HMRC admits 71% wrongly targeted in child benefit fraud crackdown

Seven in 10 parents who had child benefit suspended in an HMRC fraud crackdown last year were in fact legitimate beneficiaries who had not emigrated, the tax authority has revealed.The chief executive of HMRC, John-Paul Marks, told the Treasury select committee that 71% of those targeted, higher than the 63% previously admitted, were in error.Marks said that “just under 5%” of the 23,700 parents who lost their child benefit were in fact fraudulent claimants.Meg Hillier, the chair of the committee, accused HMRC of causing unnecessary “pain” to innocent parents and making an “egregious error” in assuming parents who had used Dublin airport to return to Northern Ireland had emigrated.The admission shows a major system failure by HMRC, which had told the government before rolling out the scheme in July that it could save up to £350m in benefit fraud over five years

Women are feral for Heated Rivalry. What does that say about men?

The explosive popularity of the gay hockey TV drama reveals women’s desire for sex and romance without violence or hierarchyThe first time gay hockey romance crossed Mary’s radar, she was warned off it. A 64-year-old non-profit executive from Toronto, Mary recalled mentioning the Canadian author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series to her son, a twentysomething queer writer and fellow hockey obsessive, a few years ago.“I said: ‘Have you heard of these books?’ and he said: ‘Yeah.’ I said: ‘Should I read these books?’ And he said: ‘No. They’re not for you

‘He tried so hard to get help’: the tragic results of NHS right-to-choose for ADHD patients

When Leigh White remembers her brother Ryan, she thinks of a boy of extraordinary ability who “won five scholarships at 11” including a coveted place at Bancroft’s, a private school in London. He was, she said, “super bright, witty, personable, generous and kind”.Ryan killed himself on 12 May 2024. A report written after his death acknowledged significant shortcomings in the support he received while seeking help for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.Like many people the Guardian spoke to, he followed the “right to choose” pathway, whereby patients can pick a private provider anywhere in the country for assessment, diagnosis and initial treatment

Death on the inside: as a prison officer, I saw how the system perpetuates violence

There are hotspots for violence in prison. The exercise yard, the showers. There are peak times, too. Mealtimes and association periods are particularly volatile.But first thing in the morning is not when you expect to hear an alarm bell

The pulmonaut: how James Nestor turned breathing into a 3m copy bestseller

It is the most essential thing we do - yet many of us arguably breathe badly. The author of Breath explains how that can be changedIn the last stages of writing his book, Breath, James Nestor was stressed. “Which was ironic when writing a book about breathing patterns and mellowing out,” he says. The book was late; he’d spent his advance and was haemorrhaging even more money on extra research that was taking him off in new, potentially interesting, directions – was it really necessary, he wondered, to go to Paris to look at old skulls buried in catacombs beneath the city? (It was.)Then a couple of months before the book’s May 2020 publication date, the Covid pandemic hit, and Nestor was advised to wait it out

Four NHS trusts in England declare critical incidents after ‘surge’ in A&E admissions

Four NHS hospital trusts in England have declared critical incidents after a “surge” in A&E admissions driven in large part by patients with flu, norovirus and respiratory viruses.Three trusts in Surrey and one in Kent sounded the alarm after a “surge in complex attendances to A&E departments”.A critical incident, which is usually declared when A&E departments are not able to necessarily deliver all of their services safely, is the highest alert level used by the NHS and allows bosses to take immediate steps to create capacity.NHS Surrey Heartlands said the situation at three hospital trusts – Royal Surrey NHS foundation trust, Epsom and St Helier university hospitals NHS trust and Surrey and Sussex healthcare NHS trust – was “exacerbated by increases in flu and norovirus cases and an increase in staff sickness”.It added that the “recent cold weather front has also impacted on more frail patients needing to be admitted to hospital”