Howard and Blair clash on records
Tony Blair and Michael Howard have clashed in the Commons on their respective political records.
In the last Prime Minister’s Question Time before Christmas, the Conservative leader sought to portray the Government as failing to fulfil its promises, whilst Mr Blair hit back with examples of Labour’s successes and attacked the Tory spending plans.
Attacking first on this week’s homeless figures – which topped 100,000 households for the first time – Mr Howard accused the Government of failing in its promise to “end the scandal of families sleeping in bed and breakfast accommodation”.
He said that the Government had seven and half years, but the numbers of families living in temporary accommodation have doubled.
Hitting back, Mr Blair said that the number of people sleeping rough on the streets has been cut by two thirds, and that more than 80 per cent of those living in temporary accommodation are in good quality, self contained homes.
The Prime Minister also compared Labour plans to increase the housing budget with Tory plans to freeze it, which he claimed would results in cuts of £400 million.
Turning to crime detection rates and school truancy levels, Mr Howard accused the Prime Minister of failing to deliver promises to cut truancy and improve crime detection rates. Side stepping these accusations, Mr Blair pointed to 43,000 extra pupils attending school each day, though he accepted that more still has to be done.
Referring to the frequent exchanges between the two on crime, Mr Blair claimed that Mr Howard had been misrepresenting analysis from the Crime and Society Foundation – and quoted a letter from its director criticising Mr Howard’s interpretation.
Speaking later, Richard Garside, the CSF’s director sought to clarify his position. He said: “We simply do not know how much total crime there is. But this does not mean crime is out of control.
“The Prime Minister is right to point out that the British Crime Survey offers a more accurate picture of the crime it measures than crime recorded by the police. But it is also true that the British Crime Survey does not measure many significant crimes. These include crimes against children, murder, sexual assaults and corporate crime. It probably also underestimates crimes such as domestic violence.
“In the run up to the election I call on all our political leaders to be open and honest with the electorate about what we do and do not know about crime. We need a debate dominated by rational argument and informed opinion, not by spin and fear.”
Finally, in the war of the holiday reading matter, Mr Howard brandished a copy of the new biography of the Home Secretary and urged Mr Blair to read it and explain the mistakes of this government. But, the Prime Minister had his own suggestion and offered a selection from former Tory MP Woodrow Wyatt’s volume of diaries where he cites Mr Howard as saying “unemployment never matters” ahead of a meeting on 19 March 1991.
“Unemployment does matter to this government”, said Mr Blair – adding that is the difference between the two parties.
