Gordon Brown sought to blunt attacks on key issues such as dirty hospitals, foreign criminals and the lack of affordable homes in a speech that amounted to a sketch of Labour’s election manifesto.

The address was light on new announcements but contained a raft of aspirations and restated policies as he sought to include eye-catching initiatives or rhetoric in each of the main election battlegrounds.

Crime

The Prime Minister announced a new target of issuing 10,000 hand-held computers to police in England and Wales as part of the drive to ensure that officers remain on the beat without having to return to stations to deal with paperwork.

The number of hand-held computers being used by police will rise from the current 1,000 to 10,000 by next year, though last night the Police Federation asked where the money to meet the pledge was to come from at a time when Home Office spending has been frozen. The use of the mobile data devices is being piloted with the British Transport Police and five other forces in the country.

Mr Brown also promised that police would be given hand-held metal detectors when they conducted planned stop-and-searches in gun hot-spot areas in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.

The proposal to target areas of the four cities follows talks in recent weeks with senior police officers after the murder of Rhys Jones, 11, in Croxteth, Liverpool.

Most of the other detailed law-and-order “announcements” by Mr Brown were a statement of existing policy or are already in force.

He cautioned shops that sold alcohol to under18s repeatedly that they would lose their licences. The Violent Crime Reduction Bill created a new offence of selling alcohol to a minor on three or more occasions in a three-month period, punishable with a maximum fine of £10,000 and suspension of the licence for up to three months.

He said that “newcomers” caught selling drugs or using guns would be thrown out of the country. It is existing policy that a nonEuropean Economic Area national serving a sentence of more than 12 months for any crime is considered for deportation, as is an EEA national jailed for two years or longer and anyone who has a court recommendation for deportation. The UK Borders Bill, currently in the Lords, will create a specific list of offences for which deportation should be considered by the authorities, officials said later.

However, the Government has struggled with deportations. Latest figures show that only 214 of the 1,013 foreign national prisoners involved in the scandal that cost Charles Clarke his job as Home Secretary have been removed. Last month the Government lost its attempt to deport Learco Chindamo, the Italian-born killer of Philip Lawrence, the headmaster murdered outside his school in Maida Vale, northwest London.

Mr Brown said that he wanted existing powers, that have led to the closure of a thousand crack houses, extended throughout the country.

Health

Mr Brown’s promises on the NHS broke little new ground. His basic intention, he said, was to provide a personal health service, not just a National Health Service. He promised to double the number of hospital matrons to 5,000, and to provide money for a “deep clean” of hospital wards, in an effort to control MRSA and C. difficile.

Modern matrons date back to the NHS Plan of 2000, and have been wheeled out as a cure for hospital-based infections by every Health Secretary since. Experience, however, has been mixed: while MRSA infections are falling, C. diff is rising. Matrons would be empowered to report cleaning contractors to hospital boards, Mr Brown said, and to order additional cleaning: hardly a revolutionary concept. Money would be set aside for “deep cleaning” of hospital wards.

Mr Brown won the plaudits of breast cancer charities by promising to extend screening by six years (from 47 to 73, instead of 50 to 70) and to treat every suspected breast cancer case as urgent. He also promised to extend bowel cancer screening. Instead of ending at 70, it would continue until 75. He also spelt out that Britain will spend £15 billion on research over the next decade, through the Medical Research Council and the NHS. Given that spending was – according to Mr Brown’s own figures as Chancellor – running at £1.2 billion a year a couple of years ago, there was less in this promise than met the eye.

Education

Mr Brown promised a personal tutor for every pupil at secondary school. The new tutors would have a bigger role than existing year tutors or heads of year because they would follow pupils from their arrival at 11 until they left school, and would combine pastoral care with academic support.

The idea was first raised in January in a report on personalised learning by Christine Gilbert, the head of the schools watchdog Ofsted, but this is the first time that it has been taken up as policy.

Pledges in Mr Brown’s speech to provide extra help with reading, and one-to-one tuition and catchup classes in English and maths, are not new and are part of the personalised learning agenda that is being piloted in schools.

There was nothing new in his pledge to ensure that pupils receive five hours of school sports. But there were distinct changes in emphasis on other old policies. What had previously been presented as a new compulsion to remain in education to 18, was transformed yesterday to a new right to education to 18.

And there was a stronger commitment than before to ensure that parental income was no longer a barrier to education, with Mr Brown’s strong emphasis on an existing pledge to ensure that 16-year-olds who qualified for the means-tested Education Maintenance Allowance – which paid for staying on at school or college – would get a guarantee of the amount of financial support they would receive if they chose to go to university at 18.

This goes hand-in-hand with a surprise announcement this summer of a massive increase in the number of students eligible for nonrepayable grants for university living costs from September 2008.

Mr Brown made clear that he views education primarily in economic terms with his comment that he wants education to provide a “clear pathway to skilled work”. That he did not mention the new specialised diplomas for 14 to 19-year-olds suggests that he is aware that there is plenty of work to do before the diplomas are accepted widely by employers, universities and parents.

Housing

In one of the few genuinely new policy announcements, Mr Brown said that the Government will aim to build ten new “eco-towns”, settlements of low and zero-carbon homes. It amounts to a doubling of an announcement of five such towns that he announced when he launched his leadership campaign. He repeated a target of creating two million new homeowners by 2010, saying that the Government wanted to increase house-building to 240,000 new homes a year.

Mr Brown’s pledge to increase investment in new social housing to £8 billion was also a restatement of existing policy. There was an implicit commitment to maintain the green belt when he said Britain “must protect and cherish” the countryside.

Social Policy

The Prime Minister threw his weight behind plans to name absent fathers on their child’s birth certificate. He repeated a promise – first made two years ago – to extend paid maternity leave to a year but failed to give a firm timetable.

He also announced an extention of the nurse family partnership programme, which offers intense one-to-one support to particularly deprived teenage mothers for the first two years of their child’s life. A pledge of £670 million for new youth facilities was an extention of an initiative first announced in July.

He made no mention of extending the right to request flexible work, currently restricted to parents with children under six and carers who look after family members. Ministerial colleagues are lobbying for all parents to be included.

Environment

Mr Brown stole a march on David Cameron when he held out the prospect of tougher carbon dioxide cuts than promised previously. In ordering a review of the Government’s target of a 60 per cent reduction by 2050, the Prime Minister tacitly accepted criticism that ministers have underestimated the depth of the problem. The review announcement suggests that Mr Brown may be ready to accept higher emission reductions than the 60 per cent agreed by Mr Cameron.

There was, however, little else in Mr Brown’s speech to excite environmentalists or worry opposition MPs. He made no new commitment to the environment and of his 7,500 words, fewer than 200 were devoted to the issue.

–– Gordon Brown’s 65-minute speech won him a standing ovation that lasted 5 minutes before he left the hall

–– This was considerably less than the ovation of 9 minutes for Tony Blair’s final conference speech in Manchester last year. That speech lasted a mere 56 minutes

–– However, it was similar to the pattern of Mr Blair’s first speech as leader to Labour’s conference, in 1994, when he announced a review that led to the abandonment of clause 4 of the party’s constitution, committing it to nationalisation. That speech lasted 63 minutes and the ovation 6 minutes

–– In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus tells of a master who, on leaving home to travel, gives to each of his three servants a sum of money. On returning home the first tells how, using his enterprise, he had managed to double the money. The master praises him and awards him more responsibility. The second, though given a smaller sum, also succeeded in doubling the money. He, too, was praised. But the third servant, fearing his master’s wrath, had buried the money given to him in the ground and could only return the same sum. The master chided him for laziness and wickedness.

Ticking the boxes

I want the religious vote “My father was a minister of the church, and his favourite story was the Parable of the Talents because he believed – and I do, too – that each and everyone of us has a talent and . . . should be able to use that talent”

I want country voters “[Farmers’] actions live out our shared understanding that our coutnryside is more than a space that surrounds, it is the oxygen for our towns and cities”

I want to keep party activists onside “I pay tribute to our deputy leader Harriet Harman, who by her campaigning work is pioneering this cause of equality. No discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, age or faith. And no discrimination against the disabled”

. . . and the unions “I can announce that matrons will have the power to order additional cleaning and send out a message – meet the highest standards of cleanliness or lose your contract”

I want to be a statesman “We will hold fast to the partnerships with our closest ally America, our membership of the European Union, the Commonwealth and our commitment to the United Nations”

I want Tory and Lib Dem votes “New Labour – now the party of aspiration and community. Not just occupying but shaping and expanding the centre ground”

I want Scottish voters who don’t like the SNP “Sharing this same small island we will meet our environmental, economic and security challenges not by splitting apart but when we as Great Britain stand together”

I want Daily Mail readers “Let me be clear: any newcomer to Britain who is caught selling drugs or using guns will be thrown out. No one who sells drugs to our children or uses guns has the right to stay in our country”

. . . and I really want Tony to keep an eye on Cherie’s book “Let me acknowledge the contribution he is making now and the debt we owe as a party and as a country to Tony Blair”

By Sam Coates

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