10/02/2014 BBC News at Six

highest they've been for decades. There are 16 danger to life warnings

along the Thames and in the southwest. Rescue teams are taking

an unprecedented number of emergency calls. With more rain and wind

forecast, many are becoming desperate. We are just left to it

now. Nothing else we can do. Sorry. David Cameron sees the damage for

himself. He rejects accusations that the government is blaming others. I

am only interested in one thing, and that is making sure that everything

the government can do is being done, and will go on being done, to help

people through this difficult time. Right now, as we go on air,

ministers are at another emergency meeting.

Also tonight: The debate over banning smoking in cars with

children in England. MPs vote this evening.

It's all too easy when you're given the answers. An undercover report on

how foreign students cheat in their visa tests.

Jenny Jones is still basking in her winter Olympic glory. She's got more

to give she says, but that's after the celebrations. I celebrated with

some champagne. And a bit of dancing!

Tonight on BBC London. I'm live here in Berkshire, as flooding reaches

record levels along the Thames. Tens of thousands of homes are affected.

Police declare it a major incident. Good evening and welcome to the

BBC's News at Six. River levels in the Thames Valley are already the

highest they've been for decades, as families in the area prepare for

another 24 hours of rain and wind. Tonight, the government's emergency

committee is meeting, amidst accusations of in-fighting between

ministers over how to handle the crisis. We have three reports - from

the Thames Valley, where police have declared a major incident. Thousands

of homes are at risk. We report on criticism of the Environment Agency.

Today, its boss hit back. And we'll also be hearing from southwest

England, where the Prime Minister got a first-hand view of the

transport challenges. But first to the Thames Valley, where there are

14 danger to life warnings. Duncan Kennedy is in Wraysbury now. Duncan.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard the phrase today,

we've never seen anything like it. I am standing in the River Thames, and

it isn't very often you can say that. The river its office 100

metres that way. It has come surging up here all day, and is continuing

to rise. The Environment Agency say something like 900 homes along the

Thames Valley have been flooded, including these ones here. Today, we

have been on a journey along the River Thames, visiting places like

that chit and stains, and here in Wraysbury in Berkshire, to see how

people have been coping with the flooding. The Thames Valley is

starting to look like the Somerset Levels. This was Henley in

Oxfordshire today. And this was stains in story, house after house

inundated, just like Marlowe in Buckinghamshire, where there is now

a blur between river and land. Our journey began in the pretty

Berkshire village of Datchet. Its centre is now a lake. Have you ever

seen it as bad as this? Never. The railway has never been flooded like

this. How long have you lived here? About 30 years. No one can remember

the Trainline being flooded. We are seeing the Thames gently rise up in

response to the rainfall, not just in the last week, but over the last

month. On one road here, we came across James, using buckets to bail

out his entire front garden, including raw sewage. We have had

friends and family over to help, but people have to work and do their own

thing. We are just left to it now. Nothing else you can do. Sorry. This

was James' first time, a property he only bought a week ago. His dad is

there to help shoulder the draining and the despair. We then moved up

stream, where they are pumping out their own homes. Others are breaking

up furniture to keep the water back. This family is going further,

building a dam in front of their house. The bricks are carried by the

family's 50-year-old mother. We have to do it, just in case it gets too

bad with all the water. Our final stop was Wraysbury, where the water

was the deepest. Annabel decided it was time for her and her pets to get

out. So many houses lost, so many people'slives ruined. As long as

everybody is safe, that's all that's important. We also waded through to

George's house. He has been here 13 years, and now has the Thames

sloshing around his lounge. It was my dream to live on the river, and I

have achieved that, but it has taken a lot out of my wife this time. They

tried to escape it by whatever transport system would take them. Up

and down these communities we found some resilient, others challenged,

as this iconic British river flows and floods its way through thousands

of lives. The Prime Minister says Environment

Agency staff on the ground are doing an amazing job and deserve support

and thanks. That's despite criticism of the agency by one of his most

senior ministers over the weekend. The agency says it's under financial

pressure. Spending on new defences in England and Wales will total ?2.3

billion over the four years up to 2015, but it claims budget cuts mean

it is losing staff and expertise. How much is spent on flood defences

and where they should go is now under intense scrutiny, as our

science editor, David Shukman, reports.

The flooding is so serious, so widespread and so long-lasting that

it has opened up divisions within government about how to respond. The

Somerset Levels are at the centre of the dispute, with questions about

what went wrong. Should the Environment Agency have invested

more in clearing the rivers of silt, or was it held back by tough

government restrictions on spending. We perhaps relied too much on the

Environment Agency's advice. Yesterday the Communities Secretary

Eric Pickles was highly critical of the Environment Agency, and why it

hasn't done more in Somerset. Today, the agency Pulse head hit back. He

is wrong. Our agency were following government rules and guidelines.

Then Eric Patterson waded in to defend the Environment Agency. This

afternoon in the Commons, Eric Pickles seems to have changed his

tune. My admiration for the work of the Environment Agency exceeds no

one, and I believe it is time for us to work together. All this as down

the river at the Thames barrier, everyone was waiting for the record

flows causing so many problems upstream. A tense backdrop to a

political storm. At the heart of the dispute is the question of who gets

defended and who doesn't, because the fact is, there's never been

enough money to help everyone. So there is a system for calculating

whether cash gets spent. Every pound must produce at least ?8 of economic

benefit. That is a Treasury rule, and it is why London gets the most

protection. Second, you count all of the households at risk. Clearly,

cities will do better than the countryside. Third, you add up

deprived households. Again, urban areas will come up with a higher

rating. Add that together, and you can see why regions like the

Somerset Levels have not been getting the investment that people

there feel they deserve. Since the 1500s, there have been arguments

about the flooding of land that produces food compared with

protecting urban areas. We know the science, we know how to deal with

this, but you have to make decisions about the economics. At this pub,

people are feeling the effects of the rivers rising. Major floods

usually force the government to think again, and we are seeing that

happen now. With the row about flood defences

continuing in the Commons, David Cameron left Westminster to visit

parts of the south-west badly affected by the recent heavy rain

and devastating storm surges. His trip has taken in Devon, Dorset and

Cornwall, all of which have been badly affected, and he's been

talking to business leaders and rail bosses. He's just arrived in the

Cornish town of Newquay. Our correspondent Jon Kay is there. It

is a sign of The Times that the Prime Minister has flown into

Newquay tonight. All kinds of problems on the trains after the

line collapsed at Dawlish in Devon last week. This one is revving up.

They have doubled the number of flights today between Cornwall and

London, to try to keep the economy operating. The Prime Minister's

message tonight is that the place is still open for business, but that is

easier said than done. Water shouldn't be a problem for an

aquarium, but this attraction on the Atlantic coast is another victim of

the winter storms. Normally these doors are pulled back. Smashed up by

the tide, closed for a week, it finally reopened today. Lots of

people were staying away, quite sensibly. They were heeding the Met

Office warnings to not travel unless they had to, and keep away from

dangerous areas, like sea fronts. The impact is that we have lost

quite a lot of business. The damage needs to be repaired, transport

links need to recover, head of the busy holiday seasons. With Network

Rail saying disruption to the Lions could take months to sort out, the

Prime Minister came to see how the south-west's railways are coping.

The collapse of the track at Dawlish means Cornwall is currently cut off,

but Mr Cameron said he wanted to show that the region's economy is

still open for business. I am interested in making sure that

everything the government can do is being done and will go on being

done. For some industries, fixing the railway is little use.

Newquay's fishermen need a better spell of weather. There might have

been sunshine today, but stormy seas have kept them in port since

Christmas. Barry has never known anything like it in 40 years. With

fishing, you can never play catch up. A day lost is a day lost. We are

now into two months, and at least another fortnight. The crews just

are not earning any money. The Harbour Master told me that all

those who rely on the seas for their livelihood are suffering. They are

struggling financially. They cannot get on with their livelihoods. Some

mornings, I have dreaded walking into work, through fear of what I'm

going to find. The south-west is determined to get back on its feet,

but the latest forecasts are not helping.

Another government emergency meeting is just getting under way. Let's

speak to our political correspondent, Vicki Young, who's

outside that meeting in Whitehall. We have seen the Prime Minister out

and about. The allegation is his ministers are busy fighting each

other. That's right. We are told the Prime Minister will be dialling into

this latest emergency meeting from the south-west of England. He is

keen to focus on the practicalities and move away from those rows that

we saw at the weekend. The intervention from Eric Pickles

yesterday is being seen as a miscalculation, because in the

future there may be questions for the Environment Agency to answer,

but to attack them at the height of this crisis, when thousands of their

workers have been trying to sort these problems out for weeks, that

was always going to provoke a pretty furious backlash. The line from the

Prime Minister today is to focus on the job in hand. He knows that

people are seeing their businesses and homes go underwater, and the

last thing they want to hear is ministers squabbling amongst

themselves. Thank you. You can find out more about the flooding on our

website. There are updates on all BBC local radio and TV stations as

well. MPs are debating whether to ban

people in England from smoking in cars when children are present.

Hundreds of health professionals support the move, but critics say it

would be almost impossible to enforce. Our health correspondent,

Branwen Jeffreys, reports. A cigarette on the go, a dummy and a

detector in the back. This is how you measure second-hand smoke in

cars, using volunteer smokers and nonsmokers, windows closed and

windows open. The monitor picks up tiny particles in smoke. Researchers

say there's as much in cars as pubs before the smoking ban. And children

are more vulnerable. It can cause respiratory problems, things like

asthma. We know that second-hand smoke for very small children is

linked to cot death as well. The government should intervene in what

happens in your family car, but how far do you take the argument? What

about smoking in your living room or pregnant women who smoke? This

lifelong smoker is among those who is fired up by the idea of a band.

In terms of civil liberties and how far the government encroaches on

your life, there is a line, and a ban in the car is over that line. I

do believe that if the government does that, people will ignore it

because they have had enough. Parents already have two strap

younger children in safely. It has become accepted as sensible. What do

they make of the idea of a law to ban smoking in cars? If there are

children involved, you should not be allowed to smoke, it is to confine.

They do not get the choice. I do not think it should be brought into law.

The evidence is strong that it is not healthy for children to be

exposed to smoke in the car. Wales and the rest of the UK is holding

off a ban, trying to persuade families to keep their car smoke

free. Everybody will be watching how MPs vote in Westminster this

evening. Our top story this evening: Hundreds

of people are forced out of their homes along the Thames in Berkshire

as the flood waters rise. And still to come... On target or wide of the

mark? Mixed fortunes at the Olympics for the GB curling team. Later on

BBC London: Caught red-handed - we expose the pay-tv fraudsters. And

the London woman facing prison in Dubai as she's accused of

'kidnapping' her son following a custody battle.

The Home Secretary to Reza May has said she is shocked after a BBC

Panorama investigation found evidence of systematic fraud in the

student visa system. Each year, around 100,000 non-EU students get

their visas to stay in the UK extended but they must pass a

government approved English test first. But Panorama saw some

candidates for tests being replaced by "fake sitters" and others who

were simply given the answers. The Home Office has now suspended exams

set by the American company ETS. Richard Watson has this report. It

is the sort of multiple-choice test that students dream of. Unbelievably

the invigilator is simply reading out the answers. Balfour means a,

the term means he, and so on. A two hour test takes just seven minutes

to fake. Panorama has been filming undercover following a network of

crooked immigration agents who helped students extend their visas.

The Home Office rules are crystal clear. Non-EU students have to pass

an accredited exam or they do not get a Visa. Only last year we heard

of an agency in West London which could guarantee an exam pass for a

price. Our undercover researcher was told how to fall the exam board. --

fool. The agency which arranged our exam denied any wrongdoing. After

paying the agency ?500, we were sent to this approved test centre in East

London for an exam. In the exam hall, an invigilator logs into a

secure or terminal but neither she nor any of the other candidates will

have to do the test themselves. Moments before the exam starts, new

people arrived to take their places. While the fake sitters answer

questions in perfect English, the applicant stands in the aisle,

waiting to have their photo taken to show they have taken part in the

exam. A few days later, our undercover reporter got her

certificate. This agency strongly denies any complicity in the fraud

and they said that after conducting their own investigation they had not

renewed the contracts of three freelancers and had improved their

monitoring systems. The company which sets the exams told us that

they do everything they can to detect and prevent rare instances of

this happening. We showed the footage to the Home Secretary. We

have done a lot over the last three years. The number of student visas

has gone down and the number of abuses has gone down but it is clear

people are finding ways around the system. Our investigation shows that

the student Visa system is still an easy target. And you can see Richard

Watson's full report on Panorama - tonight at 8.30pm on BBC One. The

Labour leader Ed Miliband will this evening lay out his plans to improve

schools hospitals and other public services. He's expected to argue

that the public sector should be accountable to parents, patients and

anyone who uses them. Let's speak to our deputy Political Editor James

Landale who's in King's Cross where Mr Miliband is speaking later.

James. What is the message he is trying to get across? For a long

time, if you asked Labour what they would do about schools and

hospitals, you did not get a full and detailed answer. The party is

struggling with a question. How do you improve public services with no

money to spend? Mr Miliband will say that the answer is not state

intervention or more choice and competition in the way services are

delivered. He will say that there should be new mechanisms to make the

state more responsive to our needs. He will promise to give parents new

powers to send inspectors into schools and impose new standards,

and also, potentially, SAC headteachers. He will promise

automatic rights to pensioners in the decisions they make. He will

promise more information in the way we engage with the state. One

question he will not answer is the one facing all parties. How much

money will you cut from public service budgets and where will the

axe fall? It's day three of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and bronze

medallist Jenny Jones has been reflecting on her success. Yesterday

she won Great Britain's first ever Olympic medal on the snow. Today she

has become something of a media star, as Andy Swiss discovered when

he went to meet her. She is the woman that everybody wants to talk

to. Jenny Jones is in the Sochi Spotlight, the morning after the

incredible day before. The journey to Olympic bronze medallist is as

unlikely as it is unforgettable. As watched by her parents, she dazzled

her way into sporting history. Even that was trumped by the most fearful

of family reunions. This morning she told me that her mother and father

had been the key to her success. To see them come forward at the end, I

was holding it together, and then I saw my mother, and I lost it. I hope

I made them proud. How did you celebrate? I celebrated with

champagne. And a bit of dancing. In the 90 year history of the Winter

Olympics, Britain has one medals in curling and ice hockey, but never in

a snow sport, in now. How has Jenny Jones succeeded where so many have

failed? This is where she learned to snowboard. This is Somerset.

Slopestyle is about tricks and jumps. You do not need mountains for

that. It is tailor-made for the UK. You do not need snow, you just need

somebody with the ability and the gumption to slide down the slopes.

These guys train on trampolines into pits of bone. Britain had another

finalist today with Jack Welbourne and the speed skating, but this time

it did not work out. He gained a painful ankle. The next medal

celebrations are still on ice. Let's return to our main story this

evening and the flooding in much of Southern England. Duncan Kennedy is

in Wraysbury in the Thames Valley. Duncan. I am here at this home, and

this is a garden but it resembles a swimming pool. Alan, what is the

possibility of flooding in the home? We had an inch in the garden last

night when we went to bed and we woke to find this. It has been

rising all day. It is lapping around our feet, do you expect it in

tonight? I fear it will. My wife has broken her ankle and is in a

wheelchair. We will sit it out and wait for the best. You cannot move?

We cannot move, there was nowhere to go easily. You lived in Datchet

before? Have you seen anything like it? 2002 and 2007, but nothing like

this. We are hoping for the best and if someone can tell us by telephone

how long it will go... The best of luck, I hope it does not come into

night. His home is one of 900 flooded tonight. Duncan, thank you.

What does the next 24 hours hold? Time for a look at the weather.

Here's Louise Lear. There are 16 severe flood warnings for southern

England so pictures like this are a familiar sight. Severe gales are

likely through the middle of the week and in the north, it gets cold

with snow and ice around. Through this week, up till Friday, we could

see 40 to 70 millimetres. Unfortunately, this will intensify

the risk of flooding. Evening showers perhaps posing a risk for

icy stretches in the North. More cloud, wind and rain is gathering in

the West and that will gather at quite apace. A relatively quiet but

cold start for Northern Ireland with showers to come. There will be snow

on the hills of Scotland with rain towards the coast. Some rain towards

East Wales. Some could be quite heavy. It is rattling through at

quite apace with the 50 mile proud gusts of winds. The East of England

will be dry but it will not last and by the middle of the morning, the

rain will push in. Behind the rain, drier and brighter weather follows

in behind, just a few isolated showers. We may see wet snow at

lower levels as the cold day continues in the North. So, shower

risks, icy patches likely on Tuesday night and into Wednesday. This low

pressure moves in and brings a longer spell of heavy rain and

severe winds with amber warnings already out for the south-west.

Thank you. That's all from the BBC News at Six so it's goodbye from me,

and on BBC One we