The case is due to be heard by an industrial tribunal next

The case is due to be heard by an industrial tribunal next month.Speculative reports have suggested that the officer would receive between £100,000 and £500,000 because the Met will be reluctant to allow the hearing to take place. But a Scotland Yard spokeswoman denied yesterday that any settlement had been made She said: “A writ was received .. in March 1999 and a hearing is expected in April. Proceedings continue and there has been no settlement.”Ms Nickell, a part-time model, was stabbed 49 times in front of her two-year-old son.Mr Stagg, who lived nearby and had a fascination for knives and bondage, emerged as a suspect and Lizzie James was brought in from Scotland Yard’s covert operations unit SO10 to gather evidence against him.During a “friendship” lasting many months, Mr Stagg told Lizzie that he had fantasised about the killing but he never admitted responsibility.At Mr Stagg’s trial, the judge refused to put the undercover officer’s evidence before a jury.Mr Justice Ognall told the Old Bailey that the honey-trap operation was “a substantial attempt to incriminate a suspect by positive and deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”.Although Lizzie James was not criticised, the case was said to have left her in “emotional tatters”. She resisted lucrative offers to sell her story and retired after 13 years working for the police.. The multi-million pound advertising campaign to woo tourists back to the country refects the Government’s alarm at the potential cost to Britain’s holiday industry of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. The multi-million pound advertising campaign to woo tourists back to the country refects the Government’s alarm at the potential cost to Britain’s holiday industry of the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
Visitors at home and abroad will be told that rural Britain is still open for business despite wide-ranging closures of tourist attractions because of the disease. Janet Anderson, the Tourism minister, will fly to the US today to underline the message that holidays in this country are unaffected by foot-and-mouth.Tony Blair and ministers agreed the moves as worries grew that the crisis could cost rural tourism £5bn, resulting in thousands of job losses.

Privately, they fear warnings to visitors to stay away from footpaths, farmland, country parks, forests and moorlands have been too effective, with country hotels and pubs, and market towns, facing a knock-on effect.The Government is also worried that images flashed round the world of “stay out” signs and of burning carcasses are deterring foreign tourists who think the whole country is in quarantine. They are particularly alarmed that tourism could still be suffering the after-effects of the outbreak long after it is brought under control.Final details of the advertising campaign were still being drawn up yesterday, but is likely to be launched tomorrow in national and regional newspapers. Parallel publicity drives are also planned for Britain’s main planned tourism markets, such as western Europe, the US and Australia.Mrs Anderson will meet with tourism chiefs in New York and give media interviews. Four million Americans usually travel to the UK each year, but their sensitivity to bad publicity was demonstrated when the Gulf War began in 1990, sending the number of transatlantic visitors plummeting out of fears of Iraqi terrorism. Ministers have been warned of US tourists cancelling holidays because they fear the foot-and-mouth outbreak means that food is unsafe to eat.A Culture Department spokeswoman said: “The US is one of our biggest markets.

The object is to dispel some of the myths, reassure them about the situation with foot and mouth, and tell them that the country is still open for tourism, that there are a lot of things they can do when they get here.”The Environment minister, Michael Meacher, who chairs the Government’s rural recovery task force,, which includes tourism, countryside and farming groups, as well as local authorities, has already begun talks on easing restrictions in the countryside with local authorities and organisations such as the National Trust and the British Waterways Board. He believes some of their moves, such as shutting country houses in disease-free areas and closing the entire canal network, are too draconian.At its second meeting today, the task force is expected to approve emergency help for rural businesses struggling to cope with the slump in revenue over the past month.The package is likely to include allowing them to defer business rates and VAT payments. Mr Meacher has also been pressing high street banks, whose representatives he met yesterday, to extend overdraft arrangements for country businesses.. The leadership of the National Farmers’ Union was yesterday accused of being out of touch with its members amid continuing fury over the extended slaughter programme. The leadership of the National Farmers’ Union was yesterday accused of being out of touch with its members amid continuing fury over the extended slaughter programme.
Some farmers claimed that the NFU’s relationship with the Government was too cosy amid a “crisis of leadership” in the areas worst affected by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.