26/02/2012 Sunday Politics East Midlands

A Lib Dem lord and a troublesome And our panel of bright young

things is here to analyse British politics and the week ahead.

A private security firm is to run one of our police stations. It is a

step too far? And the health trusts paying pregnant mums to stop

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2027 seconds

Hello, I'm Marie Ashby and our guests in the East Midlands this

week are Vernon Coaker, the Labour MP for Gedling, and the

Conservative MP for Amber Valley, Nigel Mills.

Coming up: The health trust paying pregnant mums to stop smoking. They

stand to get vouchers worth up to �700. Could it save us a packet,

too? And counting sheep for the EU - the

farmers who insist they're being fleeced.

First, we're getting used to services being privatised. But the

police? This week the private security firm G4S signed a deal to

build and run a police station near Lincoln. What's more, 500 civilian

workers at Lincolnshire Police will transfer to the company, and it'll

take over responsibility for a number of services. For instance,

it'll be involved in issuing firearms licences.

Vernon Coaker, you were a Home Office minister with responsibility

for policing in the last government. Do you have a problem with a

private company running police services?

I think there are real concerns about what is happening. The first

point is that they are pushed into this by the cuts to the Budget. You

only have to look at what is happening in Lincolnshire with the

loss of police officers already. Privatisation is not really to be

effective, but to save money. GS4 will want to make a profit. Do we

want our policing to be run for a profit? But we are told it could

save Lincolnshire Police �20 million. That is a big saving.

put the money back into the police. It will not be put back into

frontline police officers. It will not be there to retain staff. The

money is taken out of the budget, so the savings had to be made by

Lincolnshire Police. This is about efficiency and profit. Nigel Mills,

surely people have a right to be concerned that GS4 will be involved

in issuing firearms certificates? I don't think issuing certificates

is the thing most people worry about when they think about what

the police are doing. This is an interesting innovation. It allows

more officers out on the beat. That should be a positive step. It will

be interesting to see how successful it is.

But remember that this is a company which fitted a tag to an offender's

false leg last year. Now we are talking about handing over the

policing in Lincolnshire! They are taking over some of the

back office staff. You're not going to have GS4's operas as Aberdeen

police work. We can find mistakes in private companies and police

forces. This is a welcome step. We all know there's Ltd money out

there. It is not an isolated case, though.

When the BBC's inside-out programme investigated GS4, they discover a

catalogue of serious failures, including murderers and paedophiles

being unmonitored for weeks at a time.

It is not for me to defend GS4. you are happy for this to happen?

I'm sure the police will have done proper checks to make sure that

they are fully competent to do the work. We are talking about back

office functions, not have been able out on the streets on Friday

night. I would not think anybody watching this programme would think

that it is a simple back-office function as to who has a firearms

licence or certificate. They think that would be a pretty basic part

of policing, who has a gun. To actually outsource that to a

private company, people would have very real concerns. The other thing

is this is a ten-year contract. What are the safeguards for the

public if it goes wrong? The Home Office will get it in the neck,

presumably. What is in the contract? It is �10 million. What

happens with the custody suite if it does not work? What does happen?

What would happen in this instance? I would hope that we have learnt

the lessons of the previous government, locking us into

excessive cost that is not appropriate. I hope the lessons

have been learned. We are doing a full review of that. So you just

hope it is going to be OK? We have to trust the people involved.

this is for policing. This is a fundamental part of the security of

our communities. It is not a simple, with due respect, a bit of a

village egg-and-spoon race. This is fundamental policing of our

communities! It is not a matter of hope, it should be a matter of

certainty. We are engaging with private companies to give value,

and not getting locked into that good things.

-- difficult things. Next, we can't force pregnant women

to stop smoking, but it's clearly in their babies' interests that

they give up. Now Derbyshire NHS is running a pilot scheme under which

mums are being given shopping vouchers if they stop. The vouchers

could be worth up to �700 - but they'll only be paid out if mums

can prove they've quit. This device measures the carbon in their bodies.

We've been asking people in Nottingham if they think it's an

idea that should be introduced nationally.

I don't think they should pay them. It is their responsibility. That is

the harm they are doing to their child. They have to take full

responsibility. It should go on for like the first

two months, and let them do it themselves after that.

incentive to stop smoking would be good. But as long as it is

foolproof and they can't use the money on cigarettes anyway.

In pregnancy it is hard to quit smoking, as I have found myself. A

Smoking Room helped me to quit. They gave me an incentive and

support, but no finer for support. It could have helped. It is not a

bad idea. If you are responsible, being pregnant should be enough

leverage to make sure you protect your own health and that of your

baby. We have been joined by Julie

Greenwood, who heads the stop smoking team for the NHS in

Nottingham. First, some strong feelings that pregnant mothers

should take responsibility for their own actions. Some people

believe they should done in a bribe to give up smoking.

-- they should not need a bribe. There are concerns. There are a

number of premature deaths and associated health problems if the

boss Mick and pregnancy. This is a pilot. I have concerns about

escaping their responsibility. One of the ways to make it more

acceptable would be to say if people are going to receive

vouchers, they should not just be in cash but should be returned, say,

for baby clothes or equipment. If you are pregnant, shouldn't that

be incentive enough? I think we would all like to

believe that if somebody is pregnant, they are going to be so

concerned about their baby that they don't want to risk smoking and

harming themselves and the baby. I'd think the idea of rewarding

someone for something they should not be doing is pretty awful. I'm

not sure how many people would want to go out to pay tax to pay

somebody not to do something they should not be doing.

Let's ask Julie. Made people will find it hard to believe that it is

hard to stop smoking. -- many people.

It is incredibly difficult. I have got personal experience of

supporting women who are trying to stop smoking. It is only a small

portion of women who continue to smoke through pregnancy. But they

tend to be women from the most deprived areas. They are highly

addictive, and they have got lots of stress and chaos in their lives.

Although one could assume that when a woman becomes pregnant, she can

stop smoking, it is actually very difficult.

We heard also in those brief clips from one young woman who said that

vouchers might have actually helped her. Do you personally think they

are a good idea? We don't use them in Nottingham

city. But we have looked at the evaluation of other services that

have used them. If we can encourage women, if this is going to work,

then maybe I would be happy to look at the findings and the evaluation

of the Derbyshire project to see if it can help. Do you have any

reservations? When you look at smoking in pregnancy, it impacts so

much on the help of mother and baby. Also, later in life, when you look

at the cost to the NHS, it casts around �65 million per year to

treat a woman with pregnancy complications per year. Maybe �24

million per year is the cost to the infant as well.

Isn't this what it is all about, Vernon Coaker? The long-term cost?

It is controversial, this. On the one hand, shouldn't people take

responsibility for their own health and their own unborn child?

Alongside that, people are also concerned about the fact that

linked to smoking in pregnancy is a lot of premature birth and so on.

People worry about that as well. It is trying to navigate your way

through that we changes behaviour. The pilot scheme is about vouchers.

All I am saying is that I agree with Nigel, and would get concerned

about paying tax for bad behaviour. But isn't it about trying to

prevent premature death with unborn babies? Isn't one of the ways to do

that to linger vouchers do something that would benefit the

child was much if America is anything to go by, the vouchers --

would benefit the child. If America is anything to go by,

the vouchers would work. On this occasion, I think if giving

up smoking is bad heart, and I'm sure it is, I'm not sure that a

small voucher is going to help. If you stop smoking, you have got a

lot of money saved anyway. That is your incentive. Is a small Dutch

are going to make a large difference?

If this works, though, surely there will be pressure on the rest of the

country to introduce it? Be Royal College of Midwives say they

support it. That is the point. It has a pilot.

What I am saying is, which is the way to make it more acceptable

rather than just people being rewarded for what others see as the

right thing? Where does this end, though? If we

start to give vouchers to women to persuade him to stop smoking during

pregnancy, do we have to dip into alcoholics or obese people to stop

eating? -- would give them too. The issue here is we have got two

people involved, the mother and the baby. That impacts longer into

their lives because it can increase the risk of not just a short-term

risk but could increase the risk of cancer and heart disease. Really

got to think about those, haven't we. Thank you very much.

Now, when we heard about this last week, we found it hard to believe.

The EU is warning farmers that it'll fine them unless they tag all

their sheep. With more than a million in our region, that's some

ask, as our political editor John Hess has been finding out.

We are driving to one of the highest and remotest areas of

England. Peter Atkin is going to count his sheep. How many have you

got, Peter? 600 appear on this moor. And where

do they end up? On the horizon. In the Peak District, it is not

just the elements that can make hill farming a struggle. A chill

wind has Broadmayne -- has come in from Europe, making sure that all

sheep are compelled to be tagged. If not, the farmer gets a fine. The

consequences? Financial loss on something that is

basically only justifiable anyway. How do you feel about that?

Rather better, really. They want us to use a system that we know is

flawed. -- rather bitter. This is what the fuss is all about.

It is an allegory tag that the EU and Defra what on every sheep. --

electronic tag. Stephen wainwright is a younger

generation farmer. He says the new rules fail to take into account the

unique nature of the Peak District. When you go gathering to find your

sheep, I do with my dad and my best friends, and we set off for 7.5

hours. We go behind rocks and galleys, and even if they gave you

a week's notice, you would not get everyone. It is just opened more

land. You can go about 7, 8, 9 miles in that direction without

seeing a fence. It is market day in Bakewell. This

is where many of Derbyshire's 370,000 sheep are sold and bought.

It was the outbreak of foot-and- mouth disease more than 10 years

ago that prompted the EU and Defra to consider electronic tagging to

track and soars each animal. Newborn lambs now have to be tagged.

It will be the turn of older sheep in two years. All 8 million of them.

The EU embarked on a programme to bring in electronic identification

of sheep using a chip inside the tags. That has proved more

difficult to develop than was perhaps originally expected.

The sheep then come to market to be auctioned. Today in Bakewell the

prices are strong. The farmers have cause to smile.

It is good business for sheep farmers. Britain is now the biggest

exporter in Europe. But the issue, farmers say, could put all this at

risk. It is unfair to expect people to

jump through hoops when the system that they want to use is not 100%

perfect. One solution is to give the sheep farmers some leeway.

Defra is sympathetic but fears it could end up facing fines of up to

�10 million from the EU if it does not comply. In a statement, Defra

admits that at the moment there seems to be no effective way around

Farming ministers still have a compromise can be reached with the

EU that -- but they could be some long nights ahead.

There goes the EU all over dip -- all over again! Is it Operation

overkill? That is just what I was about to

say. It looks like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We are trying to

fix a problem from a decade ago. This is not needed. It is not part

of its time. It is a step too far. And we heard the farmer say they

are struggling as it is to make a farm living. This could push people

to the limit? Clearly, hill farmers watching this

and others will feel for them. I hope that common sense prevailed,

but I think you saw from the shots how ridiculous it is to believe

that you can get every single sheep or lamb or whatever on that huge

expanse... I'm not an expert in sheep farming, but surely there's a

better way of finding to deal with the issues this is dealing with.

One of the best ways is listening to what the hill farmers are saying.

Maybe, Natal, the EU Commissioner to come to see for himself.

There does seem to be a special case in that part of Derbyshire.

You do not have sheep in a pen. Having to find all of them, making

sure if they are attacked, maybe if there's some margin for error, that

the take the edge of it. -- if they are tags.

The Defra I effectively washing their hands of this. Is that

reasonable, for him to say OK, we could it a fine, let's take this no

further? You have to fight your corner on

these things and get it changed. Through listening to farmers and

through Nigel and myself, other MPs, we have had lots of regulation

change, and with this implementation date being push back

to 2014, there has been some change already. The government needs to

continue to fight its corner. What can be done next, then, Nigel?

It is fair to say that Defra had been working party get this measure

softened. There has been some success. I think we can all urge

ministers to keep the pressure up and find a solution that is less

painful for farmers and gives them a decent chance of making a living

in a hard business. Thank you very much to both of you.

Time now for our regular round-up of some of the other political

stories in the East Midlands in As fears grow over the extent of

President Ahmadinejad's nuclear programme, Patrick Mercer, a former

army commander, has joined those warning of the dangers of using

force against Iran. We cannot afford any ill judged military

action of. Earlier this month we highlighted

concerns over the decision to devalue educational on vacations.

Now, a Derby recruit the company is warning it will exacerbate the

skill shortage. Derbyshire County Council is to spend �7 million on

improving broadband services, matching the amount the government

has agreed to contribute. Big Brother watched says Leicester

and Nottingham have more CCTV cameras than any other city in the

UK. Leicester says that almost half of theirs are in schools.

Nottingham stressed that many of theirs play an important role in