Commenting on the NHS IT progamme, Reform’s Consultant Director, Professor Nick Bosanquet, emphasised the way in which existing technology available to the NHS and other small changes can be used to save money (E-health Insider).
The Conservative Party announced last night that it would cut the rate at which NHS spending is increasing. Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that, while spending on the NHS would increase in real-terms under a Conservative government, NHS trusts would have to make “real savings” in the face of smaller budget increases (Telegraph; Times; Guardian; Mail; Express; BBC Online).
The NHS is prescribing many new medicines in greater volumes than officials had predicted, according to an analysis published by the NHS Information Centre yesterday. The findings appear to contradict claims by pharmaceutical companies that even those new treatments approved by NICE are often not widely taken up by NHS trusts (FT).
Michael Fallon, Conservative MP and Deputy Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, in an article for today’s Daily Telegraph, outlines “Five ways for the Tories to get real about public spending cuts”. He recommends ending distortions of national pay scales in the public sector, sharing or outsourcing the back-office functions of public agencies, changing working practices and allowing schools, police forces and NHS trusts control over their budgets and staffing as opposed to imposing top-down targets (Telegraph).
The Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis, yesterday ruled out immediate tax rises for airline passengers despite calls from the government’s advisory body on climate change for radical cuts in aviation industry emissions (Guardian).
Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, yesterday ruled out extending the car scrappage scheme in a move likely to anger industry leaders who assert that the programme is crucial to Britain’s broader economic recovery (FT).
John Healey, the Housing Minister, will today unveil a £245 million funding package to build 3,400 new affordable homes and create more than 5,000 jobs. The money will go to 90 housing associations (Guardian).
Lord Blankfein, Chief Executive of Goldman Sachs, yesterday admitted, that banks lost control of the exotic products they sold in the run-up to the financial crisis, and said that some of the instruments lacked social or economic value (FT; Guardian).
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised to move cautiously in dismantling the Financial Services Authority, to assuage concern in the City that an incoming Conservative government would cause big disruption by axing the regulator (FT).
The BBC has dismissed its critics as “desperately out of touch”, suggesting that the public did not want to see its licence fee shared with other broadcasters. The BBC Trust, the broadcaster’s sovereign body, said that it had instructed Mark Thompson, the Director-General, to begin a strategic review of the organisation to see if there were areas where it needed to curtail operations (FT; Independent; Guardian; Mail).
Microsoft yesterday became the latest company to offer to help cut the UK’s unemployment rate by providing free IT skills training and persuading the thousands of small businesses it works with to employ jobseekers (FT).
Hopes for a flurry of company takeovers and growing belief in the strength of economic recovery yesterday propelled the FTSE 100 index through the 5,000 level for the first time in almost a year (FT; Telegraph; Times; Guardian; Mail; BBC Online).
House prices rose by 0.8 per cent in August compared with July, the second monthly rise in a row, says the Halifax. But economists from Fathom Consulting have warned that this recovery is likely to have been built on unstable foundations (FT; BBC Online).
Banks and building societies have almost tripled their profit margins on five-year fixed rate mortgages over the past year. Data released by the Bank of England yesterday shows that the difference between interest rates that banks charge and the rate at which they borrow is the highest on record at 2.83 percentage points, up from 0.82 percentage points at the height of the financial crisis (Telegraph; Times; Guardian; Mail; Express).
The government should urgently scrap the student fees system and introduce a graduate tax to ensure people are not put off doing a degree by rising levels of debt, according to a leading university chief. The current £3,225 annual fee and loans system to pay for it should be revised and rebranded as a graduate tax, payable to as a proportion of students’ future earnings, according to Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London (Guardian).
Ministers are keeping a close eye on the student finance system as it struggles to deal with a record number of applications for grants and loans, leading to numerous complaints about delays (BBC Online).
Many children in the UK are living in poverty akin to the times of Charles Dickens, Lesley Ward, new president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union, has said today (BBC Online).
Police officers should seek written consent before taking DNA from innocent children, according to the DNA Ethics Group which advises the Home Office. Under current guidelines, police are able to take samples from children who have not been arrested for any crime but agree to give DNA on a voluntary basis, with almost 1.1 million ten to 17 year olds having their profiles recorded since 2000 (Telegraph; Guardian).
The new Supreme Court risks wasting some of its best talent unless the judges’ retirement age is raised to 75, Lord Phillips, the UK Supreme Court president, said yesterday as he revealed that he was lobbying ministers to raise the bar from 70 to 75 (FT).
Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, suggested yesterday that Michael Shields, the Liverpool supporter jailed for the attempted murder of a barman in Bulgaria, would be the last person to be granted a royal pardon on the recommendation of a senior politician (Guardian).
The Conservatives are to order a radical reduction in the size of government, resulting in a smaller Cabinet and a cut in the number of ministers throughout Whitehall. In a speech today, George Osborne will say that a Conservative government “will have much to learn from Conservative town halls” which, he will argue, have been successful in improving efficiency in an “age of austerity” (Telegraph).