12/04/2016 Newsnight

Tonight the Culture Secretary insists to Newsnight his role has

not been compromised by what the papers knew about his

Is this a story about bona fide privacy -

What happens to the economy if we leave the EU?

The International Monetary Fund predicts 'severe global damage'.

This is the clearest independent warning of the taste of things

I think we're much better off if we stay in the EU.

That will make Britain stronger, safer and better off.

Ken Clarke and Daniel Hannan are here to debate.

And the survivors of Jimmy Savile's abuse tell their story.

I would get so depressed, I had anorexia as well.

I had absolutely no confidence in myself.

We'll ask a survivor, a police investigator and a prosecutor.

In a moment we'll be bringing you the latest on a story

that is begining to emerge as we go on air -

a statement given to Newsnight from the Culture

Secretary John Whittingdale about a possible conflict

The warning from the International Monetary Fund today

An exit from the EU, they said, could cause severe regional

and global damage - against the backdrop of a slashed

forecast for global growth for the fourth time in one year.

Forget for one second questions of whether the IMF -

which contains firm friends of George Osborne and of the EU -

should be taking a view on British domestic politics.

Forget even that the quote comes from the former economic advisor

to Barack Obama, who has already made his own position

Tonight, those on the Leave side find themselves having to take

on a reputable eeconomic body that is forecasting doom for this

country outside of the European Union.

Is this the kind of statement that makes up a voter's mind?

We'll ask Ken Clarke and Dan Hannan in a moment.

The EU referendum result has been declared and the UK

Will it be Brexit with breakfast, and if so, what will that mean?

Plenty are serving us up their opinions. Today the International

monetary fund voted that if the UK votes to leave the EU that could

have dire global consequences for the world economy. In its latest

Outlook published to date they warned that the planned referendum

on European Union membership has already created uncertainty for

investors. A Brexit could do severe regional and global damage by

disrupting established trading relationships. We already see the

uncertainty of the referendum result playing on the UK economy and a vote

to leave would set off a process of two years, a lengthy divorce, with a

very uncertain settlement at the end. As anyone who has been through

that process knows, it is not a positive event. For those

campaigning to leave the EU, both the timing and the substance of this

intervention is suspect. I think this is a highly political

intervention. I don't believe it is the result of a lot of people with

computers crunching the numbers aren't coming to some objective

conclusion. I think it reflects the opinions of the EU, of the Eurozone

in particular and I think it's highly convenient for the British

government, who have not exactly discouraged this. Far from

discouraging this assessment, the Chancellor was very keen to

reinforce the anti-Brexit message of the IMF. They say that if we did

leave the EU there would be an impact on stability and long-term

cost economies of this is the clearest independent warning of the

taste of things to come if we leave. I think we are much better off if we

stay in the EU, that will make Britain stronger, safer and better

off. He has not always been so keen to accept the judgment of the IM

Ofcom in 2012 they gave dire warnings about the UK economy,

saying the Chancellor was playing with fire unless he relaxed

austerity. George Osborne was furious but one year later the IMF

admitted they got the assessment wrong. We got it

wrong, we acknowledged it, we were not the only ones to get it wrong.

Any democratic vote suggests a level of uncertainty and the poll suggests

the race is tight. Beyond that is there any reason to think that life

outside the EU word in the long-term he was then inside? People. The

buying German cars in this country and we will still buy cars from

outside Europe. Welfare to be a decision to leave the EU, we would

have a period, perhaps two years, in which nothing changed while

negotiations continued, so I think this is way over the top, what the

IMF has said. The IMF is walking a thin line between giving an economic

opinion and intervening in a domestic political question. Listen

how President and Chief Economist gets when asked if Brexit is too big

a risk to take. Well, I think it is a risk. Ah, I think British people

have to consider very carefully what the balance is of risks, political

considerations and political preferences involved as well but in

terms of the bill in economics, we would worry about the outcome. With

ten weeks to go, there will be plenty more arguments about where

the balance of risk lies and some could get quite heated, like this

exchange in the European Parliament today it in a passionate Belgian

European integrationist and a pro-Brexit British MEP. Sometimes

you don't need the simultaneous translation!

Joining me now, MEP Dan Hannan of the Vote Leave campaign,

and former chancellor Ken Clarke for the Remainers.

Very nice to have you both here. Severe global damage, I guess, Dan,

is not a phrase they would use lightly? They have been consistently

wrong and they are wrong about this. They've been wrong in a consistent

way. They have consistently underestimated the strength of the

UK economy and consistently underestimated the severity of the

Euro crisis. I think what you said at the beginning of about them being

mates, I'm pretty sure that it was an Newsnight that I saw George

Osborne half promising Christine Lagarde the job of managing director

of the IMF. She made it clear that her priority was to keep the Euro

together. The IMF has become a sort of adjunct of the EU. I can see why

they want Britain to be continuing part of those bailouts, we are one

of the countries with the resources to keep rescuing others. Yet the

question we face and the one we will face in June is do we need to make

the use am's problems our problems or can we leave them to the rest of

the world? Kenneth Clarke, but has been said that it is highly

convenient politically to say this. Norman is no friend of mine but how

he can dismiss them like that, I don't know. I am joined Fiji 20,

President Obama and most of the people in the City, most business

leaders, the CBI, all of which Eurosceptics have a tendency to wave

away as scaremongering, it will be all right. The two people on tonight

two of the more respectable advocates coming yet they have no

clear idea of what will happen if we leave and this uncertainty is

damaging to economic confidence. And they believe that over two years

they will be able to negotiate a holding pattern of trading with the

outside world and it will be right. Daniel Hannan, do you concede that

they will be uncertainty and that will have a lasting effect on the

British economy? I think it's important to understand what happens

the day after we vote to leave. First, we carry on with the current

arrangement while we discuss it. Then on the day that the exit

happens, two or three years later, everything remains in place and to

one side or the other changes it. We've adopted all of the EU's

regulations on standardisation, there are no tariffs, all the things

like reciprocal health care would carry on until one side or the other

wanted to change. There would be some gradual movement. We would

embrace a different trajectory, although the person who got this

spot on at the launch of the Remain campaign was Lord rose when he said

it would not be a step change, it would be a gentle process, after

five change, - Mac five years, magenta, after ten a bit of change.

The way he describes it sounds like a yacht in a bath tub. The whole

point of negotiation will be the winning side of the Eurosceptics

when they will say they want to change things. They've made it clear

they want to give out free movement of Labour and give up being the

rules of the trading zone. That means huge uncertainty. Even the

risk of Brexit is affecting the economy now. The British economy is

slowing down. Our economy, steady on, Dan, investments are on hold,

there are no major investments going ahead... The pound is strong... The

pound has weakened quite a lot because of the uncertainty and the

governor of the Bank of England got shot down by Eurosceptics when he

calmed things by saying that he did have plans in place Brexit, taking

the lead in the opinion polls, led to a flight of capital out of the

country. There is uncertainty. It's no good saying that it is certain

that for two years nothing will happen. That is not what the Leave

campaigners are saying in general. It is not about what you say, it is

how the markets react and if there is a spooking, that will mean a lack

of investment coming into this country already. You can't say that

for two years nothing will change. Was that addressed to me, Emily? The

whole point of your campaign is that you want to change things and then

you say that nothing will change! Since the referendum was announced

in January 2013 this country has received more inward investment than

any other country in the EU. This country has created more jobs than

any other country, incredibly, more than all the other members of the EU

but together. Never mind speculation, as a matter of

observable fact, the possibility of leaving the EU has had no deterrent

effect on inward investment. I remember Ken sailing exactly these

things 15 years ago about keeping the pound .- saying these things. He

said it would scare away investment and that was a run on the pound, not

only was he wrong, the things that he predicted... Let's read out what

you said! We are running out of time. I'm happy to debate it, what I

said 15 years ago, although that is not what we are talking about now.

We've strongly attracted inward investment because we have one of

the least regulated countries in the Western world and we are in the

youth appeal union. The flow of inward investment is on hold at the

moment -- we are in the European Union. No foreign investor will

invest here until he knows what our trading and political relationships

are with the outside world in a few weeks' time. That's where the

Governor of the Bank of England, no doubt also part of the political

conspiracy, had to say what he would do in case of a flight of capital. I

appreciate it is much harder down the line, down, we've run out of

time, thank you for joining us. Tonight John Whittingdale confirmed

to this programme he had had a relationship with a woman

who turned out, unbeknownst to him, to be a sex worker, a fact

he discovered from a reporter. The details of that

relationship went unpublished - Maybe the newspapers never

considered a story about the private lives of two consenting

adults worth running. Or maybe there were more political

reasons behind the decision But John Whittingdale -

who was at the time - head of the Culture Select Committee

- now sits at the very top of a department whose job

is to regulate newspapers. Indeed, he is currently overseeing

a whole new regulatory framework under consideration in the wake

of the Leveson inquiry. So has his position

been compromised? And should he have told his

bosses in Downing Street Tonight an extraordinary statement

from the culture secretary John Whittingdale confirming a story that

for both the UK newspapers did not run. But he did have a relationship

with the woman who turned out to be a dominatrix. Both he and Downing

Street said it is no 1's business other than his own. John

Whittingdale told Newsnight in a statement, between August 2013 and

February 2014 I had a relationship with someone I first met through

match.com. She was a similar age and live close to me. At no time did she

give me any indication of a real occupation and I only discovered

this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story

about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the

relationship. This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the

time. The offence occurred long before I took up my present position

and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made. As

culture secretary. It is over three years since Lord Justice Levenson

concluded that UK newspapers needed a tougher regulator. Culture

Secretary John Whittingdale has made it perfectly plain he is not minded

to give it all the teeth. George Robson wanted but everything has got

a whole lot murkier but allegations both on the intranet and today in

Private eye that some of newspapers have got something on the Cabinet

minister. The story first surfaced that John Whittingdale had a

relationship with a woman who was a prostitute. His office told

Newsnight he had no idea that his girlfriend at the time was a sex

worker. This is the street were the dungeon lies but this is not the

story about an MP who became a Cabinet minister and a dominatrix.

It is a story about why the newspapers did not run that story.

And why that might be. James Cusick was reporter on the Independent

newspaper. He looked up the story for five months. There are details

of his private life basically which I think the public have a right to

know about, if this individual is making these decisions that will

affect the way people look at newspapers, the way newspapers

behave, the way the BBC behaves. You have a right to know about the

private life of this man if there is something in it he is trying to hold

back. In 2013 Mr Whittingdale and his girlfriend went to the MTV

awards in Amsterdam. The trip was paid for by MTV. He did not declare

this trip with a parliamentary registry of interest because the

cost of the trip his office said, did not meet the reported threshold.

He did declare a similar trip to MTV awards that he made with his then

wife in 2006. Newsnight understands that for newspaper groups

investigated the relationship between the MP and the dominatrix,

the people as part of the Mirror Group, the Mail on Sunday, the son,

and the Independent. All four newspapers spent time on the story

and all four of them did not run the story. Some commentators especially

amongst the hacked off group called foul saying the newspapers are

hypocrites. This may be unfair to editors who now more than ever are

concerned about invading privacy. Whittingdale after all was a single

man, having a relationship with a woman, a consenting adult. Tonight

Number Ten told Newsnight was John Whittingdale is a single man and his

private life is his own affair. But tellingly Number Ten also said it

was not aware of Whittingdale's relationship before he was appointed

culture secretary. To be fair to Whittingdale, he has always been an

advocate of light regulation of newspapers so there's no evidence

that he has anything hypocritical. The question is how much confidence

can the public have in John Whittingdale, secretary of state for

culture, the man in charge of the issue of whether newspapers should

be regulated or not, if they go public, no those same newspapers

have got something on the man from -- the man John Whittingdale. The

issue highlight by Private eye is fairness. The satirical magazine

highlights two cases, of the Tory MP Brooks Newmark and Labour peer Lord

Sewel, both had their sexual shenanigans splashed across the

papers. Max Mosley, for his shaming by the tabloid press after sexual

antics were laid bare and he got a bit of a kicking from John

Whittingdale as well. It is quite funny, when I appeared

in front of his committee back in 2009, he said regarding my story

with News of the World, you must have realised it was a time bomb

that was going to go off. He had similar interests, and I would've

asked if you're not in the same position. In my case it had nothing

to do with what I was known for, working in the motor racing world.

In his world of course, he's involved with the press. When he

said that to me unfortunately I did not know what he was up to. Then the

man arguing for full disclosure on the mystery celebrity who had a

threesome. The Daily Mail asked, whatever happened to the public

right to know. Tonight that seems a good question, not just in Fleet

Street but also in Westminster. It's worth making clear that

all the newspapers who decided not to run the Whittingdale story say

they dropped it because they decided It's also worth pointing out that

many of those criticising Whittingdale today have their own

grievances against him. Some allies of Whittingdale point

to the irony of privacy campaigners castigating newspapers for failing

to invade the privacy One of those critics

is the Shadow Leader Tonight he said that the culture

secretary was entitled to a private life but should have removed himself

from regulation of the press. Joining me now to discuss

this are Brian Cathcart, founder of Hacked Off,

and Roy Greenslade, professor of journalist at City University

and a former editor of the Mirror. Does this compromise his position as

culture secretary? It was, the public cannot have faith that this

man has been at Ding and remember he made important decisions in relation

to the press, decisions that they welcome wholeheartedly and

enthusiastically. The public cannot have faith in his judgment, in his

independence, in making decisions about the media any more. So you as

part of the body that would like to see more privacy is advocating that

this story should be in the public view. It is not a story about John

Whittingdale and his private life. It is a story about why the press

did not cover it. To suggest in the very week when we see newspapers

baying for the right to cover a story about a celebrity and private

which are judge told them they have no right to cover, in that same week

that they would be too scrupulous, too high-minded to report a story

about a Cabinet minister which any judge in the country would tell them

they have a right to. It is absurd for top what do you think the papers

did not pick this up, was there a sense of high-mindedness, or public

interest? You have got to think when it happened, it was not long after

the Leveson Inquiry. They would all be careful about whether or not they

had a public interest justification. They would all have taken separate

legal advice, they would all have looked at the code of practice. I

think it is a bit much to castigate newspapers for doing the right thing

for once. By deciding that this was a story about a man who was

unmarried, who had a relationship with a woman who had not told him

she was a sex worker, when he did know, he ended the relationship. I

cannot see that there was a genuine story there and clearly, with the

sun, the people, the Mail on Sunday, they felt the same. Do feel John

Whittingdale did the right thing, he did not tell his bosses at Number

Ten and he accepted the position of culture secretary? That is a

separate matter. It might be wise to have done that. Although he probably

thought this is a relationship which is over and done with. He was then

just chairman of the select committee, he did not have much

power in that position. When he came to power it was no longer a matter

of amazing interest because it was over. That is surely naive. The man

had just become a minister. Let me put it to you, do you think he is

now compromised, can he oversee regulation of the newspapers and

implementation of whatever is post the Leveson Inquiry? Of course you

can. It does not compromise them one bit. It is pure speculation that the

newspapers have conspired to keep up this story. This is a competitive

industry. It was once pure speculation that newspapers hacked

phones. It is a murky world as John Swinney has said. The idea that

these newspapers are too scrupulous, when he becomes culture secretary,

to tackle him on this, is just naive. These newspapers wanted power

over a minister and they had power over a minister. We do not know the,

how that plays out, but we know this is a minister made three vital

decisions, all of which were incredibly helpful to the press. And

not terribly in the interests of the public. Do you think that is just to

convince -- the conspiracy theory? It is. It is quite straightforward.

Newspapers have decided that they will try to get the story,

investigated the story and discovered there is not a story that

they can justify publishing. That is not true. There are at least five

public interest justifications for publishing the story. What do you

think should happen now? John Whittingdale should get out of the

weight of the legislation passed by Parliament. Passed by all parties in

parliament. -- out of the way. He is blocking this legislation which will

give everyone in this country access to justice in libel cases.

It is quite simple. He has not put that forward. That is not his

decision alone. It is the decision of the Cabinet and the Prime

Minister. I cannot think for one moment that John Whittingdale holds

the fate of UK newspapers in his hands alone. That is just not on.

Thank you both very much. The row about disability

benefits made the 48 hours after the last budget something

of a political low point Plenty of name calling and a faintly

unwilling policy U-turn. It threatened to overshadow just

about everything else. But there were plenty of other

announcements that day that are only One is the high speed move to turn

local authority schools Labour holds its first debate

on that tomorrow. And, as Chris Cook has been finding

out, it is leaving many education Tell us what you found. Since the

budget one thing is clear, when you meet people who are in a fisheries

of this policy, those big academy chains, reforming school leaders and

people who I would characterise as natural allies of the Education

Secretary, what you see is enormous nervousness about where exactly

these reforms will go. There are 850 or so academy sponsors in the

country. The government has done research into the effectiveness of

around 20 and of those we know there are around three that are more

effective than the average school. We are hearing from academy chains

on the ground that they are concerned that there is not the

capacity in the school system to take on a large number of extra

schools from the local authorities without problems for standards.

John Mannix, chief executive of Plymouth Cast -

a Catholic multi-academy trust of 35 schools across the west country.

Sir David Carter is the National Schools Commissioner.

Before that, he was the head of the Cabot Federation,

There is concern that this is happening too fast. We have got to

realise this is not something that has come from thin air. We have been

working towards this since the last ten years. It started of course in

the last Labour government, accelerated throughout the Coalition

Government. We do have a lot of knowledge in the system that this is

working. Chris mentioned in his piece about the government

investigating 20. Regional schools Commissioner 's and National Schools

Commissioner 's have a lot of knowledge about what is working. I

do not underestimate the challenge but the price of getting it right is

tantalising and I'm confident that we can deliver a full academy system

that will give us a single dynamic form of education for this country

and improve life chances of children in our schools. Ayew reassured? --

Ayew reassured. I'm not in a position to judge the capacity of

government to bring this about. I think the area of concern for me

within the debate is that it has been polarised. We used to have this

kind of local authority school, we have decided we do not like that and

there is a new model of the academy school and that has got to be the

way forward. And therefore everyone is trying to look at the evidence,

look at some academies, to be appear to be right and depending on

normally your view of this you would select your evidence accordingly.

The reason I am a supporter of the academy programme is that I do not

see the academies as a single model in opposition to the previous model.

The beauty of it is academies is about new possibilities and

flexibility, creativity. How quickly or slowly would you like it to

happen? Again to say it, one of the things that is exciting about the

programme is that it is being refined and developed and

scrutinised and tweaks. So the good thing about it is for example in our

own multi-academy trust, there are particular academy freedoms,

changing terms and conditions of teachers, pay and conditions, the

way things are operated at local government body level, we can change

those things, we just do not think that they were broken and so we

retain them. Love the chance to take everything that was good here on the

previous system, retaining it but having flexibility to develop it

further. Especially the multi-academy trust dimension, it

brings the benefit that even over a short period of time, we are seeing

that strongly. Sir David when you hear this

considered view from someone who is a fan of academies but regrets that

this one size fits all speed boat has been put on top of everything

does it not make you think twice? Let me make a couple of points. I

have come into this role from 32 years of being a head teacher and

I've been ahead in local authority schools and academies and rummaging

of academies. One challenge I want to address is shifting the debate

whether from weather academies or local authorities are good or bad

and thinking about the single education system we need. John has

rightly talked about the power of a multi-academy trust. While I believe

there is room in assistant for them to support other schools the power

of the multi-academy trust and what it does for parents and children and

staff is very powerful. This is how we will sustain it. Give me a second

and I will talk briefly... Briefly because I want to bring Chris and

again. Of course. Parents who want to educate their children understand

the context in which this works. This is a policy about local

schools. One quick illustration, this afternoon I was in Cornwall

working with a group of 17 schools want to form a multi-academy trust,

15 were primaries and several have less than 100 children in them.

Sustainability for that model is important if it means that that

multi-academy trust can make sure that the best trained teachers are

making the children of those parents, that is a winner. Two

speakers clearly on the same side and yet seeing a very different

approach to how this should be done. There are also particular problems

at school leaders are bringing out and one of these things is about the

right of parents to effectively influence and hold schools

accountable. We are moving to a world where 20 odd thousand state

schools in England are going to have who gets a new roof decided in

Whitehall, who runs your local school decided by original

commission and there will be a panel of teachers who don't get to go to

their board meetings and don't know when the art, don't get problem and

it's from them. And in a silly opaque system. -- and enormously

Paik system. -- I am sorry that we have run out of time. Thank you.

There were wives who'd never heard their husbands speak of it,

husbands who'd never heard their wives speak of it.

Children who'd never heard their parents discuss it,

and parents who went to their graves without ever

knowing their own children had been victims.

They are The Abused - and in one remarkable account -

raw, honest, shattering - we hear from those whose

lives were destroyed by Jimmy Savile - and others.

How initial attempts to report it failed.

And how a public outcry of support for him turned to a clamour of rage.

How the police became overwhelmed when so many spoke out

Here's a clip from the BBC documentary, which aired last night.

I had absolutely no confidence in myself.

The only person I ever told was my husband before we got married.

Some of those speaking out for the first time.

So what can this story tell us about the way we investigate abuse?

And has enough changed since the dark days of the 70s?

Dee Coles, who was a victim of abuse by Savile,

Alison Levitt, QC, a former legal advisor to

the Director of Public Prosecutions, is here.

And Clive Driscoll, former Met policeman.

A very warm welcome to you all. We saw you in the film last night. What

came out most strongly for me was how many other relationships in your

life are affected by about one moment, you spoke movingly of how

you are not able to tell your best friend, your mum. I wonder how much

impact you think that has had them, you with your man, your husbands

Camille wives, it seems never ending. -- your mother, your

husbands, your wives. I think it is a massive impact because in what

comes down to minutes you lose so much, you lose trust and faith and

hope. You lose that with yourself, and you lose that with the world,

and everyone you meet in it. It is gone from that moment. And does that

then play into this whole question of being believed? Does that become

the most central thing to hear somebody say, yes, we believe what

you went through? It was amazing for me to hear that. It was only in the

film that I heard that. Other than speaking to our league, the

director, I had made my statement to the police but that was incredibly

painful. And as much as I know that Operation Yewtree was just forming

and they were overworked and saying, I'm sorry, we can't get to you, that

was the most painful part the process. Allison, one of the

speakers in the film has this howl of grief when she goes through the

court case years later, and half of her own story is rejected, even

then. It comes down to this question of how you are trusted, even in

court. I think it's very difficult to explain to victims that actually

it is not that they have not been believed, it is that the standard of

proof that is required from a jury is that the jury must be sure. It

may like a question of semantics to say that not being sure is not the

same is not believing, that does not help victims. We noticed that the

victims who do best with the process are those who invest not so much in

the outcome but more in the process of saying that I need to speak out,

I need to have my voice heard, and after that, whether there is a

conviction or not is less significant. What we saw was that

actually it was about numbers in the end. When the numbers were

overwhelming the authorities had to believe these witnesses. Absolutely.

And cases where you think, is individual victims had known that

there were others, they would have gone on. That was one of the things

we realised looking at the Savile cases, it was not only with those,

it was with the cases in Rotherham, because of the fear of a false

allegation being made, and that is understandable, that the

investigators were in effect applying a higher standard for

victims of sexual offences than they would for victims of say, burglary

or road traffic offences. Do you think that this has changed now, the

way that investigators ask the questions and the very questions

they ask? I think there has been quite a lot of progress made. It is

a work in progress, we must learn from Mr Savile's case because

mistakes were made, I think they have acknowledged that. I believe

that the police are far better now in dealing with these cases but you

can always get better, and we need to win the confidence, because

really, it is witnesses that are the lifeblood of the police force. We

need to be able to put good evidence before the Crown Prosecution Service

to allow them to make these very important decisions that there is a

realistic chance of success in court. And I believe that the police

suddenly have got better at what they do. I also believe that we have

to learn lessons from nearly every case we deal with, because the

chances are that there is something you have missed, and that can make

it better for the next investigation that is how it must be. Do you think

you are getting better at these investigations? Operation Midland

has now been dropped. Do you feel that was the right decision? The

decision to discontinue the investigation, you would have to

speak to someone within that. My view is, if the evidence is not

going to reach the standard, that you had better not go into court,

because there can't be anything worse for a victim than losing in

court. If you need to stop and reassess the evidence you have got

with a view to may be revisiting it if further evidence comes to light.

I think that all three of us would agree that the fact that something

took place a long time ago or the allegation relates to something a

long time ago does not mean it should not be investigated. I think

it's important that people who did this kind of thing should spend

their entire lives looking over their shoulders knowing we might be

coming for them because it is an important deterrent for those might

be inclined to do it again in the future. There's also a deterrent for

people coming forward if they feel that the system is not on their

site, if it is too adversarial or they feel they will go through a

similar sense of inflation in court. Has enough changed, does more need

to change? I think the courts have made huge strides in the way victims

are treated. Adaptations have been made to the way that evidence is

given, from straightforward things like not having to be in the same

room as the person that accusing, giving evidence from behind a

screen, or through video link, that is quite standard, there are now

more sophisticated systems so that in the case of vulnerable victims

the judge can give directions to say, you must ask questions in a

certain way and you can only do it for a certain time period. If there

are multiple... One thing we learned from the grooming case of multiple

defendants, is, do not allow the victim to be cross examined by a

large number of advocates. Even before getting to court, just making

a statement about a case that is years old, the statement to me

seemed to be taken in the same way as a statement about something that

happened last week. I'm trying to tell a story that is incredibly

difficult, was it his left hand, was at his right hand, one point the

woman taking the statement asked me why I did not push him away.

That is all we have time for now, Evan is back tomorrow, in the

meantime, we wish you good night. Ayr hello, the big temperature

contrast of today goes on through the night so 67 degrees