It has, almost instantly,” he pointed out.Joe Benton, Labour MP for Bootle, said many of his constituents had expressed their concern at the extremely high jackpots resulting from roll-overs.”Personally, I feel it’s crazy having jackpots rolling over like this. Even £10m is quite honestly far too much.”It would be far better if it was spread around to give more people a chance of winning something.”Mike Critchley, a manager for Barclays Bank who advises Littlewoods pools winners, said the maximum pools win had been £2.9m.”Jackpots of £17m are ridiculous,” he added “It’s a nonsense if it’s won by one person. The family who won last month in Blackburn obviously had children.”If it was me, I’d be frightened for the effect on them. Also the rules regarding inheritance tax would create horrendous problems for the next-of-kin.”However, David Rigg, communications director of Camelot, said that the odds of a large jackpot being won again by one person rather than several were “relatively remote”.”The jackpot might roll over three times once in two years. What I do know is that large jackpots generate increased sales which generate money for good causes,” he added.. The chairman of a travel firm which collapsed with more than £12m debts yesterday admitted fraudulent trading.

Valere Tjolle, 49, chairman of the Bath-based company Land Travel, which folded in the summer of 1992, was allowed bail after a judge at Bristol Crown Court adjourned the case until 10 February for pre-sentence reports to be prepared.
The court was told that hundreds of people had to cut short their holidays when the company went into voluntary liquidation. The total loss to travellers was around £6.6m, of which nothing has been repaid.No evidence was offered against the company secretary, Theresa McDermott, 37, who faced similar charges, and she was formally acquitted .A DTI inquiry into Land Travel’s affairs is continuing.. Tony Blair yesterday warned that a new Clause IV was crucial to election victory and underpinned his determination not to do “deals” over its wording by declining to make a specific pledge to renationalise British Rail. The Labour leader said there was “no more important task before us to ensure Labour’s electability” than the modernisation of the party constitution. He promised it would be the “foundation and the launching pad” of a campaign for national renewal.
Mr Blair’s remarks came as he announced that Labour would launch an all-out campaign to mobilise public support to halt the Government’s “absurd” plan to privatise the railways ahead of the election. The campaign is at the heart of a three-part strategy to build in 1995 on the defeat of plans to sell off the Post Office and raise value-added tax on fuel to 17.5 per cent.At the same time, Mr Blair promised to force the Tories to contain “pay and perks excesses” of top executives in privatised utilities and to halt social security changes curbing help for mortgage payers who lose jobs.Further opposition to the leadership on Clause IV became evident yesterday when half the 62 Labour MEPs signed an advertisement in the Guardian condemning the move.

But, in a warning to his party of the importance of change, the Labour leader told a London news conference: “No matter how discredited the Tories may be, it is about us, not them, that the public now want to know more.”On reports that the leadership was facing mounting demands from within trade unions for pledges to renationalise the rail and water industries as a price for support over Clause IV, Mr Blair said: “There is no question of deals or trade-offs.” He was mystified by the reports since “no one has sought any deal from me or anyone else in the Labour leadership”.The Labour refusal to make a specific BR pledge partly reflects optimism that its campaign will make it increasingly difficult for the Government to find private sector buyers for franchises. But Brian Mawhinney, Secretary of State for Transport, last night seized gleefully on what the Tories saw as a retreat, quoting the declaration of the former transport spokesman, Frank Dobson, to the October Labour conference: “We will reverse the privatisation of Britain’s railways. We will bring the railway syste m back into public ownership and control.” Pointing out the conference had endorsed that, he asked: “Is Labour committed to renationalisation, or not?”Despite repeated questioning on the BBC Today programme yesterday, John Prescott – one of a series of Labour spokesmen who has firmly committed the party to BR renationalisation – stopped just short of repeating such a pledge.Mr Blair said: “I am not about to start spraying around commitments as to what we are going to do when the Government carries through its proposals – if it carries them through. What we always face, when the Tories privatise something – as they privatised water – is you have got to review the decision once it’s done.”We don’t want the railways privatised. Our campaign is to prevent that privatisation happening, not to get into hypothetical questions as to what we would do this way or that way.”On executive salaries and mortgage help for the unemployed, Labour will seek to use parliamentary opportunities to foster Tory rebellions as it did over VAT. Amendments will be submitted to pensions, gas and Budget legislation in an attempt to give shareholders new rights and obligations to sanction executive pay rises.Meanwhile, Mr Blair signalled a possible shift away from a pre-general election commitment to a nationwide tier of English regional government.He said the installation of regional government would “depend on the support being there”..

A detective who played a key role in bringing Frederick West to justice has been taken off the case while claims that she tried to sell her story for up to £1m are investigated. It was Det Con Hazel Savage’s persistence after she became suspicious of West during child abuse inquiries that led to the murder investigation. The remains of 12 victims were found, mostly at his home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester.
But she has been transferred to other duties while an investigation is carried out into claims in a Sunday newspaper that she contacted Gloria Ferris, a literary agent, with a view to selling her story. It is alleged that she planned to retire after West’s trial and then publish a book. But West, 53, committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell in Winson Green prison, Birmingham, on New Year’s Day.Nigel Burgess, Deputy Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, said yesterday that Supt Colin Dixon of Wiltshire Police had been appointed to investigate the allegation. He added: “WDC Savage has not been suspended, but is now engaged on duties unconnected with the Cromwell Street inquiry.” It is understood she has been transferred to general CID duties in Gloucester while the investigation, expected to take several weeks, is carried out. Det Con Savage, 50, was awarded the MBE in the New Year Honours List and has received five commendations during her long career in the police.The body of West has now been released by the Birmingham Coroner, but there is uncertainty about where his funeral will take place and whether he will be buried or cremated.Many people in his home village of Much Marcle, Herefordshire, are unhappy about him being buried there.