Although I also rather enjoy prawns nothing could beat smoked salmon, it’s a thing I could eat forever.My favourite shop sells the most amazing salmon by the barrel. Whenever I go up to London I always buy a great whack of it to bring home for us all to feast on.SIR TERENCE CONRANTrufflesMy conception of luxury foods hasn’t changed much over the years and is, I suppose, fairly typical: in the autumn, a large ripened misshapen tomato from Provence, an Italian porcini, Scottish raspberries A grouse, a woodcock or a snipe. Foie gras and caviar.My absolute favourite, which I adore for its mysterious erotic scent, is the truffle, white or black. I suppose I regard truffles as luxurious because they are so rare and quirky. I first tried them when I was 25; nowadays I probably have them six or seven times a year.I associate truffles particularly with Christmas and New Year. The perfect scenario for relishing them, in my book, involves a white linen tablecloth, a crackling wood fire, candlelight, fine white china, a thin glass of Batard Montrachet and just one amusing companion.What would I sacrifice in order to enjoy my favourite luxury? Money!JEFFREY ARCHERDouble Chocolate Chip ice-creamI do think that anything condemned becomes a luxury.

For me that includes all third courses: raspberry cheesecake and Haagen-Dazs Double Chocolate Chip ice-cream in particular. I rarely buy any for myself, but others tend to leave icecream in the freezer, leading me into temptation. I tell them they mustn’t do it but they don’t seem to believe me.I am a rather plain eater and make no apologies for liking shepherd’s pie, Lancashire hot pot, fish and chips and the like. I really do hate caviar and truffles and oysters, all of which I consider to be not only a vast waste of money but also incredibly pretentious. I love asparagus and a personal favourite is cabbage at the Savoy, which is wonderful after years of watery specimens at school.My ideal evening would be in an exquisite restaurant on the Italian riviera. The meal would consist of a small pasta dish to start, some beautiful crispy duck and then the piece de resistance, an enormous dollop of double chocolate chip ice-cream.. NICHOLAS TIMMINS

and DONALD MACINTYRE
The first scheme in which the private sector will design, finance, build and operate a hospital directly for the National Health Service is due to be announced by Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in tomorrow’s Budget.

The proposal would mean that Granada, more commonly associated with television and motorway service stations, would run a 150-bed section of a hospital.Mr Clarke is expected to give the go-ahead to the pounds 35m project to rebuild large parts of Wycombe and Amersham General Hospitals, which are part of the South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust.The privately-financed project has been put together by the Health Care Group, a consortium of the builders Taylor Woodrow, Granada, which will run the building, and the finance house, Nexus.The scheme will be announced to off-set capital cuts in the Budget which are expected to hit not only NHS hospitals but the roads programme, housing, schools and other parts of Government spending.The South Bucks development will be followed shortly with approval for a pounds 26m 166-bed new paediatric wing at St James’s University Hospital, in Leeds, and a flagship pounds 100m project to rebuild the whole of the Norfolk and Norwich NHS Trust. That will provide a 700-bed privately financed and run facility leased to the NHS on a green field site in the city.The private consortium will finance and run the buildings, but, as with the other projects, medical care will continue to be provided by directly employed NHS staff.Thereafter, Stephen Dorrell, the Secretary of State for Health, expects about one scheme a month to go through over the next year.Other projects nearing fruition include a pounds 26m redevelopment at Bishop Auckland, a pounds 50m rebuild at Swindon and Marlborough, a pounds 45m project in Carlisle and a pounds 50m new district general hospital in North Durham. Further down the line are massive private sector projects intended for London, including the redevelopment of the Royal London, following the closure of Barts.Mr Dorrell said last week that in the “overwhelming majority” of cases, NHS Trusts will continue to be the direct employer of clinical staff – a claim which is aimed at heading off Labour’s charges that the schemes will lead to the privatisation of the NHS.The projects are at the core of a big boost to the Government’s Private Finance Initiative across departments, which Mr Clarke will unveil in a budget speech that Tory MPs firmly hope will provide the basis for a political recovery between now and the general election.In a tough spending round, which has seen cuts of around 5 per cent in the costs of all spending departments, ministers have been told that many pet capital projects will have to be privately financed if they are to go ahead.In his Guildhall speech last week, Mr Major foreshadowed four privately financed trunk road projects, and made it clear there were more in the pipeline.Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade, said yesterday on BBC television that ministers were planning to “raise the profile of the private finance initiative”, and added: “We’ve already got about pounds 2bn worth of contracts left under the PFI and we expect to have about pounds 5bn by the end of this financial year.”Although there have been consistent attempts in Whitehall to dampen the hopes of some backbenchers of tax cuts of significantly more than pounds 3bn, there was a widespread view in senior Tory circles that the Chancellor would want to reduce the standard rate by at least 1p, or widen the 20p starting band, as a gesture towards ministers’ professed target of a 20p-in-the-pound standard rate. MPs also hope Mr Clarke’s relative prudence will be rewarded by a favourable market reaction, allowing him to reduce interest rates before Christmas.Mr Lang, echoing private comments made by other senior ministers, said he had “no idea” whether the Chancellor would attempt to shoot Labour’s fox by introducing a multi-billion-pound windfall tax on the privatised utilities.While Sir Marcus Fox, chairman of the influential 1922 committee, has suggested that such a tax might be a good idea, other Tory right-wingers are opposed to the idea.Some other senior Tories are also still hoping that Mr Clarke will confound expectations, and probably his own instincts, by giving tax help to homeowners, whether by increasing mortgage interest relief for first-time buyers, or by cancelling stamp duty.However, if he chooses to resist such pressure he will have been given strong support yesterday by a Social Market Foundation pamphlet that says lower prices and a stable housing market are part and parcel of a low-inflation economy.The pamphlet’s authors, Andrew Cooper and Roderick Nye, argue that the number of people said to be suffering negative equity has been greatly exaggerated.. Rupert Murdoch’s News International has paid virtually no tax in the past 10 years, despite racking up net profits of nearly pounds 1bn since 1986. The publisher of four national titles, including the Times and the Sun, earned pounds 779m in the year to the end of last June alone, but paid only pounds 8.3m tax.
In the 10 years since 1986, NI has made accumulated pre-tax profits of pounds 979.4m (net of losses) but paid just pounds 11.74m in net tax, a rate of under 1.2 per cent. Corporation tax in the UK is set at 33 per cent, and most firms pay tax of between 20 and 30 per cent of their profits.NI’s national newspaper competitors all paid between 20 per cent and 29 per cent in tax on their 1994 earnings.The extent of the tax avoidance – which accountants confirmed is completely legal – is revealed in an Independent investigation published today, and is bound to stir controversy on the eve of the Budget.Behind this unprecedented tax holiday lies a chain of financial transactions of Byzantine complexity, sometimes involving letter- box companies in offshore tax havens.

NI’s published accounts contain a list of 28 subsidiaries, of which 10 are labelled “finance” companies.Profits and losses are moved around the group. The end result, together with the entirely normal use of past tax losses, is to reduce the parent company’s tax liability to nil. NI is able to decide where to pay tax and when.Labour’s spokesman for City matters, Alastair Darling, said his party was looking at ways to reform the rules governing corporate taxation, particularly the use of group tax relief by large corporations.At the Labour Party Conference, Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, criticised companies which did not pay their fair share of tax.Some of the company’s tax avoidance can be explained by the entirely normal use of tax losses from previous years. The high costs of building up BSkyB, the company’s satellite broadcaster, as well as the move of Mr Murdoch’s titles to Wapping, created losses that can be applied to current and future profits.But these tax losses do not fully explain the extent of the tax holiday NI enjoys.According to accountants consulted by the Independent, some of the transactions listed in NI’s many subsidiary accounts are directly related to tax minimalisation. A burgeoning and lucrative industry has grown up around corporate tax avoidance.Accountants stress that the use of tax minimalisation techniques is not illegal.