An all-party group of MPs has protested to United Artists at a change to satellite transmissions affecting the live coverage of Parliament. Previously anyone with a moveable dish system could pick up the broadcast designed for cable use but viewing is now restricted to those with satellite decoders costing pounds 9,000.

STAFF at the Child Support Agency have been deluged with almost 11,000 complaints over the last 12 months - and in more than half the cases the agency is failing to meet its own targets for dealing with them.

Sir Michael Angus (left), outgoing president of the Confederation of British Industry, with Sir Bryan Nicholson, his successor, at the annual meeting yesterday. Sir Michael, who has reiterated CBI calls for sustainable non-inflationary growth and for a more open and deregulated business environment in Europe, will serve as deputy president for a year. Sir Bryan is chairman of Bupa and of Varity, the holding company for Massey Ferguson and Perkins UK. He is also a non-executive director of GKN.

Sir: Someone who is not a Conservative ought to point out to Tory backbenchers that the only politician who might be able to return them to their seats in Westminster in the future is John Major.

Simon Coombs, Tory MP for Swindon, Wiltshire, told a meeting in Greenbridge that families should consider legal action against the Child Support Agency. He said a test case at the European Court of Human Rights would bring pressure on the Government to change the rules. He said MPs had 'got it wrong' about the CSA.

Mayan Indian rebel leaders, locked in peace talks with the Mexican government, have demanded the resignation of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Reuter reports from San Cristobal. The Zapatista National Liberation Army said only a transitional government could guarantee that presidential and legislative elections due in August will be fair and free.

Denis McShane, who was runner-up for the Rotherham Labour nomination before the last election, is again on the short-list for the safe Labour seat, left vacant by the death of the sitting MP Jimmy Boyce. The six-strong list agreed yesterday also includes Barbara Boyce, widow of the late MP.

Sir: Andrew Marr ('Sex is your business; your lies are mine', 10 February) demands our sympathy for the onerous working conditions which Members of Parliament endure. He must be joking.

JOHN MAJOR provoked Labour uproar and embarrassment on his own benches yesterday when he insisted that a reported pounds 10m pay- off for British Aerospace's chairman was 'not a matter for me', writes Patricia Wynn Davies.

THE GOVERNMENT revisited the troubled area of maintenance payments by absent parents last night, as new Child Support Agency rules designed to meet a wave of protests provoked fresh cross-party fire.

Mr Yeo's insistence that he had been driven from office by media pressure is evident in the text of his resignation letter to the Prime Minister.

William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, Tory MP for Old Sarum, statesman and war leader had a brilliant and precocious son who at the age of 24 became Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister, writes Catriona Luke.

JOHN PATTEN thinks it appropriate that he and others should stop children in the street who are wearing school uniform and demand to know why they are not in school. Why stop there?

AN ALL-PARTY committee of MPs is to hold an investigation into the formula operated by the Child Support Agency for assessing maintenance payments, after receiving hundreds of complaints from divorced and separated fathers who have been ordered to pay huge increases since the agency was set up in April.