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Jun 29 2012

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Willing: Kate Middleton, below, Prince William sleeps rough for charity in 2009

THE Duchess of Cambridge is to sleep rough on the streets of London to help raise awareness of homelessness.

Kate has agreed to join Centrepoint ambassador and Loose Women star Lisa Maxwell on the Sleep Out campaign.

Her husband Prince William took part in the same initiative during the winter of 2009.

Kate said she would join Lisa, 48, the next time she is involved. William introduced his 30-year-old wife to Lisa at a party last December.

She said: “I work with Centrepoint and William’s our patron. We had a little do just before Christmas and they came down.

“She asked me about sleeping out, so I said: ‘Next time I do it, you’re doing it with me. No excuses, he’s done it.’

“She said: ‘You’re on.’”

William became a patron of the charity in September 2005, after his mother Diana became a patron herselfin 1992.

He slept rough with a group of homeless people to highlight the issue in the run-up to Christmas.

William, 30, slept beside the organisation’s chief executive, Seyi Obakin, and his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton.

During the night, they almost got run over by a road sweeper.

Lisa first took part in Centrepoint’s Sleep Out campaign in 2005, and has since been involved in several more.

She also runs workshops for the cause.

Lisa said: “Having slept rough for them on a couple of occasions previously, I’ve been able to see first hand exactly how bad the situation is for some of our young people in the centre of London.”

Jun 29 2012

NEWS that the taxman wrote off almost £5.2billion last year was greeted with shock yesterday.

A report by the National Audit Office found there had been a “large increase” in the amount of tax HM Revenue and Customs decided not to pursue.

The £5.17billion written off included £1.5billion in income tax, £1.9billion in VAT, £653million in National Insurance and £503million in corporation tax.

On top of that, the HMRC’s accounts for 2011/12 showed they overpaid around £2billion to £2.5billion in tax credits and underpaid up to £290million as a result of fraud and error.

A target of reducing the level of fraud and error to five per cent of tax credit entitlements was missed.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, said she was shocked by “the sheer scale of waste and mismanagement”.

Last year’s figure was down on the £5.5billion write-offs and remittances in 2010/11 but still made up more than one per cent of the total £474.2billion tax collected.

Tax debts being pursued stood at £13.3billion at the end of March, down from £15billion the year before.

Hodge said: “Sadly, it is no surprise that the National Audit Office have found substantial problems with the HMRC’s accounts.

“This year has seen a litany of tax errors and scandals come to light, with mistakes made at the most senior level, from the permanent secretary for tax downwards. The sheer scale of waste and mismanagement at HMRC never ceases to shock me.

“Without even mentioning the tax gap, in 2011/12 the department wrote off a staggering £5.2billion of tax owed, overpaid nearly £2.5billion in tax credits due to fraud and error and underpaid around £290million.”

Hodge added: “In some areas, the department are moving in the right direction and have made progress to implement improvement plans.

“But the department are still plagued by IT problems limiting, for example, their ability to link together the debts owed across different tax streams.

“With their long history of IT failures, the department need to get a grip before they introduce their new real-time PAYE information systems and begin the high-risk move from tax credits to the universal credit.”

National Audit Office head Amyas Morse agreed the taxman had “lessons to learn” before the introduction of universal credit, which will replace a range of existing benefits and tax credits next year.

Shazia Johnston killed Lisa Ann Quigley

Jun 29 2012
By Kevan Christie

THE WIDOW of the highest ranking soldier killed by the IRA has praised this week’s historic handshake between the Queen and Martin McGuinness.

Anne Blair, 69, was left to bring up her two young children alone when her husband Lieutenant Colonel David Blair was blown up by the IRA.

But after the Queen shook the hand of Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister – a former IRA commander – Anne said: “It’s a small price to pay for the sake of peace.”

David, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Own Highlanders, was one of 18 soldiers murdered at Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland on August 27, 1979.

Hours earlier, the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten, had been assassinated when his boat was blown up in Donegal Bay during a fishing trip.

David, who was on a four-month tour of duty in Northern Ireland, had just turned 40 and left behind daughter Alexandra, 10, and son Andrew, eight, as well as his 36-year-old widow.

His military funeral was held at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.

Anne, who lives in Edinburgh, said of the Queen’s meeting with McGuinness: “It’s marvellous if this handshake is going to represent peace. It is a great gesture.

“It was very brave of the Queen to meet with someone from the group who killed her cousin Lord Mountbatten and all the soldiers on that day and everybody else.

“It wasn’t all that long ago that the Queen couldn’t go to Northern Ireland because the IRA were trying to kill her.

“The IRA murdered 18 soldiers in that incident, including my husband, so I have never been at all happy about the IRA.

“However, they are supposed to have disbanded, and one’s hope is that they have and that this represents peace for the future.”

She added: “Some people are not happy about the meeting but they have to move on.

“The Queen represents this country and has been absolutely amazing. Clearly, this was regarded as the right thing to do.

“Obviously, she has very much got in mind all sorts of terrible things the IRA represented but it was quite right to do what she did, to shake hands with Martin McGuinness.

“I did meet the Queen at Holyrood during a reception for the minister of the Canongate Kirk retiring – but it was very brief.

“She knew about my husband and was well aware of the events surrounding his death.”

The carnage at Warrenpoint, near the border with the Irish Republic, was the British Army’s worst single peacetime loss since World War II.

Six soldiers on patrol were killed by a boobytrap bomb then as reinforcements, including David, arrived to help the survivors, a second huge device was detonated.

Twelve soldiers died in the second blast.

Anne added: “It was a terrible shock when my husband died – it was completely out of the blue.

“I’d thought that he was safer because he was a commanding officer.

“I was left to bring up the children and had no job and nowhere to live. But we got along.

“I remember that my son was in shock for about two years and that he didn’t make a lot of progress at school for a while.

“But both my children grew up to have well-balanced lives. My daughter became a journalist for The Times.

“And it was crucial that I was there for them.”

Jun 29 2012

FOUR men yesterday denied kidnapping financial adviser Lynda Spence and murdering her in a two-week torture ordeal.

Prosecutors say Lynda, 28, had a thumb and a fingertip severed and her toes crushed with garden loppers after being snatched.

She was also allegedly beaten with a hammer and golf club and burned with cigarettes as her captors demanded information about her bank accounts and financial affairs.

At the High Court in Glasgow, David Parker, 37, Paul Smith, 46, Philip Wade, 41, and Colin Coats, 41, all denied murder.

Smith offered a plea of guilty to assaulting Lynda, detaining her against her will, lopping off her toes and the tip of a finger and a thumb and burning her with cigarettes and an iron.

But the plea was rejected by the Crown.

Lynda, whose financial services company had got into difficulties, was last seen in April 2011.

It is alleged the four men detained her against her will between April 14 and April 28 at a flat in West Kilbride, Ayrshire.

Her body has never been found and it is also alleged that the four accused tried to cover up the killing by cleaning the flat.

The Crown further claim that they cut her head off and disposed of her body at an unknown location in Scotland.

Parker, Wade and Coats deny all charges.

These include allegations that Wade and Coats sent threatening email and text messages to Lynda between September 2010 and April 28, 2011.

Coats is also charged with assaulting Lynda, who lived in Ruchill, Glasgow, in the month before her alleged abduction by handling her breasts and making remarks of a homophobic nature.

And he is accused of trying to extort £12,000 from a man named John Glen. It is claimed he showed Glen a human thumb and stated it was Lynda’s.

The men also face a number of other charges, including supplying class A drugs.

Judge Lord Turnbull continued the case until July 27 at the High Court in Edinburgh for a further preliminary hearing.

No date has been set for the trial, which is estimated to last from four to six months.