Lib Dems document Labour's failings

The Liberal Democrats have published a dossier highlighting what the party says are the government's greatest failings.

Commenting on the document, called 'The state they've put us in', Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said the Blair-Brown era will be remembered for "war and waste".

The dossier points to a 160 per cent increase in personal debt to £1.3 trillion since 1997, and says the income gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street.

Carbon emissions have risen by two per cent since Labour came into power, it says, while the government will fail to meet its 1997 manifesto target of a 20 per cent cut in CO2 by 2010.

The party said the cumulative deficit for all NHS trusts has risen beyond £1bn, and claimed that productivity has not increased despite a tripling of health spending.

The document also points to Labour's decade-old manifesto commitment to cut class sizes for five to seven year-olds to 30 or under, and says more than 500,000 are still being taught in larger classes.

Violent crime has doubled since 1998 to 2.5 million incidents a year, it says, despite the introduction of more than 3,000 new criminal offences since the government came to power.

Sir Menzies said: "The Blair-Brown government started with so much hope but now we are left with so much disappointment. This government has wasted its opportunities and wasted your money.

"They have invested in health and education but lacked the courage and principles that would have enabled them to spend it effectively.

"They wasted their opportunity to build a fairer society and instead inequality has increased and social mobility fallen. Labour is still the party of redistribution but in the wrong direction.

"Above all the Blair-Brown government will be remembered for its decision to go to war in Iraq. It was an illegal war waged on false claims.

"The prime minister may have taken the decision to go to war but the chancellor signed the cheques and the Tories voted it through.

"That’s the record for which the Blair-Brown government will be remembered: war and waste."