NHS failures will stay common until we hold management accountable February 6, 2013 THIS is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people,” said Robert Francis QC yesterday. For those who think that the NHS is more important than the patients it exists to serve, and the taxpayers who pay for it, the publication of Francis’s report into the failings of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation [...]
Libor needed reform – but state control of market information is dangerous February 6, 2013 A£390M Libor fine for RBS and a $5bn (£3.2bn) US government lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s. In both the ongoing Libor and credit rating agency sagas, previously free and private information services are being pulled under regulatory control. The unwritten rule is that markets depend on information, that information should be competitively-provided, and that information [...]
The five questions Mark Carney must deliver answers to February 6, 2013 MARK Carney makes his first appearance in front of the Treasury Select Committee today. But what should the influential committee ask our new Bank of England governor? It certainly shouldn’t waste time questioning his salary. Whether the governor is paid £305,000 like Sir Mervyn King, or £874,000 as Carney will be, pales into insignificance against [...]
The Debate: Does the £15bn bid for Virgin Media mark the return of major deal-making to the UK? February 6, 2013 YES Andy Cox While the deal market has been slow over the past few years, a recent wave of high-profile activity at “big ticket” prices, like Liberty Group’s £15bn bid for Virgin Media, suggests companies and investors are regaining a taste for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Our research suggests that there is the capacity and [...]
Letters to the editor February 6, 2013 Labour’s record [Re: Why Labour is the natural party of small business and entrepreneurs, Wednesday] While Chuka Umunna’s vision for small business is admirable, his ideas smack of the same old political rhetoric. Half-baked measures and ill thought-out plans are hardly sufficient to mend the problems facing British business. A temporary VAT cut will not [...]
Why Labour is the natural party of small business and entrepreneurs February 5, 2013 “You’re all the same” is the complaint often levelled at politicians. But this cannot be said of small businesses, even if the increasing use of “SME” as a shorthand for small and medium-sized enterprises can give the opposite impression. One of my resolutions for 2013 is to stop using the term. It doesn’t do justice [...]
We don’t need to fear a Chinese slowdown – it’s real capitalism in action February 5, 2013 IT HAS suddenly become fashionable to be concerned about a slowdown in China’s growth rate. It’s not a matter of a short-run cyclical downturn, with normal service resumed shortly. It is a worry that there will be a permanent slowdown by the end of this decade. Instead of annual growth rates around 10 per cent [...]
Give London back its stamp duty to reinvest in growth February 5, 2013 FIFTY years ago the average London house cost roughly the same as a month’s rent in some parts of North London today. Notwithstanding the effect of inflation, that cannot be sustainable, socially or economically. Among the range of housing challenges we face, the greatest by far is simply to build more homes. That’s why Boris [...]
The Debate: Will Tory divisions over same-sex marriage damage the party’s re-election prospects? February 5, 2013 YES Paul Goodman The same-sex marriage bill was not in the Conservative manifesto, the coalition agreement, or the last Queen’s speech. No green or white discussion paper has preceded it. But it was “whacked” through the Commons – to borrow the ugly but efficient word deployed by Boris Johnson – on a whipped timetable. It [...]
Letters to the editor February 5, 2013 Bank ringfencing [Re: Ringfencing is the wrong solution to the wrong problem, yesterday] It’s right to point out that Northern Rock, HBOS, and Bradford and Bingley were largely retail banks. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem to solve. Retail banks have been relying on a flood of cheap money from the Bank of [...]