Is the government about to scrap the NHS record scheme?
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has today thrown into doubt the largest civilian IT project in the world with a suggestion that the £12.7 billion NHS IT programme may be scrapped. He was quoted as saying the project was "something that I think we don't need to go ahead with just now" with the government looking to save £600 million in the medium term by cutting back on various projects. So what is going on?
As soon as the comment was made on the Andrew Marr show it was "corrected" by government officials suggesting significant savings would be made but the scheme would still go ahead. The government has invested billions upon billions of pounds into the project, which is already years behind schedule, and this would be yet another massive U-turn if it was scrapped.
This is just the latest in a number of potential cost saving initiatives to be implemented by the UK government in the short to medium term. There is a need to save billions upon billions of pounds in the short to medium term to reduce the ever growing budget deficit and at least attempt to put UK plc finances in some kind of order.
Share this..
Related stories
Where there is muck there is brass!
Serial entrepreneurs Paul Wright and Valerie Kaye are on the verge of completing a deal which will see their plant and garden equipment company sold to their former offshoot Ideal Shopping Direct in a deal worth around £5 million. After initially setting up the Ideal Shopping Direct company sometime ago the couple left in 2007 with £9.9 million in their bank accounts and a stake of 29% in the bu...
Read MoreWith profits bond holders feeling the pain
For many years the with profits bond market has been a godsend for investors in the UK, offering the opportunity to smooth out the ups and downs of the UK investment markets and ultimately crystallise a decent return at the end. However, while the likes of Engage Mutual and National Provident Life have already confirmed that terminal bonuses will be reduced to 0% we have today seen Phoenix join th...
Read MoreUK sub-prime mortgages 'booming'
Britain's sub-prime mortgage market grew by 28 per cent in 2006, research from analyst firm Datamonitor suggests.Sub-prime mortgages, which cover individuals unable to secure a mortgage from mainstream providers because of bankruptcy, poor payment records or other reasons, totalled £24.6 billion in 2006 and could reach £31.5 billion by 2011, today's report claims.Datamonitor believes buoyant eco...
Read MoreLocal officials 'need PFI training'
Local officials do not have the commercial awareness to negotiate deals under private finance initiatives (PFI), MPs have warned today.A report from the public accounts committee (PAC) has highlighted a number of areas it believes the Treasury needs to work on to ensure the success of PFI schemes.PFI projects are financed by a mixture of bank loans and investor funds and in 2002 the government int...
Read MoreNext on the list, credit cards firms?
Gordon Brown is set to move his crusade from the banking sector to the credit card sector over the next few weeks as credit card companies flatly refuse to join in the recent reduction in interest rates. This is a point we have questioned a number of occasions as interest rates have risen over the last few months at a time when UK base rates have fallen from 5% to 3%.
It is not clea...