PM agrees major NHS concessions

The Prime Minister set out five main points in which he said patients would benefit from the reforms

David Cameron has agreed to make major concessions on his plans for the NHS in England, but insisted the government had not made "a humiliating U-turn".

Ministers have accepted all the changes suggested by a panel of experts, including more controls on competition and a slower pace of change.

Labour said the original proposals had been "demolished", but Mr Cameron said the "fundamentals" had been retained.

Doctors' groups have broadly welcomed the revisions.

The NHS bill will now go back to the committee stage in the House of Commons to be scrutinised again by MPs before going through its House of Lords stages.

The prime minister's official spokesman said he expected that to happen before the summer recess begins in July, and the bill to be on the statute book by the end of the current Parliamentary session.

That gives ministers until May 2012 to make it law.

Ageing population

On Monday - following a 10-week "listening exercise" - a panel of experts called the NHS Future Forum gave its recommendations on the changes needed to the bill.

They include:

Reinstating the legal responsibility of the health secretary for the overall performance of the NHS Scrapping the primary role of the regulator, Monitor, to promote competition - and focusing on improving patient choice instead Relaxing the 2013 deadline for new GP commissioning arrangements to be introduced - a National Commissioning Board, based in Leeds, will control budgets until GP groups are "able and willing" to take over Strengthening the power of health and well-being boards, which are being set up by councils, to oversee commissioning and giving patients a greater role on them Retaining a lead role for GPs in decision-making, but boosting the role of other professionals such as hospital doctors and nurses alongside them Continue reading the main storyAnalysisBen GeogheganBBC Political correspondent

After criticism from medics and complaints from rebellious MPs, the Coalition will be hoping the dust will now settle over its NHS reforms.

If politics is the art of persuasion, then the test for Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Lansley is whether or not they have convinced people that the listening process has been, as the prime minister claimed, a sign of strength.

Or does it, as Labour have been saying today, demonstrate incompetence, the result of a bureaucratic shake-up which nobody voted for?

The debate may now go quiet.

But remember that these reforms were introduced after record levels of public satisfaction in the NHS.

So, if waiting times go up, if the NHS ends up needing an extra bail-out, if patients notice things are changing for the worse, then the government's powers of persuasion may face an even bigger test.

The government and many health professionals believe changes to the NHS are necessary to deal with the demands of the ageing population, cost of new drugs and lifestyle changes such as obesity.

But the issue has led to rifts within the coalition, which have deepened since the Lib Dems overwhelmingly rejected the original reforms at their spring conference.

Mr Clegg had vowed to block any proposals he was unhappy with - and on Monday night he was reportedly cheered by his MPs when he told them their demands had been "very, very handsomely met".

However, at a joint press conference with the prime minister and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, Mr Clegg said he believed the government now had a plan "we can all get behind".

"Change will happen, but it will happen at the right pace and that is why the arbitrary deadlines have gone," he said, adding that ministers made "no apology" for pausing to "get things right".

Mr Cameron said those who described the reworking of the plans as "a humiliating U-turn", or the listening exercise as "a big PR stunt", were both wrong.

"The fundamentals of our plans - more control to patients, more power to doctors and nurses, less bureaucracy in the NHS - they are as strong today as they've ever been," the PM said.

"But the shape of our plans, the detail of how we're going to make all this work, that really has changed as a direct result of this consultation. "

'Wasting billions'

Mr Lansley admitted he had got some of the proposals wrong, but said he still believed the reworked plan could deliver his ambition of an NHS with a quality of service and level of results that was "the envy of the world".

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteWe have put competition back in its box with regards to this bill”

End QuotePaul BurstowCare Services Minister The health secretary has faced personal criticism for his inability to garner widespread support for the original bill, but the prime minister said he accepted full responsibility for what had happened.

"I am every bit as responsible as Andrew Lansley for the fact that we actually decided we could improve on what we already put forward," Mr Cameron said.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband singled out the prime minister personally for criticism, saying: "David Cameron should never have rushed into reforms that weren't properly thought through and didn't command the confidence of the medical profession.

"The problem now is that he's still going ahead with a bureaucratic reorganisation that's going to waste billions of pounds."

The British Medical Association said it was pleased the government had accepted the Future Forum's recommendations and addressed many of doctors' concerns.

But it said more detail was needed on how commissioning of care would work in future and there must be "robust safeguards" to prevent competition of any kind destabilising the health service.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy said it remained "deeply concerned" at the government's determination to increase competition and diversity of providers in the NHS.

But Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow told the BBC competition would not be "an end in itself" and would only be used to improve patient choice.

"I think what people should be pleased about is that we have put competition back in its box with regards to this bill," he added.

Junk Food Diet Hits a Child's IQ, Reveals Major UK Study

By Jenny Hope

Toddlers fed a diet of junk food can suffer lasting damage to their brainpower, researchers warn.

Children who eat more chips, crisps, biscuits and pizza before the age of three have a lower IQ five years later, a study showed.

The difference could be as much as five IQ points compared with children given healthier diets with fruit, vegetables and home-cooked food.

But even if their diet improves, it could be too late as the ill-effects can persist for a lifetime.

This is the first study to suggest a direct link between the diet of young children and their brainpower in later life.

The project at Bristol University took account of factors such as social class, breastfeeding and maternal education and age.

Researchers also allowed for the influence of the home environment, for example a child's access to toys and books.

They said good nutrition was crucial in the first three years of life when the brain grows at its fastest rate.

Young children eating a diet packed with fats, sugar and processed foods consume too few vitamins and nutrients, which means their brains never grow to optimal levels.

Whole Foods - Major Betrayal of Organic Food Movement- Dr. Mercola Interviews Ronnie Cummins

If You Eat Organic Food, You Have Just Been Betrayed
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Organic consumers and producers in the U.S. are facing betrayal. A self-appointed group of "Organic Elites", including Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, are surrendering to Monsanto.

Top executives from these companies publicly stated several weeks ago that they support the so-called "coexistence" of organics with genetically modified (GM) crops.

Whole Foods sent a misleading e-mail to its customers on Jan. 21in which they gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. However, after sharp criticisms from the OCA and their customers, and in the wake of USDA's unrestricted approval of GE alfalfa and sugar beets, the leaders of the organic industry seem to have changed their tune, issuing strong statements against the USDA approval last week.

According to the Organic Consumers Association:

    "The main reason ... why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do.

UN Warned of Major New Food Crisis at Emergency Meeting in Rome

By John Vidal
Common Dreams

The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.

In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties.

"