“The harrowing image of a little boy lying lifeless in a policeman’s arms dramatically illustrated the human cost of Europe’s greatest postwar migration yesterday as political leaders drifted further from a solution to the crisis. Aylan Kurdi, three, died with his brother, Galip, and their mother while trying to cross a few short miles of the Mediterranean to reach Greece. His body was found on a Turkish beach. As the terrible pictures emerged, eastern European nations defied calls led by Germany to share the huge numbers of migrants, many fleeing the war in Syria” – The Times (£)
>Today:
“David Cameron has warned that Europe’s migration crisis will not be solved by accepting ‘more and more refugees’, as he faced calls from Tories for Britain to accept more asylum seekers. In his strongest defence of his refusal to accept more refugees, the prime minister said that stabilising Syria, Libya and Iraq was more important. He did not completely rule out shifting his stance should public pressure grow and if Tory councils backed a call from Yvette Cooper, the Labour leadership candidate, that they should each take a small number of refugees” – The Times (£)
>Yesterday:
“David Cameron has tried to head off a rebellion among his Eurosceptic MPs by handing them another concession over the EU referendum. The government is to back down over its refusal to impose rules preventing the use of Whitehall officials and public money on the referendum campaign… However, there were already signs last night that the latest concession may not be enough to stop the government from suffering an embarrassing defeat in a Commons vote on the issue next week” – The Times (£)
>Today:
“Cuts to taxpayer support for business and higher charges for students are being drawn up, as Sajid Javid, business secretary, looks to reduce his budget by between 25-40 per cent. George Osborne, chancellor, and Mr Javid believe business should take more responsibility for boosting innovation and productivity and want to scale back direct taxpayer support. The most radical option of scrapping the Department for Business…is understood to have been rejected” – Financial Times
“Patients will be able to access their full GP records on smartphones within a year, the health secretary has pledged. As well as seeing blood test results and appointment histories, they will be able to update their records with information from wearable devices that monitor activity and heart rates, such as a FitBit. By 2018 the plans will be extended to cover hospital and other health records, Jeremy Hunt promised” – The Times (£)
“Sir, We wish to register our opinion that the economic policies sketched by Jeremy Corbyn are likely to be highly damaging, and send this message to counter the impression that might be got from the previous letter of ‘41 economists’ that Mr Corbyn’s policies command widespread support in the mainstream of the discipline. Renationalising industries is highly unlikely to improve the performance of its targets, and very likely, if history is anything to go by, to make things worse…” – Letter from 55 economists to the Financial Times
“Jeremy Corbyn, the frontrunner in the Labour leadership contest, might have failed to speak out more over one of Britain’s worst child abuse scandals because the youngsters were the ‘wrong sort’ of victims, a lawyer claimed yesterday. Richard Scorer, a solicitor who has represented hundreds of child abuse victims, said the record of the Labour MP on the Islington care home scandal had been lamentable. Children in care in Islington in the 1970s and 1980s were sexually assaulted by paedophiles among the care staff” – The Times (£)
>Today:
“Scotland would vote for independence if a referendum was held tomorrow, according to a new poll. Nearly a year on from the independence referendum, now 53 per cent of Scots would vote to leave the UK, according to the Ipsos-Mori poll commissioned for STV. It would be a decisive victory with No on 44 per cent and don’t knows on 3 per cent. It is the first time a pollster has put support for independence over 50 per cent. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the poll was ‘sensational’” – The National
“Tony Blair has said it was a mistake not to promote the United Kingdom’s national identity after devolving powers to Wales and Scotland. The former prime minister appeared to concede that his government failed to keep the British nations ‘very much in sync’ with one another after the constitutional change in the 1990s. Taking part in an interview for a new book, Mr Blair suggested that ministers should have understood the need to strengthen bonds between the countries after powers were devolved to Edinburgh and Cardiff” – The Times (£)