19/10/2016 Newsnight

Is it the usual refugee-bashing panic, but this time applied

Or are adults taking Britain for a ride, stretching the word

"children" in order to get into the country?

Which is worse - giving refuge to grown-ups that

Or leaving children behind that you did?

The refugee issue keeps on dividing the nation.

All safe passage clients but go through our process are verified,

bake the family link and the age. I think it's a distraction, these are

children that need to be treated like children.

We'll ask how you tell children and adults apart,

Also tonight, this man was boss of Barclays until last year.

Listen to what he's saying now, in this film he's made for us.

I believe that in 20 years' time we may not need banks at all. We'll see

a wave of technology driven financial services that will change

the way we all use and move money. It's not that the banks can't adapt,

it's that the system is fundamentally broken.

And we talk to former Man Booker winner, the Irish novelist

John Banville, and now author of the TV Crime series,

I watch these things like The Bridge but every single one of these shows

start off with a young woman being raped, murdered, is and thrown into

a garbage dump. If I were a woman I would be protesting very loudly

about this. There are times when every normal

teenager wants to be an adult. And there are also those abnormal

times, when certain teenagers desperately want to be

treated as children. The line between the two

is sometimes a fine one. The pictures of some of the young

people being brought into this country from Calais has led

to a certain indignant surprise among some - it has ignited

predictable suggestions that adults are making a mockery of our attempt

to help children. That we are giving refuge to people

we didn't mean to let in. That may or not be true,

but it does seem that last week's bid to bring some of the children

of Calais here was Secunder Kermani has spent the day

in the Jungle. The camp they call the Jungle is

home to up to 10,000 migrants, men, women, families and around 1000

unaccompanied children. All this is meant to be raised to the ground in

the next few days so belatedly the Home Office has begun to focus its

efforts on bringing over those children eligible to come to the UK

because they have relatives in Britain. Some of those who have been

brought over, according to critics, look far older than 17. Here in

Calais there are different criticisms, that what is being done

is too little too late. I think we can all agree today is one to

celebrate. We've seen 15 unaccompanied children arrive safely

and legally in the UK in the arms of their loved ones as part of this

process. But the process is chaotic and confusing here on the ground in

Calais. We've got hundreds of children eligible for this process

and we are very concerned but the vulnerable ones will be left behind.

There is some talk of the process allowing in people who aren't really

children as well, do you have concerns about that? I don't, I

trust the Home Office's verification process and all clients who go

through our process are verified. With the family link and the age of

that child. I think it's a distraction, these are children who

need to be treated like children. Those unaccompanied children who

have relatives in Britain are interviewed by officials in Calais

and their relatives are contacted to. This boy is from Afghanistan and

has just started the process, telling authorities he is 13.

TRANSLATION: I submitted my case they said they would hear from -- I

would hear from them in three days. One of his friends died last month

trying to board a lorry. He had a brother in Manchester and was

eligible but delays with his application led him to take his

chances. He was a friend, he was a good guy, but he died. That incident

happened and London should take in more miners so incidents don't

happen like this in future. There clearly are lots of genuine and

vulnerable children here, there are also many desperate enough to claim

to be children to escape. For those over 18, the closure of this camp is

unlikely to be the end of their journey, despite French plans to

relocate them across the country. The worry is the people who won't

seek asylum in France and won't go to accommodation centres, and still

want to live in the UK. They'll be forced to disappear and won't have

the support of the organisations or infrastructure here to supply them

with quality of life. How many people are likely to want to try and

get to Britain? I imagine there will be thousands. Frustration in the

camp has increased as the deadline to demolish it draws ever closer. As

the light goes down in Calais, that's when the tensions between

those living in the camp and the police begin to rise. You see the

scenes of conflict with tear gas being thrown. We've been told by aid

workers that with the imminent destruction of the camp coming,

those living here including the children, are becoming more and more

desperate in their attempts to get to Britain. This is clearly no place

for any child. But even if the Home Office somehow manages to bring over

all those children with relatives in Britain, it leaves stranded here

even more with no link to the UK but desperate to go there.

Conservative Councillor David Simmonds is responsible

for children's services at Hillingdon Council,

which covers Heathrow Airport and oversees the processing of many

Beth Gardiner Smith is the organiser on child refugees from Citizens UK,

which oversees Safe Passage, who you saw in the film.

Beth, is it being well handled this attempt to bring some of the

children to the UK or is it a bit of a model? It's fair to say it is

quite shambolic what is going on at the moment. In the camp you can't

people with megaphones walking around calling for children to come

forward to register themselves on separate lists. Who is doing that?

UK mandated agencies. Going around with megaphones? Calling for

children to put themselves forward because the clock is ticking,

demolition is within a matter of days, and they simply don't have the

information they need. As I understand it organisations like

yours have been carefully compiling lists. Absolutely, and we've

submitted those to the Home Office, they have them and we are working

with them to bring those children know that possible. But it is

chaotic. The Home Office has focused on this and we welcome that, but

it's been quite late in the day. It seemed like nothing was happening

and suddenly at the last minute... Indeed, we've been working for over

a year in Calais to get the Home Office to focus on the children who

have a legal right to come to the UK. You could give the Home Office

the names, the list, and you could find those young people and say we

think we know where they are? The reality is we have, and we've also

told them of discrepancies on their own list. The reality is it's chaos,

and the problem is that children will go missing in that chaos. We

are deeply concerned children are going to drop off those lists,

particularly vulnerable children, are not on any list and with

demolition days away they will simply disappear. Some who should be

coming will not get here? Absolutely. You've got a lot of

experience in the area. Is it a problem that adults pretend to be

kids and it's quite hard to tell the difference, they don't have any

documents, and you see people you don't believe our children? Councils

have been dealing with this problem for a long time. Back in 1999 the

Royal Society of paediatricians made it clear in their advice that

medical evidence was not reliable for determining someone's age

definitively and that was backed up by the British Dental Association.

Councils have to go through a process where trained staff

interviewed children to try and get the best possible information they

can to determine their age. Because young people are treated more

favourably by the way UK immigration works there is an incentive for some

who are trying to disguise their circumstances to pretend they are

younger than they are. In regards to Calais, we've always known the vast

majority of those there under 18 were older teenagers. We would

expect the people arriving wouldn't look like small children but they

would be people towards the age of 17 or 18. You do make some effort to

screen adults from children. I'm wondering how well you think you can

do that, if you're not using dental or medical techniques to do it,

interviewing people, can you really tell what age someone is by

interviewing them? The process that councils use start with checking out

what evidence is available to prove a person's age. That might be a

passport or birth certificate. Once we know which country a person has

come from will often make contact with the authorities in that country

because of the person doesn't have evidence, it may be the authorities

can provide it. In Afghanistan it's common to be able to track down

detailed records. If none of that is available then trained staff will

work in teams where they will look to interview a person over a period

of several days to get expert opinions from others which might

include doctors and other professionals, to look at what

they've been saying about their education, the things they've done

in their lives, to try and get a true picture. Whilst that won't give

you an exact date of birth it will give you a more accurate idea that a

person saying they are 16 or 17 is that age, or they might be in their

20s or as has happened sometimes, much younger. When you can properly

ascertained someone's age, maybe by getting documentary evidence, how

many turn out to have been lying? Is it the occasional person or are we

talking about a large minority? Of the total that come to the UK who

make an asylum claim and claim to be children, the proportion who are

subsequently found not to be children is quite high, it's around

60%. That's very high. It's very high in the overall number. That's

the historic record? That's extraordinary. That's consistently

over many years. The ones who come into the care of councils ones who

have already been through a UK border process that has identified

they are probably children. The proportion of those who go through

council assessment and turn out not to be children is lower, although

there are many councils who end up in the courts with disputes about

this. It's important we get the evidence right because we don't want

to see situations where adults trying to disguise their

circumstances might find themselves in a children's home with vulnerable

youngsters. Beth, your colleague in Calais called it a distraction, it

does sound bite that is a serious concern. If you have adults sitting

next to children, sleeping next to children... That's why you do the

checks in the first place and the Home Office does the checks before

the children are transferred to the UK. There are checks in place but

the real issue here is that the chaos is meaning that there are a

large number of highly vulnerable, very young children that are simply

not being catered for. The Home Office do not have a process that

those children who are eligible under the dogs law passed by

Parliament earlier this year. There is no process in place for those

children -- dubs law. We are working with children under 13, orphans who

are at serious risk, highly vulnerable, taking crazy risks every

night. All the while the Calais camp is due to be demolished in days.

Thank you. There is news tonight

that the government is about to announce a pardon

for all those convicted of the long abolished sexual offences,

notably buggery and gross As long it was consenting men over

16, and is not illegal This was in the Tory manifesto,

and follows the exceptional pardon that granted to the late Alan Turing

back in 2013. We are now joined by

George Montague, who was convicted Tell us about your conviction and

what it was for? May I start by saying that I was brought up in a

small country village where every boy longed to the Scouts. That

formed my character. You do your best and you never, ever tell a lie.

I woke one morning and thought, why am I still living a lie? I just

started campaigning for an apology to all gay men. In my generation to

be gay was to be guilty. You did not have to do anything at all. The best

young -- the best looking young policeman in the station was not

gay, not in uniform. They were not getting so many because we became

very clever and we were very disrupted -- discreet. But they sent

in these young policeman and so many, many men were caught and

convicted, all in the local newspapers. Several suicides. I

think to myself, why? Why don't I do something about it? Tell us how much

it means to you. In a way people will say it is of no practical

significance now. But maybe it isn't of practical significance, but it

sounds like it is more about setting the record straight? Yes. There

never should have been an offence of gross indecency. It didn't apply to

heterosexuals. Heterosexuals could do what they liked in doorways,

passageways, in the backs of their car. It only applied to gay men.

That is not right, surely? I want that complete law scrubbed, got rid

of, and my conviction scrubbed. We don't know all the details but are

you a happy man to hear that the government appears to be supporting

a Private members Bill being debated on Friday. The government are going

to give it time and say, let's white all of these fences off? I couldn't

be happier. Except one thing. I will not accept a pardon. To accept a

pardon means you accept you were guilty. I was not guilty of

anything. I was only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong

time. My name was on the queer list, which the police had in those days.

I will not accept a pardon. I think it was wrong to give Alan Turing,

one of my heroes, it was wrong to give him a pardon. What was he

guilty of? He was guilty of the same as what they call me guilty of.

Being born only able to fall in love with another man. I married. I loved

my wife. And you had children as well. We had children. You feel the

apology is more important than the pardon? They give Alan Turing an

apology first and then they gave him a pardon. You think the apology is

the more important of the two, particularly for somebody who is

dead? If I get the apology, I don't mind about the pardon. It is not

only me. There are still 11,000 older men like me still alive. I

talked to some of them. My great friend, Lord Edward Montagu, he

served a year in prison. I said to him, come on, surely you deserve an

apology? And he said unlike lots of my contemporaries said, or George,

leave it. Let it lie. I am not going to. Something as happened. Thank you

for talking to us. You've seen technology

undermine high street travel Maybe you felt a bit sorry

for the people whose But imagine if technology

destroyed the banks? Would you shed tears,

or think of it as payback Well, this is not a hypothetical

question. Technology is undermining the banks'

business models right now. Don't take it from me -

take it from someone Anthony Jenkins was Chief Executive

of Barclays until last year - now he thinks banks

will potentially disappear. We asked him to make

a film to explain why. In 2008, banks in the UK

and across the world suffered one of the worst crises

in their history. Trust among consumers was lost,

the banks were too aggressive, too self-serving, too focused

on the short-term. Eight years on, while balance sheets

look a little healthier, what banks fear now is far scarier

than a credit crisis. Like the dinosaurs,

destruction could be rapid, Now British banks have always used

technology to improve products From the world's first

ATM here in Enfield, to the 40 million mobile banking

apps that were downloaded last year. But now banks face a challenge

of a totally new set of rivals, ones Many established industries have

already been disrupted. Consider how Uber has transformed

taxis, threatening to put traditional cab operators

out of business. So what are the Uber

moments for banks? People in businesses lend to each

other through online services that match lenders directly

with borrowers. These firms are entirely online,

with lower overheads With middlemen cut out,

borrowers get lower rates. Savers get better headline rates,

and the banks themselves Foreign exchange companies already

make it ten times cheaper to send money abroad

than traditional banking. They have managed to remove

all of the charges banks and brokers have kept hidden for decades,

and users have access to the real Driven by new technologies,

these companies are not only changing the way that customers

interact with banks, they're also changing the way

that businesses interact But while fintech businesses

are creating real change in how we interact with financial services,

they still ride on the rails of this These are still the businesses

holding almost all the world's money, and they're almost solely

responsible for moving it around. Whether you are taking

about a peer-to-peer loan, or moving your money overseas

online, you are still One of the most important roles

of banks is to hold accurate records Without banks, how would you know

when I said I was sending you ?10, One solution is distributed ledger

technology, a tamper-proof public record of every transaction

happening in the world without needing any kind

of banks to control it. If person A pays person B the system

knows whether person A has the money, and creates a public

record of the transaction without revealing the actual

balances and details to anyone. The same thing could be done

for savings and loans, bonds and shares - almost every

aspect of today's financial system. This technology is cheaper, quicker,

and even safer and more I believe that in 20 years,

we may not need banks at all. We will see a wave of

technology-driven financial services that will change the way

we all use and move money. It's not that the banks can't adapt

- it's that the system And while these technologies might

be bad news for traditional banks, it could be good news

for everyone else. Because this technology revolution

will allow a return to a banking system based on values that serve

customers better, reduce risk to society and improve

returns to shareholders. And isn't that the banking

system we all deserve? Antony Jenkins there, and we should

point out that he is involved I'm joined now by Hazel Morre,

co-founder of the investment bank, FirstCapital, which invests in some

of these fintech companies. Do you agree that it is going to be

a really big radical change in the next 20 years? I really do. In 20

years, banks may not exist in the kind of form we see them today. Many

industries have been totally disrupted by the Internet and

changing consumer behaviour. COBRA is the largest taxi company in the

world. It has no taxis. Amazon is the largest retailer in the world.

It has no shops. He did say that at the moment all of these apps and

platforms basically come back to banks. They use the banking system

as the platform of everything they are doing? They do. It is unlikely

we will see a wholesale replacement of the banking infrastructure. But

there are regulations coming down the line that will force banks to

open the infrastructure to third parties. There is the payment

services under to directive which will force banks to open up their

payment structures. Third parties will be able to offer services on

top. It will be like Openreach and broadband? Absolutely. The danger

for banks is that they become a utility. And all of the value goes

to the providers. A lot of people say why pay the banks such a big

margin if I can give money to you directly because we have an app? A

lot of this exists now. None of it has been stressed tested. Banks,

most of the time, our fine. It is only every 100 years they have a

horrible crisis and fall apart. Are you confident that peer-to-peer

lending, say, that when everybody wants to get out, there isn't going

to be a run on them and people will find they can't get their money out

because there isn't a big stock of capital as in a bank? That is a

valid concern. What is important to realise that peer-to-peer lending is

that it is not a substitute for a high interest savings account. It is

not something that you should invest in if you need your money in a

hurry. It is a relatively sophisticated product and it carries

high risk. It should only be part of, for example, a portfolio. In

2008, when the banking crisis started, it was most impossible for

small businesses to get loans. What peer-to-peer lending allows is an

alternative source of credit, which in some respects, should there be an

economic crisis, may provide more stability into the system because

there is a different sort of credit available. Am I right in thinking

that Britain is a leader in this fintech area because we are not bad

at technology and we are good at finance? Britain, in particular

London, has a fantastic opportunity in fintech to take a global lead in

what is a huge industry. In technology, clearly silicon valley

is the centre of major innovation, but silicon Valley is not a

financial centre. What we have in London and in the UK is an abundance

of customers and -- and an abundance of talent and technology. Put those

three together and there is an opportunity to develop some

important new businesses. Thank you for coming in.

The European dream of landing a space probe on Mars appears to be

shattered tonight amid growing concern that Schiaparelli has been

lost. The probe plunged into the hot dusty atmosphere and towards the

surface at 21,000 kilometres per hour. The plan was for a parachute

to be deployed. That was going to slow the descent. But radio signals

dropped out shortly before touchdown. I'm joined by Professor

Mark McCall Quesne. Terribly disappointing after greatest joy at

the fact that the mother ship had got into orbit earlier on. What is

the diagnosis of what has happened? We have to wait until tomorrow

morning to see if we actually have data which we captured during the

day via the mothership. The trace gas orbiter was monitoring

Schiaparelli as it went down. We will be downloading the data

overnight. By ten o'clock tomorrow morning we hope to have a much

better diagnosis of what actually happened yesterday. We think that,

in fact, the signals which we saw dropping out were about 30 seconds

before the surface, just as the parachute was jettisoned and we

started descending under the rocket thrusters which were going to slow

us right down. At the moment we don't know what we will look at it

carefully overnight. We can see a little video animation of what it

was meant to be. It is an incredibly dangerous and difficult thing to

make it work. As we stand now, what would you say the best case is? Is

it possible that it is all going to come right? I think it is possible.

As a non-betting person, I wouldn't want to stake anything on it.

Chances are less than 50%. This was a test and demonstration mission to

see how we could get down to the surface using the technology. The

critical thing is relaying the data back which has been captured by the

TGL. That will teach us a lot about the technologies we employed and how

to improve upon them for the mission we are looking forward to in 2020

when we put a Rover down to the surface and start driving around,

digging deep beneath the surface for signs of life. There are satellites

going around Mars, human satellites. Are we going to get a picture? Like

we had a picture of the one on the comment. Is it possible that we can

contact this thing or view it? We will certainly be working with the

Americans because they have the highest resolution camera in orbit

flying around, called high Rice. We will be trying to work out where we

did touchdown based on the data. They will be targeting to try to get

pictures of where we are. But again, everything we do in space is hard,

it is risky. We knew that today we would try something very difficult.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the trace gas orbiter itself

will be sniffing the atmosphere of Mars looking for gases like methane,

which may be indicators of life on the planet. That has been fully

successful. I think glass half empty, glass half full, we are

pretty happy about getting TGL into orbit.

It is a little reminiscent of Beagle two, which was such a disappointment

in the end. Are you feeling a gut wrenching sadness that the potential

for this being lost or is the TG oh part of it solace? When Beagle two

went down we had another satellite with it called Mars Express. It's

been operating very successfully. I can't hide I'm feeling a little bit

down this evening. It's something we planned for four years and we do

need to understand what happened. Maybe tomorrow morning will wake up

happier people. There's no doubting it, there are a bunch of people in

the hotel who are mulling over what happened to day. That's what we do,

we take an ambitious tasks and sometimes it works brilliantly well.

And today we had 75-80% success so we can't be too downhearted. Thank

you for talking to us. It is less than a week

until the winner of the Man Booker Prize is announced,

a useful reminder for the book-reading classes that it'll

soon to be time to purchase Now we can't tell you who has won

this year, but we can bring you news of a stocking filler from the man

who won it in 2005. He is the Irish novelist,

John Banville, whose bone dry and often biting wit is almost

as celebrated as his prose. He's now published a memoir

of Dublin, called Time Pieces. He's also been talking about U2,

the high body count in TV drama and what it means to be singled

out by the Booker jury Talking of whom,

here's Stephen Smith. I was very young when I first fell

in love with libraries. "Miss flushing, blonde, pink

and bespectacled, was one of three She stood behind her counter

at a raised level so that when I approached her to have my

week's borrowings stamped, I would find myself at eye level

with her magnificent conical breasts poking against the pale

blue angora jumper. It's that particular jumper

I see her inveterately in. I'm sure I would have fallen in love

with her, another of my phantom darlings, had her bust

been less intimidating." John Banville's new one

is a memoir of Dublin. Its characters, its splendid

Georgian architecture. So we've travelled with him

to central London, and its splendid We're in Fitzrovia, said to be

the model for a part But curiously, having written this

book, I now feel that in some way You must have approached it

with some trepidation, given your illustrious

predecessors. As a novelist it's almost impossible

to write about Dublin, because anywhere you mention

will already have been Everyone will say, this

is a reference to Joyce. John Banville's best-known

for his literary fiction, He won the Booker Prize in 2005,

he loved it, but with John Banville You said at the time that

you were pleased the Booker had been But also, I did think that now

and then it's good that a book like mine should win the prize,

that it's not to everybody's taste. I was interviewed by Irish radio,

they said, it's a great day Your first wife described

you working on a novel, you "were like a murderer

who'd just returned It takes a terrible

toll on one's family. We are monsters, we would sell our

children for a phrase. That could mean that you're just

an unpleasant man No, I think that it is

true of all writers. A friend of mine was at a dinner

party, and one of the people He was sitting opposite her,

and he was fascinated He suddenly realised she was just

learning how to do him. For the new memoir, Banville went

round Dublin with a chum, who had a place next

door to U2's studio. I don't suppose John has

any stories, does he? I think that I'm one of the few

people who has thrown # What more in the name

of love # I had a nice house in North Dublin,

a lovely garden. At the back of the garden

was an old orchard. I went out there one beautiful

summer morning, and there And I said to them, this

is private property. They all very politely

got down and went away. Many years later I realised

that it was U2 I had There was a house at the end

of the garden and they were staying there, and they had just come out

there to have a rest in the trees Under the pen name Benjamin Black,

Banville's written the casebook of a 1950s Dublin pathologist,

Quirke, who is played on TV My wife said to me,

it'll never do well, Nowadays it has to be extreme

violence, there has to be blood all over the place,

you have to be wading through blood. I watched these things

like The Bridge and so on, but every single one of these shows

simply start off with a young woman being raped and murdered

and eviscerated and thrown If I were a woman I would be

protesting very loudly about this. Banville's fans will be glad to know

he is working on his next novel. All that experience

must come in handy. No experience teaches anybody

anything. When I was young I thought age

would bring wisdom, it doesn't, But I like confusion,

it's a nice state to be in. I think I said earlier that it was

in a private members bill, apparently not true, it's a Lib Dem

amendment to the policing and crime Bill.

On after us on BBC Two, No Such Thing As The News,

and if you really want to stay up late, don't forget the last

It'll be on the News Channel at two o'clock.

You can lie in bed and stream it on your smartphone, if that

We'll leave you now though with the music of Carter Burwell,

who this evening won Film Composer of the Year

at the World Soundtrack Academy Awards, as well as best

original music for None of Them Are You from

Charlie Kaufman's haunting 2015 stop motion love story,

MUSIC: "None of Them Are You" by Carter Burwell

# When I see your face or hear a name

# It doesn't matter they're all the same

Good evening. They could be a frost tonight but into the morning the

best of the sunshine, if you