Offenders in England and Wales to have sentences cut for good behaviour and completion of work, training or education tasks
Prisoners will be able to earn their freedom after serving a third of their sentences under new minimum and maximum sentence plans released by the government to tackle the overcrowding in jails.
Offenders in England and Wales will be able to earn early release if they complete work, training or education assignments and demonstrate good behaviour.
Continue reading...About 300 families may not have been told whether children carry trait for genetic disorders such as sickle cell disease
Hundreds of families in Nottinghamshire have potentially been left unaware of whether their babies may be carriers of certain genetic blood disorders, the second such NHS error to come to light since the start of this year.
About 300 families whose children were born between 2004 and September 2024 in Bassetlaw and mid-Nottinghamshire were identified by the NHS as being affected.
Continue reading...Two addresses in north-west London searched after three other Iranians detained in same investigation last Saturday
A 31-year-old Iranian man has been arrested in north-west London under the National Security Act 2023 as part of a counter-terrorism policing investigation in which three other Iranian men were detained, the Metropolitan police have said.
The man was detained on Friday morning and searches were carried out at two addresses in the area.
Continue reading...Trusts having to ‘think the previously unthinkable’ to make savings demanded by new NHS England boss
Hospitals in England are cutting staff, closing services and planning to ration care in order to make “eye-watering” savings demanded by NHS bosses.
Rehabilitation centres face being shut, talking therapies services cut and beds for end-of-life care reduced as part of efforts by England’s 215 NHS trusts to comply with a “financial reset”.
47% were cutting services and another 43% were considering doing so.
37% were cutting clinical posts and a further 40% may follow suit.
26% were closing some services and 55% more may do so.
Continue reading...Echoing comments by Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf says judicial reviews, injunctions and planning laws will be used
Reform UK has vowed to use “every instrument of power” to resist housing people seeking asylum in areas where it now controls councils, its chair has confirmed.
Zia Yusuf, the party chair and a major donor, acknowledged Reform may not be able to stop people seeking asylum being put up in hotels where the Home Office has contracts with accommodation providers.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Too many people at risk of becoming ‘martyrs’ by not getting symptoms checked as they do not want to burden health service, report warns
Too many people are at risk of becoming “martyrs” by not getting symptoms of cancer checked out because they do not want to burden the NHS, warns a report, which calls for earlier testing to diagnose those at higher risk.
The report, by the health consultancy Incisive Health, sets out ways in which the NHS in England can catch more cancers early and thus save lives by becoming more of an “early intervention service”. It comes as the government draws up its first dedicated cancer strategy since 2015.
Continue reading...Cancer 360 will help collate patient information from spreadsheets, emails and records into single digital system
Millions of cancer patients have been promised faster diagnosis and treatment, with the rollout of a new technology across the NHS in England.
The tool, called Cancer 360, is designed to bring cancer patients’ data into one central system in order that doctors and nurses can prioritise those most in need and see them more quickly.
Continue reading...Actor joins four days of national events including concerts, church services and a military procession in London
Eighty years after Winston Churchill addressed the nation from Downing Street with the words “This is your victory!” a recitation of his famous VE Day speech will be broadcast as the nation commemorates the day the Allies formally accepted Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Events across four days of national UK commemorations include a military procession through central London on Monday, with tens of thousands expected to line the route from Parliament Square to Buckingham Palace, and a service at Westminster Abbey on the 8 May anniversary on Thursday.
Continue reading...Labour-Conservative dominance challenged by Nigel Farage’s Trump-aligned party, which has control of at least six county councils
Britain’s anti-immigrant and Trump-aligned Reform UK party has made sweeping gains in English local elections, challenging the traditional political dominance of the country’s two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives.
Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, claimed his party had overtaken the Tories as the UK’s main opposition after Reform won control of at least six county councils, one mayoralty, and narrowly defeated the governing Labour party in a parliamentary byelection in what had been considered a safe seat.
Continue reading...Farage’s party has benefited this time as voters flee the main parties, but there are faultlines within its own coalition too
Fragmentation in British politics is not new. Disillusionment with the choices on offer is not new. The two-party share of the vote has been below 70% in four of the last six elections. Six months before the 2019 general election the Brexit party topped the EU election results with the Liberal Democrats in second. The 2024 general election had the lowest two-party share in the modern-party system.
What is driving this change? Political scientists talk about the demand and supply sides of electoral politics. The voters are the demand side, what types of parties and positions they want to vote for. They do not always get their wish. Who appears on the ballot paper is the supply side of the electoral equation. Increasingly, it is everyone.
Professor Paula Surridge is deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe and professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol
Continue reading...Result will heighten government’s fears it could lose scores of MPs to Nigel Farage’s party at next general election
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has dramatically won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection by just six votes in a blow to Keir Starmer’s premiership.
The hard-right party narrowly overturned Labour’s 14,700-vote majority in the first full-scale electoral test of Starmer’s government and set a new record for the smallest majority at a parliamentary by-election since the end of the second world war.
Continue reading...A ‘wetter farming’ project explores rehydrating peatland to help grow crops in boggier conditions while cutting CO2 emissions
“I really don’t like the word ‘paludiculture’ – most people have no idea what it means,” Sarah Johnson says. “I prefer the term ‘wetter farming’.”
The word might be baffling, but the concept is simple: paludiculture is the use of wet peatlands for agriculture, a practice that goes back centuries in the UK, including growing reeds for thatching roofs.
Continue reading...Linzagolix hailed as a possible ‘gamechanger’ in tackling the painful condition for some patients in England
More than 1,000 women a year in England could benefit from a new pill for endometriosis.
The condition occurs when tissue similar to the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body, such as the pelvis, bladder and bowel. It can cause chronic pain, heavy periods, extreme tiredness and fertility problems.
Continue reading...Up to 15,000 could be given nivolumab in injectable form to treat 15 cancers including lung, bowel and skin cancer
Up to 15,000 cancer patients a year could be treated with a quick injection, NHS England has announced.
It is the first health service in Europe to offer patients the injectable form of the immunotherapy drug nivolumab.
Continue reading...Secondary school pupil numbers also likely to outpace government’s recruitment goals, watchdog warns
A key government pledge to appoint 6,500 extra teachers in England by the end of this parliament will be difficult to achieve and is likely to fall short of demand, the UK’s public spending watchdog has warned.
The education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s promise to recruit thousands of extra teachers in state schools, which has been funded by adding VAT to private school fees, forms one of the cornerstones of the government’s education policy.
Continue reading...The scheme, part of policy blitz for local elections, will encourage councils and police forces to work together
Councils will be encouraged to work with police forces to seize and crush vehicles used by fly-tippers, in the latest phase of a government policy blitz before Thursday’s local elections.
Under a scheme being led by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), new legislation will impose jail sentences of up to five years for people who illicitly transport waste in England.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Force, which had dropped objection to plan, says protests of more than 500 people would impede traffic and require extra resources
China’s proposed “super-embassy” in London would require additional police officers to deal with any large protests involving thousands of people, the Metropolitan police have said before a decision by ministers.
Despite having dropped its official objection to the proposals, the Met “maintains concerns” that large protests of more than 500 people outside the embassy would impede traffic and “require additional police resource”, said the deputy assistant commissioner Jon Savell
Continue reading...Exclusive: Liberal Democrats say voters need to know sources of funding for Nigel Farage’s party before local elections
The Liberal Democrats have publicly challenged Nigel Farage to give details of his party’s donations after calculating that Reform UK spent more than £2m on personalised letters to postal voters before the local elections.
In a letter to Farage, Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said people needed to know the source of the money before Thursday’s elections, given that Reform received only £281,000 in donations in the last set of publicly available figures, for the final quarter of 2024.
Continue reading...Kensington and Chelsea sues Hotpoint maker Beko Europe as part of wider action against firms it blames over blaze
The company that made the fridge-freezer blamed for starting the Grenfell Tower fire has been accused in a lawsuit lodged by the local council of failing to run adequate safety tests on that model of appliance.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) has brought a lawsuit against the Hotpoint maker, Beko Europe, previously Whirlpool, as part of wider legal action against companies it believes were culpable for the fire eight years ago that killed more than 70 people.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Uzo Mbonu describes being targeted and ‘completely isolated’ by colleagues at HMP Swaleside
A black former prison officer has said he suffers flashbacks and nightmares after colleagues in a high-security jail subjected him to extreme racist abuse and managers failed to support him.
Nigerian-born Uzo Mbonu said he felt he was picked on and ostracised by other officers at HMP Swaleside in Kent because he did not have a British accent, did not understand the jokes his colleagues made, and challenged things he felt were going wrong.
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