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Dermot Murnaghan: Now after months of negotiations, the Brighton Declaration unveiled this week was meant to show the government’s determination to reform the European Court of Human Rights but with the mishandling of the deportation of Abu Qatada and apparent disquiet within the Cabinet, do the reforms go nearly far enough? Let’s say a very good morning to the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke and Mr Clarke, just before we discuss the ECHR, the Bahraini Grand Prix with tear gas, barbed wire, demonstrations, death of a protestor, do you really think it is appropriate to be holding a sporting event in those circumstances?

Ken Clarke: Well I think it has obviously been taken as an opportunity to publicise the grievances of the reformers in Bahrain, as always tends to happen when you have these big international sporting events. Obviously Formula 1 motor racing has nothing to do with the struggles between the Sunni and the Shia and the constitutional reform of Bahrain but they have announced three days of rage because the Formula 1 is going there. I hope both sides show restraint, I deeply regret someone appears to have been killed, obviously everybody is imploring them to keep down the level of violence but I don't think the cancellation of the Grand Prix actually would make a very great deal of difference and I don't think it’s a matter for politicians in Britain to decide whether to or not, essentially in the end it is up to Formula 1 and the people who run the sport and the teams.

DM: But it is about the nature of the regime as well, presumably you feel the protestors have a point and taking Formula 1 there, this massive multinational sporting event rather puts some gloss, gives some kudos to that regime.

KC: Well I’ve been to the Bahrain Grand Prix in the past, it is a very non-political event and it was started long before the Arab Spring. I mean we are going to great lengths to ensure various international groups don’t turn up and turn the Olympics in London into an opportunity to publicise their cause. Now regardless of …

DM: But Justice Secretary, we’re a demo

cratic society.

KC: You can’t start moving … of course but you can’t start moving sporting events around in order to try to avoid outbreaks of opinion about local politics or international politics. What we all hope is that it will be peaceful, it will further democratic reform in Bahrain, that both sides will show restraint and that the Grand Prix actually goes ahead without incident and doesn’t actually have any impact on the political settlement in Bahrain where certainly I want to see continued reform going on in that country.

DM: But it goes beyond that doesn’t it? I mean you must have seen what Amnesty International and others have said about Bahrain, it’s been going on a long time there, the crackdown on protestors and it is a brutal crackdown, there have been deaths, they brought in the Saudis to help them out and there is a denial of democratic rights there. Is it really a country we should be gracing with something like this, is it a country where we should be inviting their royal family to diamond jubilee lunches as well?

KC: Well I very much hope Bahrain will carry on progressing towards democratic liberalism, the kind I like to see in most countries in the world. It is part of the Arab Spring and I think we are going through a period of considerable turmoil across the Middle East but things are going in the right direction in terms of freedom of expression and so on. The politics of Bahrain are actually quite complicated with the division between the Sunni and the Shia and they must work out their own constitutional progress in I hope a peaceful way. I do think whether or not there’s a football match, a cricket match or a Grand Prix there is important but I don’t think one should normally start moving these fixtures about according to ones views of the political turmoil inside the country. International sports like Formula 1 are held in quite a lot of territories where the local human rights picture has from time to time been controversial, not least of course the People’s Republic of China.

DM: Okay, well let’s discuss human rights now in Europe, in the 47 nations that signed up to the European Court of Human Rights and your attempted reform to the process, to the system, in Brighton last week. Do you think you really made any progress on this issue of subsidiarity, of allowing British courts to deal with most of the cases?

KC: Well we made quite remarkable progress. To get 47 member states to agree on a declaration to accelerate the reform that’s been underway did show what a desire for the reform there was, it is going to have quite an impact on the number of cases there, the years of delays, how far the court now concentrates on the serious cases and actually gives, normally gives regard to the fact that national courts have handled the thing properly, all that was agreed. We got rather overshadowed by the circus in London that surrounded the reporting of Abu Qatada but actually I think more important achievements took place down in Brighton. I started this six months ago when we took the chairmanship up, when the Prime Minister announced our aims. I must say I thought the chances of getting everybody from Azerbaijan to Iceland and from Italy to the Russian Federation to agree on this package was not good but everybody there realised that further reform is needed and the pace of reform that has been going on needs to be accelerated.

DM: Yet apparently we hear that some of your Cabinet colleagues are not satisfied about the pace of reform, that Mr Gove, Mr Iain Duncan Smith and others on Tuesday were banging the table.

KC: Well they weren’t when I was there I have to say. We discussed it in Cabinet twice with complete unanimity, across the government, across the coalition and when we started the Prime Minister set out clear objectives that we wanted to see. William Hague and I and Dominic Grieve and several ministers have been pursuing it very energetically and we got what we set out to achieve at Brighton. We actually put in place in the declaration the aims which the Prime Minister described so we’ve had a fortnight of media circus around all kinds of events, we had rather a lack of media circus in Brighton but actually I think it was quite an important event and a big diplomatic achievement for the United Kingdom but there were more entertaining things going on elsewhere or there appeared to be.

DM: But one legal brain who gave his considered opinion to what came out of Brighton is the President of the European Court, Sir Nicholas Bratza, who interpreted rather differently the declaration and said there was no proposal for new admissibility criteria and he said that is not made in the declaration, he didn’t see any changes there.

KC: Well I spoke to Sir Nicholas actually and he was complaining to me that he had been misreported at my press conference and judges aren’t used to this. I said to him, Nicholas, don’t worry, you will be misreported tomorrow and so will I and the only trouble is that he actually had some reservations about what we were pressing for when we started, he was quite rightly defensive on the part of the court. We are not going to compromise the independence of the courts, it’s not worth its name if you do that but actually we’ve speeded up a process of reform that had already started but now normally the court is not going to hear trivial cases, repetitive cases and those cases where the national courts have already properly applied the convention. We have got enormous arrears to get rid of but all the excitement about these terrorist cases, you know, we won six, lost one, Hamza is going but Abu Qatada is still here. We would actually have a lot of frustration about the bits that we lose but we’d have a lot less frustration if they hadn’t all been locked up here for years and years. If this argument had been had six or seven years ago when the previous government was doing nothing in particular, well there still would have been annoyance that the European Court of Human Rights wasn’t agreeing to everything the government wanted but I think there would have been a lot less if the court was obviously dealing with serious issues, having regard to national judgements and applying the true principles of the Convention on Human Rights which obviously we adhere to as does every other European country apart from Belarus.

DM: On that specific case you mentioned a number of times, Abu Qatada, you said the circus surrounding that – it seems like the circus is going to stay in town, in London town, for quite a while longer after that mess up by your colleagues in the Home Office.

KC: Well when Theresa announced it in the first place she did say it would take several months more. She put forward what is the absolute given for everybody in this country – of course we only deport people, we only imprison people in accordance with the process of law, we are governed by the rule of law, it’s one of the prides of the United Kingdom that it is and the result is inevitably, she said straight away, it’s going to take a few months of legal process and some of the wild excitement about the details of that process has been taken rather to excess. We’ve lost the point in looking at all this. We only lose 2% of the cases in the court, some of the ones we lose are quite desirable like the things done to stop and search powers and holding DNA of innocent people and most of the terrorists we’ve had locked up for years have just lost their cases and are about to be extradited. Abu Qatada will also follow if the assurance is given by the Jordanians that the evidence against him was not obtained by torture are credible and stand up but it will take a few more months of process.

DM: Can I just ask you, Mr Clarke, as a former Chancellor, your take on the economic clouds at the moment, how are you reading them, particularly with the GDP, the gross domestic product figures coming out next week which will show if we have avoided a double dip recession or not?

KC: Well we are going to have a difficult time. I have always taken the view that it is going to be quite a long process to get back to normality, 2012 I think will undoubtedly be challenging, there are a lot of things beyond our control in the wider world that are likely to impact on the British economy, still could, but I think compared with most of the other Western democracies we are doing remarkably well. We have a coalition government in the national interest tackling debt and deficit, more determination than most of our friends and neighbours and actually winning more credibility for doing so, taking a leading role in trying to sort out the international problems and at home we are making our Corporation Tax more competitive, we are reducing tax on jobs, we are putting the money into research, science, education, all the things that are going to make us a competitive country again but the idea that we put up with two or three difficult months and then all is joy and we’re back to the kind of boom growth that fooled us all five years ago, that is an illusion. It is going to be long, hard work, fortunately we have a very competent, very skilled government that is leading this country through rather better than most other Western democracies are doing.

DM: Okay and in terms of that coalition dynamic, you mentioned your partners there, we know that one of the big things on their agenda, the Liberal Democrats, at the moment, it’s going to be a key feature of the Queen’s Speech, is going to be the House of Lord reform and we know there is a lot less keenness in some quarters of the Conservative party. What do you think of a wholly elected upper chamber?

KC: I’ve always been in favour of House of Lords reform. A few years ago my cabinet colleague, George Young and I produced a pamphlet with Robin Cook, the Labour ex-Foreign Secretary and Paul Tyler, then a Liberal MP, now a peer, and we set out a detailed blueprint for an elected House of Lords. The existing House of Lords is a curious historic anomaly, we are ready for democracy I think. All three political parties were in favour of House of Lords reform in their last manifesto and the House of Commons has always voted for a largely elected House of Lords whenever it has been asked in the past. The Liberals probably have determined the timing, I think doing it now in this parliament has happened because the Liberals are anxious to get on with it but the Conservatives are also in favour of reform and if we are going to do it, we’d better do it sensibly. What I can’t understand, of course there are going to be some people against, there always have been a minority in the Commons against Lords reform for a variety of reasons but what I hope is that none of our backbenchers just want to do it because they are against the coalition of the Liberals Democrats and are against it because they think it’s a Liberal Democrat thing, because it isn’t, it’s an all-party thing and sensible reform is rather overdue.

DM: And what about you, Mr Clarke, finally? We know there is a cabinet reshuffle coming some time this year, perhaps after the Olympics, would you like to get another Cabinet post, stay in the one you’re in or perhaps head for the House of Lords quite soon yourself?

KC: Well the Prime Minister is running this government very sensibly. Tony Blair used to have some people in office for a few months which was completely useless so he is running government for the first half of the parliament and then he’ll reshape it at his own good time, as he wishes, in order to produce a government for the second half. I’m not going to comment on that, I’ve sort of enjoyed myself, I’ve been delighted to be in the present government and I’m probably one of the rising younger stars I think coming along, who knows, I might catch the selector’s eye! But more seriously, I’m getting on with my job and I quite realise that when the Prime Minister reshuffles, he’ll decide who is going to go into the government for the second half of the parliament.

DM: Justice Secretary, thank you very much indeed. Kenneth Clarke there, one of the self-d rising stars of the Cabinet.