Labour holds two Westminster seats

THERE were swings towards Labour today as the party held its two seats in the parliamentary by-elections.

Stephen Doughty claimed Cardiff South and Penarth, winning 9,193 votes, while Lucy Powell won in Manchester Central with 11,507 votes.

Neither results were unexpected but encouragingly for Labour there were swings towards the party in both constituencies. In Manchester Central, the swing away from the Liberal Democrats was 16.77%.

Labour slams police vote promotion

VOTERS were not given enough information about the police and crime commissioner elections, Labour claimed today as turnout was expected to be as low as 10% in some areas.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the elections for the new commissioners had descended in to a shambles, with many voters taking to Twitter to describe the low turnout at their polling stations.

In Wiltshire, the first force area to declare, the overall turnout was 15.8% as Tory candidate Angus Macpherson, a magistrate, won after a second round of voting ahead of Labour’s Clare Moody.

Peer pursues claims over abuse slur

FORMER Conservative politician Lord McAlpine has commenced legal action against a long list of organisations and individuals who wrongly linked him to a paedophile ring after coming to a £185,000 settlement with the BBC.

Lawyers representing the peer said action is being prepared against ITV’s This Morning and a large number of Twitter users – including the wife of the Commons speaker – who identified him in connection with false sex abuse claims.

It comes after the BBC agreed a libel payout with Lord McAlpine after airing a botched Newsnight investigation into child abuse at a North Wales care home.

Israel hints at ground offensive

ISRAELI aircraft pummelled the rocket arsenals of Gaza militants and signalled a ground invasion might be growing near as troops, tanks and armoured personnel carriers massed near Israel’s southern border with the Palestinian territory.

Fighting between the two sides escalated sharply yesterday with a first-ever militant attack on the Tel Aviv area, menacing Israel’s heartland.

No casualties were reported, but three people died in the country’s rocket-scarred south when a projectile slammed into an apartment building.

£66bn invested in banks may be lost

More than £66 billion of taxpayers’ cash invested in RBS and Lloyds may never be recovered, a spending watchdog warned today as it criticised the Treasury for making a series of costly mistakes in its handling of Northern Rock.

Officials were slow to react to the banking crisis because they lacked the necessary skills and understanding, according the public accounts committee.

That made losses on the Northern Rock rescue, which auditors earlier this year estimated would cost £2bn, difficult to avoid, MPs said.