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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

BBC Radio 4

News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.

File on 4

Coroners are called to investigate sudden, unexpected and violent deaths. In the more complex cases, they open an inquest. 

The BBC's social affairs correspondent Michael Buchanan has seen many coroners in action and reported from many inquests. 

For this programme we follow the inquest of Daniel Lindsay, who died in 2023 aged 41 in a Surrey care home, as we ask wider questions about coroners courts in England and Wales. Are they operating as well as they could and are there ways they could be better?

We discuss claims the system is ‘chronically under-funded’, even 'broken'. We ask why there is such variation and inconsistency between different coroners – a so-called ‘postcode lottery'. 

We hear from Daniel Lindsay’s cousins as we explore what it is like for a bereaved family to go through an inquest and ask whether the interests of relatives should be given a higher priority.

The Chief Coroner in England and Wales Alexia Durran responds to concerns and explains what she is doing to make the service more responsive and accountable. 

Details of advice and support with bereavement, or end of life care are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Producer: Leela Padmanabhan
Sound design: Hal Haines

The Coroners Question

Operation Venetic was the UK’s largest-ever law enforcement operation, following the infiltration of the encrypted communications network, EncroChat. 

Among those arrested was Faye Dunn, a former international footballer who had become involved as an administrator in an international operation to supply drugs. After three years in prison, Faye has now completed her sentence and is rebuilding her life away from the drugs trade. 

In prison, Faye saw close-up the disastrous effect drug abuse has on users for the first time.

In this File on 4 investigation, Danny Shaw explores the unexpected consequences of the EncroChat operation, as prisons struggle to cope with organised criminals behind bars. Speaking publicly for the first time, Faye tells Danny the story of how she stepped off a plane at Manchester Airport and straight into the hands of the police.

EncroChat was a mobile phone network used almost exclusively by organised criminals. When it was compromised by French and Dutch police, it supplied the biggest windfall of criminal intelligence in British history. It allowed police to view entire chains of communication used to coordinate the international drugs trade. 

In the context of the decades-old ‘War on Drugs’, it was a bunker-busting super-weapon, unlikely ever to be surpassed in law-enforcement terms. 

Thousands were arrested. Tonnes of drugs and millions in cash were seized. Weapons, ammunition and digital trails stretching across the global drug trade were uncovered. Major players were jailed. The police called it a once-in-a-lifetime victory. 

But six years later, has this Hollywood-style policing operation made an impact on the supply of drugs on our streets?

Has it truly disrupted the drug trade – or simply shifted it?

And with law enforcement and custody costing hundreds of millions of pounds, are there other ways of reducing the harm cased by drugs?

Danny visits cities across Britain to look at programmes that aim to reduce demand for drugs - the other side of this most lucrative business model.

Presenter: Danny Shaw
Producer: Beth McLeod
Technical Producer: Steve Wyatt
Executive Producer: Andrew Wilkie
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Image: Andy Aitchison
A Prison Radio Association production for BBC Radio 4

After EncroChat

A Romanian Ransom uncovers one of the Cold War's strangest secrets - a covert trade in which Jewish lives were bought and sold for livestock and cash. In 1958, MI5 agents watch pigs being loaded onto a plane in Hertfordshire, bound for Communist Romania. The man behind it, Henry Jakober, was a London livestock trader with hidden ties to Romanian intelligence.

The documentary follows Andrea Bernard and Radu Horaud, two children raised in communist Romania, where Jews faced decades of persecution, from the wartime Holocaust through Ceaușescu's secret police. Both hid their Jewish identity growing up, and both were separated from their parents, who defected to the West. Their reunions, in Tel Aviv and Paris, hinged on a name neither had heard before - Jakober.

Historians and the families reveal how Jakober brokered exit visas for desperate Romanian Jews, paid for with pigs, cattle, and farm equipment, later escalating to cash running into millions. Mossad, alarmed at first, ultimately co-opted the scheme, and Ceaușescu expanded it into an industrial operation, selling around 100,000 Jewish lives for tens of millions of dollars, while his secret police profited from the proceeds.

The documentary wrestles with Jakober's legacy - a Schindler-like rescuer, or a profiteer trading in human freedom? Through testimony and declassified files, we trace the moral complexity of a scheme that reunited families while treating them as commodities.

A Message Heard Media production for BBC Radio 4

A Romanian Ransom

The quality of maternity care in hospitals across the country has been in the spotlight following a series of scandals. On File on 4 Investigates families allege serious failings of care at the Countess of Chester maternity unit - the same hospital where neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering and attempting to murder 14 babies. 

We speak to families about their experiences and ask what implications the quality of maternity care could have had on the Letby case.

Presenter: Stephanie Hegarty
Producer: Ben Robinson
Production Co-ordinators: Tom Dunster and Tim Fernley
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Editor: Tara McDermott 

Details of organisations offering information and support with traumatic birth or child bereavement are available on the pregnancy related issues page at www.bbc.co.uk/actionline

Letby Hospital: Maternity failings at the Countess of Chester

Whistleblower Simon Andriesz reveals how he unearthed evidence that US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had failed to disclose a business relationship with the paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein. The British broker, who worked at one of Lutnick’s Wall Street firms, made the discovery in the Epstein files, some of which were released earlier this year. 

Mr Andriesz also speaks for the first time about the personal cost of disclosing what was going on inside one of the companies then run by Howard Lutnick and his decade-long battle with courts and regulators. And he reveals how Mr Lutnick's firm was keen to agree a $1m deal with the former Prince Andrew for introductions to wealthy individuals and sovereign institutions. 

This programme has been edited since it was first released to correct errors in dates. 

Presenter: Andy Verity
Producer: Rob Byrne
Production Co-ordinators: Tom Dunster & Tim Fernley
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tara McDermott

Epstein Files: Lutnick, the Royals and the British Whistleblower

File on 4 Investigates concerns about how some strict discipline measures are being implemented in schools across England. 

We discovered students internally excluded for around 20% of their lesson time, and some much longer. The Outwood Grange Academy in Wakefield put one pupil in an isolation booth for more than half of the academic year. 

We hear from a mother in Devon whose son Taylor took his own life, weeks after he’d expressed his frustration at what he saw as his school, Ivybridge Community College’s punitive and illogical rules. 

Presenter: Jane Deith
Producer: Anna Meisel
Production Co-ordinators: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tara McDermott

This programme contains reference to suicide and self harm. 

If you've been affected by some of the issues raised in this programme you can find out more about organisations that can help by going to www.bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Strict schools: Taking discipline too far?

File on 4 Investigates how Immigration Enforcement officers are tackling sham marriages. Claire Jones follows Home Office officials as they apprehend people entering into, and organising fake marriages in order to circumvent the UK’s immigration laws. She discovers details of criminal gangs charging people up to £30,000 for a partner and 'marriage pack', a set of photos and documents designed to create a convincing back story of the fake relationship. After File on 4 Investigates asked the Home Office why more statistics are not available on suspected fake marriages, they have now committed to regularly publishing these numbers 'in due course'. 

Presenter: Claire Jones
Producer: Ashley Kennedy
Editor: Tara McDermott
Production Co-ordinators: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster
Technical Producer: Richard Hannaford

Fake Marriages - The real story

The Church of England is confronting difficult questions over a £100 million fund to address its historic links to slavery. Aleem Maqbool hears from clergy, historians and politicians as he explores the arguments over reparations, responsibility and whether the Church can make amends for sins of the past.

Presenter: Aleem Maqbool
Producers: Hayley Mortimer & Catherine Wyatt
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Production Co-ordinators: Tom Dunster & Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott

Sins of the past: Should the Church of England pay for its links to slavery?

Liv Nervo is one of the world’s most successful female DJs, who along with her twin sister, make up NERVO. She was starting a family with a man she believed was the love of her life - but at six months pregnant, she discovered he had been living a double life. She says she entered the relationship under false pretences and wouldn't have consented to sex had she known the truth about his other relationship.

What happened to her reveals an intense debate about consent, the law and a lesser-known form of domestic abuse called reproductive coercion.

G for guidance - this programme contains strong language.

Presenter: Alys Harte
Producer: Ben Robinson
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Production Manager: Tom Dunster
Editor: Tara McDermott

Tricked into pregnancy? The Liv Nervo story

Hair Strand Tests can show if parents have been using drink or drugs. Such tests play can a central part in Family Court hearings every year as judges decide whether children should go into care or not. Some barristers have been raising the alarm over the way the tests are presented and interpreted in the Famly Court. And, for the first time, File on 4 Investigates talks to mothers who nearly lost their babies – thanks to hair strand tests.

Presenter: Sanchia Berg
Senior Producer: Anna Meisel
Producer: Mary O'Reilly
Technical Producer: Kelly Young
Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott

Image: Lead Senior Scientist Dr Ellie Menzies carrying out a hair strand test

The Coroners Question

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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