Members say no to AI carers, yes to a pharmacy asset-stripping ban

The sharpest message of the day was about who should do the caring. Members voted overwhelmingly against rolling out AI carers in the NHS, even with human staff on call. Plenty of Yes voters argued care should stay human anyway, and the top No line was blunt: an algorithm can't wash a frail pensioner. Several called the idea a gimmick to dodge funding.

The verdicts

The mood on work and welfare was firm. Members comfortably backed making working-age people on benefits do community work in return, though the No side landed a fair point: if the work is worth doing, pay for it. On civil servants threatening strikes over pay and a four-day week, members comfortably sided against, with the sharpest No case conceding the right to strike while attacking the package as a bid to have it cushy.

Two more results ran heavily one way. Members overwhelmingly rejected criminal charges for parents who pressure a child not to change gender identity, and just as overwhelmingly backed legally barring pharmacy chain owners from asset-stripping them. Even there, the sharpest Yes voices wanted more than was asked: not just pharmacies. The best-rated No case agreed on the evil but wanted general insolvency law instead.

On the bigger constitutional and foreign questions, margins were thinner. Members comfortably backed the UK government formally objecting to the US livestreaming an execution, on the argument that being an ally is no reason to nod and agree. Members narrowly rejected suspending the UK's asylum system for up to five years. The Yes side kept bidding the pause upward ("Make it ten and you're on"), while many No voters said they wanted reform, just not a freeze.

The day's closest result went to giving every part of England Greater Manchester-style devolved powers, which members turned down by the slimmest of margins. The sharpest No case insisted devolution must not mean fragmentation; Yes voters pointed to a country centralised on London.

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