News round up: Thousands more council workers vote to strike

Thousands more council workers vote to strike

The prospect of a summer of strikes, which will close schools and leave bins unemptied, worsened when thousands more council workers voted to go on strike.
Almost 40,000 members of the Unite union in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will join 600,000 colleagues from Unison in a two-day walkout on July 16 and 17.

Unite members, who work in school catering, social care, refuse and environmental services, voted by 3-1 to take industrial action in protest at a 2.45 per cent pay offer.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

More rights to medical treatment for the elderly

Elderly people would no longer be refused medical treatment on grounds of age, and be offered a full range of insurance products, under a White Paper published yesterday.

The move to outlaw age discrimination by organisations providing goods and services was announced in the Commons by Harriet Harman, the Equalities Minister. At present such discrimination is banned only in the workplace. Campaigners hope that the measure will improve the provision of health services in particular.
Read more on this story in The Times

Let companies run state schools for profit, says Sir Simon Milton

Private companies should be allowed to run state schools at a profit and be free to dismiss teachers who are not up to the job, the head of the Local Government Association (LGA) said yesterday.

They should also be able to “sweat” the most from their assets by hiring out their buildings and grounds in the holidays, Sir Simon Milton said.

In remarks that brought condemnation from teachers’ unions, Sir Simon said that the role of councils should be to buy education services on the open market from a variety of providers, including for-profit private concerns.
Read more on this story in The Times

NHS review calls for more nursing care

The long awaited review into the future of the NHS by Lord Darzi will next week propose a big boost in the size of independent nurse-led provision of primary care, similar in ambition to the rise of independent foundation hospitalsDarzi will suggest that nurse-led partnerships should be given a statutory right to request a local primary care trust to allow them to set up as a not-for-profit trust. If the PCT agrees, this would improve care, and a new independent NHS organisation would be established to provide services to patients, under contract to the PCT, using NHS resources.
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Grammar pupils rise as class gap widens

The number of pupils taught in grammar schools has increased by nearly a quarter in the past 10 years, according to government research that also suggests the state education system has become more segregated along class lines since Labour came to power.