Chairman Mal - Professor Malcolm Grant of the NHS Commissioning Board - opens with Cathy Newman joke about shaving his moustache off for £2000 for Comic Relief.

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Click here for details of 'The Tao of Andrew Lansley', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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Andrew Lansley's speech to the NHS Confederation today was, unexpectedly, very funny.

Albeit not intentionally.

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Click here for details of 'The Tao of Andrew Lansley', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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This transcript is not verbatim - video is here.

I want to say something about tomorrow’s BMA strike. (The strike within the BMA is today.) I want to call again on doctors to think again before taking part in a strike that must inevitably damage patient care.

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As we did last year, Health Policy Insight has an exclusive leak of Andrew Lansley’s authentic speech to the NHS Confederation conference.

Under embargo to 1.15 pm Wednesday 20 June 2012

Check against delivery

Thanks Mike, and thanks to all the team. I want to say how much I personally appreciate all of the wasteful bureaucracy that the Confederation’s members are no longer doing.

A short extract from the latest edition of our subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence appears below. To subscribe for £69 for 12 months, email editorial@healthpolicyinsight.com.

Tao is (Wikipedia kindly informs me) the essential nature of the universe and being. Spiritual pursuit under the Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist faith involves the condition of acceptance and one-ness with the universe.

The annual NHS Confederation conference begins today, and two documents help set the scene.

The first is the latest BMJ data briefing by the Kings Fund's iridescent chief economist Professor John Appleby.

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Click here for details of 'The Tao of Andrew Lansley', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Health policy adviser to Number 10 Downing Street Sean Worth gave this extremely revealing exit interview to The Guardian.

There are some key lines to give insight into Conservative thinking in Number 10.

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Click here for details of 'The Tao of Andrew Lansley', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Westminster Hall debates in Parliament rarely make the news, but today's by Lib Dem MP John Pugh must might.

Hansard records that Labour's shadow health minister Liz Kendall used the occasion to ask anonymity-prone Lib Dem Health Minister Paul 'Who?' Burstow about the proposed funding for cancer networks from April 2013.

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GP magazine's Tom Moberly has carried out a FOI study of PCTs' policies of limiting access to non-urgent care.

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Click here for details of 'The Tao of Andrew Lansley', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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This afternoon the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers enjoyed the benefit of me chuntering on at them about health policy for a bit. They were a good, diligent crowd, and didn't walk out, which - given it was the last slot of the day - was nice (and probably all about my fellow speaker Ash Soni of the NHS Future Forum.

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