§ I have one further set of announcements to make.
§ After long years of neglect, step by step this Government are rebuilding our public services.
§ On top of the £40 billion we are already investing in education and health, we can today allocate increased resources for key public services.
§ We have identified specific areas where step changes can be made through additional investment from our capital modernisation fund.
§ We are allocating an additional £170 million for crime prevention in areas where crime is highest. The Home Secretary will make a detailed statement on this to the House.
§ For public transport, in addition to the rural transport fund we have created, we will make a further allocation that will be announced by the Deputy Prime Minister.
§ For Northern Ireland, today we allocate additional capital spending of £50 million; for Wales, £80 million; for Scotland, £165 million. Full details of the new investments will be given by the Secretaries of State.
§ The £19 billion we are already providing for education will finance smaller class sizes, more nursery education, better pay for better teachers, our drive to improve literacy and numeracy and we will help 700,000 more young people to go on to further and higher education.
§ But, so that every child will have that chance, we need specific and targeted help for our inner-city schools. For upgrading their technology, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment will receive an additional £100 million.
§ And for every school in the country, we will not only invest in new technology. As a result of our prudence in the last year, and following the huge take-up of the additional money provided last year, we are able this month to make another extra and larger allocation for school books: £2,000 to every school in every constituency in every part of the country; immediate new resources of £60 million; a total of 10 million new books in all.
§ I turn to the health service.
§ The £21 billion extra money is making possible the largest hospital-building programme since the war; a £1 billion investment in modern technology taking place in the NHS; the recruitment of 7,000 new doctors; 15,000 more nurses; and a fair pay award for nurses.
§ The Government's new programme, NHS Direct, is a proven success.
§ And the Secretary of State for Health will announce detailed proposals not only to extend it to all of the country by the end of next year, but to carry NHS Direct 190 right into communities, with a network of health and drop-in centres where people can get immediate advice about treatment.
§ We have already provided additional resources for upgrading one third of all accident and emergency units that need modernisation.
§ Today, we can go further.
§ To enhance in every part of the United Kingdom the health care that people most urgently require, we today make an additional and immediate cash allocation, to be spent in the next 12 months, for the upgrading of every single accident and emergency unit that needs it, in every part of the country.
§ For this and other improvements that the Secretaries of State for Health, for Scotland, for Wales and for Northern Ireland will announce, I am providing for the NHS almost half a billion pounds of extra investment today.
§ Throughout the public services, more than £1 billion of additional new investment, on top of the £2 billion that I have allocated to families and pensioners.
§ Public services in the months and years ahead, safe in this Government's hands.
§ I have one final announcement.
§ We promised to get inflation and interest rates under control, to sort out the public finances, to make this the Government of economic competence, and we have.
§ We promised to invest billions more in health and education, and we have.
§ We promised we would cut youth unemployment, and we have.
§ I can confirm to the House that, while rebuilding our public services, our prudence in office also enables us to hold to our pledge made at the election not to raise the basic rate of income tax.
§ In fact, to reward work and ensure that working families are better off, I will match the new 10p starting rate of income tax this April with a cut from next April in the basic rate of income tax to 22p, the lowest basic rate of tax for 70 years and under this Government.
§ Today's Budget is a better deal for work, a better deal for the family, a better deal for business. It is for a Britain now united around values of fairness and enterprise. This is a better deal for Britain and I commend this Budget not only to the House but to the country.