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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the Prime Minister is prepared to compromise we hear on welfare reforms as he tries to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Union, it’s reported this morning.  The fall out of a possible exit from the European Union is much debated of course but what impact could it have on Britain’s national security?  I am joined now from Sussex by Sir Hugh Orde, who was until recently the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers and he is also the former Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and he is now a member of the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, a very good morning to you Sir Hugh.  Does this smack slightly of a scare tactic as some are saying?  Are you saying Britain is more likely to suffer a Paris style attack or something like that if it left the EU?

SIR HUGH ORDE: Well I think it is very easy to be accused of applying scare tactics when you speak the absolute truth to citizens in this country and in my judgement I am extremely clear on this, we will be more vulnerable if we leave the EU.  We have benefited for many years now from all sorts of procedures be it the European Arrest Warrant, joint investigation teams but crucially, facing the new threats, sharing intelligence, we have benefited from those systems and if you are not in the club you will not benefit from them so that is why I think it is critical we remain in Europe from a crime fighting and terrorist fighting perspective.

DM: But those that disagree with you will point to one key element of being in the European Union, whether you are in the borderless area or not, the Schengen Agreement, it is free movement of peoples and we know there are millions of new people entering the European Union every year, some of them could well mean us harm.

SIR HUGH ORDE:  Well indeed they could which is why we have got to work more closely together, not less, to fight that particular challenge. I  have no difficulty with strengthening orders and actually making people within Europe far safer but we need to be realistic here.  There are many ways of entering countries, both legally and illegally and moving out of Europe will not deal with the illegal issue which is the one that probably causes me the greatest concern.  We know nothing for example about people coming in illegally from failed states at the moment and ironically of course, even if we had relationships with some of those states, we would get no information at all so collectively the crime fighting capacity, the terrorist fighting capacity in Europe is far stronger, far stronger than it would be if we were all operating in splendid isolation.  

DM: But let’s look at the crime side of it, there have been several high profile awful criminal actions carried out by EU nationals and it seems that British forces, British police forces were not aware of their backgrounds.  They carried out crimes in their own countries, some of them murders, some of them rapes, it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment this co-operation.

SIR HUGH ORDE: The European Arrest Warrant is extremely successful.  Before we had the European Arrest Warrant we were having to rely on legislation from 1957 and what we have managed to do without question, and the numbers are clear, is export dangerous people who commit crimes in this country or are wanted in other countries, back to the country where they then face justice.  You talk about murders for example, the Metropolitan police were dealing a couple of years ago with 50  arrest warrants for foreign nationals wanted for murder in other countries and they had the powers and the capacity to find those people and to take them out of this country and send them back to face justice.  We also must remember we export criminals to other countries and the onus is on us to pursue those people across Europe and bring them back.  I am absolutely clear that someone who is a criminal in France or in Germany and comes here is likewise a criminal here, the European Arrest Warrant gives us that capacity, it is probably the most important tool in our armoury.

DM: It’s the data sharing, that’s a slightly different issue, those who have committed criminal acts in their own countries of origin, in EU countries, are free to come here and the British police forces don’t know anything about their previous offending.

SIR HUGH ORDE: Well we certainly do if they come to notice, we can gather that information.  Indeed in my previous role at ACPO, the ACPO Criminal Records Office, ACRO as it’s known, did that on behalf of the British police service not only for Europe, my colleagues travelled the world to secure similar systems so we could get that information and of course be we’re part of Europe, that information, if we catch people committing crimes in our country from abroad, we can introduce those convictions into our courts so the judges know absolutely everything about that individual when they are sentenced.  So if you are a rapist – for example a case I remember, a man wanted for rape or committing rapes in Eastern Europe, was caught for a rape here, that information was given to the judge as bad character evidence and he was duly convicted.  So I think the general point is, whilst it is by no means perfect and we all utterly accept that, there are issues still to be addressed, my general judgement is it would be sheer madness to withdraw from the systems we currently benefit from because we are members of the European community.

DM: Sir Hugh, can I just ask you how you viewed those comments by the Presidential hopeful Republican candidate, Donald Trump, about no-go areas and Muslim dominated areas in British cities, areas he said that the police are afraid to go into?  

SIR HUGH ORDE: Well I have policed in my previous lives some very difficult policing territories, be it in the London Metropolitan Police where I served for 26 years or as Chief Constable of Northern Ireland and what I do know is every officer I had the privilege to work with over my time was determined not to have no-go areas.  Some areas are more difficult than others but I know of no no-go areas in this country.  The great strength of British policing is it is based on community policing upwards so our officers’ basic intent is to engage with communities, to deal with their problems and their issues and frankly the reasons I think we will be capable of dealing with the current threats we face is because our local officers are gathering that critical intelligence that feeds up into the system where we were dealing now with terrorists we don’t know now as well as we did in the old world.  These are people who self-radicalise, who are small and disorganised and community policing, the bedrock of our model, is a great place to start when dealing with that and perhaps Donald Trump should come and have a look at how effective it can be.

DM: And just flying from that, you argue that fewer police on the streets could feed through to a greater chance of a terror attack?  

SIR HUGH ORDE: I think community policing, Dermot, has never been more important and I do worry, I really do worry that if we denude our frontline community teams who provide that first interaction with vulnerable people and start to build or continue to build that trust, in particular in some of our diverse communities where trust relationships with police are difficult, people from other countries don’t trust the police like they trust the police in the United Kingdom, if we lose that basic connectivity I think we face a real issue looking forward in getting community information into the system about people who just start to behave very differently than how they used to behave and that will be the nugget of information that creates an operation that prevents some atrocity in this country in my judgement.  I think it is absolutely vital.  

DM: Sir Hugh Orde, thank you very much for your time.