A cultural change is needed in the way old people in care are treated, a committee of MPs and peers was told. People are being put into care homes that do not meet their needs and given the wrong drugs without their consent, the joint Human Rights Committee heard.

{mosimage}“We are seeing too many instances where it is accepted practice for old people to be treated in a low level way,” said charity boss Gary Fitzgerald. The committee is examining the rights of old people in hospitals and homes. It heard that people were being given the wrong medication – or medication was being used as a form of “chemical restraint” for dementia sufferers – which then became part of their routine care. There was a “definite link” between over-medication and homes that were short staffed.

Mr Fitzgerald, chief executive of Action on Elder Abuse, said he had heard of a case where an elderly person was given someone else’s medication to “keep them quiet”. He said he had sympathy with many care providers which did an excellent job but struggled with lack of resources.

Ian Huntley has confessed for the first time that he is a paedophile after finally admitting he sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl. The Soham killer’s admission follows a quest for justice by one of his first victims – Hailey Giblin – who says she was abused five years before he murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

{mosimage}Mrs Giblin, now 21, took out a civil claim for damages against Huntley after police refused to charge him. Her aim was to get a judge to formally declare that Huntley had attacked her. Now she has insisted that if police had believed her at the time, the Soham murders may never have happened.

Mrs Giblin said: “Had Humberside Police taken my allegations seriously when I first made them, Huntley would have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register and would not have been able to get a job as a school caretaker in Soham. Holly and Jessica may still be alive. Instead, the police did not believe my story. I was treated like a perpetrator, not as a victim, and Huntley was not charged.”

Initially Huntley, 33, contested the civil action insisting he had not attacked Mrs Giblin in an orchard in the Cleethorpes area in 1997. The case – which has cost Mrs Giblin about £60,000 in legal fees – had been due to be heard in the High Court later this year.

But the Daily Mail reveals that, faced with overwhelming evidence, Huntley has now admitted he did sexually abuse Mrs Giblin. He has signed a legal document last month at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire, where Huntley is serving a double life sentence for the murders of tenyear- olds Holly and Jessica in Soham in the summer of 2002.

One in six young people leaving care is being placed in unsuitable or unsafe accommodation because of “poor” local authority planning, according to a new report.

More patients will have to pay ‘top-up’ fees for private care because of budget cuts in the NHS and long waiting times, a group of doctors say in a report. Doctors for Reform says the idea that health care is free across the UK is now a “political mirage”.

A woman from the Czech Republic who was lured to England and made to work as a prostitute was raped in a Lancashire restaurant, a court has heard. Eleven people have appeared at Preston Crown Court charged with trafficking and controlling prostitution in connection with the case.

At least one child aged five or under is expelled from school every week and dozens more are suspended as bad behaviour among pupils soars.

The stress of everyday life is threatening a global epidemic of cardiovascular disease, a report by international health experts has warned. High blood pressure is a “silent condition” which is “grossly underestimated” by patients, their families, medics and politicians, according to the study unveiled at the European Parliament in Brussels.

A schoolboy hanged himself from his bunk bed after the driver of his school bus regularly joined bullies to taunt him, an inquest was told yesterday. Ben Vodden, 11, was found unconscious by his father, Paul, with shoelaces round his neck.

One of the UK’s most senior police officers has called for new laws that would compel the public to give information to the police about gun crime – whether they want to or not.

Four Plymouth women who goaded toddlers into fighting and filmed it have been given 12-month suspended sentences. The four, who cannot be named, admitted child cruelty charges before sentencing at Plymouth Crown Court on Friday.