You can download the PDF here.

Just the links, for now - will provide analysis and commentary once the government website works properly!

NHS

Public health

Social care and disability

and also of relevance,

Congratulations to Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb MP, who is to be Chief Parliamentary and Political Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister. OK, it's not actually deputy Deputy Prime Minister, but a headline can only be so long.

He'll be in the Cabinet Office, attending cabinet meetings, making the coalition work - or trying to do so. In the latter context, he will also be a deputy whip.

You may remember our recent exclusive about KPMG being commissioned to review the DH and ALBs' back office functions.

Various supplementary questions occurred to me, and were duly asked.

Thanks to the DH FOI team for such a prompt response: their answers, and the scope document, follow below.

A few observations about all this:
- There were no final meetings held with the bidders. This seems surprising.

This latest in the NHS Confederation’s policy salon series, in association with the Kings Fund, is going to be more difficult than usual to write up coherently.

One reason for this is that, in addition to the Chatham House Rules (which are fine), much of the research informing the presentation and discussion is in peer review or yet to be published.

So there are no hard numbers here; broadly, what I will try to do is to give a summary of the themes, trends and discussion.

The novelty of policy evaluation

Could this afternoon see the first glimmer of health-related policy from the Liberal Conservatives?

The Big Society schtick has some potential to be beneficial, if it were to help crack NHS Stalinism (where many other attempts have failed miserably).

It could also move towards some form of meaningful citizen and user engagemnet and involvement - if the powers that be feel tremendously brave.

Health policy ‘lifers’ will remember reports of ex-Health Secretary Dr John Reid’s advice to his cabinet colleague Tessa Jowell when he quit the role in 2006. Wrongly believing that Jowell was next-in-line for the DH, Reid warned her, “don’t touch health; I’ve spent all the money”.

Those of you who have ever swung an axe to split a log will know the Newtonian rule that you start at the top.

The B boys
So we welcome the two new health ministers announced, Conservative Simon Burns MP and Lib Dem Paul Burstow MP.

Simon Burns

Health Minister Simon Burns (speaking in 2008) - "There has been too much of a propensity … for politicians to interfere when they come into office, and to feel that they have to prove their stamina and machismo by making changes, sometimes, it seems, just for the sake of it.

The Health Policy Insight Editor’s Blog condemning the treatment of Royal Cornwall Hospitals’ former chief executive John Watkinson is inaccurate and offensive.

The claim for unfair dismissal was made not against Sir Ian Carruthers or the South West Strategic Health Authority but against Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, which made its own decisions acting on independent legal advice.

I've just recently got interested in the SHA assurance process (this is archived content from the DH site-as-was, obviously).

Now these are interesting and useful documents.

The quick links have all, interestingly, stopped working since I started ringing round and writing this story, but you can get them through the page above for:
NHS North West
NHS South West
NHS South East Coast
NHS East of England