[Nicholas Witchell:] Two more drivers fall victim to highway robbery. And a millionaire every week in the new national lottery. [music] As the Chancellor of the Exchequer approaches the key judgements that will shape next month's budget, he gets better than expected news on the state of the economy. The latest figures show that steady growth continued over the last three months and that as a whole, the economy is growing at a rate of two and a half percent a year. The figures go some way to counter fears that the recovery is faltering, but they reveal also that not every sector of the economy is gaining. In manufacturing, output is falling.
[Gerry Baker:] Fears that the recovery might be running out of steam now seem to have been over done. Fuelled by stronger high street sales, Britain's service sector, two thirds of the economy, is reporting faster growth. Retailers like the House of Fraser's Army and Navy stores have seen rising consumer demand.
[speaker003:] Business is certainly picking up er not only in Central London but erm throughout the entire country. And we've noticed that up to and over the last two to three weeks, not only because our sale is on er but we're far more confident about the general economy.
[Gerry Baker:] But while the services sector is strengthening, factory output fell in the last three months. The firm that makes the ties sold in the country's department stores, is optimistic about prospects at home. But with more than two thirds of its products sold abroad, the company's concerned at the continuing downturn in its export markets.
[Derek:] We see the U K certainly coming out of recession and we are something like twelve percent up on same time last year in the U K. Having said that, the E C is well over twenty percent down on same time last year.
[Gerry Baker:] The economies total output, its Gross Domestic Product, expanded for much of the eighties and peaked in the middle of nineteen ninety. In the recession that followed, output fell steeply, levelling off last Summer. Since then production has started to climb back and the government now estimates that in the last three months, the economy grew by nought point six percent.
[Stephen:] Overwhelmingly the most important things is that these figures show that across the economy as a whole, er economic activity is on a path of steady but unspectacular growth.
[Gerry Baker:] Opposition politicians were unimpressed by the government's claims.
[Harriet Harman:] These figures show that manufacturing output, far from growing, is beginning to shrink again and that the growth rate is not enough to start seeing serious inroads into our high level of unemployment.
[Simon:] The evidence out there in the real world and I'm a London MP is that people are not yet certain that there is a secure economic recovery. They hope it's there, they believe it may be there, they see a faltering sign here and there, but they need other encouragement.
[Gerry Baker:] The Chancellor is gradually receiving a clearer picture of the state of the economy as he prepares next month's budget. The figures suggest a gentle recovery is continuing, but at a rate that's unlikely to create many jobs. It remains uncertain whether it's a recovery that could sustain a tax increase on November the thirtieth. Gerry Baker, B B C News.
[Moira Stewart:] Scotland Yard say, one man is still being questioned in connection with the murder of police constable Patrick Dunn in South London on Wednesday. Three other men have been released on police bail. The shooting of P C Dunn has again highlighted the problems faced by the police and prompted calls for the Home Secretary to reject the Sheahy proposals on police pay and conditions.
[Laurie Margolis:] The tributes to P C Patrick Dunn mounted today in Cato Road, the Clapham Street where he died, as the police investigation of his killing and that of a suspected drug dealer in the house opposite, continued. Barry Critchley another community P C normally patrols Cato Road. On Wednesday when the radio call came, P C Dunn went instead because he was nearest. P C Critchley on his old bike just like the dead officer, seems from another age, far from the violence of modern London.
[speaker010:] We deal with erm a lot of domestic problems. Erm all sorts of general problems I mean I get people come up to to me complaining about their rheumatism. I get people come up to me, can I unblock their toilet, it's just er a a general thing. You become part of the community.
[Laurie Margolis:] There was more gun violence in the capital yesterday, a man apparently involved in drugs shot dead at Shepherd's Bush. For a police force still largely unarmed it highlights fierce opposition to the Sheahy proposals on police reform now before the Home Secretary. They claim their work in dealing with violent crime, cannot be linked as Sheahy attempts, to other jobs. The Home Secretary in East London was reported this morning to have serious doubts over fixed term contracts and performance related pay, though he wouldn't confirm this.
[Nicholas Witchell:] The police service themselves recognize that there has to be a a need for change that they have to be brought up to date er and er I think you'll see when I a announce my decisions on the Sheahy report er that er I am taking the need to er reform the police service, very seriously indeed.
[Laurie Margolis:] Police campaigners including Tory MPs say Sheahy could run into political trouble.
[Gerry Baker:] I think that parliament will want to look very carefully at the proposals he makes and if parliament is not happy with those proposals then I'm sure it will try and persuade the government to modify them.
[Laurie Margolis:] Police and their supporters say officers nearing contract renewal, might feel compelled to boost their arrest records, and they wonder how the work of Barry Critchley and the late Patrick Dunn, low key potentially dangerous, can be measured against higher profile colleagues. Laurie Margolis, B B C News.
[Nicholas Witchell:] Police are investigating two more cases of carjacking bringing to four, the total number of such robberies in the past week. In the latest incidents, an antiques dealer was attacked at Keele services on the M Six shortly after midnight and yesterday a woman driving along a quite country road in Chepstow had her car rammed by a gang wielding baseball bats.
[speaker003:] Last nights theft took place when an antiques dealer stopped to change a wheel on his car on the hard shoulder of the M Six near the Keele service station in Staffordshire and was attacked by three men who escaped in a white van. Their haul, mainly of silver, is valued at a hundred thousand pounds.
[Derek:] I though me time had come to be quite honest.
[Stephen:] I mean, how frightened were you?
[Derek:] Petrified. No ifs and buts about it.
[Harriet Harman:] What specific threats did they make to you sir?
[Derek:] Well with a knife sort of stuck under your chin. [LAUGHTER] And with marks to prove it, that er just sort of one false move and my job with life was over.
[speaker003:] Police say the raider's van and the antique dealer's car were both seen at a service station near Manchester last night, so the crime could have been planned.
[Simon:] That is a possibility we're looking at, it's a possibility that it may be an opportunist crime.
[speaker003:] A few hours earlier Mrs Valerie Williams was robbed of her firm's wages on a quite road in South Wales when masked men overtook her in this stolen car and forced her to stop and then rammed her vehicle from behind with another car. Already back at work today, Mrs Williams said she hadn't had time to be frightened. On reflection though, so unexpected a crime in a country area made her deeply worried.
[Moira Stewart:] Very concerned about the breakdown of law and order in the country which is very serious I feel at the moment. You're not safe to go anywhere or do anything.
[speaker003:] Earlier this week in Surrey, a businessman's wife was beaten and robbed of seventy five thousand pound's worth of jewellery after being attacked in her sports car on the M Twenty Five. And a businessman in Middlesbrough threw eight thousand pounds to masked raiders who rammed his car. Police today investigating the robbery in South Wales, say the increasing number of crimes against motorists could be copycat cases.
[Laurie Margolis:] That is quite possible when you get er this type of crime happening er nationally. It always ferments the idea in criminals minds that they might like to have a go at something like that themselves. This recent police video reflects the increasing number of opportunistic thefts from drivers in heavy urban traffic. And although the police say that crimes against motorists are still relatively rare, all drivers should be on their guard. Mike Smart, B B C News.
[Moira Stewart:] The Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew has condemned what he called the brutal and loathsome murder last night of the director of a Londonderry building company. The I R A said they killed John Gibson because his company did work for the security services.
[speaker010:] The I R A gunmen lay in wait outside Mr Gibson's home in the quietest of suburbs North of Belfast. Three shots were fired as he stepped out of his car. The fifty one year old tried to crawl back to the house but collapsed. Neighbours spoke of a quiet man who spent most of his spare time working for charity.
[Nicholas Witchell:] And to shoot a person down even because of his work is what sort of people are these anyway? These are murdering thugs. These are murdering thugs.
[speaker010:] Mr Gibson was a director of the construction company Henry Brothers in which carries out contracts for the security forces. That's enough for the I R A to have made him a target, five employees of the firm have now been killed since nineteen eighty five. It is a time of relent [break in recording] ime of relentless violence in the province as the I R A continues its killings, Loyalist paramilitaries have also been carrying out almost one attack a day. Yesterday gunmen opened fire on a taxi queue, no one was injured but paramilitaries have said mass murder of catholics is their objective.
[Gerry Baker:] There are now up to twenty Loyalist death squads in activity and it is quite clear that no circumstances given the intensity of their attacks, the geographical spread of their attacks and the reckless abandon of their attacks, there is a very substantial risk to the entire catholic community.
[speaker010:] It is killing on both sides, Mr Gibson's death is the fifty first this year, lives taken, families destroyed. Matthew, B B C News, Belfast.
[Nicholas Witchell:] A surgeon and his wife who's also a doctor have been jailed for nine and three months respectively for repeatedly assaulting their housemaid. Leicester Crown Court heard how Ramesh and Radah had treated Cindy who comes from Trinidad, like a slave.
[speaker003:] Drs Radah and Ramesh were held in high regard in their professions for their ability to care for others. He had just qualified as a surgeon. But their caring didn't extend to their maid who they regularly beat and bullied at their home in Lincoln. Thousands of domestic servants like Cindy have been allowed into Britain under a concession in the immigration act which permits foreign visitors to bring in their own staff. But Miss could only work for the doctors. At their small home she worked nineteen hours a day, seven days a week, and was paid seventy five pounds a month. The only legal right she had was to complain about the beatings when she could stand them no more.
[Derek:] And I was afraid that whatever I say would go back to the and if they hear this they will punish me.
[speaker003:] Did you try and get away at all or
[Derek:] Erm if I tried they would have caught me so I just stand still and don't scream or cry because I'll get some more.
[speaker003:] The barristers told Leicester Crown Court the doctors had been punished enough. His medical career is over, her prospects of working again are remote and their family is breaking up. Judge David told them, their lives had been devoted to the relief of pain and suffering but in this case they chose to inflict considerable pain on a young woman in their care, isolated by their way of life. The judge sentenced Mrs to three months in prison, her husband received a nine month sentence. Tonight Cindy said she thought the doctors should have been sent to prison for a longer term. Tony Roe, B B C News, Leicester.
[Moira Stewart:] The High Court has rules that life prisoners who are sent to mental hospitals are still serving their sentences and can count the time they serve in hospital towards their parole. The case was brought by Michael Hickey, one of the men convicted of the murder of the newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater. It could result in his early release.
[Nicholas Witchell:] Commonwealth leaders meeting in Cyprus have agreed to set up a special mission to lobby key capitals holding out on agreement on the GATT trade negotiations. It seems Mr Major and the Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, will be members of a team hoping to persuade other leaders that completion of the GATT talks by December the fifteenth is imperative.
[Stephen:] There's little doubt the Commonwealth sees France as the main target of the mission, but as a mainly English speaking organization, its influence on President Mitterand may be limited so the French speakers among them will be pressed into service. Mr Major, leading a group of Prime Ministers to make the announcement, was aware of the need to engage France rather than antagonize it. And even the sometimes acerbic Australian Prime Minister was watching his tongue.
[Harriet Harman:] The point of the delegation is to impress upon er selected countries, the importance which a representative group like Chogram Chogram believes er is important.
[Stephen:] The leaders say they'll decide exactly where to send their mission during informal discussions this weekend. But the Prime Minister believes Commonwealth acting together, must be heard.
[Simon:] Countries from every part of the globe, of all sizes, developed, developing, rich poor, all see a practical advantage in concluding this round this year. I think that is both a substantial amount of peer pressure and also the clearest possible indication that there is an expectation right around the world that people will put the communal benefit of a GATT agreement, before purely domestic interests.
[Stephen:] This decision represents something of a final throw. The Commonwealth believe that there has to be an agreement before December the fifteenth, very little time to close such a complicated deal. But whether the French will be any more amenable to being ganged up on in this fashion remains to be seen. Brian Hanrahan, B B C News, Cyprus.
[Nicholas Witchell:] The time is six fifteen and still to come, supermarket chiefs hit out at cross channel shoppers. They say cheap beer imports are hitting the government's pocket and they want beer taxes here to be frozen. And John Major's horse, his gift from Turkmenistan finds a stable at last. [music]
[Moira Stewart:] The supermarket giant Tesco is urging the Chancellor to freeze the tax on beer in next month's budget. It says cross channel shoppers importing cheap beer from France are already costing British off licences and supermarkets nearly five hundred million pounds a year. And if the price of beer goes up, the worry is more shoppers will go abroad for their beer. Imported beer down from fifteen pounds a pack to under ten pounds in this South of England supermarket. Tesco's having to slash priced to compete with French stores. Day-trippers to Calais can load up with lager for a third of the price here. Higher excise duty accounts for most of the difference, stores like Tesco reckon it's losing them sales of half a billion pounds a year. And it could get worse if the duty rises in the budget next month.
[Laurie Margolis:] If duty were to be put up in the budget, then the distortion of the market would be greater than it already is. It is already working to the disadvantage of the Exchequer some four hundred million pounds a year of lost tax revenue. It will affect jobs in British brewing and long term, it may affect jobs in British retailing.
[Moira Stewart:] Tesco's problem is what's bound to happen when you have a single European market but not economic union. That means that tax rates on products are different in every country. The number of cross channel shoppers has already risen by forty percent this year since restrictions were lifted. France is in the depths of recession so the Burghers of Calais love this influx of free spending English shoppers.
[speaker010:] The trade is booming er there's a lot of er of people coming across as you know and we estimate that there are in the region of er three million peop er British people coming a year in Calais.
[Moira Stewart:] At this hypermarket more than half the booze sales are to English shoppers, they come from as far away as Yorkshire to stock up for the Christmas part season. How much have you bought?
[Nicholas Witchell:] Er fifty six, fifty eight cases.
[Moira Stewart:] Is that all for yourself?
[Nicholas Witchell:] Yeah. We're very greedy.
[Moira Stewart:] So how much have you spent and how much do you think you've saved?
[Gerry Baker:] Spent about a grand or so.
[Moira Stewart:] Right. So you're gonna sell th some of this to your friends when you get back?
[Gerry Baker:] No.
[speaker003:] We come over before the Summer, before the barbecues,
[Moira Stewart:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] then come over before the Winter for the Christmas. [LAUGHTER]
[Moira Stewart:] Thanks to the English invasion, this French store has become the biggest seller of beer in the whole country.
[Derek:] At the moment the Mammoth store in Calais sells more beer and wine especially beer, than any other because of the English.
[Moira Stewart:] But Customs and Excise reckon that not all those sailing back with van-loads of beer are planning to consume their booty at their own parties. They're convinced some of it's smuggled in for resale. Over a hundred prosecutions are pending. Iain Carson, B B C News.
[Nicholas Witchell:] The Church of England is to face a legal challenge to its decision to allow the ordination of women. The General Synod of the Church of England voted last November to allow women priests but the Church Society which opposes the move has won permission for a High Court hearing. It claims that female ordination is a fundamental change in Anglican doctrine that can be brought about only by act of Parliament.
[Moira Stewart:] Air accident investigators are conducting and inquiry after and Air Malta plane landed on a taxiway at Gatwick Airport earlier this week. It narrowly missed the terminal building and it was only luck there wasn't another plane or vehicle on the taxiway.
[Stephen:] The incident was almost identical to a similar mix-up which happened six years ago. And once again it happened when an airline pilot became confused by Gatwick's three parallel strips of concrete. These are the main runway, and emergency runway normally used for taxiing purposes and a small taxiway. On Wednesday night the main runway was closed for maintenance and flights were switched to the emergency runway. So all other aircraft movements went to the taxiway with its distinctive central green lights. For some unknown reason, Air Malta flight four four one mistakenly landed on the small taxiway. It flew within two hundred feet of Gatwick's South terminal buildings and could easily have hit other aircraft or vehicles. Air Malta's senior captain who today was flying a Gatwick simulator said he was surprised by the incident.
[Harriet Harman:] I was astonished and er I knew that there were there was a similar incident in Gatwick and erm I knew that our crew were quite er highly trained and highly experience on the European routes and Gatwick especially we have very frequent flights to Gatwick. Besides questioning the pilot, air accident investigators will also want to talk to air traffic controllers and to the Civil Aviation Authorities airport safety experts. They'll want to know why it is that Britain's second busiest airport has once again come perilously close to disaster. Christopher Wain, B B C News.
[Nicholas Witchell:] The Heritage Secretary Peter Brooke says Britain will be creating millionaires every week when the national lottery starts at the end of next year. He's appointed Peter Davies the deputy chairman of the Abbey National to run the scheme. Mr Davies' first task will be to operate the bidding process to run the lottery which could become the biggest in the world.
[Simon:] Bingo's booming in Wood Green, this afternoon three hundred and fifty punters were chancing their luck. The average Briton spends two hundred pounds a year on gambling, but only thirty six pounds on charity. The government hopes half the nation will take part in its lottery, giving people a flutter and financing good causes. The idea would go down well here.
[Moira Stewart:] Yes it would I'm a big gambler and I go into any gambling.
[Laurie Margolis:] It's a game of chance innit I mean you pay your money, you you you come here to lose but if you win it'a bonus. I mean and everybody's looking for that dream amount aren't they. And with the lottery you're getting the little bit nearer.
[Simon:] And would you do the lottery?
[speaker010:] Oh I don't know about that cos I've got to understand it haven't I.
[Simon:] The bank executive named as head of the lottery will decide which business consortia gets to administer it. It could have a turnover of four billion pounds a year with weekly prizes of fourteen million pounds.
[Nicholas Witchell:] Our er primary objective in setting it up er is of course to to get money to to good causes and and on a on a large scale, Certainly certainly in in terms of er the prizes er on on the on my forecasts my my conservative forecast, there's ample opportunity for there bei for there to be a milli a millionaire every week.
[Simon:] If an entry coupon costs a pound, half will go in prizes, then charities, arts, sport and heritage get their cut as will the millennium fund, earmarked for major projects like new museums. The tax man will get a large slice leaving the rest for contractors to pay for administration and potentially massive profits. People could fill in forms in shops or supermarkets, choosing random numbers which would be scanned and fed to a central computer with the results announced live on a weekly T V spectacular. Here at the Department of National Heritage, ministers believe a national lottery will produce cascades of money. In Peter Brooke's words, a flutter for the punter and a bonanza for good causes. Wesley Kerr, B B C News.
[Moira Stewart:] The international trading company Lonrho and the Al Fayed brothers, the owners of the Harrods company House of Fraser, have settled their long running row over the ownership of the Harrods store. Both said cooperation was a better recipe for long term benefits to their respective companies.
[Nicholas Witchell:] A committee of MPs is to conduct and urgent inquiry into the running of the Child Support Agency, the organization set up earlier this year to track down absent fathers and extract maintenance payments. in its first six months the agency has handled half a million cases, but there've been hundreds of complaints about the way it operates.
[Gerry Baker:] Police Sergeant Dick Howard, here with his second family is typical of the angry ex husbands protesting at new maintenance orders. The courts had set the sum he should pay for his child by his first marriage at seventeen pounds fifty. Now the Child Support Agency says he'll have to pay a hundred pounds a week. His ex-wife and child and her second husband have been living on benefits for a year. That hundred pounds represents one fifth of his income which the agency thinks is fair but he doesn't.
[speaker003:] I feel really angry I mean I'm you might say because of my job that I I ought to be law abiding but I am a law abiding person and i like to think that I would go along with all all the laws because they are they are brought in for the benefit of all. But law should be fair and just and this cannot be.
[Gerry Baker:] Ex-husbands are holding protest meetings, MPs postbags and newspaper columns have been crammed with such cases. hardly surprising given the huge number of people affected. In two years time, the agency will have a case load affecting some ten million people, one fifth of the population. The agency is in a belligerent mood, fighting off what they regard as a male backlash.
[Derek:] Many men have regarded the payment of maintenance as optional. Not as an ordinary everyday obligation. They have also felt that if they make a payment at all, that they're fully meeting their obligation, whatever the level of that payment. Or that they are in some way virtuous.
[Gerry Baker:] The agency says fathers were paying much too little, ninety percent of the mothers are living on social security, so are be definition far poorer than their ex-husbands, and that the formula always leaves the second family better off than the first. Average maintenance is running at fifty pounds a week. The agency's been accused of targeting richer fathers who already pay something to meet its five hundred and thirty million pound target in benefit savings. But they deny it and say that in well over half the cases they've taken on, the fathers were paying nothing. Vociferous fathers have been making the running. Less has been heard from mothers for many of whom maintenance is their only chance of getting off benefit.
[Stephen:] I'll be able to guarantee that money coming in, even when i go back to work. It'll make the difference between me going back to work and not being able to go back to work.
[Gerry Baker:] The fathers most justified grievance is the suddenness of the new demands on their income. MPs are getting letters complaining that fathers may have already taken on commitments they can't get out of and they were only expecting to pay whatever the courts had fixed. It is they say, unfairly retrospective. However the agency says they'd always intended to make a radical redistribution of wealth between fathers and their first families. Polly Toynbee, B B C News, Westminster.
[Moira Stewart:] A home has finally been found for the horse John Major was given as a birthday present eight months ago. The animal was a gift from the president of Turkmenistan. But British officials had no idea what to do with it. Now the Queen's household cavalry have offered to look after the horse and it'll be transported to its new home early next year.
[Harriet Harman:] For months, British diplomats have been wondering what to do with this thoroughbred stallion, an official present to the Prime Minister which has so far caused him nothing but embarrassment. Today though Her Majesty's ambassador to Moscow visited Maxat the horse and announced that a home has been found for him at last in the Queen's household Cavalry.
[Simon:] I don't know precisely who's going to be who's going to be using it. It won't be one of the great parade horses because it's not quite big enough but I am sure there will be lots of people who will be looking forward to riding it.
[Harriet Harman:] It was President authoritarian ruler of the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan who gave the stallion to John Major. Downing Street couldn't turn down this gift horse for fear of offending the President but at the same time, they had nowhere for him to go so since March, Maxat, a champion racehorse, was stuck in these Turkmen stables waiting impatiently, getting flabby and fractious. But now the household cavalry have said they'll look after him. Theirs was one of dozens of offers Downing Street received to help Maxat since his plight was first publicized by the B B C in the Spring. For the next four months the Prime Minister's horse still has to be kept in Quarantine in Moscow and in London, Then finally John Majors will get the birthday present he never really wanted in the first place. Ben Brown B B C News, Moscow.
[Nicholas Witchell:] But we won't see the galloping major. Tonight's main news again. New statistics show the economy is continuing to grow. The government says it's prove the recovery isn't faltering. Labour says manufacturing is still suffering. As investigations continue into the killing of P C Patrick Dunn, three men have been released. And two more drivers have fallen victim to the robbery becoming known as carjacking. The next national news is the Nine O'clock News, but from Moira Stewart and from me, good evening and have a peaceful weekend. [recording ends]