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They are demanding their freedom with another man, Omar Deghayes. They won permission to seek a High Court order requiring the UK to petition for their release.Mr al-Rawi and Mr el-Banna claim they were asked by MI5 to work for them, but were later handed to the CIA for “rendition”. Tony Blair joined the growing calls for the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay to be closed after he was questioned about the claims of torture by two British residents held there. Mr Blair was challenged at his regular monthly press conference at 10 Downing Street yesterday over the graphic and shocking claims by two men who lived in Britain that they were handed over to the CIA by the security service MI5 for torture in the notorious “dark prison” in Kabul, Afghanistan, before being taken to Guantanamo.
Nine Britons were released, but Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are still in the detention camp in Cuba after more than three years. Mr Letwin used a speech to the Policy Exchange think-tank to insist that the Conservatives would focus their help on, “those who are most in need”..

David Cameron attempted to portray the Conservatives as the party of the dispossessed yesterday. He marked 100 days as party leader with a visit to the headquarters of the Big Issue magazine, while Oliver Letwin, the man charged with overhauling Tory policies, said he wanted the party to help the unemployed, homeless, refugees and drug addicts. “It is a question of changing the world according to our lights so that it cannot changed according to theirs [the Tories']. To seek to only protect what we have is to risk losing it,” he said. “The test is this: what does the change mean, when all the argument is said and done, for ordinary people? This is the very core of New Labour – always pursue the values of solidarity and equity but never be Conservative about your means Unchanging on the why, but flexible on the how.”.

It’s about us and about our country.”Mr Blair hopes the policy review will lay the foundations for Labour’s programme for a fourth term. But because one way or the other, any government will have to meet these challenges in today’s world. That is the pattern of the future that we can’t alter.”What we can do is ensure that it is progressive values of fairness and social justice that govern this future, not those of the Conservative Party that would take our nation backwards It’s not about me. He wants to include critics of his education policies such as the think-tank Compass and “outsiders” such as frontline public sector workers who are not party members.Allies said the Prime Minister wanted to learn lessons from the education row, but he was confident of winning the argument for his vision of modern public services which promoted diversity in provision and ensured the least well-off were given advice on taking advantage of the new choices.Mr Blair is anxious to redraw the dividing lines between Labour and the Tories, which have been obscured by the Opposition’s support for his school reforms.He said: “The reason I advocate change is not because I want to provoke party division, still less because I see myself as Ramsay MacBlair betraying the Labour Party’s values or seeking my so-called legacy. I believe we now need to return to the debate but in a more practical and concrete form.”A campaign called Building a Progressive Future will be launched by Mr Blair after the May local elections to shape Labour policies for the next 10 years.

Tony Blair is to launch a new “Clause IV” debate to modernise Labour’s policies on public services in an attempt to heal the party’s wounds over his controversial school reforms. The Prime Minister acknowledged the need for a more inclusive debate inside the Labour Party a day after a rebellion by 52 of his MPs forced him to rely on Opposition support to win a crucial Commons vote on his Education Bill.
Speaking in his Sedgefield constituency last night, Mr Blair said: “Ten years ago, the Labour Party debated the new Clause IV modernising our aims and values. Of course they are not transparent.”But she said it was “absurd” to suggest parties should be barred from appointing their financial supporters to political seats in the House of Lords.People who fund political parties should be seen as “doing a public service for our democracy”, not treated with suspicion and disdain, said the Health Secretary.And she added: “There is no evidence at all for this outrageous suggestion that people have been buying peerages or have been offered peerages for sale.”Labour’s reforms have made Britain’s political culture “one of the most transparent and honest systems of political party finance in the developed world”, Ms Hewitt said.”There is now more for us to do, not only in the Labour Party… but right across the political system, so that everybody agrees on the best way forward, which I believe has to do with electing the House of Lords on the one hand and having the combination of state funding and stricter controls on individual donations and on party campaign spending,” she said.Labour’s former deputy leader Lord Hattersley last night said he was “horrified” by the sums taken by the party in loans without the knowledge of Mr Dromey.”It all demonstrates that the Labour Party leadership is too obsessed with the world of money. The Labour Party should not behave in this way,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight.”Labour Party supporters will be horrified, and quite rightly so.”And Lord Haskins, a former Labour peer and close adviser of the Prime Minister who was expelled from the party for donating cash to a Liberal Democrat candidate, said the affair appeared “a bit dodgy”.”When political leaders start talking to citizens about behaving better and respect and all that, you can’t be surprised that there is cynicism in the public when they see behaviour going on like this,” he told Today.Labour last night sought to defuse the “loangate” controversy, promising to declare all future borrowings – a move swiftly followed by the Tories.Mr Blair also signalled a string of changes to party funding, ministers’ private interests and the honours system, amid claims that wealthy donors were being rewarded with peerages.Mr Blair’s official spokesman said last night that an independent figure would be appointed to start inter-party talks about state funding for political parties.The Prime Minister also suggested he was in favour of another independent figure being appointed to advise ministers on their financial interests, something that No 10 rejected in the wake of the Tessa Jowell affair.And he said he wanted to renounce the right personally to nominate people for honours, other than Labour working peers and some individuals being rewarded for distinguished public service.. Controversy over the loans was ignited on Wednesday, when party treasurer Jack Dromey launched an internal inquiry after revealing he had not been informed about the money.Elected party officials had been “kept in the dark” by 10 Downing Street, he said.Mr Dromey is due to report to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee next Tuesday.Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday confirmed that he had been aware that the party was borrowing large sums from individual supporters.But he said he did not inform the House of Lords Appointments Commission about the money when he nominated three of those involved for peerages last year.Unlike gifts, loans at commercial rates of interest do not have to be declared to the Electoral Commission for publication in its quarterly register of donations to parties.The Commission moved yesterday to close this loophole, urging parties to declare their loans.Cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt today insisted there was nothing illegal or wrong about what Labour had done.But she accepted that it was “unwise” for the party to receive money in a way which gave rise to suspicions that it was offering honours in return for cash.And she said something would have to be done to make the system more transparent, suggesting she would like to see state funding for political parties and an elected Second Chamber of Parliament.The Health Secretary insisted there was no truth in “outrageous” allegations that Labour was selling seats in the House of Lords.”Nothing illegal has been done,” Ms Hewitt told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.”I think it has been unwise to have loans that – although they were perfectly legal and although nothing wrong has been done in terms of these allegations about peerages for loans and all the rest of it – nonetheless gives rise to suspicion.”I think the Prime Minister dealt with this very clearly yesterday when he said not only are we going to bring forward further proposals for reforms of the House of Lords, but we will also, with the other political parties and an independent body, look at how we make even further steps to ensure proper transparency in party political funding.”Ms Hewitt added: “Quite clearly, we have got to do something about the business of loans. Salaries start around £10,000, moving up to £20,000 for a top stud hand in a racing yard.Harriet appears in ‘A Stable Life’ on the Animal Planet channel, part of ‘The Mane Event’ premiering on Sunday at 6pm.