Alan Johnson MP transcript

On Sunday 7 February Andrew Marr interviewed Home Secretary, Alan Johnson MP.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

ANDREW MARR:

Now immigration looks likely to be a significant issue at the General Election with all the main parties saying it's time for a candid debate. Hundreds of thousands of people come to the UK every year on student visas and, following the exposure of widespread abuse, the government says it's already tightened things up, but now the Home Secretary Alan Johnson is preparing to go further and he's with me now. Good morning, Mr Johnson.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Good morning.

ANDREW MARR:

First of all, in putting this in context, what sort of proportion of people coming into this country are actually coming in at the moment on student visas?

ALAN JOHNSON:

It's about 30%.

ANDREW MARR:

That's a lot.

ALAN JOHNSON:

It's a lot and it's very good for our economy. Higher education, in particular. We are the second most popular location for people going into higher education. But what's happened is we've got a very tightly controlled immigration system under the points based system. People who are skilled can only come here to occupy a job once it's been advertised for at least a month in Job Centre Plus and there's no UK workers who can take it. The unskilled, the door's shut completely. Unskilled workers from outside the European economic area can't come into this country. And what we've noticed is that the student visa system, there's an awful lot more of adults, not young people, not coming to study degrees at universities but coming on short courses into this country.

ANDREW MARR:

And you candidly think a lot of this is bogus?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Yes, yes.

ANDREW MARR:

And they're coming in sometimes with families.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Yes, the rules allow - and these are longstanding rules, which we are changing, and we're changing them with immediate effect - that you can bring dependents and that you're entitled to work while you're studying, so 20 hours a week is the current rule. So what we're saying in three areas here basically - first of all the English language test, we want a much stricter rule …

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

ALAN JOHNSON:

… that you have to have a certain level of English language. At the moment it's beginner's English, if you like. We're saying it should be intermediate level, the equivalent of a GCSE foreign language. Secondly, the issue about dependents. We're saying that if you're coming here for a course that's under six months, you can't bring your dependents here at all. If you're coming for a course over six months and it's not a higher education degree course for 3 years, your dependents are not allowed to work. And then finally, on the student being allowed to work, currently it's 20 hours. We're cutting that down to 10 hours.

ANDREW MARR:

It does sound a terribly lax system before. I mean it's taken a long time to get round to looking at this, hasn't it?

ALAN JOHNSON:

No, what we did … I mean we closed down 200 bogus colleges. The system that allows students to work, we have to be very careful here that we're not damaging a major part of the UK economy - anywhere between 5 and 8 billion, for the reasons I've mentioned. First of all …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) I can see the country wants the money coming in. Of course. But part of the problem with this, isn't it that it's the higher education institutions, it's the colleges who are doing the policing and not the Immigration Service?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Well a combination of the two, but we put the onus on the education institutions to be the sponsors of students coming across. And that's why we closed 200 colleges, because we were …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) There's been no checks on people … when people leave either, have there?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Well the Tories got away with … did away with embarkation controls …

ANDREW MARR:

But so did you.

ALAN JOHNSON:

… but actually they were … Well in a sense, they were right to do it. Where they were wrong was not replace it with anything else. We've introduced e-Borders. We will now know because we check people coming in and going out. By 2011, we'll have the most sophisticated system in the world to check people not just coming into the country but to check that they've left as well.

ANDREW MARR:

Some of these proposals sound quite similar to something the Conservatives were saying about a month ago, and they also said that they thought people coming in should pay a deposit as it were which was held and given back to them when they left this country.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Yeah.

ANDREW MARR:

Seems a reasonable idea.

ALAN JOHNSON:

No, I don't think it is actually. It's a contribution to the debate. I don't think it will work. And actually their proposals, I don't believe meet the problem.

ANDREW MARR:

Why wouldn't it work, may I ask?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Well because you have to have a whole system of bureaucracy to make sure that that works completely - you know that the bond is given and that you check that the bond is given back once they leave. You know many of these stu… If they are coming here, using this route for illegal migration, they will pay thousands of pounds to usually the criminal gangs who organise these kind of routes not just to this country but to other countries as well. So the thought of losing a bond is just …

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh.

ALAN JOHNSON:

… you know is not quite frankly going to resolve this problem.

ANDREW MARR:

And there'll be legislation on this before the election or …?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Don't need it. We don't need legislation. It will come in with immediate effect.

ANDREW MARR:

I see. Okay. You probably heard William Hague just now …

ALAN JOHNSON:

I did, yeah.

ANDREW MARR:

… saying that it was a disgusting abuse of the constitutional privileges of parliament to say that MPs shouldn't have to face the courts for what's happened.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Yeah, I heard William Hague trying to once again answer the Ashcroft question without answering it, and then flipping across to this issue.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) People can look at that, but on this issue?

ALAN JOHNSON:

The most serious issue is the fact that look I'm the Home Secretary. I have to make sure if the Director of Public Prosecution says he's going to commence prosecutions, that I don't actually damage that by anything I say. My colleagues in parliament should get a fair trial. That fair trial should be on the same basis as any member of the public who goes through the court system.

ANDREW MARR:

Ah, so they should go through the court system?

ALAN JOHNSON:

I believe they should go through the court system.

ANDREW MARR:

That's very interesting. Because it has been said that the original Act, the Bill of Rights, says proceedings of parliament and actions…

ALAN JOHNSON:

(over) I agree with William Hague …

ANDREW MARR:

You do?

ALAN JOHNSON:

… on what the Bill of Rights was there for. And the whole point about this - this dreadful, dreadful, damaging year we've had here - is that people want to see MPs treated in the same way as they would be treated had they broken the law. Now very few MPs have broken the law. There's been issues about expenses, there's been issues about how the system was run, and all of that is being tackled. But a few, a very few have been thought to have broken the law. That's the accusation. They're entitled to a fair trial. They're not ent… And I think the public would be aghast if they thought that there was some special little get out of jail card for parliamentarians.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

ALAN JOHNSON:

But it has to go through the court system. And I do not believe that the Bill of Rights was meant to deal with this kind of issue.

ANDREW MARR:

I was discussing the Chilcot Inquiry with Alastair Campbell, and one of the stories that we hear is that the Prime Minister is definitely going to be in front of that inquiry before the General Election, which suggests he's going to have to get on with it if it's true that we have to start thinking about an earlier election at the moment.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Look, I can't help you with your inquiries about when the General Election will be held. Gordon's been very clear about this. He saw the need to first of all get our troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, then to have a public inquiry, and that's at his instigation. And Chilcot is absolutely an independent process. They had decided not to actually invite the current Prime Minister. (Marr tries to interject) He offered himself to go in front of the inquiry.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Can I ask you to reflect more generally on what this whole episode, by which I mean the Iraq War but particularly the run up to the Iraq War and the controversy over it - what has it done to New Labour and to the project that you've been part of?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Well I think what you have to look at, if we go back to the question you asked William Hague, this was the first time we'd ever been to war on anything other than the Royal Prerogative; the first time there'd been a parliamentary debate. I was there in March 2003 …

ANDREW MARR:

Which doesn't help if parliament was misled.

ALAN JOHNSON:

Read the Hansard. Parliament wasn't misled. Parliament was not misled.

ANDREW MARR:

But surely if that intelligence did not support the assertion …

ALAN JOHNSON:

Well hang on a minute.

ANDREW MARR:

… that WMD were up and running, then parliament was misled?

ALAN JOHNSON:

Look at the debate. Look at the amendment by my colleague Chris Smith at the time. The issue wasn't about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Everyone … Well they did. We know they did because they gassed …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Some way back, yes.

ALAN JOHNSON:

… twice committed genocide against his own people …

ANDREW MARR:

Some way back, yes.

ALAN JOHNSON:

… twice invaded neighbouring countries. That's why he was subjected to UN Resolution 1441. And the whole debate was he was supposed to have complied with that absolutely by the end of December 2002. We were in March 2003. He hadn't complied and the whole argument is do you let him get away with that again? Having run rings round the UN for ten years, do you allow that vicious dictator to actually cock a snook at the international community again? That was the nature of the debate. Forty-five minutes. Go through the Hansard. I don't remember forty-five minutes being mentioned at all.

ANDREW MARR:

I remember being told about it as a reporter very clearly at the time. But, nonetheless, final point, final question. Polls tightening. Is there a sort of flicker of half excitement, half expectation in the party that maybe this election is not a foregone conclusion?

ALAN JOHNSON:

No. Well, look, I said when I was on your programme in December never underestimate the seriousness of the British electorate. It was always going to happen. This is not about a bad month for the Conservatives. This is about, this is about the public focusing on policy. And I think the Conservative Party felt with lots of money, a good PR campaign and a sense of entitlement, that was all they'd need. The scrutiny that comes up approaching a General Election is something completely different to what we've been used to over the last …

ANDREW MARR:

Okay. Our time for scrutiny sadly today is over. Thank you very much indeed, Home Secretary.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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