Reserve White Paper: Hammond In TA Shake-Up

By Alistair Bunkall, Defence Correspondent

The Defence Secretary is due to announce that £1.8bn will be invested in a restructured reservist force over the next decade.

Philip Hammond will set out a new package for reservist soldiers and their employers when he unveils the Reserve White Paper in the House of Commons.

He is expected to announce a major expansion in the part-time force and unveil plans for a special £42m equipment budget.

Training will also be boosted, with more exercises held overseas and smaller firms given financial incentives to let staff join up.

Details about which Territorial Army regiments are to disband are due to be revealed, although defence sources point out that new ones will also be created.

The White Paper will also confirm a change in name with the TA, which senior military officers feel has a Dad's Army connotation, becoming The Reservists.

Philip Hammond says employers will benefit from the changes

Thirty-six TA centres will also be "vacated", although that is far less than the 88 predicted based on early calculations.

They will not be sold off, but instead used for other purposes. A total of £80m will be spent refurbishing the remaining centres, with 68 major units for the reserve force.

Companies will also be given more notice of training and deployments so they can plan for the temporary loss of staff.

Mr Hammond will promise to listen to the concerns and views of businesses to ensure their co-operation.

Speaking to Sky News, he defended the changes, saying: "The White Paper allows us to set out our vision for the future of reserves. We need the support of employers to make this work.

"But we also need to make sure that the benefits of reservist training, the skills that reservists learn, can be properly recognised and deployed in their civilian workplace to make them better employees.

"An additional financial incentive over and above the reimbursement of costs that we already provide is our way of recognising that pressure that it puts particularly on smaller employers."

But Neil Carberry, the Confederation of British Industry's director of employment and skills, said small businesses were willing to work with the MoD but fear being told what to do.

"What we want to see is not a 'thou shalt do this' when you employ a reservist from the MoD, but rather a 'let us tell you how we can work together' to make employing a reservist a really enjoyable experience," he said.

The Ministry of Defence needs to dramatically increase the size of The Reservists. The total reserve force, made up of all three services, currently stands at around 22,000, of which around 19,000 are in the Army.

But the aim is to expand it to 35,000 members, 30,000 in the Army. A big marketing drive has been put in place including a recent series of adverts broadcast live from Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.

The Head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, admits the key challenge will be recruiting the numbers needed, but is confident that will be achieved.

"There is a cultural shift required here, there is a sort of experimental nature here, but we need to remember that historically we had a big reserve and when I joined the Army a few decades ago it was over 100,000 in the reserve," he told Sky News.

"We also need to remember that other nations make far more use of reserve manpower than we do, particularly the American army, which you wouldn't necessarily associate as being that situation and if we emulate what they've been doing then I think we'll be fine."

The Reservists will train alongside the regular troops. There will be more overseas exercises for them and both the reserve and regular force will train together ahead of deployments.

Sergeant Gary Shepard is a lorry driver and a member of The Reservists. He foresees no problem with a closer working relationship.

"I'm actually an ex-regular soldier, but when I joined 1 Para we integrated very easily and within a few weeks they actually forgot we were part-time," he told Sky News.

"What we do is 'beat-up' training prior to going and joining them (the regulars) so that we're on the same level as they are." 

However, the restructuring is not out of choice but financial pressures. The regular Army is being cut to 82,000 personnel, the lowest level for more than a century.

Although the MoD escaped the worst of the budget cuts in the recent Spending Review, the military is still undergoing a major restructuring following the Strategic Defence and Security Review a few years ago.

There will be a fourth and final round of redundancies early next year which will largely affect the Army.

Dan Jarvis, a former soldier and now a Labour MP, has his doubts. He said: "Let's be clear, these decisions are being made not about capability, but about saving money.

"The Government has considerable challenges ahead to recruit the number of reservists it needs.

"We accept and understand that changes do have to be made, but it will be a difficult a process to make all those changes happen smoothly and effectively."

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Health Tourism: Foreigners Face £200 NHS Levy

Foreigners face being charged around £200-a-year for using the NHS in an attempt to tackle so-called health tourism.

Ministers will outline plans to introduce the charge for foreign workers and students who come to the UK for more than half a year.

The Department of Health said it would make sure migrants contributed towards healthcare costs without adding to NHS red tape.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce a public consultation on the move as part of a raft of changes to immigration laws.

He will say: "We need to ensure that those residing or visiting the UK are contributing to the system in the same way as British taxpayers, and ensure we do as much as possible to target illegal migration.

"We have been clear that we are a national health service - not an international health service - and I am determined to wipe out abuse in the system.

"The NHS is a national treasure and we need to work with the entire health system to develop plans and make sure it is sustainable for years to come."

He will also outline plans to end free access to GPs for short-term visitors and pledge to cut the bill for treating tourists, which currently stands at £200m.

But he has already made clear foreign patients would not be refused treatment in an emergency. In those cases, efforts to recoup the money would be made later.

The changes are part of a Government-wide push to cut down on abuse of British services, but doctors warned they feared becoming a "form of immigration control".

Clare Gerada, chair of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: "I don't think we should be turning the GP surgery into a border agency."

Dr Gerada also warned immigrants with highly infectious conditions could end up "wandering around for fear of being charged" or going to more expensive emergency units, which could cost more.

And she accused the Government of failing to "find the facts" about the actual cost of NHS use by immigrants and launching a "rushed consultation".

"We need to make sure that what comes out the other end is sensible, proportionate and fair and doesn't cost us all much more money and put us at much more risk than the current situation which is one that, even at the worst estimates, is a tiny proportion of NHS costs," she said.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister David Cameron said immigrants could not expect "something for nothing" in the UK.

But shadow health minister Liz Kendall said: "In its three years in power, the Government has a poor record on announcing policies that sound good, but prove to be completely unworkable.

"We will have many questions to ask about the details when they are published, but the key tests for their proposals are: can they be properly enforced and will they save more money than they cost to put in place?

"The public and NHS staff must be confident that any new measures are about getting taxpayers a better deal and ensuring fairness, not playing politics with our NHS."

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Child Sex Abuse Live Streaming A Bigger Threat

Child sexual abuse streamed live online through services like Skype has been highlighted as an emerging threat by experts.

Figures show an increasing number of offenders have been targeting vulnerable families overseas to set up live access to children over webcams in exchange for payment.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre's (Ceop) annual report also warned that fears were growing of child sexual abuse in Brazil ahead of the country's influx of visitors for the World Cup and Olympic Games.

In 2012, Ceop received 8,000 reports of indecent images of children being shared - with a two-fold increase in the total number of images and videos on previous years to 70,000.

Ceop chief executive Peter Davies said: "Our assessment shows that, sadly, there are still too many children at risk and too many people who would cause them serious harm.

"We should all practice zero tolerance to child sexual exploitation and abuse."

The report said live streaming emerged as a key method of producing and distributing indecent images last year, a tactic that it said presents a particularly high risk in the developing world.

Sex offenders are targeting families and children in areas with extreme poverty, rising levels of access to the internet and poor child-protection policies, the centre said.

Concerns were also raised about the use of the so-called hidden internet - heavily encrypted forums and pages that allow abusers to cover their tracks when accessing indecent images online.

The number of UK users connecting to secret or encrypted networks each day increased by two thirds, one of the largest annual increases globally, the report said.

A total of 20,000 daily UK users of such networks are expected by the end of this year, although not all of these will use the hidden internet for criminal means.

Ceop found that there has been a 70% increase in the number of female victims under 10 years old.

The report comes shortly after after five members of a seven-man sadistic paedophile ring found guilty of grooming vulnerable underage girls were given life sentences at the Old Bailey.

Two other defendants were both jailed for seven years.

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Shipley: Man Arrested Over Murder And Stabbing

A man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of an 84-year-old woman and the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy in a skate park in West Yorkshire.

Officers found the pensioner's body in a bedroom at her home in Prospect Mount, Shipley.

It followed reports the boy had been attacked in the town's Carnegie skate park.

West Yorkshire Police said the woman, named as Louisa Denby, had suffered "numerous stab wounds".

The man, aged 26, was arrested at 4.10am on Tuesday in nearby Idle on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, a police spokesman said.

Another 26-year-old man has also been arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody.

The other local men aged 18, 24 and 29 have been arrested over the incident in the skate park, the spokesman added.

The boy suffered chest and arm injuries when he was attacked at around 4.40pm on Monday.

He was taken by air ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary where he is expected to undergo surgery this morning.

He remains in a stable condition, police said.

After the attack on the boy, police launched a hunt for a white man, in his twenties.

He was wearing a cap and glasses and was believed to be carrying a walking stick.

Any witnesses or anyone with information is asked to contact the non emergency number 101 or Crimestoppers in confidence on 0800 555 111.

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Smethwick Fire: Massive Blaze At Recycling Plant

More than 100 firefighters have been tackling a massive blaze at a plastic recycling factory in the West Midlands.

About 50,000 tonnes of recycling material and a factory unit are on fire in Smethwick on the outskirts of Birmingham.

West Midlands Fire Service said they had more than 35 fire engines at the scene, just off Dartmouth Road.

Paramedic Huw Jones tweeted that he was at the scene of the "large industrial fire".

It is understood there are no plans to evacuate residents from nearby homes.

The fire service said its control centre had received more than 145 calls about the fire.

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Rotavirus: Babies To Get 'Vomiting Bug' Jab

By Rhiannon Mills, Sky Reporter

A vaccination programme aimed at protecting babies against one of the most common causes of diarrhoea in young children begins today.

The rotavirus vaccination will be given to all infants aged between two and three months.

According to Public Health England, it will protect more than 675,000 babies from the highly infectious bug which causes diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever and dehydration.

At the moment, almost every child will have had the viral infection by the age of five and it is the most common cause of gastroenteritis in infants and very young children.

The vaccine is already routinely used in many other countries

Children will receive the vaccine orally as two separate doses of liquid drops,.

Dr Paul Cosford, medical director at Public Health England, said: "Rotavirus is a highly infectious and unpleasant illness that affects thousands of young children each year.

"While most recover within a few days, nearly one in five will need to see their doctor, and one in 10 will end up in hospital as a result.

"Although good hygiene measures can help prevent spread of the disease, the best way to protect your baby from catching rotavirus is to get them vaccinated."

Vaccination experts believe the immunisation programme will halve the number of vomiting and diarrhoea cases caused by rotavirus, meaning fewer children end up going to their GP or to hospital.

Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP, told Sky News: "The vaccination has been routinely used for many years in other countries. Overall it looks extremely safe.

"It's given by a couple of drops in the mouth and it's a weakened form of the virus which you'd be exposed to anyway, but this way you're being exposed to a weakened form so you don't get the symptoms but you do build up an immunity."

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Lawrence Mother To Question May On 'Smear Plot'

The mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence will ask the Home Secretary for either a judge-led or independent inquiry into claims undercover police were ordered to smear her family, her lawyer has said.

Doreen Lawrence will ask Theresa May about the claims made by a former officer in the Metropolitan Police's Special Demonstrations Squad.

Peter Francis said he had been asked to "dig up dirt" on the Lawrence family in the aftermath of their son's murder in 1993.

Mrs Lawrence's lawyer, Michael Mansfield QC, said: "She will be wanting something done in public, and the nearest example is Leveson, or an alternative scenario is one like the Hillsborough panel that looks at all the material.

"One of these two has got to happen. Not another internal inquiry which will not be made public because they will claim it's sensitive information.

Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a racist gang in 1993

"It doesn't necessarily have to take particularly long. Leveson was done in a year, and it's a good example of something that was done in public, and quite searing questions were asked. Hillsborough was very efficient too.

"We're not talking about a public inquiry that takes years and a report that gets left on the back-burner, we're talking about an efficient, focused inquiry."

Claims have also emerged that police had bugged meetings between officers, lawyers and Stephen's friend Duwayne Brooks, who was with him on the night that he was murdered by a racist gang.

Mr Mansfield, who represents the Lawrence family along with fellow lawyer Imran Khan, said: "I'm wondering if they did exactly the same with Imran and myself. I will want assurances that they have not done that. It's a very serious situation.

Neville Lawrence has already called for a public inquiry

"This has been a very sorry saga. Doreen has been extraordinarily patient."

Earlier this week Mrs May said Mr Francis' claims would be investigated in two continuing inquiries - one into the undercover operations of the SDS and another into alleged police corruption in the original inquiry into Stephen's murder.

However, the 18-year-old's father, Neville, insisted that only a judge-led public inquiry would be enough to get to the truth.

Mr Brooks' lawyer, Jane Deighton, told Sky News that if the bugging claims were true, they were "bizarre and sinister".

Michael Mansfield QC will seek assurances his conversation were not bugged

She said: "It's bizarre because it's a meeting that the police sought, it was a meeting that the police felt they had to seek after the Macpherson Inquiry had found that they had treated Duwayne in an institutionally racist way.

"The meeting was sold to us as a measure the police were taking to treat him with the respect he deserved.

"It's bizarre and it's sinister that they should have sought authority to bug this meeting."

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "An investigation into the circumstances of what took place has now been started by the DPS (Directorate of Professional Standards).

"This investigation will seek to establish exactly what was authorised and what happened to any material which may have been gathered, in the context of the legal framework of that time."

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Wind Farm Plan In Bristol Channel 'Catastrophic'

By Emma Birchley, Sky Correspondent

A battle is being fought to stop one of the world's biggest offshore windfarms being built in the Bristol Channel as the race continues to hit tough targets on renewable energy.

The Atlantic Array is a development of 240 wind turbines that will be visible both from South Wales and North Devon.

If planning permission is granted, it would provide enough power for 900,000 homes and reinforce the UK's status as the global leader in offshore wind power.

But Steve Crowther from the Slay The Array campaign says it will be "environmentally catastrophic".

"They call this an offshore wind farm - it's inshore. It is between this beautiful Devon coast visited by four million people every year and the Pembroke coast visited by three million people every year.

"And people don't come here to see the landscape and the horizon covered in wind turbines. They come here for peace, tranquillity, rural settings and seascapes."

But with the Government committed to offshore wind power, the number of turbines is only going to increase.

One of the biggest players in the industry is DONG Energy.

Steve Crowther says the wind farm will destroy the beauty of the area

It operates the 48 turbines at Gunfleet Sands near Clacton, which have been up and running for three years and supply electricity to 120,000 homes in Essex.

UK wind power manager for the company, Benj Sykes, says despite concerns about the efficiency of wind farms, they are generating energy more than 80% of the time.

"They are becoming more efficient by the day and Dong Energy is committed to improving that further.

"By the end of the decade we will see the cost of energy coming down by something like 40% making them competitive with other technologies."

And with nearly 8000 miles of coastline there is plenty of opportunity for further development.

Offshore wind turbines in the UK can currently generate more than 3GW watts of energy - enough to power two million homes.

In all, 12.5% of the UK's electricity is already created from renewable sources.

The target is to produce around 30% by 2020, which means building many more turbines - and that creates jobs.

In Brightlingsea, an entire business has been built because of the Essex wind farm.

Andy White, chairman of Ctruk and Cwind, said: "Three years ago we didn't exist. We started the two companies to go out and help build offshore wind farms for the utility companies so three years ago we had zero people working for us and now three years on we have 150 people working for us."

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Suspicious Item Found At Walsall Mosque

Homes near to a mosque in Walsall are being evacuated following the discovery of a suspicious item, West Midlands Police say.

Army bomb disposal experts are currently at the scene and have this morning ordered the evacuation of around 39 homes in the immediate vicinity of the mosque.

The measure is precautionary while a further examination of the item is undertaken.

Police were called to the Rutter Street address at around 10.45pm last night following the discovery in the grounds of the building.

The item was then brought inside the building by a member of the public, police said.

The area has been cordoned off.

"People in the affected area and who are unable to make alternative arrangements are being taken to Walsall Town Hall where they will be cared for," a police statement said.

Meanwhile, local officers remain at the scene and are talking to residents to keep them up-to-date with the incident and offer reassurance.

More follows...

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GCHQ Spies 'Tap Fibre Optic Cables For Data'

British spies have secretly accessed fibre-optic cables carrying huge numbers of emails, Facebook messages and other communications, according to The Guardian.

Documents given to the newspaper by US whistleblower Edward Snowden suggest eavesdropping agency GCHQ can analyse data from the network of cables that carry global phone calls and internet traffic under an operation codenamed Tempora.

The newspaper said data had been shared with the organisation's US counterpart, the National Security Agency.

GCHQ, in Cheltenham, refuses to comment on intelligence matters but insisted it was "scrupulous" in complying with the law.

It is the latest in a string of leaks from Mr Snowden, who has told The Guardian he wants to expose "the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history".

The newspaper said there were two principal components to the agency's surveillance programme, called Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation.

The paper claimed Operation Tempora had been running for 18 months.

GCHQ and the NSA can access communications including recordings of phone calls and a user's entire internet history, the documents suggest - and their scans apparently entirely innocent people as well as specific suspects.

Edward Snowden has been charged with espionage

Mr Snowden, who fled the US for Hong Kong after deciding to reveal the NSA's secrets, told the paper: "It's not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight," he said.

"They (GCHQ) are worse than the US."

The Guardian reported that GCHQ lawyers told US counterparts there was a "light oversight regime" in Britain compared with America.

The newspaper said the documents revealed that by last year GCHQ was handling 600 million "telephone events" each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.

The intelligence gathered is understood to have led to a number of high-profile arrests and convictions, including a terror cell in the Midlands. It is also claimed to have led to the arrest of London-based individuals planning attacks prior to last year's Olympic Games.

A source close to the intelligence agencies told Sky News' Political Correspondent Sophy Ridge that GCHQ scanned data for possible indications of a threat to national security, and that most of the information is not looked at in detail.

The work is legal and subject to ministerial scrutiny, the source said.

Ridge said: "At the same time this is of course going to reignite the big debate over the balance between protecting national security and making sure that people's personal details aren't compromised."

Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch's director Nick Pickes said: "If GCHQ have been intercepting huge numbers of innocent people's communications as part of a massive sweeping exercise, then I struggle to see how that squares with a process that requires a warrant for each individual intercept. This question must be urgently addressed in Parliament."

A GCHQ spokeswoman said: "Our intelligence agencies continue to adhere to a rigorous legal compliance regime."

US authorities have filed espionage charges against Mr Snowden, a former CIA technician who formerly worked for the NSA, and have asked Hong Kong to detain him.

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