General election 2019: Tories unveil plan for Australian-style, points-based immigration system November 8, 2019 Boris Johnson is to tackle both the issues of health and immigration as the Conservatives unveil plans to introduce an Australian-style, points-based immigration system. The Prime Minister is to announce a new visa that aims to attract more doctors and nurses to the NHS following Brexit. The immigration points-based system is thought to be popular [...]
NHS ‘perfect storm’ could threaten Tory election hopes November 7, 2019 The Conservatives’ election hopes face a potentially major blow from a damning report out today that warned more than 1m NHS patients could experience four hour waits at A&E this winter. The British Medical Association (BMA) analysis warned the NHS is set for its “worst ever” winter as pressure on the health provider looks set [...]
DEBATE: Can the Tories win on the NHS? November 5, 2019 Can the Tories win on the NHS? Lauren McEvatt, a former Wales Office special adviser and managing director at Morpeth Consulting, says YES. The Tories can win on the NHS, because the Tories can win in Wales. Yesterday’s Welsh Barometer poll has the Conservatives on track to gain nine seats from Labour. The success of the [...]
Carillion saga continues: Watchdog probes Whitehall salvage attempts on unfinished hospitals October 6, 2019 Britain’s public spending watchdog is to launch in investigation into Whitehall’s attempts to rescue two major hospital projects which ground to a halt when Carillion went bust last year. The unfinished Midland Metropolitan and the Royal Liverpool University hospitals were left hanging by a thread when the outsourcer collapsed in January 2018, eventually lumping taxpayers [...]
NHS to receive £250m funding boost for AI development lab August 8, 2019 The NHS is set to receive £250m in funding to boost research into artificial intelligence that could help develop treatments for cancer, dementia and heart disease. The money will be funnelled into a new National Artificial Intelligence Lab, health secretary Matt Hancock said today. Read more: Government to announce emergency £2bn NHS funding injection AI [...]
NHS still running Windows XP on over 2,000 computers despite spate of cyber attacks July 17, 2019 The NHS has admitted it is still running Windows XP on over 2000 computers, even though the operating system stopped receiving security updates five years ago. In a written answer, health minister Jackie Doyle-Price said: “As of July 2019, approximately 2,300 National Health Service computers are using Windows XP from a total of around 1.4 [...]
The NHS needs to plan for today, not 10 years into the future July 4, 2019 The NHS was built with one key purpose: to address social inequality by making the best healthcare available to everyone. For years, that aim has driven technological innovations that power better provision of care. However, as we mark 71 years from when it was founded, the NHS is operating in a very different world – [...]
Tragedy awaits if we don’t bridge the gap between beliefs and reality in the NHS June 26, 2019 A tragic story over the weekend revealed how a man who died of lung cancer was failed abysmally by the NHS. Two separate sets of doctors omitted to tell him for over a year that he had the disease. The added poignancy of the news item was that the victim was a relative of Nye [...]
We turn politics into a deposition at our peril May 30, 2019 Politics is not known as one of the more truthful professions. Spin, exaggeration, and truth-stretching are all staples of the politician’s toolkit. We might prefer it to be otherwise, but the reality is that an astute public must take claims uttered by those in office with a healthy dose of salt. It is therefore worrying [...]
Employers intend to hire despite confidence being at record lows, survey shows May 29, 2019 Employers’ confidence in the UK economy in May stayed close to the record low figure recorded in April, a survey has shown, as the Brexit deadlock continues to weigh on sentiment. Read more: UK wages rise again as employment rate stays at record high Confidence among bosses in making hiring and investment decisions also stayed [...]