15/11/2013 Newsnight

Every politician dreams of being greeted by crowds, but not like

this. In Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister's motorcade gets mobbed by

protestors holding up pictures of the disappeared. What does Cameron's

response tell us about foreign policy priorities now?

We ask the British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq War.

Labour and the Tories were trying to delete their digital histories.

Imagine what you would be missing out on if we had done the same. For

once both parties seem to be gazing into the same crystal ball.

Do we really want to lose our digital memories?

Five London cyclists die in just over a week. Has the capital really

got less safe? Newsnight returns to the very first cycle lane to find

out. Good evening.

We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies only to

mangle the Palmerstone quote a little, national interests. So what

should we make of the sight of our Prime Minister, mobbed by relatives

of dead Tamils missing in Sri Lanka's civil war? The image has

been a powerful boost to those who say the trip should never have

happened. That Sri Lanka's abysmal human rights record should have made

him stay away. Downing Street reports a robust exchange of views

with the president there. But what can the visit tell us about David

Cameron's current priorities in foreign policy and his balance

between pragmatism and ideology? Mark Urban explains. The Prime

Minister's trip to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka was an attempt to

acknowledge the suffering of the island's Tamil minority while

keeping an awkward diary date at the Commonwealth Summit. What all of

this shows is, you know, after this terrible war ended, what we ne from

the Sri Lankan Government is more generosity, in victory, bring the

country togethers by making sure people have proper rights. Here we

are in a village of refugees inside their own country. They have been

here for 20 years now or more. They have had children here. Some of

their children have had children. They want to go home and I think

that is a very powerful message. But for this Prime Minister, the

main business of this trip is business. His focus takes in the

world's two great trading posts, India and China with Sri Lanka

hanging like a limp hammock in between. If there is a simple way to

categorise the Cameron foreign policy. When I became Prime

Minister, I said to the Foreign Office, those embassies you have

got, turn them into show rooms for our cars, and department stores for

our fashion. Yes, you are diplomats and as William said, you are the

best diplomats on the globe. But you also need to be our country's sales

force. APPLAUSE

But, of course, all manner of things can get in the way of a one themed

foreign policy. In Sri Lanka the elephant outside the room is Human

Rights. The Government was right to decide to attend, but it is not that

we think that the Government is condoning the appalling behaviour by

the Sri Lankan Government, but it is an opportunity to convey what we

actually feel about what has been going on there to the Sri Lankan

Government and therefore, they were right to go.

And the Human Rights issue has proven problematic with China too. A

decision to meet the Dalai Lama caused the Chinese to shut the

British out for months. Now hot on the heels of George Osborne's visit,

the Prime Minister will travel to China in a fortnight. I see China as

a great opportunity, nots a threat. We want to sell more to China, but

with he want more Chinese investment in Britain.

Mr Cameron isn't the first PM whose foreign travels revealed a policy

journey. Intervention in Libya brought a claim for backing

democracy and thwarting oppression. But that warm glow was short-lived.

The Libyan situation has deteriorated and his calls for

military strikes on Syria were rebuffed by Parliament and by

squelcing that military option, Mr Cameron has sent Mr Cameron back to

the battle for exports. If we boycotted every country where we

were concerned about Human Rights, we wouldn't be doing much trade with

them at all. Look at China, Saudi Arabia, two big markets for our

goods and we import a lot from those countries and if we didn't engage

with them, then our commercial activity would be diminished.

The Prime Minister's motorcade to today's summit was intercepted by

protesters holding pictures of disappeared relatives. Even here

though, calculations are being made in terms of cash as well as sorrow.

Critics of Mr Cameron's attendance claiming that others led by China,

have already driven on to seize Sri Lanka's best trading opportunities.

Joining me now from New York is Carne Ross, a British diplomat who

resigned in 2004 after giving secret evidence on how the British

Government had exaggerated the case for invading Iraq. He now runs a

diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat. Thank you for

your time this evening. Let's start at the beginning. Was David Cameron

right to go to Sri Lanka? Personally, I don't feel he was

right. The scale of Human Rights abuses and atrocities in Sri Lanka

are huge and I think the fact that the Commonwealth Summit is taking

place in Sri Lanka and that the regime will be the chair of the

Commonwealth for the next couple of years is a travesty and an

embarrassment for the Commonwealth and I don't think Britain should

have endorsed it. It is hard to argue this was a trade

mission particularly when you hear about the robust conversations that

have been reported by Downing Street? I don't think it was a trade

mission. I think it was driven by some British desire that, you know,

we need to keep the Commonwealth together. We need to keep it

relevant and if the UK were to boycott it, that would be a big deal

indeed and would put a question mark over the future of the Commonwealth,

but I think there should be a question mark over the future of the

Commonwealth. What is the point of it? If it is not about Human Rights

and democracy. Indeed, the Commonwealth in 1991 said that that

was the point of the Commonwealth so one can accuse the Commonwealth

itself of great hip possibling crassy? -- hypocrisy. By staying

away and not entertaining dialogue with countries that you don't like,

you are not helping Human Rights at all, you are just making them into

enemies? That's always the argument here and that was the argument over

South Africa and apartheid and South Africa gave a convincing answer to

that when apartheid ended, the ANC leaders, the supporters of a

democratic South Africa said that the isolation of South Africa was

tremendously important in encouraging them and in pressurising

the minority white regime to give up. So I think that argument has

been answered in that case and it is never true anyway, I mean these

governments have engage in sort of constructive engagement allegedly

over Human Rights, that's not their constructive engagement allegedly

real motive, their real motive is other things like trade, security

co-operation or whatever, it is a lie they are engaged in it for Human

Rights. Well, that's interesting. You talk

about trade as if it might be a dirty word and we heard the clips

from David Cameron years ago, saying your embassies should be show rooms

for our cars, diplomats should be our country's sales force. Do you

find that encouraging or repellent? Well, I am rather unusual. I think

that Governments should be about minimising suffering, the relief of

human suffering at home and broad and the human -- abroad and the

human suffering in Sri Lanka has been enormous ha that -- and that

should have been the priority in this case and I don't think trade is

the most important thing in foreign policy. I think the welfare of the

British people and indeed the welfare of others because in the

long run the support of Human Rights and democracy pays off in both

security and chick terms. -- economic terms.

So you would be staying away from China. You would be saying, "We will

leave that to others." No, I don't think you say that. This was a

symbolic event and it is grotesque that the regime should be in charge

of it and that was in itself something that needed to be regarded

in it's own right and a decision taken about engagement with chIn DNA

is -- China is a different matter, but where Human Rights and the

promotion of democracy should take priority.

Let me ask you if you see a cohesion to the foreign policy over the last

three years? Clearly, you have worked for Tony Blair and left

because you disliked what he did. When you look at David Cameron now,

whether it is a policy over Europe, over Libya, over what he tried to

do, but didn't do in Syria, does it make sense? Well, I don't think the

Government foreign policy made sense for a long time including the

previous Government. These governments talk about the promotion

of Human Rights and the Labour Government talked about unethical

foreign policy sometime ago and both have been inconsistent in the

pursuit of these things and very reactive. British foreign policy has

lost its way in terms of what it is about, what we stand for, I feel it

should be about a system of values which are promoted even in these

difficult cases. Coherence and consistency comes from being guided

by consistent principles, not case by case.

I started with the quote about national interests and Robin Cook

talked about an ethical dimension to foreign policy. A lot of people

listen and say you are being naive? Well, I helped write that speech for

Robin Cook. I was his speech writer in those days and it is a

disappointment to me that Government failed against its own standards in

ill legally invading another country on a pack of lies. I think that, you

know, you need to set standards for yourself. You need to declare your

own values and stick to them and the most difficult cases are the ones

where it matters the most slaouk Sri Lanka or indeed, Bahrain where

Britain has pursued an ulterior set of interests namely as economic and

security interests over and above the Human Rights of the people in

Bahrain and I think that's wrong. Thank you very much indeed. Thank

you for joining us. Thank you. Coming up: I am not an alcoholic. I

have drank alcohol in excess. I am not apologising. I apologise.

If George Orwell coined the notion of a non-person in his despotic

1984, it fell to the Tories this week to create a new negative, the

non-speech as it began to delete a decade of old files. They were

trying to make their website more accessible. This evening, after

public outcry, they reversed some of that decision. David Grossman, a man

with an elefantine memory and some outtakes from the 1990s to match,

asks what happens when we rely too much on digital storage?

If you don't think politicians have an image problem, try putting these

incomplete sentences into a search engine!

The suggestions are based on what others have searched for. And they

are not exactly flattering. Managing their online brand is a big part of

modern politics because so many people get their information here.

In the early 90s, if I wanted to chec out what a politician had

previously said, I would have come to the BBC's political archive where

the speeches are in files, colour coded. For example, here 1992,

Conservative speeches on the top, one from John Major no doubt a

humdinger and in the mid-1990s, young fresh faced political

reporters began to talk about politicians harnessing the power of

information technology. Both would harness the power of information

technology. Quite! The speeches then went online. We thought forever.

When in opposition, David Cameron said this innen net memory would put

power in the hands of voters. It is the right word to use because by

making more information, more available to more people, you are

giving them more power. The power to get the best deal. The power to

learn which you were speaking about in opening this conference. And

above all, the power to hold to account those who in the past might

of had a monopoly of power, whether in Government or big business or the

traditional media. But try to search for that speech on the Conservative

website and it is not there. The earliest one we would find was from

January in year. Mark Ballard is the Computer Weekly reporter that broke

this story that the archive has gone and the Conservatives have used what

is called a robot exclusion to keep the material of search results and

independent archives. It is rather to open Government. You know, it is

quite concerning because it shows how fragile this historic record is

on the internet that someone can put something in the public domain, it

is public information, it is important public information and

still relevant and still current and although it can still be in places,

there are individual speeches that if you scratch around long enough,

you might find one. You can find some of them, not all of them. But

it takes hours. Labour's archive goes back further to 2010 when Ed

Miliband became leader, however, because he and other Labour

frontbenchers were ministers before that, you can find their speeches in

the UK's National Archives. The Lib Dem archive goes back further to

when Nick Clegg became leader to 200 7, clearing out the past is very

important. Your own website, if you control that and if you have access

to your own server you can delete information or you can make it so it

is not visible by a search which happened with some of them. For

third party websites, it is a more exhaustive process. The third party

websites blog forums and conversations, but not in your

control. It is a comprehensive strategy that you have to follow and

go through in order to reduce the exposure of those particular

websites. It appears though the Conservatives had something of a

change of heart. The robot exclusions have been called off and

tonight, what seems to be a full record of Conservative speeches have

reappeared on the San Francisco internet archive website, including

that 2006 speech on the power of the internet!

Deaths in nine days. Just tonight came reports of one more. London's

cycling community has started a revolt. Boris Johnson is under

pressure to improve road safety. Lord Adonis has called for an

independent review of cycling safety. Is London's cycle network

safe? How do the numbers of accidents and injuries this year

actually compare. Zoe Conway returned to London's first ever

cycle route on the A4. Well, I declare this cycling track open.

This is the Transport Minister in 1934 opening Britain's mirs bike

path alongside the A40 in London. Of course, you will struggle to find

cycle lanes anywhere that wide in Britain now.

80 years on and the A40 is the busiest route out of north-west

London. There is a bike path, but it is on the pavement behind me. The

debate sparked by the deaths of so many cyclists in such a short space

of time shows we are still wrestling with how to safely accommodate

cyclists. On Wednesday, 1,000 cyclists held a vigil in protest at

a roundabout in East London. Three cyclists have been killed here in

the past two years. Redesigning the junction is a priority for

campaigners, but for many, our cycling problems go way beyond the

design of individual locations. The problem is that we still think that

motoring is the only way of getting around and the reality is that in

London, for example, car ownership is falling. Cycling is increasing.

So we can continue to design for more cycles which is a more

efficient use of the road space and for public transport rather than

trying to pack as many cars as we can into roads like these.

So how safe are Britain's bike riders? Well, measured in terms of

deaths per 100 million kilometres travelled, we are less safe than the

Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. But we are safer than America.

Despite the recent deaths, Transport for London says the city's roads

have got safer because the number being killed has gone down, whilst

the number of cyclists has increased dramatically, what worries

campaigners is the cycling demographic is narrow. We still find

that the people who are taking up cycling are male. They are affluent

and tend to be people who are relatively healthy, non disabled,

relatively able to cope with the way the roads are in this country. The

people who aren't taking up cycling so much tend to be older people,

children, disabled people, women and people from ethnic minority groups.

People who surveys show are more likely to value being away from

motor traffic and who feel intimidated by the current road

situation. When the road first opened, cycling

groups were furious about it. The bike path experience is a grim

one for many cyclist. They feel they are fighting for not just road

space, but their reputation. Boris Johnson said this week that some

cyclists are taking rash decisions and endangering their lives, but

didn't lay blame with any of the recent victims. Cyclists should

approach the first stop line. Advanced green signals for cyclists

is one way Transport for London are trying to make it easier to keep

cyclist apart from cars. Other vehicles will get a separate green

light... Critics say the reforms won't necessarily work. They say

nothing less than remodelling the roads will protect cyclists. You can

see changes in some of the better designs that Transport for London is

proposing. For example, a bus stop by-pass which means that cyclists

don't have to overtake buses and move into general streams of

traffic. A bus-stop by-pass means that cyclists can go inside the bus

and not mix with the traffic. This is common in the Netherlands.

There maybe many good reasons to get on your bike, even if startling the

cops isn't one of them, but even cycling's biggest supporters can see

why many are deterred. Joining me now, Mark Ames, editor of

Ibikelondon, safety campaigner and Jonathan Cole co-owner of the cycle

shop, Velorution. Gentlemen, thank you to for coming in this evening. I

wonder if Mark you can explain what you think has happened? This

terrible spate of accidents in the last week or so. We have had a

critical density of indents over the past week or so, but they are not

that unusual. Nearly all of the cycling fatalities in London involve

particularly large vehicles and particularly dangerous junctions.

This is a known thing. But unfortunately, we don't seem to

being in anything about it. That Bow Junction which has seen three

cyclists killed in two years. Are things changing there now? Or not?

No. Bow junction is part of cycling's super highway two. Five

people have died on that route altogether in two years. There is a

problem with the actual design of the road. Encouraging people to ride

on some of London's busiest roads waut creating safe space for cycling

there is irresponsible by Transport for London and they need to act.

Do you think, because we have had a spate of politicians coming in with

thoughts. Is a cycling summit the answer? Is what Boris Johnson is

saying the right thing or, I mean, do you want to get the cyclists

right away from the cars? Or do you think there is a place for them? Of

course, there is a place for sharing the road and all road users in

London should look out for each other, but on the busiest roads, we

don't need to reinvent the wheel, we need to look across to the

Netherlands and Denmark and to learn from the best. They have been it

successfully for years. It is all safe. Jonathan, the density that

Mark was talking about, I guess is visible when you are selling stuff,

right? Do you see... We see a big shift into what we call sit up and

beg bikes, where you can look around, you are not moving as fast

and you have more awareness. I think, I think the mayor's office

are doing a fantastic job on the infrastructure in London, but it

will never happen overnight. One death is too many. The sit up and

beg bike makes cycling safer because your head isn't down? You are not

down. You are not powering on. Is that what you recommend people buy

in London? Do you step into the conversation? Absolutely. We really

specialise in the boutique bike builders from around Europe that

make 500 to 2,000 bikes a year out of love. They like the bikes on the

walls around here. The video you were showing of the 1930s, they make

bikes which, they launched a new bike that looks like a bike from the

1930s and people love it and they are buying them in good quantities

from us. And when people come in and they are buying, you know, the

racing bike, the fast bike, something that's lighter. Does that

worry you? Do you actually redirect them? There are two types of

cyclists. You have the guys who are in the sporty groups, they go out on

the weekends and they go out with their friends and long rides and

there are the people who are doing the commute to work and riding a

bike around London is fantastic, if you are in the centre of London you

can go through the parks and you can go down the canals and from one part

of London to another without seeing traffic because of the quiet routes.

The problem comes as, you know, as Mark says, you get on to a big main

road with an HGV vehicle beside you and a bus and it is scary. There is

no doubt about it and that has to be a separation. Are you ever going to,

you are not going to keep HGVs ot of London... I propose, why not? If you

look at Paris, they have many more cyclists in their city centre than

we have in London and yet, in 2012, they they had no cyclists killed and

that's because they have what is called a lorry control scheme. They

make sure that Heavy Goods Vehicles can't access the city centre at peak

times, when children are cycling to school. In London, we have a

night-time ban which means that all the lorries come roaring out of

their goods yards, just in time for the morning rush hour. It is

madness. It is something if you wanted to, the mayor could change

tonight. Do you think the tipping point has not yet come? We are not

at a stage yet, yes, car ownership may have gone down, but we are not

at a stage yet, where more people are choosing to cycle? Well, in

London perhaps we have, you know, there are so many journeys on

bicycles in Central London. If we were to give up riding tomorrow,

London's cyclists would fill 300 Tube trains and over 6,000

double-decker buses and if we got in a car, we would form a tail back

several kilometres long. Thank you very much indeed.

It's one week since the Philippines was hit by one of the largest storms

ever recorded and yet people in some of the worst hit areas have received

little or no help. The government's response to this national calamity

has been bitterly criticised by the country's media. An editorial in one

Manila newspaper spoke of chaos and despair. Another questioned whether

President Benigno Aquino was up to the job. An American aircraft

carrier has arrived to help with the relief effort. Britain has sent a

warship to distribute supplies. But the ongoing aid effort isn't only

land based. It is also happening above the clouds.

These before and after images from satellites show how whole towns were

destroyed, but with over 7,000 islands, and about half the

population living in rural areas, the photographs can also be used for

another purpose. Using five of the highest resolution sat fights in the

world -- satellites in the world, this website asks users to identify

damaged roads, and buildings. It is the kind of visual analysis that

humans find easy, but it is harder for computers. When you come to the

website today, you will see a small image of the affected region in the

Philippines and you are asked to contribute information about what

you see. Now, we don't trust only one person, so we are looking for

consensus from multiple people making the same observation. This

allows us to create a map of the cre under, showing just the affected

features. So destroyed buildings, destroyed roads, bridges, large

commercial facilities. This data is conveyed to people on the ground.

People who can make use of the data get access to this. The satellites

are run by a commercial company, but during natural disasters, they

release the tag data for free to support the aid effort. To give us a

sense of scale, we have had thousands of people contribute

hundreds of thousands of views on to the imagery. We are talking about

hundreds of thousands of eyeballs helping to analyse the destruction

in the Philippines and enabling first responders. We are seeing a

global community of people coming together to contribute to the

relief. So far, the typhoon challenge had

90,000 views and 60,000 tags. Tomorrow's front pages.

There is a picture of Prince Charles and the President of Sri Lanka in

the Times, but their story is that the Prime Minister says Britain

should keep cutting carbon emissions. He says a swipe at the

sceptics there. In The Daily Mail, pick a GP where you like. This is

the news that patients will be able to register at any doctor's surgery

they like from next October. They can register near work or school,

how and when, surgery hours, please them or help them. The great leap

forward is the line in the Independent which has a little

Chinese toddler with his dad as championship that, of course,

decides that it is going to relax its one child policy.

In the Daily Telegraph, hospitals fear the winter crisis is here

early. Stay strong, a US envoy tells Britain.

That's all for tonight. A poll from YouGov this week found

that more people think a politician who fiddles their expenses should

resign than one who smokes crack cocaine. Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, is

currently road testing the proposition on his voters. If you've

missed his progress, here's the pass notes version.

Do not use crack co Ian nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. Yes, I have

smoked crack cocaine. I have nothing left to hide. I can assure you I am

not an alcoholic. I have drank alcohol in excess. So if you are

offended, I am not apologising. I apologise. (BLEEP) I never said in

my life to her. I would never do that. I am happily married. I have