Camilla Swift

The ongoing horsemeat scandal has opened up a hugely complicated web stretching across the EU, highlighting the difficulty of tracing the origins of the meat on sale in this country. Even now, almost a month after it was announced that horse could be in beef products, no one is entirely sure of how the horses entered the food chain. There are other big questions, too: here are four that need answers: •       The matter of dodgy horse passports – which I wrote about last month - is something that still hasn’t been fully investigated. It has now emerged that up to 7,000 unauthorised passports have been in circulation in the UK since 2008, highlighting the chaotic state of the passport system.

Shadow Defra minister Mary Creagh told MPs today about her fears that a carcinogenic drug commonly used as an anti-inflammatory in horses could have entered the human food chain. Speaking in the Commons, she said: ‘I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone, or bute, a drug which causes cancer in humans and is banned from the human food chain. It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain.’ As I wrote on Coffee House on Tuesday, it was Defra’s decision last autumn to abolish the National Equine Database which has got us into this mess.

This week's discovery that some burgers sold in UK supermarkets contain up to 29 per cent horse meat was met with a combination of concerns about the labelling and sourcing of food, and jokes about the burgers' 'Shergar content'. But the fact that people are inadvertently eating horse meat isn't the only worrying part of the finding; an additional concern is the provenance of the meat. In many equine-consuming countries, horses are bred specifically for their meat, in the same way that livestock are in the UK. If you go to Auchan in Calais and pick up a horse steak from the 'boucherie' section, then your meat should be perfectly edible and, I've been informed, delicious. As a wimpy horse-lover, I'm more than happy to take their word for it.

In this week’s Spectator, Melissa Kite spends the day with the Heythrop Hunt – David Cameron’s local hunt, and a hunt that has recently been fined £4,000 for hunting outside of the law. Much has already been written about the ‘staggering’ amount of money which the RSPCA chose to spend on the case, and the lengths to which the RSPCA have gone to mount the prosecution. The two huntsmen charged pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching the Hunting Act and, as Melissa writes: ‘The RSPCA initially laid summonses for 52 separate allegations and the trial had been set to take 30 days of court time spread over three months. Defence costs could have run into six figures, so it is little wonder the defendants pleaded guilty.

These days, a winter holiday isn’t just about skiing. The majority of larger resorts offer a range of activities from dog-sledding to five-star spa facilities, while adrenalin-fuelled sports such as snow polo and skeleton bobsleighing are becoming increasingly popular. If you fancy doing something a bit different this year, here are some ideas: 1 If you’re a Cameron-style huskie-hugger, then dog-sledding will be right up your street. By day or by moonlight, you can’t beat the feeling of tucking yourself into your sled, and setting off into the snowy wilderness with your pack of canines. Mush! 2 Sledging is always popular with children and the young-at-heart, and most resorts offer toboggan rental, with specially designed toboggan runs on or near the main skiing pistes.

This morning The Sunday Times revealed the existence of a ‘secret database’ holding information on 8 million schoolchildren. Information which has been uploaded by schools and social workers, and ranging from photographs to academic records and records of bad behaviour in school. The database – named 'One', and created and operated by a company named Capita – allows schools to upload information daily, which councils can then share with 'other agencies', such as youth offending teams, NHS staff and charities. If you think this all sounds a bit déjà-vu-ish, then you’d be right.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin today admitted that he held himself responsible for the West Coast rail franchise fiasco, as he appeared in front of MPs to explain what had gone wrong. Describing the mistakes as ‘very regrettable and indeed very serious’, McLoughlin told the Transport Committee that both bidders and taxpayers have ‘a right to expect better’ from the department. The initial findings of the Laidlaw Report, McLoughlin’s independent report into the fiasco, were released on Monday — findings which the Transport Committee Chair, Labour MP Louise Ellman, today described as ‘a damning indictment of the department.

At Prime Minister's Questions this week, David Cameron referred to today's TUC rally as the ‘most expensive sponsored walk in history’, a joke that the Tories have now taken one step further. Ahead of Ed Miliband’s speech to marchers at tomorrow’s anti-cuts demo in central London the Conservatives have launched Red Ed’s Sponsored Walk, a satirical fundraising site for Ed’s charity walk, with all proceeds going - somewhat unsurprisingly - to the Labour party. His online sponsors currently include Unite, GMB and Unite, who’ve ‘sponsored’ Ed to the total price of £12.4 million, accompanied by threatening messages such as ‘Don’t let us down Ed’ and ‘Remember who got you your job’.