we have cities like bart don't even have a police station to say that austerity is ended means that they're going to have to restore all the public libraries the public parks the police stations and the facilities that have been closed or clamped down they're going to have to reverse eight years of suffering imposed on the british people and when they say it's indeed i think this is management trick to give a little accounting to a situation that is not going to be resolved or repaired for a very long time i want to get on to the big four accounting firms that no doubt will be giving advice after today's a budget but as you know they'll be mainstream media coverage and when the say the topic of universal credit comes up the government has to roll it out it will be good for the most vulnerable in society and it will be cheaper so we need to we

need to roll this out i think this is one of the biggest tragedies that are unfolding in our country for our lifetime universal credit is a horrifying social policy and we've only seen the beginnings of this disaster every day people who are supposed to be receiving universal credit and the various means tested benefits operated by the department of work and pensions every day people are dying every day one hundred people on employment support allowance that goes to the disabled one hundred people between the age of sixteen and sixty four a gallon and every day ten people who've been declared by the department of work and pensions as fit for work somehow die these are the statistics for themselves from the governor. themselves the department of work and pensions own

figures now this is a policy which is going to be unfolded in the course of next year where it's gradually being phased out across the country and estimate may the department of work and pensions secretary has told cabinet recently that something like harf of all lone parents on universal credit will be losing something like two thousand four hundred pounds a year this is in the works and will be taking place in twenty eight nineteen something like two thirds of couples with children on universal care will be losing two thousand four hundred pounds a year or the equivalent of bending how long they're on the benefit and they say austerity is ending well this doesn't make sense when in the past eight years they've slashed corporation tax for the big multinationals from twenty eight

percent and next year it's going to be cut even further to seventeen percent where they've raised in inheritance tax thresholds so that somebody with a million pound property can be inheriting it without having to pay any tax and the are taxed away is for the wealthy while they've been slashing benefits for claimants this is a situation that is going to take years to repair and they are not providing a program to reverse it well the good british government certainly would have denied any kind of accusation of murder to suggest to you and certainly philip hammond will be saying there will be extra help for the n.h.s. that's expected today at the budget any chance do you think of funding the n.h.s. to the levels of european neighbors level in the united states which ones double as a player g.d.p. on health care well they've made process this. this of an extra twenty billion

pounds for the n.h.s. they've made it many months ago and still smith seriously it hasn't taken place i think they've got a real credibility problem now in the budget and in the next few months they're going to have to find some money for the n.h.s. but meanwhile we've been experiencing a privatisation of the n.h.s. by stealth gradually more and more of services have been contracted out for profit will corporations often forum and gradually will losing that universalism that is the essence of the national health service they've also got fined money for propping up the universal credit system and a figure of two billion has been has been mentioned so he's got actually relatively little leeway if he continues to abide by the phoney logic

of the austerity era and that i'm afraid is where they are ok those constraints are in addition to the preexisting constraints as it were but as you know the people you hang around with will be lambasted in the press today for saying you don't really understand how much money there is do you think with the o b r is quoted in when different members of the big four accounting firms in order to consult if anything is really any attention is being paid to the tax havens where i don't know maybe a trillion pounds some of that of course owing to the treasury could be added in to our deficit figures that loan our debt figures well we've had this scandal for years now that we know there's phenomenal tax avoidance and tax evasion the tax avoidance is allowed by the treasury and by the government tax evasion is where the laws are being. broken with impunity the panama papers you will recall revealed

that thousands of rich british people had been using tax havens to avoid paying tax including the father of the prime minister of the time including david cameron himself until he quickly divested his investments no wrongdoing legal no it in his case he quickly got out of it before he became prime minister but that in itself revealed that he knew that what he was doing was not particularly marl i don't think we can expect miracles that they will suddenly rein in those tax havens but it's certainly part of the story because what's been happening over the last eighty years is that government has been sacrificing revenue a budget deficit just as the deficit for you and me arises when expenditure

is more than your income well the deficit in britain partly reflects the fact that the government has deliberately and i use that word advisedly deliberately has been cutting its revenue if you cut corporation tax you are sacrificing revenue for the treasury that could be used for public social spending that's what the government has done if you provide subsidies to rich corporations and rich individuals and landowners you are spending money that could have been used for other purposes and you are creating a deficit but one thing i would like to mention which i think a lot of your viewers would would understand today according to the treasury's own figures the government operates one thousand one hundred and fifty. these

six forms of tax relief what that means is that the government deliberately provides people with mechanisms by which they can reduce the income tax or are the tax they have to pay many of these forms of tax relief the majority are aggressive and other words they tend to be allowing richer people to pay a lower rate of tax so you give it to landlords you give it to various forms of of owners of property and so on now we did a calculation and the top two hundred and nine of that one thousand one hundred fifty six tax reliefs cost the treasury over four hundred billion pounds in foregone revenue now that. is of phenomenal amount of money that could be collected and would give us

a lot of fiscal space for spending on the national health service our welfare system our our social policy our infrastructure and so on when we have major councils like northamptonshire going bankrupt because the cuts imposed on them by central government what what sort of society are we seeing created so for me to say that austerity is ended today or in the near future is a very bad joke you know the government says the tax take actually went up by cutting corporation tax because in the i don't agree that incentivizes businesses to work harder no i mean even the economist is as written saying that it's resulted in a loss of revenue the fact that the the growth has taken place i mean is that more revenue is get it but you could have got more had you retain the original twenty

eight percent rate just very briefly without any reduction in the tax code for philip hammond of the house of commons today i should say there will probably be spending on the military at levels not seen since the height of the cold war he will though perhaps please your shadow chancellor you you work with by announcing something about facebook google netflix amazon and google do you think the kind of revisions in their tax codes will make a difference we must remember that companies like amazon and the alphabet i google make phenomenal amounts of money from advertising but i think what we've got to see is that the monopoly profits and the rents hill incomes earned by big big pharma big finance all of them through their intellect. property rights and so on that has to be taxed much more effectively than has been i think

you're going to see it just yet today it will look good as a headline figure but we need something far more radical and transformative than what's going to be revealed today reza guys standing back you after the break but get this secret plans to water down environmental legislation in britain we speak to one of the imprisoned fracking activists alleging a cover up risking getting all the civil coming up in part two of today's going on the ground. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to a guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

seemed wrong. why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to say proud to stay active. and engaged equals betrayal. when something find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race. dramatic. very. talk. obama really was very european in his approach. and brussels for

example doesn't represent america is america for better or worse and i think what we're trying to do here is to let the world. welcome back well from the honored voices of all star you know first off to the alleged silencing of peaceful protest joining me now is rich roberts one of the fracking three arrested and imprisoned for demonstrating in preston new road fracking site in lancashire in the northwest of england the court of appeal has now ruled that they should not have been imprisoned and they have been conditionally just thanks for coming on just happened well somebody shouted convoy and massive convoy of lorries came along press the road and it was escorted by a dozen police. because i know that nobody wants that industry there and there's a lot of likely opposition and so we ran out into the road and some of us climbed

on the race and we stayed there for entire two four days between all of us and we prevented them from delivering the part of the trading rick to the fast tracking site in the u.k. well the company did the more and they won't go on they've declined to comment the court's conviction was a public nuisance right. you simon blevins and richard lloyd. yes that's right it's a very unusual charge and ancient and common no i think it was originally brought in to prevent people from heading their cattle lazio your land and they pulled out this charge right out of the blue trying to find and imprisonable offense and to stick on protest is what they neglected to hear in the court in fact the judge wouldn't allow us to talk about the negative impact of fracking on the community

and the fact that people are blank shit like what about sixty three lancaster county council voted by overwhelming majority to stop fracking from happening at all in the county however the politicians in westminster i returned that decision and imposed this industry on a community that doesn't want it so the real public nuisance is quite straight at the fracking company unwanted they're a profit driven enterprise and they're trying to get resources from underneath the houses of the people of blackpool always invited quite early on the show i should say it's full mobile a little brown has been on this show and you want to go to old as he was completely confident that they would be able to track into people's houses which came as quite a shock to us the level of confidence to raise them a says it will benefit society . you see this i'm going to collaboration of the establishment in fracking and then you'll specific case absolutely and there's a great diagram available freely on the internet called the frack

a gram that shows all of the links between politicians and industry and it's shocking to discover that the full lord browne and was c.e.o. of coachella he was. in a very high position in b.p. he was a bosal b.p. boss to be and he led was when the wall to horizon disaster happened which is an environmental catastrophe and eleven people died and explain. and then he became c.e.o. of courtrai this company that nobody wants on their land and and then he became a member of the cabinet without portfolio so he was in the highest level of u.k. government with no particular whatsoever except for lobbying behind the scenes for the oil and gas industry because he says that they paid their dues for what having a deep water horizon and from what your alleging the government says is a part of a future energy strategy to make us more energy independent i understand that

you're still demonstrating against this you must be aware of the spike corpse investigations demonstrate is aware that there may be secret service is amongst yourselves reporting on one another is that problematic at the moment it is absolutely shocking that we're trying to stop little in the custodial sentences yeah we're trying to stop companies from. wrecking our planet and wrecking the environment and yet the state and law enforcement are employing undercover on the cover offices on the cover police into our networks to try and to try and try and stop the action from happening one has to wonder how much of that is the leverage of the oil and gas they'll be that's happening behind closed doors in westminster but we know now we take it as a given that in any big meeting of activists there will be want to infiltrate us and we just have to plan around that and not give away too many secrets you may be

courageous to be with different opinions what about the local community there and they're going to be frightened off a little given the terror as you just said the polls really are secret surveillance or loved ones and so on and now the threat of imprisonment of local people in lancaster and a living ok. the establishment shot himself in the way of sending us to prison is cruel it's an outrage and now thousands more people are getting involved in the anti fracking movement and there are lots of people who've been fighting this bravely on the front lines and communities affected by this and volunteers have moved to live near the fucking sites to protest against them and they've been fighting this for years we just spent three full days on the lower east and then we had to go through the ordeal of the the trial and the prison and people have been fighting this for years but now hundreds thousands more people wanting to take

action against fracking. sending us to prison this caused a stab in the media is bought up the issues of fracking showed how damaging it is likely and environmentally intensive risks of contamination to land them or to there's a definite and like less pollution impact and all sorts of knots these in sleds come. these gas rigs and also the global and long term environmental impacts through climate change which is really serious everyone's concerned about the issue concerned about the issue of climate change and fracking and a lot more people are now stepping up to take action and that's why the grassroots action network reclaim the power hosting a national gathering in the tenth and eleventh of november where anyone who wants to support this campaign will be involved in any way can come along and can can get scaled up and take on roles to stop this industry well as i said all the governors involved in dragging denied to the doing anything untoward to the environment rich

roberts thank you thank you. well joining me now is the barrister representing rich roberts because he had a doubt the street chambers international human rights because he thinks is there a fundamental right to peacefully protest in england and wales yes there is not only in england and wales but also in europe say there is basically we will have rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and within that protest comes within that right there can be restrictions upon that right off easily in accordance with the law and then the domestic system comes into effect to see how's it been a breach of the law here or not but generally there are no criminal penalties for process for peaceful protest in particular how thin is the line them between peaceful bridges and public nuisance we can presume we get anyone on the yeah so i think there is a real concern that this is

a very old offense which it was recommended in two thousand and fifteen by our little commission here that that offense should be scrapped for a variety of reasons which i probably won't go into but that generally when you've got something which extremely old it's the purpose of it as long gone so what you should be happening. the prosecution service isn't the police should be charging under legislation which is that such as obstructing a highway something which is there specifically for the acting question they consider is a crime relying on some very old offense is always a concern because he never to plea times have moved on and situations really have have progressed to the not necessarily reflective of what society's anymore when the case came to your attention where i was surprised were you about the custodial sentences handed down to the very well so i came and so i was instructed after conviction and rich roberts who's been on your show just

a little earlier he was my client he had represented himself through the trial it's very difficult for somebody to represent themselves through a criminal trial and i think he did an extremely well but after the conviction the judge had indicated that custodial sentences may be imposed this was a shock to everybody because the law is fairly clear that you do not impose imprisonment upon process has basically the position is throughout the law and also throughout our society is that civil disobedience is very important in any liberal democracy and it's a cornerstone of liberal democracy so i came in to represent us and also to put the legal framework in front of the judge on peaceful protest and on protest as a whole including direct action protests which is what this is. obviously had no effect

because he sent to the mall immediately to prison so then we appealed it and the appeal was expedited which means that quite often it takes. a number of months to come up to the court of appeal the court of appeal work very quickly i think also they probably saw something has gone wrong. care so they listed it. and we then were able to take the call through all that case law including european case law and so they course the sentence is very decisively and we need to be clear here you as international human rights the woman on point that douchy st james is a pretty internationally known would normally represent the most vulnerable around the earth representing a case in the north west of yeah i think probably one reason it was exploited well yes i mean it's interesting because i actually am from that area i'm from lancashire so all i'm the only one who have moved out of like

a ship from my immediate family so they're all still in that area so i know the local concerns about fracking from the communities in that area and i know the outrage not only nationally but also i was kept informed locally there was absolute outrage when these sentences were passed and there was in fact even a protest outside the prison a few days later people were really shocked because we consider frankly that we're not like turkey where if you go out and protest and express your opinion which is contrary to the government opinion you are going to go to prison without due process of the turkish government that any human rights abuses although we invited the delegation basayev. it would be interesting to have a debate with the turkish ambassador on the number of lawyers judges journalists who are currently in prison here but. how quickly did this whole case turn from the

imprisonment of demonstrators to and it's been in the bridges. much larger conspiracy what happens in the in the public city post they sent us was we've heard sentence that might be a link between the judge's immediate family company not the judge's companies no direct ship shares in it. and oil and gas supplies and subsequently there was an article in a national newspaper we then. contacted that national newspaper we then got a witness to look into company records and so on and the position is also what was uncovered it was the judge's sister in two thousand and fifteen had signed a lesser which was pro fracking and that letter was published on a platform which was financially supported by courtroom centric now that

doesn't mean the judge is pro fracking. but he has freedom to express their opinions are many people who are pro fracking however the issue that from a legal issue is about confidence in the judiciary and perceptions if you or i have been sitting on that trial where a trial of fracking protest is having the information about the judge's family would we have perhaps perceived that we could rely on him as being true to his judicial oath as being independent or would we have had concerns about that so that's what the. particular issue was a nice the court of appeal considered that it would not be right to try and deal with that issue because it will come up so quickly and it was necessary to allow some time and reflection with which i completely agreed and save that for we carried on the appeal on the other grounds however the issue of an independent judiciary and the perception of an independent judiciary is obviously false

a fundamental to our justice system so we are still have a. you look into it but do you think a powerful message has been sent to potential protesters that you could go to jail now in this country no i think absolutely the opposite now that the course of appeal has reset the law back to what it was basically in the early two thousand where it was set up by the house of lords that we have an honorable history in this country of disobedience where we have progressed is that we don't lock up protest so we've moved away from those victorian times when imprisonment was used as a tool to stop protests and we've moved on from the horrendous treatment that we saw of caring for example of the suffragettes we deal with protesters with a very broad shouldered way bearing in mind that quite often history has proved protesters to be right as to what thank you thank you that's over the show will be back on wednesday to speak to the founder of the global justice and to work with

the victims of pinochet's u.k. cia about torture program about why do you know this will travel to turkey for the shoji investigation until that he would address is really do will be back on wednesday sixteen years to the day that the pentagon moved it into conducting sarin gas experiments in hawaii and. you should. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express. some want to. actually write to the press this is what the. real people are. interested always in the waters. they should.

see this is kentucky. we moved the voices people were going to three families. and. a co money since it was almost no co mines left. the jobs are gone or the pay rises that's. live to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happening it's happened. it's not. just.

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