Policy Announcements, Tuesday 31 July

**Conservatives  **

• David Cameron has set out his party's ideas on improving school discipline in a bid to refocus the Tories on policy. In the speech to the Policy Exchange think-tank on Tuesday, the Conservative leader was attempting to take control of the domestic agenda following internal criticism and a so-called "Brown-bounce" in a series of polls. Cameron said his party would introduce contracts between schools and parents and families would no longer be able to appeal to their local authority if a child was excluded. The Tory leader criticised the pupil referral units used to teach disruptive youngsters as expensive and ineffective and praised third sector alternatives as more successful. He called for more funding for independent and voluntary sector behaviour projects suggesting the £17,000 a year spent per pupil per year in referral units was being wasted.

International  

• Gordon Brown has called for a greater international effort to combat what he called the "emergency" of global poverty. Mr Brown wants world leaders to live up to their promises made in 2000 to tackle a range of development issues. In a speech at the UN, after meeting the secretary general Ban Ki-moon, he said the millennium development goals were "a million miles" from being met. He also outlined plans to deploy a peacekeeping force in Darfur, Sudan.