DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now it’s time to take a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined by the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Ian Blair, also a cross-bench peer as well; Diane Abbott is the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, a former Shadow Health Minister and Christine Hamilton is an author and prominent UKIP supporter.  Let’s begin today with the story of internet trolling in the Mail on Sunday, proposals to give them up to two years in jail, this coming from the Justice Minister, Chris Grayling.  What do you think Diane?  Okay criminalise it but what about the platform providers themselves, can’t they do more to block people, throw off and say you’re crossing lines?

DIANE ABBOTT:  You see I see daily really vile stuff addressed to me.  I’m fine for lively debate but really vile abuse.  

DM:  Have you reported any?

DIANE ABBOTT: No, partly because I understand what Ian is saying about the police.  I think there are two things, I think the platform providers could do more but secondly you have to take away their anonymity because I know these people wouldn’t sit in a room with me and scream ‘Go back to Africa’ or talk about your private parts, these are people in the anonymity of their mum’s basement putting out this garbage, they’re cowards, essentially cowards.  They’re not going to come and debate you or me so I think we have to … Okay, there will always be a role for anonymity online if you are a whistle blower or something but anonymity online is being abused.  

DM: And the service providers can do this.  We’ve come full circle then, doesn’t that answer this, couldn’t you make it, if people were aware that we’re going to know your name and address if you put this kind of vile stuff out there, wouldn’t that be the best deterrent?  

DIANE ABBOTT:  They ought not to have to trace people, people ought to give their name and address when they go online on Twitter and so on, that’s what needs to happen.  

CHRISTINE HAMILTON: That would so change the nature of Twitter though wouldn’t it?

DIANE ABBOTT:  To its benefit, you’d have genuine debate and none of the vile abuse being hurled around.  

DM: Everyone knows where you are, you can’t go around doing it.  Let’s move on to another story now and UKIP.  

DIANE ABBOTT:  Well there is a lot of hysteria in Westminster about UKIP and there’s a feeling that everyone has got to toughen up about immigration, there is a lot of harsh rhetoric on immigration and part of this is this notion that you can do something about the EU freedom of movement but the truth is you can’t.  Freedom of movement is an absolutely central provision of the EU and I think that Cameron or people close to Cameron saying oh we’re going to introduce quotas is just spin, in reality they won’t be able to do it.   He’s building up expectations which he can’t fulfil.  Of course there is a problem with low wages and insecurity but you deal with that, you don’t scapegoat migrants.  There is a lot of hysteria about this issue but I think the political point is you can’t out-UKIP UKIP and certainly if the Tories want to do it then that’s up to them but certainly the Labour party shouldn’t …

DM: But would you say that to Ed Miliband?

DIANE ABBOTT:  I’ve said it to Ed, I have said it to Ed Miliband, I have said it to him.  The trouble is that some Labour MPs are getting hysterical, so hysterical that they are repeating things that aren’t true like a Labour MP who was saying the last government had an open immigration policy, this country hasn’t had an open door immigration policy since the introduction of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act but it’s hysterical there in Westminster. But yes, I have said to Ed Miliband that moving to the right of immigration to counter UKIP would be a disaster.    

DM: The next story is whether or not large scale immigration or migration has had a role to play and these bleak figures that chart low pay after the anti-austerity marches we saw yesterday.  No one is denying the figures, no one’s denying those charts but we’re now looking for the reasons and a lot of people believe it’s because there has been a flood of migrants, including the Labour party.  I’ve had discussions with Labour party spokespeople who have said immigration has depressed wages.

DIANE ABBOTT:  They’re wrong, they’re wrong.  They are panicking about UKIP, they are panicking actually about an underlying disaffection between the Labour party and Westminster and its core vote in the north but that predates UKIP in fact.  They are wrong and one of the reasons for these low wages actually are a deregulated labour market, much weaker trade unions, zero hours contracts and the number of people …

DM: And an almighty recession a few years back, people deciding it was better to have a job than no job.  

DIANE ABBOTT:  Yes, it’s those things and they often have to do this unpaid internship stuff.  It’s quite a simple thing, if you go into supermarkets now there is self-scanning.
CHRISTINE HAMILTON: Oh I hate that, I can’t bear it.

DIANE ABBOTT: I  hate it as well but that’s part of it.   

DM: We could have had more on self-scanning but let’s move on to next story, David Cameron writing in the Telegraph about the next election.   

DIANE ABBOTT:  The fundamental thing is the economy and if Ed Balls were sitting here he would tell you that fundamentally he embraces austerity.

DM: I interviewed him last week and he told me just that.

DIANE ABBOTT: Precisely, so the economy is the key thing and actually we’re quite close together.  What I found  interesting about this article is this isn’t right, international markets will take fright, Ebola will spread worldwide, whatever – it’s what they did in Scotland, you throw everything except the kitchen sink at people to frighten them into voting for the government.  

DM: All right, so what do Labour do?  Have Labour moved far enough to the left to you in Lord Blair’s analysis?  

DIANE ABBOTT:  We haven’t moved to the left and actually on immigration, as people you talk to will tell you, we’ve moved to the right.  The problem is we have the kind of Blair thing, going to the right, and we’ve paid the price for that.  Look at what happened in Scotland, it was the poorest Labour voters who voted for independence.  The Blair people used to say that core Labour voters had nowhere else to go, they’ve found somewhere else to go, the Greens, SNP and UKIP.  

DM: We’re out of time, I’m sorry, it was getting so interesting  Thank you all very much indeed.