1 Schools are starting to use fingerprinting technology for pupils to pay for food and to promote healthy eating. Schools in several regions, including Leicestershire, South Tyneside and Derbyshire, have introduced fingerprint scanning machines in the dinner queue, which charge the meal to the child’s account and store information about diet. Opponents have raised concerns about the security of the biometric data.
2 Changes made to the NHS are “pointless and unproven”, according to Hamish Meldrum, the chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP’s Committee. Speaking at the committee’s conference he encouraged the Government to have a real debate about the health service, rather than “stagger . . . from one crisis to another”.
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3 Government funding for universities will be overhauled under plans to replace the Research Assessment Exercise. The new approach will take account of the number of researchers in a department, how much money comes in from other sources and the publications that academics produce.
4 Better use of drugs could save the NHS more than its overspend, without damaging the quality of care, a report in the British Medical Journal says. Another study by the new NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has suggested that similar savings could be made by cutting hospital admissions.
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5 The gravitation of the world’s population towards cities will mean the number of people living in slums will increase. The State of the World’s Cities 2006-07 from the United Nations says that by 2030 cities will be home to 80 per cent of the world’s inhabitants.
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6 Dame Suzi Leather will become the next chair of the Charity Commission when Geraldine Peacock steps down on August 1.
7 The National Audit Office report on the National Programme for IT in the NHS highlights progress in some areas, but advises that staff and the public need to be better engaged to ensure that the project, which is running two years late, is not delayed further.
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8 The Social Exclusion Unit is to be abolished and replaced with a Social Exclusion Taskforce. The new group will be based in the Cabinet Office and will focus on the most difficult to reach groups, including children in care and people with mental health problems.
9 An American company will take over the running of GP services in two villages in Derbyshire after the High Court rejected attempts to stop the change.
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10 All government offices will be carbon-neutral within six years, the Prime Minister has said. The carbon emissions of Whitehall departments and agencies will be offset by environmentally-friendly schemes by 2012.
11 Thousands of doctors may have to leave the country to avoid unemployment, the British Medical Association has claimed. Under Government plans about 21,000 junior doctors will be competing for 9,500 training posts — a step towards becoming a consultant — in England in the next year. The Department of Health said that the 21,000 doctors were already working in funded posts in the NHS.
12 Criminals’ assets seized by the Government will not cover the cost of running the agency set up to recover them. The Assets Recovery Agency blames the length of time it takes to get cases through the courts.
13 Three quarters of the six million people in the UK who suffer from depression do not receive treatment because of a shortage of qualified therapists, a report by Lord Layard says. A million people in the UK receive incapacity benefit due to depression.