Timing of his announcement caused an unwelcome distraction to the Coalition

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Iain Duncan Smith’s campaign to show how the welfare system discourages claimants from working was backed up yesterday with newly published figures from his department about how different groups have fared under the recession.

Iain Duncan Smith's campaign to show how the welfare system discourages claimants from working was backed up today with newly published figures from his department about how different groups have fared under the recession.

After more than five weeks of calm on its border with Gaza, Israel is allowing more building materials into the territory and considering easing other restrictions as part of an Egypt-brokered cease-fire with Hamas that ended an eight-day conflict in November, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Ed Miliband today branded the coalition “a bad Government that is letting down the good people of this country”, in a New Year's message promising that Labour will offer Britain hope in 2013.

When Frances O'Grady was elected general secretary of the TUC, there were two widespread responses. The first was to hail the arrival of the first woman in that job and lament that it had taken so long. The second was to ask what difference it might make to have a woman at the top of an organisation known – rightly or wrongly – for a bias towards the old industries and rather a lot of unreconstructed paternalism.

Muslim women are the British economy's major untapped resources, as the latest census reveals a rise in this country's Muslim population, it's time to take notice

Serco

Hospitals and GPs' surgeries could soon be expected to provide more routine services at the weekend under proposals to accelerate the spread of seven-day working across the National Health Service.

When the new NHS Commissioning Board publishes its first planning guidance on Tuesday, a central proposal will be that hospitals and GP surgeries should move towards a seven-day working week. Such a change is long overdue. It is 15 years since the reform of Sunday trading laws allowed shops to open every day of the week. Yet hospitals remain stuck in a culture of nine to five, Monday to Friday.

The chaos that has descended on the translation facilities available to Britain's courtrooms is an object lesson in how not to privatise a public service. Court officials have had to scramble to find qualified interpreters at short notice. There has been a sharp rise in delayed and abandoned trials. Individuals have been kept needlessly in jail on remand. And the quality of interpreters has at times been appalling. All this is contained in a withering assessment of the new system by the Public Accounts Committee.

The number of people out of work has fallen by the largest amount in over a decade, official statistics have shown. The figures reveal unemployment fell by 82,000 in the three months to October to 2.51 million – down 128,000 on a year ago.