News in brief
• Jeremy Corbyn has been warned that the resignation of the veteran MP Frank Field from the Labour whip over antisemitism and what Field called a culture of nastiness in the party must be treated as a wake-up call. In a blistering letter to Labour’s chief whip, Nick Brown, Field wrote “It saddens me to say that we are increasingly seen as a racist party”, and added that antisemitism alone would have been enough to prompt his resignation. Meanwhile, Peter Willsman, a Labour activist who claimed Jewish “Trump fanatics” were making up some of the allegations of antisemitism in the party, has been re-elected to the national executive committee.
• Alex Salmond has quit the Scottish National party as he seeks to clear his name of sexual misconduct charges. The former SNP leader and first minister, who brought the party to power at Holyrood in 2007 and close to winning an independence referendum in 2014, said he wanted to focus on his judicial review against the Scottish government over its handling of the two complaints against him.
• Children and young people with serious mental health problems are receiving treatment as far as 460km away from their homes, despite a pledge to end such practice, because bed shortages in some areas are so severe. Experts say sending highly troubled under-18s to units far from their family and friends can be frightening for them, reduces their chances of recovery and increases their risk of selfharm. In all, 1,039 children and adolescents in England were admitted to a nonlocal bed in 2017-18, in many cases more than 160km from home, figures collated by NHS England show.
• The opening of the £15bn ($19.3bn) Crossrail line across London will be delayed by up to a year, it has been announced, after months of rumours that the engineering scheme was facing increasing difficulties. The train line, which has been decades in the planning and will link west and east London with faster, high-capacity services, was due to open in December.