Nnena Kalu wins the Turner Prize 2025 in ‘seismic’ moment for award

Nnena Kalu has won the 2025 Turner Prize for her colourful cocoon-like sculptures made of VHS cassette tape and found fabric.

The 59-year-old artist, who is autistic with limited verbal communication, is the first learning-disabled artist to be nominated for the prestigious award.

She received the nod for the inclusion of Drawing 21 in the group exhibition Conservation at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, as well as her works Hanging Sculpture 1-10.

Kalu’s suspended sculptures are created by winding vibrant recycled materials, such as cloth, paper, and card, around lengths of flexible ducting tape. This creates “a sense of joyous uplift”, wrote The Independent’s art critic Mark Hudson in a review of the Turner Prize shortlisted artists this year.

The artist beat out her fellow nominees, including Mohammed Sami, whose large-scale paintings meditating on war and Iraq had made him the favourite to win.

Magician Steven Frayne, formerly known as Dynamo, presented the prize to Kalu at a ceremony held in Bradford on Tuesday evening (9 December). She will receive £25,000.

Chaired by the director of Tate Britain Alex Farquharson, the jury commended Kalu’s bold and compelling work, praising her lively translation of expressive gesture into sculpture and drawing. They also noted her finesse of scale, composition and colour.

Born in Glasgow to Nigerian parents, Kalu moved to London at a young age. She still lives in the city in supported care, according to a recent interview in The Guardian.

Kalu works closely with her longtime studio manager and artistic facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead, who leads the team that has been helping to support and nurture her creative endeavours since 1999.

“The nomination is phenomenal,” Hollinshead told The Guardian in May. “It’s seismic. Someone said to me the other day, ‘It’s like someone’s just thrown a bomb into the Turner prize’ – and it is like that. A good bomb.”

Alongside her sculptural work, Kalu also creates large-scale abstract drawings made with similar vigorous and rhythmic lines.

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize is Britain’s best-known art prize. It is awarded annually to an artist born or working in the UK for work completed over the previous year.

This year, Kalu beat out Baghdad-born painter Sami, Korean-Canadian artist Zadie Xa, and photographer Rene Matić, who at 28 is the second-youngest artist ever to be shortlisted for the Turner. The other nominees will receive £10,000 each.

Sami was the favourite to win after receiving the nod for his exhibition After the Storm: Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace. It comprised 14 paintings that respond to Winston Churchill’s birthplace and contains “hints and references to conflict in Iraq”.

The work of Korean-Canadian artist Xa falls into a mystical trend in contemporary art. “Merging land and seascape in hallucinatory compositions rooted in the shamanic traditions of her Korean heritage,” wrote Mark Hudson.

Matić was the only photographer to be shortlisted for the prize. Their photographs of political demonstrations and queer subculture were influenced by their experience growing up queer and mixed-race in Peterborough.

In a video that accompanies their art, Matić – who has English, Irish and Saint Lucian heritage – describes Blackness and whiteness as being “at war” within their body.

On the Turner Prize 2025 jury alongside Farquharson were independent curator Andrew Bonacina, director of Liverpool Biennial Sam Lackey, associate curator of modern and contemporary projects at the National Gallery Priyesh Mistry, and Habda Rashid, who is the senior curator of modern and contemporary art at Fitzwilliam Museum.

Kalu joins a revered list of winners including sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor (1991), artist Damien Hirst (1995), filmmaker Sir Steve McQueen (1999), and Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur, whose doily-clad car helped to clinch her win last year.

A group show of the 2025 shortlisted artists work is running at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford until 22 February 2026.

Scale of A&E crisis laid bare as patients treated in corridors

One in five patients in need of urgent care are being treated in corridors with some patients waiting two days for a bed, according to a new study.

Research has exposed the scale of the UK’s A&E crisis revealing that the “shameful practice of corridor care is endemic” and has become “routine”.

The study, carried out by Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) Trainee Emergency Research Network (Tern), analysed five snapshots taken from 165 A&E departments in March 2025.

It revealed more than 10,000 people were receiving care in “escalation areas” – any area not routinely used for care such as corridors, waiting rooms, doubled-up cubicles and ambulances waiting outside to offload for more than 15 minutes.

The proportion of escalation area patients in non-clinical areas such as corridors ranged from 54.5 per cent to 61.1 per cent, according to the study.

“National guidance states escalation area use is not acceptable; this research demonstrates it is routine,” researchers said.

The study also highlighted the “significant patient safety issue” of more than a quarter of sites without any immediate resuscitation cubicle capacity.

Dr Ian Higginson, president of the RCEM, said the study, published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, “reinforces that the shameful practice of corridor care is endemic in emergency departments in the UK”.

“The stark picture this paper paints reflects the stories we hear from our members nationwide – the volume of which are growing as we head into winter,” he added.

“Just this week, one member told us of a patient having to wait two days for a bed in their department.

“It’s important to note that these patients may be elderly, vulnerable, have mental health issues, or be children. They have been failed by successive governments.

“We are very concerned about the harm associated with long waits in emergency departments and how it puts patients’ lives at risk – for every 72 patients who wait between eight and 12 hours before admission, there is one excess death. This should not be happening in a wealthy country.”

There were more than 200,000 A&E attendances last winter for conditions that could have been dealt with elsewhere, recent NHS data highlighted.

This included 8,669 attendances for itchy skin, 96,998 for a sore throat and 384 for hiccups.

But Dr Higginson stressed corridor care “can’t be blamed on hiccups or flu”, and said he fears this winter “we will see gridlock”.

Dr Higginson said that it is “worrying” that the snapshots were taken in March and not the peak of winter.

He said this “shows that corridor care is an issue all year round”.

It comes after Wes Streeting pledged to end corridor care by 2029 if not “sooner”.

But experts last week warned The Independent that the health secretary’s ambition is all-but impossible if the government wants the NHS to make strides on hitting its raft of other targets, including bringing down waiting lists.

Dr Higginson added: “It is abundantly clear that this hasn’t been given the priority it deserves.

“So whilst we were pleased to hear the promise from the secretary for health and social care to eradicate corridor care in England by 2029, it is vital that action is taken now across the four nations.

“The priority is to improve the way hospitals work, and to ensure that patients who don’t need a hospital bed aren’t in one, rather than focusing on redirection measures at the emergency department’s front door.

“Only then will we start to see patients moving out of our corridors, into the beds they need.

“This study shows the urgency of the situation. We cannot wait years for things to improve.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Corridor care is unacceptable, undignified, and has no place in our NHS.

“That is why we will be publishing corridor waiting figures for the first time, so we can take the steps needed to eradicate it from our health service. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

“It will take time to turn around the shocking situation we inherited, but we are already seeing green shoots of recovery, with ambulances arriving 10 minutes faster to stroke and heart attack patients than last year and handovers also almost 10 minutes quicker.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: “We know that too many patients are being cared for in corridors, and this should never happen.

“NHS teams have been working hard to limit this unacceptable way of caring for patients, while doing more to prepare for winter earlier than ever before. Our focus is firmly on getting patients out of corridors, keeping more ambulances on the road and enabling people who are ready to leave hospital to do so as quickly and safely as possible.

“Unfortunately, planned industrial action by resident doctors will only make this ambition much more challenging to deliver, coming at a time when we are facing steep rises in flu pressures.”

How MI5 turned blind eye to IRA spy’s ‘grotesque’ crimes

MI5 turned a blind eye to “grotesque” crimes committed by a British spy who infiltrated the IRA during the Troubles, a damning report has found.

Agent Stakeknife worked within the internal security unit of the Provisional IRA, which interrogated people suspected of passing information to the security forces, while sending out his own intelligence reports.

Operation Kenova, launched in 2016 to investigate the agent’s activities, found that Stakeknife, believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, who died aged 77 in 2023, “committed grotesque, serious crime” including torture and murder.

It said that MI5, which was closely involved with the agent’s handling, had knowledge of all Stakeknife intelligence and “was aware of his involvement in serious criminality”.

Yet Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Jon Boutcher, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday after the publication of the £47.5m report, said there was no evidence that people were “seeking to stop” what he was doing.

The report also said there were two incidents when his handlers from the Force Research Unit (FRU) – a British army intelligence unit – took him out of Northern Ireland for a holiday when they knew he was wanted by police for murder.

Operation Kenova examined 101 murders and abductions linked to the IRA unit where Stakeknife operated. In its interim report last year, it said more lives were probably lost than saved through the operation of Stakeknife.

On Tuesday, Sir Iain Livingstone, who led the investigation, said there was a “compelling ethical case for the UK government” to now drop its Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) policy and name the agent.

It also emerged that previously undisclosed information providing a greater knowledge of Stakeknife was only passed on to the probe by MI5 after the publication of the interim report last year, which was too late for it to be investigated properly. The security agency has apologised.

Crucially, the late-coming information revealed MI5 was closely involved in handling Stakeknife, said the report, which added that the agent’s commanding officer briefed MI5 every four to six weeks.

It said: “MI5 had automatic sight of all Stakeknife intelligence and therefore was aware of his involvement in serious criminality.”

CC Boutcher told the press conference he was unable to give an example of MI5 agents who clearly knew about specific murders, but said they were embedded with the Force Research Unit that handled Stakeknife.

He added: “I’ve not seen anything, anything, that shows that the activities of the agent Stakeknife that people were seeking to stop what he was doing. I have not seen anything to suggest that.”

The chief constable, who led the Kenova investigation before taking charge of the PSNI, claimed Scappaticci had been a “critical person of interest” at the heart of Operation Kenova.

“To directly quote a solicitor for the Kenova families who spoke to the BBC in 2024, the dogs in the street know that Fred Scappaticci is the agent Stakeknife,” he said.

But the identity of Stakeknife, who started work in the 1970s and continued as an agent into the 1990s, has not officially been revealed, including in the operation’s report.

More than 3,000 people died in Northern Ireland during three decades of conflict between mostly Catholic supporters of unification with the Republic of Ireland and mostly Protestant backers of continued links with the United Kingdom.

KRW Law, a legal firm which represents families of some of those murdered by the IRA, said it was “insulting” that Stakeknife has not been publicly named.

A statement said: “It’s a slap in the face by the state at a time when there ought to be the most fulsome of apologies over what was a state-sponsored murder operation lasting from 1979 to 1994.”

CC Boutcher also urged the government to name the agent, adding that the operative was involved in “the most serious and inexcusable criminality while operating as an agent, including murders”.

He said the actions of the IRA’s internal security unit against its own community were “utterly abhorrent, wrong and inexcusable”.

He said: “The families of those accused of being state agents, women, children and the elderly were also subjected to violence, and many have faced years of intimidation, isolation and humiliation at the hands of those who murdered their loved ones.

The late release by MI5 of additional files relating to Stakeknife was “deeply frustrating”, said CC Boutcher.

He said: “No new murders were uncovered, but incidents were detailed which could have been put to witnesses, generated new lines of inquiry, and perhaps form the basis for submissions to the Director of Public Prosecutions for additional offences. We will never know the full impact of this late discovery.”

MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum apologised, but said the material was not deliberately withheld.

Among the updated 10 recommendations in the report, the UK government has been urged to acknowledge and apologise to bereaved families and surviving victims. It also called for a full apology from the republican movement for the Provisional IRA’s abduction, torture and murder of those it suspected of being agents.

On the late discovery of material, he said: “The fact this material was provided so late and at a point when further investigation was impossible only caused further upset to the families who have already waited many years to find out what happened to their loved ones.”

Tuesday’s publication also included a report of Operation Denton, which reviewed a series of attacks carried out by loyalists with involvement by some members of the security forces in the 1970s known as the Glenanne Gang.

It found that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was responsible for the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and there was no specific intelligence that could have prevented the attacks, which claimed 33 lives.

It remains the biggest loss of life on any single day of the Troubles.

The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland previously announced that no prosecutions would be pursued after consideration of the last batch of files from the Kenova investigation.

Some 32 people, including former police, former military personnel and people linked with the IRA, were considered for prosecution on a range of charges from murder and abduction to misconduct in public office and perjury.

However, the PPS found there was insufficient evidence to pursue cases.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “While I can’t comment in detail on the allegations set out by Kenova due to ongoing litigation, the government is clear that the alleged criminal conduct Operation Kenova has set out in its interim report would not be tolerated today, and of course, we must emphasise that the principal responsibility rests with the Provisional IRA.”

Liverpool prove that Arne Slot is the true winner in the Mo Salah saga

A penalty to win it at San Siro. Perhaps Mohamed Salah, wherever he was watching it, reflected that he could have been taking it. Instead, with the Egyptian in exile, it was Dominik Szoboszlai, who first took his spot on the right wing and now his role as the spot-kick specialist, who dispatched it, brilliantly.

And this was a brilliant win for Arne Slot, a brilliant night for Liverpool. Salah missed it, missed the chance to secure a famous victory. Because what started out as the calm after the storm, a quietly ordered performance, became something more. Liverpool have beaten Arsenal and Real Madrid but the context made this their best result of the season.

Generous as the award of the penalty was, it produced an endorsement of a beleaguered manager. Internazionale, Champions League finalists last season, unbeaten in 18 group-stage games at San Siro, were defeated by the depleted. Slot showed he could win in Milan without Salah; without a host of others, too. His name echoed from the top tiers of one of Europe’s great grounds, chanted by the Liverpool supporters. In a week when Slot has been tested, he emerged triumphant and popular.

“The fans sing for me, that means a lot,” he added. And while he said it was not about him, Salah ensured it was. Slot drew a response from his players. Each performed in a manner to suggest that he, unlike Salah, still has a relationship with the head coach. There was a collective commitment, players putting the team first. No one was thrown under the bus, though some seemed willing to throw themselves in front of shots. Liverpool looked less like a club in crisis than a team with a point to prove.

And Slot showed his flexibility. This was an old-school European performance. It had the air of an away game overseen by Rafa Benitez or Gerard Houllier, not Slot.

If he has had plenty of other things to occupy him in the last few days, the Dutchman found time to construct a different gameplan. He showed he can change. Lacking Salah or anyone remotely resembling a winger, he opted for a diamond of four central midfielders. There was a pragmatism to the rethink; even using Alexis Mac Allister at the tip of the diamond got Szoboszlai’s running power on the right. In a new formation, Curtis Jones was the outstanding player on the pitch.

Liverpool showed they could defend. They have conceded 38 goals this season but shut out Serie A’s top scorers. Apart from a terrific save from Alisson on the stroke of half-time, repelling Lautaro Martinez’s header, the goalkeeper was rarely tested. His colleagues saw to that. “I would like to highlight one who has been highlighted in a negative way and that is Ibou Konate,” said Slot. “He played an outstanding game against two very good strikers,” said Slot. Liverpool had concentration, determination, organisation; qualities they have not always combined this season. “The players showed great mentality,” said Slot.

There was something symbolic that it was Szoboszlai, Liverpool’s player of the season, who gave them their reward. “It is special what he is doing physically and also football-wise,” said Slot. He stood up in a difficult moment.” Szoboszlai had never taken a spot kick in a game for Liverpool before but he fired this into the roof of the net.

The gentlest of tugs had been scarcely the wisest, Alessandro Bastoni grabbing Florian Wirtz’s shirt. Referee Felix Zwayer viewed the damning still on a monitor. “We lost the game on a big incident,” rued Inter manager Cristian Chivu. Slot concurred, to some extent. “If that was a penalty, we could have got 10 this season,” he said. But he feels unlucky over the course of the campaign. If VAR cost Liverpool a goal on the night, it afforded them one.

Briefly, Liverpool thought they had a first-half lead. Konate had what seemed a redemptive goal ruled out, with the ball coming to him via Hugo Ekitike’s arm; it took an interminably long VAR review to disallow it. It stemmed from Szoboszlai’s corner but, to borrow from Slot’s language, Liverpool were to end with a positive set-piece balance when the Hungarian converted from 12 yards.

In a game of patience, they had other chances. Yann Sommer was the busier goalkeeper, denying Jones and Ryan Gravenberch in the space of a few seconds in the opening 20 minutes. When the substitute Conor Bradley threatened, Sommer made a near-post save. Liverpool finished the stronger, and their other replacement made a difference. Slot had little in reserve. “We had only 13 outfield players available with Premier League or Champions League experience,” he added.

Like Bradley, Wirtz began on the bench. This was not cue for a Salah-esque strop from the £100m man. He instead came on for Alexander Isak, who started alongside Ekitike for just the second time; typically, the Frenchman looked fitter and sharper. If Isak had completed the 90 minutes, maybe he would have been on spot-kick duties. Instead, Szoboszlai stepped up.

He took his chance but this was a missed opportunity for Inter. They lacked urgency, misplaced too many passes, incurred a second straight Champions League defeat. While Liverpool had suffered from injuries before the game, Inter during it. They lost Hakan Calhanoglu after 10 minutes and Francesco Acerbi on the half-hour. Yet Inter still could have done more to expose Liverpool’s vulnerabilities.

Instead, Slot was to emerge far stronger. A team that had lost nine games in a run of 12 are now unbeaten in four. That began with Salah being dropped. Slot made a major decision then, a second when leaving Salah at home because of his explosive comments at Leeds. On both counts, he looks right.

Baroness Longfield to chair grooming gangs inquiry

Former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield will chair the inquiry into grooming gangs after months of delays.

Sir Keir Starmer announced the inquiry in June this year but the national probe was thrown into disarray when four women resigned from its victim liaison panel.

It has taken some months to find a suitable candidate to chair the inquiry amid the ongoing tensions. In October, the final two candidates to chair the inquiry dropped out of the process.

Now the home secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced that Baroness Longfield will take on the role.

The inquiry follows a recommendation made by Louise Casey in her rapid audit looking at the scale of grooming gangs across the country.

Baroness Longfield will be part of a three-person panel that will also include Zoe Billingham, the chair of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and Eleanor Kelly, former chief executive of the London borough of Southwark.

Ms Billingham also has “deep expertise in safeguarding and policing”, Ms Mahmood told MPs. Ms Kelly supported the survivors of the London Bridge terrorist attacks and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the home secretary said.

The inquiry will conduct local investigations in areas where suspected serious failings occurred. Ms Mahmood confirmed that one of these locations will be Oldham in the Commons on Tuesday.

The inquiry will also have full legal powers under the Inquiries Act to compel witnesses to give evidence and require organisations to hand over documents and records.

Ministers have committed £65m to the inquiry and said it must not take longer than three years.

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Ms Mahmood said that Baroness Longfield will resign the Labour whip in order to chair the national inquiry.

She said: “She has devoted her life to children’s rights, including running a charity supporting and protecting young people and working for prime ministers of different political parties.”

Ms Mahmood said it was important to call grooming gang “crimes what they were – multiple sexual assaults committed by multiple men on multiple occasions”.

The home secretary continued: “Children were submitted to beatings and gang rapes, many contracted sexually transmitted infections, some were forced to have abortions, others had their children taken from them.”

She said, “Some in positions of power turned a blind eye to the horror, even covered it up,” adding: “What is required now is a moment of reckoning.

“We must cast fresh light on this darkness.”

Responding to a question from Sir Edward Leigh, Ms Mahmood said: “There is nothing Muslim or Islamic about the acts that these evil men have perpetrated. It is not behaviour that any of us would accept or tolerate. All of these things are crimes.”

She said that Muslims in the UK fear that a “collection view” is being taken “of the whole community” because of the reporting of these crimes. “We should always pursue justice without fear or favour,” she added.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp responded to Ms Mahmood’s announcement by calling for an apology from the prime minister, who he said had “disgracefully smeared those calling for an inquiry as ‘far right’.”

He said: “Will the home secretary please apologise on behalf of the prime minister for what he said last January?

“The truth is, this should not have taken several months and the threat of a vote in parliament to agree to this inquiry in the first place, and it should not have taken another six months to appoint a chair.”

Mr Philp, who read out the sentencing remarks of several court cases involving grooming gang victims, added: “The fact is, these crimes were deliberately covered up by those in authority who were more interested in so-called community relations, and in avoiding being called racist, than they were in protecting young girls.”

Former home secretary Yvette Cooper announced a rapid national audit into grooming gangs and local inquiries in January. This three-month audit was led by Dame Casey, who highlighted flaws in data collection.

Dame Casey’s report said data gaps on ethnicity were “appalling” and a “major failing”. It said that the ethnicity of perpetrators was “shied away from” and still not recorded in many cases.

Dame Casey recommended the government conduct a full national inquiry, prompting Sir Keir to commission the review.

Winter Warning: Flu is not just a bad cold

As winter sets in and viruses circulate more easily in our homes, workplaces and public spaces, the NHS is encouraging people aged 18 to 64 with long-term health conditions to get their flu vaccine. Many don’t realise they’re eligible, or that their condition puts them at greater risk of serious complications if they catch flu.

Flu is not a bad cold. It’s a contagious respiratory virus that can cause high fever, body aches and exhaustion lasting for weeks. But for people with certain long-term conditions, it can also trigger severe complications such as pneumonia, bronchitis or organ failure.

The statistics are stark. Those with respiratory diseases like severe asthma or COPD are seven times more likely to die if they catch the flu. People with diabetes are six times more likely, and those with heart disease are 11 times more likely. For anyone with a weakened immune system, the risk rises even higher.

In 2022–23 alone, more than 49,000 people were hospitalised with flu, and 2,000 were admitted to intensive care in England. The majority of severe cases involved people with underlying conditions, many of whom thought flu “wasn’t a big deal.”

Many people with long-term health conditions manage them well and may not think of themselves as vulnerable. But flu can place a sudden strain on the body and make existing conditions harder to control. Someone with severe asthma, for example, may experience severe attacks; those with diabetes can find their blood sugar levels become unstable; and for people with heart or kidney disease, flu can significantly increase the risk of hospitalisation.

Because flu viruses change from year to year, immunity from previous infections or vaccines doesn’t last, so getting vaccinated annually is the best way to stay protected.

Flu vaccines are available free of charge for eligible people at most GP practices and participating pharmacies, and booking takes just a few minutes. You can book online at nhs.uk/book-flu, through your GP surgery, on the NHS APP or by visiting your local pharmacy directly.

The vaccine cannot give you the flu, and side effects are generally mild: a sore arm or slight fatigue for a day or two. What it can do is reduce your risk of getting the flu and, if you do catch it, make your symptoms milder and recovery faster. Studies show that people with eligible conditions are nearly half as likely to be hospitalised with flu if they’ve been vaccinated.

Vaccination doesn’t just protect the individual, either; it helps protect everyone. When fewer people catch and spread the virus, it reduces pressure on hospitals and helps shield those who are most vulnerable, such as older relatives, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

In a busy winter full of colds, coughs and competing priorities, booking a flu jab can easily slip down the list. But for millions of people living with long-term health conditions, it could be the difference between a short recovery at home and a serious illness requiring hospital treatment.

Getting vaccinated is quick, safe and effective, and one of the simplest ways to protect your health this winter.

Check if you’re eligible and book your NHS flu vaccine today here

Starmer calls on Europe to modernise ECHR to tackle illegal migration

Keir Starmer has said Europe’s leaders must re-examine how a major human rights treaty is interpreted in order to tackle illegal migration and prevent voters turning to “the forces that seek to divide us”.

The Prime Minister and his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, have jointly called on other continental leaders to agree a “modernisation” of how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is interpreted in their national laws.

Writing in The Guardian, the two prime ministers called for a tougher approach to policing Europe’s borders.

They framed this as a strategy to win against populist political opponents, confirming they are “making this case across Europe”.

The ECHR, which underpins Britain’s Human Rights Act, is seen by critics as a major barrier to attempts to deport illegal migrants from the country.

The right to family life, enshrined by article 8 of the agreement, is often used as grounds in legal cases to prevent removals.

The Home Office has also said it has seen a trend of article 3 rights, prohibiting torture, being used to halt deportations because of claims migrants’ healthcare needs could not be met in their homeland.

Sir Keir’s political opponents, the Conservatives and Reform UK, have both said they would leave the ECHR if in power.

The Prime Minister, in his joint op-ed with Ms Fredriksen, acknowledged the “current asylum framework was created for another era”, adding: “In a world with mass mobility, yesterday’s answers do not work. We will always protect those fleeing war and terror – but the world has changed and asylum systems must change with it.”

But his government has insisted it will remain a member of the treaty, and has adopted a series of hardline immigration measures, modelled on those spearheaded by Ms Frederiksen’s Danish government, in order to decrease the number of migrants crossing the English Channel.

“Migration must be orderly, managed and sustainable. Irregular routes should not be the go-to option – so we must dismantle the human smuggling networks that prey on desperation.

“Together, we are calling on our friends across Europe to go further in tackling these shared challenges,” the two leaders wrote.

European ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, are due to meet in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday to discuss reforming how the treaty is interpreted in the courts.

A political declaration signed by the gathered ministers could carry enough weight to directly influence how the European Court of Human Rights interprets the agreement, it is understood.

Sir Keir’s op-ed described this as a “push for a modernisation of the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights – so that the convention system, which we believe in, can evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century”.

In a warning to other leaders, Sir Keir and Ms Fredriksen added: “Europe has faced big tests before and we have overcome them by acting together. Now we must do so again. Otherwise, the forces that seek to divide us will grow stronger.

“So our message is this: as responsible, progressive governments we will deliver the change that people are crying out for. We will control our borders to protect our democracies – and make our nations stronger than ever in the years to come.”

The government is expected to bring forward homegrown legislation to change how the article 8 right to family life is interpreted in UK courts, and is also considering examining the threshold for article 3 rights.

NHS leader issues mask warning over ‘nasty’ flu strain

A top NHS executive has urged people with cold or flu symptoms to wear a mask in public as the health sector braces for a “tidal wave” of illness this winter.

NHS Providers chief executive Daniel Elkeles has said anyone coughing or sneezing should wear a mask, including in the office or on transport, as he warns that a “nasty” flu strain has occurred earlier than normal this year.

Speaking to Times Radio, the NHS leader also struck out at resident doctors striking next week, which he says will harm patients at a time when the NHS is under extra pressure.

He said: “When you were talking about anything like Covid, I think we need to get back into the habit that if you are coughing and sneezing, but you’re not unwell enough to not go to work, then you must wear a mask when you’re in public spaces, including on public transport to stop the chances of you giving your virus to somebody else.

“And we were all very good about infection control during Covid. And we really, really need to get back to that now.”

Mr Elkeles said the peak of flu this winter could be worse than previous years, as warm and wet weather combined with children still at school makes for the perfect flu-spreading conditions.

“We need to have a big debate probably after this flu season about how we prepare the public better for what happens every year,” he said.

The NHS leader also urged those eligible to get their flu jab. Hospital admissions for flu in England are at a record level for this time of year.

The new H3N2 strain, dubbed the super flu, could bring a “tidal wave” of illness before Christmas, health bosses have warned.

Mr Elkeles said doctors going on strike was a big challenge for the health service, and agreed with concerns from “really, really senior doctors” in the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges that the strike going ahead next week could harm patients.

He said: “It’s not too late for resident doctors and the government to find enough common ground in their conversations to say ‘We are determined to resolve this dispute but the thing that is really, really going to damage the NHS and harm patients is having the strike next week.’”

NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey branded the decision by doctors to strike as “something that feels cruel” and is “calculated to cause mayhem at a time when the service is really pulling all the stops out to try and avoid that and keep people safe”.