00:00Matt, good to see you this morning. Thank you very much for joining us. Matt, we obviously
00:03have to start with the story that's on the front page of all our newspapers this morning,
00:06the mess that is the Afghanistan situation. You were part of that government at the time.
00:13What would you... I mean, do you owe the public an apology over this?
00:17Well, good morning. I wasn't really well. I was a backbench MP. I know as much as you,
00:22really. I know what I've read from the papers. Utter, utter mess. Disastrous, disastrous
00:28data breach that has real consequences for those who were involved in the threat to them,
00:34but also for the taxpayers picking up the tab for this. Lessons need to be learned. People
00:38do need to be held to account for the role they played in that. And we need to make sure
00:42it can never, ever, ever happen again. Of course, this is going to be a huge cost
00:46to the British taxpayer. Of course, we've heard the £850 million figure. But on top of that,
00:51the paper's reporting this morning that there's going to be a huge legal bill as these Afghans
00:56who are being resettled could well claim compensation from the government.
01:02Yeah. I mean, utterly devastating in terms of the outcome of it. But actually, did we have...
01:08Well, we did have a responsibility to those people. They did their bit for Britain. And
01:13fundamentally, our services let them down. That data breach should never have been allowed
01:17to happen. It's terrifying. Matt, as you say, we owe a huge debt of regret to the people that
01:24helped our forces in Afghanistan at the time. Not just our translators, but the cooks, the drivers,
01:30everybody involved. However, there are a lot of people on this list that we don't know who they
01:34are. We don't know the reasons for being over here. But what we do know is that Afghans are more
01:40than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens. What are
01:46you going to do to ensure that British women and girls are safe? Well, I think in that... Do you know
01:54what? I've been making a lot of noise about this, actually, in the differential arrest rates that
01:59different people of different nationalities go through. Fundamentally, the debate around that
02:03and the fact that anybody who commits an offence in this country should be removed. And we certainly
02:08should not be allowing people to come here who pose a threat to British citizens in such a way. If there's one
02:13person who has arrived in this country and has a history of doing such a thing, then that's one
02:18person too many and they should not be allowed to stay and they should be deported immediately.
02:22But how much do the... How much do the politicians... Because, I mean, it's both... It's
02:26Conservatives and the Labour Party here. How much do politicians know exactly about who is coming into
02:31the country? Well, I mean, in the case of these Afghanis, we should know all about them because we know
02:38who these individuals are that are arriving. But then in the case of people who are arriving in this country
02:41illegally, very little is known, which makes it utterly terrifying. That's why we should be
02:47removing them all. The problem is with the Afghanis, you don't know who they are. You don't know
02:52what their background is. We know that, well, some of the stories today that sex offenders are amongst
02:57them. Well, I don't know that there's any evidence that there are sex offenders amongst them.
03:03But we do know who they are because we had that list, that list that was the subject of the data breach.
03:08So we do know who these individuals are. And they should be getting checked. The authorities
03:13should be checking every one of those individuals. Any one of them that pose the risk should be
03:16removed. I understand that there's been things said about them, but I haven't seen any evidence
03:20yet that any of those people are. So I always think it's dangerous for someone like me to comment
03:24if there's no firm evidence that that's the case.
03:27Matt, in your view, who should be held accounts to this? Should it be the individual who leaked this list?
03:34Should it be someone higher up in authority? Because there's a number of former ministers
03:39speaking on the record yesterday saying that, you know, people alleging that people were covering this
03:44up and that there is this clearly has caused a lot of tension in terms of more money that taxpayers
03:50are having to pay on this. Well, the individual who breached the the security around this and allowed
03:57that list to fall into the wrong hands is ultimately responsible. I think that they should definitely
04:03be held to account. I think fundamentally we have to look at there are all sorts of safeguards and
04:07checks that should be in place on data like this, particularly in the Ministry of Defence. We need
04:11to look at where those failings were specifically and who is responsible for allowing flawed systems
04:17that let this data get into the wrong hands because, as we've said, huge consequences for the British
04:23taxpayer and huge consequences for the people who were named on that list. Matt, we had a survey earlier
04:28in the week that 90 per cent of the British public do not trust the political classes. This situation
04:33isn't going to help that, is it? No. Well, I think it's damaging for people's confidence in the
04:39government. It's damaging for people's confidence in the Ministry of Defence and it's damaging for
04:43people's confidence probably in politicians as well. Matt, we've heard from Lord David Anderson about the
04:54PREVENT scheme and he's found that the anti-terror scheme PREVENT has failed to provide help that may
04:59have stopped the killers of the three girls in Southport last year and the MP Sir David Amis. What
05:07now should be done with that anti-terror scheme to make sure it's up to scratch? I think the entire thing
05:14needs to be looked at in the round. I mean, when you look at these outcomes, the thought that what went on in
05:19Southport could be prevented is terrifying. It's just not acceptable that they think they've missed
05:25this and it's cost people their lives. I mean, Sir David Amis, I knew Sir David Amis well, an incredible
05:30guy who had so much more to give to public life, just an incredible individual whose life was cut
05:35short. And then when you hear the story and how many opportunities, because it wasn't once that it was
05:39missed, it wasn't twice. There seems to have been a series of errors that allowed individuals like this
05:44to slip through the net. Fundamentally, it's broken and we need to go back to the drawing board,
05:48look again at what's going on and how we fix this so this can never happen again. Opportunities to
05:53prevent these situations cannot be allowed to carry on. Matt, prevent have been failing for a
06:00long time. Why didn't you do something about it when you were in power? I think fundamentally,
06:05lots of people would tell you all the cases that are solved and are fixed. But today we've got it in
06:09black and white in that report of somebody who's looked at this, who's investigated it objectively and
06:15found those flaws, has found what's gone wrong, has found the opportunities that were missed. And
06:20one of the things that actually you do need to look at with Prevent is the fact that it's caseload,
06:24it's something like 93% of all deaths as a result of terrorism in this country since the 90s,
06:29as a result of Islamist terrorism. Yet the caseload of Prevent is something like 13%
06:36of it is looking at Islamist terrorism. We need to get on top of that, we need to make sure that
06:40what they are looking at is the right thing, that some of these ideological terrorists are
06:47investigated properly and we're looking at what is the real threat. But if you'd have done something
06:52when you were in power, Matt, your government or you personally, obviously, maybe those three
06:55little girls in Southport would still be alive. Well, I think that Prevent is constantly being
07:01reviewed and constantly being looked at. Today, we've got the evidence, the black and white evidence
07:05of someone who's looked at it objectively and found factual failings. I don't think that
07:10necessarily that has happened on such a scale before. It's been as black and white as that.
07:14And these things, these things may have been more effective at points in their existence than they
07:19are now. Matt, we've heard this morning that Pakistani airlines will be allowed to fly back into
07:24Britain for the first time in five years. What's your initial reaction to that? Has the government
07:31made the right decision by giving it the green lights? And are we getting anything in return for
07:35that? I think, you know what, you've got to look at the facts that present themselves. I'm sure the
07:40government has looked at those facts, looked at the case and what that means for us. I don't know
07:47that we're getting anything out of it other than opening that doorway and seeing where it goes to.
07:51Matt, I think we've run out of time there, but thank you very much for joining us at Matt Vickers, MP,
07:58Shadow Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, Matt.
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