British manufacturing successes: technology such as Apple’s iPhone 4 may be made elsewhere but essential chips for it are produced in the UK. Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images At the Bank of England they are scratching their heads. Across town at the Victoria Street offices of Vince Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills there are [...]

Bricklayers working in Hatfield. The construction industry took a big hit from the recession and expects the outlook to get tougher. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian It was a bright, sunny day when 19 senior executives, each representing one of the government’s biggest suppliers, trooped into Admiralty House off Whitehall to meet the Cabinet [...]

UnitedHealth runs several GP practices in the UK as well as advising Primary Care Trusts. The company recently had to repay $350m to settle a US case in which it was accused of artificially depressing insurance repayments to customers. Photograph: Alamy A US health insurance company that recently won a multimillion-pound contract to advise primary [...]

Reports suggest Andrew Lansley could be planning to hand over most of the NHS budget to private corporations. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Despite catastrophic failures in the banking sector, the market is far from in retreat in the NHS. Reports in advance of a white paper suggest the coalition health secretary, Andrew Lansley, could be about [...]