Review of the Papers, Friday 04 May

Government

• Reviews of big government IT projects that track progress and problems could be made available to the public following a ruling by the High Court yesterday. Projects ranging from ID cards to the £12.4bn National Health Service electronic patient record are reviewed regularly and given traffic light status: red, amber or green coding. But the Office of Government Commerce has refused to release the findings of the so-called gateway reviews, arguing that to do so would discourage openness about problems and the involvement of IT companies as assessors. That would "fundamentally undermine" the process and defeat its objective, the OGC argues. The information tribunal has upheld a ruling by Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, that the first- stage review of the ID cards project and its coding be published. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/65b302a0-f9db-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• Britain is being promoted as a "tax haven" on a government website, highlighting the unusually generous tax treatment of foreign residents. "It is also perhaps the only tax haven which has the high degree of respectability sought by the international business community," says the article by Mike Curran, of PwC, the professional services firm, on the UK Trade and Investment website. The message aims to attract wealth creators. But it is likely to stoke the un-ease about the perceived unfairness of the rules, already fuelled by the non-domiciled status of some political donors and the prominence of wealthy foreigners in league tables of the UK's richest people. In most countries, residents are taxed on their worldwide income and gains. But UK residents who are not domiciled in the UK - usually because their fathers were not British - are liable for tax on their overseas income and gains only if they are brought in to Britain. By bringing capital rather than income into the country, very wealthy people can pay little tax. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0cf4a2d0-f9dc-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• Spy-in-the-sky cameras are being used to identify householders who are wasting the most energy and to shame them into turning the central heating down. Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people's houses. Maps identifying individual homes have now been placed on the internet to encourage occupiers to reduce their wastage and carbon emissions by fitting insulation and turning the thermostat down. Haringey Council, in London, has become the first authority in England to place house-by-house thermal maps on the web, after the example of Aberdeen in Scotland. Making the information available to the public is intended to raise awareness of how much energy is being used needlessly, putting up bills and contributing to global warming. It is hoped that homeowners with high wastage levels will be shamed into improving the property's insulation. http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life-and-style/property/article1744293.ece
• More children are attending independent schools than ever before despite steep increases in fees and six years of education being the Government's "number one priority", the Independent Schools Council (ISC) said yesterday. Smaller classes, more individual attention, a wide range of extra-curricular activities and increasingly elaborate facilities were the main reasons heads cited for their success in attracting a record 620,000 pupils. Among the 80 per cent who attend the 1,300 schools represented by the ISC, numbers rose last year by more than 5,000, the eighth successive annual increase and the 16th in the past 21 years. Contributing to the increase was a small rise in boarding numbers for only the second time in living memory. The ISC attributed this to schools' huge investment in improving their boarding accommodation, amounting to nearly £70 million in the last year alone. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2003/05/05/tenindy01.xml
• Tony Blair will seek an "executive role" after he stands down as prime minister this summer, which could include a new post of president of the European Union. Mr Blair, who is expected to leave office at the beginning of July, is unlikely simply to take to the international lecture circuit, according to Downing Street insiders. He has not ruled out the possibility of a heavyweight job representing his former fellow heads of government as the president of the European Council in two years' time, assuming such a position is created under an overhaul of the EU treaty later this year. Mr Blair will formally announce his resignation as prime minister next week. His spokesman yesterday denied reports that he intended to stand down as an MP at the same time, which would trigger a potentially awkward by-election for his successor, almost certain to be Gordon Brown. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4918db06-f9db-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• However, according to the Daily Telegraph, Tony Blair is to become a roving ambassador in Africa and the Middle East in an attempt to rebuild his tarnished reputation. The paper discloses that the Prime Minister is to spurn the chance to earn up to £10 million a year on the international lecture circuit by concentrating on raising money for his new Blair Foundation, which will fund humanitarian work in Africa. Mr Blair has also agreed to a request from President George W Bush that he will fly in to the Middle East when requested as a special envoy to try to revive the stalled peace process. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/04/nblair04.xml

EU

• The European taxpayer will be asked to bail out an intended rival to the American global positioning system, as its private builders have refused to take on the risk of the unproven technology. An eight-member consortium is expected to fail to meet a deadline of next Thursday to sign a contract to build Galileo, European diplomats said, leaving little option but for the public sector to press ahead - or to cancel the project. The consortium is made up of the European aerospace giant EADS; France's Thales and Alcatel-Lucent; Britain's Inmarsat; Italy's Finmeccanica; Spain's AENA and Hispasat; and a German group led by Deutsche Telekom. Jacques Barrot, EU transport commissioner, reckons as much as €1.2bn (£818m) more public money may be needed, paying for up to 30 satellites to be put into orbit. The EU's 27 member states have already found an extra €388m to cover the cost of delays to date. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3714639c-f9dd-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html