26/06/2011 The Politics Show South

Coming up here in the South: is the rising cost of policing pop

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2511 seconds

Hello and welcome to the part of the show especially for us here in

the South. My name's Peter Henley. Today we've got high art and pop

art. In the weekend of Glastonbury we're looking at the cost of

policing pop festivals. And high art? There are hundreds of

thousands of paintings owned by public bodies like councils, the

police and fire services, and most of them are never put on display.

Should we be bringing them out of the storerooms, or maybe even

selling them to get some money in. It's an idea which we'll debate

shortly. But first:

This week sees the end of the public consultation into the future

of children's heart surgery units. The proposals are for fewer bigger

units, which could mean units like the one in Southampton closing down.

This week campaigners took a petition to Downing Street, and MPs

debated the issue on Thursday. But what difference will all this

campaigning make? With me in the studio, Southampton Labour MP John

Denham and campaigner Sam Prior who went up to Downing Street.

Sam, you spent a lot of time and effort collecting petitions. There

was the debate in the House and do you feel it was all worthwhile and

you are being listened to? I think so. We had to raise the profile of

the review to make sure that everybody understood what the

proposals were. Fundamentally, the document that people are responding

to is flawed and the data is inaccurate. Drawing up a petition

is about the force of public opinion but should the whole thing

stop now and they should start again? I do not agree that it

should stop. It has been a decade since they have been trying to put

through changes to cardiac surgery for children but there are a lot of

issues in the way the process is being run at the moment in that it

is just about children and it has not taken into consideration the

continuation into care for adults. They all have the same surgeon. You

still need the same surgeon as you going to the adult service because

it is still the same kind of surgery that is being performed.

Issues like that have not been addressed. Southampton is only one

option and we need to make sure that it is a surgical centre for

the future. John Denham, you were also helping with the campaign.

There is a picture of you here with other MPs from our region on the

steps of Number Ten. For there are problems with the process and that

is something BNP should be pulling out. There are problems with the

process and you have to tell ministers to have a close look at

what is being done in their name. You have to be certain you are

confident about it. To me as a parent, I do not care where it is

as long as it is the best that you can get. Southampton is one of the

best centres in the country and is only included as one of the four

options. That does not seem right. If you take the whole work out of

Southampton, then you do not have enough beds for the rest of the

children's intensive care work that we do at the moment so you may use

that as well. These issues have not yet been brought out of the

consultation document. Now Andrew Lansley and the other ministers

know they cannot just sign this off as a technical exercises and they

have to be confident that it works. And listen to public opinion! You

have groups of MPs and parents making passionate arguments for

their own unit to have continued. That is not rational, is it? There

is a bit of that but they accepted the basic idea that if there are

fewer larger centres then more children would live and fewer

children would die. No one is questioning that process but if

there had been no protest and No campaigns, I think ministers might

not have engage themselves in it and signed it over to the experts.

Now we know what ever comes out will be unpopular somewhere but I

think Sam and her campaign and the people who have signed it and

others in other parts of the country have said to ministers that

they have to be sure that they have got it right. 250,000 people signed

here and 500,000 people signed in Leeds, did they have more right to

keep their heart unit? They came 10th in the review but they do have

more people signing petitions and they paid people to go out and

collect names on that petitions. There was an advert for those

petitions so at the end of the day... You did not do that? No, it

has all been done through the hard work by our families and our

friends and we have organised events at various big venues and it

is the general public that, when you tell them that it is the second

biggest cardiac unit for children the country, then it makes sense to

keep it. Should this kind of thing be done by a group of experts who

were looking for safe and sustainable Hart's services?

word in the expert group, what has been published, does not capture

many of the really important knock on issues. If you talk to the

doctors in Southampton, as I have been doing, there are all sorts of

issues that have not been covered. It would be awful if ministers made

a decision based on the number of petition signatures but if they had

not been this general campaigning done well on a volunteer resources

here in Southampton, I think a lot of the issues that have now come

out -- such as that the Isle of Wight has been completely left out.

What happens is we all got together and people looked at their own bit

of it and wondered if they had been taken into account. They had done

so they have now got to admit that a whole chunk of patients had not

been taken into account. All of this campaigning, you do not take a

decision on the basis of who shouts loudest but it will mean that

ministers understand that there is a lot of concern about the process

and they have got to be absolutely confident that they have got it

right. If they do and they decide that what matters is how good the

services, then Southampton should come through OK. Sorry, that is all

of our time. Thank you very much. It's that time of year when music

festivals are popping up in muddy fields all over the place.

Glastonbury's on this weekend of course. But for people trying to

get to the JLS concert just outside Winchester last weekend, the

experience became a bit of a nightmare. A nightmare which raised

questions about just how these big public events get organised.

Earlier in the week I caught up with local MP Steve Brine.

concert in Winchester on Friday was an absolute fiasco. It was a

dangerous farce. I open a fete at lunch time and people were asking

me if I had heard what had happened. I mentioned, Twitter and asked for

people to tell me their stories. I have got reports of young girls

jumping over the central reservation and running down the

motorway in pouring rain and small children pushing cars out of March

at one A M. It was a potentially dangerous farce. It is not good

enough. The organisers knew how much they had sold and they knew

where the car park spaces were and it cannot be a surprise that people

turned up. It is their responsibility to ensure that

people were dealt with efficiently and safely and they did not do that.

People are saying they want their money back and they are absolutely

right. Have the responsibility -- have the authorities got a

responsibility in this? I think absolutely everybody has a portion

of the blame here. When it comes to signing of the plan, and there was

a plan. I spoke to the police the morning of the Festival about

something else and this came up and they had a plan and they were

relatively happy with it but we need to find out whether the plan

was implemented or whether the plan was not good enough in the first

place. We need to get around the table and have a debrief as soon as

possible. We need to know where things have gone wrong and find out

whether blame lines so that people can get their money back. Is there

an issue here because it costs a lot for the organisers to have the

security and get the approval probably done and maybe it is not

being done properly. authorities want consistency. The

Isle of Wight is a good example. It is an established festival. The

organisers know the police and the council and authorities. Within

weeks of the festival happening each year, they are talking about

the next year. Michael Eavis at Glastonbury has made an art form of

it. Organisers want this consistency. They are concerned

that organisers of festivals come and go and they cannot build a

relationship. Relationships are built on trust when it comes to

these things and that is one of the things that is going wrong at the

moment. My advice to landowners would be to build long-term

relationships with organisers and that will deal with a lot of the

problems that is coming up. That was the JLS concert.

The bigger the event, the bigger the bill for organising it. And as

Alex Forsyth reports, the more the Old Bill charges for policing it.

This report contains some strobe lighting.

It has become as Britain's and Woodstock. In 1970 more than

500,000 music-lovers descended on the Isle of Wight to see the

world's biggest band. The best of all got out of control. It is home

for who knows how many hippies, beatniks and drop out. The police

are noticeable by their absence. Their theory is that it would be

impossible to control over 100,000 youngsters so even the presence of

the peaks in amongst this mass of humanity might do more harm than

good. When the Isle of Wight festival was revived it firmly

fixed its place on the festival calendar. This year thousands came

to Newport for three days of bands, blues and wellies. The organiser

does not manned -- the organiser does not mind paying the price to

keep the event secured. We take into account the fact that we have

to pay for the police force as part of the ticket price because we

believe the audience needs to be looked after and protected and we

have to provide extra protection for that. It costs hundreds of

thousands of pounds but it is worth having because if, pray God, you

had a big problem, you want people there to be capable of dealing with

it. I think the police force are a necessary evil, if you see what I

mean. I think you need them to run an event properly. It is not the

1970s where who cares and what happens happens and people can

smash down the walls. An audience needs to be protected from

themselves. Although big festivals may be all -- and may be able to

afford the bill, the smaller events they can be a struggle. This

marketplace was due to be a venue for the first free rock concert in

Ringwood. It looked like policing the event would be expensive.

if it was just 10,000, it was way over what we could sensibly afford.

It could have entered into 20,000 or even more, depending on what

happened in the evening. In the end, organisers cancelled. It is a great

shame. The bans were really enthusiastic and we were doing

auditions and the local people and businesses were behind the event.

It was a way to get Ringwood going and we were all disappointed that

they could not do that. The town council wanted to put on the

concert as well and we were doing everything we could possibly do. We

were trying to work with the police but eventually the money was just

far too much for us. Nastier a dance festival was due to be held

here in Winchester. Organisers had to cancel it and they say a hefty

police bill was part of the reason. The police to waive fees for

community or charity events but they say it is only fair that they

recoup the full costs of any commercial concert or festival.

is critical we have the right level of police resources and the right

skills. They go hand in hand with the right security and safety plan

at the events. Whether it is a large event like the Isle of Wight

festival or a small event like the dance festival, it is crucial that

any event that attracts large numbers of people, public safety

must come first. We cannot have the tax payers of the Isle of Wight

subsidising commercial and profit- making ventures. The Summer of Love

has long since passed but festivals are still going strong and they

still need policing. The question is who should fit the bill? --

fought the bill? Now, it's been estimated that there

are around 200,000 paintings in public collections all over the

country. It might be local authorities, fire services, the

police, you name it. But although they're all owned by us, the public,

about 80% of them never actually get seen by us, the public. In a

documentary later tonight on BBC One, Joe Crowley has been

unearthing some of those hidden treasures, like one he found in the

council offices in Wareham. It just sits here in a stairwell

and half the time when people come and go they probably do not notice

it. When I came in, guy asked me what I was here for and I said the

painting and he said, what painting? It makes you wonder how

many paintings like this are hidden in land and buildings around the

country. He you cannot get in and it is behind locked doors and

nobody quite knows how what is here and where it came from and at some

point it was donated. Ross, putting things on public

display is not as straightforward as people think because it is

valuable and you have to rotate it. Yes, we like to refresh our

displays so that people do not come in and think they have seen it all

before and there is nothing new. We like to change things around and

get as many of our paintings out as we can. Do you think more could be

done? Always. We always want more buildings and bigger galleries to

show more and more staff to make it available. I wonder whether that is

happening at the moment, I suspect not. It is difficult times. It is,

we are facing budget restrictions and that will have an impact on

staff. Peter, you have a campaign in Hampshire to get more stuff out.

They were buying collections just to decorate the offices. Yes,

Hampshire requires a substantial number of works of art but they are

not seen by the public who pay for them. I think the principle is

simple, when it is public art, owned by the public and paid for by

the public, they and a right to see them. They were bought in the 1980s

just took decorate offices, they could have got some wallpaper!

is completely wrong. I can wander round the Hampshire County Council

headquarters and find a lot of art hidden away where the public never

sees it. Hardly anyone in the offices sees it. That is wrong. The

attitude is wrong -- the attitude is changing and Hampshire are

saying that they will display more of the art but they have not said

where and when. In my view, the public should have far greater

access. It is a simple principle, the public omit and the public

should see it. Money is tight, wind will sell some of it? That is an

argument but if you sold it... Would you do that was mad know, if

you sold it then it would probably go into private collection of the

public would never see it. I would rather these works of art actually

seen and the public can enjoy them. There are some acclaimed art of

working Gosport by Martin Snape and you can view those works of art

online but you can hardly ever see them in the area and they used to

give away works of art to retiring town clerks. Thankfully, that

attitude has changed but there are three -- there are a few one

display at the town hall but they are mostly in areas where the

public does not have access. I am sure the public would love to see

them. Why is it not happening? think in some cases it is very

difficult to get things out and have the space to display them. We

have got an exhibition on at the moment which is a longer term

exhibition, devoted to works illustrated in the Public Catalogue

Foundation catalogue. It is clearly titled, discover the paintings you

own. Portsmouth is committed to ensuring that art remains in the

public domain, available to the people of the city. Portsmouth have

never bought the works of art for offices, they have been bought for

the museum's collection. We believe that people do want to see things

and we will let them if they see an appointment to see the things in

the store. If they make an appointment, we will try our best

to make sure they are available. What about selling a few things?

Would you resist that? It is very difficult. I firmly believe that if

the works have been a quiet, whether purchased or given by

people, to enrich the city's collections, they should stay in

the public domain. It might be that they go to a more appropriate

museum, there is always that option if it is not relevant to our

collection but I firmly believe that if you sell something, you

take it out of that public domain and once it is gone, it is gone.

Thank you for coming in and talking about it. A lot of these are

available to be seen on line as a result of the scheme so if this has

got you fired up to find out about hidden paintings in your website

there is a -- hidden paintings in your area, there is a website you

can look at. That is about it for our part of the show. We will be

off and out next week because of the Wimbledon men's final. We will