ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s start by taking a look through the top stories in today’s papers and I’m joined by the Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, Andrew RT Davis the leader of the Welsh Conservatives and Ayesha Hazareka who was until recently an advisor to Labour’s Harriet Harman, very good to see you all.  Let’s kick off then with this whole issue, Theresa May has just been talking about it and you’ve got it, Shami, on the front of the Observer, ‘Theresa May forced to backtrack over plan to snoop’, what does it say?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: And it goes on to say ‘Climb down is just spin, Liberty Chief – I think that’s me.

DM: It might just be.  

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: But there is a point here about the way that things are announced and pre-announced and fed to newspapers.  We haven’t seen this legislation yet, we’re going to see it on Wednesday but we have been in my view subject to a great big PR onslaught in recent days.  Some newspapers have been invited to have exclusive access to GCHQ and they have been writing big puff pieces about the difficult work that goes on there, granted and now in the face of growing concern about the blanket nature of surveillance powers, not just targeted at suspects but affecting all of us, it seems that there has been some suggestion, I would say some spin that there are going to be serious concessions.  

DM: But we have heard from the Home Secretary just now and what she is saying, does that address some of the concerns about getting judicial oversight in some areas?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Listening to this language, this slightly woolly language of oversight, but what I haven’t heard is that we are going to have what they have in America and that they have all over the free world which is before your communications are intercepted a judge signs a warrant. Now that’s what happens all over the world and …

DM: What, for every single person?

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Yes.  If I want to search your office or your home and I’m the police or the security services, I normally have to go to a magistrate for a warrant but not if I want to listen to your communications, at the moment it is just a politician who signs off.   And why the press release four days before the actual draft legislation, why the PR campaign before the actual legislation?

DM: On the front of the Telegraph is about the terrible plane crash in Egypt.  

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: What I find interesting is that the Egyptian authorities suggest mechanical failure, that the pilot reported some mechanical failure.

DM: Now there’s doubt about whether that’s right.  

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: But Islamic State is right in there claiming responsibility, it makes you wonder whether a modern tool of terrorism might mean that you don’t even have perpetrate atrocities anymore, you just get in there in a PR way and take responsibility for what every suspicious accident or natural disaster is.  

DM: Shami, the next story you have is the lead on the front of the Mail on Sunday, ‘Burn it.  Ministers were told to destroy secret evidence showing war was illegal.’  I kind of knew this already, not perhaps about the burning it but that Lord Goldsmith who was then the Attorney General was asked to give legal advice about whether war in Iraq would be internationally legal or not and initially he was equivocal.  

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: Well to say the least.  It’s not a new story, the suggestion that he was pressured and he gave a second piece of more piece of advice but the ‘Burn it’ adds a particularly graphic dimension, the suggestion that there was actually an instruction to destroy the first advice, that’s the suggestion.  Of course it’s still a story because we’ve not had the Chilcot Inquiry and it really is a disgrace. I’ve been involved as you know with public inquiries, Leveson and so on, if they go on for years and years with no report, they do not help.  What is the point of any public inquiry into a scandal?  Well partly the political point is that politicians want to park a problem and pass it off to a more independent person, normally a judge, in this case a retired senior civil servant but it’s about to some extent truth and reconciliation isn’t it?  If you don’t get to the truth years and years and years later then I’m afraid stories like this will keep coming and it will be a continuing burning sore, not just for the Labour party but for institutions of government.  

DM: Thank you very much indeed for fitting in all those stories, we’re out of time I’m afraid.