File on 4 Investigates

The high profile child sex abuse case in Rochdale last summer - in which nine men were jailed for more than 70 years for grooming underage girls - has been defined as a watershed moment in how the authorities deal with this kind of abuse. But were there crucial failings? In an exclusive interview for File on 4, one of the police officers involved in the case claims that flaws in the way it was han...

In the wake of the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal, investigations are going on at 14 other hospitals in England identified as having above average death rates among their patients. But why has it taken so long for enquiries to begin? Should the Department of Health and the hospitals regulator, the Care Quality Commission, have sounded the alarm much earlier? It took a lengthy public inquiry to...

The French authorities acknowledge their intervention in Mali has made them terrorist target number one. In recent weeks, the country has raised its threat level - with high visibility police patrols at tourist destinations and government buildings - and a number of people suspected of planning to join Islamic extremists in Mali have been arrested. Jenny Cuffe examines concerns in France both abou...

Has the Government done enough to protect communities from flooding? Were cuts in river maintenance work responsible for farmers land in Somerset being underwater for months? Why are planners allowing developers to continue to build on floodplains? A committee of MPs accuses the Coalition of being woefully slow to bring in measures to combat the problem. Allan Urry investigates. Producer Nicola Do...

The Government is currently deciding what to do with the UK's civilian plutonium stockpile - the largest in the world. Some are concerned that it could become the target of terrorists intent on making a dirty bomb. The stockpile has come from nuclear waste that was reprocessed to extract plutonium which was to have been used to power a new generation of fast breeder reactors. But that project fail...

21 years after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, Britain is trying to cut the cost of the European Union. As the institution comes of age, Gerry Northam asks whether the EU's spending on itself has become excessive and - if so - whether member states do anything about it. In Brussels, hundreds of millions of pounds have been found for projects described by Eurosceptics as "self-aggrandisement"...

Surrey police are probing the mystery death of a Russian exile who was helping to locate millions of dollars missing from the Russian treasury. City experts claim London is one of the routes for those laundering the proceeds of Russian crime. Britain is also now a destination of choice for many wealthy Russians. But how much do we know about some of those who choose to settle here? Internationally...

After a series of controversies over the tax bills of multinationals such as Google and Starbucks, ministers have been talking tough about avoidance. But as new tax rules come into operation, Fran Abrams looks at the reality behind the rhetoric. Will these new regulations halt the decline in corporate tax revenues? And why were so many major companies involved in writing them - even as their own t...

The government and senior medical figures want consultants to be more hands on in hospitals at weekends and at night. It follows evidence patients are less likely to receive prompt treatment and more likely to die if they are admitted to hospital on a Saturday or Sunday. A recent survey of hospital chief executives showed they had significant doubts their hospitals were as safe at weekends as duri...

The recent conviction of an arms broker from Yorkshire has raised serious concerns about the murky world of the international weapons trade. Gary Hyde was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for one of the largest illegal arms deals ever uncovered: 80,000 guns and 32 million rounds of ammunition shipped from China to Nigeria - enough to equip a small army. But no-one knows where they ended up. B...

Fed up with road works? Stuck in a queue of traffic? The Government is promising big improvements for drivers who use motorways and major roads. It's looking for ways to increase private sector involvement and to boost investment. So what future for the body that currently manages the network in England? With the CBI calling for it to be scrapped, and with criticism from local authorities and moto...

It's estimated there are up to 150,000 so called zombie companies in the UK. They are often defined as businesses which are only able to pay off the interest on their debts and have little prospect of growing without restructuring or an injection of cash. The BBC's Chief Economics correspondent, Hugh Pym, examines businesses caught in this situation and looks at what effect they are having on the...

Britain has 1.5 million people with learning difficulties, and the number is growing. Campaigners say the health service is struggling to cope: the number of specialist nurses is falling, and though extra support is supposed to be available for this vulnerable group, hospitals and other health facilities often struggle even to identify them. Families say their relatives have been left to die in pa...

In April next year, the SNP government in Scotland will merge 8 existing constabularies to create a single national police force. This is intended to bring efficiency savings by cutting out duplication of functions and gaining the economies of scale. But the move is proving controversial amid fears that it will damage local accountability and lead to worsening services in some areas. Next month in...

The midnight collapse of the Government's plans for the West Coast main railway line once again raises questions about the outsourcing of public services to private providers. Public bodies of all kinds now face massive budget cuts and are under pressure to deliver savings. As a result, across the country, public services of all kinds are now up for tender in the hope they can be delivered more ch...

The ultra-conservative Salafist movement, which is said to be the fastest growing branch of Islam, has been blamed for being behind many of the recent violent protests over an anti-Muslim film which appeared on the internet. Jenny Cuffe investigates the spread of Salafism across the countries of the Arab Spring. She asks what threat it poses to democracy in the whole region and also examines conce...

A criminal gang was recently jailed for one of the biggest ever alcohol smuggling rackets in the UK. It's become big business for organised crime according to HMRC, with tax losses in unpaid duty as high as £1.2 billion per year. MP's are demanding tougher action. But these are highly complex frauds, which take years to investigate. Allan Urry examines the scale of the challenge facing the authori...

How far should undercover police officers go to gather intelligence? Jane Deith talks exclusively to women suing the Metropolitan police claiming they were tricked into long standing relationships with undercover officers. The unmasking of undercover cop Mark Kennedy who'd been infiltrating environmental protest groups has led to revelations that other officers had relationships with woman they we...

In the first of a new series, Gerry Northam investigates the rising number of so called "green on blue" attacks in which Afghan soldiers and policemen have turned their guns on British and other international troops. With more than 50 NATO troops killed in insider attacks this year, is enough being done to protect those working as mentors? The US has invested over $50 billion on developing indepen...

World health chiefs have branded diesel exhaust emissions a major cause of cancer. Despite the efforts of car-makers to filter out the most noxious substances, these fumes still play a big part in causing air pollution. Britain has the second worst respiratory death rates in Europe and has long been under notice from Brussels to clean up its act. So why are most UK areas in breach of legal limits?...

Figures released this month reveal almost 9000 new tuberculosis cases in the United Kingdom last year, the highest level since the 1970s. The disease has risen by more than a third in the past decade. In parts of London, Birmingham and other cities it is already at the level of high-risk countries in the developing world. Yet in most of the rest of Europe TB rates have been steadily falling in rec...

Thousands of British troops have been deployed to conflict zones since 2001, in the so-called War on Terror. Research is now beginning to confirm what many people have suspected - that a sizeable minority of returning soldiers - one in ten - are displaying increased levels of violence. This is impacting on families through domestic abuse and is raising the risk of people in the wider community bec...

The EU has allocated millions of pounds in grants to help our towns and cities regenerate. So why are some complaining they can't get their hands on the cash? European rules mean Britain has to put up an equal amount of money. But, as Allan Urry reveals, cuts at Westminster and in town halls around the country mean that some projects have either stalled or been abandoned because no "matched fundin...

It was the Paul Hickson scandal in the mid 90s which first brought the issue of sexual abuse in sport to the public eye. The Olympic swimming coach was jailed for 17 years for raping and sexually abusing young girls he trained. The case led to the setting up of the Child Protection in Sport Unit and the introduction of safeguarding measures in most sports. But, more than a decade on, the problem h...

The Arab world's newest governments are desperate to retrieve billions banked in Britain by despots including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. The money, they say, was stolen from their people and is needed to rebuild shattered economies. In 'File on 4' Jenny Cuffe reports on the Arab nations' mounting impatience at the lengthy and costly process of investigation demanded to pro...