Tony Blair tried yesterday to allay fears that the Government is planning to create a Big Brother-style “super-database” after criticism from civil liberties groups. The Prime Minister told a seminar at Downing Street that “perfectly sensible” plans to share information held by government departments had been misrepresented.

A damning report has highlighted the plight of families faced with caring for loved ones in Harrow, while the council makes swingeing cuts to social care services. Since last May, the new Conservative administration has racked up home care charges by raising the weekly cap to £250 per week and charging residents a maximum of £15 an hour for care.

The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (FPLD) has called for more help in developing a “good local support” network to help children and adults with learning difficulties. Its co-director, Barbara McIntosh, also called for more research to be carried out into ways to promote social inclusion

The Government is exacerbating GP shortages and damaging patient care through “indefensible” cuts to valuable programmes aimed at guiding experienced GPs back to work, the British Medical Association (BMA) and Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) have said.

For ten years Suresh Deman has cashed in on Britain’s ‘rights’ culture with astonishing effect. The lecturer has brought at least 40 cases to employment tribunals, usually claiming race discrimination against universities, won £194,500 in compensation, and cost the taxpayer more than £1million.

{mosimage}But his days playing the system appear to be over. In a rare case brought by the Attorney General, Mr Deman has been declared a ‘vexatious litigant’ and banned from bringing further tribunal claims.

Under a High Court ‘restriction of proceedings’ order, Mr Deman must now seek permission from the Employment Appeals Tribunal to lodge any future cases.

However, the action has come too late for the publicly-funded academic institutions unfortunate enough to have received a job application from the 52-year-old finance lecturer.

Five universities or colleges made payouts to ‘settle’ actions to avoid the expense of fighting cases, and four paid damages. The cost to the taxpayer easily runs into seven figures.

Mr Deman, who is married and comes from a Hindu background, has U.S. citizenship and describes himself as Indian-American.

He was a teaching fellow at Pittsburgh University and first got a taste for litigation when he was sacked in 1987 and won £23,000 damages after bringing a successful claim for race discrimination.

The Home Office was rocked by a new debacle over prisoners last night as it emerged that a British gangster whose convictions for violent offences abroad were not entered on the police national computer committed an execution-style killing on his return to Britain.

Up to one in three mental health patients are being over-prescribed drugs, says the Healthcare Commission. A report found mental health patients were more likely to have problems with medicines than those in other trusts.

An official has been suspended over the Home Office’s failure to update police records of Britons convicted abroad. Some 27,000 case files, including 540 for serious or violent offences, were not put on the police computer.

Six men are going on trial accused of plotting to murder people in alleged bombing bids. Muktar Said Ibrahim, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, Hussain Osman, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Adel Yahya are standing trial at Woolwich Crown Court in east London charged with conspiracy to murder two weeks after the July 7 bombings in 2005.

A new weapon against MRSA is being developed with more than £3 million of funding from the Wellcome Trust, Britain’s leading research charity.