Johnson: coalition not frightening

Alan Johnson says Labour wants to be first in the popular vote

The home secretary said it was a nonsense to continue to lecture the public about the 'spectre of a coalition government'.

He said he didn't find the idea of coalition government 'as frightening as some my colleagues do' but admitted that lots of his colleagues were 'in a different place to me on things like electoral reform.

The Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said if Labour comes third in the popular vote, it would make things 'much more difficult'.

'We want to be first in the popular vote', he said.

Mr Johnson was responding to comments made by the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg who said it would be 'preposterous' for Labour's leader to stay in Number 10 if the party came third in the popular vote.

Electoral Reform

On the question of electoral reform, Mr Johnson said he had been a supporter of Proportional Representation 'for a long time' and thought the system known as AV+ was the best.

"I support AV+, where you can decide on the local candidate if you want, one to four if there's four candidates and the candidate has to get more than 50%, and you cast another vote for the party of your choice", he added.

When discussing the televised leaders' debates, Mr Johnson also said that the BBC's future 'may well be at risk in this election':

"I think there's a very big issue about the future of the BBC. I think there's all kinds of signs out there about the enemies of public sector broadcasting circling ready for the attack", he added.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

ALAN JOHNSON, HOME SECRETARY

JON SOPEL: The Politics Show teams up and down the UK have their own live debates a little later. And in a moment some of those voters will put their questions and concerns to Labour's Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, who joins us now on the Politics Show and a very warm welcome to you, Alan Johnson.

JON SOPEL: Third place, that's disastrous, isn't it?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well, I don't think we will end up in third place. I think the whole excitement of this campaign is it's very close. We knew when we came into this campaign that this is the first time probably in 20 years where there could be a Tory victory. I mean people cast their votes in '97, 2001, 2005 really expecting to wake up with a Labour government the morning after election day. Now that's not the case and it's fascinating and it's exciting and there's still 11 days to go. 11 days to go in a very, very fluid situation politically.

JON SOPEL: Well how would you say your campaign is going so far, because you know, why do we get briefings from Labour saying you're going to up the tempo? Has it been too low tempo so far?

ALAN JOHNSON: No, I don't think so. I think what's dominated this debate, and it wasn't really a surprise, although there were conflicting views about it, is the televised debates. I think they've worked really well and in a sense they've driven the campaign, and I think the next one, given that it's on the BBC - whose future may well be at risk in this election incidentally as well - and given that it's about the economic situation, I think it will have a big audience. And because it's so close to election day…

JON SOPEL: Why do that - sorry, just as a diversion why do you say the BBC's future might be -

ALAN JOHNSON: I think there's a very big issue about the future of the BBC. I think there's all kinds of signs out there about the enemies of public sector broadcasting circling ready for the attack.

JON SOPEL: Okay, let's go back to the centrality of your campaign. If things are going so well and you're getting your message across, the impression is given that Gordon Brown is sort of being shuffled from safe house to safe house, almost, just meeting Labour voters, not doing anything that's too risky. I mean is there an element of truth in that?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well let me tell you - let's put it the other way. I mean David Cameron leaping off coaches with his sleeves rolled up was probably the result of two hours in front of a focus group and a PR guru, you know saying 'roll your sleeves up, David'. I mean Gordon is not like that. He's not pushed into those situations at all. Gordon is Gordon, he'll be himself. And I think what we've found is where Gordon has gone and tried to get, kind of, behind that veneer of an orchestrated crowd that are all your supporters but you pretend they're not, to get into people's homes and talk to them on a one to one basis, that's what he's tried to do.

JON SOPEL: But they're all Labour supporters. They're all kind of holding Labour banners.

ALAN JOHNSON: They're not all Labour supporters. No, no that's not right, no. They're all Tory supporters surrounded, dough-nutting David Cameron, that's for sure.

JON SOPEL: And what do we make of Elvis' sudden appearance in the campaign yesterday? I mean it's bizarre.

ALAN JOHNSON: You've just got Suspicious Minds, I think.

JON SOPEL: Okay, very good Elvis gag there. But the point I'm making is that the campaign does seem to be missing something.

ALAN JOHNSON: On the vis-a-vis Elvis, I don't Gary Barlow has re-lit David Cameron's fire. I mean he's tried to, through this campaign, tried different tacks on the advice of his PR people and it's not working. Now, you know, that's as much a story of this campaign as the fact that at the moment the polls show us in the third place. The fact is the Tories have got nowhere near the 40% that they need.

JON SOPEL: Well you talk about that position of yourself in the polls. I want to bring in one of our audience viewers, Dennis Isaac is there for us. Dennis.

JON SOPEL: Afternoon, ask your question.

DENNIS ISAAC: Yes good afternoon Mr Johnson. I'm a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party. Realistically I can't expect the Labour Party candidate to be successful in Hereford. Bearing in the mind the prospect of a hung parliament, would you recommend in those circumstances that I should vote Liberal Democrat if I fear the prospect of a Tory government?

JON SOPEL: Okay, very good question Mr Isaac. Alan - Alan Johnson.

ALAN JOHNSON: Dennis, that would be a much easier question to answer if you were a Liberal Democrat in a Tory - Labour marginal, of which there are a hundred. As a lifelong member you'll know that the rules of the Labour Party insist that we try to ensure that every Labour candidate is elected and they'll be a very good Labour candidate who you'll know very well in Hereford who I think wants to pick up every vote. I think there's an issue here where because there may be the return of a Tory government, I find this everywhere I go, people are thinking very seriously about how they cast their vote. Because, in general, the most common message I hear is we don't want to go back to a Tory government.

JON SOPEL; Would you understand it if Dennis voted Liberal Democrat in those circumstances?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well I would understand it. Dennis's vote is a matter for him, but he knows he'll have a good Labour candidate who would be quite crestfallen if we were saying vote for anyone else, because your candidate, he or she would have worked really hard in Hereford to attract the popular vote there.

JON SOPEL: But if you support coalition politics, which you do and you have said that you are not afraid of coalition politics, then isn't that the natural thing to do?

ALAN JOHNSON: No what I said is I think it's a nonsense to continue to lecture the public about this spectre of a coalition government. I don't find that as frightening as some of colleagues do. Having said that, we're going for…

JON SOPEL: Ed Balls you mean?

ALAN JOHNSON: Not just Ed, there's lots of my colleagues who are in a different place to me about things like electoral reform.

JON SOPEL: But Ed Balls categorically disagrees with you on it, doesn't he?

ALAN JOHNSON: Yes. Well actually, Ed was making the same point that I'm making. You're in an election campaign, it's 'vote for me'. There's nowhere on the ballot paper that says, 'hung parliament, coalition government.' So, you know, in those circumstances you have to ensure you maximise your vote. Now because I'm a supporter of Proportional Representation and have been for a long time, I obviously don't have these kind of horror stories, or this horrified approach to how a more balanced parliament would work. And actually I think what Gordon has done - a big mistake from Cameron - the electoral expenses people felt that there had to be a fundamental change to the way we cast our votes in this country. Just having the opportunity to put one cross on a piece of paper, having to trade off whether you want this person as your local MP or who you want in government is a miserably disempowering system. And I think where Gordon has come to, who was in favour - who is a 'First Past the Post-er' - he's recognised the need for dramatic change to the constitution - a fixed term parliament for a start, giving that power away.

JON SOPEL: But you don't just support the Alternative Vote system. You support -

ALAN JOHNSON: I support AV plus, where you can decide on the local candidate if you want, one to four if there's four candidates and the candidate has to get more than 50%, and you cast another vote for the party of your choice. I think that system, developed under Labour, under the commission that Roy Jenkins set up, is the best system.

JON SOPEL: That is going further than the manifesto.

ALAN JOHNSON: Yes, that's true, but we're committed to a referendum on the AV system. We're committed to reforming the House of Lords with a PR system. We're committed to fixed term parliament. So I think that's a very radical programme that Cameron can't match.

JON SOPEL: So you think the manifesto should have gone further?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well, it's well known that in the Labour Party there are people who support PR, there are people who are adamant supporters of First Past the Post. I think after this election, the one thing that's going to be absolutely clear as we come out of this election, is there'll be a very strong focus on our electoral system. And I think where the Tories are is nowhere. They say that with all this scandal of MPs expenses you mustn't look at the one area where people's votes are translated into political power. That's been a no-go area for them and I think that's damaged them.

JON SOPEL: So do you believe - I mean given what you're saying that it would be possible that there could be a Labour Lib Dem coalition after the election? Because listening to Nick Clegg this morning he sounded rather hostile to that.

ALAN JOHNSON: Well I'm not talking about what happens after the election. We'll see what happens when people cast their votes on May 6th, and politicians shouldn't be lecturing people, trying to frighten them about, you know, if the system's too close you don't want a hung parliament, let's see what the people decide and then we have to work with it.

JON SOPEL: This isn't Alan Johnson waving a flag saying 'look, you may not be able to do a deal with Gordon Brown, but look at me, I believe in a much more proportional system'?

ALAN JOHNSON: Jon, this is quite definitely not Alan Johnson waving a flag for anyone. This is me saying, after the election there'll be a debate on Proportional Representation and the electoral system. And there are many people in my party - in my party, incidentally, we've won huge majorities under First Past the Post. It's a bit different to the Lib Dems who need PR actually for their own self preservation. For us we've argued from a - I think a very principled - I don't want to sound too smug otherwise you'll think I'm a Lib Dem, but from a very, very principled point of view that it's empowering the voters that matters. It's a system that is democratic, rather than politicians being able to say well, it gives us strong governments.

JON SOPEL: Well let me just read you the quote from Nick Clegg which we just heard in the news there: 'It is just preposterous the idea that if a party comes third in the number of votes it still has somehow the right to carry on squatting in Number 10.' Do you agree?

ALAN JOHNSON: No, look. It doesn't take a genius to think that if you're third in the popular vote then - and there's a debate going on, you're not best placed to deal with it. We want to be first in the popular vote. We're going out over the next 11 days and there's an awful lot of uncommitted voters out there… to say incidentally that if you elected us…

JON SOPEL: That's a very important point. You are saying that any party, if you had been a governing party, you come third, you would have no legitimacy to carry on governing?

ALAN JOHNSON: This is a fascinating argument for us supporters of PR who over the years have been told 'it's not the popular vote that counts, it's the number of seats you win'. Suddenly we're told 'oh, it is the popular vote that counts'. Under this system it's the number of seats you win that's very important, because people are casting their vote under the current system. You heard Dennis from Hereford talking about his situation under the current system. Under a PR system they'd cast their votes in different ways.

JON SOPEL: This is turning on its head what you wrote last year which was you wrote: 'To end the perversity of the party with the most votes nationally forming the opposition rather than the government.'

ALAN JOHNSON: Yes, I believe that. I believe that.

JON SOPEL: So therefore it would equally - it equally would be perverse for the party in third place to form the government?

ALAN JOHNSON: I think it would be -

JON SOPEL: Yes.

ALAN JOHNSON: If we get to the situation after the next election, then we have to work out what's going to happen. And I think if you're the third with the popular - if you're third in the popular vote then it's much more difficult, obviously. Our aim is to be first with the popular vote. And the point I'm making is, supporters of PR have said for many years - in 1950 Labour got a record number of votes - '51, sorry, a quarter of a million more than the Tories but formed the opposition. This is one of our criticisms of the system. And it's just a bit galling for those who have supported first past the post to suddenly be saying how important the popular vote is.

JON SOPEL: And you know, just where the polls are at the moment, it would be a person rejection by the voters of Gordon Brown, wouldn't it?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well no. Well I think what's going to happen, particularly over the next 11 days and particularly given people have seen Gordon, they know, as he said himself, he's not the PR man, he's not the song and dance merchant here. A decent man. Very, very driven by policy and very, very hard working and determined to get the right decisions. And all of the evidence shows actually that he has made the right decisions and the evidence of the last few weeks has been, the more people see that the more they respect it. I think particularly the older generation. I've talked to lots of pensioners who don't like the way that Cameron and Clegg talk about Gordon Brown. Who perhaps are not as susceptible to the style argument and think there's real substance there with Gordon Brown.

JON SOPEL: Let's come to your own Home Affairs brief now because I want to bring in another audience member, Bridget Whell, who is a former Special Constable in Cornwall, for us. Bridget, your question to the Home Secretary.

Bridget Whell: Hello Mr Johnson. Yes, there seems to be consensus in the party to protect frontline policing, but as a former Special Constable myself I'm actually still not sure what you consider to be frontline policing. So could you define what you mean by frontline policing and tell us what sort of figures and what measures you would use to tell us or inform us that you've actually succeeded or otherwise?

ALAN JOHNSON: That's a very good question, Bridget. We can't define frontline policing because so many police behind the scenes are backing up the frontline, whether that's in forensics or whether it's in detection or whether it's in counter-terrorism. We have three thousand police now in counter-terrorism. So our definition is, all the record numbers of police officers, all Warranted Officers and all Police Community Support Officers, of which we have 16 thousand now, that that's what we're seeking to protect, so in this financial year a 2.7% increase to police budgets, where the Conservatives would cut. After that the deal with the Treasury announced in the Budget, is that we would ensure that the money that we provide - because there's a local aspect to this as well through the precept - the money we provide from the centre will maintain the funding for all Warranted Officers and PCSOs.

JON SOPEL: Bridget, does that answer your question?

BRIDGET: It does partly but you've been speaking about 80% of the time being spent on the beat. Does that include all Warrant Officers?

ALAN JOHNSON: No.

BRIDGET WHELL: Or is that just Neighbourhood Beat officers or?

ALAN JOHNSON: No, it's a very important point. This is part of the policing pledge which all 43 constabularies signed up to. So the police themselves have said, as well as the response rates if it's an emergency, response rates if it's a non-emergency, telling the public 'here's the minimum you can expect'. They've said 80% of the time of Neighbourhood Policing teams will be spent visible within the neighbourhood, within the community.

JON SOPEL: Okay, and just on police number if I may, Alan Johnson, Gordon Brown has said guarantee the police numbers, you can't guarantee them.

ALAN JOHNSON: No he hasn't. No, he's guaranteed the funding. He's said what I've said, it's in our manifesto. We guarantee from the centre the funding we provide. Boris Johnson is talking about -

JON SOPEL: Well 'spending on police will continue to rise so that we have enough police there on the beat.'

ALAN JOHNSON: Exactly, exactly, precisely. I couldn't have said it better myself.

JON SOPEL: Okay, that's saying - but it's up to Chief Constables isn't it to decide?

ALAN JOHNSON: Yeah, but we've got Boris Johnson in London is saying he'll reduce the number of police officers by 455. He's got the right to do that. He's the elected mayor. In other parts of the country, we're saying to local authorities match our spending from the centre. Some of them have said they will, many of them have said they won't. So we can't protect every police officer. What we can do is say on our watch we've increased funding by 60%, we've got record numbers of police officers, 17 thousand more, 16 thousand PCSOs, we will retain the funding for those officers insofar as what we provide from the centre.

JON SOPEL: Sure, but then to go back to Bridget's question about guaranteeing frontline policing, you know, theoretically yes you can argue that you've put the funds there but it's up to the individual constabularies to decide how they use their resources.

ALAN JOHNSON: It is.

JON SOPEL: So therefore the pledge is kind of meaningless.

ALAN JOHNSON: I know it is but - no but it's not meaningless because every police - every Chief Constable in the country has recognised that Neighbourhood Police - it's not something that's been forced on them, it's something they've come along with, they've worked on the Policing Pledge with us, they recognise that that is fundamental to lifting public confidence and that's what they're measured by.

JON SOPEL: Okay, we've only got a few minutes left, I want to bring in another audience member, Robert Hields who is in Leeds for us now. Robert, your question to Alan Johnson.

ROBERT HIELDS: Given the disastrous state of the British economy and the overstretched condition of the National Health Service, schools, police force and other essential public services, would the Home Secretary please admit that his Labour Party policies regarding immigration and asylum are greatly increasing an unacceptable burden placed upon the average working tax-payer.

ALAN JOHNSON: Well no, I don't agree with that at all. The number of asylum seekers in this country is now down to the level it was at in 1992 and there's been a huge increase in asylum right around the world. Asylum seeker numbers are down to their level of 20 years ago and net migration is down. The Points Based System doesn't allow anyone to come in from outside the European economic area if they have no skills. If they have a skill that an employer in this country needs, the job has to be advertised for four weeks in Job Centre Plus before it can be filled by someone from outside the European economic area. So it's a very tightly controlled system. I have to say, incidentally, there's a lot of spotlight now on the Liberal Democrats. They would allow asylum seekers to work, which would be a fundamental mistake, given 83% of asylum seekers are found not to have a genuine claim.

JON SOPEL: But their amnesty policy…

ALAN JOHNSON: That's not the amnesty policy. The amnesty policy is something else. All illegal immigrants will be made - will be given an amnesty.

JON SOPEL: But you've got a 14 year rule, haven't you, that if someone's been here for 14 years they are more or less granted British citizenship?

ALAN JOHNSON: No, what - well - which we're breaking because British citizenship now will be based on a Points Based System. We introduced the act the year before last. So gradually ID cards for foreign nationals, E-Borders where we can track people in and out. Biometric visas and the Points Based System together makes us one of the strongest countries to protect our borders in the world.

JON SOPEL: But there has always been - I mean although you've criticised very strongly the Liberal Democrats amnesty proposals there has, de facto, been an amnesty proposal under this government.

ALAN JOHNSON: No. I criticise that, but I criticise their policy of allowing asylum seekers to work. To take jobs. To get, one presumes, Jobs Seekers Allowance. That is a crazy policy and what I've said in the past is it did take a time for governments to get to grips with the situation, both Tory and Labour governments, because it took so long, for instance, to deal with asylum claims.

JON SOPEL: And just a quick final point. How many illegal immigrants do you think there are in the country?

ALAN JOHNSON: We don't know how many illegal immigrants there are, by definition. But we're sending back about one very six minutes.

JON SOPEL: But Migration Watch has estimated over a million. I think the London School of Economics have estimated around 900 thousand. Does that ball park figure sound about right?

ALAN JOHNSON: Well, I'm not getting into ball park figures. What we do is we find the people - we've strengthened the laws so employers who are employing someone who's here illegally, far greater penalties there. ID cards for foreign nationals, that the Lib Dems would want to get rid of and the Tories, I believe, want to get rid of as well, will eventually ensure that anyone who's here illegally - we send one back every six minutes. This will help us to identify more which means that those people who come in through the rules, obeying the rules, are not left in a position where they might as well have been sent here by a people trafficker because they've got the same result. They've got citizenship.

JON SOPEL: Okay, Alan Johnson great to have you with us on the Politics Show.

Ends

ENDS

The Politics Show broadcasts on Sunday at 1200 GMT on BBC One and for seven days after on the BBC iPlayer.