Plans to recruit a further 20,000 learning support assistants by 2002 are backed by a research report. Researchers found that where assistants had clearly defined roles and planned lessons with teachers in the Literacy Hour, they helped pupils become independent learners. The research report shows how head teachers and local education authorities can effectively manage learning assistants so that they motivate pupils and help in raising standards.It is proposed that learning assistants should have a professional status and a unified career structure. A national framework of training and qualification is being developed.

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The Benefits Agency and local councils are striving to reduce benefit fraud by tightening procedures and introducing new technology. So far there is little to show for their efforts. Meanwhile the Government Statistical Service has cut the annual fraud bill by some 50m pounds after revisiting earlier calculations. The importance of this revised base line figure for fraud is that this is one of the targets in the Public Service Agreement between the Benefits Agency and the Treasury.What has emerged from the Government Statistical Service statement is that it is not possible to place the same reliance on figures of fraud as it is, for example, on the size of hospital waiting lists. Earlier in the year the Audit Commission published a figure for benefit fraud some 100m pounds below the latest estimate.

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The Government has spelled out the help that GPs can give in cutting the benefits budget.And the DSS is hoping to encourage family doctors to change their approach to assessing patients.

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There’s been a warning that there needs to be a sea-change in approach to Government procurement if target savings of a billion pounds are to be met.Sir John Bourn, Head of the National Audit Office, has told Parliament that its plans to make the savings through the creation of the Office of Government Commerce won’t work unless backed by a strategic overhaul in thinking about procurement.

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Primary Care Groups have shown confidence in the Government’s still relatively new form of local NHS administration by backing moves to become Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).Up to 61 of the new Primary Care Groups are asking to become Trusts.

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Family doctor services have been given positive feedback from a generally grateful public.The results of the first national survey of NHS patients were designed to assess the GP service through the eyes of patients.

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Older people have told the Government they want to work into their retirement and to maintain their independence.Their thinking will inform new public policy and is part of the Better Government for Older People project, based in the Cabinet Office.

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Civil servants and everyone who knows and works with them is being asked to feed into the biggest consultation exercise ever undertaken by the service.Every one of more than 460,000 employees is being asked to take part in discussion groups, staff magazines, phone-ins, surveys and internet debate.

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Town planners are being asked to change their thinking on transport issues when deciding where major developments should be sited.A Government draft revision of planning policy guidance places much more emphasis on how proposed public buildings or large employment sites are served by a range of transports, not just cars.

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2The new Minister for the Cabinet Office, Mo Mowlam, has made revitalising the campaign for better regulation in Europe one of her first priorities.She’s already been in Europe discussing the progress of reform in the European Commission with Commissioner Neil Kinnock – the Vice-President for Commission Reform.

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