Church must ‘turn back’ public opinion on assisted dying, says archbishop

Members of the Church of England should work to “withstand and even turn back” the forces of public opinion “that risk making … assisted dying a reality in our national life”, the archbishop of York has said.Speaking to the church’s General Synod on Friday, Stephen Cottrell said permitting assisted dying would change “forever the contract between doctor and patient, pressurising the vulnerable and assuming an authority over death that belongs to God alone”.MPs voted last month to pass a bill giving some terminally ill adults in England and Wales the legal right to be assisted to end their lives. It will now pass to the House of Lords, where 26 Anglican bishops sit by right, for further scrutiny.Cottrell is in the second most senior clerical position in the Anglican church and is currently its de facto leader after the resignation of Justin Welby as archbishop of Canterbury last year

Resident doctors’ 29% pay claim is non-negotiable, BMA chair says

Resident doctors’ 29% pay claim is non-negotiable, reasonable and easily affordable for the NHS, the new leader of the medical profession has said.Strikes to ensure resident – formerly junior – doctors in England get the full 29% could drag on for years, according to Dr Tom Dolphin, the British Medical Association’s new council chair.The doctors’ union will not negotiate on or accept a lower figure because that is the extent of the real-terms loss of earnings resident doctors have suffered since 2008, which they want restored – in full – Dolphin told the Guardian in his first interview since taking over last month.The 29% demand is not up for negotiation “because it’s based on a principle”, said Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist. “If we picked a different number, that wouldn’t achieve the pay restoration

Black people in England four times as likely to face homelessness, study finds

Black people in England are almost four times as likely to face homelessness as white people and substantially less likely to get social housing, according to the first major study into homelessness and racism in more than two decades.A three-year research project by academics at Heriot-Watt University found that ethnicity affects a person’s risk of homelessness, even when controlling for factors such as geography, poverty and home ownership rates.They recorded evidence of people resorting to changing their name, accent and hairstyle to try to gain access to housing and other services, and being told by housing officers to be grateful because “you don’t have this back in your country”.The report’s lead author, Prof Suzanne Fitzpatrick, said: “There are long-term forms of structural disadvantage, rooted in historic racism, which are impacting on risks of homelessness. But the data indicates present-day discrimination is also playing a role

Minority ethnic and deprived children more likely to die after UK intensive care admission

Minority ethnic children and children from deprived backgrounds across the UK are more likely to die following admission to intensive care than their white and more affluent counterparts, a study has found.These children consistently had worse outcomes following their stay in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the research by academics at Imperial College London discovered.The study showed they were more likely to arrive at intensive care severely ill, more likely to die after admission, and more likely to stay longer or be readmitted unexpectedly after discharge.The report, published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, looked at 14 years of UK-wide data between 2008 and 2021, commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, on more than 160,000 critically ill children aged 15 and younger.While previous studies have shown that minority ethnic children have an increased rate of admission to PICUs, this study is the first to look at the health outcomes of these children, and children from more deprived backgrounds, following admission

Living standards are not improving for everyone | Letter

Steve Reed, the environment secretary, is reported as saying that changes to living standards are happening, but for all too many people these are not materialising (‘We’ve made progress’: environment secretary is upbeat despite Labour’s struggles, 6 July).In my part of inner-city Sheffield, residents are often in overcrowded and expensive housing, with energy and food bills at unaffordable levels for their precarious incomes. Our local environment is challenged by fly-tipping and vandalism, with which our austerity-struck council and services cannot keep up. A high proportion of our local residents cannot afford days out, let alone holidays when they might take their children swimming in the sea.This doesn’t mean that people don’t want cleaner rivers and nature protection, but it does mean that increasing their trust in the government would need an end to the two-child benefit cap, employment rights for all, energy tariffs that favour low users, affordable housing and transport, and councils that can invest in things such as parks and street cleaning

37,000 more children affected by ‘brutal’ two-child benefit cap, data shows

A further 37,000 children were affected by the two-child benefit limit in the year to April, with nearly 1.7 million now living in households affected by the policy, according to new figures described as “devastating and shameful” by charities.Data released by the Department for Work and Pensions on Thursday shows that one in nine children are now affected by the policy, while 62% of affected families have three children and 59% are in work.Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) described it as a “brutal policy” that was making children’s “lives hard and their futures bleak”.“Giving all kids the best start in life will be impossible until government scraps this brutal policy, and a year after the election families can’t wait any longer for the help they desperately need,” said the charity’s chief executive, Alison Garnham