ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now as more information emerges about the Woolwich terror suspects, the government has announced a new task force to tackle radicalisation. Meanwhile a former Labour Minister has said the coalition’s approach to countering extremism is failing. In a moment I’ll be speaking to Shadow Justice Secretary and Shadow Minister for London, Sadiq Khan. Let’s say a very good morning to Sadiq Khan and that issue of radicalisation, it’s at the forefront of so many people’s minds and it was Hazel Blears I referred to, your former colleague in the government, saying that the government really seems to be failing in its attempts but is it or is it just impossible to stop some people from holding these kind of radical ideas?

SADIQ KHAN: It is firstly worth saying that I’ve been visiting mosques and other places this weekend and whether you are in a mosque or a synagogue or a church or a Gurdwara temple, I think the thoughts of most of the country if not all of them would be the family of Drummer Lee Rigby and there has been unequivocal condemnation from Muslims and non-Muslims about what happened on 22nd May. I think the reality is nowadays it is very easy to become radicalised in your own bedroom, the internet is a source for good in many, many ways but it is also a source of evil as well. The ability of you in your bedroom to read and receive sermons from 3000 miles away, to be incited to do these sorts of things, make it more difficult for those of us in positions of authority or power to stop them. Where Hazel is right is that we have got to always try to see if we can stop at an early stage somebody going down the pathway of becoming radicalised.

DM: Well it’s challenging those ideas isn’t it, being aware that these ideas are being preached or pedalled or whatever and then being put in a position where you can have a rational discussion, is that it?

SK: Well Hazel’s concern – and it is a legitimate one that should be addressed – is if you for example [inaudible] a tap to both groups that work with new converts to Islam, as this government did two years ago and there is a very good article by Keith Vaz in today’s Sunday Express, Street UK who work with converts to Islam, sometimes they are troubled young people who decided to convert to Islam, they have other challenges. If you turn off the help they receive to help these young men it makes it more difficult for the communities by themselves to help them and what the government has done is focus on the criminal side of it, so once somebody becomes noticed to the police – which is good and it is very important that this happens, Hazel’s concern is that we should be working early on helping communities, it is not just the communities by themselves that can do this, and many mums and dads are very concerned when a young person follows a deviant version of Islam, most of this stuff takes place in ungoverned places so an Imam or a mosque committee can do very little, so we have got to work with communities at an early stage to try and help them tackle this problem.

DM: What happens when it isn’t in ungoverned spaces, when it’s on the public airways, when it’s broadcast? When people like Anjem Choudary are questioned, challenged but nevertheless putting across what many people believe is a very, very extreme view. Should that be allowed?

SK: I don’t think the media broadcast in particular should be giving Mr Choudary the oxygen of publicity. He is an obnoxious, odious, horrible man who has a deviant version of Islam he follows and when we speak to most of the, if not all of the 2.7 million Muslims in this country, a lot of the two billion Muslims around the world, they do not subscribe to his school of thought and the problem with Mr Choudary …

DM: I’m not saying they agree but is it just a matter of challenging free speech, Nick Griffin has been on the public airways, the other side of the coin I suppose?

SK: Yes and no. Nobody is saying that you haven’t got a right to free speech but what we’re saying is look, don’t give this guy more air attention than he deserves. He doesn’t speak for most Muslims, a very, very, very small number of Muslims follow him. The impression he gives though, especially with non-Muslims who haven’t got friends who are Muslim, don’t work with Muslims, they believe that he represents mainstream Islam and he really doesn’t. When you speak to scholars over this weekend, when you speak to those who understand the theology of Islam, they will say he is not a Muslim because of the views he espouses are so abhorrent.

DM: I know that but just on this issue of radicalisation, a lot of interest and attention has been focused back on the universities and places like that, I just wondered from your experiences when you were at university as a young Muslim, were you aware that there were some people who were way out on the extremes or other people trying to recruit to those views?

SK: It does happen at university campuses, it happens at all sorts of places. Universities have a difficult balance to strike, on the one hand if at a young age you can’t explore wacky ideas when can you? On the other hand you have got to make sure you aren’t inadvertently giving people a space to recruit others, to throw out inciteful ideas and to create an environment where others are still very fearful whether it is because they are at the receiving end of some of this hate or because you are going down a pathway of violent radicalisation. It is a huge challenge that Vice-Chancellors and Chancellors have and we’ve got to work with them to make sure we can try and root this out.

DM: Okay but the fact is though of course, however much of that goes on there will always be a few who are out there who will, whatever’s said to them, whatever information they receive, will want to do harm to this society. On the hard practical side of things, what more can be done there? Much being made about the Data Communications Bill, many saying this should revive interest in that.

SK: Firstly I want to commend the way David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Boris Johnson have behaved over the last few days, cool, calm, clear heads. They have provided leadership and made these people realise we will not allow them to divide our communities. I don't think we should have a knee-jerk response, the reality is that we want to make sure the police and the authorities have all the tools they reasonably need to address the challenges they face so whereas previously what would happen is they could know if you made a phone call to somebody else and were planning something, nowadays the bad guys use new methods of technology, it could be social network, it could be the internet. So we want to give the authorities the proportionate powers they need. The problem Theresa May has is last year she publicly drafted communications, a joint committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, made up of MPs from all the parties who looked at her Bill and they agreed with us which is that there was too much power for the Home Secretary, it would have cost billions and billions of pounds that the government doesn’t have and it wouldn’t have had the right checks and balances. So if she wants to come back with a new Bill, of course we would work with the government to make sure we could give police and the authorities the proportionate powers they need and they must be proportionate.

DM: Okay, so a new Bill but would you hope that within that scenario the Liberal Democrats then would drop their objections?

SK: Look, the Liberal Democrat objections are not unreasonable. They agree with the Joint Committee, the Joint Committee made up not just of Liberal Democrats but Conservative members and Labour members said there’s too much power the Home Secretary has to direct companies to do certain things, we are here to make sure that those powers are proportionate, that there are proper checks and balances in place but we can’t say as the bad guys evolve the new technology that the police and the authorities are using old laws that don’t address new challenges that they face.

DM: And just lastly, Mr Khan, the issue you talked about there about the Prime Minister and his capable handling of the situation, what do you think about him going off on holiday? Presumably a well-earned break with his family but is this the time to be doing that?

SK: Well I don’t want to score any petty party political points. He’s got the intelligence at his fingertips, he went to the Cobra meetings, he knows the risk and the dangers that are there and I’m sure he decided to go on holiday after taking all that into account.

DM: Mr Khan, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed. Sadiq Khan there.