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Aim: this article proposes a radical new approach to the monitoring and governance of services, and the education and training of nurses to meet ‘failure to rescue’ requirements. Background: healthcare policy in the UK that seeks to ensure safe and effective services for the acutely ill has largely failed, resulting in adult patients dying unnecessarily. Despite grand rhetoric, UK governments have distanced themselves from implementation, resulting in patchy localised developments and creating inconsistent service responses. Design and data sources: this article draws on a review of research and UK policy literature and best international practice to propose a new national framework approach that combines competency development, governance and performance monitoring to address ‘failure to rescue’ shortcomings. Implications for nursing: paramount is a nationally agreed and fit-for-purpose competency tool using simulation to assess staff in order to improve recognition of the deteriorating patient. Service improvements should include increased investment in telemedicine; service performance should be communicated through publicly available ratings and overseen by patient panels; and governance will require strengthening through enhanced Care Quality Commission/Monitor input, which should be linked to the maintenance of foundation trust status. Conclusion: health professional bodies, regulators, providers and the Government must work together to strengthen the safety and effectiveness of acute services. This will require investment in staff competency and enhancement of the governance to ensure services consistently meet public expectations and reduce unnecessary deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Devolution has become a key 'global trend' over recent decades as many states have decentralised power to sub-state governments. The UK resisted this trend until the late 1990s when devolution was enacted by the then Labour Government, taking a highly asymmetrical form in which different territories have been granted different powers and institutional arrangements. Devolution allows the devolved governments to develop policies that are tailored to the needs of their areas, encouraging policy divergence, although this is countered by pressures to ensure that devolved approaches do not contradict those of the central state, promoting convergence. This review paper aims to assess the unfolding dynamics of devolution and policy divergence in the UK, spanning different policy areas such as economic development, health and social policy. The paper emphasises that devolution has altered the institutional landscape of public policy in the UK, generating some high-profile examples of policy divergence, whilst also providing evidence of policy convergence. In addition, the passage of time underlines the nature of UK devolution as an unfolding process. Its underlying asymmetries have become more pronounced as the tendency towards greater autonomy for Scotland and Wales clashes with a highly centralised mode of policymaking in Westminster, the consequences of which have spilt over into the devolved territories in the context of the post-2007 economic crisis through public expenditure cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay, we outline how recent events have generated considerable debate and discussion surrounding the future constitutional status of Scotland and the current devolutionary settlement in the UK, and how the aim of this collection of papers is to evaluate UK devolution and the policy mobilities surrounding it. We argue that there has been a tendency for scholars to concentrate on the detail of the constitutional and administrative structures and a reluctance to theorise devolution, and suggest geographers can offer a particular contribution here through an understanding of devolution as fundamentally about the interaction of politics, culture and territory. We discuss the value of considering the particular geographies of policy at work, and the role of the everyday work of civil servants in creating and sustaining the creation of new state spaces. We then briefly highlight the main findings of each of the papers in this special collection and show how, together, they add to our understanding of the geographies of devolution and of policy at a critical juncture in the devolution story. We conclude that whatever the particular future for the United Kingdom, the policy interactions between territories will continue to have an important role in their governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Great Britain, engagement with civil society is an increasingly central component of public policy and governance rhetoric. However, attention has tended to focus on policy developments emanating from Westminster that relate to England, rather than the policy and governance 'spaces' emerging in the devolved administrations, such as Scotland and Wales. It has also tended to focus on the organisations through which voluntary participation takes place, rather than on voluntary participation itself. In this paper we examine the extent to which there are divergent governance spaces with regards to voluntarism apparent at the national levels of England, Wales and Scotland, set against a backdrop of wider debates on devolution, civil society, community, and the Big Society. Given the common driver of public service reform which emerges from our review, we then examine the emergence of sub-national 'spaces' through the example of rural Scotland, in which the delivery of public services can be particularly challenging. Overall, we contend that public policy towards volunteering and the voluntary and community sector ( VCS) in Scotland, Wales and England has been shaped by similar drivers, but the rhetoric surrounding their deployment and the distinct governance landscapes in Wales and Scotland have the capacity to influence the deployment of these goals in distinct ways. We also argue that greater attention may need to be paid to emergent 'sub-national' governances spaces of voluntarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the impact of parties on public policy, and on immigration policy in particular, often finds limited evidence of partisan influence. In this paper, we examine immigration policy-making in the UK coalition government. Our case provides evidence that parties in government can have more of an impact on policy than previous studies acknowledge, but this only becomes apparent when we open up the ‘black box’ between election outcomes and policy outputs. By examining how, when and why election pledges are turned into government policies, we show that partisan influence depends not only on dynamics between the coalition partners, but how these dynamics interact with interdepartmental conflicts and lobbying by organised interests. In-depth process tracing allows us to see these complex dynamics, which easily get lost in large-n comparisons of pledges and outputs, let alone outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the UK the rules governing caretaker situations have historically been underspecified. The UK's constitutional traditions, such as prime ministerial discretion to time elections and its two-party system, have in the past limited the frequency and duration of caretaker periods. However, the recently lengthened election timetable, new constraints on the executive introduced by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011), and a decline in the dominance of the two largest parties are raising the risk that the UK will experience caretaker periods more often and for longer stretches of time. In this paper, we offer an analysis of the UK's current caretaker provisions and conclude that the existing conventions are insufficiently detailed and can render such periods problematic and controversy-prone. Important lessons, we suggest, can be learned from reforms in other Westminster systems, and from the caretaker rules of other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely-and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scottish government's white paper on independence, Scotland's future, sets out its defence blueprint following a 'yes' vote. It makes clear that its defence plans would be subject to a Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2016, as well as negotiation on the division of assets with London. However, it also provides a strong indication of how it envisages its defence posture as an independent state-a major pillar of which is founded upon strong and continued defence cooperation with the rest of the United Kingdom. Is this a realistic assumption? And, if so, how would it work in practice? Contextualized by the increased emphasis on defence cooperation which sits at the heart of NATO's Smart Defence initiative, as well as the European Defence Agency's 'pooling and sharing' programme, the article assesses the benefits and challenges that might be encountered in a defence cooperation agreement between an independent Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom in the event of a 'yes' vote in September's referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]