Shortfall in return on investment in health | Brief letters

Lord Hutton writes of the NHS health centres that have been built thanks to private finance (Letters, 23 November). In Didcot we’ve been waiting more than 10 years for the Great Western Park health centre. The return on investment required by the developer is greater than the NHS will reimburse. The local integrated care board fears that at that cost they’ll not get a GP practice to take on the health centre.Cllr Sarah JamesVale of White Horse district council Congratulations on the print-edition headline “Lights, Canberra, no action”, about England’s beaten cricketers not playing in the Australian capital (24 November)

‘I didn’t even know this type of attack existed’: more than 200 women allege drugging by senior French civil servant

When Sylvie Delezenne, a marketing expert from Lille, was job-hunting in 2015, she was delighted to be contacted on LinkedIn by a human resources manager at the French culture ministry, inviting her to Paris for an interview.“It was my dream to work at the culture ministry,” she said.But instead of finding a job, Delezenne, 45, is now one of more than 240 women at the centre of a criminal investigation into the alleged drugging of women without their knowledge in a place they never expected to be targeted: a job interview.An investigating judge is examining allegations that, over a nine-year period, dozens of women interviewed for jobs by a senior civil servant, Christian Nègre, were offered coffees or teas by him that had been mixed with a powerful and illegal diuretic, which he knew would make them need to urinate.Nègre often suggested continuing the interviews outside, on lengthy strolls far from toilets, the women say

Horrific death of Kardell Lomas sparks urgent calls for new independent oversight of police

Members of the federal government’s own expert advisory panel on sexual violence have called for “urgent” independent national oversight of police after new revelations about Queensland police failures before the killing of the First Nations woman Kardell Lomas.Guardian Australia’s Broken trust investigation revealed that Lomas, a 31-year-old Kamilaroi and Mununjali woman, had sought help from police and other agencies in the months before she was killed.Her family has applied for an inquest to examine, among other things, failures by police to help Lomas, protect her from her dangerous partner, or investigate evidence of domestic violence.A statement signed by 16 of the 20 members of the expert panel selected to advise the federal government about sexual violence law reform has called on the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, to take “urgent, decisive action” in relation to the case.They said the case highlighted issues they had raised throughout the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry into justice responses to sexual violence but that the inquiry’s recommendations had not gone far enough

‘Outdated and ever less fit for purpose’: five takeaways from the carer’s allowance report

Of all the devastating passages in Liz Sayce’s 146-page criticism of the government’s failing carer’s allowance system, one above all leaps out. It describes how some felt so “overwhelmed”, ashamed and criminalised they considered killing themselves.One even investigated whether their fine would be cancelled if they died, only to find the government would still chase their family.The year-long independent review, sparked by a Guardian investigation, describes in brutal detail how those who have selflessly given up their lives to care for loved ones – saving the state an estimated £184bn a year – have been criminalised by a policy riddled with “systemic flaws” and a culture that assumed “negligence as a default”.The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has vowed to review a decade’s worth of carer’s allowance overpayments as a result

UK gambling firms make extra £1bn from punters amid calls for tax rises

The UK gambling sector made an extra £1bn from punters in the year to March, according to new data expected to buoy calls for the chancellor to raise betting taxes in Wednesday’s budget.Betting companies made £12.6bn from services excluding lotteries in the latest 12-month reporting period, the Gambling Commission revealed on Tuesday, a 9.3% rise on the £11.5bn the industry made during the previous year

CPS to train staff on ‘spectrum of abuse’ in violence against women and girls

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will train its staff to recognise the “wide spectrum of abuse” in cases of violence against women, after new data found that domestic abuse was present in more than a third of rape cases, and in more than eight out of 10 cases of stalking and image-based abuse.Launching its five-year Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, the body said its main aims were to increase casework quality and increase trust in the CPS.The CPS data found a significant overlap in crime types relating to violence against women and girls, with 93.5% of charges of “honour” crimes linked to domestic abuse, as well as 35.1% of rape charges, 82