Today, Civitas has released a report which suggests a possible solution to the problem of filling those vacancies within the NHS where staff are unwilling to enter undesirable specialities such as emergency care or GP practice. At the same time this paper explains how the NHS could simultaneously reduce its dependency on locum doctors and agency… [Read More]
David Cameron has pledged to create two million extra jobs in the next parliament if re-elected, claiming in a round of interviews yesterday that ‘We are the jobs party’. The Conservatives believe they can repeat the job figures of the first parliament with more of the same: more competitive tax rates, cutting red tape and… [Read More]
There are indications in the news today that the Liberal Democrats might be willing to give David Cameron his ‘red line’ 2017 referendum policy if a Liberal-Conservative coalition is the result of May’s election. Despite the Liberal Democrats being firmly pro-EU, they have not ruled out a referendum as Labour have. However, Nick Clegg intends… [Read More]
European Court of Justice Advocate General Melchior Wathelet released an opinion yesterday on the circumstances under which EU nationals should be able to claim benefits in another member state country. The statement is a fine-tuning of the court decision taken in November last year, after a case was brought forward by the Federal Social Court… [Read More]
A new report claims that the NHS’s services are ‘deteriorating in a way not seen since the early 1990s’, but at the same time the NHS has been doing rather well! The King’s Fund report reveals that many trusts are slipping into a funding deficit as the end of this parliament approaches, waiting times for… [Read More]
Malik Azmani, an MP of the ruling party in the Netherlands, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), published a bold proposal last Sunday to shut all external European borders for non-EEA immigrants and to provide safe havens in their regions. All Dutch parties except Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) condemned the… [Read More]
HS2 is in danger of losing its consensus. The project has already come under heavy fire, with the Department for Transport being attacked by the Public Accounts Committee in 2013 for using ‘fragile numbers, out of date data and assumptions that do not reflect real life’. The House of Lords Economic Committee has now published similarly damaging claims that… [Read More]
Open Europe’s new study, ‘What If?’, has been panned by Eurosceptics for suggesting that leaving the EU could realistically cost 0.8% GDP, while few praised the alternate finding that, by 2030, exit could add 0.6% GDP yearly. The report says both: it examines what might happen with the EU; domestically; and with the rest of… [Read More]
If we are to save the NHS, simply restructuring and improving its services will not suffice, we must reduce the demand for those services in the first place. This is why the promotion of preventative medicine is so important, and why we, as a nation, need to invest more in public health programmes. Last week,… [Read More]
‘I want a full and fair referendum to be held in 2015 to allow Britons to vote on being in or out of the European Union.’ This, Nigel Farage notes, would be Ukip’s price for a confidence and supply agreement to support a Conservative government after May’s election. Farage’s gambit suggests either the same politicking… [Read More]