25/04/2016 Scotland 2016

MPs vote against a move to take in three thousand child

MPs vote against a move to take in three thousand child

We need the UK to step up to the mark and play its role in supporting

other EU states to support young people by letting more people come

into the UK. The only surgeon in Scotland

training to work in a rural hospital tells us about

the current recruitment crisis. Will issues close to home

sway your vote? Or will the bigger picture

have more of an impact? The government has seen off

an attempt to force the UK to take an additional 3,000 child

refugees from Europe. The Commons voted 294 to 276

to overturn Lord Dubs' amendment to the Immigration Bill,

though several Tory MPs voiced their concerns

that the government is not doing enough to deal with

the refugee crisis. The immigration minister

James Brokenshire said the government wanted to protect

and support refugee children but argued that taking

more from Europe could have the unintended consequence

of putting more at risk. It's called the jungle on the

outskirts of Caley. A staging post for people, adults and children,

trying to get to Britain. This is a jungle, they stayed in six months.

Never managed to get through. With all the attempts, eventually he met

with the lawyers and they brought him in. He came in through Europe.

Every month, around five or six unaccompanied children arrive in

Glasgow, seeking asylum. We see girls, boys, roughly between 16 and

17 years old, they fled from countries such as Eritrea,

Afghanistan. They may have also been trafficked into Scotland. Each of

them gets a guardian to guide them through the process, a scheme

pioneered in Scotland. Having somebody who is there either side

and on their side to speak up for them and make sure that people that

need to do things do them correctly, it allows those people to have a

voice in these difficult processes they would never have encountered

before. The UK Government says the best way to help people on the move

from Syria and other conflict zones is while there is still in the

region, before they make the hazardous journey to Europe across

the Mediterranean. But, since the beginning of the year, more than

150,000 migrants have arrived in Greece. That is 15 times the number

of people who arrived in the same period last year. And well over a

third of them are children. So, should the UK except more

unaccompanied children from places like the jungle and refugee camps in

Europe? That was the aim of an amendment to the Immigration Bill

debated at Westminster this evening. We know there are children who are

alone across Europe, subject to abuse, to prostitution, rape,

smuggling and trafficking, gangs. 10,000 child refugees have just

disappeared. Written should be one of the countries who is doing their

bit to help. This is a moral responsibility. The camp at Caley is

a shanty town, it is an extraordinary thing to see in

Europe. It is muddy and basic. There are many unaccompanied children

there, and these children are viable, confused and unaware of

their options. There is no British government presence there, despite

the fact many of these children have connections with the United Kingdom.

In the house, the government argued the UK is already meeting its

obligation and more. Last week, I announced a new resettlement scheme

for children at risk. This initiative will be the largest

resettlement that focuses on children at risk. Children that

might otherwise attempt their own journeys to Europe and the UK. We

have worked closely with the UNHCR on a scheme that protects the most

fungible children, we are settling up to 3,000 children,... The

government overturned the amendment which would have required the UK to

accept more child refugees from Europe.

And with me now is David Pratt who has been out and followed

the refugee trail from the Syria-Turkey border.

David is also Contributing Foreign Editor to the Sunday Herald.

Good evening. So, this debate tonight, just to be clear, was all

about the best way to help these unaccompanied children. What is the

difference in the two positions? The government's has issued is the

numbers were the same 3,000, which came with two caveats. One is that,

obviously, it is outside the European Union. And the other is, of

course, is that it is spread until 2020, which is an average of 600

refugee children a year up until then, whereas at the moment what the

amendment was proposing was, obviously, 3,000 children currently

in Europe at the moment, unaccompanied, being brought it

immediately. You've been to Europe, to Turkey, you've met child migrants

along the way. What is your take on it? The numbers are staggering. This

is a shameful night for the government, and it sends out a

horrendous message about Britain and where we stand on this issue. These

are incredibly vulnerable people. We estimate around 10,000 unaccompanied

children unaccounted for in Europe at this precise time. It is

interesting to night the government's argument was simply

this idea that, somehow, this will prevent more children falling into

the hands of traffickers, of going missing in that way. Isn't there a

point to that, though? If parents back in these war-torn countries see

that their children might get safety by sending them to Europe, they

might go and do that. There's two things there. One is I love this

notion that somehow there are families sitting in the ruins of

Aleppo or Homs or whatever, thinking it is conspiratorially plan. It

doesn't work like that. This is a cynical move by the government. They

didn't want to create... If you can get them to Calais, they will get

into the United Kingdom. So the idea that these numbers of people would

be conspiratorially working in some way to actually get here to benefit

from this system in a rather cynical way is utterly misguided. It is

shameful in terms of the actual overall numbers. Save the Children

say there are 2000 child refugees alone in northern Greece, fewer than

500 places for them and they are all full. What we know about what is

happening for these children that don't have safety? As I say, there

is 10,000 unaccounted for. Some of them may have gone into the hands of

traffickers, some of them may simply have made their own way to family or

other areas within Europe itself. There is no hard facts about where

they all are. The fact they are vulnerable, the fact they are

vulnerable in terms of predatory organised crime, is without doubt.

When I was coming down through the Syrian border, through Turkey and

its ports, I spoke with many refugees there who pointed this out,

that there are serious problems with organised crimes. The other thing to

stress here is that many of the refugees I spoke to have no

intentions of coming to Europe. This tends to be forgotten. The vast

majority of Syrians are content to stay in Turkey because they want to

go back to Syria. This knocks on the head the notion that they are

looking for the opportunity to get here under the auspices of the

government. Thank you. The only poll that matters

is on polling day. These and many other slices

of conventional wisdom will be served up between now and the end

of this election campaign. They have the status of truisms,

but are they actually true? Between now and polling day,

our special correspondent Kenneth MacDonald is

setting out to bust, or at least examine,

a few myths. Who said that, then? This guy, the

great American political operator. Is all politics really local? There

are plenty of people who will tell you that, but this applied in

America in the 20th century so is it true for Holyrood in the 21st? This

is Glasgow. It used to be football pitches here. The council would like

it to be flats. Campaigners like it the way it is. Scottish ministers

have called in the planning application. We started with the

councillors, officer, but very quickly we realised that you had to

know who your MSP was. To be fair to them, they all came down here and

had a tour themselves. Week 11 this land, we, the people, and the land.

We've never been asked what to do with it. They say all politics is

local. Can a campaign like yours actually feed into national politics

or affect it? Nationally, I have different ideas about which oversees

should be in place but locally this will affect the way I vote. I'd like

to think I'm influencing people and I like to think people are

influencing each other. If various parties say consistently, yes, we

hear what you have to say, we know you have a case for this but our

party policy is to not accept this, then I don't know how they can

engage the community on a whole range of issues, really. These are

big issues and 20 get up to the top politics, you hear politicians

talking about them, and you realise you are doing it in practice.

There's kids behind us climbing in the trees and things like that,

people growing an allotment, there is a community orchard, so we are

tackling big issues on a local and practical way. On a completely

unscientific exercise, we asked our local campaigners if they could

march local candidates to their parties. I'm not sure. I'm going to

stick this one that looks most like a Tory. Most is approving. I don't

think this gentleman is Scottish Labour but we will pop it on here.

Other candidates are available but our cardboard and rose at budget is

limited. I've no idea who the other three are it is difficult. To

correct out of five. So, will a local issue where you are affect the

way you vote in a national election? That is the question for you and the

alert box. Now with me are two veteran

election commentators, In Edinburgh, Iain Macwhirter,

and with me in the studio, When you look at how the campaigns

in this election are being run, do you think local issues are getting a

look in? I den think they are getting a look in. Particularly

since the referendum, politics in Scotland has been very much

polarised. That is in common with much of the Western world, the UK

and the US. There are various reasons for that. The binary debate

we had during the referendum campaign has polarised Scottish

politics. So it is Scottish/ national issues which are dominating

this campaign. Ian, do you think that polarisation

is maybe putting voters off? I don't think all politics is local, but all

political organisation has to be local. We saw this during the

referendum campaign in a very striking way when organisations at

the radical independence campaign moved into areas that hadn't been

voting for many years. That led to the kind of mobilisation we haven't

really seen in any form of elections in the last half century. We had 97%

voting registration in the referendum. That's a record and it

was 85% turnout on the day. But, as Paul says, the issue was the biggest

you can have, really. It's what country you want to be in, but the

organisation was very much local. It was getting people out to the

polling booths. But if people were harnessed by this excitement of the

referendum, fully engage in a grassroots way, is there a danger

that that has disappeared now and people are feeling disillusioned

that they can't really make an impact? Perhaps there is a little

bit of weariness in that sense, but to come back to what Ian was saying

the campaigning is local, the issues have been pushed aside almost. This

is something that is in comment with a lot of the political world, but in

Scotland it is mainly the big issues. The party machines being

what they are these days, there is very that room for an independently

minded career politician in any of the big parties. Perhaps the Greens

to a certain extent, Lib Dems, perhaps. But there is very little

room for anyone who is going to countermand the party line. Do you

think that is true, Ian? Yes, politicians face a difficult problem

here because often when they ask their constituents, they will say it

is local issues that concern them. We saw this in 2004 when Jack

McConnell was First Minister of Scotland and labour was trying to

look at ways of reenergising their party and the coalition

administration at the time. They went and asked people, lots of focus

groups, what do you want? Top of the list came clearing up dog mess on

the streets, and they translated that into the implements dog dirt

bill, which brought the parliament into some degree of disrepute. But

you can understand why they made that mistake. They asked local

people what the local issues were. They said that people hanging around

on the street corners, but when it comes to voting, it's not be local

issues that motivate people. It tends to be the bigger and bolder

issues that decide political choices. And yet there have been

more big issues to discuss at this Scottish election than any other

Scottish election and people seem a bit bored. I think that's just

because there had been too many elections. We had two referendums, a

general election... There is a election fatigue. Exactly. People

are all democratised out, which sounds terrible to say. This

election has been almost overshadowed by the EU referendum.

Even that has failed to catch fire. I think people are just a bit... It

means I have to make a decision. I think people are a bit weary. You

might have thought social media, for example, might have brought local

issues to the forefront, and energise the campaign. Yes, there is

a parallel here with journalism because some people often said the

same thing, that all journalism is local. And that has never really

been the case. And people argue that elections turn on the national

issues because it is the mass media that tends to foreground those

issues and people tend to get their political information from the mass

media. Now we have social media, which is hyper local, and, you would

think that it would mean that both journalism and local politics would

be much more locally focused, but soap either has not been much

evidence of it. It has been useful in a political organisation, but

hasn't made it more local. A shortage of surgeons willing

to work in remote areas is putting at risk the future of Scotland's six

rural general hospitals, according The move in recent years has been

towards centralising surgery in specialist centres

in Scotland's cities. The Royal College is recommending

more generally trained consultants At the moment there's only one

junior doctor training to work in general surgery

at a remote hospital. He's Stuart Fergusson and he came

in to see me earlier, before dashing off to start a late

shift. Good evening. Why do you think that

you are alone in Scotland in wanting to train in general surgery, to work

in a remote hospital? I think one of the major reasons is that it's not

something that we have exposure to as surgical trainees. The nature of

surgical training is that it's concentrated mainly in large city

centres. We don't spend very much of our time in remote and rural

environments. I think if people were to spend time at medical school, as

I did, in a remote and rural environment, they would see

something of the beauty of the place and the unique nature of the job,

the interest. But as time goes on, people begin to settle in the

situation that therein and it's harder for them to uproot family or

advertise to other places. I would have thought from a lifestyle point

of view it would have been quite an attractive option. Do you think

there is still a bit of professional snobbery? That's an interesting

question. I would say that honestly I have had a lot of encouragement

from people who have been very positive about rural surgery. They

recognise that 20% of Scottish population lives in the ruble area,

and for the most remote areas of Scotland, it simply not practical to

expect them to travel huge distances for every kind of hospital service.

It's absolutely essential that the remotest part of Scotland's are

served by General hospitals that are capable, able to provide really the

majority of general surgery services that an urban population could

expect. Is it as safe as being treated in a specialist centre? Yes,

absolutely. There is good data on that. I think there is room in

Scotland for generalists and specialists. I would not disagree

that more complex cancer specialist surgery would be better handling in

a specialist centres, but the majority of work being performed is

very much suitable for being performed in smaller centres. It can

be done to a high standard and I have done some research into that

person made. So how big a problem is the shortage and what needs to be

done? I said earlier that early exposure is important, taking

medical student to remote and rural hospitals on placement, and going

there as a junior doctor. I had a one-week experience up in Shetland

and it opened my eyes to how interesting a career it was. And how

valuable a party can be of a small community. I think particularly at

the early stages of surgical training, it's great to be in the

space for a short period of time. Thanks and good luck with the night

shift. Thank you. And with me for some analysis

of today's other stories is Lindsay McIntosh,

from The Times Scotland, and the Investigations Editor

of the Sunday Herald, So, today the debate over

shipbuilding on the Clyde dominated. The UK Government said it is

committed to building new warships. Others say that a delay could

threaten hundreds of jobs. How significant do you think is the

timing of this row? Very significant for two reasons. One is the 210 Nick

nature of shipbuilding. It is one of our prize industries and there are a

lot of jobs at stake here. We were told that if we voted yes in the

independence referendum, these people would not get the contracts

to build these complex vessels from the UK, and now that, to an extent,

that seems to be in doubt, and is a real political issue for that

reason. And who is benefiting politically? I think the SNP have

clearly got a strong case to make here that Scots were potentially

misled before the referendum. Paul, the other story we start today was

BHS going into administration. Hundreds of jobs more immediately at

threat. Why do you think this particular story is dominating the

headlines? Lindsey is right. Should building has always been an

important part of Scottish life and it is obviously very important to

the workers and families, but I'm always very puzzled about the

attention given to a shipbuilding. When we look at public sector jobs

that are being lost all the time. We are losing thousands of jobs in

local authority just now, which is a result of political decisions. These

seem to be politically manageable, whereas job losses in shipbuilding

are somehow seen as a gross betrayal. I would pay tribute to the

trade union, actually. I think they have played this very well and put

it out at an opportune time. But I think we have do see that it is not

a massive bit of the Scottish economy, although I wouldn't like to

play down any job losses. This evening, the maestro of all

interviewers, interviewed the Scottish political leaders. Here is,

Gary Tank Commander. All the other folk at interview

today, I've been telling them that you put your healing hands on my

ankle and shouted, by the power of the Lib Dems, and it temporarily

healed me. Did you? By the power of the Lib Dems! Unhealed! What would

you do if Donald Trump got into power? Would you deal with him or

dinghy him? I think America would dinghy him first. What do you think

of his hair? He reminds me of Dookie Donnelly. Blow my mind. Three Green

Bridge parcels for everyone. Is that what you are after? Three Green

Bridge parcels. I'm talking about more sunshine. The majority of

scientists are by no means of Missy and it. They're what? Honesty and,

it's a big word. So you're talking about the world, not just Scotland?

Yes, there's a lot of common ground. You have to set your priorities.

Like Spectre? James Bond? It's not exactly like Spectre. What makes you

better than Willie? I'm not a big fan of Willie. Sorry?

I can't believe she said that. It pretty hard line for politicians to

tread. How do you think they did? I think they all did really well. They

didn't try to be overly funny and judge it badly, but there were some

genuinely funny moments, with the possible exception of the UK leader.

I have a slightly different view. I think the interviews were amusing,

it's always entertaining to ship a politician use the word gash on

national television. But for the first two weeks, we had a debate on

tax and spending, but everybody has kind of given up. It's been one long

running gag and stunned and I feel like it's good to try and make

politics like and funny, but there is a fine line between that and

dumbing down. I feel that this is the most trivial and bizarre thing I

have ever covered. It's surreal. Isn't it good to humanise them

though? I think if it's done occasionally, but I feel like I have

seen too many daft stance. I'm just dying to get you next Thursday.

Full-time working fathers apparently therein more. A beach penalty for

female mothers was much less. What do you think is going on here? I

think it is very interesting because we know that women earn much less.

But not only do women mothers are mice, working fathers earn much

more, so it is a double blow. They don't know what is behind it. They

think it might be some dissemination, but they might also

work more than their childless counterparts. I wonder if that could

be a factor, it maybe once men have children they start taking on longer

hours because they are killing the responsibility, maybe? Absolutely. I

read the report and there was nothing that massively surprised me.

I think the wider point is that this idea of equal joint parenting hasn't

really made it from the region into reality yet. I'm sure it will happen

to some families but not that many. I also think that the report made a

good point about childcare as well, how it should be focused on years

one and two, instead of three and four. A long way to go for gender

equality. Do you think that attitudes are changing? I think

there are signs that it is changing. I think if parental leave is embrace

in the way it was intended and if society looks at a different model

of parenting, maybe there is more equality ahead. Thanks for coming

in. I'm back tomorrow night

with the last of our The politicians will be answering

your questions on housing.