Leeson was last seen checking out of the Regent Hotel in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Friday 24 hours before

Leeson was last seen checking out of the Regent Hotel in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Friday, 24 hours before the magnitude of the losses became public.Then there was Peter Kerry, the sullen 14-year-old British boy who evaded the eye of immigration officials and sneaked into the country using his father's passport "I have wanted to go to Malaysia for quite a while It's a nice country I like travelling. Such antics they have come to suspect from decadent English-speakers. Who can blame them? In the past few days they have had to cope with Nick Leeson, the man who quit his Barings desk in neighbouring Singapore, leaving his colleagues to cope with unpaid bills of more than £750m. The remarkable thing is that he was not British but a New Zealander, though that in the eyes of the Malay authorities is probably a pretty fine distinction. I am not making this up. A 17-year-old youth has been arrested, it was announced yesterday, trying to enter Malaysia illegally on his sister's passport He was disguised as a girl. Today, I have written to the general secretary asking him to reassure me that the promise will be kept. That would justify the inquiry and remove all suspicion that this strange exercise is simply intended to ensure that sitting members hang on to their seats..

When the National Executive drew up plans for increasing the number of women candidates, I asked for and obtained the promise that similar "affirmative action" would be introduced on behalf of ethnic minorities. For the Muslims and Sikhs of Sparkbrook are, by their nature, the uninitiated.Indeed, we need to do more than guarantee that the minorities will not be handicapped. And, for the initiated, it is easy to manipulate (as distinct from break) the rules in a way that provides an unreasonable advantage. That must not be allowed to happen when my successor is chosen. One of the problems of being a Muslim in Britain - probably poor, possibly unemployed and likely to have learnt English as a second language - is the difficulty of absorbing the subtleties of political life Becoming a Labour candidate is a complicated business.

It is also why, when I announced that I was leaving the House, I said that my successor should be from one of the communities which, although called "minorities", will soon make up a majority of Sparkbrook residents.Muslims, despite their increasingly important role in British life, do not have a representative in Parliament They want to remedy that omission The battle for Sparkbrook was always going to be fierce The National Executive must make sure that it is also fair. That is why out of eight Sparkbrook Labour councillors, four are Muslim and one is a Sikh. But most want to see the partnership of Britain and Islam respected and represented wherever power lies. A few are prepared to follow the lead of the old machine politicians. Increasingly, they want to play a part in making the decisions that shape their lives. But they remain a distinct, and generally disadvantaged, community. And we were right.We were right because Small Heath - like Sparkbrook - is the home of thousands of families popularly described as "immigrants" Most are now British citizens and many were born here.