The 1987 Conservative Party manifesto.

The Next Moves Forward

FOREWORD

In the last eight years our country has changed – changed for the better.

We have discovered a new strength and a new pride. We have fostered a new spirit of enterprise. We have risen to fresh challenges at home and abroad. Once again our economy is strong. Our industries are flourishing. Unemployment is falling.

Founded on this new prosperity, we are building a better Health Service and providing more care for those in need. Living standards are higher than ever before. Our people have the protection of a stronger defence and more police.

Britain has come right by her own efforts. We trusted in the character and talents of our people. The British instinct is for choice and independence. Given the opportunities provided by Conservative policies, many more families now enjoy the pride of ownership of homes, of shares and of pensions.

Together we are building One Nation of free, prosperous and responsible families and people. A Conservative dream is at last becoming a reality.

This Manifesto points the way forward.

MARGARET THATCHER

THE BRITISH REVIVAL

This manifesto sets out our vision for the Britain of the 1990s and beyond, a future based on the aspirations of millions of individuals and their families their hopes, their needs, their security. For the first time in a generation this country looks forward to an era of real prosperity and fulfilment.

A vast change separates the Britain of today from the Britain of the late 1970s. Is it really only such a short time ago that inflation rose to an annual rate of 27 per cent? That the leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union was widely seen as the most powerful man in the land? That a minority Labour Government, staggering from crisis to crisis on borrowed money, was nonetheless maintained in power by the Liberal Party in return for the paper concession of a Lib-Lab pact? And that Labour’s much-vaunted pay pact with the unions collapsed in the industrial anarchy of the “winter of discontent”, n which the dead went unburied, rubbish piled up in the streets and the country was gripped by a creeping paralysis which Labour was powerless to cure?

It seems in retrospect to be the history of another country. Yet these things happened and people had to accept them as an unavoidable part of everyday life.

Reversing the Decline

Remember the conventional wisdom of the day. The British people were “ungovernable”. We were in the grip of an incurable “British disease”. Britain was heading for “irreversible decline”.

Well, the people were not ungovernable, the disease was not incurable, the decline has been reversed.

• Britain today is in the seventh successive year of steady economic growth. We have moved from the bottom to the top of the growth league of major European countries.
• In Britain today. inflation has reached its lowest levels for almost twenty years.
• In Britain today, the number of strikes has dropped to the lowest levels for 50 years.
• In Britain today. far from being in debt to the IMF, we have built up our net overseas assets to their highest level since the Second World War – higher than France, Germany and the United States, second only to Japan.
• In Britain today. living standards are higher than ever before in our history.

But these are bald statistics. What matters is the feel of the country – the new enthusiasm for enterprise, the new spirit that Britain can make it, that we can prosper with the best. Investment in British industry is rising strongly. Our services sector, employing almost two-thirds of our workforce, generates a vast surplus of foreign earnings. And our manufacturers are travelling the globe with a new confidence born of the knowledge that Britain is internationally competitive again.

The World Stage

This national revival is not confined to increased economic strength. Britain is also playing a major part on the international stage. From the White House through Europe to the Kremlin our voice is heard on arms control, on East-West issues, on human rights, on the Middle East and on African affairs.

With the Conservative Government, Britain has played a strong and responsible role internationally. We have defended civilised values by fighting terrorism relentlessly. We have secured our national interests, as when we liberated the Falklands. We have been ready to settle long-standing issues like Hong Kong where we reached an agreement to safeguard the way of life of the people.

Time and again we have shown that we possess the essential requirements of successful diplomacy: we stand firm on principles yet are ready to negotiate and prepared to take decisive action.

Founded in Strength

The ability to act internationally does not come without effort. It must be founded on a strong economy and a robust defence. This Government took the necessary steps to build up both. Success has followed.

• Prudent financial policies have made Britain one of the world’s largest creditors. Today we are able to shape world efforts to sustain trade and promote international monetary co-operation.
• We gave a lead in NATO and installed Cruise missiles. Today, as a result, the Soviet Union is at last prepared to negotiate to remove its own missiles targeted against us.
• This Government is modernising our own independent deterrent. Today Britain retains an independent influence in arms control negotiations between the superpowers.

By such steadfastness, we have not only rebuilt our economy and re-established our world reputation; we have also regained our national self-respect. But restoring a country’s greatness is not easy. The new Conservative policies met bitter resistance every step of the way.

Remember:

The year-long coal strike, with its violence and intimidation on a massive scale. It failed and mining productivity has since soared.

The battle we had to fight to ensure that Britain paid no more than its fair share of the European Community Budget. We now get automatic rebates – this year, over £1.3 billion.

The doubling of the oil price which confronted the new Government with a world-wide recession – and, more recently, an equally dramatic fall in the oil price which halved government oil revenues and in earlier times would have threatened a collapse of confidence in the pound. Both these oil “shocks” were successfully withstood by prudent policies which have produced a sustained growth of prosperity.

And let us not forget the challenge of the Falklands War.

How many of the alternative governments on offer would have stood firm, overcome, or even survived such difficulties? Does anyone suppose that the Labour Party would have resisted, let alone defeated, the violence and intimidation in the coal strike? Or that the Liberals or the Social Democrats would have fought so hard for our rebate from the European Community? Or that any of the Opposition parties would have persevered through all these difficulties to break the back of inflation and restore honest money?

A Strong and Stable Government

How has it been done? All these improvements in the wealth and standing of our country have only been possible because we have had a strong government with sound policies and a decisive majority in Parliament. A weak government with uncertain policies would not have known how to withstand the pressures upon it; a government without a good overall majority in Parliament would not have been allowed to do so; and a strong government with unsound policies would have been a positive force for disaster.

In this election, only the Conservative Party is offering strong, decisive and united government.

The Next Moves Forward

The next Conservative Government will build on the achievements of the past eight years with a full programme of positive reform.

We will continue:

• to pursue policies of sound financial management, the conquest of inflation, the promotion of enterprise and the growth of employment;
• to spread the ownership of homes, shares, pensions and savings ever more widely to give families greater financial independence;
• to give people greater choice and responsibility over their own lives in important areas such as housing and education;
• to improve the well-being of the people through better health care, and to safeguard the living standards of those who have to depend on the community;
• to improve the quality of life by conserving the best of our heritage and our countryside, and by fostering provision for the arts and sport;
• to exercise strong leadership where government needs to be strong in protecting the nation against potential aggression and the citizen against lawlessness.

We intend to press on with the radical Conservative reform which we embarked upon in 1979, and which has already revived the spirit of our people and restored the reputation of our country.

WIDER OWNERSHIP AND GREATER OPPORTUNITY

Conservatives aim to extend as widely as possible the opportunity to own property and build up capital, to exercise real choice in education, and to develop economic independence and security.

Our goal is a capital-owning democracy of people and families who exercise power over their own lives n the most direct way. They would take the important decisions – as tenants, home-owners, parents, employees, and trade unionists rather than having them taken for them.

Of course, it is not possible to give people independence. That is something we must all achieve by our own efforts. But what this Conservative Government has done is to make it easier for people to acquire independence for themselves:

• by introducing the right to buy council houses;
• by returning nationalised industries to the people in ways that encourage the widest possible spread of ownership;
• by making it easier to buy shares in British industry through employee share schemes and Personal Equity Plans.

These opportunities – all too often introduced n the teeth of fierce resistance from the Opposition parties – have achieved spectacular results. There has been a surge of home- ownership, share-ownership and self-reliance.

And because these first-time shareholders and home-owners are more independent, they develop a more independent outlook. They are no longer content that some of the most important decisions in their lives what school their children attend, for example, or whether or not to go on strike should be taken by officialdom or trade union bosses. People want to decide such things for themselves.

In this way the scope of individual responsibility is widened, the family is strengthened, and voluntary bodies flourish. State power is checked and opportunities are spread throughout society. Ownership and independence cease to be the privileges of a few and become the birthright of all.

In this way One Nation is finally reached not by a single people being conscripted into an organised socialist programme but by millions of people building their own lives in their own way.

Better Housing for All

HOME OWNERSHIP

Nowhere has the spread of ownership been more significant than in housing. Buying their own home is the first step most people take towards building up capital to hand down to their children and grandchildren. It gives people a stake in society – something to conserve. It is the foundation stone of a capital-owning democracy.

A home should be a source of pride and independence to the family living in it, regardless of whether it is owned or rented. We will ensure that every family in the land has the opportunity to make it so.

Home-ownership has been the great success story of housing policy in the last eight years. One million council tenants have become home-owners and another one and a half million more families have become home-owners for the first time.

Two out of every three homes are now owned by the people who live in them. This is a very high proportion, one of the largest in the world. We are determined to make it larger still.

Some people are still deterred by the costs and complications of house purchase. That is why we must look for new ways to make house-buying simpler and easier. Our abolition of the conveyancing monopoly has already made it cheaper.

We will keep the present system of mortgage tax relief.

We will target improvement grants to where they are most needed – to the least well- off. To meet the special needs of old people, we will ensure that all local authorities have powers to give improvement grants, where necessary, for properties where elderly people move in with relatives. We will extend the 30 per cent housing association grant to help schemes for old people.

A RIGHT TO RENT

Most problems in housing now arise in the rented sector. Controls, although well-meant, have dramatically reduced the private rented accommodation to a mere 8 per cent of the housing market.

This restricts housing choice and hinders the economy. People looking for work cannot easily move to a different area to do so. Those who find work may not be able to find rented accommodation nearby. Those who would prefer to rent rather than buy are forced to become reluctant owner-occupiers or to swell the queue for council houses. Some may even become temporarily homeless.

And it is not only these people and their families who suffer from the shortage of homes for rent. The economy as a whole is damaged when workers cannot move to fill jobs because there are no homes to rent in the neighbourhood.

This must be remedied. We have already taken some modest steps in this direction by making it easier to part-own and part-rent homes through shared ownership; by bringing in and widening the scheme for assured tenancies; by our system of shortholds; and by providing a new 30 per cent housing association grant to build hostels for young workers. We have also directly tackled the problem of homelessness through new grants to housing associations and other measures.

More must now be done. The next Conservative Government, having already implemented the right to buy, will increase practical opportunities to rent.

We must attract new private investment into rented housing – both from large institutions such as building societies and housing associations as well as from small private landlords. To do this we intend, in particular, to build on two initiatives we have already taken,

First, to encourage more investment by institutions, we will extend the system of assured tenancies. This will permit new lettings in which rents and the period of lease will be freely agreed between tenants and landlords. The tenant will have security of tenure and will renegotiate the rent at the end of the lease, with provision for arbitration if necessary.

Second, to encourage new lettings by smaller landlords, we will develop the system of shorthold. The rents of landlords will be limited to a reasonable rate of return, and the tenant’s security of tenure will be limited to the term of the lease, which would be not less than 6 months. This will bring back into use many of the 550,000 private dwellings which now stand empty because of controls, as well as making the provision of new rented housing a more attractive investment.

And we will revise the housing benefit system to ensure that it prevents landlords from increasing rents to unreasonable levels at the taxpayer’s expense.

All existing private and housing association tenants will continue to have their present protection in respect of rents and security of tenure.

We will strengthen the law against harassment and unlawful eviction.

RIGHTS FOR COUNCIL TENANTS

Many council estates built in the sixties and seventies are badly designed, vulnerable to crime and vandalism and in bad repair. In many areas, rent arrears are high. In all, over 110,000 council dwellings stand empty. Yet it is often difficult for tenants to move. If they are ever to enjoy the prospect of independence, municipal monopoly must be replaced by choice in renting.

We will give groups of tenants the right to form tenant co-operatives, owning and running their management and budget for themselves. They will also have the right to ask other institutions to take over their housing. Tenants who wish to remain with the local authority will be able to do so.

We will give each council house tenant individually the right to transfer the ownership of his or her house to a housing association or other independent, approved landlord.

In some areas more may be necessary. The success of Estate Action and Housing Action Areas shows how a carefully targeted approach can transform an area of poor housing and give people there new hope. Our Urban Development Corporations have been successful in restoring derelict industrial areas. We believe that a similar approach could be adopted for housing in some places. We will take powers to create Housing Action Trusts initially as a pilot scheme to take over such housing, renovate it, and pass it on to different tenures and ownerships including housing associations, tenant co-operatives, owner-occupiers or approved private landlords.

We will reform the structure of local authority housing accounts so that public funds are directed at the problems of repair and renovation; maintenance and management are improved; resources are directed to the areas where the problems are greatest; rent arrears are reduced; and fewer houses are left empty.

Housing is the biggest single investment that most people make – whether in money or in time, skill and effort. In the last eight years, as a result of our policies, we have seen a dramatic increase in home-ownership. In the next five years, we will complement that with policies designed to improve the supply and condition of the rented housing stock.

A Capital-Owning Democracy

SHARE OWNERSHIP

Home-ownership leads naturally to other forms of financial provision for the future – notably to pensions and share-ownership. Half of the working population are in occupational pension schemes, but in 1979 only seven per cent of the population held shares.

People were deterred by the sheer unfamiliarity of owning shares. Young people were reluctant to save for a retirement which seemed far away. And most tax incentives encouraged saving through institutions rather than directly.

With a Conservative Government, all that has been changing. We were determined to make share-ownership available to the whole nation. Just as with cars, television sets, washing machines and foreign holidays, it would no longer be a privilege of the few; it would become the expectation of the many. We achieved this historic transformation in three ways:

First, we introduced major tax incentives for employee share-ownership. Seven out of the last eight budgets have included measures to encourage people to purchase shares in the company in which they work.

Second, starting this year, we brought in Personal Equity Plans, which enable people to invest in British industry entirely free of tax.

Third, we embarked on a major programme of privatisation, insisting that small investors and employees of the privatised companies should have a fair chance to join in the buying.

The results have been dramatic, and the direct consequence of government policy. Share ownership has trebled. Almost one in five of the adult population now own shares directly. And the figure will continue to rise. Of this total, the majority are first-time shareholders and most of them own shares in either privatised companies or the TSB group. One-and-a-half million people hold shares in the companies where they work.

After eight years of Conservative Government, Britain is now at the forefront of a world wide revolution in extending ownership. One in every five British adults now owns shares compared to one in ten Frenchmen and one in twenty Japanese. Only the Americans, where a quarter of the people are shareholders, remain ahead – and the gap is narrowing.

This is the first stage of a profound and progressive social transformation – popular capitalism. Owning a direct stake in industry not only enhances personal independence; it also gives a heightened sense of involvement and pride in British business. More realistic attitudes to profit and investment take root. And the foundations of British economic achievement are further strengthened.

We will press on with the encouragement of popular capitalism.

In the next Parliament:

• We will continue to extend share-ownership as we have done with home-ownership.
• We will reintroduce our proposed tax incentives for profit-related pay.
• We will privatise more state industries in ways that increase share-ownership, both for the employees and for the public at large.

Raising Standards in Education

Parents want schools to provide their children with the knowledge, training and character that will fit them for today’s world. They want them to be taught basic educational skills, They want schools that will encourage moral values: honesty, hard work and responsibility. And they should have the right to choose those schools which do these things for their children.

RAISING STANDARDS IN OUR SCHOOLS

How can all this best be done? Resources obviously matter. This Government has provided more resources for pupils than ever before.

With the Conservatives:

• Spending per primary pupil has risen by 17 per cent after allowing for inflation and per secondary pupil by 20 per cent under our Government.
• There are more teachers in proportion to pupils than ever before.
• British schools are world leaders in the use of computers in the classroom.

But money alone is not enough. Increased resources have not produced uniformly higher standards. Parents and employers are rightly concerned that not enough children master the basic skills, that some of what is taught seems irrelevant to a good education and that standards of personal discipline and aspirations are too low. In certain cases education is used for political indoctrination and sexual propaganda. The time has now come for school reform.

FOUR MAJOR REFORMS

First, we will establish a National Core Curriculum.

It is vital to ensure that all pupils between the ages of 5 to 16 study a basic range of subjects – including maths, English and science. In each of these basic subjects syllabuses will be published and attainment levels set so that the progress of pupils can be assessed at around ages 7, 11 and 14, and in preparation for the GCSE at 16. Parents, teachers and pupils will then know how well each child is doing. We will consult widely among those concerned n establishing the curriculum.

Second, within five years governing bodies and head teachers of all secondary schools and many primary schools will be given control over their own budgets.

They know best the needs of their school. With this independence they will manage their resources and decide their priorities, covering the cost of books, equipment, maintenance and staff. Several pilot schemes for financial devolution to schools have already proved their worth, such as those in Cambridgeshire and Solihull.

Third, we will increase parental choice.

The most consistent pressure for high standard in schools comes from parents. They have a powerful incentive to ensure that their children receive a good education. We have already done much through the 1980 and 1986 Education Acts so that parents can make their voice heard. But parents still need better opportunities to send their children to the school of their choice. That would be the best guarantee of higher standards. To achieve this:

We will ensure that Local Education Authorities (LEAs) set school budgets in line with the number of pupils who will be attending each school.

Schools will be required to enrol children up to the school’s physical capacity instead of artificially restricting pupil numbers, as can happen today. Popular schools, which have earned parental support by offering good education, will then be able to expand beyond present pupil numbers.

These steps will compel schools to respond to the views of parents. But there must also be variety of educational provision so that parents can better compare one school with another.

We will therefore support the co-existence of a variety of schools – comprehensive, grammar, secondary modern, voluntary controlled and aided, independent, sixth form and tertiary colleges as well as the reasonable rights of schools to retain their sixth forms, all of which will give parents greater choice and lead to higher standards.

We will establish a pilot network of City Technology Colleges. Already two have been announced and support for more has been pledged by industrial sponsors.

We will expand the Assisted Places Scheme to 35,000. This highly successful scheme has enabled 25,000 talented children from less-well-off backgrounds to gain places at the 230 independent schools currently in the scheme.

We will continue to defend the right to independent education as part of a free society. It is under threat from all the other parties.

Fourth, we will allow state schools to opt out of LEA control.

If, in a particular school, parents and governing bodies wish to become independent of the LEA, they will be given the choice to do so. Those schools which opt out of LEA control will receive a full grant direct from the Department of Education and Science. They would become independent charitable trusts.

In the area covered by the Inner London Education Authority, where entire borough councils wish to become independent of the LEA, they will be able to submit proposals to the Secretary of State requesting permission to take over the provision of education within their boundaries.

VILLAGE SCHOOLS

We recognise the important contribution made by small rural primary schools to education and to the community life of our villages. We will ensure, therefore, that the future of these schools is judged by wider factors than merely the number of pupils attending them.

PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION

Eighty per cent of all three- and four-year-olds in this country attend nursery classes, reception classes or playgroups. Formal nursery education is not necessarily the most appropriate experience for children. Diversity of provision is desirable. LEAs should look to support the voluntary sector alongside their own provision.

A BETTER CAREER FOR TEACHERS

We recognise the importance of teachers and wish to enhance their professional status. The Government has provided a record amount of money to increase their pay by an average 16.4 per cent this year 25 per cent over 18 months. Our new pay award will encourage able young people to enter the career of teaching and reward the many good teachers already in the profession.

The Burnham negotiating machinery finally broke down and has been temporarily replaced by an Interim Advisory Committee. The Government wants an effective and permanent machinery for settling teachers’ pay, in which the interests of all parties will be recognised.

The Government will produce a Green Paper setting out the various alternatives and will enter into wide consultations with a view to establishing a new and effective machinery.

Higher and Further Education

The British system of higher education is among the best in the world. It ranges from universities to further education colleges providing skills and qualifications. We recognise the value of research and scholarship for their own sake. At the same time we must meet the nation’s demand for highly qualified manpower to compete in international markets.

Building on our achievements since 1979 – 157,000 more full-time and part-time students we want to expand higher education opportunities still further. By 1990, we plan to increase student numbers by a further 50,000, and to raise the proportion of 18-year-olds in higher education.

We will replace the University Grants Committee with an independent statutory body on the lines recommended by the Croham Committee. The new body will be called the Universities Funding Council (UFC) and will have broadly equal numbers of academic and non-academic members with a chairman who has substantial experience outside the academic world. The primary responsibility of the UFC will be the allocation of funds to individual universities under new contractual arrangements.

Polytechnics are today strong, successful and mature institutions. They are complementary to the universities. Their present structure, under local authorities, is inappropriate for an expanding national role.

As part of our policy to delegate power and responsibility, we will legislate to convert the polytechnics and other mainly higher education colleges in England to free-standing corporate bodies under boards of governors.

We will set up a new Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council independent of central Government, in place of local authority control.

As part of our aim to widen access to higher education we have begun a review of student support which is the most generous in the western world. We need to modernise this system which has not changed for 25 years. The purpose of the review is to improve the overall prospects of students so that more are encouraged to enter higher education. No final conclusions have been reached, but we believe that top-up loans to supplement grants are one way, among others, of bringing in new finance to help students and relieve pressure on their parents.

We will take care to ensure that the best aspects of the present system are retained in any new proposals which we bring forward.

Trade Unions

It is not only in relation to government, however, that people’s right to choice and independence must be safeguarded and extended. Great social institutions can sometimes become too powerful and cease to represent their members, denying them any control over the decisions taken in their name and even forcing them to act against their own interests. That was the case with trade unions before 1979.

Since then, Conservative reforms have redressed the balance between the individual and his union, preventing coercion of the majority by activists and militants. These highly successful and popular measures have encouraged democracy within the unions, restrained the abuses of secondary action and picketing, reversed the growth of closed shops, restored the rights of redress against unions acting unlawfully and removed the immunity of unions that call a strike without a fair ballot.

The result has been a transformation of shopfloor relations, allowing management and workforce to co-operate to improve working practices and introduce new technology to mutual gain. In the next Parliament we will protect the rights of individual trade union members.

We will introduce legislation to:

• empower individual members to stop their unions calling them out on strike without first holding a secret ballot of members;
• protect individual members from disciplinary action if they refuse to join a strike they disagree with;
• ensure that all members of trade union governing bodies are elected by secret ballot at least once every five years;
• make independently supervised postal ballots compulsory for such elections;
• limit further the abuse of the closed shop by providing protection against unfair dismissal for all non-union employees, and removing any legal immunity from industrial action to establish or enforce a closed shop;
• provide new safeguards on the use of union funds;
• establish a new trade union commissioner with the power to help individual trade unionists to enforce their fundamental rights.

BUILDING PROSPERITY AND EMPLOYMENT

Since this Government took office in 1979, we have restored honest money and established a stable economic framework in which business can flourish. We have been careful not to spend money before we earned it. We have brought the nation back to living within its means. We have massively rebuilt our international assets. We have refused to be drawn into an auction of pledges for higher spending that the country simply could not afford. We have balanced the books. We have paid our way.

The results have been dramatic.

• Despite the coal strike and the collapse of the oil price, Britain has moved from being bottom to the top of the growth league of major European countries.
• Inflation has reached its lowest levels for almost 20 years.
• The basic rate of income tax has been cut from 33p to 27p, four taxes have been abolished, and almost a million and a half people have been taken out of income tax altogether.
• Over a million extra jobs have been created since 1983 more than in the rest of the European Community put together.
• Unemployment, a problem throughout Europe, is now firmly on a downward trend – with youth unemployment in this country below the European average.
• We have rebuilt our net overseas assets to some £110 billion from a mere £12 billion when we first took office. This will provide substantial foreign earnings in the years ahead and a cushion, should oil revenues fall.

While the Opposition parties cling to the failed policies of the past, our strategy has become widely accepted abroad. Socialist Spain as well as Christian Democratic Germany, Social Democratic Sweden as well as France, Labour New Zealand and Conservative Canada, all accept that governments must reduce their borrowing, curb state spending, reduce taxation, privatise state firms and do away with unnecessary controls. What we began in 1979 is today common international practice.

Stable Prices

Our greatest economic challenge on entering office was to defeat inflation. Rampant inflation under the Labour Government, when money lost a quarter of its value in a single year, had reduced our economy to “the sick man of Europe”.

Nothing erodes a country’s competitive edge faster than inflation. Nothing so undermines personal thrift and independence as to see the value of a lifetime’s savings eaten away in retirement through spiralling prices. And nothing threatens the social fabric of a nation more than the conflicts and divisiveness which inflation creates.

Our success in the battle against inflation has been the key to Britain’s economic revival. It required firm control of public expenditure, a substantial reduction in government borrowing, curbing the growth of money in circulation, maintaining financial discipline, stimulating competition and moderating trade union power.

The Opposition parties opposed nearly every aspect of this strategy. If even some of their policies were implemented today, higher borrowing and higher spending would once again unleash inflation.

There is no better yardstick of a party’s fitness to govern that its attitude to inflation. Nothing is so politically immoral as a party that ignores that yardstick.

The Conservative Government will continue to put the conquest of inflation as our first objective. We will not be content until we have stable prices, with inflation eradicated altogether.

Lower Taxes

We are the only Party that believes in lower taxation.

As the Party determined to achieve growing prosperity we recognise that it is people who create wealth, not governments. Lower taxation coupled with lower inflation makes everyone better off. It encourages people to work harder, to be inventive and to take risks. It promotes a climate of enterprise and initiative.

Lower tax on earnings enables people to build up savings to give them financial security in later life.

Lower taxation, by increasing take-home pay without adding to industry’s costs, improves competitiveness and helps with jobs. And tax relief for charitable donations encourages more people to give and to give more generously.

There is a strong moral case for reducing taxation. High taxes deprive people of their independence and make their choices for them. The desire to do better for one’s family is one of the strongest motives in human nature. As a party committed to the family and opposed to the over-powerful State, we want people to keep more of what they earn, and to have more freedom of choice about what they do for themselves, their families and for others less fortunate.

Governments should trust people to spend their own money sensibly and decently; high taxation prevents them doing so.

That is why we have:

• cut the basic rate of tax from 33p to 27p in the £, and increased the personal allowances (the starting point for paying tax) by 22 per cent more than inflation.
  If Labour’s tax regime were still in force, the family man on average earnings would today be paying more than £500 per year in extra income tax: a headmaster married to a nurse would be paying more than £1,300 extra;
• reduced sharply the absurd top rates of tax inherited from Labour which were causing so many of our most talented people to work abroad;
• increased greatly the tax relief for charitable donations. Giving to charities has doubled since we first took office;
• abolished four taxes completely: the national insurance surcharge – the tax which Labour put on jobs – the investment income surcharge, the development land tax and the lifetime gifts tax;
• reformed and simplified corporation tax, and cut its rate to the lowest of any major industrial country;
• cut the small business corporation tax rate by more than a third, and extended it to many more small businesses;
• reformed and reduced capital taxes as well as slashing stamp duty.

In every case where taxes have been reformed and reduced there has been an increase in the amount of tax collected.

Labour totally fail to understand the benefits this brings to everyone. Today they openly threaten to raise taxation. To fulfil their plans, they would have to raise taxes substantially. Indeed, all the Opposition parties Labour, Liberals and SDP – would raise taxation. We believe that it is precisely the wrong thing to do.

It will be our aim to do the opposite.

In the next Parliament:

• We aim to reduce the burden of taxation.
• In particular, we will cut income tax still further and reduce the basic rate to 25p in the £ as soon as we prudently can.
• We will continue the process of tax reform.

Spending We Can Afford

Over the past eight years we have managed the nation’s finances with care. Even allowing for inflation, this has enabled us to spend substantially more on the Health Service (up by 31 per cent), defence (up by 23 per cent), roads (up by 17 per cent), education per pupil (up by 18 per cent), the police and the battle against crime (up by 47 per cent), the disabled and long-term sick (up by 72 per cent), and government training schemes (up by 120 per cent).

How have we been able to do this without running into the financial crises which Labour’s spending policies invariably set off?

First, we have been prudent with the nation’s money. We have slashed public borrowing and sought savings in government expenditure wherever they could sensibly be found.

Second, we are engaged in steadily reducing the share of the nation’s income taken by the State. This means that more will be left for families and for business to invest – the only safe route to higher growth in the economy.

Third, we have constantly improved the efficiency of the public services, ensuring that we get more value for every pound spent.

For the next Parliament:

• Our aim is to ensure that public expenditure takes a steadily smaller share of our national income.
• Within that objective, we will continue to spend more on our priorities. We have set out our plans for further increased spending in these areas over the next three years.

CREATING NEW JOBS

High unemployment is one of the most intractable problems facing all Western industrialised countries.

We understand the anxiety and stress which unemployment can cause. For almost a year unemployment in the United Kingdom has fallen faster than among any of our major competitors in Europe, and faster than at any time since 1973. It is falling because of the growth and enterprise we have achieved, assisted by the employment and training programmes we have developed.

Since we were last re-elected in 1983, the number of jobs has risen by over 1 million more than in the rest of the European Community put together. This Government has established the conditions in which business can prosper and create new jobs. This has not just been achieved through the revitalisation of traditional industries. We have encouraged growth in those crucial areas of new enterprise which provide the foundation for the jobs of the future – self-employment, small firms, the creation of new enterprise, the expanding service sector – particularly tourism and leisure – and new technology.

Self-employment is the seedcorn of the new enterprises of tomorrow. Without sufficient people to start new businesses, the future of our whole economy is in jeopardy. Today we have the highest number of self-employed for over 60 years. One worker in ten is now his own boss – or her own boss, since a quarter of the self-employed are women. Indeed, the eighties have seen almost three-quarters of a million people become self-employed. More and more of our young people today seek self-employment as a worthwhile career. It is particularly encouraging that almost half the growth in self-employment since 1983 has been in the northern part of our country.

Small firms, along with all businesses, have benefited from our management of the economy. Since this Government took office, the number of registered businesses has shown a net increase of more than 500 a week – and the number has increased in every region of the country.

Helping Unemployed People into Jobs

As well as creating a climate in which business could employ more people, we have developed programmes to help those out of work.

The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) caters for school-leavers aged 16 and 1 7 who wish to participate in training and work experience. Every trainee is given the opportunity of working towards a recognised qualification.

The new Job Training Scheme (JTS), which started in April this year, will offer a chance to any person over 18 who has been unemployed for six months or more, who wants to work and train with an employer for a recognised qualification. This year it will help nearly a quarter of a million people.

Under our Community Programme, each year over 300,000 people who have been out of work for some time gain valuable experience working on community projects. They have a reference to show potential employers.

We will improve the Community Programme to make it full-time and better able to help those with families. We shall pay those working on the programme an allowance giving a premium over and above their social security payments.

Under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, 230,000 unemployed people have started to work for themselves. Many of them have now become employers themselves.

JobClubs were first opened in 1985 to help the unemployed help themselves back into jobs. Over 1,000 have been established. At present two-thirds of those leaving JobClubs go into employment.

The JobClubs programme has been a great success. We aim to expand it.

Our economic success means that we can now do more to help those out of work.

Although youth unemployment has declined in the last year it still remains a problem. Far too many of our youngsters leave school with an education that has failed to prepare them for the world of work. At the same time, by maintaining high starting wages comparable to those of fully trained craftsmen, trade unions have kept many of them out of work.

In 1983 we introduced the first Youth Training Scheme. It is now a national two-year programme aimed at giving young people qualifications for work.

THE FIRST GUARANTEE

We will now guarantee a place on the Youth Training Scheme to every school-leaver under 18 who is not going directly into a job.

As a result, none of these school-leavers need be unemployed. They can remain at school, move to college, get a job, or receive a guaranteed training. YTS will serve as a bridge between school and work.

We will take steps to ensure that those under 18 who deliberately choose to remain unemployed are not eligible for benefit. We will of course continue to protect other young people, such as those who suffer from disabilities.

THE SECOND GUARANTEE

There are still too many young people without the right qualifications for employment in today’s world.

Within a year we aim to guarantee a place, either on the Job Training Scheme or on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme or in a JobClub, for everyone aged between 18 and 25 years who has been unemployed for between six and twelve months.

THE THIRD GUARANTEE

In addition to these major programmes we have taken one further important step.

Restart is a programme we have set up for interviewing and counselling the long-term unemployed to help them into a job or training. Everyone who has been unemployed for more than one year has already been given an interview.

We will guarantee to provide the Restart service in the future at six-monthly intervals, to all those who have been unemployed for more than six months.

Over the next five years we will aim, through the Restart interviews, to offer everyone who is under 50, and who has been unemployed for more than two years, a place in the Job Training Scheme or in the new Community Programme, in a JobClub or in the Enterprise Allowance Scheme.

REGIONAL ASSISTANCE

Money spent on earlier programmes attracting firms to regions has sometimes created very few jobs. Our new system of regional assistance, introduced in 1984, ensures that aid is directly targeted towards the creation of new jobs. New activities in the service sector from which so many of the new jobs come have also been made eligible for assistance. Under the new policy, offers of assistance have already been made which should secure almost 300,000 jobs. We will continue to ensure that assistance is directed where it is most needed.

The Employment and Training Services

We will take further steps to provide a comprehensive service to the unemployed. We will consult the Manpower Services Commission about transferring JobCentres to the Department of Employment so that they can work more closely with Unemployment Benefit Offices.

The Manpower Services Commission would then become primarily a training agency. It is employers who are best equipped to assess their training needs.

We will increase employer representation on the Commission and its advisory bodies.

More jobs are being created by business and industry. Nothing would destroy whole industries more effectively than a return to the overmanning and restrictive practices of the 1970s. Our policies form a practical and realistic approach to help people back into work. We will build on prosperity to create more employment.

A FRAMEWORK FOR BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY

British business is in a healthier state than it has been for a generation. Output has been rising steadily for six years. Productivity has increased at a rate second only to Japan. Company profitability is at its highest for over twenty years. Industry has a confidence in the future that would have been unthinkable seven years ago.

Moreover, setting new records has not been confined to the private sector. Since 1983 productivity in the coal industry has risen by over 50 per cent. British Steel has more than doubled its productivity since 1979 and made a profit last year for the first time in over ten years. British Rail will cost the taxpayer 25 per cent less in subsidy this year than n 1983 and without any major route closures.

The Conservative Government has created a framework in which once again enterprise can flourish – by cutting red tape, by denationalising state-owned companies, by removing unnecessary restrictions, by abolishing exchange control, by enabling the City of London to become the foremost financial centre in the world, by keeping down prices through extending competition, and by ensuring access to open trade so that British exporters and consumers can both benefit.

Privatisation

Over a third of the companies and industries which used to be owned by the State have been returned to free enterprise. Productivity and profitability have soared in the newly privatised companies.

• In 1980 Jaguar made 14,000 cars a year, losing well over £3,000 on each Car sold. Now the company is hard put to keep up with overseas demand and last year sold over 40,00 cars, making a pre-tax profit of over £120m.
• Since the National Freight Consortium was sold to management and staff in 1982, pre-tax profits have increased sevenfold.
• British Aerospace, Cable & Wireless, Amersham International and Associated British Ports have all strikingly increased their profits.

It is no mystery why privatisation has succeeded. The overwhelming majority of employees have become shareholders in the newly privatised companies. They want their companies to succeed. Their companies have been released from the detailed controls of Whitehall and given more freedom to manage their own affairs. And they have been exposed to the full commercial disciplines of the customer. Even former monopolies now face increased competition.

We will continue the successful programme of privatisation.

In particular, after the privatisation of the British Airports Authority we will return to the public the Water Authorities, leaving certain functions to a new National Rivers Authority.

Following the success of gas privatisation, with the benefits it brought to employees and millions of consumers, we will bring forward proposals for privatising the electricity industry subject to proper regulation.

Competition

Competition forces the economy to respond to the needs of the consumer. It promotes efficiency, holds down costs, drives companies to innovate and ensures that customers get the best possible value for money.

Accordingly, this Government has:

• deregulated long-distance coach services creating over 700 new services with improved quality and lower fares;
• removed the monopoly on conveyancing of houses in England and Wales;
• removed the opticians’ monopoly, making it easier and cheaper to buy spectacles;
• relaxed advertising controls on accountants, solicitors, stockbrokers and vets, and permitted greater fee competition for architects and surveyors;
• increased competition on air routes within the UK and between certain European countries, which has resulted in cheaper fares, a more responsive service and greater choice of carriers for the passenger;
• deregulated telecommunications, so that customers can now choose between suppliers when buying telephones and private exchanges, and business can choose between two alternative telecommunications networks;
• suspended the Post Office monopoly of time-sensitive and valuable mail, stimulating a dramatic increase in the number of private courier companies.

We will continue this approach.

But competition must be supplemented by legal protection for consumers. Those who make their living from their ideas and creations also require protection against theft.

We will introduce further measures to impose tighter controls on pyramid selling.

We will introduce measures to reform the law on copyright, design and performance protection.

The City

The City of London is the world’s leading market place in foreign exchange, international bank lending and international insurance, It is a major source of funds for British companies. The financial services sector as a whole accounts for nearly 6 per cent of our national income, generates a net £7 billion per year to our balance of payments, and employs over one million people.

Like other sections of British industry, however, the City was held back by restrictive practices until they were swept away in last year’s “big bang”. This has brought nearer the day when shares can be bought and sold over the counter in every high street. We have also given building societies greater freedom to make a wider range of financial services available to the average family.

At the same time, the Conservative Government has introduced a legal framework to protect investors and consumers:

• The Companies Acts of 1980 and 1981 strengthened the powers of investigators and increased the courts’ power to disqualify directors for misconduct in the City as elsewhere.
• The Insolvency Act of 1985 made it easier to disqualify directors who had been guilty of unlawful trading.
• And now the Financial Services Act of 1986 provides the first comprehensive system of investor protection we have had in this country. It also contains stringent new powers to investigate insider dealing which was first made a criminal offence by the Conservative Government in 1980.

The Conservative Party is the party of law and order. That applies just as much to City fraud as to street crime.

Parliament has just approved our proposals for establishing a Serious Fraud Office to improve the work of investigating and prosecuting the worst cases of fraud and for streamlining court procedure. After the election we will reintroduce our proposals to reform the outdated rules on evidence, as recommended by the Roskill Committee.

Trade

Britain exports 30 per cent of all that it produces. If this country is to remain a key trading nation, industry must remain competitive. That is one reason why the Conservative Government attaches great value to maintaining an open multinational trading system. Another is that increased trade is a major way of encouraging growth and prosperity in the Third World. There is little point in demanding more aid for these countries and then refusing them the opportunity to trade.

We will continue to fight for free and fair trade in international negotiations and resist the growth of protectionism.

We will press for international rules of fair trading to be extended to international investment, trade in services and the protection of intellectual property such as patents, trademarks and copyright.

We will continue to exert pressure on countries such as Japan to open up their markets and provide the same freedom to trade for our exporters as they expect us to provide for theirs.

As well as creating the commercial and legal framework in which industry can flourish, the Government must also ensure that the practical services on which industry and the citizen rely – transport, energy, research and development, and an efficient civil service – are provided to a high standard.

Efficient Transport

The Conservative Government is proud of a record that has:

• modernised the transport system by investing over £10 billion in the nation’s motorways, roads, airports, seaports and railways;
• since 1979 completed over 680 miles of motorway and trunk roads and 67 bypasses;
• secured greater efficiency by privatising British Airways, the National Freight Corporation, Sealink and Associated British Ports;
• increased competition by deregulating long-distance coach services and abolishing local bus licensing.

These measures have laid the foundations of an efficient and more flexible transport system. We will develop it further along these lines. We are now returning the nationalised bus companies to the private sector in many cases to management buy-outs. We are also privatising the former British Airports Authority the world’s leading international airports group.

We are committed to a major capital investment programme through:

• new investment to build an extra 450 miles of motorway and trunk roads to 1989/90;
• British Rail’s plans to invest £500m a year over the next 3 years;
• private sector financing, construction and operation of the Dartford Bridge and the Channel tunnel.

Energy

Britain is the only major Western industrial country that is a net exporter of energy. This owes much to North Sea oil so successfully developed by free enterprise. But it is an advantage that will not last indefinitely.

Coal will continue to meet much of the steadily rising demand for electricity. Renewable sources of energy can make some contribution to the nation’s energy needs, which is why government-sponsored research has been increased. Nevertheless, to reject, as our opponents do, the contribution of nuclear energy to supplying reliable, low-cost electricity, and to depend on coal alone, would be short-sighted and irresponsible.

The world’s resources of fossil fuels will come under increasing strain during the 21st century; so may the global environment if the build-up of carbon dioxide the so-called “greenhouse effect” significantly raises temperatures and changes climates.

After the most careful and painstaking independent assessment of the safety case for a new pressurised water reactor at Sizewell, therefore, the Government has decided to proceed with the next phase of our nuclear programme. It is vital that we continue to give the highest priority to safety. Our nuclear industry has a record of safety and technical excellence second to none.

We intend to go on playing a leading role in the task of developing abundant, low-cost supplies of nuclear electricity, and managing the associated waste products.

Science and R & D

Government support for research and development amounts to more than £4½ billion per year. It is larger as a share of our national income than that of the United States, Japan or Germany. A country of our size cannot afford to do everything. These resources need to be better targeted. The task of government is to support basic research and to contribute where business cannot realistically be expected to carry all the risks.

We will ensure that government spending is firmly directed towards areas of high national priority, by extending the role of the Advisory Council on Applied Research and Development, drawing on the full range of advice from the academic community and from business.

The Civil Service

We have long had in this country a professional and dedicated public service which is the envy of the world. We are now building on those traditional qualities which can too easily be taken for granted with new strengths and skills: a greater readiness to adapt efficiently to change, including technological change, to manage the public service more effectively, and to see that the taxpayer gets value for money. The size of the Civil Service at under 600,000 people today is the smallest since the war. This is already saving the taxpayer £1 billion a year.

We will press on with long-term management reforms in order to improve public services and reduce their cost.

AGRICULTURE AND THE RURAL ECONOMY

Farming

Britain’s farmers serve the nation well. They produce 80 per cent of the food we grow compared with 60 per cent only 10 years ago. They have made us into the world’s sixth largest exporter of cereals when we had been a net importer for decades before. They look after 80 per cent of the British countryside. And consumer food prices have risen less than the cost of living, unlike the Labour years.

But farmers world-wide are under pressure because of rising surpluses and the huge costs of disposing of them. It is just as much in the farmers’ interest as in the consumers’ and taxpayers’ that this over-production be stopped and a radical overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy achieved. Farmers need a more sustainable environment in which to plan ahead.

We will continue:

• to play a leading part in European Community negotiations to reform the CAP;
• to strive for even-handed and fair treatment between Member States and between the different regions of the UK;
• to work for an early devaluation of the Green Pound, especially in relation to beef; to uphold the interests of the efficient family farm;
• to reduce costs and tackle surpluses, by bringing supply and demand in the Community
• into better balance by a combination of measures including price restraint;
• to reduce the role for intervention, At home we will continue:
• to promote competitiveness and innovation in British farming and horticulture;
• to give particular assistance to farmers in the Less Favoured Areas, recently extended, where farming is difficult;
• to encourage better marketing of agricultural and horticultural products and to ensure that the consumer has as much information about the contents of food as is necessary to make sensible choices.

We will not introduce rating on agricultural land and will oppose two-tier pricing in the CAP, which would greatly disadvantage our farmers and benefit their competitors.

The Rural Economy

Farming is, and will remain, the major industry in the countryside and food production will continue to be the farmer’s basic purpose. The higher production resulting from greater efficiency and modern techniques initially means more land coming out of agriculture. A new balance of policies has to be struck, with less support for expanding production of commodities already in over-supply and more support for diversifying into other activities.

We have recognised the new needs of the countryside and rural economies in two ways. First, we now place more emphasis on support for the environment and the beauty of the countryside; we now give grants to plant hedgerows, not dig them up. Second, we encourage alternative uses of land and more diverse job opportunities to maintain thriving communities in the rural economy.

We will therefore:

• emphasise environmental protection and promotion of non-farming rural businesses in the planning system;
• continue to support the Development Commission in developing rural enterprises;
• extend the Environmentally Sensitive Areas scheme which makes conservation a more integral part of farming;
• introduce new schemes to assist diversification of new enterprises on farms;
• introduce a new Farm Woodland Scheme to assist alternative land use.

The UK Fishing Industry

Our fishing industry supplies two-thirds of the fish we eat. It is an important source of jobs and income in many areas.

The Government’s success in further improving the Common Fisheries Policy has meant that international policing has been made more effective; and increasingly stringent conservation measures have secured the future for our fleets.

We will introduce legislation to ensure that UK quotas are reserved for UK fishermen. We are pledged to measures to enable our fishermen to take full advantage of all their opportunities and to improve and modernise their boats.

Animal Welfare

The Conservatives have a proud record over the years of promoting animal welfare. Most of the legislation was either initiated by Conservative governments or introduced as Private Members’ measures by Conservative MPs when the Conservatives were in office.

Since 1979 we have:

• set up the Farm Animal Welfare Council which advises the Government on the welfare of farm animals. We will continue to care for them with the advice and guidance of the Farm Animal Welfare Council;
• honoured our commitment to replace the 1876 legislation with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 – the most effective in Europe. It imposes tight new controls on the use of animals for experiments. The number of experiments has declined in each of the last nine years, and we expect that decline to continue.

BETTER HEALTH, BETTER CARE

Achievements in Health

The health of the British people is steadily improving. Quite simply, we live longer. Life expectancy has increased and infant mortality has declined.

Over the last eight years the Government has spent more on the Health Service than any previous government, Labour or Conservative. In 1979, the outgoing Labour Government planned to spend less than £8 billion on the nation’s health. This year, the Conservative Government will spend nearly £21 billion. After allowing for inflation, that is an increase of almost a third. This extra money has been spent wisely and well. The Health Service today is treating more patients than ever before in its history.

Money is important, but the success of the NHS depends still more on the dedication of the people working in it. There are over 75,000 more doctors, dentists and nurses than in 1978. These extra staff have enabled the NHS to treat 6 million more patient cases – in-patients, day cases, out-patients than when we took office. Sometimes they work in very difficult conditions. That is why the Government has reduced nurses’ basic hours from 40 to 37 1/2 hours per week and increased their pay by 30 per cent after allowing for inflation.

We will continue to improve the Health Service.

Future Tasks for the Health Service

Our policies rest on six principles:

First, we will give greater emphasis to the prevention of avoidable illness and the promotion of good health to make the NHS more truly a health service and not merely a sickness service.

Much progress has been made in the past eight years.

• The improvement of the maternity services has helped to reduce by a third the death rate among babies in the weeks around birth.
• The expansion of vaccination and immunisation has prevented illness and death among children.
• Screening for cervical cancer has been improved and death rates from the disease have fallen by almost 10 per cent in the past decade.
• We have already embarked on a major campaign to tackle the problem of coronary heart disease.
• To fight AIDS, the Government has undertaken the biggest health education campaign ever seen in this country one much admired abroad and is fully supporting the Medical Research Council in a special programme of research towards treatments and vaccines.

These are welcome advances.

In the next Parliament, we will build on this work by:

• completing the network of computerised ‘call and recall’ systems for cervical cancer screening. and extending them to younger women;
• developing a national programme for breast cancer screening;
• backing the newly established and powerful Health Education Authority.

Second, we will continue to show our support for the million people working in the NHS, of whom half are nurses.

Nurses wanted the assurance that, without recourse to strike action, they would receive fair treatment over pay. That is why we set up the independent Nurses’ Pay Review Body. After the latest award, we will have increased nurses’ pay by 30 per cent since 1979, after allowing for inflation. That compares to the severe reduction of more than 20 per cent, which they suffered under the last Labour Government.

Nurses also want a training and career structure which reinforces their professionalism, rewards experience, and offers opportunities for managerial responsibility without being removed to a distant desk. We share those views, and will seek to further them. We are particularly keen to attract experienced nurses back into the profession, and to encourage others to take up nursing as a new career.

Hospital doctors and consultants, too, are a vital part of the Health Service. We have already increased the number of consultant posts and we will continue to work for improvements in the medical career structure.

The NHS could not function without ancillary services. Some of these cleaning, catering, and laundry have been put out to competitive tender to enable health authorities to select the best and most effective way of providing these services. Savings are now approaching £100 million a year and they have gone directly and immediately into better patient care.

We have undertaken consultation on the improvement of primary care. Our aim is to develop the strength and flexibility of the services provided by GPs, dentists, pharmacists, opticians and nurses who work in the community.

There are particular problems affecting health care in inner cities. Doctors and nurses there take on a particularly tough and difficult job. We shall continue to look for new ways of helping them and improving health care, especially primary care in the inner cities.

Our third principle is to modernise the whole framework of the health service its hospitals, its clinics, its equipment.

In the face of economic collapse, the last Labour Government cut the hospital building programme by a third. This Government has embarked on the biggest building programme ever. It will cost £3 billion. In seven years we have already carried through over 200 major building projects from start to finish.

We will complete some 125 further major new building schemes in the next three years, and get many more under way.

New hospitals, too, are being built in areas lacking the provision they need. Old and inefficient Victorian buildings are being replaced with purpose-built modern hospitals. Much modern medicine and surgery is better carried out in the new larger hospitals, equipped with new medical technology. Wherever possible, however, small old hospitals have found a new role as community hospitals staffed by local GPs.

Fourth, elderly, disabled, mentally ill and mentally handicapped people, should be cared for within the community whenever this is right for them.

In the past some people who should have been cared for in other ways have remained in hospitals, sometimes for years. That is changing. The number of children in long-stay hospitals for the mentally handicapped has fallen by almost three-quarters. The number of adults in long-stay mental handicap and mental illness hospitals has fallen by around 11 000.

This changing pattern has already brought a better life to many thousands of people. It has the potential to do so for many thousands more. But we need to examine carefully various alternatives to discover what is now best for patients. We have set in hand the first ever full-scale review of community care.

We will develop our policies in the light of its findings.

Our fifth principle is to strengthen management.

The NHS is a large and complex organisation. It needs good management. It is not a business, but it must be run in a business-like way.

The reduction of waste and inefficiency has released hundreds of millions of pounds for better patient care. The sale of property which the NHS no longer needs – for example, because of new hospital developments is currently raising £200 million a year for better health care.

We will continue to ensure that the Health Service is as efficient as possible.

But good management is not just a matter of efficiency. We value enterprise in the public service just as much as in the private sector. We will continue to encourage district and regional managers to devise new ways of providing better patient care.

Finally, the ultimate purpose of the Health Service is to serve the patient: that principle is at the heart of the Government’s policy.

The time some patients have to wait for treatment is the most widespread concern in the NHS. The Government has given priority to reducing waiting lists and times. We have set up a special £50 million two-year programme. This year it will give treatment to over 100,000 people who are waiting for operations. We have set targets for more hip operations for old people, and more bone marrow transplants for children.

Putting patients first was the theme of our consultative document on primary care. We want the patient to have more information about services available from family doctors so that they can make a more informed choice.

Social Security – a Fair Deal for Those in Need

We are spending about £46 billion this year on social security benefits over £800 a year for every man, woman and child in the country. Expenditure on pensions and other benefits has risen by £13 billion on top of inflation, since we came into office. Most of this, an extra £9 billion, has gone to provide better standards of help and support to more elderly people, families with children, disabled people and those suffering long-term illness. The other £4 billion has gone to help the unemployed. But we have done more than provide extra resources massive as the increase has been.

For the first time for 40 years the Government has undertaken an overall review of the social security system. The review showed a social security system which was too complex and which too often did not provide help for those most in need. The 1986 Social Security Act tackled these problems and reformed the position so that the system is simpler to understand and to run. It will be fairer in the way it directs help to those who need it most. And it will be a system in which people can look forward to independence and security in retirement.

Our policies for social security have four main aims.

First, to ensure that those in retirement have a secure standard of living through state provision and their own pensions and savings.

This Government has honoured its pledges to the pensioner and more than maintained the buying power of the state pension. Total spending on state pensions and benefits for elderly people has risen by 29 per cent after allowing for inflation.

We will continue to maintain the value of the state retirement pension.

But retired people value their independence. They do not want to rely on the State alone for their income nor, increasingly, are they doing so. We share Beveridge’s original goal of a good basic pension from the State, together with a second income from occupational and personal pensions and savings.

Pensioners have benefited from our success against inflation. Almost three-quarters of all pensioners have savings. Their income from these has grown by over 7 per cent on average every year since 1979. Income from savings fell by 3.2 per cent every year under the last Labour Government, eaten away by inflation.

Occupational pensions, pensioners’ savings, social security benefits and the state retirement pension have all increased. The total increase in income for the average pensioner is more than double that achieved during the last Labour Government.

We are now offering new opportunities for people to obtain additional pensions from their jobs or their own savings. We have already improved the treatment of those now retiring early and of the pension rights of people changing jobs.

We wish to encourage the 10 million employees who do not yet have their own occupational pension scheme to have a pension of their own. Every employee should have the right to take out a personal pension, fully portable from job to job. That is why we are extending favourable tax treatment from employers’ schemes to personal pensions.

As a result of these reforms, millions more people will have the opportunity to take out additional pensions of their own.

In the next Parliament:

We will reintroduce measures to give substantial tax incentives to personal pensions, and to enable members of occupational schemes to make additional voluntary contributions to a pension plan that is completely separate from their employers’ schemes. These measures will further increase choice for millions of employees.

Second, to bring more help to low income families.

Child benefit will continue to be paid as now, and direct to the mother. Families on income support which replaces supplementary benefit will benefit from the new family premium. In addition, we will introduce the new family credit which will benefit twice as many low income families in work as family income supplement. The new system will also help tackle both the unemployment and the poverty traps.

Third, to improve the framework of benefits for disabled people.

Spending on benefits for disabled people and those suffering long-term sickness has been increased by 72 per cent after inflation to £6 billion. The amount spent on mobility allowances has been doubled, invalid care allowance extended, the new severe disablement allowance introduced and the invalidity trap abolished. The introduction of the new disablement premiums will bring an extra £50 million per year to disabled people.

We are carrying out a major new survey of the needs of disabled people. This will be completed next year.

Fourth, to reform the tangled web of income-related benefits which has grown up piecemeal over forty years.

For the first time all the income-related benefits will be calculated in the same way. Where people are working, the amount of benefit they get will depend on their pay after tax and national insurance contributions. Thus people will not be made worse off by taking a job and will not lose money when their gross pay rises.

The new rules, which come into effect in April next year, will be easier for claimants to understand and staff to run. In addition, our programme of computerisation – the biggest programme ever in this country will help staff to deliver benefits to all who are entitled to them quickly, accurately and courteously.

Success in social policy depends on growth in national prosperity. Labour’s economic failure led to damaging cuts in health care and benefits. Our increasing economic strength means that resources for care have grown and are growing – with programmes better managed, better adapted to changing demands, and better directed to those most in need.

FREEDOM, LAW AND RESPONSIBILITY

Conservatives have always believed that a fundamental purpose of government is to protect the security of the citizen under the rule of law. There can be no half-heartedness, no opting out, in the fight against crime and violence: all of us, not just the Government or the police, share a responsibility to make safer our streets and homes.

The Fight Against Crime

We do not underrate the challenge. Crime has been rising steadily over the years; not just in Britain but in most other countries, too. The origins of crime lie deep in society: in families where parents do not support or control their children; in schools where discipline is poor; and in the wider world where violence is glamorised and traditional values are under attack.

Government alone cannot tackle such deep-rooted problems easily or quickly. But Government must give a lead: by backing, not attacking the police; by providing a tough legal framework for sentencing; by building the prisons in which to place those who pose a threat to society – and by keeping out of prison those who do not; and by encouraging local communities to prevent crime and to help the police detect it. All this we have done; and we will intensify these efforts.

• The manpower available to the police has been increased by 16,500 since 1979.
• We have given the police more powers to avert public disorder.
• We have encouraged tougher sentences for violent criminals. The maximum penalties for trafficking in hard drugs and for attempted rape have been raised to life imprisonment. The courts have been empowered to strip drug traffickers of their profits.
• We have brought forward a number of reforms to help tackle child abuse and make it more likely that offenders will be successfully prosecuted.
• We have embarked on the biggest prison building and modernisation programme this century and increased staff numbers by almost a fifth.

Care for the Innocent

At the same time we have extended protection for innocent people and for the victims of crime.

• We have strengthened the safeguards against any abuse of police power by setting up an independent police Complaints Authority, providing for the tape-recording of police interviews and setting down clear rules on the proper treatment of the individual citizen.
• We have given special priority to helping the victims of crime. Police treatment of rape victims has been made more sensitive. More criminals now pay compensation to their victims. We are providing more money to help local Victim Support Schemes.
• We have launched a determined drive to improve the administration of justice by providing for time limits by which the cases of those held in custody must be heard. 58 more Circuit Judges have been appointed and 43 court building projects have been completed.

Better Justice

The challenge before us remains great; but much has been done. The great majority of those who commit serious crimes of violence are brought to book. There are more police, better equipped to fight crime. Those who commit serious crimes can now expect much tougher punishment.

Early in the new Parliament the Criminal Justice Bill will have to be reintroduced. It will:

• enable child victims of physical and sexual abuse to give evidence by a live video link n order to reduce the anguish which they would otherwise face;
• raise to life imprisonment the penalty for carrying firearms while committing a crime;
• tackle, by providing for reference to the Court of Appeal, the problem of lenient sentences which undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system;
• give victims of crime a statutory right to compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme;
• build on our previous measures stripping drug traffickers of the proceeds of their crimes and extend the same approach to other serious crimes.

We have already signed an extradition treaty with the United States which will make it more difficult for terrorists to escape British justice: now we will reform our own law on extradition so as to make still more effective the international war against crime.

Building on Strength

We will continue to put a high priority on the fight against crime, so that the citizen can feel safe on the street or in his home.

We will:

• increase the number of police further to ensure a stronger police presence on our streets, to combat crime and to protect the public;
• strengthen the law dealing with the sale and possession of offensive weapons;
• maintain the operational independence of the police and resist pressure from the Opposition parties to politicise the police by letting local authorities decide policing priorities;
• continue our present prison building programme and achieve more professional and efficient working practices in the prison service;
• institute a thorough review of the workings of the parole system.

Our approach in all these cases is strongly supported by the general public. We will go further in drawing on that support by promoting crime prevention. Already more than 29,000 Neighbourhood Watch Schemes have sprung up since the last Election. We are committed to the success of this popular anti-crime movement.

We will build on the support of the public by establishing a national organisation to promote the best practices in local crime prevention initiatives.

We will seek ways to strengthen the special constabulary.

Tackling Drug Abuse

We have taken the battle against drugs into every corner of the globe where production or trafficking flourishes. We have more than doubled the number of customs specialist drug investigators. We have strengthened the effectiveness of the police in the fight against drug abuse. Traffickers can now be sentenced to life imprisonment. They also stand to lose all the wealth generated by their evil trade under the most far-reaching asset seizure provisions anywhere in the world.

We have funded about 200 new drug treatment facilities. Our prevention campaign, targeted on youngsters at risk, is encouraging a strong resistance to hard drugs amongst teenagers.

The battle against drugs can and must be won. Already there are some signs that the heroin problem may have passed its peak. The cocaine explosion has never happened. It need never happen.

We will continue to make the defeat of the drug trade a key priority.

Immigration and Race Relations

Immigration for settlement is now at its lowest level since control of Commonwealth immigration first began in 1962. Firm but fair immigration controls are essential for harmonious and improving community relations.

We will tighten the existing law to ensure that the control over settlement becomes even more effective.

We now require visas for visitors from the Indian sub-continent, Nigeria and Ghana, both to protect genuine travellers and to guard against bogus visitors seeking to settle here illegally. We are tackling the problem of those who fraudulently pose as refugees and who seek to exploit Britain’s long tradition of giving refuse to the victims of persecution.

We want to see members of the ethnic minorities assuming positions of leadership alongside their fellow citizens and accepting their full share of responsibility. Racial discrimination is an injustice and can have no place in a tolerant and civilised society. We are particularly concerned about racial attacks. They require effective and sympathetic attention from the police and we have ensured that increasingly they receive it.

Progress towards better community relations must be on a basis of equality. Reverse discrimination is itself an injustice and if it were to be introduced it would undermine the achievement and example of those who had risen on their merits.

Immigrant communities have already shown that it is possible to play an active and influential role in the mainstream of British life without losing one’s distinctive cultural traditions. We also want to see all ethnic minorities participating fully in British culture. They will suffer permanent disadvantage if they remain in linguistic and cultural ghettos.

Reforming the Law

Since the last election the Government has made a number of important reforms of family law. These cover the law of maintenance and distribution of property following divorce, measures to prevent the abduction of children and the law of illegitimacy.

Particular laws which are not enforced or which are full of obvious anomalies risk bringing the law itself into disrepute. Changing tastes also require the reform of outdated laws which govern personal habits and behaviour: such reform should where possible be on the basis of a wide consensus.

The present laws on Sunday trading and licensing contain innumerable anomalies. They are frequently flouted.

We will therefore look for an acceptable way forward to bring sense and consistency to the law on Sunday trading.

And we will liberalise the laws on liquor licensing hours so as to increase consumer choice, but we will also keep a sensible limit on late-night opening.

We have already extended absent voting rights to new categories of electors. In particular we have enfranchised British citizens who have lived abroad for less than 5 years.

We propose to extend this eligibility.

Northern Ireland

The British people have shown their commitment to the people of Northern Ireland in the common fight against terrorism, and in helping improve the economic and social situation in the Province. We resolutely support the security forces in their outstanding service to the whole community.

We are determined that terrorism will not succeed; that the vital principles of democracy will be upheld; and that the people of Northern Ireland themselves should determine their constitutional position.

We will maintain, against Socialist opposition, for as long as is necessary the special powers which the police need throughout the UK to prevent terrorism and bring terrorists to justice.

There will be no change in the present status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom unless the people of Northern Ireland so wish it.

That is at the heart of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which was signed with the Republic of Ireland in 1985. The Agreement offers reassurance to both sides of the community that their identities and interests will be respected, and that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people of the Province. It commits both governments to work together in the fight against terrorism.

We will continue to work within the Province for a devolved government in which both communities can have confidence and will feel able to participate.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND INNER CITIES

The Conservative view of local government is that local people should look after the interests of the local community which they were elected to serve, maintaining and improving essential services at a price people can afford. That is an honourable tradition of public service, still upheld by councillors in most local authorities.

But the abuses of left-wing Labour councils have shocked the nation. The Labour Party leadership pretends that this is a problem in only a few London boroughs. The truth is that the far Left control town halls in many of our cities.

The extremists have gained power in these areas partly because too few ratepayers have an interest in voting for responsible councillors pursuing sensible policies. Many people benefit from local services yet make little or no contribution towards them: this throws too heavy a burden on too few shoulders.

There is much else wrong with the present system of domestic rates. They seem unfair and arbitrary. And companies are left with little protection against huge rate rises levied by councils controlled by Labour, Liberals and Social Democrats, which drive them out of business and destroy jobs.

We have acted to protect ratepayers’ interests in a number of ways. The wasteful and unnecessary tier of the GLC and metropolitan counties has been eliminated – to the substantial benefit of ratepayers. Our rate-capping legislation so bitterly opposed by the Labour, SDP and Liberal parties in Parliament has protected ratepayers from huge rate increases. This year alone, twenty councils will be rate-capped nineteen of them Labour and one controlled by the Liberals and the SDP saving ratepayers several hundred million pounds.

We will now tackle the roots of the problem. We will reform local government finance to strengthen local democracy and accountability.

Local electors must be able to decide the level of service they want and how much they are prepared to pay for it.

We will legislate in the first Session of the new Parliament to abolish the unfair domestic rating system and replace rates with a fairer Community Charge.

This will be a fixed rate charge for local services paid by those over the age of 18, except the mentally ill and elderly people living in homes and hospitals. The less-well-off and students will not have to pay the full charge but everyone will be aware of the costs as well as the benefits of local services. This should encourage people to take a greater interest in the policies of their local council and in getting value for money. Business ratepayers will pay a Unified Business Rate at a standard rate pegged to inflation.

We will require local authorities to put out to tender a range of services, including refuse collection, the cleaning of streets and buildings, vehicle maintenance, catering and ground maintenance.

Ratepayers expect councils to provide their services as efficiently as possible. Yet some local authorities steadfastly oppose private sector companies tendering for services even though they could provide them more cheaply and effectively. The independent Audit Commission has estimated that some £500 million a year could be saved if all councils followed the practices of the best sums which could be used to lower rates or improve services.

The Widdicombe Report into the conduct of local authority business painted a disturbing picture of the breakdown of democratic processes in a number of councils. We will take action to strengthen democratic processes in local authorities.

Inner Cities

The regeneration of the inner cities must be tackled. The growth in our national prosperity in recent years has been founded on a rebirth of enterprise. But in many of our inner cities the conditions for enterprise and pride of ownership have been systematically extinguished by Socialist councils. For the sake of those living in our inner cities we must remove the barriers against private investment, jobs and prosperity which such councils have erected.

We are setting up five new Urban Development Corporations which will have the powers, resources and management structure to reclaim and redevelop great tracts of derelict land: these new Corporations will follow the model successfully applied in London Docklands and on Merseyside.

Our Unified Business Rate will ensure that companies and jobs are not driven out of inner city areas by the high rates of profligate councils.

We have roughly doubled the resources to reclaim derelict land. We will improve procedures to accelerate the process of bringing vacant and under-used public sector land back into productive use.

We will build on the experience of Urban Development Corporations by creating new mini-UDCs. These will operate on a smaller scale in areas where there is clear economic potential but where the local authorities are failing to tackle the problem.

Our Urban Programme provides a range of grants to help industry and local councils undertake projects that will improve the environment and encourage new investment.

We are helping to lead local action through our five City Action Teams, sixteen Inner City Task Forces and the Inner City Partnerships. All of them draw on government assistance and work with local business and local people to promote enterprise, employment and training.

Great cities are built on the enterprise and vitality of the individuals who live there. Our aim is to create a climate which encourages and harnesses that energy in the interests of all.

A BETTER SOCIETY

Planning and the Environment

Conservatives are by instinct conservationists – committed to preserve all that is best of our country’s past. We are determined to maintain our national heritage of countryside and architecture. Since taking office we have:

• more than doubled the area of specially protected Green Belt: we will continue to defend it against unsuitable development;
• established new arrangements, backed with public funds, to make farming more sensitive to wildlife and to conservation;
• completed the work of listing pre-war buildings which receive legal protection and extended such protection to the best post-war buildings;
• established a new, powerful Pollution Inspectorate;
• passed new laws on the control of pesticides and implemented new controls on the pollution of water;
• put in hand plans for cleaning up Britain’s beaches, costing over £300 million over the next four years;
• more than doubled spending after allowing for inflation on countryside and nature conservation since 1979;
• set in hand the establishment of the new Norfolk Broads Authority – a major environmental initiative;
• established a huge programme, costing over £4,000 million, to clean up the environment of the Mersey Basin by the early years of the next century.

We are determined to maintain the Green Belt. We will protect the countryside for its own sake and conserve its wildlife, while allowing for those small scale and well planned developments which are needed to provide jobs and keep country areas thriving.

Wherever possible we want to encourage large-scale developments to take place on unused and neglected land in our towns and cities rather than in the countryside. We want to improve on our performance in 1986 when nearly half of all new development took place on reused land.

A Practical Agenda

Only the Conservatives have a serious costed agenda for further environmental action for another five years of Government. We will:

• continue our £600 million programme of modifying power stations, to combat acid rain;
• adopt improved standards, in concert with Europe, for reducing pollution from cars. We have already reduced tax on lead-free petrol and will encourage its wider use;
• introduce new laws on air pollution and dangerous wastes;
• double the funding for Environmentally Sensitive Areas;
• introduce new laws giving extra protection to the landscape of our National Parks;
• encourage more small woodlands in lowland areas through new grants;
• legislate to safeguard common land on the basis of the Common Land Forum, and continue to protect public access to the countryside through footpaths;
• support scientifically justified, international action to protect the atmosphere and the sea from damage from pollutants;
• establish a National Rivers Authority to take over responsibilities for ensuring strict safeguards against the pollution of rivers and water courses and to pursue sound conservation policies. The water supply and sewage functions of the water authorities will be transferred to the private sector;
• set up safe facilities for disposing of radioactive waste from power stations, hospitals and other sources: we have asked UK NIREX to come forward with proposals for deep disposal.

The Arts

Our international reputation in the arts has never been higher. Tourists flock to this country to enjoy the highest standards of theatre, music, artistic excellence and our museums. Art centres have nearly doubled in number since 1979. Attendances at theatres, concerts, cinemas and historic houses have all risen significantly.

Under the Conservatives, spending on the arts has risen by 15 per cent since 1979 after allowing for inflation. Over the same period, the Arts Council grant has risen from £61 million to nearly £139 million. And schemes like the Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme have pushed the value of such sponsorship from £72 million to £25 million over the last decade.

In future years:

• We will maintain government support for the arts and continue to encourage private support.
• We will make it a major objective to ensure that excellence in the arts is available in all parts of the country.
• We will continue to safeguard our heritage, particularly through the National Heritage Memorial Fund, created by this Government in 1980 to assist the preservation, maintenance and acquisition of items of outstanding merit which might otherwise be lost to the nation.
• We will encourage our great national museums and galleries to make the national treasures which they house more widely accessible.

Sport

We have increased funding for the Sports Council from £15 million in 1978/79 to £37 million in 1987/88.

We will continue to work with the Council and, through our funding of the Sports Council National Centres, we will encourage the pursuit of excellence in our sports.

We want to encourage competitive sports through schools and clubs and we strongly oppose any attempts to ban competitive sports in schools.

We will continue to encourage schools and colleges to open their facilities for community use wherever possible to co-operate with other owners to achieve public access to sport premises.

Football hooliganism has tarnished the good name of British sportsmanship. We have acted to control the sale of alcohol at sports grounds. We have enhanced police powers to stop and search at football grounds and we have encouraged tougher sentencing of hooligans.

Broadcasting

Our objectives for broadcasting are to provide consumers with a wider range of programmes, to encourage independent producers, and to preserve the high standards which we have traditionally enjoyed in British broadcasting.

Vital decisions will need to be made in the next Parliament. We have already published proposals for a less regulated and more diverse radio system. We shall follow a policy of more competition, variety and innovation in our domestic networks and encourage the export of British programmes to international audiences and markets. The development of the broadcasting industry will be allowed to occur, wherever possible, commercially.

We will therefore introduce a major new Broadcasting Bill in the new Parliament. It will enable the broadcasters to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by technological advances and to broaden the choice of viewing and listening.

The broadcasters owe it to the lively talent in the independent sector to take more programmes from them.

We will ensure that at least 25 per cent of programmes broadcast on both ITV and BBC will be supplied by independent producers as soon as possible.

The responsibility for enforcing broadcasting standards must rest with the broadcasting authorities. The present Broadcasting Complaints Commission has a relatively narrow remit. But there is deep public concern over the display of sex and violence on television. We will therefore bring forward proposals for stronger and more effective arrangements to reflect that concern.

We will remove the current exemption enjoyed by broadcasters under the Obscene Publications Act 1959.

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

Britain is once again giving a lead in world affairs. We are forthright in support of freedom and justice. We stand up vigorously for Britain’s interests abroad. Our voice is heard with respect on the crucial issues of war and peace, of finance and trade.

Defending the Nation

The first duty of government is the defence of the realm and the preservation of peace. Nuclear weapons are vital to that task. In the 40 years since 1945, more than 10 million people have died in wars around the globe. But there has been peace in Europe.

Conventional weapons did not succeed in deterring war. But nuclear weapons have prevented, not only nuclear war, but conventional war in Europe as well. A strong defence policy has proved to be the most effective peace policy.

Labour’s policy is to give up Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent without asking anything in return. The Labour Party would require the United States to withdraw its nuclear weapons from our soil and to close down NATO nuclear bases in Britain. It would remove Britain altogether from the protection of the United States’ nuclear umbrella.

That policy would abandon the defence policy followed by every British government, Labour or Conservative, since the Second World War. It would expose us to nuclear blackmail from the vast Soviet armoury, to which we would have no reply. It would inflict damage, perhaps fatal damage, on the Atlantic Alliance on which we and Western Europe depend for our security. It would strike at our relations with our most important ally, weakening the American commitment to Europe’s defences. It would, in short, be the biggest victory for the Soviet Union in 40 years.

The defence policy of the Liberals and Social Democrats is muddled and confused. They would cancel Trident and they have no clear idea of what to put in its place. Their suggested replacements are much more expensive than Trident, which costs only 3p in every £ of defence spending. None would be available in time. None would provide equal security.

The Liberal and SDP defence policy would be one-sided disarmament by default or inadvertence. The only difference between it and Labour policy is a matter of timing. Labour would scrap Britain’s deterrent immediately upon entering office. The Liberals and Social Democrats would allow it to wither on the vine.

Only the Conservative Party stands by the defence policy which every post-war government has seen to be necessary and which has kept the peace of Europe for more than a generation. We are not prepared to take risks with Britain’s security:

• We will stand fully by our obligations to our European and American allies in NATO.
• We will retain our independent nuclear deterrent and modernise it with Trident. Because of improvements in Soviet defences we need the greater capability of Trident to retain the necessary deterrence which Polaris gives. No amount of money spent on conventional defence would ever buy us the same degree of deterrence.
• We will continue to increase the effectiveness of our conventional forces, to provide them with the most modern equipment and to obtain better value for money from the defence budget. We have already increased defence spending by more than 20 per cent in real terms since 1979 and restored the pay and conditions of our servicemen.

But we also want to see a world in which there are fewer nuclear weapons. That is why Britain is at the forefront of arms control negotiations.

We strive with our allies to achieve balanced and verifiable agreements for:

• the elimination of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe and preferably world-wide;
• agreed constraints on shorter-range missiles;
• a 50 per cent cut in strategic nuclear missiles;
• and a world-wide ban on chemical weapons.

Western strength and resolution are essential to achieve these aims. That is why the Conservative Government deployed Cruise missiles. All the Opposition parties – Labour, Liberals and SDP – voted against deployment in the House of Commons. Yet it was the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles which brought the Soviet Union back to the negotiating table. We can look forward to an agreement this year which will, for the first time, reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons.

With the Conservatives Britain is also taking the lead in working towards greater trust and confidence between East and West, and to encourage changes in the East, where disillusion with totalitarian Socialism grows inexorably. The Prime Minister’s historic visit to Moscow was a major contribution to this. We shall welcome any move by the Soviet Union towards respect for basic human rights. But we must not lower our guard. Strong defence is still the surest foundation for building peace.

Europe Grows in Strength

This Government has taken Britain from the sidelines into the mainstream of Europe. But being good Europeans does not prevent us from standing up for British interests. The agreement we negotiated on the Community Budget has saved Britain £4,500 million since 1984.

We will continue to work for strict controls on the Community Budget.

Britain has led the way in establishing a genuine common market, with more trade and services moving freely across national boundaries.

We will campaign for the opening of the market in financial and other services and the extension of cheaper air fares in Europe.

We will also continue to work with our European partners to defend our own trading interests and press for freer trade among all nations.

All of this will help safeguard existing jobs and create new ones.

We will continue to play a responsible leading role in the development of the Community, while safeguarding our essential national interests.

Firm Against Terrorism and Aggression

Britain has stood at the forefront in the fight against international terrorism. No democracy has a better record than Britain in standing up to the terrorists, who threaten the most basic values of civilised life.

We will seek the support of other democratic nations for the provisions of the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism.

We stood up to aggression in the Falklands and would do so again, if necessary. We want normal relations with Argentina. We have made numerous proposals to that end. But we stand by our pledges to the Islanders. We will not negotiate on the sovereignty of the Falklands.

The Wider World

When other countries are prepared to act in good faith, the Conservative Government has shown the will and the diplomatic skill to find solutions to age-old conflicts and misunderstandings. Our record of tackling long-standing problems in Hong Kong, Zimbabwe and Gibraltar demonstrates our determination to seek peaceful and imaginative settlements of difficult international disputes. We have played a prominent part in bringing Israel and the moderate Arab states closer to peace negotiations in the framework of an international conference.

We believe that the issues of Southern Africa, too, will be tackled best by dialogue, not violence. We want to see an end to apartheid in South Africa. But trade and economic sanctions would only serve to entrench apartheid, increase the risk of bloodshed and inflict severe hardship on black South Africans without bringing a settlement any nearer. Negotiations between the leaders of the South African people are the best way to resolve the problems of that unhappy country.

Overseas Aid

We have the sixth largest aid programme in the western world, and the third largest in Europe, spending about £1,300 million each year. Britain pioneered the reform of Europe’s food aid policy, to make it more rapid and effective. We have substantially increased our support for the disaster, famine and refugee relief activities of voluntary agencies, as well as for their long-term development work. We have led the way in giving help to the people of Ethiopia, ravaged by famine. Our “Aid and Trade Provision” funds have helped win good development contracts for British firms worth over £2 billion since 1979.

We will maintain our substantial aid programme and direct it ever more effectively.

We will bring more young people from Commonwealth and other countries to train and study in Britain.

We ourselves have made positive and practical proposals for international action to help some of the poorest and most indebted countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Labour’s proposal of selective import controls would damage developing countries, open the door to protectionism and harm those poorest countries which most need our help. It would also be bad for Britain. The best contribution Britain can make to developing countries is to champion open trade and free enterprise abroad and to practise them at home.

A Fateful Choice

For decades there was basic agreement between political parties on defence and foreign policy. That agreement was firmly in the national interest. It has been torn up by our opponents.

Labour’s policy would mean not a secure Britain, but a neutralist Britain. And eventually for there can be no trifling with Soviet power a frightened and fellow-travelling Britain.

The Liberals and Social Democrats would take us more slowly down that same disastrous road.

This election matters more for our safety and freedom than any election since the Second World War.

CONCLUSION: THE WAY FORWARD

The proposals outlined in this manifesto are the extension of policies which have already proved outstandingly successful.

Today Britain is a stable and well-governed country which exercises great influence in the world.

We seek the support of the British people to make this achievement truly secure, to build upon it and to extend its benefits to all.

No previous government with eight years of office to its credit has ever presented the electorate with such a full programme of radical reform.

No other party, presenting its manifesto proposals to the nation, has been able to support them with such a solid record of achievement.

We commend them with confidence to the British people.

The 1983 Conservative Party manifesto.

FOREWORD – THE CHALLENGE OF OUR TIMES

In the last four years, Britain has recovered her confidence and self-respect. We have regained the regard and admiration of other nations. We are seen today as a people with integrity, resolve and the will to succeed.

This Manifesto describes the achievements of four years of Conservative government and sets out our plans for our second term.

The choice before the nation is stark: either to continue our present steadfast progress towards recovery, or to follow policies more extreme and more damaging than those ever put forward by any previous Opposition.

We face three challenges: the defence of our country, the employment of our people, and the prosperity of our economy.

How to defend Britain’s traditional liberties and distinctive way of life is the most vital decision that faces the people at this election.

We have enjoyed peace and security for thirty-eight years – peace with freedom and justice. We dare not put that security at risk.

Every thinking man and woman wants to get rid of nuclear weapons. To do that we must negotiate patiently from a position of strength, not abandon ours in advance.

The universal problem of our time, and the most intractable, is unemployment.

The answer is not bogus social contracts and government overspending. Both, in the end, destroy jobs. The only way to a lasting reduction in unemployment is to make the right products at the right prices, supported by good services. The Government’s role is to keep inflation down and offer real incentives for enterprise. As we win back customers, so we win back jobs.

We have a duty to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, many of whom contributed to the heritage we now enjoy. We are proud of the way we have shielded the pensioner and the National Health Service from the recession.

Only if we create wealth can we continue to do justice to the old and the sick and the disabled. It is economic success which will provide the surest guarantee of help for those who need it most.

Our history is the story of a free people – a great chain of people stretching back into the past and forward into the future.

All are linked by a common belief in freedom, and in Britain’s greatness. All are aware of their own responsibility to contribute to both.

Our past is witness to their enduring courage, honesty and flair, and to their ability to change and create. Our future will be shaped by those same qualities.

The task we face is formidable. Together, we have achieved much over the past four years. I believe it is now right to ask for a new mandate to meet the challenge of our times.

MARGARET THATCHER

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

Britain is once more a force to be reckoned with. Formidable difficulties remain to be overcome. But after four years of Conservative government, national recovery has begun.

When we came to office in May 1979, our country was suffering both from an economic crisis and a crisis of morale. British industry was uncompetitive, over-taxed, over-regulated and over-manned. The British economy was plagued by inflation. After only a brief artificial pause, it was back into double figures. This country was drifting further and further behind its neighbours. Defeatism was in the air.

We did not disguise the fact that putting Britain right would be an extremely difficult task. The second sharp oil price increase and the deepest world recession since the 1930s have made those difficulties worse. At the same time, the Western world is passing through another transformation from the age of the smokestack to the era of the microchip. Traditional industries are being transformed by the new technologies. These changes have led to a rapid rise in unemployment in almost every Western country.

Our opponents claim that they could abolish unemployment by printing or borrowing thousands of millions of pounds. This is a cruel deceit. Their plans would immediately unleash a far more savage economic crisis than their last; a crisis which would, very soon, bring more unemployment in its wake.

The truth is that unemployment, in Britain as in other countries, can be checked and then reduced only by steadily and patiently rebuilding the economy so that it produces the goods and services which people want to buy, at prices they can afford.

What We Have Achieved

This is the task to which we have steadfastly applied ourselves with gradually increasing success. Prices are rising more slowly now than at any time for fifteen years. Britain is now among the low-inflation nations of the Western world. Output is rising.

We are creating the conditions in which trade and industry can prosper. We have swept away controls on wages, prices, dividends, foreign exchange, hire purchase, and office and factory building.

We have returned to free enterprise many state firms, in order to provide better service to the customer and save taxpayers’ money.

We have cut income tax rates and raised allowances at all levels.

We have more than protected pensions against rising prices. We have strengthened the National Health Service. We have given council tenants the right to buy their own homes.

We have strengthened the police and the armed forces of the Crown.

We have done all this and more, and still kept our promise to bring public spending under control.

We have paid off nearly half the overseas debts the Labour Party left behind. Once the IMF’s biggest borrower, we are now playing a leading part in strengthening international trade and finance – to the benefit of the poorest countries on earth.

And we have acted so that people might live in freedom and justice. The bravery, skill and determination with which Britain’s task force recaptured the Falklands reverberated around the world. Many small nations gave thanks for that stand; and our allies in the North Atlantic are heartened by what Britain achieved in the South Atlantic.

Over the past four years, this country has recaptured much of her old pride. We now have five great tasks for the future. They are:

• to create an economy which provides stable prices, lasting prosperity and employment for our people;
• to build a responsible society which protects the weak but also allows the family and the individual to flourish;
• to uphold Parliamentary democracy and strengthen the rule of law;
• to improve the quality of life in our cities and countryside;
• to defend Britain’s freedom, to keep faith with our allies in Europe and in NATO, and to keep the peace with justice.

These tasks will require sustained determination, imagination and effort from Government and people alike.

JOBS, PRICES AND UNIONS

During the years of recession, now coming to an end, even the most successful of our competitors have faced increasingly serious problems and mounting unemployment. Despite all these difficulties, the Conservative Government has been overcoming Britain’s fundamental problems: restoring sound money, setting a better balance between trade unions and the rest of society, bringing efficiency to the nationalised industries, and developing effective policies to mitigate the curse of unemployment.

The foundations of recovery have been firmly laid. In the next Parliament, we shall build on this progress.

Success Against Inflation

Steadier prices and honest money are essential conditions for recovery. Under the last Labour government, prices doubled and inflation soared to an all-time peak – despite the existence of a battery of controls on prices, profits, dividends and pay.

Today, there are no such controls. Yet prices are rising more slowly than at any time since the 1 960s. During the last year, inflation has come down faster in Britain than in any other major economy. With lower inflation, businessmen, families, savers and pensioners can now begin at last to plan and budget ahead with confidence.

In the next Parliament, we shall endeavour to bring inflation lower still. Our ultimate goal should be a society with stable prices.

We shall maintain firm control of public spending and borrowing. If Government borrows too much, interest rates rise, and so do mortgage payments. Less spending by Government leaves more room to reduce taxes on families and businesses.

We shall continue to set out a responsible financial strategy which will gradually reduce the growth of money in circulation – and so go on bringing inflation down.

Our opponents are once again proposing the same financial policies that led to such appalling inflation and chaos in the past.

Labour’s ‘National Economic Assessment’ is a stale repeat of the Social Contract which ended so disastrously in the Winter of Discontent. Once again, the Labour Party is committed to carry out trade union leaders’ instructions in exchange for mere expressions of goodwill.

Commonsense in Pay Bargaining

With lower inflation. we have seen a return to commonsense in pay bargaining. Uncertainty and anxiety about rising prices have contributed to the absurdly high pay claims that destroyed so many jobs. As inflation subsides, people in work can see the prospect of real, properly-earned improvements in their living standards – which have gone up by more than 5 per cent on average over the last four years. So long as sensible government policies are matched by sensible attitudes in industry and commerce, these living standards can continue to improve.

The last four years have shown that a bureaucratic machine for controlling wages and prices is quite unnecessary. It simply stores up trouble and breeds inefficiency.

But Government remains inescapably responsible for controlling its own costs. We are committed to fair and reasonable levels of pay for those who work in the public services. We shall therefore continue to seek sensible arrangements for determining pay in the Civil Service and the National Health Service, following the Megaw Report and the resolution of the NHS pay dispute.

It is equally our duty to the nation as a whole to prevent any abuse of monopoly power or exploitation of the sick, the weak and the elderly. So we must continue to resist unreasonable pay claims in the public sector.

Trade Union Reforms

In the return to more sensible pay bargaining, the trade unions have an important part to play.

They can be powerful instruments for good or harm, to promote progress or hinder change, to create new jobs or to destroy existing ones. All of us have a vital interest in ensuring that this power is used democratically and responsibly.

Both trade union members and the general public have welcomed the 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts, which restrain secondary picketing, encourage secret ballots, curtail abuse of the closed shop, and restore rights of redress against trade unions responsible for committing unlawful acts.

But some trade union leaders still abuse their power against the wishes of their members and the interests of society. Our 1982 Green Paper, Democracy in Trade Unions, points the way to give union members control over their own unions. We shall given union members the right to:

• hold ballots for the election of governing bodies of trade unions;
• decide periodically whether their unions should have party political funds.

We shall also curb the legal immunity of unions to call strikes without the prior approval of those concerned through a fair and secret ballot.

Political Levy

Consultations on the Green Paper have confirmed that there is widespread disquiet about how the right of individual trade union members not to pay the political levy operates in practice, through the system of contracting-out. We intend to invite the TUC to discuss the steps which the trade unions themselves can take to ensure that individual members are freely and effectively able to decide for themselves whether or not to pay the political levy. In the event that the trade unions are not willing to take such steps, the Government will be prepared to introduce measures to guarantee the free and effective right of choice.

Essential Services

The proposal to curb immunity in the absence of pre-strike ballots will reduce the risk of strikes in essential services. In addition, we shall consult further about the need for industrial relations in specified essential services to be governed by adequate procedure agreements, breach of which would deprive industrial action of immunity. The nation is entitled to expect that the operation of essential services should not be disrupted.

Involving Employees

Good employers involve their employees by consulting them and keeping them fully informed. This is vital for efficiency as well as harmony in industry. We shall continue to encourage it. Many employers have already done much in recent years to establish a long-needed sense of common purpose with their workforces. We shall resist current attempts to impose rigid systems of employer/employee relations in Britain. We will continue to encourage workers to identify with the success of the firm for which they work, by the promotion of share-ownership and profit-sharing.

In each of the last two years, largely as a result of tax changes we have introduced, about a quarter of a million employees have acquired shares in the companies that employ them.

When state industries are offered to the private sector, we have given their employees the chance to buy shares in them, and many have exercised this right.

Unemployment: Coping with Change

During the last four years, unemployment in the industrialised countries has risen more sharply than at any time since the 1 930s. Britain has been no exception. We have long been one of the least efficient and most over-manned of industrialised nations. We raised our own pay far more, and our output far less, than most of our competitors. Inevitably, this pushed prices up and drove countless customers to buy from other countries, forcing thousands of employers out of business and hundreds of thousands of workers out of jobs.

At the same time, there has been a rapid shift of jobs from the old industries to the new, concentrated on services and the new technologies. Tragically, trade unions have often obstructed these changes. All too often this has delayed and reduced the new and better-paid jobs which could replace those that have been lost.

This Government has an impressive record in helping the unemployed who, usually through no fault of their own, are paying the price of these past errors.

We have committed over £2,000m. this year to training and special measures for the unemployed. This is supported by substantial help from the European Community’s Social Fund, amounting to over £250m. in 1982. As long as unemployment remains high, we shall maintain special measures of this kind, which bring effective help to many of those who have no job.

This year, some 1,100,000 people are being trained or helped by the most comprehensive programme of its kind in Europe.

For the first time, the new Enterprise Allowance Scheme offers many thousands of unemployed people the support they need, but previously could not get, while they start their own businesses. We will maintain special help for the long-term unemployed through the Community Programme, and for the older unemployed through early retirement schemes.

Removing the Barriers to Jobs

We shall go on reducing the barriers which discourage employers from recruiting more staff, even when they want to. And we shall help to make the job market more flexible and efficient so that more people can work part-time if they wish, and find work more easily.

That is why we have amended the Employment Protection Act and why we shall continue to:

• minimise the legal restrictions which discourage the creation of new jobs;
• encourage moves towards greater flexibility in working practices, such as Part-Time Job Release, which makes it financially possible for people nearing retirement age to go part-time; and the Job-Splitting Scheme which helps employers to split a whole-time job into two part-time jobs;
• improve the efficiency of the employment services in identifying and filling job vacancies;
• ensure that Wages Councils do not reduce job opportunities by forcing workers to charge unrealistic pay rates, or employers to offer them.

Training

If we are to make the most of the employment opportunities that present themselves in an age of rapid change and more varied patterns of work and occupation, up-to-date training is essential.

Training for work must start with better, more relevant education at school. For school leavers, we have provided the most imaginative and far-reaching scheme in our history. The Youth Training Scheme offers every 16-year old a year of serious training for work. It should help 350,000 youngsters by the autumn of this year. From now on, no one leaving school at 16 need be unemployed in his first year out of school.

This is only a part of our wider strategy to ensure effective training for the skills and jobs of tomorrow – on a scale and of a quality to match the world’s best. At its heart is our reform of industrial training and the apprenticeship system.

We are improving the scope and quality of our training for the employed and unemployed alike; tackling problems which the Labour Party has never had the courage to face.

We shall continue to provide for, and improve, the special employment and training needs of the disabled, and to reform our training agencies to meet more effectively the needs of industry and workers alike.

The Nationalised Industries

Reform of the nationalised industries is central to economic recovery. Most people who work in these industries work hard and have a sense of public service. Since 1979, we have gone to great lengths to improve the performance of the state sector, to appoint top-class managers and work closely with them to tackle each industry’s problems.

But for all this, few people can now believe that state ownership means better service to the customer. The old illusions have melted away. Nationalisation does not improve job satisfaction, job security or labour relations – almost all the serious strikes in recent years have been in state industries and services. We have also seen how the burden of financing the state industries has kept taxes and government borrowing higher than they need have been.

A company which has to satisfy its customers and compete to survive is more likely to be efficient, alert to innovation, and genuinely accountable to the public. That is why we have transferred to private ownership, in whole or in part, Cable and Wireless, Associated British Ports, British Aerospace, Britoil, British Rail Hotels, Amersham International, and the National Freight Corporation. Many of their shares have been bought by their own employees and managers, which is the truest public ownership of all.

We shall continue our programme to expose state-owned firms to real competition. In telecommunications, we have licensed a new independent network, Mercury, and have decided to license two mobile telephone networks. We have allowed competition in commercial postal services. Already, standards of service are beginning to improve. Investment is rising. And better job opportunities are being opened up.

We shall transfer more state-owned businesses to independent ownership. Our aim is that British Telecom – where we will sell 51 per cent of the shares to the private sector Rolls Royce, British Airways and substantial parts of British Steel, of British Shipbuilders and of British Leyland, and as many as possible of Britain’s airports, shall become private sector companies. We also aim to introduce substantial private capital into the National Bus Company. As before, we will offer shares to all those who work in them.

We shall also transfer to the private sector the remaining state-owned oil business – the British Gas Corporation’s offshore oil interests.

We have abolished the Gas Corporation’s statutory monopoly of the supply of North Sea gas to industry. Already there has been a vigorous new lease of life for gas exploration and development in the North Sea, which had ground to a complete halt under Labour. In the last Parliament, we passed a law to encourage the private generation of electricity. In the next Parliament, we shall seek other means of increasing competition in, and attracting private capital into, the gas and electricity industries.

Merely to replace state monopolies by private ones would be to waste an historic opportunity. So we will take steps to ensure that these new firms do not exploit their powerful positions to the detriment of consumers or their competitors. Those nationalised industries which cannot be privatised or organised as smaller and more efficient units will be given top-quality management and required to work to clear guidelines.

ENCOURAGING FREE ENTERPRISE

We want to see an economy in which firms, large and small, have every incentive to expand by winning extra business and creating more jobs. This Conservative Government has been both giving those incentives and clearing away the obstacles to expansion: the high rates of tax on individuals and businesses; the difficulties facing the small firm trying to grow, and the self-employed man trying to set up on his own; the blockages in the planning system; the bottlenecks on our roads; the restrictions on our farmers and fishermen; and the resistance to new ideas and technologies.

In the last four years, many British firms have made splendid progress in improving their competitiveness and profitability. But there is some way to go yet before this country has regained that self-renewing capacity for growth which once made her a great economic power, and will make her great again.

Only a government which really works to promote free enterprise can provide the right conditions for that dream to come true.

Lower and Simpler Taxes

In the last four years, we have made great strides in reducing and simplifying taxes. We have:

• cut the basic rate of income tax; raised tax allowances above the level we inherited after allowing for price rises; brought the higher rates of income tax down to European levels; and made big reductions in the investment income surcharge, which have particularly helped the old;
• removed many of the worst features of Capital Transfer Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Development Land Tax;
• cut business taxes, in particular the National Insurance Surcharge, Labour’s tax on jobs, from 3½ per cent to 1 per cent; and improved stock relief for businesses;
• much reduced the taxes on, and increased the incentives for, gifts to charities;
• greatly reduced tax bureaucracy. Manpower in the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise has fallen from 113,400 in April 1979 to 98,500 in April 1983, and is set to fall further.

This dramatic progress is all the more striking when compared with the vast increases in taxation which our opponents’ policies would inevitably bring.

The changes to this year’s Finance Act on which Labour have insisted show that they intend just this. We shall reverse those changes at the earliest opportunity.

Further improvements in allowances and lower rates of income tax remain a high priority, together with measures to reduce the poverty and unemployment traps.

We want to encourage wider ownership. This means lowering taxes on capital and savings; encouraging individuals to invest directly in company shares; and encouraging the creation of more employee share schemes.

More Small Firms

We have reduced the burdens on small firms, especially in employment legislation and planning, and cut many of the taxes they pay, particularly Corporation Tax. Our Loan Guarantee Scheme has already backed extra lending of over £300m. to about 10,000 small firms. The new Business Expansion Scheme, a major extension of the Business Start-up Scheme, will encourage outside investment in small companies by special tax reliefs. The construction of new premises for small businesses has more than doubled.

To help the engineering industry and the areas most dependent on it, we have introduced and now extended a very successful scheme of grants (SEFIS) to smaller firms, which help them to buy new machinery.

Thanks to these policies and over one hundred other important measures, the climate for new and smaller businesses in the UK has been transformed and is now as favourable as anywhere in the world.

Help for the New Technologies

Even during the recession, our new industries and technologies made remarkable progress. Britain has more micro-computers in relation to its population than any other country. We have speeded this progress by supporting research and spreading knowledge of the technologies of tomorrow; and by increasing government support for the new technologies from £100m. in 1978-9 to over £350m. in 1983-4. But that is only the beginning. We will now:

• promote, in partnership with industry, the Alvey programme for research into advanced information technology;
• accelerate the transfer of technology from the university laboratory to the market place, especially by the encouragement of science parks;
• help firms to launch new products through pilot schemes and public purchasing;
• build on the successes of our ‘Micros-in-Schools’ scheme and our network of Information Technology Centres for the young unemployed so that they are equipped with tomorrow’s skills;
• sanction the launch of new cable networks to bring wider choice to consumers, not just for entertainment, but for the whole new world of tele-shopping and tele-banking.

Regions, Enterprise Zones and Freeports

We shall continue to maintain an effective regional policy which is essential to ease the process of change and encourage new businesses in areas which have been dependent on declining industries. We do not propose sudden changes in regional policy. But we will:

• make sure that these policies are economical and effective in creating genuine jobs;
• secure more effective co-ordination between central and local government and the European Community’s Regional Development Fund to ensure that their actions offer the greatest help to communities in need;
• further develop local self-help initiatives, the 24 Enterprise Zones and, our latest innovation, duty-free trading zones, which will be established in certain experimental ‘Freeports’;
• diversify regional economies by encouraging the fullest use of our schemes for innovation.

Planning

In our crowded country the planning system has to strike a delicate balance. It must provide for the homes and workplaces we need. It must protect the environment in which we live.

One particular way to achieve this is by bringing back into use the thousands of acres lying derelict and unused, so much of which is in the ownership of local authorities or other public bodies. We have set up Land Registers to identify this land, and we shall now use our powers to bring it into use. The more this land can be used, the less the need to build on Green Belts and the countryside. We will also bring open-cast coalmining within normal proper planning control, and we shall establish more control over intensive livestock units near residential areas.

Energy

Britain has come from nowhere to be the world’s fifth largest oil producer. The North Sea success story has been a triumph of private enterprise for the nation’s benefit. We shall continue to ensure that our taxation and licensing policies encourage development in the North Sea.

In the next Parliament, the interests of the whole country require Britain’s massive coal industry, on which we depend for the overwhelming bulk of our electricity generation, to return to economic viability.

We shall press ahead with the development of safe nuclear power. It is an important way of securing lower-cost electricity for the future. We shall set up an Energy Efficiency Office to co-ordinate the Government’s conservation effort, so as to ensure that the taxpayer gets the best value for money.

We recognise that some energy users have special needs. This is why we have:

• ensured that standing charges no longer dominate the bills of small gas and electricity consumers;
• increased help for the needy with their fuel bills, leading to many fewer disconnections;

and

• introduced more favourable terms for the energy-intensive industries.

Better Transport for Industry

The national motorway and trunk road network will continue to be developed and improved to high-quality standards. This will not only make driving much safer for all, but also speed and cheapen the transport of goods. We will also seek to make rail freight more competitive.

Many of our ports have now been returned from state control to independent ownership. We intend that they should provide profitable and efficient services without the taxpayers’ support.

Tourism

Our hotels, resorts and tourist attractions are important because they provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, earn valuable foreign exchange, and provide holidays for millions of our own people. We shall continue to support the Tourist Boards and tourism projects throughout the country.

Farming and Fishing

British farming and horticulture have improved dramatically since 1979. Exports have leapt to £2,500m. a year. Since 1978, our self-sufficiency in food has risen by more than a sixth, from 53 per cent to 62 per cent.

In Europe, our tough negotiating stance has doubled our farmers’ share of the help available under the Common Agricultural Policy. The cost of the CAP to British taxpayers doubled under Labour. Under us, it has been falling in real terms. We have reversed the Labour Government’s disastrous policy for the Green Pound which harmed British farmers. At the same time, we have not neglected the consumers’ interest. Food prices more than doubled under Labour and rose faster than other prices. Under the Conservatives, they have risen less than other prices. Last year they grew by less than one per cent, the smallest rise for nearly twenty years.

We have given special help to Britain’s hill farmers, and agreed very worthwhile Community schemes for beef and sheepmeat. These have all brought great benefits to Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the uplands of England. We have launched successfully the ‘Food from Britain’ campaign, which should help us sell far more of our products both at home and in the rest of the Community.

We shall help the glasshouse industry to sell more fruit and vegetables, and to make use of the best possible arrangements for heating and insulation.

We welcome the fact that, after long negotiations, the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Landowners’ Association have agreed on the best way to make more farm tenancies available for young people. We shall legislate on these lines at an early opportunity. We intend to make sure that British agriculture and horticulture continue to make the greatest possible contribution to our economic success.

We have successfully negotiated a Common Fishing Agreement that provides British fishermen with the greatest advantages in our waters in the industry’s history. For the first time since we joined the Community, we now have effective conservation measures, and can look forward to expanding, rather than declining, stocks of fish. During the next Parliament, we shall introduce measures to restructure the fishing industry and to encourage investment and better marketing.

RESPONSIBILITY AND THE FAMILY

Freedom and responsibility go together. The Conservative Party believes in encouraging people to take responsibility for their own decisions. We shall continue to return more choice to individuals and their families. That is the way to increase personal freedom. It is also the way to improve standards in the state services.

Conservatives believe equally strongly in the duty of Government to help those who are least able to help themselves. We have more than carried out our pledges to protect pensioners against price rises and to maintain standards in the National Health Service. This rebuts the totally unfounded charge that we want to ‘dismantle the Welfare State’. We are determined that our public services should provide the best possible value both for people they seek to help and for the taxpayer who pays the bill.

A free and independent society is one in which the ownership of property is spread as widely as possible. A business which is partly or wholly owned by its workers will have more pride in performance. Already firms like the National Freight Company, where managers and workers joined together to take over the business, are thriving.

Under this Government, the property-owning democracy is growing fast. And the basic foundation of it is the family home.

Housing: Towards a Home-owning Democracy

We have given every council and New Town tenant the legal right to buy his or her own home. Many Housing Association tenants have been granted the same right, too. This is the biggest single step towards a home-owning democracy ever taken. It is also the largest transfer of property from the State to the individual. No less than half a million council houses and flats were sold in the last Parliament to the people who live in them. By our encouragement of private housebuilding and our new range of schemes to help first-time buyers, there are a million more owner-occupiers today than four years ago.

The Labour Party has met these proposals with vicious and prolonged resistance and is still fighting a rearguard action against wider home ownership. A Labour government would take away the tenant’s right to buy his council house, would prevent councils selling even voluntarily at a discount, and would force any former tenant who wanted to sell his house to sell it back to the council.

In the next Parliament, we will give many thousand more families the chance to buy their homes. For public sector tenants, the present ‘Right to Buy’ scheme will be improved and extended to include the right to buy houses on leasehold land and the right to buy on a shared ownership basis. The maximum discount will be increased by one per cent a year for those who have been tenants for between twenty and thirty years, taking the maximum discount to 60 per cent. We shall also help first-time buyers who are not council tenants through our various low-cost home-ownership schemes: ‘homesteading’, building for sale, improvement for sale, and shared ownership.

Britain needs more homes to rent, too, in the private sector as well as the public sector. For years, the blind prejudice of the Labour Party has cast a political blight on privately rented housing. But our assured tenancy scheme has encouraged builders to start building new homes to rent again, and our shorthold scheme is helping the private sector to meet the needs of those who want short-term rented accommodation.

We shall extend our Tenants’ Charter to enable council tenants to get necessary repairs done themselves and be reimbursed by their councils. Housing Improvement Grants have been increased substantially in the last two years and will continue to play an important role.

We shall conduct early public consultation of proposals which would enable the building societies to play a fuller part in supporting the provision of new housing and would bring up to date the laws which govern them.

Our goal is to make Britain the best housed nation in Europe.

Protecting the Pensioner

Over the last four years, the retirement pension has risen from £19.50 to £32.85 a week for a single person and from £31.20 to £52.55 for a married couple. Even after allowing for price rises, pensioners can buy more with their pension today than they could under the last Labour government. We have ended Labour’s unreliable system of relying on forecasts of price rises to decide by how much to increase the pension. In five of the last seven years, those forecasts turned out to be wrong. In future, pensions will be related to actual and not estimated price increases.

In the next Parliament, we shall continue to protect retirement pensions and other linked long-term benefits against rising prices. Public sector pensioners will also continue to be protected on the basis of realistic pension contributions. In this Parliament, we raised to £57 a week the amount pensioners may earn without losing any of their pension. It remains our intention to continue raising the limit and to abolish this earnings rule as soon as we can. The Christmas Bonus, which Labour failed to pay in 1975 and 1976, will continue to be paid every year in accordance with the law we passed in 1979.

Over 11.5m. people – half the working population – are now covered by occupational pension schemes. We will consider how the pension rights of ‘early leavers’, people who change jobs, can be better protected and how their members may be given fuller information about their pension schemes.

Social Security

Supplementary benefits, too, have been raised ahead of prices. To encourage thrift, instead of penalising it, the Government has also raised the amount of savings people can keep without losing any supplementary benefit. At the same time, we have clamped down firmly on fraud and abuse of social security.

Expenditure on cash benefits to the disabled is 21 per cent higher than under Labour, even after allowing for rising prices. There has been extra help, too, for those who are least able to afford their fuel bills.

We have introduced – and extended – a widows’ bereavement allowance. We have kept the war widows’ pension ahead of prices and removed it from tax altogether.

Child benefit and one-parent benefit are to be raised in November to their highest-ever level in real terms. We have also improved the family income supplement scheme to help low-paid working families.

Our record shows the strength of our commitment. But our ability to help depends on the wealth which the country produces. In Britain today, over 40p in every pound of public spending is already devoted to health and social security. It is hypocritical for the Labour party to pretend that they could raise public spending on benefits by thousands of millions of pounds without admitting the vast increases in taxation and national insurance contributions that would be needed, or the increased inflation that would result.

The National Health Service

We have more than matched our pledge to maintain spending on the National Health Service and secure proper value for money. Even after allowing for price rises, the nation is spending substantially more on health, and getting better health care.

By last year, there were 45,000 more nurses and midwives, and over 6,500 more doctors and dentists, working for the NHS than in 1978. This has helped to make it possible to treat over two million more patients a year in our hospitals. Until last year’s futile strike, waiting lists for treatment fell sharply.

We intend to continue to make sure that all patients receive the best possible value for the money that is spent on the Health Service. The treatment of the elderly, the mentally handicapped and the mentally ill will continue to make extra provision for those parts of the country in the North and the Midlands which have always been comparatively short of resources.

Unlike the last Labour government which actually cut the hospital building programme by one-third, we have committed £1,100m. to our large-scale programme for building new hospitals. There are now 140 new hospitals in that programme being designed or built. We shall continue to upgrade existing hospitals and brighten up shabby wards.

To release more money for looking after patients, we will reduce the costs of administering the Health Service. We are asking health authorities to make the maximum possible savings by putting services like laundry, catering and hospital cleaning out to

competitive tender. We are tightening up, too, on management costs, and getting much firmer control of staff numbers.

Most people who are ill or frail would prefer to stay in or near their own homes, rather than live in a hospital or institution. Helping people to stay in familiar surroundings is the aim of our policy ‘Care in the Community’. The Government has given extra powers and extra cash to health authorities to enable them to finance such community care for individual patients on a long-term basis.

Partnership in Care

Conservatives reject Labour’s contention that the State can and should do everything.

We welcome the growth in private health insurance in recent years. This has both made more health care available, and lightened the load on the NHS, particularly for non-urgent operations. We shall continue to encourage this valuable supplement to state care. We shall promote closer partnership between the State and the private sectors in the exchange of facilities and of ideas in the interests of all patients.

We also welcome the vital contribution made by voluntary organisations in the social services. We shall continue to give them strong support. The Conservative Government has already made many radical changes in law and taxation which have greatly improved the way charities and voluntary bodies are financed. The terms governing gifts under covenants have been much improved, and the liability to capital taxation has been lightened or swept away.

We shall continue to support our highly successful ‘Opportunities for Volunteering’ scheme. In the next Parliament, we shall develop other new ways to encourage more private giving.

Schools: The Pursuit of Excellence

For a long time now, parents have been worried about standards and discipline in many of our schools. This Conservative Government has responded to that worry with the Parents’ Charter and the 1980 Education Act. For the first time:

• local authorities were obliged to take account of parents’ choice of school for their children;
• schools were obliged to publish prospectuses, giving details of their examination results;
• parents were given the right to be represented on school governing bodies;
• the Government offered Assisted Places to enable less well-off parents to send bright children to some of the best independent schools.

Giving parents more power is one of the most effective ways of raising educational standards. We shall continue to seek ways of widening parental choice and influence over their children’s schooling.

We shall defend Church schools and independent schools alike against our opponents’ attacks. And we shall defend the right of parents to spend their own money on educating their children.

This country is now spending more per child in school than ever before, even after allowing for price rises. As a result, the average number of children per teacher is the lowest ever. Exactly how the money is spent, and how schools are run, is up to local education authorities.

But the Government can help improve standards and make sure that children are taught and trained for the world they will grow up into.

• Until now, HM Inspectors’ reports have remained secret. Now we are publishing them and making sure they are followed up, too.
• We are not satisfied with the selection or the training of our teachers. Our White Paper sets out an important programme for improving teacher training colleges.
• We shall switch the emphasis in the Education Welfare Service back to school attendance, so as to reduce truancy.
• We have given special help for refresher courses for teachers, research into special schools, and play groups and nursery schools where they are most needed.
• We shall also encourage schools to keep proper records of their pupils’ achievements, buy more computers, and carry out external graded tests. The public examination system will be improved, and O-level standards will be maintained.
• We are setting up fourteen pilot projects to bring better technical education to teenagers. The success of these will play a vital part in raising technical training in Britain to the level of our best overseas competitors.

Higher Education

Our universities and polytechnics, too, must generate new ideas and train the skilled workforce of the next generation. We have unrivalled institutions and unrivalled inventive genius – as the number of British Nobel prize-winners shows. What matters is to bring the two closer together and make the best practical use of both.

Britain has more students in professional training than Japan, and a greater proportion of young people in higher education than France or West Germany. More of our young people are now entering full-time degree courses than under the last Labour government. And a larger proportion of them complete their courses than in most other countries.

The very large sums of public money now going to higher education must be spent in the most effective way. Within that budget, we want to see a shift towards technological, scientific and engineering courses.

• We have set aside money for 700 new posts for young lecturers over three years to bring new blood into research.
• Over the next three years, we will provide for more teaching and research on information technology, with new posts for lecturers, and 2,200 new places for students.

Sport and Recreation

The Government has increased the real level of funding for the Sports Council. The Urban Aid and Derelict Land Programmes have also contributed to new sporting projects. By these means, and by offering one pound of government money for every one pound raised locally, we have begun to transform sports facilities in the inner cities.But there are still plenty of sports facilities which could be opened up to the general public. In particular, to reinforce our initiatives for better use of schools and playing fields, we shall urge every local education authority to make school and college premises available for use outside school hours and in the holidays. In all these initiatives, voluntary bodies will be enabled to play a bigger part.

We have kept up the pressure for public access to parks and reservoirs for anglers and all those who enjoy and respect the countryside.

Safety. Quality and Value For Money

The best way to protect the consumer is to bring price rises down and keep them down, and to increase competition. We have achieved both, and so helped the housewife far more than any bureaucratic system of controls. We have also brought the state industries under the scrutiny of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, and exposed many of them to competition to prevent them from exploiting their customers.

We shall remain vigilant in defence of the quality and safety of the products people buy. But we shall also reduce government intervention wherever it is unnecessary or harmful to the interests of the customer.

The provisions of our Data Protection Bill will meet public concern that computers pose a particular threat to privacy, and will enable us to ratify the European Convention on Data Protection.

Supporting Family Life

It is not for the Government to try to dictate how men and women should organise their lives. Our approach is to help people and their families fulfil their own aspirations in a rapidly changing world. As an employer, this Government is fulfilling its commitment to equal opportunities for men and women who work in the public services. We have brought forward for public discussion proposals for improving the tax treatment of married women, whether or not they go out to work.

We are reviewing the family jurisdiction of the courts, including their conciliation role, with a view to improving the administration of family law. We shall also reform the divorce laws to offer further protection to children, and to secure fairer financial arrangements when a marriage ends.

LAW, DEMOCRACY AND THE CITIZEN

The rule of law matters deeply to every one of us. Any concession to the thief, the thug or the terrorist undermines that principle which is the foundation of all our liberties. That is why we have remained firm in the face of the threats of hijackers and hunger strikers alike. The defeat of the occupation of the Iranian Embassy is only one example of our determination to be patient but still unyielding.

Backing the Crime-Fighters

We recognised from the start the immense and continuing public concern about lawlessness, particularly in some of our larger cities. We acted immediately to fulfil our pledges to give the hard-pressed police every possible backing.

• The strength of the police force now stands at record levels: 9,000 extra policemen have been recruited in England and Wales alone since 1979. They are much better paid and equipped than ever before. We shall be ready to increase police establishments where necessary in the war against crime.
• Thousands more policemen are back on the beat, where the public wishes to see them, instead of being isolated in panda cars. It takes time for any reform in police training and methods to achieve its full effect, but already street crime is being reduced and public confidence improved in some of the worst inner-city areas.
• The proposals embodied in our Police and Criminal Evidence Bill will help the police to bring criminals to justice. At the same time, they will reinforce public support for the police by laying down clear rules for the proper treatment of suspects. We shall also build more courtrooms to reduce delays in trying criminal cases.
• Last year’s Criminal Justice Act has given the courts tougher and more flexible sentencing powers. This Act makes parents more responsible for crimes committed by their children, and improves compensation for the victims of crime.
• Courts will also continue to impose Community Service Orders which compel offenders to make amends by doing useful work for the local community. We shall set up more compulsory attendance centres to which the courts can send young hooligans. The invaluable work of the Probation Service will continue to be supported.
• There must be enough prison places to cope with sentences imposed by the courts. We shall complete our major programme of building which will provide another 4,800 places in ten new prisons. And we are recruiting more prison officers to staff them.
• We will also respond to the increasing public concern over obscenity and offences against public decency, which often have links with serious crime. We propose to introduce specific legislation to deal with the most serious of these problems, such as the dangerous spread of violent and obscene video cassettes.
• We accept the case for an independent prosecution service, and will consider how it might best be set up.
• We intend to extend substantially the grounds that disqualify those with criminal records from serving on juries.

Dealing with crimes, civil disobedience, violent demonstrations and pornography are not matters for the police alone. It is teachers and parents – and television producers, too – who influence the moral standards of the next generation. There must be close co-operation and understanding between the police and the community they serve.

Immigration: Firm and Fair

We are utterly opposed to racial discrimination wherever it occurs, and we are determined to see that there is real equality of opportunity. The Conservative Party is, and always has been, strongly opposed to unfairness, harassment and persecution, whether it be inspired by racial, religious or ideological motives.

To have good community relations, we have to maintain effective immigration control. Since 1979, immigration for settlement has dropped sharply to the lowest level since control of immigration from the Commonwealth began more than twenty years ago. By passing the British Nationality Act, we have created a secure system of rights and a sound basis for control in the future; and we will continue to pursue policies which are strict but fair.

The Supremacy of Parliament

The British Constitution has outlasted most of the alternatives which have been offered as replacements. It is because we stand firm for the supremacy of Parliament that we are determined to keep its rules and procedures in good repair.

We have modernised the Select Committees to improve Parliament’s ability to keep a check on the actions of the Executive. We shall continue to pursue sensible, carefully considered reforms where they are of practical value.

Labour want to abolish the House of Lords. We will ensure that it has a secure and effective future. A strong Second Chamber is a vital safeguard for democracy and contributes to good government.

Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, building upon the courage, commitment and increasing success of our security forces, we will give the highest priority to upholding law and order. We will continue to give the support essential for the Province to overcome its economic difficulties.

The people of Northern Ireland will continue to be offered a framework for participation in local democracy and political progress through the Assembly. There will be no change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional position in the United Kingdom without the consent of the majority of people there, and no devolution of powers without widespread support throughout the community. We believe that a close practical working relationship between the United Kingdom and the Government of the Republic can contribute to peace and stability in Northern Ireland without threatening in any way the position of the majority community in the Province.

The Quality of Government

This country is fortunate to have a Civil Service with high standards of administration and integrity. The Civil Service has loyally and effectively helped to carry through the far-reaching changes we have made to secure greater economy, efficiency and better management in Government itself. It is a tribute to this spirit of co-operation that the number of civil servants has been reduced from 732,000 to 649,000 with the minimum of redundancies and with higher standards of service to the citizen. This has saved the taxpayer about £500m. a year, and is helping us to improve civil service working conditions.

The efficiency ‘scrutinies’ launched by Lord Rayner and other money-saving techniques have now identified savings worth £400m. a year to the taxpayer. We have abolished 500 Quangos and done away with no less than 3,600 different types of government forms.

We are successfully putting out to tender more services needed by central government. We shall press on with this wherever public money can be saved and standards of service maintained or improved.

Public spending is now planned in terms of hard cash instead of so-called constant prices, and the discipline of cash limits on spending has been extended. As a result, public spending is firmly under control.

Local Government: Saving Ratepayers’ Money

We have checked the relentless growth of local government spending, and manpower is now back down to the level of 1974. The achievement of many Conservative authorities in saving ratepayers’ money by putting services like refuse collection out to tender has played a major part in getting better value for money and significantly reducing the level of rate increases. We shall encourage every possible saving by this policy.

There are, however, a number of grossly extravagant Labour authorities whose exorbitant rate demands have caused great distress both to businesses and domestic ratepayers. We shall legislate to curb excessive and irresponsible rate increases by high-spending councils, and to provide a general scheme for limitation of rate increases for all local authorities to be used if necessary.

In addition, for industry we will require local authorities to consult local representatives of industry and commerce before setting their rates. We shall give more businesses the right to pay by instalments. And we shall stop the rating of empty industrial property.

The Metropolitan Councils and the Greater London Council have been shown to be a wasteful and unnecessary tier of government. We shall abolish them and return most of their functions to the boroughs and districts. Services which need to be administered over a wider area – such as police and fire, and education in inner London – will be run by joint boards of borough or district representatives.

IMPROVING OUR ENVIRONMENT

The Conservative Party has a long record of practical and effective action to improve the quality of life in our cities and countryside and to preserve our heritage. Since 1979, no government in Western Europe has done more for the environment – a clumsy word for many of the things that make life worth living.

Reviving Britain’s Cities

We have to cure the disastrous mistakes of decades of town-hall Socialism by striking a better balance between public and private effort. Our approach to reviving the rundown areas of our great cities is to use limited public money to stimulate much larger investment by private enterprise. The £60m. we have earmarked for the Urban Development Grant this year will be matched by up to four times that sum from private firms investing in new developments. On Merseyside, Operation Groundwork has brought together landowners, local industry and local authorities to tackle the squalor and dereliction on the edge of towns. The lessons of this and many other Merseyside initiatives will now be applied in other urban areas.

We have encouraged people to move back into the inner cities. Builders are now being helped to build homes of the type that young couples in particular can afford. We shall promote this revival of our inner cities, both by new building, and by sales by local councils of some of their rundown property to homesteaders who will restore the homes themselves.

We shall encourage greater opportunity for all those who live in our inner cities, including our ethnic minorities.

• Our small business schemes are helping to bring firms back into the city centres, and the Enterprise Zones we have set up are already bringing new life to some of the hardest-hit places in industrial Britain.
• We shall continue to give priority to the areas most in need. Our programme for the reclamation of derelict land will continue. We shall increase our efforts to secure the disposal of under-used public sector land, using the powers available to us in order to require sites to be sold for homes and jobs.

Public Transport

We have already taken important steps to improve the standards of public transport. We have lifted restrictions on long-distance coach services. As a result, about one hundred new express coach services have been started, fares have been substantially reduced and comfort improved. We shall further relax bus licensing to permit a wider variety of services. We shall encourage the creation of smaller units in place of the monolithic public transport organisations which we have inherited from the Socialist past, and encourage more flexible forms of public transport. City buses and underground railways will still need reasonable levels of subsidy. But greater efficiency and more private enterprise will help keep costs down.

The GLC has grossly mismanaged London Transport. We shall set up a new London Regional Transport Authority for the underground, buses and commuter trains in the London area. This will provide the opportunity to split the different types of transport into separate operating bodies, put more services out to private tender and offer the passenger better performance.

In the country, we shall ensure better use of school and special buses for local communities. Restrictions on minibuses will be cut. So will the red tape which makes it so difficult for small firms and voluntary bodies to provide better ways to get around for those without cars, particularly the very old and the disabled.

We want to see a high-quality, efficient railway service. That does not mean simply providing ever-larger subsidies from the taxpayer. Nor, on the other hand, does it mean embarking upon a programme of major route closures. There is, however, scope for substantial cost reductions in British Rail which are needed to justify investment in a modern and efficient railway.

Fewer restrictive practices and much more attention to the customer are also essential. Rail services are now facing vigorous competition from coaches and cars, and they need to respond with more innovative and more modern work methods. We shall examine ways of decentralising BR and bringing in private enterprise to serve railway customers.

To make life more agreeable in our towns and villages, we will push ahead our bypass programme, which will help to take more lorries away from them.

Rural Policy and Animal Welfare

Conservatives understand the need for a proper balance between the strengthening of the rural economy and the preservation of the beauty and habitat of our countryside.

Economic development will be encouraged in areas where this balance can be best maintained. At the same time, we have introduced the Wildlife and Countryside Act – the most important piece of legislation yet affecting the countryside – to safeguard areas of natural beauty and sites of scientific interest.

We have taken the lead in the much acclaimed measures to save the whale from extinction and to protect seals, and we shall co-operate fully in the important international work to protect all endangered species.

Since 1979, we have been working to achieve full European agreement on the treatment of animals. We have introduced measures to improve the conditions of farm animals being transported or exported. There is now a European Convention on the Protection of Animals. We welcomed this agreement, and immediately introduced a White Paper on Animal Welfare to foreshadow changes in the law. We now propose to introduce legislation to update the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876 which will ensure more humane treatment of laboratory animals in scientific and industrial research. The sale of pet animals in street markets has been banned.

Controlling Pollution

We intend to remove lead from petrol, and are taking the initiative with our European partners to achieve this at the earliest possible date. We will press ahead with our plans to reduce lead in paints, food and drinking water.

We will continue our policy to reduce river pollution – the length of polluted rivers has been halved in the last ten years, and this work will continue. We shall tighten up the controls on the disposal of hazardous waste and continue to support the movement for recycling and reclamation.

The worst problems of air pollution have been resolved. But in some areas the levels of smoke and sulphur dioxide need to be further reduced.

The peaceful application of nuclear energy, if properly controlled (as it always has been in this country), will be beneficial to the environment as well as to the economy. We intend to make sure that the safety record of the British nuclear industry continues to be second to none. The Sizewell Inquiry into Britain’s first Pressurised Water Reactor is well under way. The project will go ahead only if both the independent inspector and the Government are satisfied it is safe.

Arts and the Heritage

Despite the recession, this Government has strengthened its support for the best of our heritage and for the performing arts. We have created the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which fulfils the long-delayed wish to commemorate the dead of two world wars in a permanent and tangible way. We are building a new British Library. The new Commission for Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings will both safeguard our heritage and give more people a chance to enjoy it. Under the Conservatives, Britain’s opera, theatre and ballet continue to win world-wide renown. And our tax changes have helped to revive the British film industry. We shall keep up the level of government support, including a fair share for the regions. We shall also examine ways of using the tax system to encourage further growth in private support for the arts and the heritage.

BRITAIN IN THE WORLD

For nearly four decades, Europe has been at peace. The strength of the Western Alliance has kept our own freedoms secure. The possession of nuclear weapons by both sides has been an effective deterrent to another war in Europe.

The policies which our Labour opponents now propose would put at risk all this hard-won security.

The Protection of Peace

The invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of dissent in Poland remind us of the true nature of the Soviet Union. It remains a threat to the liberty and security of the West. The Soviet Union maintains massive armed forces in Europe, and is extending its naval power throughout the world. Soviet nuclear strength continues to grow, despite the false assurances of their propaganda machine.

Labour’s support for gestures of one-sided disarmament is reckless and naive. There is no shred of evidence to suggest that the Soviet bloc would follow such an example.

Labour would give up Britain’s nuclear deterrent and prevent the United States from using its bases in Britain which are part of its nuclear shield over Europe. That would shatter the NATO Alliance, and put our safety in the greatest jeopardy.

We will fully support the negotiations to reduce the deployment of nuclear weapons. But we will not gamble with our defence.

The Soviet Union now has over one thousand SS20 warheads, two-thirds of which are targeted on Europe. If the Soviet Union does not recognise over the coming months the legitimate anxieties of the West by agreeing to our proposals to eliminate this class of weapons, we will start deploying cruise missiles by the end of this year. Even after this, the West will remain entirely ready to negotiate for the removal of some or all of the missiles which we deploy, on the basis of a balanced and fair agreement with the Soviet Union.

The Western Alliance can keep the peace only if we can convince any potential aggressor that he would have to pay an unacceptable price. To do so, NATO must have strong conventional forces backed by a nuclear deterrent. And we in Britain must maintain our own independent nuclear contribution to British and European defence. At the same time, we shall continue to support all realistic efforts to reach balanced and verifiable agreements with the Soviet Union on arms control and disarmament.

We have substantially increased our defence expenditure in real terms. We have honoured our promise to give our regular and reserve forces proper pay and conditions and the equipment they need to do the job.

There could be no greater testimony to the professional dedication and the quality of equipment of the British Armed Services than the brilliant recapture of the Falkland Islands in just 74 days. We take pride in their achievement.

Civil Defence

Our overriding desire and policy is to go on preserving peace.

However, no responsible government can simply assume that we shall never be attacked. To plan for civil defence is a humanitarian duty – not only against the possibility of nuclear. but also of conventional attack.

That is why we must take steps to provide the help that could be vital for millions. To proclaim a nuclear-free zone, as some Labour councils have, is a delusion.

The Conservative Government has accordingly carried out a thorough review of civil defence, brought forward new regulations to require local authorities to provide improved protection, strengthened the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisations, and nearly doubled spending on civil defence.

We propose to amend the Civil Defence Act 1948 to enable civil defence funds to be used in safeguarding against peacetime emergencies as well as against hostile attacks.

Britain in Europe

The creation of the European Community has been vital in cementing lasting peace in Europe and ending centuries of hostility. We came to office determined to make a success of British membership of the Community. This we have done.

Our first priority in 1979 was to cut our financial contribution to the Community Budget to a fairer level. Labour made a song and dance about renegotiating the terms, but had achieved nothing. The bill to British taxpayers soared.

We have stood up for Britain’s interests, and substantially reduced our net contribution to the Community Budget. We have tenaciously sought a permanent alternative to the annual wrangles about refunds. Until we secure a lasting solution, we shall make sure of proper interim safeguards for this country. Meanwhile, with the help of Conservatives in the European Parliament, we shall continue to try to shift the Community’s spending priorities away from agriculture and towards industrial, regional and other policies which help Britain more.

We shall continue both to oppose petty acts of Brussels bureaucracy and to seek the removal of unnecessary restrictions on the free movement of goods and services between member states, with proper safeguards to guarantee fair competition.

The Labour Party wants Britain to withdraw from the Community, because it fears that Britain cannot compete inside and that it would be easier to build a Socialist siege economy if we withdrew. The Liberals and the SDP appear to want Britain to stay in but never to upset our partners by speaking up forcefully. The Conservatives reject both extreme views.

The European Community is the world’s largest trading group. It is by far our most important export market. Withdrawal would be a catastrophe for this country. As many as two million jobs would be at risk. We would lose the great export advantages and the attraction to overseas investors which membership now gives us. It would be a fateful step towards isolation, at which only the Soviet Union and her allies would rejoice.

A Trading Nation

Our most important contribution to a healthy world economy is to manage our own affairs successfully. We shall also build on our important role in promoting international action to encourage recovery through the IMF and other international organisations. With the other leading industrial nations, we shall continue with our realistic initiatives to improve currency stability in the Western world, and assist nations with excessive debts to regain stability. Together with the Community, we are also playing a leading part in preserving an open world trading system, while safeguarding our most vulnerable industries.

While world trade declined last year, our exports and share of world trade increased, and we enjoyed a healthy balance of payments surplus, despite the pessimists who said the pound was uncompetitive. We believe in reinforcing success. This Government has given wholehearted support to British companies tendering for major overseas projects, and helped them secure many important contracts in the face of the toughest competition.

We will build on these initiatives to help our exporters, and vigorously promote the interests of British trade and industry in international negotiations – where we have already made our presence very effectively felt. We have no intention of becoming a dumping ground for the goods of other nations. We shall continue to challenge other nations’ unfair barriers, whether in the shape of tariffs or trading practices.

Our Wider Role

In a troubled world, Britain is increasingly respected because we stand up for our own interests. But we are also respected because we stand up for the cause of freedom and the spread of prosperity throughout the world.

We resisted unprovoked aggression in the Falkland Islands, when the loyal support of our friends throughout the world reminded us of our common heritage of freedom. We will continue to uphold the principles for which we fought.

We shall continue to give our full support to the Commonwealth and to play an active and constructive part at the United Nations.

Our generous but carefully controlled aid programme is both an investment in the freedom and prosperity of the poorer countries and in a stable and expanding world economy. That programme helps us as well as those who receive it, since most of it is spent on British goods and services. More than many other nations, we direct our aid to the poorest countries, particularly in the Commonwealth.

But government aid is only a part of the total help we give the developing world. Unlike the Labour Party, we believe in permitting a free and profitable outflow of British investment. That flow to poorer countries has now grown far larger than British Government aid, bringing with it an invaluable transfer of skills and technology.

THE RESOLUTE APPROACH

This Government’s approach is straightforward and resolute. We mean what we say. We face the truth, even when it is painful. And we stick to our purpose.

Most decisions worth taking are difficult. Cutting a clear path through the jungle of a modern bureaucracy is hard going. The world recession of the past four years, and the high level of unemployment throughout the industrial world, have made the going harder.

During these difficult years, we have protected the sick and the elderly. We have maintained Britain’s defences and her contribution to the Western Alliance. And at the same time, we have laid the foundations for a dynamic and prosperous future.

The rewards are beginning to appear. If we continue on our present course with courage and commonsense, those rewards should multiply in the next five years.

We shall never lose sight of the British traditions of fairness and tolerance. We are also determined to revive those other British qualities – a genius for invention and a spirit of enterprise.

Under Conservative government, confidence is brushing aside pessimism at home. Abroad, Britain is regarded for the first time in years as a country with a great future as well as a great past.

We mean to make that future a reality.