Gordon Brown has taken much pride in telling us what a great custodian of the economy he is. As Chancellor he started well even setting his own rules about how much money the country should spend. But now the truth is out. The country is in crisis. The economy is teetering on the verge of collapse. There was no prudence. The last ten years has provided a relatively benign economic environment but instead of putting money aside for the difficult times, they took the money and blew it. The country’s finances are in a parlous state. Gordon Brown broke his own rules and borrowed too much.

He promised an end to boom and bust and yet we now have a budget deficit of 3% of GDP. That is double the EU average and is the worst deficit of all industrialised countries except Egypt, Pakistan and Hungary.

The Pre-Budget Report is a disaster for families. It is full of tax cons and not tax cuts. It isn’t about helping the economy – it is about helping Gordon Brown to cling onto power. OUR NATIONAL DEBT IS NOW OVER £ 1 TRILLION.

The Government has lowered VAT to 15% but this will not kickstart the economy. It is a foolish move and if Labour is elected again at the General Election, they have a secret plan to raise VAT to 20%.

Tax will rise to 45% for those earning over £150,000. This will not do anything to change the Government’s budget deficit as there are so few people that earn at that level.

National Insurance will rise by 0.5% from 2011.

Anyone earning over £20,000 will be WORSE OFF from 2011.

Tax is up. Inflation is up to 4.7%, growth is down and unemployment has hit 1.72million. The Government then added insult to injury when it abolished the 10p tax band for those on the lowest incomes. This affected 5.3 million families. Gordon Brown only realised the mistake after the public outcry and has done a huge U turn, trying to pacify people by raising the personal tax threshold by £120 for one year only and reducing the tax rate from 22p to 20p. This is a bribe. Despite pledging to end fuel poverty, there are twice the numbers of people living in fuel poverty. The Government has had to bail out Northern Rock with a £50billion bung.

The Economy is in a mess.

Gordon Brown makes much of the fact that he is experienced and the country needs an experienced pair of hands at such a difficult time.

What the country really needs is a change. We have to bring Government spending under control. We need to adhere to Brown’s own original rules. We need to protect those on the lowest incomes and we need to unlock the vast potential in Britain’s banks and regain the confidence of the financial institutions. The longer we leave things as they are, the deeper the mess will get and the deeper and longer the recession will be.

If we are elected to Government we WILL

	Protect depositors savings.
	Give new powers to the Bank of England to intervene in the market and seize control of the banks about to fail.
	Change the capital requirements for banks to make sure they put away money in the good times for use in the bad.
	Abolish stamp duty for houses under £250K which will affect most first time buyers.
	Introduce the FAIR FUEL STABILISER – so as fuel increases in price, fuel duty will decrease.
	Cut small business rates.
	Reform the Post Office Card account to allow those on low incomes to benefit from the discounts associated with Direct Debits.
	Oppose the retrospective tax on family cars (this will affect 80% of drivers).
	End the couple penalty in tax credits.
	Freeze council tax for two years by cutting wasteful Government spending.
	We will also introduce an Office for Budget Responsibility to gain control over the public finances to ensure that no Labour Government can ever bankrupt this country again.

The Labour Government pledged to improve the NHS. Despite record spending levels and a doubling of budget in the last ten years, the NHS is less efficient than it was. Patients aren’t receiving the treatments they need and hospital acquired infections are spiralling out of control. There has been massive overspending and a quarter of Trusts are now in debt. The NHS is mired in bureaucracy which means the increased funding is not getting to patient care.

	There have been ten major reorganisations in the last ten years including setting up primary care groups, then abolishing them, setting up primary care trusts, abolishing health authorities, setting up strategic health authorities and merging primary care trusts. This ridiculous bureaucracy has caused confusion, resentment and has cost over £320 million.
	The Government is obsessed with targets. These are entirely politically motivated and are not about improving patient care. Many of the Trusts have fiddled their figures and the audit commission found that only 3 out of 41 was accurate.
	There are now more managers in the NHS than hospital beds and the number of managers is increasing three times faster than doctors and nurses. By 2004/5 £1.6 Billion more was being spent on managers than in 2000. Over £600million has been spent on management consultants.
	There are only 176,000 hospital beds left after 18,000 were slashed a couple of years ago.
	Hospital acquired infections are at a record level. 5000 people died of MRSA last year. Clostridium Difficile is up 69%. Twice as many people die of hospital acquired infections than die on Britain’s roads. This is unacceptable.
	We don’t have enough Intensive Care beds which mean that 5000 elderly people die each year.
	Our cancer survival rates are lower than in the rest of Europe. If you have prostate cancer, your chance of surviving 5 years in the UK is 44%. In Germany it is 67%. We have fewer radiotherapy machines than our European counterparts, again impacting on treatment.
	The new contracts for doctors have been a shambles and morale is at an all-time low. The cost of implementing this runs into many millions of pounds but the demoralised workforce has been forced to move all over the country without being given any real notice. Even the cross party select committee in the House of Commons has concluded that the prediction of NHS staff needs has been a disastrous failure.
	Our rates of sexually acquired infections are soaring: Chlamydia is up 140%, gonorrhoea up 100% and syphilis up 900%. HIV is also rising.

Even Gordon Brown’s own advisors think he has mismanaged the NHS, We have to act quickly to stop the rot.

We must

	Stop pointless reorganisations of the NHS.
	Give power back to doctors and nurses to make clinical decisions.
	Reduce the number of unnecessary managers.
	Have effective infection control procedures including shutting affected wards.
	Have private cubicles for those with hospital acquired infections to help their recovery and stop further spread.
	End mixed sex wards.
	Give preventative health higher priority.

If Elected to Government we WILL

	Abolish TARGETS and focus on HEALTH OUTCOMES. Eg cancer survival rates.
	Set up an Independent NHS Board – this will set staff free from ministerial meddling.
	Protect GPs and end polyclinics to ensure there is excellent community healthcare. We will also stop the A&E and maternity cuts.
	Set up HEALTHWATCH which will be a consumer voice to safeguard patients safety.
	Allow real choice. We will give patients choice over their GP and chose the secondary care they want with their GP.

Over the last ten years, violent crime has doubled; knife crime has doubled in the last two years and 28 teenagers have been murdered in London. Gun related crime has increased four fold; there are now 28 gun crimes a day.

Instead of being out on the streets, the police have been made to spend 50% of their time carrying out non-frontline duties weighed down by massive Government bureaucracy. One arrest can take hours for an officer to complete and yet less than 19% of offences lead to a criminal being punished.

The Government is also obsessed with keeping DNA records of everyone arrested. Even if you are not found guilty, your DNA is kept. This means that we now have the largest DNA database in the world. There are now 100,000 innocent children on the database and 500,000 under 16. This criminalises and stigmatises these young people even though they have been shown to be innocent. The use of low copy DNA also means that DNA is not necessarily accurate when used as evidence.

We want to see an end to the police state and an end to police officers drowning in paperwork. We want police officers out in the streets where they can engage with their local communities, get to know who the troublemakers are and use their discretion when making arrests.

If elected to Government WE WILL

	Give citizens better support when they make a citizens arrest.
	Cut police paperwork so they can spend more time on the front line.
	Give police greater stop and search powers so they can search for knives, etc.
	Give directly elected police commissioners so each force is accountable to the community it serves.
	Bring in crime mapping – monthly local crime statistics will be published on line in map form.
	Ban loss leader sales of alcohol to reduce binge drinking.
	Advocate abstinence based drug treatment orders for drug addicts.

The Government has spent millions trying to improve the standards of education, but 40% of 11 year olds can’t write, read or add up. Literacy levels amongst 11 year olds have not improved since 1995. and fewer than half of 16 year olds got 5 or more good GCSE passes and good passes in English, Maths, Science and Modern Languages have declined since 1997.

School standards have fallen internationally too. In reading the UK has fallen from 7th to 17th place and in Science we have fallen from 4th to 14th place. We are now behind countries including Lichtenstein, Estonia and Slovenia. The Government also wanted 50% of people to go to University but to do this they introduced student tuition fees. Since then there have been soaring drop out rates, 42,000 each year, which costs the taxpayer £300million.

University isn’t the right choice for everyone. We need equality of access. We need to raise school standards and expand good schools. We need to cut the compensation culture that has resulted in fewer school trips. We need setting and streaming so that those who flourish can have their enthusiasm fed whilst those who struggle can have special treatment. Above all we want schools to be comprehensively excellent.

	We believe that wearing a uniform breaks down social barriers.
	We believe discipline is vital to instil boundaries in children.
	Setting and streaming is vital.

We will improve discipline and behaviour and allow teachers to teach; we want every child to learn to read by six, we want to reduce the bureaucracy in testing. We want to stretch the strong and nurture the weak and we must improve the school inspection procedure.

The Government has committed our troops to unprecedented levels of war. Our troops are exhausted. Worse still they are ill-equipped and poorly paid.

As a nation we abide by the military covenant. This is an agreement between the army and the nation. It says that because service personnel forgo some rights and risk their lives for the nation, then in return the nation must look after them and their families.

This covenant has been broken by the Government. It has overstretched the forces, increased their commitment but decreased their resources. The troops have poor equipment and poor accommodation.

In Afghanistan they are desperately short of helicopters and night-vision equipment. 60 men have died as a direct consequence of a failure of equipment. The Government does not see our forces as a priority and hasn’t even appointed a full-time defence secretary. Many of our soldiers earn less than a traffic warden.

This is not acceptable. If we send our troops to fight on our behalf, then we owe it to them to pay them properly, equip them properly and look after them as we would wish to be looked after.

We have a serious drugs problem in this country. Drugs and alcohol cost society £39 billion. We have the highest problem drug use in Europe and the 2nd highest figures for drug related deaths. There are now 327,000 registered users of opiates and cocaine in the UK.

Drugs blight society and lead to crime. Drug related crime has shot up by 43% to 194,000 offences.

The Government’s policy on drugs is one of Maintenance and Management. As a doctor I know this doesn’t work. We need to have drug treatment orders where we enforce abstinence. The figures speak for themselves. If you treat a heroin user with methadone then 7% are clean after 3 years. If you enforce residential abstinence then 30% are clean after three years.

We have to do something radical to stop the drug problem spiralling out of control. The current schemes just aren’t working.

Gordon Brown has NEVER voted in bills that can help to stop climate change

We are facing an environmental catastrophe. There has been a 70% increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 1970. The sea level is rising and the artic ice is shrinking.

Industrialisation has meant compromising the very planet we are reliant on.

The current climate change levy taxes energy USE and not EMISSIONS. A much better system would be to replace the climate change levy with a carbon levy which would reflect the amount of emissions.

This is a global problem and the UK contributes about 2% of global man made emissions of CO2 which is about 6 and a half tonnes of carbon per year.

The make up is as follows

	30% from the energy industry
	22% from transport
	18% from other industry
	15% from residential fossil fuel
	15% from other (5.9% of this is International Aviation)
	0.4% from domestic aviation

We want to see an 80% cut in UK greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but we also know that in 50 years we will be using TWICE as much energy as we are currently. Currently 20% of our energy comes from nuclear but our power stations are at the end of their working lives.

In the next 20 years we will lose all our coal and all but one nuclear power station which is ONE THIRD of all our current generation.

We have to do something QUICKLY to ensure that there isn’t an energy gap and to ensure we keep the lights on. We also have to ensure that our energy supply is SECURE. This is increasingly important in an increasingly unstable world.

	Energy must be SAFE
	AFFORDABLE
	GREEN

We believe that this can be achieved by

	Investing in new energy technology including wind power, tidal power and nuclear power (low carbon)
	Using microgeneration to allow small businesses, local schools, hospitals and homes to generate their own low carbon energy with:
	Solar and photovoltaic systems. Wind turbines. Biomass generators. Promoting the take up of smart meters to enable the household or business user to have . A clearer idea of how much electricity they are producing and how much they are Consuming. Micro-hydro. Combined heat and power.

We want the Government to honour its pledge to have a referendum on the EU constitution. The Labour manifesto promised it in 2005 and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have both promised it and yet we have not had it. Gordon Brown signed up to it away from the world’s press.

The EU reform treaty is the same as the constitution. It brings together all the treaties and agreements on which the EU is based and covers:

	Trade.
	Customs.
	Monetary policy.
	Agriculture.
	Fisheries.
	Domestic law.
	Asylum and immigration.

It will create an EU foreign minister and an EU president. It will sign treaties on our behalf and all national vetoes outside defence could be abolished.

But the Eu has cost us a fortune. EU fraud has doubled to £700 million in 12 months and the cost to businesses of regulations introduced since 1997 has rocketed by nearly £66 billion. The EU working time regulations cost £16 billion and are the single most expensive burden on British business which costs the UK £1.8 billion a year.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

WE WANT THE REFERENDUM THEY PROMISED

I am totally against ID cards. I believe these are a complete infringement of our civil liberties. They will cost £20 billion to implement. If they were scrapped, the first year’s savings alone would be £225.4 million which would build 1,200 prison places and scrap the early release scheme.

Facts about ID cards. They ;

	Will not reduce terrorism.
	Will not reduce illegal immigration.
	Will not reduce identity fraud.
	Will not reduce human trafficking.
	Will cost £20 billion.

The Government also has a terrible track record of keeping data safe. It lost the details of 130,000 criminals in 2008 and the details of 3 million learner drivers.

We don’t need ID cards. We should concentrate instead on building a society where people watch out for each other, learn to trust and communicate with each other instead of building a culture of fear and mistrust.

Despite the outcry against ID cards, they were introduced for foreign nationals from November 2008 and in 2009 will be brought in for airside workers. In 2010 young people will be offered them. It is only a matter of time until the Government brings them in for everyone on a compulsory basis unless they are defeated.

I believe passionately that everyone is unique and individual. As a Party we believe passionately in the rights of the individual.

Over the last ten years the Conservative Party has changed and modernised and fully embraces the LGBT agenda.

We believe in equality for all regardless of sex, age, race, religion or sexual preference. We have openly gay Parliamentary Candidates, councillors and MPs.

David Cameron voted for gay rights and civil partnerships. Gordon Brown has never voted in favour of gay rights. He did not vote on equal gay rights, the age of consent, abolition of section 28 or civil partnerships.

In 2007 I organised the first ever conservative Gay pride float in the UK at Brighton Pride which was repeated in 2008. This has now been rolled out across the country at all the gay pride events.

In the last ten years although the basic rate of tax has remained unchanged, Gordon Brown has raised taxes over 100 times. These are STEALTH TAXES and include:

	Council Tax.
	National Insurance.
	Stamp duty.
	Inheritance Tax.
	Tax on Savings and Pensions.

From 2009 the top rate of tax will also be raised from 40% to 45%

He has broken his own fiscal rules, He has far exceeded his borrowing rule which said he would not borrow more than 40% of GDP and he needs to raise tax to reclaim some of the money he has squandered. He also abolished the 10p tax rate which hit the poorest families affecting 5.3 million families. He is also raising car tax and fuel duty when the economy stabilises.

People are really struggling in this economic turmoil.

We have proposed really sensible policies to help

We will

	Abolish stamp duty for those properties under £250,000.
	Introduce the fair fuel stabiliser so that as the price of fuel goess up, the fuel duty goes down.
	We will cut small business rates from 22p to 20p.
	We will reform the Post Office Card Account to help those on low incomes.
	Oppose trhe retrospective tax on the vehicle excise duty for family cars.
	End the couple penalty intax credits.
	Raise the threshold for inheritance tax to £1 million.

We have to enable people to travel more easily using public transport and cut down on private car journeys.

The current situation is untenable:

	Trains are overcrowded and are running at 170% capacity.
	There are too many cars on the roads. The numbers have increased by 25% over the last ten years to 34 million cars.

We also have to reduce our emissions.

We must

	Encourage use of public transport – trains are 50 times less polluting than cars and 70 times less than aircraft.
	Encourage people to buy green vehicles such as hybrids and electric cars.
	Encourage healthy options including walking and cycling.
	Encourage huge national infrastructure projects such as the high speed rail network linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
	Cancel the third runway at Heathrow.