Alan Yentob the BBC’s director of television said: Julia’s feel for drama her drive and energy were

Alan Yentob, the BBC’s director of television, said: “Julia’s feel for drama, her drive and energy were legendary in her 30-year programme making career at the BBC. “There can be no more visible and enduring tribute to her distinguished track record in creating high quality, popular drama than BBC1’s EastEnders.” Jane Harris, the series producer, said: “EastEnders owes everything to Julia who, with Tony Holland, was the creator and founder of the programme.”. Alan Milburn, the Minister for Health, said the scale of the losses, revealed by a government efficiency scrutiny, was staggering – enough to pay for 14,500 heart bypass operations or 6,500 kidney transplants. A crackdown on prescription fraud to save the NHS pounds 100m a year was announced by the Government yesterday. Patients who evade the pounds 5.60 prescription charge will be liable to a fixed penalty fine and a new criminal offence will be introduced for doctors, pharmacists or others who cheat the system.

“Redwood is a liability; he has been shown he cannot deliver his support and he is not attractive to people in the country,” said one Tory MP.Baroness Thatcher appeared to have helped in that: devoting a good deal of effort to twisting the arms of Redwood supporters to switch to Mr Hague She said last night: “It’s been a good day.”. Brian Mawhinney, the party Chairman, has offered to continue under the new leader.There was dismay among the Clarke supporters, but Hague supporters wanted revenge against Mr Redwood. If I have to, I will put some noses out of joint.”Earlier, he said he would be asking Mr Clarke to serve under him, but the former chancellor responded shortly afterwards: “I’ve explained to William that long before the campaign started, immediately after the general election, I had decided that I wouldn’t serve in the Shadow Cabinet if I did not become the leader.”This has absolutely nothing to do with the events of this leadership campaign, which we have all set behind us and which was a perfectly reasonable campaign.”The party will also lose the services, on the front bench, of Michael Heseltine, another veteran and the former Deputy Prime Minister, who had campaigned hard for a Clarke win.Mr Hague is expected to award his two key backers – Peter Lilley and Michael Howard – with the top jobs in his Shadow Cabinet, with Mr Lilley taking the shadow Chancellor’s post and Mr Howard shadow Foreign Secretary.Gillian Shephard, who had backed Mr Lilley in the first round, before switching to Mr Hague, will also get the reward of a top job There was speculation she will become shadow Home Secretary. God is a Conservative after all.”Mr Hague, 36, and a man who was outside the Cabinet just two years ago, is the youngest Conservative leader since Pitt the Younger, 24, in 1783.He told the Central Office meeting: “Be prepared for some changes in this party because the way we conduct ourselves is going to change. The days of disunity, of factions and wings, and groups within groups, and parties within parties, must now come to an end.”If anyone doubts I mean it, I say this to them – just try me I won’t always be as friendly as I look. When the result was announced by Sir Archie Hamilton, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, one of Mr Hague’s party fans shrieked with delight in the corridor outside committee room 10, shouting: “Yes, yes, yes.

Francis Maude, one of the Hague campaigners, said he suspected some MPs had woken up yesterday to realise that such deals were not the way to elect a leader. “This is the first time in many years,” he said, “when, faced with a choice between something stupid and wrong, and something sensible and right, the Conservative Party has made the correct decision.”The result was also welcomed by Paddy Ashdown, who invited disaffected Tories to “find a welcome home with the Liberal Demo- crats”.In the Commons Chamber, Labour MPs greeted the news by cheering and waving their papers in the traditional parliamentary gesture of delight.However, the Opposition welcome did not diminish the equally genuine pleasure of Mr Hague’s supporters. He led yesterday’s test of constituency and party opinion by three to two for Mr Hague, yet that ballot was patently spurned by the party’s 164 MPs.A statement from the office of John Redwood, whose “marriage from hell” brought Mr Clarke a mere six additional votes, said there would be no immediate statement from him. William Hague last night scored a surprise, runaway victory in the final ballot for the Conservative leadership, becoming the youngest leader of the party for more than two centuries. Formally taking the leadership from John Major at a full party meeting in Conservative Central Office, Mr Hague appealed for an end to “bellyaching” and promised to put his leadership to a special conference of party members in a secret ballot.
“They can back me or sack me,” he said, “because without the endorsement of members in the constituencies we will not be able to embark on a challenge so great as the one that faces us.”The result of the final round of the leadership ballot, announced to MPs in a Commons committee room little more than an hour earlier, gave Mr Hague 92 votes to Kenneth Clarke’s 70, with two abstentions.The delight of some MPs was marred for others by the snap announcement of Mr Clarke, the former chancellor of the exchequer, that he would not serve in Mr Hague’s Shadow Cabinet and would be returning to the back benches for the first time in 26 years.The bitterness of his defeat was underlined by the fact that Mr Clarke had led in every other ballot of MPs – and, more significantly, of the party’s grassroots activists.

Mr Aitken has been accused of letting his hotel bill be paid by Prince Mohammed, son of the Saudi king, during the Paris visit, which, if proved, would be in direct contravention of rules on ministerial conduct.Giving evidence on oath at the High Court last week, Mr Aitken insisted that the bill had been paid by Mrs Aitken who had travelled from Switzerland to Paris.The family had travelled from London to Paris, and then Mrs Aitken had gone on with Victoria to Switzerland as Mr Aitken arrived in Paris.He had given the same version in the past to the then prime minister, John Major, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, and MPs in the Commons.But Ms Harris’s signed statement claims that BA documentation shows that Mrs Aitken and Victoria had booked to travel directly from London to Geneva by air, and had travelled back the same way without a Paris stopover.. He had described it as “ladies’ day” at the court.Mr and Mrs Aitken, a Yugoslav-born former economist, married in l979 after being introduced by the mother of Said Ayas, a Saudi business associate. Mr Aitken had described how, at one of his first meeting with his ” bubbly” Lolicia, she had stated she was determined to marry him. He recalled: “As we stepped on to the dance floor, after an acquaintance of 15 minutes, she said ‘I would like you to know that you’re the man I am going to marry’ I said ‘don’t be ridiculous’, but she has antennae. “The couple also have a son, William, 14, who, Mr Aitken said in court, asked him ” Daddy, what is a pimp?” after the Guardian accused him of pimping for Arab businessmen.Neither Mr Aitken, nor his wife were in court yesterday – _the first time they had failed to turn up during the 12-day hearing.Mr Aitken is suing the newspaper and the television company, makers of the World in Action programme, over claims that he was financially dependant on powerful Saudi interests, and that he pimped for Arabs.A British Airways investigator, Wendy Harris, is believed to have provided details of travel arrangements for Mrs Aitken and the couple’s daughter, Victoria, during the crucial period when Mr Aitken stayed at the Ritz in September l993.

As his lawyers were locked in discussion with lawyers for the Guardian and Granada over a settlement, Mr Aitken and his wife, Lolicia, announced that they were parting for “personal reasons”.
He said: “Recent events have shattered me and broken our family.”The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury and defence procurement minister intended to call his wife, their twin daughters, Victoria and Alexandra, 17, and his mother-in-law over his controversial stay at the Paris Ritz hotel. The former Tory Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken last night announced that he was separating from his wife on the same day that his High Court libel action was dramatically adjourned. The warning that the Government was considerably worse off than previously forecast was seen as an attempt to soften up the financial markets and Labour’s back benchers for higher taxes and a tightening of the screw on public spending. The dramatic shortfall emerged as Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a series of changes to the assumptions used by the Treasury in drawing up its economic forecasts.