The British government faced growing calls on Sunday for a national inquiry into alleged child abuse that may have involved lawmakers in the 1970s and 1980s, after it emerged that 114 files relating to the accusations were missing.

The claims have surfaced after revelations of child abuse by prominent celebrities, fueling calls for an over-arching inquiry into past sex violations.

Andy Coulson, the former editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and one-time top aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, was jailed for 18 months on Friday for his role in the phone-hacking scandal that closed the tabloid.

The sentence passed by a judge at the Old Bailey court in London caps a stunning fall from grace for 46-year-old Coulson, who once enjoyed access to the heights of the British establishment.

Support for Scottish independence is falling ahead of a referendum in September, with voters increasingly fearing economic fallout from a split with Britain, a poll showed Tuesday.

A YouGov poll for The Times newspaper said support for a "Yes" vote has fallen to 35 percent, while 54 percent would vote against independence, and 12 percent were undecided or would not vote.

British Prime Minister David Cameron called Jean-Claude Juncker on Sunday to congratulate the man he tried to block as European Commission president and the two agreed to work to make the EU more competitive, Cameron's office said.

"The PM welcomed Mr. Juncker's commitment of finding a fair deal for Britain and Mr. Juncker said that he was fully committed to finding solutions for the political concerns of the UK," Downing Street said in a statement.

British voters are pessimistic about Prime Minister David Cameron's ability to achieve reforms to the European Union that he believes are crucial to persuading Britain to stay in the bloc, a new poll found on Sunday.

Some 42 percent of respondents surveyed by YouGov do not believe the EU will be prepared to hand back any powers to member states, and another 29 percent think any concessions won by Britain will only be minor.

British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized to parliament on Wednesday for hiring former News of the World editor Andy Coulson after his conviction for phone hacking, but faced fresh embarrassment as the trial judge rebuked him for speaking out about the case.

Cameron said it had been the "wrong decision" to make Coulson his media chief in 2007 but denied ignoring warnings about his activities at the tabloid, which Rupert Murdoch shut down in disgrace in July 2011.

Poland's foreign minister allegedly said British Prime Minister David Cameron's concessions to eurosceptics showed "incompetence in EU affairs", according to the latest leak in a high-profile bugging scandal that has rocked Warsaw.

The Polish news magazine behind the report has for days been releasing juicy exchanges between top Polish politicians -- including a U.S. snub and controversial central bank talks -- that it said were caught on secret recordings it had obtained.

A Briton on trial in Kenya for plotting bomb attacks possessed chemicals capable of making an explosion, a government chemist told a court in the port city of Mombasa Thursday.

Suspected British militant Jermaine Grant, accused of ties to Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab and plotting attacks, was arrested in December 2011 in Mombasa with various chemicals, batteries and switches, which prosecutors say he planned to use to make explosives. He denies the charges.

Britain said Saturday it would provide £3 million ($5 million, 3.8 million euros) of emergency humanitarian assistance to help civilians fleeing the jihadists who have overrun a large chunk of northern Iraq.

The initial support package includes medicine, clean water and sanitation equipment, basic household items and hygiene kits for women.

A Saudi prince lost an early round of a multi-million pound British court battle on Monday against a woman who claims she was married to his late father King Fahd.

Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd argued his father had "state immunity" and that the English High Court had no jurisdiction to hear Janan Harb's claim that the former Saudi ruler owed her millions of pounds.