Breakdowns in communications and staffing and security issues show how years of neglect have pushed jails to breaking point

• Met hunting two more criminals mistakenly freed from prison

The mistaken release of a second foreign prisoner has forced ministers to re-evaluate their security and release procedures and will once again shine a spotlight on the well-documented problems at HMP Wandsworth.

Much of the concern centres on poor technology and poor communication between prisons, the Ministry of Justice and the courts – the three bodies responsible for overseeing the movement of England and Wales’s 87,000 inmates.

Resident doctors in England to strike for five days next week, saying health secretary’s latest offer is too limited

Wes Streeting has failed in an attempt to end the long-running resident doctors’ dispute with a new offer to them, which means their five-day strike next week is expected to go ahead.

The health secretary tabled a new offer to resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – in England on Wednesday in a move intended to avoid the strike, their 13th.

Samantha Browne says ban will help stop young people thinking violent practice is normal or safe

An anti-trafficking campaigner has welcomed the ban on pornography featuring strangulation, known as “choking�, saying it will help stop young people thinking it is a normal and safe practice.

Samantha Browne, who suffered exploitation as a teenager in the adult industry, said the ban would help prevent children mimicking violent sex they have seen onscreen, and she hoped it would open the door to ending other forms of abusive pornography.

Algerian sex offender and a fraudster released by Wandsworth jail, days after new checks brought in

David Lammy, the UK justice secretary, is under mounting pressure after two more prisoners, including a convicted foreign sex offender, were mistakenly freed, days after he introduced stringent checks for jails.

Lammy had refused multiple times to say whether any more prisoners had been released in error in a bruising session of prime minister’s questions, having been ambushed with a string of pre-planned questions on the issue.

ONS data, which includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as neglect, suggests 13.6 million people affected

Nearly a third of women in England and Wales were abused as a child, along with just over a quarter of men, according to new figures which for the first time include emotional, physical or sexual abuse as well as neglect.

The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates 31.5% of women and 26.4% of men experienced some form of abuse as a child, a total of 13.6 million – almost three in 10 – people.

Five biggest banks take part in programme that will also help domestic abuse victims recover their credit score

Homeless people will for the first time be able to open accounts with the UK’s five biggest banks, in a pilot scheme marking the launch of the government’s financial inclusion strategy.

The Treasury said its new national plan was meant to ensure financial services “worked for everyone�, as it also revealed programmes that could help rebuild the credit scores of domestic abuse victims, support families with no savings and roll out financial education in primary schools across the UK.

Answers demanded after 23,500 families wrongly suspected of fraud when incorrect data showed they had left UK

MPs are demanding answers from HMRC over a child benefit error in which payments to 23,500 families were stopped as part of an anti-fraud crackdown.

Meg Hillier, a Labour MP and chair of the House of Commons Treasury select committee, has written to the permanent secretary of HMRC asking who made the decisions, why they were made and whether compensation would be offered to the victims.

The council is rolling back Thatcher’s flagship policy by buying stock from private landlords. Other local authorities should take note

On a windswept housing estate by the Channel, Jacob Taylor surveys the latest addition to his property empire: a mixture of one-, two- and three-bedroom flats, built on the playing fields of an old private school.

They might not look like much but these neat rows of redbrick homes are an important acquisition – not for an offshore investor or a real-estate mogul, but for the Labour-run Brighton and Hove city council, where Taylor, its deputy leader, is taking a trailblazing approach.

Economists on all sides agree: rather than incremental changes, this deeply unfair market needs a ‘big bang’ moment

• Josh Ryan-Collins is professor of economics and finance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

The UK’s property tax system is both inefficient and unfair. There is consensus among all political parties that something needs to be done. On the efficiency side, stamp duty is the main culprit: as a lump sum tax on property wealth paid at point of purchase, it discourages people to move as frequently as they should. It prevents people from realising their full economic potential by finding the right job, in the right area, or moving into a home suitable for their household size.

In combination with high interest rates and sluggish growth, tax is contributing to UK property transactions reaching near record lows. Meanwhile, over a third of English households live in homes defined by the government as “under-occupied�, with two or more spare bedrooms; 90% of these are homeowners. Reforming stamp duty to free up some of these under-occupied properties – mainly concentrated in the baby-boomer generation now hitting retirement – could enhance growth, productivity and, potentially, the affordability crisis.

Josh Ryan-Collins is professor of economics and finance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Many autistic people face barriers due to stereotypes and ableist assumptions, including the belief that the neurotypical way of working is the only right way

Although I started my first full-time job when I was 15, it was more than three decades before I asked for an accommodation at work. This was not because I didn’t want or need changes in my workplace.

I had struggled with aspects of the workplace since my first job at the age of 15. I knew that the bright lights in my office and in meeting rooms made it difficult to concentrate and gave me severe migraines. I knew that the artificial air blowing through the air conditioning vents caused my skin to itch and made me feel ill. I knew that I struggled to shut out the background noise and focus on important conversations. But the idea that it didn’t have to be that way – or that it wasn’t that way for everyone else – was beyond my imagination.

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�.

When I first discovered this vaguely troubling symptom, I embarked upon my tried-and-tested routine for dealing with such things: 1. Pretend it’s not there. 2. Acknowledge it is. 3. Convince myself it’s growing

The NHS is a funny fish. It often kind of almost works brilliantly. Almost but frustratingly, not quite.

I had this thing on the back of my shoulder which, being where it was, I couldn’t quite see. I could feel it though. A moley, warty thing. I’ll spare you a fuller description.

Prof Sam H Ahmedzai and Dr Greg Mewett respond to an editorial about the crisis in funding in England’s adult hospice sector

Your editorial (29 October) highlights the urgent need for better funding for end-of-life care. As a physician and academic who has worked in this area for 40 years, I would like to raise three underlying issues.

First, it implies that hospices are the only model for delivering good end-of-life care. It is arguable that in Britain we have overrelied on the charitable sector. We now have NHS-funded hospital palliative care teams who can provide excellent care when patients are coming to the end of life but still needing specialist treatments – which very often hospices cannot or will not offer.

In Argentina a lawyer fights to free a working-class woman jailed after the miscarriage of her baby in this heartfelt retelling

Belén is a pseudonym; in 2014, a 25-year-old woman arrived at a hospital in Argentina with severe abdominal pain that turned out to be a miscarriage. She had no idea she was 22 weeks pregnant, but doctors suspected she had had an abortion, then illegal in Argentina, and called the police. Belén was charged with aggravated homicide and sentenced to eight years in prison. When her case was taken up by feminist lawyer Soledad Deza it sparked protests, thousands taking to the streets in green scarves. This heartfelt drama tells the story, mostly from the perspective of lawyer Deza (played by the film’s director Dolores Fonzi).

It begins in the hospital. The doctor in charge barely bothers to look up at Belén from his clipboard – she is a poor working-class woman and this will determine her fate. After a foetus is found in the hospital toilet, police arrive, handcuffing Belén to her bed. They do not carry out DNA tests on the foetus, so there is no physical evidence – a fact not raised by the blood-boilingly lazy defence at her trial. The real-life Belén has always chosen to remain anonymous, which might explain why her character takes a back seat here, though Camila Plaate’s sensitive supporting performance gives us a glimpse into Belén’s growing political awareness.

The Keep Britain Working review, created to tackle the rising tide of ill health pushing millions out of work, reported its findings ahead of this month’s budget

Employers have been told in a landmark government review that fixing Britain’s health-related worklessness crisis will require them to spend £6bn a year on support for their staff.

In a major report before this month’s budget, Charlie Mayfield warned that businesses needed to play a more central role in tackling a rising tide of ill-health that is pushing millions of people out of work.

Analysis of England and Wales units also finds 63% higher risk to babies whose mothers live in most deprived areas

Babies born to black mothers in England and Wales and those from the most deprived areas are significantly more likely to die while in neonatal units, according to analysis revealing the “deeply concerning� figures.

The study, led by academics at the University of Liverpool and published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, examined data on more than 700,000 babies admitted to an NHS neonatal unit across England and Wales between 2012 and 2022.

Questions about potential conflict of interest as council’s cabinet member for social care owns private care company

Lancashire’s Reform-run council has been accused of “selling off the family silver� with plans to save £4m a year by closing five council-run care homes and five day centres and moving residents into the private sector.

One of the care home residents, a 92-year-old woman, said she would leave only by “being forcibly removed or in a box�.

Council data obtained by the Guardian shows 345 children have gone missing in recent years, many probably taken by traffickers

More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs of lorries and are thought to have been taken by traffickers. Kent is often the place where they arrive.

Government urged to act over ‘impact of far-right sentiment’ on children, foster carers and social workers

Social workers are experiencing unprecedented levels of racism, while foster carers whose ethnicity differs from the children they care for have been accosted in the street, a fostering leader has said as he called on the government to take action.

Harvey Gallagher, the chief executive of the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP), said there was growing concern about the “impact of racism, extremism and far-right sentiment� on foster children, carers and social workers.

My wife, Sue Barker, who has died aged 79 of pancreatic cancer, devoted her life to protecting and improving the lives of vulnerable children. Over more than five decades in social work she brought her fierce integrity to some of the toughest cases in England and Wales.

Born in the village of Royston, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Sue was the youngest of three children. Her father, Alexander Willett, was a coal miner; her mother, Eleanor (nee Cheetham), had been in domestic service.

Kent county council says union flags and flags of St George must come off street lights because of safety concerns

A Reform-led council has ruled that union and St George’s flags must come down in order for a village’s traditional Christmas lights to go ahead, in a decision described as “beyond ironic�.

Kent county council – whose leader once vowed not to remove flags put up “unilaterally by the people of Kent� – told Harrietsham parish council that flags must come down from street lights before festive lights could go up because of safety concerns.

PM had been given ‘summary of reputational risks’ but did not know about contents of emails before PMQs, MPs told

Keir Starmer was briefed on details of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before he decided to make him US ambassador, senior civil servants have said.

The prime minister received a Cabinet Office report that contained “a summary of reputational risks� associated with appointing Lord Mandelson, including his “prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein� and past resignations as a Labour minister.

National Audit Office finds £415m overspend as more children travel farther to schools that meet their needs

Home-to-school transport costs in England have risen to £2.3bn a year, as increasing numbers of children with special educational needs and disabilities travel farther afield to schools that can meet their requirements, according to a report.

More than half a million children and young people up to the age of 25 now get council-funded transport from their home to school or college, triggering a £415m overspend by local authorities last year, the National Audit Office (NAO) found.

Declaration in 2023 that led to spending cuts was based on underestimation of reserves of more than £1bn, shows fresh analysis

Birmingham city council was “likely never bankrupt� and the decision to issue the section 114 notice two years ago was “based on unaudited and materially incorrect information�, accounting experts have claimed.

The Labour-run council issued a section 114 notice in September 2023, in effect declaring itself bankrupt, which triggered a wave of spending cuts and plans to sell £750m worth of assets. This prompted the government to appoint commissioners to run the council for five years.

Firefighters report rise in rescue callouts as RSPCA says some who got pets during Covid have ‘realised it costs a lot more money than they want it to’

Firefighter callouts for animal rescue have risen by more than a quarter in five years, figures show, as charities warn of a new wave of abandonment linked to the soaring costs of food and vet bills.

The RSPCA received a record 22,503 abandonment reports last year, as the cost of vets and pet food surged dramatically. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show vet costs last month were almost 50% higher than they were in 2020, and the average can of dog food went up in price from 60p to £1.03 over the same time period.

Signatories of open letter include National Children’s Bureau, Barnardo’s and celebrities such as Emilia Clarke

Celebrities, MPs and children’s charities are among dozens of signatories to an open letter ramping up pressure on the government to set targets for reducing child poverty in the UK.

The actor Emilia Clarke, the broadcaster Chris Packham and the presenter George Clarke have put their names to the letter, coordinated by the Big Issue founder John Bird, stating that the government’s reluctance to set binding child poverty reduction targets has “rung alarm bells�.

National Audit Office reports nearly two-thirds of independent hospices in deficit in 2023-24 as demand increases

Hospices in England are cutting hundreds of beds and staff because of a funding crisis, despite a sharp rise in demand for palliative care, a damning report warns.

People needing end of life care faced a postcode lottery because access to services was so patchy, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported.

The consequences of Donald Trump’s decision to scrap USAID, and other countries’ decisions to reduce funding, are playing out in deadly fashion

Malaria is a pandemic disease that hits the voiceless hardest: most of those who fall ill and die are small children and pregnant women in Africa. It is the leading infectious killer of the continent, responsible for nearly 600,000 deaths a year. Cases are rising and there is an urgent need for more funding, yet western donor countries are instead cutting back on aid. We still hear brave talk about eliminating malaria. But an expert report now warns of a potential resurgence that could add almost a million more deaths to the annual toll by the end of the decade.

Most of the money to fight the mosquito-borne disease – 59% – comes through the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Its executive director, Peter Sands, said last week at the World Health Summit in Berlin that of the three killers, the one that kept him awake at night was malaria.

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Living rooms are becoming less common, especially within rental properties

Living rooms – once central to the majority of households – are becoming less common, especially within rental properties. According to new research, nearly a third of the homes recently advertised on flat-sharing website SpareRoom now have no living room – with many landlords turning communal space into an additional bedroom.

Some homeowners, too, are choosing to forgo a lounge and socialising in the kitchen instead, for example. With this in mind, we want to hear from those who have experienced living without a living room. How does this alter the household dynamic? Is it a good way to save money and make the most of limited space – or do you miss out on having shared experiences in the home? Tell us about it below.

Democratic socialist, 34, becomes city’s first Muslim mayor as Democrats triumph in several other key races

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Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani was elected on Tuesday as the 111th mayor of New York City, defeating the former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and making history as the city’s first Muslim mayor.

The 34-year-old democratic socialist and state assembly member from Queens, secured victory with more than 50% of the vote. Cuomo, 67, finished second with just over 40%, while Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa received just over 7% of the vote.

Communities in the middle of new national forest to show how housebuilding can be delivered alongside nature

A new set of forest towns will be built in the area between Oxford and Cambridge, nestled in the middle of a new national forest.

After facing anger from nature groups over the deregulation in the upcoming planning bill, ministers are trying to demonstrate that mass housebuilding can be delivered in conjunction with new nature. The government has promised to plant millions of trees to boost England’s nature.

Soaring rents and mortages are undermining the social fabric of member states. A coming Brussels plan for affordable housing must be bold

An entrenched housing crisis was one of the dominant themes in last week’s Dutch election, and it is not hard to understand why. House prices in the Netherlands have doubled in the past decade, and a new-build home costs 16 times the average salary. Across the EU, affordability is not just a life-limiting problem in notoriously expensive property markets such as Lisbon, Madrid or Dublin. Speculative investment and a chronic supply shortage have also led to soaring prices in emerging areas where bigger, faster returns are attainable.

Belatedly, this pan-European pattern is to be addressed by a Europe-wide response. Socialist MEPs made action on housing a condition of their continued support for the two-term European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Next month, Brussels will publish its first affordable housing plan, which will target the destructive growth of the Airbnb-style rental market and aim to make it easier for governments to subsidise the building of new homes.

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