Hilary Brown, who cooks and co-owns La Potiniere, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Gullane, Lothian, said: "I'm certainly not going to use them. The British public are more adventurous now than they have ever been but I still don't think we'd put them on our set menu."Peter Daniel, a chef at Christopher's, the American Bar and Grill in The Strand, London was scathing. Canada was seeking to replace its three Ojibwa class submarines with British Upholder class submarines, the most advanced conventionally powered underwater fighting vessels in the world. British defence chiefs are now reported to be negotiating with Chile, which also has former British Oberon class submarines, and Portugal. Britain will not sell to the main countries interested in conventional submarines: Iran and Libya, which have bought Russian submarines.The four Upholder class submarines are extremely quiet and can operate in shallower water than nuclear-powered boats. Canada has pulled out of a deal to buy four British submarines made surplus by the end of the Cold War, defence sources revealed yesterday. The board expects to distribute about pounds 230m.David Sieff, chairman of the charities board and a director of Marks & Spencer, said the flood of applications vindicated the decision to restrict grants to causes helping the poor.

The decision has angered animal welfare and medical research charities who claim they have lost donations to the lottery."Right from the start, the board felt that it was important to give a focus to our grant-making. Initiatives helping those in poverty were considered to be a very high priority by the voluntary sector," Mr Sieff said.He attracted anger from deaf people last week when he said he was wary of giving too much money to causes with a strong emotional appeal: "Personally, I'm terribly kind to the blind, but I'm extremely impatient with the deaf. The deaf don't have the same emotive appeal."The charities board could not say whether any organisations representing the deaf had made grant applications. Applicants for funds include groups working with children and young people, families, the elderly, the disabled, and ethnic minorities, as well as charities for health, recreation, education and self-help. The average request is for pounds 140,000.Medical and animal welfare charities continued to call for a reassessment of the award criteria. The British Medical Association criticised the exclusion of medical research charities.

In many cases the problems of poverty and disease "go hand in hand," a spokesman said.. Vehicle excise duty should be higher for "gas guzzlers" than smaller cars to cut pollution, the Liberal Democrats will tell the Chancellor today. Paul Tyler, the party's transport spokesman, will set out a commitment for reducing car use by introducing duty at different rates and increasing the duty on petrol. The Liberal Democrats believe the move will be popular with the public, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the effect of vehicle emissions on health.The Chancellor raised duty for all cars by pounds 5 to pounds 135, roughly equivalent to the inflation rate, in the Budget last November but he has rejected demands for it be levelled according to engine size.The Liberal Democrats will propose that duty should be reduced for those using fuel-efficient cars, with a banding system of higher charges for larger, less fuel-efficient cars.The aim would be to encourage people to switch to smaller vehicles and the cuts in revenue would be balanced by an increase in petrol duty. The Treasury has tried to encourage wider use of unleaded petrol through higher rates of duty on leaded fuels but the differential has been narrowed.The Liberal Democrats would enforce tougher control measures, making the MoT emissions test more rigorous, and encourage the use of low-sulphur fuel, and ensure the fitting of catalytic converters and particulate filters to older vehicles.They would also switch investment away from road building to public transport and would enable local authorities to introduce urban road pricing to force motorists to pay for driving into cities and towns in peak hours.tLord De Ramsey, the chairman of a family company farming 6,500 acres in Cam- bridgeshire and a former president of the Country Landowners Association, was yesterday appointed chairman of the Environment Agency.The agency takes over the work of the National Rivers Authority, HM Inspectorate of Pollution and the London Waste Regulation Agency next April..