As I commented in advance last week, yesterday was a big day for the NHS – 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and ten Strategic Health Authorities ceased to exist and 211 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), overseen instead by NHS England (also known as the NHS Commissioning Board), took charge of the commissioning of health services.… [Read More]
Allowing a proportion of randomly selected members of the Upper House has the potential to make it more representative of the country and provide valuable experience of most issues. The public is trusted to serve on juries so could serve Parliament too.
The United Kingdom recorded a gargantuan goods trade deficit of £100bn in 2012. This was offset by a healthy surplus of £76bn in services, making the net current account deficit in goods and services £24bn. The government rightly recognise that running continuous current account deficits is not sustainable and that something should be done about… [Read More]
On April 1st, 211 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) will officially succeed the 152 current Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) as the main commissioners (purchasers) of healthcare in the NHS. According to the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB), the arms-length independent body that will now exercise day-to-day operational control in the service, all CCGs are now cleared… [Read More]
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has agreed a 10bn Euro bailout agreement with the “troïka” consisting of EU Commission, European Central Bank and IMF leaders. The island’s second largest bank, “Laiki” (Popular Bank), is to be closed, with losses of up to 40% incurred by bondholders and those (mostly Russian) depositors with over 100,000EUR (£85,000). Smaller… [Read More]
Cyprus is the most recent country to seek a bailout in what seems like a never ending sequence of financial disasters in Europe. Last week eurozone finance ministers proposed a levy of 9.9% on savings deposits of over €100,000 euros and 6.75% on those between €20,000 and €100,000 to raise the money for a bailout… [Read More]
On Tuesday 19th March 2013 the Department for Education released statistics for school absences for the year 2011/12. The two headline figures – overall absence rate and percentage of persistent absentees – both continued the downward trend of recent years. This looks encouraging. Is there a story behind the figures?
The Chancellor has committed only £3 billion to extra infrastructure spending in today’s budget, falling well short of the £40 billion, for example, that the CBI has advocated. Companies are sitting on hoards of cash (£800 billion) and interest rates remain at historic lows as investors look to park their money in safe government debt.… [Read More]
Civitas has published a comment piece on French healthcare written by Ed Hoskins, a British business leader who now lives in France and at one point worked in the UK NHS. It gives an insight into some of the differences between the French system and ours, and in particular how their system marries social solidarity… [Read More]
In the great struggle now taking place over press freedom, the choice is not between self-regulation and political regulation. It is between regulation open to manipulation by ruling politicians; and regulation that is independent of both the newspaper industry and the political class.