03/07/2017 Newsnight

I think we should listen to the pay review bodies who govern each

individual area of public sector pay.

Has the government being underpaying nurses and teachers, Mr Secretary?

The deficit problem has not exactly been cured but things have changed

since 2010 and politics sees other issues as more pressing,

none more so than pay for five million public workers.

A veteran deficit slayer gives us his view.

If you're struggling to keep up with the Trump

social media strategy, we'll give you the latest.

And more to the point, we'll discuss what it says about him.

What have this lot have got in common?

The answer is music producer Clive Langer.

When I wrote with David Bowie, we met socially a few times.

The debate over what replaces austerity is under way and public

The 1% cap on pay rises remains for now, but there are those

in government who want more pay for public workers, paid for by tax

rises, others who think we should borrow to pay more and,

presumably, others who think the pay cap should stay for the next few

years until the deficit is definitively slain.

The economic arguments are interesting given

that the deficit is not the problem it was.

But the politics is even more interesting -

even among a certain class of deficit headbangers

And then there's the fact that the debate about it

1000 firemen from all parts of the country had for Hyde Park in the

rain to publicise the demand for higher pay. Public sector pay has

long been an issue and an emotive one. One claim for more money that

everybody supports except the powers that be is for the nurses. 2010 is

when the latest vagaries affected public service. The government is

asking the public sector to accept a two-year pay freeze. That was

followed by a 1% cap on pay rises. Year after year, who knew we would

still be talking about it in 2017? The problem is that in delivering

spending cuts each small sounding 1% saved on public sector pay lops

almost 2 billion of public spending. For ages restraint seemed like easy

money for the Exchequer. And there was a holy trinity of arguments in

favour. One, back in 2010, the need to make savings was greater with the

deficit running at 10% of national income. Two, the justification was

clearer. Public sector pay was running perhaps higher than

equivalent private sector pay. Three, public sector workers had not

seen their pensions as badly curtailed. In 2010 public sector pay

was a relatively attractive thing to hold down because it had done better

than private sector pay in the years following the recession. Therefore,

the government might have thought it could suppress public sector pay

growth without too much pain in terms of people leaving and getting

jobs in the private sector. But now all three of the trinity of

arguments have diminished. The deficit is smaller. The public

sector pay advantage over private sector workers has shrunk away and

public sector pensions have been trimmed as well. So, is Whitehall

ready to declare austerity dead? Cautious economists may worry that

the public sector has only got two modes, tap shut or tap gushing. With

urgency over the deficit gone, it will not be careful using pay

restraint on a case-by-case basis. No, it will be a money rush. It

takes strong leadership to stop it happening and with minority

government we do not have strong leadership. Which is why it seems

post-austerity politics has been unleashed in an ill disciplined way.

Let's not jump ahead of ourselves. The policy has not changed for now,

but the talk has surely gone too far for the direction of travel to

remain unchanged for long. Our political editor

Nick Watt is here. Tell us more about the goings on and

the behind the scenes issues. There is irritation in the Treasury

bordering on fury that now we have had a third of the Cabinet

signalling they want that 1% public sector pay cap to be reviewed. Item

hearing talks these ministers are virtue signalling and what has

happened to the constitutional principle that the Prime Minister is

first among equals? All the Cabinet think they are equal. In a speech

tonight to the CBI the Chancellor said there is no change to the

policy of striking the right balance of being fair to our public servers

and fair to those who pay for them. But he said the government is

continually assessing that balance and in a sign of how complex he

regards this, he says there should be a grown-up debate on how to fund

public services and the only way to do that sustainably in the long term

is by growing the economy. A grown-up debate. Why can't we have a

childish debate! Do you think Philip Hammond can do anything about this?

Will he? This is a minority government so it feels that the

Chancellor may well act in his budget later this year and Mason the

signal in the run-up to that budget. Interestingly in his speech tonight

he said the spike in inflation due to currency depreciation has led to

what he has called frustration over the stagnation in real pay growth. I

understand there is a concern between the gap between that 1% pay

cap and inflation which is currently running at close to 3%. I think what

we could be looking at later this year is movement in that area by

putting a link between inflation and public sector pay rises. Maybe not a

real terms rise in pay, but what you could maybe see is perhaps you could

have a rise in pay at 1% below the CPI. The consumer prices index.

Ken Clarke was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1993

until 1997 as well as a number of other senior Cabinet roles.

He spent money as well as dishing it out, but in his years the deficit

came down substantially. Is there an economic case at the moment for

continuing with the pay restraint in the public sector beyond this year?

Yes, there is, until the economy shows signs of definitely recovering

from the current serious slowdown. Now we are a minority government,

but one that is intending to go on, and we have to work out our aims. I

presume we will carry on for a few years and we will have a successful

government which means we show we are confident, we have a reasonable

economy, we avoid going into recession and we get nearer a

reasonable Brexit deal and we achieved reasonable growth. If

everyone is going to get into the lobby of the week and this year it

is public sector pay... The politically vulnerable. What you

cannot do is give in to that. What would be disastrous and silly

economically would be putting money in to fuel a biased in pay in the

public sector pursuing inflation. You are making out the case for

public sector pay rises is weakness and stupidity and you have retention

problems which means you have to pay them more. The public sector used to

be paid more than the private sector and that has gone now. You can rely

on that. In parts of the country you have secure and reliable jobs.

Nurses are so popular, they are highly respected by me and other

people and they are on the front line and we have a problem with

nurses. Brexit has meant devaluation which has meant this country is less

attractive for nurses to work on and people have gone back. Whatever the

cause, basic economics means if you are short of people, you pay more to

get them. How much are you going to give? If the government gives into

this, it will not get any credit for it. Firstly our opponents, the

Labour Party, will say it is not enough, you have abandoned the cap.

The newspapers and the political bubble will say another defeat for

Theresa May and the Chancellor. That is what happened to the very

sensible decision on abortion for Northern Ireland women which Theresa

May was extremely anxious about, but it was portrayed as a defeat for

her. You say the politics mean you have to stand firm. Responding to

Labour's manifesto which was rather popular, responding to that by

getting halfway on matching certain things is not going to work? If you

are in government you have to take tough, difficult decisions which are

in the general public interest, including public servants, because

you wish to keep a strong, growing, modern economy. Throwing money about

to make yourself more popular next week is a mistake. When you were

Chancellor you got the deficit down. It was not starting from such a high

base. You took on popular actions. You put up taxes and you cut

spending and you did them in about even measure. That was a political

choice. You thought, let's be a centrist government and we will do a

bit on spending and a bit on taxes. George Osborne's austerity was very

different. It was more than 80% on spending. He did not put up taxes.

You could say it has gone too far on the public service side and we need

to spend more and we need to put up taxes to pay for it. He took over

from a very high taxing government, so he was restrained. What you have

to do is address the reality of the economic situation of the moment.

Behind all this somebody used earlier the phrase grown-up

politics, if you are in government, unlike these other people floating

around doing interviews, you have to look at the reality and your duty to

deliver is an economy which in a few years' time is better than when you

took over. The Labour Party held, but when we reached the election we

were miles ahead of them in the opinion polls on the economy. What

do you think Philip Hammond means by grown-up conversation? It addresses

the extremely serious economic problems we face. Is not grown-up at

the moment? Make a cheap political point. It is the politicians as much

as the media, in the political bubble, it is not grown-up at all.

Brexit has stimulated a devaluation and inflation and living standards

are dropping and we are the slowest growing economy. Gove and Johnson,

those who wanted Brexit, are those who have been out in the last 24

hours suggesting public sector pay needs to be raised. I think your

clips span what Michael said. You have cut out all the stuff when we

talked about fiscal discipline. No one else is doing that. I am

delighted to see Cabinet ministers being let out, being allowed to do

what Cabinet minister should do, and go out and talk about politics and

defend their policies and explain why they are doing things. Philip

should do more of it, to Reza may should do more of it and go back to

sensible discussion. All this PR rubbish about slogans, get rid of

it. They need to practice otherwise they will get spun to make mischief.

You are saying we should not worry. They need to be reminded they all

got to contribute to the serious job in hand otherwise the whole Cabinet

will go down if they respond to populist urges and make a mess of

the economy when people look back in a few years' time. You will make a

mess of the economy if you pour money in and about will have to

raise interest rates, you will cast serious doubts on economic ability.

You cast the public sector pay issue as populism, a word bandied about a

lot. You see it as all part of one and the same. It is this week's

media campaign. The nurses and doctors settled for 1% without any

particular the murdered's months ago and suddenly it is the great

passionate cause of the day. You famously called Theresa May a bloody

difficult woman. She took that as a badge of honour and was quoting it.

Do you still think she is a bloody difficult woman? She needs to be

difficult. Is chic or is she a pushover? I hope she proves to be a

bloody difficult woman and says, we have the serious task of government,

let us follow grown-up politics or we will be stuck in that cliche. We

have an economic difficulty, we do not want to be left behind by the

developed world, we have a lot of tough challenges, we are not

suddenly throwing money about so that we can beat the Labour Party

and say we are giving everybody a pay rise will stab you will set of

private sector pay rises and set off interest rates and cause a blow to

confidence and cause further slowdown.

For the past three years the Royal Military Police, the RMP,

have been investigating hundreds of cases of alleged wrongdoing

Yesterday the Sunday Times reported claims of a cover up of dozens

of unlawful killings by what the newspaper described

The Sunday Times reported that fewer than ten cases are now

being actively investigated by the RMP and just one of them

is a case of unlawful killing involving a 2011 SAS operation

Our defence editor Mark Urban has been following these allegations

for years and can now add something to the story for us.

Take us through the allegations. Essentially, if you talk to people

who have been involved with special operations in Afghanistan, there is

a widespread belief that the SAS at times was using excessive force or

stop that might be at the extreme end, getting people who should have

been taken prisoner, and going right the way back to such things like

so-called tactical questioning, I practice they ramped up in Iraq in

2000 rural macro and also took to Afghanistan, quite rough

interrogation of people on site. Where raids were taking place was

the these kind of excessive use of force. It is right to say that

people that you speak to believe the SAS were engaged in that at times

during the operations in Afghanistan. What was going on?

There were a set of factors, they came to it late, the Royal Marines

rivals had dominated the theatre until 2009. There was pressure on

them to achieve results and they achieved them a certain way in Iraq

and it was pretty kinetic as they would say. There was also the

perception that the detention system was broken, and this is something we

have reported before on this programme, that people who were

being arrested, thousands, all but a small number were released

immediately and that led to an allegation from someone who ran the

detention centre, brought STUDIO: Broadcast we had in 2015.

I've spoke to people on the ground who said that

whenever they found out what was happening to detainees it

In preference they would rather shoot them on the ground,

to save the taxpayer money and to save soldiers being killed.

That is a pretty extraordinary claim. That was two years ago. The

Sunday Times had their report yesterday. What do we know about the

investigation? The first thing we have to say, between a belief or a

conviction or a hearsay, we have got to consider his comments in that

context, and a criminal context that can be sent to the prosecution

services authority, by the military police, that is a different thing,

and there are the rights of those accused. What we have seen in this

operation, a team of 100 people, out of hundreds of cases involving all

of the forces, not just the SAS, they have come down to less than ten

where they still feel there could be a prosecutable case. All sorts of

reasons for that, but not least, if you want to find out what happened

3-4 years ago in a remote village in Helmand province, the likelihood

that is now under Taliban control and it will be very hard to access

people who could give you accurate eyewitness testimony and they are

all sorts of difficulties here. And that has led some to conclude that

things are maybe being hurried along or it is being hushed up, but the

MOD would say no, we have got to do this properly and the evidence has

not been there for prosecutions up to date. Mark, thanks.

Before we came on air I spoke to Johnny Mercer,

the Conservative MP who before entering Parliament was Captain

in the Royal Artillery and served in Afghanistan.

I asked him if it was the first time he had ever heard of such

allegations. During my time of doing that sort

of work in 2008, 2009, I never saw any of this

kind of behaviour. Heard reports of it

or talk of it or gossip? There is always talk of stories

going round in theatre. There is always Chinese whispers,

there are always stories that get And we have to be very

clear on the difference between those and unlawful acts

that have happened. If unlawful acts are found to have

happen, then clearly we will deal with those

in the appropriate process. You were very active in the campaign

against vexatious claims in relation to allegations against British

troops in Iraq. When you look at what the stories

are from Afghanistan, do you think these are very

different to the situation in Iraq? The work I did around

closing down the Iraq historical allegations team,

it was something where at the end of that process the system

was being completely abused and persecuting soldiers

for incidents which had never I think, whichever workforce you're

in, if people come forward with allegations of wrongdoing

or unlawful conduct, The values and standards that

certainly when I was serving and I know still exist

within the British Army are not compatible with what was in that

Sunday Times article. How would you describe

the allegations as you have read them and tried to make

sense of them? These terms, rogue units

and so on, sound great Whether or not individuals have

broken the law whilst they're conducting operations on behalf

of this nation. I think when we start using these

terms that perhaps aren't as clear and we are looking to, in a way,

sensationalise what has gone on. Let's remember these

are allegations at the moment. I know the army and the MoD

has the ability to hold But there are people who are saying

these investigations are being closed down before

they have really had You're confident there is no

cover-up, basically? It sounds like you're

confident about that. I'm confident that the individuals

who are served with, who I know are still serving,

the chain of command in the military, the military side

of the MoD, would not accept any And where there is evidence and that

evidence is critically important, where there is evidence

they will drill down on that I'm content that they

would not cover this up. I don't know anybody who's serving

who thinks that unlawful behaviour on operations is acceptable in any

way whatsoever, regardless of cap If you read, for example,

the comments under the Sunday Times report, many of the commenters say

these guys are trying to protect us, this is guerrilla war,

it's completely different to the wars of the First World War,

the Second World War, and we need to hold these things

to a different standard. Are they right to take

that view or not? I fought in that conflict

and I don't know anybody who fought in that conflict who did

the operations we did who believes there is ever a reason

to conduct unlawful behaviour. We try and give ourselves

some legitimacy, some credibility, when we are trying

to stabilise these countries. That's what separates

us from the enemy. You cannot go around behaving

in this manner and expect to win a counterinsurgency operation

where you have to bring the population onside and ultimately

it is their country and the solutions are all Afghan

or Iraq solutions depending So, no, there aren't people

in the military who think this is a terribly dirty war

and we behave like everybody else. We are a professional army

and there are things that set us This is one of them

and we adhere to it. It takes quite a lot to force

Donald Trump off the news agenda but what with the general election

and its inconclusive result, multiple terror attacks

and the Grenfell fire, even the headline-grabbing President

has been taking a lower profile, That changed yesterday

when he tweeted a video of him attacking a man with the CNN logo

where his head was. This had been doctored

from an appearance on a wrestling This raised accusations

that he was inciting violence against the mainstream media that,

he asserts, has been So, for anyone not paying close

attention, here's a brief catch up on what the President has been up

to in recent weeks. Oh my God, what's going to happen!

I'm fine. My family brought me up really tough, this is nothing, but

for me personally what I'm concerned about is to what this once again

reveals about the President of the United States. We're OK. The

country's not. So we're going to talk and Sewell we

can do, we're getting very close, but for the country we have to have

it up and running again -- and see what we can do. What we have seen is

the hiring of a number of people to support the investigation, most of

them quite well respected law enforcement officials from prior

administrations. And there have been some leaks about the direction of

the probe and what it is focusing on but we don't know where it is going

to end up, but it appears to be underway in very serious way.

He tweeted about this over the weekend, saying may the fake news

media will focus on the success we are having, but we have covered the

story is about what is happening, positive and negative, during his

presidency, but if you wanted us to stop writing about his outrageous

tweets, he could stop issuing them, but if there's anything he better

than anyone should realise is that he does have the ability to set the

agenda. Joining me now in the studio

is Jonathan Freedland, author and journalist,

and from Los Angeles, Charlotte Laws, Trump supporter

and political analyst. Charlotte, many people have said he

was inciting violence. With this last tweet, what do you say to that?

I said that is false. It was basically a joke. It was humorous,

like the three Stooges or a cartoon. He was basically trying to say he

was victorious over CNN, that they had three journalists who had to

resign because of a fake news story and so that was what he was trying

to say. Many of his supporters like that, and I would like him to be

more presidential, but many of his supporters were excited about the

fact that he was being authentic and the usual Trump and that he was

speaking directly to them through social media and there are things

that people liked about it and he got 400,000 likes on that one tweet.

Jonathan, on that specific one, do you accept it was a pantomime

violence rather than incitement? It is not the worst thing that he has

done, when he called the press the enemies of the people, that was much

worse, which had an authoritarian Echo. But journalists criticising

him have been on the end of death threats and five and threats from

social media. Some of the Trump supporters have praised him.

Journalists have shown their timeline full of threats and death

threats. Charlotte, you said you would like him to be more

presidential, but has he not cause an American political discourse

significantly? -- coarsened. Is this a problem. You get people who

respond to this in a very violent and problematic way in this debases

it for everybody? I do think the violence has stemmed from him,

rather just the divisiveness of the whole campaign. The media has waged

a campaign against him which continues on a daily basis and I

think that riles up people on the left. And on the right. Are they not

allowed to wage a campaign against in the right wing media wages

campaign against the likes of the Clintons and Obama. It is the

buyers, that is what it really is. Fake news, there are three types of

fake news, biased news, erroneous news where there are errors and

there are things like the onion which is completely fake. It is the

first two which are a problem. The biased news is pervasive on the left

and right and it is very difficult as a consumer to even know who you

can trust. That has become a big issue. You are not just saying that

is the anti-trump media, that is a problem for everybody? It has become

more of a problem with anti-Trump media because most of the media is

against him, unfortunately. Jonathan, you work for The Guardian

newspaper and you have written a book, it is about an in trading plot

-- intriguing plot, a demigod president has taken over the United

States. I would stress it is a novel and no

president is named. If it was written by someone from the National

Rifle Association and Hillary Clinton was president, would we not

be saying that is violence and it was debating? It was written by a

political activist and it was a novel and a thriller, it would be

like saying, you cannot write that Day Of The Jackal because you would

incite people to kill the French president. It is a different

situation. How do you think liberal establishment society, people like

you, how should they respond to the Donald Trump tweets? One argument is

ignore them. We are assessing over every week and another silly tweets

and we are talking about that and not American health care and the

budget and all the other things. You cannot do that. The speech of a

president is the act of a president. I remember somebody wanting to

restore dignity to the White House because they thought the other

president had defined it somehow. But Donald Trump attacks women for

their appearance, he has this weird obsession about women and blood and

you cannot say the president of the United States should be ignored. He

himself says these tweets are acts of the president and you have to

report them. Sometimes they are fat and you have to report the fact that

Bob Moller's investigation is widely known to include all kinds of things

and you have to report that. We are all talking about the tweets and not

the stuff he is doing. That would be great if under the radar he was

doing a lot of stuff, but what do you feel he has achieved? He has

done a lot under the radar because they say he has signed more bills

than any president since Truman. We have more jobs in the United States,

he has done a lot with regards to immigration. We have two exciting

bills before the Senate, Kate Law and another one regarding citizens.

He has done a lot for veterans. Veterans can go to any hospital

provider. I thought that the divorce was a good pick because we will go

towards choice hopefully. He has done quite a bit. But many in the

media do not report that. They obsess over the tweets. There is a

double standard. If the NRA were to do some kind of book or a play about

killing a woman president, if it was Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama if

it was a black president, everybody would be outraged about that. There

is a double standard out there and it has become politically correct to

attack Trump. The Trump record is disastrous by his own standards. He

set out to build a wall, and to repeal Obamacare, he has not

achieved things and it has been a disastrous presidency already. Thank

He is one of the greatest rock 'n' roll hitmakers

Veteran British producer Clive Langer is the man behind

a string of chart-toppers by stars including David Bowie, Madness,

Morrisey, Elvis Costello, Dexy's Midnight Runners

When you hear a record with "that English pop thing",

as Langer calls it, chances are he was responsible.

Now though, Langer's decided to put his mixing desk in mothballs

and return to his first love - writing and performing.

As he works on a new project - the Clang Group - he talked

to our Culture Correspondent Stephen Smith.

In a studio in south London, alumni of Clive Langer's influential art

school band Deaf School are working on new material.

# No change, no change # No change, no change

Langer hasn't performed much for the past 25 years.

Since stumbling into producing almost by accident,

I was the guy that would hang around at the control room

while everybody was doing their work on an album.

Madness were in, they were in a band called the North London Invaders.

I went to a rehearsal, I heard "My Girl".

# My girl's mad at me # We argued just the other night #.

When I went into producing this record with Madness on a track in a

studio called Pathway, I had some idea of what I was doing.

# Why can't she see # She's lovely to me.

We worked with bands, normally in a live situation,

recording what they sounded like and then making the most of that.

In a kind of sensitive way, hopefully.

Together with producing partner Alan Winstanley,

Langer enjoyed a string of hits with Dexy's Midnight

If you hear a record with that English pop thing,

as Langer calls it, it's probably one of his.

So I wrote this tune and I wanted Robert Wyatt to

I played it to Elvis at a party, at Nick Lowe's party, and I

Yeah, he then wrote the lyric for it.

# It was just a rumour that was spread around town

At some point I thought all the a and our people were giving us the

slightly complex characters as opposed to the pop groups so we

spent a year and a half working with Morrisey and it was a great

experience. They only had a small record

company, but we had the extra half percent, expecting them to sell

20,000, and the next thing I know it was 6 million in America. So I paid

my mortgages. Very nice. Steve Smith. And that is it for

tonight. We leave you with the news that

Bank of England staff are to go on strike at the end

of the month. Proving irony isn't dead,

the dispute is about "below Less amusingly, one

of the departments going Let's hope no one remembers

what her Majesty keeps in the bank's There is warmer weather on the way

for England and Wales this week, but wetter weather for Northern Ireland

and southern Scotland and parts of northern England. Sun north of that

and size of that. The rain will ease a bit later in the afternoon in

Northern Ireland, northern Scotland stays mainly dry, but there will be

the odd shower around. For the Central Belt and southern Scotland

and northern counties of England it will be a wet and cool day. From

Manchester to Sheffield it will be a bit warmer compared with the rainy

zone. South of that and in England and Wales the sun will be reluctant

in the morning, but it will break in the afternoon like it did today and

it will feel a bit warmer, more places getting 20 or just above. As

we look further into the week for Wednesday the northern half of the

country will fare a little bit better. Southern parts are getting

warmer, certainly hot on Wednesday and the humidity will be heading up

as well. By Wednesday there is just an area of cloud in the rainy zone.

Northern Scotland still seeing