Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had headed the inquiry into intelligence about Iraq, accused Mr Tony Blair’s administration of ‘bad government’, being unchecked by Parliament and free to bring in a ‘huge number of extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes’ with an eye to the next day’s headlines. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, denied a fresh allegation that he had helped fast-track a tourist visa to Austria for his ex-lover’s nanny, Leoncia Casalme. Dame Janet Smith, in a 1,300-word report, her fifth on the mass murderer Dr Harold Shipman, blamed the General Medical Council for perpetuating the ‘mutual self-interest’ of doctors, and recommended the construction of a national database about every doctor in Britain. Lord Winston said that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority should be abolished because it was ‘not seen to be a very good system’. Ofsted, the education regulator, said that 10,000 schoolchildren had gone missing from official records.
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