15/01/2017 The Papers

The action gets under way this afternoon, with coverage on BBC Two.

There are also regular updates live on Radio 5 Live.

Hello and welcome to our review of The Papers.

With me are Josie Delap, home affairs correspondent

for the Economist, and journalist Sean Dilley.

Let's have a look at today's front pages.

The Observer says cancer patients are feeling

the brunt of the NHS crisis, with operations being cancelled

The Mail on Sunday suggests cutting the foreign aid budget

It claims more than three quarters of voters support the idea.

Meanwhile, on the same story, the Sunday Mirror has a picture

of a two-year-old girl it says had to sit on the floor for eight hours

Theresa May's Brexit strategy is the Sunday Telegraph's focus.

It says the PM is prepared to lead Britain out of the single market.

The "Brexit Battle Plan" is how the Sunday Express put it,

saying Mrs May is going to get tough with Brussels.

And the Sunday Times carries an image of Prince William who, it

says, will be leaving his position as an air-ambulance

helicopter pilot to pursue full-time royal duties.

The Sunday Telegraph, story reflecting some of the other papers,

gamble on a clean the Brexit, Britain could leave customs union to

secure better trade talks. They have both parts per, clean Brexit seems

to be watches aiming for. Yes, it seems to be a bit of a rebranding,

from hard Brexit to clean. The speech will be on Tuesday,

ambassadors from the 27 EU states have been invited to attend. She

will lay out in more detail than she currently has her plans for

Britain's exit from the EU which will include being prepared to leave

the customs union as well as the single market. In order to regain

full control of borders. To no longer be bound by a European Court

of Justice rulings. She is also keen to end the divisive rhetoric of

levers and remainders and the insults flung around... A lot of

people are keen on that. It is hard to see that happening. This is her

trying to answer some of her critics who say she is simply not telling us

what she plans to do. Rightly picking up on the clean Brexit, good

bit of rebranding, one wonders what a dirty Brexit would be. Without

wishing to be too controversial, I am sick of all of the hard Brexit,

soft Brexit, clean Brexit, all of this nonsense, insulting rhetoric. I

know you are watching, Downing Street. We are not hiring a poet, we

would have Shelley to do that. I sympathise to a degree with the

Prime Minister because she is being asked and forced into revealing her

negotiating position before and it is a really bad idea patented.

Legally, can she remove the customs union, article 127, our membership

of the single market? There is a campaign and a judicial review going

to court led by a PR chap and I believe another. One is a remain and

one is a lever. They are trying to argue that it needs another bit of

Parliamentary scrutiny. Have we got the patience? The Sunday Times, same

story. I want to move onto Donald Trump who is obviously going to be

not just the biggest newsmaker this week but probably this year and the

Sunday Times says he wants a summit in rhetoric. What do you make of

this? Traditionally, in recent years, the President's first

international visit has been to Canada, fairly innocuous. The best

possible way! Donald Trump is discussing going to Russia, or took

recce a third-party location, to meet with Putin -- to Iceland. This

seems to have got footage officials quite worried. What exactly it will

mean in terms of sanctions on Russia. -- British officials. And

tromp-- and Donald Trump's intentions. The more recent ones

about hacking and Crimea being occupied. Donald Trump has promised

to keep an open mind on this. He has been quite flattering about Putin in

recent months so I think this is another sign of his willingness to

develop that relationship, something he says is going to be good for

America, good for them to have warmer relations. And it could be.

Someone who has been accused of looking like Vladimir Putin on

occasion, particularly from behind, ultimately, whether Russia and

America like each other, and they probably don't, historically, let us

be honest, it is clearly of benefit to have two world powers, each of

whom could be perceived by the other side as being a little bit unstable

with nuclear weapons, too... I am doing a Donald Trump! It is going to

be fantastic! The British are worried, that is part of the story.

So they say. Within the foreign service of the US, the capital of

Iceland is remembered from when Ronald Reagan tried to give away all

nuclear weapons. One might wish for a nuclear free world, but some of

the more hard cases in the Ronald Reagan administration went, my

goodness, the president is suggesting the Gorbachev, we get rid

of all of the nukes. You have to assume one of the reasons that

people in the intelligence committee on foreign service in America are so

worried about this is because we simply have no idea of what to

expect from Donald Trump and his presidency. The knows what he could

say at any moment... On Twitter, probably! Who knows. I think that is

one of the most unsettling things for spooks and diplomats who are

traditionally quite conservative or like to know very much... They like

predictability. He is anything but predictable stock we have seen this

week the president elect picking a fight, one might say, or engaging a

fight with the CIA, American intelligence, which is a brave thing

to do. Secondly, picking a fight with the civil rights community and

with, was in John Lewis who is a hero among the civil rights

committee in the United States and beyond that because of the way he

conducted himself in the early 60s. When we talk about in terms of what

he may say, he is limited by the Constitution. An awful lot of people

do not like Donald Trump the person but they are dealing with Donald

Trump the office also Reverend Jesse Jackson is also involved in the

civil liberties much happening at the moment. It is fairly inevitable

that they are going to be protests against the person. People have to

bear in mind, again, whether people like the result, effectively, they

are not protesting against democracy... Well, that is the

argument we are having. It is interesting, we will have the

president of the United States calling for unity in the United

States, one can predict, Theresa May is doing that here, you could say it

is wonderful, but it also create social problems. Absolutely, the

deep breaths, no matter how much politicians call for unity, it is

hard to imagine them going away. -- deep rifts. The differences are

fundamental, something like Brexit, as we have seen, it reveals very

great divisions. We are a polarised country. You could almost look at

the Brexit referendum back in June and the US election and the

percentages, they are not far off. Indeed not. This is a story which

the health service... The Observer has got it as have other papers in

different ways. The Mirror has the human story. The Observer has got,

health service in fighters, cancer operations cancelled. Number 10 must

face the truth according to a hospital chief. This is something

people care deeply about. Absolutely. The point about this

story, we have seen it quite a lot, stories about the crisis the NHS is

facing, cancer operations have traditionally been protected, if not

officially but they have been seen as things you cannot cancel. In

December, some hospitals began having to postpone them, if not

cancel them. The number of the hospitals doing that has increased

in January. So we have got people criticising the Government for

failing to acknowledge the scale of the crisis, which is nothing new. It

is against the backdrop, we were talking a few moments ago before

coming on air, GPs being told they have to stay from ATM until 8pm, it

is no win for anybody because if you are not a Doctor Barbara, even if

you are, I guess, but maybe you have got more time, it is virtually

impossible to get any form of GP appointment unless you queue up --

Doctor bother. Theresa May is saying that by having the surgery is open

it will ease the crisis. But GPs, professional bodies, friends of

mine, they feel they are slightly picked upon. Whether that is fair is

wide of the debate. You cannot put it all on them. You covered this

endlessly, the Economist. It is not new to this government, however we

can attract Jeremy Hunt, not the most loved person in the country,

very few people who do that job are loved by doctors and therefore by

those of us who like our doctors. What is true about the current

situation is Britain was not spending on health services is

falling behind other rich countries. We are spending less in comparison

to other places. The difficulty with health care spending compared to

something like criminal justice spending, which Theresa May was in

charge before, is that you can decide, I am simply not going to

send people to prison, I am going to... I'm going to make these

crimes, they are no logo going to be crimes. You cannot do that with

health care services. -- no longer. We have an increasingly sick

population. This is only going to be a bigger problem. Also, as you know,

governments talk about more money for the health service, but there

are more of us, the biggest success of British art in the past 50 years,

we are living longer, great success story, except if you happen to need

a doctor in your lady bloomer and you need more than ten minutes. The

figures as well -- in your 80s. There is more money being siphoned

off for social care and the like. Maybe five years ago, are member

interviewing the Health Secretary at the time, 103 billion, so the amount

is increasing. To be frank, it is really difficult. I have sympathies

with both sides. The NHS is being cut and they are feeling the

squeeze. But if you say, here is ?300 billion, which would be a

little bit under half of what the entire Treasury is worth, 768

billion, we would still have people surely wanting more budget and it is

natural because we want to help people. It is true, going back to

your point, if you look at Jeremy, per capita, they have almost three

times the number of hospital beds available because they have a

different system and they spend more money on it -- if you look at

Germany. The NHS used to be the envy of the world. It has not been

replicated though. Exactly. When we talk about it, it is difficult. We

talk about the NHS and the NHS budget as though it is one

monolithic organisation and it is many different organisations and

many different things have money spent on them. Social care, that has

been cut. The knock-on effects of that in terms of elderly people

getting sick at home and needing to come into hospital, putting pressure

on hospitals, it is something that is a very complex ecosystem. Moving

the Telegraph, Facebook and fake news. I love this story! Let me that

it! Parliament to grill Facebook chiefs over fake news. This is the

stories which you can see on social media and elsewhere. I am going to

be very cynical now and point out there is a business model that works

for online papers were the headline is so outrageously devoid from the

reality, the reality is the last paragraph, accusing the Prime

Minister still linked the lemur Christine Yate cupcake and a great

big hole thing and then they say, the Daily Mail, any other

publication, the prime Mr was in Jersey that day and could not have

been there -- the Prime Minister stealing a cupcake. There is a claim

and a counterclaim and here is our research. The answer to so-called

fake news is to do news accurately, to have journalists, not

churnalists. And have an editor. I am sorry, it was in the Telegraph a

while ago, a story which said, could previous lovers change how your

future children will look? In paragraph six, the research was

based on fruit flies. Intriguing. I thought, what is fake news? That is

one of the crucial questions. We know that there have been stories

that have been utterly false that people take very seriously and it

affects how they might vote and how they view the world and it is

something to take very seriously. We have to be very careful also about

what we label fake news and who label is something fake. Donald

Trump says CNN is fake news because he does not like it. It creates

biblical aspect to a genuinely difficult story. Do you mean

propaganda? -- it creates a difficult aspect. A story that the

BBC is to launch a fake news unit. Actually, I think it... It is

supposed to be anti-fake news. It is a fantastic idea. The problem is, it

is using rhetoric. To give you an example, with huge respect to

anybody in public service, the former prime Mr David Cameron said

that journalists should refer to the organisation that itself the Islamic

State as so-called Islamic State, I can tell you that I refused to use

the term the prime Minster said we should use because there should be

an unhealthy tension. I said the organisation called itself the

Islamic State and thereafter you call it IS or Islamic State. There

is a danger, not just when politicians tell the media what

language they should use, we need to have independence. Anti-fake news

unit is a brilliant idea. Front page of the Telegraph, 50 Conservative

MPs have demanded the Government brings in tougher strike clause --

laws. This is an old chestnut, very interesting because the Southern

Rail strike has caused such misery. Absolutely. 50 MPs saying that

strikes on critical public infrastructure such as train and bus

services should only be allowed if they can be deemed reasonable and

proportionate by a judge and if they are allowed to go ahead, unions have

to provide a skeleton service. What is striking about this, pardon the

pun... Well done! They have caused enormous misery, the strikes, but

the numbers of workers who are members of the unions and the number

of days lost to strikes has declined dramatically. We are left with a few

strikes that cause a lot of misery because they are in very high

profile industries, where it is very difficult to get workers to stand in

when you go on strike. We have to remember, when you have MPs calling

for widespread laws about strikes, this is a smaller and smaller issue.

What do you make of it? I am loathe to taking any more rights away or

creating more laws because successive governments like doing

that. I have a little bit of sympathy, I do not tend to use that

train network, but I have a little bit of sympathy. For example

policing, I do not know if you would call it an industry, but they are

not allowed to strike because we need a police service. It is a

privately run company, that is the other argument. You cannot go on

another railway to come up from Brighton. The devil is in the detail

and it is about negotiation. We have to leave it there. That is it. Thank

you to Mevlut Mert Aydintas and Ariel Zurawski. -- thank you to Sean