The parties should use the election to promise compulsory tape-recording in appropriate cases

The parties should use the election to promise compulsory tape-recording in appropriate cases.There is another reason why tape-recording statements is more vital than ever. Statements to police are now admissible in substitution for the absent source of the evidence at trial in many circumstances. With the abolition - soon to come into force - of the right of defendants to demand that at committal proceedings prosecution witnesses give evidence "live" and in the presence of the defence, some statements, prepared as always by police behind closed doors, may end up being read at the trial without the defence having had any opportunity to test their reliability through cross-examination. If courts are going to make increasing use of such statements, the least we can ask is that we have an exact record of what the witness said, not what some police officer wrote down on the witness's behalf.David Wolchover and Anthony Heaton-Armstrong are barristers who have made an extensive study of the issues they raise here..

When is a rising tax burden not a rising tax burden? When it is part of Treasury efforts to reduce budget deficits and debt as part of an operation to come into line with the criteria for membership of the European single currency. The contortions of Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Gordon Brown, his shadow, at campaign press conferences were a delight for the connoisseur of vintage political obfuscation. Neither man was willing to say that the tax burden would not rise, as planned and set out in last November's post-Budget Treasury Red Book.Could the Labour Party survive yet another defeat?Of course it could, and would. While pundits and Cassandras say that the party would break up, fall apart, disintegrate and die, the new Labour machine has been strengthened enormously over recent years.While Tony Blair might not want to stay on as defeated leader, election defeat does not need to be terminal for the party at large. If, for example, the Conservatives won the election without an overall Commons majority, and they were forced to rely on the support of the Ulster Unionists, it is most unlikely that they would be able to remain in office for more than a year. The prospect of another, quick-fire election would concentrate Labour minds, keeping the party together in the hope that one more push might drive the Conservatives from office - with the electorate finally making the break with a party that had been in office, unbroken since 1979.Labour defeat would devastate the party, given its current expectation from opinion polls, but all parties are exceedingly resilient and it is surprising how quickly they pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and start all over again.Could the Conservative Party survive its first defeat since 1979?There are tremendously strong forces at work in British politics, keeping the most unlikely people together in the same political parties, and the Conservatives, too, would soon be up and running again, dumping John Major, and electing a new leader to take them into the millennium.That is not to say that if the Tories drive further to the Right, with someone like Michael Portillo as leader, some "wets" on the Left might not flake away to the Liberal Democrats or new Labour But the bulk of the party will remain loyal. The big question is: Could it take the Conservatives as long to sort themselves out as it has taken the Labour Party - 18 years?What happens if proportional representation is accepted under a Labour government referendum?Then, all bets are off. The pressures that could come from proportional representation, with more seats going to the Liberal Democrats, and new parliamentary alliances being sought, could bring about greater honesty within the political parties, with the Tories accepting that it is nonsensical for people as far apart as Sir Edward Heath and Baroness Thatcher to pretend that they have anything in common.

Just as nonsensical as it is for Dennis Skinner and Roy Hattersley to share prayer in the same "broad church".Will the Tories extend the scope or rate of VAT?When John Major was asked this question on the first Tuesday of the election campaign, he said that it would be answered by the manifesto to be published the following day It was not. When the question was put again, he did not answer it.When Kenneth Clarke was asked the question in a BBC radio interview, being told that Labour's Gordon Brown had ruled out an extension, he condemned "the frivolous, irresponsible style of the Labour Party. Every now and again he comes out with another tax move he won't make." When the question was put again to Mr Major, he said he had answered the question already - which he had not - and he would not add anything to that. Asked by Adam Boulton on Sky TV, he said he had no plans to do so. But he said that during the 1992 election, before he extended it to domestic fuel and power bills.The health warning is delivered by the Conservative Campaign Guide, which says: "Successive Conservative Governments have shifted the balance from direct [income] tax towards indirect taxes - such as VAT and excise duties. This has increased personal freedom by leaving people more of the money they earn to spend or save as they choose."When is a boom not a boom?According to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when it is a controllable, responsible Tory boom, without the bust that followed the Tory boom of the late Eighties.