:01:12. > :01:19.Here comes Wiggins? He bags gold as he has the Midas touch on day five
:01:19. > :01:24.of the Olympics. The SAS author Gore Vidal has died at the age of
:01:24. > :01:27.46. We ask Eric Jong about his writings, feuds and view of
:01:27. > :01:31.American politics. So I thrust myself into the campaign with no
:01:31. > :01:36.money, our system is totally corrupt, we have to find about a
:01:36. > :01:44.million dollars if you want to get collected. I couldn't find a
:01:44. > :01:48.million dollars, but I got half a million votes.
:01:48. > :01:53.Good evening. Sean Rigg was a 40- year-old talented artist and mu
:01:53. > :01:57.significant. But he also suffered from skitsfreenia. He died in a
:01:57. > :02:01.cage at Brixton Police Station in August 2 -- schizophrenia, he died
:02:01. > :02:05.in a age at Brixton Police Station. What happened in the last hour of
:02:05. > :02:08.his life has always been in unclear. Today an inquiry found the police
:02:08. > :02:11.had used an unsuitable level of force against him. The coroner said
:02:11. > :02:18.there was an absence of leadership from those who should have been
:02:18. > :02:22.looking after him. Newsnight's report on the Rigg's family
:02:22. > :02:25.campaign featured on Newsnight earlier this year. But so far no
:02:25. > :02:30.police officer has been charged with the death.
:02:30. > :02:35.We followed the story from the beginning.
:02:35. > :02:40.He was full of life, he was adventurous, and he was such a
:02:40. > :02:46.creative guy. He was an extraordinary person. He had a lot
:02:46. > :02:52.to live for. It was August 2008 when Sean, their son and brother,
:02:52. > :02:57.died. Every day since, his family have struggled, amid a police and
:02:57. > :03:02.legal system, seemingly stacked against them. Sean was trying to
:03:02. > :03:07.get on with his life, despite a mental illness. He wrote about his
:03:07. > :03:11.life, and he wrote about it in lyrics and music. It is very sad.
:03:11. > :03:14.Sean Rigg died here, in the cage of the back yard of Brixton Police
:03:14. > :03:19.Station. His treatment, and neglect, at the hands of the police, were,
:03:20. > :03:24.in the words of today's inquest jury, "more than minimally to
:03:24. > :03:28.blame". Police CCTV shows him in white trousers being led from a
:03:28. > :03:34.police van. He was dying as these CCTV pictures were taken. As he
:03:34. > :03:38.gets to the cage, a camera, inside the station, shows him collapsed.
:03:39. > :03:42.What happened here, and the events that led Sean Rigg to be brought to
:03:42. > :03:46.the back yard of this Police Station to die, has raised serious
:03:46. > :03:50.questions about the kofpb duct of the police, the Independent Police
:03:50. > :03:52.Complaints Commisssion, and the -- the conduct of the police and the
:03:53. > :03:56.Independent Police Complaints Commisssion. It has taken Sean
:03:56. > :04:02.Rigg's family four years and today's verdict to get answers. The
:04:02. > :04:05.inquest jury was highly critical of the mental health service's ined
:04:05. > :04:08.adequate care of Sean Rigg, and theerm damning of the failings of
:04:08. > :04:13.the police. They say the police use of unsuitable force, and their
:04:13. > :04:17.absence of care, contributed to Sean Rigg's death. His family
:04:17. > :04:23.agreed. If the south London and Maudsley Trust had done their job
:04:23. > :04:27.properly, and provided the care and help that Sean urgently needed, he
:04:27. > :04:31.would be alive today. If the police had not ignored repeated 999 calls,
:04:31. > :04:36.from the hostel, and taken Sean to the hospital, as they should have
:04:36. > :04:43.done, he would have been alive today. I'm just calling for those
:04:43. > :04:50.officers to be fired, they should not be able to stay in their jobs.
:04:51. > :04:56.# No no Sean Rigg would rap about the mental illness he had generally
:04:56. > :05:00.overcome. In 2008 he stopped taking his medication. Staff at the hostel
:05:00. > :05:06.where he lived, staff at the hostel wanted the healthcare team to
:05:06. > :05:12.intervene, they didn't. The staff desperately wanted to get him help,
:05:12. > :05:17.they could see he was in deep psychosis. The mental healthcare
:05:17. > :05:20.team told the hostel to call the police. There was no a protocol
:05:20. > :05:27.between the mental healthcare and the police, where this should have
:05:27. > :05:37.been in hand. The hostel called the police four times, and were told
:05:37. > :05:52.
:05:52. > :05:55.The jury were horrified, you know, the gasps in the court. One of the
:05:55. > :05:59.jurors actually asked that particular witness if he was still
:05:59. > :06:03.in his job, after that. She appeared to be horrified when he
:06:03. > :06:08.said he was. The striking thing about this case, is that right from
:06:08. > :06:12.the start, the jury of ordinary citizens, multiracial, six black
:06:12. > :06:17.and five white, seemed to understand the most complex and
:06:17. > :06:21.important issues. They got it. Frequently exercising their right
:06:21. > :06:26.to ask questions about any apparent inconsistencies of the testimony of
:06:26. > :06:30.the police and other witnesses. Eventually, after a taxi driver
:06:30. > :06:37.called to say a man, apparently with mental health problems,
:06:37. > :06:40.striped to the waist, was practising Karate moves, a police
:06:40. > :06:44.patrol chased Sean Rigg outside a block of flats. When the police
:06:44. > :06:48.finally caught up with Sean Rigg, they claimed in testimony it had
:06:48. > :06:51.taken only seconds to restrain him. But photographs taken by a
:06:52. > :06:55.neighbour four minutes apart, showed that wasn't true. The jury
:06:55. > :06:57.concluded the police had spent eight minutes unnecessarily
:06:57. > :07:02.restraining Sean Rigg with unsuitable force.
:07:02. > :07:05.He was prone throughout. Sean Rigg, handcuffed, was put on the floor in
:07:05. > :07:08.the back of a police van. With his condition following restraint
:07:08. > :07:12.deteriorating, he was taken, not to hospital, but to Brixton Police
:07:12. > :07:16.Station. He was then left, in the van, for over ten minutes.
:07:16. > :07:21.If Sean was well, he should have stepped out the van like any other
:07:21. > :07:25.prisoner, and walked straight into the custody suite. He couldn't do
:07:25. > :07:30.that, without aid from the police. When he was eventually removed from
:07:30. > :07:33.the van, and brought to the few steps, he was on the floor. At one
:07:34. > :07:37.point they tried to stand him up, claiming in evidence he was
:07:37. > :07:43.presenting a hazard to officers, who could have tripped over his
:07:43. > :07:47.body. One officer, standing over Mr Rigg, said he hoped he hasn't got
:07:47. > :07:54.anything, he had his blood on him. And then added, oh Christ, he's
:07:54. > :07:59.faking it. It is a catalogue of errors, that any ordinary human
:07:59. > :08:02.being person wouldn't commit. If somebody is dying at your feet, the
:08:02. > :08:07.first thing you are going to do is stoop down. But the officers, as
:08:07. > :08:11.what came out in the evidence on the CCTV, were just standing, and
:08:11. > :08:16.saying there is nothing wrong with Sean, or he was sleeping. One of
:08:16. > :08:21.the officers thought he was mute. It was very alarming to sit and
:08:21. > :08:24.hear these things in the inquest about our brother. What, faking it?
:08:24. > :08:28.They were saying he was faking and pretending to be unconscious.
:08:28. > :08:31.Pretending to fit. They basically ignored a dying man. It took 20
:08:31. > :08:37.minutes for the station doctor to be called. They came back on their
:08:37. > :08:42.blues and twos, why did it take 20 minutes to bring the doctor, when
:08:42. > :08:46.Sean was breathless, that was one of the juror's questions to the
:08:46. > :08:50.doctor. What about the IPPC? What about them, they are completely
:08:50. > :08:58.useless. The case has become a cause he is will he be bre, the
:08:58. > :09:03.Rigg family said from the start they were let down by the IPC, who
:09:03. > :09:08.waited months to question officers. The Campaign Group say Sean Rigg's
:09:08. > :09:12.death is one too many. We can't have any more deaths like this, I
:09:12. > :09:15.have seen a pattern, historically, of young black men, with mental
:09:15. > :09:18.health problems, and other people with mental health problems, dying
:09:18. > :09:24.around the country, in similar circumstances. We are not going to
:09:24. > :09:30.take this any more. It is not fair, and we want to, we want justice.
:09:30. > :09:36.Not just for Sean, but others. Rigg, a physically fit 40-year-old
:09:36. > :09:44.died in Brixton Police Station four years ago. His family say they want
:09:44. > :09:47.the Crown Prosecution Service to act. We have the Assistant
:09:47. > :09:50.Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police with us, we will talk to him
:09:50. > :09:54.shortly first Sean Rigg's brother and sister are here. You have had a
:09:54. > :10:00.very long battle to reach even the inquest, four years. What did you
:10:00. > :10:05.make of the result today? Well, the result just told us what we already
:10:05. > :10:12.knew. But the fact that 11 ordinary men and women came to the same
:10:12. > :10:17.conclusion as us, we didn't know them, they had looked at six weeks
:10:17. > :10:23.of evidence, and seen police lie under oath. Looked at all the
:10:23. > :10:27.evidence, and basically found that the police failed and neglected
:10:27. > :10:33.Sean. What did you say? Pretty much the same, for the last four years,
:10:33. > :10:39.this has been our life, basically, and we have become investigators
:10:39. > :10:42.ourselves. We spent many hours going through CCTV and waiting for
:10:42. > :10:48.this day for the inquest to come. We are pleased with the verdict
:10:48. > :10:51.that the jury had. What do you want to happen now? What we would like
:10:51. > :10:54.is a file to be pass today the Crown Prosecution Service, we
:10:54. > :10:57.believe there is enough evidence for these officers to be prosecuted.
:10:57. > :11:02.We are thinking in the interests of justice and the interests of the
:11:02. > :11:07.public, this must happen. Even discipline rees within the
:11:07. > :11:11.Metropolitan Police? Most -- disciplinies within the
:11:11. > :11:14.Metropolitan Police? Most definitely. If the file is passed
:11:14. > :11:18.to the CPS and there is no action, would you consider private
:11:18. > :11:28.prosecution? Absolutely. We are willing to do whatever it takes to
:11:28. > :11:29.
:11:29. > :11:32.bring these officers to justice. think his blood is calling out from
:11:33. > :11:37.the ground, we can't fail him any more. What do you feel about the
:11:37. > :11:40.actions of the Met, do you feel let down by them, do you feel they have
:11:40. > :11:44.done as much as they could? Absolutely not. Throughout the
:11:44. > :11:49.inquest, evidence came out on how they willfully, in my opinion,
:11:49. > :11:54.neglected my brother, they knew he was ill and dying, in fact. They
:11:54. > :11:58.did nothing to help him. Thank you very much. Assistant Commissioner
:11:58. > :12:04.Simon Burn is here to give the first interview on the issue today.
:12:04. > :12:09.What do you say to the Rigg family? Firstly, I'm saddened, and it is a
:12:09. > :12:14.very serious issue for the Met, I'm troubled. This is the first
:12:14. > :12:16.opportunity to apologise for the death of Sean. This has been an
:12:17. > :12:19.awful burden for the family for four years, there is nothing I can
:12:19. > :12:23.do to put that right in the immediacy of the moment. We are
:12:23. > :12:26.here to learn lessons and reassure you and other people watching and
:12:26. > :12:30.listening in London and beyond, that we have learned lessons and we
:12:31. > :12:35.will change what we do. We will go through this piece by piece. Let's
:12:35. > :12:39.talk about the 999 calls, five increasingly frantic 999 calls,
:12:39. > :12:46.from the hostel, from the support hostel, over three hours, and the
:12:46. > :12:50.police did not respond. Is that entirely unacceptable? This is, we
:12:50. > :12:54.hold our hands out, how we managed the calls over three hours, we got
:12:54. > :12:58.that wrong. As your reporter said, and repeat elsewhere, it set in
:12:58. > :13:02.train a course of events that tragically led to the death. That
:13:02. > :13:08.is the first part of the events, and as I understand it, there is no
:13:08. > :13:14.disciplinary on those people taking the 99 calls, surely unacceptable?
:13:14. > :13:18.We have taken incertainly -- internally action against one
:13:18. > :13:22.member of staff. There is bureaucracy around serious issues
:13:22. > :13:26.around this issue but also for the Met, we are caught up in the
:13:26. > :13:30.bureaucracy until we get to the end of the investigation like this.
:13:30. > :13:35.sure they will move faster on that issue. The next issue, the police
:13:35. > :13:38.claimed, in testimony, that they restrained Sean for a matter of
:13:39. > :13:43.seconds. The jury, very calmly and clearly looked at the evidence and
:13:43. > :13:47.said it was eight minutes. Why did police officers lie? I'm not here
:13:47. > :13:51.to second guess the testimony of some of my officers, and
:13:51. > :13:54.obviously...Tell Me how you account for the discrepancy? Again, I'm not
:13:55. > :13:57.here to second guess what they have said. Clearly the jury, as you have
:13:57. > :14:00.said yourself, had six weeks to carefully consider the evidence,
:14:00. > :14:04.and they drew a different conclusion. A different conclusion,
:14:04. > :14:08.but there is evidence, of course, that not only that different
:14:08. > :14:11.conclusion, you it is the correct conclusion, because a neighbour
:14:11. > :14:14.took photographs which show the restraint happened at least over
:14:14. > :14:18.four minutes. So the officers weren't telling the truth? I fully
:14:18. > :14:20.appreciate that. If you are trying to see it from a general
:14:20. > :14:26.perspective, officers make snap decisions in circumstances like
:14:26. > :14:30.this, and I'm talking in general terms, their recollection can
:14:30. > :14:34.differ. The issue is he was restrained, and we have learned
:14:34. > :14:38.lessons about how we restrain people in those circumstances, to
:14:38. > :14:42.prevent a repetition of such an event. The police officers involved
:14:42. > :14:48.claim that Sean was sitting upright in the back of the van. The jury
:14:48. > :14:51.said not only was he on the floor, but in the foot well, in a V-shape.
:14:51. > :14:56.You heard that he was a physically healthy young man, within an hour
:14:56. > :15:00.of that happening he was dead. Should he have been held in the
:15:00. > :15:03.footwell of that vn, restrained with his hands behind -- van,
:15:03. > :15:07.restrained with his hands behind his back? If you look at the detail,
:15:07. > :15:13.trying to imagine a situation. Our officers were presented with man
:15:13. > :15:18.they believed, and had seen doing violence. They, would it be
:15:18. > :15:23.reasonable to suggest that these officers, having been told that had
:15:23. > :15:27.been all these 999 calls, that he was making Karate moves in the
:15:27. > :15:30.street, that he was bare from the chest up, that he had come from a
:15:30. > :15:33.hostel, that actually he was displaying evidence of mental
:15:33. > :15:37.illness. What you can see from the sequence of events played out in
:15:37. > :15:41.front of the jury, that so. Information conveyed to the initial
:15:41. > :15:45.officers wasn't as good as it could have been, that led to errors in
:15:45. > :15:48.judgment. Errors in judgments like, he's faking it? Again, I can't sit
:15:48. > :15:52.here and account for individual officers, because they have given
:15:52. > :15:56.their testimony on oath to an inquest, and as you have seen from
:15:56. > :15:59.today, for example, the Independent Police Complaints Commisssion are
:15:59. > :16:03.now reviewing what they do next. I have to cautious about what I say
:16:03. > :16:07.so I don't corrupt a process that will follow. Something you can
:16:07. > :16:13.certainly respond to, what the jury and coroner found, was that the
:16:13. > :16:18.level of force was unsuitable, the length of restraint more than
:16:18. > :16:25.minimally contributed to his death, Rushocked? I'm saddened. What I --
:16:26. > :16:30.Are you shocked? I'm saddened, the picture of Sean lying on the floor
:16:30. > :16:33.with officers, what we have changed, the training tells people when they
:16:33. > :16:37.restrain people like that, they turn them on the side to prevent
:16:37. > :16:41.suffocation, we have tried to put the wrongs right. It doesn't make
:16:41. > :16:46.it any easier for the two people sitting opposite me hurting. We are
:16:46. > :16:53.trying to pick up the lessons from an event four years ago. Within one
:16:53. > :16:56.hour of Sean Rigg being picked up by the police he was dead. Yes.
:16:56. > :17:00.the officers involved all still serving officers? They are, because,
:17:00. > :17:02.as explained, there has been a lengthy process, that has led to
:17:03. > :17:06.the inquest today. There will now be decisions made by other people,
:17:06. > :17:09.which we are here to support, in terms of are there any other
:17:09. > :17:13.further inquiries or consequences for those officers. But we have to
:17:13. > :17:18.be bound by the judicial framework that goes with that. You are a
:17:18. > :17:23.senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, do you believe that there
:17:23. > :17:26.should be disciplinaries of these men, at least? Again, I'm conscious
:17:26. > :17:32.that, to the public watching this tonight, there's probably a pretty
:17:32. > :17:35.damning set of events. But to the family, this is the damning set of
:17:35. > :17:38.events, without doubt, these officers failed in their duty.
:17:38. > :17:45.Would it not be reasonable to say that both the officers and the
:17:45. > :17:50.people that led them should face disciplinary proceedings? Not that
:17:50. > :17:55.is something you can't discuss because of bureaucracy prior to the
:17:55. > :18:00.inquest, these are events of prima facia, they didn't act properly?
:18:00. > :18:03.don't want to be drawn on a snap reaction after the inquest. We will
:18:03. > :18:12.follow up what to do next. There are other people who will take an
:18:12. > :18:16.interest in this, like the IP CC, and the CPS. There are a lot of
:18:16. > :18:19.death in police custody, that have never led, as I understand it, to
:18:19. > :18:22.police officers being prosecuted. It seems a huge balance of
:18:22. > :18:25.probability that there are some officers who should have been
:18:25. > :18:28.prosecuted. Do you think you need to review the procedure around the
:18:28. > :18:32.way you treat deaths in custody? There is a few things, just to try
:18:32. > :18:36.to put the balance right. This doesn't bring Sean back. Firstly,
:18:36. > :18:40.we have to take every case on its merits, it is easy to generalise
:18:40. > :18:45.about a whole set of facts and figure. Secondly, the way we are
:18:45. > :18:47.told to record deaths in police custody, covers a whole variety of
:18:47. > :18:53.different circumstances. If I'm giving first aid to one who dies,
:18:53. > :18:58.that is a death in police custody. If an involvement in a violent
:18:58. > :19:01.event like Sean went through, that is a death in cuss towedy. Figure
:19:01. > :19:07.don't tell the whole pick -- custody. Figures don't tell the
:19:07. > :19:10.whole picture, that is day in and day out for the police officers.
:19:10. > :19:15.Danny Boyle celebrated the NHS in the Olympic Opening Ceremony as a
:19:15. > :19:18.great institution. What kind of institution can it become in the
:19:18. > :19:24.21st century. Hinchingbrooke Hospital might hold the key. It is
:19:24. > :19:29.the first NHS-privately run hospital, taken by the Cirle group
:19:29. > :19:32.after it failed clinically and financially with �40 million of
:19:32. > :19:36.death. Since then the Cambridgeshire hospital has been
:19:36. > :19:40.transformed into a for-profit business. But solvency is a long
:19:40. > :19:43.way off. I will speak to the chief executive in a moment. First we
:19:43. > :19:50.have exclusive access to the hospital.
:19:50. > :19:53.What you do when it is the hospital that's sick? Almost since it opened,
:19:53. > :19:58.Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire was in a worse state than some of
:19:58. > :20:02.the its patients. Hinchingbrooke NHS Trust in Huntingdon has no
:20:02. > :20:07.stars, making it, officially, one of the worst hospitals in Britain.
:20:07. > :20:11.After a series of needless deaths two years a The Royal College of
:20:11. > :20:15.Surgeries criticised the surgery team responsible for bowel surgery
:20:15. > :20:18.as dysfuntional. The surgical team represented a risk to patients'
:20:18. > :20:22.safety. Things got so bad at the hospital, some advised closing it
:20:22. > :20:26.entirely was the only safe course of action.
:20:26. > :20:30.Instead, they tried an experimental and radical course of treatment,
:20:30. > :20:34.for the first time in the UK a district General Hospital was given
:20:34. > :20:37.over to a private sector organisation to manage. Six months
:20:37. > :20:41.on from the start that have experiment, Newsnight has been
:20:41. > :20:46.given exclusive access to Hinchingbrooke to find out what's
:20:46. > :20:49.changed. One of our wards here we are getting 100% satisfaction of
:20:49. > :20:53.our patients. For that work can everybody give them a round of
:20:53. > :20:57.applause, you know who you are. There is still a way to go.
:20:57. > :21:02.Nevertheless, at Hinchingbrooke they are celebrating the sixth
:21:02. > :21:06.month milestone with cupcakes. are satisfied with looking after
:21:06. > :21:09.every single one of our patients. These partner meetings are a big
:21:09. > :21:12.part of the turn around strategy. They are called partner meetings
:21:12. > :21:16.because the staff now own 49% of the company. That is part of the
:21:16. > :21:22.plan, reignighting, and then harnessing their creative
:21:22. > :21:26.enthusiasm. Talk to your colleagues in the wards. The boss is Ali Parsa,
:21:26. > :21:31.a charasmatic Iranian-born former engineer. What we are seeing is
:21:31. > :21:35.look, the doctors, the nurse, the healthcare professionals, meeting
:21:35. > :21:38.the patients every day should be running the hospitals. Their orders
:21:38. > :21:42.shouldn't come from people in Whitehall who hardly ever meet a
:21:42. > :21:45.patient. We are all human beings, and we react to the pressures
:21:46. > :21:49.closest to us. But giving control to the people on the frontline, you
:21:49. > :21:55.are empowering them to react to the pressure they see every day, which
:21:55. > :21:57.is the demands of their patients. A good place to see how this
:21:57. > :22:02.process works is in the kitchen. Obviously people don't come to
:22:02. > :22:08.hospital for the food, but, if it's terrible, they can end up staying
:22:08. > :22:10.longer. Not eating delays recovery, or, sometimes worse. At the
:22:10. > :22:16.beginning of the year, Hinchingbrooke only had half of
:22:16. > :22:19.patients saying they liked the food. Now that figure is over 90%.
:22:19. > :22:24.think what is bringing passion back into the kitchen. Buying good
:22:24. > :22:28.ingredient, making the chefs enjoy themselves. Cirle brought in a chef
:22:28. > :22:35.to help the staff rediscover what they came to work for. We all have
:22:35. > :22:41.been here for so long now, we all got steal. Now, it's all different.
:22:41. > :22:45.Now it's, we're learning something new every day. When Andreas, the
:22:45. > :22:51.Cirle chef was here, he taught us a lot.
:22:51. > :22:53.On the wards, the food seems appreciated. Lovely. It is
:22:54. > :22:58.absolutely gorgeous. It's all right? I have never had a dish I
:22:58. > :23:05.haven't liked. Although some of the nurses we
:23:05. > :23:09.spoke to suggested the more cosmopolitan bees tro-style menu
:23:09. > :23:14.needed toning down to suit the tastes of elderly patients! The
:23:14. > :23:19.same process that's happening in the kitchen is also taking place on
:23:19. > :23:24.the wards. Top-down management, being res placed by far more
:23:24. > :23:27.autonomous clinical groups. staff being -- replaced by the far
:23:27. > :23:33.more autonomous clinical groups. The staff being involved in all
:23:33. > :23:36.areas of patient care is so much better. Do patients notice?
:23:36. > :23:41.patients are happier because the staff are less frustrated. It
:23:41. > :23:44.changes behaviour, attitudes and culture. As well as trying to
:23:44. > :23:48.devolve power downwards, the management here say they have put a
:23:49. > :23:53.lot of effort into trying to flatten hire arkies amongst
:23:53. > :23:56.employees. All too often things were going wron, patients were
:23:56. > :24:00.getting hurt because junior members of staff didn't feel able to point
:24:00. > :24:04.out problems caused by more senior members of staff.
:24:04. > :24:09.Borrowing from research in the car industry and airlines, the hospital
:24:09. > :24:14.brought in a policy called "Stop The Line". Anyone can challenge
:24:14. > :24:19.anyone else without fear if they think patient safety is in jepdee.
:24:19. > :24:25.Like the junior scrub nurse, who had to tell a senior surgeon that
:24:25. > :24:29.he had left a squab inside a patient. Nine out of ten scrub
:24:29. > :24:33.nurses would have said stop, while the timid and the quiet one would
:24:33. > :24:38.have said, you know, would have been maybe a little bit shy or
:24:38. > :24:42.intimidated with the surgeon, and say, should I say it or not. Now
:24:42. > :24:46.that one out of ten timid nurse will be able to say, hang on, I can
:24:46. > :24:51.also ask you to stop and do something about it.
:24:51. > :24:55.This is not a finished product, it is still making a loss, and will do
:24:55. > :25:00.for years. Hinchingbrooke is, say Cirle, still a long way from what a
:25:00. > :25:04.hospital should look like. As a reference point, they are very
:25:04. > :25:08.keen to show off their purpose- built hospital in Bath. This isn't
:25:08. > :25:15.a General Hospital, it is much, much smaller. It doesn't have a
:25:15. > :25:18.maternity unit, or an A&E. But the difference is still striking.
:25:18. > :25:23.If you didn't know where you were, it would be very easy to get the
:25:23. > :25:27.wrong impression about what this place is. We have got a bright and
:25:27. > :25:34.breezy atrium, there is a chap over there playing the peeyan know.
:25:34. > :25:41.There is beyond that a sun terrace, complete with par sols. In -- piano,
:25:41. > :25:44.there is beyond that a sun terrace, and complete with parasols, and a
:25:44. > :25:48.coffee shop. People sitting around reading the paper and looking
:25:48. > :25:56.relaxed. Not what you would have in mind with a hospital catering for
:25:56. > :26:01.mainly NHS patients. The philosophy here is simple,
:26:01. > :26:04.reactive motivated staff treat patients better.
:26:04. > :26:09.Happy well-fed patients heal better. Here they don't have to spend money
:26:09. > :26:15.on things that patients don't value. They don't have to treat MSRA,
:26:15. > :26:20.because they don't have any. Agency nurses are a rarity. That means
:26:20. > :26:23.they can spend money on things that help patients get home quicker.
:26:23. > :26:27.Shelagh Meldrum is both a nurse and the hospital manager.
:26:27. > :26:31.There will be a load of people watching this who would say this
:26:31. > :26:34.would be great, this would be fantastic, the TV, everything, it
:26:34. > :26:38.would be fantastic if we could afford it. This has to cost more,
:26:38. > :26:41.it has to cost more than a ward? Because we don't charge for the
:26:41. > :26:44.telephone, and we don't charge for the television, we haven't got
:26:44. > :26:48.someone who is part of their working life is invoicing or
:26:48. > :26:54.working out how a payment may be made, or in fact running around
:26:54. > :27:00.telling people not to use their own mobile phones. So I think that when
:27:00. > :27:04.you think of the complexity of a system that is a historical system.
:27:04. > :27:08.That is the beauty of here, we have always been able to stop and say
:27:08. > :27:11.why, why have we always done it like that?
:27:11. > :27:15.Cirle are clear about their ambition, British healthcare, they
:27:15. > :27:20.say, should be a global export. Selling hospital management all
:27:20. > :27:26.over the world. But, first, according to Ali Parsa, we need to
:27:26. > :27:30.get over the idea that patients and profit don't mix.
:27:30. > :27:36.The job of the company is to serve its customer, in our case, our
:27:36. > :27:39.patients. If we do a phenomenal job at that, then we deserve to make a
:27:39. > :27:43.surplus. You know every NHS hospital is mandated to make a
:27:43. > :27:49.surplus. They call it a surplus, we call it a profit. The truth of the
:27:49. > :27:54.matter is we all need to be sustainable.
:27:55. > :28:01.At the moment, there are a long way from making a profit. The finances
:28:01. > :28:05.at Hinchingbrooke are dire. The first jobs say Cirle is sorting out
:28:05. > :28:11.the quality, and then worry about making it pay. They have a ten-year
:28:11. > :28:16.contract, and we we intend to keep coming back. With me now are Ali
:28:16. > :28:18.Parsa, the chief executive of Cirle, and Dr Lucy Reynolds from the
:28:19. > :28:25.London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. You took it over
:28:25. > :28:29.six months ago with a �40 million debt. You say you hope to balance
:28:29. > :28:34.the books next year? That is a miracle? When we said we would
:28:34. > :28:38.balance the books we didn't say we would pay back the �40 million. We
:28:38. > :28:43.will make sure the hospital is sustainable by next year. The
:28:43. > :28:46.hospital was projected to lose �10 million thisy, we are hoping to
:28:46. > :28:50.bring that to a sustainable level, that it will balance the books next
:28:50. > :28:56.year, and after that it start making a surplus. That seems like a
:28:56. > :29:00.reasonable return for the taxpayer? Yes. But it is a little bit
:29:00. > :29:09.difficult for me to judge those figure, because the information's
:29:09. > :29:12.not publicly available. I know that there were turnover of �70,000 last
:29:13. > :29:18.year, and losses of �30 something in each year. I think if you can
:29:18. > :29:21.turn it around that fast, that is an incredible job. If you turn it
:29:22. > :29:26.round, is it because you have concentrated on the kind of
:29:26. > :29:32.medicine that actually is less problematic, less expensive, more
:29:32. > :29:36.likely it lead you to profit? at all, we are delivering all the
:29:36. > :29:40.services that the hospital has always been delivering. We are
:29:40. > :29:46.expanding on surgery and A&E, we now see more emergency patients
:29:46. > :29:51.than we ever did before. We are going to make this work by focusing
:29:51. > :29:56.on the basics of giving the power to those who have the know-how. The
:29:56. > :30:01.doctors, the nurses, the healthcare professional, who always knew how
:30:01. > :30:04.to be best at what they. Do we are going to inject into that some
:30:04. > :30:08.entreprenurial drive and passion, and also some expertise, as you saw
:30:08. > :30:13.in your film, who can coach them, help them to be the best at what
:30:13. > :30:17.they do. But the point is, the profit is the motive. You say that
:30:17. > :30:20.the NHS hospital themselves are meant to make a surplus. But you
:30:20. > :30:24.need to make a return for your shareholder, the partners, of the
:30:24. > :30:28.people who work in the hospital. Your mandated to do that, that is
:30:28. > :30:31.your primary concern. If some surgery is too problematic, if
:30:31. > :30:36.ground-breaking stuff that often goes on at teaching hospital, is
:30:36. > :30:40.too problematic for you, you won't do it? Profit is important for a
:30:40. > :30:44.company to sustain it. In the same way as food, water air is important
:30:44. > :30:47.for a human being. They can never be the meaning of life. This idea
:30:47. > :30:51.that the profit is the only reason a company exists is just a myth. It
:30:51. > :30:54.is not true, you talk to the best entrepeneurs in the world, they
:30:54. > :31:01.live for the passion of building, doing something extraordinary, and
:31:01. > :31:05.that is what my partners are planning to do. Lucy? We have a
:31:05. > :31:10.vairlt of models around the world, -- variety of models around the
:31:10. > :31:14.world of ways to organise healthcare. We know in comparison
:31:14. > :31:18.to our system here, chargely publicly owned, to the system in
:31:18. > :31:23.the states, which we are moving towards, costs 16% of GDP, we are
:31:23. > :31:28.up to nearly 10%, it was quite a lot lower when the medics still ran
:31:28. > :31:33.the system, before all the market reforms. From experience around the
:31:33. > :31:37.world, we can see that systems which rely heavily on private
:31:37. > :31:41.provision for healthcare, they have some typical problem. They tend to
:31:42. > :31:45.develop those. Like what? Well, soaring costs, for one thing,
:31:45. > :31:51.secondly, we typically see a breakdown of trust between doctor
:31:51. > :31:54.and patient. If there are financial interests in that relationship of
:31:54. > :31:59.trust, there are big problems and there are also problems which
:31:59. > :32:01.develop with overuse of medication, and that tends to lead to
:32:01. > :32:06.antibiotic resistance. China, in particular, has got a terrible
:32:06. > :32:11.problem with that. Because they run a marketised healthcare system.
:32:11. > :32:16.I just respond to that. GPs in the UK are private companies. They are
:32:17. > :32:21.private partnerships, contracted back to the Government, some GPs
:32:21. > :32:24.make �100,000, some �250,000. But the trust between me and the GP,
:32:24. > :32:27.between the British nation and their GP is still very high.
:32:27. > :32:31.GPs have to make very difficult decisions about referring to
:32:31. > :32:35.specialists and also about drug issues with the constraint of the
:32:35. > :32:38.NHS? But they do so within a private partnership. You have to
:32:38. > :32:42.make decisions as well, you have budget and you will have to make
:32:42. > :32:45.those decisions as well? Everybody always uses the example of America,
:32:45. > :32:49.it has gone bad. I have eaten in a bad restaurant there, therefore I
:32:49. > :32:52.never go to a restaurant. We don't make those judgments all the time
:32:52. > :32:58.in our lives. In Germany, which uses the same percentage of the GDP
:32:58. > :33:01.as we do, more hospitals are run by the private sector than by the
:33:01. > :33:05.public sector, and the public is extremely happy with their
:33:05. > :33:08.healthcare system. Just because it has gone back in one place, doesn't
:33:08. > :33:13.mean it has to go back somewhere else. Would you consider running a
:33:13. > :33:16.big teaching hospital? We would love to run a big teaching hospital.
:33:16. > :33:21.This is the idea that there is going to be another kind of model.
:33:21. > :33:25.Would it be so bad to have that model? Firstly, the German system
:33:25. > :33:35.is noticably more expensive than our's, according to the 2011.
:33:35. > :33:38.10% of GDP? No it is up to 12%. Could you repeat your -- Could you
:33:38. > :33:40.repeat your question? I was thinking, is it so bad, you were
:33:40. > :33:44.talking about patient trust, and it is all about transpaorn
:33:44. > :33:50.circumstance I looked at the franchise agreement, the whole
:33:50. > :33:57.section of section 3, talking about franchise agreements, paying back,
:33:57. > :34:00.incentives is redabgtive, why not make it entirely transparent and
:34:00. > :34:05.then there will be no problem? have no problem with being
:34:05. > :34:09.transparent. In every other part of our service, in Cirle Bath it is
:34:09. > :34:13.all transparent, as a public company we have to be transparent.
:34:13. > :34:15.There is rules with tendering for the public sector, it is up to the
:34:15. > :34:19.Government to decide what they will make private or public. You would
:34:19. > :34:24.make more public? For us to make a penny of profit in Hinchingbrooke,
:34:24. > :34:29.we first have to save the taxpayer �230 million in the next ten years.
:34:29. > :34:33.If somebody came to me and says the British Government is losing �170
:34:33. > :34:36.billion a year, and you save that money and in return for that we
:34:36. > :34:39.take 10% of that, I would love to do that deal. I have to stop you
:34:39. > :34:45.right there. That may be a deal for the future.
:34:45. > :34:49.In a moment a tribute to her friend Gore Vidal from the writer Eric
:34:49. > :34:52.Jong who famously wrote something about a zip. Talking about zip,
:34:52. > :34:57.there is this bloke that keeps turning up at all the Olympic
:34:57. > :35:01.events, blonde, distinctive voice, a bid deshef vesseled, not in the
:35:01. > :35:04.running for any medal, but on a day where two Olympic rowers won gold,
:35:05. > :35:10.and Bradley Wiggins became the most decorated British olympian, how
:35:10. > :35:13.come a man on a wire almost stole the show. What is going on?
:35:13. > :35:16.Thankfully we got a gold. That is what everyone is saying. We are
:35:16. > :35:22.nothing if not patient. The jokes were beginning to wear thin. It was
:35:22. > :35:29.beginning to get a bit embarrassing, all this stuff about being gracious
:35:29. > :35:39.house -- hosts, giving the medals away to our guests. Like London
:35:39. > :35:55.
:35:55. > :35:58.buses they came ought, two bronze, He's everyone's favourite cycling
:35:58. > :36:02.mod, and today Bradley Wiggins became the most celebrated British
:36:02. > :36:07.limb I don't know when he won the time trials, it was his seventh
:36:07. > :36:11.medal. What is the point in having seven medals if they are not the
:36:11. > :36:21.right colour. It is just as well he did win, he said the race would be
:36:21. > :36:26.a doddle. He shared the podium with his team-mate. It was not so good
:36:26. > :36:30.for Louis Sanchez, who had a puncture before he started. Helen
:36:30. > :36:34.Glover and Heather Stanning took Britain's first gold. Afterwards we
:36:35. > :36:42.found out Heather only took up the sport four years ago, and Helen is
:36:42. > :36:47.on a break from being a captain in the army. There was a bronze in the
:36:47. > :36:52.swimming. Cheering them on from a great height is Boris. The London
:36:53. > :36:57.mayor got stuck in a zip wire, after he was zipping in to
:36:57. > :37:02.entertain the crowds. David Cameron said it had been a triumph.
:37:02. > :37:08.He was once described as thes could car Wilde of the modern age. -- as
:37:08. > :37:15.the Oscar Wilde of the modern age. He was an essayist writer, poll lem
:37:15. > :37:20.sis with an acid -- poll sem cyst with an acid tongue. He had the
:37:20. > :37:25.opening of not continuing, which he said is sometimes nobler. He died
:37:25. > :37:35.at the ripe old age of 86, in a moment I will speak to his friend,
:37:35. > :37:36.
:37:36. > :37:45.the writer, Eric Jong. First this.
:37:45. > :37:55.# The shark has pretty teeth # And he shows them pearlly white
:37:55. > :37:56.
:37:57. > :37:59.# Just the jack knife Of sight.
:37:59. > :38:04.A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
:38:04. > :38:07.He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and a vicious tongue in
:38:07. > :38:15.his head. Gore Vidal was a patrician, who saw the United
:38:15. > :38:21.States as a flawed Republic. A fallen Rome. I remember one evening
:38:21. > :38:27.at the White House, Jackie slyly said, oh why don't we go to the
:38:27. > :38:33.horse show, and Jack growned. was a cousin of Jackie Kennedy, an
:38:33. > :38:36.intimate of JFK's Camelot. The son and grandson of Washington
:38:36. > :38:40.politicians, Vidal also stood for office himself. I ran really
:38:40. > :38:46.because of Jack Kennedy, who was running for President. I ran for
:38:46. > :38:53.the House. We thought we would make a difference, can you imagine how
:38:53. > :38:56.niave we were. Blessed with good look, as he was the first to
:38:56. > :39:01.acknowledge. -- good looks, as he was the first to acknowledge. He
:39:01. > :39:06.had a brief acting career, and worked on the script of Ben Hur, he
:39:06. > :39:12.saw it as a gay love story, not a view shared by its star, Charlton
:39:12. > :39:16.Heston. The young Ronald Regan, then an actor, one went up before
:39:16. > :39:21.Vidal for an audition, tough crowd. I was offered Regan as an actor to
:39:21. > :39:25.play the part of a presidential candidate. I told his agent, no way,
:39:25. > :39:31.Ronald Regan would never be convincing as a presidential
:39:31. > :39:35.candidate. And poor Ronald Regan had to become the acting Governor
:39:35. > :39:42.of California, and now the acting President of the U state.
:39:42. > :39:48.reputation rests on a series of historical novels and tartly
:39:48. > :39:57.polemically essays. Even more on his stunning poise I don't knowous
:39:57. > :40:01.putdown and literary beef. Take this celebrated discussion with an
:40:01. > :40:05.American writer. You can express any point of view you like. Shut up
:40:05. > :40:11.a minute. No I won't, the answer is they were well treated by people
:40:11. > :40:17.who ostracised them. As far as I'm concerned the only proor crypto-
:40:17. > :40:21.Nazi I can think of is yourself. There was a feud with novelist
:40:21. > :40:26.Norman Mailer. He's shameless in intellectual argument, he's without
:40:26. > :40:36.character or moral foundation, or intellectual substance.
:40:36. > :40:37.
:40:38. > :40:45.It is, in fact, the speed of the bo n moe. He knocked him on the floor,
:40:45. > :40:49.and he says, lost for words again, Norman. Whether it has real legs,
:40:49. > :40:55.and whether or not in 50 years time posterity will look back, I shan't
:40:55. > :41:03.be here, but I doubt it. Naturally it is quite exciting to be here.
:41:03. > :41:09.The mature Vidal was there as new Labour sought power in 1997. Heart-
:41:09. > :41:13.breakingly, he was now willing to slum is on any two-bob show. What I
:41:13. > :41:17.love has been the flip-flop of John Major, everyman, representing the
:41:17. > :41:23."little guy", who can make it on his own, and Labour being the party
:41:23. > :41:32.of elitist snobs, this has been switched right round. It is
:41:32. > :41:35.gorgeous low funny. Now from New York is the writer
:41:35. > :41:41.Eric Jong, who was friends with Gore Vidal. Eric Jong, you have
:41:41. > :41:46.known him for a number of years, you saw him just last year for a
:41:46. > :41:54.final time. As a man, he was a lot of different things, wasn't he?
:41:54. > :41:57.was an incredible kur muj I don't know, he could be very --
:41:57. > :42:04.curmudgeon. We taught as a sem national cirriculum and had the
:42:04. > :42:07.habit of getting up from dinner without even saying goodbye. I
:42:07. > :42:13.admired him tremenduously as a person of letters, he tried every
:42:13. > :42:20.form as a writer. He wrote the most marvellous essays. If you read Pink
:42:20. > :42:27.Triangle, and Yellow Star, you understand why the fascists were
:42:27. > :42:34.against homosexuals. He had a brilliant mind, he was almost an
:42:35. > :42:38.18th century man. Indeed, Burr, I think, will last as a novel. His
:42:38. > :42:44.expertise was understanding the birth of the American Republic,
:42:44. > :42:50.which he was very close to, in a way, as an 18th century thinker.
:42:50. > :42:56.But, also, ancient Rome. So, those were the two periods he returned to
:42:56. > :42:59.again and again in his historical novels. I think those will last. I
:42:59. > :43:05.really do. I know that reading an article you wrote for the Guardian,
:43:05. > :43:10.you talked about him being quite a sad man. Tell me, you actually
:43:10. > :43:18.brought him together with Norman Mailer after the feud, and how was
:43:18. > :43:26.that, did he know he was going to be confronted by normian You've Got
:43:26. > :43:30.Mail -- Norman Mailer? I had a dinner party with Susan Sontag and
:43:30. > :43:38.others, it was a small party and amiable, it ended when Charley Rose
:43:38. > :43:45.called and wanted them to appear on television, and they all took off
:43:45. > :43:49.for Charley Rose, Gore always said never tun back the chance to be on
:43:49. > :43:52.television or to have sex. He was - - turn back the chance to be on
:43:52. > :43:58.television or to have sex. He was very funny and his mind went deep.
:43:58. > :44:02.But he should have been born during the era of the federalist papers,
:44:02. > :44:10.the 18th century, he should have been a contemporary of Burr. He had
:44:10. > :44:14.that kind of mine, a polemical mind. I was going to ask about that. He
:44:14. > :44:18.said in an interview recently, of the things he had had achieved, he
:44:18. > :44:22.was most proud, and thought he would be remembered for his essays.
:44:22. > :44:26.It was the way that the writer could speak directly into the
:44:26. > :44:31.reader's ear, he was talking about reading Aristotle. Do you think now,
:44:31. > :44:35.in this era, someone like that could flower iark, or are we down
:44:35. > :44:40.to the -- flourish, or are we down to the 140 characters of Twitter,
:44:40. > :44:46.are there room for essays? There will not be many characters like
:44:46. > :44:51.Gore coming around again. First of all, our attention span has gotten
:44:51. > :44:55.so small. Purveyors of magazines count the number of eyeballs and
:44:55. > :45:01.page views. Articles have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter.
:45:01. > :45:07.This is our loss, I think. We almost can't find a place to write
:45:07. > :45:12.at length, apart from, perhaps, the Kindle, single. But we don't have
:45:12. > :45:19.the magazines we once had, television shows rarely include
:45:19. > :45:24.writers, even very witty writers. It is extremely sad. Our whole
:45:24. > :45:29.culture has been dumbed down, so much that a person like Gore Vidal
:45:29. > :45:35.might not appear on the Tonight Show. He was invited back again and
:45:35. > :45:41.again by Johnny Carson, because he was so funny, he was so suck sibgt.
:45:41. > :45:47.Thank you very much for joining us. Now a race through tomorrow
:45:47. > :45:51.morning's pages, the Telegraph, the first and wonderful picture of the