The connection with beef is the only solution that can account for her death

The connection with beef is the only solution that can account for her death.”Her solicitor, David Harris, said that if it could be proved that Mrs Van Es ate beef after the Government had pronounced it safe, the family may have a “very valid case”.. Ms Andrews said: “The meeting is to get all the families together and see if we can achieve something. If anybody has a heart to listen, then we might have some success, if everybody is ignorant, we don’t.”My mum was a fit and healthy normal woman but she began to get depressed which was totally out of character for her, and that’s when we realised something was wrong.”Towards the end my brothers and I were feeding her, dressing her, bathing her and putting her to bed. Fonnie Van Es, 44, who was born in the Netherlands, died in 1994 from the human equivalent of “mad-cow disease” after a three-month illness.

Her daughter, Ilja Andrews, 23, is seeking legal aid for the first such case brought by the families of CJD victims.
Relatives of other victims joined Ms Andrews and her brothers Tjark, 21, and Tjobbe, 14, in their home town of Banbury, Oxfordshire, yesterday for a CJD Families Support Group meeting. Germany alone would not be able to block it, but if France and one or more other countries joined Germany, then they could.If the result is close, Britain could invoke a compromise procedure, calling for the proposal to be decided separately by the EU agriculture ministers.. A woman yesterday launched a legal action against the Government over the death of her mother from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Today’s final draft is certain to recommend that Britain must set in place strict new production safeguards for the beef derivatives and should agree to rigorous monitoring procedures, which could take months to finalise.If the proposal is pushed to a vote, a qualified majority of the 15 would be needed for the measure to pass. Attempts to block meat imports from the EU would almost certainly be successfully challenged in the British courts as being in conflict with European law. But if the sceptics’ proposal was accepted such law could not be enforced until it had been tested in the European Court of Justice.The Government sees today’s decision, which is to be taken at a meeting of the European Standing Veterinary Committee, as a crucial test of its ability to achieve progress towards a total lifting of the ban.The committee’s veterinary scientists, representing each member state, will consider a proposal for modifying the ban from the European Commission, which has already accepted that there is no scientific case for maintaining the ban on the three beef derivatives.The proposal had by last night gone through several drafts, as attempts were made to tighten the conditions to gain the best chance of securing a vote in favour. Some Euro-sceptic Tories are threatening to vote with Labour in tomorrow night’s Commons debate on agricultural policy.

But right-wing ministers will see it as reinforcing their case for an urgent change in the law to prevent British courts enforcing European trade law in ways which will severely limit the scope for retaliatory measures against the beef ban.The Foreign Office has gone out of its way to say that Britain will not adopt “illegal” retaliatory measures. German sources said last night that although Bonn is not in principle against easing the ban, it believes more time will be needed to study the public health implications.A rejection of the call to ease the ban – or a stalling – would inflame anti-European sentiment in Britain and set the Government on a damaging new collision course with the European Union.The Government faces an immediate backlash if today’s meeting does not go Britain’s way. Britain’s chances today of securing an easing of the beef ban for gelatin, tallow and semen was still in doubt last night, as France remained hesitant and Germany strongly signalled that it may call for further delay. The French President, Jacques Chirac, who began a state visit to Britain yesterday, appeared ready to lend support to Britain but gave no sign to John Major that France would vote in favour of immediate relaxation.
Germany, meanwhile, indicated that it would seek to maintain the pressure on Britain, by calling for a decision to be stalled. But so devalued is the currency of outrage and condemnation (will there be no patients waiting for dialysis under Labour, Mr McLeish?) that we sometimes do not know truly dreadful behaviour when we see it.. There is even a hint the library may not be as vital as it once was since the NAO points out it is increasingly transmitting material to readers over the Internet.The Audit Office also the possibility that the cost could rise still further since by the date of its report, the budget was fully committed. This pounds 496m total to date also includes a contingency for the settlement of claims now under way between contractors and the Government.Almost all the cost increase was caused by problems on the first phase of the project.

These related to three main areas: unsound electrical cabling; faulty fire sprinklers and a defective mechanical book shelving system.Unfortunately, notes the National Audit Office, because of poor quality assurance these weaknesses were not spotted until work was “far advanced and expensive to rectify”.Problems were exacerbated by the Department of the Environment and the library not seeing eye to eye over the project.PA Consulting, the firm of management consultants hired by the Government to discover what was going wrong “expressed concern that the department and library were behaving as opposing partners rather than as partners,” the audit office says.The watchdog stresses that the main lessons that must be learnt for future projects are: agreeing objectives at the outset, providing financial incentives for the builders and establishing proper quality assurance controls.News Analysis, page 13. Until, two-thirds of the way through Beaver’s evidence, I realised that in this case all his epithets were entirely justified. Which is what I was doing during Labour’s debate on Westminster council. And his overblown vocabulary is almost entirely taken from the boys’ comics of 40 years ago; villains (the party opposite) are fixers, fiddlers, twisters, “up to their necks” in this or that “squalid” or “scandalous” affair.As a result it is tempting to discount what he says. Liz Lynne, more Democrat than liberal, invited the PM to disapprove of violent movies, which he did. Teresa Gorman pointed out that the extra costs of the single currency for Marks & Sparks would mean “knickers going up”. The trouble is that up is exactly where the straight-laced Major, Blair and Lynne think knickers ought to be.The desirability of Natural Labour’s approach came home to me fully later on, during the Frank Dobson Show.