19/01/2017 North West Tonight

Four members of the same family from Manchester have been killed

Among those killed is a two-month-old boy.

They were on a pilgrimage and were travelling from Mecca

Tributes are being paid by family and friends this evening.

Mark Edwardson has more on the story.

A photo of all six family members killed when a mini-bus crashed

Amongst them two-month-old Adam Anis, pictured here

with his grandfather Mohammed Kurshid who also died.

He was a beautiful little baby and she loved him dearly.

You know, he was just a beautiful child who had gone with

Little did she know that he was only to live

The two other victims from Manchester were Mr Kurshid's

The two other family members were from Glasgow.

Two more relatives are said to be critically ill in hospital,

while Adam's mother Atika is in a serious condition

aged two and three, according to reports.

They've not informed her yet because it's

too traumatising and she's sedated, so I think that she's not well

enough to handle the news of losing a child.

Every year, millions of Muslims flock to Mecca and Medina -

to carry out the annual Hajj pilgrimage or the Umra.

A group of maybe 12-13 cousins, including my own siblings, children

of the deceased, are going to be going over to obviously see their

parents who have passed away and bury them there in the holy land.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that six British people

Meanwhile, a director of Manchester-based Haji Tours

said his staff had been told the crash was caused

Mark Edwardson, BBC North West Tonight.

A man in his 20s is in a stable condition after being

It happened in Stockbridge village yesterday evening.

Police believe the shooting was targeted,

and have increased patrols in the area.

Baroness Helen Newlove, whose husband Gary was killed

outside their home in Warrington, is urging the Government to

strengthen the rights of crime victims.

The Ministry of Justice says it will announce plans in due course.

Baroness Newlove says in the past year

only 15% of victims had been given the opportunity to make

a statement about how it had affected them.

The North West Ambulance Service has been told it has to improve

by the health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission.

Inspectors expressed concerns about staff shortages,

particularly paramedics, and a lack of training

The Trust says it's faced an extremely challenging year

Our health correspondent Gill Dummigan reports.

The Preston control room, one of three in the north-west.

Today, they'll deal with around 1100 calls

and around 4000 across the three sites.

The most important thing to remember when you work in the control room

is that at the end of every 999 call is a patient

and one of our primary focuses certainly on the initial training

of staff is that everything has to be patient-centric.

The report found that the trust was effective and caring

but it found that safety required improvement particularly when it

There were particular concerns with reporting

of serious incidents and that some staff needed more

The CQC was can particularly concerned about the

At the time of the inspection nearly one in six posts

They said this was placing too much strain on

We did find there was low morale in some of the areas amongst paramdics.

A lot of the paramedics were working extra hours and overtime to

There was also reliance on community first responders to attend

The pressures on the system are well documented.

In the last year, 999 calls have gone up by 23%.

There has been an increases pressure on staff.

They have to go out and deal with more intense

situations and experienced staff are leaving to

find less pressurised and better paid jobs.

The service says they accept the findings but they

have already started solving the problems,

Already, they have taken on paramedics

We are not taking anything lightly and we are a learning organisation

and the things that were picked up in this report

we will be learning from and we have learned from

and as I said earlier, we have actually corrected the bulk of them

now and some of the things that are outstanding are things that

cannot be solved immediately but we have plans

This is one of the last of the ambulance trusts

Of the nine so far rated, seven have been found wanting,

It is a challenging time for the service.

The question is whether the response to that challenge can be improved.

One in six secondary schools in the north-west

is under-performing according to new figures

The region has the highest proportion of pupils attending

More than one in eight young people are being taught in schools

that haven't managed to meet new national standards.

Well, these figures show that young people in our region are more likely

than in any other part of the country.

And three of the five worst-performing local authorities

are in the north-west - Halton, Oldham and,

with the worst record in the country,

Knowsley where every one of the borough's six secondary

This was the reaction of parents today.

Most of my son's class actually went out of borough

I was proud of what they put my children through.

The education seems very poor round here.

Knowsley Council declined an interview but told us

it's "naturally disappointed" and is already making changes.

Four of the six secondary schools are now academies and it's recently

invested a million pounds to establish an Education Commission

That million pounds follows years of problems.

Knowsley has long been one of the country's

It has the country's worst GCSE results and,

stops offering A-level courses this year,

it'll make it the only council area in England

Here's what one teachers' union told us.

The reasons that Knowsley is constantly underperforming

Many of those are deep, historic reasons and not simply

It's about the brightest and best of our young people

traditionally, for many, many years, travelling

outside of the borough to other local authorities.

Our three worst performing areas are all Labour-run

authorities, but today the Shadow Education Secretary

and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne told me Government failings were to blame.

We really need to see class sizes reducing again

We need good quality teaching and we need decent schools

for all our kids, not just for those down south.

But all the north-west's worst performing local authorities

And they've also had nearly half of their budgets,

if not over half of their budgets, cut over this period.

We asked the Department for Education for an interview.

They declined, but say that over the last six years, the gap

between disadvantaged pupils and others has narrowed.

The former bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend James Jones,

has been given the Freedom of the City.

Bishop James was honoured partly for his work

on the Hillsborough Independent Panel.

Its report in 2012 led to the original accidental death

verdicts on the victims of the Hillsborough

The great honour has been to serve the people of Liverpool

for 15 years and especially the Hillsborough families

The families over the years have always believed that

their struggle with truth and justice has not just been for

themselves and the survivors, it's not just been for the city even, but

Campaigners are asking Preston Council not to push ahead

with plans to renovate the city's Harris Museum.

Proposals have been submitted to the Heritage Lottery to open up

the Grade One listed building by giving it a new

But members of the Victorian Society say the building's classical facade

Good evening to you. Our weather watchers have struggled to find any

sunshine through the week but that should change a little bit as we go

through the weekend but changing type. Cooler air starts to come

towards us as we had through tomorrow afternoon and it will be

with us for the weekends of the will be brighter spells. Interestingly,

when this weather turns up after a very settled, cloudy spell we will

go into a settled, cool and rather bright spell so a definite change of

type but at the minutes, all about the cloud cover. Most places are

dull with a few drops of drizzle. As we head towards the early hours of

the morning, more southern parts of the region may start to see some

breaks developing in the cloud cover but I do not think the temperatures

were altered. Remaining pretty good, five and 6 degrees. Any breaks

across Cheshire may see two here and there but that is the exception

rather than liberal and for tomorrow, a cloudy start, a few

drops of drizzle the wind as well but not long before brighter skies

come in pushing from the Midlands and spread across the region as we

go through the afternoon. It is not guaranteed to reach everywhere. Part

of Cumbria and the more northern part of Lancashire may well stay in

the cloud for a good portion of the day but it will send from time to

time. To the south we will see some reasonable spells of sunshine

working their way through. The breeze is relatively light and if

you look at the numbers on the chart, they don't seem too bad but I

think you will make that temperature at lunchtime and through the

afternoon and it will then fall down by a few degrees. Helen has the

national picture next. I will leave you with the outlook for the

weekend. Definitely cooler and fresher.

looks as though we can, a bit more cloud on Sunday. Now the national

picture. Good evening, it will gradually get

colder in the UK in the next few days, something we don't