Newspaper headlines: Strep A warnings and Matt Hancock diaries

Matt HancockReuters

The first extracts from the former health secretary's diaries were published on Friday

By BBC News
Staff

The strikes planned by nurses in England and Wales later this month preoccupy the Times.

It has conducted research suggesting that up to 140,000 patients could have operations and consultations cancelled because of the action.

The paper's leader says the prime minister must work out how to prevent the wave of walk-outs in the NHS and other sectors paralysing the country if he's to have any chance of restoring confidence in the government.

On its front page, the Guardian reports that up to half a million of the UK's most vulnerable families have been left without government help to pay their energy bills, since October.

It says this is because an estimated one point three million vouchers for homes that use pre-payment meters have been lost, delayed or not been claimed.

A government spokesman tells the paper: "All vouchers for October and November should have been dispatched by suppliers. If customers have not received them, or are having difficulties in redeeming them, they should contact their supplier".

The Sun's opinion column accuses the unions of - in its words - "using skint families and stricken firms as cannon fodder in their political war".

It calls on Rishi Sunak to "show some Thatcherite steel" - by bringing in emergency laws, which would make it harder for workers to strike.

But the Daily Mirror has commissioned a poll - in which 54% of people said they supported the nurses' demand for a wage increase.

In the survey of 1,500 adults, the Mirror says only 23% were against the action. The paper's leader states that: "The findings reflect not just the widespread appreciation of NHS workers but also the dismay that nurses are so poorly paid."

Several of the papers lead on the recent deaths of six young children who had contracted the Strep A bacterial infection in England and Wales.

The Daily Mail quotes a microbiologist saying that Covid-prevention measures may have resulted in a "drop in population-wide immunity that could increase transmission, particularly in school-age children".

The Mail also offers its readers an exclusive look at Matt Hancock's pandemic diaries, kicking off a series of extracts taken from the former health secretary's book.

But the Daily Mirror takes a different approach to its first look at the diaries - taking a swipe at Mr Hancock for what it says are his "pathetic" frustrations that public opinion turned against him when he broke Covid lockdown guidance amid an affair with his aide.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times suggests that Russia has quietly amassed a fleet of more than a hundred ageing tankers to help get around western restrictions on its oil sales, imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

The paper says the Kremlin has assembled what the oil shipping industry refers to as a "shadow fleet". Experts say the evidence of this is a large increase in the number of unnamed or new buyers appearing in shipping registers.

Finally, the Daily Telegraph reports on how the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries is writing a book, which alleges that a group of Conservative MPs were involved in a three-year conspiracy to bring down Boris Johnson.

The paper says the book, which is called The Plot, will seek to disguise the identities of her sources, by giving them the names of characters from Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

But one Tory critic pours scorn on the idea, insisting that: "It's going to take a journalist thirty seconds to work out who is who."

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