ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: A packed week coming up, on Wednesday the Chancellor will set out his comprehensive spending review and autumn statement which sets Whitehall budgets for the next four years.  Mr Osborne says it will all be about security, national and economic, but he has already been warned by senior police officers that any further reductions to their budget could have course have a major impact on their ability to deal with a Paris style attack.  I am joined now by Angela Eagle, the Shadow Business Secretary, and a very good morning to you.  I just want to ask you about Syria first of all and as we heard from Julian Lewis there, it seems if it comes to a vote in the House of Commons, he’ll vote with his conscience, he’ll do what he thinks is right.  Do you think the Labour party members should be allowed to do that or to follow a whip from the leader?

ANGELA EAGLE: Well look, I think that Julian wants to know what the plan is and he is waiting for the Prime Minister to come forward with a comprehensive strategy that is likely to succeed, that has a proper legal basis, that has political buy in so it gives it the best chance to work.  We as the opposition are in exactly that position, we are waiting for the Prime Minister to come forward with his plan.  Now nobody could argue at all after the terrible events that happened in Paris last weekend that ISIL Daesh doesn’t need to be destroyed, doesn’t need to be dealt with so that it stops projecting this kind of terrorism onto the streets in Europe but also it is projecting terrorism constantly around it.  It has killed 100,000 Shia Muslims for being the wrong type of Muslim, so it needs to be dealt with and we are waiting for the Prime Minister to come forward with his strategy for doing so.  

DM: But if he does put forward a strategy and you think that it satisfies those concerns, addresses those issues and that Britain could be a useful part of an overall military alliance to deal with Daesh on the ground in its caliphate, if Jeremy Corbyn still says no, all my party must vote as I feel, do you not think you should be able to follow your own beliefs and conscience?

ANGELA EAGLE: Well that’s not how we do things in the Labour party, what we do …

DM: Well  you do on a lot of other issues.

ANGELA EAGLE: Well no, we make a decision, the Shadow Cabinet, and as my colleague …

DM: Are you not free to disagree now?

ANGELA EAGLE: As my colleague the Deputy Leader of the Labour party, Tom Watson, has said there will be discussions at the Shadow Cabinet and we will try to come to an agreement and move forward together as a party.  We cannot and will not decide on what our whipping situation is going to …

DM: Do you think Jeremy Corbyn could be persuaded, he might support air strikes, you must have had conversations with him?

ANGELA EAGLE: I think that we have to wait to see whether the Prime Minister’s plan is sensible, likely to work and has proper legal backing and there is a political process  afterwards, we have to look at cutting off the financial support for this appalling nihilistic death cult that is causing this trouble in Syria and we have to work together to maximise the chances of destroying it and that’s what we want to do.

DM: Well let’s talk about the spending review and the autumn statement and an issue obviously as I mentioned in my introduction there, it seems – and Matthew Hancock who is the Paymaster General was saying well it’s all done and dusted, they’ve sorted out where the cuts will come and he didn’t seem to deny anyway that the Home Office will suffer and that the police are very concerned about their ability to respond to a Paris style attack or something, what are your concerns?

ANGELA EAGLE: Quite right, we are extremely concerned that the CSR are pursuing an ideological obsession that the Chancellor has with cutting the state down to 36% of gross domestic product, the civil service back to where it was in the 1940s.  It will lead to one certainty, after he has finished on Wednesday there will be fewer nurses than we need, fewer teachers than we need and more importantly at this time of security, far fewer protections from the police on our streets than we need.  The weekend before George Osborne’s spending review you always get the smoke and mirrors of the things he wants you to remember and that’s why you’ve had some of the announcements today about security which I would welcome but actually let’s look at what he’s covering up – a £200 million cut to counter terrorism in the Met Force, is that wise?  We are 17,000 police officers down after the cuts of the last five years in our forces up and down the country, there are some dire warnings today which I think the Chancellor ought to heed about the consequences of some of those ideologically driven cuts, not only for the police but for other public services.  

DM: But you still haven’t addressed the question of how you’d do it.  The thought is, especially on the overall figures that you’re talking about now, the October borrowing figures were pretty awful and the feeling is that the target 69.5 billion for borrowing this year, that they could miss that by as much as £11 billion.  How could Labour, with all your spending commitments, how could you even get close to that?

ANGELA EAGLE: Hang on, there are more ways to make sure that you get deficits down.  You can grow your way into surplus as well as cut your way into surplus.

DM: Yes but you can’t conjure it up in a month.

ANGELA EAGLE: No, but when we have a look at what has happened with these cuts over the last five, nearly six years now, our deficit has gone up from 69% of GDP to 80.4% of GDP, it’s actually going in the opposite direction and it’s about time we had a debate in this country about growing our way out into surplus and about growing our way out of this deficit rather than these ideologically driven cuts that are just driving us into a cul-de-sac and creating a society where we don’t have enough access to justice without having to pay for it, where we’re not having police forces, where councils – my own local authority has been cut by 57%.  We are getting to a stage where we can’t look after our old people, there are people on trolleys in hospital corridors, the junior doctors are going on strike, there are going to be potential problems this winter with demand on the health service and all the Chancellor is talking about is cuts.  This is a pointless cul-de-sac.

DM: Well I hope to see you on Wednesday to expand on that.  

ANGELA EAGLE: Well I hope you’ll invite me on, I’ll come on, no problem.  

DM: Shadow Business Secretary, a pleasure having you here.  Thank you very much indeed, Angela Eagle there.