Meeting The Aspirations Of The British People

The Government's objective is to build a strong economy and a fair society, in which there is opportunity and security for all. The 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review, 'Meeting the aspirations of the British People' (Cm 7227), presents updated assessments and forecasts of the economy and public finances, describes reforms that the Government is making and sets out the Government's priorities and spending plans for the years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11, including: maintaining macroeconomic stability; investing in the future with total public spending rising from £589bn in 2007-08 to £678bn in 2010-11 including an additional £2bn for capital investment in public services; continuing the sustained investment in the NHS, with resources rising from £90bn in 2007-08 to £110bn by 2010-11 and with value for money savings of at least £8.2bn contributing to the funding of the conclusions of the Darzi Review 'Our NHS, our future'; further sustained increases in resources for education, science, transport, housing, child poverty, security and international poverty reduction and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; simplifying the tax system to make it fairer, simpler and more efficient; modernising the tax system through major reforms to inheritance tax and capital gains tax; steps to protect the environment, including reforms of the tax regime for aviation and a new Environmental Taxation Fund to support the demonstration and deployment of new energy and efficiency technologies. For related publications, see 9780102944556 (2007 Budget Statement), 9780101698429 (2006 Pre-Budget), and for the Darzi Review see (http://www.ournhs.nhs.uk/files/283411_OurNHS_v3acc.pdf)

The Health Committee calls for fundamental reform of the social care system in England and says political point-scoring must stop. Instead of indulging in pre-election politicking, all the parties should come together to map out sustainable reform. Consensus on the details of reforms must be achieved early in the new Parliament and a failure to do so will betray current and future generations. The report says the current social care system is chronically underfunded, severely rationed, locally variable, too often of poor quality and discriminates against older people. The Committee is highly critical of the Government's Free Personal Care at Home Bill which it says smacks of policy-making on the hoof and risks creating perverse incentives and being substantially underfunded. Free care funded from taxation has many supporters but has been ruled out as an option by the Government. The Committee urges debate on this issue. It also acknowledges the widespread concern about the proposed reform of disability benefits for older people, noting the lack of clear information from the Government on who the winners and losers will be. To mitigate significantly the worst aspects of the existing funding system, as an interim measure, the Committee recommends raising the capital thresholds in the means test. The Committee strongly supports giving people more choice and control over their care and support, but emphasises that vulnerable people must be properly protected.

This report is in five main sections: overall spending issues; efficiency and value for money; the new performance management framework; child poverty; and individual spending settlements. The planned rate of growth of public spending is set to be considerably slower than the rate of growth of recent years. This could lead to cost pressures on departmental spending as there will be a greater proportional growth in the Annual Managed Expenditure. There will also be cost pressures from public sector wage settlements, population growth and needs in particular sectors. The efficiency programmes are highly ambitious but the Committee recommends that savings should only be recorded if it could be shown that service standards have been maintained. There is a welcome for the decision not to impose explicit targets for reduction in Civil Service numbers. On child poverty the Committee note a possible tension between the target to halve child poverty by 2010-11 and that of eliminating child poverty by 2020. There is a concern that the Government has drawn back from a whole-hearted commitment to meet the 2010 target. They want the Government to either initiate a debate on the trade-off between the two targets or rededicate itself to the 2010-11 target, making it clear that the resources are available within the Comprehensive Spending Review.

This book examines how developing law and policies in England and Wales simultaneously promote and undermine children's rights.

Excellent technical writing on corporation tax abounds, but it tends to be inaccessible to public lawyers, political theorists and political economists. Although recent years have seen not only an explosion in public law scholarship but also a reawakening of interest in interpretative political theory and political economy, the potential of these perspectives to illuminate the corporation tax debate has remained unexplored. In this important work, John Snape seeks to reconcile these disparate strands of scholarship and to contribute to a new way of understanding and conceptualising the reform of the law relating to corporate taxation. Drawing on important developments in public law scholarship, the study combines elements of political theory and political economy. It advances a new interpretation of corporation tax law as an instrument of rule, through the maximisation of a nation's economic potential. Snape shows how corporate taxation belongs at the centre of any discussion of economic globalisation, not only because of the potential of national tax systems to influence inward investment decisions but also because of the potential of those decisions to shape the public interest that those tax systems might embody. Following public law and politics models, the book looks afresh at the impact of Britain's political institutions, of the processes of its representative government and of the theory that moulds and orders the values that the corporation tax code contains. This is a timely exploration of cutting-edge issues of public policy.

This book is a treasure in the hands of anyone required to use oratory skill in their role. It is known in most countries of the world that lawyers are good orators, perhaps due to the nature of their profession, Barristers are known to address the court. Some of our world leaders past and present are great orators; it is, however, important to note that while not all of them were lawyers, they have delivered remarkable and memorable speeches to their respective nations. One of the qualities of a good leader is the ability to address the nation with good oratory skills. This book therefore explores the power and effect that words have on all of us.