16/07/2014 Newsnight

politicians have been falling over each other to denounce celebrities

who invested in tax avoidance schemes. Some of these aggressive

anti-avoidance schemes that may not be illegal are morally questionable,

I think it is right for politicians not only to make that point, but

frankly to go after some of these aggressive avoidance schemes. So it

may be more than a little embarrassing to discover that

amongst the investors in one vehicle, now deemed by the revenue

to be a tax avoidance scheme is one of their own, former Tory cabinet

minister, Andrew Mitchell. The police have announced the arrest of

650 paedophiles from all walks of life across the UK after a target on

on-line activity. Is this too big a problem to arrest our way out of it.

People on the Internet should realise that policing across the

country and the National Crime Agency is able to see and detect you

when you step out of line and break the law. Living sculptures and

national treasure sure, Gilbert George have a crack with Steve Smith

over their show inspired by nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas! .

Good evening, it has been a bumpy couple of years for former Tory

cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell. There was the controversial run in

with the Downing Street policeman, followed by a long battle to clear

his name. Now it seems Mr Mitchell could face more turbulence.

Newsnight has learned he was among the investors in a film fund which

the revenue has teamed a tax avoidance scheme, and the tax man

wants the money back. It is real simple... . Everyone

wants to be in the movies, even Andrew Mitchell, the former

Government Chief Whip, he's best known for having resigned from the

Government in October 2012 over a bizarre argument with some Downing

Street policemen, a process that has left him embroilled in high-profile

legal proceedings. But back in the mid-2000s in the Shadow Cabinet he

put money into a high-profile film financing company, now best known

for backing Avatar, the blockbuster. However, this week HMRC, the tax

collectors controversially deemed that what he and his fellow

investors had actually done was to take part in a tax avoidance scheme.

Mr Mitchell invested in the company called Ingenious Film Parters II, it

was a vehicle to encourage people to invest in British film. According to

the revenue it was a company designed to generate tax reliefs for

its investors. The way that the company works is a bit complex. So

say an investor put in the minimum ?36,000, if they did that the

company would then loan them ?64,000 to invest, taking their total stake

up to ?100,000. That would then be used to buy shares in film

production, which, in their first year ran a roughly ?90,000 trading

loss. Investors could choose to write that off for tax purposes.

What does that mean? Well they put in ?36,000 in cash and they get back

roughly ?36,000 in tax relief very fast. And, now they own a ?100,000

stake in a group of films, so long as the films make enough money to

service the debt, the company's structure allows people to invest

without looking up a lot of their own cash. Now serious films get

financed like this. The company backed X Men: The Last Stand, along

with some rather less grand names, Garfield, and... . Virgin

Territories. Furthermore the income received from these films is, of

course, taxed. Ingenious says its schemes have generated ?1 billion of

such income. It continued: A tax tribunal called at the

company's question is scheduled for November, they remain confident of

the outcome. There are three big reasons why it has broader

implications. The first was it was company is run by

implications. The first was it was man who has advised the Labour Party

on tax and some of its other man who has advised the Labour Party

investors include Lord Grade a former chairman of the BBC, and Lord

Waldegrave a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. What may be about

to happen could be deeply embarrassing for the three

politician, as well as potentially expensive. They may be the first

politicians to be caught in HMRC's tax drag net and anti-avoidance

crusade. It has become a statement of political speeches. Some of these

aggressive anti-avoidance schemes that may not be illegal are morally

questionable. I regard tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance as

morally repugnant. So HMRC has been given more resources to tackle

avoidance, more powers and selected more targets. Practices that HMRC

wouldn't worry about in previous years are now in their sights. We

asked these investors how much they put in, how much they might need to

pay back or whether they had already set welled HMRC. Mr Mitchell said,

when the last Labour Government introduced tax incentives to invest

in the British film industry, along with many other investors I did so

through ingenious Film, he resigned from the company in -- I resigned

from the film when in Government and paid all tax due. The other two said

than I tension was to invest in British film. The second reason why

there is a broader interest, is investors in the company may be

among the first people to receive accelerated payment notices. That

means HMRC, the tax inspectors can send them letters for the tax they

should have been paying without going to court. This new process has

been attacked as draconian, it adds new terror to investing in a scheme

that HMRC might question. The company was identified as a

candidate for this process earlier this week. It is one of 1,200

schemes that are being primed for it. The law that allows it is

expected to get Royal Assent and letters to start going out this

week. The third issue is that pursuing alleged tax avoidance can

cause political difficulty. The drag net of 1,200 schemes is catching

people who can ill afford to repay their taxes, and are now angered

that HMRC calls their long standing business arrangements tax avoidance

schemes. There is no appeal process, if you receive a notice you must

take advice immediately, do not ignore it. Many people that receive

notices will probably come out of the blue and many of those people

will probably have been mis-sold the schemes in the first place. If

anybody feels they have been given bad advice or mis-sold by the

advisers they ha chosen that is something they have to take up with

the proper authorities. It is not a reason why they shouldn't pay the

tax that they owe. HMRC will of course still need to win cases in

court, even if they need to pay up soon, Ingenious investors will get

their money back if they can triumph there. In the short-term Mr Mitchell

and tens of thousands of others may be waiting for a letter from the

taxma How damaging is this for the

Conservatives? Leaving aside the case of Andrew Mitchell this agenda

is something the Conservatives do really care about. You have seen

Daniel Alexander, a Lib Dem announce action in this area. But George

Osborne and David Cameron pile in behind him because if they want to

be able to get tough on those less well off in society, as they have

been, ?80 billion in welfare cuts this parliament, they also they

believe have to have an agenda on those on the top. That is why they

want to be stuck like fly paper to the Liberal Democrats on this

agenda, they wouldn't want to be priced apart from it. You have more

tonight on the whole welfare issue? Now we have the reshuffle out of the

way, we will now have the politics of the manifestos and what ideas

will go into their respective manifestos and George Osborne has

already told us that he will want to find ?12 billion of welfare cuts for

the next two years in the next parliament, and the Lib Dems have

already said they don't agree with that, what we will get in the next

few months is chatter and fact about how the Tories think they can get

there. One idea that is very sensitive is how much child benefit

should be dispersed, I know Labour people who think it is completely

untenable the situation we have at the moment where every child, every

other child you have you get more money. What had been bubbling around

was the idea that it would be limited to two children and the

Welfare Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith is very keen on this idea. From my

calls today seems the Treasury is very nervous about this idea. What

is published tomorrow, which perhaps makes this more interesting is an

idea by the think-tank, Policy Exchange, is that you would limit it

to four children and taper it after two. What is interesting is perhaps

it is the way that George Osborne could embrace the idea and bring in

some kind of change on child benefit that isn't, dare I say it, something

that would really horrify people in the swing seats. Horrify people

because of the social engineering nature to it as well? There is many

more families that have two children to state the obvious than have three

or four. Numerically, so you can see families with two children who might

see that policy and think oh my gosh I won't vote Conservative, where as

families of four there are few of them that will be affected. There is

another political story? The Mirror has a story that Clegg is about to

ditch the bedroom tax, I'm looking into it and we will talk about that

later. Doctors, teachers a social services

worker a scout leader, even former police officers, as a result of an

unprecedented investigation for the National Crime Agency into on-line

paedophilia, today the police announced that more than 650

suspected paedophiles had been arrested in a six-month

investigation, and as a result 430 children have been protected. But

the secretary for the children's s charities coalition for internet

safety said the police alone can't cope with the problem, the volume of

images is too large. We will be debating on how to get to grips with

the criminality on an internet that is constantly mutating. First we

have this. The doctor with a million images of

abuse on his hard drive, the pensioner with 17 grandchildren, the

foster carer with no previous convictions, all arrested as part of

a six-month police investigation. There is no part of the internet

that is inpenetrable to us. Anybody who is listening to this programme

who offends on the Internet should realise the policing across the

country and the National Crime Agency is able to see you and detect

you when you stand out of line and break the law. If you break the law

we will come after you. That operation involved all 45

police force, leading to 660 arrests. Just 39 of those held were

on the Sex Offenders Register. 431 children were removed, including 127

identified as being at serious risk of harm. It is the job of the

Internet Watch Foundation to investigate reports of child abuse

images and pass that information to the police. This image here was an

example of some of the image that is we have. It has been very heavily

pick sellated, because obviously it is a criminal offence to look at

images, it is a child we assess to be between seven and ten years old.

They are actually tied up, so they are bound. It is a sadistic image,

so it is one of the worst types of images that you will see. The number

of images like this, seen by the analyst here has doubled since the

charity was formed in 2007. We now are 12 analysts and they are

occupied full-time, they are occupied doing work looking at

content that is on in the public domain on the open internet. What

they do know, because they are specialists in this is the majority

of the images that we see are all duplicate, so they see the same

children again and again and again, and a series of images around the

same children. So they do know when they see new images and they are

seeing increasing numbers of new images and new children. The

National Crime Agency was set up to deal with organised crime, it will

not reveal the exact tactics used in this latest operation, but they are

likely to be far less dramatic than these scenes. We do know officers

received training from the Los Angeles police department, seen here

using software that tracks in real time people downloading and swapping

abuse images. time people downloading and swapping

keen to talk up the scale of this operation, calling it the largest of

its type across the UK. Now that may be true up to a point, but ten years

ago another similar investigation into child sex abuse led to

five-times as many arrests and almost 2,000 convictions. The actor

Chris Langham was the most high-profile conviction as part of

Operation Orr, police were passed details of 7,000 UK subscribers to a

US porn site found to be hosting some child abuse images. It became

clear not everyone involved were guilty, some were accessing only

adult pornography, others were the victims of credit card fraud. The

impact on them and their families was devastating. Several people

committed suicide and a number of people were so overwhelmed by it

they didn't know what to do and before they had proper legal advice

they accepted a police caution as being the better thing to do to get

over it and get on with their lives. Police say they have learned from

the operation and the tactics used today are far more sophisticated. We

have a capability now that is well ahead of what it was a few years

ago, I'm confident the people we have identified today we will see

with the evidence presented appropriately and a high conviction

rate. There is another question here rarely asked, what evidence is there

that viewing images on a computer can lead to physical abuse in the

real world. Here the evidence is inconclusive, one academic called it

the million dollar question. A 2009 study from the US found 85% of

on-line offenders had admitted to physical abuse. Another from the

same year found the level can be as low as 3%. Some of these men are

immediately directly dangerous to children, in my experience the

majority are not. Whatever the explanation for their behaviour, and

there will be many, including their excessive use of pornography,

perhaps. But I have met many internet offenders who are actually

very good fathers, and who are very good workers, good husbands, there

are aspects of their lives of course that needs to be accounted for. We

mustn't stopped them being able to be good fathers or good husband, we

need to hold them accountable and help them learn new patterns of

living to make sure their on-line life is far better than it has been

in the past. That view may be controversial to

many, just as the police are learning how to deal with this

problem, so we as a society might have to ask some hard questions

about the extent of on-line abuse and how we deal with it. With me now

is Jim Gamble the former chief executive of see on, the police

branch dedicated to on-line protection, he oversaw Operation

Orr, the largest UK crime investigation with thousands

targeted for on-line images of child abuse, also here is Professor

Richard Wortley, head of UCL's Department of Security and crime.

Jim Gamble how different is the Internet from when you were using

Operation Orr? The Internet has developed, in the case of the

operation people went on-line, engaged with the site, made a

payment using the credit card and received a password which helped

evidence that they had been there, and they went on-line using their

computer and very often their IP address. Those tactics were when the

Internet was for buying something on it. You don't need to do that. I

totally dispute about what was said about it being discredited, people

did take their own lives, but there was no evidence of widespread fraud

or we attempted tom prosecute those on adult pornography sites, we

differentiated. Of course people can access on-line child abuse on the

open web, what is different is the development of the dark web and the

cloud and so forth, which makes this stuff much harder to access? I was

in CEOP until 2011, in 2009 we identified that the overwhelming

images were being swapped in nests on the Internet, peer-to-peer

website where is I would show you mine and you would show me yours,

that was not gotten through Google. Now you make a definite effort to

get in there and stay in there? It is a community of paedophiles that

huddle together and share images. The NCA deputy said we can't arrest

our way out of this. So do you think there is a quantifiable difference

in looking at this stuff and actually those who will actually go

out and actively commit child abuse, is it different? The overlap between

accessing on-line abuse images and committing a contact offence is very

controversial and some figures were just presented. An average that is

often used in the literature is about 12% overlap. I think the point

to make about people who access images on the Internet is they are

not a homogenius group, they span an entire spectrum. Certainly at the

extreme end they involve people who are extremely deviant, extremely

predatory and go to a lot of effort to access these images. It extends

into the normal curve, if you like. When you say the normal curve, you

actually think the normal curve is people viewing this stuff on-line,

but not actively going out and committing acts of child abuse? I

think probably we don't know for sure, but I think common sense would

suggest that the majority of people who access images on the net aren't

involved in contact offending. I would dispute that, my experience

and the work that I'm familiar with carried out by the head of

behavioural analysis unit in the United States would indicate when

they use the lie detector to test that the vast majority of those

arrested for viewing offences have been involved in contact doing

offences, there is a recent study that backs up his 2008 study came

out in February this year which shows across five different

agencies, so not linked to one study, that between 57-61% were

doing it, not only hands-on offences but they were able to identify 97

victims by name and location. That would suggest that actually the

majority of people accessing child porn on-line are dangerous? I think

there is lots of problems with that figure, in 1980 before the Internet

the largest-selling child pornography magazine in the US had

about 800 subscribers, 20 years later we had 370,000 subscribers on

one site. What has happened and now we estimate the number of people

accessing images on the net in the millions. But you are not seriously

suggesting that there is some kind of normative behaviour in accessing

child porn, surely nobody would think that to be the case? There has

been a massive increase in on-line offending, at the same time when the

best evidence we have shows there has been a drop in contact

offending, what's happened in the 20 or 30 years since 1980 we haven't

suddenly created a million new paedophile, what we have provided is

platform that provides unparalleled access to abuse images. It seems

certain people want to access those, what you seem to be suggesting is

that is it is a completely passive thing, you access this stuff and

then nothing happens, is that your thoughts? No the people who access

this stuff access it to masturbate, it is about sexual deafence, people

who have a precondition, a deviant sexual interest in children, that is

why they go there. If we are going to look at statistics from the past,

consider Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Max Clifford, because we didn't

know doesn't mean it doesn't happen. We shouldn't use language leading us

into anti-victim prejudice, a lot of people want to dismiss victims. That

is not my experience. If we want to make impact, you seem to suggest

there is a burgeoning culture of people looking at on-line child

abuse, the police say they can't arrest their way out of it, what is

to do? These arrests are absolutely defendable and should have taken

place and they do serve a purpose, and the purpose they serve is

actually mentioned by some of your commentators they demonstrate that

the Internet is not as anonymous as offenders think it is. It is the

anonymity of the internet, the ease of access of the images that is

driving the behaviour. But, also, ease of access of the image the fact

is somebody looking at child porn is actively supporting a culture where

children on-line are being abused? No question. So who cracks down

where then? I think there is not one answer to that, but we certainly

have to look at prevention. We can't answer to that, but we certainly

arrest our way out of it but arrests can provide a message to offend that

they are not anonymous. The problem has occurred because of the ease of

accessing images and the solution is to make it more difficult to access

images. I disagree, blocking, we're past a sell by date of blocking, you

don't get the images on the open internet but on the Dark Net. You

can't arrest everybody? You can't arrest everyone, but we need to

arrest someone, the fact of the matter we know 50,000 plus people in

the UK have been downloading these images, if we were to arrest 660

people a day for the next 75 days we could catch up. If the 660 people

had been terrorists it wouldn't take six months to deliver this. We need

to declare a war on paedophilia and use all of the resources open,

greater investment in acedemia, we need more doors knocked and they

need to go speedily from arrest to court to decide innocent or guilty

and set an active deterrent, the way we did with drink-driving, they

didn't stop because of the adverts they stopped because they realised

the chances of getting caught increased radically and there was a

stigma attached to it. A war on feed fila? -- paedophilia? Not in the way

Jim talks about it, there are things to do to make it more difficult to

access images. Nothing will be perfect, you have to make it more

difficult, that doesn't mean to say make it impossible. One of the

problems with the overlap figure, all of that research is carried out

on convicted and in most cases imprisoned offenders. As we learned

with this case, police will target the most serious offenders and they

should be targeting the most serious offenders but it gives you a

distorted picture when you take this very extreme group that you have

targeted and arrested and then ask them about their behaviour. There

are many people on the Internet who fly under the radar and believe me

are not involved in contact offending. I couldn't disagree more,

the question for members of the public watching this is if you

seriously believe that people go on-line and look at these images

that aren't driven sexually the question for you is would you allow

them to babysit for your children, the answer will be no, and nobody

will be suggesting that we do. The Government need to invest greater

resources so we have more of these individuals arrested and put behind

bars, that is deterrent. Ahead of Friday's House of Lords

debate on assisted dying, we have heard the conflicting voices of

senior church leaders, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury,

Lord Carey, who is in favour, and Justin Welsby who is against. What

about the medical profession, where do they stand on the bill if passed

in its present form could see them prescribing a lethal dose of drugs

to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live. There is a

key vote on Friday and people will be piling into the Lords tonight. A

campaigner on the issue is determined she should be able to die

how she choses. Margaret John was a teacher for 45

years, five years ago she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and

the illness is terminal. I asked when she first came to support

assisted dying? When I was 12! ? In the early 50s my grandfather had a

stroke, but to see a very upright rigid authoritarian ship worker tied

in a wooden chair unable to speak or move sitting in his own excrement

for four years had a very profound effect on me. And ever since I have

believed that one should have a choice at the end of life. It is not

about killing people, and I keep saying this, it is about living. And

living is not just existing, it is having a full life and doing

everything you could. Do you think then that you would preparing to

take this decision, if indeed you take it, if you had not cancer? What

is important to me is having the information, a full range of

options, full information on everything, so that I can make a

rational decision. I actually don't have a lot of pain. The fact that I

have got cancer is not really an issue. I intend to live and I mean

live to the very end. Now there is a difference between living and

existing. If my life is reduced to four walls and daytime television

I'm sorry I don't want that. Do you accept though that some days you are

feeling better than others? Oh yeah, I doubt whether I would actually use

anything. It is information, it is knowing what would work. Somebody

did say to me you can get stuff on the Internet. Yes you can, but you

don't know what it is, you don't know if it is going to work, if it

doesn't it is not John Lewis, they don't give you money back. Do you

have a faith? No I'm an atheist, if I'm wrong I will apologise. I was a

practising member of the Church of England until my late 30s and I read

extensively, I have read up on Buddhism, I took instruction in the

Catholic faith and couldn't make the act of faith. I wish I did believe.

Would it make any difference to your decision do you think? No, because

I'm talking about living, I keep forgetting to look up who wrote t it

is called the Docolog and it is a poem and based on the Ten

Commandments, I love the one about killing, "thoushalt not kill but

need not strive to stay alive". We have our guests in the studio. If

this goes through it is doctors that really have to implement this, it is

a massive moral decision apart from anything else. Jackie you were

engaged as a doctor in delivering what is life-savi treatment and yet

you support this, why? Because some people cannot be helped in the

terminal stages of disease and suffer very badly. And want the

choice to die. We know that because people go to Switzerland to Dignitas

and only the people who can afford to obviously. I have seen members of

my own family, including my brother whose case was used by Dignity in

Dying when they were talking to the House of Lords about this, who were

afraid of death, afraid of, a fear of death can be allayed by the

option of assisted dying if people know it is there. The vast majority

of them won't use it. But we cannot stop all suffering. We can't stop

all physical suffering and we can't certainly stop all mental suffering

that people go through facing a bad death. You heard Margaret in the

film completely clear headed, saying that she wants the information, she

may not use it, but she feels it is her human right to make that

decision about whether to live or die? I think the difficulty we have

is that if you do implement the bill that is proposed on Friday doctors

are going to have to make the death decision. You are going Toffler

essentially death squads which is really out of the context of

delivering good health. Is death squads not an emotive way of putting

it? I think the way the bill is going to have two doctors'

signatures, you can't predict outcome, I made disastrous mistakes

with patients because you can't predict the outcomes of cancer and

motor neurone disease. That is a heart-breaking and debilitating

disease, on the question of cancer that is a right, when would a doctor

be able to pinpoint the moment that somebody would succumb to cancer in

the end. But you can make an informed decision of the progress of

a disease can't you? You can, and cancer is easier than something like

motor neurone disease because it is a consistent line. You look at an

X-ray, if the tumour is getting bigger you can predict where it is

going. But we can be years out, you get remarkable things. I have only

twice as 35 years as a consultant been asked by a patient to end their

life, I have seen a lot of people in that time. Only two, and I remember

them as though it was yesterday. In one case I actually helped them end

their life. In what way? By giving high doses of open patients to kill

their pain. Is this the -- Opiates. To kill their pain. You are giving

these and it may cause their death and you knew that? Yes. Did you

actively know you were doing it? You don't know and different patients

will tolerate different doses of drugs. The most important thing is

making a clinical judgment with that patient. Having a bureaucratic

system with politicians involved who have no understanding of medicine is

not the way forward. It would be case of death squads? That is a

clearly emotive way. It isn't going to be doctors who decide this, it

will be patients. Two doctors have to make the decision whether or not

to prescribe the lethal medicine that would be needed. So in a sense

doctors do have to pacemaker the decision don't they? They will be --

they do have to make the decision don't they? They have to decide

whether the patient is in the six-month delivery. It is the

patient who requests this and takes the dose. This isn't euthanasia

where the doctor administers it, it is the patient who asks for it.

There are many safeguards in the bill. What the doctor may not

necessarily know is another von in the the -- vulnerability in the

patient, perhaps she has pressing financial problems or pressing

health problems that require money to deal with them, there would be

the invisible pressure on the patient to as it were to do the

right thing for the family, as they would see it? I think what is really

important to look at. This isn't a leap into the dark, this has been

happening in other places, in Oregon it has been happening for up to 17

years. The Hospice Association originally opposed the Dignity and

Dying Bill in the area, because these fears are understandable. They

withdrew their opposition because they said there was no evidence of

the two things they were afraid of which was one that offering assisted

dying would interfere with end of life care, and the other one was

there was no evidence that vulnerable people were being

affected by this. So if those people are saying we're happy with this,

what's the problem. The problem is that palliative medicine has come

from nothing when I started as a consultant to be fantastic,

palliative care, experts, nurses, doctors, that specialise. People

don't need to die in unpleasant painful circumstances.

When you say they don't need to die in unpleasant and painful

circumstance, a lot of people would prefer to die when they know they

would feel better, you seem to suggest that doctors already do this

in an unofficial way? They do it and they have been doing it because of

the nature of pain control. It is risky because you escalate the dose

and you get respiratory regression, it is inevitable. By formalising it

don't you give people control of their own destiny? In a modern

hospice, hospices at home which is the current way forward, people are

given a morphine pump which they can press a button to get more to kill

the pain. The most important thing in palliative care is to keep the

patient pain free and free from other symptoms which can be

distressing. But there will be pressure on people. I have just

heard that Norman Lambert, the Lambert -- Norman Lambert has come

out in favour of assisted dying on Friday, he has changed his mind.

Have you been surprised by some of the people that actually have given

you support? I think people are really looking at what is on offer

as opposed to a lot of argument that is are based on what is not on

offer. What is on offer under Lord Faulkner is a very prescriptive,

facing terminal illness, two doctors involved, the patient has to want

this, there is a cooling off period, it is not about disabled people or

vulnerable people, it is very specific and worked for 17 years in

Oregan. Right now I would like to bring in Norman Lambert, we can talk

to him right now, good evening. This is very good of you to come in at

such short notice. Tell me, you have made a decision and what has made,

why have you changed your mind? I'm making this decision as a person not

as a minister. It is important to make that distinction clear. It is

talking to lots of people who have gone through the experience of a

loved-one dying, often going through months of pain and distress, and

ultimately you know you have to ask the question, who should it be that

decides, should it be me or anyone else in that situation, or should it

be the state? Ultimately I think it is a very personal decision and I

have gone through a process of re-thinking my position on this, and

I think the current position where we have got this confused situation

that families do not know what the law actually will do to them, and

you have the Crown Prosecution Service reviewing I think something

like 60 cases since the most recent guidance. What an invidious position

to put families in, not knowing whether you are going to be

prosecuted for helping your loved one to end their life. So I'm very

clear in the position that I take on this. This is interesting because

you say that you are doing this in a personal capacity, but because you

are the minister for the care of the elderly, of course your

intervention, your decision carries and will be seen to be carrying

great deal of weight? I understand that but it has been made clear that

this is a personal vote issue, I feel actually having gone through

the process of thinking, re-thinking my position, I now feel very clear

in my own mind about where I stand myself on this. I think there are

clear safeguards and they are critical. In a sense it was the fear

of exploitation which always caused me concern in the past. But

ultimately should we stand in the way of someone wanting to make their

own decision about their life or should we set the safeguards in

place to ensure that there is every chance of avoiding that

exploitation, I'm very clear in my mind that the individual should be

the person who decides, not the state. Now Norman Lamb while we have

you here we should talk about a story on the front page of the

Mirror tomorrow, that is that Nick Clegg has come out against the

bedroom tax, can you give a little more on this? It is in response to a

report that has emerged which shows that a very tiny percentage of the

people who have been subject to the ending of the spare room subsidy

have actually moved home, in my own constituency I have come across many

cases where people may be willing to move, may be willing to downsize but

the state of the housing market and the shortage of social housing just

makes it impossible for that person to move. So they are stuck in the

situation, it may well be that they also have a disability and are

unable to move because they need a spare bedroom for a carer, or they

may have adapted their home, and I think therefore we have to adjust

the position in the light of experience to make sure that it is

absolutely fair. At a critical moment in the lead up to the

election of course you are in a coalition and you have absolutely no

chance have you of persuading your coalition partners also to agree

with what Nick Clegg apparently said which is that it has been a

catastrophe that punishes the POOFRMENT you are having your cake

and eat -- poor, you are having your cake and eating it, you are

disagreeing with a fundamental tenet of welfare we -- reform. The

situation as far as new tenants are concerned there is no dispute in the

private sector, individuals who claim housing benefit in the private

sector only get housing benefit for the room that is they need. They

don't get a spare room subsidy, and it is perfectly reasonable that the

same rule applies in both the private and the public sector. The

difficulty we have here is people who are in social housing who have a

spare room but are simply not able to move because of their

circumstances. Does this mean the Liberal Democrats are going to be

speaking out against the bedroom tax at every turn? It is a response to

the evidence that we have seen and I think it is absolutely reasonable

for the party to make its position clear. Thank you very much for

joining us tonight. Thank you both for joining us.

It may be just time to dust off the old gag about modern artists

laughing all the way to the bank. . Because Gilbert George have put

their new exhibition together with the help of nitrous oxide, laughing

gas to you and me. It is a legal high popular with clubbers and known

as "hippy crack". The sculptures didn't inhale themselves, but they

collected the bomb-shaped empties of the gas they found near their home

in south London. The cylinders loom large in their new show in

Bermondsey. We joined them for some street combing in Brick Lane.

We start and see these little cannisters on Brick Lane. Did you

know what they were? Not at first. Then we started to see the balloons.

For Monet it was water lilies, for Van Gogh sunflowers. Now Gilbert

George have an old exhibition out of some old cannisters. There is one of

the grey ones. Yes, there are different types. These things once

contained "hippy crack" and empties of hippy crack are a recurring motif

in their newest works. We are on an urban Safari, and apologies to

Springwatch et cetera, we present "Crackwatch"! Composing the shot,

that is what I like. The artists collected and photographed hundreds

of gas containers. It is not every day we have our shots composed by

leading artists! Some of them reminded Gilbert George of

weapons. They do look like cartridges? That is why it was

exciting, because in the evening when we are exhausting we go up and

look at Al-Jazeera, they are all bombs, don't you think, it is all

Iraq and Iran and Africa, all bombs, that is it. Never more in our

lifetime than now, it is extraordinary. In our own way our

whole life is bomb, I was bombed by Germany as a baby, bombed by the IRA

to the east and west, we had the white supremacist bomber in Brick

Lane, then the tubes and buses bombed. The scapegoating pictures as

Gilbert George have called them are antic, unsettling, sometimes

comic and full of those enlarged hippy crack cannisters. They convey

an atmosphere of fear say the artists. We like this what you call

they create this threatening atmosphere, this fear in the

picture. The pictures do? Because of that. This kind of fear that it is

new in some ways in the world. Because if you go to Heathrow it is

fear, if you go on the bus it is fear. It is all fear in some way.

Untold but it is there. fear. It is all fear in some way.

that is a new thing a sense of fear? Yes, I think it is. The pair have

been living here since the 1960s, now the only way you could afford to

live here is if you are an incredibly successful artist. With

so many different cultures and extremes of wealth on their

doorstep, they don't want for creative stimulus. The centre of the

universe, we always say if a spaceship was coming in to land from

another planet, they only have ten minutes to film a typical planet

earth place here or Liverpool Street or Bethnal Green. You would be good

guides for the Martians? Yeah, take them down all the back alleys. And

lots of naughty things! (Phone ringing) Good morning you have

telephoned Gilbert George, time to leave a brief message after the

tone, thank you, goodbye and good rid dance. Gilbert George say

their new show picks up on he will tensions and violence in the air.

The west is full of bombs as well. We are full of bombs all well. The

exhibition takes its title from a flyer about Islamophobia and

scapegoating which Gilbert George picked up as part of their voracious

collecting. Are you in any sense warning with these things. Is that

part of your work? We are showing it in some way, the new East London. I

don't want to have a big view about what is going to happen but we are

showing it. We don't want to be part of telling, but showing. Do you feel

you are being particularly risky with this work, do you have any

reservations about how it might be received? No I think some of the

most honest actual pictures being created today it is. After the death

of Mrs Thatcher, Gilbert George, perhaps alone among contemporary

artists staked out a bit of pavement near St Paul's. Tory supporters and

Monday monarchists wanted to pay their respects. We think the funeral

of Mrs Thatcher was a wonderful occasion. A lot of people came out

of the offices down towards the street and they wanted our

autograph, so there was life in the middle of death. ??FORCEDWHIT Do you

ever disagree, does one say I think we should do this and I have hit

something here and the other one says no, that would look terrible?

We call that the great hetrosexual question. Bill ?FORCEDWHITE Gilbert

George, that is all we have time for tonight, good night.