Jackie Long , Social Affairs Editor and Presenter

The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced it will pay its first dividend in nearly ten years.  The bank is still two-thirds publicly owned after being bailed out at the height of the financial crisis. Earlier this week there was anger from many small businesses after RBS learnt it would face NO action from the financial watchdog…

After eleven weeks the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower Fire is to break now until the beginning of September. Before it closed today, the judge heard from a firefighter who was on the phone for an hour to someone who lost their life in the blaze.   Meanwhile, it’s being reported that the Government was…

More than a quarter of children in England begin primary school unable to speak in full sentences or read simple words. The Education Secretary pledged to cut that number in half over the next ten years. Damian Hinds said if children were “behind from the start” they were rarely able to catch up.

“No-one should ever have to hide who they are or who they love,” said Theresa May today, as the government announced the results of the largest ever survey of LGBT people, along with a 75-point action plan. Ministers also unveiled a long-awaited consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act, which determines how a trans…

He’s best know as Loki, the Scottish rapper famed for his talent with the spoken word. But now Loki, real name Darren McGarvey, has just won one of the country’s most prestigious prizes for the written word – the Orwell Prize for political books. Judges have called it the book Orwell would have wanted to…

23 year old medical student Leanne Armitage set up an outreach programme to tell pupils in inner city London – whatever their background – they too can become doctors. She joins Jackie Long in the studio to discuss diversity in the medical profession.

A firefighter has told the Grenfell Tower inquiry about his attempts to save a 12-year-old girl from the inferno. David Badillo described his search for Jessica Urbano Ramirez, who was alone on the 20th floor of the tower when the fire took hold. He told the inquiry how he reached the flat with two colleagues…

It’s been another emotional day at the Grenfell Inquiry as the firefighter who was first to enter the flat where the blaze began gives his testimony. Charles Batterbee crawled into the smoke-filled room to tackle the fire, then radioed colleagues to say “we had done our job”. Today he spoke of his shock at realising…

Work is the best route out of poverty – it’s a slogan popular with politicians both left and right for the past two decades. But as the country surges towards record numbers of people in work – the number of those in work and in poverty too is also rising. According to the Institute for…

Dr Tom Best was in charge of critical care at Kings College Hospital on the night of the fire.

Shahin Sadafi is a survivor of the Grenfell disaster.

After a day of commemorations, thousands of survivors, the bereaved and local residents have embarked on a silent march to remember those who were killed by the fire in Grenfell Tower a year ago. Earlier at the base of the tower they read out 72 names, the name of each and every person who lost their life…

Scotland Yard is to investigate the London Fire Brigade over its use of the stay put policy during the Grenfell Tower Fire after claims that it cost lives – and should have been abandoned far earlier. Lawyers for the Fire Brigade told the public inquiry into the fire that a mass evacuation of the building would have been extremely difficult…

They were told to stay inside their flats when the fire broke out. Now the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster has heard that the “stay put” advice substantially failed half an hour after the blaze broke out. Failing to abandon it then, the counsel to the inquiry said, could have made all the difference…