ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The pressure is back on the police at the centre of the Plebgate row. Three officers have been accused of misleading a committee of MPs, they’ve been recalled to explain themselves so where does this leave Andrew Mitchell, the cabinet minister of course who lost his job at the heart of all this? In a moment I’ll speak to one of Mr Mitchell’s friends, the former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and I’ll also speak to the Chief Constable in charge of improving police standards, he is Alex Marshall. Let’s say a very good morning then to David Davis who joins me now from East Yorkshire. Mr Davis, this is very serious, is it not, for the police when Keith Vaz, the head of the Home Affairs Select Committee, accuses three serving officers of trying to deliberately mislead them?

DAVID DAVIS: Yes, it is extraordinarily serious for the police. I mean we expect the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to be at the core of policing and these three officers, when they set out in the first instance to get rid of a Cabinet Minister – and it’s pretty much clear that’s what happened – they didn’t tell the truth when they came out of that meeting and they were unable to tell the truth, extraordinarily, in front of a parliamentary Select Committee. You have to wonder at what point are they going to realise that telling untruths, telling a lie, telling a half-truth, just isn’t good enough for a police officer.

DM: And there are other questions as well for the Chief Constables, how adequately did they originally investigate the allegations?

DAVID DAVIS: Well it’s not the investigation, it’s the decision. It is most extraordinary, it’s as though somebody has laid out an incredible set of proof. We actually have tapes of virtually everything that happened in these circumstances, there is no doubt about what happened and yet somehow or other three Chief Constables from three major forces covering nearly 10% of the police forces in England somehow think this is not serious misconduct, not a gross misconduct, which is why they have been overturned – and I think this is unique – overturned by the IPCC. Now this is really worrying because it’s not just about the issue of three policemen, it’s about whether or not this sort of behaviour is seen as acceptable by the entire system and it looks like these three forces, they thought it was acceptable and frankly that’s just not good enough for the British public.

DM: Can I just ask you about that? The thought’s occurred, you mentioned the tape that Mr Mitchell kept of that meeting with the Police Federation officers, why didn’t he release it immediately after he heard what they said about the meeting? Why didn’t he correct that impression?

DAVID DAVIS: Well my understanding of this, and it really is a question for Mr Mitchell, but my understanding of it is this, during that time he was a member of the government, he was under instructions effectively not to pick a fight with the Federation, that’s the Police Federation, he was under instructions to try and play this down and not cause more difficulties for the government and as a result he did that. He even went to that meeting, and I frankly would have advised him not to have a meeting with the Police Federation in the middle of this battle over their pensions and work conditions but he had this meeting in order to try and calm this argument down and put a line under it. Of course that failed and frankly as soon as he left the government and he and I talked about it, we decided we were going to put all the evidence in the public domain as soon as possible, which we did about a month or two later on a programme on Channel 4.

DM: Of course there is another dimension to all this, the issue that lies at the heart of it all, what happened at the Downing Street gates. How does Mr Mitchell view all this, the speed and the nature of both investigations? The meeting afterwards at his constituency office and that’s what we’ve been discussing and the core event itself?

DAVID DAVIS: Well I think the first thing to understand is quite how devastating this was for Mr Mitchell and for his entire family. His career came to an end, they were subject to widespread vilification and at one point the whole of the British public thought he was guilty of this. They’ve now changed their mind, they now see him quite wrongly as a … quite rightly as a wronged man but the simple truth is that this has taken vastly too long. Again much of the evidence for this is plain and in open sight, CCTV footage and so on and it should have been dealt with much, much more quickly than this. It is now more than a year and frankly it is long past time that Mr Mitchell was exonerated and returned to office.

DM: Has he actually told you – you say you speak to him and we’re talking to you as one of his friends and allies – has he actually told you precisely what he said at those gates and do you accept that?

DAVID DAVIS: Yes, yes I do and it was me amongst others who went through the video footage to see whether the police case was remotely plausible and it wasn’t but that’s with the Crown Prosecution Service at the moment so I’d probably better not venture any further into that but it is plain as a pikestaff to me that he’s been wronged and that’s what he actually said in this meeting with thee three officers, that’s what’s on tape. He actually told them, as far as I can see, everything that happened and that’s why this compounds an error, it follows up a slur with a smear if you like.

DM: Just on the language and you say of course the CPS are looking at it but it is pretty widely accepted that he didn’t use the P word, the pleb word but it is being said that he did – and he does accept that he used some very strong Anglo Saxon language, let me call it that. You’ve heard that, did he use other words as well?

DAVID DAVIS: No, I didn’t. I’m from East Yorkshire, we’re used to Anglo Saxon language! Look, he was cross, as he walked away he said, and in his words under his breath but audibly, and he regrets that, that’s what he apologised for in the first place but frankly that’s not what the issue was made out of it. The issue that was made out of this by the Police Federation in pursuit of destroying a Cabinet Minister, in order to promote a campaign of negotiation with the government, was wholly wrong, it was a pack of lies and if I have to say on one side somebody swore under his breath and on the other side somebody who’s job as a sworn constable is to tell the truth, suddenly to start inventing things – I know which one is the much worse crime in my view.

DM: How quickly do you think he should get back in the Cabinet?

DAVID DAVIS: Well frankly if it had been my call it would have been now, it would have been already but the simple truth is government does move ponderously in these things and there’ll be a major reshuffle I’m sure in the next six months or so at Cabinet level and at that point he should be returned. It’s plain in my view but it is also plain in the view of the vast majority of the parliamentary party.

DM: Can I just ask you about a couple of other issues, Mr Davis, which I know you take a very close interest in and that we’re discussing on the programme today at quite a lot of length, the Intelligence Select Committee and of course its unprecedented questioning of security chiefs a bit later in the week in public. I mean the whole question underlying this is how much oversight and firm oversight should we have of the security services? Is that what you want to see them grilled about?

DAVID DAVIS: Well to be honest I want to see much stronger oversight, I want to see the committee itself actually directly elected and responsible to the House of the Commons. It is actually a Prime Ministerial committee, it’s not a parliamentary committee. I want them to have more powers, I want to see a lot more of what goes on. In America they are much more open about these things and they have just as much, if not more to lose as we do from unnecessary and inappropriate publicity but they know a devil of a lot more about their intelligence services than we do. When 9/11 happened for example there was a 9/11 commissioned report which actually led to the CIA chief being sacked and replaced. You don’t see anything like that in the UK and I think a move more towards that would be very sensible. The Americans themselves are now saying that even they have got to be more open so I think in this day and age when it looks as though the intelligence services are monitoring just about everybody, they ought to be accountable to everybody.

DM: We’re also looking forward this week, we’ve got the continuing progress of the EU Referendum Bill, James Wharton’s Bill, backed by the Prime Minister of course. Do you have any sympathy for those of your colleagues though that say why don’t we have a vote this side of the general election?

DAVID DAVIS: Well I’d like to too but I just think we have to get this through the House of Commons frankly. One of the difficulties with the eurosceptic cause if you like, those who are sceptical – not antagonistic to Europe but are sceptical about it – is they spend more time fighting amongst themselves than they do getting a conclusion sometimes and I think we need a conclusion. We need this referendum on the statute book. If I had my way, if I was writing it from scratch, sure, it would be before the general election but frankly the most important thing is to get the referendum on the statute book so we can guarantee to the British people that they will have it and I think under those circumstances, just get on with it and do it is my advice.

DM: I mentioned the general election, it almost feels doesn’t it, it must feel like it to you, as if there’s one round the corner. Of course with fixed parliaments it’s not going to happen until 2015 but what do you think of how your leadership is handling this debate that seems to be at the core of politics at the moment, the cost of living? The fact that there may be a recovery but so many people are not feeling the benefits.

DAVID DAVIS: Look, this is a problem that is actually endemic to the entire Western world. There was a study done in the States of growth rates in America and when they had a growth rate of 2% per annum about a year or so ago, 99% of the population saw almost no benefit from that because it was absorbed in cost and the top 1% got a 12% growth rate. Now that’s one of the things we’re seeing at the moment, the nature of growth in the West is really, really differential. In London where you are the standard of living is probably going up, in Yorkshire where I am it’s not, so we have got all those sorts of disparities too. So it’s a really difficult problem and I’m quite sure that George Osborne is wrestling with it quite hard but it’s not straightforward and I don’t pretend at the moment that we are getting everything perfectly right but we will get it much better before the election.

DM: But this issue of the energy price cap put forward by Mr Miliband, you’ve got to accept this is enormously popular.

DAVID DAVIS: Yes but it is also enormously hypocritical on his part. The simple truth is that the biggest component in the increase in energy costs are the sorts of policies that Mr Miliband imposed as an Environment Secretary and the truth of the matter is I don’t approve of this. I don’t approve of having vast subsidies for wind farms, I don’t approve of that sort of policy. It is a very, very good idea to bring down the amount of carbon dioxide and the amount of pollution we put in the atmosphere but we shouldn’t do it by putting huge burdens on poor families and we shouldn’t do it by driving our industries abroad. This is an argument I’ve had with both sides of the House frankly, with my own government too, but Mr Miliband is not in a very good position to criticise us for a policy that he in effect started.

DM: Okay, Mr Davis, good to talk to you, thank you very much indeed for your time. David Davis there.

DAVID DAVIS: My pleasure.