Review of the Papers, Friday 02 March

Government

• Britain will be divided into a patchwork of road-pricing zones where drivers will be charged varying rates, under a government plan to make them pay by the mile without tracking them on every road. Ministers believe that a zonal system would protect drivers' privacy and deter them from rat-running in residential areas to avoid high charges on main roads. All roads in each zone would be charged at the same rate, regardless of how congested they were. A driver using empty side streets to visit a shop or take a child to school would pay the same price per mile as those queueing on the high street. Stephen Ladyman, the Roads Minister, gave details of how the system would work in an attempt to address concerns raised by the 1.8 million drivers who signed a petition against road pricing. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1459230.ece
• Gordon Brown yesterday risked a political backlash from Britain's nurses ahead of a possible Labour leadership battle later this year when he pegged pay increases for more than one million public sector workers to below 2% this year. Prompting threats of industrial action from health sector unions, the chancellor insisted that the state of the public finances and the need to keep inflation under control meant the government pay bill could increase by only 1.9% - well below any of the official measures used to calculate the cost of living. http://society.guardian.co.uk/publicfinances/story/0,,2024921,00.html
• Thousands of young doctors have been left without jobs because a new NHS training system has gone "disastrously wrong", it was disclosed yesterday. As much as £2 billion has been spent on the training of up to 8,000 doctors who find themselves without a new job under a Government initiative. Such is the fury at the scheme, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), that doctors have renamed it "Massive Medical Cull". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=A5INC4FPT0OLLQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/03/02/nhs02.xml
• Britain must not go ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations until it has a "clear and robust" plan in place for dealing with the twin problems of decommissioning and waste treatment, the world's leading energy body warned yesterday. The International Energy Agency also said that any new nuclear programme must be funded entirely from the private sector, without any government subsidy or market intervention. In its latest review of UK energy policy, the agency said that it supported the building of new nuclear stations as an important part of the country's future energy mix. However, it added that the Government's current proposals for dealing with issues such as planning and construction, long-term waste management and guidance for potential financial backers were "too vague to provide the required certainty". http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2318799.ece
• Gordon Brown will next week give a clear signal that he would press ahead with controversial welfare reforms as prime minister, giving his full backing to a bigger role for the private sector in getting up to 3.5m benefit claimants back into work. In the first real indication of how he intends to overhaul the public sector if he takes over from Tony Blair later this year, the chancellor will join forces on Monday with John Hutton, work and pensions secretary, to unveil a far-reaching review of welfare-to-work policy by David Freud, a former investment banker. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2ac75c26-c863-11db-9a5e-000b5df10621.html
• Ground-breaking research into cloned embryos has been brought to a near standstill by government regulation, a leading fertility expert claimed yesterday. Excessive bureaucracy imposed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was prohibiting development in stem cell research and threatening Britain's position as a world leader in the field, Alison Murdoch, director of the Newcastle Centre for Life fertility clinic, said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,,2024925,00.html
• Last year the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) awarded Glamorgan an Ashes Test match in 2009. Veteran Lancashire fans spluttered at the snub over their pints of mild in the pavilion at Old Trafford, which most people had expected to host the engagement. Cardiff swayed the ECB by bidding a rumoured £3.2m for the Ashes match, funds provided partly by the Welsh Assembly, and thus partly by the English taxpayers who subsidise public spending in Wales. The cricketing body was also impressed by plans for a redevelopment of Glamorgan's Sophia Gardens ground in Cardiff at an estimated cost of £9m. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2db90ebc-c862-11db-9a5e-000b5df10621.html
• Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money could be saved if more couples were encouraged to resolve arguments by mediation rather than in the courts, spending watchdogs have said. A survey for the National Audit Office (NAO) found that one person in three who had been through a family breakdown case was not offered mediation. Of those, 42 per cent said that they would have been interested in the schemes, which allow families to resolve disputes such as divorce and child custody with the help of a trained professional. The NAO calculated that use of mediation would have saved the taxpayer £10 million in these cases. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article1459207.ece

Olympics

• The Treasury is likely to relent on demanding a contingency budget of about £2bn to cope with potential cost overruns in the construction of London Olympic venues, insiders believe. As the International Olympic Committee ended a two-day visit to check on preparations for the 2012 Games, the Treasury was adamant a contingency allowance of about 60 per cent of the construction costs - totalling about £2bn - needed to be built into the financing. This "programme" contingency will equate to about 40-45 per cent of the final budget, say government insiders. Construction costs are still expected to be about £5.1bn, including about £2bn for regeneration. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0fd769f6-c863-11db-9a5e-000b5df10621.html

Conservatives

• The Conservative leadership has revised a plan for a "big bang" release of policy reviews in July, and intends to stagger their publication over the run-up to the party's conference in the autumn, The Guardian has learned. Senior party figures believe this will give them time to weather the policy and public relations blitz from Gordon Brown, assuming he becomes prime minister in June or July. Reports from the six policy reviews - competitiveness, quality of life, public services, security, social justice, and global poverty - will go to leader David Cameron in July, when it had been expected they would be released. But current thinking is that the party will release them gradually in the weeks before the Blackpool conference, where members will debate them. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2024813,00.html