page_title: Tony Blair
section_title: Economic policies
hierarchical_section_title: Tony Blair / Policies / Economic policies
caption_attribution_description: English: DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 27JAN05 - William J. Clinton, Founder, William Jefferson Clinton Foundation; President of the United States (1993-2001), William H. Gates III, Co-Founder, Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation; Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation, USA; Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa; Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Bono, Musician, DATA (Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa), United Kingdom, and Olusegun Obasanjo, President of Nigeria (FLTR), captured before the start of the session 'The G-8 and Africa: Rhetoric or Action?' at the Annual Meeting 2005 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2005.
context_page_description: Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. After his resignation, he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, an office which he held until 2015. He currently serves as the Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
  Blair was born in Edinburgh; his father, Leo, was a barrister and academic. After attending the independent school Fettes College, he studied law at St John's College, Oxford and became a barrister. He became involved in Labour politics and was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983. He supported moving the party to the centre of British politics in an attempt to help it win power. He was appointed to the party's frontbench in 1988 and became Shadow Home Secretary in 1992. He became Leader of the Opposition on his election as Labour Party leader in 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under Blair, the party used the phrase "New Labour" to distance itself from previous Labour politics and the traditional idea of socialism.
context_section_description: During his time as prime minister, Blair raised taxes; introduced a National Minimum Wage and some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's trade union reforms); introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil Partnership Act 2004; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees and sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments. He did not reverse the privatisation of the railways enacted by his predecessor John Major and instead strengthened regulation (by creating the Office of Rail Regulation) and limited fare rises to inflation +1%.
  Blair and Brown raised spending on the NHS and other public services, increasing spending from 39.9% of GDP to 48.1% in 2010–11. They pledged in 2001 to bring NHS spending to the levels of other European countries, and doubled spending in real terms to over £100 billion in England alone.
caption: Blair at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005
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