All developments at the hospital where they are still open and operating normally as John McManus reports staff at Worthing Hospital have been told that one of their colleagues working in the accidents and emergency department has tested positive for the corona virus the health worker along with the 7 other people in the u.k. Who have so far been identified as having the virus is inquire in same the Department of Health says that all services at the hospital are operating normally but the news that's a 2nd health care worker has been infected has highlighted how vulnerable medical staff may be a local doctor working in nearby Bryson is one of the of the 7 cases patch of Nursing Home in the city which was visited by that g.p. Says that it is closed to visitors as a precaution though nobody there was unwell the veteran left wing Senator Bernie Sanders has narrowly won the New Hampshire primary putting him in pole position in the contest to choose a Democratic Party candidate for the White House close behind Senator Sanders came the more centrist contenders the film and there Pete Breaux to judge and Senator Amy Klobuchar shop the former Vice President Joe Biden a one time Democratic front runner finished a disappointing 5th Senator Sanders won New Hampshire more convincingly 4 years ago but that didn't stop in declaring it a great night this victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump. They are going to unite to go over and defeat the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country the government has suspended its funding of the body that runs the Commonwealth from London until it improves its financial procedures and ordered his report found that normal competitive tendering rules have been waived 50 times over 3 years by the Commonwealth Secretariat which is headed by Lady Scotland Britain is the biggest donor giving the organization 4 point $7000000.00 pounds each year a spokesman for the secretariat insisted it was implementing recommendations made by the orders. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is threatening the government with legal action over what it's described as a repeated failure to move people with learning disabilities and autism into appropriate homes ministers say they are determined to reduce the number of people living in secure hospitals but the commission has concerns about more than 2000 vulnerable people in England is our social affairs correspondent Allison Holt the commission has sent a legal letter to the Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock arguing that his department has breached human rights legislation because it's consistently missed targets to move people with learning disabilities and autism out of hospitals into more appropriate homes in the community the 1st target was set 8 years ago after the B.B.C.'s Panorama program exposed abuse at Winterbourne View Hospital last summer the program uncovered bullying and intimidation at another hospital Walton hole the commission has offered to suspend the legal process for 3 months if the health department produces a timetable planned for change the government has 14 days to respond the media regulator Ofcom is sent to become Britain's 1st Internet watchdog with the power to punish tech companies which expose unit uses to harmful or illegal material under the government's plans a statutory duty of care will be imposed on websites such as Facebook and You Tube terrorist material or child sex abuse would have to be removed quickly. Research by the b.b.c. Has found that universities across the u.k. Are using gagging clauses to silence student complaints about sexual assault bullying and poor teaching the next episode podcast has found that nearly a 3rd of institutions have used non-disclosure agreements to resolve student grievances in the past 4 years Rianna Crockford Reports Our research has found that since 216 around 300 students have signed an da's with more than 1300000 pounds being paid out one student told the podcast he was threatened with expulsion from a course if he broke the terms of her agreement University's u.k. The body that represents the institutions said n.d.s. Should not be used to stop students from speaking out if they have concerns the Department of Education echoed that saying it was unacceptable she uses Saavik remit this unit complaints I miss legislating to stop their misuse from May energy customers will be automatically compensated for delays or errors made when they switch supplier the regulator off chairman says companies will have to pay $30.00 pounds to customers if they are switched by mistake if the process takes longer than 15 days or if the final bill takes more than 6 weeks to arrive the U.K.'s National statistician in diamond said the next year's census may be the last one to be carried out the compulsory survey of households every decade is increasingly expensive and will cost more than $900000000.00 pounds in England Wales alone in who was appointed to his role last year said he was hopeful that better and cheaper alternatives could be found. It's 6 minutes past 6 and it's time for the weather let's hear from Helen Willetts at the b.b.c. Weather Center good morning Helen and Emma Good morning to you with another storm on the way for the weekend but we've got a lot of weather to get to all through between now and then and we're still in Gulf by polar air which means the snow has been causing problems through yesterday and overnight still falling and still drifting in our strong wind So ice is a big hazard this morning even in the south where we haven't the snow showers right now across southern England and Wales we've got ice to contend with on the cars the set up this morning and that could be that I see here as well where we have had some showers now will be a few showers coming through on the flow today but also a good deal of dry weather and hopefully slightly less windy because we got a bump of high pressure coming in and that will bring a slight easing in the wind and a slight easing in the showers through many parts I $69.00 in the south our high Middletons eastern England will also have a good deal of dry and sunny weather it's a cold and frosty start and fewer showers here than we've seen but they're still pestering I spose the north middle and same particular 7 our high Northern Ireland north of England will see plenty more showers particularly through this morning's rush hour they're blowing around in that strong and gusty wind clearly ice is going to be has that there will be some sunshine in between increasing amounts as we get into the afternoon as the showers start to ease but actually 3 to 4 degree Celsius civil East for Scott we got plenty of showers here merging into long spells of rain low levels snow on the low hills only $2.00 to $4.00 degrees here at easing in the wind an easing in the showers later but some more uncertain whether overnight I'll tell you about that later oh look for that thanks Helen 7 minutes past 6 is the time 1st look at the papers and the front page there Telegraph is interesting in as much as it leads with a story you might not have expected to lead with scrapping the license fee will weaken the nation is its lead b.b.c. Chairman warning that it's. Scription model could mean paying to watch royal weddings this is a speech which the Telegraph says is likely to antagonize the governments the government as it considers plans to turn the b.b.c. Into a subscription service but it's a speech none the less that said a bit Clemente the b.b.c. Chair is going to use he will say the b.b.c. Is one of the nation's greatest assets we need to remind ourselves what exactly is at stake if the license fee is scrapped. And the front page of The Times main story dangerous criminals out in days Number 10 fares and this is talking about judges blocking deportations it said that 1st Johnson was on the stand last night to be furious that violent offenders could be back on the streets written within 48 hours after judges stopped them from being deported to Jamaica this was a judicial review which halted the removal of $25.00 serious and dangerous offenders last minute after claims that they've been denied access to lawyers there are a lot of maps in the papers of high speed to some of us ludicrously complicated some not there I draw your attention the front page of the eye which has the best map Vala view are looking briefly to see where this train is going to go where perhaps it's not going to go as well and they go nice map with London used at the bottom and Manchester Leeds at the top crews mentioned East Midlands Bernie and cousin street as well but nowhere else but you sort of get the idea of what Boris Johnson is calling the spine and the eyes headline high speed north on the way as pm takes h. S. To gamble and a really pressing urgent problem in the Times which is about how to engage your guests that your next dinner party might want to bother with mood lighting or fancy wine simply invest in a tablecloth and your guests will find your food much tastier that's what into any start 9 minutes past 6 it's time the government has decided not to pay for the body which runs the Commonwealth until it gets its financial affairs in order we can talk now to James Landale our diplomatic correspondent he's been following this and this is this is about funding for the com Well Secretariat isn't it James. Yeah that's right Martha a couple weeks ago on this program we revealed that the auditor has been sent in over Christmas to look at the financial affairs of the secretary this is the sort of the body that administers the Commonwealth from London and they have produced a very critical report specifically finding that no. Competitive tendering rules when people in contract is 100 the rules have been waived 50 times over 3 years and lately Scotland the commerce secretary general was herself accused of circumventing the rules when she awarded a lucrative contract to a company that was run by a friend something her lawyers still insist was fully justified so there was a big meeting of all the high commissioners all of diplomats in London last week and I've now learned that the British government has decided to suspend its funding for the secretariat until it gets its financial house in order something that the Australian Government and the New Zealand Government have also decided to do and most of the commerce secretary said about this well Secretary at Cagny specs a statement last night simply saying that they're not going to comment on specific conversations between member states but they insist that they fully comply with the audit process and that implementing all the recommendations Accordingly the Foreign Office has said that look the reason it set these conditions is because it wants to ensure the secretary policy is in line with international best practice the problem is this is that if the Commonwealth Secretary does not get this money it will face a huge financial crisis funding streams will have to be closed off this will deplete upset and disappoint and worry Commonwealth member states and of course it will raise fresh questions about Lady Scotland's leadership her 4 year term of office comes up for renewal this year and we already know the come with heads of government have rejected a call by his supporters for her to get an automatic 2nd. So the question will be is this you know just another reason for some people to say look should there be a challenger to Lady Scott and leadership as the prime minister has self is or has already hinted might happen in a letter that he wrote to come with has a government just a few weeks ago James Landau many thanks. It is 12 minutes past 6 now we turn to the business you saw Whitely late slightly later the norm slightly earlier than normal but still we are excited to be able to do it and Dominic is morning I turn excited Have you ever had problems switching your energy supply well from now on you get 30 pounds automatically of switch goes wrong we're going to talk to the energy regulator after about this new plan shortly Also this morning the problems of the 4100 hospital company n m c health we're going to talk to Carson block He's the founder of the short seller Muddy Waters research which 1st suggested the company might have big problems it's question the start of the slide in him see and also how to turn stand the chief executive of Cardo in $59000000.00 pounds 1st year even though the company's losses got bigger 1st so that guaranteed compensation for energy switches that go wrong Mary Starks is the off Jim executive director for consumers and markets and she joins us in a good morning Mary just explain what's happening how would you get the money $30.00 pounds or under what circumstances do you qualify for a morning so you qualify for this compensation if anything goes wrong with your switch it's automatic you don't have to do anything the obligation is on the company to know that something's gone wrong to put it right and to give you compensation if you're trying to do the must be some criteria they can be just if you decide oh I think it's gone wrong you know if the company has to check whether they've met the standards as switching to this which has to be prompt has to complete within 15 days they have to issue a new bill on time and they have to be no mistakes in making the switch happen sometimes the problem can come with the old provider and there's been a lot of providers have gone out of business recently what happens if it's their systems that begin to problem but they have gone under who pays the 30 pounds for them so this these down as they're announcing today relate to as it were normal which is where is still going on when supply goes out of business we have a separate set of safety net arrangements to it and they've customers as I mean it's only both coming just to us all trading How prevalent is this problem. Many switches do you think don't meet the standards at the moment so we. Are an earlier trial of standards at this time last year so since May last year companies have paid out about $700000.00 pounds to customers in compensation but that's against $6400000.00 people who switched in 2019 it was a record year for switching so it's only a small minority of cases that go wrong for the most part people can switch with confidence why are you doing or are you doing it to incentivize people to switch more freely as it were to make them feel happier about this which you know we're doing it to give customers more confidence and more peace of mind that they can they can switch we there are still very good deals out there in the market if people shop around we want anyone who feels unhappy with the supplier that they're with or who wants to save money to feel absolutely confident they have got to get offended because it is truism of the despite often specific then in fact despite all the competition is out there which is a relatively new thing in the You Can the market people are extremely reluctant to switch Well I wouldn't say that $29000.00 was a record year somewhere between one of $4.00 and $1.00 in 5 of us switch last year so it's quite a lively market but we want people to feel even more confident about the market so there's a group of people who are extremely reluctant to switch one slice of the market just doesn't seem to switch at all older people people more vulnerable. Feel comfortable with energy supplier or feel unhappy about switching So I think their price caps that we implemented the beginning of last year protect people who don't switch so it guarantees that if you don't if you stay put you will get a fair price the the improvements to the switching process should give people confidence that they can go out and save even more money by shopping without going to those $2.00 policies mutually they contradict each other you have but you have these incentives for people to switch but then you introduce the price gap which let's not forget often don't particularly want to do. These are 2 policies working against each other no they're actually completely compatible so the price cap works for those. People who either can't switch or don't want to or don't feel comfortable doing it but it doesn't it's in far as I'm from switching observe I don't need to I'm going to. Since the price cap came in. The good deals have not disappeared from the market and as I say 21000 was an absolute record year for switching so didn't seem to be having that effect at all thank you very much Mary Starks from off Jim in mc health was something of a stock market darling it runs hospitals and clinics across the Middle East that flow to the chairs back in London back in 2012 and they absolutely took off from 210 p. All the way up to 40 pounds and in the process the company joined the 4100 so whether you know it or not that might well be in this company might well be in your pension fund another come crashing back down to just under 8 pounds it's because a well known short seller that's in the best of the bits a company shares will go down publish the research report suggesting the company's accounts were not were not accurate since in the company has put itself up for sale and earlier this week it admitted that it didn't know exactly how many shares its founder and chairman be actually own and when I've been talking to Carson Bloch He's the founder of Muddy Waters research and I asked for him asked him for his reaction to the latest emissions from him see. We said in our initial report that we did not know how deep the rot goes at an mc and that released coupled with some events from the past few weeks involving the same shareholders makes me think that the rot actually goes quite deep and mc one thing that I would point out there it's not just evident confusion about who owns what but it's pretty clear that these stakes have been pledged in replay it seems and that really brings up the question about how much debt is actually in this structure because we suspected as we wrote about our initial report that there's potentially much more debt here than is disclosed on the balance sheet and it's not a question of the company just having more borrowings than it might appear but also I think you're suggesting rather like happened with Enron all those is the companies using that date to somehow make it apparent profitability larger than it really is right I mean we talked in our report about how the margins too good to be true and one of the things that we believe that an mc has been doing is we believe that an m. C. Has been overbilling in understating its rejection rates I mean a it's entirely possible that the margin also benefited from the related parties taking on debt in order to finance transactions with an m c I don't know for a fact that that's the case in even if I knew that that were the case I wouldn't be able to tell you to what extent but with this company it was clear from day one that there are a lot of issues we've had a few high profile company scandals here in the u.k. Recently we've had Caribbean patisserie Valerie where the accounts really turned out to be fiction Alison is hearing about this and we thinking well can we really now trust the accounts of any public company do you think problems of this really are widespread or is it. Just a few here and there so see answer in my view is yes and no so what I mean by that is problems that meet the legal definition of fraud I don't think are that widespread but to me the more insidious problem is that there are ways for companies to significantly manipulate their financial statements that are legal if a company doesn't want to report I should say really management doesn't want to report numbers that aren't that flattering on the income statement then they can conceive along with bankers of transactions in ways to manipulate the accounts that