Defence Secretary Des Browne has said maintaining Trident was the "overwhelmingly sensible" decision for MPs to make when they vote on the government's White Paper. 

The White Paper had set out the nature of the threat that the country is "likely to and probably will" face in coming years.  Mr Browne went on to say: "Once you accept that that threat is there, you commit to a deterrent."

A vote is to be held in March, asking MP's whether the Trident nuclear weapons system should be replaced.  The Trident system is due to go out of service in 2024 and Ministers are to select a replacement after a three-month consultation. 

Commons leader Jack Straw said: "We have a responsibility not to cop out of this but to come to a decision, and we shall.  "We're talking about defence of the nation here, not the Shops Act or fox hunting." 

Mr Blair has said that Trident is an essential part of Britain's ability to defend itself.

With an estimated cost of up to £25bn, anti-nuclear campaigners say the money would be better spent elsewhere and they fear the government has already decided to go ahead with replacing Trident. 

Kate Hudson, chairman of CND said a white paper could "close down" the wider debate.

Lord Falconer is to ask for a more "common sense" approach as to how human rights laws

are interpreted by public bodies.   In a speech to be given later at Manchester University Lord Falconer will say the Human Rights Act needs to be explained to public rights workers, due to the Act being "clouded by nonsense". 

Conservative leader David Cameron has said the Tories would scrap the Act altogether, replacing with a British Bill of Rights to protect UK citizens.

National toll roads are set to be introduced by the year 2016.  The number of vehicles on British roads had gone up from 26 million in 1997 to 33 million.

Last week a transport study suggested road charges could halve congestion.

Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander has said:  "Drivers needed first-hand experience of road pricing through pilot schemes in Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere within the next five years.

Shadow chancellor George Osbourne said the Conservatives were "sympathetic" to road pricing. 

Mr Osbourne added: "I think road pricing should be linked directly to improvements in transport infrastructure and should not be used as an excuse to increase the overall level of taxation."

Corporal punishment refers to the use of physical punishment to correct behaviour. The term derives from the Latin corpus, meaning body.

A 2005 survey of nearly 1,700 parents by the ParentMail website found 20.8% would welcome the restoration of corporal punishment in schools, with 44.4% saying they would like it to be an option.

Although the various methods of corporal punishment were steadily outlawed throughout the 20th Century - the use of the birch in schools was famously abolished in 1948 - it was not until after the 1967 Plowden report, 'Children and their Primary Schools', that the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools was treated as a major issue, and in 1986 it was outlawed altogether.
It was not until 1998 that corporal punishment was outlawed for the few remaining independent schools that retained the practice.

Phil Williamson, head of the private Christian Fellowship school in Liverpool, went to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the ban on corporal punishment in independent schools, which took effect in 1999.  The campaign was supported by the parents at the school and backed by 40 other Christian schools across the UK.  The court agreed that there was nothing to prevent schools using corporal punishment on children with the consent of their parents.  But the UK court of appeal finally rejected the bid in 2005.

Mr Williamson feels the last 20 years have proved the legislation to be "an absolute disaster".   "Teachers are less safe, there is more bad behaviour and violence in schools and that translates into more bad behaviour in society.  I think Ofsted and the politicians are out of touch with what is really going on in schools."

In 1989 the Elton Committee said:  "There is little evidence that corporal punishment was in general an effective deterrent either to the pupils punished or to other pupils."

In 1998 Baroness Warnock, of the School Standards and Framework Bill Committee said: "We are in a position to prevent corporal punishment in schools. We are probably not in a position to prevent corporal punishment in the home. It is not that corporal punishment is good in one case and bad in the other. It is bad in all cases."

Ref: BBC News, Politics.co.uk

Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, has called for an increase in the prescription of diamorphine (also known as heroin) on the NHS.

The British Medical Association say Afghanistan's opium-poppy harvest should be used to tackle an NHS shortage of diamorphine.

Diamorphine is used to relieve pain after operations and for the terminally ill. Due to a shortage doctors are having to rely on less effective drugs.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA, said: "If we actually were harvesting this drug from Afghanistan rather than destroying it, we'd be benefiting the population of Afghanistan as well as helping patients and not putting people at risk. There must be ways of harvesting it and making sure that the harvest safely reaches the drug industry which would then refine it into diamorphine.  It should be possible, and really government and the international groups that are in Afghanistan should be looking at this and saying how can we convert it from being an illicit crop to a legal crop that is medicinally useful."

Dr Jonathan Fielden, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine in Reading, said: "The biggest difficulty will be changing the views of those countries, particularly the US, where this drug is banned. That will take a great cultural change to let them realise that a very cheap drug, easily produced, beneficial to patients, can be brought back in and used, rather than being seen as a drug of abuse."

The Afghan authorities and the UK government are against using the poppy crop to produce medicines and are stepping up their efforts to destroy new crops.

Diamorphine is still in limited supply more than two years after the government was warned there were serious shortages.  The amount being used in the NHS is a fraction of what it was before the current problems with supplies began.
 

Across the UK there are 38 Children's Hospices with five more planned.

These facilities provide a caring and comforting atmosphere for terminally ill children and their families.

Unbelievably, Hospices in England only receive an average of less than 5 per cent of their funding from the government.

The dedicated staff rely on public donations to provide this desperately needed service.

Services include children's palliative care, specialist respite care, terminal and emergency care, 24-hour telephone support, practical help, advice and information and bereavement support for all family members. Children's hospices work with families from all faiths, cultures and ethnic backgrounds and fully respect the importance of religious customs and cultural needs that are essential to the daily lives of each family.

Without this dedication many of our children would not be able to pass through this final period with the dignity and care they deserve.

For more information on Children's Hospices please click HERE.

Peter Brighouse has submitted the following  E-petition to No10:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to organise government support and finance for the children's hospices. To sign up please click HERE.