System failed our daughter, say parents, as NHS trust fined £200,000 over death

A girl who killed herself when she absconded from 24-hour clinical supervision was failed by a system that was meant to protect her, her parents have said, after the NHS trust involved was fined over the avoidable death.Ellame Ford-Dunn, 16, who suffered with severe mental health problems, died on 20 March 2022, minutes after leaving the Bluefin acute children’s ward in Worthing hospital, part of University hospitals Sussex NHS trust (UHSussex).The supervising agency nurse watched Ellame leave the ward but did not follow her because she said she had been instructed not to leave the ward if a patient absconded, Brighton magistrates court was told last month.On Wednesday the trust was fined £200,000 plus costs by the district judge Tessa Szagun for criminal health and safety offences over Ellame’s death.Her parents, Nancy and Ken Ford-Dunn, said the prosecution, which was brought by the hospital regulator the Care Quality Commission, confirmed that their daughter had been “failed by a system that was meant to protect her”

Peers are just doing their job in scrutinising the assisted dying bill | Letters

Simon Jenkins is right that the Lords should not kill legislation by procedural manoeuvre (Unelected Lords are blocking assisted dying: that’s a democratic outrage) . But peers are not playing games with the assisted dying bill; they are finally providing the independent scrutiny it has so far lacked. And the carefully crafted campaign slogans collapse under examination.Rather than addressing suffering, the bill makes no mention of it – let alone requiring, as most assisted dying laws do, that a person be experiencing suffering that cannot otherwise be relieved. And, rather than respecting autonomy, as the Swiss do, under this bill the state – not the individual – decides the circumstances in which ending your life is acceptable, and makes doctors the agents of that judgment

Online betting firms to pay billions more in UK tax, Reeves confirms

Online casinos and bookmakers will pay billions of pounds more in tax under a steep rise in duties levied on their takings from British gamblers.In her second budget as chancellor, Rachel Reeves announced duty changes expected to raise an extra £1.1bn a year by 2029-30, raiding a fast-growing sector that made £12.6bn from punters last year.Shares in UK gambling firms began tumbling even before Reeves announced the change in her budget, after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – which assesses the likely impact of tax changes – accidentally published a document confirming that the industry had been singled out for higher taxes

‘I didn’t even know this type of attack existed’: more than 200 women allege drugging by senior French civil servant

When Sylvie Delezenne, a marketing expert from Lille, was job-hunting in 2015, she was delighted to be contacted on LinkedIn by a human resources manager at the French culture ministry, inviting her to Paris for an interview.“It was my dream to work at the culture ministry,” she said.But instead of finding a job, Delezenne, 45, is now one of more than 240 women at the centre of a criminal investigation into the alleged drugging of women without their knowledge in a place they never expected to be targeted: a job interview.An investigating judge is examining allegations that, over a nine-year period, dozens of women interviewed for jobs by a senior civil servant, Christian Nègre, were offered coffees or teas by him that had been mixed with a powerful and illegal diuretic, which he knew would make them need to urinate.Nègre often suggested continuing the interviews outside, on lengthy strolls far from toilets, the women say

Horrific death of Kardell Lomas sparks urgent calls for new independent oversight of police

Members of the federal government’s own expert advisory panel on sexual violence have called for “urgent” independent national oversight of police after new revelations about Queensland police failures before the killing of the First Nations woman Kardell Lomas.Guardian Australia’s Broken trust investigation revealed that Lomas, a 31-year-old Kamilaroi and Mununjali woman, had sought help from police and other agencies in the months before she was killed.Her family has applied for an inquest to examine, among other things, failures by police to help Lomas, protect her from her dangerous partner, or investigate evidence of domestic violence.A statement signed by 16 of the 20 members of the expert panel selected to advise the federal government about sexual violence law reform has called on the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, to take “urgent, decisive action” in relation to the case.They said the case highlighted issues they had raised throughout the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry into justice responses to sexual violence but that the inquiry’s recommendations had not gone far enough

CPS to train staff on ‘spectrum of abuse’ in violence against women and girls

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will train its staff to recognise the “wide spectrum of abuse” in cases of violence against women, after new data found that domestic abuse was present in more than a third of rape cases, and in more than eight out of 10 cases of stalking and image-based abuse.Launching its five-year Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, the body said its main aims were to increase casework quality and increase trust in the CPS.The CPS data found a significant overlap in crime types relating to violence against women and girls, with 93.5% of charges of “honour” crimes linked to domestic abuse, as well as 35.1% of rape charges, 82