Five protesters, who had gained access to Parliament by posing as electricians, invaded the House of Commons during the debate on the Bill to outlaw fox hunting and engaged in scuffles with several officials in tights. Pro-hunting protesters were also out in force in Parliament Square, where several were injured in clashes with riot police. MPs once again voted in favour of a ban, though Tony Blair still hinted at a compromise. Ramblers celebrated the opening of the first tracts of moorland under the ‘right to roam’ legislation but without the countryside minister, Alun Michael, who had been advised by the police to keep away from hunting types. Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, proposed a plan to cut the sentences served by murderers to ten years if they confessed before trial. The Liberal Democrats began their conference in Bournemouth by promising to increase to 50 per cent the upper rate of tax on incomes over £100,000, but to cut taxes for low income-earners. The Department of Trade and Industry would be abolished and the Royal Mint privatised. John Redwood, who is in charge of deregulation in the shadow Cabinet, said the Tories would try to renegotiate EU laws which it deemed to be ‘excessive’. The Department of Health announced that it will be writing to 6,000 patients who have received blood transfusions to warn them that they might have contracted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A loyalist terrorist, Ken Barrett, was jailed for 22 years after pleading guilty to the murder of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. A Virgin tilting train reached Manchester from London in one hour and 54 minutes, 15 minutes faster than the previous record. A cleaner who taught Islamic morals to children at a mosque in Peterborough was convicted of hitting one of his charges with a stick.
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