New towns must be built on old values | Letters

Your editorial (16 February) correctly identifies the business model of private housing developers as the large hole at the centre of Labour’s ambitious plan to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament. In recent years, most large developers have been doing very well in terms of profit margins and shareholder returns without having to increase their output at all. Why should they bother to do more?The only way the government will get close to its target is by stumping up the money for investment in new social homes, exerting stronger control over increasing land values along the way. It was a lesson learned nearly 80 years ago by Aneurin Bevan

Angela Rayner is right to home in on rogue landlords | Letters

I work on supporting communities in one of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged but uniquely resilient neighbourhoods in Birmingham: Handsworth. In postwar Britain, Handsworth became a melting pot for communities looking to build their futures, from Irish to Punjabis and to those from the Caribbean. Now, Handsworth is still a place people first arrive and call home.Residents I work with welcome the news that rogue landlords will face greater scrutiny under Angela Rayner’s plans (Report, 12 February). This is an issue that blights our community

Environment more crucial than genes in risk of early death, study suggests

The environment is about 10 times more important than genes in explaining why some people have a higher risk of an early death than others, research has suggested.The study is based on an analysis of information from almost 500,000 participants in the UK BioBank database, including answers to questionnaires as well as data on deaths and diseases that occurred after people enrolled.Experts say the work highlights the importance of the “exposome” – the host of environmental exposures we encounter in life, from our living conditions to whether we smoke – for health, including how we age and why we develop age-related chronic diseases.Dr Austin Argentieri, the first author of the research at Harvard and the Broad Institute, said: “For a lot of these diseases, it’s really the environment and exposome that’s driving a lot of our risk for these outcomes, and investments in understanding and modifying our environments are likely going to have a profound impact on improving health for all of us.”Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, Argentieri and colleagues at Oxford Population Health and other institutions report how they analysed whether 164 environmental exposures, from salt intake to living with a partner, were associated with the risk of premature death

Influencers to urge young people not to vape as part of UK government campaign

Influencers will urge young people not to start vaping as part of a government-funded campaign that will use YouTube and Instagram to highlight health risks.Big Manny, who has 1.6m followers on Instagram, and Bodalia, a doctor and DJ, are joining forces in the first official initiative to try to dissuade under-18s from using e-cigarettes.Ministers have decided to launch the campaign after evidence showed that the numbers of under-18s trying or using vapes has soared in recent years. About one in five of those aged 11 to 17 have tried them and as many as one in 10 secondary school students occasionally or regularly use them

Life expectancy growth stalls across Europe as England sees sharpest decline, say researchers

Life expectancy improvement is stalling across Europe with England experiencing the biggest slowdown. Experts are blaming this on an alarming mix of poor diet, mass inactivity and soaring obesity.The average annual growth in life expectancy across the continent fell from 0.23 years between 1990 and 2011 to 0.15 years between 2011 and 2019, according to research published in the Lancet Public Health journal

Tell us: have you received a Macmillan Cancer Support hardship grant?

Macmillan Cancer Support (MCS) has axed a quarter of its staff, downgraded its helpline and scrapped its flagship hardship scheme providing millions of pounds in grants to thousands of patients, the Guardian has revealed.The charity, one of the biggest and best known in Britain, said a tough financial environment meant it had no choice but to make drastic changes in order to permanently safeguard its future.But a Guardian investigation has raised questions over how Macmillan ended up in such a dire state and revealed how shutting the 100-year-old hardship scheme will impact the country’s most vulnerable cancer patients.We would like to hear from Macmillan staff (present and recently past) who could tell us about their experiences of the changes and also from people who have received the hardship grants that MCS is now scrapping.We would also like to hear from professionals (eg