NHS deaths could be halved, say doctors

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/26/nhs126.xml

More than 10,000 people are dying needlessly each year after being denied intensive care treatment, according to senior doctors.

	Andrew Lansley: 'We have chronically poor levels of intensive care compared with elsewhere'

They have written to the Health Secretary Alan Johnson, warning that many patients are dying after routine surgery because of a failure to identify them as "high-risk" cases.

The result is that they are not monitored closely enough, causing at least 20,000 deaths each year.

But consultants say that figure could be halved if high-risk cases were properly identified and transferred to intensive care. They say the number of critical care beds devoted to post-operative patients should be tripled from the 30,000 currently provided, while 50 per cent of patients should receive extra care.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: "This is a really critical issue for this country. We have chronically poor levels of intensive care compared with elsewhere."

In the letter to Mr Johnson, seen by this newspaper, 17 eminent anaesthetists demand an overhaul of NHS surgical practices, warning that four times as many patients die in Britain after surgery as in the United States.

The doctors say the health service has failed to introduce simple tests to identify high-risk patients and challenge the health secretary as to why technology proven to cut deaths is used in a fraction of NHS operations.

One of the co-signatories, David Bennett, Emeritus Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at St George's Hospital in London, said: "There are at least 20,000 patients dying after surgery across the UK - that is a very conservative estimate.

"We think we could halve the numbers dying, and save at least 10,000 lives a year, if patients were given the right support.

"This is a political decision. There aren't many interventions that could have such a dramatic effect." In-creased use of intensive care, combined with better monitoring, could save money by cutting patients' time in hospital and preventing emergency re-admissions, he said.

Prof Bennett said that most hospitals had failed to invest in equipment such as fitness bikes, which help to assess the patient's health prior to surgery, and blood-flow monitors, which maintain fluid levels and cardiac output during an operation.

Despite backing from NHS rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, blood -flow monitors are used on less than 10 per cent of patients.

Dr Bruce Taylor, honorary secretary of The Intensive Care Society said more patients should be monitored by intensive care before they became seriously ill. But he said there was "no slack at all in the existing system" to take on more patients without a substantial rise in funds.

Britain has 0.6 critical care beds per 10,000 population compared to 4.4 per 10,000 in the US.

"There are not enough beds and we regularly struggle to meet -demand," Dr Taylor said.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said the Government was doing all it could to ensure hospitals provided efficient surgical care.

A dark cloud looms over the Prime Minister's honeymoon

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2156369,00.html


So far, relations with America have been stable since Gordon Brown came to power. But all that is set to change

The Observer

It was brilliant while it lasted. Since he joined George W Bush for a press conference on the lawn at Camp David a month ago, Gordon Brown has managed to have the best of both worlds, convincing the Americans that he's a true believer in the 'special relationship' and reminding Britons he's no Tony Blair. But the game may soon be up.

At their first summit, the workmanlike rapport between Brown and Bush perfectly suited both sides. The Bush-Blair love match was a thing of the past; that went without saying. The new duet would be a partnership, businesslike and profitable. Gordon looked at George and was pleased 'to be able to affirm and to celebrate the historic partnership of shared purpose between our two countries'. George looked at Gordon and vowed: 'The relationship between Great Britain and America is our most important bilateral relationship.'
Celebrants on both sides of the aisle recognised this as a marriage of convenience, but a successful one none the less. In Britain, the headline writers were persuaded that Brown was 'no poodle'. In the United States, it was clear that Bush and Brown, like Bush and Blair before them, would 'stay the course'.

It was only a matter of time before their differences threatened to bring them down. Brown could soon be forced to make decisions about the deployment of British troops in Iraq that will put both his political resilience at home and his alliance with Bush to the test. In mid-September, the top two Americans in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will report their findings on progress there. They seem likely to conclude that the US troop 'surge' is working and the Iraqi government isn't.

I won't hazard a guess as to what Petraeus and Crocker will or will not have to say about the British presence in southern Iraq and about the security situation there. Stated or not, the fact is that the picture in and around Basra is far from pretty. By almost any measure, conditions in the south have deteriorated in recent years, both for Iraqi civilians and British troops.

In the immediate aftermath of the Petraeus-Crocker report, everyone's attention will be drawn to Baghdad and its environs and to America's predicament. But at some point, heads will turn toward Gordon Brown and a single question will float his way: now what are you going to do? When that happens, the nature of Brown's premiership could change radically. Last week, Bush, in his speech arguing that to 'abandon' Iraq would replicate the 'tragedy of Vietnam', described himself with grim pride as a 'wartime President'. The last thing Gordon Brown wants to be is a wartime Prime Minister.

For at least a year now, an assumption has lodged itself firmly in the British body politic: we're on the way out of Iraq; our boys and girls are coming home. Though Blair never got credit for it (or blame, from the American side), he presided over a massive drawdown of personnel - from 46,000 in the spring of 2003 to 8,500 in May 2005 to 5,500 before he left office. There the number stands today. It is expected to fall again, to 5,000, in the autumn, when the UK turns the besieged Basra palace, once one of Saddam Hussein's smaller residences, over to the Iraqis and then concentrates its forces at Basra airport.

In coming weeks and months, Brown will come under increasing pressure to not 'cut and run' from the south. Official Washington remains discreet when it comes to criticism of the Prime Minister, but cries of 'Who lost Basra?' fill the air as outriders for the Bush administration circle Fort Brown.

The Washington Post recently quoted a senior US intelligence official in Baghdad as saying: 'The British have basically been defeated in the south.' Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA intelligence analyst and early advocate of the invasion of Iraq, says British military participation in Iraq 'has been meaningless for some time'. Last week, General John Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the US army and adviser to Petraeus, who had just got back from Iraq, told the Today programme that Basra is rife with 'almost gangland warfare' already and that with further British troop withdrawals, 'the situation will continue to deteriorate'.

But what's Brown to do? He will probably try to walk a fine line on troop deployments in Iraq, bringing the numbers down - slowly - so as not to rile Washington or risk the appearance of defeat and yet still keep the home front happy. Up to now, the softly, softly approach has worked. For a couple of years, a quid pro quo has kept the Americans at bay; Britain will shoulder a larger and larger burden in Afghanistan (a cause more easily justified to the British electorate than Iraq) while tiptoeing out of Iraq.

Suddenly, the quid pro quo is looking very shaky. For one thing, the British experience in Helmand province is getting direr, and more politically complicated, by the day ('Afghanistan death rate tops Vietnam' one London paper scaremongered). For another, Basra itself looks more and more complicated. The same could be said for relations between Brown and Bush and between London and Washington. The inherent tension between Brown's determination to distance himself from Blair and his commitment to the special relationship could reach a breaking point before Bush leaves office.

A pragmatist, Brown was never going to buy into the war in Iraq, much less the broader neoconservative American agenda, in the way Blair did. As he tries to move out of Blair's shadow, and to recover the support Blair lost by his closeness to Bush, Brown is seeking to recalibrate the special relationship, not end it. If Blair's bond to Bush and America was forged in the heat of 9/11, Brown has sought a cooler version, one that resides in the shared history of the two countries but is free of the ideological straitjacket of the last six years. Blair's inner circle thinks Brown's special-relationship balancing act is a ramshackle intellectual construct doomed to failure - or 'tripe', as one of them put it to me. You can't pick and choose when to be close or not close to America, the Blairites would argue. Of course you can, the Brownites would fire back: Harold Wilson was right to refuse to commit troops to Vietnam. Does Brown have to be Wilson in order not to be Blair?

Brown will hope that time is on his side: as of today, it's 512 days until Bush leaves office. (Surely a cheeky Gordon Brown would set his internet browser homepage to one of those Bush countdown clock sites on the web.) After all, he's got his own election, and not just America's, to think about.

All summer long, Brown has been sitting pretty, blessed by Blair's departure and the Tories' surge-in-reverse. Wouldn't you know that Iraq, the bane of Blair's political existence, would come back to haunt Brown, who is sometimes accused by his enemies of treating the war there as if it were an event occurring in a galaxy far, far away?

Brown hit by new sleaze row over Labour funds

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2327904.ece

LABOUR is facing an official inquiry into an alleged front organisation, financed by millionaire Muslim businessmen, which has donated more than £300,000 to the party.

The electoral watchdog, which polices political funding, confirmed that it was investigating donations to Labour from a group called Muslim Friends of Labour. Its findings are expected to lead to a full-blown inquiry — the first potential sleaze probe to hit Labour since Gordon Brown became prime minister in June.

Imran Khand, a Glasgow-based entrepreneur, is revealed as a leading financial backer behind Muslim Friends, which funnelled £100,000 a month to Labour between March and June.

As his money is paid to Muslim Friends - rather than directly to the Labour party - his identity has until now remained secret. The Electoral Commission is probing whether Labour has broken laws on the disclosure of donations by hiding the true source of its financing.

Khand is a close associate of Mohammad Sarwar, the controversial Labour MP who chairs the organisation. Sarwar was embroiled in a vote-rigging scandal in the late 1990s which saw him suspended from the parliamentary Labour party. He was later cleared of the allegations in the High Court.

Khand has recently set up a series of companies with a Pakistani arms salesman and is also funding a British parliamentary inquiry into “tackling terrorism” via another organisation.

He has never been publicly named as a Labour donor although Muslim Friends has risen to become the party’s second most generous nontrade union benefactor. It is understood that most Labour Muslim MPs and peers are members.

Muslim Friends, which until recently gave only modest amounts, is set up as an “unincorporated association” which does not publish accounts or reveal the source of its funding. It is registered to a PO box address in south London.

Labour politicians have previously criticised the Conservatives for accepting money from a similar unincorporated association involving Robert Edmiston, a Midlands car dealer.

The watchdog said: “We have raised questions with the Labour party about these donations. We are looking into it. Inquiries are at a preliminary stage.”

Yesterday Sarwar, who is to step down at the next election, refused to reveal who funded the donations. “I will not name names. We have made a decision not to release the information. That is the decision of the board of Muslim Friends of Labour,” he said.

He added that the organisation was “very powerful” and was regularly consulted by ministers drawing up policies of interest to the Muslim community.

Another senior member of Muslim Friends disclosed that Khand was the leading benefactor. He revealed that Sarwar, himself a multi-millionaire, had also provided funding.

One leading Muslim Labour figure said: “I am staggered how much money they are giving suddenly. It started off in the wake of 2001 when Muslims were facing serious challenges, but now it seems to be Sarwar and his friends.”

Last week Khand refused to comment on his donations to Muslim Friends.

Yesterday, when asked to justify its decision to accept donations from Muslim Friends, the Labour party said it would take steps to ensure that donors to the group were made public.

Gordon Brown attacked over Forces funding

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/26/nbrown126.xml

Gordon Brown has come under fire on both sides of the Atlantic for starving the Armed Forces of funding, leaving them struggling to fight on two fronts, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

	Robert Foster, Aaron McClure and John Thrumble

The Prime Minister was attacked by Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, and a White House adviser over ten years of "underspending".

He was accused of refusing to give British troops the money to defend themselves as they combat insurgents in southern Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The claims came as the three soldiers killed by a US jet in a "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan were named as Privates Aaron McClure, Robert Foster and John Thrumble.

Critics said that the men, who were hit by a 500lb bomb in Helmand, should have been protected by high-tech systems to identify them to friendly forces.

Dr Fox said that cuts in defence spending demanded by the Treasury had left the Army unable to invest in equipment that could have saved the soldiers' lives.

"Gordon Brown showed no interest in the Armed Forces in his time as chancellor," said Dr Fox. "We know what he thinks about casinos and cannabis but we have heard scarcely a word from him on Afghanistan. When it comes to people putting their lives on the line there is a deafening silence.

"As chancellor, Gordon Brown never gave defence much priority and now the skies are black with chickens coming home to roost."

Since Mr Brown became Prime Minister on June 27, 13 soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and 15 in Iraq.

Frederick Kagan, an adviser to President George W Bush and the architect of the US surge strategy in Iraq, said the special relationship between Britain and America was under threat because defence cuts had left the Army unable to sustain simultaneous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Britain has a lot of problems, principally that their ground forces are too small and are now paying the price," Mr Kagan said.

He disclosed that 3,500 US troops would have to be taken out of the surge to step into the breach when the British leave southern Iraq. "I do worry about the short-term effects on the relationship between the two countries. It will create bad feeling with American soldiers if they can't go home because the British have left."

The commander of British forces in Helmand last night paid tribute to the three soldiers from 1 Bn, the Royal Anglian Regiment, who died in Thursday's blue on blue attack. Speaking in Lashkar Gar, Brig John Lorimer said that their deaths were a tragedy that had dented morale.

The incident is under investigation and serving officers were at pains not to lay the blame on either the American pilots or on shortages of combat identification systems designed to reduced the chances of such tragedies.

	Liam Fox: 'Gordon Brown never gave defence much priority'

But a powerful Commons committee and the National Audit Office have publicly condemned the Government for its failure to invest in equipment to prevent blue on blue, or friendly fire, incidents. In 2003 the public accounts committee criticised the MoD for diverting billions of pounds that should have been spent on battlefield recognition technology into other projects.

In May this year, the committee's Conservative chairman, Edward Leigh, said: "At the moment, pretty well the only solution to avoid being shot at by an American aeroplane if you're in a war... is to have a great big Union Jack flying on top of your tank."

An MoD spokesman said: "We take the risk of fratricide very seriously and continue to invest in combat ID technologies to help prevent it."

The Government claims that defence spending has risen, but its critics say it has fallen compared with other areas.

The Conservatives say that the proportion of GDP spent on defence is at its lowest since 1930. Spending on health and education has more than doubled since 1999 while defence has risen from £22 billion to £32 billion.

Col Clive Fairweather, a former deputy commander of the SAS, said that it was cuts imposed by Mr Brown that had reduced the Armed Forces to having to call in the Americans when they needed close air support in Afghanistan.

"It is the fault of Gordon Brown's Treasury that the Army is under-resourced," he said. "We don't have enough aircraft, troops or equipment".

Alexander’s husband ‘backs’ independence

WENDY ALEXANDER has been dealt an embarrassing blow in her first week as Scottish Labour leader after footage emerged of her husband making a case for independence.

Professor Brian Ashcroft, policy director of the pro-Union economic think-tank, the Fraser of Allander Institute, was filmed arguing that Scotland would be more prosperous as a separate country than having full tax-raising powers as part of the UK.

Addressing a private seminar in May, Ashcroft said an independent Scotland would join an “arc of prosperity”, comprising other affluent small European states.

One of his wife’s first actions as leader was to commit to a review of the devolution settlement with the option of giving the Scottish parliament the power to raise all of the £30 billion it spends every year.

Ashcroft told delegates at an Edinburgh seminar organised by Visit Scotland, that full fiscal autonomy was “an absurdity” found nowhere else in the world. “Against that option, full-blown independence might be better, because . . . you can do many more things,” he added. “If you’re being forced to balance your books, then I think the logic is ‘be independent’, don’t do it within the Union. So you heard it here first - the argument for independence.”

Labour yesterday sought to play down the row, dismissing it as a “throwaway remark”. However, Pat Kane, who captured Ashcroft on video, said his comments were included in a Powerpoint presentation. “The reaction in the room was one of shock. People were thinking, ‘Did Brian Ashcroft just say that?’ ” said Kane.

Alex Neil, the nationalist MSP, said: “It must be be the first time in history there’s been a marital row over fiscal autonomy.”

Yesterday Ashcroft said his preferred option was for “fiscal federalism” where some, but not all, tax powers were devolved to Holyrood.

'Creeps, cranks and careerists' - former MP Martin Bell attacks Tony Blair

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=477705&in_page_id=1770

Serving as a Member of Parliament was, against stiff competition, one of the most shocking experiences of my life – right up there with meeting child soldiers in the Congo when I worked as a BBC war reporter, or the imprisoned victims of child abuse in Afghanistan.

There is still a majority of honest and hard-working MPs in the House of Commons. But it is also a refuge of last resort for an eclectic collection of creeps, cranks and careerists.

More follows...

I was permanently astonished by the willingness of so many to put their consciences into storage and vote for measures they did not believe in and against those they did.

I knew an MP who drank himself to death in Annie's Bar. The Whips didn't mind, so long as when the division bell sounded he could drag himself upstairs and vote the way they wanted.

I also sat in astonishment as I watched another MP trade his vote for a peerage. There was no doubt about it, he knew exactly what he was doing. He had a reputation for integrity and the issue was one on which his vote would carry some weight.

The Whips were watching. The MP in question justified it on an argument of unity and the debt that he owed to his party. Now grandly titled, he sits in the House of Lords.

On becoming the independent MP for Tatton, Cheshire, in May 1997, I watched and listened for a while as new Members should, to get the feel of the place and judge what kind of parliament it was.

After a couple of months, the uneasy feeling dawned on me that it resembled nothing so much as the old East German Volkskammer, where the system counted for everything and the people for nothing; where the place was stuffed to the rafters with stooges and the parties were mere husks of what they pretended to be. Why did we allow this arthritic grip on the windpipe of democracy?

Yet it had all begun so optimistically. Remember that time of 'hope beyond ordinary imagining', as Tony Blair put it? In May 1997, Labour swept into power on a tide of popular rebellion against Tory 'sleaze', both real and perceived, and on the offer of a different kind of politics. Its manifesto promised: 'We will clean up politics.'

Those words hang in the air to this day. Did New Labour's leaders really say that and did they mean it? The answer to the first is yes, to the second no.

Like millions of others, I wished to believe them. Things could hardly get worse, could they? I even had a walk-on part in the brave new world in prospect, defeating the Tories' Neil Hamilton, an MP who had come to seem symbolic of a party and government that had lost its moral compass.

The Tatton campaign was used, I realised at the time, to keep the 'sleaze' issue bubbling away at the top of the agenda. I had no problem with that, except that it was treated as a kind of stage prop, to disappear at the touch of a conjuror's wand. And Blair could conjure like no Prime Minister since Lloyd George.

Public trust in public life was as important an issue then as it is now; but as soon as the campaign was over most of those who were elected on the promise of restoring it seemed to shed it like yesterday's fashion accessory. It had served its purpose and did not seem to matter to them any more.

Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, was among those pushed overboard. On leaving office earlier this year, he said: 'My greatest regret has been the apparent failure to persuade the Government to place high ethical standards at the heart of its thinking and, most importantly, behaviour.'

Apart from the Iraq disaster, the Blair Government was by no means the worst I have lived under. The management of the economy was generally sound. It was strongly committed to providing aid for the developing world.

It helped bring about a political miracle in Northern Ireland, which may be its most enduring legacy. But on the issue on which it was elected, public trust in public life, its record was wholly and unforgivably negative. It traded in patronage. It squandered a golden opportunity to draw people in and reinvent the entire culture of politics.

It even dodged the effect of its own reforms on party funding. And this was the party that declared: 'Our mission in politics is to rebuild the bond of trust between government and the people.'

But it didn't. And that is why, after the most dazzling, disappointing and ultimately dangerous decade in recent politics, it is necessary to write the obituary of the Blair model of New Labour. For if we do not understand the mistakes, from the abuse of patronage to the nonchalant military adventurism, we shall surely be doomed to repeat them.

Gordon Brown has made a start in separating himself from the record of the previous regime (to which he contributed), and from the years of utter madness in foreign policy. And yes, he may upset the Americans in doing so – but perhaps it's time they were upset. He must also place particular emphasis on the hitherto neglected practice of honest politics.

If such an instrument as a sleazometer existed, I believe it would register the scandals of the Labour years on a higher scale than those of the Tories. An air of moral dishevelment settled around them. With the exception of the two jailbirds, Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, the Tory scandals involved mainly obscure backbenchers and minor figures.

The Labour scandals reached right into the heart of Government, touching senior Ministers, some of whom were repeat offenders.

Some survived, others did not. Blair was judge and jury on allegations of ministerial misconduct. He ruled like the Sun King, Louis XIV. He saw no reason, he said, to fine-tune the code.

But when an MP was accused of breaking the rules of the House of Commons, then that was a matter for the House itself. And here I had a ringside seat.

For three-and-a-half years I sat on the Standards and Privileges Committee as a parade of MPs came before us, including some Ministers of the Crown. It was instructive to see which of the committee's 11 members left their party allegiances at the door.

There was a group who were consistently sympathetic to Labour MPs, especially those of Ministerial rank, accused of a breach of the code of conduct. Whether they were doing the Whips' bidding I had no way of knowing. But their words and actions would hardly have been different if they had been.

This was also the Parliament that undermined its own Standards Commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin, with a disgraceful whispering campaign against her by Ministers and backbenchers. She was eventually let go for doing her job too well. This also undermined trust in the House of Commons. I doubt if it can be restored under the present Speaker, Michael Martin.

The Tories' curse was cash-for-questions – Labour's was cash-for-peerages. The fact that no charges have been pressed does not mean the scandal has gone away. The evidence is still there and will come out in the long run, to the lasting discredit of those who funded their Election campaigns with loans that pushed the law to its limits and beyond.

Large sums of money flowed from wealthy individuals to political parties. The leaders of those parties nominated the donors and lenders for high honours. On the face of it, it was a clear case of corruption. So arise, Lord Megabucks. Step this way, Lady Cashpoint. The means are there to secure you a seat at the grander end of the Palace of Westminster.

But for the Government to be hung out to dry on this issue was a bit like Al Capone being done for tax evasion when considered in the context of the invasion of Iraq, the worst mistake by a British government in living memory, and with the proclaimed cause of war turning out to be a falsehood.

The irony was that Blair was a most gifted apologiser. But he apologised only for the things he did not do, such as the slave trade or the shooting of Army deserters. He was unrepentant about the things that he did, such as trading in peerages or waging illegal wars.

Here was a man who sent the Armed Forces to war on the basis of a grand self-deception, and whose answer to those who did not trust him was typically that it did not matter, because he trusted himself.

To the end of his premiership he retained his faith – not a soldier's faith, but a civilian's – in the effectiveness of hard power. He never understood that the weapons of shock and awe, deployed in a war among the people, recruit more than they kill. And military commanders are not magicians: they are the managers of organised violence.

The 15th Century Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus said war is sweet to those with no experience of it. Neither Blair nor anyone in his Government – not a single Minister at any level – has ever worn the Queen's uniform or known anything of the reality of warfare.

Their elder statesmen, such as Denis Healey, who was a beach-master at Anzio in 1944, knew better. 'I don't think that people with war experience would have ever got us involved with the Americans in the way that Tony Blair did,' Healey said.

The untold story of the war in Iraq was the mood of unease that turned to anger among the soldiers sent to fight it.

They were in the front line as the politicians were not. As soon as it was clear that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist, there was a groundswell of disquiet in the ranks of the Armed Forces, especially the Army. It started with the medics and spread to the infantry, cavalry, artillery and supporting arms and services.

It found a voice in the statement by the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, that the time to get out of Iraq was 'sometime soon'.

On a visit to Basra last December, I met old friends from earlier conflicts I had covered for the BBC. They had the gravest doubts about this one and were well aware that their lives were on the line every day for no sufficient reason.

Many were on their third or even fourth tour of duty in Iraq. One was an officer who had seen the conflict through all its phases, from liberation to occupation, and from shock and awe to hearts and minds to a qualified cut and run.

'I'll tell you what this feels like,' he said. 'It's like being a German in the Wehrmacht in France in the Second World War. We, too, are an occupation force. That's how it seems to me.'

I was a soldier once, though not a very good one. Today's Army represents the best of British, as the House of Commons does not. Never in my lifetime has the Army been so overstretched and over-committed, undervalued and under-equipped, ill-directed and ill-used. This has happened on New Labour's watch.

The new politics that we were promised back in 1997 turned out to be the old politics redecorated with bells and whistles, Cool Britannia, surfeits of spin, glittering promises and a great cascade of peerages.

Brown has promised a clean-up and this time Labour has to be serious. That means taking the award of peerages out of the hands of the Prime Minister and other party leaders. It means a return to Cabinet government and Parliamentary accountability. There are encouraging early signs, I am pleased to say, that this is actually starting to happen.

It means respecting or reinventing the Committee On Standards In Public Life. It means the Prime Minister visiting soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. It means no more optional and ill-considered wars. It means no longer parking foreign policy up the Potomac. It means wiping the slate and starting all over again.

One of the Blair Government's catchphrases, as the debacle in Iraq unfolded, was that it was time to draw a line under what had happened and move on. But lines do not just draw themselves. They have to be drawn with something.

An obvious instrument would be an apology, supported by a detailed accounting of what went wrong and why: to track back along the trail of decision-making from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; to explain why the military option was chosen when others were still available, and to express at least a measure of contrition.

It would be a waste and a tragedy if a man of such gifts as Blair, leaving office at the height of his powers, were to spend the remainder of his years in some sense embroidering a falsehood and living a lie. He has it in him, with grace and courage, to do much more than that.

Did anyone ever do so? Yes, Robert McNamara did. Defence Secretary to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and principal architect of the Vietnam War, he wrote a penitent memoir decades later in which he said: 'We were wrong, we were terribly wrong – if only we had asked more questions back then, if only we had looked at more options, perhaps there would be fewer names on the memorial wall today.'

Step by step and surge by surge, the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq grow ever closer. But there is not yet a memorial wall to those who have died in Iraq. It is still too soon. We have no idea of the size of wall we shall need. We owe it to future generations to explain why. We cannot do so without a full accounting by those responsible.

There is no other way.

It’s Blair’s fault, says MP Wareing

Rhys Jones floral tribute from his family

THE MP who represents the family of murdered youngster Rhys Jones last night blamed Tony Blair for creating the social conditions which led to the 11-year-old’s tragic death.

The attack from West Derby’s Bob Wareing came as Tory leader David Cameron warned Britain would stop being shocked by even the murder of such youngsters unless its gun culture was tackled urgently.

A 16-year-old boy was last night arrested on suspicion of Rhys’s murder as a national newspaper put up a £100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of his killer. The suspect was arrested on Broadway, Norris Green, and taken in for questioning.

Yesterday, police, who were last night using special stop and search powers in the Croxteth area, renewed their appeal for witnesses to his shooting after admitting the public response had so far been disappointing.

Rhys was shot in the neck at 7.30pm on Wednesday night by a teenage gunman on a BMX bike. He died later in Alder Hey hospital. A motive has yet to be established but Rhys is considered to be “a completely innocent victim”.

Last night, West Derby Labour MP blamed his own government for the current social climate, which he said left “the country’s moral fibre at an all time low”.

Mr Wareing said: “Nothing was done to tackle gun crime during the Blair years – the country’s been left to the dogs.

“The gauntlet has now been laid down for Gordon Brown. Something has got to be done before we reach the point of no return.

“The time has come to take a stand against the thugs taking control of our neighbourhoods.

“Violent and gang-related crime has escalated in the UK and it highlights a deeper problem, the gun-obsessed youth culture of our society.”

Police say they do not believe Rhys was in any way involved in Croxteth’s gang scene and said the shooting was unrelated to the ending of the court case over the murder of Norris Green gang leader Liam Smith yesterday.

Two other teenage boys aged 14 and 18 who were arrested on Thursday were released on police bail pending further inquiries.

Police with sniffer dogs conducted a fingertip search of wasteland behind the Fir Tree pub on Oak Road in Croxteth Park yesterday.

At lunchtime, Rhys’s parents Melanie and Stephen Jones tearfully read the dozens of messages left near to where he fell.

Friends and strangers had left the Everton an flowers, toys, and team scarves and tops near to a bus stop on Oak Road by the pub.

The cards on some of the floral tributes were unsigned, saying simply, “Why?”.

One, signed “Hayley”, read: “Rhys what can I say?

“I can’t believe it. It seems like yesterday we were all back in Menorca having a good time.”

Another friend wrote: “When the Goodison crowd roars it will be for you. Any goals that I score, they will be for you.”

A bouquet and card had been left from the staff and babies at Zoe’s Place hospice, and Graham Rooney, brother of footballer Wayne Rooney, who grew up in Croxteth, brought flowers yesterday afternoon.

Speaking at the crime scene, Patricia Gallan, Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, said: “The answer as to who is responsible is in the community.

“If you are responsible for this crime, come and tell us and hand yourself in.”

Police attempted to reassure potential witnesses their safety and identity can be protected.

Superintendent Phil Barr, from the criminal justice unit, said: “Through liaison with the courts and the Crown Prosecution Service, total anonymity will be guaranteed to any person coming forward as a witness or with any information relating to this incident.”

Speaking after the latest arrest, a police source said: “Rhys was not involved in any form of gang.

“We have made some arrests but this could be a protracted investigation. Another arrest was made today but further inquiries are ongoing and further arrests possible.”

The source said a bike was found yesterday a significant distance from the scene, apparently abandoned.

“It’s something we are pursuing but it’s not to say that the bike was used by the offender. Another call was received today about another bike found in the location.”

Tory leader David Cameron yesterday warned people could greet even such a tragic killing as Rhys’s with a “shrug”, because they could become commonplace if nothing was done.

And he called instead for the shooting to become a turning point which compelled the public to say: “I have had enough of all this”.

“I don’t know who killed Rhys Jones, but I do know this: no child in this country should be riding around on a BMX bike with a gun, shooting other children.”

The powerful speech will inevitably provoke comparisons with the way Tony Blair seized on an earlier Merseyside tragedy, the killing of Bootle toddler James Bulger, to demand change.

Back in 1993, when he was shadow home secretary, the future prime minister rose to national prominence by calling that murder “a hammer blow against the sleeping conscience of the nation”.

Coining the phrase “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, Mr Blair signalled that Labour would never again be seen as the party soft on criminals.

Nearly 15 years later, Mr Cameron used his speech to urge people, in the wake of Rhys’s “brutal” murder, to take responsibility to change society.

He called for a new “Social Covenant”, recognising that the “state of the nation” was not just a responsibility for government.

Mr Cameron said: “What has become of our society when we have this spate of children killing children?”

The Tory leader paid tribute to Rhys’s heartbroken parents, Melanie and Stephen, describing their bravery as “awe-inspiring”.

A review of how police work to keep deadly guns off the streets was announced yesterday.

Chief Constable Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said offic- ers will look at ways to improve gun control. Home Secretary Jac- qui Smith called for the review at a meeting with senior officers after the death of Rhys Jones.

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2007/08/25/it-s-blair-s-fault-says-mp-wareing-64375-19685552/