In July the Government published its response to its initial reforms about public health. Whilst their original reforms had failed to excite as much public interest as their plans for GP commissioning, they did contain some very radical changes to the relationship between the Department of Health and public health.

Rather oddly, at a national level the public health reforms went in the opposite direction to those proposed for the NHS. Whereas the stated aim of the NHS reforms was to remove the Secretary of State’s accountability for the NHS (something that the 2011 reforms of their 2010 reforms changed radically), their original reforms of the Department’s relationship to public health abolished the independence of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and brought their powers under the direct control of the Secretary of State.