Schroders is also keen to reinstate Mr Patel while MAM is undecided. Invesco and Abbey Life said yesterday that they had support from at least 20 per cent of shareholders to call an emergency meeting and are preparing to present shareholders’ concerns to SBC Warburg, Care First’s advisers, tomorrow. Two key shareholders in Care First, the embattled nursing home group, yesterday joined calls to remove Keith Bradshaw as chairman. Some ballot forms are being returned marked “deceased”.The Tory leader’s ultimatum to the party’s grassroots activists provoked a rush of bets that he will be ousted. It could backfire if the enfeebled party organisation produces a low turnout for the ballot.

Mr Hague’s keynote leadership address will be the finale of the conference on Friday, as usual.Mr Hague yesterday repeated the “back me or sack me” threat which he has made from the outset of his leadership, in the clear belief that it will be a forgone conclusion. The Tory leader’s friends said that Mr Major would be appealing for the loyalty of the conference following the party’s worst election defeat this century.
“He will be backing William,” said a source. It will be too late to influence the result of a ballot on Mr Hague’s leadership, but the former prime minister is expected to help shore up his embattled successor with an appeal for more loyalty than he himself had when in office.Mr Major, as reported in The Independent on Saturday, spent last week on holiday with Chris Patten at the Spanish home of Tristan Garel Jones, who laughed off suggestions that it was a “plotting” meeting.The former prime minister will give his backing to Mr Hague on the first day of the conference, minutes before the results are announced of the Tory Party membership ballot.The ballot is expected to endorse Mr Hague’s leadership, in spite of protests by Alan Clark and others that the leadership question is being mixed up with a request for a mandate for reforming the structure of the party. The former prime minister, John Major, will make an emotional return to the platform at the opening of the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool to rally support for William Hague.

Tory sources said he received the pounds 15,000 in late May or early June, and decided to return it in July, after he had won the leadership.Mr Blair plunged the Government into a dilemma over pay rises when he announced last week that he would forgo a further rise next April of pounds 40,000 to show a lead to 1.3 million public sector workers, including nurses, doctors and teachers, who were being asked to show pay restraint.. “William Hague’s salary is pounds 12,000 more than than Mr Blair as Leader of the Opposition,” said a spokesman, who suggested Mr Hague would take a cut if he accepted performance-related pay.The Conservative leader also took a month to decide to hand back the money to the Treasury. He added: “I have committed myself to inflation-linked increases.”Mr Hague’s self-sacrifice failed to impress Downing Street officials, who pointed out that as the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair had declined three increases in salary and took a reduced salary. The Tory leader was entitled to the bonus after losing his post as a Cabinet minister in the Labour landslide on 1 May.
During a visit to a racing circuit at Snetterton, Norfolk, he told journalists that he had returned the payment.”I have given pounds 15,000 back to the Government without trumpeting it, without making a special announcement about it, because I thought I was being paid too much,” he said.However, since winning the leadership of the Tory party, Mr Hague has taken his full entitlement as Leader of the Opposition, amounting to a total pounds 98,000. But she added: “I actually think they have got bad value for their money because they are going to lose when it goes through parliament. I have no problem with David Steel, but I don’t get paid to express my views which are strongly anti-hunting.”Jo Morton, delegate for Hexham and a member of the Green Liberal Democrats, said: “I think there’s a clear line between being paid to do a job and simply promoting a good cause.”. William Hague yesterday sought to embarrass the Cabinet over its efforts to show pay restraint by disclosing that he had returned pounds 15,000 in severance pay.

David Steel drew criticism from fellow Liberal Democrats yesterday after revelations that he had accepted pounds 94,000 from the hunting lobby. Although all agreed that the former party leader had the right to express his views, several said they were disappointed that he had accepted payment as part-time chairman of the Countryside Movement. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, pointed out that Lord Steel, who retired as an MP in May, had registered his financial interest in the group “It was always known he was heavily involved. Personally I would not want to take money from any external source.