Officials of the parliamentary Labour Party circulated a confidential note to MPs last night promising they would raise with the Prime Minister the "unprecedented" concern among backbenchers at the changes. It follows an angry meeting of the parliamentary party with Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, on Monday over the changes. They took up the case again yesterday at a meeting with a Labour backbench health committee."I think Patricia Hewitt was taken aback by the depth of the feeling among Labour MPs," said one senior Labour MP who was at the meeting. "They felt railroaded and angry that there had been a complete lack of consultation."The MPs object to the timing of an announcement in July by Sir Nigel Crisp, the NHS chief executive, on the last day of the parliamentary session before the Commons rose for the summer recess, that trusts were to lose their role as providers of healthcare and would become commissioning bodies.Some MPs said the proposal had been "slipped out" to avoid protests before the summer.

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They were also suspicious that the changes were part of a highly controversial plan to bring more private-sector providers of healthcare, including private health clinics, into NHS primary care, competing with GPs.In an attempt to defuse the row, Ms Hewitt last night issued a statement saying there would be three-month consultation period and a steering group chaired by Michael O'Higgins, managing partner of the international board of PA Consulting Group, would be set up to oversee any changes.. A man has been arrested in connection with the "Wearside Jack" hoax letters and tape sent to police during the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry. Police travelled to the Sunderland area where they arrested a man aged 49 on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The letters and tape diverted police attention away from the hunt for the real killer, Peter Sutcliffe, during the inquiry almost 30 years ago. Police switched their murder hunt from Yorkshire to Sunderland during the period when the real Yorkshire Ripper murdered three more women.Sutcliffe,who was from Bradford, was questioned a number of times during what was then the biggest manhunt in British history He was eliminated from the inquiry by police.

One of the reasons was that he did not have a Wearside accent.The hoaxer sent the detective leading the inquiry, George Oldfield, three letters and one audio tape, which was broadcast nationally in June 1979. The chilling two-minute message on the tape, spoken in a heavy accent said to be from the Castletown area of Sunderland, started: "I'm Jack I see you are still having no luck catching me .. I warned you in March that I'd strike again Sorry it wasn't Bradford I did promise you that, but I couldn't get there.. I am not sure where, maybe Manchester I like it there, there's plenty of them knocking about. They never learn, do they, George? I bet you've warned them, but they never listen."The first letter was sent to Mr Oldfield in March 1978, saying: "You probably look for me in Sunderland, don't bother, I am not daft, just posted letter there on one of my trips. Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places.

Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again."The second was sent to the Daily Mirror and the third to Mr Oldfield, saying: "I wasn't kidding last time I wrote saying the whore would be older this time and maybe I'd strike in Manchester for a change, you should have took heed."The hoax led to years of additional police work, costing more than £4m. Lord Steyn, who retired last month as a judge sitting in the UK's highest court, described the invasion of Iraq as "military folly" and accused the Government of "scraping the legal barrel" in trying to justify it.. The Lord Chancellor took a swipe at his cabinet colleagues yesterday, warning them not to put "undue pressure" on judges over verdicts that could embarrass the Government. and contributed to a misleading impression of the value of the shares," he told the court.The case continues.. Having both bought shares in the company at about 25p each on 10 August 1999, the two journalists wrote a story a week later suggesting that the broadcaster BSkyB was about to offer 45p a share to take a near 10 per cent stake in the group "That should push the price up big time," the column said. "Get in very quickly or you'll miss the bonanza."The pair sold their shares on the day as the story was published. A deal with BSkyB never materialised.Mr Katz said that while the column was deliberately written in a brash confident tone, he claimed it went "beyond tabloid hype" in many cases."They knew perfectly well that those predictions were not just hype but were unrealistic ...