ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the former head of MI5 says Britain needs new laws to track terrorists but what can be done to tackle radicalisation at its roots to stop people turning to terror in the first place?  Well the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, joins me now and a very good morning to you, Mr Pickles.  Well that Lord Evans quotation, the former head of MI5, it’s worth just reminding ourselves, he says quite unequivocally the tools at their disposal, the security services, are no longer fit for purpose and I know you agree.

ERIC PICKLES: Well things change, things move along, different methods of communication are available and you’ve got to bear in mind that what we’re asking for is just part of what’s already happening, personal information gathering from the street, but what we really want to be able to do is to be able to map who people are talking to.  We don’t need to know what they’re saying but we need to know what the connections are so we are simply asking what we would like to do is for the various service providers to keep that information for a year and if the Home Secretary applies to see that information, to be able to make it available to our security services.  Very modest and I can’t really understand why people are against it.  

DM: Well your hands are tied, it’s not just people it’s the Liberal Democrats, nothing you can do in this parliament.   

ERIC PICKLES: Well there is an election coming very soon and if there is a majority Conservative government then we would certainly do that.  I do respect and understand concerns about civil liberties and we need to get a proper balance between preserving the things that we are actually trying to protect and to protect those things.  

DM: But it’s a powerful argument isn’t it that says this is just what the terrorists want, they want us to throw the baby out with the bath water, they want us to become a more draconian, a more snooping society, these are the very freedoms they want us to get rid of?

ERIC PICKLES: Yes and that’s a very good point and that’s why I’m quite surprised that this very modest proposal whereby we can look at records going back a year but only on application can we do that, that doesn’t seem, I don’t feel that my freedom is being in any impinged by doing that.  

DM: Well you say it is very modest but as the Lib Dems, and others indeed, point out in actual fact what it leads to is snooping, is spying on people just in case.

ERIC PICKLES: Well it’s not just in case, it’s there may be a conversation taking place now, a connection between a number of individuals, that doesn’t seem terribly relevant now but maybe in July they do.   We want to be able to look and see the different connections between different organisations and different people, we’re not looking at what they’re saying, we’re simply looking at who they are talking to and all we’re asking for is for the service providers to keep that information for a year.  

DM: So would you go so far as to say well look, if somebody does get through and if you, as you hope, get into power without being in coalition, if somebody does get through you can lay the blame at the Lib Dems door?  

ERIC PICKLES: I really wouldn’t want to play that degree of politics with stuff like this.  Clearly it makes it that much more difficult to try and put terrorist cells together but it is just part of the information that we’re getting, it would be a good thing to do but I think the last thing, if there is an atrocity, for politics to play the blame game, I really don’t want to go there.

DM: But what about the reasons people who grew up in this society want to turn on it in some cases and turn on it in a violent way?  Do you think that decades of aggressive multiculturalism have had a role to play in this alienation?  

ERIC PICKLES: No, I don’t, I truly do not believe that.  British society is different from what it was a couple of decades ago but I think it is perfectly possible to be a good citizen and to have a different religion other than Christianity.  What I do think is important is to create conditions where you talk to your neighbours, you meet your neighbours, people from different faith groups don’t just allow themselves to be restricted to people who think and see the same way and I think that what we’ve seen from militants who have come out of this country, it is a kind of a strange bastardisation of Islam rather than something that is being preached in mosques.

DM: But do you think, I mean you talk about integration, talking to your neighbours, of course you can’t talk to your neighbours if you don’t speak the same language so it is a prerequisite of living for any length of time in this society that you learn good English.

ERIC PICKLES: I think so.  I mean if you are an ambitious parent in Boston Massachusetts, in Boston England, Mumbai or Beijing, then you want your child to learn English because English is a passport to a better job and to a better future.  

DM: So what do you think?  What do you think of these councils, and we are talking about multiculturalism, we’ve all seen them, that produce leaflets on anything from libraries to bin collections in so many different languages?

ERIC PICKLES: I can I think trump that, we actually did have one that was translating in Urdu in how to feed pigeons, I mean it is clearly ridiculous, it segregates our population.  I’d be far happier for them to put the money into getting people to learn English.  I mean I funded a scheme where we’ve taken learning English into different parts of the community, not just in further education or in mosques but in supermarkets and other places where we can actually target people to speak English.

DM: But there is a kind of chicken and egg question here isn’t there, that presumably the original leaflet that people who can’t speak English read about learning English can be in their language?

ERIC PICKLES: Well I’m not so sure about that but I do think that you can target people.  I attended a kind of a graduation class of young Asian women who are learning English and it has changed their life, it has opened their ability to speak beyond, it has opened their ability to be able to get a better job.  

DM: But do you think there should be any other sanctions other than encouragement?  Nigel Farage has been on this programme talking about this very subject and saying for instance if you are working in the National Health Service and you can’t speak English you are not having a job.  

ERIC PICKLES: I can’t see how you can operate in the health service without having a good standard of English but there is kind of a limit to the way in which the state should interfere.  If we absolutely completely forbid it then you would have to look in terms of imposing sanctions and all that kind of thing.  I actually think we are showing a lot of progress by targeting people, getting them to speak English, finding ways whether it is through youth organisations like Youth United, of getting people to mix and to meet others.  

DM: The story on the front of the Express today in which you are quoted about, I mentioned bin collections there, about how littered streets can drive house prices down.  The survey said it is about 12% less on average house prices if your street has got litter on it and you put that down to not collecting the bins often enough.  

ERIC PICKLES: Well and having a very bad attitude towards littering.  I am I think something like half a mile away from a McDonalds restaurant and that seems to be time for someone to eat their meal and to turf the contents out into my drive, so it is also an attitude of mind but certainly regular bin collections, it’s not a surprise that the street outside where we’re broadcasting, that the bins are emptied twice a week.

DM: Is it a Labour problem, are Labour councils worse?  You seem to have been saying that this morning.   

ERIC PICKLES: That seems to be the case but I aren’t going to pretend that everything is hunky-dory right across the piece except in Labour councils.  

DM: But you have been talking about it for ages, Mr Pickles …

ERIC PICKLES: And I will continue to talk about it.  

DM: But don’t just talk about it, I mean that’s one of the problems isn’t it with politicians, people hear the talk and then nothing changes.

ERIC PICKLES: Well we have removed all the restrictions on weekly collections, we’re urged people to go towards weekly collections but ultimately it has got to be a decision for the councils to make.  I know it’s technical because of course these contracts come up for renewal over a different period of time but it does seem to me that you can recycle, you can do all the necessary if you have a weekly collection but ultimately Dermot, it is whether the public are prepared to accept anything less than that.  

DM: There is another story in the papers today about councils, about those that have bought in 20 mile an hour limits, many of them can’t enforce them but now technology is coming through, 3G technology which will allow them to hit motorists with fines, do you say fair enough off you go or would you say be careful where you introduce these zones?  

ERIC PICKLES: I think you have got to be very careful about where you introduce 20 mile an hour zones.  Zones are very important, they can be about the structure that it’s going over, Tower Bridge for example is 20 and it is dangerous to the bridge to travel faster than that.   I am very much in favour of home zones whereby kids can play in the streets.  

DM: There’s a council in London that I know of, Islington Council, that has introduced a universal 20 mile an hour zone.  

ERID PICKLES: That clearly is almost certainly unreasonable and I think it brings the law into contempt but where it is applied reasonably then I think it’s reasonable to do so.  

DM: Okay, leaders debates, last question, would you like to see your leader scrapping it out on live television with the leaders of the other main parties?

ERIC PICKLES: Well I am of course a political junkie so the more we get David Cameron the happier I am but we’ve been very clear, it needs to be a fair debate and we need to include the Greens.  The Greens are a big party now, they have got a membership bigger I think than UKIP, they have got a good representation in the House of Commons, they should be part of the deal.

DM: But you know there are those in your party going don’t give Ed Miliband the airtime, people might realise he talks quite a lot of sense.

ERIC PICKLES: Well you know, I’m a regular attender at Prime Minister Question Times and I’ve never noticed that tendency in Ed.

DM: Eric Pickles, thank you very much, very good to see you Secretary of State.