The Spectator

Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, announced plans to set up a Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was likened to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, to replace the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, and to take over the functions of the Home Office and Customs and Excise in investigating the smuggling of people, tobacco and illegal drugs. Mr Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, asked on television: ‘What would be wrong with making heroin available on the state for people who want to abuse their bodies?’ Nineteen Chinese workers, two of them women, were drowned as they picked cockles in Morecambe Bay. One telephoned his home in China as the water rose about him.

The government announced a committee of inquiry into the accuracy of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war last year; it will be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary; the other members will be Mrs Ann Taylor, a Labour MP and chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee (ISC); Mr Michael Mates, a Conservative MP and member of the ISC; Sir John Chilcot, the staff counsellor for the security and intelligence services; and Field Marshal Lord Inge, the former Chief of the Defence Staff. There will be no Liberal Democrat, since Mr Charles Kennedy, the party leader, decided not to support the inquiry.

The government narrowly carried the second reading of the Higher Education Bill, which makes provision for universities to charge British students an extra £3,000 a year. The vote was 316–311, with 72 Labour MPs voting against the government and 18 abstaining; Mr David Taylor, the Labour member for North West Leicestershire voted both for and against the Bill. Mr Jack Cunningham, a former Labour Cabinet minister, broadcast to the nation his view that the Labour rebels resembled the Militant Tendency. The next day Lord Hutton published a long report into the death of Dr David Kelly, the government expert on weapons.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, ordered a review of 258 convictions of parents for killing their children after the Court of Appeal ruled improper convictions based solely on expert opinions where two or more babies had died. Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, met Samantha Roberts, the widow of a sergeant shot dead during the war against Iraq after having been ordered to hand over his body armour for use by another soldier. Lord Hutton announced that the report of his inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly would be published on 28 January. This is the day after the Commons vote on government proposals on university fees, which Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has been energetically trying to persuade backbench rebels to support.

The government proposed adding a surcharge to fixed-penalty fines for offences such as speeding and being drunk in public; it would be hypothecated to the compensation of victims of crime, but employers would also have to pay compensation for those injured at work by criminals. Asked in Parliament by Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the opposition, about denying having authorised the naming of Dr David Kelly, Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, ‘I suggest you look at the totality of what I said. But I stand exactly by what I said then.’ Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk was suspended from his programme by the BBC after writing in the Sunday Express about Arab countries: ‘What do they think we feel about them?...

Mr Michael Burgess, the Coroner of the Queen’s Household, opened the inquest on Diana, Princess of Wales, the conclusion of which, he said, would not come for more than a year; he had asked Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to investigate her death, which was on 31 August 1997; as Coroner for Surrey, Mr Burgess also opened an inquest on Dodi Fayed. The Daily Mirror published a sentence from a letter written by Diana in October 1996 saying, ‘My husband is planning “an accident’’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury, in order to make the path clear for him to marry.

When, at the insistence of the US Department of Homeland Security, the first armed ‘sky marshals’ take to British transatlantic flights, it is to be hoped that the in-flight movie won’t be Goldfinger. For anyone who has managed to avoid seeing any of the 40 years’ worth of repeat screenings, the Bond film concludes with the sight of Goldfinger’s portly frame being sucked through a plane window shattered in a gunfight with 007. It doesn’t take any great knowledge of aircraft pressurisation systems to realise that guns and planes do not mix. The pilots’ union, Balpa, has come to the same conclusion. Even former BOAC pilot Norman Tebbit, who supports the case for sky marshals elsewhere in these pages, does so with grave reservations.

January. Two young black women, Letisha Shakespear and Charlene Ellis, were shot dead during a party at a hairdresser's at Aston, Birmingham. Eli Hall, a gunman surrounded by police for 15 days at a house in Hackney, was found dead after a fire. The Fire Brigades Union planned strikes. An Underground train was derailed at Chancery Lane. The FT-SE index fell to a seven-year low. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead died, aged 82; Lord Dacre, aged 89; Gianni Agnelli, aged 81; General Leopoldo Galtieri, aged 76. The Pope said: 'War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option.' The United States built up troops in the Gulf. The Queen had an operation on her right knee. February.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found new ways of increasing taxes to cover government deficits in his pre-Budget report; but he declared that he wanted to help small enterprises. British Gas is to raise prices for its gas and electricity by 5.9 per cent from next month. Rail fares will go up by an average of 4 per cent in January, with higher examples such as the company c2c increasing by 10.3 per cent peak-time travelcards between south Essex and London, and WAGN increasing cheap day returns for journeys between Cambridge and King’s Cross by 9.1 per cent, bringing the fare to £19.10. The United States dollar fell against the pound so that it was possible to buy more than $1.74 for a pound; this was the cheapest rate since 1992.

The Democratic Unionist party became the biggest in Northern Ireland after elections for the Assembly there, which has been suspended for more than a year; 'A democrat will not sit down with armed gangsters and murderers to negotiate the future of this country,' said the Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the DUP. The DUP has 30 seats, the Ulster Unionists 27; Sinn Fein with 24 overtook the Social Democratic and Labour party with 18. More than half the Labour party's backbenchers at Westminster signed an early day motion questioning government plans to allow university top-up fees of '3,000 a year payable after graduation. A vote on the issue was delayed until the New Year, but Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said there would be 'absolutely no retreat'.