Policy Announcements, Monday 30 April

Government

• Tony Blair has admitted his NHS reforms have been "really tough" for staff but said waiting list cuts, new hospitals and more staff were a sign of success. He said he did not think there would be a reversal of the "essential course" of more choice for patients and greater competition between health providers. And he said he expected NHS staff to make a "more rational assessment at the conclusion" of the reform process. Both the Lib Dems and the Tories say the 10 years have been wasted. He was addressing a medical audience two days after junior doctors called for Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to resign.
• The Ministry of Defence has today launched a new initiative to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to win more defence contracts. From 30 April 2007, the threshold value for advertising MOD contracts will be lowered. This will encourage more competitive bidding for a wider range of defence business and encourage greater innovation from industry.

Conservatives

• Conservative councils are promising upfront tax cuts, squeezing spending and cutting back on funding for voluntary groups with the approval of David Cameron's inner circle. Despite the party's caution about cutting tax and its emphasis on environmental and social credentials at a national level, Conservative administrations are freezing or reducing council tax and reducing services for the elderly and young people. In Northamptonshire, which the Tories gained from Labour in 2005, there are cuts to community and children's services. Kensington & Chelsea and South Oxfordshire, both Tory-controlled, froze their council tax this year. In Coventry, which the Conservatives gained from no overall control last year, there was a £250,000 cut to community services.

Liberal Democrats

• The Liberal Democrats have published a dossier highlighting what the party says are the government's greatest failings. Commenting on the document, called 'The state they've put us in', Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said the Blair-Brown era will be remembered for "war and waste". The dossier points to a 160 per cent increase in personal debt to £1.3 trillion since 1997, and says the income gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street. Carbon emissions have risen by two per cent since Labour came into power, it says, while the government will fail to meet its 1997 manifesto target of a 20 per cent cut in CO2 by 2010. The party said the cumulative deficit for all NHS trusts has risen beyond £1bn, and claimed that productivity has not increased despite a tripling of health spending. The document also points to Labour's decade-old manifesto commitment to cut class sizes for five to seven year-olds to 30 or under, and says more than 500,000 are still being taught in larger classes.