Don’t blame GPs for patients going to A&E with coughs and other minor ailments | Letters

GPs are not to blame for A&E attendances (Huge rise in number of people in England’s A&Es for coughs or hiccups, 31 December).‪England’s general practice meets unsustainable pressures with record productivity: 250,000 additional GP practice appointments are being delivered a day compared with 2019. It is the fall in the number of inpatient beds gumming up the A&E system, not a fall in GPs’ capacity to treat patients.‪With that said, we have thousands of GPs looking for NHS work across England right now. Just 65 more GPs could have delivered the 1

UK LGBTQ+ charities are in ‘hostile environment’ amid falling donations, experts warn

LGBTQ+ charities in the UK are operating in a newly “hostile environment”, experts have warned, as the ripple effect of Donald Trump’s attacks on equalities programmes sharpens financial pressures.The concerns come as yearly accounts submitted by Stonewall, the UK’s biggest LGBTQ+ charity, revealed corporate donations had more than halved in the last financial year, falling from £348,636 in 2024 to £143,149 in 2025.“This is an incredibly tough environment for LGBTQ+ charities,” said Heather Paterson, the head of partnerships and development for LGBT+ Consortium, an umbrella support group.Paterson pointed to research published last March by the consortium that estimated LGBTQ+ organisations receive just 10p in every £100 given to voluntary and community organisations in the UK every year.The US president’s executive orders scrapping DEI at US government level and his freeze on foreign aid for LGBTQ+ programmes have undoubtedly affected fundraising efforts in the UK, said Paterson

Tell us: what questions do you have about fasting for health reasons?

The team from our It’s Complicated Youtube channel are looking at how eating throughout the day has become normal in many Western contexts, what that might be doing to our bodies, and whether this new wave of wellness fasting really does what it claims.We’d like to know what you want explained. If you could sit down with a leading expert on fasting, what would you ask them? Send us your questions, large or small via the form below. Your questions could help shape our reporting and be featured in the show.You can post your question using this form

‘We were sitting with our calculator saying “we can afford that!”’ Joy for families as cystic fibrosis drug prices fall within reach

Seven-year-old Grant Leitch had an important question for his mother. He asked if his little brother, Brett, who has cystic fibrosis (CF), was going to die.The South African family, like tens of thousands around the world, have been priced out of access to modern cystic fibrosis therapies, and if Grant had asked at the start of 2025, he might have received a less optimistic answer.But as the new year begins Carmen Leitch has fresh hope to offer her sons. A “revolutionary” treatment sold by pharmaceutical company Vertex for $370,000 (£274,000) a year will be available for as little as $2,000 a year from a generic manufacturer

‘It takes a town to raise a family’: the community sponsors supporting refugees in the UK

“Our children correct us when we don’t pronounce some words with the proper Derbyshire accent,” says Samir*, an Afghan refugee whose family have settled into their new lives in the north of England.Initially, he says, it was difficult for the family to get used to rural life in Derbyshire, but after a while they had integrated into the local community so well that his children, who have adopted the Derbyshire accent, tease him about his.“Now our community is turning into a diverse community,” says Samir, who along with his family was relocated to the UK after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August 2021.Part of the ease with which they have settled into the community is down to support from a community sponsorship scheme. It provides refugees withwraparound support from a group of residents who agree to fundraise, source affordable accommodation, and help with the basic challenges of life in a new country such as learning English, accessing work, study or benefits, and registering with a GP and dentist

‘Catastrophic’ MoJ leasing of jail with toxic gas set to cost more than £100m

A “catastrophic” decision by the Ministry of Justice to sign a 10-year lease on a prison where high levels of a poisonous gas had been detected is expected to cost the UK taxpayer more than £100m, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.The public accounts committee said the 2022 deal to rent HMP Dartmoor from the Duchy of Cornwall was signed “in a blind panic” by senior civil servants looking to guarantee prison places.The category C prison, which held many sex offenders, was closed in 2024 after levels of radon up to 10 times higher than the recommended limit were recorded in some areas. The government has since admitted that it was aware that “elevated readings” of the gas were found in 2020.Radon, a colourless and odourless radioactive gas, causes about 1,100 lung cancer deaths in the UK every year, according to the Health Security Agency