Senior police officer will leave after London 2012 Olympics, Scotland Yard has announced

Sue Akers, who has been leading Scotland’s Yard investigation into phone hacking, is to retire after the Olympics, the Metropolitan police has confirmed.

The Met deputy assistant commissioner has been on the force for 36 years. She is in charge of the three linked inquiries into phone hacking, illicit payments and computer hacking, and has been leading inquiries into the potential involvement of intelligence services in relation to detainees held abroad.

Deputy commissioner Craig Mackey said Akers’s extensive detective experience would be missed but her decision to step down would not be allowed to affect the progress of the investigations.

Akers, who joined the Met in 1976, took control of Operation Weeting – the force’s second inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal – in January 2011. Operations Elveden, which is focusing on inappropriate payments to police, and Tuleta, which is looking at allegations of computer hacking, run alongside.

The fresh investigation came after detectives were handed a new dossier of evidence hinting that suspicious activities at the News of the World went beyond “rogue reporter” Clive Goodman.

The now-defunct tabloid’s royal editor was jailed along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in 2007 after they admitted intercepting messages.

Mackey said: “Considerable resources have been dedicated to investigating phone-hacking and related offences, and the officers on these operations will continue to follow all evidence of suspected criminality.

“The importance of the continuity of leadership will of course be taken into account when the future command structure for Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta is considered.”

Akers told the former Met commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson she had planned to retire after the Olympics even before the new phone-hacking investigation was launched, according to the Independent on Sunday. She is believed to be the longest-serving woman in the Met.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Deputy Assistant Commissioner [DAC] Sue Akers is due to retire later this year after 36 years’ service with the MPS.

“The DAC signalled her intention to retire this autumn when she took charge of investigations into phone-hacking and related corruption and computer crime.”

Akers, the former borough commander of Barnet, was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in 2007.

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Shadow ministers urge leader to put pressure on Cameron by promising EU membership poll if Labour win general election

Ed Miliband is being urged by a growing number of shadow cabinet members and senior allies to promise a dramatic in-out referendum on Britain’s future membership of the European Union if Labour wins the next general election.

Several figures in the party are pushing the Labour leader to make the pledge well before the next European elections in 2014 to outmanoeuvre David Cameron, who is under heavy pressure to commit the Tory party to a national vote on the issue. The Observer has been told that, after discussions with shadow cabinet members, Miliband is leaving the door open to a referendum – although he is keen to stress that the short-term focus and discussion must be on how to end the current euro crisis.

Allies of the Labour leader say pressure on him to make what would be a historic, high-risk pledge will increase following the appointment of Jon Cruddas, the MP for Dagenham and Rainham, as Labour’s policy chief.

Cruddas, a long-time opponent of the euro but otherwise pro-EU, is strongly in favour of an in-out referendum as a means of ending divisive arguments on Europe once and for all. Before his appointment, Cruddas told the People’s Pledge campaign for a referendum that the issue was one of “democracy”, and said a referendum pledge should be made “immediately, or as quickly as we can”. Cruddas is understood to think that such a move would help define Miliband’s leadership as bold and distinct from the New Labour years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

A ComRes opinion poll for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror showed how Europe is emerging as an issue that could be pivotal at the next election. The poll showed that 26% of Tories now say they will consider voting for the anti-EU Ukip compared to 11% of Labour supporters and 14% of Liberal Democrats. It also showed the extent of anti-EU hostility Labour would need to overcome if a referendum were held now, with 46% of voters saying they would vote to leave the EU compared with 30% who would vote to stay in.

If Labour did commit to a referendum, the party leadership would campaign vigorously in favour of a vote to stay in – a stance that would be supported by most Labour members.

A referendum would, however, leave the Tories divided, with the party leadership certain to campaign for a vote to remain in the EU, while many MPs and grassroots Conservatives would want to leave. One shadow cabinet member said: “We should have the confidence to say we think we can win this and get on with it. There are issues of timing, about when we make the decision and when one would be held. But it certainly is no longer heresy to talk about it.”

A spokesman for Miliband did not deny that the option was being considered, stressing merely that “our position is that we don’t think this is what Europe needs at the moment”.

Last week, in a sign that the Labour party is gradually preparing the ground for a referendum pledge, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said there could be a case in future, for calling a national vote when the current euro crisis was over and the shape of the new Europe was known. This followed similar comments from former cabinet minister and European commissioner Lord Mandelson.

On Thursday Peter Hain, a former Europe minister who stepped down from the shadow cabinet last week but who remains loyal to Miliband, said on BBC1′s Question Time that he believed the British people would deserve a say when the time was right. “I think the way things are going people in Britain probably want to make up their minds about whether to stay in Europe or not,” he said. “I don’t think we should be frightened about giving people a vote.”

Sources said that Hain would never have spoken out on the EU issue had he felt such remarks would have been unhelpful to Miliband, or significantly out of kilter with the Labour leader’s own views.

Miliband is said to be genuinely undecided and cautious – not least because of the possibility that the country could vote to leave the EU. He is also being advised by some that the move could be seen as crudely opportunistic at a time of crisis in the EU.

Others say that it could put off Liberal Democrats who might otherwise come over to Labour.

Labour enthusiasts for a referendum stress, however, that it would not in any way amount to a watering down of Labour’s commitment to the EU. On the contrary, it would be an opportunity to argue the positive case for membership during a national campaign – one that would also help the party build alliances with pro-EU elements of the business community.

While a minority of Labour MPs might want to leave the EU, highlighting divisions within Labour, they say a referendum would cause far deeper splits in the Tory party.

The People’s Pledge, which draws support from all political parties, has announced it will hold more local referendums in three Greater Manchester constituencies, Withington, Cheadle and Hazel Grove, asking people if they want a national vote.

The seats, one in Manchester and two in Stockport, are all represented by Liberal Democrat MPs: John Leech, Mark Hunter and Andrew Stunnell, respectively. This follows its local referendum in Thurrock last month where 89.9% of people who voted backed a referendum.

Ian McKenzie, director of the People’s Pledge, said: “The people of Thurrock set the pace last month by voting in huge numbers for a referendum. Voters in Manchester Withington, Cheadle and Hazel Grove now have the chance to quicken that pace towards a national referendum for the rest of us.”

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Fears ‘pay-to-stay’ scheme will drive thousands out of housing association and council properties

The government is introducing measures that could drive thousands of families out of social housing by removing any subsidy for their rent.

In what is being billed as a “pay to stay” scheme, Downing Street has swung behind plans to introduce a new household income threshold above which social tenants must pay full market rent. The government is expected to say that rent subsidy will be capped at a household income of £60,000, meaning, for example, a couple on £30,000 each could see their rent rise by about £70 a week.

The scheme, applicable to all housing association and council properties, is explicitly designed to make social housing primarily available to the poor.

The housing minister, Grant Shapps, has referred to the idea before, but Downing Street’s embrace of the proposal means it will now go ahead with a consultation paper next month.

The government says it is necessary to remove an unfairness in the system and to allocate scarce housing resources more efficiently. Critics will say the scheme will give wealthier families an incentive to buy their property at discounted rates, removing social housing from the market.

The government has been accused of driving some poor tenants from properties in wealthier inner-city areas by introducing a higher rent, set at 80% of the market rent. It has also introduced a so-called spare room tax, so that under-occupying social tenants of working age are docked £14 a week for one spare bedroom and £25 a week for two. No tenant will receive more than £500 a week in welfare payments, a measure that will affect larger families on housing benefit.

The welfare cap is, in polling terms, one of the most popular policies the government has introduced, and the new £60,000 household income cap for social housing tenants is likely to win equally wide support.

A No 10 source linked the two measures, saying: “It’s not right that high earners benefit from taxpayer-funded housing subsidy. Just as we have introduced a cap on housing benefit and welfare payments to make the system fairer, now we’re acting on social housing too.”

Government sources added that social housing should be regarded as a precious asset to be devoted to those most in need, not a cheap option for those who can afford competitive rents or their own property.

The government consultation, due to be launched next month by Shapps, will suggest a range of options for the threshold, with the lowest at £60,000.

Ministers have been looking at a range of proposals to make social housing more flexible, including the removal of so-called lifetime tenancies, replacing them with fixed-term tenancies. Social housing tenants can also no longer pass their homes to their children.

Government research shows that as many as 6,000 social rented homes in England are lived in by people who earn a combined income of more than £100,000, including Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union. At the proposed £60,000 threshold, ministers estimate as many as 34,000 social rented homes in England alone would be affected.

It is being stressed that no one would be evicted from their home, simply that they would have to pay higher rents.

The government claims the economic subsidy provided by sub-market rents for social housing is worth £3,600 a year on average, or £69 a week.

The total cost of this annual subsidy for those above the £60,000 threshold is £122.4m, and the annual subsidy for a £100,000 threshold is £21.6m.

Social rents are set on the basis of a formula linked to size of the property, its value and local earnings.

Labour has always argued that social housing should be for a mix of tenants and not seen as the preserve of the poor. The Liberal Democrats have curbed some government housing reforms, but could arguably support the measure as a legitimate restriction on middle-class welfare.

However, social housing has been increasingly taken up as an option by young professionals unable to afford to own their own home. The cost of the cheapest quarter of homes is now more than six times average household income and eight times in London.

The overall social housing budget was cut by more than 50% in the 2010 spending review, to £4.4bn, and the number of people on council waiting lists is now 1.8m, an 80% increase in the last decade.

In a report this week, Shelter, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation said the government was failing on five of its 10 key indicators: affordability of the private rented sector, help with housing costs, homelessness, housing supply and overcrowding.

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Gold-painted Airbus 319 brings flame to airbase to begin the 70-day relay around the country in the buildup to London 2012

The applause inside the gold-painted Airbus 319 was not the usual ironical salute for a bumpy landing at the start of a package holiday. Eight years after Sebastian Coe and his team set out to win the Games for London, the Olympic flame had touched down in Britain. Now the Games can begin.

This was, London mayor Boris Johnson proclaimed, the first time a naked flame had been permitted on a British Airways flight since they banned smoking on planes. And there indeed it sat, lit a week earlier by the rays of the sun at ancient Olympia but now, in quadruplicate, occupying two seats in the front row of the passenger cabin of BA2012.

It flickered bravely in four specially made lanterns, each 15in high, during the four-hour trip from Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelios airport ‚built for the 2004 Olympics, to the Royal Navy’s airbase at Culdrose, near Penzance.

The arrival in Cornwall preceded the start of the 70-day, torch relay around Britain, which will end on July 27, when the flame is used to ignite the cauldron in London’s Olympic Stadium.

Its in-flight attendants, alongside Johnson, included footballer David Beckham, Olympics organiser Lord Coe, the Olympics minister Hugh Robertson, Princess Anne, the president of the British Olympic Association, and a small posse of track-suited Metropolitan police officers.

On landing at Culdrose, where the flight was met by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minster, the flame was transferred to a ceremonial cauldron from which a torch will be lit early on Saturday morning and placed in the hands of Ben Ainslie, the triple gold medal winning sailor, the first of 8,000 runners. The second is Anastasia Swallow, an 18-year-old surfer from St Ives.

“So many of the people who are running will be members of the communities through which they’re carrying the torch,” Coe said. “Our market research says that at least nine million people will be watching, and many of them will be seeing their local coach, or teacher, or policeman.”

Or perhaps their local A-list celebrity. Beckham, a member of the 2012 team since its inception, made it clear that he would relish being a torch-bearer during the leg of the relay that passes through his native east London as well as being selected for Great Britain’s Olympic football team.

“I’ve never performed at an Olympic Games,” he said. “But to be part of this is something very special. We’ve got some very special people carrying the torch and it’s going to be a proud moment for them. If I was to be one of those carrying in London, it would be very special for me.”

Cynics like to point out that the torch relay was invented for “Hitler’s Games” in 1936, but torch relays played a part in the Ancient Olympics, sent out through Greek towns and villages to advertise the Games. In the modern era, the Olympic flame was re-introduced in 1928 by the peace-loving people of Amsterdam, eight years before the Berlin organisers dreamed up the idea of reconnecting Aryan supremacists with their supposed ancestors.

No one had thought to turn a flame into an Olympic symbol when London first held the Games at White City in 1908. On the second occasion, 40 years later, the torch arrived at Wembley stadium by a circuitous route in order to avoid a threat of disturbances in northern Greece, still enduring the aftermath of its civil war.

Its overland journey through Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and France was undertaken in a car provided by Rolls-Royce and specially geared to proceed at a stately 8mph. The destroyer HMS Bicester carried it from Calais to Dover, where it was welcomed by a crowd of 50,000. Then it promptly went out. Officially, it was relit from a spare carried from Greece. Unofficially, a cigarette lighter was hastily employed. Eventually it was carried into the stadium by John Mack, the 22-year-old president of the Cambridge University Athletic Club, as fine a specimen of blond, strapping manhood that could be found.

This time the designated hero figure might be Johnson but is more likely to be Steve Redgrave, the owner of gold medals from five successive Games, or perhaps an east End child of symbolic mixed ethnicity. According to Coe, discussions on the identities of the final torch-bearers have yet to begin, but Beckham is unlikely to be disappointed, just as he will almost certainly be granted his wish of a place in the football squad.

He was mobbed by expats and Greek guests during a reception at the British ambassador’s residence in Athens on Thursday night, but those suggesting that his selection for the team might be a ploy to use his celebrity to fill seats and sell shirts were being “a little bit disrespectful”, the 37-year-old former England captain said. “Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello and Sven-Goran Eriksson, they don’t pick you because they want to fill stadiums. I’ve always wanted to be picked for what I can bring to a team.”

He had been amused, he said, to hear himself introduced as “Sir David Beckham” by the announcer during the handover ceremony in the Panathenaic Stadium on Thursday. “It made me laugh,” he said. “It made everybody laugh, probably.”

Looking ahead to the next 10 weeks, in which the flame will make its way around Britain, Coe was sanguine about the threat of the sort of disruption created by pro-Tibet demonstrators when the Beijing torch visited London in 2008. “We live in a country where peaceful protest is very much a part of what we are,” he said before leaving Athens. “Thank goodness it is, in a way, as long as that doesn’t slop over into becoming a public order issue or endangering people who are enjoying their day.”

It had been instructive, he said, to watch the test event for the torch relay, which took place in Leicestershire last month. “It started at seven o’clock in the morning in Leicester and ended at five or six o’clock in the evening in Peterborough and went through little villages and small towns. In Melton Mowbray, they were four or five deep on the pavement, and that was just a test event with a cardboard torch and no actual flame. I don’t sense that there’s a widespread feeling that this is to be anything other than cherished. My gut instinct is that people will be quite protective.”

Amid a Cornish sea-fret on Friday night, Beckham was invited to step forward and light the cauldron. It is unlikely to be his last involvement.

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Chair of Office for Budget Responsibility says results would be deflation, soaring unemployment and rise in state debt

Greece leaving the euro could plunge Britain into a recession that would cause lasting damage to the economy, the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote, has said.

It could be as bad as the recession caused by the credit crunch and there would be a possibility that “you go down and you never quite get back up to where you started”, he said.

Chote – who as head of the independent OBR is Britain’s economic forecaster-in-chief – delivered his warning in a wideranging interview with the Guardian, in which he also said there was no evidence to show that cutting the 50p top rate of tax would promote growth, that current spending on public sector pensions was sustainable and that the rules preventing the OBR from costing opposition policies should eventually be lifted.

The OBR predicted that the economy would grow by just 0.8% in 2012 when it published its last forecast, at the time of the budget, but Chote said that if the eurozone crisis resulted in Greece leaving the euro, the outcome could be very much worse.

“The concern is that you end up with an outcome in the eurozone that creates the same sort of structural difficulties in the financial system and in the economy that we saw in the past recession, and that that has consequences both for hitting economic activity in the economy, but also its underlying potential,” he said.

“And it’s the latter which has particular difficulties for the fiscal position, because it means not just that the economy weakens and then strengthens again – ie, it goes into a hole and comes out – but that you go down and you never quite get back up to where you started.”

Chote said there were so many uncertainties around what might happen with Greece and the eurozone that trying to produce firm predictions was not “particularly helpful”. But the OBR has tried to quantify the impact of a disorderly sovereign debt restructuring in the eurozone on Britain and the figures make grim reading.

Britain would be plunged into recession for two years, according to the OBR analysis, published in its most recent economic and fiscal outlook report. There would also be deflation, and by 2013-14 unemployment would reach almost 11%, with debt subsequently reaching more than 90% of GDP.

Chote admitted these projections were of limited value because the eurozone crisis could develop in so many different ways.

“For example, one issue would be do difficulties in the eurozone make it cheaper or more expensive for the UK government to borrow,” he said. “If it makes investors more nervous about risk in general, it might make it more expensive. If they see the UK as more of a safe haven, it might make it less expensive.”

Although the chancellor, George Osborne, has presented his controversial decision to cut the top rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000 from 50p to 45p as one of the government measures that will promote growth, Chote cast doubt on this claim.

Osborne said in his budget speech that cutting the 50p rate would improve Britain’s competitiveness. But Chote said the OBR’s analysis was that there was no evidence to show that the measure would have a positive effect of that kind.

“We didn’t feel that there was a strong enough evidence base to say our long-term or medium-term view of the economy is now more optimistic than it was beforehand as a result of that measure,” he said.

He also challenged another government nostrum by saying the OBR did not accept government claims that public sector pensions as currently paid were unsustainable.

Although the public finances as a whole would come under pressure in years to come, the current public sector pension regime was “not where the problem is coming from”, he said. That was because OBR figures show spending on public sector pensions – even without reform – falling as a proportion of GDP.

Chote also said that eventually it would be a good idea for the OBR to be allowed to cost opposition policies. Currently the OBR is not allowed to do this, but the government is committed to reviewing the operation of the OBR in 2015 and Chote said this would be a good point to change the rules.

He also suggested that the current arrangements, which will allow Osborne to go into the election saying his plans have been approved by the OBR while the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, would not be able to make the same claim, were potentially unfair.

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