The NHS must recruit many more consultant obstetricians and thousands of midwives to ensure a major shake-up in maternity services delivers better patient care, experts said this week.
Rural regeneration was once top of the in-tray at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. But other political priorities are preoccupying ministers, and public services in the...
The scale of the impending cutbacks in public spending have been starkly illustrated this week as independent experts warned that the government will have to choose between cutting child poverty and...
An extensive review of the welfare system will consider reducing the period for which lone parents receive child benefits but ministers have vowed not to reduce payment levels, the Department for...
'Thinking the unthinkable' is a term synonymous with New Labour's rather self-aggrandising approach to policy reform yet the reality is that some ministers have been marginalised for obliging with...
US-style healthcare schemes are increasingly being imported into the NHS. But do they work on UK soil? Opinion is sharply divided within the medical profession and beyond. Seamus Ward investigates
Government attempts to tackle child obesity have involved much 'dithering and confusion' and 'little co-ordination', the Commons Public Accounts Committee has found.
The government is considering the introduction of a single benefit payment for people of working age, a move that would initiate the most radical restructuring of welfare income for decades.
The game is up for the Child Support Agency. But will its new replacement do a better job at collecting the missing billions of pounds in maintenance? Paul Gosling investigates
Ministers have promised to speed up the payment of equipment grants to help elderly and disabled people who live at home, following an independent review.
A £2bn pay and conditions deal for teachers has failed to deliver significant improvements in pupil achievement, a Scottish education watchdog has declared.
Pay attention at the back. Teaching methods are changing. No more crowded ranks of children meekly bending their heads over exercise books, slavishly copying down whichever National Curriculum-honed...
The social care inspectorate has called for an urgent national debate into whether or not the state should continue to provide preventative social care to disabled and frail adults.
Supporters say social enterprises marry private efficiency with public values, offering innovative low-cost, high-quality services. But a wider definition of value for money is needed to get the best...
Happy New Year. If you are an adult with a disability you now have two years left to receive preventative social care that could stop your condition deteriorating further, the Local Government...
Seventeen indebted NHS trusts whose income was capped under the transition to payment by results are now eligible for additional financial support in 2007/08, the Department of Health has said.
The troubled Child Support Agency will be swept away and replaced with a new body that will deliver simpler and more effective ways of collecting child maintenance, Work and Pensions Secretary John...
No sooner had Chancellor Gordon Brown finished adding up his promised £36bn investment in education over the next four years than the economists were asking the inevitable question: 'How much of that...
The chancellor whoever that might be in 2007 will have to conjure up a way of meeting expensive government commitments while implementing a tight public spending squeeze in the years ahead
The government's target is to halve the numbers of UK children living in poverty by 2010. But success rests on adequate funding, and campaigners doubt that enough money will be provided in next year'...
Your begin your first job in ignorant bliss of the pitfalls ahead, then continue to learn the hard way. But it doesn't have to be like this. Michael Ware reveals his need-to-know list
The demise of university science departments, coupled with a sharp decline in the number of school pupils learning languages, is causing alarm that the UK's competitiveness is at risk, as Stephen...
Halfway through its life, the government's efficiency programme is ahead of its targets. But with a fiscal squeeze on the way and no let-up in spending plans, the public sector is going to feel the...
