Review of the Papers, Monday 11 June

**Government  **

• Councils will be told this week to think twice before paying to translate documents into foreign languages and supporting community groups that serve a single ethnic minority. The government-appointed Commission on Integration and Cohesion is to tell local authorities to apply tests when making decisions about providing translated material. Ruth Kelly, the communities secretary, said yesterday that councils "can ask really hard questions about whether or not we're providing a crutch and supporting people in their difference, or whether translation is being used in the appropriate circumstances". Translation services cost councils around £25m a year and the NHS £55m. Ms Kelly said there could be no argument that it should continue to be made available for medical care. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2100017,00.html
• Ministers rejected a call from a teaching standards watchdog to scrap national exams for under-16s yesterday, despite increasing pressure to move to a different system of assessing pupils and schools. The General Teaching Council, an independent regulatory body set up by the government, called for the abolition of the system of Standard Assessment Tests, taken by children in England at the ages of seven, 11 and 14. Warning that teachers were being forced to "drill" pupils to pass the exams, the council argued that the testing system "added stress" for teachers and children without improving educational standards. In a submission to the Commons' education committee, leaked to The Observer, the council called for the tests to be replaced with a system of random sampling of pupils to check standards. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/fd7e040a-17b7-11dc-86d1-000b5df10621.html
• The curriculum in state schools in England has been stripped of its content and corrupted by political interference, according to a damning report by an influential, independent think-tank. It warns of the educational apartheid opening up between the experience of pupils in the state sector and those at independent schools, which have refused to reduce academic content to make way for fashionable causes. No major subject area has escaped the blight of political interference, according to the report published by Civitas. "The traditional subject areas have been hijacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the Government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students," it says. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=0NYPN4J42F0DVQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/06/11/ncivitas111.xml
• By the age of three, children from disadvantaged families are already lagging a full year behind their middle-class contemporaries in social and educational development, pioneering research by a London university reveals today. A "generation Blair" project, tracking the progress of 15,500 boys and girls born between 2000 and 2002, found a divided nation in which a child's start in life was still determined by the class, education, marital status and ethnic background of the parents. The results are likely to disappoint ministers committed to improving the life chances of disadvantaged children, notably through the Sure Start programme to develop potential in pre-school years. But the research could not establish how much more stark the divisions might have been without Sure Start's introduction in 1998. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2100041,00.html
• Ministers are unlikely to push ahead with plans for 17 planned new casinos before Gordon Brown becomes prime minister later this month - even if the government today wins a legal challenge against its proposals, say senior Whitehall insiders. Mr Justice Langstaff is due to rule on a judicial review challenge by the British Casino Association this morning. The industry body has argued that Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, "failed to comply with her duties of fair consultation" over the 2005 Gambling Act. The association argued the legislation would mean 138 existing casinos were condemned to second-class status in comparison with the 17 new casinos' freedom to offer slot machines. The challenge has exacerbated problems over the government's gambling policy. Plans to build Britain's first supercasino in Manchester, as well as 16 smaller casinos, were thrown into chaos when the government lost a Lords vote in March. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/74bf66d0-17b8-11dc-86d1-000b5df10621.html
• The Information Tribunal has ruled that civil servants' advice to ministers on major planning decisions should be disclosed to anyone who asks for it once the decision is taken. The ruling, obtained by the former Tory environment secretary Lord Baker, was hailed yesterday by Friends of the Earth as a "significant breakthrough which means that members of the public will now have a much better understanding of why a controversial major planning decision has been made". The Department for Communities and Local Government - which took over responsibility for planning from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last year - has until June 29 to release the advice officials gave John Prescott when he was considering the application for the 50-storey residential Vauxhall Tower near Vauxhall Bridge overlooking the Thames in south London. Mr Prescott approved the development in 2005 after the planning inspector concluded it was the wrong building for the wrong site and should not go ahead. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2099859,00.html
• Gordon Brown pledged to give Labour grassroots a greater say in the next general election manifesto on Sunday, as he used a leadership hustings to signal reforms to create a "21st century" party. The prime minister-elect told a youth Labour leadership event in Oxford that he would be proposing party reforms "in the next few weeks". Highlighting the stark fall in the membership levels of political parties over the past 50 years, Mr Brown said local Labour parties needed to "forge connections" with their communities. He urged them to use mechanisms such as "citizens' forums" to increase the public's political engagement and sense of involvement in policy making. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8372943c-17b7-11dc-86d1-000b5df10621.html

Liberal Democrats

• Gordon Brown has been urged to abolish many of the Queen's remaining powers over the way Britain is governed as part of a wide-ranging new constitutional settlement. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, has challenged the prime minister-in-waiting to match his rhetoric on reform by introducing a radical package of measures to allow Parliament to hold the Government to account. He also called for a constitutional convention, including ordinary people as well as politicians, to draw up a new settlement - a move already being considered by Mr Brown, who has promised changes to bridge the gap between politicians and the the public. Sir Menzies proposed that the monarch's historic powers under the Royal Prerogative, most of which are exercised by ministers without the need for parliamentary approval, should be handed to MPs. The Liberal Democrats want a new government to take office only after its programme has been approved by the Commons, replacing the current system of royal appointment. This could spell the end of the annual Queen's Speech, in which the monarch reads out the Government's list of Bills.