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The government is “dangerous, reprehensible and irresponsible” for failing to sit down with nurses to try and avert a strike, Labour has said.

NHS nurses are due to strike next Thursday and on 20 December in a dispute over pay and patient safety.

It is the first time the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has staged a national strike in its 106-year history, with up to 100,000 nursing staff expected to down sticks.

‘We need to be sensible on spending’, minister says – politics live

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Dr Emma Brunswick, deputy chair of the BMA says people will die

The union has demanded its members receive a pay rise of at least 17%, claiming they are 20% worse off in real terms, due to successive below-inflation awards since 2010.

The strike will cause major disruption, with thousands of operations expected to be postponed at a time when waiting lists are already at record levels.

RCN general secretary Pat Cullen has said she would be willing to pause the walkouts if the health secretary would agree to talk about the nurses’ pay demands.

Wes Streeting accused ministers of “not having a plan for the NHS this winter” in an interview on Sophy Ridge on Sunday.

The shadow health secretary said they intended to “blame nurses and paramedics for an NHS crisis which is squarely the fault of a Conservative government and 12 years of mismanagement”.

He added: “It is completely unreasonable for the government not to want to negotiate.”

The government has said it is for independent pay review bodies to negotiate with nurses.

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Wes Streeting says the government need to explain why they aren’t prepared to talk

Dr Emma Brunswick, deputy chair of the British Medical Association council (the UK’s doctors’ trade union), said the NHS is in such a poor state that there will be deaths.

“I do think more people will die,” she told Sky News. “But currently, the government won’t even speak to us.”

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, rejected claims that the health secretary did not want to talk to nurses.

He insisted that Steve Barclay’s “door was always open”.

Mr Cleverly said that independent pay review bodies were created in an apolitical role to resolve differences between what public sectors want and what the government can pay, adding: “in this instance the government has accepted their recommendation fully”.

He said that although he “massively values” the work nurses do, their 19.2% pay rise request would cost around £10bn and “we have to be sensible with our expenditure”.

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James Cleverly rejects claims the government won’t talk to nurses

Read more:
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Which industries are striking this winter and why?

Mr Streeting said the government was “spoiling for a fight”, but that “patients will rightly blame the government, not the unions, if these strikes go ahead”.

Head of the TUC which represents all unions, Kevin Rowan, said it was a “mark of shame” for the government that workers who did so much during the pandemic are being forced to take industrial action.

He said unions really want to find a solution but “the government doesn’t seem prepared to do that”.

More NHS strikes are planned this winter, with ambulance staff due to walk out on 21 and 28 December and junior doctors to strike on 9 January.

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Asked about the ambulance strikes, Mr Cleverly said: “We want to make sure that people are safe and we very much regret the fact that the ambulance service and other key public services are all going on strike.

“We are looking at contingency planning to make sure that we can keep people safe and people should rely on the NHS, they should call 999 if there is a problem. We will be working to make sure that people are able to rely on emergency services.”

A formal request for troops to drive ambulances during strike action is understood to be just days away.

Five other unions are also balloting for strike action, including midwives, physios and hospital porters.

The nurses’ strike is one of many threatening to deliver a winter of discontent as unions seek pay rises in line with the rate of inflation to help shield their members from the cost of living crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of workers plan to strike in the coming weeks, including Network Rail workers, bus drivers, civil servants, driving examiners, Royal Mail workers, national highway workers and baggage handlers.

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Liverpool parade collision: Why police released ‘unprecedented’ details about man arrested

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Liverpool parade collision: Why police released 'unprecedented' details about man arrested

Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.

They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.

So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.

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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street near the Liver Building in Liverpool.
Pic: PA
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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA

The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.

Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.

But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.

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Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.

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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool

A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.

Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.

Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.

He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.

The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.

“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”

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‘These were utterly tragic scenes’

Read more:
What we know so far
Eyewitnesses describe shock and sadness

Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.

He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”

Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”

Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.

He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.

“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”

Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.

In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.

Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.

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King Charles urged to seek Canadian apology for historical abuse of British children

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King Charles urged to seek Canadian apology for historical abuse of British children

King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.

Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.

More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.

Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.

King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
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King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA

Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.

“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.

John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.

“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.

“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.

“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”

More on this story:
The forgotten legacy of British children sent to Canada

John Jefkins
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John Jefkins

John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.

“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.

“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”

The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”

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King Charles and Queen Camilla are on a two-day visit to Canada.

On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.

Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.

Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.

A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.

“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”

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Ministers considering scrapping two-child benefit cap, education secretary says

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Ministers considering scrapping two-child benefit cap, education secretary says

Ministers are considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the education secretary told Sky News.

Bridget Phillipson, asked by Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast if the cap should be lifted, said: “It’s not off the table.

“It’s certainly something that we’re considering.”

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The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.

Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.

Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.

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However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.

“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.

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Why did Labour delay their child poverty strategy?

The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.

She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.

Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.

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Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.

The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.

Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.

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