20/06/2013 Newsnight

The organisation supposed to protect the quality of healthcare

in this country admits it made a mistake.

Last night its boss statistic in that chair and told us he couldn't

say who done it. He's back tonight and saying something different.

It's happening here and here and here, children from poorer homes,

white children, generally, failing at school without anyone seeming to

care very much. If education in inner cities can be improved, why

not in a leafy suburb, or sunny seaside.

The Carnegie prize winner, Sally Gardner, the headteacher from the

TV series, Educating Essex, and leading educationalist discuss.

filming myself on one of these on one of these, whilst being filmed

by one of these at the same time. That's what I will be talking about,

how fatastically annoying people like me are!

Whatever Marcus. We have got our own annoying guest to about why

people feel this weird compulsion to film everything.

Also tonight, they come from across the world to seek asylum in the

lucky country, and they end up in camps in another country in the

Pacific, what is Australia's policy towards refugees? What we want to

do, apparently, is to make ourselves look even less desirable

than the Taliban. Either they had bad legal advice or

the Care Quality Commission, supposed to protect us from

malpractice and medical incompetence don't know itself.

Last night the boss told us he couldn't disclose who had been in

on the fatal discovery of suppressing a fatal report.

Tonight we will see what they had to say shortly. First new readers

start here with our science editor, Watts.

Yet we had the CQC's own report, looking into how well they had

investigated concerns over the deaths of mothers and babies at the

Morecambe Bay Hospital Trust. It was a damning report, which found

evidence of cover-up, of failures. The CQC had taken out the names of

individuals, not identified people, citing data protection concerns.

Then we spoke to the Information Commissioner, he's the man whose

job it is to implement the Data Protection Act. He couldn't

understand why they were saying that. Now here is how the chief

executive of the CQC, David Behan, reacted on last night's programme.

You said unambiguously the advice you have been given is wrong, and

that you are hiding behind it? are not hiding behind it, I

wouldn't have commissioned this report in the first place, we are

clear that we need to account for what we did and that's what we will

do. You will publish the names tomorrow will you? I will take

legal advice tomorrow on publishing the names.

The pressure has built, and today the CQC wrote to Jeremy Hunt, the

Health Secretary, and said it had reviewed its original legal advice,

taken into account what the Information Commissioner had said

to us, and decided that the overridinging public interest in

transparency and accountability meant they could disclose those

names. So how does this move us forward then? Crucially we now know

the identities of four people who were at a meeting in March last

year at which it is alleged the order was made to delete an

internal report that it was very critical of the way that the

regulator had behaved. Now in yesterday's report these people

were just referred to by letter names. Now we know that Mr E was in

fact Cynthia Bower, the former chief executive of the CQC, who

left the organisation last year. Today she resigned from the private

health lobbying company where she has been since. She has denied any

wrongdoing. Mr F was in fact Anna Jefferson, the media manager, who

still works at the CQC. She was the one identified in yesterday's

report as saying "are you kidding me, this can never be in a public

domain or subjected to FoI". She's now on maternity leave and

vehemently denies having said that. Today she said the quote was

completely untrue and uncoroborated by anybody else and has since been

retracted. Third that at meeting, "Mr G", Jill Finney, she has also

left. She's the one who is also alleged to have made the order to

delete, saying "read my lips", she denies that, today she was sacked

by the Internet registry company where she had been working. The

last of the four at that meeting was "Mr J", we know that was Louise

Dinely, head of regulatory risk and quality at the CQC, still in post

who wrote that critical internal report and didn't in fact delete it.

Has disclosing these names done anything to improve confidence in

the Care Quality Commission, do you think? I think they have a job on

their hands. There will be internal rows at the organisation for some

time yet. There are calls for the police to look at whether there are

grounds for criminal charges against individuals for failing

patients. That deleted report is now on their website. But it has

been a very bad mis-step by a regulator whose mantra has been the

need for openness. Thank you.

As mentioned the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission was

last night in that very chair saying he would review the legal

advice he had been given. Earlier this evening he kindly agreed to

come back and see us. Welcome back. Thank you.Have your

lawyers now told you there isn't a problem with the Data Protection

Act? Well last night we said we would review the advice we were

given. I gave a commitment to do that this morning, that is what we

have done. I have also spoken to the Information Commissioner today

in light of the advice he offered yesterday. What we have done is

made a decision in the public interest to publish the names today.

So the lawyers have not given you any different advice to the

previous advice you have had? when they received the advice in

the first instance, they talked about the risk of pub liring

people's names. We have reviewed -- publishing people's names. We have

reviewed our decision, we have changed that. We probably got it

wrong yesterday not putting those names out. You got it wrong

according to the Information Commissioner? We have put it right

today, we have accepted that. are these lawyers? The lawyers we

have consulted are a reputable company, Bevan Britain. What are

you paying them? I haven't had the bill yet. They gave you duff

advice? They gave us the balance and risk. That is what lawyers do.

We need to make a judgment on that, we did make that judgment, I think

we got it wrong. We are putting that right today, we said we would

review it, we have listened to the Information Commissioner. What we

are doing is we are being and transparent and accountable for

what we did. That is why we have put the names out. We now discover

there were two people at this crucial meeting who still work for

you? Are they going to be disciplined? The other thing we

have said today is I will take, I will send the report to an

employment lawyer and take advice from them about whether there are

any risks for them. But...It Is bad idea taking advice from lawyers, it

gets you into trouble? If I can come back on the action of the two

people. The responsibility for the failure to disclose this report and

make a decision to delete it rests with the more senior people. One of

the people that was at the meeting was instructed to delete it. She

refused to delete it and did the appropriate thing and spoke to her

manager. You are not consulting employment lawyers? Whose advice

doubtless you will take again, will you? I will listen to those lawyers,

and I will make the decision about what should happen to staff.

what point did you decide to consult the employment lawyers?

have made that decision, we got this report last week, I made that

decision today that we knew. Today? You have had a week. We knew, ...I

Had less than a week. I knew there would be issues to address about

those staff still employed by us, we would have taken action against

those. The have they been suspended? No they haven't been

suspended. Shouldn't they be?The member of staff who refused to

delete the report and told her manager has behaved in an entirely

appropriate way, they were not part of the problem. What about the

others? The senior people that took the decision and gave the

instruction no longer work for CQC. I don't want to be personal about

this, but there is a leadership issue here, isn't there? I believe

I'm demonstrating leadership, I have had dozens upon dozens of

messages from members of staff who believe I'm acting in an

appropriate way, and actually creating an open and transparent

culture in CQC, and are supportive of what I have been doing. I came

on this programme yesterday and accounted, I'm here again to

account. I'm part of leading CQC forward, I believe that is

leadership and I believe my staff are recognising it as that too.

Don't get me wrong, we are pleased to see you of course. You might be

coming back tomorrow with some other decision you want to

overturn? I hope not. I believe I, my values are important to me, I

believe in public service, I believe in values of integrity and

openness and honesty. I'm doing my best to demonstrate that in what I

find in very difficult circumstances. But I do believe I

need to account. I believe that's what I'm doing. It is for others to

say whether they have trust in me, but I'm trying to demonstrate the

very best values in public sector leadership.

There was some rather good news today about what's happening in

some of our schools. The latest report from Jeff stead inspectors

suggest standards have risen in many British cities, but there is

inevitable low a flip side. The places that need serious attention

-- Ofsted suggest standards have risen in many British cities. There

are place, where the poorer children are allowed to fail, it is

suggested the creation of an elite force of teachers to sort the

problem. The problem is especially apparent in some seaside towns. We

went to Essex. I am Scarlet, I'm 15 and live in

Brightlingsea, I'm studying history. I want to be a primary school

teacher. I don't know what I would like to be but I would like it to

be of some importance. At Colne Community School, it is the

ambition of the pupils that strikes you most. It wasn't always so. Five

years ago Ofsted called the call "satisfactory", in other words

mediocre. The pupils had low expectation for their future.

children seemed to have very little aspiration. We are in a community

by the sea, we are in a community where there are lots of family

businesses and the aspirations of the students were very narrow in

that sense. That's really been a large part of our work here is to

make the students aware of opportunities outside of

Brightlingsea and Essex and England, into the whole global market.

school, which serves a community with its fair share of deprivation,

has been turned around. Ofsted calls it "outstanding". How did

they do it? They put much of their success down to having made

dramatic changes to the teaching staff. Did you have to get rid of

some bad teachers? I don't think there is such a thing as a bad

teacher. I think there are sometimes teachers who don't

necessarily fit into an organisation. They may be a weaker

teacher. You did have to ask some to go? Some teachers did leave the

school. The idea that good teaching can improve the performance of even

the poorest pupils was at the heart of Sir Michael Wilshaw's speech.

Poverty of Pectation is a greater problem than material --

expectation is a greater problem than material deprivation. It is

true that many families find it hard to make ends meet, but the

children of poor families with high aspirations do better at school

than those whose parents and teachers expect little of them.

Today's Ofsted report looked at the location of schools with high

numbers of deprived children. It found that the ones serving them

best are concentrated heavily in urban areas. The ones serve them

least well, included a significant number in coastal communities.

Were it not for strong school leadership, Brightlingsea could be

one such community. Like many seaside downs it feels cut off. It

is not that it is at the end of the -- towns it feels cut off. It is

not that it is at the end of the line, all that is left is the

railway and the pub. But the success of Brightlingsea's

secondary school is an exception rather than the rule. Too many

children living along this coastline have been let down by the

education system. Many of the schools are performing well below

the national average. You need to travel a few miles down the coast

to find a village that tops the league table, in poverty, that is.

Jaywick is the most deprived place in England. It is a community that

feels left behind. I think they are not looked after anywhere near as

well as the big cities and town, they deal with that side of it. But

the smaller communities are ez left behind. --Are left behind.

youngsters don't stand much of a chance here. You try to give your

children the best chance you can. Are you worried for them? Yes, I am,

definitely. Why?Because if they don't do so well how is their life

going to be as they grow up? Are they going to bring their own

families up in poverty? Today Ofsted warned that it is

neighbourhoods like this one, with mostly white population, that are

failing poor children most. In graph shows that with the heavy

focus on improving standards in Britain's ethically diverse inner

cities, the poorest children from Bangladeshi, Indian, black African,

Pakistani and black Caribbean backgrounds have all seen large

increases in their GCSE pass rate since 2007. Despite starting from

the lowest base five years ago, it is white British children on free

school meals who have seen the smallest increase.

So why are coastal communities in this part of Essex struggling?

are dealing with some of the issues that are falling out of the urban

areas and we are picking up quite a few of the pieces at the moment.

What do you mean by that? We have a bit of a transient population. You

find that schools are picking up youngstersing out of education in

inner cities, they have -- youngsters out of education and

inner cities, they have family issues, picking up those families

with complex issues is the biggest problem.

Ofsted has highlighted not just what disadvantaged children can

achieve, but where they can be found.

With us is Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education at

the University of London, who was a member of the expert panel that put

together the Ofsted report. Vic Goddard, the principal of Passmoor,

he's Academy, featured in Educating Essex. And Sally Gardner, labelled

"unteachable" at school, but won the Carnegie Medal for her book

Maggot Moon. These are unseen children, who are they? If you look

at the Ofsted report they said there are two sorts of schools that

do well for their children. There are schools that are relatively few

poor children in the school, and schools that have very large

numbers of children on free cool -- free school meals. Those the

schools doing well. There are significant numbers of poor

children not doing well. Are you familiar with this phenomenon?

think the silent minority is always there. It is always difficult when

you have our eye on so many balls and plates spinning. It is

difficult to always keep that. Being reminded by Sir Michael today

is fine. I think we should be keeping on being reminded of the

young people missing out. The transparency on information on

schools is so much greater, people can see where we are doing well or

not, and if we are supported to change it all the better. What is

your feeling of how much this is a consequence of social deprivation

and how much it is something else? I think it is a lot to do with

social deprivation in these particular areas. I think there are

amazing teachers battling with very, very difficult problems that come

into these schools. And I sort of feel we should empower teachers

rather than put it down. I feel very worried about the negativity.

We always seem to start from an area of failure rather than looking

at what the success of these places are. And there is a success story

in all of this. What's happened in those inner city schools is

amazing? The big story of the Ofsted report is we are doing

better than we were in 2003, the last report, we are doing much

better than we were in 1993. We are doing better because inner cities,

predominantly London, but also Birmingham and to some extent man

chester, we have learned what we need to do -- man chester, we have

learned what we need to do. What Michael is doing now, challenging

us, to get what we know out of London to take it to scale. When

you look at the figures spent per child, children in parts of inner

city London, for example, are getting paid twice as much per head

as in some rural areas, twice as much? The London Challenge, a big

part of the success of London, London is the only capital city

where it is above the national average. That was done on an audit

of need, not done with a standard formula, let's giving everyone the

same money. London Challenge advisers went in, looked at what

wasness he radio, got the resources from central Government and put

them in bespoke packages of training to improve the staff there.

That was what made the difference, empowering the teachers to meet the

challenges they face. And of course, it was funded centrally. Let's look

at the question of teachers raised here. This is this idea, of there

being a hit squad, that is wrong, it is called of national service of

teachers? It is like James Bond going in. Flying in and doing his

wonderful thing and then sort of going away again. And then what? So

what? I find it an extraordinary idea, ll Orwellian. It is equally

concerning to hear "there are no bad teachers". That is a daft thing.

It was a silly thing for that man to say. There are bad people, not

bad people, but people less good an others in any field? There are

people who can be enfranchised to be better, and given the tools to

be better, rather than starting from the area of badness. This it

immense about testing for failure. What is the idea here? I want to go

back half a step. The key problem here is that the teacher labour

market is not working. What does that mean? What that means is the

way we employ teachers in this country is that each school hires

its own teachers. And we are building in to our system an almost

mechanism that means that poorer struggling schools are finding it

more and more difficult to attract really good teachers. We looked at

schools on the east coast, it is very difficult to for schools in

isolated rural areas on an open labour market to attract really

good teachers. You are nodding? sit here today, a school that has

been on telly, done OK, and an Ofsted report that is outstanding.

Inspiring I thought. I still sit here without a science and maths

teacher, advertising nationally, tweeting it, using every influence

I get. I sill sit here because I won't employ poor teachers, I

interview, if I don't think they are good enough I won't employ.

What is my alternative? Superman coming for two weeks is not going

to help. One of my two daughters tweet today say it would be good if

we parachuted them in! Given that the teacher labour market isn't

working. Can we put together solutions which mean we can move

teachers around more stragically. We know we need to put teachers

into Harlow and Clacton, what if we took a more strategic way to doing

that? I don't think this is a national service strategy. It may

be sub-regional, but it is about saying where are the good teachers

in Essex, how do we make sure they are better shared around the

schools of Essex. You are looking very restive? I just think it is, I

think there is so many teachers, I go into lots of schools, and I do a

lot of things with young people. I see so many great teachers who are

just giving up. They can't take it any more. This tick box education,

this new curriculum that keeps changing. All the borders keep

changing. So I don't even know what the measurements are any more. I

don't think many people are beginning to know that. I can see

people are going away from teaching. I think it is so tragically sad

that you should have this problem I can well see why teachers don't

want to go into it. I spoke to a head of a Clacton school, head of

Clacton Coastal Academy. Last years results were high, top 1% of the

country for the progress they make, in this town around here, it is

about the quality of teaching experience for the children. But

there needs to be a systematic change of coastal town, I don't

know what your experience is, mine is Skegness in the summer, lots of

people, very vibrant, you go back to one of these place now, in the

winter, where the people aren't there, the transient population

mentioned. You are making an environment case. Are you saying

the environment deters teachers from moving? Without a shadow of a

doubt. It is about societal change. Teachers don't want to go and work

in some places? It is more difficult. It is much more

difficult to attract and to retain teachers into isolated rural

communities like the ones that we have seen. More difficult than

getting a teacher to go into a tough inner city school? Much more

difficult. Things have worked incredibly well for London. London

schools are vibrant, the very best place in the country to go to

school if you are a poor child is a London borough, tower hamlets,

Westminster, Camden, extremely successful. There are reasons why

young people want to work in London. It is much more difficult, much

more difficult to attract people to Clacton, Hastings, Margate. The

report is saying if you want to solve that problem you have to take

a more strategic approach to solving it. That means doing what

they do in France, Singapore, one of the highest performing system,

they will move teachers into struggling schools. Teachers have a

vested interest in doing what is right for young people, we come

with a moral purpose. I work with other schools outside my school to

do that. Competition is not the way to raise standards, collaboration

Thank you very much all of you. Now did you have a good dinner this

evening? Did you take a picture of it? If so, please send it to us.

Just a joke, send it to MasterChef. But the habit of taking photos,

usually with our phones of anything and everything is everywhere.

Instead of enjoying things and engaging them. There is a growing

habit of photoglafing them. It is like firsthand events aren't real

unless there is a photo, then we can all experience them secondhand.

When the Queen opened these offices the other day, you could hardly see

her for all the idiots holding up their telephones. What is this

about? I know a man who won't know, Steven Smith reports. Can you spot

the difference between these two pictures? Here is the Queen

visiting the Beeb in 1953. Here she is again from a few weeks ago.

Did you get it? The difference between the two pictures is all the

pictures. Now taken on smartphones. Zoom in, grab the shot, put it on

social media. We might get to see a bit of the world if we are lucky

but is anyone actually looking. A lot of us have got these gadgets

now, smartphone, it seems that at the least bidding we will whip them

out and start recording. But is there a danger that we are

missing out on something, we are failing to live in the moment. Not

keeping it real? Sorry what was I saying? How things have changed.

This was the crowd outside the Vatican saying farewell to Pope

John Paul II in 2005. And here they are again greeting Pope Francis

this year. My name is Geoff Dyer, I wrote a book about photography,

called The On Going Moment. We recreated the modern experience

of the saturation shoot in Geoff Dyer's sitting room.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has just re-opened, now you can

take pictures of the Van Gogh paintings, which means that nobody

is actually looking at these paintings they have come to see,

the paintings they have seen endlessly in reproductions. They

are always looking at them through their cameras, or just

photographing them without looking. And that seems a bit daft.

# It's not the way she smiles. It has been a while since Newsnight

got behind a boy band. But we are not frayed to say it, the The

Wanted do it for us. They live in the unsleeping eye of social media.

We met the band and their fans outside our sister station Radio

One. How important is the taking pictures when you come to something

like this? Good because it is important because obviously.

can keep the memory as well You can prove it! It is putting it on

Instagram or Twitter to make everyone else jealous. How would

you have felt if you had come this morning and discovered you had left

your phone at home? I would have cried. Cried? I find that it is

better to just not take pictures, because you are more in the moment.

Max and Jay of the Wanted. We are on Newsnight. Happy to be here,

Newsnight for the win. I think a lot of the time people are trying

to record the moment and essentially watching it on a three-

inch screen instead of the concert. How do you feel about that, you

have worked long and hard on your music, you want people to live in

the moment don't you? Well hopefully they are still enjoying

the concert. But it is just, it is not like it was when I was a

teenager for sure I don't think. What happened then, those many

years ago! People jumped around and were very engaged in the

performance. Not Twitter and Facebook, without

them we wouldn't be where we are, we started off on Twitter. Hello

I'm Marcus Brigstocke, mostly I'm a comedian, today I'm filming myself

on one of these on one of these whilst being filmed by one of these

at the same time. And that's what I will be talking about, how

fatastically annoying people like me are. Marcus Brigstocke

definitely doesn't welcome smartphones at his gigs. It is a

way of hoovering up his material, for one thing. Do you let all this

wash over you or what do you do? When I'm on stage I bring it up and

get the person to stop. If they don't stop straight away then I go

for them. When I played King Arthur in Spamalot, there was a night in

Oxford where you unsheathed Ecalibur, I'm not proud, I held my

sword alot of and threatened to sever a man's arm. I can't believe

through the conversation you have been filming it, really

disrespective, I thought this was a genuine experience! We thought we

would gorilla it! See -- guerrilla it and see what happens? Do you

even know what that means? No!I'm Dr Jay Watts, I'm a clinical

psychology and psychotherapist, specialising in narcissism within

cyberspace. Surrounded by entries for this year's BP Portrait Award

at the National Gallery, Dr Watts identifies a generation gap.

There has been a real cultural shift, where especially young

people, the called digital natives, men and women born after 1980,

really sometimes have almost an idea that one doesn't experience

something unless one represents it. And the representation increasingly

is on cyberspace. So it is pictures of an event, it is tweeting about

an event. And really that has become such a new way of thinking

that people share straight away almost addicted to the kind of hit,

hit, hit of people liking and reinforcing what one has been

through. This is a place to pause, study,

reflect. Smartphones are taboo, or so you might think. In fact the

gallery is considering allowing them and its director is a bit of a

fan. I think at certain moments getting out a smartphone actually

will make some people look more closely. As long as it is not the

only thing. As long as people do things around it to savour the

moment and think of the moment. I don't think it is a substitute for

memory, I think it can maybe enhance it. It makes people to

think about why they wanted that moment and the image mattered.

People who meet the Queen often say it is an experience they will never

forget. But if they spend a moment taking pictures, what is it exactly

that they will remember? To discuss some of those points we are joined

by the technology journalist and broadcaster all election Krutofsky

and novelist. Why are people doing this? It is way to document

themselves and document the worlds around them. Document themselves?

Absolutely. It is a first person perspective, isn't T whether you

are taking a photograph of yourself, a selfie, or taking a photograph of

your surroundings, it is a first- person adventure that you are

capturing. What do you think? agree it is people documenting

themselves. I also think it is a sign of cultural anxiousness. We

have been through a period of a couple of hundred years where the

self has been very important to us, and in tearority we arep told by

modern novelist we should be looking into the subjects and we

have found there is not much there maybe! We are at a moment where

maybe we are not trusting something actually happened unless it is

shared. Proving the girl waiting for the popstars said you have to

prove it! You have to prove that you did that. That is what those

people were doing with the Queen. The actual experience of being in

the vicinity of the Queen is probably quite bland. But you want

to be somebody who has been near the Queen. That makes it more bland

if all you have of the event is some image on a smartphone. That's

the terrible horror and emptiness of post-modernity. There was

something interesting that the National Portrait Gallery owner

described when he was talking about the exhibition, and he said it will

allow people to look more closely at something, a portrait or an

image. Part of the experience of capturing something like that on

your smartphone, these things happen in a split second. The Queen

walks by. Save it for later. You can. The Queen walks by you blink

and you miss it, this way you can see it, it is slightly different

from the person next to you, that is unique. That is interesting, you

can have a conversation about that. Then you take it away, not only

bragging rights, yes I was there, but also you can take a closer look

and really experience it a bit more. As a memory trigger for whatever

was going on at that time. In the same way that we have taken as long

as we have been able to take photos we have been capturing content, we

happen to be putting it into a digital medium as opposed to a an

album that we stick in a dusty corner. And don't look at for 20

years? Absolutely, they are memory triggers in the same way objects we

acquire, snow globe or themables that we collect when we are

travelling. It is the same thing that will transport us

psychologically, intellectually, back to a particular time where we

were, when we were, when those things were capturing. If you don't

look at it what's the point? What's the point of having the little

themables or the snow globes you got when you - themable or snow

globes you got on holiday. At least it will sit on your mantle piece

and you know where you got the ridiculous thing? If you are in the

pub or down at the library or at school and you pick up your phone

and you flick through and you can compare and share with the people

that you are with. Say here I was. It is all about showing off? It is

creating an identity and capturing a sense of the self as a narrative.

Where you were as an individual back then and where you are going

now. I sense a degree of intellectual scepticism? All we

have been doing is talking about what photography is. We have always

done that. What is interesting is behaviour has changed and the sheer

volume of material we are creating has changed. Virtually some

extraordinary percentage of all the photographs that have ever been

taken have been taken in the last three or four years since cellphone

cameras became ubiquitous. My concern is that not so much with

people taking photographs, let everybody take as many as pe they

want. But it is with the -- as many as they want. But it is our

collision through photography, through network technologies of

various kinds in making a kind of eye penopticon that we are now

living in a world where we are always on, where there is always at

least the potential of being watched and of being recorded, of

our behaviour not being private or interior, being something that we

are performing. This isn't nice?I don't think it is nice at all. I

think the cultural conversation about it is lagging behind the

technology a long way. The notion of performing is a new thing, we

stick a particular T-shirt on and we walk down the street. We perform

every time we use particular lingo. We indicate and express to other

people, whoever they may be, that we are part of a particular group.

I think that's part of what's going on. How it is evolving and how it

is being captured and how we deal with it in the long-term is

something that's certainly up for discussion, and we need to develop

that conversation. Thank you both of you. What

responsibility do we owe to asylum- seeker, it is a question which

almost every wealthier country in the world has to answer.

Historically, as the land of second chances, Australia, the called

"lucky country" was built on immigration. But the same question

has raised even more livid questions than here. They cooked up

a mechanism called the Pacific solution, which meant that people

who had risked their lives crossing the world to get to Australia ended

up being held not in Australia at all, but on an island in another

country all together. Our reporter has had exclusive access.

We are not animal, we are human. These remote tropical island

detention centres were supposed to be a thing of the past. But now

they are back at the centre of Australia's toxic immigration

debate. They are intended as a deterrent,

to stop boat people heading for Australian shores. A perilous

journey which for scores has ended in disaster and death. But the

policy known as the Pacific solution has been slammed for being

inhumane. We have become the first news organisation to gain access to

a detention centre where asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan,

Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories are being

held. But are its new low- constructed

accommodation blocks easing the psychological pain of indefinite

detention. In tackling its boat people problem,

the biggest power in the South Pacific has looked to its smallest

neighbour for help. Nauru is one of the tiniest Republics in the world,

and also the most remote. In the hey day of its mining boom in the

1970s and 1980s, it was per capita one of the richest nations in the

world. Nowadays it is one of the poorest.

So despite its tropical setting and swaying palms, it is far from

paradise. Its jagged coastline reinforces a sense of isolation and

enclosure. Last September 30 Sri Lankan asylum

seekers touched down here. The first to arrive since the Labour

Government shut down the Howard era detention centre in 2007. With no

time to build a proper detention centre, the asylum seekers were

housed initially in army tents. The most makeshift of accommodation.

Keiren Keke, a trained doctor, is Nauru's former Foreign Minister. He

says the timetable imposed by the Australian Government was

ridiculous. There was a very, very strong push to have a centre

operating in whatever form, as quickly as possible. This was a bit

of a rush job? It was too quick, the set-up was too quick. Our

Government told the Australians that we felt it was too quick. In

any of the discussions that we had previously the minimum time frames

that we are talking about were three months to be able to have

some basic facility operating. And certainly ouric pecktation was more

on the lines of -- our expectation was six months to have more of a

significant fashion and operation, to have something up within a month

was really unrealistic. We have seen the consequences of that.

wasn't long before daily protests erupted, as these pictures filmed

secretly, and first broadcast on the Australian broadcasting

corporation show. The conditions are intensely hot and humid. The

centre's tent city was overcrowded. The uncertainty of indefinite

detention inflicted psychological damage. For some it was unbearable.

Asylum seekers sewed together their lips in silent protest, sometimes

using paper clips as needles. There have also been suicide attempts.

This man, whose identity we can't reveal tried to hang himself. His

neck was badly injured. This worker from inside the camp, who wants to

protect his identity was appalled by what he saw. The men are

frustrated in Nauru, there is a sense of helplessness and

desperation. For many of them the way they express this frustration

is through self-harm and suicide attempts. One man said to me "we

can choose to take it out on other people but we don't, we take it out

upon ourselves to express our pain". Men are cutting themselves, burning

themselves with cigarettes. We have had men attempt to commit suicide

using bed sheets, using the ropes off tents. For them they see no

future and they see no hope of leaving. They have been in Nauru

for nine months and they have no idea if it will be another nine

months or another three years or another five years. The track

inland to the detention centre passes through the island's

phosphate mining fields. A landscape that is eerie and hostile.

Then there is the thick jungle that separates and camouflages it from

the outside world. Up until now the journey for those covering the

Pacific solution beat has stopped here at the entrance. The

Australian Government has imposed the strict media ban. We have

become the first news organisation to be allowed inside. Australia's

department for immigration clearly wanted us to see how Nauru's tent

city has been replaced by permanent accommodation. The $100 million

project has been designed, not so much with comfort in mind, but

certainly more civility. Under the strict stipulations of our visit,

we are not allowed to identify anyone in the centre. Although one

of the Australian Government's chief concerns about letting us in

was that it would look too nice, negating its deterrent effect.

There is no fence or razor wire, but the jungle creates a natural

barrier. It is currently home for over 400 people, all of them men,

again we are not allowed to show their faces, in case their asylum

claims are rejected and they are sent home. Over 90% of boat people

turn out to be bona fide refugees. They are subject to the Australian

Government's new "no advantage" principle, which could see boat

people detained for up to five years, so they aren't seen asylum

seeking queue jumpers. What we want to do apparently is to make sure

selves look even less desirable than the Taliban. Julian Burnside

is one of Australia's leading human rights lawyers, and represents a

number of boat people held on Nauru. We want people to prefer to face

the Taliban than to face us. I'm not sure I want to see my country

fall that low and yet that seems to be the course they are following.

If the Pacific solution is supposed to be a deterrent, it will only

work as long as everyone who sets out knows about it, that is not a

certainty by any means, and we have to look more frightening than the

perils they are escaping. Unbeknown to these young Nauruan, their

island has become part of Australia's political game, and a

brutal one for that. With an election set for December, border

issues are serious, it is seen as a vote-winner. The revival of the

Pacific solution for Australians is an embarrassing reversal. When

ministers ended the policy they described it as cynical and costly

and ultimately unsuccessful exercise. But the Gillard

Government fears being seen soft on asylum-seeker, especially at a time

when one of the Conservative politicians most ringing slogans is

"stop the boats", the return to the Pacific solution was born of

political weakness. The trouble is the tough policy hasn't stopped the

Government slide in the polls, and even more crucially it hasn't

stopped the boats. Since announcing its controversial new approach over

21,000 asylum seekers have been intercepted in Australian waters.

In 340 boats. So the embattled Labour Government

is itself all at sea. For its Conservative opponents, Nauru is

part of a failed border protection strategy. For many on the

Australian left the detention centre stands as a landmark to

their country's heartlessness towards boat people.

We asked the Australian Government for a response to his report, but

they declined. That's all we have Good evening, we have one more

humid night on the way, from Friday night it will be a little bit

fresher. As far as Friday goes, it is going to be quite a good day

across the majority of the UK, sunshine around. Maybe one or two

showers, but essentially it is a fine day, however later on in the

day there will be thicker cloud and some rain getting in just to the

west of Northern Ireland. For Scotland, this is 4.00, plenty of

sunshine around the north, maybe a couple of light sprinkles of rain,

nothing more than that. Across the border, England, Pennines, here are

the isolated showers -- thundery, maybe even heavy in one or two

places. The vast majority of the country across the south of the UK

will enjoy the fine weather. For a lot of us it will feel warmer

because we are going to have a bit more sunshine compared to what we

have just had today. You can see the fine weather extends into the

south west and Wales too. A scattering of cloud here and there.

Fresher on the boast around 15 degrees, let's have a look at the

end of the week and into the weekend and other places. Belfast

it does freshen up here by the time we get to Saturday. Temperatures

dip down to 15 degrees, the wind will be stronger too, the same goes

for many other areas, the big temperature drop in Birmingham from