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Survivors recount panic and struggle to breathe in Nigerian prison cell where 37 died

Survivors from a prison cell in Nigeria where 37 suspected illegal goldminers died while in the custody of a paramilitary group this week have recounted their panic and struggle for breath, as police on Friday fired teargas at people protesting against the deaths and imposed an overnight curfew in the city of Minna. The victims – many of whom were children – were found dead on Thursday in the cells of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), which had raided suspected illegal gold mines and ⁠locked up dozens of miners in the city, the state capital of the mineral-rich state of Niger. NSCDC – a paramilitary group that works with police – initially blamed the deaths on a disease outbreak. However, an intelligence report seen by Agence France-Presse (AFP) said preliminary information suggested that overcrowding and inadequate ventilation were responsible. The state governor, Umar Bago, said many of the dead were children, aged 14 to 18, who had been working in the mines instead of going to school. “There are issues of illegal mining and it is taking a toll on our children,” he said. Dauda Shehu, a survivor from the cell, told journalists at a hospital on Friday: “We were jam-packed in the cell, no ventilation for us to breathe well. All of a sudden we realised that we could not breathe and we were all scampering for where to get fresh air, we even appealed to them several times, banged the cell door, but they refused to answer us.” A video shared online showed the bodies of dozens of young men clad only in shorts, most of whom appeared to be teenagers, sprawled on the ground out in the open. Volunteers wearing gloves can be seen standing over the dead, while veiled women try to identify the bodies of their relatives. Voices shouting curses on those responsible can be heard in the background. AFP reported that another survivor, who asked not to be named, said he had made it out alive because he was near the cell’s entrance, where he could breathe better. “We were screaming for help,” he said, with detainees telling the guards that “people are dying one after the other. They did not believe us.” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered an investigation into the deaths after his government earlier suspended some senior officials. But protests over the deaths broke out on Thursday evening in Minna. On Friday dozens of young people, including miners and their relatives, gathered near the NSCDC’s office in the city. Police cordoned off the area and attempted to disperse the protesters by firing teargas. A Reuters witness saw security forces fire live rounds as protesters – some armed with sticks, machetes and traditional hunting rifles – called ‌for justice. Some protesters tried ‌to set fire to government buildings in the Tunga neighbourhood. “We are not thieves – we are simply seeking a way to make ‌a living by mining,” Yusuf Auwal, a miner who joined the protesters, told Reuters. At least one body lay on the streets. Soldiers and police officers patrolled Minna to try to restore order. As ⁠curfew began at 6pm local time on Friday, security forces appeared to have at least temporarily restored order to the streets of the city. The NSCDC said the detainees had been held in raids on suspected illegal mines on 15 and 16 September in the Wushishi-Lukoto area west of Minna. Nigeria’s interior minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, ordered the immediate suspension of Niger state’s NSCDC commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, pending the outcome of an investigation. Niger state, which is Nigeria’s largest and is more than twice the size of Belgium, is rich in minerals and attracts thousands of artisanal miners, most lured by gold. Police and the NSCDC did not initially provide a precise number of deaths but the state governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, later confirmed 37 people had died. “It’s so sad, it’s so tragic,” he said, adding an inquiry into the deaths had already started work. He declared three days of mourning and postponed the start of campaigning for elections due in January. The men were buried on Thursday, according to Islamic tradition, without any forensic investigations. The scramble for gold reserves dug up in illegal mines in Niger state is fuelling violence by criminal gangs, according to officials and experts. The gangs tax the miners and demand a cut from the extracted ore as a levy to allow them access to the pits. Most of the illegally mined gold is smuggled to the United Arab Emirates, where it is laundered into the global supply chain in Europe, the US, Asia and South Africa, according to a 2024 Swissaid report. Apart from gold, the state of Niger sits on deposits of other minerals including tantalite, copper and lithium, which are in strong demand for use in electric vehicles and clean energy technology. Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Brazil’s Lula announces higher welfare payments and free weight-loss jabs ahead of election

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced a 15% increase in the country’s main cash-transfer programme for poor families, as well as free weight-loss jabs, prompting criticism from opponents who say the moves are electorally motivated just two weeks before the presidential election. On 4 October, the leftwing incumbent will face the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who has been gaining ground in recent weeks. The rise in the monthly payment, from about £98 to £113, that he announced on Thursday is due to take effect on 19 October, just before the likely runoff vote on 25 October. The increase is expected to benefit between 15% and 20% of voters in what promises to be one of the closest ever presidential races in Latin America’s largest country. Lula said it was not really an increase, but an adjustment in line with inflation to “protect the purchasing power of the most vulnerable families”, but his opponents have criticised its timing so close to the election. Flávio Bolsonaro called it an “act of desperation” after polls showed him gaining ground – although the most recent survey, released on Thursday night, still showed Lula numerically ahead despite the technical tie. The senator added that Lula was trying to “buy the votes of the poor”. Created in 2003 during his first term as president, the programme, called Bolsa Família, was a flagship cash-transfer policy that helped lift millions of families out of poverty during his first two terms. Currently, families with an income of up to £32 per person are eligible, covering about 50 million people, or roughly 27 million of voting age. The programme has long been fiercely criticised by rightwing politicians, including by Jair Bolsonaro, although he kept it in place during his presidency. On the eve of the 2022 election, Bolsonaro announced a 50% increase in the monthly payment, prompting Lula’s campaign to file a case with the electoral court alleging abuse of political power and electoral use of the state machinery. The similarities have sparked a debate between those who say Lula is doing the same thing Bolsonaro did four years ago, and others who argue that the two cases are different. The journalist Miriam Leitão wrote for O Globo that although both Bolsonaro and Lula made the adjustments “out of electoral interest”, the current incumbent’s increase is in fact limited to inflation over the past four years, during which there had been no adjustment. She also noted that Bolsonaro’s increase had an expiry date – precisely at the end of the electoral period – while Lula’s is permanent. Victor Escobar, a researcher at the Laboratory of Parties, Elections and Comparative Politics, agreed. He said that although Lula, like his predecessor, is also being criticised for unveiling a package of benefits on the eve of the election – including a promise to distribute weight-loss jabs free of charge through the public health system – Bolsonaro’s measures were “even more irresponsible from a budgetary point of view”. In addition to increasing benefits for poor families, Bolsonaro introduced temporary monthly payments of up to £727 for two groups that broadly formed part of his support base, taxi drivers and truck drivers, along with a series of other social benefits whose projected impact on the budget was so large that critics dubbed them the “kamikaze” package. Escobar acknowledged that Lula’s intention was also electoral, but said that, as long as the measures comply with the law, “it’s something entirely expected when we’re talking about an incumbent running for re-election, who will try to use the legal mechanisms available to improve their voting numbers”. Some electoral law experts have said that an inflation adjustment is not, in principle, prohibited, but another far-right candidate, the influencer Renan Santos, filed a case with the electoral court seeking to suspend the increase until the president-elect takes office. Although critical of the measure, Flávio Bolsonaro has not done the same, reportedly because of concern about the impact such a move could have among voters who benefit from the programme.

Sweden’s soul and worrying political shift | Letters

I am writing in response to Martin Gelin’s article (How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden, 11 September). Gelin is right to lament how far Swedish politics has moved from the liberal internationalism of the Fredrik Reinfeldt era. Having grown up in Malmö, I have seen how border controls with Denmark affect an Öresund region whose everyday life has long depended on easy movement across the strait. Gelin is right to see this retreat from openness as consequential. But to say that Sweden has therefore “lost its soul” goes too far. Its political shift is neither uniquely Swedish nor evidence that the country has somehow ceased to be itself. Reinfeldt’s “open your hearts” Sweden faded in much the same European political moment as Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” Germany. Across the European mainland, mainstream parties have adopted more restrictive positions on migration. The cases involving British citizens that Gelin describes are troubling, but Britain’s departure from the EU is also part of the explanation for why Britons in Sweden now face immigration rules from which freedom of movement once spared them. Sweden has changed. So has Britain. Neither exists in a vacuum. There is nothing wrong with romanticising an open, internationalist Sweden. As a young Swede studying at Cambridge, I am susceptible to that image myself. But defining one particular political settlement as Sweden’s “soul” risks turning nostalgia into national essentialism. Perhaps Jantelagen – the Scandinavian suspicion of thinking oneself exceptional – offers a more Swedish conclusion. We should not imagine that our political upheavals make us uniquely fallen. Sweden has changed, considerably and sometimes regrettably. It has not stopped being Sweden. Alvin Engström Cambridge • Martin Gelin’s analysis of how Sweden is losing its soul rings true – unfortunately. After living in Sweden for 33 years, I have never felt more like a foreigner than I do now. I am British (of Scottish origin) and moved to Sweden in 1993, at the age of 37, to live with my Swedish husband and our two children. I remember being so impressed by the social benefits, the access to good and affordable childcare and the job opportunities for women – precisely the ideals Martin describes. Over the past 10. years, opposition to immigration has grown in the wake of the so-called refugee “flood” of 2015, when the door was wide open. Sadly, that door is now permanently closed, and locked. In recent years, I have repeatedly been asked whether I consider myself Swedish (I have dual nationality). At first, I didn’t think much of it, but over time, I began to find the question very irritating. On one occasion, an older Swedish woman said it didn’t matter if I didn’t feel Swedish, because “we see you as one of us anyway”. I am ashamed to admit that I snapped at her over the word “us”; I know she meant well, but it made me realise just how divisive the question was. The mere fact that it was being asked by nice, ordinary, polite people was playing right into the hands of the far right. I love my life in Sweden and have no plans to move, but the divisiveness has got under my skin and is hard to ignore. Jean Fridh Katrineholm, Sweden

Flight chaos for hundreds of thousands was caused in ‘millisecond’ by software error

A software defect in part of the UK’s air traffic control system corrupted flight data “in the space of a millisecond”, leading to a six-hour outage and mass airline cancellations and delays across the UK last week, National Air Traffic Services has said. But ministers said the Nats report into the incident still left questions unanswered, saying they needed “to urgently understand why this issue was not discovered and fixed before it caused chaos”. According to the report, the error first occurred at 10am and was notified to engineers who investigated – but the system appeared to be working again, until 12.30pm when a repeat occurred and a major incident was declared. The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) industry regulator would now “check their findings” and investigate Nats more widely. Hundreds of thousands of passengers had their travel disrupted after the Nats failure on Tuesday 8 September, which ended up delaying and cancelling flights across the UK and beyond late into the next day. Airlines have called for compensation and a “credible plan”, with Ryanair demanding the dismissal of the Nats chief executive officer, Martin Rolfe, after the third major air traffic control failure in the UK since summer 2023. A government source said the CAA review would be “a chance to fundamentally investigate” if Nats was fit for purpose. Rolfe said the incident was unrelated to the previous failures. He said he could “confirm that it was a software issue and not caused by any incorrect actions by either military or civil operators”. The preliminary report said the failure was a “legacy and previously unknown software defect and a combination of very specific events occurring simultaneously” in part of the National Airspace System (NAS), which allocates codes to individual aircraft to identify flights on radar. Nats said the software error occurred at 10am, with engineers first notified at 10.02am that the link between the NAS and London area control system had dropped. The engineers reported at 10.06am that the system had apparently recovered with no operational impact, but continued to investigate. The report said the fault presented when a manual request for an aircraft code was being processed but paused for another, unspecified “higher priority activity” request. It said: “When processing of the aircraft code request resumed, the software defect meant it did not resume correctly and the resulting output was corrupted, and affected some subsequent flight data updates. This happened in the space of a millisecond.” At 12.32pm the link between the national and London airspace management dropped again and a major incident was declared, with controllers having to conduct some tasks manually. By 12.45pm, Nats was restricting flights as the system continued to glitch, before failing completely at 1.32pm. At 1.40pm airlines were advised of restrictions, and between 2.50pm and 4.09pm Nats rebooted the system, eventually resuming full operations at 7.30pm – but leaving mass congestion, displaced aircraft and hundreds of thousands of delayed passengers in its wake. It took more than two days for the backlog of passenger disruption to be cleared, with more than 2,000 flights cancelled in total and hundreds of thousands of people’s travel plans disrupted. Rolfe said: “The issue has been identified and mitigation is in place while a permanent fix is safety tested and deployed.” He added: “I would like to apologise again, very sincerely, to everyone who was affected last week. It’s our job to get people where they want to go, quickly and without delay and we are devastated when that goes wrong. However, our primary role is to keep our skies safe, and everyone who flies through them. At no point last week was safety in question.” The transport secretary said: “The disruption we saw last week was completely unacceptable and I know how frustrating it was for passengers, airlines and airports.” Alexander said she had received Nats’ report, adding: “It’s clear we need to urgently understand why this issue was not discovered and fixed before it caused chaos. “I have therefore tasked the CAA with conducting an independent review to check Nats’ findings and investigate their investment plans to enhance resilience in the future, along with regulatory accountability.” The CAA’s review will be published within six months. Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of Airlines UK, a lobby group representing the industry, said: “The CAA’s review must mandate real investment in Nats’ resilience so a single fault can never again descend into nationwide disruption.” He said his members were writing to Nats to “demand immediate compensation for the costs incurred and a credible plan to improve resilience”. The EasyJet chief executive, Kenton Jarvis, said: “Passengers deserve more than just another promise that lessons will be learned. Firm actions must be taken … and there must be a fair solution to ensure that airlines are not left to pick up the bill.” The Ryanair chief operations officer, Neil McMahon, said: “‘The software ate my homework’ is not an acceptable explanation … How many times must the UK ATC system collapse before Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility and resigns.”

Record fuel prices across EU prompt calls for bloc-wide windfall tax on firms

European governments have discussed imposing a bloc-wide windfall tax on energy companies, as near-record fuel and gas prices pile pressure on leaders desperate to contain mounting public discontent and the challenge of the far right. With elections due next year in eight EU countries including France, Italy, Spain and Poland, leaders are scrambling to head off the potential fallout from what analysts have warned could be one of the continent’s biggest energy shocks in decades. Germany’s finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, called on ‌the European Commission at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin on Friday to propose possible ways to tax what he described as the excessive profits of oil companies. “Several member states have been calling for models for a long time,” Klingbeil said, demanding proposals by next month. “People can see how oil companies are exploiting the situation, overcharging and significantly increasing their profits.” Oil futures have climbed back above $100 a ⁠barrel, about 50% higher than before the Iran war, as escalating attacks across the Middle East threaten more supply routes. Derivatives markets suggest traders do not ‌expect a near-term drop in ‌prices. Pump prices have already reached all-time highs across Europe. In Germany, diesel prices surged to a record average of €2.45 a litre on Wednesday, while petrol hit a fresh high of €2.31 a litre, according to Europe’s largest motoring association, ADAC. Prices are even higher in the Netherlands, where petrol eclipsed last week’s record high to reach €2.73 a litre on Wednesday, with diesel at an average €2.78 a litre. Prices have risen higher still for petrol in Denmark and for diesel in Finland. Across the EU, petrol prices are 24% higher than a year earlier, while diesel is up 38% and jet fuel costs more than 100% more. Benchmark gas is trading at €81 a megawatt hour, up 150% on a year earlier, with analysts suggesting it could hit €100. The EU’s economic commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, has said the commission has no plans “at this stage” for an ⁠EU-wide taxing mechanism, but stressed it was “ready to engage in discussion” and member states were free to impose their own taxes. Sky-high fuel prices are already a major domestic political issue in France and Italy, both of which next year face crunch elections in which voters’ concerns are likely to be dominated by the soaring cost of living, driven largely by high energy prices. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s ruling rightwing coalition, trailing rivals in the polls, said this week it would scrap road tax for 14.5m cars and motorbikes from next year at a cost of over €2bn, on top of a cut to diesel duty that has already cost €2.8bn. “We have chosen to redirect a portion of the resources used to address rising fuel prices into a simple, structural measure designed especially for those who use cars and motorcycles every day to work, take their children, or get around,” Meloni said. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, told ministers he wanted the government’s “full mobilisation” on fuel supply and prices, including efforts to secure supplies internationally by working toward the “peaceful reopening” of the strait of Hormuz. In the latest of a wave of protests, French fishers blocked access to two ports and a fuel depot in southern France on Thursday over soaring diesel prices that this week rose to €2.37 a litre, just below their record of €2.38. The fisheries minister, Catherine Chabaud, said the fishers had agreed after six hours of talks to lift the blockades after a promise that those with cashflow issues would be granted zero-interest ⁠loans and support measures would to be tied ‌to fuel price changes. The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, this week extended emergency fuel subsidies until the end of the year for the agriculture, fishing and construction sectors. But the government is reluctant to step in to cut fuel prices for all. “Blanket measures that affect everyone – including those who don’t need them – are a false economy,” the country’s finance minister, Roland Lescure, told journalists earlier in the week. “Why? Because ultimately, we’ll have to fund them.” In August, Spain doubled its diesel tax discount to €0.20 a litre from 1 September after diesel prices jumped by 15.7% in July, while in Germany, the embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has promised action “soon” to ease the impact of record fuel prices. Berlin cut fuel taxes for two months in May, but that lapsed just as renewed clashes in the Middle East began further pushed up oil prices. Merz’s centre-right CDU was this month heavily defeated in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt by the far-right AfD. Two more state elections this weekend are likely to bring further gains for the far-right party, which has campaigned on a platform of a return to the cheap Russian gas imports Europe largely abandoned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces launch inquest into sudden military collapse

A bitter inquest is under way among Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces as to how what was being billed as a decisive assault on Sana’a, the Houthi-controlled capital, suddenly collapsed into a military rout. More than 15 brigades were defeated as the country’s entire west coast fell into Houthi hands. Efforts are now being made to reorganise the anti-Houthi forces representing the UN-recognised Yemeni government in order to capture the Kahbob mountains, a strategic point from which to restrict Houthi forces moving closer to the crucial Bab al-Mandab strait. Some Yemeni politicians are claiming that billions of dollars were offered to persuade the forces defending the west coast to abandon their position. It is thought as many as 30,000 well-equipped fighters retreated, raising questions about coordination, readiness and morale. The claim made by the governor of Hadramaut, one of Yemen’s largest governorates, did not identify the source of the payment, but others have tried to draw conclusions from the past links between the United Arab Emirates and the pro-government National Resistance Forces led by Tareq Saleh. The UAE left Yemen in January, but remains bitter at the role played by Saudi Arabia in forcing it out and in the outlawing of the separatist Southern Transitional Council. The Yemeni Nobel peace prize winner Tawakkol Karman has called for an investigation, while another political activist, the Mocha resident Abdu Mukabib, described the withdrawal of forces from the now Houthi-held port city in the early hours of 10 September as a great betrayal. Saleh’s National Resistance Forces have said they made a necessary tactical retreat. Hours before, the Houthis had captured the headquarters of the National Resistance Forces operating along Yemen’s western coast, situated on the high ground of Jabal al-Nar (Fire Mountain) and supposed to contain six military brigades and sophisticated weaponry provided by Saudi Arabia. Mukabib said on his Facebook page that by the time the Houthis entered the city at 6am their forces numbered less than 20: two military vehicles, each carrying five people, and four motorcycles, each carrying two people. He said that what happened, in his words, caused “humiliation” and betrayal to those who trusted the forces they fought alongside. “We are not accusing anyone, but they all participated in betraying us, conspiring against us, selling out our cause and abandoning us. “It was not a withdrawal from weakness or lack of equipment and supplies, but rather a cowardly and shameful withdrawal.” The National Resistance Forces said they had withdrawn after the death of 500 of their soldiers and to prevent encirclement. Saleh has said he is now forming the “Tihami Resistance”, a group that was entirely independent of Yemen national forces. Others point to explanations for the reverse including poor command and control communications that led to slow decision-making, high-level Houthi intelligence and divisions within the anti-Houthi military forces, including the influence of Saudi commanders. Alongside the inadequacies of the UN-backed forces, the Houthis have become an increasingly sophisticated army, bolstered by Iranian intelligence. They have benefited from the cut-price nature of modern warfare, using cheap drones to harass maritime traffic. But more than 10 years in control of many of Yemen’s key regions and the occasional payoff from Saudi Arabia have swelled their coffers enough to not only buy ballistic missiles, but develop their own indigenous weapon-making infrastructure, becoming less reliant on Iran in the process. Iranian officials insist the Houthis are not a simple proxy force, but have their own unified command structure and set of priorities. The inquest into what is widely regarded as a military catastrophe is not entirely retrospective. Both Yemen government and Saudi forces are urgently reviewing the lessons of defeat to better understand whether the Houthi gains can still be reversed. It was claimed that a limited force from the Giants Brigades, a group once linked with the UAE-backed southern separatists, managed to repel the Houthi advance and recapture positions in the days before the fall of Mocha, which could have served as a springboard for regaining the initiative. However, the withdrawal of neighbouring National Resistance units weakened this advance and turned it into a series of retreats. Prof Dr Abdulwahab al-Awaj at Taiz University in Yemen said: “The collapse of the western coastal fronts is not merely a conventional military defeat, but a warning sign of a breakdown in coordination and trust among the anti-Houthi forces. The Houthis exploited this breakdown more than any decisive military superiority. “Regaining the initiative cannot be achieved simply by sending reinforcements. What is needed is a reorganisation of government forces and allied formations under a unified operational vision, addressing security gaps, and building genuine trust on the ground to prevent a recurrence of this scenario.”

British woman who was kidnapped in Malawi rescued by police after shootout

A British woman kidnapped in Malawi last week has been rescued by police after a shootout in which four of her alleged abductors were killed. Nusrat Osman was abducted outside her home in the southern city of Blantyre on 11 September at about 12.30pm. Police had offered a reward of 30m Malawi kwacha (£12,950) for information leading to her rescue and the arrest of the perpetrators. Malawian police announced Osman’s rescue late on Thursday in a statement. “There was an exchange of fire between police and kidnappers, who were armed with [an] AK47 rifle and a Girsan Regard MC pistol. In the process, the criminals got shot and were taken to hospital where they succumbed to their injuries.” it read. A police officer, deputy inspector general Mlowoka Noel Kayira, was also shot during the operation. “He is currently receiving medical attention at the hospital and is in a stable condition,” police said. Osman, a 47-year-old auditor and mother of two, was safe and “not too shaken” after her ordeal, her brother Shobi Jiwa told the Sun, expressing his gratitude to Malawi’s police. Jiwa reserved special thanks for Kayira. “He is the hero of our family. He’s the hero of the country,” he said. “He’s the hero of the world, actually, for putting his life at risk and taking a bullet into himself for my sister.” Kidnappings are rare in Malawi, which has experienced a rise in pickpocketing and house burglaries by often armed men in recent years amid unstable, crisis-ridden economic conditions. The landlocked southern African country is one of the world’s poorest nations, with a population of about 22 million and an average annual income of just $672, according to the World Bank. In 2024, a country report by the US state department’s diplomatic security service said: “Kidnappings are not a widespread concern in Malawi, and there have been no recent high-profile incidents involving westerners. “Historically, expatriates have not been significant targets for kidnappings in the country. When kidnappings do occur, they often involve members of the Asian business community rather than foreign travellers or residents.” Osman, who is originally from Leicester, worked for a local audit firm and had lived in Malawi with her husband and children for several years. Before her rescue, her family said they had not had any news of her, including any contact from the kidnappers demanding a ransom. Her husband, Nazil Osman, told the local news outlet Nyasa Times: “I don’t know where she is or how she is. My wife is an auditor, and I have no issues with anyone.” Her brother told the Sun on Tuesday: “My sister has been missing for five days with no trace or call,” adding that the family could not think of a motive for her kidnapping. Police did not say whether information received in response to the offered reward had led to Osman’s rescue, adding that investigations were ongoing and more details would be shared “in due course”.

Disabled people need right to travel abroad, say UK MPs amid ‘ridiculous’ restrictions row

Disabled people must have a guaranteed right to travel abroad, MPs and peers have said, as further cases emerged of individuals barred from taking holidays as a result of “ridiculous” rules imposed by local NHS care boards and local councils. Leading figures have called on the government to bring in clear national guidelines to ensure people who require full-time personal assistants (PAs) are not prevented from using funding for their 24/7 support team for breaks and work trips. Wide variations in local rules governing foreign travel mean whether a disabled person can take their care team abroad can depend on where they live, the whim of local officials or whether they are prepared to mount a legal challenge. The call came as it emerged two men with the same health condition and care packages, living 40 miles from each other, are subject to different rules regarding overseas travel with their PA support team. While Joel, 40, a graduate who works in marketing for a global brand, is barred by his local health board from using his personal health budget to contribute to the travel costs of his PAs when going abroad, David, 25, who lives in a neighbouring health board area, receives a travel costs allocation. While Joel (not his real name) has been effectively prevented from travelling overseas for the past eight years – he can afford his own travel costs but not those of his two PAs – David was free to take a trip to Europe this summer with his PA support team. “This is really unfair and brazenly discriminatory,” Joel said. “It is a fundamental human right that individuals with disabilities should have the same freedoms, opportunities and choices to travel as any able-bodied person would.” Jane Campbell, a leading disability rights campaigner, said: “These ridiculous care restrictions are against common sense. Stipulating where and when the person can use the support they’ve been assessed as needing is like tagging somebody, as if a prisoner out on parole.” The Guardian previously revealed NHS care boards and local councils were refusing to allow disabled people to use their care funding outside the UK, even when they paid PA travel expenses themselves. Joel’s case suggests other care boards are indirectly barring disabled people from travelling: while overseas travel is in theory allowed, in practice it is unaffordable without NHS funding for PA expenses. Lady Campbell said: “It’s as if those controlling the purse strings believe disabled people do not deserve the same experiences they enjoy. The government constantly says how important it is for disabled people to work and take responsibility for their lives and yet when we do, these kind of rules are imposed. “We need national guidelines on using care abroad now to protect disabled people’s rights and end this nonsense once and for all.” Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee, said the restrictions potentially breached the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which the UK has ratified. “Disabled people should have the same freedom as everyone else to travel for work, to visit family or simply to go on holiday,” said Abrahams. Joel, who has spinal muscular atrophy, was initially allowed to use his health budget to pay for his PAs to travel with him and had two short breaks in Europe, at his own cost. Eight years ago, his NHS funder, now Cheshire and Merseyside NHS integrated care board, reversed its decision, ruling travel costs were valid for the UK only. He challenged the ruling but was rebuffed, being told earlier this year by the care board that the period in 2017 when it permitted him to use his personal care budget for overseas PA travel costs was a “historical error in decision-making”. Just 40 miles (64km) away David (not his real name) said his local care board made very different rulings. Greater Manchester integrated care partnership blocked his requests for holiday PA expenses for five years. Officials finally relented last year after he submitted detailed evidence suggesting its decision would breach NHS guidance and human rights law. It allocated £2,370 annually to enable David to contribute to his PA team’s travel and accommodation costs. David, a graduate with a first-class degree, last year took his first trip abroad without his parents, paid for by himself. He said: “It can feel like being in a prison for a person with my condition. I want to live how my peers live. I want independence. I want a change of scenery from time to time.” The MP Marsha de Cordova, who is a former minister for disabled people, said local variations highlighted the urgent need for national guidelines: “Disabled people’s right to travel should not be decided by the mood of local officials.” Cheshire and Merseyside’s most recent policy, approved last week [10 September] states that while disabled individuals can request holiday travel expenses for their PAs it would “not ordinarily” pay for them. It states it has an obligation to use NHS funds “in a way which is fair and equitable”. NHS Greater Manchester said it had no ratified policy on holiday travel. The Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) position is that care boards should examine all requests for PA travel support and consider the health and wellbeing benefits for the applicant of overseas travel for the applicant. A DHSC spokesperson said: “Personal health budgets work best where people have real flexibility over how they use their budgets and we expect integrated care boards to examine each proposal on a case-by-case basis, in line with national policy and legislation.” NHS Cheshire and Merseyside and NHS Greater Manchester separately issued the following statement: “While we cannot comment on individual patient cases, all requests for personal health budget funding are assessed according to our personal health budget and integrated budget policy on a case-by-case basis according to patient need. This policy has been developed in line with national NHS guidance.”