The Special Educational Needs scandal: How ‘sharp-elbowed' parents who insist their badly behaved children suffer from ADHD are ruining the lives of youngsters with real special needs
When his case came to the desk of child psychiatrist Dr Mike Shooter, he faced intense pressure from Bryn's middle-class, professional parents to produce a diagnosis of ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder).
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Retiring NHS England boss says cancer treatment on ‘cusp of golden era'
Cancer treatment is on the 'cusp of a golden era', according to the outgoing national medical director of NHS England. Professor Sir Stephen Powis said he expects the development of drugs harnessing the body's immune system to fight the disease will bring 'great advances in cancer survival'. In his final interview before retiring, Sir Stephen, 64, told The Times: 'We are at the cusp of a golden era in terms of the way we treat a range of cancers. 'For many cancers now, people should be confident that it's not a death sentence and that more treatments will become available.' He said the rise in people living longer and surviving cancers would continue, alongside cures for some forms of the disease. 'Our understanding of the genetics of cancer, of the way we can target cancers with particular drugs, and how we can use the body's own immune system to target cancers itself, is being revolutionised,' he said. He compared the progress made in treating cancer with the success in developing HIV/Aids treatments since he qualified as a doctor 40 years ago. He also said an increased focus on prevention will help eliminate certain types of cancer. 'We can't prevent all cancers, but there are cancers that we can certainly prevent,' he said, adding that he hopes lung cancers will become 'a lot rarer'. Cancer treatment, he said, would be 'driven by genetics' to become more individualised with the increased ability to pinpoint mutations in cells. His comments come as experts warned of a 'postcode lottery' in cancer services that focus on improving patients' quality of life and providing urgent care for people with the disease. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), the UK Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (UKASCC) and the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) have called for urgent investment in supportive and acute oncology. Sir Stephen warned the biggest challenge facing the NHS was the rise in elderly people and the economic pressure that is putting on the younger generation and the economy. Last week, Sir Stephen warned the British Medical Association (BMA) to 'think really hard' about whether industrial action by resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – planned for later this month is justified. He told The Times the walkout would cause 'tens of thousands of appointments and procedures' to be cancelled. The kidney specialist has served as national medical director since January 2018 and held the role throughout the Covid pandemic.
Times
4 hours ago
- Times
Delaying payouts for blood and Post Office victims is scandalous
Tens of thousands of people are thought to have received contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES The familiar truism that justice delayed is justice denied has taken on a morbid sense of urgency for the many victims of the Post Office and infected blood scandals. Thanks to the courageous persistence of campaigners, public officials have been forced to face up to the moral enormity of these past wrongs: respectively, the most widespread miscarriage of justice, and gravest case of medical malpractice, in recent memory. Yet, those charged with remedying these injustices are continuing to drag their feet in awarding victims due redress. It has been estimated that at least 100 further victims of the infected blood scandal have died in the protracted interim between the conclusion of Sir Brian Langstaff's inquiry last year and being invited to apply for compensation. Likewise, some 345 former sub-postmasters are thought to have died before securing any financial restitution. Those still pursuing claims now find themselves caught in an interminable, tortuous, legalistic wrangle: one that seems cynically designed to delay and minimise the total amount of compensation that will eventually have to be paid out. • Keir Starmer: infected blood victims deserve justice now A report published last week into the human toll of the prosecutions made on the basis of the Post Office's defective Horizon IT system was unsparing in its grim detail. Its author, Sir Wyn Williams, concluded that the scandal had driven 13 people to suicide. Many other lives were blighted by addiction, divorce and financial ruin. Yet, the government's declared determination to correct these wrongs is belied by the gross deficiencies Sir Wyn identifies in the remuneration of those harmed. The Post Office compensation programme is byzantine in its complexity, with four separate schemes running in parallel. 3,700 former subpostmasters are yet to receive any payout. Many are locked in a legal limbo while their claims are subjected to excessively bureaucratic and adversarial scrutiny. Claimants are disadvantaged if they can't produce decades-old forms, often long lost. One sub-postmistress claims to have received a compensation offer worth just 0.5 per cent of her original claim. Sir Alan Bates, who championed his fellow sub-postmasters' cause, has fallen victim to what he describes as a 'quasi-kangaroo court', receiving a 'take it or leave it' quote amounting to less than half his submitted claim. Similarly shameful treatment has been meted out to those survivors among the 30,000 NHS patients infected with HIV and hepatitis by contaminated blood products. Last week, Sir Brian Langstaff warned that this compensation system too is creating 'obvious injustice'. Only 460 people have received full payouts, the result of a dilatory process forcing victims to be invited to make a claim rather than initiate one themselves. • Infected blood victims 'left suicidal' by compensation delays It is clear that government officials and civil servants tasked with disbursing payouts are subjecting comparatively powerless individuals to a level of rigoristic penny-pinching they would not dream of applying elsewhere. When set alongside the kind of financial waste casually tolerated within government, from the eye-watering sums sunk into HS2 to the near £2 billion in 'bounce back loan' fraud complacently written off by the very same department of business overseeing appeals by victims of the Post Office, the contrast is galling. Victims of the infected blood and Post Office scandals have had their right to restitution established by due process. Obstructionist officials should not be allowed to deny them justice.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Labour accused of 'crocodile tears' over junior doctors strike as ministers criticise medical union for low turnout in ballot - but Rayner's flagship Bill will make walkouts even EASIER
Labour was last night accused of crying 'crocodile tears' over planned strikes by junior doctors as it prepares to make walkouts even easier. Angela Rayner 's radical workers' rights Bill will soon scrap the 50 per cent turnout threshold which unions must meet to hold legal strike action. Yet the Government has repeatedly criticised the British Medical Association for achieving only a 55 per cent turnout in its ballot to trigger walkouts this month. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that the 'majority' of BMA resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – did not vote to strike and has called the forthcoming action 'completely unreasonable'. But Labour's Employment Rights Bill repeals the minimum turnout requirement in trade union law which was introduced under the Tories – making future strike action even easier. Last night Conservative business spokesman Andrew Griffith told the Mail the Government's comments were 'totally hypocritical'. He said: 'The unions are already licking their lips at the Employment Bill, which will unleash waves of low threshold strikes. By reducing the turnout required to trigger a strike, Labour are guaranteeing even more strikes. They are effectively giving unions the whip hand at the worst possible time. 'Labour is crying crocodile tears over the BMA strike action, given what Angela Rayner has planned. It is totally hypocritical. 'Rayner will grind this country to a halt and take us back to the 1970s. If they remotely cared about growth or our public services and the people that use them, they would rip up this extreme union charter at once.' Cabinet ministers are divided over the workers' rights Bill, with the Department for Health and the Treasury said to be 'quite worried' about the impact on public services. But Ms Rayner's department for Housing, Communities and Local Government believes that the threshold requirement makes it harder for unions to engage to settle disputes. The Department for Health has been at pains to point out that only around one third of resident doctors voted for strike action. The BMA, which announced last week that resident doctors in England would walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on July 25 over pay, has seen turnout fall in the past couple of years. Some 90 per cent of voting resident doctors backed the fresh strike action, with the BMA reporting a turnout of 55 per cent. But this is down from 61.9 per cent in 2024, 71.3 per cent in June-August 2023, and 77.5 per cent in January-February 2023. The union is demanding a 29.2 per cent rise for resident doctors to reverse 'pay erosion' since 2008-09. In September, BMA members voted to accept a Government pay deal worth 22.3 per cent on average over two years. The strike action lays bare a growing rift between Labour and its union paymasters, with Unite last week suspending Ms Rayner's membership. General secretary Sharon Graham said members 'don't believe that Labour defends workers in the way we thought they would'. But allies of Ms Rayner point to the Employment Rights Bill, which returns to Parliament today, as evidence of the Government seeking to 'make work pay'. Research by the Mail identified more than a dozen instances when the law now being repealed prevented strikes going ahead. Unions in the public and private sectors held ballots which found support for industrial action – but they could not take place because turnout was below the 50 per cent required by the now-doomed Trade Union Act 2016. A Government spokesman said: 'The old strike laws clearly didn't work, with the UK losing more days to industrial action than any year since the 1980s. 'Our Employment Rights Bill is fundamental to delivering our Plan for Change, with the biggest upgrade to workers' rights in a generation and ensuring people get a fair wage for their hard work. 'Instead of confrontation, we are ushering in a new era of partnership that sees employers, unions and government work together in cooperation and through negotiation.' Analysis of previous NHS walkouts suggests the strikes will send waiting lists soaring, with backlogs predicted to rise by up to 10,000 a day to 7.4 million. A Whitehall source told the Telegraph, which carried out the analysis, that the strike risks 'sending a wrecking ball through the NHS' and will be a major blow to Labour's pledge to turn the health service around. And hospitals will find it harder to plan to cover the strikes after Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-leader of the BMA's resident doctors committee, reminded members that they do not have a legal responsibility to tell their NHS trust whether they are striking. Mr Streeting will meet BMA representatives this week in an effort to avoid strike action.
