ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now it is a pretty blistering attack on the Prime Minister’s record on immigration, not from his usual foes in UKIP and the likes but from within parts of his own Cabinet, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove dramatically escalating the Tory civil war that was triggered by the referendum campaign.  Well Iain Duncan Smith, the Leave campaign ally and the former Works and Pensions Secretary joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Duncan Smith.  Your take on this, presumably you are fully supportive of Mr Gove and Mr Johnson in making these points that the Prime Minister shouldn’t really have set this target of net migration of tens of thousands if he isn’t going to try and keep it.  

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think the point they are making here is one that the public themselves are asking so I think it’s fair. They have set a series of questions for him which are straightforward and they are this: we have a manifesto commitment, we said we would get migration down to tens of thousands, how do you expect to do that if we don’t control our borders with the European Union and to control those borders therefore we should vote to leave which would allow us to get our tens of thousands migration figure to where it should be.  But it isn’t just about migration, the point they’re making is migration isn’t just an issue about who is coming in, it hugely affects ordinary people’s lives.  One of the points I made a couple of weeks ago which is key which is people on low skilled work etc in the UK according to the Bank of England have seen their incomes actually fall by up to 10% now as a result of this uncontrolled migration with the European Union and the reason for that is that the majority of people coming in from the European Union tend to take low skilled job whereas those coming from outside tend to be high skilled doctors, nurses, engineers. So the problem with uncontrolled migration of the EU is it has directly affected the incomes of the poorest in society, those who are trying to work and that is a big strong point as to why we set out to control it in the first place.

DM: But what do you think about the tone, the way these views are being expressed?  Do you think it is within those parameters of this is reasoned debate and the whole thing can be put back together again after the EU referendum because there is some pretty strong language flying around.  We’ve got to add into this Priti Patel saying effectively the Prime Minister is too posh to care about immigration, he’s not affected by it.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I think if we just take a pace back from this and see this as it is, I think this is a very important debate.  I have seen that Downing Street has been saying, oh we shouldn’t be talking about this, it is just a distraction from the economy – no it’s not, it is the economy, immigration is the economy, you can’t divide the two of them so of course it is going to be a fierce debate because the truth is I am a Democrat, I believe we got elected on a manifesto, I may be old fashioned but I believe if you get elected on a manifesto you should at least be certain that you want to try and make that manifesto work and the manifesto commitment at the heart of that was a commitment to get migration down to tens of thousands.  It is quite clear that everybody believes, actually the Home Secretary herself came out the other day and said pretty much unless we get control over borders we’re not going to be able to make it to get to this target figure so what my colleagues are saying today is a) it’s important, how do you intend to do it, please can we hear from the Prime Minister how he is going to …

DM: So do you think he is out of touch, do you think he is too posh to know the real effects of immigration?   

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Actually what Priti was saying, and if you read the article quite rightly, is for most people it is not aimed at the Prime Minister or Chancellor particularly, it is actually aimed at heads of corporates and these guys that live in rather smart houses here in Central London and do rather well for themselves, immigration isn’t an issue for them because they think it’s all right for them because they can get cheaper nannies and stuff like that.  What she is saying though is the people that I was talking about, people on low and marginal incomes, people living in communities where there has been big dislocation, pressure on schools, pressure on housing, they are the ones who pick up the pieces and by the way, she is saying, they are also the ones that pick up the pieces when those same big corporates and the forecasters and the economists got it wrong about the crash in 2008.  The bankers didn’t suffer, the people that suffered were the poorest in society.

DM: But what about the rancour within the party, will it last?  

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: You know, it is a fierce debate, it doesn’t get any more important than who governs your country so of course it is going to be fierce and there are going to be things said and this is the heat of the moment but if you really ask me do we think that in the next four years the Conservative party will be back and stable and governing, yes I do.  Actually it is worth pointing out…

DM: Do you think the Prime Minister will last two, three, four years of that?  

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: That’s absolutely what I believe and hope he should do because he … well he actually said he wasn’t going to stay four years anyway so at some point he is going to step down but my view about this is, and it’s very simple, we’re asking the British people a very simple but important question, do you believe that we had a reformed European Union – in those words did the Prime Minister get those reforms – therefore do you want to stay in that or not?  I say there is no reform so we should vote to leave.  If they vote to leave, the Prime Minister’s duty and that of the government is to then implement what the British people have decided.   

DM: And you want to see him stay and do that?  Because there are people today, Andrew Bridgen within the Conservative party, saying even if Remain is the result, particularly if it is by a fairly narrow margin, the Prime Minister has got to go because of the way he has conducted this campaign. Now that’s annoyed you, you’ve expressed that in the past, you called the Chancellor Pinocchio and things like that.  Yes, you did.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well a lot of people know that when Pinocchio didn’t tell things exactly correctly his nose grew and actually the Treasury Select Committee today said there was a lot of Pinocchio going on inside the government’s figures and so they …

DM: But on that point, are these people who run this campaign which has annoyed you so much, are they the people to lead your party?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I have a very simple view about this: we were elected a year ago to be a government for five years.  This debate is not about who governs us in the sense of who is actually in Westminster, it’s about who governs us in terms of should it be the public voting for a government in Westminster or the European, 60% of our laws are made in the European Union and we don’t control our borders so voting to leave means we get that power back and that’s the government that they elected a year ago and that government should then get on and implement that decision.  So I think it’s very straightforward.  I have a simple point I make to my colleagues and everybody else – when you are campaigning, and this is the biggest issue you will ever campaign on, I have only one interest – winning this campaign.  

DM: By whatever means possible?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, by getting people to recognise the risks of remaining, the crashed euro, the unemployment in Europe, the massive migrancy crisis they have got going on there, the problems of our open borders, migration damaging people’s incomes and us not being in control of our laws, that’s all facts and truths and I would then simply say vote to leave, let’s get that done and let’s not worry about what’s happening afterwards, let’s vote to leave …

DM: But as your other former leader, Sir John Major, saying today by using crass and distorted figures and telling downright untruths he says.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: He does say that a lot doesn’t he really?  I do wish he’d read what we say. I talked about people on the lowest earnings being damaged by migration, uncontrolled migration, that’s true.  They all came from Bank of England figures and from their own migration advisory council.  

DM: It says on the side of your bus that it costs the UK £350 million a week being sent to the EU without mentioning how much they send back.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Yes, let me explain to you how that works.  It is accepted by the ONS that £350 million – actually £367 million last year – and what actually happens, this is how it works.  A bit like me taking £350 off you and saying I’ll tell you what, that £350 I’m going to take that away but here’s the deal, I’ll give you some of that back but it won’t be for a year …

DM: But hang on, that figure … I didn’t see the subparagraph on the bus.  It just says 350 million quid a week, not that you get half of it back.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Because everybody knows … No, you get some first of all back, I’ll give you that a year later which by the way isn’t always agreed, you have to negotiate that and then I give you a bit more which takes you to about half of that figure, £170 million, so I give you a bit more back but here’s the deal – now this is your money but I am going to tell you how you have to spend it.  So the rules are my rules about your money so you don’t actually get it back, just here’s the cash, you get it back being told what to spend.  So I think it’s quite reasonable for the British public to say £350 million a week which is the about the cost of a hospital a week being built in the UK, that is a lot of money to be a member of this thing which actually is not working very well at all for anybody.

DM: Just to pick you up on that point, the economic argument, this idea that the campaigns have split with Remain on the economy and you on immigration as you have explained to us a bit earlier but what about this survey from hundreds of economists today saying unanimously almost that there is a danger in Brexit?  You really can’t deny that, you’ve lost it when that kind of argument is made so strongly.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well first of all I don’t see in any of this press release actually how many people didn’t even bother to return the survey, they just give us the number that came back which is fair enough, no doubt we’ll find out but more importantly I have a very simple point to make.  I do love economists dearly, I do love the way that they always tell you that they know the future but actually this, if I go back I remember all the same kind of economists telling Mrs Thatcher it was all going to crash and burn because she’d never get it right, the economy would never get going and the economy actually boomed under Mrs T.  

DM: But this is a survey …

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Hang on, nearly 70% of all economists also told us that if we didn’t join the euro we would be in dire straits and we would be on the outer margins and these are the same economists that didn’t forecast the great recession in 2008.  I love economists dearly but I wish they wouldn’t tell us that they know the future the way they do.

DM: You  have used this argument before, if you get your predictions wrong then we can take whatever you say with a pinch of salt but what about you and Universal Credit?  You have been telling the House of Commons for years that Universal Credit is on course because of the actions I took over a year ago – this was in 2013 – to ensure Universal Credit will roll out and deliver exactly as we said it would.  As of February this year there is only 203,000 benefit claimants still on it, you are not exactly brilliant at predictions are you?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, this is a function, we have actually now rolled Universal Credit out to every single Job Centre in the United Kingdom and that was exactly the plan.  Then what happens is you now bring in all the other benefits, there are six benefits coming into it, that is now starting this month, that rolls out over the next year and a half to two years and the whole reason for this is because we’ve changed the process.  As I said earlier on gone are the days when a government says hit the button the programme goes out, because it always ends up in trouble.  What we’ve said is that you do it phase by phase, you check to see that you’ve got it right, we don’t want to damage people’s lives, we want them to actually do better as a result of UC and that’s exactly how it’s going.

DM: Last question, you are watching from the outside obviously as your baby continues and whether it gets that far or not is …

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: It’s already out in every single Job Centre in the UK.

DM: But what about this issue of a reshuffle post the result whatever it is, if the Prime Minister offered you a place back in the Cabinet would you go back or have you burnt your boats?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I never speculate about the future. I  resigned because I had a strong feeling that we were moving away from the narrative about social justice and social reform, I wanted us to get back on that, I felt the better way for me to do that was to campaign outside.  I am doing that, I intend to do that against after the referendum is over so I don’t speculate about where I will be.  As far as I’m concerned I will serve my government in the best way that I can which is for my party.

DM: But you counsel more broadly then the Prime Minister to approach any reshuffle from the point of view of reconciliation rather than revenge?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I never advise Prime Ministers of anything really because they have to do the job themselves.  My view about this is I want to win this referendum more than anything else.  If we win this referendum and the United Kingdom leaves the European Union we will be better off and in a stronger position. I am passionate about Britain, I think we are the most innovative, the most brilliant people on earth and we should stop telling people that you’re not good enough.  Britain is good enough to do anything it chooses, as the Prime Minister actually said the other day of course we’ll thrive and prosper and I say amen to that because that’s what we’re voting to leave the European Union for.

DM: Great to see you Mr Duncan Smith, thank you very much indeed.  Former Work and Pensions Secretary there, Iain Duncan Smith.