started his contribution to the Throne Speech debate by saying that all the PLP's programmes were based on principles set by its founding fathers.

And he said Bermuda owed much to the PLP's founding fathers.

"We would not have seen much of the social legislation that has taken place in this country," he said. "What we are doing is continuing along that road."

The UBP had integrated the schools, introduced free and compulsory education, government-sponsored health insurance, old age pensions and other initiatives only because the PLP had pushed vigourously for them, he continued.

"It has been the PLP that has provided the vision, the force for a Bermuda that is equitable where there is equality for all the people of this country," he said.

"It's that underpinning that has driven our country to a place where it is today."

Mr. Horton reminded the House of the predictions of disaster if the PLP took power and said that the PLP had made some significant strides in the Social Agenda already with initiatives such as the Long Term Residents and the Employment Act.

"For the first time in this country people who are non-unionised workers ? who the employers used to bully to do exactly what they were told to do, it was a kind of slavery," now have to be paid overtime if they worked more than 40 hours in one week.

"Employers object vigourously, as does the UBP. They object to people getting paid overtime past 40 hours."said that the PLP lifted some of their Throne Speech proposals directly from the UBP's proposals. He agreed that the PLP's founders should get the credit for many of the social advances, but said that the current regime was arrogant and had for six years presided over corruption and "questionable ethical behaviour".

Mr. Furbert said the PLP should have few excuses because it knew what it had to do when it took power in 1998. Its platform had said it would be unjust to link government housing rent to market forces, yet the rents for the houses at Anchorage Road were being raised to market rates.

"We have a Government that has a history of failing to keep its promises," he said. Mr. Furbert added that the average price of a house was now $1 million, up from $540,000 when the PLP took power in 1998, a situation which could have been avoided if the government had added to the housing stock.

And he cited census figures which show that 60 percent of the Island's seniors are poor or near poor and represented the largest group of "have nots".