Government
- A tax on unhealthy food could prevent more than 3,200 deaths every year in the UK, experts said yesterday. A quarter of the population is obese and 216,000 people die each year from cardiovascular disease. The foods that should be taxed to gain the biggest reduction in deaths include dairy foods, sugar and cakes. One idea to combat the growing problem is to tax unhealthy food. The Government dismissed this "nanny state" measure. Dr Mike Rayner, from the Department of Public Health at Oxford University, evaluated different approaches that ranged from taxing food high in saturated fat and taxing all food that is high in salt, fat, and sugar. He found that taxing food with a lot of saturated fat increased death rates because it did not take the salt content into account. Taxing food deemed to have low nutritional value would prevent 2,300 deaths a year. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/12/nfood312.xmlm
- The Department of Health admits today that it paid £1.9m to two companies to set up the failed Medical Training Application Service website and in running costs. Patricia Hewitt, then health secretary, said in May that MTAS, under which junior doctors were to apply for specialist training posts, would be shelved as a recruitment system. Hospital Doctor magazine said that Methods Consulting, the IT firm that supplied the website, is working on other NHS IT projects. Last month, the British Medical Association called for an investigation into the true cost of introducing MTAS. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2124089,00.html
- The Government will not be able to build its way out of the prison crisis, Jack Straw suggested yesterday. He indicated that the only way the pressure could be relieved was by sending fewer people to jail and using more noncustodial sentences. In an interview with The Times, his first since becoming Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, Mr Straw called for a "national conversation" about the use of prison. He also spoke of the need to make community sentences more effective to build confidence and trust in noncustodial sentences. Even if he could click his fingers "and magic an extra 10,000 places" they would still have to have the same debate about the use of prison, he said. His call came amid growing concern in the Prison Service that the recently implemented early-release scheme may not be enough to prevent another crisis of inmate numbers in the autumn. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2062175.ece
- A major overhaul of A-level exams will bring in more Oxbridge-style questions to allow Britain's brightest students to show off their talents, The Independent has learnt. Exam boards have been instructed to make their questions more open-ended to allow pupils to show off their creative and thinking skills. Ministers and exam board officials are worried that current A-level papers fail to stretch the brightest pupils. In future, the examination will include the kind of questions previously reserved for the advanced extension award papers - usually taken by high-flyers who want to go on to elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. Those taking history papers might, for example, be asked questions that inquired into the thinking behind Oliver Cromwell's campaign during the English Civil War rather that just rely on candidates to outline the main dates and events of the war. http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2758819.ece
- The scale of the initiative was immense; 44m pieces of fruit or veg served up every year to 2 million children in 18,000 schools across the country. The point of the plan was laudable; to make children healthier, and give them a real appetite for fresh food. But there is one great problem with the scheme that was launched with such fanfare three years ago; children just won't eat their greens. That, at least, is one conclusion to be drawn from a study published today which shows that the government's intervention has made no difference to children's nutrition. One critic, who advised the Department of Health that it was unlikely to work, said that making fruit and veg available at school breaktime was no use in a culture in which healthy food was thought to be uncool. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schoolmeals/story/0,,2124204,00.html
Lib Dems
- An estimated two million households would be hit under tax plans to be unveiled by the Liberal Democrats today. Couples earning a combined income of about £70,000 would be worse off under the package drawn up by the party's tax commission. However, the plans will be coupled with proposals to help lower and middle-income earners by slashing the basic rate of income tax by 4p to help boost the Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell and the flagging fortunes of his party. There will also be plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax at an average rate of 3p to 4p in the pound. In a magazine interview today, Sir Menzies also seeks to destroy the perception that he is much closer to Labour than the Tories by saying there could be no post-election coalition without a promise to introduce proportional representation for Westminster parliamentary elections. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/12/nlibdems112.xml