18/01/2016 Newsnight

Tonight in a Newsnight exclusive, we meet the woman accusing the Met

police of abusive psychological torture.

It was New Year, and we had a party with a few friends, and he asked me

to marry him. I said yes, and we rang my mum and told my mum.

of marriage without realising it was "a state-sponsored lie"

Port Talbot lays off another 750 jobs.

Is it time to admit we just can't compete on steel anymore and let

Local boy Michael Sheen and Business Minister Anna Soubry

And who's actually responsible for our schools?

The chief inspector says the whole system is patchwork,

Tonight we bring you the extraordinary tale of Andrea -

who says she is the victim of a state sponsored crime.

She became engaged to a man who, entirely unknown to her,

was for many years working undercover for the Police.

For more than two years he promised her a new life,

She had no idea what had gone wrong until she started to understand

that their whole relationship had been a sham.

Living a double life, and sent to infiltrate her group

of friends who were being watched, it seems, for their

It is not the first time this has happened within the Metropolitan

Police. At the end of last year Police

chiefs made an unreserved apology to women who were deceived

into similar relationships - and paid out substantial

compensation. They thought they'd drawn

a line under the abuse - but this investigation by Newsnight

and the Guardian shows that the problems for

the Met are far from over. And I felt very safe

with him at that point. He felt like a very

committed person. And he was single, as far

as I knew, at that point. And it seemed like we just kind

of met each other at the right time. The man who shared every aspect

of Andrea's life for two years was in fact an undercover officer

working for a secret unit Their entire relationship

was a state sanctioned lie. That chunk of life, of my life,

was completely fabricated. So I spent quite a large portion

of my time with someone who didn't This is the man who infiltrated

Andrea's life, Carlo Neri. He had a passport and a driver's

license in that name. For several months before

they started seeing each other in late 2002, he was

mixing in her circle We agreed to protect her identity,

such as the sensitivity of her story, but this

is her real voice. He really made himself very

useful within that group. Lots of people in London at that

time of that age, we were all in our 20s, early 30s,

we didn't have cars. But why target Andrea,

not her real name? She wasn't that politically active,

but some of her friends were. I've got no idea why I was chosen

other than to think that I was probably just quite a safe bet

to become respectable in those circles of trade

unionists and socialists. They had quite strong views

politically, and so did he. Andrea's story raises huge

questions about the effects The scale of deception

is shocking, and for what? Andrea has no criminal record,

and she was simply on the margins of a group of left-wing

political activists, mostly linked to

the Socialist Party. Andrea met Carlo Neri in September

2002 on this demonstration in London He was an official steward

responsible for the route, He was with a group of people that

I knew, one of whom was a friend He came across as being very

straightforward, very down to earth, But not the life and

soul of the party. He kind of stepped back

a little bit from the crowd. At the time, Andrea

was living in a rented flat She thought she had

found her life partner. We were pretty much together

from the day we met, and we were pretty much inseparable,

so he moved in with me within a few Yeah, he did frequently,

he was quite expressive. And I think he gave that impression,

people were drawn to him because he was kind

and gentle and caring. Because it was so serious,

Andrea introduced him When she attended her sister's

graduation, he was invited. When she went on a family holiday

to Whitby in Yorkshire, For the family, he was

the devoted future son-in-law. He seemed to gel with

them quite well. And he seemed to become very fond

of them very quickly. He kind of made an effort to be

in contact with them a lot. Back in London, Carlo Neri

was attending activist events with Andrea, including one

above this anarchist book Because Andrea was known to

the group, Carlo Neri was trusted. He became a regular

at this kind of event. And Carlo Neri was at the forefront

of political rallies, working with anti-fascists

and the Socialist Party. Quite often, he would be one

of the people who was stewarding. He'd often have to be there really

early, and be their right to the end, because

when you take that responsibility, you have got

quite a different role, and he was very much involved

in that aspect of it. Carlo was clearly

accepted by the group. His job as a locksmith could have

been extremely useful He quite often said people

could improve the security of where they lived,

and again, that seemed at the time With hindsight, it has a different

perspective, really. Because there's a huge amount

of people's locks that someone So, Carlo Neri had the keys

to activists' flats. We've discovered that he was

living a double life. Not only was he secretly reporting

back to Scotland Yard, what, we don't know,

but he had a wife and a son, Carlo used the actual names

of his real family in his cover story, presumably to

guard against slip-ups, He brought photos of the kind of key

people in his family into our house, and they were in our flat,

so I had pictures of his son, his sister, and they were actually

his real family members Obviously at the time

I didn't know any of this, but now I know they were real

people in his real life. And there were always reasons

why I didn't meet them. We know that his wife knew

he was a police officer. His occupation is written

on the birth certificate of his son. We don't know how much, if anything,

she knew about his undercover Carlo had to invent stories

to maintain both lives. How could he justify time away

from the Maida Vale flat and his live-in relationship

with Andrea to spend time First, he told Andrea that

a new job meant he would have Because of his interest in food,

his interest in Italian food, he then got a job working

for a company which did import and export of fine quality foods

and wines, so he then started to do Very convenient for Carlo,

because his sister did in fact run an Italian deli, so he could bring

home fine foods and wines. He also found an excuse to be away

every other weekend. He was probably away from home

for four or five nights And that would be due to work trips,

and every other weekend he would go Because as far as I was concerned,

I was going to spend my life with this man, and his life

was my life, and having that strong relationship with a child

is a really important thing. There were no access visits

to Cornwall, of course. His son was just down the road

in the family home. In terms of his relationship

with Andrea, it was going Just three months after they met,

he proposed to her, at home in the flat they shared

in Maida Vale. It was New Year, we had

a party with a few friends. It was a really nice gathering,

not a huge party. I said yes, and I rang my mum,

we told my mum. Carlo and Andrea spent the next year

together, but by Christmas 2003, but by Christmas 2003,

the Met and Carlo decided He then began the most

cynical of exit strategies, father was on his deathbed in Italy,

and he had to be there. He said he was really distressed,

and he had been missing for a week. He had been out of contact

for a week at that point. But a dying father was not dramatic

enough, it seems, for his exit strategy, and while in Italy,

Carlo said he had learned something truly terrible

about a female relative. He told me that she had been

sexually abused by their father. The stuff he was disclosing

was horrendous. And I think if you love someone

and you are with someone, you have massive amounts

of compassion for them. You do for anyone who's

experiencing that difficulty, but when you live with them,

and you love them, and you see them being in much pain, or so you think,

you want to support them. Andrea tried to save

the relationship, but Carlo seemed He moved out four months later,

taking everything, down to the last He went to live with other

activists in the group. Their relationship survived

for a while, but in November 2004, two years after they first met,

he sent her an e-mail saying And after that, he simply

disappeared. Newsnight now on BBC

Two with Kirsty Wark. Tonight, the environmental

protesters, the undercover cop That was that until activists

and journalists, Newsnight included, started investigating how the Met

infiltrated protest groups. Campaigners Peter Salmon

and Eveline Lubbers devised a survey list of 15 questions following this

early work to try to identify For example, did they

have cars and vans? Someone must have planned it maybe,

and that is what we want to know. It is also about the individual

and the undercover officers and the damage they did,

but someone thought this all out. The Met police are now under intense

pressure over the deployment In November, eight women

who unwittingly entered into intimate sexual relationships

with undercover police called The worst part of this is to recall

that actually when he was with me, The Met have settled seven

of their legal claims for damages. Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt

issued an abject apology. It has become apparent that some

officers acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups

entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships

with women which were abusive, I acknowledge that these

relationships were a violation of the women's human rights,

and abuse of police power I unreservedly apologise on behalf

of the Metropolitan Police Service. But if the Met thinks they have

drawn a line under this affair, In this new case, Andrea says

it is like being the victim This kind of level of emotional

abuse, I would say, or psychological abuse, was used to keep

the relationship on a trajectory It is psychological torture,

and it's very damaging. Andrea is now working

with the solicitor who has represented all the other eight

women who have taken legal action This is clearly a pattern

that they worked on. The other women who had

relationships all describe similar exit strategies, and in each

of those cases, they were harmful, and this is the one of the worst

I have heard in related the whole story of sexual abuse and domestic

violence that didn't exist, and I think that is

a sick thing to do. The Met refused to confirm

or deny whether Carlo Neri We know his true name,

and quite a few details about his life, including the fact

he infiltrated a number of demonstrations here

in central London. He has a highly distinctive surname,

and we decided not to broadcast this The Metropolitan Police issued

a statement to Newsnight. Assisted Commissioner Martin Hewitt

told us: Andrea has just been given core

participant status in the public enquiry into undercover

policing now under way. She has only just begun to process

the fact that two years of her life were effectively stolen by the state

after our investigation A decade on, and she's

rebuilt her life. Rather like the fiery blast

furness that powers it, the Tata steel plant in Port Talbot

has shown an insatiable appetite It's been losing a million pounds

a day - and has swallowed three hundred million pounds of investment

in the last four years. The latest brutal round of job cuts

there means some 750 will have to go - of more than 1000 jobs in steel

axed today across Britain. And that - for the Indian

company behind it, Tata - The reason for the difficulties

are not particularly new ones - but they're getting

harder to overcome. Slowing demand and a seemingless

endless supply of cheaper Chinese commodities - plus higher

energy costs here - have rendered Britain's

own steel making more costly So is there much that the government

can realistically do? Jobs in steel are vanishing fast.

The clouds of economic uncertainty claimed 750 livelihoods. The steel

plant will also see around 100 jobs go. The measures we take, we are

very confident we can turn this industry around. The job losses in

UK steelworks had their roots in the Chinese construction and

manufacturing boom that followed the economic crisis. Steel manufacturers

invested in expensive new plants in the hope of supplying this seemingly

limitless market but the extra demand never came. If we look at

this graph for how the capacity is being used, in the decade following

the year 2000 it was around 90%. Since 2009 it has been under 80% for

much of the time. For the last year, demand has been contracting. The

price has dropped from around ?600 per tonne to around ?200 per tonne.

Cheap money has meant loss-making steelworks are kept afloat in debt.

The MP whose constituency includes the Port Talbot plant says the UK

Government must take much of the blame. What we are asking for is a

level playing field. 80% of the Chinese steel sector is state-owned.

They are subsidised to the hilt by the Chinese government, in clear

violation of international trading rules. Why isn't the government

doing more to push the European Commission on that? There is

anti-dumping legislation in place. Why don't we use it? We have a

government with a lazy ideology that believes the market is right and

sets the price and the other is that they are cosying up to Beijing. It

is not that long ago since the Chancellor was touring Port Talbot.

He was there to publicise help for energy intensive industries like

steel-making. The government says it's done much more sense by

changing the rules. There is obviously this overproduction of

steel that is affecting countries around the world but the steel

industry have asked us for action on procuring and energy prices, we have

taken action. They want us to take action within the European Union and

we've done that as well but we will continue to work with them. I want

to have a strong British steel industry at the heart of our

manufacturing base. But the steel industry says other European

governments are doing far more. The Germans have spent 6.4 billion euros

to support energy intensive industries in terms of mitigating

the impact of carbon tax. We spent just ?100 million per year. That

will rise but it is just simply not enough. The worldwide steel glut is

now hitting China, where plants are closing and one boss says his

industry is bleeding cash. Some believe we in the UK are better

advised to look for new industries. In the long-term, it is not economic

to compete with places like China, where the Labour costs are lower.

The stability means it is better to invest. It is not a short-term

bridging gap or something that if we do it now we will be able to fix, in

a couple of years. They will never be economic again. Talk of new

industries and economic forces will be of little comfort to the workers

of Port Talbot and others who have lost their jobs. In a moment we will

hear from and a supreme but first we are joined by Michael Sheen, who

grew up in Port Tolbert and has made a film set there. This area is close

to your heart. What impact do you imagine this will have? It is

incredibly frightening in terms of the repercussions. It is not just

the jobs being cut at Tata steel, there is a domino effect for the

whole region. Other jobs that are dependent on what is going on at the

steelworks. Port Talbot is a town with a lot of challenges already. It

is not the most affluent town. The community is facing a lot of

difficulties. There was a report, there is already a lot of poverty

there and half the people experiencing the effects of poverty

are working households. If people in work are experiencing poverty then

who knows what will happen when the job cuts happen? It is a frightening

time for the town. It sounds terrible, but on an economic level,

this is losing ?1 million per day. Should the government continued to

hand out cash? This is part of a much bigger picture. The steel

industry, through the cuts we've seen in Redcar, and in Scotland,

this is not an industry on the up. It is going in one direction. The

government says that it is doing everything to help it but the

actions and the words don't fit together. I'm not an expert, I don't

know what is going on behind the scenes, I know there are a lot of

people who feel the government have a lot of positive words but the

actions are not backing that up or if they are it is happening too

slowly and into small way. Do you know what actions you would like to

see? Without asking the government to waste money on something that is

not working. I would like to see the government be honest, first of all,

about whether they want to support the steel industry or whether they

are letting it died by stealth. If they are allowing that to happen, if

they don't think there is a way to support the steel industry, if they

are dragging their heels over getting involved in the rules that

are there, then they need to put into place very quickly support for

the communities that have been affected in this way. If there is

nothing more for those communities then that is the biggest danger.

Let's put some of those point across. Do you accept that he is

asking for honesty? He has had that. He makes a very valid point that

this is a dreadful day, and so for example when we know, there is no

more steel in Redcar, absolutely, need to support that communities so

those workers can get into new jobs, no doubt the Welsh government will

come up with the same. We are being very honest about it. This has

happened in Redcar, in Port Tolbert. You have had the industries saying

the government was not alert to crisis warnings, they were asleep at

the wheel. We are on top of it. What happened up in Redcar was different.

That was a steelworks that had been losing ?600 million over 2.5, three

years. That was never going to happen again. It was gone. There

were huge problems with the owners. The difference with Tata steel is

quite profound. They have been trying to sell beer division based

in Scunthorpe for two years. We can to make sure we play a full part in

securing that deal. I pack Tata steel want to sell it. Is that

right? It was on the market two years ago in Scunthorpe. Turning to

Port Talbot, that is very different. They have already brought the

consultants in to say, what do we need to do to keep this place and

make sure it is sustainable? They brought the consultants in,

unfortunately 1000 jobs have already gone. What are you going to do, put

more money in? We cannot do that, the state aid rules do not allow it.

But what we can do, we have implemented four of the five

electricity prices, emissions directive, dumplings, I'm quite

happy to discuss what we've done on dumping, and the other thing we've

done, we've looked at the procurement rules. That is hugely

important. No other government in the European Union has changed the

procurement rules. There is a sense among British steel companies that

in many cases they are not even allowed to tender for jobs. At

Hinckley Point C at a nuclear plant. That is completely different. 60%

will be available. Unfortunately... I do not understand that. Some are

out to tender. Can I explain why there is a problem? 60% of the steel

should be available for British Steel however, 40% is no longer made

in this country. But, in terms of the billions of pounds, this is

really important, I want to tell you something that a Labour MP has said,

he talks about there not being opportunity to bid on nuclear

repairs and the justification they were told was EDF was providing for

underutilised French manufacturing. Is he wrong? I don't know. You said

that in October. You said you would look into it. Yellow mac people say

things but when you look at it. EDF acquired electric and he says it is

steel companies have not been able to tender. That's what he said.

They've not had the opportunity to bid. Can we talk about what the

government has been able to do? That is quite important, if the

government is promoting British steel or not. We've changed the

procurement rules, never been done before. There is now no excuse not

to buy British Steel. That's never been done before. We quantified the

amount of steel that we anticipate to be available in the billions of

pounds we are putting into the industry in this. We've quantified

it and shared those figures. You heard the Prime Minister, what he

said, we are absolutely determined that we will keep steel production

at both Scunthorpe and Port Talbot. The steel industry have asked you

not to give China market status. Are you going to? It is the decision of

the European Union. Should they have market economy status? In theory,

yes, but they need to prove that they will play by the rules. It is

really important, in the first time in July, for the first time we have

voted in favour of protectionist measures. That's never happened.

They were so shocked in the European Union... They said you were helping

China by giving it market status. The overall sense is your government

is more preoccupied with keeping China happy than keeping Wales

employed. That the spend. That is how it comes across. That is how it

comes across to you. That was Leanne Wood. I can assure you we have voted

in a way that has never happened before to protect steel. Most

importantly, the political will express by the Prime Minister to

make sure we continue to produce steel at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe.

That is the determination and we've delivered on four.

I am going to go back to Michael Sheen. Does this give you

confidence? There is the political will that they are committed to

steal in this country and import Tolbert specifically. Well, I think

the workforce in the steelworks and the larger community have been kind

of in the dark for a long time. As soon as it started to become clear

there were problems, people started to become desperate to find out what

the plan was and whether the Government had a strategy to sort

this out. I do think anyone in Port Talbot is feeling any clearer now.

And in the country itself, the country has suffered so much in the

Dinda era after the coal-mining, those communities in places like the

Rhondda but I have visited are still feeling decimated by what happened,

and I would hate to see that happen in Port Talbot as well. Is it worth

the Government spending money on a way of life, community? Of course,

that is why we put ?80 million into Teesside. But can I just say to

Michael, I went to Port Talbot for a day, and I know that that is where

you were born and bred, but what really strikes me is not just the

union representatives who are outstanding and genuinely represent

their members, but the level of honesty and realism amongst, mainly

men, amongst them, and I think they do get it. I was struck when I went

to Scunthorpe as well that the men really understood the real crisis

the steel industry was in. Michael Sheen. You might understand that you

are drowning, but that doesn't mean you don't want a helping hand. I

think it was the realism, and even in Redcar, which was a terrible

situation, it was this understanding that you can't argue that the price

of steel has almost halved, and that is the reality of it. And in which

case, I would love to hear what the Prime Minister and the Government

have got in store to help the people of Port Talbot if indeed the steel

industry is on decline. It is a Welsh government decision. The door

is open, we will always help. Thank you both very much indeed.

Who is responsible for the oversight of schools

when some are academies under schools commissioners

and others the responsibility of local authorities?

The question lies at the heart of what Ofsted Chief Michael Wilshaw

said is going wrong in the schools system, which he described

as confusing and ill-defined in a speech today.

He also believes the country cannot continue to "fail half its future"

by refusing to sort out the quality of vocational training that many

young people who chose less academic courses

We will hear from so Michael in a minute.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector,

has issued a call to arms to improve English

education, that it may be one the Government doesn't actually

Sir Michael's responding to a new report by CentreForum,

an education thinktank, which explains how the gap

between poorer children and the rest grows whilst they are at school.

As they start school, the gap averages

By the time they're 11, it's nine months.

And at 16, it reaches almost 20 months, more than a year

I think the gap between young people from disadvantaged and advantaged

backgrounds is one of the big scars on the face of English education.

We've made some good progress in primary education in reducing

the gap recently, but it's far too wide

in secondary education, and it goes on widening,

that gap, every year of a youngster's time in education,

and that can't be something that we are

Now, Sir Michael's proposals to address this cut

For example, he says he wants powerful political figures to feel

responsible to local people for the performance

But the Government has a policy of encouraging local authority

schools to become academies, and that in part is intended

to erode the role of local politicians in schooling.

The school system is built on an army of volunteer school

He says they need a better skill set.

In fact, in what would be a potentially expensive

move, he said we should consider paying them

We know that leadership is a crucial ingredient in high-quality

schools, and we have got some fantastic schools here in places

The problem is, how do we get that strong leadership

right throughout the country when we know from Ofsted reports

that it is not there in many parts of the

country outside London and the south-east?

Sir Michael also worries about children drifting into weak

vocational training, so he has called for more university

technical colleges, schools that start at 14

and prepare pupils for a specific trade.

And again, this won't be much loved in Whitehall where these

expensive technical schools have few fans.

So Sir Michael says we need better school leadership,

better options for children who want a vocational path and better school

You certainly can't say that he lacks ambition.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools

You paint a pretty grim picture in your report today -

underperfoming schools, north south divide, school leavers

unprepared for jobs, behaviour problems, this

You're approaching the end of your term.

I am passionate about raising standards in all of our schools. In

our last annual report, we said primary schools across the country

are doing very well indeed, and you just had a piece about the closure

of steelworks in south Wales, in Redcar, where the steelworks closed

recently, an area of deprivation and a high degree of poverty, the

primary schools there are doing phenomenally well, above the

national average, but the secondary schools are failing, and that has

been replicated across the country, particularly in the Midlands and

particularly in the north. London is doing very well, as are secondary

schools in the south-east. And if we are going to improve our secondary

school performance, accountability and leadership are key things that

will do that. Something like the Northern Powerhouse, presumably

Biggins oration by the government to put them north of the heart of what

it is doing industrially, will that happen? Yes, and I support what the

Prime Minister Chancellor want to do, but education has to be at the

heart of that, and if you have too many failing secondary schools in

the North and Midlands, we will not achieve that powerhouse. One in

three secondary schools in the Midlands and North are not achieving

well. In the 16 local authorities, less than 60% of secondary schools

are good or excellent, one third of those in the North. We need good

leadership and clarity of the accountability system. You have a

teacher recruitment crisis. Where has that gone wrong? There has never

been a time when I have been teaching, and I have been a

headteacher long time in London, there has never been a time when it

has been good. It is particularly problematic now because the economy

is improving and graduates have more choice of the sort of jobs that they

can go into. But there is a problem, and what we need to do as a nation

is to sell teaching much more proactively and positively than we

have done up to now. Teaching is a great job. Leading teachers is a

great job. We hear so much negativity about teaching. And I get

really frustrated when I hear that, because ice really enjoyed my life

as a teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed my life is ahead, and you talk to

lots of teachers and head teachers, they enjoy it. We don't sell

teaching as well as we should. I'm thinking of Nicky Morgan calling

Michael Gove the former Education Secretary despised and divisive. Do

you agree with that? I had a lot of time for Michael Gove. He may have

made mistakes here there, but he was passionate about raising standards

and raising standards for poor children, and I think he has been

unfairly treated. The message he sent was if you want standards to

improve, you have got to give power and authority and freedom to the

people who really matter, the people on the front line, the people in the

classrooms. Take the system away from bureaucrats and give it to

people who can really raise standards, people in the classrooms

and corridors and playgrounds. I wanted to ask you about the front

story of the Daily Telegraph, David Cameron will back the Muslim Veil

plan. He says the Prime Minister will give backing to public

authorities in terms of schools, the banning of the veil in schools.

Would you back that? Si yes, I would. The Prime Minister's view

that we have got to make sure that our liberal values, our liberal

Western values are protected, people need to listen to that, and the

Muslim community need to listen to it as well. We have come a long way

in our society to ensure that we have equality for women and that

they are treated fairly. We mustn't go backwards.

So if it is down to individual organisations to choose to stop

Muslim women from wearing the veil, you would recommend it? We would

support that, particularly if it is stopping good communication in the

classroom and lecture hall. And you think it is? Possibly. My inspectors

occasionally see issues with communication. Sir Michael Wilshaw,

thank you for coming in.