In Gaza. It's war again. The negotiators have walked away from truce talks in Qatar. Hamas says it won't free any more hostages until Israel stops the bombing. Israel says it won't stop the bombing until Hamas is destroyed. It there will be no peace and no end to the killing anytime soon. The devastating Gaza is causing tremors in Washington. The Americans are saying to Israel in public, enough already. Up to 70,000 people died from extreme heat just last year, according to a recent study. Everyone agrees that we need to cool it, but is the debate in Dubai producing anything more than warm words? Victoria Atkins is the new health secretary and joins me in the studio. We'll get the latest government view on Gaza and talk about how to start a health service she says is facing a hard winter ahead. Jonathan Reynolds is Labour's Shadow business Secretary. His leaders in the papers this morning praising Margaret Thatcher. Is this a sign of things to come from a party that's likely to form the next government? We're at the Cop Climate Change conference, where world leaders are trying to save the planet. From there, we'll speak live to former Australian prime minister and welcome chair Julia Gillard.

And just what does success look like for Israel in its war in Gaza? And how can civilians be protected? I'll be joined by the Israeli ambassador to the UK sippy pottobelli. And with us throughout the morning, the broadcaster, author and conservative commentator, Ian Dale, the journalist and author Form Mason and the former Lib Dem advisor, Holly Mackenzie. Welcome to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. It's the darkest Sunday of the year here in London and it's cold outside. It'd be easy to forget that this has been the hottest year on record, with wildfires burning across the globe and the international effort to keep global temperatures down evermore in jeopardy. I grew up in a country, Guyana, where the capital, Georgetown, lies below sea level. We only needed to glance out of the window at the crumbling sea wall to know that a small rise in sea level would make 350,000 people refugees overnight. They haven't forgotten in Dubai, where 70,000 delegates are gathered for Cop 28, there's a deal on the table to help small nations facing extinction. But we've yet to hear what some of the big emitters, China, India for example, really plan to do to stop global warming.

A climate's having its political impact here at home. The cold snap reminds us that winter is coming and with it, what seems like an annual crisis in the NHS for a government. 20 points and more adrift in the polls, the outlook seems bleak in every way. A little earlier, I spoke to the health secretary, Victoria Atkins. Victoria Atkins, you must be disappointed that the conflict has started again in Gaza after the truce. We are playing a part here. What exactly are our military aircraft doing in Gaza?

Well, of course, the UK government was very supportive of humanitarian pauses, because whilst we absolutely support Israel's right to defend itself, we also acknowledge, of course, there are humanitarian repercussions in Gaza itself and indeed across Israel. And so we were very much advocating for those pauses to continue in terms of the military hardware that is in the region. The Ministry of Defense has announced that it has sent some unmanned and importantly unarmed surveillance drones into the region to help look for hostages, because having had around 100 hostages released, of course, there are still many, many more who are being held captive by Hamas. And we want to do everything we can to help find those hostages and to secure their release.

Let me take you up on one thing, if I may. You've started by talking about humanitarian forces. It's very interesting, the change of tone from you. The American Vice President yesterday issued a warning to Israel that there'd already been too many killings. Lord Cameron was out there last week. Did he say to the Israelis that they are risking British and American support if the loss of civilian life keeps rising in Gaza?

Well, I hope you'll appreciate I won't trespass on conversations that the Foreign Secretary may have had with his counterparts, but certainly the international community throughout this, even in the immediate aftermath of the horrors of October the 7th, we're saying that, of course, Israel, as the only democracy in the region, will be wanting to act within international law. But we're seeing again and again the awful, awful humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in terms of Hamas's treatment of people. Only yesterday, Janice Turner had an extraordinarily shocking article about how rape is being used as a weapon of war by Hamas. And it is these sorts of crimes that we very much want to support the international community in supporting Israel.

There's no question about the degree of horror that people have for what Hamas did, and that's where this started. No question about that. But it seems to me that the UK and the USA are beginning perhaps, to run out of patience with Israel again.

We stand absolutely steadfast with Israel, but we have always said that this must happen within international law. And so we were very, very supportive of the humanitarian pauses. And we very much hope that Hamas will get back around the table and agree to more of these pauses and release more hostages. They could end this tomorrow, today, even.

All right, you've been in your role as Health Secretary for about, what, two weeks now. Extraordinary. You've met your target for nurse recruitment and GP appointments. You've settled a strike. That's all good news. But you have also pointed out in the last couple of days that there is a difficult winter ahead. Prime Minister's promised a slash waiting list. How's that going?

Well, just if I may, just on my first couple of weeks, it's been an absolute privilege to be appointed to this role. I came into politics. One of the reasons I came into politics was because of the NHS and the way it's looked after me and my family. So it's a genuine privilege, but also a huge responsibility. And I'm also conscious that there's an enormous amount of teamwork that goes on across NHS England, across the Department of Health, and, of course, my predecessors to achieve the manifesto promise that we've achieved this week of 50,000 more nurses and so on.

But let's come to winter now, in.

Terms of the winter crisis, of course, this is my absolute priority over the coming months because we know that the NHS, like every other health care system, in fairness, struggles in the winter with temperatures dropping and the impact that has on people's health. And so we have set in place our urgent and emergency care plan. We've started preparing for winter before we were preparing last winter for this. And we are seeing already in the system, we are beginning to meet our target of 5000 more beds in hospitals to try and get through some of those delays that we I'm going to.

Come to some of the details in a second, but I'm interested that you are using the word crisis already. Is that where we are?

Well, only no, not at the moment. But again, I do understand the challenges that the NHS will face over the coming months. I think we all do. We all acknowledge that as winter comes in, we have more respiratory illnesses, we have physiological impacts of cold temperatures on people, particularly if they have preexisting conditions. So we're trying to prepare for that. But I do acknowledge the challenges that everybody will be facing across.

The issue is whether the system can cope. Is it right that coroners have three coroners have already written to you saying you got to get ready for the winter because they're already seeing ambulance delays that have caused unnecessary deaths?

Well, I was very, very concerned to understand that, but also, of course, as a rural constituency MP, I know how difficult it can be in very rural areas for ambulances to get to people on time. And this is why, through our winter planning, we are bringing 800 new ambulances on board. That will help. And we have already this month seen some improvement, actually, from this time last year. Our category two ambulance times, which is the measure we tend to use, they're some 19 minutes faster than they were this time last year. But of course, I'm not resting on my Lauras with that. We need to do all right, let's.

Dig into the details of this just a little bit. Okay? The ambulance gets people to the hospital. That doesn't mean they're going to get into a bed. Let me just tell you what the NHS England's own statistics said in 2014. The total number of people who had to wait 12 hours for a hospital admission after a decision had been taken to admit them was 489 under 500 in 2014 for a whole year in October. This year, just one month that was warmer than usual. The average number of people had to wait over 12 hours was 1440, nearly three times as many a day. And that's each day is this month. In that month. What are your plans to cope with? It's a whole different scale.

So this is part of the longer term pressures on the NHS. So what we are doing to address this is almost looking at the end rather than the beginning, because if we can move people out of the system more quickly, then the flow through the hospitals, forgive me, is much, much smoother and quicker. So with hospital discharge.

But the scale of it is extraordinary, isn't it?

Well, we have 11 million inpatients a year, so the scale of the NHS is unique around the world. Of course it is. But it is also unique because of the very fact that our care is free at the point of use and that will continue for as long as I'm alive. This means that we are able to measure this in ways that perhaps other areas aren't able to. But the key to this is hospital discharge. And there are some areas now, because of the plans that have gone into winter planning already, but also importantly, the further 600 million pounds of investment that we've put into social care this year, systems around the country have been able to plan. And there are some areas now where there aren't those delays of submitting into social care. But of course, there is more to.

Do in every well, let's talk about that, because the other big obstacle in meeting your ambitions is the workforce. Now, the latest figures from September show that you've got 121,000 and more Vacancies. That's about 10% of the NHS workforce. And in June this year, 265,000 of those people came from abroad. That's more than the year before. Now, your colleague, Mr Hunt, sat in that seat a couple of weeks ago and told me he wants immigration numbers down if he gets his way. Where are those 265,000 foreign workers in the NHS? And by the way, the similar number in social care going to come from? You're never going to meet your targets if he gets his way on immigration.

All of our workforce, whether they are UK nationals or they have come from overseas to work in our NHS and social care system, are incredibly important to the system and I genuinely thank them for their service. In terms of immigration as a whole, it is too high. But there's more to immigration than simply health and social care visas. So this year, we unveiled a genuinely game changing policy of removing dependents from student visas. They take up quite a portion of.

Let me show you something. Take a look at this graph here. A great number of the people that you're missing, about a third are nurses. Where are the nurses coming from? Those red bars are foreign nurses. And this year, 2023, half of the new nurses that come into the system are from abroad. So let me put it to you again. If Mr Hunt gets his way to cut immigration, you'll never meet your targets because you will not have those nurses.

Well, this is where the long term workforce plan comes into effect. And earlier this year, we announced the Long Term Workforce Plan for the whole of the NHS. I see it as a sort of building blocks for the next 75 years of the NHS. And the focus on this is about training our nurses and doctors here in the UK and supporting them and retaining them through innovative measures such as nursing, apprenticeships, shorter degrees.

You're not going to fix this this winter.

This is for the medium to longer term. We have recruited our nurses and our social care workers. They play an incredibly important part in our health system. And we are working across government to tackle immigration because we understand it's of great concern, but we can do this in a way that protects the NHS.

Let me just quickly ask you about one other thing, which, in a way goes back to your last job as Attorney General.

Financial Secretary, treasury.

Sorry. Financial Secretary. Treasury, where you're also interested in immigration and so on. Now, the government's apparently putting some more money into the system to make the Rwanda deal, to sweeten the Rwandan deal.

I don't think that's been confirmed yet. I think speculation.

It is speculation. It's reported. Okay. The only person who seems to be on their way to Rwanda, actually, is the Home Secretary, James Clevernley. There's no asylum seekers going there anytime soon. Again, when he was here, he told me he was going to introduce emergency legislation urgently to make it possible to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, and that was weeks ago. Where's that emergency? It can't be that much of an emergency, because we haven't seen the legislation.

Well, it was right that we took time to read the Supreme Court's judgment carefully to understand the points that they raised. We, of course, respect that judgment, but we don't agree with it in that we think we can set out the case. And it was important because the Supreme Court acknowledged that it was perfectly proper to send people to a third country to decide our asylum claims. But in terms of Rwanda, we are very much working across government on this. It will take a little bit of time to draw up this legislation because we want to make sure it's in the right form.

So we're not going to see anything very soon, are we? No legislation for Christmas.

I know that the Home Secretary is working incredibly hard quickly on this.

All right, one last thing. You must have read this morning. That the Leader of the Opposition has praised Mrs Thatcher for dragging us out of our stupor as a country introducing entrepreneurialism and he's inviting Conservative voters to come across. Are you thinking about crossing the floor because Labor has gone? Thatch right.

I think the public will see this for what it is. Don't forget, he wasn't appealing to Margaret Thatcher's entrepreneurial spirit when he was courting votes from the hard left. And I suspect the great lady herself would view a man who is trying to ride on the coattails of her success with the following. No. No.

Victoria Atkins, thank you very much indeed.

Thank you.

With us throughout the show today is our panel broadcaster and author Ian Dale, journalist and author Paul Mason and former Lib Dem advisor, Polly McKenzie. Let's get a very quick take on that last channeling of Mrs Thatcher. Paul Mason, what's your leader trying to do?

Well, the Conservatives are falling apart in office. They are at war with each other over Rwanda and much else. And I think it's entirely legitimate for Keir to be saying, look, if you're one of those Conservatives who thinks the Rwanda deal is rubbish, if you want strong communities, safe streets, and yes, if you like the idea of a thriving entrepreneurial society, the Conservatives are not delivering one. So think about labor.

Ian, Apollo, you first. Has he got a chance on this with this?

Well, he'll do what he wants to do, which is mildly or violently irritate the left of the Labor Party, thereby not Paul, of course. Paul is known as a moderate and reasonable person who never gets hold of.

The last three months by talking about.

Margaret Thatcher, who still looms large over our politics in a way that really just makes you ponder the smallness of our current political leaders. He can potentially appeal to a few people, but mostly he can remind people that he is not of the hard leftist.

All right, listen, I'm going to come back to you, Ian, but I'm being told that we have to talk to our next interviewee because they're in Dubai and things will fall apart there if we don't. Now the world leaders are in Dubai for the UN climate change conference. US Vice President Kamala Harris has announced that 100 countries have pledged to triple renewable energy production, but there are still concerns about what can be achieved at this cop. So I'm going to speak now to the former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who is now also the chair of the welcome Trust, and she's speaking to us live from Dubai. Good morning, Ms Gillard. Can I just first ask you about Israel and Gaza? You are an experienced political leader on the world stage. The short truce has ended. Mrs Harris told the conference yesterday that the death toll is already too high. From where you are talking to people in Dubai, is there any sense that the support for Israel is wavering in any way.

Well, I'd have to be clear that I've been on a different mission in Dubai. We're here at Cop and being chair of welcome, I've been here for what is the first ever Climate and Health Day. So a recognition that the climate crisis is a health crisis. And yes, we can measure it in degrees of temperature, but we can also measure it in human lives. So all of my discussions have been around that, not more broadly.

Okay, well, let's come to that. You are, as you say, trying to draw attention to the effects of climate change on health. We seen at least one study that says 70,000 people, or there were 70,000 excess deaths last year alone due to extreme heat. What sort of impact are we talking about other than that?

Well, extreme heat in many ways is just the start of it. As bad as that is, we are also seeing infectious diseases going into zones that they haven't been before, because climate change warmer, wetter is enabling those diseases and the insects that carry those diseases to thrive in new regions. You've pointed to extreme heat. Obviously, there's a whole set of questions about human biology in extreme heat. And we also know that climate change in many parts of the world is degrading the food system. So there's less food and the food that is grown is less nutritious. But to be frank, one of the reasons welcome is in this space is because we don't know yet every manifestation of the effects of climate change on health. That's why we're investing this year alone 100 million pounds to make sure that the scientific community globally can fully inform us about the likely ramifications of climate and health. And hopefully that's a spur to action to get leaders at events like this to do more to address climate change. And it can inform how we adapt to climate change and particularly how we get our health systems ready.

For example, we're trying to assist with things like being able to map where outbreaks of things like cholera are most likely to starve and that anticipatory work can obviously help a health system get prepared.

What would you expect or what would you like to come out of these sessions from world leaders? We've seen that there is a deal pretty much on the loss and damage question, the support for smaller nations facing extinction. There's a deal on nuclear energy, it looks like. What would you like to see them do on health?

Well, we're very pleased that this has been the first Cop at which health has been raised, that there's been a Climate and Health Day. The hosts at UAE have facilitated that. We're grateful for that. We're also very pleased to see 123 countries have signed on to a Climate and Health declaration. But we recognize with all of that, it's just the start. We do need to be addressing the transition from fossil fuels because, properly viewed, the continued use of fossil fuels does create a public health problem in many, many ways. It's obviously feeding into the climate crisis, but the air pollution from fossil fuels directly, we know from research in the British Medical Journal, costs around 5 million lives each year.

It's obviously a top agenda topic right across the globe. But what has been emerging in the last years, actually, in the last few months very strongly, is that not everybody agrees. And the battle of ideas, which I think many people like yourself would have thought had been won at Cop 26 in Glasgow, hasn't. We've seen challenges to net zero targets by political leaders in Holland, in France, now in Argentina, who've been successful? I was in Germany at the start of this week, and there the alternative for Deutschland has made enormous progress electorally, largely on their opposition to net zero. The battle that you're fighting is still to be won, isn't it?

Yes, in many parts of the world it is. And right around the world, we need to lift ambition. And I get that communities, families, individuals say to themselves, well, look, my life is pretty hard today and I've got to focus on the things that matter for my family. There are cost of living pressures, all of those sorts of issues, and that's what I'm worried about. I can completely get that. But we are saying to people, look, if you properly view this climate crisis as a health crisis, I think we're all able to say as individuals, there's nothing more important to us than our own health, than the health of our family members. And so we're saying to people, look, if you believe that, and many, I think people in their billions do believe that health is fundamental, then that does take you in the direction of addressing climate change, because it is going to matter for human health. It already is mattering for human health and we're going to see greater effects in the future. And whilst being in a high income country, the benefits of being in a more wealthy place can help shield people, in truth, no one's going to be immune from these health effects.

Well, there is a difference between the high income and the lower income countries, isn't there? I mean, we still have to hear much, I think, this time around, from China and India. At Cop 26 in Glasgow, they essentially watered down the deal because their argument, of course, is that you guys, us, Britain, America, Australia, you've had 200 years of polluting the world, got the advantages of it, and now you expect us to slow our development because of something that you did. What are you saying to the Chinese and the Indians when they put that case to you?

Well, the declaration from this Cop is still under negotiation, so there's still time and there's still time to make sure that it reflects these health issues. What I would say broadly to everybody is we only share the one planet. We've only got the one planet. And of course, people want to see economic development, they want to see prosperity. Nations want to see that, individuals and communities want to see that. We want to see that in our own lives, for our own families. But there are ways of doing the transition that also are good for economic growth. And coming back to this health agenda, of course, I mean, poor health in the community is an economic issue. If we haven't learned that after the pandemic, I'm not sure when we're going to it shows in lost productivity, lost opportunity and greater health and social care costs.

I know that you're there for a very specific reason, but I wonder if I may just take you on to another topic, which I know has always been of interest to you, and that is the position of women particularly well across the globe, but the issue of women in war. You are chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership and a debate not a debate, I think it's probably more accurate to say an accusation has been leveled that many of the world's governments, many of its leaders, and the UN in particular, has had too little to say about what happened to women on October the 7th. You will probably know of the material that's been circulated, the accounts of Horrid. I mean, all rape is horrible, particularly brutal and pretty much unspeakable acts. What is your reaction to those who are saying that the world's leaders have somehow gone absent on the issue of the treatment of women in this particular conflict?

Well, I'm not sure I'm across every world leader's statement on it, but on my own behalf, obviously, what I'd say is gender based violence everywhere, whether it's October 7 in Israel or anywhere in the world, is wholly unacceptable. We know that gender based violence continues to blight the lives of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of women. And with my Global Institute for Women's Leadership hat on, we obviously want to see a world of greater gender equality and a world that is one in which women can go about their lives with safety and security.

Judah Gillard, thank you so much for your time this morning.

Thank you. And sorry for the fiddling with the earpiece, but I've been able to hear you, so that's a great result.

It is just coming up to 09:00. You're watching Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. In the last hour, the health secretaries told this program that the NHS is not yet in seasonal crisis, but it will be a hard winter ahead. And Victoria Atkins wouldn't confirm whether emergency legislation to send asylum seekers to Rwanda would be in parliament before Christmas. Well, there's still plenty to come. We'll hear from our panel throughout the next hour and in just a moment we will hear from Labour's shadow business Secretary that's Jonathan Reynolds. We'll also talk to Israel's ambassador to the UK, Cebi Potaveli, and she'll be in the studio to discuss the latest on events in Gaza. So there's plenty to talk to with our panel here. So let's talk to my mates here, Ian Dale, Paul Mason and Polly Mackenzie. Ian, I cut you off when you had the chance to comment on Victoria Atkins's channeling Margaret Thatcher earlier on.

Well, Margaret Thatcher is an iconic figure in British politics, whether you agree with her or not. But what we have to remember is that anyone under the age of 50 doesn't remember Margaret Thatcher in office, probably. So Kirstarmer's comments in this interview I think are interesting in the sense that, well, who's he aiming them at? I mean, if he's just aiming them at Conservative voters, I can't really think of a single Conservative that's going to switch to Labor just because he says a few nice things about Margaret Thatcher. It seems bizarre to me because he is going to alienate a lot of people in his own party by doing that. Tony Blair did it, Gordon Brown did it, but they were much nearer her time in power.

Both Ian and Polly Paul have said that this may do more to hack off people in the Labor Party than to attract potential Tory voters who might be potential labor voters.

If what labor were playing for was a sort of ten to 20 or 30 majority, you might be right. But I think everybody in the Labor Party, and I'm on the left of it, can see that there's a potentially a moment coming up where labor sort of rejigs politics and starts to represent that part of the middle. Remember, my own town, Lee in Lancashire, went Tory for the first time since, well, ever. And I can see people who voted Conservatives hopefully coming back to Labor, not because Kia Stalbert says Thatcher revitalized the economy, because they know that she didn't, that their own economy collapsed after the minor strike. But they can see the idea that if you want safe streets, if you want strong communities, then the way the economy is going right now isn't going to deliver them. And growth is what delivers it. And I think labor will win a substantial majority on that proposal, growth.

We will come back to talk about the politics of it, but let's polly, if I can come to you. Victoria Atkins seemed rather sanguine about the problem that I think they have, which is you haven't got enough people to work in social care and the NHS. A large proportion of those who do work in social care and the NHS come from abroad. You want to bring down immigration. How do you square that circle? Do you think that she is right to be relaxed about it?

Well, I think she's right to be.

Relaxed about immigration because actually, I think it's one of the reasons why the economy. Is performing a bit less sluggishly than we expected. It's one of the reasons why the NHS is doing well. It's one of the reasons our universities are not currently financially collapsing, is simply because of fees from international students. But the gap between what's actually happening, which is immigration continues to enable our economy and our public services to function. And what they say they want to happen is simply bizarre. I mean, David Cameron said he wanted to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands is basically, I mean, nearly tripled since then. And lots of that is because of, again, government decisions, which I support, like opening us up to asylum seekers from Ukraine, not technically asylum seekers, repatriating people from Afghanistan, opening our borders to Hong Kong. They set a target for 600,000 international students. It's just why they're relaxed about the politics of this just completely contradictory science.

It's quite curious, isn't it, Ian? This is probably, de facto, whatever the rhetoric says, the most pro immigration government in history.

Well, it is if you look at the facts, but not if you look at the rhetoric. And the rhetoric and the facts at some point have to collide. And I've always thought that the levels of immigration are effectively determined by the economy. If we need extra workers in a particular sector and we can't recruit them from this country, well, where else are they going to come from but abroad? So I've always thought that immigration, by and large, was a very good thing for the economy. And this year you've got circumstances that bring things together, sort of Hong Kong, Ukraine, the number of foreign students. I mean, we should be proud that all these foreign students want to come here because we have world class universities, and yet somehow the Tories are giving us the impression they think that's in some way a bad thing. It isn't a bad thing. And anybody that voted for Brexit who thought that it would lead to reduced immigration, I mean, I said at the time during the campaign, if you think that, you are going to be very, very disappointed because it's not going to be like that.

Yeah. The curious ironies is quite a lot of people might have voted for what they thought would be less immigration from the rest of the world. What we end up with, almost relatively speaking, no immigration from Europe, but tons from, particularly Nigerian.

That isn't true. We still have net immigration to this country from the European Union. It's just not as much as it was before, but it has opened it up to the rest of the world.

My point is, it's way lower, and Nigeria and India particularly, are a multiple of what they used to be. But Paul, this is not just a story problem. Isn't it? Darren Jones, Shadow cabinet member, said to me last week, labor wants immigration to come down. He later said, they wanted it around 200,000 a third of what it is right now. And I noticed that in Kirstarmer's piece this morning, he criticizes the Tories for their record on immigration, but doesn't say anything either about what levels labor wants or indeed what labor is going to do to bring it down.

Yeah, I think there's one sense. Well, first of all, let's remember most of the debate about immigration is about the small boats issue, which has to be sorted if you're in politics and the government says, we'll sort it out, and they don't, I think it's quite legitimate to say, well, the way you're doing it doesn't seem to be working. But like Polly, like everybody around this table, I think immigration is a net positive in many ways. What Labor need to do, obviously, they need to spell out what they're going to do about the small boats. And they've said they'll cancel the Rwanda scheme. On the issue of economic migration. You've just got to kind of find a balance between starmer says in that article in the Telegraph it's not acceptable that the government policy is that foreign workers can work on 80% of the wages. And people do care about that because they want to see those nurses employed at the right shopping you because we've.

Got a lot of people out on the road today who need to talk to us when they need to talk to us. And I'm now going to talk to the Shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds. Good morning, Mr. Reynolds.

Morning.

I want to come to that interesting piece by your leader this morning, but can I just very quickly start as often as usual with Gaza? Labour's line on Gaza has been to stand four square with Israel and you've called for the ceasefire. It's evident that's not going to happen. You've heard what the American Vice President said yesterday, and the American, I think, Defense Secretary said today, how many deaths in Gaza is it going to take for labor to withdraw its backing for Israel?

Well, I wouldn't characterize a situation like that, Trevor. I mean, first of all, we all want to see a cessation of violence and a real peace process, not warm words, a real peace process reinstated. We have been absolutely clear that we recognize there is no way to do that whilst the threat of Hamas that was manifested on October 7 still remains. And that requires either a political commitment that can be trusted from Hamas and that, I'm afraid, is not something that looks likely, or the removal of that threat. And we've seen in this brief humanitarian pause what can be done. Obviously, everyone welcomes the release of hostages and aid getting into Gaza, but our position has always recognized, yes, we want to get to the end of this horrendous episode, but there's got to be a practical understanding of the limitations and the way to do that. I'm simply calling for a ceasefire when that would have abandoned hostages or meant that that threat remained. That was not a realistic or desirable thing to call for.

Okay, so no change in your position. And of course, that's a bit of a problem, isn't it? Because Labor MPs are reporting being harassed and intimidated by activists in their constituencies. Two weeks ago, Rachel Reeves was here and she condemned such activities, called for it to stop, but as far as we understand it, it hasn't. Will Labor expel any party activists found to be taking part in such demonstrations and intimidations of Labor MPs?

Look, this has been a difficult period for everybody in politics, but I think we all keep that in proportion to what is going on in the ground in the Middle East, which is obviously the paramount concern that we have in terms of internal labor matters. We have very high standards that we expect from anyone who is a party member. We've changed the party. We've fundamentally professionalized and put in place a series of disciplinary procedures to make sure people do live up to that standard. And look, people have a right to demonstrate, to express to their member of Pond or anyone else how they feel about an issue. Of course, if that were to get into intimidation or things that are unacceptable, we would look at that in the usual disciplinary fashion. But look, as I say, whilst we've had a difficult period here in the UK, I think everyone primarily sees this issue through the incredibly difficult situation on the ground in Gaza.

All right, look, let's talk about politics. Your leader this morning says in a Conservative leading newspaper that Labor will be the change that will, I'm quoting here, get Britain back to greatness. When was that greatness that you're getting back to? Was it when Margaret Thatcher, and I'm quoting again, he says, set loose our natural entrepreneurialism?

Well, the point that Kia is making is we can be the vehicle for change in the UK, because we can point to how we have changed the Labor Party since 2019, how Kia has changed the Labor Party. And for people who are happy with everything in the UK right now, if they want the status quo, you've got the Conservatives. And if you want to change, if you want better public services, a better economy, better living standards, labor is the vehicle to do that. And it's not about looking at any particular period.

If I can interrupt you, I don't think that is what he says. He says that Labor will, quote, get Britain back to greatness. He does say we've done something with the parties, but he's very specific in his piece that he is looking back to a point of greatness. And I just want to know when that was.

The point that Kiera is making is not to endorse any Prime Minister, be that a Conservative or a Labor one, but to say we've got better days ahead, but we need change to do that. I mean, if you are a Conservative who, for instance, wants people to own their own home, you don't get that. Under this government. If you are somebody who wants to conserve the environment, you don't get that with sewage in the waterways. Under this government, if you want control of the immigration system, you don't get that. So we will appeal, Trevor, to Labor supporters and to supporters of any other political party to say, if you, like us, want to see change in the UK, it is Labor who can deliver that. And we can prove to you we can deliver that because we can point to you how we have changed the Labor Party. And I think that message of change is integral to what Kia is saying. There's no golden era that we should be pointing to, to say that's how it should be. But it is about saying, if you want a better future, labor is the vehicle to deliver that.

Just by the way, Jonathan, are you a satrifying yourself?

No, I'm not. But I can recognize that she was a formidable opponent. And if I were to list the significant Prime Ministers who've really changed the country, obviously I'd name people like Tony Blair and.

Please don't. Well, let me ask you about another thing. If I can just understand what's in this article properly sakir criticizes Tories for failing, and I'm quoting, to realize the possibilities of Brexit. What exactly are those possibilities? Give me two.

Well, first of all, you've seen the ability, I think, to have a more interventionist industrial policy. That's very important to my brief. And I think what we see from the government is a little bit half hearted, you know, the substantial spending from the government. But what are they trying to get from that? Where's the ambition? Where's the transparency? I mean, they're offering half a billion pounds to the steelworks in Port Talbot to make thousands of people redundant. That's not the kind of policy I want to see the country pursue. And I think when it comes to some of the trade policies, again, in my brief, that a government could use. Look, there's a lot of rhetoric, there's a lot of different deals being put forward, but have we actually seen the UK's export performance improve? Have we seen work with smaller businesses so they can get the potential of that, rather than just big headline political headlines or, frankly, to be honest, trade policy being used as a platform for Liz Trust to become Prime Minister? I think there's some serious things that can be done that the government is too interested, perhaps, in some of its own headlines, some of the politics of that, rather than meaningful, substantive change.

Goodness me, this is very interesting this morning, Mr Reynolds. You sound like a born again Brexit fan, almost Johnson esque.

I would like to think, Trevor, there's nothing I have in common with Boris Johnson, but I would say, look, I wouldn't change my vote if we had that referendum again, or it was happening for the first time now. But you've got to recognize the result is then you've got to move on. People will feel strongly about it, of course they do. But when it comes to the need for a proper, stable environment for businesses to succeed, for people to get on, you don't want to live the arguments of the past. You want to move on and look at the potential that is there. And I think labor has done that and I think people recognize, even where they're clearly unhappy with how things have gone under the Conservatives. They don't want to live the same arguments again. They want to look to the future and that is what Labor is doing. I think there are real potential within that.

Let me put a very serious point to you. You are in some senses going to be the Secretary strait for growth if Labor gets into government. On the Brexit point, Secure has a go at Tories. As I said, maybe one of the possibilities of Brexit trumpeted by its supporters is to have control over our own immigration policy. I've been talking to Victoria Atkins this morning about the problem that the NHS faces, the hospitality sector faces and so on. Net migration numbers 740,000. Your colleague Darren Jones says labor wants that reduced to 200,000. As a Secretary of State for growth, how would you have growth when you basically are losing half a million workers? How do you reconcile bringing down immigration with your desire to fuel growth? Can't happen, can it?

No, I challenge that quite strongly because first of all, I think you can be someone who recognizes the tremendous benefits immigration can bring, but simply say, under this government it's far too high. I think that's entirely consistent. You couldn't see this level of net immigration sustained for a long period of time. But look beneath the headlines around the Ukraine scheme and the Hong Kong scheme, which we support. There's a failure around work, Trevor, in this. I mean, look at the sheer number of health and social care I'm about to, which is that if you look at the current failing in that system, it's around the terms and conditions in that sector and our fair pay agreement in social care. Part of our new deal for working people is our specific policy to deal with that. We recognize that people will always come to the UK to fill skills and labor shortages, but the skills system isn't working as it should at the minute. Our flexibilities in the apprenticeship levy, our decision to not allow the 20% reduction in the going rate for wages in the shortage occupationalist is a part of that skills england linking immigration to the kind of training we want to see.

You shouldn't have a job on the shortage occupational list for over a decade. The skills system should reflect that and the two systems should work together.

Okay. We will no doubt talk about this again. Thank you so much for your time this morning, Mr. Reynolds.

Thank you, Trevor.

In just a moment, I'll be joined by the Israeli ambassador to the UK.

Sky News from the Sky News Center at seven.

Now that you're up to date, we.

Can go into a bit more detail.

Things can change incredibly quickly.

Taken by surprise.

Have you ever known a moment like.

This in British politics before?

Yes.

Cheers. We'll start with breaking news.

Let's get the latest on the ground.

So by the end, we'll hopefully all understand what's going on in the world. Just that little better.

I'm inzamam Rashid. And I'm Skye's, north of England correspondent.

Telling stories from this culturally rich region I call home.

Welcome back. The temporary truce between Israel and Hamas has well and truly ended, with Israeli forces carrying out heavy bombing of areas in the south of Gaza. Israel's divided the strip into numbered blocks, telling people to move in certain areas ahead of bombing. But Palestinians are thought to have been killed in attacks on Rafa City. I'm joined now by Israel's Ambassador of the UK, Sippy Hotavelli. Good morning. We last spoke on October the Eigth, within 24 hours of the Hamas attack. Some people had hoped for an extension of truth, but let's just deal with some facts for a moment that's obviously failed. Do you know how many hostages remain in Gaza?

First of all, it's Hamas that failed this pause, and the reason is he's still holding 15 women, two children. One of them is a ten month baby ferbivas. I think he became the most famous baby all around the world with his red hair. And they're in charge of bringing back all the other hostages. We have over 100 hostages still in the hands of Hamas, and they're the one who start firing on Israeli cities and Israeli towns on Friday. And we need to make sure that Hamas understands that we mean serious when we say any games will be fighted back by Israel. And we're back fighting because it seems like Hamas was not serious when he said, we'll release the women. And.

You, if I may ask this, then, how do you expect to get those hostages back? Because they're saying you can't have any negotiations over hostages while you're still raining missiles down on us. You're saying that we can't talk to these people, just speak of it specifically thinking about the hostages. There are people in Israel who would say you're abandoning them.

Absolutely not, actually. But what we realized this week when we saw the first hostages coming back home, when we saw their faces, they're sharing their stories, and unfortunately, Hamas didn't do that from goodwill. They're not humanitarian organization, as you know. They're a terror organization. They brutally tortured the people that they kept hostage. This is a war crime. We need to make sure everyone understands Hamaskomi did a war crime by taking those innocent people at the 7 October as hostages and when they're coming back. What we realized is the only thing that made Hamas get into this negotiation joined with the Qataris and the Americans, was the fact that Israel was with its troops on the ground in Gaza, only this invasion, that Israel brought Hamas to release our hostages. So it's actually the other way around. When we don't put military pressure on Hamas, we get nothing. When we put military pressure on Hamas, hamas starts to feel the pressure, and then the negotiations started.

But military pressure thus far, you don't have to accept Hamas's numbers on this, but military pressure, as you put it, has resulted in the deaths of what, 10,000 more people in Gaza. And I'm wondering if I come back to your aim to get the hostages back, how what Israel is doing now is going to contribute to that. If you're saying that actually the only way to make progress is to do what you're doing now, isn't the possible outcome of this that there will be tens of thousands death in Gaza and you don't get the hostages back either?

So, Trevor, we need to go back to the 7 October to understand what exactly Israel is doing. Israel is making sure that Hamas won't exist in the Gaza Stream. The Duar had two aims. One is to make sure that all Hamas capabilities are dismantled, and the second is to bring our hostages back. And my point is that the military.

Pressure, hostages families are saying that actually you're putting that objective, destructive Hamas ahead of bringing them home.

No, because we think those aims are not contradiction in contradiction. Basically, when you put the military pressure on Hamas, you make a progress both on destroying Hamas capabilities. Now, I want to speak something you made also, like many other journalists, you're just starting to understand the amount of sexual violence that Hamas committed against innocent women. I must raise that because it took over 50 days to the UN women Organization to condemn something that is so clear. We just saw in the Guardian today in the Sunday Times, we saw clear testimonies on women that are being raped. And some of the testimonies are speaking about women being raped and then being murdered brutally. So one of the articles said rape is rape. So why and how come it took 50 days to the UN women Organization to deal with that? So Hamas, it was part of its plan to use this sexual violence against women. And we want to make sure the world understand what we are dealing with and what we are facing with. Hamas brutally murdered and raped innocent women. And this type of mentality to terrorize innocent people, to terrorize the entire Israel, this is something that was part of his psychological warfare.

We're not going to let this type of crimes to be under the radar. And speaking about crimes, I heard a testimony from one of our best doctors in Israel, Professor It, when the first hostages came, he received to look after the children and the women and twelve children. He said, when I heard their testimonies about what they've been going through under the hands of Hamas, he said, the whole country won't be sleeping at night. When we listen to these young children and what they've been through. We're talking about starvation, we're talking about children didn't see daylight. We're talking about physical torturing. And we are talking about children that are whispering today because Hamas stole their voice. They're not allowed to speak. This is as bad as it was. And I'm saying to the world, look at the people we're dealing with, the people that brutally murdered over a thousand Jews. We cannot live next to them. So we need to make sure that Hamas is defeated. There is no other way to carry on in life in the Middle East without Hamas being defeated.

I wanted you to lay that out as you wished. I don't think anybody has any doubt about pain of Israeli people and their relatives here and elsewhere. But the question is, how do you stop that happening again? Now, you've dropped leaflets instructing people in Gaza to retreat to safe areas. One of the things that we've seen, and we're not the only station that's reported this, is that people who have gone to safe areas and they show the Israeli instructions, you've numbered the blocks and all, they've gone to safe areas, and then they show you that those blocks have been destroyed. How can you be sure that, for example, people in places like Hanunus aren't turning into your enemies again and perpetuating exactly the kind of thing you've just been talking about?

Well, Trevor, that's a very deep question about how we think about peace in the future. So one thing being proven at the 7 October that Hamas regime is bad both to Israelis and to Palestinians, what Hamas gave to the Palestinian people, poverty, abusing them, using them as human shield. So I'm answering you. Israel made sure there is a place for the people of Gaza to have their shelters. There is a place in Gaza called the Muassi. The Muassi is the place where they all can have shelters. Together with international organizations, we created shelters for the Palestinian people. So you cannot say Israel is not facilitating that. Together with humanitarianism.

Let's deal with the fact that they experience it on the ground. And we've seen them, our people have reported them. They've gone to the places they thought were safe, that Israel, the IDF told them was safe, and they were not safe. Let me put it to you again, isn't the problem, and I'm not at all saying it's easy, isn't the problem for Israel that you need to think again about the consequences of the action. And you might want to carry on with it. But we need to be honest, don't we, that there are going to be more casualties here?

So I will give you my answer. The only reason there are civilian casualties in this war is because Hamas is using them as human shields. When you see schools of UNRA being used with when you see those mosques being used as a place that they launch rockets on Israel. Just yesterday there was a massive attack on Tel Aviv, on center of Israel. That means that basically they don't care about their own people, hamas, while Israel does care about let's keep bringing me back to Hamas.

I want to talk about Israel.

They're the cause of everything.

Let me bring it to you in this way. It's not your enemies now who are asking whether Israel is pursuing the right tactic. The American vice President yesterday said, in terms enough people have died in Gaza. Defense Secretary of America said the same thing. Cabinet Minister sat here this morning and said very different tone from the first days when we spoke before, where there was steadfast support for Israel, that we need to make sure that Israel essentially that the death toll does not rise. Aren't you risking international support for Israel and ending up isolating your own country by your actions?

Absolutely not, because, first of all, US support is very strong and we can see that we share the same aims. I mean, if the Americans would have said, Wait a second, destroying Hamas is not the right thing to do. It's not what they're saying. They're saying you need to destroy Hamas. The UK government is, but not in this way, perhaps destroy Hamas. We're very much open minded to see if someone can find a solution that is like a magic know. One of the ministers in the Cabinet said, if you can give us a magic spell, maybe a Harry Potter stick to make those tunnels underneath tunnels to disappear, we'll be very grateful. But this is not the case. We know we speak on reality underground. It took the Americans nine months in Mosul to dismantle ISIS capabilities when there was no underground tunnel city. This is much more complicated than Mosul. This is why I need to make sure that everyone understands. In order to have a better future in the Middle East, in order to have peace in the future, we must make sure Hamas is destroyed. And this is where the Americans and UK government and other international leaders share our goals.

So I really believe it will be for the better for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Ambassador, unfortunately, I think we'll be talking about this for many moons to come. Thank you for taking your time this.

Morning to come here. Thank you.

Thank you. In just a moment, we'll find out what our panel made of what we've just heard.

SA

back to our panel now. Ian Dale, Paul Mason and Polly McKenzie. Polly, the Israeli ambassador was pretty unbending there. She seemed to, in spite of essentially the Americans publicly, essentially admonishing Israel not to be at all interested in any kind of softening of the position.

I think it's heartbreaking to think about what is going on in the region. What the region needs more than anything is peace, some form of negotiated settlement between these warring parties. And to be honest, it feels like we are further away from that than at any point in my lifetime. And you're right, she seems unbending. She is, of course, quite rightly furious about both the monstrosities perpetrated by Hamas and the issue of gender based violence, of rape perpetrated, one of the oldest weapons of war, perpetrated in total violation of any kind of laws of armed conflict. And I can understand every piece of outrage that she feels about that I have sympathy for. And yet, unless there is some willingness to compromise on both sides, it is, of course, almost impossible, probably impossible, to negotiate with Hamas. They are terrorists. And the people who are the victims of this are, of course, the civilians in Gaza, the citizens of Israel who have, as far as I can see, almost no hope of being able to live together in peace, which would be the only solution.

We're a bit player to some extent here, Ian, but could we should we be doing more, our government be doing more?

Well, I'm not sure what we as a country can do. I mean, we have historic links, obviously, to Israel and Palestine, but I think that our government has adopted the right approach so far. I think it was very important to stand behind Israel right from the start. And, yes, we can all quibble about some of the things that the Israeli government has done, not just over the last few weeks, but over the last few years. And the trouble is, people are expected to either be pro Israel or pro Palestine. It's just not as simple as that. I can be pro Israel, but still criticize the Israeli government and the Israeli prime minister, and I do so frequently. However, I don't see what alternative they've had but to do what they've done. Now, I'm going to say something very that people are going to find very unpopular now, but Andrew Neal was on BBC's Question Time on Thursday, and right at the end of the program, the panel were asked, what hope is there for a peaceful solution in the end? And he said, there is no hope. And he's right. There is no hope at the moment for any negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Not while Hamas are around, certainly. And this whole idea of a two state solution, which everyone in the west thinks is the magic solution, it is for the birds at the moment. You have an Israeli prime minister on the record saying he doesn't want a two state solution. Certainly Hamas don't want a. Two state solution. They want a one state solution with Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

Well, I was in Gaza in 2014 during the war, and I reported that war. I saw civilians killed and the results of attacks on civilians as closer to me as you are now. So I can tell you exactly why the level of casualties are unacceptable. And I think it is because and there is evidence this week in the Israeli press that the Israeli armed forces are using an algorithm, the decision tool, that allows them to say it's legitimate to kill a lot of civilians when we go after one military target. I don't think they're targeting civilians. What they're doing is they're using a criteria for acceptable civilians. Their own newspapers, Nine, Seven, Two Magazine and Local Voice have reported this week that that's what they're doing with seven on the record sources. And the problem is, our own armed forces would never do that. The lawyers who work for the Mod, for the Aurora Air Force, would never say it's acceptable to kill so many civilians when we're targeting a military target. And that's where I'm absolutely certain the American, British and French today pressure is going because there is going to be a second phase of this war.

It is just that the Israelis want to wipe out Hamas, but they cannot go on doing it in a way that alienates the rest of the region and draws their own allies into the moral vacuum of when you say it's acceptable to kill hundreds and thousands of civilians.

Just from a historical point of view, this has been a problem for Israel over the last 20 or 30 years, where they've got international support for the terrorist outrages that have been perpetrated against them. But in the end, they blow the international support by just going that bit too far, and they are at a risk of doing that.

Now, I wanted to bring this back to here because actually, it's interesting. It's disturbing, I suppose, in the way that this conflict has opened up some rifts in this country. We talked before in this program about the rift in the Labor Party over it. But Polly's point about the argument about gender based violence being particularly an issue for the left in this country, where I think a lot of women writers who are liberals, left wing are saying that we're all in favor of a campaign against gender based violence until it comes to this particular one. This is going to be a problem, isn't it, Paul? Particularly for the left?

Well, I think the left has been split over the Israeli Palestine conflict. I, as a left wing member of Labor Party, have been very clear. I support Israel's right to defend itself, to go and get the hostages to defeat Hamas. The problem is Israel has no endgame in sight. And this is something about the gender based violence. Okay, so the left has been split over that on gender based violence. I can't understand why there have been a few let's not elevate these voices. There have been a few voices on the left that have raised doubts not only about whether women were brutally raped, but over whether babies were beheaded or whether I've heard people saying this was a mass breakout of resistance from a jail. I find that language completely unacceptable, and I have no intention of amplifying or naming the people who have come out with those unacceptable beliefs. The bigger problem Victoria Atkins was referring to, and the ambassador is that the UN and the UN women, that is, there is quite a lot of support in the global south for not just Hamas, but the politics behind Hamas, not only the military behind Hamas, and I think therefore, come back to the original point.

How are we, as a P Five country, as a major power in the world, going to go on convincing people in that region that Right is on our side when we don't criticize openly breaches of the wars of law by Israel?

Thank you. In just a moment, we'll hear once again from our panel.

I heard the fire alarms go off and one of the guys, the banksman on the ground said, this is not a fire drill, this is evacuate everyone out, and there's a fire on level eight. I was concrete in it at the time, and I looked out my left window and I could see the smoke. So I just hoisted up and slewed round to put the concrete skip on the ground. And they said, yeah, you have to come out the crane as well. So I got the skip off and my change and I started hoisting up and I slew back round and I looked out my left window. And as I looked out my left window, one of the guys on the ground shouted out, there's a guy on level eight. And I stopped what I was doing and I looked out on level eight where he was, and he was waving.

His coat and you could see the.

Area where he was standing. You knew he didn't have that much space.

No, he had about two meter. He was standing on about 2 m² there. That wasn't a light. When I touched down the cage, there was materials on the floor. So the cage started to tilt a little bit. Yeah. And the wind caught the block then, and it started pulling the cage over. I thought, no, lucky, it came back. And then I heard the cage go down and the banksman said, he's in, he's in. Then I heard the crowd outside. They were all shouting as well. I could hear all that as well. And then up and away back. Pulled the lever right back as fast as I could get him out of there.

You're in the right place, the right.

Time in terms of you were in.

Your cab, you were told to evacuate him, but you heard that someone was there, so you stayed in and like you said, you've done that maneuver many, many times.

Yeah, I've been on that level before.

Yeah, but from what you're saying, you were operating blind. You and your man on the ground worked together.

What was that like?

What were the nerves like?

The adrenaline was out the roof, I can't tell you. When I got him back on the ground, put him back on the ground safely and the ambulance staff was there? Yeah, they took him away and they took my hooks off and I blocked up and everything, got the crane safe and I just stood up. I was shaky as hell.

Our panel of Ian Dale, Paul Maitan and Polly McKenzie are with me again. Ian, Jonathan Reynolds said that he said, as you'd expect, that Tories have made a mess of it on migration and so on and so forth. Do you think he had an answer to this dilemma about growth? If we bring down the migration numbers, we could stifle growth.

I don't think he did have an answer on that and I think Labour's position on immigration is an absolute disgrace, because sometimes the three of us on this panel have all explained what the benefits of immigration are. Do you ever hear a politician from right or left extolling the virtues of immigration? And you have the leader of the Labor Party, probably our future prime minister, basically saying, well, the Tories haven't gone far enough. I mean, the world's gone mad on this issue and the media play into it because that's all we ever seem to talk about. There are other things at play here and Johnny Reynolds, I think, is one of the most impressive people in the Shadow Cabinet. On Wednesday, he launched a Labor small business strategy. I mean, that's never going to sort of get people particularly excited, but it is a really important thing because that's where the jobs of the future are going to come from, small businesses. And he gave a lot of detail on it. I had him on my show for an hour talking about it and I thought, well, how refreshing that you've got a member of the Shadow Cabinet willing to commit to definite policies, because, as you know from your experience of interviewing them, it's like getting blood out of a stone sometimes.

To be fair, Polly, though, I try and avoid that on this show. Jonathan Reynolds did say that the thing that they needed to do was raise wages and do more skilled training and so on and so forth. But it strikes me that he then runs into another roadblock with his Shadow Chancellor Victoria Atkins has to run into Hunt's desire to reduce numbers. He will run into his Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves'desire to not spend any money, won't he?

Yeah, absolutely.

Which is, of course, one of the.

Reasons why immigration is valuable, because it helps to just drive at least the total income that's coming into the treasury up. They have found a good political sweet spot which actually politicians have been using for a really long time. Which is to say, well, the reason that we need people from abroad is because we don't invest enough in skills and high quality training in this country. And that the solution to bring down immigration without hurting the economy is to invest in skills. But we have a problem, a financial problem and also a sort of structural problem. The money going into our Fe colleges is too little, it's incredibly kind of constrained and has been now for quite a long time. The amount of income that's going into universities for domestic students, again is fixed in cash terms and therefore falling off. So the amount of money available for universities to put into skills and development of future generations is limited. And you have this sort of standoff between government and businesses. You see it in the apprenticeship levy, which is a tax that basically the businesses can keep hold of if they spend the money on training apprentices is they just recycle it into training they were going to do already.

So all of that apprenticeship money is not going into 16 year olds leaving school with no qualifications. It's going into basically MBAs, what's called level seven qualifications, which businesses should be paying for themselves.

Let me put this to you though, Polly. There'll be people out there saying, oh yeah, well, she works for university. She would say that, wouldn't she? Because all our universities are completely dependent on fees from international students. And what's now happening is we become a sort of international market, our own kids are not going into these universities and so on. So actually that's another example of why they are.

Well, exactly.

I'm putting to you what people might say, and I would like to be.

Wrong, Trevor, you're right, that is what people say. For universities that are constrained in terms of the total numbers of students they can take. It is possible that sometimes an international student is taking a place that a UK student would otherwise have occupied. However, certainly in our university, which is University of the Arts London, and loads of them, because they're growing, it's actually the international students that make it possible to have any domestic students at all. We lose money on every domestic student we take. We can only afford to have places for UK 1819 year olds because we have international students subsidizing them, which is a choice the government makes.

Polyus put a finger on labor's problem because if you are going to do all these brilliant reforms that they keep talking about in the Health service, in education, all of these things are going to cost money. And yet they constantly refer back to, well, we're going to put VAT on school fees or we're going to abolish the nondom status. They've spent this money many times over and in the end, the public are going to expect big changes in their public services under a Labor government. And at the moment, I can't see how they can affect those changes within the first term of a Labor government.

Paul, I don't want to keep beating this particular thing to death, but one significant thing that's happened this week, of course, is the passing of the former Labor Chancellor, Alastair Darling, who, I should say, by the way, I knew a bit. He and I were exact contemporaries at university, and he was elected president of his student union, Aberdeen, in the same year that I was elected President of Mine Imperial. What would he be saying right now about this Labor dilemma?

Well, first of all, to know, I, as a journalist, interviewed Darling many times, alistair Darling, and found him an amazingly relatable and humane person, which is, let's say, not ubiquitous in politics. And I think we should mourn his passing. He also saved Britain from being lumped with Lehman Brothers. There was a day during the Lehman Brothers crisis when a certain bank, brothers.

The bank that went bust, nearly destroyed the world.

We could have ended up owning that bank had Aleister Darling not say no on a particular day. But what would the politics that Darling represents, which is Keynesian economics, what would we say to this problem? It's quite simple. The only way we're going to afford decent public services is if this economy can be stimulated into growth. Liz Trust tried to do that by slashing the tax bill and ripping up the rules. That didn't work. The international markets didn't buy it. With borrowing costs as high as they are, you can't borrow your way out of it. So you've got to change the way the economy works, and that's what Jonathan Reynolds'job will be. It is changing the microscale of how the economy generates growth. It's not easy. No one's saying it's easy. But this government isn't trying. And I think the Labor government's promise is that we will try by indeed bringing private investment into jobs, skills, plants, infrastructure.

Let's very briefly take a quick look forward. Boris Johnson at the COVID Inquiry. Ian, have you bought your popcorn? Yeah.

I mean, it's going to be quite a spectacle. Have you read Nadine Doris'book? No, but you should, because she actually.

Introduces very old Ian. My life is too short.

Seriously. You are missing out, Trevor, you really are. Because she details a lot of the things that he's probably going to be saying this week and it is going to be box office. Now, I think a lot of people have already made up their mind about Boris Johnson's role in this. It'll be very interesting to see how much of a mere culpa there is. Is there going to be any sort of apology? I don't know.

Polly, do you think he's going to be able to extricate himself from all of the allegations of blame and all that.

Well he's chosen to brief out quite extensively what he's planning to say, assuming that that briefing is correct. It sounds like he's going to buy himself some space with some contrition, so he's going to apologize for mistakes that were made and admit a certain amount of weakness in order sort of rhetorically to enable him to defend a lot of the other parts of the record. I understand he might be defending eat out to help out, which was Rishi Sunak's initiative, which know, largely criticized both by economists and by health experts for the impact that it had. And again he will say a phrase that he used extensively in the Commons is we got the big calls right and I think it will be for citizens to decide whether they agree with him on that.

Well we'll get our popcorn ready. That's it for this week from Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. Politics. Hub is on every evening from tomorrow to Thursday with Sophie Ridge from 07:00 p.m on Sky News. Thanks for being with us, enjoy your Sunday. Join us again next weekend.