09/01/2013 Newsnight

Lack of affordable housing is the biggest social justice crisis in

this country, according to the planning minister, Nick Boles. On

Newsnight tonight, he reveals a new policy to encourage more house

building which what he jokes are bribes, or Boles Bungs, cash for

communities that agree to new house anything their area. You can build

a new playground for local kids or do whatever you like with new money.

I wanted to call it the Boles "bung". We will debate the idea and

ask if anything else might solve the housing crisis.

Stay in the European Union, a blunt message from the Obama

administration on Britain's future. What has it to do with them? We

will ask a euro-sceptic MP and a former state department spokesman.

After attacking US gun control laws following the Connecticut shootings,

Piers Morgan will not be deported from America, we ask if he regrets

calling the gun lobby "stupid"! Hello, good evening, if the

community town or village where you live is prepared to accept new

housing developments, community groups will be given hard cash,

perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds. The idea is being

implemented right now by the planning minister Nick Boles, who

caused a row on Newsnight last month, by explaining why Greenfield

sites would need to be built on if Britain is going to meet the demand

for housing. Tonight Mr Boles goes even further. He reveals to us his

latest plan to use an existing levy or tax on house builders, to give

local communities some hard cash, as a big incentive to say yes to

development. We will debate the wisdom of all of this in a moment,

first here is the political editor. Meadows and moors, valleys and

viaducts, we are on a journey among it all to find the great bricks of

Great Britain. If a Domesday Book itemised every piece of the country

many years ago, where have we gone on to build.

Newsnight is back on the road with the planning minister, last month,

on this programme, he said only 9% of this land was developed. He was

accused of making his sums up on the back of a fag packet. This,

then, is the fag packet. More modest, modern, Domesday Book, on

the walls of the minister's office in Whitehall. There has been quite

a row about how much of England is actually developed. Some

campaigners have said, oh it's 15%, it is 25%, that is affected by

urban development. And you said? said it is 8.9%. The idea that some

how there is nowhere to build in the south-east is just not true, as

this map, I think demonstrates. Everywhere needs housing, in the

deep countryside, Cumbria, where we are going, is a good example,

people still want their kids to be able to live in the village that

they grew up in. If you don't build any houses, they can't. Because you

know, holiday makers buy the houses, at stratospheric prices.

Destination one, we are heading to what the minister's map suggested

are yawning voids, the co-ordinates that test Nick Boles's assertion,

that we have so many green and pleasant fields, some of them can

be offered up. This is Brough.

It is on its high street that Leslie lives with her four children

in a rented home. She and her husband are professional carers for

their neighbours in Brough, priced out of the market, Leslie is on

Nick Boles's conscience. What can he do to help her?

A short drive through forbidding foggy moors to Crosby raifrpbs

worth, where the minister tells her just what he's going to do. Good

morning everybody. We are in the Upper Eden Valley, nestled near the

Cumbrian lakes and Yorkshire National Park, on the front here is

planning policy S Newsnight is here, because it is the first in the

country to put the views of its community into planning. It will

hold a vote on the outcome. Nick Boles chose here to make an

exclusive announcement. What we have decided is that for those

areas that have a neighbourhood plan, and get it through the

referendum, then 25%, a quarter of the revenues from the community

infrastructure levy, will go to the neighbourhood to spend on what the

hell you like. That money will come to you if you build new houses.

Does anybody feel they want to respond to the announcement that

Nick has made. The bribe! I wanted to call it the Boles "bung". This

is a new pot of money that the council might once have thought

100% their's to spend. What do they make of it? The days when we are

going to sit back and get allocations for anything are gone.

You are prepared to accept 25% of your pot dwindling. The important

point to make this is a new revenue stream. This isn't money that the

district council is already getting of which we are taking away 25%,

this is a new tax, that is bringing in new revenues and we are saying,

you are going to get 75%, and 25% will go to the neighbourhoods, if

they have a neighbourhood plan. are those priced out reassured.

deems what affordability is in affordable housing. My husband and

I work as carers in the community, and we still can't reach, you know,

getting a deposit together for the mortgage, paying the monthly rent

with four children. Where do we stand at the end of the day. What

assurances do we have? That it will be affordable for us. Your

situation is absolutely typical, I am afraid. It is a huge national

crisis, I think, for my money, I think it is the biggest social

justice crisis we have, it is bigger than bad schools that we

have plenty of bad schools, it is bigger than people without jobs

that we have lots of people who are desperate for jobs. After digesting

Nick Boles's exclusive announcement, people in that meeting would later

e-mail that programme, they would express concerns that since his new

fund will not all flow to the council, councils might be more

resistant to neighbourhood planning, because of this, they suggested, it

just wouldn't work. The minister, though, remained adamant it would

help people like Leslie. He took her to what he thought was an

affordable home. With the work we do it varies, so it needs to be

something that I know at least my husband will earn within that month.

Rents at the moment, we are paying what we could pay on a mortgage, in

rent, but it is finding the deposit and going through everything.

much is that a month that you would think was doable? About �500-�600.

It is very, very hard, this is going to take a very long time to

change. The situation we have with the housing market in England is 40

years in the making. How does that strike you, he is saying we are

many years away from your situation being made easier? Then at the end

of the day if it doesn't help me t will help my children.

Over at the Dales, to the cafe not far away, where Labour has a

different take. Housing starts are down 9% on last year, the point I'm

making really is the Government's strategy to deliver more housing

isn't working anywhere. So we want them to really look at how they put

more delivery mechanisms into the system, so that all areas, because

absolutely every area needs more housing and more affordable housing.

That was the north of England, where empty houses exist, they just

aren't cheap enough for Leslie, in the south there are different

pressures, that is why Nick Boles said in order to unblock the log

jam, you have to open up other possible options, go for

Greenfields. So to Harlow, and one such Greenfield, it has been guilt

on, we brought one of the minister's fiercest critics to it.

Is the lack of housing because too little land is available, or is it

another reason. You think it is land, if you release more land the

house builders will build. You have to look more closely at the housing

market. The house builders have a low output, high margin model. They

will build the houses they think they can sell. The demand is there,

unquestionably the demand is there, prices have gone up stratferically,

why are people not building if it is so easy. What is stopping them,

I don't think it is a lack of land. You have to come up with an

alternative explanation, I have an explanation. I'm not the Government.

Your Government and the last Government are in denial about this,

when we built enough houses in this country the state built a lot of

them. Throughout the 1970s the state built over 120,000 house as

year. Private sector house building since the war is pretty steady, the

real loss is in public house building, it is cut even more

recently. This is the what it looks like

after building on green fields, this is what it looks like before.

Down the road, here the bulldozers are poised to roll into this more

consensus green field plan. If the Government is going to offer you

money, you can spend it on something? You can always spend

money, but is it a useful project to the area. There is nothing I can

think of that sort of money will satisfy in the area. If you were

talking about millions, maybe. Couldn't you as a community do

something with �100,000? Of course you can. It doesn't address the

first problem we looked at. This development defies all of the

original plans for Harlow. That they don't overlook various areas.

That the road system is capable of carrying it, et cetera. Just before

Christmas, the think-tank that Mr Boles used to run said this

Government's policies says it is currently on course to build

300,000 fewer new homes than the plans of the previous Government,

presiding over the lowest rate of house building since the 1920s.

Nick Boles needs his bribes and his bungs to work.

The planning minister, Nick Boles, is here. Along with three

interested partners, Roberta Blackman Woods, and Simon Jenkins

and John Stewart. Do you agree that something must be

done, and this might be the right something? Something must always be

done. What do you mean by that? Something must be done to address

the housing shortage? There is always a housing shortage too.

There is plenty of land to build houses on. There is more derelict

land in this country, post- industrialisation than in any

history in Britain. Building on in a few meadows outside Harlow will

not solve the housing crisis. There is plenty of sites with planning

permission existing that hasn't been used yet. Two million houses

could be built on juggling the figures. The issue is how you treat

planning. Selling planning permissions, in effect, through

bribes, is not the way to plan this country. You should decide to build

where it is appropriate, it might be on greenfield sites in places.

The issue has to be one of planning. Do you plan work that appropriate

development should take place, protecting beautiful areas and

country areas, which are going fast, or do you say, let rip, let money

determine it and bribe anyone we can to build houses, that is not

the way to approach planning. problem is planning, not just what

we heard. You are bribing people with their

own money, it is public money? trouble s firstly, Simon started

with something that isn't drew. The CPRE, I don't agree with the figure

even they say there is only enough brownfield land for 1.25 million.

They agree only 460,000 can be built in areas where we need

housing most, London and the south- east and the south west. There are

only over 100,000 homes empty for more than six months. The idea that

there are land out there that we can put two million houses on to

solve the problem is frankly not true. Let him come back on this.

Also this question, there is a degree of nimbyism, we all like our

local area to look good, we are quite conservative, about that.

Isn't this saying this is a good way to encourage people to have a

stake in what is happening in their area? The agreements in place

already, which is the way you tax developers to provide roads,

schools and so on, that's in place already. We are making housing very

expensive in this country by the fancy schemes. That is not true,

economically, if Simon had spent a little time looking at economic

theory, what he would realise is the 106 agreement and the levy,

drives down the price that the developer pays the landowner for

the land. The landowner's best alternative use for this land

agriculture, agriculture land prices are 10,000 an acre,

development prices are �2 million an acre. From where you sit, is the

problem planning question, or that people don't like new developments

in their areas, and don't like what is being planned, or is it, frankly,

that we are all broke and can't afford new housing any way? In the

short-term it is a question on the demand side, it is a question of

mortgages, since 2007 we have seen horrendous crisis in the economy

and mortgage market. If we go back over the last 20 years, it is

largely a supply problem. The planning system in this country

controls the supply of land. You have to have a planning permission

available to build legally, so it controls the supply of land. Can I

pick up on this point about a bribe or bung, I'm sorry minister I find

the term unfortunate used. It is his term? It was meant to be a

joke! The point about the community infrastructure levy, which is where

the money is coming from. It is an infrastructure levy, it is a levy

on land value to pay for the infrastructure that we require to

facilitate development. That is only proper and right. Whether it

can be paid for by the land is another question. It is only right

it should be the case. If some of that is taken off and given to

local communities, as long as it is spent on infrastructure that is

fine, it is not a bung or bribe, it is not cash in pockets. They are

going to put a roof on the village hall, or build a primary school, or

a park. Are you persuaded by this, you are in favour of localism, and

local people having a say, presumably you are in favour of

cash going to all those wonderful things, what is wrong with the

idea? We are happy that the Government is taking the

infrastructure levy forward, we lobbied for it, we are happy for

local communities to benefit from it. It is not enough, on its own it

is not enough to deliver affordable houses across the country. We will

come on to what more should be done. Are you saying, then, that this

idea is at least worth a look, you think it might work? We think it's

worth having at the edges, but it is not going to deliver the amount

of housing that we need. The Government, you know the minister

is now saying he recognises there is a huge crisis in housing, the

Government have got to upscale their efforts, we really want them

to be looking at issues like. Bring some passion and vision back into

planning, stop saying that planning is just an obstacle all the time,

we can use planning to deliver growth. We can use planning to

develop new garden cities, urban extensions. Using what for money?

This is really interesting, there are pots of money, we think the

Government isn't using the money that is available effectively. They

could be looking at SIL, they could be looking at the Regional Growth

Fund, money going to other things. Bring this together, use it

stragically. So we get, not only housing, and I think we have to be

careful not only to talk about housing, we need to talk about

building places, building communities that people want to

live in. They need schools, and they need jobs as well as houses.

actually don't disagree with a lot of what was said. We are using all

of those different pots of money to try to unlock sites. I share her

passion for garden cities and the way they were developed. My case in

a sense is very simple, the last Government, I believe, tried to

force people to accept development. And it didn't work. They just

didn't take it, we're a very old, democratic country, we won't be

told what to do. My job, therefore, is to try to persuade people. It is

partly to persuade them of the social justice problem, which is

very real for all of their kids. But it is also to persuade them

that new development can benefit their community, can benefit the

people who live there now, and that's what I'm trying to do.

you buy into the structure too, the idea of to have a referendum, to

have local people being brought on board? I have no problem with that,

in principle. It is going to split communities, the real problem here

are the landowner, they are the people who get the huge profits out

of it. The idea that you some how produce some local harmony by these

serious, I mean Nick is bribing people to have housing estates and

wind turbines, the money involved is very considerable. Quite why the

whole community doesn't get it I don't know, that is another

question. The question is where do you want the development to take

place. Britain is a low-density country, the houses are like the

houses we are looking here, most of Europe they have flats. If you have

a housing crisis you build high- density, where you have roads and

facilities in existence already. This meadow development is just

crazy. Those of us, and I don't know about anybody else, those of

us who have more than two homes. I have two homes, one I own on a huge

mortgage, one that the taxpayer, thankfully rents for me in my

constituency. Simon has at least two homes, I have been to two of

them. Those of us who have two homes or more, have to be careful

about telling people they need to build in the top floor of a flat,

when people want a house with a garden. Do you see a cultural

difference in this country when you come here, you are originally from

New Zealand. We don't want to live in flat, people want to own their

own homes and feel priced out of the market? There is a strong

preference for homeownership, as in other countries like New Zealand,

it is definitely the case. There is opposition to development of all

kinds, and house anything particular, because it is the most

common form of development, as an Antipodean I find puzzling. What

Nick is talking about is you are addressing issues people are

worrying about. If the local people hear there is a housing development

and there are another 50 houses, the first thing is congestion on

the road F you live where I live there is already congestion, if

this is relieving congestion by fund ago round about or road

widening. If it is a bung that goes on unnecessary things, I would be

concerned about that. Minister, isn't this quite small beer, though.

The part of the housing crisis is more and more people rent, we have

to get used to that, the British idea that we will own our own homes,

perhaps, there is a generation finding that incredibly difficult.

Even though you may do things around the edges, as was suggested,

it won't work for most people? not willing to accept that. In the

19th century, homeownership was a privilege, it was the exclusive

preserve of people with money, or rich parents. We can either head

back to that, that is where we are heading, homeownership sank by 5%

in the last decade in England. We can go back there, or recognise we

have a huge amount of undeveloped land, that isn't special, all of

the special land, 40% of it is protected by various destinations,

there is a huge amount of it undesignated. In Germany what is

home occupation? It is low. problem is in cities. How many

homes do you own. I'm paying for your house, bloody hell! The issue

is here is city housing, there is a shortage of house anything cities.

Housing in cities is badly managed at the moment. People don't occupy

enough of the houses the Government is doing the right thing to

encourage them to get rid of surplus bedrooms. This business of

trying to get people to build on meadows is a total distraction. It

is about planning cities properly for people to live in.

There is nothing new in senior American politicians, or even

diplomats for that matter, saying they want Britain to play an

influential role in the European Union. What is highly unusual is

for a senior diplomat at the US State Department, Philip Gordon, in

this case, to criticise the very idea that Britain should hold a

referendum on the EU. He warned that referendums can turn countries

inward. All this comes as leading British business figure, including

Richard Branson, sir Martin Sorrell, the head of the CBI, sir Carr ka,

warn that wholesale renegotiation of EU membership, could damage

British business and put EU membership in peril. Allegra

Stratton is here with background. What has been said and what is the

reaction in Downing Street? Downing Street is saying that actually they

agree, that they too want Britain to have a strong role with the EU,

full stop. What Philip Gordon said, was it is in America's interest for

Britain to be at the forefront of the EU. He said it was in America's

interests, especially above all EU countries if Britain is in there.

If you have this referendum you are turning inwards. This is classic

megaphone diplomacy, the problem is it is screechingly loud when we are

weeks away where the Prime Minister will give the speech where he will

set out where he thinks. He has to tow the line, with the euro-

sceptics, one across the table from us, will decide that part of the

British public and people in his own cabinet. And on the one land,

and some senior politicians who sound euro-sceptic, they are more

pro it than they sound, so George Osborne, and sometimes David

Cameron. He may agree with Philip Gordon, but in the speech he has to

offer up something substantial to people who he has kept waiting for

a long time. Philip Gordon is saying this is an internationally

awaited event. Marc Reckless is well known for his

demands for a referendum, and we have an Assistant Secretary of

State in the Obama administration, What is it to you about these

comments? The response to the Financial Times, where Richard

Branson expressed concern about the uncertainty that a decision and

referendum would create. We live in an integrated world. We require

collective action to solve global and regional challenges. Trend, if

you think about it globally, is to strengthen international

institutions, not weaken international institutions, and

from a US perspective the EU has been good for the UK, having the UK

vocal has been good for Europe. It service the interests of the United

States. What do you think of this, it is clearly in American interests

that they have a strong ally in Britain, and politicians actually

of both parties in the United States, for many years, have said

Britain is only really strong if it is strong in Europe? The US may

like Britain being an advocate for US interests in the EU, there may

be some people in New York who wouldn't mind too much if EU

regulation were to stifle competition from the City of London.

But, ultimately what matters, is the interests of the British people.

I think this debate has really moved on in the last two years

particularly. It now does look like the British people will have a say

in the referendum, for the first time ever, no-one under the age of

55 has such a vote, where we decide whether we want to govern ourselves

or continue to be governed through the European Union. Are you in any

way irritate bid what was said today, or you think this is --

irritated by what was said today, do you think the Americans have an

interest, even if it is not in line with your views, even if what PJ

Crowley was saying we get a good deal for the world and the country?

Earlier in his remarks he said it was a matter for the British

Government, Philip, and the British people, and I think that is really

important that is recognised. Ultimately we had to look at what

is in the interests of the British economy. Do we want our own laws,

perhaps the US might like us to moderate slightly how EU

regulations affects them. Our economy, so much of it is governed

by EU regulation. We have to obey single market rules exporting to

the EU, why should we obey them for the domestic economy and exporting

else where Let me ask about the referendum question. What was

picked up is the implication that perhaps the referendum is the wrong

thing, it would make us turn inward was the suggestion. It might do

exactly the opposite, might it not? It might give people a chance to

express their opinion for origins on a matter that affects us very

deeply? Sure, and as Philip Gordon said, this is a matter for the

British people, ultimately. On this side of the Atlantic, you know,

there is a lot of attitudes about US membership in the United Nations,

it comes up over four years, there is a sliver of our population that

does not think that, or thinks that the United States membership in the

United Nations is a challenge to our sovereignty. We happen not to

put that to a vote. To the larger question, the reality is domestic

issues have broader international implications. There is nothing

wrong with voices in Europe or in the UK saying to the United States

politicians, look, we don't care how you solve your debt and

spending crisis, but if you fall off a cliff, at some point in the

future, and you go back into recession, that is going to have a

profound impact in Europe, and likewise, I think it is perfectly

appropriate for the United States to say, look if you take steps,

while they can be logical from a domestic standpoint, end up

weakening what has become a very significant international

institutions in the EU, if you think that will be helpful to the

world. Do you think the Obama administration thinks Britain is a

less important ally if we are not in the EU? I don't think this is an

Oort or, this is a win, win, win for the United States. There is a

great convergence of interest between the United States and the

UK. And this pillar is vitally important, when then you put shared

bilateral interests in the context of an EU, or in the context of NATO.

It is not an either-or proposition, it is the fact that the special

relationship between the United States and the UK has multiple

venues through question effective action can be achieved. Is that the

way you see today's comments, or is it to go back to what you said at

the start of the conversation, there are clearly American economic,

domestic and political interests in what we do, and perhaps the pro-

pond regins of opinion there, or those who think about it, is we

should stay in the EU? I think it is inconceivable that American

people would allow a NAFTA court strike down EU laws, the idea that

the American people would accept being governed in a way this

country has been governed. They are telling us what they think about

what we do, does that cause you concern? We have very important

defence relationships with the US, the US is our largest single

trading partner, but at the moment that trade relationship is run by

the European Union. What I would like to see is that trade

relationship run in British interests, rather than tying

ourselves to one declining continent in the EU, we should

trade freely across the world, and negotiate a free trade deal with

the United States and rising economies in China and India and

elsewhere, and trade dols that are in the British interests, opening

up our agricultural market to the US and other countries, we have

huge ambition to do better deals in the British interest.

A couple of years ago the TV satirist, Armando Iannucci, the man

behind The Thick of It, explained his job was sometimes made more

difficult that some things in real- life politics were beyond satire.

Imagine the mid-term report congratulations and then an next

that had pledges gone wrong, that remained a secret, until a

Government aide was photographed with the document revealing the

internal debate on how long to bury the bad news, you couldn't make it

Come n imagine this is Downing Street, and you are a senior

Government adviser. The Government is about to publish its Mid-Term

Review, there will be some good stuff in it, and some not so God

news. Obviously you would rather everyone focus on the good news.

The question is, what do you do with the bad news. Do you, (a)

publish it all at once, and hope, on balance, you come out ahead in

the coverage, or do you (b) publish only the good news, and sneak the

bad news out later, only on the Government website. Do you do (c)

inadvertantly tell everyone what you are doing, by showing

photographers a memo cussing your options.

I'm guess you won't have plumped for (C) that is exactly what

Government adviser, Patrick Rock, has done. The memo talks about

problematic areas, unfavourable copy and broken pledges, that could

be published without fanfare. But, guess what they have now got.

(fanfare) The fanfare was deafening when the 24,000 document was

published this afternoon, the Government had guaranteed that

every journalist would be pouring all over it. Now the storing story

wasn't so much missed targets and broken pledge, no, it was a

Government incompetence, and allegations of deception. So it was

certainly happy new year for the Labour leader and his first Prime

Minister's Questions of 2013. the Prime Minister tell us why on

Monday, when he published his Mid- Term Review, he failed to publish

his audit of coalition broken promises. We will be publishing

absolutely every single audit of every single prob mis, all 39 --

promise, all 399 pledges set out in the Mid-Term Review. He's a PR man

who can't even do a relaunch. Half way through this parliament, we

know they are incompetent, they break their Prom mys and the nasty

Party is back. So, what does the document say?

Well, some of the pledges haven't been kept yet, but may be delivered

over the next two-and-a-half years, like having a free vote in the

Commons over fox-hunting, that appears pretty unlikely. Others

look pretty difficult to describe as kept, for example, the

guarantees that health spending increasing in real terms in each

year of the parliament. The UK Statistics Authortiy has concluded

it would be fair Tory say there has been little change in -- fairer to

say there has been little change in health spending. What about the

top-down reorganisation of the NHS, the document suggests that has been

kept, if so, what was all the business about abolishing strategic

health authorities, and Primary Care Trusts, and giving more

commissioning to gpts, it seemed pretty top-down at the time. Don't

hold your breath waiting for legislation creating fewer and more

equal-sized constituencies, Nick Clegg is refueinging to support the

changes because the Conservatives won't support Lords reform. The

publication of the Mid-Term Review on Monday, had real echos of Tony

Blair's annual reports. Line-by- line we are delivering on the

contract. Now it is claimed it is PR. In the end Tony Blair gave up

his Annual Reports after three years, perhaps concluding that no-

one really cares what Governments say about how jolly well they are

doing. I think all Governments end up doing this, despite their

experience, they still think that good news is news to journalists.

It is not, unfortunately, they get their headline for a few hours, on

the first day, then you lot go around picking holes in it, or you

look at the processology, which is exactly what has happened today.

Poor Patrick Rock isn't the first minister or adviser to get snapped

revealing a document. No comment, gracious smile, look good. In fact

the mishap has even made it into an episode of the TV comedy, The Thick

of It. What would possess you to talk about the streets with notes

just there for anybody to see. Patrick Rock joins Labour

minister's Caroline Flint and Hazel Blears, and exConservative minister,

Andrew Mitchell. Perhaps most serious was Bob Quick, parading

details of a yet to happen anti- terror raid. Perhaps one finding of

the next Government review is ministers and advisers should all

be issued with folders and envelopes to put their sensitive

developments in. There is no hotter hot button issue

in the United States than guns and what to do about them. After the

Connecticut school shooting Barack Obama opened up the emotionally

charged debate, and into it stepped the former Mirror editor, Piers

Morgan. He criticised America's gun control laws, enshrined in the

second amendment to the constitution. Since then almost

100,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to be

deported. The White House issued a statement defending Mr Morgan's

right to free speech. Tonight he had a flavour of how some Americans

think about it, when he invited the man who started the petition on to

the programme. 1776 will commence again if you try to take our

fiefrpls, it doesn't matter how many lemmings you get on the street

being for them to have their guns taken, we will not relinquish them,

that is why you will fail, do you understand, the establishment knows

that no matter how much propaganda, the revolution will rise again. My

family was at the core starting Santa Ana, because they came to

take the guns of Texas. Don't try what your ancestors did before.

Come to America, I will take you out shooting, you can become an

American and join the Republic. you finished? Yes I am finish. You

will not take my right. There you are, just before I came on air

strikes I spoke to Piers Morgan. Do you regret telling Americans

what laws are appropriate in their own country and not your's?

really. Because I live here. I'm a legal resident in America, the

constitution and Bill of Rights applies to me equally as it does to

an American. What happens here affects me and my life and that of

my family. The guns issue here is now, I think, so dangerous, and so

out of control, that something has to give. If I can help frame the

debate in a way that is constructive to getting new gun

control legislation, then great. But framing in a de -- a debate,

you were telling the gun components they were stupid? They were having

stupid comments. When you have a massacre like the Sandyhook school

massacre and 20 young people blown to pieces by a deranged young man

getting Assault Rifles if he wants from a local superstore like Wal-

Mart. The reaction of the gun loby that I had, on my show at CNN, was

to say more guns less crime, arm everybody, arm the teachers, arm

all the movie theatre receptionists, arm everyone at a church, temple

and shopping mall and the spiralling descent into gun madness

continues. And I do find it stupid and dangerous. I do think that most

people in Britain, in particular, where we remember what happened

after Dunblane were we brought in very draconian gun control law, and

guess what, we have between 30 and 40 gun murders a year, America has

11,000-12,000. You can't be surprised as a vit -- at the vit

roll, telling them as a foreign in their country that their laws stink

which, is effectively what you have just said? I don't know that at all.

For all the vitriol I'm getting, I'm getting a lot of people

crediting me, a lot of Americans are very concerned about this, who

think what I'm trying to do, which is exactly what the President is

trying to do and many other people, like the Mayor of New York are

trying to do, it is not about banning all their guns or attacking

the second amendment, it is a specific campaign to take the

military-style assault weapons off the streets and out of civilian

hands. They have been used in the last four mass shootings in America,

they are the preferred weapon of choice for mass shooters. They load

them up with these ridiculous high- capacity magazines that you can put

100 bullets in to fire in less than a minute. They are killing machines.

They need to be outlawed. Everybody will understand the arguments,

particularly over here, they understand exactly what you are

saying, you are now a political activist, not a journalist? I don't

mind what you call me. I'm comfortable with what I'm doing,

and I will continue do doing it, if it makes me popular or unpopular,

it doesn't matter, it is what I believe in.

The called War on Drugs was declared by President Nixon first,

and declared lost in 2011, inbetween many politicians try to

avoid the phrase, with the Obama administration suggesting it was

counter-productive. Whatever you call t the efforts by the United

States to control the production of narcotics abroad, and their

consumption at home, the results have involved conflicts in Panama

and elsewhere, and the incarceration of thousands of young

Americans for drug crimes. The House I Live In is a new film on

the War on Drugs, by the director, Eugene Jarecki, and one of the

contenders for an Oscar, the film argues the war has been a disaster.

Here is a flavour. I'm not a big Superdrug dealer. I have weed. I do

what I have to do, I know how to survive, I dib and dab if I have to.

It is not hard to tell these are the junkies. Yeah. I think the

economy thrives off the drug money. We have judges getting high too.

Cops sniffing coke, people with good college jobs who can afford

the habits. That is the difference. The boys are behind us. The biggest

drug industry in the world isn't in Mexico or Columbia, or in

Afghanistan, it is in the United States. One of the realities is,

most people getting arrested in this country or drugs are selling

drugs to support their own habit. If you stand in a federal court,

you are watching poor, uneducated people, being fed into a machine

like meat to make sausage. It is just bang, bang, bang, next.

Somebody down the road said we will fight a war against illicit drugs,

because drugs are bad. OK, there is no argument there, think about

where we are 30 years later. If you look at all the money spent on drug

enforcement, on prison, probation officers, judges, narcotics agents,

on adix, and everything else that has expanded due to the war on

drugs, it gratifies us because it makes us feel tough on crime. But

to what end, we are the most jailing country on the planet.

Beyond saud dough Arabia, China or Russia, nobody jails their

population at the rate we do. And yet drugs are purer than ever

before, they are more available. There are younger and younger kids

willing to sell them. If it was draconian and it worked, but it is

draconian and it doesn't work, and it leads to more.

You can see a full version of the film, The House I Live In, on

Storyville on Monday night. Eugene Jarecki directed it, and he's here

tonight. You say that the War on Drugs has failed, the slogan has

clearly failed, the Obama administration has distanced

themselves from it. You can't say taking the drug problems has not

made America a safer place than in the 1990s, because crime has gone

down, and much of it drug-related? Crime went down for lots of factor,

we have created more crime. There is a study that says when you

incarcerate 300 people out of every 100,000, that is the tipping point

that provides public safety. The moment you go beyond that you

foster crime what we do in America is take the non-violent and punish

them as though they were violent. We do 740 people per 100,000, among

the black community it is 4,000 people. A lot of people make the

point it is disproportionately punitive among the black population.

I lived in Washington in the 1990s you were 20-times more likely to be

murdered than in Belfast, that was mostly drug crime, it was mostly

drug crime? It was violent crime. That is drug territory, that has

largely gone? No, the violent crime that happens over drug territories,

because of the illegality of drugs, if you look in Portugal and Greece,

that once they legalise the violence goes away. We learned from

prohibition that violence is attached to the drugs. You and I

wouldn't be talking about the matter if we were talking about the

incarceration of the violent. Who has a problem with that. America's

700% explosion of the prison population, is because we

incarcerate the violent with the non-violent. Is your solution the

decriminalisation of the drugs, saying we should trade in them, and

a trading decision, which street corner you deal on? It starts with

dealing with it as a health problem, it is that. We should treat drugs

certainly we treat alcohol. It is a far more destructive drug than any

on the schedule of legal drugs. Its track record of human destruction

and public safety and health is peerless. We treat those on the

schedule of illegal drugs far more harshly than alcohol, because there

is a big business attached to T it defies common sense. It is true

there is big business, one of the reasons things are criminalises is

society make as moral statement about it. You criminalise murders

or rape because you don't think there will be any more, but you do

that because they are wrong? That is the nature of it, we unleashed

the dogs of war when we launched the War on Drugs. If you want to

talk about policies reformed and taxing and regulating drugs, as

Washington and Colorado have voted to do. We have laws in America that

are so surreal, for example, in California, there are people with

non-violent third strieblgs who have life sentence, down the hall,

a murder, one of the violent people we should be concerned with are out

in 15 years. We are punishing the non-violent more hysterically than

the violent. In Holland, where the use of cannabis has been decriminal

niceed, they are tougher on it, they don't -- decriminalised it,

they are tougher on if, they don't want drugs tourists. You couldn't

have more draconian policies than in the United States. We lead the

world in demand. We have 40 years of it, and spent �45 billion

dollars. We have cheaper drugs more available than before. The violent

crime you are talking about, that has been part of the regime that I

would say, let's go after violent crime, when you have

criminalisation of non-violent petty offence, the police are

invent advised to spend their evening on it rather than policing

the violence. We will look forward to the film. A quick look at

Over 47 million litre water pump from it each day, it hosted its

first birth in 1924, and fewer than 10% of its stations are south of

the river. London's Tube is celebrating its 150th birthday.

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