13/01/2014 The Papers

favourite, after scoring 56 goals last year. We will also have the

action and reaction from Arsenal's trip to Aston Villa.

Hello, welcome to our look ahead at what the papers will be bringing us

tomorrow. With me are Hugh Muir, the diary editor at the Guardian, and

Deborah Haynes from the Times. The Independent is leading with news

that a trade deal could lead to UK companies being sued. The Daily

Telegraph quotes the Labour Leader are saying that the foundations of

the middle-class are being undermined by job in security and

worries about living standards. The Express is claiming that a spokesman

for the Prime Minister says that immigration was allowed to run out

of control before 2010. The Daily Mail says that children as young as

15 are to be allowed to watch films filled with obscene and which. The

Guardian is leading with a story claiming that a top police officer

is trying to force Channel 4 to hand over documents about the

whistle-blower who revealed that under cover offices spied on

relatives of Stephen Lawrence. The Times has a beaming picture of

Benedict Cumberbatch at the Golden globes in Los Angeles. But we are

not interested in that. Deborah Haynes, step up to the plate. Army

wastes millions on botched IT system, that is your lead story. It

is a story about a whole new recruitment programme for the army.

There has been a lot in the news about the plan to shrink the regular

army and build of the reserves. This story that we have got in

tomorrow's paper reveals just the scale of the IT fiasco that is

behind the recruitment side of things. Basically, the idea was that

they wanted to make army recruitment more efficient by making it online,

so that people could, instead of going to recruitment offices, sit in

their home and apply online. Lots of industries and businesses are doing

that, to save money? Exactly. The problem is, they spent ?15.5 million

on an IT system that doesn't work. Until they fix the problem, they are

wasting ?1 million per month, at a time when money is very scarce. We

are having to lose soldiers because we cannot afford to keep them.

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, is thinking about having

to scrap the whole thing and pay ?48 million to a company to build

another IT system. OK, I suspect many people out there would be,

like, oh, no, another cock-up. As you say, another day, another IT

mess up. You can look at the universal credit problems they have

hard, HMRC, they have hard IT problems within the NHS. It does

seem that whenever the Government embark on a large IT project we end

up here, saying, what has happened, how can it have gone so wrong? I

wonder what kind of lessons you learn from that. Is it that these IT

projects are just too big? They go outside, contract them out and there

is a problem with the contracting process? At some point, it has been

said that there is just a kind of competence problem with the

Government and people wonder whether or not the Government actually has

control of Whitehall and would be able to manage the project is

properly. There is a specific instance here, about the MOD, about

the defence and soldier recruitment. It does seem to follow

a pattern that goes throughout the Government. We do show in the story

that the reason why this went wrong is because the army went with an

option to use a consortium of countries that are already

contracted by the MoD to provide information technology solutions,

instead of going with Capita, which it is thinking of going with now,

who had the ability and know how to produce the system that was needed.

Yes, it is another IT problem. But the impact, the effect of this,

means that recruitment targets are being missed. Because this whole

recruitment partnering programme, this whole plan to reform the way

that the army recruits soldiers is not fully commented yet, Capita,

which is in charge now, or in the lead, with partnership with the

army, an recruitment, is not being penalised for meeting the target

because it is not at full operating capability. The MoD is having to,

once again, cover the cost of failure. Well, the taxpayer is. The

taxpayer is, exactly. This chips away at the credibility. Every time

one of these fiascoes happen and people say, hang on, I thought we

were strapped for cash, I thought you were shrinking the army, you

seem to be trying to recruit people and you are not even doing that

properly. I think there is a cumulative effect of all of this. It

does not sound good, but one way the Army is trying to save money

according to the Daily Telegraph, that is to ask soldiers to use less

ammunition? Yes, an internal Army magazine has told troops to stop

firing unused ammunition at the end of exercises. Can you imagine how

you would feel if you were one of the soldiers, reading the story on

the front of the Times, and you read this, this is practical, what we

have to do as part of our job, and we are being told by people higher

up that we have to use less ammunition. Terrible timing. Of

course, they could not have known what Deborah and the Times was up

to. Again, it just chips away at the credibility. How much money is that

going to save, compared to the millions wasted at the IT system? It

does seem sensible, it says not to fire unused ammunition. Save a

couple of bullets for next time something. It just shows the level

to which they are having to scrimp and save to save any sort of money.

At the same time, haemorrhaging cash. Something needs to be done.

The big thing is, nobody is ever held responsible. People who fail in

the MoD get promoted. Why am I laughing? OK. Let's stick with the

Telegraph, actually. The top of it, interesting story, I can save the

middle classes. Ed Miliband suggesting that life for those in

the middle-class is proving very difficult at the moment? Yes, again,

he is returning to talking about the squeezed middle. Very much his

feeling for the election strategy is that he has two secure a sizeable

vote there. So, he is now saying that the middle-class face a crisis

of confidence over their living standards he obviously has his

private polling and it is telling him there is a problem. He has been

appealing to the squeezed middle, the middle classes. I'm not sure it

is working out as he hoped it would. That is why this is in the Daily

Telegraph. If you want that kind of vote, you go to the Tory heartland

to try to convince them on their own territory. But is Ed Miliband part

of the problem? He is reiterating a message that has been successful for

him, the squeezed middle. But he feels he has to push it up there

again because Labour are not getting the kind of traction in the polls

that perhaps they should be at this point in the Parliament? He is

touching on a point that is close to some of our hearts, life is really

expensive, especially if you have children and it is really hard to

make ends meet. You do worry about how you're going to afford to send

your children to university. It is something that is a really emotive

issue. Was really unimpressed with the string of policies that he is

supposed to be doing to fix the problem. The top one is, to link

benefit payments to employment history. How is that going to pay

for my children to go to nursery? Does not really answer the problem.

Well, you cut the bill. He's arguing if you have a history of work and

now you are on benefits, you will get more benefits. If you don't, it

will be cut. But there is no direct answer to the problem is that the

middle-class are facing. Here is his problem, on the front page of the

Guardian, an ICM poll that says he has dropped two points over the

month, now at 35%, just three points ahead of the Conservatives. That is

in our poll, I am sure he is doing his own private polling and he knows

that the lead that he had, which has never been a substantial one, and

his personal rating has not been healthy either, he knows that is

slipping, he knows he has to do something. Thus, stories like this

one that we see today in the Telegraph. Let's go onto the

Independent. UK sovereignty at risk from EU-US trade deal. What is this

about? At an interesting story, there is obviously this trade deal

that is going on. There is a concern that if it happens you are going to

be in a situation where multinational companies will be able

to sue a country if they don't like the sort of policies it is adopting.

It says this sort of thing is actually happening at the moment. It

gives a couple of good examples. Apparently, in Australia, it is

being sued by Philip Morris for introducing plain cigarette

packaging. In Canada, it is being sued by this US drugs firm for

revoking patterns on drugs, on the grounds that the benefits may have

been overstated. Two policies that the public would totally sympathise

with, but the worry is that it might penalise foreign investors. There is

a warning by MPs and pressure groups about the trade deal that is

currently being negotiated, as to whether the impact could be on the

UK, for example, as well, if we were to implement this policy. 200 groups

protesting, we do not have here exactly which they are. But it does

appear to be a critique coming from the left, which is quite unusual.

For the most part, when you hear criticism of the various works of

the EU and European Commission, it normally comes from the right. UKIP

are making great hay with that. There is a traditional scepticism

and concern about the reach of Europe, which has come from the

left. Way back in Labour history, that has been quite a respectable

opinion. We don't hear that much about it now. Theys on the right,

would they support a deal that seems to be beneficial towards big

business? Exactly. They probably would, wouldn't they? At the same

time, wouldn't they be angry about potentially being sued, potentially,

this country being sued by multinationals? That's why it could

take us into an interesting place, if you have this confluence of the

left and right. Both having different reasons to be unhappy with

the eyew, but both be -- EU, but both unhappy. The front page of the

Independent, this is an interesting story. The man who invented this

thing, the Kalashnikov, he went to his, not his priest, but local

church and said - I feel bad that I invented this thing. AK-47, what an

iconic weapon, used across the world for revolutions, for terrorists, all

sorts of reasons, such a cheap weapon, easy to use and has been the

cause of, you know, millions of deaths, would you say? I don't know.

It's very interesting that the man who, I presume became very rich off

the back of it... I don't think he did, actually. He did it for the

honour of the Soviet Union. This is the problem with invention, you

invent great things or terrible things for mankind much you never

know how it's going to turn out. If he hadn't invented AK-47s, someone

else would have invented something similar. But it is interesting. It

makes you wonder about people who invent weapons of mass destruction,

for example, whether they, how they feel. Oppenheimer regretted to his

dying day the invention of nuclear fission, and the atom bomb.

Interesting that the Orthodox Church decided it was going to release this

letter that he sent. Maybe it shows there's hope for us all. Even the

man who invented the killing machine. All right. OK. We're going

to end it there. Deb raw, Hugh, you're back at the top of the

Deborah, Hugh, you're back at the top of the next hour, in fact at 11.

30, an hour's time. At 11pm, we will have much more on our lead story,

involving the benefits of fracking, apparently. And the incentives

offered by the Government to local councils to have this kind of

activity in their own backyard. ( Stay with us here on BBC News for

that. Coming up now it's time for Sportsday.

Hello, welcome to Sportsday. Coming up: Gone in 60 seconds, two goals in

a minute puts Arsenal back on top of the Premier League. An emotional

Cristiano Ronaldo beats off