Tag: 2002 Press Release

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 31 January 2002.

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Bercow MP, today launched a ‘wastewatch’ campaign, calling on the public to help in highlighting the continued waste of public money across all departments of the Government.

Pointing to several staggering examples of frivolous expenditure, fraud and even theft within Government departments, Mr Bercow told conservatives.com, “far from every penny of public money being spent wisely to make peoples lives better, millions of pounds are being frittered away at our expense, examples of which range from the comic to the ridiculous.”

He continued, “a recent report said that the Metropolitan Police paid £185 for a kettle and £325 for a light bulb. Those authorising this profligacy have clearly lost all sense of responsibility to the taxpayer.”

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 16 January 2002.

Shadow Defence Secretary, Bernard Jenkin, says that Tony Blair’s ‘global ambitions’ are taking an unsustainable toll on Britain’s armed forces. Mr Jenkin said that while the number of trained servicemen and women had fallen by nearly 10,000 since Labour came to power, the Army was now taking part in more, not less, deployments.

Mr Jenkin used the example of 2 Paras, based in his own Essex North constituency: “They spent Christmas 2000 in Northern Ireland before being sent to Macedonia. They spent this Christmas in Afghanistan.” He told the BBC: “If Britain is going to use British troops for a nation-building programme, then you have to up the ante. It is either the Prime Minister’s global ambitions or the Treasury, but you can’t go on indefinitely overstretching the armed forces in this way.”

Mr Jenkin said that it was too early for the Conservatives to say how defence would be operating under a Conservative Government. He told conservatives.com that the real question was whether you carried on with this much wider peace-keeping deployments, or focus on specific threats.

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 17/01/2002.

The Conservative Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has said that the Party was firmly fixed on public services. He said that while the problems facing the country were changing, the values that underpinned the Party’s solutions were as relevant as ever.

In a speech to business leaders in Birmingham, he said that the Conservatives would renew policies using timeless principles to meet the challenges of our time, contrasting that with the Labour Party who stood for power without purpose, politics without principles and governing without direction.

He accused the Government of having a top-down approach to the public services, thinking that problems can be solved from the top of Government. “My instincts are always to build from the bottom up: to derive policy from the instincts and values of the people we represent, guided by our own values,” he said.

Mr Duncan Smith went on to say that policy renewal was inseparable from effective Opposition. “The way we develop policy will be characterised by leadership and direction, and based firmly on Conservative values,” he said. The Conservatives had always been successful, he argued, when they articulated a clear view of the problems that Britain faces, and found ways to solve them, by empowering people, rather than pushing them around.

While in Birmingham, Mr Duncan Smith paid a visit to a local comprehensive school, to meet with staff and pupils.