Category: Economy

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Hull on 11 October 2002.

Empowering Local Centres of Initiative

The Deputy Prime Minister has pioneered a new regional policy for Britain. With the Department for Trade and Industry and the Treasury, he has championed regional devolution with strategic economic policy making devolved away from central government to the regions.

Instead of the old “Whitehall knows best” command and control regimes, he and I want to see a Britain of not one but many centres of initiative and decision-making power.

Now it is time to devolve power even more – empowering high performing local government and the many community and voluntary organisations that make such a difference to the strength and vitality of our communities.

The first generation of regional policy, before the war, was essentially ambulance work getting help to high unemployment areas. The second generation in the 1960s and 1970s was based on large capital and tax incentives delivered by the then Department of Industry, almost certainly opposed by the Treasury. It was inflexible but it was also top-down. And it did not work.

The new approach to regional economic policy, wholeheartedly promoted by the Treasury, is based on two principles. It aims to strengthen the long-term building blocks of growth, innovation, skills and the development of enterprise by exploiting the indigenous strengths in each region and city. And it is bottom-up not top-down, with national Government enabling powerful regional and local initiatives to work by providing the necessary flexibility and resources.

So there should be more responsibility and accountability for the Regional Development Agencies so that local people do make local decisions about local economic needs. A new generation of regional policies concentrating on indigenous measures – strengthening, within the regions, the essential building blocks of self generating growth, the capacity to innovate, invest, build skills, match the unemployed to jobs available, and offering Development Agencies new flexibilities and in return demanding strenuous targets to be met in skills, innovation, business creation, new technology and employment.

A new regional policy – locally sensitive and locally delivered, local people meeting local needs through local agencies.

This new regional policy is based on a genuine devolution of power in economic policymaking to the Regional Development Agencies with expanded budgets and – just as important – a Single Budget with 100 per cent flexibility, including full End Year Flexibility, to spend these resources to meet regional priorities.

And to ensure proper regional and local accountability, after the last Spending Review the Deputy Prime Minister and I allocated £5 million to fund the eight Regional Assemblies outside London. Earlier this year, the Deputy Prime Minister’s White Paper set out the detailed route map for those regions that want to go further and move to elected Regional Assemblies. And the Treasury worked closely with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office to draw up a package of financial freedoms and flexibilities to match greater accountability.

Let me turn to local government. Just as we made a start with regional policy in the last Parliament, we also made a start in devolving power to local government, moving away from the destructive centralism of the 1980s and early 1990s – years characterised by universal capping, strict limits on borrowing and then the poll tax.

As in regional economic policy, so in local service delivery, a proper strategic division of responsibilities requires us to recognise that Whitehall does not know best – that effective service delivery for families and communities cannot come from central command and control but requires local initiative matched by local accountability.

So to build a long-term and strategic partnership between central and local government, and to deliver improved public services, this Government has begun to reverse the trend towards ever-greater centralisation. We have:

boosted financial support for councils, through real terms increases in revenue and in capital expenditure for four years in a row;
matched devolution with greater accountability and with new constitutions for local government following local consultation;

recognised the key role of local government by introducing statutory community strategies, supported by a new power to promote community well-being through coordination and partnership with other local actors;

introduced local Public Service Agreements with councils, which link resources and greater flexibilities to stretching outcome targets for both national and local priorities. By this time next year we will have concluded local PSAs with virtually all upper-tier authorities. And in 2004 we will launch a new round of local PSAs that will boost partnership working and local innovation still further.

These are important measures, but they are only the first steps in developing this new partnership. We must now be ready to do more to achieve our goals. The White Paper last December set out our vision of local authorities as strong community leaders responsible for high quality public services. And we have made good progress since then in developing further reforms that will let councils make more decisions for themselves free from central control.

So we are introducing a range of new financial freedoms – new powers for local authorities to trade, retain fines, develop new services and decide council tax exemptions and discounts – allowing responsible councils to innovate and respond to local needs

We are making councils themselves responsible for deciding how much they can prudently borrow, providing greater freedom for councils to invest in local services.

We are removing unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy and will cut the numbers of plans and strategies that the Government requires councils to produce by 50 per cent.

We are developing a more coordinated and proportionate inspection regime to generate real performance improvements for all local authorities.

And we are restricting ring-fencing of central grants to cases which are genuine high priorities for Government and where we cannot achieve our policy goal by specifying outcome targets.

But with freedom comes responsibility and the need for greater accountability to local communities.

That is why the Treasury has worked with John Prescott to introduce a new Comprehensive Performance Assessment – for the first time providing clear and concise information about each council’s performance across a range of local services. The assessment will enable us to make our inspection regimes more proportionate, to target support where it is most needed, and to identify the small minority of failing councils in need of tough remedial action.

And to encourage all councils to deliver the best public services, high performing councils will receive substantial extra freedoms to enable further service improvements. Our best local authorities will see a dramatic reduction in the amount of their funding that is ring-fenced, plan requirements reduced to the absolute minimum and inspection cut by around 50 per cent. We will also withdraw reserve powers over capping, as a first step towards dispensing with the power to cap altogether.

This is our vision of a modern partnership between central and local government – a new localism where there is flexibility and resources in return for reform and delivery – local authorities at the heart of public services, equipped with the freedom they need, and accountable to the communities whose needs they serve.

This is the shape of a Government that enables and empowers rather than directs and controls.

Many social problems once addressed only by the state gaining more power can be solved today only by the state giving much of its power back to the people.

And this is why there is renewed interest in voluntary organisations – devolving more power from Government altogether, and into the hands of local communities.

It is because we are committed to matching local devolution with agreed national goals that we can encourage local innovation without putting at risk our shared commitment to the highest quality public services available not just to few but for all.

A few illustrations will show how Britain is changing.

With Sure Start – new local partnerships to run services for the under-fives – we break new ground. For the first time, services for the under?fours not only involve private, voluntary and charitable organisations, but can be run through and by them – not implementing a standardised central plan, but reflecting the needs of local communities and families.

And this is just one of the new social initiatives at the heart of a new relationship now being forged between individual, community and state. Our children’s policy is evolving not just through better financial support for mothers and fathers, balancing work and family responsibilities, but with a national and local network of Children’s Funds, seed-corn finance to enable and empower local community, charitable and voluntary action groups to meet children’s needs.

Through the New Deal, we are working in ever closer partnerships with third-sector organisations; our Healthy Living Centres bring together public, private and voluntary sectors; we have introduced new Computer Learning Centres run not centrally but locally as we work to ensure that no one is excluded from the computer revolution – even more not being run by Government agencies but by community organisations and partnerships.

And of course voluntary action extends to community economic regeneration. Today the Phoenix Fund is pioneering new community finance initiatives and the boards of New Deal for Communities have strong voluntary and community sector involvement. The whole purpose of Communities Against Drugs, and the Safer Communities Initiative, is to engage voluntary, community and local organisations at the centre of the war against drugs and crime.

What do all these initiatives have in common?

In the not-so distant past, each of these public efforts would have been initiated, planned and run by the state. Today, instead, they are the domain of local leaders, local and community organisations, private sector leaders working in partnership for the public good. In Britain today there is not one centre of initiative but many centres of local initiative ready to flourish in all parts of the country. So in the provision of these services the old days of “the man in Whitehall knowing best” is and should be over: men and women in thousands of communities round the country – the mother in the playgroup, the local volunteers in Sure Start, parents in the fight against drugs – know much better.

So instead of people looking to Whitehall for solutions in locality after locality, more and more people will themselves take more control of the decisions that most affect them – a devolution of power, an empowerment of local centres of initiative that is now ready to spread across regions, local government and communities, large and small.

The Government’s approach to localism empowers people – bringing public, voluntary and private sectors together, encouraging innovation to deliver our shared goals of high quality public services for all.

Others appear to be simply advocating privatisation under another name – public services taken over by private companies with the best provision guaranteed just for the few not the many.

Instead, for us, a new era – an age of active citizenship and an enabling state – is within our grasp. And at its core is a renewal of civic society where the rights to decent services and the responsibilities of citizenship go together.

Much more needs to be done and as we help voluntary, community and charitable organisations meet new needs, David Blunkett and I will publish a discussion document that will highlight how by our decisions in the Treasury and Home Office we can do more to devolve power to communities.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Birmingham on 1 November 2022.

It is a pleasure to be here in Birmingham today – a city which is a leading example of urban renaissance in progress.

A city with some of the largest regeneration projects in Europe, with new arts facilities, top quality commercial developments and now your nomination this week for the 2008 European City of Culture.

But here to in Birmingham – one of the country’s most successful cities – we have growth side by side with large pockets of deprivation — and so today I want to talk about the challenges of poverty and unemployment in our urban areas:

The steps we have taken.

The challenges ahead.

The lessons we have learned.

And the new policies I think we must introduce.

And I want to congratulate participants here – councillors, local authorities, public servants, academics, community groups, companies, urban specialists in every field – on the huge advances that have been made in our understanding of, and action on, what makes for quality of life in our urban areas: advances in the study and practice of geography, planning, the built environment, the role of cities in regions and – my theme today – understanding of the economic and social forces at work in poorer urban areas. And I want to thank you for the work you do, the service you give and contribution you make.

I think most of you would agree that 50, 20 or even 10 years ago the idea that the treasury would be interested in issues like public space, the design quality of public procurement in urban areas, devolution, regionalism and social exclusion would be almost unthinkable. But we know that not only are these questions vital to successful, economically vibrant cities but they are at the heart of the agenda for social and economic progress.

And I can genuinely say that I and the Treasury are privileged to be associated with the challenge, led by the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, of creating sustainable communities in our towns and cities.

One hundred years ago Winston Churchill, then an economics minister, spoke to an audience in the midlands about the unacceptable gap in Britain between the excesses of accumulated wealth and the gaping sorrows of the left out millions.

And I know that today – as one hundred years ago – we must and can do better.

I know that we cannot talk of real prosperity for all of Britain if thousands are left behind on the margins; that for economic efficiency and social justice reasons Britain needs an economy that works not just for some people some of the time but for all of the people all of the time; and that, learning from the work many of you here have done and the service you have given, we must – to achieve our objective that no area is bypassed and no one excluded from the mainstream of economic prosperity:

Not only continue to make the right long term choices about stability and growth – avoiding the old economic instability of boom and bust so damaging to economic activity in the past;

Not only ensure the finance necessary to back reform and modernisation in local public services – the task of last July’s spending review for health, education, the environment, tackling crime and local government services where – for deprived areas where outcomes are worst and the need for good schools, hospitals and other services is greatest – we have introduced new floor targets to raise the performance of public services;

And not only directly tackle low incomes – with the introduction of the new child and working tax credits – expenditure of £4.5 billion pounds more for low paid workers, families with children and pensioners.

…but we must also, more fundamentally, tackle not just the consequences of unemployment and poverty and its symptoms, but the underlying causes — being aware more than ever before of just how much poverty and deprivation are rooted in low levels of economic activity. People are poor because they have no jobs, no skills for jobs – or if disabled, old or sick are poor because of inadequate provision where they or their families have had historically low earnings from employment.

And second – and this is the main point I wish to make to you today – we must recognise that the old approaches to renewing economic activity which have been less than successful must give way to the new:

Neither an old style bricks and mortar only approach which, for example with the experience of enterprise zones in the 1980s, targeted subsidies for property development, often at huge public cost diverting economic activity from one area to another with no overall economic gain;

Nor the old style benefits approach which gave hand-outs to compensate for unemployment but provided no real help to get people back to work, leaving whole communities abandoned on the dole;

…both of which failed to tackle the causes of unemployment and poverty or secure long-term environmental regeneration and social inclusion. And both of which failed to invest, as we must, in the forces of renewal – education, training, jobs, enterprise and business development

So increasingly the emphasis of our approach will be measures to encourage and foster the indigenous skills, talents and potential of local people and communities.

This focus on the drivers of homegrown local economic activity is also at the heart of our new approach to regional policy.

There have been three phases of regional policy in our country

The first generation of British regional policy – from the 1930s – was designed to support hard up areas with emergency measures.

So the second generation – from the 1960s – sought to encourage inward investment with new incentives.

Now we are moving to the third stage of modern regional policy – creating regional development agencies where the emphasis is not just on encouraging inward investment but also on local innovation and local investment and building indigenous strength with freedom and flexibility for local people to make decisions based on local needs.

So first today I want to put the spotlight specifically on measures to renew economic activity and encourage enterprising communities across the country.

And I will secondly suggest that in modern economic regeneration our aims – high and stable levels of economic growth and employment – can best be met by protecting and enhancing the local environment.

Third, modern economic regeneration with its emphasis on local activity not only means but requires the devolution of power – local people making local decisions about local needs.

And fourth, special new measures will be needed to tackle unemployment, measures that recognise that the problems are not simply in the creation of jobs but in the employability of the unemployed.

First, because our comprehensive solution to urban poverty and unemployment has to involve raising levels of economic activity – more businesses if you like rather than more benefit offices – we should start to see inner cities and old industrial areas not as no-go areas for business or simply “problem” areas but as areas of opportunity: new markets where businesses can thrive because of the competitive advantages they often offer – with strategic locations, untapped resources, a high density of local purchasing power and the potential of their workforce.

In the late 1990s the rate of business creation in our high unemployment communities was one sixth of our prosperous areas so we recognise not only that barriers to enterprise are greater in poor communities – many people, for example, trying to start up businesses face special problems – but also that we need to put in place the right incentive structure to stimulate business-led growth.

So if a key that unlocks inner city regeneration is fostering the potential strengths of local people, we need to systematically tackle all barriers to development: cutting the cost of buying, starting up, investing, hiring, training, attracting equity, and growing.

Renewing the economic base is one of the main aims behind not only neighbourhood renewal funding in 88 areas worth almost £1.9 billion pounds over this parliament and the new deal for communities in 39 areas worth £2 billion pounds over ten years; but the creation of regional development agencies and the small business service; the new encouragement for local authorities in their economic role; and the creation of local strategic partnerships which can do more to drive forward policies on enterprise and employment at the local level.

And it has led to our policies for enterprise in high unemployment areas to help firms start up, invest, hire and expand:

Encouraging investment – through the community investment tax credit, the community venture capital fund, the phoenix fund, and reforms to the small firms loan guarantee scheme;

Help with hiring, employing and training – the special work of the new deal and training programme;

Support and advice for business – the remit of the new small business service;

Cutting the cost of property purchases – with reforms in stamp duty;

And reforming our planning system to make it quicker, more flexible and more responsive.

Central to this is recognising the importance of regenerating the environment, attracting new businesses to our inner cities. And following the recommendations by Lord Rogers – to whom we owe a debt of gratitude – measures to renew local high streets and urban estates have included:

A 150 per cent accelerated tax credit to clean up contaminated land and bring it back into productive use;

100 per cent capital allowances to enable owners and occupiers to obtain full tax relief when creating flats for letting over shops and other commercial premises;

Breaking with flat rate vat by targeted vat reductions to encourage the renovation and conversion of existing properties to bring vacant homes back into use; and

Measures to tackle the crime that hits businesses, particularly retailers, in inner city areas …showing that our objectives for growth and employment are not at odds with but complimentary to our objectives for environmental care and protection.

We talk a great deal about the 1944 economic objectives that governments across the western world have followed – high and stable levels of growth and employment. With the understanding we have now i believe that these objectives are better expressed as high and stable levels of growth, employment and sustainable development.

Good management of public spaces and high standards of urban design are key to creating urban areas that are attractive, sustainable places to live in, invest in and do business in, as John Prescott said. And so too is investing one billion pounds more in housing over the next three years – the most sustained rise in housing investment for 25 years – with an additional four billion pounds for the transport infrastructure, including money for local authorities to provide transport systems that revitalise recently renovated urban areas and improve the quality of the urban environment.

But there is still much more to do.

So, working in partnership with local authorities and regional development agencies, we will designate 2000 new enterprise areas – not the old enterprise zones of the 1980s where property subsidies diverted activity from one area to another, but 2000 new enterprise areas where we encourage home grown economic activity by cutting the cost of starting up, investing, hiring, training, managing the payroll.

In these enterprise areas – the 2000 most deprived wards in the country – I can state that:

First, having already cut stamp duty in these areas, we plan to abolish it entirely with full stamp duty exemption for all business property purchases;

Second, we will give planning authorities powers to create business planning zones that will cut red tape for growing businesses by removing the need to apply for planning permission;

Third, we will offer businesses special investment help through the community investment tax credit – which offers for every hundred pounds of private investment an extra 25 pounds of public investment – and risk capital from the community venture capital fund;

Fourth, we will increase funding for the phoenix fund by £50 million pounds – providing support to thousands of small businesses with special encouragement for women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from ethnic minorities

Fifth, the small business service will provide additional help to firms in these areas – a package of advice and support worth at least £2000 for each new businessman or woman;

Sixth, we will make improvements to the business incubation fund to stimulate the availability of flexible managed workspace for start-up companies;

And all businesses will benefit from financial incentives to help them bring their tax and payroll systems on line.

And because we know that to get the deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture we need we must start in our schools and colleges, by 2006 every school pupil will have the opportunity of five days worth of enterprise education, with extra help for schools and colleges in high unemployment areas.

Together, these measures – combined with help for infrastructure and employment – offer substantial additional resources based on a systematic and coordinated attempt to create a stronger economic base in previously run down and high unemployment areas.

And all these measures are underpinned by devolution of power and responsibility – local people making local decisions about meeting local needs – as the way forward.

While it is right for central government to establish clear long term goals, the people closest to the ground in the regions and our local communities should be equipped and empowered with maximum local flexibility and discretion to innovate, respond to local conditions and meet special needs.

That is why the regional development agencies, who have been given responsibility to promote enterprise in their regions, have been given substantial resources and unprecedented freedoms – within a single budget without the old ring fencing – to decide how to use these resources to create the right conditions for local businesses to grow and prosper.

And because it is crucial for city growth strategies to be embedded within wider regional policies for growth and development, we are making regional planning a statutory activity, and setting up regional housing bodies with a single regional housing budget to match policy decisions to the regional housing market, and link policies on housing with decisions on planning, transport, infrastructure and anti-poverty programmes.

Local public service agreements between central government and local councils are also playing their part in regenerating our urban centres.

Across the country, councils are being given additional powers and flexibilities to allow them to tackle national priorities in the way that works best for them locally. Newcastle city council has set a target to regenerate an extra five hectares of brownfield land each year for the next three years – a one third increase. Hammersmith and Fulham are concentrating on working with government agencies to increase job entry and retention rates. And Leeds city council are using their local PSA to close the gap in the educational attainment of Bangladeshi pupils who lag behind those from other communities.

But the true devolution of power goes beyond regional and local devolution to public authorities – it means devolving more power from government altogether, and into the hands of local communities. Giving local people the tools to make improvements to their own neighbourhoods.

Neighbourhood renewal and new deal for communities are excellent examples of policy areas where local communities are in the driving seat; where we know that Whitehall does not always know best. Within a strategic national framework, including challenging floor targets, neighbourhood renewal gives local strategic partnerships both responsibility for deciding what is needed in their area and discretion for deciding how it will be delivered.

And we must also harness the expertise of the private and voluntary sector alongside the public sector. Sure Start, the New Deal, Neighbourhood Renewal, New Deal for Communities, Urban Regeneration Companies – all these programmes are putting these principles into practice.

But any solution based on renewing economic activity in our urban areas must tackle the persistent, often chronic, problems of employment and employability

In the mid 1980s, Glasgow had over seventy thousand unemployed, in Liverpool there were over fifty thousand and in London over four hundred thousand – rising to nearly half a million in the early 1990s — an arithmetic of poverty and deprivation so great that the whole fabric of community life was undermined.

So when we came to power, five years ago, our new programme – the new deal – was not only based on the principle that work was the best route out of poverty and the need for rights and opportunities to work to be accompanied by new responsibilities and obligations to work, but the new deal and our make-work-pay measure – the working families tax credit – was designed to offer special help to people and areas left behind.

Helped by the new deal, and our other employment programmes, 1.5 million more people are in work than in 1997. And I can report that unemployment has fallen furthest, and vacancies risen fastest, in those regions that were hit the hardest in the 1980s. It is a measure of the achievement of the new deal – for which i thank local authorities, voluntary and charity groups and the public services – that in the 1980s 350,000 young people were long term unemployed. Today the figure is less than 5,000. But this is not the time to relax our efforts but to step them up.

Improving employment means improved employability – with more investment in inner city schools, more further education places, a 50 per cent target for young people reaching universities by 2010 with enhanced measures to ensure access, and for the unemployed, literacy and numeracy training and help.

But while more people are in work than ever before, there are still areas of high unemployment in every region of the country, and particularly in our most deprived urban areas where a quarter of the unemployed live.

Our analysis shows that too often side by side with long lists of vacancies are large pools of the unemployed.

In Liverpool, while there are no longer fifty thousand unemployed there are now fifteen thousand people registered as unemployed but eighteen thousand vacancies registered at jobcentres over the last six months. In Glasgow, while there are no longer seventy thousand there are now seventeen thousand unemployed, but over thirty thousand vacancies. Here in Birmingham, there are thirty thousand unemployed and over thirty six thousand vacancies.

Too often in too many areas the long-term unemployed have slipped through the net in these areas

Too often there are workers without jobs side by side with jobs without workers

Tottenham, for example, has 3,500 men, 4,800 adults, unemployed while neighbouring jobcentre plus districts have seen over sixty thousand vacancies in the last six months, with many more in the wider London economy.

Labour shortages exist today in large numbers in retail, hotels and restaurants, transport and communications and in every region

To match the unemployed to vacancies we have introduced intensive area-based initiatives in difficult areas:

– fifteen employment zones

– 63 action teams

Which have helped nearly seventy thousand people into jobs so far.

And building on this, we are piloting the step up scheme in fourteen areas, with another six starting in December — obliging the long-term unemployed to accept a guaranteed job which will offer, instead of the dole, secure waged employment. In London and selected cities, we are matching this new regime with mandatory work preparation courses for the long-term unemployed.

But we must go further and so tackling the barriers to full employment and encouraging the unemployed back to work in our most deprived areas will form a major feature of the pre-budget report.

Because we must break the destructive culture that “no-one around here works” which damages both the areas themselves and people’s chances of jobs, we will provide far more help than in the past in these areas, using the sanctions and opportunities available in the new deal and where necessary taking job advisers onto estates, and extending access to the help available through the new deal and equip the unemployed with the skills they need to get into work, including providing training in literacy, numeracy and other basic skills. But in return we will expect the unemployed to take up the jobs that are available.

In pilot areas, we will look to test a more intensive approach to tackling the worst concentrations of unemployment, street by street, estate by estate. As we insist on unemployed adults and young people getting back to work, we will identify the barriers to their employability, offering them training, advice and sometimes cash help, and linking them to jobs in the vicinity.

This will be an onslaught in favour of full employment and against the unacceptable culture of worklessness that ruined some of our communities in the 1980s and early 1990s as we address the underlying causes of poverty in Britain.

So in conclusion I want to match the radical environmental, social and quality of life improvement that you are all contributing to with three changes, economically, over the next few years in our urban areas that will help enhance the quality of life:

More people moving into jobs, with the work ethic reinvigorated in every community of Britain as we advance to full employment not just in one region, but in every region;

More people able to transfer their ideas and hopes into small firm start ups and growing businesses as we create a Britain of high and stable levels of growth and sustainable development where enterprise is open to all;

And more people taking advantage of education, thus true equality of opportunity in education – life-long recurrent education open to all, regardless of where they live.

I want Britain’s cities to be world leaders.

And just as this conference has already shown that public space, quality of life, the built environment and quality infrastructure can help create world class cities, so too I hope I have shown that new economic and employment policies can contribute to urban regeneration with Britain leading the world in its commitment to full employment and enterprise for all.

More importantly I believe this conference shows that working together – central and local government, business, voluntary organisations and local communities – we can, and will, deliver our aim that prosperity should be not for some but for all in every city, every town, every community in our country.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Brussels on 5 November 2002.

We live in a highly globalised world and global movement of capital – essential for the effective operation of the world economy – brings vastly increased opportunities for countries, business and individuals. But with these gains come new challenges – tackling terrorist financing and preventing money laundering, as well as avoiding a situation where people are given the opportunity to evade paying their taxes.

Countries right across the world face problems caused by a minority of their residents who seek to evade the taxes they owe by hiding their money in other jurisdictions — making it harder for Governments to fund the schools, hospitals and public services that their citizens expect, and unfairly penalising the honest taxpayer.

When individuals hide their income from their tax authorities, and make false tax returns, most countries recognise this as a serious offence — one that they are determined to combat individually and collectively.

There are those who argue that there are two equally effective and desirable ways to ensure people pay the right amount of tax on cross border income from savings – and that a withholding tax is as effective as co-operation and exchange of information between countries’ tax authorities.

I believe they are wrong.

At the Helsinki European Council in December 1999 the European Union agreed that all citizens in a Member State of the European Union should pay the tax due on all their savings income. And at the Feira European Council in June 2000, the European Union agreed that the best way to achieve that was exchange of information on as wide a basis as possible.

The previously proposed harmonisation of savings taxes by a withholding tax – a centrally imposed, one-size-fits-all solution – was exposed as an inadequate response to tax fraud.

And we should recall why.

A withholding tax on cross border income flows will almost invariably result in the wrong amount of tax being paid, and in the wrong country.

It will always be the wrong amount unless the tax is levied at the same rate as the individual’s marginal tax rate in their home country.

And it will be paid to the wrong country because authorities will collect tax in the country it is deposited in rather than the country where the citizen is resident. You would need a cumbersome revenue sharing arrangement to get the money back to where it belonged.

Besides which, people who cheat on tax are generally interested not only in evading tax on interest income but in hiding their wealth. Withholding taxes do nothing to address this issue. And they typically have huge avoidance problems.

So without the most pressing reasons, the introduction of new taxes across Europe is in nobody’s interest. It runs counter to the sort of healthy, fair tax competition which benefits countries, business and individual taxpayers.

By contrast, exchange of information delivers the right amount of tax to the right country as the tax authorities in the individual taxpayer’s home country receive the information they need to determine the tax due on the overall income of their residents.

It involves countries exchanging information in respect of non-residents, so that the home country can collect the tax properly due under its laws. Exchange of information does not impact on how a country chooses to tax and deal with its own residents so protects the sovereignty of individual nation states.

Exchange of information enables governments to apply correctly the tax rules voted for by their people, without constraining their capacity to indulge in fair tax competition.

And exchange of information addresses the issue of capital, as well as income, offshore.

So the European Union had compelling reasons for the choice it made.

At Feira, the blunt instrument of tax harmonisation lost and economic reform based on exchange of information won.

But transparency and exchange of information are not only important for tax purposes but are also vital to our efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Since the tragic events of September 11th it has been crucial for countries to work closely together to ensure that criminals and terrorists have no place to hide their funds.

As terrorists and money launderers become more sophisticated, Governments have to respond, making financial systems more transparent and utilising high quality, comprehensive information exchange. Because terrorists and money launderers do not distinguish between tax and non tax issues, we cannot afford to have a loophole that means that information is not exchanged in respect of tax matters.

It is also important that developed countries set an example to the rest of the world. Lack of transparency in developed countries gives cover for smaller, and less developed countries, to engage in illicit transactions – be they related to drug trafficking, or terrorist financing, or illegal arms trading. Developed countries cannot stand up effectively to these countries if they are able to point a finger back.

At Feira we had good reasons for saying that, in a globalised economy, a solution to tax evasion will do best when it extends wider than Europe alone. And so analogous co-operation between tax authorities is being extended at least to key third countries, and to offshore territories with the closest cultural, political and financial links to the EU where EU residents’ savings might already be invested or to which they might be transferred.

The US is one example and there is a long history of close co-operation between America and its tax treaty partners in providing and receiving information and in joint efforts to tackle tax evasion. The US has taken the lead in entering into exchange of information agreements with offshore centres whilst respecting their fiscal sovereignty. And in the aftermath of September 11, cooperation with the US has been – and will continue to be – particularly vital in our efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The best chance of agreeing an approach that reaches across both America and Europe is exchange of information not a withholding tax. And I also welcome the clear signs of greater transparency, openness and a willingness to co-operate in the fight against tax evasion in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey – which will undoubtedly help them to develop, diversify and remain competitive in line with international standards.

Switzerland is one of the world’s key financial centres and it ought to remain so. Their professional expertise is exceptional, their economy and political situation sound and stable, and their history of prudence invaluable.

But the Swiss system is unique amongst the world’s leading financial centres in that it allows clients of its banks to be shielded from their own tax authorities.

Clearly there are sensitive and closely linked political and legal issues involved, but their cooperation in helping to combat tax evasion is crucial.

The arrangements the Swiss make for dealing with Swiss taxes to be paid by Swiss residents are clearly a matter for them.
But the arrangements they make for dealing with non Swiss taxes due by non Swiss residents affect us all.

We are not suggesting how the Swiss tax Swiss residents – indeed our whole approach is to uphold the sovereignty of Member States with reference to tax – but we have a deep interest in securing the tax due to Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Britain and other countries by German, French, Italian, Dutch, British and other taxpayers who have accounts in Swiss banks and financial institutions.

These are taxes due not to Switzerland but to France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries.

They are our citizens and our taxes and we have not only an interest in ensuring that tax evasion is prevented but ensuring this is achieved by the best and most effective means possible.

So the presence, on the EU’s immediate borders, of a system that fails to recognise the deliberate submission of a false tax return as fraud is an open invitation for abuse and causes us concern.

All we are asking is for Switzerland to exchange information on the savings accounts of EU residents, not their own citizens. And in a world in which the general drive is for cross-border co-operation and transparency, I have no doubt that if Switzerland respected the international consensus in favour of exchange of information it would be better placed than ever to maintain its role as one of the world’s leading financial centres.

I also believe that, as a major world financial centre, Switzerland has a responsibility to lead by example.

The Swiss have taken many positive steps to combat terrorism and money laundering. I welcome that. But tax evasion is not a predicate offence in Switzerland so criminals have the opportunity to avoid legal action if they can persuade the authorities that their activities are to do with tax evasion. And the Swiss have abstained from the OECD’s initiative on harmful tax competition, which promotes exchange of information and transparency for tax purposes.

We recognise that the transition to automatic exchange of information can’t always happen overnight. The EU has agreed that some Member States may need up to seven years to make the transition – and it would not be unreasonable for the Swiss to negotiate for similar arrangements or to make their commitment subject to endorsement by the Swiss people.

But the ultimate objective internationally must be automatic exchange of information.

There is growing recognition around the world in favour of exchange of information. It has been endorsed not just by the European Union but by the OECD in its work on harmful tax competition, banking secrecy and double taxation. And two prominent Swiss academics have themselves criticised the Swiss Government’s approach to banking secrecy.

If we are to have a consistent principle rather than an ad hoc approach for tackling international terrorist financing, money laundering and tax evasion effectively, we need exchange of information across the world.

Developed countries need to act together and set a strong example. And I call upon all countries to help us achieve this goal.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in London on 5 November 2002.

Can I say first of all what a pleasure it is to be present at these awards for Inner City 100 – these “Oscars for Business”; to thank not only the New Economics Foundation, for their work in developing and running IC100, but the lead sponsors, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest; to be able to congratulate all of you who are finalists for the contribution you make both to your community and to the British economy; and to say that Inner City 100 is not just a competition between new high growth firms in our inner cities but a celebration of the dynamism of new enterprise in our inner cities.

Having started last year with only a few entries, Inner City 100 has, with 400 nominations from across the country this year, become the premier showcase for the initiative, innovation and renewal that is a feature of so many of our inner cities today.

And in thanking all of you for what you have achieved – and will achieve – I want, in the minute or two I have, to show how your achievements, your ingenuity and your creativity are building a new Britain of enterprise and initiative.

For just as the work ethic is being restored in Britain I believe we are now engaged in an even greater and more ambitious project – encouraging not just in the most successful or wealthiest areas of our country, but in all areas of our country, the spirit of enterprise.

For too long, in too many areas, for too much of our recent past, enterprise has been seen as something for someone else, for a small elite. People thought the opportunity to start a business or become self-employed was, somehow, not for them.

And so the business league tables I am publishing today show that the rate of British business creation, while higher than in France and Germany, is still only two thirds of that in the United States. And in the best performing areas of the UK, there are ten times the number of firm start-ups than in the worst performing.

The chance to start a business should not depend on your background, contacts or just luck. In every area of Britain I want the enterprising to go as far as their talents and potential can take them. The British economy will do best when enterprise is – and is seen to be – open to all.

We should start to see inner cities and old industrial areas not as no-go areas for business or simply “problem” areas but as areas of opportunity: new markets where businesses can thrive because of the competitive advantages they often offer – with strategic locations, untapped resources, a high density of local purchasing power and the potential of their workforce.

And to achieve all this we must modernise our attitudes to enterprise, embrace a wealth creation agenda and build a new British and European consensus around the importance of enterprise and business success to prosperity and social cohesion.

I want British young people to see businessmen and women as role models in their communities. I want teachers willing to extol the virtues of enterprise and a career in commerce. And because I believe the way forward is to open up enterprise to all who have the talent, I want, even in our poorest communities, men and women to see an expansion of enterprise as the best solution to unemployment and deprivation and there to be no no-go areas for the enterprise economy in Britain.

Most of all I want to entrench a consensus where from the poorest to the richest community, from left to right of the political spectrum, across all countries in Europe, there is a deep and enduring understanding that enterprise is open to all as a force for wealth creation and equality of opportunity, and that enterprise and fairness are not mutually irreconcilable opposites but depend upon each other.

And building on the new Enterprise and Competition Bills, on our capital gains, small business and corporation tax cuts, and our measures to encourage enterprise in schools and colleges, the Pre-Budget Report will contain new measures that open up competition, cut red tape, abolish tax barriers to business creation and, from the classroom to the boardroom, deepen and widen the enterprise culture in our economy.

And working in partnership with local authorities and Regional Development Agencies, we will designate 2000 new Enterprise Areas – not the old Enterprise Zones of the 1980s where property subsidies diverted activity from one area to another, but 2000 new Enterprise Areas where we encourage home grown economic activity by cutting the cost of starting up, investing, hiring, training, managing the payroll.

In these Enterprise Areas – the 2000 most deprived wards in the country – I can state that:

first, having already cut stamp duty in these areas, we plan to abolish it entirely with full stamp duty exemption for all business property purchases;

second, we will give planning authorities powers to create Business Planning Zones that will cut red tape for growing businesses by removing the need to apply for planning permission;

third, we will offer businesses special investment help through the Community Investment Tax Credit – which offers for every £100 of private investment an extra £25 of public investment – and risk capital from the Community Venture Capital Fund;

fourth, we will increase funding for the Phoenix Fund by £50 million – providing support to thousands of small businesses with special encouragement for women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from ethnic minorities

fifth, the Small Business Service will provide additional help to firms in these areas – a package of advice and support worth at least £2000 for each new businessman or woman;

And sixth, we will make improvements to the Business Incubation Fund to stimulate the availability of flexible managed workspace for start-up companies.

And because we know that to get the deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture we need we must start in our schools and colleges, by 2006 every school pupil will have the opportunity of five days worth of enterprise education, with extra help for schools and colleges in high unemployment areas. And I call on businesses and colleges to look for ways in which they might help build on the popularity of summer schools to offer enterprise experience to secondary school pupils during the school holidays.

Together, these measures are a concentrated attempt to recreate economic activity as a basis for prosperity in previously run down and high-unemployment areas.

Our aim – to work together to build a wider, deeper enterprise culture where starting a business or becoming self employed is seen as open to all with the talent, ideas and will to do it — so building a strong, dynamic, economic culture not just in prosperous areas but across Britain.