Review of the Papers, Monday 02 April

Government  

• The row over the government's pensions policy deepened yesterday as business leaders dismissed ministers' claims that they had lobbied for Gordon Brown's controversial tax changes in 1997. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act late on Friday showed that the chancellor was warned about his plans to remove a key tax benefit enjoyed by pension funds in his first budget. Civil servants warned that the cuts could lead to the closure of many occupational pension schemes. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2047974,00.html  
• Developers siting new buildings close to hazardous industrial installations could be forced to finance some of the extra costs involved in making the plants safer, under government proposals being unveiled today. If implemented, the ideas would for the first time establish the principle of spreading out the costs of reducing the dangers of such sites between their operators and nearby businesses. The proposals could leave developers of projects such as housing estates or warehouses facing bills of several million pounds. Up to now, all the costs of necessary plant improvements have fallen on the operators themselves. Developers could find themselves paying for extra safety measures, such as improved maintenance or more sophisticated instrumentation. About 60 large industrial sites in England, Wales and Scotland, mainly chemical plants and refineries, that are considered especially hazardous would be covered by the new rules. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/21886216-e0b6-11db-8b48-000b5df10621.html  
• A £16bn merger of two big-spending Ministry of Defence agencies will be finalised today under a plan to improve the UK's poor record in weapons buying. The MoD's procurement arm is being combined with its logistics division, creating a 29,000-strong Bristol-based department that controls 40 per cent of the defence budget. The merger is part of an overhaul of military buying policy as Britain looks to create long-term partnerships with industry to maintain and upgrade warships, helicopters, armoured vehicles and fighter jets - all of which often remain in service for decades. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/927fea8e-e0b6-11db-8b48-000b5df10621.html  
• The UK has spent £165m on hiring private security companies in Iraq in the past four years - the equivalent to around a quarter of the entire Iraq aid budget, it has emerged. A further £43m has been spent on private guards in Afghanistan since 2004. The security costs, mainly for guards for British staff and facilities, were revealed in a parliamentary answer from the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells. They reflect the huge quantities of money that Britain and the US have had to divert from humanitarian and reconstruction resources to deal with the deteriorating security environment in both countries. In Iraq, a total of £145m has been spent on security guards to protect British assets, with a further £20m going on police training and security advisers to the Iraqi government. Britain's Iraqi aid budget over the same period was £644m. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2048009,00.html  
• The industrialist responsible for the London 2012 Olympics construction project has rejected claims that the budget will continue to soar over the next five years, and predicted that the final cost will probably be less than the £9.3bn announced by the government. Sir Roy McNulty, acting chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), said the budget, which has trebled since London was awarded the games, was now "realistic". In an interview with the Guardian to mark the project's first year yesterday, he insisted it had been "fast out of the blocks" and hit all the main milestones. Sceptics have warned of possible £15bn costs but Sir Roy said there would be "pressure to deliver value for money throughout the whole exercise" and the Olympics were "in relatively good shape". http://www.guardian.co.uk/olympics2012/story/0,,2048050,00.html  
• Council tax inspectors have held high-level talks with their overseas counterparts who use an annual system for revaluing properties, according to documents published by the Conservatives yesterday. Annual revaluations would mean that any household would be taxed for any material improvement to their home, said Caroline Spelman, the Tory local government spokesman. The Government has already announced that a revaluation, which would likely result in large council tax rises for homes that have benefited from the boom in property prices, will be delayed until after the election. But detailed information obtained by the Tories indicates that the Valuation Office in England is preparing for a new system of regular revaluations, including using computer programmes and so-called "spy in the sky" technology to value homes, to boost local council revenues in England. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/02/nhomes102.xml  
• An outgoing chief constable launched an attack on the level of police bureaucracy yesterday, as a survey revealed that public confidence in the service is plummeting. Alastair McWhirter, on his last day as chief constable of Suffolk police, said officers were spending half their time in the station, sometimes filling in forms for Government statistics. Mr McWhirter said a "phenomenal" amount of paperwork was required to take someone into custody. Even the file for a simple assault case contained 128 bits of paper and had been handled by about 56 different people before it got to court. Mr McWhirter said bureaucracy in the force was a "necessary evil" but needed a root and branch overhaul. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/02/ntape02.xml  

Conservatives  

• Opposition MPs turned up the heat in the row over pensions policy yesterday, with the Tories announcing they would hold a debate on the issue as soon as possible after the Easter recess. Conservative MPs said they would ask Gordon Brown to account for his decisions in his first budget in 1997 that ended a tax benefit for pension funds. The party has already called for an independent inquiry by the government actuary into the total cost of the policy to pension funds. Experts put the cost at £5bn a year, but government figures vary between £2bn and £10bn. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2047867,00.html