Review of the Papers, Wednesday 11 July

Government

• Whitehall departments are still introducing regulations without proper analysis of their cost and likely benefits, according to the National Audit Office. The public spending watchdog also says that officials are failing to explain how regulatory proposals will be implemented and enforced, often assuming there will be 100 per cent compliance when developing measures. MPs, ministers and civil servants do not take such issues into account when drawing up new regulations, it adds. The findings follow repeated complaints from business organisations that screening rules required by the Better Regulation Executive, a Whitehall watchdog, to avoid unnecessary red tape were being ignored. The British Chambers of Commerce said in April that most regulatory impact assessments did not consider whether doing nothing was a better option, for example. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/660f7d9a-2f01-11dc-b9b7-0000779fd2ac.html
• The most radical reform of NHS services since 1948 - designed to halve the number of patients needing hospital care - is revealed today by the newly-appointed health minister, Sir Ara Darzi, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Giving the clearest signal yet that Gordon Brown wants to quicken the pace of NHS reform, he disclosed a 10-year programme to reshape health care in London. It will include far-reaching plans for a network of 150 "polyclinics" across the capital, providing a complete range of services to meet all routine health care needs. The polyclinics would be equipped with X-ray and ultrasound machines, allowing consultants to leave their hospital departments to run outpatient clinics in easy reach of patients' homes. http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2123464,00.html
• Hospital staff gave the wrong treatment to the wrong patient on almost 25,000 occasions last year, leading to deaths, serious injury and long-term harm, official figures show. Errors in identifying patients led to at least 500 a week getting the wrong operation the wrong drugs or diagnostic tests, the National Patient Safety Agency said. No breakdown of the figures was available yesterday to show how many had died or been seriously harmed and how many escaped injury. The agency admitted the total could be much higher because many incidents went unreported. Almost 3,000 of the incidents are estimated to have occurred because of confusion over wristbands used to identify patients. An investigation found that the colour red on a wristband had eight different meanings in different NHS trusts, ranging from "allergic to penicillin" to "does not have English as a first language". http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2753392.ece
• MPs have rejected calls for statutory regulation of the press following the News of the World phone tapping affair but have accused some editors of becoming "complacent" about the excesses of their staff. The Commons media select committee launched a review of the self-regulatory system that governs the press following the conviction of reporter Clive Goodman for listening in to hundreds of phone messages meant for the royal family's closest aides. The affair led to calls for the case for statutory regulation to be re-examined. Tony Blair also hinted that statutory regulation may be a necessity as newspapers and broadcasting converged.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2123375,00.html
• Soaring house prices and interest rates are forcing first-time buyers to take on record levels of debt to get on the property ladder. Figures released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) show that the average amount borrowed by someone buying their first home in May was 3.37 times their salary, the highest level recorded. It is up on April when the average amount needed to borrow was 3.33 times income. It means that a first-time buyer is paying an average 19.1 per cent of his or her income in interest, the highest level since 1992. The figure is likely to rise further because the latest statistics do not take account of the last two rises in interest rates. The increasing financial hurdles faced by aspiring homeowners are compounded by the fact that record numbers are now paying stamp duty. During May, 60 per cent of first-time buyers were liable for the tax, compared with 52 per cent a year earlier. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/money/property-and-mortgages/article2057175.ece 
• A crime-ridden high street in north London has been branded the most spied-upon road in Britain, after it emerged that it is watched over by more than 100 CCTV cameras. In one 650-yard section of Holloway Road, that runs from Archway to Highbury Corner, there are 29 cameras mounted on shops and lampposts, a church and a courtroom. There are 102 CCTV cameras monitoring crime on the two-mile road, as well as a further seven checking for speeding cars and vehicles straying into bus lanes. Civil liberties groups are alarmed by the number of opportunities for the state to watch people in Holloway Road, particularly as they claim surveillance cameras do not always help to reduce crime. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/ncctv111.xml

**Other  **

• Matthew Syed: Will spending more public money on sport help to tackle obesity? No chance. Gerry Sutcliffe, the new Sports Minister, will soon discover one of Whitehall's best-kept secrets: sporting participation has not budged since 1994 despite an extra £3 billion of investment through the lottery and millions more from the taxpayer. Couch potatoes have long felt aggrieved at having to subsidise the healthy choices of others but this statistic will give them an even bigger reason to march upon Westminster (if they can heave themselves off the settee). It is now clear that the great sporting experiment of recent years has failed to deliver the change in attitudes that was promised and has simply provided cheaper access to sport for those already familiar with the concept of exercise. The net result has been a super-size redistribution of wealth from the fat to the fit. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest-contributors/article2056419.ece  
• Families should restrict themselves to having a maximum of two children to stabilise the effect on the environment of Britain's rapidly growing population, a thinktank warns today. According to the Optimum Population Trust, Britain's rising birth rate, currently growing at the highest rate for nearly 30 years, should be considered an environmental liability. "Each new UK birth, through the inevitable resource consumption and pollution that UK affluence generates, is responsible for about 160 times as much climate-related environmental damage as a new birth in Ethiopia, or 35 times as much as a new birth in Bangladesh," the report says. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2123255,00.html