Brown: Families are central to Labour’s vision
The concerns of women, families and children are at the centre of Labour’s vision for Britain, Chancellor Gordon Brown said today.
In a speech targeting the female vote, Mr Brown sought to highlight the party’s policies on women and the family.
He highlighted education maintenance allowances, universal nursery education for three and four year olds, Sure Start, investment in schools and the child trust fund, the lifting of one million children out of poverty and the introduction of the minimum wage as being Labour’s key achievements.
For the next term, Mr Brown promised a Sure Start in every community by 2010, an education leaving age of 18, the embedding of a “truly national childcare strategy” and expanding free nursery provision to 15 hours a week.
Speaking in London, Mr Brown said that the Government’s Sure Start programme was “probably the greatest success story and yet the best kept secret of the last eight years”.
It was part of Labour’s drive to produce “a new deal for children: a determination that not just some but all British children have the best start in life and the chance to succeed,” he said.
Mr Brown added: “With India and China already producing four million graduates a year and skilled workers from computer scientists to engineers, a country the size of Britain which aspires to remain a premier league economy cannot afford to waste the potential any child, discard the ability of any young person, leave untapped the talents of any adult.
“This is the practical, inescapable reality: what is right for the future of our children is also essential for the future of the economy.”
Turning his fire on the Tories, Mr Brown said that their plans for pupils’ passports would take £2 billion out of the state system, while they also wanted to abandon the New Deal system, cut Sure Start – and he pointed out they opposed the minimum wage.
Mr Brown argued that the election represents “a choice about the character of our country for the next generation and beyond,” and warned that “many parents literally cannot afford a Conservative government”.
