News

The NHS has been accused of racial discrimination in pay after evidence showed that white senior doctors earned almost £5,000 more than colleagues from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The British Medical Association (BMA) and British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (Bapio) said the findings were part of a wider culture of discrimination against black and minority ethnic doctors, which includes job interviews, promotion, disciplinary processes, harassment and bullying.

Of 26,171 procedures due to take place during the last week of March this year, 3,724 (14%) of them were called off at or close to the time they were due to occur, according to the findings, which are based on the experience of patients at 90% of NHS hospitals across the UK.

The results prompted fresh warnings that the delays were leading to patients suffering pain and distress when they had to wait longer than expected for their surgery and that the NHS was seriously short of the resources it needed to function properly.

Around 1.4 billion adults are not physically active enough to stay healthy, says the research. One in three women and one in four men do not take enough exercise or move about enough, too often sitting at desks all day at work, in front of the TV in the evening and travelling by car.

Almost 4 million children in the UK live in households that would struggle to afford to buy enough fruit, vegetables, fish and other healthy foods to meet the official nutrition guidelines, a groundbreaking food poverty study reveals.

The poorest fifth of families would have to set aside more than 40% of their total weekly income after housing costs to satisfy the requirements of the government’s Eatwell guide, the study finds.

Growing numbers of teenagers in England and Wales are killing themselves, official figures show, sparking fresh concern about the deepening crisis in young people’s mental health.

There were 177 suicides among 15- to 19-year-olds in 2017, compared with 110 in 2010 and more than in every year since then except 2015, when the toll was 186, the Office of National Statistics data shows.

Almost half of maternity units at hospitals in England were closed to expectant mothers at least once during 2017, research by Labour has found, with the party blaming staff shortages and other resourcing problems.

Freedom of information (FoI) requests by Labour identified almost 300 occasions when maternity units were closed and expectant mothers sent elsewhere, with the most common reasons cited being a lack of capacity and staffing issues.

Carer’s Allowance in Scotland is going up by £8.50 per week to the same level as Jobseeker’s Allowance which Carers UK welcomed. In the short term, Carers UK is campaigning for Carer’s Allowance in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to be raised by at least £8.50 to match these changes.

The eminent international human rights lawyer called for submissions from anyone in the UK to establish “the most significant human rights violations experienced by people living in poverty and extreme poverty in the UK”. He is interested in the impact of austerity, universal credit, the advent of computer algorithms making decisions on welfare matters, and Brexit.

Alexander Tiffin, a 30-year old from the Scottish Highlands, sent a diary of his life on universal credit to Prof Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who is coming to Britain in November.

Hundreds of families are being made homeless every week in “no-fault” evictions by landlords keen to cash in on rising property prices or put the rent up.

Analysis of quarterly eviction and homelessness data by the pressure group Generation Rent suggests that 216 households evicted every week in England under section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act are becoming homeless. These are known as no-fault evictions because landlords do not need a reason such as rent arrears or property damage to kick tenants out. The end of a private tenancy is now the single biggest cause of homelessness in England, with the number of cases more than trebling from 4,580 to 16,320 between 2009 and 2017.

A huge surge in measles cases across Europe has been reported by the World Health Organisation, which says low MMR vaccination rates are to blame.

More than 41,000 cases of measles have been reported in the European region between January and June. Last year there were nearly 24,000 for the whole 12 months, which was the highest count in any year of the last decade.