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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has said this morning that the Syrian President must stop killing his own people. His condemnation comes on the day after Qatar suggested that Arab League countries should send troops in to Syria to try to stop the deadly crack down. Well in a moment I’ll be speaking to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, but also watching the discussion are our Twitter commentators and today they are Paul Waugh, editor of Politics Home, deputy political editor of the Telegraph James Kirkup and Craig Woodhouse, political correspondent of London’s Evening Standard. They provide their reactions via Twitter, you can read on the side panels and you can follow on our website, skynews.com/politics and join in as well using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who joins me from Darlington. First of all Foreign Secretary, can I ask you about the stricken liner, the Costa Concordia, what news does the Foreign Office have of the Britons on board?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we do have some more definitive news now. The Ambassador there, as you saw on your programme, has been working very hard on this, a consular team was deployed from Rome to Porto Santo Stefano and I also send a rapid deployment team from London to help their efforts yesterday. Now we have been getting a lot of information from different sources, cross checking it and on the basis of that we can say now, on the basis of information available to us, that all the British nationals involved are accounted for and are safe, that is 23 passengers and 12 crew. We’re not complacent about that, there may still be some other information that comes to light but based on all the phone calls we’ve had, the passenger lists, the people that we’ve been able to track down, the British nationals, 35 British nationals are safe and accounted for.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: And if required, Foreign Secretary, given the haste with which they may have left and probably did leave the liner, will assistance be given in getting them to where they need to go?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes, of course, yes, that’s part of what our rapid deployment team do so there will be assistance available to them at the airport and a reception centre available for them in a Rome hotel. It is primarily of course the responsibility of the cruise liner to arrange flights for people back home but British Embassy staff, British consular staff will be around to assist people. The phone numbers for people to contact have been well advertised, if they need any assistance with travel documents for instance, that is often a problem in these cases, then we will of course give them that assistance so we are doing our utmost to look after everybody. They have been through a very dreadful and distressing experience so we’ll do all we can to look after them, that is our prime concern in a case like this, to make sure British nationals are safe and looked after.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, thanks for that Mr Hague. Can I turn now to the disturbing and worrying situation in Syria and this suggestion from Qatar, who of course were crucial in terms of their intervention in Libya nearly a year ago, suggesting that Arab League countries should send troops in to Syria. Is that something that you would support and that you could see working practically?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well the Arab League will have to consider these sorts of suggestions together. As you know there is an Arab League monitoring mission in Syria and we welcome the work that the Arab League is doing and the fact that they have taken such a strong lead on this subject but that is only one of the 22 Arab nations that has made this suggestion that you are talking about so I don't think the Arab League is on the verge of doing that. What we are all looking at, at the moment, is this announcement from President Assad this morning of an amnesty for so-called crimes committed over the last few months. The Syrian government has had a habit of announcing amnesties and then making it impossible to verify whether they have really been implemented, so we and the Arab nations will continue to judge the Assad regime on its actions, not on its words. We continue to believe that Assad should leave power and immediately they should be holding dialogue with opposition, stopping the firing on and imprisoning of protestors and allowing access to the media and everybody else.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But as the killing goes on then, no immediate practical support to protect those peoples? There were Kremlin sources – I know you shot them down – suggesting, Russia suggesting that NATO had been looking at some kind of no-fly zone to protect members of the Free Syrian Army within that country.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we haven’t been looking at a no-fly zone because as we saw in Libya, a no-fly zone is only effective if you can also take other necessary measures to protect people, use military force in other ways and it is not primarily by flying aircraft that the Assad regime is repressing its people. There is no serious prospect, certainly at the moment, of the UN Security Council agreeing – we have not succeeded in agreeing any resolution on this at the moment, let alone agreeing a resolution comparable to anything that happened in Libya. So this is a much more difficult case than Libya. That doesn’t mean we’re not doing anything about it, we have passed many rounds of sanctions in the European Union including an oil embargo that is reducing the revenues of the Assad regime, we are working on further sanctions that I hope we can agree in the next ten days or so and of course we are backing up strongly the efforts of the Arab League with their monitoring mission. If that does not work, and it’s not succeeded so far, I hope they will come to the United Nations and suggest a way forward that we can all get behind.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Talking about oil embargoes, can I move on to Iran and the incredibly serious situation developing there. How worried are you about how Iran responds to further sanctions particularly in terms of blockades in the Straits of Hormuz and things like that?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we must not be put off further sanctions by bluster or statements from Iran. This is an increasingly dangerous situation that Iran is developing a military nuclear programme, we would have no problem with them developing a purely civil nuclear programme. So yes, certainly I am confident we will adopt very significant additional measures against Iran at the European Foreign Affairs Council a week tomorrow, on the 23rd, covering the oil sector and possibly other sectors as well. This is designed to put additional peaceful, legitimate pressure on Iran which has to see that it is on a dangerous course, that if it continues it will produce nuclear proliferation across the Middle East which will then be extremely dangerous for the people of Iran, for the whole region and for the peace of the world. So our sanctions are part of trying to get Iran to change course and to enter negotiations and we should not be deterred from implementing those.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: It does look like, doesn’t it, that there is some kind of co-ordinated covert operation going on with a fourth nuclear scientist it seems being assassinated there last week, also much reported cyber-attacks over the last few months and years. Do you have any idea who might be trying that on?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well no, it’s for others to speculate about that. I don’t comment on our own intelligence matters, the assassination you are talking about is not something that the United Kingdom would be involved in and I don’t want to speculate about who else would be but what we pursue are peaceful, lawful, legitimate ways of increasing the pressure on Iran. We do believe the world needs to respond robustly and clearly to this threat so we welcome what Japan has said in the last week about restricting oil imports, we welcome the sanctions imposed by the United States and we will continue to intensify our own sanctions and those of the European Union.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But ultimately do we support the United States, do we support Israel who say that they don’t rule out some form of military action if it leads to that?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we’ve never ruled anything out. We have not ruled out any option, we’ve not ruled out supporting any option, we believe all options should be on the table, that is part of the pressure on Iran, but we are clearly not calling for or advocating military action. We’re advocating negotiations, meaningful negotiations if Iran will enter into them and the increasing pressure of sanctions to try to get some flexibility from Iran in those negotiations so it is that twin track that we’re advocating. We’re not calling for military action against Iran.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let me turn now to Europe and the serious economic situation bubbling up there and of course we have seen those downgrading’s of France and others in terms of their credit rating of course and we’ve heard from you and everyone in government saying how seriously we in Britain take our Triple A rating, the France downgrade then, and others, is tremendously serious potentially.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it is serious. Of course it’s important for nations to maintain their credit worthiness to the maximum possible level and we’re doing that in this country, we’ve succeeded in doing that. These events do underline the importance of what we’re doing here in the United Kingdom. You were looking earlier in your programme at Ed Miliband saying we were being basically too tough or too strict in reducing public spending in this country but if we adopted his approach, well then our Triple A credit rating would be in danger and that can then mean higher interest rates for businesses, for households and can do great damage to the economy. So this is serious, it underlines the fact that the eurozone is not through its problems – we want it to be stable and healthy, that’s in our national interest in this country but it means that across Europe, including the UK, we need to redouble our efforts to get growth going. That means in Europe more free trade, agreements with the rest of the world, it means really pushing forward the single market, it means stopping passing regulations that make life more difficult for businesses and this is the case that the Prime Minister will make at the European Council at the end of this month.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: And the economic situation, does it move it – you are famous for your likening the euro to a burning building with no exits, does it push the eurozone closer to some kind of collapse, taking on board of course the fact that Greek debt reduction talks failed on Friday?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well not in itself, I don't think these downgrades do that. Clearly there are many difficulties to resolve over the Greek debt repayments, we hope they are resolved. In recent weeks the European Central Bank has been more active in improving the liquidity of the banking sector in Europe, this is something that we have called for for some time so that is welcome and I think that has helped to stabilise matters somewhat over the last few weeks, so I don't think we should be talking things down. We want this to be stable and healthy, we want the eurozone countries to recover, they can best do so through that kind of financial action and through really setting a course for growth. No more time wasting bureaucratic directives, an emphasis on free trade, that is the way for Europe to go.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But is it true as reported I remember at the end of last year, that there contingency plans in place that you and the Foreign Office has been developing contingency plans to help British nationals, many thousands, perhaps millions of them, who would be affected, who live in the eurozone or would be holidaying there if there was a eurozone collapse and they weren’t able to access money and things like that? You have contingency plans?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we have contingency plans in the Foreign Office for a very wide range of eventualities. It is because of that that we are able to respond quickly to something like the cruise liner disaster that we’ve seen in the last couple of days, it’s our job to prepare for what may happen however unlikely it might be, so yes we do have contingency plans for a variety of events that may happen in the eurozone over the coming months. We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t do that but that doesn’t mean that we believe all these things are going to happen and some of the reports that I saw, press reports at the end of last year that you were talking about, were rather exaggerated in the scale of what we were preparing for but nevertheless we are prepared for all eventualities and we will continue that work as long as there are economic dangers that we may have to respond to.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much for your time. William Hague there.