Review of the Papers, Wednesday 30 May

Government

• The use of the private finance initiative to acquire a fleet of air refuelling tankers for the Royal Air Force has delayed the acquisition of the aircraft and increased the cost, according to a senior executive of the company building the aircraft. The widely criticised initiative seeks to transfer the risks associated with public sector projects to the private sector in part or in full. The contract for the air tanker - estimated to be worth £12bn - has been described as the largest PFI. The comments were made last week to the Commons defence committee by Francisco Fernández Sáinz, the head of the military transport aircraft division at EADS, the European aerospace and defence company which leads the consortium building the tanker. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e4521ba4-0e4a-11dc-8219-000b5df10621.html
• Gordon Brown is retaining the option of privatising Channel 4 if he wins a general election against David Cameron, according to Whitehall insiders. Officials in the Treasury have carried out work on the financial and political benefits of selling off the government-owned broadcaster - despite a commitment in the party's last election manifesto to keep it in public ownership. Asked if Mr Brown might sell Channel 4 to raise an estimated £1 billion, a Treasury spokesman described the idea as "speculation" but declined to rule it out completely. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/30/nchannel430.xml
• The National Audit Office has been asked to investigate whether a half billion pound underspend by the NHS in England was caused by political chicanery at the Department of Health. Norman Lamb, the Liberal democrat health spokesman , called in parliament's spending watchdog yesterday after the record surplus was disclosed by the Guardian in an analysis of strategic health authority board papers. They showed NHS trusts responsible for hospitals, mental health, primary care and ambulance services ended the financial year in March with £456.8m in spare cash that could have been used to provide extra healthcare. The total did not include a surplus of £75m that was forecast by NHS foundation trusts. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2090834,00.html
• The number of prisoners in England and Wales hit an all-time high of 80,846 yesterday, raising fears that the court service could run out of cell space this week if too few remand prisoners succeed in getting bail. The record numbers saw 450 prisoners housed in police and court cells made available for overspill. At one point yesterday, prison governors estimated that every court cell on standby would be full by tonight, but later they said they expected enough remand prisoners to get bail to leave a few spaces available. http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2091119,00.html
• The cabinet only took one decision during Tony Blair's first eight months in office, the country's top civil servant at the time has revealed. And that was to delegate the matter of the Millennium Dome to the prime minister. In the course of an entertaining but damning critique of the way Mr Blair has run the country, the former cabinet secretary Lord Butler said the new Labour administration failed to take collective decisions from the start."In the eight months I was cabinet secretary when Tony Blair was prime minister, the only decision the cabinet took was about the Millennium Dome," he told a discussion at the Guardian Hay Festival. "And the only way they could get that decision was Tony Blair left the room to go to a memorial service and John Prescott was left chairing the meeting. There were in fact more people against than for it and the one thing that John Prescott could get cabinet agreement to was that they should leave it to Tony. That was the one decision." http://books.guardian.co.uk/hay2007/story/0,,2091033,00.html
• A disabled Second World War veteran with 10 debilitating ailments is being denied home nursing on the NHS because he was too thrifty during his working life. Eric Friar, 91, and his frail wife Norma have been told that they are entitled to only £40 towards the £600-a-week cost of his care. The former RAF navigator has cancer, shingles, dementia, is almost blind, has MRSA and is currently in hospital with pneumonia. Mrs Friar, 79, who has struggled to provide 24-hour care for him for 15 years, has osteoporosis and can no longer cope. But the local NHS trust has assessed the case for assistance as "moderate" because the couple have savings of more than £21,500. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/30/ncare30.xml
• It would help tackle the problem of climate change if people ate less meat, according to a Government agency. A leaked email to a vegetarian campaign group from an Environment Agency official expresses sympathy with the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, which bans dairy products and fish. The agency also says the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is considering recommending eating less meat as one of the "key environmental behaviour changes" needed to save the planet. It says that this change would have to be introduced "gently" because of "the risk of alienating the public". David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, has raised the issue that farm animals are blamed for producing large amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas, methane, and told farmers they need to do something about it but the agency's response appears to go further than official advice. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/05/30/eavegan30.xml

Conservatives

• David Cameron was faced with a damaging party split last night as a frontbench Conservative MP resigned after being disciplined for defending 11-plus selection. Other senior Tory MPs rallied behind Graham Brady after he quit as Europe spokesman, in a direct challenge to Mr Cameron's authority over the Conservative policy on grammar schools. His protest resignation came as a poll for The Independent showed that the row over grammar schools has made the Tories look more divided and their lead over Labour has been reduced from nine to four points. The poll puts Labour on 31 per cent, up by four points from 27 last month, and the Conservatives down one point to 35 per cent. Asked which leader would be able to keep his party united, 40 per cent said Mr Brown and only 37 per cent said Mr Cameron. A similar poll a month ago showed that 64 per cent thought Labour were divided, compared with only 36 per cent who thought the Tories were disunited. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2594172.ece
• Eton College has rebuffed a call from Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, for public schools to become involved in the running of the Government's flagship city academies. Tony Little, the headmaster of the country's most prestigious private school, said he had to focus on his own pupils rather than become "enmeshed in a vast bureaucratic exercise". Mr Johnson has said he expects public schools to play a greater role in their local communities to justify the tax breaks they receive as charitable foundations and has suggested that they could sponsor a city academy. Two independent schools have said they will invest in academies in Kent, while two others are to scrap fees and become academies in Liverpool and Manchester. But with little sign of other public schools wanting to become involved in the state sector, Mr Little said he was worried that such a move would distract schools such as Eton from their main task. http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2594161.ece