“Every Speaker has to bite his tongue and every Speaker has a very sore tongue.”I thought that if he were to say this was a slight misjudgement and he was sorry, they [the MPs] would be very generous to him, and would cheer him – and they did.” He said that the episode would not have any long-term adverse consequences for Mr Martin’s position, “as long as he does not do it again.”I cannot think in my 10 years of the number of times I could have spoken out on some constituency matter,” he said. “There are ways of doing these things, but not in the chamber.”. The Prime Minister has warned Stephen Byers not to “bury” news of the Government’s approval of controversial plans to build a fifth terminal at Heathrow airport. The Prime Minister has warned Stephen Byers not to “bury” news of the Government’s approval of controversial plans to build a fifth terminal at Heathrow airport.
In a complete reversal of Labour’s normal attitude to news management, Tony Blair has privately instructed the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions that an announcement should not be hidden amongst dramatic developments in Afghanistan or elsewhere.Downing Street has told Mr Byers that the Government will “clear the decks” for the Terminal Five decision so that no other significant statements will be made on the same day.The instruction means that Jo Moore, the beleaguered “spin doctor” at the Transport department, has been further side-lined and that her days as Mr Byers’s adviser are numbered, according to Whitehall sources.Mr Blair’s office intervened after news last week that senior officials at the Department for Transport had been ordered to rush out the Terminal Five announcement at a moment’s notice. Civil servants had originally been asked to prepare the documents for mid-November, however last week they were ordered to get the papers ready for immediate release from the middle of this week. Officials said they believed it was another cynical exercise in news management.Mr Byers has been under constant pressure to dismiss Ms Moore since she sent out an e-mail on 11 September trawling for bad news that could be “buried” under cover of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.Officials said they detected her influence in preparations to announce the approval for Terminal Five, which will be bitterly opposed by environmental groups, surrounding residents and local authorities in west London.Mr Byers has said he will be making a statement on the issue in the Commons. A spokesman for the department said the announcement on Terminal Five would be made “in due course”..

The Government’s financial watchdog is to investigate claims that the Ministry of Agriculture diverted too many vets to the fight against foot-and-mouth, leaving abattoirs and meat factories dangerously exposed to the threat of other diseases. The Government’s financial watchdog is to investigate claims that the Ministry of Agriculture diverted too many vets to the fight against foot-and-mouth, leaving abattoirs and meat factories dangerously exposed to the threat of other diseases.
The National Audit Office is to follow up a complaint from the biggest supplier of vets in the country about salaries of up to £100,000 paid to recruit professionals to the fight against the epidemic.Jason Aldiss, the managing director of Evill and Jones, the country’s biggest private contractor of vets, said the pay offered by the Government “was so good that our people abandoned us”.Abattoirs and meat factories were severely overstretched and in some cases unable to meet the Government’s own standards introduced this year to protect the public against diseases such as BSE.The investigation will assess claims that public health vets were warning the now-defunct Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) on a daily basis that they were haemorrhaging staff during the crisis because of the salaries being offered by the Government.Andrew Storrar, president of the Veterinary Public Health Association, said: “Public health could have been disturbed by not having the number of people to cover. We were overwhelmed because we could not compete with these salaries. It was farcical.”Downing Street was told about the dangers but vets say their pleas were ignored.Hundreds of vets saw their salaries double when they signed up to work on a daily rate for the Government, which paid up to £250 a day as well as offering perks including a car, mobile phone and free hotel accommodation.The Independent has learnt that an official complaint has been made to the inland revenue that some vets recruited from abroad left the country without paying tax.The Tories accused the Government last night of a “grotesque waste of public money” in supplying vets.Peter Ainsworth, shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, said: “Seeing them handing out money hand over fist like this is shocking.”Mr Aldiss said: “From 1 April this year we were required to provide 100 per cent supervision of all fresh meat facilities including cutting plants and slaughterhouses So we recruited 60 vets to ensure compliance Thirty were subsequently poached by Maff. That left us extremely short-staffed and I known that other contractors were left in the same position and were unable to provide the cover required.”In future they [Maff and its successor] have to learn lessons from this We all warned them. They knew what was happening and nobody listened at all.”The Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, which was created after the demise of Maff, denied that public health had been compromised by its policy of hiring vets on high rates.It said it had received no complaints from the Meat Hygiene Service which is in charge of enforcing government standards.Some 600 vets are still being paid the high rates even though there have been no cases of foot-and-mouth for the past month. But the Government is now understood to be looking at introducing fixed-term contracts for vets to save money..

A woman who was denied a war widow’s pension after her partner was killed on an SAS mission in Sierra Leone has been offered compensation by the Ministry of Defence. A woman who was denied a war widow’s pension after her partner was killed on an SAS mission in Sierra Leone has been offered compensation by the Ministry of Defence.
Anna Homsi, 31, stands to receive a reported £250,000 to cover the cost of raising the baby she had with SAS trooper Brad Tinnion. The 28-year-old was shot dead in September last year on a mission to rescue 12 Royal Irish Regiment soldiers taken hostage by rebels in the Sierra Leone jungle.Ms Homsi, who lived with Mr Tinnion for eight years, said she would continue to campaign for the rights of unmarried partners in the armed forces.Her lawyer, Tom Reah, said she had not decided whether to accept the payment, which he claimed was about half of what she would have received had she been married. The cash was offered as an ex-gratia payment – where no legal obligation exists – to support the couple’s baby daughter until she was 17. He told the BBC it would not set a precedent for the unmarried partners of servicemen killed in action in future.He said: “I can’t confirm that she has accepted it as yet.

We are looking at the small print and after due consideration we will respond to the MoD.”He added: “Accepting this might be less than she might get under legislation that might be brought in.”She is very pleased with the progress that we have made to date. But there is a big responsibility on her not only for herself, but for those in the future. We are living in the 21st century and things have moved on so far as the way people cohabit as partners.”An MoD spokeswoman was unable to confirm a newspaper report that Ms Homsi had been offered £250,000. “I cannot confirm the exact amount because that it is a private matter between the MoD and Anna Homsi,” she said.The issue of a financial settlement prompted intensive talks between the MoD and the Treasury to obtain special dispensation. The couple’s daughter, Georgia, now aged 10 months, was granted a £2,000-a-year allowance until she reaches 17.Miss Homsi, who was named chief beneficiary in her former partner’s will, was given a one-off discretionary payment of £20,000.

Two months ago she said she intended to sue the MoD to get the same benefit as a married partner.. While children across Italy are bothering their parents for witches’ masks, pumpkin lanterns and light-up skeleton suits, youngsters in the Sicilian city of Gela are being offered a trick or treat with a difference. Rosario Crocetta, the city’s head of education, is so opposed to the American imported Hallow-e’en fest that he is prepared to pay people not to take part. While children across Italy are bothering their parents for witches’ masks, pumpkin lanterns and light-up skeleton suits, youngsters in the Sicilian city of Gela are being offered a trick or treat with a difference. Rosario Crocetta, the city’s head of education, is so opposed to the American imported Hallow-e’en fest that he is prepared to pay people not to take part.
He is offering a million lire (£300) to any primary and intermediate schools that take measures to “discourage American cultural domination at the expense of local traditions”. Mr Crocetta brushed off suggestions that, because of 11 September, his anti-American initiative could be misconstrued.