Up to 100 eurosceptic Conservative members of parliament are expected to back an amendment this week criticising the legislative plans unveiled by the coalition government last Wednesday because they did not include a bill for a referendum on Britain’s continued EU membership.

Ministers have been ordered not to join the rebels but will be allowed to abstain, a sign of the extent of the divisions that have dogged Cameron’s party for decades.

Three senior ministers, including Education Secretary Michael Gove, said on Sunday they were ready to abstain.

Gove went further, becoming the most senior Conservative figure to publicly confirm that he would back Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union if there were a vote based on the current terms of the relationship.

“I’m not happy with our position in the European Union but my preference is for a change in Britain’s relationship with the European Union,” said Gove, seen as a possible rival to Cameron. “Life outside would be perfectly tolerable, we could contemplate it, there would be certain advantages.”

EUROPE SQUABBLE

Cameron came to power in a coalition with the pro-Europe Lib Dems in 2010 with a plea to his party to “stop banging on about Europe” – a squabble that helped to bring down his predecessors Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

But the prime minister has come under increasing internal pressure after the party suffered in local elections this month at the hands of the anti-EU UK Independence Party.

Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union and hold a plebiscite on EU membership in 2017, but eurosceptics want a vote now.

Cameron’s plans depend not only on securing more favourable EU membership terms but also on forming the next government after elections in two years. The Conservatives currently trail the opposition Labour Party by around 10 percentage points in surveys.

Gove and other ministers said they fully supported Cameron’s stance, but that has done nothing to dim the internal clamour.

Junior Conservatives in parliament would have free rein on whether to back the proposed amendment, but ministers had been instructed to abstain, a government source said.

One unnamed minister told the Sunday Telegraph the fact that Cameron could not even force his cabinet colleagues to vote against the motion showed the prime minister’s weakness.

Former senior minister Liam Fox, who ran against Cameron in 2005 for the Conservative leadership, told Sky News he would back the amendment, but described it as “an element of frustration” rather than an overt criticism of the prime minister’s position.

While more than 500 business leaders backed Cameron’s renegotiation policy in April, saying a new, looser relationship would boost the British economy, others fear his referendum pledge has created uncertainty that will deter investment.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

Up to 100 eurosceptic Conservative members of parliament are expected to back an amendment this week criticizing the legislative plans unveiled by the coalition government last Wednesday because they did not include a bill for a referendum on Britain’s continued EU membership.

Ministers have been ordered not to join the rebels but will be allowed to abstain, a sign of the extent of the divisions that have dogged Cameron’s party for decades.

Three senior ministers, including Education Secretary Michael Gove, said on Sunday they were ready to abstain.

Gove went further, becoming the most senior Conservative figure to publicly confirm that he would back Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union if there were a vote based on the current terms of the relationship.

“I’m not happy with our position in the European Union but my preference is for a change in Britain’s relationship with the European Union,” said Gove, seen as a possible rival to Cameron. “Life outside would be perfectly tolerable, we could contemplate it, there would be certain advantages.”

EUROPE SQUABBLE

Cameron came to power in a coalition with the pro-Europe Liberal Democrats in 2010 with a plea to his party to “stop banging on about Europe” – a squabble that helped to bring down his predecessors Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

But the prime minister has come under increasing internal pressure after the party suffered in local elections this month at the hands of the anti-EU UK Independence Party.

Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union and hold a plebiscite on EU membership in 2017, but eurosceptics want a vote now.

Cameron’s plans depend not only on securing more favorable EU membership terms but also on forming the next government after elections in two years. The Conservatives currently trail the opposition Labor Party by around 10 percentage points in surveys.

Gove and other ministers said they fully supported Cameron’s stance, but that has done nothing to dim the internal clamor.

Junior Conservatives in parliament would have free rein on whether to back the proposed amendment, but ministers had been instructed to abstain, a government source said.

One unnamed minister told the Sunday Telegraph the fact that Cameron could not even force his cabinet colleagues to vote against the motion showed the prime minister’s weakness.

Former senior minister Liam Fox, who ran against Cameron in 2005 for the Conservative leadership, told Sky News he would back the amendment, but described it as “an element of frustration” rather than an overt criticism of the prime minister’s position.

While more than 500 business leaders backed Cameron’s renegotiation policy in April, saying a new, looser relationship would boost the British economy, others fear his referendum pledge has created uncertainty that will deter investment.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

Hall, 83, who was best known for hosting the family TV show “It’s a Knockout” and was still working for the BBC as a soccer radio commentator until recently, admitted 14 counts of indecent offences against young girls over two decades, with the youngest victim aged just nine.

“Whether in public or private, Hall would first approach under friendly pretences and then bide his time until the victim was isolated,” said Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor in northwest England.

“He can only be described as an opportunistic predator.”

Hall’s admission follows a scandal centered on the late Jimmy Savile, an eccentric former BBC TV presenter who police said in January had committed sex crimes on an unprecedented scale and was suspected of more than 200 offences.

The revelations about Savile, one of the BBC’s biggest stars during the 1970s and 1980s and who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, rocked the public broadcaster and heralded subsequent allegations against a procession of ageing, high-profile names.

On Wednesday, William Roache, the world’s longest serving TV soap actor according to Guinness World Records, was charged with two counts of rape against a 15-year-old girl.

Roache, 81, who has played womanizer Ken Barlow in the ITV soap opera “Coronation Street” since its first episode in 1960, is accused of attacking the girl in 1967.

While neither the cases of Hall nor Roache were directly linked to the Savile case, the police inquiry into sex crimes has shocked Britons.

Last week, celebrity publicist Max Clifford, 70, whose clients have included “The X Factor” reality TV creator Simon Cowell, was charged by police after he was accused of 11 offences of indecent assault between 1966 and 1985.

Australian children’s entertainer Rolf Harris, 83, who once painted the queen’s portrait, former BBC radio DJ Dave Lee Travis, 67 – praised by Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi for keeping her entertained during her years of house arrest – and comedian Freddie Starr, 70, are among those arrested.

Clifford and others who have spoken out publicly or through their lawyers have denied any wrongdoing.

Media commentator Roy Greenslade said he expected the successful prosecution of Hall would lead to even more women coming forward with allegations.

“My first thought on hearing this string of arrests was that the police couldn’t possibly effect prosecutions that would succeed because of the length of time between the offence having happened and now,” he told Reuters.

Greenslade said the historic offences reflected the fact people in the 1960s and 1970s had ignored “sexual shenanigans”.

“It does seem to me that we as a society in the 1960s, we didn’t let this concern us too much,” he said.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Richard Dart, 30, who was arrested in July just weeks before last summer’s London Olympic Games, discussed attacking Royal Wootton Basset, the town which became known for its repatriation ceremonies for British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dart had believed his “silent” conversations with fellow conspirator Imran Mahmood, 22, conducted in his flat by typing on a Microsoft Word document on a laptop and then deleting the text, would keep them safe from detection and surveillance.

But over four months, detectives and a computer forensics expert pieced together fragments of the deleted text which they deciphered from 2,000 pages of computer code.

The text showed they talked about targeting “M15 or M16 heads”, a reference to Britain’s foreign and domestic spy agencies, as well as the attack on Royal Wootton Bassett.

“This was a prosecution that was based on the most high-tech and sophisticated evidence gathering available,” said Mark Topping, specialist counterterrorism lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service.

Mahmood, Dart, who at one time worked as a security guard at the BBC, and Jahangir Alom, who worked for two years as a Police Community Support Officer, admitted last month to engaging in preparation for terrorism.

The son of teachers from Weymouth, a seaside town in southern England, Dart gained fame when he appeared in the BBC film “My Brother the Islamist” which documented how he had been converted by Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most prominent radical Muslim cleric.

He and Alom, 26, travelled to Pakistan in July 2011, after the documentary appeared earlier in the year, in the hope of receiving training from the Taliban or al Qaeda. But they returned a month later having failed in their aim.

They then enlisted the help of fellow Briton Mahmood, who received training in Pakistan. He was detained when he arrived back in Britain when officials found traces of high explosives on his rucksacks, but was not arrested.

Dart was given a six-year prison term and Mahmood was jailed for nine years and nine months.

Alom, who was a part-time soldier but left for medical reasons before joining the police, was jailed for four and a half years.

His wife was jailed for 12 months last December for possessing terrorist material and her brothers were imprisoned in February last year for being part of a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange. All were also British citizens.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Senior police and security chiefs argue that unless they are given new powers to monitor online activities, militants and crooks will exploit advances in communication technology such as Facebook and Skype.

Critics say the plans, closely watched by other countries facing the same dilemma, represent an attempt to secure the West’s most far-reaching surveillance powers and are a gross infringement of privacy.

Nick Clegg, leader of the centre-left Lib Dems, the junior partner in the coalition government, said the proposed Communications Data Bill, which had been expected before parliament next month, would now “not happen”.

“I’m afraid I think that it is not necessarily workable nor proportionate,” said Clegg, who newspapers reported had been coming under pressure from activists within his own party, with its traditional focus on civil liberty.

His opposition will anger some senior figures in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, not least Home Secretary Theresa May who has been a vociferous advocate of the new powers which she argues is vital.

It also comes with the Conservatives, traditionally viewed as strong supporters of law and order, and Lib Dems appeared at odds over attempts to deport Abu Qatada, a radical Islamist cleric deemed a national security risk.

“NOT GOING TO HAPPEN”

“What people have dubbed the snoopers’ charter … that’s not going to happen,” Clegg said on his weekly phone-in on the LBC radio station.

“The idea that the government pass a law which means that there would be a record kept of every website you visit, who you communicate with on social media sites, that’s not going to happen, it’s certainly not going to happen with Lib Dems in government.”

A spokesman for Cameron said police and security agencies had to be able respond to technological change and discussions would continue as progress on the issue was important.

Currently, British mobile and landline telephone providers must retain records for 12 months, in line with an EU directive.

Requests by authorities for details of a person’s phone contacts can be approved by a senior police or intelligence officer without the need for a warrant.

The proposals would have expanded these powers to force the retention of data about online activities, such as which web sites individuals looked at and who they were talking to on social networks, although the authorities insisted they were not interested in the actual content.

Senior counter-terrorism and spy figures have warned their work will suffer unless action is taken.

On Wednesday, Charles Farr, Director General of Britain’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, said advances in communications was making “terrorism easier to conduct and safer for terrorists”.

“Legislation and some degree of technology is required to enable us to level the playing field,” he said.

(Editing by Toby Chopra)

Senior police and security chiefs argue that unless they are
given new powers to monitor online activities, militants and
crooks will exploit advances in communication technology such as
Facebook and Skype.

Critics say the plans, closely watched by other countries
facing the same dilemma, represent an attempt to secure the
West’s most far-reaching surveillance powers and are a gross
infringement of privacy.

Nick Clegg, leader of the centre-left Liberal Democrats, the
junior partner in the coalition government, said the proposed
Communications Data Bill, which had been expected before
parliament next month, would now “not happen”.

“I’m afraid I think that it is not necessarily workable nor
proportionate,” said Clegg, who newspapers reported had been
coming under pressure from activists within his own party, with
its traditional focus on civil liberty.

His opposition will anger some senior figures in Prime
Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, not least Home
Secretary Theresa May who has been a vociferous advocate of the
new powers which she argues is vital.

It also comes with the Conservatives, traditionally viewed
as strong supporters of law and order, and Liberal Democrats
appeared at odds over attempts to deport Abu Qatada, a radical
Islamist cleric deemed a national security risk.

“NOT GOING TO HAPPEN”

“What people have dubbed the snoopers’ charter … that’s
not going to happen,” Clegg said on his weekly phone-in on the
LBC radio station.

“The idea that the government pass a law which means that
there would be a record kept of every website you visit, who you
communicate with on social media sites, that’s not going to
happen, it’s certainly not going to happen with Liberal
Democrats in government.”

A spokesman for Cameron said police and security agencies
had to be able respond to technological change and discussions
would continue as progress on the issue was important.

Currently, British mobile and landline telephone providers
must retain records for 12 months, in line with an EU directive.

Requests by authorities for details of a person’s phone
contacts can be approved by a senior police or intelligence
officer without the need for a warrant.

The proposals would have expanded these powers to force the
retention of data about online activities, such as which web
sites individuals looked at and who they were talking to on
social networks, although the authorities insisted they were not
interested in the actual content.

Senior counter-terrorism and spy figures have warned their
work will suffer unless action is taken.

On Wednesday, Charles Farr, Director General of Britain’s
Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, said advances in
communications was making “terrorism easier to conduct and safer
for terrorists”.

“Legislation and some degree of technology is required to
enable us to level the playing field,” he said.
($1 = 0.6550 British pounds)

(Editing by Toby Chopra)

Thatcher, who died aged 87 on Monday, deeply divided Britons
and while some have paid warm tributes to the achievements of
her right-wing Conservative governments, others said her
privatisation of swathes of industry had destroyed communities.

That opposition was manifested in a Facebook campaign to
propel the witch song, from the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz”, to
number one in the charts, provoking anger from politicians of
all parties, right-leaning media, and members of the public.

The Official Charts Company said 52,605 copies of the song
had been sold, but that was about 6,000 shy of the chart-topping
track “Need U” by British DJ Duke Dumont and singer A*M*E.

The top 40 best-selling singles are played weekly on BBC
Radio but the broadcaster said on Friday it would only pay a
five-second clip of the song as part of a news item, leading to
accusations it had caved into political pressure.

“I understand the concerns about this campaign. I personally
believe it is distasteful and inappropriate,” BBC
Director-General Tony Hall said in a statement.

“However, I do believe it would be wrong to ban the song
outright as free speech is an important principle.”

Meanwhile, a rival campaign by the former premier’s
supporters to promote the 1979 single “I’m In Love With Margaret
Thatcher” by punk band the Notsensibles fared less well,
debuting in 35th place after sales of 8,768.

Since the death of the “Iron Lady”, many of the divisions
which characterised her time in office from 1979 to 1990 have
resurfaced.

LONDON “PARTY”

In addition to the witch song campaign, several hundred
people held a “party” to mark her death in central London,
chanting, drinking champagne, and waving an effigy of the leader
they despised.

More protests are expected on Wednesday when a ceremonial
funeral with military honours is held at St Paul’s Cathedral
after her coffin is taken on a procession through central London
- a tribute usually reserved for senior royal family members.

“This needs to be a fitting event for a very great lady,”
Francis Maude, a minister who served under Thatcher and is
responsible for the ceremony’s arrangements, told Sky News.

“It’s a free country and people must obviously be free to
express their views. I would simply ask that they respect the
wishes of the mourners of which there will be very many for this
event to take place in a dignified and seemly way.”

But the cost to the public purse of the ceremony, estimated
by commentators at 10 million pounds ($15.4 million), has been
widely criticised at a time the Conservative-led coalition
government is making deep spending cuts to cut a budget deficit.

According to a poll, 60 percent of those surveyed thought it
should not be funded by taxpayers. Tim Ellis, the Anglican
Bishop of Grantham, the eastern English town where Thatcher was
brought up, said the grand ceremony was unwise.

“In a context where there is great ill-feeling … about her
legacy, to then actually have a situation where we seem to be
expecting the nation to glorify that with a 10 million pound
funeral, I think any sensible person would say that’s asking for
trouble,” he told BBC TV.

Police have said they are prepared for any trouble which
could come from anti-capitalists and anarchists with a long
record of violent protest in the British capital.

David Ison, the Dean of St. Paul’s who will officiate at the
ceremony, said he could understand “the hurt and the anger that
people want to express about the legacy” but said her funeral
should be respected.

“Mrs Thatcher is not a witch or a monster,” he told BBC TV.
“She’s a human being like the rest of us and part of what of we
need to do in a funeral is put things aside.”

($1 = 0.6507 British pounds)

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

The London School of Economics (LSE) said three BBC
journalists – including the respected reporter John Sweeney -
joined a student society trip at the end of March, posing as
tourists to make a film about the secretive state.

The university said the students had been told “a
journalist” would accompany them, but it had not been made clear
the BBC’s aim was to use the visit to record an undercover film
for “Panorama”, a current affairs programme.

“This was not an official LSE trip,” Craig Calhoun, the
Director of the LSE, wrote on Twitter. “Non-students & BBC
organised it, used the society to recruit some students, &
passed it off.”

Tensions in the Korean peninsula have escalated in recent
weeks, with North Korea threatening nuclear war against the
United States and South Korea.

Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of the LSE’s student
union, told Sky News the students were only told of the BBC’s
intentions at a very late stage, with one saying she was only
informed when they were on the plane to North Korea.

The university said Sweeney, who graduated from the LSE in
1980, had posed as a history PhD student at the university to
gain entry to the country even though he currently had no
connections with the institution.

“BBC staff have admitted that the group was deliberately
misled to the involvement of the BBC in the visit,” the LSE said
in an email to staff and students released to the media.

“It is the LSE’s view that the students were not given
enough information to enable informed consent, yet were given
enough to put them in serious danger if the subterfuge had been
uncovered prior to their departure from North Korea.”

“STUDENTS WARNED”

It said the LSE’s chairman had asked the BBC to pull the
documentary, which is due to be shown on Monday, but the
broadcaster’s Director-General had refused.

“The students were all explicitly warned about the potential
risks of travelling to North Korea with the journalist as part
of their group,” a BBC spokesman said on its website.

“This included a warning about the risk of arrest and
detention and that they might not be allowed to return to North
Korea in the future.”

Sweeney also defended his actions on Twitter. “The LSE put
out a statement which we dispute,” he said.

“We did go to North Korea Undercover. The North Korean
agency unhappy. LSE students knew and understood what was at
stake for them before trip. They consented.”

Panorama’s website said Sweeney had spent eight days
undercover “inside the most rigidly-controlled nation on Earth”.

“Travelling from the capital Pyongyang to the countryside
beyond and to the De-Militarised Zone on the border with South
Korea, Sweeney witnesses a landscape bleak beyond words, a
people brainwashed for three generations and a regime happy to
give the impression of marching towards Armageddon,” it said.

The LSE said aspects of North Korea were legitimate objects
of study in several academic disciplines but said the BBC may
have seriously damaged the university’s reputation, and
jeopardised future visits to North Korea and other countries.

“BBC story put LSE students at danger but seems to have
found no new information and only shown what North Korea wants
tourists to see,” Calhoun wrote.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

The three men were convicted as part of a wide-ranging
police investigation begun two years ago into claims journalists
from Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World newspaper had
hacked into mobile phone voicemail messages.

That inquiry has led to dozens of arrests of current and
former staff at News International, the British newspaper arm of
Murdoch’s News Corp., and has been widened to examine
claims of illegal payments to public officials.

The long-running scandal forced the closure of the News of
the World and has called into question the judgment of British
Prime Minister David Cameron, who was friends with several of
Murdoch’s senior executives.

Richard Trunkfield, 31, who worked at a high-security prison
in central England, gave information to the Sun about Jon
Venables, who was aged 10 when he and another child killed a
toddler in 1993 in one of the most infamous murders in Britain
in recent times.

The prison officer, who had contact with a Sun journalist
between 10 and 15 times, receiving 3,500 pounds ($5,300)in the
process, was handed a 16-month jail sentence at London’s
Southwark Crown Court.

“It is most assuredly not for individual prison officers to
take it upon themselves to contact the press to reveal
information about a defendant in circumstances such as those
before the court today, still less to enrich themselves in the
process,” said the judge, Justice Adrian Fulford.

Alan Tierney, 40, an ex-police constable based in Surrey to
the south of London, was paid 1,250 pounds for details of the
arrest of former England soccer captain John Terry’s mother on
suspicion of shoplifting, and the arrest of Rolling Stones star
Ronnie Wood, who was held on suspicion of beating up his lover.

Tierney was jailed for 10 months while a second former
police officer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was
sentenced to two years in prison. All three men had pleaded
guilty to misconduct in a public office.

Last month, April Casburn, 53, a senior British
counter-terrorism police officer, became the first person to be
convicted and jailed by detectives looking into the
phone-hacking claims and other related offences.

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International and a
close confidante of Murdoch, and Cameron’s former media chief
Andy Coulson, are among those who have also been charged with
crimes relating to the inquiries.

They are due to go on trial later this year.

The two men were convicted as part of a wide-ranging police
investigation begun two years ago into claims journalists from
Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World newspaper had hacked
into mobile phone voicemail messages.

That inquiry has led to dozens of arrests of current and
former staff at News International, the British newspaper arm of
Murdoch’s News Corp., and has been widened to examine
claims of illegal payments to public officials.

The long-running scandal forced the closure of the News of
the World and has called into question the judgment of British
Prime Minister David Cameron, who was friends with several of
Murdoch’s senior executives.

Alan Tierney, a police constable based in Surrey to the
south of London, and Richard Trunkfield, who worked at a
high-security prison in central England, had both pleaded guilty
to misconduct in a public office last month.

Tierney, 40, was paid 1,250 pounds ($1,900) by the Sun for
providing details of the arrest of former England soccer captain
John Terry’s mother on suspicion of shoplifting and the arrest
of Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood, who was held on suspicion of
beating up his lover.

The former policeman was jailed for 10 months.

“This case demonstrates that behaviour of this kind will not
be tolerated in the police service,” said London’s Metropolitan
Police, which is leading the inquiries.

Trunkfield, 31, provided information about Jon Venables, who
was aged 10 when he and another child killed a toddler in 1993
in one of the most infamous murders in Britain in recent times.

The prison officer, who had contact with a Sun journalist
between 10 and 15 times, receiving 3,500 pounds in the process,
was handed a 16-month sentence.

“It is most assuredly not for individual prison officers to
take it upon themselves to contact the press to reveal
information about a defendant in circumstances such as those
before the court today, still less to enrich themselves in the
process,” said the judge, Justice Adrian Fulford.

Last month, April Casburn, 53, a senior British
counter-terrorism police officer, became the first person to be
convicted and jailed by detectives looking into the
phone-hacking claims and other related offences.

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International and a
close confidante of Murdoch, and Cameron’s former media chief
Andy Coulson, are among those who have also been charged with
crimes relating to the inquiries.

They are due to go on trial later this year.