So make no mistake, today's statement in open court that he may now be prepared to leave is something that many in government thought they would never hear.

The reason for this major development is simple.

Abu Qatada's willingness to go comes down to the strength of legal guarantees in an extensive UK-Jordan treaty signed in March - guarantees that make it harder for him to win a deportation appeal.

The document provides very clear and unambiguous assurances of fair treatment and a trial in Jordan free of evidence extracted by torture. It goes much further than a previous deal with the UK.

And that's what his legal team have always argued: Live up to what we tell other nations - only deport people back to countries that respect basic human rights.

Both of these are complicated areas of law and policy - so let's have a look at the detail.

One of the proposals is to change the way the courts decide cases in which someone with a criminal conviction is appealing against removal from the UK by arguing their family life is here, rather than abroad.

It is worth stressing these legal battles have nothing to do with the prolonged case of the radical preacher Abu Qatada.

He's not a convicted criminal and his deportation to Jordan hinges on the entirely different question of that country's record on torturing people into giving evidence against others. His right to family life is not an issue in that particular battle.

The bill proposes to bring the "full force of legislation" to a policy in which there is a presumption the "public interest" lies in deporting somebody rather than letting them stay. So do we need legislation when the rule already exists?

In 2012, the Home Office changed the immigration rule book in criminal deportations. The new rule said if someone was convicted of a serious criminal offence, typically meaning one that had led to a year in jail, then the Home Secretary's deportation order should trump the offender's right to family life in the UK. That general right is set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In a little-known immigration case, a judge then ruled the new rules were not good enough because they had been nodded through by MPs, rather than properly debated by all of Parliament. Well, the home secretary has now come back with the full monty.

The question is whether the new legislation would be any more successful than the controversial rules?

If this legislation goes through without a hitch, it will strengthen the home secretary's legal hand because she will have the will of Parliament behind her. Judges generally do not like to be seen to be flouting the will of Parliament unless a law is completely incompatible with other laws, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights.

And here's the thing. All British courts - from the Immigration and Asylum Chamber to the Supreme Court - have made clear that when it comes to a right to family life, one size does not fit all. They say judges have a duty to examine the merits of each case.

That's why more than 150 convicted criminals in the past two years have successfully avoided deportation on the basis of an Article 8 claim. Some won because they have lived almost their entire life in the UK and have no real ties to another country. Others did so because their children are in the UK, even if they do not live with them.

So it is very difficult at this stage to see how a new law would eliminate these kinds of deportation battles - but it may in time make it easier for the Home Secretary to win.

The other major proposal is to restrict the access some migrants have to public services.

The Home Office says temporary migrants would lose access to public services. It says this would ensure those who use the NHS are making a contribution.

Health care is a devolved matter in the UK - so it is not clear whether the proposals will apply to the whole country or just England.

Currently, GPs treat temporary patients - meaning someone who is in an area for more than 24 hours but less than three months - free of charge.

And some NHS services are free irrespective of where somebody normally lives. These include accident and emergency care, family planning and sexual health.

GPs can refuse to register a patient - but they are under no obligation to check someone's immigration status.

Separately, hospitals have a duty to charge patients who normally live overseas.

Some doctors have already voiced concerns about the new proposals, with one leader already saying people should not overestimate the size of the problem, and that GPs should not become a new border agency.

The measure is however backed by MPs from the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration who say they have long called for NHS restrictions.

"The Queen's Speech provides another important success for the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration. Restricting free access to health care for people who have recently arrived in this country and those who have stayed illegally has been a measure that the Group have long been calling for. We welcome the announcement of a new Bill, which clearly responds to voters' strong views."

The government also proposes requiring private landlords to check the immigration status of their tenants and banning illegal immigrants from obtaining driving licences.

Labour has already attacked this proposal as inadequate because there is no statutory register of private landlords. There is also the question of how to stop unscrupulous landlords who cram migrant labourers into homes - a practice that sometimes sees two workers using the same bed at different times.

The Home Office says that by splitting the UK Border Agency into two - creating an immigration-and-visa service and a separate law-enforcement body - it aims to stop abuse of the system.

Now, what's not clear is what happens next - and when. Downing isn't saying that the changes will come in before restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian workers are lifted next year.

But crucially, the proposed requirement to make landlords check the immigration status of their tenants - and the move to restrict access to the NHS - are going out for consultation.

In other words - there's no final policy as of yet to put into a bill - which means we can't even be sure when the proposals will go before Parliament.

Ever since the Leveson Inquiry and the related criminal investigation into how some journalists acquire information from the police, there has been a row brewing between police chiefs and newsrooms over the flow of information.

The row broke surface this week when Warwickshire Police decided not to name a former police officer who had been charged with theft from the force's former headquarters.

That led to a broad accusation from some journalists that it was symptomatic of increasing secrecy from the police - secrecy which is making it harder for reporters to find out what officers are doing in the public's name.

When someone is arrested for an offence - and the incident appears to be newsworthy - journalists will try to establish what has happened. That ultimately means trying to establish who has been arrested, because journalists want their reporting to be accurate.

But the police's position in relation to names is shifting in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry report.

Lord Justice Leveson said that arrested suspects should not be named "save in exceptional and clearly identified circumstances".

Current practice is that a police force issues a statement along the lines of a "A 34-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of such-and-such a crime".

What happens next varies from force to force. Some will informally confirm the name of the person arrested if journalists have worked it out for themselves. Some won't.

Police chiefs want to introduce an official policy under which forces would "neither confirm nor deny" (NCND) the name of anyone arrested.

The point of the proposed NCND policy is to end what Chief Constable Andy Trotter, who leads on media policy for forces in England and Wales, says is a "bizarre parlour game" in which a reporter tries a variety of creative and persuasive techniques to receive some guidance on whether or not the name is correct.

Writing in the Press Gazette, the industry website, Andy Trotter said the current situation "is less than satisfactory, with no-one certain as to what can be expected, and a pervasive sense that these arrangements may not be transparent or fair. This is damaging to public confidence in both police and media".

He says there would be exceptions where it would be in the public interest to name on arrest.

The broad argument put by news organisations is that the public interest test being considered by the Association of Chief Police Officers is not the same issue as deciding what the public is legitimately interested in.

Further, naming a suspect who has been arrested can lead to more victims coming forward.

That is what happened in the case of BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall, who has admitted 14 charges of indecent assault. More of his victims came forward after the media reported he had been arrested on a handful of allegations.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World at One programme on Thursday, The Times' crime editor, Sean O'Neill, said Surrey Police could have uncovered more about Jimmy Savile's crimes if it had named him when it had him under investigation.

The counter-argument is that someone who is arrested will be tainted by the impact of being named, even if they are innocent. The headline screaming "John Smith Arrested" won't be matched by one declaring "John Smith Goes Free".

Nowhere is that argument more compelling than in the case of the ordeal-by-media experienced by Christopher Jefferies, wrongly arrested in relation to the murder of Joanne Yeates. The innocent man later told the Leveson Inquiry that once his name was out, he suffered a "frenzied campaign to blacken his character".

That feeling of gross unfairness at the hands of parts of the media appears to be shared by many members of the public. A survey for The Independent newspaper found three-quarters of those interviewed believed that people accused of serious sexual offences should benefit from anonymity.

The chairman of the Bar Council, the professional body for barristers, has also called for anonymity in sexual offences.

One backbench MP has even tried (and failed) to make it a crime for a journalist to name arrested people without official permission.

But the Law Commission, which advises ministers, takes a different view - it says that police should release names unless there are compelling reasons not to do so.

The Warwickshire Police case was, however, of a completely different order. On Wednesday, it refused to name a former police officer charged with a major act of theft.

"Due to a change in policy we no longer release the name of an individual on charge," said the force. "Journalists may request a surname for guidance the day before the first court appearance by calling the newsdesk."

It later said the policy was in keeping with national police policy.

It wasn't - and the force ultimately admitted it had been wrong and has since named the former officer as Paul Andrew Greaves.

The broad accusation from journalists is that the police are increasingly secretive and it's becoming harder for reporters to find out what the police are doing and why.

The police say that's rubbish. Be that as it may, it's highly likely that forces in England and Wales will soon adopt a rule of neither confirming nor denying the identity of people who have been arrested, even if a reporter knows for sure who it is.

Warwickshire's now abandoned policy not to name Paul Greaves after he had been charged went further than that.

Police chiefs argue the proposed national policy would be neither secret justice nor secret arrests, but an attempt to be fair, particularly to suspects who may be released without charge.

The British police and MI5 don't have the manpower that the East German Stasi once had, so counter-terrorism investigators deal everyday with competing requests for resources for covert operations. Uddin was, in the jargon, a person of interest whom investigators wanted to better understand.

But given what they knew of his connections, did they make the right call? The case has inevitable echoes of 2004 when MI5 had come across a man from West Yorkshire on the periphery of another investigation. They never got to the bottom of who he was until he led the 2005 suicide attacks on London.

Nowhere is the romance more lacking than in the militant training camps of Pakistan - the destination of choice for many aspiring Western jihadists.

Four of the men who pleaded guilty to preparing for acts of terrorism - Ishaaq Hussain, Shahid Khan, Khobaib Hussain and Naweed Ali - did so on the basis that they had left their family homes in Birmingham and headed off to join a camp run by men they saw as leading the fight for Islam.

In truth, the trip was an unmitigated disaster.

The Birmingham cell's leading figure, Irfan Naseer, was grooming these four as potential recruits for his master plan to bomb the UK.

Naseer had himself returned from two jihadist camps in Pakistan full of tales of derring-do.

MI5 once listened in as he told a particularly incredible story of evading a US drone. The tale is reminiscent of a scene from the grim black comedy film, Four Lions, and we'll never know what really happened.

These four impressionable young men thought they had a top militant contact in Naseer, and a fast track to joining the mujahideen.

He arranged for the quartet to go to a training camp hidden in Pakistan's mountains.

The men travelled in pairs in mid-August 2011. If they were trying to avoid attention they failed miserably.

Counter-terrorism officers were across the entire plot. They assessed they could allow the four to leave, knowing they could ultimately arrest them on their return.

Ishaaq Hussain told his family he was going on a prayer retreat in southern England - a tradition for some observant Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan.

Instead, he and Shahid Khan were driven to Birmingham airport and flew to Islamabad.

Their driver was Rahin Ahmed, Naseer's hapless gofer.

He had been in charge of looking after thousands of pounds which the group fraudulently raised by posing as charity workers. He lost £9,000 in botched currency trading. His punishment was to run around doing Naseer's bidding, including ferrying the travellers to the airport.

As he drove the second pair to the airport, he made several last minute checks which were recorded by MI5. It had been bugging the car for some time.

They discussed martyrdom and avoiding saying goodbye to their families.

Meanwhile, Ishaaq Hussain and Shahid Khan had arrived in the mountain hideout. The shock began to set in.

This wasn't like the training camps of propaganda videos, with the black flag of al-Qaeda flying free in the wind. There were no racks of weapons waiting for recruits. And all the trainers had left for the religious festival of Eid.

Very few people spoke English and the British boys were left to their own devices.

Conditions were, according to Ishaaq Hussain's account, primitive. They slept on bare ground in sleeping bags, with a hole in the ground for a loo.

What little food they could get was a far cry from mum's home cooking or the tasty takeaways of Sparkhill and Sparkbrook.

Mosquitoes posed a more immediate threat than American drones, and if the insects weren't going to get the Brits, the unbearable heat would.

As soon as the sun set, the men were in darkness. Ishaaq Hussain, 19, had left home two days earlier - where his mother made the beds. Now, with no bed at all, he was disillusioned.

Once they were reunited, the four Brits put aside their collective embarrassment of being part of a clandestine shambles and began debating how to get out.

With rapidly diminishing batteries on their mobile phones, they called Naseer's gofer Rahin Ahmed. The phone battery died, but they had enough in another to call relatives.

The men's families gathered at Shahid Khan's home, shocked and furious about what their sons were up to.

In the middle of the night, the men received a call from their families telling them in no uncertain terms to get off the mountain and meet an uncle in a nearby town. He had travelled to collect them and would return them to Islamabad where another relative would put them on flights home.

The four crept out of the camp at dawn with their tails between their legs. The only one not to return immediately was Shahid Khan, although the court heard there was no evidence he received any terrorism training during his continued stay in Pakistan.

Back in Birmingham, recriminations began. An influential local man known as "Jimmy" confronted Irfan Naseer. Shahid Khan's family, the court heard, was "outraged".

The BBC has approached the families and nobody wants to speak publicly. One close relative told the BBC of their feelings of shame and anger, but added they believed the four were on their way to being reformed.

"All four of you took the decision not to proceed with terror training and all four of you realised what a shocking mistake you had made," Mr Justice Henriques said during sentencing.

"But it is a chilling thought that unbeknown to your parents you left this country intending to undergo a period of terror training."

He sentenced each of them to 40 months in prison. That means they'll almost certainly leave prison within weeks on licence, having spent almost two years in jail, awaiting conviction.

Mr Justice Henriques made clear that although the men had been convicted of preparing acts of terrorism - the ringleader had been capable of delivering on his big talk.

Irfan Naseer stood in the dock in the same way he had appeared throughout the trial - largely emotionless, shifting his considerable weight from one leg to another.

Irfan Khalid breathed deeply and looked worried as Naseer got life. But the judge accepted expert evidence about his limited intellectual capacity and so he avoided the same fate.

Five jurors who sat through this incredibly complex trial returned to see the men go down.

Above them, in the public gallery, were a few relatives. There had been smiles and nods from the lesser members of the group to the gallery during this week's complex sentencing arguments. There were even a few nervous giggles. But there were no smiles today.

Operation Pitsford: The 11 men

The UK originally signed a "memorandum of understanding" with Jordan in 2005 in an effort to deport Abu Qatada.

That talked about fair trials for deportees - but it did not define what fairness meant - or refer specifically to how those trials would be conducted.

Its harshest critics said it was a grubby attempt by the UK to duck its international commitment to oppose torture.

This new treaty clearly states that torture-tainted evidence cannot be used in court against someone who is deported.

These are strong words - but the question now is whether these words can be made real. Judges here and at the European Court of Human Rights have laid down a very stringent test.

It is going to be for the government to show that test has been met.

And that's the problem Theresa May faces.

The Supreme Court's job is to consider whether there are major points of law - the rules which govern our society - that need thrashing out.

The fact is that judge after judge has said that the law is clear: The UK should not send people back to regimes with a whiff of torture about them.

Only a third of applications make it through to full Supreme Court hearings, so the odds are stacked against the government.

The remaining options are to get a bigger and better deal with Jordan over the manner in which Abu Qatada would be prosecuted, or to charge him with a criminal offence in the UK - something that has never happened.

And it's because of that apparent determination to plough on that the judge gave the men extended sentences.

Judges can turn to these sentences when they assess that an offender is so dangerous they may commit a further serious crime after release.

In effect, extended sentences partially bridge the gap between ordinary fixed jail terms and life sentences, under which serious criminals live out their days knowing their release licence can be withdrawn at any time.

Iqbal and Ahmed face five extra years at the end of their 11-year sentence, during which they could be sent back to jail if they have not changed.

Both men will have to tell police regularly about their whereabouts for 30 years.

In each of the other cases, the suspects were put on a plane to face the American courts.

The job of the Strasbourg judges is to balance security and human rights. And in this particular and unusual case, Aswat's poor health has been the single and deciding factor.

Campaigners have long argued that the solitary confinement regime at ADX Florence, a US supermax jail used for terrorism suspects, breaches all decent standards of treatment.

But European judges don't agree because last year they sanctioned the extradition of other men, including Talha Ahsan who has Aspergers Syndrome.

What happens now? Unless the court's block on Aswat's deportation can be overturned in the Grand Chamber, the UK government will no longer be able to detain him pending extradition.

The Court of Appeal's ruling makes clear that the chances of an appeal to the Supreme Court are very slim.

The immediate effect is that the preacher can't be detained under immigration law because there's no realistic chance he is going to be deported anytime soon.

So if the home secretary wants to get rid of the cleric, she'll have to start all over again trying to convince judges that the facts on the ground in Jordan have changed.

Critics of this legal saga say it would never have been necessary if Abu Qatada had been charged with a crime and put on trial.

Not the current one, Theresa May, but one of her many Labour predecessors, John Reid, in 2006.

And yet seven years on, it looks like we're back in the same place.

The UK's migration system has been astonishingly troubled for almost 20 years.

Accused of incompetence and beset with massive organisational difficulties, it is the most ridiculed part of central government - a tainted brand that has a real impact on people who just want to get on with their lives.

Immigration was once a busy, but fairly banal part of the Home Office. But when immigration took off in the 1990s, the system wasn't geared up to cope.

And slowly, but surely, the problems began to mount.

Some critics say the problems began when departure gate checks were scrapped in two stages between 1994 and 1998. Almost two decades on, the UK still does not have a completely comprehensive and single electronic record of movements across the border.

The first real problem noticed by the public was the creaking asylum system. The then Prime Minister Tony Blair was under so much pressure he pledged in 2003 to halve the number of applicants.

And that pledge became one of many ministerial attempts to win a game of bureaucratic whack-a-mole: hammering one immigration problem and hoping that another two wouldn't emerge elsewhere.

The crunch moment came in 2006 when then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke lost his job because his department had lost track of released foreign national prisoners.

It was a devastating blow to what public trust there was in the immigration system.

His replacement, John Reid, announced there would be radical change and the eventual result was the UK Border Agency, as BBC News reported at the time.

This arm's-length body brought together the teams managing immigration applications with the law enforcement parts of Revenue and Customs.

Ministers set the policy and the agency was charged with delivering it. The separation also had political benefit because the home secretary was no longer directly responsible for any disasters.

The UKBA, under its chief Lin Homer, had a mission statement to protect borders, tackle immigration crime and to take fast and fair decisions. Did it achieve any of those?

In its scathing report published on Monday, the Commons Home Affairs Committee accused the agency of providing, time and again, inaccurate or misleading information and bungling its casework.

It was specifically critical of Ms Homer who, in turn, has rejected the allegations made by MPs.

Backlogs mounted as the agency shuffled resources around to deal with emerging crises.

Inspectors and MPs currently calculate the total backlog of unresolved or disputed cases at 312,000 - although the true figure could be different.

Part of the UKBA's problem was that it was never, strictly speaking, a wholly separate executive agency.

Many immigration decisions must involve ministers because they involve fine judgements on the law and policy.

That blurred boundary became a public row that threatened the home secretary herself when she suspended borders chief Brodie Clark. He was accused of relaxing controls without authority. They eventually settled the dispute out of court.

So where now?

Labour has accused the coalition of worsening the situation inside the UKBA by forcing it to take a 43% funding cut since the general election and by closing thousands of open files where it can't trace the particular applicant.

But Mrs May's decision to bring immigration back in house reverses Labour's earlier decision as a failure in itself.

There will be two new commands ultimately answerable to the minister. One will deal with visas and applications and another will take care of immigration enforcement. The UK Border Force will continue to operate as a third command at the ports.

Mrs May thinks the new organisations will do the job better because they will be smaller and more focused. She says she wants to ensure they are transparent rather than part of a "closed, secretive and defensive culture".

But the biggest challenge, other than the backlogs, is how to modernise the UKBA's systems. There have been occasions at the Croydon headquarters when the system has shut down, leaving hundreds of applicants stranded.

Paperwork - including applicants' passports - can go missing for months, leaving people unable to travel.

Can the new agencies work? Given the record of failures, Mrs May knows the UKBA's successors have to be more than a rebranding exercise.

Not the current one, Theresa May, but one of her many Labour predecessors, John Reid, in 2006.

And yet seven years on, it looks like we're back in the same place.

The UK's migration system has been astonishingly troubled for almost 20 years.

Accused of incompetence and beset with massive organisational difficulties, it is the most ridiculed part of central government - a tainted brand that has a real impact on people who just want to get on with their lives.

UKBA's astonishingly troubled history

The official report into what police knew - and, critically, failed to do - about Jimmy Savile makes grim reading.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, the watchdog that looks at how the police function, looked for evidence of reports, complaints and intelligence that had been gathered on Savile down the years.

They didn't find a great deal - just seven potentially actionable complaints which emerged during a series of incidents. The inspectorate lists a further series of incidents in which people tried to report Savile and, in effect, failed to get the police to record what they were being told. I've included those "failed complaints" below because it helps to understand how some police officers dealt with allegations and their more general failure to share intelligence.

Some of the evidence uses explicit language.

The earliest known complaint about Savile dates from 1963 and it is one of eight complaints that were never registered at the time they were made. This one occurred just as his television career was really beginning to take off. A male victim told his local police officer in Cheshire that Savile had raped him. He made the complaint the day after the assault. The officer told the victim to "forget about it" and that they should "move on".

The officer did not record a report of what the victim had said - and so there was no investigation into the DJ.

There was a similar second incident - this time after the DJ had begun presenting Top of the Pops. A man told the Metropolitan Police that his girlfriend had been assaulted during a recording of the programme. An officer told him that he "could be arrested for making such allegations". No report appears to have been logged.

The HMIC says that, to its knowledge, complainants went to three other forces in England and Wales - Merseyside, the then Royal Ulster Constabulary and West Yorkshire - but failed to get police to take them seriously. The Police Service of Northern Ireland, the RUC's successor, says that it checked all records and could not find any report about Savile.

A further separate allegation was made in 2009 to police in Jersey. Police there concluded on legal advice they could not charge Savile - and they had no access to the information uncovered below because of the limited way that forces were sharing intelligence.

In the 1960s, police records and intelligence systems were somewhat ad hoc. Forces used different approaches depending on what worked for them. The Metropolitan Police's then paedophile unit used a paper ledger system for recording intelligence on suspects and lines of inquiry.

In 1964, an officer with the unit recorded information in this ledger about the DJ - information which the HMIC says could have been further investigated.

This is what the record said:

"BATTERSEA BRIDGE ROAD... - 4 older girls & youth [name redacted] (? Homosexual) live at - Jimmy SAVILLE (sic) well known disc jockey frequents - used by absconders from DUNCROFT APP SCHOOL"

So the Metropolitan Police had a record of the DJ which connected him with a location that officers suspected was used to commit sexual offences. Critically, the ledger names the Duncroft Approved School in Surrey which events have now shown became one of his main targets for victims.

The author of the intelligence entry knew of concerns about organised offenders targeting the school:

"DUNCROFT APP SCHOOL - Absconders - Vice Ring. [Name] ....living on (sic) immoral earnings of [names of two females identified as DUNCROFT girls]."

The HMIC found no evidence to suggest that the Met acted on this intelligence to get to the bottom of whether Savile was either a suspect working on his own or linked to an organised group of offenders. Crucially, the ledger entry was not recorded in a way that made it accessible to other forces or investigators as police later modernised their approach to sharing intelligence.

We go forward 30 years now to the late 1990s, where the inspectorate found a computerised version of an anonymous letter about Savile. The letter, dated July 1998, was sent to the Scotland Yard vice squad. This is an edited version of what it said:

"I supply here information which if looked into by one of your officers will yield a secret life.

"The image that JIMMY SAVILE has tried to portray over the years is someone who is deeply concerned with his fellow man; however, the thrust of this is entirely the opposite.

"His fund-raising activities are not out of altruistic motives, but purely for selfish advancement and an easy living. He has slimed his way in wherever possible. He has tried to hide his homosexuality, which in any event is an open secret with those who know; but did you know that he is also a deeply committed paedophile.

"An incident that happened some years ago (not that long) was when he was involved with a young 'rent boy'. This rent boy followed him to [location named]. JIMMY SAVILE foolishly gave this rent boy his Leeds telephone number [set out in the text] which he has now subsequently changed; this was because he was having threatening calls from this rent boy, who was going to go to the press and expose him for his paedophilia, if he did not give him more money.

"I know at the time he was extremely angry and frightened. How it ended, I really do not know. What cannot be acceptable and must be stopped is JIMMY SAVILE's paedophilia."

The anonymous correspondent tells the police that Savile would be quite open about seeking out rent boys in Leeds after taking part in charity runs.

"He thinks he is untouchable because of the people he mixes with, and again I know from personal experience, that they find him amusing and the butt of many jokes," the letter continues.

"When JIMMY SAVILE fails, and sooner or later he will, a lot of well-known personalities and past politicians are going to fall with him.

"I have done my duty, my conscience is clear, you have the power, time, and resources at Scotland Yard to wheedle him out, and expose him for what he really is."

Uncorroborated intelligence is the hardest type of intelligence to act on. If you don't know the source then how can you check it? In this case, it would not have been so hard because it includes a number of possible lines of inquiry - not least whether or not Savile had changed his phone number. There would also be the possibility that West Yorkshire Police would have street sources who may know if Savile sought out male prostitutes.

The intelligence was indeed passed to that force, as well as the Met's own paedophile unit. What West Yorkshire did with it remains unclear. But the Met, internally, marked the intelligence as "sensitive". That meant that any officer who sought it out would need to know what they were looking for before they could have access to the material. An investigator couldn't just happen upon it as part of a general trawl for allegations against Savile.

On this occasion, a woman told the Met Police she had been sexually assaulted by Savile in 1973 when she was 15 and had attended a recording of Top of the Pops. He had touched her and when she told him to stop he retorted: "I thought that's what you came here for".

The woman said she would provide a witness statement but said she only wanted to see a prosecution if other victims were subsequently identified. Officers recorded the allegations but nobody interviewed Savile.

But here's the really interesting bit. The record was marked "restricted" - presumably because of Savile's celebrity status.

The HMIC report says: "This classification was to have a profound effect - it rendered the record invisible to investigating officers in Surrey... in 2007 following a separate allegation made to them about Savile. This prevented those later officers from identifying a potential pattern in Savile's behaviour which may have been relevant to their enquiry.

"It also prevented any possibility that the 2003 victim could be told that another allegation had been made against Savile with a view to finding out whether that caused her to change her mind about further assisting the police with a view to mounting a prosecution."

The cumulative effect was that the Met was incapable of seeing the wood for the trees - it had over the course of 30-odd years both complaints and intelligence about Savile but no way to connect them.

In May 2007, a former resident of Duncroft - the school linked to Savile's suspected offending in 1964 - told Surrey police that she had seen the DJ assault a fellow pupil. This time, detectives began a proper investigation.

They carried out proper searches on the Police National Computer - the main system for recording crimes - and the then interim system for sharing intelligence short of a provable offence. This appears to be the first time that a record that was searchable by another force was created.

Surrey tracked down the victim who reluctantly confirmed the allegation but asked for the police to leave it. The force however pressed on and contacted 21 other pupils from the same year group. Two further victims were identified. Again, police found victims reluctant to help a prosecution.

Although Surrey felt it was struggling to get sufficient evidence for a charge, it interviewed Savile. He denied the allegations and referred to the fact that he knew senior officers in West Yorkshire.

Surrey's investigation ultimately came to nothing after the Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was insufficient evidence. But throughout the investigation, the detectives had no access to the intelligence already held by the Met.

In March 2008 Sussex Police received a complaint of sexual assault against Savile which took place in Worthing in 1970. The investigating officer discovered the information held by Surrey and the two forces talked.

The HMIC says that officers alerted each other to the "reluctance of their respective victims and both decided that neither was able to support the other.

"As a result, opportunities for mutual support were lost. A copy of the Sussex crime report was faxed to the Surrey officers."

If the government is going to win, it must show that judges have got it wrong in deciding that the cleric will suffer a "flagrant denial of justice" in Jordan.

The judges don't have to look at the facts of the case but how to approach answering the question.

If there is a "real risk" of unfairness, is it any business of the UK if Jordan says it has procedures for dealing with torture-tainted evidence?

The cleric's legal team says the risk is real because there's no proof that Jordan's courts will act in a way the government hopes.

And so the case is not about Abu Qatada any more - but the standard of justice in Jordan and the lengths the UK should go in assessing it.

Ever since police in Liverpool went on strike almost a century ago, sworn officers have been banned from withdrawing their labour.

Under the Police Act 1996, it is a criminal offence for any person to cause, or attempt to cause "disaffection amongst the members of any police force". If a Police Federation organiser had called on PCs to down handcuffs and walk out, they'd face up to two years in jail.

So this vote was about sending a message to ministers that ordinary police officers are fed up with reforms - changes that the government has been determined to drive through.

The fact that less than half of the Police Federation's membership supported the proposal shows how many officers think it would have been a futile gesture.

And so ministers will point to these figures as evidence that their policies of tackling immigration abuse and some categories of students are biting. They're certainly closer to their net migration target than they had expected to be.

However, critics will ask whether part of the fall relates to whether the UK remains attractive.

The UK cannot turn away EU workers - but there's been a drop in the arrival of those industrious Eastern Europeans whom business bosses love. Statisticians think some of those people may now be heading to Germany instead.

Secondly, there's been a slight rise in emigration as more Britons and people from Commonwealth nations find jobs abroad.

But although they did not have a clear target, their own words clearly convinced the jury that the three men were extremely dangerous: they knew what they were doing.

What was never clear in the trial was what had really made them want to be bombers. They exhibited all the same characteristics as many who have gone before them - including a vague hatred of "Western" society and a general social inadequacy with their place in Britain.

One of them even conceded to police that if his two fellow plotters managed to find women who would have them, their anger with the world may have eventually gone away.

Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, all from Birmingham, face life sentences for their plan to become suicide bombers. This is the story of how a school joker became one of the most dangerous men in Britain.