Member News
By Edward Davie - 6th October 2004
The Conservatives have detailed their "timetable for action" if they win the next election.
Shadow ministers have spent the week in Bournemouth setting out what they would do in the first days, weeks and months of a Conservative government coming into office.
Party leader Michael Howard has used what is almost certainly the last conference before the next nationwide poll to lay out his programme in a bid to win back the trust of voters.
Within a day
Within the first hour of taking office Howard has said he would forbid political advisors from telling civil servants what to do in a bid to "protect the integrity of the civil service".
He would also make the Office for National Statistics independent of ministers to "ensure that government cannot manipulate figures".
On the first day civil service recruitment would be frozen and police officers would no longer have to fill out a form when they stopped people.
On the same day a date would be set for a referendum on the EU constitution, while moves would begin to return cannabis to Class B status and for headteachers to control pupil expulsions.
Whitehall targets for hospital performance would be scrapped and a minister for homeland security would also be created within the first 24 hours.
Within a month
Among moves to take place within the first week of moving into Number 10, Howard would abolish the prisoner early release scheme and announce a "no switching" visa rule to prevent "abuse of the system".
Within a month a Tory chancellor would present his first Budget in which he would announce the timetable for implementing proposals to cut Whitehall waste.
A points scheme for immigrants would be introduced and arrested drug addicts would be forced to choose between rehabilitation and the criminal justice system.
Also within four weeks, a new prison-building programme would get underway and moves would be made to recruit 5,000 extra police officers a year.
In a bid to win back the voters' trust, Howard says he will sack any minister unable to deliver these pledges.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd