You want to talk about neighborhood policing to start with?

Yes, please. We think that it's really important when half of the public say they never see any police officers on the streets, and they're right. We need to make sure that we have more police there, and there are some really important policing that isn't being done properly at the moment. So we need to increase the number of community police officers by 13,000, and their job will be to make sure that they're in the town centers dealing with shoplifting, dealing with antisocial behavior, drugs dealing, the things that the public complain to me about. As I go up and down the country, we know that not enough is being done and we need to respond to that. We found a way of being able to pay for it so that the 43 police services all buy their stuff individually, which is just extraordinary. So you'll get one police force spending £20 on a police baton and another police force spending £120. It's like madness. And obviously, if they all If you can work together, then you can get them things cheaper because they'll be a bigger customer. But also you'll get a consistency. And the Independent Police Foundation has said that if they were to buy it nationally, we could save £700 million.

We've said, Well, we're not sure of that. We're not sure of that figure. So what we'll do is we'll just commit to spending half of that to be on the conservative side. So if we spend half of that, we can get the increase in the number of police officers that we all know that we need.

Why didn't you do it when you were in power last time?

I don't know, but it was a long time ago. But this is over the last 13, 14 years. The government have talked about doing it occasionally, but then they never do it. Well, we will, and we'll save all this money, and we'll be able to spend it properly. It's the public's money.

What's your take on the way the Met behaved last week?

I think it was wrong, clearly. And insensitive, and they do need to understand that... I mean, look, it's very difficult policing all of these demonstrations. I appreciate that we're asking a great deal of our police, but that's their job. But it was a mistake, the way in which they treated, because anybody should feel safe on the street. They should be allowed to do whatever they want on the streets. We shouldn't be saying to one community, Oh, no, clear off the streets because we're having a demonstration. No. Our democracy means that anyone can demonstrate, but anyone can be there. And if you don't understand that, you need to have that corrected. And the Met didn't respond properly. They now know that they didn't, and hopefully it'll never happen again.

It's not a sacking matter, or is it for the-No, I don't think it is.

Commander, Commissioner? No, I don't think it is. But I do think that we need to make sure that doesn't happen again.

We saw what happened in the channel yesterday, seven-year-old girl amongst those that died. I had Grant Shapps on the show this morning, and he said, That is why we need to send people to Rwanda as a deterrent so they won't get on the boats to start with.

It doesn't make any sense. What we need to do is we need to crush the gangs that are organizing these boats. That's what we need to do. And that should be the priority. And the problem for this government is that they've got themselves hooked on this idea of sending a few hundred people to Rwanda is going to solve it. And nothing that anyone can say can change their minds. And the amount of money they're going to spend on each person, if anybody gets sent, is going to cost £2 million per person. Now, if we were to spend that money instead on increasing our security services, in making sure that we have returns units, making sure that instead of sending people on a plane to Rwanda, we make sure that where they've come from is safe, and if it is safe, we send them back there. That's what we should be doing. We should be prioritizing crushing the gangs, working with the French properly, increasing the amount of security, and frankly, not wasting the public's me on this gimmick.

So you would scrap it from the get-go?

Yeah, we would replace it with our own legislation, which we would need to have in order to make sure that we increase the powers and change the way in which we do things in accordance with our plan.

But that would take time. So from a standing start, what's the plan?

From a standing start is that we need to start making some decisions. Nobody's having any decisions made at the moment. I have people coming in to see me who have been waiting for years for a decision to be made, even on the basis of, are they entitled to be here or aren't they entitled to be here? And it just seems as though the Home Office is just standing, holding its breath, waiting for Rwanda. No, that needs do more than this, and they're not.

And labor would continue with the 2.5% of GDP as and when you came to power for defense spending?

Not as and when we come to power, but as and when we can. So when circumstances allow. So we want to move towards 2.5%. I mean, it was 2.5% when we were last in power, but we need to move towards that. And we're not going to say that we're going to do it by 2030, as the government have said, unless there's a plan that makes sense. And to be honest, you wouldn't expect me to come on and say that we could spend 75 billion pounds by 2030 without having a plan as to where we were going to get the money from. I mean, exactly why it is the government thinks they can say this, because for example, yesterday where they produced this 22-page document about defense and what they were going to do without a single word about how they were going to pay for it. It's just a gimmick. I mean, in the run up to a general election, I know that you will because you're really fair-minded. You will hold both of us to account, both Labor and Conservatives. They should not be allowed to say that they can spend £146 billion getting rid of national insurance without saying where the money is coming from.

They shouldn't be able to say that they can spend £75 billion on defense by 2030 without saying where the money is coming from. I hope that I will never come on here and do that.

What do you make of the suggestions from Ofcom? This is a bit left field for you. Okay, we're worried now. About politicians being presenters?

Oh, well, yeah. Do you think you'd be a good one? I like my day job, to be honest. You could do both. That's the point. I don't think I could do both. I honestly don't think I could. I I think I'm one of life's enthusiasts, and I think that when I was given the great honor of representing Islington South and Finsbury, it just took up every waking moment. I just loved it. And then I was given an additional job on top and thought I'd never be able to do it. I have been able to do both. But I don't know how they get time to do presenting because you can't just walk into a television studio, as you know, and just present a program. It's easy. Yeah, right. But there's a lot of work that needs to go on behind it if you're going to do it properly.

So you don't fancy it? No. Maybe we could job swap.

Kay. Leave my constituency alone.

It's good to see you as.