Obsolete

Parents have protested to Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, after security cameras were installed in a secondary school's lavatories.

Staff at Westhoughton High, near Bolton, Lancashire, say the measure is necessary to combat vandalism, smoking and drug-taking.

But more than 80 parents have signed a petition demanding the removal of the CCTV cameras, and have asked Ms Kelly to intervene.

One parent, Carol Galloway, described the move as "an invasion of privacy". Bolton council said the school was seeking to "reassure parents about why it is necessary to have cameras in place".

Signs emerged today that Charles Clarke shared opposition doubts about the detention without trial of terror suspects for up to three months, as proposed yesterday in his draft anti-terrorism bill.

Close examination of the letter the home secretary sent his opposite numbers by email yesterday showed that in an earlier draft Mr Clarke had himself been unsure about acceding to the police request for longer detention periods. Both Liberals and Conservatives immediately objected to the proposal on receiving the letter.

Mr Clarke's doubts were revealed by the accidental inclusion of an earlier draft in an "annex" to the letter. In a version of the letter later released to the press this annex had been removed. However, the slip will reignite speculation, fuelled by Sunday newspaper stories recently, that the prime minister regards Mr Clarke as too soft on civil liberties, and may replace him in a future reshuffle.

By the time the letter was sent, Mr Clarke had hardened his stance to agreeing with a three-month detention period - putting the onus on the opposition to make the case against.

The three-month issue - dubbed "internment in all but name" by Amnesty International yesterday - was the main sticking point in reaching cross-party consensus on the bill, which will be introduced when parliament returns in October.

In the first draft of his letter, Mr Clarke said: "I think the case for some extension is clear, though I believe there is room for debate as to whether we should go as far as three months, and I am still in discussion with the police on this point."

But the correspondence actually sent reads: "It may be that you are convinced by the case for some extension but feel that three months is too great an extension. I would be interested in your views on this particular point."

The government's proposed anti-terrorism laws published yesterday are so widely drawn that anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" any terrorist act committed over the past 20 years could face a sentence of up to five years in prison.

But the small print of the draft terrorism bill published yesterday shows that the home secretary is preparing to go even further and draw up a list of historical terrorist acts which if "glorified" could mean a criminal offence being committed.

A Home Office spokeswoman said 9/11 was such an example; it would become a "listed event", the appropriate ban lasting longer than 20 years. However, the 1916 Irish Easter Rising would be exempt.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the offence of "glorification" was so broad it meant the home secretary was now acquiring powers to determine which historical figures were terrorists and which freedom fighters.

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, said the power was needed because the "celebration of despicable terrorist acts over the past weeks has only served to inflame already sensitive community relations in the UK". But he acknowledged that the proper exercise of freedom of speech meant the offence had to be carefully drawn. His proposals came as it emerged that the Crown Prosecution Service was preparing guidelines for "intelligence-only" interviews, whereby terrorism suspects could give information which would not be used against them. Senior prosecutors are convinced that this, plus other measures such as intercept evidence and plea bargaining, would strengthen their hand against international terrorism and organised crime.

An earlier draft of the letter made clear that powers allowing the police "to close down places of worship used to foment extremism" had been dropped.

Two other measures outlined by the prime minister - refusal of asylum to anyone who connected with terrorism anywhere in the world, and a maximum time limit on extradition cases - were also absent from yesterday's package.

The cross-party consensus on anti-terror legislation broke down today, as the home secretary, Charles Clarke, proposed detaining terror suspects without charge for three months.

The Liberal Democrats immediately opposed both longer detention periods, which the police have requested, and the intention to create a new offence of "glorifying terrorism".

David Davis, the Tory home affairs spokesman, echoed the first objection, saying the government had "yet to make a convincing case" for extending the maximum period of detention.

After seeing the details of the offences, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, said: "We still want to try to seek consensus. However, two sticking points have emerged for us." Those sticking points are longer detention, and "glorifying terrorism".

The Liberal Democrats oppose the "glorification" offence on pragmatic grounds of how it would be drafted and interpreted by the courts, a spokesman said, rather than the principle of endorsing terrorism.

On detention without charge, they argue that if the police have difficulties amassing a case for a charge within a fortnight, that is a question of police and forensic resources, rather than a reason to increase the detention period.

A spokesman added: "The period has only recently been increased, from seven days to a fortnight, so that, plus more resources, should be tried first."

Mr Davis meanwhile repeated long-standing Tory concerns that the government was unwilling to allow security service phone tapping as evidence, but welcomed Mr Clarke's statement he was now willing to look at the possible use of such material.

The plan to increase detention periods was also immediately denounced by civil rights campaigners as "a new British internment".

Evidence in the trial showed the British and US govern ments had made exaggerated or misleading claims based on the raid on the north London flat where Bourgass lived.

Making the case for the Iraq war in February 2003, the former US secretary of state Colin Powell said in his speech to the UN security council that ricin had been found there and that that demonstrated a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida. No such evidence was produced in court. Mr Powell spoke of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network".

The marathon trial, estimated to have have cost at least £20m, also revealed that government claims that ricin had been found continued after their own scientists concluded that none had been. The London flat where Bourgass's poison recipes were found had been raided on January 5, but within two days experts at Porton Down concluded that no ricin had been produced, according to a court document seen by the Guardian.

It can also now be reported that the attorney general took the rare step of warning his ministerial colleagues about prejudicing the jury after comments by the former home secretary David Blunkett. The trial judge wrote to Lord Goldsmith after Mr Blunkett, when in office and as the jury was hearing the case, said last November: "Al-Qaida is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, to be actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives. I am talking about people who are and about to go through the court system."

Lord Goldsmith has decided Mr Blunkett's remarks did not amount to contempt but yesterday the trial judge criticised Mr Blunkett for comments made during the trial.

Last night Muslim groups condemned the publicity over the plot. Azad Ali of the Muslim Safety Forum, where top police officers and Muslim leaders discuss terrorism and other issues, said: "The ricin plot was part of government thinking and public justification in bringing in control orders. This will confirm the feeling in the Muslim community that it is being victimised on the basis of intelligence that was not tested in anything like a court, and when it is, it is thrown out."

What also emerged was that an early test on a pestle and mortar, conducted when the flat was raided, showed possible traces of ricin.

But a more advanced test on January 7 found none, a result confirmed by a DNA test.

Professor Alastair Hay, an expert in biochemical poisons, reviewed Porton Down's tests for the defence.

Porton Down documents show that by January 8 scientists at the defence research facility had written to the police declaring there was no ricin on several items from the flat.

The jury heard that the plan had been to kill people by smearing ricin on door handles in Holloway, north London. But Prof Hay said: "With these recipes they could not have killed people. Ricin is not absorbed through the skin."

Fuel protests which sparked fears supplies could be blockaded fell flat when only a few protesters turned out today and no blockades were reported.

Early this morning, only around 12 people arrived for a demonstration outside an oil refinery in Jarrow, south Tyneside, with a similar number at an oil terminal in Purfleet, Essex, where one man was arrested for causing an obstruction.

Demonstrations failed to materialise at other refineries around the country, and journalists outnumbered protesters at at least two refineries visited by the Guardian this morning.

Farmer and haulier Andrew Spence, who was involved in the 2000 protests, said ministers had been forced to make concessions by the latest campaign.

He said that without it "I doubt that the government would have given us the 1.2p freeze in duty proposed for October. I like to think that we have achieved something this week."

Mr Spence, who was among a small group of protesters at the Shell refinery in Jarrow, south Tyneside, said: "We didn't want a lot of people here, I would rather there was just a handful of us."

Another protester, farmer Martin Stevenson, said that despite the low turnout, support for the cause was "very large" as "everybody is dissatisfied with the amount of money they're paying in tax on fuel".

At Purfleet in Essex protesters held placards saying "Support British Hauliers" and "End Labour's War on the Motorist". A man from Sheerness in Kent was arrested for obstructing the highway.

Customers began panic-buying petrol in some parts of the country yesterday, with long queues and anger on the forecourts as fears grew of fuel blockades.

Drivers were caught in hour-long queues in London, Yorkshire and Essex, while in the West Country and the Midlands some fuel stations ran out of petrol temporarily.

The stockpiling came after protesters predicted a fierce battle with the government as they prepared for three days of blockades outside refineries.

The protesters from the Fuel Lobby, including farmers and lorry drivers, have given the government until 6am tomorrow to meet them or face protests. They are demanding that the chancellor, Gordon Brown, cut tax on petrol by 10%. But Mr Brown will use a speech to the TUC's annual conference today to emphasise the global nature of the problem.

There were signs yesterday that not everyone is supporting the demonstrations. The Road Hauliers Association, which represents 10,000 hauliers, is not taking part in the protest.

"The police are concerned about terrorism at the moment; they have said they will throw an iron ring around refineries," said Steve Williams, from the association. "They are overstretched already with the terrorist threat and we don't want to be involved in something that will stretch them further."

The Fuel Lobby protesters say they will start three days of demonstrations if ministers do not meet them on Tuesday.

It wants the public to "attend" oil refineries on Wednesday to protest.

Lobby spokesman Andrew Spence said: "We are not calling for a blockade, but if oil companies decide they cannot send out lorries while there is a public presence at their site, then that is a matter for them."

Sir Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, said the last thing the government should do was cut fuel duty.

Fuel prices needed to be kept high to drive changes in consumer behaviour and drive investment in new energy efficiency technology.

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

It is unclear whether any of the "aesthetic fillers" such as collagen available in the UK or on the internet are supplied by the company, which cannot be identified for legal reasons. It is also unclear whether collagen made from prisoners' skin is in the research stage or is in production. However, the Guardian has learned that the company has exported collagen products to the UK in the past. An agent told customers it had also exported to the US and European countries, and that it was trying to develop fillers using tissue from aborted foetuses.

In China, authorities deny that prisoners' body parts are harvested without their consent. However, there is some evidence to suggest it may be happening.

In June 2001, Wang Guoqi, a Chinese former military physician, told US congressmen he had worked at execution grounds helping surgeons to harvest the organs of more than 100 executed prisoners, without prior consent. The surgeons used converted vans parked near the execution grounds to begin dissecting the bodies, he told the house international relations committee's human rights panel.

Skin was said to be highly valued for the treatment of burn victims, and Dr Wang said that in 1995 he skinned a shot convict's body while the man's heart was still beating. Dr Wang, who was seeking asylum in the US, also alleged that corneas and other body tissue were removed for transplant, and said his hospital, the Tianjin paramilitary police general brigade hospital, sold body parts for profit.

Although the exact number of people facing the death penalty in China is an official secret, Amnesty International believes around 3,400 were executed last year, with a further 6,000 on death row.