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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the Scottish Labour party could be allowed to decide its own policies according to a report in the Sunday Times newspaper this morning.  The party was almost totally wiped out of course north of the border back in the May general election losing all but one of its MPs in Scotland.  Now Scottish Labour has a new leader of course who has promised to renew the party and Kezia Dugdale joins me now, a very good morning to you.  So it is going to be an autonomous Scottish Labour party is it?   

KEZIA DUGDALE: Yes, this is an essential thing that we’ve got to do in Scotland to transform our party, to get it fit for the future, to regain the trust of voters across Scotland that we’ve lost so badly over the past few months.  Now I won the Scottish Labour leadership contest with a tremendous mandate, 72% of the vote, to do exactly this, to lead an autonomous Scottish Labour party where decisions about our policies, who stands for us in the direction of our party, are made in Scotland and that’s what people the length and the breadth of the country want to see.  

DM: But of course one of the big reasons, and you’ll have heard it more than I, you know it more than I, one of the big reasons why many voters deserted Labour was the campaign during the course of the independence referendum that you stood or your leader, your then leader, stood full square alongside the views of all the other parties within the United Kingdom, that your party represented the Westminster bubble.  

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well there is no doubt that standing side by side with the Tories had a damaging effect on the Scottish Labour party but bear in mind there were people of all parties and none involved in the campaign for yes and no during the referendum.  But that’s a debate that is in the past, what I’m in the business of talking about is Scotland’s future, meeting the hopes and aspirations of voters across the country and in order to do that we have to be able to make policy decisions in Scotland, in the Scottish interests.  Now what I would say to you Dermot is I hope very much that this is a starting gun of a debate across the whole of the Labour party, across the whole of the UK, about where power lies and how we organise Labour people and Labour values …

DM: So you will see in effect a federal Labour party?  Frank Field has just been on, the veteran Labour MP of course, talking about just that, the nations and regions should in effect have their own Labour parties.  

KEZIA DUGDALE: I would support a more federal solution for the organisation of the Labour party, undoubtedly I think that is the direction that we need to go in.  The Scottish Labour party was the party of devolution but the one mistake we made was not to devolve the party itself.  Now is the time to do that so I want to lead a more autonomous party where decisions on our policies are made in Scotland, not because of some theoretical debate about how the Labour party should form its own structures but because I want to represent the views of people across the country and put Scotland first in that regard.  

DM: People are going to be sitting at home listening to this saying, give us some specifics.  It is pretty hard at the moment  to define what Labour’s policies are as a UK based party in many areas but how would you differ from the Corbyn leadership?

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well I’m going into the Scottish Labour party conference next weekend with a strong focus on tackling inequality.  I came into politics to tackle education and …

DM: I think we can say hold on, we’ve heard that in spades from Jeremy Corbyn.  

KEZIA DUGDALE: Hang on a second though, one thing that your listeners don’t hear very often is a proper critique of what’s happening in Scotland under the SNP.  We’ve had eight years of SNP government and we now have 6000 kids across the country leaving school unable to read properly.  One in four people in the newest hospital in Scotland have to wait more than four hours in an A&E department to be seen.  Our public services are in a mess and they aren’t getting the scrutiny that they need because there isn’t a strong enough opposition in place to take on those arguments. This is very much a part of that debate, making sure that the Scottish Labour party is fit for the future.  

DM: And what about this specific issue of tax credits?  It’s unclear and the SNP has been asked if and when it gets more fiscal autonomy whether or not it would mitigate the effect of the cuts to tax credits.  That’s explicit then is it from Scottish Labour that you would make sure that Scottish people who receive tax credits would not be affected?

KEZIA DUGDALE: Your right that the SNP’s position is unclear on this, you hear John Swinney say one thing and Angus Robertson say another.  I’m going to wait until next weekend to lay out just exactly my policy position on tax credits if you don’t mind, much as I would love to give you an exclusive on that here.  

DM: But come on, I am just asking you the specific question, if you win power – and it’s a mighty big if of course – in the Scottish elections would you make sure that Scottish voters are not effected by cuts to their tax credits?  

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well we will find out very soon about the powers that the Scottish parliament will get from the Scotland Bill and the degree to which we will be able to mitigate things like that in the Scottish parliament isn’t 100% clear yet, we will get clarity very soon.  I’ll tell you one thing though, I am absolutely opposed to what George Osborne is trying to do here.  It’s very clear that an average family across Scotland and we are talking about 200,000 families here, could lose up to £1300 of their income.  Now this is a government that purports to represent working people, this is an attack on working people, it’s an attack on people who just want to go out, go to work and build better lives for themselves so there is no doubt that the Labour party stands united in opposition to these tax credit cuts.  

DM: But you’ve got to ague, you’ve got to tell people what is different from the Westminster Labour party.  I haven’t really heard anything that I haven’t heard from many, many of the contenders who were fighting that leadership election, some of them actually lost it of course but particularly Jeremy Corbyn, you’re not saying anything different as far as I can discern.

KEZIA DUGDALE: Jeremy Corbyn and I agree on many things, of course we do, we’re in the same political party however …

DM: So why should you be autonomous?

KEZIA DUGDALE: However there are issues on which in Scotland we need to take a different position to develop our policies in our own direction.

DM: Which are?

KEZIA DUGDALE: Well let’s talk about welfare reform for example, we will soon have more powers around tax and welfare reform in Scotland. I want to use those powers to tackle educational inequality and the types of policy that I’ll come up with in Scotland might not suit other parts of the United Kingdom, that’s why it is important to have an autonomous Scottish Labour party where we can design policies that fit the Scottish interest.  I take you back to that earlier point, Dermot, this isn’t just about Scotland, this is about whether the Labour party itself is fit for the big ideas, the big issues of the future so my appeal is to people across the UK Labour party, see this as the start of a debate that you have a big part in.  Can we have more powers in Wales?  There is a debate now about how the Labour party organises itself in the big cities and regions, we’ve had Jon Cruddas raise this over the weekend as well.  What I’m saying to people is, learn the mistakes of Scottish Labour, don’t repeat them, there’s a chance here to innovate and reform how our party is organised and how it is structured and if we get it right our party will be in a much stronger and fitter position for the future.

DM: What is your experience of the attitude towards Scottish Labour at the moment since the election of Jeremy Corbyn?  Isn’t he getting more popular and Scottish voters quite like what Jeremy Corbyn is saying?  Of course he has moved the party to the left and it was said that the SNP had out-lefted the Labour party under its previous leadership but now Jeremy Corbyn is more in tune and perhaps this is the solution to old problems.

KEZIA DUGDALE: Actually since both myself and Jeremy have been elected the Scottish Labour party membership has grown, the number of members and supporters now stands at over 30,000, that’s as high as it’s been since 1997.  There’s a multitude of reasons for that but your point about Jeremy Corbyn being more left wing than the SNP, well frankly that’s not difficult because that accepts the premise that the SNP are a left wing party and I can’t point to a single progressive policy that they stand for, not a single policy that redistributes wealth from the richest to the poorest for example.  We have two tax policies which really involve cutting business taxes whether that be corporation tax which has been a long standing position of the SNP or the more recent policy they have put forward around giving local government the power to cut business rates.  Not to change the barriers or put them up but to cut business rates.  That’s not the actions of a progressive left wing party and the other point to remember, Dermot, is you’re forgetting the referendum and the impact that had on Scotland.  It wasn’t about left or right, it was about yes or no, I do hope though that those arguments are in the past and with an autonomous Scottish Labour party we’ll be fit for the future as well.

DM: Kezia Dugdale, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed, the leader of Scottish Labour there.