Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls says plans to cut disability benefits ‘won’t work’

The former shadow chancellor Ed Balls has criticised plans for cuts to disability benefits, saying on his podcast that it was “not going to work”.George Osborne, the architect of welfare cuts during the coalition years, also told the same podcast that he had resisted freezing personal independence payments (Pip) – a move currently under consideration – because he felt it was going too far.Balls, an influential Labour figure who is married to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, hinted that welfare reforms would be hard for the party to stomach in the context of other cuts.“It’s one thing to say the economy is not doing well and we’ve got a fiscal challenge, but the context we’re now in is that we are having to increase defence spending and, two weeks ago, it was announced we’re going to cut international aid,” he told the Political Currency podcast.“But cutting the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society who can’t work, to pay for that, is not going to work

‘I had no voice’: black mental health patients on surviving a care system they say is racialised

It has been more than four decades since Devon Marston, a 66-year-old community organiser and musician, was taken to a psychiatric hospital where he was restrained, injected and forced to take medication. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.“Everything was said around me and about me, but no one asked me how I was doing,” he said. “I had no voice, and there was no one to say: ‘Don’t do that to him,’ or: ‘Listen to him, hear what he has to say.’”The experience had a profound impact on his life and put him on a path to campaign for better care for minority ethnic people experiencing mental distress

Urgent adult mental health crisis referrals in England double in a year

Urgent adult referrals to mental health crisis teams in England more than doubled between 2023 and 2024, according to a healthcare watchdog, which said people were becoming more unwell while waiting for help from overstretched services.The report, from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), found there were not enough beds or staff, and ward managers felt pressed to discharge the “least unwell” patients.Very urgent adult referrals to crisis teams increased to 3,063 in March 2024, from 1,400 the previous April.The report, published on Thursday, also raised concerns about the over-representation of black people detained under the Mental Health Act, finding they were 3.5 times more likely to be held than white people

Margaret Miles-Bramwell obituary

My friend Margaret Miles-Bramwell, who has died aged 76, was the founder and chair of the weight-loss organisation Slimming World.At the age of 21, after struggling with her weight, she hit upon the idea of forming a local weight-loss club. She set up Slimming World in early 1969 with the help of a friend and neighbour in Alfreton in Derbyshire, and by the end of the year the business had grown to 25 groups across the county and neighbouring Nottinghamshire. Today it employs more than 500 people at its head office in Alfreton, supporting a franchisee network across the UK and Ireland of about 3,500 self-employed consultants who run its weight-loss groups.Born in London and adopted soon after birth by Emma Selina and Samuel Birch, Margaret grew up in humble surroundings in South Normanton in Derbyshire

Dick Muskett obituary

My partner, Dick Muskett, who has died aged 82, was an organiser, socialist and entrepreneur who played a key role in setting up the Workers Beer Company, which runs event and festival bars to raise funds for progressive causes.Dick was a man with strong principles, energy and charm who used his experiences as a soldier, firefighter, trade unionist, event organiser and local government officer to make a difference. A firm believer in collective action, he never took the limelight for himself.Born in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, Dick was the eldest child of Joanie Davidson, a shopworker. He never knew who his father was and Muskett was a surname chosen for him by his mother

Cutting benefits won’t help disabled people into work | Letters

I doubt the government understands what disabled people need in order to work (Starmer decries ‘worst of all worlds’ benefits system ahead of deep cuts, 10 March). I have a mental health condition, physical disabilities and am neurodiverse. To do meaningful part-time work, I had to become self-employed, simply to work at my level of skill and experience. It costs me nearly £1,000 a month in various ways to remain well enough to work consistently – all post-tax.The NHS is merely keeping me alive – it isn’t interested in optimising my life, for example, by tackling the hideous side-effects of my medication – and the tax system refuses to recognise that anything more than keeping me alive is required