In Today's Papers

By Natasha Salari, Amy Taylor, Clare Jerrom and Alex Dobson.

Blunkett halts Carr's early release
The Home Secretary has ordered a change in the rules to ensure that Maxine Carr would not be able to be released early from prison as a part of an electronic tagging scheme.
Carr, jailed in the Soham murder trial last month for conspiring to pervert the course of justice, has applied for the home detention curfew scheme, which would allow her to freed early.
Blunkett has halted this by changing the rules of the scheme to stop prison governors from being able to make decisions apart from in "exceptional cases".

Source:- The Independent Thursday 15 January page 2
Trust must pay £440,000 for illegal migrant crippled in crash
A health trust has been ordered to pay the £440,000 cost of treatment for a failed asylum seeker who was crippled after the stolen car he was travelling in crashed.
The man, who entered Britain illegally from Iraq, is now receiving specialist follow-up care at the cost of £4,000 a week, which the trust must also cover.
The government has rejected claims by East Lincolnshire Primary Care Trust that it has been placed in an unfair financial predicament just because the man was taken to a hospital in its area after the accident.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph Thursday 15 January page 1.
Child care should be free for the poor, says Byers
The former cabinet minister Stephen Byers has proposed that poorer families with children under the age of four should receive free child care.
The idea was part of a new approach by Labour to the redistribution of wealth, said Byers. He added that a manifesto promise of universal child care would show that Labour was in touch with the needs of poorer parents.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph Thursday 15 January page 2.
Scottish newspapers
City bans happy hours to curb binge drinking
Glasgow’s licensing board has introduced a ban on the promotion of happy hours in a bid to control binge drinking and cut-price promotions.
The board decided in November to end happy hours, but waited until its first quarterly meeting of 2004 to implement the policy, which it hopes will solve the problem of antisocial behaviour and ill-health associated with binge drinking.
Around 2,000 pubs and clubs in the city are expected to sign up or risk losing their licences. In return, the board will relax drinking rules.
Source:- The Scotsman Thursday 15 January
Call to review mental health orders in Borders
An increase in the number of patients in the Borders being sectioned and detained under the Mental Health Act has prompted a team of experts to call for a review.
A panel led by Dr Sandra Grant, project director of National Mental Health Services Assessment, has warned that there will be a need for 75 mental health tribunal hearings a year in the Borders under the new Care and Treatment (Scotland) Act, based on current figures for detentions.
According to the team, the use of long-term detention orders by medical officers in Borders was the second highest in the country, and for short-term orders, the third highest.
Source:- The Scotsman Thursday 15 January
Prisons too full, says chief of parole
The prison population should be reduced by thousands, so that more money can be spent on improving communities and crime prevention, according to the chairperson of Scotland’s parole board.

Dr Jim McManus said Scotland could be a safer place, if ministers invested funding in employment and education rather than punishment.
The senior law lecturer at Dundee University told the Scottish Association for the Study of Deliquency that the prison population could easily be cut from 6,500 to 2,500, without “significantly increasing the risk to the public”.
Source:- The Herald Thursday 15 January
Dole drop for Scots
The number of Scots on unemployment benefit fell to the lowest level since September 1975 last month.
The claimant count for December dropped 600 to 98,200 in the 29-year low.
Source:- Daily Record Thursday 15 January page 2
Welsh newspapers
‘One in five social workers’ jobs vacant? I’m not surprised
One in five social work posts in Cardiff’s children’s services are vacant – 16 months after the problem was highlighted in a highly critical joint review.
Councillor Jacqui Gasson, Liberal Democrat social services spokesperson, said that the situation was diabolical, but that it could not be resolved overnight.
A spokesperson for the council said that like most authorities throughout the UK, Cardiff continued to suffer high levels of vacancies.
Source:- South Wales Echo Wednesday 14 January page 2
Councils are letting children down, claims AM
Vulnerable children are being let down by local authorities, according to Welsh Conservative assembly member, Jonathan Morgan.
He made the claim during an assembly debate on the Children’s green paper that includes provisions relevant to Wales. Morgan said that a culture of neglect of vulnerable children had been revealed by reports on services in some authorities in Wales.
Source:- Western Mail Thursday 15 January page 5
Smacking ban backed
The Welsh assembly has voted to back a ban on smacking children. Although the assembly has no powers to introduce such a ban there is hope that the vote will help influence policy makers in Westminster.
Source:- Western Mail Thursday 15 January page 5
Speaking up for older people
A half –page feature looking at the possibility of a private members bill that would create the post of an older people’s commissioner for England and Wales.
Ian Lucas, MP for Wrexham, explains why he has chosen to promote the idea and how by doing so, he hopes to highlight issues that affect older people.
Source:- Western Mail Thursday 15 January page 14