Dispatches

On the night of the Haiti earthquake something happened in downtown Port au Prince - the Haitian capital - which would leave the fate of all the aid efforts and the country's future hanging in the balance: 4,500 prisoners escaped from Haiti's terrifying and overcrowded prison, the National Penitentiary. They included many of the hardcore criminals, kidnappers and gang bosses who'd reduced Haiti to anarchy from 2004 to 2007, but had then been subdued after an all-out military onslaught by the police and heavily-armed UN peacekeepers. Now they were free to regain control of the slums and the tent cities where most Haitians live, using murder and rape to enforce their rule, with Haiti more vulnerable and less well-policed than ever before. Helping battle the escaped gangsters is Mario Andresol, Haiti's police chief, who put many of them in prison in the first place. At great personal risk, he played a key role in the United Nations offensive that smashed the power of the gangs. Now, four years later, he has to do it all again. His force is riddled with corruption and many of his officers are without homes and living in tent camps. BAFTA-winning director Dan Reed captures the daily battle for Haiti's future, filming with Andresol, escaped gangsters, the beleaguered special police unit that's trying to capture them, UN peacekeepers, and the despairing and philosophical inhabitants of the slums and tent cities.

Dispatches investigates the fish sold on Britain's high street to find out where it is sourced, how it is processed and what is actually in it, as Channel 4 News presenter Alex Thomson unwraps one of the nation's favourite dishes. Through DNA testing Thomson discovers the fish in fish and chips may not be quite as advertised and exposes how one major supermarket is misleading consumers about the sustainability of the cod it sells. The apparent health benefits of fish have driven demand from consumers and made it a lucrative multi-billion-pound industry in the UK. But Thomson reveals the chemical additives used in some fish products. He also uncovers that packaged fish on sale in the chilled section of the supermarket may have been frozen for nine months before it's defrosted and sold to consumers, some of whom assume this is fresh. Dispatches also goes undercover to investigate the prawn industry in Bangladesh, which supplies Britain with several thousand tonnes of prawns each year, and finds a dangerously unregulated industry. Secret filming reveals serious hygiene issues and the use of a widely banned pesticide to combat disease in prawn ponds. The report also exposes how prawns are injected with a dirty bulking liquid to increase weight and profit.

In the wake of the resignation of the Downing Street's head of communications Andy Coulson, Dispatches charts the unfolding events in the phone hacking scandal. The film examines the controversy, which stretches from Fleet Street to Scotland Yard and on to Westminster and Downing Street. It investigates the wider implications for the tabloids and asks is this a watershed

Dispatches goes undercover to investigate allegations that teachers regularly assault young children in some of the 2,000 Muslim schools in Britain run by Islamic organisations. The programme also follows up allegations that, behind closed doors, some Muslim secondary schools teach a message of hatred and intolerance

With NHS figures showing that more people than ever before are leaving hospital malnourished, Dispatches reveals the shocking truth about catering in the NHS. Not only is much of the food disgusting, but some patients are suffering as a result of cost-cutting and sloppy production. Reporter Mark Sparrow spent ten weeks in traction in hospital, forced to rely on NHS food. The quality of his meals was so bad that he set up a blog and began to record his experiences. He photographed and filmed dozens of meals. Since being released from hospital he has set out to discover whether his experience was a one-off or symptomatic of a deeper problem. Sparrow meets young people with cystic fibrosis, whose survival depends on getting the right diet. They tell him that the NHS is failing them and that their parents have to take them out of hospital to local pubs and restaurants to make sure that they eat properly and obtain the necessary calorie content. Mark also meets the relatives of elderly people who have been served revolting food and then given no help eating it. They tell him that NHS staff have falsified records to show that patients have consumed meals where, in reality, the food was untouched. Mark finds that a national network of patients groups is springing up to campaign against the mistreatment of the elderly. Mark goes in search of solutions, visiting hospitals that succeed in feeding patients on a limited budget. He explores whether introducing more competition would drive up standards.

The NHS is there to make our final days as dignified and pain-free as possible. But as a devastating health service ombudsman report has shown, the reality can be very different. For the first time, Dispatches has given three people cameras to film the last weeks of their lives, at home, in a care home, and in hospital. Their experiences provide a unique insight into the gap between what we hope for compared with the painful reality of dying.

Should Britain flog off the family silver to cut our national debt? Dispatches reveals the billions of pounds worth of assets we own as a nation, from ancient silver candlesticks to missiles, from football clubs to huge houses for judges to sleep in. Should we sell the government wine cellar, Gibraltar, Buckingham Palace? The entire armed forces? Or even Birmingham? Should we be selling these off rather than sacking council workers and cutting the NHS? And how far should we go? Join Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and a host of experts in this live studio debate and play our 'sell or not game' to vote on which assets you want us to flog or keep.

Dispatches investigates whether the beneficiaries of the government's cuts are in fact private outsourcing companies. Financial journalist Ben Laurance looks at whether the coalition's keystone policy, the Big Society, may actually benefit big business, while the public and voluntary sectors feel the pinch of austerity Britain.

The taxpayer has been spending billions to upgrade the British rail network yet many passengers have complained of high ticket prices, overcrowded carriages and cancellations. Dispatches asked actor Richard Wilson to investigate the state of the railways a few weeks ahead of a major Government spending review on the trains. He experiences the hustle and bustle of the daily train commute, and interviews train experts and industry insiders as well as everyday commuters. As members of the public tell their stories on Dispatches' Train Journeys from Hell website, Richard finds that buying tickets and travelling on the trains is no easy task.

BP is one of the largest companies in the world and plays an important role in the British economy through UK pension funds, the billions of pounds of tax it pays and as a major employer in the UK. A year on from the start of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, journalist Greg Palast examines the role of BP in this spill as well as similar incidents in the past and examines its contracts with oil-producing nations and relationship with the British government.

With students facing massive increases in their fees, Dispatches investigates the pay, perks and privileges enjoyed by universities' top earners. Journalist Laurie Penny reveals the increasing commercialisation of higher education and asks what happens when universities scour the globe for students and funds.

Dispatches goes undercover inside one of the country's busiest NHS hospitals as it faces multi-million-pound cuts and hundreds of job losses in the next year. With the coalition government pledging to protect the NHS, Dispatches reporter Tazeen Ahmad investigates what's really happening to the Health Service.

In May 2010 David Cameron and Nick Clegg announced they were forming the first coalition since the National Government during World War II. One year on, Andrew Rawnsley interviews the key politicians and their friends and foes to chronicle the trials and tribulations of the coalition. For the first time on television, 10 cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, talk about how the coalition works, how compromises are reached and how they get on both personally and politically. It was made in the run-up to local elections and a referendum that will deliver the voters' first judgment on the Cameron/ Clegg partnership, and a pointer to each of their political fates. Rawnsley reveals how Lib-Dem and Conservative minsters reached compromises on student tuition fees and the on the pace and depth of the spending cuts. The programme explores the ongoing arguments about the NHS reforms and the direction of foreign policy in the wake of uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. Who are the peace makers and who are the political winners and losers, and where are the cracks emerging after 12 months in office? Rawnsley also examines how Cameron has reorganised his Downing Street office in the wake of the Coulson scandal to avoid any further PR headaches, navigating through a steady drip of stories about health service cuts, and announcements about privatising our forests and scrapping school sports programmes.

Dispatches - in a joint investigation with the BMJ - explores what's implanted into our bodies. Almost 40 million of us come into contact with a medical device every day. That includes everything from a basic sticking plaster to hi-tech coils implanted into the arteries leading to the heart. The medical device industry is worth over £200 billion a year. Dispatches investigates whether in the drive for innovation, patient safety can come second. The programme reveals that although these medical devices save thousands of lives every day, there are questions from patients and doctors about the amount of testing that these products go through before they go on general sale.

As the government's cuts to the NHS start to bite, Sam Lister, The Times' Health Editor, investigates dentistry, going undercover to reveal how some dentists are misleading patients about their rights to NHS treatment. The programme exposes dentists who are waiting until patients are lying back in the chair before telling them they must pay hundreds of pounds for private treatment, which should be available on the NHS. Dispatches also reveals that children's teeth are being neglected under the NHS and that cost-cutting dentists are outsourcing lab work to countries like China where there are little or no checks on safety or quality.

The strike that killed Osama bin Laden provided a glimpse of the vast and often secret campaign by US special forces and troops to kill thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. They call it 'precision targeting'; their critics say it's assassination. A six-month investigation by Dispatches has gone inside the US 'kill/capture' programme to discover new evidence of the strategy's impact, and its costs. The team have talked to key figures in the US military, to US spies and to Taliban commanders and fighters. General David Petraeus, since he took command of troops in 2010, has ordered a major expansion of these 'manhunt' missions that rely on highly classified intelligence, cutting-edge technology and Special Operations forces. Correspondent Stephen Grey and producer Dan Edge explore the logic behind the kill/capture policy, and ask if this unremitting pursuit of the enemy will help end the war in Afghanistan. The military say these operations have led to the death or detention of more than 12,000 Taliban insurgents in 12 months. Petraeus and his advisers argue that a ruthless, accurate and relentless campaign against enemy leaders will paralyse the insurgency and force them to the negotiating table. On the ground in Baghlan Province in Afghanistan, US raids have put the Taliban on the run. But Dispatches makes contact with a young - and important - Taliban commander who says that, after the targeted killings of two of his seniors, he was simply promoted up the ranks to take their place: 'This war has become like delicious food for us. When a day passes without fighting we get restless.'

For generations criminal justice policy has been predicated on the belief that chasing criminals and locking them up is key to reducing crime. The truth is that for years the police have been repeatedly arresting the same relatively small group of criminals who continue to commit robbery, burglary, theft and other crimes that affect us. The majority of this group are drug addicts and for them prison is no deterrent. In fact many use their repeated spells in custody as a way of briefly stabilising their chaotic lives before re-emerging to continue offending. With exclusive access over six months to an innovative Offender Management scheme in Bristol, Dispatches follows the progress of three persistent criminals who all say they want to change. The scheme offers them all the support they could need to go straight - drug services, accommodation and access to employment - hoping to reduce the harm they cause to themselves and society and save money by no longer warehousing persistent offenders in prison at a cost of £40,000 per year, per convict.

Dispatches reporter Oliver Steeds travels the globe to investigate the conservation movement and its major organisations. Steeds finds that the movement, far from stemming the tide of extinction which is engulfing the planet, has got some of its conservation priorities wrong. The film examines the way the big conservation charities are run. It questions why some work with polluting big businesses to raise money and are alienating the very people they need in order to stem the loss of species from earth. Conservation is massively important but few dare to question the movement. Some critics argue that it is in part getting it wrong, and as a consequence, some of the flora and fauna it seeks to save are facing oblivion.

Dispatches challenges the British gold jewellery industry to come clean about where the gold in their jewellery comes from. Businesswoman Deirdre Bounds, who ran a successful ethical travel company, reveals what's wrong with the industry and goes on the road to present her unique take on how things could be done very differently. Secretly filming at Britain's biggest high street jewellery chains, Bounds exposes shop assistants giving vastly misleading information about where the gold in their jewellery is mined. Then, unable to get a straight answer from the stores, Bounds travels to the source: to the mines. In Senegal, she meets a child miner and reveals his hazardous daily existence at an illegal mine. She also looks at allegations that a large-scale industrial mine in Honduras has caused hair loss and rashes in the local population. Shocked by what she's seen and the lack of traceability in the supply-chain, Bounds sets out to find how things could be done better. In her search to find an alternative, she explores newly-launched Fairtrade and Fairmined gold and also how recycling old gold could offer an answer. Going undercover, she finds one of Britain's largest gold manufacturers not living up to their pledge to support ethical alternatives. And she asks the British public to back her campaign to clean up the British jewellery industry.

In this undercover investigation, Jon Snow reports on the return of the slum landlord in 21st-century Britain. At a time when more people than ever are having to rent privately, unable to get on the property ladder, Dispatches reveals the shocking conditions in which tenants are forced to live. Dispatches sends an undercover reporter to work for a rogue property empire in the north of England. He reveals a world of forced evictions, slum properties in dangerous condition, and routine bullying of tenants. Jon confronts the man raking in millions while his tenants suffer. Dispatches also exposes an extraordinary new phenomenon: thousands of people living in illegal sheds, transforming parts of London into slums. A second undercover reporter lives in a squalid, illegal shed in London, paying £40 a week rent to another rogue landlord. Dispatches lifts the lid on a world where unscrupulous landlords are exploiting the most vulnerable people in society and getting away with it.

What happened to Anni Dewani while on honeymoon in South Africa in November 2010? Why did the life of this young woman, married only a few weeks earlier to Bristol businessman Shrien Dewani, come to such a brutal end in one of South Africa's roughest townships? As a court in London decides whether Anni's husband, Shrien Dewani should be extradited to South Africa to stand trial for her murder. With exclusive access to Anni's family and to the prosecution case, Dispatches investigates the events surrounding her death.

With a Select Committee looking into the state of football and growing calls for reform, an undercover investigation by Dispatches finds out who wants to own the beautiful game and reveals how ex players and foreign businessmen are prepared to circumvent the rules, to cash in on a sport that's in financial freefall.

Dispatches investigates the world of the Rupert Murdoch and the influence and political power he holds in the UK.

Dispatches investigates the use of both recreational and performance-enhancing substances in our national game. Reporter Antony Barnett examines football's drug-testing regime, raises questions about how the sport deals with its drug cheats and also looks at the use of some bizarre but legal treatments players undergo.

In a film broadcast on the day that the mass eviction was due to start on Dale Farm, Britain's largest traveller site, Dispatches reporter Deborah Davies investigates the controversial relations between gypsies and travellers, their neighbours and the law. Across Britain furious residents complain about the way gypsies and travellers pitch camp illegally in local parks, the damage they cause and the mess they leave behind. They also accuse gypsies of underhand tactics to win planning permission on green belt land where housing development wouldn't normally be allowed. Travelling families complain they're constantly moved on by police and bailiffs. They say many council sites are badly maintained and in locations where no one else would want to live. The gypsies and travellers also claim they're refused permission to develop their own sites because of prejudice. The programme asks whether the government's proposed crackdown on unauthorised development will make things better or worse. Councils will be given more freedom to decide how many places to allocate in their areas but there's already a shortfall of about 6000 caravan pitches and political reluctance to spend money on the travelling community may mean even fewer places are provided. Set against that, councils already spend close to £20m a year evicting and clearing up illegal encampments because gypsies claim they have nowhere else to go.

Since resigning in June 2007, Tony Blair has financially enriched himself more than any previous ex-prime minister. Reporter Peter Oborne reveals some of the sources of his new-found wealth, much of which comes from the Middle East. On the day Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official representative Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. By January 2009 he had set up Tony Blair Associates - his international consultancy - which handles multi-million-pound contracts in the Middle East. It is so secretive we don't know all the locations in which they do business. Dispatches shows that at the same time as Blair is visiting Middle East leaders in his Quartet role he is receiving vast sums from some of them. If Blair represented the UK government, the EU, the IMF, the UN or the World Bank, this would not be permitted. He would also have to declare his financial interests and be absolutely transparent about his financial dealings. But no such stringent rules govern the Quartet envoy. However, he could opt to abide by the rules and principles of public life. They were introduced by John Major, and Tony Blair endorsed and strengthened them for all holders of public office - but chooses not to himself.

GPs are among the most trusted and respected of all professions. They are our first port of call for most NHS treatment with 800,000 people visiting surgeries every day. But Dispatches reveals that failing doctors routinely slip through the system. We've been filming secretly in GP practices and have uncovered concerning evidence of misdiagnosis by doctors who have failed in the past, but are still practising. Reporter Jon Snow reveals that, six years after The Shipman Inquiry called for increased scrutiny of doctors, GPs who've been sanctioned by the authorities in the past are not regularly checked to make sure they are safe to practice. Even GPs who've been punished by the authorities in the past are not regularly checked to make sure they are safe to practice. Jon Snow also speaks to a whistleblowing doctor and nurse who reveal that even when the authorities have serious concerns about a doctor's fitness to practice they don't always act promptly to alert all patients. They allege they have been barred from telling patients the truth about serious malpractice at a surgery they worked at. As the government prepares to hand over more control and responsibility to Britain's GPs Dispatches asks how much we are really told about the medical competence of our own doctors.

Dispatches lifts the lid on Britain's bins and asks what the plan is to tackle the country's growing rubbish problem. Reporter Morland Sanders travels the UK in the wake of the government's Waste Policy Review to find out about bin collections, litter, excessive packaging and Britons' secret bin habits. He finds householders angry about their bins not being collected every week and fly-tipping setting resident against resident. He asks whether we can do more to help reduce the rubbish problem ourselves and sets a family the challenge of living without a bin for a fortnight. Can they really recycle everything? On the high street, he questions whether we are simply sold too much packaging with the things we buy, making us throw far too much away, and sifts through litter to see who should be doing more to keep Britain tidy. He also talks to the people who collect, sort and recycle our waste and discovers what happens to our paper and plastics once they are collected. Does profit win out over green considerations? And he investigates whether the waste companies are really solving our rubbish problem.

Research suggests that thousands of children are potentially being sexually exploited by street grooming gangs. This may only be the tip of the iceberg, as experts believe many crimes of this nature go unreported. Journalist Tazeen Ahmad investigates street grooming and hears from community leaders who say enough is enough and demand action on the issue. She meets victims of grooming and their parents, whose lives have been torn apart. She hears how girls as young as 12 have been targeted by these gangs and so terrorised and brainwashed that they keep their ordeal secret for years. In a particularly shocking encounter she talks to two young men who explain in detail how grooming by gangs is perpetrated, why virgins are more highly prized and how the commerce of this type of brutal sexual exploitation unfolds.