Episode 11 Sunday Morning Live

They started as a vital part of a woman's right to choose. Now

Britain does almost 200,000 abortions a year. Should we make it

Good morning and welcome to Sunday Morning Live. MPs vote this week on

making women have independent counselling before they can have an

abortion. A timely halt to terminations or turning the clock

back on women's rights? Police are gearing up to remove 400

travellers from an illegal camp. The council says it has a perfect

right to bulldoze their homes. Opponents say it is racist. Whose

side are you on? The number of people we put behind

bars is the highest in history. The Government says locking up

criminals reduces crime and delivers justice. A former BBC

presenter who has done time for the assault says the opposite is true.

I believe it is time we stop sending so many people to jail.

Prison places should be saved for just the most violent and serious

of criminals. My guests have not made their names

be pulling any punches. Lowri Turner is a Fleet Street journalist

and her son calls for Joseph sterling. -- Joseph Stalin. Richard

D North likes throwing right hooks at the left. And Patricia Casey is

a professor of psychiatry who treats women post abortion and has

spoken publicly about her pro-life views. We would like you to give

your views, through Twitter, Skype In 2011 it is a shocking claim that

women are being railroaded into abortions in private clinics, so

said MPs this week we want to change the law. They want women to

get independent advice before going through with a termination. Critics

say this just means more hoops and anguish for women to go through at

a vulnerable time. Running at almost 200,000 a year, are too many

abortions now a very poor form of birth control?

In the year after abortion was first legalised in 1967, just under

50,000 were carried out. Last year, almost 200,000 were performed in

Britain. Some say this rise shows a life-changing decision has become a

lifestyle choice. Before a woman can have an abortion, the law

requires two doctors to agree there is a risk to the mental or physical

health of the mother or child. Some MPs and anti-abortion campaigners

are worried that private abortion clinics are giving advice which

encourages women to terminate the pregnancy. On Tuesday some MPs want

to pass a law to ensure that women wanting abortions must first see

independent advisers. They hope this could prevent 60,000 abortions

every year. Opponents say this would make it harder for women to

get an abortion but is that a good thing? Many religious groups are

united in their belief that abortion is murder and they want to

ban it. Others believe that NHS waiting lists already make it too

hard to get an abortion and that the new law will allow faith group

to try to persuade women not to terminate, making a difficult

decision even harder. As abortion now become just another form of

contraception? Or should we stand by a woman's right to choose?

Professor Patricia Casey, you are a psychiatrist and a Catholic, as you

are also against abortion. It is a hard decision for a woman to make.

Do you think it should be harder? think the question is misplaced.

What I would like to see would be a reduction in the number of women

seeking abortion. I think women deserve better. Do hundred thousand

abortions every year, one-third of them repeat abortions. -- 200,000

abortions. We know from research published in the British Journal of

Psychiatry that abortion for some women is traumatising. It is a

life-changing event and it can be deeply distressing emotional. It

can cause psychiatric illness. I think we need to give women more

options. We need to be honest about the options so they can make

informed choices. That is the question for our text message vote

this morning. Should we make it We will show you how you voted at

the end of the programme. So you don't think it should be harder?

You think other options should be easier? I think other options

should be easy and women should be offered independent counselling.

People who I have treated for depression and anxiety disorders

after abortion tell me that they are not given the information that

they would have wished to have. One lady became actively suicidal after

an abortion and she said to me that nobody told her it would be like

that. Time and again, women tell me the same thing. Adoption is not

discussed. Keeping the baby is barely mentioned. They are not

given the information about mental health. Are you talking about women

that have had this experience within the UK? Yes. Let's talk to

an abortion adviser from the Marie Stopes Clinic, the medical director.

Is it already hard, Dr Franklin, for women to get the information

that they need before an abortion? I think we do our best to make sure

that information is available to all women. We certainly provide

that information at Marie Stopes. The important thing is that the

information is impartial and non- judgmental, and non directive. I

think the more of that sort of information that women can have

before they make this very difficult decision the better.

you think that once they have had the counselling that women are

saying this as an easy option, an alternative form of birth control?

There is no evidence from the women but I see in our centres every day

that this is an easy option. This is a difficult decision for all of

the women that have to make it and I think we should respect that and

the difficulties that they have. We certainly offer counselling both

before, and if they are due to proceed with the abortion, after as

well. They can have as much of that as they would like to support them.

This is not an easy decision for anyone. Can I say that when I have

dealt with people that have had abortions that have returned to the

abortion provider, full of anguish, they have been told you should not

feel guilty, it was just a clump of cells. It is that that point that

they often go to their GPs and GPs refer them to people like myself. I

am not the only psychiatrist treating people in this area.

that a problem. Various things occurred to me. If a woman goes to

Marie Stopes, somewhere that is known for providing terminations,

on the whole, her mind is made up. You can now do home pregnancy tests,

so you would have done the test yourself at home. You don't want to

find out whether you are pregnant and what you should then do. When

it comes to making that decision, surely the people that are

important in that decision are the father... We have not talked about

the men at all. We have only talk about the woman's decision.

Frequently it is the man's decision, too. And also her family. The idea

of these poor, vulnerable women, going to these wicked, evil

abortion providers, being strong- armed into having an abortion, to

me that doesn't seem honest in terms of how women are today. Women

are quite proactive. It is not free to go to Marie Stopes. You have to

pay and therefore you kind of know what you want. I think that if we

are having escalating numbers of terminations, then the question is

not whether you should make it easier, but what is going wrong

with contraception elsewhere? And what about the men in this? There

is a strong sense of women being punished. My friend here obviously

treats people, and people have had an abortion and then gone on to

feel anxiety, but what about the women who have the baby and a post

natal depression? They have to be treated as well. What about the

women with hopes and dreams of an education and a career that have to

be put aside because they are pregnant? Depression caused by

anything, abortion or post natal depression, can be treated. The

difference with the abortion is that the decision once you have

made it cannot be changed. The baby is gone. The baby is dead. There is

no way back. For many women, that is something that they live with

for the rest of their lives. A lot of women feel immensely relieved

that they have made a difficult decision. There are very high

figures for the number of babies, and we are talking about embryos,

not fully formed babies, the number of babies that are lost naturally

is very high. Nature causes a lot of women to lose the baby.

issue is not really about whether abortion is good or bad. Clearly it

is a very bad form of birth control but it is one that women opt for

and maybe it is too late to cancel them. Maybe it should have happened

earlier about why they are getting pregnant in the first place. The

issue this week is about whether Marie Stopes should be locked out

of counselling because they are provider. So far as I understood it,

and hearing from people that have been to Marie Stopes, they have a

good record of counselling. If they are providing good counselling and

good advice, then so be it. Divorced women to go trotting round

some anti-abortion type places, let's say, to hear their point of

view first, seems to me a little wrong. I want to speak to Nadine

Dorries, the MP who has sparked this row in recent weeks. Your

amendment is all about getting women what you call independent

counselling. Is the aim to make it harder to get the termination that

they have approached the clinic for? Can I correct the

misinformation that has been spoken on the programme? At Marie Stopes

to do not have to pay for the abortion. 96% of abortions are paid

for at the NHS and not every woman who goes to Marie Stopes or any

other abortion provider has made up her mind. 15% decide not to go

ahead and actually leave Marie Stopes. They have not made up their

mind when they get there. Your other commentator, it is not

actually about driving women into the hands of other groups. This

amendment is about simply making an offer to a woman of independent

counselling, and if she wants she can take it. If she does not want

to, she does not have to. The kind of women that will accept that

offer will be the women that are having doubts. That is all it is,

an offer. Just to get back to my original point, and the point we

are asking viewers to vote on this morning, is the idea behind it to

reduce the number of terminations by making it more challenging,

asking more women to change their minds, are you trying to make it

harder for women to get an abortion? We are not trying to make

it harder at all. Most abortions take place between 7 and 14 days.

The counselling would be delivered within 24 to 48 hours. Those women

that accept the offer of counselling will be those that have

doubts. Whether they go ahead or not, there will be no delay

whatsoever. They will still have the abortion at the same point in

time that they would have before. This is simply an offer for those

that may need additional help. need to put that to Dr Franklin,

medical director of Marie Stopes. Independent counselling might

encourage more people that have not made up their mind to make a

different decision. I would like to make a couple of points. The

majority of women at that come to Marie Stopes have made up their

mind and have decided that they want an abortion. In those cases we

still offer women the opportunity to talk to a counsellor. Just

because you have made up your mind does not mean that there are no

issues that you want to discuss. That is important and we make that

offer. The counselling that we provide is impartial, non-

judgmental and non-Dai Rector. -- non-directives. Our councillors are

all members of an official organisation and council according

to the guidance of that organisation. It is tempting to

talk to women that have been through this experience. Margaret

joins us on the webcam. In the past, you have been through two abortions.

One of them left behind a twin who is now in her twenties. What do you

feel, looking back, about how easy it was to access those

Well, it wasn't difficult to access the abortion, but I really want to

quote Homer the fact that you can be outside of of the situation and

think what he would do if you're ever faced with a crisis pregnancy.

-- what I really want to put over his. But a life, maybe for the

first time, is out of your control, and it is not as logical as those

who are providing the abortion and those who support abortion would

say it is. I felt like a headless chicken, and I was terrified,

frightened. What was I going to do? What was going to happen in my

life? I was ask two questions in the so-called counselling, are you

in a supportive situation, and can you cope? My answer was no, and

they said I could have an abortion. Is it a baby? That is the only

question I asked. They said no, it is only a blob of cells. Well, I

regret that I aborted two children. They were not just for once, they

were my children, and I did not realise that. Because of the fear

and panic, I did not realise until after the second abortion. What

would have been the moral difference between avoiding that

more of cells, as somebody called it, and having used more effective

birth control at the point of contraception? I mean, Margaret is

regretting the loss of a baby, the loss of a child that would have

grown up. Well, I mean, that losses kind of hypothetical. An act of

contraception earlier would have led to the same loss of that baby.

Well, I would say the majority of the 200,000 women that are having

abortions are not using contraception. You are putting your

logic to situations in life where people are not thinking about

contraception. People are a emotionally wounded today. There is

not one of us working that do not have some emotional issues. That is

the area that you are not understanding. You cannot apply

logic to people out there that are drunk and having sex, taking the

risk. That is the reality. Margaret, I want to talk to Lucy, who has

also been through the experience. We appreciate you staying with us.

Lucy Cavendish, you are a mother of four children, but you have been

through two abortions. Do you feel a emotionally affected by them?

Without wishing to sound particularly callous, I do not feel

a emotionally affected by them. I really do not want to get into a

debate about when a baby becomes a baby, and obviously I now have four

children, so I am aware of the process of pregnancy. Lots of

people use contraception, I used contraception, but it did not work,

and I ended up with two crisis pregnancies, as they call it, in my

early 20s. For a variety of reasons, I chose not to go ahead with them.

I think those were the right decisions for me at the time. For

no woman is this an easy decision. It is a really difficult, really

hard decision, and I absolutely do not believe that the majority of

women use it as a form of contraception. You can take the

morning after pill, there are a million and one things you can do

now. You have to think about where you are in your life. At the age of

20, I honestly do not think I could cope with having a baby, bringing

up a baby, and I was finishing my studies, and I still stand by that.

Do I go back and think, I could have done it differently? I do not,

and I am not one of those women who has been psychologically really

affected by it, because that is what I believe. Let's talked to

Anne Widdecombe. Your stance is very public and clear to people.

Let me ask you this, it is an individual woman's choice, and

obviously someone choose to do it and then regret it, but why should

the state make it harder, then, for all women? Well, you are talking as

if there's only one person involved in this. Of course, there are two.

The unborn child needs a voice. You cannot say, as the last contributed

did, say that you cannot argue about when a baby becomes a baby.

That is exactly the issue. If a woman has a child and has just

brought it into the world, no matter how awful the circumstances,

she has no power at that point over that child's life. It is accorded

full civil rights. You have to ask where you have a situation where

you can have two children of equal age of gestation, absolutely equal,

one has been born prematurely and his in a cot with medical resources,

and the other, who is just as much a baby and just as much developed,

is being taken from the womb and destroyed just because the woman

has decided she does not want it. Now, that does not mean that and

not sympathetic to people who find themselves with an unwanted

pregnancy. I am very sympathetic, and there are lots of things we

should be doing to address that and to support the woman in those

circumstances. Asking me to ignore completely the life of a child is

actually asking me to ignore the most fundamental responsibility.

have to say, where is the father? We are not talking anything about

the far this year. I have got two sons, my eldest is 11. Let's say he

gets his girlfriend pregnant at the age of 17. I will be marching head

down to marry Stopes, because it would be his life that would be

destroyed as well as hers. The idea that women, on the one hand, the

whole point about the sexual revolution is that women should be

able to enjoy sex and men should have won and sexually available to

them. If that is the world in which we live, unwanted pregnancies will

occur. We have talked about the emotional effects on women, and we

have talked to a woman who feels clearly devastated by what happened

to her, but isn't the answer to give more emotional support to

vulnerable women and not to make them feel guilty about what is

happening? I would concur with what Anne Widdecombe says. There are two

people, in fact three, there is the father, the woman and a baby. We

need to keep all three in our sights. Now, in relation to the

woman, of course, the woman needs support, and before the abortion

she needs accurate information so that she is not the worst in to it.

I frequently deal with people who have been coerced by boyfriends or

parents into having abortions when they actually do not want them, and

that really is a recipe for disaster. These women need careful

counselling and needs sensitive management. But does that

ultimately make it more difficult? At various points in history,

society has said that human beings were not too much. It happened with

slavery, it happened with women, and we were not let it happen with

relation to babies. In my experience, women often suffer a

great deal from having had abortions, and some of them, as he

said, are socially colours. But the issue in Parliament, the thing that

is being discussed is that I thought they were being told that

they had to go through counselling. This amendment in parliament, the

proposal seems quite reasonable. In any case it is already offered. I

do not understand this week what the fuss is about, because Marie

Stopes say that they always offered his independent counselling. Nadine

in Parliament wants to insisted should be offered. Let me let the

viewers have a say on this. Simon says, abortion should be avoided. I

was adopted and found my birth mother at 24, they considered

abortion. I have a life and have done my best to make the most of it,

and others deserve the same opportunity. Alison is in Northern

Ireland and says, I had an abortion 20 years ago. I have not gone on to

have another child, I have been left scarred. If you are all enough

to have sex, you are old enough to deal with the consequences. Sylvia

from Hertfordshire, I have at two abortions, I received excellent

consultations that were very neutral, and if we make abortions

harder, we will return to backstreet abortions that were so

dangerous. That is our text poll today. Should we make it harder to

It is a stand of that may yet turn violent. The law says the Dale Farm

travellers have to leave and their homes be destroyed. The travellers

say the eviction is racist, and they are digging in. Who you think

This is one of the largest unauthorised travellers' sites in

Europe. To the 400 travellers who face being convicted, it is home.

This eviction in Essex in 2004 is what the travellers fear is about

to happen to them. The council says the eviction is purely a planning

issue. The travellers only site but have built on it illegally. The

judges have agreed the council have the right to demolish their homes,

as they would with any other group of people, but the travellers say

their treatment is racist. On Friday, the United Nations

intervened to say the eviction could be a human rights violation.

Irish travellers are historically a nomadic people with their own

language and distinctive culture. They say they are stereotyped as

dirty and criminal and often discriminated against. Many have

now settled, but there is a lack of legal sites, which leads to

conflict with local villagers. have had to put up with it for 10

years. If anybody came here and put up with this for 10 years, I do not

think they would last one week. the year 2000, Irish travellers

were recognised under English law as a protected ethnic minority, and

those at Dale Farm say their eviction is ethnic cleansing.

Forgive us our sins... It is not happening, we are here to fight,

and we are going to fight it. this alternative lifestyles deserve

special protection, or are they doing something illegal and asking

for special treatment? Well, let us know what you think. You can make

or point on Skype and joined the conversation on Twitter. The

details will be on screen. Jake Bowers is the editor of Travellers'

Times and a Romany gypsy. He joins us in the studio. Good morning. Is

it raises? I think it is undeniably motivated by racism. To have it

that amount of people on the guise of a planning dispute is undeniably

racist. Aren't they just enforcing the law? They are enforcing

planning law, but it is a smokescreen. If you go down there,

the people are prepared to leave, but the issue they are fighting is

that they should not have to move out of the district. There are

other bits of land which is publicly owned when they have but

in planning permission, which Basildon Council could look at.

They have refused to look at it. The thing that is racist is to

affect people to set a quota on a particular race of people and say,

we have enough gypsies in this area. He would not be able to apply that

to any other ethnic group foot. You would not be able to go to

Leicester and say, we have enough Pakistanis here. Where is your

evidence of this quota? I heard it from the former head of the council

has said, we have enough gypsies in our area, and that has continued in

the current leadership of Basildon Council. He might be talking about

the fact that there is already a welcoming, tolerant attitude to a

large number of people from that community. That is not the same as

saying there is a quota. In effect, it is a quota. He said, and the

council has stood by this, that there are already enough gypsy

sites in Basildon. That is what he claimed. It is on the public record,

that is what he said. But we are talking here about a site which has

no planning permission, so that is an enforcement of the law, pure and

simple, isn't it? You have to look at it in the context of the

legislative framework which has led to it. Nomadic life in this country

has been outlawed since 1994. They are not enough public sites.

Getting planning permission is pretty much impossible. When you

find that your traditional culture is outlawed, yes, you have to break

the law and order to survive. Richard, this is not simply a

planning issue, this is not simply enforcement of the law. There is

something more sinister going on here. It is a nice move of Jake's,

and it is a good move. I think it is a straightforward planning thing

that Irish travellers have been very clever over the years in

buying land very cheaply as a paddock and then turning it into a

building plot. You and I could do that, we would be multi-

millionaires. It is a good ruse from that point of view, and I

understand why they do it. Hold on. Housebuilders do it all the time.

No, they don't, because they have got to get planning permission and

can only do it implausible places. Irish travellers do it where they

would never get planning permission. The idea that there should be a

quota, now, I think there is something in it, that people are

saying, we have got enough Irish travellers, thank you very much,

because this traditional way of life, it is no longer traditional,

because they are moving, not moving, they are in a hinterland, staying

put and not staying put, which makes life for their children

difficult and gives them poor prospects and so on. But sure, I

think councils are well within their rights to say, there is a

strict limits to the amount of land and tolerance that our neighbour

that will provide. This way of life, unlike Pakistanis or others,

imposes a real strain. People do not like... People do not like

having Irish travellers there. That is not a pretty thing, but it is

These are separate sides, not integration into a community.

is the tip of the iceberg. For Irish travellers, being nomadic is

an essential part of their identity. It is not chosen, it is not

debatable. It is like finding men attractive if you are homosexual,

it is a key part of their identity. That is like a coal miner saying

they have the right to dig coal forever. You are confusing a

lifestyle with a key part of an identity. You are right winger. You

should believe in family values. They want to stay there so they can

look after their old people. You should be fighting this. For people

that say this is a lifestyle, my knowledge of travellers and gypsies

is from Big Fat gypsy Wedding, OK? As far as their traditional

lifestyle goes, it does not look very traditional to me. There seems

to be picking and choosing going on. When it is useful to be regarded as

a traditional ethnic group, OK, but when you want to listen to

Christina Aguilera and get married in pink chiffon, then that goes out

the window. Looking at the amount of flat-screen TV's and the amount

of money they appeared to have, if I was a local person and I had

wanted to convert a building in my garden into an office, and it had

been turned down, and then I saw Dale Farm, I would be livid because

for the rest of us it is about fair play. The rest of us want to live

by certain rules. Some of these people are terminally ill, and

they... A lot of them are not terminally ill. The few are drawing

your knowledge from that TV programme then you need to visit

them. The -- if you are. There are laws that we have to live by and it

appears to the outsider that certain among gypsy traveller

communities think they do not apply to them. Why are they in the UK

when they are Irish anyway? Let's put that to can be Sheridan from

the gypsy Council. Is there a certain amount of opting out from

the law of society because travellers consider themselves

separate? Absolutely not. Firstly, enforcement is discretionary. There

is no reason at all for Basildon to continue with this massive abuse

and the obscene amount of money. It is discretionary. Dale Farm, like

it or not, was a former scrapyard, with all the evidence for that.

One-third of that site remained a scrapyard. As Richard is saying, he

is trying to alienate Irish travellers. Everybody at Dale Farm,

except for the people in their 70s, hold a British passport. Sorry to

tell you that, they are British citizens. 103 children go to the

local primary school. They will be forcibly stop from attending school.

Their circumstances and prospects will be stopped by Basildon council,

the MP, at David Cameron and the coalition. This is obscene. We are

not above the law. I put in planning applications, I put in

work behind the scenes. I identified the Brownfield sites,

and my applications have not been heard. I have a public inquiry on

November 22nd. Please let us have a chance to find sites for all of the

travellers at Dale Farm. Everybody is willing to leave. The site is

killing them. Four people are in hospital at the moment. It is

obscene. People will die because of the stress, no doubt about it.

Please listen to common sense and let me deliver. The business of

being British and playing strongly to an ethnic card is at least a

little peculiar. If you want to claim to be British, then get with

the British way and live in houses like the rest of us. So you cannot

be black and British, Asian and British? How ridiculous. You can be

that no other group is pressing for such extraordinary rights. No other

group has been so aggressively marginalised over the years. Their

entire way of culture... Of but hold on. About the business of the

school. I have read the Ofsted report for their primary school.

Somebody is failing those kids. They go in not equipped for primary

school. They are then moved in and out very quickly and they rotate

around. They've virtually have their own private school there. It

should be a wonderful place of education but because of this

travelling thing, and maybe because the ideal of education is not taken

very seriously, actually the kids don't do very well. They have

prospects of gypsies is not very good. This travelling thing is not

awfully good. That is maybe why so many people from his Irish

travelling community actually want to do their own bricks-and-mortar

but they will not do it on the terms that the rest of us have to.

Presumably the alternative is to be on the housing list. That would be

something the council could provide. As far as I understand it, they

have been offered bricks-and-mortar. For the people that I have spoken

to, I remember one brave old lady, she is clinging on to live in a

horrible situation, because she is surrounded by her brothers, sisters,

grandchildren. There is an incredibly supportive community

atmosphere. That is the one thing that is probably keeping her alive,

to be frank. She deserves to live as part of that extended family

network, if not there then someone else in the district. Robin Page is

chairman of the Countryside Restoration Trust. Is there a

danger that people in the countryside are dealing with

gypsies as a blot on the landscape, when actually they are human beings,

and perhaps perfectly reasonably, they want to live the way of life

that they have chosen? First of all, I cannot live any sort of life that

I happen to Jews. I have to begin with society. The first question

you ask, is why they are here. Are there no hospitals and schools in

Ireland? If I went to Ireland, could I live wherever I like? The

answer is no. In Ireland it is a criminal offence to illegally

occupying land. Let's deal with this once and for all. Most of

those children were born in this country. You said that question

needed to be asked. Let him answer it. Let me have a say first. It is

a civil offence here. That is why they are here. The people that are

pleased to see them here are the guard in Ireland. I have spoken to

them. You go on Tuesday it is a -- to say it is they race in but it is

not. There DMI is the same as ours. You may know about the countryside

but you don't know about race. It is not defined by DNA. I have the

right to speak on the programme, not play tennis with you. It would

be fair to allow him to answer the question. I think the result of

this will be very messy. It will be a compromise. The British people

will cut the Irish travellers more slack, probably, than they ought to

or public opinion would like. It is going to be messy but I don't think

it is helped by playing this ethnic threatened people card. There will

be give and take on both sides and it will be very messy. Lots of

ordinary English people that play by the rules and actually take the

pain of the rules are going to be extremely hacked off by the outcome.

Frankly, I think it would become the travellers to be a little more

graceful in saying that we do play the system. I have heard that the

local council have offered to house those that they legally have to. So

if you are a family with children under a certain age, the council

has to provide something. And speaking from outside this culture,

it does not occur to me to demand that the council provide me with a

home. It doesn't. That is not actually what they are asking for.

They want the right to provide their own homes on their own land.

But to be able to do that they have to get planning permission, and

like the rest of us they are either occupied illegally or they move on.

They have had 10 years of illegal occupation. There are key moment in

history of every minority. For women it was getting the vote and

for black people it might have been getting Barack Obama in two offers.

The gypsy people at Dale Farm are the equivalent of Gandhi, Martin

Luther King and the suffragettes and what they do. Anybody that

believes in the diversity of human rights should go down on Saturday

and stand up for them and make sure it is the last time a council can

dedicate one third of its budget to removing a certain people. Do the

people of Dale Farm have the support of the people round and

about, that is the litmus test? I'm afraid we have to leave those

questions hanging in the air because we are out of time. You can

continue talking about that on our website and we encourage you to do

Coming up on Sunday Morning Live. They were bursting at the seams

before the riots, now our prisons are groaning with the highest

numbers in history. A previous BBC News reader who was convicted of

assault says that prison does not work. Does he have a point? You can

join in the event by webcam, by the phone, and on line. And should we

make it harder to get an abortion? If you think we should, text the

word vote followed by yes. If you disagree, follow it by no. You have

about five minutes before the poll closes.

Before we let Jake Bowers go, it is time to chew over the moral moments

of the week. You are concerned about the nurse accused of killing

patients with insulin, who has been released by police without charge.

This is Rebecca Leighton, of course. What does she face? I think she has

been portrayed in the media as being the next equivalent of Harold

Shipman, this deadly nurse going round injuring people. Her name has

been dragged through the media. In this country we have a wonderful

concept of innocent until proven guilty. I fear for her. She has

been released but there is still this question hanging over her head.

She deserves that principle to be applied to her. Richard, you are

concerned this week about a tobacco company, Philip Morris, trying to

get hold of research that has been done on teenage smokers' attitudes

to smoking which a university is resisting handing over. I am all

for it being released to the tobacco company. On the grounds

that if it is public information, if it passes that test, it is just

knowledge. We start saying that if Joe Bloggs can get this information

but a wicked tobacco company cannot, then we are privatising knowledge

in a bad way. Nationalising it and then looking it up. It is a freedom

of speech thing. They have every right to know this stuff.

professor in charge says it is deeply concerning that they are

trying to get the data and it has implications for academic freedom.

It might well make the tobacco company cleverer at selling

cigarettes to young people. That is just off. Knowledge is tough. --

that is just tough. You have to toughen up if you live in a society

filled with cigarettes and drugs. But we cannot give that knowledge

to everybody else but not a tobacco company. Not least because Joe

Bloggs could write in and then be paid by the tobacco company to have

the information anyway. Surely the Freedom of Information Act was for

individuals and human rights. It is obnoxious to me that a corporation

claims to have the same rights of an -- as an individual. But the

company is just a group of individuals, even if they are

flogging tobacco. The best film I have seen is about a funny PR man,

Thank You For Smoking. Of course we should sit down with these people,

they are ordinary tax-paying people. A new free school being set up,

staffed by the army. It is going to be in Manchester. These a former

military people. Anybody that had their shop looted recently will be

wishing that those hoodies could be sent straight to the school but

there is no sense of compulsion at the moment. It is whether parents

want to send them. I'm not sure it has even been set up yet, has it?

could threaten my children with it, fantastic! If you don't behave, I

will send you there! Teachers should be teachers and soldiers

should be soldiers. Should we make it harder to get an abortion, that

is the question we have asked. The opinion poll is closing so please

don't text in because you could still be charged and your vote will

not count. We will bring the results at the end of the programme.

Figures out this week show only 20% of convicted knife criminals are

going to prison. That is a long way from Government advice to jail

anyone caught carrying a knife. What difference would prison make?

Not a good one, says Ashley Blake, a BBC presenter until a violent

assault saw him sacked and jailed for nine months. He said that his

time behind bars was not time well We have more people banged up

behind bars than ever before. I believe it is time to stop sending

so many people to jail. Places should be reserved for the most

violent or serious criminals. Prison is the ultimate university

for crime. I have just done nine months inside, where I learned how

to burgle a house, cultivated marijuana, organise an armed

robbery, how to market and distribute Class A drugs, and how I

could avoid getting caught for it. It is my belief that far too many

people are being sentenced for crimes which do not warrant

imprisonment. I would say I am a classic example. I was found guilty

of a crime, and I unreservedly accept that punishment is needed

for anyone who breaks the law. But surely my time would have been

better spent in the community, giving something back, rather than

costing the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds keeping me at a

Majesty's pleasure. Most prisoners reoffend within the first two years

of being released. The current system clearly is not working, so

let's stop spending money on banging people up who could be

better punished in the community, doing good.

Let's Jain Ashley, back to a BBC studio. Welcome back. You can make

your point by webcam, tax, e-mail online. Do you feel punished by

your experience? I certainly feel punished, yes. So it worked in that

sense. Yes, I guess it did, but it was the loss of liberty, not being

able to see family, friends and loved ones, that was the worst part.

But in terms of a deterrent, prisons do not work. In terms of

rehabilitation, rehabilitation in prison is a myth. It is just a myth.

How on earth can you rehabilitate somebody in a system like that? It

is a warehouse. But you feel punished but you do not feel

rehabilitated. Or are you talking about other people you mad? I am

talking about myself. There are three reasons to send somebody to

prison. That is for punishment, protection of the public and

rehabilitation. Absolutely, protection of the public. If you

tick the boxes on those three categories, you should go to jail,

but rehabilitation, I witnessed grown men requests to acting like

seven-year-olds with in a classroom. That is not rehabilitation. Any

courses that are offered, any education, vocational courses that

are offered are meticulous, because the prospect of getting a job once

you have been to jail is very limited. Glyn Travis is from the

Prison Officers' Association. It might work for some in terms of a

punishment, it might work as a deterrent, but it is not

rehabilitating prisoners, and actually it is making it harder for

them to work again. Well, it is a very open-ended question, does

prison work? I believe that the present system does work. Could the

system be a lot better? Yes, it could. Listening to Ashley, he is

quite right. Far too many people are sent to prison, but ultimately,

what the judiciary is for is the first point, which is to protect

the public. In Ashley's case, I do not know the circumstances to his

offence or anything, but obviously a magistrate thought that society

needed to be protected, they needed to send Ashley to prison. Because

of the length of sentence, there is not sufficient rehabilitation

programmes available. Therefore, he is quite right in a sense, when he

says that prisons can and often are a human warehouse because of the

ineffectiveness of the sentence. you think that there are too many

people in prison and that the only people who should be in prison are

the people from whom the public needs to be protected. The only

people who are in prison are the people that magistrates and judges

deem society has lost trust with. I mean, we have just witnessed the

biggest riots on our streets for many, many years, totally

unacceptable, and the magistrates and the judiciary has reacted to

public pressure and ensure that the vast majority of those people, who

would never have been sent to prison, were sent to prison because

the government and the public demanded a summary justice, which

is not what the prison system should be about. So the Willis's

from the Howard League for Penal Reform. His prison be useful way of

giving people a shock and putting them of doing the whole thing

again? Or is it full of people who should not be in there? Well, I do

not think so, because in Howard League research, we have seen that

prisoners prefer a short-term prison sentence. They find it

easier to complete rather than a community programme that can often

be over a longer period of time and actually require them to address

their behaviour. When you're given a community programme, they can be

lots of conditions, so for example unpaid work, you have to access

rehabilitation. There are a number of criteria you might have been

fulfilled. On a prison sentence, all you have to do is lie on a barn

for a few months. So actually prisoners do prefer it, and it

seems to be an easier thing to complete. They are 66,000 people on

short-term prison sentences every year. This is our money that is

paying for it, and we deserve to get the most effective outcome.

is right. It is a complete waste of money. For the first three months,

I was doing exactly what she said, sitting on my bunk, bought out of

my brain, getting fat because there is nothing they could do for me. I

do not need rehabilitating, I am not a danger to the public. Was the

point of wasting tens of thousands of pounds of sending somebody like

me to jail? Jails are full of people like me. 1 point, this was

not your first offence, Ashley. You had six previous convictions for

theft and handling stolen goods. Now, to some people, they might

think you should have gone to prison much earlier in your life,

because that might have given you a reason not to go on to commit other

offences. You know, you're not imprisoned, and you were three then

to go out and commit further offences. That was 24 years ago,

when I was a child, and I lived in an inner-city area of Birmingham

that many people might know, nacelles. -- Nechells. But was 24

years ago, and it was dealt with them, I paid by Price to society

then. In a different way, you're right, I did not go to prison, but

I was subject to having a social worker to work with me. But having

a social worker, did that work? Well, clearly it did because that

was 24 years ago. I have not done anything since then up until this

unfortunate incident that happened at my restaurant. Somebody on

screen mentioned the issue of looting recently, which I think was

probably heartening attitudes towards those of us who would

regard ourselves as almost liberal, because there was reporting that

the kids with balaclavas on work getting up to shenanigans because

they said, we're just going to get an ASBO, who cares? For a lot of us,

to see them go to jail was sweet justice, because we say that the

current situation is not working. Yes, we are jailing to many people.

I used to live in a house on a street where there was lots of

petty crime, and the high point although point was when I woke up

at 3 o'clock in the morning, and somebody had said alight to a moped

in next yours garden. I was frightened by house would be on

fire. When I talked to the firemen and said, he would do this? He said,

it is just kids. I said, what are they doing at this time of night

that Iraq they rolled their eyes. That kind of low-level... You might

say those people should not be in prison, but that is what made life

a misery for lots of people. what you're doing there, Lowri, it

perpetuates the problem. These are the people that you need protecting

from. The people who burgle your house. There are a list of reasons

why people should be sent to jail, but the people involved in the

riots, classic example, knee-jerk reaction by the Government, send

them to jail, we need protecting from them. I do not agree with that,

because we are perpetuating the problem. We are criminalising young

people and taking any prospect away from them of ever getting a job

again, so what are they go into do? I don't care about them! They will

come out of jail better educated in criminality. It will cost society

more money. If you are a Kurdish refugee who has come to this

country and set up a corner shop and made it work by working 18

hours per day and you have had your business destroyed by some kid, you

would want them in jail. That is exactly what happened to me, Lowri,

and I ended up going to jail for protecting my business from young

people. I have not got an argument with that in this programme, that

is for another debate, but I would not want to send those kids

attacked my business to jail. I would want to see society working

with those kids so they do not do it. I want to see them being taught

citizenship, social values. Won't they regard that as an incredibly

soft sentence? It is going to cast... Society will get more for

its money. The problem here, they say we have not troubled kids in

school, the gang thing. In a lot of cases, the answer is to cut a very

tough contract, and I would say it is go to a boot camp with a tag.

You behave yourself, you learn something, you do teamwork. It is

tough. There is no mobile phones, the diet is simple. If you come out

having fulfilled a really rigorous programme, then you are spared jail.

But, hold on, and the merit of this is that jail costs �40,000 per year.

And on. For that, we could provide public school education for them. I

want them to have a very tough, very structured route can situation.

Gerald Buchan is a UKIP MEP. Boot camp, not prison? Yes, I think

there is something in that. We have got prison in different categories.

Hardened, serial criminals should be in prison. People at the other

end can still be Salvidge. I would like to see something more

imaginative for them. -- Salvidge. Let's have places in Ireland and

Scotland, where people have to build their own shelters and grow

their own food. It might teach them respect for other people's property.

The reason we have ended up with the riots and the level of crime we

got his 30 years or more of being soft on crime. You have got to be a

dedicated criminal to go to prison. Most people do not go to prison

until they have committed a number of crimes. It is difficult to be

convicted in the first place. A lot of the things that actually found

in prison, I'm sure you can pick them up of the internet. You do not

need to go to prison to learn them. Criminals want to know, they will

find out. The thing about present is that it protects the victims of

society, and that is what we need. -- Prison. Ashley, thank you for

that, interesting staff. That debate will continue on our website.

We have to end at there because your text vote results are in. We

asked at the beginning of the programme, should we make it harder

to get an abortion? This is what you told us. 40% of you said yes,

it should be harder, but 60% sex head no, we should not make it

harder to access terminations. -- 60% said no. I am surprised. I

thought the pro-life people would have mobilised in phone calls and

texts. I'm quite buoyed up that the audience for this programme, anyway,

takes a grown-up, realistic view that life is not perfect, that

people get pregnant and we have to deal with it. Ideally, yes, you use

contraception, you're in a stable situation and he sticks around and

he says, how lovely, let's get married, but we are having to work

with an imperfect world, and termination is part of that. Ashley,

you were not here for that part of the debate, but four at of 10

people think it should be harder. It should not be harder, no, but my

problem is that which point you offer support? Is it before

abortion, after. More emphasis needs to be put on Post abortion as

well, all support needs to be given an. Richard. I think it would be

quite a good idea to send them a bill as well, it could be like a

long, like going to university will stop send the father the bill. Yes,

if you can find him! These are much more than we would like to admit,

these are lifestyle choices, and I'm not sure the state should have

to pay for them. Well, that is where I say thank you to all of my

guests in the studio this morning, Lowri Turner, Ashley Blake, Richard

D North and Jake Bowers and Professor Casey, who were with us

earlier. The phone lines are now closed, please do not call or