Brown reveals Labour's key election pledges
Updated on 27 March 2010
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has named the Labour Party's five key election pledges and said keeping the country on the "road to recovery" is central to his strategy, as Gary Gibbon reports.
At a speech today to Labour activists in Nottingham, the prime minister also promised that ministers would be more accountable to the British public, saying the public is the "boss".
Mr Brown pledged that Labour would:
- Secure the economic recovery and halve the budget deficit through growth, fair taxes and cuts to lower priority spending
- Raise family living standards, by keeping mortgage rates low, increasing tax credits for families with young children, helping first-time buyers and restoring the link between the state pension and earnings from 2012
- Build a "high tech, high knowledge" economy, creating one million new skilled jobs and modernising infrastructure with high-speed rail, a green investment bank and broadband access for every citizen
- Protect frontline investment in policing, schools, childcare and the NHS, promising a new guarantee of cancer test results within a week
- Strengthen fairness in communities through an Australian style points-based system to control immigration, through guaranteed education, apprenticeships and jobs for young people, and a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.
Mr Brown said: "Each is substantial, it's deliverable and it's carefully costed. I know that in this time of cynicism and lack of trust in politics, there are some people who will say that politicians will promise the earth but never deliver, that a pledge isn't worth the paper it is written on.
"And I understand that, but these are not general pledges without dates, without tests, without scrutiny. These are our pledge to every single citizen, tied to timetables, regular reporting and proof of performance."
To ensure that the pledges were met, he promised new public annual contracts for cabinet ministers, and said their positions would be subject to delivery.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell would manage the performance of the top civil servants in each Whitehall department and the inventor of the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, would ensure that information was available to the public online.
The pledges come before the general election, which is expected on 6 May.
However Channel 4 News's political editor Gary Gibbon remains unconvinced.
