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tv   Wednesday in Parliament  BBC News  June 7, 2018 2:30am-3:01am BST

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opposition politicians in guatemala have called for the sacking of the head of the emergency response agency, saying it failed to heed advance warnings about the deadly eruption of the fuego volcano. 99 people are now known to have died since sunday in a series of volcanic eruptions. an american grandmother jailed for more than 20 years on a non—violent drugs charge has been released from prison after she was granted clemency by president trump. her case was highlighted by reality tv star, kim kardashian west, who met mr trump last week to lobby for her release. britain's grenfell inquiry has heard that the man who lived in the flat where the fire started was not responsible for the tragedy. a lawyer for behailu kebede said his client alerted his flatmates and neighbours as soon as he saw smoke and claims that he left the building to burn were a nasty lie. now on bbc news: wednesday in parliament. hello and welcome to the programme.
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coming up: theresa may refuses to say when she'll publish the government's detailed brexit plan. it's not the opposition that are conducting the negotiations. but very sadly, mr speaker, it's not the government either. but the prime minister hits back. labour voted for a referendum. they've voted to trigger article 50. and since then, they have tried to frustrate the brexit process at every stage. hear, hear! and: tsb bosses face a grilling over the bank's it meltdown. you pay yourself massive amounts of money, defining yourselves as leaders. can we be certain that some heads are going to roll? looming very large on the parliamentary horizon
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is the return of the key brexit legislation — the eu withdrawal bill — to the house of commons next week. on tuesday and wednesday, mps will go through the 15 changes the house of lords made to the bill and vote on whether they should be overturned or not. so, looking ahead at prime minister's questions, the labour leader focused on the government's strategy, while theresa may focused on labour's policy. jeremy corbyn kicked off by asking about the government's detailed plans setting out the uk's future relationship with the eu: the white paper. yes, my right honourable friend the brexit secretary and i agree that we want to publish a white paper that goes beyond the speeches... that goes beyond the speeches
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and the papers that have been given and published so far. that does go into more details. and that ensures that, when we publish that white paper, we are able to negotiate with our european union and european commission colleagues on that. on the basis that this is an ambitious offer from the united kingdom, for an ambitious trade deal and security partnership in the future. jeremy corbyn! well, the question was a very simple one, actually. it was: when will this white paper be published? because next week, we will be debating the most important piece of legislation for a very long time, and we still have not seen the government's negotiating position. perhaps the right honourable gentleman would like to take the opportunity of doing what he refused to do two or three weeks ago in this chamber, which is to stand up and rule out a second referendum. hear, hear! jeremy corbyn! mr speaker, the last time i looked at the order paper it said prime ministers question time.
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hear, hear! i didn't ask him a question. i simply suggested that he could stand up and say what the labour party policy was on a second referendum. hear, hear! it's not the opposition that are conducting the negotiations. but very sadly, mr speaker, it's not the government either. hear, hear! so can the prime minister confirm that it remains her plan to leave the european union in march 2019, and complete the transition by december 2020 7 prime minister. yes. jeremy corbyn. ah! well, mr speaker, i look at the faces behind her and they're not all of one on this matter. hear, hear! the labour leader came to his final question. when it comes to brexit,
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this government has delivered more delays and more cancellations than northern rail. hear, hear! the government's white paper is delayed. its customs proposals have been cancelled. and it's ripped up its own timetable. just like our shambolic privatised railways. hear, hear! this government's incompetence threatens our economy, businesses, jobs and our communities. hear, hear! so, my question... my question to the prime minister is this: which will last longer, the northern rail franchise or her premiership? hear, hear! prime minister! i say to the right honourable gentleman, that if he's not willing to stand up in this house and talk about the labour party policy on europe — we actually learned a little today from the shadow brexit secretary about the labour party's policy on europe,
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where he made clear that it was a pretence. and i quote: "a pretence that somehow everybody in the labour party is in the same place on this". so, now we know what the right honourable gentleman is. labour voted for a referendum. they've voted to trigger article 50. and since then, they have tried to frustrate the brexit process at every stage. hear, hear! but others criticised both the conservatives and labour over their brexit policies. while the leader of the opposition is playing games, the question he should have asked today is: will the prime minister stop her charade and vote for the lords next week, for membership of the eea and the customs union, protecting jobs and prosperity? the brexit vote means families are already £900 a year worse off, while both tories and labour pedal affection of single market rewards without responsability. i asked the prime minister
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and her honourable friend said the opposition, how much poor will families become, as they indulge in fantasy politics? hear, hear! but theresa may did receive support from one conservative who'd recently resigned from an unpaid role in the government in order to, as she put it, fight for brexit. but hasn't the time come that we reiterate to our eu friends, echoing it in words of the prime minister herself, that "no deal is better than a bad deal"? and can i ask my right honourable friend what circumstances is she prepared to walk away from the negotiations, saving the british taxpayer billions of pounds? in reply the prime minister stressed she was willing to walk away from the negotiations and government departments were preparing for all contingencies. now, the chief executive of the tsb, paul pester, has already offered numerous apologies to customers for the problems caused by the it meltdown at the bank.
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and on wednesday he said sorry again. the tsb moved the records of its five million customers to a new computer system in april. the changeover meant some customers couldn't access their accounts online and others were targeted by fraudsters. one customer logged on to find he was £1.2 million overdrawn. in his second appearance before the treasury committee in five weeks, mr pester faced some tough questioning. do you think that tsb deserves to be nicknamed the truly shambolic bank? well, i think this whole situation as tsb has been a terrible situation for tsb customers. the migration, the subsequent for the tech. the fact that even when we sent letters to customers we managed to put more letters in a single envelope, all of it collectively has created a terrible time for our tsb customers and i apologise unreservedly for that. what about a letter
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the financial conduct authority sent to the tsb? you received a letter from the fca on 25th of april about your communications with customers. that letter reminded you of the importance of ensuring that tsb's communications were clear, fair and not misleading. and reflected the true position of your associates. do you accept that you fell short on that? well, i apologise if we fell short on any of our communications. no, do you accept that you misled customers? and maybe misled this committee? no, i do not accept that i have intentionally misled this committee. as the fca has said in the letter to the chair of the committee: there is no evidence that i have misled or tsb has misled the committee. one mp raised the case of a constituent who couldn't access her account before her wedding. ijust wonder how much you paid her? i am aware that we have paid miss mikhail money. i don't have in my head
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what the amount was. you don't? but i am aware that we have paid her compensation. what sort of figure do you think of the appropriate for someone‘s whose wedding has been — i will use a polite word — messed around? without having the specific details on how it was messed around — and i'm not trying in the slightest to be... i gave you them last time. you've messed around her wedding, put a lot of stress on her. i'd raised it with your last time. and i wonder what kind of figure you thought was appropriate. i can't give you an answer to that today. you said — to quote you — the amount will be calculated based on stress and emotional distress. and i hope that is how it has been done because i'm aware she had recieved compensation, but i haven't got in my head what the amount is. £100. you're paying pitiful, embarrassing, cringeworthy levels of compensation. beyond any credulity
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of anyone, in my estimation. which i find deeply disturbing because that suggests something fundamentally wrong at the heart of the leadership team. you pay yourself massive amounts of money, defining yourself as leaders. can we be certain that some heads are going to roll? if that's said to me. as i said, we are not going to prejudge. it would be wrong to prejudge. but clearly, and as i had just said, depending on what the investigation shows us about what has gone wrong here, we will take action. the tsb has also had problems with customers asking to switch accounts. some cases when customers are asked to switch away from tsb, the bank had written to the councils or the utility providers, to inform them — and other organisations — to inform them that they had died and they hadn't, obviously.
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i think the fca made it clear to us that that was a software issue. but i'd like to know how many people have been affected by that? well, 370 people, to the best of my knowledge, have been affected by this. and i wouldn't describe it as a software issue. i would describe it as a failing in our service to those customers. i mean, it's deeply distressing. and once again he apologised unreservedly. you're watching wednesday in parliament with me, mandy baker. "men are demonised in the media and trashed as a waste of space." that's the thought—provoking view of one commentator for the times, who was giving evidence to the women and equalities committee. the committee is investigating sexual harassment. do you think that sexist attitudes
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portrayed on the media would have an effect on workplace culture for example? well, they may do. in that they normalise those sorts of behaviours. but there is a great deal of sexist attitudes in mass media against men. the casual demonisation of men. men are held up as the butt of ridicule. they are regularly trashed for being intrinsically stupid, violent, a waste of space. and if one's saying that mass the representations of women in a negative way have an effect on behaviour toward women, that i am suggesting that it must follow that the equivalent attitudes towards men must have a similar effect upon the behaviour towards men. and why is it that you think that men, who vastly make the media, would demonise themselves? i am not saying that men demonise themselves. i say that they are portrayed in a demonised fashion. it is mainly women that do that
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and feel they are able to do so with impunity on the basis that it is the default position that masculinity is intrinsically a problem. a consequence that seems to me as a kind of default position in the media that merely reflects... so, you think that it's women leading the default position of the media? do think that women lead that? in terms of unpleasant stereotypes about men, i think that women are leading those... i'm proud to hear that we've got such power. gender stereotypes are bad for everyone. yeah, that is definitely true. and she said the #metoo movement had "shifted" the understanding of the word harassment. to me, harassment is something that is which is protracted, protracted unwanted advances. whereas personally, i would have thought... i did think when the whole #metoo controversy had gotten under way, a number of things which i would not classify personally as harassment were being conflated
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with real harassment. so, crass, misjudged... maladroit. .. sexual advances. of which i would call in times gone by clumsy attempts at flirting or misinterpreted signals. these things happen. and they happen from women to men and from women to women and from men to men. they happen in personal relationships all the time. and these are things i think that before #metoo, many of us thought that we just had to get on with and just accept it and deal with, and i don't mean just submit to them. i mean deal with them in a personal way. and what has happened now it seems to me is that... do think we should have to deal them? i think that it's kind of adult to make a judgement as to whether a set of behaviours is truly a threat or whether it is simply
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a social misjudgment. the british board of film classification has been researching public attitudes to sexual violence in films. there was public concern about sexually violent content in films. i'm not talking about pornography, i'm talking about regular film and video. and there was support for intervention by us as the regulator to remove some of the more egregious examples. for example, depictions of sexual violence that suggested victims enjoy being raped. or to propagate the rape myth. or invite viewer complicity with the attacker, for example. so we take a very strict line with the kind of content. we won't classify it. as part of our general guidelines, consultations and standards we are talking to around 10,000 people at the moment. about a range of issues and sexual violence and how we classify sexual violence as part of that. and what we have seen already of course we will not finish in to the end of the year and we will publish their results in early 2019 that among... we were asking the public specifically about sexual violence
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15—18 that they think they're drawing a line in the right place and they do seem to be suggesting based on preliminary results that we should be stricter in our classification of sexual violence. david austin from the british board of film classification. the home secretary and one of his top civil servants have faced tough questioning over the way windrush generation migrants were treated by home office officials. it was revealed earlier this year that hundreds of people who came to britain from the caribbean in the post—war decades had been denied access to services, and some threatened with deportation, in a crackdown on illegal immigration. the revelations eventually led to the resignation of amber rudd as home secretary. parliament's human rights committee has focused on two people who were detained on home office instructions. first the case of paulette wilson. she was detained and as i say after this evidence has come through from the jamaican high commission, she was detained twice in august 2017 and in october 2017 on the basis that,
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and i quote, "there was no current evidence of her lawful entry." what do you make of that? we didn't take a holistic view of that evidence. this would be happening in the task force. and help her to build a picture of her residence in the uk and therefore her status under the 1971 act. and again, i do think that was... a mistake. the committee moved on to the case of anthony bryan. could we move beyond the idea of, could we ask you to leave the idea of there being an initial mistake? there was not an initial mistake. it was an initial mistake by... there was a mistake by every single person who took this file to the next stage which then ended up with mr bryan been locked up. yes, chair.
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absolutely. i'm not... sorry if i gave the wrong impression. i am not seeking to say that mistakes were not made throughout the course of this. i was saying the first step to this was the application to ukbi... can i bring just another point to you? paulette wilson's daughter who has been something of a heroine in this situation on behalf of her daughter, she remonstrating with the home office — "this is my mum." and her remonstrations lead to her being banned from being with her mother in the home office. and i must say when i saw what she did on behalf of her mother, it was all i could do not to stand up and cheer for this woman. because she was doing what any daughter would do when her mother was being subjected to a terrible injustice. this is what she said. this is the file note from the home office. "i advised her mother that her daughter would not be allowed into the building in future. the daughter started to swear, stating, ‘you are an..."
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and you can understand can't you why you would say that? "you are a..." "you can." "it's my mum!" this is what was going on. there was extreme distress. there was piles of evidence. there was the lawyers but there was this other strand which was extreme distressed. instead of being responded to by the department they banned the daughter and locked her mother up. what you think of that? i think it was a very badly— handled case. iagree. joanna. people might be forgiven for thinking that this is either gross incompetence or a deliberate course of conduct ignoring evidence in order to perhaps reach some target for detention and deportation. i certainly... i would say that certainly from the time i have been
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in the home office i have seen no evidence of that. i would find very hard to believe that anyone would deliberately ignore any evidence. i think that... the explanation probably lies much more in what we're able to discuss and what i've tried to articulate the general approach of not being personal enough, not applying enough common sense and not just trying to sort of be more sympathetic and more trusting of the information we're receiving. sajid javid. the former chief executive of cambridge analytica, the political consultancy at the heart of the row about facebook and privacy, has suggested he's the victim of a conspiracy theory. alexander nix was recalled to give evidence to the culture committee as part of its inquiry into fake news. we were simply the guys who were perceived to have contributed to the trump campaign and were wrongly accredited with being the architects of brexit. and as a result of the polarising
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nature of this to political campaigns, the global liberal media took umbrage and decided to put us in their cross hairs and launch a coordinated, extremely well coordinated and effective attack on us as a company. in order to destroy our reputations and business. according to you, everything that has been written and said about cambridge analytica is wrong. yet the only thing we've ever heard from you directly and your own admission is a pack of lies. so you can understand the frustration that you deny everything that's ever been written or said about you and then when you are caught going on the record saying something your reaction is that it is all lies. you can understand that it is a frustrating position for us to be in to have to listen and to try and... that's not true.
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it's not as hard as it is for me, sir. alexander nix. four cases against men accused of rape collapsed in december and january after it emerged that vital evidence hadn't been passed to their defence lawyers. as a result, the crown prosecution service ordered a review of rape and sexual assault cases in england and wales. a labour former attorney general asked thejustice minister about what he thought was a discrepancy in the views of the director of public prosecutions, alison saunders. would you like to comment on it yesterday's evidenced by the director of public prosecutions which the first honourable gentleman's assertion that you do not think the closure failings would have led to people being wronglyjailed? who was the blame to for the situation? is it the police or the cps? the minister pointed out that new technology
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was increasing pressure. we now live in an environment in which there are vast quantities of social media, instagram, facebook and the like, all of which can be contained upon one or two mobile devices. and which make demands upon both the police service, the crown prosecution service and indeed a defence that did not exist ten years ago. we must meet those demands. we accept that going through data confiscated from smartphones is time—consuming and expensive. but fairness and justice require, can they it a guarantee that the government will respond to recent affairs by giving all necessary resources to be devoted to this work to ensure we do it achieve full disclosure of relevant material to the defence? a liberal democrat former metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner, referred to an interview given by a former director of public prosecutions, ken macdonald. he may not have heard my noble
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friend, former director of public prosecutions, say on newsnight last night that he felt that it was as a result a 25% reduction in funding for the cps and the loss of hundreds of lawyers. and can i add to that potentially the loss of thousands of police officers and 25 ongoing reduction percent in their resources that could be to blame. i know that we need to use could... —— i note your post to make careful use of the word could. we need to await the outcome of the present inquiries and investigations before we draw any conclusions. lord keen. finally, in the dying stages of prime minister's questions, the conservative mp chris davies returned to the question of whether mps will next week overturn the changes made to the eu withdrawal bill by peers.
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the biggest challenge between the commons and the lords takes place next week. yes, i am referring to the lords versus commons pigeon race. there hasn't been a pigeon race of this nature for 90 years, but soon it'll take its place in the parliamentary calendar alongside such delights as the dog of the year contest, the pancake race and as recently as tuesday night, the commons vs lords tug of war. to give it its due, the revived pigeon race did inspire this memorable line from theresa may. i am happy to sponsor a pigeon and i would encourage every member of this house do so as well. i'll add that to my list of things i never thought i'd hear a prime minister say. and on that note, from me, mandy baker, goodbye. hello there. good morning. this forecast may seem repetitive
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because the weather pattern is not changing very much over the next few days. it will be difficult to pin down the details of the showers. a shower today across more southern parts of england and many places will be dry with sunshine. here is where the showers are coming from. there has been a lot of rain over the near continent and most of those storms are staying over the near continent at a couple of crossing the channel and heading into the southern parts of england. they are quite hit and miss. most places will be dry and we will seek perhaps more mist and fog and widely developing sunshine. chance of a shower again to the westernmost parts of scotland and to the west of northern ireland. typical temperatures into the low 20s. typical around the north sea coast especially when the cloud remains. more of our low cloud coming back in overnight and showers in the north—west will fade away. one of two could keep going to the
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south—west and south wales that generally speaking it will be dry over most places. double—figure temperatures. after a misty and make use of a mixed up which should see good weather develop widely but again, the risk of a few storms moving northwards into england and wales and the risk of a few more brushing the west of northern ireland and the far west of scotland. those temperatures are all around the mid—teens near the east coast because of the onshore flow. and that is because there is high pressured to the north and lower pressured to the north and lower pressure to the south. it is around the low pressure that we seek heavy showers and thunderstorms. on saturday a gain most of the more away towards the new continent and a few will wander into england and wales. not sure exactly where. most places will be dry with sunshine. maybe a few more heavy thundery showers across northern ireland and towards the north—west of scotland. again, cabbages in the low 20s on saturday. as we head into the second half of the weekend, this lower pressure, a flabby area of low
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pressure, a flabby area of low pressure in the south moves look and with the weather front which could see some heavy rain moving across the channel into the southern counties of england. in the north, a few more heavy slow—moving showers across scotland and perhaps reaching northern ireland. central areas may be dry with differences in temperature. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: calls for the sacking of guatemala's head of emergency services, after the agency failed to act on warnings of eruptions of the fuego volcano. the death toll rises to 99. president trump grants clemency to a grandmother serving a life sentence, after a plea from reality tv star, kim kardashian west. britain's grenfell tower inquiry hears from the man who lived in the flat where the fire started. and the salamander, the conservationists and some mexican nuns. we'll tell you about the unlikely alliance to save the axolotl.
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