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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: British intelligence agents have had to be pulled out of overseas operations after Russia and China apparently cracked the encryption of computer files stolen by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, that’s according to the Sunday Times this morning.  Joining me to discuss that and the rest of today’s top stories are the former head of the Football Association, David Davies, flanked by Mark Field the Conservative MP and the journalist and activist Laura Bates who is founder of the Everyday Sexism project and was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours yesterday.   We’ll pick up on this story, extraordinary James Bond stuff on the front of the Sunday Times, British spies betrayed to Russians and Chinese, this all flowing from the Edward Snowden revelations.  

DAVID DAVIES: I think the most significant paragraph is actually further down the story when it actually says ‘It is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data or whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and then in Moscow’.  He is in both and some of us who naturally welcome the whistleblower in the Guardian, wherever he or she may come from, we have to reassess our thinking when we see stories like this.  As you said at the start, someone like James Bond, people like James Bond do still exist.  

DM: There are undercover agents, I mean obviously there is code cracking going on but I kind of imagined it didn’t work like that anymore.  

DM: An extraordinary scoop, an extraordinary all-round story in the Mail on Sunday, Rolf Harris’s vile jail song.  A letter he’s written or several letters I think he’s written to someone who has then released them to the Mail.  

DAVID DAVIES: This is stupid isn’t it?  He might still face further charges.  

DM: David, what have you got there from the Independent, Clinton vows to champion all Americans, of course Hillary’s bid for the White House.   

DAVID DAVIES: Well I mean, I have to warn the British public this morning and everybody here, that for another year and a bit we are almost certainly going to hear about Hillary Clinton at least every Sunday and a lot more.  I happen to think she’s terrific, right, I personally would have preferred if she had won the Democratic nomination eight, six years ago or whatever it was but can believe that it’s almost – the very first sentence of this Independent story, almost a quarter of a century after she bumped across America in a bus beside her husband on his first run for President and here she is standing in New York, taking a swipe at Wall Street, saying all the right things, I’m for the successful and for the struggling, has she learned a few lessons from our election campaign?  … Age may win her this election, the very fact she is an older … are we not this  morning reading about the older vote, the grey vote – which I’m in favour of, surprise-surprise – but seriously, those matters do count with a lot of people and Ronald Reagan, for goodness sake, won the US Presidency when he was not young.  

DM: He was 69.  

DAVID DAVIES: Men lose their marbles as well I have to tell you, that does happen.  

DM: Your thoughts on Tim Hunt’s comments about women scientists?  

DAVID DAVIES: His wife says about her husband ‘He doesn’t think first’.  End of story.

DM: Sorry we’re out of time, very good to see you all.