“Britain has a social care crisis,” says the headline above Wes Streeting’s latest piece in the Guardian. “Here’s how Labour plans to fix it.” And how does Labour plan to fix it? Why, by “announcing an independent commission on building a National Care Service” of course. Crossbench peer Louise Casey has agreed to chair the […]| The Policy Sketchbook
We are two months in and, as far as NHS reform goes, the new government is still in a stage of political positioning and information gathering. Lord Darzi’s report, published yesterday, tells us that the NHS is in a bad state. Everything is worse than it was in 2010: waiting lists have soared, cancer outcomes […]| The Policy Sketchbook
It is an old cliché that people in the UK want European levels of public services for US levels of taxation – even if the last government achieved closer to US levels of public services for European levels of taxation. And maybe there is nothing wrong with this: any economist will tell you that a […]| The Policy Sketchbook
Lord Sumption has come under fire for comments he made in BBC a debate about whether lockdown was “punishing too many for the greater good”, where he told a woman with stage 4 cancer that her life was “less valuable” than other people’s. He was saying this as part of his argument against lockdown, which […]| The Policy Sketchbook
The development of three highly effective vaccines in record time was not only a rare piece of good news in 2020, but an incredible scientific achievement – and one delivered by our much-maligned drug companies. So often seen as the bad guys, Big Pharma has ridden to our rescue when we needed them the most. […]| The Policy Sketchbook
Why you should probably vote for the least bad party that can win in your constituency It’s election day and we’ve got choices to make. Of course, we have choices to make every time an election comes around, but for many people – seemingly more than usual – none of the options are very appealing. […]| The Policy Sketchbook
The gotchas around the Conservative pledge to recruit 50,000 more nurses are wrong – but the truth is actually worse. The Conservative announcement that they will “deliver 50,000 more nurses” has not gone down as they would have hoped. Labour has picked up on the fact that some of this increase will be delivered by […]| The Policy Sketchbook
Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, has an article in the Times (also available on the IFS website without a paywall) about how different ideas about fairness are behind some of our political di…| The Policy Sketchbook
Public policy, mostly from the UK, sometimes with pictures| The Policy Sketchbook
3 posts published by thepolicysketchbook during January 2018| The Policy Sketchbook
“To be clear,” wrote Richard Murray and Siva Anandaciva last year in the Health Service Journal (The Wretchedness of NHS Financial Planning, July 2023 [£]), “this is not fraud.” Richard was then Ch…| The Policy Sketchbook
Kailash Chand has a piece in the Guardian arguing that unless the NHS fundamentally changes its approach to focus on prevention rather than cure, it will not be financially sustainable. This remind…| The Policy Sketchbook
