Author: admin

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, at the Center for American Progress on 13th September 2005.

At The Brookings Institution yesterday, I described the Welfare State as the glue that holds society together and that the key challenge for Government is to help people cope with both the fear and the reality of rapid economic and social change. This pre-supposes that the role of Government is to support the individual at times of transitions or in planning for the future. A different philosophy to the “Social Darwinism” of Herbert Spencer which led President Cleveland in the late 19th Century to pronounce that whilst the individual should support the Government, the Government had no obligation to support the individual – the view epitomised since as “the best form of Government is no Government at all”. So my proposition pre-supposes active if not big Government. But I also believe Governments can not do it alone – individuals and communities as a whole also have a key role to play in fostering greater integration and in supporting all citizens to contribute to society.

The same is true of retirement security. The challenges of globalisation and demographic, social and economic change pose difficult questions for the future of pensions systems across the world – and for Governments, individuals and communities who must find long term solutions to build retirement security in an ever changing climate.

The debates in the UK and US are of a slightly different nature but they are about the same fundamental challenges: Establishing the role of the State in delivering affordable and sustainable social security; finding the best way to protect employer based pensions; and supporting individuals themselves in planning and building both income and assets to support their future.

In the US there is an increasingly urgent question over the affordability of social security with projected social security outlays implied by the current benefit formula rising from 4.3% of GDP in 2004 to 6.4% in 2079. In the UK, the emphasis has been more about the adequacy of state provision with forecast expenditure relatively stable between 5 and 6 per cent of GDP. But the underlying issue is the same – what should be the role of the State in a world where the number of workers per Social Security benefit recipient in the US will have declined from 3.3 to 2 by 2025 – and where the UK dependency ratio will halve from 4 to 2 between now and 2050?

The EU as a whole faces the staggering statistic that while the total working age population is set to fall by 7% over the next 25 years, the population over 65 is set to increase by over 50%.

In our own UK National Pensions Debate we have set out the particular challenges we face on our side of the Atlantic and my Ministerial team and I are travelling the country, sharing these challenges and listening to people’s views. These are emotive issues and it is only by learning from each other and building consensus that we can deliver long-term change.

Neither the State nor the individual can secure the future alone. The Government must have an interest in lifting dependency – the individual and family want and aspire to a higher standard of living than basic entitlement – and the employer must have an interest in attracting and retaining, as well as socially caring for, the workforce.

The security of employer-based pensions is an area where the US and the UK are rightly learning from each other. We learnt from the US Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) in building our Pension Protection Fund – a central component of last year’s Pensions Act that brings real security and peace of mind to over 10 million members of defined benefit schemes in the UK. Yesterday I met Bradley Belt, Executive Director of the PGBC – and the PPF and PGBC will continue working closely and learning from each other.

What is certain is that income in retirement relates to the world of work. As I was reflecting on issues of the welfare state yesterday, so with retirement we have to take account of multiple changes in our working lives, in not just the number, but also the nature of the jobs people do. This is a much talked about element and a real challenge in terms of providing the security in later years which is fundamental to a civilised and independent society.

The issue is how to retain the responsibility of employers and not just the individual, and of course to account for self-employment, especially at the lower income end of the spectrum.

Increasingly people need to be able to choose to work longer and they’ll need the flexibility to switch between jobs and even careers – not just to build their own retirement security but for the benefit of society as a whole.

Those aged 50 and over are a particularly important group to support. While they are much more likely to stay in their jobs than younger workers, if displaced they are much more likely to remain jobless. In the US, of all displaced workers during 2001-03, only 58% of workers aged 50-64 were employed in January 2004, compared with 70% for workers aged 25-49.

Encouragingly older worker retention rates in the US and the UK are higher than in other major OECD countries. For example, based on analysis of data for the period 1998-2002, the probability that a male worker aged 55-59 will still be working for the same employer four years later is 54% in the US, 58% in the UK – but only 45% in Germany and Italy, and only 24% in France.

But we must go further in supporting people approaching traditional retirement – and in giving them the opportunity to choose to work longer if they wish. Of course, the US already benefits from not having a compulsory retirement age – and from next April in the UK it will no longer be possible for anyone under 65 to face compulsory retirement.

One of the things that has been particularly striking in the early UK National Debate events, is the extent to which people don’t know about state pension deferral. As a result of last year’s Pensions Act, someone can now choose to delay taking their state pension, and be rewarded with a higher state pension – increased by a full 10% for each year of deferral – or a lump sum of, on average, up to £30,000 after a five year deferral.

And measures in the 2004 Finance Act will now give people the option to work for the same employer whilst drawing an occupational pension. This will give employees greater flexibility to plan a gradual move from full time work to retirement.

As well as flexibility over when to retire, flexibility over how to save – and the portability of individuals’ savings is an important part of how savings vehicles can adapt to meet the demands of a modern world – where people can have ten jobs in a career instead of 1. This, of course, is where the DC pot can have advantages for the employee over the DB plan – and I have been interested to hear about propsals to extend “auto-rollover.”

I’ve also been interested to learn more about your 401(k) plans where the auto-enrolement, auto-escalation and auto-rollover debates are all key parts of wider question of how individuals can be helped to overcome inertia in building their retirement savings.

In the UK, we are looking closely at the possibility of auto-enrolement – though, of course, we also have a debate about compulsion and whether employers (and perhaps employees) should be mandated make contributions to pension schemes. This is an issue which the independent Pensions Commission will address when it reports later this year.

As well as helping tomorrow’s retirees, the UK Government has already done much since 1997 to improve the situation for people already in retirement – not least by the introduction of Pension Credit which has lifted nearly 2 million people in retirement out of absolute poverty. Indeed, figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies show that the UK is now in an unprecedented position where those in retirement are no more likely to be poor than any other group in society.

But despite this, there are still sections of society where much more needs to be done. Women in particular have found themselves the victims of a pensions system largely based on a 1940s view of society, when their roles were very different and based on dependence on their husbands. This has led to many not having been able to build up enough national insurance credits for a full state pension. I have already announced that a special report will be produced to look solely at this issue, and we will also be holding a specific National Pensions Debate event to discuss its conclusions.

But meeting the ageing challenge and achieving security in retirement is wider than purely financial issues. I am particularly interested in asset-based forms of security. Tackling the growing assets divide is crucial to ensure future generations are removed from, rather than managed in, poverty. If we are to prevent future poverty as opposed to ameliorating it, the support we provide to enable people to build assets – both at an individual level and a community level – will be absolutely crucial.

Asset policies can offer unparalleled opportunity in the fight to prevent future disadvantage, stopping people falling into dependence when circumstances change, and by enabling families to build intergenerational stepping stones out of poverty.

In this way we can explode the myth that ageing is a barrier to a positive contribution to the economy or society as a whole – moving beyond traditional debates about how to manage dependence and looking to a new world of enabling independence.

Ultimately security, well-being and quality of life is about more than income. It is about health, environment, a sense of belonging, worth, about community and enablement. It is about the glue which holds society together – so moving forward on retirement security is about social capital, not just cash.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in Canada on 16th September 2005.

I’m very pleased to be with you in British Columbia today – to have the opportunity to share experiences with you and learn from you – as we work together in the fight to end disability discrimination – the last great emancipation of our time.

The UK and Canada have a lot in common – and we are learning from each other – for example with your Human Rights Commission and Office for Disability Issues and our New Deal and Pathways to Work.

Western Canada has gone much further than we have in achieving greater accessibility but not as far as we have in other areas which I will come back to. Yesterday I was in Vancouver. With more than 14,000 side-walk ramps, Vancouver is one of the most wheelchair accessible cities in the world. Half of the buses and all but the Granville Street SkyTrain station are wheelchair accessible and the HandyDART is a bus service designed for wheelchair users.

In the UK we have, of course, got our Disability Discrimination Act which we’ve updated twice over the last five years and the Disability Rights Commission. We’ve also set about implementing the most profound extension of disability civil rights our country has ever seen.

Last October saw protection against discrimination given to an additional 600,000 disabled workers. And it saw a further 7 million jobs and 1 million employers brought within the scope of the employment provisions of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.

This year’s Disability Discrimination Act takes us even further. As different clauses come into force over the next 18 months, the Act will extend the coverage of the DDA to at least another 235,000 people – by extending the existing definition of disability to those with HIV infection, cancer and multiple sclerosis effectively from diagnosis rather than from the point at which the condition has some adverse effect. We are also going to treat people with mental illnesses on a par with people with any other impairment by removing the requirement that mental illnesses must be “clinically well recognised.”

The Act will end the anomaly of transport not counting as a service under the DDA and allows us to set an end-date of 2020 for all rail vehicles to be made accessible to people with disabilities, including wheelchair users.

It also places a duty on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. And this is a vital step in helping to eliminate the institutional disadvantage that many people with disabilities still face.

For the first time, people with disabilities can have confidence that their needs will be at the forefront rather than being considered as an afterthought.

For example, local authorities won’t be able to consider closing facilities like libraries or leisure services without thinking first about how people with disabilities in the area would be affected.

However, the primary task is to bring about comprehensive change in the way in which those planning or delivering services think about the implications before rather than after they are implemented. We all know this is true of architects and planners but it needs to be equally true of those organising education or social services and, above all, those providing information and advice.

This promotion of equality is central to our vision of a truly fair society offering opportunities for all. And it underlies much of our efforts to empower people with disabilities to realise their ambitions in the workplace as well as in society as a whole.

In Canada in a 2001 survey, 43.7% of people with disabilities had a job – less than two thirds the rate of those without disabilities. The UK rate is just under 50% and just under 75% respectively. So although we have seen a significant increase in the employment rate of disabled adults since 1998 – up by about 9 percentage points – we still have much further to go.

In Canada, working age adults with disabilities are at higher risk of having a low income and, in 1998, nearly half of them relied on Government programmes as their primary source of income compared with 11% for those without disabilities.

We’ve been committed to developing employment programmes to help all people realise their potential and achieve in the workplace. 225,000 people with disabilities have already benefited from our package of New Deal programmes. (The New Deal has a range of strands targeting particular areas of unemployment and offering with conditionality, substantial support.) And we have good and growing partnerships with civil society so that Government alone is not responsible for delivery.

One example of employers, Government and the medical profession working in Partnership is with the Pathways to Work. This is available not just to people with disabilities but is a key part of our programme to reduce the numbers claiming Incapacity Benefit.

The latest Pathways statistics show that the number of recorded job entries for people with a health condition or disability has almost doubled compared with the same period last year. On a national basis this early success would be equivalent to over 100,000 IB claimants being helped into work each year. However, this even when available nationwide is not ambitious enough to challenge the failure of the last 25 years which has led to a quadrupling of the number drawing IB at a time when medical and other forms of intervention have improved dramatically. That is why I shall be bringing forward comprehensive package of reform for wide consultation over the months ahead.

The consultation will begin next month with a policy paper which will set out the next stage of reform to ensure that we can transform the welfare state from a crutch or a mere safety net – to ladder that can help everyone capable of doing so to climb out of dependence. It’s not about paternalism – it’s about something for something – helping people who are prepared to help themselves.

There is a very important distinction which I want to emphasise – and that is between our reforms of Incapacity Benefit and our provision of Disability Living Allowance. The latter in providing non-means-tested support towards offering equality – the former being financial compensation for the inability to earn. Many people with a disability or who are taking long-term medication do not turn to IB but instead to the world of work and self-determination. We believe that work is the best route out of welfare and provides the means to break intergenerational disadvantage and exclusion from the norms of social as well as employment interaction. Active inclusion means overcoming barriers to normal living rather than simply accepting and then compensating for, exclusion from what others take for granted.

But achieving full equality and opportunity in society is about much more than benefits. Ultimately, no Government action, legislative or employment support programme will be sufficient unless it is accompanied by a step-change in public attitudes.

In a 2004 survey, just under half of Canadians pointed to prejudice on the part of individuals and society-at-large as the most significant barrier to inclusion facing people with disabilities – a view shared by citizens with and without disabilities. Only 29% pointed to physical barriers.

The UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Report in January this year called “Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People” set out an ambitious 20-year strategy to improve the life chances of people with disabilities by promoting independent living supported by individualised service delivery.

It recommended new ways of ensuring more co-ordinated policy making across Government, specifically through a new Office for Disability Issues, and it sought to enable people with disabilities to participate in policy design and service delivery.

The UK Government is taking forward all the recommendations – including the creation of this new Office for Disability Issues – where, as part of our consultation which ended yesterday, we have been looking at your model here in Canada. I’m especially interested in the Social Development Partnership Program’s work with the non-profit and voluntary sector, and the Opportunities Fund’s work to encourage employers to hire workers with disabilities, and help individuals start their own business.

And through another recommendation we are committed to piloting individual budgets and a new Independent Living Task Force to look at the practicalities of such budgets. This is another idea that has routes in British Columbia where in the 1970s the Woodlands Parents Group had formed to advocate the best possible community based resources for their children. They realised that in setting up programmes and services they could not guarantee that people with disabilities would be able to participate fully in the community – and they worried that establishing specialised services might relegate their children to an institutionalised community life. Therefore from the provision for early years education and childcare through the years of schooling and into the skills and avenues into employment, we need to ensure that integration with support, is available at every stage.

Rather than people fitting into services – services need to fit to people with every person with a disability able to choose the supports and services they need from a wide range of possibilities that exist within a given community. Let me give the example of blind and partially sighted men and women. The provision of information is crucial but it needs to be available in a range of formats including Braille, large print and on CD. But this means a range of agencies taking responsibility for ensuring this happens rather than passing over the task to in your case the CNIB and in our case, in the UK, the RNIB.

Although the goal of the 1970s Woodlands Parents Group was not realised at the time, their vision has struck a chord – the idea that individualised funding could open the door to self-determination.

Today, this concept of individualisation is now becoming global. The idea of a menu of choices – focused on the individual – but supported by the community is really both powerful and inspirational. Earlier this week I was in Washington discussing employment programmes with the US Government and yesterday I visited SUCCESS in Vancouver – which last year provided no fewer than 886,000 client services through the support of a dedicated network of 20 board members, over 350 professional staff and 9000 volunteers. In both cases we are seeing the effects of giving people options with which to support themselves out of disadvantage. And when you combine that with a sense of with building assets and social capital – and with volunteering and community engagement – it really does bring hope the future of our society.

Ultimately we are talking about what sort of society we want for ourselves; inclusive and supportive but not paternalistic and confining. We want to liberate people, not patronise them. We want to create independence, but with mutual help – something for something – which is not about abandoning those of working age facing illness or disability but helping them to overcome the additional barriers to a full life.

Where people simply can not, we have obligations which spring from decency and morality – but where people can gain independence we have an obligation – and so do they – to take up in this modern technological era the opportunity to become a full player in life.

If you don’t write yourself off nor will we – is a phrase close to my heart. But I am not saying if I can do it you can – we’re all different.

The coming months will be crucial for both our countries – with both Governments looking to make major changes to their welfare systems. But both Governments must look further in working to change attitudes and embedding the social capital which is central to successful integration and cohesion of our societies.

Helping our communities adapt for the future is not about ameliorating poverty, but actually overcoming intergenerational disadvantage in order to root out poverty and exclusion. That is the challenge for the future.

Below is the text of the speech on managed migration made by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, at the 2004 TUC Conference on 10th November 2004.

This is first opportunity I’ve had since George Brumwell stepped down from the General Secretary’s job at UCATT to thank him for the many years of tremendous battle that he’s been engaged in. He is very familiar indeed with gangmasters given the history of the construction industry and lump labour and all the exploitation that went with it.

So what we’re catching up with this morning is an agenda the union movement have been battling about for the last 150 years. Why it’s relevant today is because world-wide people movements have made a difference – not just now but in the past as well. Of course the world changes and economy changes because it’s not that long ago since Auf Wiedersehen Pet was on the television and it was British workers in Germany that were the entertainment.

I think it’s worth just reminding people that we are now responding to the most successful economy – other than in Scandinavia – in the world and we’re actually seeing the requirements of that strong economy in terms of the need for labour and for flexibility. The real task and the challenge that I want to lay out this morning is how to achieve that without the gross exploitation of those workers coming into the country, the exploitation of lower paid workers who are resident and indigenous in the country here and the exploitation of better employers by swept labour being used by those employers who are prepared to undercut in the way that was described almost 100 years ago when the Wages Act was passed.

Francis O’Grady, the Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, and I were sharing a platform a week or two ago in Chesterfield talking about these very issues. About how we have to face up to what is happening in terms of gang masters and the way in which individual unions like the Transport and General Workers and UCAT have been involved over the years in battling for a new gang master legislation which is very welcome and a starting point for getting this right. I was a very strong supporter both in Cabinet and in Parliament for getting that right. We need to ensure that we establish and develop the Stakeholders Group so that we can deal with illegal working and illegal exploitation. We need to build on the TUC’s work with the workers rights leaflet which we have been funding and developing with the TUC in respect of those workers coming in, or already being here from the Accession States under the expansion of the European Union. Of course that has been a really major success. It’s part of what we laid out almost 2 ½ years ago in the policy paper Safe Havens, Secure Borders back in February 2002. Not many people have read it unfortunately, it is on the website though.

The paper is a balanced policy about sensible, legal economic migration underpinned by good social cohesion and integration policies, mirrored and paralleled by legal routes for people to come into the country if they are facing death or torture and are therefore asylum seekers and we’ve developed the United Nations route for doing that. It’s at it’s very early stages and we’ve had difficulty persuading local authorities to take on the challenge of being part of the pilot scheme. My own authority in Sheffield was the first to do this prior to the elections at the beginning of June – others were terrified in case their local media and local electorate took fright. Bolton are just taking on a new traunch of those people coming in legally. I mention this to begin with because we’ve got to get over the way in which some branches of the media confuse legal migration with legitimate asylum with illegal and clandestine entry and merge all of these together into a campaign against people being able to come here to receive a warm and recognition that they play an essential part in the life and wellbeing of our country.

And we have a challenge in the trade union movement because although the leadership of the movement is absolutely committed and always have been against racism and in favour of properly managed legal migration and properly managed asylum policies – the vast majority of trade union members, as demonstrated by the opinion polls both taken internally by the Government as well as those taken by the news media – demonstrate that people are still not only misled and misunderstanding but also deeply fearful and therefore in need of reassurance.

80% of people in this country think that asylum claims rose over the last 12 months when it actually dropped by 70%. They don’t believe the facts and they don’t believe them because they’re not told them by the media. We have a job to do here, we can be as remiss as others in terms of not being able to get the message across as to precisely what’s happening. Two years ago when I reached agreement with the French on the closure of the Sangatte camp – we stopped what was a nightly vision on our televisions and a daily vision on the early pages of the newspapers of people smuggling their way into the country. The impact that those visual images had still rests with us. So, we’ve got a real challenge to actually get across the message both inside and outside the trade union movement about the real facts.

The facts are that we need migrant labour. That we have a vibrant economy and we can have a dual approach which doesn’t see managed migration as a alternative to training, to skilling, to improved education, to better welfare to work policies – but a corollary of them, running alongside them. So that getting it right in terms of skills, of moving people from unemployment, of getting people in the right jobs in the right place, of being able to ensure that those who have previously been excluded from the labour market for all sorts of reasons, can firstly take part-time and then full-time jobs. That’s an absolute imperative, as is making work pay and both the minimum wage and the tax credit system are now beginning to ensure that that can happen. We’ve made progress and I know that people in this audience will want us to make it faster and more effective but we’ve made substantial progress over the last few years in achieving that.

But, we can’t simply meet our needs by that alone. When opposition parties talk about “rigid quotas” (opposition parties that always believe in markets everywhere else except in the labour market), they have to answer a simple question – how on earth can you determine a quota in terms of what employers need to fill vacancies, what the economy needs in terms of the stimulation of growth and productivity and therefore the continuing creation of jobs? The meeting of the challenge of population changes, demographics, of an ageing population and the requirement to be able to sustain us in those changes and to sustain our pension policies and our well-being in those circumstances? How could you do that with a rigid quota laid down in Parliament which would result in anybody to a restaurant and finding as they waited 2 hours for a starter, the manager came along and said don’t argue with me but get hold of your local MP and have an amendment moved next week to the quota because we’re a bit short of labour. More poignantly when the ward’s closed and the nurses are not available or the class size rises about the minimum that I set for infants and we have a crisis in the education system. This would be the result of not allowing a labour market to operate legally and openly and not allowing people to come here in that way.

We have 600,000 vacancies in the economy, we have shortages in particular sections and regions and in the country of Scotland who are pioneering the programme of getting people to move to Scotland and to play their part in the life of Scotland and the Scottish economy. We’re working with the Scottish Executive to enhance that and to make that even more effective.

All of these things come together in terms of opening up what should be a common cause in this country between those in work and those trying to fill vacancies. 31% of doctors in this country originated overseas, 25% of all health workers in this country originated overseas and many of the people who have come here recently under the Accession States changes have been able to fill vacancies, sometimes on a temporary basis that would otherwise have led to very considerable difficulties in sectors of the economy.

I’m proud of what we did on the 1st May, I had to battle extremely hard privately and publicly for what we did because we and Ireland were the only ones who opened up fully the ability to come and work under Accession arrangements. Other countries in varying degrees had to let people of course come as visitors and to move able freely but not to work. As a consequence many people have been pushed into clandestine working across the European economy, undercutting and exploiting other workers and providing a misleading view that somehow they don’t need and shouldn’t have those workers. We chose instead a registration scheme, an open registration scheme. Around 90,000 people in the first 5 months registered. They made a major contribution, many of those who registered originally have already gone back to their countries of origin. 60% in terms of the agriculture sector. And it raises an interesting question about what happens to those who are not registered because they’re not part of EU Accession but are here clandestinely from outside the European Union – something I want to come back to in a moment.

It may well be that some of those come and go. Some of them we pick up as part of the doubling of our drive against illegal working. Some of those claim asylum in country in order to be able to stay and their cases have to be dealt with on their merits. Some of them are prepared to go home, some can’t go home because their countries of origin won’t re-document them and cause major complications. But as far as the EU States are concerned, this has been a tremendous success. You just need to look back to April of this year to see what people were saying about my proposals. There was almost panic. The leader of the Opposition got up week after week on Prime Ministers’ Questions denouncing it as being an opening of the flood gates. There were newspaper articles that almost suggested that people from Central and Eastern Europe would be pillaging wives and daughters. It was utterly bizarre.

I do therefore think that the Government deserves some credit for standing up and being counted on this issue and saying that this is the first step to demonstrating just how well a balanced policy can work in the interests of our country. It can only work of course, if that balance is right. The registration allows people to be treated properly, entitled to minimum standards and decent conditions. It also entitles us to require them to pay tax and national insurance and in the first few months alone £120 million was contributed to GDP and £20 million to tax and national insurance. It would have been a great deal higher but many of these workers are actually quite lowly paid.

I mention the question of temporary as well as full-time workers because whilst many of the workers from Accession States are able to move freely and go backwards and forwards, there is an issue about avoiding exploitation of workers from the developing world. Many of you will have debated this on occasions – we agonised about it when I was the Education and Employment Secretary in relation to schools. Because very often we wanted people to come to our country with particular skills but we didn’t necessarily want to encourage them to stay forever because their own countries of origin desperately needed them. But there are mutual benefits if people come here to learn, to improve, to gain confidence and to go back and be able to contribute to the well-being of the country that they came from.

I think we need to see this as a much broader policy generally, we need to be able to reach agreements with countries across the world which would reduce the need for people to attempt to claim asylum that there would be much greater freedom if those countries were prepared to guarantee re-entry for their citizens and were prepared to adhere to decent human rights. So, this isn’t just an issue about managed migration or asylum, this isn’t just an issue about fair treatment in our country – it’s also a much broader issue about human rights across the world, genuine freedom of movement and proper treatment of citizens.

So – I just want to put one or two things on the table. I’ve mentioned that we’ve doubled the number of actions, or raids against illegal working and we’re going to step that up quite dramatically.

We’re going to develop with the TUC and the CBI an agreement in terms of dealing with illegal working. We’re going to implement the measures in the Sex Offenders and Sex Offences Act in terms of the trafficking of workers for sexual exploitation. We’re going to strengthen the law on top of the Gang Masters Bill, around the issue of illegal employment and we’re going to work with the TUC on providing additional information to workers coming into our country. All of this needs to be seen alongside the material that we’re now supplying not only to asylum seekers but to new migrants on their rights in Britain and their duties and obligations. This will be provided as part of the development of English language for people coming into the country and of course the new citizenship courses which will be available and will encourage people to take naturalisation.

There is a common cause here between what we’re doing on citizenship in schools which I introduced when I was Education Secretary and what we are doing in terms of citizenship for those who have come into the country and the demand and obligation that we require from our own citizens to provide a warm welcome and an integration of those settling into the communities around us.

So the contribution that is being made overall by migration into this country is something just under 0.5% contribution to GDP. It’s a substantial tranche of our well-being and the flexible way in which we’ve been dealing with these issues over the last 3 years has actually accelerated that process. But it has to be underpinned with quite clear and tough, reassuring policies – which is why we’ve put in place the new security and immigration measures on the French and now on the Belgium coast. Why we’ve been able to reduce dramatically (by 2 thirds) the number of people who are picked up as illegal entrance into the country at the Kent coast over the last 12 months. Why the new legal routes into the country are so important and the quadrupling of work permits is so vital to making this work because people know that they can get here safely and legally and why we need to learn from the Workers Registration Scheme.

Now, people have put to me, could we have some form of amnesty for those who are being exploited more generally, those who are not EU citizens. If I went for an amnesty at this moment in time there would be an absolute flood of people trying to get in to actually take advantage of an amnesty. So I think we’re going to have to approach this in a different way. Not everybody in the TUC agrees with me about Identity Cards but one absolutely certain fact is that until you have a proper identity system and we know who is legally here in this country and who is entitled to work and draw down on free services and we are the only country in the world that has a free health service and open access to pre-University education – then we won’t actually be able to monitor and therefore to be properly able to register and do the job. We can do it with EU Accession States because people won’t receive in work benefits and support and legal right to remain here but we can’t do it for people across the world. That is why I have to get other measures in place first before we could ever consider such a policy. I hope that the work that I’ve announced this morning, the joint work with TUC and individual trade unions and the CBI and small business federation will help.

I hope that the Serious and Organised Crime Agency that we are about to establish will help us to clamp down on traffickers and organised criminals who are behind the clandestine entry. I hope that the further measure that we are about to take which joins Customs and Excise, Immigration, Inland Revenue, the DTI’s enforcement and DWP with the Home Office on a major new drive and pilot scheme in the West Midlands to clamp down on and illegal working will help.

It has to help because your members are undermined just as the individual themselves are undermined by what is taking place. Because the minimum wage is undercut, conditions are ignored, the bad employer actually affects the jobs of those working for decent employers by undercutting prices and unfair competition.

So we’re all in this together and I hope that with the umbrella of sensible, balanced migration and the new integration policies including the new integration loan that I announced at Labour Party Conference, we can start making progress. Not only to provide that warm welcome but to change people’s attitudes in this country. Because if we don’t you’ll hear again and again what you heard from the Co-Chair of the Tory Party last Saturday, Liam Fox, who spoke on the on Saturday morning and lied through his teeth.

He talked about migration being out of hand, he talked about asylum claims going up. He talked about the dangers, he attempted to whip up fears and our job is to reduce those fears. To reduce the fear of difference, to reduce the fear of exploitation, to reduce the fear of someone else taking your job. We need to demonstrate instead that properly organised and properly managed in the community we have a win-win situation here where people being treated properly can also lead to us treating ourselves properly.

That is the message of this morning and I ask the TUC and individual trade unions to ask their executives not just to pass resolutions or be sympathetic – or even sometimes to be critical when they think we’ve got it wrong – but to actually help us to do something about it. Like persuading those 80% of trade union members who don’t have the facts, who are fearful about what’s happening around them and who need persuading. If we don’t do it together I promise you our opponents will exploit that weakness and it won’t be us arguing about what we’re going to do but it will be all of us passing resolutions about what we’d like somebody else to do in a different world when we return to power.

So, here we are, we’re in it together and I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to you. I’m particularly for all of you coming this morning to listen.

Thanks very much indeed.

Below is the text of the speech made on 17th November 2004 by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, on identity cards.

Well, thank you very much for being here and for the invitation. It depends of course upon your passion and whether or not we are in favour of it. I am very happy to take on the challenge of those who feel extremely strongly about the issue of identity cards and the protection of our identity. There was a little group of people outside who burnt a card with my effigy on it. There are 80% of the population at the moment on all the opinion polls who are in favour, so if they keep up those antics, we should get over 90% by the end of the year. When I first started discussing this and it’s almost 3 years ago to the month since it was raised with me rather then my raising it publicly, there was a great deal of scepticism about whether the public themselves would be in favour. By the time I’d published the consultation, we’d reached the point where people at least were smiling about it. There was a cartoon in the Daily Telegraph, which I thought was very apposite, of two dogs smelling each other’s bottoms saying “Well at least with identity cards we won’t have to do this anymore!” So that at least bought a smile to people’s lips.

There have been lies, damn lies on the coverage of ID cards. I saw in a Sunday paper just a few weeks ago a quite remarkable story about how they are going to allow the government to track the shopping habits, the purchasing and the spending habits of the population, where of course, as we know it’s these little cards that actually determine whether people’s shopping habits, whether they’re purchasing, whether their family activity, the exact nature of the purchasing, where the expenditure is made, is all to do with loyalty cards and voluntarily very large numbers of the population now are prepared to have that sort of detail understood by the private sector and often used by the private sector. And I think there’s a real issue about how that should be overseen and supervised and how as part of the debate about the very limited access and use of information in terms of identity cards, we should broaden the discussion in terms of protecting our broader privacy in those circumstances. So I think it’s a really good opportunity now to start debating what is known about us, by whom, who supervises and oversees it and how we can get a grip on it. And certainly with ID cards, the real issues will be about how we reassure people that far from encroaching on their liberty, their privacy and confidentiality, we are able to build-in proper mechanisms to ensure that there isn’t either a drift in terms of the access to it or function drift in terms of the use of the information that is available on the new register.

I want to address the issue of “why now?” and why now it is meaningful to actually undertake the project that we are about to legislate on and to develop. The first thing to say is that there is a mistake in believing that what we are putting forward is a replica of anything else that actually exists across Europe and the world. I wouldn’t be arguing for identity cards in the form that they’ve been known in Europe for the kind of measures that we want to take and the protections that we believe an identity card will give us. I wouldn’t do so because we could not actually track and properly verify identity under those schemes because firstly we wouldn’t have a secure and verifiable database of the specific biometrics, the identifiers that route back to our identity as opposed to someone else’s. Secondly, we wouldn’t be able to use that database and the verification mechanisms both through the card and direct from the person to be able to check whether the person who presents themselves, for whatever purpose, is the person who’s identified on that secure database, and thirdly because the uses to which we are now able to put the identity card linked to a database using biometrics has, by necessity, to be the method by which we will be challenged across the world as we use visa and passports linked to biometrics. So the “why now” is all about the meaningful use of a card which in itself is unimportant. It’s the identification of the individual and the use of the biometric, and it may well be that in years to come, the card itself will become superfluous. Technology would allow you simply to move past, or to put 3 or 2 fingers over a particular laser for the identity to be reflected in terms of the database. So the card is almost a reassurance. It’s a reassurance as to what’s there. It’s a reassurance for those learning to use and to provide proper verification of identity. It’s simply about this: how do we know that the person who presents themselves, is the person they claim to be? At the moment we don’t have such verification and we can’t prove it, and secondly we haven’t had methods which were free from, or as free as we could get from, from people being able to forge someone else’s identity. You can forge a card, that isn’t the issue. The issue is can you forge someone’s identity, whose identity is registered on the database? Of course if someone claims to be someone else, registers as someone else and continues for the rest of their life to be someone else, then the database will have them as someone else, until the someone else actually claims to be who they are and then we sort it out, because there can’t be 2 people with the same biometric on the same database claiming to be the same person. I think it’s quite important to spell that out because there is terrific misunderstanding about the issue about being able to forge or multiply identity. You can do what you like with the card but you can’t in terms of routing it back to the database.

And why the necessity of doing it at all now? Well fairly obviously on a very personal level what is it good for in terms for us? If we are going to have to pay $100 a throw to get a biometric visa for clearance to travel to and from the US and there are 4 of us in the family, it’s a lot easier to use a biometric ID card, linked to our new biometric passport then it is to have to pay over and over again in order to be cleared to be able to get to the US, and that will certainly become the case in other parts of the world as well. It’s helpful for us, in terms of being able to establish common travel arrangements in Europe. Not necessary inside but certainly coterminous with the Schengen travel area, in order to be able to do that, alongside our colleagues in France, Germany and Spain who are now developing the issue of biometrics for travel inside and outside the European Union. It’s obviously the case that we need to tackle gross fraud and whilst PIN numbers help, they don’t overcome the massive growth in fraud and organised criminality which is a daily occurrence, and which is actually affecting the lives and well-being of millions of people. And then of course we get onto the issues of terrorism. Now people say to me that they don’t believe for a minute ID cards would actually help in terms of being able to track or prevent terrorist activity and they say “It didn’t stop the terrorist attack in Madrid in March, did it?” And the answer is: “no it didn’t” and I have never claimed that it would have done. The claim is very simple. ID cards, and this is true of their use in other areas, is not a panacea for all ills. It does not prevent, it does not stop, it contributes to being able to put in place another plank in the creation of a wall against those who would exploit our well-being in free societies, in a global economy, in a world of immediate communication where transport across the world allows us to move freely wherever we want to go.

We live in a totally different world to even 20, never mind 50 or 100 years ago. And if something contributes, as it does, to preventing multiple identity being used for terrorists and organised crime, I believe we should take that opportunity. The security service say, and there is no reason on earth why they should tell an untruth, and I’ve checked with the Spanish government who after all were not in government when the attack took place, so they have no vested interest in this, what the situation is in terms of multiple identity and terrorism: 35% of known and identified terrorists have used multiple identities. They use it to hide and prevent tracking of their movements; they use it in order to be able to cover other terrorists and terrorist activities and their contacts and they use it obviously to be able to escape detection. So there is a real contribution, albeit that it isn’t a complete one, in terms of helping us to do that. What is absolutely certain, is that in a modern democratic society like ours where we have free provision of services, the attraction of being in Britain without an easy and verifiable way of ascertaining an individual’s identity, changes the relationship between citizens and residents who contribute towards society around them and those who would draw down on society without making a contribution.

I think it’s a profound values point. Those who argue against free services argue that people misuse them if they don’t contribute to them. People who argue against transfer of income through public services, namely equalisation, providing a fairer society, do so on the basis that people exploit those services and take them for granted. Only by ensuring that we have a something for something society, those who in one form or another contribute towards the well-being of society, in my view, have the right therefore to demand that society support and develop services to sustain them. We have the only free health service in the world. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of pounds a year are drawn down on by people who have no right to use our services – primary and mostly acute care. It’s estimated that we have those in our country who know that they can come here freely and they can present themselves and receive treatment. Now clearly anybody who has an emergency, anyone who is in this country and has reciprocal arrangements, anyone who has a contagious disease that requires immediate action, should receive free treatment and under the scheme we are putting forward that would remain the case. Anyone accessing long term treatment care and expensive services by immediately registering with a GP or presenting themselves at A&E, should actually be able to prove their identity and then we can sort out not whether they receive treatment, and if they are on a long term programme, how it’s paid for. It’s as simple as that.

The same applies in terms of the ability to work in our country. You can’t have a system where we quadruple work permits, where we open up new migration routes, where with the United Nations we get a grip on the exploitation by organised criminals of those who come into our country through asylum but actually want to stay and work. If you don’t have a system that can route out clandestine entry and clandestine working, at the moment schemes to try and clamp down on those who are exploiting others, including gang masters, are very difficult. The 1996 Act clause 8 has been very difficult to implement because employers quite rightly say that they are not an immigration service and they can’t easily ascertain whether someone is legally in the country without great difficulty. The verification process under ID cards would remove that excuse completely and people would know who was entitled to be here and open to pay taxes and NI. In my view that would be a major contributor to social cohesion, to tackling racism, to overcoming xenophobia by ensuring that people know that those who are here in our country have a warm welcome, contribute and are not exploiting themselves, or exploiting others or being exploited by rogue employers who undercut rates by sweat shops. If we really want to get a grip on the sweat shop sub-economy then we will need, I am afraid to those who disagree with me, we will need ID cards to be able to do it.

Let me just say two other things, one about values. A lot of the fear it seems to me in this country about ID cards, apart from the clumsy way in which they were handled in the post-war era, is the history we have of having understandable and legitimate doubts about the intentions of the state, whatever state, whichever government is in office reinforced with what we saw across the world in the 20th century with communism and fascism. It goes back a long way, actually John Stuart Mill wasn’t quite the libertarian that people think he was because he understood that we held common values which were crucial to the glue of society and was not as antipathetic to the philosophies of Rousseau which underpinned the mutuality and solidarity which is much more common in Europe. Kant, I’m afraid, was the great libertarian, who took a view [and people often do subliminally in our society], that there is something inherently suspicious about government itself and if government are doing it, then something must be inherently wrong, there’s going to be oppression, there’s going to be the taking away of freedoms and rights. Whereas of course the private sector, as with loyalty cards, is perfectly alright, no problem about that, whatever they know about us is perfectly legitimate. Now I challenge this because as a democratic socialist, I believe that the great strides in equality and fairness and in creating liberty and in creating a civilised and just society have come about by people joining together through democratic politics to change the world, and they have done so by using politics through government, at local and at national level. And increasingly have to try and do so, including of course, the United Nations, by joining together and having solidarity in overcoming those challenges and I think that it’s time to take on those who simply believe that if governments are engaged in trying to ensure that people’s true identity can be ascertained, there is some suspicious and dangerous philosophy behind it. It can’t be they say, at face value. You can’t really just want to know that someone is who they say they are. Well we do, and we can build in systems that you can’t build for private enterprise to protect ourselves, our citizens, from encroachment on those aspects of our lives that we don’t want the state to interfere with or to know about. Simple identity with simple facts about who you are, where at the moment you are living, seems to me to be completely open to scrutiny as are the things we put on our passports or our driving licenses and it is exactly the same we are seeking from people.

We have had two consultations, one on the original scheme and secondly on the draft bill. The Home Affairs Select Committee have produced their report and we have accepted a very large number of their proposals including that whilst we build the scheme on the biometric passport we actually issue a separate card. We’ve agreed that the purposes of the programme should be put on the face of the bill. We’ve agreed that we should reinforce the very important safeguards about function drift and we’ve agreed and I’m very pleased that he’s here this morning with the Data Protection Commissioner that we should take on board concerns that he quite legitimately raises from his position. And we’ve agreed that we should, through the new Identity Commissioner, widen the scope of the surveillance that he will be able to undertake to protect individual’s interests and that individuals should be able to check, not only what’s being held which is very simple and straightforward, but who has accessed for verification purposes, the check on their identity.

So having already illustrated at the beginning that there is an issue about how we might allow checks to be made on the use of other cards, I think it’s beholden on us to get our card right in the first place. Secondly to make sure that in doing so, the Commissioner can have the powers of oversight necessary in a way that will secure people’s confidence that only accredited third parties can undertake the checks that are required and that we can check who has verified our identity on that database. I think when we do that, when we build in those checks and balances, people will be secure. We know that it’s right, that we should be cross-questioned and held to account on this. It’s a very big programme that we are setting in train, which is why we are going to take time over doing it.

I just want to finish by very quickly explaining why even if we didn’t have ID cards, we would be incurring the bulk of the cost and the necessary identification methodology. If we want, and we’ve already agreed as a nation that we do want, secure passports, the only way to get them is to use biometrics. So the question is do we use 1, 2 or 3? We think that we should endeavour to use 3 biometric identifiers as a safeguard for all of us. Secondly if we are going to have those secure passports, and we are, does it make sense to make sure that they are genuinely secure and that the biometric can be used properly for the other purposes I outlined this morning rather then simply for travel? We believe it is because if we are going to incur the cost which was set out in the UK passport plan for the next 4 years at the end of March of this year, and the costings that went with it, that raised (over the next 4 years) the average passport charge to meet the biometric identifier required. And we need to get those identifiers at the point that someone renews their passport, does it make sense to pay a little extra to be able to have a secure database with a secure method of verification and to issue a card alongside it? In other words the £15 that I announced 2 weeks ago is now our clear understanding of the additional charge on top of the passport for the ID card in 4 years time, lasting for a 10 year period, and we believe it is. Therefore, we are going to have biometrics anyway, we want to use them sensibly, we want them to be properly surveilled and we want to protect people from intrusion and misuse, and we want to use the link database and ID card to ensure that we can protect ourselves as citizens and as individuals and we can have a society in which people are confident about what is happening around them. We can tackle organised criminality, we can stop clandestine working, we can protect our services and we can have a card which reinforces the identity of those in and working alongside us in our society in a way that will help reinforce the importance of citizenship and cohesion. And if we can do that, then we will have a scheme that is worthwhile. And if we can’t, I shall certainly will be remembered in history as one of the biggest political failures that Britain has ever produced!

Below is the text of the speech made in the House of Commons by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, on 13th February 2003 on airport security.

Since Tuesday, there has been an enhanced level of security throughout the capital. As the Metropolitan police said in its statement, which was made on behalf of all those engaged in the operation, this was likely to be most visible at Heathrow airport. At the request of the operational services, it was agreed that, as in the past, the armed services could be called on for preventive and protective measures.

It may help the House if I set the events of this week in the context of what was said in my statement of 7 November, and if I recall key points. As I made clear, we face a real and serious threat. We know that al-Qaeda will try to inflict loss of human life and damage upon the United Kingdom. That is why we have explicitly pointed to some of the most obvious risks, such as to transport infrastructure, and why the Government have taken a range of measures to improve public protection. In doing so, we have been mindful of the importance both of keeping the House informed, and of keeping continuity of operational policing and security measures.

The House will forgive me if I quote the most relevant passages of the statement of 7 November. I said:

“Aviation security measures remain at an enhanced level following the attacks on September 11th and the government keeps these measures under constant review. From time to time additional protective steps are being taken, and will continue to be taken as the situation demands.”

The statement continued:

“Where threats are specific, we seek to thwart them. Where they are general, we seek to analyse them, and take whatever responses we believe to be necessary to ensure the protection of the public.”

This is precisely what we have done this week, and will need to do from time to time in the future. If the situation were to change, I would inform the House. If there are specific incidents-as tragically occurred in January, with the death of Detective Constable Oake-I will come back to the House. However, I do not believe that it is responsible to provide a running public commentary from the Dispatch Box on every end and turn-any more than previous Governments did during the past 30 years, when facing the threat from Irish terrorism. As with those Governments, our view is that we must do nothing to undermine the work of the police and the security services. We have to make fine judgments, which must ensure the safety of sources of information. The terrorists must not be able to assess what we know and how we know it.

We must give the public the information that they need to protect themselves and others. We did precisely that with the statement last Tuesday morning. However, we must also avoid frightening people unnecessarily or causing the sort of economic and social damage that does the work of the terrorists for them. The public must be alert but not alarmed. That is why I have consistently-and again this week-facilitated confidential briefings for the shadow Home Secretary and the Liberal Democrat spokesman.

Finally, I again pay tribute to the work of our police, security and armed services. We owe them our deepest gratitude for the continuing vigilance, courage and professionalism that they have shown.

Below is the text of the speech made by the then Education and Employment Secretary, David Blunkett, to the 1998 TUC Conference.

President, Congress, it is a pleasure to be back with you and to be able to share thoughts this morning, and my congratulations to the award winners. It is very good indeed to be able to celebrate success and the work of the trade union Movement in the cutting edge task of the future.

I was going to crack a joke about Cabinet Ministers stacked up over Blackpool waiting to land, but apparently all my colleagues are stacked up over Tokyo waiting to land instead which underlines the nature of the global economy. More of that in a moment.

I want to thank all of you. I want to thank the trade union Movement for the work that has been done since the general election 16 months ago, for the constructive way in which partnerships have been developed locally and nationally, for the way in which we have been able to forward the common agenda which we share, of improving people’s lives, of greater equality of the opportunity to learn and to work. I would like to thank specific individuals. I would like to thank Bill Morris and Rodney Bickerstaffe for the work that they are doing on the New Deal Task Force, you, John, as President, and Ken Jackson and Tony Dubbins, for the work that has already been started on the Skills Task Force which I will mention later, Roger Lyons on the UFI embryo board for developing the University For Industry for the future and, of course, you, John Monks, for the continuing leadership and vision that you share. It is just a pity about Manchester United! That is a problem. My club has had a bid from the local radio station, I think, but I will probably get shot when I get home for saying that.

Over the last 16 months we have started the process of committing ourselves to meet the pledges and promises that we made. For the first time ever this country has a childcare strategy to begin the process of bringing equality into practice and decent childcare in every community. We have allocated , 600 million for a new Sure Start programme for work with families from the very moment a child is born, to change the inequality that makes such an impact on the lives of every child. We have already established an early years place for every 4-year-old whose parents wish it from this September, and over the next three years we will establish 190,000 additional places for children in nursery classes aged 3 in order to begin the process of providing that foundation on which success in later life can be built.

We have started the process of implementing the pledge on class size: 100,000-plus youngsters aged 5 to 7 will, from last week, be in smaller class sizes so that that pledge can be fulfilled over the next three years, and we have commenced the implementation of our literacy strategy so that children can read and write when they leave primary school and have the same opportunity that the better off have taken for granted over generations.

We have acted against exclusion and we have invested in lifelong learning, , 550 million extra next year for further and higher education – and that is only the beginning. Today the Prime Minister and John Prescott will be announcing the £800 million programme of investment in regenerating our communities, in linking the needs of that community to the will and the desire of men and women to work and to put back into the community their talents and their experiences, the ability to build an environment and a quality of life that is worthy of Britain as we move into the 21st century.

We have set up the Learning Grid, we have established a Training Challenge Fund. We have got centres of excellence emerging in information technology across the country and we have started work on the individual learning accounts and their links with the University For Industry.

But I recognise that there is a real challenge that all of us share together. The debates that are being held, the controversy that is highlighted in this morning’s papers, is a real challenge for Britain as well as for the rest of the world, and only by working together can we really tackle the new rapid change and uncertainty that faces every man and woman in this country, every community and increasingly every industry and service. The old certainties have gone for ever.

We live in a global economy, as John Prescott was describing yesterday, in which we cannot control the particular price of a particular commodity at a particular time, where rapid change disintegrates a market that looked certain only two years ago, whether it is in semi-conductors or the electronics industry, a period of rapid change in which we are not powerless but we are not all powerful either, where we should not accept economic determinism, but nor should we believe that a Government can wave a magic wand and solve all our problems.

I realise, as a visitor, I am sandwiched between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Governor. I watched Eastenders on Sunday night because we are doing a launch tomorrow of the Year of Reading with them and it reminded me of what the power of the Governor really is in all our communities. When you welcome him this afternoon, as the Governor of the Bank of England, it is worth just reflecting that the ratio of the pound to the deutschemark this morning is 5 pfennigs less than it was when we took over on May 1st 1997. The world is a funny place. Long-term underlying interest rates are the lowest they have been for years. The certainties about what needs to be done are uncertainties. The world changes day by day and our response needs to change with it.

All of us have a key role to play – my Department in terms of education, skills and training and tackling unemployment, you in terms of the response that you are making and feeling your way through in terms of what is happening with globalisation, the recognition that what happens in the United States, as well as what has already happened in the Far East economies, makes a big difference. I say to newspapers that think it is none of our concern as to whether instability exists in the United States, “Get real. We live in a global economy and we have to live through the changes and the uncertainties of that economy.”

But nor should we, in recognising that real challenge and the fact that this Government is not going to change its economic profile or its policies, accept that determinism that believes that nothing can be done. We can intervene but in entirely new ways, not by trying to save industries where the market has disappeared, money after jobs, as was the case in the 1970s, nor the “Hands off, there is nothing we can do” of those economists who, in my view misguidedly, believe that it is the means and not the end that are all important.

We can, for instance, recognise – all of us – the absolute critical nature of what is happening to men and women in our economy. I know about the theories that emerged 30 years ago from Milton Friedman, the words that are used so easily, “The natural rate of unemployment”, as some economists talk of it, “The non-inflationary rate of unemployment”; but I also know about the hopelessness and the misery and the despair of men and women up and down this country when they face unemployment, when they face, in their own community and family, the worthlessness of not having a job. That is why this Government will find a different way forward which bridges the gap between the belief that Government can do everything and those who believe that Government can do absolutely nothing. That is why, Congress, it is critical for us to join together in recognising what can be done.

Tomorrow the Prime Minister will launch a package of measures in the North-East, which will be put together with my Department, , 38 million which will tackle, through the new Regional Development Agencies, through a new rapid response unit, and a fund to back it up nationally, through further and higher education skills action, the job together with you to make it work for people in our communities.

Today I launch the interim report of the Skills Task Force — a Task Force that is looking at both the short term and the long term needs of our communities: the ability to change, the available pool of labour which in turn will have an impact on what is possible in our economy, and the reactions of the Monetary Policy Committee and the wider international monetary scene.

We can widen the pool of skilled labour and I know that over the years all of us have said, “What is the point in training people if people do not have a job to go to?” Of course that is right. Of course skills of training on their own are not adequate, but with a quarter of a million vacancies we have a massive task in terms of getting the right people with the right skills into the right place at the right time. We can do it; you are doing it.

We are celebrating this morning the activities of the trade union Movement in their commitment to lifelong learning. It is not just a slogan; it is not just for an awards ceremony. It is actually day‑to‑day the thing that will change the opportunity for all of us in that rapidly changing world. The task force recommend better coordination of the plethora of agencies and providers that exist locally and nationally, and we certainly need to do that. They talk about ensuring consistency of high quality learning in the workplace and in the wider community, and we need to do that. Employers as well as Government and trades unions have a responsibility in making that happen. We have a responsibility in linking public and private together, linking the individual, the company and the trade union Movement in making it happen on the ground.

There is the availability of information through the new Learning Direct Line that we have established, the development and investment in the Careers Service, the ability — as the Prime Minister will spell out tomorrow — to respond on the ground where it matters to changes that are taking place around us over which we do not have control but in circumstances where we do have a key part to play. There is the credibility of the high status apprenticeships and investment in replacement of the Youth Training Scheme; the national traineeships, the development and investment that we are making in modern apprenticeships and hope for the future; the help for small and medium sized enterprises in recruitment.

Whilst we are debating, and understandably debating, the fears that exist particularly for manufacturing industry in the immediate months ahead, we know that if the people we are able to get to were supported with greater mobility to be able to fill the jobs that already exist, we could lesson that fear, and we could make our labour market more flexible and responsive to the needs of the moment.

Of course, we need a strategy as the task force spells out for the development of information and communication technology where massive shortages exist. All of it needs to be put together with a review of the Training and Enterprise Councils, with the development of the new National Training Organisations (over 60 of them) that now exist in which the trade union Movement are playing a key part.

The development of those regional development agencies and the funding streams that we have set in place are all part of a process of change and of renewal, and all of it engages everyone, whatever their part in the trade union movement and at work. It is a critical and important contribution in drawing together the strands of a modern economy, not disengaging and washing our hands from the circumstances and the consequences for men and women across the country.

That is why I am so proud today to reinforce the message that Jimmy Knapp and the Learning Services Group have put out, about the work that you have been doing in the workplace. I am pleased to announce that 21 trades unions and 45 different schemes have benefitted from the , 2 million that we have allocated for the Union Learning Fund. I am also pleased to announce that because of its success I intend to invest another , 6 million over the next three years in making it possible to have continuity and to expand that scheme.

On the ground we have the Transport and General Workers Union with the Transferrable Skills Initiative using telematics; the scheme by USDAW and BIFU working together to support men and women to overcome dyslexia; the GMB with the Life Skills Task Force, and the way in which they are ensuring paid time off from work, even for one or two of the men and women who have only one parent to sustain them. And I was not thinking of one parent families. The MSF with their Virtual Learning Centre for mobile workers; UNISON with the accreditation scheme for care workers in Suffolk; and the AEEU working with Coca Cola and Schweppes. What a cocktail! What a new Labour programme that really is for the future of those workers.

Given the success of those schemes, we are clearly just at the beginning of a process of linking good intentions with practical action on the ground, making it happen where it really matters. While we are doing it, and while we are investing an extra , 19 billion in education, , 21 billion in health, whilst we are beginning at last to tackle head on the things that the Congress have demanded over the years, that John spoke about yesterday afternoon, the legislation and the beginnings of a long awaited national minimum wage, the Fairness at Work White Paper, the ability to be able to take on the key rights that have been taken for granted in other parts of Europe.

Whilst we are doing that, just take a look at our opponents. Just remember 16 months back, just recall what it was like, where we were. Just look at them now. A major referendum is taking place inside the Tory Party. I gather that William Hague and John Gummer are the key protagonists. You have to hold your breath to see which knocks the other one out first! The nation will have a referendum on the single currency. The Tory Party’s is a complete and utter irrelevance to all of us. For theirs is the old politics; theirs is an agenda of the past, looking over their shoulder, trawling over past failures. Ours is a new politics for the future.

Over the last 16 months we have been able to sustain month on month more people getting jobs, fewer people without a job. My task in the Department for Education and Employment is to ensure that people do have a job. There is no economic policy that justifies higher unemployment. There is no economic policy that seeks to waste the lives and talents of men and women or to increase public expenditure in keeping them unemployed. There is every justification for what we have been doing: , 3.5 billion on the new deal for the unemployed, for single parents, for men and women with disabilities, for those in long‑term unemployment who from this November will also have additional programmes at their disposal.

There is every reason to celebrate what we have achieved, to face the difficulties of the months ahead together, to see the old battles behind us, and to develop that new partnership, not for scoring points, not for blaming someone else, but for working together to tackle the changed environment we work in, the uncertainties that we face together and the needs of men and women in the workplace and the community who rely on us to continue that partnership; to continue working together in their best interests and ours, with a Labour Government that will fulfil its pledges and will, at the end of its term of office, have fulfilled its commitment to economic growth with stability, to jobs that are sustainable and that matter, and to a quality of life of which all of us can be proud.

Thank you very much indeed.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, to the 1997 TUC Conference.

It gives me very great pleasure to congratulate the TUC and all those staff who have made it possible to gain the Investors in People award. After hearing the Archbishop and Prime Minister, I think I had better keep my speech very short. It is not so much the organ grinder and the monkey but something that I would rather not say at an open TUC meeting! I am delighted to be here. I am very pleased indeed that after New Labour, the TUC now have Investors in People, and it is my job to make sure that the Department for Education and Employment receive it as well because they have not yet achieved this.

In offering congratulations and presenting the award of the Investors in People plaque to be displayed in the foyer at Congress House, we have a very clear message which is that the trades union Movement is taking a lead in achieving one of the most prestigious awards in terms of quality for development of staff, for training and ensuring the skills of the future. If the TUC can give this lead, then every employer in the country has a beholden duty to make sure that they are also taking steps to get Investors in People status and to treat their employees in a civilised and acceptable way. This should not be dealt with merely in terms of basic rights, which are the foundation that you have been debating at Congress this week and on which Tony Blair spoke this afternoon, but it should be taken much further, not looking backwards over our shoulders but looking to the future and taking the example of Bargaining for Skills and the Return to Learn programmes and other similar measures that unions within the TUC have been implementing.

They should join in partnership with the new Government in making it possible to bring alive adult and continuing education in the way that the early Labour and trades union Movement began so many years ago with the Mechanics Institutes. That is why we have appointed Bob Fryer, the principal of the Northern College, to head the Advisory Group to reinvent adult and continuing education in the community and the workplace so that we can draw on the experience that members of the TUC, and the TUC itself, have had.

Earlier this afternoon, a delegate spoke about her experience on the Health and Safety courses, Levels I and II. I used to teach those courses back in the 1970s. I was proud of that and, as a Secretary of State, it is my job to make sure that trades union education and skills for life are at the top of the agenda. As we invest in nursery provision ‑‑ we have removed the nursery voucher scheme which people said it would take us a year to do; we did it in three months ‑‑ as we remove the assisted places’ scheme and divert the money in the coming years to lower class sizes, and as we take up the cudgel of stopping the cut‑backs, redundancies and retrenchment from next April as we invest the , 1 billion that Tony Blair talked about, we do so only as a foundation. Many of your members, just like myself when I was a youngster in the community in which I was born and grew up, did not have a first chance, never mind a second or third chance.

The idea is to bring about lifelong learning in and out of the workplace, making the issue of employability and skills come alive for people who have been denied those opportunities. It is bringing alive partnership in practice for everyone in our communities and taking up the cudgel that the TUC have so gallantly laid down in terms of setting an example. That is why I am so proud to be able to be here and to offer the award this afternoon. I have been on a learning curve over the last few weeks as well. In fact, I am thinking of inventing an NVQ Level IV for Cabinet Ministers so that we can make ourselves qualified for the job. We just have to hang on to it long enough to be able to ensure that we make it in practice. Just as we get to the point where we think we are experts, we are either sacked or reshuffled!

The skills’ revolution is about job security in the cabinet and job security at work. I commend everyone this afternoon in taking the agenda forward in the way that the Prime Minister indicated, a modern trades union Movement in a modern Britain, moving to a new century, preparing and equipping people to take on that challenge. You will be looking at the global economy anew but ensuring that in your hearts you know what you are doing to ensure that the people who rely on you have the grasp, equipment and tools to be able to do the job and to fend for themselves.

It is a tremendous challenge. Together with Margaret Beckett and Ian McCartney from my department who have been here, I hope to be able to work on that new agenda. I congratulate the TUC and all of you for the Investors in People Award. I present the award this afternoon, not to Morecambe, not to Wise, but to John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC.