Episode 9 The Big Questions

agreements, and moral tales. -- prenup joule.

Good morning, I am Nicky Campbell, welcome to The Big Questions, we are

live from Jack Hunt School in Peterborough.

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions! Now, on Monday,

Parliament will be asked to vote on whether the Secretary of State for

Health should have the power to close hospitals in England even if

the staff and local communities are opposed. It is a matter of keen

interest here in Peterborough, where the local hospital is in deep

financial trouble. Has the time come to phase out local hospitals?

Welcome to Professor Terence Stephenson, chair of the Academy Of

Medical Royal Colleges. It is great to have you here, how is phasing out

local hospitals putting patients first? It is always couched as

hospital closure, but it is hardly ever that. What the people in this

audience want is the right treatment in the right place at the right

time. I have spent the last week from dawn to dusk looking after a

emergencies, and what is preventing doctors from me giving people like

this the best quality they can is the fact that we are trying to run

20th century hospitals with 21st century medicine. Two things we are

struggling with - one is that all the evidence from strokes, trauma,

cancer, heart attacks, is if anyone in this room is ill, their best

chance of surviving that illness is to be treated somewhere where we do

lots of it. Expertise. Expertise, you know that, if you have a flat

pack, you build a couple of year, they don't fit together. If you are

doing ten a day, you get very good at it. Not talking furniture, we are

talking people. Same principle, the more you do, the better you get. The

second point is that on a Sunday morning, there will be 200 hospitals

open for children's emergencies. About half of those will only add

mid sixth or seven children. In half of those, 50 hospitals, they will be

less than 30 Minutes Drive from another hospital admitting seven

children. Currently we cannot staff them properly. They will be short of

paediatricians and children's nurses, so we cannot staff them, and

we need to have the volume and expertise. So for some people, it

will be a longer journey. For some people, it will be a 30 minute

journey. Does this make sense? You have time this very well, because

last week in the BMJ there was a publication that showed the number

of hospitals we have compared to other countries in the OECD is

extremely low. We have got to few hospitals already in this country.

We have already seen the number of beds cut down to under 150,000 in

the last 20 years. Some of that is due to changes that need to happen,

but we have occupancy rates of more than 90%, when the safe level is

around 85%. Clinically, this could be very dangerous. I will come back

to the point about how the tax and strokes, I'd agree that there is

clear evidence that centralising some services can improve survival.

-- heart attacks. But other conditions, if you close your local

hospital, what happens to acute asthmatics who have to travel

further? What happens to a choking child? What happens to other medical

emergencies? That data does not look at that, so this is dangerous, and

what we have seen in the austerity that is happening at the moment,

this is not about clinical decisions, it is about finance. If

you increase health care spending, this is from the IMF, Stanford

University, if you increase spending, it's the late economic

growth, not having a negative effect because you keep the population

healthier, so we need to go completely against the austerity

agenda, which is damaging the health of the population and decreasing the

number of services, which will lead to increasing privatisation and

medical insurance is outrageous. Outrageous! Julia Manning, this is

outrageous, but you believe that keeping a lot of local hospitals

open, they are not safe. Absolutely, they are not safe, and this is not

about cutting services, it is about changing the way we deliver services

so they are fit for this generation and the next generation. We have

people going to hospitals even though most of us know that you are

not in there, when you have an operation, you might be in for a

week or two. A lot of surgery is day surgery. We need to be using what we

have in terms of resources and people in a much more intelligent

way so that we can meet the needs of the current population, which is

growing. But you are not meeting their needs if they have to travel

further to visit relatives in hospitals will stop that has got to

be bad for anyone recovering in hospital, and that might be a

consequence of this. We need to remember that the majority of health

care takes place in the community already, and that is where the most

patient-professional contact takes place, in primary care. Hospitals

are only a small part of the NHS, but we seem to have a national

hospitals service, instead of a National Health Service. We need to

make it fit for purpose for this century. We are not using technology

the way I should. It is nonsense that I should have to go to a

hospital to see a consultant to have a conversation I could have on the

phone, they then tell me I need to have tests, tests I could have at a

GP's surgery. We are not using technology in new that we should,

whether that is referrals... The evidence base, apart from a few

selective conditions, is, by their own admission, weak. We need to have

these discussions on a case-by-case basis. The public is not

convinced... I am sick of being patronised by experts who tell me

that it is better for my health to close my local hospital, you know,

and I think we need to be having these discussions in our local

community. We were told no decision about me without me, and yet they

are trying to bring in a fast-track... Do you think this is a

circumventing local democracy? Explicitly. As someone who has

campaigned against hospital privatisation, 40 days is no time to

save your local hospital. Let's look at the evidence, these big centres

of excellence, is there concrete statistical evidence that they save

lives, Julia Manning? When there are specialist centres, yes, absolutely.

We want to go to a specialist centre. Lives have been saved?

Absolutely! If I had a rare tumour in my eye, I would only go to the

Royal Liverpool Hospital, where they specialise. There is no expertise in

the world better than that, I will take a train to go to that. But the

bigger picture is we have a ?30 billion funding gap in the next

eight years, and that is just book-keeping services as they are.

Where do we get that from? -- just for keeping. We want to take it from

education or raise taxes? You are looking, on the average salary, an

extra ?100 per month. And it is going to get worse as the population

gets older, and part of the problem with these monster mortgages that

the hospitals have as a result of the Private Finance initiative, they

are just frightening! Sorry, they were set in sunnier times, back at a

rate of interest they would never be paying back now. Julie is right

about specialist centres, but we need both, your specialist centres

and smaller hospitals. I am a cancer specialist and a specialist

hospital, but I do peripheral clinics in local hospitals to

deliver a service to the wider community. You cannot afford to have

the equipment in every hospital, it is extremely costly and you need a

lot of expertise. Actually, we need more funding of the health service,

people are saying, where are you going to get it from? We wasting

billions on a health care market, we have this split with GPs buying

supplies from hospitals, and that's just drives up costs. It is wasting

?10 billion a year. We have got huge tax avoidance problems, ?70 billion

a year in tax avoidance, so we need HMRC to focus on the big people,

thousands of people... And we need to... Professor Stevenson, get your

hands ready, I will be coming around the audience, I know this is an

important issue locally. Professor Stevenson, clamping down on tax

avoidance, is that ever going to be enough to pay for what we need in

the future? It is not about pain. I started by giving people the best

quality care we can. -- paying. We like behind Sweden and Norway, where

people realise that the best quality care is not delivered by having 220

hospitals. They have far higher tax rates. There are other differences.

I worked in a centre for 22 years, and I never had a patient or

bulletin saying, I don't want to go by aeroplane to Glasgow or

Newcastle. -- patient or relative. Every time they said, I want to go

where I can get the best treatment possible. Good morning. A quick

point so we can get through them all. We have to see this in the

economy as a whole. The public-private partnership, we have

to see there is an argument that there is no money here, a funding

gap. There is money in the economy here. Take the example of the big

banks which are taking bailouts from the Government. Just last year, RBS

had billions in their profits, paying out 9 billion in bonuses of

executives. That is what is going on in this economy. Why can't this

money be thrown into health services and hospitals? The Professor here.

If you were really ill and had cancer, we have a great new district

hospital in Peterborough which has financial problems because of

Labour's failed private finance initiative, but if you have cancer

here, you would want to go to Adam Brookes, which is a teaching

hospital. -- Addenbrooke's. I think we have to look at what is driving

the proposed laws to the Care Bill, and that was brought in by Jeremy

Hunt tried to insert this clause to give him unprecedented powers to

close local hospitals. Because of the situation in Lewisham. Where he

was deemed to have acted beyond his powers. But what we are seeing with

the closures, a lot of the closures are things like A services. To

give an example of the consequences of that, in Chase Farm Hospital in

London, they closed the A service there. Weeks later, a mother rushed

her young child over to Chase Farm Hospital, not realising that the

servers had closed. As a consequence, she had to rush around

to find another hospital, increasing the travel distance, and there was a

tragic incident where that child sadly died. Is that a trade union

badge? It is, yes. We do not know the individual situation there,

Julia Manning, but are these inevitable consequences of closures?

That is a tragic, tragic story, and our heart obviously goes out, but

that is a failure of publicity and telling the public what is going on

with their health services. That is why this debate is so important,

because the public needs to realise that we have a gap in funding but

that does not take into account rising incidences of diabetes, sight

loss, dementia, and we cannot go on funding buildings and pouring money

into them. We need to put money into people and services. And it is not

about closure, it is about transferring and changing. We are

continually told that our suspicions are wrong, we were told in

Peterborough that the private finance initiative scheme was not an

affordable, that it was conspiracy talk, and then we are told it was an

absolute catastrophe. -- unaffordable. I think our fears are

grounded, and they need to be heard. Where I live, there is a district

general hospital that people have fought to save, and we are now being

told that the services, it is not the best place, the kind of points

you are making, and we will have community-based care, in much the

same way that we were told about mental health care and care in the

community 20 years ago. Those services simply are not there,

district nurses are supposed to be picking up the pieces when little

hospitals closed down, and we have lost a lot of beds. These district

nurses that are supposedly picking up the pieces, their figures have

declined 40% in the last ten years. We still trained doctors and nurses

and hospital when the majority of care takes place in the community.

In London, they claimed five district nurses only in the last

year, and this is supposedly the big new home. Why aren't we looking

fundamentally at the way, not just the way the public views services,

but the way we plan them, the way be trained staff, we need to make it

fit for the next generation. My daughter got the certainty of having

her children on the NHS, in a place which is safe, and secure, where

she's going to get the best possible outcomes for the above is not going

to happen if we don't fundamentally change the way we deliver the

majority of services. Is there evidence that people are dying?

There is evidence from Newark hospital. That was the AMD closure a

couple of years ago, subject to an ongoing investigation, but the

mortality rate of people within that region, emergency admissions has

gone up by 30% and that needs to be looked at to be confirmed but that's

just an example -- A People have to travel further. Ambulance

journeys take longer. It has to do come with funding. This government

is clear, there's a clear agenda to cut the amount of public spending

across the board, not just the health but across the board. Because

we don't have the money. Health insurance is coming our way. I'm

worried about this but I've co-founded a political party... Who

are you standing against? I'm going to stand against David Cameron in

Witney on an NHS ticket for 2015, general election, and the people of

Witney will have the opportunity to give the NHS they want. If we carry

on the way we are, we will lose the NHS. Professor Stevenson, we have

debated privatisation on The Big Questions. This leads us to the

conclusion that we've heard from Clive, we are losing our National

Health Service. Are we? It's not about privatisation. It's not about

hospital closure for the Peter Bratt has 184,000 people, 39 miles from

Cambridge, not much further from Leicester, two huge centres. If you

have a condition which can be treated at home, the best place for

it to be treated is at home. If you have something complex that needs

more technical expertise, better to go to a centre where the do lots of

it. It's not either or. It is misleading the public. There is

hardly hospitals closing in the country and there's nothing. They

moved to a service where you have immediate urgent care, and if you're

seeing in a category which needs help, paramedics transfer you. It's

a difficult sell, though. And MPs can't do it. MPs say it will cost

them 10,000 votes for that they know that. When someone presented with an

illness cover you don't know how old they are until they been assessed.

If someone comes another headache and B meningitis or a migraine. They

they need to be assessed. They can go an hour down the road. They need

to be seen and assessed by expert medical nursing staff of having done

that, they need to be triage. That is the modern 21st-century way. It's

not about everybody doing everything immediately. Whilst been hearing

what individual examples, and there are tragedies, let's not be

complacent about the fact that, today, the outcomes of survival of

people in this country is worse than France, worse than Germany, Holland,

many compatible countries. We want to get up to that standard of care

for the Wii won't do that by dwelling on this. If we were

starting again, with a blank sheet of paper, wouldn't we be designing a

National Health Service rather like the vision that the professor has?

Julia Manning is agreeing. I thought she would. Local health centres

dealing with those. There's a 12 point blank on upper body funded

provided... Rather than your 12 point plan which am sure we will be

reading about. Caroline, medical centres and big centres of

expertise... No one is arguing for nothing to change, but it's

important to remember, in 2010, though independent studies by the

Commonwealth fund, the OECD, the NHS, in terms of pounds spent in

terms of lives saved, it is one of the most efficient systems and the

whole world. APPLAUSE

And that's why people are so proud of it in this country.

And we hear about the new technologies which can come in. I

mean, we heard this message about the 111 service. I hear people

laughing. It's a classic example, technology was rolled out, you don't

need to go and clog up the hospitals and beds, just call this number for

the that's an example of a promise which did not materialise. The last

word from the audience. A quick comment. On the terms of saying that

these are tragic stories, and they are really sad and can't be helped,

and we shouldn't focus on them too much, if I hadn't got to hospital

within three minutes of when I had anaphylactic shock, I want to be in

the seat, C can't just ignore the tragic stories. If I couldn't get to

a hospital, and I had anaphylactic shock now, and the hospital was too

far away, I wouldn't survive. What is your name? Ruth. Her situation,

she might not be here today. I have worked in the NHS all my life and

I've never seen a patient... I believe in the NHS free at the

moment of delivery for the I'm asking for an NHS which can deliver

21st-century Quay, comparable to other countries, and for you, three

minutes coming on the paramedics to come to your home if you're that

sick, and get there within three minutes for them don't rely on you

somewhere else. The modern world is the medicine comes to you. It takes

you to the facility which can best to deliver high-quality care which

hopefully will get you to survive. Thank you all very much indeed.

Thank you. APPLAUSE

If you have something to say about that debate, logon to

bbc.co.uk/thebigque stions, and follow the link to where you can

join in the discussion online. Or contribute on Twitter. We're also

debating live this morning from Peterborough, will pre-nuptial

agreements undermine marriage? And are bible stories the way to teach

morality? So get tweeting or emailing on those topics now or send

us any other ideas or thoughts you may have about the show. On

Thursday, the Law Commission recommended that pre-nuptial

agreements should be enforceable in the event of a divorce, provided

both parties had received legal advice, had disclosed all their

assets and the agreement was signed at least four weeks before the

ceremony. So there's just about time to pop into your solicitor's, if you

are planning an Easter wedding. Will pre-nuptial agreements undermine

marriage? What do you think? Certainly. Yes, definitely. Ron,

you'd be married a few times. Eight times. I'm on my last. Did you not

think every single one of those marriages was going to be forever? I

did, you know. It takes two, doesn't it? I've never even thought of

prenup tales. In retrospect? -- pre-nuptials to me, it's like

saying, you have the fork and I'll have a nice, and then you have a

fight about the spoon. LAUGHTER

It's pushing people to think about divorce before they even married.

You have a lot of faith, which is the appropriate word to use on a

Sunday morning. The last woman you married was in Thailand. The latest

woman, you thought you were going to be with forever, was from the

Philippines. The woman from Thailand, she grabbed and seven

going to marry you. She planned the wedding while I was away for that I

had no choice. She was going to jump off the balcony. Something was in it

for her. She wanted a passport, gold, she wanted everything. Not

with me, though. If you had gone to the solicitor and said, you get that

no more in the event of our splitting up, would it not

approved, if she'd signed it, her genuine devotion to you? No,

because, actually, we just went in the registry office, it took five

minutes, when it came to the divorce, we we saw the same lady who

married us, and she divorced us within five minutes. How romantic!

It's so true. No, I mean, I've never believed that. I think it's up to

the couple themselves. Francine, you believed it, but isn't it turning

marriage into a cold transaction? This is a triumph of cynicism, isn't

it? I love those words. No, totally the opposite. This is not a career

move. I'm marrying you because I love you, not for any other reason.

So whenever you come into the relationship with something, that's

what we had, beforehand. And we will keep it, I respect that. I'm

marrying you, I love you, but we not having that if we split up. You

might have inherited something, there could be family obligations.

You could be third time around and you want to leave a legacy for your

children having lost a lot in your relationship previously. But I'm

marrying you. The first point is, if you have a prenup, you're getting

out at the beginning who we are in this relationship. But the most

important point is, because I love you, I want to look after you. Even

though I want to hold on to what I'm coming in with, for other reasons I

might have, when I marry you, you're going to be looked after and we both

become... So it's romantic? Yes, because beforehand, I'm saying I'm

going to look after you, take these vows of marriage seriously. If we do

divorce, what's going to happen afterwards if you're going to be

taking care of dollar Ade Omooba does not like this. Just let me

finish from moment. If you do it properly, and the couple sit down

together, you can make provision for afterwards, you don't wait until the

will to see what's happening at that point. You don't wait until the will

to see what's happening at that point. The it sets out sensibly

about how it should be for the. Marriage is no longer mine, it's

ours. If you don't understand the concept of marriage commits to

individual people come together and say, we want to stay together for a

lifetime. It's a lifetime commitment. Totally agree. You bring

it together and becomes ours. If you're so much in love with what you

had, before you but the person you are going to marry, going to marry

what you had before. Marriage, we speak about it as if it's something

which is extremely disabled and requires crutches. If you bring

arrangement into it, it only do value set. I think you're valuing it

more. Love, selfless, for one another. The moment you bring an

arrangement into it, you nullify that and it makes it easy for people

to walk away from it. In fact, it's harder for people to walk away from

it because of having to walk away from. If I have agreed to marry you

knowing that I have what I have and you have what you have, I've made a

choice. I've made a choice to be with you, not with what you have, so

I'm now... APPLAUSE

When you go into married to somebody, you go into it with

everything they have and you commit everything together.

Marriage is to become one. -- two becomes one. You can have children

if you wanted, and the whole family, it's for the better of that one

family. You could save money, though. The lawyers fees. They cut

back on legal aid for family situations and so, if you get it

sorted out beforehand and know who is going to get what, say we were

going to get marriage, same-sex marriage, I predict you're not a

good fan of that, Francine is talking about pre-nups,

I think they undermine the nature of marriage, which is what has already

been talked about. And in the Church of England marriage service, the

couple say to each other, all that I am, I give to you. All that I have,

I share with you. Now, I know that the ideal fulsome and,

unfortunately, reality shows a lot of marriages don't last. But when

you get pregnant, and you have a baby, you plan the baby shower, the

christening, you don't plan the sad eventuality that does happen, the

baby dies for the budget don't need to do that with children... Not with

the pre-nups as they are now. That brings it down to loss and profit,

materialistic view of assets. When, really, pre-nups can be reconfigured

and more the way Francine is talking, putting in goals and hope

that couple, their expectations, not just reduce it to finance and

possessions. You are a lawyer, and you? Yeah. You have dealt with

divorce, a divorce lawyer, in fact. In America, it is seen as a business

relationship, isn't it, marriage? We have been reading about these stars

over the years, and many of us reading with some horror about the

clinical nature of the situation, and get all that stuff is coming

here. Does it work internationally? It works. Marriage is a partnership,

and it is about trust and respect and all that, and it is not just

when you look at the prenup, it is how you divide assets, it is more

than that, because at that stage the couple are still talking to each

other, they trust each other, they want to have a future together. And

when you look at, for example, Germany, they have been floods for a

long time, not only in America. We hear about actors and rich people,

but that is not the reality. When we have them in Germany, it helps the

marriage, because at that time, when you consider a prenup or not, you

have the choice to do that, and you give security for the future. In

Germany, how long is a marriage in Germany, when you get divorced? We

have 15 years on average when you actually get divorced. In England we

have a very high divorce rate, and it is too high, and I think we need

to give the couple the security back, if they want a prenup, fine.

You do not like it, do you? You are from the Christadelphians, a

Christian group. I agree with Andy, it is a contract between man and

woman for life in front of God, not a contract with solicitors, not a

contract with lawyers. Jesus was asked about marriage, anti-sense, it

is not how God is designed it. One man, one woman together for life,

but he said divorce came in because of the hardness of your hearts.

People want to do what ever they like. The dowry is a business

transaction, a prenup agreement of sorts between families. The Bible is

littered with examples of dowries. Rebecca in Genesis, I wrote that

stand last night, there are many more. What is the difference? That

is true, and the traditions of the time were that. The Bible does not

say that you should provide a dowry, they just work, that is an

historical account, an accurate historical account. What it says is

that marriage is between man and woman for life. The challenge with

that is that people died in childbirth, so these days you can

have two or three marriages, this gentleman has had eight, there is

enough time to do that. When women were giving birth and dying, yes, it

was till death do us part, but the couples I am working with, who do

have marriages 15, 20, 25 years, the number one thing they argue about

when they divorced - money, money, money. And this is what really costs

them a lot of money with lawyers. If that had been sorted out, we

wouldn't have this problem. Have you got a prenup? I do, I do, and the

reason for that is that this is my second marriage, and my first

marriage ended very badly, we were very young, and I wish we had have

protected our assets. We didn't have any children, and I was taken to the

cleaners financially. And therefore with my second marriage, I wanted to

make sure that what I had build up again... Was it an easy sell to your

partner? I don't want you to take me to the cleaners, like my previous

partner? I think he understood where I was coming from, and I don't want

to say he was 100% keen on the idea, but certainly he could understand

where I was coming from. The situation has changed. You can

reaffirm your vows. Yes, we had a clause written into it, were in the

event of children, I would revisit it, or we would take steps to do a

prenup again. At the moment we have not done anything about it, and it

is null and void. There is some steam coming out of 's years!

AdeYou do not like this, do you? I do not like it, you have gone into

marriage, and you know it is not a bed of roses, we all know that. I

have been married for 22 years, I have got three kids, I love my wife

and kids to bits. We don't agree all the time on things, but we know that

we are committed to its together. Where we disagree, we disagree to

agree at the end of the day. We live with the consequences, that is life.

As everyone is here today, we don't know what is going to happen

tomorrow. That is the ideal, and as a Christian, and I have been married

for a very long time myself to the same man, but we know that marriage

is not a healthy place for a lot of people, particularly for a lot of

women and children. And I like the more creative, flexible approach

that you were talking about, and we have to understand divorce, even

though Jesus was against it. Luke is right, it is about the hardness of

our hearts, but also people having our human nature. If we didn't have

an exit route from relationships that were damaging people and

destroying people, it would be worse than if they had to stay in them. So

we have to deal with it, and the way to do it is, I think, marriage is

too easy, divorce is too difficult. Let's make marriage more difficult

so you cannot run in and get married to someone you do not know! The way

to make marriage... You acknowledge that divorce is necessary

sometimes? It is necessary at times, but the problems start before

marriage. That is what I am saying. You might love somebody but then

they start beating you up! Many people do not understand what love

is before they get into marriage. What is love? In 30 years, I have

counselled so many people, and I just have two young people in front

of me getting married, and I said, do you love each other? Tell me what

love is. They don't understand it! What is going to happen once they

get into it? I said, are you ready to lay everything you have down for

this management she looked at herself and said, yeah. And are you

ready to do the same for the? And they both paused. Yes, they were

Christians in church! This is the reason I want to sit with you first

and talk about love and understanding. Did they get married?

I married them, but I spent three months showing them the challenges

of marriage to minimise the problem of divorce. Francine. This is where

I agree with you, I spoke to a religious leader, and I said I

totally believe in marriage and would like to eliminate divorce, and

if I could get rid of that word, I would only call at completion

anyway. I spoke to a religious leader and I said to him, I know

exactly how to take young couples and show them what they are going

into, it is like they both have a banner over their heads, a

preconception from their upbringing, they started you that they are

running. If they knew that they were bringing that strategy into the

relationship, when they trigger each other and there is an upset, they

will know it is coming from the past. Now, I can show them how to do

that so that we can eliminate divorce and we want to get divorced.

So we said to me, what you are saying... You could eliminate

divorce? I could if I had speak to a couple before they got married. Wait

a minute, I said to the sky, we could do that, he said, Francine, so

what you are saying to me is you want to take two young people who

say they are in love and do not see any fault in each other and you want

to show them where they could get triggered? I see what you are

saying, but I am not going to do that. Why would I do that to them

and take away their dreams? Frank is a divorce lawyer, he does not like

the idea of divorce being taken away! Divorce happens, like it or

not, OK? It is real. Deal with it, make a deal. That is the way I see

it. Ultimately, if you put your plans upfront, you cannot dispute

that. By the time it gets to a divorce, people have stopped

communicating, there is hate and all sorts. Divorce is not a pleasant

place to be. And therefore, if you take steps to protect what you have

got up front, it resolves all of that nastiness and hate that

happens. We will end with you. If you have an argument, does that crop

up at all? Never. It has never cropped up. We discussed it very

heavily upfront. For you, it is for ever. It is for ever, yes, and that

is definite. Listen... Have some faith and respect! Ten years ago, I

was not a Christian. I am now a born Christian, and it has changed my

life completely, God has saved me. For the first time in this debate,

Ade is looking happy! Thank you. A round of applause for Ron. Thank you

very much indeed. You can join the debates by logging onto the BBC

website and following the links to the online discussion, or you can

tweet using the hashtag #bbctbq. And tell us what you think of our last

big question, our Bible stories the way to teach morality? If you would

like to be in the audience at a future show, e-mail us. Next week,

we are in Cardiff, Newcastle at the 16th, and one week after that

Southampton! Well, a recent YouGov poll for the

Bible Society found that over 60% of children had never heard, read or

seen popular Bible stories like the good Samaritan, or Daniel in the

line's den, but the same survey found that parents illustrate good

values that children should learn. Our baby way to teach morality? Look

from the Christadelphians, good morning again. -- Luke. You teach

children the story of Noah. Absolutely. Do you teach them the

bit about God deciding to wipe every one of the earth for being wicked?

We teach them everything, we teach them the whole Bible, every part. So

it is a bit indiscriminate, God killing everybody. If one of the

children says, that is a bit cruel, babies and children being killed

because some of them have been wicked, what do you say to them?

When people say that, and they do, what they forget is that God warned

those people for 120 years, and that is in there, and he warned them

again and again and again, and he told them that was going to happen.

They didn't listen, and finally when it happened, it was regrettable,

really regrettable. God did not want it to happen, but he warned them for

120 years, and when it did happen, it was on their own head. Well...

Would you teach them that the archive every single animal on

earth? We do. Kangaroos, polar bears, penguins? We take the Bible

literally. What about the sermon on the Mount? Yes. It is remarkable and

beautiful. This is one of the puppets reuse. If you have got... If

you have got puppets of any other prophets, kindly not show them! We

use them for two things, for public preaching, so out in the centre of

Peterborough, some people may have seen these. Anyone seen them? And we

also use them in Sunday schools, I teach Sunday school on a regular

basis and have done for 20 years or so, and I know from my own personal

experience, not just from teaching Sunday school, but from myself the

morals in the Bible are absolutely fundamental to me, to who I am, to

how I act, and I have seen it in children as well that I teach in

Sunday school, from the once 20 years ago and the ones I was

teaching last Sunday. We use the Bible, we base everything we believe

on the Bible, and there is a fantastic thing, stories in the

Bible, historical accounts. How does it work? I was hoping you would not

do this to me! Have you got a bench early quest act as well enter by I

have not, I normally leave the property is to it. -- have you got a

ventriloquist's act as well? These are wonderful stories, and they? The

bigger question is about stories and morale at ease, and stories are a

really important way to encourage moral development, they do things

that other things cannot not, adding warmth and colour and lessons and

engaging children. And we are lucky right now to have access to millions

of amazing stories, stories with incredible characters, with

incredible lessons, which adds deep, in the way I have described,

children's stories like Harry Potter... Is Harry Potter better

than the Bible? Harry Potter has people cooperating, behaving

Waverly. Able combining against evil in the world. And I think stories

like that, stories of Philip Pullman, are a really good way of

encouraging children to think about moral issues and become better

people and to want to be better people because they see those

examples in stories. In comparison, the stories in the Bible aren't good

enough to be morally instructive. APPLAUSE

I think that lots reasons. Which ones are not good enough? What

about the stuff about Noah warning people? You said there's a lot of

nasty violence and amorality in the Bible like wiping out the entire

population of the Earth, because they're not doing what you told them

to do. Also a lot of other very superficial stories. I mean, even

stories that might be useful as a one-off lesson, like the good

Samaritan for example, is a good example of someone reaching out

across the cultural boundary to help somebody. But in the stories, it's

not something they engaged something immediately like modern fiction they

can get into straightaway. They have got the puppets. The fact you need

the puppets to make the story useful as an indication of not a good

story. It doesn't need explaining. A man was lying beaten, robbed on the

floor, and a complete stranger came along and showed him compassion. And

you say it superficial? It's wonderful. It's a nice moment, it's

a nice moment. We don't need to go any further. My grandfather lived to

120 years. He had this Bible story, the missionaries brought the stories

of Jesus explaining divinity and humanity, and he was saved, he

passed on to my father and my children. Do we get our morals from

the Bible? Of course we do. Where did the ancient peoples, 50,000

years ago, where did they get their morals from? The Bible talks about

human beings. Where did they get their morals? God is an aid in us,

goodness. As we leave our lives, and communicate, the moment we make

decisions in our lives, we live with the consequences. So it's not from

the Bible, it's innate? The Bible traitorous as people, and gives us

guidance on how to live our lives and that's fantastic fulsome but

millions of people live before the Bible. I'm saying, yes, I'm talking

about God, who was before the Bible. The point I would make, innate

goodness. I would say we are made in the image of God, and we can choose

to follow a la innate goodness or not. I think, I love the stories.

You are talking about Harry Potter etc. The stories in the Bible are

absolutely brilliant for teaching morality. Think of the prodigal son,

he goes off, makes a mess of his life, comes back and the moral of

the story is, when you have blown it, say you're sorry, and God is a

God of forgiveness, you can start again. But it has to be retold in

every single generation. And the problem I would have with keeping it

only in this century, is it is so remote fulsome children can't

understand it. Stories have to be completely retold, re-dressed,

reconfigured for each generation, but the Bible is filled with such

incredible truth, but... There's another story here, which occurred

to me. What marriage is there in the story of Abraham being on the brink

of sacrificing his son because God told him to sacrifice his son? Now,

these days, it's a job for social services. What is the point about?

What is the merit of that story? Didn't ultimately go through with

it. The merit is all about a person 's relationship to God. It's about

who do you put first in your life? We would have to really tell that

story differently because that would be totally unacceptable now. It has

to be retold because no parent these days would ever get that far to

plunge a knife to sacrifice their child for the do you think Abraham

got that far? It is a story. It's not. It's a historical account. Did

that happen? I don't think so. It talks about radical BDM is to God.

If you started missing part of the Bible as being just stories... Of

course we don't think the Bible literally. It stands as a complete

book. Historical? It's not a bug, it's a library. It's fundamentally

moral. I think it's extraordinary that Christians seem to think they

invented morality. But it is innate. The higher cognitive species,

gravity. If you look at the birds feeding is young, you don't think at

the expense of the zone life, you don't think that is being moral. If

you look at a fish which gives 10,000 eggs, which deaths, it's not

a bad thing. Let's get back to the stories in the Bible. What is your

favourite? I think the Bible is an interesting document. It's part of

the social fabric of Great Britain. I think, in terms of offering moral

guidance, I think it's pretty much zero. Not at all. The sermon on the

Mount? Do unto others? That is the golden thread that runs through all

the great religions of all time. Christians didn't invent gravity.

There is a reason why morality has evolved. Partly because human beings

take so long to develop in the womb, nine months, so the human

brain is the most complex thing known to man. Youngsters take 15

years to develop. Parents have to devote a huge amount of their life

to their children. That is the crucible in which Varanasi evolves.

It is inevitable otherwise they wouldn't survive. Let's hear from

the audience. The word story has been mentioned a lot and if you add

the word theory before it, that basically is what all those stories

are about. -- fairy. Goldilocks and the three Bears, Harry Potter, Lord

of rings, I don't read the Bible and I don't think children need the

Bible be taught good morals. Parents need to teach their children good

morals, not a book. I think the Bible is great, full of some super

stuff, a simple line of Scripture, I try to live by it. I think there are

dangers women look at other stories by other authors like Harry Potter

for the BS, there are some great points about Harry Potter,

friendship and standing up, Shakespeare, that an element of

people, the occult, dangerous. The dangers of the occult. The Bible is

a good reference but it surely isn't the only reference. You should

reference many aspects for philosophy, etc. We're not claim

exclusivity on gravity. We've never claimed that, but a lot of people

are talking about children. -- morality. We have children all over

the country coming to have fun, make their friends and learn at the

Bible, so I ask this question yesterday, 13 and 14-year-old

children, they said real people, real emotions, real lessons. And

what they said as the Bible is not old, it's not old-fashioned, it is

absolutely relevant for them today. These are young people who are

facing the world and the problems of this world, and it's not an easy

place to live. The Bible as the advantage over Shakespeare and

Dickens and JK Rowling? Because it's true? Absolutely. If one of those

pupils asked you about something in Saint Paul's gospel, what does it

mean when it says a wife should submit her husband? What does that

mean? Explain that to a child. Yes, I believe you can explain the whole

of the Bible to a child. I have an 18-month-old daughter and I read her

Bible stories as she grows older full I will explain the Bible

stories to her. The Bible puts it, and I don't want to get into

verbatim doctrine, but the Bible has principles in place and there is a

principle of authority from God, through Jesus, to husband, to the

wife. That doesn't mean a husband has control over the wife. It is a

biblical principle. Hierarchy. You won't be surprised to hear me say

that Christians hold a different interpretation of the Scriptures

and, looking at the Bible, you can't look at it as a set piece. You have

to look at who wrote it, in what context, what was their worldview

and interpret it for us now. And that's why we need theologians. This

is what is confusing. You like the cuddly bits. He likes it all. I

don't just like the cuddly bits for the we have to face Noah and the

flood, Abraham and Isaac, Lott 's wife turning into a pillar of salt.

The radical things. We have to distinguish what is teaching about

proof and reality and humanity fraught time, and what is culturally

different. The wheat from the chaff for the discernment and wisdom for

that that's why we have brains. This is one of the problems we have with

using Bible stories as a way of trying to encourage moral develop

went for the they are all the things I said before, they are narrower

than other fiction. But it's also the case that some people believe

they are actually true and for them, it's a religious matter. And so, the

discussion about those stories becomes extremely intense,

conflicted, volatile, and it's difficult to use them as fictional

examples with which to develop empathy and so on for them at least

a Harry Potter, very few people actually believe it's real. And you

could use those stories in a proper way. The example you said about the

wives submitting to their husbands... We don't have time for

that. It's very important about family thought of the same chapter

says a husband must not be harsh to their wives. And it doesn't say or

husband controls you. In any environment, there is leadership for

the shared leadership, either for one another, love one another. You

get the children are held context so they take it. That is

interpretation. Yes, it's interpretation. It has to be

interpreted. It's not interpretation for Luke. God wrote it. No no no no

no. Not at all for top human beings about it. Wonderful human beings

wrote it. Inspired by God's holy spirit. It's up to us to interpret

it. We believe them to it. Mayhem. Thank you all very much for taking

part this morning. As always, the debates will continue online and on

Twitter. Next week we're in Cardiff, so join us then. But for now it's

goodbye and have a great Sunday. Thank you for watching The Big

Questions.