Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced that Britain would send an extra 500 troops to Afghanistan, bringing its strength there to 10,000. Earlier he had criticised Pakistan for not making ‘more progress in taking out’ the leader of al-Qa’eda: ‘We have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden.’ The High Court ruled that two men in prison accused of being al-Qa’eda terrorists, who cannot be named, have the right to hear the secret evidence against them or be released. Lady Warsi, the opposition spokesman on community cohesion, was pelted with eggs by Muslim protesters when she visited Luton.
English Heritage refused an application to put up a blue plaque in London to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. The Rt Revd Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester from 1974 to 2001, died, aged 94. The Yorkshire and the Chelsea building societies announced plans to merge. Miss Susan Boyle, a 48-year-old woman from Blackburn, West Lothian, exposed to public curiosity on television talent shows, sold 411,820 copies of her CD in Britain in a week, an unprecedented number.
Twelve NHS hospital trusts in England are ‘significantly underperforming’, according to the annual Dr Foster Hospital Guide, although the Care Quality Commission had a month earlier given nine of them ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ ratings for their overall performance. Basildon University Hospital had the worst patient death rate in the country for the second year running. Social workers would one day need licences to work and a National College of Social Work would be established, the Department for Children and the Department of Health announced. Mr Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, said he would push for the college to be given royal status as quickly as possible.
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