81. Alex Chalk, Lord Chancellor: How to fix Britain’s prisons

23:31But I was sitting there in the British embassy. And I we had the great and the good with everyone from Supreme Court justices to the Attorney General. And by the way, the UK has massive convening power. Let's let's we should never forget that. But I was looking around the room and it was overwhelmingly white and it was overwhelmingly male. And I remember thinking, actually, in Britain, of course we have things that we need to improve. But this is by and large a pretty fair-minded country where people principally are interested, not where you're from, but where you're going. And I take such pride when I look at the diversity around the cabinet table, which I think is well understood.

24:06But by the way, would not be possible in most peer nations. It just simply would not happen. But I think we give ourselves very little credit for that. And I think whilst there are also proper concerns about background, that's absolutely right. I do think this is one of the more equal societies on the face of the earth and we should take some quiet pride in that. Just on the law, you've a couple of times mentioned the importance of the rule of law. You can't have been totally comfortable with the way this Rwanda debate has been handled. Look, I've always said that, so I believe in the rule of international law.

24:39one of the things that is precious little discussed is which country has the second largest legal sector in the world it's ours right it employs huge numbers of people there are firms from 40 different nations in london alone it's a great engine so all the oligarchs can get into the well no no but the point is it's hugely it knows we are very tough on that kind of stuff but anyway the point is we've got the commercial court is fantastic we have wonderful judges and so on and so forth. The reason why I say that is because we have done a huge amount in this country to uphold the international rules-based order.

25:12Possibly pound for pound, we've contributed more than any other nation. And that is an enormous part of our soft power. So international law matters. It's also incredibly important, you know, to paraphrase Edmund Burke from the 18th century, you know, a state without the means of some change is also without the means of its conservation. We have to evolve. And I think that's incredibly important. The law should be a living instrument. And so what I've said, and I think not unreasonably, is yes, the framework of international law matters, but we also have to ensure that it remains modern and relevant.

25:43And it must be right that sovereign nations can protect their borders consistent with international law. So what we are seeking to do, yes, I accept it's novel, I accept it's contentious, and I accept it is difficult, but I also strongly expect that in 10 years from now, this will become pretty mainstream. And whether you're looking at France or Austria or Germany, there will be an element of offshoring in the way that they seek to deal with it. But you can't be comfortable with being in the position where it's possible that we could leave the European Convention of Human Rights and be in a league with Russia and Belarus.

26:15You cannot be. No, no, but we have to take this in stages. So the whole point about this policy is that people like me, having thought about this extremely carefully, by the way, and dissected every clause of it and say, to what extent is it consistent with the human rights, insofar as we're taking, disapplying that part. And you genuinely think it is? Yes, I do. I think it is properly arguable that it remains within the four corners of international law. But I accept it's novel. I accept it's contentious. But I've looked very carefully to see whether this can be said to be consistent with the ECHR and our duties that exist under that.

26:47Because, you know, lest we forget, who was the person who wrote most of it? It was a British, it was a Scots lawyer, as you know. And a lot of these values, right to life, sounds a bit like a British value to me. prohibition against torture and human and degrading treatment sounds fairly British prohibition against slavery the right to liberty and security so what I'm saying is that it can be done within the the four corners of international and the final thing I wanted to say is look there are approximately 100 million people on the move around the world as we speak and that figure is likely to go up look at the 50 degree heat in the Indian elections look at the extraordinary and accelerating pace of climate change there's got to be a 21st century solution which is consistent with the rule of law and that's what we are we're moving towards right alistair and lord chancellor let's have a quick break and come back afterwards to talk about prisons

27:41let's um get to prisons yeah something that that alistair and i both care about so i found being prisons minister the most satisfying frustrating interesting worthwhile ministerial job i ever did and you did that job and now you're the kind of boss the person he does that job tell us a little bit about your journey with prisons what your first sense of prisons were and and maybe just start with what was the difference between the way you saw them when you were a lawyer and how you began to see this minister because i sort of remember my first conversations with you you saying to me before you were prisons minister well rory come on you know i i was a lawyer i locked up a lot of people prisons and then you became prison minister so tell us a bit about that journey well i remember funny very very clearly when you became prison minister.

28:24I remember going into the library in the House of Commons and you had taken the trouble to go to the librarian and you'd asked for all the great tomes and what the prison reformers had done. And there was stacked on this table, this huge pile of books. And I remember being incredibly impressed because what we also discussed is, why have they made you prisons minister? But you were this guy, obviously this expert in international affairs. And I think he was saying, I don't quite know. And then you took to it. And I don't know whether it's because you read all those books and you recognize that there is this fundamental tension that runs throughout politics, which is the rights of the individual as against the security of the state.

29:01And how you balance those things comes into the sharpest of focus in the way we handle our detainees. And so, yes, I had spent a lot of time in prisons, you know, HMP Elmley, I spent too many years of my life or hours of my life in HMP Elmley speaking to people, but you're very conscious when you're defending someone you're sitting there in a dank cell hang on the state puts you here what are the obligations on the state and i've always been very very mindful of that and i remember also you i think tried to get them to bang you up in prison i tried to do the same thing as prisons minister they hate it and in fact they declined to let me do so so i did the next best thing which i spent three days in a gritty london prison because i wanted to see what was going on and so fundamentally there were things which I found troubling and I challenge anyone who is a basically a compassionate human being not to feel troubled by it so you know when people are remanded in custody awaiting trial right they of course are innocent until they're proven guilty I remember seeing some guy in a prison and he'd been in there for eight months because CTL's custody time notes have been extended by two months and the regime during that time is he'd spent a lot of each day on lock up you know that's that is something that should trouble anyone and he's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

30:11Right. So he could be acquitted. The jury could say, hang on a second, we're slinging this. There's nothing to it. And then he doesn't get his eight months back. No, he doesn't get his eight months. And I should just add, incidentally, our custody time limits in England and Wales are lower than they are in France. In France, my goodness, people are detained pre-trial for years sometimes. So actually, our six-month CTLs are broadly right. But you've always got to be conscious that these people are in the custody of the state. And that, of course, weighs heavily on me, as I know it did on you. We're in the middle of an election campaign and Labour came up with a lot of stuff on prisons.

30:44And we, Roy and I, have both been complaining that there hasn't been enough focus on prisons in the political debate. But I just wonder generally where you think we should have prisons in the political agenda and specifically what you thought of some of the proposals they had. Just sort of stepping back, looking at this for 10 ,000 feet. So we brought on quite a lot of prison places since 2010. So the total custodial state is about 88 ,000 people. that's 4 ,000 or more than that higher than it was in 2010 and indeed we are rolling out the biggest prison building program since the Victorian era so we've built HMP 5 wells HMP Fosway which which I say passes my French French foreign minister test in the sense you would happily walk around with your counterpart and say voila look at that these are really decent clean rehabilitative prisons and they're absolutely fantastic and will any of the existing estate get shut down Well, yes, so that does happen.

31:33So sometimes they come to the end of their life. But what we're not in a position to do is to discontinue or to shut down the entire Victorian estate. Some of it's actually still very, very good. But there are other bits that you would want to get rid of. So we've got another prison that's coming on next year, HMP Milpsych. So the point that Labour made, which was a fair one, which I said, hang on, there have been some prisons which have been bunged up in planning. And she's right about that. Siobhan is absolutely right about that. And that has been frustrating. but it's also correct to say that of the three which we're going to build two have now got planning and the third one will get planning fairly shortly but my solution to that has been we need to get additional money from the treasury to ensure that we've got a pipeline way in advance so that we're applying for planning permission like years and years in advance as opposed to hoping and expecting is a what they call optimism bias that you're actually going to get it so optimism bias has been detonated in the moj because it's simply not that we got rid of that So my solution has been to get the pipeline.

32:27But that wasn't an unreasonable point. What was less correct is to say, oh, well, there wouldn't be pressures on prison places without that. That's not the case. So those were expected to roll out on 27, 28. In fact, the fact we've lost a year doesn't make the blindest bit of difference in terms of the pressure today. And what about going to a completely different mindset on the whole kind of prisons? You know, Norway, Denmark, a completely different approach. So those are we just never going to do that in this country. So I think, first of all, you have to recognize that in Norway and Denmark, there are different cohorts of criminals.

33:00So you have to, judges will sentence based upon the people who are coming into their courts. My view has always been we have got to ensure that there are prison places for the most dangerous people. You've got to take the most dangerous people out of society. The question is, should we be locking, we've got to lock everyone up we're scared of. Do we want to be locking everyone up we're cross with? And that fundamentally crystallizes the issue. My whole approach to this is follow the evidence. strip the emotion out where you can. So that means, I think, for those people who commit appalling crimes, think, for example, the Wayne Cousins case, the poor Sarah Everard who was abducted, appalling things done to her and then killed.

33:36Absolutely right, you should get a whole life order, right? So we have legislated so that there are more whole life orders because I think that is consistent with what the British people expect. When I started prosecuting, the standard, if you could say that, tariff for a murder was 15 years. Now, you wouldn't automatically be released after 15 years, but you could be if the parole board said that you were safe. I think a lot of people nowadays say, what, 15 years? That's a joke. That's simply not enough. So I think it's perfectly sensible for those most serious offences. They get locked up for longer.

34:03But when you're talking about those offences, say for the sake of argument, driving was disqualified, right? That carries a custodial sentence. Now, if you, Rory, took leave of your senses, maybe work was going badly, relationship breaking down, whatever it was, and you drunk too much, and you therefore were disqualified from driving because you've just been a couple of micrograms over the limit, but you're off the road, get off the road, And you're told at court, do not drive that car. But you have a terrible row with someone. You're at rock bottom and you drive to go and see your best friend because you just, anyway, you do it and you get caught.

34:33And the magistrates are considering whether to send you inside. Now, if you go inside for a short sentence, that is your life wrecked. Your reputation is gone. Your relationship's gone. You are absolutely at rock bottom. And the chances of you being able to contribute to society are dramatic. So do they send you inside? or do they say this crosses the custodial threshold Mr. Stewart but we are going to suspend the sentence so you will still have a custodial sentence against your record don't you know make no mistake but you will do this work this unpaid work to repay your debt to society you will also by the way go on an alcohol rehabilitation course you will have your freedom restricted so you can't go and watch the football on a Saturday and if you break any of these or the cricket or whatever it is you can't get the British library on a side and if you and And if you breach any one of these conditions, you will hear the clang of the prison gate.

35:18Now, I think, by the way, that sounds like it could be common sense. But also the evidence shows that the chance of reoffending for a short sentence, it's 55 % if it's an immediate custodial sentence under 12 months. It's 25 % if it's suspended. Okay, so can I come on the evidence? So obviously, David Gork and I, before you, tried to get rid of short sentences for exactly that reason. That I said short sentences were endangering the public. you were more likely to re-offend with a short sentence than if you weren't sent to prison at all. Boris Johnson came in, whole thing was then suspended. Later, Dominic Raab didn't want to have anything to do with it.

35:51What was the politics of trying to get back to this position that we thought we were in in 2018? What was the politics? What? Look, I had, as a backbencher, I talked about this. And incidentally, you talked about the kind of the trust interregnum. So in the most underreported speech ever, so I'd been a minister, as you indicated, and then I left and so on. and then there was party conference. I thought, here I am. I can say what I think. So I went out and I talked about the precise issue and I said, follow the evidence. And I was speaking to the conservative audience and they came with me. They said, hang on, I completely get the logic of this.

36:22It makes sense. Because by the way, you know, the cost of these prison places is like 650 grand for each place to build it and then 47 ,000 pounds a year to incarcerate someone. So it's a huge cost of doing it. Sounds like sending someone to Winchester. Well, anyway, very, very expensive. And so what I was fascinated is people can be persuaded. and so I thought so I came in and you try to make your mark as a minister and you try and say listen this is what I think we need to do so that was that was the proposal and there are a number of things that I wanted to do when I came in we needed to improve the fabric of the courts and Rishi was great he unlocked some money to put into the courts and he was and he was fantastic about those things and really impressive and listen to the evidence and so on so it wasn't so much politics as kind of I think this is a good thing to do.

37:04Is the criminal justice system in good shape. So here's a really, really important point to mention. I know everyone is kind of bored of talking about COVID, ah, since absolutely ages ago, blah, blah, blah. But there are few areas in our system that are more susceptible to that. And I'll just explain why. So people talk about pressure on the prisons, for example. Sometimes people don't think, well, what is the reason for the pressure on the prisons? The reason is this. During COVID, we made two fundamental decisions. I remember sitting around the table in the MOJ. One, should we release a whole load of people from custody?

37:32Because Public Health England, Public Health Wales were saying, look, ministers, you are going to lose thousands and thousands and thousands of people. There is no conditions which are more susceptible to an airborne virus in prison. And so they said you should release 16 ,000 people. Now, by the way, California, which is a similar sized population to England and Wales, released 11 ,000. France released 13 ,000. We released 200. Now, as it turns out, although every death is a tragedy, the numbers that died was fewer than 200. And that's because prison officers did a spectacularly good job at keeping them safe.

38:00So first decision was, should we release loads of people? And the decision was made, no. because that would have prioritized prisoner health over public safety. Point number one. But the second issue is should we get rid of jury trials? Because that was seriously being considered. And you might remember they thought about it in Scotland. There was much you in crime. And Robert Buckland and I said, absolutely no way. So jury trials are the lamp of our liberty. Absolutely essential to ensure that we have balance and that the rights of freeborn Britons are upheld. That's sounding too grandiose about it.

38:28It does sound a bit grandiose. But it's very important. It's very important. But the problem is this. It means that the cases stack up in the system. And remember we talked about people awaiting trial in custody. The numbers awaiting trial in custody have gone from 9 ,000 pre-pandemic to 16 ,000. So you're carrying those additional folk in jail. And so that is a really important aspect of it. So even though you're building a load more prisons, if you make that decision to hold on to your principles, there is a price you pay for that. But what about access to justice and legal aid cuts? So I sometimes say that I'm a legal aid lawyer on a career break.

39:05I care passionately about legal aid. And you will never hear stuff that I had to hear, by the way, when I was a practitioner going off down to Snesbrook Crown Court for a mention at£46.50 plus VAT, which is literally what you were paying, where we were getting maligned by people I won't name unless you push me in government at the time saying, oh, well, these are fat cat lawyers, snouts in the top. It was complete rubbish. Who was that? Do you want me to say? Yeah. Well, he's a perfectly alright guy. But so Tony Blair was saying that we are going to derail the gravy train of legal aid. That's what he said.

39:38He also said - What job was he doing then? Well, he was Prime Minister. When he was Prime Minister? Yeah, he said in Brighton. Terrible life. He said we're going to derail the gravy train of legal aid. And do you know what? Absolutely. And do you know what? I got named and shamed because I'd earned a certain amount within a certain month. So they would name and shame lawyers. It was awful. It was awful. It was a really hostile. And Charlie Faulkner, to his great credit, wrote an article in the Times saying, that we were wrong to vilify legal aid barristers. And generally, these guys do exceptionally important.

40:05So why have you not written similar articles saying that the Troys are wrong to keep going to Keir Starmer over cases than it did? No, no, hang on, we'll come back to that. So that's a second, come back in a second. But on the issue of funding, we've injected up to£141 million into legal aid. Also, when I came in strictly into the department in 2020, I wanted to roll out something called ELSA, Early Legal Support and Advice. I gave it snappy names so people would remember it. But the idea of trying to promote access to justice, because that's how you ensure that the laws that are set out in Parliament don't become a dead letter because people can actually enforce them.

40:37So critically important. So we are actually now housing legal aid. We've expanded that. We've also expanded family legal aid because ultimately too many people going into court as litigants in person that clogs the system up, creates delays. So we have looked to expand that. But Alex, a lot of barristers listening to this will think you're whitewashing, that the system is really in crisis. It's crazy. You read The Secret Barrister, it's shocking. Right. So many of my friends who are lawyers are in a boiling rage. Courts horrible, prisons horrible, systems horrible. What's the problem? There's a COVID problem.

41:12Yeah. But how's it going to be fixed? All right. So there are a number of issues. And first, the condition of the courts was, well, is, is too poor. And that's why one of the first things I did when I came into government, I said to the prime minister, we must have, please, can you reopen the spending review, which is, you know, you both know is incredibly difficult thing to do to get additional 80 million pounds to go into the court estate. And he did that for me. And that's it's made it's making a huge difference. That's really important. We need more practitioners. That's the other. You need more practitioners and much more money, right?

41:44Yeah, well, so we're running maximum sitting days, which is, you know what that means. So we need to have more practitioners as well. But also what we're doing is for those people who are awaiting trial, we've rolled out a thousand independent sexual violence advisors and independent domestic violence advisors so that they can support those individuals through the court process. So there is plenty more to do, I accept. Just a step back for a second. Sure. So regardless of who gets elected, Labour or Conservative, we are in a situation where tax is the highest rate ever and our public services are creaking.

42:17Prisons are a horrible state. NHS, some targets seen as some of the worst performances of the Second World War, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And all these parties are going into the election saying they're not going to increase taxes. So, if Labour gets elected, I'm afraid in this podcast we're now beginning to come to the view that Labour may get elected. I don't want to put you on that because you're in an election campaign. But were Labour hypothetically to get elected, surely they're facing a massive financial black hole. Where are they going to find their money from to deal with all this stuff?

42:47Well, I mean, I think they've been quite careful in the wording that they've used. There's no taxes on working people. But you're sitting there thinking, hang on a second. Well, what about corporation tax? What about capital gains tax? What about inheritance tax? What about council tax? So I think there are a whole load of things that there will be people worrying, pension allowances and so on, worrying that they'll be going after that. So I think that is a genuine and legitimate concern. Plus, of course, some of the... You're not going to say they've got a secret plan to put£2 ,000 in the tax, are you?

43:17You're not going to do that. Some of the spending commitments that have been made. So I know that apparently the£28 billion is not happening, but I think they still want to spend between£4 and£5 billion. So there are big spending commitments, And I think people are rightly and reasonably concerned about that. But you make a point. This nation has had two sucker punches in the form of the pandemic, which had this sort of scarring effect. There's no doubt about it. And also the war in Ukraine, which had this impact on national income. Now, we are healing. So you talk about the situation in the courts.

43:44It is difficult. There is real strain. But I think we can heal our way through the system. And I think it's also the case if you look at you talked about waiting list. In fact, I think they've been going down for several months on the bounce. I look at Cheltenham in my patch. We've got a brand new hospital wing, 17.2 million pounds. We're doing an additional 3 ,000 appointments every year. So the system is slowly healing and it's about whether we can stay the course. Now, I know you're saying I'm absolutely on message, but I do believe this. We have genuinely in my department about how we want to ensure that we stay on increasing the number of women who can get justice for allegations of rape.

44:21We're prosecuting more people for rape than in 2010. We can have more independent sexual violence advisors. We can ensure, for example, that more serious offending is caught. For example, we outlawed upskirting, non-fatal strangulation. We are the party that brought in coercive and controlling behaviour as a specific offence. There's a lot that we're doing, a lot we want to do, but we do have to stay the course. I'm loving the passion for the job and also the fact that you're speaking like somebody who thinks they can be there for quite a long time. We're in this campaign. I've fought in a lot of election campaigns, as you know.

44:51And I fought in winning campaigns and I fought in campaigns where it's felt a bit not so sure. But I've never fought in a campaign where we've got in 20 points behind at the polls. And I'm just wondering how you feel about that. I'm not going to ask you to say, because I know you're not going to say anything that suggests the Tories can't win. So I'm not going to bother with that. But I just wonder what the psychology is when you really do. You must be feeling this is like the last days. So my feeling is, and I speak through the prism of my own electoral fight in Cheltenham, that my job as somebody who loves democracy and you love democracy, whether you win or whether you lose, right, you've got to really, is you have to set out to the people what your record is.

45:33And I've got a record in Cheltenham of saving the A &E and all those things, which I won't bore you with now. And then say what I want to do if I'm reelected. And then you entrust the people with the decision. And I think it's perfectly reasonable in the national debate to say, look, this is where we want to go. So we want to ensure that we have the triple lock plus on the pensions and all the things that you've heard about. It's reasonable to set that out. And then you allow the people to make the decision. But I think Rishi is right and reasonable to say that there is much more clarity about what we're proposing to do rather than the Labour Ming-Var strategy.

46:04And I think over the coming weeks, people will not unreasonably shine a remorseless forensic spotlight on what Labour want to do. And I hope, by the way, on what reform would do to the point we were making earlier. But the point about the psychology, it's like, you know, if you take the sort of sporting analogy, it's just so much psychologically, it's so much harder if you think you're you're on the back foot. Yeah, well, what I was trying to say rather inarticulately is, genuinely, I don't look at it that way. I just say... Do you think you can win? Do you think you can win your seat? Obviously the underdog, and I'm definitely the underdog in Cheltenham.

46:34But all I would say is, in Cheltenham, I've been the underdog. I'm probably the answer to a pub quiz question. Paddy Power had me on to lose. There are other betting agencies available. In 2015, 2017, 2019. What was your majority last time? 981? It was 980 more than it needed to be, honestly. But what I want to say is that my constituents are some of the smartest people anywhere in the country and they will work it out for themselves. Lots of ex-GCHQers, some very, very smart people there. And they won't be told. It's not like, oh, well, the pulses say chalk's going to lose. They'll work it out for themselves.

47:06And just on the, we mentioned Johnson and Truss. I just wonder, and you're obviously very, very fond of Richie Zunak and think he's doing a better job probably than I would. But if you do lose, would you say that his predecessors are a greater cause of that than him? I think that Rishi had a very difficult inheritance. And I think it's fair to say that he has had to try to deliver in a short period of time. He's had to restore, I think, a lot of trust. I think there's no doubt that the immediate economic context was difficult. and I think it would have been astonishing to have had a complete turnaround.

47:48And I genuinely think he's done a good job and he's done the best he could in a very difficult circumstance. And I just say this, I sit around the cabinet table with him and sometimes I'm there one-on-one if we're doing something to do with prisons or whatever. And I have never seen anybody who understands the detail more than he does and who cares more and who tries harder to get to the right result. And to err is human, I'm sure he won't have got everything right and they're things that should have been done differently or not at all. But his heart is in the right place. He's got the brain the size of a planet.

48:15And, you know, that really resonates for me. Final one for me. Sure. Looking back on being a politician and trying to get out of elections. You or me. Looking back. You or me. Well, I mean, Rory, you can't do this to the guy. He's just in the middle of an election campaign. Give us a sense of what you've learned about politics that surprises you. and try not to make it too schmaltzy and positive. Give us something frank and weird and revealing about what this job is really like for the listener. Well, look, it's interesting you used the word reveal. I'm not the first person to use this expression, but someone else did and I picked it up.

48:51But politics reveals. There's something about the intense pressure of it that it shines this remorseless spotlight on your weaknesses as well as your strengths. And so you find out a huge amount about yourself. You find out what your breaking point is. You find out how you have to balance these competing issues. You know you want to get in my hospital. I wanted to get some more scanners in my hospital. I knew the following day I was going to have to meet the health secretary. I also knew there was a vote that night on something I didn't particularly agree with. So where does my loyalty lie? So it's this constant challenge of what is the ethical and the right thing to do and how do you balance these competing considerations?

49:27And I found that immensely difficult. but I hope if in many years from now Rory that I come to be looking back I still do think having traveled around the world that for all the failings all the shortcomings we have something quite special in our democracy and I think this event today is just a small part of it that freedom of speech and it's been a real pleasure to be able to join you well you're sounding like you're ending the podcast but I haven't asked my final question because I just wanted to ask you finally I alluded to this earlier, but I do find it very troubling that this guy that you've described, Richie Sunak, with the brain the size of the planet and values and all this, and yet he does seem to have bought into this strategy that the Conservative Party and the wretched Andrew Gilligan should go through every case that Keir Starmer's ever done as a lawyer and then try to make that part of a political campaign.

50:19That is wrong. I think all I can sensibly say is everyone has a right to a defence. I've defended, I've prosecuted more than I defended, but everyone's right to defend, and that's really important. I'm more interested in records actually in office, and that's what I will always focus on. So, I mean, I think he has done some things which are wrong, right? So we've got foreign national offenders, and he wanted to stop the plane of foreign national offenders taking off. So for my part, that is what I will always focus on. But if in the next TV debate, Rich, you were to sort of throw out a case that Keir Starmer defended, you would not be happy about that?

50:51Well, I've made my point. Well, thank you for being here. Thank you for being the first serving cabinet minister to come on during the campaign. That's right. Lord Chancellor, thank you very much for coming with us on the podcast today. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the campaign. Thank you, Alistair. Thank you, Rory. Thank you. Right, are you sure Rory? I quite liked him. Did you? I did, yeah. What I liked about him was here we are in the middle of an election campaign. There was no point in me going on about who do you think is going to win and all that stuff. absolutely pointless but i thought he had real passion and enthusiasm for the issues we could probably could have pushed him harder on what's actually happening inside the criminal justice system which i think we both think is a bit of a disaster but i was very very keen to hear his assessment and i i think he's clearly somebody who thinks about it pretty deeply probably does feel very very uncomfortable with some of the stuff that his government does but anyway you know him a lot better than i do yeah i mean so i'm i i obviously he's a friend that I like him very much.

51:49I think that there's something which if I was having a drink with him and it wasn't a middle of an election campaign, I probably would have pushed him more on, which is of course he feels that he's arrived at these positions as positions of principle, but he's also part of a government and a cabinet and a team. And I felt definitely as a politician that you can convince yourself that something's right more easily if it's the thing that your government is doing and I wonder what's he going to do if the government comes out the next week or so and says that it's going to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights.

52:22He just gave this whole speech about how it had been created by Tories, created by the Brits, talked about all these things and yes he and my friend Victoria Prentice the Attorney General endorsed the Rwanda policy and you know I'm sure they did it in good faith and went forensically through all the information but But again, they're lawyers. They're used to, and this is being unfair, but they're used to preparing the best case they can. And I think sometimes, if I was pushing me over a drink, I'd say you prepare the best case you can, you begin to convince yourself of it, particularly if it's the case that your government is good at.

52:53No, he put a very partial view as to what the policy was. And he put a pretty partial view of Rishi Sunak's capacities as well. What I will say, though, is that he's been a very interesting, I think, good MP in Cheltenham. He did something which you'll remember during the election campaign. when there was a huge demonstration outside his constituency office, there was a lovely moment where he stepped out into the middle of the crowd, took the abuse, took the questions, really worked the crowd. Very brave. I'm glad he talks about the customs union thing. Very, very brave. So this was in 2019. Things were very raw.

53:27Endorsing the customs union was unbelievably unpopular with the Conservative Party. And he worked with me to whip the vote, to vote with Labour. We got 32 Conservative MPs to vote with Labour. We put it together as an amendment in Ken Clarke's name because we thought that would sound more impressive. But basically it was me and Alex running around and I've always been a bit embarrassed to raise it because I thought it would blight Alex's career as he continues to set up the Conservative Party. But that was a bold thing to do. And there were lots of other people who, when push came to shove, let us down, went home, fell asleep in the library, changed their votes, and he stuck to it.

54:04Yeah. Yeah, that Cheltenham thing was, I'd forgotten about it, but what happened was we did, when the People's Vote campaign was kind of really in its ascendancy, I'm getting big crowds, we had a lot of money coming in. So we did this massive, big event in Cheltenham. And because he was the MP, I think he wanted to be there. And I was trying to persuade him to kind of, you know, do a big sort of thing, which he wouldn't do. And he was very, he was kind of, he was courageous in that he was being there. It was obvious what he was trying to say. But I sensed he was very, very nervous about the whole thing.

54:33Do you think it's a problem for the future Conservative Party, people like him and me who seem kind of obviously posh from these kind of privileged backgrounds who aren't able to talk about our hard luck stories and our working class roots and this kind of? I don't think so. I think I liked his story about his granddad. No, because I think you're not hiding anything. I think there's a problem if somebody feels if they feel they have to invent a backstory. No, I don't think that's a problem. I think there is a problem with the current makeup of the cabinet that it feels very, very wealthy and very, very detached from the real world.

55:11But no, I don't think he's got that problem. I think he came off as very, very sort of warm and personable. I mean, do you think he's the sort of politician who, if he does lose his seat, would feel that he kind of has to come back? Or do you think he'll just think he'll move on to something else? I don't know. But of course, he loves the law. And I guess one of the advantages for MPs who are lawyers is they can go back to the law. Whereas many, many other MPs, when they lose their seats, they really struggle to work out what to do. I guess he'll be able to go back to it. I was also pleased that we haven't really got into the rule of law in our legal system and our courts.

55:44and things. It's such an important part of our society. Boy, does it not feature in electoral campaigns, all that stuff that he's doing. It's the other thing also that I feel we never really look at the detail of what people do in ministerial jobs. We look at their voting record, we look at austerity, we look at the economy, but nobody tries to really assess the micro details. And I guess one of the strange things about it, which I always experienced in my life, is on the macro level, things are pretty catastrophic. The British economy has contracted since 2019. Our productivity is terrible but every one of the or not everyone but a lot of these ministers will feel they're working very hard they've made all these improvements they've brought this legislation in this money there i got 82 million from there i did all this and so it's always a weird disconnect between the minister's sense that they're doing all this stuff in the public sense that everything's on a general downward slip yeah well we shall see anyway thanks for that thank you bye-bye