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Consumer Alert weekly UK web news articles, information & tips: Monday July 19th 2010.

Mon, 2010-07-19

1.  Broadband for all Consumers:  target date put back to 2015.

The battle to close Britain's broadband divide suffered a blow this week  when the government pushed back the UK's target for universal access to high speed broadband by 3 years.  Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said that it was not practical to meet the previous government's target of universal broadband coverage by 2012 – a commitment he had previously dismissed as "paltry". Instead, Hunt said it would take until 2015 before every home in Britain had at least a 2Mbps (megabits per second) connection.   At present, 99% of homes can get some form of broadband connection but about 11% – or 2 million homes – cannot get speeds as high as 2Mbps. This limits their ability to use bandwidth-intensive services such as video streaming and television-on-demand. About 160,000 rural and remote households still cannot get any form of broadband, more than 10 years after the first services were launched.  FULL STORY (telegraph.co.uk)

2.  CONSUMER WARNING: Why we all need to have private overseas health cover - even for European countries.

Are you, like most of us, assuming that your little NHS E111 card (now the EHIC) will give you adequate medical cover when in Europe?  Well, a cautionary tale published in the Daily Telegraph shows that this card is simply not enough and that it is absolutely essential for UK travellers to arrange private insurance cover prior to overseas travel.  The writer of the article, Judith Woods, incurred huge unrecoverable medical costs after being involved in a riding accident in France.   Read the article for the full frightening details but just one example will suffice.  There is no free ambulance service in France and the 999 ambulance call out charges alone amounted to a staggering  Euros 1,200.  The moral of this story - get insurance before you travel (and of course declare full prior medical history on your application to avoid any chance of invalidating your cover).  FULL STORY (telegraph.co.uk)

3.  Consumers are not prepared to pay for smart meters, says Which?

Nine in ten people say that energy suppliers should pay for smart meters if they are going to save money from the scheme, according to new research by Which?Government figures released in December last year showed that smart meters will save energy suppliers at least £306 million a year while the potential savings for consumers will depend on suppliers passing these efficiency savings on and consumers changing their behaviour. Around 4 in 5 people (83%) are not prepared to pay any additional cost to have a smart meter installed in their home. British Gas has already started rolling out smart meters to some of its customers free of charge, proof, says Which?, that competing energy companies can absorb the cost of the scheme without charging customers.This independent research comes as Ofgem and the Government prepare to publish their smart meter prospectus this month.   FULL STORY (which.co.uk)

4.  Devolving NHS financial control to GPs is a huge gamble, says the Independent.

Medical organisations are warning that the Government's plan to devolve financial control of the NHS to GPs represents a huge challenge  and could "de- stabilise" the NHS. The Nuffield Trust said: "It is risky now to reduce central grip, given the urgent need to make efficiencies in today's economic climate."  Groups of GPs organised into consortia are to be given freedom and responsibility for buying care from local hospitals and other providers, including private organisations, in a major switch of purchasing power from central management to the surgery. They will control upwards of 70 per cent of the NHS budget, which will be managed by staff whom they will hire. The changes will not take full effect until 2013-14.   FULL STORY (independent.co.uk)

5.  Government regulation of the food market needed to stabilise prices?

Greater regulation of the food market should be introduced by the government to stabilise food prices, according to an anti-poverty group. A World Development Movement report says the  banks which caused the financial downturn have created volatile food prices. It says bankers have poured money into commodities like wheat and maize after giving up on failed mortgages. Banks have argued that basic food price rises, especially in 2008, are due to increased demand from China and the use of bio-fuels. "Bankers are to blame for price rises in coffee, chocolate and bread," states the report, which said that, in the UK, it was the poorest people who suffered the most.   FULL STORY (bbc.co.uk)

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