this is bbc news. the headlines: more than 28,000 people have died in turkey and syria as a result of this week's earthquakes. millions more have been affected. un aid chief martin griffiths told the bbc there's an urgent need for medical assistance, as well as food and shelter for survivors. another high—altitude object has been shot down over north america. this time canadian prime ministerjustin trudeau says a us fighterjet, acting on his orders, brought down an object over northwestern canada. he said the wreckage would be analysed. a committee of mps has been highly critical of the chairman of the bbc, richard sharp. they accuse mr sharp of an error ofjudgement for getting involved

in facilitating a loan to then prime minister boris johnson whilst applying for the chairmanship of the bbc. now on bbc news, breaking the county lines. it's every parent's nightmare. he was climbing out the windows on a night. they had him selling crack and heroin. young people lured into a world of drugs, gangs and violence. he was beaten badly. to see your child's face twice the size of what it should be — no mother should see. there are calls for a change in the law. to make it a specific offence to deal to children under 16. but are they criminals or victims? if children are being exploited and coerced, the law would not criminalise them in those —

in those circumstances. today, we investigate what is being done to break he county lines. it's something you might have read or heard about on the news — "county lines" is defined as grooming by criminals to force teenagers into drug dealing and other activity. drugs are often transported away from the big cities to smaller towns and rural areas by children and vulnerable people. the "county line" is the mobile phone use to take the orders. well, gemma's been looking at this and speaking to some of the families involved. gemma, what have they been saying you? yeah, i've spent several months talking charities and families about children exploited and controlled by the county lines drugs gangs. for example, tim, in some cases, when a child is talking to a social worker, gang members can listen,

in via the child's mobile phone, so real control over who the child's talking to and what they are saying. but i think the thing that really surprised me was just how quickly young people can get embroiled in this world of drugs and gangs, as this mum, who's been speaking anonymously to us can explain. he was a happy child. 0n the go, 100 miles an hour. cheeky chappie. he went into year 11 and knuckled down. he was then ready to do his exams, until lockdown came in march. and then my whole world fell apart. lockdown, he was supposed to be in, wasn't in, was going out, was going out, coming home at all hours, wouldn't answer my calls. he had just been absent from the home, not telling me where he was, secretive.

i suspected things were going on in the home. i'd find little bits of weed and little bags. he was arrested, which is the first time that the police came to the home. i — there were things in the house that i wasn't happy about, so i did get rid of. he came back from the police station and asked me where these things were. and i said "i've put them in the skip" — and the fear in his face was horrendous. and it was alarm bells to me — something is not good. police actually gave the debt for him, because they searched his bedroom, they arrested him out and about, and took all the drugs off him. they then belonged to this perpetrator, and they need — they need the money or the drugs back. he was beaten badly —

which is a trauma that he's now living through. he came home and hid himself away and eventually said, "this is what you get by owing money." to see your child's face twice the size of what it should be — no mother should see. and then, that's when i asked for some help. didn't really get any help. a few weeks went by. i thought if he went into care, he would be looked after, safely. he was then placed in a contained flat in the middle of where he was being exploited from. no supervision. no protection, really. no money — you know, no benefits or anything.

and was there for four months — 4—5 months. when he was in the flat, did the exploitation continue? absolutely, yeah. 0h, he was — he was still selling drugs. and that's how he was funding living. but i look back and think "is it a tough love? "have i given him tough love? "does he have to hit rock bottom before he — "he got get better?" just one phone call to him and i said "stop doing what you're doing and come home. "if you don't, stop phoning me." and he came home two days later. so he was — he was back home, but the repercussions have continued, haven't they? with the police and the cases against him — he should be treated as a victim, but that doesn't seem to be happening in — in the police respect. he's lost a couple ofjobs. he's suffering. he's not the boy of 11 or 12.

hopefully we'll get him back, fully. a very powerful account from that mum. lindsay dalton is the ceo pace — parents against child explotation. many parents would be watching this programme today and might think "that couldn't happen to us — that couldn't happen "to our family" — what you say to them? it could, unfortunately. our work at pace sees that families affected by exploitation come from every community and every background. so how do you break that cycle? how do you stop kids becoming coerced by the drug gangs? it needs a multifaceted approach and part of that needs a national strategy that looks at the laws that are needed to bring charges to those that are responsible for these crimes — that specifically make an offence of child criminal exploitation and the subsequent

harms that come from that. so you say the law need to change — how does the law need to change? so currently, we are seeing it tacked on to other laws, drug laws, and the fact that exploitation of a child may be an aggravating feature of those — those laws. what we need to see is that child criminal exploitation is made a law within itself, and the subsequent harms that come from that. so, for instance, concealment of drugs is a real issue and real factor that we see in county lines. and by concealment, we mean that people are forcing, coercing or tricking children to insert drugs into their bodies to travel to different locations to drop those drugs off. forcing the drugs into their bodies? yeah, in some instances they may trick the children to do it themselves, in other instances, and more often than not, we're seeing offenders that are grooming and exploiting children inserting those drugs themselves. and you're saying at the moment it's quite difficult to prosecute those offenders because there is no specific offence for that? the legal framework isn't there. it gives too many grey areas for these offences to be charged against. we don't need it to be

an aggravating factor, we need it to be a stand—alone offence of its own right, to give the consequences its needed. lindsay dalton, thank you. thank you. well, we're going to hear from to another mum, now, again speaking anonymously. now, she and herfamily were forced to move away from their home to escape the gangs, but, as we're going to find out, it was far from perfect solution. we had to leave a rented — private rented property due to benefit cuts, due to the benefit gap, and we ended up being moved into a very, very rough area in the town. he had to go to a new school, which is in the middle of two different gangs. and he — a friend of his got stabbed while we were there, and because his friend used to be in a gang, they associated him with the gang and then they sort of put — he was then just associated with it, so they want to stab him as well. he were preteen at the time.

and i think hejust — he knew then that he had to make the choice of being on his own orjoining the gang for protection. i noticed his friends got a lot older. he's always gone around with older lads, because he's always been mature, but this was dramatically older. it were difficult to know where he was, keep tabs on him. thejob i had, i was going to bed early, and, like i said, i had other children as well, and i actually thought "oh, well done, he's going to bed" — you know, it was — whose son at this age goes, you know, to bed so early? and it turned out that he was actually climbing out the windows on a night, and they had him selling crack and heroin. one of my children had come in, and they wanted to get supper. and they said the big brother's friends were all in the kitchen and there was branches everywhere. i didn't understand at the time, and when i walked

in there was some very, very tall, older teens to early 20s, and there was, like, stalks of skunk cannabis, all over my kitchen. and they'd obviouslyjust cropped, as they call it, and they were bagging up in my kitchen, and sorting it all out. when i went in, i was quite shocked, and my reaction was "what do you think you're all doing, how dare you?" they all ignored me. nobody lifted an eyebrow. i thought that — that — that me sort of cursing, and — and my tone, it'd have made everyone walk out. my son just looked and sort of said "don't start" — and i had to back out of the room. and that's when i realised things were getting really, really bad. i was phoning social services and i were finding weapons as well — machetes, knives — he was getting caught with knives at school. i was taking them to the police station, asking them "will you please arrest my son?"

"can you give me advice on what to do?" they couldn't give me any advice. they wouldn't put him in the cell. it sounds isolating, as well, to you, as a mum. were you able to talk to other mums? not really, because you felt — you felt ashamed and embarrassed that you couldn't protect your children and that you couldn't stop what was going on. i tried my best, like i said, to get any outside help — we had different gang teams coming in — but all the teams coming in required my son to work with them, which he didn't want to do. how did you get him out? i was told that i couldn't go to the nearby towns or cities because it was so easy to get there — only one bus, so there'd be no point — so i had to move miles and miles away. the councils have no understanding whatsoever. when i went down, i was told on more than one occasion to go back to where i come from. it's crucial that that changes. if we can't — if we've got nowhere to go, if families have

nowhere to take our children, far away, then we're never going to get away, we're never going to be able to break that and bond between victim and the gang. alison lowe is west yorkshire's deputy mayor for crime and policing. we saw there a family had to leave their home to escape the gangs. should that be happening? because it sould like, in that case, the gangs have won. yeah, it should not be happening. families should be able to live freely, securely, and safely in west yorkshire. but we know, unfortunately, that crime — and same with organised crime — is rising, and we know here in west yorkshire, like many other metropolitan places, county lines, the drug gangs, the organised crime groups, they're here, they're trying to take over our communities, and we've got to stop them. are there no—go areas in west yorkshire right now, areas the gangs have taken over? i suspect some people

are feeling that — whether the west yorkshire police would say that is another matter. we know that west yorkshire police have mapped 101 different serious organised crime areas — threats— in west yorkshire, and we know that there are organised crime groups operating across leeds, bradford, and kirklees. we know that because we've a programme, precision, which works across all our partners to map those threats, to disrupt those threats. we are winning. we're working together to — to support all those different partners. really? you — you reckon the police are winning the war against the drug gangs? well, i think that we're winning, because we're taking millions of pounds of drugs out of the — the circulation. we're — just in the last six months taken £1.5 million that we actually found from the — the drug runners. we're using that money to invest back in our communities, through the pocket moneys, the proceeds of crime act monies.

we, the people of west yorkshire, are winning, i believe, and we have to win, because otherwise, the future is bleak. do you think young people who are coerced into joining county line drug gangs should be criminalised? no, not at all. and there are mechanisms through the modern slavery legislation to protect young people being criminalised — so there is a national referral mechanism, which is not being used. we need to do more to raise awareness of that. i just wonder whether some families might feel that in a case that some drugs have been supplied by another young person, treating that person as a victim, rather than a criminal, might suggest thatjustice hasn't been done. there are lots and lots of children being exploited through fear, through violence, through threats to their wider family members, who are doing terrible things that they would not do without those older crime members — 0cgs — you know, forcing them to do it.

and i don't think they should be criminalised for that. we know that from 2010 youth services have been decimated. i was a councillor for many years, as you know, and leeds, the first thing we cut was our youth services — and so did every local authority other in the country. we've now got lots of academies, which are brilliant in themselves, but they don't talk to the local authority — they don't work with the local authority in the same way. so it's much more difficult to bring those agencies together, because they're part of the solution. alison lowe, some interesting points made, there. we will be putting some of the things you said to the government's policing minister, who we'll hear from in a moment, but thank you for speaking to us today. you're very welcome. now, the story of kerry and tammy, the last two mothers in this programme. kerry's daughter died after taking drugs supplied by tammy's son. both are calling on politicians to take a closer look at the laws surrounding this, as richard edwards reports.

it has been four years, this year, but it still feels like it happened yesterday. flowers in applegarth car park, in northallerton town centre. this is where15—year—old leah hayes was found on saturday. police were called after reports a young woman had collapsed. two north yorkshire mums who built an unlikely friendship from a terrible tragedy. kerry roberts and tammy kirkwood first campaigned side—by—side to raise awareness of the risks of drugs, after tammy's son helped supply the mdma which killed kerry's daughter. kerry wants to see a new law, in tribute to her daughter, leah. tammy's strongly against the idea, but both want to see stronger action on county lines gangs. most of the laws need updating. you know, the laws are not with the times. they were made — what — 50, 60, 70 years ago,

when life was so much different. just set out for us the specific law changing you want to see through leah's law. what you want to see come on? to make it a specific offence to deal to children under 16. it sounds really simple, and it sounds like it could already be a law — but it's not. i don't think the politicians understand what modern slavery is. they know when boris was in, he had his ten—year plan. but in his ten—year plan, when you read it, there was nothing in there protect our children that are being exploited. he talked about helping the drug users, and everybody else, but he didn't talk about protecting our children. we are in a crisis, aren't we? a living crisis, at the minute — so that's what we need to talk about. but as we are in the middle of that living crisis, and actually, so are our children, because even though mum and dad aren't saying they need help with bills, they're seeing they're not getting the things they used to get, things are hard at home. so he's not thinking of that bigger picture

of what is going on with our children. he's not said one word about drugs that i have listened to at all — or exploitation. i met rishi, but since we've met, i've had nothing — i've had nothing back from him. and kevin hollinrake he's obviously took — you know, believes in leah's law, and has took it under his wing. and he's not my mp. he's in a close—by town, but he's not my mp. so, can kevin or me have the support from rishi? kerry roberts ending that report by richard edwards. anne longfield chairs the commission on young lives, and is a former children's commissioner for england. what needs to happen to prevent another tragedy like the death of leah? well, first and foremost, we need politicians, government ministers, and the prime minister to see this as a national emergency it is. we're looking at tens of thousands of children, here, who are falling through gaps in services,

who are being exploited by criminals — in plain sight, in front of us, in our cities, towns and around the country. families are desperate to get help, but there are so few places for them to go. and it needs to have the laws behind it, the framework of law behind it, and legislation. but really, we need government to be able to get behind this, to accept that this is a national emergency, to get to the point where they're as agile and determined as the criminals are, at the moment, to exploit our children. are you saying that's not happening at the moment? because there was a big anti—county lines strategy launched under boris johnson. there was. the prime minister then said he wanted "to bite the head off the county lines snake" — the snake's still going. and all that we can see is that it is getting more prevalent — it was rocket—boosted by the pandemic, the cost—of—living crisis is adding to that — and we have a government that doesn't have either the leadership or the co—ordination about this. it's unclear which secretary of state is responsible for the protection of our children. it's unclear where this fits

with government policy. and we don't have leadership from the top. i want the prime minister to see what is happening, just as, actually, david cameron did, with child sexual exploitation nearly a decade ago — that's the level of intervention we need. and — and why are so many kids being coerced into drug gangs right now? why's this happening? well, first of all the drug dealers want them. they're commodities. they are cheap for them. and they deliver a really important part in their business — they take all the risk, do all the running. we've actually seen that the age of kids that are involved in this is getting lower and lower. with found 13 and 14—year—olds that are actually managing the county lines, now — notjust doing the dreadful work around it, but managing it. and that's something that's, of course, part of the strategy from these ruthless criminals.

so first of all, people want them, and they are constantly recruiting, and then, of course, you've got children who are often falling outside school, often vulnerable for different ways and theyjust don't have the protection around them. those services are stretched to their limit — they can't intervene to the level that they need to support the families and support those children. we should — should there be tougher punishments for those who deal drugs to under—16s? of course. there should be both tougher punishment and better support for those kids. we have to do this from both sides. we have to be the — tough on the criminals that exploit children. it has to start. we have to change the scales has to be at the moment it is very easy for them. we are making it very easy for the criminals want to get children. we have to start fighting back and making it much more difficult. at the same time, we have to get to those kids and support and inspire them to stop it happening. anne longfield, thank you. well, i've been speaking to the policing minister,

chris philp, and i asked him and many cases where the children who have been groomed into drug gangs should be treated as victims or criminals. i think it obviously depends on the facts of the case, butjust to be very clear — if somebody is aggressively coerced into carrying drugs, then they will not be considered a criminal in that context. each case it looked at on its individual merits. clearly, where children are being — if children being exploited and coerced, the law would not criminalise them in those — in those circumstances. do you support leah's law? something that's being proposed by north yorkshire mum kerry roberts that would make it a specific offence to deal drugs to under 16s? drugs to under—16s? supplying drugs to — to children, to people under 16, is a particularly heinous and despicable crime. i say that as a father myself. under the 2020 sentencing act, it is already an aggravating factor if the person being supplied drugs as a child, if they're under 16.

and what that means is they will get a longer sentence — the person dealing drugs will get a longer sentence than if the person receiving the drugs was over the age of 16, so we've got that law already. i know my colleague in parliament, kevin hollinrake, has been raising this — this tragic case. so we are looking at it very carefully. but just to reassure your viewers — under the sentencing act, you already get a longer sentence because of the aggravating nature of supplying drugs to a child under the age of 16. and we've heard alarming claims about young people trasporting drugs in their bodies. do you think the people who force them to do that should face tougher sentences? i think that is an absolutely despicable form of abuse of children. it's absolutely disgusting. it's the worst possible form of exploitation. that is something i'm definitely prepared to look at. quite clearly, if someone is convicted of doing this, then it's a form of assault. what you've just described would obviously attract a — a severe sentence. it would be considered at the most serious end of that

kind of assault. but i — i want to make sure that, where people do this to children, they get the highest possible sentences. i will take a look at that, and if we need to do more to ensure the sentences are as high as possible, we definitely will. is the cost—of—living crisis playing a part when it comes to young people being recruited into drug gangs? no, i don't think so. i think the — the link between the economy and drug addiction or drug dealing isn't well — isn't a particularly a well—established one. let's not forget — we, thankfully, have historically very low levels of unemployment. i mean, unemployment is halved since the conservatives came to office, it's pretty much at a 50—year low. well, former children's commissioner anne longfield clearly disagrees. she believes it is a factor. well, i mean, wider economic conditions and poverty are slightly different questions. 0bviously, we're focused on getting people out of poverty — benefits are going up substantially in a couple of months' time,

the national minimum wage is going up, as well — and we are very keen to make sure that when children are at risk and they are properly safeguarded — we're working obviously with local authorities and with charities to actively identify children who are at risk, so that they can be properly looked after. that is — that is a really important element of this — of this whole issue. that was the policing minister chris philp. well, gemma's here for a final thought. a hint there, perhaps, that the government might be looking at a change of policy, here? yeah, look, clearly i think there is an agreement that county line drug gangs are something that need to be tackled. the question, as ever, is how. and it is something the government are — young know, they have strategies, they're spending millions of pounds and trying to tackle it, as we have just heard. labour would have a different strategy in charities, as we have been hearing, as well. but i think right now,

if you're a parent, and you are going through this it still remains something that is very bewildering and very frightening. it is, gemma, thank you. well, of course, this is a huge issue which we will return to, but if you are impacted by any of the subjects raised today and in need of support you can find organisations which can offer advice at bbc.co.uk/actionline. you've been watching breaking the county lines — a politics north special. ta—ta. hello there. saturday was pretty cloudy up and down the country. best of the sunshine in the north—east of scotland, north east england. i think today, though, we're promising a bit more sunshine around thanks to more breeze, particularly

in the north and the west of the country. further east, it'll stay rather grey and cloudy. high pressure still holding on through part two of the weekend and, indeed, it will do into the start of the new week as well, feeding up this milder air from the south. we start off rather cloudy. i think a little bit of mist around, too. but then, the clouds tend to break up in the north and the west of the country as the breeze picks up and breaks up the clouds. so, scotland, parts of northern england, wales, south west england, northern ireland seeing the best of any sunny spells. tending to stay cloudier across eastern england with lighter winds here. but again, it's going to be mild double—figure values for most — up to 12 or 13 in the sunniest spots. similar picture as we head through monday and tuesday — largely dry with some sunshine. it could be quite foggy in the south—east on tuesday morning. and then, from wednesday onwards, things start to turn more unsettled with

the chance of some rain.

this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm lucy grey. our top stories: at least 28,000 people have died in the earthquakes in turkey and syria. the un aid chief says there's an urgent need for medical assistance. medicalfacilities here are absolutely overwhelmed, as you know, so there is a huge need for urgent medical care, mobile clinics, field hospitals. canadian prime ministerjustin trudeau confirms a us fighterjet — acting on his orders — shot down another high—altitude object, this time flying over northern canada. hundreds of thousands demonstrate across france again over planned pension reforms.