The News Agents: Could Huw Edwards have a case for libel?

Last night, just before six o'clock, we heard from the wife of the presenter Hugh Edwards.

Vicky Flind came forward with a statement that, if you like, outed her husband as the

man at the centre of the BBC presenter scandal. It was brave and it was surprising, although

many people in the country will already have known who it was, it kind of stopped the story

in its tracks. And Vicky also went on to say that Hugh, who had suffered from depression,

had now been admitted to hospital with serious mental health issues and that it was a very

difficult time for all concerned that the previous five days had been horrible. But

on BBC News, they carried on with the story and their own investigation into fresh allegations

surrounding him, even though they had just read out on air that he was in hospital with mental

health issues. So we're finding our way in this episode asking questions about where investigative

journalism is about doing your job properly, where it becomes invasive to privacy and mental health

and what we have learnt, if anything, from the way this whole scandal has been covered.

It's Emily and as we sit here, we are puzzling questions about the very nature of journalism

when it goes too far and when it has to carry on doing its job in the face of a changing story.

And as John said, there were fresh allegations coming out about the text that Hugh Edwards

was purportedly sending to younger colleagues at the BBC at the same time as the news organisation

was telling us about his severe depression and the fact that he was currently in hospital.

And I think it raises really important questions about how the nature of journalism and the nature

of privacy has to co-exist and whether we actually know where that balance is, because I would say

that today, when the story broke really, there was an error of something must be done. Everyone knew

that something had changed, that this poor man was in hospital and that was absolutely appalling.

And yet obviously there will be journalists here saying, but that doesn't stop us doing our work.

And so there's something must be done means what? Everyone is essentially entrenching their own

positions. The Sun is still saying they did nothing wrong. The BBC is carrying on with its

investigations. The BBC management is talking about reopening its investigations into how the

complaint was or wasn't followed up. So what, if anything, has this week taught us?

Well, that people don't quite know where the line is between, and it's an age old question,

what is the public interested in and what is in the public interest? And they are two different

things because surely if you're a public broadcaster, like the BBC is, there is accountability

and things do have to meet a different threshold than if you're the Sun newspaper with much

lighter regulation and free it to go your own way. But interestingly, the Sun said, well,

we're not going to publish any more allegations about Hugh Edwards in light of the fact that he's

in hospital with mental health issues, yet the BBC is. Now senior managers in news,

do they not have the duty of care and responsibility that Tim Davy, the director general was talking

about, about this duty of care that we have? I mean, Hugh is employed by BBC News. So for the

managers to say, well, no, no, we're just interested in the journalism. We're not interested in the

duty of care. It's just Alice in Wonderland. It's very difficult to make sense of. And I also think

that the Sun has now rode back from this implication of criminality in their coverage.

They literally said on their newspaper that the top BBC star who paid child, child

for sex pictures could be charged by cops and face years in prison. That is a Sun headline.

If that doesn't suggest criminality, they didn't say he would be. I mean, of course,

you're absolutely right. That is exactly the implication. That is exactly what they are

pointing towards. And they had a denial from the young person, their so-called child,

and they chose not to run the denial. And to be fair, there might be really good reasons for that,

but we haven't heard them. We've obviously asked the Sun. We've obviously asked for people to

explain to us what was behind their editorial judgments on this. We haven't heard them.

And that has allowed BBC journalism to take the story on with alacrity, almost gusto,

almost glee. We're part of the pack. We're hunting. We're doing our own investigation

to try and bring down somebody who only a week ago, just a week ago, was presenting BBC news

coverage of the coronation of the king in Scotland. Exactly. I mean, you couldn't get much higher than

that. Yeah. And so there was just this weirdness and disjunction. And I've got to say, I have been

contacted by a surprisingly large number of BBC staff, some senior, very senior, some junior,

that would not be known about how distraught they were at some of the BBC coverage and have

tried to raise it with bosses and their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. And it's like, when

you're in the middle of this, the BBC does not want to hear complaints about its own news service

from its own journalists. And I think there has been considerable disquiet over the way the

coverage has unfolded on the BBC in the past 24, 48 hours. I mean, we've now had it firmed up

that investigations at the BBC into Hugh Edwards' sort of alleged behaviour on text

were being investigated before the sun ever broke their story. And we kind of touched on this

in the podcast yesterday. But whilst you never want journalists to stop doing their job,

you are in a really weird place. If the way that you raise a concern about a fellow presenter or

colleague is not through an HR process, is not through a complaints process, but by breaking

a story about them because they're famous. And I think that's the thing you can't get away. If

it had been a manager, they would just have had to go to HR. But because they can get traction on

a famous person, and to be honest, we've all been at the centre of sort of, you know, media storms

and had your pictures splashed across the paper. And it's very easy for anyone to make anything

into a story because you have a profile. And I just wonder whether they would have actually broken

that story if it hadn't been that the sun set the template. The situation that we're in with the

confirmation that Victoria Derbyshire, the presenter of Newsnight, had been investigating

Hugh Edwards. I mean, so BBC News presenter investigates BBC News presenter. It is mad. I once

was in the situation when I was... But you wouldn't have said that about Savile, right? So if you had

been the person, and obviously I was at Newsnight and it was Liz and Myron, two of the greatest

investigative journalists really that we've ever known, who did try and do that. And they said,

Jimmy Savile is the one you should be focusing on. And of course, what we now know is that he was

lauded and praised and all the rest of it. They didn't take the thing off air. And it was considered

not very tasteful. And it was a huge mistake. Of course. So this is the pendulum swing.

Exactly. The overcorrection. Obviously, I'm not in any way comparing this with the Savile episode.

But I'm just saying that BBC journalists like to think that actually they should be able to

break a story that's in their backyard, because they didn't with Savile. I was in a position

when I was North America editor, where the complaints unit rang up and said, there is a

complaint about you and your coverage of Donald Trump. And I thought, well, fair enough, I'm expecting

that. And then I got another call saying, the call has come from a reporter at BBC Radio Guernsey,

I think. So I said, what? So the next girlfriend? No. So some journalist at Radio Guernsey who had

used the external BBC complaints process to make a complaint about me. And so I contact the person

directly and said, if you had a problem with my coverage, drop me a line. If you think that Hugh

has overstepped the mark, and he's sent inappropriate messages to younger members of staff, Victoria

could just ring up here and say, Hugh, mate, sorry, this is a bit out of order. Why don't you

rain it in a bit? But to actually start launching a journalistic investigation,

which at best seems to me, it could be an HR issue and not much more.

Well, it might be an HR issue. I mean, let's not minimize the allegations, because it might very

well be something that we don't know the full story about. And it might go to HR, it might go

further afield than we can tell at the moment. I suppose the thing that makes me feel uncomfortable

is the idea that you see everything as a chance to get something on air that could do

someone else down. When if you're working in any kind of collegiate atmosphere, wouldn't

the more appropriate thing to be to say, look, mate, this is out of order, you've got to rain it in,

or look, mate, this is out of order. I've got to tell HR because I'm so alarmed at what I've heard.

But the idea you're investigating it and putting it on air, the night the person that's gone into

hospital, yeah, wrong side of the line. Well, in a moment, we'll be speaking to the former

son editor, David Yelland, who was with us right at the beginning of the week,

helping us make sense of this story and is now back with us, reflecting on just where we've ended

up as the week draws to a close. This is the news agents.

Well, joining us now is David Yelland, former editor of The Sun and a man who, I think, really

set the pace and set the tone this week by raising questions about the relationship between The Sun

and the BBC at the very beginning in all this. And David, I wonder if you think after a full week

of the story, a week of reflection, the Sun still doesn't actually think it's made a misstep on this?

Within all organizations, there is a legend and a story which people tend to believe.

That's particularly true of tabloid newspapers. So everyone within The Sun is not in a grumpy,

bad mood or feeling particularly negative at all today. It's very important to say that. They think

that they have succeeded. And we said earlier in the week that The Sun had the BBC exactly where

they wanted the BBC in the sense that the majority of people in the country thought that we had another

Jimmy Savile type situation developing. And a lot of people in the country still think that.

The BBC has been damaged and therefore The Sun has succeeded in what it's set out to do.

And I think they would say, if you look back and think, well, what actually happened here,

go back and look at the first story. It's a single column story, which means it's not a lot of words.

And what they effectively did, they did it very well, was it's like an incendiary attack on the

BBC. If you think of it like, you know, firebombing the BBC metaphorically and then running away.

No interviews. We haven't seen a single Sun person other than one columnist

go on TV and defend, you know, and others have fanned the flames, including the BBC itself.

The crux of the matter feels to me that they had a denial from the young person in question that

they did not run. Why not? If this ends up, as it may do, as a libel case, because there's no

doubt that huge legal team will make that accusation when he's better, I don't think there's any doubt

about that. The fact that The Sun chose not to run and on the record denial by the person who

was the subject of the story is not good for them. Why didn't they run it? They must have taken the

it's for them to say. I can imagine a scenario where you wouldn't run it if you were so convinced

as an editor that the story was accurate and that this person was so damaged that they should be

disregarded. But I think that's a very big call to make. How complex is it to make a case for libel

given that The Sun will say, didn't name him, just said it was a BBC star? It's very simple. To

libel somebody, you don't need to name them. You just need other people to say, I knew who it was.

And I think you could go into any pub in the country. The definition of a libel is that you have

damaged somebody's reputation or caused them financial loss. Now, those two things are very

certainly Hugh Edwards, Lloyds would think there's a very, very... So you don't need to name someone

to libel them. Right. But there has to be some form of identification. Doesn't The Sun have

a defense saying, but look, it was subsequent. We didn't know that Jeremy Vine was going to come out

and Nicky Campbell were going to come out and say it wasn't me and the whole pile of other people

came out and said it wasn't me. And therefore, by a process of elimination, people are lighted on

Hugh. That's not The Sun's fault, is it? If Hugh's lawyers can prove to a judge or more likely

this was settled before a judge, but let's just go through the scenario.

Would you say that you think that The Sun will just be willing to pay?

Well, what will be happening now, despite the fact that he was in hospital, is his legal team

will be looking to see if they have a case for defamation. And at The Sun, the in-house legal

team will probably already have taken external counsel, which means, you know, a KC view. And

if Hugh Edwards sues The Sun for libel, then the decision making goes above the editor's head.

I know that from my experience. So what actually happens is the two legal teams

are interacting behind the scenes. And if the external counsel that The Sun would have

advises you're going to lose this, they'll settle.

Okay, I go back to the word that you used earlier in answer to Emily, that it's been a success.

If The Sun has to settle a huge libel bill, it's still a success?

As we sit here now, what I'm saying is, my own personal view is that this is a disgrace. If

you walked in this room, I would give you my hug. It's the first thing I would do.

And, by the way, the young person affected, who I'm very concerned about, but we can go

on to that in a minute. But you asked me what's the atmosphere at The Sun at the moment. And the

fact is that they have succeeded in what they tried to do, which is to damage the BBC and to raise

the decision. There are clearly texts and so on, which will be the subject of an inquiry,

an HR inquiry, at the BBC. So it's not as if there wasn't something there that merited

running a news story, but it's the way in which it was run, which is the problem. And the accusation,

the implication that he had broken the law with quote, unquote, a child, which is a word that

was used repeatedly through the story. And, you know, in terms of libel, I would say to the people

listening, did you or does anybody you know, think that this person had engaged in illegal

activity with a child? And if the answer to that is yes, then the case for libel exists.

Because they basically called him a pedophile and they've got absolutely nothing

to substantiate that. Is that right? Lots of people in the country, including Lee Anderson and

Pretty Patel, assisted The Sun in making that very clear. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think there's

any doubt in that. Now, funnily enough, there's a, you know, this is not the BBC, so I can use the

word shit fight. There is a real shit fight going on at News UK between The Sun and The

Sunday Times, because at The Sun, some people there think The Sunday Times took this story on,

on The Sunday and implied things that they didn't. And indeed, the mail on Sunday, also

on Sunday, their front page, because it was very aggressive, more aggressive, actually, than The

Sun. And that's what I mean by, you know, the editor of The Sun threw an incendiary device into

New Broadcasting House, because what you do is you throw this in, and then everyone else piles in,

including the BBC's own journalists, for laudable reasons, although we can discuss that later,

maybe there are other issues around that as well, that has resulted in

hubing in hospital and the police making it quite clear that the law wasn't broken. So

what was this all about in the first place? And what, what on earth is this, actually,

to push back a bit, David, there are still investigations going on,

not of a criminal nature, but we know of a, let's call it an inappropriate texting nature,

right? Is the BBC right to proceed with those investigations by its own news teams

at this moment? There are two separate things there. One is like an HR issue,

which is, is the BBC right to investigate complaints made by its own people about late

night texts and so on? The answer is yes, I don't think there's any doubt about that,

and those things happen all the time in all organisations, increasingly.

In terms of the journalism, I think overall the BBC has got to grow up, and everyone within it has

got to grow up and understand that there is an existential threat to the BBC from these people,

from the commercial newspapers in this country and their owners. They want the BBC

dead in the water, they want the licence fee abolished, and you could see that. I mean,

they don't hide it. I mean, the editorials say that. The Andersons quote said, I mean, I would,

Haven for Perverts. Yeah, you know, Haven for Perverts, and we should get rid of the licence

fee. I mean, those are the two things, and any politician on the right knows that if they say

that, they all carry favour with not just the sun, but with other newspapers as well.

The BBC does understand this at the top. There's no doubt that Tim Davie and his predecessors do

understand that, but within the organisation, they're manipulated too easy. So if I watch

Laura Kungsberg on Sunday, which you know, we all do, the first thing they do is they're the front

pages. Well, the front pages then set the weather for the day. So the BBC journalists would argue

that their response to an existential threat is doing their own investigative job more robustly.

I absolutely agree. I think the news division has performed brilliantly this week.

They may have overcompensated, actually. I thought news night last night,

certain question might, you know, you know, let's see, you know, but what I'm saying is going back

to my sort of metaphor of the sun throwing an incendiary device into the BBC, they would have

known that this is what would happen. They would know that the BBC would assist them

in damaging the BBC once that initial. Just say that again. You think the BBC has helped the sun

in damaging itself? For all the right reasons. It's an asymmetrical war, this, because on the one

side, you've got the BBC, which is totally accountable. You know, Tim Davie is director

general, totally accountable, totally trying to tell the truth, leaning over backwards,

both its journalists and its executives. And then you've got the sun on the other side,

which runs a story without mentioning the fact that the person, yeah, and then doesn't, I haven't

seen any sun journalists, the editor or anybody else. Rod Liddle was on news night, apparently

last night, he's a sort of columnist, but he's not really a sun staffer defending themselves.

Well, you know, the BBC, I think Tim Davies has handled this as best as possibly could.

There is the issue of the original complaint and why it wasn't investigated.

But we still don't know what the family said, what the accusation was. We don't know anything about

what actually happened a couple of months ago yet. But I mean, one of the things that I found

extraordinary disturbing, I think even depressing last night was, you know,

someone texted me and said, there's a statement from Hugh's wife, Vicky, saw it,

listened to the Radio 4 bulletin. It goes into this whole thing about how Vicky has issued

this statement that Hugh has been hospitalised, comes to the end of the report and the newsreader

picks up and says, meanwhile, there we've got fresh allegations that the BBC has uncovered

of a member of staff having been made to feel uncomfortable about one of his texts. And you

thought, what are we still, the guy's in hospital. You're still going on with this. And it's about

someone being made to feel slightly uncomfortable. And you think, really? So where would you be on

that one David? Do you think that is legitimate? Some of these things are just beyond anybody's

control? Because they were to prepare that story before they knew that Hugh's wife was going to

say what she said. But they carried on with the report. They couldn't pull it because they pulled

it, it would have leaked out, it would look like they were covering up and all these sorts of things.

I think this asymmetry, which exists between the Sun and newspapers, actually, and the BBC is

something that's not talked about enough and not understood enough within the BBC itself.

For example, the Sun splashed BBC lied. The word lies, you know, for the BBC to run the story

saying the Sun lied, even though there may be a case for it, they couldn't do that because of all

kinds of checks and balances within the organisation. But the Sun ran a front page that said the BBC

lied, which is based on the stepfather, saying that he'd made the full complaint and the BBC said

that the actual reality is that the BBC, exactly, it's wrong to accuse the BBC of lying. But you

can count on the BBC and all the former BBC director generals and, you know, the ex-heads of

Radio 5 Live and so on, usually to pile in, right, criticizing the BBC, you know, because the BBC said

that's the way it is. You can't know anything about the BBC. Whereas the Sun is a pyramid structure,

right? I know having edited it, whatever I said, even if I was wrong, and I was wrong quite a lot,

it went. It's like a military organisation and that's its strength and its weakness.

And it's also the ungovernability of the BBC. I know that the DG Tim Davy feels that is,

the word he has used, is surreal. This kind of separation between the corporation and the news

division that Tim Davy could shout until he was blue in the face about what he wanted to happen.

And the news division would essentially say, very interesting, Tim, screw you, we are independent,

we're going to do our own journalism here, which is a strength and it's an absolute weakness.

One of the great things about this country is the BBC and if we're not careful, we're going to lose

it. And that is, but if you take the Gilligan case, which we know in a great detail.

Sorry, just to give you a bit of context, this is, 20 years ago, we're going back to the Iraq

War, the Dodgy dossier and what he thought he knew then from David Kelly, who was the

government scientist. I mean, the fact is that Alistair Campbell was right

and what Gilligan said on the Today programme was wrong. It was even investigated and that is a

fact, but I happened to be in the BBC building because I was doing an interview when Greg Dyke

left. I remember, practically, I think he was shoulder high. And the wonderful professional

journalism is good at lots of things, but it's not very good at looking at itself and particularly

in the newspaper world. It has no sense of self-awareness. I still speak to, you know,

obviously, my friends who I grew up with and sometimes it amuses me that they simply don't

understand that the rest of the world has a very different view. I think there's a view that

within the BBC, that if you play nicely, you will get the Daily Mail or the Sun or the Telegraph

on board and that, you know, we've got to make moves towards them and it's never going to work.

They've got a vested interest in the BBC failure. A commercial vested interest in not wanting the

BBC to succeed. I think that's from my own personal experience. When I took over the Sun,

I wrote a leader in the first few weeks that basically said why the BBC should be closed down

and I did that because I've been in New York for 10 years working for Mo Lock over there,

but why did I do it? I did it because I wanted to carry favour with Rupert, is why I did it,

if I'm not really honest. And I see this the whole time. The way to carry favour with the boss,

not just at the Sun, but the Mail, is to do that. So you didn't believe that. You were writing

opinion leaders that you didn't believe? Yeah, exactly. I didn't. Do you think they're all doing

that? I don't think I'm unique, but what happened with me was that every BBC person I met when I

was editing, whether they would be journalists or the director general or whatever, I really liked.

And I thought, oh, you know, because I had that Derek experience of the BBC before.

So is that the motivation of Victoria Newton at the editor of the Sun that Mo Lock may have

been on the shop floor, she needs to impress, right, we'll do a big one up against the BBC?

Oh, that's a very difficult question. I think Victoria has a very good track record actually

on issues of child abuse, which this isn't. So that would have affected her view as well.

I think when you're in those, my experience of being editor of the Sun is that I lost the

ability to know what I actually thought myself. When I left the job, it took me a few years to

realise what my own politics were, because you do align your politics and views with the boss.

You just do. There's no doubt about that. And one other thing that you said to us at the beginning

of the week, which I thought was so fascinating, was you said it was once upon a time, the people

who went in and gave their 20B bits over to buy the Sun that was the power. You're now saying it's

the advertisers. Where will the advertisers be? Where will the marketing people be? Will they

be thinking the Sun has had a success? Or will they be thinking, oh, crikey, we're going to lose

people over this? It's too early to tell, but it will be of a concern at News UK. There's no doubt

about that, because we've seen what's happened at GB News and the advertisers have a huge amount of

power. And they can take fright. They can. I haven't seen any evidence of it yet, but it is possible.

It's too early to tell. If there was a libel action and the Sun lost it, that would be quite a

moment as well. What's some of you talking about? What do you think? I don't know, but it's very

possible that we wake up one day. You see, he has a year to make the case, that's the law, for libel,

then could take maybe a year or so. But I think it's quite possible that nothing happens legally,

or that we wake up in a couple of years' time and the news tells us that an amount of money

is being paid, or that's often the way. I'm not saying the Sun has necessarily libeled you,

because that would be a foolish thing to say, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of

settlement. I know when I was editing, we settled a number of times when actually we probably had

the case, but the legal team take the view, is it likely the judge or the jury will find in our

favour? That's the calculus that matters. Can I ask you one thing? When the statement came out from

Hugh's wife, and everyone did, I think, a bit of pausing and self-reflection, and we hear this kind

of age-old phrase that lessons should be learned, like, lessons must be learned. Watershed moment,

lessons must be learned. And yet, actually, if you go to the respective parties, no one thinks

they did anything wrong, the Sun's happy with their coverage, the BBC is broadly happy with it.

Well, I think in terms of the news investigation, they're happy, the management's looking,

well, okay, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just saying, when we talk about, particularly,

this idea that lessons are learned, I mean, nothing's going to change as a response to this.

Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think, how many times have we heard that lessons will be

learned? I think that the danger is that the BBC learns its lessons and overcompensates,

and the newspapers don't. I mean, that's quite a likely scenario, actually. But I would say that

one thing I would hope the BBC would do, both at a senior management level and amongst this journalist,

is just to think, just to realise how not to be so easily manipulated. I think that's an

important, because it's important to the country. Also think there are lots of things that could

happen. We're not at the end of this yet. The Sun has a duty of care to its source, even though

the source denied the story. You know, this person appears to be a Class A drug user, although we

only know that because that's what the parents have told us. Probably had a great deal of affection

for you. Well, we don't know anything more than that. Has now out in the cold, probably hasn't

got any money, isn't talking to their parents, and the world has just collapsed. So that person

needs care. Do you think there's a way back to the BBC for you? Yes. A career? I do think that.

I think in order for that to happen, lots of things have to go his way. But the country is not the

Sun. The country is millions of people who all have, in their own lives, issues. There are lots of

drugs in the country. There are lots of people that say and do things on social media and on text

that they shouldn't do. There are people in appropriate relationships and all kinds of things.

Life is complicated. The British people are much more able to understand those nuances, I think,

than you would think from reading the newspapers. So I think that my message to you would be there

is a way back. And let's see how it goes. It may not necessarily be quite what he was doing before,

but there may be a way back. And I think there is actually. And I think if you say, has anything

changed? Over the last 20 years, the politicians have started to survive scandals, right? There was

a time when- The wife in the five-body- Absolutely. You rang Downing Street. I remember the Robin Cook

case where Alistair Campbell effectively told Robin Cook to leave his wife for his job

and he had to make a decision instantly. That's all changed. If Hugh Edwards were to come back

into his BBC role, that is the moment that the country has changed. And that is something,

I think, that the BBC management should bear in mind as I guess through this process.

David Yellen, thank you so much.

Welcome back. And there is good news and there is bad news if you work in the public sector.

The good news is that Rishi Sunak, according to the Times newspaper, is going to accept

the public sector pay settlement recommendations that have been made so that that should give

public sector workers a pay rise of around 6% and they will be delighted at that because

the government was originally offering far, far less. And the bad news is that the government

won't actually be borrowing any more to fund the raises, which means the departments will

actually have to take this out of their budgets up to what the Times today is calling a three

billion pound squeeze. And I think it's important just to put this in context of why

perception was so critical here because the independent pay review body is the body that

the government has sort of set up to keep things at arm's length, to make it look as if

they're making the decisions. So actually take all your strikes, you know, it's nothing to do with

the government and the workers, it's all to do with what the independent pay review body suggests.

So when they came back with this headline figure of, you know, in some cases, 6.5%.

And the Prime Minister said, oh, no, I don't think so. That's a bit much. Everyone was kind of

rightfully, well, what is the point of the recommendation of this independent body then

if you're just going to sort of walk right through it. And so strategically, he's played a very

smart game, which is I'm accepting the headline figure. I just don't want to pay for it.

Yeah. So I guess the teachers will now be going out to buy their own chalk for the Blackboard

because there's no budget left for anything to be had in schools because you've taken it

out of the school's equipment budget to put onto the school's salaries budget.

John hasn't been to a school for long. Do they not still use chalk and Blackboards?

Papyrus. Yeah, they've gone back to Papyrus now.

Papyrus. Oh, good. Okay. Quills?

Yes, very much so. And inkwells?

The inkwells are still there, obviously.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, at the desk.

In every desk, which has a little penis drawn on the seat. Do you have those at your school?

It was a boys' school. Well, that's all we had drawn up.

And imaginary pictures of women with large breasts.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, where were we?

Police and prison officers, we think will be receiving pay rises of 7%.

The armed forces will receive rises of between five and six.

And ministers have said that there is a tacit agreement to give personnel the recommended

pay rises as they are unable to strike. So we know that the police, we know the army,

can't just decide to go on strike. So they have to be given these rises.

But where does the money actually come from? Their own departmental budget?

I just love that a year ago, when the independent pay review bodies had said,

right, you can only have 2%. And the various groups of workers were complaining saying that's not

enough. Rishi was going around saying, well, look, it's what the independent pay review bodies

recommended. I'm sorry, it's not more than you. And now that the independent pay review bodies have

said 6.5, said, whoa, steady, we can't have any of that. So that is the way that they have found

to fund this. I mean, maybe it will end the public sector strikes, which would be great,

because if you want to travel around or you want to kind of have your kids taught or whatever it

happens to be, then I'm sure that will be a relief. And maybe it's clever politics

on the part of Rishi Sunic to do it this way. Well, it's not that clever in the sense that

you've got the head of the hospitals group NHS providers already saying pay awards need to

be fully funded. The NHS hasn't got the resources to fund them from existing budgets. And I don't

think this solves any of the problems of, yes, I mean, maybe, you know, doctors or nurses are

going to get more money, but then they're not going to have the equipment needed to help patients.

And so if you're actually sitting there thinking, I can't sustain this, I'm going to go and work in

Australia, New Zealand, you know, they pay us more, and they're better funded and all the rest of it,

what am I doing still here? I don't think that problem goes away. I don't think retention,

which is the biggest, most critical problem in the NHS right now, is going to disappear just

because they've magicked up the independent pay review announcement without any more money behind

it. Before we go, we knew you'd want an update on the latest situation regarding Boris Johnson's

mobile phone and whether it's going to be handed over to the Hallit inquiry. Apparently,

one of the reasons that it hasn't been handed over, if you believe this, is that Boris Johnson

can no longer remember the password he had for his phone. Now, I know that some very sophisticated

people have algorithms which generate new passwords every few weeks so that the password is constantly

changing and that way your phone is absolutely safe. But there are those people who settle on a

password and use it for absolutely bloody everything. And my guess is that Boris Johnson

falls into latter category. So, when he says he can't remember his password,

is what I'd say. Yeah, apparently, government security experts right now are trying to establish

if they can stop the iPhone erasing itself if the passcode is wrong. This is kind of mission

impossible. This tape will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Exactly. So, I'm sure he'll be very happy

if that phone self-destructs. But right now, that's where we are. The finest scientific brains

in the country are trying to work out the passcode to Boris Johnson's phone. And you wonder why we

can't get things to run properly in this country. Yeah, we need Tom Cruise. I'm not sure that is our

former prime minister. We'll be back tomorrow. Bye for now. Bye. Yeah, bye.

This has been a global player original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.