Blue Labour leader Dan Carden switches to vote against assisted dying bill

The leader of the Blue Labour group has said he will vote against the assisted dying bill – one of the most high-profile switchers – as both sides make their final pleas to MPs before Friday’s crunch vote.It comes as campaigners and bereaved relatives joined the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater ahead of the third reading of the bill, to urge parliament to back the reforms, saying it would be at least a decade before another chance to change the law.The bill would legalise assisted dying for mentally competent adults in their final months of life.Dan Carden, who previously abstained, said it was core Labour vales that drove him to vote against the bill. “Legalising assisted suicide will normalise the choice of death over life, care, respect and love,” he said

Grooming gang survivors say political ‘tug of war’ must stop before inquiry

The political “tug of war with vulnerable women” abused by grooming gangs must stop before a new national inquiry into the crimes, survivors have told the Guardian.Holly Archer and Scarlett Jones, two survivors who played a key role in a “gold-standard” local inquiry in Telford, have urged politicians and those without experience of abuse to allow women to shape the investigation.“We have to put politics aside when it comes to child sexual exploitation, we have to stop this tug of war with vulnerable women,” said Archer, the author of I Never Gave My Consent: A Schoolgirl’s Life Inside the Telford Sex Ring.“There are so many voices that need to be heard. There’s some voices, though, that need to step away,” she said

UK sickle cell patients ‘get worse care than sufferers of similar disorders’

People living with sickle cell disease face substandard care as its treatment significantly lags behind advances relating to other genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, a report has found.The study, commissioned by the NHS Race and Health Observatory and carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, analysed various measures of care for sickle cell disease between 2010 and 2024, including clinical trials, approved drugs and reviews of existing studies.The findings indicated that sickle cell care across the UK does not have parity with other genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, with there being only 0.5 specialist nurses per 100 patients for sickle cell, compared with two per 100 for cystic fibrosis.The report also found that there is 2

Scottish government faces legal action over failure to implement biological sex ruling

The Scottish government has been given a deadline to implement the UK supreme court’s ruling on biological sex across all public bodies or face further legal challenges.Sex Matters, the UK-wide gender-critical campaign group, has threatened legal action in 14 days if ministers continue “intolerable” delays to new policies and guidance required by April’s landmark ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 does not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates.The move reflects ongoing frustration among gender-critical campaign groups at what For Women Scotland, who brought the supreme court case, described as “extraordinary pushback” since the unanimous judgment.Politicians, LGBT+ rights groups and prominent supporters have raised concerns that the ruling could result in the erosion of rights, privacy and dignity of trans people across the UK.These fears were increased after equality watchdog the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) brought out interim advice soon after the judgment which, they said, amounted to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets of their lived gender, which many in the community said effectively excluded them from public spaces

Pepper spray use in youth prisons irresponsible amid racial disparities, watchdog warns

The rollout of synthetic pepper spray for use to incapacitate jailed children is “wholly irresponsible” while black and minority prisoners are more likely to be subjected to force than white inmates, a watchdog has said.Elisabeth Davies, the national chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards, whose members operate in every prison in England and Wales, said the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, should pause the use of Pava spray in youth offending institutions (YOIs) until ministers had addressed the disproportionate use of force on minority prisoners.“There is clear racial disproportionality when it comes to the use of force,” she told the Guardian. “It is therefore, I think, wholly irresponsible to expand use-of-force measures before disproportionality issues are addressed.”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

Ondine Sherwood obituary

My friend Ondine Sherwood, who has died from lung cancer aged 65, was one of the earliest campaigners for the recognition of Long Covid. Having failed to recover fully from Covid-19 in March 2020, she discovered that others were suffering similarly and GPs did not seem to know how to diagnose them. Ondine rapidly became the main spokesperson for the patient-created term “Long Covid”. She founded the group Long Covid SOS that June and secured charitable status and trustees.Ondine lobbied politicians, doctors and civil servants for recognition of the illness