27/02/2014 BBC Wales Today

Welcome to Wales Today. Our top stories. He was killed by the IRA in

Hyde Park. Tonight his brother tells us he'll never get justice after the

man accused of the bombing walks free.

I just believe that is an end to it. We will never bring his killers to

justice. Also tonight, the bitter row engulfing Carmarthenshire

Council after damning reports by the spending watchdog. The leadership

under scrutiny after claims they acted unlawfully over money given to

their chief executive. acted unlawfully over money given to

areas have received billions of pounds from the EU since 2000, so

why hasn't the economy caught-up with the rest of Britain? Charging a

new revolution in electric cars. Why so few of them are on our roads.

Good evening. In tonight's sport. Will Swansea's European adventure

take them past Napoli tonight? We'll have the latest from Italy live.

Good evening. The family of a Welsh soldier killed in an IRA attack fear

they'll "never get justice" after a legal blunder meant the alleged

bomber has walked free. 19-year-old Corporal Jeffrey Young from

Tonyrefail was killed in the 1982 Hyde Park blast. Today

Tonyrefail was killed in the 1982 Minister David Cameron has ordered a

judge-led review into the matter. Nick Palit reports.

July 1982 and the community of Tonyrefail are out in force to

honour one of the four soldiers killed in the IRA bomb attack in

London's Hyde Park. Corporal Jeffrey Young from the Household Cavalry was

19 when he died. Seven days later he was buried with full military

honours on his 20th birthday. He left behind a wife, two daughters,

and a devastated family. We were all very proud of him. More than 30

years on, his brother Vincent still has vivid memories of the day his

brother was killed by the IRA. He was -- it was like a blur. We

travelled to London. You could not see him because he was just

mummified in bandages. And then the next day, he died. John Downey was

due to stand trial at the Old Bailey for his part in the Hyde Park

bombing. He denied the charges and the trial was halted after his legal

team claimed he'd been issued with an official letter that gave

assurances that he wouldn't been tried. That had been part of the

Good Friday Peace Agreement. Now a political row is brewing over the

existence of these secret letters. We were not the only people who knew

about this, that the information about this was actually in the

political about this was actually in the

extent, within the public domain. Today Prime Minister David Cameron

ordered a judge led inquiry in to the letters. The Neath MP Peter

Hain, who was the Northern Ireland Secretary for part of the time when

the letters were issued, defended the practice. It was a completely

lawful process and I think the victims who have suffered such

terrible trauma over the last few days with all sorts of accusations

being flung around, as if there has been something sordid or full on, I

think they need to be reassured that this was perfectly lawful. Back in

Wales, Jeffrey Young's family view news of the judge led inquiry with

cynicism. I just believe that is an end to it. We will never bring his

killers to justice. We were all very proud of him, all the family.

killers to justice. We were all very ended up burying him on his 20th

birthday. It was very sad. "We're sorry - we made mistakes."

That's the message from the leadership of Carmarthenshire

council tonight after they voted to accept the recommendations of the

Wales Audit Office report that pension payments to its chief

executive Mark James were unlawful. Pembrokeshire council, which was

also criticised over their payments, has already agreed to accept the

report. Abigail Neal has more. Inside these four walls, a debate

has been raging all day. Councillors came to take their seats and with

the meeting broadcast over the web, some argued the scandal surrounding

their chief executive had seriously damage the council 's reputation.

This council 's name has been dragged through the mud. The chief

executive is no longer at his desk, members are each other's throats,

valuable time has been wasted and redirected away from what we are

here to do, provide quality services. Today's event stem from a

report about cash given in view of employer pension contributions to

the Chief Executive 's of Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire

Council, Mark James and Bryn Parry Jones. The report stated that cash

payments were unlawful. It also said a separate decision to pay for Mr

James' legal fight against a blogger was also unlawful. Carmarthenshire

Council spent more than ?26,000 helping him pursue a libel

counterclaim for comments made in a blog. On the issue of pensions, the

council admitted they were wrong. I am man enough to say sorry to anyone

who has been upset by it. But we have learned from it. You do not

always get everything right. The decision to cover the legal costs

was trickier. But in the end, they voted to accept the auditor 's

recommendations and agreed they would not do it again. The council

has accepted the recommendations in both reports. That is an end of it

from my point of view. It is not the end of it for the council. They have

some things to look at and we will be monitoring that very closely. A

Plaid Cymru Welsh and of no-confidence field.

Abigail is at the council's headquarters tonight. Does this

bring the issue to an end? It would seem so. Essentially what we saw

today was the first opportunity of the full council to question their

leadership about this issue of pension payments and legal payments

to their Chief Executive. And although we heard lengthy

discussions from the council 's executive board about why they did

it, and that they were acting in good faith, it came down in the end

to a straight vote, do we accept what the Wales audit say -- Wales

Audit Office say or do we risk owing to court? By voting to accept the

recommendations, the auditor has confirmed it is the end of it from

his point of view. And what about this motion of no confidence? It is

not too surprising that the Plaid Cymru motion did not go through.

Although they are the largest party in this council, in a Labour

independent coalition, they do not hold the majority of the vote.

Although they did not get this motion of no-confidence, it can be

said that they did the leadership a bloody nose because what has come

out of this now is a recommendation to establish a cross-party group to

look at governance within this council and certainly the leadership

of Plaid Cymru tonight are saying they are happy with that. They are

hoping this will improve decisions taken here and the way those

decisions are made. A deputy head teacher from Cardiff, who has

previously admitted secretly filming children in a toilet, has appeared

in court charged with 48 further offences. 47-year-old Gareth

Williams, who's been suspended from his job at Ysgol Glantaf, faces 12

further counts of voyeurism, six of which relate to the school. He also

faces charges of making and possessing indecent images of

children. He was remanded in custody.

A drug to treat people with alcohol dependence has been approved by the

NHS here. Wales has followed Scotland by giving the go ahead to

Nalmefene, which has been shown to more than halve the amount people

drink, when used alongside psychological support. It's thought

the drug could help some of the 140,000 people with alcohol

dependence in Wales. The drug hasn't been approved in

England yet. The leader of Anglesey council has

voiced his objection to a merger with Gwynedd Council. He told

members of the full council he would not accept a voluntary merger with

the neighbouring authority, as was proposed in a

council reorganisation. A man from Bridgend has been found

guilty of murdering his wife by strangling her with a dog lead.

Asiah Newton was found in the bedroom of her home in Pencoed last

July. Cardiff Crown court heard that she told Kelvin Newton she wanted a

divorce after meeting another man on holiday in Tunisia.

The Prime Minister has been meeting Conservative AMs in Downing Street

amid tensions within the party over its devolution policy. The meeting

takes place two weeks after the Welsh Tory leader, Andrew RT Davies,

sacked four members of his shadow cabinet for rebelling over the

transfer of income tax powers. Live now to Downing Street, and our

parliamentary correspondent, David Cornock.

What brings you here? Jobs, prosperity. Not a crisis summit?

What crisis? David, no crisis summit, so what did

they find it awkward? This was a long planned annual meeting beast we

need Prime Minister and his Assembly Members but in politics, as in

comedy, timing is everything and it follows the fallout from the shadow

cabinet reshuffle and also differences between Andrew Arty

Davis and the Secretary of State for Wales, David Jones. Their body

language suggests that those differences may go rather deeper

than the minutiae of fiscal devolution. There have been

questions from Downing Street in the run-up to this summit today, trying

to find out just what it led to, the departure of those four Cabinet

ministers -- shadow cabinet ministers. And the tensions between

the party in Wales and Westminster. I asked one Assembly Member, when is

your leader? And she replied, which one? That gets to the heart of their

recent problems. Andrew Davies and David Jones went into the meeting

separately with their various entourages but they emerged as one.

They gave a rare joint interview, this is what they said. We actually

have not got any differences. The position is, the draft Wales Bill

has been published and that is the form which the Bill will proceed.

The Welsh select committee is reporting tomorrow and we will look

carefully at the recommendations. A policy we have announced is party

policy and I think we are agreed on that. This is a positive meeting, a

meeting of Assembly Members and the Secretary of State, and the Prime

Minister, everyone making sure there is a strong conservative voice for

Wales. That was a positive meeting we just had. The focus was very much

on jobs, concern about those jobs at the refinery in Milford Haven, the

prospect of rail electrification and no one, apparently, mentioned those

sacked shadow cabinet members. You're watching Wales Today. Stay

with us. Plenty still ahead. Swansea on the scoresheet. We will have the

latest from Italy. And there's a mixture of rain, sleet

and snow on the way tonight. Snow for some of us, but not everywhere.

Stay tuned for a full forecast. Dwr Cymru Welsh Water has been

criticised for releasing higher than permitted levels of sewage into a

river in Wrexham. The company has been fined ?15,000 for deliberately

discharging waste into the River Clywedog when its overflow tanks

were full. It's the fifth time in the last five months the firm has

been prosecuted for failings at its sewage plants in North Wales.

Matthew Richards reports. Five Fords Sewage Treatment Plant

receives waste from across Wrexham, including the town's main industrial

estate. But following an audit by Natural Resources Wales, it emerged

that more raw sewage was being released into a nearby river than it

should. That's because its overflow tanks were full and an operational

decision was taken to pump the excess waste out.

decision was taken to pump the is the river, which is a tributary

of the River Dee. Because drinking water is taken from the River Dee,

the water here is readily monitored and it was when samples were taken

from here in July 2012 at higher than normal levels of ammonium while

found. The levels were still within acceptable standards and there were

no ill effects on wildlife or people. But fining the company

?15,000 today the chairman of Wrexham magistrates said there was a

significant risk of harm. Dwr Cymru Welsh water runs 800 sewage

treatment plants like this one in Cardiff, fed by 19,000 kilometres of

sewer. Since the period in question ?23 million of improvements have

been made at the Five Fords plant to reduce the risk of a similar

incident. We have invested heavily at this plant in Wrexham in order to

high standards and this was a breach high standards and this was a breach

of consent on a technicality. It had no But Natural Resources Wales has

criticised Dwr Cymru Welsh Water for a series of failings at other sewage

works in North Wales. Impact on customers nor the environment. This

is the fifth prosecution of the company here, and the most serious.

We work with them, as we do with any commercial company, to make sure

that they operate within the law and the environmental permits that they

have God. This is not the first time we have been in this situation. The

court heard how Natural Resources Wales weren't informed of the

company's decision to discharge the extra waste and the firm has

apologised for its failures in communication behind the case.

A key measure of economic performance from the European Union

suggests that Wales has fallen further behind the average of the

European Union. That is despite the country receiving billions of pounds

worth of funding from Brussels to help the economy. Our political

reporter Dan Davis joins me now. We have been on the slide since the

middle of the last decade. In other words, before the financial crisis,

before the recession. What we are looking at is and assessment of how

the economy is in the nations and regions perform and the European

Union uses those figures to decide on funding. It is basically an

assessment on standard of living. If you imagine the average is 100%, we

can see who is above and below that line. In Wales in the year 2000, we

were 85% of the average. That went up to 90% over the next couple of

years but by 2011, it had come back down to 74%. We are looking in

particular at West Wales and the valleys. That region cover is --

covers pretty much most of Wales. The same story again, raising

towards the middle of the decade but then going straight back down.

Since the year 2000, Wales has had just over ?4 billion worth of aid

from the European Union. As it happens, I was in Strasbourg this

week covering a meeting of the European Parliament where I met the

European Commissioner in charge of regional policy, in charge of all

this funding, and this is what he had to say. It is difficult to

assess but certainly the situation would be much worse result in the

structural funds, so I would that the structural fund

contribution has mitigated the problems of the crisis and I think

this is the message we have to pass. Not everyone agrees with that

assessment. Get bed is a vocal critic of the way this money has

been spent. He says the money has been wasted. Leanne Wood has said

there needs to be a review of this funding. The Welsh Government says

this data is from 2011. More recent data shows that the economy in Wales

is moving on the right track. When this funding was first announced, it

was announced as a once in a generation opportunity. We have had

a once in a generation recession since then. The question is has that

undone the work of all that money? Car manufacturers are producing more

of them. The Government is offering us grants to buy them, so why are

there so few electric cars on our roads? There are moves to get more

of us in Wales to switch from petrol engines to electric powered

vehicles. Opponents say the technology is still too expensive.

But converts say electric cars bring environmental and economic benefits.

Iolo ap Dafydd reports. If you use motorway service

stations, you may have seen one of these, Japanese car manufacturing

Nissan and renewable energy company have paid to install them. There are

eight electric charge points along the M4 in South Wales. The ambition

is to have them on main roads all over Britain within two years. We

will have done 250 motorway charge points by the end of next year. How

long will it be be for you can drive 50 miles, 60 miles, in any part of

Britain and you could come across a charging point like this? Maybe two

years from now. Currently power at motorway plug-in points is free. The

National trust in Wales is also keen to expand the number of charging

points. They have 26 plug-in sockets at their main site and another ten

will be installed next month. There are 28 million vehicles in Britain

but despite a government grant of up to ?5,000 to help pay for a new

electric car, sales have not yet taken off. There is an increase,

almost 3800 grants given out last year. David Walker is a convert. The

book price is 28,000 but with the ?5,000 grant from the government and

the dealers that are quite keen to get the ball rolling on selling

electric cars, you can get another reduction of maybe 3000. You are

down towards 20,000. If you wanted to hire the batteries in

down towards 20,000. If you wanted rather than buy them out right, that

reduces it again by another ?5,000. Inside, the car is much quieter than

ordinary vehicles. David also has a petrol car but loses this -- uses

this car locally. We are in a rural area. Finding a charging point could

be a problem. But as people see more electric cars on the road, people

will start putting charging points in their own garages. According to a

website, there are around 50 charging points in Wales. But with

more than 1.7 million vehicles on our roads, there has been a modest

increase in vehicles powered electrically in the past six years.

People are not flocking to buy them and the reason is they are still

relatively expensive to purchase, even with the subsidy. They do not

know how much the money they will get for them when they go to sell

them second-hand. It seems until petrol prices increased radically,

we are not queueing up to buy electric cars just yet. Swansea City

hoping to make a bit of history tonight. Here's Claire with

tonight's sport. How are they doing? Good evening. So far, so good. Yes,

it's half time on Swansea City's biggest night in Europe. They're

looking to progress through to the last 16 of the Europa league. It was

all square after the first leg, which ended goalless. Tonight

they're in Napoli's own backyard. They kicked off at 6pm. Both sides

have had their opportunities but the breakthrough came for the home side

on 20 minutes. They have had more chances but Swansea got their

equaliser. And that is how chances but Swansea got their

half ended. Let's go live to Naples now and hear from our football

correspondent Rob Phillips, who is commentating on the game for BBC

Radio Wales. Yes, it is advantage Swansea City at

the moment because they have scored this away goal. The first leg a week

ago was goalless, any away score draw would be good enough for

Swansea City. Effectively, they are 45 minutes plus injury time from a

place in the last 16. That would be absolutely historic. And they have

played really well. It has been a terrific game. Yes, Natalie got the

opening goal but Swansea equalised and Wilfried Bony is causing all

sorts of problems. There are more goals in this. We have just seen a

Swansea goal again. Garry Monk is a man with a lot on his mind at the

moment. A huge night for the club. His fiancee is due to have twins at

any minute. Does he look extra energy? No, he looks fine. We were

talking to him about it as we travelled over and he said, she

understands that the job he has to do... I think they are due on

Tuesday but if we are nervous now, imagine what it will be like in 45

minutes' time. I hope his wife is coping fine. Garry Monk is otherwise

engaged at the moment. coping fine. Garry Monk is otherwise

second half. You can listen to the match live on BBC radio Wales. We

will bring you all the goals in the late bulletin. Cardiff captain

Steven Caulker has been named in England 's 30 man squad for their

friendly against Denmark at Wembley next Wednesday. Caulker last

featured for England in the game with Sweden in November 2012 when he

scored a goal on his debut. The 22-year-old is one of eight

defenders in the named in the squad today. Welsh hopes at the Wales Open

Snooker in Newport remain solely on the shoulders of former World

Champion Mark Williams. The 39-year-old caused an upset

yesterday knocking world number one Neil Robertson out of the

tournament. Williams, who's now 18th in the world is back in action

tonight, taking on Marco Fu. His match starts at 7pm and you can

catch it over on BBC Two Wales. At the World Track Cycling

Championships in Columbia, Elinor Barker is hoping to match the

success of Becky James in the women's Pursuit Team later. Great

Britain are favourite to win gold. James won a bronze medal in the Team

Sprint last night, matching her performance last year. The

22-year-old from Abergavenny is also defending two individual titles.

Let's get the forecast now. And snow on the way for some of us, Derek.

For some of us, yes, but not all. Don't get too excited. At the

moment, the greatest risk of snow will be in upland areas of south

Wales tonight and tomorrow morning. The Brecon Beacons could see five to

10cm. Two to four inches of snow. Low lying areas will have plain

rain. This evening dry for a while but heavy rain will spread into

south then Mid Wales overnight. Ten to 20mm of rain likely with snow on

higher ground above 300m. 1000 feet. Northern counties should stay dry.

Lowest temperatures zero to four Celsius. Here's the picture for 8am.

A mix of rain and sleet and snow in the southeast. Snow on higher

ground. Could be a bit tricky on some high level roads for a time.

Further north and west dry. No more than the odd shower. Feeling chilly

with a northerly breeze. During the rest of the morning the rain, sleet

and snow in the south-east will clear leaving a better afternoon.

Dry and brightening up with some sunshine. Feeling a bit chilly. Top

temperatures six to eight Celsius with a north-westerly breeze. Colder

on high ground. In Heads of the Valleys, sleet and snow will clear.

The afternoon dry and feeling cold. In Radnorshire tomorrow dry with a

high of six in Rhayader. Tomorrow night one or two showers

high of six in Rhayader. Tomorrow dry and cold. Mist and fog patches,

frost and a risk of ice. The forecast for Saturday is not clear

cut. At the moment, I'd go for some dry weather. Bright in places too

once any morning fog lifts. Perhaps some rain Saturday evening. Sunday

some dry weather and sunshine but rain is expected by the evening. The

wind picking up as well with snow on high ground. In the meantime, a

wintry mix of heavy rain, sleet and snow tonight and tomorrow morning

for mid Wales and the south. Most of the snow on the Brecon Beacons.

Becoming dry and brightening up tomorrow afternoon. This winter is

the mildest since 2007, but we're in for a chilly start to March.

Thank you very much. A reminder of the top stories. A jumping

immigration and a dropping people leaving the UK has dealt another

blow to David Cameron 's pledge to slash net migration to the tens of

thousands. The latest net migration figures have risen by more than a

third. The family of a Welsh soldier killed

in an IRA attack fear they will never get justice after a legal

blunder meant the alleged bomber has walked free. Corporal Jeffrey Young

was killed in the 1982 Hyde Park blast. Tonight, his brother

criticise the events that led to John Downey 's trial collapsing.

criticise the events that led to You can listen to Swansea 's Europa

League Eamonn Radio Wales.