No police officers are to be prosecuted over the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at a Tube station. But the Metropolitan Police will be charged under health and safety laws. The Crown Prosecution Service said there was “insufficient evidence” to offer a realistic prospect of conviction against any individuals. Brazilian Mr Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell, south London, on 22 July 2005, after being mistaken for a suicide bomber. A surveillance team had been monitoring a block of flats in Tulse Hill, south London, where Mr Menezes lived, in the belief that a man wanted in connection with the previous day’s attempted suicide bombings in London resided there.

Hundreds of physiotherapy students and graduates will gather in Westminster today to demand urgent Government action over the jobs crisis facing thousands of newly qualified physiotherapists. The lobby of Parliament coincides with the release of a new survey from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), which indicates that 93 per cent of this year’s 2,529 physiotherapy graduates, trained at a cost of £73 million to the taxpayer, have no NHS job to go to this summer.

BRITAIN’S most senior policeman is proposing that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and dangerous sex offenders so they can be more easily tracked. Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said the implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up “zones” from which sex offenders would be barred. These could include schools, playgrounds and former victims’ homes. Any attempt by the offender to enter the zones would trigger alarms in a monitoring centre, enabling police to act.

The former head of the Prison Service launched a withering attack yesterday on Tony Blair’s law-and-order record, accusing the government of lacking ‘the guts’ to admit that thousands of imprisoned children, mentally ill people and petty offenders did not belong behind bars. The extraordinary broadside from Martin Narey, who ran the service for seven years before leaving to head the children’s charity Barnardo’s last October, will increase pressure on the Home Secretary, John Reid, ahead of a major speech this week laying out plans to overhaul the criminal justice system.

John Reid’s efforts to turn around the embattled Home Office will be dealt a major blow this week by figures revealing a surge in muggings and other robberies over the last year, suggesting police forces are struggling to control street crime. Violent crime has also risen significantly in many areas, according to an Observer survey of police forces across the country. Robberies are expected to have risen by almost 10 per cent according to official Home Office figures to be published this week. The figures come just as the government attempts to take charge of the crime agenda, with Reid due to unveil long-awaited criminal justice reforms this week, making it harder for prisoners to get parole and refocusing the work of immigration services.

A Leamington Spa care home has been criticised for failing to provide adequate services for 21 elderly people. Clarence House, in Warwick New Road, Leamington, was rated poor in many areas, including health and personal care, social activities and checks on staff, during an unannounced inspection. Officers from the Commission for Social Care Inspection said, in a report, that residents were not given access to menus and the food provided was not recorded. People were not offered alternative meals and any specialist dietary needs were not being taken into account.

A national charity has revealed that a controversial campaign held earlier this year has led to a significant change in public attitudes towards mental health. Rethink ran the campaign, which aimed to cut down stigma and prejudice around mental health issues, in March but provoked national reaction after using a statue of Sir Winston Churchill in a straitjacket to force its message into the public domain. Following the success of the pilot campaign in Norwich, the charity is now planning to roll out the initiative across Northern Ireland next year and used the advances made in public attitudes in Norwich as the basis for a bid for funding to extend the campaign across the whole of the UK.

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) is considering supporting an appeal by the residents of a care home to the Court of Appeal after they lost a key human rights case in the high court. The DRC intervened in the case of Johnson and others v London Borough of Havering to highlight the lack of Human Rights protection open to disabled people in private care homes. The judgment, which has major implications for disabled people, held that a private care home providing accommodation to elderly residents, after these services had been ‘contracted out’ from a local authority, would not be providing a public function under the terms of section 6(3)(b) of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, and are therefore not bound by the Act.

The owner of a new care home for dementia sufferers is demanding Essex County Council do much more to address the chronic shortfall of beds in the area. Gavin Sunshine, of Foldcroft, Harlow, has opened Sunshine Residential Care, in Weald Hall Lane, Thornwood, with 39 beds for people suffering Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Mr Sunshine, along with brother and general manager Mark and care manager Mike Stevens, has taken on 20 carers as well as a separate team of support staff.

Examples of evaluations or research projects which measure the impact of service user and carer participation are required for new good practice guidance by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).  The research – which SCIE has commissioned to Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) – aims to fill the gap in knowledge SCIE identified in the position paper Has service user participation made a difference to social care services? SCIE found that service user and carer participation is not routinely evaluated so the difference it makes to the services people use is therefore unknown.