24/01/2013 Newsnight

We ask a photographer who spent six weeks with British women on the

front line in Afghanistan, whether women want to be in combat and

Good evening. In the world in which many of us live, as we'll see in a

moment, families are seeing their household income cut by almost a

five ndge real terms, since the economic crisis began. The

Government's task has been not merely to manage the economy now,

but in their words, to rebalance it for the future, to compete in what

David Cameron frequently calls "the global race against fast growing

economies in the developing world". The Science Minister today

announced �600 million targeted to what he called eight great

technologies from big data and robotics to regenerative medicine

to help turn the clever ideas of British scientists into stunning

new industries, jobs and growth. Ahead of what are expected to be

dismal growth figures tomorrow, we wanted to see what Mr Will its had

in mind. Our political editor has Texture - two or more substances

not chemically united... economy, overdependent on runaway

financial centre ond under- dependent on hard industry.

Coalition - two parties that are not chemically similar but gel

around the same long-term solution, an industrial policy.

The state injects funds into inventions helping them flourish

and eventually hoping they add to the sum of human progress, but also

create some cash. A belief in an industrial policy is not in the

Conservative Party DNA, a belief in the free market is coded for, but

not the idea that the state could intervene in the British economy.

That is until now, and a new breed of Tory politician. They believe if

you can't pick winners, you can pick sector, like the invisible

cloak sector. Harry Potter thought he was special, but soon he will

lose his advantage, when an academic at Imperial College makes

a breakthrough. The Government will give him money to help him make

invisibility more visible. Invisibility for me is a grand

challenge. My work involves controlling light and here at

Imperial College we've developed some new tech jol any -- technology

for controlling light in a powerful way. We wanted to show the world

how powerful this technology was. We thought invisibility, which is

very popular with all manner of people, would be a very good way, a

grand challenge for us to show off our technology. Today, at the

think-tank Policy Exchange, the minister for science, David Willey,

he of the two brains, set out how he wanted to channel money to

others with two brains. The Government will back eight great

technologies of the future. He said there's a direct role for

Government in deciding broad areas of technology to support before

they reach full commercialisation. Who got to be the last poster girl

for the British brains trust? Manchester. Home to the two

brilliant scientists I met this morning, who have just been awarded

the Nobel Prize for physics. Their prize was for the discovery of a

substance called graphene. With graphene it seems we were too late.

One academic think it's should have been picked earlier. If you

consider something like graphene. We won the Nobel Prize. We have a

problem of commercialisation seeking to address here. Whether it

signals a broader change in Government economic thinking is the

interesting and key question. This could be just Willits on his own

pointing to what might be done time prove the commercialisation of

leading science and engineering in the UK. But it could be part of a

broader change in policy. If the commercialisation can be successful,

what could be the gains? The European Commission has estimated

that the money put into research could be multiplied by six-and-a-

half times, with the emphasis on the "could". There will be failure

as much as success. The problem is we've heard so many speeches from

ministers now, I lose count. This must be the 20th from Vince Cable

or David will its. They've been in Government for over two-and-a-half

years and still no proper industrial strategy is implemented.

We know the Government has cut total departmental science spending

in the first year of this Parliament. It's not just what you

spent, it's actually ensuring that what you fund in terms of research

goes on to be developed. Even if they make an industrial strategy

work, it's a long-term strategy. What hasn't material aisles sd

short-term economic growth. This morning the IMF chief

economists said, in his words, that now was perhaps a good time to take

stock of the UK Government's deficit-reduction programme,

perhaps slow down was his message. The EOCD, IMF and EC have all

predicted that the last quarter of 2012 will see a contraction of the

British economy. But the real thing is published tomorrow. Government

sources are braced for, in the words of one, hideous figures.

Today the Deputy Prime Minister admitted mistakes had been made in

the Government's economic stratd ji, that there could have been more

capital spending in the early days, instead of the cuts to that budget.

Hydrogen - H plus one... Invisibility clobgz, chocolate

biscuits that don't melt, but if necessity is the mother of

invention, what this Government needs is a damage tote speed up

economic recovery. David Willits joins me now. You say

that the 1980s made us very wary of governments trying to pick winners.

You are picking winners in the sense that you're talking about

eight great technologies that you think will work, that would be

winners. Yes. We can't be sure they'll be winners, but Governments

do have to decide and set priorities. We're trying to tackle

one of the fundamental problems in the economy. We have excellent

science, but we stop funding it when it's too far short of the

market. Then we beat up ourselves and say we don't take risk. The

fact is when I go to America, I see there, federal agencies that

support science much closer through the development of the technology,

closer to market, when of course, individual companies take over and

there's no role for Government in backing those individual companies.

Recognising market failure in this country is the key to it -- to it.

I'm recognising the Valley of Death between the great theoretical ideas

in the universities and research labs and the commercial application.

The Government is saying there's absolutely a role for Government in

helping ideas closer to market and as you can't be indiscriminate, you

have to identify the technologies that you think have the best

chances of success. This isn't my personal whim. This stkraus on the

expert advice that scientists whose advice we published. But it is a

big bet. There may be eight other great technologies out there that

others have not come up with. It may be unlikely that however big

the brains, any Government committee is going to come up with

If you look at what happens in America, you will see that in

Stanford, there was federal funding that initially got funding, not

because the federal Government backed a particular company, but it

was far more adventurous in the way it supported IT, and the way the

defence department backed start-up company using IT in innovative ways.

We in Britain should not be so paralysed by the fear that

sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we will get it wrong. And

not do anything. It is worth a go, it is worth identifying these great

technologies, emerging from our science labs and bringing them

closer to market. It is tax-payers' money you are having a go with, at

the same time as just has been said, you are cutting science budgets?

That is not true, we have offered cash protection to the current

science spend. We did inherit from the previous Labour Government big

planned reductions in capital spending, what we have been doing,

in the past two years, is reversing those cuts. We have put in an extra

�1.5 billion. There is a reduction in science spending, and David

Cameron talks a lot about this global race, he may very well be

right in that, aren't we losing the global race, China overlook us in R

& D spending in 2005 and France, and now America, you have made the

case for. We are pretty slow? of the things I set out today is I

think we have competitive advantages, we have great science,

we have an extraordinary history of great science, we still have

brilliant technologies. What I'm saying is if Government,

researchers and business come together, we can back them. I think

that includes going to the challenge of the Sheffield

programme discussion you are going to have, it includes the challenge

of manufacturing coming back to Britain. Remember, we are now, for

the first time since the mid-70s, we are a net exporter of motorcars,

we are second in the world in Aerospace, we can do these things.

We are waiting for the growth figures tomorrow, it might be

George Osborne that needs the invisibility cloak. When you have

the IMF chief economists saying slower fiscal consolidation may be

appropriate. He's suggesting that actually it is political

stubbornness that is stopping Mr Osbourne from thinking again?

you inherit one of the biggest budget deficits from any modern

European country, you have to take small steps, it is happening over a

period of several years. Nobody is saying you could avoid bringing

down the budget deficit. We have to use our limited resources smartly

one of the smart ways, where George Osborne, myself, Vince Cable, want

to spend that money, is backing the technologies. They are not all

going to work, but some of them, in ten years time, will be proviegd

the jobs and prosperity we need -- providing the jobs and prosperity

we need. You have made that point clearly. Nick Clegg is saying in

House Magazine, that the Government cut capital spending too much and

too early, he might be smart on. That do you think you got it wrong

at the start of the term, you cut too hard? I remember our

discussions of this in cabinet, the Chancellor was clear in the very

first spending decisions, he wasn't going to add any further

reductioned to the plant -- reductions to the plant capital

reductions from the last Government. He has actually added back capital.

The reason I have �600 million to invest today in science capital is

in this Autumn Statement, the Chancellor reduced current spending

in order to put �5 billion more into capital, including science

capital, that is the correct judgment. The point may be, that

one definition of economic madness is to keep doing the same thing and

expect a different result. It is clear they are signalling that you

should think again? The overall budget judgment is absolutely clear

that we have to carry on, on the steady programme of bringing the

budget deficit down. Of course that's painful, but it is necessary,

and it is one of the reasons why we have historically low interest

rates. Then, within the almost half of entire national spending, it is

right to use it as productively as we can, that involves getting a

grip on welfare bills, instead investing in education and science.

That is what we are doing. We will leave it there.

Whatever the plans for the future and the new ideas for a new

industrial strategy for the 21st century, many people have a

different priority, survival. Many of us are struggling with falling

real wages and rising prices, plus the uncertainty of an economy where

there are jobs beg created, where, as we hear from Sheffield and Paul

Mason, they might not last long. Welcome to the age of uncertainty.

At the moment what we have is an economy, we will probably find out

tomorrow morning, that is not growing T will be lucky if we are

flatlining, it maying that the last three months of last year were

again a dip, and we are in the middle of what could be a technical

triple-dip recession, and yet this economy is capable of creating jobs

hand over fist. Half a million in the past 12 months, 90,000 in the

past quarter. Now, this is a conundrum. There is a debate that

goes on about why it exists. I want to put a kind of shape to it, with

the ninth great technology of the country which is the Newsnight

graphics. This is the level of GDP through the crisis, you see the big

dip in 2009, and the failure to recover to where we were. This is

five years of pain, technically longer than what happened in the

1930s. Let me now superimpose that the percentage of employed people,

this is a different left-hand scale, this is percentages, it starts at

72. The shape is important, you see like-for-like fall in the scale,

but the recovery is only just happening. That is what is really

going on. Look at the steepness of that pink curve at the end. That is

a real recovery. There was a time when some of the Government's

critics said this is an illusion, this is real. What does it create

economically? When you go down to the gran later level, and you ask

people -- granular level, when you ask people on part-time, part-time

contracts, giving back a lot of their work place benefits, as we

are about to see, giving back some of their wages, and what interests

me at the microeconomic level is the way this is beginning after

five years of pain to change people's perception of what the

possible future for them s and wait they are starting to consume and

even think about work. We went to Sheffield for a couple of days, the

capital of electropop, and still manufacturing, as you can see.

They call it flatlining, growth, like the temperature, struggling to

stay above zero. For many families it is worse than flatlining. People

in Sheffield have lost 19% of their household income in the past five

years. It seems to be hitting everyone quite hard, you notice it

in all sorts of sectors ts on the news all the time. Lots of chains

and businesses going bust and having problems. It is all around

you. Sheffield is a city where they

still work with metal, big chunks of it, though now it is precision

cut. People here know this is where the

economic recovery is supposed to be. Driving exports, jobs, higher

skills. But the firm had to make 70 people

redundant before Christmas, and the rest were forced to take a week's

unpaid leave. So everybody is worried about the future.

You have given up a week's wages, how did that feel? We are not happy

about it, but we have had to do it just to cement our jobs. I went on

holiday and I came back, and I found out the day I got back that

lucky I hadn't lost my job. How old are you? 28. So probably the last

five years of your working life things have been tough, when will

we see an end to this fairly flat, stagnant conditions? I'm hoping, if

I'm realistic I can't see it any time soon, a few years. At the

moment a lot of our business in the offshore wind energy business is

export business. Henry Sherman has built this company rapidly, even in

the face of financial crisis. They make armoured cars, wind farms, big

stuff, in general, he knows places like this are supposed to be

driving the recovery, but it is tough. We had a very strong first

half, in the second half it fell away dramatically. Unfortunately we

had to lay people off, we don't like doing that, it is very

difficult. We had to cut costs, reduce all our expenditures in

order to keep the business as tight and surviving as it is. That's

supposedly in a period where we thought we were coming out of

recession? It was, there were a few little glimmer of light on the

horizon. But 2013 is looking quite challenging.

The fact is, the hard figures for GDP and exports don't begin to

capture the full story. Wherever you go, people tell you about

struggling, surviving, adapting, holding on. After five years of

crisis, all this gets harder. What is shipping like as an economy --

what's Sheffield like as an economy? I personally think there

are no jobs, the jobs there is are not flexible, when you are offered

the job the hours are very long, you either accept it or you don't.

It is not like before where you could actually negotiate a job. Now

you can't. It is hard to measure insecurity,

but whether it is the factory or a Surestart centre, that is what

people talk about. Without this centre, neither of these mothers

would be able to hold down jobs. Though they are both white collar,

both are juggling childcare and work, and it is getting harder.

People are grateful for the jobs they have got, and have to shuffle

their lives around it, because you can't turn work down. Of course the

shuffling doesn't show up in any economic figures? No. I think

people have managed very well, in terms of shuffling their lives

round. I have got friends that work opposite shifts to their partners

so they have not had to pay for childcare, because that is not

something that they can afford to do. But, I think there is a lot of

people are really hoping that there is an end in sight, because they

have really struggled. What this tells us, is that

relentless flatlining, year upon year, is changing the way people

think, and act, and spend. There are jobs, but no security, wages,

but no wage rises. Everybody's worried about redundancy, and the

old drivers of growth are gone. It is hard, I mean the house is

rented, we would like to buy it. As first time buyers at the moment we

stand absolutely no chance of getting a mortgage. Spencer got

made redundant four times in five years before getting his current

job, running a lighting company. Laura is in the training business.

Do either of you see an end to this period where jobs are at risk,

where the company might not be there, or is that the new normal?

think it is the new normal. You see it every day on the news. You just

don't know, it is like if your job gets put as risk, you are never

secure in finding, even if you go to a big-named company, there is no

big-named company any more. I would like to think we are going to come

out of it, and things will get easier. I don't think they will

ever go back to what they were. In Sheffield, they know all about

recessions, they lived through steep downturns in the 1980s and

1990s. This one is different, the gloom may not be deep, but it is

relentless, what they want to know here is when it will end.

Well there are a number of puzzling things about a stagnant economy

creating jobs, and watching Paul Mason's report with me were the

labour market economist, John Philpott, John Wastnage from the

British chambers of summers, and my other guest.

You see some of this up close, what sacrifices are people making in

order to keep things together in this kind of economy? They are huge,

I know a mum called Nina who has five hours a week, one hour a day

in the school playground, she has four children, does a fantastic job

bringing them, she's chuffed to have a job, but it is five hours a

week. Obviously she's putting that in with her benefits and juggling

to make ends meet at the end of every week. My question is, what

happens when she wants to buy two pairs of school shoes for the

children, or pay for a school trip they have to go on, where is the

extra money. She's being paid very little above the minimum wage.

do you make of the argument that a job is a job, she obviously wants

to do it and be active in the work market. She wants, presumably a

better job, but it is better than not working? That is debatable,

because her pay isn't enough to be able to ride her through the

circumstances she's finding herself in. Part of her income comes from

benefit as well, that has to be balanced. The question is, what

happens when there is extra expenditure, what about a hole day,

what about the extra things. How do you -- a holiday, what about the

extra things, how do you pay for doors for Christmas, you go to the

payday lender. I can't tell you how many people are afraid of what the

knock on the door will bring, and pay the doorstep lender rather than

their rent, because they are afraid. We saw whole communities in the

1980s blighted by various things. It is almost like a low heamorrhage

now? It is much more dispersed, lots of people are feeling it,

rather than it being concentrated in particular areas. I think the

key is that because we haven't had the rise in unemployment, that a

lot of people, myself included, were expecting, it is almost a

sense as though things are slightly better this time. But I think as

Paul's film showed, there is an underlying crisis of insecurity,

and that's a symptom of an on going economic malaise that doesn't seem

to be getting better very quickly. We have had essentially five years

now of the age of insecurity, and we have on top of it the age of

austerity, and how long it will take to get out of that I think is

something that is taxing a lot of economists. Insecurity is difficult

to measure, but you know when you see it. I wonder what about the

different kinds of employment, we have heard of people just making do

with short-term working, zero hours working, what about self-employed,

a lot of self-employment? Self- employment is one of the big

stories of the recession. Until recently the number of employees

have been falling, but we have seen on going rising in self-employment.

A lot of this new self-employment is very different from the sort

that we saw in the past. A lot of it is unskilled, in particular a

lot of the new self-employed are working relatively short hours.

These are people who would, ideally, prefer to be employee. They can't

get jobs, and essentially declaring themselves a self-employed person

so they are not unemployed. Because that could 0 make them look

unattractive to future employers. Of course, it means that they have

very limited incomes. It flatters the labour market statistics,

because it makes things look better than the underlying reality it is.

How bad is it for businesses to survive, we saw the sacrifices

people were making to keep a job, working for nothing a bit to help

out the employer who wants to keep people on? Employers are finding it

very tough as well. Uncertainty is the new normal, not only for

employees but employers, they are desperate for that confidence that

is going to allow them to grow. As you heard from the MD, it is never

nice to make people redundant, but sometimes it is necessary. What we

have seen in this crisis that has been different from previous crises,

is a really flexible labour market, that has allowed the pain to be

spread a bit more evenly, and has kept more people in work, which has

to be a good thing. Obvious criticism is, it means low-pay,

people doing skilled jobs, and really not getting the rate for the

job. What would happen if an employer like that had to pay what

people are asking, and what they would need to keep pace with

inflation? If an employer had to pay for more their labour, you

would find they would employ fewer people, or they would look to

automation in more cases to replace labour.

I know you want to come in on that, one of the things that struck me

about the film is people thinking when is it all going to end? Where

is the hope? What is the next thing? That is hugely important. If

you are struggling to put the food on the table each week, and you are

wondering, the stress of getting your children to school and to hold

down a job, a shift job, that constant stress, week after week

after week, has an effect long-term on your health, and your well being.

It is great news that there are extra jobs, and employers and small

businesses are flourishing and finding ways to employ people, what

has been better news is some of the big institutions, Government

departments, the Department of Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith has

announced they will pay the living wage, that is �7.35 nationwide,

much higher than the minimum wage. That makes a significant difference

to working families. What do you think might bring this to an end

finally. People want to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and

it keeps getting longer? I agree with some of the things that John

was saying. I'm worried about this terminology of the "New Norman", it

implies there is an inevitability about this we have to accept. If we

had -- The "new normal, it implies there is an inevitability about it

and we have to accept. If we had this retraction there would be a

sense of national crisis, without the jobs, but because the labour

market has come out OK people are thinking that it is OK and we can

adapt to it. But the economy is flatlining, and something ought to

be done about it, what that is has to do in part with a much more

aggressive fiscal policy. As the IMF were saying, we should be

slowing down the austerity. We agree with the Government's

deficit strategy, we would like them to repriorise the spending,

rely on more house building, and leveraging into infrastructure

projects, making it easier and less risky for businesss to take people

on. And finances for small and medium-sized businesses. Can I say

in the poor communities, what I have come across, going into

Christmas, pawning your children's toys to put food on the table. The

new normal, if the wages are so low, is this the sort of economy we want

our children to be brought up in? Where they hardly see their parents

because they have to double shift and the aspiration is to low wages

and a low standard of living. Is that a good enough new normal for

Britain? The children's charity, Barnardo's estimates that 7,000

children in this country are awaiting adoings, the highest

figure since 2007, the one thing they are looking for is a loving,

caring family environment. Many would-be parents are looking for

children to adopt, why, do you ask, can it take up to four years to put

the child and adoptive parents together. When the Government asked

that question, one answer they came up with was too much bureaucracy in

local councils in England, today the Government announce those

councils may be striped of responsibility for adoption if they

don't improve. The first years of our life are a

time of exploration, learning and development. But for thousands of

children they are a period of trauma and waiting.

Last year 3,450 children were adopted. But their wait is a long

one, spending on average two years and seven months between leaving

their birth family and arriving with their new one. That includes

11 months in care before it is decided they should be adopted, and

another 11 months to match and place the child with adoptive

parents. And then another nine months before the actual adoption

takes place. Today the Government repeated its

desire that more children should be adopted more quickly. In their

sights, 150 local councils, and the threat that if they don't improve,

they will be striped of their involvement in the adoption process.

For the Government, it's a political agenda tinged by the

personal. Education Secretary, Michael Gove, was himself adopted,

and has told how his birth name was Graham, while his junior minister

Johhn Timpson, has two adopted brothers. The older a child gets

the longer they wait to get placed. Six-year-olds wait almost four

years before adoption, and it can be a long road for adoptive parents

too. Of those that come through months of screening, almost half

still don't have a child seven months after being approved.

This man, whose identity we have kept anonymous, has adopted two

children. He told us that the adoption process is a labourious

one. From day one, to the day the court

signed off our daughter, I think it was three years. It was probably

two-and-a-half years before we knew a child was matched to us, then it

was another six months before there was formallised by the courts. They

would come every Wednesday evening, inbetween you had homework to write

about, how was your family, do you have any problems with your family,

do you get on with your brothers and sisters. They went through the

whole family-type things and close things. They ask you some pretty

personal questions. Do you still have sex, how many times do you

have sex. My friends are asked do you still use sex toys, completely

inappropriate questions, I think. It started going into your opinion

on multiculturalism, and homosexuality, your view on a range

of topical issues, I don't know how important those really were,

without a doubt it is worth the grief, however ridiculous and time-

consuming the system is. It is worth it, because you get so much

more out at the end of it than you could wish for. There could be

happier parents and safer children around if more people were adopting,

so yes it is worth the hassle, there shouldn't be that hassle.

Local authorities are responsible for 90% of all adoptions, but the

Government believes they are only doing what they have to do by law,

meeting demand in their local area. They say some potential adoptive

parents are being turned away, because they are not needed locally,

irrespective of the national demand. The Government wants training to be

outsourced for adoptive parents, saying it will make the system far

more efficient. But councils point to an increase in the number of

children adopted in the last 12 months. This is a shared issue, it

is not just something about Government, but councils are

getting on with their part of the problem, by improving the number of

children approved for adoption. We have to make sure the bits in the

Government's hands, around the national adoption gateway, and the

bureaucracy which they Prom my today address are done quickly. --

promised are addressed quickly. We are still waiting. Today the answer

today for the Government could be the 30 organisations who adopt

parents. We are encouraged to have working relationships with the

local authorities to work together, to maximise the chances of placing

these children, to encourage more people to come forward to adopt. As

a result, together, if we have more people coming forward to adopt, we

hope that more children will be placed. The monies that we get,

either as a local authority, or as a voluntary sector, will help us

achieve that. Today's announcement is not an

isolated measure, as well as trying to reduce the time it takes, they

want to less importance attached to matching a child with adoptive

parents of the same ethnicity. According to Barnardo's, a white

child is three-times more likely to be adopted than a black child. The

report makes no hiding of the -- The question is, whether for the

thousands of children waiting to be adopted, it is a necessary risk.

Debbie Jones is President of the Association of Directors of

Children's Services and head of Children's Services in Lambeth. Do

you accept there is a problem, that there is something wrong when there

are 7,000 children who would like to be adopted, but can't be, and

some of them are waiting two to four years to find the right

parent? Within the sector we absolutely accept that there is a

problem. It can never be right for children to wait longer than they

need to, to get placed with the right family. Where is the

bottleneck, the implications that Government is suggesting is some

local council, some local areas are aslope, and they are not getting on

with it? The process of adoption is a long and a complex one, adoption

is probably one of the most difficult but most important

decisions that you are ever going to make for a child. So making sure

that it is a once-only decision is the most important thing. That

means it needs to be done carefully. In the right amount of time. Not

too much time. With some councils, it is absolutely true, it is a

statement of fact, that it takes too long. We recognise that, we

would never...People Understand that social workers get it in the

neck, if you act quickly or slowly and so on, but there are some

parents who are found to be, potential parents and adopters,

found absolutely fit and it takes another seven months to put a child

with them. That seems odd, if the parents are OK, obviously you have

to match a child to parent, where is the problem? The process of

matching the right child to the right family, has to take the

length of time it needs to take. If it takes two years, that is too

long. If it takes three months and you get it wrong, that is even more

wrong. But, you work with some of these Voluntary Organisations any

way, they are good organisations, you accept that. If there are these

problems, why not rely on them to help speed things up? I understand

you think of it as a bit of a threat, but maybe that is what's

necessary? We're actually working very closely both with Government

and the voluntary sector. In order to introduce the radical reforms

that Mr Timpson was talking about today. That is the minister for the

Department of Education. Yes, we have been working with them, as

councillor Simmons was saying for the last 12 month. A number of new

initiatives are being introduced, which includes the Adoption Gateway,

reducing that dreadful bureaucracy that colleagues have complained

about. Do you see this as some kind of big stick, I noticed the

councillor quoted elsewhere as saying this could adversary impact

on parents and children, a disjointed and confusing system. It

may be a spur to get on with it? The threat of taking away the power

to recruit adopters, we see as an incredibly blunt instrument, that

could destablise the current system. As you have heard, we currently

have something in the region of between 4,000 and 7,000 children,

waiting for adoptive families. What we don't need is the system in

chaos while we change and reorganise. Surely what we need to

do is build on the best, build on the best practice in local

authorities that are doing it well, build on the best partnerships with

other local authorities, with the voluntary agencies, in order to

ensure that we build economies of scale, and make it work. What we

don't need is a ministerial Sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads.

That is how we see it. What it will do is create uncertainty in the

sector, it will be demoralising for staff doing it well, and actually,

at the end of the day, what we are all concerned about is finding the

right homes for children, because at the end of the day, Gavin, those

children that wait the longest are often those children with the most

complex need. You cannot afford to get it wrong for any child.

The United States military is, for the first time, to allow women to

serve in combat roles. This will strengthen the US military's

ability to win wars, according to the Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta,

it will remove what President Obama calls, unnecessary gender-based

barriers to service. More than 150 women in support roles in the US

military have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Already critics

have questioned whether women have enough strength or stamina, and

also whether mixed united in combat might prove difficult to manage.

For women American soldiers, fighting on the frontline of one of

the last barriers to equality. next greatest generation will be

one of men and women who will fight and die together to protect this

nation. That is what freedom is all about. In Australia, Israel,

Germany and Canada, women can already take on combat roles, that

is not the case in Britain. Here, they make up about 10% of our Armed

Forces, that is around 17,000, but soldiers like these ones

photographed in Helmand Province last year, are still restricted

from joining the infantry or face- to-face combat. The last time the

policy was looked at was 2010 then the MoD decided women were

physically and psychologically capable of doing combat jobs, but

there wasn't evidence that changing the policy was worthwhile. With the

frontline becoming more blurred, even without those changes, more

and more women are ending up in harm's way.

The photographer who took the photographs there is with us, she

spent six months with troops in Afghanistan and she spent 12 years

with the RAF. We will run more of those photographs as we talk. In

terms of the roles women do now, what sorts of things do they do now,

and do they do things only women could do in Afghanistan? One of the

things I noticed in Helmand, and why I did the project, is the

female soldiers I worked with were female engagment officers, they

could only be women, because they were working with other Afghan

women, and going out and meeting them. The interesting thing about

that, to achieve that they had to go out on patrol with infantry

soldiers, so there was the two dynamics there. They are doing it

any way. And facing all the same dangers in many cases as the men?

Yes, of course. It was your sense that many of them would be prepared

to fight, that was why they joined up and would like to be in a combat

war? I don't think it is why they joined up. The reasons why people

join the military is not to kill people. That is very important to

say that. But also the girls themselves are very, very capable

individuals, and quite physically fit as well. I think they would

have been relied on in any situation out on the ground to do

what they needed to do. Let me tell you some of the things being said

in the United States about the plans. That women don't have enough

upper body strength, and the stamina and physical stuff. What do

you think about that? There is a element of truth in the upper body

strength, that is a physical thing you can't deny. I saw examples of

physically strong women in Afghanistan, I met one girl who

could do more pull-ups than most of the enm. It is down to individual

attributes, if a girl is strong enough, maybe she should have been

given the opportunity. What about the more cultural things, that

mixed units are difficult to manage, perhaps, and particularly in combat.

We don't permit mixed football teams, women play football and it

is great, and men play football and it is fantastic and all that, you

don't let them play together, it just doesn't work? In Afghanistan I

witnessed men and women working together in very high-pressured

environments, on the frontline, and I didn't ever see a problem with

that. I didn't see any outward displays of discrimination between

the guys and the girls. I think it was all down to team spirit,

cohesion and working together to get the job done. That is really

what I saw. What surprised me the most, actually, I almost assumed

that a girl on her own in a patrol base would maybe be subjected to

that, but I didn't actually see any of that myself. I think they

adapted really well. Were the men a problem? Men are always a problem!

Do they have problems with this idea, it is a man's problem?

can't speak from a man's point of view, but I do speak to men in the

military. I think there would be a split on whether men would agree

whether or not women should be on the frontline. I have asked men

working alongside a girl, like as a medic twice a day, they see her as

part of the team and the patrol. They don't have an issue with

gender, as long as you can do the job there is no problem. I wonder

if Britain is a bit slow on this, maybe we are stuck on the mud,

there is quite a lot of militaries who do it, it used to be famously

the Australians, but a lot of military organisations are trying?

I can't speak on behalf of the MoD, I don't know what their policy is

on all of this. I do think that women are involved in the military

since the Second World War, it is not a new thing, really. I think it

is very interesting that the US are now making it legitimate for women

to be on the frontline. It would be interesting to see how that plays

out. I definitely will be following that very closely. Another lot of

photographs. Thank you very much for sharing your photographs as

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 45 seconds

well. That's all for tonight. If you are

feeling a bit chilly this winter, spare a thought for the people of

Chicago, where last night it was so cold that when firefighters put out

a blaze in an abandoned building, the water froze and turned it into

# Fire and ice # I want to give you my love

# You just take a little piece of my heart

Still cold weather to come through Friday, milder but wetter there

after. You could see the first signs of rain coming into the

western part of UK by the end of tonight. As it moves into the

colder air, turning readily into snow, ahead of it a cold day across

much of England. The wind freshening up, that will make it

feel pretty bitter. Grey skies not helping with the feel of the day.

Further west, look at the difference, rain across Cornwall,

temperatures of seven degrees. Rain rather than snow pushing into the

western parts of Wales. There might be sleet on the lead edge and wet

snow over the hill. North Wales more likely to see a spell of snow.

It will turn back to rain. Definitely into the milder air,

during Friday across Northern Ireland, six or seven degrees, a

wet-looking day. The rain moves across the colder weather across

Scotland, turning readily to snow, disruptive know potentially, that

could be a problem through Friday afternoon and evening, across part

of England as well. By Saturday, look at the way the temperatures

jump up. Six degrees in Edinburgh, we haven't seen that for a while.

Birmingham beginning to creep up. The mild air coming from the