The House

Blair message

TONY BLAIR sent a message to President Bill Clinton expressing "shock and sympathy" over the high school massacre in Denver.

He said that after the tragedy of Dunblane the events in Colorado would evoke many special memories and emotions.

But while the decision to ban handguns had been "the right one", the laws of the US were a matter for them. "It is important that we teach children properly in the classroom about these issues," he added.

Time to dance

BARONESS JAY of Paddington, the Leader of the Lords, claimed a sense of "defeatism" had gripped Conservatives over the abolition of hereditaries. She said she now expected them to dance a "long, stately, hopefully reasonably courteous, quadrille" towards accepting reform.