27/10/2015 Newsnight

Get set for a whole new era in British policing.

Top cops tell us that impending spending cuts mean they're having

We need to reimagine policing. The way we are being asked to operate

and respond to crimes is changing. The end of old-style street patrols,

some DIY policing, We'll ask whether the police can get

by or not, on a reduced budget. is President Putin a threat to

the internet? Some worry that Russia is working

out which cables to cut to stop And what Erica Jong now thinks

of the anonymous sex she wrote In Fear Of Flying,

I say the ZF is a platonic idea. It is rarer than the unicorn,

and I have never had one. If October has been a month

of arguments about tax credits, get set for November

which will see the Government It'll be a big moment in Whitehall,

but few public services are waiting Theirs is not a "protected" budget,

like health or schools, so the police have to brace themselves

for cuts over this Parliament Even if they don't turn out to be

that deep on the day, the cuts will not involve a little

tuck or trim here or there. No, senior police have told

Newsnight that we'll be When it comes to policing, we are a

romantic lot. We like our bobbies to be on the beat, we want our cops to

be chasing robbers. But those days are coming to an end. Crime has

changed, and so have those fighting it. The Metropolitan Police will

soon move out of its iconic quarters here, into a much smaller building

just around the corner. In a way, it is symbolic to look at some

pressures on the police at the moment, trying to do as much as they

can with a lot less money. And among senior officers, there is no

pretending that life will ever be quite the same again. So will the

threshold for investigating certain crimes rise? Yes. People won't like

that. I think people are far more understanding when they know scale

the of the challenge and they understand the choice is having to

be made, I think people understand. I think it is game to be very tough,

and other things need to change. One of the initiatives we are looking at

is whether every police force should do a full range of policing

capability. Are there more efficient ways to be organised's another thing

that comes up from time to time is whether we need 43 forces in England

and Wales, whether in fact it would be cheaper to have fewer.

Police demonstrating about cuts. Now they are braced for a much worse. In

next month's competent of spending review, budgets will be slashed by

25-40%. The winds of change are already through blowing forces

across the United Kingdom. Many police stations have been shut, and

others will be soon. Figures obtained by Newsnight under Freedom

of Information give a snapshot of how life on the front line of

policing is changing. Over the last five years, the Met has closed 77

police stations. In Merseyside, they have closed 28. Another seven will

go. The Police Service of Northern Ireland has shut 29 out of 83, and

in Scotland, they have closed 31 police stations. In terms of bobbies

on the beat, it is a difficult one, because it is one of those features

of policing which the public have come to like and respect over many

years, but the evidence would say that random police patrol doesn't

prevent crime, solve crime, or make people feel safer. Are the days of

the routine patrol over? I think in the future we will always respond to

the pub fight, domestic abuse, people in difficulty, and we will

always focus our patrol on crime and disorder hotspots. What we won't be

doing is focusing patrol is focusing patrols on areas where there is

little crime and disorder. Just after 11 o'clock on a Saturday

morning, at Piccadilly Circus, if you want ten minutes with a London

policeman, you have called me just right. By law, police officers have

always been protected from the perils of compulsory redundancy. Now

police chiefs believe they could be necessary. In the classroom today,

seasoned detectives learning new tricks. There is another operating

system inside Windows which might be doing bad things. They are being

taught how to look for the tell-tale signs of crime online. Cyberspace is

a smoke and mirrors world, and the police are playing catch up. It

involves communications data, whether that be IP addresses or

phone numbers. For us to resolve that, that is very resource

intensive, and the Met is grinding to a halt under the weight of

applications and our ability to process them, because they are not

cheap to do. Money is short, and the police need help. We will have to

look at computer you different models. There has been a lot of talk

as we start to step into this world, why could we not work with

industry to fund some of the work we do, and they could help in paying

for that? Does that mean direct funding for some of your

programmes? Potentially, and I think that is one of the things we are

going to have to think about as we go forward. There are also to the

ethical challenges and hurdles along the way, but one of the challenge of

this size and scale does is 40 to think differently. But the future

does offer one nod to the past. If you are a Miss Marple, the police

needs you. DIY detectives are back. Would you encourage people to be

more proactive in investigating certain types of crime for

themselves and helping you by delivering what evidence they have?

Yes. Absolutely. Take an example of your home. Many people now will have

CCTV or something, on the outside of their home, and those sorts of

things, they're all our might go off in the middle of the night. They

would look at that, and if there is something on me, give it to us.

There has been a lot of commentary where we have talked over the last

six or 12 months about people looking on auction sites themselves,

prized by extolling from shed, and go on auction sites. I am probably

the only person who would recognise my bike. You can say that it is read

and made by certain manufacturer, but getting people involved in that

crime prevention and that crime detection workers got to be part of

the future. The Home Office insists front line

services have been detected, and crime is coming down. They say it is

how officers are used that matters, not how many of them there are. And

for those in uniform, the Finn Lu line is getting increasingly

threadbare there. -- the Finn blue line.

A lot of provocative ideas in that piece.

Joining me now, Joanne McCartney and sociologist Dr Foster. Let's start

with bobbies on the beat. It is easy to say, they are not doing anything

at all, they'll the first cut on the block. I think bobbies on the beat

play an important role in reassuring the public, and increasing public

confidence that there is an office of their that can help. The cuts

that policing is facing now is taking us back to 1970s level

funding, and don't think any of us want to see the police in cars,

driving around and waiting for any shoe. But we really want them to

spend the money wisely and efficiently, and if they don't

prevent crime or catch crime, then bobbies on the beat one of those

romantic luxuries we can't afford? They are imported, they are the

mainstay of our traditional policing. But you make sure you use

them in crime hotspots. There is a need for them. And increases of

traditional crime such as violent and treat based crimes are going up

in the city, not coming down, so they are still there, but the demand

is expanding as new crimes come to the fore. Janet Foster, would you

put much money into bobbies on the beat? I probably wouldn't. The

research evidence says that the important thing is that the research

suggests it doesn't actually reduce crime, having bobbies on the beat,

but there is an important element of public reassurance in terms of

reducing fear of crime. The interesting thing is that fear of

crime is sometimes higher in areas which have very low rates of crime,

so the visibility might not be in the places where you need to have a

police officer the most. However, the experience of neighbourhood

policing over the last ten or 15 years has actually shown that having

some kind of visible presence in communities is actually quite

important in terms of how people feel. That was limited resources,

what we need to do is put the cops where the problems are. We have also

heard from the police that community policing and having local people,

and bobbies known locally as that they get valuable intelligence,

which actually they would be in danger of losing if right

neighbourhood policing altogether. And does the evidence back that up?

Yes, it does, and it is important to remember that the public are the

conduit by which police learn about crime, and the interactions police

officers have the better relationship with the communities,

the more likely you are. But maybe not on the scale that you would want

it if you don't have the money to do everything. What about the things

that the public say they would like to have before they lose bobbies on

the beat. We have been discussing merging police forces for as long as

I can remember. Everybody recognises it would save money, and yet it

never happens. Why doesn't it happen? It is not popular with

police forces themselves, and now we have elected police commissioners, I

can't imagine them wanting to abolish their own positions, which

is what would be needed. In London, which operate on a command unit,

each London authority borough has its own command unit, but that is

one of the proposals about scrapping that and perhaps having one

commander in charge of two or three of those boroughs, so those

processes are being looked at. Janet, any view on that one? I think

there are whole series of issues and difficulties that are related to

these things... Just remind me of the question again? About merging

forces. It is to do with the politics of this, and politics are

and policing is something that took don't mix very well, but all the

time the political the sessions are driving certain kinds of decisions

about policing, so for example the whole emphasis on police numbers is

something that is a politically driven thing that looks at policing

as being about crime fighting in a very narrow form. The public clearly

think numbers is the best single snapshot of what you would want in a

police force. And the public, it is just a bit simplistic? Absolutely.

And if we look at the 2011 riots, police numbers did pen important

part. 8000 in a forceful size of the mat, that is about a quarter. It

seems impossible you could contemplate that without

re-engineering the whole idea of what the leaves are doing. The thing

to consider here is that what you have got is the backroom functions

which have already been taken away and cut as far as possibly they

probably can be cut, and the irony of that is that in some of those

services, there are things that would deliver more effective and

efficient policing. But the scenario has been that you have needed to

focus on police numbers. We have certainly got the stage where it is

policing that is going to be hit, but it is an all our best interest

to have a safe and secure situation, and the interesting thing

as you said in your introduction is that the focus has been on ring

fencing health and education, and yet actually policing is a vital

service. Do we need to readjust our expectations? If somebody goes wrong

in the street, some movies takes off their clothes and run naked or

something, you would basically think, call the police. That is who

you would go to. Do we have to stop thinking that the police can do all

that? I think we do and there is work

going on at the moment to understand what expectations are. A lot of

their work is to do with mental health issues and that is not part

of core policing. As you say if you saw someone in distress you would

call the police. There is a perfect storm gathering over policing

because they are the emergency service of last resort. And with to

authority budgets and to help service and voluntary sectors, who

will pick up the pieces if the police do not. I think what is

important is we fundamentally misunderstand what the role of the

police is. All of these functions that are now for example dealing

with mental health issues, with all kinds of order maintenance issues

not necessary to do with crime, but the important thing we need to do is

to understand what it is that the police do. I think the political

agenda has been about policing as crime-fighting. So the police have

always done a multiplicity of tasks. Many of which are thankless, that

they do not particularly enjoy themselves. But as you said they are

the agency of last resort. We will have to have this discussion when we

know exactly what the cuts are. Thank you.

Yesterday the Government faced its big defeat in the Lords.

David Cameron announced that he was asking Lord Strathclyde,

the man who was the Conservative leader in the Lords for many years,

to lead a rapid review into the relationship between

Labour have accused the Government of trying to bully the Lords.

With me now, Baroness Smith, Angela Smith, who is the Labour

Good evening. In what way is the Prime Minister trying to bully the

Lords? We do not have the standards often, this is the first time we

have spoken about it for many years. But when it was first mentioned that

the Lords thought about voting on tax credits, we had the cover -- the

government announced that they would have 150 extra peers and then it was

going to click their wings. The Lord has done nothing unusual, it acted

within the constitution and within its rules. But the government does

not like defeat. That is the bullying. As a Labour peer and you

do agree that the upper house, the unelected upper house should not

have power over financial bill. Whether you regard yesterday as a

bad thing. What the House of Lords does is to look at the detail and

scrutinise the government measures. This could come before the House of

Lords in the normal way that the government chose not to do that. Do

you think it was arguable that the Constitutional Convention says you

should not have voted this down. That it was not even an argument. It

is not even worth having that discussion? I think after discussion

but at the end of the day we were perfectly within our rights. The

clerk 's Department, independent experts, said it was no problem at

all. Is it not reasonable and not bullying of government to say, we do

not like the argument you talk, we want to have a look at this. That is

reasonable. It is a short memory, let's face it, when this government

was the opposition they did exactly what we are doing now. Tom

Strathclyde in 2008 did exactly the same on the Labour government

financial measures around national insurance contributions. So what we

do in government is OK, but not in opposition! Well supposing Lord

Strathclyde's review said there would be in agreement, a bit of

tinkering, and the Lords would not vote on finance instruments of that

kind. Would you support such a convention was they know, that the

Lords should have the right to vote on that kind of thing. On this kind

of thing we do have the right to vote. If Lord Strathclyde said the

only change is that the Lords should not vote on financial matters like

this? I do not think he has made the case. The government bowed one --

the government lost one vote. Let's see what change will come in. The

government could have said we do not think the law should vote on this,

in the normal way, we will bring forward a bill on these measures.

Why did the government not want to do that, why try to sneak it through

through a statutory instrument without proper discussion? If lost

track guide -- if Lord Strathclyde did suggest that, you would not

agree with codifying the fact that you should not vote on it. What Lord

Strathclyde is doing, on the basis of one defeat for the government,

which only said go back and have a look at the matter at ten, which is

perfectly reasonable and a common-sense approach, they now want

to change the rules. Clearly that defeat is in their mind but how many

defeats have the government had since May? I think about 16. Not on

financial matters. And he is looking at financial matters. They face an

in-built majority basically. Against them in the upper house. They do.

Did you never complain when they were in-built Tory majorities? Part

of the problem here as well, no Labour government ever had a

majority in the House of Lords. This is the first time ever that the

Conservative Party has not had an automatic majority. You would be

happy now to carry on with the idea of not having a majority in the

House of Lords? I think you do things properly and if you look at

the votes, not some of the more serious issues that the Labour

government lost on like terror issues, crime issues every one of

those votes, you do not vote everything down, you examine things.

More often than not, far more cases, the government accepted the changes

the House of Lords recommended, because it recognises it has not got

it right first time. Thank you. Of all the malicious threats to

our way of life, from terrorist bombs to cyber warfare, there is

one you may not thought about - the potential for an enemy to cut

deep sea communications cables. The issue has been highlighted

by a New York Times report that security sources have been concerned

to see Russian naval activity near Could the Russians sever the cables,

close down the internet, Our technology editor has been

looking at how scared we should be? They are the arteries

of the internet. About as thick as a garden hose but

thousands of miles long. Without them there is no global

communications network. The undersea cables carry

the vast majority I mean, satellite is a bit

of a rounding error. Anything that is sending information

that is travelling internationally, whether the Skype call or any

telephone call or any e-mail or any They are so vital that it is hard to

imagine what would happen We would have a complete failure

of global communications. According to the New York Times,

Russian submarines and spy ships, although not necessarily piloted

by Vladimir Putin himself, are aggressively operating close to

these vital undersea cables. Unnamed high-level American military

and intelligence officials told the paper that the Russians might

be planning to attack these lines This is part

of the geopolitical response we're seeing out of President Putin

and it is of a piece with flying It is of a piece with increasing

the military forces in the Arctic. It is of a piece with

the increase in military activity This is another geopolitical signal

that the Russians are sending that they're in the game and they're

going to be very assertive going But in practice, how vulnerable

is the undersea internet? If we look at the busiest part

of the network, under the Atlantic, there isn't just one cable

for a would-be aggressor to chop, Plus another couple that go via

Greenland or South America. In practice, say experts,

it would be almost impossible for someone to cut enough of these

to make a meaningful difference. If anyone

of those systems is broken, capacity will simply move to another system

and the break would not be felt. If they were to target multiple

systems at once, my guess is that we would see that coming a long way off

and we would be able to prevent it. And these cables are damaged all

the time. Sometimes, believe it or not,

by sharks. There are about three cable breaks

a week worldwide. Here are pictures from last weekend

of the cable between France This specialist team,

always on stand-by, haul out the damaged section,

fix it, and drop it back in. The most common cause,

dragging anchors. To go out and sabotage them,

you have to contend with the large voltages that are flowing

through them. So I wouldn't suggest walking onto

the surf But in a sophisticated way,

could the cables be cut? Their locations are

quite well-known. There are very good maps that are

meant to keep ships But it leaves the question of,

you know, what message are you It doesn't make a whole lot

of sense. Given the redundancies

in the system. It is a very aggressive,

very obvious act. And if

the Russians did somehow manage to strangle the West's internet, well,

apparently in the process they would So, well,

there would be little point. Because of the domestic

infrastructure built up within the major telecom hubs of Western Europe

such as London, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam, the effect would be less

felt there than it would be felt in other parts of the world where they

are more reliant And I think Russia would certainly

fall into that category. They are heavily dependent

on Western Europe, so anything that affects Western Europe would

ultimately affect them. So there are plenty of things for us

to worry about in the world today. An impossible conflict with Russia

is undoubtedly one of them. But one thing it's probably not

worth losing any sleep over tonight The statistics on death by suicide

are strikingly gender related. Men take their own life at almost

four times the rate of women. In fact, that gap has widened

considerably in recent decades. But important as statistics are,

they are not the only way of understanding an issue like

suicide - individual stories also And in that vein, tonight on

BBC Three there was a documentary from the rapper, Professor Green,

about the death of his father. It was part of the gender season

on the channel. I suppose there's very few ways

in which you can look at anything Because I would never make

the mistakes that he has. There's one theme between the

carpet and the sofa, isn't there? Well, I'm joined by Professor Green

- that's his stage name. He's otherwise known as

Stephen Manderson. Thank you for coming on. Why men,

you think? I guess there's still a of pressure on men to be the

archetypal man, to be hard. A lot of men feel the need to project that

image and the carry a lot of Rivaldo and pressure. Perhaps we have a

society developing not quite far enough yet. -- a lot of bravado. So

bottling things up? Feeling you have to be behaving in a certain way to

be a man. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you're less of a man.

If you go back and you talk to your father's best friend, best man, he

had no idea, it was a complete surprise to him that your father

would have taken his life. I think that is the same in so many cases.

We did a lot of research for the programme and many stories are the

same. I spoke to a lot of people on social media since we started to

help raise awareness and so many stories, all with original to the

present but they are similar in many ways. The culture of jocular guys

slapping each other on the back, playing practical jokes, does that

get in the way? Maybe, it is quite difficult. When you have something

going on, I think the owners is on all of us to ask the right

questions. Sometimes it is difficult, you do not want to delve

too deep even though something is going on. So the onus is on us to

take better care of each other. One of the things that came out, one of

the experts you spoke to, at this point about a generation because if

you look at where the high rates are, it seems to be my generation,

actually, that of your father, born in the early 1960s, who had a higher

rate of suicide in their 30s and now has moved up into the 40s. I think

it was in their 20s actually. I was not really a round before that but

there was a political change, a lot of things they endured in their

lives but also the stiff British upper lip. Society is different but

I do not think men in particular have caught up. The role of a woman

has become more defined and that of a man less so. Stress used to be if

you are under attack, or starving, but now it exists in every aspect of

our lives. We have not dealt with that.

One of the things I was struck by was family. Your father was strange,

he left you as a child. He had had similar problems in his family.

Something I only found out about the first time on camera. I wonder

whether UK match feeling more conservative about family life and

the importance of trying to keep bonds together and keep

relationships working? I think family is important and keeping

those relationships intact. As a child, it was hard for me because I

thought it was my responsibility, and what led the last time we

spoke, was me making myself vulnerable and reaching out to him

even though I said I never win again, because my great-grandmother

would write letters to his best friend Ken Bailey who would put us

back in touch, but I put my neck on the line to speak to him again, and

he let me down again. It has to be said, only again this was something

I learned watching a film, was the degree to which if you are exposed

to someone who has taken your life and you are vulnerable, you are more

likely to need help. And my dad's brother took his life a couple of

years before, so there is obviously something there. All of the things

that contribute to that, my dad had been through, and to find out stuff

like that was... To think about what anyone goes through when they are in

that position, and this is the one thing I hope comes from the

programme is that we change the perception of people who take their

own lives, because there is busy roads towards it which only helps

the taboo and makes more stick around it. People who take their

lives are not selfish, they often think quite the opposite. What would

you say to him now? My dad? You Muppet. You idiot. All right, thank

you very much. To a very different perspective

on gender now. The American novelist and poet

Erica Jong took the women's movement by storm with her 1973 novel Fear

of Flying with its phrase that Except she didn't use

the word copulation. Whatever word you choose,

it refers to a fantasy described by the heroine of the book

as "rarer than the unicorn". That was back then - we're now more

than 40 years on, and many books later, Erica Jong is on a new quest

with a book called Fear of Dying, this one billed as a novel about

sex and death in the internet age. Kirsty went to meet

the indefatigable Erica Jong. If Betty Friedan,

Germaine Greer and Simone de Beavoir wrote the textbooks of feminism,

Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was the witty erotic and whipsmart book

on on the feminism fiction shelf. It was the kind

of book you can remember where you In my case, a damp student house

in Edinbugh in my final year It has stayed the course -

more than 27 million copies sold, Now aged 74, Erica Jong's

protagonist Vanessa, aged 60, is back on the trail of the ZF, via

internet dating, but also dealing with death - her parents, her dog,

and she has a very sick husband. In Fear Of Flying,

I say the ZF is a platonic idea. It is rarer than the unicorn,

and I have never had one. So it is kind

of mystifying to discover myself It was because it was such a phrase

that stuck in the consciousness for so long, it is become part of the

lexicon. The book struck unnerve at the time in history in particular,

and there are things in your life you can't control, that is true. It

came at a time when people wanted to believe in the ZF and in the

possibility of it. So they didn't really read, " and I have never had

one". The idea at the time that the Internet might be a way of

delivering the ZF, was that a false dawn? I think six changes, but six

doesn't change. I think people want connections in their lives, they

want love and intimacy, but we go through these periods of madness

where people will say, the Internet will deliver! Identity anybody who

is not 12 years old actually believes that you will find love on

the Internet. The ageing process is something I think women worry about

more than ten. Do you think that is true? My heroine is an actress, and

actresses fear ageing because they are out of work when they age. So

there was a reason I made her an actress. People are making a fuss

now about Monica Baluchi is a bond woman because she is 50. I will make

a fuss when we have Jane Bond. I will not make a fuss about Monica

Baluchi being gorgeous at 50, because women are gorgeous and 50.

In your novel, you have Vanessa, your heroine, having a face-lift.

You said you had one, too. Ages ago. Do you regret doing that now? I

regret nothing. And what do you think about yourself? In a sense

that you still feel you are at the height of your powers? When it comes

to publication, I get panic stricken, as I always have, but in

the process of writing, I take great leisure in my power. Do I think I

look 20? Absolutely not. Do I think I look 30? No. But I feel very good

about getting older. I feel very strongly my work, and all kinds of

opportunities are rising in my work that never arose before. You have

been criticised in the past about mining your family for some plot

lines and characters. Who doesn't? The secrets were Vanessa takes her

daughter to rehab, and your own daughter was in rehab, it seems to

me both an apology in a way and a realisation that things that had

been done in the past, you felt guilty about. She came to me and

said, mummy, I have to go to rehab. My first thought was, it cannot be.

And then I said to myself, shut up and listen. She was very certain

that that moment in her life that she wanted to live. Had she not have

that quality, I could not have done anything. And I have seen it with so

many of my friends. The child has to want life, not death. And I consider

myself the most fortunate person in the world that my child reached out

for a life. Fear of Flying has never been out of print, more than 27

million copies. But I wonder what young people reading it now in

2015... What I hear from women in their 20s is that not enough has

changed. They also that. What I hear from men, and in California I was

amazed that half of my audiences were young men, what they say to me

is, now I understand women better, now I understand myself better. So

the book is made quite a journey. Feminism is like democracy. Once you

stop fighting for it, the fascists creep Atkin. The world is full of

places in which women are being raped, abused, denied their rights,

shot in the head that advocating school, think of Malala. That is the

norm in the world. Shooting women in the head for seeking education is

the norm. We are the exceptions, and we still don't have equal rights. So

there is a lot of work to do. Erica Jong, thank you very much indeed.

That is almost it for tonight. If you want to watch the Professor

Green interview, you can do so on the website.

We leave you with the local election campaign in the

Ukranian city of Odessa, where Darth Vader is standing as a candidate.

Local police had to get involved when the Wookie was caught

along with a Stormtrooper outside a polling station,

Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138.

Hello. It is a very unsubtle theme through the rest