Tony Blair speech at CBI conference

Tony Blair speech at CBI conference; - If you look at the waiting times when I first came to office there were thousands of people that waited over 18 months, hundreds of thousands of people who waited over 6 months / There are barely any people now / However, we still have a huge problem with people waiting too long, for example, for diagnostic tests to be carried out in certain areas / But my point is very simple, without strong performance management from the centre, including targets and standards for output, there is no way that we could justify the amount of money that we are putting in / And incidentally I also totally agree with what Kevin was saying in this respect, part of the minimum standards are the proper minimum standards of the workplace, and we as a government have introduced things like the minimum wage and so on and protection for part-time workers, but once you have done that I don't think there should be any prejudice that the public sector necessarily treats its employees better than the private sector- But performance management is one thing / The second thing is greater consumer choice / Now again in the fall in waiting lists over the past few years, which is roughly about 400,000 from 1997 here is the fact, and this is what I would say to people who are opposed to our reforms, is that until we introduced some element of contestability and choice we did not get the fall that we needed / I can't tell you how many occasions you would go to an area and they would say to you well you know we don't have enough money, even with the money that you are putting in- We've got these long waiting lists / There is nothing we can do about it / And we would say well all right we will set up an independent treatment centre and they can take the strain for you and remarkably, over quite a short period of time, somehow what was previously impossible became a bit more possible and then actually was done / And the truth of the matter is public services, l...