Scientists are taking vicars on tours of laboratories and addressing church services as part of a series of projects designed to foster better understanding between science and faith. CofE vicars in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire will tour laboratories with Christian science professionals, while scientists address Sunday services and church discussion forums on science and faith. ‘Take Your Vicar to the Lab’ is one of eight projects helping churchgoers engage confidently with science, raising the profile of Christians whose vocation is science-related, and changing the debate about science and faith in churches and communities. There will be a science, medicine and technology festival at Ely Cathedral; café-style discussion evenings with students and science professionals in Baptist churches in Leeds; a family science and faith club at parishes in Oxfordshire; 100 scientific activities for Messy Church sessions; and booklets encouraging young people to explore the Isle of Man Cathedral gardens from a science and faith perspective.

A firm used by the Government to cut tax credit payments has received calls from ‘suicidal’ clients. A whistle-blower said most staff weren't even trained to deal with such calls and staff were not offered counselling but were instead told, ‘Have a smoke - you'll be fine.’ But US firm Concentrix said that its staff are trained in accordance with Government guidelines, and ‘are supported as much as possible where we have encountered this type of scenario.’ Concentrix was awarded a £75m contract by the department responsible for collecting taxes and paying out certain benefits to help cut tax credit fraud and overpayment. It will not have its two-year contract renewed next year. A member of the company's Belfast office said, ‘The 600 workers were yelled at every day by clients, with people crying down the phone to you that they're down to their last bag of wipes or have no food in the fridge to feed their kids’.

Brexit will ‘enhance’ Scotland's standing in the world rather than diminish it, Theresa May has said. In a column in Holyrood magazine, the Prime Minister said the Brexit talks were an exciting chance to forge a new role in the world. Mrs May said Scotland's financial expertise, shipbuilding prowess and food and drink could be global leaders. The SNP said this was jaw-dropping hypocrisy, accusing her government of chaos and confusion over Brexit. In June's EU referendum, Scottish voters backed Remain by 62%, the stated preference of Nicola Sturgeon's government. Writing in the Daily Telegraph Alex Neil, formerly a member of Ms Sturgeon's cabinet, said leaving the EU provides a ‘golden opportunity’ to win new devolved powers for Holyrood.

British Muslims should be given a new way of reporting hate crimes that bypasses the police because the Government’s controversial Prevent anti-extremism strategy has ruined trust between the two parties, Andy Burnham has suggested. Labour’s shadow home secretary called for a root and branch review of the system, and said the true scale of Islamophobic hate crimes was being hidden because Muslims were reticent to report such crimes to Prevent. He compared Prevent to the French ban on the burkini swimming costume and said it singles out one community for different treatment. He said such an approach risked legitimising or inspiring Islamophobic hate crime. Pupils are afraid to speak up in class in case they're seen as extremist. Earlier this year the UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of assembly warned that Prevent could actually end up promoting extremism, describing it as a ‘Big Brother’ approach.