26/06/2014 Daily Politics

Morning, folks, welcome to the Daily Politics.

Cameron's in the dock for apologising over Andy Coulson.

The judge says the PM - and other leading politicians -

could have scuppered the rest of the phone-hacking trial.

We delve into the head of Jean-Claude Juncker, who looks

set to be the next president of the European Commission,

And want to get beach fit for the summer?

Try Adam's London tour of European think tanks and pressure groups.

This is the office of a very Eurosceptic group inspired by

Margaret Thatcher's speech from the 80s. It is next door to the Calvin

Klein shop, which is appropriate, because they think Europe is a load

of pants. And with us the duration is

Mats Persson Mats here doesn't want Britain to

leave Europe but wants big reform Now, first today, let's talk about

the phone hacking trial because yesterday the judge presiding over

proceedings strongly rebuked Are asked him and my chief of staff

asked him whether he knew about phone hacking. We accepted his

assurances. That was the basis on which I employed him. I was always

clear I was giving someone a second chance. He had resigned from the

News of the World because of the bad things that happen there. I accepted

his assurances and gave him a job. It was a second chance and turned

out to be a bad decision and I'm extremely sorry about that. But I

would say that he didn't, in the work he did for me before I became

Prime Minister or as Prime Minister, people have complained about that

work. But still, employing someone when they gave false assurances was

the wrong decision. I'm profoundly sorry about that. I always said that

if this turned out to be the case, I would not be found wanting in giving

a full apology. I'm sorry about that. It was a bad decision. I

shouldn't have made it. He apologised on Tuesday. Mr calls and

was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones. The only problem was

that the jury was still considering other verdict in the trial.

The judge, Mr Justice Saunders, said he was "very concerned" about

the Prime Minister's intervention and accused Mr Cameron of launching

an "open season" on the defendant, who was still facing two charges of

conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.

Well, joining me now is the Labour MP Tom Watson

and the former Solicitor General, the Conservative MP Edward Garnier.

Can clock so that the problem was that the Prime Minister wasn't a

lawyer but it turns out he had the Attorney-General in the room giving

him advice. Did the Attorney-General give the wrong advice? Depends what

advice he gave them. Add voice to speak out, clearly. We don't know

that. We do know that. The Prime Minister would not have spoken out

like that without taking legal advice. What we do know is that the

political imperative for the Prime Minister to make some statement was

there. I accept that the judges extremely concerned that he made the

statement when he did but if you consider the timetable - there had

been verdict given, though I appreciate there were several more

to come. The following day was going to be Prime Minister's Questions. It

was inevitable that Miliband was going to go on this. If we think the

Speaker would have stopped Mr Miliband from asking questions about

it even though the jury was still out, we are living in a different

country, not least because he allowed the Chancellor to be

questioned by the shadow chancellor. Should the judge have

given more explicit guidance after the first set of verdicts came out,

knowing there were two other verdict? He could have put a blanket

no reporting order until all verdicts were returned. But bear in

mind this trial had been going on for eight months and a number of

people had been acquitted. I think they were entitled to have those

acquittals made public as soon as possible. Why didn't he deliver the

verdicts altogether? He could have done but the jury were entitled to

come back and say that they had decided on some but not on others.

Having acquitted a number of people, who have been in the dock

for eight months, I dare say the judge thought that the acquitted

people had a right to see their exoneration is out there as soon as

possible. The Attorney-General clearly gave the Prime Minister one

piece of advice - that he could go ahead and make his apology, call Mr

cool son a liar -- Andy Coulson a liar. I don't know what advice the

Attorney-General gave the Prime Minister but the short point is,

what effect would it have. I researched around for advice and the

advice came back from the deputy as a kid, please do not comment until

the verdict. Tom Watson says nothing is news in itself. Would you have

commented at that point? I know you wouldn't have done. You're a very

able lawyer. That's kind of you to say so. I'll give you my telephone

number. I'm very expensive. You need to be careful. The problem that the

Prime Minister faced was that he had a media storm already building up.

We know the circumstances. I'm just wondering what advice he would have

given the Prime Minister. I'm not going to say because I wasn't there

to give it. Would you have commented? I haven't commented. You

said in July 2011 that Rebekah Brooks was not only responsible for

wrongdoing at News International but that you believed she knew about a.

Do you accept that is wrong? Rebekah Brooks is not guilty. She has been

found not guilty of conspiring to hack phones in a court of law. She

is innocent. I wish her well with her life. Do you apologise for

saying she knew about it? I'm not going to apologise. The club against

a very powerful company that a court case has exposed for having

potentially 5000 victims of phone hacking. If you remember, back then,

there were many public institutions - the police, the criminal justice

system, past prime ministers - who were not standing up for families

like the Dowlers. I was shaking the tree. The tree has been shaken but

you said the story of Rebekah Brooks being far from events was simply not

believable, when a jury of her peers found it very believable. At the

time, I thought that an editor would be on top of those stories. She is

now said that the staff under Hurd took the decisions without her

knowing. She basically said she knew nothing about it and she wasn't the

editor that I thought she was. I do accept that she has been found not

guilty and I hope she goes on to do something productive with her life.

It was said in court that you hated her. I don't hate anyone. Not even

Tony Blair, although I'm not very happy with him at the moment. I

don't hate anyone and it wasn't personal. It was about trying to

expose criminality at News International. Six people have

pleaded guilty or been found guilty, very senior editors. We have an

eight-month trial, estimated to cost ?100 million, and we've had seven

defendants and one charge out of 14. That's because five of them

pleaded guilty. But the real cost was in the trial. There were huge

costs at pre-trial. They pleaded very late. If they had dropped the

one rogue reporter defends in 2006, as we now know Andy Coulson now knew

that was the case -- could not be the case because he was played a

phone hacked message in 2004, we wouldn't have had any of this cost.

About 40 descent of the annual budget of the Met's homicide

division was being spent on this. -- 40% bracket one charge out of 14 has

been held up. The Murdoch family's net wealth has almost doubled and

the sun has hailed it as a great day for red tops. -- the something

aggro. If the whole organisation was criminal, the aim was to bring it

down. The aim was to expose wrongdoing and if the alternative is

just to let the journalists carry on hacking the phones of abducted

teenage schoolgirls, do you think that is right? The alternative would

be to make sure we got ?100 million worth of justice by perhaps getting

better than one charge out of 14. I wasn't a prosecutor. Maybe you

should have been. But is that the right measure? Lots of people are

acquitted when the jury considers the evidence. Lots of people are

convicted when the jury considers the evidence. An acquittal is not a

failure of the justice system. But it isn't a great track record for

the CPS. The point I'm making is that the justice system is there to

try people. Your leader, Mr Miliband, has dined out on his claim

that he is the man who took on Murdoch when all around him would.

You, as well as I, know that isn't true. -- would not. He only turned

on Mr Murdoch after the Milly Dowler scandal became public. In a day that

I will never forget, he got up in the chamber and said Rebekah Brooks

should resign and BSkyB should be shelved. I owe him a great debt of

loyalty for that because I'm not taking away anything from the other

people that run for leader of the Labour Party but I think he's the

only candidate, other than Diane Abbott, who that decision. He

decided to take it on. I think the others would have taken a different

path. But it was only after Milly Dowler broke and by then it became

toxic. The week before, he'd been sitting champagne with Rupert

Murdoch at a summer party. Some reports say he was one of the last

to leave. Well, I wouldn't have done that but he did do the right thing.

But only after it was like shooting trout in a barrel. What would you

like me to say? You took on Murdoch before Milly Dowler. He did the

right thing and I stand by him for that. I would liken to commit the

Labour Party to permitting the Leveson proposals in full, which

would you deeply. It doesn't upset me at all. You commit the Labour

Party to what you want. What I think is not the issue. What did you think

of a man who boasted taking on Murdoch being pictured reading the

Sun? I was very embarrassed. Why did it not dawn on him what he was

doing? I suspect because he is head of press thrust the paper in front

of him. He is the Rubiks cube kit. Has he not got a brain to think for

himself? I haven't been in that kind of job where you have things coming

at you from all sides. I was his performance in the Commons are so

poor yesterday? He had an open goal against David Cameron and drew less

blood than Luis Suarez. I'm not sure whether the position David Cameron

took will hold because Leveson is not over. There is a second part of

Leveson, which is the bit that, as Leveson said, should show who did

what to whom and when. I think he was asking legitimate questions

about what David Cameron knew when he took Andy Coulson into Downing

Street. He didn't quite make it. David Cameron had a single, robust

line of defence, not answering the questions. It doesn't mean the

questions will go away. Isn't it just time to park it? We've have

this massive case. There are still scores of journalists still under

bail. They don't know what their future is and some will be waiting

four years until they get to trial. There am many occasions where I wish

we could have this behind us and I actually do feel very sorry for

those junior journalists who were part of a big corporate culture that

expected these things to happen. They have my sympathy. One of the

things I hope can happen is that the newsrooms of the tabloid newspapers

say to their proprietors, "get the self-regulatory proposals in place,

let journalism move on, and let's hope that at some point we can ask

whether there is a public interest in continuing with these cases". Did

you think it was right in these cases but scores of Claude Rampage

-- scores of policeman Rampage into your house in the middle of the

night as if they were dealing with terrorists or gangsters? They had a

reasonable suspicion that evidence was being destroyed. That's what

they said in the court case. No, they weren't terrorists, as far as I

know. I don't make anyone has ever accused Rebekah Brooks or Charlie

Brooks of terrorism but the police had a reasonable suspicion that they

needed an element of surprise. What do you make of all this? It's MS,

isn't it? But in other countries, the security services, or others,

record and tap politicians then leak it to the press. I wouldn't

encourage anything! How interesting is the public in this in the long

run? -- interested. Thank you. The Prime Minister appears to be

on the verge of failure in his efforts to prevent the former

Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Claude Juncker, from being

nominated as the next president EU leaders begin gathering

for a two day summit today - first David Cameron is demanding that

a vote take place at the summit - he wants other leaders to have to

justify their support for Mr Juncker But, barring any last-minute

disasters, Mr Juncker looks set to become one of the most

powerful figures in Europe. And why is Britain

so vehemently against him? Mr Juncker was Prime Minister

of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013. He was forced to resign after

becoming embroiled in a wiretapping scandal involving the country's

intelligence service SREL. He belongs to Luxembourg's

centre-right Christian Democrat But he's suspicious

of always pursuing free-market solutions and has been described

as "the most socialist From 2005 to 2013 he chaired

the Eurogroup of finance ministers At the heart

of EU decision-making for so long In May 2011, he told a meeting

of the federalist European Movement that he often "had to lie" and that

eurozone monetary policy should be It's also well known that Mr Juncker

is partial to a glass of wine and the odd cigarette, even leading him

to deny that he had a drink problem. In March the centre-right grouping

in the European Parliament the EPP chose him as their candidate to be

the next President of the European He has pledged "to give

an answer to the British question." But he says,

"My red line in such talks would be the integrity of the single market

and its four freedoms." Well, joining me now is Dirk Hazell,

leader of the 4 Freedoms Party or UK EPP - it's a pro-EU, centre right

party which contested the recent And we're also joined by one

of UKIP's new MEPs, Tim Aker. It's all a bit confusing! You should

make your name is a bit more different so we could see exactly

what you are. I think it's fair to say Mr Younger has not had the best

of the British press. Are we all wrong about him? The fact of the

matter is that we have a treaty framework which was agreed by the

British Parliament. We've had a European election conducted under

that treaty framework. All the serious EU parties were clear about

that and he is the winning candidate. Having both been in the

Conservative party when Mr Cameron was selected and in the EBP when Mr

Younger was selected, Mr Younger's selection process was at least as

clean and democratic as Mr Cameron's why would you pick a man

who had to quit as Prime Minister after being involved in a scandal

and has had to lie? The decisions on monetary seizure shouldn't always be

conducted in the full light of publicity, according to Mr Juncker.

I think he has a point. He was talking about when issues become

serious. He said you have to lie. And we have no lies ever from

British politicians, do we? You can't ask me that doing this

programme. But why would you have someone who says that sometimes you

have to lie and thinks that most things should be in secret, dark

debates. Some of this is very difficult. He has been confronted

once or twice about English, which is not his native language. But he

is, in person, engaging and formidable. And the really relevant

point is that he stood on a very transparent 5-point action

programme. What should have been happening over the last month,

instead of these spinning techniques coming out of Number Ten, we should

have had a very firm focus on getting British people in the right

places in a Juncker commission to see through the 5-point action plan,

which is focused on getting millions of people back into work. Tim, you

must be quite pleased. It's business as usual over there, isn't it? It's

a sign that David Cameron's renegotiation efforts have the first

real test of getting European ministers to sign up to his

programme and it looks like they've turned against him. At one point it

looked like he was getting them on side and there might be a rival

candidate but now it's fallen apart around him and Juncker seems to be

the favourite to go forward. Cameron said that if he becomes the

commission president, it could lead to the UK "drifting towards the

exit". I think there's political symbolism in this, the fact that

Cameron has been unable to block a candidate that represents what most

Brits would consider wrong with the EU in the first place. There are tee

separate issues. On the one hand, it is personality. Juncker may be as

unhelpful as any other commission president that has been a candidate

who has been taught about. That's the substance but the principle, the

president, is not very good. This idea that Younger is -- Juncker is

on some kind of democratic mandate is silly. 9.7% of the European

electorate voted for parties that were, in theory, affiliated with the

centre-right political European Parliament. Most opinion polls show

that a minority of them actually knew who Juncker was. In Germany, 7%

could identify Juncker. More Germans believe in ghosts than that. The

opinion polls drifted in Germany as awareness group. The trouble is,

with the way Mr Cameron has mishandled this... That's your

opinion. It has had the effect of greatly strengthening the strength

of opinion behind Juncker, which has made it very much more difficult.

What choice did he have? I've been amazed that you managed to find

someone who is pro-Juncker. He has no legitimacy in this country. The

Lib Dems back the other guy and the Tories are not part of the EP P who

nominated. That is precisely my point because the real issue... He

had no choice. The real issue, as you have admitted in print, is that

Cameron left the EP P. If Britain is going to be in the EU, the three

main parties should be in it. What lessons do you take from all this?

It's Christmas early for you! Yeah, it's Christmas come early. A

federalist who thinks more Europe is the solution. What you've been

talking about with Juncker and the 5-point plan... UKIP coming top in

the European elections means that your agenda is way off course. We're

heading for the exit door. There we are. We'll see if you're right.

Thanks for joining us. Now, do you you know your Centre

for European Reform from your centre Your European Policy Centre

from your European Policy Forum? But fear not,

our reporter Adam lives, breathes and quite often hangs

around outside some of the many, Come with me. No need to go to

Brussels, when there's so much Europe a short stroll from your

office. Behind this tour, you'll find the centre for European reform,

a Europhile think tank. Just round the corner, above the Faith Society,

you'll find Open Europe. They have a team of multilingual researchers who

translate all the European press so you don't have to. Just down the

road, you will find Business For Britain, which is pro-reform and

pro-Britain. Under all this scaffolding, under the new campaign

group called British Influence, which describes itself as a

cross-party pro-EU membership organisation. Time to head further

afield. In these offices, you will find the

extremely pro-EU group Business For New Europe, Either? Run A Europhile

Businessman. On Regent Street, The Office Of The Very Euro-sceptic

Bruges Group, Inspired By Margaret Thatcher's Speech Of The 1980s. Then

there are groups that are no longer with us like Britain in Europe,

which united big names in support of the euro, or its antithesis,

Business for sterling. I didn't have time to visit some, but now to the

better off out campaign, an offshoot of the freedom association, a bunch

of libertarians. Their offices on that vote. -- their office is on

that vote. I've heard there is a bar on board stop don't make the mistake

as me. How are you different from Get Britain Out? They put their

case, we put our case, but we look to emphasise the positives.

And finally, the EU has its own presence here, in the form of Europe

House, where you can get all sorts of literature. And no peace would be

complete without pointing out that this used to be Tory central office.

Adam is now lying down in a dark room to recover. Here is a test for

you. Which is the odd one out? Open Europe, centre the European reform,

friends of Europe or the Bruges group? Open Europe because of those

groups we get the most things right. No, the Bruges group because it is

the only one that advocates withdrawal from the union. What have

you achieved in ten years? We've moved the debate. We were right on

the euro. We said it would be a mistake for Britain to join and we

were right. In many ways, everyone is now where we were several years

ago, which is talking about the need for reform and in that sense we set

the terms of the debate. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate Mr

Cameron's chances of getting some real repatriations? On a scale of

one to ten, between a six and a seven. You think he might do it?

Absolutely. It depends on a number of factors but Mr Juncker is not the

main match. It is the warm up. There is a lot still to come in this

Europe debate. We will have a lot of business in future. That's it for

today. I'll be back with This Week tonight. That's after Question Time

on BBC One tonight. I'll be back tomorrow at 11am with all the big

political stories of the day and on Newsnight tomorrow on BBC Two.

Goodbye.