Mastodawn

Ministers privately ruling out scrapping two-child benefits cap

Ministers privately ruling out scrapping two-child benefits cap - Lemmy.World

Ministers are privately ruling out scrapping the two-child benefit cap despite warnings from charities that a failure to do so could result in the highest levels of child poverty since records began. Government sources said charities and Labour MPs who were concerned that wider benefit cuts would push more families into poverty should “read the tea leaves” over Labour’s plans. “If they still think we’re going to scrap the cap then they’re listening to the wrong people. We’re simply not going to find a way to do that. The cap is popular with key voters, who see it as a matter of fairness,” one source said. In a letter to Keir Starmer on Tuesday, groups including Barnardo’s, Save the Children UK and Citizens Advice said scrapping the two-child benefit limit would be the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group, which signed the letter, estimated the number of children in poverty would increase from 4.5 million to 4.8 million by 2029 unless urgent action is taken. The government is planning to publish its long-awaited child poverty strategy in June, around the time of the spending review, raising expectations the plan will come with funding attached to try to drive down poverty levels. The government is also launching its policy of introducing free breakfast clubs into all primary schools in England as part of an initiative to reduce child poverty. The first 750 clubs, providing 30 minutes of morning childcare, open on Tuesday as part of a trial before a national rollout. Ministers said the extra time could save parents £450 a year, if their child went every day, with up to £7,500 more saved by the provision of 30 hours of free childcare per week from September, up from 15 hours a week. The breakfast clubs policy is being promoted not only as a way to improve school attendance, educational performance and attainment, but also as a primary lever for reducing poverty, with 67,000 of the 180,000 pupils set to benefit coming from the most disadvantaged areas of England. But Labour MPs said while they strongly supported breakfast clubs, they remained concerned the two-child cap, along with wider cuts to disability benefits, would drive more families with children into poverty. “Ditching the cap is by far the most effective way of tackling child poverty. We have a moral obligation to do this,” one MP said. “I’m afraid they’ll use the breakfast clubs to soften us up to tell us the two-child benefit cap remains.” Ministers are still looking at ways to alleviate the impact of the two-child limit for universal credit or child tax credit, imposed by the Conservatives in 2017, without spending the £3.6bn required to remove it entirely. Among the options is applying the limit only to those with children who are five and over, exempting parents of disabled children or parents in work, and increasing child benefit payments for parents of young children. A separate proposal for a three-child limit has also been discussed. Charities have called for Labour ministers to ditch the benefits restriction as part of the child poverty plan, warning that a failure to do could mean child poverty levels soaring by the end of this parliament. In their letter to Starmer, they said: “Scrapping the two-child limit is by far the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. It would lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight and result in 700,000 children living in less deep poverty. “If it is not scrapped, the stark reality is that child poverty will be significantly higher at the end of this parliament than when the government took office, making this the first time a Labour government would leave such a legacy.” However, aides said there was little political appetite within No 10 to lift the cap entirely, with polls suggesting that voters support it. Others have suggested the tight fiscal circumstances mean ministers will not change track, despite some feeling the limit is overly punitive.

geneva_convenience 7h ago

‘Ours was inspired by the Empire State Building!’ The chaotic brilliance of the UK’s biggest self-build town

https://lemmy.ml/post/28961206

‘Ours was inspired by the Empire State Building!’ The chaotic brilliance of the UK’s biggest self-build town - Lemmy

What would the world look like if Kevin McCloud had his way? What if each of us had the chance to build our very own Grand Design, letting our streets be lined with personal visions, liberated from the identikit brick boxes offered by the usual big housebuilders? A glimpse of this world exists, sort of, on the outskirts of Bicester in Oxfordshire, where the country’s biggest self-build experiment has been under way for 10 years. Graven Hill is a place where rooftops tilt, zigzag and bulge, where windows come in circles, squares and triangles, or poke out from unexpected places. There are balconies fashioned from glass, steel and rustic timber clinging to facades of stone, brick, wood and render, along with every type of fibre-cement board available. Wandering the freshly tarmacked streets feels like walking through a building supplies catalogue. Panels of fake wood are proudly fixed next to rusted cor-ten steel and bits of slate, as if residents were fed fizzy drinks and let loose in a cladding warehouse.

RubberDuck 21h ago

Some British MPs spending equivalent of a day a week doing second jobs

https://lemmy.world/post/28506373

Some British MPs spending equivalent of a day a week doing second jobs - Lemmy.World

Lemmy

RubberDuck 1d ago

NHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds

https://lemmy.world/post/28489336

NHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds - Lemmy.World

British cancer patients are being denied life-saving drugs and trials of revolutionary treatments are being derailed by the red tape and extra costs brought on by Brexit, a leaked report warns. Soaring numbers are being diagnosed with the disease amid a growing and ageing population, improved diagnosis initiatives and wider public awareness – making global collaborations to find new medicines essential. But five years after the UK’s exit from the EU, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind concludes that while patients across Europe are benefiting from a golden age of pioneering research and novel treatments, Britons with cancer have “lost out” thanks to rising prices and red tape. Brexit has “damaged the practical ability” of doctors to offer NHS patients life-saving new drugs via international clinical trials, according to the 54-page report obtained by the Guardian. In some cases, the cost of importing new cancer drugs for Britons has nearly quadrupled as a result of post-Brexit red tape. Some trials have had shipping costs alone increase to 10 times since Brexit. The extra rules and costs have had a “significant negative impact” on UK cancer research, creating “new barriers” that are “holding back life-saving research” for Britons, the report says. In some cases, the impact has been devastating. Children are among the NHS cancer patients whose tumours have returned or treatment has stopped working, leaving them in limbo and denied drugs that could extend or save their lives, senior doctors told the Guardian. Sources said officials in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology were studying the findings of the review. It cites evidence from a range of leading clinicians, scientists and researchers, and was compiled by experts from organisations including Cancer Research UK, the University of Southampton, and Hatch, a research consultancy. In a statement, the government said clinical trials were vital to millions of Britons with long-term conditions for whom limited treatments were available in routine care, including cancer patients for whom routine therapies were ineffective. Ministers were committed to “strengthening” the UK’s relationship with the EU on research, and the government offered “extensive support” for UK researchers to help them secure funding, a spokesperson added. Three areas of UK cancer research have been hit particularly hard by its departure from the EU, according to the report. They are the regulatory environment for clinical trials, the mobility of the cancer research workforce and access to research funding and collaboration. Clinical trial groups and universities are struggling to attract “global talent” in cancer research to come to Britain, with UK patients missing out on the expertise of the world’s top cancer scientists. At the same time, UK researchers are finding it “more difficult” to attract grant funding to explore new ways to save the lives of patients “due to additional bureaucracy since the UK left the EU”. The report also reveals the UK is needlessly duplicating drug testing in clinical trials involving the UK and EU, with extra checks causing potentially deadly delays. In one case, the UK had to spend an extra £22,000 for an official to certify batches of aspirin for use in a cancer trial. Aspirin is one of the world’s most familiar drugs and the batches had already been checked in the EU. Meanwhile, Brexit is having a wider, damaging effect on life-saving research in the EU, the report adds. “The exclusion of UK researchers from European cancer research activities has had, and will continue to have, negative consequences for the overall European cancer research effort,” it says. Leading experts shown the report by the Guardian said the harm Brexit had inflicted on UK cancer research and NHS patients had been inevitable and predicted to occur. “Those of us who understood the EU warned repeatedly about precisely these concerns,” said Dr Martin McKee, a professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “These findings are not just predictable, they were predicted.” He added: “It was always inevitable that Brexit would lead to costly duplication and barriers to collaboration.” Mark Dayan, the Brexit programme lead at the Nuffield Trust, a health thinktank, said the report highlighted “concrete examples” of “disruptions which many warned were inevitable from the moment that we left the EU with a relatively hard Brexit for health and research”. The UK and EU are due to renew the trade and cooperation agreement this year, and discuss a wider reset which will shape the future UK-EU relationship. Keir Starmer should make the case for “a new pact to protect health”, Dayan said, “cutting back pointless post-Brexit red tape on medicines testing and research approvals by being willing to cooperate and offer guarantees”. The report recommends the creation of a mutual recognition agreement for testing medicines, to cut costs for researchers leading cross-border trials. Without it, patients will experience further delays to trials in future, denying them access to potentially life-saving treatments, it says. A government spokesperson said: “We are strengthening our relationship with the EU on research and have been providing extensive support for researchers to help them secure funding from the £80bn Horizon Europe programme and get more vital treatments from the lab to patients.” Last year, the Guardian revealed how hundreds of thousands of people in the UK were being forced to wait months to begin even basic cancer treatment, such as surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, with deadly delays “routine” and even children denied timely care.

SleafordMod 1d ago

The British economy has lost out - and sucking up to Trump will only get Starmer so far

https://feddit.uk/post/27833530

The British economy has lost out - and sucking up to Trump will only get Starmer so far - Feddit UK

I found this interesting. It’s mainly about how Brexit has introduced extra red tape when dealing with Europe. The article says how the EU is the UK’s largest trading partner, with the value of trade being over double that of the next largest trading partner: the USA. Here are some quotes: >The days of freedom of movement for people, goods, and services between the UK and its neighbours are long gone. >The British economy has lost out and British citizens and businesses suffer from greater bureaucratic botheration. >Nor has immigration into the UK gone down since leaving the EU. The numbers have actually gone up, with people from Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan and Nigeria, more than compensating for EU citizens who used to come and go.

Sunshine (she/her)1d ago

Free breakfast clubs to open at 750 schools

https://lemmy.ca/post/42595758

Free breakfast clubs to open at 750 schools - Lemmy.ca

Lemmy

RubberDuck 3d ago

Teachers warn of rise in misogyny and racism in UK schools

https://lemmy.world/post/28424812

Teachers warn of rise in misogyny and racism in UK schools - Lemmy.World

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned. A survey by the NASUWT union found most teachers identified social media as “the number one cause” of pupil misbehaviour, with female staff bearing the brunt. Teachers also raised concerns about parents who refuse to accept school rules or take responsibility for their children’s behaviour. One teacher told the union: “A lot of the students are influenced by Tate and Trump, they spout racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist comments in every conversation and don’t believe there will be consequences.” The NASUWT’s general secretary, Patrick Roach, told the union’s annual conference on Friday: “Two in three teachers tell us that social media is now a critical factor contributing to bullying and poor pupil behaviour. “Pupils who believe it is their inalienable right to access their mobile phones throughout the school day – and use them to interrupt lessons, bully others, act out, or to garner respect from their peers.” One primary teacher said: “I have had boys refuse to speak to me, and speak to a male teaching assistant instead, because I am a woman and they follow Andrew Tate and think he is amazing with all his cars and women and how women should be treated. These were 10-year-olds.” Others reported instances of boys “barking at female staff and blocking doorways … as a direct result of Andrew Tate videos”. Another teacher said: “Pupils watch violent and extreme pornographic material. Their attention spans have dropped. They read lots of fake news and sensationalised stories that make them feel empowered and that they know better than the teacher.” Roach said the union had “positive discussions” with ministers about tackling the problem but warned that restricting access to mobile phones during the school day did not go far enough. “We now need a plan to tackle what has become a national emergency,” he said. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know the rise of dangerous influencers is having a damaging impact on our children, which is why we are supporting the sector in their crucial role building young people’s resilience to extremism as part of our plan for change. “That’s why we provide a range of resources to support teachers to navigate these challenging issues, and why our curriculum review will look at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world. “This is on top of wider protections being brought in for children with the Online Safety Act, to ensure children have an age-appropriate experience online.” The Liberal Democrats, however, said the union’s findings showed that more needed to be done. “Toxic algorithms are pushing many children into dark corners of the internet, where sinister attitudes that cause terrible harm in the real world, including in our schools, are free to develop,” the party’s education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said. Delegates to the NASUWT conference in Liverpool heard that parents had become increasingly hostile, and even violent, when called in to discuss their child’s behaviour. Lindsay Hanger, a delegate from Norwich, said unacceptable behaviour was being tolerated in many schools in England because of a need to meet attendance targets “at any cost” and avoid suspensions or exclusions. “I think the government needs to go further, with a strategy to ensure that all parents of school-aged children are expected to uphold behaviour strategies or risk their child being denied their place in the classroom,” Hanger said. The conference passed a motion instructing the union to oppose “no exclusion” policies being legitimised across the education sector – a reference to campaigns seeking to end or curtail the use of exclusions. Roach also told the conference that the union wanted “a real-terms pay award for teachers this autumn that is funded fully”, warning that anything less “will be met with the response from our members it deserves”. Roach told Schools Week newspaper that the NASUWT would hold a formal strike ballot in England if the government ignored recommendations for above-inflation pay increases by the independent pay review body. The conference also passed a motion ordering NASUWT leaders to rule out a merger with the National Education Union (NEU) or other unions. Some members are concerned that Matt Wrack, the former leader of the Fire Brigades Union and the leading candidate to replace Roach as general secretary, supports a merger with the more leftwing NEU.

geneva_convenience 3d ago

Journalist Medhurst ordered to surrender to Heathrow police 15 May

https://lemmy.ml/post/28814328

Journalist Medhurst ordered to surrender to Heathrow police 15 May - Lemmy

Richard Medhurst, the Syrian-born British journalist and son of Nobel Peace Prize winners who was arrested by police last August as part of the Starmer regime’s misuse of anti-terror laws to target anti-genocide journalists and activists and has been kept in limbo for eight months since as the police state continues to ‘make the process the punishment’, has now been told to surrender himself to Heathrow police on 15 May. Medhurst commented on the regime’s ‘criminalization of journalism’ that he still does not know whether he will be charged with an offence under the Terrorism Act – carrying a potential fourteen-year sentence, or potentially two years for protecting the confidentiality of his journalistic sources by refusing to disclose his device passwords to police – or whether the investigation will be extended or dropped altogether. Starmer’s war on pro-Palestinian journalism and protest has seen numerous people raided, harassed, threatened and, in some cases, arrested and charged in a campaign of intimidation that has been condemned by both the United Nations and human rights groups. One group of young people is being held in prison for at least fourteen months before trial, as the government seeks to punish and chill resistance even if juries eventually acquit.

SleafordMod 3d ago

How Brexit, a Startling Act of Economic Self-Harm, Foreshadowed Trump’s Tariffs

https://feddit.uk/post/27749047

How Brexit, a Startling Act of Economic Self-Harm, Foreshadowed Trump’s Tariffs - Feddit UK

I found this article interesting. Here are some quotes: >Brexit’s backers sold the project as a magic bullet that would solve the problems caused by a globalizing economy — not unlike Mr. Trump’s claims that tariffs would be a boon to the public purse and a remedy for the inequities of global trade. In neither case, experts said, does such a panacea exist. >“The truth is, Brexit did not correct any of the problems caused by deindustrialization,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. “If anything, Brexit made them worse.” >Mr. Trump’s MAGA coalition has some of the same ideological fault lines as the Brexiteers, pitting economic nationalists like Stephen K. Bannon against globalists like Elon Musk. That has led analysts to wonder if post-Trump politics in the United States will look a lot like post-Brexit politics in Britain. >“Brexit caused profound damage to the Conservative Party,” Professor Travers said. “It has been rendered unelectable because it is riven by factions. Will the Republican Party be similarly factionalized after Trump?”

geneva_convenience 3d ago

A crisis at the Jewish Chronicle shows the toothlessness of the press watchdog

https://lemmy.ml/post/28807191

A crisis at the Jewish Chronicle shows the toothlessness of the press watchdog - Lemmy

You may remember the origins of the mystery: a fake story from a dodgy source published by the JC last September. The article, under the byline of Elon Perry, echoed the talking points of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was alleged to be based on documents uncovered in the Gaza Strip. It all turned out to be rubbish. After Israeli journalists exposed the nonsense, the JC announced an inquiry. The very next day – 13 September – the paper concluded its “thorough investigation”. A two-paragraph statement offered no explanation of how it had come to publish such manipulated tosh but assured readers that the paper “maintains the highest journalistic standards”. Phew. Just imagine if it didn’t. The Leveson Inquiry sat for 100 days, produced a report of around 2,000 pages and cost around £5m. A new regulator, IPSO, was the main outcome – a body with supposedly more bite than its toothless predecessor, the Press Complaints Commission, and the power to launch investigations where there are patterns of editorial concern. It can theoretically fine publishers up to £1m. In fact, in its 10 years of existence, it has launched no standards investigations and fined no one. You would not guess from IPSO’s most recent statement that the successful mission to plant a story in the JC appears to have owed more to black ops than rota mishaps. Indeed, there is nothing at all about the massive Shin Bet inquiry into the affair, or the political background in Israel. Lord Austin takes a keen interest in the BBC’s coverage of Israel, recently demanding that executives who oversaw a recent much-criticised Gaza programme “should be sacked for very serious professional and moral failings”. But of the professional and moral failings of the JC he has to date said nothing.