Michael Gove has launched a new poster campaign putting Gordon Brown’s record at the heart of the election campaign.

These posters arrive alongside a new analysis of Labour’s time in power, and you can view both by clicking the links below.

Read the document

Speaking at the launch, Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

“Gordon Brown is asking people to vote him in for another five years but he and his tired Government will just make things worse.”

“He has doubled our national debt and squandered billions of pounds selling off Britain’s gold at rock bottom prices. He has taken billions out of our pensions system and doubled the tax rate for the poorest workers. He has let down our young people by causing record youth unemployment, and overseen an increase in the gap between the rich and poor. And he has let 80,000 criminals out of prison early, leading to 1,500 crimes being committed by people who should have been behind bars.”

“We can’t go on like this. The choice at this election is five more years of Gordon Brown’s tired government making things worse or David Cameron and the Conservatives with the energy, leadership and values to get the country moving.”

… and here are some other things Gordon Brown did…

Cut the Defence Budget at a time of war – and got caught out denying it!

Gordon Brown misled the Chilcot Inquiry, Parliament and the public when he claimed that ‘the defence budget has been rising every year since 1997’
(Hansard, 10 March 2010, Col. 291).

He was later forced to admit that ‘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 actually fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007.
(Channel 4 News Factcheck, 10 March 2010).

Taxed jobs as we were emerging from recession.

Last December, Gordon Brown’s Government announced a tax on jobs – a 0.5 per cent rise in the rate of National Insurance Contributions for both employees and employers. This comes on top of the
rise in NICs announced in the 2008 PBR, meaning a total planned rise of 1 per cent. This is a tax on all businesses and on every person earning over £20,000.
The Federation of Small Businesses has estimated that this could mean up to 57,000 jobs are lost. (FSB,
Press Release, 24 March 2010)

Increased spending on quangos by £10 billion.

The cost of unelected and poorly accountable government bodies has soared by almost £10 billion under Gordon Brown. In his first year as Prime Minister, total expenditure on so-called
“executive non-departmental public bodies” rose from £37.0 billion to £43.0 billion in 2007-08 – a 16 per cent rise
(Cabinet Office, Public Bodies 2007, p.10; Public Bodies 2008, p.10).

Figures for 2008-09 revealed quango expenditure rose by another £3.5 billion to £46.5 billion – a 7 per cent rise
(Cabinet Office, Public Bodies 2009, p.6) making a mockery of his claims to deliver a new politics.

Brought boom and bust to the NHS – which led to NHS cuts.

Despite massively increasing spending, Gordon Brown has been guilty of a ‘boom and bust’ approach to the NHS finances, forcing NHS Trusts into cuts and wasteful short-term spending. Between 2005 and 2007, 14,500 jobs were cut from the NHS as Trusts struggled to recover from deficits
(NHS Information Centre, NHS Staff 1998-2008, 25 March 2009).

And since 2004, the number of beds in the NHS has been cut by 21,500 – the equivalent of 12 per cent
(Department of Health, Bed availability and occupancy 2008-09, 30 September 2009).

Accident and Emergency departments and maternity units up and down the country have faced or are facing cuts and closures. And things are only set to get worse, as one of Gordon Brown’s own health advisers said that ‘the days of the District General Hospital are over’
(Professor Sir Ara Darzi, NHS London, A Framework for Action, 11 July 2007).

Let truancy rise to record levels.

In 1998, Gordon Brown’s Treasury set a target to reduce truancy rates to 0.5 per cent
(HM Treasury, Comprehensive Spending Review, Public Service Agreements 1999-2000, December 1998).

But the figure now stands at 1.05 per cent – up 44 per cent since 1996/7, well in excess of the Government’s target, and at a record high. 67,000 pupils skip school without permission every day
(DCSF, Pupil Absence in Schools in England, Including Pupil Characteristics: 2008/09, 25 March 2010).

Paid couples more to live apart than together.

The tax credit system penalises parents who live together, giving families a financial incentive to split up.
The IFS has highlighted the fact that a couple with children earning £20,000 between them could be more than £5,000 better off in terms of benefits and tax credits if they split up.
(The Sunday Times, 4 March 2007).

David Cameron has responded in the House of Commons to the Chancellor’s presentation of the last Budget before the general election.

He said Labour “have made a complete mess of the British economy and they are totally failing to clean it up”.

Cameron set out the big argument in British politics: Labour say “don’t do anything before the election, let’s just sit tight and keep our fingers crossed”, and the Conservatives say “we need real action to get our economy moving – and urgently”.

Highlighting new policies that copied existing Conservative proposals, such as the stamp duty cut and new university places, he said the “only new ideas in British politics are coming from this side of the House” and that “the only thing Labour bring are debt, waste and taxes”.

The figures that stands out above any other, he said, was that Labour have “doubled the national debt, and they’re going to double it again”.

Outlining the Government’s failure Cameron criticised “all those schemes that they launched with great fanfare” for failing to help enough people. He also drew comparisons on the state of the economy when Labour came to power to the present – including the huge increase in the debt and deficit, and a falling down the global league tables in terms of competitiveness, tax and regulation.

We need a credible plan to deal with Britain’s record debts”, he said, criticising the Chancellor’s repeated hope to halve the deficit by 2014 as giving us a deficit “almost as big as when Denis Healey went to the IMF in the 1970s”.

Moving on to the delay in dealing with the deficit, he said “the risk to recovery is not in dealing with the deficit now, it’s in not dealing with the deficit now”. Cameron said that “every family knows that when your debts mount up, you need to start paying them off or things will only get worse”, and that it is time for the Government to learn the same lessons”.

“The Prime Minister and Chancellor faced a choice – between bold action in an election year or playing politics. Once again, they chose politics.”

Cameron also emphasised the need “to show the world that we are back open for business”, saying that because Labour “flunked the difficult decisions on spending, they are raising tax after tax after tax – all after the election”. “These are the ticking tax bombshells timed to go off the day after the election and that will destroy our recovery.”

He said that the greatest risk to Britain’s economic recovery was another Labour government. “No one has yet thought of a question to which the answer is five more years of this Prime Minister”, he said.

“We need a credible plan to cut the deficit. We need an unleashing of enterprise across the nation. We need a plan to boost employment through radical welfare and school reform. If ever there was a time when this country needed a radical change of direction it is now.”

He concluded that Britain needs a Conservative government “to clean up the mess made by this Labour Government”.

“Britain needs new energy, leadership and values to get this country moving again. That’s the argument we’ll take to the country the moment the Prime Minister has been forced by the law of the land to call the election he has avoided for so long.”

Read David’s speech in full.

Delivering the annual Mais lecture, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne set out the Conservative vision for a new economic model.

He argued that the debt-fuelled model of growth that the Government pursued over the last decade was fundamentally unsustainable, and that we need to move from an economy built on debt to an economy where we save and invest for the future. We have to deal with our debts to get the economy back on its feet.

He pointed to research which shows that the root cause of the economic crisis was an explosion of private sector debt, and that the biggest risk to the recovery is an explosion of public sector debt. High levels of public sector debt risk undermining growth.

He argued that the existing policy framework failed to prevent the crisis, is unable to deal with the current weakness of the economy, and won’t be able to stop it happening again. He set out a new economic model for growth based on saving and investment, and a new policy framework that can ensure that private and public debt are sustainable in the future, including:

· A new system of financial regulation, with the Bank of England back in charge of controlling the overall level of debt in the economy.

· A new fiscal policy framework, with an independent Office for Budget Responsibility to ensure that public debt is sustainable.

· A supply side revolution that releases the pent up enterprise and wealth creation of our country, encourages a nation of savers, and addresses long term structural weaknesses like poor education and a welfare system that traps people in workless poverty.

He also explained why the Government’s argument that we can afford to wait until 2011 before dealing with the deficit is complacent and puts the recovery at risk, and explained why we need to start dealing with the deficit in 2010:

· Confidence: a lack of confidence in the sustainability of the public finances is already undermining the recovery.

· The realities of markets: those who argue we should ignore financial markets are siren voices. If Britain loses the confidence of international markets the result would be emergency cuts that would indeed be swingeing and savage.

· The realities of Government: real public sector reform takes time so starting early on the deficit creates space for more targeted cuts that protect the poorest and front line services.

For the first time he also set out in detail how the budget process would work following the election in the event of a Conservative victory:

· Phase One: the independent Office for Budget Responsibility will set out an independent audit of the nation’s finances, based on independent growth forecasts. Only then will anyone know the true scale of the fiscal challenge that faces whoever forms the next government.

· Phase Two: an emergency budget within 50 days will set out the overall fiscal path and spending totals that we will stick to over the years ahead, as well as some of the cross-cutting measures on pay, the cost of Whitehall, the review of the pension age, and the largest public sector pensions, that will help to put our public finances on a sustainable footing. It will take targeted steps to reduce some budgets in-year in order to build credibility and make a start on reducing the deficit. Crucially, the first Budget will also contain measures to boost enterprise, encourage new jobs and show that Britain is open for business.

· Phase Three: over the Summer we will work flat out to conduct the detailed departmental Spending Review for the years after 2011 that the current government has simply refused to carry out, and publish that results of that review in the Autumn.

Read George’s Mais lecture in full