 In last night's debate, David Cameron showed he was ready to lead. He was personal, direct and in command. He succeeded in talking directly to the public about the issues that really affect them. He clearly won on the NHS and proved it is our priority - and spoke for the ignored majority on immigration and crime. He was the only leader to apologise for expenses.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown was negative and argumentative. He had no answer to David Cameron's criticism of the jobs tax, which will kill the recovery, and he struggled throughout to deal with his record.
Nick Clegg played the same game throughout - to blame the other two. He was unable to answer scrutiny of Lib Dem policies - especially the funding black hole that lies at the heart of his plans.
The voting intention polls taken after the debate show the Lib Dems catching and Labour losing ground, but the Conservatives strongly ahead - and David Cameron clearly ahead on who would make the best Prime Minister.
Top 25 misleading comments from Gordon Brown
1. Crime: police time on the beat
• GB said: “Police have to spend 80 per cent of their time now on the streets.”
• Fact: The Advertising Standards Agency ruled illegal the Home Office advertisement that claimed: “You can now expect your neighbourhood police to spend at least 80 per cent of their time on the beat in your area” (The Guardian, 26 March 2010).
• Fact: In reality, police spend more time on paperwork than on patrol. Just 14 per cent of all police officers’ time is spent on patrol compared with 22 per cent of their time on paperwork (Hansard, 21 April 2009, Col. 604WA).
2. Crime: police numbers
• GB said: “The one thing I'm absolutely sure of, we have to maintain the number of police we have in this country.”
• Fact: Police officer numbers are already being cut. Thirteen police forces have cut police officer numbers in the last five years (Home Affairs Select Committee, Police Service Strength, Fifth report of Session 2009-10, 19 January 2010). A leaked report for the Home Office, co-written by Mark Rowley, the Chief Constable of Surrey, has raised the prospect of 28,000 police officers being replaced by civilian workers to save money (The Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2010). And just four out of the 43 police forces in England and Wales say they plan to maintain current staffing levels (Home Affairs Select Committee, Police Service Strength, January 2010, Appendix A).
3. Schools: discipline
• GB said: “I want the best discipline in our schools as well.”
• Fact: Every school day, over 1,000 pupils are excluded for abuse and assault (DCSF, Permanent and Fixed Period Exclusions from Schools in England 2007/08, 30 July 2009).
• Fact: Truancy rates have risen by 44 per cent since 1997, to reach a record high. 67,000 pupils play truant on an average school day (DCSF, Pupil Absence in Schools in England, including Pupil Characteristics: 2007/08, 25 March 2010).
• Fact: Head teachers are increasingly having their authority over discipline undermined. Exclusion appeals panels overrule head teachers on expulsion in over a quarter of the cases they hear, and 35 per cent of these pupils are then returned to the school from which they were excluded (ibid.).
4. Schools: standards
• GB said: “Now, as far as grades and standards are concerned, I myself believe in the highest of standards.”
• Fact: An academic study has shown that in 2006 students received a grade higher in maths GCSE than students of the same ability in 1996 (CEM Centre Durham University, Change in GCSE and A-Level: Evidence from ALIS and YELLIS, April 2007).
• Fact: Research by academics at Durham and King’s College London suggests that school maths standards are no better than they were in the mid-70s, even though the number of good grades has doubled (British Educational Research Association Press Release, 5 September 2009).
• Fact: The Royal Society of Chemistry said there had been ‘catastrophic slippage’ in school science standards and that pupils could get a good pass by showing superficial knowledge of scientific issues (The Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2009).
• Fact: A 2009 Ofqual report states that a pupil could pass a GCSE English exam without reading a novel (Ofqual, Review of Standards in English Literature, March 2009). A pupil who wrote ‘f*** off’ as an answer in a GCSE English paper was given two points for spelling the expletive correctly and conveying a meaning (The Times, 30 June 2008).
5. Immigration: exit controls
• GB said: “To stop illegal migration which is what Nick has referred to, border controls have been brought in and we are counting people out and in from the end of this year. It was a policy that the Conservatives scrapped before 1997.”
• Fact: This is just not true. The last Conservative Government stopped embarkation controls for EU citizens in 1994, in line with our obligations as an EU member. But in 1998 it was Labour who stopped them for people from the rest of the world, a policy which has resulted in porous borders and a sizeable illegal population.
6. Immigration: border police
• GB said: “We’ve brought together the police and immigration officials and customs officials in one agency, we're doing that already.”
• Fact: Labour’s border agency does not include the police. That is why we want a proper border police force.
7. Immigration: net figures
• GB said: “Let's be honest, net inward migration is falling, it's falling three years ago, two years ago and it's falling this year. It's falling as a result of the action we are taking and will continue to take.”
• Fact: Net migration is only falling due to emigration: gross immigration went up in 2008, the last year for which figures are available. The inflow of people coming to the UK actually increased as we went into recession, from 574,000 in 2007 to 590,000 in 2008 (Office for National Statistics News Release, 26 November 2009, based on Office for National Statistics Annual Report, Migration Statistics 2008, 26 November 2009).
• Fact: Total net migration to the UK, the difference between immigration and emigration, increased from 48,000 in 1997, to 163,000 in 2008 (Office of National Statistics, Long-Term International Migration Tables, 1991-latest).
8. Crime: violent crime
• GB said: “violent crime is falling.”
• Fact: Independent analysis by the House of Commons Library, which allows for changes in recording practices, shows that recorded levels of violent crime against the person increased by 44 per cent between 1998-99 and 2008-09 (House of Commons Library Note, February 2010).
9. Crime: prison places
• GB said: “There are 20,000 more people in prison, as a result of the tougher sentences we have been passing.”
• Fact: Under Gordon Brown, over 80,000 prisoners have been released early, including over 16,000 violent prisoners (Ministry of Justice, End of Custody Licence Releases and Recalls, February 2010, table 1).
• Fact: Labour actually provided new prison places for barely half these prisoners. “Certified normal accommodation” – uncrowded capacity – in 1997 was 56,411. On 26 February 2010 it was 76,342. When we exclude doubling up and so on, Labour have therefore increased the estate by a maximum of 19,931 places. Yet Jack Straw admitted in a letter to Michael Howard in 2007 that the Government’s claim to have provided 20,000 places included 8,600 prison places which he said had been announced by Michael as Home Secretary. Ken Clarke announced the funding for these 8,600 prison places in his November 1996 Budget. So Labour have added only 11,331 places.
10. Unemployment
• GB said: Labour would: “support people who were unemployed so you could keep unemployment down.”
• Fact: Unemployment is 794,000 higher than at the start of the recession. Unemployment is 399,000 higher than May 1997. Unemployment is 1.01 million higher than in May 2005 (ONS, Labour Market Statistics, Time Series Data, March 2010).
• Fact: And the Government has predicted that unemployment will rise further. The Budget 2010 predicted that the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance would rise by a further 160,000 this year (Budget 2010, p198).
• Fact: Labour’s ‘six month offer’ was supposed to offer 500,000 opportunities for Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants reaching six months unemployment. After eight months just nine per cent of opportunities have been taken up – a total of 43,470 people (DWP, 6 month offer statistics, January and February 2010).
• Fact: Under Labour, youth unemployment has hit a record high. In September 2009 youth unemployment hit a record high of 943,000 and a record rate of 20 per cent (ONS, Time Series Data, March 2010).
11. Schools: education to eighteen
• GB said: “That's what we're saying in our manifesto, education will be part-time or full-time to the age of 18.”
• Fact: In the last quarter of 2009 there were 177,000 people aged 16-18 who were not in education, employment or training (NEET). This is 9.3% of all people in that age group. The 177,000 consists of: 34,000 16 year-old NEETs, 49,000 17 year-old NEETs and 94,000 18 year-old NEETs (DCSF, NEETs Statistics Quarterly Brief, February 2010).
12. Schools: teacher numbers
• GB said: “If you cut money out of the education budget now, you will be cutting the numbers of teachers and teaching assistants.”
• Fact: £300 million of Labour’s education efficiency savings are to come from federations and mergers of schools (DCSF, Investing for the future, protecting the front line, 15 March 2010). This actually means getting rid of school leaders. In a BBC interview, Ed Balls suggested 3,000 deputy and assistant headteacher posts could be eliminated (Telegraph, 21 September 2009). This equates to getting rid of one in every 12 posts (DCSF, School Workforce in England, January 2009, May 2009).
13. Schools: teaching standards
• GB said: “We need teachers with better qualifications...”
• Fact: Labour have set the bar for becoming a teacher too low. Less than half of those who became qualified maths teachers actually had a degree in maths; only 41 per cent had a 2:1 or better in any degree; and 16 per cent had a third or worse in any degree. (Policy Exchange, More Good Teachers, 2008).
• Fact: Almost ten per cent of secondary teachers who qualified through graduate teacher training got a third class degree or worse (TDA, TDA performance tables 2007, 2007).
• Fact: One in five teacher trainees had to retake their literacy test and 7 per cent had to retake it three or more times - over triple the 2000/1 rate (Hansard, 27 October 2008, Col. 714 W).
• Fact: One in four teacher trainees (23 per cent) had to retake the numeracy test (up from 19 per cent in 2000/1). 13 per cent had to take the numeracy test three or more times - over double the 2000/1 rate (Hansard, 27 October 2008, Col. 714 W). A sample question from the numeracy test asks: ‘In a test a pupil scored 18 marks out of 25. What was the pupil’s score as a percentage?’
14. Schools: under performance
• GB said: “under performing schools ... next year down to zero as a result of the fact that we are allowing federations academies to take over underperforming schools.”
• Fact: About ten percent of primaries do not reach the Government's own minimum standard. There are now 1,472 primary schools in England (more than 1 in 10) where fewer than 55 per cent of pupils achieve Key Stage 2 Level 4 or above in both English and Mathematics, up from 1,359 in 2008 (up about 8 per cent) (DCSF, National curriculum assessments at Key Stage 2 in England, 2009, 1 December 2009).
• Fact: Nearly four in ten secondary schools are not good enough. In the most recent Ofsted annual report, 6 per cent of secondary schools are assessed as inadequate, and 31 per cent as merely ‘satisfactory’ (Ofsted, The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector 2008/09, 24 November 2009). Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, said that schools which were satisfactory were ‘not good enough’ (The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2006). This means that 1.2 million secondary pupils are in schools that are not good enough (DCSF, Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics, 9 May 2009).
15. Schools: international standing
• GB said: “It’s important to realise we're in this new world where we're competing with Asia as well as America and Europe and our young people have to have the grades to be able to meet the best in the world.”
• Fact: The UK has fallen down the world league tables in English, maths and science. Since the first OECD comparative study on education was conducted in 2001, the UK has fallen from 8th to 24th place in maths. In reading, the UK has fallen from 7th to 17th place, and in science from 4th to 14th place. We are now below countries like Liechtenstein and Estonia (OECD, Programme for International Student Assessment, December 2007).
• Fact: The second ‘Progress in International Reading Literacy Study’ found that England fell from 3rd to 19th place in the world between 2001 and 2006 (National Centre for Education Statistics, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, November 2007).
16. MPs’ expenses
• GB said: “I was shocked and sickened by what I saw.”
• Fact: In July 2008, when MPs had the chance to vote for the reform of the allowances system – the so-called John Lewis list – Gordon Brown failed to turn up to vote and more than 30 of his ministers voted against reforms. David Cameron whipped the Conservative front-bench to support the reforms, but they were defeated by 172 votes to 144 (Hansard, 3 July 2008, Col. 1121-4).
• Fact: In January 2009, Conservatives forced Gordon Brown to abandon a proposal to amend the Freedom of Information Act to prevent it being used to obtain MPs’ expenses receipts (Guardian, 22 January 2009).
• Fact: In April 2009, Gordon Brown proposed that the second homes should be replaced by a daily allowance which would have meant MPs would have been able to receive the same allowances but without having to show that they had incurred any expenses (www.number10.gov.uk/Page19073).
• Fact: And when the Kelly Report identified ten separate steps to reform expenses that required legislation to be passed by Parliament (Committee on Standards in Public Life, ‘MPs’ Expenses and Allowances: Supporting Parliament, safeguarding the taxpayer’, 4 November 2009), Gordon Brown failed to include any legislation on the subject in the Queen’s Speech.
17. Hereditary peers
• GB said: “I want a House of Lords that is not hereditary.”
• Fact: Labour have been saying this for 13 years and have never delivered: “End the hereditary principle in the House of Lords” (Labour Manifesto 1997).
18. Health visitors
• GB said: “To help people live at home, to give them the urgent care needs that they have and see them met, for example by home helps and health visitors so that people who want to stay at home don't have to go into institutional care.”
• Fact: The number of health visitors has been cut by 18 per cent since 2004 – which means almost 2,500 fewer staff (NHS workforce statistics, 25 March 2010). 29 per cent of health visitors report that caseloads are so large that they are losing track of vulnerable families (Amicus, Survey of Health Visitors, 2007).
19. Respect for the troops
• GB said: “Let me say first of all, my pride and my admiration for the armed forces.”
• Fact: On 1 October 2007 with planning for a snap general election at the front of his mind Gordon Brown flew to Iraq – in the middle of Conservative Party conference – and announced that 1,000 British troops would be withdrawn by Christmas. The small print later revealed that 500 of these had been announced earlier in the year, and 270 are already back in the UK (Gordon Brown’s Address to Reporters in Baghdad, 1 October 2007).
• Fact: Former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Guthrie said, ‘in my experience as Chief of the Defence Staff in Whitehall, he was the most unsympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer as far as defence was concerned, and the only senior Cabinet Minister who avoided coming to the Ministry of Defence to be briefed by our staff on our problems’ (House of Lords Hansard, 22 November 2007, Col. 961).
• Fact: Gordon Brown has frustrated so many military commanders that a growing number of them are resigning. These include the commander of 3 Para during the initial 2006 Helmand deployment, Colonel Stuart Tootal, Brigadier Ed Butler (the Brigade Commander during the same deployment), Major Sebastian Morley (commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS), and the commander of British forces in Afghanistan from October 2007 to April 2008, Major General Andrew Mackay.
20. Helicopter budgets
• GB said: “all the different helicopters we need have been put into Afghanistan.”
• Fact: Following changes in the funding of the Ministry of Defence, the Government cut the projected 10-year helicopter budget. Geoff Hoon confirmed that ‘had the budget had been spent in the way we thought we should spend it, then those helicopters would probably be coming into service any time now’ (Chilcot Inquiry Transcript, 19 January 2010).
• Fact: In 2004, the National Audit Office warned about the “considerable deficit in the availability of helicopter lift” (National Audit Office, Battlefield Helicopters, 7 April 2004, Session 2003-4, HC 486, para. 4.2).
• Fact: British troops were deployed to Helmand Province in 2006 with insufficient helicopters. The then commander of 3 Para, Colonel Stuart Tootal said “in Afghanistan in 2006 repeated demands for more helicopters fell on deaf ears. It increased risk for my paratroopers, but the decision-makers were not the ones driving into combat when we should have been flying in” (The Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2008).
• Fact: Lord Guthrie said: “I have no doubt whatever that, with additional helicopters, some of the lives that have been lost would have been saved” (House of Lords Hansard, 6 November 2009, Col. 524).
21. Defence spending
• GB said: “The important thing is that we are doing the right thing by our troops and that’s why we’ve increased the spending on equipment dramatically over these last few years.”
• Fact: At PMQs on 10 March Gordon Brown claimed that “the defence budget has been rising every year since 1997” (Hansard, 10 March 2010, Col. 291). A week later, on 17 March, he said: “I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms” (Hansard, 17 March 2010). Figures from the Ministry of Defence show that the defence budget fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 when Labour came to power – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007 (Figures Provided by the Ministry of Defence for Channel 4 News Factcheck, 10 March 2010).
22. Health spending
• GB said: “Yes, it is our priority that we will support the front line services, health...”
• Fact: In the Pre-Budget Report and since, Labour have promised to protect ‘frontline’ NHS spending. Gordon Brown promised at the launch of Labour’s election pledges on 27 March 2010 to ‘Protect frontline investment in... the NHS’. However, the details of Labour’s plans in the Pre-Budget Report and since tell a different story:
o Gordon Brown planning to cut NHS investment after 2010-11. In the Pre-Budget Report, Labour promised to protect ‘frontline’ NHS spending in the years after 2010-11, but the small print of the report showed that this was only ‘near-cash’ spending, which excludes capital spending on hospital buildings and equipment such as x-ray machines and ambulances (HM Treasury, Pre-Budget Report 2009, p.103).
o Protection for other budgets is only for two years. The Pre-Budget Report small print also reveals that the protection afforded to other ‘frontline’ budgets is only for two years – 2011-12 and 2012-13 (ibid.)
o £700 million cut to the NHS capital budget. The small print of the 2010 Budget Report reveals that the NHS capital budget is falling in 2010-11 by £700 million to £4.5 billion, a cut of 13 per cent.
23. GP access
• GB said: “David will not give you the guarantee that you will ... have a GP in the evenings and weekends.”
• Fact: This is not true. We have said that we will commission a 24/7 urgent care service in every area of England, including GP out of hours services, and ensure that every patient can access a GP in their area between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week.
• Fact: The Department of Health’s latest GP Patient Survey found that one in three people do not know how to contact an out of hours GP service; one in five of those who did know and tried to contact their out-of-hours GP service said doing so was not easy; and one in three said their out-of-hours GP took too long to provide care (Department of Health, 17 December 2009).
24. Social care
• GB said: “Elderly people shouldn't have to choose between the home they own and the care they need and we have to devise a better system for the future”
• Fact: There are currently around 48,000 elderly people in residential care who had to sell their home to pay the fees (The Daily Telegraph, 18 December 2009).
• Fact: Under Labour’s plan people would still have to pay their own food and accommodation costs in a care home as they would cover only the cost of care. This applies even to the Government’s plans for ‘free’ care after two years. The Government’s White Paper said: ‘Under a comprehensive National Care Service, the Government expects that people would continue to pay for their accommodation costs in residential care’ (Department of Health, Building the National Care Service, 30 March 2010). These are £14,000 a year on average (Saga, Laing and Buisson, Cost of Care Report, 2008-09). Crucially, this means that many people will still have to sell their homes to pay for their care.
25. Carers
• GB said: “We have tried to do something about respite care because there are 6 million carers in this country, I've met many of them and talked to them about their needs.”
• Fact: The Government’s National Carers Strategy in 2008 promised £150 million to help provide breaks for carers over the two years from 2009-10 to 2010-11 (Department of Health, 8 June 2008). But a survey by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers and Crossroads Care found that funding is not reaching the front-line. Eighty per cent of the new money that was supposed to be spent in 2009-10 was not being used by Primary Care Trusts to increase support for carers as was intended (12 October 2009). Tags: New Labour Liberal Democrats |
