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The Prime Minister: I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on raising a serious issue--it is probably why he is not the leader of the Conservative party today. At least it was a question on the economy. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may shrug his shoulders at the Bank of England forecast, but I certainly do not. If he was being really honest about it, I think that he would recognise that, when we took office, the budget deficit, at £28 billion, was far too high. Also, a Bank of England forecast going over 4 per cent. meant that inflation was on the way up, while our main competitors had inflation rates of under 2 per cent. That is an unsustainable position. On the exchange rate--with the greatest respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman--when people realised that interest rates had to go up, the exchange rate went up. The exchange rate is now back down to the level that we inherited from him.
I believe that the only way of getting long-term stability into the economy is to have Bank of England independence. I do not know whether or not the right hon. and learned Gentleman supports that--I am never sure of his position--but I believe that, in the long term, that gives us the best chance of a stable economic policy.
The real point is that we are better placed to weather the storm as a result of the tough decisions that we took. All round the world, the International Monetary Fund,the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development and the European Union are downgrading world growth forecasts. The question is how we best meet this economic challenge as a country. I say that we do so by the new and modern rules for Bank of England independence, the new fiscal framework that we have in place and the extra investment that we are making in our public services and productivity.
The centrepiece of the Queen's Speech is the set of measures to improve the health service, our schools and law and order and to reform welfare. The £40 billion for schools and hospitals, which is opposed by the Conservative party, is the biggest increase in investment ever for those two services, but it is part of a deal. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks made no serious mention of the fact--I will--that the money is expressly tied to reforming the way those services work.
In education, we inherited a situation in which 500,000 infants were in classes of more than 30. Under this Government, more than 100,000 children were already in smaller classes from the start of this year. As a result of the measures we are taking, we will ensure that all children in infant schools will be in classes of fewer than 30 by 2001. Nursery education is now available for all four-year-olds, and the £300 million national child care strategy will provide child care for children in every neighbourhood. Again, none of that was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks.
The literacy hour has been launched and we will publish the pilot results by the end of the year. We plan the same approach to numeracy. More than 2,000 schools have been given help through the new deal, which was also opposed by the Conservative party. A further 12,000 will be helped soon. Next week, we will be announcing the biggest reform of the teaching profession in 50 years. If we take those measures together with the four education Acts already passed and with specialist schools, the encouragement of setting by ability in different subjects and beacon schools, there will be a real drive towards pushing up standards in primary and secondary schools throughout the country.
Those are people's priorities. We will now have the power to tackle the schools and education authorities that are failing. Also--again opposed by the Conservatives--for the first time in years, education spending as a percentage of national income will increase. That is another promise fulfilled.
I shall now come to the health service and the extraordinary remarks of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks. I take it from those comments that he will oppose the measures that we propose. We have invested the largest single amount in the biggest hospital building programme ever. We have invested £2 billion and £21 billion is coming next year, to tackle waiting lists and improve the national health service. New services such as NHS direct and booking systems for out-patient and in-patient appointments are coming on stream and there is extra investment for cancer treatment. We make no secret of the fact that the NHS Bill will put the final nail in the coffin of the costly, disastrous and bureaucratic internal market introduced by the Conservatives. On the letter that the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks read out from a doctor, I should tell him that the British Medical Association supports the proposal. The two-tier health service will go.
Additionally, the Bill will establish--the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks never even dealt with it--a commission for health improvement which, for the first time, will inspect every hospital and have powers to investigate wherever there are concerns about clinical practice. A new national institute for clinical excellence, a demanding framework to measure performance and GP practices, will ensure that best practice reaches into every part of the NHS. The right hon. Gentleman did not say a word about those plans. I do not know whether that silence means that he opposes or accepts the plans, which are central to what the Government are trying achieve for the health service.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
Much of what the Government plan to do on the health service is welcome. However, I have a few simple questions. Although the Prime Minister seems to believe in democracy in education, and in local government running housing and social services, there will be less, not more, democracy in the health service. Why? Does he accept that there is rationing in the national health service? If so, why are there no proposals for deciding on its priorities? If he does not accept that there is rationing, will everyone be given treatment by the national health service when they need it?
The Prime Minister:
The hon. Gentleman's questions are somewhat inconsistent. First, on democracy, primary care groups will increase the ordinary ability of doctors, nurses and others in the health service to ensure that those precise concerns are taken into account locally. Secondly, those people will be best placed to determine priorities in the national health service. The best way of determining priorities is to ensure that we have the best framework, which the Bill will provide. I should also say that the £21 billion extra will transform health care in the United Kingdom. That money is coming into the health service only because, in our first two years, we took the difficult decisions that were opposed by the hon. Gentleman and the Liberal Democrats--which is why we shall continue taking them.
The new crime Bill also was not mentioned by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks. I should have thought that crime was a top priority among the public. We have achieved an immense amount in the past year. Nevertheless, the Bill will help not only to halve the time it takes to get young offenders to court but to put a stop to offenders getting repeat cautions. For first-time offenders, there will be a new discipline and regime of restraints on their activities. There will be new protection for witnesses, and new rules on the treatment of drug offenders.
For all those public services--including the health and police services--there will be efficiency targets to ensure that the extra money is spent wisely.
Taken together, the measures--both the investment and the reform--amount to the largest programme of change in our public services for many years. One of the best things about them will be that, for the first time, people working in those public services can take pride in public service--which the Conservatives constantly undermined when they were in office. Conservative Members now have the chance to renew that commitment to public service under the new Labour Government.
On modernisation of the welfare state, 18 months ago, we had a situation which one in three children lived in poverty, one in five families had no one in work, there was record income inequality among pensioners, and spending was growing at 4 per cent. a year in real terms. We are tackling each one of those problems left to us by the Conservatives--with the new deal; equalisation of single parent benefits; overhaul of the Child Support Agency; greater security for pensioners through a new minimum income guarantee; the biggest-ever recasting of student finance, extending higher education by lifting the cap that the Tories placed on higher education; and rooting out fraud and waste.
In the coming year, with the programme that the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks dismissed--I do not think that he spent any time discussing it--we shall embark on the next stage of reform. Our programme will introduce a single gateway into the benefit system, modernise the systems of support for disabled people and for widows and introduce low-cost stakeholder pensions. We shall make work pay for low-income families through the working families tax credit. Moreover, legal aid will be radically transformed.
Each one of those measures is a huge measure of change. Each one of those subjects was ducked when the Conservatives were in office. From his speech today, it was quite unclear whether the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks supports or opposes the measures, other than the working families tax credit. If, as he says, he opposes the working families tax credit, is that the only part of social security spending that he opposes? We do not know. Most of the money on social security spending is about pensions uprating, disability benefit uprating and extra child benefit. Are those measures opposed by the Conservative party? We do not know.
The Conservatives oppose the £40 billion, and we assume now that they oppose the extra social security spending. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks shakes his head. I read his article in The Daily Telegraph a few days ago. He called our spending proposals "an irresponsible spending spree". I assume that, if they are an irresponsible spending spree, the Conservatives oppose the proposals. Or are they saying that the proposals are irresponsible, but they would introduce them anyway? The Leader of the Opposition cannot have it every way. The Conservatives have been caught on this because they refuse to say where they stand on the key issues. The one thing that they are prepared to say is that they oppose the working families tax credit.
I should tell the Leader of the Opposition that 1.5 million hard-working families will benefit from the working families tax credit. Many of them will gain more than £20 a week. We are doing that in order to help them make work pay. The right hon. Gentleman gave the example of a family with an income of £38,000. Such a family would have to have four children for all of whom they needed child care. There will be families in that situation, but what I say is that, if those people really need that help in order to get to work, the Government should make it easier for them, should help them and should ensure that they get the support that they require to support their own family. In each of our welfare reforms, we are giving help to those who need it. It is fair reform and change. It is modernisation of our system. On each of our proposals, the Conservatives either have nothing to say or are opposed to it.
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