21/02/2017 Newsnight

An ecstatic crowd in London wait to cheer a fresh face young

politician in a huge rally, bedecked with red

He's Emmanuel Macron, and he's running for French president.

Not since Jeremy Corbyn's leadership rallies has there been such

enthusiasm for a political leader in the UK, and even

British liberal Remainers are pinning their hopes on him.

We'll ask two British centrist politicians if they are for him,

Also tonight, is this the reason why HIV infection rates

We went back over all our new HIV diagnoses and each month

But then we asked our colleagues in other clinics in London

And is the NHS the last bastion of Communism?

Four hours for emergency care, two months to start cancer

treatment and six months for a routine operation.

Let's stop trying to fix it, let's totally change the model.

French politics has never been more interesting.

For one thing, Marine Le Pen is the leading candidate

in opinion polls for the first round of the presidential election.

No-one can dismiss her as fringe anymore.

But her opponents make the race interesting too.

In the final round of election, Le Pen's rival is expected to win.

And the leading opponent - just - is Emmanuel Macron.

He is interesting because he has the potential to redefine

He's young, he's an outsider with a new party, and today,

His message might appeal to the many French voters in the UK,

but for that dispirited group of British liberal remainers here,

he seems to have quite a bit of appeal too.

They'd queued around the corner to see the French politician

Is he a potential beachhead in the fight against the populist

There is a lot of liberal hope being invested in his politics.

He looked very comfortable here in London, and in a way he fits

He is socially liberal, believes in same-sex marriage.

He is economically liberal, he's against the French 35-hour week.

He is the antithesis of Donald Trump.

What I like best about Macron is that he is not of the right.

Where we are now in politics, anybody who can win who is not

of the right and who will fight off the right is an asset.

It's a second-order issue precisely what policies are,

what we know is that he's not racist, he is pro-European,

And he will fight off some of the dark forces

This is a message for American researchers...

He has a canny political sense for appealing to liberals.

I do know how your new President now has decided to jeopardise your

budget, your initiatives, as he is extremely sceptical

Now, the French election comes to a showdown

Current poll ratings say he would be one of them

Which raises an interesting question.

If he is so popular in France, why isn't

Could he or his ilk make it over here?

In some ways, our old party loyalties disguise the changing

Conservative Anna Soubry is surely closer to say,

the centrist Alan Johnson in Labour, than she is to Jacob

Alan Johnson must be surely closer to her or to Nick Clegg

in the Lib Dems than he is to his own leader Jeremy Corbyn.

And you could even argue a slew of big-name Conservative and Labour

And they have a minority segment of the public behind them.

Over the last year it is clear the old ideas about left and right

are not sufficient to fully understand politics in Britain,

in France and across developed democracies.

And so in YouGov we have looked at the new tribes

And we have found that with 37% in France and 37% in Britain,

it's the pro-EU, internationalist moderates, this centrist

group, who are actually the largest single group.

And they support the EU, they support controlled immigration

And the question now is can Macron in France or indeed

any candidate in Britain or France sufficiently capture enough

The problem for British centrists is not just that they're stuck

in three different parties, the voting system makes it hard

Memories of the old SDP, a Macron-esque party of the early

'80s, instil fear in those wanting to break the mould.

As for Macron, no one really knows if he is a winner yet,

But for liberals, feeling pretty battered,

Conservative Ed Vaizey was Culture Minister from 2010-16

and Labour MP Alison McGovern is the chair of Progress -

a Labour think tank which has been associated with New Labour

in the past, and now describes itself as an organisation

which "aims to promote a radical and progressive politics

We've got you both here because we think you are pretty similar in your

politics even know you are in different parties. You are going to

concoct an argument between yourselves. Do you like Macron,

Alison? Tempting though it is to draw conclusions about what's

happening in France, the parallels are limited because there is a

totally different system in France. The internal dynamic that happens

because of their system isn't necessarily applicable. I'm keen

that we have lots of European cooperation, despite Brexit, because

my constituents' jobs depend on it but having a direct read across from

what is happening in France isn't really possible. You are the big

issues, you are in the same places? On things like the idea that in a

world where most companies of any size are multinational, I think

European cooperation is the right thing and I'm pretty sure he would

agree. I think he would. The same question to you, you have met

Macron? I spoke to him a couple of times, once when he was wooing tech

companies in London, when it was the European Union and French companies

were flowing over here. He's very charismatic and I like a lot of what

he says and a lot of his policies for France. For me as a centre-right

politician, very attractive policies, attacking the 35 hour

week, deregulating the Labour market, which urgently needs doing.

Whether he will succeed if he wins is another question. Interesting to

see Polly Toynbee endorsing him as the only backstop to stop Marine Le

Pen. He's in that position by accident because the Fillon campaign

has imploded but would she say the same thing about that, supporting

anybody who would stop Le Pen? She is more enthusiastic about Macron.

Let's get to the real gist of this, should you be in the same party? No,

absolutely not. I'm a left-wing politician. As much as I think we

should modernise our ideas and look to the future, for me, the nature of

politics is about where you come from, who you listen to, and that's

very different across the two parties. We have a different system

in Britain. I understand the Conservative Party and Labour Party

are different, I'm wondering if you are closer to Ed than Jeremy Corbyn.

I'm a Labour politician and I walk through the lobbies with Jeremy

Corbyn two of those -- to oppose a lot of what the Conservatives did

which has put the economy in a mess that when it came to the Brexit

vote, they had to protest against David Cameron and George Osborne for

what they have done. I don't buy the idea that, you know, in the centre

we are all the same. We have a different system. You aren't all the

same, it's just that the differences between new two are smaller than

those differences between your leaders. The coalition may not be

between your leader, but it may more naturally be between you and other

people in the centre. Where I think there is an important point to that

argument is that the debate we are in in Britain, everything in

politics is being flown to the ends. Brexit seems to have given a lot of

power to people on the hard right and the far right and I think that's

problematic because they don't represent the interests of the

majority of people in our country. Getting issues like, you know,

schools funding on the agenda can be really difficult because Brexit is

sweeping everything else out the way. Do you think you should be in

the same party as Alison, Ed? I agree on the point that Brexit has

thrown up talk of some kind of crazy political realignment. Maybe there

will be a Remainer realignment but people have been talking about a

third way, 20 years ago. People forget, there's a tendency,

especially for Remainers like me to characterise Brexiteers as these

insular, non-globalist parochial politicians but Boris Johnson is a

liberal, open the globalist, Michael Gove keeps a copy of Tony Blair's

autobiography on his bedside table and refers to him as the master. Why

on earth did they find themselves campaigning alongside the likes of

Nigel Farage if that's true? This is what I don't understand. Campaigns

can make unusual bedfellows as we see Polly Toynbee backing Emmanuel

Macron, she properly disagrees with his policies, to prevent something.

Remainers like me must understand why people voted for Brexit. I feel

the way it has shifted, the Remainers had given ground. Not

saying we are going to fight the referendum all over again, we're

saying we want a relationship with Europe and we will campaign for

that. That reaches back to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who believe

in free trade, open trade and David Davis in tomorrow's Times is talking

about keeping immigration levels high because of the skills we need.

It will lead to a million arguments about whether we should be detaching

ourselves or not. The argument isn't over. The nature of our

relationship. It isn't clear what those people really think. You say

they are interested in openness and working with our European colleagues

but they've done nothing to bring about that vision. Isn't the real

vision that you as a centralist, Remainer Tory, you are harbouring

hopes that the Tory party is essentially an open party, socially

liberal, a Macron party, you hope that Theresa May is the British

Macron? I think Theresa May can be the British Macron. If I was going

to critique the last six months, and I said this in the debate on the

Article 50 bill, I hope the government changes its rhetoric and

recognises that 48% of people voted to stay in Europe because they have

that globalist and open agenda. I think Theresa May has that

opportunity. I think the Article 50 bill has given her exactly what she

perhaps didn't want, an opportunity to rally people behind the fact that

we are leaving Europe and forcing people like me to accept that and

say, what is our relationship with Europe? Now is a chance for the

government to build beaches to people who have these concerns. In

that debate a number of reasonable amendments were put down to the Bill

which would shape, make for representations on behalf or people

who voted league and remain about the Brexit they wanted and all I can

remember is the Tory MPs cheering as it was announced that the bill had

passed without amendment. Rhetoric is important but actually, deeds

matter too and we're going to face the kind of Brexit that is really

damaging to British interests. It used to be said the SDP split the

vote on the left and kept the Tories in power. Is it possible to save the

Tory Labour duopoly has the most the centrists. -- has split the votes of

the centrists. I think all political parties are a coalition because of

the system that we have in this country, first past the post and

that dictates the coalition. I would not be in the same party as Alison

because I do not think the state is the answer to our problems or higher

spending or taxes. But the funny thing is I have watched Tories in

power over the past six years running down public services and

doing real damage to their economic prospects for ordinary people. For

most people who think about politics for two minutes a week, those of the

things they want us to focus on. Thank you both.

There has been a dramatic and under-reported change

to the number of new HIV infections among gay men in the UK.

The good news is that in 2016, the rate of infection plummeted.

It's not because a vaccine was invented, it appears to be down

Quickly treating those who are recently diagnosed as HIV

positive, stops them being so infectious.

And then there is the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis - or PrEP.

A drug for treating HIV turns out to be good

The moment I was told I had HIV, it was confusing, I suppose.

They said to me, your test has come back positive.

And so without saying, you are HIV-positive,

it took me a couple of moments to really understand

I never want anyone to go through what I had

I almost died, I was in hospital for a week after my diagnosis.

We first looked at the graphs, we thought no, it can't be true.

So we went back over all our new HIV diagnoses

and each month we looked, it was the same.

But then we asked our colleagues in other clinics in London

And so we thought, it is true, it's real.

There is actually truly a reduction in new HIV diagnoses.

And I can't get across to you how excited we were because initially,

The most significant thing that's happened in that time

is that we found that a lot of people who are really high

risk who come to our clinic were taking PrEP.

So PrEP means basically giving people who are really high risk

for HIV two drugs that are used to treat HIV, to stop

And recently, in the last year, 18 months or so, increasing numbers

We've discovered this because they come into our clinics

and we ask them what medication they are taking and they tell us

Now over the course of my lifetime it's going to cost around ?300,000,

And so by providing PrEP, then it would have cost the NHS

You know, I definitely would have been taking PrEP had it been

And yeah, I probably wouldn't have HIV now.

So yeah, is there a danger that with PrEP,

And there are some studies that have demonstrated this.

It's important, though, to recognise that STI rates are high

and have been going up for quite a long time.

And were going up before PrEP became available.

So I don't think we can say with any certainty that PrEP is responsible

for the current increases that we are seeing in STI.

I don't think that now there is any doubt at all that it works.

And I think what now has to happen is that as many people

as possible who are at risk, should have access to it.

You think that there might be a time, actually reasonably soon,

where we won't get any new HIV diagnoses?

Well, I can't say how soon, I would hope soon, but I think yes.

Our producer James Clayton compiled that report.

Matthew Hodson is the Executive Director of aids

charity NAM AIDS Map, which shares information

Which is more important is it the PrEP which is not yet available on

the NHS or the treatment of new cases much earlier so they're less

infectious? Both are important, you need to recognise if people are

treated they're not an infection risk to their sexual partners and

this is important. But we have been rolling out treatment on diagnoses

since 2012. And the very dramatic drop we have seen in new HIV

infections last year, it feels it cannot just be about that because it

must be something new. The thing that has dramatically changed is

people accessing PrEP. And they're mostly doing it by self

prescription, just getting online. It is not yet available on the NHS

so some websites have been set up grassroots activists, and they're

putting people in touch with suppliers of generic PrEP drugs.

Which incidentally are cheaper than perhaps the NHS would pay.

Considerably cheaper than the NHS would be paying. The NHS would say

why would we want to buy this drug for people, especially as we would

pay full price, when it appears to be working anyway because people

will just go and buy it themselves. We have seen that dramatic drop

which is fantastic news, really exciting. But it is only reaching

those people who are well-informed, and who also have income to say I'm

going to spend about ?40 a month and if you considered the number of

people quite young gay men for example still being diagnosed with

HIV or perhaps ?40 per month is quite a considerable barrier to

them. It is exciting because we are turning a corner now and you want to

everything we have got at it because we could make a huge difference. You

definitely want the NHS to make it available on prescription for those

who say they want it? If it could be rolled out to the people who would

benefit most then you're going to have the power to end the epidemic.

How much does a license people to go off and behave with unsafe sex

because they say I have taken PrEP and I do not need it and thus

perhaps get hepatitis C or any number of sexually transmitted

infections. Condom 's have been a pillar of HIV infection since the

1980s and they still play an enormous role obviously. But we now

have this opportunity where we can do something which is going to

increase our prevention power. And we could use this. The other thing

is if people were getting PrEP on the NHS then they would be tied into

clinical services and that means they would be regularly screened and

if they had an STI there would be diagnosed and treated. It is one of

the problems we have is people accessing PrEP in the wild they may

not be getting regularly tested for STI 's. I can hear a lot of people

saying the NHS is basically does not have enough money, that is the

commonly held view, would this be a priority thing to spend money on,

basically recreational sex, as opposed to many other things the NHS

could spend money on. The kind of money we are looking at, I mean I

think figures have been branded a round of about 20 million, and it

sounds like a lot of money but if you think it is under 1% of the NHS

budget. But also it is cost-effective and with the enormous

production we have seen in diagnosis it is more cost-effective even than

we thought because it costs a lot to treat someone living with HIV. And

unless people are infecting other people because they do not have it,

how successful or significant has this been for other categories at

risk of HIV, said drug users? I think the big drops we have seen so

far have been particularly amongst gay and bisexual men and that is

partly because it has been a grassroots activism that has pushed

this. I think what we have done is proved that the concept works and I

think that increases the urgency of rolling it out to other high risk

groups like people from sub-Saharan Africa, trans women and injecting

drug users. Thank you for that. And if you have any questions

for Matthew we're going to be continuing to talk about this topic

on our Facebook Live page You sending your questions and I

will read them from my mobile phone and put them to Matthew. That will

be straight the programme for about 20 minutes. -- straight after.

Today, it's the turn of oncologist Karol Sikora with his take

Health care systems everywhere are struggling.

Ageing populations, high cost effective novel technology

and relentless demand from a Internet savvy patients

There are only three ways to pay for health care.

But Britain's NHS is mainly tax based.

It was a great concept when it began.

Free and the point of care, based on medical need,

This became the catechism for a religion with more believers

Politicians are frightened to meddle, even though

It's now cracking up, simply throwing more tax

Nearly half of the budget goes to people over 65

Younger working people would have to pay massively more for

Anything we want is just a click away, yet the NHS is the last

It is a monolithic, unmanageable and inefficient system which can't

Staff are great, but the system is not.

Nowhere in Western Europe are the targets so slack.

Two months to start cancer treatment.

Let's stop trying to fix it, let's totally change the model.

Think of the NHS as a tax -based insurance scheme covering basic

costs and allow a plethora of private providers to enter.

Fast paced, competitive and innovative, these organisations

will breathe fresh life and efficiency into

They will provide what society really wants.

Let people choose whether they wish to spend more on their health

by paying to top up their basic care, or by converting

Make no mistake, the NHS is collapsing.

Tinkering at the edges just won't work.

It needs radical surgery to bring it in line with the 21st-century.

As we sit here, peers are still debating the Brexit Bill.

Let's take a look at the House of Lords.

From here to eternity, the talk goes on.

But the expectation is that the peers will not get in the way,

and the bill to allow the government to invoke Article 50 will proceed.

But the Lords might propose an amendment on the rights of EU

citizens currently residing in the UK.

Many are known to feel strongly about it -

it will probably come up next week, rather than tonight.

How should Britain deal with continental residents here?

I'm joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think

tank British Future, which was responsible

for a cross-party inquiry which looked into securing

the status of EEA nationals in the UK.

Thank you for joining us. The first issue, what is the cut-off date that

allows you to say you were here and not here? What was your

recommendation? We can use the date Article 50 is triggered as the date,

if you were here before that, exercising free movement rights, you

can have a guarantee of your right to settle, but if you arrive after

that, your expectations have changed, you will be part of

transitional arrangements. There is an ethical commitment. This has

legal status whereas Article 50, you get into legal problems if you try

and say something happened on the Iraq random. You can use Article 50

as the cut-off -- something happened on the referendum. How can I say

when someone arrived? If you have been here exercising your free

movement rights, then we've got a lot of footprint on you, you will be

on the DWP database. One part of the solution, rather than sending up to

1 million people back to every previous employer they've had and

collecting gas bills, if somebody has been paying tax and you got them

on the system, if government systems talk to each other, the 2 million

people who have been here for five years, it is a light touch way to

clear the easy cases. Sounds like quite a problem. How many permanent

residence claims from Europeans is the British immigration department

trying to handle, 20,000? 27,000 in the year before. The rate tripled

immediately after the referendum. It is 100 times more. Your systems

aren't up to it. What are you proposing that you do? If it isn't

up to it, that implies you could add another 10%, another few office

blocks. We know that immigration systems haven't worked well in the

past, the idea that every European should send in their passport isn't

exactly the best start to Brexit. We've got some local nationality

checking services where if you're making their passport application

you can go with your documents, they can look at the system and they can

send you home to get something if you haven't got it. That could be

the green light to the easy cases and let the Home Office deal with

the complicated cases. There could be complicated and, if we have sent

people to prison then we would exclude those people. It's up to the

government to identify the people they have sent to prison and if they

get it wrong they will be in trouble. When you guys looked at

this was it your view that only people who speak English should be

allowed to remain, that some kind of test should be applied? I think the

character and criminal record status we have for settlement should stay.

The English language citizenship test, if you are a European national

who was to become a citizen, jump through the same hoops, but we are

trying to guarantee the same rights you had before the referendum. Let's

suppose that I'm Polish and have been sending money back and in 2018,

2019I think I don't want to go back, I want to bring them over here? That

would mean a lot of extra people coming in after Article 50 but

observing the rights of a person who is already here. It gets

complicated. It does to a certain extent because there are very few

areas where European rights have superior rights to British citizens,

they don't have the income threshold if they want to marry someone. We

thought the fair thing to do was to allow those rights to exist for a

five-year phasing in period and then to phase them out so everyone is on

the same status. The principle is that people who were already here

and not expecting the change should have the same status that they have

now, that is something that all parties agreed to. Everyone agrees

that is the right thing to do. Four people including those abroad are

still waiting to hear that is what we will organise with the European

Union. Thank you for joining us. Life is sometimes brutal as we know,

but it is turning out particularly so for the wonders of brutalist

architecture in this country. Tower blocks and other

of these concrete structures For councils, it seems

easier to remove them And developers follow on behind,

putting up flats for private buyers. But all this is happening just

as many are finally appreciating Our Culture Editor,

Stephen Smith reports. These buildings have

now reached a certain need to be renovated, or sometimes

it is cheaper to knock them down. It was a recurring

rhetorical trope after the The people are the

greatest capital that Often the solution

looked a bit like this. The tower block,

the high-rise with its It's like being in

heaven up here because We've had so many

good friends up here. And these places are

just lovely for us. What excites me about them is that

they were designed with the real kind of effort going into what makes

the place good to live, what makes it a really pleasant

place to grow up, to know, to live an urban life

where you're not cut off from your Where you bump into people,

where you have quick and easy access to transport

and to shops. But it wasn't long before the first

wrinkles appeared in all that I mean in winter, his

quilt is wet through. I'm going to put him in with us

again because his bedroom is Come and help kill

the dampness dragon! Justly or otherwise,

some made a link between the concrete jungle

and the law of the jungle. The Thamesmead estate was a backdrop

to clockwork Orange, as the writers saw something dystopian in the

architecture. Couldn't get away with it! In get Carter, Michael Caine

worked off his anger in the Trinity Square shopping centre in Gateshead.

Don't look for it now, it isn't there any more.

Feel free to leave the room if you think the term iconic is overused

but that's what they call this tower in west London which was completed

in 1972 and is now a great two listed building. Some housing

campaigners are not impressed. The problem pretty immediately was that

the management costs were sky-high to make it work, lifts were being

vandalised, it became known as the Tower of Terror because of the high

risks of rape in the stairwell. That has been managed better. The problem

with a lot but not all of the post-war architecture is that they

were cutting across 2000 years of sitting making -- City making and

organic knowledge of how people want to live and where people are happy

and power. In the last 20, 30 years we've started being able to research

that thanks to big data and a greater capacity to understand where

people work. What we've learnt is that you tend to know your

neighbours less well, you have less trusting relationships with them.

The architects of the Alexandra Road estate in North London apparently

modelled it on the sinuous curves of the Georgian terraces of Bath.

What's it like to live here? We have decent people, its well-kept,

decent. You don't mind the concrete? No, I don't, I love it. The

concrete, it is an acquired taste, I'd say. But it's not horrible,

actually, it's quite comfortable and inside, the spaces are marvellous.

Would you fancy one of these? I don't know, too many windows for me.

A love to keep clean. Absolutely. As if to prove that appreciation for

brutalism is growing in some quarters it was recently adorned by

Tom Hiddleston's own desirable superstructure. I'm so sorry! I'll

survive. I don't doubt it. Your excellent specimen. I thought you

were empty. I've just moved in. It's all too late to save this estate in

east London, destined for the Iraq's ball. Most of the critics, most of

the strongest critics of post-war architecture are people who don't

live in it. Buildings like this can be a wonderful place to live. Places

that are perceived as being attached to post-war architecture is really

the disparity between the grand utopian aspirations and the reality

which can never meet the future that was imagined for many of these

buildings. Tomorrow we will be in Stoke ahead

of the by-election. Don't forget I'll be on Facebook

Live in a couple of minutes taking your questions for our guest

on falling HIV rates. We leave you with news that BBC1

is to re-examine the sound mixing on their new Sunday night drama

SS-GB, after the 90% of the population with cheap TVs

complained they couldn't Those passes you took are just

about the most valuable piece of paper a foreigner

can be given. Anyway as a favour to our sister

channel, we've arranged to have the show redubbed for them -

by Radio 4 Newsreaders Zeb Soames Those passes you took are just

about the most valuable piece of paper a foreigner

can be given. That's what we are as far as you're

concerned, foreigners. The Germans are the ones

with the right to be here, and we are the intruders

who have to bow and bloody scrape. Get your hands off me,

you bloody Gestapo bastard.