Health minister Lord Darzi quits

Health minister Lord Darzi quits
Gordon Brown today lost another expert outsider drafted into his “government of all the talents” when Ara Darzi quit as health minister, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family and on his medical consultancy work.

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Elderly face £20,000 bill in plan to defuse population timebomb
Radical changes to the way care for elderly people is funded were outlined yesterday in a green paper that confronts the soaring costs of looking after an increasingly old and frail population.

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Mandelson warns of 10-year squeeze on public spending
Lord Mandelson warned of a 10-year squeeze on state spending yesterday as the government sought to repair public finances in the wake of the economic crisis.

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Youth services: Lost in nowhere land
As the government revives its mantra about getting tough on crime, research highlights why youth clubs need to be properly funded.

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Recession blamed for increasing pressure on school places
Rising birth rates and fewer parents opting for private education because of the economy are putting pressure on school places

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Public sector staff: Absence of malice
Despite high sickness levels and pressure to work harder, civil servants show defiant enthusiasm for public services.

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Army of volunteers
The head of conservation charity BTCV tells Alison Benjamin why he is determined that the once-shy organisation should march in the vanguard of attempts to solve the problem of youth unemployment.

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Together forever’ couple, Sir Edward and Joan Downes, raise new suicide fears
The death of a leading British conductor and his wife at a Swiss suicide clinic has raised fears that couples will be encouraged to die together even when one of them is not terminally ill.

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£286m to help terminally ill to die at home ‘lost in system’
Millions of pounds of extra funds pledged by the Government for the care of terminally ill patients are failing to reach frontline health services, The Times has discovered.

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Seize errant youngsters’ bikes and mobiles, says Tory Chris Grayling
Seizing children’s mobile phones and bicycles could deter them from getting into trouble, according to Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary.

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UK unemployment hits highest since 1971
UK unemployment rose to a record in the last quarter, underlining the grip that the downturn still has on the economy.

Read this story in The Daily Telegraph