Women working at more than 30 British firms will be offered paid time off for IVF under a campaign for new laws requiring all employers to provide leave for fertility treatment.
Women undergoing IVF and other fertility treatment are not currently entitled to statutory paid leave.
But the Labour MP Alice Macdonald is campaigning for the Government to change the law and bring fertility leave into line with other statutory entitlements, such as sick pay and maternity leave.
She has secured a commitment from 38 businesses, including major companies like HSBC UK, Centrica and EON, as well as the Ministry of Defence, to offer their employees paid time off or flexible working to attend clinics for IVF or other fertility treatment.
How you ‘smart fridge’ could be hacked
Household appliances, energy meters and even microwaves are vulnerable to hacking from hostile states, experts have warned.
Here’s how…
Fridge hack
Hackers sent temperatures soaring in supermarket freezers across 10 countries on Tuesday – including Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Sweden.
The incident occurred three weeks after an unprecedented cyber attack caused French freezers to heat to 50°C, spoiling millions of euros worth of food.
How was the attack carried out?
Older internet remote-control boxes that manage refrigeration were targeted with an automatic defrost function, triggering dozens of shops, including IKEA.
Security experts believe a state actor like Russia may be to blame for the attacks, which also affected fridges in a small number of British businesses.
While state-linked attackers are more likely to target supply chains or national infrastructure to cause maximum disruption, experts are now calling for homeowners to reconsider if they need appliances that connect to the internet and action from government.
5 min read
Warnings from the Government
Millions have ‘smart fridges’
A YouGov poll last year showed more than two million Britons have smart fridges.
MP Graeme Downie said people in the UK should reconsider the connected appliances in their homes.
Cellular modules
Downie warned against the use of smart cellular modules that can connect to the internet or mobile network.
What else is vulnerable?
Luke de Pulford, the co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which monitors the threat from Beijing, said any firmware in devices that requires remote software could be vulnerable to hacking from a foreign-based entity.
- “Energy smart meters, microwaves, smart TVs – those are all things that are vulnerable. But also Chinese-made CCTV equipment. These are all devices that are well known to be vulnerable,” he said.
Taking pets abroad may be about to get easier – here’s why
Pet owners are likely to get easier access to the European Union for their pets under a new UK-EU agreement, it has been reported.
Pet passports
Pet passports will be revived under a new UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement due to be agreed ahead of a joint summit reports.
Post Brexit, pet owners paid £200 to obtain an animal health certificate in order to take them abroad. Under the proposed deal, pets will now be a given a passport.
New deals with the EU
- 1Travellers will be able to bring their dogs, cats, and ferrets into EU territory for the duration of their lifetime without the need for expensive certificates. This will be implemented from 2028.
- 2UK ministers also hope to agree a deal to give car manufacturers access to the EU’s Made in Europe scheme.
- 3The EU is also looking to agree a youth mobility scheme allowing up to 100,000 Europeans to work aand study in the UK a year. Separately, Brussels is also looking for a reduction in tuition fees for EU students.
UK may have to accept almost 100,000 young Europeans a year to unlock Brexit deal
British negotiators think they can strike a youth mobility agreement with the EU while staying under the “psychologically important” figure of 100,000 visas, The i Paper can reveal.
Why Rice Krispies is no longer made from whole grain rice
Kellogg’s has removed rice grains from its Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals after “changing weather conditions” affected the quality and availability of the ingredient, the firm has said.
New formula
Rice Krispies has been reformulated to use rice flour instead of rice, while Coco Pops now contains a blend of rice flour and corn flour in place of rice.
Under the new recipes, the cereals now also contain wheat gluten, meaning they are no longer suitable for shoppers with a wheat allergy or coeliac disease.
Kellogg’s spokeswoman:
“This recent change helps us maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the and grains used in our cereals.”
The change in formula comes after this year’s El Niño weather phenomenon caused widespread droughts, floods and heatwaves across much of Asia where most of the world’s rice comes from.
Watch more from The i Paper
What to know as Republicans suffer brutal election losses
The Democrats have made sweeping gains in a bruising night for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Sweeping victories
The US midterms have seen the Democrats flip key Republican Senate seats in places such as and .
The stunning results have been widely regarded as a consequence of the cost of living crisis which has been driven by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Losing both houses will now make it hard for Trump to drive his legislative agenda.
Key Republican losses in the Senate
Democrat James Talarico defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton in Texas.
Democrat Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, defeating Republican Jon Husted.
Democrat Annie Andrews beat Trump’s hand-picked candidate Darline Graham to take the seat.
The losses keep coming
Democrat Troy Jackson won, taking the state’s Senate seat for the first time in 29 years.
Abdul El-Sayed is projected to win, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history.
Paralympian Josh Turek won a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 18 years.
Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the 100-member Senate to win a majority, while in the 435-member House, they needed three. Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election in Georgia, told supporters “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame-duck President Donald J Trump”.
Trump’s response:
I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, the President sought to defend the bruising results.
While offering to work with opponents, he also posted a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word “Veto”, suggesting he would block legislation they sought to take through Congress.
Watch more from The i Paper
Why you feel completely broke
A decent salary and watching what you spend is increasingly not enough for people to feel well off– here’s why.
Cost of living
The UK is suffering the worst decade in terms of the growth in household incomes since records began.
Due to cost of living pressures and a lack of substantial wage growth, leading think-tanks like the Resolution Foundation predict that a typical working-age household will see their disposable income fall by £1,050 or 3 per cent between now and 2029.
Disposable income growing slower
Slow growth, inflation and stubbornly high housing costs are the main culprits. While disposable incomes fluctuated throughout the 1970s and 80s, they generally rose again after a fall. Not so since the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.
3 min read
House prices rising faster
The average house price in the UK is currently around 6.5 times the average income, compared to around 3.5 times in 1996 and 2.5 times in 1966.
- One could argue that it is why Andy Burnham thinks Britain should rejoin the European Union and why we’ve heard so much about growth – now rebranded as “good growth” – in order to improve incomes.
More people paying higher rate income tax
One of the major reasons behind stagnated income growth is the constant freezing of tax thresholds – levels that won’t change until 2030.
You are now dragged into paying the higher tax rate of 40 per cent if you earn £50,271 or more. You stay in that bracket until you earn £125,000, but at £100,000 a year you lose your personal tax-free allowance and your entitlement to state-funded free childcare.
The NHS blood test which could find several cancers
Blood tests capable of detecting signs of several cancers from a single sample will be offered to NHS patients in a world-first trial.
New blood tests
Thousands of patients will be invited to take part in the Stride-RCT study, which aims to catch cancers at a time when treatment is more likely to succeed.
The tests – which use AI and other cutting-edge technology – could also help GPs identify patients with cancers that are difficult to diagnose.
How will the tests be rolled out?
Who is eligible?
More than 20,000 patients aged 45 or older will be invited to take part.
The tests will be offered to patients who present with symptoms such as persistent bloating or abdominal discomfort.
Where will they be available?
The £8.5m government-funded trial will be offered in more than 200 GPs across England.
How do the tests work?
The tests are designed to detect signs of cancers including bowel, pancreatic, ovarian, stomach, liver, kidney, bladder and prostate cancer.
Some work by identifying tiny fragments of DNA that are shed into the bloodstream by tumours. Others measure proteins in the blood, or use AI to analyse results.
The tests aim not only to identify possible cancer cells but also to indicate where in the body it may be developing.
6 min read
Watch more from The i Paper
The current Equality and Human Rights Commission Code of Practice on Employment compares a woman undergoing fertility treatment to a man having cosmetic dental surgery – highlighting how poorly fertility treatment is recognised in workplace rights.
Macdonald has urged ministers to make fertility leave statutory so all businesses would be obliged to provide it.
Fertility-related unplanned sick leave costs UK employers up to £54 million every year, the organisation Fertility Matters At Work estimates.
The MP said that offering a few hours of paid leave and putting supportive policies in place would actually be beneficial for businesses, because they could plan out the time more effectively with their employees.
The pledge signed by the firms also commits them to having a clear fertility policy, appointing an ambassador to support colleagues undergoing treatment, and better training for managers on the subject.
Polling shows four in 10 women who revealed they were having IVF treatment to their employers say they have experienced discrimination as a result.
The research by the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, published to coincide with National Fertility Awareness Week, found that 27.1 per cent of women undergoing IVF do not tell their employer they are having treatment. And of those who do disclose it, 39.2 per cent say they have experienced discrimination.
Currently employees have no specific statutory right to time off work for fertility appointments, leaving many having to use up annual leave, take unpaid leave or call in sick.
Macdonald said she had heard personal stories from women who had hidden in their office toilets to do injections because they did not want to reveal to their bosses they were having IVF.
Some women might prefer to take up the flexible working option rather than a whole day of paid leave because they might only need a couple of hours for an appointment, she said.
Macdonald, the Labour MP for Norwich North, said there was increasing use of IVF for couples trying to get pregnant – with one child in every classroom conceived with the help of fertility treatment – so the issue was becoming more significant for women workers and businesses.
IVF accounted for 1.4 per cent of births in 2004, but by 2024 it had risen to 3.2 per cent.
The campaign for changes in the law would likely have cross-party support because it was previously raised by the former Conservative MP Nickie Aiken.
Macdonald said: “Going through fertility treatment can be one of the most challenging experiences in someone’s life. The last thing anyone should have to worry about is whether attending an appointment could put their job at risk or harm their career.”
She added: “We need a change in the law but in the meantime employers can act. Employers of all shapes and sizes all across the country recognise that this isn’t right.”
Macdonald praised the firms who have signed up to the pledge, and urged others to join them.
Firms and organisations that have signed up also include University College London, the Royal British Legion, Autotrader, Norwich City Football Club and Saxon Air.
Jeff Wilkinson, Head of Change Execution at HSBC UK, said: “We encourage businesses and organisations to sign the pledge and take meaningful steps towards a more fertility-friendly workplace.”
Macdonald has also highlighted concerns about unequal access to fertility treatment across the country, with the amount of NHS-funded IVF cycles varying depending on where people live.
For example, women in Norfolk and Waveney are entitled to fewer IVF cycles than those living in North East and North Cumbria.
The disparity comes despite updated NICE guidance recommending that eligible women under 40 should be offered three full cycles of IVF across the board.
NICE analysis published in March 2026 found that just three Integrated Care Boards, or 8 per cent of the total, were funding three cycles in line with this recommendation.