File on 4
Summary: A podcast offering Radio 4's award winning, flagship investigative series File on 4.
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- Artist: BBC Radio 4
- Copyright: (C) BBC 2015
Podcasts:
Have British banks been too quick to accept dodgy deposits from Arab despots and too slow to return missing billions to their rightful owners? Jenny Cuffe reports.
As Ofsted's new regime leads to more schools failing their inspections, Fran Abrams examines the reasons why a growing number are challenging the judgements.
Reporter Gerry Northam examines the use of closed courts in the British legal system. The Government says it allows judges to hear highly sensitive evidence but campaigners say it undermines the long-established principle of open justice.
Hospital waiting times are a key measure of success for the NHS. But do the official figures accurately reflect the reality for patients across the UK? In Scotland the waiting time data has been called into question after a hospital trust was exposed for manipulating the figures in order to hit its targets. There's now an investigation to see if the practice has become widespread. In England the Health Secretary has hailed latest statistics showing a fall in the number of people waiting for treatment as a great achievement. However there's evidence which suggests the pressure to meet waiting list targets is leading to gaming of the system. Jane Deith investigates.
Is institutional racism still alive in the police? Allan Urry investigates claims from black and Asian officers that discrimination is destroying promising careers.
After details of people under witness protection were leaked to a private investigator, Allan Urry asks whether police are doing enough to protect witnesses whose lives are at risk
The Government says its keen to help develop British business - so why do so many public sector contracts end up going to companies outside the UK?
Fran Abrams investigates tax avoidance schemes which cost taxpayers billions every year. Government employees, bankers, even footballers - is there anyone who isn't involved?
In the last two months, four fathers have killed their partners, children and themselves. Jane Deith investigates why they decide to take such drastic action.
The credit rating agencies' word is gospel to markets. But can we trust them? Hugh Pym gets inside the world of Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch.
Despite pledges to tackle diabetes, why do 24,000 people die needlessly each year?
As the European Union strengthens its sanctions against Iran, Reporter Allan Urry looks at the impact on UK companies who trade with Iranian businesses.
How well protected is the UK against biological threats? Dutch and American scientists have succeeded in mutating a deadly bird-flu virus to make it easily transmissible to humans. If it got out, it could start a fatal epidemic. They keep it securely locked away in their laboratories, but want to publish the biological recipe for making it. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. government is pressing them to keep the details of their experiments secret for fear that bio-terrorists could use the organism to kill hundreds of millions of people. At the same time, a rapidly developing branch of science known as 'synthetic biology' offers dramatic possibilities for developing new vaccines and targeting many lethal diseases. But does it also increase the risk that newly-created organisms could be used for harmful purposes as the necessary research techniques spread out from authorised laboratories to a network of DIY enthusiasts?
Inquests are hearing a new term to explain deaths in police custody: Excited Delirium. Could the diagnosis be used to cover up excessive police force? Angus Stickler investigates.
Jenny Cuffe talks to the foster families left alienated by their unequal - and sometimes Kafkaesque - struggles with social services departments.