Chancellor Gordon Brown explains how he believes his £43 billion public spending package will benefit the people of York and the surrounding region.

MANY Evening Press readers will have heard yesterday that spending on our schools and other key public services is to receive a major boost over the next three years.

I want today to take this chance to spell out both what it will mean for York families - and also how our country can now afford such record investment.

What it will mean is better schools, a better health service, safer streets, improved transport, and a fairer and more prosperous country.

Better schools because the extra investment announced yesterday for education will mean more money spent on every child in York.

By next year, spending will have increased since the election on average by £430 per pupil. Our new plans means that figure will have risen to £700 by 2004.

This investment will recruit more teachers, buy more books, continue the drive to renovate school buildings, reduce the number of infants in classes of more than 30 which have already fallen in York from more than 1,000 at the election to fewer than 200 now.

Above all, this investment will continue improving standards - not just in our primaries but also in our secondary schools as well.

Some of this money will go direct to schools and headteachers. Up to £60,000 a year to the typical secondary school in York. Up to £20,000 to the typical primary. Money for the schools to spend where they know it will do most good.

Streets will be safer because the big boost for spending on law and order will mean we can recruit more police for your community. There will be an annual increase of nearly four per cent more above inflation for the next three years for the police.

Extra investment, as well, will improve transport - another of the priorities of Evening Press readers. Increasing spending by 20 per cent a year above inflation will reduce congestion on our roads and improve public transport.

The crusade against poverty will he stepped up too, giving help to deprived neighbourhoods. Increased support to the regions will let all communities share in the country's rising prosperity.

And all of this is on top of the record increase in health funding announced in the Budget in March - a rise of six per cent a year in real terms. This is double the average increase achieved over the history of the NHS - to deliver the reforms and improvements we all know are needed.

It's a programme designed to meet your priorities, to deliver opportunity and security for all. But it's investment which can only be afforded by the hard decisions taken to deliver first a strong and stable economy.

An economy where there are a million more people in work since the election, long-term unemployment has fallen in York by 77 per cent and where we are repaying debt rather than borrowing £28 billion a year as the Tories did.

Repaying debt - and this year we are repaying more than any time since the war - means less money paid out in interest charges this year and every year to come.

By 2004, the steps we have taken to repay Tory debt will save us £5 billion a year. And more people in work means less spent on benefits.

So that's why yesterday I announced we are going to extend and make permanent the New Deal which has already helped cut youth unemployment by 78 per cent in York.

That's why it's wrong that the Tories have said they will scrap the New Deal. And wrong, too, that they are threatening £16 billion of cuts in spending on schools, hospitals and other key public services.

This country needs more not less investment in our vital public services. But that's only possible if we have a strong and stable economy.

This Government has now delivered an economy where jobs are being created and debt reduced. That's why the investment in York's schools, hospitals and police can be afforded this year and in the future.