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He feels that he does not need to improve his human rights record because he is big friends with the Americans now. But that could change if the West stood up to the bully of Tashkent.Whoever replaces Ambassador Murray, their first message should be that there has been no fundamental shift in Britain’s approach to human rights. But they have to say it publicly so that Karimov believes it. The European Union has leverage in central Asia, whose republics want to open trade links with the West.As an expert for the OSCE, I have carried out extensive training of judges, prosecutors and investigators in Uzbekistan in how to comply with international standards, and I worked closely with my former colleague and mentor, Professor Theo van Boven, then UN Rapporteur on Torture, in trying to change the system to eradicate the appalling, systematic use of torture in the country. I can confirm that everything Ambassador Murray has said about the use of statements obtained through torture is true. His views should be the views of any right-thinking person representing a democratic government.For the Foreign Office to regard his stand as so eccentric as to make it impossible for him to remain in the post says more about the Government than about him. It undermines all attempts to fight torture in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, and signals a retreat from morality and a commitment to human rights in foreign policy.I have visited Uzbekistan and have seen for myself Karimov’s victims.

I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to stand up to the use of torture Karimov is no wacky dictator He is a ruthless and cunning man. The only thing that will make any impression on this leader is public pressure. I salute and support Craig Murray – a brave and honourable man, and a better ambassador for the values which this country proclaims than his masters will ever be. Shame on them.The writer is professor of law at London Metropolitan University. Why have we been so late in facing up to the crisis about pensions? It seems extraordinary that the British, with all their expertise and experience, should have only now discovered they are facing a black hole, as revealed by last week’s report by Adair Turner. Lively young people have always had an aversion to talking about pensions, because they have the smell of decay and death. “The young man till thirty never feels practically that he is mortal”, wrote Charles Lamb.I can remember from my youth the dislike for those gloomy advertisements for insurance companies showing middle-aged men worrying about their retirement: “If only I had a pension with the Pru”.

The very word pensionable conveyed a deadly timidity: as the poet Louis MacNiece wrote: “Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension”.And there were soon more rational arguments for not trusting pensions. Through the post-war decades, most people were better off buying a house with a high mortgage than setting aside regular payments to an insurance company. A house you could live in was a more convincing security than an insurance policy from a remote and anonymous company; and while pensions became less reliable, house prices went up and up.There had always been plenty of reasons to distrust insurance companies for their ruthless salesmanship and misrepresentations, ever since Gladstone had attacked the Pru in 1864 and tried to set up an alternative Post Office system. Doubts kept recurring, and they surfaced again in the insurance scandals of the 1980s.After 1988, when the Conservatives encouraged savers to opt out of occupational pension schemes, the Pru was once again under attack: three years later, the Securities and Investment Board found that nine out of 10 new pensions were based on incorrect or misleading advice – what was euphemistically called “mis-selling”. And two years later, the Financial Services Authority accused the Pru of “a deep-seated and longstanding failure of management”.The failures of management were linked to the fact that insurance companies were run by the rarified profession of actuaries – highly-qualified mathematicians – whose skill rested on projecting past trends, including inflation, share prices and pensioners’ longevity, into the long-term future.They gave the appearance of certainty to an industry which – as later emerged – was subject to extreme uncertainties.