Anti-terrorist police and MI5 were under pressure last night to explain how the ringleader of the July 21 suicide bomb plot slipped through their net despite being captured on surveillance photographs more than 12 months before the attempted attacks on London.

The government’s Sure Start programme has proved a “very serious policy failure” and a “substantial wasted opportunity” for deprived black and ethnic minority families, according to a report out today.

A confidential study commissioned by the government’s Youth Justice Board after the death of a 15-year-old boy claims the way children are being restrained in young offender institutions is putting them at risk. The report, leaked to The Observer, states young offenders ‘report that they frequently experience difficulty in breathing during restraint.

{mosimage}There have been numerous reports from trainees indicating that many had experienced physical distress, difficulty breathing and other distress during restraints. The Review of Physical Control in Care and Behaviour Management in Secure Training Centres also reported:

‘Of those skills used, a number are unsafe and should be removed from the programme.’ Staff were alleged to ‘often manipulate an incident’ so that they are legally allowed to use force. It gives a typical example in which a staff member initiates a ‘low level of physical contact’.

The report was commissioned by the YJB, the body that oversees the institutions, in response to the death of 15-year-old Gareth Myatt in 2004, but has never been published. Myatt choked on his vomit after being restrained at Rainsbrook centre in Northamptonshire.

An inquest into Myatt’s death earlier this year recorded a verdict of accidental death but was critical of the role played by the YJB and Rebound ECD, the private company that runs Rainsbrook.

The leaked report found that in some centres as many as ’30 per cent’ of restraint techniques were used to overcome ‘non-compliance, specifically resistance to going to bed or moving from one location to another’. The findings suggest the institutions could be breaking the law. According to the Children Act 1989, ‘force should not be used… simply to secure compliance with staff instructions’.

At Hassockfield secure training centre in Co Durham, almost a quarter of restraint techniques result in an injury to the offender, according to the report which recommended outlawing the use of a number of techniques.

The whole issue is the subject of mounting controversy because the Ministry of Justice wants to change the law allowing for physical intervention as a ‘last resort’. The government says it is updating the law to provide clarification to those working with young offenders, but MPs and children’s charities are concerned it will mean an expansion in the use of restraint techniques.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is funding legal action against a Primary Care Trust for operating an illegal blanket ban on providing sight-saving treatments.

Traditional ‘one size fits all’ hospitals are to be replaced by tightly focused specialist centres which will transform the experience of NHS patients. In a major shake-up of health care, the government will announce that London’s major hospitals will be transformed to focus their work on acute care.

Care agencies are teaming up to promote independent living for elderly people in the Selby area – and prevent avoidable hospital admissions. The Department of Health has announced funding for a scheme to look at how health, social care services, housing support and voluntary organisations can work more effectively together.

Responding to Counsel and Care’s annual survey of local authority care for older people, Elizabeth McLennan, social care policy officer for Help the Aged, said:

The number of children in Britain with autism is far higher than previously thought, according to dramatic new evidence by the country’s leading experts in the field.

A confidential study commissioned by the government’s Youth Justice Board after the death of a 15-year-old boy claims the way children are being restrained in young offender institutions is putting them at risk.

The NSPCC children’s charity has been given £30m by the government to expand Childline and other help lines.