› › Hc 971 An Update On Hinchingbrooke Health Care Nhs Trust

HC 971 - An Update on Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 25 pages

File Size : 24,59 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Law

ISBN : 021508425X

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Book Description

The taxpayer has been left exposed by the failure of the Hinchingbrooke franchise according to the Public Accounts Committee's report. In February 2012, Circle took operational control of Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust, becoming the first private company to run an NHS hospital. In January 2013, the Committee expressed concerns that Circle's bid to run Hinchingbrooke had not been properly risk assessed and was based on overly optimistic and unachievable savings projections. The Department of Health responded that the NHS Trust Development Authority would monitor progress and take action if the Trust was failing to deliver on its plans to make the hospital financially sustainable. In the event, Circle was not able to make the Trust sustainable and the NHS Trust Development Authority did not take effective action to protect the taxpayer. In January 2015, Circle announced that it intended to withdraw from the contract, just three years into the 10-year franchise. It was clear at the time the franchise was let that the Trust would only survive if it secured substantial savings. The Comptroller and Auditor General's 2012 report highlighted that the savings projected in Circle's bid were unprecedented as a percentage of annual turnover in the NHS.



HC 973 - Care Services for People with Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviour

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 25 pages

File Size : 40,48 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0215085647

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Book Description

The Winterbourne View scandal in 2011 exposed the horrific abuse of people with learning difficulties and challenging behaviour in a private mental health hospital. Concerns were also raised about a number of other institutions. As a result, the Government committed to discharging those individuals for whom it was appropriate back into their homes and communities. However, since then, too many children and adults have continued to go into mental health hospitals, and to stay there unnecessarily, because of the lack of community alternatives. The number of people with learning disabilities remaining in hospital has not fallen, and has remained broadly the same at around 3,200. It was refreshing that NHS England took responsibility for this lack of progress and has now committed to develop a closure programme for large NHS mental health hospitals, along with a transition plan for the people with learning disabilities within these hospitals, from 2016-17. Discharges from hospital are being delayed because funding does not follow the individual when they are discharged into the community. This acts as a financial disincentive for local commissioners who have to bear the costs and responsibility for planning and commissioning community services. Delaying discharge has the effect of institutionalising people, making their reintegration into the community more difficult. Some local authorities' reluctance to accept and fund individuals in the community will be exacerbated by current financial constraints. The Department should set out its proposals for 'dowry-type' payments from NHS England to meet the costs of supporting people discharged from hospital.



HC 892 - The Effective Management of Tax Reliefs

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 21 pages

File Size : 11,86 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0215085582

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Book Description

Tax and tax reliefs are plainly different and require different accountability arrangements. Put simply tax is where you get money in through taxation and a tax relief is where you make a conscious decision to forgo that income. Some reliefs are structural parts of the system to ensure a more progressive system or avoid double taxation. But other reliefs, costing some £100 billion a year, are designed to deliver a policy objective that could be met instead through spending programmes. HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) do not keep track of those tax reliefs intended to influence behaviour. They do not adequately report to Parliament or the public on whether reliefs are working as intended and what they cost and whether they represent good value for money. While HMRC is accountable for implementing and monitoring all tax reliefs, its statements about the extent of its responsibilities are inconsistent with its actual practices. HMRC accepts it has a role to assess, evaluate and monitor reliefs, but is unable or unwilling to define or to categorise reliefs by their purpose. While HMRC accepts the need for reporting the costs of tax reliefs, it does not see the merit in assessing the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of reliefs, or considering their cost effectiveness alongside that of alternative policy instruments such as spending programmes. HMRC does not generally assess the effectiveness of reliefs with specific objectives although in a few instances it does consider their impact on taxpayer behaviour. HMRC's failure to articulate a set of principles to guide its management and reporting of tax reliefs is a serious omission which it now needs to rectify.



HC 737 - Strategic Flood Risk Management

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 21 pages

File Size : 41,56 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Law

ISBN : 0215084489

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Book Description

Given financial constraints, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency have done a good job in improving the cost effectiveness of their approach to flood risk management. They have adopted rational methods to prioritise spending on both new capital flood defences and maintaining existing ones. However, risks remain to the sustainability of current levels of flood protection. The Agency will need to make difficult decisions about how it prioritises its maintenance budget, including some defences where it will need to reduce or stop maintenance. In these cases, there is a risk that lack of maintenance will mean that capital costs are incurred sooner, when defences require replacement earlier. Since our evidence session, the Agency has published a long term investment strategy, which presents a number of flooding scenarios and outlines how much funding would be needed to protect against these.



HC 1141 - The Work of the Committee of Public Accounts 2010-15

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 41 pages

File Size : 43,37 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0215085779

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Book Description

This report summarises the key areas of the Committee's work over the past five years. It draws out the areas where progress has been made and where their successors might wish to press in future. The Committee has assiduously followed the taxpayer's pound wherever it was spent. Since 2010 they held 276 evidence sessions and published 244 unanimous reports to hold government to account for its performance. 88% of their recommendations were accepted by departments. In many cases they successfully secured substantial changes, for example with the once secret tax avoidance industry. They secured consensus from government and from industry that private providers of public services do have a duty of care to the taxpayer, and in pushing the protection of whistleblowers further up the agenda of all government departments. By drawing attention to mistakes in the Department for Transport's procurement of the West Coast Mainline, more recent procurements for Crossrail, Thameslink and Intercity Express have all benefited from more expert advice and a more appropriate level of challenge from senior staff. After discovery in 2012-13 that 63% of calls to government call centres were to higher rate telephone numbers, the Government accepted our recommendation that telephone lines serving vulnerable and low income groups never be charged above the geographic rate and that 03 numbers should be available for all government telephone lines. They also secured a commitment to close large mental health hospitals.



HC 1045 - Major Projects Report 2014 and the Equipment Plan 2014 to 2024, and Reforming Defence Acquisition

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 21 pages

File Size : 11,12 MB

Release : 2015

Category : History

ISBN : 0215084314

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Book Description

The Committee welcomes the progress made by the Ministry of Defence in getting to grips with its budget and military equipment costs. The affordability of the Department's 10-year plan for buying and supporting equipment is, however, dependent on it: continuing to control cost increases in existing equipment projects; delivering ambitious project cost savings over the next 10 years in order to balance its budget; and having the right skills in place to ensure that the assumptions made in its plans are robust and deliverable. Failure to improve the skills of Defence Equipment and Support (DEandS), which buys and maintains military equipment, will undermine the Department's efforts to improve control over its finances. The Department agrees that DEandS is over-reliant on expensive contractors and DEandS is spending a further £250 million on contractors over the next three and a half years to determine how it will address this and secure the skills needed to deliver the Equipment Plan within the assumed budget and to time. There remain risks to the success of the Department's Army 2020 programme designed to reduce the size of the regular Army and increase the number of trained Army reserves. The Department has not yet addressed the Committee's previous recommendations to develop credible contingency plans in the event that it cannot recruit the number of regular and reserve soldiers it requires. While the Department is reporting progress against its recruitment targets, it does acknowledge that targets beyond 2016 will be challenging and require significant improvements in performance.



Delivering Social Welfare

Author : Derek Birrell

Publisher : Policy Press

Page : 304 pages

File Size : 32,52 MB

Release : 2016-12-14

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1447319184

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Book Description

As the system of social welfare governance and delivery in the United Kingdom faces continued, radical change, this important book argues that this change is so extensive that we should consider it a fundamental transformation or revolution. Assessing twenty years of changes across the whole of the United Kingdom, Derek Birrell and Ann Marie Gray show how a new public governance perspective has replaced the dominance of public management, reflecting the increasingly plural and fragmented nature of public policy implementation. Drawing on examples across a range of policy areas, this comprehensive book unravels the complex ways in which changes in social policy and governance interact in the delivery of social welfare, making it essential reading for welfare researchers, students, and policy makers.





Networks of Power

Author : Thomas Parke Hughes

Publisher : JHU Press

Page : 492 pages

File Size : 40,41 MB

Release : 1993-03

Category : Science

ISBN : 9780801846144

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Book Description

Awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology, this book offers a comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. It described large-scale technological change and demonstrates that technology cannot be understood unless placed in a cultural context.



Dairy Ingredients for Food Processing

Author : Ramesh C. Chandan

Publisher : John Wiley & Sons

Page : 604 pages

File Size : 15,95 MB

Release : 2011-03-15

Category : Technology & Engineering

ISBN : 0813817463

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Book Description

The objective of this book is to provide a single reference source for those working with dairy-based ingredients, offering a comprehensive and practical account of the various dairy ingredients commonly used in food processing operations. The Editors have assembled a team of 25 authors from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, representing a full range of international expertise from academic, industrial, and government research backgrounds. After introductory chapters which present the chemical, physical, functional and microbiological characteristics of dairy ingredients, the book addresses the technology associated with the manufacture of the major dairy ingredients, focusing on those parameters that affect their performance and functionality in food systems. The popular applications of dairy ingredients in the manufacture of food products such as dairy foods, bakery products, processed cheeses, processed meats, chocolate as well as confectionery products, functional foods, and infant and adult nutritional products, are covered in some detail in subsequent chapters. Topics are presented in a logical and accessible style in order to enhance the usefulness of the book as a reference volume. It is hoped that Dairy Ingredients for Food Processing will be a valuable resource for members of academia engaged in teaching and research in food science; regulatory personnel; food equipment manufacturers; and technical specialists engaged in the manufacture and use of dairy ingredients. Special features: Contemporary description of dairy ingredients commonly used in food processing operations Focus on applications of dairy ingredients in various food products Aimed at food professionals in R&D, QA/QC, manufacturing and management World-wide expertise from over 20 noted experts in academe and industry