Hundreds of hospice beds and staff cut in England amid funding crisis

Hospices in England are cutting hundreds of beds and staff because of a funding crisis, despite a sharp rise in demand for palliative care, a damning report warns.People needing end of life care faced a postcode lottery because access to services was so patchy, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported.A lack of government oversight meant ministers were unaware of how reliant they were on independent hospices, its 52-page report found.The NAO said nearly two-thirds of independent hospices in England reported a deficit in 2023-24. Overall expenditure was £78m more than income generated

‘No more children are going to die like you’: how Sheffield mother kept her promise to boys killed by father 11 years ago

When Claire Throssell held her dying son Jack in her arms, she made him a promise: that no more children would die in the circumstances he had – at the hands of a violent parent, on a court-ordered unsupervised visit.Jack and Paul, then aged 12 and nine, were killed by their father 11 years ago, when he lured them into the attic with a new train set, barricaded the house shut and used Throssell’s possessions to set 14 separate fires.“When I held him in my arms, just like I did Paul,” she said, “I made him one last promise. I said to him: ‘No more children are going to die like you.’”Last week, on the anniversary of the fire, she was invited to meet the prime minister in Downing Street, as the government announced that it planned to repeal the presumption that children should have contact with both parents, under which decisions are made in the family court

NHS makes morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England

The NHS has made the morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England in an effort to reduce a “postcode lottery” of access to emergency contraception.Almost 10,000 pharmacies are now able to offer the pill without charge, saving those in need of free emergency contraception from having to visit their GP or to get an appointment at a sexual health clinic.Some pharmacies were previously charging as much as £30 for emergency oral contraception.The NHS’s national clinical director for women’s health, Dr Sue Mann, said the expansion was “one of the biggest changes to sexual health services since the 1960s” and “a gamechanger in making reproductive healthcare more easily accessible for women”.“Instead of trying to search for women’s services or explain their needs, from today women can just pop into their local pharmacy and get the oral emergency contraceptive pill free of charge without needing to make an appointment,” she said

Five more prisoners freed in error after sex offender’s release from Essex jail

Five other prisoners have also been released by mistake in the same week a convicted Ethiopian sex offender was allowed to walk free from an Essex jail, says the prison officers’ union.The disclosure of further mistakes highlights the intense pressure on prison staff, according to the Prison Officers’ Association (POA).Last Friday, Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford after being sentenced to 12 months in jail in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl while living in an asylum hotel in Epping.After a two-day manhunt he was tracked down in north London and returned to detention.His mistaken release inflamed public anger, given his case had already caused unrest across England and Wales over the summer, with many demonstrators rallying against asylum accommodation and voicing anti-immigration sentiments

EHRC guidance will help businesses comply with the law on sex and gender | Letter

I can reassure businesses that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) takes how equality law is applied in everyday situations extremely seriously (Dozens of Labour MPs warn of chaos for firms over gender recognition advice, 23 October). It’s our job to accurately explain how to implement the law in practice and we have taken every opportunity to do so since the supreme court clarified the meaning of “sex” in the Equality Act in April.Our updated code of practice for service providers, submitted to the UK government seven weeks ago, will help balance the rights of service users and protect everyone from discrimination.These updates haven’t been rushed. Our consultation on the updated code heard from more than 50,000 organisations and individuals, including businesses, whose views helped make the guidance as clear as possible

Gambling does not cause any ‘social ills’, lobbyist tells incredulous MPs

The boss of the UK’s main betting and gaming lobby group has told MPs that there is no “social ill with gambling” as she warned against imposing higher taxes on the sector in the November budget.Grainne Hurst, the chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, repeatedly made the statement to parliament’s Treasury select committee on Tuesday, where she also claimed that higher taxes would result in thousands of job losses and push punters into using hidden market services.Hurst made the comments as part of the gambling industry’s lobbying against calls to increase taxes on the sector – including on products seen as the most risky for creating problem gamblers, such as online casinos and the betting machines that fill high street adult gaming centres (AGCs).During an at-times testy session, the committee member John Glen said to Hurst: “This issue has become pertinent in the run-up to a budget because people and government [are] frustrated that the taxation of something that does have a significant social ill for those individuals isn’t properly addressed in our tax system.”Hurst responded: “I would disagree that there are social ills as a result of it