The legal advisers helping migrants pretend to be gay to stay in the UK — BBC Newscast

[0:00] A BBC investigation has found that a shadow industry of law firms and advisors is charging [0:04] thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the UK under the UK's [0:10] asylum system. And one of the journalists who's been working on this because it's been a team [0:14] effort is Billy Kember and he's here. Hello, Billy. Hello. And we should give some credit to Phil [0:18] Kemp, your colleague, who's also been working on this. Absolutely. Now, this is a very different [0:22] kind of journalism from what I've ever done in my career. So I'm selfishly intrigued to just work [0:27] at how you even go about starting an investigation like this. And we'll go into the details of the [0:31] story in a second, but just tell us a bit of your process. So we started with a fact, really, [0:38] with the fact that asylum claims were at record levels, topped 100,000, and that there's been [0:43] a lot of focus on small boats, on people arriving illegally in the country and on the government's [0:49] behalf, trying to stop the smugglers facilitating that passage, but much less focus on another big [0:55] cohort of those asylum claims, which is people that have come to the country legally on visas, [0:59] on work visas, or student visas, or as tourists, and then had entered a claim for asylum. And we [1:04] had some initial information that there was a particular issue with that group of fake claims [1:09] being made, and that they were being facilitated by advisors, not overseas, like the criminal gangs [1:13] behind the small boats, but here in the UK. So that's where we started from. We, at that point, [1:20] as with any other story of this kind, set out to find out more, to speak to people, to gather [1:27] information, look at documents, see what we could learn. And as we did that, the more research we [1:33] did, we realised that the only way to really penetrate this story, to penetrate this hidden [1:38] world, was to go undercover. Yeah, so you've got an undercover reporter, and where did he end up? [1:44] Just explain how he, well, in fact, how he ended up in someone's bedroom. [1:47] Yes. Because that's sort of the denouement on this, isn't it? We worked with two undercover [1:52] reporters, two very good undercover reporters on this story, and one of them did indeed end up in [1:58] the bedroom of one of the legal advisors. So that begins with a phone call that he made to a [2:05] paralegal, someone at a law firm in London. That person said, quite straightforwardly, [2:12] you need to be persecuted to claim asylum. But they were willing to meet. But before that meeting [2:18] ever took place, and it never did take place, he received a call just out of the blue while we [2:23] were filming something else to do with this story. And that was from a woman called Tanisha. And [2:29] that's the woman whose bedroom he ended up in later that same day. We went out to, [2:34] he arranged to meet her. That turned out to be at her house in Forest Gate in East London. [2:38] And when he was invited inside, she led him up the stairs and into her bedroom for a consultation. [2:43] So she basically was using her bedroom kind of like her office. And then what does she advise [2:47] him to do in this consultation? [2:49] So she described how she could offer a comprehensive package to facilitate a fake claim that he should [2:56] pretend to be gay. He's from Pakistan. Homosexual acts are illegal in Pakistan. So you can legitimately [3:01] claim asylum from, from with that, with that background if you were genuinely gay. And she, [3:07] she explained all of the evidence that she would help assemble to do that, that he would need to go [3:11] to gay clubs, for example, and take photographs and get receipts of drinks from all this sort of [3:18] proof of that sort of thing, go to LGBT groups and attend events by tickets. She said that she would [3:24] be able to provide someone who could pretend that they'd been his partner and that they'd write a [3:28] letter saying that they'd had a sexual relationship with this person. So he could present that to the [3:32] Home Office. And there's a huge array of evidence that gets assembled in these sorts of cases. [3:38] And she said that that's what would happen initially. He'd make the, he'd make the claim [3:41] he'd submit this evidence. And that when it was time for his interview with the Home Office to [3:45] try and assess his credibility, she would coach him. She'd train him on what to say. She'd show him [3:49] questions that were asked to other migrants recently in a similar situation. And she'd help him [3:55] through it. She said, you need to do some work too. I'll be like the teacher. But is it on the [3:58] teacher if you fail the exam? It's not going to just be all on me. [4:02] And what's so interesting here, Billy, is that we're so often, aren't we, in our reporting [4:05] around asylum, we look at the visible elements. And I guess the most politically visible elements [4:10] in the last couple of years have been small boat crossings. And what you've got to and [4:14] Phil has got to in this investigation is showing our newscasters and others an insight into something [4:20] that is, that frankly, normally is invisible, but is a massive contributor towards this whole [4:26] issue. And we really got, I think, more than perhaps we'd anticipated, a sense of the infrastructure [4:32] and how this worked in a sort of systematic way. So this advisor, Tanisha, was affiliated [4:37] with one of these community groups, with an LGBT asylum seekers group. And as it went on, [4:43] in a subsequent meeting with her, with our undercover reporter, he became a client. And she said, [4:47] you need to come along to this group's meetings. Actually, we have one next week. So he went along [4:53] to one of those meetings. It was in Becton in East London. And there were, there must have been [4:57] 175, 200 people there for this meeting and in this, in this hall and on a Tuesday evening in [5:05] Becton. And many of the people there, she said, were like him, they weren't genuinely gay, [5:10] they were just pretending. And so this was part of that ecosystem designed to facilitate fake claims [5:16] was certainly being used in that respect. And you actually got one of the guys who's in that [5:21] meeting, who's standing outside, and he says not even 1% of the people in that room are gay, [5:25] not even 0.1% of them are gay. So basically revealing that lots of the people in that room [5:31] knew what they were doing. Yeah, exactly. We can't be sure. And it's quite possible that there were [5:36] some genuine applicants there. But certainly... Just like there are in the whole system. [5:40] Absolutely. Absolutely. And the whole system, you know, is there to offer protection to people [5:46] that are in fairly desperate situations. It's not safe for them to live in their home country. [5:50] That is what asylum is there to provide. So there's a, you know, it's a really, it has [5:56] a really serious purpose. And the serious consequences of these fake claims that they make it harder [6:01] for people with genuine claims to be able to obtain asylum. [6:04] That's the thing, isn't it? Because if you're going to have an asylum system that acknowledges, [6:08] I mean, right at the heart of the asylum system is the reality that for some people a return to [6:13] their homeland would be dangerous. And in some instances, like sexuality, your sexuality could [6:19] be the very reason it's dangerous. Creating a system that allows the collation of evidence for [6:25] people to make a case, when the nature of a lot of that evidence is going to be at least [6:29] potentially circumstantial or not definitive. You know, how you then create a system that has, [6:36] it is recognised to be fair and scrupulous, that can't be exploited, but at the same time [6:42] allows people genuinely with that concern to be able to be granted asylum. That is really hard. [6:49] Well, and Billy, on that issue of evidence, you spoke to other people who explained some [6:53] of the lengths they'd gone to to provide that evidence for their claims. [6:56] We did. So we spoke in particular, for example, to a man who was back in Pakistan, [7:01] who'd made an application a few years ago, pretending to be gay, along with several of [7:05] his friends. They all used the same solicitor in London. His friends were successful. He [7:09] wasn't. He ended up spending a lot of money on appeals and ultimately gave up. But as part [7:14] of that process, he talked about how he was coached in what to do. And one of the things [7:19] he did was to pretend to be someone living with HIV and to tell a community group that that was [7:24] that was his status. [7:26] And also there's a family element to this as well. We often talk about how the immigration [7:32] system allows people to bring family members in from abroad when they're here. There's an [7:36] element of that in this story too. [7:38] Yeah. So the undercover reporter who met with Tanisha during that conversation, [7:41] just to really test, I suppose, the limits of what sort of service she was offering and what [7:49] solutions she would suggest, told her that he had a wife, that he was married in Pakistan, [7:53] that the authorities here didn't know. But he was in a relationship with a woman in Pakistan [7:58] who he would like to bring over to the UK. And she said, no problem. You bring her over [8:02] as a tourist or whatever. And once she's here, I'll make her a lesbian, i.e. I'll get her [8:07] to make a claim on the same basis as yours for asylum and succeed. And the man we spoke [8:14] to who'd moved back to Pakistan because his claim failed said that friends who had succeeded [8:19] brought their wives, their children over after that had happened and that there were no [8:23] checks from the Home Office. You've claimed asylum, you've obtained asylum on the basis [8:27] that you're gay and now you're bringing your wife over from Pakistan. [8:29] I suppose the very nature of this, Billy, means we don't know how many people have successfully [8:35] used this technique, these methods, in order to be granted asylum. [8:41] No, we don't. That's the truth of it. There are some figures that give us an idea of the [8:47] scale of this sort of problem. But even those are limited. So the Home Office publishes figures [8:53] for the number of asylum claims on the basis of sexual orientation. They fluctuate between [8:58] about 1,500 and 2,000 over the last few years. But we don't have any figures since 2023 and [9:03] the number of asylum claims has been increasing dramatically. So we don't know how many of those [9:08] types of claims there are. We don't know obviously within that just how many are fake. And pretending [9:13] to be gay is not the only route people are using to fake asylum claims. We heard too about [9:18] people pretending to be atheists, pretending to be political activists, and again, building [9:22] up fabricated evidence in order to do that. [9:24] And it was interesting listening to Peter Tatchell on Radio 4, a veteran gay rights campaigner, [9:29] talking to Sarah Montague about this. Because he said, yeah, on the one hand, one of the things [9:34] he's experienced with the asylum system is lots of people making claims that they're going [9:38] to be tortured or harmed as they go back home for being gay. That claim is turned down. [9:42] But actually huge numbers of people then get it approved on appeal. So he says that's [9:47] happening on the one hand. But then on the other hand, he was saying his organization [9:51] has stopped advertising certain events because he was getting mobbed by men who he thought [9:57] were clearly straight, but who wanted to appear gay and wanted a selfie with him as part of [10:03] their case. So that's the kind of the two sides of the coin there, just from Peter Tatchell. [10:07] And I heard today from someone who runs another LGBT group, a genuine group, saying they had [10:14] to ban people taking photographs because just people turning up, taking photographs, immediately [10:19] leaving, not even staying for the event. And again, they appeared to them to be just doing [10:24] that for an asylum claim. [10:25] One thing I'm often intrigued by, Billy, with the kind of investigative journalism that you [10:29] do is the reactions it prompts from those who are sort of broadly, if you like, involved [10:35] or connected with some of the themes you're exploring. Has that been happening today? [10:38] Your sort of email pinging away or whatever with people reading or seeing or hearing about [10:42] it and thinking, oh, hang on a minute, I've got a line into this. [10:46] Absolutely. And there's actually a part two to this investigation that's coming tomorrow. [10:50] And we've had several emails today from people saying, the next thing you should be looking [10:54] at is this. And that is actually what we're going to be looking at in tomorrow's story. [10:58] So certainly a lot of people getting in touch with different aspects of the immigration [11:03] system that they think we should take a look at. [11:05] And just in terms of how people involved in this have responded. So Tanisha, the woman [11:09] that I refer to sitting on the edge of her bed, giving this advice as a consultant, she [11:14] said, oh, this conversation was happening in Urdu and she doesn't speak Urdu very well. [11:19] So she wasn't exactly sure what she was saying. [11:22] That's what she said. [11:22] That's what she said. Exactly. So Worcester LGBT, the group that organized the community [11:26] event, they said they don't create, encourage or support fabricated evidence in asylum claims. [11:30] And they said they're going to, that they are in fact investigating Tanisha and that she [11:34] had no decision making authority within the organization. So the lawyer that we initially [11:38] rang who passed the undercover reporter's number to Tanisha, he said that he had no knowledge [11:43] when he did that, that she'd offered to fabricate an asylum claim and that had he suspected [11:47] anything of that nature. He wouldn't have made the referral and he'd have reported the [11:51] matter immediately. And the law firm where Tanisha, so Tanisha had a meeting with our [11:56] undercover reporter in her bedroom initially, but subsequently the two further meetings were [12:00] in the offices of a law firm in East London. And that law firm said they had no professional [12:04] connection with her, that the reporter was never set up as a client of the firm and that [12:08] they're investigating potentially unauthorized access to their office. [12:11] And it's worth, it's worth, Adam, reflecting on the political reaction, which there has [12:14] been, of course- [12:15] That's what I was going to do next. [12:16] Ah, oh, well- [12:18] The kind of journalism I actually normally do, as opposed to Billy's amazing investigative [12:22] journalism. [12:22] I'll save you a question. [12:24] Yeah. [12:25] And I think, Billy, what's interesting with the political reaction is that the kind of [12:28] vocabulary that political parties from the government to the opposition parties are [12:32] using is all pretty similar, isn't it? People saying it's deplorable, it's abhorrent. [12:36] And clearly seeing the evidence that Billy and Phil have broadcast and saying, you know, [12:43] blimey, this is bad. But the big question, it seems to me, Adam and Billy on this, is [12:48] that I was just looking back at some, a YouGov tracker poll about asylum and immigration going [12:52] back to 2011. So in that time, obviously, we've had all of the Brexit arguments where [12:56] immigration in the round was a big theme, but also governments at Westminster involving [13:01] the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour. And that stickiness, that persistence, [13:06] of the salience of immigration and asylum. Yes, it's ebbed and flowed, but broadly speaking, [13:11] it's been in the top three, sometimes, you know, broadly speaking around there, alongside [13:15] health and the economy in terms of the concerns that people have about the country. In other [13:21] words, underlying that, I think a persistence of a sense from people that governments of multiple [13:27] colours have not got a grip on this, and particularly around control of it and a sense [13:32] of fairness. And that's why this investigation is so significant, because it plays absolutely [13:37] into that, I think. [13:38] And this advisor, Tanisha, who we've been talking about, she's one of a number of advisors that [13:42] we met during the undercover investigation. But she said that she's been doing this work [13:46] for at least 17 years. [13:47] Right, right. [13:49] And just to be explicit about what the political parties have been saying, the Conservatives [13:52] said that this exposes the scam at the heart of many asylum claims. The Liberal Democrats [13:57] said that these findings were abhorrent. Reform said that this is an outrageous scandal that [14:01] must be urgently investigated. The Greens said it's disgusting to see these unscrupulous law firms taking [14:06] advantage of people or taking advantage of a system like this. And Chris, Shabana Mahmood [14:11] responded to this as the Home Secretary. [14:13] Yeah, so she said it's deplorable. Downing Street have said those trying to defraud the [14:18] British people should have their asylum or will have their asylum claim cancelled and said [14:23] unethical and illegal practices should be referred to the appropriate regulatory bodies [14:26] or the police. I think, Billy, there was a bit more of a statement, wasn't there, from [14:30] Shabana Mahmood. Is that right? What else did she have to say? I got a bit of a sense [14:35] from Downing Street. Deplorable tended to be the sort of adjective of choice. [14:38] Yeah, it was very much just condemning this behaviour and emphasising that the hard line [14:45] that the government intends to take on those court doing it. [14:49] What I didn't quite understand about how the system works is, OK, so the system at the [14:54] moment is a person makes a claim. That claim might be rejected or it might be approved or [15:01] they might be rejected and then approved on appeal or they might just get sent out of [15:05] the country because it's just it's just failed full stop. Is there a way for then going back [15:10] to someone's claim to check whether they might have been fraudulent while they were making [15:14] it? To me, it seems that the decision's made, the person stays and then the system sort of [15:19] forgets about them. [15:21] Well, it's a great question. [15:23] Because, I mean, we might not know the answer. If you don't know the answer, don't worry [15:26] about it. One of the changes that has come in is this change where you don't get it granted [15:36] for five years, you get it granted for two and a half years and then it gets checked and [15:39] renewed and after five years you can apply for indefinite leave to remain and that period [15:43] is going to extend or the indications are that that period will extend. And so there is [15:48] then potentially a check at the two and a half year mark. But if you've managed to deceive [15:53] the Home Office during that very extensive initial application process or potentially [15:59] after rounds of appeal in the courts, what is going to happen at the point where these [16:04] checks are being made that is suddenly going to mean you're rumbled? And certainly, for [16:09] what it's worth, Tanisha was not concerned that those changes were going to make any difference [16:12] to her business from what we could tell of her interactions with our reporters. [16:16] And also, short of moments like this where particular things are exposed, how would the system [16:23] become, why would the system become suspicious of someone who it had previously not been [16:27] suspicious of? [16:28] That's what I mean. There doesn't seem to be a sort of retrospective element to this, [16:32] even though lots of people today are saying, oh, we'll pursue the people that did it fraudulently. [16:36] But yeah, but then, but then if you're, but how do you, you know? [16:40] Although I do know a sort of simpler solution that some people have come up with today is that [16:43] you just say no more visas for study for people from Pakistan, because if it's people who come [16:50] here on a student visa from Pakistan, and then there's a suspicion that they're then gaming [16:54] the asylum system using these methods, then the way you prevent that is by stopping Pakistani [16:59] students coming to study in the UK, which there's a precedent for, because we've already done [17:03] that with some other countries this year. [17:05] And then you start to wonder about, is there a way that they could be, they could raise the [17:09] bar on what the evidence would be that would be presented, you know, whether it's proving [17:15] that you're gay or whatever it might be. But then, but that has to be done in a way [17:19] that then doesn't provoke accusations of homophobia being injected into the asylum system. [17:23] Yes. And also where the evidence case for lots of these things, whether it is sexuality [17:28] or being atheist or whatever it might be, is not likely to be clear cut. There isn't likely [17:34] to be a single definitive clear cut bit of evidence that would prove that beyond any doubt. [17:40] And that's what goes to the heart of this. As Tanisha put it, there's no machine that can [17:43] tell if you're gay. It's ultimately going to be a credibility test. The sorts of evidence [17:47] that they are creating to facilitate the fake claims are the sorts of evidence that's worked [17:51] in the last few years. Maybe the types of evidence the Home Office looks for will change, [17:55] but why wouldn't the advisors bringing the fraudulent claim just change the types of evidence [17:58] they're willing to create? It's just going to be a sort of whack-a-mole scenario. So it's [18:03] definitely a very, it's a very tricky one for the Home Office to root out these cases, [18:09] particularly when there's so much effort going into making them. I think that's the thing [18:13] that's really telling from what we've found, just how sophisticated it is. [18:17] Billy, thanks for all your hard investigative journalism. And good luck staying up late, [18:22] working on part two and fending requests for part three, four, five and six. [18:27] Thank you. [18:28] And Chris, good to see you too. [18:29] Ta-ra. [18:30] Now, earlier on when I was in the other newscast studio, I caught up with Faisal Islam, [18:34] who was in Washington, DC, for that big regular meeting of finance ministers, where they talk [18:40] about all the issues in the global economy, and they talk about those projections for the global [18:44] economy by organisations like the International Monetary Fund. So here is Faisal's take as he [18:49] was running from building to building and finance minister to finance minister. [18:52] Hello, Faisal. [18:54] Hi, hi. Where are you right now? Paint a picture of your surroundings, please. [18:57] I'm in the lobby of the World Bank, which is an institution that deals with poverty, crisis, [19:07] alleviation, loans, that sort of stuff. And it is the biannual meetings of finance ministers [19:15] and development ministers here. And so that's what's going on. And there's a lot of activity, [19:21] obviously, around the ordinary workings of the kind of economic firefighters trying to save the [19:26] world in a crisis, emergency loans and things like that. But also just kind of standard meetings [19:33] of G7 and G20 finance ministers, trying to deal with what I have to say is just yet another [19:38] geopolitical crisis, you know, sort of every time you sort of think that the normality has resumed, [19:44] it kind of, some crisis kind of intrudes upon you. And that's obviously the case right now. [19:49] And where is this current crisis on the crisis-o-meter, as it were, because you've been at these [19:54] meetings when so many things have popped up in the world? [19:58] Yeah, yeah. I can go back to obviously the great financial crisis in 2008, the Eurozone crisis, [20:04] when they thought the euro is going to fall apart, the mini budget crisis in 2022. I mean, [20:10] this one, there's two separate ways of measuring it. It has the potential to be like the 1970s [20:17] oil shock, kind of before we were born, but like, you know, significant major global event. It's sort [20:24] of getting there, but it kind of just depends how long it lasts, which is an unsatisfactory answer. [20:31] But you know, the sheer quantity of oil and gas that's shut into the Gulf is one thing. But then you [20:38] have all the other derivative products. And even if, and I've just come from a press briefing with the [20:45] managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva. And, you know, her point was that all these [20:50] derivative products that normally in a functioning world economy, nobody cares about, you know, [20:55] the things that go into making plastics, fertilizers, the helium required to make a [21:02] semiconductor chip, all of this stuff, it just functions, it works, it spreads around the world [21:06] economy kind of naturally, according to the market. All of that is greatly affected in ways that [21:13] probably, you know, even myself as economics editor, didn't fully kind of comprehend just how much [21:20] having 800 ships locked into the Gulf would have this cascading effect. And the critical moment right [21:26] now is that all of those ships, had they been set free in the straits of Hormuz, would have reached [21:32] their destination around now. So the physical shortages, particularly in Asia, you'll start to see [21:37] now. [21:38] And Faisal, don't worry, we had quite a long discussion on the previous episode of Newscast about [21:42] why it's okay to admit you don't know what's going to happen. I don't mean you, but why one, [21:46] one in particular can say that they don't know what's going to happen, because that's the theme [21:50] in all sorts of institutions at the moment. Right, talk about this beef between Rachel Reeves [21:55] and the US administration. [21:58] Yes, very interesting, I think, the strength of words. And we've heard versions of this sort of [22:02] brewing over the past two or three weeks. We've heard, you know, some obvious, I mean, [22:10] it's not just criticism of the decision to go to war with Iran in an unplanned fashion, [22:17] but almost this government sort of trading on that quite fundamentally, and sort of defining [22:24] themselves and Keir Starmer in that way. And so she sort of upped the ante on that with an [22:32] interview in the Mirror just before she arrived here in Washington, saying that the war was [22:36] folly, saying that she's frustrated and that she's angry as well. And then after that, she has now [22:45] kind of amassed a dozen or so other finance ministers to sort of sign up to a call for a [22:51] ceasefire based on not just the humanitarian damage, but the damage to the world economy too. [22:57] And I spoke yesterday with the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, who, when I put to him what he [23:04] thought about the forecast from the IMF of a potential global recession, if this continues [23:08] for months, well, the message we're getting from the US administration is, well, this is [23:12] all gonna be over quite soon. You know, everyone can calm down, everyone's panicking. But in general, [23:16] he said something quite kind of like, I was like, oh, when he said this, he said, well, you know, [23:21] what would the GDP hits be if a nuclear, with a nuclear strike on London? And I stood up in [23:27] myself. In other words, if the Iranian regime had been allowed to continue its pursuit of a nuclear [23:34] weapon, they could have, in theory, threatened London. And so therefore, the US taking out that [23:39] threat was a bigger help to the economy than the cost to the economy that we're experiencing now. [23:44] Indeed, but rather bluntly put, and I had to ask him what he actually meant by, you know, [23:48] clarify what he meant by that. And in other form of words that I think is quite interesting in terms [23:54] of understanding the US mentality here, is that they think and they say, and they're clearly under [23:59] a lot of pressure here, the whole world's finance ministries have turned up to, you know, today in [24:03] Washington, and are sequentially meeting with the US administration saying, what on earth is going on, [24:08] and echo exactly what happened a year ago on tariffs. And he said, well, you know, a small amount [24:14] of economic pain for a few weeks is worth it to take out this threat to global security. That's the [24:19] general argument we're hearing. We're hearing that argument. And we're also hearing, don't worry, [24:24] it's going to be over in weeks. That's the two prongs of the argument that we're hearing. [24:28] But you're absolutely right to say that there's that spat. We also heard from enterprising colleagues [24:34] on Sky News about this call with Donald Trump, where he suggested, floated, murmured out aloud [24:41] about the idea that the UK had a very good sweetheart tariff deal with him last year, and that that could [24:47] be revisited based on the UK's lack of lack of loyalty. You know, there's a lot of sort of UK centric [24:52] views of this. He's obviously sort of lashing out at different entities right now. We're not alone [24:57] here. Italy, very much the sort of apple of Donald Trump's eye. Georgia Maloney also coming [25:05] in for some criticism in that spat over the role of the Pope, Pope Leo, obviously from Chicago [25:12] originally. So it's quite difficult to fathom really where this all goes. But clearly, the economic [25:19] angle here is central to the conflict. And, you know, as the French finance minister put it to me [25:26] last night, this is, you know, the Iranians are well aware of the economic consequences. This is part [25:33] of their battle. Hmm. And do I'm just interested about how the feeling of multilateral organizations, [25:39] because that's what the World Bank and the IMF are organizations where lots of countries are members, [25:45] and they come together to work together. How does that whole multilateral system feel when you've got [25:50] a US administration kind of just doing whatever it wants and not behaving in a very multilateral way, [25:55] being quite unilateral? Yes, well, here's what's really quite interesting is that you're hearing [26:02] a rhetoric from the top of these organizations now, which is very much seems as if it's trying to [26:07] keep the Trump administration at bay, in a way, to try and sort of speak their language to some [26:14] degree, sort of get them off their back. When Donald Trump came into office, there was a project, [26:20] I forgot what it is, project 2030, was it? Or project 2050? There was a sort of blueprint. [26:25] Yeah, from the Heritage Foundation, the think tank, yeah. [26:28] That's it, that's it, project 2025. I forgot the precise numbers, but yeah, project 2025. [26:32] And the theory was, you know, that they might have abolished the IMF and the World Bank. [26:36] But they've kept it going. I was very struck by the sorts of rhetoric you're hearing from the head [26:44] of the World Bank. You know, they're very much now, they were, they were reinventing themselves as, [26:49] for example, climate change banks, two or three years ago under Joe Biden. And now it's very difficult [26:55] to hear them say the phrase climate change. You know, you are seeing a sort of an attempt that you see [27:01] echoed in individual nation states to just try and sort of manage the new reality. But they are still [27:08] here. They haven't been abolished. They do have an important role. I told you, I was just at this [27:12] briefing with the managing director of the IMF, you know, and there is a big demand from African [27:17] countries now, because debts are so high, because interest rates are going up, because demands as [27:22] energy bills go up are intense. Big demand from African countries for help and for support. [27:28] And she said something very interesting, which is because of the physical shortages of some of the [27:33] things I mentioned, that are now inevitable, even if a ceasefire happens tomorrow, that countries [27:39] should now start planning to economise on energy. And even think about your working from home, [27:46] free public transport to prevent use of overuse of fuels. I think that was mainly aimed at developing [27:52] countries. But I think that there's an interesting question about the extent to which some of this [27:59] stuff might be required elsewhere, shall we say? Well, yeah, it's already happening in Australia, [28:06] isn't it? But then they are sort of uniquely placed geographically to suffer from this situation. [28:11] Faisal, last question for you. Does the UK seem like an outlier at this meeting, like where we've got [28:17] our own particular problems that might make us particularly vulnerable, which was the sort of feeling from the [28:23] IMF's assessment of global growth this year and next year? Or actually, from what you're saying, [28:29] every country has problems. They're just sort of maybe different problems and different combinations. [28:35] Yeah, we can get a bit sort of obsessed with the UK being at the eye of every storm. But I mean, [28:41] I think the reality is, is when you look around the world, and you see that there are countries [28:46] whose refineries will be running out of feedstocks, so that make their, you know, plastics and [28:51] semiconductors, which is their key export, and their oil and gas, you know, and that could happen [28:56] fairly imminently. One needs to get this in perspective. And there are countries in the [29:00] least, obviously, whose petrochemical industries have faced missile attacks. One needs to get this [29:05] in a bitter perspective. Even the figures that came out from the IMF, yes, they did tell a story [29:10] of the UK being hit, and having sluggish and very disappointing growth just when we thought it was [29:16] safe to sort of creep out into the world and think maybe normal growth was coming back again. [29:20] But it still leaves Britain sort of middle of the pack. In fact, actually, I think the over two [29:25] years, the fastest G7 European economy, it's not like the most amazing claim in the world. And it's [29:32] basically pretty sluggish. But it's not like, you know, I think, I think occasionally, we've had this [29:37] conversation before, we can overstate the centrality of the UK to every global story. And I think that [29:44] there is a sort of convening role that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are kind of [29:51] mapping out in terms of trying once a peace deal is done to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, using our [29:56] shipping expertise, using the fact that the insurance companies are based in the UK. I don't [30:01] want to overstate that. But I think, I think probably given what happened in the economic outlook and [30:06] that downgrade, that perhaps overstates it the other way. Yes, we're going to be here. Yes, [30:13] we're over dependent on imported energy. That does mean a price has to be paid. There's still a hangover [30:19] from the political chaos in the bond markets. And, you know, our interest rates in markets go up [30:27] faster and come down faster. There's more volatility than you would like we haven't kind of the government [30:32] hasn't nailed that issue in the markets. But it can be overstated too. [30:36] And Faisal, I know you've got to dash off to something else. But just in terms of process, [30:40] we'll see Rachel Reeves and her opposite number, Scott Besson, actually in person meeting each other [30:45] rather than just trading barbs indirectly quite soon. [30:48] Well, how much of this we will see, I'm not entirely sure. I think we might see a photo of it. And I look [30:55] forward to the readout, occasionally, the different versions. And I recall from last year that the [31:03] readout came about three days later from the Americans. But I do have some contacts in that [31:07] in the administration. I don't have Donald Trump's phone number, unfortunately, or fortunately for him. [31:12] But we may be able to get a sense of what's going on a little bit earlier. [31:17] I'm sure Donald Trump would find it a stimulating conversation as I have just done. [31:21] Faisal, thank you very much. And safe travels. [31:23] Thanks, Adam. Bye. [31:24] And that's all for this episode of Newscast. Thank you very much for listening. And a reminder [31:29] that after the Easter break, we will be back on BBC One with a TV episode of Newscast after [31:34] Question Time on Thursday, if you want to stay up late. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.