A high-powered inquiry into the BSE epidemic, and the link to CJD in humans is being `actively considered’ by ministers. Colin Brown says Labour MPs want a judicial inquiry for the families of the victims. Jack Cunningham, the Minister of Agriculture, is giving “active consideration” to growing cross-party demands for a full public inquiry into the BSE epidemic and the links to CJD in humans.
Families of the CJD victims are demanding a judicial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of more than 20 people, mostly young, from suspected exposure to BSE-infected meat products or employment in the meat industry.An inquiry could be highly controversial, reopening the wounds of the industry, and pointing to possible lapses by the last Tory government before admitting a link with humans had been established. But he has made it clear that he would welcome the opportunity to issue authoritative, on-the-record denials of some of the “garbage” that appears in the media.The move is one direct result of confusion over the Government message on the European single currency last month, with Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, eventually being forced into a full-scale Commons statement.If Mr Campbell had been able to issue a complete denial of a Financial Times report on 26 September, which claimed that the Government was “on the point of adopting a much more positive approach to European economic and monetary union”, much of the subsequent speculation might well have been stifled.As it was, the FT report added more than pounds 30bn to that day’s London share values, and knocked four pfennigs off the pound, and speculation continued until the Chancellor made his Commons statement that entry was not expected until after the next election.The lobby system, under which political reporters were given privileged access to certain parts of Parliament, was created in 1884, and the current system under which lobby reporters are given a twice daily non-attributable briefing by Number 10 was initiated in 1930 by Ramsay MacDonald.Lobby reporters have always been accomplices to a process of news management, but the system was turned into a fine art by Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, who even used its cloak of anonymity to vilify ministers being prepared for purge.One of his victims, John Biffen, described Sir Bernard as “the sewer rather than the sewage”; suggesting he was simply delivering the Prime Minister’s poison.This month’s Mountfield Report, which will be approved by the Prime Minister, will formalise that approach and extend it to all information put out by Mr Campbell’s office – providing the Government with its own version of Labour’s “rapid rebuttal” unit, as well as a proactive, and publicly identifiable, machine for the delivery of its daily “good news” message.Putting the day’s definitive briefing on the record will also enable Parliament and others to judge whether a key element of the Government Information Service is sticking to the official conventions on propriety.”That Government publicity should be: relevant to Government responsibilities; should be objective and explanatory, not tendentious or polemical; should not be, or be liable to misrepresentation as being, party political; and should be conducted in an economic and appropriate way, having regard to the need to be able to justify the costs as expenditure of public funds.”. The last remnants of secrecy surrounding the century-old parliamentary lobby news network are to be broken. Anthony Bevins, Political Editor, reports on the move towards more open government.

When Margaret Thatcher was in Number 10, they were attributed to “government sources”. Under John Major, “the Prime Minister’s office” was used to source lobby briefings. But with Labour at the helm, control has relaxed to the point at which reporters have ascribed quotes to the Prime Minister’s spokesman.
Now, daily briefings by Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s chief press secretary, are to be put on the record – getting rid of the much- criticised system of non-attribution under which official “news” is attributed.A review of the Government Information Service by Robin Mountfield, Second Permanent Secretary at the Office of Public Service, is due to be published this month.The report is expected to include a recommendation that Number 10 briefings should be turned into press conferences, with Mr Campbell providing on- the-record quotes about Government policy attributed directly to “the Prime Minister’s spokesman”.It is unlikely that the press conferences will be open to cameras or microphones, if only because Mr Campbell is wary of being promoted to the point at which he obscures the message. The move is part the plan, to be announced in the White Paper on the NHS at the end of the month, to abolish the barriers between family doctor surgeries and hospitals, which have cash-limited budgets.. You have to have a safety valve,” said a BMA source.Limiting prescribing budgets for each practice could lead to patients being denied drugs on the NHS, unless a let-out clause was allowed. The announcement is being made after agreement with the profession.

The salaried GPs will be responsible to the practice that hires them.Meanwhile, The British Medical Association yesterday said it was deeply concerned at weekend reports that ministers are planning to put cash limits on the drugs budgets of family GPs to curb the cost of prescribing on the NHS.”You cannot have a situation where a GP’s drugs budget runs out in February. One problem is the commitment required for GPs to take on a job in a practice, even as a partner. Many young doctors want to commit one day a week to research or other specialist work, in addition to their general practice duties.Most GPs are employed as independent contractors through their local health authorities and derive their incomes of pounds 45,000 a year from a complex range of fees and allowances agreed each year by the Government, after recommendations by their own pay review body.The salaries will be negotiated locally, but the aim is to offer around pounds 45,000 a year, similar to those earned by other practice GPs. The main shortages of GPs are being experienced in hard-pressed urban practices, where young doctors are reluctant to make a long-term commitment.But country practices are also finding it difficult to fill vacancies. It could allow more doctors, who have dropped out to have babies or taken a career break for other reasons, to return to general practice.In real life, as in the television world of the fictional practice, many general practices are finding it hard to fill vacancies, and patients are suffering.The fictional practice in the Dangerfield series would suffer less than most – it has a picturesque setting in a semi-rural area, and a Range Rover appears to go with the job.

Colin Brown, Chief Political Correspondent, says ministers want to allow family practices to hire GPs on salaries of around pounds 45,000 a year. Dr Paige, the new recruit played by Nigel Havers in the new BBC TV series of Dangerfield, could have been hired on a salary by his colleagues under a new initiative by the Government.
After a series of pilots in London, Alan Milburn, the health minister, will announce this week that family doctors across Britain will be given power to hire other GPs on salaries. Dr Dangerfield’s fictional TV practice could have been helped to find a replacement for its departing star under the Government’s latest initiative. I got into the habit of checking every day with my secretary that it was still there. Once the valuers took it away, my secretary, who didn’t know it was being sold, nearly had fit when she saw the blank space on the wall,” he said. Though his wife has threatened to buy the painting herself, he said his family would not be bidding.Together with Industrial Landscape, which could fetch more than pounds 200,000, Christie’s is auctioning seven other Lowry oils, many from the painter’s first overseas exhibition at the Salon in Paris in 1930..