Keir Starmer wins two-child benefit cap crunch vote despite Labour MP rebellion – live

Nearly half, 47 per cent, name the health service as the most important issue – the highest since December 2019, just before the pandemic hit.

Immigration is also a growing issue, at the highest level since January 2017 and cited by 31 per cent of those asked.

The Government will end the use of the Bibby Stockholm barge for housing migrants off England’s south coast as part of an overhaul of the asylum system, the Home Office has announced.

The contract for the barge moored in Dorset will not be renewed past January as demand for such accommodation will be reduced by moves to clear the asylum backlog, the department said.

The vessel was one of several sites, including the military bases RAF Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, used by the previous Tory government in a bid to cut the cost of housing migrants in hotels.

But the new Labour Government said continuing the use of the Bibby Stockholm would have cost more than £20 million next year, and that scrapping it forms part of the expected £7.7 billion of savings in asylum costs over the next 10 years.

Dame Angela Eagle, minister for border security and asylum, said: “We are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly; and ensures the rules are properly enforced.

“The Home Secretary has set out plans to start clearing the asylum backlog and making savings on accommodation which is running up vast bills for the taxpayer.

“The Bibby Stockholm will continue to be in use until the contract expires in January 2025.”

The Government’s efforts to tackle the UK’s asylum backlog include redeploying more than 100 Home Office staff from working on the now-scrapped Rwanda deportation scheme to focus on a “rapid returns unit” to send people with no right to be in the UK back to their home country.

In 2022/23, £2.4 billion was been spent on homelessness services, more than twice the amount spent in 2010/11, including £1.6 billion on temporary accommodation alone. The huge sums are putting a massive strain on local authority finances, according to the report published by the National Audit Office (NAO) on Tuesday.

The NAO said there was a £204.5 million gap in the funding local authorities received to cover the cost of providing temporary accommodation and the actual costs needed in 2022-23, up by more than £150 million in a decade.

A number of the councils that spoke to the NAO said they would likely have to issue a Section 114 notice due to the costs, similar to bankruptcy, much like authorities in Birmingham last year.

There is an “urgent need for action” to tackle soaring gynaecology waiting lists, top medics have said as they warned that some women are forced to “endure months of suffering”.

Long waits are resulting in emergency admissions due to worsening ill-health, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) said.

The waiting list for gynaecological care in England currently stands at almost 600,000, RCOG said.

Almost half (46%) had been waiting for longer than the target of 18 weeks and one in 20 (5%) had been waiting for more than a year as of April 2024, according to new analysis by the College.

The figures suggest that, as of April, 29,660 women had been waiting for more than a year.

Meanwhile, data on emergency admissions show that, in March 2021, there were almost 143,000 emergency admissions in gynaecology, rising to nearly 170,000 in March 2023 – the latest figures available.

The College has produced a new data dashboard showing the proportion of long waits around the UK.

Officials said the data, published with the help of LCP Health Analytics, reveal a “postcode lottery” of care, with some patients having to wait weeks longer, on average, compared with others in neighbouring regions.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said 700,000 dental appointments will be delivered “as a matter of urgency” to address “dental deserts”.

Mr Streeting also confirmed the Government would continue with some aspects of the Tories’ dentistry recovery plans, but said he would be dropping the “gimmicks”.

Prior to the General Election, the Conservatives set out a £200 million dental recovery plan aimed at bolstering the NHS and providing 2.5 million more appointments.

Speaking during health questions on Tuesday, he told the Commons: “NHS dentistry is non-existent in huge parts of the country.

“There were aspects of the previous government’s dental recovery plan which we will stick with because they’re the right solutions. There are other gimmicks which we will not proceed with and we will come forward, as I’ve stated, with a serious plan to reform the dental contract.”

Labour MP Alice Macdonald described her constituency of Norwich North as a “dental desert” and called for a dental school to be established in the east of England, to train more dentists.

Mr Streeting branded Norwich North the “Sahara of dental deserts”, stating there were only 36 dentists per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 53.

A former postal affairs minister said she became “worried” about Post Office prosecutions in the Horizon IT scandal when she realised they concerned “leafy middle-class people” with no previous convictions.

Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe told the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry she was repeatedly “misled” by officials, including civil servants, who failed to provide her with sufficiently accurate and impartial advice regarding issues surrounding the IT system and unsafe prosecutions.

The Conservative peer previously served as a business department minister where she was responsible for postal affairs between May 2015 and July 2016.

She told the public inquiry on Tuesday that, before postal affairs was added to her portfolio, she was aware several MPs had raised issues regarding the Horizon system and related prosecutions in Parliament but was repeatedly advised there was no evidence to support these concerns.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe said she became “worried” once she had examined individual examples and realised they involved seemingly “honest citizens” with no criminal history that had “suddenly” been handed convictions.

The former Cabinet Office minister said her “road to Damascus” moment was a meeting she attended in June 2015 with MPs and Post Office officials where MPs Andrew Bridgen and Kevan Jones outlined issues in specific cases.

Three years ago no one thought he could win – now his critics say it won’t last, writes John Rentoul:

A Labour MP has called for police officers to be psychologically tested as part of tackling violence against women and girls.

Dawn Butler, MP for Brent East, referred to the murder of Sarah Everard by off-duty police constable Wayne Couzens and the case of two Met police officers who were jailed for taking and sharing photos of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

On Tuesday during the King’s Speech debate on immigration and home affairs, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Government would “increase standards in policing” and introduce “mandatory vetting standards across forces”.

Ms Butler intervened asking: “On the point of mandatory vetting, does (Ms Cooper) also agree with me that we should have psychological testing as well for the police?

“Some of the incidents that have been brought to light like the kidnapping and killing of Sarah Everard, taking the pictures of Bibaa and Nicole in Brent is absolutely appalling and can only be done by people who have lost compassion in their job.”

Ms Cooper replied: “(Ms Butler) makes an important point here because some of this is about the vetting standards before people ever are appointed as police officers, but some of it is also about the culture that can operate within forces or within small groups within forces that also always needs to be challenged and needs to be challenged by leadership as well.

“We do want to see national vetting standards. Let’s be clear. There are police officers every day of the week who are doing an incredible job to keep all of us safe, also showing immense bravery.”