Obsolete

The Conservatives are promising to create more good local schools. Parents will have the right to choose the best schools for their children, which means they will be able to send their child to an independent school for the cost of a state-funded education.

Headteachers and governors will have complete control over discipline in school, including control over admissions and exclusions. Heads will set minimum standards of behaviour and will no longer be forced to admit children excluded from other schools. The party will establish Turnaround schools for disruptive pupils - at a cost of £200m a year. Pupils will attend full-time and will only be readmitted to mainstream schools if their behaviour significantly improves.

The Connexions careers service will be scrapped and a new service created with strong business involvement.

Michael Howard has said that an incoming Conservative government would ask parliament to approve a limit on the maximum number of refugees allowed into the United Kingdom. A quota of around 20,000 a year would be set - even though it could mean genuine refugees are refused the right to refuge and asylum in Britain. Applicants for entry to the UK would be processed at offshore asylum centres.

The party intends to return cannabis to a class B classification to resolve current confusion.

Pledges to create 20,000 extra prison places to guarantee that sentencing will not be driven by capacity. Plans an end to the early release scheme that sees prisoners monitored by electronic tagging and believes community sentences should only compliment not substitute prison.

Wants to see the civil law provision that a householder will be only be prosecuted for "grossly disproportionate" action against a burglar extended into criminal law through a householder protection bill.

The Conservatives promise to spend £4bn of their £12bn worth of efficiency savings on tax cuts. They plan to spend £1.3bn of that on halving council tax for the over-65s and are believed to be considering raising the threshold at which low earners start to pay income tax and cutting inheritance tax and stamp duty further. Ten million workers would get tax relief on their pension contributions, using £1.7bn of the Tories' efficiency savings. The Tories have promised to abolish the 1% stamp duty on house purchases below £250,000. At the last Budget, the threshold was raised from £60,000 to £120,000. The Tories claim that lifting it to £250,000 will free more than 500,000 homebuyers a year from stamp duty, and leave 80% of house purchases unaffected by the tax.

The party supports free choice for NHS patients in terms of care delivery. Patients will have the option of going private, with 50% of their costs underwritten by the state. GPs will advise patients on the best hospital for their needs.

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, yesterday won an agreement across Europe to ensure that telephone and internet records are stored by telecoms companies for up to two years.

The deal, which won the backing of the European parliament yesterday, will mean that police investigating terrorism and serious crime will have access to the commercial traffic logs of all phone calls, text messages, emails and instances of internet use by suspects.

Mr Clarke said: "This agreement on retaining communications places a vital tool against terrorism and serious crime in the hands of law enforcement agencies across Europe."

The new EU directive will make it mandatory for telecoms firms to keep phone and internet data for a minimum of six months but will not cover police access to the content of calls or emails, and will be subject to strict data protection. Mr Clarke said yesterday he would however urge EU governments to make it mandatory to store data for up to two years. He had made the issue a key element of the British presidency of the EU; it proved highly controversial, with Germany, Ireland and other countries raising concerns about privacy and cost.

The deal will mean that the voluntary agreement with the telecoms industry in Britain will now become mandatory across the EU. At present in Britain, emails, text messages and internet data are kept for six months. Telephone details, including numbers dialled, the time and duration of calls, and location of the mobile, are kept for 12 months.

Even details of calls that are connected but go unanswered will be archived on the grounds that they could be signals to accomplices or used to detonate a bomb.

Mr Clarke said yesterday the EU member states would each decide on how long the data should be kept, and whether they would reimburse telecoms firms. The UK contributes £6m a year to national costs.

There was also flexibility in the ruling to ensure new forms of data are covered.

Yesterday, the Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said it amounted to a green light for mass surveillance: "Ordinary citizens could find details of their movements, acquaintances and favourite websites circulating in Whitehall."

The lord chancellor branded as "ridiculous" yesterday claims that the prosecution of a peace campaigner for reading out the names of British soldiers who have died in Iraq showed that free speech was threatened.

Maya Evans was last week given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay ��100 costs after being prosecuted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which limits protest around Westminster, for reading the names by the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said the law "was a simple measure to avoid disorder around parliament".

Sir: I am really sorry that my constituent Maya Evans was convicted under Section 122 of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (report, 8 December).

On the face of it, it looked to be an overreaction on the part of the prosecutors but be that as it may, it would be wrong to say that the legislation is unnecessary. Its purpose is not to deny protest but to ensure that such protest is possible.

Historically all sorts of protests have taken place around Parliament, but with the current terrorist threat it would be easy to mask a terrorist atrocity under the guise of a legitimate demonstration. The easy solution would have been to simply ban such protest - as the media indeed claim is the purpose of the Act - but that was not the Government's intention.

Ms Evans's prosecution is unfortunate and appears to have been somewhat zealous, but to suggest it is an attack on free speech is bizarre. Such a right must be, and indeed is, protected by this legislation.

MICHAEL FOSTER MP
HASTINGS AND RYE

I may not like what they call me, but I thank God they can. That's called freedom."

The terrorist threat to the UK has intensified so much since July 7 that Scotland Yard gets high-grade intelligence on suspects almost every day, in contrast to the monthly reports it received before the London bombings, the UK's most senior police chief said yesterday.

Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told a Metropolitan Police Authority conference on terrorism, where relatives of the July 7 victims were among hundreds of delegates, that cells were plotting further attacks.

"The level of threat has intensified and continues to intensify. The terrorists are here and they are going to go on attempting to kill people like you and people like me," he said. "The sky is dark. You may argue on the current legal position or British government's position, but we are in a different place than before the opening of this century.

"There are currently people in the UK as we speak who are planning mass atrocities and who will use suicide as a weapon. That's a different place to where we have been in my lifetime."

He said there had been a 75% increase in counter-terrorism operations by his officers since the July bombings. Three conspiracies had been thwarted since July 7, which had resulted in charges and deportations, he said, although he declined to comment further owing to ongoing court cases.

"Before July 7, my service and the security services believed themselves to be absolutely flat out against international terrorism," he said. "We are now further flat out than we could have ever imagined ourselves to be."

Referring to high-grade intelligence reports, Sir Ian said: "Andy Hayman [the Met's assistant commissioner in charge of anti-terrorism] would expect to get, before July, maybe one every month. Now, it's almost daily." The UK terrorist threat level has remained at "severe general" since late August and security chiefs believe that London is a prime target.