Antony Little for Norwich South

Cllr. Antony Little with health campaigners in Thorpe Hamlet

1. Education & Schools

It isn’t right that Norwich has so many schools on the verge of OFSTED special measures.  We need a generation of school leavers with the skills to match the jobs of the next century.

We will address the educational underperformance which blights our nation’s future through a long-term, supply side-revolution, along with a number of immediate measures.

The immediate actions include:

- Improving discipline and behaviour in schools by shifting the balance of power in every classroom back in favour of the teacher

- Delivering more teaching by ability which stretches the strongest and nurtures the weakest

The long-term, supply-side revolution will involve:

- Over 220,000 new school places being created

- Freeing up the system whereby new schools are established, to allow charities, livery companies, existing school federations, not-for-profit trusts, co-operatives and groups of parents to set up new schools in the state sector

- Diverting more resources to pupils from disadvantaged background.

2. Energy

Norwich is a City leading the “green revolution” in the UK; and the City wants to create a new, sustainable policy on energy.  We want to see a decentralised energy revolution in Britain.

Instead of relying on the large centralised energy providers of old, we want Britain to adopt micro-generation: small providers, including homes and businesses, producing energy for their own use, using a variety of methods from combined heat and power (CHP) to wind to photovoltaic power.

A new system of ‘feed-in tariffs’, by which people are paid for the energy they produce, will stimulate diversity and decentralisation of our power supply, as well as incentivise energy-saving.

Our decentralised energy paper sets out plans to encourage micro-generation through feed-in tariffs:

- Enable every small firm, local school, hospital and household to generate electricity through micro-generation

- A fixed price to be paid for all electricity produced from decentralised, low carbon sources

- Ensure smart meters are available free of charge to anyone installing micro-generating capacity

3. Welfare

Everyone should take responsibility for themselves and their family.  But the state should be on hand to provide for those who need that help.  Our REAL programme for welfare reform will end the culture of long-term welfare dependence in this country and help make British poverty history.

Respect for those who cannot work

- Those recipients of Incapacity Benefit who cannot work will receive continued support

Employment for those who can

- Every out of work benefit claimant capable of doing so will be expected to work or prepare for work

- A comprehensive programme of support for jobseekers

- Welfare-to-work services to be provided by organisations on a payment by results basis

Assessments for those claiming out of work benefits

- Rapid assessments for new and existing claimants

Limits to claiming out of work benefits

- People who refuse to join a return to work programme will lose the right to claim out of work benefits until they do

- People who refuse to accept reasonable job offers could lose the right to claim out of work benefits for three years

- Time limits for out of work benefits – so people who claim for more than two years out of three will be required to join community work programmes.

4.Prisons

The conditions in Norwich prison shocked the nation and sometimes the criminal justice system as a whole shocks the nation.  Britain’s prison system is not working. Half of all crime is committed by previous offenders and 65 per cent of prisoners re-offend within two years of release.

The measures laid out in our policy paper, ‘Prisons with a purpose’, will restore confidence in the criminal justice system, re-design prisons for the 21st century, and launch a sentencing and rehabilitation revolution.

- We will introduce honesty in sentencing so courts set a minimum and a maximum period of incarceration

- We will replace automatic release with earned release

- We will make community sentences tough and effective, and withdraw benefits for those who don’t attend

- We will enforce Drug Rehabilitation Requirements

- Offenders will compensate victims through a Victims’ Fund. Those serving custodial sentences will pay into the Fund through work in prison.

- Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts and private sector prisons will be paid by results – with a premium awarded if the offender is not reconvicted within two years.

- We will accelerate the deportation of foreign national prisoners

- We will increase prison capacity by more than 5,000 places over and above Labour’s plans, to end overcrowding by 2016.

5. Voluntary Sector

The one remarkable thing I have learnt going around the City meeting people and visiting voluntary groups is the amount of time that people give up for the benefit of others.  We want to expand the role and the influence of charities, social enterprises and voluntary bodies in our society.

Our approach is not to change the voluntary sector, but to change government: from being an object that gets in the way of civil society to being a force that gets behind it.

Encouraging giving and volunteering

- Simplify the Gift Aid system to reduce the bureaucratic burden on charities

- Support for volunteering to go through grassroots organisations not government quangos

- Reduce the burden of regulation on volunteers

- Support efforts to establish volunteering as a social norm

Supporting the voluntary sector

- Replace the Big Lottery Fund with a Voluntary Action Fund dedicated to the voluntary and community sector

- Operate a genuine one-stop funding portal for significant government grants

- Create a network of Social Enterprise Zones

Working with the voluntary sector

- Allow voluntary organisations delivering public services to earn a competitive return on investment

- Remove state interference by agreeing on goals and outcomes, not dictating methods of delivery

- Create a powerful Office for Civil Society to fight for the interests of charities and community groups.

6. Health

Labour’s system of running the NHS through top-down process targets isn’t working. We believe the focus should instead be on outcomes, in order to make the NHS more accountable to patients and restore professional discretion over how to treat patients.

Our strategy for driving up standards involves:

- Phasing out Labour’s process-driven targets

- A national focus on the health outcomes we want the NHS to deliver

- Collecting information about the results of people’s treatment in the NHS

- Publishing those results, so we can see where we are making progress and where we lag behind other countries

- Developing outcome measures which patients with chronic conditions themselves provide

- Giving patients a choice of provider so they can use published outcome information to get the care they want

- Introducing payment-by-results within the system

7. Skills and training

As a teacher I know that the system of training in the UK is stuck in the past – and as a result, over three-quarters of a million young people are not in any kind of education, employment, or training.

We propose a revolution in skills and training, with:

A massive expansion in the provision of real apprenticeships

- Measures to make it easier for companies to run apprenticeships

- Creating 100,000 additional apprenticeships every year with a £775 million injection of funds

- A £2,000 bonus for each apprenticeship at a small or medium-sized enterprise

More community learning to improve skills and employability

- A £100 million NEETs fund aimed at youngsters not in any kind of education, training or employment

- A £100 million injection into the adult community Learning Fund

Supply-side reform to set further education fund

- Freeing Further Education colleges from unnecessary bureaucracy

- Allowing new providers to enter the sector

A revolution in careers advice

- Providing a careers adviser in every secondary school and college in the country

- Creating a new all-age careers advice service.