Ministers are scrambling to avoid a damaging rebellion this summer when MPs vote on controversial cuts to disability benefit payments, even offering potential rebels the chance to miss the vote altogether.

The government is due to hold a vote in June and dozens of Labour MPs are worried it will hurt their constituents and could cost them their seats.

Possible solutions include allowing backbenchers to abstain – a major climbdown from earlier votes, when rebels were disciplined or suspended from the party. Ministers are also looking for ways to mitigate the cuts with extra spending on measures to tackle child poverty, including extra benefits payments for poorer parents of children under five.

One Labour MP said: “When people abstained on the winter fuel vote, they were warned that it had been taken by the leadership as voting against the government. This time, however, a number of MPs have been offered the opportunity to abstain.”

Government sources said whipping arrangements had not yet been decided for the vote in two months’ time, but did not deny that potential rebels had been offered the opportunity to abstain.

The cuts to benefits have become one of the biggest sources of tension within the Labour party since it came to power. In recent months, backbenchers have been stripped of potential privileges for abstaining on a vote to remove the household cap on winter fuel payments, while several were suspended last summer for defying the whip over the two-child benefit cap.

The vote in June over £4.8bn worth of cuts to disability payments is expected to trigger an even bigger backlash from within the parliamentary party. Disgruntled backbenchers say as many as 55 MPs are prepared to rebel at that vote, with more than 100 others still considering their position. Recent analysis by the Disability Poverty Campaign Group showed more than 80 Labour MPs have a majority which is smaller than the number of their constituents who could lose some or all of their benefits.

Labour backbenchers are also irritated that they are being asked to vote on the package without an assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility on how effective the government’s back to work scheme will prove. One MP said: “The obvious truth is that people will lose money under these proposals – including those who clearly don’t deserve to. This can’t simply be spun away. The mood in Westminster may seem calm, but this issue isn’t going to fade quietly.”

As well as offering MPs a chance to abstain on June’s vote, ministers are hoping to win favour among backbenchers with a separate package on child poverty which is likely to propose increasing benefits for poorer parents of young children.

Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, will announce the government’s child poverty strategy about the same time as the benefits vote, and is looking for ways to lift children out of poverty without entirely removing the two-child benefit cap. Kendall recently told the Mirror she would consider it a personal failure if child poverty was not lower by the next election.

The Guardian revealed this year Kendall was particularly interested in proposals to boost the incomes of parents of children under five, which is likely to cost less than the £3.6bn it would take to remove the cap altogether.

Officials are looking at a suggestion promoted by the Fabian Society thinktank to increase universal credit payments for parents of babies and toddlers.

The group found that ministers could reduce child poverty by 280,000 by doubling the child element of universal credit for those with children under one, while raising it by 50% for those with children between one and four. Doing so would give parents of babies an extra £293 per month, and those of toddlers an extra £146 per month, at a cost of £2.4bn a year.

Alternatively, increasing the payment by £20 a week for those with babies and £10 a week for those with toddlers would lift 80,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £715m a year.

The Fabians recommended paying for the move by reducing or ending the marriage tax allowance, through which married couples can share part of their tax-free allowance.

Officials said they were looking at any suggestion that could be shown to take children out of poverty. One said: “There are a lot of discussions and options on the table for what that might look like.”

Ministers held a series of meetings with MPs to discuss the welfare changes in the days before the Easter recess in an attempt to take the wind out of any rebellion this summer.

At the same time, anti-poverty charities are holding private briefings for MPs to lay out the likely implications of the welfare reductions.

One MP said the sessions they had became a forum for backbenchers to vent their anger at the government’s actions. “There is a serious depth of concern about how we got into this mess,” they said. “There’s a growing sense of frustration that the leadership simply isn’t listening.”

Others in the party have become irritated at what they see as an organised campaign to exaggerate the impact of the changes. “The network tend to get together, message each other and get terribly worried about these proposals,” said one MP. “But nothing that’s been sent to me has given me hard evidence of cases that are at risk of really losing out.”

The mundane tasks of everyday life, such as homework after school and household chores at the weekend, may not have changed in the past 80 years, but societal attitudes towards them could not be more different.

A study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London (KCL), comparing public attitudes now and in the 1930s and 40s, reveals how significantly views on everyday life in Britain have shifted over the decades.

Homework is probably as unpopular as ever with children, but today seven in 10 people think pupils should have to do homework in their own time after school. In 1937 it was just two in 10, while 79% opposed it.

Opinion on single-sex education has also shifted markedly. In 1946, 43% thought boys and girls should be taught separately; now, three-quarters (76%) are in favour of them being taught together.

Much has changed in the home. Eighty years ago a quarter of men (24%) said they never helped with the household chores. Now, just 4% admit to this, though evidence suggests women still do far more housework than men.

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2024 women spent an average of 3 hours and 32 minutes a day doing unpaid work activities including housework, caring for others and volunteering – 57 minutes more than the average among men.

Women today are happier being women. In 1947, almost four in 10 women said they would prefer to be a man – today that has declined one in 11. Men’s attitudes remain unchanged over the decades, with about only one in 20 saying they would rather be a woman.

Attitudes to fitness and work have also transformed. Today the majority of people (66%) say they exercise to keep fit, whereas in 1937 most (56%) did not. More people can swim, up from about half (54%) in 1946 to 79% today.

In the world of work, 80 years ago people prioritised job security over high wages (73% v 23%). In 2024, opinion was more divided – 46% thought high wages were more important (41%).

But getting up to go to work remains difficult. According to the KCL study, 40% of people struggle to get up in the morning, which is virtually unchanged from 1947, with women finding it harder than men.

The research, part of a series exploring societal and political changes in Britain, is based on data from historical polls compared with a survey of 1,000 UK adults carried out in December 2024.

Prof Bobby Duffy, the director of the Policy Institute, explained some of the changes.

“The much greater expectation on children to do homework makes perfect sense, as education levels and their importance to future success have increased hugely in the past 80 years.

“The education experience is entirely different for young people today than in the 1930s and early 1940s, when the school leaving age was still just 14 years old.

“We are also much more in favour of co-education, with boys and girls taught together – although it’s notable that younger adults are most likely to favour keeping the sexes separate, which may reflect other trends we’re seeing in terms of greater division between some gen Z men and women.

“And it’s a real insight into the lives of women back in the 1940s that nearly four in 10 said they would rather be men, compared with just 9% today – although that is still twice the proportion of men who say they would rather be women.

“We’re also now much more likely to be focused on pay than job security, which is an interesting pattern, given that unemployment was actually very low in the postwar years. This is likely to reflect the very real pressures felt on getting by today, even for those in work, given recent increases in the cost of living.

“Many other small but important behaviours have also increased hugely – from keeping fit and the ability to swim, to men’s contribution to work in the home. But some have remained remarkably constant, not least that four in 10 of us struggle to get out of bed in the morning – a very human feeling that seems may always be with us.”

Donald Trump has said he is expecting to travel to to the UK in September for his second state visit.

King Charles is preparing to host the US president and first lady as the UK government tries to bolster transatlantic ties after Trump imposed a series of tariffs on trading partners.

The venue is expected to be Windsor Castle, with Keir Starmer and the US president understood to have discussed the visit during a phone call.

Trump on Thursday appeared to suggest Buckingham Palace was “setting a date for September”.

He told reporters in the Oval Office: “I was invited by the king and the country – great country.

“They’re going to do a second, as you know, a second fest … that’s what it is: a fest, and it’s beautiful, and it’s the first time it’s ever happened to one person.

“And the reason is we have two separate terms, and it’s an honour … I’m a friend of Charles, I have great respect for King Charles and the family, William, we have really just a great respect for the family.

“And I think they’re setting a date for September.”

Starmer has prioritised striking a trade deal with Washington, opting not to retaliate over Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on goods exported to the US, and 25% tariffs on UK car and steel exports, instead offering concessions on areas including digital taxes and agriculture.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, said on Tuesday he believed a mutually beneficial US-UK trade deal was within reach.

In February, the king extended a personal invitation for the Trumps to stay at either Dumfries House or Balmoral, both in Scotland.

Starmer used his trip to the White House to present the US president with the invitation letter from the monarch.

Traditionally second-term US presidents are not offered a state visit and have instead been invited for tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle.

The Trump administration has taken aim at Harvard, with President Trump calling for the university’s tax-exempt status to be revoked, despite the likely illegality of that threat.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to enact the president’s demand, a move that would cost Harvard millions of dollars each year.

The move is part on an ongoing battle, and a significant escalation on Trump’s attack on Harvard and his aggressive, multi-pronged assault on higher education institutions. The White has urged Harvard to change its hiring, teaching and admissions practices to help fight antisemitism on campus.

Harvard has said that it has taken steps to address the issue, and has received support from institutions such as Stanford University, and other schools united in support of academic freedom.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 17 April 2025.

She had been welcomed to the White House with open arms as few other foreign visitors had been since Donald Trump’s return, and Giorgia Meloni wanted to assure her host that – at least when it came to their political worldview – they spoke a common language.

Italy’s prime minister, whose Brothers of Italy party has roots in neo-fascism, was keen to stress that she shared many things with the man who had just hailed her as a “friend” who “everybody loves … and respects”.

Tariffs were a bit of problem. But between friends? Hey, we can work it out.

Even if Italy boasted one of Europe’s biggest trade surpluses with the US, such disagreements could be bridged with recourse to the previously uncoined creed of “western nationalism”, argued Meloni, speaking in confident, lightly accented English, although she admitted she did not know if it was “the right word”.

“I know that when I speak about west mainly, I don’t speak about geographical space. I speak about the civilization, and I want to make that civilization stronger,” she said, in terms that the president and his attendant cabinet members-cum-courtiers surely lapped up.

“So I think even if we have some problems between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is the time that we try to sit down and find solutions.”

After all, Meloni pointed out, they were on the same side when it came to one existential struggle, “the fight against the woke and ADI [sic] ideology that would like to erase our history.”

The acronym was a bit confusing. Did she mean DEI? But no matter, her audience got the general gist.

Meloni, 48, has been labelled “Europe’s Trump whisperer” – deemed capable of awakening the concealed angels of his nature that other Euro-leaders cannot reach. She has spent time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, and was the only European leader invited to his inauguration in January.

Here, in the Oval Office, the whispering was having a soothing effect. The president smiled indulgently, before going off on several “weaves” during which he attacked Joe Biden, the federal reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting interest rates, Biden again, “activist judges” who were blocking his deportation agenda, then Powell once again.

But it was standard Trump. The man who had publicly browbeaten Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, and barely tolerated Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer on their White House visits was the very picture of a gracious host.

Even JD Vance – whose boorish interventions blew up the Zelenskyy visit and nearly did the same to Starmer’s – kept his trap shut, proof indeed that all was going swimmingly.

Then disaster threatened.

An Italian journalist insisted on asking the prime minister a question in her native Italian. Mama mia!

Meloni looked disgusted. Weren’t they all supposed to be western nationalists here, defenders of the same civilization. Why emphasize differences?

She played along reluctantly, her features relaxing slightly as she embarked on an extended discourse, but her body language betraying her as she lifted both feet off the ground, one crossed leg folding behind the other. Trump watched her intently all the while.

When she finished, an American journalist tried to ask another question but Trump interjected: “No, wait, I want to hear what you said.”

It was over to Meloni’s female interpreter, sitting nearby, who revealed: “Prime Minister Meloni was asked … what she thinks about the fact that President Trump holds Zelenskyy responsible for the war in Ukraine.”

It was a discordant, yet key, moment – and the prime minister knew it. As the interpreter tried to continue, Meloni – perhaps sensing this was unsafe territory, not least because she has, for the most part, stuck with the western support for Ukraine that Trump is on the brink of abandoning – took over interpreting her own answer.

She limited her explanation to vowing to raise Italy’s contributions to Nato, currently at below 1.5% – well below the 2% minimum agreed, and far short of the 5% Trump has lately demanded.

Then it was the president’s turn. “I don’t hold Zelenskyy responsible,” he said, a retreat from his previous false accusations that Ukraine started the war. “But I’m not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started. I’m not happy with anybody involved.”

If anybody was to blame, he went on, it was Biden – the default scapegoat for every wrong – because, after all, everyone knew the war would never have started if Trump had still been president.

No blame was attached to “President Putin”, the man who actually was responsible for starting the war. “Now I’m trying to get him to stop,” said Trump.

For the unfortunate Zelenskyy, widely praised across the west for standing steadfast in defense of his country when it was under attack, there was little charity.

“I’m not blaming him. But what I’m saying is that I don’t think he’s done the greatest job, OK? I’m not a big fan, I’m really not.”

It was a telling moment of just how far the west’s center of gravity had shifted in the few short weeks since Trump’s return to power. And an uncomfortable one, even for Meloni.

Then the conversation moved on to to the common ground of combatting migration – and it was back to the whispering again.

Luigi Mangione was indicted on Thursday on a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last year, a necessary step for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court also charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and a firearms count.

It was not immediately clear when the 26-year-old Mangione will be arraigned. A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for his lawyers.

Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, also faces separate state murder charges. He’s accused of shooting Thompson, 50, in the back outside a Manhattan hotel on 4 December as the executive arrived for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference.

US attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced this month that she had directed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to seek the death penalty, following through on Donald Trump’s campaign promise to vigorously pursue capital punishment.

It’s the first death penalty case sought by the justice department since the president returned to office in January with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under the previous administration.

The killing and ensuing five-day manhunt leading to Mangione’s arrest rattled the business community, with some health insurers hastily switching to remote work or online shareholder meetings.

It also galvanized health insurance critics – some of whom have rallied around Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over coverage denials and hefty medical bills.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police say the words “delay”, “deny” and “depose” were scrawled on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase commonly used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

US airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed 33 people and wounded 80 others, Houthi-run media said early on Friday, which if confirmed would mark one of the deadliest days of a campaign launched under US President Trump that has involved hundreds of strikes since 15 March.

The strikes hit the Ras Isa oil port and were intended to deprive the rebels of “illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years”, the US military’s Central Command said.

“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully,” it added. It did not acknowledge any casualties.

The Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel aired graphic footage of the aftermath of the attack, showing corpses strewn across the site. It claimed paramedic and civilians workers at the port had been killed in the attack, which sparked a massive explosion and fires.

On 9 April, the US state department issued a warning about oil shipments to Yemen. “The United States will not tolerate any country or commercial entity providing support to foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Houthis, including offloading ships and provisioning oil at Houthi-controlled ports,” it said.

An Associated Press review found the new US operation against the Houthis under Donald Trump appears more extensive than that under former president Joe Biden, as Washington moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel and dropping bombs on cities.

The new campaign of airstrikes started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The rebels have loosely defined what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning many vessels could be targeted.

The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.

The US campaign shows no signs of stopping, as the Trump administration has also linked its airstrikes on the Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

With Associated Press and Reuters

US airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed 33 people and wounded 80 others, Houthi-run media said early on Friday, which if confirmed would mark one of the deadliest days of a campaign launched under US President Trump that has involved hundreds of strikes since 15 March.

The strikes hit the Ras Isa oil port and were intended to deprive the rebels of “illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years”, the US military’s Central Command said.

“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully,” it added. It did not acknowledge any casualties.

The Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel aired graphic footage of the aftermath of the attack, showing corpses strewn across the site. It claimed paramedic and civilians workers at the port had been killed in the attack, which sparked a massive explosion and fires.

On 9 April, the US state department issued a warning about oil shipments to Yemen. “The United States will not tolerate any country or commercial entity providing support to foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Houthis, including offloading ships and provisioning oil at Houthi-controlled ports,” it said.

An Associated Press review found the new US operation against the Houthis under Donald Trump appears more extensive than that under former president Joe Biden, as Washington moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel and dropping bombs on cities.

The new campaign of airstrikes started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The rebels have loosely defined what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning many vessels could be targeted.

The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.

The US campaign shows no signs of stopping, as the Trump administration has also linked its airstrikes on the Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

With Associated Press and Reuters

Four people have died and one is seriously injured after a cable car crashed to the ground near Naples in southern Italy on Thursday.

A cable broke on the link taking tourists from the town of Castellammare di Stabia, on the Gulf of Naples, to Monte Faito, about three kilometres(1.8 miles) away.

“Four lifeless bodies were found, while a fifth injured person was rescued and taken to hospital,” the fire department said in a Telegram post, adding that this was a final toll.

Vincenzo De Luca, the head of the Campania region around Naples, told Rai that rescue operations were hampered by fog and high winds.

More than 50 firefighters took part in rescue efforts.

One cabin carrying 16 passengers was close to Castellammare and they were put down on firm ground. A second cabin was above a precipice on Mount Faito and fog delayed the rescue effort, reports said.

The cable car had just reopened for the summer season and prosecutors said they had launched an investigation into the accident.

“The cable car reopened 10 days ago with all the required safety conditions,” said Umberto de Gregorio, the head of the cable car company. “What happened today is an unimaginable, unforeseeable tragedy.”

The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni expressed “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims, her office said.

The cable car has been operating since 1952 and a similar accident in 1960 also left four dead.

In 2021 14 people died when a cable car linking Lake Maggiore with a nearby mountain plunged to the ground in northern Italy. In 1998, a US fighter jet flying at a low level on a training flight cut a steel cable, killing 20 people in a cable car in the Dolomites.

NHS bosses are scrambling to overhaul guidelines for single-sex spaces in thousands of hospitals and GP surgeries after the equality watchdog warned they would be pursued if they fail to do so.

The British Transport Police became the first to change policies on Thursday amid the fallout from the supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, piling pressure on the health service and other organisations to revamp their guidance.

Current NHS guidance in England says trans people should be accommodated based on how they dress, their names and their pronouns. Under Wednesday’s ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under the Equality Act 2010, this would be scrapped.

Senior NHS legal officials and estates and facilities managers are racing to draw up proposals for how hospitals, community care centres and GP practices should reflect the ruling, sources told the Guardian.

The ruling poses a challenge for the NHS, which has an estate spanning 25m square metres in England alone, with infrastructure repair bills of more than £14bn. The issue is further complicated by the fact that health policy and spending is devolved in Wales and Scotland.

Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “They [the NHS] have to change it. They now have clarity.

“There is no confusion as of yesterday, at 10.30 in the morning, and they can start to implement the new legal reasoning and produce their exceptions forthwith, but they have to change it. We will be having conversations with them to update that guidance.”

Asked if the EHRC would pursue the matter if the NHS did not do so, she replied: “Yes, we will.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is currently reviewing guidance on same-sex accommodation and, as part of this process, will consider and take into account all relevant legislation and [Wednesday’s] ruling.”

Meanwhile, the BTP, which patrols the railways in Great Britain, announced that male officers would conduct intimate searches of trans women “in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee”, while trans men would be searched by female officers.

Under the force’s previous policy, officers had been told that anyone in custody with a gender recognition certificate would be searched by an officer matching a detainee’s acquired gender.

The update comes during a legal battle between gender-critical campaigners and the force over its guidance that allowed transgender officers to strip-search women, so long as the officer held a gender recognition certificate.

The rapid change of approach came after Lady Falkner said the EHRC would be issuing updated and legally binding codes of practice on single-sex spaces and services in the wake of the “enormously consequential” court ruling.

“We are going to have a new statutory code of practice [meaning] it will be interpreted by courts as the law of the land. We’re hoping we’re going to have that by the summer,” she told Today.

She said the judgment meant only biological women could use single-sex changing rooms and women’s toilets, or participate in women-only sporting events and teams, or be placed in women’s wards in hospitals.

Even so, the commission “will not tolerate” discrimination or harassment of trans people, which remains unlawful under the Equality Act, and would support trans women taking out equal pay claims under sex discrimination laws.

Falkner said the ruling was “a victory for common sense” but “only if you recognise that trans people exist, they have rights and their rights must be respected. Then it becomes a victory for common sense.”

The UK government has avoided making any substantial comment on the ruling, but a strong indication of Labour’s approach came from Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, who swung the party behind the supreme court and the EHRC’s stance.

Previously a supporter of self-identification for trans people, Sarwar said there was now a need for an “urgent” update of Scotland’s policies on single-sex spaces. Scottish ministers are expected to update Holyrood next week on their response to the ruling.

“I’ve always said that we should protect single-sex spaces on the basis of all biological sex,” he said during a visit in Falkirk. “There’s a clear ruling now from the supreme court.”

The bulk of the reaction from Westminster politicians continued to come from the Conservatives. Speaking during a local elections campaign visit to Cambridgeshire, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said the court decision was a vindication of their views.

She said she would support changes to the Equality Act and Gender Recognition Act to cement the court’s view. “These laws were written 20 years ago plus when the world was different. A lot of people are trying to change what the law means,” she said.

In contrast, there was little sign of how ministers will help institutions navigate the new framework. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, on a visit to Scunthorpe, dodged some questions on the issue, saying only that more advice would come in “due course”.

Among the issues that will need to be tackled is provision of toilet facilities for transgender people, given the EHRC said the ruling means they will not be able to use single-sex toilets.

A directive introduced by Badenoch when she was equalities minister last year requires new public buildings such as offices and shopping centres to prioritise single-sex toilets, and to provide universal toilets only “where space allows”.

That regulation remains in force, meaning public buildings could become increasingly inaccessible for transgender users.

Burning wood at home adds more particle pollution to the UK’s air than all of the vehicles on its roads, but there is very little information on where this burning takes place and who is most affected.

To address this knowledge gap, researchers have produced the first high-resolution map of wood burning in England and Wales.

Dr Laura Horsfall, from University College London, said: “We began investigating domestic wood burning after our earlier study identified rising rates of lung cancer in non-smokers living in affluent areas of the UK. This raised important questions about potential exposure to carcinogens from wood smoke, as the use of wood fuel for home heating has increased in recent years.”

Horsfall’s team analysed 26m energy performance certificates for 18m homes in England and Wales. These certificates are required when renting or selling a home and describe how well-insulated a home is and how it is heated. They calculated that 9.3% of the homes in England and Wales had solid-fuel heating, mainly for burning wood.

With availability of local wood, it is no surprise that the proportion of homes with wood burners is greatest in rural areas, especially in the south-west and north-west of England and in Wales. The Isles of Scilly tops the list for the local council with highest proportion of homes with burners (44%). The lowest is 0.5% of homes in Newham, east London. There were differences even within urban areas. In London the highest proportion of homes with wood burners were in the south-west suburbs and in Bromley, where parts of the borough have been exempted from smoke control legislation since it was first applied in the 1950s and 1960s.

The researchers found that the spatial density of burners determines the amount of air pollution that builds up in neighbourhoods on winter evenings. The density of wood burners was greatest in urban areas outside the major cities. Worthing, Norwich, Reading, Cambridge and Hastings councils had more than 100 wood burners per square kilometre.

In separate research on 6,900 preschool children in New Zealand, the spatial density of solid-fuel heating was also associated with an increased risk of emergency hospital admissions.

Horsfall said: “The sharp contrasts across small urban areas were particularly striking. What stood out most, though, was the high concentration of wood burners in smoke-control areas.”

In Sheffield the greatest density of burners was found in the west of the city, and in Greater Manchester it was mainly around Stockport and Trafford. All these are smoke-control areas, raising questions about their effectiveness.

Combining the home energy data with data on deprivation reveals that wood burning is overwhelmingly a pastime of those in the wealthiest areas. Most people had other forms of heating available, too. The certificates also revealed a steady increase in homes with a wood burner since 2009, with a sharp rise since 2022.

Horsfall said: “We’re in a situation similar to what happened with diesel cars where we were encouraged to use an apparently environmentally friendly option, only to later discover its unanticipated impact on air quality.”

An inquest into the deaths of four people killed by drivers with failing eyesight in northern England has found enforcement of visual legal standards for motorists is “ineffective and unsafe”.

The HM senior coroner for Lancashire, Dr James Adeley, has sent a report to the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, calling for action to be taken to prevent future deaths.

Adeley labelled the licensing system for drivers as the “laxest in Europe” as he said the UK was one of only three countries to rely on self-reporting of visual conditions affecting the ability to drive.

He said it was concerning that the UK was the only European country to issue licences without any visual checks for a continuous period up to the age of 70.

The coroner made the remarks on Thursday at the inquests in Preston of Marie Cunningham, 79, Grace Foulds, 85, Peter Westwell, 80, and Anne Ferguson, 75.

Cunningham and Foulds, who were friends, were hit by Glyn Jones, 68, in his Audi A3 as they crossed the road in Southport, Merseyside, on 30 November 2021.

Jones was aware for some years before the collision that his sight was insufficient to meet the minimum requirement to drive a car but failed to declare it to the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

When he was jailed for seven years and four months, his sentencing hearing was told he could not see his steering wheel clearly.

Westwell was hit by Neil Pemberton, 81, as he crossed the road in Langho, near Blackburn, on 17 March 2022. Pemberton, who was jailed for 32 months, had a long history of eye disease and was informed on several occasions by different clinicians that he should not drive, the inquest heard.

He also repeatedly failed to declare his sight deficit on licence applications to the DVLA.

Ferguson died when she was struck by a van driven by Vernon Law, 72, in Whitworth, Rochdale, on 11 July 2023. A month before the incident, Law was told he had cataracts in both eyes but he lied to an optometrist that he did not drive.

Law, who was jailed for four years, knew he had problems with his eyes for years before the collision and also failed to declare his sight issues on licence applications to the DVLA, the inquest at County Hall heard.

Adeley said: “The four fatalities shared the same feature that the driver’s sight was well below the standard required to drive a car.

“The current system for ‘ensuring’ drivers meet the visual legal standards is ineffective, unsafe and unfit to meet the needs of society as evidenced by the deaths of Marie Cunningham, Grace Foulds, Anne Ferguson and Peter Westwell where the DVLA continued to provide licences to drivers who had failed to meet the legal sight requirements.”

The Department for Transport said it would consider the coroner’s report once received.

A spokesperson added: “The NHS recommends adults should have their eyes tested every two years and drivers are legally required to inform the DVLA if they have a condition which affects their eyesight.

“We are committed to improving road safety and continue to explore ways to achieve this.”

A series of exceptionally dry summers that caused famine and social breakdown were behind one of the most severe threats to Roman rule of Britain, according to new academic research.

The rebellion, known as the “barbarian conspiracy”, was a pivotal moment in Roman Britain. Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of Britain’s descent into anarchy to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in the spring and summer of AD367.

Senior Roman commanders were captured or killed, and some soldiers reportedly deserted and joined the invaders. It took two years for generals dispatched by Valentinian I, emperor of the western half of the Roman empire, to restore order. The last remnants of official Roman administration left Britain about 40 years later.

Warning of the possible consequences of drought today, Tatiana Bebchuk, a researcher at Cambridge’s department of geography, said: “The relationship between climate and conflict is becoming increasingly clear in our own time, so these findings aren’t just important for historians. Extreme climate conditions lead to hunger, which can lead to societal challenges, which eventually lead to outright conflict.”

The study, published in Climatic Change, used oak tree-ring records to reconstruct temperature and precipitation levels in southern Britain during and after the barbarian conspiracy. Combined with surviving Roman accounts, the data led the authors to conclude that severe summer droughts were a driving force.

Little archaeological evidence for the rebellion existed, and written accounts from the period were limited, said Charles Norman of Cambridge’s department of geography. “But our findings provide an explanation for the catalyst of this major event.”

Southern Britain experienced an exceptional sequence of remarkably dry summers from AD364 to 366, the researchers found. In the period AD350-500, average monthly reconstructed rainfall in the main growing season was 51mm. But in AD364, it fell to 29mm. AD365 was even worse with 28mm, and the rainfall the following year was still below average at 37mm.

Prof Ulf Büntgen of Cambridge’s department of geography said: “Three consecutive droughts would have had a devastating impact on the productivity of Roman Britain’s most important agricultural region. As Roman writers tell us, this resulted in food shortages with all of the destabilising societal effects this brings.”

The researchers identified no other major droughts in southern Britain in the period AD350-500 and found that other parts of north-west Europe escaped these conditions.

By AD367, the population of Britain was in the “utmost conditions of famine”, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, a soldier and historian.

Norman said the poor harvests would have “reduced the grain supply to Hadrian’s Wall, providing a plausible motive for the rebellion there, which allowed the Picts into northern Britain”.

The study suggested that grain deficits may have contributed to other desertions in this period, and therefore a general weakening of the Roman army in Britain.

Military and societal breakdown provided an ideal opportunity for peripheral tribes, including the Picts, Scotti and Saxons, to invade the province.

Andreas Rzepecki, from the Rhineland-Palatinate General Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Trier, said: “The prolonged and extreme drought seems to have occurred during a particularly poor period for Roman Britain, in which food and military resources were being stripped for the Rhine frontier.

“These factors limited resilience, and meant a drought-induced, partial-military rebellion and subsequent external invasion were able to overwhelm the weakened defences.”

The researchers expanded their climate-conflict analysis to the entire Roman empire for the period AD350-476. They reconstructed the climate conditions immediately before and after 106 battles and found that a statistically significant number of battles were fought following dry years.