The Tories will today spell out how they would "transform the culture" of the public sector to save billions of pounds. They will accuse Labour of wasting £60bn a year since 1997 ? the "productivity gap" between the state and private sector, which has secured bigger efficiency gains.

Philip Hammond, the shadow Chief Treasury Secretary, will announce plans for a Tory government to make payment-by-results the norm unless there are compelling reasons why it would not work. "Schools will be ( Read more... )
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As the US, Britain and Nato allies prepare to announce they will send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, the Prime Minister said there was a "need to have not just a military push in Afghanistan, but a political push".

Mr Brown said: "What we want to do at a national level is support clean and corrupt-free government. At a local level we want to support district and provincial governors that are free from intimidation and can actually deliver the services that people want. What we also ( Read more... )
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The report, compiled by the information watchdog, shows how personal information from private and public bodies is being used to commit more serious crimes.

In one case, a pensioner died after a policeman passed on his address to a man who later went to his house and threw a brick through his window after a parking dispute in a supermarket. The 79-year-old from Derby later died from the shock of the attack.

In another case, an Essex police officer was found to have unlawfully searched ( Read more... )
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The plans drawn up by the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) would also see them given £20 more than MPs for overnight accommodation. While Sir Christopher Kelly has recommended that MPs be given £120 a night to cover hotel bills, their unelected colleagues are set to receive £140 a night.

The SSRB review rejected the idea of introducing an annual salary, but peers could still earn about £30,000 a year by turning up for every session in the Lords, with travel and overnight accommodation ( Read more... )
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Plans to demolish an Edwardian home in Old Bath Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and replace it with six townhouses were agreed by Cheltenham Borough Council this week.

Kevin and Susan O'Gorman, the owners, joked that they might give the development the name Pogue Muhone Court, claiming the name refers to their family village in Ireland. The Irish folk band The Pogues were founded in 1982 as Pogue Mahone, an anglicisation of the Gaelic pog mo thoin, meaning "kiss my arse".

Caroline ( Read more... )
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Solicitors questioned by the National Audit Office (NAO) say they believe that the reason half of all suspects do not use their free services is a direct result of the action ? or inaction ? of the police. This is partly confirmed by further research in the NAO report which finds that solicitors "can experience barriers to accessing their clients" at the police station. Between April and October last year 29 per cent of calls from legal advisers working for the Legal Services Commission went unanswered. ( Read more... )
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Gary McKinnon and his family were told yesterday that Alan Johnson is to allow the extradition to go ahead after refusing to block it on medical grounds.

Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, is accused by the US authorities of breaking into military and Nasa computers. He has admitted hacking but maintains he was looking only for evidence of UFOs.

He was told in a letter from the Home Secretary that the extradition would now "proceed forthwith" after finding ( Read more... )
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The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by the defendant, Hungarian International Bank Ltd, and upheld a decision of Judge Michael Kershaw QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge in the Commercial Court on 23 October 1991, giving judgment for the plaintiff, First Energy (UK) Ltd.

The case concerned an alleged contract under which the defendant was to provide the plaintiff with business finance. One of the issues was whether the defendant's agent had ostensible authority to communicate the ( Read more... )
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Pensioners over 80 will get an extra £100 on their current fuel allowance, raising it to £400. But the charity argued it was not enough to meet the 15 per cent rise in prices by the fuel companies, who escaped a windfall profits tax. The increases are also a "one-off" that will not be repeated next year, unless the Chancellor finds more money.

Mervyn Kohler, spokesman for Help the Aged, said it was "a badge of shame" that Alistair Darling had not taken more decisive action to combat the ( Read more... )
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The independent Treasure Valuation Committee reached the figure after meeting at the museum yesterday.

The money will be split equally between the finder Terry Herbert and the landowner Fred Johnson, the museum said.

The two men and the two museums which hope to acquire the hoard, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, have all approved the valuation, a spokesman added.

Professor Norman Palmer, ( Read more... )
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The man, 31, climbed into a waste bin to sleep out of the cold and rain, but the bin was later loaded into a waste collection vehicle which automatically compacts waste through its mechanical crusher.

His body was only discovered when the lorry emptied its load at a tipping site in Ardwick, Manchester, at about 11.30am on Wednesday

A Home Office post-mortem examination concluded he died as a result of asphyxiation as he was crushed amongst the refuse. ( Read more... )
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But the number of new arrivals rose, with more than half-a-million people coming in, official statistics showed.

Arrivals from Eastern Europe were down by nearly a quarter in the year to March as job prospects were hit by the recession.

More recent figures suggested immigrants from the eight countries which joined the EU in 2004 registering for work fell even more dramatically this year. In the year to September the total was down 41% to 106,000. ( Read more... )
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The town's voters, long taken for granted in this traditional Labour heartland, knew they had delivered a historic victory to the Liberal Democrats. And many admitted that a deliberate snub had been delivered to Labour.

"As long as Rennie keeps his promises to fight for the local hospital, schools and jobs then we just might let him keep the job," said Helen Taylor, 46, a former Labour voter who admitted that she had become disillusioned with the status quo.

Nine months ago, Labour ( Read more... )
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Pensioners are to get lower winter fuel payments in future. Millions of elderly people received an unprecedented £200 one-off payment last winter. But the Government has no intention of extending the same generosity in coming years.

Plans outlined in a report by the Cabinet Office's social exclusion unit say winter fuel payments to 8.5 million pensioner households will be cut to £150 next winter.

Pensions have been a contentious issue for the Labour Government. Last year's 75p increase ( Read more... )
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The local man was detained by officers investigating the blaze at a flat complex in Norton, near Malton, in September, North Yorkshire Police said.

The blaze claimed the life of promising apprentices Jamie Kyne, 18, from County Galway, Ireland, and Jan Wilson, 19, from Forfar, Scotland.

Two other young jockeys were injured as they escaped the fire in a three-storey block just off Norton's main street.

A police spokesman said he could not confirm the arrested ( Read more... )
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More than 125 firefighters were tackling the blaze in Peckham, south east London, which spread rapidly in the early hours.

One resident spoke of flames shooting 20ft high from the three and four storey blocks as residents, including mothers with babies, sheltered on the street.

One casualty was treated at hospital for smoke inhalation, with their condition not reported to be life threatening.

A total of 25 fire pumps were at the scene, along with police ( Read more... )
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For two months Jane Kariuki was tortured and abused in a Nairobi prison just because her husband was a prominent member of the human rights movement.

When she was finally released, she found her house had been burnt down and her husband and youngest daughter had disappeared.

Fearing further persecution, Mrs Kariuki, 49, an executive with a Kenyan conservation charity, took her two surviving children to London where she sought sanctuary. For the past 10 years the Kariuki family has ( Read more... )
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POLICE searched visitors after two valuable antique watches described as 'priceless and irreplaceable' were stolen during an exhibition at the headquarters of Britain's watch and clock-makers.

A steward spotted that the gold watches were missing from an unlocked glass display cabinet at the annual National Exhibition of Time at the British Horological Institute's centre in Upton Hall, near Newark, Nottinghamshire.

The three-day exhibition was crowded on its second day on Saturday when ( Read more... )
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Sir Christopher Meyer, who was Britain's ambassador to the US between 1997 and 2003, said the April 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas, appeared to be a major turning point.

He said in evidence: "I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there.

"I know what the Cabinet Office says were the results of the meeting but to this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you ( Read more... )
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The Conservative leader yesterday challenged Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the schools run by the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation, which he said received £113,000 from the Government - some of it from a fund designed to prevent violent extremism - even though it was linked to the militant group Hizb ut Tahrir.

But Mr Balls accused Mr Cameron of "divisive smears", saying that the cash going to the schools in Slough and the north London borough of Haringey was in fact ( Read more... )
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