- Written by Anthony Rubin
- BBC News
On 4 January 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set out his five priorities.
“I fully expect you to hold my government and me accountable for achieving those goals,” he said.
What progress has he made?
Half inflation
Inflation was 10.7% in the three-month period between October and December 2022, so the goal was to reduce inflation to 5.3% or less in the last three months of 2023.
The CPI for the final three months of 2023 was 4.2%, so Sunak has delivered on that pledge.
In April 2024, it reached 2.3%, close to the Bank of England’s target of 2%.
Economic development
The government has not publicly announced the procedure that should be used to evaluate this pledge, despite requests.
In some private briefings to reporters, sources said this would be the case if the economy was larger in the three-month period from October to December 2023 than in the previous quarter (July-September).
This did not materialize, as the economy contracted by 0.3% in the last three months of the year, pushing it into recession.
In all of 2023, the economy grew by just 0.1%.
On 28 March 2024, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was asked whether the government had failed to deliver on this pledge.
He said the promise was to halve inflation, but the prime minister: “Then he said we would grow the economy. I don’t think any of us expected the economy to actually grow last year.”
In the first three months of 2024, the economy emerged from recession, with growth of 0.6%. But it was there No growth in April 2024.
Pledging to grow the economy has become more difficult because of the government’s promise to cut inflation by half.
However, this has also led to spending cuts and slower economic growth.
Reduce debt
When governments talk about reducing debt, they almost always mean it as a proportion of GDP.
The idea is that debt declines if it is growing more slowly than the economy.
But the government’s pledge was not about the size of the debt now, but rather about expectations that the debt will decrease within five years (2028-2029).
But it will be tough and will involve challenging spending control for some government departments.
Cut NHS waiting lists
Mr Sunak promised: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly.”
His pledge is on waiting lists in England, because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own health systems.
the Total number The number of waits for non-emergency treatment in England reached 7.6 million in April 2024.
This is about 350,000 higher than when Sunak pledged.
But it is about 200,000 fewer than it was when waiting lists reached their peak in September 2023.
The Prime Minister was asked in an interview on TalkTV on 5 February 2024 whether his government had failed to deliver on its pledge, and Mr Sunak said: “Yes, we have.”
He highlighted the level of NHS spending and said: “All these things mean the NHS is doing more than ever before but industrial action has had an impact.”
Research conducted by the Health Foundation The industrial action taken by consultants and junior doctors has lengthened the waiting list by about 210,000 by the end of October 2023, the research center noted.
Stop the boats
In January 2023, Sunak said his ultimate priority was to “stop boats” carrying people across the English Channel, after 45,755 migrants crossed from France in this way in 2022.
The plan included sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda – to act as a deterrent – but so far, no migrants have been forcibly deported to that country.
The boats did not stop coming.
In all of 2023, 29,437 people were observed crossing the English Channel. According to the Ministry of InteriorWhich decreased by more than a third from the previous year.
So far in 2024, 11,433 cases have been detected, which is more than a quarter more than the same period last year and also ahead of 2022 levels.
April 22 Correction: The Waitlist section has been changed to reflect methodological changes in the February 2024 data as well as incomplete data from September 2023.