Senior police officers were quick to play down the implications of plans exposed in the press last March to outsource whole swathes of policing tasks to the private sector, yet despite the assurances major companies such as the security giant G4S are gaining disturbing new powers.
Hundreds of local frontline fire service staff face the sack despite millions of pounds of public money used to bailout a national initiative undertaken by the previous government and denounced by Parliamentary watchdogs as “one of the worst cases of project failure” they have seen “in many years”.
A company which already detains and deports asylum seekers in the UK has been awarded a government contract worth £175m to provide and manage accommodation, as well as transport, for asylum seekers in Manchester and the North West over the next five years.
At a time when pay and conditions for everyone in the UK bar CEOs appears to be on an inevitable downward trajectory, there was a significant cause for celebration last week.
Despite rising bills and cuts to winter aid, the UK has pledged to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016. But past government targets to protect vulnerable groups by 2010 have already been missed. And under the Coalition, new schemes are weakening protections and passing on responsibility for eradicating fuel poverty onto energy companies with little incentive to end the problem – and less interest. Sam Cordon reports.
Suicide rates and prescriptions of anti-depressants in Manchester have risen since the onset of recession according to a new report presented to councillors responsible for monitoring health issues.
In 2010, the last year for which figures are available, just over 1,700 unaccompanied children claimed asylum in this country. A new report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, released just this week, exposed a shadowy deal between Britain and France where for 15 years often sick or traumatised children were subjected to instant interrogation once they hit the UK border. Clare Sambrook explains.
