Home Office sources have told the Guardian that the government is considering introducing special anti-terror courts sitting in secret to determine how long suspects should be detained without charge.

Ministers are considering making a French-style "security-cleared judge" responsible for assembling a pre-trial case against terrorist suspects, with in-camera access to sensitive intelligence evidence, including currently inadmissible phone-tap evidence.

The plan under consideration could also involve the use of security-vetted "special advocates" as legal representatives of those detained.

However, a former minister and senior Blairite MP has criticised the government for its apparently panicked handling of initiatives to counter the threat posed by Islamist extremists.

John Denham, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee and a former Home Office minister, told the FT he was concerned by the way senior government figures had rushed out a number of controversial moves without prior consultation.

"What is more worrying is the sense of slight panic that seems to be emanating from the government over the last few days," he said.

"After the [London] bombings, there was a very sensible and measured approach recognising things needed to be done and discussed. The flurry of announcements over the last few days, many of which haven't been developed fully, gives the sense that the government is not fully in control of events and that's unfortunate."

Meanwhile, four men alleged to have been involved in last month's failed bomb plot were charged formally and remanded in custody when they appeared at Bow Street Magistrates' Court sitting at the maximum security Belmarsh prison in London.

A fifth suspect, Hussain Osman, is being held in Rome awaiting an extradition hearing.

Gordon Brown is expected to deliver the eulogy at Robin Cook's funeral, reports the Times.

The chancellor, who had a tense political relationship with the former foreign secretary for more than 20 years, will be at the event, which is to be held in Edinburgh on Friday.

But Tony Blair will not break off his holiday to attend, Downing Street has confirmed.

The prime minister, who will instead attend the memorial service later this year, is understood to feel that the security arrangements that would have to be put in place if he did attend would detract attention from the funeral itself.

Gaynor Cook, the MP's widow, issued a statement saying: "At this terrible time, I have been deeply touched by the many, many messages of support I have received."

Meanwhile, left-wing think tanks have warned that a "dangerous intellectual vacuum" has been created inside Labour by Cook's sudden death.

The director of the IPPR claims the Liberal Democrats could take the lead on constitutional reform as a result, whilst Compass's chairman Neal Lawson said: "It is a dangerous moment for Labour that the glue that he provided and which held the party's broad coalition together is no longer going to be there."

It has also emerged that Cook was speaking to his publishers about a new book on future Labour policy, which might have provided a springboard for his return to the front bench under a Gordon Brown premiership.

Allies of Brown said Cook's return to the front bench would have been a symbolic opportunity for the chancellor to help heal the divisions caused by the Iraq war.

"Mr Brown cannot make that gesture now and that makes his task more difficult," one supporter said.

John Prescott continued yesterday to stamp on suggestions from David Blunkett that he would be sharing the "necessary decisions" while Tony Blair is on holiday.

The deputy prime minister ordered Downing Street press officers to reiterate to reporters that he is in sole charge of the country over the next three weeks.

A spokesman for Blunkett said that his words had been "wrongly interpreted".

Prescott called a top-level security meeting at Number 10 yesterday - to which the work and pensions secretary was not invited.

The deputy prime minister also found time to take a family of tourists on a tour of Downing Street after spotting them peering through the gates.

Pinakin Patel, 38, said: "I thought he was joking but he took us back to Downing Street.

"That is the most surprising thing - that he had the time to show us round. He took us to the different rooms. In the Cabinet Room, he said, ‘This is where we make all the decisions - we just came out of a meeting just now’.

"Everybody in Number 10 looked quite surprised as he kept opening the doors for us. He even had the guys close the front door so we could get a photo there with him."

MI6 is to break with nearly a century of tradition and recruit openly for spies.

Intelligence sources have revealed that since the July bombings, a significant number of applications for jobs through existing methods of recruiting had come from Muslim graduates, who said that they wanted to do something for their country.

This unexpected rise in interest encouraged the Secret Intelligence Service to alter its recruiting methods.

A new training programme for junior doctors will focus on patient safety, ministers will say today.

Thousands of graduates will participate in the scheme - described by the Department of Heath as a "ground-breaking change in postgraduate medical training".

Under the new scheme all newly qualified doctors will be assessed for the first time on how well they communicate with patients.

Graduates will have their competence in carrying out patient consultations and conveying potentially shattering news regularly assessed, to ensure that they are as lucid and sensitive as possible.

The Telegraph reports that the Millennium Dome faced closure as early as May 2000, only five months after opening.

And board minutes of the the New Millennium Experience Company, which ran the attraction, that board members, who had been appointed by the government to run the Dome, threatened to quit rather than risk being personally liable for its debts.

Peter Ainsworth, who was the Tory spokesman on the Dome during the year it was opened, said: "As late as September 2000 they were pretending everything was all right. I smelt a rat at the time. The government was in denial."

The Police Federation has claimed that attempts to modernise the police force are depriving the service of properly trained officers.

The modernisation agenda is led by Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who has extensively used police community support officers in the capital.

But Alan Gordon, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, said: "What they fail to understand is that operational civilian police staff have stringent and rigidly defined jobs, which provide neither the flexibility nor police experience needed to fight terrorism."

Britain's top fraud officer says financial crime investigations are being delayed because of outdated restrictions on cross-border policing and a lack of co-operation between police in the European Union.

Interviewed in the FT, Ken Farrow, the outgoing head of the economic crime department of the City of London police, said "an awful lot" needed to be done to speed up fraud investigations across the EU.

Left-wing Labour MPs and unions have hit Gordon Brown with a range of demands for policy changes, anticipating that he will take over the premiership from Tony Blair.