In Today's Papers

By Amy Taylor, Shirley Kumar, Clare Jerrom and Alex Dobson

5,000 jobs to be axed in cull in NHS quangos

The Department of Health is cutting more than 5,000 jobs as a result of over half of its quangos being abolished or merged, the government is expected to announced today.

The cuts are designed to save £500 million that will be put into frontline services.

Together the quangos, such as the General Social Care Council, have outgoings of £2.5 billion a year.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Thursday 20 May page 10

Bishop calls for total ban on smacking

A bishop will attempt to get smacking outlawed in a debate on the Children Bill in the House of Lords today.

Kenneth Stevenson, the Bishop of Portsmouth, and a cross-party group of peers have tabled a new clause to the bill removing the defence of “reasonable chastisement”.

Charles Clarke, the education secretary, indicated that he is preparing a compromise that would remove the legal defence of smacking, but would not impose a total ban when the bill goes to the commons.

Source:- The Independent Thursday 20 May page 21

Councils to manage properties left vacant

Homes that have remained empty for long periods of time will be put onto the rental market under new legislation enabling councils to take over their management from uncooperative owners.

Amendments to the Housing Bill will give councils the power to take over the home owner’s role where a home has been empty for around six months or more.

Source:- The Financial Times Thursday 20 May page 6

Care homes need more cash

English care homes need more than £1 billion more a year to hit the government’s top standards, a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found.

The government wants all care homes to have a homely feel with ensuite bathrooms.

Source:- The Times Thursday 20 May page 2

Support for smacking ban

Two thirds of people would back a ban on smacking, a Mori poll for the Children are Unbeatable Alliance has found.

The survey found that 71 per cent would support a change in law.

Source:- The Times Thursday 20 May page 4

Father4 Justice launch flour bomb attack on Blair

Father4 Justice launched a flour bomb attack on Tony Blair during Prime Minister’s Questions at the House of Commons yesterday.

Father4 Justice admitted to The Times that it had planted its two activists in the commons by buying two tickets to accompany Baroness Golding.

The campaigners, set-up 18 months ago, are fighting for legal access to their children. They want the courts to give greater recognition to the rights of fathers separated from their children.

Source:- The Times Thursday 20 May 2004 page 8

Scottish newspapers

Union leader calls for ‘zero tolerance’ towards violent pupils

Pupils who physically assault teachers should be expelled and be made to face criminal charges, the leader of one of Scotland’s main teaching unions urged yesterday.

Ian Clydesdale, the Scottish president of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, made his comments after a new survey revealed that 20 per cent of teachers had been physically assaulted by pupils.

He said the survey pointed to “a serious cancer growing within our schools and causing huge deterioration in education provision”.


Source:- The Scotsman  Thursday 20 May

Alarm after girls seen carrying baby across busy rail track

A train has narrowly avoided hitting a baby who was being carried across one of Scotland’s busiest railway lines by two girls.

The driver of a Glasgow bound train spotted the girls aged around nine years old who were seen pulling a baby up from the tracks on to a platform at Hillington east station in south west Glasgow.

Source:- The Scotsman  Thursday 20 May

Jail for fatal attack on alleged abuser

A man has been jailed for seven years for terrorising an alleged child abuser into jumping to his death from a second floor window.

James Marshall beat his flat mate John Taylor after hearing that he had been charged with indecency offences and suffering a flashback to the abuse he himself had suffered in his childhood, a court was told.

During a lull in the attack, Taylor jumped out of the window of the flat in Glasgow but sustained fatal injuries in the fall.

Marshall pleaded guilty to the culpable homicide of Taylor in October last year.

Source:- The Scotsman  Thursday 20 May

Welsh newspapers

Parties maul Hutt on health

Opposition parties have attacked Welsh assembly health minister, Jane Hutt, claiming that the Welsh NHS lacks direction and is in a worse state than the service in England.

During a debate on a recent Audit Commission report on health and social care, Plaid Cymru shadow health minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas accused Hutt of creating a culture and mentality in Wales which meant that the health service could not be improved.

Source:- South Wales Argus Wednesday 19 May page 2

Transfer of prisoners criticised

A group of residents from Usk in south Wales are critical of a decision to move sex offenders nearing the end of their sentence to an open prison near the town.

Prisons minister Paul Goggins has confirmed that the Home Office is to transfer people convicted of sexual offences from Usk prison to Prescoed open prison. The decision to rehabilitate prisoners at Prescoed has been described by the chair of the residents’ action group as short-sighted and dangerous.

Source:- South Wales Argus Wednesday 19 May page 2

Mother hits at son’s betrayal

The mother of a south Wales teenager indecently assaulted by a church lay reader has accused the Church in Wales of betraying her son.

Her comments came after it emerged that concerns about the conduct of Darren Jenkins had been raised by a vicar and a parent up to two years before the assault.

The Church in Wales has launched an investigation into the incident.

Source:- South Wales Argus Wednesday 19 May page 8