coming up in the show the last budget before brick set of the last budget before britain's economic collapse we asked britain's shadow transfers advisor guy standing about today's budget and why the u.k. government isn't using billions offshore to fund health care schools and the starving and after the earthquake recorded in england days after fracking starts we speak to an activist willing to risk his freedom to stop shale gas the first let's go straight to today's budget joining me now via skype from geneva is economic advisor to u.k. shadow chancellor john mcdonnell and council member for the progressive economy forum professor guice the guy thanks for being on the show again every year to resume our previously cameron said austerity was over meaningless in the context of today is a budget the last before breakfast i think this is become a very sick joke to be honest we've had a dick eight and eight years under the tories basically in which the public social spending has been slashed slashed each year and each year this is it we're told the

pain is being shared and it isn't being shared we have a ridiculous situation today where six hundred police stations for example have been closed in the last five years and we have cities like baath 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 all clumped down they are going to have to reverse eight years of suffering imposed on the british people and i mean 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 government 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 it weighs 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 this promise 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 phony 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 when the o.b. r. is quoted and 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 laws are being broken with impunity the panama papers you will recall revealed that thousands of rich british people have 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 model i don't think we can expect miracles but 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 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 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 other 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 costs 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 in 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 what's going to be revealed today reza guys found exactly 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. all the civil war coming up in part two of today's going on the ground.

as a trumpet ministration pulls out of a key arms control agreement nato conducts a massive exercise in the arctic is a new front. and it seems the saudis will get away with murder. or bomb a really was very european and his approach would be very well suited is. 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 see. here. 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 at 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 charge rich thanks for coming on just brought happened well somebody shouted convoy and massive convoy of lorries came along press the right and it was there. courted by a dozen police vehicles with flashy lights because they know that nobody wants that industry there and there's a lot of likely opposition and say 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 drilling rig to the fast high volume fracking site in the u.k. well the company that we've been led to the more and they won't go on they've declined to comment the cool conviction was a public nuisance. yes use and live ins and rigid. yes that's right it's a very unusual charge and ancient common law i think it was originally brought in to prevent people from hurting their cattle of you your land and they pulled out

this charge right out of the blue trying to find an imprisonable offense 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 the people of lancashire three democracy three lancaster county council voted by overwhelming majority to stop fracking from happening at all in the county however 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 the fracking company unwanted their their profit driven enterprise and they're trying to get resources from underneath the houses of the people of blackpool who are invited quadrille on the show i should say its former boss lord browne has been on this show and years ago told us he was completely confident that they would be able to

crack into people's houses which came as quite a shock to us the level of confidence to resume says it will benefit. you are you see this i'm going to collaboration. of the establishment in fracking and in your 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 before lord brown. was c.e.o. . he was. in a very high position in b.p. he was the boss of b.p. the boss had been he was when the deep water horizon disaster happened which is an environmental catastrophe and eleven people died in that explosion and then he became c.e.o. of courtrai this company that nobody wants on their land 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 role whatsoever except for you know being behind the scenes for the oil and gas industry because they pay their dues for what have a deep water horizon and from what you're alleging the government says is a part of a future energy strategy to make us more energy independent 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 that 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 it and we just have to plan around that and not give away too many secrets you may be courageous a little late to have different opinions what about the local community there and they're going to be frightened off a little given the zero as you just said the possibility of secret surveillance or loved ones and so on and now the threat of imprisonment of local people in lancashire little girl living ok the establishment is one establishment and shot himself in the way of sending us to prison has caused 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 four days on the lower east and then we had to go through the date of the tried and the president and his people have been fighting this for years but now hundreds thousands more people want 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 both locally and environmentally intensive risks of contamination to land them more 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 on 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 drugging 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 you really look you see head of dodgy street chambers international human rights because you think. 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 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 yes 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 is in the police should be charging under legislation which is there 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 believe 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 in 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 them all 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 sentences very decisively i mean to be clear here you as international human rights the woman on point that douchy st james is

a pretty internationally known world normally represent the most downtrodden vulnerable around the earth representing a case in the north west of the 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 ever 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 have. been 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 from the imprisonment of demonstrators to and it's been in the bridges much larger conspiracy what happens in there in the public city post the sentence was that we've heard post sentence that might be a link between the judges the media. 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 had 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. 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 so if you or i have been sitting on that trial with a trial of the fracking protest as 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 saved therefore 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 also fundamental to our justice system so we are still having to look into it but do you think a powerful message has been sent to potential bridges just that you could go to jail no in this country no i think absolutely the opposite now that the court of appeal has reset the law back to what it was basically in the early two thousand is where. it was set up by the house of lords that we have an honorable history in this country of disobedience and 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 we've moved on from the horrendous treatment that we saw of caring for example of the suffragettes and 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 remark thank you thank you that's of 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 back torture program about what you know will travel to turkey to the shoji investigation until that people really do will be back on wednesday sixteen years to the day that the pentagon moved it into conducting sarin gas experiments in one .

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but i'm not going to buy the book the. get. go that must be. wounded so much at the next cd you party convention in december i will not run for the chair of the party this fourth time is the last one for me. the german chancellor lances she is stepping down in twenty twenty one and confirmed plans to quit as leader of the party after a.