The government is to press ahead with plans to reform the rape laws in an attempt to increase the low conviction rate, despite strong opposition from the judges who will have to put them into effect, the Guardian has learned.

NHS trusts are struggling to meet key hygiene standards, according to data submitted to the NHS watchdog. One in four trusts have reported they are not complying with one of the three standards relating to the hygiene code, covering areas such as cleanliness.

The General Social Care Council has welcomed the DoH and Comic Relief report ‘UK Study of Abuse and Neglect of Older People’. The report said that 13% of older people were mistreated by care workers in the past year and ‘relatively little mistreatment was carried out by care workers’ compared with mistreatment by partners and family members.

Parts of the UK’s black community face a “serious crisis” with young people becoming involved in crime, MPs say. The Commons home affairs committee said the number of black men in the criminal justice system was “unacceptable”.

Teenagers are in the grip of a sexual health crisis fuelled by a “celebrity culture” that condones alcohol abuse, drug addiction and promiscuity, Government-funded advisers warn today.

{mosimage}A daily diet of celebrities in sexualised poses, taking drugs and getting drunk has led to increasing numbers of children “defining their lifestyle” around drugs, alcohol and sex in their early teens, with Britain now having the highest rate of teenage pregnancies and sexual infections in Europe, they say. Despite this, Government campaigns have failed to make the link between drugs, alcohol and sexual health – even though many drugs increase sexual desire, leading to more sex and more drinking, the Independent Advisory Group (IAG) on Sexual Health and HIV reports.

At the same time, “distorted messages” mean young boys wear football shirts emblazoned with alcohol brands while girls read magazines portraying them as sex objects, or purchase “sexualised” dolls. The strongly-worded report concludes that there is “no national and joined up Government approach” to deal with the problems.

Restrictions on the advertising of contraceptives on television, as well as the lack of compulsory sex education in schools, are exacerbating the problem, and the Government is using the wrong language when it talks to young people, the group says.

Its report paints an alarming picture of the extent to which teenagers are in thrall to the world of celebrity and will make uncomfortable reading for the Department of Health, which funds the group. The findings follow a Unicef investigation that put Britain last in a table of 21 countries for children’s well-being and found that more British children had sex by the age of 15 than in any other country. They were also the third highest users of cannabis and more had been drunk by 11, 13 and 15 than anywhere else.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said last night: “The Government has set targets for the reduction of teenage pregnancies but they are going to fail to reach these. It’s vital we improve sex education and advice, but also family and community structures which support young girls in the most deprived areas.”

In a fighting speech to the UK’s family doctors’ conference, GP Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum sent a warning message to the incoming Prime Minister. Unless Gordon Brown clears the obstacles out of the way, the government’s flagship NHS policy of cutting patient waiting times to 18 weeks will fail.

The NHS is too vast for politicians to hand over to an independent board to run, the health secretary has said. Patricia Hewitt said the proposal, favoured by the British Medical Association, would turn the NHS into a “1960s nationalised industry”. But she said more power should be given to patients, GPs and health staff.

A man who murdered his disabled fiancee and her carer has been told he will spend the rest of his life in jail. David Tiley, 47, stabbed mother-of-five Sue Hale, 49, who suffered from a degenerative brain disorder, and her carer, mother-of-two Sarah Merritt, 39.

A quarter of young cancer specialists in the UK are suffering from stress which could affect their care of patients, researchers have found. More than one in 10 oncology registrars also showed clinically important levels of depression, according to the study conducted by the University of Manchester.

The Liberal Democrats want to “ensure the face of council housing is changed forever” by building a million social homes over the next 10 years. Sir Menzies Campbell said it was a “national disgrace” that cities are “too often known for ‘sink estates'”.