The mother of a young soldier who took her own life says she has “sleepless nights” knowing there are abusers still serving in the Army.

A coroner ruled that the Army’s failure to take action after 19-year-old Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck was sexually assaulted by a more senior soldier and harassed by her line manager contributed to her death at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in 2021.

One of the men has since left the Army but the other continues to serve.

Jaysley Beck’s mother, Leighann McCready, believes he has been protected by the Army.

“Why should they continue to carry on serving when we’re left absolutely heartbroken? We have to deal with this for the rest of our lives and it’s not fair. It’s absolutely not fair that no action’s been taken.”

Reacting to the announcement that claims of sexual harassment in the Army will be removed from the chain of command and instead dealt with by a new, specialist taskforce, Ms McCready said it was a “step in the right direction” but added that “it should have happened a long time ago”.

Last week, a Sky News investigation revealed claims of widespread sexual abuse.

One former soldier described how, after reporting an alleged rape, she discovered the officers dealing with her case had called her a whore.

Ms McCready praised the hundreds of servicewomen who have spoken out since her daughter’s death and urged the Army to root out their abusers.

“This causes me sleepless nights to know that they’re still serving. It’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to think this is still going on.

“All I want now is for action, for real action to be taken and to continue with the change and continue speaking up”.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said “the Army and MoD have undertaken to carefully analyse and assess all of HM Coroner’s findings into the tragic death of Gunner Jaysley-Louise Beck.

“There is no place for bullying, harassment, or discrimination in the military. This government is totally committed to making the reforms that are needed to stamp out inappropriate behaviour and hold people to account.”

On Tuesday the head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, told MPs “I absolutely recognise that we still have work to do. There are some recurring themes which we are addressing. Self-evidently, there continues to be a prevalence of bullying, harassment, and discrimination within our ranks.

“We have to recognise that there are some cultural and structural barriers still.”

Labour was the party that created the welfare state. Now it is intent on cutting it back.

And in Liz Kendall, the government has found a Labour work and pensions secretary clearly entirely comfortable in going harder on benefit cuts than any of her Conservative predecessors since 2015, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

When I ask her about that, she is unrepentant and unfazed by colleagues’ criticisms.

“I am going to be a Labour work and pensions secretary who fixes a broken system,” she said, “who says to people who’ve been written off and denied chances and choices that we believe in them…

“I am cross, because I’ve seen in my own constituency people written off to a life that is not the life they hoped for themselves or their children or their families.

“I want to fix it. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”

This, then, is the moral case for reform that she and the prime minister have talked about in recent weeks.

And on Tuesday, Ms Kendall outlined reforms designed to reduce those claiming the main disability, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to lose personal independence payments (PIP) if they suffer from milder mental health conditions and less severe physical difficulties.

Read more: Further benefit cuts not ruled out

The target is to save £5bn from a disability benefits bill for working-age people set to balloon by over £20bn to £75bn by the end of the decade.

Ask some in Labour and they will privately acknowledge and argue this is but a drop in the ocean, with one insider telling me this week they didn’t think the reforms went far enough.

“I don’t think people have clocked the size of the numbers going on here,” they said. Look at the public finances and you can see why.

While the Labour Party clearly talked about welfare reform in its manifesto, it never signalled it would make these sorts of cuts to the benefits bill. But the environment has changed.

Growth is sluggish, which many businesses – and the opposition – blame on tax rises in the October budget, while the cost of government borrowing is on the rise.

The chancellor now finds herself with a hole in the public finances to the tune of £9.9bn, which she has to fill if she is to fulfil her self-imposed fiscal rule that day-to-day government spending must be funded through tax receipts – not borrowing – by 2029/30.

She was crystal clear to me in our conversation for the Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast that she was not going to loosen her fiscal rules – although many MPs think she should.

She was also clear she wasn’t coming back with more tax rises. Instead it will be spending cuts, and welfare is the first wave, with a spending squeeze across Whitehall departments expected in the Spring Statement.

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Sir Keir Starmer told me last week that his plans to reform the state, with thousands of job cuts already signalled in NHS England and benefit cuts, that there will be “no return to austerity”.

His hope is that reform – be it through technology or efficiency savings – can mean public services are maintained even if rates of spending growth are reduced.

It may not feel like that for those who are at the sharp end of the £5bn of benefit cuts coming down the track.

Liz Kendall would not rule out further cuts to the welfare bill further down the line in an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, which will make many in her party nervous with some MPs and ministers concerned about the motivations of the government in its overhaul of the benefits system.

“The intellectual question hasn’t been answered here: is this about principled reform or is it a cost-saving exercise?,” one cabinet source told me on Tuesday.

“There are some concerns this doesn’t fix the issues around welfare but rather is about finding quick savings.”

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There will be unease among MPs, unions and charities as the Labour Party moves onto traditional Tory territory with welfare cuts as a strapped Labour government looks for savings. It is uncomfortable terrain.

“I have to say these are Conservative policies that Labour MPs will be voting for,” the former Tory work and pensions secretary Baroness Coffey told me on Tuesday.

“Overall, I think a lot of Labour MPs will be very unhappy about what they heard today [but] I think the Conservatives will support a considerable amount of that because, as I say, a lot of this was Conservative policy. We didn’t have time to do the legislation, unfortunately, towards the end of the parliament.”

Sir Keir Starmer has the majority to bring in these changes, but cutting the benefits of those living with disabilities will be controversial in the Labour movement even if the measures are more popular with the wider public.

As one veteran Labour MP put it to me: “This is one of these issues that come back to bite later.”

The devil will be in the detail, and for now, hundreds of thousands of benefits recipients don’t know if they will still be eligible for the main disability benefit – personal independence payments – in the coming months, with the government yet to outline where the £5bn of savings will be found.

It is an anxious time for those who rely on the welfare state. How long a shadow these reforms will cast over Sir Keir’s domestic agenda is hard to tell – but these reforms look set to become his hardest sell.

Children who underwent operations with a now-suspended surgeon at a Cambridge hospital are being let down again by a lack of information and transparency from the hospital’s trust, according to a lawyer representing one of the families.

Last month, Addenbrooke’s Hospital announced it had contacted the families of nine children whose complex hip surgeries “fell below” the expected standard, following an external review.

The orthopaedic surgeon, who has not been named, has since been suspended while a second external review is carried out.

But families are said to be “frustrated” by a lack of communication from Addenbrooke’s, which is yet to release the findings of the first review.

A lawyer instructed by one of the families has accused Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust of failing to follow official guidance in their handling of the patients and their families.

Catherine Slattery, associate solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, told Sky News: “Families should feel they are being supported through this process, and that their child is the centre of this investigation.

“At the moment, it doesn’t feel that way.”

Read more:
Helpline extended as 74 families reach out over suspended surgeon

The National Patient Recall Framework – for patients “recalled” by a healthcare provider after a problem has been identified – states that the patient’s needs should “always be placed at the centre” of the process.

The guidance adds: “There should be appropriate and compassionate engagement with patients to ensure that the process remains patient focused.”

But Ms Slattery, who has spoken to more than one of the families affected, says Addenbrooke’s is falling short of the framework and needs “to be a lot more transparent about the situation”.

She said: “I think the communication has been lacking. I think that there hasn’t been enough information provided.

“The priority has to be patient safety to ensure that if there are any ongoing symptoms or issues that they are dealt with promptly.”

In February, the chief executive of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust apologised to families affected, and admitted they had been let down.

So far, the outcomes of nine surgeries were found to fall below the expected standards. A second external review is now investigating every planned operation performed by the surgeon in question.

In a statement, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “We take this matter extremely seriously and we reiterate our unreserved apologies to the children and their families whose care was below the standard they should have received.

“We proactively contacted the parents of children where the initial external review had identified that treatment had fallen below the standard we would expect and that they and their families are entitled to expect from us.

“We have put in place arrangements for a further independent and external review into all of the planned surgical operations carried out by the individual during their employment with the trust.

“We will contact any child and their family if this independent process identifies the possibility that there has been a poorer than expected outcome from their treatment.”