A Palestinian militant jailed for illegally entering Britain and accused of calling for Jews to be slaughtered has asked to be deported from the country.

However, Abu Wadee—whose full name is Mosab Abdulkarim Al-Gassas—cannot currently be returned to Gaza because the Home Office has no safe way to transport him there.

Wadee arrived in Britain by small boat in March 2025 and was photographed making a V sign as a Border Force vessel approached. Soon afterwards, The Mail on Sunday identified him as a former militant who had called on Allah to “kill (Jews) one by one… don’t leave a single one”.

He was imprisoned for illegal entry two months later, then released in December and placed in asylum accommodation.

Wadee was traced to a property in Corby this week. He now says he no longer supports Hamas, claiming he only did so under pressure while in Gaza, and denies being antisemitic.

The 34-year-old, who is fitted with an electronic tag, was subsequently removed from the property and transferred to another location. From there, he has posted videos calling for his removal from Britain, citing the media attention surrounding his case.

In one video translated from Arabic for the Mail, Wadee said: “I am calling upon the Red Cross and human rights organisations all over the world to organise my removal from Britain. I wish to be relocated right now, before tomorrow.”

The Daily Mail understands that the Home Office is unable to deport him because Gaza remains an active conflict zone, despite a ceasefire reportedly having been in place for the past year.

Despite his request to leave, Wadee continues to face demands for immediate deportation because of his criminal conviction and alleged history of militant activity.

While living in Gaza, Wadee was a member of the “Tyre-Burning Unit”, a Hamas-linked group active during the 2018 Great March of Return protests along the Israel-Gaza border. The unit threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli troops.

The Great March of Return began as a civilian protest movement but was soon strongly supported by Hamas. A 2019 UN report said the group had “encouraged or defended demonstrators’ use of incendiary kites and balloons”.

Contemporary images published by the press showed Wadee throwing rocks and posing with a tear-gas grenade in his mouth. On social media, he also shared videos that appeared to show him throwing pipe bombs towards Israeli forces.

He also boasted to Felesteen, a Hamas-affiliated newspaper in Gaza, about launching flaming kites into Israel. “The kite only costs us three shekels (75p), but in return it costs the occupation much more because of the fires it causes,” he said.

Other social-media posts showed him posing with assault rifles, including in front of a poster of Rouzan al-Najjar, a volunteer medic killed by Israeli troops in June 2018. He captioned one image: “Be a leader, for history does not remember the soldiers”.

Wadee now disputes that account, saying he worked as a construction worker in Gaza and was not affiliated with any faction. He claims the photographs showing him with guns were taken at weddings, where such displays are customary.

“They publish reports about me and bring old photos of me carrying a weapon while I was in Gaza… those photos were at weddings,” he said in one video.

“We all know our customs and traditions at weddings in Gaza. I do not belong to any faction.”

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In another clip, posted on Friday afternoon, Wadee alluded to his time in the Tyre-Burning Unit, but said this did not mark him out from other Palestinians.

‘All the people in Gaza participated in the Marches of Return; it does not mean that if you went to the Marches of Return, burned tires, or threw stones that you belonged to an organization or were affiliated with a faction,’ he said.

Wadee – who is thought to have taken 18 months to reach Britain – was traced by the Northamptonshire Telegraph to a housing estate in Corby after sharing videos of himself in the town on TikTok, often filmed on his own street.

He told the newspaper that he no longer supported Hamas, having done so under duress, and had Jewish friends.

‘No, no, no. I love England, I love Corby,’ he said, adding: ‘Everyone knows that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that would kill us if we didn’t speak against the Jews while living there.’

But the convicted criminal’s continued presence in Britain is putting pressure on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who just this week gave Palestinians a new legal route into Britain by re-opening the UK Resettlement Scheme.

Home Office staff have been ordered to flag Palestinian asylum claims for ‘reputational risk’, as revealed by the Mail this week.

It is thought the order came from mandarins after a former bodyguard to the leader of Hamas was allowed to remain in the UK following an immigration appeal. 

Corby MP Lee Barron has written to Ms Mahmood demanding Wadee’s deportation, saying he had put ‘a target on the back’ of the town’s other asylum seekers.

A spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said: ‘It’s remarkable that we’ve got to a point where even Abu Wadee is asking to be deported, but the Government can’t even manage that.

‘This has been a complete farce from start to finish. In May 2025, Mr Wadee pleaded guilty to illegally entering the UK on a small boat after we identified him, but it’s October and he is still in our country.

‘It’s no wonder that British Jews have little faith in the authorities to protect our community when they can’t even get this right.’

The Home Office declined to comment on specifics concerning Abu Wadee, citing a longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases. 

A government spokesman said: ‘Any foreign national who receives a prison sentence in the UK is referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity and will be barred from ever returning.

‘Over 11,000 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists have been returned or deported in the two years since the last election – a 41 per cent increase on the two years prior.’

For many people, an afternoon coffee is the fuel that carries them through the rest of the day. But drinking caffeine too close to bedtime can make falling asleep—and staying asleep—far more difficult.

Around two-thirds of Americans drink an average of three cups of coffee daily. Sleep experts recommend setting a caffeine cutoff to prevent the habit from interfering with nighttime rest.

So, exactly how late is too late for daytime coffee?

A resurfaced study suggests that avoiding caffeine for only a few hours before bed may not give the body enough time to recover. If you believe stopping at 5 p.m. is sufficiently early, the research offers a reason to reconsider.

After reviewing findings from 24 studies, researchers in Australia concluded that people should have their final cup of coffee at least nine hours before going to bed to minimize sleep disruption.

That means anyone aiming to fall asleep at 10 p.m. may want to switch off the coffee machine shortly after lunch.

For gymgoers who rely on caffeinated pre-workout products, the window is even shorter. These supplements often contain considerably more caffeine than a regular cup of coffee.

Researchers estimated that pre-workout caffeine should be stopped at least 13 hours before bedtime.

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine, a chemical that naturally accumulates during the day and helps create the growing drive to sleep as bedtime nears.

When adenosine’s effects are blocked, the body remains more alert. Heart rate may rise, while blood vessels in the brain constrict. Normally, those vessels widen during rest to support oxygen flow, but caffeine can limit that response and contribute to higher blood pressure.

A typical cup of coffee contains about 80 to 100 milligrams of caffeine. Tea generally has 15 to 70 milligrams, while energy drinks can contain between 80 and 300 milligrams. Pre-workout supplements vary, but commonly provide roughly 150 to 300 milligrams per serving.

The FDA advises adults to consume no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day—roughly the amount in four cups of coffee. Excessive intake can affect cardiovascular health, potentially causing heart palpitations, an elevated heart rate and high blood pressure.

Published in 2023 in Sleep Medicine Reviews, the study examined 24 investigations into the connection between caffeine consumption and poor sleep.

The researchers assessed how both the amount and timing of caffeine affected sleep, including total sleep loss, the time needed to fall asleep and overall sleep quality.

Based on the combined findings, they calculated that a cup of coffee containing approximately 107 milligrams of caffeine should be consumed at least 8.8 hours before bedtime.

For someone who goes to bed at 9 p.m., that would place the final coffee at about noon. With a 10 p.m. bedtime, the recommended cutoff would be around 1 p.m.

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Larger caffeine doses require an even earlier stop, the researchers found. A typical caffeinated pre-workout serving—roughly equivalent to two standard 8-ounce cups of coffee—should be taken no later than 13.2 hours before bed.

As a result, someone going to sleep at 11 p.m. would ideally avoid taking a caffeinated pre-workout supplement after about 9:30 a.m.

The research identified several associations between caffeine and disrupted sleep. Most notably, consuming caffeine after the recommended cutoff was linked to an average reduction of 45 minutes in total sleep time.

Another finding looked at sleep efficiency – the amount of time spent actually asleep. 

Late night caffeine also reduced sleep efficiency by about seven percent, roughly 34 additional minutes spent awake. This means someone who spent eight hours in bed could have spent more time struggling to fall asleep or waking during the night.

Caffeine also increased the time it takes to fall asleep by about nine minutes and was associated with waking up more in the middle of the night.

If someone woke up after initially falling asleep, caffeine before bed could add about 12 minutes to their total time awake during the night. 

Caffeine was also linked to less deep sleep, which is crucial for overall immune support, cardiovascular health and energy restoration.

The findings showed that the subjects spent an extra six minutes in a light sleep stage and lost 11.7 minutes of deep sleep.

Around 80 percent of US adults consume some form of caffeine every day. 

In addition to when to stop drinking caffeine, experts generally recommend holding off on the first cup of coffee until 90 minutes after waking up in order to reap the top energizing benefits and avoid jitters immediately after waking up.

Studies show cortisol levels, the main stress hormone, are highest when we wake up and that having a coffee too early boosts these even more. 

High cortisol keeps your body in a ‘fight-or-flight’ mode, which can disrupt sleep, metabolism and energy. It can also cause feelings of anxiety, exhaustion, insomnia and brain fog.

Looking to cut back on caffeine and sleep better? Experts recommend tea as a sound alternative, as it contains less caffeine and has added antioxidants, offering a more moderate caffeine boost without packing the same punch as coffee.

Green tea offers less caffeine than coffee and contains L-theanine, an amino acid found in tea leaves and mushrooms. It promotes calm and focused relaxation. 

An 8oz cup of green tea has about 29mg of caffeine, which can help wake you up without drastically affecting sleep. 

Politics has always been a curious world. When I was married to a Cabinet minister and regularly found myself at the dinner tables where power was exercised, I recall hearing envious remarks about a young Special Adviser, or SpAd, at No 10. She was striking, highly capable and already irritating a few people in Westminster.

The phrase used most often was ‘bold as brass’. How quickly political fortunes can change. Many of those critics have disappeared into the history of failed careers, while the woman they were discussing, Laura Trott, is now the Conservative Party’s Shadow Education Secretary and one of its most prominent rising figures.

Trott is 41 today, but in the period around 2011, soon after David Cameron entered Downing Street, she was in her mid-20s. She had recently graduated from Oxford and gone on to work for the influential consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.

Before the Coalition Government took office, she had already established herself in the implementation unit created to prepare the Conservatives for government. A former colleague remembers her as ‘this unbelievably impressive spreadsheet bunny, phenomenally driven, fantastically competent, incredibly bossy – and always glammed up to the nines’.

In a political culture shaped by old Etonians, inherited privilege and well-established connections, Trott was noticeably different: a bright comprehensive-school pupil from a close, industrious family with a deep commitment to public service.

She was the first member of her family to attend university. Her two sisters became teachers, her mother worked as a special-ne needs teaching assistant and her father was employed by the Bank of England. Among her grandparents, one was a milkman, while another, Stan, worked as a doorman at The Sun.

‘He told me Rupert Murdoch was always incredibly polite to him,’ Trott says when we meet at the Mail offices in Kensington, ahead of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

Slim, blonde and blue-eyed, she arrives wearing a vivid pink Cefinn dress, the label founded by Samantha Cameron. ‘I love her stuff because it doesn’t crease,’ she says. ‘But now that the company’s folded, I get it on Vinted.’

Our conversation centres on the Conservatives’ latest childcare proposal, expected to feature prominently in their next manifesto. The policy aims to remove the childcare ‘cliff edge’ that can leave working parents worse off after their earnings rise beyond a certain level.

Under the current rules, once one parent earns more than £100,000, a couple can lose eligibility for up to 30 hours of funded childcare each week, along with access to Tax-Free Childcare. As a result, a household in which both parents earn £99,000 may retain the support, while another family, with one parent earning £100,000 and the other earning very little, can lose it altogether.

As the mother of three children with her husband, Bahador Mahvelati, known as ‘Bids’, Trott says she is determined that ambitious working parents should not be discouraged from having families. Her argument comes as the UK birth rate has fallen to notably low levels.

The proposal is also aimed squarely at middle-class families who feel increasingly squeezed by household costs. Trott suggests Labour’s approach risks applying pressure until, in Denis Healey’s famous phrase, ‘the pips squeak’.

‘We want working families to have children,’ she says. ‘There’s a real contrast between us and Labour here. We want to reduce childcare costs for parents who are working and trying to do the right thing; meanwhile, Labour has just abolished the two-child benefit cap. It’s a real statement of values.’

‘Having children is the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ she continues. ‘But I know so many friends who’ve been anxious about starting a family because of the expense.’

‘It’s robbing people of something so special. No one should decide against having a child because childcare is too expensive, or reject a pay rise because they fear it will leave them financially worse off.’

Trott was elected Conservative MP for Sevenoaks in Kent in 2019, but her political ambitions began much earlier. She says she wanted to enter politics from the age of 12, influenced by her family’s involvement in the local community and, perhaps unexpectedly, by John Major.

She accepts that Major may not be the first figure people name among Britain’s most inspiring leaders. Yet his example mattered to her: a working-class man educated at a comprehensive school who went on to succeed in Parliament. It helped her believe that she could do the same.

Education has remained Trott’s central political interest. It is also the area in which she believes the Conservatives can point to a lasting achievement after 14 years in government.

When the education reforms launched under David Cameron began in 2010, Britain’s performance in international comparisons was at a historic low. In England, where those reforms were introduced, pupils now rank ninth in the world for reading, up from 20th, and 11th in maths, compared with 22nd previously.

In Scotland and Wales, where the SNP and Labour administrations respectively rejected the changes, rankings have declined. Welsh teenagers now sit 40th internationally for reading and 42nd for maths, leaving them around two years behind pupils in England. ‘Ever since I took the job as Shadow Education Secretary, which is the one I asked for, it’s been about protecting standards in this country.’

‘Our schools are probably the biggest public policy success of the last couple of decades. It took a long time to percolate through the system, and that’s a lesson for policymakers: the things you do in politics often don’t show up until many years later.

‘The tragedy,’ she adds, ‘is that Labour are now undoing it, and we won’t see the damage – the vandalism, I’d say – for many years to come.’

She is fierce in her criticism of Lucy Powell, her opposite number, and of Powell’s predecessor, Bridget Phillipson.

‘Think of everything that’s wrong with this country, and they’re picking on the one thing that’s working really well,’ she says. ‘It’s extraordinary.’

As well as imposing VAT on independent schools (a disastrous policy which Trott says she will immediately reverse if the Tories are elected), one of the first things Phillipson did was take away Academy freedoms.

‘This means that Academies are now effectively under state control in a way they weren’t before,’ explains Trott. ‘This also stops good schools expanding and undoes everything that drove the improvement: choice, freedom, accountability, and the ability to replicate, expand and open new schools. They’re trying to wind it all back.’

Why take a wrecking ball to success, I ask? ‘Because of the unions,’ she says, bluntly. ‘They want central control because it gives them more power. For example, the Schools Act imposes national pay scales on academies and free schools. I had to point out to them that this means giving lots of teachers a pay cut, and they hadn’t even realised.

‘But that’s what drives them. It takes away freedom and choice, and it’s just wrong.’

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One of the more contentious issues around schools in recent years has been the question of religious restrictions, and in particular head and face coverings. It emerged recently that a school in Barnet, north London was forcing girls as young as seven to cover their hair.

‘I’m very clear about hijabs not being part of the school uniform,’ she says. ‘I do not believe the state should be party to an instrument of female suppression.

‘To her credit, when I asked Lucy Powell about this at the despatch box, she agreed with me – but she’s done nothing about it. This would not happen under us.’

I ask her where that would leave other faith schools, such as Jewish and Catholic schools. Is there a case for saying that religion should have no place in education altogether?

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she replies. ‘I think faith schools are appropriate. We have rules about teaching British values, and many faith schools do amazing things. This is specifically about the hijab and what it means for women. I think most people can see there’s a category difference.’

Trott is confident in her beliefs, and not afraid to express them, regardless of who they might offend. It’s a characteristic she shares with Kemi Badenoch, whose plain-speaking, clear-sighted lack of compromise has catapulted her to the top of the political charts.

As Trott puts it, ‘She’s Madonna- level, with single-name recognition, which I love.’

Badenoch – and her team’s – mission is to restore the Tory backbone, to persuade the electorate that they have a strong vision for Britain and the determination to implement it.

Where Labour is on course for ever-bigger state intervention, Kemi’s Conservatives are all about individual responsibility and choice. Trott is adamant, for example, that the crisis involving NEETS (young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training) is less to do with education and more to do with tax and welfare under Labour.

‘No one wants to employ anybody because they’ve made it so expensive,’ she says. ‘And the pull of welfare is also strong, and Labour are doing nothing about that. They’re not doing anything about retraining either.

‘That’s why Kemi’s policy is that you can’t go straight on to Universal Credit from school. Tough love is what everyone needs.’

This feeds into Trott’s other passion, reducing the harms done to children from screens and social media.

‘It’s a litany of issues,’ she says. ‘There’s the physical side – we’ve got 30 per cent more children with myopia now. Then there are the back and skeletal problems, socialisation, mental health, ADHD.

‘They’re using screens so much in school now. You need a smartphone just to get the timetable and the homework. Worksheets have a QR code on them. Sorry, what? They’re seven!’

Trott worked hard to steer the ban on social media for under-16s through parliament. ‘The social media companies lobbied so hard to stop it because they want to get children early: the earlier they start, the more time they spend on the platforms and the more money they make.

‘They’re monetising our children, which shouldn’t be allowed.’

Would she go further and support a total ban on smartphones for under 16s? ‘I would love to,’ she says. ‘But we’re taking it step-by-step.

‘The social media and smartphone ban in schools is a really good start. What I’m going to work on now is getting screens out of the classroom. What’s wrong with textbooks?’

I ask her how she feels about women and girls’ safeguarding, not just in the context of schools but against a broader background of female single spaces and the concerns raised by groups such as the women of Piddington, who have campaigned against Home Office plans to house 1,200 migrants nearby.

‘The Government’s record on protecting women’s safe spaces isn’t good,’ she says. ‘They had to be forced into it, and Kemi was so brave to speak out when it was still really unfashionable.’

On Piddington, she says: ‘I had a constituent who was raped by an illegal migrant.

‘He pretended to be a child when he was obviously about 40. To dismiss concerns like those of the women of Piddington is appalling. It’s tearing our country apart.’

Finally, I ask her about the threat from Reform. Nigel Farage’s party is somewhat in the doldrums now, but perhaps not for long given the huge donations from two crypto-billionaires.

‘I think most people now recognise that [Reform and Farage] give you the ick. Worse than that, a lot of their stuff is quite menacing. Like their support for all these balaclava people: weird.’

Final word, then, on Burnham’s speech at Labour conference last week, which many have heralded as a huge triumph. Trott is unimpressed.

‘He had nothing to say on the problems facing the country now. I’ve never seen a prime ministerial conference speech that barely dealt with the economy, nothing on international affairs, nothing on defence. It was extraordinary.

‘He delivered it very well, and he seems like a very nice man, but what is he doing to make people’s lives better today? Nothing at all.’

Something that few people could say about Trott herself.

Eventually, Susan Laurie was concealing alcohol in almost every corner of her life.

She kept bottles in her car, inside the house and in the garage, even slipping them into her wellington boots. On some occasions, she was so intoxicated while hiding them that she later had no idea where they were. The resulting panic was intensified by the fact that she no longer wanted alcohol for pleasure — she needed it to prevent herself from becoming sick.

Drinking had become a cycle of vomiting, tremors and terrifying withdrawal symptoms. When she attempted to quit, she experienced vivid hallucinations. If she woke after passing out drunk, she would reach for another drink simply to lose consciousness again.

‘I couldn’t face being awake and facing the carnage,’ she tells Daily Mail.

Her teenage son had moved in with his father. Susan had tried rehabilitation, Alcoholics Anonymous and repeated attempts at sobriety, but each effort eventually ended with her drinking again.

At her lowest point, she became convinced that her alcoholism could have only one ending. Yet Susan Laurie had not always been consumed by drink.

‘It took the edge off’

Susan was raised in a working-class Catholic family in northern England and was the middle child of seven. She shared a close bond with her sisters, but alcohol played only a small role at home. Her parents rarely drank, and apart from occasions such as Christmas and New Year, there was usually no alcohol in the house.

Her relationship with drinking changed after she enrolled at Durham University. Having attended a comprehensive school, she suddenly found herself among students who had been privately educated at some of the country’s most exclusive schools.

‘I think the lack of confidence came from feeling sort of less than people,’ she says. ‘I can honestly remember that feeling… taking the edge off, feeling awkward or out of place.’

Alcohol helped Susan become more talkative and confident, and she quickly grew attached to that transformation. The habit continued when she entered pharmaceutical sales, a profession shaped by conferences, client dinners, open bars and after-work networking. Colleagues even joked about ‘death by minibar’. If everyone arrived for the next morning’s meeting, Susan recalls, excessive drinking was rarely questioned.

‘It was so stealth-like’

Susan cannot identify a single point at which social drinking turned into alcohol dependence. There was no dramatic morning when she suddenly realised everything had changed. Instead, by her late 30s, drinking was fuelling arguments, while friends and family were warning her that alcohol was having a damaging effect.

‘It was so stealth-like,’ she says. ‘I know now, looking back, that I went through all of the stages of progression.’

The progression also took a physical toll. Susan needed increasingly large amounts of wine to recreate the comfort and confidence alcohol had once provided. Before long, she began waking with intense anxiety.

‘I started to believe there were problems in my life that were making me feel anxious,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realise it was my body’s reaction to the alcohol leaving my body. So then I would have a drink to take that anxiety away.’

As her tolerance grew, so did her intake. Susan could consume two or three bottles of wine and still manage to function the next day, allowing her to convince herself that she remained in control.

Her serious attempts to quit brought stretches of sobriety, but each relapse was more severe than the last. Wine was eventually replaced by spirits, and drinking was no longer mainly about feeling confident. Increasingly, it was about avoiding the physical and emotional consequences of being without alcohol.

‘He hated what I’d become’

Those closest to Susan noticed the transformation before she was willing to confront it. Friends said they never knew which version of her would appear when they went out, while at home, behaviour that once would have seemed deeply troubling gradually became an accepted part of daily life.

‘My husband now says if somebody had parachuted into our house, they would have said, “Ross, this isn’t normal,”‘ she says.

Susan became unreliable and fiercely defensive when anyone questioned her drinking. She lied to the people closest to her and became increasingly protective of alcohol, even as she could see that they were hurting.

The greatest damage was to her relationship with her son, who was then a teenager facing important years at school. Eventually, he moved out of Susan’s home and went to live with his father.

‘He didn’t hate me, but he hated what I’d become,’ Susan says. ‘No mother would choose to do that to a child, and I think that’s how I know the power that alcohol had over me.’

‘I tried everything’

Susan was trying to stop. She went repeatedly to her GP and had counselling, attended Alcoholics Anonymous and worked through the steps with sponsors. She spent time in rehab twice, the first voluntarily and the second, she says, practically ‘kicking and screaming’. Over the years, she also paid to see five different hypnotherapists.

‘I didn’t get from problematic drinking to the rock bottom, where I was dying, without trying to get sober,’ she says. ‘I absolutely threw myself into different treatment.’

As her dependence worsened and one treatment after another failed to help her stay sober, Susan became increasingly desperate. On one occasion, she paid $2000 and travelled hundreds of miles to see a practitioner who told her he could pass electricity through her body and capture the ‘bad energy’ in a crystal around her neck.

‘You will try anything,’ she says. ‘When these things don’t work, you drink on the guilt of wasting your family’s money.’

For Susan, every relapse chipped away at the belief that recovery was still possible. She had managed periods without alcohol, including months after rehab, only to find herself drinking again.

One statistic she remembers being given in rehab had lodged itself in her mind: that only three in 10 people with alcohol dependence as severe as hers would survive. As Susan continued to relapse, she became convinced she would not be one of them.

‘I’d sort of just accepted that I was going to die.’

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‘I’m an alcoholic and I don’t want to die’

Susan had reached the point where she no longer expected anything to work when, during another attempt to stop drinking, she found herself searching online for help. She was in a bad way and beginning to withdraw when she came across the website of therapist Tim Phizackerley.

Susan had tried hypnotherapy five times before and her family had heard countless versions of her promise that she had found something new and this time would be different. Still, she filled out the short contact form.

‘I think I just put, “I’m an alcoholic and I don’t want to die,”‘ she says.

Tim replied almost immediately, but told Susan she would need to be sober before he could see her. She detoxed at her sister’s house, knowing her sister would not allow her to drink.

Susan knows now that what she did was dangerous. Given how dependent she had become on alcohol, she says she should have gone through a medical detox.

She knew what withdrawal could bring. There were shakes and vomiting, along with terrifyingly vivid hallucinations which, for Susan, always took the form of spiders.

When Susan eventually arrived for the appointment, she spent most of the day with Tim.

She describes the treatment as a combination of hypnotherapy and regression, along with PSTEC, or Percussive Suggestion Technique, a method Tim developed involving recorded words, clicks and tones and simple finger-tapping exercises.

Much of the earlier part of the session was spent exploring the feelings that had sat beneath her drinking for years, including that old sense of being ‘less than’ other people. It wasn’t until later in the day that they turned specifically to alcohol.

By the time Susan left, she was exhausted. After everything she had tried before, she had no way of knowing whether this time would be any different.

‘I hadn’t thought about alcohol’

Nothing dramatic happened when Susan left Tim’s office. There was no sudden revelation and, after so many previous attempts to stop drinking, she didn’t allow herself to believe this one had worked either.

It was only later – Susan can’t remember whether it was days or a couple of weeks – that she realised she hadn’t thought about alcohol at all.

‘I remember thinking, “oh my God, I have not thought about alcohol,”‘ she says.

For years, alcohol had occupied almost every part of Susan’s day. She had worried about where it was hidden, whether she had enough, when she could drink and what would happen if she couldn’t. Now it simply wasn’t occupying her thoughts.

Susan believes the treatment had removed the compulsion to drink that she had been unable to overcome through willpower alone.

‘It was like a miracle,’ she says. Eleven-and-a-half years later, Susan has not had another drink.

The long way back

Stopping drinking was one thing. Repairing the damage Susan’s drinking had caused took much longer.

Her family had lived through too many relapses to know whether this time would last, so there was no great celebration when Susan stopped drinking. Her son was away at university by then, and she knew another speech about how everything would be different wasn’t going to repair what had happened between them.

Instead, she gave him space. She visited occasionally and otherwise kept her head down, retreating into what she describes as a ‘cocoon’. Rather than trying to convince the people she loved that she had changed, she let them see it for themselves.

Over the months and years that followed, trust slowly returned. Her son is 31 now, and Susan tells him something she couldn’t have known during those darkest years: ‘You weren’t the reason why I had an alcohol problem, but you were absolutely the reason why I’m alive today and sober.’

Susan was also working out who she was without alcohol. For years she had been known as ‘Sue the drinker’, the loud one at the party who would still be there at the end of the night.

‘I didn’t really know who I was,’ she says, although underneath that uncertainty was a quiet confidence that she wasn’t going to drink again.

‘Don’t give up’

In 2019, Susan published From Rock Bottom to Sober Forever, laying bare the drinking, the relapses and the treatments that hadn’t helped her stay sober. She didn’t write it to promote Tim’s approach, she says, or suggest there was one answer for everyone. Susan is quick to point out that AA works for some people, while others find their way through different treatments.

What Susan wanted was to reach those who, as she once had, were beginning to believe there was nothing left to try.

‘I know what it’s like to give up hope,’ she says. ‘My message really is, don’t give up. Keep trying, because there will be something out there that will work for you.’

Since it was published in 2019, Susan says the book has sold more than 5000 copies, largely through word of mouth.

Her work now focuses particularly on people with severe alcohol dependence. Susan knows from her own experience how vulnerable people can become when they are desperate for something to work, and she advocates for greater regulation of private alcohol treatment and greater accountability for treatment outcomes. She also speaks to workplaces and community organisations about alcohol, drawing on parts of her own life she once worked hard to hide.

‘The real me’

Eleven-and-a-half years after her last drink, Susan says sobriety has given her something she once believed she needed alcohol to find: confidence. More important, though, is having the trust of her family again and knowing that the person they see now is what she calls the ‘authentic me’.

For years, some of what kept Susan drinking was the fear of facing what she had done and the belief that the people she loved might never forgive her. Sobriety gave her the chance to discover otherwise.

‘The people who matter will be kind,’ she says. ‘The people who love you, love the real you. So don’t let that fear keep you drinking.’

Parents have described the distress of being reported to police and social services after raising questions about their children’s wish to change sex.

The families say teachers and healthcare professionals alerted authorities over issues including their refusal to buy puberty blockers, attempts to limit internet use and continued use of names given to their children at birth.

In one account, parents said social services questioned them after they declined to purchase chest binders, garments intended to restrict breast growth. In another, a father said he was arrested after disputes with his vulnerable daughter.

The families, who have asked not to be identified because they fear further distress for their children, are being supported by the Bayswater Group, which campaigns on behalf of parents of transgender teenagers.

The group represents hundreds of families across the UK and estimates that more than one in ten members have been referred to social services. It says schools were responsible for roughly a third of those referrals.

Bayswater says it is aware of at least 17 cases in which social services, and sometimes police, interviewed families after complaints were made. The organisation believes the actual figure is considerably higher. It also warns that referrals could increase under Labour-supported proposals to prohibit efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the draft Conversion Practices Bill, anyone convicted could face up to five years in prison.

The proposed legislation has drawn criticism from campaigners and MPs who fear parents, and possibly therapists, could face legal scrutiny if they are judged to be standing in the way of a child’s wish to transition.

One mother told The Mail on Sunday that a school referred her 14-year-old daughter to social services because the family continued to use her birth name at home. The referral was later closed without further action.

Another mother said social workers visited her home after she tried to stop her teenage daughter from undergoing irreversible surgery.

‘I questioned why a radical double mastectomy was being treated as an accepted option for confused adolescent girls with healthy breasts,’ she said. ‘But my concerns as a parent were portrayed as “aggressive”.’

‘A social worker came to our home soon afterwards, and I attempted to explain why I had challenged the treatment approach being considered for my daughter. The case was ultimately closed with no further action.’

‘I felt relieved, but the referral was profoundly upsetting. I felt accused of endangering my daughter when I believed I was trying to protect her.’

‘The allegation was false and disingenuous, and seemed intended to pressure me into complying.’ A third family said it was reported to both social services and police after refusing to buy puberty blockers for their daughter. The parents said they were accused of emotional abuse and feared she could be taken into care.

This newspaper also spoke to the father of a transgender son who said his local council accused him of homophobia and bullying after he tried to restrict the teenager’s internet access. The father said he had acted because the boy had allegedly been attempting to arrange meetings with older men online.

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Although the Mail on Sunday has spoken to several families who say they were affected, their anonymity means their accounts cannot be independently verified. The Bayswater Group has, however, received support from Conservative critics of the proposed legislation. Supporters of the Bill insist it would apply only to cases involving genuine abuse, while opponents fear the term could be interpreted too broadly.

Critics are also worried that the legislation could enable councils to seek Conversion Practice Protection Orders for people considered at risk, potentially allowing social services to intervene without a family court ruling. Some have compared the proposed powers to ‘sex-change ASBOs’, invoking the Anti-Social Behaviour Orders introduced in 1999 to tackle teenage offending.

Tory peer Baroness Cash told The Mail on Sunday that she considered the Bill both dangerous and impractical. ‘This is the long arm of the law extending into family life, private conversations between parents and children, and even discussions between children and therapists,’ she said.

‘The landmark Cass Review into gender identity services for children and young people made clear last year that most children who identify as transgender ultimately see their difficulties resolve.

‘But it is crucial that they have exploratory therapy. This ill-judged draft legislation puts even the therapists in danger. We know from the Bayswater Group that parents already face serious accusations if they disagree with their children or their children’s advisers. Now, we are asking therapists to risk their careers should a child take exception to what they have to say. It is completely unworkable.’

The Sex Matters charity – which campaigns for those who believe there are only two genders and that sex cannot be changed – says the new laws would be ‘an attack on ethical, loving parenting’ and could prevent children receiving the therapy they need.

They could also cause chaos in schools with teachers feeling unable to ban trans girls (born as boys) from female toilets for fear of legal sanction.

A Sex Matters report published last week concluded that the draft Bill would silence therapists, harm children, divide families and could ‘legislate some parents out of their children’s lives’.

‘This Bill would criminalise ordinary and therapeutic conversations in the name of preventing conversion,’ says the author, social scientist Matilda Gosling.