13/05/2014 The Papers

possible return to cricket for Freddie Flintoff as well.

Welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be bringing us

tomorrow. With me are Liam Halligan, the economics commentator for the

Telegraph, and Hugo Rifkind, columnist for The Times. We are

going to start with the Guardian. International court examines UK war

crimes. If you go to the ICC website, there are ten countries

where preliminary investigations are taking place, including the Central

African Republic, Afghanistan and Honduras, and we have been added to

the list. As a spin doctor would say, the optics on this are not very

good. This is the announcement that a specialist tribunal in The Hague

will investigate alleged misdemeanours by UK military

personnel relating to 60 allegedly unlawful killings and 170 apparent

mistreatments of Iraqis. This story will go on for many, many years.

Even preliminary investigations into this will take several years, we

understand. The UK is the only western country who will be subject

to this investigation. The Government has come back, the

Attorney`General saying, well, what can he say? He says, of course we

support the process of the International Criminal Court, but

these allegations are already being comprehensively investigated, in his

words, why the UK Government. But Hugo, Dominic grieve says, it is not

systematic, what happened, it may be, although I am putting these

words into his mouth, the odd guy here or there, if any mistreatment

happened at all. But what the lawyers putting forward this case

are saying is that this goes right to the very top, Army chiefs and

defence ministers, potentially? With an allocation of 60 cases of

unlawful killing, that is not good. Unlawful killing, that would

suggest, if true, that there were things going on in a fairly routine

fashion which should not have been in the field of conflict. However, I

think it is important not to get this story backwards, which is easy

to do. Yes, the UK is the only western states to have faced a

preliminary investigation like this one, but what that means, if you

think about it, it means Abu Graber did not go to the ICC, that means

Fallujah did not go to the ICC. Britain is committed to

international justice, Britain has cooperated with this court. Most

likely, after a preliminary investigation, whatever happens,

even if there was found to be substance in the allegations, the

ICC would probably understand that written is capable of investigating

these things themselves. `` Britain. Written is I think doing the right

thing in cooperating. It would be relatively uneasy to say, this is

rubbish. Liam, that is right, isn't it? Dominic Grieve came out today

and said what he had to say, but he also said, we are open to anyone

coming here and investigating this? It was a very measured statement. I

am sure there were some cross`party talks in formally before the

statement took place, because this could go on for a very long time, as

I say. I think Hugo is right, it does show that we are open to

investigation from outside forces, and some other western countries are

not. But it does not look good, given the other countries which are

being bracketed with the UK in the aftermath of Iraq. Staying with the

garden, US takeover could cost lives. I don't think I have ever

heard an excuse to prevent a takeover, the suggestion that it

could actually kill people? This takeover battle is getting pretty

bitter. I am not saying the man is wrong, he knows what he is talking

about, however, it is not in the interests of any drug company to

delay cancer drugs. Cancer drugs are held drug companies make their

money. Any drug company that can bring a new cancer drug to market

will do so as quickly as possible. The development costs are such that

they will not risk a delay. So I would take that with a pinch of

salt. But it shows how nasty this is getting. All manner of politics and

protectionism and thinly veiled xenophobia is coming into this one.

I think this will run and run and there will be a lot of fallout

afterwards. The shareholders, one assumes, are watching all of this,

and ultimately, one would assume that they are going to make the

final decision, it is not going to be Vince Cable. Yes, what would

usually be seen as a dry business story has become a soap opera. It is

now being talked about in the pubs and clubs and taxis up and down the

land. Not only because it is a ?60 billion bid, not only because

pharmaceuticals is our second biggest sector in this country after

financial services, or that it would be the biggest takeover of a British

company by a foreign company in our history, it is also because the

Government is considering intervening. That is the reality.

Simon Walker from the Institute of Directors, speaking to you earlier,

having already spoken once to the press, again this evening he

reiterated his view, that it is up to the shareholders, who own the

company. I do not think it is clear that in the run`up to an election,

we will not get intervention here. Of course, the Treasury does not

want it, it is trying to say that Britain is open for business. Even

in the States, the citadel of so`called free market capitalism,

you have had foreign deals blocked when they have looked politically

too sensitive. I think we could yet see some kind of intervention,

although I personally hope that we don't. There is a difference between

foreign direct investment and selling off your own industries.

There comes a point where we need to ask ourselves whether we want to be

somewhere. Mike with the car industry, somewhere where with we

can produce cars for companies owned in other countries, whether we want

to be that sort of nation. Pharmaceuticals is one that we have

always been very good at. I am being told that apparently we are making

more cars than we ever did. That is true, but we do not have a volume

car`maker in this country it is Nissan, it is Tatar, of course. Yes,

we are making more cars, giving people gain full employment, with

semiskilled and skilled jobs, not least in the north`east of

England... But they are not British cars! . The companies are often

domiciled elsewhere, sometimes the tax goes elsewhere. All of this

stuff about life sciences, research and development ` if Pfizer said

?100 billion, then all of that goes out of the window, the shareholders

will say, come on in, weren't they? The Government needs to decide

whether they will put limitations on any possible deal or not. It is

interesting, Pascal Soriot, the CEO of AstraZeneca said almost nothing

in front of the Commons committee today, but he did launch this

extremely emotive headline, maybe this could kill people. He said

almost nothing else that was worthy of reporting! But he was determined

to get this in the papers, and he did! Moving on to the Metro, this is

really interesting ` Google told to wipe your past off the internet?

This was a judgement by the European court today. There is no possible

appeal. On the one hand, Google and people interested in freedom of

speech will say that the ability to remove things from the internet

events honest reporting and disclosure of information in the

public interest. On the other hand, others will say that if the

intermediary of the information, the search engine, has to become

responsible for the veracity or otherwise of the content, that has

big implications for internet publishing not just for search

engines, but all media organisations. It is a very

important story. Hugo, in this particular case it was a Spanish guy

who had had financial problems in the past, and that affected his

credit history. And he is fine now financially. So he wanted that stuff

wiped. That seems fair enough. Yes, in his case, fair enough. But it

ends when else this would happen. Anyone who has ever wanted anything

removed from the internet on if they believe they have a decent case to

do it, sometimes they do have a decent case to strike the record.

The question is, who owns the record? Even if his credit history

is flawless these days, should it not be in the public domain that it

once was not? Your credit history cannot be flawless. Your history is

your history. That is why it is your history. There is something to be

said that your history should not be evaporated. How many people were

googling him anyway? I never have. I am sure you would like to wipe the

old photographs of you that are still being used to this day. That

was his rebate phase. And he used to have dreadlocks. Few photographs

remain. Nothing wrong with that. Right, we go to the Daily Telegraph.

Hugo, it is official. We are not going to win the World Cup. The

government is saying this now. Less of the week, please. Ouch! Speaking

as a Scot, we got used to not winning the World Cup long ago.

Controversial. I doubt I will get away with this, but it has always

puzzled me, watching the England football team, because the England

football team goes to the World Cup and there is always a sense of

surprise that they don't win. As if it is not possible. It is not

possible to do unusually badly every time . It is like when you call a

call centre and they say, we are unusually busy. It happens every

time. The government has said a report by the Home Office has used

bookmakers' odds when considering the benefits of keeping the pubs

open. There is a 54% chance of us going beyond the group stage. We are

in group D with Italy, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The top two go through,

so we should get through that. But then we only have an 11% chance of

going beyond the quarterfinals. I once asked the former Governor of

the Bank of England, Mervyn King, how good he thought various players

were, particularly when Theo Walcott was going to the World Cup. If we

have a cup run, everybody buys barbecues and summer clothes and

consumer spending goes mad, which has a big indication for the

economy. You are onto a hiding to nothing asking Mervyn King that, he

is an Aston Villa fan. What does he know about football? I will get a

lot of abuse for that on Twitter now! You will both be back later. At

the top of the hour, we will have the latest on today's developments

in the enquiry into the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence.

Now, it is time for Sportsday. Hello and welcome to Sportsday. I'm

Olly Foster. Here's what's coming up tonight. Vacancy at the Lane ` Tim

Sherwood has been sacked at Spurs. The stampede for Wembley ` Leyton

Orient are through to the League One play`off final.

And a second chance for Michael Carberry, as he gets an England