The NHS should record the ethnicity of all patients to ensure people with mental illness are not discriminated against, a watchdog has said. The Healthcare Commission said some black and ethnic minority groups were three times more likely than average to be admitted to mental health hospitals.

Many people living in nursing homes are enduring chronic pain, a study says. The work by the Picker Institute Europe for the Patients’ Association found nearly two out of five residents experienced constant pain.

The lord chief justice yesterday voiced his opposition to mandatory life sentences for murder, saying they “misled the public”. Lord Phillips put on record for the first time his disagreement with the government over the life sentence, which ministers insist must be retained to reflect the unique gravity of murder.

Health inspectors will today publish conclusive evidence that the government’s claim to have ended the scandal of mixed-sex psychiatric wards in the NHS was false, or at best misleading.

The Government’s plans to toughen up mental health laws are “fundamentally flawed” and could put the public more at risk from dangerous criminals, mental health experts warn today.

A grieving mother has told how she discovered her 12-year-old son hanging after an argument about tidying his room. Wendy Thomas found Aidan hanging from his bedpost by his school tie. She tried desperately to save his life but he died in hospital the next morning.

The Commission for Social Care Inspection has warned an NHS Trust that it must dramatically improve standards in the care homes it runs for people with learning disabilities, or face the possibility of prosecution.

New gay equality laws which are opposed by the Roman Catholic Church are a “major step forward”, the Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has said. Peers voted against an amendment to throw out the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, brought by Tory peer Baroness O’Cathain.

Sir Elton John has marked his 60th birthday by urging the public to speak out against homophobia, in a strongly worded article that highlights the violence faced by gay people all over the world. In a piece published in the Guardian and New Statesman today, the singer asks people to “shout down” homophobia whether it happens “in the local pub or a thousand miles away”.

There has been a “disastrous failure” of NHS workforce planning creating a “boom and bust” approach, MPs say. The Health Committee said little thought was given to long-term planning as managers strived to hit “demanding” government targets.

{mosimage}MPs said vast rises in staff numbers had been followed by redundancies, cuts to training and recruitment freezes. They added regional health bosses had to make planning more of a priority and ministers stop “micromanaging”.
The findings come after leaked Department of Health planning documents at the start of the year showed there would be a shortage of GPs and nurses and too many hospital consultants in four years time. It said there had been a “yo-yo attitude to planning”. 

Shadow Health Minister Stephen O’Brien said: “Last year Patricia Hewitt blamed the cash-crisis in the NHS on it employing too many staff. But we know that it’s her department who forced this desperate situation.”

MPs said workforce planning was a “vitally important process” as 70% of NHS funding is spent on staffing costs, but it had been a “disastrous failure”. They said the NHS has ended up employing too many staff, relying heavily on overseas recruitment, in a bid to meet “demanding” government targets.

Between 1999 and 2004, nursing numbers increased by more than 67,000 – 340% in excess of original targets. During the same time, GP numbers swelled by more than 4,000 – double the initial target. MPs said this had been at the expense of long-term sensible planning and created a “boom” and “bust” situation in the last eight years where the increases in staff numbers were being followed by redundancies, training cuts and newly trained staff not getting jobs.