Plans to increase benefit payments to single parents seeking work will have a limited impact because little is being done to keep them in the labour market, a former welfare minister has warned.
Up to 60% of deficit-hit NHS organisations have grounds to appeal against the tight time frames they have been given to cut services and recover their debts, according to the NHS Alliance.
Claims that English schools are failing almost 1 million pupils are misleading, damaging and a 'gross simplification' of the reality of education, teaching leaders said this week.
As the NHS's financial crisis continues, the Private Finance Initiative has come in for its share of the blame. But this is wrong, argue Phil Lobb and Tom Startup. In fact, with a more flexible...
The DoH claims that 'reconfiguration' of NHS services is all about improving clinical care. Critics says it's just to balance the books. Either way there are widespread protests against hospital...
The payment by results tariff and other information needed to create financial plans for 2007/08 will be published before Christmas, according to Richard Douglas, the Department of Health's director...
Sir Derek Wanless's proposals for funding long-term care for elderly people amount to a 'huge subsidy for the rich' and play into the hands of campaigners concerned with protecting their inheritance...
Government proposals to allow social workers to operate out of independent, GP-style practices have been greeted with caution by local government leaders, who fear the policy is masking the...
Salaries for Whitehall directors rose by 7.4% last year almost twice the rate as for the rest of the UK's workforce. But some executives have been rewarded despite poor performances, critics have...
Delegates to next week's annual social services conference are still reeling from the last round of organisational shake-ups. Now there is more change on the way, with a new children's green paper...
New Audit Commission chair Michael O'Higgins is quietly determined to turn up the heat on his inspectors to ensure they stay in touch. And he is no slouch in the kitchen either, as he tells Joseph...
A future Conservative government should curtail school selection and establish a 'very different agenda' to the vouchers policy on which the party fought the last election, shadow education secretary...
Fears over job security might prompt community nurses to leave the NHS following this week's rationalisation of primary care trusts, according to the Royal College of Nursing.
The chancellor and the NHS are on a collision course with unions after suggesting that next year's pay rises should not break the government's 2% inflation target.
Just when everyone thought that Tomlinson's 14 19 diploma idea was over, key elements of it are being revived via a range of new vocational courses. But there are many financial and other challenges...
Alan Johnson has vowed to unveil wide-ranging proposals next month to put a stop to the 'chill indifference' of the state to children in care and banish the deep-seated disadvantage that condemns...
Pressure is mounting on the European Commission to publish a legal framework establishing the limits to which public services must abide by its rules on free market competition.
The NHS foundation trust regulator has warned primary care trusts to be realistic in contract negotiations over the number of patients that need hospital care.
The Conservatives have not just got a new logo but a brand new set of policies. Both might be a bit sketchy, but have they got the potential to grow into something more meaningful? Alex Klaushofer...
Cabinet Office officials this week admitted that many of Whitehall's human resources functions are inadequate, after it emerged that the four HR directors whose departments were criticised in...
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has removed the symbolic ceiling on private sector involvement in the NHS but has also conceded an important element of finance policy that experts say will curtail...
