Moral Maze

When Professor Averil Macdonald, the chairwoman of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said that women are opposed to fracking because they don't understand it, the reaction was predictable. She was accused of being sexist, patronizing, misogynistic. But in all the brouhaha what was missed was the difficult moral question at the heart of her argument. Professor Macdonald was citing research that shows only 31.5% of women are in favour of shale gas exploration compared to 58% of men. She argued that while women do accept the rational benefits of shale gas, they prefer to give more weight to their emotional fears about its possible impact. Setting aside the issue of gender, fear has been a powerful motivator in many campaigns such as GM crops, nuclear power, the MMR vaccine and numerous others. Combine that with an understandable streak of nibby-ism and you get an implacable and emotionally charged opposition to progress or developments that could benefit the majority of people in this country. It took eight years to apporve Heathrow's terminal 5; a third runway is being fought even harder and HS2 is yet to get beyond the stage of computer generated graphics. Do we rely too heavily on public opinion? Should we trust politicians more to make the correct decisions on our behalf? Or are we abdicating our powers and responsibilities to a new breed of scientific philosopher-king? Rather than a toxic blend of ignorance and self-interest are these kinds of protest the sign of a healthy and thriving democracy where the voice of the minority is not only heard, but also counts and a reminder that there are values that go beyond the bottom line? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Matthew Taylor, Giles Fraser, Michael Portillo and Anne McElvoy. Witnesses are Ross Clark, David Babbs, Peter Tatchell and Patrick Diamond.

If you're the kind of person who likes to smoke a joint and chat on your mobile while out for a relaxing Sunday afternoon drive it seems you're in luck. According to figures released this week it seems that the police are increasingly turning a blind eye to these offences and when it comes to enforcing the new law banning smoking in cars where there are children, the police have said it's not their job. If the purpose of the law is to protect public health and safety, and to set moral boundaries, can it ever be morally acceptable to ignore law breaking? Should the law be about defining what is right and wrong, good and bad in all circumstances? Or is it acceptable for a law to be a moral symbol of disapproval, with no real threat of enforcement? And if the police don't have a moral duty to enforce the law, what about us as citizens? From this week landlords will be breaking the law if they don't check their tenants have a right to live in the UK and teachers now have a legal duty to tackle extremism. In both cases it's no longer enough to define a good upright citizen as one who doesn't break the law; it's now about having a legal duty to enforce it too. The Moral Maze and the letter of the law.Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk, with Giles Fraser, Michael Portillo, Claire Fox and Melanie Phillips. Witnesses are John Cooper, Luke Gittos, Professor John Tasioulas and Peter Garsden.

The Moral Maze returns this week to apply its nose to the grindstone and naturally the prospect of work is exercising our collective mind. Ringing, perhaps guiltily in our ears, are the words last week of the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Defending the changes to tax credits he said "We want this to be one of the most successful countries in the world in 20, 30, 40 years' time. There's a pretty difficult question that we have to answer, which is essentially: are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard? And that is about creating a culture where work is at the heart of our success." According to one business expert he may have a point. Rohit Talwar, the chief executive of Fast Future, has said teachers should be preparing schoolchildren for a future that could see them having to work in 40 different jobs until they reach 100. For many this debate isn't just about increasing life expectancy and the cost of state pensions. It's about what kind of contribution society has the right to ask of its citizens and whether the common good demands that we try to meet it. Is work not just financially rewarding, but morally improving? Is self-reliance a virtue that is undervalued in Britain? Or are they both a moral smokescreen for a soulless, utilitarian attitude that sees us all as units of economic production and only values us while we continue to contribute? Isn't the true test of good work not whether it's 'hard' but whether it's fulfilling and productive? Whether we enjoy it? The Moral Maze chaired as ever by Michael Buerk. Michael is a man known for his love of hard work. He says he can watch it for hours. Chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Michael Portillo, Giles Fraser and Matthew Taylor. Witnesses are Sheila Lawlor, Dan Taylor, Tom Hodgkinson and Lord Maurice Glasman.

Looking back at some of the stories that have been in the news during this series of Moral Maze you could be forgiven for despairing of humanity. The suspected firebombing by Jewish settlers killing a Palestinian baby, the white supremacist who shot dead nine people at a church in South Carolina and where to start with so-called IS? Public stoning, mass executions and lessons in beheading for school children are just some of their stock-in-trade. Faced with such a litany of horrors it's tempting to reach for the word "evil" - nothing else quite does justice to the enormity of this kind of barbarity. If we can comfortably categorise an action as evil, what about the people who carried them out? Are they evil too? The problem of evil has long exercised theologians and moral philosophers. As our understanding of psychology and the neurosciences has developed what role should the notion of evil have in our moral, political, and legal thinking? Is evil an out-dated, redundant superstition which should be abandoned? Are we all, given sufficient provocation or circumstance, capable of committing evil acts? And if that is the case is there no horror which cannot be explained away? If we abandon the concept of evil what does that do to the idea of free will? Without evil would we drift into moral relativism? Or is the charge of being evil an easy get out for us all? By suggesting that evil is something alien and other, something of which we are possessed, that takes us over, it conveniently absolves us of the deeply unpleasant task of recognising that these people are part of our world. On the six hundredth and sixty-sixth edition of the programme the Moral Maze looks at the problem of evil.

No one has come up with a better or pithier definition of public service broadcasting than John, later Lord Reith. The purpose of the BBC is to "inform, educate and entertain." For Reith, the son of a minister, the creation of the BBC was a public service; an unambiguous moral good and ever since Reithian has become an adjective that symbolises a kind of broadcasting that promoted virtue to the nation and one that should not be sullied by commerce. To "inform, educate and entertain" are still part of the BBC's mission today, but for how much longer? And how should we define what public service broadcasting is in a global, digital world? This week the government will publish a green paper setting out the details of a fundamental review of the BBC, examining its future size, funding and purpose. The BBC is funded by what is effectively a universal tax so making sure everyone gets something out of it has always been an issue. Advocates of public service broadcasting often talk about defending cultural quality, making programmes that no one else would about issues that would otherwise be ignored. But some of the best, most talked about programmes in recent times have been on internet, subscription only services. And there are plenty of other organisations such a museums, galleries and charities offering their own public service content free of charge. As the lines between the internet and broadcasting blur what role should the state have in regulating what we chose to watch and how we pay for it? This is not simply a debate about the future of the BBC, but about the moral and ethical tensions between what benefits the individual and what benefits society as a whole.