• Brown voices Gaza ceasefire hopes

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hopeful a basis for a ceasefire in Gaza will be found to end the Middle East's "darkest hour".

  • Companies 'facing' gambling levy

Bookmakers and other firms may be forced to fund research into gambling addiction under plans put forward by ministers.

  • Cable gives house price warning

Vince Cable warns house prices could fall another 20% as negativity surrounding the market shows no sign of lifting.

  • Gaza solution is possible - Blair

The conflict between Israel and Hamas can be resolved, ex-UK prime minister and current Middle East envoy Tony Blair insists.

  • Blair to get US Medal of Freedom

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will be awarded the US's highest civilian award next week, the White House confirms.

  • UK short-selling ban to be lifted

A ban on the short-selling of financial shares is to be lifted, the UK's financial regulator confirms.

  • Thatcher pays tribute to Walters

Lady Thatcher leads tributes to her "fearless" economics adviser Sir Alan Walters, who has died aged 82.

  • Cameron makes savings tax pledge

David Cameron proposes to axe tax on basic rate taxpayers' savings and to increase pensioners' tax free allowances.

  • State widens homeowner help

The government extends state help for people struggling to make mortgage payments after losing their jobs.

  • Halloween knife figures more trick than treat, say statistics chiefs

Statistics chiefs mount a new attack on knife crime figures - including a claimed reduction at Halloween.

  • Spending cuts due to recession to cause 'austere' future for schools

Schools will be forced to tighten their belts as the government diverts spending to tackle the recession, MPs warn today.

The government's promise to rebuild every secondary school in the country at the cost of nearly £45bn could be one of the first major casualties, the new report from the commons select committee for children, schools and families suggests. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is currently under review amid concerns that the private finance it relies on is drying up.

Headteachers should brace themselves for more "austere" times, the committee's annual report on the government's expenditure on schools and children's services says. "The concern ? is that these serious economic problems could undermine investment in education and related services and could prevent the government from achieving its objectives," it warns.

Barry Sheerman, who chairs the committee, said: "We are warning that education spending as a percentage of GDP is plateauing and beginning to dip." As GDP dips in the recession this could mean a cut in funding for schools.

According to the report, "those in charge of schools and children's services more widely need to be planning now for ways of coping".

Last autumn the prime minister, Gordon Brown, and the chancellor, Alistair Darling, both promised continued investment in public services such as schools and hospitals when they announced a multibillion pound bailout of the banks. But today's report warns that those promises could be undermined by plans to review three key education programmes, including the £45bn BSF scheme.

The pre-budget report in November put the school building programme and plans to expand free childcare and teaching assistants under the Public Value Programme review to test whether they are worth the investment ministers have promised. Darling brought forward separate money to spend on building schools outside the BSF programme as part of efforts to kickstart the construction industry.

The committee report warns that BSF is also under threat because much of it relies on raising private capital to invest in the PFI schemes. These see companies build and manage schools, which are then contracted to local authorities.

"The private sector may be far less willing to enter into PFI arrangements in connection with the BSF programme," says the report, which also calls on ministers to explain the extent of the review of BSF and clarify its future.

The report also warns that schools with the most deprived intakes are not getting all the money set aside to help them teach their more challenging intakes.

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The select committee is right to point to the potential storm on the horizon for education spending, created by the financial crisis. It is vital, therefore, that education funding maintains its upward trajectory so that Gordon Brown's commitment to matching spending for schools in the state sector with that of the private sector is realised.

"It is about time that the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) for school building was laid to rest. The select committee is right to question the future viability of PFI. The NUT has always opposed this expensive and burdensome approach to building schools. With the collapse in property prices and the looming recession, the government should take the decisive step and end PFI."

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Funding is now at its highest ever levels in cash and real terms ? overall funding will reach £6,600 per pupil by 2010-11.

"We need to make sure school funding is fit for the priorities and challenges of the next decade. We are currently reviewing school funding from 2011 with the aim of creating a single, transparent distribution formula recognising different costs of educating particular groups of pupils with a key focus on how better to give extra money towards disadvantaged children.

"The Treasury announced in the Budget that it would look to secure additional value for money across a range of Whitehall programmes which included BSF. This is not a scaling back of BSF - it is common sense and absolutely right to make sure that the taxpayer gets the best from every penny of capital investment."

  • Brian Paddick on how the police force is starting to defeat institutional homophobia

When I was a police officer, the usual reaction to the publication of the Stonewall workplace equality index from gay and lesbian colleagues was: "How could our force have scored so highly?"

Like me, many had suffered discrimination at worse and been tolerated at best. When I joined the Metropolitan Police in 1976, homophobia was rife and overt. "Only girls and poofs wear gloves!" bawled the drill sergeant on the parade square at Hendon. Ten years later, a close colleague was beaten up by his police officer flatmate, simply for bringing his boyfriend home. In the 1990s, sexual orientation was included in the Met's equal opportunities statement. But at the same time I received a visit from my boss to tell me it was "a shield and not a flag."

Even 30 years later, my experience in the upper echelons of the Met was of networking done, and major decisions made, by the straight white male majority. Much of the business was done in the bars around New Scotland Yard after work, a culture that excluded "others" like me, then the highest-ranking openly gay police officer in the UK, and the then highest-ranking Asian officer, Tarique Ghaffur.

Many things have changed. Stonewall's index is more rigorous and the top 25 organisations are now independently evaluated: Hampshire Constabulary's second place accolade is well-deserved, as are those of the four other forces in the upper quartile. The number of police forces participating has increased and they appear to be getting their act together. Acutely aware of the need to retain public confidence, to be seen to be fair and impartial, and to reflect the communities they serve, the police service has done more than many other sectors to address equality issues. Whatever is said about leadership in the police service, this year's index proves that, on the issue of lesbian and gay equality, real change is happening in many forces.

Having said that, the Metropolian Police, the force that polices the UK's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and was once at the forefront of the diversity agenda, is ranked 35th. I never thought I would see the day when the London fire brigade was considered to be more "gay-friendly" than the capital's police service. All credit to Roy Bishop, LFB's deputy commissioner, who has led their diversity work. The new commissioner of the Met clearly has much more work to do.

  • Government drive will do little to reduce number of low-paid jobs, warns thinktank

The government's drive to improve skills in the workplace will "do little" to reduce the number of low-paid jobs, a Labour-leaning thinktank warns today, raising the prospect of a future surplus of overqualified workers.

The report, Nice Work If You Can Get It, by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), predicts that the occupational make-up of the UK will change little over the next decade, with the incidence of low-paid jobs in catering and retail likely to remain the same ? a fifth ? as a proportion of the workforce.

The report's authors say that the government's skills strategy neither reduces the levels of low-paid jobs nor improves their condition. They say: "Without a coherent strategy for improving the quality of jobs available in the UK labour market, current policy will have only a limited impact on reducing the extent of low pay and working poverty."

Painting a gloomy picture about the efficacy of the government's skills agenda, the reports says: "Although most qualifications continue to provide considerable wage returns, there is some evidence that wage returns for lower level vocational qualifications are weak and decreasing. This raises questions about the government's focus on level two qualifications within its workplace training strategy."

The report shows that the UK's "relatively poor" skills base is estimated to account for around a fifth of the productivity gap with countries such as Germany and France. "This suggests that steps to enhance workforce skills will only have a limited effect on the country's productivity and economic performance."

Next week the government will publish a white paper on social mobility building on interim reports trailed at the end of last year showing the link between parental income and educational attainment beginning to weaken ? an early indication that the recent decrease in social mobility between the 1958 and 1970s cohort may be starting to reverse. The government is known to favour skills and training as a means for improving the life chances of the less well-off.

But in today's report, the IPPR urges the government to supplement its skills and social mobility agenda with a drive to improve the quality of low-paid jobs.

The thinktank also urges the government to encourage funding for training beyond level two of workplace training, given the poor return for results at this level.

Analysis by the IPPR showed that between 2002 and 2005 over half of all low-paid workers did not see a significant increase in their income, either because they remained in low pay or they dropped out of employment. This compared to 7.1% of "high paid" workers, who were either low paid or out of work after three years.

The report also warns the recession will mean some firms and sectors "under pressure" may revert to low-cost, low-value, low-skill business models, which may further run down the quality of jobs.

Over a half of poor children live with a parent who works and a fifth of the workforce ? 5.3 million employees ? are low paid.

The report urges the government to strengthen career ladders within industry to help low-wage workers move up.

Lisa Harker, the co-director of the IPPR, said: "Low pay and in-work poverty are long-term challenges, and the government must not let its priorities get blown off course by the recession. Government investment is needed now to strengthen career ladders, improve workplace performance and make sure the welfare system is focused on helping people stay and progress in work."

In 2006 there were 2.5 million economically active adults with no qualifications, but 7.4 million jobs requiring no qualifications for entry. By 2020, there are projected to be just 585,000 economically active adults with no qualifications ? but a similar number of jobs as in 2006 requiring no entry qualification.

  • MI5 chief - terror trials have reduced al-Qaida threat

The head of MI5 says today that the threat of an immediate attack in Britain by al-Qaida-inspired extremists has diminished because a string of successful prosecutions has had a "chilling" effect.

Jonathan Evans warns, however, that al-Qaida leaders still intend to mount an attack, and that there are individuals in Britain able to do so. In the first newspaper interview by a serving MI5 director general, Evans warns that:

? Israeli attacks on Gaza give extremists in Britain more ideological ammunition.

? The Afghan conflict and its outcome has a "direct impact" on UK domestic security.

? The international economic crisis could affect Britain's security.

? Dissident republican groups in Northern Ireland are a growing threat.

? Not getting access to emails and data on internet sites would be detrimental to national security.

Speaking on the centenary of the establishment of MI5, Evans said his agency believes "core-al Qaida", the leadership based on Pakistan's north-west frontier, retains a strategic interest in carrying out attacks in the UK, using British nationals or residents.

"There is a significant number of individuals in active sympathy," Evans said. He added: "They are doing things like fundraising, helping people to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. Sometimes they provide equipment, support and propaganda."

However, MI5 does not believe al-Qaida has what he termed a "semi-autonomous structured hierarchy" in the UK. And: "We have probably seen fewer 'late-stage' attack plans over the last 18 months."

Evans pointed to 86 successful prosecutions in terror trials since January 2007. In more than half, the accused pleaded guilty: "That has had a chilling effect." However, while the networks might keep their heads down, they had not gone away. "There is enough intelligence to show they have the intention to mount an attack here," he said. And the period between first talk of a plot and its active planning could be just a few weeks.

Evans predicted that the Israeli invasion of Gaza would see "extremists try to radicalise individuals for their own purposes". Research had shown "no single path" on the way to violent extremism, but foreign policy was certainly one factor, along with economic, social, and personal circumstances.

Three out of four al-Qaida and Islamist-related terrorist attacks in Britain had a Pakistan link, Evans said. Potential jihadists had made their way to Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan (and now increasingly to Somalia) by circuitous routes. "There is no super highway. Lots of little lanes will get there," he said.

He played down any idea that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November had links to Britain. "Alarming statements" had been made, but MI5 had not found "any connections of national security significance to the UK".

Overall, Evans painted a more sanguine and less alarming picture of the terrorist threat than ministers have done of late. They and some senior Whitehall officials have suggested the threat level was close to being raised to its highest - "critical" - in recent months. Evans appeared to dismiss such a suggestion.

What MI5 was very concerned about, he said, was an "upsurge" in plots by dissident republicans with sophisticated booby-trap bombs aimed at police officers.

The London Olympic games in 2012 were a potential target but he said any real threats to the event would be more likely to come from extremists already known to MI5. rather than any dedicated team established to target the games.

  • Fictional adventure in the Baltic launched 100 years of spycatching

It was 1903 and Carruthers of the Foreign Office and his old university chum, Davies, were yachting and duck hunting in the Baltic when they spotted strange goings-on. Gradually, it dawned on them that they were witnessing Germany's clandestine preparations to "traverse the North Sea and throw themselves bodily upon English shores".

Carruthers and Davies may have been fictional characters in Erskine Childers's novel The Riddle of the Sands, but the German "plot" they uncovered was deemed realistic enough to alert Lord Selborne, the first lord of the Admiralty, that such an invasion was a possibility and that Britain needed to have better intelligence about such risks.

So it was, in 1909, with rumours of German spies gathering information in British naval ports, that the Secret Service Bureau was established. The first head of the military section, later known as MI5, was Vernon Kell, or K, as he was called, a young army captain and polyglot whose father had fought in the Zulu wars and who had himself been in Shanghai during the Boxer rebellion. His initial staff consisted of a single clerk.

By the start of the first world war, with the number of officers increased to 14, MI5 was fully functioning and had uncovered a real network of German spies in Britain who were sending back messages written in invisible ink. One of them, an Islington hairdresser, Karl Ernst, was arrested for espionage and sentenced to hard labour.

Between the wars, attention focused on the growth of the Communist party and on homegrown fascist groups. But the service was seen as underprepared at the outbreak of the second world war and the prime minister, Winston Churchill, replaced Kell in 1940, first with Brigadier "Jasper" Harker and then Sir David Petrie. A revamped service enjoyed some spectacular successes during the war, with more than 100 German agents caught and many of them turned into double agents.

One double agent, Agent Garbo, whose real name was Juan Pujol, helped to mislead Germany over the location of the allies' Normandy landings in 1944 and sent back a "confusing bulk" of information, all the while pretending to be a fanatical fascist anxious only to serve his führer. Another remarkable agent was Eddie Chapman, a safe-blower who was serving a jail sentence in Jersey when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. The Germans recruited him, codenamed him Little Fritz and parachuted him back into England, where he promptly presented himself to MI5. He became a double agent after being debriefed by the monocled Lieutenant Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens, who made him Agent Zigzag, later the subject of books and films.

After the second world war, attention shifted firmly to the Soviet Union's influence and the prime minister, Clement Attlee, announced that communists as well as fascists could be excluded from work connected with state security. By the 1950s, as the cold war reached its frozen depths, MI5 had increased its numbers to 850 and the Soviet Union had meanwhile recruited a number of British sympathisers in the shape of diplomats and Foreign Office officials, most famously Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. The first three defected, while Blunt became a royal art historian before being exposed in 1979 and stripped of his knighthood.

The cold war was also MI5's most controversial period, with peace activists, trade unionists, civil libertarians, nuclear disarmers, radical journalists, Irish republicans and assorted reds of different shades falling under suspicion and often being investigated in ludicrous circumstances.

Those on whom files were opened included the future government ministers Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt.

In the mid-1970s, Harold Wilson, the prime minister, became suspicious that he himself was being spied on by MI5. A former Security Service officer, Peter Wright, in his book Spycatcher, elaborated on this theme with a claim that about 30 officers were part of a plot to overthrow the government - a claim later dismissed after an inquiry.

There were other setbacks for the service. One MI5 man, Michael Bettaney, offered to work for the Soviet Union but was caught in the act and jailed in 1984 for 23 years, a sentence completed 10 years ago. Another former agent, David Shayler, was jailed briefly under the Official Secrets Act in 2002 after he spilled embarrassing beans to the Mail on Sunday. In 2000, Straw, now home secretary, said that MI5 had files on 440,000 people. Under pressure, MI5 eventually became more public, naming its director general for the first time when Stella Rimington was appointed in 1992.

Now there is an MI5 website that runs a section on "myths and misunderstandings" in which it attempts to persuade a sceptical public that it does not carry out assassinations, never plotted against Harold Wilson and does not "help terrorists by making secret information publicly available on its website". Rimington now writes spy fiction. Carruthers and Davies would have been astonished.

  • MI5: Opening up, but not lifting the lid

In the latest step in MI5's path towards greater openness, the first newspaper interview by a serving director general in the agency's 100-year history had strings attached. We can say where the interview took place - in Thames House, MI5's headquarters, overlooking the river on Millbank. However, for "security purposes" we are asked not give the floor number or the layout of the room in which we talked.

As Jonathan Evans, the 50-year-old career security service officer who took over from Eliza Manningham-Buller in 2007, put it, the interview was an unusual event. Evans, an appropriately cautious man, added that he was not planning to lift the lid on MI5.

What he meant was that he was not going to talk about current operations or the details of the way it goes about bugging suspects or intercepting their communications. He made clear that the first official history of MI5, written by the Cambridge historian, Christopher Andrew, will not do that either.

However, he provided insights into MI5's mindset. For years now it has, as Evans put it, deliberately targeted women from Cheltenham Ladies' College and other establishments, at a time when their skills were not being tapped by the employment market. The average age of MI5's staff of more than 3,000 is under 40. Nearly half of its officers (47%) are women, and 8% are from ethnic minorities, Evans said. By 2011 MI5 will have a staff of 4,100, more than double the number the agency had 10 years ago at the time of the September 11 attacks.

MI5's request for more resources have been accepted with alacrity by ministers, out of concern over the political fallout of another terrorist attack, as well as for the potential victims. Evans has to be more level-headed. "There can't be guarantees in the intelligence world." MI5 officers took "priority decisions on a daily basis".

"What to investigate and what not to investigate is a judgement ... we won't always get it right," he added.

The security service faced criticism over events surrounding 7/7 when it emerged that Mohammed Siddique Khan, who later became the leader of the suicide bombers, came under MI5's radar in connection with another operation. MI5 argued that a lack of resources and the need to take decisions about priorities lay behind the fact that Khan was not followed.

Perhaps foreseeing criticism ahead, Evans said: "It is quite likely the next attack or attempted attack will be by people of whom we have heard or known a bit about," Evans said. MI5 gets some comfort when it learns that a suspect or terrorist plotter is not entirely unknown, even though it does not know their every move.

The public would not want a society in which the security service monitors them all the time, Evans said. And it was easier to identify terrorist suspects than to de-radicalise young Islamists, he suggested.

Evans warned that the current economic crisis might turn out to be what he called a "watershed moment" which was quite likely to have national and security implications in the long term. He did not elucidate beyond saying that the world would not stay the same and the west would become less economically dominant. "We have this at the back of our minds, it is too early to say," said Evans.

MI5, whose job is to protect Britain's economic wellbeing, as well as protecting the country from spies and terrorists, is concerned about growing threats from the east, including Chinese cyber-warfare.

Evans did not give a figure on the number of potential Islamist extremists MI5 believed posed a direct threat to national security. In his first public speech, in November 2007, he put the number at 2,000, up from 1,600 the year before. Perhaps, he did not want to say explicitly that the number had fallen. Scores, rather than hundreds of British residents had travelled to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan over the past decade for terrorist-related purposes, security and intelligence officials have suggested.

Nor did Evans give a view about what he thought of the government's proposal that terrorist suspects could be jailed without charge for 42 days - a proposal condemned by his predecessor, Manningham-Buller, in her maiden speech to the Lords last year.

Evans had already said that - unlike the police - MI5 did not have a view.

He said that MI5 adopted a sensitive approach to human rights and quoted the approval of one of its second world war interrogators, who advised that abuse was counter-productive. Evans also would not comment on allegations of MI5 collusion with the CIA and others in the mistreatment and secret rendering of terrorist suspects, including British residents and citizens who ended up in Guantánamo Bay. Allegations were the subject of inquiries and legal cases, Evans said.

He defended the parliamentary intelligence and security committee which meets in private. "It worked very effectively because the nature of secret intelligence work is such that you can't talk about it." He said he had no objection to setting up a commons select committee, to occasionally meet in public, so long as such information was discussed in closed hearings.

Evans added that never before had Britain's security and intelligence agencies - MI5, the domestic security service, MI6, which recruits spies abroad, and GCHQ, the electronic eavesdropping centre - co-operated more effectively.

He also robustly defended the government's plans to allow MI5 and the other security and intelligence agencies to intercept emails and other communications which may have been sent, or posted on websites.

  • Lib Dems call for British arms embargo on Israel

Gordon Brown came under pressure yesterday to impose a British arms embargo on Israel in protest at its actions in Gaza, and to call on the EU to join the boycott.

The call was made by Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in an article in the Guardian, and represents the first serious political pressure on the prime minister to do more to condemn Israel.

Clegg accused Brown of sitting on his hands and speaking like an accountant about the crisis, remarks that were likely to deeply offend the prime minister.

Downing Street insists that Brown has been acting tirelessly behind the scenes alongside Tony Blair, now a Middle East envoy, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to secure a ceasefire that the Israeli government will accept, including an international force to police the tunnels reportedly taking weapons into Gaza. The Labour MP Richard Burden said that 100 parliamentarians had signed a letter condemning the attacks on Gaza.

But Clegg, ahead of an expected Commons statement on Monday by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, writes in the Guardian: "The EU is by far Israel's biggest export market, and by far the biggest donor to the Palestinians. It must immediately suspend the proposed new co-operation agreement with Israel until things change in Gaza, and apply tough conditions on any long-term assistance to the Palestinian community.

"Brown must also halt Britain's arms exports to Israel, and persuade our EU counterparts to do the same. The government's own figures show Britain is selling more and more weapons to Israel, despite the questions about the country's use of force. In 2007, our government approved £6m of arms exports. In 2008, it licensed sales 12 times as fast: £20m in the first three months alone.

"There is a strong case that, given the Gaza conflict, any military exports contravene EU licensing criteria. Reports, though denied, that Israel is using illegal cluster munitions and white phosphorus, should heighten our caution. I want an immediate suspension of all arms exports from the EU, but if that cannot be secured Brown must act unilaterally."

He wrote that it was intolerable that Brown, like Blair, was making UK policy subservient to the US and condemned what he described as "the aching silence" of the US president-elect, Barack Obama.

  • Simon Jenkins: Who will cure ministers of illiberal headline addiction?

The recession does not exonerate ministers from idiocy. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is about to reject the recommendation of her official advisers to remove the clubbing drug, ecstasy, from the same harm category as heroin and crack cocaine.

She may be putty in the hands of her advisers on curbing civil liberty, but sternly resists all the blandishments of reason in the matter of narcotics. Her spokesman told the Guardian that since "ecstasy can and does kill unpredictably, there is no such thing as a safe dose".

This apparently was enough to keep it a class A drug, carrying a sentence of up to seven years imprisonment for consumption, and life for dealing.

Last year the same Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs recommended that cannabis remain in class C, since the evidence did not support a change to class B. An embattled Gordon Brown, eager for plaudits from the tabloid press, pledged that he would make just that change. He has yet to do so, perhaps moved by the ridicule hurled at him from drug experts, his own medical officers and the Medical Research Council.

A second overturning of its advice would render the committee largely pointless. Its chairman, the impeccable pharmacologist David Nutt, has fought a long and lonely campaign for regulatory sanity. His task is to assess and combat harm, the statutory purpose of drug classification - as opposed to that political cliché, "to send a message". The idea that teenagers across Britain are waiting on tenterhooks for a "message" from Brown and Smith is ridiculous.

The justification for regulating drugs can only be the harm their use imposes on individuals and the community. We allow people to abuse themselves with food, drink and tobacco and take risks with sport and travel, albeit in some framework of regulation. A Lancet study last year classified 20 mind-altering substances by personal and social harm. It put ecstasy at the bottom, well below alcohol and nicotine.

Not only is it disproportionate to impose life sentences on those dispensing the millions of pills consumed annually in Britain's pubs and clubs, it is stupid. Since the law is unenforceable the market in a potentially harmful substance is left unregulated. Ecstasy has none of the quality controls applied, for instance, to prescription amphetamines. Smith is the pushers' ally.

Most ministers - indeed, some home secretaries - admit on leaving office that drug policy is one of the greatest failures of the Blair/Brown governments. They acknowledge drugs as the single biggest curse on families, schools, policing, community cohesion and the housing estate economy. Yet nothing, absolutely nothing, is permitted by way of reform.

The reason has been simple. Blair's (and now Brown's) press operation lives in holy terror of the tabloids. The last substantive, and disastrous, change was the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, leading to 38 years of legislative inertia. Narcotics control is a prime example of media power over weak government.

The advisory committee is like the prisons inspectorate or Ofsted, an uncomfortable public body that constantly reminds ministers of their failures. Its task is to collate the findings of research and recommend adjustments in the harm classification of drugs to assist the courts in sentencing. It must marry evidence to reason in the hope of yielding due proportion.

A sequence of politically weak home secretaries has balked at reform, other than towards wider imprisonment (notably of women). The only mildly courageous change, David Blunkett's reclassification of cannabis from B to C, is about to be reversed.

Research into mind-altering substances is now worthless. Instead research should seek a substance capable of mind-altering ministers from their addiction to illiberal headlines. Leaving ecstasy in class A on the grounds that "there is no such thing as a safe dose" is public stupidity. On this basis there is no safe alcoholic drink or cigarette. There is no safe tree, no safe ladder and, according to Smith, no safe mobile phone. Do we ban trees, ladders and mobiles? Lurking behind them all is an accident waiting to happen, a terrorist incident, a loss of state control. Smith's nostrum may be music to the health and safety industry, but not to common sense.

The classification of ecstasy alongside heroin and crack is justified on the grounds that there are "at least 30 deaths a year" of those using it. While any death is tragic, this figure has no significance, given that a dehydrated dancer can suffer all sorts of traumas.

The 2000 Police Foundation committee on the drug laws, on which I served, was the first to call for a reclassification of ecstasy. We concluded that the "population safety comparison" made it "more than a thousand times" less dangerous than heroin, and its retention in the same harm group was absurd. Tens of thousands of young people thought the same, which is why the law is in such disarray. This has led to more rather than less ignorance of the real dangers of ecstasy abuse.

When ministers defy evidence, rational citizens should shudder. Barely a week passes without some new statistical mendacity to sustain a dud policy. Knife crime figures, bandied about over Christmas, are useless since records vary nationwide and no one can tell a slashing from a stabbing or a bottle attack.

Like statistics on all forms of crime, and indeed on health and education, those on knifings are so embroiled in qualification as to be meaningless. Crime figures, collated by some 40 target-driven police forces, are not more or less accurate or more or less good news. They are devoid of sense, mere political chaff.

The mathematician David Spiegelhalter pleaded this week for children to be taught "risk literacy" as an elementary life skill. He is launching a Risk Roadshow to spread an understanding of probability and danger, so young people know how to handle odds, lotteries, interest rates, insurance premiums and health scares. Such literacy, he says, should be "the basic component of discussion about issues in the media, politics and schools ... to deconstruct the latest story about a cancer risk or a wonder drug".

Children who cannot handle risk have no way of adjusting to and properly using the world around them. But what hope is there for such a programme when a home secretary peddles statistical nonsense to justify a policy that every teenager knows is rubbish? None.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

  • Hugh Muir's diary

? So many accusations fly in the midst of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, and here's another one: censorship. Listeners to George Galloway's phone-in show on TalkSport on Saturday were confused and, yes, aggrieved, to find that George himself was absent. What occurred, we learn from those who know, is that shortly before the Saturday broadcast, Galloway was called by officials from the station who said that his pro-Palestinian position was well-known, it was all very sensitive and would he like, instead of presenting, to appear as a guest in his own time slot, appearing alongside an advocate for Israel. Strangely, or perhaps not, Galloway declined; and though he should be back in charge on Friday, who knows? We are slaves to the whim of others. And events, dear boy, events.

? What leadership can we expect from the Czechs now that they have assumed the presidency of the European Union? The crisis in Gaza, both bloody and ugly, seems to be testing their diplomatic skills to the very limit. The results are not all good. Haim Bresheeth, an academic in London, took exception to the Czech prime minister and EU's new rotating president, Mirek Topolanek - as quoted by a government spokesman - saying that the Israeli action "is more defensive than offensive". This has been attributed to a misunderstanding but Prof Bresheeth nevertheless emailed Jiri F Potuznik, the Czech spokesman responsible. This was his reply: "Dear Mr Haim Bresheeth, let me deeply and personally apologize to You - my mystake and misunderestanding was not the support of any murdering. Information I have recieved but have not confirmed was the opposit. That is my shame, not the bad intention. I proposed my resignation anyway." He is staying and henceforth he speaks for all of us. What is he saying? Who knows?

? We have more on the danger posed to aviation by exploding cheeses. Yesterday we told how a reblochon, the milk-rich cheese from the Alps region, was confiscated by security at Geneva as a dangerous liquid while a semi-soft but evidently less hazardous morbier was allowed through. Has anyone tried to travel with camembert? we asked. My colleague Sam Jones pleads guilty. "I managed to bring a camembert through Geneva airport this summer," he says, waiving all rights to legal representation. "The security guard sniffed it out in my bag, removed it, told us we shouldn't be taking it through and then let us through with it." They run a tighter ship at Schiphol, he found subsequently. "They made me surrender two tubs of Peruvian chilli paste which, they claimed, were liquids, despite being measured in grams," he reports.

This does fall a little outside the ambit of our investigation but nevertheless merits inquiry. Perhaps it went well with the cheese.

? We sought guidance from the Department of Transport but merely learned that security officers are told to watch out for a list of gels and liquids. Other than that they are on their own. Cheese nowhere appears and thus there is little we can offer by way of clarity, save to say that fondue in all its forms is problematic. Sorry.

? Many benefits may flow from the depiction by the US authorities of Osama bin Laden in a suit and tie. He is not, as they suggest, in "western" dress - for that he might need a cowboy hat - but they have successfully portrayed him as he might appear disguised. Still, there are drawbacks to this, and one may be that individuals who bear some similarity to Bin Laden as depicted in the counterterrorism centre's image meet difficulty when next they encounter US customs. David Blunkett, though manifestly blameless, could be one of them. We regret that.

diary@guardian.co.uk

  • Urban art: How leading cities perform

Bristol

It looked for a time as if the city's Old Vic, one of the country's oldest theatres, was for the chop. It was reprieved and the city seems in good, if not spectacular, cultural health. There's certainly plenty to do but some wish the city was aiming higher.

Derby

The enforced closure of the Derby Playhouse continues to hold the city back culturally and a lot is resting on Derby Live, "a new model for the delivery of performing arts". Equally, a lot rests on the city's new £11.2m space for art and film, Quad. The jury is still out on both.

Glasgow

It was the UK's first capital of culture in 1990 and it transformed the place: the legacy can arguably still be seen. Of course, every summer it has to roll over and let Edinburgh be the centre of attention but there is still much for the city to be proud of.

Leicester

Civic leaders have created what they call a cultural quarter and at the centre of it is Curve, the jaw-droppingly expensive - £61m - performing arts space that opened in November. Will people get its radical open-plan design? And while the building looks amazing, how radical will the things inside it be?

Manchester/Salford

It has always been one of the most culturally rich cities outside London and Edinburgh, so the launch of the biennial Manchester international festival in 2007 only strengthens its firepower. The possibility of the Royal Opera performing at the Palace Theatre trundles closer.

Newcastle/Gateshead

Tyneside can lay claim to having had one of most successful cultural makeovers of recent years. There is a real buzz at places such as the Baltic centre for contemporary art, one of the UK's best concert halls in The Sage and the refurbished Live Theatre where one of the finest recent new plays, The Pitmen Painters, was first performed.