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Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 12.28pm: Professor Steve Field, the former chairman of the Royal College of GPs, will chair the panel that is being set up to consider changes to the health bill, the BBC reports. 12.24pm: Cameron says that the government will ban competition on price in the health bill. 12.20pm: In response to another question, Cameron says that some waiting targets are being maintained. But it is important to be flexible, he says. The four-hour maximum waiting time for people in A&E did not suit people who might have wanted to wait a bit to see if a condition settled down. It led to some people being pushed into hospital quicker than they wanted, he says. 12.18pm: Back to the Cameron Q&A. Cameron is taking questions now. Q: How can you ensure that medicine remains flexible? Cameron says he does not want to create a “dictatorial” system. The health future forum – the body that he is setting up to advise on possible changes to the bill – will ensure that the new structure is not too rigid, he says. 12.09pm: Libya is potentially a “goldmine”, according to Tony Blair. He made the comment in an interview with Danish TV. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he said: The thing about Libya is that, potentially, it is a goldmine of a country. It has got fantastic financial resources, it has got amazing tourist sites. If it opened up its economy, and opened up its society and take that route of reform once they change government then Libya will be a phenomenally successful country but we need to be there to partner them to do that. 12.07pm: The royal wedding is expected to be seen by 2bn people around the world, Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, told colleagues at the cabinet meeting this morning, according to Number 10. 11.56am: Live blogging an event from the TV has many advantages, but occasionally it goes wrong. Sky abandoned their coverage of the Cameron event just as Andrew Lansley was about to tell us about the areas where the government might be willing to make changes to the health bill. As soon as I can find out what he said, I’ll let you know. 11.52am: Andrew Lansley is speaking now. He says that there is no more important institution in the UK than the NHS. There is widespread support of a patient-centred service, he says. But people have had “genuine concerns” about the detail of the health bill. Lansley says this re-think will focus on four areas. But – just as he starts to tell us what these areas are – Sky cuts away to the funeral of Ronan Kerr in Northern Ireland. 11.49am: Nick Clegg is speaking now at the same event. He is delivering a very similar message to Cameron’s. Change is essential, he says. Clegg says he cares more about getting NHS reform right than getting it done. It is unusual to have a pause while a bill is going through parliament. But it is also unusual to have a government that listens, he says. There will be “no privatisation of the NHS”, he says. Private providers have always had a role in the NHS. The government will strengthen that role. But it won’t allow private providers to cherry pick the easy cases. 11.44am: Cameron says he is determined to protect the NHS. But it has to change, he says, for two reasons. First, it could be better. It is not as effective as the best health services in the world, he says. Second, the pressures on the NHS will grow. It already treats 25,000 patients an hour. As the population ages, these numbers will grow. Cameron says he recognises that there are some “big questions” from doctors about what the government is doing. We want to work with you, not against you. There will be a pause before the bill returns to the floor of the Commons, he says. The government will use this time to reflect. It will bring forward changes to improve the will. We will listen, and we will make any necessary changes. 11.42am: David Cameron is speaking now. He’s in Frimley, Surrey. He says he believes “passionately” in the NHS. He says that he knows what it is like to rely on the NHS, and to put people that he cares about in its hands. He knows what it is like to turn up at a hospital in the middle of the night. It matters to everyone, he says. And it is “precious” because people know that they don’t have to turn up at hospital with a credit card. 11.30am: David Cameron’s NHS event is going to start shortly. I’ll be dependent on BBC News or Sky for my coverage because I’m in Westminster, but it’s a quiet day and I’m expecting them to show most if it live. Cameron is not now expected to announce any specific changes to the health bill. But we may get a better idea of quite how “substantive” (to use Nick Clegg’s word) the changes to the legislation will be. According to a post from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Twitter, the literature being distributed by the government at the event includes an implicit admission that ministers have so far failed to win public support for their plans. Govt flyer admits failure to sell reforms to NHS staff ‘we know real change will only happen if we have people who work in the NHS on board’ 11.20am: Paul Waugh at PoliticsHome has got an interesting take on the story about Benjamin Zephaniah supposedly being airbrushed out of pro-AV literature distributed by the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign outside London. I’ve just learned that the real story is the exact opposite. It wasn’t Zephaniah who was airbrushed out in the West Country – it was Tony Robinson (aka Baldrick) who was removed from the London leaflets. I understand that one member of the Yes camp spotted the leaflet with Robinson on it and said that in the capital it would look strange to have no ethnic minority faces. As a result, Zephaniah was airbrushed in, rather than airbrushed out. 10.58am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here. As for the rest of the papers, they’ve cleared depressed Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome. Having read them, he has posted a blog under the heading: “At the slightest of opportunities, the Telegraph, Mail, Sun and Express will kick Cameron.” Here are the articles that I found interesting. • James Kirkup and Christopher Hope in the Daily Telegraph say David Cameron blamed Britain for many of the world’s historic problems on his trip to Pakistan yesterday. His remarks came on a visit to Pakistan, when he was asked how Britain could help to end the row over Kashmir. He insisted that it was not his place to intervene in the dispute, saying: “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.” His remarks about Kashmir were greeted warmly by the audience of Pakistani students and academics, but drew accusations from historians that the Prime Minister was wrongly apologising for Britain’s past. Daisy Cooper, the director of the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, said: “This is typical of the UK’s schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past. The Coalition has said that it has big ambitions for a modern Commonwealth and the UK should stop being embarrassed about its colonial past and they should work with other countries to help improve their human rights.” • The Times (paywall) in a leader says Cameron should reshuffle his cabinet. Serious questions have to be asked about whether a number of Cabinet ministers are being deployed in the right place. Despite the brave face he put on the pause in his legislation, Andrew Lansley has lost the political argument at Health. Since he was caught speaking out of turn, Vince Cable’s future at Business has been in doubt; a move to Health could suit him well. Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, was not distinguished in the Comprehensive Spending Review, but can he be moved during a war? Eric Pickles appears intent on starting fights with as many councils as he can; and, at the Ministry of Justice, Kenneth Clarke’s proposals for prisons are a disaster in the making. Any reshuffle involves the juggling of both personal and political relationships, but it is not as if there is no talent available. Nick Herbert is proving impressive as Minister of State at the Home Office, as is Greg Clark at Communities. If David Laws is ever freed from the endless investigation into his expenses he would be welcomed back into Government. Distinguished politicians such as Stephen Dorrell, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon and Sir Malcolm Rifkind still have a lot to offer. • Chris Giles in the Financial Times (subscription) says Gregory Clark, an American professor, has produced research suggesting that there is about as much social mobility in Britain now as there was in the Middle Ages. “The huge social resources spent on publicly provided education and health have seemingly created no gains in the rate of social mobility,” Prof Clark said. “The modern meritocracy is no better at achieving social mobility than the medieval oligarchy. Instead that rate seems to be a constant of social physics, beyond the control of social engineering.” • Lord Young of Graffham, David Cameron’s former enterprise adviser, tells the Financial Times in an interview (subscription) that Cameron should “resist Nick Clegg’s plan to encourage fathers to take more time off work to look after young children because it will harm small businesses”. Lord Young of Graffham, who was forced to quit Number 10 last year after suggesting people were not suffering in the recession, said small companies were already thinking “two or three times before they take on a woman of childbearing age” and needed to be left in peace. “You don’t have to make [maternity leave] interchangeable. Why should men take time off?” the Conservative peer said in his first interview since leaving the government. “No, they can leave things how they are. What I think would be extremely difficult is to have [extended leave] going to the men as well.” Rules come into force on Wednesday allowing fathers to take up a mother’s unused maternity leave if she returns to work within 12 months. Mr Clegg wants to extend this further to allow parents to share leave in small chunks rather than take it as a single block. 10.41am: My colleague Severin Carrell is at Clydebank College for the launch of Labour’s manifesto for the Scottish elections. The press notice about the event describes it as “a fantastic new campus which was built by the previous Labour government in Scotland with an investment in excess of £20m”. But Severin has just called to say that the fire alarm has just gone off, and journalists and Labour’s Scottish high command are all now standing outside in the rain. He’ll be filing a full story about the launch later, after it actually gets going. 10.34am: David Cameron’s NHS Q&A is taking place later this morning. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is already there. She’s given a flavour of what we can expect on Twitter. Glossy flyer with ‘we love the NHS’ given out at event – PM told cabinet important to get reform right – wonder if he gave them a flyer too? 9.59am: The Tory MP Douglas Carswell has a good question on his blog. If unpaid internships are to be discouraged, I presume that the government will now put unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretaries onto the government payroll? 9.03am: It’s the start of the new tax year and, as my colleagues Polly Curtis and Larry Elliott report, Ed Balls has dubbed it “black Wednesday” because of the impact on working families. Balls was on the Today programme this morning setting out his case. According to PoliticsHome , this is what he said: I think you’ll find that government ministers will not be willing to say that the effect of these budgets is progressive because they know it is regressive, because of the VAT rise which outweighs by far the personal allowance rise. However, even on today’s figures, if you are a family with children, if you are a woman rather than a man, in particular if you are a woman in part-time work, you lose very substantially. The IFS have said that a family with two kids on £18,000 plus will lose… up to £1,500. The question is, if we’re all in this together, why is it women rather than men, families with children, part-time working women losing their child support who are being hit the hardest in a set of changes that is not progressive, but is regressive? But he was wrong about ministers not being willing to describe their tax policies as progressive. This is what Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, had to say about an hour later when he was asked if his changes were progressive. I think they are, yes. If you look at the information that we published in the budget document and the spending review document last October, they do show that everyone is making a contribution, but that those on the highest income are contributing most and that’s right. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden. 8.48am: Health seems likely to be the story of the day. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley are all appearing together at an event with NHS staff. They are not going to unveil changes to the health bill, but, according to the BBC, they will announce that that they are appointing a panel of experts to review the legislation. Yesterday Clegg said there would be “substantive, real changes” to the bill . Today’s announcement will be the first step in that process. Otherwise, it seems relatively quiet. MPs have started their Easter recess (although the Lords is still sitting). Here are the items in the diary. Morning: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley hold a Q&A with NHS staff . 11am: Lord Fowler raises phone hacking during questions in the Lords . 12.30pm: Vince Cable , the business secretary, speaks at the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) annual conference . As my colleagues Jeevan Vasagar and Jessica Shepherd report , he is going to warn universities that imposing fees of £9,000 could backfire. As usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers (unlike yesterday, when I didn’t have time – sorry) and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and an afternoon one at about 4pm. Health policy NHS Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk