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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the Home Office has long been seen as a bit of a poison chalice sometimes for politicians, not so for Theresa May. Immigration is down, crime is falling and now to cap it all she’s managed to deport Abu Qatada. Well the Home Secretary, Theresa May, joins me now. A very good morning to you. Is it delight or a sense of grim satisfaction to see Abu Qatada touching down in Jordan?

THERESA MAY: Well I’m very pleased that Abu Qatada has been deported. I was clear that we wanted to deport him and that we would deport him and an awful lot of work has gone into that. I went out to Jordan myself, Minister for Security James Brokenshire went out to Jordan, we’ve had a lot of Home Office officials working very hard on it, the Ambassador in Jordan working hard on it and I’m clear we had a clear intent to deport him and that’s what we’ve done.

DM: Do you feel though, I mean I was mentioning earlier, we had one of them on, John Reid, the Home Secretaries that went before you that didn’t manage to do it, do you feel that you are standing on the shoulders of giants so to speak and they had done a lot of the groundwork or you did something that they didn’t see?

TM: Of course it has taken some time, I know how frustrated I was and members of the public have been that it’s taken some time and we need to do something about that and we will do. In the Immigration Bill later this year we’re going to look at making some changes so that we can deport people more quickly. I think crucially in what I’ve done and those that have been working at the Home Office in this over the last two to three years, we’ve come across a number of legal hurdles, the European Court changed the goalposts but every time we’ve gone back, we’ve worked with the Jordanian government and we’ve sought the assurances that were necessary.

DM: When you mention those legal changes, will you be able to get round the European Court if there are similar situations as this?

TM: Well there are two aspects to the issue of looking at deportations in the future. One is what we do here in the UK which we can change in the Immigration Bill, there’s a longer term issue about our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights, you’re absolutely right in that. We’re looking at that relationship and what it should be in the future and I’m clear nothing should be off the table.

DM: But you’re not looking at it as a coalition government, the Lib Dems are not very keen?

TM: Of course what we have had over the last couple of years is looking at the possibility of a British Bill of Rights and looking at the Human Rights Act. Of course as a Conservative I came in to the last election with a commitment to repeal the Human Rights Act, I think that was absolutely right. Looking ahead at the next election, the Conservatives will make clear in our manifesto what we’ll do about that and about our relationship with the European Court.

DM: Have you got a final cost for all this, all this legal action, the detention? How much has it cost this country having Abu Qatada here for so long?

TM: Well it has cost quite a lot of money. There were some figures around issues like legal aid and so forth, not for everything that has been in relation to Abu Qatada’s presence here and the amount of time he spent in detention and so forth in the UK but what matters in the future …

DM: A ball park figure? Ten plus million?

TM: No, we’re not talking about as much as that but I think the important thing in the future is that we make it easier for ourselves to be able to deport people who are a threat to the UK and do it more quickly and that’s why we will be making changes in the Immigration Bill later this year.

DM: And in terms of the knock-backs you had, just on Abu Qatada, we heard from the Prime Minister earlier this morning and he said, like a lot of people it made his blood boil, I’m sure it did yours. As you got a knock back, as there was yet another appeal, was there a bit of kicking of the filing cabinets behind the scenes?

TM: Well I think in situations like this, the key thing is just to get on with saying what can we do to make sure we can overcome this next hurdle so that we can achieve what we want which is deporting him. We’ve now done that and I think that’s the important thing.

DM: But when you sat down with the Prime Minister, he has told us his blood’s boiling, were you both going my goodness me, what are we going to do?

TM: Of course it is deeply frustrating when it takes so long to deport somebody you believe you need to deport because they are a threat to the UK and it is deeply frustrating when you suddenly find for example the European Court moving the goalposts and another legal hurdle comes in the way but the key thing at that point is to actually just get on with the job of finding a way to overcome those legal hurdles so that we can do what we’ve always said we wanted to do, what the public wanted us to do, what we’ve now been able to do which is to deport Abu Qatada so he is no longer in the UK.

DM: But has there been a strain, have there been stresses over this? As I said in my introduction, we’ve seen what’s happened to previous Home Secretaries for many, many reasons, it is such a big department, so many responsibilities that the public care so deeply about and Abu Qatada really caught everyone’s attention and it was on your watch. Did you feel what happens if I don’t manage to get him out of the country?

TM: Oh well, it was a clear priority for us that we did deport Abu Qatada and I was just very clear that we would keep going and that we would keep working until we were able to do it. We said it was right for the UK that we would deport him and we’ve now done that.

DM: But a stressful time.

TM: Well it’s always … you have to work hard at these things and obviously, as I say, it’s not just me but it’s the Security Minister James Brokenshire, it’s Home Office officials, it’s our Ambassador in Jordan, we’ve been working with the Jordanian government so a lot of work has gone in from a lot of people to be able to ensure that we can do, as I say, what the public has wanted for a long time which is for Abu Qatada no longer to be in the UK.

DM: Of course his family are still here, what’s happening to them?

TM: Well obviously they’ll have some decisions to make about their future and in due course the government will have some decisions to make but in relation to today the key thing is that we were committed to deporting Abu Qatada, we believe that was right, we’ve now achieved that.

DM: But do his family have a legal right to stay?

TM: His family will obviously be wanting to make some decisions themselves about what they want their future to be.

DM: What kind of oversights, if any, are you having on his treatment in Jordan given the assurances you’ve got from the Jordanian government about the use of torture against any potential witnesses? What happens if you see someone wheeled into court to testify against him who you think may have been giving that evidence because of duress applied to him or her.

TM: I am absolutely confident about the assurances that we’ve been given by the Jordanian government. Indeed our immigration court here in the UK last autumn said that the Jordanian government, they believed they would bend over backwards to ensure that Abu Qatada had a fair trial, there was just this one issue which you’ve hinted at which is whether or not people who have given evidence allegedly under torture, whether that evidence would be used in the case against him. That issue is addressed in the Treaty. The Treaty by the way is a more general Treaty so it will be able to be used in relation to other deportations between the UK and Jordan but that final issue was addressed in that Treaty and under our Memorandum of Understanding with the Jordanian government there is a group in Jordan who will be monitoring his treatment.

DM: Okay, what do you make of those who are now saying and actually singing it from the rafters that it’s really enhanced your leadership credentials here, this is a real feather in your cap?

TM: Well what I would say to them is, I’ve done my job. I believe that part of my job and my priorities was finding a way that we could deport Abu Qatada, we have now … I have now done that and we get on with the rest of the Home Office work.

DM: Okay but would you see your time, if there is a reshuffle coming up, your time at the Home Office, you’ve managed to swerve any bullets that were coming your way, you’ve turned it into success, is there much more to do there for you now?

TM: There is still more to be done at the Home Office. As you said in your introduction, Dermot, immigration is falling but we need to keep an eye on that to make sure we can achieve our aim of reaching, bringing net migration down to the tens of thousands. Crime is falling but obviously there are some issues that we are looking at at the moment. We have brought major reform into policing, there is still more to be done in relation to some of these issues around which have been raised and questions have been raised about integrity of policing, the College of Policing will be producing a code of ethics and integrity for the police for example, that’s a new body that we’ve set up to look at standards in the police.

DM: I’m interested that you raised that, we’re speaking to Peter Fahy after this from Greater Manchester Police and I just jotted down some of those issues you mentioned – Hillsborough, we’ve got this issue of undercover police officers assuming babies names, what’s gone on with the Stephen Lawrence investigation, bugging and phone hacking and corruption being described in some of the papers today. Do you get a sense from all that, as the Prime Minister said to me about three weeks ago, that our police are only relatively honest?

TM: Well I think the vast majority of police officers are out there and working with integrity and honesty and doing the job that the public wants them to do. Sadly of course the police as a whole get a bad reputation if there are some that are not doing that and, as you say, there have been a number of issues recently, a number of cases, some of which of course are historic but have really shocked people. I think people were genuinely shocked by the outcome of the independent panel into the Hillsborough tragedy for example and what that said about the police. Obviously that is now a matter of investigation, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is looking at that as they are in a number of other areas and on undercover policing, the Policing Minister, Damian Green, will be making a speech about this tomorrow in which he’ll be setting out some of the things that we will be doing to look at that particular issue.

DM: But on these large issues, what is your interpretation of it? That there are for instance pockets of corruption and the rest of it is more or less down to incompetence?

TM: No, I think … well part of the point of having these investigations is that it’s important that where there have been criminal offences, if there has been criminal corruption that has taken place, that that is found and that justice is done and that people are brought to justice. That’s why the investigations in relation to Hillsborough, it’s why the investigation in relation to the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad, this special squad of individuals that have come into the news recently in relation to their alleged activities around the Stephen Lawrence case. That’s why it’s important to have those criminal investigations.

DM: But do you think the row with all that going on, the police feel that day in, day out we follow your agenda, we’ve helped get crime down, really all this raking over the issues affects morale?

TM: I think what’s important is that we recognise that the majority of police officers are doing their job, doing it with honesty and doing it with integrity and it is difficult for them when a few of them are doing things not acting with integrity and when they see that obviously being highlighted, as it is right to do, it should be dealt with, it is right to deal with it and I think we should thank those officers who day in and day out are keeping us safe and cutting crime through their actions.

DM: A couple of other quick issues, there is so much as you mentioned there. Immigration, this issue of the £3000 bond you are going to bring in from November, for people from selected countries. People from those countries are saying, well hold on, look at the ones you’ve selected and the ones you haven’t, you’re discriminatory here and indeed anti-Commonwealth.

TM: Well we haven’t announced the detail of this scheme yet. What we want to do is a pilot to see if this is a system that works and that we should bring in more generally. We’re not talking about a …

DM: But people from Nigeria, from India, from Bangladesh and not people from Australia or Canada, is that not discriminatory?

TM: What we will look at is how we can operate a pilot and we will probably look at a number of ways of operating the bond system so we can test whether this is a good system or whether it’s one that we should be introducing. So we are not talking about large numbers of people, we would be talking about a small number of people and we would probably look at it on the basis of risk, that is one of the potential factors that we can look at when we decide where we will operate it.

DM: Just to return to dimensions of Abu Qatada, trying to make the country a safer place, certain ideas are not given currency. Anjem Choudary, you mentioned after the awful events of Woolwich and some of his comments, that you might look at ways of restricting, of dealing with some of the things that people like him are saying. Are we talking here about perhaps some broadcasting ban or something like that?

TM: Well one of the things that the government did when we came in in 2010 was look at how the system was dealing with extremism and violent extremism and actually extended the work that we were doing not just to look at violent extremism but to look at extremism more generally and that work continues. The Prime Minister, after the murder of Lee Rigby, the Prime Minister set up a task force across government which is looking at a whole range of issues so we will be looking at what happens in terms of radicalisation in prisons for example, we’re looking at the work that is being done with …

DM: But just on the narrow issue of broadcasting, one remembers Sinn Fein and the 80s and the 90s, there was a broadcasting ban on them, their words had to be mouthed by actors, could something like that be brought in?

TM: We will be looking at groups. We have an arrangement at the moment whereby groups can be proscribed if they meet certain criteria, activity in terrorism and a certain number of criteria. I think we will look at it to say is there something that needs to be done, perhaps a banning order which is not proscription but which needs to deal with those groups that don’t quite meet that level of proscription but that’s part of the work that this task force is undertaking.

DM: Theresa May, thank you very much indeed. The Home Secretary there.