Government
- Householders will face a new tax on rubbish from next year under proposals to be announced by David Miliband next month, The Times has learnt. The Environment Secretary will disclose much tougher targets to recycle waste and will give councils new powers to levy charges on nonrecyclable rubbish. New regulations are expected to be attached to the Climate Change Bill to be introduced in July. The new proposals are likely to aggravate a public outcry over fortnightly collections of domestic waste brought in by cash-strapped authorities. Some councils, particularly those facing town hall elections, have changed back to weekly collections. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1706736.ece
- Town halls have been instructed by Whitehall to hush up plans to introduce fortnightly bin collections ahead of local elections. With Labour facing potential losses at next Thursday's polls, dropping weekly bin rounds has become a major political issue. In what has been branded a cynical ploy to save votes by covering up an unpopular policy, a government agency told local authorities: "The timing of local elections may affect your thinking on when best to introduce the concept to members and to the public." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=U0S3UEFC3QRF1QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/26/nbin26.xml
- The Department of Health last night named 17 NHS hospital trusts across England which are mired in debts worth hundreds of millions of pounds and cannot survive without a fundamental reorganisation. David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, said 12 were not creditworthy enough to be lent money from government funds to cover an accumulated deficit at the end of the financial year last month. Five were permitted to take out loans, but acknowledged they could be repaid only over "a very extended timescale". http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2065490,00.html
- The Department of Health has apologised after a security lapse on the junior doctors recruitment website enabled confidential information on thousands of applicants, including their sexual orientation and previous convictions, to be accessed by the public yesterday. With the application process already beset by controversy, the security breach on the site where junior doctors apply for postgraduate medical training programmes is yet another blow to the scheme. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2065733,00.html
- A growing cross-party campaign for the 500,000 long-term illegal migrants in Britain to be given an amnesty with rights to work in this country will gain pace at Westminster today as MPs call for the regularisation of "irregular" migrants on humanitarian, security, and economic grounds. Jon Cruddas, a candidate for the Labour deputy leadership, is to table a cross-party Commons motion in support of the changes, which have received celebrity backing in the form of Nick Broomfield, the director of a documentary-style film based on the story of the 23 illegal Chinese immigrants who died while picking cockles for a gang master in Morecambe Bay. The scandal over the exploitation of illegal migrants has prompted an outcry, but so far the Government has refused to ease the immigration rules to allow them to work legally, fearing that it could act like a magnet for more migrants to Britain. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2486647.ece