Newspaper headlines: May's £20bn NHS boost and mother's 'cannabis oil victory' By BBC News

Staff Published duration 17 June 2018

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The Mail on Sunday calls the prime minister's pledge to substantially boost spending on the NHS "May's £20bn NHS gamble".

It says Mrs May is betting that the public will be willing to face tax hikes to pay for better care.

The Observer says the cabinet is split over the scale of the tax increases and claims there are ongoing arguments between Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor Philip Hammond and the prime minister.

The paper says one option being considered is a freeze on tax thresholds.

This would be a big policy U-turn by the Tories because the party is committed to raising the point at which people start paying basic rate income tax and the threshold for higher rate.

In an editorial, the paper says people are already seeing wage growth that is hardly ahead of inflation. It says they are pounded by the Treasury at the fuel pump, and the sugar tax has made soft drinks more expensive.

Instead, the Sun believes, the NHS needs fundamental reform to make it far, far more efficient.

The Sunday Express says the description of the funding as a Brexit dividend represents a victory for Leavers after a fierce battle in the cabinet.

It says the money will be significantly higher than the pledge of £350m a week famously used on the side of a bus during the EU referendum campaign.

The Mail on Sunday characterises the move as Mrs May hijacking Boris's bus.

In an editorial , the paper says the cash means that those who care about the NHS have a stake in ensuring that we negotiate a pragmatic Brexit - and it warns Tory MPs to resist calls for rebellion.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who campaigned for Remain in the referendum, has written an article for the Sunday Telegraph , in which he says the £350m-a-week promise can now unite rather than divide both sides, because the government will deliver on it.

In an editorial, the paper says it makes opposing Brexit much harder, because it absolutely has to happen on schedule and rebel Conservative MPs would have to explain why they're against something that would redirect so much cash to the NHS.

The paper believes the real aim is to take Mrs May's premiership out of intensive care.

The Observer says some Remain supporting MPs have described the timing of the announcement, days before more crucial votes in Parliament, as cynical - with one saying it was sickening and pathetic that the government was trying to sell Brexit as a money-spinning course for the country to take, when the reality was that it was loaded with economic risk.

The Mail on Sunday claims credit for the government's change of policy on Saturday in allowing 12-year-old Billy Caldwell to be treated with banned cannabis oil.

Its reporter accompanied the boy's mother, Charlotte, on her trip to Canada to find the medication.

Writing in the same paper, the doctor, MP, and former health minister Dan Poulter says the Home Office's outdated rules were to blame for the deterioration in Billy's condition - and we should all unite behind a change now.

The Sunday Mirror says it comes to a pretty pass when Border Force officers act as drug enforcers and drug mules in the same week.

It says the fact that they confiscated medication from Ms Caldwell on Monday, and then had to return it to a London hospital yesterday, shows the law is an ass.

The Daily Star Sunday says withholding the medication from a child when it's freely available in many other countries is nothing short of cruelty and the law needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency.

The lead for the Sunday Times is figures showing that under 5% of street robberies and burglaries are being solved by police.

The paper has drawn up a crime map of Britain, showing the performance of the police in every neighbourhood.

It says that in more than a thousand places with at least thirty crimes last year, officers failed to catch anyone.

The Metropolitan Police told the paper it accepted there was more work to be done.

The World Cup is seen by the Daily Star Sunday not so much as a celebration of football, but as a boost to Britain's pubs.

It's been to one in Norfolk where the landlord has built a grandstand in the car park, to increase capacity from 200 customers to 500.

In Russia itself, the Sun on Sunday says the England team has been banned from using room service, because of fears of a Russian plot to poison them.

Almost every paper seems to have sent a reporter to the Labour Party's arts and music festival yesterday - officially called Labour Live, but universally referred to as the Jez Fest - but they all agree that it was relatively poorly attended.

There were few enough people that queues for the loos were non-existent, he writes, but he did wait 35 minutes for a burrito, meaning he missed most of Unite leader Len McCluskey's speech.

Michael Deacon in the Sunday Telegraph says only Mr Corbyn got the crowd alive - and if they hold the event again next year perhaps they should just give him a guitar.