21/03/2018 Wednesday in Parliament

Hello and welcome to the programme.

Coming up,

the Foreign Secretary compares

President Putin's approach

to the World Cup in

Russia to Hitler's use

of the 1936 Olympic Games.

The comparison with the 1936 is

certainly right.

It is a medic

prospect frankly.

How is the Health Secretary

going to fund pay rises for more

than a million NHS staff in England?

How is the Prime Minister is "The

skills grown a set magic money tree?

-- cinematic skills.

And Theresa May says claims that

a British company harvested personal

data from Facebook users must

be properly examined.

The allegations are clearly very

concerning as it is right. They

should be properly investigated.

But first, the UK's relationship

with Moscow has been under

the spotlight since the poisoning

of the former Russian double

agent and his daughter

in Salisbury earlier this month.

A complicating factor is of course

that Russia is hosting

the World Cup this summer.

Facing the Foreign Affairs

Committee, Boris Johnson was asked

about the safety of those travelling

to the tournament and indeed

whether the England

squad should go at all.

On balance, it would be wrong to

punish them or the team who worked

on this for a long time incredibly

hard, given up their lives to it, I

think it would be a pity for them.

But your point about the safety of

bands as well-made and taken. This

is of crucial importance to us. Can

we do indeed need to have an urgent

conversation with the Russians about

how they propose to fulfil their

obligations under their feet the

contractor look after all fans. --

their Fifa contract.

A Labour MP was dubious

about the championships

being staged in Russia.

They got the right. Putin will use

it the way he they used the Nokia 36

Olympics. The idea that Putin

handing over a World Cup to the

captain of the winning team is...

I

think you characterisation of what

is going to happen into Moscow's at

the World Cup, I think the

comparison with 1936 is certainly

right. I think it is a big prospect

to think of Putin glorying in this

sporting event.

The Foreign Secretary

said the safety of fans

was uppermost in his mind.

One of the consequences of the

expulsions that we had from Moscow.

We lost our officer who was going to

be responsible for the fans. You can

imagine anything more

counterproductive than the UK's

ability to help fans in Russia.

There is an issue. I will not hide

it from this committee. There is a

discussion. We need to consider that

issue and at the moment as I say the

numbers of applicants for tickets

are well down where we were at Brio,

and a considerable amount of fans to

want to go and we have to think of

the welfare.

There are fans who will

be gone to places like Rome, which

they will be exposed to hotbeds of

Russian nationalism. That's not

going to places where they will be

exposed. Those journeys...

Mr Austin

has a good point. That is featured.

Are right. We are thinking about all

of this.

Boris Johnson was also asked

about the Salisbury attack itself.

Why do you think Putin and Russia

felt able to undertake such a

brazen, despicable, illegal attack

on British soil?

It was a sign that

President Putin or a Russian state

wanted to give to potential

defectors in their own agency,

saying this is what happens to you

if you decide that you support a

country with a different set of

values, such as our own. You can

expect to be assassinated. And I

think the reason they picked the

United Kingdom is very simple. It is

because this is a country that does

have that particular set of values

and belief and freedom and an

democracy and in the rule of law.

And a half time and again called out

Russia over its abuses of those

values. You could argue there aren't

saying this as being weak.

And we

are desperate to look the other way.

Rather than seeing bin Asia Russia's

precedents in other countries. --

Saint Russia's depressants another

country.

Regardless would happen 12

years ago after the living echo

assassination, most people I think

both sides of the comments, all

backbenches that I listen to last

Wednesday overwhelmingly approved by

the response the UK is issuing this

time. And it's been a mixture of

Burma, diplomatic responses. The

biggest expulsion of undeclared

Russian agencies since the 1980s.

Coupled with a series of measures,

designed to push back on the Russia

and all sorts of ways.

What are your

plans in terms of communication in

light of what has happened?

Things

will be very difficult politically

for a while to come. But that does

not mean the whole contact must be

stopped and all engagement must be

stopped.

Boris Johnson gave his

assessment of the UK's

relationship with Russia now.

We do not wish to engage in a new

Cold War. I remember the old Cold

War. It was a pretty miserable time.

I grew up genuinely worrying that

the world, our country was going to

be evaporated and eight

thermonuclear strike. I don't think

we faced that kind of existential

threat. But it is a thread

nonetheless. -- it is a thread

nonetheless.

The Foreign Secretary.

The Health Secretary has said a pay

rise for more than a million NHS

staff in England recognises they're

working harder than ever.

Nurses, midwives, paramedics,

cleaners and porters will be among

those receiving at least six

and a half % over

the next three years.

Answering an urgent question

about the deal, Jeremy Hunt said

rarely had a pay rise been

so well deserved.

The whole House will want to pay

tribute to the hard work of NHS

staff up and down the country during

one of the most difficult winters in

living memory. And today's agreement

on a new pay deal reflects public

appreciation for just how much they

have done and continue to do.

However, it is much more than that.

The agreement with Woods in a trade

unions have recommended to the

members today is a something for

something guilt whisperings and

profound changes in productivity in

exchange for significant rises in

pay. Staff, trade unions and the

Labour Party have today been

vindicated in saying a pay rise is

long overdue.

But one we have seen

nurses and paramedics, midwives

losing thousands of pounds in the

value of their pay, but we heard

stories of NHS staff turning to food

banks, we have 100,000 vacancies

across the service, and more nurses

leaving the profession that had

rain, wind must have spent billions

on agency staff than this pay cut it

should have been scrapped years ago.

Then I also write to recognise and

remember back in 2009, labour's or

depression busting economy into the

biggest and most of economic charges

we have faced. As a result of our

stewardship and support of the NHS

through that period, like many other

countries, and cut their health

spending, we secured 200,000 jobs

and the NHS and now we can start

rewarding them for their hard work.

I will come the fact that the NHS

workers in England were finally

receiving a pay rise they deserve.

Health is the bald to do was

government and so could the

secretary clarify how much of this

additional funding is new funding

and also with the consequential will

be for the was government?

Jeremy Hunt said the normal

Barnett Formula, which dictates how

funding from Westminster

is allocated to the devolved

governments, would apply.

We have not had a functioning

assembly for 14 months. We've had no

Health Minister for 14 months! The

how can the hard-working members of

any NHS staff in Northern Ireland

benefit from this new pay deal? With

the Secretary of State commit to

speaking to his Cabinet colleague

who I'm delighted to see on the

bench here today. To make sure that

NHS staff in Northern Ireland seat

the benefits of this deal today.

The

rise is deserved. Welcome and

overdue. But without a long-term

plan for funding health and care,

this is announcement will not be

trusted. Do that he agreed that we

need a new deal to refresh the

vision for the 21st-century and

should we be prepared to be honest

with the British people is a this

will involve a modest but clear

increase in taxation?

Will need to

find a way of getting more money

into the NHS and social care system

in the future as we paste pressures

of an ageing population. And we need

to the best way to do that.

Jeremy Hunt.

Now Prime Minister's Question Time

is supposed to be one

of the highlights of the week.

But on Wednesday some MPs were very

slow to take their places

on the green benches and some even

left before the end.

To top it all, a little boy brought

in as guest of a Labour MP to watch

democracy in action fell asleep

on his father's lap

in the visitors' gallery.

In the chamber below there was more

than a hint of local election

campaigning in the air.

Thus the Prime Minister believed

that the collapse in Northampton

town so that the basalt of the

incompetents at a local level or is

it conservative incompetents at a

national level?

That has been the

report into Northamptonshire County

Council but let's look at what we

see across the board and councils.

Yes, yes. If you look at what is

happening and councils up and down

this country, there is one message

for everybody. And that is the

conservative councils costume last!

Jeremy Corbyn! Mice question was

actually quite specific to

Northamptonshire, Mr Speaker.

That's

what my question. The tour leader

said we've been warning the

Government for about 2000 13 and 14,

we couldn't cope with the level of

cuts we are facing. Three years ago,

that counsel Brackett was pioneering

an easy council model. It then

proceeded to outsource 96% of his

council staff, transferred them the

new service providers, run by

private companies, paying dividends,

now that counsel has gone bust.

That's the Prime Minister really

believe that the slash and burn

model for local government is really

a good one?

Can I say to the right

honourable gentleman, first of all

it will be helpful if he accurately

reflected the independent statutory

inspection was concluded last week.

Which was the report was clear that

Northamptonshire's failure is not a

case of underfunding. So his

claims... Indeed, no temperature's

core spending power is set to rise

by 14 and a half million pounds. I

say to the right honourable

gentleman, the attack that he is

making that this is all about the

amount of money the Government is

providing is not correct. What we

are answering, what we are ensuring

is that councils are able to provide

the services down the country and

that is what we seek with councils,

conservative councils of and down

the country costing people last than

labour.

Jeremy Corbyn said the government

had prioritised tax cuts

for the super rich and big business

over funding for councils.

Theresa May hit back.

We all know what labour it would

mean for council tax payers because

just this week, the shadow community

Secretary... Oh, he says. LAUGHTER

Could that be because he doesn't

want people to know what he is

supporting? Because he has supported

a plan to stop local taxpayers

having the right to stop tax hikes,

he is supporting a plan to introduce

a land value tax, a tax on your home

and George garden! And he wants to

introduce a new hotel tax! We know

what would happen in the labour.

More taxes and ordinary working

people would pay the price.

This

conservative government/ public

services. They cut funding and!

Councils to pick up the pieces. The

result of this is children's centres

are closing, schools are struggling,

fewer police on the streets, older

people being left without care or

dignity. And refugees turning women

away. The Tories own head of local

government says it is unsustainable.

And doesn't it tell you everything

you need to know about this

government? That it demands

households and businesses pay more

to get less!

The Prime Minister replied

that the economy was strong

under the Conservatives,

which meant more money for schools

and hospitals than ever before.

You're watching Wednesday

in Parliament with me, Mandy Baker.

Dozens of alleged victims of abuses

by undercover police have walked out

of a public inquiry

at the High Court.

They said not enough

officers were being named

and that they had no confidence

in the inquiry's chairman.

The review relates to undercover

police officers who formed sexual

relationships to help them

infiltrate certain groups.

The concerns were

echoed in the Lords.

Over a period of 24 years from 1985

to 2009, almost every single year,

there was a state-sponsored sexual

relationship between a police

officer and a woman who at no point

was accused of doing anything

illegal, not arrested, not accused.

I just don't understand how

the Minister can sit back and think

that this is all right.

This strikes at the heart

of the ethics and the integrity

of our police forces,

and of course, our security

services, and I must stress

that the cases we know

about are the only ones

we have heard about

because they are the only

police names in the public realm.

We don't know all of them.

Until we know the police undercover

names, we won't know

how me victims there were.

I have been made aware of that

walk-out and I am aware

that the hearings are still ongoing

and I would encourage

all core participants and indeed

anyone impacted by undercover

policing to participate fully

in the inquiry so that we

can learn the lessons

and get to the truth.

And the minister was asked

if procedures were now in place

to make sure similar practices

wouldn't be repeated.

My Lords, I would love to stand

at this despatch box and say that

certain things could never happen

again, but nobody can legislate

for the odd rogue undertaking

or malicious intent of people

and therefore, one cannot be

absolutely certain it

will never happen again.

What one can do is put measures

in place to try and mitigate

as far as possible that it

never happens again.

The Minister also thought

it was important for the officers

to retain their anonymity and said

the Home Secretary had full

confidence in the chairman

to carry out the inquiry.

Companies that deliberately put

workers' pensions at risk will face

fines and even criminal sanctions,

a Cabinet minister has warned.

The construction firm Carillion

collapsed in January with a pensions

deficit of almost £600 million

and hundreds of unfinished

public contracts.

The Work and Pensions Secretary,

told a joint committee of MPs

that the pensions regulator

will soon have tougher powers

to deal with situations like that.

Should anybody do anything to weaken

or recklessly put their pension

scheme into difficulties,

then those people will get either

either penalties or now, a criminal

sanction for what they have done.

So this is about

strengthening the regulator.

It is about giving them powers

to investigate more.

It is about putting them

on the front foot, and also,

being able to enforce a funding

standard, and as I said,

there will be a very

clear message that should you not

adhere to what you should be doing

for your pensioners,

then there will be sanctions

and criminal prosecution.

But MPs suggested that regulators

had not done enough.

It became a joke, Peter crying wolf.

It worries us that if the industry

knows that Peter will only ever cry

Wolf

Lord knows what else is out there,

because they would be

absolutely toothless.

I'm going to defend what they didn't

do and I think it's important that

if you do have powers,

that you should use them.

I know you can't always judge

what was happening in 2013

with what was happening in 2018,

and there's always a very fine

balance that I guess the regulator

was seeking to strike

between the ongoing

sustainability of a business,

because everybody would say the best

way to protect their pension scheme

going forward is to make sure you've

got a viable, strong business.

However, that balance in those

instances, you're right.

They said they could have done more.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing,

but again, moving forward,

they will need to do more

and they've now got

stronger powers to do more.

During the same hearing

the Business Secretary

was challenged over the dominance

of the big four accounting firms:

I think it is an important question.

As I say, it has been looked at

recently.

I would suggest it is not

really working.

Are you in favour of

breaking them up, Greg?

I don't want to answer that

without having considered advice

on the consequences.

In general, I agree with your fellow

chair that more competition tends

to act in the interest of consumers

and of innovation, I would say,

and in general, when you have

concentrated markets,

that is, that is not a good state

of affairs, but I think it is,

it would be proper to consider

in your joint committee

and the select committee may

well want to, as I will,

take an interest in whether further

reforms are needed, including

the suggestion you made.

Greg Clark.

The Prime Minister has said

allegations that the political

consultancy, Cambridge Analytica,

misused information

about millions of Facebook users

are "very concerning".

They should be

properly investigated.

It's right that the information

Commissioner is doing exactly that,

because people need to have

confidence in how their personal

data is being used.

And I would expect Facebook,

Cambridge Analytica

and all organisations

involved to comply fully

with the investigation

that is taking place.

She was challenged about her party's

links to Cambridge Analytica

by the leader of the SNP at

Westminster.

The parent company of

Cambridge Analytica is Strategic

is Strategic Communications

Laboratories.

It has been run by the chairman of

the Oxford Conservative Association.

Its founding chairman

was a former Conservative MP.

A director appears to have donated

over £700,000 to the Tory party.

The former Conservative Party

treasurer is a shareholder.

We know about the links

to the Conservative Party.

They go on and on.

Will the Prime Minister explained

to the House her government's

connections to the company?

Can I say, the right honourable

gentleman has been talking

about two companies,

about the parent company, SCL,

and he also referred

to Cambridge Analytica and I can say

that as far as I'm aware,

the Government has no contracts

with Cambridge analytical

or with the SCL group.

Later, on the committee corridor,

a former operations manager

for Facebook told MPs he'd raised

concerns about the risk

of users' data being abused -

but the company didn't tell users.

Speaking on a rather ropey

video-link to the Culture Committee,

Sandy Parakilas, described how

a firm like Cambridge Analytica

could get personal data when people

connected to an app linked

to Facebook.

Facebook asks you the user for

permission to give certain kinds of

information from your Facebook

account and once you agree, Facebook

passes that data from Facebook's

servers to the developer.

He explained that they gave

the developer the ability to access

data relating to the users' friends

- but those people hadn't explicitly

given their authorisation.

As a senior manager,

he raised the issue with executives

who are still at the company now.

I included lists of bad actors and

potential bad actors, which

included, for state actors, data

brokers, -- foreign state actors

will stop I said here are some of

the things they could be doing and

here are some of the areas that the

company is still exposed and user

data is still at risk. And I shared

that around with a number of people

at the time.

He said he didn't know

if Facebook's chief executive

Mark Zuckerberg knew,

but it was widely understood

at the company that there

was a risk in the way Facebook

was handling data.

A Conservative asked

about the developer companies.

Do you think they might have

acquired data illegally from

Facebook and that might have been

used in an attempt to impact the

outcome on elections in the UK and

further afield?

That seems very

likely. The amount of data that was

passed out of the Facebook platform

in 2010 and 2014 is just fast. There

were in my memory, hundreds of

thousands of apps on the platform

while I was there.

Sandy Parakilas.

In the Lords, it was day nine

of detailed scrutiny of the EU

Withdrawal Bill and the thorny

issue of devolution.

The government explained

that its amendments would place

restrictions on Westminster's

ability to exercise powers returning

from Brussels after Brexit

where those relate

to devolved matters.

Their affect is that by default, on

exit day, any decision-making powers

currently held by DEQ in areas that

are otherwise devolved, would pass

directly to our evolved institutions

without first being diverted through

Westminster.

He said he wanted to be clear.

Any decision that the devolved

institutions could take before exit

day will continue to be a decision

they can take after exit day in

areas where they have exercised

their powers. There is no

encroachment into existing devolved

areas.

Labour described the original

drafting of the bill

as an "emasculation" of devolution.

There was "some way to go" before

the government's proposals

would be satisfactory.

I must make the point in sorrow

rather than angered that the way in

which the Government has handled the

whole issue over months of

inactivity from the autumn onwards,

it leaves much to be desired.

Indeed, it would not be wholly

inappropriate to describe it as

lamentable.

And peers are expected to return

to these issues next week.

And that's all we've got time for.

So from me, Mandy Baker, goodbye.