30/01/2018 Newsnight

Until now, the BBC has been offering

helpful lessons in how not to handle

the issue of gender pay..

Today, it tried to offer some

lessons on how to get it right..

After months of terrible

publicity, it's preparing

a thorough pay overhaul.

But still claiming there's no

systematic gender bias.

Can that really be true?

We'll ask the head of BBC news how

can that really be true.

Do you have a wood burning stove?

Enjoy coming home to a real fire?

Prepare to become a social pariah..

Michael Gove says they're

seriously polluting our air.

We'll debate the latest government

thoughts on restricting

the burning of wood and coal.

And this...

the story of the sinking

of the Empress of Britain.

I never knew the name of the chap

who saved me until I bought a book

and suddenly there was a section

where it became very emotional.

Because I realised it was writing

about me.

Hello there.

After three uncomfortable weeks

in which it has had little to say

in answer to critics of its unequal

pay structure, the BBC came back

with its own analysis today.

With other companies being forced

to address THEIR pay gaps this year,

the BBC's defence may turn out to be

a template for the arguments

playing out elsewhere.

It was compiled by the accountants

PwC and you could summarise it as -

"there is no problem,

but yes, we are going to solve it".

On the "no problem" side,

it looks at the pay of news

presenters and on-air journalists

and finds that gender is not

an issue - even though women

are paid less on average.

It's mostly down to the fact

that the women have on average,

arrived more recently, it suggests.

More men were taken on in days

when media pay rates

were more generous.

But the report also says,

a problem needs solving:

that the pay at the top level

is a mess, and needs

to be more structured.

Our business editor,

Helen Thomas reports.

Public pay packets for high earners,

the gender pay gap and now on-air

talent. Questions of pay, fairness

and equality has certainly knocked

the BBC off balance. The report

today by PWC looked at 824

presenters, editors and

correspondence who appear on screen.

The gender pay gap between the

median of women salaries and men's

was 6.8%, that is lower than the

9.3% for the BBC overall and the

national gap of 18.4%. But in 656

lower profile roles, the gap was

12.6%. And for the highest profile,

the report found the range of pay

was much too wide with more men at

the top than women. But the BBC is

trying to address two quite separate

issues, the first is the gender pay

gap. Every company with more than

250 employees must now publish

various measures of the gap between

the average of men's pay and

women's. That gap can sometimes be

partially explained by skills,

seniority or by type of work.

EasyJet posted a 45% gap because

most of its highly paid pilots are

men and most of its cabin crew are

women. But the BBC is grappling with

another issue, equal pay. That is

the allegation that men and women

have not been paid equally for doing

jobs that are essentially the same

or for work that are of an equal

value to the organisation.

It is not

an audit of equal pay across the

BBC, it is a particular sort of

report that the BBC has ordered and

without being cynical, it seems to

be the report that the BBC wanted. I

hope that other employers and

employees are looking at all of

theirs, I am sure they are bored

with the shenanigans that the BBC,

but the central thrust of what we

are about is about telling other

people that if it has happened to

us, it is almost certainly happening

to you or another woman that you

care about.

PWC said they had found

no evidence of gender bias in paid

decision-making but it criticised a

lack of structure in setting pay and

a lack of consistency and

transparency. Today the BBC pledged

to address that with the new paved

framework, more information on pay

and a faster push towards equal

representation of men and women on

air. These may be TV presenters with

6-figure salaries but discrimination

lawyers say that the issues raised

are the same as another equal pay

cases.

The principle is the

principal and reminds me of the

cases I did local authority bonuses

for manual workers and the women who

were not getting the bonuses and

whether or not the bonuses were

representing productivity. In the

past, they might well have been

productive, but in the time that we

were doing the cases, it had become

basic pay, they were coming up with

the usual pay packet and that is the

analogy here, there may well have

been a time when this extra pay was

merited, but that was then and this

is now and they should have

therefore change the page.

The most

eye-catching part of the BBC

response so far has been pay cuts,

for high-profile men, but that some

say is a debatable approach.

It is basically telling the women

that if they raise an equal pay

case, they are going to punish the

men as a result. It is a deterrent

to women pursuing cases and it makes

them the villains, rather than

actually being the victims. In the

US, it is common to have clauses

that ban pay cuts, so if an employer

discovers that a woman is being

underpaid, they must raise the pay

of women and not cut the pay of men.

Carrie Gracie has accused the BBC of

illegal pay discrimination and

tomorrow she will give evidence in

Parliament. The BBC's balancing act

is not set to get any easier.

Fran Unsworth is the

BBC's head of news.

She's been in the job

a month, but was deputy

for sometime before that.

I spoke to her this evening -

does she really believe that when it

comes to pay in news,

gender is not an issue?

I don't think that's quite

what the report says.

The report says that what the PWC

has done is that there is no

systemic gender bias in the way that

pay has been set.

That does not mean to say

that there aren't differences

in men and women's pay.

What the report is saying

there is that gender has not been

the basis of the decision making,

that people have used when they have

set somebody's salary.

Isn't the real reason that

you do not want to admit that

gender has been an issue,

a specific issue, is that it gets

you into legal problems and you then

have to start paying back pay

for six years for anyone who can

show that they are a victim of it?

That's just too expensive

for the BBC to contemplate

without having nightmares.

I think that what the report

is saying, it might

apply in some cases.

That there is an equal pay issue.

But there is no systemic issue.

Can you imagine, six years

of back pay, in most cases

where there is a gender issue?

If we have broken the law

in an individual case,

then we will have to

address that, yes.

I think that part of the reason,

though, that there was this

discrepancy, because the gender pay

gap is not the same as equal pay.

That is two people in the same job

earning very different amounts.

And some of the reasons why two

people in the same job may be

earning different amounts of money,

the law says you have to justify it,

so there might be justifiable

reasons why two people in the same

job are on different salaries,

but those criteria will be around

how long has the person been doing

it, what is their profile

with the audience, does the audience

tune in to the programme

because of that person?

In which case, there is not an equal

pay claim under the law,

but of course those are things that

have to be justified

and they might be open

to debate as well, of course.

The BBC argument has been,

the BBC has been proportionally

The BBC argument has been,

the BBC has been disproportionally

employing men in the era when money

was a little bit looser and then

diversity came along,

the BBC made a big effort on that,

just at that time when austerity

was beginning to bite

and the money was much tighter.

Would you acknowledge

there was systemic gender bias

in the period say more than 5 years

ago, when the BBC was

recruiting more men,

or a disproportionate

number of them.

Quite possibly, although there might

have been a smaller pool of women

from whom to choose.

For all sorts of social reasons.

And that is something that we have

to address going forward.

The Carrie Gracie case,

she has been at the BBC 30 years,

Jeremy Bowen has been at the BBC

for 30 years, pretty

different salaries,

I wonder whether you think,

as you look at the salaries,

as you have gazed and eyeballed

at them like everybody else did

when many were published last year,

did you not think, that looks

strange, that looks a bit weird?

Yes, we did.

We very much did, yes.

These salary issues were a matter

of individual negotiations up

to a point, it was sort

of within a framework.

They were confidential matters

and we were not setting them vis

a vis other people in quite the way

that we should have done

and disclosure, I think,

has thrown a very uncomfortable

light on that which

needs to be addressed.

You had access to that data

the rest of the world did,

so the rest of the world saw it last

July and went, that

looks a bit weird!

You could have said

that at any time!

You could have just looked at it

and said, that looks a bit strange,

you were strangely not curious,

I suppose in not having

raised this before.

I think it is around

really not having a proper

framework in which to do it

and that is what this report

introduces now which says,

if you work on this type

of programme, this is the type

of salary that you can expect to be

paid within a range,

recognising those factors.

That is what we did not do before.

That is why, I think a lot of women

are quite reasonably saying,

this was not transparent.

Strangely, you did not even do it

knowing that they were going to be

published last July,

you had a year's warning

that they would be published.

I think there was...

Did you not even eyeball them

and say before the publication,

we have got a problem looming here,

we as the bosses probably have

to sort this out and make sure

we have got something to say

to staff who are obviously going

to see anomalies all over the place.

Many of them seem to be

quite gender specific.

There was a bit of that,

but not enough and I would accept

the premise of your question,

that we should have been

on to this earlier.

The eyes of the country are very

much on the BBC and the pay

formation at the moment.

People will be interested if the BBC

finds a system which is not

replicated elsewhere.

which is replicated elsewhere.

If you have this BBC system

and you have a rate for a job,

I don't know, the presenter

of the Ten O'Clock News,

and you've got a range for that job

and then you want to employ someone

from outside who is on a higher

salary than in our

range, what do you do?

It is a really good question,

which we have thought of and I think

that we are taking the view

that we will have to stick

within the ranges, broadly,

but what has changed,

I do believe, is the market

for news presenters.

Now, the BBC has been discounted

anyway, according to the market,

but I think that we'll be continuing

with that process

and I think it does...

You will not employ someone higher

than that rate and if they don't

come in for the going salary...

I think there will be more of that,

yes, than there has been

in the past, because if we don't

apply that, that is how things do

get very out of line.

Do you see that over

the next five years,

the BBC saving money or spending

money on reforming this pay?

I don't know the answer to that,

to be honest, that is probably,

it might be that in the short term

they are spending, and in the long

term, it is saving.

We have not run the numbers on that,

we are still here and there

are approximately 200 more cases.

I do think, though, that this

will be a fairer, more transparent,

and more justifiable to both

the public and to our workforce,

and our way of paying people.

Fran Unsworth, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Last week, our diplomatic editor

Mark Urban ran a piece

on Saudi Arabia's richest

businessman, Waleed bin Talal.

He was - you'll remember -

incarcerated as part

of the anti-corruption drive

in the Kingdom.

In Mark's film, we heard

from someone who'd been

in video contact with him,

for the Saudis, and who said

he did not look well,

was a different man

and was twitching.

Well, things moved on fast

after Mark's piece.

Waleed Bin Talal was released over

the weekend, and just before that

even appeared in a video suggesting

he'd been well looked after.

I feel at home, no

problem at all here.

Everything is fine.

And all the rumours that appeared

on the BBC especially,

you saw that and it upset me a lot.

And it is all lies,

frankly speaking.

All lies.

You know, I have been

all the time here at this hotel

and everything has been fine.

And all these rumours

really upset me.

Because they went so far.

Which rumours in particular?

You know I read about them and saw

them on the BBC and others saying

Waleed was sent to some

other place, you know,

the main prison.

And that he had been tortured.

All lies, you know.

Here he is just two days

after his release...

Arriving at work to applause.

Is it a coincidence that

Prince Bin Talal was released soon

after we ran our item?

Maybe not - we've heard suggestions

that there was a link.

I'm joined now from Cairo

by Hugh Miles, a journalist

who specialises in the Middle East

and has done extensive research

into corruption in Saudi Arabia.

What do you think was going on last

week with the sequence of events?

I

think BBC Newsnight was instrumental

in getting points to one released. I

think the Saudis reacted to the

report, they were surprised and

shocked to see the Newsnight report.

I do not think they had any plans to

release him beforehand. And they

realised something had to be done

because otherwise this news report

was going to dominate the news cycle

and Davos was going on, the Saudis

keen to get investment. Mohammed bin

Salman planning a visit to the UK,

to the west and this Newsnight

report released on them because it

showed that Prince Waleed bin Talal,

one of the most high-profile of all

the detainees with all the

international connections, was being

abused in detention.

What did you

make of his protests that he had

been in fact quite well looked

after?

I do not think they are

credible at all. I think the BBC

Newsnight report last week got it

right, I think the Saudis pulled out

Waleed bin Talal to try to show and

convince the world that they're not

torturing detainees, not doing a big

shakedown and taking all the assets

of all the businessmen in the

kingdom. But I do not think Waleed

bin Talal, that his video was

credible for a number of reasons. It

was a performance, propaganda.

And

it is important to the Saudis to

show they're not mistreating

businesspeople because they want

investment in the country,

presumably?

They desperately want

investment, they need foreign

investment to make their vision of

success. If they do not get it it

will fail and the country will face

serious economic problems. So they

need to try and keep coming and this

parish has done a lot of damage to

their international reputation.

Ironically like some of the other

plans that have gone wrong, the

Yemen war, this has been quite

self-defeating, this purge. It has

badly damaged investor confidence in

Saudi Arabia and who would want to

put their money into such a system

is this that treats businessmen in

this way. So it is an attempt to try

to rectify the self-inflicted wound

that they have, that Mohammed bin

Soliman has done to the Saudi

economy.

How secure is Mohammed bin

Salman, you say he has made a number

of mistakes and locking up so many

princes in the Ritz-Carlton?

Where

does this leave him now? Well the

problem is the anti-corruption drive

is backfiring on multiple levels. As

with his other projects. It is not

going to get anywhere near as much

money as planned, it is difficult to

get back foreign assets put up and

the valuable assets are outside of

the kingdom and he has made little

progress getting hold of those.

There's one problem but the other is

that the Royal Family who should be

his allies, and helping him, have

now been eliminated and are all in

shock. And now Saudi Arabia is a

revenge culture and all the Royal

Family have been affected by what

has happened because they're all

intermarried and now they will want

revenge against Mohammed bin

Sandman. There is a history to this

in Saudi Arabia, King Faisal was

murdered by his cousin in revenge

killings. And we have already seen

signs of the Royal Family wanting to

take revenge. Mohammed bin Sandman

is good at locking them up, he did

that before the Ritz-Carlton, we

knew that there was a Saudi

programme to arrest Saudi dissidents

in the West for a couple of years

before this.

before this. A number of people have

been disappeared for a long time. So

he's trying to keep the Royal Family

down but they could strike back at

any time.

Another problem...

Really

briefly. He has undermined his

legitimacy, the Saudi government for

a long time has presented the Royal

Family as the the Troubles to the

country and this has been the

government message. And now the

Royal Family have been treated like

criminals, that is harmful to the

regime.

Thank you so much. And if

Waleed bin Talal would like to come

on the programme we would welcome

them at any time.

Most people go through sporadic

phases of respecting the House

of Lords, or hating it,

depending on whether it's last

important vote aligned

with their own opinion.

So be ready for a lot of discussion

about the constitutional role

of the Lords, now it has started

debating the EU Withdrawal bill.

Its Brexit discussions got

going today; lots of peers are down

to speak, and of course,

there are fears by some Brexiteers,

that the Lords could try simply

to delay or thwart the whole thing.

So - will they?

Our political editor Nick Watt

has been investigating

what the anti-Brexit peers

are up to.

It's a gilded palace whose grand

halls and corridors have echoed down

the ages to the footsteps

of monarchs and aristocrats

as they shaped our island story.

Now as the UK embarks

on a new journey, the Elysium Fields

of the House of Lords are serving

as the last redoubt of pro-Europeans

determined to challenge Brexit.

If you were to delve into the minds

of the 800 or so peers sitting

across the river in one

of the world's largest Parliamentary

chambers, you would find deep

misgivings about Brexit.

Most peers would say that

reversing Brexit is the last

thing on their minds.

But one told me privately, of course

I'm trying to obstruct Brexit.

It was just over a century ago that

peers ended up relinquishing

many of their powers after a seismic

battle with the elected

chamber over David Lloyd

George's People's Budget.

Today's peers have been warned that

if they overstep the mark on Brexit,

they could revive the people

versus peers battle.

One veteran would be delighted

if a challenge to the government

over Brexit led to the demise

of the House of Lords.

This place is a complete

anachronism.

You know, we send young

men and women abroad

to fight for democracy,

we haven't even got it

in our own country.

The House of Lords

as it presently is...

How do you become a Lord?

There's only two ways of doing it.

One is that you're a friend

of the Prime Minister and the other

is your great-grandmother slept

with a king.

I'm not entirely sure which of those

provides the better peers.

It is an anachronism.

We need an elected second chamber.

Though that is not the battle

we should be fighting at this stage.

So a more subtle game is being

mapped out in the House of Lords.

I understand that for the last few

months pro-European peers

from the four main groups,

the Conservatives, Labour,

Liberal Democrats and the nonparty

crossbenchers, have been talking

about how they can use the bill

to assert the overall authority

of Parliament and even to change

the nature of Brexit.

These pro-European peers hope

to amend the bill in four ways.

Firstly, challenge the use

of so-called Henry VIII clauses,

powers taken by ministers to put

thousands of EU regulations into UK

law without a full vote.

Second, to remove any

mention of the Brexit date

of the 29th of March 2019,

potentially turning the two-year

transition period into an extension

of the Article 50 negotiations.

Then to have a go at reintroducing

amendments, rejected by MPs,

to keep the UK in the single market

and the customs union.

But the highest hopes rest

on tightening a rebel amendment

passed in the House of Commons that

would give Parliament a meaningful

vote on the final stage,

whatever the outcome.

That would mean a vote

even if there is no deal.

One peer is so concerned

about the proposed transition phase

she hopes to see an extension

of the Article 50 negotiations.

If we have extended Article 50

rather than going into this

transition where we have left

with no way back, then

there would still be the option

of protecting the national interest

if it turns out that the

consequences of where we are heading

are far more dangerous and damaging

than people might

previously have realised.

Brexit-supporting MPs

believe unelected peers

should tread with care.

I would hope very much that

the wisdom that sits in the House

of Lords will know that fighting

the people's voice would not be

the way forward and that they should

not be thwarting the process of this

bill, but discussing it with them,

kicking around the issues as we have

done in the Commons,

raising those concerns and then

sending it back to the House

of Commons so that we can take it

through to Royal Assent.

The scene is set for

a very British showdown

in the riverside Royal Palace.

Peers are determined to carry

out their constitutional obligation

to revise legislation.

Even if that involves a fight.

The mood on the red benches

suggests peers will be

choosing their battles with care.

And Nick joins me now. It has been a

busy day on the Brexit front not

least because of the much discussed

speech in the opening day.

There

were high expectations of punchy

interventions this afternoon in the

House of Lords and so it proved when

Lord Bridges, a Brexit minister

until just before the general

election, stood up. This is what the

remain supporting pier had to say.

All that we hear day after day are

conflicting, confusing voices. If

this continues and ministers cannot

agree amongst themselves on the

future relationship the government

wants, how come this Prime Minister

possibly negotiate a clear, precise

terms of the future relationship

with the EU. My fear is we will get

meaningless waffle in a political

declaration in October. The

implementation period will not be a

bridge to a clear destination, it

will be a gangplank into thin air.

The significance of that

intervention, Lord Bridges are

saying publicly what many ministers

are saying privately that there is a

real potential danger to the UK

negotiating position because Theresa

May and the Cabinet have not yet

been able to pinpoint the precise

and exact nature of what they're

asking for, the future relationship

to be.

Well the other story today,

this leaked document on the economic

impact of leaving. All scenarios not

particularly good I suppose you

would say. And that has caused

problems.

So another insight into

the knees in government and that

spilled into the open after that

leak. Now the Brexit minister

earlier today in House of Commons

said to MPs that civil service

forecasts are as he said, always

wrong. But now this evening Doctor

Philip Lee, a Justice Minister, has

done a series of tweets in which he

has said you cannot just dismiss the

evidence and then look what he said

in his second tweet. He said if

these figures turn out to be

anywhere near correct there would be

serious questions over whether a

government could legitimately leave

the country along a path when the

evidence and the rational

consideration indicate would be

damaging. This shows the Prime

Minister's challenge. And he is a

minister in the government is a

neighbouring MP of Theresa May and

he has never before being an MP but

it is important to save the

government is saying the scenarios

being examined either known

scenarios and that report did not

model the government's preferred

option, of Opus book option. But of

course they have not outlined yet

what they want.

More than a million homes

in the UK use a wood

burning stove or real fire.

Sales are booming.

And we're not just talking

rural folks here, who may

not have natural gas.

We are talking city dwellers

who perhaps want to feel

a connection to a more rustic life.

One might even say it has become

something of an interior design fad.

But diesel cars were a fad too.

And stoves might be getting

that diesel stigma.

On the day that Britain was among

the EU countries to be reprimanded

for breaking clean air rules,

and on the day that London

hit its pollution limit

for the whole year -

at least on one measure -

the government opened a consultation

on the domestic burning

of solid fuels.

It worries that stoves are adding

to local air pollution.

The Mayor of London

is also concerned.

David Grossman has been

looking at the data.

Really not that long ago,

you could taste the air

in our cities, you could cough up

black globs of it.

That is, if it didn't

choke you to death.

If you looked at his x-ray,

you would see plenty...

Tens of thousands did die.

The days when massive structures

like this belched out black smoke

into our towns and cities

are fortunately long gone.

They were closed and

the air quality improved.

This one is now being

turned into luxury flats.

But the Environment Secretary has

identified another threat

to the air that we breathe.

On a much smaller scale.

People who burn wood

in their stoves and fireplaces.

This may come as something

of a surprise to lots of people,

and others, sat in front

of their fires this evening.

You might think burning

wood and coal at home

was a problem of the past,

a problem of the 1950s and 1960s.

But it is something that has

returned under the radar.

If you go into WH Smiths and pull

one of these home style

magazines off the shelves,

you will find pictures of people

in their lounges with wood burners.

And it is something

that has crept back in.

In the last five to ten years,

over 1.2 million wood stoves have

been sold in the UK.

And now somewhere between 30 and 40%

of the particle pollution

in our cities is coming from wood

burning at home.

A fire like this may

look and feel great.

But its impact may be much

bigger than many realise.

The permitted emissions

of particulates for the wood-burning

stove are actually six times greater

than for an HGV lorry.

Tell me what this is?

A poster about air pollution.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has

talked about banning stoves.

The government says it isn't

planning to do that,

making an enemy of so many voters

may not be politically prudent.

But what else could they do?

Ultimately what we need

from the government is a new clean

air plan which will bring down

emissions to safe levels

across a whole range of sources.

So covering wood-burning,

covering cars.

With regards to wood-burning

in particular, there are some simple

things that we can do.

So burning wet fuel,

burning wet wood or wet coal is much

more damaging than dry wood.

So we can restrict the sales

of wet wood to discourage

people from doing it.

And we need to do more to get

the information and advice out

there so people know

that they shouldn't

be burning wet wood.

And they should always try it out

first to protect their family's

health and their neighbours' health.

But it could be argued

that the problem has been caused

by too much green legislation rather

than not enough.

We were after all encouraged

into diesel cars because

they emitted less CO2.

And wood-burning became attractive

partly because green levies made

more conventional

fuel more expensive.

No one can blame taxpayers

or consumers for these things,

they're responding either

to government incentives or even

just government advice.

People try to trust the government

on these areas for good or ill.

Really the problem comes

in when the government

tells them one thing,

incentivising the wrong way,

often using taxpayers money.

And then changes its mind

when the evidence changes.

Which I suppose is good,

but then ends up lumping taxpayers

and consumers with the cost.

And always with unintended

consequences, always taxpayers

and consumers who end up bearing

the brunt of it.

The government has so far only

launched a consultation

and since they say they will not be

banning wood-burning

in hearths or stoves,

their options seem limited.

Beyond perhaps educating us to use

cleaner, drier fuel.

Here with me are journalist and wood

burning stove owner Harry Wallop

and the Green party's Caroline

Russell.

What is better about fire heat,

Harry, than radiator heat?

It is

obvious, the reason why a man has

been rubbing sticks together has

been because it is warming and

comforting and for any of us who

live in a house that was built

before the war, all our sitting

rooms, the focus point is the fire

and the horrid and for an urban

dweller, in these uncertain times, a

wood-burning stove is a little dash

of rural comfort.

It is trouble,

buying the wood, lighting the wood

with the kindling, it is not like

turning on a boiler.

I love chopping

wood, but I forage for it.

You have

an open fire, Caroline.

I do, but I

do not use it. Michael Gove wants

nothing more than first in the

discussing how much Harry likes to

drink his cocoa and put his slippers

on and sit in front of the fire.

Today we have had the main pollution

breach in Brixton, I met parents

down there who were telling me how

worried they are about the impact of

air pollution on the lives of their

children.

Can we really believe

these figures that fires are causing

40%...

Fires are making a

contribution, fires produce small

particles, tiny particles which are

so small when you breathe them in,

they get into your lungs and those

other particles that cause cancer,

cause cardiovascular problems and

really make the lives of people

miserable. If you're living with

COPD, this particle pollution makes

your life a misery.

They don't give

out the same pollution as diesel, it

is a specific set of particles.

Burning wood in London has been

illegal since 1956 with the clean

air act. It is clap back again...

Greenhouse gas emissions are low,

you're talking about gas given away

more carbon dioxide.

We are talking

about public health, we are talking

about particles that are causing

lung problems that are stunting lung

growth in children, causing cancer,

this is a public health situation.

The point is that the government has

been avoiding doing what it is meant

to be doing to clean up our air, if

they are meant to comply and they

have not.

I want to bring Harry back

in, you have heard the case against

Harry, so what do you think... This

is a middle-class thing, a lot of

people, no one in a tower block and

have a big fire, a wood-burning

stove, they cannot have a

wood-burning stove.

First of all, it

is not illegal. Mine is cleared by

DEFRA, so

DEFRA, so though the figures are

that a particular matter is caused

by burning wood in the home, we

think only a small percentage of

this comes from wood-burning stoves,

most are open fires that are legal.

Those are worst. I have spent the

day with a thermal monitor which

measures these dangerous particles

and it is true that a wood-burning

stove gives out more than often a

busy street in London. Wood-burning

stove is micrograms per what ever,

thank you very much, and a busy

street can be less, but you go onto

the tube in London, that is

alarmingly high. There are so many

worse threats to our health than a

wood-burning stove.

It is a nice

smell in a village, but that is the

same as the particles, when you

smell that. You will still be

breathing those in. Do you think

that the government should ban

these, that effectively the

middle-class hobby of having these

fires, just makes it hard to ban,

even though the logic says

different.

They should be focusing

on the big picture of public health

and transport, that is whether

absolute focus should be. In terms

of these would fires, yes, they are

absolutely a problem and they need

to deal with them and they need...

Ban them or not? Make sure that

anyone who has a wood-burning stove

has one that is compliant, even the

compliant ones are more polluting

than a diesel car. This is a health

issue for the people who are

enjoying the fires as well as for

the people who are breathing the

smoke outside in the street.

Thank

you both very much indeed.

It's that time of year when we start

planning our summer holidays -

or so the advertisers seem to think.

Undoubtedly many of you are

partial to a cruise.

A tour of the Med aboard a huge

floating hotel is all very well,

but for sheer style,

it can't compete with the golden

age of the ocean liner,

which is celebrated

in a new exhibition

at the V&A in London.

Of course, there was maritime

tragedy, too, not least

the passenger ships sent

to the bottom by German U-boats

in the Second World War.

But in that era, you could actually

sail from Britain to New York in

a breathless three-and-a-half days.

Who better to recall it,

than our Deck Quoits

Correspondent, Stephen Smith.

Going anywhere nice

for your holidays?

Long before squabbles over sunbeds,

this was the last word

in getting away from it all.

The ocean liner, racing in style

between here and North America,

was the acme of civilised travel.

The ocean liner shaped the modern

world in so many ways.

Transporting millions of people

to new lives but also becoming one

of the great sort of aspirational

leisure activities

of the 20th century.

For many people their first

experience of the sort of modern

world was often getting

aboard a minor.

world was often getting

aboard a liner.

The liner came to represent

this idea of the future.

You know, a future life but also

the most modern technology

that they had ever experienced.

A new exhibition at the V&A

celebrate the high watermark

of the line between the wars.

It recreates the grand staircase

of a seagoing ballroom and opulent

fittings from the salon

of the French liner Normandy.

The Normandy was one of the greatest

objects ever created, really,

the great French ship

launched in 1935.

I mean, she was a sort of floating

fragment of France, a great sort

of expression of statehood.

And she had some of the most

magnificent interiors anywhere.

She was at the time

equated with Versailles.

Here is a metaphor come to life.

A deck chair from the Titanic.

A reminder of the old truce,

worse things happen at sea.

I name this ship

Empress of Britain...

In her day the Empress of Britain

was the largest, fastest,

most luxurious ship on the run

from Britain to Canada.

She was requisitioned as a troop

carrier in the Second World War.

But struck by a German bomber

and then a torpedo in 1940.

Some 40 lives were lost.

78-year-old Neville Hart Ives

was an infant travelling

with his family on the ship.

One of the crew saw me in the arms

of my mother and realised

she would not be able to go down

the Jacob's ladder.

And so he got a blanket,

wrapped it around him and pushed me

in in a papoose style arrangement.

And went down the ladder.

And I never knew the name

of the chap who saved me.

Until roundabout 2000, thereabouts,

I bought a book on the Empress

of Britain and there came a section

were suddenly it became...

Very emotional.

Because I realised it

was writing about me.

The man who saved Neville has died

but he is now in touch

with his rescuer's family.

Did you feel, you know, somebody up

there is looking after me?

I did feel that.

I mean, for this man to have

taken me on board and did

what he did and put himself at risk,

I think that is tremendous.

Yeah.

The reign of the ocean

liner could not last.

Airliners took their crown.

That said, whoever saw long-haul

air passengers looking

as jolly as this lot?

That's it for today,

which all true republicans

I will be back tomorrow, until then,

good