Tag Archives: andrew lansley

Stephen Tall

Why IDS is still in his job is revealing of Conservative attitudes to social security

By Stephen Tall | Wed 10th December 2014 - 5:55 pm

Iain Duncan SmithWhen Andrew Lansley’s health reforms ran into trouble – and his inability to take with him the public or those working in the NHS proved toxic – David Cameron reshuffled him out of harm’s way. Jeremy Hunt was brought in to make nice to the health sector and patients.

When Michael Gove’s education reforms started to run before they could walk – and his inability to take with him the public or the teachers proved toxic, especially in marginal constituencies – David Cameron reshuffled him out of harm’s way. Nicky …

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Mark Pack

The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works

By Mark Pack | Mon 16th July 2012 - 2:25 pm

Robert Hazell and Ben Yong’s work, The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works, is a very readable volume, written mostly in the style of an introductory politics textbook and based on extensive interviews with the participants, including at very senior levels.

The book is well done, readable, comprehensive and has a few gems lurking in the revelations from all the interviews, such as the limited involvement of Andrew Lansley and Paul Burstow in drafting the health section of the Coalition Agreement.

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Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: Clegg, Cam & Lansley “You can hear the white coats flapping” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 11th February 2012 - 3:50 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here’s David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley rolling up their sleeves over the NHS reforms — what do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Ed Davey “I’ve got Energy” Edition.

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Prateek Buch

Senior Tories voice growing concern over NHS reforms, calling for ‘unnecessary and unpopular’ Bill to be scrapped

By Prateek Buch | Fri 10th February 2012 - 8:10 am

The Health and Social Care Bill has long been criticised by doctors, nurses, many Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. To the list of those concerned about the impact of Andrew Lansley’s reforms can be added senior Tory figures including Tim Montgomerie, editor of ConservativeHome blog, and several members of the Cabinet.

According Tim’s editorial this morning, following on from a Times article earlier in the week (£), Conservative Cabinet Ministers are sufficiently concerned over how the reforms were being handled to press for the contentious components to be dropped and for only those elements that retain cross-party …

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NewsHound

£1.5 billion needed to sort out Labour’s PFI mess

By NewsHound | Mon 6th February 2012 - 1:54 pm

The Guardian reports:

Seven hospital trusts struggling with crippling private finance initiative debts are to receive £1.5bn in emergency funding from the government to help them avoid cutting patient services to pay their bills.

The Department of Health is making the £1.5bn available – in grants, not loans – to the seven hospital trusts in England with some of the heaviest PFI debts through a “stability” fund. Trusts will be able to use the money to meet PFI repayments, rather than their usual budgets, as long as they meet four conditions set out by the department.

The move will help trusts such

…

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The Voice

Shirley Williams’ campaign against NHS reforms wins new concessions from Lansley

By The Voice | Sun 29th January 2012 - 12:30 pm

Here’s how The Guardian reports today’s news that the Coalition will offer further concessions to the NHS reform bill in an attempt to head off a revolt in the House of Lords led by Lib Dem peer Baroness Williams:

… ministers will table a series of amendments to the health and social care bill that will oblige Andrew Lansley to maintain the NHS as a national public service and, his critics say, limit his ambitions to expand the role of the private sector. The changes will also spell out the kind of services that must be offered by GPs and

…

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NewsHound

LibLink: Shirley Williams – Why this flawed bill threatens the very future of the NHS

By NewsHound | Sun 4th September 2011 - 6:32 pm

Writing in today’s Observer, Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams says:

As the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill has ground on, the doubts and questions that accompany it have become ever more difficult to address. This is a bill that has been subjected to a listening exercise, extensive consultation and a report by Steve Field, chairman of the Future Forum, redrafting by Parliament, more than 100 hours of debate, and dedicated efforts by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the Liberal Democrat minister of state for social care, Paul Burstow, to amend it to meet the worries Lib

…

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Mark Pack

“Prime Minister David Cameron’s Liberal Democrat deputy has quietly emerged as the more successful Whitehall operator”

By Mark Pack | Wed 31st August 2011 - 10:00 pm

So writes Paul Goodman in the Daily Telegraph:

That Clegg persuaded his party to cohabit with the Conservatives is a tribute not only to his powers of persistence and his colleagues’ appetite for office, but also to the Coalition Agreement itself. Its importance can be over-stated. The Government has done things that aren’t in it, such as housing benefit cuts. And it won’t do things that are in it, such as postal ballots for primaries. But its carefully crafted terms, approved by a Liberal Democrat team apparently surprised by the co-operation of the Conservative one, achieved many of the party’s objectives.

…

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Mark Pack

Stinging rebuke for Great Ormond Street’s management in The Lancet

By Mark Pack | Tue 21st June 2011 - 8:23 am

Writing in the latest edition of The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, its editor Richard Horton says,

If GOSH’s management team had been in Wigan they would almost certainly have departed by now. Perhaps GOSH is just too important to be seen to fail. Even when a child dies. (The Lancet – free registration required)

The reason for his comment that had it been another hospital, the management team would have been sacked or resigned by now is the criticisms levelled at the hospital not only for its role in the death of Baby Peter but …

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The Voice

LibLink | Shirley Williams: Lib Dems should take credit for thwarting Lansley

By The Voice | Mon 13th June 2011 - 10:19 am

Shirley Williams, writing today in the Independent, says that the Liberal Democrats can be proud of their influence on NHS reforms:

Liberal Democrats, from our party’s grassroots to its leadership, can be proud of the influence we have exerted to change the Government’s NHS plans. It is clear now that the proposals that will be taken forward are dramatically different to those originally proposed.

The implications of Andrew Lansley’s massive health proposals, setting England’s health system on the path to a market in health care rather than a public service, were very slow to sink in. The complex, extensive and sometimes almost

…

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Mark Pack

It’s a busy Saturday for the spinners

By Mark Pack | Sat 11th June 2011 - 10:21 am

With the new version of the government’s health plans due out on Monday or Tuesday, expect tomorrow’s papers to be full of pre-briefing from the different camps – the pro-Lansley Tories, the rest of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

The first of that trio are likely to have by far the toughest, verging on implausible, task given the major changes coming to the original NHS plans. The bigger media battle is between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (or Cameron and Clegg if you prefer your politics in distilled personalised format) over the relative credit for those changes.

The news from the Liberal …

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Mark Pack

NHS reforms will be altered significantly and in a Lib Dem direction – Paul Burstow

By Mark Pack | Sun 22nd May 2011 - 1:50 pm

The NHS Bill will be substantially changed – that was the message from Liberal Democrat MP and Health Minister Paul Burstow at Lewisham Liberal Democrats on Friday night. It won’t just be changed, he said, it will be changed in a distinctively Liberal Democrat direction.

At the heart of the likely changes is the role of Monitor, the proposals for which Paul bluntly said were got wrong first time round. Though he was careful not to directly criticise Andrew Lansley, he did say that the original proposals for Monitor were to adopt the model of regulator used with privatised utilities and …

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Mark Pack

Grassroots pressure stepped up over NHS plans

By Mark Pack | Tue 5th April 2011 - 12:27 pm

With yesterday’s holding announcement from Andrew Lansley – yes, the health plans might be changed but no, there are no details as yet – the future of the health White Paper is very much up for grabs. It’s not quite as simple as Liberal Democrats versus Conservatives, as although there are not many Conservatives who share the principled objections to parts of the plans from the Liberal Democrats, there are many who share concerns over the practical workings of the detail and fear the political impact.

In a smart move, which reinforces how the Social Liberal Forum is becoming one …

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Mark Pack

First Conservative MP to back Yes vote in AV referendum?

By Mark Pack | Mon 4th April 2011 - 8:57 am

It looks as if Warrington MP David Mowat could be the first Conservative MP so far to back the alternative vote in May’s referendum. The Liverpool Daily Post reports:

A Warrington MP is ready to defy David Cameron by voting to scrap the first-past-the- post voting system – potentially making him the only Conservative to do so.

David Mowat said he was considering backing a switch to the “alternative vote” (AV) for Westminster elections in the nationwide referendum to be staged on May 5.

The Warrington South MP described himself as an “agnostic” on the issue, but also stated his belief that

…

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Mark Pack

Will money for cancer drugs be available for alternative medicine asks astrology MP

By Mark Pack | Sat 12th March 2011 - 8:26 am

Bosworth Conservative MP David Tredinnick, the man who claimed for astrology software and training on expenses, has been asking in Parliament about switching funds from cancer drugs to alternative medicine:

David Tredinnick: The cancer drugs fund is available only for pharmaceutical drugs, but can it be used for wider support services, such as healers, aromatherapists, those using therapeutic touch and other such practitioners?

Andrew Lansley: We are finalising the design of the future cancer drugs fund from April, and we will publish shortly. The interim cancer drugs fund is designed to support new effective medicines, …

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Lisa Harding

Opinion: Baroness Williams shows how to disagree with coalition policy with grace

By Lisa Harding | Tue 1st March 2011 - 4:49 pm

One of the very reasons I became a Liberal Democrat in the first place was be cause of strong women within the party who held similar beliefs to my own. Baroness Williams is one of those women, but she has something else which is equally important in these times of coalition government.

Shirley Williams has a wonderful way of saying that she disagrees with the coalition without it being dramatic or overly sentimental. In her opinion piece in The Times she lays out her thoughts as to why she cannot support the coalition and its proposals for the National …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: Nanny no more – a real test of the Coalition

By Prateek Buch | Tue 13th July 2010 - 1:40 pm

It was inevitable, it had to happen at some point, the honeymoon couldn’t last forever (insert any other clichés you’d like to add); the Coalition government, drenched in soft summery praise in its opening weeks – enough to spark a nauseating case of cognitive dissonance in the case of Martin Kettle’s latest offering – had to face a stern test of its unity sooner or later, and now we have it. But I’m not talking about the referendum on electoral reform, nor about cuts to public services or even the VAT rise. No, I’m talking about Turkey Twizzlers, fizzy …

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The Voice

Lamb’s challenge to Lansley: let’s get to grips with social care

By The Voice | Wed 17th February 2010 - 4:20 pm

Lib Dem shadow health secretary Norman Lamb has today written to his Tory opposite number Andrew Lansley to urge him to attend this Friday’s conference on social care.

The Tories are refusing to attend the cross-party conference – following last week’s tribal spat – on the basis that the Labour Government will not rule out a compulsory levy. This is despite earlier indications that Mr Lansley accepted that the issue of voluntary versus compulsory schemes was one of the key points to be resolved in a consensus building process.

Norman has also called for the talks to be held in the open, …

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Richard Huzzey

Daily View 2×2: 10 September 2009

By Richard Huzzey | Thu 10th September 2009 - 12:02 am

2 Big Stories

Tories announce curb in health spending increases

As The Telegraph reports,

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said that the Tories would cut the rate at which NHS spending was increasing.

The health service would have to “tighten its belt” and accept small increases in its budget, he added.

Afghanistan Rescue Mission Debated

Meanwhile, questions emerged overnight as to the British military intervention to rescue journalist Stephen Farrell:

Military officials tonight defended the decision to launch a dramatic raid to rescue a British journalist from the Taliban, in which his Afghan assistant and a soldier were killed, against angry criticism in

…

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Mark Pack

The thing David Cameron wants you to forget when watching his election broadcast

By Mark Pack | Fri 15th May 2009 - 9:06 pm

Today’s election broadcast from the Conservatives simply features David Cameron talking to camera about MPs and their expense claims. The message is meant to be about him facing up to the problems and talking frankly about them.

But listen to his language:

I want to start by saying sorry … sorry for the actions of some Conservative MPs…

principle of thrift should apply to Conservative MPs too. So from now on I want them to claim what is reasonable to do their job…

Members of my Shadow Cabinet, including Michael Gove, Oliver Letwin and Andrew Lansley, have agreed to pay back money…

…

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