Miss Estelle Morris resigned as Secretary of State for Education, saying she was not up to running a big department. She was replaced by Mr Charles Clarke, who was replaced as Labour party chairman by Mr John Reid, who was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Mr Paul Murphy, who was replaced as Welsh Secretary by Mr Peter Hain, who was replaced as Minister for Europe by Mr Denis MacShane. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had an argument at the end of the European Union summit in Brussels, which led President Jacques Chirac of France to say: ‘You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this before.’ Mr Blair himself might have had reason to be annoyed, since Mr Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany had agreed between them that spending under the Common Agricultural Policy should remain much at present levels until 2013. MPs voted to sit from 11.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday (Monday and Friday hours remaining unchanged). The BBC asked Angus Deayton to step down as host of Have I Got News For You following newspaper reports of his involvement with prostitutes and cocaine. Members of the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service and the Royal Air Force squadrons which fly their aircraft were awarded four Conspicuous Gallantry Crosses, five Military Crosses and three Distinguished Flying Crosses for their part in operations against al-Qa’eda and Taleban fighters during the war in Afghanistan. Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society, and Lord Rothschild, the banker, were appointed to the Order of Merit by the Queen. While she was giving evidence at the trial for theft of the butler of Diana, Princess of Wales, her mother, Mrs Frances Shand Kydd, had her house in Scotland burgled and her uninsured jewellery stolen.
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