He has urged Scottish National Party ministers to speed up their proposed timetable for staging the ballot in the autumn of 2014.

BBC: Scottish independence: UK consultation backs early vote

The public pressure has prompted the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, to call for officials from his conservative People's Party and the opposition Socialists to speed up negotiations on reforming the eviction laws during talks on Monday.

BBC: Spain suspends house evictions for two years

Tim Ward, a councillor from Cambridge, said he wanted local authorities not civil servants in Whitehall deciding speed limits as the Lib Dems were "not the party of centrally dictated targets".

BBC: Lib Dem conference: Call for more 20mph speed limit zones

But a protest was held near the Conservative Party conference on Monday against the proposed HS2 high-speed rail link involving the STOP HS2 group, which has expressed concerns over the environment and funding.

BBC: Cameron gives elected mayor views in Birmingham

For the Tories, Baroness Hanham said her party had long been convinced of the need for a high-speed network.

BBC: Adonis unveils high-speed rail plans in Lords statement

In 1988, Pierre Mauroy, the city's mayor and a powerful figure in France's Socialist Party, engineered the routing of a new network of domestic and international high-speed train services through Lille and used that coup to turn the city into a logistics and service hub.

ECONOMIST: Urban regeneration