31/03/2017 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be

With me are the political commentator Jo Phillips

and Chief Economics Commentator at the Telegraph, Liam Halligan.

Welcome to both of you. A look at the front pages first of all. The i

newspaper is leading on the story that Spain might get a veto over how

any agreement between the UK and the EU applies to Gibraltar. Parliament

faces in new expenses scandal after a leak of information on how much

MPs pay their staff. That makes the front page of the Telegraph. The

Guardian claims that US security officials had serious concerns over

Michael Flynn becoming national security adviser because of his

links with Moscow. The Times reports that repay Google ?31 million worth

of corporation tax. The express covers new research suggesting that

a lack of sleep increases the risk of suffering a stroke or heart

attack. Prince Charles tried to delay the US invasion of Afghanistan

says a book being serialised by the Daily Mail. That features on the

front page of the paper as well. And an exclusive interview with singer

Linda Nolan who has been diagnosed with cancer in the daily Mirror. We

will look at those front pages in a moment. First, the i newspaper. Fear

on the rock. I think you did an interview a while ago with the Chief

Minister of Gibraltar. This is not entirely unexpected, but Spain is

apparently going to be given a veto over the future of Gibraltar, which

has always been a bone of contention between Spain and Britain. London is

said to be furious, Boris Johnson is said to have committed to fight

ruthlessly to make sure that it stays British. And this is all part

of the shenanigans that have been going on today from Donald Tusk, his

comments, Europe playing it out on what we can expect, agreed the

divorce Bill and then we will talk trade -- laying it out. What about

Ireland, no special deal for the City, Nicola Sturgeon has told

Theresa May that she has handed a letter, her version of Article 50,

saying we will hold a second independence referendum. What do you

make about Gibraltar? It was nice for a day, wasn't it? Yesterday I

thought the Prime Minister and her rather emollient Article 50 letter

and now the EU has this road map for negotiations which is going to

dominate the airwaves for the next couple of years. And they have

alighted on Gibraltar because they know that will lead to strong

emotions in the UK. It has been a British protectorate since 1713, I

think. A long time. This is designed to provoke. Spain does have a veto

on this deal. It seems that the gloves are off. Does and surprises

that it has happened so soon? Not at all. My view is that the whole

divorce bill thing is also designed to to pluck 60 billion

euros out of the air, it is a figure that's meant to rile and meant to

get the UK on the back foot. If I was advising the British government,

which I am not, I would say that in a complex negotiation many facets,

the actual amount of money is the very last thing you decide when

everything else has been decided so this strikes me as something

completely on its head. As Liam says of course this will come, are you

going to take this CV is and who gets the cat, like in every divorce.

The cuts will be later! Our cat correspondent, tonight, Jo! Spain is

where most Britons living in Europe live as well which adds another

facet to it. To be fair to Spain, so far in these talks about the future

of UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK, many British

citizens are in Spain and Madrid has been eager to say publicly, we will

accept these people and let's try to get a deal on the rights... British

people living here, I think that will get solved quite quickly. I

hope so. Yet these are the bones of contention will be swirling in the

air for months to come. Different parts of the EU will want different

things. It is not just what Donald Tusk says. Liam, let's go to the

front of the Telegraph, continuing the Brexit theme. Donald Tusk says a

spot of this opening salvo there must be no unfair competitive

advantage that Britain takes after Brexit. It's all about shifting and

trading regulations to get a more business friendly environment to

facilitate cross-border trade. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory

leader, a big Brexiteer, has predictably said this is posturing.

I think the Telegraph are only punting this because a lot of the

readers run small and medium-sized enterprises that don't actually

export to the EU. At the moment they do have to adhere to all the EU

rules. Things like Brexit make life more difficult for the small and

medium businesses. Afterwards that will be gone. It will depend on

relative regulation. If Sun is in relation to workers' rights that

will throw up another... It would but there are things about

environmental transport, a lot of things have been very beneficial. Is

this Great Repeal Bill which viewers will hear lot

about, repealing the EU version, that is why it's called the great...

It will be strange when people start asking which is the one about the

bent bananas that have been talked about for the last 30 years? It will

be such a tsunami of legislation that the government has had to give

an undertaking that, we are not going to use this transfer as a way

to trick and trim and get stuff through on the nod, we are not going

to cut Labour or environmental standards. Of course, the Labour

Party and the Lib Dems will be keeping their eyes open for any slip

from that pledge. You threw me a question in the office. When was the

first MPs expenses scandal? To all of our astonishment it was 2009. And

we all said, about five years ago? It is on the front page of the

Telegraph, a suggestion of a new expenses scandal. Although the

headline is often is misleading because it is not about expenses, it

is about a breach of data. Basically the information, about the people

MPs employed in their offices. Some will be members of that MP's family.

It lists everything including names and addresses, the amount they earn,

the amount of holiday entitlement and bonuses, interestingly, this

appeared on the independent parliamentary standards authority's

old website. It was up there for four hours. That would have been

like leaving a document that you want the press to see accidentally

on a photocopier. Allegedly. LAUGHTER

. It is a big story for the Telegraph because it was the

Telegraph's investigation which led to the founding of Ipsa. It then

said that Ipsa recommended, let's get rid of the ideas of MPs

employing members of their family including spouses. MPs rebelled. It

seems that still 150 MPs at 650 employ family members. So a

roundabout one in four. In defence, a lot of MPs, men and women, live in

constituencies that are at the other end of the country. They did not

employ their spouse as office manager, then frankly, their

relationship would break up -- if they did not employ their spouse.

And then you would not get family people being MPs. Sometimes it can

be abused when people employ their children for doing nothing, that has

happened in the past. Sometimes it is defendable. If you don't spend

time in Parliament and understand how it works, it looks bad enough

from the outside and goodness knows Francois Fillon in France is

suffering, but it can be justifiable. It is true, if one of

you is in Westminster... Four nights a week and the constituency is

bogged down by questions about a local bus route... So sometimes it

makes sense that one person should be in the constituency keeping show

on the road. In the interests of keeping cats in the topic... Let's

go to the times. Dekker let's drop everything and just do cats. The big

moment in British history, cats! Google and tax. This is interesting.

All the big tech giants are in the spotlight. Companies that may be

abusing their market share. Saying they've come up with a fantastic

product that everyone needs. What we have is an investigation, Google's

parent company files in the states and shows the revenue of subscribers

to Google in the UK is 7.78 billion in the last year but the amount of

tax they pay is 25 million. That is very low. Then it turns out that

even though George Osborne is said to have wrapped Google over the

knuckles and done a deal to get tax back, which is hailed as a major

success, it transpires that HMRC now owes Google about ?30 million. But

probably oversimplifies it. You would think it is an April fool, but

nobody would run out as a front-page story however obvious it seems. The

country claims it it has paid or taxes legally do, just so that we do

that. You're on a! Guardian, the front page. Donald Trump. This could

have been an April fool when year ago, Michael Flynn, former national

security adviser to Donald Trump, forced to resign, has come up

through his lawyer, saying he has a story to tell provided he is immune

from prosecution. Because there are investigations going on into the

links between the Trump campaign, of which Michael Flynn was a leading

light and Russia in the run-up to the election of President Trump.

According to the Guardian, both American and British intelligence

had discouraged Michael Flynn "Worrisome" behaviour well before

his appointment and raised concerns about his ties to Russia, and his

capacity for linear thought, whatever that is. Don't ask me what

it means! I've no idea. We all looked mystified. Is it good or bad,

a capacity for linear thought? Not only will he go down as the shortest

ever serving international adviser, is a serious person, a former

Lieutenant General in the US Army, he held a major security post under

Obama and is a seasoned Washington insider. It almost takes us back to

McCarthyism and the mutual paranoia of the 1950s that you have a

national security adviser deposed, just a few months into a government,

in return for immunity from prosecution. You are guaranteed to

arouse curiosity if you say, I have something to tell you but I cannot

tell you what it is unless I have immunity. He wants a book deal. He

will end up with his own chat show. And this is the man leading the call

for "Lock her up" giving the campaign, about Hillary Clinton. I

am torn about talking about Cats now. Let's quickly do Le Sting.

Paris, Lyon and Grenoble say that of British cars come over and don't

have a green sticker talking about emissions of the particular vehicle,

they will be fined the equivalent of ?117. In order to get this sticker

they have to grapple with the French government website that apparently

is very difficult, and paid the equivalent of ?4 ten. It may be that

22 other French cities including Lille and Dunkirk, where many

British people go, may bring in this scheme as well. So if you are going

to drive to Paris, Lyon or Grenoble this Easter, do check. The RAC say

they have been inundated with calls. News that you can use. And because

it is going to be a nice weekend here, they say don't go anywhere.

Cats! Do we think this is a real story? A little caveat here. This is

quite a large piece of text. We must get these cat faces on the screen.

Any cat owner will recognise them. Scientists have cracked the secret

code of inscrutable cats. According to scientists who filmed 29 cats at

a Canadian shelter on 275 occasions with these different faces, relax,

everything is satisfactory for now. Viacom is that a vacuum cleaner,

please don't use it, this meal is not served to my liking, and so

forth. The thing that gives it away is the thoughts of a person called

Penny Ward Mouser, a cat enthusiast, the author of our cats smart. We

will have to leave that in suspense. Thank you. Can I just say, the last

30 seconds have been the pinnacle of my journalistic career. Mind to!

Don't forget you can see the front pages

of the papers online on the BBC News website.

It's all there for you, seven days a week

at bbc.co.uk/papers, and if you miss the programme any