But even he did not expect it to be so slow or so difficult to achieve. With waiting lists now standing at 1.3m – a record – he has pledged to reduce them to their pre-election level of 1.2m by the end of March 1999.To meet this target, Mr Dobson is allocating pounds 320m to health authorities in England for cutting the lists.Privately, ministers concede that the waiting-list pledge was a mistake. Instead of falling, the lists have risen by more than 100,000 in the past year and may rise further before they turn around. Other initiatives such as replacing repeat cautioning with a final warning, parenting orders, and child curfew orders, are also expected to have a knock-on effect on the number of teenagers going to court.For 12 month’s work, Jack Straw’s output is impressive.Pledge rating: 6/10Jason BennettoCrime CorrespondentPLEDGE 3: NHS WAITING LISTSMAXIMUM embarrassment to ministers and maximum pain to the Treasury is the legacy of the pledge to cut NHS hospital waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000. The cost of meeting the pledge will take a sizeable chunk of the NHS budget.Frank Dobson, health secretary, admitted six months after the election that waiting lists are like an oil tanker in being slow to turn around. In North Hampshire, for example, the time from a young offender being charge to sentenced has dropped from 133 days to 89.The key legislation, the Crime and Disorder Bill, will allow courts to lock up persistent child offenders as young as 12 while waiting for their cases to be heard. However, publication of “best practice” guidelines for courts seems to have spurred some magistrates into action.

Will a school be able to persuade the parents of the 31st five-year- old to send her to the second school?Pledge rating: 5/10Judith JuddEducation EditorPLEDGE 2: YOUNG OFFENDERSIT WILL take until the end of the century before the full impact of new government powers to speed up youth justice is fully felt – although an order to the courts to sharpen up their act has already made its mark on the time it takes for a case to be heard.The Home Office has set a 71-day target time for dealing with a young offender from the point of arrest to sentencing – the national average was 142 days in 1996 – but the legislation has yet to come into force.Pilot schemes where courts will be set strict time limits and solicitors, probation officers, and the police could face fines for dragging their feet, will not start until October 1999. However, it may not always be physically possible to build extra classrooms or adapt schools to meet parental demand.Difficulties may also arise if there are not enough extra children to make another class and the nearest alternative school is, say, five miles away. Our aim is to fight poverty, not increase it; narrow social division, not widen it; and extend opportunities, not deny them.” The public and the party should not be deceived by that ready charm and the shirt-sleeve style. Neither party dissent, nor public conflict will deter him from the agenda he has set himself for welfare reform – the most tendentious issue he could tackle as a Labour leader.In his letter to party members, Mr Blair said: “It would be easy to put complex and controversial areas like welfare reform on the back burner. But if we are to make a difference, we need to start now.” This followed his comment in the foreword to the March green paper: “Work for those who can; security for those who cannot.”Now, party members are being told: “We believe that society has a responsibility to help people in genuine need, who are unable to look after themselves.

But nobody would deny that people have a responsibility to help provide for themselves when they can or that a job is the best route out of poverty for those who can work…”It is about delivering a more efficient system. But only two in five of those questioned felt that Labour had kept its election promises on health, education and jobs, and an Independent poll carried out by Harris Research found that only 49 per cent felt the Government had on balance been honest and trustworthy.Yet the Prime Minister is unimpressed by polls like these: he believes strongly that if he and the Government do the right things, the voters will re-elect them. But his devotion is no passing fad or fancy infatuation; it is absolute. Whether the voters will acknowledge the change and reward Labour with another five-year, full-term majority depends on fickle gratitude, the speed with which William Hague can lick his party into shape, and the unforseeable crises that will inevitably batter government popularity over the next four years.For the moment, the voters appear more convinced than the party members, inside the Commons and out. A MORI survey carried out for the Sun at the weekend suggested a staggering five per cent swing to Labour since the election last year, putting Labour on a 54 per cent rating. The bitterness that generates among old and faithful supporters is natural, but it will not deflect Mr Blair from his project: a society in which economic efficiency and social justice go hand in hand.But the efficiency side of the equation is the one that creates most internal Labour dissent; fuelled by the demand for more money to be spent on the poor and the needy today, rather than tomorrow, and paid for by tax increases if necessary.

Mr Blair, as always, wants a balance; as he said in last week’s party letter: “The whole government shares Gordon Brown’s determination to get the public finances on a sound footing. We want public money spent on the things we care about, not on paying the interest on debts built up under the Tories. “What marks us out from the politics of the past,” Mr Straw said, “is that we will not hesitate to do what is right and in the best interests of the country as a whole.”If that means treading on the toes of the old Labour left, or the trades unions, or any other traditional Labour pressure group, Mr Blair will do it without fear or favour. To the Labour critics, it seems that only the CBI, the royals, and Rupert Murdoch can expect more favours than fairness demands.