The Conservatives have put up alternative plans for tackling inner city deprivation. As the party gathers for its annual conference today in Bournemouth, the leader has launched a week of offering up alternative ideas to those currently being implemented, with proposals on unfamiliar territory. The party clearly believes that there is dissatisfaction with the rate of progress being made on this issue.The policy document ‘Believing in Our Cities’, argues that there are not enough places in the cities where people both want and can afford to live, and too many blackspots of deprivation and low-quality housing. The paper proposes an integrated approach, across government departments, to promote inner-city regeneration.

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Family doctors and the Department of Health are welcoming a new move to bring in electronic paper records. The stumbling block to the streamlining of GP paperwork has been the traditional contractual agreement between doctors and the NHS, which has until now required paper records.The BMA says it has re-negotiated this to ensure that modernisation takes place at the pace a GP can cope with. It is doctors who will decide when to make the change, and to what extent. There will be controls. Surgeries will need the consent of their local health authority, and will be expected to stick to new best practice guidelines. There is also an issue about retaining up to fifty years of paper records, which are highly unlikely to be transferred onto computer.

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