Review of the Papers, Monday 23 July

Government

• Gordon Brown is under mounting pressure to order GPs to open evenings and weekends after business leaders said that £1 billion a year was being lost to the economy because of their inflexible surgery hours. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said it wanted a "healthy workforce, but not one stuck in doctors' surgeries during the middle of the day". CBI leaders are taking the extraordinary step of writing to Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, to ask him to give urgent consideration to making family doctors work outside their current timetable of 8am to 6.30pm. Mr Brown is known to be concerned by the lack of out-of-hours GP services and has said he wants them tailored better to the needs of working people. He is drawing up plans for more "walk-in" health centres near places of work and wants pharmacies to be able to offer routine services such as blood pressure tests and to hand out repeat prescriptions. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/23/ndoctors223.xml
• Millions of patients could be paying more to telephone their family doctor as surgeries switch to numbers that are more expensive than the traditional local call, The Times has learnt. Even though the telephone watchdog Ofcom is critical of the idea, about 1,200 practices have abandoned their area code numbers and now use numbers that have an "0844" prefix which may allow them to earn money from patients booking appointments. Although not officially classed as "premium rate", the new numbers are up to 4p a minute more expensive to call from a standard BT landline, and can cost up to 40p a minute using a mobile phone or other price plan. GPs' practices can also receive a rebate of up to 2p a minute on incoming calls. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life-and-style/health/article2120932.ece
• Airlines, car dealers, power companies and petrol stations would have to ask customers to pay a green levy under plans outlined by MPs today. Taxi companies, diesel train operators and sellers of patio heaters would also fall foul of a law aimed at businesses that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. Customers will be able to opt out of paying the extra amount destined for projects to stop global warming, such as planting trees and erecting windmills. The levy for a return flight to New York would be about £10. For a household's annual fuel it would be £40 and for a return train journey from Birmingham to Newcastle, 50p. The all-party Environmental Audit Committee, in a new report, calls for more Britons to "offset" their carbon emissions by paying to reduce equivalent pollution elsewhere in the world. As well as neutralising the increase in the main gas blamed for global warming, MPs believe that offsetting helps to educate people about their "carbon footprint". Tim Yeo, the committee chairman and former Tory Environment Minister, told The Times: "Aviation is the prime example. That's the start. Transport generally; taxi companies is a good idea." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2120775.ece
• The Government's response to the floods has been criticised as it prepares to give the go-ahead for hundreds of thousands of new homes to be built in areas at risk of flooding. A Green Paper on housing to be published today will say it is not realistic to prevent building in places likely to be hit by floods because 10 per cent of England's housing and population is already in "at risk" areas. But it will call on local authorities to take account of the increased flood risk caused by the changing climate. The document will spell out how the Government intends to meet Gordon Brown's pledge for another three million homes by 2020. About £8bn of taxpayers' money will be spent on providing 70,000 affordable new homes each year, mostly for rent from councils or housing associations. There will be cash rewards for local authorities which provide more homes and penalties for those which fail to identify sites for housebuilding. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2793088.ece
• Nearly half the extra 40,000 homes the government wants built each year will be social housing, the housing minister, Yvette Cooper, is expected to say today. The government is increasing its target from 200,000 a year to 240,000 a year by 2016 in an attempt to tackle the country's affordable housing crisis. As part of the proposals the property industry is also expecting a new 17.5% government equity loan, designed to make it easier for people to get on to the housing ladder by owning less than a fifth of a property. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/story/0,,2132408,00.html
• More than 350,000 people are facing days without fresh water supplies and a clean-up operation lasting months as devastating floods this weekend left communities cut off across central and southern England. Last night waters were still rising in several parts of the country as the Severn and Thames threatened to burst their banks in Gloucester and Oxford, bringing more chaos to a region where hundreds of people have been evacuated after downpours which began on Friday and swept the country over the weekend. http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/0,,2132621,00.html  
• Plans to give university students hundreds of millions of pounds in extra grants will do nothing to help the poorest undergraduates, economists warned yesterday. Ministers say the new grant system due to be introduced next year will encourage more students from deprived backgrounds to apply to university. But economists from the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that taxpayers' money would be better spent on improving the school results of youngsters from poor homes. They added that universities would also be worse off under the reforms since they would have to give bursaries to more students. http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2132469,00.html  
• A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children's expectations. The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away. Pupils taking the "preparation course" - worth half a GCSE - answer queries from computer-generated customers. The assistant headteacher, Helen Elderkin, said the scheme gave 15- and 16-year-olds a wide range of skills that would help them to get a job or continue with their education. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/careers/story/0,,2132481,00.html