Diane Abbott The Andrew Marr Show

A lot of people who are only half of paying attention to the campaign

thought it was in the bag for the Tories, but now the polls have been

closing a bit, they have do focus on the real possibility of Jeremy

Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. That means almost certainly with Diane

Abbott in Home Office. Many watching this after Manchester, thinking

about who to vote for, look at you and Jeremy Corbyn and think we do

not completely trust you to be in charge of the security given what

you have said and done in the past. You can take a moment to talk to

them and tell them why they are wrong. Before we move on to the

politics of it, I think it is too soon to forget the victims. 22

people are dead and so many people, families and children who have seen

things that will haunt them for many years. I think it is important to

say that. In terms of why people should vote Labour in the general

election, they should vote Labour because we have put forward a

manifesto that will be transforming the manifesto investing in the NHS,

in education and is also seeing how we would defend it. Before we go on

to that, I want to ask about your own record and saying I do not trust

Diane Abbott to be in charge of the Home Office. First of all, I think

there is something to be said for a Home Secretary who is actually

worked in the Home Office. I worked in the Home Office for nearly three

years as a graduate trainee and I know how it works from the inside. I

think there is something to be said for a Home Secretary who is a young

woman who worked and campaigned with diverse communities and sees these

issues as not just from the view of Democrats but from diverse treaties

and there is something to be said for a Home Secretary who spent 30

years as a constituency MP and knows how these issues work for ordinary

people. What about someone who has said that we should abolish MI5? I

think you have got back from... You signed in 1989... I can read it back

to. She called for the abolition of conspiratorial groups like MI5 and

Special Branch which are not accountable to the British people.

Signed by about. At the time I felt MI5 needed reforming. It has since

been reformed and I would not call for it to be got rid of now. So that

Diane Abbott has gone and you support MI5? I'm saying that MI5 has

gone. It is a different MI5 and that is why so many of us can support it

now. And you fully support it, because also in your career, you

have voted around 30 times against anti-terrorist legislation. What you

have to remember is on many of those occasions I and Jeremy Corbyn were

going through the lobby with Tory MPs. Theresa May herself voted

against the 2005 invention of terrorism Bill, she voted against ID

cards and against the... Nobody votes against it these things

without a lot of thought. And the view of myself and Jeremy and Ms

numbers of the Conservative Party including David Davis at the time

was this counter-productive, counter terrorism legislation. Some of the

positions we voted for work held up in the courts. You said nobody votes

against the beings without a lot of thought. Just before 911, you voted

against subscribing Al-Qaeda as an organisation. That was a huge

mistake on your part. Have you read the legislation we are voting on? I

have. What the legislation broke forward with a whole list of

organisations, some of which some people would argue are not terrorist

organisations. To say that because... Which ones? Al-Qaeda,

Egyptian Islamic jihad, The Armed Islamic Group, The Liberation Tigers

Of Tamil, The Islamic Jihad Grip, The Kurdistan Workers Party. . The

reality of some of those groups, whether they were dissidents in

their country of origin, and that is why some of us... Had they taken

Al-Qaeda as one thing... This is a group of really dangerous

organisations from all over the world who have killed a lot of

people. This group carried out the Mumbai attacks that killed more than

117 people. No list is perfect, but it was a pretty good list and you

voted against prescribing those groups. Because there were groups

that I did deemed to be dissidents rather than terror organisations.

You have to give people credit for thinking about how they vote. As I

said, we're hearing about all this anti-terror legislation that Jeremy

and I voted against, but we're not hearing that the Tories voted

against the same legislation. There is the list. Which of the

organisations should not have been ascribed? You voted against the

whole lot been prescribed because you thought somewhere OK. Which ones

do you think are OK? It is not that I thought they were OK. I thought

they were dissident organisations. I do not need it, and you, because the

point is less than a week after those people died in Manchester, we

should be talking about going forward to make this country safe.

But to go forward, we have to look behind and look at people's record.

That is why we are talking about you. Jeremy Corbyn got in some

trouble with his interview because he said he had not met the IRA, but

he was 40 craft with many during his career. You said a defeat for the

British state would be a great liberation, Eamon forward. Do regret

your support for the IRA? That particular quote is from a now

defunct left newspaper and it had as well as... It was 34 years ago, I

had a rather splendid Afro at the time, I do not have the same

hairstyle, I do not have the same views. It is 34 years on. The

hairstyle is gone and some have the views of corn. -- the views have

gone. Still you do not regret? The hairstyle has gone, the views have

gone. Do you regret what you said about the IRA at the height of the

bombings? What specifically do you want me to regret? I can read the

quote. What you said was that 80 feet of the IRA would be devastating

for the British people. You said the reason for the violence was entirely

caused by the British presence in Northern Ireland. To think those

statements are now wrong? It was many years ago. I have moved on. You

said that Ireland is our struggle. Every defeat of the British state is

a victory for all of us. 34 years ago and I have moved on. Within a

few weeks, you could be Home Secretary and one of the things we

know from Amber Rudd is she spends to hours a day signing orders

approving the surveillance of individual people. Would you be

prepared to sit therein do that? Of course! Of the evidence was

presented to me. I know how these things work. If the file that was

imprint of me, I will sign for surveillance. That is part of the

job. Another big issue, encrypted services on WhatsApp and other

mobile messaging devices. Due oppose all support forcing those companies

to show what they are doing? I think the problem is they are American

companies and they feel strongly about the right to free speech. We

do have to do work with them to you have access to these messages where

it is an issue about end-to-end encryption. We have do work with

them. If they will not cooperate, we will have two can sit what further

action to take. Given the tragedy am Manchester, I would hope they would

want to work with the British Government. Reported in today's

papers, as recently as 2010, you told a dinner party we should not

put innocent people's DNA on the database and we should not have

guilty people on that database again. Do you still support that

statement? I'm also its constituency MP and I had to deal with some very

difficult cases of children who were not convicted of anything who had

their DNA on the database and I had a huge struggle to have their DNA

taken. We do need to be careful about taking children's DNA. But did

you did not use the word children now. Added time, about a child,

whose DNA had been taken. In terms of retaining a strong DNA database,

IU in favour or against it. I'm in favour of the DNA deck to base. I'm

not in the favour of keeping the DNA of children who have committed no

crime. So the DNA should be kept of those who have committed a crime?

Let's move on. One of the big announcements has been lots more

officers, including another thousand people for the security services.

They are now increasing by a thousand after David Cameron 's

buttons marked the 1000 has not been recruited. They are not recruiting

them yet. We want to recruit 10,000 extra police officers, community

police officers because we think community policing is key. We want

to recruit more firefighters, 3000 extra prison officers 1000, as you

say, people in the security field and more bodyguards because we think

protecting our borders is so important. How much extra will you

spend on MI5. We are not spending extra because the Government has put

the money aside. So this is announcement at all? It is part of

our security's the reason we had to the's on Theresa's watch, there are

20,000 police officers down. So the cost of the entire package

Thank you very much indeed. In the Labour Party manifesto, it says

freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union. Are you in

support of that policy? Freedom of movement obviously ends when we

leave the EU. If we leave the European Union,, what we should be

talking about is the immigration we have when freedom of movement ends.

There is no question that it ends on we come out of the European Union.

You have said ending free movement has been a synonym for

anti-immigration racism. I don't think you're reading the manifesto

properly. Of course, I think that anti-immigrant rhetoric is toxic and

very bad for business. We are seeing the numbers of EU migrants going

down at a time when we are 24,000 nurses short. Anti-immigrant

rhetoric is unpleasant but also bad for the economy. On freedom of

movement, freedom of movement ends when we come out of the EU. If you

become Home Secretary, you will be the first black person in the any of

the major home offices of state. Will you run it differently in terms

of its attitude to racism and communities and so on? I will run

the best Home Office that I can. I will draw on my experience, having

worked there. I will draw on my experience at the grassroots. We

will have the best Home Office that I can run, which will draw on some

of the Home Office 's best traditions and above all, we'll keep

this country safe. Thanks very much indeed for talking to us.

Waiting for your mate to wake up after a sleepover.