05/02/2017 The Papers

On this week's Meet The Author, my guest is Sofie Kinsella. She will be

talking about her latest book My Not So Perfect Life.

Welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be bringing us

tomorrow. Joining me is Robert Fox and former Conservative employment

Minister Esther Mcveigh. The front pages, starting with the Daily

Telegraph, leading analysis of plans to close A units in England in an

effort to save money. It reports that up to one in six casualties

departments face closure. Rent Revolution, the headline on the

front of the Metro, referring to a shift in tone by the Conservatives

from their right to buy policy towards affordable homes to rent.

The Independent has a photo of the French far right leader Marine Le

Pen as she launched her presidential campaign in France today and

attacked a radical Islam. Blackmailing Beckham, the daily

Mirror reports on a plot over hacked e-mails from David Beckham.

Health tourism is the focus of the times. It reports hospitals will be

legally obliged to charge foreign patients before they are allowed

access to NHS health care. The garden looks at the

controversial travel ban imposed by Donald Trump but rejected by a US

appeals court. It looks like those defending the US president and his

efforts to stop people travelling from seven many Muslim countries.

I expected to see more of Donald Trump on the front pages but no. But

there is a lot of Marine Le Pen instead. Here she is. She was

appearing in Lyon today as she launched her campaign.

Vive la haine, which I think long live hatred. Yes. It was the rage of

the banlieues, which they do every ten years, badly. And those are the

suburbs? That's right. The interesting thing is that is her

constituency. I am worried about you and Mr Trump. We are not having him

40 already, are we? I just thought he would feature more. -- for tea.

The papers say Marine Le Pen is going in and she has a roaring start

in the presidential election race. She'll win the first round but

definitely not the second. You don't agree. I don't because we heard all

of that about Mr Trump. What's been interesting since reporting last

week from really depressed parts of France, very much the kind of rust

belt area that Trump appealed to. They say we are behind one of the

big union configurations, the CGT, but the only one who can really

speak sent us this time his Marine Le Pen. Wait for a shock. We've

heard from other politicians, particularly to do with Islamist

fundamentalism in the US in particular, but also saying that we

want a rethink of our relationship with the EU. And even the euro as

they currency. And she's come out with putting France first. She wants

to get into the, sort of, national feeling, the sense of the people

she's coming forward with. As you say, whether it is the euro, whether

it is talking in a debate to come out of the EU. She's also talking

about wanting to tax imports. Also looking at contracts for foreign

workers. To raise welfare. Cutting tax. She's appealing to everybody,

giving them a pick and mix of things they can go to her for. Do you think

she will win? Rob knows the country better. He feels she has support. I

would not have thought that. Everything I've been reading has

very much said it has always been in the French tradition anything but

Marine Le Pen and the National front. She would get through on the

first round but not the second. But if people are not tapping in and you

are not hearing the coverage of the people she's appealing to, then that

could be a way of keeping her off the front pages, but all I saw from

the footage on the BBC, when they spoke to an audience afterwards,

some were teachers, doctors, students, and they all said Marine

Le Pen is the only one for us. So what you are saying is resonating

from those 3000 in Lyon. But if they wanted somebody new, somebody

different, who wasn't part of the political establishment in terms of

had held elected office before they could pick Macron, who have twice as

many people turn up at his launch, also in Lyon. He is part of the

establishment. He went to the grand schools. He's been minister. He is

never held elected office. We've heard that before. I think Marine Le

Pen is a much better politician than her father, the founder of the front

National, and I think she has populism. She is another one of the

big populist leaders, saying, I know the people, I trust the people, the

people trust me. I think he is an elite figure, very intelligent,

absolutely top drawer, Macron will find it difficult to break that

crust. In a way the establishment let themselves down. The people who

should have been there, Fillon... I could not agree more. In the States,

everybody said, we didn't want Trump, we didn't want Hillary,

Hillary had problems with her foundation, her e-mails, why was she

the Democrat candidate? C have two people who wouldn't necessarily come

forward but the establishment has, they've let themselves down by doing

things they should not have done. You are saying the establishment has

rotten candidates? I didn't. But I think you have a point. They have

done things so wrong for a long time and got away with it, but these

people are now coming through. They've opened up the path that

these people who you would not have thought would have been here

together in the final. So it is really interesting. We will find out

pretty soon what is going to happen. April, then many, if we need a

second. And we have the Dutch. -- then May. Then we have the big ones,

the Germans, and then the Italian ones will come somewhere in between.

We will have somebody who does not agree with politics at all. It is

rock and roll. Let's move on and talk about Brexit in various guises.

There are so many different strands to the Brexit story. First of all on

the Telegraph. Made to stand firm against rebels' attempts to wreck

Brexit bill. -- Theresa May to stand firm. This would be by a number of

amendments which would cause trouble. The government will not

back any of them. How can they wrecked the Brexit bill with

amendments if they don't get much support? I would not have thought

the support was more than nine or ten. Amongst the Conservatives? Yes,

couldn't really see that, some of these amendments it is like 100 have

come forward. They are wrecking amendments, I think, one has gone

through that you cannot trigger article 50 until we've had money put

into Cardiff airport. Bless them for trying, but lots of things are

coming forward like this. At the end of the day she is going to proceed.

She is going to carry on. The vote last week was pretty much unanimous

over 380 supporting it going forward. Ken Clarke? He is about the

only one. He was the only one from the Conservatives. But we expected

that. We knew that. Yes, stand firm, follow one through, and, you know,

she is touring the right thing. We've also got on the FT, just

quickly, Brexit having a negative effect already, says big business

leaders. Hold the front page. How original of the FT. They've been

writing that practically since the 23rd of June last year. When we

actually leave, though... It might happen, but, you see, they have been

doing that and they've been rather blown out of the water by the

government of the Bank of England -- governor. And the statistics saying

we are doing better than we thought it would be. On the front of the

Independent, Jeremy Corbyn braced for fresh Brexit rebellion, it says.

Diane Abbott also under pressure. This will be the story. It won't be

the Conservatives. They've probably never been so united. This is the

story, Diane Abbott has a six-day, having a migraine... A Brexit

migraine. She said she was ill and that is why she didn't turn up. Her

own party don't believe that. Caroline Flint saying that today.

This will be interesting. What will she do next week? She cannot beat

you with a migraine this coming week. She will have to vote. -- she

cannot be all with a migraine. What will happen when other people didn't

want to vote, they wanted at Stein, he said no and they've lost their

place in the Shadow Cabinet. -- they wanted to abstain. I think this is

the start of Jeremy Corbyn's demise and him going for what Diane Abbott

has done. You think so? Do you think he will stick with her? -- I do.

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn has fought through a Brexit strategy.

One suspects he is in sympathy. He was not a great enthusiast for the

EU. Arguably he campaigned more visibly than Theresa May did, who

was supposed to be in Remain. I tweeted the other week that they

should have been given a free vote because Brexit would have gone

through if people had a free vote or not because more constituents and

more MPs would have had to have voted with him. He could have done

that. I think he's put himself in a pickle going forward. He was trying

to appeal to the by-election in Stoke, the one in Copeland, he had

to show his northern voters that he's in touch with his working

class. But he isn't. He is pulling further apart. It is difficult for

any leader, who does he follow, kind of thing, Metropolitan elite,

working-class voters in the north, the two by-elections are in the

north and that is why he went way. The health service. All this week

across the BBC we will be looking at the state of the NHS. The Daily

Telegraph says one in six A and the wards are facing closure. --

accident and emergency wards. A lot of insight into that. They are

really holding things together in a lot of places. Exactly. Talking of

closing them down or and cutting them back, according to this story,

which is very detailed, the plans are part of efforts to close a ?22

billion debt. You cannot go on doing this. The thing is the NHS is going

to need money. It will probably need a lot more money given the ageing

population. We heard on your interview just before this

programme, I think he was from... He was from a former NHS Trust. Yes. We

know what is going to happen. But when will we finally confront it?

Let me put it to you as a serving politician. Put it off today because

it is such a big question. And it is about what you said about something

else, dammed if you do dammed if you don't. But it is underfunded for

what it is going to have to do and probably what it has today already.

We will have a special tax. An insurance scheme in the middle of

it. Part privatised with an insurance thing. Do we bring back

that dreaded concept that I cannot see any British politician or

political party doing it, the means test? They are very big questions.

The Conservatives in the coalition spent a lot of money as Labour had.

That appears from the figures we have seen to have tailed away, the

amount of investment going in. The investment has gone in. The

investments are going in. As we were saying before, there are so many

demands on it now. Even with the money going in and increased money

going in the demands are growing at a faster rate. Whether it is

expectations, whether it is the cost of pharmaceutical goods, whether it

is ageing population, social care attached to that, that will be the

issue. But I think it is positive that now maybe people are going to

have a proper adult conversation rather than being so tribal, locked

and extreme parts of the debate, and not really solving the problem.

Foreign patients to pay upfront for NHS care in the Times newspaper.

Hospitals will be legally obliged to charge foreign patients. If somebody

comes in and they really need help you do not ask to see a credit card,

do you? No. This obviously has to work within the realms of humanity

and what is right. But what do you need to do is find out who is

eligible, who isn't eligible, and they need crisis treatment. They

will be paying for it afterwards. So far they haven't done that. The fact

they are just issuing them with the ability to do that with pay

machines, nobody has ever asked before. We are going to have to say

that it is in the International health service, it is the national

Health Service, and people who paid for it need to get treatment from

it. I just need to look at the rent revolution. It is in the Metro. A

shake-up to give tenants longer agreements. We are all supposed to

be homeowners. This is pretty big. It is huge. The homeowning

democracy, that was Margaret Thatcher's slogan. Selling council

houses. I can hear the brakes being slammed on, grinding gears, it is a

big change, and it is because of the way the housing stock is run and

rents are impossible, and it's very difficult for young people. A

solution 40 years ago which was right isn't necessarily the solution

now. You have so many precious. When David Cameron said we want to have

all of these new homes, you know what, you never got the planning

permission through. You can say whatever you want, actually people

don't want them built in their local environment, it isn't going to

happen. So then you have 300,000 people coming in every year, which

is pretty much a city coming into the country, where are you going to

house them? If you can't, you are not building enough, you will have

to look at rent, affordability, that is a dilemma but we do have to have

something. Supply and demand. There you go, basic. Basic economics. That

is it for this hour. But you will both be back at 11:30pm. The poor

viewers. I don't want to be here are my own. Coming up next, Meet The

Author. Sophie Kinsella's new novel

is called my My Not So Perfect Life, It's about a woman in her 20s

who leads an apparently