AS prospective Labour candidate for Bradshaw Ward, I feel I must reply to the letter you printed from John Evans the prospective Conservative candidate. Mr Evans' tirade is sadly only too typical of the loony right that we have come to expect from the Tory party in recent years.
He accuses the Labour Party of so much in his short letter that I am left wondering whether he and I live in the same nation state. He may like to consider the following. On crime this government has introduced a ban on handguns and spent an extra £1.2 billion on the police service.
On pensions the minimum income guarantee has been raised and the winter fuel allowance has been increased from the derisory rates the last Tory government set, firstly to £100 regardless of winter temperatures and now to £150.
On education this government has raised the literacy and numeracy standards across the country and increased investment in education by at least £20 billion. On health and the NHS we have just witnessed the biggest planned and sustained investment for 30 years --NHS spending will rise to £54.2 billion in 2000-2001, to £58.6 billion in 2001-2002, £63.5 billion in 2002-2003 and £68.7 billion in 2003-2004.
Radical reforms such as the introduction of the national minimum wage and the Working Families Tax Credit have meant that the working families are now better off than at any time during the last 20 years and measures such as devolution and the reform of the House of Lords have modernised our state and improved our democracy. I challenge John Evans to tell us which of the reforms of the Labour government he disagrees with. Does he disagree with our investment in health, or in education or perhaps both? Does he perhaps want to abolish the winter fuel allowance or the Working Families Tax Credit? Or maybe he would like to abolish the minimum wage and let one million people return to earning derisory wages.
Far from destroying the country, Labour has once again made Britain into a country of which we can be proud.
Chris Whitby
Barnfield Close
Egerton
Bolton
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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