Views
Difficult choices for the long term - for the Inverness Courier
I AM back to work this week, after a couple of week's break. The better weather at the weekend was a welcome respite and afforded the opportunity for a swim at the wonderful beach at Loch Morlich.
I was also able to see Ross County Cricket Club, for which I played as a teenager, slip to a narrow defeat to Orkney and Caithness in the reserve cup final in the Sunday evening sunshine at Castle Leod.
It was good to have some time for family, rest and recuperation after a hectic six months or so, but also time for reflection on what the coalition government has achieved and will have to do. This is timely, since later this week we will have had served our first 100 days in office.
The fact that the government is a coalition is, in itself, a striking difference to previous governments. It is right that two parties have come together to fix the enormous problems that our country faces - financial, economic, and social. But the fact that we are a coalition also, I believe, is making us do what all government's should: to think for the long term.
That is what the coalition programme that I helped to negotiate was all about. It is a five-year plan to do things very differently in Britain, to honestly tackle big problems and to take the tough decisions needed to put things right. So we have had a much more radical first 100 days than conventional wisdom might have predicted.
We have set out radical steps to boost patient power in the NHS and steps to give more freedom to teachers and parents, combined with more money for disadvantaged children. I hope some of these ideas will be at the heart of debates in Scotland in the run-up to the next election.
We are restoring rights to liberty and privacy and have set out an ambitious programme to clean up the political system. Our emergency budget took a big first step to a fairer tax system and setting out plans to get public spending under control.
That is not bad going. But the truth is that this government doesn't expect anyone to reach their verdict after 100 days. We expect to be judged on what we have achieved in five years - on delivering our agreement, our promises, and on seeing through the difficult but necessary choices to bring the country back to financial health.
That is different to the headline obsessed spin of the previous government. In their daily desperation to sound tough, Labour sacrificed hard-won civil liberties and trashed precious freedoms. Worst of all, they ignored the warning signs that the economic bubble they helped create had gone wrong, preferring to encourage irresponsible banks instead.
Getting the economy back on track is the coalition's core task. Britain has the largest budget deficit in Europe, save Ireland - we are spending £150 billion more than we raise in tax this year. That is like putting a quarter of your salary on a credit card and planning to do so again and again year after year. It has got to stop - and if it didn't we would all pay the price in higher interest rates and lower growth.
There is nothing fair about stacking up huge debts for future generations to pay off, so our priority is to build a strong economy for the future. That means investing in long-term measures to bring growth that lasts and rebalancing the economy so we don't again pin all our hopes on financial services. It's only by making the tough decisions about where and how to cut public spending that we can build sustainable economic growth - and ensure shared prosperity in the future.
I will be holding surgeries across the area over the next few days. Please do come along if you have anything you'd like to raise, local or national, and I will do my best to help. If you can't make it, e-mail me on [email protected].
Posted on: 17/08/2010
