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Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, said he could not support as they stood government plans to hold in camera civil court cases involving secret intelligence. The government also proposed changing the law to allow it to monitor the telephone calls, emails, texts and visits to websites of everyone in the country. UK Biobank began making available to researchers information on 500,000 volunteer patients in the National Health Service. The government said it had accepted ‘virtually all’ of the 28 recommendations in a report commissioned from Mary Portas on the rejuvenation of high streets, including reduced charges for parking. A Palm Sunday procession in the village of Hamble, Hampshire, involving choristers and a donkey, was cancelled after Eastleigh Borough Council received objections from police about traffic management, signage, road safety, risk assessment and insurance.
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Tanker drivers belonging to the Unite union held talks at Acas, the conciliation service, after motorists had spent a couple of days panic-buying petrol in response to advice by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to ‘top up’ in case of a strike. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said: ‘A bit of extra fuel in a jerry can in the garage is a sensible precaution to take.’ A woman in York suffered 40 per cent burns after petrol caught fire as she decanted it into a jug in her kitchen. In a by-election, George Galloway won Bradford West for the Respect party, with 18,341 votes, capturing it from Labour, whose candidate gained only 8,201 votes, with the Conservatives polling 2,746 and the Liberal Democrats 1,505. The Ulster Unionist Party chose Mike Nesbitt, a former television presenter, as its leader.
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Two German power companies, Eon and RWE, withdrew from plans to build new nuclear power stations.
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