Obsolete

Mobile phone and internet companies yesterday warned EU ministers that counter-terrorism plans for the compulsory storage of billions of phone and internet records would prove expensive and intrusive, with far-reaching implications for every citizen.

Industry experts also claimed that the demands for extra data to be stored on the location of mobile phone callers breached existing European privacy laws. The data will have to be stored for a minimum of 12 months and will be accessible to police and security services investigating terrorism and serious crime.

The EU-wide plan for the compulsory storage of telephone and internet data means that the industry would have to store records that not only tracked which numbers were dialled, the time and duration of calls, but also the location of the caller from a mobile throughout and at the end of the call. They would also have to record the location of the phone being called. Internet companies would have to preserve records of when users logged on and off their networks but not track the websites that had been visited.

While some of this data is already held for up to six months by the companies for billing purposes the industry says that the demand for the details of location of phone calls breaks new ground.

"We retain data for legitimate business reasons for three to six months but we believe the rationale for change and making far more intrusive measures remains unproved," said Michael Bartholomew of the European Telecommunications Network Operators's Association.

He said the demand for location data breached existing European data protection laws. He also protested about the demand for data about unsuccessful calls to be collected, claiming it would mean a typical mobile phone operator having to reconfigure 1,600 switches at a cost of £€160m (£108m). "We think this is a rather unsophisticated approach to a complex problem. Our plea to the ministers is to have more dialogue with the industry."

The United Nations warned Gordon Brown last night that he will have to levy taxes on the better-off in Labour's third term if the government is to meet its ambitious goal of halving child poverty by 2010.

In its flagship annual study charting progress in tackling poverty, the UN highlights Britain as a country where inequality has put a brake on development, and says there would need to be a complete reversal of the pro-rich bias of the 1980s to eradicate the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Its human development report (HDR) praises Labour for its efforts to tackle child poverty since 1997, but says a cash-strapped Mr Brown needs to go further in his coming budgets and contemplate politically sensitive tax rises to maintain the progress made in the past eight years.

"If the next 10 years did for the poor what the 1980s did for the rich, that would bring the UK within touching distance of the child poverty goals," the UN says.

In the UK the incomes of the richest 10% rose by 3.7% a year on average from 1979 to 1990 compared with a 0.4% average increase for the poorest 10%. Taxes on top earners were cut from 83p to 60p in the first Conservative budget in 1979 and from 60p to 40p in 1988.

If the incomes of the poor rose by 3.7% and those of the rich rose by 0.4% until 2010, child poverty would be cut from 23% to 17%, the UN says.

It says Labour's untrumpeted tax and benefit changes since 1997 have resulted in the incomes of the poorest fifth of the population rising by 20%. However, the report says the government needs to do more to load the tax and benefits system in favour of the less well-off, make it easier for poor parents to find work, and make "fundamental changes to the underlying distribution of earnings and income".

The Conservative party today held out the possibility of an east European style flat tax, with the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, commissioning an investigation of the system pioneered in some former Soviet states.

Mr Osborne today called for "a flatter and simpler tax economy" and announced he would hire a senior business figure to report back next year on whether a completely flat tax regime would be viable in the UK.

The introduction of such a system, which scraps progressively higher tax bands in favour of a uniform (and usually low) percentage, would be controversial, with opponents claiming it is little more than a tax cut for the rich. Flat taxes have so far only been introduced in developing economies seeking to attract foreign investors.

EU states should keep mobile phone and e-mail records for longer to help fight terrorism and crime, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has told MEPs.

Without such measures, European states would be fighting terrorism "with both hands tied behind our backs", he said.

Mr Clarke said telecommunications data proved valuable in the investigation of the London bombings.

He rejected complaints about intrusion into privacy, saying there must be effective protection against abuse.

Mr Clarke also said laws preventing suspects being deported to places where they faced persecution might have to change.

He said he wanted judges to realise of "circumstances in the modern world" when they judging cases involving European human rights laws.

He has not spelt out how long companies should be required to keep records but said "the longer it is held, the better".

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has said internet data could be kept for six months and phone call details for 12 months across Europe.

In some member states, he said, there are no data retention rules at all.

Mr Clarke hopes to reach a consensus by the end of the UK's EU presidency in December.

In a speech to the European Parliament, Mr Clarke said countries could only fight terror effectively if they knew what the terrorists were saying to each other.

All measures had to be proportionate, with "appropriate safeguards" against abuse and a clear legal basis for exchange of information in each case.

"They will not lead, as some have argued, to the mass surveillance of our citizens or to unnecessary invasion of the citizens' right to privacy," he insisted.

He also wants biometric information included on driving licenses across Europe but he acknowledged the timescale for the change would be "enormous".

The European telecommunications industry will oppose the plans when EU justice ministers in Gateshead later on Wednesday.

The industry says the plans are disproportionate, expensive and ineffective.

Mr Clarke's dossier also calls for a rethink of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The convention prevents terror suspects being deported back to countries with poor human rights records.

Mr Clarke says the British judiciary should respect controversial deals being sought with other countries to allow deportation despite poor human rights records.

Critics say such deals cannot guarantee that deported people will not be tortured.

Lib Dem MEPs leader Graham Watson said the human rights convention should not be changed in a "spasm" from recent events.

From a distance of 70 metres and through the sight of his machine gun, Assaf could tell that the Palestinian man was aged between 20 and 30, unarmed and trying to get away from an Israeli tank. But the details didn't matter much, because Assaf's orders were to "fire at anything that moved".

Assaf, a soldier in the Israeli army, pressed the trigger, firing scores of bullets as the body fell to the ground. "He ran and I started shooting for a few seconds. He fell. I was a machine. I fire. I leave and that's that. We never spoke about it afterwards."

It was the summer of 2002, and Assaf and his armoured unit had been ordered to enter the Gaza town of Dir al Balah following the firing of mortars into nearby Jewish settlements. His orders were, he told the Guardian, "'Every person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do it."

It was not the first time that Assaf had killed an innocent person in Gaza while following orders, but after his discharge he began to think about the things he did.

"The reason why I am telling you this is that I want the army to think about what they are asking us to do, shooting unarmed people. I don't think it's legal."

Assaf is not alone. In recent months dozens of soldiers, including the son of an an Israeli general, all recently discharged, have come forward to share their stories of how they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed people without fear of reprimand.

The soldiers were brought into contact with the Guardian with the assistance of Breaking the Silence, a pressure group of former soldiers who want the Israeli public to confront the reality of army activities. The group insisted on anonymity of its witnesses to protect the soldiers from persecution and prosecution.

Although those speaking out are a tiny proportion, their testimonies reflect a widespread culture of impunity, according to Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

"During the first intifada, there were printed rules of engagement. In the second there are none and what rules exist are kept secret. This leaves a wide scope for interpretation for officers and soldiers," she said.

According to B'Tselem, 3,269 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in almost five years. About 1,700 are believed to have been civilians and 654 minors.

According to the army, over the same period it has investigated 131 cases of soldiers misusing firearms, resulting in 18 indictments and seven convictions. As a result of the testimonies received by the Guardian and Breaking the Silence, army prosecutors are looking at a further 17 cases of alleged criminal activity.

Another soldier, Moshe, told the Guardian he and his colleagues came under pressure to obey illegal shoot-to-kill orders. As part of his sergeant's training course, he and his fellow trainees were ordered to set up ambushes in Jenin in May 2003. He said there was "pressure to get kills".

Before the operation, the soldiers were briefed that they were on the lookout for armed men. But their targets also included children and teenagers who habitually climbed on armoured personnel carriers as they lumbered through the narrow streets. On a few occasions, machine guns had been stolen from APCs.

"We were expressly told that we were just waiting for someone to climb on an APC, and ordered to shoot to kill," said Moshe. "After a day or two, a 12-year-old climbed on one of the APCs. There were a lot of guesses about his age. First they said he was eight, later that he was 12. In any case, he climbed on an APC, and one of our sharpshooters killed him. The neighbouring company also had an incident with a kid or teenager who was killed."

The statistics collected by the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group show that on May 14, Diya Gawadreh, 13, was killed by a live bullet. Kamal Amjad Nawahda, 13, was shot by Israeli soldiers on May 22. He died on May 27.

After Moshe returned to his paratroop unit, he said there were several incidents when children and teenagers were killed after bullets aimed at their legs hit their chests. The attitude was, he said, "so kids got killed. For a soldier it means nothing. An officer can get a 100 or 200 shekel [£12.50-£25] fine for such a thing."

A common theme in the soldiers' testimony was the desire to avenge Israeli casualties and inflict collective punishment on Palestinians.

May 2004 was a bad month for the Israeli army in Gaza. Four soldiers were blown to pieces when their explosive-laden APC hit a roadside bomb in Gaza City. As the army took over, another seven soldiers were killed in a similar incident in Rafah, at the other end of Gaza. In response the army launched an operation "to secure the neighbourhood along the Philadelphi Road [the border between Gaza and Egypt] and to make sure they are clean from terrorists," said Major General Dan Harel, the local commander.

Thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and around 50 died, of whom between a quarter and a half were civilians. According to Rafi, an officer in the Shaldag, an elite unit connected to the air force, the whole mission was about revenge. "The commanders said kill as many people as possible," he said.

He and his men were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared to be touching the ground, as if they might be placing a roadside bomb, or anyone seen on a roof or a balcony, as if they might be observing Israeli forces for military reasons, regardless of whether they were armed.

Colonel Liron Libman, the chief military prosecutor, said testimonies brought to light by Breaking the Silence had resulted in 17 investigations, some of which were still going on. Investigation of the testimonies, he said, revealed that some were exaggerated and some relied on hearsay. However, the incidents described to the Guardian and Breaking the Silence by the soldiers match deaths recorded by human rights groups and in the media.

It began late one night when Kathleen McCaughey's front door was kicked down by two men who stormed up the stairs shouting: "Taigs out."

"Aren't you going to call me an Orange bastard?" asked one of the men when Mrs McCaughey, 51, who has epilepsy, came out of her bedroom in her dressing gown.

After five months of attacks including petrol and paint bombs and a poster campaign calling her a republican scrounger, she was given a few hours to clear her house and leave the village of Ahoghill in Ian Paisley's North Antrim constituency.

Protestant children had been paid £5 each to sit on her front lawn banging drums until she caved in. If she did not go, she was told, her row of houses would be burned down.

The town of Ballymena and its surrounding villages are in the grip of the worst wave of anti-Catholic sectarian attacks for years and the police have been forced to adopt the same tactics as the UN uses in Kosovo: guarding Catholic churches, schools and Gaelic sports clubs at night to stop them being torched.

Northern Ireland is slipping into the kind of civil strife where people cannot tolerate the presence of their neighbours, and it is being demonstrated at primary schools. Two Catholic schools in the area were burned in arson attacks within 24 hours last week. The head of Northern Ireland's community relations council has said the police patrols are unsustainable, adding that many people would soon start to feel they could only live in Ballymena with UN-style protection.

Mr Paisley, who has always talked about his unbiased dedication to the Catholics in his constituency, was accused of moral cowardice and a lack of leadership. He returned from holiday and condemned the attacks last week but complained that, in the past, attacks on his church headquarters in Belfast had not been condemned by Sinn Féin.

Mark Durkan, the SDLP's leader, accused loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association of orchestrating sectarian violence in north Antrim.

Police said it was more complex than a coordinated campaign against Catholics, adding that teenagers and young boys had been involved. A 13-year-old boy has been charged with arson following last week's attack on St Louis' primary school which destroyed one classroom and damaged 10 others. A 15-year-old is also being questioned. Police have recorded 28 significant attacks against Catholics, including two attempted murders, and 14 attacks against Protestants.

In the nearby, predominantly Protestant, suburb of Harryville, the Catholic church has been repeatedly paint bombed and daubed with slogans such as "Fuck the Pope" over the summer.

A report by the Institute for Conflict Research shows that following the Good Friday Agreement in 1997, sectarian violence has increased, with more attacks on churches, Gaelic sports clubs and Orange halls than before the ceasefires of 1994.

There have been sectarian attacks on both side of the divide in north and east Belfast throughout the summer.

Dennis Bradley, the former Catholic priest who brokered the first ceasefire and is now a member of the policing board, said police alone could not solve the problem of the sectarian attacks, which he blamed on the "nihilism of 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds" and "20- and 30-year-olds who are quite sectarian in the sense that they cannot live with their neighbours".

Other research recently has shown that children as young as five or six are displaying bigoted ideas.

A generation is growing up more segregated and sectarian than its parents.

The BBC Radio 4 Today presenter John Humphrys has hit back at allegations that he disparaged senior Labour politicians in an after-dinner speech by implying that all ministers are liars.

Yesterday the BBC announced that it had asked for a full transcript of Humphrys' remarks to the Commercial Directors' Forum on June 8 amid newspaper claims that he had used the speech to pour scorn on Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.

In a video and transcript of the speech published on the Times website, Humphrys is reported as saying that some MPs "couldn't give a bugger whether they lie or not", and mocking the chancellor as "easily the most boring political interviewee I have ever had in my whole bloody life".

Humphrys also refers to Mr Brown, who lost sight in his left eye after being kicked in a school rugby game, as winking at him from "his one good eye" during a Today interview and pokes fun at Mr Prescott's habit of mangling familiar phrases, saying people "can't understand a bloody word he says".

Yesterday, Humphrys hit back at the Times report, saying it was "disgraceful" for the newspaper to suggest that his remarks were intended to imply that all ministers were liars.

"It's not what I believe and never have done," he told the Guardian.

Humphrys claimed the newspaper and its stablemate, the Sunday Times, which carried a similar report yesterday, had "conflated" a series of remarks he had made about politicians.

"What I actually said was that there are three kinds of politicians: those who do not lie full stop, those who lie if they absolutely have to, and those who do not give a bugger about lying," said Humphrys.

In one section of his speech Humphrys reportedly refers to the row over the Andrew Gilligan affair, telling his after-dinner audience that the former Radio 4 reporter's controversial claims that Downing Street deliberately inserted false information to "sex up" intelligence in Iraq, were substantially true.

"The fact is that we got it right," he is heard to say.

Humphrys also describes Mr Campbell, who led the government's attacks on Gilligan and Today, as "a pretty malevolent force" and pokes fun at an interview Cherie Blair gave to the Sun during the last general election in which she hinted at her husband's sexual stamina.