‘Purge of the middle class’ and Dirty Den tributes

The Times says Charlotte Caldwell should be allowed to give her epileptic son, Billy, cannabis oil.

It was seized at Heathrow Airport as they travelled back from Canada. The 12-year-old is now in hospital in west London after suffering seizures.

“The Home Office should look into its soul, if it has such a thing, and give the medicine back,” the paper says.

“When laws are misapplied to put a desperate boy’s life at risk, justice is mocked.”

Leader writers are withering in their response to Sir Christopher Chope’s action yesterday in blocking a private members’ bill which would have specifically outlawed “upskirting”.

“It takes a depraved mind to want to film up women’s skirts,” says the Daily Mirror, “and an imbecilic one to want to block laws preventing it.”

“What was he thinking?” it asks. “By his inexplicable behaviour, Sir Christopher has brought nothing but disgrace upon himself.”

The Daily Telegraph leads on what it describes as fears of a “purge of the middle class” at top firms.

There are also questions about their parent’s educations and careers.

Tens of thousands of civil servants will apparently be asked the same questions in a survey in October.

David Green, director of the right-of-centre think tank, Civitas, calls it “sinister” and wonders where they’ll go next: “Perhaps they will ask ‘are you now or have you ever been a reader of the Daily Telegraph?'”

The paper’s not impressed: “This is not a road a Conservative government should be travelling,” it says.

Health service funding and Brexit are high on the agenda – sometimes together.

According to the Times, Theresa May will allow Brexiteers to claim that they’ve secured £350m a week for the NHS – days before forcing them to swallow a series of big compromises on Brexit.

The move is said to be linked to a multi-billion pound budget boost for the NHS which the prime minister will announce, possibly as early as tomorrow.

The paper says Boris Johnson has been pressing for the increased spending, under pressure to deliver on the most controversial promise of the Vote Leave campaign.

But one minister tells the paper Brexiteers were likely to be asked to make concessions in the weeks following, which could include agreeing that Britain should stay part of the single market for goods or compromising on the sort of trade deals that can be struck straight after Brexit.

It’s ducking the real issue: the NHS needs root and branch reform, but politicians are frightened to broach the subject of fundamental change within the NHS.

We need a visionary, the paper says – and at the moment they appear to be in pretty short supply.

The paper says one-and-a-half-million people are believed to have signed up for what it describes as “rip-off” wills sold – or offered free – by the banks in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The Mail claims the small print gave the banks the right to appoint themselves as executors and grab up to 2.5% from an estate in legal fees. “Will the banks never learn?” it asks.

The Financial Times reports that the Church of England is planning to add mobile phone masts to its rural spires in partnership with a company controlled by Goldman Sachs.

The church agreed to help solve the problem of broadband blackspots in an accord signed with the government last year, the paper says – but little progress has been made until now.

Mobile phone companies apparently complain that churches are asking too high a price.

A spokeswoman for Vodafone tells the paper: “It looked like they were trying to help the community, but really it has been about monetising the steeple.”

The Sun, the Daily Mirror and Daily Star give extensive coverage to the death of the former EastEnders actor, Leslie Grantham.

“A proper villain” agrees the Mirror. Both papers also cover the ups and downs of his off-screen life, but the Mirror concludes: “No-one can deny Dirty Den his place in soap’s hall of fame.”