Delivering on our Contract

Delivering on our Contract with the British people At the 2010 General Election David Cameron made a Contract with the British people. He said the Contract was his “side of the bargain: the things I want to do to change Britain”.

Two years on we assess the Government’s progress against some of the key pledges in that Contract.

Pledge: Cut wasteful government spending and act now on the national debt.

Delivery: Labour left Britain in a mess. When we took over in 2010, for every £4 spent by government, £1 was borrowed. Conservatives have cut £3.75 billion of wasteful spending in just the first ten months. And our tough action to get to grips with Britain’s debts is delivering low mortgage rates for millions of households.

Pledge: Raise standards in schools and give teachers the power to restore discipline.

Delivery: We are offering bursaries to attract the best graduates into teaching, and giving teachers the tools they need to keep order, like the power to search pupils for banned items. We have enabled parents, teachers and charities to set up ‘Free Schools’ and are letting schools become academies, giving teachers more freedom and parents more choice.

Pledge: Increase the basic state pension, and protect key pensioner benefits.

Delivery: This year we are increasing the basic state pension by £5.30 a week. That’s the biggest cash rise in history. And, we have protected pensioner benefits like free eye tests, free prescriptions, free bus passes, free TV licences for the over-75s and the Winter Fuel Payment.

Pledge: Increase spending on the NHS, and ensure that cancer patients get the drugs and treatment they need.

Delivery: We’re investing extra money in the NHS every year, an extra £12.5 billion by 2014. We have created the £200 million per year Cancer Drugs Fund, which has already helped to provide over 10,000 treatments. Our reforms are passing power to patients, and giving control over NHS resources to doctors and nurses.

Pledge: Control immigration, reducing it to the levels of the 1990s.

Delivery: Under Labour, immigration reached unsustainable levels. Conservatives have capped the number of skilled workers who can work here and no unskilled workers are allowed. We have cracked down on sham marriages and shut bogus colleges with their fake students.

But these measures are only just the beginning. We’ve still got so much more to do to fix what’s wrong in Britain and protect what’s right.

We’ll keep on working every hour of the day to deliver the change set out in this contract, to repay the trust you, the voters, put in us.