Yesterday's paper from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) – The Government's Health Reforms. An Analysis Of The Need For Clarification and Change by The Royal College Of General Practitioners – is a really important document in a number of ways. It is well worth a couple of day's posts. So I will deal with some of the detail of the important issues they raise about competition in my post tomorrow and the day after. But today I want to gauge why the overall impact of the day's media coverage of the Report shows how deeply the Government have lost control of its health policy.

Ever since 2005 when David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party,  he has made it clear in speech after speech that he believes in the basic principles of the NHS. Almost certainly by the time of the election a year ago a majority of the public believed that this was true. In fact if they hadn't most of those that voted for him then would probably not have done so.