In addition, it counts hundreds of schools, hospitals and local authorities among its customers already, even if the institutions have to pay for the service. The best way forward is to set about creating the transparent and consistent environment in which the private sector can operate efficiently but in which the non- market goals are equally respected. Fair regulation, not “deals between the boys” on the eve of a party conference. If this is Labour in opposition, how might it act in power?Labour has made much of its modern image. Unlike its statist predecessors, Labour wants to do more “steering” and less “rowing,” to employ the phrase coined by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in their book, Reinventing Government.But to do this, it must make sure its rules are the same for all companies – giant BT, the dominant telephony service provider; Telewest, the biggest of the cable operators; even tiny International CableTel, an operator with a paltry 25,000 customers in Britain.Cable has already shown it is willing to submit to public service criteria, even where they are not mandated.

Small wonder that BT likes the idea.Labour’s central objective is political. It wants an information highway that reaches out to all members of the community. It now concedes, too, that the marginal cost of linking up hospitals, schools and the like would be negligible next to the pounds 15bn it says it would spend building a national all-fibre optic network.Moreoever, BT would get paid every time a school or hospital used the service, just as it is now paid every time a customer makes a telephone call. It acknowledges that the rules would have to be changed in order to allow it to offer concessionary terms to public institutions.

Chris Smith, Labour’s shadow heritage secretary and a leading light of Labour’s information highway policy, made it clear that he is ready to talk to the cable operators, to see how they might fit into the information superhighway model Labour envisages.BT, too, is now putting a different spin on the “deal”. Indeed, the present government is itself likely to let BT in eventually, and probably as early as 2002, just as Labour is promising.The difference is that Labour was willing to promise, in exchange for BT’s public spiritedness, to grant the freedom, whereas the Government talked only of a “review” of the restrictions some time around the turn of the century.Even this “deal” looked less than airtight last night. This week’s announcement, then, could hardly have come as a surprise.Second, BT has been lobbying for the right to compete with the cable industry using its telephone network, ever since it decided to abandon its own cable licences in 1990 No surprise here, either. First, Labour has stated openly since the summer that it was minded to see restrictions on BT lifted, allowing the company to offer broadcasting across its own network.

Already the issues look far less clear than first reports might have suggested.It is worth remembering two things. But what about the cable companies, already building a pounds 10bn fibre-optic network to which hundreds of schools have been connected?Rather than create a policy framework in which all companies know the rules, and where firm regulation is married to open competition, Labour has now opened itself to accusations that it is stitching up deals behind closed doors – dangerous enough for governments in power, but a desperately risky approach for a party not yet elected.But just how concerned should we be about the deal as it now stands? After all, since the Labour leader Tony Blair made his first reference to the agreement, at the party conference on Tuesday, the spin doctors have been hard at work. Why should BT get special attention? Admittedly it is a company of international reputation, and provides proof even to many of Labour’s own traditional supporters that privatisation can – sometimes – work. For a start it is oddly (and uncomfortably) reminiscent of the “pick-the-winners” strategy that won favour with the interventionist politicians of the Seventies, and from which Labour has been retreating. By giving in to BT’s loud and long lobbying, and promising to allow the telephone giant into entertainment broadcasting by 2002 at the latest, Labour says it can meet its prime objectives in the development of an information superhighway: guaranteed access for schools, libraries, universities, hospitals and local authorities, provided free of charge by BT.
The aim, say Labour’s young technocrats, is to avoid the creation of an information elite, able to pay for the privilege of membership in the information society, and an information ghetto, cut off from the network.The goal is laudable but the method faulty. There is more than a whiff of old Labour in new Labour’s pact with BT, whatever the distinctly high-tech, modern features of the increasingly controversial deal.

That compares with 9 per cent last year and 8 per cent in 1993.Mr Manning said the reasons for the rise were not entirely understood, but it was probable that it reflected both better targeting of offenders by police and changing drinking habits associated with the introduction of all day opening.. In the first six months of this year there were 8,057 positive tests.So far this year around 15 per cent of those asked to undergo tests had either failed, refused or been unable to provide one. Officers will continue to exercise their discretion in cases where drivers are injured.An extra 200 breathalyser kits have been issued to traffic garages and police stations throughout London to put the new policy into practice.Similar policies have already been adopted by several other forces.Mr Manning revealed that positive tests in the Metropolitan Police area rose from 8,840 in 1993 to 11,251 in 1994. Our message is quite clear – if you have the slightest accident you are liable to be breath-tested.”A pilot scheme has been operating in south-east London since the beginning of the year.