An official has been suspended over the Home Office’s failure to update police records of Britons convicted abroad. Some 27,000 case files, including 540 for serious or violent offences, were not put on the police computer.

Home Office civil servants held at least four meetings with police chiefs to discuss the foreign convictions backlog that ministers say they knew nothing about, it became clear last night.

{mosimage}They took place last October as a new police unit struggled to deal with the details of thousands of British citizens convicted of offences overseas.

This information — including data about 540 serious criminals – had never been entered on to the Police National Computer (PNC) despite being submitted to the Home Office over a 10-year period.

Last May, responsibility for dealing with the data passed to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which set up a unit in Hampshire.

But the backlog was so great that Acpo asked the Home Office for more money to ensure the information could be more swiftly entered on to the database.

A letter was sent to Tony McNulty, the police minister, last October to update him on the work of the new unit but the Government said this did not mention the problem with the backlog.

Patients are being put at risk by appalling conditions on hospital wards, a senior consultant says today in the British Medical Journal. Katherine Teale, a consultant anaesthetist at Hope hospital in Salford, Greater Manchester, accuses some nurses of neglecting basic care in favour of paperwork. Doctors are accused of not spending enough time on wards.

Boxing star Amir Khan has become an ambassador for the NSPCC, the children’s charity has announced. The 19-year-old, who is a hero to many youngsters, wants to encourage children to be brave and speak out if they are suffering cruelty.

Four out of ten muggings are committed by children aged 16 or under, it was revealed on Thursday. This is the first time a breakdown has been provided of who is responsible for the epidemic of robbery on Britain’s streets.

A major spending boost is needed if mental health care is to meet the government’s expectations for 2010/11, a charity has warned. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health examined the resources needed to meet the government’s 10-year National Service Framework.

The government has only a year to save the NHS and maintain its status as a free service funded by taxation, the leader of Britain’s 120,000 doctors warned yesterday.

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has appointed two new members to its board of trustees. The new board members – Ann Macfarlane MBE and Jenny Owen – will join SCIE’s other trustees in supporting SCIE’s leadership, strategic direction and executive level appointments.

Despite a new report by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) showing that standards of care are improving and more services are now meeting the minimum standards, more and more older and disabled people are either having to find and pay for their own private care or rely on family members or friends.

British scientists are preparing to launch trials of a radical new way to fight cancer, which kills tumours by infecting them with viruses like the common cold. If successful, virus therapy could eventually form a third pillar alongside radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the standard arsenal against cancer, while avoiding some of the debilitating side-effects.