Sunday papers

The Sunday Times leads with a YouGov poll which says that voters are overwhelmingly in favour of cutting public spending rather than tax rises to close the budget black hole,

Sixty per cent want to shrink the size of the state to curb the £175 billion deficit amid mounting government disarray over the public finances.

A similar theme in the Observer which reports that the middle classes could have to bear the brunt of cutting the national debt amid growing debate in the Labour party over whether universal benefits, including the pensioners' winter fuel payments and child benefit, can be sustained.

The admission by the chancellor, Alistair Darling, that public spending will reduce under a Labour administration has opened new questions over a group of benefits that are not means tested.

The Telegraph leads with the story that Ministers are under intense pressure to scale back plans for a "big brother" child protection database which will force millions of parents to undergo paedophile and criminal checks.

In a major blow for the Government, Britain's largest children's charity, the NSPCC, criticised the regulations for parent helpers which it said threatened "perfectly safe and normal activities" and risked alienating the public.

According to the Independent

The paper leads with the story that

British intelligence chiefs have targeted war-torn Somalia as the next major challenge to their efforts to repel Islamic terrorism, after scores of youths left the UK for "jihad training" in the failed African state.

Gordon Brown will declare this week that Britain is emerging from recession and that the economy is on the "road towards recovery".

The Times reports that the Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago.

Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya.

E Coli breaks out the Mail reports that a group of 12 children were being treated in hospital today following an outbreak of the vomiting bug E Coli, health officials said. Four of the cases are said to be serious.

It leads with more on the postal strike reporting that
Sacks of letters and parcels have been left lying in the gutter after Royal Mail chiefs secretly drafted in managers in a desperate attempt to clear a huge backlog of mail caused by postal strikes.

The News of the World leads with Jacko's last wish reporting that

messages written by Michael Jackson in his final hours - revealed today for the first time - show the singer's bizarre state of mind before his drug addiction killed him.

Finally the Telegraph reports that a letter written by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at the height of the Blitz reveals how close she and her husband, George VI, came to being killed in a bombing raid.

Handwritten 69 years ago to the day by the then Queen Consort, it reveals how the Royal couple leapt for their lives after a bomb exploded in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Three servants were injured in the attack.