Some of the nation's finest minds are trying to track down the culprits for the soaring NHS deficits. Andy McKeon knows where the bodies are buried and says all will be revealed once the reforms...
Yes, the government missed its 2004/05 target for reducing the number of children in poverty but it has made some heartening progress towards the overall goal. Ian Kearns explains what it needs to...
Next week's Budget looks like being a return to form for the chancellor, thanks to a big rise in tax receipts. But is he on course to hit his political as well as economic targets? Peter Riddell...
Fears of a multibillion pound black hole in public sector pensions have brought forward calls for the chancellor to amend his fiscal rules. John Hawksworth analyses the options and calls on the...
In 2003, angry pensioners were taking to the streets as council tax soared, unchecked by government. This year, ministers cracked the whip and councils meekly complied. Tony Travers explains what's...
The government narrowly failed to meet its ambitious target to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2005, but senior sources are confident that the Department for Work and Pensions will achieve its...
Patients have failed to benefit from a new contract for consultants which has cost the NHS in Scotland an extra £235m over three years, Audit Scotland has found.
A shortage of NHS therapists is likely to force the government to outsource a crucial part of its welfare reforms, Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has warned.
Unison has requested a judicial review of the government's proposed amendments to the Local Government Pension Scheme, saying its figures and reasoning are 'flawed' and 'absurd'.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has said that wider access to low-cost savings plans must emerge from the consultation on Lord Turner's retirement proposals.
Most local authorities want to make the most of their community powers and include social and environmental benefits in the contracts they award. But procurement law can be problematic
Almost a year to the day after Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott caved into pressure on pension rights, local government union members are once again being balloted for strike action on the issue.
Whitehall's largest department was this week accused of meeting its crucial job cuts target and efficiency savings by transferring staff to private sector partners who immediately make them redundant.
Social mobility has stalled, despite the government's best efforts to raise the aspirations of children from working-class homes. Effective reform of local services will be crucial to turning this...
Everyone agrees that the council tax is regressive but there's less consensus on the solution. The interim Lyons report plumped for reforming the benefit system and not the bands. But both are...
& is a problem halved. But not when public bodies can't agree on the best ways to collaborate. Judy Hirst explains why sharing services is so hard to do
Labour's plans for more housing depend on developers paying for the accompanying infrastructure with a new planning gain supplement. But there is opposition to this tax on building, as Mark Smulian...
When the National Audit Office investigated Whitehall's efficiency savings it found that they weren't all they seemed. Some were aspirational, some weren't efficient and others couldn't be proved....
The Department for Work and Pensions has become the first major Whitehall body to sign up to the Office of Government Commerce's new on-line procurement service.
