I was disappointed and somewhat amused to notice that John Redwood had engaged in a spot of editing on Wednesday. Originally his NICE article read like so:
Because the NHS has such colossal power in its buying decisions drug companies have to throw everything in to selling to the single purchaser in the UK market. They are very disappointed if it does not work.
But it was changed to:
Because the NHS has such colossal power in its buying decisions drug companies have to throw everything in to selling to the single purchaser in the English market. They are very disappointed if it does not work.
I'm disappointed because John Redwood is one of the more analytical of MPs, and if he conflates England with the UK then what hope is there for the rest? Perhaps John could have a word in the ear of the people that write the Conservative website to correct the ambiguity of their news items and policy briefs (like this one which talks of 20,000 cases of pests in NHS hospitals but fails to mention that it's the English NHS).
Stop the pretence that there is one "National Health Service", there never was and never will be.