15/03/2012 BBC News at Six

New evidence that Merseyside Police blamed Liverpool fans for the

Hillsborough disaster. 96 people died in the tragedy 23 years ago.

Leaked documents reveal the police wrongly blamed drunken fans. It is

absolute nonsense. It is the same old story that Liverpool fans were

drunker. I was neither drank nor without a ticket, and thousands of

Liverpool supporters were not. -- drunk.

Also tonight: The Belgian schoolchildren enjoying

the snow before the coach crash that left 22 of them dead.

The not-so-thin blue line - new reforms which could see officers

sacked if they're not fit enough. The PIP faulty breast scandal - now

a further 7,000 women may be affected.

How reading standards in English schools aren't improving and are

falling behind other countries. And as Kate bullies off in the

Olympic Park, children report on Coming up on Sportsday at 6:30pm,

Big Buck's makes history at Cheltenham, winning the World

hurdle for the 4th time, in a Good evening. Welcome to the BBC

News at Six. Nearly 23 years after the

Hillsborough disaster, the BBC has seen leaked documents which show

that a senior Merseyside police officer claimed the tragedy was the

fault of drunken fans. The officer's claim was contained in a

briefing received by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, just

days after the disaster. It supports for the first time a view

long held by many in Liverpool that attempts were made at the highest

levels to shift the blame for the tragedy away from the police and

onto the fans. Later, an official inquiry found the disaster, in

which 96 people died, was caused by South Yorkshire Police's failure to

control the crowd. Judith Moritz reports from Liverpool.

It is almost exactly 23 years since the FA Cup semi-final at

Hillsborough turned to disaster. Thousands of Liverpool fans had

gone to watch their side play Nottingham Forest, but they were

crammed into pens too small to hold them, and 96 people died as a

result. It happened after an exit gate was opened on the orders of

South Yorkshire police, and the fans surged in. The inquiry into

the disaster blamed the lack of police control. But the then Prime

Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who toured the ground the next day,

seems to have been told another story. Radio 4's World at One

programme has seen leaked government documents from the time.

In one letter, Government advisers told Mrs Thatcher about comments by

the then Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, Kenneth Oxford.

If he is said to have believed that a key factor in causing the

disaster was the fact that large numbers of Liverpool fans turned up

without tickets. "This was getting lost sight of in attempts to blame

the police, the football authorities, etc." It also

mentioned another officer, who said he was deeply ashamed to say that

it was drunken Liverpool fans who had caused this disaster, just as

they cause the deaths at Heysel. Peter Carney survived the crash at

Hillsborough and was upset to here about the contents of the papers.

It is absolute nonsense. It is the same old story that the Liverpool

fans were drunk and ticketless. I was neither drunk, nor ticketless.

Thousands of Liverpool supporters were not. The people who died are

commemorated here at Anfield. Their relatives and others have long

campaigned for full disclosure of all information, and in 2009 the

Hillsborough independent panel was created. Today's leaked Government

documents form just some of thousands of papers that the panel

is currently examining. Today, a spokesman said that its work was

complex and difficult and they are expecting to report back in the

autumn. Nicholas was 27 when he died at Hillsborough. His mother

once the panel to publish the whole story. It is like a knife going

into your heart and turning all the time. Because it has been such a

long time for us. And every so often, these reports, information

comes out, and it is not the whole truth. At Hillsborough itself, the

dead are still remembered. 23 years after Britain's worst ever sporting

disaster, many say that the truth is yet to be revealed.

Judith Moritz is at Anfield this evening. Getting to the truth is at

the heart of this. To the families think they are getting closer to

discovering the truth of what really happened on that day? -- do

they think? Well, since that day, there has been an independent

inquiry, an inquest, judicial scrutiny and a private prosecution.

Despite all of those legal steps, the families still feel they have

not got the truth. They say attempts were made from very early

on to shift the blame from the police to the fans, and today's

papers will not have done anything to disabuse them of that notion. I

know they have confidence that the panel, which is looking at every

document connected to Hillsborough, is going to get closer to the truth

when it reports back later in the year. And then they say they hope

they will get to know what was said behind closed doors following 15th

April 1989. The families of the 22 children who

were killed in a coach crash in Switzerland have been to the tunnel

where they died to lay flowers. Four teachers and two drivers were

also killed when the coach hit a wall in the tunnel on Tuesday, as

the group was on its way home after a ski trip. From Sierre, Christian

Fraser reports. The last year of primary school and

photos of the annual ski trip to the Alps. Incomprehensible that

such a holiday could end in this way. This mountain village has been

welcoming the group for 30 years. At the same hotel in which they had

stayed, another Belgian party was boarding a coach today. Same

company, similar age. This local mountain guide saw the children on

that last fateful day of their holidays. They were clattering

through the village, he said, returning from the slopes. In a

small village like this one, every child feels like one of your own.

It has been a brutal 24 hours for the parents. Today they left the

hotel for the grim task of identifying the dead. Some of them

had wanted to see the crash site where the children had died, and

they were taken by the authorities to lay flowers inside the tunnel.

The Belgian ambassador has been here throughout, trying to support

them. You just feel the emotion. It is a terrible thing that happened,

a terrible accident, and all these very young people who just died

like that. What can you say? coach crashed at the end of the

winding mountain road, on the first stretch of motorway, and in the

first tunnel. The cause of the accident is still unknown but the

investigation is focused on the driver and what is left of the

vehicle. In here, the crash investigators are working through

the wreckage to try to find out why the bus swerved as it did. At the

moment, there are more questions than answered. There was no liquid

on the road, no ice, no other vehicle involved, the bus was new.

Was it the driver who suffered a catastrophic heart attack? Or was

it just plain and simple driver error? The police told me they are

conducting a postmortem examination today on the driver, still keeping

an open mind. Although one theory is that he was handling a DVD at

the time. The kind of answer that would only intensify the grief.

Police officers should be made to take an annual fitness test, with a

pay cut if they repeatedly fail it, according to a wide ranging review

of the police service. Pay cuts for new recruits, easier and quicker

promotion, and power for chief constables to make compulsory

redundancies are also among more than a 120 recommendations. Here's

our home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds.

They call it "the job". But today's reforms are based on the idea that

modern policing should no longer be regarded as a blue collar

occupation and instead as a profession, on a par with medicine

or the law. It is a complex environment and it requires the

most intellectually able people who have the other qualities to be

police officers, which are just as important - courage, maturity,

judgment, self-control, the ability to assess situations and deal with

people. The proposed reforms are designed to grip police officers

fit for the future, literally. He wants compulsory annual fitness

tests. If you fail three times, you could be docked nearly �3,000, or

even fired. Some officers, like those training in public order, are

already tested. They insist they are up to the job, but the Windsor

report contains figures suggesting male officers in London are more

likely to be overweight than the general population. The report is

also trying to tackle what it calls equal pay for unequal work. New

police constables would get �4,500 less than they currently do, and

future pay rises would depend on performance, not time served.

are not reforms. This is just another cut to the police budget.

Tom Winsor took �300 million from police pay in his first report. He

has come back and grabbed nearly �2 billion on this occasion.

Police Federation's response to these proposals was, how much more

are our members propose -- supposed to take? But Chief Police officers

felt it should have gone further and tried to save more money. One

of the most radical reforms is designed to attract more high-

achieving graduates. 80 each year will be given a fast track to the

rank of police inspector without pounding the beat. Of course, Tom

Winsor wants police to do more for less in difficult times, but

Britain's top officer accepts the challenge. When money is tight and

we have to develop our talent and be shown to adapt to a new world, I

think these are things that we must at the very least consider, and

they are put into place. It will take a lot of talking and a lot of

consensus-building, but I am sure that we can use these ideas and

develop the police service in the future. But given that want reform

today means new recruits would no longer be guaranteed protection

from redundancy, it is unlikely the rank and file will be as

enthusiastic about the sweeping changes.

It has emerged that thousands more British women may have received

potentially faulty PIP breast implants, filled with non-medical

great silicon. Fergus Walsh is here. What can you tell us? Until now,

the figure was 40,000 women who had these French-made PIP implants with

this non-medical grade filler. All of that surgery was gone from 2001

onwards. Today, the French authorities said they could not

guarantee the safety of PIP implants made before 2001. That

means an extra 7000 women in Britain are affected. Given that

implants have a limited life span of 10 to 15 years, and these women

had surgery more than a decade ago, many of them will already have had

those implants replaced. The strong advice here from an independent

body is that there is no need for the routine removal of PIP implants.

But there is a recognition that it is causing a lot of anxiety, and

the NHS has said it will remove them if, after consultation with a

specialist, women still decide that is what they want.

David Cameron has visited Ground Zero in New York on the last leg of

his official visit to the United States. Last night, he and Barack

Obama paid tribute to each other at a star studded banquet at the White

House in Washington. Mark Mardell's report contains flash photography.

The Prime Minister at the sight in New York where the twin towers once

stood before the 9/11 attacks, a solemn moment in a trip of many

moods, all of them intended to dispel any lingering doubts about

the essential relationship. Earlier, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama

laid on the most splendid state dinner yet for the Prime Minister

and his wife, now greeted as old friends. The guest list included

Hollywood glamour, with George Clooney, sports stars like Rory

McIlroy, and the irrepressible entrepreneur Richard Branson. It

was mostly meant to be light hearted, but there was a very

personal tribute from the president, a reference to the death of the

Camerons son. All of us have seen how you as a parent, along with

Samantha, have shown a measure of strength that few of us will ever

know. Tonight, thank you for bringing that same strength and

solidarity to our partnership. guests were based in a soft purple

light as they ate lemon pudding, but the most lavish part of the

evening was the praise heaped on the President by David Cameron.

there are three things about Barack that really stand out for me.

Strength, moral authority and wisdom. In the US, Conservatives

accuse Mr Obama of being weak, but this Conservative said he had given

the country a new voice in the world. He has pressed the reset

button on the moral authority of the entire free world. It is a

pleasure to work with someone with moral strength, with clear reason

and with fundamental decency in this task of renewing our great

national Alliance for today and for the generations to follow. In his

early days in the White House, the President got a reputation for not

bothering too much about Britain. This extravagant reception is meant

to made at a rest. But David Cameron has gone one further, a

British Conservative going out of his way to heap praise on the

President's policies and personality in a critical election

Nick Robinson, who has been travelling with Mr Cameron, is that

Ground Zero. Going to Ground Zero was an important part of the visit

for the Prime Minister. It was very important, yes. A

moving occasion for the Prime Minister. He was accompanied to

this memorial at Ground Zero, a vast black hole filled an hour with

rushing water, on the site where once that enormous tower, one of

the Twin Towers, stirred. He was accompanied by the husband of one

of the victims, a British victim from Wales. You can see the flowers

that have been left there, where her name is one of 2983 names of

the people who lost their lives on that day in 2001. While he was here,

I ask him about the war that follows that attack, the war from

Afghanistan, with more troubling news from their that the Taleban

have suspended talks with the US Army -- there. I ask David Cameron

what that meant to his hopes of a political solution. A I think we

just have to be clear that we have a Plan in Afghanistan which is to

hand over to a capable Afghan army police and government at the end of

2014. We will do that without a political settlement or with a

political settlement. That is up to the Taleban. Words of defiance,

really, from the Prime Minister, that what ever the Taleban do,

Britain, the United States, they have their eyes on the exit. They

will not rush, but they know the timetable and they are determined

to proceed. This trip is now coming to an end. It is striking and

fitting perhaps that it and so here at Ground Zero. The roots, if you

like, of the conflict of the war that the Prime Minister and the

President are trying to find a way to end and end with honour.

Nick Robinson, thank you. The time has just gone 6:15pm. This

Copse story: -- our top story. Leaked documents suggest Merseyside

Police wrongly blamed Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster

in which 96 people died. Coming up: The Duchess of Cambridge

has taken at tour around London's Olympic Park today.

The young roving reporter's guide to the Olympics for the BBC's

School Report. Of Tesco UK is to resign -- the

boss of years -- test the UK is to resign. And the number of people in

Reading and literacy standards in primary schools in England are

falling behind other countries and haven't improved in the last five

years, according to the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael

Wilshaw. Last year, nearly half of children who failed to reach the

required standard at primary school also then failed to get a grade C

in GCSE English. Danny Savage reports.

Dazed, I did not realise my position for a few moments. My chin

and was resting on the floor... St Joseph's in West Yorkshire, they

have a 100% pass rate when it comes to literacy. What style of writing

wholly looking at? That means all of the year 6 pupils achieved the

Government target for primary schools, known as Neville four. So

what is the secret? It takes other children supporting, it takes adult

support, including parents that volunteer to cumin, non-teaching

staff -- staff at the school, boosting sessions, there is a lot

already. All children in England are expected to reach a national

standard of literacy by the time they leave primary school. At the

moment, about one in five children fail to reach that level. That is

100,000 children for not making the grade every year. And they raised

concerns that standards have stalled, as there has been little

change since 2007. The unions say the Government is playing fast and

loose with the figures and point out that literacy levels have

improved greatly over the last 20 years. One union says the

Government should be a bit less critical and help them more to

improve learning. But the chief schools inspector says the current

situation is a problem for primary school children. They find it very

difficult in secondary school. They find it very difficult to do well

in examinations, to move from one Key Stage to another and progress

to higher education and of course, to get a job. And employers are

dismayed at the poor writing skills shown by school leavers in job

applications. We get applications from people and they don't know how

to spell and construct sentences in a proper way. So I would say the

levels have gone down quite significantly. Today's plans apply

only to England, and the literacy levels in Northern Ireland are

similar. In Scotland, the result of a literacy survey will be known

Sood and in Wales, there is a new five-year plan. And changes in

England are already afoot. From this may, you want children -- a

year one children will be tested on word sounds the two address any

concerns even earlier. In Syria, it's been a year since a

small protest took place in the south-eastern town of Deraa against

the arrest of 15 teenage boys who had sprayed anti-government slogans

on a wall. That led to a movement across the country demanding

political freedom. The United Nations says more than 7,500 people

have been killed in the ensuing conflict and government crackdown.

Fergal Keane looks back at how the protests began in Deraa and what

has happened to the town since. His report contains some distressing

images. Early March 2011 and the first

large protest against the Assad regime. In Deraa, people learned

fear can be overcome. 18th March at Omari Mosque, the focal point of

the demonstrations. Because of the secret police were chased away. --

the cars. But the ecstasy of freedom was short. On the same day,

the regime hit back. These sisters witnessed its brutality.

TRANSLATION: One injured protesters fell to the ground and tried to

escape by crawling up to safety. But they apprehended him and beat

him severely with batons. I was watching all of this from my window.

The Gulf's father filmed the incident. -- The Gulls. In the

weeks that followed, children would be at the forefront of

demonstrations. Deraa was placed at the forefront of the siege and

became a symbol of resistance. This 13-year-old joined a march to try

and reach the city. It was attacked. He was wounded and arrested. His

uncle was present when his mutilated body was returned to the

family one month later. TRANSLATION: Wedd added that his

body, which was inches away from May -- when I looked at his body,

which was inches away, it had been subjected to extreme treatment, I

felt pain and aching in every cell. He was subjected to the most

horrific torture. They had even cut off his penis. The Government

denies he was tortured, but the child became an icon of the Syria's

revolution. He is among hundreds of dead children. Many others are in

detention or scattered to exile. Those fateful days in Deraa

established a pattern that would spread across Syria of a people no

longer afraid challenging the Government that would resort to

ever more ruthless violence to stay in power. A year later, the news

reaching the refugees from Deraa is of a city locked into permanent

siege. The Welsh nationalist party Plaid

Cymru has appointed its first leader from a non-Welsh speaking

background. Leanne Wood won with 55% of the vote.

Accepting the position, she said she would put the Welsh people

first. None of us get things right first time. I don't and I won't as

leader. But the one thing we have always got right and always well is

that this party, our chief driver, will be the people in this land

that we love. Betsan Powys is in Cardiff for us. This is quite an

unexpected outcome. Leanne Wood certainly didn't start

this race as the favourite and what this result tells us is that Plaid

Cymru members but then down the country by ready for change. She

was the candidate least like the outgoing leader Ieuan Wyn Jones.

She is from that non-Welsh background, the sort of background

their party members hope will help them reach the part of Wales it has

not yet managed to reach their electorate. She is a staunch

Republican, the only Assembly member ever to be thrown out of the

Assembly chamber over the water. She called the Queen Mrs Windsor

and out she was prone. Her critics say she is it -- in experienced and

too much of a student protesters. She says -- talks about a real

independence of Wales and taking on labour, but put her policies under

scrutiny and people are afraid they will crumble. Nobody called Leanne

Wood a safe pair of hands. That is what has won her the leadership.

That is what other parties will now be out to exploit.

Now, a school from every region of the UK has been at the Olympic Park

in Stratford today and some have had the opportunity to interview

Lord Coe about this summer's Games. They're just some of the thousand

schools across Britain taking part in this year's BBC News School

Report, giving children the opportunity to turn their

classrooms into newsrooms. Reeta Chakrabarti reports.

The venue, the handball arena in the Olympic Park. It was a chance

for a lucky group of selected children to try out their

interviewing skills. I wanted to deliver it with real

gusto. The interviewee, the chair of the

Organising Committee, Lord Coe. A chance to grill board: the big

story of the year is every budding journalist's dream -- Lord Coe.

Questions ranged from Whitemoor children have not been allocated a

Olympic tickets to wide certain sports are not included. How come

that Paul is not an Olympic sport? That is a question I get from my

daughter's quite a lot. Today is the culmination of weeks and

research -- of research and reporting by tens of thousands of

children. I play all kinds of sport with

Charlie and I usually don't use a wheelchair, but when I play with

him, I do. I am going to interview Jessica Ennis. We are trying to

find out what it means to be a great British Roller. We will be

reporting for Look East... Back at the Olympic Park, children were

perfecting their pieces to camera, while inside, the Duchess of

Cambridge was showing off her skills on the hockey pitch. The

former schoolgirl captain was there to give the British Women's team a

boost. From a Royal Athlete to a real athlete, the chance to

interview a 2012 hope for. And for the children to show they have made

the most of this golden opportunity. -- hopeful.

Let's take a look at the weather now. Here's John Hammond.

You saw it was sunny in Stratford, You saw it was sunny in Stratford,

but look at this. Across parts of the Midlands and East Wales, it was

cold and dull, with temperatures just four or five degrees. What a

contrast with conditions across parts of East Anglia and the south-

east where temperatures soared in the sunshine. It has been a day of

contrast, and a week of contrast, but things will even themselves out

to some extent through this evening with cloud pushing them from the

West. One or two parties of fog across the south-east of England,

but not the same as last night. Rain turning up across parts of

Northern Ireland and Scotland, some of it quite heavy. That will

continue through the day for Northern Ireland and Scotland. Most

of England and Wales will start overcast but mostly dry. Some

brighter spells developing across central and eastern areas but not

the sunshine we saw across the South East Today. Across western

part, by 3pm, a fair bit of cloud as we rolled down towards the south

coast. Wales is rather dull, parts of the Midlands and East Anglia

will see the best of the sunshine. Patchy rain pushing into Cumbria

but moving out of parts of Scotland, so some late bright as for the

north-west of Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland. Saturday, again,

the best of the sunshine will be across Northern Ireland and

Scotland, bright but chilly. England and Wales, a change in the

weather, lots of cloud and showery bursts of rain and quite cool when

they come along. Sunday, the southern half of the UK will

continue to see further outbreaks of showery brain gradually easing