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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, it’s now nearly seven months since Theresa May announced her decision to hold an inquiry into allegations of historical child sex abuse but it is still struggling though to get off the ground.  There is currently no chair of inquiry, two people have resigned from that role and Labour says the Home Secretary is overseeing a fiasco.  Well Yvette Cooper is saying that, she’s the Shadow Home Secretary and she joins me now and a very good morning to you.  Are you using this ever so slightly to score points, are you just waiting for Theresa May to announce another name to chair this inquiry and then you’ll just jump on that?

YVETTE COOPER:  No and in fact we’ve been very keen to support this inquiry from the start.  I first called for an inquiry over two years ago, as you said Theresa May set up this inquiry nearly seven months ago now and at every stage we have been very keen for it to get going and to get working, to get rolling and particularly to start the work of taking evidence and hearing this information from survivors of abuse who have not been listened to for too long but I think it’s really unfortunate that we’ve obviously had it not set up properly in the first place, the two chairs go because again the proper checks were not done in the first place and now the hearings have been suspended while we still wait to see what will happen about getting a new chair in place.  

DM: So not set up properly in the first place, you think it should have a statutory basis don’t you?  

YVETTE COOPER:  I think it needs statutory powers with a new chair in place, it needs to have the powers to be able to really take wide ranging evidence now and I think since the inquiry was set up, was first announced, we have obviously had even more serious allegations and concerns raised.  What I think this is about is about looking into whether there were different forms of institutional failure to listen to children who were abused and who were crying out for help and also to investigate whether there were cover ups that took place as well.

DM: But on this issue of getting a chair in place and getting the whole thing underway, statutory basis or not, people are going to say surely this, if there is any issue that requires cross party co-operation, this is it.  Haven’t you got your own list, haven’t people been in touch with you saying I’ll chair it, why can’t you go and knock on Theresa May’s door and say what about these people?

YVETTE COOPER:  Well we’ve said we are very keen to work with the Home Secretary on who the chair should be, she did say in November she would consult us and we’re still waiting to hear and I hope that she will do so because, look, it’s important to get the right chair in place but also to have the right powers, the right terms of reference, the right scope for this for it actually to get going and that’s my worry, that this has staggered on now and for something that is so important …

DM: Have you got some names in mind?  

YVETTE COOPER:  Well I think it’s right that anybody that comes forward, the Home Office itself should do due diligence and that we shouldn’t obviously speculate about individuals before the Home Office has done proper due diligence on individuals to lead this but you know there was this idea at one point with people saying you can’t possibly come up with someone who can chair an inquiry who is now somehow connected with various members of the establishment.  Well that’s just nonsense, there are huge numbers of people with great expertise and authority who could do a very good job of doing this inquiry.

DM: Just tell me about the atmosphere at the moment around all of this, there seems to be a febrile atmosphere and a lot of attention on the so-called Dickens Dossier, the dossier that Geoffrey Dickens is meant to have handed to the then Home Secretary, Leon Britton, who died last week.  Have you read today in the papers there what Geoffrey Dickens’ attitude was towards the Home Office, he handed that alleged dossier to Leon Britton in 1983 and as late as 1987 he was saying about the Home Office in the House they’ve been very helpful, a strength to me in my campaigns.  Do you think it’s a bit overblown?

YVETTE COOPER:  Well I think there are a series of issues here.  This started, I first called for an inquiry after a lot of the Savile allegations had come to light and looking at also what had happened in North Wales so I think this is about a series of different institutions over very many decades not listening to children, not hearing people who had been abused and who were calling out for help, for somebody to keep them safe so I think this goes much wider than those allegations but I think all of this needs to be investigated and there has been some very serious allegations that the police are now rightly investigating and that criminal investigation has to also take place.  It’s not just about the statutory inquiry, it is also about making sure that where there are crimes that have taken place that we can still do everything possible to get justice for those victims.

DM: Okay, you mentioned police there, I want to talk about police resources now, particularly with reference to the fight against terror and dealing with that threat. Let’s be frank about this, do you think the cuts have gone too far, it has affected the police’s ability to keep us safe?

YVETTE COOPER:  I think it is a serious concern now because the government is planning a thousand more police officers to be cut next year at a time when we have growing pressures on the police to deal with not just historic cases of child abuse but serious cases of child protection which they must respond to but also, as you said, the pressures in terms of counter-terror as well so I think it’s wrong for the government to be trying to cut a thousand police officers next year.  We’ve said that we’ll make sure that the police have the money to stop those cuts including by abolishing Police and Crime Commissioners and …
DM: And does that add up, have you done the maths?  

YVETTE COOPER:  There’s a series of ways you can save money including abolishing Police and Crime Commissioners, that saves £50 million in elections alone next year and I think it is just the wrong priority at a time when we need frontline policing support, there’s also joint procurement, requiring police forces to jointly procure services and equipment. They don’t do that at the moment, they all do it separately and that saves potentially hundreds of millions of pounds and in addition stopping the subsidy for gun licences.  Why should the police have to subsidise gun licences?  Gun licences currently cost less than a fishing licence, again other ways you could raise revenue to put back into frontline policing.

DM: But what about all the other police that have gone over the course of the parliament, would you restore those?  There have been 15, 16,000 police officers gone altogether.  

YVETTE COOPER: That’s very hard to do.  We opposed the scale of cuts in the first place, we said the police could manage a cut in their budget of around 12%, instead the Home Secretary went for well over 20% but look, we’ve been honest, given the mess that George Osborne has made of the economy and the public finances, we now have to deal with hundreds of billions more borrowing that the government has left us with than they initially said they would do so that does put us in a difficult position but what we can do is prevent further cuts to policing next year.

DM: Okay, and direct reference to terror, what is your attitude towards now this fast tracked terrorist, anti-terrorist bill going through parliament, it’s been said that the government is trying to smuggle in parts of the Data Communications Bill within that.  Do you believe, as many members of security services are saying, well all of them are saying, they do need these extra powers, do you believe them?

YVETTE COOPER:  Well we’ve said for a long time that technology is changing all the time so the police, the agencies need obviously the capabilities to keep up with changing technology but you also need to update the oversight, the checks and balances to make sure that powers are not misused and you need to do both and that’s where the government hasn’t come forward with any detailed proposals to do that.   They had an original Communications Data Bill from three years ago that a joint committee said, that was drawn too widely and gave too many powers personally to the Home Secretary.  So we do think the law needs to be updated but what we need are detailed proposals to do that, that look at both the capabilities and the oversight that you need with modern technology and that’s why we called for David Anderson to do an independent review into this.  He’s the person who does the oversight of counter-terror and we need to see I think his report and I think he has huge credibility and which will set out the details that we need.

DM: I just want to ask you, talking of detailed proposals, 102 days to go to the General Election, how detailed are the proposals within the Labour party about potentially working alongside the Scottish National Party?

YVETTE COOPER:  Well we’re fighting for every vote for the Labour party, we want to have Labour MPs elected right across the country, I think there are a lot of things that …

DM: But if you had to operate with some party they would be quite a natural fit.  

YVETTE COOPER:  Look, they have continually for the break-up of our union, the break-up of Britain and that’s just something we strongly oppose.  I think we are much stronger as a country if we stay together, we are much stronger for our future if we stay together and that’s why the Labour party is really the only party that is campaigning strongly in all corners of Britain, we are campaigning for votes in every corner of the country and our candidates and MPs are doing a great job.  

DM: Can I just ask you, we watched that report, that interview I did with  [inaudible] she must be keeping an eye on events in Athens today, would you feel that Syriza make a lot of good points given what the Labour party say about austerity going too far in this country, do you think they are kindred spirits in part?

YVETTE COOPER:  Well I think the problem for Greece is the problem of the eurozone and we said really from the start there was a good reason why Labour in government did not join the Euro because the huge problems it’s caused and I think that obviously, look everybody wants to see stability in Europe, we don’t want to see huge problems across Europe because it’s our biggest market but I think that really the whole of Europe really needs to recognise that the scale of the austerity imposed on many of those southern European countries in the end was going to be unsustainable.  They need to have a long term plan for growth for those southern European countries and a long term plan that has Europe as a whole able to grow rather than this fragmenting that’s happening.

DM: Shadow Home Secretary, thank you very much indeed, thanks for joining us.  Yvette Cooper there.