23/01/2012 BBC News at Six

Plans to impose a benefits cap run into trouble in the House of Lords.

Controversial welfare reforms would mean that no family gets more than

�26,000. The Government says that is what hard-working families

survive on. It is a basic issue of fairness. Should people really be

able to earn more than �26,000 just through benefits alone? I did

believe that they should and the overwhelming majority of people in

this country would back that you. Some families claim they would have

to move to cheaper accommodation. Why should I move somewhere else? I

am a single parent. I don't have relatives to support me. In any

place I would not know anybody. Right now the House of Lords is

debating whether to exclude child benefit from the cap. We will have

the latest. Justice delayed. 19 years after he

fled the country, Asil Nadir goes on trial in one of the biggest

fraud cases in Britain. New plans to curb executive pay.

Ministers want to give shareholders more power.

No place like home. We meet the woman who has lived under the same

I will bring you all the sport later on the BBC News Channel

including action from the Australian Open. Not that there was

Good evening and welcome to the BBC News At Six. Plans to impose a

�26,000 cap on what any family could receive in benefits have run

into stiff opposition in the House of Lords. The Government says that

is the amount that the average household in England, Scotland or

Wales owns every year after tax. A coalition of Labour peers, bishops

and rebel Lib Dems says that this could hurt children from poor

families. Plans to live the cap for families that would face

homelessness were defeated. Should any family get more than

�26,000 and benefits? No, so the headlines and the Government, there

has to be a limit. But yes say some charities and Piers, who fear that

some families could be made homeless. Take Lucy. She claims

that more -- the cap would mean that she would struggle with her

bills. Why do I have to give up a good standard of living? I am a

single parent with no relatives here. I would have to go to any

place where I do not know anybody. Why is this cruel decision being

imposed on me? Well, this is why. Are you happy that your taxes are

going towards families where nobody is working and they are earning

over �26,000 in benefits? Is that fair? Under the benefit plans, a

cap of �26,000 per year would be imposed on families in England,

Scotland and Wales where the parents do not work. 60,000

families would be affected, but the savings would be �290 million a

year, a drop in the ocean compared to the billions that ministers are

looking for. In Bristol at least, but cap seems to fit. Everybody has

got different circumstances but that is a lot of money. I have to

manage on a lot less than that. �500 a week? I think that is too

much. This cap will have most impact in central London where

property prices are high. Ministers believe the policy will be popular

with the public across the country and they are ready to fight for it.

Labour back the idea of a cap but they have worries about the detail.

Labour said that families that could be at risk of becoming

homeless should be excluded from the cap. My parties support the

benefit cap but one based on fairness. A particular concern for

us is the potential to drive increased homelessness. Ministers

say that the cat would help get people off welfare and back into

work. -- the cap. The benefit cap is about changing psychology. It is

about trying to get a change of circumstances. When it came to a

vote, peers back to the Government and not Labour. The not contents,

250, so they have it. They have not finished yet. They want to have

child benefit excluded from the cap, which ministers say would make the

policy meaningless. We do need to defend the interests of those that

are poorly paid, but we do not do so by refusing child benefit to

those that are out of work. While bishops and Piers say one thing,

the newspapers say another and tonight is one occasion where the

Government is happy to take the side of the press.

But the latest we can speak to our political editor Nick Robinson, at

the House of Lords. They are still debating. How worried is the

Government going to be about the opposition coming from there?

Usually governments do not like to lose a vote on anything. It is

normally much more low-key in the House of Lords. I can't tell you

how relaxed the Government seemed to be and there is a reason. They

think the Government is fairly and squarely on their side. David

Cameron is delighted to be able to say that he is speaking up for

ordinary people when it comes to fairness. The House of Lords is not,

the bishops are not, but what he really wants to do is claimed that

the Labour Party is not either. Ed Miliband says he is in favour of a

cap but not this particular cap done in this particular way. What

has been no striking about this debate in the House of Lords has

been a debate about welfare which has been about morality. -- most

striking. Ministers are insisting that it is simply not moral for

people to get more in benefits than they can if they are burning. Many

of the bishops are saying that it is not moral to drive people out of

their homes because they happen to have large families and they happen

to be unemployed and they happen to live in expensive parts of the

country. We will see in the next few minutes which side wins the

next boat. Thank you.

-- the next vote. It is said to be one of the biggest

ever fraud trials in the country. Asil Nadir has gone on trial at the

Old Bailey accused of stealing �146 million from his former company,

Polly Peck. He fled to Cyprus after his company collapsed in 1990 but

he returned to England in 2010. He denies any wrongdoing. Our

correspondent is at the Old Bailey now.

When Asil Nadir came back to Britain in 2010 he must have known

that this moment was going to come. He is charged with simple theft,

but of 13 counts of theft totalling �34 million. Asil Nadir,

accompanied by bodyguards, arriving to find oily face and Old Bailey

jury. In a dark suit, appearing relaxed, he greeted reporters

outside the court room. This was as on the day in the 1980s, in the

year before the fraud investigation began, and he fled from Britain,

according to the prosecution. The Turkish Cypriot tycoon had built up

a huge and thriving business empire. Polly Peck International was a

network of companies ranging from electronics to fruit production. It

was the most successful company in the FTSE 100 in 1980. Asil Nadir

was firmly in charge. Opening the case against him, the QC described

him as a dominant force who had abused the power and helped himself

to tens of millions of pounds of money. He maintains direct control

over its operations, directing its affairs in an autocratic manner and

refusing to tolerate rival sources of power, or to accept constraints

upon his freedom of action. The prosecution alleged that Asil Nadir

could transfer money from the company with a single signature,

his own. Often he filled it the cash from Britain to Turkish Cyprus,

where he had control of companies owned by Polly Peck. -- he filtered

the cash. It is claimed that the money was used to buy shares,

properties, pay his tax bill, or even buy a Mercedes for his wife.

This is Ersin Tatar, once the assistant treasurer of Polly Peck.

The jury was told that he helped in the fraud, telling a member of

staff who found out to keep his mouth shut. Asil Nadir denies 13

charges of theft by fraud. He will argue that for every demand that he

took from Polly Peck's bank accounts, he put in an equivalent

amount. The jury will scrutinise the case in intense detail, in a

trial that is expected to last five months.

Thank you. A juror who researched a

defendant's background on the internet has been jailed for six

months for contempt of court. Theodora Dallas, 34 year-old

university lecturer, discovered that the defendant had previously

been accused of rape and told her fellow jurors at Luton Crown Court

last summer. Today 3 High Court judge has ruled that she had

deliberately disobeyed an order not to go online. -- three High Court

judges. Police investigating murders and

Stepping Hill Hospital say that a 5th patient has died. Linda

McDonagh died on 14th January. It is thought that a saline drip was

deliberately contaminated with insulin last year. NS is on bail on

suspicion of murdering three patients. -- and a nurse.

A prisoner has been sprung from a prison van near Hewell Prison. The

man who escaped, 31 year-old John Anslow, has been described as

dangerous by police. The company shareholders should

have the power to veto massive pay packets for Britain's high-flying

bosses. That is one of the proposals in the Government's plan

to curb boardroom success. The business secretary said it was

wrong that bosses got pay rises even when their companies were

failing. Labour said the plans did not go far enough. Robert Peston

reports. Tough at the top? Possibly not.

Bosses of big companies continue to get big pay rises and bankers

pocket multi-billion pound bonuses, while most British people endured

the worst squeeze on living standards for 60 years.

Vince Cable wants to curb the boardroom excesses. The evidence is

very clear that business and investors recognise that there is a

disconnect between top pay and company performance and something

must be done. Shareholder power is at the heart of the business

secretary's reforms, giving them a veto over executive pay policies.

The investors themselves are very highly paid and they have been

asked to signal their views on the earnings of their bosses. This did

not stop the executive pay explosion. It is in the past decade

that executive pay has really taken off. Since 2000, those that run our

biggest companies have typically seen their pay and remuneration

soar from �1 million to �4 million. That includes a pay increase of 12%

for them over the past year, when the economy has been so flat. For

the rest of us, pay increases have been 1.4%, from just over �26,000

for a typical employee a year. Publishing simpler pay information

such as a single number for how much an executive is expected to

earn his the second reform. It is perfectly justifiable to pay a lot

of money to an outstanding performer, football star, chief

executive, pop-star. It is not acceptable to reward failure or to

give lots of money for mediocre performances. The finally Vince

Cable wants the views of employees on pay to be taken into account

when executive rewards are decided. He is not going as far as Labour

would like. Why will he not back moves for employees to sit on the

remuneration committees? Employees play this type of role in Germany

and at John Lewis. The Government is the big investor in the Royal

Bank of Scotland but Vince Cable said it was above his pay great to

block controversial plans for RBS to pay a �1 million bonus to the

chief executive, which perhaps shows that investors will not find

it easy to rein in big play. -- pay. More details have emerged other

News of the World hacked into the mobile phone belonging to Milly

Dowler. Surrey police told the newspaper that police officers have

listened to the voicemails after getting the telephone number and

pin code details from her friends. Our correspondent is at News

International headquarters in Wapping. What does this letter say?

The hacking of Milly Dowler's voicemail goes to the heart of the

phone hacking scandal. It led to the closure of the News of the

World in Wapping and an unreserved apology from Rupert Murdoch and a

multi-million-pound payout to that Milly Dowler family. This raises

the question of how much the newspaper involve themselves in the

police investigation. The reporter contacted the police in 2002. The

reporter said they had got the mobile phone number and pin code

details from her school friends and somebody pretending to be Milly

Dowler's mother had attempted to blag information from a recruitment

agency which had left a voicemail on her telephone. Tonight News

International said that the matter is being investigated by the

Metropolitan Police and they hope that those that are responsible for

these abhorrent actions will be EU foreign ministers have imposed

some of the toughest sanctions yet against Iran over the country's

nuclear programme. The measures involve a ban on all new oil

contracts with the country. Last night, British, French and US

warships sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has

threatened to close if its oil exports are disrupted. The Strait

is key to the movement of oil around the world, with a daily flow

of almost 17 million barrels last year. That's more than 20% of all

the oil traded worldwide. Our Tehran correspondent, James

Reynolds, is monitoring The Gulf is the closest that Iran

has to a giant cash point. The European Union has now decided to

stop paying into Iran's accounts. It will no longer buy any oil from

the Persian states. And so Iran loses 20% of its oil markets. This

is why. The West fears Iran is trying to learn how to build

nuclear weapons. It is a charge Iran denies. Iran continues to defy

UN Security Council resolutions and enriches uranium to 20%, for which

there is no plausible civilian explanation. It is very important

for us to agree these measures, to increase the peaceful and

legitimate pressure on the Iranian government. The Gulf is Iran's

supply line to the outside world. Exporting oil helps keep the

country's government in money and in power. So the EU has decided to

go after Iran where it hurts. Iran warned the EU not to do this. To

make its point, it carried out war games in the Gulf and did even

threatened to close the narrows, crucial straight before moos. In

response, the world's most powerful military has sent an aircraft

carrier to make sure it stays open. The US and Iran have clashed here

before. America wants to keep the price of oil stable. If any

limitation is put on the availability of oil in the

international market, one would expect the place of oil to go up.

Some will be ready to make up the shortfall. In a man, smugglers

prepared to get goods into Iran. Iran's rulers may be used to

isolation, but losing a source of income may be much harder to bear.

Our top story tonight: Controversial welfare reforms -

plans to impose a benefits cap run into trouble in the Lords.

Coming up: Spurs manager Harry Redknapp in

Later on the BBC News Channel, agrees creeps closer to a DEC deal

as eurozone leaders meet again in Brussels.

A slump at Thomas Cook at normally The Leveson Inquiry into press

standards has heard that political leaders have demeaned themselves in

their conduct with newspapers. Her that was the view of Lord Patten,

the chairman of the BBC Trust and the former Conservative politician.

The inquiry also heard from the head of the BBC, Director General

Mark Thompson. He has been chairman of the BBC

Trust, the Corporation's governing body and regulator, for nearly a

year now. It is the latest role in a long career of public service. As

Christopher Patten the politician, he was a minister in the

Conservative government in the 1980s and then party chairman. As

diplomat, he was the last British Governor of Hong Kong before the

handover to China. And as an academic, he has been Chancellor of

Oxford University's since 2003. Today, as Lord Patten, he brought

all that experience to the Leveson Inquiry. His first target, the

party leaders of recent years for their cosiness with some press

barons. I think major political parties and particularly their

leaders over the last 20 to 25 years have often demeaned

themselves in the extent they have paid court on proprietors and

editors. Of course I'm in favour of talking to editors and journalists,

but I'm not in favour of grovelling. In his role as chairman of the BBC

Trust, he said he had comparatively little contact with political

leaders. I have seen the Prime Minister wants. Presumably seeing

the Prime Minister and other party leaders more frequently if I had

been a News International executive. Then the central question of

regulation. Lord Patten said that unlike broadcasters, newspapers

should if possible be left to sort out their own problems without new

laws from Parliament. I think if possible politicians should be kept

out of these areas, but unless the press owners, editors, come up with

a convincing scheme, we will presumably get drawn in that

direction. Her coming from someone with Lord Patten's experience,

those comments will add weight to the efforts by the newspaper groups

to resist any form of statutory control. Earlier, the BBC's

Director General Mark Thompson told the inquiry that he had ordered an

internal review to establish whether any phone hacking had

occurred within the BBC. No The supermarket chain ASDA is

planning to create up to 5,000 new jobs this year. It's opening 25

stores and refurbishing more than 40 others as part of a �500 million

expansion plan. Italian officials say the bodies of

two women have been recovered from the wreck of the cruise ship Costa

Concordia. This brings to 15 the number of people confirmed to have

died. At least 17 people are still missing. The authorities say they

will begin pumping fuel from the ship while the search operation

continues. The Tottenham manager, Harry

Redknapp, has appeared in court to face accusations of tax evasion. He

denies the charges, which date back as far as ten years, to when he was

in charge of Portsmouth. Our sports correspondent James Pearce's

A manager normally seen in a football dug out arriving at court

to spend the day in the dock. Harry Redknapp has been charged, along

with Milan Mandaric, in the middle, the former owner of Portsmouth

Football Club, with two accounts of cheating the public revenue. The

allegations date back to 2002 when the two men were working together

in Portsmouth. Redknapp initially as director of football and later

the club's manager. The jury was told about the signing of Peter

Crouch. Redknapp was entitled to share of the �3 million profit

Portsmouth banked on the player. But a change to his contract

reduced his cut from 10% to 5%. The prosecution claimed that around the

same time, Redknapp flew to Monaco where he set up a bank account in

which he could receive payments from the personal account of Milan

Mandaric. The jury was told the Monaco account was called Rosie 47,

the name of Redknapp's dog and the year of his birth. The prosecution

claimed the choice of Monaco was quite deliberate because it had

minimal taxation and a long tradition of banking secrecy.

Redknapp is one of the most successful English managers of his

generation. He was described by the prosecution as unusually talented,

but nevertheless a hard-headed businessman with financial acumen.

His claim that he never told the authorities about his Monaco bank

account. Redknapp and Mandaric deny the charges. Tomorrow the

prosecution will continue outlining their case.

Moving home can be one of the most stressful times in life, but one

woman has avoided the hassle by staying in the same house for 100

years. Georgina Brown was born in a gas-lit cottage in Hambledon in

Hampshire in 1912. Robert Hall went Georgina Brown, on her way to visit

the shop she once ran, following a path which leads back to winter's

day in 1912. A day when her father ran a blacksmith's forge and his

daughter was born in the tiny front bedroom of their cottage, into a

very different world. The old form horses used to come and the

blacksmith shop to be shod. I would go round and look at their noses

and their faces and strokes them. People used to have fits. They used

to say, she will get kicked. The Old blacksmiths used to say...

Outside the village, women were still fighting for the vote.

Fragile flying machines was struggling into the sky. A world of

simpler pleasures. But away from the towns and cities, primitive

living conditions brought harsh winters. We had a mud floor, but we

used to sit with Wellington boots on, sitting in the water because

the springs came up. It ran through Hambleden like a river. It ran

through the house. You just had to put up with it? We put up with it.

It went down after about three weeks. 100 years of -- have brought

traffic, electricity and better drainage, but the passage of time

never loosened her bond with her Hampshire Valley. This is home. It

is a draw. There's no place like home. And she has every intention

of celebrating their birthdays to come right here. -- her birthdays

to come. to come.

She did not look 100! Let's take a look at the weather forecast.

Clear skies for many this evening, conditions should the northern

lights make an appearance across northern Britain. But it will be

cold and things are going to change. Later in the night it turns cloudy

and wet and that combination of cold and wet weather will make for

some bleak conditions tomorrow morning. This evening we have

largely clear skies, rain clearing from the south-west. Clear skies

are allowing temperatures to fall, they will be an extensive Frost.

Not quite as cold further west as things turn wet. Rain in Northern

Ireland, but as the wet weather pushing across Scotland and

northern England, there will be some snow. It is not looking too

pretty for tomorrow morning's rush- hour. Very wet indeed across

central and southern Scotland. Trans Pennine roots may be snowy

and they could be some snow across north-east England. Even if you

haven't got the snow, it will be cold and wet. Rain covering much of

southern England in the morning rush-hour. Across the south-west,

the rain might not be as heavy, but it will still be a damp and dreary

start with a lot of mixed and low cloud. Pretty bleak in Wales with

cloud and outbreaks of rain and also for Northern Ireland.

Temperatures in the West are higher than they will be in the east. Cold

conditions persist through the day. Snow only slowly eases away and it

will stay chilly throughout the day with a lot of cloud and mist.

Temperatures in the afternoon in the east just three to four degrees.

In the West, a lot milder. But even here it will be dull and there will

be further rain to come. Mild pretty much everywhere by Wednesday.

Rain across Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular. Thursday

looks brighter with some sunshine, looks brighter with some sunshine,

but then it starts to turn colder once more.

Thank you. A reminder of the top news.

Controversial plans to place a cap on benefits have run into trouble

in the Lords. A further vote on whether child benefit should be

excluded from the cap is expected in the next hour. You can watch all