General Reports and Other Publications

TKF: The pay-for-performance scheme for GPs introduced in April 2004, known as the Quality & Outcomes Framework (QOF), has not resulted in improved ill-health prevention or health promotion by general practitioners, reveals new research undertaken by The King’s Fund.
 
Researchers looked at the impact of the QOF on public health & inequalities and revealed that where local practices were undertaking preventive activities, they usually pre-dated the QOF and were not a result of the incentives. The report makes a number of recommendations.
Press release & links ~ Impact of Quality and Outcomes Framework on health inequalities ~ TKF Summary
 
Ofcom: 48% of parents with children aged 5-15, who use the internet at home, think they know less about the internet than their children do, new Ofcom research reveals. This rises to 70% of parents of 12-15 year olds. These and other findings form part of Ofcom’s media literacy reports, which focus on the safe & informed use and understanding of digital content among UK adults & children.
 
Ofcom has also published a consumer guide ‘Managing your media in a digital world’ to help parents understand some of the issues raised by Ofcom’s research.
Press release & links
 
PC&PE: The Commons Committee of Public Accounts has published a report which, on the basis of evidence from HM Treasury, and separately from RBS and Lloyds Banking Group, examines the maintenance of financial stability & protection of the taxpayer.
 
The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: “….. There are areas of concern, however.  Both banks found it difficult to provide the Treasury with appropriate & robust data on their assets. We found this alarming.  It places a question mark over the standards & practices of the banks themselves, and whether or not there was effective oversight by regulators and the banks' own auditors.
 
Secondly, the Treasury lacked effective sanctions against RBS and Lloyds when they failed to meet their targets for lending to small businesses in the first year of the Scheme”.
 Press release & links
 
PC&PE: The Committee of Public Accounts has published a report which, on the basis of evidence from HM Treasury, examines the progress on repaying taxpayer support & maintenance of financial stability.
 
The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: “ ….. There must be an end to the dependence of the banks on taxpayer support.  It is of course, encouraging that by December 2010, the level of explicit support had decreased from nearly £1 trillion to £512 billion. ….. Currently, the arrangements available for winding-up failing banks would not be able to cope with the failure of a major bank.  There is still no way to avoid the taxpayer having to bear the cost of any such failure.  This committee feels that it is inappropriate for banks dependent on taxpayer support to be generating excessive incomes, unnecessary bonuses or dividends at the expense of exiting public support”.
Press release & Links
 
TKF: Waiting times for hospital treatment have reached their highest level for 3 years as the NHS spending squeeze begins to bite, according to a new quarterly monitoring report published by The King’s Fund
The new report highlights the pressure building within the health system as budgets are squeezed and the NHS struggles to deliver productivity improvements.  Most of the finance directors surveyed are already warning that they are unlikely to meet productivity targets in 2011/12.
Press release & links ~ NHS Confederation response
 
Civitas: Following Parliament's rejection of votes for prisoners, a new Civitas report calls for urgent reform of human rights legislation to keep European judges from deciding British lawStrasbourg in the Dock, argues that judges have gone beyond their legitimate powers of interpretation in their now infamous Hirst ruling.  He finds some of the European judges are 'woefully lacking in experience' and, as a consequence, 'are undermining the credibility and value of the Court'.
Press release &links ~ Hirst ruling
 
IfG: Director of the Institute for Government, Andrew Adonis, and 12 other peers have written to the PM warning that the House of Lords is full, with 117 peers having been created since the election.  The letter accompanies a new Constitution Unit report, which calls for short term changes to the House of Lords ahead of the government's proposals for large-scale Lords reform.
Press release & links
 
CAB: As most British workers look forward to enjoying an extra bank holiday to celebrate the royal wedding, a new report from national charity Citizens Advice reveals that tens of thousands of workers in low paid, low skilled jobs are being denied their legal right to take time off.
 
Give us a break!*, based on evidence from Citizens Advice Bureaux across England & Wales, reveals that denial of paid holiday entitlement is widespread, especially among small employers in low-profitability sectors of the economy.  While most working people take their right to paid holidays for granted, many others are forced to work all year without a break, or only allowed unpaid leave.  In the 3 years 2007 – 2010, CAB advisers dealt with 87,725 such cases.
 
Citizens Advice is calling on the Government to consolidate the existing enforcement bodies into one Fair Employment Agency to ensure vulnerable workers are able to enforce their basic workplace rights, including the statutory right to paid holiday.  It says this could reduce the number of employment tribunal claims, create a level playing field for responsible employers, and help put an end to exploitation and abuse.
Press release & links ~ Give us a break!
 
FSA: The Food Standards Agency has published a report of consumers' views on the use of nanotechnology in food & food packaging.  The focus group research, which asked participants about their views on nanotechnology in late 2010 & early 2011, was carried out as part of the FSA's programme of work on nanotechnology.
Press release & links
 
 ASI: In a report released last week the Adam Smith Institute has called on the government to allow profit-making companies to open and run Free Schools, without the need for a charitable vehicle or trust framework, as required by existing legislation. The Institute endorses the spirit of the Free Schools programme, but argues that unless the profit motive is introduced, its impact will be limited.
 
 Profit-Making Free Schools: Unlocking the Potential of England’s Proprietorial Schools Sector provides the first in-depth, empirical analysis of England’s existing for-profit schools.  It identifies 489 of them, which – perhaps contrary to expectations – are overwhelmingly non-selective, secular & urban or suburban.  

Moreover, 41% of these schools operate on fees less than or on a par with the average per-pupil spend in the state sector.  Both this subset of inexpensive for-profit schools, and for-profit schools in general, significantly outperformed the independent sector as a whole in Ofsted inspections between 2007 and 2010.
 
Crucially, Croft also finds that these for-profit schools have significant spare capacity relative to their size – although they only have 15% of the total number of pupils educated in the independent sector, they carry 25% of the sector’s spare capacity. This, coupled with their proven ability to add capacity, suggests that for-profit schools are the ideal solution to the Department for Education’s problems.
Press release & links
Spotlight on women at Serco – Anita’s story