By Adam Hartley | A controversial new study that uses Bluetooth technology to track UK citizens, without their knowledge, has come under fire from privacy campaigners.

The Cityware study - has been set up with the objective “to develop theory, principles, tools and techniques for the design, implementation and evaluation of city-scale pervasive systems as integral facets of the urban landscape.”

Big and clever, academic-sounding words, for sure. But what does this actually mean?

Science or surveillance?

A report in today’s Guardian claims that the Cityware researchers at Bath University have “installed scanners at secret locations in offices, campuses, streets and pubs to pinpoint people’s whereabouts.”

More worryingly, the report continues: “The scanners, the first 10 of which were installed in Bath three years ago, are capturing Bluetooth radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission.”

Eamonn O’Neill, Cityware’s director, claims that his study is not interested in tracking individuals but is more “interested in the aggregate behaviour of city dwellers as a whole,” adding that the “notion that any agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous.”

The CCTV of the mobile industry

However, certain privacy campaigners strongly disagree, with Simon Davies, director of Privacy International responding: “This is yet another example of moronic use of technology.

“For Bath University to assert that there aren’t privacy implications demonstrates an astonishing disregard for consumer rights. If the technology is as safe as they claim, then all the technical specifications should be published and people should be informed when they are being tracked.

“This technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control.”

Former Cityware researcher Vassilis Kostakos, conceded that “If a person’s phone is talking to a scanner, then they should be told about it. Any technology can have good and bad consequences. In many ways, I think the role of a scientist is to point out both. I agree this is complex and I agree there are harmful scenarios.”

But while the new ruling exposes some of the channel’s practices, it also exposes the limitations of the regulator. The programme was peppered with distortions and misleading claims. But despite being presented with a vast dossier of evidence by climate scientists, Ofcom decided that it could not rule on the matter of accuracy. While news programmes are expected to be accurate, other factual programmes are not, and Ofcom “only regulates misleading material where that material is likely to cause harm or offence.” It decided that The Great Global Warming Swindle hadn’t caused actual harm to members of the public and would not rule on whether or not the programme had misled them. In fact, it is precisely because “the discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great extent settled by the date of broadcast”, meaning that climate change was no longer a matter of political controversy, that a programme claiming it is all a pack of lies could slip past the partiality rules. The greater a programme’s defiance of scientific fact, the less likely Ofcom is to rule against it. This paradoxical judgement allows Channel 4 to keep getting away with it.

The Great Global Warming Swindle is part of a long-standing pattern. Channel 4 upsets all sorts of people, and it has every right to do so. On all other issues it appears to do so in a random fashion, sometimes attacking people on one side of the debate, sometimes on the other. But one polemical position has kept recurring over the past 18 years: a fierce antagonism towards environmentalism. Some of these programmes have used misrepresentation, distortion or fabrication to sustain claims that environmental concerns are the fantasies of self-serving scientists. It is arguable that no organisation in the United Kingdom has done more to damage the effort to protect the environment.

For the first eight years of the channel’s life, its coverage of environmental issues was broad, diverse and often stimulating. It broadcast 20 programmes a year in its Fragile Earth slot. But two years after Michael Grade became chief executive, its programming began to change. The trend continued after he left.

In 1990 Channel 4 screened a documentary called The Greenhouse Conspiracy, directed by Hilary Lawson at the company TVF. It maintained that “there is no evidence at all” for dangerous climate change. There is a conspiracy among scientists, it said, to talk up the dangers in order to win funding(3). No reasonable person would dispute that Channel 4 should show countervailing views, or would claim that it has an obligation to take an environmentalist line. But there were three problems with this programme, which appear to characterise several of the channel’s films about the environment.

The first is that it was billed as a science documentary, rather than a one-sided polemic. It had an anonymous and authoritative voiceover, rather than the onscreen presenter you would expect to see in a polemical film. It presented as hard fact statements that were extremely contentious and often plain wrong. The second is that contributors’ commercial interests were not mentioned. The third problem is that though the majority of scientific opinion was at odds with the line the programme took, the opposing point of view was scarcely represented. The contribution of a very eminent climate scientist was edited to make him seem like an inconsistent crank, while maverick outsiders were presented as the voices of scientific orthodoxy.

But this film became a template for the channel’s environmental coverage over much of the following 17 years. Its most prominent films about the environment screened in this period took the same line as The Greenhouse Conspiracy, which created the impression that environmental problems do not exist and that environmental scientists are mendacious fanatics.

In 1997 Channel 4 broadcast a series across three hours of prime time on Sunday evenings, called Against Nature. Made by Martin Durkin, then working for the production company RDF, it claimed that the greens are modern-day Nazis who have been “needlessly consigning millions of people in the Third World to poverty and early death”. The programme’s publicity stated that it “highlights the absence of scientific rigour behind notions like the greenhouse effect and global warming”, yet the series made the most elementary scientific blunders, describing sulphur dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the oceans as the major net source of carbon dioxide.

Like The Greenhouse Conspiracy, Against Nature was billed as a science programme, rather than a polemic. It had no onscreen presenter. It amplified the credentials of some of its contributors and failed to reveal that some were funded by fossil fuel industries. The programme makers duped and misrepresented the environmentalists they featured. This series was subject to one of the most damning verdicts that Ofcom’s predecessor, the Independent Television Commission, has ever handed down.

None of this, or subsequent distortions, stopped the channel from continuing to pay Martin Durkin to pursue what looks like a personal crusade against science. In 1998, he hired a research biochemist and TV researcher called Najma Kazi to help him with a film for Equinox called Storm in a D-Cup claiming that breast implants are completely safe. After two weeks she walked out. “It’s not a joke to walk away from four or five month’s work,” she told me, “but my research was being ignored. The published research had been construed to give an impression that’s not the case. I don’t know how that programme got passed.”(4) In 2000, he made another film – a 90-minute special – for Equinox about genetic engineering. He interviewed the environmentalist Dr Mae-Wan Ho. “I feel completely betrayed and misled”, she said. “They did not tell me it was going to be an attack on my position.”(5) Neither of these programmes, however, was criticised by the regulators.

During this period, Channel 4 broadcast several environmental programmes which were vicious and grossly unbalanced denunciations of environmental science. But, as independent film makers I have spoken to testify, proposals for programmes which expressed concern about the environment were rejected out of hand. When I went to speak to the man who was then the director of programmes, Tim Gardam, to ask why the channel seemed so hostile to the environment, he told me something that shocked me more than any defensive statement. “I don’t know what’s important any more”.

The list of environmental programmes Channel 4 has sent me shows a sharp reduction in output during the years 1992 to 2006(6). But in mid-2006 I was told by an executive that the channel had realised it had been misled by people who were sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. It seemed as if the dam had broken. Channel 4’s new commissions suggested that it was at last beginning to wake up to the fact that environmental issues were not just the crazy fantasy of a group of green fascists. That was until March 2007, when The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast, backed by a massive promotional campaign. The director, yet again, was Martin Durkin, and once more he was given 90 minutes of prime time.

The first thing I noticed about the Great Global Warming Swindle is how similar it is to The Greenhouse Conspiracy, broadcast 17 years before. The two programmes made the same claims, using some of the same contributors. They were now a little greyer and fatter, but they repeated their line almost verbatim. A vast accumulation of evidence in the intervening years, contradicting the programme’s thesis, was ignored – it appeared that very little had changed since 1990. Indeed much of the distortion in the programme involved the freezing of timelines at points convenient to his argument, producing a misleading impression of current evidence.

Some of the graphs Martin Durkin used in the programme, for example, seem to have been altered, changing the historical record. A graph of 20th Century temperatures was attributed in the programme to NASA. In reality it was first published by an Exxon-funded lobby group and creates the false impression that most of the rise in temperature occurred before 1940, after which there was a sharp fall(7). The data it used ended in the mid-1980s. On Durkin’s version however, the timeline was extended to 2005 – the change of dates on the graph appeared to support his argument. Following complaints, the dates were corrected when the programme was rebroadcast.

He used a graph of temperatures over the past millennium to make the claim that they were higher during the 12th Century than they are today. But again the timescale was altered. An arrow marked “Now” points to data which in fact end at 1975. A third graph had been mislabelled in the same way: the arrow marked “Now” points to the global temperature 108 years ago, in 1900. On a fourth graph, the film-makers altered part of a curve, thereby creating the impression that temperature has precisely tracked changes in sunspot cycles. The author of the original graph complained that the film had presented “fabricated data … as genuine” to make its case(8). In response Durkin said it was a mistake.

It would require a book to catalogue all the distortions and fabrications The Great Global Warming Swindle is alleged to have included. A complaint by a team of senior scientists – the first peer-reviewed submission ever made to Ofcom – runs to 188 pages(9). Not only did the film inflate credentials of some of the contributors; some of them appear to have been made up altogether. The climate sceptic Tim Ball, for example, was said to be a professor at the Department of Climatology in the University of Winnipeg. There is no such department and he has not held a professorship since he retired in 1996. Philip Stott, the programme claimed, is a professor at the Department of Biogeography, University of London. While he was once a Professor of Biogeography, there was no such department, and Stott retired some time ago, becoming professor emeritus. Piers Corbyn was given a doctorate he does not possess and described as a “climate forecaster”. He is in fact a weather forecaster – a very different matter – and has published no peer-reviewed papers on either topic since 1986(10). Fred Singer is said to have been the director of the US National Weather Service. In reality he was Director of the US National Weather Satellite Center.

Far from revealing its contributors’ financial interests, the film created the impression that they have taken no money from the coal or oil industry. In truth 10 of its protagonists have either been funded directly by fossil fuel companies, or have received paid employment from lobby groups funded by these companies, which campaign against taking action on climate change(11). Tim Ball claimed in the programme that “I’ve never received a nickel from the oil and gas companies.” But he has received fees from two groups which lobby against taking action on climate change – Friends of Science and the Natural Resources Stewardship Project – both of which receive major funding from energy companies(12). The Great Global Warming Swindle looks like free, undisclosed propaganda for coal and oil firms. Channel 4 forcefully denied this. Ofcom decided that it is “unable to assess or adjudicate on the relative merits of these strongly disputed allegations.”

The film invoked an extraordinary conspiracy theory to explain why governments have tried to tackle climate change. It began, the Swindle claimed, with the British coal miners’ strike. “The miners had brought down Ted Heath’s conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was determined the same would not happen to her. She set out to break their power … At the request of Mrs Thatcher, the UK Met Office set up a Climate Modelling Unit, which provided the basis for a new international committee called The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.” In reality, Mrs Thatcher did not make a public statement on climate change until 1988, three years after the miners’ strike ended in their defeat. The IPCC was established in the same year – not by the UK Met Office but by the World Meteorological Organisation and the UN(13) – and the Climate Modelling Unit (the Hadley Centre) did not open until two years afterwards, in 1990(14).

Here too were inaccuracies of the same stamp as those which appeared in Against Nature. The Great Global Warming Swindle claimed that volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all sources of man-made carbon dioxide put together. In truth they produce less than 1%. It maintained that “the biggest source of CO2 by far is the oceans” (they remain a net carbon sink). Sea level changes have “nothing to do with melting ice” (melting ice is in fact responsible for about 40% of the rise) and so on and so forth. One of the contributors to the Great Global Warming Swindle, Carl Wunsch, says that he was duped into appearing in the documentary and his words were “grossly distorted by context”(15). Ofcom found that Professor Wunsch had been treated unfairly in the way in which his edited interview had been presented but that his comments about CO2 in the ocean were not unfairly edited.

Perhaps the cruellest distortion perpetrated in Durkin’s programme was the claim, also carried in Against Nature, that environmentalists are condemning the poor to live without electricity and to cook their meals on smoky fires, causing millions of premature deaths from respiratory disease. The film interviewed a Kenyan official at a rural clinic, whose solar panels did not produce enough power to run both the fridge and the lights. This was apparently the fault of Western environmentalists, who had somehow obliged the clinic to use solar power, which is “at least 3 times more expensive than conventional forms of electrical generation.”

In reality, it is much cheaper to install solar panels in parts of rural Africa which do not have transmission lines than to build a new grid connection, which is probably why the clinic was using them. If they are providing insufficient power, the cheapest solution is to install more panels and batteries. The solar fridge, developed by the British environmentalist and engineer Guy Watson, has saved countless lives, as it permits vaccines and blood which would otherwise be degraded by heat to survive in even the remotest locations. Environmentalists have been amongst the most outspoken campaigners against cooking on smoky fires, partly because of the health effects, partly because they use huge amounts of wood and partly because the black carbon they produce is a cause of global warming. This was the only partiality issue on which Ofcom was prepared to rule, because it regards the treatment of the poor, by contrast to climate change, to be a “matter of major political controversy”. It decided that in this respect the programme breached its rules.

This film was presented as a dispassionate science documentary. We were not told whose opinions the anonymous narrator represented. Outrageous claims were stated as bald fact. Ofcom has decided that there is “no …requirement” to disclose the personal views of the presenter “in relation to factual programmes”. The Great Global Warming Swindle, like Against Nature, had a huge impact, persuading many people that manmade climate change is not taking place. I attended a presentation by a pollster from Ipsos Mori who showed that there had been a decline last year in the number of people who believed that global warming was a real phenomenon – primarily, she said, as a result of Durkin’s film(16). This is hardly surprising. No one unfamiliar with the channel’s record on this issue could have imagined that a public service broadcaster would have transmitted a programme containing so many distortions.

This became a personal issue when the man who commissioned The Great Global Warming Swindle, Hamish Mykura, appeared on the Today programme to defend the film. It was, he said, part of “a season of opinionated polemical films about global warming”, and was balanced by a film I had made, broadcast in the same week, for Dispatches(17). I was flabbergasted. Neither I, nor the audience, nor anyone on the production team had been told that my programme was part of “a season of opinionated polemical films about global warming”, or that it would be linked to The Great Global Warming Swindle. Had I known this, I would have pulled out. When I asked Mykura for evidence – some memos or publicity material about this “season”, for example – he was unable to provide any(18).

My film was subjected to such a rigorous process of fact-checking that it was, in effect, edited by Channel 4’s lawyers. While this made it rather dull, it also meant that it was robust and unchallengeable: any claim which would not stand up to rigorous academic scrutiny was excluded. Despite this, it was billed as a controversial polemic and my own personal view (I was the onscreen presenter). Durkin’s film, by contrast, appears to have been exempted from such rigorous fact-checking and was not presented as his opinion. Why did such radically different standards apply? And in what sense did my film “balance” Durkin’s? Mine was about policies seeking to address climate change: I was not asked to demonstrate that manmade global warming was taking place. Even if that had been my aim, Channel 4 misunderstands its public service obligations if it believes it has to strike a balance between truth and falsehood. I was glad to see that Ofcom found that the other programmes in the channel’s schedule “were not sufficiently timely or linked” to the Swindle to balance it.

The channel appears until now to have shrugged off criticism of these programmes: even, in fact, to have enjoyed it. They create “noise”, which is considered by some executives to be the thing that counts. Hamish Mykura, the man who commissioned The Great Global Warming Swindle, has since been promoted. Channel 4’s spokesman tells me “It would be wrong to suggest that Channel 4 has an agenda regarding environmental programmes. The vast majority of Channel 4’s programmes on environmental issues over the last 20 years have reflected the opinion of the majority of scientists on man-made global warming. … to the best of our knowledge, since 1990 there has been 5 ½ hours of programming giving voice to the minority of scientists who question man’s role in global warming.” This, it says, “is against the background of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] stating that there is a 90% certainty that the causes of global warming are man-made, it follows that there is a 10% uncertainty. Yet this 10% uncertainty receives a disproportionately small amount of airtime.”

I find this argument extraordinary. A 90% level of confidence doesn’t mean that 10% of the evidence suggests that an effect is not occurring – in fact there is no reliable evidence showing that manmade global warming is not taking place. It is expressed in this way because there is no absolute certainty in science. The “very high confidence” the IPCC expresses in the global warming thesis is the strongest statement any reputable scientist would make about his area of study. It is legitimate and right to stress that there can be no absolute certainty about global warming. But this is not what Channel 4 has done. The five and half hours of programmes which attack the thesis (and there have been many more which savage other aspects of environmentalism) express absolute certainty that manmade global warming isn’t happening.

So why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens? I am not sure, but it seems to me that much of its programming – whether it concerns property, celebrities or contestants seeking fame and money – is aspirational. Environmentalism is counter-aspirational. It suggests that the carefree world Channel 4 has created, the celebration of the self, cannot be sustained.

It is against my interests to publish this article. I would like to continue making programmes for Channel 4. I recognise that what I have written may jeopardise this work. But these matters are far more consequential than my own employment. By broadcasting programmes that appear to manipulate and even fabricate evidence, it has impeded efforts to forestall the 21st Century’s greatest threat. For how much longer will this be allowed to continue? And for how much longer will Ofcom forbid itself to state that a programme is misleading?

George Monbiot’s book Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice is published by Guardian Books, at £10.99.

References:

1. Independent Television Commission, 1st April 1998. Channel Four to Apologise to Four Interviewees in “Against Nature” Series. Press Release.

2. Ofcom, 21st July 2008. Broadcast Bulletin, Issue 114. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb114/issue114.pdf

3. You can read the transcript here: http://www.angelfire.com/dc/gaudcert/globwarm3.htm

4. Najma Kazi, pers comm.

5. Mae-Wan Ho, pers comm.

6. Channel 4, by email.

7. You can read the account of where this graph came from and much more at http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/

8. Nathan Rive and Eigil Friis-Christensen, 27th April 2007. Regarding: “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on March 8, 2007. http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html

9. See http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/

10. Piers Corbyn has sent me the list of his publications.

11. See http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/

12. Tim Ball, pers comm.

13. http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm

14. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/history/

15. http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/channel4response

16. Dr Lucy Arnot, 18th October 2007. Communicate 07 conference, Bristol.

17. Hamish Mykura, 16th March 2007. The Today programme.

18. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/01/correspondence-with-hamish-my…

Some good news from Lancaster. The BNP set up a stall today in the town centre. It seems that the small gathering of pond life came from Carlisle. The BNP have no official presence in Lancaster since their previous organiser, Chris Hill, resigned his position following the party split in January. The out of town BNP members set up a small table just near the Museum. It had been kicked over within minutes by a lone woman passing by!

Initially undeterred the fash re-assembled their stall and continued to hand out leaflets. Within half an hour there was a spontaneous response from local concerned people who gathered quickly and surrounded the BNP stall. Standing in front of the stall with anti-fascist leaflets the local people made sure the fascists were unable to distribute their filth. A passer by also emptied two cans of fizzy pop all over the BNP leaflets. People shouted “keep the racists out of Lancaster”, and eventually a mega phone turned up to get the message across!

Unable to continue leafleting the pond life got fed up and packed up their stall. The cops arrived to add a bit of extra tension into proceedings. But funnily enough the fascists were in a car with an illegal number plate. Some on our side pointed this out, and the cops spent another ten minutes taking their details. Totally dejected they eventually drove off to cheers and jeers and were told not to come back!

Hopefully the fascists had such a bad day that they won’t return. But if they do let’s make sure they are not given an inch. Fortunately the other market traders were very good at opposing them. The stall holder next to the BNP refused to let anyone in his gazebo with a BNP leaflet! And the fascists were reported for not having a license. However, we can’t just rely on council bureaucracy to see off these fascists. We saw today that it is possible to stop them peddling their hatred in this tolerant town of ours, by taking direct action!! Direct action on a bigger scale can have the same results come the BNP’s “Red White & Blue” racist festival in August.

Further questioning elicited more explanation: no, you won’t have to carry it around all the time, only when you want to use public services. Then: it’s “not a tool for police to demand your papers”, but if you are suspected of committing a crime, police can ask you to prove your identity, as before. Eh? This brings us back to “what’s the point then?” - in a system that’s supposed to stop terrorism/whatever, there’s no benefit to having ID cards unless everyone has to carry them around all the time. Stop Joe Criminal and give him the option of popping along to the police station later to bring in his ID card, and you think he’ll show up?

In any case, you’ll automatically register for an ID card if you renew or apply for a passport, so pretending that it’s not compulsory in any way is frankly a joke. Some honesty on such matters would go a long way to convincing people that the system is not malevolent - if that is indeed the case - and hobbling one of the key bodies that’s scrutinising the scheme’s introduction is not exactly helping matters.

Oh hang on [looks through notes from today's eForum]… “The government has said it will look at further legislation for compulsory registration in the future” (Harrison again). That’s more like it. Call a spade a spade.

Owen Gibson, media correspondent, The Guardian

The former chief scientist Sir David King and the IPCC complained about Channel 4’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Channel 4 misrepresented some of the world’s leading climate scientists in a controversial documentary that claimed global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud, the UK’s media regulator will rule next week.

In a long-awaited judgment following a 15-month inquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which sparked outcry from environmentalists.

Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts, the Guardian has learned.

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin, but executives will argue that the key test of whether or not it was right to broadcast the programme has been passed.

One source said both sides would be able to claim victory after a bitter dispute that has raged in newspapers and online since the programme, billed as “a definitive response” to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, was first broadcast in March last year.

The programme was criticised by scientists, who claimed it fundamentally misrepresented the evidence about global warming, that it rehashed discredited old arguments and manipulated data and charts to make its case.

The IPCC, King and other scientists including Dr Carl Wunsch, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, complained to the regulator over the way they were represented. Ofcom is expected to find in favour of King’s complaint and three out of five of the IPCC’s. One is expected to be thrown out and the fifth will be partially upheld.

In its judgment on King’s complaint, Ofcom will say: “Channel 4 unfairly attributed to the former chief scientist, David King, comments he had not made and criticised him for them and also failed to provide him an opportunity to reply”.

In the programme, the concluding voiceover from the climate change sceptic Fred Singer claimed “the chief scientist of the UK” was “telling people that by the end of the century, the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic … it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad”.

King has never made such a statement and it is believed Singer confused his views with those of the contrarian scientist James Lovelock. King did once say that “the last time the Earth had this much C02, the only place habitable was the Antarctic”.

Addressing the IPCC’s complaint over 21 pages, Ofcom will rule that the programme “made significant allegations … questioning its credibility and failed to offer it timely and appropriate opportunity to respond”.

But Channel 4 has argued that the organisation had refused to cooperate with the programme-makers.

After the broadcast, Wunsch said the programme was “masquerading as a science documentary when it should be regarded as a political polemic” and was “as close to pure propaganda as anything since world war two”.

He claimed he had been duped into appearing and his comments had been misleadingly edited.

The Ofcom ruling is expected to find that Wunsch was misled about the tone and content of the programme, but that his views were accurately represented within it. Durkin, who had previously made other controversial documentaries, including Against Nature and the Rise and Fall of GM, vigorously defended the broadcast.

“The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong,” he wrote.

Channel 4 justified the broadcast by saying it was a useful contribution to a timely debate, arguing that it had a tradition for iconoclastic programming and had also aired programmes supporting the case for man-made climate change.

The producers claimed that after it was broadcast, Channel 4 received a record number of phone calls that were six to one in favour of the arguments made. The film was subsequently sold to 21 other countries. A global DVD release went ahead despite protests from scientists.

A Channel 4 spokesman said: “We wouldn’t comment on any Ofcom ruling in advance of its publication.” Ofcom declined to comment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/19/channel4.climatechange

The prime minister also met senior US officials during a surprise visit to the country, ahead of a statement next week on Britain’s involvement there.

He said “enormous progress” had been made in Iraq recently and paid tribute to the “resilience” of UK forces.

In Iraq to assess the UK’s goals there, Mr Brown also said violence had fallen.

Mr Brown flew into Baghdad on Saturday for talks with Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki, president Jalal Talabani and military leaders.

He also met US military chief General David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

He flew on to Basra where he is due to meet British troops and review progress in reconstruction projects.

The UK prime minister said there were four main objectives he wanted to see met in Iraq, including the training of local army and police and the holding of local elections.

He is also focusing on economic and social development in the Basra area, and the transfer of Basra Airport - where most British forces are currently based - to civilian use.

Violence ‘progress’

Plans to halve UK troop numbers to 2,500 by spring were delayed due to violence in Basra at the end of March.

Numbers had been reduced from 5,000 to 4,000 between October 2007 and early April.

Military commanders have said they expect numbers to be further reduced during the course of 2009, said the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.

Speaking after his meetings with Iraqi leaders Mr Brown said: “It is certainly our intention that we reduce troop numbers, but I am not going to give an artificial timetable at the moment.”

Mr Maliki is keen to get a withdrawal timetable in place before the US presidential elections in November.

Meanwhile Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called on Mr Brown to withdraw British troops in southern Iraq and put more into the “increasingly difficult job” of fighting the Taleban in southern Afghanistan.

In a press conference Mr Brown said the number of violent incidents had reduced dramatically since he was last in Iraq December, falling from six violent incidents a day to one every six days.

“Enormous progress has been made,” he said.

“It’s important to recognise that security, prosperity, local democracy - these are the things that we are trying to move forward and trying to achieve.”

He added: “I am very grateful for the way the British forces behaved in such an exemplary manner. Their professionalism, and their courage, and their dedication is very much part of the progress that has happened.”

Mr Brown - whose visit was not announced in advance for security reasons - spent just under an hour in talks with Mr Maliki, then with his advisers. He then spent 20 minutes with Mr Talabani at the presidential palace.

In his last visit in December he announced the official handover of Basra to Iraqi authorities.

This week Iraq and the US called for an agreement on a “general time horizon” for the withdrawal of US troops.

‘Basra another Dubai’

The UN mandate covering foreign troops in Iraq expires at the end of the year.

The US is negotiating a new bi-lateral agreement to cover their continuing presence, and Britain will have to do the same, said Jim Muir.

He said Mr Brown would also be talking to Mr Talabani about the “broader relationship” between the UK and Iraq, with a focus on getting more investment and jobs into the country.

When asked if Britain was motivated by its need for Iraq’s oil, our correspondent said Iraq was “awash” with money from increasing oil revenue.

“The British a looking to play a big development role down in the south… and they are very much encouraging foreign firms to come in and invest, not just in oil but in other projects.

“The British commander down there is talking about Basra being another Dubai in 10 or 20 years down the line, and so there’s huge potential and obviously Britain wants to be part of that effort and obviously to help profit from it as well.”

Mr Brown said he had agreed to hold further talks with Mr Maliki in the autumn.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7515159.stm

John McDonnell, the Labour member for Hayes and Harlington, and Andrew Tyrie, Conservative member for Chichester, say the allegations should be examined by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the Westminster body that oversees the Security Service, MI5, and the Intelligence Service, MI6.

In a statement to the Guardian, released via the Home Office, the Security Service insisted it did “not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture”.

However, details of three new cases have raised concerns among MPs.

McDonnell says he wants to know whether British officials colluded in the abuse of one of his constituents.

The man, a medical student, said he was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The student, who has not spoken out before, has described how he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and witnessed other inmates being tortured.

He was questioned about the suicide attacks on London’s transport network in July of that year, and says that after being tortured by Pakistani agents he was questioned by British intelligence officers. He was released to his father, who says he received a personal apology from the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

The student returned to his London teaching hospital, qualified last year, and is now working in a hospital in the south-east of England. He remains terrified of both Pakistani and British intelligence agencies, however, and has asked not to be identified. A second Briton, Tariq Mahmood, 35, a taxi driver from Sparkhill, Birmingham, has said he was abducted in Rawalpindi in October 2003 and released without charge about five months later.

He is thought to have been held in a prison run by a different agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, where a number of other Britons have also been held and allegedly tortured before being flown to the UK to stand trial. Mahmood’s family say he was tortured, and that MI5 officers and American intelligence officers had a hand in his mistreatment. They have declined to issue any detailed allegation, however, apparently fearing for the safety of relatives in Pakistan.

A third Briton, Tahir Shah, 41, an author from London, was held for 16 days in 2005. He says he was interrogated about the July 7 bombings in what he describes as “a fully-equipped torture chamber”, with mangles, whips and electrical equipment.

He says he was hooded and shackled for long periods and deprived of sleep. He does not allege that British officials were involved, but believes it is unlikely they would not have been informed. He was eventually bundled aboard a scheduled flight to Heathrow, where his passport was returned by an unnamed official whom he believes to have been from MI5.

Allegations of collusion in torture could be examined by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, established eight years ago with a remit to investigate complaints against MI5 and MI6. Another possibility is that the ISC could look into the claims.

McDonnell said of his constituent: “I believe that there is now sufficient evidence from this and other cases to demonstrate that British officials outsourced the torture of British nationals to a Pakistani intelligence agency.

“This warrants the fullest investigation by the ISC, which is best placed initially to undertake such an inquiry. I would expect the government to cooperate fully with such an investigation and eventually for the prime minister to make a statement to parliament on how this practice has been allowed to develop and what action is to be taken.”

Tyrie, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, added: “Any torture of British nationals by Pakistani authorities would be utterly unacceptable. If credible allegations implicating British officials in such mistreatment have been made then they require investigation. The ISC appears to be the most suitable body to examine these issues.”

Asked about the allegations, MI5 asked the Home Office to issue a statement which said: “The government unreservedly condemns the use of torture as a matter of fundamental principle and works hard with its international partners to eradicate this abhorrent practice worldwide.

“The Security and Intelligence Agencies do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhumane or degrading treatment. For reasons both ethical and legal, their policy is not to carry out any action which they know would result in torture or inhumane or degrading treatment.

“The ISC gave the Security Service a clean bill of health in its 2005 report on torture. When Security Service personnel had come across instances when poor treatment of detainees was suspected, the report commended that MI5 officers notified the detaining authorities immediately and this was followed up with an official complaint from London.

“All Security Service staff have an awareness of the Human Rights Act 1998, and are fully committed to complying with the requirements of the law when working in the UK and overseas.” Earlier this year representatives of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch told another Commons body, the Foreign Affairs Committee, they believed British intelligence officers were colluding in torture.

Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch, told MPs: “It is pretty clear the US and the UK are relying rather heavily on the well-known abusive Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, in the counter-terrorism operations. It is one of the most brutal intelligence agencies in the world.” He added that British interrogations of people being held by this agency “seem to amount to complicity and collusion in the mistreatment”.

In April the Guardian reported that four other British men, who had been detained in Pakistan during British-led counter-terrorism operations and held illegally for several months without access to a lawyer or court, had each alleged that British officials colluded in their torture.

Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is an offence for British officials to instigate or consent to the inflicting of “severe pain or suffering” on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such treatment. Any such offence could be punished by life imprisonment.

One of the four, Salahuddin Amin, 33, a university graduate from Luton, later told the Old Bailey that he was interviewed by two MI5 officers several times in 10 months, in between being whipped, beaten with sticks, suspended from his wrists and threatened with an electric drill. MI5 was permitted to give its response to the allegations in camera, with the media and the public excluded.

Allegations of collusion were raised at Amin’s appeal against conviction for terrorism offences last month, which was also heard largely in camera. They are to be raised again later this year at the trial of a British man whose lawyers said he had three fingernails extracted while a prisoner of a Pakistani intelligence agency. They say their client was then questioned by British intelligence officers.

A series of legal ploys are being used by major companies including Strada, PizzaExpress and Carluccio’s to take a slice of the £4bn a year that diners leave for low-paid staff in tips.

Today, The Independent launches a campaign to improve the treatment of the country’s 231,845 waiters and waitresses – and ensure that customers know where their money is going when they leave a tip.

Most restaurant customers believe staff receive the tips or service charge as a reward for good service. But our investigation has discovered that tips left by diners are being regularly used to pay basic wages, or meet costs.

Among the practices, The Independent found:

*Carluccio’s, Café Rouge, Chez Gerard, Strada and Café Uno all pay their staff less than the minimum wage and use customers’ tips to make up the balance in their employees’ pay;

*PizzaExpress takes an 8 per cent cut of tips left on a credit card;

*One chain of Asian restaurants, Georgetown, takes 100 per cent of tips;

*Staff at one London eatery receive no basic wage at all.

Last night, The Independent’s campaign won the backing of MPs from all parties and the trade union Unite.

Stephen Byers, who introduced the national minimum wage when he was Trade and Industry Secretary, said: “Action is needed now to ensure fairness, so customers know when they leave a tip for good service, it goes to the individual concerned and is not an extra sum of money for the employer or restaurant owner.

“Loopholes in the system are being exploited by unscrupulous restaurant owners. We must close the loopholes so hard-working staff get the rewards their customers want them to have.”

Peter Luff, Conservative chairman of the Business and Enterprise Select Committee, acknowledged there was “exploitation” of workers in the hospitality sector. “Nobody should be paid anything less than the minimum wage. They should not have to depend on charity to get a legal wage,” he said.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrats’ spokeswoman on business and enterprise, added: “It’s great that The Independent is highlighting such an important issue and I wholeheartedly back the campaign.”

In 2006, Britons spend £37.6bn spent on food and drink in restaurants, according to the British Hospitality Association. At 12 per cent, tips for waiting staff should approach £4.7bn a year.

But restaurants are using several loopholes to take a portion of the money. The practices are believed to have intensified with the rise of electronic payments and the introduction of the chip and pin system in 2006. Among the most popular is the exploitation of a loophole in minimum wage legislation. Restaurants have won the right to pay staff below the minimum wage of £5.52 per hour for workers aged 22 years and older. Staff are paid as little as £3 or £4, with the remainder topped up by tips.

In a few cases, such as at Tuttons restaurant in Covent Garden, the staff receive no “pay” at all: their wages are derived entirely from tips left by diners.

Other waiters are forced to pay restaurant chains hundreds of millions of pounds in sales fees for “administering” tips. Other establishments make deductions as a result of breakages or customers leaving without paying.

One waitress at a London restaurant complained: “Some of us work two jobs and you could be on your feet maybe 80 hours a week with no weekends. If you’re earning £5 an hour and tips go to management, there isn’t the incentive to give customers the best service.”

The Independent looked at the practices of 12 chains that operate 1,300 of Britain’s 26,600 restaurants and turn over almost £1bn a year. They include some of the biggest names in the business.

Britain’s second biggest chain the Tragus Group, which runs Strada, Bella Italia, the French bistro chain Café Rouge and the Belgian beer and frites chain Belgo, also dips into tips to reach the minimum wage. Paramount Restaurants also employs the practice at its Café Uno and Chez Gerrard brands.

At the Nobu Japanese restaurant in London, waiters claim they saw nothing of a £150 service charge on a £1,000 bill and an extra tip of £100.

Gondola Holdings, Britain’s largest casual dining giant with annual sales of £228m, deducts an 8 per cent administration charge from tips to staff at PizzaExpress. A waiter at PizzaExpress, Nabil Guirguis, was allegedly dismissed for talking to the media about the practice, which the private equity company insists is fair. The British Hospitality Association, which represents restaurants, denied that its members were mean – and blamed the Inland Revenue for failing to provide a clear lead. Its deputy chief executive, Martin Couchman, said that there were “legitimate” costs involved in distributing service charges and credit card tips.

“It’s perfectly legal to top up to the minimum wage,” he said.

“Evidence from recent controversy is that, overall, people are earning more than the minimum wage. It’s legal and its one of the things that arose from the Inland Revenue interpretation, which was very confused for a long period.”

Restaurateurs also maintain that their use of tips to top up, or replace, their wages incentivises staff. “Our waiters get a salary depending on how good or bad they are,” said Kumar Muthalagappan, the founder and owner of Pearl Hotels and Restaurants Group.

Unite, however, believes that staff should receive all their tips. Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary, argued that low paid workers deserved a better deal on tips. “The Government must take action so that everyone can tip with confidence,” he said. “Customers want to know their tips are going to the hard-working staff who serve them.”

The Independent is urging restaurants to run an equitable and transparent policy on disbursements to staff – and to disclose that policy on menus.

We are also calling on the Government to end the minimum wage loophole, ensuring that staff are automatically paid the minimum wage in full.

Three simple steps for just deserts

Today, The Independent sets out three simple guidelines for fair treatment of waiting staff, asking that the Government introduces legislation to end the widespread unfair tipping practices adopted by many of Britain’s restaurants:

1) All restaurants should operate a fair, clear and transparent policy for distributing service charges and gratuities to its staff.

2) All restaurants should display their policy on service charges and gratuities clearly on all of the menus.

3) All waiting staff should be guaranteed a basic salary of at least the minimum wage, excluding gratuities.

She said: “Seventy percent of CCTV is operated by private companies. There are 16 different types of system operated by public authorities in the Strathclyde Police area. We need a system that makes sure that cameras are used properly.”

The back bencher is proposing a statutory duty for public bodies such as local authorities, transport groups and housing associations to work together with their local police forces to achieve streamlining of public systems.

Ms McKechin wants shops, shopping centres and licensed premises to agree a code of conduct on the use and storage of CCTV images.

Her proposals would require private organisations which control large areas open to the public such as cinemas, hotels and shopping centres or large bars and clubs to provide the local police force with up-to-date information on the type of CCTV systems that they use and how they use them.

The 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain has led to accusations that the nation has become a “surveillance society”, which was one of the issues at the centre of the campaign by David Davis, the former Shadow Home Secretary, who last week regained the seat of Haltemprice and Howden in a by-election.

Last week, the latest row over CCTV cameras emerged in the idyllic fishing village of Elgol on Skye, where locals have complained over the siting of a £1200 camera by the local council, claiming it was an intrusion into the area’s tranquility.

However, Highland Council has made clear that the only reason it has installed the camera is to monitor a dispute between two rival boat-trip companies.

Ms McKechin will use the parliamentary device of the 10-minute rule bill on Wednesday to raise the issue of CCTV cameras. Without the backing of the UK Government, it will not become law.

In order to achieve its own ends (public control), this government has, in the wider population, systematically created a fear of faceless terrorist threat - but so many murders among the indigenous young is of far greater concern.

We don’t need more consultations, cameras or cards. We need more policemen making a connection with the young and their parents, and we need to rid ourselves of this miasma of fear and uncertainty and get on with our lives.

Douglas Cardow