ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We’ve got Sadiq Khan here now, the Shadow Justice Secretary, a very good morning to you.  Listening to Richard Barrett there, it’s chilling stuff isn’t it? 

SADIQ KHAN: It’s a huge source of concern and one of the reasons why Ed Miliband asked all six questions on this issue is because of the concern we have.  Look, there’s nothing new about British citizens being concerned, angry, frustrated about things that have happened overseas in the past, our country has been involved in military action as a consequence of liberal intervention, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Libya recently.  We often provide humanitarian aid for people on the other side of the world who are suffering the consequences of civil war and war but I think what we have got to make quite clear though to British citizens who are concerned, frustrated, angry at what’s happening to, in inverted commas, their ‘brothers’ in Syria or Iraq or elsewhere is jumping on a plane, going to these country and becoming a soldier isn’t the way to help these people and where I disagree with Richard, he is talking about the steps we’ve got to take once they come back, well I think we should be doing much more to stop people going in the first place.  The problem is this, I was in Cardiff on Friday and went to a mosque and was invited by the Chairman of the Mosque to speak to the congregation and many of them afterwards wanted to speak to me.  The mosques actually do a good job, actually most mums and dads don’t want their young sons – and we’ve seen the father of the two sons in Cardiff who have been radicalised but the problem is with the internet now, with social media, with Twitter.  Our ability as parents or as governors of a mosque are less than they were, we’ve got to redouble our efforts to try and stop at source these preachers of hates getting into people’s bedrooms. 

DM: You identified the problem back in 2009 for the Fabian Society, with that pamphlet you wrote, how to reconnect – reconnect meaning there’s a disconnect – with the British Muslims.  That was five years ago and it still hasn’t happened.

SADIQ KHAN: Well I think the issue is this – not wishing to excuse people who  have become radicalised or turned to violent means, I think we’ve got to recognise that if you are a young person born and raised in this country and the first time someone shows you a role model is a bearded man with a Kalashnikov in Afghanistan or somebody doing bad things in Syria and Iraq, it’s a problem and we need to do much more to make people in this country recognise that actually it is possible for people of different faiths and backgrounds  - 2.7 British Muslims in this country, millions of Hindus and Sikhs …

DM: But that means, as I say the Prevent strategy and other strands have been running for eleven years and more and were given a big push after 7/7, it’s been a long time already and it’s still not working.  What more can be done?

SADIQ KHAN: Well it depends how you define success.  Some would argue, and you have Ian Blair on later on, the fact that we have had so few successful attacks is a sign of success but it just takes one or two people to get through, two men to kill Lee Rigby, four to commit 7/7.

DM: That’s a sign of success from the security agencies who may, we don’t know what they’re doing behind the scenes preventing the attacks taking place but as you say and we all agree, it would be better that people don’t have these feelings, don’t have these desires to carry out these attacks and don’t get the training in the lethal methods to do that abroad in the first place.

SADIQ KHAN: Well that’s the point I tried to make, the point I tried to make was actually we’ve got to be quite clear about the fact that it is possible to be a British Muslim and to have British values, they are not inconsistent.  The idea that somehow British values are inconsistent with Islam is nonsense, it’s possible to be a practising Muslim and to be a lawyer or a doctor or a governor of a primary school or secondary school or be a police officer or to be a comedian or to do all these things.  The idea that you can’t do one because you are the other is ridiculous and we’ve got to talk loudly about the success stories but not be scared to have these debates, to take on those charismatic preachers who say the only way to be a good Muslim is to go to Syria or Iraq, to take on those who say you can’t be a Muslim and have British values as well.  You can do both on both sides.

DM: There’s another dimension of where people get radicalised that I know you’ve touched on, given your brief as Shadow Justice Secretary, is of course in our prisons, there’s a big concern there.  Say some of these young men commit some offence and are arrested and end up in prison, rather than them changing they may come out even more radical.

SADIQ KHAN: Oh this is a big problem.  You talked about what I wrote in 2009 but the Chief Inspector of Prisons in 2010, she reported and she said she was concerned about some convicted terrorists being in prisons with young vulnerable men and there had been no action to try to stop them mingling and I asked a question on this on the floor of the House recently because the figures I uncovered showed in some prisons 44% of those in prisons are Muslims, many of them convicted of terrorism.  We should be asking the question why there are so many Muslims are in prison, a big question there but also what’s gone wrong…

DM: But what is the supervision there?  

SADIQ KHAN: But also … And you speak to prison governors as I do, prison officers as I do, the inadequacy of their training is quite shocking but also their inability to tackle these problems is a big issue and we should be doing much, much more. There is no point [inaudible] from this government coming on with their heads in their hands, blaming parents, the mosques, important roles they have to play as well.  The spaces we can govern, prisons, we should be doing much, much more than we currently are.  

DM: Sadiq Khan, thank you very much indeed for your thoughts, good to see you.  Sadiq Khan, Shadow Justice Secretary there.