ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now immigration is a tricky issue for the Labour party. They have admitted to making mistakes in the past but are still trying to win trust for the future and this morning the party has announced they would force big firms to train a British apprentice for each worker they hire from outside the European Union. In a moment I’ll speak to the Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper about that and other things. So let’s say a very good morning then to the Shadow Home Secretary there at the Labour Party Conference and let’s get some specifics first of all, Ms Cooper, about this idea of making firms who hire from overseas take on a British apprentice. So if you are a large company who urgently needs someone with say IT skills from outside the European Union, you can’t bring them in unless you make at least a pledge to hire a British apprentice.

YVETTE COOPER: Well that’s right because already if people want to bring in what’s called the Tier Two workers from abroad, they do have to meet certain conditions and this would be adding additional conditions in order to really have the right kind of approach both to immigration and to our economy. We don’t think it’s good for the long term health of the economy for companies to be reliant to be bringing in skilled workers always from abroad because they are not supporting the investment in skills and training that we need here at home and so of course we will always have people coming with great skills and talents from overseas to work in Britain and to contribute to Britain, that is important in a global economy, but we don’t want to be reliant on those overseas talents when in fact we should be investing in talents here at home.

DM: Okay, what’s the overall aspiration on immigration? We’ve heard you and indeed your leader say you have made mistakes in the past, particularly with transitional controls on Poles and others from Eastern Europe but aspirations for the future? Would you join with the Conservatives and say you want to get it down to tens of thousands net migration?

YC: We’ve already said that the pace of migration has become too fast, we do think it’s right to support measures that bring immigration down, in particular low skilled migration as well but I think the problems with the Conservatives, in fact the measure is going in the opposite direction now. They set a target for net migration, that target is now going up. In fact it depends on whether or not people are leaving the country, it depends on British people leaving, it also includes students, university students who obviously bring a lot of money into this country but doesn’t include illegal immigration which we’re worried about because we think that is getting worse. So I think you have to look at different kinds of immigration and the problem with the Conservatives approach is that it doesn’t look at different kinds of immigration and as a result is in danger of targeting the wrong things.

DM: Have you any suggestion about what to do about the imminent arrival of an unspecified number of Romanians and Bulgarians next year?

YC: Well we did set our earlier this year measures that we thought the government needed to take in advance of the Romanian and Bulgarian transitional controls ending and that included for example looking at those areas which had traditionally recruited from abroad, for example the care sector, and looking at targeting training and support schemes to get young people who are unemployed in this country into those jobs instead. It also included looking at things like the way in which the minimum wage is being undercut, the way that people are being exploited when they come to this country, having stronger enforcement of the minimum wage but also much tougher penalties and we are announcing a big increase that we would support in the fines for breaching the minimum wage today because I think that’s the problem. When you look at the European migration, it is actually having an impact on the Labour market and the government could do something about that – they haven’t done that, they haven’t taken those measures.

DM: Let me push you that, the minimum wage, because of course Labour introduced it. You talk about more prosecutions, there have only been two attempts to prosecute since 2010 in this government but no prosecutions whatsoever under Labour between 1998 when it was introduced and 2007, you weren’t exactly policing it yourself.

YC: Well I think it is a serious problem that there haven’t been prosecutions, it’s why we’ve also said we think that we should bring local councils into looking at some of these enforcement issues as well because we know there are breaches. There are some estimates that suggest that in the care sector alone there are over 200,000 people who are not being paid the minimum wage, that is shocking, it’s appalling. Ed Miliband has said this is a priority because it’s deeply unfair on people who are working hard, contributing to this country, contributing to their families, supporting their families who are being exploited and it is really unfair on people across the country.

DM: But what’s the stick? You increase the maximum fine to £50,000 and, as I say, a handful of prosecutions since it was introduced. You are now talking, if you take your figures, 220,000 in the care sector, 287,000 workers overall who should be paid the minimum wage, we are talking tens of thousands of prosecutions with potential £50,000 fines.

YC: Well I think you have got to start increasing the prosecutions and hopefully once the prosecutions start increasing, then you have a deterrent effect on other employers who then start getting their act together because this is really unfair on good employers, employers who do pay at least the minimum wage, if not more, who are ending up being undercut by unscrupulous employers …

DM: Ms Cooper, you know the majority of big businesses obviously can’t get away with not paying the minimum wage, we can all scrutinise what they’re doing. It’s the small businesses who employ a handful of workers, now if they are not paying the minimum wage, Labour are saying we are going to hound you and we are going to fine you.

YC: I think you’ve got to take action. You can’t just turn your back on the way in which people across the country are being exploited. It’s why we’ve said we need action on zero hours contracts as well because again it’s another example of where people are working really hard, they’re trying to support their families, you see a cost of living crisis going on where prices are going up and up and up every single month under David Cameron’s government and yet he’s doing nothing about it, the fact that wages simply aren’t keeping up because the economy is not growing but also those on low and middle income are actually finding themselves really feeling ground down, getting no support at all from a Tory and Liberal government that seems to be just turning its back and supporting millionaires, giving them tax cuts instead of looking at what are the practical things that can give people a bit of a helping hand, a bit of support when they need it most.

DM: Let me join this up with what we’re hearing from Labour about the other end of the income scale. We heard from Mr Miliband last year that you were a one nation party, always have been, always would be but wealth creators, those people who earn perhaps over £60,000 a year, you’re not that interested in them apart from wanting to tax them.

YC: Well we support everybody across the economy and we want them to contribute, that’s the approach that we’ve always taken. I think there are people who are earning all kinds of levels of income who are perhaps feeling stretched because the cost of living keeps going up, that’s the pressures people are facing, that’s why you have got to do on things like energy reports and all of those sorts of things.

DM: But £60,000, that’s when you become rich and that’s when – we heard from the Liberal Democrats, they think it’s around £50,000, you’re more or less in the same ballpark, beyond that level you will contribute more?

YC: No, I don’t think that’s a helpful way to look at it at all. I don’t think that’s a sensible approach. What we’re saying is that for example we would not have supported the tax cut for millionaires because that is putting additional money in the pockets of those who have got the highest income at a time at which they are taking away support from things like the Child Tax Credit, from things like Child Benefit, from those on the lowest incomes who are I think under real pressure.

DM: Can I just ask you about the background to this conference? Of course it has come at a time that a man that presumably you know, Damien McBride, former advisor to the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has released extracts of his memoirs, the full book of course is coming out on Wednesday. Were you aware of any of the poison that he was spilling out at the time? Everyone seems to be saying they didn’t know what he was doing, we know that’s not credible.

YC: No, and I think it’s obvious that Damien McBride was out of control as a result of some of the things that were happening and I think the book and the reports have made that clear. I think though this is also about a kind of politics that really is appalling and that we should never go back to. It is something that happened some years ago and I think it’s a sign of how much the Labour party has changed, the very different climate, the very different way in which Ed Miliband is managing things, is operating things now, that’s a good thing. We don’t want to go back to the navel gazing of the past.

DM: But we know he did know and work with your husband, the Shadow Chancellor. Did Mr McBride ever come round to your house?

YC: No.

DM: Not once, not ever?

YC: I think this is again about what happened in the past and I think we have to not get drawn into looking backwards at things that happened six or seven years ago when people want us to be talking about their concerns and the cost of living today. Actually I just think this was never about what was going on in my constituency and other people’s constituencies all over the country and it is certainly not what people are worrying about now and I think that’s what this party is…

DM: No, indeed, I get that but people are worried about this issue of the past, we discussed that when it came to immigration, Ms Cooper, honesty and the degree of honesty from the current Labour leadership about what went wrong with Labour’s immigration policy in the past but this is part of that isn’t it? It’s honesty about the past so that you can be trusted for the future.

YC: Well that’s right and I think that is what we’re also saying, that things have changed and I’m glad that they have because …

DM: Is that an admission, is that an admission that Damien McBride briefed on behalf of the former Prime Minister and others, his acolytes, and that was sanctioned?

YC: No, I mean I don't know all the details of what he was doing, I’ve seen the reports in the papers and I didn’t know based on those things what was happening at the time but I think the important thing is for us to say that should never have happened, it shouldn’t have happened at the time, it’s the kind of politics that nobody ever wants to see and it certainly shouldn’t be happening now and it isn’t happening now because I think you can see a very different way of working and a very different support because we obviously had very many years of that relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown which was very damaging for the party. We don’t have that any more. It’s right that we should put that into the past and move on and actually be helping people today.

DM: But you and I know that there’ll be journalists watching this programme who hearing you saying there are no anonymous briefings any more from Labour will just be going – really?

YC: I think that what people across the country want to see watching your programme is what is the Labour party going to do to help them? What is the Labour party going to do to support them when they are facing rising costs of childcare, when they are facing rising prices in the shops, when they can’t afford to pay their fuel bills, when they run out of money at the end of the month rather than us all getting sucked into a Westminster bubble looking back at things that happened six or seven years ago that we all agree should never have happened, must never happen again and the focus of this conference for our Labour Party Conference is about people out across the country who are feeling under pressure. That’s what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to help them because we know that the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are letting them down, repeatedly letting them down, making their lives harder month by month by month.

DM: Shadow Home Secretary, thank you very much indeed. Yvette Cooper there at the Labour Party Conference.