23/10/2017 Newsnight

So-called Islamic State was driven from its own capital last week.

But hundreds of Brits had gone out to fight with them,

and so hundreds of Brits may now choose to return.

What sort of welcome should we offer them?

One minister talked of the need to kill them, some want

the British fighters kept out, some want them to be

We'll ask if we can distinguish between the dangerous

The great Airbnb debate - it's created a market in tourist

lets for spare rooms, but has it created a deregulated

So there are wards in Westminster where one in ten properties are

permanently in the short-let sector and that's not good.

This Labour MP has resigned a post on the Commons equalites committee

for stupid comments he made in his early 20s.

Should we forgive errors made 15 years ago?

Will anybody make it into public office if we don't?

And as Lady Trumpington says farewell to the Lords,

we ask her how she dealt with sexual harrassment in her day.

I think you curse them and it's quite possible to slap their face,

We don't know how many people have left Britain to fight

with so-called Islamic State over the last few years.

There is talk of 850 of whom half may have already come back,

That would leave hundreds still out there.

But if we don't really know how many, we can't know all their names.

And with Isis now pushed out of its own self-declared

capital city, Raqqa, we don't know where

the remaining ones are, or what they are currently

The only thing we do know is that we need some approach

One idea would be to ease them back into mainstream society.

But one government minister, Rory Stewart, said yesterday that

in most cases, they'll need to be killed.

He's clarified that he meant that they would fight

to the death, not that we should illegally assassinate them.

But Mr Stewart has prompted quite a debate.

Our diplomatic editor Mark Urban has been looking at it.

In the rubble of the self-proclaimed caliphate live the corpses

Some infamous figures like Sally Jones were reportedly

killed in the fight for Raqqa, but the fate of many is unknowable,

so in terms of the IS group, how many UK jihadists joined?

More than 800 tasted life in Syria and Iraq

with various groups, and many died, a feat

with various groups, and many died, a fate

which apparently the Government wishes would befall them all.

And we have to make sure that if they ever do return from Iraq

and Syria they do not pose a future threat to our national security,

but they have made their choice - they have chosen to fight

for an organisation that uses terror and the murder of civilians

How many are still with IS, that's very hard to know,

Figures compiled by the BBC suggest that of the 800 plus

who went out, at least 74 are believed to have died.

Around 400 are thought to have returned home,

with a few dozen of them convicted, but hundreds

The majority of the foreign fighters, and we will come to find

this out in the days ahead as we continue to work

through and clear Raqqa, but the majority of them, we

assess, were killed in the battle at Raqqa.

Raqqa, as an example, was a place where Isis could freely plot,

organise, resource, launch and export their terror.

They can't do that any more, and there are so few places now.

As a matter of fact, 95% of the territory that

Isis once held is now underneath partner controls.

Now the caliphate is almost extinguished,

There are many possible routes, from Turkey to Iran,

How likely are returnees to get back undetected?

I think that the UK agencies are probably going to be operating

on the presumption that they can't be confident, that they will do

their best but there can be no certainty that they are going

to identify and detain all those who might merit that.

There are difficult judgments for the security service.

Since some of them may have realised the folly of

their ways, and of course the summer's attacks in the UK didn't

involve anyone known to have been in Syria and Iraq -

It all adds to the complexity of the task facing MI5.

As well as those we are looking at today, risk can also come

from returnees from Syria and Iraq, and also the growing pool of over

20,000 individuals that we've looked at in the past,

MI5 has means of watching the returnees and grading

If you look at the individuals who went sort of early on, let's say

2011, 2012, the sort of first travellers out there, one could

argue, or one could believe the stories that they were going out

there very much to go and, you know, protect the Syrian people.

If you're going in 2015 to go join the Islamic

State, then you're joining a group that publicly has been decapitating

aid workers, that has been launching attacks in the West, that has

conducted all sorts of heinous activity, and so when you're looking

at an individual who has gone out then, you are clearly going to be

more concerned, than maybe someone who went a lot before.

Some of the IS fighters slipped away. They are hunted now but among

them, or the ones who have already returned, will long worried the

counterterrorist community. Richard Barrett is a former British

diplomat and intelligence officer, now a terrorism expert involved

in countering extremism. What is your guess as to what

proportion of the returnees comeback regretting having gone and what

proportion come back fired up with a mission to attack home? It is very

hard to assess. About half have come back, so about 400, maybe. That is

probably true in Denmark and Sweden. In other countries in the EU it is

more like 30%. But EU wide, there has been about 5000 people go and

therefore you have 1200 coming back, that is quite a lot of people to

deal with. He might think, even if only 1% of the dangers and field

with the ideology, if you like, what do you do? Do you lock all of them

up or can you tell the difference between the ones who come back ready

to just reintegrate into normal life? You have to make that

assessment. How do you make that assessment? You have to examine when

they went and why they went, because the date it is important. And why

they came back and when they came back, because that is also

important. If they came back about 2014 when the caliphate was

declared, you might say they were disillusioned and disagreed with

what was going on and made a mistake. But if they lasted until

the fall of Raqqa, they were obviously more committed to the

cause. But that doesn't give you the answer either because they may have

gone wanting to join the Islamic state, not necessarily to train to

come back as a domestic terrorist, they are two different things in my

view. But having been subject to the ideology, they may come back all

fired up, ready to do something stupid here. What do you think our

approach should be? The great thing about our country and the great

thing about terrorism is that we have this stick to our values and we

mustn't let terrorism undermined those values. Therefore, people who

comeback must be treated according to the rule of law. Must be treated

like any person suspected of criminal activity. There has to be a

criminal investigation and during that investigation, what do you do

with them? If you put them in prison, is it legal? But if they go

in, they might radicalise other people in prison. If you leave them

outside, and they do something, people will say, what the hell was

going on. The answer is going to be expensive, leaving them out and

watching what they are doing. I don't know how many officers it

takes to follow one person, but we are talking probably more than we

have got? It is enormously resource intensive. This is what all

governments in Europe understand and that is why there is little action

so far to address this problem of returnees, so hopefully they won't

come back. I was going to say, that is the hope. A lot of people are

saying it would be better if they have died out there, is that your

view? It isn't going to happen, some of them are going to come back, many

are back already. What will you do now? You can't escape the problem by

the hoping it doesn't care. I suppose you might call it social

work, which you intensively coach and look after them, nurture them to

a peaceful existence. Does it work, is that more expensive than

surveillance? It will work with some, but I don't think it will

change the mindset of people, but it will change their behaviour. It is

important to disengage them from violent activity and change their

views on how society should be. We all have our own view on how society

should be and it is only when we impact our fellow citizens with

violence, we make a problem. As a former senior intelligence person,

how useful are the ones who returned, comeback disillusioned, if

you like, are they ready to shop their mates, is it how that works?

Some may do that and that will be invaluable if they can point out the

people who were members of the Islamic state and people like Jihadi

John, we want to identify those people quickly because they have

committed serious crimes. You don't want them wondering about free.

Richard Barrett, thank you very much.

The Labour MP Jared O'Mara, who won his Sheffield Hallam back

in June by beating Nick Clegg in that very studenty seat,

has resigned his place on the Commons Equalities Committee

over some comments of his which surfaced today.

They'd been left on various internet forums.

Apologies for any offence, but I'll give you a taste of the remarks -

there was reference to having an orgy with the pop band

Girls Aloud, there were comments on fat women and he referred to gays

as fudge packers, and driving up the Marmite motorway.

As I say, he has apologised and resigned from the Equalties

Committee, but here's the thing - these comments were made 15 years

Should we really hold him to account now for those views?

Or should there be a statute of limitations on speech crimes,

trails of which are inevitably left all over the web?

It's a problem that the millennials might find cropping up

We have asked two political writers to talk this through with us. First

on Jarrod O'Mara himself, should he have resigned? Absolutely. No

question, he cannot be seen to be taking a qualities issue seriously

before he has really explained and thought through his previous

comments. He has apologised for them and they were 15, 13 years ago?

Parliament is supposed to hold our trust. It's not just the women and

equality is select committee, it isn't just a body to scrutinise

bills and talk about law, it represents the body of the British

people as we face up to what are very serious issues of

discrimination in the world today. It is impossible for us to have

faith in that committee while it holds people like Jarrod O'Mara, and

people like Philip Davies, the controversial Tory MP. We're not

here to discuss Philip Davie is. He's not here to defend himself. Do

you agree with it? I don't think he should lose the Labour whip and he

shouldn't stand down as an MP. But it's not just any select committee,

it is about women and equalities. I am sure we will come back to that in

a second, and he was in his early 20s when he made those comments. If

you are a child, you are an idiot, but at 22, 23, you are an adult.

Does this reflect his current personality and views towards

homosexuality or women? I don't think we have seen enough to prove

they don't. There is a question to answer about his views today based

on those comments back then? Until we see otherwise, yes. He's not

someone who is known for his great feminism. There are other

controversies over him. I don't fundamentally disagree, but Jess

Phillips, chair of the women's Parliamentary Labour Party said she

talked to him today and she does accept his apology and things he was

genuine. She is not known for being a tolerance of misogyny.

Tell me what the rules are. What age do we forgive, what age do you start

having to take response to the? If he was 17, we would probably forgive

his crimes, but 22, do be or not? What are the rules? Set them out

because this will come out time and time again. That is the thing. I'm

not entirely sure and that is why I think the Jared O'Mara story is

interesting and we will look back on it. We have not really had this

until now. These young people who grew up on the Internet, became

MPs... Have left their trail all over the place. Of course, and if

someone said some stupid things at 14-15, I would say that was clear,

unless it was quite extreme Nazi stuff, you know, it would have to be

really a torrent, and anything from sort of mid-20s on words I think is

clear-cut again, but early 20s, I think it is a bit weird,

case-by-case basis. Into just both of us as millennial writers who have

no problems putting ourselves over the Internet, and there are things

in our careers we may disagree about, and something to even be

embarrassed about, but as writers I would say that Marie and I both

explain our political journeys, we talk about the way in which we have

changed our minds and that is quite an important part of being a writer

in the public sphere, demonstrating that ability, and my answer to your

question, if MPs have embarrassing tales online, what they will have to

do in the future is right at the beginning, we are also in an age of

transparency, so embrace that, they need to 'fess up up, and that is

basically good PR advice, 'fess up before folks find it. If he had

said, I had written all this nonsense in the past, all this

rubbish, would that have made a difference? If it had not been

exposed... I think so, yes, but that being said I would argue that not

everyone our rage can remember everything they have posted before,

and I know that because I looked at my early Facebook account recently,

and was quite higher -- horrify. How can you confess when you don't

exactly know what you have posted... We are all delighted that AOL

Instant Messenger shut down this week! Your older viewers may not

realise this but we have a lot of memories of that, we millennial 's.

Talking about redemption for people who have gone out to fight with Isis

in Syria. Are we overblowing speech crimes in the great pantheon of our

career mistakes? I don't think so. What would that say to women and

LGBT people, that this person said this incredibly offensive stuff, not

just silly jokes that were on the line, but genuinely offensive stuff?

It would send such a message, I think, to say it is sort of fine. So

I think him resigning from the committee while remaining as MP and

apologising is kind of a decent way to do it. Speech crimes, the problem

is in the phrase they are, you said two words, and I think it was about

ten. A more open society would be one in which we accuse people less

often of speech crimes but we could also have intelligent debate about

changing our minds. Thank you very much indeed.

Of all the services the internet can provide, Airbnb is perhaps

In case you haven't encountered it, it is where people turn their spare

rooms into overnight accommodation for tourists.

The easy matchmaking between renters and rentees has

Not great for hotels, but for everybody else

Well, Airbnb has scaled up - from just being a simple way

for homeowners to earn a bit of pocket money, to also being

a platform for professionals to run money-making property portfolios -

and to do so outside the regulations facing hotels.

For some neighbours of Airbnb properties, the service

We'll debate its merits shortly, but first our technology editor,

David Grossman, looks at the Airbnb phenomenon.

Like the low-cost airlines before them, short-term letting apps

like Airbnb are making travel more affordable for people.

They get to stay in interesting places, and as the slogan says,

And if property owners can make a few quid too, who's complaining?

As we've seen from taxi apps like Uber, the sharing economy isn't

In terms of short-term letting apps like Airbnb,

the evidence is that it's starting to have a profound impact in some

local housing markets, and on the experience

Our research shows that it's primarily a London problem,

but it's very definitely a growing problem in other large cities,

with a tourist interest, so Manchester is seeing a lot

of growth, and in Glasgow and Edinburgh we're particularly

The London Borough of Westminster is particularly hard-hit,

with an estimated 5000 properties taken out of the traditional

It is taking homes away from people who might

otherwise be living there - on scale.

So there are wards in Westminster where one in ten properties

are permanently in the short-let sector, and that's not good.

To be clear, no one is saying that a property owner shouldn't be

able to let a room out, or go away on holiday

and let their flat-out - that's all absolutely fine.

It's the increasing professionalisation of this

This is what a real hotel looks like, regulated to have

minimal impact on locals, because - however welcome to a city

- short-term visitors don't make great neighbours.

It's been going on for couple of years now, and it has got

to the point recently where we've wanted to move away from it.

This neighbour of a busy short-term-let flat

in London doesn't want to be identified

because she is frightened of repercussions.

You don't know who's around you, you don't know that when you come

home at night you're going to get a good night's sleep.

It's just irritating when you're just dropping off,

to have a sudden reminder, oh, yeah, your neighbours

are Airbnb - they're back now, they're going to keep you awake.

Often, the first sign of a property moving over to short-term letting

is the appearance outside of these - key boxes.

Getting complete data from Airbnb is extremely hard,

but we've analysed the website to find out how many hosts let out

That may be an indication that they're operating as a business.

In London, we found 12,428 entire homes run by multi-listing hosts.

That's 37.5% of all entire Airbnb homes in the city.

London's top ten hosts ran a total of 1634 entire home

In Edinburgh we found 1794 entire homes run by multi-listing hosts.

That's a third of all Airbnb entire homes in the city.

Edinburgh's top ten hosts ran a total of 302 entire home

In Bristol, we found 226 entire homes run by multi-listing hosts.

That's 30% of all the entire Airbnb homes in the city.

Bristol's top ten hosts ran a total of 127 entire home

Unlike residential properties, mortgages on holiday lets qualify

for mortgage interest tax relief, and the returns can be two

or three times as big as conventional letting.

So much so that instead of buy to let, people are now setting up

hugely lucrative rent to let businesses.

It's increasingly common for landlords to rent property out,

and find that property is sublet, either with their consent -

although perhaps not with their entire understanding -

or entirely without their consent, in what you might choose to call

a sort of rent arbitrage, in that I pay you the market rent

from an ordinary let property on the family market.

If I then put it on Airbnb on the holiday let market,

for the same period of time, provided I can keep it full,

I will get more money from Airbnb and so I can guarantee to pay

you a set sum of money and make a profit on the difference.

It's possible to construct vast portfolios of property in this way,

creating virtual hotels complete with a check-in desk.

It's one of the most popular nightspots in the capital.

It's where groups of people come for a curry and a night out.

And it's also one of the hotspots for Airbnb -

there are lots of properties listed around here, many of them run

I've checked into one, or at least I've booked it.

I've been e-mailed some instructions of how I have to check in.

I have to go and pick up the keys from a shop which is,

When I got there, the shop - well, it didn't feel

More like just a guy sat behind a desk with a big ledger in front

of him with all the bookings for different places.

My name was on there, he checked my ID, he gave me

the keys, he gave me the instructions how to get there.

Floor's a bit creaky, but apart from that it

In fact, it says in the welcome folder that the entire building -

nine flats - are available from the same Airbnb hosts.

But whatever this place is, it clearly isn't somebody's home.

This place has been kitted out - the whole building has been

Looking for evidence of any wrongdoing is very tricky.

Since 2015 property owners in Greater London have been legally

allowed to short-term let somewhere for a maximum total of 90 days

It makes it virtually impossible for us or anyone else,

like the local authority, to prove what's going on.

The problem is that it's not actually an offence

to breach planning control, unless you're told to stop

breaching planning control, so they have to be caught and told

to stop, and then caught again breaching the being told

to stop and carrying on, so you have to catch people twice.

Although Airbnb has introduced restrictions on people letting out

somewhere in London for more than 90 days, it's a simple matter to list

on one of the many other short-term letting sites.

It's really difficult to track how these landlords

are using the different sites, and so we can't really judge

whether they are moving properties around across different platforms,

but we know anecdotally that this has been reported,

and so it's something that if we had this availability to share the data

across the platforms, and they worked together

with the GLA, this is something that we would be able to keep

Well, I think that the Government needs to accept that local

authorities have to have legal powers to act to ensure that

when people are letting short lets, that they notified.

when people are letting short lets, that they notify.

If you have a notification it makes it much more straightforward then

for a local authority to be able to monitor, make sure

that the law is being upheld - it doesn't stop people letting,

Other cities and countries are far further ahead in regulating

Airbnb declined our request for an interview, but said

they already go far further than any other platform

in making sure their listings comply with the law.

This may not be much comfort to those trapped

on the other side of the wall, or the floor, or the ceiling, from

I'm nervous that it's just going to turn into a strange hotel

situation, in all the blocks, without any regulation

Really, it feels like your block is changing?

I am concerned that as we see this go on, if nothing changes,

the block will just turn into a hotel.

Well, Airbnb have given us a statement.

"We are good partners to London and have

introduced automated hosting limits to help ensure home sharing is good

news for everyone, and that growth is responsible and sustainable.

We are pleased to lead our industry on this matter and urge policymakers

to ensure other platforms act responsibly in London,

It is not just a problem in London, though.

Joining us now in the studio are Roddy Campbell

from Shared Economy UK, the trade body for the UK's sharing

economy, and founder of the website Vrumi which allows householders

But in Liverpool we're joined by the Labour councillor

Laura, let's start with you. Short lets, what sort of problems do they

cause for your? Do you get a lot of complaints as a councillor? It is a

recent phenomenon in our city in Liverpool, certainly moving out of

the city into the more residential areas, but we have seen summers of

absolute mayhem, where residents have had to call the police, naked

men running down the street playing football, stag parties and so on

going on, and of course in a city with a lot of student residents

really do value that quieter time they used to get in the summer,

which is now filled with hen and stag parties completely without any

regulation. As Europe is just short, we would welcome home sharing that

is genuine, but this is undeclared businesses not paying tax -- as

Europe is just showed. But the tourists coming in, that kind of

behaviour, it could happen in a hotel. If they want to run out and

play football naked at night, isn't it the same thing? I wouldn't think

so because the hotels would be staffed and this is completely

unstaffed and unsupervised, and these are small terraced streets I

am talking about, not big country manners or something. Four bedroom

terraces with 20 people for the weekend, it creates mayhem for the

neighbours and other residents. Roddy Campbell, that is effectively

a lot of what is going on location. Businesses setting these up to defy

the regulations? I don't know how you make the leap,

London is my main area, that is where I operate my business in. Am I

allowed to set up a hotel in London where ever I want. They are hotels

about stuff? There are plenty of regulations for short-term lets. How

those are in force and whether they are enforced is another question.

Enforcement issue for you guys, you are the council, it is your job?

There are no regulations. We can't enforce anything, there are no

regulations. There are minimal regulations in London, but outside

of London we don't even have the 90 day restriction. We are asking home

sharing sites to share their data with local authorities so we can

regulate them and ensure minimum standards and have have a 90 day

cap. Sharing the data so nobody can run their business for more than 90

days and a 90 day national limit would sort out the professionals?

There is a lot of laws on data protection and data sharing. But we

can pass a law on that? If they pass a law on that then yes. We can't

enforce the rules at the moment because somebody could put 90 days

on one site, and 90 days on another. In London, that is illegal and they

can be prosecuted for that and after they have been warned by the local

authority, they can be fined for that. But the point is, we have to

make it easier for the authorities to levy the fine against the rule

breakers because they have to be able to catch the rule breakers to

levy the fine. It is difficult for them to watch a property for 180

days or 91 days. Can I ask about the scale of this? When people are

talking about rogue minicab company is, if there are two rogue drivers

in the fleet who are not getting their tax and insurance done, it is

not a problem. But if there is a thousand, then it is a problem. The

numbers went through very fast on your tape, there are 226 properties

your tape, there are 226 property job people identified as

multi-property operators in Bristol and it was 1600 in London out of 3.3

million households. The idea this is a massive business... The buy to let

businesses big. Private renting is a huge business and the short term

rental is a sliver of that business. Let me put that to Laura. The

numbers are relative to the size of Liverpool or London and we talking

about a small industry? Absolutely, but it is growing very fast and the

complaints are growing fast. We don't know where they are, we have

landlord licensing in Liverpool and we work hard to get that across the

city so we can regulate the private rented city. -- sector. This is

coming in below the radar, should these people be paying council tax,

or business tax? We don't know where they are until we get the complaints

in and then it is too late. Airbnb said we want to see everybody's

income and then we can regulate the industry better. As a trade

Representative Association would you support that? I am speaking as the

owner and founder of a business roughly similar to Airbnb. I know

hate Chim RC and the Treasury have had conversations about what can and

can't be done and what is right, and being on the board, Airbnb have had

endless meetings with Treasury and HMRC about what can and can't be

done. In the end they are a platform, like me having my make-up

done by your very nice make-up man. He takes in travelling actors

through his website. I am sure he pays his tax, declares it. Would he

expect travelling actors to reveal his income to the taxman? Probably

not. Local authorities are picking up the cost of this. We could run

this a bit longer because it raises a lot of issues, but we have got to

leave it there. People love to complain

about politicians, but you won't hear much grumbling

about Baroness Trumpington. She's a Tory member of the House

of Lords, appointed back in 1980 During a career as a minister

and a peer, Trumpington has been independent of thought and has

always been one to She has also been mischievous,

for example, she famously directed a V-sign at Lord King,

when he remarked upon her age Her life chronicles much

of the history of the 20th century. She once worked for David

Lloyd George on his farm. She is the sort of person

for whom the words national But today, her 95th birthday,

she is stepping down from the Lords. They have been marking the end

of her era with a party this evening, here is a picture

of her celebrating with Prime Minister John Major

and the Lords Speaker. I sat down with her on Friday,

to talk about her life I began by asking her

whether life is better now Well, better for those

who have money. I think it's amazing the way people

climbed out of the mud Well, I can think of

Betty Boothroyd, for instance. She was a great success and she had

to fight to begin with. Another big woman in your life

was Margaret Thatcher of course? And you still think

of her with affection because you often argued with her,

I think? But that was my value

to her and she realised But if I didn't agree

with her about something, I said so. It gave her a chance to know what

the opposition might say to her. Important in politics not

to have all the yes men What about the issue

of women in politics? Because a lot has changed

in your lifetime. And a lot has changed since you were

in the Lords, which was 1980. How should women deal

with men who are interested Because it is a big issue today,

a lot of women are very angry about it, how should women react,

slap them in the face go I think you curse them and it's

quite possible to slap their face. One of the big changes

between men and women between your young life and now is,

men just used to grope women Because women have

learned to fight back. Really, women used to be

terrified of making a fuss. If the man deserves it, he deserves

to have a public fuss made of him. Just tell me about David Lloyd

George, because he was one What about this thing

with him measuring you up? You are a young girl working

on his estate and he's taking a physical interest

in you, correct? Anyway, I was much too frightened

and shy at that time to object. Of course, you worked at Bletchley

in the Second World War as part When Churchill visited us he said,

you are the birds that laid the golden eggs,

but never cackled. And that was the important thing,

was that we never talks. Tell me about this episode

in the House of lords, this is one you were very famous

for, which was Lord King, made some reference to your age

and you did the V-sign at him? And then the survivors

of World War II started to look pretty old as well,

as my noble friend, the baroness reminded me,

I believe claiming to be Now on some stories, you weren't

really making every sign, Now on some stories,

you weren't really making a V-sign but on other accounts,

you knew very well, you knew I did know, because I thought

he was insufferable. Trumpington, we associate anything

with Trump with the president How extraordinary the Americans

are to have let him get away... Well I won't say what

I was going to say. Can I ask what you are going to miss

most as you leave the lords and say farewell on that long period

in your life? I will have permission to sit

on the steps of the throne and I will be able to eat meals

there, but I won't be a member You will miss them and I'm

sure they will miss you. Baroness Trumpington,

thank you so much. And that is all we have time for. I

will be back tomorrow but until then, good night.

Good evening. One thing we won't be in