Murnaghan Interview with Stephen Crabb MP, Welsh Secretary 18.10.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the government has been accused of an increasingly inadequate response to the migration crisis by Bishops in the Church of England.  More than 80 of them have signed a letter to the Prime Minister calling for at least 50,000 Syrian refugees to be taken in over the next five years.  Well I’m joined now by the Welsh Secretary, Stephen Crabb, very good morning to you Mr Crabb.  Now what is your response, Mr Crabb, the government’s response to this from the Bishops saying we are just not doing enough in this country?  

STEPHEN CRABB: Well in a sense Church of England Bishops criticising the Conservative government isn’t really news but on this specific issue what I would say to them is look, four years ago we were out there in Syria as a government spending tax payers money, investing in camps, providing clean water, shelter, security, education for those refugees, those poor people whose families are fleeing war so our response has been one of compassion, we’ve been at the coalface there for the last four years, long before the Bishops started taking a campaigning interest in this issue.

DM: But can we hold our heads up internationally or even just within the European Union when so many countries, so many of our collegiate nations, are doing so much more than the UK in terms of taking those numbers in, those people who are desperately fleeing the situation?

STEPHEN CRABB: We absolutely do hold our heads up high and we take pride in the response that we’ve made over the last four years, as I say long before lots of media and other organisations started taking a serious interest in this humanitarian catastrophe.  In terms of the numbers that we’re taking, we’ve actually been praised by the EU Commissioner for Refugees for that number of 20,000 that we’ve committed to take directly from the camps to ensure that we’re taking the most vulnerable people, those who have suffered the most.

DM: And that’s deliberately designed, isn’t it, not to create more of those pull factors which you feel Angela Merkel in particular, the German Chancellor, has done by saying well basically earlier on our borders were open.  

STEPHEN CRABB: What we’ve seen over the last few months is a massive movement of humanity.  A lot of it is effectively trafficked, people paying sums of money to criminal gangs to give them passage into Europe and guaranteeing them access to certain European countries and as a government we don’t want to feed that movement, that trafficking of people which is why we’ve said we will take 20,000, we’ll resettle them in the UK but we will take them directly from the camps, we’ll give them …

DM: So those that make their way into continental Europe, into the European Union, they are not coming to Britain, none of them?  

STEPHEN CRABB: Well we are not part of the European resettlement programme, that’s for the other countries in the EU to take a decision about, we’re not part of that programme.  If we were part of that programme, actually our quota for refugees would be less than what we have committed to take so actually I do think we hold our heads up high, our response is one of compassion but it is also one of actually thinking this through in terms of the long term interests for those people, those families but also for this country.

DM: Can I just touch on something you touched on in your first answer there, saying it is not unusual for Bishops to criticise a Conservative government, do you feel they are too left wing?

STEPHEN CRABB: Well if you go back decades now, if we had listened to the Bishops and all of their prescriptions for economic and social policy, we’d probably have debt a lot higher and we wouldn’t have the kind of economic recovery we’ve got.

DM: I can understand your criticism of Bishops delving into areas of economic policy, they would say it was all to do about poverty as I remember from some of those letters but this is a pure and simple issue of morality.

STEPHEN CRABB: This is an issue of morality, it’s one of compassion which is why we got involved …

DM: On which they are qualified to pronounce.  

STEPHEN CRABB:  In which we got involved right at the very start, four years ago we were there, spending money, investing in those camps, in security and shelter for those families fleeing from that dreadful conflict in Syria.  Not just that but in the wider region, 25% of the entire population of Lebanon are refugees which is why we’re there in Lebanon supporting that government, supporting the refugees there.  That’s a response of compassion and morality too.

DM: Okay, and another issue of compassion and morality and economics as well, the domestic issue of the cuts to tax credits, there may well be a letter winging its way from other Bishops and clergy.  This whole idea, and you’ve seen the learned bodies that have talked about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who will be affected from next April by the removal of some of their entitlement to tax credits.  Are these not the very people that the Conservatives are now meant to be addressing?

STEPHEN CRABB: We are absolutely on the side of working people but in the last ten days we’ve seen that independent statistics are showing that unemployment is falling in all parts of the country and …

DM: But just address this issue, do you accept that from next April hundreds of thousands – and I’m taking the lower end of the estimates – hundreds of thousands of people will be affected economically by the removal of some of their tax credits?  I haven’t heard that from any government spokesperson.

STEPHEN CRABB: People’s circumstances are changing and they are changing for the better.  Five years ago colleagues of mine were on programmes like this facing exactly the same charges, that if you try to balance the books, if you try to embark on a programme of welfare reform it will create five million unemployed, huge poverty.  None of those predictions came true because all of those analysis that makes those predictions cannot take into account the dynamic effects of a growing strengthening economy.

DM: It sounds like jargon to me.  We’ve seen numerous people, individuals, appearing on television programmes and phone-ins during the course just of last week saying these are my family circumstances, these are specific circumstances, I get X now and I will X minus Y from April, why don’t you admit that some people will be hurt by this and it is for the greater good, you could say that.

STEPHEN CRABB: But I don’t accept that in the same way that five years ago I didn’t accept the predictions that we would create five million unemployed, that we would create new poverty.  Poverty has fallen in the last five years …

DM: But it is just a simple question, how will they have more money?  You are saying these families will have more money, how can they possibly have more money when they are losing their entitlement to tax credits?  If they get another job maybe.  

STEPHEN CRABB: Well inflation has never been lower, wages are rising, living standards in real terms are rising, there has never been a better moment to seize what we need to do which is to transform this economy from being one where we tax too much, where we get businesses get away with paying too little wages and low pay has been one of the curses on the British economy for far too long.  

DM: I’m sorry to get stuck on this but the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation, the House of Commons Library, they all estimate – and as I say I am taking the low end of the estimate – hundreds of thousands of families will have less weekly, monthly and annual income due to the removal in April of their tax credits.  Can you just say you accept that or do you think they are all wrong?

STEPHEN CRABB: But they don’t take into account first of all the full increase in income tax personal allowance which effectively takes people on low incomes out of paying tax, they don’t take into account the investment we’re making in free childcare which is going to be worth around £5000 a year for a typical family and it doesn’t take into effect what happens when you have a growing economy where real wages are rising for the whole, through the entire economy.  None of the analyses that were done in the last five years by the IFS and others that predicted doom and gloom came to pass because they can’t make those predictions.  We have a really, really strong and important opportunity for this economy to move on to a much better footing in terms of paying better and seeing our economy strengthened.

DM: I just wanted to ask you obviously about Welsh devolution, obviously your primary area of responsibility, Carwyn Jones the First Minister there says what you’re proposing will weaken the powers in actual fact of the Welsh Assembly, you should have a pause.

STEPHEN CRABB: Well I don’t accept that.  We are approaching a Welsh Assembly Election so I understand why the First Minister wants to make some politics in all of this but he knows, as I do, that we have a devolution settlement at the moment which isn’t working, it’s very vague, it leads to UK government, Welsh government going across to the Supreme Court and having an argument there and seeing the lawyers getting paid a lot of money from that. So what I’m doing next week is bringing forward a draft Bill that will provide a lot more clarity to devolution in Wales and that will see Wales get stronger within a strong United Kingdom.  

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