Category Archives: Society

Which benefits are available to vulnerable people under Labour?

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As the winter fuel allowance is scrapped for many pensioners, we outline some other key benefits

• Millions facing ‘cruel winter’ without fuel payments, Labour MPs warn

Labour backbenchers are warning that millions of vulnerable people will face a “cruel winter” amid rising energy prices and a reduction in benefits, including the removal of winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.

Keir Starmer’s government has promised to improve conditions for those most in need, with a commitment to “reduce and alleviate” child poverty and end the “moral scar” of food banks. And while Labour sees economic growth and creating more reliable and well-paid jobs as crucial to achieving these aims, it cannot ignore a number of pressing and often interrelated problems in the social security and benefits system.

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Millions facing ‘cruel winter’ without fuel payments, Labour MPs warn

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Backbenchers say end to support schemes would be ‘wrong measure’ that ignores struggle of poorest households

• Which benefits are available to vulnerable people?

Millions of vulnerable people face a “cruel winter” owing to a combination of rising energy costs and government cuts to welfare schemes, Labour MPs and campaigners have warned, as Keir Starmer comes under pressure to extend key financial support programmes.

Labour backbenchers are calling on the prime minister to reverse or mitigate the government’s decision to end winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and to extend the household support fund (HSF), which is due to run out in September.

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Baby in Gaza partly paralysed from polio in territory’s first case for 25 years

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WHO says infant in stable condition as it prepares to vaccinate more than 640,000 children amid war

A Palestinian baby in Gaza has been partly paralysed from polio in the first case there for 25 years, amid preparations for a difficult and dangerous vaccination campaign in the midst of war.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed that the affected infant had lost movement in his lower left leg, but was in a stable condition.

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Fears grow for women’s rights activists jailed in Iran after 87 executions in one month

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Prisoners including Nobel prize winner Narges Mohammadi were reportedly beaten for protesting against a recent execution

There are fears for the fates of women’s rights activists imprisoned in Iran after a surge in executions since the election of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in July.

At least 87 people were reportedly executed in July, with another 29 executed on one day this month. The mass executions included Reza Rasaei, a young man sentenced to death for his participation in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Human rights organisations fear further executions in the lead-up the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in custody and the unprecedented nationwide protests that followed. Amini, who was 22, had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code before she died in September 2022.

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HMP Wandsworth living conditions are ‘inhumane’, finds report

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Rat-infested London jail from which terror suspect escaped is unsafe and overcrowded, say independent monitors

Wandsworth prison is crumbling, overcrowded and vermin-infested, with inmates living in half the cell space available when it was first opened in 1851, according to a report published on Thursday.

The south London prison’s independent monitoring board identified a litany of failings in its annual report, concluding that “the prison is not safe” and “conditions remained inhumane”.

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How west Africa’s online fraudsters moved into sextortion

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With ‘hustle kingdoms’ teaching young people the tricks of the trade, there has been a surge in blackmailing crimes

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.

Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakwa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.

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Social housing rents to rise as part of UK push to build affordable homes

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Rachel Reeves works on plan for 10-year formula to give councils and housing associations certainty

Social housing rents will rise by more than inflation over the next decade as part of UK government plans to boost affordable housebuilding and shore up the finances of struggling landlords.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is working on plans to introduce a 10-year formula to calculate social rent on homes that will result in rents increasing every year by the rate of the consumer prices index – which is now 2.2% – plus 1%, removing an existing cap on rises.

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Afghan women arrive in Edinburgh to finish medical degrees denied under Taliban

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Three-year campaign by parents of aid worker killed in Afghanistan brings 19 trainee doctors to Scotland

A group of trainee female doctors from Afghanistan have travelled to Edinburgh to complete their medical degrees after the Taliban forced them to quit studying.

The 19 women arrived in the UK on Tuesday after a three-year campaign by the parents of Linda Norgrove, the kidnapped Scottish charity worker who was killed during a botched rescue attempt by US special forces in 2010.

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Murdered Indian doctor’s father speaks out: ‘All I can do now is get her justice’

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The rape-murder of a trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital has caused outrage across India. Here, her father recalls her urge to help others and their struggle to support her studies

The father of the trainee doctor murdered during a rest break at a Kolkata hospital has spoken of his daughter’s love of medicine and the way her family had worked to support her vocation.

“We are a poor family and we raised her with a lot of hardship. She worked extremely hard to become a doctor. All she did was study, study, study,” he told the Guardian by telephone.

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Ministers launch pension credit campaign after restricting winter fuel payments

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Government urges pensioners to check their eligibility for credit which will also qualify recipients for winter fuel support

Ministers have launched a pension credit publicity campaign to minimise the impact of the government’s decision to radically restrict winter fuel payments.

Last month the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, introduced a means test for the winter fuel payments, which have been a universal benefit available to all pensioners since 1997, so that only those on pension credit would qualify, as part of the “difficult decisions” she had to make having inherited a “dire state of public finances” from the Conservatives.

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‘A revolution is building’: can young people force change across Africa?

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Africa has the youngest population of any continent, and recent protests in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda suggest growing youth disillusionment. Will they be able to turn discontent into action?

The youth-led protests that have broken out in several African countries over the past weeks should, say observers, serve as warnings that a disillusioned generation blame the elders of the ruling political classes for missed economic opportunities.

From mid-June to early August, young people in Kenya hit the streets protesting against what they described as runaway corruption and high taxes levied by President William Ruto’s regime. In Uganda, what was shaping up as protests against the government in July were nipped in the bud by police after President Yoweri Museveni’s warning that those thinking of such protests “were playing with fire”. Nigeria saw short-lived protests against the poor handling of the economy by President Bola Tinubu’s government.

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Black children in England and Wales four times more likely to be strip-searched, figures show

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Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs

Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.

The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.

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Crisis measures to tackle English prison overcrowding imminent, says union

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POA chair says ministers could declare as soon as Monday that Operation Early Dawn is coming into force

The launch of an emergency plan to avoid prison overcrowding in England could be announced as soon as Monday, the Prison Officers’ Association has said.

The longstanding measure, known as Operation Early Dawn, would allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison beds became available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice.

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UK sperm donations being exported despite 10-family limit

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Exclusive: Legal loophole means there is no restriction on making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad

Sperm donated in the UK is being exported and can be used to create large numbers of children across multiple countries, contradicting a strict 10-family limit that applies in the UK, experts warn.

A legal loophole means that, while a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families in UK fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on companies making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad.

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‘Share government data to boost economy’, says UK statistics watchdog chief

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The UK Statistics Authority’s chair says linking data sets from departments could aid growth and improve services

• We need to make data sharing across government the rule

Ministers could find ways to boost the economy and improve public services by combining data from separate government departments, according to the head of the UK’s statistics watchdog.

Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, said that too often government data was “siloed” because departments and other bodies were worried that people may uncover weaknesses in the data or even reach inconvenient conclusions.

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Male UK university students are ‘less macho’ when sharing flats with women

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Researchers have found the competitiveness of men living in mixed flats on UK campuses significantly decreased

Living with female flatmates at university makes male students less “macho”, new research from Essex University and Australia’s University of Technology Sydney has found.

The study, which followed a cohort of students at a UK university living in campus halls of residence over a one-year period, revealed that men living in mixed flats with female flatmates exhibited a significant decrease in competitiveness. There was no effect on women.

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Former Sunak adviser urges Labour to introduce wealth tax on housing

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The economist behind the Covid furlough scheme has called for ‘unfair’ council tax and stamp duty to be axed

Council tax and stamp duty are “unfair and unpopular” taxes that should be abolished, says the economist who devised the Covid furlough scheme.

Tim Leunig, who has advised a series of cabinet ministers, including Rishi Sunak during his prime ministership, said it was time for a new and radical approach that would axe the two taxes and replace them with proportional levies.

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Labour must raise GP funding to end ‘8am scramble’, says doctors’ group

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General practices forced to ‘do more and more with less and less’, says Doctors’ Association UK

Labour’s promise to “end the 8am scramble” for medical appointments will be impossible without increasing core funding for GPs, according to a leading medical association.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, pledged during the general election campaign that Labour would “end the 8am scramble by allowing patients to easily book appointments to see the doctor they want, in the manner they choose”.

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‘We fear the police’: young people share their concerns with Yvette Cooper

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Home secretary says predecessors ‘turned their backs’ on a generation as she discusses her young futures programme

Yvette Cooper has had a baptism of fire as home secretary – a national tragedy when three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance club and an ensuing week of race riots fuelled by dangerous misinformation.

It has not been easy, but Cooper has been in waiting for more than a decade to take the home secretary job – in the shadow role and as chair of the powerful home affairs committee – and is not about to waste a moment. In fact, her only complaint about the job so far is that her busy schedule and tight security means she is struggling to get enough exercise – apart from the many flights of stairs to her Home Office desk she must climb each day.

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Indian medics step up strike in protest at doctor’s rape and murder

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All hospital services except for emergency care to be shut down on Saturday amid outrage over Kolkata attack

All hospital services in India except for emergency care will shut down on Saturday as doctors escalate their protest over the rape and murder of a colleague by calling for a nationwide strike.

A strike that doctors started on Monday was more limited, affecting only government hospitals and elective surgeries. The one on Saturday, called by the Indian Medical Association, will cause massive disruption for 24 hours. All outpatient services and treatment in government and private hospitals will be cancelled.

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