Daily roundup 14 March: Childcare vouchers, Telford, and extremism

Ministers are to delay scrapping a system of childcare vouchers by six months after an intervention by the Democratic Unionist Party. The BBC reports that Education Secretary Damian Hinds made the concession during a House of Commons debate. The employer-backed voucher scheme, used by up to 450,000 parents, was due to be closed to new entrants next month but will now have a temporary reprieve. An alternative system of tax-free childcare introduced by the government has suffered a succession of problems.


Reports on the scale of sexual abuse in Telford are "sensationalised", a police chief has said. The BBC report that a Sunday Mirror investigation found up to 1,000 girls in the Shropshire town may have been victims of grooming gangs since the 1980s. One victim told how she was abused at a "rape house" and the town's MP Lucy Allan said girls were being traded for sex in a "routine way". West Mercia Police Supt Tom Harding "significantly disputed" the figures.


Extremist parents could have their children taken away by the courts because they do not provide a "safe" place to grow up, the Justice Secretary warned today. The Daily Mail reports that David Gauke said society had a right to declare certain environments too dangerous for children to grow and develop in. He drew a comparison between the children of religious extremists to those of paedophiles. Since the start of the Syria conflict around 100 children have been safeguarded through the family courts.


An extra 1.5 million children will have be in poverty by 2021 as a consequence of the government's austerity programme, according to a study of the impact of tax and benefit policy by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Guardian reports that the EHRC study forecasts dramatic increases in poverty rates among children in lone parent and minority ethnic households, families with disabled children and households with three or more children.


A 17-year-old boy has been charged with the murders of a teenage boy and a man in Camden, Scotland Yard said. The Guardian reports that the teenager has also been charged with violent disorder following an incident in Pembury Circus, Hackney, east London, on the same day, 20 February. He will appear at Highbury Corner magistrates' court on Wednesday.