Mandelson should hand back US ambassador payout, says cabinet minister
A cabinet minister has called for Peter Mandelson to hand back the payout he received after quitting as ambassador to the US last year, as pressure increased on the prime minister to quit for having appointed him in the first place.Pat McFadden, the welfare secretary, said on Sunday he thought the Labour peer should give back his Foreign Office payout, which is reported to be as much as £55,000.The Foreign Office is understood to be reviewing the payment.Mandelson quit last year as Washington ambassador after further details came to light about his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.This week, he said he would stand down from the House of Lords after yet more documents were published, showing the relationship between the two men to have been closer than thought.
Mandelson was reported on Sunday to have received a payment worth three months’ salary when he quit in September.“I think Peter should reflect on that and either return it or give it to an appropriate charity,” McFadden told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.The Foreign Office said: “Peter Mandelson’s civil service employment was terminated in accordance with legal advice and the terms and conditions of his employment.”The department is understood to be reviewing the payment – though officials believed at the time they had no legal option but to pay it.McFadden was a close ministerial ally of Mandelson in the last Labour government, working as his deputy in the business department.
He said he had not known anything about his former boss’s relationship with Epstein, and said he had been dismayed by emails that appeared to show Mandelson passing sensitive government information to the late US financier,“This is someone from whom I’ve sought political advice over the years, someone who I thought I knew well, but when I look at the emails that have been published in the last two weeks, there’s a whole side of that I knew nothing of,” he said,McFadden insisted Keir Starmer should remain in his job despite rising pressure on the prime minister in the wake of the latest revelations,“I don’t think it’s good for the country to be changing its prime minister every 18 months to two years,” he said,“It has an economic cost, it has a confidence cost, it has an international reputation cost.
”Steve Wright, the head of the Fire Brigades Union, on Sunday became the first boss of a Labour-affiliated union to call on the prime minister to stand down,“I think we need to see change,” he told the BBC,“I think 18 months ago, the general public wanted to see that change, and we’re not seeing it, we’re just seeing a continuation of what happened before,And I think that needs to be a leadership change, and I think MPs need to be calling for that,”Many MPs, meanwhile, are agitating for Starmer to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who pushed personally for Mandelson to be given the job in Washington.
Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, said on Sunday: “Someone needs to take responsibility, and a lot of the responsibility needs to lie with people who advise [Starmer].It is well known that there is a boys’ club in No 10 of people who feel as though they can act with impunity, give advice.And it’s not worked out well.”Another Labour MP added: “The idea of Morgan being allowed to resign makes the PM look even weaker.He should sack him or he will go down with Morgan.
The longer he leaves it, the more likely it is the latter.”
UK’s ‘unsung army’ of full-time unpaid carers needs more support, report says
A growing “unsung army” of 1 million people with full-time caring responsibilities needs better support, according to a report that found one in three unpaid carers from poorer backgrounds were unable to work because of their duties.The trend is the result of an ageing society and rising ill-health and disability concentrated in the poorest half of the country’s working-age families, the Resolution Foundation’s research found.Almost one in three working-age adults in lower-income families had a disability, compared with fewer than one in five in better-off families, the thinktank said.It added that in homes of modest means, 1 million people had caring responsibilities of 35 hours or more a week – the equivalent of a full-time job – making it challenging to secure paid work.Mike Brewer, the deputy chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain is getting older and sicker, while a greater share of its population has a disability
Menstrual blood test could offer alternative to cervical screening for cancer
A pioneering test of period blood for signs of cervical cancer could be a convenient, non-invasive and accurate way of screening for the disease, researchers have said.A regular sanitary pad topped with a blood sample strip can pick up human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cases of cervical cancer, and could be used by women at home, the results of a study indicate.Currently, most women undergo cervical screening under the care of a clinician, who collects a sample via a brush inserted into the vagina. But millions of women invited for screening do not attend.Researchers in China compared the diagnostic accuracy of menstrual blood with samples collected by a clinician for detecting cervical cell abnormalities (CIN2 and CIN3), which can require treatment
Most statin side-effects not caused by the drugs, study finds
Almost all side-effects listed for statins are not caused by the drugs, according to the world’s most comprehensive review of evidence.Other than the well-known risks around muscle pain and diabetes, only four of 66 other statin side-effects listed on labels – liver test changes, minor liver abnormalities, urine changes and tissue swelling – are supported by evidence. And the risks are very small, according to the systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Lancet.Statins have been used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide over the last three decades and are proven to reduce heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths. At the same time, millions have been put off the drugs amid long-running safety concerns, with statin labels listing dozens of possible side-effects
Does getting cold increase your chances of catching flu?
“Put your coat on or you’ll catch your death of cold.” It’s a common refrain that feeds the narrative that getting cold will make us sick. And it’s true that illnesses are more common during the winter months, but is it true that you are more likely to catch the flu if you forget your hat?Not exactly. Writing in The Conversation, medical microbiologist Manal Mohammed from the University of Westminster has explained that colds and flu are caused by viruses that spread either by respiratory droplets or person to person regardless of the temperature. However, there is a bit of truth in the idea – many viruses survive for longer in colder and dryer conditions, increasing the chances of them hanging around and infecting a fresh victim
Autistic girls much less likely to be diagnosed, study says
Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study.Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37
Ministers to crack down on profiteering in care sector and make renewed fostering push
Private providers of child social care in England will be pushed out of the system if they are found to be profiteering, the children’s minister has said.Josh MacAlister, who is in charge of overhauling the care system for children, also called for a fostering equivalent of the Homes for Ukraine scheme to provide homes for tens of thousands of children.Announcing a major push to find homes for 10,000 foster children as part of a bid to rebalance child social care away from private providers, MacAlister said the state was “failing to provide the lifelong, loving relationships that these kids need”.MacAlister led an independent review of child social care under the last Tory government before becoming an MP and then minister. He said his message to private providers was: “If you want to be part of this system in the future, don’t price-gouge; don’t profiteer
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