02/03/2018 The Week in Parliament

Hello and Welcome to

the Week In Parliament, our look

back at the big events of the last

few days here at Westminster.

On this programme: Theresa May

is urged to set out more details

of her Brexit strategy.

We will bring back control of our

laws, our borders and our money.

But Labour says the

government's in chaos.

Wayne Ishii going to put the

countries interests

the oversized egos...

Also on this programme: We talk

to Welsh Mps as Scotland and Wales

turn up the pressure on ministers

to make sure they get control

of some of the powers coming back

to the UK after Brexit.

There's a call for a ban

on live animal exports

And: is facial recognition

technology a security boost

or a big brother threat?

The Chinese site has introduced a

system with RU. You can smile to

pay.

But first....

The acceptance that the UK cannot

have its cake and eat it,

was just one of the messages

from Theresa May as she set out

details of what the UK

wants from Brexit.

In a speech on Friday she laid down

five tests for a future agreement

with the European Union,

including whether any deal respects

the result of the 2016 referendum,

protects jobs and security,

and strengthen the ties

between the four nations of the UK.

The Prime Minister will update

the Commons on her ideas

in a statement on Monday afternoon.

It will be another chance for Mps

to question her over just

where she sees Brexit going.

At Prime Minister's Questions

on Wednesday, the Labour leader

Jeremy Corbyn had taunted

Theresa May over a recent

ministerial get together

at her country retreat,

which aimed to thrash out

the government's strategy and come

up with a united way forward.

Mr Speaker the Prime Minister a

merged to promise a Brexit of

ambitious diversions.

What on earth ambitious divergence

will mean and practise? We will

bring back control

our borders and

our money. That is in direct

contrast with the Labour Party is

positioned, want to be in a, and do

whatever it takes that would mean

giving away control of our laws, our

borders, and our money. And that

would be a betrayal of the British

people!

The government to so divided

that the Prime Minister is incapable

of delivering a coherent and

decisive plan for Brexit! So when is

she going to put the countries

interests before the outsized egos

of her own Cabinet?

Jeremy Corbyn, Well one problem

that's proving particularly tricky

in the Brexit talks is how to take

the UK out of the EU's customs union

while still avoiding checks

on the Irish border.

In the week the EU put forward

a plan for a common regulatory area

for the whole island of Ireland,

which would avoid what's known

as a hard border with checkpoints

between the north and south.

But at Prime Minister's Questions,

Theresa May made it clear that

proposal wasn't acceptable to her.

What if implemented undermined, the

integrity of UK, down the, and no UK

Prime Minister could ever...

The SNP's Westminster leader picked

up on the Irish border issue,

and a leaked letter

from the Foreign Secretary Boris

Johnson to Theresa May.

In it he said the Government should

prevent the border from becoming

"significantly" harder,

a comment that came hot on the heels

of a BBC Interview where he'd

compared the issue to crossing

between London boroughs and the use

of the congestion charge!

The foreign secretaries letter, says

he cannot get to grips with the most

fundamental issues of Brexit. The

Foreign Secretary, compared crossing

the Irish border to going between

Camden and Westminster! Frankly, you

could not make this stuff up! Is a

UK Government, that the Buddha

jeopardy a good five-year agreement!

Does the Prime Minister agree with

the Foreign Secretary who is making

the United Kingdom a laughing stock?

Theresa May didn't mention

Boris Johnson specifically

in her reply but insisted

the Government was committed

to the Good Friday Agreement.

But Mps wanted the Foreign Secretary

to explain himself directly to them.

So, straight after PMQs,

Labour put down what's known

as an urgent question asking him

to come to the despatch box.

But as you might be able to see

Mr Johnson left the chamber,

Provoking much shouting

from the opposition side.

The DUP's Westminster leader used

the opportunity to speak up and back

Theresa May in rejecting

the deal proposed by the EU.

It is ironic is it not, that those

who complain hardest about a hard

border between the Irish Republican

Army Island, have today welcomed

proposals from the EU which would

create a hard border between them.

These the Belfast agreement or most

specifically, to thwart exit in

shape it in the way, it is

outrageous and disgraceful!

We are

not going to rip our nation further

apart. We not only to have a

pragmatic approach, but in honest

approach. And the only solution to a

hard border is, membership of the

custom union, Mr Speaker they will

get there in the end.

Anna Soubry.

Of course the Irish border isn't

the only big unresolved issue.

The governments in Wales

and Scotland have real concerns too.

For example, what might Brexit mean

for regulating Welsh farming

or the Scottish fishing industry?

Control over agriculture and

fisheries is technically devolved.

But these powers are currently

exercised from Brussels.

Once the UK leaves the EU these

powers will be heading to the UK.

But where will they go?

The Welsh and Scottish governments

claim that Westminster

might try to grab them.

The Cabinet Office Minister

David Lidington tried

to reassure the doubters.

The vast majority of power is

returning, will start off in

Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and

led there be no doubt this will be a

very big change to the EU withdrawal

bill that is before Parliament and a

significant step forward in these

negotiations.

But both the Welsh and Scottish

governments think that's not good

enough and responded

by introducing Continuity Bills,

in effect making sure

those responsibilities

go directly to them,

not Westminster.

Bad weather cancelled the St David's

Day debate in the Commons.

But we thought we'd stage our own.

First I asked Plaid Cymru's

Westminster leader,

Liz Saville Roberts,

why she thought Westminster

would hold on to the powers

and not pass them on.

Why would the government does not

allow these powers to go straight to

Cardiff for Edinburgh? If we are

equals, with the nations of the UK,

we should be owed to discuss that

within the Parliament so we can come

into an agreement together.

According to our needs.

Before they than get passed on to

us.

I am joined by Steven Doughty

and joined by a WebCam by David

Davis. Let me start with you. These

powers are going to affect people

for years to come. Shouldn't they

have a say on them from day one?

They will have a say from day one

and they will have. Those powers are

currently in Brussels and they are

going to come back to London where

they will be decided upon by a

British Government made up of MPs

from England but also Wales,

Scotland and Northern Ireland so

those powers are already coming back

to the United Kingdom. It will

already have a much greater say to

how these laws are made. And in the

short term, maybe not immediately

but in the period of the next two

years, many of the powers will be

divulged straight down towards

Cardiff Bay or Scotland and Northern

Ireland. Everyone is going to Mark

Powers as a result.

But that's the

majors ticking point, eventually

those powers will go to Scotland and

Wales, why can't they go

straightaway?

There is not one

single thing that they can do at the

moment that it won't be going to do

after brexit. We are not taking any

powers away from Belfast, Scotland,

nowhere else. No powers have been

taken away and more powers will be

going to them. We need to ensure

that we don't have, if you like,

four different nations all doing

their own thing and that would

undermine the single market in the

UK and it is such an irony that all

of these people, I respect Steven

Doughty and other MPs who say we

need to be a part of this equal

market. If we as a -- if we have a

situation where they have different

agricultural policies we will lose

the single market in the UK.

It

sounds unreasonable.

The UK

government had plenty of time during

this process to resolve the issues

with the Welsh and Scottish

governments. And the discussions

have come to a stalemate at this

time. The Welsh Government has had

to set out a continuity bill to try

to keep things going because they

haven't come to this agreement and

that is not the situation we want to

be in. We don't want to end up back

in the Supreme Court arguing about

these powers. The powers that have

been given to Scotland and Wales

have been in place since 1999 and it

is established they have powers in

those areas and that they would get

stuck in Westminster and grab back

by some Ministers is not an

acceptable situation.

You talked

there about these continuity bills,

wouldn't everyone be better off

trying to sort out and negotiate

with the Government at Westminster

rather than going for this nuclear

option of having a continuity bill

and making more confusion and as you

say, more potential to turn up in

the courts?

We have raised this

problem since day one and I work

closely with my colleagues and

National Assembly and from SNP and

elsewhere. We agree that this is

about respecting devolution and the

different powers that the Government

and United Kingdom have in keeping

the constitutional stability here in

the UK in the UK government has not

responded adequately to that. Using

conservative Scottish MPs agreeing

that this is not an adequate

situation. And they have not come

forward. The chaos seeing or whether

they are grabbing back the powers

and hold them in Westminster,

neither of those are acceptable.

Isn't there a problem for the

Government that it is going to look

like it is walking roughshod over

devolution, if it hangs onto the

powers it is in trouble. At the

continuity bill goes through it is

also in trouble.

Whatever the

Government does, and no matter how

far is it traced to support the

Welsh Assembly and Scottish

Parliament, leaders of those

institutions are not going to

support brexit, we are not taking

any powers away, we are taking

powers from Brussels. But that is a

wonderful thing, we're taking this

powers from Brussels and back to the

UK Parliament were Welsh MPs will

have a say over it in the Welsh MPs

will bring it down to Cardiff. That

is respecting the result of the

brexit referendum in Wales.

Last ten

seconds, would you make of that?

He

is incorrect. We voted for the Wales

act and this is an intent to claw

back the powers and Ukip in the

Welsh Assembly are backing the Welsh

government on this and it is this

silly route that we don't need to

have. It is not about walking brexit

and it is expected -- respecting the

powers of the governments in the UK

government should do that.

David TC Davies and

Stephen Doughty there.

Now, I hear you ask,

what's been happening in the wider

world of politics this week?

Here's Duncan Smith

with our countdown.

# Five, four, three, two, one.

Five.

A wintry week at Westminster

and the heating failed at a

late-night sitting in the House

of Lords, prompting peers to wrap up

warm.

Four.

Welsh Nationalist MPs are backing

Manchester city boss

Pep Guardiola for wearing

a pro-Catalan ribbon at the

cup final.

He was charged by the FA

for promoting a political message.

MPs tabled an early motion

praising his stance.

Three.

Back in the Lords,

a the quick thinking

doorkeeper saved

the day on Wednesday.

Business can't end if

the mace is in place.

Two.

Most fashionable subject

for a speech this

week, Brexit as seen on Monday,

Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday, and Friday.

One.

We return to the weather

for our top story.

And the snow at Westminster inspired

these images on social media.

# Five, four, three, two, one.

Duncan Smith with our countdown.

Now let's take a look at some

Westminster news in brief:

The International Development

Secretary, is considering stopping

UK aid for a number of charities

after they failed to

provide assurances over

safeguarding to her department.

Penny Mordaunt had set a deadline

for the information,

following the scandal surrounding

sexual misconduct by

aid agency workers.

A number of organisations

unbelievably Mr Speaker have not

replied. We are following up. But

without compelling justification

they would have lost our confidence

and we will consider whether it is

right to continue their funding.

The government's announced

its abandoning the next stage

of the Leveson inquiry into press

intrusion, set up in the wake

of the phone hacking scandal.

The Culture Secretary,

argued the industry had changed

and he reminded MPs that phase one

had cost £48 million.

I have an wormed Sir Brian that we

are formally closing the inquiry.

But we will take action to safeguard

the lifeblood of our democratic

discourse and tackle the challenges

of our media face today, not a

decade ago.

This announcement

conveniently timed to be buried

under a flurry of snow is a

disappointment. A breach of trust

and a bitter blow to the victims of

press intrusion. But it is not in

any way a surprise.

UK millennials are on track to be

the most overweight generation

since records began,

health experts say.

Based on population trends,

more than seven in every ten people

born between the early 1980s

and the mid-90s will be too fat

by the time they reach middle age.

Five-year-olds are now eating their

own body weight in sugar every year,

obesity is the second largest cause

of cancer and it reduces life

expectancy up to ten years. What is

needed are mandatory reformulation

targets for reduction in added

sugar, fat, and calories across all

products as well as common-sense

policies directed at early years.

We

have seen action in what we will see

in the spring is evidence of whether

or not it has had the desired affect

and if it hasn't we have left all

options open to take more if

required.

The electricals retailer Maplin

collapsed in the week,

putting two and half thousand jobs

at risk

And on the same day a further three

thousand jobs were under threat

when the UK's biggest toys retailer

Toys-R-us went into administration.

In the Lords, there was a dire

warning that trading in Britain's

shops could decline by nearly

a quarter in the next year.

There is a crisis on the high

street. Can the Minister tell us

what the Government is doing to

recognise the pressure the Internet

is putting on physical shops?

We

found 2.3 billion and cutting

business rates and found a degree of

fairness to the system. There are

limits to how far one can go and one

has to accept that a lot of what is

happening is a result of what the

consumers want.

MPs debated a call to ban

live farm animal exports

after more than 90,000 people

signed an online petition.

Ministers are said to be

considering the change.

Currently, live animal

exports from Britain

are controlled by EU regulation.

In 2012, 40 she'd had to be

euthanized after being crammed into

a shrub. Other sheep spent four days

without having access to food or

water are being transported to

Turkey.

Let this be one of the great

steps as Britain takes back control

from the European Union because as

Gandhi once said, the greatness of

the nation and its moral progress

can be judged by the way its animals

are treated.

We should not be

banning live exports because if we

do that, we will lose control

through the Irish border and

potentially the animals that we are

seeking to improve the welfare of

Will end up travelling from Southern

Ireland to Spain or France, journeys

that are considerably longer than

they need to be.

MPs have been increasingly

concerned about the plight

of the Rohingya people

fleeing Myanmar formerly

known as Burma.

Now the chairman of the

International Development Committee

says its been blocked from making

a fact-finding trip

to the country after publishing

a report on the crisis.

Yesterday our passports were

returned to us without visas and

clearly the failure of the Burmese

government to grant these visas

simply prevents us from doing our

job as a select committee which is

to oversee how overseas development

assistance is spent in country. I

understand Mr Speaker, it was the

leader herself who blocked the

approval of our visas.

They

indicated three reasons for that

refusal, first that there is an

extended public holiday in Burma and

secondly that access to the state

remains restricted for security

reasons and finally and I think this

was something that was brought up in

the rest release yesterday evening.

They were unhappy that individual

members had signed a letter calling

for the senior general of the

Burmese army to be held to account

for the military behaviour.

In the Lords, there was a call

for better regulation of facial

recognition technology

by the security services and police.

Biometric software can identify

someone by comparing a photo

or video to a stored face-print.

It's used for security but also

increasingly by private companies.

One peer, who said she'd been

arrested but not charged

while attending peaceful

protests, raised concerns.

This technology is being used for a

database full of illegal images of

innocent people and I include myself

in that number. It seems that facial

recognition technology is using

police national database which

contains tens of thousands of people

who are never charged, nor convicted

of an offence. It is six years since

the High Court ruled that the policy

of retaining the mugshots of

innocent people was unlawful. But

the police still do it and they

still upload them onto the police

national database. The Government's

solution in 2017 was to allow

individuals to write to the police

asking to be deleted. That just

isn't good enough.

Although it is

still at a very early stage of

development as far as its use in the

criminal justice system is

concerned, I have no doubt that it

will eventually be accepted by the

police and the courts as a quick and

reliable method of eliminating the

innocent from suspicion as much as

for identifying and convicting the

guilty.

But he added there were no national

or international standards for how

implement its use.

These techniques are extremely

powerful but they are out of the

bag. The train has left the station

or whichever metaphor you want to

use on this concern. The Chinese Ali

Baba site has introduced a system

whereby you can smile to pay. As far

as I know, it is China and it is

different of course, but any others

similar system being adopted in the

UK or in other Western countries,

but the point is that the technique

is there and it is actually only a

matter of time before non-state

actors start to use these techniques

far more widely than is currently

the case.

One peer and former MI5 chief

stressed the benefits in counter

terrorism and was impressed

with a system he'd experienced.

I was going into the building the

other day and they had a facial

recognition system at the door and

it immediately and accurately

identified me as myself and was able

to do it on the basis of a

12-year-old photograph taken from

the Internet. So this is not just

about police custody records, you

can do it without any of that stuff

and a lot of people are doing so in

the private sector.

So for example

the German police force is using

image camera to make a troublemaker

database which is against the

principles of data protection and

against the spirit of not using this

type of technology for and

intelligence gathering tools. There

are is no illegal status -- legal

status and no oversight, they are

getting away with it.

The Home Office Minister said

biometric data was critically

important in law enforcement.

Maintaining public trust and public

confidence is key, achieving this

needs a more open approach to

deployment and development of new

technologies. Re-remained committed

to our use of biometrics including

provided to block enforcement is

legal, transparent and robust.

She also said the Government

was committed to creating

a framework so that organisations

could innovate with biometric data

in an ethical and transparent way.

Finally, March the first is

the meteorological start of spring,

which might have been a little hard

to believe over the last few days,

but it's also St David's Day,

and a chance for a few non-Welsh

speakers to have a go

at the traditional greeting.

Can I wish all members... I am told

happy Saint David's Day for all the

nonwovens speakers among us.

And

here is the Scottish accent.

SPEAKS

WELSH.

And here is how it should be

done.

SPEAKS WELSH

But there was some bad

news for those wanting more

talk of St David's day.

when the bees from the East takes

into his dorm Emma, one of the

victims of the victims of the House

will be the Welsh members the debate

on Saint David's Day has been

cancelled so they can travel home

they please.

-- can travel home

safely.

The weather intruding on Commons

business once more something

Pete Wishart was keen

explore, sort of.

There are two items of business, the

beast from the East, and the home

Secretary, what is a white out that

causes damage wherever it goes in

the other is the beast from the

East.

Pete Wishart.

And that's it from me for now.

But do join Lucy Grey on BBC

Parliament, on Monday night at 11pm

for a full round up

of the day at Westminster.

But for now from me,

Alicia McCarthy, good bye.