Thursday 11th December 2003

Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, was banned from driving for seven days and fined £400 for speeding at 99 mph on a motorway. Police stopped the MP for Camberwell and Peckham on the M4 in Wiltshire a month earlier after a laser speed detector recorded her breaking the limit. Harman, 52, a QC and the first woman to be appointed Solicitor General, was taking her son, Harry, 20, back to Bristol University after the Christmas break