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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well a coalition row has broken out over rules to ban so-called hate preachers from speaking at universities in England.  A new law requires universities to take steps to prevent radicalisation taking place on their campuses and the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable, is reportedly trying to water down the rules.  Ed Davey is the Energy Secretary and the Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton in south-west London and joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Davey. Let’s get straight in to this then, lots of discussion about radicalisation and the roots of it, well part of it has got to be these so-called hate preachers, surely it’s time to clamp down further upon them?

ED DAVEY: Well if these preachers are inciting violence, if they are saying it’s okay to be a terrorist, if they’re saying you can cut off people’s heads as we’ve seen from ISIS in Syria, they can and should be arrested and the Liberal Democrats are clear that that law should hit them with full force but what the Conservatives seem to be wanting to do is to introduce against British values of free speech a new type of rule which says the state will know what extremism is.  Now one person’s subjectivity is another person’s objectivity and therefore the phrase extremism that they are talking about is very, very nebulous, it’s unclear and there is a danger that the Conservatives will clamp down on free speech and that will be giving in to the terrorists and we’re not prepared to do that.

DM: It is very hard, isn’t it, to draw the line but you are effectively saying you can stand up there and question so-called British values as long as you don’t incite violence?

ED DAVEY: We had this debate with the BNP, many people said should we ban the BNP from universities and from platforms and Liberal Democrats said no because we want to expose their arguments.  Racist views are abhorrent and are very easy to demolish and equally some of the appalling views of some of these preachers are easy to demolish.  So don’t …

DM: Not if they are in front of an appreciative audience.  Some of them sail at the very least very close to the wind.

ED DAVEY: Burt what would happen if you did what the Tories are saying?  They’d appear on the internet, they’d go underground and in fact they wouldn’t be able to be taken on and beaten.  What the Tories are arguing for actually would make radicalisation worse, that’s what I fear, because it would push these people into a more secret world which we know exists and therefore they couldn’t be challenged.  The beauty of democracy, the beauty of freedom of speech is it has stopped these appalling views taking root and so the only way to …

DM: So you say that improves the robustness of the democracy but what about this issue about dealing then in other ways with radicalisation?  Okay, so these preachers and people giving talks are allowed to speak as long as they don’t cross that line, what about the Prevent strategy?  I’ve been talking today and in the past with those that have been involved from the Muslim community, involved in designing and pushing forward the Prevent strategy and are saying the government in the last few years, your government, has taken their eye off the ball.  You thought it was done, Al Qaeda were on the run and that the Prevent strategy in effect could be neglected.  

ED DAVEY: Well I think the Prevent strategy is very important, it’s how it is done.  The last government made some huge mistakes, they put CCTV cameras in to communities and that caused fear and alienation.  What this government has tried to do is work with Muslim communities.  Should we do more?  Absolutely.  Do we need to tackle radicalisation?  It should be a top priority .  We need to challenge these views that are heard and we need to help the vast majority of Muslims who find these extremist views abhorrent, we need to give them the strength to take that tiny minority on.  I have got a lot of Muslim friends, I speak with a lot of Muslim leaders and they want to work with the government, work with councils to take these extremist views on that they find extreme and I think they are better placed to work with the government to ensure the British Muslims who play a really important role and make a big contribution to our economy aren’t isolated.  

DM: And concentrating on that issue of civil liberties, what do you think about the interventions of the security services?  A lot is being discussed at the moment about the radicalisation of Mohammed Emwazi and his complaints about how he was harassed and questioned and arrested by security services, not just in this country, do you have some sympathy for the view that being over heavy-handed can lead to radicalisation when it comes to those approaches?

ED DAVEY: No, I don’t, no I don’t.  The security services do a fantastic job in dealing with one of the most difficult problems the country has ever faced.  They manage to keep us safe, they foil terrorist plots day in, day out and they …

DM: But in this case we are led to understand that they approached Emwazi, they threatened him, they followed him, they made him think of taking his own life.   

ED DAVEY: Well I’ve not seen the huge detail, let’s be clear about that, I don't think you have …

DM: Well we’ve seen the emails that he sent.  

ED DAVEY: I think that you cannot blame the security services for someone like Mr Emwazi going and committing appalling acts that are criminal acts, let’s be clear he’s a criminal and he needs to be hunted down and brought to justice and the security services are our defenders of liberty.  Of course it’s possible that different people make mistakes, I don't know but I’ll tell you what, I think the security services do a fantastic job and this sort of criticism I think is just unfounded.  

DM: Okay, we want to get on to your brief and a pledge coming out from the Liberal Democrats to turn the United Kingdom, well carbon neutral by 2050, 35 years, how are you going to do that?  

ED DAVEY: Well you’ve got to make sure we can green our transport, to green our heating and green our power and actually in this government, thanks to the Liberal Democrats, we have done a huge amount.  We’ve got a lot more to do but I think people don’t realise that we have more than doubled the amount of renewable electricity for example.  

DM: It’s still only, what, 5% isn’t it?

ED DAVEY: No, no, renewable electricity is getting on for 17%, dramatic, more than doubled.  We put in place projects for the future to increase even more, last week I issued contracts for 27 renewable electricity projects, 15 onshore wind, five solar PV, two offshore wind with the price coming down significantly.  So we believe, the Liberal Democrats believe we can go green far faster than many of our competing parties and do it at a cost the country can afford.  

DM: Okay, but I like this pledge, in 35 years hence you’re going to have a legally binding target in 2050, enforced by who?   

ED DAVEY: Well we have a legally binding target at the moment in the Climate Change Act which all the parties have signed up to, of cutting our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.  Why have we changed and want to be even more ambitious?  Because of the climate change science, the scientific …

DM: But with this mechanism, you are making it sound all grand, legally binding target, who would sue who?  The government would say oh we haven’t done it because Ed Davey 35 years ago said we should so we’d better get ourselves in front of a court somewhere.  

ED DAVEY: You’re right because what we need to do, and to be fair to Ed Miliband and David Cameron and the Liberal Democrats, what we did in the Climate Change Act when we set these targets before is we had five year rolling budgets so you don’t wait to 2050 to see whether you’re on track, you have these rolling budgets which means that government can be held to account the whole way through.  Liberal Democrats have fought for keeping ambitious budgets. There were parts of the coalition who thought we should be less ambitious, the Liberal Democrats have made sure that this country stays on track to make sure we hit our climate change targets and now, as we reach the election, we want to do more.  We have five green Bills to make sure we can do it, give green pieces of legislation.  

DM: But my question is a real one about politicians, let’s rewind 35 years or so and imagine if a previous government, imagine if Margaret Thatcher had passed some law to have more nuclear power stations or something, you in government now would saying well we can ignore that, that’s nothing to do with us.  

ED DAVEY: Well I think this is different.  First of all we created the Climate Change Committee which is an independent body, independent of government, to monitor how government is doing so that enables governments to be audited, these five year budgets enable governments to be audited and we have made international agreements that are binding on the UK.   People often complain that politicians are short term, they only look at the next election, by coming together actually in this country – and we’ve led the world in this – the political parties have said we are prepared to commit to long term agreements.  So I put it back to you, you would normally say we’re acting short term, here we’re acting long term and we need to.

DM: Okay, you mentioned the short term nature of the election, will you put your hat into the ring to be leader of the Lib Dems if Nick Clegg doesn’t make it through?  

ED DAVEY: Good try.  Nick Clegg is not just going to win his seat but he is going confound the pollsters, the Liberal Democrats are going to do far better at this election and given the polls are also showing that no party is going to have an overall majority, the Conservatives clearly aren’t going to win, Labour aren’t going to win, we’ve got to be actually thinking about which parties can you trust in the next coalition.  The Liberal Democrats have shown that we can be trusted on economy, we came to power with the Conservatives when the economy was in a total mess, we  were borrowing £400 million a day.  Thanks to the Liberal Democrats being able to take tough decisions with our Conservative colleagues, we have massively reduced the deficit, now we have an employment rate at its highest ever, unemployment tumbling, growth increasing, inflation down, our economy outperforming most of the rest of the world, the equivalent countries in the world.  That’s because Liberal Democrats have been able to take those tough decisions in government so I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved and we will do that if there is another balanced parliament as I expect there will be.  

DM: Alright, you can be trusted with tough decisions, well one of the tough decisions which cost you an awful lot of trust and faith in the Lib Dems is of course the issue of tuition fees, those £9000 that you allowed to be imposed.  Do you think Ed Miliband’s proposal is travelling in the right direction to knock them down a third?

ED DAVEY: No, I think it’s a really bad policy.  If you look at the impact of the way we introduced these fees, we’ve seen student numbers increase, we’ve seen the proportion from disadvantaged backgrounds increase because although we weren’t able to deliver our main policy because we are in coalition, we had to compromise with the Conservatives …  

DM: But you wanted to abolish them, surely knocking £3000 off them is a good idea.  

ED DAVEY: But the way we introduced the fee system has been shown to work.  Labour’s proposal, knocking £3000 off, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the independent body, has shown all the benefits will go to richer graduates.  You’d have to be on a starting salary of £35,000, the sort of people who go on to become bankers and hedge fund managers, to benefit from Labour’s policy so what Ed Miliband is actually asking, he’s asking people who are on low wage incomes to pay their taxes, to give help to rich graduates who are going to become richer when they’ve developed their careers. That seems a betrayal of Labour values.

DM: Okay, Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed.  Ed Davey there, very good to see you.