News in Briefs

WikiLeaks founder uses subject access request to access British agency chatter, which allegedly calls extradition ‘a fit-up’

Authorities at GCHQ, the government eavesdropping agency, are facing embarrassing revelations about internal correspondence in which Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is discussed, apparently including speculation that he is being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition on rape allegations.

The records were revealed by Assange himself in a Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme Salvados in which he explained that an official request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by GCHQ.

A message from September 2012, read out by Assange, apparently says: “They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate.”

The messages appear to contain speculation and chatter between GCHQ employees, but Assange gave little further explanation about exactly who they came from.

The WikiLeaks founder, who has spent the past 11 months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden, claimed GCHQ had been unaware that it might have anything on him that was not classified.

“It won’t hand over any of the classified information,” he said. “But, much to its surprise, it has some unclassified information on us.”

“We have just received this. It is not public yet,” he added.

A second instant message conversation from August last year between two unknown people saw them call Assange a fool for thinking Sweden would drop its attempt to extradite him.

The conversation, as read out by Assange, goes: “He reckons he will stay in the Ecuadorian embassy for six to 12 months when the charges against him will be dropped, but that is not really how it works now is it? He’s a fool… Yeah … A highly optimistic fool.”

“This is what the spies are discussing amongst themselves,” Assange told the Spanish television presenter Jordi Evolé.

The Cheltenham-based agency said: “We can confirm that GCHQ responded formally to the subject who made the request. The disclosed material includes personal comments between some members of staff and do not reflect GCHQ’s policies or views in any way.

GCHQ is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. However, it is understood that Assange’s request was a subject access request, a mechanism under the Data Protection Act that can be used by individuals to obtain personal information that bodies hold about them.

On its website, the agency says : “As one of the UK’s intelligence and security agencies, we gather and analyse digital and electronic signals from many channels, from all corners of the world”.

“Converting this information into intelligence material, we play a significant role in informing national security, military operations, police activity and foreign policy.”

By Giles Tremlett, Ben Quinn

Tory rebellion on amendment to grant civil partnerships to heterosexual couples will ‘cost £4bn and take two years’

Downing Street issued a stark warning that the bill to legalise gay marriage will run into grave trouble – and cost the taxpayer an extra £4bn – if the Labour party joins forces with Tory opponents to vote in favour of granting civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.

As David Cameron was accused by the Conservative Grassroots group of showing “utter contempt” for party activists by pressing ahead with plans to equalise marriage, Labour sources voiced fears that No 10 appeared to be trying to find ways of killing the bill.

The row erupted as No 10 braced itself for a loss of face as up to 150 Tory MPs prepare to show their opposition to the prime minister during a series of votes when the marriage (same sex couples) bill reaches its report stage in the Commons today.

At least two cabinet ministers – the environment secretary Owen Paterson and the Wales secretary David Jones – are prepared to vote for a series of amendments that would grant exemptions to teachers and registrars.

Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, and John Hayes, the prime minister’s unofficial envoy to the Tory right, may also side with opponents of the bill during a series of votes, which are “free” – allowing MPs to vote with their consciences.

The government warned of three dangers to the bill if an amendment to grant civil partnerships to heterosexual couples is passed. It is being tabled by the former children’s minister Tim Loughton who opposes gay marriage. A government source said the Loughton amendment would:

• Come with a price tag of £4bn. Steve Webb, the pensions minister, told parliament’s joint committee on human rights last week that the state would be liable for new “survivors’” pension rights.

• Delay the introduction of the entire bill by 18 to 24 months because the government would need to work on the joint implementation of new rights for gay married couples and heterosexual couples in new civil partnerships.

• Complicate the government’s argument that the changes are about strengthening the institution of marriage by opening it to all couples. “If you open up civil partnerships to opposite sex couples then the institution of marriage will be weakened,” one government source said. “The church will not be happy about that.”

Government sources said the warnings were aimed at Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader, whose support for the amendment will be decisive. One source said: “Ed Miliband clearly wants to make political capital here. Perhaps he should think of the consequences.”

But Labour rejected what it called the “farcical” warnings, as sources noted that the supposed size of the “price tag” had grown from £3bn to £4bn in five days. One source said: “They are wrecking this bill themselves and trying to blame others.”

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and shadow equalities minister, who has been negotiating with the equalities minister Maria Miller, told Sky News: “I think it’s a real problem if this gets lost in the vortex of the Tory infighting that we had over the last couple of weeks when actually it’s a really positive bill that we should all want to celebrate.”

Loughton accused the government of scaremongering after issuing its warnings about the dangers posed by his amendment. The former minister told the Guardian: “This scaremongering just won’t wash. The government has come up with a lot of desperate last-minute excuses as to why giving full equality of civil partnerships will not work. This is what comes when you try to redefine marriage without having thought through the consequences. One of those consequences is that the majority of the population and MPs clearly want equality for civil partnerships. The government bill, as it stands, will deny them that equality. So they need urgently to do the work to make it happen.” Last night Loughton tweeted: “£4bn is back of fag packet scaremongering particularly if Govt doubt straight couples want civil partnership.”

The anger over the bill was highlighted when 35 current and former heads of Tory associations delivered a letter to No 10 lambasting Cameron. They wrote: “Your proposal to redefine marriage is flawed, un-Conservative, divisive and costing us dearly in votes and membership.

“You have failed to listen and respond in an appropriate manner to the concerns of loyal grassroots members…This utter contempt for ordinary people has led to a mass exodus of members and mass loss of supporters.”The PM came under fire from another wing of the party when Lord Howe of Aberavon, the former chancellor, warned he appeared to be “losing control of his party”. In an Observer article Howe wrote: “If the Conservative party is losing its head, a heavy responsibility now rests with Labour and the Liberal Democrats to hold their nerve.”

Sir Richard Branson on Monday joins a group of 19 business leaders describing the economic case for British membership of the EU as “overwhelming”. In a letter to the Independent, they write: “The benefits of membership overwhelmingly outweigh the costs, and to suggest otherwise is putting politics before economics.”

By Nicholas Watt

Ministry’s proposals to reduce criminal legal aid budget by £220m is ‘unfair in principle’ and ‘risks undermining quality’

Depriving defendants of the ability to choose their own solicitor will undermine confidence in the criminal justice system, an official legal watchdog warned on Monday.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has branded Ministry of Justice proposals to slice at least £220m from the criminal legal aid budget as unfair and likely to damage the quality of representation in courts and police stations.

The strongly worded rejection of one of the key elements of the MoJ’s plans comes amid a swelling chorus of complaints from legal bodies who warn that the proposals will lead to an increase in miscarriages of justice.

A mass protest by lawyers outside parliament is due to take place on Wednesday organised by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, while the Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, has asked members to stage a one-minute “pause for unity” in courts on 4 June to oppose the “unworkable and possibly unlawful” cuts.

The Commons justice select committee is expected to hold an inquiry into the controversial measures unveiled last month by the justice secretary, Chris Grayling.

Under the plans the cost of judicial reviews will rise steeply, lawyers’ fees are to be slashed and criminal legal aid contracts awarded through competitive tendering. Virtually the only company to express interest in the contracts in public has been Stobart Barristers, a legal subsidiary of the haulage conglomerate.

Criminal defence lawyers fear the MoJ’s proposed fee structure will result in advocates being paid the same for a guilty plea as a trial lasting up to three days. This, they say, introduces perverse incentives and a danger of miscarriage of justice.

The Consumer Legal Services Panel’s formal response to the consultation is particularly damaging since its members are appointed by the lord chancellor, who is also the justice secretary. The panel is an independent arm of the Legal Services Board, a government quango.

Removing client choice, the panel says, is “unfair in principle, not the most effective means of achieving the intended competition benefits, goes against the grain of government policy for other public services [and] risks undermining quality”.

It adds: “Vulnerable clients may suffer most. Confidence in the legal aid system may be undermined if people accused of a crime are allocated legal representation by an agency of the state which is seeking to convict them.

“Consumers value choice and … allowing consumers to choose their lawyer would help to safeguard quality as poor providers know they will be punished by the market.”

Elisabeth Davies, chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, said: “When a person’s liberty is at stake, they must have the freedom to choose who will defend them. The public will not have confidence in a system where the defendant’s lawyer is chosen by the very state seeking to convict them. Allowing consumers to punish the worst providers by exercising choice is the best way of ensuring that quality is not sacrificed in a price bidding war.”

The MoJ says that in order to guarantee that firms awarded contracts receive a sufficient number of cases each year, it has to remove the right of defendants funded by legal aid to select their own solicitor.

Among other bodies preparing responses to Grayling’s plans is the Criminal Cases Review Commission. “It stands to reason that if you do something that depletes the quality of representation … you obviously increase the risk there will be a miscarriage,” a legal source said.

In a letter to the Guardian, the housing charity Shelter and the Bar Council, which represents barristers, warn that changes to judicial review will increase homelessness. “Judicial review is the main mechanism Shelter uses to ensure local authorities meet their legal duties to help homeless people,” they say.

By Owen Bowcott

Party board’s involvement likely to dismay No 10, which has spent weekend rubbishing reports in Times and Daily Telegraph

Lord Feldman, the Conservative co-chairman, is to be challenged at a meeting of the party board on Monday over allegations that he made disparaging remarks about Tory grassroots activists.

As the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, led a cabinet fightback on behalf of Feldman, who denies having described activists as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”, a member of the Tory party board said he would be asking Feldman to explain himself.

Brian Binley, the Conservative MP for Northampton South who has been an officer of the party for 54 years, said: “This is a very disturbing matter and needs a full and proper review at the party board meeting. From that meeting I will decide how I will act thereafter.”

The involvement of the board, which represents the views of Tory activists, will dismay Downing Street after it spent the weekend rubbishing reports in the Times and Daily Telegraph about Feldman’s alleged comments. Feldman described the reports as “completely untrue”.

No 10 was particularly sensitive because the alleged remarks revived criticism of the Tory leadership for being aloof and out of touch. Hunt spoke for Downing Street when he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1: “The person who is alleged to have said that has denied it and I know the individual and I trust him. “

The unease across the party was highlighted yesterday when 35 current or former Conservative associations handed in a letter to Downing Street that accused the prime minister of showing “utter contempt” for the grassroots activists after pressing ahead with legislation for equal marriage. But Cameron came under fire from another wing when Lord Howe of Aberavon, the former chancellor, warned that he was losing control of the party on Europe.

Ben Harris-Quinney, the chairman of the Bow Group and director of Conservative Grassroots, which drummed up support for the letter, said of Feldman’s alleged remarks: “It doesn’t matter who made these comments, the problem is that it comes as no surprise and is representative of a wider malaise in the party – the disconnect between the leadership and the grassroots, between conservatism and the leadership of the Conservative party. The tail cannot continue to wag the dog.”

The Bow Group, which was founded in 1951, intervened in the wake of Feldman’s alleged remarks on Wednesday night, said to have been made shortly after 116 Tory MPs showed their unease with David Cameron over Europe and voted in favour of an amendment regretting the absence of a EU referendum in the Queen’s speech.

Taunted by a journalist about the vote, an unnamed senior member of Cameron’s inner circle was quoted by the Times and the Daily Telegraph as saying: “It’s fine. There’s really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

The alleged remarks were particularly damaging because they appeared to echo the prime minister’s language. The FT reported in March that Cameron “tells colleagues that anyone who wants to talk to him about the EU is ‘swivel-eyed’“. The FT article was not challenged by No 10.

Downing Street said over the weekend that the Times and Telegraph, which reported the remarks, had no credibility because they had declined to name Feldman, who admitted talking briefly to journalists at the Intercontinental Hotel at Westminster.

The Tory co-chair recognised one of the journalists when he popped out of a private room, where he was attending a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Pakistan.

The journalist and another colleague, who was attending a dinner in the hotel’s Blue Boar Smokehouse restaurant with the prime minister’s former civil service press secretary Steve Field, had a brief conversation with Feldman about the vote. Field and two other journalists did not hear the conversation.

Feldman has said that he is consulting his lawyers over the publication of the comments, which he said do not “represent my view of our activists”.

The veteran MP Brian Binley said: “I am angry because this makes the job of the voluntary sector so much difficult. The voluntary sector is the Conservative party, the leadership is the caretaker of the party not its proprietor. If a small group of people think they know better to the point where they insult party members in this way – if that is what has happened and I need to know whether that is what has happened – then I will be very angry indeed.

“I would be hurt and surprised if Andrew Feldman said these things. But I am in a serious quandary here because I don’t believe senior journalists would say these things if they didn’t have the basis of truth. That is why it is no good simply saying Andrew Feldman is an honourable man, it is no good simply saying I’m going to talk to my lawyer about this. I personally – and the voluntary sector – need to know the truth of this matter.”

Binley said he was shocked by the way in which the Tory leadership has accused the Times and Daily Telegraph of lying. “I have been around for a long time and I recognise that people might think I am a backwoodsman. I have been a party agent, a county councillor and an MP for eight years. I have always had a good relationship with journalists, local and national, and have only ever been misquoted and mistreated by one group of journalists – and that was over the expenses issue. I have never felt the need to feel unhappy with any other journalist.

David Mellor, a former member of John Major’s cabinet, said the row highlighted the need to have a heavyweight figure as Tory chairman. Feldman is co-chairman along with the MP Grant Shapps. Mellor told the Murnaghan Programme on Sky News: “I am old enough to remember the days when the Tory party chairman was a serious political figure and chosen because they were a serious political figure. Feldman is a great friend of the prime minister.

“He strenuously denies [the remarks]. But, if so, I have to say as a former lawyer – sue them. Where is the writ? I think we will find the writ will not appear. If it was him – as newspapers suggest – then this has been a disaster waiting to happen because you cannot elevate tennis playing friends to be chairman of the Conservative party without there being a political price to pay.”

The criticism of Cameron over Europe by Lord Howe prompted a withering intervention by Lord Mandelson. He told the Andrew Marr Show: “We all know what’s going on inside the Conservative party. The UK isolation party and their fellow travellers in the Conservatives are sort of operating a Soprano-style protection racket inside the Conservative party. They are saying: ‘Do what we want, give us what we are demanding, or we are going to burn your home down.’”

Mandelson added: “Just because one wing – the provisional wing – of the Conservative party want to bring down their leader and change their party’s policy and are using this as an issue to do so is not a good reason to hold a referendum.”

By Nicholas Watt

Rising private rents, lack of affordable housing, benefit cuts and low levels of home-building force costly short-term solution, investigation finds

The UK has spent almost £2bn housing vulnerable homeless families in short-term temporary accommodation, according to figures that demonstrate the scale of Britain’s housing crisis.

Rising private rents, a shortage of affordable housing and benefit cuts have forced local authorities, particularly in London, to place increasing numbers of households in bed and breakfast accommodation, hostels and shelters.

With the number of houses built in Britain falling to new lows, according to figures released last week, a four-month study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, has revealed that £1.88bn has been spent on renting temporary accommodation in 12 of Britain’s biggest cities over the past four years.

Campaigners have said welfare changes will exacerbate the problem. Official figures show that in London alone 7,000 families dependent on benefits stand to lose more than £100 a week under the benefit cap, and many are expected to become homeless as a result.

Leslie Morphy, chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis, said: “For the sake of cutting just a few pounds a week from their benefits, families and individuals are being forced out of their homes, to be put up in B&Bs or temporary accommodation that costs us all far more.”

A separate investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered evidence that London councils are rapidly accelerating the rehousing of homeless households outside their home boroughs. Some 32,643 homeless households have been rehoused out of their borough since 2009.

In the year to April, 10,832 households were rehoused in this way – a 16% rise on the previous 12 months. Most left the more affluent districts of inner London for the cheaper outer suburbs, although an increasing number of London’s homeless are being moved to towns outside the capital, such as Dartford in Kent, Slough in Berkshire and Spelthorne in Surrey.

The “destination” boroughs have said the influx of households has put a significant strain on local services. Councillors in Enfield in outer London, where more properties and B&B rooms are secured by London authorities than anywhere else, have said the demand from inner London authorities is pushing up private rents and placing untenable pressure on school places.

“The pressure will not abate,” said Edward Smith, a Conservative councillor in Enfield. “Before long we will have to build more secondary schools.”

The Labour leader of Slough council, Robert Anderson, said: “If authorities put people in our area with complex needs, or even just families; they need to inform us. If we know where they have come from we can make sure the borough does not shirk responsibilities and just pass on their more difficult clients. You can’t just pitch up halfway through a year and expect to get a school place. It’s not McDonald’s.”

The housing minister, Mark Prisk, insisted on Sunday night that councils should be careful about placing families in B&Bs far from their home borough. “There is absolutely no excuse for families to be sent miles away without proper regard for their circumstances, or to be placed in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation for long periods of time,” he said. “The law is clear: councils have a responsibility to take into account people’s jobs and schools when securing homes for those in need.”

But Prisk also defended the policy of removing families on benefit from central London. “Nor is it right that those living on benefits should be able to live in parts of the capital that those who aren’t reliant on this support couldn’t afford to,” he said.

Households accepted as homeless by their local council will often be placed in temporary accommodation until a more permanent home can be found for them.

As latest government figures show there were 53,130 households living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2012 – 9% higher than the previous year – a leading law firm is preparing a class action against councils that keep families in B&B for longer than the statutory maximum of six weeks. It is believed a third of British local authorities are in breach of the limit, largely because of a shortage of suitable temporary accommodation.

Official guidance says B&B accommodation should be avoided wherever possible. Lack of privacy and amenities for cooking and laundry means it is “not suitable” for families with children or pregnant women “unless there is no alternative accommodation available and then only for a maximum of six weeks”.

Bureau data shows the amount spent on temporary accommodation across 12 of Britain’s biggest cities was up 5.7% to £464m last year. And London councils have budgeted for further significant overall rises this financial year.

Since 2009, London councils have secured 5,827 properties and B&B rooms in the three London boroughs of Enfield, Waltham Forest and Haringey alone.

The borough suffering the worst homelessness crisis in the country appears to be Newham, in east London which has spent £185.2m placing people in temporary accommodation since 2009.

By Nick Mathiason, Patrick Butler

Leader of Tehreek-e-Insaf party says Altaf Hussain’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement behind death of Zahra Shahid Hussain

Imran Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, on Sunday blamed the killing of a political activist on the eve of a partial rerun of voting in Karachi on Altaf Hussain, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader, who runs his party from exile in London.

Zahra Shahid Hussain, the vice-president of Khan’s PTI party in the southern province of Sindh, was gunned down outside her home in the upmarket Defence area of Karachi on Saturday.

Police said she died from a shot to the head in an attack that might have been either an attempted mugging that turned deadly or a deliberate political killing. The attack came after a week of protests by PTI activists, who accused the MQM of attempting to intimidate PTI voters into not voting.

Since the 1980s the MQM has maintained a firm grip over Karachi, enjoying solid support from the city’s community of mojahirs, the Urdu-speaking descendants of Muslims who moved to Pakistan from India in 1947.

The party has long been accused of having an illegal armed wing intimately involved in Karachi’s criminal economy of drugs, extortion and land theft.

On Twitter on Sunday night, Khan, who is being treated for back injuries in hospital, said he held Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder of the 65-year-old as he had “openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts”. He also criticised the UK for not taking action against Altaf Hussain: “I hold the British government responsible as I had warned them to act against Altaf Hussain after his open threats to kill PTI workers.” Khan’s attack on the MQM leader, a man few dare to publicly criticise, has capped a dire week for the party, which some commentators believe has been shocked by a weakening of its position in Karachi.

Although it has managed to cling to the 18 seats it had in the last parliament, it has seen its share of the vote fall by almost 10 percentage points and the PTI emerge as major challenger.

Last week Altaf Hussain responded furiously to PTI accusations of vote-rigging with a speech broadcast from London in which he appeared to threaten PTI demonstrators in the sprawling port city with violent retribution.

The Metropolitan police are examining whether he can be prosecuted for inciting violence.

“They have gone into shock over these results,” said one Karachi-based security consultant. “People have voted against them because of their utter failure to do anything in the last five years. In retrospect, the PTI could have done even better if they had put more effort into Karachi.”

Diplomats say Altaf Hussain’s tirades and increasingly erratic behaviour are a growing source of embarrassment to party officials who manage MQM affairs in Pakistan. “They would be much happier if they could speak to him and vet what he says,” one diplomat said.

Farooq Sattar, the most senior MQM leader in Pakistan, appeared to accept that Altaf Hussain had gone too far with his speech from London, saying the MQM leader had retracted his remarks and offered an apology.

In the early hours of Sunday he lambasted members of the MQM’s central committee for failing to defend the party against media criticism and Khan’s explosive accusations.

The MQM, with its solid block of seats in parliament, is used to remaining in power, regardless of which party heads the government.

For the past five years, the MQM has enjoyed enormous influence by being a key coalition partner of the government led by the Pakistan Peoples party (PPP), which was trounced in the election on 11 May.

But Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, has won enough seats in the election to ignore the MQM.

The prospect of the MQM having much-reduced political influence in Islamabad has raised fears it could once again resort to the sort of violence and intimidation that party officials have claimed they have been trying to put behind them.

Sattar, the senior MQM leader, accused Khan of further inflaming a city already vulnerable to violent confrontations between the ethnic groups that live there. “The killing of Zahra Shahid Hussain was a conspiracy by someone who wants to take advantage, to bring Karachi to another test in terms of sectarian and political polarisation,” he said.

Khan should wait for the results of a police investigation, he said, adding that the MQM would launch a defamation action against the former cricket star.

Election authorities ordered fresh voting at 43 polling centres in a largely upmarket area of Karachi where there were reports of serious irregularities, including ballot-stuffing and attempts to intimidate voters in the national elections.

The MQM and other parties boycotted the new poll after demanding the election be rerun in the entire constituency.

One PTI voter, called Ashar, who ventured to a polling station at a school in the Defence neighbourhood which was the scene of protests last week, described the killing of Zahra Shahid as “despicable”. “It is purely political, because of the power struggle happening right now,” he said.

By Jon Boone

We take thousands of pictures nowadays, but do we still cherish them?

By Blake Morrison, Adrian Searle, Jemima Kiss, Grayson Perry, Sean O’Hagan

Lawyer says Mairead Philpott’s role in killing her six children in a Derby house fire was ‘not as substantial as trial judge assessed’

A mother jailed for 17 years for killing her six children in a house fire is to appeal against the length of her sentence, her lawyer have said.

Mairead Philpott, 32, was jailed alongside her husband, Mick, at Nottingham crown court last month after being found guilty of the manslaughter of Jade Philpott and her brothers John, Jack, Jesse, Jayden and Duwayne.

At the sentencing hearing, Mrs Justice Thirlwall told Mairead Philpott she had ignored obvious risks to her children’s lives by going along with a plan to set fire to her home in Allenton, Derby.

Speaking to BBC Radio Nottingham on Sunday, Shaun Smith QC, defending, confirmed that lawyers planned to take the case to the court of appeal.

Smith, who represented Mairead Philpott during her trial, said of the 17-year jail term: “We think it was too long and we are going to the court of appeal to see whether or not we can persuade [it] to reduce the sentence.

“She was instrumental in killing six children, but we feel as though her role in the killing of the six children was not as substantial as the trial judge has assessed.”

By feeds.guardian.co.uk

Man, 45, reportedly held after bodies of children aged five and 10 are found in his flat in Lyon

A British man has been arrested after his two children were found with their throats cut in France, according to reports. The man was allegedly seen fleeing on rollerskates from his flat on the outskirts of Lyon.

The bodies of the children, a girl aged five and her brother, 10, were found on Saturday in their father’s second-floor flat at Saint-Priest, a south-eastern suburb of the city.

According to the local newspaper Le Progrès, whose report was confirmed by Lyon police, neighbours saw the man leave his apartment on Saturday afternoon wearing in-line skates.

Neighbours said the man and the children’s mother, who is French, divorced two or three years ago and he had taken the separation badly and had a tendency to “drink too much”.

The man, 45, had seen his children regularly but in a neutral environment in the presence of teachers.

Sources told Le Progrès this was the first time the father had been allowed to have his children at his home. The children had arrived there on Friday evening and the mother had been due to pick them up at 6pm on Saturday.

However, she became worried and went to a police station on Saturday afternoon to inquire what she should do if there was a problem.

She then went to the flat and found the door locked. When there was no answer and no sounds from within, she called the police, who entered and found the bodies. Reports also said a knife was recovered from the murder scene.

Police immediately launched a manhunt and at about 9pm on Saturday officers arrested the father in the Montplaisir district of Lyon.

A police source said: “We believe the man was looking after the children for the first time since he divorced his wife. He was arrested at the end of yesterday afternoon.”

Lyon police told the Guardian the information in Le Progrès was correct but would not comment further.

Ahmed Benguedda, a former neighbour, said the couple had divorced two or three years ago.

The mother, a bookkeeper, had been granted custody of the children and had moved away from Lyon. The father, who was reportedly unemployed, remained in the former family flat and refused to sell it, the neighbour said. “Everyone here is in a state of shock,” Benguedda said.

The Foreign Office said on Sunday: “We understand a British national has been arrested in France. We are in touch with the French authorities and await the outcome of their investigation. We stand ready to provide consular assistance.”

The man had reportedly been living in France for about 10 years.

By Kim Willsher

Reports claim board has approved move to buy blogging platform site that could catapult Yahoo back into top flight web firms

Marissa Mayer, the former Google executive who is now in charge of Yahoo, is poised to create yet another nothing-to-riches tale in the web industry with the $1.1bn (£720m) acquisition of the blogging site Tumblr.

Mayer called Yahoo’s board together on Sunday afternoon to discuss the firm’s latest attempt to regain its former glamour and reports indicated the board had given its approval. Tumblr was founded in 2007 by David Karp, then 21, in a bedroom in his mother’s apartment in New York. Within a fortnight it had 75,000 users; by January 2012, there were 42m blogs on the site; today, there are about 110m, and the investors who have poured $125m into the company include Sir Richard Branson.

With a press conference due on Mondayfor Monday afternoon in New York’s Times Square, just a couple of miles from Tumblr’s headquarters, nobody expects Mayer will turn up empty-handed. According to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday evening, the Yahoo board have agreed to pay $1.1bn for Tumblr and will let it continue to operate as an independent business.

Yahoo declined to comment before the announcement, but pointed out that it would be streamed live. That is something the company has previously only done (in audio) for its quarterly financial results. For Yahoo, capturing the white-hot blogging site could catapult it back into the top flight of contenders in a web world that has become hugely more complicated since it was set up in March 1995 – before Google and nearly a decade before Facebook.

Tumblr’s attraction is how easily it allows users to create their own web presence: they can go from zero to blogging in less than a minute, posting pictures and text effortlessly. Unlike Facebook, it is anonymous, yet has a powerful search engine for finding “similar” content, which is often reshared. As the network grows, that internal sharing grows and grows.

The web measurement company Quantcast says Tumblr has had 217m global users in the past month, and was the US’s 24th most popular site, with about 75m American users. This gives Tumblr a user base on a par with Yahoo’s own.

But for Tumblr, Yahoo could bring the ability to attract advertising it has been sorely missing. It also looks like something of a shotgun marriage. Tumblr has only a few months of cash left, according to industry gossip, and has been shopping itself around for a while. It pulled in $13m of advertising in 2012, but is spending far more than that.

Tumblr hoped to hit a $100m revenue target for 2013 but that now seems unlikely, making the purchase a potential lifesaver for investors.

Unlike Facebook, Tumblr has been slow to pull in advertisers. Speaking to the Guardian in January 2012, Karp expressed disdain for how other sites use ads. Of the Google-owned YouTube, he said: “They take your creative works – your film that you poured hours and hours of energy into – and they put ads on top of it. They make it as gross an experience to watch your film as possible. I’m sure it will contribute to Google’s bottom line; I’m not sure it will inspire any creators.”

Mayer was appointed 10 months ago as Yahoo’s chief executive in a move that looked both audaciously clever, and a last throw of the dice. She was at the time one of the longest-serving staff at Google, having been there 13 years, but had apparently been bypassed for the high-profile jobs. Yahoo, meanwhile, had seen its revenues slump and a revolving-door procession of CEOs.

The big fear for Yahoo is that Tumblr will turn out to be an updated version of Geocities, the third most visited site on the internet when Yahoo bought it in January 1999. Though it became famous for users’ garish choice of page colours, Geocities was also a resource many loved. But the company arguably never got back the $3.57bn it paid – entirely in stock, at $36 per share. In 2009, Geocities was shut down, and the entire site simply wiped from the internet. For Mayer and Karp, and millions of Tumblr users, the hope must be that history won’t repeat itself.

By Charles Arthur