2 Big Stories

The joint committee of MPs and peers on human rights is calling for an independent review of the evidence that British intelligence officers were complicit in torture:

The Joint Human Rights Committee said it was unable to establish whether British officers were involved in mistreatment of suspects.

It also criticised ministers and the head of MI5 for refusing to testify at parliamentary hearings on the claims.

Meanwhile, Northern Rock has posted losses for its tax-payer owners of £724m:

The Newcastle-based bank, which is to be split into so-called good and bad banks, admitted that many customers were struggling over repayments, with the proportion of mortgage accounts more than three months in arrears rising to 3.92% by the end of June. At the end of March the arrears figure was 3.67%, and it was 2.92% at 31 December 2008.

2 Must-read Blog Posts

Writing on Harriet Harman’s calls for an established tradition of female leadership in her party, Meral Ece said “I’m with Harriet”:

How the tabloids love to bash Harriet Harman MP for stating what I think the majority of women (and some men) believe: that we need more equal representation of men and women in politics and in the boardroom. She has been roundly pilloried.

Elsewhere, Keith Angus was furious with Labour’s plans for a new immigration system:

If someone breaks the law then that’s clearly bad behaviour, and I don’t have a problem with that as a concept. However, it would also cover activities where the law hasn’t been broken, but involves doing something the Labour government would prefer its citizens rather not do.