Health Policy Insight occasionally receives criticism that we as an entity and I as an editor are, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit downbeat. Glum. Depressive. Downhearted.

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Click here for details of 'Lansley: the NHS is not a mobile phone; I am not Henry V', via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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The Battle Of The Bill has been a long campaign. It's ironic that as the listening pause draws to a close, there has been a morning of political action.

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Click here for details of 'Lansley: the NHS is not a mobile phone; I am not Henry V', via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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Deputy PM Nick Clegg's speech on health at University College London Hospital, 26 May, 2011

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Click here for details of 'Lansley: the NHS is not a mobile phone; I am not Henry V', via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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After the ‘pause’ – Labour’s alternative on the Health and Social Care Bill

David Cameron‟s Health and Social Care Bill is fundamentally flawed and needs to be radically rethought. The Prime Minister has promised to listen to the chorus of criticism and to make substantial changes.

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Thank you for allowing me to join you and mark this last week of the Government’s so-called “pause to listen” on their NHS reorganisation. I know that your Society deals with policy, rather than politics. And that you’re expertise lies in professional standards, not political argument.

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Click here for details of 'Lansley: the NHS is not a mobile phone; I am not Henry V', via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The seventh lead item on the ten o'clock BBC News was Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's speech tomorrow in which he is set to win the battle of reforming the NHS reform, and promise ... what?

(The BBC's footage also showed Secretary Of State For The Time Being Andrew Lansley looking seriously rough. Time for a long rest from all this?)

There will be no function for Monitor as a competition regulator, now or in future?

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The BMA has published its response to the listening exercise.

Their media release says that the legislation represents “an enormous risk” during a time of huge financial pressure for the NHS, noting that over 80 per cent of just under 1,000 BMA members who completed a feedback form on the BMA website in May said their attitude to the reforms was either mostly or very unwelcoming.

Poor old Andrew Lansley. He's got a great career behind him as opposition health spokesman.

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Click here for details of 'Lansley: the NHS is not a mobile phone; I am not Henry V', via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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Professor Steve Field, chair of the listening pause, had a private meeting this morning with members of the House Of Commons Health Select Committee, which was not listed on the committee website.

I learned about this meeting from a tweet from Labour MP and committee member Grahame Morris.

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“The need for new supporters is a mathematical fact – we will not be able to implement a Conservative manifesto in full unless we get a bigger share of the vote than we did last time … Headline voting intention figures in the polls obscure the fact that the Conservative Party has in fact lost close to one in eight of its voters from 2010. The reason the Tories still retain a share in the mid-thirties rather than the high twenties is that they have won over a section of the electorate which did not vote Conservative at the election.