09/03/2017 This Week

This is a world of hidden mics and two-way mirrors,

The House of Lords isn't listening to the British public who gave

Theresa May a clear mandate in the referendum for Brexit.

We can bug anybody any time, anywhere.

Still, there's more growth than we were expecting.

Be careful, you're just supposed to listen.

The plight of refugees has fallen on deaf ears this week.

That's why I've been campaigning to change that.

Even telly boxes have ears these days and maybe eyes too.

So stop slouching, it's time for This Week, let's

There is nothing private about the conversation.

Or perhaps you'd like to say "Welcome" to us.

Just as well as you can hear and see us.

Ever since you bought that Samsung TV that fell off

the back of a lorry, very little that you've said or done

Earlier today the Producer and I were spying on a front room

that gave new meaning to the word "squalid", broken toy train sets

piled up in the corner, absurdly coloured shirts strewn

on the floor, a bizarre shrine to Maggie Thatcher made out

of empty bottles of Blue Nun on the mantlepiece.

We soon ascertained it was the abode of a certain M Portillo Esquire,

6 The Railway Cuttings, Clapham Junction.

Naturally we called the security services -

Speaking of the long-arm of the law, how long can it be before

Yesterday Philip Hammond promised new laws to clamp down on misleading

pledges to consumers, with the real cost and truth hidden

Tonight he's on the run from his own legislation, having increased

National Insurance Contributions despite a Tory manifesto promise

Of course they buried that pledge on the first page of their manifesto

in the full knowledge that nobody would ever get that far into it.

Sneaky, dishonest and now, probably criminal.

Tonight I'm joined by two people whose utterances make a Terms

and Conditions audiobook sound interesting but are renowned

for having all the insight of an I Speak Your Weight Machine.

I speak of course of Michael #choochoo Portillo and Lisa

Welcome to you both, your moment of the week, Michael? I think the

unveiling today of the war memorial for those who died in the Iraq and

Afghan conflicts. There are popular wars, people are unhappy about our

participation, and the risk is then that you devalue the service and

sacrifice that was made there. For decades we didn't have a memorial

because we felt queasy. I thought there was a danger that the men and

women who lost their lives would be devalued in the same way and

disregarded. I'm glad this memorial's gone up quickly in terms

that these things normally happen. It looks stunning too. The people

who went there to fight and lost their lives, they didn't declare the

war, they were doing what they were told by the Government. Lisa, your

moment of the week? I like Michael's a lot, but probably the thing that

stands out for me is a real low point, the vote on Monday that was

last that would have opened the door for us to do something to help more

of the thousands of child refugees that are stranded on their own in

Europe at the moment and we only lost by a handful of votes.

Campaigners have said it's not over and I think it's probably right that

it's not to be honest. Theresa May's in trouble about national insurance,

they've got problems with business rates and Brexit. A small majority?

Yes. So the fight will go on. We'll come back to that toward the end of

the programme. Michael Heseltine has been in touch,

after he got fired from five unpaid He'd heard of our unparalleled

record in employing politicians long past their sell-by date

and concluded this was the natural Now, Hezza has a long

and illustrious public career but you can't just barge

on to this programme. We had to put his application

to the This Week Board of Directors. And I'm sorry to report

that it was vetoed by two of our most senior executives,

citing security concerns - yes, Molly the Dog and her little

step sister, Iris Bailey. Clearly they'd heard what he did

to his own mutt a while back. When we told Hezza he'd been turned

down, he denied ever Anyway, here's David Starkey

with his Take of the Week. On Tuesday, the House of Lords tried

to stop the clock on Brexit. We are about to embark

on an almighty battle to extricate The last thing we want is a bunch

of truculent peers breaking ranks Some Tory Brexiteers want

the Prime Minister to call a snap general election,

to give her an unimpeachable mandate for her plans for a hard Brexit,

thus neatly cutting the ground But they are taking a sledgehammer

to crack a bunch of coroneted nuts. For the Prime Minister already has

an unimpeachable mandate, And she should use this mandate

to threaten, and if need be, to carry out a mass creation

of peers who are committed But the Prime Minister shouldn't

stop at Article 50 and Brexit. The new peers should also be

committed to the long overdue reform of the bloated,

anachronistic, expensive and increasingly

indefensible upper house. The new House of Lords must be much

smaller, largely elected, weighted to the regions

and the four nations. And above all, its legislative role

and its subordination to the Commons must be put beyond doubt

by a written constitution. For our much vaunted unwritten

constitution is now, as the antics of the judges

and the peers demonstrate, a source of major instability

in this time of national crisis. Theresa May has seen

off the Etonians. She needs to call time

on the House of Lords. And thank you to Howard

Walwyn Fine Antique Clocks for the use of their beautiful

Kensington Church Street showroom. David Starkey joins us now. Welcome.

Thank you. Let me start with you, Michael, it's 2017, why is the

second chamber still not elected, partly hereditary and still called

the Lords? Because there's never been agreement about what to do

about it. I think most people believe that it's not satisfactory.

But for example, I'm not particularly keen on seeing an

elected House because I think people who're elected fall prey to the

whips of the parties and lack the independence of some of our very

best peers today, by our best peers, I mean people like the Astronomer

Royal, Field Marshals and Admirals of the fleet who'd never stand for

election. So it's been the lack of agreement on what to do about this

that has brought about the present situation. What I think is

unfortunate is, as a nation, we are usually rather good at having

unimpeachable processes. We ought to be able to appointed the House of

Lords in a way that's absolutely beyond corruption and suspicion.

Unfortunately, the House has been corrupted massively by Prime

Ministers who've appointed third rate Members of Parliament that they

wanted to get rid of at an election so they could put their placement in

and of course putting in people who paid lots of money into their

parties. Lisa, why haven't we been able to reform it properly? Because

we can't agree on what to replace it with, that's rite. Where I don't

agree is the House of Lords not being elected. I agreed with a lot

about what you said but the problem for me is not that the House of

Lords is willing to challenge the Commons, that is incredibly

important, we get it wrong in the Commons quite a lot and we should be

challenged the point is that they have no basis to do it. No

democratic legitimacy? The only thing is to elect them. Tell Michael

why he should be elected? Lisa's made the point. We are in a

democracy, not that you would know it by the way by the verdict of the

Supreme Court. This again is the problem. We are so unclear what the

source of sovereignty is. We prattle about the idea of Parliamentary

sovereignty. You'll love this, an true, tune who invents Parliamentary

sovereignty, Michael probably will, Henry VIII invents the concept of an

independent national Parliament distinct from any other form of

authority, that's the Pope. There's only one sovereign in Parliament,

again Michael will tell us, the enacting clause, be it therefore

enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, only the Queen is

sovereign in Parliament, the Commons, and the Lords, merely

ascent to it. In other words, we have total pantomimes. Our

constitution's become a pantomime, it's a Gilbert Sullivan pantomime

that doesn't recognise democracy, doesn't look at the sovereign role

of the people. It's income patable with a 20th century democracy. I

don't know if you have seen the BBC documentary Meet the Lords, when

politicians' careers are over, they're over, in other countries.

Bill Clinton's career is over, Barack Obama's career is over. When

Angela Merkel steps down, her career will be over. But in this country,

they get a second chance. I mean, you saw all the faces, half of whom

I thought were dead and they are in the House of Lords and it suits

them, it's the way of the political establishment providing a lovely

retirement home that keeps their importance and gives them ?300 a day

as well. There's a lot right in what you say. Another way to put it would

be to say that you have a House and, you know, various forms of this in

history is where elder statesmen go, you have the value of all the

experience. Most are failed politicians. No, some are. Some of

them were very successful politicians. I mean, unless you take

the view that all careers end in tears, that's true. You can't say

Heseltine or Lawson or Lamont were failed politicians. I merely give

you two out of three. In their day, they were very successful

politicians. There are people who shouldn't ever have been put there

in the first place, that's true. No-one can be truly happy with a

House of Lords that doesn't contain David Starkey or Michael Portillo.

What happens when in a major issue like this, the Lords start stepping

out of line in a very serious fashion. The Commons itself and this

has been a fundamental problem in the last few months, it's seriously

out of line. The Lords aren't stepping out of line in a major way.

What the Lords did was to say that Parliament should have a vote on the

final deal and, for someone like me who absolutely went out and made the

case to remain, lost that argument and respects the fact that the

people have spoken about whether we are leaving the European Union. I'm

also very acutely aware that there were lots of different competing

versions of Brexit on offer during the course of the referendum. There

is no mandate for any one particular outcome and it must be debated by

Parliament and there must be the ability of Parliament to hold the

Government to account and I'll tell you why. We heard it over and over

again during the referendum campaign. The levers, the one thing

that really united them was that they said Parliament must be

suffering. You have a parliament and an

executive, and the executive is there to execute things. You cannot

have 1400 members of Parliament in the Lords and Commons being people

who conduct a negotiation. The only thing that would happen if that

clause were passed is that the European Union would see that if it

were unreasonable, Parliament would reject the deal and the European

Union would have the hope that we would revert... You say it is

causing political instability. Explain. We are in a position where

we are now dealing with a very tight timetable. It is a timetable of

nearly two years. We are dealing with an extraordinarily difficult

negotiation, the point just made, that if this clause were accepted it

effectively gives Europe the obvious negotiating tactic, be as difficult

as possible and the negotiations will fail. Lisa, you really do have

to understand that the Lords is not the proper... I am pleased there are

a bunch of men here to explain to me how it works. There is one man

explaining to you. The real failure in the Commons has been new lot,

particularly the Labour Party. It is up to you to take a clear line. When

you have an opposition that is as badly led, the effective opposition

goes to the Lords. Let Lisa respond. This is absolute nonsense. First of

all, the Labour Party has not been weak and confused in our line on

Brexit. In the last round, we had a whip imposed about how to vote.

Talking about the Lords, how far should the Lords go? Into an

amendment that they have passed? I think they are right. How far should

they go in terms of challenging? Yes. They have made their views

clear and it is up to the Commons to make a decision. If it knocks it

down, what should the Lords do? In the end, the Commons has to prevail.

It is the house with legitimacy. But the point is that because of

parliamentary scrutiny, the Government will be under pressure to

come to the House of Commons with a deal that works for the majority of

the British people, and that is the importance of the outcome we need to

get. Is that really how a negotiation will be conducted? If it

is not in the interest of the British people... Where I disagree

with you, David is that I do not think the Lords have gone beyond a

threshold in what they have done. Yet. If they reverse the Commons for

a second time, I would unleash the dogs of war, threaten them with the

creation of enough peers to get business through, but I doubt they

will do that. Are we not as far away from the democratic reform of the

Lords as ever in modern times? I think we are, and one of the

problems with the abolition of Reddit trees, you seemed to carry

out, as with so much of new Labour, a pseudo- model -- moderation. I

think we have an extraordinary debate over what the role of the

judiciary was, in terms of the work and planning Parliament to go

through the process. These things are really dangerous. We are played

out with this Gilbert and Sullivan pantomime of an unwritten

constitution, and I would hope that this enormous political crisis,

because that is what it is, the biggest change in politics for well

over 50 years, would force us to look again. We put it off and put it

off, too long. We need to do something and have the courage. We

will see what happens. I've -- I remember when Michael foot and Enoch

Powell got together to stop reform of the Lords.

Now it's late, Netflix and chill with Julian Assange late.

To be honest, we're just glad Nigel Farage has gotten

over his messy break up with Douglas Carswell so quickly.

But if, like us, you'd rather not hear about Nigel's strange

bedfellows, fear not, because waiting in the wings

is supermodel and refugee rights campaigner Lily Cole,

here to put campaigning in our Spotlight.

So join in my sad little keyboard warriors, go Facebonkers

for the newest Snapcraze, all comrades are welcome

to our Twitterevoution, yes even, you, Instagranny.

Now, it's been Spreadsheet Phil's Big Week in the sun

which was something of a novelty since you don't usually see

The Chancellor was on top form delivering his first Budget,

comparing the Labour party to a driverless car and saying that

Jeremy Corbyn was so far down a black hole that even

Clearly he'd hit the Blue Nun before hitting the Despatch Box.

But he's always had a sense of humour and well-practiced

at keeping it well-hidden from the rest of us.

But he once sat in this very studio having a conversation

about government spending with Peppa Pig.

Which is not quite as demeaning as what our very own Nick Robinson

accidentally called him on Radio Four this morning.

It began with Spread, followed by shh but ended

Anyway, here's Richard Madeley with his Round Up of the Week.

Andrew has finally allowed me to get a stylist's chair in the prestigious

To be absolutely honest with you, I really thought I'd blown it last

week with that disastrous new style that I trialled on Michael.

You don't bounce back from something like that easily.

But I can't let a little thing like Michael drag me down.

I mean, we self-employed are the life blood of the economy.

# Clean your act up and don't be a slob.

# Get it together like your big brother Bob.

# Why don't you get a hair cut and get a real job #.

The political week began with the second defeat

Peers voted through an amendment calling for a "meaningful vote",

I ask your Lordships to rest on the long contested principle

that this country's future should rest with Parliament

And it is in that spirit that I commend this new clause

# Get a hair cut and get a real job #.

In the end, 12 Tory peers joined the rebellion.

Mr Heseltine, Sir, welcome to the salon.

It was an eyebrow trim you reserved, as I recall, Sir, wasn't it?

# Get a hair cut and get a real job #.

I see, it was for meeting the PM for the first time.

Well, that does deserve something special.

And then she said that you'd actually met before?!

The point comes in life when you have to do what you believe

to be right and saying that somehow or other Parliament couldn't have

enshrined in the statute, a commitment to involve Parliament,

the sovereign body of our country, was too much for me.

Well, that sacking must have put hairs on Theresa May's chest.

Don't worry, Prime Minister, we can sort that out

Mrs May was in robust mood for PMQs and Jeremy Corbyn tried

But then he switched tack and went on to schools.

She proposes a flagship scheme to build the wrong

schools in the wrong place, spending millions on vanity projects

of grammar schools and free schools whilst at the same time per pupil

Isn't it time that this colossal waste of money was addressed?

We are fighting for the best deal for Britain.

Labour are fighting among themselves.

That's Labour, weak, divided and unfit to govern

# I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair.

Well, the main political event of the week was of course the Budget

and spreadsheet Phil's statement was absolutely lathered with jokes.

And yet he never once mentioned Brexit.

Still, the cost of Brexit's no laughing matter, is it?

I turn now, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the OBR forecast.

This is the spreadsheet bit but bear with me because I've

The Right Honourable gentleman opposite who is now so far down

a black hole that even Stephen Hawking has disowned him.

At the forefront of disruptive technologies like biotech,

robotic systems and driverless vehicles, a technology

I believe the party opposite knows something about.

There wasn't a massive amount of policy to go between all of those

gags but I suppose one key measure was to go back on a manifesto pledge

and increase national insurance contributions

From April 2018, when the class 2 NIC is abolished, the main

rate of class 4 NICS for the self-employed

will increase by 1% 2010% with a further 1% increase

# Mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall #.

Jeremy Corbyn responded with a rallying cry for people

I wonder what made him think of that.

This was a budget of utter complacency about the

Utter complacency about the crisis facing our public services

and complacent about the reality of daily life for millions

Entirely out of touch with that reality of life for millions.

This morning, over one million workers will have woken up not

knowing whether they'll work today, tomorrow or next week.

The Lib Dems and the SNP highlighted the lack of mentions of Brexit.

And of course that hit to the self-employed.

It was the Brexit budget that dare not speak its name,

The biggest single risk to the UK and the Scottish economy.

He's confirmed he's wedded to the welfare cut, punishing

It's a real insult to self-employed people.

One in four people in my constituency is self-employed.

Self-employed people already don't get holiday pay,

now thanks to this Government, they can't afford a holiday

Do you know what, I'm not sure I'm cut out of this lark.

Oh, having to listen to the customers' dreadful

To be quite straight with you, the This Week regulars - ferrel.

Our thanks to the staff and students at Lambeth College.

Welcome back to the programme. Michael, this increase in the

self-employed National Insurance Contributions Bill you are a former

Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Would this have been fully discussed

with the Treasury team and approved by the Prime Minister? Certainly the

former. Yes, I would have thought the Prime Minister would approve a

major part of the Budget, absolutely. And none of them saw

this coming? What? That they could put up the National Insurance

Contributions Bill the self-employed and it not blow up in their face.

Well, they decided they wanted to raise some more tax. Whatever they

did, that was going to be difficult. They probably thought they have the

best possible case here because the self-employed's access to state

pensions has been equalised with employed people. So they had a case

to make in this particular field. But what this takes me back to is

the folly of going into elections with a heap of pledges about all the

things that you are not going to do in the coming Parliament. My one

hope is that because the Tories look as if they will win the next

election whatever happens, that they won't next time go into the election

promising not to raising complex, not to raise VAT... But they did not

think they were going to women they promised that. Nobody thought that.

They thought they could not win unless they promised it, because

they thought every time a journalist said are you going to raise VAT and

they said we will not say, that would lose them votes. It did not

seem to dawn on him that many of the people he is hitting our Tory

supporters. Is it right to close the gap between the taxation of the

employed and self-employed? That was one of the arguments, that it helps

crack on this false self employment issue. The problem is that basically

you are punishing the victims of the crime and not the perpetrators. If

employers are putting people on to self-employed contracts, not

contracts, but classifying them as self-employed as to avoid having to

meet the other costs like holiday pay and maternity and paternity

rights, and your answer is to say, we are going to make life harder for

the people who do not have those rights, it seems wrong-headed. The

people you are talking about may not be affected. According to the in

situ tough fiscal studies, 96% of the extra money raised by this

change will be in the top 50% of households. If you are a

hairdresser, on low pay, ?12,500 a year, you -- your insurance

contributions will fall. A taxi driver on ?17,300, you will pay an

extra ?20 a year. Not per month. But if you are a management consultant

on ?52,000 a year, you will pay extra National Insurance of ?620.

Why would a Labour Party not approve of that?

The bracket this is hard for is the ?17,000 to ?24,000 a year earners.

For them this is really tough because they're paying more, nothing

has been done about the protections that they currently don't have, like

holiday pay and paternity and maternity and so on. But also,

there's something else in this budget that is a real problem for

them and for many of us too, that's the inability of the political

system as a whole to get a grip of the crisis in social care. Don't

forget, many people who're self-employed in that earnings

bracket will be struggling to make ends meet already. They will be

worrying about the job insecurity that they've got and they'll also be

worrying about how they're going to pay for their care in the future. Am

I the only one to be a little surprised that the Chancellor should

have taken such a collectivist approach to this particular problem.

If he genuinely was concerned there was an unfair gap between employed

contributions and self-employed contributions, why didn't he lower

the level rather than raise the level at the bottom, why didn't he

bring them closer together. Very good question. Someone said to me,

why is the Tory Chancellor saying we are going to tax you more, but in

the return we are going to give you more. It's not what the Tories are

meant to do? The big issue is that if you are an employed person, your

employer pays 13.8%. That is an enormous Amount. If you are worried

about the incentives, you would have to tackle the gap between what would

be the employers contribution and the fact there is no contribution

whatsoever for a self-employed person. My guess is that actually,

the Chancellor will get away with this. It's true that it hits Tory

voters. It seems odd. Here is a Conservative Government that no

longer seems to be in favour particularly of home ownership and

now is hitting the self-employed. On the other hand it's also a Tory

Government 16 points ahead in the opinion polls. Before it did this? !

You saw what the omnishambles budget of George Osborne did. It may not

result in a lead but could cut the lead. There is a deeper issue at

work here, Lisa, and Michael alluded to it. It is the wilful erosion of

the tax base. If politicians say they're not going to raise VAT, they

are going to raise income tax, they are going to freeze fuel duty,

you've got the rapid growth in self-employment, the rise of the

digital gig economy. So where does the money come from for all these

huge demands that will hit us in the next decade on social care and NHS?

I don't see how you square that circle? The way you square the

circumstance sell to take the Party Politics out of it. Social care is

the best example of this that I can think of. There have been a number

of reports and suggestions over the last few years about how we solve

the crisis in social care. Every time that a political party has

actually stuck their head up and said OK we are going to support one

of those, there's been a major political row and the whole thing's

fallen apart. You mean essentially people insuring themselves during

their lifetime? Well, so you've got the Dilnot Report with the cap on

the amount you pay... We have had all these reports. Remember what

happened to Andy Burnham before the 2010 general election. He talked

about levy on the estate after people died, the Tories labelled it

the death tax, it was everywhere, it collapsed everywhere, now the idea

is being floated again. They didn't in this budget but you are right,

there's been talk about it. I always hear politicians say they are going

to take the politics out of something and I just think, yes,

that's never going to happen. Is it? Would than be funny. You think that

about everything we say though, Andrew. That's my default position.

Something you said a few minutes ago, if politicians aren't supposed

to talk positively about their manifesto and make promises, what do

they do in the run-up to an election? What I object to is

negative promises, saying all the things they absolutely won't do

whatever the circumstances may be. I see. But what is the difference

between breaking a negative promise and a positive promise, because they

do both? No, I think one of the reasons they've gone for this is

that, in the legislation that gave effect to the tax lock, this I think

was not covered, if I've understood this point correctly. That's the

small print. I know. Although it's not in the manifesto, they haven't

locked themselves in legislatively. There isn't an example of how bad

policy gets made because they've seen a little gap where they can

make a change. It would be so much better if the Chancellor had no

promises back there, so if he thought it was appropriate now the

raise VAT or tax or whatever, he could do whatever he thought was

best. I think he's gone for this because he thought there was a

little gap where he could get it in. By the way, it raises peanuts in the

grand scheme of things, but they lock themselves into none of the tax

rises, of the erosion of the tax base, even though their fiscal plans

have gone awry, they promised to balance the budget by 2015, they

didn't. They promised to do it by 2020, they won't. It's now an

unspecified time in the next decade. I don't want to blame the media but

you know perfectly well, if they had not promised the lock, you would

have spent much of the election on this saying, why didn't you promise

that you are not going to raise VAT and income tax and, it's from that

sort of pressure that they feel... So I'm to blame? I preface my

remarks appropriately. Richard, you were in the same class as Philip

Hammond? Yes, yes. Shenfield Tech in Essex. Did he run a good spread

sheet? He did for his disco business. He ran a school disco

business and it made a lot of money because I was good friends with his

partner in this business, named Graham Norton, but not that Graham

Norton and Phil kept the share of the profits, I'm not saying that was

the wrong thing to do, but he did it very well. The word is that the

Prime Minister said she doesn't want to run into the legislation

necessary to do the national insurance contributions. I see. That

smells like a U-turn in there somewhere. Thank you very much,

Richard, good luck with the day job. Now, a wave of grassroots activism

has taken This Week by storm. Michael has been tirelessly

campaigning to reopen the Chipping Sodbury to Much Binding

in the Marsh railway line, even though historians are not

sure it ever existed. While Lisa has gone full populist,

starting a petition to keep Britain's manhole covers safe

from radical groups. We didn't know they were threatened

in this way but she assures us she's seen a suspicious guy with a beard

taking an unhealthy With such a wave of democratic

enthusiasm, we're putting campaigning in this week's

Spotlight. # I suppose I should tell

you what this lady's thinking...# So, you want to campaign

for change, do you? Well, you'd better get yourself one

of those celebrity endorsements. Support the NSPCC's

Call for Help appeal. Although members of the public

are getting in on the act, too. We found attitudes

that belonged more - I was going to say in the 1950s,

but probably the 1850s might be more accurate -

than in the 21st-century. # Sometimes it's hard to find

the words to say...# Not a problem on

International Women's Day. Meanwhile, Annie Lennox thinks

Donald Trump has actually made But it wasn't a great week for those

campaigning to bring more child These local authorities

have put their hands up Why should we, as a nation,

say no to them? So the noes have it,

the noes have it. And to supermodel turned refugee

campaigner, Lily Cole, who is raising awareness

for the refugee cause in a new film. The refugee camp, designed for less

than a thousand people, Celebrity endorsement

and fighting the good fight. Welcome to the programme. Lots of

powerful causes around at the moment. Why for you the refugee

crisis? Good question. I went out to Greece last year to make the short

film you showed some clips from, without feeling like a kind of

emotionally affected by the issue but feeling like I didn't really

understand it very well and a bit confused about all the different

things you read and narratives. And so I went first and foremost to

learn and then happened upon meeting a couple of people with

extraordinary stories which we filmed and packaged into the short

film which is online now. I think, as I've tried to unpick and

understand the issue better, it's, I guess the humanitarian basis first

and foremost that really appeals to me. I mean the reality of what

people are going through right now I think is pretty horrific. Was it

pretty bad in the camps you visited? It was awful. People had come

through Turkey? Exactly. From the Syrian conflict, Afghanistan and

other areas? Yes. Managed to get to Greece but were going no further?

Yes. I visited the end of last year. There were around 2200 people in the

camp there, it was designed to have less than 1,000, so it was really

overcrowded, badly managed, to a point where when multiple people we

interviewed speculated that was a deterrent strategy to make it so

bad. That it's so horrible you don't want to go? So that you don't

encourage your friends and family on the other side of the sea to cross

over, that that was a squarely believable prospect. What are you

campaigning for the British Government to do? I mean, it

coincides, we worked on editing the film and we put the film out last

week and it happened to coincide with different other political

narratives that were happening. So here in the UK we have obviously had

the kind of step back from what was agreed under the Dubs amendment last

year and that for me was truly horrifying when I learnt about that.

It's the only thing this year that's made me cry. I watched the House of

Commons debate. The numbers that we thought would be coming in are not

the numbers that will be coming in Just that we are taking a harsh

attitude towards the situation. The numbers are so minimal, 2650

children is what we are debating on, it's 0.04%, it's a trivial number,

feeling ideological and political, rather than a real tangible

reflection on numbers. Today I don't know if you saw the Guardian did a

Freedom of Information request and showed that over 20,000 places

apparently have been offered by local authorities across the

country. That contradicts what was being said. This is a strange verb

to use, but have you enjoyed getting stuck into this, because it's a real

issue? Enjoyed it is a tricky word. Satisfying? On some level. I mean, I

also have other work, so it was quite hard doing like two things at

the same time. Tell me about it! But it's something that I've been

incredibly consumed by, passionate about, thinking about a night,

working on my spare -- working on it at night in my spare time. It feels

real. Are you going to stick with it? I don't know what that means.

Keep campaigning? Yes, I don't know how that will manifest, whether it

will be more film-making or conversations, I don't know how. We

can see the film on YouTube? You might be able to see it on YouTube

tomorrow, but right now it's on Vice. Lights in dark places it's

called. That is your lot. We're off to LouLou's

for Michael Heseltine's man-sized Michael and Lisa have been asked

to "man" the doors and they're so desperate for work they've even

agreed to adhere to the dress code Nighty night, don't let

the PM's demonic laugh bite. # And there was a little

old man in scarlet and grey I ought to report you

to the Gnome Office. # I'm the laughing

gnome and you can't catch me # I'm the laughing gnome

and you can't catch me.# You can still see her -

but it has to be supervised. You thought it was YOU

I was afraid of. Now it's happened, not only

have I got nothing to lose,