ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Good policy is 10% brainwave, 10% idea development and 80% implementation

Why have politicians fallen so far in public esteem?  Is it the sleaze that is the meat and drink of campaigners like Guido Fawkes?  Partly, yes, but large numbers of voters have ceased to respect their politicians since at least the days of Profumo.  A big additional factor - perhaps the most powerful factor - is the incompetence of politicians.  Reflecting on the Chinook helicopter debacle Stephen Glover, in the Daily Mail,  goes on to list example after example where this Government has failed to deliver on its promises.  It's a long list but... Will the Conservatives be any better?, he asks...

"The Shadow Cabinet has its fair share of dullards and professional politicians with little experience of a wider life. Its two most outstanding members, David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, are members of the new political class, both being young and untried. Mr Osborne has never had a job outside politics; Mr Cameron made a foray into PR. We must hope their undoubted talent will make up for their limited experience."

Mr Glover doesn't offer solutions but here are a few to get this thread going:

> Follow Boris' example and make full use of talented people from outside politics.  Since becoming Mayor Boris has brought high quality individuals into City Hall.  Tried-and-tested business people like Tim Parker, Patience Wheatcroft and David Ross are helping to cut waste and oversee the Olympics.  Successful social entrepreneurs like Ray Lewis are helping with the fight against crime.  Given that Nick Boles of the Conservative Party's Implementation Office is running Boris' transition we can be confident that this approach will also be adopted by an incoming Cameron administration.

> A much greater focus on the voluntary sector and other local delivery models.  Earlier this week Greg Clark MP and David Cameron launched an impressive range of ideas to boost the voluntary sector.  Many of the ideas came from Iain Duncan Smith's social justice policy group.  This voluntary sector agenda fits into the wider Conservative commitment to decentralise power - the agenda of the Direct Democracy group.  Too many decisions are taken in Whitehall - away from the people most affected by those decisions - preventing a close relationship between service deliverers and service users.  Localisation would facilitate more policy experimentation leading to a competition of approaches to solving problems and more immediate feedback when things go wrong.

> Focus on implementation, implementation, implementation.  We've argued this before but it might be necessary for the next Conservative Government to insert a lot of outsiders into the Whitehall machine in order to ensure that our policy agenda isn't frustrated by civil servants who oppose or don't understand our objectives.  These aren't so much political appointments - as the outsiders don't need to be Conservatives - but they need to be committed to the idea of the welfare, schooling, prison and other trademark Tory reforms.  Francis Maude, head of the Conservative Party's preparations for government, understands the importance of implementation and is carefully researching public and private sector models of successful delivery.  We'd like to suggest that we think in terms of Maude's Law to reinforce the importance of an implementation strategy.  Maude's Law hasn't been written by Francis Maude but honours his belief in the importance of delivery mechanisms.  It states that good policy is 10% brainwave, 10% idea development and 80% implementation. Most of our think tanks focus on policy development.  Very little attention is given to policy implementation.  The TaxPayers' Alliance is a notable exception to this.

Was John Prescott a 'tenant from hell'?

A Freedom of Information request by the Conservatives has discovered that it cost £3,320 to deep clean the three bedroom Admiralty House flat that John Prescott enjoyed when he was Deputy Prime Minister.  You may remember that it was the flat on which he failed to pay council tax.

Eric Pickles MP has written to the Cabinet Secretary suggesting that John Prescott repay the money if he hadn't adequately maintained the property:

"I observe that it is standard precedent for the occupiers of official ministerial residences to pay for the routine costs of cleaning their property. I am concerned over the excessive cost of this deep clean - compared to commercial quotes of £210. This raises questions over the routine maintenance that the flat has received, and whether the cost of deeply cleaning the flat is higher than if the flat had been regularly cleaned to a high standard by the occupier... I wish to request that you conduct an investigation into the appropriateness of this expenditure, and why the cost of cleaning was so high. If you find that the property was not properly maintained, I would submit that the former Deputy Prime Minister should be billed for the cleaning bill, to avoid the cost falling to the public purse. I note that Mr Prescott has already been forced to pay back the cost of unpaid council tax on the property, so there is a clear precedent for retrospective payments by Ministers."

What public enquiries should the next Conservative Government initiate?

From Paul Goodman MP...

"As I write, the pointy-headed geniuses at Cameron Towers are drawing up our programme for Government.

They’re looking for good ideas.  So here’s one.  But to work, it needs the help of ConservativeHome readers.

It’s as follows.

In 1997, Labour launched a public enquiry into BSE.  I’ve spoken to some of those involved.  They say that it was carried out by the book and to the rules – but also that its purpose was blatantly party political.

I’m not suggesting that the next Conservative Government should act in a similar spirit – dear me, no.  But it’s surely fair to ask what public enquiries, if any, such a Government should set up after it takes office?

This is where you can help.  All suggestions welcome in the thread below…"

Tories say enough is enough as Labour raid good causes budget again to pay for Olympics incompetence

4.30pm update: The Government has now assured the Conservatives that this will be the last raid on National Lottery funds.  This had been a demand of Jeremy Hunt and will be a relief to all good causes hoping for better luck with their future applications.  This victory for the Conservatives may mean the Conservatives will now abstain when the issue comes to a vote.  Over at CentreRight.com Dan Lewis has authored a good post on why Olympics and other public sector projects over-run their budgets: "There is no competitive pressure to reduce costs and improve service for those quangos distributing the funds. If Camelot fails, it loses its license. When did a quango last get sacked for being cost-ineffective?"  More here.

***

Today's Times reports that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will - for the first time - vote against Labour's Olympics spending plans.  Labour is planning another raid on National Lottery funds for good causes because of further cost over-runs and have been unable to assure the Opposition that this will be the last such raid.

Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, told ConservativeHome why enough was enough:

"We have been rocksolid in our support of the Olympics. Hugh Robertson, our Shadow Sports Minister, was actually in Singapore with the bid team when we won it and Michael Howard made a speech to the IOC pledging the support of a future Conservative government. However where the Olympic consensus has been most tested is the utterly incompetent way the government has handled the finances, not simply tripling the budget last March, but financing its miscalculations by raids on lottery good causes including - crazily - the budget for grassroots sport which was held up as how we would provide a sporting legacy from the Olympics.

As a result of this afternoon's Statutory Instrument, which we will vote against, the grassroots sport budget will be cut by over £100,000 for every parliamentary constituency, enough to fund a 100m grass sports pitch or a floodlit multi-use games area for each one."

For all the background on the rising costs of the Olympics, the failure to introduce adequate competition for key 2012 contracts, Ken Livingstone's role in the sorry affair and the souring of public opinion we recommend The TaxPayers' Alliance's 2012 Watchdog blog.

Herbert leads response to latest Government data loss

THE GOVERNMENT LOSES THE ADDRESSES AND PHONE NUMBERS OF THREE MILLION LEARNER DRIVERS - BBC | Telegraph | Times

This just in from CCHQ on the latest data loss:

"Government must now come clean on overseas data centres

Following the news that the personal data of 3 million driving learners has been lost by DVLA contractors in Iowa, United States, Conservatives are demanding that the Government publish a list of all the ‘processing centres’ used by the Government outside the UK and outside Europe.

The Data Protection Act 1998 states that personal data should not be sent outside the European Economic Area unless “adequate protection” is in place. Conservatives are calling on the Government to conduct an urgent audit and publish a public list of every government department, agency and their contractors which are processing data outside the United Kingdom and the EEA, and what measures are being taken in each case to maintain data security.

Nick Herbert, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, said:

"The public will be rightly concerned that their personal data can be sent abroad without proper protection. The Government must now come clean and publish the list of every overseas data processing centre and what measures are being taken to ensure robust security. The public have a right to know.

"It beggars belief that in the 21st Century, such sensitive information is not being transferred securely.""

10am, 18/12 update:

Theresa Villiers' statement: "This latest debacle shows a systemic failure within the Government's data protection controls. The words Labour and incompetence are now synonymous."

Theresa said this incident must spell the end for Labour's proposed national road pricing scheme:  "How can the public possibly trust this incompetent department with information on every journey made by the 33 million vehicles on Britain's roads?"

Unbelievable

"The former head of HM Revenue and Customs, who resigned over the loss of data discs containing the personal details of 25 million people, has returned to work in Whitehall on a £200,000 salary. Paul Gray has taken up a position under Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, after just 13 days out of work." - Telegraph

I think this is more outrageous than anything that happened last week.

Brown "tainted by sleaze"

An ICM survey for Newsnight suggests that twice as many voters see Gordon Brown as sleazy (57%) as see David Cameron as sleazy (28%).  44% agree with Mr Cameron's PMQs' attack that Mr Brown is not "cut out for the job".  Unfortunately only 41% think the Conservative leader passes his own test.  43% think Mr Cameron the most competent leader and 42% think the same of Mr Brown.

Those LibDems who think Vince Cable should be their leader might have their enthusiasm cooled by the revelation that just 8% think their acting leader is cut out for the job.

8am on 4/12: As our party attempts to present itself as an alternative government - competent and prepared - one of the most important tasks has been given to Francis Maude and Greg Clark - our shadow cabinet office team.  They will oversee the party's implementation office - a unit that will ensure policy ideas are ready to be implemented and not just press released.  The unit will also help to prepare shadow ministers for the responsibilities of office.  At last night's Policy Exchange reception David Cameron was the speaker and he announced that Nick Boles - that think tank's highly-regarded founder and our candidate in Grantham and Stamford - will run the implementation unit.  I hope to write a lot more about this important unit soon and, in particular, the division of responsibilities between the MPs like Francis Maude, who has ministerial experience, and Nick, who doesn't.

Grayling attacks Brown's attempts to switch attention from donations scandal

I agree with Fraser Nelson.  Francis Elliott's piece in this morning's Times, is a perfect summary of the last week's donor scandals that have engulfed Gordon Brown.  I particularly enjoyed this section:

"Behind the scene No 10 aides are furious at the Harman camp’s attempts to pass the blame on to Mr Brown for her involvement in Labour’s donations scandal. Mr Brown had his competence and integrity called into question by David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions over his admission that a controversial property developer used proxies to channel money to Labour. Now, as the cracks begin to show after six days of pummelling over the David Abrahams affair, the Tories can claim that Mr Brown’s administration is not only bungling and sleazy, but divided to boot."

Mr Brown wants to move on from his troubles by proposing reforms to the whole system of political funding.  He wants to use this opportunity to increase state funding of political parties.  The Labour machine is already trying to embroil the Tories in its mess by launching attacks on how the Conservatives receive money.  Lord Ashcroft inevitably and the Midlands Industrial Council are in Labour's mind.

Chris Grayling is having none of it.  He's just issued this statement:

“This morning’s speech is a pretty opportunistic attempt by Gordon Brown to erect a smokescreen around events of the past two days.  David Cameron wrote to him in October urging major reforms to party funding and a cap on donations, Gordon Brown refused because he didn’t want to give up on the multi-million pound financing from the trade unions.  His decision to pick up the issue again today must be more than an attempt to divert attention away from party problems.  The other real concern about this morning’s comments is that it looks like he’s trying to find ways of giving himself greater political advantage.  He wants to cut campaigning by his opponents in marginal seats whilst continuing to use tax payers’ money to give his MPs a communication allowance to spend in those same marginal seats.  It also looks as if he’s set on protecting big trade union donations whilst putting limits on everyone else."

Even if Labour did reform the laws governing party funding, does anyone believe that they are competent or honest enough to abide by them?

Editor's comment: "This is dangerous for Labour.  If the Conservatives choose to oppose extra state funding of political parties (as they should), Labour's attempt to extract even more money from the taxpayer will cause new public fury.  The Tories should be doing much in the meantime to increase the proportion of funding they receive from individuals.  The Canadian Conservatives would be a good example to learn from."

Labour's reputation for competence and integrity is lost

Last night we covered the fact that the Telegraph/ YouGov poll gave the Tories an 11% lead.  Within the poll there's lots of interesting details:

• 23% are satisfied with Gordon Brown and 59% dissatisfied.
• The Conservatives have a 1% lead on economic competence - 33% to 32%; Labour had a 49% to 27% advantage at the last election.
• 11% think Alistair Darling is doing a good job; 53% think he's doing a bad job.
• 52% agree that the Government is neither competent nor efficient.
• 60% agree that Labour appears sleazy; only 31% say the same of David Cameron's Conservatives.

The table on the right indicates the extent to which the loss of the HMRC data on 25 million peoples' personal information leads public perceptions of Labour as incompetent.

You can access all of the numbers from within this page on Telegraph.co.uk.

3.15pm: A Populus poll confirms Labour's weakening position.  53% of voters agreed that "the Labour Government now appears to be more sleazy than the previous Conservative Government". 40% disagreed.  60% agreed that they had less trust in Gordon Brown than when he became Prime Minister in June.  36% disagreed.  60% disagreed with the proposition that despite recent events Mr
Brown was leading a competent government.  By 47% to 40% people still thought that Gordon Brown would make a better Prime Minister than David Cameron.

Another day, another Labour scandal?

This txt msg arrived a little while ago at my Washington breakfast table.  No time to blog on it (off to Arlington Cemetery for David Cameron's first public call) but The Telegraph has the full story.  It appears that Straw knew about the issue for weeks, not years:

"Hundreds of criminals, including those accused of sexual offences, have avoided prosecution after a "cover-up" in magistrates' courts, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.  Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is to admit that over a period of "many years" hundreds of cases never came to court because warrants were not issued for the arrests of defendants when they failed to show up at court.  It means that the offenders got away with their crimes. Mr Straw has known about the cases, which initially involved Leeds magistrates' court but are suspected could go much wider, for some weeks."

The week it all went wrong for Gordon Brown

A public row with David Miliband...

Alistair Darling is roasted for the Government's mishandling of Northern Rock...

Darling is back in the Commons to tell the nation that the personal data of 25 million people has been lost...

All of the newspapers turn on Labour for incompetence...

Another Ratner moment for Mr Brown at PMQs as he tries to play politics with 'datagate'...

Government borrowing has reached its annual limit only seven months into the financial year...

Former Defence chiefs mount coordinated attack on Labour underfunding of the armed forces...

New leak of the foot-and-mouth virus has been reported...

MoD's rushed sale of research arm has cost taxpayer tens of millions says National Audit Office...

The number trusting Labour to deal with economic problems collapses from 61% to 28% in two months...

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving man.  I'm sure Tony Blair agrees.  It probably won't be long before there's lots of speculation about Brown's future.

PS Just to rub salt in the wounds, Sky publishes this photo of Mr Brown...

Scary.

Good morning Prime Minister, here are today's newspapers

And if you think they're bad, Mr Brown, have a read of the leading articles...

This Government couldn't run a bath

Heard the latest?: "Confidential details of 15 million child benefit recipients are on a computer disc lost by HM Revenue and Customs, the BBC understands... Chancellor Alistair Darling is to give a Commons statement on "a major operational problem" at 1530 GMT.  BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood ministers had been aware for nine to 10 days.  Mr Darling is expected to outline the measures taken to protect those whose data has been lost."

I say it again: Incompetence will be on the political gravestone of New Labour.

1.10pm: The impressive and increasingly high profile Michael Fallon has just been on Radio 4's World at One.  He says that Labour has cut too deeply into Revenue and Customs and must take its share of the responsibility for the organisation's problems.

1.20pm: Wato update - Ken Clarke has just been on.  The last Tory Chancellor charged Labour with three main faults over Northern Rock: (1) A 48 hour delay at the start of the crisis in reassuring depositors; (2) A failure during Brown's time as Chancellor to renew the Deposit Insurance regime; and (3) A lack of transparency from Alistair Darling in recent weeks.  Northern Rock's shares were down sharply again today.

Related link: George Osborne responds to the Chancellor's statement on Northern Rock

10pm: Text of George Osborne's Commons response to the news.  In his response Mr Osborne concluded that this should mark the end of ID cards: "Does he agree that today must mark the final blow to the Government’s ambition to create a national ID card? They simply cannot be trusted with people’s personal information."

Paint Brown as The Great Waster

So, who is Gordon Brown?

The weak Clucking Fist of Chicken Saturday?

The 'Stalinist' control freak who surrounds himself with yes men?

The scheming sulker who plotted constantly against Tony Blair?

The political calculator who nicks Tory ideas and does everything for political advantage?

The untrustworthy guy who broke his promise on the EU Constitution?

The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?

The party leader who gets his bills paid by the unions?

Yesterday's man who cannot escape the shadow of Tony Blair and who does not understand today's challenges?

He's probably all of these things but I would suggest that - more than anything else - he's an incompetent waster.

This is the man (building on what I wrote yesterday) who sold gold at the wrong price... crafted the tax credit system that is so riddled with fraud and complexity... is responsible for the £14bn cost over-runs for the NHS supercomputer... has overseen the weakest-growing economy in the English-speaking world and the slippage of Britain down the global competitiveness league table... had to admit that his Government's statistics on immigrant workers were out by 300,000... so underfunded the prison service that hundreds of foreign prisoners were released wrongly...

You get the idea.  If we get a 'Brown Is The Great Waster' campaign right - and it needs to be a campaign with creative YouTube videos and a bank of facts constantly fed to journalists - it won't matter if he continues to steal our best ideas.  Noone will believe that he is capable of doing anything half-properly.

The US Democrats recently ran this Halloween video which asked American voters to say which Republican scared them the most.  CCHQ could run a competition as to which Brown failure appals them most...

Related link: This Government couldn't organise a booze-up in a brewery

Idea 5: Promising nationally, acting locally now

David Cameron focuses on Labour incompetence

Later today David Cameron will mark the day on which Gordon Brown had planned to hold a General Election with a big picture speech.  There's nothing dramatically new in it - just a skillful bringing together of key themes including the idea that we are seeing a change in the tide of ideas every bit as significant as 1979 and 1997.  You can read a PDF of the whole speech here.  The most important passage is, I think, the one targeting Labour's incompetence:

"After ten years in power, it seems they still haven’t mastered that fairly basic requirement of government – running the country competently.  The shambles over immigration.  The fiasco over prisoner releases.  The first run on a bank for over a hundred years.  U turns every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  This latest shambles over immigration shows exactly why we need a new government.  It’s not just because Gordon Brown has no vision for the future.  It’s because this government is incompetent.   They try to run everything but they can’t actually run anything.  Their whole philosophy is about top-down control, but on this vital issue of migration, they’ve lost control.  No wonder people are saying it’s time for change."

A reputation for incompetence is, I think, much more politically deadly than a reputation for sleaze.  Most voters don't have much faith in politicians' ethics but they hope for basic competence.  If we can destroy Labour's reputation for competence - and we have more and more ammunition - we have a good chance of finally ending the Brown-Blair years. 

Gordon Brown's first month: the small print

Following our post this morning Chris Grayling has been in touch and sent us a new document called Gordon Brown's first month: the small print. It looks at Brown's spin and then at the small print. It covers:

• Flood Defences
• Support for Flood Hit Areas
• Border Police
• ‘New’ Legislative Programme
• Aircraft Carriers
• Drug Strategy Consultation
• Limiting the Prime Minister’s Power
• Supporting Sport
• Cuts in the NHS
• Servants of the People
• Welfare Reforms
• New Crime Strategy
• Building Homes; Protecting the Green Belt
• Reforms in the NHS

Chris Grayling wants this document circulated widely in the Party. It is reminder that despite his honeymoon Gordon Brown is carrying on just he and Tony Blair have done since 1997; constant spinning masking the lasting damage Labour are doing to our country.

Let's hope this is a sign of what we can expect over the summer!

£645 for changing 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister' sign to 'Deputy Prime Minister's Office'

Just received from CCHQ: "Parliamentary Questions, buried by John Prescott and yet to be published in Hansard, have today revealed that Prescott has spent £645 of taxpayers money on a new sign for his office – replacing the previous “Office of the Deputy Prime Minister” sign with a new “Deputy Prime Minister’s Office” sign. A further £726 was spent on business cards for the new department."

Oliver Heald commented:

"John Prescott is costing the taxpayer over £2 million a year despite being handed the political equivalent of a P45 and losing his job. At a time when savage NHS cuts are being imposed by Gordon Brown, burning cash on a vanity department is a scandalous waste of time and money.  Prescott’s department was described by his staff as a ‘pantomime horse’. The Whitehall farce is continuing with taxpayers’ money being wasted on a pointless new sign for pointless new department that faces the chop when Tony Blair finally leaves Downing Street.”

Tony Blair apologises for Foot & Mouth disaster...

...for wasting billions on an NHS IT system that is billions over budget... for failing to reform welfare... for allowing Gordon Brown to impose a record tax burden... for presiding over massive family breakdown... for failing to build enough prisons to stem Britain's rising violent crime... for incompetence in Iraq... for surrendering to Sinn Fein... for ignoring moderate Muslim leaders in Britain... for releasing 1,000 foreign prisoners... for the Millennium Done...

Our Prime Minister has not, of course, apologised for any of the above but he has expressed deep regret for the slave trade.  It's about time he took responsibility for his own record.

Blog campaign targets rogue employer

Labour Party Chair, Hazel Blears, has this morning been sent a letter and email by several bloggers regarding the cameraman her office hired without remuneration. This picture is taken from one of the videos he made, and shown at their Party Conference.

If her office doesn't respond by Monday the signatories have committed to paying his dues themselves - which going by the minimum wage amounts to at least £395. A guide to commercial rates was also sent with the letter. Even if they find a way around the arguments for a legal obligation, there is a strong ethical case which they would be advised not to spurn - particularly as the cameraman hired, Danny Dewsbury, is a student in substantial debt.

Some great work has been done over the last few days to find out the details of the case and their legal ramifications, it is a good example of activists pulling together via the internet to make something happen. The successful Reinstate Roger campaign which was sparked by a ToryDiary thread, is another.

The other classic feature about this blog campaign is that, like in some infamous scandals in America, the issue is being kept alive when it may have been forgotten after the first day's headline in the mainstream media. Special mention to PragueTory, Croydonian and Dizzy for having the idea.

Labour's hand has been forced:

1. They can pay up now as a result of this pressure. This looks bad, and also costs them a few hundred pounds which they don't have.
2. They can ignore the issue, or make an excuse. The cameraman's wages will then be paid by the signatories and it becomes more interesting to the mainstream media. If you are in the media feel free to email me for Danny Dewsbury's contact details.

Either way, by not letting Labour off the hook and causing the issue to arise again, some voters will be reminded that the Labour Party isn't necessarily the friend of the working man, has caused many students debt, and that its central operation is beginning to resemble the Russian military.

See the letter and PragueTory's blog for more details.

Deputy Editor

Balls' protest kicked back

Ed Balls was one of four Labour MPs who legally appealed against boundary changes which would hurt their careers - his seat of Normanton will no longer exist. The High Court has rejected their appeals and awarded costs to the Boundary Commission.

These changes are a modest attempt to address the fact that the Conservatives need about a 10% lead over Labour in terms of votes, to return the same number of MPs.

Oliver Heald, Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, made the point that this would further increase the unlikelihood of Brown calling a snap election:

"This is a major blow to Ed Balls' attempt to allow Gordon Brown to call a snap election on out-of-date and unfair Parliamentary boundaries. We are pleased that the High Court has seen through a clear attempt to delay the independent Boundary Commission's proposals."

With Murdoch sticking his oar in, no money in the Labour bank, and repeated opinion polls putting Brown behind Cameron - a snap election can't be on the cards at this stage. That is, if Brown wins...

Deputy Editor

CCHQ press release on Labour's Top 50 failures

1. Competitiveness. Britain has dropped from fourth to thirteenth in the international competitiveness league under Labour.
2. Reading and Writing. Almost half of all 11 year-olds cannot read, write and add up properly when they leave primary school.
3. GCSEs. Nearly 23,000 children left school last year without a single GCSE.
4. NHS Deficits. The NHS in England is this year forecasting a gross deficit of £883 million.
5. Waiting Lists.  Almost one million people in the UK are still waiting for treatment on the NHS.
6. Threat to Staff Numbers. Since February 2006, over 18,000 job losses have been announced by NHS Trusts in England
7. Growth Rate. Britain’s growth rate in 2005 was 1.9 per cent, the lowest for 13 years.
8. Inheritance Tax. The number of households paying inheritance tax has doubled under Labour.
9. Carbon Emissions Rising. Carbon emissions have risen for the second year in a row - emissions have risen for five of the past eight years.
10. Violent crime has more than doubled under Labour - over 1.2 million violent crimes were committed in 2005-6.
11. Gun crime has doubled under Labour.
12. Robbery has gone up by 47 per cent under Labour
13. Unemployment.  There are 957,000 people out of work and claiming benefit, the highest level since 2001.
14. Child Support Agency. The backlog of cases at the CSA amounts to over 273,600 and £3.5 billion of debt remains uncollected.
15. Business Tax. The CBI estimates British businesses have been hit by a massive £50 billion increase in tax under Labour.
16. Stamp Duty. Under Labour revenue from stamp duty has quadrupled to over £10 billion.
17. Government debt has soared under Labour - it now equals 36.6 per cent of GDP, a seven-year high.
18. Council Tax. Typical pensioner couples have seen more than a third of the increase in the basic state pension snatched back in higher council tax.
19. Tax credits. Of the 6.5 million recipients - 2 million have been overpaid and over 900,000 are underpaid.
20. The Pension Credit is so complicated and unpopular that up to 1.6 million pensioners are not claiming the Pension Credit they are entitled to.
21. Manufacturing jobs. Since the second quarter of 1997, over 1.1 million manufacturing jobs have been lost.
22. Administrators in the NHS. The number of NHS managers is increasing three times as fast as the number of new doctors and nurses.
23. Child poverty. Over half of children in inner London live below the poverty line.
24. Benefit Take-up. Between 23 and 30 per cent of eligible people are not claiming the benefits that they are entitled to.
25. Young People. Over 1.2 million young people are not in work or full-time education - higher than when Labour came to power.
26. Pensioner Poverty. Two million pensioners still live in poverty.
27. Rising unemployment. Unemployment now stands at over 1.6 million and is at its highest level since January 2000.
28. Economic Inactivity. In a survey of 23 countries surveyed by the OECD, the UK had the highest percentage of economically inactive men between 25 and 49.
29. Incapacity Benefits. 2.7 million people of working age are claiming incapacity benefits.
30. Rise in Long-Term Benefit Claims. The number of people receiving incapacity benefit for five years or more is now twenty times as large as it was when Labour came to power.
31. Benefit Fraud. At least £2.6 billion of taxpayers’ money disappeared in 2004-05 in benefit fraud and error.
32. Underpaid benefits. £243 million in income support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Pension Credit was underpaid in 2004-5.
33. Pensions Tax. Labour’s pensions tax introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997 has cost pension funds £5 billion a year.
34. Savings. The Turner Commission estimates that over 9 million people are not saving enough for retirement.
35. School results for low-income families. Three-quarters of 16-year-olds from low-income families in England and Wales failed to get five 'good' passes at grades A to C, which was double the rate for other students.
36. Savings. The household savings ratio has almost halved under Labour to 6 per cent.
37. Temporary Accommodation. The number of households in England living in temporary accommodation has risen by 139 per cent since 1997.
38. Failing Schools.  Nearly a million children (980,000) are estimated to be at poorly performing schools, according to the National Audit Office - 13 per cent of the school population.
39. Truancy. Over a million children play truant every year.
40. Assaults. There is an assault on a teacher every seven minutes, according to teacher unions.
41. Home Office Bureaucrats. The Home Office has taken on 20,700 more bureaucrats – but only around 14,200 additional police officers since 1997
42. Asylum Removals. Only one in four failed asylum seekers is ever removed – a lower proportion than in 1997.
43. Special Schools. More than 100 state special schools have closed since Labour came to power.
44. Qualifications. Over one third of adults in the UK do not have any basic school-leaving qualification - double the proportion in Canada and Germany.
45. Waiting Times. Almost 45,000 people are currently waiting over one year for basic diagnostic tests, such as MRI and CT scans, and hearing tests.
46. Hospitals - Slower Improvements. 1.4 million more people would be getting hospital treatment if Labour had kept up the rate of increase in completed hospital treatments achieved by the NHS under the Conservatives
47. Dentists. 10,000 dentists have left the NHS since Labour came to power.
48. MRSA. The number of people who have died from the hospital superbug MRSA has more than doubled since 1997, despite Labour’s 23 ‘initiatives’ to tackle the problem
49. Productivity in the NHS has fallen by up to 1.3 per cent in each year since 1997 despite record increases in spending.
50. Productivity. Under Labour, Britain’s productivity-per-worker growth rate slowed from 2.6 per cent a year in 1992-7 to just 1.2 per cent a year in 2001-5.

Welfare is Labour's biggest failure

The Americans are celebrating ten years of welfare reform and they really are celebrating.   Signed into law by Bill Clinton (probably his greatest act) and drafted by Newt Gingrich's Republican Congress, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996) has had a transformational effect on American welfare.  These are some of the results as tracked by the conservative Heritage Foundation:

• "Overall poverty, child poverty, and black child poverty have all dropped substantially...
• Some 2.9 million fewer children live in poverty today than in 1995...
• Decreases in poverty have been greatest among black children... the poverty rate for black children is now at the lowest point in U.S. history....
• Hunger among children has been cut roughly in half...
• Welfare caseloads have been cut nearly in half and employment of the most disadvantaged single mothers has increased from 50 percent to 100 percent.
• The explosive growth of out-of-wedlock childbearing has come to a virtual halt."

Welfare reform is just one of the pillars of American compassionate conservatism that UK Tories should learn from.  [Next month Greg Clark MP - chairman of the welfare reform subgroup of Iain Duncan Smith's social justice policy group - will be writing three articles for ConservativeHome on what he is learning]. 

The situation in Britain could hardly be more different.  Many of Britain's welfare ills were listed by Sue Reid in a depressing article for last week's Daily Mail.  New Labour, 'Nixon-in-China'-style, had a great opportunity to transform welfare in 1997.  It had a huge parliamentary majority, the goodwill of the British people and an economic inheritance that could have paid for serious welfare reform.  Tony Blair's instincts - as has often been the case - were good and he appointed Frank Field as Minister for Welfare Reform.  But it all came to nothing.  Gordon Brown roadblocked Field's reforms and Labour rebellions (as yesterday's The Business reminded us) scuppered the promise of a 'hand-up, not a handout'.

Because of New Labour's weakness many more Britons lead lives that are not as free and rewarding as their American counterparts.  Resources that could be targeted on Britain's most vulnerable people - the very old, the very sick and the very young - are instead being squandered.  And Britain's economy is ill-prepared for the ever more intense competition from the east.

Labour's five deadly sins

This morning's newspapers are full of stories that cover almost every aspect of the fall and fall of this Labour government:

Disunity: "The New Statesman magazine will today question how long Mr Blair can last at No 10, with police planning to present a report to the Crown Prosecution Service on the eve of the Labour conference.  "Party officials talk openly about a second conspiracy: a plot to oust Blair before the end of the year led by the Parliamentary Labour Party, or even elements within the cabinet," the magazine claims." (Telegraph)

Ineffectiveness: "A rise in young people carrying mobile phones and MP3 players is being blamed for street robberies and muggings jumping by 8% last year.  The latest crime figures include a 10% rise in gunpoint robberies." (BBC) and "Ministers have expressed "disappointment" at statistics showing fewer young people from poor backgrounds are going to university... The data for 2004/05 showed that while the total number of students from all groups rose, the proportion from poorer backgrounds fell from 28.6 to 28.2 per cent." (ePolitix.com)

Sleaze: "Lord Levy was last night facing fresh pressure over the peerages row after it emerged that he personally nominated his former secretary for an MBE.  MPs from across the political spectrum called for a probe into whether Jean Cobb deserved to receive the prestigious honour in 2002 for her 'services' to charity." (Daily Mail) and "John Prescott is facing a mild rebuke from the Parliamentary standards watchdog for failing to register his stay at the Colorado ranch of an American gambling tycoon and the gift of an elaborate cowboy outfit." (The Telegraph) 

Flip-floppery: A leader in The Telegraph lists some recent Government U-turns... on immigration, prison-building, automatic sentence reduction for guilty pleas, home information packs, marching yobs to cashpoints, no referendum on the EU Constitution, scrapping GP fundholding... we could all think of plenty more!

Weakness: "Why the shock over Tony Blair supporting Sinn Fein while at Oxford?  Surely making heroes of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness while prime minister is more serious." - Daily Mail.

It's confirmed: LabourDoNotDo

A few weeks ago I posted about the possible power of YouGov's new daily tracking polls.  More data has just been posted by Anthony Wells on his indispensable UK Polling Report blog.

Take a look at the data yourself but there are at least three trends worth highlighting:

1. John Reid's time at the Home Office is not endearing him to voters.  Since replacing Charles Clarke his positive/negative impression rating has fallen from minus 10 in mid-May to minus 19 now.
2. The closer-than-expected Bromley by-election result has lifted Sir Ming a little.  His rating has risen from minus 22 to minus 16.
3. The best news for the Conservatives, however, is that "the sharp drop in the Labour party’s reputation for competence" has been maintained.  Anthony concludes that "there has been a genuine change in peoples’ perceptions of Labour’s competence and it is this and disillusionment with Blair that has pushed them behind the Conservatives in the polls."  It is ConservativeHome's strong belief that incompetence rather than sleaze will be Labour's undoing.  Voters expect politicians to be sleazy but they hope they might be able to exhibit basic competence.  But as we are increasingly learning... LabourDoNotDo.  It is vital that as voters come to judge Labour for its incompetence the Conservative Party displays professionalism in the ordering of its own affairs.

Blogswarming John Prescott

The blogosphere is awash with rumours about John Prescott's private life and I do not intend to add to that 'blogswarm' here.

I do believe that the private lives of public figures are of public interest (and I explained why here) but I think there are risks in believing that anything that is "common knowledge" in the Westminster village is legitimate material for a blog.  Things that are "common knowledge" amongst MPs and journalists are not always true.  On this occasion the "accused" 'Tory blogs' have probably stayed on the right side of the line as John Prescott failed to deny allegations of other affairs when repeatedly pressed by John Humphrys this morning.  But next time?

The overriding reason why John Prescott should resign isn't, of course, because of affairs or alleged affairs but because of his abject incompetence and policy failures.  It was John Prescott himself, who in the earliest months of 'New Labour government', said that the Dome was its 'first big test of competence’.  ‘If we can’t make this work, we’re not much of a Government,’ he continued.

With the considerable help of William Norton I've drawn up a list of some of the ways in which Mr Prescott has proven that Labour really isn't much of a government...