11/01/2017 Newsnight

That something Nazi Germany would have done and did do. I think it's a

disgrace that information that was false and fake and never happened

got released to the public. That's right, you heard

America's President-elect compare He thinks intelligence

agencies spread salacious No, I'm not going to

give you a question. Fter an electrifying

hour-long press conference, what more have we learned of Trump,

the truth, and his relations We've all seen humanitarian crises

around the world. To use that description of a national Health

Service was irresponsible and overblown.

The government tries to paper over growing concern about the NHS.

Like, I've already made the decision I want to be a girl.

But I haven't made the decision if I want to do the surgeries.

Is it right that primary school age children should be permitted gender

Donald Trump has suggested that US intelligence agencies may be behind

claims that Russia has gathered compromising information on him,

and rubbished the news agencies that chose to publish the salacious

sexual allegations about him from leaked and unverified documents.

Speaking at his first press conference since July,

the President-elect reminded reporters just how different

In an explosive and combative exchange, Trump attacked

both CNN and Buzzfeed - which he described as

And he compared the actions of the CIA - who had shared

the intelligence with him - to Nazi Germany.

The documents appear to claim Russia had secretly filmed him,

Donald Trump - and his surrogates - spelled out why none of the facts

Our Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban, has pieced together

With his first press Conference in six months, Donald Trump was bound

to have been under close scrutiny. So last night's allegations couldn't

have been better timed, and indeed does make indeed the leaks finally

pushed into publicly blaming Russia for hacking rivals. As far as

hacking, I think it was Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other

countries and other people. And I can say that when we lost 22 million

names and everything else that was hacked recently, they didn't make a

big deal out of that. That was something that was extraordinary,

that was probably China. We have much hacking going on. But if that

seemed to put the President-elect on the same page as his intelligence

chiefs, think again. That nonsense that was released by the maybe the

intelligence agencies, who knows? May be the intelligence agencies,

which would be a tremendous blot on their record, if they in fact did

that. A tremendous plot. Because a thing like that should have never

been written. It should never have been had and it should never have

been released. The allegations published last night have been known

to some reporters for months. But it was the fact that intelligence

agencies decided to brief Trump on these claims and votes for the

credibility of their author, a former MI6 officer, that gave them

traction. These were based on memos compiled by a former British

intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials

consider credible. When that had aired, the reports ended up online.

The documents, marked confidential and sensitive source, argue the

Russian government had been backing Trump for at least five years. One

makes salacious claims about his alleged use of prostitutes, and that

the FSB had either arranged or moderate them. The latest memo

details a meeting in Moscow between Carter Page and senior Russian

officials. One source suggests the Russians have compromising material

on both Trump and Hillary Clinton. A Kremlin spokesman is alleged to have

led the campaign to help Trump and damage his opponent. He today issued

his own denial. There were also alleged meetings between Trump

lawyer Michael Cohen and Kremlin officials. One suggests he met

Kremlin officials in 2016. Michael Cohen says he has never been to

Moscow. CNN reported may have been a different Michael Cohen. The memos

claim deniable payments were made to hackers who had worked for the

Kremlin and against Clinton's campaign. The fact that Buzzfeed and

CNN made the decision to run with this unsubstantiated claim is a sad

and pathetic attempt to get press. The report is not an intelligence

report, plain and simple. People need to look very carefully at a

range of information in front of them. And, go to their own

conclusions as they sift through a variety of different facts. -- and

come to the wrong conclusions. I will say that I listened to him very

closely and listened to be denied and what he did not. And the point

about the number of different contacts that people in his campaign

had with the Russians, which he was asked about repeatedly, he did not

comment on that point. Today's confirmation hearings for Trump's

Pickford Secretary of State spent much time on Russia and Putin. I

have not had any class -- on classified briefings because I have

not received my clearance. I did read the report released on January

six. That report is clearly trouble. It indicates all of the actions you

describe are undertaken. The tycoon's Kremlin ties are the chosen

battle ground. This was a press

conference like no other. The bulk of it was spent

on dispelling what Donald Trump But in between, we got

plenty of real news. The Mexican wall will be built

with almost immediate effect, Obamacare would be replaced

with a new healthcare system, a border tax would be enacted

on those companies who move production abroad,

and the President-elect would be isolating himself

from all his business interests and handing the company

over to his sons to run. As a press conference,

this was unwieldy, confused and exhausting, but as a piece

of television, it The man who in just

ten days will be sworn in as the leader of the free world

began by dismissing the lurid allegations of sexual behaviour

in a Russian hotel room and commended those who chose not

to report them. I want to thank a lot of the news

organisations here today. Trump pulled back

to questions of his If Putin likes Donald

Trump - guess what, folks - that's called

an asset, not a liability. Trump then explains why

those extraordinary I was in Russia years

ago with the Miss Universe contest,

which did very well. And I told many people,

be careful, because you don't want to see

yourself on television. Trump lashes out at both

the US intelligence highly personal fight with the news

organisations who did choose to Since you are attacking

us, can you give us a She's asking a question,

don't be rude. No, I'm not going to

give you a question. I think it was disgraceful,

disgraceful, that the intelligence agencies

allowed any information that turned out to be

so I think it's a disgrace,

and I say that, and I say And that's something Nazi Germany

would have done, and did do.

I think it's a disgrace. As far as Buzzfeed,

which is a failing pile of garbage, writing it,

I think they're going to suffer the He picks up parts of the story

he claims are demonstrably false. Michael Cohen of the Trump

organisation was in Prague. It turned out to be

a different Michael Cohen. It may well be that

none of the leaks are true, but the story in some ways

has already moved on. A man about to enter

the highest office in the land who distrusts

the very agencies tasked

with keeping America safe. No note to end on, so he falls

back on a role he does These papers are all just

a piece of the many, many companies that

are being put into trust

to be run by my two sons. I hope that the end of eight years

I'll come back and I'll Otherwise, if they do a bad job,

I'll say, you're fired. Well, within the last hour,

the BBC has named Christopher Steele as the author of the series of memos

regarding Donald Trump which has He is a former member

of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and has been a director

of Orbis, which describes itself as a leading corporate

intelligence company. He has not yet responded

to a request for comment. Glen Greenwald - best known

for his role in the publication of the National Security Agnecy

leaks - joins us now from Rio. You heard Buzzfeed, the publication

that went ahead with publication today, being described as a failing

pile of garbage. Would you have published? I think the question

about whether to publish was a very easy one before yesterday, which was

the decision that every news organisation that had this document

made, which was not to publish, because nobody could verify this

information. Once the intelligence agencies called CNN to tell the

world that the FBI and CIA had briefed the President-elect on this

material, and that Russia allegedly had dirt on Trump, I actually think

Buzzfeed did an important journalistic service by ending the

speculation about what that was and letting everybody see what a

farcical document this actually was on which this is based. You call it

a farcical document, Donald Trump called it fake news. You basically

with him on that? I don't know if it is fake or real. I say it is

farcical because when it was disclosed it was not only anonymous,

now a person has been identified, it was somebody paid by Democratic

operatives to pick up dirt on Hillary Clinton. There is no

evidence. It is all based on what anonymous people allegedly told him.

It is impossible to evaluate whether or might not these claims are true,

which is why no journalist or organisation was willing to publish

despite efforts to get them to do so. It was taken seriously by the

CIA, doesn't that elevated above gossip? Right, so the CIA is an

agency that has repeatedly got caught lying in the past. It is

designed to disseminate propaganda and they are currently in open

warfare with the person elected president of the United States.

There were behind the Hillary Clinton campaign. Once the CIA

briefs the president and President-elect on this document, it

becomes newsworthy. But the mere fact the CIA tried to enshrine this

document in a cloud of authenticity or credibility, doesn't for me as a

journalist convince me. I want to see evidence first to believe

claims. You are calling the CIA partisan. You basically suggesting a

Donald Trump ignores everything the CAA tells him, that is no great loss

to America? No, I didn't say anything even a multi-like that. You

suggested the CAA was partisan and pitted against the President-elect?

That is absolutely true. The former head of the CIA, Michael Morrell,

went to the New York Times and endorsed Hillary Clinton. General

Hayden went to the Washington Post and did the same. They both accused

Trump of being a recruit of Vladimir Putin. Whatever they tell him now,

in that case, he would have to take with a pinch of salt because he

would see them as a partisan organisation? Is that what you are

suggesting? I would say that any rational human being with minimal

history of the United States and the CIA would take everything that the

CAA says with a huge grain of salt. I would call it a dose of rational

scepticism, given how many times in the past that agency has lied and

been in error. The Iraq war was started because that agency said

that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in alliance

with Al-Qaeda. Something that was tragically untrue. So of course

people would treat those claims sceptically. But intelligence is not

the same as fact. It's Omeley comes to you with a terrorist threat, it

is what they understand might be about to happen. If they came to you

with fact, it would be too late. That is what the CIA is doing, isn't

it? For the CIA calls to be public is

not pack can anybody's mind not even the CIA say it is fact. As own

report demonstrated, one of the only claims that could be verified, that

Trump's lawyer travel to Prague to meet with Russian officials, came

pretty close to being affirmatively disproven, given that Michael: Was

not in Prague. It is not a fact. It is a falsehood, as the CIA so often

disseminates. But it may not always come down to fight with

intelligence. Are not right to try to alert the incoming president that

this may be going on? Surely that is an intelligence agency doing its

job, isn't it? I don't think anybody has a problem with the fact the CIA

told Donald Trump this happened. I think the problem is they called the

source credible, then somebody went to CNN in a coordinated way,

multiple officials, to tell CNN that this was briefed to the president

and the President-elect, knowing they would report it and the

document would surface. You can take the line that the CIA was trying to

do its job, but it is obvious there is open conflict between the

intelligence community and the elected president and this was a way

of undermining his credibility. We don't know where those leaks came

from, although he has pointed the finger at the intelligence agencies.

Let me ask you to clarify one thing, because it seemed as if the first

time today we had Donald Trump concede that the hacking of the

Democratic e-mails over the probably did come from Russia. Would that

change how you view Wikileaks and awayday leaked -- and the way they

leaked? I don't regard Donald Trump as a paragon of truth that we are

duty bound to agree with. I want to see evidence before I believe Russia

did it. Second, every media organisation, when they get

material, ask two questions: Is it authentic, and is it in the public

interest? It does not matter what the provenance of the documents was

from a journalistic perspective, it depends on whether they were in the

public interest, and they clearly were. It resulted in five Democratic

officials being removed. Wikileaks did the right thing in reporting on

those materials. Labour has accused the Prime

Minister of being in denial over In the Commons today,

Jeremy Corbyn pointed to the increasing number of patients

waiting more than four hours in A, and the number of hospitals now

overstretched, and called for extra investment in health

and social care, calling it a humanitarian crisis -

the phrase first used Theresa May rejected the phrase,

but admitted the pressure exists. It is winter, the NHS's hardest time

of the year, and while it is not actually snowing in Westminster, it

feels positively arctic in the English health service. Today, its

chief executive, who already has a pretty frosty relationship with

Downing Street, kicked off a fairly public campaign for more NHS

funding. The Government is repeatedly telling us, and I have

had letters recently from the Secretary of State, that the NHS is

getting more money than it asks for, so what is your view? I have said it

previously to a select committee in October that, like probably every

part of the public servers, we got less than we ask for in that

process, and so I think it would be stretching it to say that the NHS

has got more than it has asked for. So how bad are things? Is it just

January? No, it isn't. Here are the 2014 figures for the share of

patients at A dealt with within four hours. You can see how cold

weather ways on the service. It is well below its 95% target at the end

of the year. He was 2015 and 2016. Now, let's look at the July. You can

see that, yes, winter matters, but performance has declined each year,

and each year, there was matching deterioration in the financial

position of the hospitals. The hospital sector is struggling on all

fronts. Hospitals started the financial year with an underlying

deficit of almost ?4 billion, which meant they were spending ?4 billion

more than their funding. In the summer, the Government introduced a

so-called reset, of measures to address this, including targets for

hospitals to gradually reduce those deficits, and some extra money over

the next three years, though that has to be taken from elsewhere in

the NHS. There is also a restriction on hospitals hiring locum staff. As

part of the reset, hospitals were supposed to increase performance.

Here is the average of the plans set out, starting from July. You can see

they were supposed to gradually moved back to that elusive 95%

target, but here is what happened. The hospitals started off behind and

fell further back. The BBC has obtained leaked data suggesting

recent performances in this region of the graph down here. The reset

utterly failed. Some of the causes of this winter's problems in health

care are very long. Full example -- for example, the country's ageing

and every year technology means that we can treat new diseases, which

means there is rising demand for health care every year. It is a type

that comes in and never goes out. But some of the problems have more

medium-term causes. For example, what's going on in social care. If

you go back to 2010, we now have 400,000 fewer people receiving

social care, so a 25% care in the number of people getting support,

which means you have large numbers of people in hospital ready to be

discharged, medically fit for discharge, but we cannot get them

into social care facilities. Act hospitals mean bad care, high costs

and long waiting times, which is why Simon Stephens supports more money

for local authority social care. The hospitals themselves have another

problem: They have taken up particularly big part of the NHS's

funding string. They wanted to drive more productivity in hospitals by

reducing the amount the given per patient. This meant that by 2015,

the hospital was paid the equivalent of ?850 to treat a patient they

would have been paid ?1000 to treat five years earlier. The hospitals

aren't coping on those lower prices. It's really not just another winter.

Hospital bosses now talk about the new law of longer waiting times and

was hospital performance. Does the NHS need

comprehensive reform? I'm joined in the studio now by

former Health Minister, Dan Poulter. By the former President

of the Royal College And by Ali Parsa, who is the founder

of the Digital Healthcare There was this dismissal of it being

a crisis, or at least not on the scale the British Red Cross

suggested. When the Prime Minister talked at PMQs about beans -- the

small number of incidents, there was a collective groan at someone who

had clearly underestimated the problem so badly, ban. When we think

of a humanitarian crisis, she rightly said, we think of Syria and

Iraq, but it is the case that there is a big problem in the NHS, and we

have seen tragic examples in Worcester and elsewhere this week,

where people's lives have been lost because of the pressures on A You

are clear, there is a big problem in the NHS, not a small number of

incidents will stop -- a small number of incidents. It is worse

than I have seen things in the decade or so but I have been working

as a doctor. The result of pressure on front line services, we can see

that, if you like, the shop window of the NHS, A, is under pressure,

both in terms of difficulties in discharging patients, reductions in

money to local councils for social care, but I think we really need to

start a fund general practice and community care to make sure we can

prevent some of those admissions. When we talk about increases in the

budget over the last few years, almost all has gone to the acute

sector, to hospitals, many of them in debt, and a lot of that money has

sometimes been taken from mental health budgets at the expense of

primary care, and that needs to change. This talk of a humanitarian

crisis, do you think it has been unhelpful in the debate because it

makes it sound rather political? I wouldn't use the term, but I think

it is a human crisis for those elderly people waiting for hours on

trolleys, for those children with mental health problems having to

travel hundreds of miles to find a hospital bed, and for my profession,

who are trying to deliver and unable to deliver. So it is certainly a

human crisis, and I believe that what Dan has just said is absolutely

correct. It is sometimes easy to say that we need more money. We have an

incredibly cheap health service. We eke out so much care from our health

service. We have one of the most efficient services in the world. It

is a precious gift to the people of this country, and if we lose it, we

will all be more the worse off for it. Ali, do you think it comes down

to money, is it really that obvious? I don't know whether it all comes

down to money or not, but I do know that money is not the only solution.

We have to deploy better technology. One of my children got sick at the

weekend, and I had the option of taking the child to A, on a bus or

whatever, adding to the overcrowded this, spending hours and putting a

burden on doctors, or I picked up my phone, made an appointment in

seconds, so a doctor within minutes, my prescription was sent... When you

say you picked up your phone, argue talking about a private clinic? --

are you talking about a private clinic? With my private company,

Babylon, all of that went away within minutes. I pay a subscription

every month, which is a fraction of the price it costs. That is a

fraction of what we pay each year. If we push people towards this as an

alternative to A There is no doubt that investing in technology

is an important part of improving the delivery of care. It is not just

the application, it is the extra payments. I believe in a health

service free at the point of care, and free in terms of need. I think

it should be funded from general taxation. There is a sensible

discussion we need to have about whether the level of money you put

into the health service and the level of taxation should perhaps be

increased to pay for and maintain a health service we all care about. Do

you think we need more taxation? It used to be the case that national

insurance was strongly linked to health contributions. It's now a tax

that just goes to the Treasury. If we can re-establish some link

between hypothecated health and care Pack, it is something I would be

open to discussing. I think there is a good case. I am not a politician

but I agree. The public probably don't mind paying more tax if they

are sure it is going to the health service. The over 65s don't pay

national insurance. There are ways that the public can start to look at

how we can fund the health service. If you lose the service, or even the

idea of the service, it's something that you regret and you never get

back. Do you think, in a sense, that is inhibiting the NHS from trying

new, more radical ideas? Never so much iconography about the NHS, it

doesn't dare disturb itself much. In that respect, I think you're right.

We provide the same service in Rwanda. In 15 weeks since we

launched, we signed up 2.5% of the population of row under. We

delivered 70,000 consultations over the phone to the people of one of

the poorest, most economic way challenged countries in the world.

We have to be careful about this. This is not whether they should be

private or public. In Essex, we have the same arrangement with the NHS

where we do this for the National Health Service. What are some of the

other solutions you are looking at? If you see yourself as a pioneer,

it's not just about an application on your phone will stop where else

are the solutions? Ten years ago, it would have cost $1 million, ?1

million, to do diagnostics on you. Today, I can do that for ?10,000, a

99% reduction of the cost in diagnostics, and I can throw in your

gene sequencing. What is happening with technology and its effect on

health care is significant. We need to embrace it, as well as keeping

our old system. It is not one against the other.

If we were self prescribing more, is that a danger? It can be a danger.

The Pats -- has to be used in a Safeway. But certainly supporting

terrorism is important. 1.I would make is that in the NHS our systems

are just beginning to talk to each other. We need to improve the

delivery of front-line patient care. Most health care organisations spend

only a small fraction. Please don't fall into the trap of assuming that

all innovation is in the private sector and not the public sector. In

my practice, we have developed an online digital offering for patients

currently offered to 2.5 million patients across England. It will

offer people pre-care. It will tell the GP what they think is wrong with

them. We can do electronic prescribing. I think it is 2 billion

prescriptions described digitally. We self prescribe pharmacists. Let's

not look at one sector and save the NHS is a Luddite and a dinosaur. The

NHS is an innovative institution. The problem is people working in the

NHS are exhausted. To innovate, to experiment, requires energy and

Headspace. Do we have to get used to living with crisis? Demand will

always outstrip income. There will never be a time when there is a

surplus of money to spend on health, right, because of how the population

has changed? We have had an unprecedented period of a squeeze on

finances. Demand has increased. People with increasingly complex

care needs. But funding is going up by 1% a year. That is not a

sustainable long-term solution. We spend a lower amount compared to

other countries by OECD calculations. When we saw a

transformation in what we could do with the health service was when

Tony Blair put the money in and made an investment. We need a similar

investment now. You are the Tory minister talking about the need for

a Tony Blair, Gordon Brown government splurge? I care about the

health service. I care about patients. That made a difference.

With Gordon Brown, Tony Blair or Theresa May, we need to make a

difference. If that isn't done, do you have to look at the services

that can no longer be offered? . I think you're right. We need to send

some of the practices we have into general practice. If we re-source

them better, we will keep patients out of hospital and we will

hopefully be able to write this crisis. Fundamentally we get what we

pay for if we don't put more money in. We can't pay for anything. Thank

you. Around the world there has been

a significant increase in the number of children being referred

to gender clinics. Increasingly, parents with children

who say they've been born in the wrong gender,

are adopting a gender affirmative approach

and supporting their children Tomorrow night, a documentary airs

on BBC Two which looks at the choices children

and their parents Around the world, the transgender

community is on the march. Not all boys have a penis,

and not all girls have a vagina. Parents are facing

an explosion in the number of children saying they were

born in the wrong body. I never actually fitted

in with being a boy. I don't like the games,

the hairstyles, the clothes. And I always thought

from the beginning There's nothing wrong

with being a boy. It's just that I don't

enjoy being a boy. She's just at an age now

where sexuality is starting to develop, so boy crushes and things

like that are just starting to come I'm pretty sure I'm going to have

to get surgeries and all that It might be rough, cos

everybody has a rough life. At this point, we have

to start considering puberty blockers, things like that, so we've

been researching that like crazy and speaking to doctors and different

things to try to make those decisions for her because she's

too young to make them. Like, I've already made

the decision I want to be a girl, but I haven't made

the decision if I want to do the And you can see the whole

of that documentary - Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best -

tomorrow night on BBC Joining me now is Sian say, it's

transgender journalist in Bristol. At what point do you think children

are able to makes up their own minds on this? I think the whole point

about this kind of treatment or realisation is there is a lot of

nonsense in the media at the moment about transgender children and about

the kind of treatments they go through. Something like puberty

blockers, which was just discussed, Aaron fact allowing children space

and time by delaying puberty. They experience such stress out of their

gender role. It gives them the time before puberty takes over and

essentially takes a lot of decisions out of their hands that have to be

reversed painfully later. Let me bring in Ray Blanchard, who is

joining us from Toronto. Ray spent many years researching factors that

determine sexual orientation. Do you think if you can take out that

messy, oak-wood, complicated stage of childhood puberty because a small

child knows best, wouldn't you choose to do that? -- awkward. There

are some facts that have to be introduced. Every follow-up study

has shown that the majority of children with gender identity issues

do not enter up transsexual. The majority and up with normal gender

identity. Secondly, we have no diagnostic procedure and methods

that can reliably distinguish which children are going to go on a sexual

trajectory and which are going to end up with normal gender identity.

Thirdly, I think people who are not enthusiastic about it in young

children take the decision that the first line of approach Tonetti

should be helping the child accept his or her sex. If they can't do

that by puberty, it is reasonable to consider puberty blockers. I am OK

with puberty blockers. Only after a screening period. We heard about a

doctor who was fired in Canada for not being gender affirmative and

off. In other words, for asking children to pause before making that

kind of gender choice. Surely it's right for the medical profession to

try and stop that in the first instance because it's irreversible?

One thing I want to say is actually the doctor in question wasn't fired

purely because of his ideology about children and gender. He was also

fired because of a review by his peers which actually found that his

methodology was faulty. But also that his practice as a clinician

was... That is categorically untrue. He was asking very lured sexual

questions. I have to say we have to be a little bit wary... We have

heard from Ray that is categorically untrue. I don't want to go further

down those allegations because he is not here to defend himself. Let us

look at the wider question, that this is something that can't be

reversed for a child. Isn't it eminently sensible in such a young

science of clinical practitioners to Paul's? While unfortunately, the

problem is that when that pause occurs it sounds very nice and

reasonable and rational. But these are real people at the heart of it.

And unfortunately, one statistic that genuinely is true in this

country is that 48% of trans-teenagers before they hit 18,

attempt suicide. When you call for this very reasonable pause, parents

and teachers increasingly know and the majority of clinicians know...

The objective data shows gestures in gender children are the same as

those in other psychiatric populations of children and

adolescents. There is no data about the rate of completed suicides is

hiring gender this form to children than in adolescence. Isn't the

question that parents do not want to feel they are guilty of having

failed to listen to their child's concerns when they could have done

something meaningful about his? Yes, I agree. Some parents are being

emotionally blackmailed by false information about threats of suicide

by these children into thinking that if they make any attempts to help

their kid that they are putting their child at risk of suicide. It

is just pure manipulation. It is manipulation and emotionally

blackmailing? Who is manipulating? Where is this coming from? I'm

transgender myself. I work with transgender children. No one's

parents was looking for this. Most parents of transgender children have

had to go through a long process. It's not like your GP pushes it.

It's quite difficult to access health care in this country. Schools

aren't very aware of it. This idea that there is some kind of pressure,

or some trans-mob that walks into a home and says, it's time for

surgery... We have run out of time. Ray, last word to you,... Do you

think it's just because essentially this is a new science and people

have not caught up with where it transgender issues are, even those

who work within it? I think the problem is that the media coverage,

I'm not talking about the BBC, the media coverage has been so water

well mainly one-sided in terms of cheerleading for gender transition,

it has not covered other aspects of the question. -- overwhelmingly

one-sided. Thank you both.