20/08/2017 The Papers

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

With me are Ben Chi, economics and business

editor of the Independent and the Education Editor

Let's have a look at the front pages first.

The Sunday Times leads with its story that the Queen

The front page is dominated by an image of Her Majesty in pink.

The Daily Mail says hope is fading for the seven-year-old boy missing

The Daily Express has the same story.

It says the boy's injured British mother is desperately

The Telegraph also covers the Barcelona attack,

but focuses on plans to crack down on car and van rentals

And the Observer reports that leading experts on EU law have

cast "serious doubt" on Theresa May's Brexit strategy.

Let's start with the Telegraph. The investigation is continuing into how

this Barcelona cell was able to operate for a whole year undetected.

It is looking at its own incompetence in the way it couldn't

rent a larger van and do more damage, shone. There is a very

interesting story in the Sunday Telegraph, which in the wake of the

things that have happened in Barcelona, I think Britain is now

looking at whether we can crack down on car and van rentals. Of course,

hired vehicles have been used in several of these attacks like London

Bridge and Finsbury Park mosque. So the idea is that information handed

over to rental companies, including names and addresses could be cross

checked against criminal watchlists quickly. And then the car could be

tracked if it is rented out, or even stopped from being hired out to

potential terrorists. But one of the concerns is not to infringe upon

daily life, because people still need to rent larger trucks for

completely valid purposes. That is the trade-off that the public have

to make. As you say, it will mean that if you hire a van, if they

implement the suggested scheme, it will mean a lot more red tape and

delays. But my guess is that most people would be willing to make that

trade-off if it meant even the small chance of a terrorist being able to

get hold of an articulated van or lorry and causing the kind of

carnage we saw in Barcelona, if there is a minimal chance of doing

it, I suspect most people would be happy to do it. The other issue

which is not raised here is that barriers in public places like Las

Ramblas and Westminster, I suspect we will see more of them. That is

simpler and quicker to implement than these bureaucratic obstacles.

We are increasingly seeing those barriers, but in some areas, it is

physically impossible to get them in. You can't put barriers

everywhere. You never know whether terrorists are going to strike.

There are barriers now across London Bridge. I over it every day to work

and the barriers are there so that cars can't mow down pedestrians. But

you can't put them right across London, or right across our capital

cities. And that doesn't help with the attacks in Finland, which was a

knife attack. People use common objects in horrific ways. The

security services have to respond to a threat the way they see it. At the

moment, the terrorists are getting vans, so they have to respond to

that, but as you say, things can evolve. There are other ways to

attack innocent people. So it is a terrible challenge. The Mail on

Sunday focuses on this lost boy, the seven-year-old British boy. We still

don't know what has happened to him. But my goodness, I have a nine-year

old and I how difficult it is. If he is missing, his parents are

absolutely distraught and his mother is very ill. Such a sad photograph.

This boy is in his football shirt. It is always the details that grab

your heartstrings. He loves to dance. His mother, who was also

injured and ill in hospital, the dad flying over from Australia. What

that family must be going through. When they pick up on these stories

of the victims, it's heartbreaking. As Sian mentioned, the father had a

22 hour flight from Australia, because his wife and son were in

Barcelona for a family wedding. Imagine what it must be like not

knowing what had happened to your son for all of that time. Just

heartbreaking detail. This is what the Sunday papers are good at. They

have found the stories of the people who have been affected. Stories of

heroism are emerging as well as stories of tragedy. The Mail on

Sunday has a British tourist who risked his own safety. He stayed

with a badly injured boy on Las Ramblas, even though he was told to

move away, because the little boy reminded him of his son. The quotes

are so moving. He said, that was somebody's child. It could have been

my child. You immediately think, there but for the grace of God go I.

So many of us have been to Las Ramblas. We have all been to these

places, and it is devastating when we see something like this. Which is

precisely why the terrorists choose these targets. They know the maximum

way to multiply the shock is to choose places we have all been to or

that we might go to. They want to terrorise, so it is deliberate. Onto

the Observer, where we are back focusing on Brexit. It doesn't take

long to return to Brexit. Doubts are being cast on Theresa May's Brexit

red line. What are they getting at? This is Paul Jenkins, the former

head of the government's legal services division. He is pouring

cold water on Theresa May's Brexit strategy. He said the policy on the

little indications of Brexit was foolish and if the UK once close

links with the single market, it will have to observe EU law in all

but name. Of course, it is only two weeks until David Davis enters a

crucial phase of talks on the exit plan. So still chaos and confusion

around our Brexit strategy, with a lot of people knocking it. That has

been such an issue, the chaos and lack of clarity which is getting

people very concerned. We had two position papers last week, one on

the customs union and one on the Northern Ireland border. And I read

them closely because I have to write about them. And I was astonished by

the lack of detail. The customs paper was 16 pages long, the Ireland

one was 30 pages long. These are incredibly difficult challenges they

are grappling with, and to give so little to people on the EU side or

even the journalists or analysts to work on seems to be a terrible

mistake, because it underlines how much they either haven't thought

about them, or how much they are keeping back about what they are

going to try and implement. Do you think they don't know, or are they

afraid to share it? David Davis said last week that it reflects creative

ambiguity. That was the phrase he used. It is a nice sounding phrase,

but I think it is used to cover the fact that they don't know how to

confront these challenges. They have grappled with the detail. This is

the detail which is brought out in the Observer story. If you are going

to have a temporary interim customs union with the EU which is like the

one we have at the moment, someone has to oversee it. A legal body has

to oversee it. So who is that going to be? The natural thing is the ECJ,

but Theresa May said we will not be subject to the supervision of the

ECJ after 2019. So how can the customs union proposal work? This is

what Sir Paul Jenkins is saying. To make the customs union bit work for

the interim, you have to have ECJ supervision. If not that, there will

have to be some kind of fudge where the EU court and the UK courts

cooperate. It is by no means clear that the EU side will agree to that.

So this will all come into focus in the coming days. Sian, are you

sensing frustration from the public that this is unravelling?

Absolutely. I cover education for the Sunday Times, and universities

are absolutely panicking because they have so many EU students and EU

staff. They are so reliant on EU research funding, and they don't

know what will happen in two years' time. Trying to make plans for the

future is very difficult. We are going to stay with the Observer.

This is a story that the Telegraph is also covering. It is another

Twitter spat. Stephen Hawking, the eminent scientist and cosmologist,

gave an opinion article to the Guardian on Friday, raising alarm

about privatisation of the health service and the general direction of

health under the Conservatives. And as you say, there was a pushback on

Twitter, the medium by which have an ministers now communicate with the

people, it seems, by Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, yesterday. But

he also wrote a column for the Sunday Telegraph where he went into

more detail than he was allowed to with the 150 character limit on

Twitter, talking about why Sir Stephen Hawking was wrong to accuse

the Tories tried to privatise the NHS and pushing a pernicious

falsehood. And also hitting back at the accusation Stephen Hawking made

against Jeremy Hunt, that he was cherry picking data when he argued

that it is less safe to be in a hospital on weekends, which is one

of the big disputes related to the junior doctors' strike. So quite a

serious butting of heads between the two of them. As to who comes out on

top, personally I think Sir Stephen Hawking overegged it when he said

they are privatising the NHS. You can't really find that in the data,

but he is right to recuse Jeremy Hunt of cherry picking data over the

weekend effect. All the studies I have read suggest that the data is

simply not there to make the kind of claims Jeremy Hunt was making. But

when you have someone like Stephen Hawking coming into an argument like

this, you have to think there might be a bit of a problem or a breakdown

in PR. Absolutely. It is a public relations disaster. Personally, I

think Jeremy Hunt going on Twitter and attacking Stephen Hawking is

ludicrous. That is not the way we expect ministers to behave. I don't

want serious policy discussions played out on Twitter with use of

the number two instead of the word! Now social media users have piled in

and we have doctors and scientists mocking Jeremy Hunt on Twitter for

taking on the world's most famous scientist. Well, they think it is a

more direct way to communicate. At the last general election, Labour

did so well because of social media. So ministers think, we have to get

our message out there. We have seen how Donald Trump uses Twitter, which

is not a good example in my view. But it is a direct way of

communicating, so maybe they are making the trade-off that although

people will ridicule him, it is a direct way of communicating. Another

way of communicating now. The Sunday Times said the Queen will not stand

down for Prince Charles. No real surprise there. Well, there has been

a lot of talk that she might. She is very elderly and very wonderful, so

she might want to not just stop back from duties, but have a Regency

arrangement where Prince Charles takes over. This is a story from our

royal correspondent, making clear that nobody is planning for a

Regency, neither Buckingham Palace nor Clarence House, and that this

pledge the Queen made on her 21st birthday, I declare that my whole

life, long or short, shall be devoted to your service, she intends

to completely honour that, even up to her 95th birthday. She will be

delegating more duties to Prince William and Charles and so on. We

are seeing the younger royals taking up more of an active role. And

members of the public seem to like that. But in terms of the Queen

standing down, that is difficult to fathom. With Brexit, a big

constitutional moment for the UK, and the issues around Charles and

Camilla, I can imagine that the last thing people want would be for this

massively respected sovereign to invoke the 1937 Regency act and step

back. It is just not the right time for it. Providing her health is up

to it and she has no intention to do it, I expect a lot of ministers and

the Prime Minister will be breathing a sigh of relief over that. The last

thing they need is less stability. Let's finish with the Sunday

Telegraph, the child genius. Sian, how different is this? I can't

imagine a child like this. It is incredible. It was extraordinary to

watch little Rahul. He was amazing. He is like a little 15-year-old in a

child's body! He was so composed. He was so clever. He memorised things

so well. Of course, the debate about Child Genius, every time it is on

is, is it the children who want to take part or is it pushy parents?

And watching Rahul's family, his dad was so behind him. Rahul lifted the

trophy at the end and his dad lifted away from him! But you had the sense

that this was a family completely behind this child more willing him

on, but not in a negative way. And my son, who was watching with me,

said, the family that completes together wins together! We always

ask if it is good for these children to be put in the spotlight in this

way, but life is pressure and competition. If you go to the Far

East and you see the tiger parents, these are the children that our

children will be competing against in the global economy. We have to

stop being so wishy-washy. I loved it and I loved Rahul and his

parents. The family were great characters. I haven't watched it,

but I read the interview and I came away with from it with a jaded eye,

thinking they must be punishing him. But I read the interview and they

sounded like the nicest possible family, not pushy, but encouraging

and pretty modest. Humble background, they are not

particularly well off. And I really want to them just from reading the

article, so maybe I should watch it. But I can't imagine any child of

that age sitting down and getting on with this level of work. There must

be some pushing from the parents. They definitely encourage them to do

it, but with the difficulty of the questions, the freezing point of

water in degrees Kelvin, I don't know!

Just a reminder - we take a look at tomorrow's front pages every

Coming up on BBC One after this programme is Sunday Morning Live.

With the details, we say good morning to Sean Fletcher.

Coming up on Sunday Morning Live, a row erupts about the language used

to describe grooming