Redundancy payouts could reach £1bn in NHS shake-up

The bill for NHS redundancy payouts could reach £1bn in the service’s most radical shake-up in a decade.Between 20,000 and 30,000 jobs are expected to be lost following the announcement last month that NHS England will be abolished.Thousands of other jobs in the 42 integrated care boards in England and corporate service posts in NHS trusts will also be cut.An Observer analysis of Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) annual accounts shows nearly £450m has been paid in the past five years to staff in the department and its agencies who have taken voluntary or compulsoryredundancy. These include 94 employees who each received more than £150,000 in the year to 31 March 2024

Does the UK have a mental health overdiagnosis problem?

When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, suggested the “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions was a factor in the government’s welfare changes, many saw the comments as playing into an unhelpful culture-war stereotype of coddled millennials – and as echoing Rishi Sunak’s claim, a year ago, that there was a “sicknote culture” plaguing Britain’s economy.But media coverage of Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan’s recent book, The Age of Diagnosis, has amplified and lent credibility to the idea that a diagnosis, in itself, can risk limiting an individual’s life prospects.Streeting’s comments came amid plans for substantial cuts to personal independence payments (Pip), after the government concluded that the overall bill for disability benefits, which rose by nearly £13bn to £48bn between 2019-20 and 2023-24, was on an unsustainable trajectory. Much of the increase in spending is linked to a huge rise in the number of working-age adults claiming disability benefits linked to mental ill health on a scale that demands a policy response. At the heart of the debate is the question of what has caused this increase and how it could be reversed

‘I didn’t start out wanting to see kids’: are porn algorithms feeding a generation of paedophiles – or creating one?

More than 850 men a month are arrested for online child abuse offences in England and Wales. They come from every walk of life: teachers, police officers, doctors, TV presenters. And the numbers are rising every year. How did this happen?Andy was enjoying a weekend away with his wife when it happened. “My neighbour phoned me and said, ‘The police are in your house

AI cancer screening rollout should be accelerated in the NHS | Letters

The stark mismatch between government rhetoric around the use of artificial intelligence and its implementation in the NHS in England is highlighted in your article (‘Ridiculous’ cuts to AI cancer tech funding in England could cost lives, experts warn, 31 March).At the 2024 Labour party conference, Wes Streeting told his audience that AI “is happening” and made specific mention of its use in the diagnosis of skin cancer. The reality is different. Although AI for the diagnosis of skin lesions has indeed been successfully piloted by NHS England, its rollout has been significantly slowed over the last 12 months because of uncertainty relating to an early value assessment (EVA) by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). The EVA started in October 2023, with final recommendations only due to be published shortly

Sir Torquil Norman obituary

Torquil Norman, who has died aged 91, was successively a naval pilot, banker and businessman, philanthropist and toymaker. He created several popular toys of the 1980s and 90s, before using his wealth and powers of persuasion to buy the then disused Roundhouse building in north London and raise £30m to restore it to a successful arts and concert venue.In a long and varied career, perhaps somewhat at variance with his establishment background, he opened the swimming pool in the garden of his St John’s Wood home each summer for local children, set up with his wife a charitable trust to support young people, was a supporter of the anti-apartheid and anti-slavery campaigns and argued for social and political reform, national community service and constitutional change.He was the third son of Sir Nigel Norman, a civil engineer whose firm designed London’s first commercial airport at Heston, Middlesex, close to where Heathrow is now, as well as several other prewar airfields, and Patricia (nee Annesley), Torquil’s first name being a nod to her Catholic, northern Irish roots. Nigel was a pioneer aviator and flew Torquil to Switzerland at the age of six to seek treatment for his tuberculosis

Ozempic is hailed as a miracle drug. But how does it affect people with eating disorders?

Doctors worry about GLP-1s being used by people with restrictive eating disorders – but research also shows they could help others struggling with binge eatingGLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic have, in three short years, changed our attitudes to the body. They’ve revived a cultural fervor for thinness that has been blamed for everything from the closure of wine bars to killing off the body positivity movement. What began as a seeming miracle drug posited to help those most in need of losing weight for health reasons has led to a clamor in which one in eight Americans have tried the drugs and telehealth companies have offered cheaper off-brand versions with very little oversight.Ozempic (the brand name for semaglutide) and other GLP-1s mimic a natural hormone in the body, stimulating insulin and slowing the rate of stomach emptying after eating, increasing one’s sense of fullness. But the very qualities that make GLP-1s such powerful tools for weight loss also make them potentially dangerous for those who struggle to adequately feed themselves