ANNOUNCEMENTS MADE AT CONFERENCE 2007
by MARTIN PHILLIPS
Education & Skills
- The watchdog monitoring curriculum and exams will be split. One body will set the national curriculum and monitor school standards. The other will be an independent watchdog of exam standards.
- Teaching assistants will have a new pay structure that is more like that of teachers.
- Every secondary school pupil will have a personal tutor.
- There will be small-group tuition for 600,000 children, and one-to-one tuition for 300,000 primary school children.
- There will be a catch-up programme for primary school writing skills.
Sustainable Communities
- Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears and Yvette Cooper all called for Tory and Lib Dem councils to stop obstructing house building and to start doing it.
- The number of new homes built will increase to 240,000.
- The social housing budget will increase by 50%, to £8.6bn per annum.
- The number of new eco-towns will double, from 5 to 10.
- All high-energy light bulbs will be phased out from sale within 4 years (saving 5 million tonnes of carbon pa), and the government will work with the industry to phase out high-energy domestic appliances.
Crime, Justice, Citizenship and Equalities
- There will be a review of self-defence laws, to provide greater protection to victims of crime.
- A new fund to support neighbourhood police patrols – 10,000 mobile computers and fingerprint machines will allow officers to do more work on site and mean less time wasted returning to stations.
- There will a local beat patrol of neighbourhood police officers in every area.
- Safety budgets shared between police, councils and other agencies will help fight crime and anti-social behaviour.
- There will be further measures to fight gun crime and the gang culture, starting in the cities worst affected.
- National network of specialist help centres for rape victims to be doubled, from 18 to 36.
- Every area will have its own local crime figures published, to reassure local people about the true level of crime.
Health
- Lord Darzi announced that we would revolutionise access to GP surgeries, with longer opening hours, the ability to attend a surgery near work as well as near home, more 24 hour walk-in centres and community health facilities.
- To fight hospital infections, every hospital in the country will have a full deep steam clean – a measure proved as essential in the USA. Matrons will have more powers to order extra cleaning, and the new regulator Ofcare will inspect, with the power to close wards.
- The number of matrons will be doubled, to 5,000.
- Cancer screening will be extended to a wider age range for breast cancer, cervical cancer and colon cancer.
Britain in the World
- As well as further reform of the United Nations, to make it more effective, the Prime Minister will be urging the UN to form an Environmental Agency.
- Accommodation for soldiers will be improved.
Prosperity and work
- We will close private equity tax loopholes.
- There will be more schemes to help lone parents into work.