18/02/2018 The Papers

Now on BBC News, The Papers.

Hello, and welcome to our look

at what the papers say this morning.

With me are City AM's Rachel

Cuncliffe and the Financial Times'

political correspondent Henry Mance.

Let's take a look

at those front pages.

The Observer investigates

Britain's prison system,

claiming two-thirds of prisons

are providing inadequate

conditions or unacceptable

treatment for inmates.

The Sunday Express says Theresa May

has declared there will be "no

going back" on Brexit.

The Telegraph leads

on claims prominent members

of the Labour Party met Eastern Bloc

agents during the Cold War.

The Mail on Sunday has

an interview with Brendan Cox -

the widower of murdered MP Jo Cox -

who has stepped down from his role

in two charities after admitting

inappropriate behaviour

with a colleague.

The Sunday Times says

the Education Secretary is looking

at a number of university reforms,

including cheaper tuition

fees for some courses.

And the Sun on Sunday reports

on alleged marriage difficulties

between pop stars Cheryl and Liam

Payne.

So a variety of stories

on the front pages.

Lets kick-off and start with The

Mail on Sunday. The Brendan Cox

story is dominant, The Mail on

Sunday have made the running on this

story.

Yes, he has given an

extraordinary person an in-depth

interviews with them. Obviously this

is the husband of Jo Cox. She was

murdered very shockingly, and has

been a hero for the charity sector

and also talking about free speech

on migration and making MPs feel

safe. It is a real fall from grace,

these allegations from various

charities that he made women feel

uncomfortable and behaved in an

inappropriate way. It's quite

interesting because obviously you've

got that incredible headline which

is a bit misleading and then a

couple of pages detailing the

allegations in quite a lot of

detail.

The front-page headline

which says yes, I was a sex pest

confesses Jo Cox's Husband.

He

doesn't use those exact words. In

the interview lots of apologies,

lots of soul-searching, and he's one

of the few that have actually been

accused and come forward and said

I'm really, really sorry, I've let

myself down. It's an interesting

juxtaposition.

What did you make of

that?

It primarily seems to relate

to two complaints made in relation

to Brendan Cox, one when he was a

senior figure at Save the Children

and another when he was on a

university course at Harvard

University. He says he doesn't

accept the precise details of the

complaint at Harvard but he

understands that his behaviour might

have made people feel uncomfortable,

might have been inappropriate, that

he could be seen as overstepping the

mark. This comes down to power. He

was a very senior figure in the

charity. The Mail on Sunday links to

the former chief executive Justin

Forsyth. It's trying to save where

these figures untouchable, that you

couldn't make a complaint knowing it

wouldn't affect your career. A lot

of people will find this very sad,

given how much Brendan Cox has

suffered and how much dignity he's

had in the aftermath of his wife's

murder.

The paper says it is a

remarkable fall from grace, that's

their words.

Yes, and I think you're

right about the power dynamic. Later

in the interview he links it to the

wider More in Common movement. We've

allegations like this in Hollywood,

Westminster, the city, now the

charity sector. -- the Me Too

movement. He makes a point which is

sometimes intentions don't matter,

if there is such a gaping power

imbalance and such a lack of

oversight, you can make women feel

very uncomfortable and unsafe

perhaps without realising. That is a

culture change that needs to happen

across industries.

Oxfam, who has

been so much in the spotlight over

the last few days, on the front page

again of The Sunday Telegraph. This

is saying Oxfam new ten years ago of

a "Urgent sex abuse problem".

This

is a report in 2008 by Save the

Children, a report about Haiti

saying that people were being forced

to sell sex in exchange for aid.

That was circulated to various

charities. Oxfam say one of their

representatives went to Haiti and

put some processes in place.

However, Oxfam admit the measures

they put in place will probably

insufficient and also that the

people in charge of those policies,

the country director in Haiti for

example, they couldn't be trusted to

do that and may have compromised the

measures. You have a real question

about what happens when complaints

are raised and why it takes so long

to go from evidence of wrongdoing to

proper procedures in place, and who

is ultimately responsible. If there

are going to be bad eggs in the

system, who is in charge of routing

them out and in searing desperately

poor people in places like Haiti are

protected? -- ensuring desperately

poor people in places like Haiti are

protected.

This started with Harvey

Weinstein, Hollywood, now the

spotlight very much on the charity

sector and aid agencies.

I think

ultimately that's a good thing, that

we are talking about this and

allegations are coming to like and

we are having a conversation. I

think what you get particularly with

the charity sector stories is people

like to think that harassment and

sexual abuse is done by bad people.

What you're getting with the Brendan

Cox story and also with aid workers

in the charity sector is these can

be good people doing good work who

have families, who have friends who

are not what you would consider a

sexual predator, but who can also do

terrible things and use prostitutes.

This story claims some children as

young as six were forced to sell

sex. The reason it's perhaps taken

longer to get the charity sector is

we have this idea of everyone

working in the charity sector is

doing good work, that doesn't mean

you don't need oversight and

structure and a process for

accusations, evidence, policies. I

think perhaps the charity sector is

a bit complacent because we think

about it in a positive, rosy light.

There are repercussions financially

for people like Oxfam losing money

as a result of the publicity.

Oxfam

has told government, but you think

ministers might have said the same

thing anyway, that it won't bid for

new contracts. Last year they won 60

million in contracts to do work in

Yemen and South Sudan. Over the

medium-term, the threat is greater.

We know how much Oxfam depends on

goodwill, how much the government

spend on aid. People have the sense

that that is good work being done by

good people and is making Britain's

name more popular and seen in a good

light around the world. Haiti has

strong words to say about charities

so it's not the soft power we

imagined.

Let's move onto happier

news which is Queen Lizzy as The

Sunday Telegraph calls her. Lizzy

Yarnold with gold again, waving the

union flag, a great moment.

We

weren't doing so well in the Winter

Olympics up until this point. We got

four medals in 48 hours. I watch

what they do and it's absolutely

terrifying. How quickly can you

throw yourself down a chute of ice?

It's a real success story, she is

the first Brit to have defended her

title in two Olympics in a row.

Are

you a fan of the Winter Olympics?

It's exciting, it's just terrifying.

You watch with your heart in your

mouth.

Are you watching it?

I am.

You need a moment like this to get

people interested. You don't want to

see Brits losing. There was another

sad except for Elise Christie. It

wasn't all good news. Once you see

it's not just the Germans and the

Dutch who are going to win

everything, you get involved. We are

just behind Belarus in the medals

table.

The Winter Olympics are not

our strongest sporting event, we are

good at cycling, running, those sort

of things.

The thing everyone says

about the summer Olympics is we are

good at the sitting down sports.

Rowing, horse riding, cycling and

now this as well.

And running with

Mo Farah.

She's using the technology

that these British spy -- that the

British cyclists use for their

suits.

Prisons in The Observer

British cyclists use for their

suits.

Prisons in The Observer.

Another depressing report.

We have a

new prisons minister, Rory Stewart.

He's come out and said that the

state of some jails is deeply

disturbing. This is fairly amazing.

You see various people in charge of

prisons in the government come out

and almost trash the government's

record and admit things haven't been

at all good.

It's not just this

government, this is a problem that's

been going on for decades.

That is

the case. The type of language being

used is really strong. In terms of

figures we are talking about self

harm going up over 10% in the past

year, assaults going up 10%, a lot

of those on staff. Fewer than 10% of

prisons are seen as good. If you're

thinking about rehabilitation, in

the earlier years of the Cameron

government there was this idea that

people should be spending less time

in prison, get them out,

rehabilitate them. Michael Gove have

the same idea. The facilities

themselves are not living up to

that.

There are people who will say

actually prisons aren't meant to be

nice, who cares if they are awful

because they're awful people

prisons.

They are meant to be safe

for both the prisoners and the staff

who work there. The government has a

duty of care, which is clearly

failing. One of the statistics is

44% of prisons are unsafe. The

second one is an economic argument

which is it costs a lot of money to

keep people in prison and you should

want people leaving and trying to

rebuild their lives afterwards.

There's an interesting quote from

the Conservative chair of the

Justice select committee Bob Neill

who says we need to have a

discussion about what is the point

of prisons. If they are just for

punishment, then your argument is OK

but if we actually want people

engaged with society when they leave

and we want to stop them going back

and save money, we need to be

focusing on education and

rehabilitation. So many people, like

you say, don't want to spend money

on prisons, because it seems like a

waste. It's an easy way to cut the

budget and looks like there are no

consequences but clearly they are.

The Sunday Times with a focus today

on the cost of going to university.

University fees which has been a big

political headache for Labour, the

lbw Democrats and conservatives. A

lot of older people who know their

children might incur these costs are

concerned about it as well. The new

Education Secretary Damian Hinds is

launching a consultation which could

see the Fifa certain subjects

dropped. If you've got subjects

which are less expensive to teach

compared to medicine or physics, the

arts degrees and social science

degrees would be cheaper. Also the

interest rate at which students paid

back would be cut.

It is currently

6.1%, which seems...

You can accrue

£5,000 worth of interest before you

finish your course. Is linked to

RPI. Basically no one is going to

pay back their student loan. I did

classics, another useless degree.

They say the ones that are cheaper

to teach should be cheaper to

students. I've heard the alternate

which is the one is more useful to

society, I mean I think Classics is

useful but medicine and engineering,

we talk a lot about the skills gap.

If you're doing something to fill

the skills gap you should be

subsidised more. There are different

arguments. I think that politically

the Conservatives are never going to

win over a majority of students.

They will never beat Labour which is

the policy of scrapping tuition

fees. The Conservatives have a youth

problem, its defining youth. Really

it's anyone under 40. If they want

to increase their voucher rather

than going after students they

should go after people in their late

20s and 30s and talking about

housing and policies to do with

building on the green belt or

liberalising planning laws. That

would be better for them politically

than trying to win over students

which they are never going to do.

We're going to end up with The

Sunday Times again and an

interesting new rule about how to

film sex in the movies. I suppose

it. As with the Harvey Weinstein and

the idea that you wouldn't have any

nudity in auditions, very strict

rules on how they filmed. What did

you make of this?

This is something

coming out of Equity. We've been

told by actors that sex scenes are

very unsexy, but it's not a nice

thing to film. There are some issues

such as do you kiss with tongues

when filming these themes. -- these

scenes. The problem again is power.

Male writers, male directors, male

actors being paid more and female

actors may be feeling cajoled. Maybe

these restrictions would balance

things a bit.

Is this a reform we

need?

These are professionals. One

of the examples in the story is an

actress at 19 filming a sex scene

where there was quite explicit

content but the director

deliberately didn't tell her about

it because he wanted her to "React

as a girl not have an actress". That

is very sinister and not treating

her as a professional. I think it is

about giving them respect. Clearly

they can film realistic sex scenes

in a professional and safe way and

they should be doing that.

Thank you

for coming in to review the papers

today.

That's it for The Papers

this morning.

Don't forget you can see the front

pages of the papers online

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Thank you Rachel and Henry.

Goodbye.