All Michael White articles – Page 9
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CommentMichael White: opposition's political artillery fire rings hollow
A barrage of political artillery fire preceded Monday’s Commons second reading of the Health and Social Care Bill.
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CommentMichael White: like a civil war, the Health Bill has divided political families
Reading in last week’s HSJ how Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill will combine NHS decentralisation with powerful regulation from Whitehall, I was reminded of the label once attached to the Chinese communist party’s controlled introduction of capitalism: “market Stalinism”.
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CommentMichael White: ministers are puzzled by the BMA’s hostility
It remains a guiding principle of this column that any policy opposed by the British Medical Association can’t be all bad.
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Comment‘Dentists are making their own high pitched whine about the Care Quality Commission’
I saw Michael Gove declaring himself “an enthusiast” for Andrew Lansley’s healthcare reforms, which says more for the education secretary’s collegiate loyalty than his attention to the small print.
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Comment
Michael White: It could have been worse
The danger for ministers over the festive break is to be drawn into the news vacuum that develops when the world goes on holiday. How well did Andrew Lansley survive his first Yuletide vacuum in the health hot seat?
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Comment'People are skeptical of welfare spending'
As coalition ministers plough on with radical reforms of health and other public services, they should not take much comfort from this week’s social attitude survey suggesting Britain is now more right wing than in the Thatcherite 80s.
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CommentMichael White: caution and openness
Watching Andrew Lansley introduce MPs to his “nudge” white paper on public health, I was struck by how much it is still a first draft and by how enthusiastic the new generation of Conservative MPs is for bossiness.
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Comment'Stalinist Whitehall controls will be needed'
I felt a bit sorry for Phil Morley, chief executive of the Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust, getting roughed up on the radio after Dr Foster’s sleuths named his patch as the place where patients are most likely to die of complications after routine operations.
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Comment'Dorrell argues now for quiet pragmatism, for letting change evolve'
Am I just imagining it? Or did Andrew Lansley start to modify his combative message to the NHS, its suspicious staff and customers, even before Stephen Dorrell’s striking intervention in the reform debate courtesy of last week’s HSJ?
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Comment'NHS cuts will come off a far fatter bird'
It won’t have changed your life much, but MPs have been squabbling for weeks now over the future size of the NHS budget under the coalition’s plans for the next five years. “Bigger or smaller?” critics demand to know. Yes or no, does it change anything?
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CommentMichael White: health panel discussions
As I type I can hear this week’s opening of the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust public inquiry being discussed on the radio.
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Comment'Complaints about NICE on one page and useless, costly drugs on another'
After a summer in which Labour’s health team was off fighting a leadership contest and the Liberal Democrat team was co-opted into government, health politics are livening up. No more Mr Nice Guy seems to be John Healey’s message.
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Comment‘Labour MPs who call the Osborne way Thatcherism Mk II are not up to speed’
It took less than a week for some vociferous supporters of George Osborne’s £81bn spending cuts experiment to get cold feet about the likely consequences for lower economic growth. The government “cannot cut its way to prosperity”, business leaders warned on Monday.
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Comment‘Part of “Waiting for Osborne” consisted of Lansley reassuring voters he has GP support’
At a conference the other day I heard an entrepreneurial medic giving a glowing account of a GP led consortium and all the wonderful Lansley style things it is doing for its patients in the South. Oh brave new world!
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CommentWhat was he thinking?
What’s that? Our former health boss, cheerful Alan Johnson, as shadow chancellor and Andy Burnham switched to the education brief, where he has been quick to condemn coalition plans to raise student tuition charges? What was Ed Miliband thinking?
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Comment'Lansley needs to make the intellectual case for PCT upheaval'
Who caught my attention at the Tory conference this year? Not Andrew Lansley, I think. He had his £164m cancer screening announcement pinched by David Cameron (a PM’s prerogative) and also made a rather lacklustre speech of his own from the platform.
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Comment'The pre-election death tax row continues to reverberate'
No, I didn’t really expect Ed Miliband to snatch the Labour leadership from his big brother, now you come to mention it. I did expect Andy Burnham to end up where he did in the contest, fourth out of five after a respectable campaign which has raised his political profile ...
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Comment'A centre-left party in a centre-right coalition needs to tread carefully'
It has been a fascinating week in Liverpool watching Liberal Democrat ministers, MPs and party activists circling each other at their first party conference since entering the Cameron-led coalition.
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CommentMichael White: Is the summer silly season over?
MPs are back at Westminster early this year. Does it mean the summer silly season is definitely over? Not quite. I read during the week that Andy Burnham, our erstwhile health secretary and Labour leadership contender, is a descendant of Britain’s first Tudor monarch, King Henry VII.
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CommentMichael White on Blair's diary
Don’t be put off by some of the savage reviews of Tony Blair’s memoirs. As books of this kind go, and I have read a few, it is unusually frank in all sorts of ways, not least about his growing alcohol dependency - a very New Labour concern.