File on 4 Investigates

With the Government claiming to lead the way in plans to crack down on global corruption, how come so little is being done in Britain to tackle the vast sums of money allegedly laundered through the UK by corrupt foreign officials and international crime gangs? Allan Urry investigates claims that not enough is being done by the UK to tackle the laundering of corrupt assets or to assist nations who...

The number of people who are homeless is on the rise. In London it shot up almost 80 per cent in 4 years. Latest government figures show councils in England took on 15,000 new homeless households between April and June this year - a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. Increasingly councils are having to use temporary accommodation and even bed and breakfasts to cope with a shortage of affor...

This July, days after walking into the top job at number 10, Theresa May renewed her commitment to crack down on modern day slavery, describing it as "the great human rights issue of our time". The 2015 Modern Slavery Act gave prosecutors more options to pursue offenders, it handed judges the ability to dole out life sentences and promised more protection for victims. But in the clamour to tackle...

The world's first tidal lagoon power station in Wales, which was in the Conservative manifesto, has stalled, as the government seems to be baulking at the price. The Swansea Bay lagoon, and five more that would follow around the country, would generate as much electricity as Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. But does the government's commitment to the wave of new nuclear threaten the future o...

Following the BHS scandal, Allan Urry investigates other cases in which employees claim they've lost out because companies have ditched their full pension fund commitments. It's the job of the Pensions Regulator to ensure employers follow the rules and to protect the benefits of those who've been paying in. So how good are they at keeping your pension safe? The programme untangles the complex fina...

The split and part privatisation of the UK probation system in June 2014 saw huge changes to the service, with high risk offenders managed by the new National Probation Service and low to medium risk offenders managed by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). Two years on, probation officers report a system that has been 'ripped apart', with two sides often failing to communicate. There are co...

Valued at £80 billion, the UK's junior stock market is hyped as the most successful growth market in the world. Government incentives - including stamp duty and inheritance tax breaks - mean that more ordinary UK investors are opting for the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Set up in 1995 to allow smaller companies to raise funds, AIM is a less-regulated alternative to its big brother, the mai...

For a long time, society didn't want to believe child sex abuse was happening - but now are sex crimes against elderly victims being dismissed in the same way? File on 4 reveals new figures about the scale of alleged sex offences taking place in residential and nursing homes. Whether 5 or 85, should the victims of sexual assault be treated any differently? Claire Savage hears from the families of...

Five years after shocking revelations about the abuse of patients at Winterbourne View, File on 4 asks what progress has been made on the promise to get people with learning disabilities and autism out of hospital units and into homes in the community with good support. Families of those still stuck in these units say patients are trapped in the system with no clear plan or apparent will to get th...

Earlier this year, the government introduced legislation banning the production, distribution, sale and supply of legal highs. Designed to stop what has been described as a tsunami of chemicals flooding into the UK, it has resulted in the closure of the high street shops which had been selling exotically named substances like Spice, Mamba and China White. So why are they still finding their way on...

Police are investigating allegations of abuse made by people who, as children, were sent for psychiatric treatment at Aston Hall Hospital in Derbyshire. Some patients say they were only sent there because they were difficult to manage or had behavioural problems. The Medical Superintendent is accused of 'experimenting' on his child patients, giving them an anaesthetic called sodium amytal in thera...

Is the UK putting trade above concerns about human rights in the United Arab Emirates? Britons who claim they were tortured in the Gulf state's prison cells say the UK government failed to fight for them. The foreign office has received 43 cases of alleged abuse of UK citizens in the UAE since 2010. In exclusive interviews, File on 4 hears from those who've got out of detention in Dubai who say th...

Successive government procurement strategies have repeatedly promised high quality public buildings made possible through Private Finance Initiatives, but is that what's been delivered? What went wrong in Edinburgh where 17 schools remained closed after the Easter break because of fears walls might collapse on children and staff? Allan Urry reveals new concerns about the extent of fire safety prob...

Around 2.5m council tenants across the UK have bought their homes since Right to Buy started in 1980. The scheme is now being extended to more than a million housing association tenants in England with the first homes expected to be sold in pilot areas next month. The popularity of right to buy has risen sharply since greater discounts were introduced four years ago, but so too have cases of fraud...

The recent deaths of children at the hands of family members have revealed some children's social work departments are still failing children some nine years after the death of Baby P. In some regions the reaction of the Government has been to take social workers out of the hands of councils and put them into independent trusts. So what's been going wrong - and will the radical solution coming out...

Over the past five years thousands of patients in England have been given access to new but expensive cancer drugs through a special Cancer Drugs Fund. But critics argue that hundreds of millions have been spent on drugs that offered poor value for money with sometimes limited effects. The Fund is now being reformed but cancer charities have written to the Prime Minister to express deep concern th...

English football clubs enjoy a high profile around the world, leading to many companies vying to do business with them. But have some football clubs entered into financial deals with companies with questionable backgrounds? File on 4 explores whether clubs are vulnerable to companies and individuals who use the reputation of English football to lend credibility to their activities. But what due di...

For the past 22 years Thomas Bourke has been in prison for a double murder he says he didn't commit. The killings made national headlines in 1993 when two MOT inspectors, Alan Singleton and Simon Bruno, were shot dead at a garage in Stockport, in Greater Manchester. The evidence produced in court against Bourke seemed compelling. Two mechanics at the garage said they had seen him carry out the sho...

Police forces in England and Wales are to get an additional fifteen hundred firearms officers to help protect the public from terrorism and organised crime. Most of the new officers will be trained within the next two years after the Prime Minister, David Cameron, set aside £143m to boost the country's armed response capability. But is it enough to meet the challenges they face? The number of fire...

The Serious Fraud Office has begun an investigation into allegations of corruption in the award of multi-million pound oil contracts in the Middle East. A Monaco based company, Unaoil, denies that it helped British and other companies win contracts by corrupting politicians and government officials. The investigation follows a leak of thousands of emails and other documents. Jane Deith has been gi...

This week's massive leak of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has given unprecedented access to the way the rich and powerful have used tax havens to hide their wealth. But within the eleven and a half million documents, there is also evidence of how some of the shell companies set up by the firm, or the individuals that owned them, have been the subject of inte...

Two months ago a File on 4 investigation into match-fixing in tennis made headlines around the world. The programme revealed how tennis authorities had received repeated alerts in the past decade about 16 players, all of whom have been in the top 50. It also questioned the effectiveness of the sport's watchdog, the Tennis Integrity Unit. Now, in a follow up programme, Simon Cox reveals new allegat...

As more and more migrants seek asylum in the UK, is the system for processing their applications reaching breaking point? Allan Urry investigates the impact of a drastic reduction in the numbers of courts hearing cases. At the same time, appeals are going up and key rulings against Home Office decisions to return people to other countries are also piling on the pressure. With Europe now bracing it...

Special guardianship orders are a way of giving legal status to those - usually grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters - who come forward to care for children when their parents can't. SGOs were designed to let children grow up with family, instead of in care - once a relative is granted special guardianship, the council steps backs and the guardian can raise the child without social...

It's estimated there are around 620,000 people in England with dementia. Prime minister David Cameron says fighting the disease is a personal priority and doctors in England have been encouraged to proactively identify people with early stage dementia. The PM says that an early diagnosis allows families to prepare for the care of a relative, but others argue there's no treatment for such a diagnos...