File on 4 Investigates

Ministers have promised a new focus on home care for the elderly and disabled amid concern that 15-minute calls and a low-paid, underskilled workforce are leaving vulnerable people at risk. From this Spring, inspectors will ask how councils' commissioning practices are affecting the daily lives of those they care for. But with authorities under pressure simultaneously to cut costs, will quality co...

A year after the horsemeat scandal there are calls for a new police force to fight food fraud amid concerns that organised crime is increasingly targeting the sector because there are huge profits to be made at the expense of the consumer. Prof Chris Elliott, who was commissioned by the government to investigate the UK's most serious food scandal in recent years, says criminals are committing more...

Last month a report by a government advisor, Lawrence Tomlinson, accused The Royal Bank of Scotland of forcing some viable businesses into insolvency. The Bank has denied Tomlinson's claims and has asked a leading law firm to carry out an independent investigation. With their findings due to be published shortly, File on 4 assesses the evidence. Jane Deith speaks to families who claim their compan...

As water companies submit their spending plans for the next five years, Lesley Curwen investigates what happens to the money once the household water bill has been paid. Half of England's water companies are now in the ownership of global investment funds. In many cases these corporate bodies are run and financed from abroad behind closed doors. They use a web of companies some in off-shore tax ha...

As a complex operation continues to destroy the remainder of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, how much will we ever know about the supply routes through which the Assad regime acquired the basic ingredients for its arsenal? Vast quantities of chemicals are traded around the world every day, so what chance do we have of controlling their use by rogue states and terrorists? In the first of a new...

The biggest ever slice of the NHS is up for grabs in Cambridgeshire. Ten bidders, including NHS hospital trusts and private companies Serco, Virgin Care and Circle, are competing for a five year contract to run older peoples' services. It will be worth a minimum of £700,000. The successful bidder will provide everything from podiatry and occupational therapy to dementia treatment and end of life c...

The Work Programme is the Government's flagship scheme designed to help the long term unemployed off benefits and into lasting jobs. But how well is it working - both for those at whom it is aimed and for the private companies who are paid to deliver it? Official figures paint a patchy picture and some companies have already been sanctioned for not meeting targets. Their record has been particular...

What's behind the recent death of a clubgoer in Manchester who's believed to have taken a bad dose of the drug ecstasy? He's one of 12 in the area in the last year who've died after using illegal stimulants with toxic new additives, prompting the Government's Chief Medical Officer to issue a formal alert. Police are concerned organised crime is hiring backstreet chemists to cook up their own toxic...

Ministers have set a target of 170,000 new affordable homes in the next two years. But the Housing Associations which must take a major part in delivering them are under increasing financial strain. With their incomes squeezed by benefit reform and grant cuts, many are taking a more commercial approach. But there's concern some are taking too many financial risks. And MPs have voiced fears that th...

It is estimated more than 100 British people could be fighting with opposition forces in Syria. At least one is known to have been killed in action earlier this year. File on 4 investigates who these men are and why they have gone to fight. While some are believed to have strong Syrian connections and are motivated by personal opposition to the government, there are concerns that others have trave...

The government is stepping up its support for HS2, the high-speed rail project due to link London and Birmingham by 2026 with extensions to Manchester and Leeds by 2032. The cost is officially estimated to be £42.6bn and could rise to more than £51bn if, as expected, the scheme incurs VAT. Opponents foresee further increases and have predicted an eventual bill of £80bn for taxpayers. Who stands to...

The Government wants more wind power and nuclear energy to supply our electricity, but how well is it delivering that plan? In Scotland where conditions for renewable sources are good, there's been a rush to cash in on generous subsidies for wind farms. But the infrastructure can't cope so companies are also being paid handsomely to dump the energy they produce. And, deals which include subsidies...

Recent revelations about secret mass surveillance programmes have raised fears about potential abuses of individual privacy in favour of national security. With requests to intercept personal communications data on the rise, just who is collecting the information and for what purpose? Even local authorities can now use surveillance powers to track employees and monitor the activities of residents....

Will the Rana Plaza factory tragedy mean Bangladeshi garment workers no longer have to work in death traps? It's five months on from the collapse of the 8 storey building in Dhaka, in which more than a thousand workers died, and several thousand lost arms or legs or were paralysed. Jane Deith reports from Dhaka on what's happened since. Just how much medical and financial help have survivors and f...

Psychiatric hospitals have a duty to keep their patients safe, which means taking extra care with patients suffering acute depression who may be at risk of self-harm. So campaigners argue that when a patient commits suicide, it is vital that a thorough investigation should discover any failings by doctors and nurses and any weaknesses in hospital systems of communication or levels of staffing. But...

The amount of coal burned in Britain's power stations rocketed in 2012 with ministers relying on the fuel to help keep the lights on in the next few years. But coal mining in Britain is now in deep trouble. Two of the UK's major mining firms have collapsed and a third is in trouble following a huge underground fire in February. The fire was at Daw Mill in Warwickshire, one of the few remaining dee...

Last week, the Government dropped plans to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes in England. It said it wanted to wait and see what happens in Australia where the measure was introduced earlier this year. Labour and health campaigners accused the Government of caving in to the tobacco lobby. A claim it has denied. In Europe, too, MEPs are considering a new law aimed at deterring young people fr...

While the G8 summit of world leaders has agreed a global deal to ensure big business pays its dues, concerns about tax avoidance go wider. A group of MPs has just examined the case of the Cup Trust, a charity which tried to claim £46 million in tax relief but spent just £55,000 on good works. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, concluded the Trust's purpose "was to avoid ta...

NHS hospitals in England are back in the spotlight with a crisis in A&E and a growing number of cancelled operations. But does the real problem lie in the way the Government is currently funding them? The Department of Health uses a system called Payment by Results to try to ensure better patient care is delivered more efficiently. However Allan Urry hears from hospitals which say they're bein...

The way in which oil is traded on commodities markets is coming under close scrutiny. Last month, officers of the European Commission raided the London offices of BP and Shell along with Norway's Statoil company and the leading price reporting agency Platts. They said they were investigating claims of collusion to manipulate the prices of oil and biofuels on the international markets. A leading ci...

Local authorities across the UK are facing tough decisions as they try to balance their books in the face of unprecedented funding cuts - with many opting to sell land and buildings to reduce spending and bring in much needed capital. But, one person's white elephant is another's much loved local facility, so the choice of what goes on the market often causes great public resentment. Jenny Chryss...

In the latest high profile grooming trial, 7 men from Oxford will be sentenced later this month for sexually exploiting and raping 6 schoolgirls. Police said the girls - some as young as 12 - were 'abused to the point of torture' for years. One girl was injected with heroin. Another was forced to have a backstreet abortion. The police praised the young women for finding the strength to give eviden...

Operation Jasmine was the UK's biggest ever care home abuse investigation. But in January this year proceedings against two key figures in the case collapsed, leaving dozens of families asking if they will ever get justice. While relatives demand a public inquiry into what happened in the six Welsh care homes at the centre of the case, 12.5 metric tonnes of unpublished evidence lie in a Pontypool...

There's mounting concern over the Iranian nuclear programme. Is Tehran is simply playing cat and mouse with the international community and buying time until it is ready to develop a nuclear weapon? Evidence is emerging that Iran is co-operating with North Korea, a country which has already developed its own weapon. The latest report from the UN's international watchdog, the IAEA, is due out next...

In the first of a new series, File on 4 asks whether recent stark warnings about the threat posed by growing resistance to antibiotics have come too late. The Chief Medical Officer of England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has painted an apocalyptic picture where routine operations could become deadly in just 20 years if we lose the ability to fight infection. But the programme discovers growing co...