The Public Accounts Committee criticised the Home Office this week for allowing an 'unhealthy' backlog of asylum applications to build up, as Labour and Conservatives launched a pre-election war of...
Finding a blueprint to tackle Britain's looming pensions crisis is one of the major challenges Work and Pensions Secretary Alan Johnson has set himself, he told Public Finance this week.
The government's push on preventative health will continue to take a back seat in the NHS as targets and incentives focus on more 'vote-winning' acute care, a think-tank warned this week.
Further education colleges are demanding that the government plug a £200m funding shortfall that leaves them with 10% less cash per pupil than school sixth forms.
Paul Boateng has given the green light to development work on a cost index that would accurately reflect the financial pressures faced by local authorities, Public Finance has learned.
The Audit Commission is to slash £18m from public bodies' annual inspection bills after a review concluded that significant areas of the regulator's activities do not represent value for money.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred this week stepped in to heal a potential breach with foundation trusts' regulator Monitor over the troubled Bradford Hospitals trust.
The head of the Ministry of Defence's new Private Finance Unit will have a veto over future projects as part of his remit to improve the department's lamentable procurement record, officials have...
Government grant for local authority Private Finance Initiative schemes will move to an annuity-based system, in an effort to level the playing field with other forms of capital finance.
The NHS foundation trust regulator did not adhere to its own assessment procedure when it was considering the Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust for foundation status, according to a report released...
Radical plans to devolve control of services to neighbourhoods and reshape the landscape of local government have been launched this week, as Cabinet ministers gathered in Manchester for the...
The Wanless franchise keeps on growing. Not content with producing two influential reports on future NHS funding and public health, the former NatWest chief executive this week announced he is...
The Office for National Statistics must be granted the same independence from political interference as the National Audit Office if public confidence in the UK's economic data is to be restored, a...
GPs will refuse to take up practice-led commissioning because the payment by results system is riddled with errors and there is no means of rectifying mistakes, primary care representatives are...
Children from the poorest families are badly served by an education system that fails to cater to their needs, the chief schools inspector said this week.
Despite ministers' rhetoric, the long-awaited reform of Incapacity Benefit outlined this week drew on a familiar political solution to a troubling financial issue: cut basic state payments to...
The government's workforce 'remodelling' plans, part of its efficiency agenda, are an attempt to get more out of workers for less and could herald a return to job insecurity, unions warned this week.
