Head of GMC to say ‘something must have gone badly wrong’ when trainee doctors are fearful of speaking up

Mothers and babies being harmed in the NHS risks becoming normalised because of its toxic cover-up culture, a health leader will say, as it emerged that 14 trusts are the focus of a national maternity investigation in England.

Charles Massey, the chief executive of the General Medical Council, will tell a conference on Monday that “something must have gone badly wrong� when trainee obstetrics and gynaecology doctors are fearful of speaking up.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge university hospitals NHS trust.

Blackpool teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust.

Bradford teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust.

East Kent hospitals NHS trust.

Gloucestershire hospitals NHS foundation trust.

Leeds teaching hospitals NHS trust.

Oxford university hospitals NHS foundation trust.

Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals NHS trust.

Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust.

The Queen Elizabeth hospital, King’s Lynn NHS foundation trust.

University hospitals of Leicester NHS trust.

University hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust.

University hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust.

Yeovil district hospital NHS foundation trust/Somerset NHS foundation trust.

Exclusive: Cancer experts declare ‘national emergency’ as hospitals miss targets on diagnosis and starting treatment

Three in four NHS hospital trusts are failing cancer patients, according to the first league tables of their kind, prompting experts to declare a “national emergency�.

Labour published the first league tables to rank hospitals in England since the early 2000s this week. The overall rankings score trusts based on a range of measures including finances and patient safety, as well as how they are bringing down waiting times for operations and in A&E, and improving ambulance response times.

Move comes despite election manifesto promises from Keir Starmer to improve ‘access to learning’

Prisons across England and Wales are set to slash frontline spending on education courses by up to 50%, despite promises from Keir Starmer to improve “access to learning� in last year’s general election manifesto.

The budget for classroom courses at HMP Leicester will be cut by 46.5%, another men’s prison is cutting spending by 25%, while a women’s prison is cutting its provision in education by 26%, sources have confirmed.

Exclusive: Ministers have vowed to fix benefit after Guardian revealed thousands had been plunged into debt for accidentally breaking rules

The government is considering compensation payouts for unpaid carers who have been unfairly hit with huge financial repayments in recent years after inadvertently falling foul of harsh carer’s allowance benefit rules.

Ministers vowed to fix problems with the benefit after a Guardian investigation revealed how draconian penalties coupled with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) administrative failures had plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt.

For decades, lung cancer has been viewed as a disease of older men who smoked. Now, cases among young women are on the rise and doctors are baffled. Could air pollution be behind it?

Towards the end of 2019, Becca Smith’s life was full and hectic. At 28, she had taken on a unit in Chester to convert into a yoga studio, poured in all her savings and hired teachers, while at the same time working as a personal trainer. Her days started at 5am; she was driven, stressed, excited, and had no time for the back pain that just would not subside.

“It kept moving around,� she says. “Every day it would be in a different part of my back. I was strapping on heat packs and ice packs just to get to work.� Smith saw her GP, her physiotherapist and a chiropractor, all of whom suspected a torn muscle. “What really worried me,� she says, “the worst-case scenario, was a slipped disc.� One day in March 2020, the pain was so intense that Smith took to her bed, fell asleep and woke with a crashing migraine and blurred vision. Her mum took her to the optician who shone a light behind Smith’s eyes, saw haemorrhaging and sent her straight to the hospital. Once there, Smith was admitted, and over the course of a week, had an MRI, a CT scan, and a biopsy taken from the cells in her back.

Prescribing of non-addictive drug in England clustered in London and West Midlands, with cheaper alternative issued far more often

Tens of thousands of prescriptions have been issued in England for a promising and non-addictive new sleeping pill, but doctors say NHS uptake is being held back by cost and patchy awareness.

Daridorexant, approved last year, has been prescribed 67,000 times since November 2023, at an estimated cost of £2.6m to the NHS. The drug has been hailed for helping people fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer and wake up clear-headed – without the dependency risks of traditional pills.

Researchers say social media myths drive ‘nocebo effect’ of side-effects that are real but psychological in origin

Social media misinformation about the contraceptive pill is encouraging women to view it so negatively that many give it up, a study has found.

Researchers have identified myths spread on TikTok and other social media platforms as a key driver of users suffering side-effects that are real but psychological in origin. It is called the “nocebo effect�, the opposite of the better-known placebo effect.

An expectation at the outset that the pill will be harmful.

Low confidence in how medicines are developed.

A belief that medicines are overused and harmful.

A belief that they are sensitive to medicines.

The archetype of this ideal man is Mr Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce. Maybe Swift is on to something

How do you like your men? Yes, obviously, we shouldn’t be dismissively taxonomising a whole gender like boxed Barbies. But in the era of tradwives and nu-gen gold diggers, in which the manosphere remains alive and kick(box)ing, telling teenage boys lies about women, I reckon there’s a way to go before we reach reductive objectification parity. Does that make it OK? No. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes, a bit.

So, returning to the question, my answer is “like my coffee�: small, strong, dark and highly over-stimulating, brewed by my sister’s boyfriend in Scarborough … No, hang on, this is falling apart. Regardless, my ideal man is wildly at odds with the zeitgeist and my husband needs to punch up his protein intake and stop having opinions, because the New York Times claims a new dream man has dropped and he’s “beefy, placid and … politically ambiguous�.

He’s a rheumatologist, a standup comedian – and now the author of a memoir. He talks about racism in healthcare, why Covid was the only time urgent care was properly staffed – and his beef with cardiologists

Are You Really the Doctor?, Matthew Hutchinson’s memoir of being a black doctor in the NHS, opens in A&E with a patient suffering from a thunderclap headache and taking time out from his excruciating pain to complain that Hutchinson is “very scruffy�. “I’m wearing scrubs, the pyjama-like, hospital-issue uniform – something pretty difficult to put your own personal flair on,� Hutchinson writes, concluding wearily that the guy must have been reacting to something else: “Skin, hair, or general … vibe.� You couldn’t call it a microaggression, the patient’s assumption that, being black, Hutchinson was unlikely to be an expert. But this anecdote barely registers on the Geiger counter of bigotry in healthcare that Hutchinson writes about trenchantly and acerbically, from the prejudices doctors face from patients and the gender and race blindspots in medical textbooks, to the racism that could endanger a patient’s life (black women are four times more likely to die during childbirth).

Meeting Hutchinson in the Guardian’s offices in London, he emanates forethought and competence. Even in shorts and a T-shirt, he seems like the kind of guy who couldn’t look scruffy if he tried. He says the book he’s written about race had to be done, but “I’ve spoken to people who are non-white and female, and without even prompting, they’ve said: ‘Actually, the thing that is held more against me is being a woman.’� Hutchinson’s wife, Louise, is a GP. “The lack of respect that can be shown to female doctors is outrageous, sometimes by certain other healthcare professionals, not even patients. In the same way, we haven’t really had a book, as far as I’m aware, about being disabled as a doctor and the lack of access to medical school for someone with a disability. I’ve met only one doctor with a hearing impairment in the entire time I’ve been working.�

Judging by the minor complaints being put to employment tribunals, workplace etiquette appears to be breaking down. But the headlines rarely tell the full story

I would hate to be in human resources at the moment. Admittedly, as someone with no discernible people skills, I would always hate it, but I’ve been imagining the awkward HR meetings behind the scenes of the recent wave of “what is acceptable workplace behaviour� rulings from UK employment tribunals recently, and … oof!

I’m thinking, particularly, of last week’s ruling on whether younger chatty workers disturbing an older colleague constitutes age discrimination (it didn’t), but there are many more. Comparing a colleague to Darth Vader in an online personality test resulted in a £30,000 compensation award. Leaving someone out of the tea round could contribute to unfair constructive dismissal. Sighing at a colleague could be discriminatory. An air kiss wasn’t harassment and neither was telling a manager his work was messy. Allocating a senior employee a “low-status desk� can be seen as a demotion.

Poor accessibility, questionable hygiene, scattered needles and budget cuts … the UK is in the midst of a public toilet crisis. Thankfully, Raymond Martin is fighting back

The first thing Raymond Martin looks for in a toilet, he says, is cleanliness. Does the tissue paper on the floor mean this public lavatory has failed his inspection? “You have to understand that it’s a working toilet, it’s now mid-afternoon – a few bits of tissue on the floor is neither here nor there,� Martin says. “If there were cigarette packets, bottles on the floor – that I’d be worried about.� We’re in Knutsford, Cheshire, and Martin is on a toilet-inspection tour of the north and west of the UK. He’s just come from the Lake District and Blackpool. When we part ways in a couple of hours, he’ll head on to Wales to inspect the public conveniences of Pembrokeshire.

Do people laugh when Martin, who is managing director of the British Toilet Association (BTA), tells them he does toilet inspections? They do, he says. “But then, immediately, they say, ‘I’ll tell you where I was and they had wonderful toilets …’.�

Care and support package, including housing, will help 30-50 young Palestinians for an initial two years

The first group of children from Gaza have arrived in the UK for specialist life-saving treatment on the NHS, the Guardian understands.

Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, informed the parliamentary Labour party on Monday evening about the development. On arrival in the UK, the patients and their families have been granted access to NHS treatment, appropriate housing and comprehensive support services for an initial two-year period.

Medical tribunal rules ‘very low risk’ of Suhail Anjum, who had been dismissed by hospital in Greater Manchester, repeating behaviour

A doctor who left a patient midway through an operation to have sex with a nurse is at “very low risk� of repeating his serious misconduct, a medical tribunal has ruled.

Dr Suhail Anjum, 44, and the unnamed nurse were caught in a “compromising position� by a colleague who walked in on the pair at Tameside hospital. The consultant anaesthetist had asked another nursing colleague to monitor the male patient, who was under general anaesthetic, so he could go to the bathroom.

The industry’s retreat from the UK reflects a deeper shift about how Beijing is rewriting the rules of innovation

When Merck abruptly scrapped its billion-pound London research hub last week, critics blamed Britain’s lacklustre support for life sciences and a Scrooge-like grip on NHS drug prices. But one important factor may have been missed. That Merck, which is also cutting jobs elsewhere – 6,000 globally – is recalibrating not just in response to the UK or the US, but to China.

Merck’s cash cow is pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), an immunotherapy drug launched in 2014 that has successfully treated advanced melanoma, head and neck, lung, cervical and other cancers. It blocks an antibody called PD-1, teaching the immune system to fight the cancer. Because some patients are out of other options, the results sometimes seem miraculous.

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Readers respond to Wes Streeting’s introduction of hospital rankings in England based on 30 factors

Wes Streeting does not seem to understand the complexity of healthcare funding. League tables will exacerbate regional differences rather than abolish them (Norfolk hospital worst in country as NHS league tables reintroduced, 9 September). The problems are not unknown but, sadly for this government, will not be solved in the next four years. It should not be a surprise, especially for Mr Streeting, that the NHS cannot function efficiently until social care is fixed.

There is a massive shortage of staff in all specialities, which take 10 to 15 years to get from university to skilled professional. This leads to a reliance on locum and agency staff. The hospitals at the bottom of the tables will have the highest usage of them, reducing quality of care at a higher cost. Increasing the use of private clinics simply loses staff from the NHS.

Top officials exited agency under RFK Jr’s leadership, and his anti-vax beliefs have dismayed medical community

After high-profile departures and sweeping layoffs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) faces an unprecedented loss of expertise and a simultaneous erosion of trust as top health leaders undermine vaccines and other vital health tools.

“Americans should be alarmed,� said Nirav Shah, former principal deputy director at CDC and now a visiting professor at Colby College. “All of these moves leave us less safe, and it comes at a time of rising public health threats.�

Private firms’ profits soar, watchdog says, as prices nearly double in five years

The cost of a single place in a residential children’s care home in England has nearly doubled in five years to an average £318,000 a year, with private firms racking up huge profits as a result of market failure, according to the public spending watchdog.

The £3bn children’s homes market, which is increasingly dominated by private firms, some funded by private equity, is “dysfunctional� and too often fails to deliver a good service for youngsters or value for money, a National Audit Office (NAO) report said.

My friend Damaris Le Grand, who has died aged 79, was a social worker and policy innovator who later spent many years as a volunteer supporting refugees. Her life reflected her determination to make the world a better place.

Known to everyone as Dammy, she was born in Norwich, the middle of three children of Betty (nee Southgate), a teacher, and Nigel Robertson-Glasgow, a vicar in Chipping Warden, Northamptonshire, where Dammy grew up.

People need consistent relationships with practitioners who have the time, skills and tools to listen, encourage and challenge, say Sarah Owen and Marie Buss

Your editorial about new ideas in social work (3 September) was right to highlight the power of building relationships rather than pushing people through disconnected services. The examples you gave, and the brilliant work of the Changing Futures programme, show that when practitioners spend time getting to know people, treat them with respect and see and understand the whole person, lives can change for the better.

But calling these projects “pioneers� risks making them sound like rare exceptions. If this way of working is proving effective, why should it be left to a handful of special schemes? Relational support shouldn’t be a side experiment – it should be the foundation of all our public services.

The MP said police should be focusing on people who are members of the group, not those who ‘recklessly express support’ for it

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, used his speech to conference this morning to say that the TUC expected the government to deliver its workers’ rights bill “in full�. He said employment rights were “overwhelmingly popular with voters across the political spectrum�.

And he condemned Reform UK for its stance on employment rights. After saying that Nigel Farage claimed to represent working class people, he went on:

Here’s the truth – there is a world of difference between what Nigel says and what Nigel does.

Every single Reform MP, including Mr Farage, voted against outlawing fire and rehire, against banning zero hours contracts and against day one rights for millions of workers.

Ask yourself this fundamental question. Do you believe in your gut that that Nigel Farage really cares about the people of Clacton when he’s off collecting his speaker’s fees in the United States?

Do you believe that Richard Tice really worries about the people of Skegness while he’s living it up at home in Dubai, or are they just rightwing conmen lining their own pockets?

I just have to say this. No amount of TikToks, or ozempic, or expensive haircuts, will ever hide the eager inner ugliness of Robert Jenrick.

The man who ordered murals painted over in a reception centre for children seeking asylum is indeed a xenophobe, an opportunistic xenophobe hoping to create a political climate that ends up with far right folks laying siege to hotels and black and Asian people being threatened and harassed on our streets.

If we look at the powerful geopolitical push factors, they’re things like regime change. We think Afghanistan, war, civil conflict. And when we look at people crossing in small boats, where do they come from? Well, the top nationalities: Afghan, Eritrea, Iranian, Syrian, Sudanese – just those five nationalities account for almost two thirds of all small boat arrivals, and these individuals are from some of the most chaotic parts of the world.

But there are also some pull factors, and the question is, why not claim asylum in France, why come to the UK? A number of reasons recur there when we speak with asylum seekers. It’s the presence of family members, the English language.

In those circumstances, typically, flagged upon the system, the UK government would be able to issue a speedy refuse refusal and try and effect removal.

As it is, people arrive, we don’t have that record, so we don’t know who they are.

Sir Tony Radakin says ‘extraordinary Teams calls with 20 or 30 people’ partly at fault as he calls for action to be taken

Sprawling video meetings involving dozens of ministers and officials that each have a veto over the outcome are frustrating decision-making and delaying reform at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), according​ to the recently departed head of the armed forces.

Sir Tony Radakin, giving a speech that had been blocked by Downing Street, complained of “extraordinary Teams calls with 20 or 30 people� – and that the number of senior MoD civil servants had increased by 85% since 2018.

People who were “not going to face the accountability if something goes wrong or it doesn’t happen� nevertheless “have the ability to say no�, the retired admiral said, in online meetings that were normal practice both within the MoD and across government.

Defence reform was “not happening as strongly and as quickly as it needs to,� said Radakin at the Institute for Government, despite the efforts of the current and previous governments, and he acknowledged this “speaks to a personal failure� to defeat bureaucracy.

Whitehall needed to reduce “the levels of hierarchy�, he said, adding: “We have increased senior civil service numbers in defence by about 85% since 2018 even as defence has got smaller and the military star count has remained largely static.�

The former admiral contrasted the normal civil service decision making processes with that adopted in the case of Ukraine, where ministers and officials were willing to take more operational risk. “What I think is frustrating is the outcome [in the case of Ukraine] is so much better,� he said.

Radakin was careful to praise the Labour government and defence secretary, “John Healey, especially�, for wanting to reform the civil service bureaucracy. They were battling a system in which accountability “becomes cloudy�, he said, when large numbers of people were involved.

The problem, Radakin said, was that it was too ​easy for politicians and officials to delay anything non-urgent, and he highlighted repeated delays to green-lighting a replacement for the now-ageing Trident nuclear submarines in 1998, 2010 and 2016.

“There is something wrong,� he said, when governments say maintaining the UK’s nuclear arsenal is the highest priority “but our sailors are having to put to sea for extraordinarily long patrols in some of the most complex machines on the planet that are beyond their original design life.�

Trident patrols, which used to be considered long if they lasted more than three months, now routinely extend beyond five, as the time taken to repair and refit the submarines has increased.

Originally due to be phased out between 2017 and 2024, they will not be replaced by new Dreadnought class boats until the early 2030s.

Another approach, Radakin said, would be to drastically slim down the number of people involved in taking procurement decisions: “If the person leading a project and one other are willing to say ‘yes’ and are comfortable they can justify their decisions to the Public Accounts Committee and the secretary of state for defence, then let the programme move forward.�

Radakin was chief of defence staff for nearly four years, coming into post as Russia was gearing up to invade Ukraine. He departed earlier this month as his term of office concluded, to be replaced by the air force chief, Sir Rich Knighton.

But he had to wait until he left his post before being able to give a valedictory speech in the UK. Downing Street allowed Radakin to make a speech in Washington and give an interview to a Ukrainian outlet and the BBC but otherwise said no to his speaking in public.

The former admiral said it was the policy of Labour, inherited from Conservatives under Rishi Sunak, to restrict military chiefs’ ability to speak in public, and accepted it was “the prerogative of government to make those decisions�.

But he said that service chiefs could “sometimes be helpful for the government� in explaining UK policy, arguing that “officials, especially military, in all surveys of public trust tend to have quite high levels of confidence�.

Campaigners crowdfund £26,000 to seek judicial review of move to construct pitches in wildlife-rich area

Campaigners are mounting another legal challenge to the building of a women’s football academy by Tottenham Hotspur on wildlife-rich parkland in north London.

The Guardians of Whitewebbs group has successfully crowdfunded £26,000 to seek a judicial review of Enfield council’s granting of planning permission for the Spurs academy, which will include all-weather pitches, floodlights and a turf academy built on 53 hectares (130 acres) of Whitewebbs Park. Enfield council’s planning committee approved the proposals in February, despite local protests, on greenbelt parkland rich in bats, newts and mature trees.

The best example was the rollout of the Covid vaccine taskforce, a time when there was minimal bureaucracy and things got done. We need that now

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The British civil service was designed to run an empire, not to serve working people. Its purpose was to rule over people as subjects, not serve them as citizens. It was built to command and control. Clever people with the right sort of education who knew the decisions they made were better. Brains at the centre, obedience at the edge. Endless statistical knowledge, precious little experience on the ground.

It is plain to see this inheritance is creaking at the seams. We expect much more of the state than we did in its imperial past.

Peter Hyman is a former adviser to Keir Starmer and author of the Substack Changing the Story. Morgan Wild is chief policy adviser at the thinktank Labour Together

Hopwood DePree has been leading efforts to renovate Grade II* listed Hopwood Hall in Middleton since 2017

It was a story fit for the pages of a Hollywood screenplay, with a California actor moving to a town in north Manchester to restore his dilapidated ancestral home.

But Hopwood DePree’s romance plot has transformed instead to a horror, after he found himself locked out of the building he was restoring, and now battling the local council in court for possession of the property.

Tenisha Warner reveals identity as she starts two initiatives to support children on behalf of late actor and singer

The widow of actor and singer Malcolm-Jamal Warner has announced the launch of two philanthropic organizations in his honor, paying tribute to her late husband in social media posts that identified her for the first time.

On Friday, the day before the eighth anniversary of their wedding, Tenisha Warner published a photo on Instagram of her and her Grammy-winning husband holding hands and laughing together on the day they got married. Some accompanying text explained that the doctor of psychology and her daughter had started the Warner Family Foundation as a young artists’ scholarship program as well as River & Ember, which is dedicated to helping deepen bonds between parents and children.

He made his name with chart-topping hits – now the Scope chair wants to change how society sees disability

Pop mogul Sir Robin Millar is not a man who you would expect to struggle with access in the music industry.

In a glittering career that spans decades, he has worked alongside some of the most celebrated names in British music, from Sade to Boy George, and counts legends such as the Rolling Stones among his list of A-list friends.

The British Sikh marathon runner Fauja Singh, who has died aged 114 in a traffic accident, became known globally as the “Turbaned Tornado�. He was the first person over the age of 100 to complete a marathon when he ran the Toronto waterfront marathon in 2011. This achievement was not officially recognised by Guinness World Records as Fauja did not have a birth certificate, but his feat captured international attention.

His love for running came late in life when, at the age of 89, after seeing people running on television, he decided to give it a go. He ran his first marathon in London in 2000. He was deeply committed to charitable causes, and saw running as a spiritual act of Sewa (selfless service).

My friend Christopher Roles, who has died aged 63 of glioblastoma, was head of the UK-based charity Age International from 2012 to 2022. It supports older people around the world, including through humanitarian responses to disasters and emergencies.

He brought to that position a characteristic combination of calm authority, moral clarity and quiet humour that left a lasting mark on colleagues and friends – qualities that also led him to become a valued member of organisations in other settings. He served on the BBC Appeals Committee and was a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee until his retirement in 2022, when he took up trustee roles at Winchester Cathedral, Wesley House Cambridge and the Pensions Trust.

Family with children forced out of north London home before property put back on the market at 25% higher rent

The Labour donor Lord Alli evicted a family of five from one of his rental properties before increasing the rent by nearly £1,000 a month.

The family, who have school-age children, had lived in the five-bedroom north London townhouse for four years, paying £4,800 a month.

Boasting two-sink kitchens, London’s Tower Court is tailored for the Haredi Jewish community – but its generous proportions and outside space for religious observance are a treat for all residents

The intricacies of religious doctrine might not be a typical feature of the English planning system. But, in a corner of north-east London, the specific teachings of one ultra-Orthodox community have led to more generous council housing for everyone.

Approaching the handsome brick blocks of Tower Court in Hackney, the first clue that something might be out of the ordinary can be spotted in the balconies. Rather than sticking out in a regular grid, they dance across the facade at staggered intervals, each surrounded by a skeletal metal frame. Some have been walled in with fencing panels, while others are shielded with reed matting or shrouded with fake plastic leaves. It looks like a vertical display of makeshift garden sheds.

Lords amend planning bill to include protections for wild animals, including bird-safe glass and swift bricks

Hedgehog highways and bird-safe glass could become requirements for all new buildings as members of the House of Lords push through amendments to the government’s planning bill.

This may cause a headache for ministers, who have tried to avoid burdening developers with laws on nature measures such as “swift bricks�. The new Lords amendments include mandated provision for these nesting boxes, which campaigners say are crucial for the survival of the threatened species.

My widowed sister-in-law has dementia and we need to sell to fund her care home, but the charges seem excessive

The sheltered housing provider Anchor is taking more than 60% of my widowed sister-in-law’s nest egg, which she needs to fund her care home.

She and her late husband bought a £59,995 retirement flat at an Anchor development in Leominster in Herefordshire in 2004. She now has dementia and has had to move out of the flat into full-time care.