The week in Westminster
Published 14 Oct 2010 09:30
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With Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West
I spent last week in Birmingham at the Conservative Party conference. There was a very clear sense of purpose - to sort out the dreadful mess left to us by Labour. We are going to spend £43bn on debt interest payments this year alone - not to pay off Labour’s debt, just to stand still.
Of course there was much said about balancing the budget but the raft of policy statements reflected a clear aim to fix the many broken aspects of our society.
To highlight just a few, there were announcements of new measures including:
l to support small enterprises and help people start their own business
l giving teachers new common-sense powers to enforce good discipline in our schools.
l giving councils the financial freedom they need to offer a better deal to the four million people living in council housing in England
l giving funding this year to the NHS and councils to provide support to the frail and vulnerable after they have been discharged from hospital, which will benefit 35,000 people
l introducing Universal Credit which will simplify the benefit system by moving from the current multitude of complex benefits to one streamlined payment - simpler for claimants and making it easy to see that it is always worthwhile going to work
l setting a cap on benefits for workless households, while at the same time protecting households with Disability Living Allowance or Working Tax Credit claimants.
There is a long way to go but, as David Cameron summed up in his speech, the Government has achieved much so far: 200 new academies, 10,000 university places, 50,000 apprenticeships; Corporation tax - cut; the jobs tax - axed; police targets - smashed; immigration - capped; the third runway - stopped; Home Information Packs - dropped; fat cat salaries - revealed; ID cards - abolished; the NHS - protected; our aid promise - kept; quangos - closing down; Ministers’ pay - coming down; a bank levy - coming up; a cancer drugs fund - up and running; £6bn of spending saved this year; an emergency budget to balance the books in five years; an EU referendum lock to protect our sovereign powers every year; for our pensioners - the earnings link restored; for our entrepreneurs - employees’ tax reduced and for our armed forces - the operational allowance doubled.
As the Prime Minister said, look what we’ve done in five months. Just imagine what we can do in five years.
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