We sat down with Prime Minister Keir Starmer to talk about his commitment to 2.5% of GDP on defense and tackling the crisis in UK prisons.
Gary Gibbons: You have talked about 2.5 percent of GDP that you want to spend on defense at some point in the future. There is some puzzlement back about how if you are going to have a review, and then it can come out the date you will press it, and yet you will have a review spent before that. So you’re about to decide on an envelope, but somehow you end up throwing out the envelope later. It’s not quite a tally.
Keir Starmer: The commitment to 2.5 percent is absolute. And we’re going to get that 2.5 percent. It is very important. We have to do it in our fiscal rules. I think that really emphasizes the seriousness of what we do. If I sit here and say to you, ‘We will earn 2.5 percent, I will choose an arbitrary date, I will not tell you how to earn money’, you will say that the plan is unserious.
Gary Gibbons: But it seems unserious if you are going to review spending and going all the cash envelopes and you have not been able to get out when you want to press 2.5. There won’t be enough money for defense, so you’ll have to remove anything else you don’t want to remove.
Keir Starmer: We will meet in our fiscal rules. Obviously we will go through the exercise. There is also a strategic review, which is to look at risks and capabilities…
Gary Gibbons: But it’s not a mistake, these two things, right?
Keir Starmer: We now have access to material that, understandably and correctly, was not accessible before the government. So we’re going to do that strategic review. A commitment to 2.5 percent is a commitment. The commitments that we have made as a government, that I have made. But we need a clear path. This is what we expect from a serious government.
Gary Gibbons: You know what I mean, these things are not tied properly. But can I ask you something, you said you were seriously looking at books and stuff. We had Rachel Reeves there, some people said a sort of pearl-clutching horror in what the book looks like. But through the general election, we can all hear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, almost every economist we talk to, say what’s wrong with the book. You’ve got the OBR telling you regularly how the book looks. There’s something sort of performative, a bit contrived, about it, because that’s how it is.
Keir Starmer: Let me really find that head on. If you take one issue that comes up quickly, which is prison, then I’m afraid that what I found was worse than I expected. I am very familiar…
Gary Gibbons: Right, I mean again…
Keir Starmer: I can tell you’re right…
Gary Gibbons: The Association of Prison Governors has issued a statement that they tell you what it’s like. You’ve talked a lot before, you know it’s bad.
Keir Starmer: Worse, worse. It was shocking. Obviously, I know this field very well, but it is a basic function of government to make sure that we have the necessary prison space for those who are sent to prison by the courts. For those who have broken down is the catastrophic failure of the last government. It is a very high level of carelessness and irresponsibility. And I would say that this is not a party politics issue. It is the basic function of government. And it’s worse than we thought.
Gary Gibbons: You have appointed James Timpson as the minister of prisons, and this makes people think again, that what you said in the election about reducing crime and so on, you are doing familiar rhetoric, tough talk. But James Timpson is a man who believes that about a third of people, especially women, who are in prison, should not be there. There should be more punishment in the community, like rethinking prisons, which you don’t use in elections. You’re just talking about building another prison. Is it true where you are? Are you closer to James Timpson’s thinking?
Keir Starmer: I spent five years of my life as a prosecutor, bringing cases that sent serious criminals to prison for long periods of time, and it was true…
Gary Gibbons: I asked about something else.
Keir Starmer: In regards to the work that can be done to prevent people from going to prison, I always believe that there are cases that should not be taken to court. So if you look at some of the things we said in the election about knife crime and tackling crime that is particularly prevalent among young people, we want a youth hub, which is an opportunity to pull young people out of their lives.
Gary Gibbons: Indeed, and that is in the manifesto. But what is missing from the manifesto is that the more community sentencing, the less people go to prison. It sounds like you’re going to send the rest to prison. You want to build another prison. Is it true that you think there are too many people getting prison sentences that they shouldn’t have? Maybe especially women?
Keir Starmer: We are not doing a review of the sentence. We are dealing with the problem immediately…
Gary Gibbons: So what was James Timpson doing there? He has all these beliefs.
Keir Starmer: We are dealing with an immediate problem, which is that we have too many prisoners for the prison places we have got. This is a complete failure of the last government, we have to deal with it.
Gary Gibbons: I was told my time was up. No more thinking about punishment?
Keir Starmer: We will look at the punishment in the round, but the problem I address this week is not the punishment.
Gary Gibbons: Looks like someone is thinking again.
Keir Starmer: I am not discussing the sentencing policy. I’m talking about something more basic. That is, this government has made a complete mess of prisons, and we have to vote. We will have to fix it, and yes, then we will have to see what the long-term fix is. But the immediate problem we are left with is the very serious problem of too many prisoners for the number of prisons. And I can’t build a prison overnight, as is obvious.
