ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, has told Sky News that a terror attack in the UK is not likely and that the official terror threat level remains at severe.  The government’s own definition of that level is that an attack is ‘highly likely’ so who’s right and what can we do about it?  Well the Conservative MP and of course former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, joins me now.  Are we getting caught up in semantics here, the fact is that the UK is still and has been for a long time under threat?

LIAM FOX: And we have had terrorist attacks of course and so the threat remains there.  Whether it’s highly likely, whether it’s just highly possible, I think you’re right, these are to a certain extent semantics but we do have a level of threat and the thought of a repeat of a Mumbai style killing is always there and is always in the mind of security services.  

DM: But that must have sent a shiver down the spine of the security services, it was the use here of automatic weapons being used by men who clearly knew how to use them.  In the past terror attacks in the United Kingdom have not had those kind of characteristics.

LIAM FOX: Well you have had some fairly sophisticated attacks by the IRA in the past in terms of bombings but it’s not something new.  

DM: But the current attacks.

LIAM FOX: Yes, and it was bound to be the case that there would be copycats, that there would be those who had been involved in ISIS for example or have had training, been radicalised in Pakistan or Yemen or other places, who would be a threat to the United Kingdom as they have been a threat to France.

DM: I’ve been reading your recent book Rising Tides, there is a lot in there about the terror threat and how to respond to it and you’ve got basically a four-point recipe.  I want to start with point four with one eye on the demonstration that’s going to take place as we’re looking at now, as the crowds gather in Paris, at least one million, maybe two million people walking along in that in an act of national and international unity and you say one of the main things to do to try to defeat this kind of ideology is show the will to prevail in a long conflict.  

LIAM FOX: And it is necessary.  We have to be willing to stand up for what we believe in, free expression, our rule of law, our concept of rights that applies across race, religion and gender and we have to be willing to do that over a very long indefinite period and that is who we are and ultimately that is what the jihadists fear.  They can see the trends in the world towards these things, there is growing prosperity around the globe, there is a growing movement towards democracy around the globe, they fear that because that stands in the way of their violent medieval misogynistic view of the world.

DM: Do you also mean don’t overreact?   Don’t go for some draconian terror laws and don’t above all make sure your society gets divided.

LIAM FOX: Well there are several points in that.  Of course you don’t want to have more division in our own society and retribution against people because they happen to be Muslims in our country is no more logical than attacking the Irish because of what happened with the IRA, so we do have to keep a sense of proportion.  What they want is for us to overreact, they want us to create division and hatred because that fits with their view of the world but ...

DM: I just want to stop you there, would you agree with the head of MI5 then or disagree that we need to look again at the right particularly to snoop, to keep people under surveillance in their online activities?  

LIAM FOX: If there were two different internets, one for the bad guys and one for the good guys, life would be very simple.  That is not true.  As I pointed out in the book, in 1993 there were 130 websites in the world, at the end of 2012 there were 654 million.  That’s a lot of haystacks for a terrorist needle to hide in.  We have to ensure that the security services have the powers they need to keep us safe, this is a constantly changing and evolving world and the terrorists find ways round what the security services are doing.  When we get people like Edward Snowdon telling them how we go about our business of security that of course makes life easier for them and more difficult for our security services.

DM: So you think Edward Snowdon is partly responsible for what went on in Paris?   

LIAM FOX: Oh I think Edward Snowdon is a traitor.  He gave away amongst other things thousands of the files that GCHQ had, that makes it easier for terrorists.  I’m not saying in particular in Paris but in general it makes it easier for terrorists to attack us.

DM: You also talk about understanding where this comes from and key to that understanding is the definition of this, what’s gone on in Paris and has gone on before in the United Kingdom, is it criminal or is it an act of warfare?

LIAM FOX: It’s kind of a bit of both.  It is clearly criminal but …

DM: But that defines the response doesn’t it?  

LIAM FOX: It is clearly criminal, what has happened, but they have declared a war on us.   We can pretend that it’s not but they have declared a war on us, these are people who hate our values, who hate what we stand for, our systems of government, our freedom of expression and Western liberal opinion has to understand that there are fanatics out there who we cannot compromise with because they cannot be reconciled to our way of thinking and I think there is still some opinion that says if you can reason with these people enough they will come to understand the error of their ways.  That’s not going to happen and …

DM: Well hold on a minute, if you can’t reason with them you either have to kill them or lock them up for a very long time.   

LIAM FOX: Well that may well be the case and that’s what we face in places like Iraq where there is clearly a lethal threat being launched against us.  We have to understand the scale of what is happening because if we don’t understand the scale and nature of it, we’ll not make the correct responses but you raised another point which I want to mention which is that we have to be careful in our responses to these things that we don’t become the very thing that we are fighting against.  We’ve got to make sure that we retain our freedom of expression and we’ve got to retain our values and our systems of government and we mustn’t have responses that turn us into something that will be very much more like the people we are fighting against.  

DM: Well thanks for those thoughts. I want to turn to domestic matters because of course the big debate before all this happened, and life does go on, was the National Health Service and what state of crisis it is in.  Do you feel your party while in government has messed up the NHS, the Lansley reforms were ill-conceived and ill-implemented?  

LIAM FOX: I don’t think so, no, and I think what we are facing at the moment is a very big demand on the A&E services which is partly because of the change in patient behaviour.  When I was a GP and when I worked before that in Accident and Emergency, people would wait to see their GP.  Behaviour has changed now, patients are not willing to wait a week to see a GP, they are willing to wait four hours in A&E for that to happen.  Now two things need to happen to stop that, the government’s response already which is to get GPs to have more appointments, be more open at weekends for example: that will help take the pressure off A&E but I have long believed that those health authorities who have GPs in their Accident and Emergency are on the right track.  I think when patients get to the door of A&E they should be sorted into those who need to see a GP and those who really require Accident and Emergency care because if we don’t separate them out like that, actually it makes life much more difficult for those who need real emergency care.  

DM: This is not a novel prescription, excuse the pun, but it just doesn’t happen.  It is like keeping GPs surgeries open later, we heard the Prime Minister talking about that again at the party conference and we’ve heard that before from  Labour governments.  It doesn’t happen.

LIAM FOX: It’s an easy thing to do to put GPs into an emergency service and to triage patients at the door, some places already do it and I would hope that that becomes the norm.  That’s what should happen, that will take the pressure off the system, it will enable those who want to see a GP to see one and it will enable those who really require Accident and Emergency treatment to get it in a timely fashion.

DM: Okay, job done.  Do you think it is that simple though?  

LIAM FOX: It’s not as simple as that but that would go a long way to dealing with the problem and I think to say we should tell patients not to go to A&E is like telling people to use the corner shop and don’t go to Tesco, that’s simply not going to happen, they will use what’s the most convenient way for them to get the healthcare for them and their families and I think the system will have to learn to change in response to how patients what to get the healthcare.  

DM: Something else that has been eclipsed, everything has been eclipsed of course quite rightly by what’s gone on in France but the Prime Minister talking about the EU referendum if the Conservatives win or become the largest party again after the next general election, the EU referendum he’d like to see – okay it’s promised for 2017 but he’d like to see it take place as soon as possible. You presumably would welcome that.  

LIAM FOX: I want to see a referendum after we get proper discussion with our European partners about the Europe that we want to be a member of and the reason I want to have a referendum after the renegotiation is that as a eurosceptic you have to accept that the public might choose to stay in and if the public choose to stay in I’d much rather stay in under a renegotiated formula rather than …

DM: But I mean the short length of time between the general election and when a referendum is gives less time for that renegotiation, is that what you’d like to see?  

LIAM FOX: There’s another problem and that is getting the legislation through to enable a referendum to happen.  Remember, we cannot have  a referendum on the European Union membership unless we have primary legislation.  Now we don’t know what the outcome of the general election will be but even if we get a Conservative majority, which I hope we get, we’ve still got to get the legislation through the House of Lords and that might not be quite as simple as it looks so the timing – let’s have it as soon as is practically possible but let’s ensure we have had time for a renegotiation and time to get the legislation through.  These are the two very practical obstacles that stand in the way.

DM: Well Liam Fox, thank you very much once again for your thoughts.  The former Defence Secretary there.