Is the jury system overrated?

This is a Global Player original podcast. Runnymede, the 15th of June 1215. King John seals the Magna Carta. In it, no free man will be imprisoned. Except by the lawful judgment of his peers. The 2nd of December 2025, David Lamy tears it up. We've had jury trials for over 800 years. They are, as David Lamy himself once proudly asserted, fundamental to our justice system, fundamental to our democracy. work against tyranny.

Twelve ordinary citizens pooling their collective wisdom. That is Robert Jenrick, Shadow Justice Secretary. Taking us back to 1215 to start his assessment of David Lamy's plan to scrap juries for many cases in England and Wales. That is the year of the Magna Carta. And Jenric's argument is that Lamy is tearing up history. But is that right? I mean, 90% of cases are heard in this country by magistrates. So what is Mr Jenrick getting so exercised about? Welcome to the newsagents.

The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And that was a video from Robert Jenrick where he's seen walking across a muddy field in white trainers with his dog. I mean that's just the wrong look. I'm sorry. Runny meads maybe. Was he in running me's? Do you think? It may have been runny meat. I think so. I don't think it was just any old field. But surely it should have been Wellies if you're going across a field.

I also love the idea that we um reached a you know fundamentally sound and just

legal system in twelve fifteen. Yeah, yeah. There was definitely no wrongful imprisonment after that for the next eight hundred years. No rack, no torture. No indeed. But this is all related to the announcement that David Lamy, the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary has made today, which is controversial because however comically Jenwick has expressed it, it is true to say that the jury system has been at the heart of the English, Scottish legal system.

for centuries, unlike many other European countries. But he's announced, David Lamy, that jury trials in England and Wales for crimes that carry a likely sentence of less than three years will be scrapped. These are reforms to the justice system, including creating so called SWIFT court.

and that will include serious offences including murder, robbery and rape. Will still go before a jury, but anything less than that will go either before magistrates or individual judges. And the context for this, Lamy argues, is the fact that frankly, at the moment, our justice system is not working. A fundamental feature of any state or a fundamental responsibility of any state is the efficient and swift operation of justice and it is not working. Indeed at the moment

there are current projections that Crown Court case backlogs will reach one hundred thousand by twenty twenty eight. That's against a current backlog of almost seventy eight thousand. And this means that currently a suspect Being charged with an offence today may not reach trial until twenty thirteen. What he says, what Jenric says anyway, is that Lamy and indeed the Prime Minister have gone back on previous positions that they held and indeed that they articulated.

Uh he quotes the Prime Minister as having said a few years ago, there should be a right to trial by jury in all criminal cases and quoted Lamy as saying juries act as a filter for prejudice. In other words Jenrik's accusation is he's scrapping the very justice system that he once lauded and trying to make it look like this was Never in a manifesto was never an idea that they had before they came to power. Now they've come into power, they've seen how slow the system is.

The diagnosis is right but the solution is wrong. Well, why don't we just listen to a bit of David Lamy uh in the commons making his announcement today? Today I can announce up to£34 million per year in additional funding for criminal legal aid advocates. to recognise the vital support that they give to those navigating the system. I will also accept Sir Bryan's recommendation to match fund a number of pupillages in the criminal area.

to open a career at the criminal bar to more young people from across society. I will also negotiate sitting days with the senior judiciary through the usual Concord Act process, aiming to give an unprecedented three year certainty to the system. I am clear that sitting days in the Crown Court and Magistrates' Courts must continue to rise, and my ambition is to continue breaking records by the end of this Parliament. But as Sobrian has made clear, Investment is not enough.

meaning justice will be denied to more victims and trust in the system will collapse. Mr Speaker, to avoid that disaster, I will follow Sir Brian's bold blueprint for change. First I will create new Swift Courts within the Crown Court with a judge alone deciding verdicts in triable either way cases with a likely sentence of three years or less.

So that is the Justice Secretary, the Lord Chancellor David Lamy, and the Sobrian he's talking about is Sobrian Leverson, who more famously led the Leverson inquiry into the phone hacking scandal and kind of the way the press was behaving in this country. Look, I think when people talk about broken Britain

They sort of have the justice system in mind where nothing seems to be working and the wrong prisoners are being let out early and there are all sorts of cock ups and mistakes. The justice system is certainly creaking. But the point about sort of justice delayed is justice denied. There's someone I know who has been the victim of a stalker. The person who had been stalking her

has now been charged with attempted rape and the police came round to see this woman, a young woman and said, Look, he's gonna plead not guilty. It means that the case will go to the, you know, Crown Court and a jury, but it will be years. ac mae'r barriswyr sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n The the person who is accusing him will just think, I want to get on with my life. I don't want this hanging over me and the case will drop.

And if that is a legal tactic now that just play it long because the case will go away, then surely that has to be addressed. And for that reason I kinda think that people will get hooked on King John, Magna Carta, but I think there is a practical thing about our justice system now that needs addressing it. I mean no one I don't think you'll find anyone who says oh we need to lengthen the period of the wait between, you know, the resolution of a crime and the crime taking place.

The question is whether getting rid of a jury's I don't think jury selection takes that long. I don't think that is what's holding it up. As they've said to us, it's about the number of days that they're not even sitting, it's about the delays to the process, it's about things

kind of stopping in a recess and having to be re examined and sending everyone home. That's the time consuming stuff. I don't think it takes very long to to get a jury together. What this is an example of is the government almost trying to pull any lever. To lessen this problem. Because John, you are right. I mean, this is this is a profoundly, profoundly serious crisis in the British state. One of the reasons it's been allowed to get this bad is because most people, thankfully,

for one reason or another, do not have do not encounter the justice system very much. It's a bit like the border force or something like that. Generally speaking, unlike, you know, frontline public services in that day to day way like the NHS and so on, we don't encounter I mean we talk about NHS waiting lists.

God, if we had operation waiting lists or elective waiting lists that were anything like this, I mean the political crisis for this government in terms of half which is already bad would be on a whole nother level, right? But the fact is is that for individuals who are caught up in it It is

Life destroying potentially. Either if you're a victim or someone who has been accused wrongly or correctly of a crime. It is basically destroys your life because it just ho hangs over your life for years. The question therefore becomes as as we're discussing whether the j changes to the jury system will be the sort of silver bullet to try and arrest it or to try and make it better. And I think

What you could probably say is that it might make some differences around the edges. But if you look at the actual stats in terms of what's happened to the justice system, and the truth is, as the IFG Institute for Government have pointed out, justice system is now employing fewer criminal lawyers

pretty much than ever before on a per capita basis. The number of judges working in courts remains seven percent smaller compared to fifteen years ago. We're spending ten percent less in real terms on the court system than we were fifteen years ago. I mean we we're expecting magistrates more of this slack. Actually, you know, the number of judges has gone down a bit, but there's been an absolute collapse in the number of magistrates since twenty ten. So if you're generally trying to funnel

people away or cases away from the jury part of the system, where they're gonna go. So, you know, I think that what is I mean, you know, Generick can talk about Magna Carta as as as much as he likes. The truth is is that, you know, we can have a debate

about the jury system. There is a debate about the jury system. You know, we've changed it in the past in the nineteen thirties, as Lamar has pointed out. We used to have jury systems for civil trials. We don't anymore until tw the Tories themselves change it in defamation cases. We had it'til twenty thirteen. You can pick and choose without

fundamentally changing our nature of a democracy where you employ a jury system. The question is is whether it will make as much of a material difference in terms of lessening the problem in the justice system overall. I guess in my head I'm trying to work out What is practical and what is theoretical in this whole question? I went to a few barristers to sort of gauge their response to Lamy's changes.

And one sent me to his blog, The Secret Barrister, and he said juries are the worst way of determining criminal liability except for all the others. In other words, it's the old Churchill quote about democracy. And I think this is the the m the most fundamentally easy way of understanding it, that juries are important not for the powers they have

As for the powers they prevent others from having. In other words, this is a theoretical argument, and I sort of stand back from that and I'm just kind of looking at it. The point of having a jury is that it means that prosecution can't simply be nodded through by a court. The evidence has to be impartial, has to be evidential. It's taken out of the hands of career and legal professionals. In other words,

just having that body of your peers is what gives you distance from, as it were, the legal system itself. So something that seems very obvious if you're a career barrister, if you're a career professional, if you're a lawyer. Suddenly has to go through another check and balance. And I think that's the argument that the Jenriks of this world, the Michael Ghose of this world make.

I'm not pretending that I'm totally convinced by that because I think we probably do need to modernise and I think twelve fifteen is probably not, as you said, the right starting point for whatever the system has given us. But I do understand that there is a sort of gut. reaction to this because people you know you you know I hate the slippery slope argument.

But people see it as a way of giving more power to a smaller number of people and a more closed system than it currently has and that's a worry. And and of course if you look at you know, the sort of temples where the the the judges and the barristers gather, you know, in London.

Representative, kind of up to a point. It's got better. But you I thought you were gonna say up to a point. Up to a point, my lord. I was waiting for that. But but i y you can see that you know, overwhelmingly it is white. It is male, it is middle class, it is drawn from the private schools. But on the other hand, you know, if you have got legal professionals adjudicating

Do you want twelve good men and women true to be you know, the jury of your peers to be judged by them when there are all sorts of cases where they've gone on gut feeling but not on the law? Almost every major miscarriage of justice.

has come from a jury trial. But that is probably because juries are involved in all the major trials. Exactly. And in other countries and in other countries, you know, as I say, this is very much a sort of English common law tradition to have juries. Most other European countries don't have them apart from maybe in them s some specific cases and I'm sure they have their miscarriages of justice as well. I mean I think the the the problem is John is that like you know at least

My sort of overall point here is that this is systemic, right? In the sense that, you know, at least we can be guaranteed to get jurors. Like you have to do it. It's one of the only sort of parts of our free. Yeah, we're we're only parts exactly. Oh I didn't know. This wasn't a this isn't just a theoretical discussion. No, no, no, I'm not sure. Twelve good men and women true. I I have been called for John. One angry man. Yeah. John's wonderful. Yeah.

Well no, but like exactly, you know, the state can compel us to do it. It's you know, we it's one of the only things in our democracy we have to do. We don't have to vote conscription. No, we do we're not conscripted. We have to do it unless you've got a very, very

Good excuse. So we are a plentiful resource. Actually within the criminal justice system right now, if you can't afford your own barrister, try and get a criminal defence lawyer. You know, the legal aid situation is so bad that actually now the sort of remuneration is so poor that actually

the system itself is struggling to even get enough criminal defence lawyers to come in. Most solicitors in the country, criminal solicitors are now over fifty five. It is an ailing, creaking system, and in that respect as well, A big part of the story here is that the justice system mirrors the rest of the public sector in not recovering or not getting close to recovering even pre-pandemic productivity levels. We see that in the NHS. I mean for example the IFS said the other day.

that the average number of cases resolved per sitting day in a Crown Court in twenty nineteen twenty was one point one six. So that's good because if it's above one then you're getting through the backlog. But now it's point nine seven. Now you can work that out. If you're not above one, then the backlog just keeps growing and growing and growing and the jury system in particular or changes to the jury system now won't help that backlog in particular.

because it would have to be retrospective which would get everyone up in arms. Legal profession won't tolerate that'cause a lot of these processes and these cases have already started and you can't go back and say, Well, we started with a a jury type system and now we're changing moving the goalposts halfway through. To be fair to Lamy

This is the bit of his announcement that has got, you know, all the focus,'cause it's a big constitutional question. But he is also, and he he told us stay in the comments, thirty-four million pounds of additional funding for criminal legal aid advocates. and he wants to match funding pupillages, in other words, make it more possible for people to study as barristers and increase the number of sitting days. So it's not that he is ignoring all the other stuff which is

holding up the system and shows a lack of funding. I think he's trying to do them side by side. But obviously the question about juries is the one that gets our attention because it feels like a massive change. It feels like something slipping out of our grasp. Even though as you say, in the EU we are the only country that routinely has juries.

When did that happen? Why did nobody tell me? Back to twenty sixteen we're gonna have to take ten years. Not twelve fifteen at least, that's something. Yeah, but I mean you know, in in Europe, yeah, exactly. We are the only country'cause the common law system We share that with the US, with Canada, I guess Australia.

of what is wrong with the criminal justice system and Lewis, you've kind of outlined, you know, some of the problems that are there. Then no, it doesn't. I mean, you know, okay, a thirty seven million here and a

f you know, extra pupillages and whatever else funding. I mean that's all good. No, that's boring but it is important. Yes it is i it's boring but it is important, but is it going to deal with kind of the crisis that we've got In our prisons, in in the way our criminal justice system works, in the court backlog, in you know, all of that. frustrating things about being involved in a case is just how analogue the system is. I mean how so much of it appears to also be done on sort of pen and paper.

You know, it feels uh you know, and and having you know, from the all the super instruction stuff we did, having had

that for two years, I had some experience of that and it is extraordinary. You're sort of sat there and you get there and everybody's waited, been waiting for this particular hearing, and been waiting for weeks and weeks and weeks and you get there and it turns out that one in this case the government side, oh, haven't sent all the right paperwork in this promise and then you'll stand there going

Right, well I suppose we'll have to go and get those. How long is that going to take? Oh, at least three hours, my lord. Right, well, we'll have to adjourn for lunch there. And you know, before you know where you are, everything's been deferred and delayed, and then you get to the end of the day and they say, Right, we haven't really progressed, have we? And they say, right. Yeah. When when can we come back? Oh, we haven't got another court hearing availability until for three weeks.

And so you can just see this stuff just kind of like augments and gets bigger and bigger and that you know, that's one case and then you multiply that out by hundreds and hundreds and thousands of thousands and then you have a back. So the question is whether this is I mean, exactly to your point, is this a something must be done knee jerk? Or is it a clever way of actually starting. To speed up the system. I know what they would be nice.

It's it's all very well for the defenders of the jury system to come out and start talking about the idea that sort of, you know, lamps lamps of liberty is going to be extinguished and whatever but You can't do that if you're the same people who have been in charge for the previous fourteen years, who've allowed the system to go to rack and ruin. Because that is what has happened. It is. What has happened to our justice system is a national

Scandal. I mean let's let's end with Jenrik because one of the things he said in the comments today is You've had seventeen months to do this. Why haven't you done it before? You think, You had fourteen years, mate, and you didn't do it this is that backlog. It's not a backlog that has accrued principally over the last fourteen months. Seventeen months is a backlog that has accrued

Certainly since the pandemic and before that. And austerity. Right through the twenty ten years, yeah. And we'll be back in just a moment. And junior doctors and their strike plans ahead of Christmas. Hello, it's Andy Hughes here from The Crime Agents and if you want more on this story we've recorded a special episode on these monumental changes to the jury system, which should be in your feed about now.

The news agents. Well, the British Medical Association, which is the union which represents doctors, has announced that there's going to be Five days of strike action from the seventeenth of December until the twenty second of December. So the five days running up to Christmas. No fresh ballot action was called and the proposals that the government have most recently offered have not been put to the members again. But the union still has the authority to call a strike.

and it has done And the reaction of health professionals, kind of those who administer the health service and the health secretary, have been pretty well furious because they're saying this is a terrible time to be conducting industrial action because it's in a way the busiest time for hospitals where they're trying to maximize the number of people they can discharge.

so that they can be at home for Christmas with their loved ones and instead of which, obviously, if you've got resident doctors out on strike it's gonna be much more difficult to get through all the different wards to See who is capable of going home for the Christmas period. Yeah, the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has directed his air very firmly at the BMA, the Bush Medical Association, which is this

increasingly powerful union. He says that the association's going against the wishes of its members because most junior doctors, I think the latest poll suggested that wouldn't actually support this strike, and where Streeting said the BMA seemed, his words, intent on causing pain to patients. Now, I think when you actually start talking to junior doctors, resident doctors, as they're now called, and I've been sort of speaking to a few sort of friends and children of friends.

I think it's a much more complicated picture than just about pay. It's about placements. It's about whether British trained doctors are being pushed back in the queue by those who are coming in from abroad. So when you get higher up, like to become a registrar or a consultant? Exactly. So one of the things that West Streeting hasn't actually been completely straight about. is this whole question of allocating foundation places, you know, training places.

So there are junior doctors who want an immediate policy which is implemented now that UK trained doctors would have priority over overseas trained doctors and where Streetings made this sort of vague commitment to that.

But it's not good enough. So I think it's not just about now and the pay, it's also about the sense of priority and direction of travel and where the commitment is to those who have been trained here as well. But if we just zoom out From it being about doctors and to the wider public sector. And doctors, resident doctors, have seen their pay rise to the by nearly thirty percent over the past three years, including by twenty two percent under Labour

which was announced last year. And Labour took unbelievable flack from opposition parties saying, Oh my God, you're just giving money away to these junior doctors. There's no productivity bonus. And the doctors have pocketed that money. And still said it's not enough and they say they need a further twenty six percent pay increase. In their pay to compensate for the erosion. And they've set this sort of date of 2008, which is when they say that pay decline.

Obviously if you go to another date, if you set the bar at twenty fifteen and say what's happened to doctors pay over the past ten years, then under the CPI index Consumer prices index then pay has gone up. Well let's talk to one of those resident doctors now, Dr Callum Parr, Deputy Chair of the Resident Doctors Committee.

um who is joining us now I think from hospital. Are you are you right in hospital speaking to us, Callum? In my middle of my shift I've taken a break to be with you, so thank you for having me. Well thanks for coming on. I guess the question is where you start to look at the back pay from because if you did it from the last three years

then I guess resident doctors are seeing a pay rise of almost thirty percent. If you go back to two thousand and eight, obviously there is a much bigger gap. I mean How how would you tell the the public that you have to start from two thousand and eight rather than from, I don't know, twenty twenty? Yeah, so I think when you look back at two thousand and eight, it was a time where the NHS was the envy of the world.

we were ranking number one across a whole host of different statistics when it comes to delivering patient care. And I think it's important that we as doctors want to go back to that. We want to be delivering world class care. to have that, you need the staff, you need the resident doctors who become the consultants and the GPs that can deliver that care. You mentioned pay over the last few years. It's really important to contextualize that, that that was over multiple years.

on the background of a series of real terms pay cuts for doctors, real time pay erosion, and the Secretary of State, West Streeting, has proposed another real terms pay cut next year. So when you're looking at the future of the healthcare service, the NHS, and what you want that to look like, you are not going to retain doctors in the health service and have those consultants to bring down the waiting list if you don't pay those doctors fairly. And I think a real time pay cut sort of summarizes

What we perceive as his attitude towards this. But you've had a twenty eight point nine percent pay rise in the past couple of years, and as I say, over the past ten years. According to the CPI, your pay has gone up in real terms. So in terms of other public sector, virtually every other one else in the public sector Doctors in the past decade have done way better than everyone else.

So I don't actually agree with that. So even when you look at CPI, that still hasn't kept up with inflation. And while the wider economy and areas of the private sector have actually seen real term pay increase, CPI is inflation. then when you look at resident doctor pay that hasn't kept track with CPI even we have seen real terms

huts when it comes to our pay. Whether you look at CPI or RPI, what's important to consider with RPI is that our student loans use RPI as well. So personally I have a hundred and twenty thousand pounds in student loans from medical school.

since I started full time work as a doctor, working up to seventy two hours a week, my student loans have gone up by seven thousand pounds. So I think that sort of gives you a good sense of why RPI is important because if the government deems that important for our student loans,

Um then we we deem important for our pay. Can I just read a quote from West Streeting to you? After a twenty eight point nine percent pay rise, the government offered to create more jobs and put money back into residence doctors' pockets. The BMA rejected it out of hand, refused to put the offer to its members, blocking a better deal for doctors. Now why haven't you gone back to your members? So this is the dispute about pay and job.

When it comes to jobs, we've seen this fast call situation where you have thirty thousand fully qualified doctors in our health service applying to ten thousand jobs. Then why not ask your members? Because this is a pay and jobs dispute. So there has to be movement on pay when it comes to jobs. He hasn't moved far enough. So offering an extra thousand training places this year doesn't touch the sides of the crisis that we are seeing.

But there is a new offer there is a new offer, you could have put it to your members. Your your strike mandate runs out in January. So it looks like you've tried to get a five day strike in under the wire before your mandate expires. So we don't see it that way at all. So our last strike ended on the seventeenth of November. We sent a letter to West Streeting that day inviting him to come back to the negotiating table. We gave him two weeks.

to have those conversations and see if we could reach a deal. He didn't even send us a letter. So we are ready, we are willing to negotiate. We said that before the strikes, during the strikes, and after the strikes. That is an active choice by the Secretary of State not to make any improvement on the offer at all, or even just to have that conversation with her.

Callum, can I read you a message I was sent by a resident doctor um who said I'm supporting them but it feels completely futile. I think they're just fitting in one more strike before the inevitable, read the ballot, and then no more strike. I mean, is there a quiet acceptance that you Fundamentally haven't got the public on your side for this one and that whatever happens in the coming week will basically

Be a last gasp before you you just have to reballot? No, so I think what we have seen over this last couple of strikes is that. strike action is the only thing that the Secretary of State is willing to listen to. So we did not call strike action when we ended our last strike in November. We gave two weeks of space for a discussion with the Secretary of State and he chose not to even send us a reply to our letter.

So for us, what what choice do we have but to call strike action to force him back to the table? That is the point of strike action. He he doesn't sound I mean he doesn't sound at the moment from the rhetoric he's using like strike action will bring him back to the table. You know, we've read out some of His quotes he holds the BMA responsible for causing pain to patients.

I mean certainly the language he's using right now, he doesn't sound like a man who's about to walk back and sit down with you. I think it's important that he thinks about what the future of our healthcare service looks like.

So we have A and E waiting times. You don't think he does that? I mean you don't think the health secretary does that. When we look at A and E waiting times, for example. So I'm a working doctor, I work in North London. I turn up to a shift where I admit patients from A and E who need medical admission.

Often we are looking at hours that patients have waited over twelve hours, though last month, which we had no strikes in October, we have the dates for October, there are over a hundred and sixty thousand patients waiting over twelve hours in A and E. At the same time, the competition ratios for specialty training places for doctors who want to train to become A and E specialists to bring down that wasting time was 14 to one.

Do you have 13 doctors being turned away for every place that we have? That was over 4,000 doctors. So actually when you put that into context. So I don't agree about public support because when I see patients in A and E and we have discussions And they understand that we've turned away thirteen fully qualified doctors from those places. To them it doesn't make any sense either. I mean the all the polling evidence seems to suggest

the the support for doctors which may have been very, very considerable. And I think in most people's hearts, you know, you're not seen as a militant trade union. But you're becoming to be seen as increasingly militant. I think that's because of where we find ourselves, where we have successive health secretaries who don't seem to be willing to

address the problems that we're facing. We're crying out because we have a crisis. I worry every time that I come to work that I'm going to be doing the work of two doctors because all it takes is for one of my colleagues to fall in sick and I don't begrudge them that. They call in sick and I'm automatically doing the work of two doctors. What we're asking for is to have more doctors in these training places, that we have better staff rotors.

Ultimately that is going to be better for patient care. And I think it's really important the Secretary of State addresses that. And so far we just don't think that he has done that. And Callum, just a kind of final thought. The cynicism that you're being accused of. uh calling this strike action at Christmas when you need all the doctors around that are available to be on the wards to working out who can be discharged so that they can spend Christmas at home with loved ones.

And of course that is going to be so much more difficult. When all the resident doctors are on strike over the period of When that would be happening to the

Yeah, so I think it's important to point out that we're not striking over Christmas itself and all of our action as it has been before. No, but in the lead up to it when those decisions would be made, you are. So as with all of our action, that is covered by senior colleagues, those specialist consultants who can make those discharge decisions.

We talk about spending time with loved ones. You know, doctors will be working on Christmas Day. I'm personally working New Year's Eve. I'm working the night shift. doctors sacrifice their time around Christmas, on Christmas Day itself, to be there to deliver the care that we always do for patients. This strike was completely avoidable if the Secretary of State had come back and even replied to our letter.

We have told him that we're willing to look at an offer that goes over multiple years. That would take strike action off the table not only for December, but for multiple years to come. We think that is a common sense approach for the Secretary of State to take, but it's one that he's not taken at all. Do you think he will? I hope so. We're taking strike action because we see this as the only option to get him to come to the table to address it. We think we're being really reasonable. We gave us

the time to have those conversations and he didn't contact us at all. I I don't see how this is anyone else's fault other than his. Dr. Callan Parr, thank you very much and thanks for speaking to us on your break. Appreciate that. Thank you. With award winning. Underranged. Here in Edinburgh. My American week is next. Reporting from the heart of Listen on our free or the new LBC app. Leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. Before we go, a moment of calm reflection from Donald Trump security chief, Christine Noem. who has just put a post out saying she wants a travel ban on every country that is flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Yes, that's uh kind of a pretty big uh kind of sweeping net. So broadly speaking, foreigners

We don't want you in America. I'd like to know which countries, you know,'cause obviously we've had the odd fraudster that's gone from Britain to America. So are we not welcome and where do you draw the line? It seems that America is really saying we don't want anyone.

Kind of anyone from abroad, we'd really don't want you. So the background is that there were two national guardsmen, w guardsmen and guardswoman, who were shot last week in Washington DC, not that far from the White House, one of whom has died. Um the person who is accused of the murder is an Afghan national who had been granted asylum when Biden was president. So it's got that added piquancy that you know Christy Noman and Donald Trump are saying, this is all because

Joe Biden let in all these people unvetted into the country and that is why we've got this problem now. Yeah, so Donald Trump came out straight away and said no more people coming in from third world countries. And Christy Noem has sort of followed up on that by saying, Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat and the unyielding love of freedom, not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes

Suck dry our hard earned tax dollars or snatch the benefits owed to Americans. We don't want them, not one. Um they've got the World Cup next summer. Exactly. And that's the interesting thing, then when you would expect tens of thousands of people To be travelling to America. Are you a leech? And and are you a leech? Are you a parasite? Are you a benefit scrounger?

Are you from Africa? Well probably an awful lot of people will be from Africa coming to uh the United States. Are you from Latin America? Yep. There'll be a lot of people from Latin America coming. Do you think there'll be a lot of empty seats? Seriously. I think that there'll be an awful lot of people who'll be put off. And I you know, I I'm sure you hear it as well, only two, of people who are planning to go to America

who are scrubbing their social media accounts of anything that is in any way controversial, who are fearful that they won't get through the border crossings because, you know, of what they might have posted before. I mean it's really interesting, isn't it? There are forty eight teams Forty eight countries, in other words, coming to the World Cup. I'd love to see Trump running his fingers down that list of forty eight, telling us which was a third world country and which wasn't. Because

What happens? Like the squad's banned? The fans are banned? Anyone from those countries is banned? What is a third world country in his eyes? Right? And and could be very small. Could be a niche World Cup. Or it could be if you're from one of the first world countries Very easy to get tickets because there might be an awful lot of empty stadiums. Yes. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll be back with the newsagents USA then too. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Production.