27/08/2014 Newsnight

The man in charge of children's welfare in Rotherham faces calls for

him to quit. Are we all in denial of how many young people are brutally

exploited for sex in other towns too. We knew that she had absconded

before and she was having relationships with older men who

threatened violence. We knew all this and for seven days we did

nothing. This is unbelievably ?3,000 worth of drugs that I take every

morning. Has the Government had enough of paying for those expensive

drugs. Newsnight learns some pricey medicines could be axed. Does

America's right to bear arms include nine-year-olds. We speak to someone

who believes it does. Ever feel lost and unconnected? In a broadband

wilderness. The wireless revolution is just beginning, so TV white space

is giving us more spectrum and more availability to communicate. Good

evening, stubborn doesn't really begin to cover it. The man who was

in charge of Children's Services in Rotherham while warnings of abuse

were ignored refuses to leave his current post. That's despite the

Home Secretary and his own party, Labour, calling on him to go. It

says now they will suspend him if he hasn't gone by the morning. But

tonight Shaun Wright is still responsible for

tonight Shaun Wright is still Yorkshire. Whatever his future, or

those of other Yorkshire. Whatever his future, or

politicians still in senior positions elsewhere, the more

politicians still in senior similar abuse may still be happening

to other children. From Rotherham here is Jim Reed.

Shaun Wright out! ! And still he won't go, everyone from the English

Defence League to the Home Secretary was calling for his resignation

today. But the man in charge of Children's Services for much of the

last decade is tonight refusing to quit. I'm not resigning as South

Yorkshire Police commissioner because I'm proud... REPORTER: How

can people have confidence you in you? People can have confidence if

you allow me to answer the question, because I can evidence all the

actions I have taken since I came into this office. It is the scale I

have a Bews in Rotherham that has shocked this town. 1400 girls over

16 years. Children as young as 11, raped, traffiked, beaten and

intimidated. Newsnight has spoken to one man, who until recently worked

in a child protection role, covering parts of Rotherham. They are without

doubt, without any shadow of a doubt the most vulnerable people we have

got in society. When they came forward to contact the authorities,

whether it is the police or local council, with Tories of sexual abuse

or evidence of sexual abuse, how seriously were the stories taken?

There was almost a resigned acceptance that these were the kind

of issues that were inevitable, given the background, given the

individual circumstances and the personalities of the children

involved. But yesterday's report was not the first the authorities had

heard about street grooming. Three separate reports dating back over

ten years had already highlighted the problem to council officials and

the police. In 2003 a drug analyst wrote a report for the council about

substance abuse, it describes a significant number of girls and some

boys who were being sexually exploited. Including the case of a

young girl dowsed in petrol as a thread if she went to the police.

Three years later a second report from the doctor this time talking

about an established sexual exploitation scene which was very

organised and involved systematic physical and sexual violence. I had

a child who had been missing, a 14-year-old girl, she had been

missing for seven days, we knew that she was at risk of sexual

exploitation, that was a given, and we knew that she had absconded

before and that she was having relationships with older men who had

threatened violence, we knew all this and for seven days we did

nothing. But perhaps the most serious example came earlier in

2001, a young Home Office researcher was told to write a profile of sex

offenders in Rotherham. This week's independent report talk about how

that researcher spoke to young women in the town. She described mounting

frustration at the lack of action by the authorities. One girl had tried

to escape from the gang abusing her, the researcher took her to the

police station, where she was too scared to give evidence saying

simply "you can't protect me", that researcher with permission from her

manager wrote two letters to senior figures in the police force, she was

called in for a meeting and simply told never to do this again. The

contents of the letters were never discussed. When senior council

officials and police officers saw a draft of that report the researcher

was immediately suspended for gross misconduct. From that point on she

was not allowed to contact any of the girls involved and funding for

the project was simply stopped before it could be completed. The

leader of Rotherham council quit this week as a result of the

scandal, saying he takes responsibility for what has

happened. But no other head has rolled and no police or council

officer has been disciplined. So the spotlight has fallen on one of the

most visible of those in charge, police and crime commissioners

cannot be sacked only voted out by the electorate. But Labour have

raised the stakes this evening saying they will suspend Shaun

Wright's membership of the party if he hasn't resigned by the morning.

When the report says the information was there and action should have

been taken, when leadership fails it is important people take

responsibility. This evening Shaun Wright is thought to be at home

consulting with his family about his future. That future looks

increasingly uncertain. In a moment we will speak to Amjad

Bashir, the UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and Sheila Taylor of the NWG charity

which advises professionals on working on child sexual

exploitation. With us first of all is Jack Dromey the Labour shadow

minister for policing. Thank you for being with us. As things stand

tonight Shaun Wright is still a member of your party. Your calls for

him to go have failed. You are pretty powerless aren't you? He

should resign, he had are the power to act but he did not use that power

to defend the powerless, he needs, therefore, to accept responsibility.

If he does not resign then he will be suspended tomorrow morning. But

for people watching this in Rotherham, being thrown out,

temporarily from a political party, it is not exactly tough action on

him is it? We in the Labour Party will act, but the problem about the

legislation that was introduced by Theresa May, there is no mechanism

to force him to stand down. Now that does raise questions for the future.

But in the here and now we are absolutely clear he has to accept

responsibility for his abject failure to defend those who were

being abused by evil men. And we will come on to that in a more

detail in a second. In future, if you were in Government, would you

change the rules to make Police Commissioners a new role more

accountable. In just this circumstance they could be gotten

rid of if appropriate? What is clear beyond any doubt is the current

arrangements don't make any sense. I think there will be complete dismay

in south Yorkshire, he has lost the confidence of the people of south

Yorkshire, above all he has lost the confidence of the victim. Would you

change the rules? Necessarily so. Isn't he, however, a proxy in a

sense of a problem that was clearly admitted today by one of your former

colleagues, Dennis McShane, the MP for Rotherham for many years. He

told the BBC that when he was working in the town he didn't want

to rock the multicultural boat too hard. He said as a true Guardian

leader and liberal lefty he didn't want to raise it too hard? It is

important to stress that the great majority of men who abuse children

are actually white, having said that, were there particular problems

in Rotherham? Yes there were. And it cannot be right that you ever allow

the fact that there is an ethnic grouping, an ethnic identity to the

nature of some of that abuse, not all of it, it cannot get in the way

of proper investigation, defending the powerless and calling those

responsible to account. But what is important here is that a formerly

prominent Labour politician is fessing up and saying we had a

problem in the Labour Party, we turned a blind eye because we didn't

want to rock the boat. Do you accept that? Lessons need to be learned of

the past. Of that there is no doubt. After the immediate, which is Shaun

needing to resign, crucially support for the victims and bringing the

perpetrators before the courts. There has been an announcement for

Take That that -- that, we pressed for that at the time, that all those

with responsibility have a duty to react. Lessons to be learned may be

overused in these circumstances. Can you be confident that the problem

identified today by your colleagues that looking the other way to

protect multiculturalism has disappeared in the Labour Party? We

should never allow multiculturalism or any other factor to get in the

way of the investigation of wrongdoing. Has it changed? We need

to learn lessons from the past because the idea that this is a

problem of the past, it is an on going problem, on a massive scale of

the abuse by men of children. Amjad Bashir, you are the MEP from the

area and you are Pakistani in origin, we have just lost him, we

will hope to come back to him shortly. Let's put this to you, this

specific problem in the Pakistani community in this one town is much

discussed, do you accept that this was in some sense a racial crime? I

think there may be elements of racial crime in there, but to me

anybody who thinks it is OK to have sex with children within our society

is committing an offence. We need to focus on the criminal activity,

there is an awful lot of focus on the victims and actually we're not

looking at how we are going to tackle the perpetrators within our

society. Is this picture painted so eloquently by Professor Jay in her

report yesterday of this specific problem in the Pakistani community,

is that familiar to you? It is familiar to me, but it is not the

only model that we see. We see lots and lots of ways that sexual

exploitation manifests itself within society. And there is a very

specific media focus on the Pakistani Muslim community. That

doesn't mean to say there isn't an issue there that needs tackling. But

there is at the same time we can't let that be the only thing we

tackle. Amjad Bashir I hope can hear us from Leeds now, thank you for

joining us. You are Pakistani in origin, but a proud Yorkshireman to

boot, do you acknowledge and your community acknowledge the extent of

this problem? I think the community does acknowledge that there is a

problem. 1400 young, vulnerable girls, over 16 years have been

exploited, largely by Asian men. It is not acceptable. The community has

to come forward and accept this and try and make sure this is prevented

in the future. I have just come away from a meeting with the religious

leaders who have all condemned this. I think there is a problem out there

and we have to admit there is a problem and prevent it from ever

happening again. And do you think that turning a blind eye and that

this sensitivity around ethnicity essentially let people off the hook

in Rotherham? I do believe that and I think the deputy leader of

Rotherham council has been implicated in this. He has been a

barrier preventing messages from the police getting to the community.

That's not, that should not be the case. He should be a facilitator

trying to get communication between the community and preventing these

paedophiles, these people that were responsible for gang raping and

taking these girls across the country and selling them on. This is

not acceptable. He is of course not here tonight to defend himself. But

Sheila Taylor isn't this precisely part of the problem. You said this

is only one thing we should consider and there are lots of other factors,

but clearly as Amjad Bashir suggests, in this situation,

professionals were just too nervous and professionals maybe with the

best of intentions were reluctant to look properly at what was going on

because of the sensitivities around race? Historically we have looked

back at child sexual exploitation since I have been involved in 1999

when I got involved that you see professionals really not responding

appropriately to children that are telling you it is happening to them,

but they are not being believed, they are not being heard properly

and they are certainly not being responded to properly. If you think

about those 1400 children that we have talked about that have been,

for want of a better word, serially raped over a number of years, what

have we done to help them to repair and recover from that and they are

now in society and if we're not careful we are going to have a

cohort of people who don't know what a healthy sexual relationship is.

And on precisely the point of what should happen next, Jack Dromey

And on precisely the point of what you have confidence as the shadow

Policing Minister you have confidence as the shadow

Yorkshire Police to look back at these crimes properly to investigate

them now properly? That is why there needs to be an independent

investigation by the IPCC, because all those who fail to act deserve to

be called to account. Including those in the Police Service, those

who previously worked for the council as well as of course the

police and crime commission. Briefly, South Yorkshire Police have

intimated they will investigate some of these crimes historically, do you

have confidence in them to do that, particularly as some of the victims

are considering taking legal action against them. That is a conflict of

interest isn't it? There will be no confidence in any investigation

other than it is seen to be independent. Thank you all of you.

other than it is seen to be The NHS budget is insulated

to other Government department, but it is still under significant

pressure. Not least from drugs whose prices climb and climb and climb.

Newsnight has learned that officials plan to threaten to stop buying some

of the most expensive high-tech cancer treatments if the companies

that produce them won't cut their prices. The proposals will be

revealed tomorrow and they affect the cancer drug fund, a scheme set

up in 2010 by David Cameron. With the details we have our policy

editor Chris Cook. Concern about the NHS's unwillingness to spend money

on expensive cancer drugs is a long-running theme. That is why

David Cameron announced the Cancer Drugs Fund back in 2010, an

England-only, ?200 million a year specialist pot to pay for drugs that

otherwise would be refused for costing too much. Just ask Clive

Stone, I met him years ago when we were in opposition. He had cancer

and he is said to me the drug he needed was out there but they

wouldn't give it to him because it is too expensive. Please, if I get

in could I do something about it. We have, a new Cancer Drug Fund that

has got the latest drugs to more than 21,000 people and counting.

Newsnight has learned that the fund is running overbudget, and officials

are expected to announce tomorrow it will be increased from ?200 million

a year to ?280 million a year, starting this year. The fund will be

subjected to a new cost benefit regime, that will mean the least

effective drugs stop being funded and the most expensive drugs will

have to prove their worth if they are continued to be funded. Some

pharmaceutical companies should expect that they will be told their

drugs are too expensive for the drugs fund set up just to payer to

the most expensive drugs. This issue all revolves around NICE, the body

that decides whether or not the drugs are cost effective enough to

be bought by the NHS. They should cost no more than ?30,000 a year for

a year of life in good health. The amount they will pay for that is

sometimes more when dealing with end of life drugs, even so cancer drugs

often just cost way too much. NICE struggles in cancer, that is

publicly acknowledged hence the fund, the issue there really is the

advent of the new science means we have highly targeted medicines

within smaller patient cohorts but fixed R cost, so a drug costing ?1

million over a small amount of patients. You have higher headline

prices per patient, that is what happened over the course of recent

years. This is almost ?3,000 worth of tablets. That is why there is

demand for the fund, and some of these medicines really do make big

differences. In 2008 I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, I was

put on to the hormone therapy treatments which are usual in that

situation, they carried on through until my levels changed and I was

advised by my consultant to go on to something called a new drug at the

time. This has allowed me to continue my professional and family

life to the full and has allowed me to avoid chemotherapy and any of its

effects. This was only possible because of the Cancer Drugs Fund.

You if you if the fund lacks rules on cost effectiveness, drug

companies can just charge very high prices. And, when you discuss that

problem one company comes up a lot. Roche, the Swiss pharmagiant

accounts for one quarter of spending. It produces the latest

high cost cancer treatment rejected by NICE. It costs ?90,000 a throw

for six months of extra life. That gives you a cost per QALY of

?166,000, that is several times more than the most generous of NICE

limits. Now officials really don't want to delist effective drugs, nor

do they want to undermine what is a flagship policy for NHS England. But

if they don't have the power to say to drug companies we won't buy at

that price, they don't have a negotiating position at all. And

with rising numbers of cancer patients, the inability to keep the

cost of cancer drugs down is a major concern.

This is a tough issue, Roche say NICE's methods aren't fit for

Europes, other Companies point pharma out the prices for QALY have

not moved with inflation. Many are asking if we should he can empt

cancer patients from the NHS cost systems at all.

I'm joined by my guests this afternoon. Why is cancer special?

Because it affects one in three of us, soon to affect one in two of us.

It is something, a disease that has awful implications but in fact we

can do a lot, more than 50% of cancer patients are now cured. We

have seen a breakthrough in the number of new drugs in the last two

years, 25 new drugs, new drugs, all expensive registered for cancer care

in Europe. For sufferers, patients and the families of those with other

appalling diseases why should they accept that cancer sufferers get

prefer relation financial treatment. Do you accept that is what happens?

That is what is happening. The NHS pot is limited, however you look at

it, the politicians try to bend it but it is limited. If you give more

to cancer you are taking it from somewhere else. Nurses don't syringe

ears any more simply because there is not the funding for their time to

do that. Do you accept that is what we should do? I think the cancer

drugs fund is a political stunt in response to shroud-waving by the big

response to shroud-waving by thebig big pharma companies. Is it only

motivated by political pressure on David Cameron? Yes and the pressure

is enormous, it is brought by the companies themselves but also the

patient organisations which are often fronts for the companies. It

has been alleged that it costs a billion to develop the drug but it

has certainly been suggested only a tenth of that is actually the drug

development cost, the rest is PR, advertising and marketing. These are

big global companies they have clout, they have more power than the

Government in lots of ways and the Government has to stand up to it. Is

this now the Government standing up to big pharma, what do you make of

the idea, why don't they say if you don't lower the prices we won't pay

any more? The cancer drug is a great example, they were asked to come

back with a lower price and they haven't done so. They are in the

press beating each other around the head. The sadness for me as a doctor

is when you see the emotional effect on a patient today. A woman maybe

who has failed on herceptin and a good candidate for that drug and

they have to go through a funding request. To be clear on the

proposal, you back the idea of the Government saying unless you put the

price down, big powerful drug company, we will not fund this drug

at all? I back that, but I think that one has to have an escape

clause, so doctors can prescribe a drug that they think will be the

best thing for their patient. That is the conflict. And David's right,

it is a political stunt. You have got NICE, that is assessor, if the

assessor turns it down how can you have a back door in. That is to

prevent the politicians losing faith coming up, losing face coming up to

an location. Is that the right way to go? It is the only way to go, you

have to stick up to to go? It is the only way to go, you

companies, they will probably back down in the end. They won't do it

easily. It is terrible for patients, of course. But you have to be clear

easily. It is terrible for patients, that although cancer survival has

improved, many of these new drugs are very marginal improvements.

Katsyla the extra life you get compared with standard treatments is

an extra six months, that is not very much for ?100,000. The hope is

that by understanding the molecular targets of their

that by understanding the molecular predict which patients can respond

and then everyone will be happy. If the drugs were expensive

and then everyone will be happy. If used in patients that would

and then everyone will be happy. If I have a patient with lung cancer

that has I have a patient with lung cancer

years now on a drug that costs ?120,000 a year, but he's in

years now on a drug that costs group that will benefit from that

drug. We can predict that. Isn't the bigger problem as David suggests

that with enormous respect medical professionals like you, the research

industry is enormously reliant on the big pharmaceutical companies,

unless tax-payers suddenly want to pay an awful

unless tax-payers suddenly want to going to have power over

Governments? They are, there is no. going to have power over

They do, but I think what has happened with Kancycla is an example

of standing up to it. They can't sell it half the price in France and

twice the price to the NHS, sell it half the price in France and

would ship over in Europe, there has to be a way of coming to an

agreement, there will be in the next few months. Roche made ?7. 7 billion

profit last year, they can afford to reduce the price, they won't,

because once they have done it they will be expected to do it again, of

course. But they cannot go on living in this style for drugs which don't

actually work at all well very many of them. If I was terminally ill and

they said if you have this drug for ?100,000, it is difficult to say

what you will feel when you are terminally ill, but you can have

four months of uncomfortable live extray, I'm not sure that I would

say that I was, it was my duty not to bother with it. It is easy to

intellectualise when you haven't got cancer, if you have got cancer and I

see people every day that have the disease, they want everything, they

are desperate, especially younger people with families, two months to

them is worth having. And studies have shown that for 1% benefit

people will take the drug. If you haven't got cancer it is not so

important. But I do take your point about the balance within the health

service and drugs. How do we prioritise? Various politicians go

with the voters and the voters vote for the NHS and they vote for cancer

as the most important worry they have about the NHS. So politicians

follow that. Cabs Cancer is terrifying that is the target for

the companies. It is also the target for a lot of quacks who immediately

surround anyone with cancer wishing to poke them with pins and all sorts

of concoctions. We will leave it there thank you very much for

joining us. In this country we tend to assume

that guns and children don't really mix very well. That seemingly

responsible assumption would be regarded pretty strangely by many

people across the Atlantic where firearms can be part of family fun.

This particular part of the eternal debate over the right to bear arms

is back. After a nine-year-old in Arizona shot her instructor dead

while she was having a shooting lesson at a firing range, learning

how to use an Uzi, a sub-machine gun almost as big as her. We have to

keep that held in, otherwise the gun won't fire. A regular day out. For

many American families there is nothing unusual to see here. But

seconds later this nine-year-old girl lost control of the Uzi

sub-machine gun killing her instructor, Charles Vacca. When a

nine-year-old gets an Uzi in her hand, the criteria is eight-year-old

to shoot firearms, we instruct kids as young as five on 22 rifles they

don't get to handle the firearms but they are under supervision of their

parents and professional range masters. Six years old! And shooting

a fully automatic. For many parents the right to bear arms isn't just

important, introducing their children to guns they can barely

lift is a rite of passage too. Did you shoot the Uzi? Yeah. That's my

boy. These home videos recorded from shooting ranges across the US

proudly uploaded by parents for the world to see. But America's less

proud of the record of firearms incidents that kill and injure

hundreds of children every single year. 100 children were killed in

accidental shootings in 2013. More than 800 children under 14 are hurt

in nonfatal incidents every year. And 31% of children live in a home

with a gun. Will this latest accident and new focus on the

thousands of others make any difference in a country where for

many owning a gun is a way of life. Finger off the trigger, how did that

feel? Pretty good. From Washington we're joined by Gary Pratt from Gun

Owners of America, and the President of Washington Ceasefire. Thanks for

being with us, can you explain to us in the UK why it is acceptable for a

nine-year-old to be given a lesson in how to use an Uzi sub-machine-gun

which can fire five bullets a second? I'm sure what preceded that

situation, I know that when I have taken my children and they in turn

have taken their children shooting we start with the. 22, as the

gentleman you interviewed had pointed out. And we point have them

graduate to anything until they are ready for it. And that's something

that we can determine, they are under our supervision. This goes on

not only with individual families but their clubs, some scouting

groups provide shooting instruction for young Scouts. So when done

properly I think most Americans say that is a good thing. But in

principle, whatever the type of gun, how young, at what age is it OK? A

seven-year-old, a six-year-old a five-year-old? How young should

children be before they are allowed to handle a gun? In my own family's

case we have made the determination based on their physical capability,

their judgment. It was something that was the parents' call. How old

was your youngest child when you gave them a gun for the first time,

and your grandchildren even? I would imagine eight or nine years old,

same as the girl in this video. Why is that acceptable, it is pretty

hard for many people in the UK to understand that Well you are

starting with a. 22 which has no recoil, they become familiar

whenever they touch the gun, they get ternly lectured about how to use

it safely, and we, I think in America, understand that firearms

ultimately are nothing personal but why we are no longer British. What

do you say to that, it was a tragic accident was it not? It is a tragic

but another unnecessarily accident. I think the key thing on this is

that this is a military assault weapon, it is an automatic weapon

where if you hold your finger on the trigger, bullets will fly, you know

at an incredible rate. So it makes absolutely no sense at all, and I

think it is indicative that mainstream America is disconnected

from the dangers of a gun. Disconnected from the danger of a

gun in the home. We know when there is a gun in the home you are

22-times more likely to kill family member or friend than an intruder.

We have a cultural defect in this country where we can't find that

balance between personal freedoms and public safety. Are you

suggesting that no child should ever be allowed to handle a firearm, even

under supervision? No child should ever be allowed to fire an Uzi with

that type of killing power and that type of immediate catastrophe

waiting to happen. This is not the first event of its kind, in 2008 an

eight-year-old boy in a similar situation in Massachusetts, lost

control of an Uzi and he was the one who was killed in it. This weapon is

almost eight pounds and can fire in some case, some model, over 1,000

bullet as minute. This should just not have happened under any

circumstances, what do you make of that? Let's put it into some more

perspective, the victim in this episode was at greater risk while he

was driving to that range than he was at the range. But cars don't

fire bullets, five bullets a second? More people are killed in

automobiles, including children. Than by firearms, firearms are not

the greatest device connected with people dying. But people need to

drive to get to work, they don't need to allow their nine-year-olds

to use a gun? We will have our disagreement. People need to have

their guns, they are part of our political control of our Government,

they are part of our keeping ourselves safe, some 16-times a day

more defensive gun use occurs than any kind of death resulting from a

firearm. And it is even when you lock at just accidental deaths from

firearms compared to automobiles, than defensive gun use something

like 32-times. Larry see it is from a different perspective. First of

all. That is an understatement. In Washington state now we have more

death from gun violence than car accidents. So right now we have

about a similar number nationwide of 30,000 from guns and 30,000 deaths

from cars, a rate that is about 20-times higher than the average

industrialised nation. Here in Washington state we 600 deaths.

Every time this kind of accident takes place the debate takes place

too, will there ever be a day when the antigun lobby will have to

accept that the American way of life requires access to firearms and you

don't like it, will you ever have to accept it do you believe? No, I

think change is on the way. Mainstream America is being educated

and the risk of having guns. Larry's comment of a gun being used to

deflect a crime 1600 times a day is based on bogus research. Research

that is refuted by the director of prevention from the Harvard school

of public health. They send out false research, we have the mayor

spending $50 million to rebutt this. Larry and his groups have prevent

the researchers to look into gun violence. Thank you for making time

for Newsnight this evening. Eurowoes are back, if they ever

truly disappeared. After the Government fell apart on manoeuvre

truly disappeared. After the how to rescue its economy, France

today announced record unemployment. Italy has fallen into a triple-dip

recession, investors are now so nervous about where to put their

euros, they are paying the German Government to look after their cash.

That is the curious economic quirk of the negative interest rates

charged on German bonds these days. Our economics correspondent Duncan

Weldon has been working out why. How bad is it? The only word to use what

is happening in Europe at the moment is "disaster". What is happening

with the German interest rates today, the German Government can

borrow at record interest rates, after two years the German

Government can borrow at a negative interest rate. People are paying the

German Government to take their money. That is not meant to happen,

that is a sign something is terribly wrong in the economy. If we look at

unemployment and just for context if we look at UK and US unemployment

over the last two years, now it rose during the recession, and since then

as our economies have recovered unemployment starts to fall. But if

we look at Europe you get quite a different picture, so the eurozone

unemployment rose but look what has happened since 2011 it has gone

higher and stayed up there. The UK and the US have had their weakest

recoveries in 100 years but Europe hasn't really had a recovery at all.

Those fundamentals have been the case for some time what are the

markets so worried about today? What the real concern is about at the

moment in Europe is inflation, or rather the lack of inflation. I mean

again if we take a look at the numbers, this is the change in

prices in the European economy. You have 2010, 2011, inflation is going

up, but against 2012 inflation has been collapsing t has been down to

less than half a per cent. What is really concerning people today is in

the coming months prices in Europe, across Europe as a whole might

actually start to fall. Stuff getting cheaper doesn't sound like

the biggest economic problem. But what economists will tell you is it

is terrible consequence, it sucks spending out of the economy and

pushes down pages and making debt harder to pay. That is the last

thing particularly southern Europe needs at the moment. The situation

is quite worrying. I suspect I can guess the depressing answer to this

question, is there any end in sight, any prospect of eurozone politicians

gripping this in a long-term radical way? I think you know the answer and

the answer is depressing, this seems to be a neverending economic crisis

and there is no end in sight at the moment. The real problem is

politics. There is lots the European Central Bank could be doing to get

Europe out of this state. But it has been held back by the Germans who

are very uncomfortable with it. At the moment the French and Italians

are pushing very hard for a deal. They are saying we will carry out

reforms in our economy but you have to give us more breathing space. The

Germans are not budging. They are stuck in this cycle. The really

worrying thing is if this continues for a little while longer and down

the road you will hear more and more voices in countries like Italy who

are starting to say is it worth the pain of being a euro member.

Promises that the Internet can revolutionise your life are rather

hollow if like millions fortunate to live outside our great Metropolis,

your broadband is slow and maybe non-existent. There could be a

solution, it might be in the space all around us. It is being

developed, where else, but where Marconi set up the first wireless

telegraph station, we sent Mark Grossman there, to the Isle of

Wight. Battling the waves and not just in the sea. One of the biggest

changes for the fresh water independent lifeboat is

communication. Radio waves often struggle to get past the spectacular

cliffs at the Isle of Wight coastline. Back in the 1890s Marconi

came here to test his wireless invention, since then radio has

saved thousands of lives, but it is still pretty limited. How dependable

is the radio communication? Essentially we are using the same as

Mar rconi first invented, we are still limited by line of sight and

we can only have one way communication at a time. If somebody

else is talking on the radio that will drown us out. If they have got

a stronger signal. This is particularly frustrating for Jeremy

and the crew, because this lifeboat is otherwise fitted out with the

latest technology, including cameras that could stream real-time rescue

pictures back to base. What the lifeboat desperately need is a

reliable way of getting two-way communication between here and

shore. That's exactly what this little boat has been testing as part

of a UK-wide series of trials and new technology called TV White

Space. Here with the help of a stick and fresh water beach is the

technical bit. What is this white space technology? It is technology

that takes advantage of unused spectrum, that you can utilise for

broadband connectivity. If you think of a spectrum as moving from low

freakies down the long wave, up to the high freakies, which is visible

light, you have a couple of key points. You have your home-based

Wi-Fi that sits here, then the TV broadcasts which are sitting down

here, this is prime real estate spectrum, the broadcasters weren't

stupid, they put their transmissions in the place that gives them best

coverage for the lowest possible power to reach the maximum number of

viewers. If we zoom in on the bits where the television transmissions

are, it looks like this. This is BBC One, this is BBC Two, this is ITV,

you get the idea, and look at this, you have got space here, you have

got space there, you have space inbetween the different

transmissions? What are the spaces there? These spaces stop the

transmissions interfering with each other. That suggests the spaces

can't be used because it would interview with the TV signal? Not

the case you can use them to deliver broadband. One of the problems with

Wi-Fi is how to get it through to the back bedroom and the kitchen. It

is not easy to do now. The reason it doesn't reach these places is

because the frequency is so high. If you lower the frequency to 600, 700

MHz, then had goes much further. Using the TV freakies to send and

receive the Internet it means the signal will go much further than the

Wi-Fi. You can then connect up a whole village with one Wi-Fi hub,

bringing the Internet to the thousands of households currently

off line. This man runs an internet provider on the Isle of Wight and

can't wait to shift his operation into white space. One of the biggest

problems growing that we become approached with are people

struggling to sell their houses in the rural area where the broadband

connection is not good enough. Everyone who knows if you have a

super yacht you can have broadband in the middle of the Atlantic. But

systems like that are out of reach of domestic homes and offices and

independent lifeboats and the RNLI who have to fund their own

purchases. White space allows connectivity to go much longer

through much more challenging conditions, but at a really

affordable price. There is no confusing the centre of Glasgow with

the Isle of Wight what could help rural Britain, could, it is argued,

be equally transformative for cities. Strathclyde University has

been running a pilot to link their cities. Strathclyde University has

campus up with TV white space technology. I can get the

Strathclyde network here, and here, and here and here. Of course the

university could have used conventional technology to

university could have used in and around all these buildings of

their in and around all these buildings of

laying miles of big, fat, expensive cable. Beyond their budget, instead

what have they done? Have a look up there, you see the

what have they done? Have a look up bring me the Internet. The wireless

revolution is just beginning, we have set up a number of nodes on

campus and we have a white space network here so students can pick up

on their phone with a Wi-Fi to a white space connected basestation.

You wait a few years you will have a white space chip in your mobile

device and you can do mobile or Wi-Fi or white space, so as a

research organisation we are looking into

research organisation we are looking designs. This is something that will

happen. It is absolutely going to be a great opportunity for people to be

more connected. Because it really will be wireless everything soon.

White space technology is possible partly because of advances in GPS,

the geographical partly because of advances in GPS,

device wanting partly because of advances in GPS,

of the spectrum has to be established. This is then fed into a

constantly updated database to work out which white spaces are free to

use. Ofcom, who control the TV spectrum are white space

enthusiasts. When might we see it coming in for real? That is what we

are busy working with people at the moment. Rural broadband with

workshops taking place last week to see how people can use it, it is

being used in America and Singapore, the UK is one of the leaders. We

expect people to be able to use it from next year onwards. And speeds

that they can only dream of at the moment, I suppose? Definitely. It

depends how much white space is available and how many channels you

can use in those space, but people will

can use in those space, but people use this application. Bar a few rock

falls the cliffs haven't changed too much since Marconi stood here and

brought radio to the world. Even he would be surely amazed with how far

wireless communication has come since then. Some people we barely

got started. A clarification, earlier one of our guests referred

to the deputy leader of Rotherham council, to be quite clear he was

referring to the former deputy leader, just in the last minute some

breaking news on that story. The Police Commissioner, Shaun Wright,

in south Yorkshire, who was head of Children's Services, during some of

the time when abuse was committed on such a scale in Rotherham, has just

announced that he is resigning from the Labour Party but has said he

remains committed to staying on in his role as Police Commissioner with

responsibility for the police in that area. And a very brief look at

one of tomorrow's papers that is on the front page of the Sun. One of

the victims of that scandal taking an unusual step, waving her

anonymity to tell her story and say how angry she is with Shaun Wright.

That is all we have time for to tonight, good night and thanks for

watching. Another area of low pressure coming

lose close to the UKover night, spreading rain northwards, still

around in Scotland. It