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Evan Harris, another Liberal Democrat member of the science and technology select committee, said: "The political sacking of a distinguished scientist, who is the chair of an independent scientific advisory committee, for the 'crime' of having different views than the secretary of state, is an enormous blow to the credibility of the government's approach to pearl jewelry scientific evidence."

There has been speculation that Johnson might be forced to change his request to Nutt to quit if a sufficient number of council members came out in his support.

Last night a former home secretary, Charles Clarke, called for a major review of drugs policy and urged ministers not to "isolate themselves" from science. Clarke said the work of the advisory council had always been "extremely valuable" when he was at the Home Office.

"In 2006 I came to the view that the whole classification system needed to be examined as it was out of time and gave the advisory council a mandate to investigate that and report back to me," Clarke said. "I still think that would be the right course of action."

The science minister, Lord Drayson, who is in Japan on official business, announced on the biwa pearl social networking network Twitter in the early hours of yesterday that he had just heard about Nutt's departure and "I am looking into it", triggering speculation that he is privately concerned about the way relations with the scientific community might be affected.

A spokesman refused to elaborate on his views.

Drugs charities were also critical. "The home secretary's decision to force the resignation of the chair of an independent advisory body is an extremely serious and concerning development and raises serious questions about the means by which drug policy is informed and kept under review," said Harry Shapiro, information director at DrugScope, the independent body that tracks the price of street drugs.

Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre, called for independent scientific advisers "to be allowed to akoya pearl communicate their evidence and findings to the media and the public as far away from the political process as humanly possible."

She hoped that lessons would be learned from Nutt's forced resignation. "Those in government who care about independent scientific advice – and there are many – now need to use this crisis as an opportunity to clarify the situation and provide assurances to scientists who are willing to share their expertise on contentious issues that they are free to speak their minds."

Richard Garside, director of the CCJS, said it was "important that the council is in a position to give honest and impartial advice without fear or favour". He added: "One has to ask the question: who would wish to chair the council at this point, given the pearl jewelry quite blatant political interference it has to deal with?"

Professor Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said it was vital that government policy was based on evidence. "Nobody rational could possibly want a government based on any other type of policy-making."

His comments were echoed by a spokesperson for the Government Office for Science, part of Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who said it was "vitally important that scientists are able to give objective and independent advice to ministers". Nutt has argued that all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, should be ranked by a "harm" index, with alcohol coming fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates and methadone. According to Nutt, tobacco should rank ninth, ahead of cannabis, LSD and ecstasy.

Lost in last week's furore was Nutt's comments about ketamine, which he suggested in evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee should be upgraded from a class C drug because of the harm it can do to users. Nutt's supporters say his comments were consistent with his argument that drugs policy should be evidence-based.

The home secretary asked Nutt to resign because he had "lost confidence" in his ability to biwa pearl give impartial advice. Johnson also accused Nutt of going beyond his remit and of "lobbying for a change in government policy".

"It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an adviser you do nothing to undermine the public understanding of them," Johnson told Nutt in his letter asking him to quit. "As my lead adviser on drugs harm, I am afraid the manner in which you have acted runs contrary to your responsibilities," Johnson added. "I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy, and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD."

A former government chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, also said that Nutt had gone too far . "I do feel that if David was critical of Jacqui Smith and her individual decision-making that's stepping over the line," King told the Today programme. But he added: "I think the government has lacked courage in backing David's committee's advice."

Keith Vaz, who chairs the home affairs select committee, described Nutt's comments as "unwise". Vaz said: "As the country's top adviser on the issue, he is implying to akoya pearl many young people that cannabis is not particularly dangerous."

However, Vaz, one of Labour's most influential MPs, also appeared to have concerns about the nature of Nutt's sacking. "It is important to have an honest and open debate about drugs," Vaz said. "There is a delicate balance to strike between showing leadership in this area and facilitating a scientific debate."

Politicians from other parties expressed shock at the decision. Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat chairman of the science and technology select committee, said he was seeking clarification from the Home Office. "We are going back to what George Bush did when for eight years he put science back into the doldrums because his administration would not take advice except from trusted people," Willis said. "Is that what we want in the UK?"

The government was at the centre of a furious backlash from leading scientists last night following its sacking of Britain's top drugs adviser.

The decision by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, to call on Professor David Nutt to resign as chairman of the pearl jewelry Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has thrown the future of the respected independent body into severe doubt. There were claims last night that many of those who sit on the 31-strong council – which advises ministers on what evidence there is of harm caused by drugs – may resign en masse, raising serious doubts about how ministers will justify policy decisions.

Several were this weekend seeking urgent reassurances from the government that it will not try to control their agenda and will allow them to speak out before they decide whether to quit. One is said to have already resigned.

The government's decision to dismiss Nutt came after he wrote a paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) at King's College London that questioned the biwa pearl "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs.

Nutt told the Observer he had received hundreds of messages of support and had been contacted by several members of the council. "I actually think it might be an untenable position," Nutt said of the chairmanship. "I can't believe that any independent-minded scientists would want to take it on. People will think, if you can't speak your mind and be honest about what you think, why take on the job? It might be that the council becomes unviable."

He said he had not approached members of the council – who include police officers and social services professionals as well as medical experts – but about a third had already contacted him.

"All the ones that have contacted me are considering their positions," he said. "There is uniform support, uniform horror at what happened. We have been abused by government, misused by government."

Nutt accused the former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, of "distorting and devaluing" scientific research. He said Smith's decision to reclassify cannabis meant she akoya pearl had fallen victim to a "skunk scare", and in another dig at the government claimed that advocates of downgrading ecstasy from class A to class B had "won the intellectual argument".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, Nutt was also fiercely critical of Gordon Brown's role in shaping drugs policy. "He is the first prime minister... that has ever in the history of the Misuse of Drugs Act gone against the advice of its scientific panel," he said.

Nutt has become increasingly frustrated at the government's decision to ignore the evidence provided by the council. Following decisions to reject its advice on cannabis and ecstasy, there have been questions about its purpose.

"We need to continue to attract outside investments, but it needs to be done in a transparent fashion," said independent senator Godwin Hulse.

The prime minister of Belize, Dean Barrow, has pledged to resist any attempt by Ashcroft to reclaim the cash from one of the most impoverished countries in pearl jewelry central America.

Ashcroft denies he now has any interest in Telemedia but his claims are rejected by the Belizean government. However, any attempt to continue using the London courts to recover the cash could prompt further outrage in Belize and place Ashcroft in an uncomfortable light in the run-up to the general election.

Baron Ashcroft of Chichester, deputy chairman of the party, gave £1.6m to the Conservatives in 2008 through his company Bearwood.

He first began to wield influence over the Tories between 1998 and 2001 when he donated several million pounds to the party. Hague made him party treasurer and secured him a life peerage in 2000.

Ashcroft has been criticised for refusing to clarify his tax status and explain whether he pays income tax in Britain. Amid growing controversy over politicians' finances there has been mounting pressure for peers to guarantee that they pay tax in this country as a condition for membership of the House of Lords.

Separately, the Electoral Commission is investigating whether donations from Ashcroft's company to the biwa pearl Tory party comply with electoral law. Labour claims Bearwood, a British-registered firm, has been the beneficiary of cash from Stargate Holdings, a Belize-based company. Overseas companies are banned from making donations to political parties in Britain.

Ashcroft's companies have made a series of donations to members of the Tories' foreign affairs team. As well as paying for most of Hague's flights, Flying Lion has flown Mark Francois, the shadow minister to Europe, to former Yugoslav and Russian states and Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, to akoya pearl South America, the Caribbean and Africa over the last two years.

A spokesman for Hague said: "We flew back with him [Ashcroft] from Washington and this will be declared in the normal way. Lord Ashcroft attended some of the meetings and he didn't attend the meeting with Hillary Clinton."

The American economy flipped from recession to recovery over the summer, a bit of sunshine news just before the weekend that ends daylight saving time.

But even President Obama, who claims his stimulus spending has created or saved 650,000 jobs so far, isn't celebrating quite yet.

The news of a 3.5 percent rise in economic growth was met with plenty of "Is this a trick or a treat?" comments by market watchers. And Mr. Obama himself warned that the US economy has "a long way to go" to being fully restored.

Indeed, coming back from the pearl jewelry longest economic contraction since World War II will require a careful assessment of what has worked so far to avoid making policy mistakes. Economists are still debating what ended the Great Depression, which was triggered 80 years ago this month by the 1929 stock market crash.

With midterm elections for Congress a year away, politicians will be focused on job creation. More than 4 million jobs have been lost so far this year, a source of great suffering for many Americans. And the unemployment rate, now double what it was two years ago and at a 26-year high, could rise above 10 percent soon and stay high a while even as the economy itself recovers.

The job losses would have been higher if not for the $787 billion stimulus plan, the government's "cash for clunkers" boost in new-car sales, and the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers.

But such spending, which largely takes money out of the economy to spend it elsewhere, is temporary.

Real job creation comes from the biwa pearl more fundamental levers of government, such as actions by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury to stabilize banks and Wall Street and to keep interest rates low. Fresh capital invested in innovative, globally competitive enterprises is what really creates the best high-paying, long-lasting jobs.

While the Obama administration claims some $150 billion of $339 billion in stimulus money spent through Sept. 30 has created and saved jobs – mainly in state and local governments – this accounting is incomplete. Left unassessed is the impact of the Recovery Act's $288 billion in tax cuts, and how that incentive may be spurring business to restock shelves and hire innovative workers. (The average rate of productivity for American workers has jumped during this recession.)

Investments by venture capitalists so far this year are still about half of what they were compared with a year ago. And layoffs among the most important workers spurring innovation – scientists and engineers – has been greater than for most other types of workers.

While the stimulus package does provide incentives for innovation in energy and also boosts worker retraining for high-tech jobs, the money isn't coming quickly enough. Almost two-thirds of the impetus behind the rise in the gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2009 was because of higher consumer spending.

That was unusually high. And in akoya pearl fact, consumer spending plunged in September, in large part because of the end of the cash-for-clunkers program.

Instead, private investment needs to become a higher portion of what drives economic growth. Creating that investor confidence won't be easy, but it's essential.

A nice uptick in the economy over the summer is welcomed news. Now let's make sure that it lasts by putting more capital to work in order to get Americans back to work.