31/05/2017 London News

Welcome to BBC London News with me Alex Bushill.

Tonight, a first for a British police force and a radical

Aspiring officers will be able to join the Metropolitan Police

as trainee detectives WITHOUT having to work in uniform as

Scotland Yard says it will help with a shortage of detectives.

Critics say it demeans the job that those without any

Here's our home affairs correspondent Nick Beake.

High priority in the detectives' training goes to the

The art of the Scotland Yard detective has been

Successful candidates have always been selected after gaining years

of experience in uniform on the beat.

But times have changed and now for the first time

detectives will be recruited into the Metropolitan Police

At the moment, Scotland Yard is short of around 600 detectives.

Under this new scheme 18 new recruits will be taken

on initially and their starting salary will be around ?30,000.

This is about offering people a direct pathway

into a different kind of career, we know from research did

last year in London, this is really appealing

because the uniform attraction is attractive to some

and a barrier to others, particularly with the male and BME.

and a barrier to others, particularly with

Direct entry detectives will need to have a degree,

they will undergo 18 weeks of training, some of it

in the classroom, some of it out in the boroughs,

with a focus on investigative skills.

But some former police officers believe it's simply not enough

time to learn the tools of the sect of trade.

I don't know how you can condense two to three years of training,

from being a probationary constable through to training detective

I think that'll be difficult in that time because you develop

so many life skills, to ensure that you are not

going to make errors that somebody will get off at court.

This is what today's Met detectives face.

Here, suspected drug dealers in Holton.

It can be tough work and many serving officers

of put off joining CID because of the high workload

and pressure to get results, creating this shortage.

Coffee table on the left-hand side...

London's most famous detective was never actually a policeman.

Will talented civilians step forward once again

and solve the case of Scotland Yard's missing detectives?

Onto the election now - and the main parties deployed some

of their big hitters on the campaign trail in London today.

The Conservatives focused again on Brexit and Labour

Here's our political correspondent Karl Mercer.

There is one more week of this to go.

One more week of handshakes, speeches, backing up key policies,

Boris Johnson in Eltham today may do plenty of this but has clearly

Not always on message but he was today.

Expect to hear plenty more of this from the Conservatives

If you go with Jeremy Corbyn, you will be sending

into negotiations in Brussels a guy who doesn't really

It's perfectly obvious that Labour don't have a clue what they mean

by coming out of the EU, taking back control

of our immigration policy, and control of our cash.

It would be catastrophic, they would eat him for breakfast.

Labour was also on unfamiliar territory in Hammersmith

with its health spokesperson dropping in on an area where changes

to local hospital services are proving controversial.

Labour, promising more money for the NHS.

At the moment the NHS is going through a big financial

squeeze and many proposed changes are simply because NHS bosses have

to balance the books and the NHS hasn't been given

We will invest substantially within the NHS and once we have,

we can look at how services are designed, look at

But we have got to involve the public.

I hope we're going to turn it on now, the poster

Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was in Southwark,

attacking Conservative plans to do away with universal free lunches

Not only do I think her decision to snatch free lunches

it hits the poorest, kids won't get a decent meal

day, it's also so dishonest to claim that somehow free breakfast

will be readily available when the Conservatives own figures

show that they are only calculating for 7p per breakfast.

Is that for me, thank you? Seven more days.

Well, let's get the thoughts of our political editor, Tim Donovan.

And there's no doubt, is there, as to the key messages

That campaigning today in London is a pretty good snapshot, Brexit,

trying to create the impression, Theresa May, continuity, solidity,

although that image has taken a little bit of a knocking over the

manifesto, conversely, Labour, they're the party that cherish

public services, going to put lots of money into them, big questions

about how much that will impact on us all in terms of taxation. But

very clear where the core key lines are. Trying to go with what is

strongest, and dumping what is weakest. Just a week to go, which do

you think is the message getting through the most? In London, it's

interesting, you will have seen how volatile polling has been nationally

but it seems to have suggested that Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are

catching up, closing the gap on the Conservatives. In London, it's

different anyway because Labour have consistently been ahead of the

Conservatives, the last poll about two weeks ago had them pulling away.

What will be interesting to see what the next poll does after recent

moves, what is perceived as a recovery by Jeremy Corbyn. The other

fascinating thing is Brexit. Are voters going to punish the

Conservatives for being in charge when we made that decision to leave

in a Remain city or decide we are moving on now? We will find out

soon, thank you very much. We've already got Wi-fi on the Tube

and now the capital's commuters are a step closer to being able

to make phonecalls The Mayor and Transport for London

are in talks with telecoms companies about providing the infrastructure

as Gareth Furby explains. Use a mobile phone on the street

there's rarely a problem but on the Underground it's

a different story. On the platforms there is Wi-Fi

but by the time you have And on board there is no signal

at all which leaves people browsing Or putting their phones

away altogether. But pretty soon this

is all going to change. The Mayor of London's

office issued a statement. This man is a self-confessed tech

geek who is pretty excited What it'll involve is putting little

repeater boxers all the way down the tunnels so the signal can get

to you even inside the tunnel, I would say it's about the deal

that TfL wants to cut If the deal is done,

text messages and data soon may not be a problem

but what about conversations? To explain the issue we're

going to have to use subtitles. Peter Foot is from the campaign

for courtesy and he thinks there is a risk people may just end

up shouting into their phones. It's going to be too

much noise, it'll become And back underground today,

there were some mixed opinions. It's a good idea, we pay so much

money every month to do line rental and we can't use the phone

on the train. I think it's a really bad idea,

I find it intrusive listening to people's conversations with no

regard for other people, loud, Transport for London says it is keen

to offer full mobile phone coverage, the introduction of this would need

to be commercially viable and would follow engagement

with staff and customers. I'll wish you goodnight and hand

you over to Louise Lear Thanks, good evening everybody.

London may not have been the sunniest place today but it was the

warmest with 23. Tomorrow will be warmer still and more in the way of

sunshine. Maybe a little bit misty first thing in the morning but the

cloud breaking up and really quite sharply. Lovely spells of sunshine

coming through and temperatures will respond. We could see highs of 25,

77 Fahrenheit in central London. Slightly fresher on the outskirts.

We do it all again pretty much on Friday. A good slice of sunshine

coming through, just a slim chance in the afternoon of an isolated

shower, potential for more thundery showers to develop later in the day.

But highs on Friday of 27. That's into the 80s in terms of Fahrenheit.

Sharp showers could be an issue Friday night, I will leave you with

a summary. It looks as though we could see heavy showers easing on

Saturday. Fresher conditions for Sunday. Here is the forecast

nationally. Sunday. Here is the forecast

nationally. Good evening. It was a lfl day for

large swathes of the United Kingdom. It turned into a lovely evening.

This stunning photo was taken by one of our weather watchers in Suffolk

not long ago. Here is confirmation of a lovely day for many, a lot of

sunshine across the north. Even this cloud tended to break up but there

were one or two showers in Wales. Now we are looking at west for the

next weather system heading our way. Ahead of that we have this southerly

breeze that will keep things mild overnight tonight. Also a bit of

patchy mist and maybe some low cloud developing as well. The worst of the

visibility overnight will be coming in from the English channel, low

clouds and mist and drifting a little bit further inland. The odd

shower for northern England, generally clouding over from the

west. This rain just about gets into the west side of Northern Ireland by

the end of the night. 14 in Glasgow, in Cardiff and in