06/02/2013 BBC News at Ten

Tonight at Ten: Hundreds of recommendations following one of

the greatest scandals in the history of the NHS. A public

inquiry into the failings at Stafford Hospital calls for

profound changes to culture and management of the NHS. This is a

story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people.

They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put

corporate self interest and cost control ahead of patients and their

safety. But the victims' families insist

that individuals should be held accountable for the many failings.

We are looking still for resignations. We've lost hundreds

of lives. People have got to be held accountable within the NHS.

And during the day, another five English hospital trusts were placed

under investigation. Also tonight: A big fine for RBS

for fixing a key interest rate, mostly paid by bankers' bonuses.

More turmoil in Tunisia - a leading opposition figure is killed and a

new government is formed. The practice of throwing away fish

because of European quotas is to end under new reforms.

And a rare victory over mighty Good evening. The public inquiry

into failings at Stafford Hospital has called for profound changes to

the culture and management of the NHS. The report makes almost 300

recommendations, including a "zero tolerance" approach to poor

standards of patient care. But the families of the victims say that

today's report doesn't go far enough, as our health correspondent,

Branwen Jeffreys, reports. In simple words this, report laid bare

the shame of Stafford Hospital, where public trust was betrayed,

appalling suffering was caused by a lack of care, compassion, humanity

and leadership, and a callous tolerance of poor standards led

patients to suffer. They were failed by a system which ignored

the warning signs and put corporate self interest and cost control

ahead of patients and their safety. So what went wrong at Stafford?

These patients suffering happened over several years. Their families'

anger and distress ignored by hospital managers. George Dalyell

was grossly neglected after an operation. Not washed or fed

properly, and most shocking of all given no proper pain relief.

epidural had been sited in the wrong place. He was having swollen

legs, swollen feet from it. Eventually the anaesthetist came up,

took him off the epidural and was giving him paracetamol. So for the

whole of the time he was in Stafford Hospital he didn't have

any pain relief whatsoever. Some staff did try to sound the alarm,

but too many just accepted poor standards. The board of the

hospital was obsessed with money and targets, complaints were hardly

ever discussed. And right to the top of the NHS, there was a failure

to put the quality of care above all else. With terrible

consequences in Stafford. There were patients so desperate for

water that they were drinking from dirty flower vases. Many were given

the wrong medication, treated roughly or left to wet themselves

and then lie in urine for days. Relatives were ignored or even

reapproached when pointing out the most basic things that could have

saved their loved ones from horrific pain or even death. On

behalf of the Government and indeed our country, I'm truly sorry.

policy or Minister was singled out for criticism in the report, but

the scandal at Stafford was while Labour was in power, and Ed

Miliband said today they were truly sorry for what happened. The

recommendations of the public inquiry are for significant changes.

A legal duty of candour, so a hospital has to explain if mistakes

are made. Criminal prosecutions if a failure to meet standards leads

to patients dying. A healthcare assistant's register so no-one will

care for you who isn't trained. And a single regulator for healthcare

to make sure no failure goes unnoticed. So who is to blame? The

families asked that today. The report says scapegoats are

pointless, but campaigners want David Nicholson, the top manager in

the NHS, to resign. Sadly the chief executive of the NHS, who is the

leader at the moment, has failed badly. That will send a big signal

if he continues in his role to the NHS - carry on the way we've been

going all along that. Man can't change all of a sudden and become a

caring man who looks after the front line and looks after our NHS.

He's failed and he needs to resign. Sir David Nicholson led the NHS in

the Midlands just as the problems at Stafford, one of ne'er hospitals,

were developing. He went on the lead the drive on targets and

finance. Today he apologised and insisted he can lead a changing

culture. I think I can begin to hopeful understand what the impact

of that was on their loved ones. And I at the time I apologised and

in a sense I apologise again to the people of Stafford for what

happened, but apologies are not enough. We need action. More

experienced nurses and a stronger emphasis on care. Stafford Hospital

says it has learnt its lessons, but as this report makes clear, the NHS

across England needs to do the same. From nurses on the ward to those

leading our biggest public service. Branwen joins me now. Let's talk

about the recommendations, nearly 300 of them. What's your thought on

implementation and when that might happen? The Government talked a lot

today about the steps it is taking to try to put the quality of care

above everything else. But we don't get its detailed response to this

enormous 4,000-page report for another month. And only then will

we find out whether they are going to go for some of the big ideas in

this report. Damien Francis was really clear. He said what happened

at Stafford wasn't rare, it wasn't unique and no-one should try to use

that as an argument to say that significant a wasn't needed. He

talked about the need to transform an NHS which sometimes has been

secretive and defensive into a health system that can be open,

transparent and can learn from its mistakes. Given that you are

talking about restoring confidence, what do you make of the fact that

foot another five hospitals were put under investigation today?

these five hospital trusts there were slightly higher than average

death rates. The trusts are Colchester Hospital, Tameside

Hospital, Blackpool teaching hospitals trust, Basildon and

Thurrock hospitals and east Lancashire hospitals. Just to be

clear, experts describe death rates higher than average as a smoke

alarm. It may not mean there's anything wrong at the hospital but

it means they should be investigated, and that is going to

happen. Branwen, thank you. And there's more coverage and

background on the Stafford inquiry Royal Bank of Scotland has been

fined nearly �400 million by British and American regulators for

its part in rigging a key interest rate. The bank, which is 80% owned

by the British taxpayer, says most of the staff implicated in the

scandal have either left RBS or been sacked. Most of the fine will

be paid from bankers' bonuses, as our chief economics correspondent,

Hugh Pym, reports. Royal Bank of Scotland, it is majority owned by

us, the taxpayers. It to was fined �390 manage. Much of that will be

paid for by RBS staff through reduced bonuses. One wos has --

boss has quit without the bonuses he was entitled to, though he

wasn't involved in the scandal. What happened at RBS and other

banks is totally unacceptable. At my insistence the bankers, not the

taxpayers, will pick up the bit. Those people who did wrong will

face the full force of the law. LIBOR is a key interest rate used

as a benchmark for many consumer and business loans had. Traders at

RBS and other banks tried to manipulate the information it was

based on for profit. Today's ruling included details of messages passed

Last year Barclays was fined �290 million over LIBOR issues and UBS

more than three times that at nearly �1 billion. RBS says 21 of

its staff were involved. They've either quit, been fired or have

been disciplined. The wrong doers are the ones that we need to focus

on, and the culture and controls and inheritance of RBS and of our

whole industry need to be changed. We are changing them. The job's not

done. Regulators have found that the misconduct relating to LIBOR

continued until 2010. You came on board in late 2008. Have you

considered your position? I think it is important that all of us at

the top - the chairman, the board, me, other members of management -

must be held accountable for the totality of what we do. If we are a

wrongdoer an open and shut case. If we are not involved in something

and it goes right or wrong on our watch, you look at the totality.

Regulators said RBS was slow to react. Clearly a taxpayer-owned

bank should be upholding the highest possible standards in

integrity and clearly RBS has significantly failed in relation to

this case. The LIBOR saga certainly doesn't end here at RBS.Self ral

other leading international banks are still being investigated by

regulators and there could be a string of legal cases mounted by

customers of the banks who allege they lost out because of interest

rate manipulation. With City of London Police having arrested three

people last year, the possibility of criminal prosecutions is still

hanging over the bank industry. Tunisia is again in political

turmoil two years after the protests which marked the start of

the Arab Spring. Thousands of people have taken to the streets

following the murder of a senior opposition figure, Chokri Belaid, a

prominent critic of the Islamist- led government. In Tunis, there

have been more clashes between protesters and police, and tonight

the country's Prime Minister has called for new elections, as our

special correspondent, Allan Little, It is the country's first political

assassination since the revolution and instantly it has exposed

entrenched divisions and powerful distrust.

Crowds of opposition supporters gathered at the Interior Ministry

and tried to storm the building. They blaipltd Islamist-led

government. -- they blamed. These are the streets which brought

down the dictatorship only two years ago. Eye witnesses said when

the police responded there was panic and chaos. All we could see

was tear gas, people running all over the place. Police tried to

absorb the anger of the demonstrators, but they just

couldn't watch people throwing stones at them.

Chokri Belaid was the leader of a small secular party and a fierce

critic of the largest party in the governing coalition. He was shot

dead by a man on meator bike as he left home this morning. Ennahda

denied any involvement. It is unlikely to satisfy the dead

man's supporters, who say he had he received repeated death threats,

the last only yesterday. It is just over a year since Tunisia

celebrated a genuinely open election. That election made

Tunisia something of a beacon, the first functioning democracy to

emerge from the Arab uprisings and n inspiration to the entire region.

The Islamist Ennahda party emerged as the largest group, but without

an overall majority but promised moderation and can he prison in a

secular multi-party republic. It seemed Tunisia was finding a which

to accommodate constitutional democracy with Islamic

sensibilities. Will today's assassination derail the democracy?

I don't think it is the end of the democratic dream. This is the most

difficult process of the change. As the new political system is being

put together, the new constitution, the divisions between where the

country is going, who would hold political power, there is a lot of

man overing between political parties but things are heading in

the right direction. Even so this, would put fear into the heart of

Tunisia's political life. Tonight the Prime Minister dissolved the

country's coalition cabinet and called new elections. It is a

sobering reminder that even this post most promising, most hopeful

of Arab democracies, remains a work in progress. Police are

investigating the death of an elderly woman who was left without

care in her own home for nine days. Gloria Foster from Surrey died

earlier this week after being found suffering from dehydration and

starvation. Her care stopped when the provider was closed down in a

raid by the UK Border Agency. Two men have been arrested in

connection with allegations of child abuse at a guesthouse in

south-west London during the early 1980s. Police are investigating

claims made in Parliament last year that a paedophile group, involving

politicians and other establishment figures, abused boys on the prep

iss. Our Home Affairs correspondent, Matt Prodger has more details.

It was here in St Leonards-on-Sea that police investigating

allegation of an historic paedophile ring made their first

arrest A7 0-year-old former children's homeworker, John

Stingmore was taken away for questioning.

A 66-year-old priest, father Tony McSweeney was arrested in Norfolk.

A statement from the Diocese of East Anglia said he was helping

police with his inquiries. It comes three months after a Labour MP

stood newspaper Parliament to demand an investigation between

allegations of links between politicians in the 1980s and a

network of paedophiles. At the heart was this man, Peter Righton,

now dead. He was a senior advisor to children's charities before

being convicted of importing child pornography in the 1980 Since I

asked a question about an historic allegation of child abuse in the

House of Commons, I was inundated with people who raised further

issues with me and this is one of the issues I passed over to the

police some weeks ago. investigation is focusing on what

happened in this south London street 30 years ago. It's claimed

children from a care home were abused at a guesthouse here, until

it was closed down following a police raid. The current residents

are in no way implicated. The care home the children came from was run

by Richmond Council and closed long ago, to be replaced by flats. John

Stingmore, arrested today, helped run it. The election into Elm Guest

House is still continuing. Detectives at Scotland Yard say

they want to hear from more victims who may have information. They are

asking them to contact the police or the NSPCC.

Coming up: Gordon Strachan's rein as Scotland

manager got off to a winning start tonight.

-- reign. Government borrowing looks set to

reach even higher levels and could be greater this year than it was

last year according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In a

rather bleak assessment of the UK's public finance, the IFS suggests

after the next election, public service spending could fall by one-

third, leading to the loss of more than 1 million public sector jobs.

Stephanie Flanders has been looking at the figures. The economy and the

deficit. The Chancellor's been trying to fix both since 2010 and

neither's going according to plan. The weak state of the economy means

the Chancellor's going to be borrowing �64 billion, nearly 4% of

GDP, more in the last year of the Parliament than he originally

thought. That's extra borrowing that the Institute for Fiscal

Studies isn't expecting the Chancellor to do anything about in

next month's budget, which might be wise in a flat economy, but the

report says the decision to ease up on plan A will lead more tough

choices for the winner of the next election. Over the last 30 years

governments have put up taxes by �7.5 billion, on average, after

elections. The IFS thinks tax rises at least that large and extra

welfare cuts are more likely after 2015 an the spending cuts pence

yild into current plans, which could see budge -- be penciled into

current plans, which could see budgets in unprotected areas like

transport or the police cut by 35% in real terms by 2017 or by more

than one-third. If you follow- through on the planned cuts, the

IFS director says you are looking at a very different kind of state.

You become a state which is spending a very large proportion on

a small set of things, a welfare state. Social Security, pensions,

health and very little on policing, defence, local government and so on.

That is changing quite rapidly in a way that I don't think has been

sort of debated properly politically or more broadly. It'll

also be a state with a will the fewer people working for it. The

official forecast is for the public sector workforce to shrink by

900,000 by 2017. The IFS thinks the fall in the number of Government

jobs will be closer to 1.2 million. The 1.2 million people who are

doing these jobs at the moment, they are paying their taxes. If

they lose their jobs and there isn't the slack in the private

sector at the moment, if they lose their jobs, they go on to benefit

and become a cost to the economy. It doesn't make sense.

So far new jobs in the private sector have more than made up for

those public sector job losses. One reason, perhaps, why the

international think-tank, the OECD said the Chancellor was doing the

right thing. I think the policy response from the case of the UK

has been the appropriate one and it is being recognised and it is being

rewarded by the markets. If the recovery turns out to be

stronger than expected, the IFS says some of that if you tour

austerity won't be necessary, but there's little sign of that yet.

In Egypt, a protester has been arrested for throwing a shoe at the

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It happened during a

visit to a moss income Cairo. The shoe didn't appear to hit the

President but he was quickly led away by security guards. Officials

say the protester is believed to be Syrian.

Europe's highly-controversial Common Fisheries Policy is to be

radically reformed, ending the practice of throwing away huge

quantities of dead fish because of European quotas. The European

Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of changes to restore stocks

which have declined sharply over recent decades. Greenpeace has

described the reforms as a momentous shift away from over-

fishing. It's the busiest fishing port in

Scotland. In decades past, trawlers lined up here, many deep. Not any

more. You used to be able to walk right

across the harbour here, you know, with boats. There are hardly any

boats left now. Tough out there. It is tough, you know. There are so

many rules and regulations now this it's really, it's very hard, you

know. Now the European Parliament's laid the ground work for yet more

legislation. But this, a crucial vote, signalling potentially

radical reform, including the end to the dumping of dead fish, so-

called discards, back into the sea. The deal that came out of the

Parliament is a real change for sustainibility of the stocks, for

ending discading, for having a better use for European tax payers'

money. The EU quota system for governing catch size has led at

times to the industrial scale dumping of fission often because

they are the wrong species or wrong size.

Celebrity chefs like Hugh fernly which theing be stall have led a

public outcry over the policy. -- Hugh fernly whitg stall. The fact

you can throw away fish allows you to put in the most valuable hold.

Anything that gets in the way is thrown back into the sea. This is a

culture that has it change. We have to motivated and incentivise

fishermen to fish in a more sustainal and less wasteful way.

Today's vote is a very big step to the path to that achievement.

Scottish fishermen have already introduced conservation measures

allow morgue catch to escape. They welcome the ban on discards but

would like more details about how it would actually work. Fish

discards are believed to make up almost one-quarter of total EU

catches. The hope is that bringing to an end the policy of dumping

dead fish back into the sea, it'll help an industry which has been

much-reduced, not just to survive, but also to prosper.

And help restore healthy fish stocks back into the waters around

Europe. Right, tonight's football news and

England secured a rare victory over brailz this evening, beating them

2-1 in a brendly at Wembley. -- Brazil.

In a friendly at Wembley. The first win over Brazil in almost 20 years.

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have also been in action this

evening. Andy Swiss is at Wembley. It is a chilly night here at

Wembley but what a night for the England fans. Brazil, of course,

one of the biggest names in foot bau. England hadn't beaten them for

some 23 years, but tonight they pulled off a famous win.

It is one of the glmor games of world football. Brazil bringing

sunshine to cold Westminister bli. For Ashley Cole there was a 100th

cap. His side was up against it. Jack

Wilshere's gave away a penalty. Remember Ronaldinho. He missed a

penalty. Then Rooney's gel seemed almost too good to be true as did

this, anyway mar, the hottest Brazilian talent with not a the

best finish. But Gary Cahill Daudled and Fred

took advantage. Brazil levelled. Where England's hopes fading? Not a

bit of it. This time, the ever- green Frank Lampard made them pay

in exquisite style. Yes, it was only a friendly but with World Cup

qualifiers to come, a real cause for English optimism.

In Aberdeen, Gordan Strachan took charge with immediate results.

Charlie Mulgrew firing them to a 1- 0 win over he is stonia. In Swansea

it was a good night for Wales, too. Their star man, Gareth Bale putting

them ahead against Austria. Come the second half, he set up the next

goal for a 2-1 victory on a night when British football had plenty to

celebrate. Northern Ireland were also in

action tonight. They could only draw 0-0 with Malta, but even so,

it has been a pretty encouraging evening for the home nations,

particularly for the England fans at Wembley. They'll be hoping they