28/11/2017 London News

Newsnight is coming up on BBC Two.

Here on BBC One, it's time

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Good evening. Welcome to BBC London

News.

Tonight - the vulnerable young women

who are being treated like slaves

behind closed doors. That's the view

of one au pair agency in the

capital. A BBC London investigation

has found that some au pairs are

being exploited and even bullied by

their host families, who are

supposed to be looking after them.

We have this special report.

Some on this march are strangers.

Almost all are foreign au pairs.

They have come to support each

other and make a stand

against exploitation and abuse.

We meet Ellie, not her real name.

We have disguised her face and

changed her voice for legal reasons.

She tells us about her

previous host family.

The family were very violent,

they were not violent with me,

but violent with each other.

I felt really

uncomfortable and unsafe.

I also did 14 hours a day,

seven days a week.

It was too much and I left.

We also spoke to Isabella,

again we have disguised her

identity for legal reasons.

She says she worked up to 70 hours

a week for just £100.

I started at 7 O'Clock,

I tidied, I did three

washing machines, I cried

after the first day.

My house mum told me to go

to my room, she said you work for me

and you need to do what I want.

After a few weeks I escaped.

She was scaring me.

Isabella was homeless

in a foreign country,

but luckily she was put

in touch with Maggie.

She runs an au pair agency

in Hampstead and found

Isabella another host family.

But only after she provided a clean

criminal record and two references,

something not required

by the current system.

Some of them are working all hours.

She said she was working weekends

sometimes frequently,

seven days a week.

Au pairs are entitled to two

completely free days a week.

But they get really bullied

by family some of them.

It is unbelievable.

They told me all about it.

Slavery is getting so much

publicity at the moment,

but some of it is going on with some

of these families and the way

they are treating their au pairs.

The government says if an au pair

is a victim of modern slavery,

it should be reported to the police.

According to government guidelines,

au pairs are not workers

and so are not eligible

for a minimum wage or paid holiday.

They are meant to be treated

as a member of the family

and given a room and meals.

In exchange, they do around 30

hours of light housework

and baby-sitting a week.

In return for what is called pocket

money of £70 or more a week.

But we found online adverts that

went beyond the recommended hours,

adverts asking for excessive

household tasks, and

even proxy parenting.

The title of the advert up

here is au pair/carer.

Rosie Cox has carried

out extensive research.

She has been trying to raise

awareness about au pair

exploitation for over a decade.

The government needs to be quite

firm about what an au pair

is so that somebody can say actually

70 hours a week is not au pair is,

they ought to be being

paid the minimum wage.

At the moment nobody

knows where au pairs are.

They are not registered in any way,

the agencies who pays them do not

have to be registered,

so there is this unknown population.

We need to think about how

vulnerable they are,

it is almost always young women

inside people's homes.

Not every single au pair we met

had a negative story.

Anna is Spanish and looks

after Isabel and Rufus in Nunhead.

For me, from the first minute

I arrived here I feel

like a member of the family.

I always have the weekends off.

so I have a lot of time

to know London and for me

it is amazing living here.

I am lucky.

Anna's host family work long hours,

they are one of many families

across London who rely on au pairs

to

help with childcare.

But experts warn without tighter

rules on au pairs are left open

to exploitation with few people

to turn to.

City Hall has said it is to review

how stations are evacuated after a

false terror alert at Oxford Circus

sparked panic on Friday. A leaked

official report into what happened

at the station says inaccurate

information made the situation

worse. 16 people were injured in the

stampede, after what was thought to

be gunfire on the platform. Here's

our Transport Correspondent Tom

Edwards.

This is a Black Friday these

shoppers will not forget as fear

swept Oxford Circus,

a busy shopping area.

What happened?

In a leaked document,

we can reveal a timeline of

what happened.

At 16..39pm Oxford

Circus station after

reports received

a discharge firearm.

Six minutes later armed police

arrived as the incident was

declared the most category one.

By 17:34pm it was over.

TfL had been given permission

from the police to

reopen the station.

The report does say

the incident was "compounded by

various differing reports

of what the incident actually was."

The panic spread from

the platforms up here

onto the street level and right down

to Selfridge's and there are the

store says a surge of shoppers not

items onto the marble floor adding

to the pandemonium.

Inside Selfridge's

the singer Olly Murs

tweeted there had been

gunshots and on social

media many posted about

a possible terror attack.

But commentators say

the panic was understandable.

To go with the herd is more

than just a survival

instinct, it is a smart thing to do.

It is like outsourcing your

cognitive powers to other people,

With some injured in the station

evacuation, now the

authorities are looking at their

announcements at tube stations

and whether they can be improved.

Clearly there is an issue

about getting people out of stations

very quickly and that is something

that

is worthy of more examination.

How do we evacuate

people really quickly

in a situation where there

is probably some panic?

The Met found no evidence

that any shots were

fired and the authorities are now

looking at what lessons can be

learn, especially

When misinformation and panic spread

to quickly.

It's been criticised over many

areas. Thames Water has admitted it

let its customers down. Now they've

promised cheaper bills for everyone

next year but consumer goods say it

is nod good enough.

This was Upper Street in Angel after

a Thames Water main bust last

December. Many businesses were

flooded and around 100 people were

evacuated from their homes

Yes, this

is all flooded. It was flooded right

up to about here, the line there.

Trevor Turner was one of them. He

and his wife still haven't moved

home permanently

Whenever I see a

Thames Water van now, I go - not

again, not again. It is a fearful

thought. You watch this enormous,

giant bust on a 36 inch mainstream

pipe leak on Upper Street bubbling

away.

It is just one of the Incep

dents Thames Water has been

criticised for. It has now announced

it'll be repaying customers £40

million worth of penalties for past

leaks, earlier than required, having

the expected annual rise in bills by

around £8. The company has admitted

it has let customers down and is

unlikely to meet its targets for

leaks once again this financial

year. What is going so wrong?

The

thing about a big water company like

Thames is a lot of these things are

legacy issues, and I think we can

see a real change happening inside

the company. It's not just about

paying back our customers early,

it's also a lot of incremental

investment. So this year we're in

the going to be paying any dividends

to our investors, what we're going

to be doing is spending the money

for the benefit of our customers,

improving our service.

And it's been

aed about year for Thames Water. It

was fined £20 million in March for

allowing 1.4 billion litres of raw

sewage into the River Thames and it

was hit with an £8.6 million penalty

for misleaked targets in the fngess

year. The consumer council says it

must do better.

There have been

significant bursts. The leakage

problems have not been met at the

level it should have been and there

have been fines over that. And there

has been sewer flooding in the

Thames Valley area. It is not

acceptable it customers.

Around 60%

of the top team has changed at

Thames Water since last September.

It is a company that looks to want

to turn a corner and says it wants

it get its leaks back continue

target by 2020. Well that's it for

now, I will say good night and hand

you over to Elizabeth for the

weather. It's getting a lot

you over to Elizabeth for the

weather. It's getting a lot colder.

It certainly is. It felt colder

today but at least we had sunshine.

Temperatures reached 7 only and it

actually felt cold we are that with

the strength of the northerly wind.

We will be keeping that for the next

few days, the theme is it'll turn

progressively colder there. Could be

a few showers around at times in the

east but otherwise mostly dry. Some

sunshine and feeling a bit less

chilly as we head into the weekend.

Now, overnight tonight, we will

probably see a patchy frost form in

the more sheltered spots really.

There will be clear spells around

but quite a bit of cloud. We'll

steefrp tours dip to probably two to

three degrees Celsius in the towns

but below freezing where we have the

clear spells and brightness and

sunshine around tomorrow morning.

Then we will see more cloud around,

maybe one or two showers across

parts of Essex and Hertfordshire and

we have a northerly wind. That will

make it feel colder than these

numbers would otherwise suggest. We

will be keeping the wind, the

strength of that cold wind over the

next few days, of course. Thursday

is looking like the coldest day. One

or two sleety showers