09/01/2014 The Papers

the return of Martin Adams, back to his best, in the darts. That is all

to come, after the papers macro. Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the papers will be bringing us tomorrow. With me Jennie Bond and

David Davies. We are going to start with the Independent, and it is

leading with a leaked report from 2002, suggesting organised criminals

were able to infiltrate Scotland Yard at will by bribing corrupt

officers. The Telegraph says there are concerns for the elderly, over a

proposed NHS policy which could see drugs being licensed only if they

are deemed to be of a wider benefit to society. On the front of the

Express is a man who has avoided prison after telling the judge he

needed to be at home to look after his youngest baby. He has 22

children by 11 different women. The Guardian says thousands could get

refunds from the Department for Work and Pensions following errors in

calculating the spare room levy. The Mirror also features the story of

that adult 22, whom it claims has avoided jail because of his

childcare duties. The Mail says the new on benefits has revealed more

than 30,000 families who were previously claiming sums amounting

to a salary of more than ?60,000. So, let's begin with the Guardian,

Jennie Bond, and the fallout continuing after the verdict into

Mark Duggan's death, that he was unlawfully killed by police. The

headline, stop-and-search could be curtailed. -- that he was lawfully

killed. I am old enough to remember, you guys are barely old

enough to remember, the 1981 Brixton riots, and the 1985 Broadwater Farm

riots. We had exactly the same comments after those, with regards

to stop-and-search. It is deja vu, isn't it? Yes, it did not happen

then, I would hope it might happen now. Maybe this is one good thing

which might come out of this very sensitive and delicate situation,

following the inquest verdict. The Guardian says Theresa May is

considering curtailing stop-and-search. It also has some

quite interesting, you will not find it shocking, research, which says

that over a 10-year period recently, ethnic minority Britons

were subjected to 1.5 million times more stop and searches than if they

had been treated as white Britons. They are shocking. It seems to me a

misused power. My mind goes back to the 1980s, in my case covering riots

in Moss Side and in Liverpool. As you rightly say, this

stop-and-search issue has dogged successive home secretaries. The

interesting thing is, right in the middle of this Guardian story, one

official report found that in over a quarter of cases, officers did not

have reasonable suspicion, as required by legislation, and may not

understand their powers. This whole thing about reasonable suspicion, a

similar thing actually on the motorways, when the police stop you,

you are either meant to have visibly been breaking the law, or they have

reasonable suspicion that you are breaking the law, or that you have

been drinking or whatever it is. This reasonable suspicion thing, it

is so easy to interpret it as you see fit. And it is quite shocking

that they do not apparently understand their powers in the first

place, so basic education of our police officers. And some people

might be thinking, well, you know, back people or ethnic minorities are

stopped more because they are more likely to commit crime - that is not

the case. The crime figures clearly show that we are going to stay with

the Guardian, and we are going to go to another story. Thousands due

refunds on bedroom tax after blunder by DWP. Well, this so-called bedroom

tax continues to dog the Government and Iain Duncan Smith's welfare

reforms. We are told that thousands of people have been wrongly

identified as liable for this tax, including some who now face

eviction. Now, how many people have been wrongly categorised? Well,

housing experts, we are told, saying it could be 40,000 people. The DWP,

surprise, surprise, says it leaves only a small number of tenants are

affected, which could be 5000. That is a rather startling difference.

But his bedroom tax, we were saying before we came on air that actually,

are we surprised that it has survived? Absolutely, it has been a

cook up from beginning to end, it seems. But this is a huge

bureaucratic thing, and the Department has been going through a

massive shake-up as a result of the fallout of the national debt and the

problems with the country's finances, and as a result, there are

going to be problems and teething troubles, should we be more

understanding? Understanding of the DWP, I don't think so! I am playing

devil's advocate. I am not a natural fan, necessarily, of Iain Duncan

Smith, but I happen to believe, without patronising him, as

virtually everybody believes, that his heart is very much in the right

place. And the work that he did after he was dumped out as

Conservative Party leader, and he has dedicated his life to this sort

of work. But talking about the policies themselves, and whether

they are right or wrong, but also, the scale of what he was trying to

do, it was so huge. And you say, isn't it inevitable that there

should be teething problems, and of course you are right. But this is

the price you pay when you are in government. They say they are going

to close the loophole, but they an interesting story on the front of

the Daily Telegraph, fears for the elderly under the new NHS drugs

policy. Apparently, drugs may only be licensed in the future if they

are of a wider benefit to society? This is a really scary story, I

think. It is the national Institute for health and care excellence, the

guys who decide how funding is going to be allocated. And apparently,

they have put forward a draft proposal that basically, if you are

not deemed to be worthy of a place in society, if you are not good

enough... By whom? They are not going to fund the medicines which

will keep you alive. Cancer is one example, where it afflicts many,

many older people, and maybe they will not fund the cancer drugs. I

would have thought the majority of the people who were on the board of

NICE all of a certain age, surely? I am not sure this is going to fly at

all. Firstly, to be fair, we are told that this is a possible new

development. It is a consultation. Yes, and it is the sort of story

which, if you are sitting in the press office of the Department of

Health tonight, you are thinking, oh, my God, what is this case we are

told, sources close to Jeremy Hunt insist the proposal is at an early

stage, and he will intervene if the elderly are being discriminated

against. You bet he will. I think it is a nonsense story. Sorry, Daily

Telegraph. Maybe, but you see, it says in here that in the past 12

months, NICE has given the go-ahead to just one cancer drug, even though

more than a dozen were put forward. I think that is a shocking

statistic. But isn't that potentially to do with the efficacy

of the cancer drug itself? I do not know. If they are now going to look

at the efficacy of the person who might be receiving it?! But it is a

thankless task, judging between this potential cure and that potential

cure, and how many more people you are going to cure, if you go down

that road, than the other road. And it will not get any easier. Who

would want to be on the board of NICE? Moving on to the Independent,

an interesting story, Scotland Yard's rotten core exposed, it says.

The Met isn't the only public institution whose persona has taken

a pasting in modern times. But nothing is more damaging than

allegations of corruption within the police force. Now, this story

relates to a decade ago, and yet, here it is, that Britain's biggest

force, the Metropolitan Police, suffered endemic corruption at the

time. And in the middle of the story, we find figures such as, 18

corrupt individuals with links to the police, including 42 then

serving officers, and 19 former detectives. -- 80 corrupt

individuals. But the significant question now is, is this still

there? And the story would certainly imply that it is, albeit to a lesser

extent, we hope. The Independent says they have spoken to one former

senior officer, who says, that is just the way it was 14 years ago, of

course! There were extraordinary examples in the middle of the story,

that senior police officers co-owned properties, and indeed racehorses,

with a. Who was suspected of being one of Britain's most hardened

criminals. I don't know if we should be surprised by that. -- with a. Who

was suspected... -- with a chap. The wider thing is, were these

allegations of corruption pursued with enough vigour which Mike and

clearly, they weren't. According to the Independent, they shifted a few

officers around, hardly any of those named were convicted of anything,

they shifted them around and even put all the bad apples in one

barrel, in one office, and had a strong management team behind them,

apparently. If you talk to younger police officers today, they are

hugely resentful about what they see as the sins of the past, and how

damaging those sins are to them today.

One wonders what the reaction will be from Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, one

assumed he knew about this report. He was not in the force in 2002, but

very interesting. And a crestfallen and forlorn looking governor of New

Jersey, Chris Christie. This is turning into quite a huge story. And

the suggestion that this is a man, one of the front runners,

potentially, for the red presidential nomination for the

republicans. You can argue, the front runner. A man who would have

been a very different candidate for the republican Party than anything

we have seen recently. And he very clearly in those days leading up to

the most recent American election day for the tea party, absolutely

was treacherous in siding with Obama, as they saw it, in saying how

he had reacted to the problems and the awful storms in New Jersey. And

was offering a much more bipartisan approach to his candidature, and was

thought to be not just a front runner, many pundits think that he

was the front runner. I think it is hilariously could be scuppered by

one of his aides. The specifics of the story... It seems that one of

his aides decided that she would cause massive traffic jams in a

rival's district. In fact she closed two of the three traffic lanes to

the George Washington Bridge, absolute chaos ensued, so everyone

would think this guy was a hopeless mayor. And Christie would then have

it. It has gone rather the other way. It is so petty and silly, yet

is only happen in America, couldn't it? I was in traffic the other day,

what was the bridge? Boris? We didn't say that!

This perhaps makes the way even clearer... There are a few other

would-be Republican candidates. The thing about Christie was he was seen

as Mr bipartisan. Someone who could struggle the island. The suggestion

is that the Republicans have got a bit fed up of the tea party and

their particular brand of ideology. But anyway, it is still not a done

deal in terms of him deciding not to run. But some of the mud is

potentially beginning to stick to him. Let's go back to the Telegraph.

What is this about? Apparently, deciding who is going to get what in

any divorce is difficult. Apparently, fighting for your dog is

quite as bad. Liam Gallagher and Nicole Appleton went to court over

who would keep the dog. It says that Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson

were fighting over custody of their stuffed dog. It is probably a work

of art worth millions of pounds. There is a serious side. The dogs

trust says they have kept 400 abandoned pets because of break-ups.

Seriously asking a prenuptial agreement? Hey! You will be back in

our. Stay with us because at 11:00pm, we will have more reaction

on the finding that Mark Duggan was lawfully killed by an on lease

office. His family said they will campaign peacefully to get a

judicial review -- lawfully killed by an armed police officer.

Hello and welcome to Sportsday - I'm Mike Bushell. The headlines tonight.

There's a new man at The Hawthorns - West Brom appoint 50-year-old

Spaniard Pepe Mel as their new head coach.

Toby Flood is left out of England's elite squad for the Six Nations, as

George Ford is preferred instead. And back to his best