:00:13. > :00:16.Tonight on Newsnight Scotland: The former editor of the Scottish News
:00:16. > :00:23.of the World Bob Bird is charged with attempting to pervert the
:00:23. > :00:27.course of justice. What next for Operation Rubicon? And who are Mr
:00:27. > :00:31.and Mrs Average Scotland? We will discuss what the latest snapshot of
:00:31. > :00:35.Scottish society tells us. Good evening, the former top
:00:35. > :00:38.journalist in the Scottish operation of the News of the World
:00:38. > :00:41.was detained by police in Glasgow this morning in connection with an
:00:41. > :00:45.allegation of attempting to perverse -- pervert the course of
:00:45. > :00:51.justice. Bob Bird was editor of the Scottish edition of the paper
:00:51. > :00:54.during the Tommy Sheridan defamation trial in 2006. When
:00:54. > :00:58.Tommy Sheridan sued the News of the World for defamation in the Court
:00:58. > :01:02.of Session back in 2006, there were few media commentators who thought
:01:02. > :01:06.he would win. But there were fewer still who predicted the series of
:01:06. > :01:11.events which followed his victory. He was convicted in the Glasgow
:01:11. > :01:14.High Court, after committing perjury during the defamation case.
:01:14. > :01:24.As he headed for jail, his lawyer suggested that his imprisonment
:01:24. > :01:28.might not be the end of the matter. Today, I was convicted. I have
:01:28. > :01:34.fought the power of News International off my political life.
:01:34. > :01:37.I make no apologies for taking on the might of Rupert Murdoch.
:01:37. > :01:43.Several million pounds of public money was spent investigating me
:01:43. > :01:47.and my wife. Is it not time that similar resources were devoted to
:01:47. > :01:51.investigating the activities of the News of the World? As the London-
:01:51. > :01:55.based media, notably News International, were making
:01:55. > :01:57.spectacular headlines before, during and sends the Leveson
:01:57. > :02:00.Inquiry, Strathclyde police were conducting what they called
:02:01. > :02:06.Operation Rubicon, described as an inquiry into allegations of phone
:02:06. > :02:09.hacking, breaches of data protection and perjury. Already
:02:10. > :02:14.this year, Andy Coulson, formerly the Prime Minister's communications
:02:14. > :02:18.adviser, had been charged with Strathclyde police in connection
:02:18. > :02:22.with issues arising at the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial. Douglas
:02:22. > :02:28.Whyte, former editor of the Scottish edition, was charged with
:02:28. > :02:32.perjury himself, during the original defamation Acts and and --
:02:32. > :02:35.action and other telephone offences. Today's arrest of Bob Bird for
:02:35. > :02:38.attempting to pervert the course of justice, means more than 14
:02:38. > :02:43.individuals involved in the media across the UK have been charged
:02:43. > :02:48.with wrongdoing of one sort or another so far this year. Bob Bird
:02:48. > :02:51.told reporters today that he is not guilty. I want to say that I am
:02:51. > :02:57.really saddened and disappointed that things have come to this,
:02:57. > :03:01.today. I have always tried to do the right thing in my career,
:03:01. > :03:06.throughout my 30 or 40 years in journalism. I will be denying the
:03:06. > :03:11.charge that has been made against me today. Strathclyde police will
:03:11. > :03:20.send a report in due course. Our Home Affairs Correspondent
:03:20. > :03:25.revolvers and joins me now. Where next does this investigation go? --
:03:25. > :03:31.Reevel Alderson. He hinted that is in that report. The investigations
:03:31. > :03:35.will be sent to the procurator fiscal. Then they and the Crown
:03:35. > :03:40.Office will decided there needs to be further proceedings. There have
:03:40. > :03:43.been three people charged by Strathclyde police as part of
:03:43. > :03:47.Operation Rubicon. All of these cases are being considered by
:03:47. > :03:51.prosecutors. They will make a decision as to whether, first of
:03:51. > :03:55.all, there is sufficient evidence to take the case to trial. Secondly,
:03:55. > :04:02.whether it is in public interests to take it to trial. It would be a
:04:02. > :04:07.very brave prosecutor to decide that it was not. Or, indeed, that
:04:07. > :04:12.it should proceed in the normal way. But they have a year from the
:04:12. > :04:15.charge before anything must come to court. We know that there are
:04:15. > :04:20.investigations under way in Scotland. There are also separate
:04:20. > :04:22.investigations in England. What impact, if any, could the
:04:22. > :04:26.proceedings South of the Border have on the investigations here?
:04:26. > :04:30.They are entirely separate investigations under entirely
:04:30. > :04:34.separate legal systems. Operation Weeting was set up by the
:04:34. > :04:39.Metropolitan Police to investigate allegations of phone hacking and
:04:39. > :04:44.impropriety surrounding the News of the World's activities. Already, a
:04:44. > :04:49.number of people have been arrested as part of that. One of them is
:04:49. > :04:53.Andy Coulson, who has also been arrested by Operation Rubicon,
:04:54. > :04:58.detectives in Strathclyde. They are separate investigations. They will
:04:58. > :05:04.proceed in a separate manner. If, for the sake of argument, people
:05:04. > :05:06.were brought to court under Operation Weeting, I think that
:05:06. > :05:12.might delay things in Scotland if the same people were implicated
:05:12. > :05:15.here. What impact, if any, would there be on that the conviction of
:05:15. > :05:22.Tommy Sheridan for perjury? I do not think there will be any impact.
:05:22. > :05:25.I think it is perfectly possible, isn't it, that in the perjury case
:05:25. > :05:32.and the defamation case a large number of people wired. Just
:05:32. > :05:35.because one side -- a large number of people my age. Just because one
:05:35. > :05:39.side was found to perjure themselves, it does not mean the
:05:39. > :05:45.other side is whiter than white. Just give an indication of the
:05:45. > :05:51.scale of the inquiry. Operation Rubicon was set up by the Office
:05:51. > :05:59.following the receipt of a document by Tommy Sheridan's then solicitor.
:05:59. > :06:07.At one point it had 50 officers. The work continues on Strathclyde
:06:07. > :06:09.police say there is no sign of that Howl average do you feel? Research
:06:09. > :06:13.out today highlights the make things that Scots have in common
:06:13. > :06:16.and the many ways in which we do care. The Scottish Household Survey
:06:16. > :06:25.found that a third of women do not feel safe for the home at night.
:06:25. > :06:29.Most people are happier with their What is it like to live in
:06:29. > :06:33.Scotland? What are the facts on the ground? One senior, the Scottish
:06:34. > :06:38.Household Survey tries to answer those questions. It holds a mirror
:06:38. > :06:43.up to all of Scotland so that we can see ourselves in all our glory.
:06:43. > :06:48.Or maybe just warts and all. So, what do Scottish communities look
:06:48. > :06:53.like? For a start, if you have the range of cultures you will find
:06:53. > :06:59.here in Glasgow. Scotland is a very diverse country in many respects.
:06:59. > :07:03.But not, apparently, in respect of ethnic origin. 97% of adults
:07:03. > :07:10.questioned said that they were white. Just 2% said they were of
:07:10. > :07:19.Asian origin. So, does that 2% feel left out? It is a question I put to
:07:19. > :07:27.a local student and amateur boxer, Mohammad Humair. I don't see a
:07:27. > :07:33.difference. There are less Asians and more whites. Anywhere I go,
:07:33. > :07:39.city centre, college or university, where you would think there would
:07:39. > :07:43.be more Asians. The survey found just under half of Scottish adults
:07:43. > :07:46.are married and living with a spouse. One in three households
:07:46. > :07:54.contains just one person. As we found out in Aberdeen, it is
:07:54. > :08:00.normally a matter of choice. myself. There is nobody to tell you
:08:00. > :08:05.what to do. It is as simple as that. You can do what you want, way you
:08:05. > :08:10.want, when you want. You can go way you want, if you want to go to the
:08:10. > :08:14.pub, you can. Most Scots like where they live, especially if they are
:08:14. > :08:17.out of the city. But a quarter of adults surveyed think their
:08:17. > :08:21.environment is unpleasant. Most feel that they cannot do much to
:08:21. > :08:25.change it. Are you able to influence your environment? Do you
:08:25. > :08:35.think there is a changed to be made, and you have some way of making it?
:08:35. > :08:36.
:08:36. > :08:41.No. Can you have an input and influence on how it changes?
:08:41. > :08:51.hirer people than me. But it is where you live? Yeah, but you have
:08:51. > :08:55.
:08:55. > :08:59.These are tough time economically. That is reflected in the public
:08:59. > :09:07.mood. In the course of a year the percentage of people who felt
:09:07. > :09:11.positive about their household finances fell from 48% to 44%. Also
:09:11. > :09:19.among the findings, three out of ten Scottish households have no
:09:19. > :09:25.savings at all. I'm saving up more. I'm too scared to go out. Normally
:09:25. > :09:29.I would buy jeans, I'm too scared to now. I'm watching what I spend.
:09:29. > :09:32.Is that because you are concerned about how things will go? Is it it
:09:32. > :09:36.because there is not so much money around? There is not so much money
:09:36. > :09:40.around. The Government, you know, the cutbacks that have happened
:09:40. > :09:45.with everybody on benefits, it's really, really getting harder.
:09:45. > :09:49.Everybody is feeling it. Has it hit you? Big style. I'm a single parent
:09:49. > :09:54.with two kids. It's forced me back on to jobseeker's allowance. They
:09:54. > :09:57.are giving me a really hard time. My rent as well, everything. Most
:09:57. > :10:03.Scottish households don't have to take the bus everywhere. They have
:10:03. > :10:09.access to a car. It seems many are still in the driving seat. 6% of
:10:09. > :10:14.men have a licence, but only 60% of women do. I can't understand why.
:10:14. > :10:19.Women do a lot of things with the car nowadays like shopping and
:10:19. > :10:23.things like that. Maybe quite a lot of women drop their husbands off.
:10:23. > :10:28.The husbands say they are the drivers and owners of the car don't
:10:28. > :10:32.get them throughout the day. There are some things that surveys just
:10:32. > :10:34.don't reveal. With me in the studio is Jim McCormick of the think-tank
:10:34. > :10:38.The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and in Edinburgh is the journalist,
:10:38. > :10:43.Lesley Riddoch. Thank you for joining us this evening. Jim, we
:10:43. > :10:46.know the point of these surveys is to inform Government policy. What
:10:47. > :10:50.do you take from the Scottish Household Survey? We get a as soon
:10:50. > :10:55.as possible shot. It gives us a rich and partial picture of how
:10:55. > :10:58.Scotland is to live in and how it's changing. Take an example like
:10:58. > :11:04.growing satisfaction with public services. That seems like good news.
:11:04. > :11:08.If you scratch below the surface you will find, for example, all the
:11:08. > :11:13.people with dementia who have poor experiences in hospital. Disabled
:11:13. > :11:19.people who have poor experiences again. We have to be careful not to
:11:19. > :11:25.over interpret the positive findings and look below the surface
:11:25. > :11:32.to get a handle of how it can be useful for a policy stool. There is
:11:32. > :11:36.a feeling within the statistics of a lack of empowerment amongst
:11:36. > :11:40.communities? There was a staggering statistic that suggested that 22%
:11:40. > :11:44.of people feel they can have any impact on their local area, the
:11:44. > :11:48.local council area. When you bear in mind that is where the lion
:11:48. > :11:52.share of our lives are lived, that is how we experience government to
:11:52. > :11:57.government services, it's really quite astonishing to find that
:11:57. > :12:01.people feel disco nexted. I know this is a time when we have big
:12:01. > :12:07.fish to fry, everyone is interested about the future of Scotland and
:12:07. > :12:11.whether it will be part of the UK. Here we are with the largest local
:12:11. > :12:15.government unit in Europe, I think this is telling its own story.
:12:15. > :12:18.People can't make an impact where they live. That is really serious.
:12:18. > :12:24.We live in a democracy. Surely, individuals have a responsibility
:12:24. > :12:28.to take action or to try and change things if they can rather than
:12:28. > :12:32.relying on the government, which you seem to be suggesting might be
:12:32. > :12:42.the problem? How would you not rely on the architecture of government.
:12:42. > :12:47.
:12:47. > :12:52.That is why we pay our taxes. We are weird in Europe. We are at the
:12:52. > :12:56.bottom of the league table when it comes to how close you are to local
:12:56. > :13:02.authorities. We could change. We could discuss it, but very rarely
:13:03. > :13:06.do we get the chance. One thing that struck me reading what is a
:13:06. > :13:11.lengthy document, 20% of people surveyed have no qualification what
:13:11. > :13:15.so ever. If you look at those who have qualifications, they tend to
:13:15. > :13:18.have larger incomes and tend to have better results in this survey.
:13:18. > :13:24.It highlights the importance of education? What has been happening
:13:24. > :13:27.in the last 20/30 years is that unqualified people get older,
:13:27. > :13:33.retire early, the workforce, people coming behind them are better
:13:33. > :13:37.qualified. If you are young in Scotland today, and unqualified, or
:13:37. > :13:42.poor qualifications the jobs market is much tougher than at the time of
:13:42. > :13:46.the last recession 20 years ago or so. We have the powers under
:13:46. > :13:51.devolution to target our training budgets, our support for employers
:13:51. > :13:55.to do something about that. I think it's a really important blind spot
:13:55. > :14:01.in our policy system that we haven't done more since the
:14:01. > :14:05.Scottish Parliament began life in 99, to really target those young
:14:05. > :14:09.people who have been left behind, even before the recession came
:14:09. > :14:15.along. Lots of positive things about public service in this survey.
:14:15. > :14:19.We shouldn't lose sight of that. Another thing that struck me was
:14:19. > :14:26.how overwhelmingingly white Scottish society is, something like
:14:26. > :14:31.97% of the population white, 6 % described themselves as being
:14:31. > :14:36."heterosexual". It's strange if there are worries about immigration,
:14:36. > :14:40.for example, that it's based on a small experience of it. That does
:14:40. > :14:45.make me wonder whether the kind of animosity that sometimes occurs is
:14:45. > :14:50.because of perceptions of not having enough for... To go around,
:14:50. > :14:53.if you like, the local, enough housing, enough affordable housing.
:14:53. > :14:58.Enough services that people can get their hands on. I wonder why that
:14:58. > :15:02.should be the case? There is another puzzle to me, when you look
:15:02. > :15:06.at the transport survey published today, after all the rises that we
:15:06. > :15:10.have had in oils prices and the push to get us on to public
:15:10. > :15:15.transport we are using the bus less than we were ten years ago and
:15:15. > :15:18.there is still 66% of people driving to work. Now, that's kind
:15:18. > :15:25.of quite extraordinary given the amount of effort there has been to
:15:25. > :15:28.create a change there. It makes you begin to think there is some
:15:28. > :15:32.entrenched bits of human behaviour that we don't discuss well in
:15:32. > :15:36.public forums or debates like this, which are still clogging the works
:15:36. > :15:40.up, if you like, to stop us getting where Scots like to think they want
:15:40. > :15:46.to go, which is on to public transport or on to cycling. We seem
:15:46. > :15:52.to be stuck and entrenched in some habits. This has exposed them today.
:15:52. > :15:55.In terms of the economy, we have had a recession, we are now in a
:15:55. > :16:00.double-dip recession, that is reflected in some way in these
:16:00. > :16:05.figures is that people feel lest positive about their household
:16:05. > :16:10.finances. A third of Scots have no savings. 10% have less than �1,000
:16:10. > :16:13.in savings? I suspect we may be at a turning point in some of these
:16:13. > :16:18.indicators where we have seen positive trends for a few years. If
:16:18. > :16:21.you look forward, we know we are in a middle of a sustained drop in
:16:21. > :16:26.household incomes, not just at the bottom, but for many people. We
:16:26. > :16:31.know that lone parents in particular are going to come out
:16:31. > :16:35.badly if welfare reforms, even before. We already see that their
:16:35. > :16:39.rates of savings are low. So, what is interesting will be to look a
:16:39. > :16:43.year or two from now when we have the survey being published as to
:16:44. > :16:47.whether we are picking up that increase in insecurity. A
:16:47. > :16:51.particular trend I want to pick out is the doubling of number of
:16:51. > :16:57.households in the private rented sector. Within the numbers we will
:16:57. > :17:01.see a core of often young, insecure people who are pushed into private
:17:01. > :17:05.renting sector through lack of choice. We may find that they end
:17:05. > :17:09.up having a poor quality, high cost experience. If we should do
:17:09. > :17:14.something from these figures it is to go after that problem. This is a
:17:14. > :17:19.vast amount of information. Put yourself in the role of a
:17:19. > :17:25.Government minister, what do you do with this detail? You ask questions.
:17:25. > :17:29.The snapshot of transport, why has so much nrk and money to try to
:17:29. > :17:36.encourage us to change and green ways and bus lanes and all the rest
:17:36. > :17:40.of it, why hasn't that got us to change? Is a good snapshot of our
:17:40. > :17:45.habits here. It would be a shame if this descended into ministers
:17:45. > :17:49.having to try and dig deep to try and find the one bright spot and
:17:49. > :17:54.concentrate on it because we need to really try and tackle why we are
:17:54. > :17:58.not able to go where we would like to go, in terms of better and
:17:58. > :18:04.healthier habits. Does it paint a picture of a healthy society that
:18:04. > :18:10.is content with itself? It paints a mixed picture. It offers a view of
:18:10. > :18:16.Scotland on the surface, a snapshot, it conceals as much as it reveals.
:18:16. > :18:22.We should look not to just people's attitudes, but also behaviour. What
:18:22. > :18:28.do we do and not just say to pollster what is we would like to
:18:29. > :18:33.do. Put in proper incentives to shift people to walking, cycling
:18:33. > :18:37.and transport and high cost ownership then we are close to
:18:37. > :18:42.making good use of this survey. Thank you very much for joining us
:18:42. > :18:45.Thank you very much for joining us this evening. Tomorrow's headlines:
:18:45. > :18:54.The Scotsman. The Paralympics, the Opening Ceremony having taken place
:18:54. > :19:03.over the last couple of years. Focus on a third of women fear