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Hundreds of thousands of air passengers face possible delays today as Border Force workers become the latest to go on strike.

More than 1,000 employees are walking out, affecting passport control desks at Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow airports, as well as the port of Newhaven in East Sussex.

The strike – by Mmembers of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union employed by the Home Office – will last until early on Boxing Day, before another round from 28 December until early on New Year’s Eve.

More than 10,000 flights are scheduled to land at those airports during those times and more than 250,000 passengers arriving on Friday have been warned to expect delays.

The airports said that most departing flights would not be affected, although some arriving passengers – particularly those who cannot use eGates – could face delays.

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PCS union boss on strikes

Royal Mail employees will also be on strike today, their fifth day of action this month, in what Royal Mail said was a “cynical attempt to hold Christmas to ransom”.

The company has estimated that the strike, which will continue on Christmas Eve, has already cost it £100m.

National Highways workers in London and the South East will continue their four-day walkout that started on Thursday.

The workers, who plan, design, build, operate and maintain the roads, are following action by colleagues in Yorkshire and the Humber, northwest and northeast England.

Hundreds of thousands of workers are striking over winter as unions seek pay rises in line with the rate of inflation to help shield their members from the cost of living crisis.

Read more:
Strikes every day before Christmas – which sectors are affected and why
Giving in to nurses on pay would ‘stoke’ inflation
Troops training at Heathrow and Gatwick before Border Force strikes

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‘Government has refused to talk to us’

Rail workers to strike from Christmas Eve

Rail workers represented by the RMT union will strike from 6pm on Saturday until 6am on 27 December, while East Midlands Railway will be affected by a strike on 23 and 24 December by the Unite union.

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency employees will strike today and tomorrow in northwest England, and Yorkshire and the Humber, with more strike action expected in other regions over coming weeks.

Hundreds of bus drivers in south and west London employed by Abellio will strike tomorrow, 27 and 31 December, before a further eight days in January in their pay dispute.

They have already taken 10 days of action in the past two months.

Further January strikes for NHS workers

Earlier this week, NHS staff were on strike, with nurses walking out on Tuesday and ambulance workers following them on Wednesday.

Pat Cullen, head of the Royal College of Nursing, said on Thursday that if she did not hear from Health Secretary Steve Barclay by the end of the day, she would announce further January strikes dates.

“The public is clear – as am I – that the way to avoid further strike action is for the government to stop prevaricating and repeating the same tired lines and step up to holding meaningful negotiations with me,” she said.

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The government has refused to negotiate on pay, insisting it is accepting recommendations from independent pay review bodies.

Ambulance workers, represented by Unison, have already announced further strikes, with workers in London, Yorkshire, the North West, North East, and South West walking out on 11 January and 23 January.

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Dave Ward says there have been more ‘positive’ discussions with Royal Mail

Some 25,000 ambulance workers from Unison, Unite and the GMB unions walked out in co-ordinated strike action on 21 December – their biggest strike in 30 years.

Members of the GMB union at nine ambulance trusts are also preparing to strike on 28 December, while 1,000 union members in the Welsh Ambulance Service are set to announce strike dates in the new year.

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “It’s only through talks that this dispute will end.”

NHS trust leaders have warned that Christmas could be one of the most difficult the health service has seen, with strikes threatening to worsen an “already deeply challenging situation”.

Last week, one in four ambulance patients in England waited more than an hour to be handed to A&E teams at hospitals, latest figures show.

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Mum diagnosed with cancer tells of the day her life changed ahead of assisted dying vote

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Mum diagnosed with cancer tells of the day her life changed ahead of assisted dying vote

There is a lot at stake this week for Sophie Blake, a 52-year-old mother to a young adult, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer in May 2023.

As MPs vote on whether to change the law to allow assisted dying, Sophie tells Sky News of the day her life changed.

“One night I woke up and as I turned I felt a sensation of something in my breast actually move, and it was deep,” she says, speaking from her home in Brighton.

“Something fluidy, a very odd sensation. I woke up and made a doctor’s appointment.”

Sophie underwent an ultrasound followed by a biopsy before she was taken to a room in the clinic and offered water.

“They said, ‘a hundred percent, we believe you have breast cancer’.”

But it was the phone call with her mother that made it feel real.

More on Assisted Dying

“My mum had been waiting at home. She phoned me and said ‘How is it darling?’ and I said ‘I’ve got breast cancer,’ and it was just that moment of having to say it out loud for the first time and that’s when that part of my life suddenly changed.”

Sophie says terminal cancers can leave patients dreading the thought of suffering at the end of their lives.

“What I don’t want to be is in pain,” she says. “If I am facing an earlier death than I wanted then I want to be able to take control at the end.”

Assisted dying, she believes, gives her control: “It’s an insurance policy to have that there.”

Read more:
Why is assisted dying so controversial and where is it legal?
UK on ‘slippery slope’ Justice Minister says ahead of vote

On Friday, the government is set to debate the issue before voting on it. Sophie hopes they’ll back the proposal.

“It should be my choice to be able to have a compassionate death,” she says.

There has been much debate about the bill since details about how it would work were published earlier this month.

On Friday, former prime minister Gordon Brown became the latest senior political figure to share his opinion on the matter, coming out as against the legalisation of assisted dying, based on his experience of his own daughter’s death.

Disability rights advocate Lucy Webster warns that for people like Sophie to have that choice, others could face pressure to die.

Lucy Webster, disability rights advocate
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Lucy Webster

“All around the world, if you look at places where the bill has been introduced, they’ve been broadened and broadened and broadened,” she tells Sky News.

Lucy is referring to countries like Canada and Netherlands, where eligibility for assisted deaths have widened since laws allowing it were first passed.

Lucy, who is a wheelchair user and requires a lot of care, says society still sees disabled people as burdens which places them at particular risk.

“I don’t know a single disabled person who has not at some point had a stranger come up to us and say, ‘if I were you, I’d kill myself’,” she says.

The assisted dying bill, she says, reinforces the view that disabled lives aren’t worth living.

“I’ve definitely had doctors and healthcare professionals assume that my quality of life is inherently worse than other people’s. That’s a horrible assumption to be faced with when [for example] you’ve just gone to get antibiotics for a chest infection. There are some really deep-seated medical views on disability that are wrong.”

Under the plans, a person would need to be terminally ill and in the final six months of their life, and would have to take the fatal drugs themselves.

Among the safeguards are that two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and that a High Court judge must give their approval. But the bill does not make clear if that is a rubber-stamping exercise or if judges will have to investigate cases including risks of coercion.

Julian Hughes, honorary professor at Bristol Medical School, says there’s a very big question about whether courts have the room to take on such a task.

Julian Hughes, honorary professor at Bristol Medical School
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Julian Hughes

“At the moment in the family division I understand there are 19 judges and they supply 19,000 hours of court hearing in a year, but you’d have to have an extra 34,000,” he explains.

“We shouldn’t fool ourselves and think that there wouldn’t be some families who would be interested in getting the inheritance rather than spending the inheritance on care for their elderly family members. We could quickly become a society in which suicide becomes normalised.”

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Young people to lose benefits if they refuse work and training, says minister

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Young people to lose benefits if they refuse work and training, says minister

Young people will lose their benefits if they refuse to take up work and training opportunities, a minister has said ahead of announcing measures to cut the welfare bill.

Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that “conditions” will be attached to new skills opportunities the government intends to create.

Politics live: MP proposing assisted dying bill responds to claims it’s a ‘slippery slope’

With a record number of young people currently unemployed, Labour promised in its manifesto a “youth guarantee” for 18-21 year olds to have access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work.

“If people repeatedly refuse to take up the training work responsibilities, there will be sanctions on their benefits,” Ms Kendall said.

“The reason why we believe this so strongly is that we believe in our responsibility to provide those new opportunities which is what we will do. We will transform those opportunities, but young people will be required to take them up.”

The Labour government has said it will stick to a commitment under the former Tory administration to reduce the welfare bill by £3bn over five years.

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The Public Accounts Committee's report says the DWP has relatively few programmes that directly target people from ethnic minority backgrounds

Ms Kendall said her party will bring in its “own reforms” to achieve that target, though did not elaborate further.

The Conservatives had planned to change work capability rules to tighten eligibility, so around 400,000 more people signed off sick long-term would be assessed as needing to prepare for work by 2028/29 to deliver the savings.

Asked whether these people would ultimately be denied their current benefits under Labour’s plans, Ms Kendall told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I’m saying we will bring forward our own reforms. You wouldn’t expect me to announce this on your programme.

“But my objective is that disabled people should have the same chances and rights to work as everybody else.”

The latest official forecasts published by the government show the number of people claiming incapacity benefits is expected to climb from around 2.5 million in 2019 to 4.2 million in 2029.

Last year there were just over three million claimants.

Ms Kendall will launch proposals on Tuesday designed to “get Britain working” amid concerns about the soaring unemployment rate.

Read More:
The 800,000 people who have fallen into ‘economic inactivity
Surprise fall in retail sales a sign economy is slowing

Thousands of jobs to go at Bosch

The white paper is expected to include the placement of work coaches in mental health clinics and a “youth guarantee” aimed at ensuring those aged 18-21 are working or studying.

Ministers are also looking at a subsidised jobs scheme, Sky News revealed last week.

The UK remains the only G7 country that has higher levels of economic inactivity now than before the pandemic.

Ms Kendall said the reasons are “complex” and include the fact that the UK is an older and sicker nation.

Asked whether she believes “normal feelings” are being “over-medicalised”, she said that while some people may be “self-diagnosing” themselves with mental health issues it is a “genuine problem”.

“There’s not one simple thing. You know, the last government said people were too bluesy to work.

“I mean, I don’t know who they were speaking to. There is a genuine problem with mental health in this country.”

Ms Kendall’s language was softer than Sir Keir Starmer, who this weekend promised a crackdown on “criminals” who “game the system” .

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said: “Make no mistake, we will get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society.”

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Man fighting for his life after stabbing on Westminster Bridge

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Man fighting for his life after stabbing on Westminster Bridge

A man is fighting for his life after a stabbing on Westminster Bridge, police have said.

Officers were called to the scene at around 10.45am on Sunday to reports of a fight and found a man with a stab injury. He was taken to hospital in critical condition.

Westminster Bridge is closed with investigations ongoing.
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Westminster Bridge is closed with investigations ongoing.

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and another has been arrested on suspicion of affray.

Two of those arrested were taken to hospital with minor facial injuries, the Met Police said.

It is understood the incident is not being treated as terror-related.

The road remains closed, with the police investigation ongoing.

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