Obsolete

The Loyalist Volunteer Force, one of the most reviled and unpredictable paramilitary groups thrown up by the Northern Ireland Troubles, last night ordered its military units to stand down.

The disbandment came hours after a truce was declared ending a murderous feud between the LVF and the Ulster Volunteer Force from which it broke away in 1996. Billy Wright, better known as "King Rat", founded the group after he and his associates were stood down by the UVF in 1996 following the sectarian murder of a Catholic taxi driver at the height of the Orange Order stand-off at Drumcree. Wright was shot dead in the Maze prison by republicans in December 1997.

In a six-week turf-war across north and east Belfast this summer, the UVF set out to "wipe out" the smaller splinter group, shooting dead four men it perceived to have LVF connections and attempting to murder 15 more. Many LVF members and supporters were forced from their homes.

While the group will claim that its order to military units to stand down, which took effect from midnight last night, was a response to the IRA's decision to disarm, it was under formidable pressure from other loyalists. The LVF, whose relatively small membership was centred around Portadown, Belfast and Antrim, was more a loose gang of criminals and drug dealers, which had been responsible for sectarian murders and violence.

In September 2001, it was behind the first murder of a journalist in Northern Ireland's Troubles.

Police are investigating possible LVF involvement in the murder of Lisa Dorrian, a 25-year-old shop assistant who disappeared from a caravan site in February.

Lawyers were reportedly told there still were matters to resolve before the prosecutor "decides what he is going to do, so Mr Rove will not be indicted today".

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is to announce legislation this week to abolish local probation boards so he can take over their statutory powers and put their services supervising 200,000 offenders out to private tender.

The Guardian has learned that the plan could see private companies such as Group 4 managing dangerous offenders and advising the courts on whether to send offenders to prison and when they should be released. The decision to "market-test" probation services is believed to be the first time that an entire group of public sector professionals has been threatened with privatisation.

According to a letter from Mr Clarke to John Prescott leaked to the Guardian, the home secretary spells out that his plan to "market-test" the probation service means that the public probation service "could be left with no contracts and would therefore cease to exist" in some parts of the country.

In the letter dated September 30 2005 Mr Clarke told the deputy prime minister that he wants to "move towards a world where open contracts and tendering for all offender management services, including interventions and custody, are the norm". He says the decision to take over the probation boards' "exclusive duty to deliver probation services" will enable him to "contract directly for both prison and probation services with a range of providers from the private, not-for-profit and public sectors. This represents a radical change for the probation service."

The contracts will specify how the new providers should manage dangerous offenders, plan offenders' sentences, and engage in local partnership activity. They will also specify the level of qualifications and training of staff.

It is believed his plea to Mr Prescott, as chairman of the cabinet's domestic affairs committee, was successful in securing a slot in the parliamentary timetable for his legislation in early December. An announcement is expected to be made this week taking his management of offenders bill off the "reserve list" and getting it on to the statute book by next summer.

The move marks a speeding up of the development of the National Offender Management Service [NOMS], which has had a troubled birth in bringing together the prison and probation services.

Harry Fletcher, of the probation officers' union, Napo, said last night: "This is an extraordinary proposal which will lead to massive resistance and industrial action. If implemented it will mean privatisation of the probation service. We could have the absurd situation of Securicor or Group 4 writing court reports and recommending prison to boost numbers. It could also mean private companies advising the parole board on early release and indeed on sentencing matters."

The services run by the probation boards that would be offered to private correctional companies such as Group 4 GSL and Premier Prisons include:

· advising the courts on the most appropriate sentences for each offender and on parole decisions

· ensuring community punishments, such as community work orders, are carried out and offenders are supervised and rehabilitated

· supervising prisoners released on licence including sex offenders and those convicted of other serious violent crimes.

They also have statutory duties in relation to victims, children, local crime and youth offending teams.

Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

The soldiers, who were targeted by insurgents as they travelled through the country, died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams. The bombs were developed by the IRA using technology passed on by the security services in a botched "sting" operation more than a decade ago.

This contradicts the British government's claims that Iran's Revolutionary Guard is helping Shia insurgents to make the devices.

The Independent on Sunday can also reveal that the bombs and the firing devices used to kill the soldiers, as well as two private security guards, were initially created by the UK security services as part of a counter-terrorism strategy at the height of the troubles in the early 1990s.

According to security sources, the technology for the bombs used in the attacks, which were developed using technology from photographic flash units, was employed by the IRA some 15 years ago after Irish terrorists were given advice by British agents.

"We are seeing technology in Iraq today that it took the IRA 20 years to develop," said a military intelligence officer with experience in Northern Ireland.

He revealed that one trigger used in a recent Iraqi bombing was a three-way device, combining a command wire, a radio signal and an infra-red beam - a technique perfected by the IRA.

Britain claims that the bomb-making expertise now being used in southern Iraq was passed on by Iran's Revolutionary Guard through Hizbollah, the revolutionary Islamist group it sponsors in Lebanon.

But a former agent who infiltrated the IRA told The Independent on Sunday that the technology reached the Middle East through the IRA's co-operation with Palestinian groups. In turn, some of these groups used to be sponsored by Saddam Hussein and his Baath party.

The former agent added: "The photographic flashgun unit was replaced with infra-red and then coded infra-red, but basically they were variations of the same device. The technology came from the security forces, but the IRA always shared its equipment and expertise with Farc guerrillas in Colombia, the Basque separatists, ETA and Palestinian groups. There is no doubt in my mind that the technology used to kill our troops in Basra is the same British technology from a decade ago."

Immigration judges delivered a scathing verdict yesterday on the decision of the home secretary Charles Clarke to resume the deportation of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe, saying those sent back were handed straight over to security police.

The asylum and immigration tribunal ruled in a test case that an asylum seeker, who cannot be named, would be at risk if he was sent back to Harare. The three judges said they were alarmed at the Home Office's lack of interest in what happened to those sent back and sharply criticised an official British mission to Harare for failing to find any new facts.

The ruling will force the government to revise its decision in July to resume deportations to Zimbabwe on the grounds that it is a safe country. The decision triggered hunger strikes amongst the 140 Zimbabweans who were detained this summer pending their deportation. The Home Office refused to tell the court how many others faced removal but the judges said they believed the number to be large.

The tribunal heard that anyone who claimed asylum in Britain was considered in Harare to be a traitor, and deportations were regarded as "a cloak for an attempt to infiltrate Blair's spies into Zimbabwe".

The chairman, Mark Ockelton, said that the asylum seeker involved in the case had been fraudulent and dishonest in his dealings with the British authorities. He had claimed to be an active member of the opposition, MDC, but could not say what the initials stood for. But that did not alter the fact that he faced real risk of harm if he was returned to Zimbabwe. "He has become a refugee, entitled to all that that status carries, by making a false claim to be a refugee," the judges said.

Mr Ockelton said Home Office evidence showed that those who had been sent back since deportations resumed last November were escorted on to planes in London and their documents handed over to the air crew. "At that point it appears to us that the [home secretary] ceased to have any very clear interest in what happened. We find [his] lack of interest in the process by which individuals that he returns to Zimbabwe are received by the Zimbabwean authorities rather alarming."

The judges criticised a Foreign Office/ Home Office "field trip" to Zimbabwe, which was sent once the legal challenge had been launched.

It was made up of civil servants involved in policy rather than from the Home Office country information unit. "The way in which the investigation was conducted, and the way in which the results were presented to us, gives rise to the possibility - we say no more than that - that the investigators may have had existing policy in mind rather more than the discovery of new facts."

Tim Finch, the communications director of the Refugee Council, said the judges "could not have been more dismissive" of the way the government delegation had conducted its work in Zimbabwe.

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture said:"The judgment emphasises the absolute nature of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights that no one should be exposed to the risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment."

David Cameron's leadership election team fear that Associated Newspapers is out to destroy his campaign and determined to dig up dirt on him, his wider family and his supporters, mainly concerning allegations of cocaine taking.

Other campaign teams are predicting that Associated Newspapers, especially the Mail on Sunday, will damage Mr Cameron this weekend. Some appear to be close to abandoning hope of finding another means of preventing Mr Cameron reaching the runoff between two candidates among the membership. The first ballot of MPs is next Tuesday, with the second and final round next Thursday.

On Friday, The London Evening Standard revealed Mr Cameron had been helping a relative who was receiving treatment for heroin addiction.

In a statement, Mr Cameron said: "Someone very close in my family has had a dreadful problem with drugs.

"They have come through it, been through rehabilitation, and I'm incredibly proud of them.

"Their life has nothing to do with my candidature for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Many families will have had a similar experience, and they and I know full well the damage drugs can do.

"I hope now that this person can be left alone. I won't comment further on this story."

In fact, under the terms of the bill, anyone who voices support for armed resistance to any state or occupation, however repressive or illegitimate, will be committing a criminal offence carrying a seven-year prison sentence - so long as members of the public might reasonably regard it as direct or indirect encouragement. Terrorism is not defined in the bill as, say, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, let alone an assault on civilian targets by states - but as any politically motivated violence against people, property or electronic systems anywhere in the world. This is not only an assault on freedom of speech and debate about the most contentious subject in global politics. It also makes a criminal offence out of a belief shared by almost every society, religion or philosophy throughout history: namely, that people have the right to take up arms against tyranny and foreign occupation. Clarke made clear on Tuesday that this was exactly his intention. He could not, he said, think of any situation in the world where "violence would be justified to bring about change".

Internet companies are being urged by the Home Office to make so-called suicide websites and chatrooms more difficult to access. The move comes after two strangers forged Britain's first internet suicide pact, dying side by side two days after making contact for the first time on a chatroom dedicated to discussions about suicide.

Following a spate of online suicide pacts in Japan and elsewhere, psychiatrists are warning that Britain may be about to witness a disturbing new trend, with young people in particular using the chatrooms to make contact with other depressed individuals.

Ministers have considered outlawing sites which appears to encourage suicide, but were warned that new legislation could also criminalise fictional depictions of suicide and hinder academics and counsellors writing about the subject.

Talks are taking place with a number of service providers, including Yahoo! and AOL, and search engine companies, in an attempt to reprioritise the results that are thrown up during a trawl on the internet. "When somebody keys in 'suicide' and 'UK', we would like them to be offered a link to the Samaritans long before they find a website showing them what they can do with a car exhaust and a hosepipe," one official said.

The country's leading state schools are being colonised by the middle classes, educating significantly fewer poor pupils than other schools and excluding less affluent children who live nearby, according to a study obtained by the Guardian.

In one of the most significant reports of its kind, the leading education charity the Sutton Trust used the latest GCSE results to identify the top 200 state schools and examined the number of poor children they taught.

The study, based on data provided by the National Foundation for Educational Research, found that the schools are using increasingly complicated admissions procedures, which include aptitude tests and interviewing parents, to covertly select middle-class children in the expectation that they will boost their league table rankings. The "colonisation" of these schools is being accelerated by wealthy parents who are spending thousands of pounds moving into the catchment areas of the most successful schools rather than pay private school fees.

Last night, MPs and union leaders accused the government of introducing "socially selective" education since it came to power in 1997, and warned that the report's findings undermined the notion of a comprehensive school system.

"Any secretary of state or any schools minister who reads this and does not take it very seriously is being extremely foolish," said Barry Sheerman, chairman of the Commons education select committee. "This pinpoints what is happening in our leading state schools and how the more socially disadvantaged pupils are being dramatically short changed, even if they live close to a good school, by a system that favours affluent families."

The research found that the average proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals - the standard measure of deprivation - at the top state secondaries is just 3%, compared with a national average of more than 14%. It also revealed that the schools are failing to admit many of the disadvantaged children in their own neighbourhoods.

Last night Sir Peter Lampl, of the Sutton Trust, said: "The best state schools in the country are effectively closed to the majority of less well-off families. We've replaced an education system which selected on ability with one that is socially selective: the best comprehensives serve the relatively affluent, while the remaining grammar schools attract far too few able students from poor backgrounds."

Last month Tony Blair told the Labour party conference that his priority was to offer an excellent education to all pupils, regardless of their social background.

But critics say today's report reveals that the top state schools are using admissions policies to skew their intake in favour of middle-class pupils.

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: "Parents' income as an indicator of how well a child will do in school has become even more pronounced now than under the Conservatives. Worse still, this study shows that Labour's false 'choice agenda' is being exploited by better-off parents and is widening that divide even further."

Last month, Sins of Admission, a report by Chris Waterman, executive director of The Confederation of Education & Children's Services Managers, which represents local education authority leaders, called on the government to stop "rogue" state schools admitting only the children of wealthier parents. He said the best-performing schools were using parental interviews, complicated procedures and specialist status to covertly select middle-class children. Yesterday, he said: "The Sutton Trust research proves there is a system of subtle selection going on in the leading state schools. We are seeing increasingly complicated admissions procedures which benefit middle-class parents who have the experience and wherewithal to play the system."

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills insisted state schools were not socially selective, and said a high proportion of those in the study were grammar schools, which "select on the basis of high ability rather than ... a pupil's background".

Believe it or not, there is a real possibility that the government is about to announce plans that - at least in one particular - will make English comprehensive schools more comprehensive. The 168 grammar schools will retain the role of positional goods - as much in demand for the status they confer as for the education they provide. They will remain proof of Tony Blair's emotional attachment to the suburban middle classes. The proposal that specialist schools and city academies should select 10% of their pupils - largely rejected and therefore one of the few pieces of legislation that ministers boast about being ignored - comes in the same political category. But at least there are steps afoot to ensure that secondary schools have an all-ability intake.

Although the claim stretches credulity to breaking point, there is no doubt that Sir Cyril Taylor - private education entrepreneur, sometime deputy leader of the Tories on the now defunct Greater London Council and special adviser to successive secretaries of state - is entitled to take credit for the new and improved admission system. If the BBC's series on comprehensive schools was correct, Sir Cyril joined the ranks of Blair's confidants as a result of a fortuitous train journey to Newcastle during which they "hit it off". Never mind the example of government by whim, the unaccountable chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust is offering the government welcome advice. Opponents of secondary selection must make sure that they take it.

Sir Cyril's plan requires all primary-school pupils to take a "non-verbal reasoning test", which he rightly described as "less biased by social, cultural and ethnic factors than other methods of assessment". The results will not be used to separate grammar-school sheep from secondary-modern goats. On the contrary. Having grouped 11-year-olds into nine "bands", local education authorities will be expected (perhaps even required) to allocate secondary-school places to pupils who represent the full range of ability within their area.

The idea of "banding" was pioneered by the ILEA during Sir Cyril's years in opposition. At the time it was derided as a futile socialist attempt to make non- selective secondary schools work. The new scheme goes far further than anything that the London Labour party ever dared to suggest. Banding, says Sir Cyril, should not be based on the various levels of ability to be found in one catchment area. That would result in schools in some districts being monopolised by middle-class parents and therefore being unrepresentative of society as a whole. Each school should be "banded" according to the ability pattern of a district wide enough to reflect a cross-section of a heterogeneous community.

The middle class would not like that. They would be even more opposed to Sir Cyril's idea for guarding the education system against exploitation by well-heeled families who manipulate the admissions policies of "good" schools by buying houses, at inflated prices, in their catchment areas. Perhaps, he says, the time has come to break down the rule of proximity by which over-subscribed schools admit those applicants who live nearest to their gates. He proposes two catchment areas - one immediately surrounding the school, to which half the places are allocated, and one further-flung to guarantee admission to students from different backgrounds.

Schemes to redistribute places in "good" schools are, by definition, based on the assumption that "bad schools" are always with us. Schools policy should be dynamic, not static. Bad schools should be made good. But until that happens, a policy that makes comprehensive schools more comprehensive is a matter for rejoicing. Let us hope that Sir Cyril's will prevails.

Fears that it may not were reinforced by an education department spokes- person whose comments on the scheme can best be described as dismissive. But doubts about its political acceptance have a more fundamental cause. A "banding" system diminishes prospects of parental choice. Even if there are empty places in a school, a pupil might be denied admission because a particular "band" is fully subscribed. Blair cannot honour his undertaking to extend choice and, at the same time, fulfil his pledge to promote comprehensive education. Let us hope that, for once, he breaks the right promise.