The row over using surveillance information to spy on people has intensified after it was revealed that 1,400 requests to snoop on the public were made every day last year.

Councils, police and the intelligence services asked more than 500,000 times for approval to access private email and phone data.

Each one allows public authorities access to communications data - which includes records of phone, email and text messages - but not their content.

The Home Office says the new figures "offer reassurance that the powers are being used appropriately".

But the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief" and the country has "sleepwalked into a surveillance state".

"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year.

"The Government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint."

The figures were published in the annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy.

It showed 504,073 requests for communication data were made last year, or nearly 10,000 every week.

Although slightly down on last year, the total is up more than 40% on two years ago.

A Home Office spokesman said: "Of course it's vital that we strike the right balance between individual privacy and collective security.

"And that is why the Home Office is clear these powers should only be used when they are proportionate."

Lords condemn 'database Britain'

Peers have criticised the "incessant creep" of CCTV snooping and the recording of personal information by Government.

Members of the House of Lords Constitution Committee say the UK has more CCTV cameras and a bigger DNA database per person than anywhere else in the world.

They call for ministers and Parliament to exercise much greater restraint in authorising more surveillance and data collection.

Councils should be stopped from using powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, they say, and compensation paid to anyone who has been the subject of unlawful monitoring.

The use of such powers - which were criticised when it was revealed they were used to monitor people putting out their bins and whether schoolchildren lived in the right catchment area - should also be monitored by judges.

Ministers are also urged to "act quickly" to comply with the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the DNA database.

Committee chairman, Lord Goodlad, said: "The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy.

"If the public are to trust that information about them is not being improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, by whom and how it is used.

"The UK now has more CCTV cameras and a bigger national DNA database than any other country. There can be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about us being recorded and pored over by the state."

Witnesses to the committee said the "steady expansion" of the state's "surveillance apparatus" had "transformed the everyday lives of millions of people, and not always for the better".

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said: "This is a damning indictment of the reckless approach of this Government to personal privacy."

A spokesman for the Home Office and Ministry of Justice said: "CCTV and DNA are essential crime fighting tools and along with new technologies have revolutionised police investigations and helped to keep the public safe."

A Sky News investigation into babies born with deformities in heavily-bombed areas of Iraq has led to the creation of an expert medical training programme.

Eight months ago, Sky News reported the desperate calls for international help from families in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where growing numbers of children were being born with deformities.

Concerns were increasing that the rise in deformities may have been linked to the use of chemical weapons used by US forces.

Sky showed the plight of three-year-old Fatima Ahmed, who was born with two heads and could not see, hear or move by herself.

After seeing the report, professor Kypros Nicolaides of the Fetal Medicine Foundation in London offered to set up an expert training programme to help the babies.

Muntaha Hashim

Dr Muntaha Hashim

And after months of paperwork and red tape, the first Iraqi doctor is about to travel to Jordan and London for the training programme.

Dr Muntaha Hashim, a 39-year-old prenatal care specialist, is one of the most senior doctors at Fallujah general hospital.

Her life has been dedicated to the welfare of those in her city and it is hoped that with the training ahead, she will return with a unique set of skills to help pregnant women and babies.

It is also hoped she will set up a birth deformity register, to reveal the extent of the problem.

In April and November 2004, Fallujah suffered some of the heaviest bombardments of the Iraq war.

The US military said it used the banned weapon white phosphorus, but primarily as a smokescreen - permitted under international law.

When used as an incendiary weapon, however, the chemical can cause serious burns and is linked to deformities in new-born children.

Hikmat Tawfeeq, deputy chairman of the Fallujah-based human rights group Alakhiyar, told Sky News last May: "We have around 200 cases of deformities recorded by our society. Most of these cases are birth deformities which have arisen after the bombing of Fallujah."

At one cemetery in Fallujah, undertaker Mahmoud Hummadi said he usually buried four to five bodies of newborns every day, most of them with deformities.