Monday
Hospitals are missing cases of swine flu because they are not testing patients with respiratory illnesses for the virus, according to Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London. Professor Ferguson told the Cheltenham Science Festival that surveillance strategies for H1N1 must be rethought.
Lloyds Banking Group looked set to become the first bank to return bailout money to the taxpayer. It announced that it planned to pay back £2.3 billion to the Government this week. It would still owe the Treasury £14.7 billion.
Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, said that he would not pay back the £800 he spent on food he claimed on expenses while Parliament was in recess in 2005. He has agreed to give information about the claim to the independent audit committee that is investigating MPs’ expenses.
Tuesday
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A group of Oxford dons has criticised the “Orwellian language seeping through government documents of performance management and control that has come to dominate educational deliberation and planning”. In short, they are fed up with jargon in education.
After a week of resignations, accusations and oustings, Gordon Brown won a reprieve. He told a meeting of 400 Labour MPs and peers that he would “play to my strengths and address my weaknesses”.
Wednesday
Officers of the Metropolitan Police have been accused of practising “waterboarding”, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning. An anti-corruption investigation has also heard allegations of evidence fabrication and theft of suspects’ property.
A former senior Army officer told MPs that the British military operation in Afghanistan was crippled by a spending cap imposed by the Treasury. Brigadier Ed Butler, who resigned his commission last year, told the Defence Select Committee that funding was limited to £1.3 billion for “a three-year campaign” that severely limited the number of troops deployed.
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Thursday
Plans to build a new generation of community hospitals are likely to be shelved after the Treasury said that it was to withhold £500 million of NHS funding. The cuts are being seen as a sign of how serious the Government is about curbing public sector spending. The five-year community hospitals programme was originally allocated £750 million in 2007.
More than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money was put at “unnecessary risk” in Icelandic bank accounts, according to the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee. It has called for a Financial Services Authority investigation into why so many public sector bodies were allowed to invest so much in the banks.