Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre is privately run, by MTC, on the same site as two prisons. MPs want the Government to take over this detention centre, where children are kept in their cells for all but thirty minutes a day. MTC had previously been told to improve. The House of Commons justice committee said the Government should act by June 2020 if conditions tantamount to solitary confinement are not addressed. MP Sir Bob Neill said, ‘The experience of the inspectors over the past year has shown that some of the promises made by MTC are worth less than the paper they are written on. The ministry of justice has failed in its oversight of this private contractor.’ The centre holds 87 boys and girls convicted or awaiting trial for serious offences. They have complex behavioural problems or other vulnerabilities, such as self-harming.

Psychiatrists have warned that ‘cuts to addiction services for young people risk condemning them to a lifetime of dependence and poor health or even an early death’. The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) reported that between 2014 and 2021 budgets were cut by over a third (37%), amounting to £26 million, leaving thousands of young people with limited access to drug and alcohol treatment or specialist help. It is asking the Government to inject £43 million into public health funding for councils, to bring spending on youth addiction services back to 2013/14 levels. RCP said we need to wake up to the fact that money spent on addictions services saves the NHS a lot more in the long run, whether in A&E or in other mental health services. The second most common substance abuse after cannabis is alcohol.

Brussels will not export AstraZeneca’s (AZ) vaccine manufactured in the EU to the UK until it meets its vaccine commitment to the EU. Its internal market commissioner, emphasised, ‘there is nothing to negotiate’ referring to EU’s ongoing talks over vaccine production. He said coronavirus vaccine production from Belgium and the Netherlands matches vaccine commitment made by AZ to the EU and thus must be reserved for them. ‘If AZ does more, we don’t have any issue, but as long as it doesn’t deliver its commitment to us, the doses stay in Europe - except for Covax (a vaccine programme delivering vaccines to poor countries).’ He said they are trying to ensure that AZ’s contract with the EU is delivered. In August AZ agreed to supply 300 million doses, with an option for another 100 million doses. Unfortunately, the supply has been slow, and they slashed their commitment to 30 million in the first quarter.

The EU’s environment commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, said he was deeply concerned by the threats facing the Great Barrier Reef. ‘As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,’ he said. He hopes Australia will sign up to the 84-country Leaders’ Pledge for Nature - a document that calls for a ‘green and just’ recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and stronger political will to act against the ‘crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and climate change’. The leaders’ pledge backs the objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said this is his preference, but he has resisted making a formal commitment amid divisions within his government over climate policy. Coral reefs are threatened because of human activity - unsustainable ways of living, producing, and consuming.