it'll be weeks before italians know which populist politicians make it into government and whether they keep their promises. you are up to date now. a russian man who spied for britain falls critically in a salisbury shopping centre. was he exposed to a lethal substance? and was the russian state involved? here's what putin once said about russians who sell secrets. translation: traitors will kick the bucket, trust me. these people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms. whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them! we know nothing yet, but could this be foul play? we've gathered the experts. performance with medication.

' - -ij..,. : ' . . we never talk about money, it is easier to talk about stds! good evening. when a man falls ill in a shopping centre, it doesn't normally lead the news. when that man is revealed as a russian who spied for britain — and his condition is considered critical — the whole thing becomes

a little harder to ignore. sergei skripal was granted refuge in britain in a spy swap between america and russia eight years ago. nothing much was heard from him in that time, until yesterday, when he and a woman in her thirties were found slumped on a bench in salisbury. police have declared a "major incident", and believe they were exposed to an unknown substance. one which may yet prove untraceable. if the spectre of alexander litvinenko lingers on his shoulder, we should caution against being too hasty, assuming we know too much. clearly, there are plenty of unknowns. but there is much we need to ask too. we begin with our diplomatic editor, mark urban. yesterday afternoon, passers—by noticed two people — apparently unconscious — on a bench in salisbury. the area was investigated by people in protective suits, as suspicions built that the two victims had been poisoned. they were in salisbury hospital tonight, described as ‘critically ill‘. we are unable to ascertain whether or not a crime has taken place.

a major incident, however, has been declared today and a multi—agency response has been coordinated. the bbc established that the man being treated is sergei skripal. he was convicted by a court in moscow in 2006 of being a spy for british intelligence. he was sent from the court to the gulag, where he languished for four years. it was in 2010 that the arrest of a network of russian agents in the united states provided an opportunity for mi6 to repay its debt to skripal. the uk asked for his name to be added to a list of prisoners the cia was putting together. and injuly of that year, skripal and three others were put on a jet from moscow to vienna. the ten accused by the us of espionage — among them, anna chapman — were flown from america and, in the best cold war traditions, the two parties of spies crossed on the tarmac in austria.

asked about who might have betrayed this american spy ring, president putin vented his fury publicly. translation: traitors will kick the bucket, trust me. these people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms. whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them! as for skripal, he flew from vienna to britain, where he began a life in exile. police were today securing the house in salisbury where the former russian intelligence officer has lived in recent years. mark is here now. give us a sense of who this man is. people who have met him talk about a tough ex—paratrooper, special forces, very proud of that who gravitated towards russian military intelligence. if you believe the court case that was heard against him back

in 2006, at some point in the late 1990s, he began working for mi6 at a time when it was very hard to penetrate the gru. i talked to western spies at the time and they said post—soviet collapse, this was the last element of the russian intelligence community as it had become that was really tight and held together. so the recruitment would have been quite an achievement for mi6 at the time and as a colonel, he moved on to the people who run the panel of the gru and he was responsible for personnel matters so he would have been in a position to open up a complete order of battle of the gru in western embassies throughout the early 2000s, before being caught. while he may not be a very top level of british penetration, he was a pretty senior agent is pretty important is to western intelligence during those years. we do not know what made him defect. what was he doing here latterly?

you can imagine somebody helpful to that degree to hmg will be looked after and we know they put his name forward when these russian agents were picked up in america in 2010 and the russians, despite the fact they convicted him for treason, agreed to send him back on a plane to get their agents back. he would have got an mi6 pension and i understand from people in the forces that he occasionally gave lectures about the gru. and he also acted as a consultant going to talk to other intelligence services as part of his sort of consultancy, almost. with mi6 that he did in return for this package. not unlike, in fact, the type of work that litvinenko did in terms of his conversations with the spanish as a consultant or whatever you want to call it. yet he is now lying critically ill

in a hospital in salisbury, found in a very public place. what is your sense of what has gone on? he was a man without an enormous number of connections to other people, in salisbury or beyond. and he had a small nuclearfamily. we know that his wife died in 2012 and she is buried in the uk. his son died last year, very early, but after an illness, people i speak to say they did not regard it as suspicious. but he was clearly in a vulnerable state, only one member of the family surviving, his daughter, and it seems to be the case that somebody seeing him last week came to help him out perhaps at a difficult time after several months after the loss of his son. we know that his son, although he died in russia on a holiday there, was repatriated to this country and he is buried in this country.

so all kinds of possibilities that somehow the repatriation of his son or the visit of someone else coming from russia to see him may have been a way that could have been used to fix his location and try and find out where he was. these are purely hypotheses because as you said at the very beginning of the programme, no foul play has been proven, but if you are looking for how he might have been found, those are some of the things you might be looking at. thank you. stay with us. we asked the russian government to come on to newsnight — they wouldn't, unfortunately. butjoining me now live from brussels is former m15 agent annie machon. and here in the studio, i am joined by bill browder, who calls himself putin's enemy number one, and whose lawyer — sergei magnitsky — was, he believed, murdered by the russian government. nice of you both to join us. bill, you are right in front of me, what is your sense of what has gone on here? we don't know the details yet, but when a major enemy of russia

suddenly becomes critically ill from an unknown substance, one has to assume the worst. and one should start with the worst assumption and work our way back from that. i would assume until proven otherwise the assumption should be that this man was poisoned, with some type of substance from what is known as the kgb poison factory. they have a scientific research unit in moscow, part of the fsb, in which they come up with poison to assassinate their enemies. they have used those before with litvinenko. there was another shocking death connected to my case, a man who dropped dead in surrey in 2012 after blowing the whistle on a major russian government corruption scheme. people die on a regular basis outside the country and so we should assume for the moment, until we know otherwise, that he has been assassinated. you would be surprised if the russian state in some shape

or form were not behind whatever has happened this weekend ? we have no information, but the assumption, based on what we know right now, it is that this was an assassination attempt. annie machon, is that going a step too far or do you see where bill browder is coming from? i think we are ratherjumping the gun here, i have to say. we do not know the name of the woman who was with him, we don't know what substances might have been involved. we don't know pretty much anything around this case. it has started to unfold in the media and it was just two people who appear to have taken an overdose of something, which has now been discredited, or whatever, on the streets. it has hit the headlines because it turns out he is indeed a russian defector who is being protected by mi6 in the uk after the spice up in 2010. so there are many

unknowns in this case. —— after the spy swap in 2010. it is inflammatory to throw around accusations, particularly in this era of russiagate and trump. it is also understandable that there was an immediate decontamination exercise around the case. once this person's name had been fed into the system and once he had been taken to hospital and the police reported it, there would have been a red flag and in the way of the litvinenko case, it would be absolutely normal for the police to contain this issue and try and decontaminate in case there was any potential similarity to the litvinenko case, which was hideous, but we don't know that yet. you from a security, intelligence background. explain what happens in a spy swap. when these people are transferred from one country to another, what protection are they given? he would have been on all the lists presumably for mi6 and m15?

absolutely. from what i have seen in the reports, i don't know from the inside, from what i have seen, this guy was a high value asset for mi6 for at least ten years and then he was caught and prosecuted and he went to prison in russia in 2006 for identifying the names of british agents in russia, which is the crown jewels of intelligence. so it was a very serious crime. in the uk, we would also see that as a very serious crime. and then he was swapped in the 2010 spying ring case involving anna chapman and other russian illegals swapped for four suspects, convicts — in russia. so you are looking at a swap of ten russian illegals, allegedly, forfour convicted people in russia, so he must have been pretty high—value. why would you assume the state would intervene at point, bill browder?

if this happened in 2008—2010, a decade ago, why would this happen now? what you have to understand about russia is, you have many hundreds of thousands of people who work in different branches of the security services. they are not motivated people, they are not loyal and necessarily honest people. unlike here and other countries, where people contribute their service out of patriotism, they do so for other reasons. they cannot assume anyone is going to be loyal. and so the only way that putin can assure loyalty is to absolutely viciously and completely punish disloyalty no matter where and when and how. and so he has to create an incentive — a terrible incentive so that everybody else around says, if i in any way via off the track, terrible things will happen

in the way that it has done to him. does that make sense to you, that this is putin reasserting a flexing muscles? we don't know anything about foul play at this point, but as a way of operating by the russian president? it would seem unlikely in this particular case because they would not have handed him back to the west if they saw him as being a threat. but also, i find that slightly bizarre, the statement from your other guest, in the sense that a lot of patriots work for the intelligence agencies in america and in the uk. i was one of them, that was my motivation. and across the rest of the west. but a lot of patriots also do the same thing in russia and to try and make a distinction between the motivation, i think, is slightly disingenuous. i don't really know... i can't really say for sure who is motivations are where but what i can say for sure is that putin, and we saw this completely

and absolutely with litvinenko, the way putin operates is to make examples out of people. he does not have loyalty anywhere in his own country, it is completely full of disloyal people who are profiting from different enterprises, etc, and the way he goes about creating loyalty is by creating a very, very severe punishment for people who are disloyal, and he said so, we just listened to him on the television saying that exact thing. that if somebody betrays their brothers in arms, then terrible things will happen to them, there is no mystery about that. thank you both very much for bringing us so much this evening. what does it mean to cross an ethical line to enhance sporting performance? it's the charge being laid at bradley wiggins by a parliamentary committee report — one that he and team sky have strongly refuted. at the report's centre is the concept of therapeutic use exemptions — taking usually banned

substances in exceptional circumstances for medical need. the committee said it believed the system was open to abuse, and was unable to say for sure what a mysterious package to wiggins contained back in 2011. bradley wiggins himself has denied any drug was used without medical need and, in an interview this evening, claimed that the allegations were "malicious". perhaps the question it throws up is this one — some athletes will need drugs for medication, but who should decide who and how much? here's katie razzall. commentator: it's a winning ride to win the tour de france. this is malicious, this is someone trying to smear me. six years ago, bradley wiggins won the tour de france. the effect it's had, the widespread effect on the family is just horrific. bowing to the crowd... i don't know how i'm going to pick up the pieces up. now, the way he won is being called into question. this is a man fighting for his reputation. it used to be so simple. the tape is broken and so is the record athletes have long been dreaming about.

this sporting legend, we're told, was sustained on pilchards. back then, roger bannister reportedly thought it was cheating to speak to your coach on the day of a race. his passing camejust ahead of a report from the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, which pulls no punches. they had modern—day athletics in the firing line too, but when it comes to cycling, the committee says the application by wiggins‘s team sky for a therapeutic use exemption for triamcinolone, a powerful asthma drug with performance enhancing qualities, before three of his biggest races, crossed the ethical line. so with a drug like triamcinolone, which is a very powerful drug, it has very powerful beneficial side—effects that give riders and edge, we have taken evidence to say, if you are... actually, you don't need to take triamcinolone, there are other methods of treating asthma more effectively, which means you don't have to take that drug. that drug might only normally be used for someone who is about to be hospitalised because they're so sick. if that's the case, if someone is that ill, why are they competing in an elite performance event?

he's not cheating because he's got a tue. you don't know the situation of the particular athlete needing to use it at that time. it's certainly pushing the boundaries of are they using the system to improve performance or are they using the system to make sure the athlete's health is in the right order? pilchards barely come into it. these days, sporting success is scientific and at london metropolitan university, athletes use the latest technology to optimise their performance. while the committee report is clear what it's alleging team sky did with its tues is not against the rules because a therapeutic use exemption is authorised by the authorities, it does say the system is open to abuse. but where is the line to be drawn when it comes to ethics in professional sport, and can we ever really ensure there's a truly level playing field? facilities like ours are not unusual. you can do heat training here, you can do cold training, you can do high—altitude training where we can limit oxygen levels. and you can argue that those things are not universally available because of the cost associated with them. and so, there are so many options

available to athletes to enhance performance and because races and competitions are won by very small margins, then athletes and those that support them are looking for every opportunity just to enhance the performance of the athlete. is the system that regulates sport fit for purpose? the select committee wants a change in the law, so those who supply sportspeople with performance enhancing drugs go to prison. they also want better medical record—keeping by team doctors and others and more scrutiny of the data. others suggest we should follow australia and put the monitoring of what medicines athletes are provided with into the hands of an independent body and many argue for a fundamental cultural change. there is too much focus on winning. we want to be a nation of winners, we want to win, that is important to everyone. however, what is most important is to win with integrity. sir bradley wiggins and team sky

deny they've ever acted without integrity. his former employer said today: not at any time during my career did we cross the ethical line. these allegations — i mean, it's the worst thing to be accused of, but it's also the hardest thing to prove you haven't done. because we're not dealing in a legal system. i'd have had more rights if i'd murdered someone. in those heady days when he was feted and his services to cycling earned him a knighthood, surely this "living hell", as wiggins calls it now, would have been hard to imagine. earlier, i spoke to michael rasmussen. he's a danish professional cyclist whose most notable victories include

winning four stages of the tour de france. in 2013, he admitted to doping throughout his career. i began by asking him whether today's select committee report really was a "smear campaign and witch hunt" against bradley wiggins. well, it's not all about bradley wiggins. it's just as much about track and field. so this is not a report about bradley wiggins. of course, him and sky plays a big part in it. what do you make of a doctor, the team sky doctor, just refusing to give evidence to parliament? did that strike you as odd? it certainly sounds a little hollow and if they really wanted to clear up this mess and ease the understanding for everybody, that would be the easiest thing to do. but apparently, they seem to have a hard time keeping track of their records. do you understand the difference

between crossing an ethical line and doing something that was actually illegal? there is, of course, a difference. the problem for team sky is that they have been putting themselves into this position by saying it out loud, that they would not accept any former dopers in the team. if they had just acted like everybody else and not telling the whole world that they would be whiter or holier than the pope, then it would be a lot easierfor them now. and do you think sky the sponsor is putting pressure now on the team to clean it up? i am sure they have been involved in dealing with the media strategy all along. they have been backing every decision so far. now, of course, it's a little bit different. now, it's actually an official committee that has come up

with an entire report about it and have concluded that there has been unethical behaviour within team sky, so it might put things into a different perspective for sky, the sponsor. what do you think should happen to dave brailsford now? can he remain at team sky? i think it would be appropriate if he resigned. bradley wiggins has broken his silence now, he's given an interview to the bbc. do you think he has given us all the facts now? the way that the tues were issued, it does not correspond very well what he wrote in his book, that he never had any injections besides vaccines. and on top of that, it looks very much like something you would do if you wanted to improve your performance in the tour de france. you don't believe his reasoning that it was for medical need? in that case, it would be very convenient to have asthma and in that time of the year.

so you don't believe him? i think there's more to it than what he's saying. and do you think that whatever happens from now on, his legacy is now over? well, the problem is that he didn't break, didn't break the rules in the sporting perspective. but he certainly crossed the line from an ethical perspective. michael rasmussen there. sir bradley wiggins said tonight that he "100%" did not cheat and that he is the victim of an attempt to "smear" him. team sky said it "strongly refutes" the report's "claim that medication has been used by the team to enhance performance." we are going to be hearing a lot more about pay transparency — and notjust here at the bbc. uk companies will soon have to publish their gender pay gaps — the gap between the average pay

of men and women. there are thousands still to cough up their numbers. andjre there,other,, like the icy waters around stockholm's archipelago, openness is inherently swedish. the right to freely seek information is written into the constitution. it's known as ‘offentlighetsprincipen‘ — the public access principle. it's about a month until uk companies with over 250 people had to have published their gender pay gap. that's the gap between the average pay of men and women. it's different from equal pay,

which is whether men and women are paid the same for doing the same or similarjobs, but it is a step towards pay transparency. here in sweden, it's a bit easier. you can request pay information through trade unions or equality watchdogs and companies have to carry out a full pay audit every year. and there's another way that anyone feeling aggrieved orjust curious can take a look at what their neighbours or colleagues might be earning. hi. i'm looking for some information about these people, please. you have only name? yeah, i only have their names. i think this might be her. let me see. it's very interesting. bjorn ulvaeus? of course. this is his date of birth. english. oh, thank you. stefan edberg ? i could ask for anyone?

for anyone. dolph lundgren. of course, just a moment please. we have only one dolph lundgren. really? well, there is only one dolph lundgren. it feels a bit odd, actually. anyone can get a range of tax and earnings information about any swedish individual. so i've got the details of someone i'm due to meet later, a presenter off a leading swedish current affairs programme, and a range of famous people from stefan edberg to bjorn ulvaeus — that's bjorn from abba to you and me. sweden's gender pay gap is about 12%, below the european average. the uk's is 18%. but sweden's equality minister still sees a problem. we know there is an undervaluation of women's work compared to men's work and that is really a disgrace. we have to do more to put pressure so that these differences disappear.

i think that if a country or a government wants to change gender inequalities, they have to address that because otherwise, you won't see, talking about transparency, that this really is about a power shift. so, transparency is very important and has been for us but you also have to talk about gender inequalities. back home, only about one—sixth of the companies required to report their gender pay gap have done so. that leaves about 7,500 to go before early april then. it concerns the woman who secured government support for pay gap reporting in 2015. i'm a bit disappointed with the way the regulations, the details of those have been brought up, because there aren't any firm sanctions. there's no fines that can be imposed on companies. there is a transparency mechanism,

so if firms are not compliant, then effectively, they can be named and shamed. so what would you actually like to see happen? what more would you like to see happen? we absolutely need to look at what more we can do to right this injustice and that could be more transparency, it could be people being able to get more information from their employer, it could be more responsibilities on the companies themselves to do more digging into their own data so they are able to justify any pay differentials that do exist. everyone at granttree knows what everyone else earns. the first day i got into the company, i was just sent my pay information and at first, i was a bit confused. there was a lot of pay information on one spreadsheet and i was just scrolling down and all of the pay information was on that spreadsheet! i thought that was pretty startling, but you get used to it. the company helps other businesses apply for government grants. it uses a type of self—management called holacracy and part of that is pay transparency.

you can go into this spreadsheet at any time and everybody is listed in here. here's me. and you can see what somebody‘s salary is and also the reason for it. if we look here, you can see my salary is 51,500 from the pay review that we just finished earlier this year. but this isn't about gender pay or discrimination. theyjust think it's a better way of doing things. by sharing information about pay and actually by sharing information about all of the financial health of the company with all of the people who work here, we build a lot of trust in that relationship. and there's an awful lot of work that suggests that actually, the amount of trust that you experience at work, how sort of psychologically safe you feel, really has an impact on the quality of the work that you can do. one argument in favour of transparency is that actually,

we're all pretty bad atjudging how we are paid. in sweden, transparency seems to be seen primarily as a democratic ideal, not a tool for pay. camilla wagner is a consultant on gender issues. do you think that people use the tools they have here enough? no, not enough. i always advise people, if they are going into a negotiation, you should really get all the information you can. so just call the swedish tax agency and make sure that you have the information on people with similarjobs in that organisation to see what they make.

so why do you think people don't use the tax information? is it sort of cultural reticence? yes, it is a cultural thing in sweden, we never talk about money. it's easier to talk about stds than it is to talk about how much money you make, which is really something we need to get over if we want to close the gender gap. some think this is alljust a storm over statistics, that the pay gap can be explained by seniority, types of work or career choices, but even among those who see a serious and persistent problem, there is debate. is it better to free up information and allow individuals to fight their own battles? or is government enforcement needed to stop women being left out in the cold? he once described chatting with the queen as like ‘catching up with an old mate'.

certainly, there was a life roundly lived by the man who not only invented wind—up radio, but also worked as a tv stuntman and aquatic showman. the death of trevor baylis was announced today, aged 80, after a long illness. he was interviewed here on newsnight in 2013. we thought you might appreciate the chance to listen again to one of the foremost inventors of our age. my name's trevor baylis. i call myself an inventor. this workshop is where it all began. this is the graveyard of a thousand domestic appliances, if you understand? i'm known, i guess, for making the clockwork radio. that's how i wound it up. it'll be interesting to see if it still works. radio crackles. yeah. i was watching a programme about the spread of hiv/aids in africa and they said the only way that they could stop this dreadful disease cutting its way through all those places was through radio and music, communication, but there was a problem. most people in africa didn't have electricity and the only other form

of electricity was in the form of batteries, which were horrendously expensive. i'm then thinking to myself, hang on... all those years ago, i can see myself with an old—fashioned gramophone and i thought, you know, you wind this thing up and you can get all of that noise by dragging a rusty nail around a piece of old bakelite, as it were, and that produces that volume of sound, so there must be enough energy in that spring to drive a small dynamo which, in turn, would drive a radio. trevor baylis there. tomorrow morning, public health england are launching a new strategy to prevent childhood obesity. we got the first peek and the figures in its report are shocking. children living in poor areas are twice as likely to be obese as their wealthier neighbours. london has the highest rate of childhood obesity of any peer

global city and the deprivation gap has increased by over 50% in ten years. so what's the best way to tackle this? this morning's times quoted jamie oliver questioning how you change behaviour. he says middle—class logic won't affect behavioural change in our low—income, unhealthy eating families. so, what's the best way to get the healthy eating message across, or will it only ever sound patronising? jo lewis is the food for life policy director. dawn foster is a commentator and author. nice to have you both here. do you think campaigns like this make any difference? food for life is not a campaign telling people to do things differently in their lives. it is a campaign that dries to make healthy food easy and normal for families in all walks of life. we work with schools, nurseries, caterers and we make sure that healthy option is normal and easy and enjoyable for everyone. so the key thing is, you are not telling people what to do, you are just taking away options that don't work? well, that is right, and making the good food, the fresh and minimally processed

food easily available. all the evidence shows childhood obesity is not some big national failure of will power. and that we are, it is just a normal response to an abnormal environment. look at the backdrop, this is the unhealthy food environment surrounding bars and the choices people make, they are time constraint and heavily influenced by what is on offer around them. dawn foster, is that right, if you just take away the bad stuff, people will have to eat the good stuff? is that a brutal but fair way of making us eat more healthily? i think it is very complex. often, people think that if you take away certain options in supermarkets, it may change eating habits. one of the big issues is both time and money. a lot of people don't have the time to spend a lot of time cooking and they don't have the knowledge to help them. i speak to a lot of families and have visited homes in fuel poverty and it is often cheaper

to to cook in a microwave and that limits what you feed your children. so you do not turn the other non—? yes, it costs a lot more money and is very fuel intensive and if you can use the microwave, it is a lot cheaper and that means it limits what you can feed your children. and when we look at the choices available for a lot of people, it is very limited and not especially healthy. take the five day or what you should be doing, the traffic lights, do those have any effect or is this a middle—class conscience salver? i think a lot of people feel bombarded by a lot of very conflicting messages on health. with five day, recently, it moved up to eight, or ten,

and a lot of people felt that was out of the realms of possibility, very expensive, and they disregard it. we are often bombarded with lots of conflicting issues and what we needed more time and more so people can invest. more legislation? i would like to see more legislation so people get paid better and we can beat poverty. then we can look more at what we eat. it is a very different thing to saying we should get rid of buy one get one free offers, we should get rid of cheaper fast food shops on every street corner. would you go as far as saying legislation has to take over because the public will is not there? yes, the former chief executive of sainsbury‘s, when the childhood obesity plan was published, he said even the supermarkets need a level playing field and legislation. it is very hard to move ahead of the others in terms of getting rid ofjunk food promotions. if they went, would you feel patronised by that, i can make my own choices

or would you say you much prefer without making people feel they are dictated to. the bottom line is that when you are time poor and finishing we all understand that, i am a mother of two children and i know what it is like to not feel i have the money,

the time, the headspace. if it is like that for me from a middle—class background, how much more challenging is it? we have to get realistic and sympathetic about what is