File on 4 Folgen

Recent revelations about secret mass surveillance programmes have raised fears about potential abuses of individual privacy in favour of national security. With requests to intercept personal communications data on the rise, just who is collecting the information and for what purpose? Even local authorities can now use surveillance powers to track employees and monitor the activities of residents. So what rights do people have when they feel they have been unfairly targeted? Jenny Chryss examines the role of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal - the little known body that considers complaints from those who've been under surveillance by the state. Critics talk of an "Orwellian system" in which cases are shrouded in too much secrecy. The Tribunal usually sits in private, with claimants barred from hearing evidence and with little detailed explanation of its decisions. So where should the balance lie between openness and effective oversight?Producer: Gail Champion.

Will the Rana Plaza factory tragedy mean Bangladeshi garment workers no longer have to work in death traps? It's five months on from the collapse of the 8 storey building in Dhaka, in which more than a thousand workers died, and several thousand lost arms or legs or were paralysed. Jane Deith reports from Dhaka on what's happened since. Just how much medical and financial help have survivors and families of the dead received?Campaigners said the disaster should be a "game changer" in forcing international brands who source cheap clothes in Bangladesh to take more responsibility for conditions within the factories they use. Safety inspections of hundreds of premises are due to begin in earnest. But the Western manufacturers are split on who should pay for expensive improvements - the clothing brands or the factory owners? It's estimated that it could cost $3bn to bring all the factories up to scratch.But there are those who argue that Western shoppers who buy the cheap clothes, and the brands that sell them, don't deserve all the blame. The Bangladeshi government continues to limit the power of trade unions and is accused of failing to act against powerful manufacturing bosses when people die in their factories.The safety campaigners agree that Western brands pulling out of Bangladesh would be the worst result for the country's four million garment workers and the families who rely on their earnings.So is it possible to keep them in work and keep them safe?Producer: Sally Chesworth.

Psychiatric hospitals have a duty to keep their patients safe, which means taking extra care with patients suffering acute depression who may be at risk of self-harm.So campaigners argue that when a patient commits suicide, it is vital that a thorough investigation should discover any failings by doctors and nurses and any weaknesses in hospital systems of communication or levels of staffing.But, unlike deaths in prison or police custody, fatalities in psychiatric units are not reviewed from the start by a fully independent investigator. Initial reports are usually prepared by staff of the NHS and kept confidential to the health officials and family concerned. Only at the subsequent inquest does an independent inquiry take over.Critics call this 'a recipe for cover-up by the NHS'.File on 4 reports on a series of suicides in one psychiatric unit which have led the local coroner to accuse the NHS of 'a catalogue of failures stemming from an institutional complacency'.Reporter - Gerry Northam Producer - Gail Champion.