Ministers are facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat over plans to introduce tough new mental health laws, as the leading charities and opposition MPs this weekend threatened to use full scrutiny powers to de-rail the plans. On Tuesday MPs will debate proposals to introduce powers of compulsory community treatment for patients who have stopped taking their medication. The plans follow revelations last week of repeated failures in the mental care of John Barrett, the man who murdered a stranger in Richmond Park, London.

NHS reforms harm patient care and ministers are making fraudulent claims about their impact, a doctor says. General surgeon David Flook accused the government of “incompetent” handling of the health service and called for more doctor-led management. He said fast-track cancer referral pushed the “worried well” to the front instead of those most at risk, the British Medical Journal reported. But the government said it had devolved power and made many improvements.

Unwitting pensioners who take up council grants may find that their carer has a claim on their estate at death. This is the worry of one councillor. As Bedfordshire on Sunday reported last week, a grant system run by Bedfordshire County Council means that elderly recipients are unknowingly becoming the employers of their own carers.

There is a cycle familiar to anyone who cares for someone suffering from an acute mental illness. Patients experience terrifying symptoms: hallucinations, paranoia, delusions. They become unable to look after themselves and are ‘sectioned’, meaning compulsory detention and treatment. Once given anti-psychotic drugs, their condition improves.

The Government will publish controversial plans regarding the treatment of people with mental health problems. The Mental Health Bill was scrapped in March amid protests about its content but is now being reintroduced in an amended form.

One in three babies is conceived by mistake, the result of missed pills and split condoms, according to a large-scale study which questions whether women have the control over their lives that modern contraception promised them.

The state-run blacklist designed to protect vulnerable elderly people from abuse was in chaos following a human rights judgement. A decision by a High Court judge threw into question the blacklist that is meant to protect two million old people from violence, theft or mistreatment in their own homes or in care homes.

The Government’s health watchdog faces court action over its decision to deny tens of thousands of patients access to dementia drugs. Companies involved in the marketing of one of the drugs said they had no option but to seek a judicial review of how the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) reached its conclusions.

Mental health workers in Gloucestershire have voted to strike in protest at cuts, their union said. Unison balloted about 800 members, of which two thirds supported a walkout – others supported a work-to-rule.

The number of children being admitted to hospital with alcohol-related conditions has risen by more than 20% in the last five years. The BBC’s Panorama programme found 20 youngsters a day are diagnosed with conditions such as alcohol poisoning and behavioural problems.