It’s wrong to be using these fees as a stealth tax which squeezes people at times of great stress – and this legislation will leave hospitals no worse off.
The work done in partnership with Baldwin, and by Chamberlain alone after 1937, gave Britain some of the best welfare services in the world.
Replying to Alex Morton’s column of a week ago, the ASI’s Senior Fellow argues that the response to the financial crisis was imperfect, but more right than wrong.
41 per cent say spending should rise further and be funded by a specific hike, while 44 per cent oppose the idea.
Adopting the lexicon of the left muddles our thinking and undermines proper understanding of our positions.
It might please nurses, but provokes new pay demands from teachers, doctors and soldiers. Nor would a hypothecated ‘NHS Tax’ make the issue go away.
Day-to-day spending being brought back into balance is good news, and it makes some spending decisions easier, but beware hype about the ‘end of austerity’.
However the Wyre Forest MP is less optimistic than some about the prospect of a ‘Brexit dividend’ which will further boost public spending.
“But we are still in the tunnel at the moment. We have to get debt down. We’ve got all sorts of other things we want to do.”
Last month, he told the Defence Select Committee that Russia has ousted terrorism from the top of the national threat list – which has big spending implications.
It’s later than Osborne planned, but good news nonetheless. Now Hammond must hold the course, and resist siren calls to start splashing the cash.
There needs to be a paradigm shift in policy and culture. Our state should work to keep us healthy and allow us as individuals to be responsible for our actions.
In his second piece on Higher Education, the former Universities Minister looks at how they might be tweaked – and why the alternatives are reactionary, expensive or both.
“This is a Government that is actually protecting police budgets,” the Prime Minister insisted, while the Labour leader alleged the opposite.
It has fascinated me since growing up in a single parent family on the outskirts of Belfast – before attending the lowest-performing secondary school in Northern Ireland.