Gordon Brown's parliamentary programme for the next year

12.02.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 25th Jul 2007

Earlier this month the Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlined his parliamentary programme for the next year to the House of Commons. This makes me wonder is there any point in us having a queen's speech any longer.

I have never been a fan of the queens speech especially during the Blair years when you could have read about most of what was going to be in the queen's speech in The Times at latest on the morning before the speech.

What I would rather have is the Prime Minister or the Leader of the House of Commons layout the governments agenda to a joint meeting of both the houses of parliament (especially one the House of Lords has an elected element) and if needed the monarch to make a speech of his/her own. The boring speeches the queen currently delivers nothing but a chance for her and members of the House of Lords to dress up in clothing which was not even suitable or fashionable even in the last century.

An advantage of what Gordon Brown has done is that there is now a chance to have a public debate on some of the issues for a longer period, however if I am not mistaken Gordon Brown didn't say how the debate that can be had before the queens speech will affect government thinking. If the public, professionals/experts and politicians have major reservations about any of the government plans will the government drop that Bill?

Making housing, health and education the priorities of government was no surprise given that these are the issues people are most concerned about at the moment. Previously I use to think that housing was very much an issue for the cities or urban areas however since being involved in the Liberal Democrats when I started helping in rural constituencies I realised that it was much an issue for rural areas as for the urban areas. Health and the state of the NHS is something that always worries people and the NHS is currently facing cuts due to budget deficits. I find that government always try to make education a priority for two reasons, the first being that it shows government as being responsible and thinking of the long term and second because everyone wants to blame the "evils of society" such as anti-social behaviour, drug abuse, poor health conditions or whatever on the failure of the education system.

I was interested that something like a hundred thousand homes could be built on sites owned by central government which are currently not being used. This sounds like a good idea but I think the success or failure of this depends on the infrastructure around these sites. If they are in the middle of nowhere and people will have difficulties with travelling, shopping, finding schools etc then we may find that people do not want to live in these sorts of places.

I am disappointed that Education and Skills Bill would call for all young people to stay in education or training until the age of eighteen. I think that by raising the age at which people leave education what we are doing is failing to realise that the problem is not how long people are in education but what they do in education. I would rather that we focussed on reforming the education system so that people in their teens could focus developing the experience and skills as well as gaining knowledge. There is the fact that a number of young people are ready to join a family business whether it be as an apprentice or to support the management of a business and keeping them in education longer then is necessary will benefit no one.

Related Link:

Housing dominates Brown's agenda.