Murnaghan Interview with Chris Grayling MP, Leader of the House, 28.02.16
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the House of Commons was captivated last week when the Prime Minister launched what is being seen as a thinly veiled attack on the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, over his decision to back the Brexit camp and there is a warning in the Sunday Times this morning that David Cameron could face a leadership challenge if the so-called blue on blue attacks don’t stop. Well Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House, is one of the cabinet ministers campaigning to leave the EU and he joins me now from Sky Centre. A very good morning to you Mr Grayling. Do you see it in any way ironic that the initial warning when the campaign kind of began about blue on blue attacks so-called, came from Downing Street, they said they didn’t want to see any of that yet the Prime Minister seems to be the first to carry one out.
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well the important thing is absolutely that point. We are going to go through four months of debate, there are different opinions in the party, everyone has got to go out of their way to make sure that the debate within the Conservative party is a constructive one, an amicable one and one that doesn’t involve attacks on each other, that’s really important.
DM: So you do think that Prime Minister made it personal then?
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well you can interpret the words the Prime Minister used on Monday in a number of different ways and I don’t want to pick on that particular example and say that’s right, that’s wrong but I think going forward we’ve got to make sure that nobody who is involved in the debate acts in a way that is hostile to any other member of the party. Frankly that’s true of the broader debate, the country as a whole wants to make its mind up on the basis of hard facts, on the basis of proper information and evidence and none of us are going to win support by actually turning this into a battle rather than a debate.
DM: But the Prime Minister, you were sitting there, what did you think when you heard the Prime Minister? He seemed to be angered, did he go over the top?
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well he was setting out a point of debate and you can interpret that in whichever way you want. What I’m saying is going forward we have got to make sure that none of us do anything that is easily interpreted as an attack on each other, we’ve got to be very careful to make sure that within the party and indeed outside the party, that this is a debate that is measured, constructive, sensible and of course from a Conservative point of view, after the event we’ve really got to make sure that when the result comes in we come together, we heal the party, we move on beyond the divisions and discussions at the moment and we win in 2020.
DM: But it isn’t just that is it? It isn’t just what we all got to see in the House of Commons, then coming from deep we suppose from within the Remain camp the suggestion that the Justice Secretary Michael Gove, he may face the sack if your side loses?
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well look, I have to say I don’t believe at the moment the Prime Minister is sitting in Downing Street plotting sackings of Ministers, it would not be at all sensible when the referendum is over for there to be a purge of people on either side of argument. If we are going to come together, if we are gong to work harmoniously as a party and if above all we are going to beat the Labour party and win in 2020, we’ve got to come together well and there cannot be recriminations at the end of this. The Prime Minister has done the right thing in giving us all the freedom to debate on one side of the argument or the other and I really admire him for doing that. All of us involved in that debate must make sure afterwards there are no recriminations.
DM: But don’t you think they have been surprised, this is the other report, they have been surprised within the Conservative Remain camp by the scale of the opposition to them from within the party and from within the Cabinet.
CHRIS GRAYLING: I am not surprised there are a lot of Conservatives who want to leave the European Union, there’s a lot of people across the country who want to leave the European Union. I was out in the Midlands yesterday in a number of different places and getting a pretty consistent message of people coming up to me and saying we want to leave. So I am not surprised there are strong feelings in favour of leave in the Conservative party but what matters is for the next four months we argue our case, we set out our views, we try and win the argument, we have the result and then we come together because what we cannot do is let Jeremy Corbyn anywhere near Number Ten Downing Street.
DM: Just nevertheless, the last thought on this kind of issue, just how important is the issue for you personally? If it turns out to be a career defining or indeed a career destroying moment, you feel it is a price worth paying?
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I’m not in this because I’m trying to keep my place in the Cabinet or I’m trying to put in danger my place in the Cabinet, I’m doing this because I think it’s the right thing to do. I genuinely believe that Britain will be better off outside the European Union, that there will be far more opportunities for us in the world, it would open up new avenues for the United Kingdom and enable us to govern ourselves again and that to me is more important than my job, it’s more important than the role I fill in Cabinet and I think that’s true of all of us who are campaigning to leave the European Union, we’re not thinking about our careers. But afterwards, and I don’t for a moment think the Prime Minister is sitting in Downing Street planning some kind of axe session, it would be hardly the best way of bringing the party together afterwards and I don’t for a moment think he is planning that at the moment.
DM: But passions are running high, you’ve got to admit that. We hear that the Foreign Secretary had some choice words, let me put it that way, to say about Sir Bill Cash.
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well passions often run high in debate but they mustn’t be lasting passions. We’ve got to make sure that we stay friendly, we stay constructive and we come together when the referendum is over.
DM: What about this issue though, tell me how it works with you, this idea that – and it’s not an idea, it’s a dictat coming from Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Head of the Civil Service, saying that ministers like you shouldn’t have access to the civil servants if you’re using the information on the Leave campaign.
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I think the civil service machine, everyone has got to be very careful over the next four months because government has to continue. Now we will have European meetings, we will have European documents crossing our desks, we will have to as Ministers take decisions about the right way forward for the United Kingdom, even through the referendum period and so it is really important that whatever happens Ministers can carry on running their departments, Ministers can carry on doing the right job for the United Kingdom. But of course nobody is actually expecting, when the Prime Minister is on a different side of the argument, for us to be getting detailed briefings about what he is planning to do in the days and weeks ahead.
DM: Yes, but if you want some basic information about how one of your proposals might be affected whether we are in or out of the European Union, you want to use some of the resources, don’t you, of the civil service? The Prime Minister presumably can tell Sir Jeremy to change his view on this couldn’t he?
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I think it is really actually important that on both sides of the argument we are seen not to use inappropriate amounts of public money, inappropriate amounts of public time, to put together information that is going to be used as part of the argument for the referendum. Now the government has a formal position on this and so of course the government and the Prime Minister are going to argue that formal position but the public will not thank us if they see us wasting public money as part of the debate process.
DM: Do you accept now, as the Prime Minister made very clear during the course of last week, that this referendum is the final decision, there will be no shilly-shallying afterwards and maybe hoping that the EU makes up its mind? If we’re gone, we’re gone.
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I’m very clear that if we vote to leave, we leave. What then happens is a discussion about our future relationship with the European Union and of course we will carry on trading with them. There are a whole range of scare stories around at the moment that somehow the world is going to change in a way that is going to destroy businesses, destroy jobs. The actual truth is that we buy far more from the European Union than they buy from us and if anybody is worried about the outcome at the moment it’s continental businesses in France and Germany and Spain and Italy who will not want to see trading arrangements change and that is why we will carry on trading, we’ll carry on having the opportunity to sell our products into the European Union because they are not going to put in danger the ability to sell cars from Germany into Britain or agricultural products, cheese and wine from France into Britain, that’s not going to happen.
DM: But you would accept wouldn’t you that the Leave side have a difficulty for painting for the voting public what precisely the one vision of Britain post-Brexit would look like when you have got everything from George Galloway’s socialist paradise to Nigel Farage’s red in tooth and claw capitalist paradise – what are people going to make of it? We are hearing that the Remain campaign are going to be asking those very questions about the 25 scenarios to consider from the Leave side.
CHRIS GRAYLING: Well there is an awful lot of talk from the Remain side about, oh you want to be the Norwegian model or you want to be the Turkish model or the Canadian model. I want us to be the United Kingdom model. We will negotiate our own arrangements with the European Union, we will do so because we buy far more from them than they buy from us therefore they need us, they need to trade with us. We will not accept unlimited free movement in the way that we have had up to now but nor are we going to stop people coming and living and working from other countries in the right and proper way, in a managed way which we don’t have at the moment. But these will be the subject of a detailed negotiation when the time comes but when it comes to the groups of people that are campaigning, yes, of course there’s a very diverse group of people campaigning but ultimately it will be a Conservative government that leads us out of the European Union, that leads us into a relationship based on free trade, on a broader look around the world, on new relationships with emerging economies in different parts of the world that can create jobs and opportunities for people and businesses here.
DM: Okay, Leader of the House, great talking to you, thank you very much indeed. Chris Grayling there.
