Austerity 2

NHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/20/nhs-cancer-patients-denied-life-saving-drugs-due-to-brexit-costs-report-finds

Brexit has ‘damaged the practical ability’ of doctors to offer NHS patients life-saving new drugs via international trials, according to the 54-page report. Photograph: Dmitrii Dikushin/Alamy

Guardian Exclusive: Britons found to have ‘lost out’ while rest of Europe benefits from golden age of research and treatments

British cancer patients are being denied life-saving drugs and trials of revolutionary treatments are being derailed by the red tape and extra costs brought on by Brexit, a leaked report warns.

Soaring numbers are being diagnosed with the disease amid a growing and ageing population, improved diagnosis initiatives and wider public awareness – making global collaborations to find new medicines essential.

But five years after the UK’s exit from the EU, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind concludes that while patients across Europe are benefiting from a golden age of pioneering research and novel treatments, Britons with cancer have “lost out” thanks to rising prices and red tape.

Brexit has “damaged the practical ability” of doctors to offer NHS patients life-saving new drugs via international clinical trials, according to the 54-page report obtained by the Guardian.

In some cases, the cost of importing new cancer drugs for Britons has nearly quadrupled as a result of post-Brexit red tape. Some trials have had shipping costs alone increase to 10 times since Brexit.

The extra rules and costs have had a “significant negative impact” on UK cancer research, creating “new barriers” that are “holding back life-saving research” for Britons, the report says.

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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/20/nhs-cancer-patients-denied-life-saving-drugs-due-to-brexit-costs-report-finds

Continue ReadingNHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds

Pensioner with severe learning disabilities could face eviction over care costs dispute

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/21/pensioner-severe-learning-disabilities-face-eviction-care-costs-dispute

Hugh Kirsch, 66, with his sister Oona Herzberg. Hundreds of contract disputes have erupted between cash-strapped councils and financially struggling care providers. Photograph: Oona Kirsch

Hugh Kirsch’s case one of wave of evictions of vulnerable residents caused by crisis in adult social care funding

A pensioner with severe learning disabilities who was a victim of one of the most notorious care home abuse scandals of recent years has been told he faces eviction over a dispute about who pays for the costs of his state-funded care.

The family of Hugh Kirsch, 66, said they had been warned he would have to leave his supported home because the council that funds his care refused to increase fees in line with costs and his care provider could no longer afford to subsidise the price.

The case is one of a growing wave of evictions of vulnerable residents caused by the crisis in adult social care funding in which hundreds of contract disputes erupt between cash-strapped councils and financially struggling care providers.

Kirsch’s sister Oona Herzberg said he was “trapped in the crosshairs of funding issues that have nothing to do with him”, and urged his funder, Haringey council, to fulfil its responsibilities to meet his care needs.

She told the Guardian: “It would be cruel and inhuman to evict Hughie. He would be traumatised after what he has been though, and so would we. He would be totally bewildered and upset, and would withdraw inside himself.”

Kirsch, who is non-verbal and needs one-to-one care, survived a regime of abuse at his previous residential home, run by the National Autistic Society, in which he and fellow residents were repeatedly taunted, bullied and humiliated by a “gang of controlling male staff”.

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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/21/pensioner-severe-learning-disabilities-face-eviction-care-costs-dispute

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
Continue ReadingPensioner with severe learning disabilities could face eviction over care costs dispute

‘The whole policy is wrong’: rebellion among Labour MPs grows over £5bn benefits cut

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/20/the-whole-policy-is-wrong-rebellion-among-labour-mps-grows-over-5bn-benefits-cut

‘We are being asked to take a leap of faith. It does not make sense’: Neil Duncan-Jordan, Labour MP for Poole. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian

Dozens of MPs are angry at their party, despite frantic efforts by whips and government ministers to assuage them

Labour MPs opposed to the government’s massive £5bn of benefit cuts say they will refuse to support legislation to implement them, even if more money is offered by ministers to alleviate child poverty in an attempt to win them over.

Legislation will be introduced to the House of Commons in early June to allow the cuts to come into force. They will include tightening the criteria for personal independence payments (Pip) for people with disabilities, to limit the number of people who can claim it. Under the changes, people who are not able to wash the lower half of their body, for example, will no longer be able to claim Pip unless they have another limiting condition.

A major rebellion appears to be hardening on the Labour benches rather than subsiding, despite frantic efforts by whips and government ministers to talk MPs round.

One idea being floated as a way to win over rebels is for ministers to publish their long-awaited child poverty strategy shortly before the key Commons votes, and in it offer additional money for poor parents of children under five. Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall is understood to be examining a proposal focused on the youngest children that would cost less than the £3.6bn needed to scrap entirely the controversial two-child limit on benefit payments. It is now accepted in government that, given the state of public finances, the cap cannot be scrapped in the short term.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/20/the-whole-policy-is-wrong-rebellion-among-labour-mps-grows-over-5bn-benefits-cut

Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much
Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much
Angela Rayner wears her "benefits in kind" donation from multi-millionaire Lord Alli.
Angela Rayner wears her “benefits in kind” donation from multi-millionaire Lord Alli.
Continue Reading‘The whole policy is wrong’: rebellion among Labour MPs grows over £5bn benefits cut

Unite says bin strike deal closer if council puts public promises in writing

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/unite-says-bin-strike-deal-closer-if-council-puts-public-promises-writing

Rubbish bags are taken away on Poplar Road in Birmingham, Aril 16, 2025

THE Unite union called out Birmingham City Council today over the ongoing bin strike negotiations, warning they would be much closer to a deal if the authority “put in writing what it is saying in public.”

More than 350 refuse workers have been on strike since March 11 over plans to cut the vital role of waste recycling collection officer (WRCO).

According to Unite, it will lead to 150 of its members having their pay slashed by up to £8,000 a year.

On Monday, workers rejected the council’s latest offer. Unite said the proposal still involved substantial pay cuts and failed to address other potential wage reductions for 200 drivers.

Birmingham City Council leader John Cotton said that the council made a “fair and reasonable offer that means that no-one has to lose any pay at all, with alternative roles offered within the service, or indeed a promotion to work as a driver.”

He tried again to reassure the public today, telling the BBC “we’re in a position where nobody needs to be losing income.”

But Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said they appeared to be living in a “parallel universe.”

She said: “Yet again, John Cotton is saying one thing in public while his local officers are saying another in the negotiating room and in writing.

“If the council puts in writing what it says in public then we would likely be much closer to a deal.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/unite-says-bin-strike-deal-closer-if-council-puts-public-promises-writing

Continue ReadingUnite says bin strike deal closer if council puts public promises in writing

NEU president slams Labour’s renewed austerity

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(left to right) Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner clap their hands during the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, September 22, 2024

NATIONAL Education Union (NEU) president Sarah Kilpatrick slammed Labour’s renewed austerity today, telling the NEU annual conference that Tory welfare cuts had killed her disabled father.

She accused ministers of “perpetuating and repeating the shameful pattern of punching-down and finger-pointing” by “balancing the books on the backs of the poor.”

On the first day of the conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, she described how her father had died at the age of 56 after being stripped of his disability benefits under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

She said that she had experienced poverty as a working-class child in Newcastle upon Tyne and was his carer for a number of years.

“As Iain Duncan Smith gleefully applauded the welfare cuts, I represented my father in a tribunal against the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] decision to remove his disability benefits,” she told delegates.

“He’d had his gas cut off. Couldn’t afford groceries. His elderly mother was adding tins of food to her shopping to bulk up what I was buying for him, but he isolated himself further still.

“He lost a lot of weight during that time and never really recovered.”

In 2013, her father became one of an estimated 120,000 people who died as a result of the Tories’ austerity programme, she said.

“When Wes Streeting brags to the Tories across the benches that Labour have done what they never could and slashed the welfare bill, this is what they mean,” said Ms Kilpatrick.

“Let’s be clear. Nearly two decades of economic permacrisis has not been caused by disabled people.”

Nor has it been caused by the elderly, refugees, the trans community or children in poverty, she said.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/neu-president-slams-labours-renewed-austerity

Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Continue ReadingNEU president slams Labour’s renewed austerity