30/10/2015 Newsnight

Tonight - this programme has seen details of the extraordinary

payments made by Kids Company to some of its clients.

Why was the charity authorising spending on designer shoes

Ministers saw these details before authorising a multi-million

One senior Cabinet office source told me these

Either you leave us to die in peace, or either tell the world the truth!

He spent a third of his life in a cell in Guantanmo Bay.

Now Shaker Aamer is released home to Britain - without charge.

What purpose has Guantanmo served - and what do its practices say

We're joined by two men who know Gauantanamo well

Musicians play their instrument, I play the orchestra.

We talk to film director Danny Boyle about his no holds-barred portrayal

A corporation like Apple is so powerful now,

so influential around the world, that it is crucial that writers and

artists tell the stories that they don't necessarily want you to tell.

And on Artsnight, George the Poet explores black culture in the

For me, racism always trumps sexism, for me.

A senior cabinet office source has described as "gobsmacking"

details of the payments made by the charity Kids Company just three days

A preliminary report - seen by this programme - confirms large

sums were made to individual clients - and even to the family of staff.

One individual received ?47,000 over the past year. Government officials

had advised ministers against giving the charity further money.

Kids Company - which shut down in August - had been led by

the charistmatic and high profile founder, Camilla Batmanghelidgh.

Chris Cook who broke the orginal story of Kids Company's

Ministers were sent a report containing concerning

details about Kids Company just three days before they paid it ?3

The document obtained by Newsnight and BuzzFeed News contains new

information about the charity's operations under

And it will increase pressure on Matthew Hancock and Oliver Letwin,

the two Cabinet Office ministers who signed off on the payment.

The report is by PWC, the accountants.

It is an interim response to a set of allegations made to

the Charity Commission by former employees of Kids Company.

Now, here is how Alan Yentob, the charity's chair of trustees

and a BBC executive, characterised its content to MPs a fortnight ago.

Because of the allegations going on, because we had to go to the PWC

and pay them ?50,000 to tell us that there wasn't much substance

in the allegations and therefore the Cabinet Office should go ahead

This confidential report doesn't adjudicate on the allegations that

were made to the Charity Commission.

But what it does do is establishes the facts around them and it finds

For example, patchy record keeping. The thing

The thing that really jumped out from this report, there is

the sheer scale of the spending on some of Kids Company's clients.

Two young people related to staff members benefit from nearly 134

thousand pounds worth of spending. PWC said ?90,000 of that went on

therapy but that still leaves a lot to account for. When they went

through the receipts they found one from this designer shoe shop in the

London West End. ?300 on a single pair of designer shoes. In other

cases the PWC report mentions receipts for Apple computers and

high-end clothes shops. Kids Company refuses to comment on individual

cases but the charity said spending was always motivated by specific of

each client. The document also showed spending on the child of an

Iranian diplomat, document says Kids Company funded their Ph.D. At a

high-ranking British university. Support was costed at ?25,000 per

year. Camila Batmanghelidjh who is herself Iranian, said she had not

been involved in the case. But she said the president needed support

and the donor was sponsoring the spending. But why was Kids Company

sponsoring a foreign student at all? The PWC report also looks into

allegations of employment irregularities. Money for a favoured

crime. It confirms one person received over ?47,000 in untaxed

income in 2014, including thousands of pounds for rent and clothes. This

individual was not required at all but an employee. They were just paid

as a client to avoid taxes. The charity completely denies this but

even if this person was acquired, we still have a problem. Acquired

received almost ?1000 per from Kids Company. This person did not have a

family but this is what Camila Batmanghelidjh said to MPs two weeks

ago. Was it true that people over the age of 18 received over ?100 per

week? That would be very rare and only if it was a family. And they

have two support a family. You are aware that it is contempt of

Parliament to mislead us? Absolutely. This charity leader, who

has had previous disagreements with Kids Company, thinks the money they

spent was not well tailored to the needs of recipient. What I'm seeing

in the report is random, flamboyant largesse as opposed to strategic

support of vulnerable young people. I would want to see in any kind of

paperwork from Kids Company, detailed care plan. Why this

individual was chosen, why the amounts of money were given in this

way and for this purpose. The charity of course disagrees. They

say spending was based on assessment of personal, social and clinical

needs but the report is a problem for ministers and raises questions

for Alan Yentob. A spokesman for

the charity's leaders has told us: The allegations made to the Charity

Commission were not substantiated. When PWC reported on their findings

the evidence they had seen did not This was not a full audit

but an intensive investigation looking at hundreds of documents

and interviews with key staff. Alan Yentob made it clear to

the Public Accounts Select Committee that the PWC investigation

was incomplete. Financial and practical support has

always been part of Kids Company's role providing

a supportive family environment. All the gifts referred to in the PWC

report were funded by private donors,

not by the Government's grant. Chris Cook, he is with us here.

Where does that now leave things? Well the next phase is with the

select committee, there is a session next week and the big one will be

with Matt Hancock and Oliver Aleppo and having to explain themselves.

Their argument is really that ministers have been overruling civil

servants to give money to Kids Company since 2002. They were the

ones who forced Camila Batmanghelidjh to resign. It is sort

of their fault that money was spent recently but they were at least not

as bad as previous ministers. Thank you very much.

For the last 14 years he's been known as detainee 239.

Shaker Aamer has spent nearly a third of his life in Guantanamo bay

- and yet this evening he returned home to the UK without charge.

His plane landed at Biggin Hill airport this afternoon,

and the man - picked up by a bounty hunter in the

Jelalabad region of Afghanistan in 2001 - was released without charge.

He has always denied any form of extremism - and

in later years he became an advocate for other prisoners rights.

He could now be in line for a ?1 million payout

Tonight, we ask why he was kept for so long - and what purpose

The voice of Shaker Aamer, recorded in his cell by an American

documentary team in Guantanamo Bay two years ago.

Today Shaker Aamer, the final British resident in Guantanamo

arrived back in the UK after 14 years of internment without trial.

He was cleared for release in 2007. A Saudi national, he had been living

in the UK before his arrest that has a wife and four children. His

youngest son who he has never seen, was born the same day he was sent to

Guantanamo Bay. Shaker Aamer, would eating the 239, was captured in

Afghanistan in 2001. He claims he was engaged in aid work at the time

but in US documents released by WikiLeaks, is described as a

recruiter, financier and facilitator with a history of participating in

jihadist combat. The documents also state he admitted travelling to

Afghanistan in 2000 to serve with the mujahedin. In spite of these

allegations, he was never charged and his lawyers have said he was

subject to regular beatings, sleep deprivation and spread almost one

year in solitary confinement. His supporters said the delay in this

release was due to security service failures that he could reveal

damaging information. He alleges British intelligence agents

questioned him and they knew that he was being tortured. It is unlikely

then that his return to the UK marks an end to his story. But for now

Shaker Aamer has said he is more pressing priorities, like a cup of

coffee and reuniting with his wife and family.

Our two guests tonight both know it well, but have seen it

Here in the studio, Moazzam Begg, a former detainee incarcerated

there for two years - and from Washington David Rivkin, a former

Thank you both for coming in. Moazzam Begg you have been in touch

with the family of Shaker Aamer today. Of course they are overjoyed,

they have also been apprehensive about what it means to reconnect

with the father, husband. And of course Shaker Aamer has not seen

those children, the last time he saw them they were just babies and he

has never met his youngest until today. So what that means for Shaker

Aamer is to be a father once again, a husband, a member of society. And

to be able to walk out of the four corners of the cell that he used to

being, unrestricted. It is something completely new him. 14 years and

then no charge at all. Guantanamo Bay seems pretty indefensible on a

day like today? On the contrary, the fact that he has not been charged is

not signify anything. He was held for a number of years as an enemy

combatant while the conflict was still going on. It is quite common

not to charge people and despite insinuations to the contrary, he was

held in humane and comfortable conditions. Better than most people

in federal prisons. He was not a charity worker, he was a combatant,

and there was plenty of evidence, he belonged to an organisation that

committed acts of brutality, killing innocent women and children,

torturing people. With all due respect are not greatly moved by his

desire to be reunited with his family. What about people who were

killed and tortured and had their heads cut off? So tonight you do not

see him as an innocent man? Well to not try to deliberate on TV whether

or not he is innocent. It is quite crucial to this. You are accusing

him of things he may or may not have done. In your mind he is not an

innocent man tonight? He is not innocent for the simple reason, the

Bush administration and the Obama administration have been quite

critical about Guantanamo Bay, but he has multiple reviews of his

record by objective and honourable military officers.

It's not a question of convicting him, it is looking at the record and

concluding there is insufficient evidence. I want to ask Moazzam

Begg, when you got home and looking at Shaker's position in society, do

you feel like an innocent man, you've heard this opinion from an

advocate of Guantanamo Bay, do you feel vindicated? We are talking

about countries that advocate the rule of law, countries that talk

about habeas corpus, the right to the body, either you are presented

with the evidence against you and prosecuted, or you are released.

There cannot be this third type of situation the gentleman here is

suggesting. Even Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo. He said it is

an indefensible place. People are being executed dressed in orange

suits in Iraq by Isis, for example. It doesn't alarm you that there have

been fewer than 2% convicted? That is not a concern for you? For the

benefit of your viewers, in a military justice system, which is

very different from the criminal justice system. It does not mean it

is lacking due process. People were held for years in prisoners of war

camp, the vast majority not convicted in World War I and World

War II. It's not a question of conviction, whether there is

sufficient evidence to conclude he was an enemy combatant. Would you

keep the camp open? Would you keep it going? I'd keep Guantanamo open

but that's nothing to do with the question, this individual was given

the benefit of the doubt, numerous reviews were conducted and they

concluded he was a member of Al-Qaeda, which is a horrible

organisation. Shaker Aamer has been cleared by at least six agencies. He

was not cleared, that is a lie. He's been cleared by two consecutive US

governments and never did designated for trial even by military

commission which is the lowest standard. The process that exists...

You are misleading. If you look at the code of justice any advocate

from the military has not been trained to use that process, and

even in that process they were never charging Shaker Aamer. I don't know

on what basis you say he's guilty. He is not. He has been held in false

detention, kidnapped, rendered and tortured. I want to pick up on the

point in terms of the interrogation and torture. David Rivkin, are you

convinced that British authorities supported US authorities in what

they were doing to inmates in Guantanamo? I would be amazed. I

have no factual knowledge of what transpired at any particular time. I

be amazed if anybody was mistreated in Guantanamo. You say nobody was

tortured in Guantanamo Bay? Nobody was tortured in Guantanamo Bay.

Moazzam Begg. Have you missed completely the CAA report? Have you

lived in a different world completely? Why did Obama ordered

the closure of Guantanamo Bay knee came into power? Why did he say I'm

going to end torture. He accepted torture existed. You deny it took

place. The only place it didn't happen was in your brain. Torture

never took place in Guantanamo. President Obama misspoke or

misunderstood? President Obama was referring to an investigation at

so-called CIA black sites, different issue to what happened in

Guantanamo. Nobody alleged there was mistreatment in Guantanamo. Every

single prisoner and American soldiers who served there, and

including some American prosecutors like Matt Diaz who resigned from the

commission process said there was tortured taking place. That is total

rubbish. Captain said torture was taking place and numerous people who

served in Guantanamo said torture took place. What do you think

Guantanamo chief, David Rivkin? Guantanamo has been criticised and

we paid a price, I understand that. Guantanamo symbolises this is a real

war against an implacable enemy which if we don't win will cost us

dearly. This is not a criminal justice exercise and the vast

majority of European friends just don't get it. Why were over 670

prisoners including myself released? If we are so dangerous why

are we free men? It doesn't make my sense will stop you made them had

mistakenly called us terrorists and the worst of the worst without any

legal process at all. Quite frankly this is nonsense. What you are left

with is a place that is a stain on the United States which you are

trying to defend. The viewers know what the recidivism rate of people

released from Guantanamo? Yes, I wrote a book and that is called

recidivism. And also the guys who made a film, it is called recidivism

because they made a film about Guantanamo, that is nonsense,

please! We've run out of time. Many people went back to fighting and

killing innocent civilians! We have run out of time, thank you for

coming in. Does the House

of Commons need to debate the need One Conservative MP - Philip Davies

- thinks the answer is yes. And he put his suggestion to

a backbench business committee. One of its members - Jess Philips -

the only woman on the board - said the gender imbalance,

not least of their own committee, "When I've got parity - when women

in these buildings have parity, then It could have ended there.

But it didn't. Jess Phillips joins us now from her

home in Birmingham, to explain. What happened, Jess Phillips? Hello.

What happened? Philip Davies came to the backbench

business committee and asked for, as you have outlined, asked for a

debate, International Men's Day debate, on the 19th of November.

I've not heard of it before. He led the charge in a sort of: The women

get one and a question session in Parliament so the men should have

one too. Then the fallout from it was that I spoke up against it,

which was presented by a certain newspaper that I had laughed and

joked about male suicide, men dying of cancer, young boys' education,

which obviously I did not do. And then I suffered a huge torrent of

very noisy abuse from men's rights activists, which very unfortunately

led to a very dark bit of the Internet calling for me to be raped,

banged and raped, raped publicly. And then when I published that on

Twitter then there was a torrent of people that said I was asking for

it, and it was my own fault. You called this a dark bit of the

Internet, do you think this is just a very small tiny section of it. Or

do you feel that what happened to you was fairly representative of

what happens to a woman? Well, there are many examples. Stella Creasy,

Kayla Mueller ran, the journalist has suffered from it. Caroline

Criado-Perez, suffered terribly. It is not in anyway just aimed at me so

it seems frilly, and. It goes immediately to sexual violence.

Philip Davies has done some pretty awful things that people have

criticised him on Twitter for today. Today he did a pretty awful thing to

carers. But I very much doubt that as a man anyone is threatening to

rape him and gag him and bind him. What has that done to your

perception of what happened? You said a paper criticised you for

laughing, or for treating its -- it lightly. Do you think any of your

behaviour was wrong in spite of what has happened since? If I was there

again I might not laugh at a man who was clearly not an equalities

champion, suggesting that... The thing that made me laugh was the

suggestion that men don't have an opportunity to speak up in the House

of Commons. Not any other things. If he'd come with a debate about male

suicide I would have been delighted to push that through. The reason he

didn't get his debate was because he didn't fill in the form properly,

nothing to do with me. Country to what you can read. Apps I wouldn't

be so flippant. I will protect myself in future. I will not

speaking up though, against people who frankly using quality as a tool

for their own ridiculous agenda -- I will not stop speaking up. Used to

think of politics as stuffy and out of reach of normal people. You know

what it is like to use an expletive or two against a colleague, Diane

Abbott in a PLP meeting, I'm thinking of. The fact you can call

her names, or burst out laughing at a suggestion, or that people are now

directly contacting you and you are reachable and relate about to, do

you think in one sense that is breaking down barriers between

people and politicians? It is and one of the things people said to me

since becoming an MP is that I speak like normal people, I have a normal

life and the way I react sometimes is sometimes a bit childish. I'm

only human. When I'm cross and angry I behave like most people do when

they are cross and angry, and maybe parliament will beat that out of me

eventually. But while there are a few idiots threatening to rape me

for being a woman with a big voice, the vast majority of people who

speak to me in my constituency, and on the Internet at large, are

delighted that there seems to be more humanity in the place. Anything

that makes a place with the amount of protocols and rules that

Parliament has. Jess Phillips, we've lost the link, we know where you

were going. Thank you, if you can still hear us.

How do you make an epic movie about someone who is already part

of so many of our daily lives, the man who invented Apple?

Aaron Sorkin - the scriptwriter who brought Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's

Aaron Sorkin - the scriptwriter who brought Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

to the big screen - was tasked with doing the same for Steve Jobs.

He teams up with Director Danny Boyle - to depict the

scenes backstage as Jobs prepares to face an audience of enthusiastic

The film out next month captures the entrepreneur's life,

In fact it depicts him as something of a brute.

Danny Boyle has been talking to Evan.

What do you do? You're not an engineer.

You're not a designer. You can't put a hammer to a nail.

I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen.

So how come ten times in a day I read Steve jobs is a genius?

Your Steve Jobs has come out, I think a lot of people think,

as quite a jerk actually, quite unpleasant.

I think Michael's portrait of him is uncompromising

and what is extraordinary about his performance as well, and

obviously Aaron Sorkin's writing of it, was that you were not shielded

There are many people who would testify to great devotion to him

and the huge inspiration that they gain from him.

And other people felt they were very damaged.

You're issuing contradictory instructions, you're insubordinate,

You put together an opening ceremony for the Olympic Games.

I had to do a little bit of shouting at the International

Olympic Committee, but anybody, no matter what kind of person you are,

would shout at the International Olympic Committee at some point!

They say with film directors there is

That actually there are things that you're after that you will do

anything to get out, and there needs to be many differentiations in

But I believe in honesty. I try to be honest with people.

And I think that does bring the best out of them.

It's a system error. Fix it.

Fix it? Yeah!

We're not a pit crew at Daytona. This can't be fixed in seconds.

You didn't have seconds, you had three weeks.

The universe was created in a third of that time.

Well, someday you will have to tell us how you did it.

One of the things the film attracted is a bit of an argument about how

far a movie about a real guy can bend facts and have dramatic licence

I think it comes partly out of a despair

So what you end up developing, if you are dealing with real life, is

you end up developing a sense, and listen, this is not going to stand

up in a court of law, it's the bull shit sense where you go, it's the

bull shit detector, where you go, "I don't believe that."

You get that nightmare with actors where they go I'd think

my character would behave quite like this at this moment, which

fills you with this horror moment for a director, when you think,

But actually, it's very important because it's an internal moral

sense that you think we are being honest here and respectful.

You're arriving at that spot on a long lens looking that way.

Have you been annoyed at the argument that has raged

No, I think it's actually one of the reasons why I did the film.

Because, I think that a corporation like Apple is so powerful now are

Because, I think that a corporation like Apple is so powerful now,

so influential around the world, that it's crucial that writers and

artists tell the stories that they don't necessarily want you to tell.

I don't mean that you are digging out stuff about them

that's unacceptable behaviour wise or anything like that.

But you actually do tell stories about how it has happened that this

company that was born in a garage 40 years ago dominates

the world now and is richer than virtually all countries on earth

Do you feel like a Hollywood insider now?

You won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire.

But you are kind of like an independent film-maker

Are you a Hollywood person now? No, not really.

This is the first script I've ever done that we didn't generate

But then we made this film and we lived

And I kind of understood really. It's an extraordinary town.

And I come from Manchester originally,

which had a lot to do with the first Industrial Revolution.

And it's weird working in a town that is

a modern Industrial Revolution, like the updated version of it.

You got a sense of potential of how things are changing,

It's three years since the Olympic opening ceremony now.

Everybody said Danny Boyle produced a statement of our country that most

people thought, this is rather good, we are proud of this.

And it was a sort of statement of a modern nation at ease with itself.

I just wonder what you think about the state of Britain.

We are always in a state of total self-criticism.

The Olympic opening ceremony was a chance to say that

behind that there is a sense of a progressive, decent country

And we can encourage it, which I think is all you can do.

Has there been any dent in your view of Britain

as a country which is free and which has these core values?

The debate over migrants this summer, for example.

I think any hesitancy about resisting refugees coming to this

country just denies the very nature of what the country is built on.

I mean, we have always had a noble tradition of being a refuge for

people who, for whatever reason, are under threat and I think that's part

of our national identity and what makes us a great country really.

Are you filled with the joy of a new politics, or are you filled with

the horror of a man who you don't think can win the next election?

Which of the various narratives about Jeremy Corbyn do you buy into?

Shall we do a biopic of Jeremy Corbyn?

He's obviously a very admirable man and I admire the way that he has

maintained his own personal principles throughout his time,

Obviously your only concern is that in the sway of things, by the time

the back and forth has finished and you arrive at an election when

you have to make absolute decisions is, will the Labour Party remain a

proper force that can be a government really?

Now on Artsnight, George the Poet explores

the meaning of black culture in music, theatre, writing and