The majority of NHS trusts are not giving people with diabetes enough help in managing the condition at home, a watchdog has warned.

BUPA has confirmed that it is to raise £1.44bn from the sale of its 25 UK hospitals to the European private equity firm Cinven and has said it will use the money initially to pay down debt and then to invest in ‘long-term growth’.

Furious residents in some of Bolton’s most deprived areas hit out after learning almost £500,000 will be spent training locals to carry out community audits’. Residents groups say the cash would be better used on facilities for education, training and sport.

Criminals released early from prison because of the overcrowding crisis committed eight more offences within days of the controversial scheme being introduced, it has been revealed.

Justice for Families has released evidence proving that the government was warned that their policies to increase adoptions could result in chidren who could safely stay with their birth parents being instead adopted.

Elderly people are experiencing “unacceptably long waits” for long-term care and have difficulties in accessing their GP practice or local hospital, according to a report from Help the Aged.

The doctor who linked the MMR jab to autism, prompting one of the biggest medical controversies of the past 10 years, paid children attending his son’s birthday party to donate their blood for his research, it was alleged yesterday.

{mosimage}The charge is one of more than 40 laid against Andrew Wakefield, a surgeon who became a gastroenterologist, at the General Medical Council yesterday. Many of them related to giving children interventions such as lumbar punctures, barium meals and colonoscopies which allegedly they did not need.

Mr Wakefield is facing a General Medical Council hearing which is expected to last 14 weeks with two colleagues from the Royal Free hospital, where he worked – Professor John Walker-Smith and Professor Simon Murch, all three of whom deny allegations of serious professional misconduct.

The episode at the birthday party involved Mr Wakefield alone. The charges stem from a story he himself later told at a presentation in California in March 1999. He allegedly told his audience that he asked 32 children, aged between four and nine, and whose parents were present, to give blood during the party and gave them £5 each as an incentive.

The charges say he took blood in “an inappropriate social setting” and “showed a callous disregard for the distress and pain that you knew or ought to have known the children involved might suffer”. In the circumstances, say the charges, “you abused your position of trust as a medical practitioner”.

Mr Wakefield, Professor Walker-Smith and Professor Murch worked together on research project 172-96, which resulted in the paper published in the Lancet medical journal in February 1998. The paper, suggesting a link between measles vaccine, bowel disease and autism, and comments made at the time by Mr Wakefield suggesting single jabs might be better than the combined MMR, seriously damaged public confidence in the MMR.

Children in poorer areas are twice as likely to have televisions in their rooms as those in affluent areas, a National Consumer Council survey found. Some 550 children aged nine to 13 filled in researchers’ questionnaires.

Unions began balloting nurses on industrial action over pay today as a survey revealed strong public backing for their cause. Three-quarters of people (74%) said they support industrial action by nurses provided it does not affect patient care, according to a YouGov survey for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Cornwall County Council has welcomed a new report which praises the quality of services provided for older people in Cornwall. The positive report from the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) highlights a number of areas of good practice.