ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s start by taking a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined by Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s General Secretary, Margaret Mountford, the businesswoman and former lawyer and the author and former newspaper editor, Eve Pollard.  Good morning to you and what visions in red.  A lot to go through, there are lots on all the front covers.  Let’s start with the letter from the bishops on the front of the Observer.  Frances, what about the numbers?  50,000 still is a drop in the ocean compared to the millions that are being displaced by the Syrian conflict in particular.

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think the fact that millions is a very large number doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do more.

DM: Germany are taking hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, this year.  

FRANCES O’GRADY: And I think the Bishops are saying we ought to get closer to what other countries are offering and also …

DM: The German number do you think, do you think there should be hundreds of thousands?

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think what’s interesting is it’s the Bishops who are arguing for a role for the Big Society, they’re saying can’t we get people around the table, can’t we draw on people’s good instincts to try and offer to help and I think they do feel insulted that they only got a cursory response to what was an offer from faith groups and civic society to try and do more as a country.

DM: Just on that, 800,000, that’s about the figure, we know not all of them are coming from Syria, that’s the about the number that Germany will take this year. Britain is a similar sized economy so what kind of number do you think we could take?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well I’m not an expert, I’m not going to come up with a number but I think what many people in this country feel is that we can and should do more and here’s a practical offer of help.

DM: The Telegraph, page 14, apprenticeships, you’ll have a view on this Frances, I’m sure.

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well it is one in fact that I think that good employers and unions are united on because actually it damages the whole brand of the apprenticeship which young people and families have faith in and see as leading to a real job and if you have, as we do have in this country, about a quarter of apprenticeships not even paying the minimum rare, the statutory minimum rate for apprenticeships, that suggests to me that …

DM: How do they get away with that?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well that’s where I think many employers and unions are saying we need the government to crack down on it, we need more wages inspectors because if they are not paying the minimum wage then they are probably a Mickey Mouse cheap Labour scheme rather than a real apprenticeship as we’d understand it.

DM: Frances, I want you to bring us this tax credit story, this one is going to run and run.  The government denying that the least well paid in our society, the least better off will be worse off with the removal of some entitlement to tax credits but in the Observer it is saying Tory MPs in 71 marginals could be at risk from their voters.

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think it’s very interesting that we are beginning to see some of the blue on blue battles that were predicted.  We have got rebellions possibly on Europe, on Sunday trading and I wonder how long before we’ll get them on tax credits too.  Over three million families will be worse off, on average £1300 a year.  The Institute for Fiscal Studies says it is arithmetically impossible for people to be better off as a result of the government’s reforms including that increase in the minimum wage because the loss of tax credits is much, much greater.

DM: But do you agree with the government’s direction of travel, saying it’s better to be paid the money straight rather than it be taken off you in tax and given back to you in tax credits, it would be better if you just got a better wage, that’s what they’re saying?

FRANCES O’GRADY: I think everybody believes that the problem of low pay should be tackled at source and that means giving people a decent pay rise and improving our productivity to pay for it but I was interested elsewhere I think Rachel Reeves has been calling for let’s have a two year pause, let’s see what the real impact of the increase in the minimum wage will be before we remove the safety net from millions of families who depend on it.

DM: But there is the other statistic the government gives that when tax credits were first brought in it was about £6 million cost to the Exchequer, now it’s up to thirty, it’s ballooned.  

FRANCES O’GRADY: Families are having sleepless nights.  

DM: Let’s move on and Frances, junior doctors, again something that people find like the last issue we were discussing, people find very complex to get to the bottom of what actually is being proposed and what is opposed by the BMA, a trade union I suppose.

FRANCES O’GRADY: This is the threat of probably not strike action but possibly the withdrawal of unpaid overtime by junior doctors who feel very angry that the Health Secretary is really running negotiations through the media and not getting around the table talking to them about those unsocial hours payments as they’re called for working Saturdays and nights. They are saying look, we already do run a 24/7 NHS but if you remove those payments you’ll find it hard to recruit doctors to do the work.  

DM: The junior doctors are saying there are plenty of us around 24/7, that’s because we’re at the bottom of the pile, we do work the weekends but it’s those consultants who are out playing golf and on their weekends away, you need to get them in hospitals.

FRANCES O’GRADY: According to the papers the consultants were covering these junior doctors so that they could come out in their thousands in London, Nottingham and Belfast to protest.  

DM: The Northern Powerhouse and the closure of at least one, two steel plants in parts of northern England, Northern Poorhouse is how the Mirror terms it.  What’s your overview of the global forces at play here?  British steel is too expensive to produce, how can we continue to produce it when we are making it at a loss?

FRANCES O’GRADY: Well China clearly has its own economic problems and there is dumping of cheap steel going on in the global market.

DM: You couldn’t be arguing for tariff barriers surely?

FRANCES O’GRADY: I don't think anybody is but I think what people are saying is that if you look across the water to Germany, France or Italy, then they recognise you have to back your steel industry on which manufacturing depends through the rough times as well as the good. They are intervening, they provide subsidies, they provide active support, in this country our Business Secretary appears not to want to even use the term industrial policy.  We shouldn’t be hitting it with high energy costs either and they are much higher in Britain than they are in Germany.

DM: I am drawing a close to my discussion with the ladies in red, thank you very much indeed for taking me through some of the newspaper stories there.