Click here for details of Andrew Lansley's Millwall Tendency via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Cats are wriggling their way out of badly-drafted bags.

The uncorrected Hansard of Tuesday's health select committee session with Our Saviour And Liberator Andrew Lansley and DH colleagues is now online.

The Health Policy Insight team may swear a bit, occasionally when under extreme provocation. As a rule, we try to avoid personal attacks.

Although we do make an exception for special, special Health Minister Simon Burns. And actually, we make an exception for anyone who's a bit much to bear.

What the hell: some rules are made to be broken.

Click here for details of Andrew Lansley's Millwall Tendency via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

With thanks to several Health Policy Insight readers for sharing this document, below follows the text of the DH's official advice on the legal status of GP commissioning consortia and shadow consortia.

Status of GP consortia and ‘shadow’ consortia
1. This note provides clarification on a number of questions that have been raised about:

In this guest editorial, Nick Seddon, deputy director of Reform thinktank assesses key issues which are dogging changes to the NHS

In its favour, the Government has recognised that the NHS needs reform. Spending doubled, performance dawdled, productivity dipped.

It is perverse to protect waste – most people agree – and there’s enormous scope for boosting value across the system, redesigning services to shift care out of old hospitals and into more appropriate and cost-effective settings.

Click here for details of Andrew Lansley's Millwall Tendency, via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The uncorrected transcript of the latest health select committee evidence session on commissioning is now online.

Extracts of a few key exchanges follow below.

Click here for details of Andrew Lansley's Millwall Tendency, via subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Variation in healthcare is a fact of life. And much like the broader facts of life, the scared and the stupid don't like to talk about it.

Another day, another batch of bad news stories for Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms.

(I’ve typed that so often, it feels as if it deserves its own acronym, but ADABOBNSFALNR will never catch on. It sounds like the name of a Nordic volcano that's going to screw up everyone's travel plans, which, when you think about it ...)

Today’s trio of tribulations carry quite a sting.

Open primaries, primary care and a Greek tragedy

The new health adviser in the 10 Downing Street policy unit is Paul Bate.

He is not, however, the health academic Professor Paul Bate of UCL Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME), as we originally published.

He is, rather, the management consultant Paul Bate, formerly of 2020 Delivery.

D'oh to me. Sorry to Paul Bate (Professor), and to the actually appointed Paul Bate.

I went to look at the elegantly-redesigned Dr Foster Intelligence website, and happened across the news that DFI last week parted company with its chief executive Tom Moloney. I missed spotting Dave West's report of this last week in Health Service Journal.

Professor Alan Maynard on the specious McKinsey Report, mushroom management and the whereabouts of £4 bilion a year over the next four years

Comrade-In-Chief Nicholson has decreed that the NHS has to re-cycle £20 billion over the next 4 financial years, following his absorption of McKinsey’s so-called report, with its several references to McKinsey data! President Lansley has concurred.

With neither of our bold leaders apparently capable of a critique of the McKinsey alchemy, NHS managers are busy seeking to meet the demands of these latter-day Stalinists.