Pepper spray use at young offender institutions in England ruled legal
An attempt to halt the use of pepper spray on children held in young offender institutions (YOIs) has failed after the high court ruled on Monday that the weapon’s rollout was lawful.The Howard League for Penal Reform challenged the Labour government’s decision to authorise the use of Pava, a synthetic form of pepper spray, in three prisons in England holding boys as young as 15.Risks such as the physical and psychological harm posed by Pava, the likely disproportionate use of the spray against disabled children and black and minority ethnic prisoners, and propensity to increase violence overall, had not been considered, the charity said.But in a judgment on Monday, Mr Justice Calver said that the then justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had sought to ensure that its use was only as a “last resort”.“It is plain that the secretary of state was closely involved in the formation of the Pava policy and was insistent upon thorough safeguards being introduced concerning its use, as well as constant ‘live’ monitoring and oversight of the limited use of Pava which she expected to be extremely rare in view of the limitations upon its use: viz, as a last resort, and only where there is an immediate threat of life-changing or life-ending violence,” the judgment said.
Mahmood authorised the rollout of Pava across YOIs in England and Wales in April amid growing demands from the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) to protect staff from attacks.The Youth Justice Board, the children’s commissioner for England, the Independent Monitoring Boards and the British Association of Social Workers all issued critical statements in response.HM Inspectorate of Prisons had “serious concerns” about the move.Squirted from a canister, Pava spray, or pelargonic acid vanillylamide, causes searing pain and discomfort in the eyes for about 40 minutes and a burning sensation to skin.In 2018 it was rolled out in men’s prisons in England and Wales.
Since then, there have been claims of disproportionate use against disabled people and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.The government’s “use of force” evaluation report, published in April, found black prisoners were nearly twice as likely as white prisoners to experience Pava and baton use.Using official data to March 2023, the report found that 409 of every 1,000 black inmates were subjected to use of force, compared with 208.6 per 1,000 white prisoners.In the 12 months to March 2025, YOIs recorded an average serious assault rate of 35.
8 incidents per 100 children and young people per year, a 58% increase on the previous year’s rate of 22.6.Andrea Coomber, the chief executive of the Howard League, said she was disappointed by the ruling.“Clearly, today’s decision in court is not the outcome we hoped for, and our disappointment will be shared by the many individuals and organisations who have stood alongside us in opposing this policy.“We are glad that this opposition has forced the government to implement additional safeguards, including preventing a ‘full rollout’ to all officers in prisons holding children as was originally proposed.
However, we continue to have serious reservations as to how effective any safeguards or purported mitigations can ever be, knowing as we do the enduring harm already caused by the use of other pain-inducing techniques against children in prison.”Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the POA, welcomed the ruling.“The people who wish to remove any form of protection from staff who deal with the most violent cohort of convicts that are incarcerated should hang their heads in shame.They will never have the courage to don the king’s uniform and tackle the extreme levels of violence my members face on a daily basis.Age is no excuse for violent behaviour.
The nature of this violence presents a high risk to life-changing injury.”
Nandy intends to refer Daily Mail’s Telegraph takeover to regulators
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, intends to ask the UK’s media and competition watchdogs to examine the proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph titles by the owner of the Daily Mail.Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) agreed a deal in November to buy the titles, in a move that will create a right-leaning publishing powerhouse.Nandy said on Tuesday she was “minded to” task Ofcom with looking at the impact on media plurality of bringing the Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles together with the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.The Competition and Markets Authority will look at whether the proposed deal creates competition issues.Nandy is expected shortly to issue a public interest intervention notice (PIIN), which starts an investigation process of up to 40 working days
Water winners: who will gain from the industry’s spending spree in England and Wales?
When a sluice gate failed 24 metres below the water’s surface at Thames Water’s Queen Mother reservoir near London’s Heathrow airport, there were no easy fixes available. Emptying 37m cubic metres (1,307m cu ft) of water was not an option, meaning that helmeted divers were limited to 98-minute stints in the high-pressure environment.The risky project required a team on a floating platform with a crane to cut out the broken equipment with thermal lances, bolt a plate on to the reservoir wall, and install the new equipment. It took more than a year until last October to complete, according to Glenfield Invicta, the contractor that carried out the work for Thames Water.Water companies across Britain are gearing up for more of these repairs and upgrades than ever this year, as the industry undertakes the biggest spending spree in its history until 2030
Donald Trump trashed global economic orthodoxy. A year on, did he leave Australia a winner or loser?
One year into Donald Trump’s presidency and experts in Australia and around the world can hear the grinding of history’s gears.“We have entered a new economic era; one with rules that are very different to the past,” the Commonwealth Bank’s chief economist, Luke Yeaman, wrote in October.We exit the heyday of globalisation and its relentless, single-minded pursuit of efficiency, to … what?At this point it looks like a world of rising trade protectionism, populism, self-sufficiency, suspicion, conflict and crackdowns on the movement of people and capital.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailTrump has exploded so many established norms that his return to the White House seems to have ruled a line between what was before, and what is now and will be.The “liberation day” tariffs in April last year triggered fears of a global trade war that would smash the world economy
GSK to buy food allergy drug maker RAPT in $2.2bn deal
GSK, the UK’s second-biggest drugmaker, has unveiled a $2.2bn (£1.6bn) deal to acquire a Californian biotech company which is developing a drug to protect against severe food allergies, including allergies to nuts, milk and eggs.It is the first large deal announced by GSK’s new chief executive, Luke Miels, who joined the London-based company in 2017 as chief commercial officer and took the reins from Emma Walmsley at the start of the year.RAPT Therapeutics is developing therapies for people with inflammatory and immunologic diseases
Bessent urges Europe not to retaliate against Trump’s Greenland tariffs
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has urged European countries not to retaliate against the US’s trade tariffs announced over the Greenland crisis.Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Bessent said countries and companies should pause and “let things play out” after Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries in his pursuit of the autonomous Danish territory.As global stock markets fell amid political uncertainty, Bessent indicated that retaliatory tariffs would be unwise, citing last year’s tit-for-tat tariff war that broke out between the US and China.Last April, Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement caused turmoil in global stock markets before some countries agreed trade deals and markets recovered to reach record highs later in the year, fuelled in part by the AI boom.Bessent told a press conference at the annual meeting of global leaders: “I would say this is the same kind of hysteria that we heard on 2 April
Number of employed people in UK falls again as wage growth slows
The number of employed people in the UK has fallen, particularly in shops, restaurants, bars and hotels, reflecting weak hiring, while private sector wages grew at the slowest rate in five years, official figures show.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the number of employees on payrolls fell by 43,000 in December from the previous month, to 30.2 million – the biggest monthly drop since November 2020.The rate of unemployment remained at a four-year high of 5.1% in the three months to the end of November, but this was up from 4
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