Whole Truth Coalition

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Alistair Darling was alerted to the possibility of a meltdown of Icelandic banks ‘weeks’ before they collapsed, taking billions of pounds of British savers’ cash invested in them.

A transcript of a private telephone conversation on October 7 between the Chancellor and an Icelandic government minister shows that Mr Darling had been ‘very concerned’ about the country’s banks well before they failed.

In the transcript, published on the website of the Iceland Review magazine, Mr Darling accused Icelandic Trade Minister Bjorgvin Sigurdsson of misleading him ‘a few months, weeks’ earlier about the state of the Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir banks operating in the UK.

But damagingly for the Chancellor, the full record of the conversation shows that Mr Darling did not believe Mr Sigurdsson’s reassurances at the time.

‘We doubted what we were being told then and I am afraid we were right,’ he said.

Last night, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the revelation was ‘very disturbing’ and called on the Chancellor to make a statement to the Commons tomorrow.

Mr Cable said: ‘If it’s true that the Government did know all about these problems and doubted Icelandic reassurances, this shifts the balance of responsibility. Mr Darling has to explain himself.’

On October 8, the Chancellor announced that Iceland would not compensate the 300,000 British savers who lost about £4.5billion as a result of Iceland’s banking disaster.

In response, the British Government invoked terrorism legislation to freeze Icelandic assets in the UK - a move that enraged Icelanders.

Mr Darling guaranteed the assets of private UK savers in Iceland. But the Government has said it will not guarantee about £1billion invested in Iceland by British councils.

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Banks and credit card companies are exploiting obscure legal powers to seize the homes of thousands of people who cannot pay their credit card bills.

In some cases, people owing as little as £1,000 have been served with charging orders – the legal instrument enabling a creditor to order the sale of a property.

The practice has emerged days after Yvette Cooper, chief secretary to the Treasury, called on banks to do more to allow people to keep their homes.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 97,026 charging orders were granted by courts in England and Wales last year, a tenfold increase since 2000.

They allow financial institutions to order the sale of a property to pay off unsecured debts on credit cards, personal loans, store cards and car finance. Some will have been used only to threaten the debtor, or to levy a surcharge on the mortgage to recoup the debts.

Nationwide, the building society, and Northern Rock, which was nationalised earlier this year, are among the most aggressive in using the court orders.

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John Hutton has become the first defence secretary to back a French plan for a European army, branding those who dismiss it as “pathetic”.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, he said: “I think we’ve got to be pragmatic about those things. Where it can help, we should be part of it.”

His support goes beyond the public position of Gordon Brown, the prime minister, and will antagonise those who believe that further European cooperation will undermine Nato by excluding the United States.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has sought to develop Europe’s military structures with new headquarters and rapid reaction forces, each consisting of 1,500 troops from member countries.

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Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to “speed up” the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to “deal with” public resistance to them.

And they show that the leaders want “agricultural representatives” and “industry” – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the “vested interests” of environmentalists.

News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.

Public opposition has prevented any modified crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of only three countries in Europe to have grown them in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation, and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.

The embattled biotech industry has been conducting a public relations campaign based round the highly contested assertion that genetic modification is needed to feed the world. It has had some success in the Government, where ministers have been increasingly speaking out in favour of the technology, and in the European Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted of having “excellent working relations”.

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Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.

The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Liberty, the civil rights group, cautioned that the law required fingerprints taken in such circumstances to be deleted after use. Gareth Crossman, Liberty’s policy director, said: “Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can’t establish his identity.”

Details of the type of equipment and the scope of its use have been revealed in a presentation by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

The initial phase of the Mobile Identification At Scene (Midas) project, costed at £30m-£40m, will enable officers to perform rapid checks on the fingerprints of people arrested or detained. The marks will be compared against records on Ident1, the national police database which holds information on 7.5 million individuals.

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Bright teenagers are a disappearing breed, an alarming new study has revealed.

The intellectual ability of the country’s cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools.

The ‘high-level thinking’ skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976.

The findings contradict national results which have shown a growth in top grades in SATs at 14, GCSEs and A-levels.

But Michael Shayer, the professor of applied psychology who led the study, believes that is the result of exam standards ‘edging down’.

His team of researchers at London’s King’s College tested 800 13 and 14-year-olds and compared the results with a similar exercise in  1976.’

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What they also fail to mention is the effect on the population, especially children of Fluoride, vaccines, mobile phones, Aspatame, cell towers, Junk food etc etc.

Britain’s most expensive credit card, which carries an interest rate of 227 per cent, is being promoted as a solution for hardpressed families this Christmas.

The Easy Shop card is linked to Argos and offers one possible solution to parents who do not have the cash to buy presents for the children.

However, MPs and debt experts last night condemned the extortionate charges as ‘wicked’ and warned struggling shoppers to reject the card.

Argos chiefs revealed last week that the company’s sales are running around 9 per cent down on this time last year.

The firm apparently believes that the Easy Shop card will help its bottom line in the crucial festive trading period.

A customer borrowing £100 on the card and repaying it over 27 weeks at £5 a week would pay a total of £135, which equates to an APR  -  annual percentage rate  -  of 227 per cent.

The card is produced in association with the finance company Provident Financial.

The rate of 227 per cent is based not only on the interest that must be paid but also takes into account how the loan is repaid, the length of the loan, and the timing and amount of payments.

Retail giant Argos teamed up with Provident Financial to produce Britain’s most expensive credit card

The Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable MP described the marketing of cards and loans with such extortionate interest rates as ‘wicked’.

Dr Cable has been warning for ten years about reckless lending and spiralling personal debt, which now tops£1trillion.

He said: ‘A lot of people are finding it increasingly difficult to borrow from the mainstream high street banks.

‘Many may well feel they have to fall back on things like this. There is a real risk of a very large number of people being exploited as a result.’

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For the past 12 years, retired builder Mike Kamp has exercised his age-old right to collect firewood from the forest near his home.

But the health and safety axe has finally come down on an 800-year-old tradition which dates back to the Magna Carta.

Forestry chiefs say they have been forced to overrule the charter due to the ‘increasing constraints’ of modern legislation.

The Magna Carta of 1215 included a Forest Charter which recognised the rights of commoners to get subsistence from common land. They were granted ‘estovers’ - dead wood - for fuel, to repair their homes, fix tools or make charcoal.

Mr Kamp, 59, uses a wood-burning stove at his cottage near Betwys-y-Coed, North Wales, and enjoys walking through nearby Gwydir Forest. But now he has been told by Forestry Commission Wales that he can no longer buy a licence to forage.

Mr Kamp said: ‘They are claiming there are health and safety issues. But people have walked through the woods collecting firewood for hundreds and hundreds of years without too many safety problems.’

Soaring fuel prices have led to more and more people combing woodland and forests for firewood. But the Forestry Commission is suggesting they buy the same wood from local merchants - who will still be allowed into the forests.

Mr Kamp said: ‘That would be very carbon-intensive. The contractors would need vehicles to go into the forests to get the wood and to move it to the users. That defeats the whole object of the exercise.’

Peter Garson, head of estate management at the Forestry Commission Wales, said: ‘We understand Mr Kamp’s disappointment, but this is an area where we are subject to increasing constraints in terms of health and safety.

‘We have a duty of care to the public in our wood.’

The ban currently applies only to Wales, but is likely to be extended to Forestry Commission woods across Britain.

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British businesses are being tied up with record levels of Brussels red tape, a report warned yesterday.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance says that UK firms are struggling under the ’severe burden’ of EU regulation, which is estimated to cost £150billion a year.

The study found that there are currently 16,980 EU laws in force in this country and they are increasing at a rate of 2,000 a year.

It said that Whitehall had added to the regulatory burden by using EU directives as ‘vehicles for their own policy agendas’ and attaching numerous additional clauses and extending their scope - a practice known as ‘gold-plating’.

Ben Farrugia from the alliance said: ‘Regulations are an enormous burden to business, particularly in a time of financial hardship. The EU’s addiction to regulating and Whitehall’s compulsive gold-plating have added billions to business costs in recent years.

‘Both the legislative process which has created this regulatory tangle and Britain’s relationship with the EU needs a serious rethink.’

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