20/12/2016 North West Tonight

of the German flag in tribute to those who lost their lives

A judge has agreed that a seriously injured Merseyside police officer

PC Paul Briggs suffered catastrophic brain injuries in a motorcycle crash

last year that left him unable to speak or move.

His wife argued that her husband would not wish to live in this way

and wants life support treatment to end.

Our Chief Reporter, Dave Guest, was in court.

Paul Briggs was a respected police officer and much-loved

family man and husband, but his wife made the most painful

decision of her life when she begged the judge to let him die.

PC Briggs suffered serious brain injuries when he was involved

in a crash while travelling to work on his motorcycle in July, 2015.

He is currently if is in what is known as 'minimally

He can't speak or move and is being kept alive by food

His wife, Lindsey, told the court in Manchester that her husband had

always been clear that he would not want to remain alive in such

She asked a judge to order the doctors to stop administering

nutrition and hydration, but doctors from The Walton Centre,

where he is being cared for, objected, as did

the Official Solicitor - a Government funded lawyer

who speaks on behalf of those who can't speak for themselves.

They argued Paul's condition might improve at some future date,

but they accepted he would always be severely disabled.

Today, here in London, Mr Justice Charles

It ran to 48 pages, but the nub of it was

If Paul Briggs could speak for himself, he would say he did not

want the doctors to carry on feeding him.

He ordered that they should stop and should make arrangements for him

to be transferred to a hospice where he could be

Mrs Briggs wasn't in court today, but her solicitor

We are grateful that Mr Justice Charles has shown

compassion towards Paul and respected his wishes and values

and has understood what Paul would have has wanted.

But this may not be the end of the matter.

The Official Solicitor has indicated he may well

If that happens, all agree it should happen quickly

because until the outcome of any appeal is known, today's

Sir Mark Hedley was a judge at the Court of Protection.

He is now retired, but earlier I asked him how judges make

Well, the law is actually quite simple because it requires

you to make a decision in the person's best interests.

Then what amounts to someone's best interests is a hugely wide subject

which varies dramatically from case to case.

The idea really is that you try to get to know the person

about whom you are making a decision, you try to understand

the decision that they would have made had they been able to do

so and, provided you think that's in their best interests,

One would imagine that when you are making a decision

like this, that is the hardest job that you can ever do.

I mean, intellectually of course, it's not all that difficult

because the law is not all that difficult, but there is such a huge

amount at stake and that people have vast emotional investment in these

cases for entirely good reason, they are very pressurised

Have there ever been occasions where that you have

laid in bed and thought, "Have I made the right decision?",

I agonise about these cases until I've made the decision.

I have then rather learned to switch off after that.

I mean, I can still think about the case, but it

won't trouble me provided I feel I have given my best shot to it.

If people make lasting powers of attorney, then they can't give

these decision-making powers to their families,

but very few people do and, at the end of the day,

the views of the family and the carers are one of the things

that the judge has to take into account, albeit

A company which employed stuntmen for public displays has been fined

?100,000 after a man died performing as a human cannonball.

Matthew Cranch, originally from the Isle of Man,

suffered fatal injuries in front of hundreds of spectators.

These pictures were recorded moments before Matthew Cranch was fired

from the mouth of a cannon at the Kent County

The safety net that should have broken his fall gave way,

He died from his injuries in hospital.

Today his boss, Scott May of Stunts UK, was sentenced in Maidstone

after admitting breaches of health and safety.

The court heard that a mechanism that triggered the release

of the safety net hadn't been set properly.

The company's health and safety was, according

Mr Cranch had performed the stunt only five times previously and had

joined the team only a month before his death.

Matthew's parents were in court as a Victim Impact Statement

was read, describing Matthew as an intelligent, happy young man.

Today's sentencing is about bringing justice for Matthew.

We will always be grateful and thankful for his love and the time

His company was still in business, but the human cannonball stunt

I think what we can learn from a case like this

is that the health and safety laws apply not just to companies

and to individuals, but also to directors of companies

and if those directors are found to have fallen short of the mark,

then they can expect to be prosecuted, as well as the company.

Scott May was sentened to 150 hours of unpaid work as part

Police patrols at Manchester's Christmas markets are being

increased in response to last night's terror attack in Berlin.

The force say there's no intelligence about a threat,

but are mounting a bigger visible police presence.

A planned strike by airport baggage handlers later this week

More than 300 members of the Unite union working for Swissport

at Manchester Airport were due to walk out on Friday

and Christmas Eve in a dispute over pay and conditions.

The strike has been called off following talks

Credit card firm MBNA, which has its European

headquarters in Chester, has been bought by Lloyds

Lloyds has said MBNA would retain its own branding.

Chester's MP says he hopes the deal won't lead to job losses,

as Lloyds needs to make savings of ?100 million.

School dinners have long been a topic of conversation,

something we all have memories of, but today's Christmas lunch

at a school in Stockport was literally rubbish!

All the ingredients were unsold supermarket food,

Instead, they were turned into a festive meal for students.

This is not just any succulent chicken Christmas dinner.

Crispy roast potatoes and fine green beans.

This is all waste supermarket food - failed deliveries collected last

night and brought here early this morning for pupils to prepare.

This food is in date, there is absolutely nothing wrong

Cate Bauer and Nikki Pope are passionate about reusing food.

This was their wedding in Manchester in June.

They served waste food up to their guests, who loved it.

Helped by the Real Junk Food Project, they're now doing the same

The kids have been involved throughout the whole day,

and also their eyes are being opened to what is wrong with

these vegetables - and what is wrong with it?

It's quite sad because there was nothing wrong with

It looks nice and there are people who are really hungry out there.

After hours of preparation, it's time to serve the food up

It's obviously something that's very important to us at Ramillies.

It's the kind of thing we teach our children

to care for one another, care for the environment,

so taking up this project was an ideal opportunity,

The big question - how does it taste?

In tastes really good and, like, so delicious.

It tasted like you would have got it fresh out of the supermarket.

This is the first time that waste food has been served in a North-West

The hope is it has been so successful today,

that lots of other schools will follow suit.

The proof here is in the clean plates.

This may be waste food, but the students aren't

Now Quidditch, the game born on the pages of JK

Rowling's Harry Potter novels where two teams fly around

on broomsticks to try and score goals through hoops,

has now been developed into a terra firma version.

It's officially been recognised as a sport and is being played

Storm Barbara is on its way. Good evening to you. We saw some sunshine

around today. It is the calm before the storm because on the anniversary

of Storm Desmond, storm Barbara is on the way. It is not about the

rain. Last year, December was very wet, this year it has been dried. It

is the strength of wind that Barbara will bring, gusting up to 70 miles

an hour. What we have now is a line of rain creeping across us over the

last few hours. Over the next couple of hours the rain will continue. The

radar is not reading as much as is a chilly around -- as his really

around. Temperatures will ball away. It might get down to 2 degrees for a

short while. It will be 5 degrees to start the day. This line array will

work its way through in the morning, clearing into the afternoon,

followed by brighter skies. The top temperature will be seven or 8

degrees. Some sunshine tomorrow afternoon. Just a reminder, Friday

country it's worth knowing the national forecast. Over now to

Tomasz. So, the weather's going to blow a

few cobwebs away in the coming days and maybe a few other things, as

well. How stormy is it going to get? For most of us probably not too