LABOUR’S YEAR OF FAILURE

It has been yet another year of failure for Tony Blair’s discredited Labour Government.

2004: A DIARY OF LABOUR’S FAILURE

January

Tax: The OECD warns that Gordon Brown will have to raise taxes or cut the rate of spending growth to meet his fiscal rules.

Drugs: Re-classification of cannabis came into force - The Metropolitan Police Commissioner admitted that the Government’s policy was muddled: ‘There is a massive amount of muddle about where we are on cannabis’ (BBC News Online, 15 January 2004).

Education: Tony Blair narrowly avoids defeat in the Commons after backbench Labour rebels vote against his decision to break a manifesto commitment not to introduce university top-up fees. The Bill scrapes through, and students now face being saddled with thousands of pounds more debt.

February

Tax: The Government intends to spend an additional £2.4 billion on running itself in 2003-04 compared to the previous year. This increase of 14 per cent would pay for an extra 112,500 nurses.

Asylum: Figures are released showing Labour are 45 per cent short of their target for removing asylum seekers (Home Office, UK Asylum Statistics 1997-2003).

Crime: Research by the Prison Reform Trust finds that Labour have not planned enough prison places, with a projected prison population of 88,700 expected by 2007 and a projected capacity of 78,700 (Prison Reform Trust Press Release, 2 February 2004).

Education: The Chief Inspector of Schools, David Bell, attacks Labour's target-setting culture, stating in his annual report : ‘Weaknesses remain in the link between target-setting, teaching and the effect on pupils’ learning especially in literacy and numeracy’ (OFSTED, 2003 Annual Ofsted Report, 4 February 2004).

March

Tax: Labour announce six new stealth taxes in the Budget. From 1 April 2004 small owner-managed companies will incur a minimum 19 per cent rate of corporation tax on any profits that are distributed to the owners as dividends.

Asylum: Steve Moxon, an immigration caseworker from the IND, reveals that officials had been ordered to fast-track thousands of applicants with little or no checks on their authenticity (Sunday Times, 14 March 2004).

Drugs: An NAO report showed that Drug Treatment and Testing Orders are failing, with more than two thirds terminated without being completed in full (NAO, Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, 26 March 2004).

April

Tax: Treasury figures show the administrative costs of running government are more than £1 billion over budget. The actual cost for 2003-4 was £21.3 billion compared to a budget of £20.2 billion. This waste could have paid for an additional 39,750 teachers.

Asylum: A written answer highlights the spiralling costs of legal aid. Between 1996-7 and 2003-4, the legal aid budget for asylum and immigration rose from £26.1m. to £204m. – an increase of 682 per cent (Hansard, 29 April 2004, Col. 1249WA).

Education: The Education Department's annual report shows Labour have 35 separate targets for education. They missed 7 out of 9 of their targets from 1998. ATL, the teaching union, reports a fivefold increase in attacks on its members (The Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2004).

Education: Class sizes continue to rise. According to new figures, over 100,000 secondary pupils are now in classes of 30 or more. Average primary school class sizes also rose (DfES, Pupil Characteristics and Class Sizes in Maintained Schools in England, January 2004 (Provisional), 29 April 2004)

May

Tax: New figures show that average council tax bills have increased by 70 per cent since 1997 - £478 for each year of Labour Government. Typical pensioners have seen more than a third of the increase in the basic state pension snatched back in higher council tax.

Asylum: A National Audit Office report is published, criticising Home Office asylum statistics: ‘In the time available we were not able to select and test a large enough sample of data entered on the Home Office’s asylum databases to provide with sufficient precision a view on the reliability of the statistics’ (National Audit Office, Asylum and migration: a review of Home Office statistics, 25 May 2004).

Prison: At the end of May 2004, 17,000 prisoners were doubling up in cells designed for one and 91 of the 138 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded (Prison Reform Trust Factfile, July 2004, p. 7).

Education: Labour's childcare policy is shown to be ineffective, with only 57 per cent of childminders able to make a profit – leading to a large drop in the number of childminders (DfES, The 2002/3 Childcare and Early Years Workforce Survey, May 2004).

June

Immigration: Following visa scandals in Bulgaria and Romania, the National Audit Office conducts a report into the integrity of all UK visas. The NAO found great inconsistency in the quality and extent of visa checks: ‘The use of forged documents is endemic in some of the countries covered by the visa regime… In some of the posts that we visited this has led to considerable success in identifying fake documents and, in Accra, it was considered to be a contributory factor in the high refusal rate. But resource constraints, and the requirement to meet processing targets, limit posts’ efforts on such work and there was wide variation between posts in the attention given to forgery issues’ (National Audit Office, Visa Entry into the UK, 17 June 2004).

Police: The Home Secretary throws Humberside Police Authority into chaos by using his powers to ask the authority to suspend the Chief Constable, David Westwood, following the conclusion of the Bichard Inquiry on the Soham murders.

Education: A report from education analysts shows that some O-level papers from the 1960s are harder than modern A-level papers. Other questions were 'almost indistinguishable' (Jonathan Ramsay and John Corner, Observations on London (Edexcel) ‘A’ Level Mathematics from 1960 to 2004, published by the Campaign for Real Education, June 2004).

Tax: Reports suggest that Gordon Brown will postpone raising fuel duty until after the general election. This is an admission that taxes would have rise under a third term Labour Government - and is just the tip of the iceberg.

July

Tax: An ONS report shows £4 billion error in the Government’s net borrowing requirement for 2003-4. The Chancellor will have two choices for dealing with this ‘black hole’ - either he will have to cut public spending or raise taxes.

Asylum: Campaigners against the detention of asylum seekers conduct a series of protests around the country. They want an end to detention of people not convicted of any crimes (BBC Online, 31 July 2004).

Violent Crime: Recorded crime statistics show that there were a million violent crimes in 2003-4, an increase of 83 per cent since 1998-9 (Home Office, Crime in England and Wales 2003/04, July 2004).

Education: Figures show student debt has increased under Labour by 18 per cent in one year, and is now £14.6 billion (Student Loans Company, July 2004).

August

Tax: The Bank of England raises interest rates for the fifth time in 13 months. For a £100,000 mortgage this represents an increase in monthly repayments of over £100.

Asylum: Yearly asylum statistics are released showing the number of applications remains high at over 61,000 - 65 per cent higher than under the last Conservative Government (Home Office, Asylum Statistics 2003, 24 August 2004).

Police Funding: Conservative research finds that Police Authorities across the country are facing funding shortfalls of millions of pounds as the Government continues to inflict national targets on local police forces.

Education: More evidence of the decline in school discipline emerges with statistics showing there were over 17,000 exclusions in one term. The CBI condemns the poor state of literacy and numeracy amongst school leavers (Times Educational Supplement, 6 August 2004 & The Daily Telegraph, 23 August 2004).

September

Immigration: The number of people coming to Britain to work from the EU accession countries between May and September stands at 90,000 – at least seven times Home Office estimates (Home Office, Accession Monitoring Report May to September 2004, 10 November 2004).

Police: Clear-up rates fall yet again: only one in five crimes is cleared up by the police who are spending almost as much time at their desks as out on the streets fighting crime (Home Office, Police Performance Monitoring Reports, 22 September 2004).

Education: Class sizes up again: ONS statistics reveal Labour's flagship 1997 policy to cut primary school class sizes is in tatters. More than 20,000 pupils are now in classes of 31 or more, a rise of 26 per cent on last year (DfES, Statistics of Education: Schools in England, 2004 Edition, September 2004).

October Health: ONS statistics show an alarming drop in NHS productivity. Spending on health has increased by almost 28 per cent in real terms since 1998, but activity has only risen by just over 7 per cent.

Asylum: Conservative research shows that the asylum bill has trebled under Labour. £664 million was spent in the last year of Conservative Government in 1996-7 compared to an aggregate cost of asylum in 2004-05 of £1,969 million (Hansard, 19 October 2004, Col. 600WA & 10 April 2000, Col.3WA).

Young Offenders: The number of persistent young offenders is up by 63 per cent since 1997 (Department for Constitutional Affairs, Statistics on Persistent Young Offenders, Issue 10/2004, 8 October 2004, Table 1).

Education: Labour appoint the first University Access Regulator, to interfere in universities' admissions policies. Meanwhile, DfES bureaucracy means two highly-qualified academics are prevented from becoming teachers, and told they have to take a GCSE (The Guardian, 13 October 2004).

November

Tax: The CEBR publishes a report predicting third term Labour tax rises, joining the IMF, the OECD, the IFS, the ITEM Club, the NIESR and just about every other serious economic commentator in predicting that Labour will have to raise taxes if it is re-elected for a third term.

Asylum: Quarterly figures are released. They show the number of asylum applications up 9 per cent compared with the previous quarter. They also show that the number of asylum removals had fallen by almost a third compared with the same quarter last year (Home Office, Asylum Statistics 3nd quarter 2004 – United Kingdom, 16 November 2004).

Crime: New figures show that more than a third of Labour’s flagship ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’ are breached (Hansard, 2 November 2004, Col.187WA).

Education: Charles Clarke announces plans for dealing with school discipline that will force all schools to admit unruly pupils who have been excluded from other schools (DfES, Press Release, 18 November 2004)

December Tax: ONS figures show a dramatic decline in the amount of money invested in the UK by foreign companies. The fall from £16 billion to £12.4 billion in 2003 is hardly surprising when the economy is being suffocated by extra taxes and 15 new working regulations a day.

Blunkett: The scandal caused by David Blunkett’s fast tracking of a visa dominates the headlines. On 1 December The Daily Mail publishes two letters, which show that despite a huge backlog the Home Office processed a visa application for his lover’s nanny, Ms Casalme, in 10 days. The Home Secretary was forced to resign on 15 December 2004. The subsequent Budd report finds that there was a ‘chain of events linking Mr Blunkett to the change in the decision on Ms Casalme’s application for ILR’ (Budd Inquiry Report, 21 December 2004).

Education: Three separate reports condemn Labour's record on basic skills in schools. Maths falls from 8th to 18th place in an international table, and an OFSTED report condemns the poor state of literacy in primary schools (Learning for Tomorrow’s World-First Results from PISA 2003, OECD, 6 December 2004; Reading for purpose and pleasure, OFSTED, December 2004).

What will Conservatives do?

Lower Taxes: Our priority in government will be to give people value for money for the taxes they pay. Government has become fat and bloated under Labour. Conservatives will cut government waste and bureaucracy to make sure taxpayers’ money is spent on front-line services. We will stop Labour’s third term tax rises and set Britain on a path to lower taxes.

• Within the first day of a Conservative Government, we will freeze civil service recruitment.

• Within the first week, we will put a stop to wasteful inspection regimes in local government.

• Within the first month, our first Budget will cut wasteful government spending.

This will give taxpayers value for money and stop Labour’s third term tax rises.

School Discipline: The Conservatives believe that teachers, not politicians, should run our schools. We will cut teachers’ paperwork, restore discipline in schools and give parents the opportunity to choose the best school for their child.

• Within the first day of a Conservative Government, we will set out plans to give head teachers the power to expel disruptive pupils.

• Within the first week, we will begin to abolish the restrictions which stop good schools expanding and new ones opening, as well as centrally-set targets for schools.

• Within the first month, we will include in the Queen’s Speech a Bill to give parents the opportunity to choose the best school for their children.

Cleaner Hospitals: Hospitals should be run by health professionals, not politicians. Conservatives will get our hospitals clean, get money through to front-line services and give patients the opportunity to choose where and when they get their treatment.

• Within the first day of a Conservative Government, we will abolish targets imposed by Whitehall on hospitals.

• Within the first week, we will make it possible for people to have access to information about hospital performance, including on infection rates.

• Within the first month, we will publish legislation to give people the opportunity to choose cleaner, better hospitals.

More Police: Our society needs more respect, discipline and decent values. Conservatives will cut political correctness and police paperwork, and put more police on the beat.

• Within the first day of a Conservative Government, we will announce plans to prevent police officers having to fill in a form every time they stop someone.

• Within the first week, we will announce the ending of Labour’s early release from prison scheme.

• Within the first month, we will start our new prison building programme and the recruitment of an extra 5,000 police officers each year.

Controlled Immigration: Conservatives will bring immigration under control. We will create a fair asylum system that helps genuine refugees and an immigration system that gives priority to those who want to come to Britain to work hard and make a positive contribution, like they do in Australia.

• Within the first week of a Conservative Government, we will announce that holiday and student visas cannot be

switched to long-stay visas once people have arrived in Britain.

• Within the first month, we will introduce legislation to give priority to people who want to come here and make a positive contribution, like they do in Australia.

• Within the first month, we will set in train 24 hour surveillance at ports of entry.