ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well, cuts to police budgets have had a shocking impact on frontline forces, at least that’s what Labour are saying this morning. Figures they’ve obtained appear to show that the number of officers who respond to emergencies have fallen by 5000 and more since the government came to power. In a moment I’ll be speaking to Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, and to Police Minister, Nick Herbert, but let me tell you also watching the discussions are our Twitter commentators and today they are Paul Waugh who is the editor of Politics Home, we’ve got David Wooding, the Associate Political Editor at the Sun, they’re joined by John Higginson, political editor of the Metro newspaper. They provide their reactions via Twitter and you can read those on the side panels if you’re watching in HD, you can also follow on website skynews.com/politics and you can join in using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning then to the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Ms Cooper, you’re in the same director of travel as the government when it comes to accepting that cuts to police budgets have to take place, you’re talking about 12% instead of 20%, would you thought with the 12% cut be able to preserve frontline policing in its entirety?

YVETTE COOPER: Well I think the government should be protecting frontline policing, these figures today are completely shocking because time and again Ministers have promised us that the frontline would not be hit and in fact the Prime Minister himself told us that the frontline was increasing. These figures show us the truth – over 500 officers lost already from jobs like emergency response, the 999 calls, the kinds of calls people depend on, so I think we should have more protection, I don't think the government should have gone as far and that’s why we said that a 12% reduction in the police budgets was sustainable for the police and that’s based on independent evidence and analysis but 20% is just too far, too fast and it’s putting communities at risk.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, so what effect, in your estimation, would the 12% have? I know things don’t work like this but if you went for 12% cuts instead of 20%, you’re talking about 5200 police, 3120 frontline police going under Labour.

YVETTE COOPER: No, our assessment was, and this was based on different programmes of work done by Alan Johnson before the election, also some other work done by the HMIC, different programmes of work that have been done that would allow you to protect the number of police officers, to protect frontline policing. That was the pledge that we made at the time of the election and that’s what I think the government should be doing but instead, by hitting so deeply and also with these deep frontline … sorry, these deep front loaded cuts, the fact they’ve made the deepest cuts in the first two years, that’s why we’re seeing so many police officers going. David Cameron told the House of Commons within the past couple of weeks, he said the frontline was increasing. In fact the reality is over 5000 police officers going from these crucial jobs across the country, that’s what the Freedom of Information requests have shown from force after force after force. Chief Constables have been telling us they face a cliff edge, they are in a really serious position, the government is just not listening and I think it’s deeply unfair on people who’ll be worried at a time when crime is already starting to rise in some areas.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So no cuts in police numbers under Labour then, because you’ll be aware that your colleague Alan Johnson, you mentioned him there, when Home Secretary, said a Labour government if elected in 2010 could not guarantee that police numbers would not fall.

YVETTE COOPER: Well ultimately all decisions are taken by Chief Constables but what we would have done is give the Chief Constables enough resources to sustain police and be aware that there are many other organisations including organisations like the Police Federation, who said yes, they would have supported a 12% reduction in the budget. But 20% - the difference is they’re taking £2 billion a year out of the policing budget, it’s a bigger hit than to a whole series of other areas and I think it is just to ignore the concerns that people are raising. Personal crimes such as theft, robbery, violence, has already gone up by 11%, I think that is worrying for people across the country especially if they now worry that officers will not be able to reach them as fast, that the response will not be as strong because of the scale of the cuts the government’s taking.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So are those crime figures you mentioned, are they going up because of the cuts?

YVETTE COOPER: Well obviously there are a whole series of things that affect what happen with crime but there was some research done by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, they are an independent organisation, and they said, they predicted that the scale of cuts to the number of officers would mean an increase in crime. There are other things of course happening when I think the government has hit hard in prevention programmes, for example youth prevention work that was working with people to prevent reoffending, a lot of those programmes have been hit and we know too that long term youth unemployment is rising. So I think that people in communities across the country will be really worried and it’s like the government is just not hearing. They keep saying it’s improving, it’s increasing, it’s like saying that up is down, black is white, in is out – they’re just not listening.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: That response seems a bit more nuanced than what you’ve written in the Sun on Sunday today, a simple sentence, four words – crime up, police down. You believe that the cuts are affecting the crime figures.

YVETTE COOPER: Well already you’ve got violence, robbery and theft going up and I think to do that at a time when crime in some areas, in these really important areas, is already rising, to be at that time taking 16,000 police officers away in total, as you said 5000 of them from the frontline already but many more to come, so to remove 16,000 police officers already at a time when crime is already rising, I think that is deeply irresponsible. What we need is a government that is committed to cutting crime. You’ll be aware that crime fell by around 40% over the last 15 years but that was as a result of having more police on the beat, doing more to prevent crime in the first place, police officers working with local councils, working with communities – none of that’s happening any more. There’s no strategy to cut crime and instead you’re seeing crime go up and police officers come down.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I want to ask you in this time of budgetary restraint why you are now supporting police commissioners, elected police commissioners? Of course some of your former colleagues, most notably John Prescott, wants to become one. In your estimation it is going to cost quite a lot of money to stage those elections, wouldn’t that be better spent on policing?

YVETTE COOPER: It certainly would and we don’t support the policy. We think that the government should not be going ahead with it, to spend over £100 million on elections at a time when you could put that money into 3000 extra constables in Olympic year I think is just showing the wrong priorities. We would still like the government to pull this, not to go ahead with the elections in November which I think is a very bad time of year to hold these elections, but if the government insists on going ahead then of course we will make the best of a bad job because I think it’s important that we don’t simply stand back and ignore policing and leave the Conservatives to put up their candidates who I think will be champions for these cuts and cheerleaders for the cuts instead of standing up for their communities, which is what Labour candidates will do.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: And in terms of how you pay for all this, is it back to that seemingly never ending pot of banker’s bonuses for Labour?

YVETTE COOPER: No, we’ve said that we would not cut so far and so fast, that’s the approach that Labour have always said and that’s …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Yes, that’s the point that I’m making, where would you get the extra money from?

YVETTE COOPER: Well we’ve said that we should have a more balanced time table to bring the deficit down but bear in mind what the government is doing, they are actually borrowing more now to pay for the bills of failure, now to pay for more people on the dole because they took such I think an unbalanced approach, because they’ve hit the economy so hard, they are also hitting policing and the NHS and other public services but most importantly hitting the economy so badly, you end up with more people on the dole. That means we pay more in unemployment benefit, it means there are fewer businesses growing and paying tax and the consequence is that George Osborne is borrowing £158 billion more as a result of his policies so that I think is where the most important change needs to take place.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Right, so don’t do the cuts and hope for growth but the Lib Dems seem to be discussing more concrete policies than Labour at the moment, do you think some of these things should be Labour police – tycoon tax, mansion tax, keep the 50p rate?

YVETTE COOPER: Well I think Nick Clegg seems to have a different policy every day. There’s I think quite a lot of distraction politics going on because he doesn’t want to talk about what’s actually happening with the NHS and I think the Liberal Democrat’s shocking betrayal of the NHS by the fact that they have signed up to the Conservative’s policies but you raised, look, we’ve said of course you should look at things like the mansion tax, we’d be happy to look at those sorts of things but in order to protect those who at the moment the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are going to hit by £4000 that they’ll be taking away from working families so that they will end up being better off if they give up work, better off if they split up – that is the cut to tax credit that this government is proposing to bring in in just a few weeks’ time. If they are serious about fairness, if they are serious about supporting families who feel really squeezed, that’s what they should be putting their effort into and not into finding different ways of trying to get rid of the 50p tax rate for highest earners which seems to be the priority of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, lastly Ms Cooper, can I ask you about leadership? I know we quite often return to this, did you hear that Radio 5Live interview with your leader where he got monstered by some members of the public including Labour supporters?

YVETTE COOPER: I didn’t hear it but look, in politics you always listen to people who have all sorts of different views but I think Ed is doing a great job at the moment and you can see the results as to the campaign on the NHS for example which I think is extremely strong and we will keep campaigning on it at the moment.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So not time for a woman leader yet in reference to another interview you’ve given, that Labour one day will have a female leader?

YVETTE COOPER: No … No, Ed is doing a really good job and you can see the … I think the progress the Labour party has made over the last two years is very considerable. We know we’ve all got more work to do but actually it’s Ed’s leadership that I think is making a big difference. The campaigns that we’re running now around jobs and growth, around the NHS and now on crime and policing, each area where we think the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are abandoning hard working people, they’re not listening and they are doing huge damage. That’s why we want to stand up for people across the country and to campaign on their behalf and to also campaign for more support for Labour as we do so.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So learning from your mistakes, because you refer in that Sun on Sunday article to saying that we weren’t doing enough to stand up for those that played by the rules. What precisely are you referring to?

YVETTE COOPER: Well I think if you look at the time of the election obviously there were 28% of people voted for Labour at that time and we had to listen to the concerns that people were raising with us. Since then under Ed’s leadership now under the polls, and I am always slightly cautious about polls, I don't think you should always take them with a slight scepticism but they have shown Labour climbing back to around 40% in the polls and that is I think as a result of what we’ve been doing since which is campaigning on jobs. People are really worried about losing their job at the moment, they’re really worried about the fact that youth unemployment has rocketed since the election – before the election it was coming down. We’ve been campaigning on those basic things that I think are really important to people and listening to people. We’ve got to do more of that, we know we’ve still got work to do but I think the work that we’ve done since the election has been really important, we’ve got to keep on going.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Yvette Cooper, thank you very much, the Shadow Home Secretary there.

YVETTE COOPER: Thank you.