Nearly six million people began to receive letters from HM Revenue & Customs telling them they had paid the wrong amount of tax. About £2 billion has been underpaid, at an average of £1,380 per person, and £1.8 billion overpaid, averaging £420 per person. Connaught, the social housing maintenance company, which employs 10,000 people, went into administration. As his special adviser resigned, Mr William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, issued a statement saying: ‘Any suggestion that his appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man.’ He said that they had occasionally shared hotel rooms with twin beds while campaigning. Mr Hague added that he and his wife had wanted children, but that she had suffered ‘multiple miscarriages’. Mr Bob Diamond is to replace Mr John Varley as chief executive of Barclays next year. Sir Cyril Smith, the 29-stone MP for Rochdale 1972-92, as a Liberal, then a Liberal-Democrat, died, aged 82. HMS Astute was commissioned into the Royal Navy; a nuclear-powered submarine that need surface only after three months, it was laid down in 2001.
The House of Commons reassembled and gave a second reading by 328 votes to 269 to a bill providing for a referendum on 5 May next year on the alternative vote system of electing MPs. Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police told a Commons committee that police would ‘at some stage’ question Mr Andy Coulson, who is the director of communications for the Conservative party, over new allegations that he was aware of telephone-tapping by reporters when he was editor of the News of the World, 2003-07.
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