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Departmental Business Plans

The hon. Gentleman's plain English is wonderful to behold. I do not think that anyone has ever accused me of being any good at speaking English [Laughter.] I do not intend to try to cure my ways now. I am trying to assist this Government to carry out the most important programme of structural reform that has happened in this country for many years so that they can improve our public services and make life better for our citizens, which matters an awful lot. The point about horizon shift is that it is serious. The previous Government caught themselves repeatedly on the hook of trying to achieve a result on Wednesday that they could show the public by Thursday. Often, the upshot was to achieve nothing whatsoever. We are saying that we will try to achieve things in the long term without trying to achieve publicity goals on the way, which is an important change.