16/02/2018 Newsnight

Tonight, the government has

announced that Oxfam will not bid

for any new funding from DifD

until it is satisfied

that the charity meets

high ethical standards.

So has the relationship

between the government and aid

charities been too

close and too casual?

And can Oxfam ever recover?

It was the long shadow

over the US election.

Now a grand jury indicts

13 Russian nationals

for interfering in the campaign,

and it's clear the allegation

is they gunned for Hillary Clinton

before the vote, and since then

they've been sowing discord

about the Trump presdiency.

The defendants allegedly

conducted what they called

information warfare

against the United States,

with the stated goal of spreading

distrust towards the candidates

and the political

system in general.

What if the government gave everyone

£10,000 a year instead of state

benefits and tax reliefs?

Thomas Paine's age old idea

of a citizen's dividend is back.

The former Labour leader Ed Miliband

is flirting with the idea

of a basic universal income.

"The Russians made a sinister

and systematic attack

on our political system," said

the Republican speaker

of the House of Representatives,

following the charges

against 13 Russian nationals

and three Russian companies.

One of those charged,

Yevgeny Prigozhin, is said to be

nicknamed Putin's chef,

a reference to his closeness

to the Russian president.

However, a Russian Foreign Ministry

spokeswoman called the allegations

of interference in the US

elections, "absurd".

What is clear from the indictment

is that the alleged interference,

which involved hundreds of people

in a spider's web of online

activity going back for years,

was not only designed to damage

Hilary Clinton's

presidential campaign,

but it didn't stop after Donald

Trump reached the White House -

his presidency became the target.

A little earlier this evening,

this is what the US deputy

Attorney General had to say.

On September 13, 2017,

soon after the news media reported

that the special counsel's office

was investigating evidence that

Russian operatives had used social

media to interfere with

the 2016 election, one defendant

allegedly wrote, "We had a

slight crisis here at work.

The FBI have posted our activity.

The FBI have busted our activity.

So I got preoccupied

with covering tracks,

together with my colleagues."

And Trump tweeted tonight

that Russia started

the anti-US campaign long before

he announced he would

run for president.

He said:

"Russia started

their anti-US campaign in 2014,

long before I announced that

I would run for President.

The results of the election

were not impacted.

The Trump campaign did nothing

wrong - no collusion!"

I'm now joined down the line

from Washington by Niall Stanage,

White House columnist at The Hill.

And Anne Applebaum, Washington Post

columnist and Professor at the LSE

Institute of Global Affairs.

Good evening. The level of detail in

the indictment is quite

extraordinary.

It is, absolutely,

Kirsty, that is the big takeaway

from this. Some of the allegations

are not that surprising given what

is in the ether. But it is as if the

prosecutors have been building a

jigsaw puzzle and have suddenly

whipped away a cover to show just

how much they know. In that sense it

is very dramatic and a very big

story.

On page 23 of the indictment

it talks about November the 12th in

2016, at the same time defendants

and their co-conspirators organise a

rally in New York called Trump is

not my president. They held a rally

in Charlotte, North Carolina against

Trump. So they were putting together

rally ideas and posters and the

unwitting American public was

following along.

Yes, as they were

doing that by fictional social media

accounts. The overall effort here is

clearly to increase discord, to sow

dissent among the American people,

and to use hot button social issues

to do so.

What about the involvement

of a particular character, allegedly

called Putin's chef?

I am not an

expert on the Russian side of this,

but clearly somebody who is that

much intimately connected with the

Russian president is a problem

because it typifies that this is a

Russian lead and directed operation.

It seems clear this is not some

freelancing effort, given the number

of people involved and the amount of

money involved, $1.5 million a month

at one stage.

I want your reaction

to these indictments tonight.

I

think the indictments are an

extraordinary insight into how the

Russians think, how they think about

disinformation, US elections, and it

should offer us some really useful

background for how they think in

other countries and how they act in

other elections because we know they

do that as well. One of the

extraordinary thing is watching the

US election campaign was the way in

which Russian messaging and

which Russian messaging and tramp

messages were acting hand. Hashed

out and narratives that started in

sputnik and on TV would appear out

of the President's mouth a few days

later. We never knew what the

connection was. We do not know what

tied them together, but we see the

Russians were studying the US very

closely and were looking for

explosive, divisive issues and they

were acting in concert with the

Trump campaign.

And the unwitting

collusion of the American people in

this as well, the way they organised

it, that is their modus operandi

anyway, but I wonder how it fits

into the overall picture about

possible Russian interference. Given

that it is still going on, does that

in itself as per Donald Trump's

tweaked let him off the hook?

No, I

do not think he is let off the hook

at all. It is true the report says

there is no evidence any of the

Americans named in this indictment

knew they were collaborating with

Russians. But this does not address

the overall question of what the

Trump campaign knew. Did they know

this extraordinary campaign was

going on? How could they not know?

There were all kinds of connections

between different kinds of Russians

and members of the campaign is all

through 2016 and that was happening

at the same time millions of

Russians were putting millions of

dollars into affecting the campaign

and increase democratic

disillusionment in the United

States. How is it possible they were

not aware of one another? We do not

have the answer to that told.

And we

now have a Trump presidency and

Hillary Clinton would be perfectly

right to say this possibly did

actually affect the outcome of the

election that she has some evidence

on her hands with these indictments

now.

We certainly have evidence of

what the Russians were doing. As the

previous speaker was saying, it is

in detail. This is what is

unexpected about the indictment. The

PayPal accounts, the bank accounts,

the particular incidents described.

We now know exactly what the Russian

operation looked like in the United

States and how it worked.

The detail

is extraordinary and a slip-up of

one of the defendants who allegedly

said online to a friend what they

were doing and how they were trying

to cover their tracks. It is like

some strange thriller.

Absolutely.

some strange thriller.

Absolutely. I

am not even sure... It is amazing

the FBI got those details where you

have an alleged Russian conspirator

e-mail in a family member literally

saying the FBI are on to us and we

are now trying to cover our tracks.

Just in terms of the sheer

compelling nature of the story that

is a remarkable thing and it builds

this broader picture of nefarious

activity and that is what further

adds to the narrative about alleged

collusion.

Thank you both very much

indeed.

Tonight the pressure

on Oxfam has intensified,

with the government announcement

that the charity will not bid

for any new government funding

until they prove they can meet

the high standards expected

of the Department for International

Development's partners.

The International Development

Secretary, Penny Mordaunt,

said that it was clear that Oxfam

has a long way to go to regain

the trust of the British public,

their staff and the people

they aim to help.

It comes on the day when the charity

said it will set up an independent

commission to investigate past

and present allegations

of exploitation by staff.

In a moment, we'll be

discussing the implication

of the ban on bidding,

not least for the delivery

of future aid to those

in need around the globe.

But first here's David Grossman.

Charities cannot afford to be slow

in showing us the work they do.

Their fundraising depends on

showcasing the lives they change.

We

cannot reach them without you. It

all starts with you.

In the past we

may have rather trusted their own

accounts too much. After all, we can

hardly go and see for ourselves. But

that trust appears to be drying up.

I would like more outrage. This has

all been going on for a long time.

The intelligence agency warned in

1999 that paedophiles were finding

safe, happy homes in our foreign aid

sector. And yet nothing has been

done about this until the Times

investigation last week.

How ripe is

the misconduct within the charity

and the sector at large?

Oxfam needs

to fully clarified delegations with

maximum transparency.

Tonight it

deepened. The young aid worker

employed by Oxfam for the first time

in the Haiti disaster in 2010 has

told the BBC she was assaulted by a

more senior, male colleague.

He

pinned me up against the wall, he

was groping me and grabbing me. He

was kissing me and I was trying to

shove him off.

A torrid week of

scandals for Oxfam has ended with a

blunt statement from the

International Development Secretary.

Oxfam will no longer bid for

government aid contracts.

Clearly

Oxfam have a long way to go before

they can regain the trust of the

British public, their staff and the

people they aim to help. The actions

and attitude of the organisation

over the coming weeks will be

critical.

The Oxfam scandal has cast

a spotlight on the whole sector,

where the government with big aid

budgets rely too heavily on how the

NGOs spend those budgets and whether

this close relationship has

deflected necessary scrutiny.

This

is not about the charity, it is

about the people they are trying to

help. By withdrawing from bidding

for future contracts, that might

mean Oxfam can help fewer people in

the future. Throughout this process

whatever Oxfam has done wrong, I

very much hope this is a temporary

period whilst they sort themselves

out.

But this has happened before.

The charity kids company collapsed

in 2015 amid allegations of

financial impropriety and questions

about how many people they help.

It

was not that the government saved

the company, it was that the company

did the government's work.

The

charity received tens of millions of

pounds of public money. The

journalist who wrote the first

critical article says it was a very

tough story to break.

Nobody wanted

to hear the story, people had

invested too much into kids company

and their reputation rose and fell

with kids company, so the did not

want it pulled down. This was

whether they were politicians or pop

stars or whether it was business

people. They wanted kids company to

keep going because it made them look

good.

This perhaps explains why it

took so long for the allegations

against Oxfam to come to light. For

75 years the charity has been

harnessing the British public

enthusiasm to help those in need.

Whether that enthusiasm survives

this scandal will decide how well

the charity survives.

the charity survives.

I'm now joined by Imogen Wall,

an independent aid worker

and former UN spokesperson.

She runs an online support

forum for aid workers.

Also with me is Martin Bell,

a Unicef UK ambassador since 2001.

He's also a former war

correspondent and former MP.

On the line from South Africa

we've got Ian Birrell,

a contributing editor to the Mail

on Sunday and former advisor

and speechwriter for David Cameron.

Good evening. If I can come to you

first. How bad is it for Oxfam that

the government has said going

forward there will be no future

contracts until they are sure of

that ethical stance?

It is pretty

damning for Oxfam, although I have

to question why it is the government

feels Oxfam is not good enough for

new contracts, but it is worthy of

continuing to hold the contracts it

has held and they are worth millions

of pounds.

of pounds.

Let me put that to Martin

Bell. Oxfam is engaged in so many

different contracts around the

world, is Ian Wright that if we take

the chance of them getting future

contracts away now, we should really

be probing the contracts that they

have now?

Oxfam is in so much trouble it has

two and suffer itself. I have been a

Unicef ambassador for 17 years. I

have seen wonderful people, national

and international staff, doing

life-saving work on some of the most

difficult corners of the world. I

can only hope that this appalling

scandal does not affect those people

helped by aid agencies doing such

great work.

With your professional

hat on, looking at that indictment

of Oxfam from penny Mordaunt, she is

saying there needs to be radical

change, the time it takes for that

to come out, what will happen to

Oxfam?

We will see in the coming

days. We are very far from the end

of this. What is clear and very

unfortunate, and I think David have

no choice, they manage public money

and the right to demand an element

of accountability, but that Oxfam

are not alone in this. Every agency

in the aid sector has a problem that

we work in a sector that attracts

the vulnerable, sorry, that supports

vulnerable people.

It attracts

predators.

So you have to have a

safeguard. Every agency has faced

this. Oxfam have been found out but

they have been hung out to dry.

That

is possibly quite terrifying for a

lot of people to hear that we, with

our best endeavours, support a

variety of charities, and you're

telling that this literally is the

tip of the iceberg, what is going to

happen?

Hopefully wholesale reform

will happen.

Without scandal? People

are just quietly changing things?

No, they are not. That is the

problem. For many years activists

have been warned.

An activist on

Newsnight said that last year she

talked about sexual violence to aid

workers and Oxfam was by no means

the worst.

They are really not. They

have had opportunities to reform

themselves. It needs to come. We

need an interagency process. You can

solve the problem of Oxfam but the

predators will get jobs elsewhere.

We have seen that is what happened.

How damaging you think this is to

the global aid effort?

I think it is

pretty damaging because it is

highlighting problems that these are

organisations that paint themselves

as saviours of the poor, paint

themselves as do-gooders and see

themselves as being so morally above

criticism, and suddenly people are

seeing them for what they are, which

is people interested in earning my

and people proclaiming...

Can I just

put to you what Martin Bell was

saying? He has been an ambassador

for Unicef are many years and has

seen the good work done. You

wouldn't doubt, presumably, that

individual aid programmes, people

going with their best endeavours to

help those in need, you're not

entirely cynical about this, are

you?

I'm pretty cynical. I've seen

too much of it. Let's look at Hay

tee. What did the UN there? They

took cholera there and killed

several thousand people and put

hundreds of thousands more into a

state of disease. Then they denied

it. They covered up. That is typical

of what goes on. A.D. Was a complete

mess from start to finish. -- high

tea.

I want to bring in Martin.

Particularly when you are talking

about the government giving money to

particular aid charities, do you

think there has been too cosy and

casually relationship between the

government and the charities who it

funds aid programmes through?

I

think the government and charities

are close and they have to be. If

Ian had been where I had been, if

you are holding the hands of a

nine-year-old child in Yemen who has

been bombed out of her home and is

being given care by Unicef, you have

a different view of it. I think the

idea that because there is a

scandal, all aid agencies are

tarnished. Just connect with my

experience. Wonderful people doing

wonderful things out there.

What

about the question of governance?

Are aid agencies and the governance

to close?

They work closely

together. What we are seeing right

now is the capacity the government

has told them to account when

needed. That is a powerful thing.

There is no question it is a club

and there have been long discussions

about how to bring more particularly

local organisations into that

community, and to this collection of

agencies.

That interesting. What you

are saying is, and we know the

government only funds through big

agencies and it is funnelled out...

What you're saying is that it is too

for a divot. They have to be more

particular and pick smaller

charities which it ollie spatter?

Yeah. And help develop into agency

policing systems. I was in the field

for ten years. 95% of aid workers

and local staff. They are not

internationals. That is the

stereotype.

What about the big

salaries Ian talks about?

They are

not that big, trust me! Certainly

not for Oxfam.

Ian, if you don't

think that aid in itself delivered

by charities is a good thing, how

would you sort a lot of the global

issues that we feel everywhere in

the world, those of us who have

more, have a duty to help those who

have less?

I'm very committed to

help the world's poor but the way to

do it is not with patronising

Westerners going in there and

telling them how to solve their

problems their services. Not by

propping up dictators. And not get

caught doing harm. Is what we have

seen often. There is an unholy

Trinity going on whereby there is a

shared deal going on with the

government and much of the media,

and with the aid groups. They all

portray this image that they are the

saviours of the world. The facts do

not fit this. That is why there is

such resentment against it in many

parts of the world.

Martin,

everybody is hearing this, people

who perhaps give to different

charities, should the public, for

example with Oxfam, withhold the

money until Oxfam gets a clean bill

of health?

I think that is

reasonable. Oxfam now has to answer

for itself. But that all NGOs and

aid agencies should be tarnished, if

Ian and anybody could come with me

to the eastern Congo, there are no

dictators, there was no government,

there was nobody there helping the

people accept Unicef and other

agencies. Should they be left

without help? I don't believe so.

Thank you all very much. With

regards to recent allegations made

against Adam Smith International,

the ordination -- organisation have

denied any wrongdoing.

What would you do with £10,000

a year guaranteed income?

A new report says we have to rethink

radically the value of work,

and how we contribute to society,

before the machines take over

swathes of our lives,

and just as we face a vastly

increasing ageing population

and the prospect of much

less stable employment.

Would it be better to give everyone

a basic income and do away with many

state benefits and tax reliefs?

Today, the Royal Society

for the Encouragement of the Arts,

Manufacture and Commerce rebooted

the idea of a Universal Basic

Income, described by Thomas Paine

more than 250 years ago

as a "citizen's dividend".

From its Enlightenment origins,

Universal Basic Income has been an

idea that crosses the political

divide, mentioned in the writings

of Thomas Paine

and John Stewart Mill.

The first thing that we

must do you tonight...

By the 1960s, both Martin

Luther King and Richard

Nixon were on board.

One of the big attractions

for modern politicians is that it

proposes getting rid of one

of the most hated aspects

of the welfare state.

You still don't get

this, do you, Mr Blake?

This is an agreement

between you and the state.

The Ken Loach polemic,

I, Daniel Blake,

struck a chord in its portrayal

of the dehumanisation process of

bureaucratic assessment.

Universal Basic Income

would simply do away

with that altogether.

Everyone gets paid

the same sum of money each

year, no strings attached.

Some on the libertarian right

like it, because the government

would be less involved in our lives

and it could lead them to shut

existing programmes.

Some on the left like it

because it seen as a way of

universalising benefit

and empowering workers, even as

automation undermines

their position.

Have a few more days off a week

to study, take up yoga or

help elderly relatives -

who could argue with that?

Of course, some may choose

not to work at all.

That is one criticism.

The main problem though is expense.

In the most extreme

version, where the

allowance is enough to live

off, that is hundreds

of billions of pounds a year.

So most UBI proposals

are for a halfway house.

Smaller amounts, or even one

large, one-off payment.

Today's report envisages

10,000 a year.

But the thing that unites

all the proposals is that they

envisage giving billions of pounds

to millions of people who currently

manage without state help.

Will voters buy that?

With me now a man who is flirting

with the idea of Universal Basic

Income, former Labour leader Ed

Miliband. You have sort of half

tongue in cheek described the idea

of a universal income as a trust

fund for all. The problem is that

people actually do have trust funds

and get it as well. It is

indiscriminate.

This yeah, but they

pay it back through taxation. I'm

attracted that this because it

speaks to the can of society we want

to be. Do we trust in people? Do we

believe that if we get rid of a

complex, intrusive, demeaning means

tested system, and replace it with a

flat rate payment, people will do

extraordinary things? I personally

think they probably would. Some of

it would be caring, for elderly

relatives, kids. Some would be

voluntary. The interesting thing is

the evidence is, on the point about

work, the evidence is so far in the

work that has been done on this, the

pilots, it hasn't led to the

diminishing of work, people doing

nothing.

There will be less work?

Because of technology. Exactly. That

is another reason why this is

interesting. We are entering an era

were be can't be certain of this

scale. We know technology will be

incredibly disruptive. A welfare

system built on a job for life, the

welfare system we sort of have,

doesn't really feel fit for purpose.

And therefore, this could be, this

is kind of right, has got

attractions in any case. But in

particular for the very people

chopping and changing their jobs,

that world, it could be appropriate.

Do you think that by and large

people want to work?

Yes I do.

Nick

Boles, the former Minister of

skills, says mankind is hard-wired

for work, we gain satisfaction from

it. The point is there won't be work

for all, we're kidding ourselves.

That may be true to an extent. We

don't know. People have predicted

the end of work before. The

interesting thing on this point

about what evidence we have, it's

not overwhelming, but Alaska, they

have got a fund, a smaller

version...

They are doing well in

Finland.

Yes, but Alaska has been

going for a decade. Work has gone

up. In a way this is a bet on human

nature.

There is a bigger

fundamental question about whether

it would necessarily be a bad thing

if people worked less, if they do

different things, because there will

be an ageing population. Perhaps

there are different ways we should

be running our lives?

I totally

agree with you.

The ageing

population is another aspect of

this. Anyway your language has

changed. When you are special

adviser to Gordon Brown you talked

about tax credits.

I was in short

trousers!

That must have looked very

weird in Parliament. You talk about

tax credits. They are means tested.

You have changed your mind?

May be a

bit. I'm still a defender of tax

credits.

But they are means tested.

Yeah. The liberating thing for me is

I'm not thinking what should we do

tomorrow. I'm thinking five, ten, 15

years ahead, what system should we

be designing? What is the system

that will be fit for purpose?

You

talk about labour being the party

that supports crafters. It is more

like the grifters.

That is where we

part company. The notion that people

will take this money and lay around,

I don't buy that.

Who will pay for

it? What the RSA are saying is it

will cost 14 billion a year.

In the

big scheme of things that is small

change. In the big scheme of things,

if you are thinking about a 20 year,

15 year enterprise, and I think we

should pilot this...

It has been

piloted in Scotland.

Exactly. We

should be doing it here. The

government has Cook corporate tax

over the past few years. You would

save some money on some of the means

tested benefits. It would have an

outlay. But if it worked, if it had

the liberating power that many

advocates think it could have, I

think it would be worth it.

You

think there would be retraining?

Starting businesses. They are saying

in the report today that Mrs

Thatcher said up the enterprise

allowance, which gave people a

certain amount of money. People may

set up businesses. Middle-class

people taken for granted that they

have money to fall on.

You have been

very critical of people like Mike

Ashley at Sports Direct. The idea

that people are very wealthy and get

this 10,000, I suppose they give

more back in tax. In a moral sense,

should everybody get this money?

Yeah, because they are citizens.

This is the point. We have more or

less got universal child benefit.

This is what Thomas Paine advocated.

Recognition of citizenship.

Particularly as technology takes off

and the danger is greater

inequality. The idea that every

citizen should have a stake in the

growing wealth of the country I

think is attractive.

Thank you very

much indeed.

Two papers in front of us. That

story, no more money for Oxfam, say

ministers. Charity warned it must

regain public trust. On the

right-hand side, 13 Russians charged

over the Trump plot. The Financial

Times, Russians charged with

interfering in US election. They

have also got a piece on life in

Riyadh jail. City access after

Brexit.

That's almost it for tonight.

But before we go,

the closest most of us will get

to walking amongst the stars

is a holiday in Los Angeles.

Not so for Norishige Kanai

and Mark Vande Hei.

The two astronauts spent most

of today on a so-called Space Walk,

conducting maintenance

on the outside of the

International Space station.

Talk about an office with a view.

Goodnight.