welcome to the alex salmond sure we return to the subject which provided one of the crunch votes of today's amazement or to government the plight of unaccompanied child refugees seeking to join family members in this country in 2017 when the house of lords held enormous sway in the house of commons a spine we balanced the issue of unaccompanied child to fiji's was brought to the center of the bricks to beat large up some self brought to this country as a child refugee from nazi germany seized the opportunity to propose an amendment to the may withdrawal bill which the make government were then forced to accept as i arrived in this country in the summer of 939 as an unaccompanied child if you jade in fact this comes to you at the time i put safety to some 10000 children and it is

thanks to cynically winton who helped organize came to transport from czechoslovakia but i got here told that i almost certainly owe my life to him once in a while the days of challenges to test our humanitarianism and europe's effigy cup crisis is surely one such challenge but within that there is i believe a need to do something about unaccompanied child if the g.'s and you are like other children to be able to safety in this country and be given the same welcome and opportunities that i had. how things have changed when the house of lords similarly amended the johnson withdrawal bill the government use its newfound house of commons muscle last month so overturn it without any set of many tournaments this week or 2 more the moment for which was moved in the other place in the name of the noble lord lord well the government humbly disagrees with the noble lords a moment this moment in no way affects our commitment to seek an agreement with the

e.u. prime religious way she cannot deliver the best outcomes for these children as it cannot guarantee that we and agreements and that is why this is automatically a matter which must be negotiated with the e.u. and the government is committed to doing so to seek in the best possible outcome those negotiators give way and of course however while they amend it was removed from the bill they issue itself has not gone away and today we speak to some of the committed campaigners within the and to fight parliament who intend to bring it back to the political center stage i think the more of us the better and we will definitely i will get every celebrity a every face that i can on to this campaign i will do anything to make it happen we need to make it work and i will refugee in the united kingdom can take the children with them but our child refugee can take that out of peter's siblings with them and i think has a great inequity because surely children who are refugees deserve the same rights

as adults or refugees and i don't think it's been fully thought through the consequences of not doing that at all and spitters arguments were made up against it which are shown not to be true. with the parliamentary prospects looking much less hopeful for the child refugee campaigners thought so now turning tighter a new pressure from outside parliament one aspect is to focus on the constitution that the defendants have charged effigies of the past have made to this country alex speaks to the star of a 1000 t.v. programs debbie arnold whose mother was brought to this country as a toddler on conduct transport and arnold welcome back to the show this is lovely to see you alex i feel i feel like i'm part of the. well the last time we spoke to you a bit of you because power. grabs are more than our television screens but we can spot your posting in the homeless but the you've got a very particular interest in taking up the cudgels on behalf of child refugees

cudgels you're taking up with the formidable log dubs of yes love does well my mother was on the kids' transport and so was self dobbs and so i'm i'm trying my best to get the word out and make things now that of course now that the government has well what if they don't need the lord said they were going to carry on this amendment and then the went into the commons and they said we were so well what happens now but the government's position we're just have from stephen bach to the black society is that ok doesn't have to be in the legislation in order for it to be government policy to help a child left use or if you could dos about that well i mean because beforehand what it was legislation it still wasn't done and so and then they had to go to court to say you know this is not being done so that it and then of course now it's not part of the legislation so i don't really kind of would understand what the government's talking about but there again i don't most of the time so what you're saying is that the government didn't on its commitment that was the previous government exam in government when it was in the legislation how can you trust them what is not in

the legislation before and wouldn't a government want to help believe that we're talking here but child refugees who are doing. valium egypt family with them in europe but have family in the u. k. we don't really want to not the facility a lot of these people obviously not and i and i don't understand how we my mother came over here. to transport as well i mean they didn't have any relatives over here and they had to be sponsored to come here and that's what you know 10000 kids came over here and then even then the government didn't want to do it but it was public opinion so now we need public opinion to change but how do we change that if public opinion was so strong i'm sure they'd listen to it but people don't understand the difference between immigrants and refugees and there is a massive difference but what are you saying that we're back because everybody in this country says oh yes look at the conduct transport program that's a sign of the open hearted you know rossetti of of this country are you saying that

wasn't an unambiguous poll was that it was because they didn't want it don't if there were you know they didn't want to do it but the the public opinion swayed and they said they had to do after kristallnacht they said that's it we've got to do something and they did but. you're mom she she was with a small child which was on can you know she was you know came over here at 4 years old and she was put on the train and a lot of people don't know either that they were told that if they cried when they were with the parents took them to the station they were told that if they cried or showed any emotion they want to put the kids on the train so you can imagine it was like a silent thing and they were saying goodbye to the children and the children little children 4 years old how could they understand what was happening i mean it's such a horrible thing but there again they came over to england they saved their lives and i wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for the can transform what i meant to mum. one day when you were old enough to understand that this is how i know she didn't she

you know it was always part of my life always was what was part of anybody else's life i remember when i was little growing up and seeing him in films about bits and my mother used to run to the. the sense that perhaps i can see my mummy and daddy and it really used to make me so upset so i never was very interested he used to just upset me the whole thing about the war i never want to talk about it because i upset her so much generations of people who came as part of the program must be muscle contributions only in your world of acting and if you come across a lot of actors who were part of course as we had to find interesting i think people didn't really talk about it it's only recently now that i know so many people that are connected now that i'm friendly with after you've got dame shirley i mean she is she she's very high up in autism there are thousands in fact there's a list of people who came over on the can to transport you know top physicians top you know people of surgeons everything people have saved lives constantly and there

are people now when we went to the there was a kid to transport reunion and it was just fantastic to see i mean people now that came over very old but that their children and what they've given to society and how we've changed this country because this country saved my mother's life and i feel that all the contributions that she made and all the people that came over on the kinda made have made a huge difference to this country so we've paid back our dues as perhaps some of the lemming center attached to the new holocaust memorial will do to assure the contribution will so they should do i think that would be fantastic so why when given the track record when let's talk about lord dobbs for a 2nd i would believe respect because of his background because he was part of the program because he speaks with former rival thought at the on the issue which is he see the politics of this lying and how is your campaign going to take shape if you mobilize public and well i don't know man are they going to be formidable to govern though i know i love i love to work with them at the moment i'm working with i'm

just you know being a spokes person for how i feel i'm not my views of my own not his as you say concerts are but i don't know what's going to happen next obviously. will come up with a plan and i should be behind him but we've got to hope we've got to get public opinion behind us if we cannot get the government behind us we've got to get public opinion and somehow we will i'm sure i was partly a campaign will be mobilizing some of your your showbiz power to get the message across yes absolutely i think the more of us the better and we will definitely i will get every celebrity a every face that i can on to this campaign i will do anything to make it happen we need to make it work in the terms of the contribution. you're saying that people don't always appreciate the difference between immigration and refugee how do you illustrate that were folks don't grading immigration which in itself many would argue i would argue is a fairly good thing for yes i think immigration is good but i think people think that people come over here as immigrants and they take from our society they take

from the n.h.s. they take from this they get free there's they get free that they get you know benefits where is that's what they feel they come over i'm not saying they do that but i think that's what they think i think terms of national health service so the question would be very much the well exactly but that's what people think and i think that on the other hand with refugees these people need help they're not coming over here to to to take or even contribute particularly they just need to be saved they just need someone to look after them they are vulnerable we look after animals and i am a huge animal lover we look after our animals so well now because we have to we get animals from all over the world from greece we have programs with greece and spain bringing in rescue dogs but we can't bring in rescue children and yet the help in moments of the last few years one thinks of the autumn of 2015 will the picture of arlene killed the car dish lot of and 3 years old lying dead on the beach you know

mobilize change public opinion and not just of this country but but what will why how do you create that intimacy with people without people always. with a lie on a picture of a complete after the individual clutch i think you need someone to explain i think people need to know it's just about knowledge i mean before hand we used to just leave animals didn't we we didn't treat them very well and i think now that because we've had so much public opinion that everybody loves you know like paul o'grady for the love of dogs we have all these wonderful programs we need probably more media on the a lovely programmes to show how lives have been changed we need to do something very special to show this compassionate country to be a program on successful refugees your contribution to me exactly says that you know that yes i think that you're absolutely right and no one's done that we need to know we need to know the success of these people but we need to help people we need to feel compassionate towards these little children some of whom are sleeping in

the fields on their own they have no family well if anyone could put forth a program idea or get on to the screen is about to write a letter x. like that that's the next thing someone asked if you don't care what's what should be in activities of a person well i said i do lots of voice overs i'm also a producer of shows on cruise ships which is great which i actually produced and put on myself and i'm also a contributor to close time magazine so i'm doing loads and loads of things so i on the to start my my career goes in one thing and out of the other but i think i still think i might like to go back to a soap but you keep coming back and joining us now i love coming here so thank you for having me place alex. join us after the break for alex a lot probably a problem and she campaigner i guess spending macneil how m.p.'s can still make a difference facing a large government majority will see that. 10

year period of the. money velocity or money has gone directly into the pockets of the few oligarchs and countries the doors of america and around the world in these silos like these $12500000000.00 properties when they when the infrastructure for that starts to crack and illiquid he starts to see balance and you get inflation for real for stuff like food and we're seeing this happen now where people are noticing that the cost of every day living has starting to spike higher. in the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of northern ireland that was coordinated loyalists attacks particularly on the population of tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and what was striking to put these attacks was a p.r.

you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing them they were active participants in the burning of full streets in belfast i think more than a 100 innocent civilians with blood that has to live you can see in yours and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and of the currents which the collusion was involved in some of those cases that killers would lead to be named into than a gang i think it went to do very very top i think it is. the water where all the taste and you thought was going on and give the go ahead. welcome back 2 years ago while lord dubs led the campaign for child refugees in the

house of lords to spain to mcneil the m.p. for the human in year let the count pain in the house of commons his private. member bill fell through a 2nd reading in 2018 with all party support only for the government to use procedural tactics to 1st rate it from becoming law alex big fantastic meal about how to make progress in the new political environment of a government with a massive commons majority and i'm joined by someone who's taken key parliamentary list of in the house of commons on the issue of refugees meal newly reelected this chair of the international trade committee congratulations on your statement much i like your i'm glad to be back it's an interesting group particularly this time with border seeming to learn international trade on the hoof every time we turn on the television he thinks a lot of silly as wu is a deal so on the subject of refugees in the last parliament you produce the the family unification refugees family reunification bill which sailed through its 2nd

reading a great achievement for a private member's bill sykes but then go down by the government lost in the the sirens of commons procedure of what happened to the year they were given it was technically called a money resolutions or can get up to committee upstairs in the commons and there was a tory whip was particularly difficult about and went on their legs and as leader of the house i asked several times of business questions why the money resolution wasn't forthcoming i was sort of storing walling food for weeks on the trot i asked the same question effectively and to the leaders of those under lead some of the time and there's really no will within the tory party to move that on and we would only be giving children the same rights as adults something that's normal across decent countries across the world but let's deal with the procedure 1st i'm in for people watching around the world so here was a bill on a friday which most m.p.'s of already shuttled back to their constituencies was was

carried before a commanding majority usually you know a large number of m.p.'s attending but even with the parliamentary assent. government of the black arts of god but put certain procedure of knowledge to bog down in the house of commons and the tone of that make you feel was very well summarize the it really was difficult because i'd met some of the young refugees in question who had hoped at the 2nd reading stage that meant perhaps if he says that may not be taking a dangerous journey through the sahara could just fly here in safety if you go with people traffickers to the sahara particularly as a woman well you don't need to spell it graphically what might happen is sadly not pleasant and if you fall off one of the vehicles then these just left and so it's a dangerous journey both physically in mentally in many ways to try and get yourself to a place of safety so we're trying to do was to get children and families reunited

these are people who have families already in the united kingdom who were seeking to join them from danger zones and war zones as refugees from from around the continent that was the objective of your book absolutely and it happens in other european countries where the child more typically a teenager might arrive in a certain jurisdiction the family have been split up for someone reason or another they might have wondered of course africa or the middle east of whatever and ended up in a european country to relative safety in normal countries the a low children have the same right as adult refugees of an adult refugee in the united kingdom can take the children with them but our child refugee can take that out of periods or siblings with them and i think has a great inequity because surely children who are refugees deserve the same rights as adults or refugees and i don't think it's been fully thought through the consequences of not doing that at all and spitters arguments were made up against it which are shown not to be true so what is the government's logic here will

remember memorably of dubs in the house of lords succeeded an amendment to teresa mayes breaks a bill tried the same. thing and succeeded in the lords of abolish johnson's woodrow bill but use these big majority in january to overturn the house of commons but what is the government's motivation a minute most we're talking about a few 1000 people involved why are they so dead set against a structurally provision and take all these children to rejoin the farms well it's evidence of 2 things to do to that question i think there's an ingrained behavior and motivation in the home office which is and is going back to in the 2nd world war what orphan children of the holocaust there was resistance to deal to when did we have for instance the 300 children in to czechoslovakia it was resistance in the home office to allow them a sense of normality after the horse had been thrown all across so there's that

stand that runs through the home office for decades but i think more worryingly perhaps in the current conservative government it's just a feeling that they might get bad headlines from trashy tabloids who might say the ticket in too many people and vote i think is such a baseless and unthought through motivation a kneejerk motivation that it really is sickening when you put out against what children have had to face. in becoming a refugee the uprooting of the families the dismemberment of the families the killing in some cases of members of the families of the other death threats to other members of the families let me ask about your constituents and the leader of the west of miles ahead pretties was there any feeling when you were fortunate enough to get a prime position in the in the private member's ballot that perhaps the members should have been proposing something more directly related to that to the western islands as opposed to the issue of child refugees the joy of any blowback from your

constituency that perhaps you should be mailing your own files well there's always one or 2 sat in voice but the overwhelming majority in 90 plus percent i would say they were on side with this i mean they have a decent. unlike the near independent feed a while as with the population growing in the hebrides we see deep population and we want people in fact there were one some syrian refugees a quarter of all the syrian refugees to the united kingdom of come to scotland and some went to the island of us and the other other 5 or 6 islands were complaining they didn't get any refugees they're refugees tend to mean and you spark new initiatives filling up schools vitality in the community people you'll get to know quite quickly and so no question there wasn't blowback so if you buy the opposite when a society has experienced the hard side of emigration they're more willing to see the benefits of immigration that is absolutely right and also the understand from their cousins and friends who are emigrants to other places and have been welcomed to other places that when migrants and immigrants come towards you then they should

be welcomed in the same spirit that you cousins and friends and family were welcomed in other parts of the world but what the prospects for this parliament with a massive total majority in the house of commons have got a lot of dubs still active still campaigning in the house of lords is there anything you can do in the commons to keep this issue alive and well sadly in the current lot of private members goes nobody has taken up the baton i was hoping somebody would take up the baton so we will find parliamentary devices bills behind the chair or whatever. the chair over there what is that where there's no much of a devising but the private member's bill but at least we can present it in the house is to get behind the chair of the of the speaker i will get some traction some motion with will do some work at the end users what you're saying is you get a law you don't get the same opportunities as being lucky at the ballot for members you know your garden team taking you can still get your your bill printed you can still use the extra you can use the parliamentary mechanism has to fire the public

campaign you sell a questionnaire with some experience of these of these methods absolutely and that's and that's what it's about sort is about keeping this in the public consciousness. i don't think given boris johnson's huge majority it'll be much in boris johnson's conscience unfortunately or the 2 of the government's conscience who knows they might have a change of heart at some at some point but they aren't going to reach any road to damascus unless we try and at least work with n.g.o.s to keep just to do the forward because it's a normal thing in normal countries. to resist giving child refugees the same rights as adult refugees i mean if you even slipping and i'm not advocating this is the step in the right so muddled refugees a little bit some form of equity teaching to adults and children badly but teaching children only badly is reprehensible and surely they're going have a change of heart i'm not going to take a deputation of some of these families and to see bodies jobs to see if you can get that change of heart see if you can appeal to his better mention of every device

that is possible that we can play at the heartstrings and play that at the reality of the situation towards the prime minister should be considered and all of the members of the government particle in the home office and the and the immigration minister as well because if we don't this will wither on the vine so we have to find things over the next few years hopefully perhaps in the next parliamentary year somebody comes out of the of the heart for the private member's bill if i'm lucky enough to be one myself and of this hasn't been sorted by then i would obviously a got the button again and run with it once things always interested me and that. would be a collection of of the generations who have achieved so much who were the beneficiaries of of refugee programs and the can been wonderful debbie arnold of spectacular show business and sort careers as one of your your key supporters and campaigners but i'm exempt of all those national life who are only here and only achieve what they

achieved because someone at some point the city to rescue them from that sea germany or from or from other. extraordinary difficult circumstances internationalism as of an argument for getting an assembly of of these great achievers have contributed too much to save these people would not be part of the fabric of the country unless somebody had said you know suffer the little children and let them come in absolutely i mean i think there's also looking behind as to why that happens i think when people come into a different society whether we go to another society or they can do society we see things through different eyes it is a different perspectives and different opportunities i'm reminded as you've been speaking about or a man from the land of lewis who helped people from a boat from vietnam and in the height of the vietnamese boat people and he got them to hong kong left his own merchant ship and helped him get to hong kong and these people litter settled in canada having left vietnam with nothing with lovely the

cloak roughly the clothes on their back some of them on their multi-million years if not more in canada and is welcomed refugee reconvenes that various times in canada has been over to see the people who left destitute or know beyond wealthy in canada and it's a matter of a few short decades or whatever their fees seem to go i don't have any academic evidence for this but it seems the anecdotally it perform because the experience of being a refugee whatever it is certainly enriched the societies that in help the societies and we're lucky to have refugees and we should think that with the benefits refugees bring us not what we're doing for refugees for the short period that are getting on the feet what would use chair of the national trade committee say to about the issue of child refugees are here to your your minute with a private list appealing to his battered nature what would your message to bulldoze jobson be well today's refugees are tomorrow's trade partners and the countries they come from will be an invaluable bridge don't spurn anybody be the refugees or

be the potential trade partners that has benefit which will benefit from us all to embrace both. on this point it will likely have much to thank you. when the opposition parties agree to the christmas election the i think peace angus macneil described as a parliamentary christmas present for boris high right he was the implications of a tory landslide go far beyond the immediate politics of bedsit and impact on many issues with opposition held sway in the minority parliament similarly the house of lords has moved from a commanding position to being emasculated cameron has to break sit or anything else cannot be summarily overcharged in the corman's thus the campaigners for legislative protection for unaccompanied charges fiji's were only to find new ways of progressing their campaign the focus will no longer be on crunch parliament she votes but on the low good job of persuasion of public opinion however feelings remain strong and the government would be unwise to underestimate the impact of

publicity and on how the public can be touched by the plight of refugees children and politics probably went to authorities are what kinds for much but not quite for everything meanwhile from alex myself and the rest of the team it's good bye for night and we'll see you next week. thank . you. i can't show you my face but i'm going to teach you must store in 9093 this man was

sentenced to death. they could charged with capital murder even though he didn't have the gun didn't pull the trigger didn't intend to kill anybody imagine living in your bathroom for that week with the son of a $23.00. i doubt that i deserved to be. confined within 4 gray walls. it seems. to help him to leave this room. we're still in an era of resource colonialism again this is a big risk and the one big thing that could really inhibit the kind of electric vehicle revolution that a lot of us want to see is if we can't resource the battery components in a sustainable ethical way then it's not going to be a successful revolution. crusher

is called to help the syrian army repel an offensive in italy a province to which by minutes and with the support of the turkish troops. in is tonight unofficial memorial for the 9 victims of last night she was in the west of germany council merkel condemns the poison of racism that the suspect is believed to have had. motives and president to back in time except which isn't in france as he bids to win votes ahead of next month's local elections. there is 10 pm here in moscow.