 The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has been key to Britain's incredibly successful vaccine rollout. We're all in a much better place because of it. However, today the UK medical authorities have changed the advice when it comes to the use of the Oxford vaccine. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation have recommended that due to an association with rare blood clots, alternative vaccines should be offered to under 30s. Where does this leave our vaccine rollout? And how should we judge our own personal risks? We'll be speaking to one of the country's leading experts on vaccines. And throughout the show, I'm joined by Dalia Gabriel. How's it going? Hi, Michael. How are you doing? Very well. I've been glued to the COVID press conferences today. All very interesting. Who needs a social life? Well, we're not allowed to have one at the moment anyway. We, of course, have a host of other guests on tonight's show. More than usual, in fact, today we'll speak to Dave Ward about the poll in Hartley-Paw, the CWU commissioned, which has got under the collar of a fair few Blairite MPs. And we'll talk to a delivery driver who is on strike today and to a momentum co-chair as we exclusively reveal the result of their membership ballot on policy priorities. Very exciting. As ever, do share the show, link, tweet on the hashtag Tiskey Sour, and send your super chats under the YouTube stream. Now, following concerns about its connection to rare blood clots, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation have announced new advice for the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. When an alternative is available, they have judged its use will no longer be recommended for those under the age of 30. At a press conference this afternoon, Dr June Rain, head of the UK Medicines Regulator, laid out the new evidence that informed this decision. The benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against COVID-19 and its associated risks, hospitalisation and death continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people. Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small. By the 31st of March, over 20 million doses having been given, we have had 79 case reports up to and including that date, 31st of March. All 79 cases occurred after the first dose. Of these 79 cases, 19 people have sadly died. These cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men aged from 18 to 79 years. And from these reports, the risk of this type of rare blood clot is about four people in a million who receive the vaccine. Three out of the 19 were under 30 years. 14 of the 19 were of the cerebral venous sinus thrombosis with low platelets and five were other kinds of thrombosis in major veins. The balance of benefits and risks is very favourable for older people but it is more finely balanced for the younger people and we at the MHRA are advising that this evolving evidence should be taken into account when considering how the vaccine is used. So key there, this condition is very rare and for almost everyone, risk of getting seriously ill from COVID outweighs by a considerable degree the risk of getting seriously ill from the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the balance of risk does shift as we move down the age brackets. This was the key graphic, the key evidence that was displayed at that press conference. So we can get this up. This is weighing up the risks of taking the AstraZeneca vaccine versus the risks of not taking it if that means being liable to catch COVID-19 over the following 16 weeks. Now this shows with the levels of COVID as they were in March, that's why it's saying low exposure risk, 14.1 people between 60 and 69 would be expected to go into ICU out of 100,000, that's over a 16-week period with COVID of course. Now that could be contrasted to only 0.2 people out of 100,000 that we'd expect to have a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine. You can see very, very clear, those people should take the vaccine, they should take hundreds of the vaccine. I mean, that's not my medical advice, but you can see that it's overwhelming. But once we get to people between 20 and 29 with COVID at levels they were in March, again, we'd expect only 0.8 people out of 100,000 to end up in ICU with COVID-19, while 1.1% of people, sorry, not 1.1% of people, one people person out of 100,000 could have a serious negative reaction to the vaccine. So the risk ratio shifts as the age group in the population shifts. Obviously, this is the risk ratio if you have COVID levels at a relatively low level, this is what they or that was what they were in March. This changes if we get to higher levels of coronavirus. So they also showed us how this balance would work out if we had slightly higher levels of coronavirus. So this is the rates we had in February this year. You can see then at all age groups, actually, it makes sense to take the AstraZeneca vaccine, but we have lower levels of COVID than that. And if we had really high levels of coronavirus, so the highest we've had in this country, the peak of the second COVID wave, it really makes sense for people in every age group to get the COVID vaccine. So a very small chance of a serious harm. But because actually at this point in time, if you are in your 20s, for example, and we have the rates of COVID that we currently do, your risk of going to ICU with coronavirus is also very, very low. That's how they're making this decision. Now, how will this change affect the overall rollout of the vaccination drive? We also heard from Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam at the press briefing today. And that's what he touched upon. And his advice was, or his statement was actually fairly reassuring. This is a change in clinical advice for the under 30s. It will require some changes in the way that the National Health Service operationalizes the vaccine rollout program. But I have spoken to my colleagues in the NHS in some detail this morning. And I'm assured that actually, because of our supply situation in relation to alternative vaccines, the effect on the timing of our overall program should be zero or negligible. That, of course, is contingent upon getting the supplies that we expect to get of the alternative vaccines, which are the Pfizer vaccine currently in use and the Moderna vaccine that we hope to bring into deployment from mid-April in England. So some reassurance there from Jonathan Van Tam. He would have been pleased to be able to also deliver the good news as well as the bad news today that the first of the UK's Moderna vaccines were deployed this morning in Wales. He's saying they won't be in England until the middle of the month. So was this the right decision? Why have we restricted the use of the AZ vaccine so much later than our European neighbours? And what should young people who've already received the AstraZeneca vaccine make of today's news? To find out, I spoke to Dean and Pelé, Professor of Virology at UCL and member of Independent Sage. I started by asking Dean what he made of today's change of advice from the JCVI. What we've heard today seems to me is a very sensible response of the UK regulatory organisation and then the policy part of that, the JCVI, as a response to the information that they're getting, that there does seem to be this rare association with the AstraZeneca vaccine. We've got to remember that really the uncertainty to date has been whether, in fact, this constellation of this disease, this low platelets with clotting, was actually likely to be associated with the vaccine or was rather random events that may happen all the time and irrelevant of the vaccine. And I think the important bit of information has come out today both from the MHRA but also the European Medicines Agency is the evidence is starting to show the likely causality. In other words, the vaccine is the cause of this and that is why the MHRA have had to deal with this and come out with the JCVI with a new policy. We haven't been rolling out vaccines under 30s on a mass scale yet but there will be lots of people in their 20s who will have had the AstraZeneca vaccine especially women might be concerned because it seems at least on initial estimations that this affects women more. What would you suggest? How would you reassure? What would you advise a woman in her 20s who has been vaccinated recently with the AstraZeneca vaccine? Well, first of all, just to dissect that a little bit, what became clear in the press conference today and Mania Pirra-Mahamed who is the head of the Commission on Human Medicines outlined this is that because more young women than men have had the vaccines, because of course the young people have been vaccinated mainly because they're care workers and health care workers and there are more women in those situations, it is not surprising that more women have appeared to get this syndrome where it's actually on a vaccine to vaccine level there's no difference between men and women. So I think that was an important message that comes out and is a reassurance therefore that it's not a predilection for women. There does seem to be a higher risk in young people although even that was apparently less clear but how the decision was framed was within the risk benefit analysis is that even if there's only a small increased risk in young people, the fact that young people are far less likely to be hospitalized and get into intensive care, then that was a reason for the advice. So to some extent that is reassuring to young people and young women it's rather in the context of what their risk of COVID will be. I was going to get up the slide of the risk ratios because this was sort of really the core of the press conference I think explaining their decisions and we can get this up now this is for 100,000 people with a low exposure risk so we showed a number of examples if there were higher levels of COVID obviously the risk ratios would change so this showed that if you're between 20 and 29, your risk of serious harm from a vaccine or from the AstraZeneca vaccine is 1.1 out of 100,000 whereas your risk of going to ICU within 16 weeks for catching COVID is only 0.8 out of 100,000 so they're saying it's only in that 20 to 29 group where there is a bigger risk of the vaccine than going to ICU. For every other age group you can see the ratio changes so if you're between 30 and 39 your risk of going to ICU is 2.7 out of 100,000 and your risk of an adverse reaction from the vaccine is 0.8 out of 100,000. Now this all you know I think it was a good press conference that made lots of sense to me in terms of how that decision is being made. At the same time a couple of things stood out to me in terms of how people should make their decisions. So one is the age brackets are quite broad so I'm 31 for example so I can see that people who are between 30 and 39 the risk of getting COVID over the next 16 weeks is higher than the risk of taking the vaccine but could the crossover be a less arbitrary age than 30? I'm presumably at more of a risk of clots and less of a risk of COVID than someone who's 39 and second what's happening here is they're saying what's being compared is 16 weeks of not being vaccinated or taking the AstraZeneca vaccine but what if that's not the choice what if when I'm offered a vaccine I might think well I could get the AstraZeneca one tomorrow or I might be offered the Moderna one in a month's time. So I mean I can see why they simplify it to explain the decision they've made but it's it quite difficult for people to judge how their personalised risk should be assessed when they're actually quite a lot of unknowns. When will I be offered a different vaccine for example how would you advise people to deal with those unknowns? Yeah those are really good questions I think taking your first point to start with which is about the absolute risk according to specific age and lucky you you're a young man of 31 and where do you fit the problem is is within the UK there's been 79 of these cases of this clotting disorder amongst 20 million vaccinees and of course if you start to really then try and ascribe risk to each each year of age one it becomes very spurious and less meaningful and so that is the reason why there's been you know there's this sort of this broadening of age categories that's that's the first thing but the second point you make is is an important one of where does this we're not comparing vaccine and no vaccine we're comparing AstraZeneca to other vaccines and I think that is reasonable that is reasonable of course we don't know necessarily what long-term impact will be and side effects of other vaccines that have not been rolled out so the Moderna vaccine for instance we start it's been rolled out in the US and we're looking there but we've got to remember it takes many millions in this case many millions of doses before these signals become clear and of course different countries have different sort of populations and secondly we've got to be mindful of the supply chain and I think we've already learned to our cost that following a government aspiration for a vaccine rollout without taking into into consideration that there may be hiccups all the way along and that's not just political contractual arrangements that's also glitches in manufacturing so to some extent there's a pragmatism that we need to take on the base that any vaccine is better than no vaccine and and of course that includes delaying getting vaccine until your vaccine of choice becomes becomes available so I think it's quite a reasonable approach that that has been taken in terms of encouraging continuation along this this route the point was also made with regard to whether those who've had their first AstraZeneca vaccine should receive their second and in fact the advice was very much that yes you should receive your second dose but I know that I think in Germany the announcement just been made that if you've had your first AstraZeneca vaccine if you're under 60 I think then your second vaccine should be of a different should be of a different sort now of course again there's arguments both ways for that on the one hand just in terms of the pathogenesis the cause of this clotting problem if it indeed is an immune response that the vaccine somehow generates against platelets which sort of makes this happen then you would imagine that that would happen after the first dose rather than waiting for a second dose but equally when we think about mixing and matching of vaccines those trials are going on now but we just don't have the data to you know to give any indication giving one dose of one vaccine followed with another dose of a different vaccine is going to yield the same benefit in terms of protection from COVID then two doses of the same vaccine and until we have those data I think it was probably erring on the side of sensibleness for the government for the MHRA to advise and Jonathan Van Tam to advise get your second dose of the same vaccine. Finally I want your perspective on I suppose the timing of this decision and especially I'm thinking that you know Norway Germany there were other countries in Europe who suspended this vaccine for younger populations a long time ago at that point in time there were lots of people in this country who were saying oh they're being ridiculous this is all for political reasons our regulators have now decided or recognized that these risks were real that there was a causal relation do you think the fact that we have come to this decision a bit later than any anyone else is potentially because of I mean it's it's not normally how vaccine nationalism is is thought of but this government obviously have a lot invested in this vaccine being seen to be a success and so do you think they are setting the bar higher for what would be a reason to stop the rollout than other countries are and could that have cost lives? Yeah that's an interesting point my my say I think let's separate these into two first of all is an approach to intervening in a vaccine rollout before one has a good degree of certainty that a side effect is caused by the vaccine and I know that the EMA and the same are obviously coordinated press conferences with MHRA and EMA both announced using pretty much similar language that on the balance of probabilities it's now likely that the vaccine is the cause of this side effect so that's waited until now and and that's had to wait until you know in the UK we've had 79 cases of of of this particular syndrome and I think in in in Europe it's been more like 150 cases for 34 million doses compared to 79 cases for 20 million doses here so it's needed to wait until those data are there to give that indication and I think it's you know stopping a vaccine before that is clear is always difficult particularly in the context of vaccine hesitancy and so forth but but separate to that and I say that because you know I listen to the MHRA and the Commission on Human Medicines and I myself sit on one of the expert advisory groups for the CHM and MHRA with regard to therapies rather than vaccines and and I know these are run extremely well they take a large amount of scientific advice and there's very little political if any there's you know I've never seen any political interference in in the decision-making so I think the scientific decision-making remains sound and it it's you know by contrast to some of the other decision-making the UK government has made during the pandemic but the second thing is is that more geopolitical context that you talk about clearly AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine has had hiccups along the way compared to the other compared to say Moderna and Pfizer vaccine there was of course the dose mess up in the trials which made it very complicated to to decipher there was the trials that were stopped because of a potential side effects neurological side effects although it took some time before it was clear that that the the oversight committee of the trial had decided that that wasn't a reason to stop the trials they were started again and of course there's been the recent debacle in the US where the Data Safety Monitoring Board of the US based trial disagreed with the with the press release given by the company and that you know caused some hiccups so there's clearly been something around the AstraZeneca vaccine that's not gone well in terms then that may just be a communications issue and it may be you know a different part of the company that is rather than the scientists that are that are involved with that and of course there's been this underlying we now understand this fraught issue of contractual arrangements between countries and AstraZeneca so all of those things may very well have contributed to different European countries having a stance against AstraZeneca of course they would do that in the context of the other supply chains that they have the degree of vaccine hesitancy and of course their own internal political dynamics so I think for this I wouldn't necessarily blame the UK government and for this apparent lateness in which the MHRA has come to the table I think more they've come to the table when they can when there's something to say that is useful that has been and has been messaged in a way that I think will will minimize the harmful effects on the rollout although of course this may contribute to some more hesitancy. That was Dean and Pillay professor of virology at UCL and member of independent SAGE now one thing I didn't ask Dean and about but which I think it's important to to get across is what the symptoms look to look out for when it does come to these blood clots now obviously these are incredibly incredibly rare I don't think there is any reason for anyone to be worried about this it's just that the risks of people who are who are young anyway the risks from COVID are so low we've been through this but if you were to be concerned I'm about these clots and you had had a vaccine the European Medicines Agency today released their advice of what to look out for and again I presume it's the case that if you have these symptoms it's still very unlikely you've had a clot but you should seek medical advice this is from the the EMA website they say patients should seek medical assistance immediately if they have the following symptoms after taking the AZ vaccine shortness of breath chest pain swelling in your leg persistent abdominal that's your belly pain neurological symptoms including severe and persistent headaches or blurred vision or tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the site of the injection so that's what to look out for if you were to be concerned you'd be suffering from this very very rare condition now Dalia I think you're in your 20s you're lucky enough to be in your 20s I'm just past the limit are you disappointed you might have to wait a little longer for a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or are you relieved that the decision about the AZ vaccine has essentially been taken out of your hands now yes I am clinging on to your life for my 20s I'm turned 28 a couple of weeks ago in a sense both I mean I'm obviously disappointed that there might be a delay I'm also glad that the decision has been taken out my hands and but I've been thinking a lot about you know if the AstraZeneca vaccine was offered to me today and especially if there wasn't an alternative um or if it was offered to me like you know today i.e. you know several months before I would be offered it for my age group and I think overall I probably would and the reason is ultimately you know the question is is the potential for a serious side effect both more likely and more severe than the condition that is being treated or that is being prevented and when you look at the graph that we showed earlier that kind of tips very slightly in the direction for people in my age bracket and you know whilst I would argue that and I you know I would argue that whilst the condition that I'm preventing which is coronavirus if you look at these you know most serious effects of that being admission to the ICU it represents a very low risk to me but I guess the overall kind of public health of you know having lower transmission feels like that is a risk that is not factored in that table that is a risk I would still consider and also you know like a lot of the data with COVID I think that the way that we categorize serious cases of COVID is actually quite narrow like obviously being admitted to the ICU represents a really serious case of coronavirus but I know plenty people my age who were actually never admitted to the ICU but are still suffering from the very debilitating effects of long COVID six months plus later after they were infected and you know we still don't know the long-term effects of COVID on people's bodies and so that kind of risk isn't registered in that ICU admissions figure but it still represents harm that I really want to avoid and not to mention the sort of mental and physical health impact of us continuously having to be in lockdowns and you know obviously the data sort of shows that this isn't a concocted risk but we also know that the risk is kind of comparable to other things that we take for granted as being you know part of our lives so you know taking a flight contracting COVID you know is also a risk factor for blood clots or being on the contraceptive pill which a lot of women have been talking about on Twitter today you know the risk for the pill of getting a blood clot is 0.3 to 1% over a 10-year period now there's an argument to be made you know there that women are not made aware of these risks before taking the pill and that you know that risks that exist because you know the pill hasn't really developed that much or advanced for several years because of lack of research because women are kind of expected to absorb the casualty of maintaining broader public reproductive health so you could argue that you know the contraceptive pill isn't really the gold standard for like public health and consent public health consent and risk so we shouldn't really compare them because it's sort of not we shouldn't be doing a sort of race to the bottom but overall I think that you know judging juggling all of those things you know putting things into a bit of perspective and also considering the the other risks of COVID that I would consider serious and that I really would like to avoid that are not captured in that ICU figure I would still accept the AstraZeneca vaccine and I think it's really important that considering all of that those who are under 30 who have gotten the AstraZeneca vaccine know because they have underlying conditions or because they're carers really should not panic and I really hope that this doesn't for example reduce the uptake of the second dose in particular especially that we know that the risks are actually much more associated with the first dose and the second dose as well. No I mean I think all super in important points I mean I mean I think my feeling on this is basically I do kind of you know I don't really trust the government but I do trust the JCVI and the the MHRA so when I get my text I'll just I'm like just I'll do what you tell me to do essentially when it comes to things like this um let's go to a comment fp with a 999 donation says I work in social care and got my second vaccine today in brackets Pfizer-BioNTech you smart person so here's a celebratory donation keep up the great work I don't really mean yours you work in social care and you've donated to us all of our all of our respect to you and congratulations if you've received either Pfizer-BioNTech or the AstraZeneca vaccine because these are remarkable pieces of technology and as Dahlia says it's not just your your own risk you're reducing by getting the vaccine it's also the risk of society at large so these are incredibly incredibly complicated issues if you are enjoying tonight's show do hit the like button it helps us in the algorithm now the 6th of May will be Keir Starmer's first big electoral test as labour leader commentators will be looking out for whether there are signs of the start of a recovery in Scotland whether labour can remain dominant in elections to the Welsh Assembly and whether the party will go forwards or backwards across England's councils however perhaps because Starmer has spent so much energy relentlessly focusing on winning back MPs in the red wall the loudest chatter within labour circles has been about the by-election that will be held on that day in Hartlepool where constituents will vote in a replacement for the former labour MP Mike Hill now that chatter went into overdrive on Tuesday when Servation released the first constituency and only constituency-based polling in Hartlepool we can get up the results here so Servation have projected that the Tories will in fact gain the seat from the Labour Party winning 49% to Labour's 42 they also projected the brand new Northern Independence Party would come in 3rd which is quite an achievement seeing as I mean they mainly exist on Twitter they do have a great candidate Felmer Walker who's knocking on doors but most people think of them at this point as kind of a Twitter phenomenon so to get 2% would be impressive if that is borne out in fact and they also asked about the favourability of the different leaders as we've discussed it's not looking great for Keir Starmer at the moment so Boris Johnson they're 49% favourable compared to 30% unfavourable Keir Starmer only 24% favourable compared to 38% unfavourable and that's obviously the people in the constituency who asked they're not national favourability ratings they're local favourability ratings now the poll was commissioned by the communication workers union and their general secretary Dave Ward joins me now now Dave welcome to the show I'm Michael I'm going to go through some of the policy questions which the poll asked because I know this is you know close to the CWU's heart that the issue is about broadband etc but first of all I want to talk about the pushback you got for for commissioning this poll from certain labour MPs this is what Bren Bradshaw this is how he responded to the poll so he tweeted hi Dave Ward how about helping on the labour doorstep in Hartlepool and elsewhere instead of spending CWU members money on a dodgy looking unweighted poll with leading questions and using it to undermine Keir Starmer and labour that was followed up by this from Toby Perkins Shadow Minister for Apprentices and Lifelong Learning Toby Perkins wrote instead of spending his members money running tiny polls to undermine labour campaign Dave Ward could more usefully get himself up to Hartlepool a lot more than 42% of voters I've met are voting for Paul Williams it's not really how the labour doorstep works you normally knock on people who you're expecting to vote Labour but Dave I want to know what do you say how would you respond to Ben and Toby yeah I mean I think you saw our response in our tweets last night that sort of really sort of said they're irrelevant in this debate if that's their view I think it's a very shallow response from those MPs I guess it's a the start of a coordinated response from some on the right in the party and I think what it tells me is that they're still blind to the real reasons why they're not connecting with working-class communities and the fact that they would rather attack not us in that sense I mean this was carried out by a salvation you know one of the most well respected polling companies in the country I think it just demonstrates how off the pace they are but to me personally I mean they're on your relevance in the debate I mean the CW Michael we commissioned the poll for a number of really important reasons where we thought it was right to make this intervention firstly the CW is a union where we've worked really hard to connect our industrial and political agendas so it was important to us to test some policies that were around in the general election that Labour then supported but these are policies that support our members' jobs so as you said things like free broadband, renationalisation and roll-out I have to say I was quite taken aback by the scale of the support for free broadband and the difference between how that was seen in this particular poll compared to what a lot of critics on the right of Labour who were criticising Jeremy and John McDonnell for coming up with that policy which we were part of developing so I thought that was really interesting and therefore you know it helps us understand what we need to do to connect with our members' jobs and in supporting the industries that they work in and the second reason we do it is the CW is a union that strongly believes that it's time for the trade union movement to harness our collective strength and to really change somebody in balances of power and wealth that exists that we can do you know unions can make change happen on the ground so it was a strong message from us that we wanted to reconnect with working class communities as a trade union movement we wanted to understand what was happening and then thirdly the poll was clearly that we're unhappy with the direction that Labour are taking and we think that Labour are genuinely in danger of becoming an irrelevance and you know my feeling for some time has been that there's no pathway to victory for the Labour party without a radical platform that changes the inequalities that challenges that balance of power and wealth you know in the world of work in the economy and in wider society and for me the poll showed that without those policies you know a Labour party that spent the last year obsessing with telling everybody what Jeremy Corbyn sorry that they're not Jeremy Corby rightly it seems to us that people are saying well who are you then and I think there's a message there for Labour that if it wants to win seats like Hartipall it now needs to go back to setting out a bold agenda for the future I want to get up some of those poll results as you say they were quite quite striking so first of all let's look at what people said in terms of their priority being investing more in public services or paying off the country's deficit now 67% when asked that question chose investing in more public services so they're a clear rejection of austerity although to be fair most parties are are talking along those those lines now they've been quite a turnaround there there was also as you mentioned overwhelming support for royal male nationalisation and then the real headline result the real surprising result for many people was on broadband as as you say so you can see here 69% of people supported having a policy of providing free broadband internet to all UK homes and businesses by 2030 now Dave my question for you because I mean some people have responded as we've seen by saying oh this is an unweighted poll it's it's nonsense people don't actually want free broadband the more I suppose subtle and sophisticated critique is to say that yes we all knew that people like nice things the reason why Labour going into an election promising all of these things was a problem was because it sort of fed into a narrative that Labour just offer nice things and you can't really trust them to deliver them all they're offering so many nice things that will end up in in loads of debt so whilst the public might say oh I'd love free broadband if the Tories gave it to me but if Labour give it to me that would seem a bit oh I'd be a bit suspicious there what do you make of that critique? Well first of all it wasn't an unweighted poll so it was done exactly in the way that salvation would do any poll and we actually saw the unweighted results and then they're weighted at that point and they go through all the same processes that they do with any poll so that did then come back towards a more narrow result actually in terms of whether they would be supporting Labour or the Tories and the critique I think what's interesting about it is it's quite a relatively short period of time and since that policy was ridiculed by a lot of people including you know many people in the Labour Party but actually I think what's happened is is that during the pandemic I think people have realised the importance of broadband the importance of that in tackling inequality how it keeps people connected and I think everybody recognises that unless you've got you know full fibre broadband connected across the whole of the country you know that without that it's a key part of your infrastructure to rebuild the economy and because there's been lots of discussions about rebuilding the economy I think people have just realised that these are essential things more importantly I think there's a willingness to recognise there that the state shouldn't have been in funding and investing in free broadband so for me in some ways it was a justification of the work that we've done with John McDonnell leading into the last general election and I would say that you know John and his team were ahead of the gun with this policy Boris Johnson I think has recognised that a year on more than what Labour are and you know so it's a wake-up call for Labour to get back to a radical policy agenda and to set that out as part of its election offering I think that's a really important point actually you know if you ask most people who do you think is more likely to now offer free broadband in the next general election I think it probably would be Boris Johnson I want to ask you because we're talking about Hartley Paul the other big takeaway from that poll was that in third place was the northern independence party I want to go to a statement they released in response to them being shown to be inferred so they say a political party that was set up by strangers over Twitter and what's that five months ago is now polling higher than the liberal Democrats and Brexit party reform UK we've not even started our campaign we've spent nothing on this election yet we are already beating established Westminster parties the Labour Party is a spent force in British politics they are a not a fit opposition to the Tories now Dave you've I mean in a way you seem to share some of their analysis the Labour Party is a you know is becoming irrelevant they're not providing proper opposition to the Tories are you in any way tempted by this this this new I mean you might call it a very online party but they're polling inferred what's your opinion on the northern independence party um well I haven't really formed an opinion on the mother than I did see the guy who's the leader he's named Proudfoot was he on your show I think I saw a clip yeah Philip Proudfoot he was on he was on the show with Aaron I thought he was pretty good to be honest with you I thought he was talking uh on a more sort of radical platform uh than what I hear from Labour so again you know a reason for Labour to watch out but look you know I mean there's a general consensus I think building that people are are moving towards more separatism and they seem to be supporting more political parties that um are closely aligned to where they are what their issues are so I think there's lessons for Labour in that and for me you know the big takeaway in all of this is and this is kind of where the CW is at the moment politically I don't want us as a union to get engaged in the debate about this affiliation um because you know I don't really think that takes us anywhere but equally I'm not prepared to you know see Labour use the union movement like a bank where it can withdraw money at the time of elections and not represent the policies that we feel that we need in this country that our members would support so you know Labour should never get anything for nothing from the trade union movement I'm a very strong supporter Michael of the trade union movement um showing the way here for Labour and I think we're due to talk in a couple of weeks time about this new deal for working people and why I think it's important that the trade union movement whether you're affiliated to the Labour Party or not that we are willing to step up and take on some of these companies take on whole sectors of the economy to tackle insecure employment to tackle the imbalance of power in the world of work in the way that the economy is shaped that's our job we have to do that and what this poll was about for me it just again says to me that we are the people that can connect with working class communities and that's what we're going to do we're going to develop that we're going to diversify the way that we spend our political money I mean the other interesting thing which we haven't touched on is my team have been looking at this during the course of the day and it was really interesting to see how many CW members went back at people like Ben Bradshaw almost saying to him don't tell us how our union spends their political money because they're putting it to good use and I think that's a warning sign for Labour not to treat trade unions disrespectfully and I have to say it feels in the last year that they've got more distant from the trade union movement and from engaging with us we're not fringe movement we're a powerful movement and I think we've got a really good chance of bridging you know a lot of the divides that exist in society and unite in working class people so you know that's our strategy that's what we're going to do whatever people like Ben Bradshaw say. Dave Ward I know there's lots of people that watch this show who think you know I'm a Labour member I'm inside the party but I feel completely you know sick and lonely and alienated in here I think most of those watching you will be you know glad that you're also in the party fight in their corner so thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for coming on the show tonight to speak about it. If you are enjoying tonight's show please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month because we want to build up navaramedia to be powerful like the trade union movement so we can also be pressuring Labour or whoever to adopt policies that might actually benefit ordinary people. Now Deliveroo the app based delivery service has had a rough few days last week the company's long awaited first day on the London stock exchange was labelled the worst IPO in London's history as the value of the company fell by 26% in a matter of hours. Now that tumble in share price was blamed on poor timing of the IPO short sellers attacking the firm and the complex two-tiered share structure but concerns will also raise that Deliveroo's business model was based on an unsustainable form of exploitation. The Bureau of Investigative Journalists recently calculated that a third of riders were paid below the minimum the equivalent of the minimum wage by Deliveroo so they write our analysis of thousands of invoices from more than 300 riders over the past year show that one in three made on average less than £8.72 the national minimum wage for those over 25 for their overall time per session in the app some earned even less. A cyclist in Yorkshire was logged in for 180 hours and was paid the equivalent of £2 per hour. This is perfectly legal because riders are treated by Deliveroo as being self employed. Now as it stands that exploitation might be legal but that doesn't mean Deliveroo riders are willing to accept it lying down and that might be what's worrying the shareholders. Now many of those riders went on strike today that was to coincide with the start of unrestricted trading of Deliveroo shares on the London Stock Exchange. These were scenes from Central London. To discuss the strike and protest around the country I spoke earlier today to Ethan Bradley even is the secretary of the couriers division of the IWGB that's the union who organised the strike and he also works as a rider for Deliveroo. Now I started by asking Ethan what were the issues that motivated him to take strike action? So I've been Deliveroo rider myself for three years. We have watched our pay decrease particularly through the pandemic as orders have dried up. Meanwhile Deliveroo have doubled their number of riders from 25,000 to 50,000 so they claim and as a result because we're gig economy workers we're paid per drop per order not per hour. We've watched our wages plummet to a point where we're not even making national minimum wage let alone the living wage and this is before costs as well. So you've got to pay out your own pocket up keeping your vehicle your bike your car insurance if you if you drive fuel as well and all these other unexpected costs like costs of doing business that Deliveroo don't compensate for. So this pushes your wage down and down so pay is the main reason we're doing this but we're also we're also trying to seek rights because like we are classed as contractors not workers so we're not entitled to sick pay no holiday pay no minimum wage guarantee and this is a loophole that Deliveroo and other gig employers have been using for a long time to disenfranchise their workforce and sort of skirt around paying us a wage we can actually live on. I mean I'm I'm lucky enough to be doing this job without dependence I don't have a family I don't have kids to feed but many of my colleagues do and having sort of guarantee of like minimum wage income would mean so much to them. I want to read to you what Deliveroo have said in response to the strike so this is a statement from their spokesperson they say this small self-appointed union does not represent the vast majority of riders who tell us they value the total flexibility they enjoy while working with Deliveroo alongside the ability to earn over £13 an hour only today Tuesday we ran a survey and 88% of riders said that they were happy with the company and flexibility was their priority we are proud that rider satisfaction is at an all-time high and that thousands of people are applying to be Deliveroo riders each and every week riders are at the heart of our business and today we are beginning a new consultation with riders about how we should invest our new £50 million community fund. Now how would you respond to that particular statement I mean to summarize they're saying that most riders are happy with the job and you don't have much claim to represent the general workforce at large how would you respond to that? Well there's a few things to unpack there first of all I got your email about this consultation as every rider did there's actually a clause in terms of conditions where there's like a little prize draw for delivery vouchers and you have to sign something saying that Deliveroo can use you in their PR to show how happy their workforce is if you want to you want to take part in that so it's just more PR, bluster and spin I will note as well that Deliveroo until very recently said that we can make £15 an hour when it's busy they've now dropped up to 13 and I don't know where to get in their figures from it's certainly not the figures that we have I don't know where to go in this form but I think the core the core issue of this is that Deliveroo always like to claim that riders can either have flexibility or they don't have rights they can't have both and they like to claim that by campaigning for rights that we are going to lose the flexibility that makes this job worth doing now I joined because I like the flexibility this is a new form of flexible work it's it's not an employment factor it's been around for a very long time and it's a huge it's a great opportunity for people who don't do well in other types of work so Deliveroo knows exactly what they're doing by sort of scaring riders against taking action that if they do take action this will be taken away however this is completely falsified they're very much on the back foot at the moment they call us what do they call us in that statement then unrepresentative I think so they're calling you self-appointed you're a small self-appointed union self-appointed last week it was fringe organization which is quite amazing really so we watched these statements get more and more deranged over time but they're scared of us and they're running scared of us because workers are starting to take notice and workers are starting to realize that it's not a trade off between flexibility and rights you can have both a multinational corporation 12 investors pulled out last week and many of them cited workers' rights concerns as a reason for them not choosing to invest in Deliveroo like this is something that they are very aware of and it's it's showing a change in tide not only by us taking action but also a general public mood towards a gig economy and gig economy workers that was Ethan Bradley from the IWGB now Dalia I know your PhD is on the gig economy I want to know from you you know with recent rulings that have stated that Uber has to treat its drivers as workers not contractors and with the problems that have now beset Deliveroo we can see people striking but also problems with their IPO do you think that maybe the tide is starting to turn when it comes to how these big tech companies treat the people working for them I mean I think that's that's too early to say um what it does show is that uh is that you know and I'll go into this a little bit bit later but it does show that certainly this idea that of technological determinism you know this idea that technology is kind of too all-encompassing it is too rapidly developing for us to shape um is certainly not true I mean you know the gig economy isn't new it's always existed in some form especially sort of at the fringes of the economy but the particular model that we see represented by things like Deliveroo and Uber they are sort of a formalized rapidly scaled up model of that gig-based exploitation mediated through kind of the digital platform which allows for the workforce to be sort of monitored and managed remotely by an algorithm so that that's what's different right and that as a model is very young um it kind of rose as a model in the early 2010s both sort of as a response by capital to the crisis of 2008 and also because it it it reframed um it was framed as a sort of um technologically solutionist like economically populist fix to the sort of joblessness of the post-2008 um recession and it's an economy that is characterized by these sort of moonshot companies that accrue a seemingly huge amount of power in such a short space of time right they have these astronomical rises they monopolize this space very rapidly and it can feel very overwhelming um very quickly but it's important not to internalize that because it's really important to not think of this model as something that is sort of infallible and cooked up in Silicon Valley and then exported top down across the world and that's that it's not determined like all models of work it is a product of struggle and it's still in the relatively early days of that struggle um it's shape it's contours of what it can get away with depends on the formations on the ground some one of which includes you know worker power and worker organization so the the example of this strike the IPO the example of um the uber case in the supreme court won by the adcu um you know union campaigns worker strikes these are all having direct effects on how this emerging platform model is able to exist and you know that doesn't mean that it that it's easy um you know it's called it's called struggle for a reason these companies are backed by huge amounts of venture capital they have very different pressure points to and require very different strategies of organizing compared to sort of more traditional forms of workplace organizing and i think a lot of these small grassroots unions are sort of learning on the streets um and you know because of the fact that you know the centrality of things like data extraction the fact that the workers are very splintered you know according to across the city they're not very unified um physically and the centrality of pr the fact that company reputation and visibility because of that venture capital um component is incredibly important to the valuation of the company um rather than sort of actual profits or actual you know books um that are balanced or you know balance sheets as it were so it calls for kind of different unionization strategies that that are still being learned and are still being trialed but within that context of resisting this sense of technological determinism of this feeling that there is this new model of work that is so overwhelming that is represented by such powerful monopolistic companies that that can't be resisted or shaped um but organizing workers and organizing the community and consumers in solidarity with those workers is absolutely essential um in staving off the kind of predatory excesses of data capitalism that are most explicitly represented um by this platform labor model so you know I think that these are not just important moments for worker organizing but these are important moments in what the future of work are going to look is going to look like and staving off these excesses at this stage is incredibly incredibly important that they win for all of our sake I mean I think obviously too early to say was the correct right answer but I think you're absolutely right that I mean the future of the gig economy really is now being decided by workers on the ground negotiating with these big bosses and then public opinion and governments etc it does seem quite up in the air there was a period quite recently where all of these big countries seemed completely untouchable they could do whatever they wanted less so right now and that's because of you know the organizing that we've been seeing today now people's momentum have had to search for a new role since the left lost labor's leadership before they were a praetorian guard defending the democratically elected leader against a hostile media and hostile labor MPs now out of favor with the current party leader they need to find a new way to have a voice and with a new coordinating group they're aiming to use the power of their membership not connections to the leader to promote left-wing policies to that end the organization recently balance its members on what policies momentum should push and tonight we can exclusively reveal the results now we haven't sorted out the sound effects for this so if you want drum rolls you have to do them you have to do them at home and before we reveal what are the top eight policies which momentum's members have chosen to be the organization's priorities over the coming years let's get them up number one is a 15 pound minimum wage and momentum will be campaigning for that over the coming years number two time for proportional representation number three global climate justice i think we can get these up at some point also building council housings and housing and an end to homelessness green jobs revolution building back fairer that's attacking poverty and inequality rejecting the integrated care system and renationalizing england's nhs and social care now i did check that that's not against the principle of having an integrated care system against a specific policy which involves privatization by the back door and number eight is a four-day week for which a society in which we work to live not live to work now to discuss the results and what momentum will do with them i'm joined by gaya shri scanfan gaya is an elected regional representative to the momentum ncg and co-chair of momentum thank you so much for joining us this evening thanks for having me michael it's great to be here now looking through these you might be relieved none of these particularly contentious i don't think any of these are really going to split the organization the one that to me seemed probably the most divisive or where there's at least the most disagreement on the left is proportional representation um looking at the the eight priorities that your members have chosen are you personally convinced these are all these are all good ideas yeah actually i was i don't know if the the term is pleasantly surprised but surprised and and and and i'm really really happy to see the kinds of ideas being put forward i think these eight motions really represent the clear step forward from the 2019 labour party manifesto there are there are motions that speak to people's basic economic and social needs the housing nhs but there's also a future vision for a world that is green and not dominated by low paid work which really relates to your previous segment um and yes there are there i mean i think pr is probably the one issue that um some people may not be um completely aligned on but i think in terms of all the other motions that we have um that there's there's a lot to find agreement on and actually i think these these really speak to issues that the broader labour party membership and the broader public would get could be able to get behind like um the national really renationalizing the nh nhs which is being slowly privatized by the Tories more public ownership was very popular um secure housing um workers rights and i think covid has really demonstrated the fractures in in in the working in the in the system and these motions really speak to those and i could go here and grill you on all eight of these policies and find any contradictions in them how would you pay for them etc but i know that you're not you know the leader of a political party so the more relevant question is actually what leverage do you have how can you make a labour leader who is quite hostile to you to be honest and a parliamentary labour party which again is quite hostile to the left adopt these kind of policies that that you want to see what what's the plan what's the strategy well we all know that starmas stood on a platform of socialist policy and we you know we are expecting him to come back to keeping his promise and listen to what the labour membership is saying and of course we're going to be mobilizing our members for the conference and there are a number of policies around which it may be able to build broad coalitions with unions and the majority of members especially as i mentioned on issues on on higher minimum wage on the nhs and of course we all recognize there's a real risk that the leadership will continue to move further rightwards and if this continues then our campaign for socialist policy will for dividing lines between those that want change and those that are content to support a rinse political and economic status quo um currently the labour party has nothing to say to a country divided and damaged by inequality and poverty and the impact of COVID-19 not to mention the climate crisis and and it's it is a party that's risking fading into irrelevance so we hope this you know a show of strength at union around conference around policies that everyone can get behind might be a rallying call to the leadership if you're watching the show and you are enjoying it do hit the subscribe button we go live every monday wednesday and friday at seven p.m. we put out videos every day darlie i want to bring you in on this i don't know if you're a momentum member actually but from someone who's looking at this as a commentator um obviously there will have been you know some people will be having doubts about what momentum what the labour party can achieve at this point from your perspective do you see there still being i'm going to do the pun again momentum on the labour left i mean i think that whether it is within the labour party or outside of the labour party there needs to be a movement that is democratic that is uh that that is you know if not membership based at least something that has some kind of structure for which members can feel part of an invested in the project and that sort force will need to have a way to speak to the labour party in some way shape or form or at least a theory of change about what to do with the labour party because the labour party is the main i don't even want to say it's like the left wing a left wing party but it's one of the two main parties in a two party system that isn't the conservatives um so i think that what i'm really interested in here actually is not so much the kind of policies themselves because ultimately those policies you know um we've got those kind of headline things but what that will actually look like could be really really progressive or could be could you know not be so progressive something like the green jobs revolution you know yes but if those green jobs are you know built off the backs of mining in the global south then we'll have an issue with it and that still needs to be hatched out but regardless of that what i think is really interesting here is this approach of membership based participatory model of politics right it's not something that we've really had it's something that has existed historically um in many different countries throughout you know throughout the world but in terms of recent British politics recent you know history in British politics having a major membership based um organization in this way that is not necessarily just a trade it's not just a trade union but is sort of a more amorphous um political organization is something that we haven't had before and it's something that a lot of people have been calling for and it's something that that kind of democratic policy making is something that i'm particularly interested in and it's something that i i think it's a really valiant effort to stick your head out and to try and actually do something that makes it work do something to make it work and learn on the ground as it works so i think that for me that process of membership driven um policy making uh is really interesting and that's kind of what i want to see um more of and what i think that other organizations should have a look and and see what we can learn um from that process uh guy i want to bring you you back in i've got quite a basic question as my final one which is is eight a bit too many so when i was looking at these i think you know momentum is a it's a fairly small not not particularly well-resourced organization are you going to have the time and the energy to campaign for all of these eight or do you think you're going to have to you know prioritize the top two or something i mean how how's it going to work well i you know i think you know speaking to dahlia's point about yeah having a broad broad process that's really bringing in the members and allowing them to have a say um we we felt that eight was a good amount because it allowed an expression of of what's important to the membership across a number of areas and to sort of like make it a kind of race to the top two i think would would drown out a lot of of of the content and the the the things that were really important to our membership so it may seem like a lot but a lot of these campaigns were actually a lot of these um policy motions were actually submitted by by labor party campaigns um so there are other groups and other coalitions that also by unions so other groups will be campaigning on these policy motions so it won't just be us it's not i think that's what's so valuable about this whole process because we're engaging our membership but we're also engaging unions we're engaging other campaigns and um there'll be a number of fronts um through which these policy motions will be pushed that's a really important point so it's not the it's not the idea that momentum have to take sole responsibility for making all of these happen this is often going to be momentum now having a mandate to sort of support um other movements um guy i thank you so much for for joining us this evening a real pleasure to to have you on and we look forward to seeing how you develop these these these eight policy priorities yeah we look forward to it as well thanks michael bye cheers um that is all for us tonight darlie it's been such a pleasure being joined for you that joined by you this evening i have to say i find your take on the vaccine quite um so astute i have to say it's sort of stuck with me actually oh thank you um i just don't want long covid please i was i was i was i was very very persuaded um thank you for joining us this evening as well you've been watching um tisky sour on the vara media of course as you know um this show is only possible because of your kind support thank you so much if you are a supporter you make this all possible thank you to all of our guests for now we're off i'll be back on friday at seven p.m you've been watching tisky sour on the vara media good night