Transcripts For BBCNEWS Newsnight 20170905 : comparemela.com

Transcripts For BBCNEWS Newsnight 20170905

What it looks like. We will ask how bad Hurricane Irma can be and what parts of the caribbean and the us are most at risk. This is the first timea are most at risk. This is the first time a woman and her daughter have spoken about Grenfell Tower. And a warning, this film contains content which we may find distressing. I was sleeping and my mum, she got up, she saw the whole house, the kitchen was on fire, so she grabbed me and she told me to get the dog, so i got the dog and i ran out. On their way to see what could become their new home, beauty salon owner helen and her daughter lulya lived on the 21st floor of Grenfell Tower. They had a terrifying escape with neighbours, three hours after the fire broke out. This is the first time theyve spoken publicly about their ordeal. Ijust looked up, at the window, there was a fire, i saw the fire coming, so ijust ran, and i grabbed my daughter. Helen and lulya are talking to us now because they and so many others face yet another battle for a new home. A battle that can end up pitting resident against resident. The plan is to rehouse some grenfell tenants in what is termed Affordable Housing in this new development. Helen and lulya thought they were going to visit a lower floor flat, only to find out it had been given to someone else. Instead they were shown one far higher up, on the tenth floor. These details can be all important. When you see the full windows and the height, that is the difficulty for me. My mum likes them, the rooms and everything are ok, but its not what i think they should be showing us, because of what happened. I never used to have any type of problem with anything, but now im getting anxious whenever i see any Tall Buildings or anything. So, its a big change for me. The council has opened a website to match Grenfell Residents with a new home. Flats are being offered under a four band priority system. Helen believes that is divisive at a time when the towers former tenants still feel traumatised and vulnerable. Why should i bid . I should be priority as well. We are the ones, we came from the 21st floor, all the way down, my daughter, she was stuck on the tenth floor and she was in a coma for ten days, so how come i am not priority . How . We nearly lost our life. Does she have to be dead for them to prioritise me . No. It should not work that way. In fact, its not fair what theyre doing its not fair. Kensington and Chelsea Council say this is a matching rather than bidding process. Those who lost a Family Member are number one priority, then comes anyone with a disability, then those with dependents and then Grenfell Residents and evacuated residents of nearby grenfell walk. None of the flats in Grenfell Tower had a balcony. After their horrific experience, helen and lulya are adamant that their new home will have one. The flat they were initially shown didnt. The fact that the fire was coming from the outside and the fire was on the kitchen wall, so if you have a balcony, you could step out and you would have a bigger chance of being rescued, so they could bring anything to come and save you. Hear their story, and you understand their logic. We tried to come out three times, but then, we had to go out the fourth, because the bedrooms were already on fire. So, we had to take the stairs. I had my dog. My friend luwanna had her dog. This was around liz30am. Smoke had long ago entered Grenfell Towers only stairwell. While i was going down, all the smoke, it was really thick, so its like thick airgoing into you, its really strong. I can hear everyone trying to find air, like everyone screaming, choking, gagging, then i trip over someone, someone lying on the floor, which is the worst part of everything. So, im squeezing my dog so much and my dog is trying to reach up to me and i roll down the stairs with my dog. I roll down like another ten sets of stairs and. And then i passed out and then i let go of my dog because i couldnt breathe any more. My dog is so clever though. After id passed out and i dropped him, he went back up to the 21st floor, which is the floor that we lived on, and he was with. Lily, the other dog, they found them both together. Lulya spent ten days in an induced coma undergoing treatment for cyanide poisoning. When youre sleeping, you feel numb. Like, you dont know whats happening. Youre sleeping, you feel relaxed, but in a coma, you feel everything. You feel whats happening. You feel all the pain. But. But you cant move. Its like youre paralysed. Neither lulya nor helen will ever forget their experience. Im saying to myself, you know, itsjust a bad dream. You know, just a bad dream. But, no, its not. It did happen and its really bad. Its very very bad. It will always be with us. Well never forget. I dont want to forget. But i want to overcome it. I dont want to forget. Its a lesson. Helen and lulya have now seen two flats that theye keen on. Helen and lulya have now seen two flats that theyre keen on. Theyre still waiting to find out if either will become their new home. She really liked the third floor, so lets hope they can do something about the third floor for us. Because weve been let down and i hope theyre not going to let us down again. I hope so. Yes. Helen and daughter lulya talking to katie razzle. In a statement, kensington and Chelsea Council deputy leader Kim Taylor Smith told us the council had prioritised bereaved families and made accommodation offers to them all. He added that the council had secured more than 100 homes to resettle people and said the housing team was working hard to find homes for everyone. No one david davis observed today of brexit negotiations ever pretended this would be simple or easy. The brexit secretary came before the commons with a concrete example of something he had managed to agree with the eu negotiator this week continued use of the european wide Health Insurance card for those britons living in the eu when this country leaves the bloc. Its a step that will reassure many older retirees outside of britain although we dont yet know if the same priveleges will apply to tourists and visitors as they do at present. The chance to dwell on this was shortlived, however. This evening, the guardian splashed on a leaked government proposal that suggests britain might End Free Movement of labour immediately after brexit. Something mooted, but never previously laid quite so bare. Chris cook our policy editor and nick watt our Political Editor are here. Does this sound like confirmation of what we knew would happen . It is a lot more colour in the picture. The dilemma was that we wanted a really smooth transition after leaving the eu, we wanted eu to treat us much like a memberfor a little while until we get our acts together just that and that we wanted to convince the eu that basically Free Movement was probably going to continue during that transition period. At the same time the government wanted to convince us, the british public, that Free Movement was ending. So it was a delicate needle to thread. The thing is, this document doesnt do it, it is very clearly ending Free Movement, even the registration of workers coming in during the transition period. I think this signals that this is a document from the home office side, the anti migration side of the Civil Service, its about a government, if it were to be followed, worrying more about domestic consumption than perhaps securing the best deal we can get from the eu. In terms of what david davis said today in the commons, nick, what did you pick out from what he had to offer . Very important illustration of the old phrase follow the moneyjust if david davis has his way, we will be following the money for the entirety of these two year negotiations. Now, that is not what the eu wants. They want the uk to come to an agreement on the framework in three areas the divorce bill, the rights of eu citizens who are already here at the point of departure and northern ireland. And what this intervention from david davis today shows is his confidence that he is going to be able to say to the eu, you have a rigid structure and we simply cannot agree the fundamentals on these three points until we know what the overall deal for the future will be. A lot of chat in whitehall how michel barnier, the eus chief negotiator, carrying out the agreed mandate of the 27 member states, is being rigid and there is a hope, not a belief, that if Angela Merkel is re elected in september come we might get a bit more flexibility. Brexit may well provide the biggest structural change to the british economy in a century. Tomorrow, the ippr will release a report containing its response to the challenges and interestingly, for a think tank often seen as on the centre left of the political spectrum theyve got together with helena morrisey, the high profile fund manager and keen brexiteer to work with them on it. This is her take on the way ahead. Im in the city of london, ranked the worlds top financial centre. And outside the city, of course, britain is home to many world class companies. But as well as those world class companies, we also have a problem, we have more companies than our International Competitors that are lower productivity. Productivity is a measure of output versus input. And since the financial crisis a decade ago, the uks overall productivity growth has stalled, reducing our economic potential. And no one is quite sure why and economists have dubbed this the productivity puzzle, but it really matters, because if were not making the best use of skills, then people are in insecure jobs and on low wages. At this stage, we have rising pay inequality, stagnating Household Incomes and many young people today dont expect to have higher Living Standards than their parents and that is the first time that has happened for many generations. And the uks economy is also geographically very imbalanced, with about 40 of output generated by london and the south east and there are many geopolitical uncertainties, including brexit. You could argue that we dont really so much have an economic model, as an economic muddle. The specific challenges may be quite different, but in many ways, the situation we are at today is not dissimilar from the 1940s, when we were looking to rebuild the economy after the war, or the 1980s, when we were recovering from a deep recession. The question is, how do we change the economy for the better . How can we make it work for more people . Our economy needs fundamental change, not just tinkering around the edges. We need the city and british businesses to be investing for the long term. We need employers to be focused on creating good jobs that contribute to higher productivity and improved competitiveness. And we need the government to implement an industrial strategy that helps british businesses grow at home and compete abroad. Helena morrisey. Well, another of those behind the report is the man whose job it once was to respond to these changes in government, the head the Civil Service between 2012 and 2014, sir bob kerslake. Thank you forjoining us. This report, as helena was saying and as the archbishop of canterbury has said, is pretty bleak. It says the economy is broken, the model is broken, it is a real slating of the british economy. I think we have to recognise that the uk economy has simply stopped working for ordinary people and the statistics are really very stark. We have had the longest period of wage stagnation for 150 years and, at the same time, the very wealthy people, the chief executives, have raced ahead. 30 years ago a chief executive may on average earn 20 times that of a worker, now it is 150 times. There are some very fundamental questions about our economy and they will not be tackled. If Phillip Hammond was sitting here, he would say we have low unemployment, faster growth than europe over the years, the deficit has come down, the structure is all there, is he wrong . I think what hes talking about is one set of measures. But if you look at the economy over a period of time, we have deep structural problems that have been there for a while. Productivity, 20 lower than france and germany and our investment has fallen for 30 years and the differences between different parts of the country are quite extraordinary. If you live in the north east, the north west, you might be on 30 less in terms of your salary. Is this the way the free market is operating . It is partly about how the free market works, but its actually about what kind of economy do we want to create . There is a sense in which people say we cannot do much about the economy, it is settled by the market, but i think we can have an ambition for a prosperous and just economy and work towards it. It is a question of clarity and well. You used the word just and it is striking when you have a figure like the archbishop in this. Do you think the way the economy is being run is a moral . I think it is producing outcomes that we will find very hard to defend if we are asked the question because it is not delivering fair outcomes for many of the people in this country. Others will form a view whether that is about morality. Bob, you had to defend those practices, you worked in the Civil Service over many yea rs. Did you find them wrong at the time . I dont think we necessarily saw individual policies as wrong, but what you need to look at is a longer period of what has happened in the uk over many years. Help me on this, give me a sense, it is all very well to say the model is broken and we need to change the structure, fundamental reform, what does that mean . When you talk about taxation you say we need there, smarter, simpler taxes. You dont address the question of whether we need more taxes, should we be taking in more taxes. Does that need to happen . My personal view is that the current austerity approach has run out of road and we need a new approach. But thats broadly agreed across the spectrum, even to reason may have said that now. Consequences flow from that. We have a fiscal gap that will need to be addressed. We need to look at who pays what and how the system works. You will not get people to buy into a change around tax unless they feel the system is fair. Do you want to see more intervention of the state, the government playing a bigger role . We do not start from presumption that it is about more of a state role, we start from a sense were you need to be clear what kind of economy youre trying to create and everyone gets behind it. So, yes, there will be really important tasks for the state to do and in the report we set out 30 different new ideas that can be considered. But its notjust about the state. Its about business and the trade unions and others. Let me put this to you. A couple of years ago, Jeremy Corbyn became labour leader and he said pretty much what is in your report today. Many in the establishment laughed at him today. You have the likes of yourself and the archbishop of canterbury broadly saying, he is on the right track with what he is talking about now. What you have is a number of politicians, including of course the prime minister, saying, there are issues. She talked about burning injustices that needed to be tackled. So, yes, Jeremy Corbyn is saying some things, so is vince cable. Would you now embrace that vision for britain . We want a vision that is embraced notjust by one party, but by the country, a clear sense in which we can create a fair, just and prosperous economy and then we want business and trade unions and others to get behind it. We are not, as you will see from the membership of the commission, starting from one political party. Lets talk about brexit, you were a Civil Servant at the heart of this, when david davis said no one thought it would be easy, there were some sniggers, because some suggested it would, you ran the Civil Service, do you think they are embracing this challenge, are they ready for this and can they deliver it . The Civil Service prides itself on doing thejob it is asked to do by the government of the day. The government of the day is wanting to deliver brexit. The challenge here and i will be direct, from my perspective, there is no upside. This is about damage limitation and we are working in a situation where policy has not been properly settled. The guardian story that chris was talking about, that it would be the end of Free Movement of labour, pretty much from the start of brexit and the document, draft document admittedly, describes a massive it operation and solution which would let people know, whether that person was allowed to work in the uk, where tapping on a number, is that feasible . Truthfully, i havent seen the details and i cannot comment. An election that was intended to settle the way we left the European Union did nothing of the sword. So we still have a very live debate about how the transition period will work. In that situation, Civil Servants will struggle to get coherent policies, if the politicians have not sorted out their priorities. So when theresa may says that no deal is better than a bad deal, from a Civil Service point of view, no deal even an option . Could we survive no deal . I dont know what the Civil Service view is, but my view is that it would be an utter and complete disaster for this country and we need to be very frank about this, there is not a no deal option that would be good for this country. Thank you for coming in. When a teacher, social worker or Health Care Professional suspects that a child has been the victim of female genital mutilation, theyre obliged to report their suspicions to the local child safeguarding authority. But an investigatio

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