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This article highlights important points raised in a keynote speech delivered at the Guardian's Managing New Realities conference on 22nd March 2006. It draws particularly on the New Types of Worker project created by Skills for Care, and emphasises the need for local leadership to overcome the barriers to collaboration that are likely to prevent emergence of a remodelled workforce in practice, which is seen as central to effective implementation of the White Paper.The article underlines the need for:• a national coherent framework setting out the pathway to realising the visions set out by the White Paper• a local framework to deliver primary social care, with the primary care trusts and local government working as one• a common set of cultural values throughout health and social care• clear and agreed funding arrangements, along with a workforce development programme to keep pace with changing service requirements• public support for change, to achieve a seamless service without the gaps that lead to tragedy.It is through addressing these challenges to primary health and social care that the remodelling of the workforce will come about.

The factors which influence costs of production of food and the prices to the consumer have changed dramatically during this century, but especially since the establishment of trading systems all over the world. Gone are the days when the simple expedients of supply and demand alone governed the situation. The erosion of these principles began at the turn of the century, mainly as a result of the introduction by the rapidly developing industrial power of the USA to protect her own industries against the cheaper products of European countries. They introduced the system of tariffs on imported manufactured goods; it grew and eventually was made to apply to wide sectors of industry. European countries retaliated but the free trade policy of Britain's Liberal government was making the country a dumping ground for all other country's cheap products and surpluses.