19/01/2017 Spotlight

An increase in some of the most serious crimes.

Reports of rape, violence and burglary in Devon

Packed out and leaving proud - we have the highlights and hopes

of Argyle following last night's FA Cup replay match against Liverpool.

And how to ease the pressures on the NHS.

Later in the programme, a special debate on the future

Could increasing demand for new technology like electric

cars breathe new life into an age-old Cornish industry?

Lithium is in many of the gadgets we use every day and there are hopes

of finding significant reserves here in the south-west.

This morning, the largest programme ever to explore beneath the surface

At the moment, much of the lithium comes from South America,

But most mining expertise since the Industrial Revolution has

Experts are not expecting a gold-rush, but given

the desire for electric cars, lithium is the mineral

Here's our business correspondent, Neil Gallacher.

This is what many old Cornish mines are full of - water.

The conventional challenge is how to get rid of it.

It has been known for decades that the water in many Cornish mines

Until recently, there was only a limited market for it.

But in today's world, we were all reliant on portable

mobile devices, if not electric vehicles, lithium is suddenly much

A major new business deal has been reached. A new company is launching

what is claimed to be the largest exploration programme in Cornish

history. It aims to sink boreholes like we've seen in recent years

thanks to the boom in metals prices. They hope to spend ?5 million on

this and get to commercial production in about five years. That

coincides with the dramatic change in growth in electric cars which is

the main consumer of this product. A electric cars starting at a low

base, but dramatic growth, particularly after 2020 and going

into 2025 went to Volkswagen have said 25% of their fleet will be

electric. That's when the market matures. It's not far-fetched and

it's certainly not something we would expect to see production

immediately, but it's a lot quicker to get something like this into

production than you would a hard rock mine where you're having to

build infrastructure. A note of caution. Most of the mining schemes

that have been announced over the last 15 years haven't come to

fruition, or not yet. Here there is a double layer of uncertainty. Not

only do they need to persuade investors there's enough lithium

below the granite in Cornwall, they also have to persuade them there's

cost-effective way of getting it out of of the water.

There's been a rise in the overall number of crimes recorded in Devon

New figures do show significant falls in murder and robbery

Police say new types of offences such as those committed online have

also contributed to the increase, but senior officers are keen

to stress crime rates here are still low.

Our home affairs correspondent Simon Hall reports.

There have been increases in a series of crimes

Sexual offences, violence, burglary, possession of weapons

Extra security has been introduced in this beauty salon,

after it suffered persistent criminal damage and anti-social

There owner believes increases in crime are down

Lack of police on the streets, one of those sort of things

that we'll want to have, we all expect to have

We don't have that any more, we don't get a police car very often.

Recorded crime rose by 6% in Devon and Cornwall last

Rape, violence without injury, burglary, weapon possession

and vehicle offences all increased, but there were significant falls

in murder and manslaughter, robbery, drug trafficking

We know we've had rises in crime, but we're still one of the safest

Some of those rises are down to new offences

in technology and some of them are historic sex offenders,

which we now have risen because of the enquiry is going on.

Devon and police -- Devon and Cornwall police say the chances of

becoming a victim are still low. Crime has increased

across England and Wales, according to today's figures,

reversing a falling trend. It is believed much of that

could be due to online offences and historic cases,

and that could mean more increases in recording crime

in the coming months. 50 firefighters tackled a blaze

which closed a major road The fire began in industrial

units in Winterbourne One side of the main A35 road

was closed for nearly six hours. 73 properties were left

without electricity until power Home Park was packed last night,

just over 17,000 filled the stadium. Now, they may not have got

the result they all dreamed of, but as Andy Birkett reports,

the Pilgrims' performance in their FA Cup replay

against Premier League giants These Plymouth Argyle fans can all

say, I was there, in years to come. After the draw at Anfield,

expectations were high. He might not have been so happy

when Liverpool took the lead The stubborn resistance was broken -

would it open the floodgates? Sheer dogged by 15,000

Plymouth Argyle fans, a good save. Tiny margins can make

a huge difference. Jake Jarvis probably won't ever come

closer than this without scoring. Plymouth Argyle's hopes dashed

by the width of a post. One of the best games

I had seen us lose. I thought we'd get

hammered, to be honest. One lapse of concentration

on the corner, it was so unlucky, This may only be the third round of

the FA Cup. But Jurgen Klopp was presented with his first trophy as

Liverpool manager. After the first game he asked how far Plymouth was.

Last like he got his answer. Injury West Country style. -- in true West

Country style. This cut Brian has left Argyle of the best part of ?1

million better off and the fans are understandably proud of their team.

A medical professor in the south-west has told BBC

Spotlight that the demands now being placed on emergency

Jonathan Pinkney of the Peninsula School of Medicine says pressures

have been "mounting year on year" with "dramatically rising

His comments come after some of our hospitals declared a high

state of alert at the beginning of the year.

But the strains are being felt across the system.

Today, it emerged Dorset Healthcare -

which runs services in the community - is trying to fill more than 100

It's now launching an advertising campaign in London.

BBC Radio Cornwall and Devon have today had their own health debates,

and in a moment, Justin will be putting some of the huge challenges

revealed in our special week of coverage here on BBC Spotlight

to key decision-makers as we look at what the future might hold.

But to begin the debate, Simon Clemison has been discovering

that some of the problems are not entirely new.

Frictions at this point and that point, it shortages, more facilities

will be needed before criticism will die down. One of the chief sources

of our troubles in Britain is the increasing demand made upon hospital

facilities by the aged six. The words of Nye Bevan in 1949, one year

after he launched the NHS. Britain still has what is in one sense

something to celebrate, and ever longer life, but the age of people

can put pressure on hospitals, especially if patients can't move

because of a shortage of care at home. The wards get busy and

operations get cancelled. The lights at A are always on for the next

agent. The challenge of the more elderly population is only one part

of the picture. When a stroke strikes, the damage spreads in the

brain. The sooner you get help for a stroke, the less the damage.

Treatment is advancing all the time, treatment which costs and which can

fill up hospitals. When the government first announced their

plans, doctors refused to go operate. They argued the plans were

modified. While there is always a decision for wider society to be

made about how much tax should be sent on the NHS, people say is not

all was about money. Patients are likely to see a series of junior

doctors in training. One interesting model of care is the greater

involvement of GPs here in the hospital. GPs have the appropriate

skill set, they are correctly trained, they have knowledge of the

patients. Use of GPs is probably one way it's possible to reduce the

likelihood of hospital admission. In their early years many babies are

born to the child welfare clinic. Soon the baby 's first cradled in

its arms will turn 70. Surveys find many have nothing but praise for the

health service and they care it offers, but the strain, evident on

day one, is back again this winter, leading for some to call for a break

in the traditional political dividing lines of the past. Most of

the shortcomings are not the result of the intrinsic effects of the

service itself, but because of the overwhelming volume of need that the

service itself has revealed. Well, this week, we've highlighted

some of the pressures facing But how can those pressures be eased

and what will a future Joining us tonight to discuss those

and more are Sarah Wollaton, the MP for Totnes, who's a former GP

and chairman of the Claire Wright is an independent

councillor in East Devon Kathy Byrne is chief

executive of the Royal And Angela Pedder is chief executive

of the Success Regime, set up to turn around the finances

of the NHS in North, We also made repeated requests

for a Government minister, Thank you for joining us. Let me

start by saying to you, Sarah, that the letters NHS seem to have the

word crisis permanently attached to them. How would you sum up the

current state of the health service? Whereas winter pressures are nothing

new, what's now changed are those pressures are year-round and become

particularly severe in the winter. I would agree that the current

pressures are unsustainable and my view is we need to look at this

across both health and social care together, but it's not just about

funding, it's about workforce and greater efforts on prevention. We

need to have a whole system response rather than looking at this

separately. We'll talk through some of those points this evening. Where

do you think the key pinch points are and where could they be eased to

ease the pressure of the whole of the health service? In some respects

I think the health service is still responding in the way it might have

responded back in the time of Nye Bevan. We are still waiting for

things to happen before we step in rather than trying to prevent and

promote better health care and keep people at home for as long as they

can possibly be there. We are in fact still waiting for them to

become ill and then trying to fix them once they become ill. How do

you change that? There have been long held campaigns to try to

encourage people to look after themselves. When you're in red

alert, or black alert, and you are asking people not to come to A,

what should people do instead? How can people look after themselves

more and not present themselves at hospital as the first port of call?

We need to step back and look at the system as a whole rather than

looking at it only when it is in strife. If we take ourselves out of

the crisis situation and stand back and look at the monumental resources

that we apply to the health service and the social care system as a

whole and say to ourselves, are we really putting our resources in the

right place? Are we really saying to the community, do it all yourself?

Or are we saying we think we've got our resources a little bit wrongly

aligned with the need and now is the time for us to say should we spend

it all acute care or should we redesigned the system so we are

helping people to promote better health for themselves? Which is

where the sustainability and transformation plan comes in. A lot

of viewers tonight and this week have been asking if there's so much

pressure on acute hospitals, what sense does it make as part of the

SDP you're currently considering in closing community hospitals? Because

all the evidence in Devon shows every day there are 600 people in a

hospital bed that don't need to be there. It's back to service point

about the integration between health and social care. The only option

available at the moment, if a GP has a frail old person that needs

additional support, some nursing, the only option for most people is

they refer people into A If you could intervene early, if you've got

a plan, you could wrap services around that individual for sometimes

a short period of time and maintain that person at home. That's the

shift we have to be able to deliver, to offer people a different set of

choices. People tell us they want to be at home if they can be. People

are also very concerned there won't be local hospitals if the

sustainability plans go ahead. Lots of people from North Devon are

worried about the pressure on services elsewhere. If you no longer

have A and other services at the North Devon District Hospital. What

sense does it make to close some of these hospitals if we know there are

already pressures on the acute hospitals? There are no plans or

proposals at North Devon. We have a review of acute services across all

of Devon. A and maternity could go. We are reviewing services across

Devon, but there are no proposals. We do have problems in terms of

ensuring we can continue to deliver the standard of all acute services

for stroke, maternity, paediatrics, neonatal. Standards have gone up.

There is so much more we can do for people and we have to be sure those

services are safe and sustainable and because we don't have problems

in terms of staffing at St Mary's, that services don't fall over.

Recently in North Durston, somebody left and overnight we didn't have a

service. We had to put something in at short notice. We have a

responsibility to look forward and plan and say how our services

sustainable? If the service isn't available at short notice, it could

become unsafe quickly. We will talk more in detail throughout the

evening. Claire Wright. Can you explain the logic which many viewers

are struggling to understand of proposals to close community beds

when we know there is so much pressure elsewhere in the health

service? It doesn't seem very logical at all. The thing that no

one has yet mentioned is government underfunding. Devon can to counsel,

I'm a counsellor, and social care has had huge budget cuts over the

past few years. Angela talked about 600 people being in hospital beds

every day that shouldn't be there. If social care was adequately

funded, a lot of those patients could get back home will stop but it

isn't. If there was proper funding for social care, we wouldn't

necessarily need the community hospitals? If their work a package

is in place for people to be cared for at home or other environments

within the community? No, I think community hospitals are absolutely

vital. If you look at the occupancy rates set out in an audit from 2015,

the occupancy rates are really high, around 85%. Local people really

value them. Community hospitals are absolutely vital in alleviating the

pressure from acute hospitals. I don't think we can do without them.

Let's go back to the beginning of the process. People frustrated they

can't get an appointment with their GP so they rocked up at A The

Prime Minister has said this week GPs need to do more to alleviate

that pressure and their operating hours need to be extended. What's

the feeling from GPs? Dual practice is under enormous pressure. The

workforce pressure is very severe. When I think back 20 years ago,

there would have been many applications for every vacancy in

general practice. There are parts of Devon where people can't recruit or

get any applications for those places. This is not just about GPs.

It's about specialist nursing staff and also physiotherapists. Many

professionals across the whole team. What did you think of the idea of

having more GPs in emergency departments so they can filter out

and deal with some of the patient's? In some places that does help when

you can have triage at the front door of the carriage of the

Department and direct people to co-located casualties departments.

One of the criticisms about the government responds on Friday was

that if you're asking GPs to man: OK did accident and emergency, and man

conventional out of our services as well as services on a Saturday and

Sunday in their own surgeries, there isn't the workforce to go round in

many parts of the country. GPs would love to be editor of a staggered

working week to provide that care, but there simply isn't the workforce

to do all three. What we found on the health committee when we looked

at this in detail was we are in danger of undermining existing out

of hours providers if we stretch it too far. We have to make sure these

responses are appropriate to the area. As a form of rule GP, I know

that if you federate very brutal practices, what can happen is people

travel to other more inconvenient local -- location. It's not one size

fits all. We'll explore more of the issues on Facebook after 7pm. I want

to bring in some of the ideas we saw proposed earlier, the idea of GPs in

accident and emergency. Is that something you would consider in the

Royal Cornwall and what difference could that make? I must say I agree

with what Sarah has said in relation to how far can we stretch already

pressured resources. I would go back to saying, as I said earlier, if

people were more appropriately cared for in their homes, why would we

take GPs, general practitioners, and put them in an Acute Hospital to see

a patient when they arrive? Wouldn't it make more sense to support the

GPs and the primary care and the wider community services to assist

people to stay at home and provide alternatives. When people,

particularly elderly fragile people, when they come near an Acute

Hospital, they tend to be admitted because of their own circumstances

not being good at home, or there isn't the support for them. They

come into the Acute Hospital and then it's very difficult for them to

get out again. Sometimes we de-condition them to the point where

they become no longer able to look after themselves and we make them

dependent. There couldn't be anything sillier than that. And more

damaging to individuals. We have literally only just scratched the

surface in the 11 minutes we've just had, but we will continue the

discussion on Facebook later. Later I hope we can explore some of your

ideas for solutions and how the NHS may look in the future. Thank you

very much indeed for that. Keep your comments coming. Thank you for

questions and comments we've had. We'll continue the debate later in

the evening. Yes, thank you for your comments and

questions about the NHS. And remember that debate

will continue in just a few minutes You don't need to have

a Facebook account to watch. You can find it at

facebook.com/bbcspotlight. In the meantime, David, how was it

looking on the weather? Cold is the main story for both tonight and

tomorrow. Some low temperatures. A widespread overnight frost.

Temperatures now just two or three degrees above freezing for most of

the south-west. Frost is already forming and it will be very frosty

tomorrow morning. Some lovely sunshine, but definitely feeling

pretty cold. An area of high pressure which moves around a bit

more through the weekend. It opens the door to allow more clout to come

through. Clear skies at the moment and that will last until the end of

tomorrow. As we move through Friday and into Saturday, we start to see

changes in the wind direction. It becomes more southerly. By the start

of the weekend, there's a lot more cloud, particularly for the more

western parts of Cornwall, where there may also be showers on

Saturday. The frost is already starting to form. Some pretty cold

weather across the whole of southern parts of England. It's been cold but

fine. Let me show you what it's been like looking across Plymouth Sound.

This is Jenny Cliff. Jeff has been Kacaniklic is of the setting sun.

It's been glorious stop -- Jeff has been catching a glimpse of the

setting sun. Temperatures have struggled because of the cold air.

Even though we've had the sunshine, it's been pretty chilly. The frost

is starting to form overnight and by the end of the night we are looking

at low temperatures. -3 minus four. For tomorrow, pretty much the same

sort of day as today. Maybe a bit more cloud floating along the south

coast, just spoiling the sunshine. But for all of us it will be a cold,

fine, dry day with a top temperature of between four and eight Celsius.

For many of us, you will need to wrap up warm. There is more breeze

out the West. A cold wind. You will need to be wrapped up warm. The

times of high water... And the surf...

More of a wave along the north coast. The waves generally clean. An

easterly wind tomorrow. Occasionally five through the English Channel and

through the Isles of Scilly. Fair with good visibility. You've been

taking pictures and some lovely shots this afternoon. This is the

famous bridge across the River Tame R. Some frost in Devon. And some

glorious sunrises and sunsets over the last couple of days. On Saturday

and Sunday, a bit more cloud around. Still dry, but note the

temperatures. Still a cold story as well. Have a good evening. Back to

you. That's all from Spotlight

here on BBC One, but our health debate will continue in just a few

minutes on our Facebook page. You don't need to have

a Facebook account to watch. You can find it at

facebook.com/bbcspotlight. I hope you'll join us there at 7pm.

Have a good evening. See you tomorrow.