Inflation in the UK has fallen to 4.2%. Get the full data over time - and see how it compares to pay
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UK inflation dropped to a six-month low of 4.2% in December, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed today - down from 4.8% for November 2011.

More precisely Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.2% for December. When looking at this drop it is important to remember that in September this year, when the CPI stood at 5.2%, it had never been higher in recorded history.

The Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.8% down from 5.2% in November.

There are some important differences between these two main ways the ONS use to measure inflation. The government prefers the Consumer Price Index, which also includes services, housing, electricity, food, and transportation, but the Retail Price Index covers more items. The RPI includes housing costs and is used for many pay negotiations and used to be used for pension payments. We've included both here - just click on the links on the spreadsheet. You can get the full list of items in the inflation basket here.

We have also added in pay data - and you can see how inflation is racing ahead of average earnings.

We have gathered all the data for inflation since June 1948. Let us know what you can do with this data.

DATA: UK inflation since the 1940s - CPI and RPI
INTERACTIVE: how we visualised the data

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• Inflation
• Economics
• Quantitative easing
• Financial crisis
• Deflation
• Economic policy
• Bank of England
• Government data
• Office for National Statistics
• George Osborne
• Mervyn King

London hearing to decide whether radical cleric should be freed after extradition to Jordan was blocked by Europe court

A radical Muslim cleric described as a grave threat to Britain's national security could walk free on Monday.

Abu Qatada, who is being held at Long Lartin high-security prison in Worcestershire, will apply to be released on bail as he fights deportation to Jordan.

Lawyers for the home secretary, Theresa May, are expected to oppose bail while British diplomats continue to seek assurances from the Jordanian authorities that evidence gained through torture would not be used against him.

Such evidence is the main reason Qatada, once described by a Spanish judge as "Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe", won an appeal to the European court of human rights in January. The judges ruled that sending Qatada back to face terror charges without such assurances would deny him his right to a fair trial and be a "flagrant denial of justice".

May has vowed Qatada, held for six and a half years, will be kept behind bars while she considers all legal options to send him back. The Home Office has said he "poses a real risk to national security".

At a hearing in central London, Qatada's defence team will urge an immigration judge to release him. The judge, Mr Justice Mitting, has said: "Six and a half years of detention requires the eligibility for bail to be considered urgently.

"I accept that it's possible that negotiations with the Jordanian government may produce a rapid solution but past experience ... leads me to believe that is likely to be an unrealistic expectation."

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) will hold a full bail hearing on Monday morning.

January's verdict is the first time the Strasbourg-based court has found that an extradition would be in violation the right to a fair trial as required by the European convention on human rights, which is enshrined in UK law under the Human Rights Act.

The home secretary has three months to lodge an appeal with the court's grand chamber.

The Henry Jackson Society thinktank has said the ECHR ruling "undermines national security" while the former home secretary David Blunkett said Qatada was "extraordinarily dangerous and we don't want him on our streets".

Qatada, 51, is also known as Omar Othman. He featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the 9/11 bombers.

Since 2001, when fears of the domestic terror threat rose in the aftermath of the attacks, he has challenged and ultimately thwarted every attempt by the government to detain and deport him.

Law lords ruled almost three years ago that he could be sent back to Jordan and Lord Phillips, now president of the supreme court, said torture in another country did not require the UK "to retain in this country, to the detriment of national security, a terrorist suspect".

But the European went against that judgment, agreeing with a 2008 decision of the UK court of appeal that there were reasonable grounds for believing Qatada would be denied a fair trial in Jordan.

• Abu Qatada
• European court of human rights
• Torture
• Human rights
• Human Rights Act
• Foreign policy
• Terrorism policy
• UK security and terrorism
• Global terrorism
• Theresa May

Bonus Season report estimates pay and bonuses worth more than 10 times average earnings could raise £1.7bn a year

Companies that pay huge bonuses could be punished by having to pay extra corporation tax, the TUC has said. The move could generate billions of pounds for the exchequer if it is applied to pay and bonuses worth more than 10 times average annual earnings (£26,200). The TUC said it could raise around £1.7bn a year if it was confined to the banking and financial services sector. Companies are taxed on profits after expenses, which included staff costs. A TUC report, Bonus Season, uses data from the Labour Force Survey to show the total pay and bonuses to staff earning more than £250,000 is £6.8bn. It found that over a third of employees earning more than £250,000 a year in the UK work in banking and finance.

• Executive pay and bonuses
• Tax and spending
• TUC
• Trade unions

Harry Potter star describes Nick Clegg 'whipping boy' of Tories and says he will vote Labour

Daniel Radcliffe has announced that he is no longer a supporter of the Liberal Democrats after emerging as one of the party's most high-profile celebrity backers ahead of the last British general election, and will probably vote instead for Labour under its "genuinely leftwing" leader, Ed Miliband.

In what is turning into a hemorrhaging of support for the Lib Dems among a list of celebrity backers it unveiled in the run-up to last year's vote, the star of the Harry Potter franchise described party leader Nick Clegg as a "whipping boy" for the Conservatives. He also hit out at the "homophobia" of some of the US Republican presidential candidates.

Colin Firth, another actor and A-list Hollywood star declared in December that he was ending his support for the Lib Dems. The party has also lost the support of Bella Freud, the fashion designer, and Kate Mosse, the author.

Radcliffe made the comments in an interview that will be published on Monday in the latest issue of Attitude magazine, the same forum he used in 2009 to announce that he would "almost certainly" be using his first ever vote in a general election to vote Lib Dem.

Asked if he is happy with the Lib Dems's place in the coalition, he said: "No, of course not. Nick Clegg asked to meet me after that Attitude interview and we talked about issues such as gay rights and faith schools.

"I was initially supportive. For me it was good that the Lib Dems would be fighting our corner. But he has become a whipping boy and it seems to me that he has been totally used by the Tories - anything they don't want badly reflected on them they reflect on to him."

The actor, who is estimated to have a £30m fortune, cited "so many concessions" by the Lib Dems' on education and taxes. He added: "I think, if you make a lot more money than most people - like I do - you should pay more tax and subsidise people who work just as hard as you, but don't earn as much."

Radcliffe, whose current film, The Woman in Black, was estimated to have made $21m at the US box office during its weekend opening, said he "will probably be going to Labour".

He said: "From what I've seen of Ed Miliband, I really like him and he speaks for what I believe in. I think he's genuine, genuinely leftwing, and will act as such if he gets in."

The actor — who is straight — also used the interview to call for gay marriage, relationship education in schools that would cover both gay and straight relationships, and attacked some of the US Republican presidential candidates.

Radcliffe said that he wished more educational establishments, especially in the US, were not in thrall to religion, stating: "I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation. We need sex education in schools.

He went on to say that he has been "disgusted, amazed, stunned" by candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination, such as Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann, who have been openly hostile to gay rights.

"But they disgusted me less than candidates like Rick Perry, who made that ridiculous advert wearing 'the Brokeback jacket', and I think pretend to be homophobic just to win votes." .

Asked if he wished that Barack Obama would publicly back gay marriage, he replied: "Yes, I do, but can he really? Of course he's in favour of it, but he has to be careful about saying so. I'd rather have someone like him in the White House than the alternative."

• Daniel Radcliffe
• Liberal Democrats
• Nick Clegg
• Labour
• Ed Miliband
• Conservatives
• Harry Potter
• Republican presidential nomination 2012
• United States
• Republicans
• US elections 2012
• US politics

Commonwealth countries of Antigua-Barbuda and St Vincent-Grenadines among those supporting blocking British ships

A group of Caribbean countries have agreed to back Buenos Aires and block any ships flying the Falklands flag from docking in their ports, Argentina's foreign minister Hector Timerman has said.

They include the Commonwealth countries of Antigua-Barbuda and St Vincent-Grenadines, along with Cuba, Nicaragua and Dominica, Timerman said.

Argentina received strong support for its blockade at a meeting in Venezuela of a left-leaning bloc of South American and Caribbean nations.

The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, said: "It is time for Latin America to decide sanctions against this mistaken power that pretends to be imperialist and colonialist in the 21st century.

"I think we have to apply more forceful things. We have to talk about sanctions."

Argentina hopes that diplomatic and economic measures will pressure Britain to comply with UN resolutions encouraging both countries to negotiate the islands' sovereignty. Britain has refused so far.

Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, said: "If it should occur to the British empire to attack Argentina militarily, Argentina won't be alone this time.

"Venezuela is no power, but we've got some weapons and the will to face any imperialist aggression."

Tensions have risen as the 30th anniversary of Argentina's invasion nears.

• Falkland Islands
• Americas
• Military
• Defence policy
• Foreign policy
• Argentina

Three gloomy reports will put pressure on Bank of England to pump £50bn more into economy when it meets this week

The beleaguered state of the UK economy has been underlined by three separate reports revealing that Britain's one million small and medium-sized businesses were facing their most difficult year since the recession of 2009.

Sharp declines in bank lending to smaller firms, and a collapse in confidence across the sector outlined in the reports will add to concerns that the economy is about to enter a second recession in three years, analysts said.

The gloomy reports will also put pressure on the Bank of England to pump an extra £50bn into the economy when it meets on Thursday.

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has indicated he could support an extra boost to the £270bn quantitative easing programme if there were evidence of a further tightening in bank lending and a deterioration in the economic outlook.

Several other members of the nine-strong monetary policy committee are expected to vote in favour, including the economist Adam Posen, who believes an extra £75bn could be justified.

The European Central Bank has also faced calls to ease monetary policy to offset cuts in public spending and rising unemployment across the eurozone. The bank, which has allowed European banks to borrow £500bn since the start of the year in response to the deepening euro crisis, could cut interest rates further to ease borrowing costs, analysts said.

Most economists expect the Bank of England to sanction further quantitative easing despite positive figures from the services and manufacturing sectors last week that showed a steady expansion over December and January.

According to the Markit/CIPS UK services PMI poll, services firms, which make up more than two-thirds of the economy, were more optimistic about the outlook and had the strongest growth in new business since last July.

Businesses in the sector, which includes hotels, restaurants, banks and transport, gave cheer after official figures showed the economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2011 but they hired new workers at the fastest pace for almost four years.

However, a report by economic forecasters the Ernst & Young Item Club is expected to dampen the mood. It said bank lending this year would be the lowest since the recession of 2009.

The Item Club expects total bank loans – after expanding by an estimated 4.3% in 2011 – to contract by 2.2% in 2012, with just 0.9% growth forecast in 2013.

Bank lending is considered a crucial measure of economic health and a fall this year could cripple many businesses that have struggled to keep their doors open since the recession.

Neil Blake, its senior economic adviser, said: "We have been warning about the impact bank de-leveraging could have on the economy for some time, but this is the first time there will be an annual contraction in total loans since 2009, when the UK economy was still suffering from the immediate effects of the global financial crisis."

A separate report, by the accountancy body ICAEW, found that business confidence had fallen at a record rate, and firms were planning to cut investment.

Job creation plans also stayed subdued, though small and medium-sized businesses were more likely than larger ones to hire people in the next 12 months, the report said.

Michael Izza, chief executive of ICAEW, said: "At the moment it is hard to see where growth will come from and the chancellor, George Osborne, needs to use the forthcoming budget to give businesses reasons to be more confident about the future – and unlock potential investments."

Osborne is understood to favour a boost to quantitative easing by the Bank of England to offset his austerity measures.

He came under fire last week from opposition MPs for sticking to his plans after the Institute for Fiscal Studies said he could spend at least an extra £10bn without undermining confidence in the UK's fiscal outlook.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said: "It is particularly worrying that business expectations for capital investment have fallen for a third successive quarter. Low business confidence is hitting Britain's future growth potential and discouraging firms from investing for the long-term, with over half of businesses surveyed operating below capacity.

"Vince Cable's promise that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills would be the 'department of growth' has been exposed as little more than empty rhetoric, as ministers have failed to adopt an effective plan for growth or take meaningful steps to support businesses and our key sectors.

"Labour's five-point plan would get the economy moving again, including by bringing forward long-term investment projects and temporarily reversing last year's damaging VAT rise."

• Small business
• Economics
• Economic policy
• Bank of England
• Recession

Websites now pose bigger risk than prisons, says report, prompting call to clamp down on 'unregulated' material

The internet now plays a part in most, if not all, cases of violent radicalisation and is a more significant recruiting ground than prisons, universities or places of worship, according to report by a cross-party group of MPs published today.

The Commons home affairs committee says internet service providers need to be as effective at removing material that promotes violent extremism as they are in removing content that is sexual or breaches copyright.

The committee discloses that a new Home Office counter-terrorism internet referral unit has received 2,025 complaints since it was set up in 2010. About 10% of the offending websites or web pages have been taken down as a result.

But the MPs say far more needs to be done, including more action to take down extremist videos and a new code of practice to draw the line on material promoting violent extremism.

The MPs' focus on the influence of the internet comes as judges prepare to sentence this week the four men found guilty of plotting a pre-Christmas terrorist attack on the London stock exchange after being inspired by the radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki.

The nine-month inquiry found that the internet played a greater role in violent radicalisation than prisons, universities or places of worship and was now "one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation is able to take place".

The report stresses, however, that no single pathway leads to radicalisation and emphasises that direct, personal contact is also significant. It adds that although convicted terrorists have attended British universities and prisons there is seldom evidence that they were radicalised there. The report says recruitment activities have retreated to private homes as the authorities have targeted public arenas.

The MPs, however, heard in private an assessment from Charles Farr, the Home Office's head of the Office of Security and Counter-terrorism, that "sympathy for violent extremism is declining rather than increasing". The MPs contrast this with the situation in 2007 when MI5 said there were "at least 2,000 people" in the UK who posed a threat because they supported terrorism – a figure that had increased by 400 the previous year.

The MPs do conclude that there may be growing support for nonviolent extremism within the Muslim community, fed by feelings of alienation and a sense of grievance, and this is a challenge for society and the police.

They recommend that tackling Islamophobia and demonstrating that the British state is not antithetical to Islam should constitute a big part of the official Prevent strategy designed to counter the ideology that feeds violent radicalisation.

The MPs talked to the radical preacher Abu Hamza in the maximum security unit at Belmarsh prison in London, who told them the main drivers of radicalisation were grievances, especially concerning Palestine and Afghanistan, a sense that the prophet was being mocked, guilt and capability.

He said unemployment was not a source of grievance.

Keith Vaz MP, the committee's Labour chairman, said: "The conviction last week of four men from London and Cardiff radicalised over the internet, for a plot to bomb the London stock exchange and launch a Mumbai-style atrocity on the streets of London, shows that we cannot let our vigilance slip. More resources need to be directed to these threats and to preventing radicalisation through the internet and in private spaces. These are the fertile breeding grounds for terrorism."

• UK security and terrorism
• Terrorism policy
• Keith Vaz
• Global terrorism
• Internet

Rail services offer worse value for money and are more expensive than those in other European countries, report says

Britain's railways have been judged worst for fares, efficiency and comfort in a study of rail services in Europe.

The report by the thinktank Just Economics said UK rail services were less affordable, less comfortable, slower, more inefficient and more expensive than those in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Frequency of trains was the only area in which the UK performed better.

"In terms of bang for buck, not only does the UK come bottom of the index of outcomes but it also spends a relatively large amount of money to achieve this woeful result. This means that it also comes bottom of the value for money league," said the report.

"Our under-performing railways carry a considerable cost both for passengers and for the public purse. Our calculations show that a more affordable, more comfortable and faster railway would generate a staggering £324bn in social value (£9.2bn a year) between now and 2050. This is the equivalent of £7 of value per average journey in that period.

"We also estimate that the social, economic and environmental benefits of achieving a modal shift from road to rail – in terms of reduced congestion, accidents and emissions – could potentially reach £154.8bn by 2050.

"When we combine this estimate with our previous figures showing improved outcomes for passengers, we calculate that the total social value of the strategic shift that we propose in this report is in the region of £479bn."

The report was released ahead of the government's response to the McNulty review on the future of the railways, which is expected to be published shortly.

Bob Crow, leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, which commissioned the study, said: "This latest research shows that the failures of privatisation are costing the UK hundreds of billions of pounds in social value.

"Instead of addressing that issue and looking at the cheaper and socially beneficial alternative of a publicly owned railway, McNulty proposes more cuts and even longer gold-plated franchises for the private train operators.

"Now McNulty and the train operators want to roll that model out across Europe, smashing up rail services from the North Sea to the Mediterranean."

The report's author Eilis Lawlor added: "Our research puts figures on what anyone who has been to France or Spain already knows – the UK's railways are poor value for money.

"Instead of profitability being the primary measure of success, the wider benefits of the railway need greater consideration.

"The government should act decisively and make an objective and transparent assessment of the best way to organise Britain's railways so as to maximise social, environmental and economic value."

• Rail transport
• Transport
• Transport policy
• Rail transport
• Europe
• Trade unions

Diabetic mothers-to-be have high risk of giving birth to children with congenital abnormality, study says

Women who have diabetes are almost four times more likely to have a baby with a birth defect, research reveals.

One out of 13 mothers-to-be with either Type 1 or Type 2 of the disease on giving birth have a child with a major congenital abnormality as a direct result of their condition. Overall for such women, the risk of having a child with a birth defect of whatever kind is 7%, according to the journal Diabetologia. The risk of having a baby who has a birth defect is 2% in females without diabetes.

Researchers led by Ruth Bell from Newcastle University reached their conclusions after studying 401,149 single-baby pregnancies between 1996 and 2008 in the north of England, 1,677 of them pregnancies of diabetics.

Diabetic women from poorer backgrounds, or who did not take folic acid, were at higher risk, they found.

Iain Frame, the research director at Diabetes UK, which funded the study, said it had identified that the mother's blood glucose level at time of conception was related to her risk of having a baby with a birth defect, such as a heart abnormality. Diabetic women considering becoming pregnant should alert their medical team so that steps can be taken to minimise the risk. In addition, women who are diabetic should make sure to use contraception so that they do not become pregnant unexpectedly, Frame said. This is because some drugs taken by Type 2 diabetics – 90% of the UK's 2.9 million patients diagnosed with the disease – can cause problems for a developing foetus, and in such cases the women need to take higher than usual doses of folic acid, he said.

"Although it has been known for some time that maternal diabetes is associated with an increased risk of foetal anomalies, this study has, for the first time, quantified the relative risk," said Justin Warner clinical lead for the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit, which is led by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

"This highlights the importance of good diabetes control in mothers at the time of conception and the need for careful diabetes monitoring if pregnancy is being considered."

Young women with diabetes need to be educated about the risk of having a child with an abnormality if they become pregnant, he said.

NHS staff should try to stabilise the health of diabetics who may become pregnant, and reduce the risk of birth defects by using insulin pump therapy and continuous monitoring of glucose levels, the authors suggest. Such women do get offered specialist preconception care, "but uptake remains low, and women from ethnic minority groups, socially deprived areas, and with Type 2 diabetes are less likely to attend", the study says.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "We know that diabetes brings increased risk of complications during pregnancy and that the best way to avoid the complications is through good planning and making sure that the diabetes is well controlled before and during pregnancy."

The Change4Life campaign was encouraging people to adopt healthier lifestyles, which would help prevent diseases such as diabetes in the first place, she added.

• Diabetes
• Health
• Children
• Pregnancy
• Health & wellbeing
• Women
• Medical research
• Health policy

Labour leader Ed Miliband urges cross-party campaign to block Andrew Lansley's health reform bill

Originally published in the Guardian on 6 February 1960

Not every MP loves the newspapers but all are fascinated by them, and there was a big Friday turn-out to hear Mrs Margaret Thatcher, in a commanding maiden speech, put before the Commons her bill to buttress the rights of the press at local council meetings.

She got her second reading (by 152 votes to 39) and also the gallant support of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, although Mr Brooke is still inclined to rely more on what he calls his "code of good conduct" to persuade the few publicity-hating councils to mend their ways. He is going on with his code whatever the ultimate fate of this bill, and thinks – as many other members think too - that if there are legal rights for the press these should also be extended to the general public.

Not everybody thought the newspapers should have more rights and some extreme views were expressed about their nature and function. Are they snoopers or guardians of liberty? Noble watchdogs or curs of low degree? The provincial reporters mainly involved, men normally obsessed with the struggle to keep their pencils sharp and to carve out a half-hour for lunch, will be amazed when they read how dramatic is their impact on our legislators.

Mr Edelman, for instance, saw them as giant-killers, slayers of potential local dictators who might otherwise flourish in the dark. "There are at least as many village Hitlers as village Hampdens," observed Mr Edelman, himself a journalist though hardly a village one. Someone on his own side of the House remarked with a visible shudder that on some dark night you might also meet a village Wilkes.

Mrs Thatcher's main aim is to stop councils from throwing out the reporters by suddenly turning themselves into committees. She wants the press to attend, as of normal right, all committees which have substantial delegated powers of their own, but she provides no new sanction against any local authorities that may choose to disobey. No mayor or town clerk will be standing in the stocks as a result of her bill.

Yet already, according to Mr Reynolds, who led the objectors, the bugle has sounded from parish and city and county and top officials are rallying to their books to find ways of getting round the bill in case it should find its way to the statute book.

The menaced town clerks had at least this amount of encouragement from Mr Brooke: it would be "grievous," he thought, if local government officers were hindered from advising their councils through fear of their words - at present, it would seem, mere whispers – becoming the subject of public controversy.

There was plenty of disagreement, but it was by no means on party lines. Mrs Castle, for instance, gave rousing support to the bill, and Mr Wise was one of the Tories who opposed it. Mr Wise, who was making his first speech since he returned to the House after a fourteen-year absence, was the one member who really brought the debate home. The rights of reporters at local council meetings may be slender enough, but they are solid compared with the rights of those of us who perch precariously in the Commons press gallery. We have none at all.

• Margaret Thatcher
• Newspapers
• Press freedom

Labour leader to say that official NHS statistics prove that the coalition's reorganisation of NHS is directly affecting patient care

Ed Miliband will claim on Monday that the total number of nurses working within the NHS has been cut by 3,500 since the general election, and could fall by a further 2,500 by the end of this parliament.

The Labour leader will say that official NHS statistics prove that the Tories' reorganisation of the health service is directly damaging frontline patient care.

At the same time, Labour will argue that the funds set aside to pay for the costs of the health bill's reorganisation would protect all 6,000 nursing jobs if parliament chose in the coming weeks to abandon the reorganisation.

The claims could prove to be damaging to the government, under attack from the health profession for its proposed reforms. They come in a difficult week for the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, during which the bill will return to the Lords, where it can expect to come under attack by peers of all political persuasions. Labour is keen to maintain pressure on the Tories after an improved performance by Miliband in which he was widely praised for his attacks on David Cameron over City bonuses.

The number of full-time qualified nurses fell from 281,431 in May 2010 to 277,915 in October 2011, a fall of 3,516, according to data from the NHS Information Centre which have been released by Labour. The figure refers to the change in "qualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff". The Royal College of Nursing has identified 5,000 nursing posts at risk, comprising both qualified nurses and healthcare assistants; Labour believes half these posts are qualified nurses.

Miliband will visit staff and patients at the Princess Royal university hospital in Kent on Monday, and is expected to say: "In tough times and with little money around, the very first priority should be to protect the frontline NHS.

"Instead, we have a government blowing a vast amount of money on a damaging back-office reorganisation at the same time as it is cutting thousands of nurses, with more than 3,000 already gone. Labour's priority is protecting the frontline, not a pointless and damaging reorganisation of the NHS.

"We're calling for the bill to be scrapped, and for some of the money set aside to fund this reorganisation to instead be made available to the NHS to protect the thousands of nursing posts either already cut or set to be cut in the coming years.

"It is a clear and simple choice for the government: by stopping this damaging reorganisation we can fund 6,000 nurses."

The attack by Miliband comes as Labour launches the next stage of its campaign against the government's health bill. Labour, Liberal Democrat and cross-bench peers are discussing joint strategies to torpedo further elements of the bill when it begins its report stage in the Lords on Wednesday.

They are training their sights on the parts of the bill that would open the NHS to a greater role for the private sector.

Writing in the Observer, Miliband said: "It is not too late to stop this bill.

"We have three months to prevent great harm being done to the NHS. Now is the time for people of all parties and of none, the professions, the patients and now peers in the House of Lords to work together to try to stop this bill."

The worst option, he added, would be for the government to press ahead with the reforms merely to save face.

The latest action to amend the bill – which would devolve commissioning to GPs and open up service to more competition – comes despite the government offering a string of concessions when it put down 136 amendments. Last year, the government set aside nearly £1.8bn to pay for the costs of the health bill reorganisation that could only be used once it is enacted.

Labour is calling for £750m of the money set aside for the reorganisation to be used instead to fund 6,000 nursing posts over the spending review period, replacing the 3,500 nurses that have already been lost and protecting a further 2,500 posts that research suggests will be lost in the coming years.

The list of professional bodies which have come out in opposition to the bill include the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Radiologists, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Health minister Anne Milton said that Labour's accusations were wrong.

"Since the election we've cut admin staff by 15,000 and the total number of clinical staff has remained the same.

"If we were not proceeding with modernisation in NHS by the end of this parliament there would be £1.5bn not available to support services and front line staff."

• NHS
• Health
• Nursing
• Health policy
• Public services policy
• Ed Miliband
• Labour
• Liberal-Conservative coalition
• Conservatives

Party to call on the government to spend money on offering post-service support to soldiers through charities

Labour is to call on the government to set up a £1m fund to monitor the mental health of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and allow charities to bid for the money.

The move follows concern expressed by armed forces charities about the timelag between service personnel leaving the services and experiencing mental health problems and that current support is focused on people still in service. Labour says it does not want those who have served to be "forgotten" after 2014.

The fund would come out of part of the savings obtained by cutting the number of senior ranks in the armed forces. There are more admirals than ships in the navy and proportionately more officers in the UK military than in other countries. The number of army brigadiers, and commodores in the navy and RAF has risen by a third since 1990.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that 20 posts of the ranks of brigadiers and commodores are to be abolished. Labour says more should go.

Jim Murphy, shadow defence secretary, said : "We must prevent an epidemic of invisible injury. The country owes it to all those who have served to provide real post-service support. With thousands having experience of Iraq and Afghanistan legacy issues are more important than ever."

He added: "Imbalances in our forces by making real savings at the top. This is a real priority for Labour."

Labour's defence spokesmen referred to comments by the organisation Combat Stress which says a significant minority of servicemen and women suffer from mental ill health as a result of their experiences.

Research suggests that of the 191,000 personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 7,600 people (4%) could develop post-traumatic stress disorder. Another 37,600 people (19.7%) may be battling other debilitating mental health problems, such as depression, mood disorders and anxiety.

On average veterans wait 13.1 years between leaving the armed forces and seeking help from Combat Stress, showing the delay between a traumatic event taking place and the impact on mental health.

According to the Royal British Legion, the armed forces are facing a "perfect storm" of health and welfare needs in coming years as the legacy of Afghanistan and Iraq combine with defence cuts and strains on public sector support.

By 2020, Legion research estimates that 1.8m in the armed forces community will be living with long-standing illness; 800,000 will be isolated socially, having little contact with family or friends; and 700,000 will be living below the poverty line.

• Military
• Defence policy
• Mental health
• Health
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Depression

Sniping between Whitehall and MPs prompted by revelations over spending goes to the heart of government

Whitehall has become a frontline. The elegant boulevard, stretching from Trafalgar Square down to parliament, is now a political no man's land: to the north side, the civil service, the "permanent government"; to the south side, the MPs of key select committees. There has been sniping for some time. But just before Christmas, the outgoing head of the civil service, Sir Gus (now Lord) O'Donnell, threw the first grenade.

He aimed it at the public accounts committee, whose robust inquiries into government spending disasters have made headlines. But civil service anger about a new steeliness among MPs is not limited to the PAC. Since the rules changed to allow select committee chairs to be elected by MPs rather than chosen by the powers that be, several committees have been making waves. This confrontation goes to the heart of parliament's role and authority.

Let's start with a little recent history. The PAC has been investigating the so-called "sweetheart" deal between Revenue & Customs officials and Goldman Sachs. At stake is a tax liability of £20m that was not collected. That's just a fraction of the billions of pounds of unresolved tax bills, many of them owed by large, litigious and wealthy companies. The committee decided to use the Goldman Sachs issue, which came through a whistleblower, to crack what was going on inside the department: why were the powerful corporate players getting away so easily, while small companies and private taxpayers faced a tougher regime?

It proved to be a long, complex and difficult inquiry. The head of Revenue & Customs, Dave Hartnett, has been hugely resistant to criticism, attacking MPs' accusation of systemic failures as based on "partial information, inaccurate opinion and some misunderstanding of the facts". Others disagree: the inquiry has won the PAC chair, the former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, "MP of the month" in the most recent issue of Total Politics magazine.

During the inquiry, HMRC lawyer Anthony Inglese was the subject of an unusual exchange when the committee called for a Bible to be brought in for him to swear on – a rare but critical moment in establishing the truth of what had happened in a tax deal he described as perhaps "unconscionable". This seems to have been the cause of the angry letter from O'Donnell to Hodge, and a wider campaign against the committee now being waged.

O'Donnell accused the PAC of being "a theatrical exercise in public humiliation" and argued that civil servants were not accountable to parliament, but only to ministers. This goes back to Whitehall conventions, most recently asserted by one of O'Donnell's predecessors, Lord Armstrong. The PAC, because it investigates how public money is spent, rather than policy issues – which clearly are for ministers – has always been an exception. O'Donnell argues that this only affects the person at the top, the "accounting officer", not advisers such as Inglese. The committee wonders, in that case, how they are possibly supposed to get to the bottom of failures in an organisation like HMRC.

Hodge is hitting back, and has support from unlikely allies: the rightwing Conservative MP Douglas Carswell says she is "spot on" and declares: "Elected by the whole house, select committee chairmen have taken to asking the mandarinate what it is that they are doing for the rest of us – rather than churning out patsy reports as they used to."

Another conservative, Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the public administration committee, has not been afraid to criticise, saying last month that the decision to split the top civil service job (O'Donnell's old one) into two "will lead to divided and weak leadership" and was "inherently unstable".

And it was the Treasury select committee that acted first on the HMRC scandal, leading Hartnett to admit its own processes were not fully followed; Hodge's PAC inquiry came after one of the Tory MPs on that committee, Jesse Norman, angrily complained that parliament was unable to discover what was happening, attacked the department's lack of accountability and called for greater oversight by MPs.

Context is important here. The National Audit Office recently discovered that more than £31bn had been wasted by government departments over the past two years: £6bn in ropey defence contracts, £10bn through uncollected income tax, and huge sums from bad IT schemes. There is £25bn of unresolved tax bills. The government is trying to cut £80bn of public spending.

If less had been wasted, far fewer cuts would be needed. The failure of civil servants on some of these projects directly affects the depth of cuts that have, and will, come to vulnerable families and users of public services throughout Britain: not a small matter.

Mandarins feel aggrieved. They are not used to being challenged, sometimes rudely, in public by MPs. That, they have always been told, is what ministers are for. That is the principle O'Donnell fought to protect. Other senior mandarins are now calling for the PAC to be broken up and reconstituted as a tamer body. They are going to war.

They should watch what they wish for. The culture and the climate have both changed. We live in a world in which, after recent scandals, MPs, journalists, executives of top companies, and the bosses of banks and local authorities are all subject to far more scrutiny than ever before. In many cases their financial misdeeds are minuscule compared to problems in Whitehall: why should civil servants not be challenged?

At a time of severe tightening of public spending, which is likely to go on for many years, parliament has a prime duty to squeeze out waste and challenge past mistakes. As Hodge says in her reply to O'Donnell, it is her committee's duty "to fearlessly pursue the public and taxpayers' interest wherever and whenever we deem it necessary". The Commons is at last recovering its mojo; and civil servants resist it at their peril.

This doesn't mean individuals should be bullied or mocked; witnesses at committee hearings are not on trial. But there has been too much superiority in the civil service for much of the past century, guarded by anonymity and secrecy. There was a time when Sir Humphrey's prickly defensiveness was funny, an almost harmless-seeming subject for TV comedy. The more we find out about real scandals in public spending, the less funny he seems.

Twitter: @jackieashley

• Civil service
• House of Commons
• Public sector cuts

I well remember the Lucas Aerospace plan (A utopia we nearly had, 1 February), but I also have an even older memory. In 1945 I was an apprentice in the aircraft industry, producing torpedo bombers for the war in the Pacific, when the war ended and millions were redeployed from both the arms industry and the forces. Almost overnight many of my colleagues disappeared, but not into oblivion or the dole; they began the job of repairing the devastation resulting from six years of war and creating a new and better society. That this was possible was down to two factors: political will, and advance planning, both singularly missing today. One factor that was not considered was money, any more than it had been a restriction on the war effort.

Now compare that situation with the one reported by Amelia Gentleman (After all the pep talks and CV workshops, where are the jobs?, 1 February). Although there are many differences between 1945 and 2012, there are in common many unmet needs (a housing shortage most obviously) and yet millions are unemployed instead of contributing to fulfilling those needs. The Labour party's five-point plan is far too feeble a response. The two Eds, the trade unions and the millions of people suffering from the cuts should be demanding far more radical policies. The Green New Deal would be a good start, but only a start.
Frank Jackson
Harlow, Essex

• Surely there is a lesson to be learned from the Lucas workers' initiative – that something is wrong with the structure of most commercial enterprises. Yet it is only recently that the question of workers' representation on company boards has come to the fore. Immediately after the war the control commission in the British zone of occupied Germany designed a reconstructed basis for their war-torn industry to build for the future. Those foundations were built on a tripartite system of unions, management and shareholders. The idea was of equal interdependence. We have all seen how strong German industry has grown.

We already have some examples that lead the way, with workers' participation in the John Lewis Partnership. There is a huge potential in the workforce that isn't released because of the restricted notion of how firms should be organised. What is needed is to enfranchise the workplace through the introduction of industrial democracy. What has been the point of 150 years of state education if it hasn't equipped workers to have an equal status at work?
John Lloyd
Organiser, South Shropshire Green party

• As an education officer for the southern region of the GMWU (now the GMB) in the late 70s we regularly invited representatives of the Lucas Aerospace union combined committee to contribute to shop steward courses. They talked about working collaboratively across the unions – skilled and unskilled, white collar and manual – and inspired us by their commitment and vision.

I agree with Anne Karpf's conclusion that there was never a more urgent moment to revive this type of plan. She quotes Marxism Today as saying at the time that "socialism in one company" was not a viable option. But that's hardly a reason for inaction. The Lucas Aerospace committee knew that their plan couldn't exist in glorious isolation but that if the idea caught on it could, to coin a phrase, light a fire. That fire would in turn question the market, the profit motive and the recessions, redundancies and poverty that invariably follow.
Jol Miskin
Sheffield

• Anne Karpf rightly reminds us of the visionary work of the Lucas shop stewards, but she also highlights a key problem for today's unions with their publicly perceived "no" role. As a union member I should be happy to see funds used to develop a modern version of the Lucas Aerospace vision, and so enable both the trade unions and the Labour party to take a more positive stance. Identifying predatory capitalism is a beginning, but given the nature of shareholding in British companies the likelihood of any radical change is zero. By working together, for a change, the unions and Labour could offer a new and positive approach to the voters.
David Kennedy
Ilkley, West Yorkshire

• Many congratulations on printing this timely and important article by Anne Karpf. With unemployment increasing and the public's disaffection with the government's belligerent foreign policy growing, the government should think again about our vast arms industry. By converting its factories to benign manufacturing of technologies that people need and want that utopia could be finally realised.
Jim McCluskey
Twickenham, Middlesex

• Unemployment
• Trade unions
• Economic policy
• Labour

Much has been written in the media recently about fathers being denied the right to have a full and meaningful relationship with their children because of inadequacies in the legal framework (Divorced fathers to get more access to children, 3 February). For 90% of divorcing and separating couples, the courts are not needed because they are able to reach agreement between themselves, or with the help of a solicitor. For others, the dispute becomes so bitter that a court has to intervene to decide on the important and emotionally charged questions of how the child's time is divided between the parents and their respective homes, on schooling, holidays and so on.

The starting point for the courts is and must continue to be the rights of the child. For parents the issue is – or should be – their responsibilities, not their "rights". Where court processes are necessary, they must be speeded up. Sadly for children, cuts in family legal aid and in family court services will lead to greater delay. So there is much to be put right – but that will not be achieved by prioritising the rights of adults over the rights of children.
Desmond Hudson
Chief executive, Law Society

• Mindful of recent cases where children and their mothers have been killed by fathers, it is not ministers who should brace themselves for a backlash – in their case from single mothers. It is the vulnerable children who will be endangered by the decision of the government to bow to the misleading demands of Fathers4Justice for greater access for fathers, regardless of risk, and in doing so ignoring the recommendations of the independent review for no change to the existing law.
Gillian Dalley
London

• Divorce
• Family law
• Children
• Family

It is hard to think of a starker failure in domestic government since the poll tax

No one, but no one, thinks that the health and social care bill returning to parliament this week is any good. Nurses and doctors have lined up to denounce it – even GPs, whom the legislation claims to put in charge. Professional resistance can be dismissed as "producer interest", but not so the joint editorial published by three specialist periodicals, including the Health Service Journal. The journal is generally supportive of exposing medicine to competition, yet it damns the particular market-based reforms on offer as "unnecessary, poorly conceived, badly communicated" and "a dangerous distraction". Meanwhile, a committee dominated by coalition MPs has just concluded that the current upheaval "complicates" necessary cost-cutting, and displaces "truly effective" reforms.

Even the health secretary cannot any longer really believe in the watered-down product he is saddled with punting. The one hope for the bill which Andrew Lansley had originally articulated intelligibly was removing politics from healthcare. But, after a year of amendments and grudging stand-offs with the Liberal Democrats, he has utterly failed in this – as is underlined by the latest concession, which explicitly reaffirms that he will retain full political responsibility to parliament.

Having foolishly nodded the legislation through in the Commons, the Lib Dems blundered again by failing to kill the bill – as they could have done – when their members and peers revolted. Instead, they settled for fudge. The bill before parliament is littered with warm words such as "integrated", which mean entirely different things to advocates of planning and cheerleaders for restructured competition. It may well fall to the courts to determine what on earth whole passages mean. And yet – carried along only by the crack of the government whip – this unloved legislation rolls towards the statute book. The strongest remaining argument for passing it is that the hard-to-manage mess of half-disbanded care trusts could descend into uncontrollable chaos if new rules and structures of some sort, however flawed, are not agreed on soon.

Mr Lansley's great error was to allow the charged words "Tory", "cuts", "health" and above all "privatisation" to combine to become the story of the bill. The technocrat imagined that he could quietly impose a new healthcare market, and that England would soon bow to its logic. He not only misread opinion, but also mistook a well-founded concern to restrain medical profiteering for socialistic superstition. Last month the Guardian revealed that millions were being diverted to the likes of KPMG and McKinsey to teach "business skills" to GPs. On Friday, it emerged that a cash-strapped health department was having to stump up £1.5bn to trusts that cannot afford repayments under the PFI – the last great brainwave for getting the private sector involved. Public fear of racketeering is not boneheadedness. The medical marketplace will never be one where consumers (or, as they were once known, patients) can be sovereign – the knowledge gap with "producers" is too great.

David Cameron, like Mr Lansley, initially banked on voters being indifferent to health service structures so long as health service standards were maintained. He might have been right, too, were it not for the fact that the NHS is facing the sharpest spending squeeze in history. Seduced, perhaps, by his own comforting rhetoric about not cutting the service, the prime minister failed to see it coming. But with the queues for treatment lengthening – long waits are already up by 43% since the coalition came to power – the presumed indifference will soon give way to rage.

One of the few predictable effects of the reforms is that they will make it harder to manage scarce resources by imposing rationalisation; another is that all this frenzied ministerial activity will ensure that blame for the problems that flow from inescapable scarcity will now be laid squarely at the coalition's door. It is hard to think of a starker failure in domestic government since the poll tax.

• NHS
• Health policy
• Health
• Public services policy
• Social care
• Andrew Lansley
• Doctors
• GPs
• Healthcare industry

Nietzsche's pious lack of faith led to my own conversion to Christianity

The Big Ideas series has for several months now explored the meaning of a number of familiar intellectual phrases, among them Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message", Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" and Adam Smith's "invisible hand". But none of these feels quite as big an idea as Friedrich Nietzsche's "God is dead". After centuries of Christianity, a new dawn is being announced. And the language Nietzsche uses in his famous passage from The Gay Science reflects the enormity of his discovery: "How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?" Nothing again will ever be the same.

But what is his discovery? It isn't a eureka moment in which Nietzsche comes to understand that God does not exist. Indeed, he is not all that interested in the question of God's existence. The Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson recently told me that he would be an atheist even if God walked into the restaurant. Similarly for Nietzsche, it's not a question of evidence or the lack of it.

He is in a completely different place to the new atheist brigade of Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. If God walked into the room, Nietzsche would stab him – for his "God is dead" revelation is that humanity can only become free if it rejects the idea of the divine. Christianity is not a mistake. It is wickedness dressed up as virtue.

Nietzsche himself was raised in an overly pious religious household. And on the death of his father, who was the local pastor, Nietzsche was brought up to fill his father's shoes. In his first year away from home he wrote some nauseatingly sentimental Christian poetry and won the university preaching prize.

But all this weight of expectation was profoundly claustrophobic and so it was almost inevitable that rejecting God came as a great release. Indeed, such was the enormous freedom that Nietzsche felt in throwing off his Christian upbringing that he came to describe it in terms of salvation. With the most extraordinary rhetorical daring, he borrowed the language of Christianity to articulate the liberation he discovered in this new-found lack of faith. Which is why one of European culture's most dedicated atheists can sound so religious. And why the death of God story feels so much like a biblical parable.

Nietzsche's case against Christianity was that it kept people down; that it smothered them with morality and self-loathing. His ideal human is one who is free to express himself (yes, he's sexist), like a great artist or a Viking warrior. Morality is for the little people. It's the way the weak manipulate the strong. The people Nietzsche most admired and aspired to be like were those who were able to reinvent themselves through some tremendous act of will.

I have never seen anything to admire in Nietzsche's view of morality or immorality. He was badly interpreted by the Nazis. But his ethics, if one can call them that, are founded on the admiration of power as the ultimate form of abundant creativity. His hatred of Christianity comes mostly from his hatred of renunciation and the promotion of selflessness. Jesus was a genius for having the imaginative power to reinvent Judaism but a dangerous idiot for basing this reinvention on the idea that there is virtue to be had in weakness. The weak, Nietzsche insists, are nasty and cruel. They take out their frustration on those who have the power of genuine self-expression.

It may seem perverse but it was Nietzsche who was partly responsible for my own conversion to Christianity. As a philosophy student in the 1980s, I had served my time with the analytic tradition and its logic-chopping ways. Like many students, I was expecting something more from philosophy than an ability to break down "the cat sat on the mat" into its semantic parts or wading through dreary and unconvincing proofs about the existence of God. I wanted the excitement of big ideas. Marx did it for a while. But my own public school version of revolutionary communism was inevitably a brittle thing, despite its evangelical fervour.

As radical socialism collapsed around my ears, Nietzsche invaded my consciousness with a whole range of new and exciting questions. I took the anti-God line entirely for granted. As a good communist, atheism had always been my unexamined default position. And because Nietzsche was so passionate an atheist, I had my defences down to his unusually intense religiosity and elliptical desire for salvation. Which, I suppose, is how the question of God crept under my intellectual radar.

Nietzsche hated Christianity with all the intensity of someone who had once been caught up in its workings, but he would have equally loathed the high priests of new atheism and their overwhelming sense of intellectual superiority. "How much boundlessly stupid naivety is there in the scholar's belief in his superiority, in the simple, unsuspecting certainty with which his instincts treat the religious man as inferior and a lower type which he himself has evolved above and beyond", he wrote. Nietzsche's big idea goes much deeper than a belief that there is no God. His extraordinary project was to design a form of redemption for a world beyond belief. And to this extent he remained profoundly pious until his dying day.

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• Atheism
• Christianity
• Religion
• Philosophy

In this jubilee year, the Queen will commemorate 60 years reigning over a changing Britain. Now, with talk of Scottish independence in the air and preparations for the Olympics under way, 100 UK residents tell us what being British means to them

The poet Edwin Muir, who pootled round Scotland in an unreliable car in the mid-1930s to research his book Scottish Journey, was admirably realistic about the limitations of what he could achieve. "Scotland," he concluded, "could only be known by someone who had the power to live simultaneously in the bodies of all the men, women and children in it." He modestly described what he was doing as "gathering shells whose meaning was often obscure or illegible to me".

I have also been on a shell-gathering expedition, and not just in Scotland but across the whole of the UK. I am, in fact, a little shell-shocked as I write this, having just travelled from Devon to Stratford-upon-Avon via Caernarfon, Belfast and Coventry in less than a week. I am tired of trains, ferries and cheap hotels, and irritated that I have no grand, overarching theory of Britishness to offer as a result. Instead, I have returned with 100 visions of identity, drawn (sometimes reluctantly) from people I encountered – shop assistants, window cleaners, bankers, lawyers, mechanics, students, pensioners, unemployed people. All British life is here – or a decent chunk of it anyway.

This journey, I had to remind myself as its lunacy dawned on me, was my idea. I saw 2012, with the jubilee and the London Olympics, as a watershed year, a last hurrah for a monarch who symbolises the old, deferential, class-bound world. Soon she will give way to the new order, represented by power couple William and Kate. There may be a brief interregnum when Charles, embodying the confused collision of two eras, reigns, but that is appropriate too. New worlds are not born easily.

It seemed like a moment to ask who we were and what we wanted to be. I talked to 100 people, in 10 different locations across the UK. The aim was to get both a geographical and a demographic spread, to build up a sort of patchwork of the UK to mark Monday's 60th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne (pause here for the playing of the national anthem).

Taking the pulse of a nation is, however, hellishly difficult. As I stood in freezing temperatures in Bradford's Centenary Square trying unsuccessfully to get twentysomething Muslim women to tell me how they lived their lives, I started to have doubts about the exercise. Belfast was even colder, and with security concerns still a worry – there were two bombs in Derry the day I arrived – some people were wary of talking about Britishness. For that reason, two of the identities of my Northern Irish interviewees are not disclosed: a sixtysomething Catholic who served in the army and was proud to be British, and a young Catholic in his 30s who thought Sinn Féin had sold out and still saw the country as being occupied by the British. Those two are the only ones whose names and photographs are suppressed.

I usually managed to dispel my doubts with a continuous stream of coffee and the encouragement of the occasional very good interview. Where possible, I tried to engage people in a proper conversation. Some encounters lasted a few minutes; others half an hour or more; one ended in a pub with a man telling me his life story and coming close to tears as he recounted his struggles. Though a few people I approached thought I was mad to be asking questions about their identity – or, worse, thought I was a chugger – most were willing to engage. On the whole, their answers were intelligent and thoughtful. I was left with a warm feeling about my fellow citizens who, despite a failing economy, remain remarkably resilient. I was also impressed by the trains, ferries and planes, which were surprisingly punctual. Despite all you read in our mordant media, ours is a society that more or less works.

The initial reason for undertaking the journey was the jubilee, but that was quickly overtaken by the Scottish question. The storm produced by David Cameron's attempt to bounce Alex Salmond into an early referendum broke when I was in Edinburgh, and gave an urgency to the inquiries I was making. The issue was on the front of every paper; people were discussing it in pubs; it mattered. If Scotland went, the game would be up for the UK. The disintegration predicted by Tom Nairn in his book The Break-Up of Britain almost 40 years ago – he called Britain "a basically indefensible and unadaptable relic, not a modern state form" – would have come to pass. Three hundred years of history would have to be unwound. Warring partners usually argue over the CD collection; this separation would see disputes over nuclear weapons and oil revenues.

I began my journey with a mission to stand up for Britain. I was born in Wales and have a bit of Irish on my mother's side, so am drawn to mongrelism. I have lived in England for almost 40 years without ever much liking or understanding the English. At heart, I remain Welsh, vague, mystical, verbose, a devotee of hwyl, that curious mixture of passion and inspiration with which Welshmen seek to play their rugby and lead their lives. But do not take my paean to Welshness as a plea for a Welsh state. I despise nationalism, embrace the idea of the "melting pot" that is the UK (a description much favoured by pro-Britishers I encountered), like the tensions that animate the union. I can happily cheer on England at cricket and Wales at rugby. Indeed, when it comes to rugby, I will support anyone but mechanical England. These confusions are vivifying. A country, so I thought, was like the human body – the more mixed the gene pool, the better.

Initially, my theory held up. In Stratford, east London, where I began – the conceit underlying the journey was that I would start in cosmopolitan, Olympic Stratford and end in heart-of-England, Shakespearean Stratford – people born to parents who had migrated to the UK seemed much happier to be called British rather than English. Britishness felt inclusive; Englishness conjured up bulldogs, union flag underpants, riotous football supporters and sometimes racism. But elsewhere I began to wonder about my easy assumption that British was best. For many people, Britishness meant little or nothing. The trip from prosperous, flag-waving, jubilee-supporting Ottery St Mary, a small town in Devon, to recession-hit Caernarfon in north Wales, where Welsh speakers easily outnumber those for whom English is the mother tongue, was especially telling. Britishness was a hazy notion here. Their horizons were narrower; their world defined by the language they were proud to speak and nurture.

The Scots are Scottish, the Welsh are Welsh, the Northern Irish Catholics mostly look south. Only the Northern Irish Protestants wear their Britishness on their sleeves, and on some public buildings too – a vast union flag flies above Belfast town hall, a shock after union flag-less Wales. So gradually I began to wonder about the thesis I was so sure of as I began – that Britishness should be protected at all costs. If it was already largely moribund, what was there to protect? As one man in Stratford-upon-Avon said, what would really change if the constituent parts went their own way? Hadrian's wall wouldn't be rebuilt. All the old links, of culture and family and business, would remain. Only the political settlement would change. And what, in the end, is politics when set against life?

Much of this was anticipated by historians and cultural commentators in the 1980s and 90s. Raphael Samuel, in Island Stories, argued that the redundancy of the post-imperial state made the idea of Britain problematic, and explored how British history was being replaced by Four Nations history, pointing out that 1066 was a great date for the English but barely registered for the Scots, Irish or Welsh.

In reality, as the discussions I had on my journey show, to break Britain down into four constituent parts is hopelessly simplistic. There are several Englands: urban and rural, northern and southern, the east, the west and the usually ignored Midlands. In Hastings, I found a society of misfits who had gone as far away from mainstream English society as they could without falling into the sea. There are at least three Scotlands: lowlands, highlands and islands. Salmond should beware secessionism. Might not Shetland want to go its own way, linking up with Norway in a Scandinavian "arc of prosperity"? In Caernarfon, it was clear that north and south Wales – rural v urban, Welsh-speaking v English-speaking, post-agricultural v post-industrial – loathe each other.

There aren't four Britains. There are 40. In Coventry alone there must be a dozen ethnic groups living in largely segregated communities. I had to change trains at Smethwick, near Birmingham, on the way to Coventry and had 40 minutes to kill, so went looking for a pub. There were none, because this was an almost entirely Sikh community. Or rather, there was one tatty building called the Old Comrades Club, which was shut. It was flying a ragged union flag on a pole in the car park. The flag was at half mast.

Britain no doubt means a lot to the men who drink in the Old Comrades Club. It means quite a lot to me, brought up on the Victor comic with its tales of wartime derring-do. I also think it means a lot to Jeremy Paxman, author of a recent book on the British empire. His interviews with Salmond are sparky even by his incendiary standards, and my guess is that his distress at the idea of Britain breaking up adds fuel to his interviewing fire. We have lived with Britain all our lives, and thought we would die with it too. But now the old comrades' voice is growing fainter. It is not the British state that people care passionately about, but the British state of mind, the values that Britishness is thought to encapsulate. When I asked people what mattered to them, few mentioned the monarchy, the army, the BBC, parliament or any of the organs of state; they eulogised our values – democracy, freedom, equality before the law, openness, tolerance, fairness, justice.

These were referred to repeatedly as the essence of Britishness, or perhaps of the New Britain, because some of those qualities were certainly not in evidence in the class-bound realm which Queen Elizabeth II took possession of in 1952. Tolerance, openness and diversity have all emerged in the past quarter-century, and now define our society. The young – those under 35, let's say – have embraced the virtues of a tolerant, easy-going, multicultural society; many of those over 65, especially in the big cities, feel dispossessed, their old cultural certainties shattered; those in between – me and Paxman aside, perhaps – are just about swimming with the tide, or at least keeping our thoughts to ourselves. What matters for the post-1970 generation is not the protection of institutions but of values. They would accept a new political settlement – "If the Scots want to break away, that's up to them" is the prevailing view in England – but they would fight to keep their freedoms and the anything-goes view of society we have come to take for granted in the past couple of decades.

I started my journey at the gleaming Westfield shopping centre in Stratford which, as one visitor said to me, could easily be Singapore. Hastings I chose for its historical associations, but it was a washout – the Normans landed 15 miles down the coast, the great battle was fought six miles to the north (the precise spot is disputed), and I got soaked. Then I headed north to Bradford, to explore an archetypally multicultural – and economically depressed – city, filled with wonderful 19th-century buildings and horrible 21st-century pawn shops and amusement arcades. I chose two locations in Scotland: Edinburgh, inevitably, where I paraded up and down the Royal Mile and buttonholed people outside the parliament building, which looks like the sort of elaborate home an Arab sheikh might build; and Pitlochry on the edge of the Highlands in Perth and Kinross, where I had haggis for every meal, including breakfast.

From Scotland, I travelled to Ottery St Mary in Devon, birthplace of Coleridge and what I hoped might be a typical West Country village. The locals, however, berated me for calling it a village, insisted it was a town (population about 4,000) and introduced me to the mayor. I fear I failed in Ottery, because I spoke almost exclusively to the bourgeoisie, most of whom were involved in amateur dramatics. Farmers and the rural poor passed me by completely, but I do now know a great deal about the Mikado.

I took three trains from Devon to north Wales – a journey that took seven hours – and stayed in a hotel in Bangor run by a Chinese family. I did my interviews in Caernarfon, in the shadow of the castle, where Prince Charles had his bizarre investiture in 1969 – look at the TV coverage on YouTube and marvel at the absurdity of the occasion. Caernarfon is desperately poor, yet the love of the language was palpable. Whereas Scotland defines itself by the separateness of its institutions, Wales relies on Welsh.

Then came Northern Ireland, probably the most eye-opening part of the journey, and the two Midlands towns: Coventry, chosen because it symbolised post-war reconstruction, but vying with Caernarfon as the most dismal of the places I visited, and a city clearly rebuilt for the convenience of the car rather than pleasure of its people; and finally Stratford-upon-Avon, heart of England and home of the bard, where I was pleased to discover children still danced around maypoles, and I talked to a beggar who told me the police wouldn't let him beg in the town centre because it made a bad impression on tourists.

I was left with misgivings about the future of the UK, but no doubts about the capacity of the people who live in these islands. The young, for all the talk of a lost generation, have buoyancy and self-belief, while the old have their gripes and prejudices to sustain them. I had an epiphany early in the trip when I watched dozens of young people skating on an ice-rink as darkness fell at a wintry Westfield in east London. Plenty of the skaters fell, too, but they quickly bounced back up and made their way across the ice, laughing and clutching on to friends, fearless and eager to learn. People are remarkable in a way that countries can never be.

• British identity and society
• Queen's diamond jubilee
• Olympic Games 2012
• Scottish independence
• Scotland
• Welsh Assembly Government
• Prince Charles
• Monarchy
• The Queen

Justine Greening to attend firm's AGM to vote against executive payout – though Labour says she is failing to use full powers

The transport secretary, Justine Greening, is planning to vote against a proposed £20m bonus pool for Network Rail executives. But she was accused by Labour of failing to use her powers to put a stop to the payments.

On Friday, she will attend Network Rail's annual general meeting to vote against a package which could see chief executive Sir David Higgins collect a £340,000 payout in addition to his £560,000 basic salary.

Greening's intervention will put pressure on Network Rail to reduce the bonuses which have been paid annually to executives for many years. The company that operates most of Britain's railway structure has faced criticism over its safety record and poor track conditions.

"I'm going to go to the meeting next Friday, I'm going to vote against them," said Greening on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme. It will be the first time that a minister of state has voted against bonuses at Network Rail.

Despite her vote against the company, she claimed that she would not have the powers to stop the payments from going through. "The governance structure that the last government set up means I can go and vote against it. The problem we have got is that won't actually change the result," she said.

However, Labour is claiming that the Department for Transport has powers over remuneration and incentive schemes thanks to its position as Network Rail's "special member".

Maria Eagle, the shadow transport secretary, said: "Greening is wrong to say that she cannot block these bonuses … It is difficult to see why Network Rail would have felt able to propose this new bonus package without knowing if it had ministerial backing."

Those close to Greening hit back, saying that Labour has misinterpreted company documents. "Justine can't block bonuses, because she has one vote among 80. Labour knows that the government doesn't have a power of veto and when in office repeatedly said that bonuses were an issue for Network Rail and not for government," a source said.

Higgins will also share in a long-term bonus scheme which could be worth up to £15.6m over the next three years for the rail group's six executive directors. The six will also earn £2.3m a year in salaries plus a maximum of £4.2m in bonuses.

On the same day that Greening casts her vote, Barclays will announce an estimated £1.7bn bonus pool, some 30% less than last year but a sum that will see staff at its Barclays Capital arm remain among the highest-paid UK workers, earning an average of £210,000 each.

Barclays, one of the world's largest investment banks, is forecast to report profits of £6bn, barely changed on a year ago despite the eurozone crisis.

While the bonus of its chief executive, Bob Diamond, is unlikely to be revealed until March, he could get up to £11m.

The latest round of payouts will fuel the controversy around City pay, which prompted Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive, Stephen Hester, to waive his near-£1m bonus a week ago.

More than 20 MPs have signed a Commons motion saying Network Rail had been "found by the Office of Rail Regulation to be in breach of its licence" and had been responsible for "major asset failures, congested routes and poor management of track condition".

Last week, the company admitted health and safety breaches over the deaths of two teenagers killed at a level crossing in Essex in 2005.

A Network Rail spokesperson said that no decisions have yet been taken on any potential bonuses. "Friday's vote is not on whether directors will receive a bonus but on a proposed scheme, the shape of which is a result of discussions with our regulator. The independent remuneration committee will have full discretion on any decision to award bonuses."

• Network Rail
• Executive pay and bonuses
• Justine Greening
• Rail transport
• Transport
• Travel & leisure
• Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet
• Conservatives
• Liberal Democrats
• Liberal-Conservative coalition
• Labour