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Male and female relatives of young women with breast cancer are at greater risk of developing cancer themselves, according to research published today.

Scientists studied parents and siblings of 504 women diagnosed with the disease before the age of 35 and found they were at a 1.5 to two-fold increased risk of prostate, lung, brain and urinary cancers.

The risk was little changed among the relatives of women who did not carry known faulty genes that increase the chance of breast cancer. That suggested there may be other undiscovered gene disorders causing cancer in young women and their families, the researchers said, meaning further work could help identify more people who might be susceptible.

Women who inherit one of the abnormal genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 have a 55% to 85% risk of developing breast cancer in their lifetime. But most women with the disease do not have the high-risk genes, which only account for between 2% and 5% of all breast cancers.

Professor John Hopper, from the Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne, who led the study published in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC), said: "These results are surprising and novel, and could be pointing to a new cancer genetic syndrome.

"Just as the link between male and female breast cancers in some families led UK researchers to find the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2, the results of this study could help scientists discover new cancer susceptibility genes." Dr Lesley Walker, the director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, which owns the BJC, said: "These early results are interesting in pointing to some increased risks of other cancers in the relatives of very young breast cancer cases. This study is important in suggesting a strategy to help identify other genes which significantly increase a woman's breast cancer risk. More studies with larger numbers will help confirm these risks."

It is already known that relatives of early onset breast cancer patients without mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 carry up to a four-fold increased risk of the disease compared with those with no family link, but this study suggests close relatives also face higher chances of other cancers.

It also backed up earlier research by finding that mothers and sisters of women with breast cancer had a substantially increased risk of the disease, even if the women did not have a BRCA mutation. The risk for sisters was greater than for mothers. Previous studies have suggested increased risks of other cancers for relatives of women with breast cancer, but the links have been weak and inconsistent.

Of the 504 women in the study, 41 had a BRCA mutation. A total of 2,200 parents and siblings were involved.

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Fans all over the world have been saying it for years. But now David Simon, the creator of The Wire, the hit television show that took us into Baltimore's drug-addled underworld over five seasons and 60 episodes, has it in writing from as unimpeachable a source as you could think of: he is a genius.

More precisely, he has been given one of 23 grants handed out this year by the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Each grant bestows a foundation fellowship on the winner and pays them $500,000 (£300,000) over five years. And because they are handed out to an unpredictable list of brilliant people with no specific entry process or criteria, they have earned a simple nickname that indicates the extraordinary prestige attached: the "genius" grants.

A mildly astonished Simon struggled to come to terms with the honour yesterday. "I've looked at past years' lists and there are people contending with fundamental environmental issues and trying to deal with socio-economic inequality – real tangible, make-the-world-better stuff," he told the Los Angeles Times. "So while I value storytelling, I feel a little bit of a nagging notion of shame pulling on my shirtsleeves."

While production ended more than two years ago, The Wire still has a fiercely loyal following. It achieved a reach comparable to hits like The West Wing even though its subject matter was often dark and jarring. For the city of Baltimore it was advertising that no tourist office would commission.

Simon was one in a typically diverse range of winners. Those honoured yesterday also included David Cromer, an actor and director well known for his commitment to revivals of classics and off-Broadway productions in New York, as well as a sculptor, an animator, a fiction writer and notable scientists specialising in fields as diverse as tumour growth and DNA research.

"They are explorers and risk takers, contributing to their fields and to society in innovative, impactful ways," the MacArthur Foundation's president, Robert Gallucci, said. "They provide us all with inspiration and hope for the future." MacArthur was an insurance tycoon and philanthropist who died in 1978.

There are no strings attached to the money, allowing recipients full leeway on how they spend it. Simon indicated yesterday that his first instinct was to give it to charities, most probably organisations committed to improving the inner city in Baltimore, where he lives when he is not shooting new episodes of the television series Treme in New Orleans.

Cromer joked that he plans to spend the cash on buying cake. Taking a more serious tone, he said having the grant will enable him to think of projects that may be more artistically than commercially viable. "It purchases you freedom," he noted. "I can do things now that aren't necessarily going to generate income."

Simon concurred. The Foundation's "stamp of approval makes it easier to argue for other stories that might not otherwise get told by the entertainment industry," he commented. "That's very valuable." He went on: "It makes it easier to go into the room with the network and argue against doing the usual thing in television."

And he does have plans. With Ed Burns, with whom he co-created The Wire, he is exploring a project centred on the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1880, which profoundly coloured the American union movement, as well as what he calls a long-term effort to develop scripts about the birth of the CIA in 1947. And he says he is working on a book about the drug economy in Baltimore in the Fifties and Sixties.

The Foundation cited Simon for his full opus of television dramas, saying that they viewed urban life "through the lens of a hard-edged, cautiously optimistic realism".

Cromer, 45, is best remembered in New York for staging Thornton Wilder's Our Town, on an off-Broadway stage with a hugely successful two-year run that ended just three weeks ago. He is now preparing a revival of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway to open a year from now starring Nicole Kidman. He was cited for "reinvigorating classic American plays with a spirit and urgency that eschews nostalgia and provides audiences with unexpectedly fresh and compelling theatrical experiences".

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With its mesmerising songs and startling acrobatics, the Cirque Romanès is one of the most unusual cultural highlights of Paris: the only Gypsy circus in Europe and the only show in the French capital whose artists retreat to their caravans after the curtain falls. For 18 years it has been attracting audiences to its exotic blend of poetry and performance. In June it was deemed good enough to represent France at the World Expo in Shanghai.

But after a summer which has seen France crack down on its foreign Roma population and draw the ire of Brussels for the policy, the future of the circus and its loyal band of artists hangs in the balance. The authorities have refused to validate work permits for the five Romanian musicians whose instruments are crucial to the performances.

The French employment inspectorate insists that the cancellation of the permits has no connection with the wider political climate, which has seen around 1,000 Roma return to their home countries in nearly two months and around 200 unauthorised Roma camps cleared by police. They say there are problems with the circus's functioning, accuse its owner of underpaying the musicians and question the use of child performers.

Such claims are dismissed as "pure invention" by Alexandre Romanès, the circus's charismatic founder. "They're making up all these reasons. It's complete fantasy," he said, as he sipped coffee outside his caravan on the outskirts of Paris. Responding to the authorities' chief criticism – that of low pay – he added: "They get four times the minimum wage, and they are fed and housed. When I contacted a lawyer and told her what they [the authorities] were trying to claim, she just burst out laughing."

Romanès, a published poet and friend of the late writer Jean Genet, is unequivocal about what he believes to be the real reasons for the sudden move, taken for the first time in the circus's two decades of existence. For him, it is just another sign of France's growing hostility towards his people.

"As this woman from Luxembourg [EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding] said, we thought Europe was protected from this kind of thing, but clearly it isn't. What I have noticed is that, instead of waging war on poverty, the French government is waging war on the poor," he said.

In order to try to revoke the authorities' "unjust" decision, 59-year-old Romanès and his wife, Délia, have started an online petition. Urging the authorities to let the circus "employ those Romanian and Bulgarian artists with whom they want to work", the appeal has more than 7,000 signatories. A "night of support" on 4 October will aim to rally the troops.

One of the most vocal Romanès fans is Reinhard von Nagel, a world-famous harpsichord maker and esteemed Maître d'Art appointed by the French culture ministry. There was no doubt, he said, of the political nature of the refusal of permits. "In France, as in other countries, there are laws for and against things, but they are not always applied. If you want to attack someone, you find a law and you apply it. That is what the authorities are doing in the case of Alexandre and Délia," he said, criticising the "zealousness" of the authorities implementing the "hunting down of the Roma".

"It is a policy which I have no hesitation in declaring to be fascist. It bothers me deeply," said Von Nagel, a German who has lived in Paris for decades. At a meeting last weekend with Frédéric Mitterrand, the culture minister, he brought the Cirque Romanès to the minister's attention. "I told him that if the Cirque Romanès is shut, I don't know if I can stay in France," he said.

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Lord Ashcroft, the outgoing deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, continued to avoid millions of pounds in UK tax, despite his pledge to become a full British taxpayer, according to a wide-ranging investigation into his financial and business affairs to be aired by the BBC tonight.

A Panorama programme on the billionaire Tory donor was originally scheduled to air before the General Election, when Lord Ashcroft was in charge of the party’s campaign in marginal constituencies, but the corporation delayed broadcast amidst wrangling with Lord Ashcroft's lawyers, and extended the programme's scope.

The investigation spans three countries where the peer has controversial interests, including the Caribbean tax havens of Belize and the Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as the UK. His lawyers told the BBC before broadcast: "Our client has denied any impropriety or wrongdoing in respect of any of the matters that you have raised."

Lord Ashcroft’s opaque tax affairs have proved a thorn in the side of David Cameron’s Conservative party, and the Panorama broadcast will ensure that the issue does not fade quietly as the peer formally steps down from the deputy chairmanship at a party meeting today.

The programme claims that Lord Ashcroft transferred ownership of one of his main companies on the eve of a new law that forces members of the House of Lords to pay tax on all their worldwide income. On 5 April, the peer moved his 25 million shares in Impellam Group into a trust for the benefit of his children. On 6 April, new legislation came into force that would have cost him an estimated £3.4m in inheritance tax.

“The billionaire businessman hasn’t broken any rules by using the family trust, but his actions appear to conflict with the coalition government’s stance on tax avoidance,” the BBC said in a press release for the programme, which airs on BBC1 at 8.30pm today.

The Independent revealed in March that plans to broadcast the investigation before the election had provoked furious protests from Conservative headquarters. Senior Tories fired off letters of protest to the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, and the chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons. In the end, the decision to delay broadcast was taken because Lord Ashcroft’s lawyers disputed key parts of the programme and to give the team of journalists more time to unravel his network of offshore companies.

The peer is taking legal action against The Independent over two reports on his business interests in the Turks and Caicos Islands last November.

Panorama says that British detectives working on a corruption inquiry in the TCI are looking at loans provided by Lord Ashcroft’s bank to two local politicians. The investigation started after a Commission of Inquiry headed by retired Judge Sir Robin Auld found a high probability of systemic corruption in the islands and requested a criminal investigation of five government ministers. The British government suspended the TCI constitution last year and the islands are being run from the UK Foreign Office, which is now led by Lord Ashcroft’s political ally William Hague, who nominated him for a peerage when he was the Conservative leader in 1999.

The peerage was eventually granted in 2000 after Mr Ashcroft gave Mr Hague a written promise that he would become a UK resident. For the next nine years, he refused to answer questions about whether he was a UK taxpayer, until his hand was forced two months before the General Election this year, when he admitted he was not fully resident in the UK for tax purposes and so paid no tax on his huge overseas assets.

Lawyers for Lord Ashcroft told The Independent that he denied all wrongdoing. They said they would respond to the BBC later today in respect of the allegation about UK tax, adding "The [BBC] Press Release is fundamentally flawed, and this will be made clear to the BBC".

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Beijing police have arrested four men, including a professor, over a hammer attack on China's top "science cop", a whistle-blower famed for exposing religious fakes, academic charlatans and bogus researchers.

Fang Zhouzi was attacked last month, sparking immediate suspicions of a link with his "New Thread" website, which has built up a powerful reputation for highlighting academic fraud. "I will not stop battling pseudoscience," Mr Fang said after the attack, although he said he would be more cautious about his own safety in future.

The attackers temporarily blinded Mr Fang with pepper spray then hit him on the back with a hammer in the street as he returned home from a television interview on 29 August. He suffered minor injuries in the attack and has fully recovered. Police identified three men in early September using surveillance video and witnesses. The investigation was part of another inquiry into an attack on an investigative journalist, Fang Xuanchang, an editor of the financial journal Caijing, in June. The two Fangs – who are not related – had previously worked together, including on a story exposing a cancer medicine as fraudulent.

The three alleged assailants said they had been hired by Xiao Chuanguo, head of the Urology Department at Wuhan Union Hospital, according to police. Professor Xiao was arrested at Shanghai's Pudong airport on Tuesday.

Mr Fang had claimed that Professor Xiao had exaggerated his academic credentials, prompting a series of libel actions from Professor Xiao. All but one were thrown out.

Police said Professor Xiao confessed the attacks were revenge as he believed exposure by the two writers had caused him to lose out on an appointment to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Xiao allegedly told police he hired Dai Jianxiang, who arranged for two accomplices to help him to carry out the attacks.

Fang Zhouzi has made some powerful enemies with his high-profile campaigns to expose fakery in China. He has unmasked Beijing University professors using unfair means to grant students entry, and found evidence that a top geneticist had faked his diploma.

He also caused a furore when he accused Tang Jun, the former chief executive of Microsoft China, of fabricating his academic credentials in the US. Mr Tang has denied the allegations. Mr Fang's particular bugbear is fakery in Chinese traditional medicine and he goes after those who claim to be environmentalists but are without merit.

He says China is prone to such charlatans because there is a general ignorance about science, leaving the weakest members of society prone to abuse.

He is in a powerful position, as, in the absence of an independent media, exposing such trickery is difficult. The government is also concerned about the damage to China's reputation, particularly when some of the country's top academics are exposed as plagiarists

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Banks will be punished with higher taxes if they award huge bonuses in the next few months, Liberal Democrat ministers warned yesterday.

Today Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, will float the idea of giving shareholders more power to curb excessive pay packages for all company bosses.

In his speech to the Liverpool conference, he will announce that a review of executive pay and takeovers will be launched next month. It could result in legislation aimed at forcing company boards to behave more responsibly and "advisory votes" by shareholders on remuneration packages to put pressure on firms to show restraint.

The Coalition Government has already announced a levy on banks' balance sheets from January, which will eventually raise £2.5bn a year.

Yesterday's sabre-rattling suggests that the Coalition may extend the one-off 50 per cent tax on bank bonuses of more than £25,000 announced by the previous government last December. That would cause anguish in the City of London, and provoke renewed warnings of an exodus of firms.

Before leaving the Liberal Democrat conference to attend a United Nations poverty summit in New York, Nick Clegg said ministers would not stand "idly by" if banks handed out "unjustified" bonuses.

The Deputy Prime Minister told BBC Radio 4: "I think it would be not in their interests at all, socially or economically, for them to be starting to award themselves [big bonuses]."

Mr Clegg went on: "It is very important that the banks understand that you cannot possibly award yourself ludicrous sky-high bonuses in an industry that has been bailed out by the taxpayer when those same taxpayers are now having to make very serious sacrifices in their own lives... that will appear almost gratuitously offensive."

Mr Cable warned bankers that they would face a "train crash" if they award themselves huge bonuses, but admitted that the Government was braced for a public and political outcry over the next round of handouts.

The Business Secretary warned: "I don't think the banking community should assume that the Government doesn't have any potential sanctions, because it does."

He said regulation could be used to ensure disclosure of bonuses and added: "Potentially there are quite tough sanctions in terms of tax policy." If banks showed they had lots of money to spread around in dividends and bonuses, "then the Government may have to use some form of taxation to change their behaviour". That could mean an increased tax on profits, or looking at a tax on financial transactions – although the latter would almost certainly only be done as part of an international agreement.

In his speech on the final day of the Liberal Democrat conference, Mr Cable will declare: "The principle of responsible ownership should apply across the business world. Let me be quite clear. The Government's agenda is not one of laissez-faire. Markets are often irrational or rigged. So I am shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour."

He will add: "Why should good companies be destroyed by short-term investors looking for a speculative killing, while their accomplices in the City make fat fees? Why do directors forget their wider duties when a fat cheque is waved before them? Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can."

The Business Secretary's consultation exercise will consider whether companies should be under a greater obligation to behave responsibly – both on pay and in their actions more widely. It is designed to address concerns illustrated by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Kraft takeover of Cadbury.

The review will consider the growth of "short-termism"; how to make boards set out their objectives more clearly; give shareholders greater opportunities to influence the strategy and look at directors' wider duties during takeovers.

A separate consultation by the Takeover Panel is already underway.

Bosses reacted with scepticism to Mr Cable's attack last night. Richard Lambert, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said: "Of course Mr Cable is right to say that the principle of responsible ownership should apply across the business world. But it's odd that he thinks it sensible to use such emotional language.

"The case for corporate takeovers is that they allow control of poorly run businesses to pass into more efficient hands. Mr Cable has harsh things to say about the capitalist system: it will be interesting to hear his ideas for an alternative."

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A few years ago, when I was working in India, I spent several days talking to poorer Delhi residents whose homes had been demolished in preparation for these games. These were familiar stories of individual catastrophe; in recent years there has been a lot of painful upheaval as politicians try to create a city worthy of its status as gateway to an emerging superpower. But there was a particularly depressing absurdity in the amount of misery triggered during the planning of the athletes' village – a construction that would only be operational for a short period.

On a visit to a dismal resettlement camp on the outskirts of Delhi, I met Parvati, a mother in her 40s. "We were told that palaces would be built there for visiting foreigners and that the slums would have to move. We had two hours' warning that our homes would be destroyed. That's about all we know about the games." She lived on a pavement for several weeks, then she and around 5,000 families were given a new bit of land outside the city centre. Few had enough money to rebuild their homes. The poorest were living beneath plastic sheets, draped, at shoulder height, over a framework of wooden sticks. The new site was remote and without any infrastructure: no water supply, sanitation, or buses to take residents back to their jobs in the Delhi. Without jobs there was nothing much to do, except play cards and worry.

When I visited, there was a steady flow of newly displaced families arriving, their belongings stored in baskets strapped to their heads. Parvati said she had so little money she was watering down the meals she cooked to make them stretch to the whole family.

In the context of the profound unhappiness that families such as Parvati's have endured, complaints from team officials about the standard of accommodation might be viewed as rather petulant. Feeble even, when you put them next to those of people such as Mahavir, a farmer who saw the 10-acre plot of land where he grew flowers and vegetables reclaimed by the state for the project. "Bulldozers came on the day before Diwali, when all the courts were shut," he said. When I met him he was working as a day labourer on land elsewhere, earning a small and irregular daily wage. "There's no stability. We have to stretch the money that comes in to feed the family," he said.

The buildup to the Commonwealth Games has been chaotic and troubled by allegations of corruption. The resettlement of so many city residents raises uncomfortable questions, and the environmental damage to the banks of the Yamuna river is likely to be permanent. But however misguided these decisions were, the price has already been paid. It would be even worse to think that the sacrifices made were entirely pointless. In the spirit of friendliness the games is meant to evoke, the athletes should fret less about their personal comfort and insist on travelling to Delhi. Turning up to take part is the least they can do.

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The grieving father of a truck driver who killed himself in a gas-filled car in a pact with a woman he met on the internet has called on the government to ban online suicide discussion forums.

Melvyn Lumb, 63, from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, spoke out today after his son Stephen, 35, was found dead in a car on Monday morning, 200 miles from home on an industrial estate in Braintree. Alongside him was Joanne Lee, 34, who lived close to the Essex town, and who a couple of weeks earlier had pleaded on the internet for a partner with whom to kill herself.

The pair had stuck notes on the vehicle's windows warning of the lethal gas inside.

Police believe they met in person only hours before ending their lives in Lumb's black Vauxhall Astra. The pair are thought to have met using an internet newsgroup focusing on suicide methods and finding partners with whom people could kill themselves. She had been given advice and encouragement on suicide in the days leading up to her death.

"They should be banned," said Lumb, who shared a house with his son. "Why do they have such things? How can people talk other people into how to take their lives? These websites are terrible. I think they should be illegal because they are very dangerous for people. I had no idea he was using this website."

He said his son did not suffer from depression and seemed to have recovered from the grief of losing his mother two and a half years ago.

"It was like any other weekend," he said, reflecting on the hours before his son drove to Essex. "In fact he didn't seem to have a care in the world. On Saturday night we had a few cans of beer and watched Match of the Day."

The fatal pact began on 13 September when Lee, using the username Heavens Little Girl, posted: "I'm desperately seeking a pact in the UK. I'm 34, female, and live in the Essex area."

She then explained her preferred method was gas and asked for a partner with a car who could pick her up. "My time frame is As Soon As Possible," she said. "If you are very serious, please email me."

The previous month she had posted about planning to kill herself in a cupboard or bathroom and other users shared tips about how to overcome practical problems she had encountered.

By 9 September she reported she was "looking into partners right now, hopefully I have found the right one," and last Sunday afternoon, Lumb, using the username Endthis, wrote: "I'm just saying goodbye … and to all you people suffering I hope you find what your looking for."

Eight fellow forum members wished him luck and bade him farewell, but none tried to dissuade him.

Essex police today closed their investigation and, treating the deaths as unexplained, passed the case file to the coroner.

Lee's parents said they had no clue what their daughter was planning and described her as "lovely" and "very caring". Her mother, Jill Chappell, said: "Police have taken away her computer but we have no idea what websites she was using or that she was on any kind of websites.

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Nick Clegg will seek to reassure his anxious party that the Liberal Democrat identity is secure by promising tomorrow that there will be no electoral pact with the Conservatives and holding out the prospect of a coalition deal with Labour after the next election.

During a sometimes uneasy hour-long question and answer session with delegates on the first full day of the party's conference, the Lib Dem leader refused to give ground on the running of the coalition. He insisted that he would not manufacture synthetic rows with the Conservatives simply to raise his party's progressive identity.

He also admitted he was under constant pressure from friends and colleagues to pick a fight with the prime minister, David Cameron, and to show the extent to which his party was distinct from the Conservatives.

Discussing the spending cuts he also conceded that "people are starting to believe a lot of this hype that we are imposing these things for a swivel-eyed ideological zeal overnight".

In his setpiece speech to conference this afternoon he will emphasise the temporary nature of the coalition by telling his party: "The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are, and always will be, separate parties with distinct histories and different futures. But for this parliament we work together to fix the problems we face and put the country on a better path. That is the right government for now."

He will also restate the case for entering into coalition: "People have got used to us being outsiders against every government that comes along. Maybe we have got used to it ourselves. But the door to change we want was opened, for the first time in most of our lifetimes. Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever have asked the voters to take us seriously again?"

In a sign of the unease on the left that the party is being squeezed, in terms of visibility and its poll rating, the former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris writes in the Guardian: "We need closer identification of Lib Dems in parliament, in the media and in government with those coalition plans that are Lib Dem-inspired and conversely some distancing from Tory-imposed policies."

He also urged his party to take a leaf out of the Tory right's book by communicating unhappiness about illiberal policies.

The remarks calling for greater Lib Dem ownership of policies do not represent a revolt, however, but more of a warning shot that the party has to work harder to maintain its distinctive identity.

In a sign that the leadership is aware of the mood of many ordinary members, the main policy announcement today was a promise to be ruthless with the rich who avoid or evade paying tax. HM Revenue & Customs will be granted £900m to tackle those who, in the words of the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, had made "a lifestyle choice" not to pay taxes. He also promised to focus more revenue resources on those on the new 50p rate earning more than £150,000.

The phrase was a deliberate echo of the chancellor George Osborne's threat to get tough with those who had made "a lifestyle choice" to be benefit cheats.

Clegg, however, was adamant that he would not "manufacture synthetic rows" inside the coalition or hang out dirty washing of internal disputes just to placate grassroots members.

Such tactics "might give you a good feeling for about five minutes", he said. "But it would do something much, much worse in the long run. It would destroy what we are trying to create, which is showing the country at large that doing politics differently, that coalition politics, is possible. That is the big prize."

He said the public were yearning for an end to adversarial politics and craved pluralism and diversity in politics. "It is a long game," he insisted.

He said he was confident about the party's identity and denied the party would "suffer some mysterious cross-contamination in Whitehall which means that we will suddenly warp into something different. You can share power with others and still retain your values".

Much of tomorrow's speech will be focused on explaining the coalition's decision to eradicate the structural deficit in one parliament. He admitted that the charge of betrayal levelled against his party by Labour largely stemmed from claims that he had changed his stance on the deficit as the price for gaining power.

He admitted he heard "quite a lot the charge that the party is being beaten up by Labour … and that we are not hitting back hard enough".

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Sharon Shoesmith defended her role in the Baby Peter scandal yesterday, describing the nationwide fury after the case as "absurd" and the response from politicians as "reckless".

Ms Shoesmith, who was sacked as director of children's services at Haringey council in north London in 2008, admitted that errors of judgement had been made by her staff but insisted she bore no personal responsibility for the tragedy.

She told a Commons committee that she felt sorry about the toddler's death but questioned why the police and health services had not also been made to take responsibility.

Appearing before the Education Select Committee, Ms Shoesmith revealed that social workers had been so taken in by 17-month-old Baby Peter's mother, Tracey Connelly, that they could not believe it when police informed them she had been charged over his death.

She said: "I was in the room. Those people who knew Peter Connelly and his mother were completely taken aback. They said 'That can't be the case – you must have it wrong'."

She added that the furore had proved extremely damaging for social workers across the country. "The whole sector is now motivated by fear of failure," she said.

In her opening comments to the hearing, Ms Shoesmith said: "There never was a doubt about how sorry I was, and everyone else at Haringey was, about the murder of Peter Connelly. To construct a narrative which told the public that Peter Connelly died because Haringey was uniquely weak, sack everyone from the director to the social worker and all would be well – was, quite frankly, absurd.

"So I must start by telling you that if you believe the narrative put to the public by some members of the press and some politicians, then we begin on different pages."

Peter Connelly died in August 2007 after suffering horrendous injuries at the hands of his mother, her lover Steven Barker and his brother, Jason Owen. Despite receiving 60 visits from social workers, doctors and police, he suffered 50 wounds over the final eight months of his life.

Ms Shoesmith, 57, is the first expert to be called in front of the committee, which is examining issues in safeguarding children.

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