At first sight, the plan to cut down the public sector inspectorates from 11 to four seems sensible. But a closer look shows there is method in the seeming madness of the current messy, overlapping...
Local Improvement Finance Trusts can make a big difference to health services, but issues need to be resolved around value-for-money comparisons, resourcing and the rationalisation of primary care...
Private Finance Initiative credits worth £125m awarded this week will provide incentives for working with the voluntary, health and private sectors, care services minister Liam Byrne has told Public...
A future Conservative government should match Margaret Thatcher's 'enterprise revolution' in industry, with a 'social enterprise revolution' in the public services, shadow health secretary Andrew...
The protracted dispute over the refusal by private firms to offer the Agenda for Change pay deal to employees working in the NHS will finally be resolved this week after the government agreed to fund...
The public sector could employ an additional 5,700 doctors, 12,800 nurses or 9,100 police officers annually with the money it loses through two forms of benefit fraud.
Public service unions are vowing to step up their opposition to the government's controversial reform programme after bloodying ministers' noses over pensions and the NHS at the Labour Party...
Leaked official documents suggest that the government is planning far wider private sector involvement in the NHS than previously admitted, a senior member of the Common's health select committee has...
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has been criticised by the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance for calling for a reduction in the size of the province's public sector.
As the Conservatives gear up for their Blackpool conference next week, they face their most important leadership contest in more than 40 years. Philip Johnston analyses the policies behind the beauty...
Gordon Brown's fiscal rules were invented to win his party credibility, but he has changed their definitions so often that unless they are independently scrutinised we face a borrowing disaster
The NHS needs finance skills more than ever if it is to transform itself into a modern, forward-planning organisation while struggling with major structural upheavals, growing deficits and the need...
Patient and Public Involvement forums might be reformed along very similar lines to the recently abolished Community Health Councils, health minister Rosie Winterton said this week.
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is considering proposals to expand the powers of local authority overview and scrutiny committees, so they would be able to hold government departments and...
Can you only feel the public service ethos if you are employed by the public sector? Of course not, says Ann Rossiter. It all depends on the values of the service provider
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are meant to be as one on the need for radical public sector reform. But as Blair embarks on one of his last Party conferences as PM, his quest for a legacy is bringing...
The Liberal Democrat leadership this week called on members to support a bold range of new policy proposals designed to give the party a real chance of electoral success by the end of the decade.
NHS organisations continue to face tough financial decisions because of chronic underspending in the 1980s and 1990s, the NHS Confederation said this week.
NHS trusts and private care providers should compete on price as well as quality under payment by results, according to shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley.
Mammoth PFI commitments appear to have had their day in the NHS, now that the government is prizing competition above all else. Smaller, self-financed projects are emerging as the way forward
