Andrew Lansley and the NHS reforms

Yesterday I attended a lecture and discussion with Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of state for health, in the houses of parliament. I was invited quite last minute to go by my friend whose father is a member of the Conservative muslim forum, who were running it. I am neither a conservative nor muslim but the event was non selective so I still went.
Obviously as it was organised by a political organisation there was a lot of political behaviour involved in the whole thing which would be unnacceptable in any other social situation, commenting on Andrew Lansley's love of pies and a lot of juvenile eye rolling. The main event was to be a talk by Andrew Lansley on the state of the NHS and the reforms, followed by a question and answer session, but in the words of the man himself, 'he would give a response but it may not be an answer'
he reforms have been met with a striking amount of criticism, but rightly pointed out, it has bubbled down a bit recently. He first started up with the need for the reforms, to improve the care further and to save money to combat the mammoth debts. The
Of course as he was figurehead for the reforms, he undoubtably gave a rather biased view. It is easy to become very believing of the majority viewpoint in such an enclosed area with no means of research and proof so we should always examine credibility and reliability to ensure we get the whole picture.
After there were some interesting questions asked, including one about what we we should expect in the profession of healthcare in the future. According to Mr. Lansley, being a doctor offers a lot of opportunity for career development, the highest salary in Europe for a medic and a great degree of security, I'm sold!
He was also asked about what they were doing to reduce waste of funds, in particular relating to IT, Mr Lansley said that the government reviewed the contracts they had with IT companies and cut the ones which weren't delivering, good for the NHS and their funds, but bad for the company who just lost a major portion of their income and would have to reduce staffing, it will never be a win-win situation. The IT solutions would then be changed up for more personalised services with lots of choice rather than a one size fits all model.
He was asked how the government is using their own social marketing strategies to combat powerful advertising of unhealthy products and he said that they were aiming for a more empowering outlook on the adverts rather than a nagging response and were already running many successful campaigns including the Change 4 life and new invisible smoke ones. The more information is made accessible, the better informed the general public will be.