With three priorities – “education, education, education”
Mr President, In 1997, Tony Blair was elected to power:
Promising to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”;
With three priorities – “education, education, education”;
That there were “24 hours to save our National Health Service”;
To attain “a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2010”;
That “New Labour is not about high taxes on ordinary families”;
To be “Whiter than white” … “purer than pure”;
And to “clean up politics” and “reform party funding to end sleaze.”
The Prime Minister told us:
“That is my bond of trust with the British people… The buck will stop with me.”
Mr President, seldom has a politician so comprehensively failed to deliver on the promises he made.
This Government has won three consecutive elections. This Government won massive majorities in the first two and a respectable majority only last year. This Government has had, at any rate until this summer, the unwavering support of the mass of its Members of Parliament – two of whom join us tonight.
Mr President, this Government has squandered that extraordinary parliamentary advantage.
Mr Blair could have achieved so much. He could have done anything he wanted. And in some respects, as we will see, so he did.
But on so many fronts – from education to the economy to Europe to crime to immigration to the environment to health, the Prime Minister raised the hopes of the British people high, then dashed them on the ground.
Let me give the Prime Minister some credit – there certainly are some things that the Government has done which I applaud and which I have supported. For instance the Government gave the Bank of England independence to set interest rates as it sees fit – although of course it is now free only of the meddling of ministers, and that must be a good thing.
EDUCATION
As I said, the Government was elected promising to make “education, education, education” the priority.
When Labour came to power, they promised that “within a decade every child leaves primary school with a reading age of at least 11”. Well in just a few months, that decade is up. And still, almost half of all 11 year-olds cannot read, write and add up properly;
Today:
23,000 children left school last year without a single GCSE;
Nearly a million children are estimated to be at poorly performing schools – that’s 13 per cent of the school population;
Over a million children play truant every year;
There is an assault on a teacher every seven minutes;
More than 100 state special schools have closed since 1997;
Over a third of adults in the UK do not have any basic school-leaving qualification;
And student debt is spiralling out of control.
The Labour Party promised us that they would,
“make education our number one priority… Attack low standards in schools… Zero tolerance of underperformance… No matter where a school is, Labour will not tolerate under-achievement.”
So much for “education, education, education”.
THE ECONOMY
In 1997, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair inherited a golden economic legacy.
As Chancellor, Ken Clarke had reformed monetary policy; the stable monetary framework that Mr Blair and Mr Brown inherited, with the inflation target at its heart, was a decisive change.
Inflation had been defeated by the Major government. The day Mr Brown became chancellor, inflation was 2.6%. Low inflation kept interest rates low. Government borrowing was under control.
That economic legacy has been squandered.
Today:
Over 1.2 million young people are not in work or full-time education;
Two million pensioners live in poverty;
And unemployment now stands at over 1.6 million – the highest level since January 2000.
Under Labour, Britain has dropped from fourth to thirteenth in the international competitiveness league. £50 billion extra business tax and £50 billion worth of extra regulation every year – Mr Brown has eroded the ability of Britain’s businesses to compete.
Last year, Britain’s growth rate was the lowest for 13 years at just 1.9 per cent.
And despite promising us that, “New Labour is not about high taxes on ordinary families”, the number of households paying inheritance tax has doubled.
Gordon Brown’s pensions tax introduced in 1997 has cost pension funds £5 billion a year. Small surprise, then, that over 9 million people are not saving enough for their retirement. Why save when so much of your money goes straight into Gordon Brown’s coffers to be wasted?
And after all, people who should be saving for pensions have so many more costs now – mainly Gordon Brown’s stealth taxes, like the incredible hike in Council Tax since 1997.
Of course, Council Tax hits hardest those least able to pay. Typical pensioner couples have seen more than a third of the increase in the basic state pension snatched back in higher council tax.
Mr President, those here to oppose the Motion will of course say that this money is not wasted – that it is spent on much-needed public services.
Certainly, some of it is. But it is also undoubtedly true that much of it is wasted through unnecessary bureaucracy and sheer incompetence.
There can be no better example of incompetence than the Government’s tax and pension credits.
In 2003, Tony Blair told the Labour Party conference that,
‘we are investing in our poorest communities… it’s the whole basis of tax credits. If you work, we will help you with the working tax credit. If you are bringing up kids we will support you with child benefit and child tax credit. If you save, we will help you with pension credit’
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
If only it were true.
Of the 6.5 million recipients of tax credit, 2 million have been overpaid and over 900,000 are underpaid.
And pension credit is so complicated and unpopular that up to 1.6 million pensioners are not claiming the Pension Credit they are entitled to.
This is not helping the poorest communities – it’s making their poverty worse and perpetuating it.
But far from sorting this mess out, the Government arrogantly forges ahead – claiming success where failure is clear for all to see.
That’s no way to run a welfare system, and it’s no way to treat the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
CRIME
You know, it’s the most vulnerable in society who are affected most by crime. So when Tony Blair promised that he would be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, people had real hope that they would be safe in their own homes and on their own streets.
That’s why it is such a scandal that Labour have allowed violent crime to double since they took power.
Over 1.2 million violent crimes were committed last year alone.
Gun crime has doubled too.
Robbery up by half.
When I was Home Secretary in the last Conservative Government I cut crime – during my four years at the Home Office, crime fell by an unprecedented 18 per cent.
By the time I left office, nearly a million fewer crimes a year were being committed.
“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, Mr Blair? Don’t make me laugh.
HEALTH
In 1997, Tony Blair told the British people that the NHS was at risk. He told them that they had, “24 hours to save our National Health Service”.
He promised to, “save the NHS” – “will rebuild the NHS, reducing spending on administration and increasing spending on patient care”.
So why are my constituents being warned by the NHS that they should expect the same hospital closures as are happening up and down the country?
Why are newly-qualified nurses and physiotherapists unable to find jobs in the NHS?
I’ll tell you why.
It’s because the Government have fiddled the way NHS trusts are funded, so more money goes to trusts with Labour constituencies and less money goes to trusts with opposition constituencies.
That’s why the NHS in England is this year forecasting a gross deficit of £883 million.
This shambles has affected patient care. There’s no doubt about it.
Almost one million people in the UK are still waiting for treatment on the NHS.
Almost 45,000 people are waiting over one year for basic diagnostic tests.
NHS productivity has fallen by up to 1.3 per cent in each year since 1997 – despite the extra cash.
And the number of people who have died from MRSA has more than doubled since 1997. That’s something my family knows a lot about.
Those here to defend the Government’s record will tell you in a minute that billions of pounds of extra investment have gone into the NHS. And it has. But it’s been wasted.
They will tell you in a minute that if you criticise the way the Government has incompetently managed the NHS, it means you’re attacking nurses and doctors and all those who work so hard to restore the sick to health.
I would never criticise the hard work that they do – but they could achieve so much more if they were not held back by the incompetence and the meddling of this Labour Government.
And I would never seek to defend policies that have resulted in 20,000 sacked NHS staff – I’ll leave that to Mr Bryant.
I care passionately about our National Health Service – I just can’t stand what Labour is doing to it.
THE ENVIRONMENT
It’s not just our NHS that’s sick, though.
Our planet is, too.
Britain is failing to tackle climate change.
Our carbon dioxide emissions have actually risen since 1997 and the Government is set to miss it’s own 2010 target.
Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions have stalled.
Virtually all the progress towards our Kyoto targets occurred under the last Conservative Government – not under this Labour Government.
Mr Blair fiddles while earth burns.
He promised to, “lead the fight against global warming, through [a] target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2010.”
In 1992, as environment secretary, it fell to me to persuade the United States government to attend the Rio summit and sign the UN framework convention on climate change; in 24 hours of shuttle diplomacy the Americans were persuaded on both counts.
This is more than a mere footnote in history: the framework convention provides the basis for the Kyoto protocol and all subsequent agreements.
The Kyoto treaty runs out in 2012. We need to start thinking about a new agreement – one that builds upon positive developments in America, achievements that prove industry will respond if politicians lead.
But where is that leadership? Tony Blair hasn’t shown it in the last 9 years.
John Prescott, with his three Jags, certainly hasn’t.
Gordon Brown has discovered a sudden interest in the environment which strangely coincided with the election of David Cameron as my successor…
This Government doesn’t care about the environment, about global warming – and it’s about time that we had a Government that does.
IRAQ
No speech supporting a ‘no confidence’ motion against this Government would be complete without mentioning Iraq.
The reasons we went to war could not be more clear. The Government’s dodgy dossier stated them in no uncertain terms:
“[Saddam’s] military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them…”
“the Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so…”
Iraq has “military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons . . . Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them”
As we all now know, this proved to be utterly false.
The Government misled parliament and the country to take us to war.
There can be no greater offence.
That is why on 28 January 2004, as leader of the Opposition, I called for a full and independent inquiry into the Iraq War.
That’s why on Tuesday I voted in the House of Commons for just such an inquiry.
That is not to say that we should not support the work our brave service- men and women do.
Now that they are there we should support them.
But they are under-resourced, and over-stretched.
There is no contradiction in supporting our troops while criticising this shambles of a Government.
After all, even the head of the Army, the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has done so.
Whatever your view about whether we should have gone into Iraq – and I believe that we should – the Government’s conduct has been a disgrace.
FINALLY
In conclusion Mr President, rather than urging you to vote for this vote of no confidence myself, allow me to call on someone else to do so.
The very man here today to defend the Government’s own record – the very man who will urge you to vote for confidence in the Government – he himself has no confidence in the Government he seeks to defend.
It is none other than Mr Chris Bryant who, on the 4th September, headed the list of Labour MPs calling on the Prime Minister to resign.
Signalling that he has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, the Member of Parliament for Rhondda said that “an urgent change in the leadership” was needed:
“That is the brutal truth. It gives us no pleasure to say it. But it has to be said. And understood.”
“We believe that it is impossible for the party and the Government to renew itself without renewing its leadership as a matter of urgency.
“As utter Labour loyalists and implacable modernisers, we therefore have to ask you to stand aside.”
Well, Mr Blair’s still there. He’s not shifted.
So there we have it. How can this House have confidence in the Government, if even the person sent here to persuade us does not himself have that confidence himself?
Not only I, but the Member of Parliament Mr Chris Bryant, urge you to vote in favour of the Motion.
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