Episode 3 Sunday Morning Live

Jimmy Carr has been mauled this week for avoiding tax. David

Cameron said he was morally wrong. If you could legally get away with

paying only 1% income tax, wouldn't Good morning and welcome to Sunday

Morning Live. The Treasury says tax-avoidance costs us �7 billion a

year. The Chancellor says avoiding tax is morally repugnant, but Peter

Hitchens says it is common sense. have nothing against legal tax

avoidance. Where does it say in the Bible that we have to give our

hard-earned money to a bunch of incompetent politicians? This man

has gone to the High Court to allow doctors to kill him, without being

charged for murder. And Billy Connolly says he rowed with his

wife over letting his teenage daughters have sex in the family

home. The my guests have been looking forward to sparring with

each other all this week. Peter Hitchens is with us, a columnist

for the Mail on Sunday, the proud scourge of liberal left-wing as

everywhere. That's why we put him next to the historian and

playwright Francis Beckett, who says he is proud to be a card-

carrying lefty. And Mohammed Ansari is a Muslim former banker, who has

written a sex education for schools, who has six children. -- a sex

education guide. We would like you Jimmy Carr was exposed over some

questionable tax dealings this week. The Government says people who

avoid tax are no better than benefit cheats, but Peter Hitchens

thinks it is total poppycock. This is what he thinks. As it happens, I

pay my tax, properly, at the proper rate. But much of your taxes, and

mine, are wasted on things like schools that spread propaganda and

ignorance, police who will not fight crime, stupid foreign wars,

expensive armies for politically correct jobs works. So, I have

nothing against legal tax avoidance, provided it is done by people who

think as I do. What I object to is modish Liberals, endlessly going on

about how they are in favour of a high-spending state while quietly

taking advantage of legal tax dodges. This is more common than

you might think. In my view, they should all be made to pay a special

ATP mack in the pound tax, a tax on being insufferably left-wing. --

80p in the pound. Where does it say in the Bible that we have to give

our hard-earned money to a bunch of incompetent, wasteful MPs? In any

country, there will always be legal tax avoidance schemes. I challenge

any of you, hand on heart, to say honestly that if you were offered a

chance to pay less tax, you would not take it. Jimmy Carr's mistake

was to get well paid for whipping up moral outrage against certain

sectors, then to go out and hire some tax lawyers himself to reduce

his own taxes. I am also puzzled about how the Prime Minister can

denounce the action of Jimmy Carr as morally wrong. Mr Cameron is

rather rich, yet for seven long years, he claimed roughly �20,000 a

year in parliamentary expenses, one of the highest claims in a wall of

Westminster, for the mortgage interest on a rather nice country

house. All perfectly legal and within the rules, but paid for out

of your taxes and mind. If that isn't immoral, then nor is tax

avoidance. In fact, I rather wish I had managed to avoid helping him

pay for his cover. That's the question, is avoiding tax immoral,

especially compared to what the MPs have been doing on expenses?

the rich should pay their taxes, so that nobody should dial one and

treatable illness, and other things. So, that's the question for our

vote. This week, you can also vote online, on our website. So, Peter,

it was your Sunday stand - hospitals, schools, we are stealing

money from them if we do not pay our taxes? Hang on, who does the

money belong to? Does it belong to the state and they let us keep some

of it, or does it belong to us, and we give some of it to the state in

a society run by consent? We have to start by remembering that the

money is ours to begin with, and in many cases, we can spend it better

than the state can. If you send the government out to buy you a loaf of

bread, it would come back one week later with a stale cake and not

much changed. In many cases, it does very bad things with our money.

I did not want to have a war in Iraq, I do not want to have a war

in Afghanistan. I do not want them to be employing thousands of jobs

woulds in the public sector. If I was to build a national Health

Service, frankly, I could build a better one out of a banana than the

one we have built, which is enormously inefficient. We have

dirty hospitals, and people dying of neglect. It is not a question of

schools and hospitals, therefore we must pay tax, it is a question of

whether the government has a moral right to require of asked to give

them as much about money as possible. It is obviously not so. I

can spend most of my money, and so can most people, better than the

government can. But it absolutely is a question, Peter, of schools

and hospitals, in the sense that if we do not pay taxes, how will we

provide them? Are we going to provide them out of charity?

Personally I have always been with Clement Atlee on that. He said that

if the rich wanted to help the poor, they should pay their taxes,

because that is far better than some kind of private enterprise,

far better than charity, because overall, it is benefiting everybody.

Let's keep it on morality, if the morality of avoiding taxes...

is one very important point which you're missing, otherwise you will

go off in the wrong direction, and you will wish you hadn't - I am not

saying people should not pay tax, I believe they should pay tax, within

the law. But in any society, there will always be lawful tax avoidance.

If David Cameron is attacking tax avoidance, then there is something

overtly hypocritical about that, because David Cameron is the Prime

Minister, and all the schemes that we have heard about, the Jimmy Carr

scheme, all of them, they are easy to close. The reason they have not

been closed, I suspect, is that you would not just catch people like

Jimmy Carr, you would catch all sorts of donors to the Tory party,

who David Cameron does not wish to catch. Is this about fat cats, not

picking on just a few comedians? With my banker's hat on, which is a

bit dissimilar to this one, there are a few principles we have to

concentrate on. The first one, Jimmy Carr has not done anything

illegal. Secondly, he is well known for his sense of humour. My

instinct is that he has probably apologised and moved away from

these tax schemes just so that David Cameron does not take the

moral high ground again. There is a difference between being legally

right and Molly right. You have to look at morality in the round.

Jimmy Carr and any individual has a moral, ethical duty to make sure

that they mitigate their tax liability within the boundary of

the law. Any right-thinking person would go to their bank manager,

their financial adviser, and say, how do I mitigate my tax liability?

But shouldn't it be made illegal, don't you think? What Jimmy Carr

did, it is not illegal, we know that, it has not yet been tested in

the courts - should it not be made illegal? Should we not be saying to

David Cameron, if you think this is immoral, and then make it illegal.

Closing loopholes is a difficulty and the consequence of having a

broken taxation system. Is it about the amount of money, is it because

Jimmy Carter -- wreckage was making �3 million and hiding �2 million of

it? -- Jimmy Carr was making �3 million? I think this is a huge

destruction. For a rare moment, Peter and myself will stand on the

same ground on this one. We have a broken taxation system. We have a

system where Philip green, for example, can transfer assets, in

his wife's name, to be housed offshore, so he can be saving �250

million in tax. What bothers me is that there is so much tax that we

are required to pay. But not people like Philip green, doesn't that

bother you? This is not about week, tax avoidance is for the very, very

rich. It is not for people on ordinary incomes. Lots of people

avoid tax. In the case of Tony Blair, who, on a �12 million income

in the past year, paid just �300,000, about 3%. This is an

imperfect world, and in this imperfect world, and the same is

true of justice, it is regrettably always going to be the case that

the rich will be able to get away with paying less tax than anybody

else. But if you're worried about the unfairness of tax, you should

be saying, why is it that poor people should be taxed in many

cases to subsidise things that they do not want, to pay for services

which are inadequate? That is an injustice which could be rectified.

The other thing you're missing is that what really got this going was

the hypocrisy of Jimmy Carr, attacking exactly the sort of

schemes which he then went and engaged in. Being a left-wing

windbag... That's deeply unfair, because there is no evidence at all

that Jimmy Carr is left wing. going to say, I think there is

plenty of dispute about it. Let me bring in somebody from the Tax

Justice Network. Somebody said, if it is not illegal, why does it

matter? Well, good morning. It matters because the sums are so

large. First of all, the estimate of �7 billion is on the low side. A

far more accurate is that tax- avoidance costs this country around

�25 billion a year. So, the sums involved are enormous. It is

absolutely the case that if the rich people are not paying their

tax, others are picking up the slack. All the rest of us are

having to pay much more tax as a result. I would also like to pick

up on a point that was made earlier about cash ISAs - these are exempt

from tax. Tax-avoidance might be, strictly speaking, legal, but for

many years, apartheid was legal, slavery was legal, sex

discrimination was legal. Tax avoidance is legal, largely because

of the extensive lobbying which happens around the tax arrangements

of the rich. So, it could be closed down very, very quickly. And the

result would be that most of us would end up paying very much less

tax. You think there is a moral difference between the Jimmy Carr

kind of avoidance, the offshore thing, and some of the smaller

scale stuff? Anything which involves using offshore structures

in dodgy places like Jersey, the reason they are being used is

because people are hiding these structures in order not to draw

attention to them. Even they must be aware of the fact that there is

something dodgy about it, because they are using offshore tax havens.

The language which John is using is based on the idea that all our

money belongs to the government, and that there is something moral

about the Government spending our money, and that it is better at

spending it than we are. None of these things is true. It is an

ideological position. You may think that, but that does not mean that

your position is more moral than mine. I happen to think that most

people have a better idea of how to spend our money, morally, then it

any government I have ever encountered. I don't think the idea

that so much money is lost to tax evasion, thinking about it like

that, is the right way. Why do we pay such colossal sums of money in

tax to governments which, by and large, waste it and misuse it?

we are not talking about people who pay colossal sums of money in tax,

we are talking about relatively tiny sums of money, in proportion

to the income that they earn. You and I a pay what I think is a

fairly reasonable amount. But I am not super rich. If I was, I would

be able to find tax schemes, like Tony Blair can find, like a number

of donor parties to the Conservative Party can find, which

would enable me to pay relatively no tax and increase the burden on

the very people you claim you're trying to help, which is people on

low incomes. It is the wasteful, incompetent, stupid government!

You're starting in the wrong place! Taxation is not just about

individual, personal income taxation, the taxation structure is

much broader than that. We are talking about capital gains tax.

Why can't you invest in certain Have we have to focus on

something... Find a Peter will dislike the fact that this comes

from a bleeding heart leftie, but there was an article last week in

the Guardian that talked about the corporate tax swindle. For the

single biggest shift in assets in income for generations, possibly

history, has happened as a result of the changes in the corporation

tax system which this government has brought in. Overseas

companies... The system is only on a par with the system they have in

Switzerland, where billions of pounds are not going to be

collected by the Exchequer. I want to bring in Moly. Is this about

rich individuals like Jimmy Carr being hypocritical or is it about

corporations that we should be focusing on? I think it is everyone.

Everyone should be paying their fair share of tax, from my

neighbours, Jimmy Carr, Philip Green. Of course it is different

with large corporations not paying their tax. Vodafone paid no

corporation tax last year, which is ridiculous when we are having a

huge public sector cuts and the government say we have no money

left. How do you deal with the fact that when you look at the amounts

of money, there's an issue about a few people and big corporations not

playing -- paying their fair share. That is a different question, that

is a question of the competence and abilities of Her Majesty's Revenue

& Customs and whether they are up to the job of collecting tax. Some

questions have to be raised about that. You are not saying paying tax

is immoral? If we introduce my plan of an 80% windbag tax for left-

wingers, we would raise so much money. This government, at a time

when there are huge austerity measures in this place -- country,

the government has decided to lose 10,000 jobs from HMRC, which is

about compliance and checking tax revenue. We have a government

saying it is immoral not to pay your tax, they are cutting tax jobs,

at the same time they are giving Catt -- tax cuts for the wealthy as

in society. Why do we live in a society where the poorest carry the

heaviest tax burden? Do you think the imbalance between austerity and

tax-avoidance means we are making cuts we should not be? You're

worried about poor people paying more than their fair share. What we

don't address... His tax being spent in the way we want it to be

spent? There are so much that is indefensible. If people are worried

that the tax they pay it is unfair they should address themselves. The

entire product of the income tax in this country is spent on welfare

payment. Most people don't even know facts like this. Once you

start to examine how the money is raised and spent, it will horrify

you. He is about time we started to challenge the idea that everything

the public sector does is wrong and incompetent. We've seen, in the

last 30 years, government progressively trying to push more

of their responsibilities over to the private sector and it hasn't

worked. That is because the public sector is actually an awful lot

better, and I mean the government and the Civil Service, far better

at delivering than most of the subsequent Thatcherites like

Peter... I'm not a Thatcherite. Neo- fish. If somebody said to you,

this is absolutely legal, I've got a way you can pay 1% income tax,

are you not telling me you would not be tempted? I would be tempted

but I wouldn't do it. I think he has to be in the privacy of the

confessional to answer that question. When it happens to you,

you will know. What about you? would take any opportunity to pay

little tax. I have advised people to reduce their tax liability

legally, but I would say, when you look at the state of the broken

taxation system, Peter would have you believe it is some other thing,

if you look at Islamic principles, taxing the surplus wealth and

marketable assets of the wealthiest in society... It is a far fairer

system. We do have to leave it there. A quick e-mail...

Avoiding tax is a separate argument from an incompetent government,

morally you should pay tax. That is our poll question today. Is

You can also vote online. You have about 20 minutes before it closes.

It was impossible not to be moved by his suffering this week. Tony

Nicklinson is put paralysed and he wants doctors to be allowed to kill

him. He is not asking for a change in law on euthanasia, he is simply

asking to choose how he ends his life. Would you give it to him or

does it set a dangerous precedent? Tony Nicklinson can't eat by

himself, he can't hide his wife or his children, his mind remains

sharp, but since his stroke seven years ago, it is locked inside a

helpless body. Another thing he can't do is end his own life. He

says it is wrong that a doctor is not allowed to help him to die.

is no longer acceptable for 21st century medicine to be governed by

twentieth-century attitudes to death. His condition means the only

way for him to take his own life is to starve himself to death. This

could take months and would be slow and painful. But at the moment, any

doctor who helped him to die would be charged with murder. Tony says

this law condemns him to a life of pure torture which could last over

20 years. Opponents say if Tony wins his case, it could make other

disabled people feel value less and put them under pressure to end

their lives to save trouble for carers. And some doctors argue it

will fundamentally change the patient doctor relationship.

concern is that by setting a precedent, it would change both

relationship between patients and doctors and an expectation that we

are able to deliver something that currently we can't deliver within

the law, namely to actively kill a patient. Tony and his supporters

say that with proper safeguards, he should be allowed to choose how he

dies. But others say if the court allows him to be helped to die, it

will open the floodgates to other cases and in effect make euthanasia

legal. If you have a webcam, you can make

your point on Stipe or join the conversation on Twitter, text or e-

mail. We are joined by a Christina Patterson. Tony Nicklinson says his

life is torture because he has to go on this way. Would you deny him

the right to end his life the way he wants? I don't think it is me

denying him, it is not society denying him, I think it is possible

to hear him talk about the situation he is in and see his face

crumpled up in pain and not feel desperately sorry for the situation

he is in. But we did not create that situation, that was terrible,

terrible, terrible luck. We can't construct laws around people's very,

very bad light. I think what he is one thing, which is for someone

else to make a decision about whether his life is worth living,

and not just to help him die but to kill him, is a step too far. He's

made a decision about whether his life is worth living. We have Jane

Nicklinson on the phone. Thank you for joining us. How do you answer

people, and there are many people, who say your husband has had

terrible luck, but we can't change the law, it is just too big a step.

We disagree with that. Briefing furtive safeguards are put in place,

the vulnerable people that everybody talked about will be

protected. People say he does have things Philiphaugh. Well, all I can

say is how dare they presume what Tony should or should not thing.

They should try changing places with him. Is this would you and

your daughters want? It is not what we want, it is what Tony wants.

Because we love him, we are fully supporting him. Peter, if Tony

could find a doctor who would be willing to end his life, we do want

that Dr to be allowed to do it? is very difficult for me. There's

an absolute prohibition on this for me, but that would have to apply to

me alone. For him it is a different matter. In this case, if

individually her doctor were to do this, and it went to trial, I think

it is very unlikely that a jury would actually convict. In fact,

this reminds me very much of the law on abortion in England and

Wales before 1967, based on an horrendous case in 1938 in which a

doctor performed an abortion on a young girl who had been raped by a

gang of soldiers. He was, after a very dramatic trial, acquitted

under very, very specific circumstances and as a result

abortion was illegal under restricted circumstances based on

common law. If that remained the case, there would be something

Toller look about it. If you change the law, safeguards which Mrs

Nicklinson speaks of very often don't turn out to be safeguards in

practice. The safe cards in the 1967 abortion Act were not

safeguards. Instead of having a few people in terrible circumstances

been permitted to have abortions, we now have 200,000 abortions a

year, which was never the intention of the law and was supposed to be

ruled out. Be very careful about safeguards. I'm not unsympathetic,

who could fail to be sympathetic about this. Turning it into a

general change in the law is very dangerous. If you could find a

doctor, and I don't know if you've been approached by anyone, Peter is

implying that juries would be sympathetic and they would never go

to jail. You should just try to find the solution yourself. We are

not trying to change the law, it is just a law that is already there

that we are into it indifferently. This business of the floodgates

opening is nonsense. This would only apply to someone that is so

severely disabled, but they can't do it themselves. So someone that

is completely paralysed. I keep being told there are so few people

like Tony around that the law should not be changed for him. In

the next breath, people say that the floodgates will open and there

will be thousands of people knocked off. You can't have it both ways.

There will be a rigorous procedure to go through. It would have to be

taken to the courts to get approved. It would work, I'm sure it has

worked in other countries and we all know there's a judge in Canada

that also agrees with us. Jane is absolutely right, people talk about

the flood gates and I want to know where these floodgates are? Where

are these thousands of people just waiting to be allowed to ask for

their doctor to kill them as soon as Mr Nicklinson gets his way? It

seems to me that I can't understand how the state can have the cruelty

and arrogance to say to Mr Nicklinson, whose situation we have

described, who has clearly and intelligently thought this out, and

has made it clear decision about his life and how we can then be so

crawl and so arrogant as to say to him, I'm sorry, Mr Nicklinson, but

we think you might think differently in a year or two. He

knows he is not going to do that. He has thought this through, he is

not a child. How we can say to him that in some way or another he is

setting some sort of President, he is not doing that. He doesn't know

that he will not change his mind. Many people have felt at various

points that they would rather die than be alive. I have had loopers

and cancer twice. There might have been moments when I thought this

was too tough. I would like to end it. I am extremely grateful that I

did not. I am not saying nobody could have the presumption to say

to Tony Nicklinson, you will change your mind, cheer up. It is very,

very desperate for him. But it is also, I think, not true that it is

a life entirely without joy. On his Twitter feed this week, he said

what joy it is to be loved. At the moment he feels that the

frustration of not having control over his life over rights that joy

and that is entirely understandable, but it is also possible there will

come a point when that balance changes. I want to bring in Nikkei

Kenwood. You have had a similar condition to Tony's locked-in

syndrome. What is your concern about his family's desire to allow

Yes, I was locked-in for many, many weeks, and I am still severely

disabled. My concern is that I feel hurt, I feel affronted, I feel

scared for people in similar situations, because it will change

people's perception of who should live and who should die. Already,

lots of people who are severely disabled live with extreme bias

spoken about them. I have had people say to me, if I were you, I

would rather be dead. Every day, something is said that paints a

negative picture of my life. Tony is thinking about Tony, but as soon

as he takes this to any sort of judicial considerations, then it

becomes about all of us. Can I put that quickly to Jane Nicklinson?

She says, it is about all of us. This is absolute rubbish. If you

want to die, you ask for it, if you don't, then do not ask for it,

plain and simple. If this lady does not want to die, then do not go to

your doctor and say, I want to die. It is nonsense, it is pure

scaremongering. Jane is reacting very much how people react who do

not understand disability issues. Excuse me, I sit and watch my

husband every day, I understand it perfectly well. Then, I would like

to know why a Tony does not go out, why he does not see people. I have

sat with people in the same situation as Tony in cinemas, in

cafes, and gone for walks with them. People have a life. You said

yourself, Jane, that it would be like abortion, and then it would

become mainstream. That's not what I said, I said public opinion had

accepted abortion, so they would accept this. It is a change of

attitude, which takes time to sink in. How do you think people who

have got children who are like Tony, I have got teenage friends who are

like Tony, how do you think we feel when somebody is placing such a low

value on our lives? One final word to you on this, Jane. It is

absolute nonsense. If someone wants to die, like Tony, they ask for it.

It will not be offered to them. They think people think that

somebody who is really disabled will go to the doctor, and the

doctor will say, your life is not worth living, so I will knock you

off. It is ridiculous! It would have to be asked for, it would have

to be approved by the courts, it would be a hugely complicated

procedure, and it would be only a few cases, I'm sure. Thank you both

of you so much. The two issues raised there - whether people would

feel devalued, and we have a big problem with a growing elderly

population, but also, the moral values have changed, and we need to

recognise that? Yes, and what's regrettable is the slightly angry

tone which is being adopted towards Jane, which is wrong. I think the

needs to be a bit more sympathy on both sides. But fundamental models

do not change. Some things are wrong, and that's why so many of us

see a society facing problems. The old in our society are increasingly

the ones who have the houses and the wealth and the money. I don't

think it is safe to put into the hands of doctors and relatives

necessarily the fate of the old and the ill, if those are the

circumstances. I don't think that legal safeguards can be relied upon.

I think the abortion act of 1967 is proof of that. It is supposed to

have safeguards in it, but they are worthless. I have sympathy with

that idea, but it does not seem to me that Jane Nicklinson is saying

in any way that she wants to put this power into the hands of

doctors. The power is in the hands of her husband, and her husband

will take the decision about his life. No doctor is going to take

the decision for him. As I understand it, what he wants to do

in fact is not to die straightaway, but to have the power, when he is

ready. As I understand it, he wants to be able to use the defence of

necessity. I think it would be hard to ask a doctor to have a look at

the relationship that he has with his wife and daughters, for example,

who adore him, and he adores them, and say, it is necessary for him to

die. I don't think that is a good interpretation. I want to bring in

one more person on the telephone. We have got Kevin, from the

organisation Not Dead Yet UK. If you could find a doctor who was

willing to do it, why not give them legal protection? Why should we put

this on to doctors? As a matter of fact, most doctors do not want to

do this. One key point is that if we do introduce a law here, it does

introduce have radically different mindset, where we move into a place

where we have a legally supported opinion that some people, they can

be treated as objects, to be disposed of. The difficulties that

we keep repeating are those about safeguards and the vulnerability of

disabled people, for example. In terms of safeguards, if it could be

done, it would have been done already. That's one thing. As we

have discovered in places like Holland, the safeguards cannot be

applied in such a way... In Holland, it is legal for somebody over 70

who is tired of living to have this applicable to them. We have a

situation, and Jane was clear about this, we have more than 9,000

people dying through a particular form of sedation in Holland every

year. So, what actually happens is that the extension of the law in to

a situation where lots of people who are vulnerable are affected in

this way. I am afraid we have to end it soon. This e-mail says, it

should be down to the person and the family. We could have a law

where people can go and die with respect and dignity. This lady from

Essex says, I have seen people suffer, we should have a right to

die. I would like to thank everybody who has taken part in

that very difficult discussion. Later on the programme - one

reality TV star says her mother put her on the Pill at the age of 14,

so she could have sex with her 15- year-old boyfriend. Is that

responsible parenting, or should parents be banning teenage sex,

particularly in their own home? And remember to keep voting also in the

poll. The question - is avoiding tax immoral? You have got about

It is time for our moral moments of the week. Peter, you were intrigued

by a story about hell. Yes, this survey shows apparently that where

people believe in hell, they behave better. In nations where people

believe in hell, there is less crime. Yes. But even so, it does

seem to me that in societies where people stop believing in hell, it

is often the case that hell appears in their societies, which could

increasingly be said of our own. In some of the nasty parts of Britain,

you could often think on a Saturday night that you were in the suburbs

of hell, if not in the centre of it. I don't know if they believe in

Hell in Saudi Arabia, they do not believe in it in the Church of

England, I'm delighted to say. they do. Do they? My moral moment

of the week... You do not believe in it, presumably. No, I do not

believe in hell, I do not believe in heaven, either. Do you think

there is a possible link to how people might live their lives?

relies on the International Criminal Court. That's quite right,

I do, I would rather rely on that than on some kind of God whose

presence nobody has been able to prove to me. I believe neither in

heaven or in hell. I think they're quite useful social constructs for

an awful lot of people. I think they have helped keep order in the

world for a long time. But the fact that they are useful and actually

quite comforting things to believe in - it is quite comforting to

think that somehow or other, when we die, all the injustices of the

world will be put right and everything will be OK... It is more

than comforting, it is an enormous puzzle. Why is it that we have a

parody, this immense desire for justice, and yet it is quite plain

that justice is never completed in this world? If there is not another

place, where justice is complete, then why do we have this sense?

Because we are complicated and fascinating creatures, and we have

all kinds of contrary and ludicrous use. But that takes you past the

argument. It seems to me that it is not surprising, of course your

beliefs affect your behaviour. We need to get through all of these.

Rowan Williams has been giving his you, a man of belief. And like hell,

this is entirely rational. What he has said is that the Big Society is

a complete fraud. He has exposed a complete fraud. He has exposed

this. We talk about a Big Society, and then we diminish it and make it

smaller and smaller, and remove all the safeguards to help the poorest,

we start removing housing benefit, we start removing housing benefit,

we cut back on the amount of education which the state provides,

we cut back on the national Health Service, and we call it the Big

Society. It really is very much like George Orwell's Ministry of

truth, which told lies. I have to say, being accused of waffle by

Rowan Williams it is a bit like being called Fat... This was a

story about obesity, is that right? Yes, apparently, people are not

noticing they are getting just enormous, because everybody around

them is also enormous. We all adapt to our cultural norms, and we all

know that the West is pretty much eating itself to death. It is not

ideal. Gluttony is a deadly sin, isn't it? It is, it also makes you

fat. I don't think there has been any evidence to show that more

religious societies are necessarily thinner societies. No doubt there

will be studies to be conducted. But we do need to address this,

because at this rate, not only will people be popping their clubs left,

right and centre, but it is going to bankrupt the NHS. -- popping

their clocks. It has been said that we must not give our young people

too many negative messages about body image. You have lots of

contrary messages. You have people who are 25 stone, and on the other

hand, people who are starving themselves. These polarities are

always a sign of a society which is out of balance. If you look at

America, the West Coast, ludicrously thin. And they believe

in Hell in America, don't they? all of them. They are a lot more

religious! Fat is hell. Let's levered there. The poll is closing

now, so please do not text. The online vote is now closing as well.

We will bring you the result at the end of the show. Now, it has got to

be one of the most difficult decisions for parents to take. A

teenager brings home their boyfriend or girlfriend - would you

allow them to sleep together under your roof? What did your parents do

when you were a teenager, and did you get it right with your

children? It is difficult for parents when they realise their

teenage children are becoming sexually active. Nowadays, it is

happening younger. But should we allow them to have sex in our

homes? Some say it is better to know where your children are. They

are likely to have sex behind your back anyway, and at greater risk.

Being open about it might make our children more confident in talking

to us about relationships. It might also help lower the number of teen

pregnancies. We have still got one of the highest rates in Europe. But

others argued that some teenagers do not actually want to have sex,

but feel pressured into it, so allowing them to have their

partners stay over could add to that pressure to have sex. And what

happens if your children are only 14 or 15? Should you sanction them

doing something illegal? Should we embrace our children's sexual

awakening, no matter how uncomfortable we may find it? You

can join us on webcam, or make your point online. Mohammed, you have

got six children in your family, what were the rules? The rules are

very straightforward. It is no sex before marriage. Some people find

before marriage. Some people find this very old fashioned. It is, I

this very old fashioned. It is, I hope, traditional British values.

But actually, if you make the rules player and straightforward,

prevention is better than cure. If you get to the point where you're

having to have a discussion, that the boyfriend or girlfriend have

come home, where are they going to sleep, together on the sofa, then

you have probably already gone too far? Even if they are at university,

and they are coming home to stay? If you want to do things in a moral,

and I hope a sensibly discriminating framework, within an

Islamic environment, and within many other religious and non-

religious environments, we certainly did not have dating

before marriage. It is kind of, you're single, then you reach a

point in time, and you get married. It makes the process a lot easier,

and you miss out on this, a mile out to say, sticky middle

situation? I think you just did! Is the problem that too many parents

want to be their child's best friend, but actually you should be

No. What we have just heard is fine if you happen to be a religious

person. If you want to bring your child up believing certain things,

if you want to bring your child up believing in the precepts of Islam

and therefore this is one of those precepts. I don't want to do that.

My main concern about this would be to say, let's not make sex some

sort of enormous taboo. Let's make it a normal part of growing up.

People grow up at their own rates and within their own time. They

want to start having sex at different times. Let them do so.

Really? Absolute glee. I would far rather children didn't regard it as

something they could not discuss with their parents. Discussing an

doing our separate things. exactly. Use -- you are saying you

don't let them have it until they are married. You have to be

absolutely certain that that is carrying on. Would you happily have

your 16-year-old son and his 13- year-old girlfriend sleep in your

house? That would be rape. Would you be tacitly endorsing your son's

rape of a 13-year-old? No. Let's distinguish aged consent. Nobody is

saying under 16. Should your child want to have sex... Are I can't

think of a bigger deterrent to sex than having sex in your parental

home! So the parent is desperate for their child... It depends how

relaxed... If you want to postpone it for as long as possible, by all

means bombard them with information. A commonsense approach is required.

Is it different for women and men? Billy Connolly... That is a

Freudian thing. It is different for fathers? I'm agreeing. Billy

Connolly is very odd about this. He is very, very upset that his

daughter shouted at him to get out of her room when she was 14. Good

Lord, he doesn't know very much about 14-year-old girls! He is a

man alone in a house of women. think men get more upset about

their daughters having sex and women do about their sons having

sex. Why are women less bothered? They don't have this Daddy's little

girl thing going on. That is right but it is not something we should

take into account. No. I can tell you that one would feel different

about one's daughter to how I would feel about my son. But at the same

time, one ought to ignore that. I bring in Philip, a

psychotherapist and broadcaster. I remember watching you give advice

to young people on TV over the years. Why do so many parents have

a problem with this? There's a Freudian element, and thank you for

the memories! I to call of your advice! And you are still here to

tell the tale. Just as children have a horror of thinking about

their parents' sex lives, parents have a horror about their

children's sex lives. That is healthy? It is, but we need an

appropriate boundary. I think it is a matter of being welcoming to

those who are legally engaged in the exploratory business of sex. We

are not born knowing how to do it. But things like Mohammed's

guidebook for schools. There are a lot of guides. Provided you don't

belong to a Major religion, I think the modern Western view is that we

need to learn and we need to fail, we need to have relationships that

break before we find one that might last. This is an interesting

question. Assuming that one is not religious, we know that most adults

are having sex outside marriage, so that should not be taboo. I'm not

sure where Philip is coming from this the right place. When we look

at the state of sexuality and our approach to sex in this country, in

the West generally, who's to say it works? When we look at the rates of

marriage breakdowns, how stable relationships are, how unhappy many

children are, and how many children from unhappy homes end up being the

scourge of society, whether it is criminality or producing more

unhappy children? There are huge questions around sex and sexuality

and we need to have an adult debate about this. Culture... You are

taking quite an extreme view. They understand why you laugh because of

your religion. I'm not sure it is that. I think sex outside marriage

-- no sex outside marriage is pretty extreme. There's a happy

medium and I think children are under horrendous pressure to be

sexually active from an early age. People are starting puberty earlier.

I heard statistics last week that the average age of puberty is now

to end. Children as young as five and seven are getting it. Parents

do have a responsibility to try to counteract the pressures in society

for children who don't understand what sexual exchanges all about. A

lot of them think it is a way of being popular in class.

approached this issue from a non- religious point of view, which is

to say it actually... Young people, do young people, even 16 or 17, do

they have the moral, sexual integrity, the maturity, to handle

a sexual relationship? Funny you should say that. On the line I have

been 18-year-old, Ryan, who has kindly agreed to talk to us about

this. You live with your mum. What is her view about having

girlfriends over and have you feel about it? I then had one girlfriend

and I had been with her for three years. We got together when we were

15. My mum's attitude changed because when I was 15, it was

before the age of consent, and my mum said no way. Did you listen?

Say that again. Did you listen when she said absolutely no way? Largely,

yes. She is the one bringing me up and she knows what is best for me.

Respect comes into it as well. From my perspective, because I had been

with my girlfriend for so long, I realised I am not going out

drinking and bringing home a different girl every night, I'm not

being irresponsible or anything like that. I'm in a loving

relationship, I love her more than anything, and we have pretty much

grown up together. It seems like the right thing. Your mother is

happy? When you got to 16? No. Even when I was 16, she said you are

only 16. What is the situation now that you're 18? It is kind of hard

to explain. Sometimes my girlfriend might stay over, but it is always

down to her parents as well. It has changed a lot with weddings. My

father took us to a wedding on my father's side of the family one

time and my girlfriend was able to stay over with me with my father's

permission and her parents' permission. There's also an

argument about whether or not it is allowed to happen or allowed to

happen in their house. Thank you. One of the interesting things is

the idea of different parents having different attitudes and how

you negotiate that. Mohammed, if one of your children wanted to

marry, but their parents were happy to let them stay over together.

orders two children, when they were old enough, they wanted to get

married and they got married, and they went straight from almost

being single. At what age? They married at 21 and 19. Quite young.

If we take the broader point of different sets of parents and

different moral values, how do you negotiate that? How many UK -- how

you negotiate anything else, by talking about it and having an

enormous row! The real good. This is very, very difficult territory.

Frankly, unless you are bringing children up in a fiercely religious

household, they will have sex so the question is how you manage that.

My generation were terrified of fades and we took contraception and

protection seriously. Talking to them about it is not necessarily

protecting them. No. I think I would far rather have children, if

they are going to do this, doing it in a place where we know where they

are, we know what they are... if they are under age? Yes. Even if

that is technically rape? That is... A can you answer that? I can't

answer that. It is under-aged. is the part where you have a row!

What we are saying is that is illegal and you have to deal with

it. You have to prevent it. If you were talking about two 15-year-old,

I don't see any difference. couple of e-mails...

Teenagers have been having sex for decades, so what difference now? At

least with parental support, contraception can be safer.

Parents should not the ban or encourage teen sex, their job is to

make teenagers will inform decisions.

We have to end there. Text and phone line votes are in. I want to

thank everyone because it was very frank and I thought quite

illuminating. Is avoiding tax immoral? This is what you told us.

61% of you said yes, 39% said no. What are your thoughts as the ex

Banket in the room? It wasn't overwhelmingly. It wasn't. Peter

and I did our best to get those figures down a bit. Something that

is illegal is clearly immoral. necessarily true. When the

Government is behaving in such a hypocritical... Are immoral? When

the government is behaving in such a Nipper -- hypocritical manner and

largely with questionable morality in how they approach tax, I think

the voters and the nation is probably split on how they view

these things. But there's a responsibility to manage your

financial affairs sensibly and there's a responsibility to take

best advice. Christina? Most of us have thought about nothing else all

week and this tax situation and I am now sick to death of it! Did you

feel sorry for Jimmy Carr? No. My pity for Jimmy Carr is fairly

sparing. I also think that until people are in a similar situation,

most of us don't have a choice about tax. It is very, very easy to

pass judgment on other people. The main difference... I don't like

what Jimmy Carr did, it is very unattractive and hypocritical given

what he said about tax, but the bottom line is it is lack of

opportunity. Most of us don't have the opportunity. You would do it if

you could? I would not. Particularly if I was super rich.

The super rich are not using money to give themselves a better life,

they are using money as a means of acquiring power. It is not just

Jimmy Carr, it is Tony Blair and the rest of them. Thank you to

everyone who has taken part. Don't text or call the phone lines any