22/02/2017 BBC News at Ten

The fiance of a children's author is convicted of murdering her

Ian Stewart had met Helen Bailey on a website.

He drugged her for weeks before killing her.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Helen Bailey.

The moment Ian Stewart was arrested for murder and his shocked response.

He probably planned it all from the day he met her,

and in hindsight, I don't think he loved her at all.

Now police have launched an investigation into the sudden

death of Stewart's wife seven years ago.

A political row about the compensation paid to the British

so-called IS fighter after he was detained at Guantanamo.

For the first time in its history, the Metropolitan police give

French politicians take the battle for the coming presidential

And newly discovered planets - scientists believe they could

have the conditions needed for life.

And coming up in Sportsday on BBC News.

Testing times for the Champions Leicester, this time in Europe,

as they faced the Spanish side Sevilla in the last 16

The fiance of the children's author Helen Bailey has been found guilty

of murdering her and dumping her body in a cesspit under

Ian Stewart, who's 56, drugged Ms Bailey over several weeks

before smothering her in April last year, in the hope of claiming

The couple had met through an online bereavement group.

It's emerged that detectives are now re-examining the sudden death

Our home affairs correspondent June Kelly reports.

Police recorded Ian Stewart's arrest at his home.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Helen Bailey.

He was stunned he'd finally been caught out.

For three months he'd been living with the body of his wealthy partner

My name's Helen Bailey and I'd like to introduce

you to my new book, which is called When Bad Things Happen

Helen Bailey was a successful author.

As well as murdering her, Stewart also killed her dachshund,

After her husband's death, Helen Bailey began blogging

And it was through a Facebook bereavement group that she met

But while she was planning their wedding, he was planning her murder.

Ian Stewart's sons were in court to see their father convicted

of killing the woman who was about to become

Last spring, Helen Bailey suddenly vanished from the home she shared

with them and their father in Royston in Hertfordshire.

It took Ian Stewart five days to report her missing.

Hertfordshire Police, how can I help?

Hello there, my partner has been missing since Monday and has

Three months after Helen Bailey's disappearance, police began

searching the garage, which was at a distance

This laser imaging illustrates how, underneath the hatched door there,

The police started probing, and it was here below a layer

They had found Helen Bailey's body and buried

with her was her dog, Boris.

There was even a possibility, because she had been drugged,

that she could have been alive when Stewart put her down here.

CCTV shows how within hours, Ian Stewart drove to a rubbish

Was that duvet taken to the tip because it had Helen's blood on it?

In police interviews, Stewart said nothing.

He probably smothered Helen Bailey after drugging her over a long

He was set to benefit massively from her ?4 million fortune.

If Helen had written a book of this story,

He probably planned it all from the day he met her.

And in hindsight I don't think he loved her at all,

This is Ian Stewart's late wife, Diane.

Police are now re-examining her sudden death.

She'd suffered from epilepsy and was said to have died from a fit.

Diane Stewart died of natural causes in 2010, it would only be right

and proper that we re-looked at what the causes might be.

But, of course, it would be part of our enquiries,

At the family home in Bassingbourn, in Cambridgeshire, Diane Stewart

Diane was a very fit and healthy person.

The whole of Bassingbourn was in shock, I think.

You could not believe it could have happened because there was no

sign or prior knowledge that there was anything wrong

After his wife died, Ian Stewart was seen with other

women before he began his predatory pursuit of Helen Bailey.

As a writer, she was used to studying human behaviour,

but she never learned the true character of the man

who was closest to her and who she thought she knew best.

Our homes affairs correspondent, June Kelly, is in Royston.

The police are coming in for some criticism for taking three months to

find Helen Bailey's body underneath the garage. That's right, it took

them three months to carry out a detailed search of the property and

locate the cesspit. During those three months, Ian Stewart went on

holiday to Spain, came back, and all that time, Helen Bailey's body was

buried under the garage. Hertfordshire police have defended

the way they conducted the investigation. They say that Ian

Stewart at that point was seen as a witness rather than a suspect and

this was a missing persons enquiry as far as they were concerned. They

said they followed normal procedure and had no plans to refer themselves

to the police watchdog. Tonight at the heart of this story are two

families and today, Helen Bailey's Brother John said that both had been

left devastated by what happened here. Ian Stewart will be sentenced

tomorrow. Fiona. June Kelly, thank you.

A political row has erupted over the compensation paid to the British

fighter with so-called Islamic State.

Ronald Fiddler was formerly a detainee at Guantanamo Bay

and is reported to have died in a suicide bombing in Iraq.

Lord Carlile, who reviewed terror laws for ten years,

said Fiddler should never have been paid a penny.

Tony Blair has defended himself from attacks

that he was responsible, saying the decision

to award the compensation was taken by the mainly

Our deputy political editor John Pienaar reports.

The face of a fanatic, a Briton, about to die an IS suicide bomber,

detained then freed and reportedly handed ?1 million compensation

Why? That's now a bitter dispute.

Jamal Al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler, was among

the suspected terrorist detainees held here at Guantanamo Bay

without charge until, following British government

pressure, he was freed, to discuss his time behind bars.

I was, I was angry, very angry, actually.

First, when they told me, I was scared, because I'd been

in a cage for so long, I didn't want to leave,

Yeah, my first reaction was, "I don't want to go".

Tonight, his family insisted he'd been radicalised by what they called

the mental cruelty and inhuman treatment, and his compensation

He's gone now and I just hope that between him

and his maker, he's, you know, done whatever

Today, papers and some Tory MPs condemned Labour's

Utter hypocrisy, according to Tony Blair.

The critics had demanded the detainees' freedom.

Are you to blame for this, Mr Blair? But Mr Blair has hit back.

He said in a statement, "He was not paid compensation by my government.

The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative government.

The fact is, this was always a very difficult situation where any

government would have to balance proper concern for civil liberties

with desire to protect our security and we were likely to be attacked

It is just a matter of fact that compensation was decided

by the Conservative government, by Kenneth Clarke,

the Justice Secretary, and not by a Labour government.

But according to this intelligence assessment, on Wikileaks,

Fiddler was a suspected terrorist associated with Al-Qaeda

There was intelligence against these people.

But the only way that the actions could have been defended

is if the intelligence and the sources of intelligence had

And that would have been to undermine the whole

of the efforts of the intelligence and security agencies.

The immediate circumstances that forced the government to give him

money no longer exist, because the law of disclosure in

But we do need some assurance from the Attorney General that this

is the case and that someone like him would not receive a million

or however many pounds of public money in the future.

Intelligence can now be used in court, without compromising

But hundreds of Britons have travelled to Iraq

and Syria as jihadists, and one former minister told me

they are believed to include some who have been monitored,

perhaps even detained and compensated in the past.

There may be more like Ronald Fiddler.

Security forces can only try to keep up their guard in future.

For the first time in its 188-year history,

London's Metropolitan Police force will be run by a woman.

Cressida Dick said she was "thrilled and humbled" to be taking

on the "great responsibility" of the post of Met Commissioner.

Ms Dick will succeed Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe next week.

But as our home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds reports,

her career at the Met has not been without controversy.

A new New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police's new

headquarters and now it has a new Commissioner, Cressida Dick,

flanked by the the Home Secretary and the

It's beyond my wildest dreams, an extraordinary privilege.

I'm very humbled. I adore London.

I think it's the world's greatest global city and I love

I know she cares about the priorities that

are also my priorities, about the terror threat in London, about

vulnerabilities in this city and I'm really looking forward to working

closely with her to make it a great success.

A lot of people have helped me along the way from the moment I

was first a police constable, over 30 years ago at Hendon.

Where all those men made up the rank and file,

If you think it is the thing for you, then,

She ran the Trident team, fighting London's gun violence.

In the furious years following the murder

of Stephen Lawrence, she helped the Met learn

lessons and that led to counter terrorism when in,

Cressida Dick was in charge of the plain

clothes officers who shot dead, not a terrorist,

but Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian electrician.

His family and their supporters today said her appointment

That post has to have trust and integrity.

The person has got to be responsible for the highest

standards of professionalism, has got to ensure the police act

within the law and here we have somebody who's forever going to be

tainted with the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

But this is the log of Cressida Dick's decision

that day, her order at 10.04am, "Stop him".

She has always insisted not "shoot him".

A jury later found she'd done nothing wrong

though management of the operation was criticised.

Her new in-tray will be full of difficult decisions,

many of them focused on two of her biggest challenges -

the Met's squeezed finances and the changing nature of crime.

This is quite a moment for British policing,

as with Cressida Dick's appointment, the three most senior

operational police officers in Britain are now women.

Tom Symonds, BBC News at New Scotland Yard.

A brief look at some of the day's other news stories.

The Government has indicated there could be more support

announced in next month's Budget for companies in England and Wales

that are facing a steep rise in business rates.

The Government's come under strong pressure from its own MPs to soften

The Supreme Court has upheld a controversial rule that

prevents British citizens on below-average incomes

from bringing their foreign spouses into the country from outside

The judges rejected an appeal by families who argued

the threshold of ?18,600 a year breached their human rights.

Police in Northern Ireland say an improvised bomb has exploded

outside the home of a serving police officer in Londonderry

while Army specialists were trying to defuse it.

Detectives described the device, discovered under a car,

They believe it was planted by "violent dissident Republicans."

There are no reports of any injuries.

The BBC is to create a television channel for Scotland.

It will broadcast from 7pm until midnight

and will cost around ?30 million a year.

There had been calls for a separate Six O'Clock News

for Scotland on BBC One, but this was rejected in favour

of a Scottish news hour on this new channel.

Our Scotland editor, Sarah Smith, is in Glasgow.

What's been the response to this announcement there?

The announcement took everybody by surprise here. Since then, it has

been broadly welcomed by the SNP and Scottish Government, who had been

arguing for a separate Scottish TV Channel 4 years. You mentioned the

idea of a separate Scottish six o'clock News and that has become

something of a totemic political struggle in Scotland of Yate and

people who have been pushing for that say they are disappointed they

have not got it. -- in Scotland wait. They wanted an hour-long news

programme presented in Scotland with an exhaust Scottish, international

and UK news, they are getting at 9pm on the new channel.

There's soon to be a lot more BBC in Scotland.

Responding to demands for more spending and more dedicated news,

Tony Hall came to Glasgow to announce a whole new channel.

Does this mean you feel what BBC Scotland's been offering so far

hasn't been giving audience what is they want?

No, I want to give audiences in Scotland more choice and I really

believe the excitement of saying - we have a new channel for Scotland,

How are we going to shake sure that we get dramas and comedies,

programmes of journalism, talk shows and, at the heart of it,

this one-hour news from Scotland, that's a really exciting proposition

The new channel will run programmes like The Adventure Show,

along with drama, comedy, factual and entertainment

programmes made in Scotland, for a Scottish audience.

On air from 7.00pm to midnight every day, but why does Scotland

At the most basic level, Scotland is it a nation, it's not a region,

It's important also that you understand that Scotland has

already separate areas of its civic and public state, its education

system, its legal system, its artistic communities

and whatever, all of which are befitting of a small,

modern nation and they're not being well reflected just

The new channel will have a budget of ?30 million a year.

There will be an hour-long news programme, at 9.00pm every night,

and it's due to launch in the summer of 2018.

The long-running debate about whether Scotland

needs its own separate news programme at 6.00pm

Viewers in Scotland will get a Scottish Nine on the new channel

instead of a Scottish Six, which doesn't satisfy everyone.

Obviously, I welcome new jobs and new investment in BBC Scotland.

I am, however, disappointed that the BBC has decided not to go

ahead with the separate Scottish Six on BBC One because I think that this

is exactly the time for the launch of that new programme

with all the political developments we know.

Two-and-a-half minutes until we're on hour.

Nothing the BBC does will ever please everyone

and as the Corporation has to make cuts elsewhere, viewers in other

parts of the country might wonder why Scotland

Already, politicians in Wales are complaining that they're

being shortchanged compared to the deal Scotland's been given.

A Serious Case Review into the murder of an 18-month-old

girl has concluded that she became "almost invisible to professionals"

after she was taken into the care of the woman who later killed her.

Keegan Downer was murdered by 34-year-old Kandyce Downer,

in Birmingham, less than a year after being appointed

The report said if there had been greater supervision,

Keegan Downer died in September 2015, she had suffered a catalogue

of injuries and had 153 scars and bruises.

Kandyce Downer, a distant relative, was given custody

Last May, she was convicted of the toddler's murder.

Today, a Serious Case Review concluded that Keegan's death

could not have been predicted, but it said she had been

"invisible to professionals" after being placed in Downer's care,

that insufficient discussion had taken place between involved

agencies and that there was too much focus on Kandyce Downer's wants

An Ofsted report released last year, said Children's Services

in Birmingham were still failing to protect vulnerable children.

They have been rated inadequate since 2008 and have had 28

Serious Case Reviews over the last decade.

Can you, genuinely, put your hand on your heart and say that children

So we have still got an inadequate rating for safeguarding,

They're getting safer, we're making the system stronger,

Last year, the BBC highlighted concerns around some special

Today's report said Kandyce Downer's assessment had been

We need to be absolutely certain that the person who's applying to be

a special guardian is suitable, that they're going to make

an appropriate guardian for that child and of course,

crucially, a safe guardian for that child as well.

The council says, as a result of cases like this one,

it has made the vetting process more robust, but Downer's assessment

has been label today as "superficial" and has cost

It's a question frequently asked and now scientists,

writing in the journal Nature, say they may be a step

Astronomers think that seven planets in a newly discovered solar

system may have the right conditions for life.

The new worlds - 40 light years from earth -

lie in the so called 'Goldilocks' zone where temperatures

are sufficiently temperate to allow water to form.

Here's our science editor, David Shukman.

An artist's impression of a startling discovery deep

in space, around a faint and distant star, much weaker than our sun,

is a collection of planets that are surprisingly similar to earth.

In all, seven of these worlds have been spotted and astronomers think

it may change the way we look at the night sky.

The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second earth

is not just a matter of if, but when.

An array of telescopes kept watch on one point in space

and what the scientists were looking for were tiny clues about the light

of a particular star becoming dimmer, on a regular basis,

They can't see these new worlds, but they know they're there.

This is the biggest amount of planets that we've found in one

go and that look like the earth in composition, size and mass.

All seven are close enough to the star and far enough

to the star that they could host liquid water, and that's

This is the latest revelation in a wave of discoveries over

the past 25 years of new worlds that exist in solar systems

The total of these distant planets now stands at well over 3,000.

What makes this discovery so unusual is the sheer number

of new worlds spotted in one go, seven in all.

Crucially, they're just the right temperature for liquid water

Three of them are in what's called the 'habitable zone' which raises

the tantalising possibility that they could

But we won't be getting there in a hurry, they're

To reach them, using the rockets we have now, would take

There's so much to find out about these worlds,

whether the artist's impressions are right, whether it's possible

that the conditions for life do exist and astronomers say they'll be

The more we look, the more planets we find and the more

earth-like planets we find, but this is especially exciting

because this, sort of, ultra cool star that we've

discovered, they're quite populous throughout our galaxy and it's

the first time we've had planets going around a star like this

The best hope lies with huge new telescopes that'll

come into service soon, improving the chances of getting

a really close look at these alien worlds to see,

for example, if they do have oceans and maybe, just maybe,

discover if there are some hints about life.

As France heads towards its most unpredictable election in decades,

politicians are preparing to visit the annual Agricultural Show

It's a key event in the election calendar, with the French

countryside still an influential part of the national identity.

As the more mainstream candidates fight not only against each other,

but also against the rise of the far-right Front National,

it's an important election battleground as our Paris

correspondent, Lucy Williamson, has been finding out.

The rural idyll is France's national brand.

Governments might change, but the countryside,

so the story goes, does not, and, at election time,

every politician wants to be the farmers' friend.

The small town of Chatillon sits in a corner of Burgundy,

with its grand heritage of food and wine.

Chatillon has had a centre-right Mayor for 22 years now but,

since 2010, the far-right Front National has doubled

The Mayor puts that down to a lack of support

for the rural economy which, he says, is creating a two-tier

France with jobs and people moving to the cities.

TRANSLATION: There's a big feeling of disappointment,

We've seen one government after another and none of them have

People don't believe they have a future in

the countryside and this has an impact on their vote

because they say they're fed-up and they don't believe

Philippe has been a dairy farmer here for 25 years

and his parents before him, but with growing competition over

milk prices, he's been running at a loss for years and he says some

here are quietly turning to the FN for answers.

TRANSLATION: If there's one idea that sparks interest,

it's the idea of turning inwards, the nationalist spirit -

closing of borders, protectionism, limiting the movement of people.

You don't see many FN voters, it's a vote that appears

in the ballot boxes, but it isn't openingly expressed.

Rural votes are a key battleground in this election,

especially in right-wing areas like this.

A crisis in French farming, dwindling public services

and now a financial scandal in the centre-right

Republicans Party is pushing some voters to the Front National.

That's true even if you travel west from Burgundy to some

The town of Tulle, where President Hollande was once Mayor,

it's so attached to the socialist leader they wanted him to run again.

Even so, the FN got 20% of the votes in the last regional election

and it's not hard to find people who understand why.

TRANSLATION: It would be a good thing to regulate

We take care of immigrants who are just arrived here better

than our own homeless people in France.

TRANSLATION: There's good and bad things with Marine Le Pen,

with her rediscover a France worthy of its name.

But Marine Le Pen scares people, a little, so let's see.

These days old French traditions don't stay in the villages,

accordions made here find their way to China.

Globalisation is now the great dividing line in French politics,

seen as stealing or delivering France's future.

TRANSLATION: We sell to China even though our accordions are taxed

at 35% because they want to protect their market.

I say yes to globalisation because we have to compensate

Farmers here say that politicians like their countryside traditional,

but want the benefits of globalisation, too.

Marine Le Pen's chance of victory is still slim,

but to some her message is alluring - that Europe is the problem

and France's model doesn't need to change.

She was renowned for her style and elegance and now some

of Princess Diana's dresses are to go on display at her former

The exhibition coincides with the 20th anniversary of her death.

The collection will feature 25 of her best known gowns.

It will also feature an ink blue evening gown she wore

when she danced with the actor John Travolta at the

David Bowie has been named best British Male Solo Artist

at tonight's Brit Awards, just over a year since his death.

The singer, who died of cancer last January, at the age of 69,

also won British Album of the Year for Blackstar.

This time last year, Leicester were on their way

to becoming the unlikeliest champions of the Premier League.

But today, they sit just one point above the relegation zone,

So tonight's Champion's League tie against Sevilla had been

billed as a chance to turn around their season.

Everything is drawn back down to earth, Isaac Newton knew that

in the 17th Century, but Leicester's rapid

They were in Sevilla as Champions of England, remember.

Yes, but in Sevilla, having just lost at Millwall.

This season there's been so much of this.

But did the young man taking it, Correa, look confident?

COMMENTATOR: Correa, Schmeichel saves!

The only thing better than this cross was the header.

The Spanish side are European experts, not a place for Leicester's

Correa scored, his confidence restored.

Leicester searching for their lost fearlessness.

Well, Drinkwater gets the ball, looks up and finds, him.

Just the time for Jamie Vardy to rediscover the goal because it's

2-1 and a home leg to come, gravity can wait for a while.

Tonight, we're coming from Stoke-on-Trent,

a city that has been in the spotlight thanks

We're with a local audience and a panel of politicians

and commentators and we'll ask whether cities like this

have been let down by Governments in London.