This week (20 January 2013) the thinktank Demos (“ideas and action to promote the common good”) has published its report Faithful Providers, which argues that faith-based organisations should be used more as public service providers. Simon Barrow offers an initial response, highlighting some of the problematic assumptions and stances within the report, setting out the background to successive government's interest in co-opting faith providers, and pointing towards a more radical Christian stance which roots service in a tradition of modelling and advocating a different social order based on justice and equality.

The UK government’s proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) which assesses claimants’ fitness to work, will have a "huge impact" on the way peoples’ illnesses are reviewed, experts have warned.