The Prime Minister provided a keynote New Year speech yesterday in which he made three promises but felt unable to place a time limit on any of them.

He vowed to cut the inflation rate in half, reduce NHS waiting lists and grow the economy. This is obviously a wish list for any Prime Minister, but he was painfully devoid of any details as to how his goals will be achieved.

To reduce NHS waiting times, he will need to produce more doctors, nurses and hospital beds. Currently, the NHS is losing staff despite a pledge to recruit 30k more, while in order to deliver the 7k new beds that have been promised by his health minister, they will need to expand the recruitment exponentially. This could take a revision of his refusal to consider a Swiss style agreement with the European Union that could allow health workers to be recruited.

In order to grow the economy, tax cuts will be needed, but there has been no indication of this happening from his Chancellor. Jeremy Hunt met with business leaders yesterday to explains the Government's plans to provide support to them during the next financial year.

This sounds more like a package of emergency measures rather than a plan for growth. There is little prospect of a positive quarter of GDP before the final quarter of this year, and that is only a very remote chance.

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