So far this year a litre of fuel has jumped from 75.63p to 77.28p a litre, or £3.51 a gallon, according to Arval PPH, a car fleet owner.Danny Clenaghan of Arval, said: “Tensions in the Middle East have resulted in the cost of crude oil staying well in excess of $30 per barrel and that has led to rising forecourt prices. This is a golden opportunity for the Government to win itself a lot of friends by reducing fuel taxes.”The AA motoring organisation said that the price was approaching levels that contributed to the mass fuel protests in 2000.Richard Freeman, an AA spokesman,urged the Government to take motorists into account in the forthcoming Budget but conceded that a cut was unlikely. “The idea of increasing fuel tax would be unwise given that, in the short term, fuel prices will continue to rise while there is uncertainty over a war,” he said.Ray Holloway, of the Petrol Retailers’ Association, said 80p a litre was a “psychologically important level” that the Treasury would be keenly aware of. “Even to raise duty in line with inflation would not be a clever political decision,” he said.. A record 110,700 new asylum seekers arrived in Britain last year, the Home Office revealed today.

Stephen Downing, whose 27-year jail sentence for the murder of a woman in a Bakewell cemetery was overturned by the Court of Appeal has said he is angry and disappointed that the police cannot rule him out as a suspect. Officers wanted to question him about three confessions he is alleged to have made since his release from prison, including one recorded on audio tape.Mr Downing protested his innocence yesterday. “I am disappointed but not surprised really at the outcome because I was never really sure what could materialise after 30 years,” he said. I’m a innocent man, no matter who says what – my only crime was being aged 17 and being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he added.His supporters insist that the three alleged confessions were as unreliable as his original admission to the sexual assault and murder of Mrs Sewell, made when he had a mental age of 11.But Derbyshire Police held more store by it in their reinvestigation report, which also questioned the methods of Don Hale, the campaigning former editor of the Matlock Mercury who was awarded the OBE for his work to secure Mr Downing’s release.At the time of the murder, Mr Downing was a groundsman at the cemetery and claimed he found Mrs Sewell’s part-naked body covered in blood She had been bludgeoned to death with a pickaxe. Mr Downing has always claimed the victim bloodstained his clothes as he knelt to help her.Derbyshire police delivered a thinly-veiled attack on Mr Hale after their report was published. The reinvestigation team asserted a number of witnesses quoted by Mr Hale claimed never to have spoken to him and that their version of events did not tally with the one he delivered in his book on the Downing case, A Town without Pity.Mrs Sewell’s widower David called on Derbyshire police to prosecute Mr Hale for perverting the course of justice – although that is unlikely.Mr Hale hit back claiming he was being “shot, here, as the messenger.” Speaking outside his his home in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, Mr Hale said: “I have interviewed over 100 people during the course of this work and I can’t remember now who said what when, or where. The biggest barrier here is the passage of time.”Mr Hale must have found little succour from his old newspaper, though.

The front page of yesterday’s Mercury declared there were: “Anomalies found in the book ” and “gaping holes in Don Hale’s case”.. Robert Del Naja, a member of the group Massive Attack and one of the most influential figures in British dance music, has been arrested as part of a police investigation into child porn on the internet. He was released on bail but his computer equipment was seized for further investigation. Police also confiscated class A drugs, believed to be ecstasy tablets.A founder member of the group, which is best known for the album Blue Lines and the single “Unfinished Sympathy”, Mr Del Naja has recently emerged as a leading figure in Britain’s anti-war movement. He said in a statement after his arrest: “I have never looked at child pornography in my life I am fully co-operating with the police. I have total faith in the justice system.”The musician was arrested by officers from Avon and Somerset police’s Operation Ricochet team, which is part of the nationwide Operation Ore inquiry into internet child porn.

Operation Ore began after US authorities seized credit card details of thousands of people who had used American child porn sites. The FBI passed 7,272 names to British police.A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said: “A man in his 30s from Bristol was arrested in connection with allegations of class A drugs and internet porn offences.”Mr Del Naja, 36, was the driving force behind the band’s fifth album, 100th Window, which is in the Top 10.. Teachers won an important legal victory yesterday when the law lords ruled that they had the right to refuse to teach violent pupils. Neither of the youths, known as Pupil P and Pupil L, can be named for legal reasons.Pupil P was expelled from a south London comprehensive in 2000 for violent and abusive behaviour. The law lords were unanimous in ruling that the teachers’ threat of industrial action after the headteacher instructed them to teach the boy was legitimate. A dispute over what workers were obliged to do was concerned with their terms and conditions of employment and therefore amounted to a genuine trade dispute.Pupil L, represented by Cherie Booth QC, the Prime Minister’s wife, was expelled from a Hertfordshire school in 2001 for his involvement in a gang attack on a boy.Ms Booth argued that Pupil L had been subject to “humiliating and degrading” treatment when he was taught in strict isolation after being returned to the school on appeal.