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Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mayor backs report's call for cannabis law reform
The possession of small quantities of cannabis for personal use should be decriminalised, a report backed by the London mayor has concluded. The report by the London Drugs Commission, chaired by former Labour cabinet minister Lord Falconer, makes 42 recommendations, including removing natural cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA). Lord Falconer told BBC Radio Four's Today programme that 'continuing to have possession as a crime meant continuing have problems between the police and ethnic communities". He said: "Stop and search in London for example is most commonly based on 'the smell of cannabis' and it is disproportionately used against young black men." Lord Falconer said the current law 'doesn't work, is disproportionate' and is also used to relieve genuinely symptoms of certain illnesses. He added: "The law treats cannabis the same as a whole range of much more serious drugs. The right course now, we think, is keep dealing criminal but make sure that possession is not a crime." Sir Sadiq Khan said current rules "cannot be justified", adding that the commission's findings had provided "a compelling, evidence-based case" for decriminalisation. David Raynes, of the National Prevention of Drugs Alliance (NPDA), said any reduction in the legal consequences around cannabis would wrongly send the message that "cannabis was less harmful". The report makes recommendations in areas covering education, healthcare and the policing of cannabis. Among the recommendations, it says natural cannabis should be removed from the MDA, where it is considered Class B alongside drugs like ketamine, and instead maintain it as a controlled substance under the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA). The report states: "The possibility of a custodial prison sentence of any length, but certainly up to the current maximum of five years, for possession of cannabis for personal use feels excessive." While acknowledging that it is very rare for anyone to be sentenced anywhere close to the five years, the authors said the "consequences of serving any time in prison are significant". The report states that police officers often identify cannabis possession through the use of stop and search which "continues to be utilised in a racially disproportionate way". Its authors call for the suspicion of cannabis possession to be removed as a reason officers can initiate a search. The authors argue even when a person is found with an amount deemed beyond personal use, the current legal consequences "feel extreme, relative to the dangers of cannabis itself". Sir Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police commissioner, said the law on drugs and cannabis was 'a matter for parliament' and the force would 'keep working to our current law'. He added: "At the moment, we see drugs being at the centre of a lot of crime. "Drug dealing is so linked to violence. We see a lot of communities complaining about public drug use and that's a big issue in terms of antisocial behaviour. "If the law changes, we'll change around that, but it's not something we're calling for." Among the other recommendations made in the report are to: Improve public health services for cannabis-related harm, including better treatment access and coordination Enhance cannabis education with earlier, age-appropriate, and credible content in schools and beyond Support fair access to medical cannabis, including addressing cost barriers and expanding research Monitor international developments and reassess the case for broader legalisation in five years Cannabis clinics see rise in patients 'I break the law to buy my child's life-saving cannabis drug' Will legalising cannabis unleash chaos in Germany? Regulating cannabis under the PSA, the authors argue, would expose fewer people to stop and search, help tackle "racial disproportionality", and make any legal consequences "commensurate with the risks posed". They add decriminalising it would reduce the impact on those who take cannabis for medicinal purposes but are not able to get a legal prescription. Janet Hills, the commission's deputy chair who was a former detective sergeant and chair of the Met's Black Police Association, said it was time to "shift in our approach to cannabis enforcement". She said the recommendations would "create a more equitable and just system". Mr Raynes, who has long been against any liberalisation in Britain's drug policy, said that the report's authors were attempting to "modify the law as gently as possible". "The real danger is that we send a signal to the youth of London that cannabis is less harmful," he said. Asked about the point made in the report that cannabis is still widely used despite the current legal consequences, Mr Raynes said it was about "restricting the damage" done by illegal substances. He added that the London Drugs Commission, which Sir Sadiq established in 2022, was "an enormous piece of self-indulgence by the mayor" in a policy area in which he has no authority over. Responding to the report, the mayor said: "I've long been clear that we need fresh thinking on how to reduce the substantial harms associated with drug-related crime in our communities." He added: "We must recognise that better education, improved healthcare and more effective, equitable policing of cannabis use are long overdue." The Home Office has been asked to comment on the report. In March, Dame Diana Johnson, a minister at the department, said the government had "no plans" to legalise cannabis but did not address decriminalisation. In a 2023 interview as opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer said drug policy was "settled" in the UK. Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.
Evening Standard
14-05-2025
- Health
- Evening Standard
Doctors raise concerns over assisted dying Bill ahead of return to Parliament
He told the BBC Radio Four Today programme: 'I totally understand the criticisms around the Bill but I think that actually if you read the Bill it's incredibly safe now and it has a number of safeguards around capacity and coercion and indeed that's why we've involved psychiatrists for the very difficult cases around assessing mental capacity – which are very few but we need their expertise on that level.'
Sky News
30-04-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Ian King: The people and events that defined my 11 years at Sky News
It's 6.25pm on Monday 2 June 2014 and my heart is racing. After 20 years as a national newspaper journalist, plus a few years of working in the City before that, I am about to learn whether I can cut it as a television presenter. I'd done plenty of broadcast journalism over the years - for BBC Radio Five Live's Weekend Business and Wake Up To Money, BBC Radio Four's Today programme and regular appearances on Sky News - but these were as a guest pundit or, in media jargon, what is known as the "presenter's friend". This was different. Sky News had entrusted me to step into the sizeable shoes of Jeff Randall, its influential business presenter from September 2007 to March 2014. After four or five rehearsals using Jeff's old scripts, under the tutelage of experienced director Neil Hunter and with colleagues Dafydd Rees, Katie Mandel and Hannah Capella acting as guests, I was deemed ready. Broadcasting from Sky's original City Studio, on the 15th floor of the iconic Gherkin building on St Mary Axe, I awaited Neil's cue before uttering the introductory words: "From the heart of the City, this is Ian King Live." That first half hour show whizzed by: our guests were Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of power generator Drax; Clive Efford, the shadow minister for sport; and Lily Cole, the model and actress. Not bad on a slow news day although during the programme, overseen by my first producer Peter Hoskins, we also broke news that Frank Lampard would be leaving Chelsea. The adrenalin was still pumping after the show but abated somewhat after John McAndrew, then executive editor and director of content at Sky News, called to declare it "a bloody brilliant start". Other guests that week included Andy Griffiths, UK chief executive of Samsung; Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor; Sir Tom Hunter, the billionaire entrepreneur and Tom Crotty, director at the chemicals giant Ineos. The following week our guests included Sir Terry Leahy, the former Tesco chief executive, giving his first public comments on the accounting black hole recently disclosed by the supermarket; Paul Pester, the TSB chief executive, giving his first broadcast interview ahead of the bank's stock market flotation; Keith Cochrane, chief executive of the FTSE 100 engineer Weir Group; Justin King, in his final broadcast interview as chief executive of Sainsbury's and James Quincey, then head of Coca-Cola's European business but now its global chairman and chief executive. We were up and running. Now, some 11 years on and after more than 2,000 editions of Ian King Live (the show was rechristened Business Live with Ian King at the end of June 2023), Sky News and I are parting company. The worlds of business, markets and economics have changed immeasurably in that time. In April 2014, when I joined Sky News, Walmart was the world's biggest company. It is now only the 15th largest in the S&P 500 - dwarfed by tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia. Reflecting that increase in importance, US companies now make up around 65% of global stock market capitalisation, compared with just 52% then. Mark Carney was governor of the Bank of England, David Cameron was prime minister and George Osborne was chancellor; in the US, Barack Obama was president; Jack Lew was US Treasury secretary and Janet Yellen was chair of the Federal Reserve. It all seems such a long time ago now. The central bank chief with the hardest role back in April 2014, though, was Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank. Although Ireland and Portugal were about to exit the bailout packages they received at the height of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, there was still a sense that the fire had not quite been extinguished, which was why the ECB's main policy rate was still zero. The Bank of England and the Fed still had interest rates at close to zero, too, with the latter becoming the first major global central bank to tighten monetary policy in December 2015. So there was a real sense of crisis still in the air and, over the subsequent decade and a bit, very little has changed. The 2016 Brexit referendum led to some spectacular gyrations in the value of UK equities, bonds and the pound: the day after I did my first live broadcast - from the trading floor at Monex, a stone's throw from the Bank of England - at 5.30am and was still broadcasting 11 hours later. A few months later, Donald Trump was elected for the first time, with markets rattled by his instigation of a trade war with China soon afterwards. Then, in 2020, came COVID and, for a few months, it felt as if I was never off the air, bringing news first of the market turmoil that accompanied the lockdowns and then, later, the financial responses to the pandemic from governments, central banks and businesses alike. By then, having relocated initially to the 'Baby Shard' in 2017, Sky's City Studio had moved again, this time to Fleet Place, close to the Old Bailey. Everyone will have their own memories of lockdown, suffice it to say, going into a deserted City every day was a weird and depressing experience. Not as depressing, though, as interviewing distraught business owners weeping at what the lockdowns were doing to their livelihoods and those of their employees. Some people, even some in the media industry, disparage business news as being somehow distanced from the human condition. They do not know what they are talking about. The post-COVID bounce back in late 2021 and early 2022 was great fun to report on. Animal spirits, especially in the US, were back. But then, in September 2022, came Kwasi Kwarteng's mini budget and the eventual departure of both him and Liz Truss. The latter, incidentally, was one of the more surprising interviews I did at Sky News. While in the post of justice secretary, she appeared on the programme on the evening of Philip Hammond's autumn statement in November 2016 and, in response to one particularly tricky question on the public finances, replied: "I don't know." That episode serves to remind just how many changes of personnel we have had during the last 11 years. Past and present chancellors I interviewed at Sky News included Nigel Lawson, Norman Lamont, Ken Clarke, Philip Hammond and Rachel Reeves. The Bank of England has proved rather more stable although I still interviewed three governors past and present: Lord King, Mark Carney and Andrew Bailey. Companies too have undergone frequent changes of leadership. During the last 11 years I have interviewed three different chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury's and BP, two each from - to name a few - Rio Tinto, Centrica, Land Securities, Lloyds Banking Group, Marks & Spencer, GlaxoSmithKline, BAE Systems, National Grid, British Airways, John Lewis Partnership, Prudential, easyJet, Greggs and RBS/NatWest. Few have had the same chief executive for the entire period but two CEOs who have remained in place throughout are easily among the most outstanding of their generation. One is Sir Pascal Soriot, the French genius who helped AstraZeneca stave off an unwanted takeover bid from Pfizer, before building the drugmaker into the UK's most valuable company. The other is Michael O'Leary of Ryanair, a man with a rare talent for judging customer demand and for ruthlessly exploiting gaps in the market, even though some may cavil at his communications style. And now, sadly, it is over. Thank you to the thousands of guests who submitted themselves to interview over the years and to colleagues past and present. While the presenter is the only person the viewers see on air, TV is a huge team effort, with producers, directors, runners, lighting and sound technicians and make-up artists all contributing.
Sunday World
27-04-2025
- Sport
- Sunday World
Ian Wright responds to Eni Aluko after apology is rejected in women's football bust-up
Eni Aluko and Ian Wright are football pundits (Adam Davy/Pedro Soares/PA) Former England international Aluko apologised to fellow pundit Ian Wright after appearing to suggest his presence risked blocking opportunities for women. Aluko told BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour on Wednesday that Wright needed to be aware of the 'finite opportunities for women'. Her comments have since come in for heavy criticism, and on Friday she issued an apology to Wright via her Instagram Story. 'Ian Wright is a brilliant broadcaster and role model whose support for the women's game has been significant,' she wrote. 'In my interview with Woman's Hour this week, I was trying to make a broader point about the limited opportunities for women in football – whether that's in coaching, broadcasting or commercial spaces – and the importance of creating more space for women to thrive on and off the pitch. 'But it was wrong for Ian's name to be raised in that conversation, and for that I sincerely apologise. I've known and worked with Ian for many years and have nothing but love and respect for him.' Now Wright has taken to Instagram and he didn't try to hide his disappointment with Aluko in a passionate statement. 'I have to talk about this week and what's going on, I don't want to endlessly be asked about it,' Wright said. 'I've got to say, I'm very disappointed about what Eni has said, she knows how I've helped her, supported her publicly, and I know the previous conversations she's had with me and my management. "I've seen the apology on social media, but I can't accept it, but I also want to move on. 'For anyone watching this, I really don't need any further social commentary directed on any of this. 'The thing about where the women's game is, it isn't about me - it has to be about the collective. 'Because of the past, we know the men blocked the women's game for 50 years, because of the past we know the game has serious systemic challenges, and it's going to take everyone to help fixes. 'So for me, I always give back to the game, it's given me so much. 'It's never bothered me about who's playing the game, as long as they're playing the game. if you know my story you'll know how much football means to me. 'We are the country that invented modern football, so we have a responsibility, to lead the way in women's football 'We men are the ones that banned women's football for 50 years, so we have to hold that one. I need to say to everyone who has spoken about it publicly and showed love and support, I say thank you It's something I do not take for granted.'
The 42
26-04-2025
- Sport
- The 42
Ian Wright ‘can't accept' Eni Aluko apology after controversial punditry comments
IAN WRIGHT SAYS he 'can't accept' Eni Aluko's apology after she appeared to suggest his presence risked blocking opportunities for women, but wants to move on from the controversy. Former Arsenal and England striker Wright is a passionate advocate for women's football and regularly presents on coverage of the England Women's team. Aluko, though, told BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour on Wednesday that Wright needed to be aware of the 'finite opportunities for women'. Her comments have since come in for heavy criticism, and on Friday she issued an apology to Wright via her Instagram Story. 'Ian Wright is a brilliant broadcaster and role model whose support for the women's game has been significant,' Aluko wrote. On Saturday, Wright posted a video on his Instagram account addressing Aluko's comments. Advertisement 'I have to talk about this week and what's going on. I don't want to endlessly be asked about it,' Wright said. 'I've got to say, I'm very disappointed by what Eni has said. She knows how I've helped her, supported her publicly and I know the previous conversations she's had with me and my management. 'I've seen the apology on social media, but I can't accept it – but I also want to move on from it. 'For anyone watching this, I really don't need any further social commentary directed at anyone on this. 'The thing about where the women's game is, it isn't about me – it has to be about the collective. 'Because of the past, we know the men blocked the women's game for 50 years, because of the past we know the game has serious systemic challenges, and it's going to take everyone to help fixes. 'So for me, I always give back to the game, as it has given me so much.' Wright added: 'It's never bothered me about who's playing the game, as long as they are playing the game. If you know my story you will know how much football means to me. 'We are the country that invented modern football, so we have a responsibility, greater than most, to lead the way in women's football. 'We men are the ones that banned (women's) football for 50 years, so we have to hold that one. 'But I need to say to everyone who has spoken about it publicly and showed love and support, I say thank you. It is something I do not take for granted. 'I have never felt quite as emotional this week seeing those public messages of support.' In her apology, Aluko, who won 105 England caps, had stressed she was 'wrong' to bring Wright into the wider conversation being discussed. She said: 'In my interview with Woman's Hour this week, I was trying to make a broader point about the limited opportunities for women in football – whether that's in coaching, broadcasting or commercial spaces – and the importance of creating more space for women to thrive on and off the pitch. 'But it was wrong for Ian's name to be raised in that conversation, and for that I sincerely apologise. I've known and worked with Ian for many years and have nothing but love and respect for him.'
