Coalition promises: separating substance from spin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/09/coalition-promises-substance-spin

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NHS

In the coalition agreement ministers said: "We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of this parliament". The coalition audit reads: "We have provided the NHS with a real-terms increase in its budget in 2011/12." No mention then that NHS spending was cut in real terms in the first year of this parliament or that spending on the NHS was lower in 2011/12 than it was in 2009/10. The chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot, pointed out that real-terms spending in 2011/12 on health was £104.3bn and in 2010/11 was £104.2bn – both lower than the £105.1bn in 2009/10. Randeep Ramesh

Defence

Questions were raised, especially during the rebellions and protests at the start of the Arab spring, about the coalition's pledge to support defence jobs "through exports that are used for legitimate purposes, not internal repression". Though the government revoked some arms export licences to Libya, Egypt, Bahrain – and Israel – it resumed arms sales to Bahrain despite a violent crackdown of demonstrations there. David Cameron has made plain arms exports to Gulf states are a priority for the government. Richard Norton-Taylor

Green policy

Just five of the coalition's 42 green pledges have not been met, but about a third said to be in progress have faced problems unmentioned by the midterm review. These include failures in tackling illegal levels of air pollution in some cities, in increasing annual flood defence spending from 2010 levels and in protecting our seas. The Green investment bank has launched, but remains the world's only public bank that is unable to borrow, while the promised £1bn to kickstart the technology needed to bury carbon emissions, while marked "in progress", remains unspent in the Treasury's coffers. Damian Carrington

Schools

Schools have seen one of the most rapid and ambitious programmes of changes, but a number of pledges are open to interpretation. While narrowly accurate, ringing claims about extra spending on poor students through the so-called pupil premium would look less impressive if parallel cuts to grants which sometimes benefited the same schools could be factored in. A promise to ensure "all academies follow an inclusive admissions policy" has been marked fulfilled as is the introduction of a new "slimmed down" admissions code, which probably offers less protection than existed before. Tom Clark

Jobs and welfare

The audit says "the Work Programme has been launched". The review neglects to say that official figures released in November showed only 3.5% of people referred to the programme found long-term jobs and none of the welfare-to-work scheme's 18 contractors hit the target of getting 5.5% of clients a job for at least six months. The coalition claimed ministers "will ensure that receipt of benefits for those able to work is conditional on their willingness to work". The review backs this up with talk about the mandatory work activity scheme, requiring more jobseekers to do a month's full-time activity to help them back into work, but fails to mention that the DWP's own evidence points out that most benefit sanctions are due to failure to attend initial work programme meetings - rather than for non-compliance in mandatory activities. RR

Aid commitments

The coalition promised to enshrine into law its commitment for 0.7% GNI of aid in the first session of a new parliament. The funding has been granted, but the legislation has yet to be tabled. Commitments to cut maternal and infant mortality have been backed with some cash, but DfID is reducing bilateral funding for HIV/Aids programmes from £59.9m to £41m up to 2015, and channelling money instead through multilateral organisations. Liz Ford and Claire Provost

Universities and further education

The pledge to increase "workplace training places" is claimed as met through the "youth contract", but this only came into being after a U-turn which saw the abolition of the future jobs fund, inherited from Labour. A promise was made that if the Lib Dems "cannot accept" the Browne report, which recommended raising top-up fees, the party's MPs could abstain in any vote" – stirs memories of their most significant broken promise. They didn't abstain en masse, which might have removed some of the sting for the party, but instead split three ways. The report notes: "The government has agreed a new funding regime for higher education." TC

Culture

Ministers have repeatedly claimed that "frontline" arts would be protected from cuts. In fact the budget of Arts Council England was reduced by 30% at the 2010 comprehensive spending review. The lottery has been pointed to as the answer to funding problems in the arts and heritage. "Sports, heritage and the arts will each see their original allocations of 20% of good cause money restored," claimed the 2010 Conservative manifesto. That has been done, but critics are angry the £675m diverted from the lottery to the Olympics will not be restored to causes until the middle of the next decade, after sales of land from the Olympic park. Charlotte Higgins

Justice and immigration

A rough calculation shows the criminal justice ministers are among the worst offenders in Whitehall with progress falling short on 14 out of 50 or so coalition promises across the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Theresa May's draft communications data bill, which Nick Clegg has sent back to the drawing board, does not seem to quite square with the coalition pledge to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason". Ministers have made progress in extending its "no torture, no ill treatment" deportation agreements for foreign terror suspects, but progress has been fatally undermined by the failure to secure the removal of Abu Qatada. Alan Travis

Equalities

"We will promote equal pay and take a range of measures to end discrimination in the workplace," the coalition promised and says it is in the process of legislating to do so. While there is enthusiasm from campaign groups for the extension of the right to request flexible working, there is despondency at the lack of progress on narrowing the pay gap, and concern at research that suggests that the gap is set to start widening again. Amelia Gentleman

Political reform

The first item in the coalition agreement on political reform has been achieved – the current parliament will have a "fixed" term of five years. But the audit does not mention that the House of Lords blocked a key objective, that the five-year terms should apply to future parliaments. On other areas of political reform the coalition delivered on key commitments, such as the AV referendum and bringing forward proposals for House of Lords reform. In both cases, however, the status quo has been upheld after the "no" vote in the referendum and MPs voted against the Lords reform bill. Nicholas Watt

Families and children

The document states that the coalition promised to "maintain the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020" and reports that it has published a strategy to tackle the causes of poverty and is consulting on changing the way we measure child poverty to better capture "the reality". But child poverty campaigners say the coalition is not on course for the 2020 deadline. Although the last round of figures show a fall in child poverty, there is a two-year lag on these statistics, so they refer back to 2010/11. Predictions from the Institute for Fiscal Studies are that child poverty is set to start rising again sharply by 400,000 in 2015 and another 400,000 by 2020. AG