Friday 2 April 2004

By Amy Taylor, Natasha Salari and Alex Dobson

Immigration minister Beverly Hughes yesterday resigned
from her post for misleading the public.

Home secretary David Blunkett admitted that yesterday was the
“worst day” of his political life.

Hughes admitted that she had misled the public by giving the
impression in interviews that she had not known about a suspected
visa scam in Eastern Europe.

Source:- The Times Friday 2 April page 1

Safe pair of hands for a tough job

Desmond Browne is to become the immigration minister after
Beverley Hughes’ resignation yesterday.

Browne, a lawyer by training, was a junior minister in Northern
Ireland before being promoted to minister for work in June last
year.

Source:- The Times Friday 2 April page 10

Mother snatches girls at knifepoint

Police are concerned for the welfare of two young girls
abducted from their foster parents at knifepoint by their
mother.

Salina Hafeez and her sister Sarah were bundled into a car by their
mother, Shanaz Hafeez, and two men.

Cleveland police said that Hafeez was extremely depressed.

Source:- The Times Friday 2 April  page 11

Legal system is failing fathers, says judge

One of the country’s most senior family judges has launched
an attack on the legal system for failing divorced and separated
fathers.

Mr Justice Munby said he felt “ashamed” after dealing
with a man who had fought unsuccessfully for five years to see his
daughter.

He argued that mothers who repeatedly defied court rulings on
access should be jailed.

He said a lack of resources and “scandalous” court
delays were major problems. But he also regarded the legal process
as “adversarial” and counter-productive because it
focused on the arguments of the parents, not the child.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 2 April page 3

Check on Shipman’s early career

The years that Dr Harold Shipman spent as a junior hospital doctor
will be re-investigated by the judge leading the inquiry into the
serial killer.

The decision was made by High Court judge Dame Janet Smith after a
health professional from Pontefract General Infirmary, in West
Yorkshire, contacted the inquiry with fresh concerns.

Shipman, who committed suicide in prison in January, was a junior
doctor at the infirmary from 1970 to 1974.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Friday 2 April page 9

Falconer guilty of contempt for attacking
whistleblower

The Lord Chancellor has been rebuked by a parliamentary standards
watchdog after he disciplined a whistleblower who gave evidence to
a Commons committee.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton was accused of “contempt”
after he tried to remove Judy Weleminsky, who had submitted written
evidence to MPs about the shortcomings of an official child
protection agency, from her job.

He wrote to Weleminsky, a member of the board of the Children and
Family Court Advisory Support Service, and accused her of failing
to “observe confidentiality” and failing to
“behave in a corporate manner”. He suspended her and
called on her to resign from the board.

MPs on the standards committee agreed no further action should be
taken against Lord Falconer or the former Cafcass board
chairperson, Anthony Hewson, and David Crawley, a senior official
in the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

But the committee said all three had been guilty of contempt of
parliament.

Source:- The Independent Friday 2 April page 10

A passport to £1m

Three men who made at least £1 million from smuggling
hundreds of illegal immigrants into Britain have been jailed for a
total of 18 years.

Hundreds of young Asian men entered the country illegally from
Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in regular air, boat and train
services, using doctored British passports.

Robert Walkden, Mohammed Jamil and Khalid Mahmood smuggled them in
via Spain and France by sticking their pictures onto passports they
had acquired.

The three gang members were each jailed for six years at Bradford
Crown Court this week after admitting conspiring to facilitate the
entry of illegal immigrants into the UK.

Source:-The Daily Mail Friday 2 April page 39

Welsh newspapers

Employing agency nurses in Wales to cover gaps in hospital
services over the last year cost £18 million.

The cost has more than doubled in the last three years according to
a new report from the National Audit Office Wales.

Reducing the agency nursing bill is highlighted in the report as
one of the major challenges facing the NHS in Wales.

Source:- South Wales Argus Thursday April 1 page 2

Storm over £180,000 grant to Welsh cult

A Welsh assembly member is questioning a grant of
£180,000 to a ‘personal’ development group that is
listed in a book about British cults.

Elin Jones, AM for Ceridigion, has called for an investigation into
how the Template Foundation based in Llandysul, came to be
allocated £100,000 of Objective One European aid money and
£80,000 from the Welsh assembly’s local regeneration
fund.

Source:- Western Mail Friday 2 April page 1

Baby scam victims heartbroken

A couple from Wrexham at the centre of an internet baby
scam have told of their despair at losing the chance of having a
family.

Sharon and Peter Robinson-Hudson had agreed to pay £5,000 to
Moira Greenslade to adopt her unborn baby girl after seeing an
advert an internet site. But Greenslade had already entered into
negotiations to sell the child to two other couples.

She was later found guilty of three charges of obtaining money by
deception and three offences under the Adoption Act.

Source:- Western Mail Friday 2 April page 6