The House of Commons Select Committee says that tackling NHS deficits in England by slashing the amount spent on training NHS staff is unacceptable. Responding to the report, Mr James Johnson, Chairman of Council at the BMA, says.

MPs have called for the controversial NHS accounting system to be scrapped or refined as NHS trusts struggle with debts they have no hope of repaying. The cross-party health select committee inquiry into NHS deficits warned that the absence of financial control in the NHS was leading to cuts that affected staff morale and impacted on patient care.

Paedophiles could be driven underground if the media continue to publish details of their whereabouts, a police force have warned. Child killer Robert Oliver, 52, had to be escorted from his home in Bishops Lydeard, Somerset, by riot police yesterday following a day-long protest by local residents.

Forty-three maternity units across the UK are under threat, the Conservatives have warned. They say 21 midwife-led units and 22 run by consultants have either closed or may do so. Most are in England, and two-thirds are in Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Independent seats, the analysis of the possible closures finds.

A convicted paedophile has been moved from his Somerset home by police after a crowd of angry residents protested outside his home. Robert Oliver, 52, was a member of a gang involved in the killing of 14-year-old Jason Swift in 1985.

{mosimage}Women were yesterday warned not to walk alone after dark as the hunt for a Ripper-style serial killer took another sinister turn. Three prostitutes have been found murdered in recent days and yesterday it emerged that two more women in the same area have been reported missing.

All five were touting for business in Ipswich, where police are increasingly certain a crazed killer is preying on prostitutes.

And with the Christmas party season in full swing, police warned that any woman walking the streets at night could be in danger.

Jacqui Cheer, Assistant Chief Constable of Suffolk, said: “My message to you is simple – stay off the streets. If you are out alone at night you are putting yourself in danger.”

The naked bodies of Tania Nicol, 19, Gemma Adams{mosimage}, 25, and an unnamed 24-year-old woman have all been found in ‘strikingly similar’ circumstances on the outskirts of Ipswich in the last nine days.

Another prostitute, 29-year-old Annette Nicholls, was reported missing yesterday by relatives who have had no contact from her since December 3. She is understood to have been working the streets of Ipswich when she was last seen alive.

The government is to tell the NHS in England it must achieve a £250m surplus next year. The service ended the last financial year £512m in deficit, but Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has pledged to balance the books this year. However, the latest predictions are that there will be a £94m shortfall. The government will also set out new targets for tackling hospital infection and on meeting the 18-week target for waits from GP appointment to operation.

For the fifth year running, adult social care services in Hampshire have been given a two-star rating. Council chiefs said they were “delighted” to keep their two stars, despite growing financial difficulties. The council was judged to be “serving most people well with promising prospects for improvement”.

More single women and lesbians could get IVF under Government plans to scrap the requirement for doctors to consider a child’s ‘need for a father’. Currently doctors can only give fertility treatment if they believe their patient has taken into account a child’s need for a father-figure.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt today announced the creation of eleven new Biomedical Research Centres of excellence across England to drive the development, testing and uptake of new and better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat ill-health. These Centres, within England’s leading NHS-University partnerships, will focus on “translational research” that will take advances in basic medical research out of the laboratory and into the hospital clinic.