Philpott's 17-Year Sentence 'Draconian'

Mairead Philpott is not safe in prison and her 17-year prison sentence for killing her six children is unfair, a court has heard.

In the most high-profile case to be broadcast since cameras were allowed into the Court of Appeal last month, Shaun Smith QC, representing Philpott, said she will forever be known as a "child killer".

He told the appeal court in Nottingham there had been "a clamour for the draconian punishment" for Philpott even before her sentence was passed, and added that Mairead was under the influence of her husband Mick, 56, who was jailed for life.

"Whatever happens from now on," he said, "there will be a number of permanent reminders of her inability to say stop."

"She will, despite the fact that she has been found guilty of manslaughter, be forever known as a child killer.

Back (l-r) Duwayne and John, Front (l-r) Jack, Jessie, Jade and Jayden

"Her time in custody will inevitably carry with it the risks attached to all inmates serving sentences involving the death of children.

"When she is released she will have no support network, nobody supports her, at all.

"She will never again be allowed to have children or be involved with children."

Philpott, 33, and family friend Paul Mosley, 46, got 17 years for the manslaughter of the children in a house fire in Derby in May 2012.

Mick has not appealed, and a plan for Mosley to appeal has been abandoned.

A wedding photo of Mick and Mairead Philpott

Jade Philpott, 10, and her brothers, Duwayne, 13, John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, and Jayden, five, all died in their bedrooms after a fire swept through the family home on Victory Road in the Allenton area of the city.

Mairead's father, Jimmy Duffy, said she "shouldn't be appealing at all".

"They should be getting on with what they've got," he added.

Mr Duffy said he was in support of court proceedings being televised.

"Basically they're going to be seen for what they are, in fact they should have televised the whole case if I had my way," he said.

The house at Victory Road being demolished

Mr Duffy said his daughter had written to him from prison.

In the letter, Philpott said she is "coping as best as I can it's hard but I'm doing ok for now", and signs off, "Hope to hear from you soon, love Mairead xxxxxx".

But Mr Duffy has little sympathy for her.

"I love her, she's my daughter, don't get me wrong, she's my flesh and blood, but I can't forgive her for even having a part in it," he said.

Mosley's sister Angela doesn't think he should have tried to appeal in the first place.

She told Sky News: "If you knew your friend was going to set fire to their house, my first port of call would be to the police station.

"You would do everything in your power to stop the fire but they didn't they carried on, they're guilty."

It is the first time a Court of Appeal hearing has been filmed outside London.

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::Watch the case live on Sky News

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Bodies In Home Of Woman 'Not Seen For Decades'

A woman not seen by neighbours for more than 30 years has been found dead at her home in Oxford, with the body of her daughter nearby.

Police broke into the terraced property after reports of a pungent smell and initially recovered the body of daughter Caroline Jessett.

She is thought to have been dead for several months.

However, officers were unable to go upstairs amid fears the property could collapse and engineers spent a week shoring up the walls.

When police returned yesterday, they discovered the body of mother Pauline Jessett, in her 70s, in an upstairs room.

Sources suspect she may have been dead for months, or even years.

Post-mortem examinations are being carried out and the deaths are so far unexplained. 

Neighbours, in Cowley Road, Littlemore, south Oxford, described both women as reclusive and some said they had not seen Pauline Jessett for 30 years.

They told journalists that the curtains at the home were always drawn and the Jessetts refused to answer calls at the front door.

One neighbour, who did not want to be named, told reporters she had not seen Pauline since the 1980s when her husband had died.

Caroline had not been spotted for at least six months and also rarely ventured out, the neighbour added.

Photographs at the property revealed an overgrown garden and furniture piled up inside the house.  

Investigating officer Detective Inspector John Turner said: "There continues to be nothing at this stage to suggest these deaths are suspicious.

"Investigations are now being carried out to determine the circumstances."

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Mortgage Approvals Hit Six-Year High For UK

Mortgage approvals have hit their highest level since February 2008 while the rate of annual house price growth has accelerated to 6.5%, according to the latest figures.

The Bank of England reported that 67,701 home loans were dished out in October - just 24 hours after confirming that its Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) would no longer support mortgage borrowing from January to help prevent the market overheating.

Nationwide said earlier on Friday that a monthly house price increase of 0.6% in November took average UK values to £174,566 from £173,678 in October, though prices were still around 6% below their 2007 peak.

A large part of the improvement, Nationwide said, could be attributed to "further improvements in the labour market and the brighter economic outlook."

Nationwide provides a respected monthly report on house prices

A shortage of property on the market and incentives to help borrowers under Government schemes such as Help to Buy have been cited as reasons for national price growth, which has soared in London and the South East.

Yesterday, the Bank of England took the first step in putting the brakes on the property market as it scrapped an initiative that has had a significant part to play in encouraging mortgage lending.

Governor Mark Carney said the FLS stimulus would instead focus purely on helping small business borrowing, which remains muted.

FLS has offered lenders access to cheap finance on condition that they pass on the benefits to borrowers, and experts yesterday said that the Bank's move could spell the "beginning of the end" for ultra-cheap mortgage deals.

Fears of a looming property bubble have been growing in recent months amid a string of reports suggesting demand in the housing market far outstrips the growth in the supply of homes.

London in particular has seen strong demand this year, and Land Registry figures released on Thursday showed that house prices in London were up by 8.7% year-on-year in October.

But the market remains patchy and prices in the North East have dropped by 3.1% year-on-year, according to the registry.

The latest phase of Help to Buy, which offers state-backed mortgages to people with deposits as low as 5% was launched in October and this is expected to inject further activity into the market among credit-worthy buyers who have particularly struggled to get on the housing ladder or move up it since the financial crisis struck because they have a lack of upfront funds.

Lenders representing around two-thirds of the mortgage market have committed to coming on board the scheme and there are also signs of competition increasing to attract low-deposit borrowers from lenders which are outside the Help to Buy scheme.

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Police Appeal After Teen 'Abducted' In Van

Police are appealing for witnesses after a teenage boy was dragged from a street into a van which then drove off.

The alleged victim is described as a white male, possibly aged approximately 16/17 years old with a slim build and was wearing blue coloured jeans and a grey coloured jumper.

Officers were told that at around 3pm on Wednesday a white van stopped in Hyland Way in Hornchurch, Essex, and forced the boy into the vehicle.

Police in Havering Borough are especially keen to be contacted by a dog walker seen in the local area who was witnessed shouting "stop" at the van. This witness is described as a white man, possibly aged in his 30s, walking a brown or gold coloured dog.

The van is described as small, coloured white but dirty and with a side opening door. The rear windows are believed to be blacked out and the front headlights are believed to have a blue coloured tint.

There are currently no matching missing persons reports and police have no further details which could lead to the identity of the boy.

Anyone that can assist police are asked to call the CID main office on 01708 779 224 or police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

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London 'Slavery' Case: New Homes Investigated

Detectives say they are investigating 13 addresses as part of their probe into claims that three women were held as slaves in London.

The inquiry began after one of three alleged victims told a charity she had been kept against her will for more than 30 years in a house in south London.

The three women - a 30-year-old Briton, a 57-year-old Irishwoman and a 69-year-old Malaysian - are believed to have suffered years of physical and mental abuse at the hands of a couple.

Police carried out house-to-house enquiries over the weekend in and around Peckford Place in Brixton, where the three women were found.

It has emerged that the couple - a man aged 73 and a 67-year-old woman - were previously arrested in the 1970s, although police have not said why.

They are of Indian and Tanzanian origin.

Police outside the property where the women were allegedly held

Officers have recovered a birth certificate for the 30-year-old woman, who is believed to have lived her entire life in servitude, but no other official documents for her have been found.

The case came to light after the Irish woman rang the Freedom Charity last month after seeing its founder Aneeta Prem in a Sky News report about forced marriages.

The Metropolitan Police said part of the agreement on October 25 when the women were removed from the address was that police would not take any action at that stage.

None of the women was reported missing after being rescued, police said. All three are now in the care of a specialist non-governmental organisation.

Some 37 officers from the Met's human-trafficking unit are working on the case.

On Sunday, Home Secretary Theresa May said tackling modern slavery in Britain was a "personal priority", saying many other victims were "hidden in plain sight" across the country.

"It is walking our streets, supplying shops and supermarkets, working in fields, factories or nail bars, trapped in brothels or cowering behind the curtains in an ordinary street: slavery," she wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.

"Something most of us thought consigned to history books, belonging to a different century, is a shameful and shocking presence in modern Britain."

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Bereavement: Workers 'Should Get Paid Leave'

Campaigners are urging the Government to give workers the legal right to paid leave if they have been affected by a family bereavement amid growing public support for the move.

Two thirds of people said it was unfair that bereavement leave was unpaid, a survey of more than 1,500 adults showed.

The poll, commissioned by the Change Bereavement Leave campaign, also showed that seven out of 10 people said they would back a national guaranteed minimum of paid leave.

The findings were welcomed by Lucy Herd who discovered that her partner could only take three days unpaid leave from work when their 23-month-old son Jack drowned in their garden pond in Cumbria three years ago.

"David Cameron acknowledged he was able to take two weeks off after the death of his own son, but sadly not all parents have sympathetic or understanding employers or can afford unpaid time off," she said.

"We would like to see four weeks of paid bereavement leave for parents."

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "Thinking about how they might cope following the death of a close family member is clearly not something many of us want to spend much time contemplating.

"Most people will be surprised to learn that unless they have an understanding employer, they may not be able to take much time off work following a death in the family, and if they are, any compassionate leave will almost certainly be unpaid.

"Coping with the sudden loss of a loved one is traumatic enough without having to worry about work too. The Government should do the right thing and give people a legal right to paid time away from their jobs after someone close to them has died.

"Employers can also help ease the upset of their bereaved employees a little by being more generous depending on someone's individual circumstances - for example a parent coping with the sudden loss of a child is likely to need much more time off work."

Labour MP Tom Harris has raised the issue in the Commons, saying that many bereaved parents go back to work too early after the death of a child because they have no right to employment leave.

"Most people are unaware that there is currently no right to bereavement leave for parents. This is an injustice that Parliament needs to address," he said.

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Toddler Khaleel Hussain: Murder Appeal Launched

Police investigating the murder of a toddler have appealed to people who had contact with him to come forward.

Detectives are trying to build up a picture of Khaleel Hussain's life and are keen to speak to further witnesses with information which could assist their inquiries.

The two-year-old boy died at Birmingham Children's Hospital on October 22 following a serious head injury.

He was taken there after being admitted to the University Hospital Coventry the previous day after falling ill at his home in the Stoke area of Coventry, police said.

They are particularly keen to talk to anyone who had contact with him in the days and weeks before he lost his life.

Although a post-mortem examination proved inconclusive, the case is being treated as murder.

Further tests are being carried out to establish a cause of death.

A 21-year-old man and 25-year-old woman arrested in connection with the investigation remain on police bail.

Detective Chief Inspector Dean Young, from the Coventry Police Public Protection Unit, said: "We are still trying to piece together exactly what happened before Khaleel suffered the injuries that ultimately led to his death.

"As part of our ongoing inquiry I am keen to speak to anyone who had contact with him or his family during his very short life, particularly in the days and weeks before he died.

"We have spoken to lots of people as part of the investigation so far, but I'm sure there are others out there who may have information that could help us and I would urge them to come forward."

Anyone who can assist the investigation should contact the Public Protection Unit at Coventry Police on 101 or the Crimestoppers service anonymously on 0800 555 111.

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Monty Python Tickets Sell Out In 44 Seconds

Four new dates have been announced after tickets for the first Monty Python live show for 30 years sold out within 44 seconds.

The veteran comedy troupe - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones - announced they were getting back together last week.

A spokesman for the Pythons said the July 1 event sold out in 43.5 seconds on Monday morning and tickets for four further shows had immediately gone on sale.

The concerts at the venue in Greenwich, South East London, come more than 30 years after their last stage performance.

Speaking at last week's news conference, they said they would include some of  their most famous routines including the dead parrot sketch.

But Cleese ruled out a re-run of one of his best loved moments, the Ministry of Silly Walks, saying: "I have an artificial knee and an artificial hip so there's no chance of that".

Idle said fans could "expect a little comedy, a lot of pathos, some music and a tiny bit of ancient sex".

Their last major live show was at the Hollywood Bowl in 1982.

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