Euro '˜not ruled out' says Hague: The week that was June 6-12, 1998.

Mr Hague – Conservative MP for Richmond, North Yorkshire – intended to fight the next election on a commitment to retain the pound, effectively ruling out British participation in the Euro for a decade. But, even though he saw the currency as “risky”, he insisted he had not ruled out signing up to the Euro forever.

Mr Hague also launched a new attack on the government’s plans to reform the House of Lords, which would see hereditary peers stripped of their right to sit and vote in Parliament’s upper chamber.

Meanwhile Labour’s Health Secretary Frank Dobson announced that hospitals were to be forced to publish new league tables showing the death rates of their patients.

The move came in the wake of the scandal at Bristol Royal Infirmary, where 29 children died after heart operations. The government saw the controversial new policy as “a powerful new weapon to raise standards in the NHS”, said Mr Dobson.

The late Princess Diana’s mother Frances Shand Kydd suffered a personal insult at the hands of Mohamed Al Fayed when the two met for the first time since their children died in a road crash in Paris in August 1997.

Mrs Shand Kydd had to sit a few feet away from the Harrods boss at a meeting called by the judge investigating the crash. Mr Al Fayed later launched a tirade against her, accusing her of “English snobbishness” because she had not spoken to him. The two had had no contact with each other since the deaths of Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in the Pont d’Alma underpass.

Diana’s mother was known to be distressed by the welter of conspiracy theories that had circulated since the deaths, including those apparently promoted by Mr Al Fayed. As he left the meeting in Paris, he said: “Who’s she? I don’t need to talk to her...if she thinks she belongs to the Royal Family and doesn’t want to talk to ordinary people like me, then it’s up to her.”

A 17-year ban on otter hunting had come to fruition, with the resurgence of otter populations living within 10 miles of Sheffield and York and 20 miles of Leeds.

New research by the Wildlife Trusts showed that the playful creature was swimming in rivers flowing through 28 British cities, with a stronghold in North Yorkshire.

The report, Splash Back! credited the recovery of the otter in Britain to the ban that was enshrined in the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act and efforts by environment groups to restore waterside and wetland habitats to speed up recovery. In the last year the otter had been spotted in places where it had not been present for 30 years.

The three surviving Beatles came together this week in an emotional reunion to celebrate the life of Linda McCartney, who had died of cancer in April. Ringo Starr and George Harrison joined Paul McCartney at a memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, where songs written by Sir Paul and inspired by his wife were played.

During the service Sir Paul said: “After she died I was thinking of her and I thought of her like a diamond, a big orange diamond and if you look at all the facets of the diamond as with every facet you looked at she was greater.”

Among the other mourners were Elton John, Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, Pete Townshend, Peter Gabriel and legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin.