The Report

The UK's Supreme Court recently heard another challenge to the law governing assisted suicide. Appellants are seeking clarity on when a health professional might be prosecuted for helping someone to die.

Belgium legalised euthanasia for adults in 2002. Now around 2 per cent of all recorded deaths occur as a result of people asking to end their lives. Pro-euthanasia advocates want the law to be broadened - there's been talk of legislating for people with dementia. And recently, the upper house of parliament, the Senate, voted by a large majority to extend the right to request euthanasia to children who are terminally ill. Supporters claim this is logical. Detractors say it is insanity.

In The Report, Linda Pressly explores how the euthanasia law works in Belgium - are there lessons for us to learn here in the UK?

With cabinet papers relating to the 1984 miners' strike due to be published tomorrow, Jenny Chryss examines growing calls for a public inquiry into allegations of widespread falsification of evidence by the police against some of the miners who ended up facing charges.

On June 18 1984, scores of pickets and police officers were injured during one of the bloodiest events of the year long strike. Protesters at Orgreave were trying to stop coke from the plant being transported to the British Steel mill at Scunthorpe. Ninety three people were arrested that day with some charged with riot, which carries a potential life sentence. However, nearly four months into the trial of fifteen of the accused pickets the case against them collapsed.

Thirty years on, it's alleged that some police officers manipulated the evidence given in court and colluded over their statement writing or were told what to write. But no officer has ever been charged.

And allegations about police malpractice spread beyond Orgreave. The programme hears from one former miner who says he was beaten almost unconscious during a picket at Frickley Colliery in West Yorkshire and then charged with a public order offence on the basis of falsified evidence. The case against him was later dropped.

Campaigners and some MPs are now calling for a public inquiry and are drawing parallels between these allegations and similar revelations about the manipulation of evidence after the Hillsborough football disaster five years later. The Hillsborough Independent Panel revealed that more than a hundred and sixty South Yorkshire police statements had been altered after the disaster in which ninety six Liverpool fans died in April 1989.

Producer: Sally Chesworth.

The 'Cyber Monday' computer meltdown that affected RBS and NatWest customers as they tried to bag bargains in the run-up to Christmas was just the latest in a string of IT glitches that have plagued the big UK banks in recent years.

But is there a greater problem than the inconvenience caused for shoppers? Melanie Abbott talks to those who have worked on the huge, ageing computer systems at the heart of the UK banking system and finds out that banks like RBS face a massive dilemma - spend billions replacing their 'mainframes' or risk bigger, more serious problems in the next few years.

Melanie finds out about the scale and size of the IT systems behind our everyday transactions as she becomes the first journalist allowed access to one of the secret data centres that power the banking payments system at Vocalink. And she hears from Andrew Tyrie, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, about the urgent need to solve the banks' IT problem before they damage the entire financial system.

At the end of November 2013 the Metropolitan police released details of what has been described as Britain's worst case of domestic slavery.

Following the arrest of two people in Lambeth, South London, it was revealed that three women had been taken into care - a 69-year-old from Malaysia, a 57-year-old from Ireland, and a 30-year-old Briton.

It was claimed the three women had been held for 30 years, but further details began to emerge which suggest this is a unique case and not typical of other stories of domestic servitude.

Two of the women, Josephine Herivel and Aishah Wahab, had been members of a small Maoist collective which formed in Brixton in the 1970s - The Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The women were still living with the group's founder and his wife - the couple who were recently arrrested and bailed by the police - while the youngest woman, Rosie Davies, is believed to have been born into the household.

On this edition of The Report, Simon Cox probes the circumstances under which these women came to live together, exploring the relationship they had with their suspected captors.

The programme speaks to those who came into contact with the Maoist collective over the past three decades, as well as relatives of former members of the group, to ask how the women could seemingly lose contact with wider society.

Reporter: Simon Cox

Last month the former Home Secretary David Blunkett warned that tensions between Sheffield's Roma and their more established neighbours could lead to "an explosion". But, with estimates of as many as 200,000 Roma in the UK, such tensions aren't confined to Sheffield. So is enough being done to help ease their integration? Andrew Fletcher reports on how local authorities are coping with the arrival of large numbers of Roma migrants and with Britain's labour market opening to Bulgaria and Romania in January, asks whether there will be extra pressures in areas already experiencing community tensions?

Producer: Rob Cave.

Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed's audacious escape from terror restrictions by removing his electronic tag and absconding from a west London mosque in a burka has brought the Coalition's terror laws into the spotlight. Should we be worried that under the relaxed legislation six other suspected terrorists will have restrictions on them lifted in January? Phil Kemp investigates Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures - or TPIMs - and asks if the civil liberties of suspects have been put ahead of public safety.

Pope Francis is being acclaimed for his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church with even secular newspapers running headlines like "Pope Idol". But he was only elected because last February his predecessor Benedict XVI became the first Pope in centuries to resign. Was it a simple matter of ill health, or was he impelled to step down because of scandals at the Vatican Bank, claims of a "gay cabal" within the Vatican and the Vatileaks affair, in which the Pope's butler was arrested for leaking confidential documents?

Mark Dowd travels to Rome to try to find the truth behind the Papal resignation. He talks to, among others, Cardinal Francis Arinze, who was present at the momentous meeting at which Benedict announced his decision to step down.

Hannah Barnes asks where the money from your energy bills goes. Do the energy companies have anything to hide and are customers are being ripped off? She visits Jane, an energy customer in Brighton, and finds her in a cold house waiting as long as she can to turn on her heating. Jane isnot alone - there are thousands like her who cannot afford to pay their bills. So why are they going up and are each of the different reasons given by the big six energy companies valid or are we paying too much.

Contributors:

In The Report this week Simon Cox finds out why the Department for Work and Pensions has struggled to create an IT system that can deliver Universal Credit.

The government announced in 2010 that it planned to create a single payment - combining six of the current benefits available for those struggling financially. The plan for Universal Credit was developed in Opposition by Iain Duncan Smith, now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

It was envisioned that there would be a pilot in April 2013, with the system rolled out to all new out-of-work claimants by October 2013. By 2017 all those in receipt of benefits should be claiming Universal Credit.

However, it was announced earlier this year that the pilot would only include a very small number of new claimants - the most simple to process. The national roll-out has now been scaled back. And in September this year the National Audit Office produced a damning report, saying the project had been beset with problems.

But was the plan too ambitious in the first place? Or could better management have delivered the project to the timescales originally set out? Simon Cox travels to the areas of Greater Manchester where the new benefit is being trialled to see how Universal Credit is being welcomed.

Producer: Charlotte McDonald.

The government announced this week that it was bringing it's new help to buy scheme forward to start in a few days time. Its a policy designed to help get the housing market moving. But will it really be a lifeline for hardworking families wanting to get on the property ladder or will it drive up prices and cause a housing bubble? Helen Grady finds out who the scheme is likely to benefit and talks to people trying to buy and sell in York and London.