Review of the Papers, Tuesday 20 February
20 Feb 2007 - LP
Government
- Gordon Brown is failing to persuade the public that he would make a better prime minister than David Cameron, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today which suggests the Conservatives could win a working majority at the next general election. Voters give the Tories a clear 13-point lead when asked which party they would back in a likely contest between Mr Brown, Mr Cameron and Sir Menzies Campbell. The result would give the party 42% of the vote against Labour on 29%. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,2016791,00.html
- A secretive price-fixing scheme operated between the Department of Health and the major pharmaceutical companies has resulted in the NHS spending many millions of pounds more than it should have for drugs, the Office of Fair Trading is expected to say. The OFT report is expected to recommend major changes in the way drug prices are decided. It will call for a far more transparent system, which could lead to lower prices for innovative medicines like Herceptin when they first arrive on the market. The high price of such drugs has caused some primary care trusts, who hold the purse strings, to drag their feet over paying for them. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,,2017090,00.html
- Tony Blair will tomorrow tell more than 1.6 million people who have signed an e-petition condemning his road pricing plans that the government intends to reject their views and go ahead with a series of pay-as-you-drive trials. Downing Street insisted last night the prime minister had no intention of performing a U-turn in the face of complaints in Whitehall that the petition on the No 10 website has obscured rather than illuminated the arguments. "He recognises that there are strong opinions on this issue and that there were strong opinions even before the e-petition," the prime minister's spokesman said. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/story/0,,2016939,00.html
- Scientists have called for subsidies paid out to a handful of national deep sea fishing fleets to be stopped immediately to prevent permanent ecological damage and the extinction of some of the longest living creatures on the planet. Without the $152m (£78m) of subsidies paid out annually, deep-sea fisheries would operate at a loss of $50m. But the technologically advanced fleets are moving from place to place, fishing areas to extinction before moving on. The researchers said deep-sea species are particularly vulnerable because they reproduce slowly and so are not able to recover. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,2016931,00.html
- Thousands of new council tenants would be able to rent their houses for only six months under radical proposals to overhaul social housing. A Government-commissioned report, published today, will say that many council houses and flats are occupied by relatively well-off families who could easily find alternative private sector accommodation. All existing tenants should keep their right to stay in their homes, but the report recommends “more diverse offers” including short-term contracts of six months or a year. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1410388.ece
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