The 6.30pm news, which is the one that has replaced News at Ten, always begins bang on 6.30pm. "It's driving me mad when you turn on the TV at 11pm and find the news has started early. The whole point of a news programme is that it is on at a designated time you can rely on to find out what is happening. A new bulletin in particular needs a specific slot instead of being moved to accommodate some old James Bond film."ITV maintains that News at Ten would often begin a moment or two adrift from 10pm and that all programmes on commercial channels are subject to slight adjustment: "It has always happened," said a spokeswoman."Advertising minutage will dictate when programmes start within limits And we have more flexibility with this new news. The ITC confirmed this, saying that ITV had simply promised to run its late news at "around" 11pm.But Labour MPs, many of whom opposed moving News at Ten in the schedule, are furious.

Gerald Kaufman, the chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Culture, plans to put down a question in the autumn to find out how many viewers have been lost by changing the time of the news.Claire Ward, a member of Mr Kaufman's committee, plans to complain to the ITC about the shifting times. The Prime Minister is being displaced by James Bond films, football matches and repeats of old David Jason crime dramas.ITV says there is nothing in its contract with the Independent Television Commission which says the nightly bulletin has to begin at the stroke of 11pm - even if listings pages claim that it does - unless it is more than four minutes out. Tony Blair, no less, keeps missing the start of the news because ITV moves the start time around to accommodate whatever is on before it. But in a sign of ITV's changed priorities, the channel's new 11pm bulletin has not actually started at 11pm on a single occasion during the past three weeks. Instead, the Nightly News, which is part of the schedule that replaced News at Ten in March, has started broadcasting at times ranging from 10.50pm to 11.05pm. No 10 Downing Street, perhaps the most news- obsessed address in the country, is said to be fuming.

ONCE YOU could rely on the ITV news to start on time; after all, Big Ben doesn't bong at three minutes to 10. So far the system has only been approved for catching speeding cars.The conventional Gatso radar-triggered roadside cameras were introduced in Britain in 1992. There are now an estimated 2,000 across the country, although many are left switched off because of the expense of keeping them permanently loaded with film.Figures released in May showed that almost 400,000 motoring transgressions were caught on film in 1997, of which 86 per cent were speeding.. As it takes 36 seconds even for a car doing 100mph to travel a mile, that allows plenty of time to identify cars against national databases.The Treasury is giving the DVLA pounds 400,000 for a pilot study to catch road- tax dodgers, starting in September, using similar technology to the SVDD system.A spokeswoman at the Department of Transport confirmed that "the system can be selective in terms of tracing vehicles" and admitted that it raised "civil liberties questions".