Sure Start works) or on children's health. However, in 2016 the British Medical Journal noted that the benefits of Sure Start to children and families were being eroded by austerity cuts and that, ""disadvantaged families are at greatest risk from [these] austerity cuts"". In 2017, the evidence concerning the effectiveness of Sure Start from both the NESS and the ECCE studies was summarised by a Briefing Paper that was written for the (then) Members of the UK Parliament. Sure Start Sure Start is a UK Government area-based initiative, announced in 1998 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, applying primarily
Chancellor of the Exchequer Prescott. It reverted to the chancellor in 2007, then Alistair Darling. The chancellor traditionally carries his Budget speech to the House of Commons in a particular red Despatch Box. The Chancellor's red briefcase is identical to the briefcases used by all other government ministers (known as ministerial boxes or "Despatch Boxes") to transport their official papers but is better known because the chancellor traditionally displays the briefcase, containing the Budget speech, to the press in the morning before delivering the speech. The original Budget briefcase was first used by William Ewart Gladstone in 1853 and continued in use until 1965