Plans for a major shake-up of adult social care in England have been announced by the government. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said an independent commission, led by Baroness Louise Casey and launching in April, "will work to build a national consensus around a new National Care Service". 

What did the commentators say?
This will be "no-nonsense civil servant" Casey's "toughest challenge yet", said Andrew Gregory in The Guardian. "Leading voices" have warned that social care provision is facing collapse, with high employment costs and lack of funding "threatening" its sustainability. A House of Lords report last September revealed that more than 130,000 social care posts were vacant in 2023-24, with the shortages exacerbated by the previous government's policies preventing carers from overseas bringing their families to the UK.

"Three things are needed" to get the sector back on track, said Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King's Fund policy think-tank, in the Financial Times. The government must address the financial challenges, then "take forward long-term reforms" that address the reality of "people with modest means" having to pay for care ("previous administrations have frozen in the face of this challenge"). Thirdly, they should "get on with putting in place the building blocks" that will make these reforms possible. These could include Streeting's already mooted NHS transition "from analogue to digital", and shift in focus "from sickness to prevention".

The health secretary has announced an extra £86 million this financial year for the Disabled Facilities Grant, to help 7,800 elderly or disabled people adapt their homes to their needs, such as by installing stairlifts. 

What next?
The first phase of the commission, which will identify key issues, is due to report back in 2026. The second phase, reporting by 2028, will make longer-term recommendations. But critics have warned that immediate action is needed. "The people in care today cannot afford to wait any longer," said Martin Green, chief executive of Care England.

A newly uncovered mass escape of 80,000 farmed salmon off the coast of Scotland has increased concerns over the environmental impact of salmon farms.

The young fish were being transported from Loch Shin to the west coast of Scotland by boat in February 2023 when "human error" led to many escaping through an "unsecured hatch", said The Times. Dale Vince of sustainability charity Green Britain Foundation, which uncovered the incident, said the mass escape – and the fact that it was not made public for almost two years – should be "a wake-up call for us all".

The cost of farmed salmon
"Once a cottage industry", salmon farms are now the UK's "fastest growing food production business", said the i news site. It's also a hugely profitable one, accounting for £580 million of trade in 2023. But "with great demand comes great challenges around ethics and sustainability".

The UK's fish farms take the form of open pens near the coast, each holding between 30,000 to a million fish. These are banned in several countries, because fish faeces, uneaten food, copper treatment used to preserve netting, sea lice and the chemicals used to treat them pour into the ocean, with "occasionally disastrous consequences" for the environment.

The cost to wild salmon
Fish farms are also rife with infection and disease. In 2023, a record 17.4 million deaths were reported at Scottish salmon farms, according to the Fish Health Inspectorate – a 193% increase on 2020. And when escaped farmed fish enter the wild, so do their diseases. Although the causes of falling wild salmon stocks are "complex", with sewage and climate change among the key drivers, it is "impossible to rule salmon farms out as a factor", said the i news site.

But "the biggest barrier to long-term sustainability" of salmon farming is the amount of wild fish needed to feed them. Globally, about 17 million of the 91 million tonnes of wild-caught fish go to the fish-farming industry every year. "What was supposed to relieve pressure from overexploited oceans has become a new source of its exploitation," said Vox.

"Welcome to Meghan Markle's influencer era," said The Independent. The Duchess of Sussex has launched a new Instagram account as the first trailer drops for her new Netflix series, "With Love, Meghan".

Queen of Huns
The show will celebrate the "joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship", said Claudia Cockerell in London's The Standard. The foundations are clearly being laid for Markle to establish herself as an influencer and "follow the Goop playbook".

I have "always had a soft spot for Meghan", said Rebecca Reid on the i news site, but the whole thing feels, "for lack of a kinder word, cringe". Perhaps Markle should "bypass cool and head straight for cheugy". As long as she avoids hiring "anyone who knows anything about social media", she "might enjoy a renaissance as Queen of the Huns".

Trad wife Meghan
"We've had Meghan, the actress, Meghan, the people's princess, and Meghan the wound-licking, Oprah-confiding ex-royal," said The Times. Now it seems the Duchess of Sussex has a "new guise": "Meghan, the trad wife". The "honey-hued trailer" for her new show may seem "a little Stepford", but with the popularity of housewife influencers soaring and "ostentatious displays of domesticity" now "de rigueur" online, "With Love, Meghan" is "bang on the money".

Opening up her life online will inevitably draw an "extra dose of criticism", said The Independent. Still, "a 'hate follow' is still a follow", and "social media offers the potential to make money from her detractors – it might just give Meghan the last laugh after all."

Our attitude to growth is a choice to be poor
Emma Duncan in The Times
I've always put Britain and the US in the same "rich-country pigeonhole", writes Emma Duncan, but "looking at the numbers, I realised that some frog-boiling has been going on". In 2010, British GDP per person was 82% of America's, but "now it is 60%". The "growing disparity" is partly due to our "ambivalent" attitude towards growth and wealth creation. "We're entitled to value leisure over money, workers over firms", but "we need to be clear about the costs".

No legal term – even genocide – can fathom Israel's atrocities in Gaza
Rob Howse on Novara Media
Israel's assault on Gaza is "more than genocide", writes international law professor Rob Howse, "it's gleeful killing without restraint". As South Africa said in its case at the International Court of Justice, Israel's military and political leaders "repeatedly told their soldiers to destroy everything, to remove every restraint". This is "not just about genocide" but "also about legicide – destroying the whole notion of legal limits in war" – and "the harm to law and morality" that goes with it.

Fat people can't expect to get weight-loss drugs on the NHS
Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph
The "whole notion of self-control" is "being abandoned as an impossible dream" when it comes to tackling obesity, writes Rowan Pelling. Rolling out weight-loss medication on the NHS as a "panacea" is not just another "expense to the taxpayer", it also risks creating a "vicious cycle" of "food giants pumping out ultra-processed foods and big pharma flogging their victims slimming injections". Instead, we should "reward every fledgling step towards better self-maintenance", and "tut-tut" those who shirk that responsibility.