David Ruffley

MINISTERS WERE at the centre of a row last night over the use of taxpayers' money to fund television documentaries.

The Government has spent almost pounds 2 million to fund programmes that are all but indistinguishable from regular shows, The Sunday Telegraph has established.

But unlike normal documentaries, the programmes are commissioned by ministers with the purpose of showing their policies or activities in a sympathetic light.

Fury at Pounds 12 grub for police cell lags

PRISONERS kept in police cells to ease jail overcrowding get six times more spent on their meals, it emerged yesterday.

Cops are given Pounds 12 a day to feed each inmate they lock up - but jail meals cost Pounds 2.

And lags in police cells are often allowed to choose from local TAKEAWAYS.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw admitted even more could be spent in exceptional circumstances.

Prisoners were held in police cells 61,000 times last year - meaning their food cost taxpayers at least Pounds 610,000 extra.

POLICE fork out more per head on takeaway meals for prisoners than the combined sum spent on food for NHS patients and frontline soldiers.

The Ministry of Justice has admitted more than £700,000-ayear is spent on feeding inmates held in police stations because of the lack of places in prisons.

Some £12-a-day is lavished on each convict in police cells, six times as much as the amount spent in jails.

Much of the £12-a-day is known to go on burgers, fried chicken and chips from

fast-food chains.

FEEDING convicts held in police stations because of a shortage of prison cells has sent food bills soaring.

Serving grub at a local nick costs up to six times as much as it does in jails - £12 a meal compared with £2 a day.

Last year the total bill came to £732,000 - £600,000 more than if prison cells had been available.

Tory David Ruffley, who uncovered the figures, said: "Taxpayers will be appalled by the waste."

Home Office blunder leads to fears for informants' safety

Confidential records and sensitive intelligence on tens of thousands of the country's most prolific criminals have been lost in a major breach of data security at the heart of Whitehall.

Scotland Yard is investigating the loss of the information, which was taken from the Police National Computer and entrusted by the Home Office to a private consultancy firm.

DETAILS of up to 127,000 criminals have been lost in a major security scandal at the Home Office, the Daily Express can reveal.

A computer memory stick containing names, addresses and offences of more than 40,000 persistent offenders and every prisoner currently locked up has vanished.

The information watchdog yesterday said that mishandling such important data was a "toxic liability" and called the fiasco "deeply worrying".

The details were lost on Monday but the Home Office kept the blunder a secret and only admitted it yesterday when quizzed by journalists.

THE number of children repeatedly committing crimes has soared by two-thirds since Labour came to power.

Ministry of Justice figures show that since 1997 the number of "persistent young offenders'' has increased from 9,868 to 16,512.

The number of offences they committed has nearly doubled to more than 30,000 a year.

AS RESPECTABLE readers of the The Times, you almost certainly pay your road tax on time, buy insurance for your car and register your vehicle correctly with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). Sadly, a growing number of drivers flout the rules, and it is the rest of us who are picking up the tab.

POLICE officers are being forced to spend up to half their working day on paperwork rather than patrolling the streets, it was revealed yesterday.

Despite Government claims about reducing bureaucracy, Home Office figures showed that a tide of socalled 'incident-related paperwork' is keeping officers off the beat.

The term refers largely to forms relating to arrests or interventions such as stop-and-search.

Labour rakes in speed cash

SPEEDING tickets are bringing in £200 a minute- a rate four times higher than when Labour came to power.

The huge rise in income has followed a massive expansion in the number of speed cameras on our roads.

The Home Office hs revealed that 1.8million tickets are now being issued each year, or 4,850 a day.

In 1997, only 713,000 fixed penalty notices were handed to drivers.