Firstly and most importantly I have decided that when we said five years ago that you should vote Blue in order to get Green we should have actually meant it. So I have decided to do something useful to try and put a stop to climate change. I can announce that we are investing over a billion pounds a year in insulating homes and businesses to cut energy consumption and cut costs. We will also launch a major programme of scientific research, product development and marketing to ensure that Britain is at the forefront of the huge opportunities for modern industry that will be opened up by the switch to a low and then a zero energy consumption economy. I am also acting to increase incentives to help homeowners install solar panels and cut their energy bills and will be requiring all building projects to ensure that the new building generates as much energy as it uses over the course of a year.
Because we will be much less dependent on fossil fuels I will not be requiring expenditure on an out of date missile system which has been pompously called Trident. Instead I will cease the constant reductions in the numbers of our conventional armed services and ensure that they have the up to date equipment and the mobility that they need in order to be able to help in situations such as the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean or to defend us if we are ever actually attacked.
Closer to home I wish to apologise for telling voters that we intended to create a northern powerhouse around a coherent modern tube like rail network for the north when my colleagues knew all along that we were about to 'pause' key investment in electrification. We will now proceed to invest heavily in education and training of rail technicians to enable this project to move forward and we will indeed find new investment funds to restore rail lines such as Skipton to Colne and to link them properly into the northern rail powerhouse. Clearly a coherent service needs to be run by one single operator and ticket pricing needs to be simple and straightforward to understand so I will be starting work on renationalising railways as franchises become available.
On the theme of apologies I would like to say that I am deeply sorry to housing associations for threatening to sell off assets that they own - particularly as the legal basis for this is far from clear. Instead I will be making funds available to local authorities, housing associations and indeed the private sector to build new social houses and rent them out to those in need at affordable rents. We will be investigating whether the right for a tenant of a private landlord to buy their home would assist home owner democracy or restrict supply.
For the NHS and education I can make two promises. Firstly we will put a stop to all top down re-organisations. I realise we have already promised this and then launched two massive and unhelpful re-organisations but trust me. This time we mean it. Secondly we will be increasing cash available in real terms and directing it to the schools and hospitals working in the most challenging environments. We will therefore be sending them cash instead of a stream of messages telling them that they are failing or coasting. We will also provide a secure financial future for the BBC and ask it to further develop its excellent website facilities so the public has access to high quality free information alongside the more dubious information provided by the Murdoch corporations.
Our massive top down re-organisation of welfare reform will continue with one vital change. From now on the main purpose will not be to cut what people receive in the hope that making them poorer will be good for their character. Instead we will be raising the resources available so that a massively simplified system will incentivise work but also support those properly who cannot afford to do so. With an ageing population the cost of supporting this could be problematic but fortunately we have a reasonable supply of people of working age willing to move into the country and support our pensioners via their taxes. Whilst we will continue to legally control the number of people coming to the country we will cease to demonise this group and they will have access to benefits on the same basis as all other citizens since they contribute massively more than they consume.
It may be that some people did not understand that I was joking when I promised to pass a law to insist that all future UK governments would need to go back to failed 1930s economics and balance the budget every single year. I am in fact planning to continue with the massive £370 billion money printing operation known as quantitative easing. But from now on this money will go into expanding productive industries and cutting energy consumption instead of merely propping up banks. Investment of this kind will enable the economy to grow without inflation because an increased quantity of goods and services will be produced for people to spend their new increased incomes on.
I am particularly pleased to report that I have been successful in my efforts to persuade the EU leaders to join with the Japanese and US central bankers who have already been applying this policy and that the world is now set back on the course of economic growth. Countries such as Greece that are crippled with debts will be supported to get their people back to work and so those debts will gradually become affordable. Most of all I am overjoyed to report that I have succeeded in persuading other world leaders to set about achieving growth whilst radically reducing their consumption of fossil fuels and raw materials. The exciting new technology which we will now all be investing heavily in has the real capability to help us ease the pressure of 7 billion people on our small planet. I see now that this is such an important objective that it should have been at the heart of our planning from the very beginning.
I trust that the House will forgive me for not recognising this earlier and will work with me in a spirit of trust and co-operation to ensure that the government now proceeds to look after the interests of all its citizens and indeed all occupants of this planet instead of slavishly following a narrow obsession with a flawed economic theory that says that out of control free markets are a good way to manage absolutely everything. I also trust that you will just be glad that our obsession with austerity is over and not hold it against me. Hey everyone makes mistakes sometimes and what is five years of unnecessary misery between friends! Let's all forgive and forget.