08/11/2013 The Week in Parliament

image of the typhoon that's hit the Philippines. Now it is time for the

Week In Parliament. Welcome to the Week In Parliament. As winter

arrives, labour says the NHS is already struggling to cope at David

Cameron defences government's record. There are more AMD

consultants working in a and there were five ago. `` A He is

complacent about the A crisis and what is happening in the NHS. Out of

the shadows, top spy bosses in Britain talk publicly to an peace.

`` MPs. The leaks from Edward Snowden put our operations at risk.

It is clear that our advisories are rubbing their hands with glee. We

asked two veterans if we have lost faith in our institutions. First,

the Labour leader tackled the Prime Minister of the care and Alan A

departments. He argued they are in crisis and were before the onset of

winter. The Labour leader says there was a lack of senior doctors and a

shortage of beds. Across the medical profession, they are saying there is

a crisis in A departments and we have a Prime Minister saying that

crisis, what crisis? How out of touch can he be? In the last year, 1

million people waited more than five hours in A Delayed discharges are

up, response times is up, why is this happening? There is top`down

reorganisation that nobody is watching and nobody voted for. There

are 5500 more doctors in the NHS and fairer 1000 more midwives in our

NHS. There are more than 1000 health visitors in our NHS. The country

would have hurt today that the Prime Minister is complacent about the A

crisis and clueless about what is happening in the NHS. Watch the

British people know is that the NHS is heading into winter with fewer

nurses, a lack of senior A doctors and a shortage of beds. He promised

he would protect the NHS but it is now clear that the NHS is not safe

in his hands. He has rolled on the facts. There is a simple fact, there

are more A consultants working in A than they were five years ago.

That is why we are meeting our targets in England, and that is why

Labour is missing targets in Wales. My job is to stand for the NHS and

deliver a stronger NHS. When will he understand his job is to stand up to

the police of United and show some courage. A member raised the idea of

cutting jobs at Scotland and England after the completion of two Navy

aircraft carriers. Newly 1800 people have learnt that they will lose

their jobs and neither the Leader of the Opposition Prime Minister seem

set to raise this issue so far. I hope that the Prime Minister's

thoughts are with the families of people who will lose their jobs and

will he confirm that he agrees with the statement that Glasgow is the

best place to build frigates? I think the sense `` acting this is a

vital issue. I difficult decisions and our thoughts should be with

those who are affected. I was surprised that the leader of the

opposition to the addresses. We need the Royal Navy to have the best and

most modern ships with the best technology. We will go on northern

warships on the client. We will announce three new offshore patrol

vessels keeping that you busy, rather than paying it to remain idle

as the last of the proposed. Yes, there will be job reductions, but

there are many more people involved in ships servicing them building.

The workforce will go from 12,000 to 11,000 but nobody should be in any

doubt of two things ` under the scum that will have aircraft carriers,

frigates, submarines. They should also know that if there was an

independent Scotland, we wouldn't have any warships at all. Nearly

1800 jobs are to go in British shipbuilding. Now, to Thursday. For

the first time, the heads of the British intelligence agencies have a

peer to publicly before a committee. Inevitably, one of the main topics

was the leaking of information by Edward Snowden. It revealed some of

the activities of UK's listening stations, GCHQ. Some of that

appeared in The Guardian newspaper. It is sometimes argued that the

people responsible for these publications have not mentioned

names, details, they have simply rip referred to general capabilities. Is

there any validity? It seems on the face of it that that seems to be

much less damaging. How do you,? I am not sure that the journalists who

are managing this very sensitive information are particularly placed

to make these judgements. The leaks from Edward Snowden have been very

damaging, put our operations at risk. It is clear our advisories are

rubbing their hands with glee, Al Coyte as lapping it up. `` Al`Qaeda.

The you feel entitled to say that? Why do you believe it to be true? My

colleagues have really set out how the alerting of targets and overseas

to our capabilities means it becomes more difficult. Head of MI6

answering questions from the chairman of the Intelligence and

Security Committee, a conservative and former secretary. He joins me in

the studio. Mark, let's begin with your question. Why had this hearing

in public? It is an easy one to answer. Most of what the

intelligence agencies do is what we do as the committee has to be done

in private. We are discussing highly secret material. There is public

interest but if you have intelligence agencies spending ?2

billion of taxpayers and they have powers to do things that intercept

e`mails and conversations on the telephone, these are powers that

nobody else has. Therefore, the reason why these powers are

necessary, to be reassured that they only use these powers when they have

legal authority to do so, that must be part of a wider public debate. It

must be an open society. Given what they do, you had to be careful that

the things that you could ask them, and so, what did we learn? Would you

say that, no, we had to be careful that we had to do so in the

knowledge that we had to get into detail and they couldn't answer

certain things in public. That is what happened on one or two

occasions. I don't criticise them for that. Obviously, most people

that have commented on that, they said it was worth having as, it was

an historic event. The committee didn't grill them enough. They

didn't go into enough detail to prove what they were certain. The

reality is, we're not like the Public Accounts Committee or another

committee of Parliament. Because we with secret information, and I make

an accusation as to where you have done something and you deny it, I

would then ask you to reduce evidence. Now, we do do that but

that has redone and private sessions. We can't do that in

public. The purpose of yesterday was not just theatre, it was to

concentrate most of the discussion, which is what we do, on what was the

perception of the threat. What is the united kingdom facing? What is

the general judgement and the effect of the damage brought out by Edward

Snowden? These are the things you can bring out in public. There is no

point in expecting to press him on hard secret evidence because you

know why they can't provide that in public. The head of liberty said

this wouldn't have scared a puppy. Yes, they would have said that.

Unless they revealed tried to reveal every single secret that they had,

they would have found reasons to complain, that is a job. I don't

blame them. They are not representatives of the general

public. All of the evidence of whatever Zorzi go to, there is

understanding that if you have secret agents, and sadly we need

them, if you have them, they have to retain secrets. Their objective is

to ensure that we have, as a committee, we ensure that they are

obeying the law, behaving in a reasonable way, there is acceptable

reasons for what they do, and if we find they are failing, we can

condemn them in public. How much of your time in his private sessions as

spent making sure that they go by the law, and how do you know they

are doing it? If you are asking me a year ago and would have had to admit

that we didn't have the kind of powers we would need to do our job

properly. Law passed in the past few months has given us power that we

need. We reviewed our powers at the beginning of the Parliament and set

it the committee needs updated powers of a substantial kind. For

example, in the past we could only ask intelligence agencies for

information, we couldn't requirement to provide it. The tragic death of

Lee Rigby, we are a one star. For the first time ever, we can go into

the intelligence agencies' and buildings, look at their files, and

ask staff. `` there . Sometimes expand most of the day in

the headquarters of GCHQ and MI6 looking at what they do and getting

full briefings with ordinary star. This is a serious operation. By its

nature, most of it has to be done behind doors. What which include...

That is only can go public. It is also up to us to demonstrate that

Allah judgement deserves to be trusted. `` that alloy judgement.

Do you think this will become a regular event? Yes, but not a

substitute to what we already do and what we will continue to do. I

imagine 90% of our meetings will have to be in private because there

is no use having security and spends all of its time and public sessions.

To do our job, we need private sessions but there will be other

public sessions. We perform a viable role in the name of Parliament and

public to understand a lot more about the intelligence agencies

without giving comfort to the bad man.

There was another dramatic committee hearing here in the week. The latest

twist in what is known as an affair where police officers gave evidence

over a meeting with Andrew Mitchell. He is the former chief whip resigned

after an with police officers. The officers who were called to the home

affairs Select Letta held a meeting with him about the incident. Their

version of the meeting had been called into question. The officers

had then summoned to a committee and then recalled. The question was,

what they apologised to the former Minister? `` would they. I can't

apologise for something I haven't done and a number of accusations

have been raised which I totally refute and to which I was not party,

so I cannot apologise for something I haven't done. But I certainly

regret any distress caused and it wasn't my intention. To Mr Mitchell

and his family? Yes. I recognise the distress it has caused his family

and I would urge that the CPS report and the investigation into that

matter is concluded as speedily as possible. So you are not wanting to

apologise to Mr Mitchell and his family for distress, as your

colleague has? I am saying that I recognise distress has been caused

and I think it would be best if... I think the answer is no, you are not

going to apologise. I cannot apologise for something I didn't do.

Two police officers defending their role in the Plebgate affair.

Which got us thinking ` have we lost trust in our public institutions?

Are we all just more sceptical than we used to be when it comes to the

police, parliament, the NHS or any of our big state institutions?

I asked two MPs with long experience of Parliament and power.

Ken Clarke is in the Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio, but has

held a cornucopia of Government jobs, from Home Secretary, to

Health, to Chancellor of the Exchequer. While Labour's Margaret

Hodge is currently best known for chairing the no`holds`barred Public

Accounts Committee, which delves deep into who's spending our money

and how. I asked Ken Clarke how trust in our

institutions has changed over his 30 years in politics.

Completely. In my lifetime, certainly, it has transformed. The

1960s were a formative time for me, I wasn't in the House of Commons

then but I was one of those youngish guys who delighted at the end of the

age of deference, the closed world of politics suddenly opening up to

more public scrutiny and some of the dafter traditions beginning to fade.

Now we have gone completely to the other extreme and the current mood

of the public about all public institutions, including Parliament,

is one of deep cynicism and a deep sense of distrust, which has gone

too far the other way. It is dangerous to democracy. Standards of

honesty and ability in politics are somewhat higher than they are in

most other walks of life in this country but that is regarded as a

startling thing to say. We will pick up on some of those points later but

what I really wanted to ask you to start with is how has the Government

responded to that change in trust? It has tried, but it hasn't been

very successful. The best way to respond is by demonstrating that you

can deliver. The problem the Government and the Opposition have

is we are in the age of mass media, which is fine, no complaint about

that, but we have a public with very much higher expectations than it

used to have, so we do have constant campaigning. You can no longer just

govern and then electioneer every now and again when your term is

coming to an end. Every day of the week now is some hysterical subject

matter being subject to the great crisis of the day and you have to

campaign your way through it. Margaret Hodge, do you think we have

seen an increasing demand for transparency in all things? That

doesn't necessarily make things easier for people to understand,

because more information can make life more complicated. Two words I

was thinking of as Ken was answering the question was that people are

demanding more transparency and they are demanding clearer

accountability, and part of that is 24/7, but also it is the revolution

of various other things. There is distrust in politics and here I

disagree with Ken a little bit. In 2001, I had a very low turnout in my

constituency, and then later on, the BNP found their way into Barking. I

did some work, among women in particular, on one of my more

deprived estates and what I found there was there was not apathy about

what we were up to here in Westminster, but there was real

anger about what we were up to. And most of their politics, and this is

what is so interesting, starts from the very local. They really care

about what is happening in their immediate community. Is that one of

the reasons people can be very angry, seeing failings like things

in the police? We all have examples where policing has gone wrong, or

the NHS? Things like Stafford? These are the things that people can

understand and connect with and these failings make them angry.

First of all, I think you rebuild trust by delivering the local, so if

you can deliver cleaner streets, build a new bus stop, that begins to

build trust and secondly, yes, you are right and I think one of the

reasons that the Public Accounts Committee has captured the public

mood is because we reflect the frustration that people feel about

things going wrong not once, but time and time and time again. Their

money is being used to deliver services and we don't deliver

efficiently. This isn't a partisan view, we don't deliver efficiently,

they see their money wasted and nothing seems to change. I think us

shining a light on that from our committee has really captured and

touched the public mood. Ken Clarke, do you think that in a

way, that can add to the problem? One of the standard Parliamentary

Government responses to anything going wrong is to set up an enquiry.

It looks at the problem, it shines a light on it, it gets a lot of

publicity and it makes people more disillusioned, more cynical. It has

always been the case that public attention has focused more on the

failings of Government and anything else, that is inevitable because it

is more newsworthy apart from anything else. You can cope with

that normally, because there are ways in which you are held to

account that change over the years. I don't think that is the problem. I

don't disagree with what Margaret said. What she said about her

electors in Barking applies to electors everywhere. There is a deep

cynicism and distrust and anger. That is why all Western democracies

are producing right wing fringe parties. They don't actually

represent any particular policies, they represent an anger at the

political class. One of the things that government

does to try and say how you can trust these institutions is to set

targets for everything. That doesn't work either. No, I'm not in favour

of setting targets. The targets started because the ministers liked

taking credit for the targets. It is easier to set them than it is to

achieve them. So your target is so attractive that you get a vast

amount of applause for setting it but some unfortunate successor has

to explain why you didn't hit it. Just to be a little party political,

we inherited dozens of those, Margaret. I know, so we move from

targets to outcomes. I can't really see the difference. We are actually

judged by our outcomes. The sensible public judge Government and public

services by whether they feel they are get better or not. They take

these individual things in proportion. The trouble with three

Police Federation officers in the West Midlands has not destroyed

trust in the police. Those things are not cumulative.Trust in

institutions is a cumulative thing, so you may have a problem with the

NHS, in Stafford in particular, so the Government launches an enquiry,

look at the problem and come up with recommendations. You might think it

make things better until the next hospital failure and trust in the

NHS is damaged over a period of time. The NHS is the biggest

employer in Western Europe, there are very few rivals to such a giant

organisation. The Chinese People's Army, the Indian state railways.

Every now and again, you will find bits of it that makes mistakes. The

important thing, one of them, about the Stafford review is that the old

instinct that pervaded the entire public sector when I started, to

cover up and make sure that the criticism does not get to the

outside world and you all close ranks, which is an understandable

reaction, that is being blown apart. I have to say, we have had

Colchester this weekend that was a cover`up of poor standards, so there

is still a tendency and you could argue, because you have targets, if

you don't meet the targets, you cover`up. I think one of the real

challenges facing us in the public sector, if you're going to build

trust, is you have to have measurements that will allow you to

assess if the service is delivering what you want. Whether you call it a

target or an outcome, it does have unintended consequences. So people

go for one thing and they missed the main point of the target for a

public service. One very last and quick thought from

both of you, do you think we are looking at this the wrong way around

and we should get used to the idea that the public did not have trust

in the big institutions anymore and maybe embrace that? No, I think it

is hugely important if you're talking about politics and

parliament, it is hugely important that we listen to the anger that

people feel and that we look at ways of re`establishing trust. And my

answer to this is you start not from setting an agenda, allow your

constituents to set the agenda, build the trust on what matters to

them then engage them on the rather bigger national issues which obsess

us here. Ken Clarke? Hugely important. You

don't have a healthy democracy from most of the population don't vote,

people don't vote the local Government institutions and you

don't have a healthy democracy if it is obvious that a significant

proportion of those who do vote of casting angry protest vote. I have

never, throughout this programme, denied that there is a deep

underlying problem but there is no populist, simplistic way out. It is

just about raising the performance of institutions, Parliament and what

they deliver and then lecture the public a bit and say you need to

take it seriously and adolescent cynicism should not be applied to

every aspect of public life. Listen, not lecture.

Thank you both very much for coming in to see us.

Ken Clarke and Margaret Hodge on public trust.

At the end of a week dominated by spooks, ships and the NHS.

The wettest stay is likely to be Saturday. A repeat performance of

what we had previously. Some sunny weather on Saturday morning across

eastern Scotland will stop a touch of frost. Some showers coming into

the north`west of England, east of the Pennines should be dry and

brighter. A dry start in the Midlands to was to ``