Britain is undermining the care workers it depends on | Heather Stewart

“We are deflated, we are sad. We feel the government is trying to pull the rug from under our feet,” says David. “It is like we are being criticised for working in a sector which the government called for us to come help with.”David – not his real name – is a care worker for adults with learning disabilities. He came to the east of England from Nigeria in 2022 with his wife as the Conservative government turned to migration to tackle the social care recruitment crisis

Suicide-related callouts to fire services triple in England in a decade

Suicide-related callouts to fire and rescue services in England have tripled in the last decade, with Samaritans now calling for mandatory training for firefighters, who they say are struggling to deal with the increase in traumatic incidents.New figures show that fire services in England attended 3,250 suicide callouts in the year ending September 2025, the equivalent to 62 callouts a week. This was up from 997 callouts in 2009-10 when records began.Samaritans said firefighters were often among the first on the scene when someone was in suicidal crisis, and despite having to make rapid, life-saving decisions, received no formal mandatory training on how to intervene.Elliot Colburn, public affairs and campaigns manager at the charity, said: “People with this experience are telling us they don’t feel equipped with the training on dealing with someone in suicidal crisis

From syringes to stents: Iran war exposes NHS dependency on petrochemicals

The war in Iran has put the NHS on high alert amid fears about looming shortages and rising costs for medicines and medical products such as syringes, intravenous bags and gloves.Much of modern healthcare is dependent on the petrochemicals now held up by the Gulf shipping standstill – whether for active pharmaceutical ingredients or to produce the millions of sterile single-use items, ranging from personal protective equipment (PPE) to catheters and diagnostic-device casings.The NHS is one of the biggest healthcare bulk buyers in the world. It spends £8bn a year on equipment and consumables, from latex gloves and paper towels to stents and prosthetic hips. Its bill for medicines was £21

Safety fears as UK hospitals use nurses to cover for doctors due to shortage of medics

UK hospitals are using nurses to cover for doctors because of an NHS-wide shortage of medics, raising fears that “substitute doctors” may provide inferior care.Health professionals known as advanced practitioners – who are mainly senior nurses – are undertaking roles usually performed by doctors in A&E, neonatal units, critical care and other areas.Almost half of hospitals in the UK are deploying APs to cover gaps in doctors’ rotas, according to figures obtained by the British Medical Association under freedom of information laws from NHS trusts in England and health boards in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.The BMA warned that the widespread use of “non-doctors” in medical roles is “simply not safe” and may be driven by hospitals using staff who are cheaper than doctors to save money.Its revelations follow a number of cases in which mistakes in either diagnosis or treatment by APs led to patients being harmed or dying

How the Walsall rapist John Ashby exposed his misogyny rapping online

John Ashby is a man who did not hide his hatred of women.In fact, the rapist, who was sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum of 14 years for a racially motivated sex attack on a Sikh woman, vented his misogyny online for all to see.Publicly available videos uploaded to YouTube show Ashby, 32, rapping about hitting women. “I’d fight any bitch, don’t give a fuck. You cheeky bitch want to get slapped up, what?” he says

Mother ends life at Swiss clinic four years after son’s death

A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.The former care worker, from the West Midlands, had previously attempted to take her own life.The case comes as assisted dying will not become law in England and Wales after proposed legislation, branded “hopelessly flawed” by opponents, ran out of time.Ruedi Habegger, the founder of Pegasos, described Duffy’s death as a “sane suicide”