This paper investigates the access that health professionals, researchers, journalists and, ultimately, the public have to review spending in the English National Health Service (NHS). The ability of news organisations to inform debate and decision-making, particularly when hospitals face financial constraints, relies on accessible data. Theorists such as Patrick Dunleavy have suggested that developments in information communications technology induce a dialectical movement, involving changing governance and increasing transparency. Drawing on this premise, the article reviews the extent to which the NHS has moved from a 'freedom of information regime' to one of 'full open-book governance'. Its methodology includes a combination of documentary and freedom of information data analysis, as well as in-depth interviews with directors of commissioning and provider services and national agencies. It argues that, while increased dissemination of information might be consistent with the government's digital agenda, the NHS's quasi-market operation and its relationship to the Freedom of Information Act mean that significant data remains inaccessible or costly to obtain.

This paper analyses how the UK national press has covered local decision-making onoptions for the integration of health and social care. In England, as part of a major restructuring of health services, the UK government has devolved significant decisions on reorganising services to local areas. This increasing 'localism' in healthcare has been a global trend, albeit an uneven one. The article assesses the insights of Amitai Etzioni and others, as applied to national newspaper coverage of local decisions. It finds Etzioni's analysis to be not fully supported. Following other journalism research on the NHS, we show that contentious points of wider public interest were little reported on, such as international corporate influence and the potential for fragmentation across a national health service.

This article contests the idea that social democracy is dead. It is argued that a proper consideration of the evidence casts doubt on this widely held assumption. In this article, the evidence is examined in relation to post‐Fordism, class structure and solidarity, electoral behaviour, post‐materialism and the crisis of the welfare state across Europe.

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