Downing Street Says » Coalition First Anniversary

The Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that there had been a discussion at Cabinet this morning on the implementation of the Programme for Government over the past year. The message from Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander at Cabinet was that the Government had done a lot of what it had set out to do over the past year. There had been some very significant achievements and we had made good progress on our key priorities, which were to strengthen the economy, modernise public services, raise aspirations and implement political reform.

The PMS went on to say that the Prime Minister had made the point in Cabinet that as a five year Coalition Government we had been able to focus on issues that had held back Britain for generations, due to the fact that many of those issues involved long-term questions about sustainability – from eradicating the budget deficit to reforming welfare, pensions, university fees and so on. The Prime Minister made the point that these were particularly difficult issues, and that having a Coalition Government helped in tackling them.

Asked if the Government would be publishing a document setting out the actions taken over the past year, the PMS said that there were two sets of data that outlined the Government’s progess. Firstly there was the Coalition Agreement/Programme for Government, which outlined 355 commitments of which 26% were complete, 64% were in progress and 10% were not yet started. Then there were Business Plans from every department, which reflected the commitments made in the Coalition Agreement. The Business Plans had 1276 actions that departments had to complete by a certain point. By the end of April 2011, 66% had been completed, 31% were still in progress and 3% were overdue.

Asked about those policies which had been abandoned, the PMS said that clearly there were occasions when the policy had changed.

The PMS went on to say that the Programme for Government set out a number of policies and they were in the process of being implemented. Obviously other things would arise and would be dealt with, but last year we put in place some machinery to reflect the fact that we had a Coalition Government. That machinery, including the Coalition Committee, the Quad and so on, would deal with issues in the normal way.

Asked if there was a need for a second Coalition Agreement, the PMS said that there were no plans for a second Coalition Agreement, but there could be a point where the Government wanted to say more about what it would do next, which Governments in the past had done. We had designed the machinery to be robust and operate so that as issues arose they could be dealt with effectively.

The PMS said that it was unprecedented for a Government to set out in so much detail at the start of Parliament precisely what it would be doing for the period that followed. The Business Plans set out in great detail specific actions that would be undertaken. There were events that Governments responded to, and no doubt there would be further policies set out in the coming years but that was not so different to what other Governments had done before.

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» Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Coalition First Anniversary

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