End of term report | Features

Labour government 1997-2001
Subject	Grade
transport	C–
	Disappointing first term. Labour’s handling of Railtrack and the Tube has been little short of lamentable and it seems to take us an awfully long time to get anywhere. With the exams coming up in June, this could be something of a problem.
macroeconomics	A+
	Despite being a bit out of practice, Labour has shown an excellent grasp of how to run a modern post-industrial national economy. Let’s hope it can keep it up!
schools and hospitals	B+
	Promising. Labour has invested a lot of effort in this area and one day we might actually see some results.
housing	C+
	Quite good on the social side, but hasn’t really addressed the issue of supply – provision has fallen to its lowest point since the 1920s. Needs to get to grips with planning.
taxation	D
	Very poor. It’s done nothing about VAT despite being repeatedly asked, and the CIS was not a good piece of work. We’ve caught it sneaking other taxes into class as well. We can only hope that the next term will be better than this one. If there is no improvement, we may have to consider expulsion …
procurement	B+
	Has continued to make progress with the PFI and prime contracting and has shown real enthusiasm for the Egan agenda. Great things are expected next term.
special initiatives	B–
	Some rather erratic work on the cowboy builders problem, but has made a creditable attempt to tackle advanced work on urban regeneration. Also, CABE has proved very popular.
overall assessment	B
	On the whole, Labour has been a popular government, despite one or two blunders and some significant weaknesses in the areas of transport and taxation. Still, we are confident that it will do well in the exams next month and there’s still time to pull its socks up – next term will almost certainly be more challenging than this one has been.