Review of the Papers, Thursday 15 March

Government

• Gordon Brown will raise billions of pounds to put education at the centre of next week's Budget with a privatisation of the student loans system. The chancellor will make the announcement of extra billions for education the centrepiece of what seems sure to be his last Budget. The book value of student loans at the end of March last year was £16bn and the Treasury is planning to sell a large chunk of this to a private sector that has an almost insatiable appetite for assets bearing a steady stream of income. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3b60aba4-d29b-11db-a7c0-000b5df10621.html
• Rail passengers face annual inflation-busting fare rises into the next decade after the government announced a £1bn investment in carriages to ease overcrowding. A passenger watchdog said yesterday it expected season ticket prices to rise by at least 1% above inflation for the foreseeable future to fund the expansion of the overloaded rail network. Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, said the government would buy 1,000 extra train carriages between 2009 and 2014 to ease sardine-like conditions on the worst affected routes. http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,2034207,00.html  
• The government was rebuked yesterday by the world's leading anti-bribery watchdog over its decision to terminate a major corruption investigation into Britain's biggest arms company, BAE. The watchdog stepped up pressure on ministers by deciding to send international inspectors to London to find out why the Serious Fraud Office investigation into Saudi arms deals was stopped. The inspectors are expected to question Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, and senior officials. They will also investigate why Britain signed up to a global treaty outlawing the payment of bribes to foreign politicians and officials in 1998, but has so far failed to prosecute any British companies for these offences. http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2034290,00.html`  
• Taxpayers are facing a bill of more than £3bn to pay for cost overruns on nearly 200 road schemes, the National Audit Office reveals today. The failure to control costs is so great that the Treasury has introduced revised rules to give more pessimistic estimates for existing schemes after the average cost overrun hit 40%. Even after this change some schemes have still cost substantially more than the revised estimate. The worst examples in England are a new lane on the M5 between junctions 19 and 20 which was budgeted to cost £6m, rose to £8m in a revised estimate but cost £17m to complete, and a crossroads on the A14, budgeted at £5m, which was revised to £6.7m but cost £13.4m to build. http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,2034264,00.html  
• The Government's most senior education official last night admitted that he was "greatly concerned" about poor English and maths results in Tony Blair's academy programme. David Bell, permanent secretary to the Department for Education and Skills, told the allparty Public Accounts Committee, that academies' peformance had to improve and that principals were more than aware of that. While insisting that all schools in the Government's ambitious reform programme are starting "from a low base", he acknowledged that results for literacy and numeracy were low. "It does concern me greatly," he told the MPs. "But it concerns the academies more, because getting the basics right is the foundation to success elsewhere." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1517516.ece  
• Parents who fail to control what their children are eating, because of their busy lives, social pressures or lack of knowledge, are the focus of a new anti-obesity campaign launched by the government today. It follows a report from the Medical Research Council's human nutrition research centre linking bad parenting to obesity in children. It identified four areas in which parents need support: Parents often have no idea that their child is overweight and know little about the damage that could do to their health. Parents sometimes think changing to a healthy lifestyle would be too difficult. Parents are under pressure to provide high fat, salt and sugar food, not just from advertising, but from their children who do not want to be different from friends. Parents think it is not easy for their children to have an active lifestyle because sporting activities can be expensive and playing out may be dangerous. http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2034195,00.html  
• Eight large marine reserves where fishermen would be liable for damage to protected species are being proposed by the Government today in a new Marine Bill. Among the proposed reserves will be the Dogger Bank, which every schoolchild once knew as the centre of the fishing industry but which has been devastated by industrial fishing. Praise for the Government from conservation groups is likely to be muted, however, because the Bill will also push a £15 billion tidal barrage across the Severn further up the agenda. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/15/nfish15.xml