29/09/2016 Reporting Scotland

Now on BBC One it's time for the news where you are.

More than a ?100 million given to councils to pay for free

childcare has not been spent on funding the programme.

That's according to a government report.

But the local authority umbrella body Cosla says the report

is a "crude assessment that doesn't reflect the reality".

Here's our political correspondent Lucy Adams.

Increasing free childcare is one of the SNP's most

The policy should offer all three- and four-year-old and vulnerable

But the first analysis of its kind shows that

has given local authorities ?329 million to spend on the policy,

just ?189 million has been spent on child care.

So what has happened to the remaining money

and what impact has it had on families?

You might have a place between 9 o'clock and 12.10.

You can't pay to have your child there before or after.

For most working parents that is unusable.

So it is frustrating to hear there is funds available that

haven't been spent and if we spent those could we have made

The BBC has learned that ministers will publish a childcare blueprint

to propose new models, including child accounts,

under which funding follows the child and not the institutions.

They will use this report to help cost the models.

It has shown we have fully funded councils to deliver the expansion

and now it is for councils themselves to account

for what they have done in relation to additional spending.

But it makes it clear where additional spending was requested,

But Cosla said it is a crude assessment which shouldn't detract

from the success of them providing 600 free hours to children and said

that the government's own report said the gap

The Scottish Government has promised to almost double

The same amount of time children spend in school is expected to cost

The hope is by then all the authorities will have

Closing speeches have begun in the trial of a man accused

of the 1998 murder of Indian restaurant worker Surjit Singh

The prosecution has asked the jury to convict Ronnie Coulter,

Ronny Coulter, the man accused of murdering Surjit Singh Chhokar,

The prosecution said Surjit Singh Chhokar's death

was a tragic tale which happened after the theft of a giro cheque.

The prosecution said in 1998 Surjit Singh Chhokar was on his way

home from work, looking forward to pleasant evening

and he was confronted in the dark by three men, he was attacked,

stabbed, killed, murdered and left in the street.

He said the person responsible for that is Ronny Coulter -

The jury heard Mr Coulter was tried and acquitted of murder in 1999.

Mr Prentice said the outcome of that trial in relation to this

The defending QC started his closing speech and said it was Mr Coulter's

position that he did not stab Surjit Singh Chhokar and he told

the jury that the trial had heard from atrocious

And he said race had no place in the case.

48-year-old Mr Coulter denies murdering Surjit Singh Chhokar,

The Scottish Government has apologised after it emerged that

payments to farmers have been hit by another error.

The snag relates to loan payments - which were only introduced

because IT problems undermined the main funding system.

Farmers leaders said it was "deeply disappointing".

Earlier, I put it to our political editor Brian Taylor that this

was an embarrassing development in a long-running saga.

Opposition leaders are furious and demanding a full Parliamentary

statement by ministers at the earliest

Bearing in mind what happened, they were due payments and they had

to be processed by the Scottish Government and there were endless

problems with the IT system, the money wasn't getting through.

In comes a new minister who says we will sort this out

and in the meantime bring in a loan system to provide support

to farmers and guess what, the loan system has gone wrong

in regard to payments due to be paid and hundreds

This falls into the department of you couldn't make it up.

The NFU said there have been moves to ensure the payments.

Farmers will watch out and I have got to say I think, given earlier

An SNP MP has been detained and questioned by police in relation

Chris Law won the Dundee West seat for the nationalists

Police Scotland say they detained a 46-year-old man

who was released pending further enquiry.

A source close to the MP says Mr Law has agreed to provide the police

with further information and is confident the matter

A search has been launched for an RAF serviceman

from Dunfermline, who's been missing since the early hours

Corrie McKeague, who's based at RAF Honington in Suffolk,

was last seen in the town of Bury St Edmunds after a night out.

CCTV footage suggests that the 23-year-old briefly slept

in a doorway in the early hours of Saturday morning.

A merchant navy cadet, who was stranded for weeks

on a container ship off Singapore after the parent company went bust,

has vowed to return to sea to complete his officer training.

Ruaridh Hanna arrived back in Scotland today,

A warning that Craig Anderson's report contains flash photography.

Back on home soil after a few weeks, Ruaridh Hanna is greeted

He said it was the uncertainty of their situation rather

than conditions that caused them most concern.

But he was taken aback by the welcome at Inverness airport.

I can't believe so many people took on board our story

It is quite flattering and also a bit embarrassing.

He has another few months' training to go qualify as a deck officer.

It made me take a hard look at the industry and any romantic

vision of going to sea has been done away with.

But as for putting me off, no, I'm still determined

to complete my training and to become an officer.

That is his choice and I would hope he would complete his training,

because otherwise it would have been, you would say,

a waste of time putting up with what he has put up

So I'm proud that he has wanted to go back.

The public is being urged to help solve the mystery of plans

for a second RAIL bridge over the Forth.

The drawings date back to 1945 but were only discovered recently.

Historians are investigating a few theories about why

the plans were made, but they want to find out more.

Plans from 1945 were found in a box under a desk in Glasgow.

They want to know why the designs were made and then dropped.

We have a lot of drawings, but concentrating on the original

construction of the bridge we see today.

So this is a real mystery and why they were created,

The second rail bridge would have been built downstream

That is the time the V bombs were landing in London.

My theory is they were thinking of more rail travel.

The existing bridge was being heavily used and they

Network Rail stress the original bridge remains in good health

and there has not been a need to put the plans for a bridge coming over

But it is keen to find out more about these alternative designs.

Because the Forth Estuary does split Scotland badly

From all those years ago, 71 years ago.

Sometimes more than than they do now.

Historians are asking for public help to solve the

Let's get the weather outlook for tonight and tomorrow

Good evening. It was a real autumnal feel to today. Blustery showers,

some sunshine, a few rainbows. The showers are still with us.

Thundering across the North of England and the border but becoming

confined to the central lowlands overnight and also a number for the

Northern Isles where the winds remain strong. Elsewhere, winds are

lighter than last night. If it's dry with clear conditions, good chance

of catching the Northern lights. This picture was taken last night.

To start the day tomorrow, certainly across central Scotland, cloudy with

a few showers. North and south of here, bright morning sunshine,

chilly in the countryside. A rash of showers across Orkney and Shetland.

Through the course of the day, the cloudy Shari zone eases off with

showers becoming more combine to Argyll and the West Coast.

Elsewhere, some sunshine. Some sunshine south of the border, a few

light showers. Not as breezy as today. Similar for Northern Ireland

and for us by afternoon, similar conditions. Bright spells, a few

light showers and the wind is nothing like what we have had of

late. Temperatures around the mid teens, perhaps 15 or 16 in the

north-east. Into Friday night, the showers are still with us and all

eyes on the weekend. We are watching this developing area of low pressure

pushing through Ireland in towards Wales and England. Deign to the

south, but producing card for southern Scotland and a few showers.

The week and doesn't look too bad. Best of the sunshine on Saturday for

Central and North western Scotland, a few showers across Grampian,

cloudy in the South. Winds light, temperature is around 14 degrees.

Low-pressure pulls away towards Scandinavia on Sunday. Behind it, we

fridge of high pressure. Sunday probably the better of the two days

because behind it, the dry, bright sunny weather more widespread.

Temperatures by mid around the mid teens.

But, from everyone on the late team here in Glasgow

and around the country - goodnight.