Lord Hanson interview

Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series. I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor. And in this episode, I am delighted to be joined by Sir Lord Hanson, the former Labour MP for Delyn from 1992 to 2019, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Wales, 1999 to 2001, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2001 to 2005, Minister of State for Northern Ireland 2005 to 2007, Minister of State for Justice 2007 to 2009, and Minister of State for Security, Counterterrorism, Crime and Policing 2009 to 2010. Welcome to the interview.

Lord Hanson: Good morning, Will. That is a long CV for an introduction.

Will Barber-Taylor: Yes, but a very varied one and a very interesting one that we will be touching on throughout this interview. And I would like to begin with what has happened recently, which has been the local elections and the regional elections in Northern Ireland. I would like to begin by asking you what your general impression is of how the local elections have gone across the UK for each party.

Lord Hanson: For the Labour Party, it has been a reasonably good election. They are local elections, so there are local variations. Even in London, you will see that there have been some councils that have been lost in London, largely on performance issues, such as Croydon, and there has been another gain, such as Westminster, which is historic. They are very much local elections, and they were taken at a high point for Labour the last time these elections were held.

But across the UK, there has been, I think, a swing to Labour, which is positive for the Labour Party, given where we are and where the Labour Party is in the midterm elections. Liberal Democrats have made some gains, self-evidently, and they have made gains predominantly in areas where the Conservative vote has collapsed in the South. And if I were a Conservative going into these elections, I would have been very worried about holding my seat, so that those who have done so are in areas where they are obviously traditionally very strong because in my old parliamentary constituency of Delyn, we won the seat again, 15 Labour councillors, nine Independents, four Liberal Democrats and two Conservative Party councillors in a seat that is now held by the Conservative Party at parliamentary level. Across the board, and in Scotland again, Labour has made progress and has won seats in Scotland. In England, Scotland and Wales, there has been strong progress for Labour, strong progress for the Liberals and a falling back for the Conservative Party, and people are looking to Independents, I think, as well as an alternative to all the parties.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And of course, as I mentioned in the introduction, you spent time as Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office. And of course, the results in Northern Ireland have been quite remarkable with how Sinn Féin has done. On that point, how successful do you think devolution has been in Northern Ireland? And do you think that there are any ways in which devolution could be improved? And is that something that you think we are going to see in the forthcoming years? Or do you think it is unlikely given the power imbalance at Stormont?

Lord Hanson: I think we have had a look at this historically. Devolution’s been a success in Northern Ireland.

It has provided local control of local services for most of the last 25 years. There have been gaps, and there is a gap at the moment, but overall, devolution has been a success. It has brought all political streams, both unionist and nationalist streams, into government, and that has worked quite successfully with Ian Paisley, with Peter Robinson, and with Arlene Foster as First Minister. And we have just had an election where, for the first time, probably largely not just because of Sinn Féin’s advance, but also because of the splintering of unionism, there is a first minister potentially for Sinn Féin. 

Power sharing was about power sharing. I would hope that those people who are from the unionist tendency would get into government and would work on issues such as health, education, planning, agriculture, and culture, all of the things that the devolved government does, because that devolved government provides real services to people on the ground, and the absence of this has been really felt. And when I did the job for two years, I ran the Department of Finance, the Department of Culture, the Department of Housing, and other departments. But I ran them as a minister who did not have a local mandate in Northern Ireland and was making decisions without the consent of the people. There is an opportunity to deliver real services and to tackle some of the real issues that the assembly in Northern Ireland is responsible for, so I am genuinely disappointed that there is not an assembly up and running in terms of a government now. This week, there will be the chance to elect the first minister for Sinn Féin and the deputy first minister. If the Democratic Unionist Party do not step up to the plate on that, that will be disappointing, not just for me personally, but also for the people of Northern Ireland who spent last Thursday voting in an executive that they believe can deliver services for them locally. Whatever the wider issues of Brexit, the border, any future border poll, all those things, there is a whole pile of services spending billions of pounds worth of investment that need political direction on a cross-party basis in Northern Ireland. That is what should happen in my view.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Do you think that the reluctance of unionists to be involved in the formation of a government may, in fact, push people who may be in the middle more towards Northern Ireland becoming a part of the Republic of Ireland, so that they might think we have got unionist politicians here who are not willing to work with the nationalist politicians like Sinn Féin? Maybe we should go, maybe we should try it with the Republic of Ireland. Maybe we should try for reunification because the current system is not working. Do you think that is a fear that it could turn people who may lean more towards unionism or who may be in the middle, away from wanting Northern Ireland to remain a part of the UK?

Lord Hanson: I think the biggest threat and the biggest mistake that the Democratic Unionist Party particularly made was supporting Brexit because before Brexit, when we were part of the European Union, people could be British, people could be Irish, but there was no border, there was free movement, and people could look to be being British or Irish in the European Union. People were European Union citizens as well as being British or Irish. And therefore, the issues of the border and the issues of the Good Friday Agreement of not having a border were manageable. The moment the Democratic Unionist Party supported the idea of Brexit, the logic of that ultimately leads to where we are now, that there has to be a border, as there is at Calais between France and Britain, somewhere between the Republic of Ireland and the North of Ireland or the rest of the United Kingdom. And the EU has a legitimate demand to have that border control somewhere to check on goods. Equally, the people who do not want a border also have a legitimate concern. And the whole Brexit issue has forced this to the forefront in a way that we told the governments of all parties and people who were voting for Brexit around that issue prior to the referendum, but which has been really focused on now.

Where we are now is that the Democratic Unionist Party are using the Northern Ireland Protocol, which the government negotiated, to support a border in the Irish Sea as opposed to our land border. The Northern Ireland Protocol, which was negotiated and on which the general election in 2019 was fought, are being used as an excuse not to go into government. That is an issue that needs to be resolved. But it should not stop people from going into government because going into government in Northern Ireland is about what the services are provided for and whether or not we have a united Ireland downstream, a border poll downstream, continuation of the same arrangements, some other border established elsewhere or maintained where it currently is under the Northern Ireland Protocol. Those are issues which have to be resolved, and that, in many ways, are irreconcilable. But they are not about the fundamentals of what the election should have been about last Thursday in Northern Ireland, which is about how we deliver the services to the people of Northern Ireland while we have an assembly in place.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Do you think then, just looking back on everything that has happened since the 2016 referendum, that those who supported Brexit, who supported Leave, might now feel that it would be better that Britain stayed in the European Union? And do you think that eventually we are going to see some move towards maybe not full membership again, but Britain going closer to the European Union, building closer ties to the EU?

Lord Hanson: One of the options that we discussed in Parliament in the run-up to the 2019 election, after the referendum, was the idea of maintaining a membership of the single market and the customs union, whilst leaving the political institutions of the European Union, such as the European Parliament, Council of Ministers, and other institutions.

And that was voted on in the House of Commons and nearly got through. It strikes me that even this, I would think, for a Conservative. Given that Margaret Thatcher introduced and supported the single market and supported the single market, the idea of free movements of goods and services through the countries of the European Union would have been and still could be potentially a positive way around resolving that tension of the border because the paperwork involved in the border, be it at Calais or be it somewhere in the Irish Sea, is tremendous for both importers and exporters of goods from the European Union and from the United Kingdom. But the irreconcilable issue is that there has to be some form of “border” from England, Scotland, or Wales to Northern Ireland and then into Ireland. Then potentially through into the rest of the European Union or vice versa, without some form of check, if the logic is that we are a third-party country to the European Union. And if there are borders at Calais, then the logic has to be that there must be some check somewhere in the country at large in relation to Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. And that is why the Northern Ireland Protocol was put in place, and I think the whole thing should have been a single market customs union, even if we left the European Union. 

And there may be scope at some point to look at how that works again, because it is in all of our interests not to have queues on the Dover side of Dover-Calais or to have the difficulties thrown up by the Northern Ireland Protocol. After all, the people who are unionists feel part of the United Kingdom, and a border would not exist between Liverpool and London. And I understand that argument, but equally, the people of Ireland and the people of the rest of the European Union need to have that protection for their integrity and their imports and exports. Therefore, there needs to be something somewhere. It is irreconcilable at the moment, but one possible long-term solution would be something we put forward before the 2019 election, which is how to get a customs union, single market operating that benefits all parties.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely, absolutely. I would like to turn now to your time as prisons minister, Minister of State for Prisons. What do you think, looking back on that time and then looking at the state of prisons in the UK at the moment, what has been improved, and what has gotten worse?

Lord Hanson: I think if I look at the whole stream, what needs to be done with prisons is to make prisons effective for rehabilitation and to make sure the people who go into prison are the people who need to go into prison for the severity of the crime that they have committed, but actually have some benefit from being in prison when they are there. And what we tried to do in government when I was in government is really threefold; first of all to try and look at how we divert people from prison in the first place by strengthening the number of community sentences, by making them more effective and by making sure that people do not necessarily go to prison for eight or ten weeks for what are relatively low-level crimes. But there is a community-based penalty that is severe, that is strong, that helps deter future criminal activity, that punishes in part but also provides some support and training. Because the key thing on this one is if someone goes to prison for three or four months, they may lose their home, they may lose any job they have got, and they may not have time in prison to be rehabilitated.

The key thing is, prison should be first of all for people who need to have longer-term sentences. And I think what’s happened is we have lost that over the last ten or so years. We have lost that ability to have community-based sentences strengthened to the extent they should be to keep people out of prison who should not be going to prison in the first place.

Secondly, I think one of the things that may have improved which is a long-term gain (I think political parties of all spheres should be trying to aim for this), is to try and make prison for those people who go for longer than six months, one year, two years, three years, four years, a place where they can be: rehabilitated, learn skills and training, and reintegrate back into the community with employment support, for housing, and dealing with some of the problems that may be through alcohol, drug addiction, exploitation, or other things, got them into prison in the first place. Prisons should be around punishment, but they should also be around changing lives.

And I think that one of the things that is always a challenge, and it is still a challenge now, is how you integrate that through-the-door community-based penalty into the community, in a positive way, after people have served a prison sentence. And that is one of the things that I am currently involved with, some volunteer organisations dealing with the prison service.

One of the key objectives that we have is to try and make sure that we focus on employment, housing, and skill development in prison and through the gate to outside of prison, so people can reintegrate positively.

Will Barber-Taylor: On the issue of skills, how important do you think it is for those prisoners who perhaps need new skills or need help with how they will deal with life outside prison? How important do you think it is that they can get those skills whilst in prison? And what do you think would be the best way to improve it so that it is easier for prisoners who want to learn new skills to be able to learn them whilst serving a prison sentence?

Lord Hanson: One of the things that we have got to do, and I did a report for the Welsh Government on prisons a few years ago on this very issue, is that there are big skill shortages in the United Kingdom at the moment. There are skill shortages through our Brexit withdrawal, with people leaving the country; there are skill shortages through retirement in a whole range of key skill areas; and there are new jobs for the future where skills are not yet up to standard.

What we should be trying to do is to link, particularly those people who are in prison, with those potential skill shortages, and link with businesses outside of prison who can help support training inside of prison on those areas for skill shortages. Because, again, many people go into prison for relatively short sentences of one year, two years, three years; there are opportunities in there to invest in skills training.

And one of the keys to stopping reoffending is the three stabilities of life, which are job, home, and support for any challenge that you had, like drug or alcohol addiction, before you went into prison. What we should be trying to do, and I think this is common to what I tried to do as a prisons minister, what most prisons are still trying to do, and it is an ongoing process, is find a way to ensure that the people who come into prison, when they are in our care, leave prison with a better opportunity to have employment, housing, and tackling some of the challenges that they face.

Therefore, using links with outside companies, using their skills assessments for the future, using prisons as places where we can help train the academies in there, helps people positively go through the gate. We did that in the Labour government with companies such as Timpson, which provide training academies in some of the prisons that we have. We did it with major utility companies like British Gas. We did it with Network Rail. There is a whole pile of companies out there that can potentially offer employment in areas where it is difficult to recruit or where there are skill shortages, where there are people who, with that trust and support, can do that job, who have been through the prison system.

Will Barber-Taylor: I would like to now turn to the issue of parole because there have been some instances of quite high-profile prisoners or prisoners who have been involved in quite high-profile cases, who have been paroled, and there has been a certain amount of outrage both from the government and the press. I am thinking of Colin Pitchfork and, more recently, the mother of Baby P. To what extent do you think that this outrage is justifiable and that something has to be done to the parole system? Or how much do you think it is an example of the government and certain elements of the press wanting to create a culture war issue around parole and the way that we parole prisoners?

Lord Hanson: I think the answer to that question is that the key thing for any parole system is the risk to the community for the release of the person who is potentially up for parole. Be it someone who served 30 years for murder, or be it someone who served five years for a lesser offence. The key issue for the parole board is risk. And I know the parole board takes that extremely seriously. They will do a very thorough assessment, and they have to determine whether there is a risk to the community of the release of the individual or whether the individual is in the right place to be released at that time.

There will always be challenges because there will always be victims who will be upset at the potential release of an individual. There will always be concerns from the press about ‘whipping that up’ or making a statement about that. But the key issue is a solid, sensible assessment of risk. And there is always going to be a role for ministers ultimately in making a judgment and asking the parole board, potentially, to consider again if they make a judgment

But the parole board retains their independence, and the parole board has that job. And we have had instances in the past when ministers have removed parole board chairs because they have not agreed with the decisions made. I think that the key thing is to try and establish a system which is in place to establish: risk, assessments from all, to liaise and understand and work with victims when there are serious cases that are going to come up for parole, to listen to representations, but ultimately to make a decision, independent of political interference on what is the risk to the community of the release of this individual. We can always potentially, as in the case with Colin Pitchfork, be recalled if there are concerns raised once the parole has been granted.

Will Barber-Taylor: Yes, yes, absolutely. I would like to turn now to something related to the pandemic and something that ​​Centre Think Tank did a lot of work on: people who were excluded from the government’s Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, and this was something that you supported in terms of those people should have been included. Why was that something that you thought was an important issue, and why do you think that the government never decided to include those people who had been excluded from the support schemes?

Lord Hanson: I think there are two aspects to that. First of all, there are a number of people, around about 3 million people, who were either self-employed or employed in other ways that did not qualify for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme the government put in place. But that meant that I have known people who were former constituents of mine who had real financial difficulty because they were self-employed, and their business closed down effectively during that time.

They could not gain any income because they could not do their particular jobs, but they were not qualified for the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme because they were not employed by somebody else. They were self-employed. That seems to be a distinction that is very unfair because ultimately, those businesses need to survive the COVID pandemic. And at the end of that period, they are going to be again producing tax revenue for the government and producing services that people require and providing goods for sale, but are in a self-employed setting at the moment and therefore did not qualify for the scheme. It struck me as very short-term in relation to the government because ultimately, I do not know, I generally do not know Will, how many of those 3 million businesses have survived that two-year period, that are fit and proper and up and running now, having gone through the two years of that Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme not being in place.

That struck me as a short-term mistake by the government not to include self-employed people in the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. What can we do about it now? We have gone through the COVID scheme, and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is winding down, so it is very difficult to do anything about it now. I think that in the event (which I hope never happens) that we have a similar situation again, the government need to look at how we sustain businesses. Whether they are self-employed or people who work for companies, through the pandemic in a way that sustains the business for the long term, because sustaining the business is about the future wealth creation in the country. And it is something I think Rishi Sunak missed the trick on.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And in terms of the economy, we are obviously seeing economic difficulties at the moment, not just for the UK, but worldwide. How much of that do you think is a result of the pandemic and the aftermath of the pandemic? How much of it do you think is the result of what we have been seeing happening with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Russian war in Ukraine? Do you think that there is a clear distinction in whether one or the other has influenced the current economic system?

Lord Hanson: I think we are in the middle of a wide-ranging storm for which the United Kingdom is potentially among the worst positioned of all European and global economies to deal with. And that is simply because we have, I think, three storms brewing: we have the impact of a two-year-plus COVID pandemic, which has obviously taken the heart out of many businesses, suppressed demand, and caused great difficulties for a large number of businesses. This has built up a government tax bill by funding things such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, and building of government debt, which has been very difficult. That is number one.

Secondly, we have the impact of Brexit, which is still, I think, going to be felt very strongly because there are definite consequences there in terms of the free movement of goods, the ability to sell, the demand for goods in Europe, and a range of consequences related to that, which, again, whether you voted for or against Brexit, they are there as either teething problems or long-term problems, depending on your perspective.

And then we have something that nobody expected to happen, which is the impact of the Ukraine invasion by the Russians. The impact of that, not just in terms of the impact in Europe, but also the impact on energy prices, with Russia being a major energy supplier, and the impact on a whole range of other domestic issues. Those three challenges are impacting greatly, which I think, and this is again a key point, this is where the current government needs to take some action. These are issues that need significant government action and significant international government action to resolve.

They need significant intervention by the government, not because government is a great thing in itself, but because government is the place where these issues can be resolved at a national, regional, and international level. And that is why we have got to have, in my view, active government not just from a political perspective, but also from an economic perspective to try to come together to stimulate the economy, look at some of the LNG challenges, and not just take short-term fixes, but look at the long-term issues on top of which we have wider ranging issues about the use of oil through global warming and global challenges. We have wider issues about food poverty in different parts of the world. We have wider issues about the changing nature of automation. We have wider issues about individuals being laid off while companies are taking on different types of staff and more temporary staffing regimes.

All of those things mean that you are in an ever-changing world. But with COVID, Ukraine and Brexit on top, that ever-changing world is even more complicated than normal and needs the government to focus on those long-term challenges internationally, as well as locally.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Just going back to the last time we spoke, we of course discussed the 1997 election, and recently it was the 25th anniversary. Just looking back on that election again and comparing the calibre of politicians who were part of that incoming Labour cabinet to the current cabinet. What do you feel has changed about politics so that the figures that we saw in that cabinet are not reflected in the current cabinet? You certainly could not compare Boris Johnson’s cabinet with Tony Blair’s cabinet when he was elected. What does that say about the way that politics has changed over the past 25 years?

Lord Hanson: It is difficult to answer. If you go back 25 years (which surprises me that it is that long ago), we were at the end of 13 years of Tory government in 1992, until 1997, which was 18 years. There is a five-year period between 1992 and 1997 when the real changes happened. We were effectively in a period of seismic potential change because the economy was in a difficult place. Trust in leadership had gone with John Major. There were very similar feelings to where we are now, I think, in relation to a lack of direction over where the government was going. There were lots of international and national challenges. We had a new leadership come forward with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and others in the mid-1990s, who were ready for 1997. But none of us at the time in 1997, I said to you last time, expected to have the type of result that we got in 1997. We knew what we wanted to do with that result, and the country itself was in a mood for change.

Now the question is, and this is one that we can debate: are we at the same period in time now as we were in 1992, 1993, or are we not? Does the country want change or not? Is it that you are concerned about Partygate as a temporary issue? Is it concerned about issues related to COVID and the response now? Or are there seismic, longer-term changes? And as we did not know that in 1994, 1995, we do not really know that now.

The next election will be fought on the record of the current government, the record and potential of the alternative current government, but also, really, as all elections are, the future offer. And in 1997, people were ready for a future offer that offered hope for the changes that were needed. Offered fairness and justice, offered constitutional change, and offered responses to the challenges of the 21st century. They were encapsulated in the people who were in the cabinet in 1997, and by the way in which they approached the political issues of the day, and by the way in which they approached the issues of what their forward offer was. I think whoever forms the next government, and there will be challenges on that, it will be about that forward offer.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. We are coming towards the end of the interview, David. It has been excellent to have you on. And I have one final question. Now, I know that you are an ardent collector of political memorabilia. If anybody has not followed David on Twitter or followed his Instagram account for the cabinet, they certainly should. There are some remarkable things that you have got, David. But my final question to you is this: Is there one piece of political memorabilia that you do not currently have that you would really, really like to be able to have, that you feel would set your collection off, or you feel that would give it an added sheen and an added glow?

Lord Hanson: Oh, yes, I am always in search of the holy grail, Will. There are lots of holy grails out there. I would love to have an original Clement Attlee election address from the 1920s or earlier, or from 1922 onwards for Clement Attlee. I would love to have a George Lansbury election address from earlier. Those are two leaders in the Labour Party who had different issues at different times. I would love a Keir Hardie election address. That would be fantastic.

But I am very lucky. You are welcome to the In the Cabinet Instagram account. I am just over 50 years old now, and I have collected bits and bobs of election material because it tells a story. It tells you about what happened at the time.

And my favourite piece I have got is probably the Ramsay MacDonald election address, from 1892, which I picked up many years ago in Southampton. This is Ramsay MacDonald as a young Labour Party member, in the Independent Labour Party, before the Labour Party was formed, trying to find a way to take forward the challenges of society, arguing for a minimum wage, arguing for devolution, and arguing for trade union rights. Coming fifth in the election, but ultimately being Prime Minister 25 years later, seeing the Labour government in the future putting some of those things he argued for in 1892 into practice. Election materials tell stories, and I just love checking every one of them. If ever I find an election address or piece of material, I put it away. It is only in two filing cabinets, but it is good stuff, and anybody can visit my collection. At a time, I post one, two or three things every day that I have. I have got about another nine months’ worth left to post and put them on the In the Cabinet Instagram account. Anyone can follow it and have a look at the past stuff I have posted already.

Will Barber-Taylor: I would certainly recommend that they do because it is a fantastic account. And as I said, there are some great things there that people will not have otherwise seen. Thank you once again for coming on, David. If people want to find out more about you, if they want to follow you on social media, where should they go to find you and to follow you?

Lord Hanson: Instagram is @inthecabinet, and my Twitter account now is The Right Honourable Dave Hanson: @RTHonDaveHanson.

Will Barber-Taylor: Excellent, thank you once again for coming on the interview.

Lord Hanson: Thanks, Will.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.