By Natasha Salari, Clare Jerrom and Alex Dobson.

Ministers cleared of easing entry for Eastern Europeans
A government inquiry has cleared ministers of approving a secret policy to make it easier for Eastern Europeans to settle in Britain.
The inquiry concluded that the scheme had been drawn up by managers at the Sheffield office of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) acting on their own initiative.
An investigation was ordered after the IND ‘whistle-blower’ Steve Moxon said the policy to fast-track Eastern European applicants was designed to massage immigration figures.
Source:- The Independent Friday 26 March page 8
Soham investigators ask for £1.4m
Police have asked the government for more money to cover the cost of investigating the murders of the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
The Home Office has given Cambridgeshire Police Authority £3.5 million for the investigation into the murders of the 10-year-old girls in August 2002.
The authority said yesterday that it was asking for a further £1.4 million.
Source:- The Independent Friday 26 March page 9
Athletics coaches in sexual abuse inquiries
A leading athletics trainer has been banned from coaching for seven years.
The ban by the sport’s governing body, UK Athletics, follows accusations that Joe Sweeney, a former British triple jumper, physically and sexually abused female athletes he worked with.
The NSPCC claimed the case involving Sweeney, who was found guilty yesterday of “engaging in inappropriate encounters with young vulnerable female athletes under his care”, was just one of a number that UK Athletics is currently handling.
It is believed that at least six cases of sexual abuse by coaches are currently being investigated by the NSPCC.
Source:- The Guardian Friday 26 March page 1
Mother loses child in post-Cannings appeal
The first woman to go to the court of appeal following the Angela Cannings judgement has lost her child after a judge ruled that the girl should be freed for adoption.
The case involved an unmarried Bangladeshi woman of 20, who became pregnant when she was 17 in November 2002. A high court judge accepted medical evidence that she had made four attempts to smother her baby daughter in the first four months of her life.
The judge ordered that the girl, now aged two, should be taken into care.
Angela Cannings had her conviction for killing her two baby sons quashed last year. The appeal court said that in future no prosecutions should be brought where medical experts were in dispute and there was no other cogent evidence.
The case yesterday was the first to reach the appeal court since the solicitor general, Harriet Harman, announced that cases in which children had been taken into care on medical evidence could be reopened.
Source: The Guardian Friday 26 March page 4
Drug offenders failing to follow treatment regime
A community sentence giving drug users treatment instead of sending them to prison is failing with only one in three offenders completing the order in full, according to the National Audit Office.
More than 18,400 drug testing and treatment orders have been imposed on offenders since they were introduced in 1998.
The completion rates have varied considerably across the country, from 71 per cent in Dorset to only eight per cent in Kent.
Source:- The Guardian Friday 26 March page 6
Soham police chief ‘ignored advice’
The chief constable of Humberside police has come under renewed pressure after it emerged that he was twice told not to blame the Data Protection Act for the deletion of records on the Soham murderer Ian Huntley.
David Westwood ignored the warnings of two senior figures, and issued a statement just hours after Huntley’s conviction for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, saying that filed had been deleted to comply with the law.
Source: The Guardian Friday 26 March page 9
Welfare fraud and errors are costing £1bn a year
Fraud and faults in the welfare system are costing the taxpayer more than £1 billion a year, according to two new reports.
One survey, by the Office for National Statistics, showed that taxpayers were losing £1.09 billion a year because of fraud and error in claims for income support and job seeker’s allowance.
Another report, from the House of Commons public accounts committee, showed that 20 per cent of all benefit decisions contain errors.
Source: The Daily Telegraph Friday 26 March page 2
‘Game Boy’ generation is risking health by sleeping less
Children are risking their mental and physical health by getting too little sleep, according to new research.
One in five children gets between two and five hours less than their parents did at the same age, losing up to one month’s sleep a year.
Children are being left in their rooms with electronic gadgets and experts say the number of televisions and computers in children’s bedrooms is largely to blame for sleep deprivation among the young.
Source: The Daily Telegraph Friday 26 March page 5
‘Mr Big’ seized in gangmaster raids
Raids across the county in a police operation aimed at gangmasters running a “21st century slavetrade” using illegal workers have resulted in dozens of arrests.
The dawn raids involved scores of police and immigration officers from Norfolk, Aberdeen, Cambridgeshire, Essex and London.
In Aberdeen, 28 men and 10 women, mostly of eastern European origin, were arrested, while Norfolk police said that they had detained two men, one of whom they believed to be a “Mr Big” in the world of gangmasters.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 26 March page 7
Mother to sue police after being cleared of killing son
A mother cleared of drowning her son 13 years ago has said that she will sue the police.
Sallie-Anne Loughran, aged 40, said she would take action against the Nottinghamshire force over its re-investigation into the death of two-year-old Thomas Hunt.
A coroner originally concluded that Thomas, who was found in a duck pond in April 1991, died in an accident.
But police re-opened the case in late 1999 after relatives of Loughran’s former husband claimed that she had confessed to murdering Thomas.
This week she was found not guilty of murder and manslaughter.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 26 March page 11
Doubts cast on ‘shaken babies’
A text-book symptom of shaken baby syndrome can be caused by a household accident, a study by doctors has said,
Dr Patrick Lantz and colleagues from Wake Forest University in North Carolina say in the British Medical Journal that retinal bleeding, one of the three classic signs of shaken baby syndrome, is “scientifically questionable” and needs to be re-examined.
Dr Lantz is calling for research to compare eye damage in children thought to have been abused and not abused.
Source: The Daily Telegraph Friday 26 March page 13
Probation system failed to stop constable’s killer
Failures in the probation service allowed the killer of a police officer to be free to offend, it has emerged.
Drug addict David Parfitt who had a history of offending, regularly breached the conditions on which he was freed early from prison. He failed drug tests and missed appointments within weeks of release from jail under the government’s early-release scheme.
An official report into the death of Constable Ged Walker published yesterday blamed individual probation officers, managers of the Nottingham Probation Service and the National Probation Service.
Source:- The Times  Friday 26 March page 7
Housing ‘unfit’
A company that housed asylum seekers in Liverpool has been stripped of its contract with the Home Office.
Landmark Liverpool Ltd properties were found to be damp, dangerous, and infested, and were slammed as “below standard”.
Source:- The Times Friday 26 March page 9
Scottish newspapers
Pay talks hope in nursery dispute
Union leaders have agreed to talks with local authorities in a bid to end the nursery nurse strike over pay and conditions.
Unison has written to 21 Scottish councils still locked in a pay dispute with their employees to accept an offer of talks.
Source:- The Scotsman Friday 26 March
Cut price loan idea for public workers
Key public sector workers including teachers and nurses, may be offered cut-price loans to help them beat Edinburgh’s soaring house prices.
According to sources, the Scottish executive is considering whether to follow the example of John Prescott, who this week announced loans of up to £100,000 to help key workers afford housing.
The calls for special allowances came as the executive announced a £284 million investment package for affordable housing across the country in the next financial year.
Source:- Evening News Thursday 25 March
Antisocial blitz ‘won’t stop crime’
Proposals to tackle antisocial behaviour will not solve the problems blighting areas of Edinburgh, it has been claimed.
A public meeting in the City Chambers heard arguments that the bill will criminalise youngsters, waste valuable police time and distract attention from the real problems facing society.
Source:- Evening News Thursday 25 March
SACRO hails course after repeat drink crimes fall
A community initiative designed to lower alcohol-related crimes has reduced further convictions in offenders, according to the latest statistics.
According to a study of SACRO’s Alcohol Education probation programme, 71 per cent of those who completed the course did not offend again within a year.
The charity operates the eight–week scheme as part of a probation order where drink has contributed to an individual’s behaviour.
Source:- Evening News Thursday 25 March
Welsh newspapers
From lollipops to alcopops
Parents in south Wales are allowing children as young as nine to drink alcohol.
A new study from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (Uwic) is calling for a change in parental attitude after research revealed that alcopops had replaced fizzy drinks at many children’s parties.
Source:- South Wales Echo Thursday 25 March page 5
Fury at assembly’s sick porn website
Computer hackers have infiltrated a Welsh assembly internet site and replaced information on economic development with hard core pornography.
Conservative assembly member Alun Cairns, chairperson of the assembly’s IT committee, is demanding immediate action to be taken, and apologies to be issued to anyone who has viewed the site.
Source:- South Wales Echo Thursday 25 March page 11
Housing cash bombshell
Gwent is short of at least £427 million to upgrade council homes to meet new basic standards.
The five local authorities in Gwent will have to upgrade thousands of homes by 2012 because of new Welsh assembly standards.
Councillors have warned that local authorities may not be able to find the cash to improve homes, and may be forced to ask housing agencies to handle stock in the future.
Source:- South Wales Argus Thursday 25 March page 11
Man evaded staff watch to kill himself
A former farmer hanged himself from his bed frame despite being on a 15-minute watch.
Thomas Charles, aged 70, who was almost blind and suffered from arthritis, had been depressed for some time prior to his death. He was found by his bed at Bro Cerwyn Hospital in Haverfordwest, but efforts to revive him failed.
Pembrokeshire coroner Michael Howells said that he was satisfied that adequate procedures were in place at the hospital at the time of the suicide.
Source:- Western Mail Friday 26 March page 3