The Republic of Ireland is to investigate the homes for children born outside marriage and their mothers, run by religious institutions for most of the last century. It follows concerns over the deaths of almost 800 children at a convent-run mother-and-baby home in Galway over several decades and controversy about whether they were given proper burials. Mairead Enright of the Faculty of Law at the University of Kent said the inquiry could help to create a new Ireland in which the attitudes of shame and exclusion could never again be fostered. ‘There are plenty of people in Ireland not much older than me who remember girls who were sitting next to them in school who weren't there the next day because they'd got pregnant and they'd been shipped off somewhere,’ she said. ‘It has had influence on families, on how parents raised their daughters, on how women were perceived.’

A woman who had an abortion at 39 weeks has prompted outrage from British politicians. The women in question allegedly terminated her pregnancy just days before her due date as her unborn child was considered at risk of being disabled. ‘I do not understand how we can have a law which allows the life of a baby with a disability to be ended at full term,’ Fiona Bruce, MP for Congleton and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-life Group, has commented. ‘It is a graphic illustration of society's inconsistency on disability. After birth we work hard to ensure equality, but before birth we have laws to prevent the disabled taking their first breath.’  MP Rob Flello added: ‘We have a Jekyll and Hyde approach to disability. On one hand the entire country can be united in praise of Paralympians. On the other we can permit the abortion of children at nine months simply for the crime of having a disability.

A scathing report has prompted a call for a rethink of schools oversight as MP threatens to name council officials who took no action. A group of fundamentalist ‘activists’, mostly men of Pakistani origin, infiltrated the management of at least ten schools in Birmingham, sometimes breaking the law in order to introduce Muslim worship and sex segregation, according to a highly critical report. Their activities were unimpeded by council officials who were fearful of allegations of Islamphobia, and who forced ousted teachers to sign gagging clauses rather than treat their complaints seriously as whistleblowers, Ian Kershaw, the authority's independent adviser, concluded. Sir Albert Bore, leader of the city's Labour-run council, apologised on Friday to the people of Birmingham ‘for the way the actions of a few, including some within the council, have undermined the great reputation of our city’.

This week, a High Court judge considered whether fresh evidence from the Mayor of London’s office shows that Boris Johnson personally ordered Transport for London to ban a bus advert by Christian charity Core Issues Trust (CIT), and whether he did so for an improper purpose during his re-election campaign in 2012. Mrs Justice Lang upheld the ban on the CIT slogan, ‘Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get over it!’ at the original High Court hearing. (See also Prayer Alert 05-2014) Following the decision, CIT submitted a Freedom of Information request which revealed emails suggesting the Mayor had personally instructed TFL to ban the adverts. One email from the Mayor’s Director of Communications at the time, Guto Harri, states that the Mayor personally ordered the Christian advertisement to be pulled. CIT took the case to the Court of Appeal which sent it back to Mrs Justice Lang to consider the new email evidence which she had not seen at the first hearing.