Children who spend a lot of time in nursery are more likely to be aggressive and disobedient throughout primary school – no matter how excellent the nursery, according to study published today.

A high court judge has revealed how the innocent parents of a baby boy suffered the “nightmare” of a court finding that they had deliberately harmed him, in a cautionary tale about the devastating consequences that can follow when courts and expert witnesses get it wrong.

Thousands of young women are facing infertility because of Labour’s broken promises on sexual health, alarming new figures suggest. Ministers have failed to implement a pledge made in 2004 to introduce a nationwide screening programme for chlamydia – now the most common sexually transmitted disease – by this month, the Daily Mail has learned.

Thousands of prisoners are being given keys to their cells in the latest farce to hit the criminal justice system. They can roam in and out virtually at will under a scheme designed to give them more “respect and decency”.

Ministers are failing to tackle the problem of playground bullying, according to MPs. In a damning report to be published tomorrow by the Education Select Committee, the Government will be accused of throwing money into a “black hole” because it doesn’t understand the problem.

The political battle between Gordon Brown and David Cameron will today shift from the budget to the quality of childhood when Mr Cameron announces a formal inquiry into lost childhood in Britain.

The publishers of The Lancet are under fire from leading doctors who are complaining about their escalating involvement in arms fairs. Across three pages of today’s edition the medical journal publishes letters from top doctors, led by the Royal College of Physicians, who say that Reed Elsevier’s commercial interest in the arms trade undermines the journal’s efforts to improve health worldwide.

Hospitals in parts of England and Wales are reducing or even axing services for pregnant women because of the NHS’s financial problems, it has been warned. Antenatal classes and breastfeeding tuition are being affected, the National Childbirth Trust and Royal College of Midwives told the BBC.

Thousands of teenage criminals are escaping virtually unpunished because of failings in the new flagship system of “super-Asbos”. Almost 40 per cent of the 10,000 placed on the Independent Supervision and Surveillance Programme have broken the agreements keeping them out of jail.

A firm responsible for tagging and tracking offenders has failed to monitor some criminals for weeks, a BBC undercover investigation has found. Group Four Securicor (G4S), responsible for monitoring more than 1,000 people across the East Midlands, said it had failed in “a small number of cases”.

{mosimage}A BBC Inside Out inquiry found several men described by G4S staff as sex offenders were among those unmonitored. Five workers have been suspended and a Home Office investigation has started.

Ian Ridgley, COO for G4S Justice Services, said: “We recognise that the Home Office require us to work to a very high standard and we are sorry that in some minor number of instances we may not have operated to those standards.”

A BBC undercover reporter spent four months working as a temporary employee at G4S where he secretly filmed workers and managers and kept a detailed diary. He filmed G4S staff allegedly fabricating records of tagging installations to save money and meet government targets.

The BBC also learned tags were routinely removed from alleged offenders the night before their bail hearing on Home Office instruction. One violent offender was filmed drinking after his tag was removed by G4S. A week later he was sent to prison for assaulting a former partner. The policy of removing the tags before hearings is being reviewed by the government.