Today I am publishing "Valuing People: Making things better" the Government's third annual report on learning disability services. The report describes progress made in implementing the programme of action set out in the White Paper "Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century" (Cm 5086) and comments on the National Director for Learning Disabilities report "The Story So Far—A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century" which was published in March this year.Valuing People is a cross-Government strategy. In last year's annual report, "Valuing People: Moving Forward Together", we described areas where Government Departments worked with learning disabled people to ensure that they could be more fully included in society. It recorded a wide range of activity covering many aspects of daily life. In this year's annual report "Valuing People: Making things better" we have described:the work of the Learning Disability Task Force —which has changed the way it works in order to focus on the things that are really important for people with a learning disability;policies set up by the Department for Education and Skills such as "Every Child Matters", the Early Support programme and "Removing Barriers to Achievement" to look at how children with learning disabilities and their families can have services that meet their specific needs. Through encouraging more joined up working, DfES have also been addressing the issues faced by young people during the transition period when leaving school and becoming an adult;issues around choice and control for people with learning disabilities and how individual budgets can help increase people's choices. In the Department of Health, the Valuing People Support team's "In Control" project has been testing out how to make individual budgets happen for certain groups of people and we aim to learn from this; andthe work being done to make people with learning disabilities' day to day lives better: such as improving transport services and, under new laws such as the Disability Discrimination Act, helping make information about transport easier to understand.Today's report, like last year's, is written in an accessible form, using pictures and straightforward, jargon-free language. It is important that people with learning disabilities can see for themselves what is being done to improve the services they use and to increase the opportunities available to them to lead the type of life the rest of us take for granted.Valuing People said that it would take a minimum of five years for its programme to be implemented. We are now over half way through that period and continue to make good progress. However, section three of today's report outlines where the Government acknowledge changes that still need to be made. We shall be working to address these issues in the near future.Copies of "Valuing People: Government Annual Report on Learning Disabilities 2005—Making Things Better" have been placed in the Library.

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