Category: Economy

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech at the Press Launch of Enterprise for All

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech at the Press Launch of Enterprise for All

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 18 June 2001.

    Enterprise for all

    When four years ago we made the Bank of England independent, we said that the aim of economic policy in Britain should be high and stable levels of growth and employment.

    In our first term we put stability and employment creation first. From today our energies — building on the platform of stability and employment creation — must now be directed to raising our country’s productivity.

    Britain needs radical reform and modernisation of our product, capital and labour markets to create, for the first time, a truly entrepreneurial culture that is not confined to the few but open to all:  one where, in every community, people with ideas and initiative have the chance to start and succeed in business.

    The new Britain of enterprise for all cannot be built on inadequate investment, low skills, boardroom complacency, workplace resistance to change, or on cartels or restrictive practises from whatever quarter they arise.

    So first, competition open to all.

    Because greater competition at home is the key to greater competitiveness abroad, the Secretary for Industry and I believe that a step change in competitive pressures within the British economy is essential if we are to reach for US levels of productivity growth and to deliver over this decade faster productivity rises than our industrial competitors.

    In the last Parliament we made monetary decisions independent of political influence within a long term framework. In this Parliament we must do the same for competition policy and the Secretary for Industry is setting out today her plans to make British competition decisions – and the competition authorities – fully independent of political influence.

    In the United States, it has long been recognised that cartels are simply a sophisticated form of theft — and that the threat of prison sentences for such clear-cut abuses is the most powerful and effective deterrent. So it is our intention, following consultation, to introduce a new criminal offence for individuals who engage in cartels. We will consult on the details.

    By next year we will have put in place the framework to deliver a pro-competition regime to match the best in the world.

    The small businesses of today are the big businesses of the future.  And so, in addition to opening up competition, we are today sending a message to the  entrepreneurial, the innovative and dynamic: if  you are starting up, growing a business, investing,  taking people on, seeking new capital or  working your way up in business – we are  on your side.

    So today the Government makes proposals to create a Capital Gains Tax regime for entrepreneurs and business assets that, overall, will be more favourable to enterprise than that of the United States.

    The Capital Gains Tax rate we inherited was 40p for investments held for one year.  We cut it in Budget 2000 to 35p. I now propose a cut to just 20p.

    For investments held for two years, I propose to cut the rate from 30p to 10p.

    With this new regime, the Inland Revenue estimates that three quarters of taxpayers with business assets will pay only a 10p rate.

    And for non-business assets we will now consider the case for further changes to improve incentives to invest.

    The Enterprise Management Incentive scheme helps innovative and growing companies attract the best talent. I now propose to double the reach of the scheme to include all businesses with assets of up to £30m.

    For large companies we have already cut Corporation Tax from 33p to 30p, the lowest rate of Corporation Tax in our history. Our approach is one based on a broad base and low tax rates, that is stable and transparent, reflecting our belief in fair tax competition — and our opposition to harmful tax competition and niche regimes — so that companies make decisions to exploit real business opportunities. All reflecting our goal to make and keep the UK as the best place for international business. And as we discuss with business the next steps we will take in pursuit of these principles we are next month publishing a further consultation document.

    It is not enough to offer new incentives for existing businesses. Britain should also be the best place to start a business.

    Compared with Britain, three times as many Americans say they want to start a business.

    The chance to start a business should not depend on your background or 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. Instead of the old Britain under-performing when enterprise was seen to be restricted to a closed circle of the few, the British economy will do best when enterprise is — and is seen to be — open to all

    First, to simplify VAT for half a million small firms, we are publishing details today of a new flat rate VAT scheme — reducing business costs by up to one thousand pounds a year.

    Second, at present companies must compile separate accounts for Companies House and for the purposes of calculating their tax. We are now consulting with business on abolishing the requirement for separate accounts for tax, cutting both red tape and business costs.

    Third, I can announce that in the Budget of 2002 there will be a cut in small company Corporation Tax bills. More of small companies profits will be taxed not at 20p but at half that rate, 10p.

    Fourth, as we introduce an on-line electronic gateway for small firms to access services, Mr Pat Carter will report on how we put new technology to use to help small firms cut the cost and time of running payroll systems.

    Fifth, for half a million businesses with turnovers of less than one hundred thousand pounds, we will remove the presumption that fines be levied automatically. In future, automatic VAT fines will be levied only after a written communication is first sent offering advice and help to sort out the problem.

    Sixth, because small business growth rests not just on increasing the rewards for success but minimising the costs of failure, the Secretary for Industry will announce major changes to the rules on insolvency, including abolishing administrative receivership and, at a cost of around £100m a year, the Treasury will abolish Crown preference — the right of the Revenue and Customs to have first call for tax payments ahead of other creditors already in the queue.

    Finally, to make the enterprise culture work for people and places too long forgotten, I can announce that a £40m community development venture capital fund, comprising Government, private sector and charities, is to be opened and we will set out, in the next few weeks, the detail of the stamp duty exemptions, VAT reductions and enhanced capital allowances that will be on offer to encourage new  economic activity in  high unemployment areas.

    Fresh incentives to start a business will be accompanied by new measures to encourage venture capital — vital to bridging the investment and productivity gaps with our competitors — in all our regions and nations. I can announce today that, following our agreement with the European Commission and backed by £80m of Treasury funding and up to £60m from the European Investment Bank, our Regional Development Agencies — leaders in a new industrial policy for Britain’s regions  — will issue prospectuses for a one billion pound fund. Regional targets are being set out today.

    The modern way to personal prosperity is higher earnings through higher skills. To tackle the most serious skills problem in the modern industrialised economies — 7m adults with less than 5 GCSEs and 3m with no qualifications at all — the new Education Secretary is preparing plans for  a step change in the skills of the adult workforce.

    Our new British tax credit system that applies to work and families allows the tax system to pay out money as well as receive money. Because of its strategic national importance to the future of our economy — and because the voluntary approach has not achieved enough so far — we are prepared to apply to workplace training the same radical approach, with the government not only recognising companies? investment in skills when they pay tax but looking at contributing more through a new workplace skills tax credit or grant.  But we will only move ahead with this reform if the opportunities we offer are matched by new responsibilities accepted by both employers and employees.

    A tax credit is already boosting research and development and encouraging innovation among smaller firms. In the next Budget I intend to introduce a new research and development tax credit for larger firms

    Britain benefits from entrepreneurial talent joining us from all over the world. In the last Parliament we extended the work permit system and skilled people coming to the UK have risen from 50,000 a year to 150,000 a year. The next step is to attract those with a business track record that demonstrates their value to the economy and building upon this new scheme it is our intention to do more.

    Closing the productivity gap requires us to raise the quantity and quality of investment in private and public sectors.

    Institutional investors control 1.5 trillions in assets, including half the quoted equity markets. We will see through the reforms Paul Myners has prescribed to encourage long term investment and there will be a further review – as he recommended – on the extent to which our pension funds have risen to the challenge he has laid down.

    I can also announce today that Ron Sandler, former Chief Executive of Lloyds and Chief Operating Officer of Natwest Group, will undertake an independent review of the long-term retail savings industry including life insurance, a sector which manages more than one thousand billions in assets.

    Working closely with the FSA, he will examine the forces and incentives which drive the industry and its approach to investment.

    The efficiency we seek in the private sector we demand in the public sector. Having doubled net public investment, including  £180 billion of new public and private investment over ten years for transport, Government at every level – national, regional and local – must raise its game.

    The planning system is a key issue for business and the economy.  Much of our planning system is based on the needs of the post war world. The Secretary for Transport, Local Government and the Regions will now bring forward detailed proposals for modernisation in a Green Paper on reform to the planning system which we will publish later this year and which will strike the right balance in a radically different economy which puts an ever higher premium on speed, efficiency and flexibility – especially to reflect the widely differing needs of all our regions.

    Today, Martin Cave, who is conducting the independent review of radio spectrum management launched in the Budget, is publishing a consultation paper on his approach.  His preliminary conclusion is we need better incentives so that users, in the public or private sectors, do not waste or hoard what has previously been a free good – especially if we are to encourage innovation and productivity in this area.

    Our universities have a major role to play in generating ideas and providing high level skills crucial for productivity and growth.  In the last Parliament, we provided substantial new funding, especially for science.  The universities too have begun to respond, and a process of culture change is underway.  In this Parliament we will take this further, ensuring that the right freedoms and incentives are in place for universities, and that talented people from all backgrounds are able and encouraged to get the best education.

    The same radical programme of reform of capital, product and labour markets we have announced for Britain, we will also pursue in Europe.

    If we are to have the deeper and wider  entrepreneurial culture we need, we must start in  our schools and colleges,  and the Secretary for Education and I have asked Sir Howard Davies to examine how we can make progress. We want every young person to hear about business and enterprise in school; every college student to be made aware of the opportunities in business – and to start a business; every teacher to be able to communicate the virtues and potential of business and enterprise.

    So as we spread the spirit of enterprise from the classroom to the boardroom, our aim for this Parliament is to contribute to the creation of a deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture where enterprise is truly open to all.

  • Ed Balls – 2001 Speech at the Oxford Business Alumni Annual Lecture

    Ed Balls – 2001 Speech at the Oxford Business Alumni Annual Lecture

    The speech made by Ed Balls, the then Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, at Merchant Taylor’s Hall in London on 12 June 2001.

    INTRODUCTION

    It is a great pleasure and a privilege to be invited here today to give the first Oxford Business Alumni Annual Lecture.

    The last four years have been a dramatic and exciting period of change – both for the Said Business School and for British economic policy.

    Oxford University’s Business School has been transformed from a concept in 1990, its first MBA programme in 1996, to a fully-fledged School with 100 MBA students from some 30 countries and over 1,000 alumni.  With its first graduates now established in the business world, I congratulate the School and its alumni for its deserved reputation as a centre for dynamism and excellence in the application of ideas to business and commerce.

    The institutions and practice of British economic policy have also undergone radical change.  The new Competition Commission and strengthened Office of Fair Trading enacting new competition legislation.  The Financial Services Authority regulating financial services.  A network of Regional Development Agencies implementing a new and decentralised industrial policy.  Three year budgeting for central and now local government.  A new framework for fiscal policy based on greater transparency and clearly defined fiscal rules over the cycle, enshrined in legislation in the Code for Fiscal Stability.

    And, above all, a reformed Bank of England granted, de facto, operational independence to set British interest rates on this very day of the political calendar – the Tuesday following the 1997 general election.

    The decision to go for immediate independence fulfilled the Manifesto commitment to “reform the Bank of England to ensure that decision-making on monetary policy is more effective, open accountable and free from short-term political manipulation”.  From the moment that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, first told the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury of his intentions at their first meeting after the General Election and handed him the draft letter to the Governor of the Bank of England, a small Treasury team remained locked in the office throughout the Bank holiday weekend to prepare the announcement.  All of us knew that this was a very major institutional change – for the Treasury but also for the Bank – over-turning decades of practice and tradition.

    It is also a very significant constitutional change – a Chancellor and a government choosing to cede such a significant power as setting national interest rates to an unelected agency of UK government.  In the words of the Times the next morning: “the most fundamental shake-up of the Bank of England since its formation nearly 303 years ago.”

    But, most important, it was – as the House of Lords Select Committee concluded two years later – “a radical new departure in economic policy-making” – establishing a new and distinctive British model of central bank independence.

    Different countries and regions have chosen and succeeded with different routes to stability, depending on their economic circumstances, history and traditions. For Britain in 1997 we needed a new route to stability and a new model of central bank independence.  A model suited to a medium-sized open economy in a fast-moving open global capital market and with a strong tradition of parliamentary and, through the media, public accountability in economic policy-making, but also a country with a recent track record of instability and economic failure.

    In this lecture I want to set out in more detail the background to this decision, why we felt central bank independence was the right route to stability for Britain and why changes in the global economy and the history of economic policy-making in Britain led us to choose the particular model and design features of the new British model of central bank independence.  And I will then take a look, at this still early stage, four years, four weeks and one general election later, at whether this model is delivering a credible, flexible and legitimate platform of stability for Britain.

    THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDEPENDENCE

    Why did the new Labour government decide to move so quickly and decisively to establish the independence of the Bank of England in May 1997?

    Some argue that the Labour government would have been forced to do it anyway, and so tried belatedly to take the initiative.  But there was no expectation either in the Treasury, the Bank or indeed in the wider business or financial communities that the government would decide to opt for statutory independence.

    A second mistaken view is that independence would allow a new Chancellor to duck responsibility for difficult decisions. In fact, interest rates were raised immediately by Gordon Brown. But we also knew that the Chancellor who made the Bank independent would necessarily be held responsible for the subsequent economic record, albeit with less ability to directly influence it month by month. A number of former Conservative Chancellors had become advocates of independence in their memoirs.  But none ever felt either sufficiently pressured or sufficiently brave to take the plunge while in office.

    Nor was it an admission of impotence in the face of global financial markets – confirmation that national governments no longer have the power to make their own decisions about economic policy.  Yes, governments which pursue unsustainable monetary and fiscal policies are punished hard these days – and much more rapidly then thirty or forty years ago.  But the evidence of the past decade is that governments which are judged to be pursuing transparent and credible policies can attract inflows of investment capital at a higher speed, in greater volume and at a lower cost than ever before.

    A final mistaken view is that independence could avoid the potential for conflict between a new Labour chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England.  It is true that the personalised “Ken and Eddie” monthly meeting had already become destabilising and unsustainable.  One did not have to anticipate a return to the days or Wilson, Callaghan and Lord Cromer to see the potential for media mischief with a new Chancellor.  It was a deliberate decision to move to independence straight after the first  – and thus last -old-style meeting between the Chancellor and Governor.  But the model of central bank independence we chose demands a continuing close relationship between the Chancellor and Governor.  And, in practice, to my mind, that relationship has become very close over the past four years by historical standards.

    There were three reasons, in my opinion, why central bank independence was the right policy for Britain in 1997.

    First, it demonstrated that the new government was determined to make a decisive break with the short-termism of past Labour  and Conservative governments.  It demonstrated a clear and unambiguous commitment to a new long-termism in British economic policy-making.  As with the two year freeze in public spending, handing over the short-term fine-tuning of the economy to a group of experts was an emphatic demonstration that this government was not looking for short-termist quick fixes or to duck difficult decisions.  It had a decisive impact on both the international reputation of the government and on the wider credibility of Treasury Ministers.

    Second, central bank independence liberated the Treasury.  There is no doubt to my mind, talking to colleagues, that setting interest rates, and all the short-term activity which came with that task, took at least half of the time and energy of past Chancellors, as well as being a monthly source of disagreement between No 10 and No 11 Downing Street. Since independence there has been – as the Treasury Permanent Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull told the House of Lords select committee investigation – “a change of time horizon” at the Treasury. Handing over the short-term task of monthly decision-making on interest rates – to meet a target set by the government – has created the time, space and long-term credibility for the Chancellor, and senior Treasury management, to concentrate on all the other levers of economic policy and the government’s long-term economic objectives.

    For the Chancellor’s first words at the 1997 press conference were to restore, as the goals of economic policy, the 1944 white paper aims of high and stable levels of growth and employment.  We knew these objectives had radical implications across the widest range of government economic policies.  But stability alone could not by itself deliver full employment, higher living standards, better public services to tackle child poverty.  It is the reforms to enterprise, competition and productivity, employment policy and the welfare state, tax and public services – in the last parliament and in this new parliament – which will determine the government’s abilities to meet its long-term economic and social goals.

    But to achieve those long-term goals, and after the instability and short-termism of past decades, we knew that building a stable economy and a credible and forward-looking macroeconomic policy – with no deflationary bias – was an essential first step.  So the third – and most important – reason for the early move to independence was that it provided a unique opportunity to reshape the objectives, institutions and practice of British macroeconomic policy.

    After the violent boom-bust economic cycles of the past twenty or so years, any threat of a return to renewed short-termism and instability in macroeconomic policy-making would have quickly undermined any chance of focusing on long-term supply-side reform or establishing for business and public services a credible platform for long-term investment.

    A change of government provided a unique opportunity to learn from that history and changes in the global economy and establish a modern, pro-stability but post-monetarist macroeconomic framework for Britain.

    BRITISH INSTABILITY AND THE FAILURE OF MONETARISM

    The search for credibility had also prompted a change in economic direction when the government had last changed hands in 1979.  For by the mid and late 1970s, with unemployment and inflation both rising and the old idea of government fine-tuning a long-term trade-off between unemployment and inflation dead, reform was needed.

    But the new government, following a combination of IMF advice and a rigid application of the views of US economist Milton Friedman, took a hard-line monetarist direction.  The monetarist route to credibility was to tie the government’s hands and remove discretion from policy-making. It did so by relying on a stable relationship between the growth of the money supply and inflation and by pre-committing the government to set interest rates to control money growth.

    The problem was that – in the face of global financial integration and deregulation – what had seemed to be a stable relationship between money and inflation was collapsing.

    Persisting with these fixed rules, as monetary aggregates ran out of control, proved disastrous.  Because with its credibility at stake, the government was forced to continue with a deflationary policy of high interest rates and high exchange rate, in a continuing attempt to meet its monetary targets.  Attempting to achieve stability and low inflation by clinging doggedly to a series of intermediate indicators now implied perverse policy mixes – first highly deflationary, then grossly inflationary in the mid to late 1980s and then deeply deflationary again.

    But because the government had staked its anti-inflationary credentials on following these rules, it was faced with paying a heavy reputational price for breaking them.  As one money rule after another proved unsustainable and was replaced by the next, the government’s anti-inflationary credentials and commitment weakened and politics increasingly drove policy-making with little transparency or effective justification or explanation about policy decisions or mistakes.

    Nor did the attempt to shore up credibility through the exchange rate prove a better alternative.  Nigel Lawson’s destabilising flirtation with exchange rate targeting in 1987 and 1988, during which period the objective of UK monetary policy became damagingly ambiguous, was followed by the debacle of Britain’s membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism which again had monetarist undertones – this time hoping for stable relationship between the exchange rate and inflation which did not exist.  The result was a second deep recession in decade, leaving the credibility and legitimacy of British macroeconomic policy-making badly damaged.

    The failure of monetarism as a macroeconomic doctrine was not its rejection of old-style fine-tuning or its desire to achieve long-term credibility in policy-making. Its failure was to introduce a rigidity into UK monetary policy-making at just the time when the reality of global capital markets demanded greater flexibility – with disastrous deflationary and destabilising consequences.

    Things did improve after sterling’s exist from the ERM in 1992 – in particular the shift to inflation targeting and publication of minutes of a monthly discussion between the Chancellor and the Governor.  But they did not constitute a credible and sustainable approach.

    Decision-making remained highly personalised, the inflation target was ambiguous and deflationary and – as we concluded in the Treasury’s recent assessment of the old and new systems – “policy-makers operated behind closed doors and decisions were often made with little or no explanation”. Most problematic, the suspicion remained that policy was being manipulated for short-term motives.  As Deputy Governor Mervyn King concluded in 1999, “long-term interest rates contained a risk premium that the timing and magnitude of interest rate changes might reflect political considerations.” Long – term interest rates remained 1.7 percent higher in Britain than in Germany while, despite the commitment to an inflation target of 2.5 per cent or less, financial market expectations of inflation 10 years ahead remained at 4.3 per cent in April 1997, and never fell below 4 per cent for the whole period, while by the time of the 1997 election the Treasury was forecasting inflation was forecast to rise above 4 per cent over the coming year.

    CREDIBILITY, FLEXIBILITY AND LEGITIMACY

    A decisive change in direction was needed to rebuild credibility and trust. The change of government in 1997, and the decision to opt for an independent central bank, provided the opportunity.  We needed a new British macroeconomic framework which could meet three central objectives:

    First, Credibility.  We needed a policy framework in which the government’s commitment to long-term stability – low inflation and sound public finances – commanded trust from the public, business and markets. For a new government, especially for a left of centre government out of power for twenty years, establishing credibility was a must.

    Second, Flexibility.  We needed a framework within which policymakers could take early and forward-looking action  – in monetary and fiscal policy – in the face of the ups and downs of the economic cycle without jeopardising the credibility of those long-term goals.  And we needed the flexibility to strike and sustain the right balance between monetary and fiscal policy.

    And third, Legitimacy.  The new framework had to be capable of rebuilding and entrenching public support and establishing a new cross-party political and parliamentary consensus for long-term stability.  A new consensus about goals – delivering low and stable inflation and supporting the government’s wider objectives for sustainable growth and employment  – without the old deflationary mistakes. But also a new consensus about institutions so that policymakers would be able to take difficult decisions, when necessary, in the public interest.

    These objectives were and are closely related.  Responding flexibly and decisively to surprise economic events is critical for establishing a track record for delivering long-term stability without huge swings in inflation, output or unemployment.  But without a credible framework which commands trust and a track record for making the right decisions, it is hard for policy to respond flexibly without immediately raising the suspicion that the government is about to sacrifice long-term stability and make a short-term dash for growth.

    And British economic policy-making was effectively starting from scratch in establishing reputation and public trust.  As the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out in his 1999 Mais lecture, in this new world of global capital markets, we needed a new post-monetarist model – a model based on what I described in a lecture to the Scottish Economic Society in 1997 as “constrained discretion”.  An approach which recognises that the discretion necessary for effective economic policy – short-term flexibility to meet credible long-term goals – is possible only within an institutional framework that commands market credibility and public trust with the government constrained to deliver clearly defined long-term policy objectives and maximum openness and transparency.

    DIFFERENT ROUTES TO STABILITY

    Of course, there is more than one route to stability for countries and regions – and different successful models of central bank independence – depending on their history, institutions and track record.  For Britain, the government’s commitment, in principle to membership of a successful single currency, provided the five economic tests demonstrate that membership is in the national economic interest and the cabinet, parliament and the people agree in a referendum, directly demonstrate this government’s understanding that, in principle, Euro membership could be an alternative and valid route to stability for Britain.

    In the US, Alan Greenspan has established huge credibility through his track record of monetary policy-making and his stress on transparency. And this credibility has allowed the Federal Reserve to maintain great policy flexibility without setting explicit targets for monetary policy – either for inflation or any other intermediate targets.

    The Bundesbank also had a highly successful history.  Credibility established over a 50 year track record of stability.  Flexibility, because this long-term credibility enabled the Bundesbank to regularly turn a blind eye to its publicly announced money supply targets.  And legitimacy which grew from the apolitical almost anti-political approach to monetary policy-making shared by the Bundesbank, the government and German people following the hyperinflation of the past and the subsequent post-war success of the German economy – and which continued despite the Bundesbank’s tendency to surprise the markets and its cautious approach to transparency.

    The drafters of the Maastricht treaty had this Bundesbank model at the centre of their thinking when they established the European Central Bank. But legal independence from political interference is only part of the story.  The fundamental question the Treaty designers had to decide – and which the ECB’s track record will establish – is whether the ECB could inherit the credibility and reputation of the Bundesbank or whether, like the UK, it was starting from scratch in building a reputation for long-term stability.

    The old Bundesbank-style approach would not have worked for Britain in 1997. Because it is only when there is already a long-established track record and tradition of successful stability-orientated policy-making that objectives do not need to be clearly set or decisions made in an open and transparent fashion. The UK had no such tradition.

    THE NEW BRITISH MODEL

    That is why we concluded that we needed a new approach for Britain in 1997 – and a new model of central bank independence. Macroeconomic policy could not hope to command credibility,  retain flexibility and rebuild legitimacy without a clearly defined long-term targets, proper procedures and a commitment to transparency and accountability.  Because to combine long-term credibility and short-term constrained discretion to respond flexibly in the face of economic shocks would only be possible if policy-makers were seen in practice to be genuinely pre-committed to delivering long-term stability and could build a track record for doing so.

    The new British model has five key features:

    • a strategic division of responsibilities:  with the elected government setting the wider economic strategy and the objectives for monetary policy, while monthly decisions are passed over to the central bank, thereby pre-committing the government to long-term stability;
    • a single symmetric inflation target:  with no ambiguity about the inflation target, no deflationary bias and no dual targeting of inflation and the short-term exchange rate;
    • independent expert decisions:  with monthly decisions to meet the government’s inflation target taken by an independent Monetary Policy Committee made up of the Governor, four Bank executives and four outside experts appointed directly by the Chancellor;
    • built-in flexibility:  with the Open Letter system to allow the necessary flexibility so that policy can respond in the short-term to surprise economic events without jeopardising long-term goals and proper procedures to ensure proper co-ordination of monetary and a medium-term fiscal policy;
    • maximum transparency and accountability: with monthly minutes published and individual vote attributed and with a strengthened role for parliament – so that the public and markets can see that decisions were being taken, within a legitimate framework, for sound long-term reasons and in order to support the government’s wider objectives for living standards and employment. I will discuss these features in turn.

    First, a strategic division of responsibilities between the Treasury and the Bank of England – with the Chancellor  responsible for what Governor Eddie George labeled in his 1997 Mais lecture the “political decision” of setting the target and the MPC responsible for the “technical decision” of achieving it. This was a clear change from the normal model of central bank independence.  The Federal Reserve, Bundesbank and the ECB are all “goal independent” – charged in legislation with delivering price stability but also responsible for defining the precise target for policy as well as making monthly decisions to meet that target.

    Why did we opt for operational independence?  Partly, as I will discuss in a moment so the Chancellor could introduce a new and non-deflationary inflation target.  But also to strengthen the  legitimacy of the unelected MPC in making monthly interest rate decisions by emphasising that its pursuit of stability was an important part of the government’s wider economic strategy to deliver high and stable growth and employment.

    As Deputy Governor Mervyn King said in his 1999 Belfast lecture, “the rationale for handing operational responsibility for setting interest rates to the MPC is that it is better qualified to make those decisions than elected politicians, whereas elected politicians have the democratic legitimacy to choose the target.”

    Some feared that this would lead to a less credible central bank. And it is, of course, entirely open to the government of the day to set a higher target for inflation, indeed – with the support of parliament – to suspend or even reverse independence entirely.  But in the absence of a long-term trade off between higher inflation and higher unemployment, there would be nothing to gain and everything to lose from setting a weaker target.

    Far from being a weakening of independence or a failure to be bold, I believe that our decision to have the government set the target was, in fact, a more radical approach which strengthened the independence of the central bank.  For having set the target for the central bank, it is very hard for the government to question the decisions of the MPC.  To doubt their decisions is either to doubt that the target is wrong, which is not their fault, or doubt their expertise which is hard for the government to do, especially if it has appointed the experts itself.  Instead, the incentive for the government of the day is publicly to back the MPC’s decisions.  And from the central bank’s point of view, as well as having the government firmly alongside it in making sometimes controversial decisions, it is able to spend its time each month debating how best to meet the inflation target rather than debating and disagreeing over what price stability should mean in practice.

    At no time has the government ever cast any doubt about the wisdom of the MPC’s individual decisions.  Indeed, while backing their strategy in public speeches, this Chancellor has been careful to avoid ever commenting on individual decisions – although the Treasury publicly reviews the MPC’s performance against the target. As Eddie George said in that 1997 lecture, this division of responsibilities ?helps to ensure that the Government and the Bank are separately accountable for their respective roles in the monetary policy process.?

    The second reason why we wanted the government to set the target was so that we could move from an asymmetric to a single symmetric inflation target.  And that we did in June 1997, changing from the ambiguously defined inflation target we inherited of 2.5 per cent or less to a clearly and symmetrically defined inflation target of 2.5 per cent.

    I said earlier that our commitment to stability rested on a rejection of the old idea that there was a long-run trade-off between unemployment and inflation.  But the rejection of the old-style fine-tuning means recognising that there is no long-term gain to be had either from trying to trade higher inflation for more output or jobs or lower inflation at the cost of output and jobs.

    A stable and symmetric target is the best guarantee of a pro- stability and pro-growth policy.  It requires that deviations below target are taken as seriously as above – removing the old deflationary bias of the ?2.5% or less? target which makes 2% better than 2.5% and 1% better than 2%, regardless of the impact on output and jobs.  It is the key innovation in the new model which ensures that monetary policy supports the government’s goals for high and stable levels of growth and employment.

    As the Governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, said to the TUC Congress in September 1998:

    ?The inflation target we have been set is symmetrical.  A significant, sustained, fall below 2 1/2% is to be regarded just as seriously as a significant, sustained, rise above it.  And I give you my assurance that we will be just as rigorous in cutting interest rates if the overall evidence begins to point to our undershooting the target as we have been in raising them when the balance of risks was on the upside”.

    In our internal discussion at the Treasury in the Spring of 1997, some feared that dropping the aspiration to lower inflation than 2.5 per cent would damage the credibility of UK monetary policy.  I believe that the role of the symmetric target as the sole target for monetary policy has been critical in enabling the MPC to be both credible and flexible.  A symmetric target gives much great clarity – making it more straightforward for the MPC to justify publicly its decisions and be held to account for its record.  But, importantly, it has ensured that the MPC takes a forward-looking, as well as symmetric, view of the risks to the British economy.  If inflation is forecast to fall below 2.5 per cent the MPC does not wait to see how far it will fall but instead responds to get inflation back to target.

    The setting of the symmetric target, by the government, as the sole target for monetary policy, with the Treasury also responsible for exchange rate policy and intervention, has also removed any suspicion that the government might be trying to target the exchange rate as well as inflation. For in an open economy like Britain, with open capital markets, successfully trying to run dual targets for inflation and the exchange rate is flawed in theory and has proved destabilising in practice.  Britain’s economic history suggests that trying to deliver exchange rate target can only be achieved at the expense of wider instability – in inflation and the wider manufacturing and service sectors.

    As the Chancellor has said, the government understands the difficulties that the current high level of sterling has caused.  But any short-term attempt to manipulate the exchange rate, overtly or covertly, would put both the inflation target and – as in the late 1980s – wider stability at risk.  The objective of UK monetary policy is and remains clear and unambiguous – to meet a symmetric inflation target of 2.5 per cent.  The Government’s objective for the exchange rate remains a stable and competitive pound in the medium term.  But there is no short term exchange rate target competing with the inflation target.

    The third new departure to achieve independent expert decisions was the establishment of the new Monetary Policy Committee – a reform which at a stroke put behind us the old personalised approach to policy-making we had seen in the 1980s.  The role of the chancellor in appointing the four outsiders was, in my view, part of the delicate constitutional balance we were striking in moving to a legitimate model of central independence consistent with British-style ministerial accountability to parliament.

    Some, I am sure, doubted whether our commitment to appoint genuine and independent experts was real.  The quality and independence of all the appointments speak for themselves.  Importantly, they have demonstrated that it is perfectly acceptable and desirable for independent experts to disagree in public over difficult monetary policy judgments.  Should the outside appointments have had longer terms than three years or, as Willem Buiter argued, serve only one term?  Perhaps. Although, over the first four years of the MPC’s life, it would have made no difference.  It is hard enough to get experts to commit to leave their posts for three years.  And no issue of appointment or re-appointment has been influenced in any way by past voting behaviour.

    The fourth departure in the new British model is the built-in flexibility to allow the MPC to respond flexibly in the face of economic shocks and to allow an effective co-ordination of monetary and fiscal policy.

    The first of these is the Open Letter system.  If inflation goes more than one percentage point either side of 2.5 per cent, the Governor is required to write to the Chancellor, on behalf of the MPC, explaining why it has happened, what the MPC has done about it, how long it will take for inflation to come back to target and how the MPC’s response is consistent with the government’s economic objectives – both for price stability and high and stable levels of growth and employment.

    The Open letter system has not yet been used, confounding the fears of some that it would be used many times.  I believe its importance has not been properly understood.  Some have assumed it exists for the Chancellor to discipline the MPC if inflation goes outside the target range. In fact the opposite is true.  In the face of a supply-shock, such as a big jump in the oil price, which pushed inflation way off target, the MPC could only get inflation back to 2.5 per cent quickly through a draconian interest rate response  – at the expense of stability, growth and jobs.  Any sensible monetary policymaker would want a more measured and stability-oriented strategy to get inflation back to target. And it is the Open Letter system which both allows that more sensible approach to be explained by the MPC and allows the Chancellor publicly to endorse it. In this way, transparency and accountability have the potential to make it easier for the MPC to be flexible when necessary without risking its long-term credibility.

    Nor has the new system led to a less flexible approach to the co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy.  In fact, monetary and fiscal policy are much more co-ordinated now than they ever were when the sole decision-maker was the Chancellor for both interest rates ands fiscal policy.  Partly because the Treasury representative explains the fiscal strategy to the MPC regularly, and in particular at the meeting before each Budget, on the basis of clearly defined fiscal rules set over the economic cycle.  But more importantly the MPC is free – in a transparent way – to respond with interest rates to fiscal policy.  So, in preparing the Budget, the Treasury knows that it will be judged both in terms of its medium-term fiscal rules and what the MPC does and says in its Minutes about fiscal policy.  There is no way, as in the past, that the Chancellor can any reward him or herself with an interest rate cut the day after the Budget as happened on numerous occasion in the past.

    Central to the discussion of each of these reforms is maximum transparency and accountability.  And that means transparency of both objectives and process – what goals the government is trying to achieve, how the target for monetary policy is being set to help meet those goals and how decisions are being made in order to achieve them.

    The most important transparency mechanism is the publication of the minutes of the MPC’s monthly meeting which not only sets out in detail the reasoning behind the decision but also sets out the range of views within the MPC and – critically – publishes the votes of named individual members. It is this transparency in published voting records which has done so much to deepen public understanding of the nature of monetary decisions.  The fact that independent experts, publicly accountable as individuals for the decisions, are seen to change their minds when the evidence changes has deepened legitimacy but also demonstrates that the MPC’s flexibility and forward-looking approach is in pursuit of a credible commitment to the inflation.  This innovation, with the minutes now published two weeks after the meeting – consistent with the ‘within 6 week’ formulation of the legislation – has contributed greatly to a much more mature debate in Britain about genuinely difficult monthly decisions.

    Some have argued that the particular arguments and views in the minutes should be attributed.  From the outside, this seems to me mistaken.  The strength of the meeting at present is that there is a genuinely open debate which the minutes reflect but which allow MPC members to be persuaded by argument.  Attributing argument to individuals would quickly lead to members reading prepared texts in the minutes at the expense of flexibility in decision-making and the genuinely deliberative nature of the meeting in which people can change their minds and be influenced by the debate.

    The minutes are the most important of an array of transparency and accountability reforms.  There is also the quarterly Inflation Report, and press conference, the role for the Treasury committee in cross-examining the MPC, the role of the non-executive directors in scrutinising, monetary policy arrangements, the annual report and parliamentary debate.  As the Treasury Select Committee concluded in its report on Bank of England accountability in July 1998:  ?We agree with the conclusion by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its country survey of the UK that “In international comparisons the United Kingdom’s framework is among the strongest in terms of accountability and transparency”.?

    CONCLUSION – AN ASSESSMENT

    I said I would end with an assessment of the framework’s track record over the last four years.  It is early to make considered judgments, but the signs are certainly encouraging.  The evidence does suggest that the British economy is putting past decades of instability behind it and that, with the new policy framework, we have been better able – and are now much better placed for the future – to deal with the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

    It is against the three objectives for modern macroeconomic policymaking – credibility, flexibility, and legitimacy – that the new system must be judged.

    Credibility

    The signs are certainly that – economically and politically – Britain has made a decisive step forward to a credible model of macroeconomic policy-making in Britain.  And largely because of the sound and forward-looking judgments of the MPC, the economy has sustained stability with growth close to its trend over the past four years.

    The simplest measure of policy credibility – long-term interest rates – have fallen to their lowest level for 37 years.  The differential between UK and German 5 year forward rates fell by 54 basis points between the beginning and the end of May, while 10 year interest rate differentials with Germany halved from 1.69 percentage points in the week before the May 1997 announcement to 0.88 percentage points by October. This differential has since been eliminated as the MPC’s track record has become established.

    In part, this reflects the economy’s inflation performance – a clear improvement in the last parliament compared to the previous one. Since 1997, inflation has averaged 2.4 per cent – in a historically narrow range of 1.8 per cent to 3.2 per cent – compared to 2.8 per cent and a range of 2 to 3.8 per cent in the period between exit from the ERM in October 1992 and the 1997 election.

    But it also reflects lower inflation expectations in the new regime.  Inflation expectations 10 years ahead averaged 2.71 per cent in the last parliament compared to 4.78 per cent in the period between October 1992 and May 1997.  And inflation expectations in the financial markets have also converged on the target for the first time with the inflation expectation implicit in index-linked 10 year gilts now down to 2.65 per cent, from 4.3 per cent the week before May 1st 1997.

    The behaviour of the labour market has also been very encouraging.  Wage inflation has remained over the past four years broadly in line with the 4.5 per cent a year which the Bank of England has said it believes is consistent with meeting the inflation target.  And this improvement in expectations of stability has not happened at expense of output or jobs. But it is still too early to say we have succeeded in entrenching expectations of long-term stability. Inflation expectations in the financial markets are still just above the 2.5 per cent inflation target while public opinion poll surveys suggest that public expectations of future inflation are at 3.5 per cent, down from 4 per cent pre-independence, but also still above the target.

    Employment growth has also been impressive. Far from leading to higher unemployment, as some might have predicted, central bank independence has seen unemployment continue to fall to its lowest level for over 25 years with employment rising – not just nationally but in every region of Britain – at a time when most economic forecasters were expecting unemployment to start to rise rather than fall.  To talk of the prospect of a return to full employment in every region is now a credible goal.

    More generally, the past four years have transformed this government’s standing as economic manager and turned upside down the historic reputations of the parties for economic competence – with the new government sustaining a 30 percentage point plus lead over the main opposition on this question throughout the election campaign.  It has laid to rest the myth that a left of centre government, with ambitions for full employment, to cut poverty and for stronger public services, cannot run a successful and prudent long-term economic policy.

    Indeed, far from preventing the government achieving its long-term goals, this new and credible framework – independence and clear and disciplined fiscal rules  – has enabled the government to take decisive steps forward towards full employment and greater investment in public services.

    The announcement in the 2000 Budget that – within these fiscal rules – spending was set to rise by an average 3.7 per cent a year until 2004 -with spending rising as a percentage of GDP – was taken in its stride by the financial markets.  Indeed, long-term interest rates fell following the March Budget – two weeks later, ten-year UK gilt yields were around 20 basis points lower.

    So as the new government starts its second term, the expectation in financial markets that stability and prudence is now at the heart of British economic policy, the vigilance of the MPC and the continuing discipline of the fiscal rules provide a credible platform for next year’s Budget and the 2002 spending review.

    Flexibility

    The second test is flexibility. It is early to make a definitive judgment.  Four years is not a long time in economic policymaking.  Some argue that this new British model has yet been tested against a severe national or world economic shock.  As I said an Open Letter has yet to be received by the Chancellor, although this is in itself a tribute to the MPC’s success in delivering inflation to target.  And the new system has yet to experience a change of government.

    But the new system has – in the past four years – handled an over-heating British economy in 1997; the Asian financial crisis of 1998 – which saw the CBI Industrial Trends business optimism measure fall from ?4 to a balance of ?41 in just a few months;  a trebling of the world oil price between end of 1998 and 2000; and the US and wider global economic slowdown since the beginning of this year.

    In each case, the MPC has responded in a decisive and forward-looking way – raising interest rates in 1997 and 1998; a series of rate cuts in the autumn of 1998 and spring of 1999; and again the easing of rates this year as the world economy slowed.

    The interest rates response in autumn 1998 was particularly important, with three cuts in interest rates between October and December 1998 – a cut of 1.25 percentage points.  In the old system, such a policy response from the Chancellor would have been interpreted as a sign of panic and crisis.  And some did fear that recession was on the way in 1999.  But the MPC’s handling of the situation stabilised the economy and boosted confidence.  And the 1999 Treasury forecast for growth that year was our worst forecast in the parliament only because we underestimated the strength of UK economic growth.

    Contrary to expectations, the new system has also delivered a much more effective co-ordination of monetary and fiscal policy than in the past.  Fiscal policy has been set in a predictable medium-term context.  The ratio of net debt has fallen to historically low levels.  And while economic theory would not have predicted that a 4 percentage point of GDP tightening of fiscal policy would have led to a stronger exchange rate, fiscal policy continues to support monetary policy over the economic cycle.

    Legitimacy

    The final test is legitimacy.  There is a new consensus in Britain both about the need for stability and the operational framework to achieve it.  Any decision to raise interest rates is bound to be unpopular.  But the fact that main opposition party has dropped its threat to reverse the move to bank independence, that there is now an all-party consensus in favour of this reform and that the MPC could cut interest rates during the election campaign without accusations of political bias, shows that this consensus is becoming deeper-rooted.

    But, given Britain’s history, that consensus cannot be taken for granted.  It depends not only on a sustained track record of stability, which no government can guarantee, but also on whether the government can deliver its wider  goals for high and stable levels of growth and employment – and so deliver rising living standards and better public services.  A continuing commitment to stability is a necessary means to these ends.  But, in the end, it will be the success or otherwise of the government’s wider economic agenda –  to close the productivity gap, promote full employment and invest in public services  – that the credibility and legitimacy of British economic policy will depend. These are now the challenges for this parliament.  So as the Prime Minister and Chancellor have said regularly over the past few weeks – the work goes on.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Yale Club in New York

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Yale Club in New York

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in New York, the United States, on 26 July 2001.

    Travelling from London to New York reminds me of just how much both of us are stronger because of the shared history that shapes our countries and links our destinies – and because of the shared values that bind us even more closely together.

    Indeed for centuries, your land and the islands of Britain have been linked not only by history but by ideals.  For while the United States was born in a revolution against a British government, it was also a revolution for an assertion of fundamental values that Britain and America hold in common and represent to all the world: a passion for liberty and opportunity for all; a belief in the work ethic and in opening enterprise to all; a commitment to being open not isolationist – a commitment which in our day and generation increasingly depends on a shared conviction that economic expansion through free trade and free markets is the key to growth and prosperity.

    In this century our shared values can become our common destiny, and I stand for a Britain and you stand for an America outward looking, ambitious to succeed, determined to advance an enterprise culture fully equipped to lead in the 21st century economy.

    Winston Churchill said that those who build the present only in the image of the past will miss out entirely on the challenges of the future.

    And I want to suggest now that all of us – businesses and governments working together – should face the great challenges of today’s and tomorrow’s economy not by risking stability but by strengthening it; not by resisting change but by empowering people to cope with it; not by standing still but by radical economic reform; and – the main theme of my remarks today – not by protectionism but by promoting open, competitive markets and international cooperation.

    Specifically I am certain that we must think transcontinentally as well as continentally. Today, between us, Europe and America account for 55% of world trade, 60% of trade in services and, remarkably, 80% of world wealth.

    One American leader, speaking about the changing relationship between the US and Europe said:

    “As the worldwide effort for independence, inspired by the American declaration of independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort -for interdependence – is transforming the world about us.”

    “I say here and now that we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership.”

    Remarkably, this statement was not made by a present-day politician.  In fact it was made 40 years ago by President John F. Kennedy, on independence day in Philadelphia.

    Kennedy’s words ring with relevance in our own times.  He continued:

    “We believe that a united Europe will be capable of joining with the United States and others in lowering trade barriers, resolving problems of commerce, commodities, and currency, and developing coordinated policies in all economic, political, and diplomatic areas.”

    “For the Atlantic partnership of which I speak would not look inward only, preoccupied with its own welfare and advancement. It must look outward to cooperate with all nations in meeting their common concern.”

    So as John Kennedy makes clear, it is more than commerce that binds us.  And, increasingly, in this age of globalisation, our national goals are shared international goals, our responsibilities are shared responsibilities, and our opportunities are shared opportunities. And we must not underestimate the good that can be done for the whole world, not least for developing countries, if the relationship between Europe and America is deepened.

    And as President Bush reminded us just a month ago when he was in Poland:

    “When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy.  When Europe and America are partners, no trouble or tyranny can stand against us.”

    So this is the challenge I address today.

    Let us be clear: in just a few short years the world has moved from sheltered to open economies; from local to regional to global commerce; from national to world-wide financial markets; from location, raw materials and indigenous capital as sources of competitive advantage to skills, knowledge and creativity as the factors that make the decisive difference.

    We should welcome this change, not shrink from it. So, for us in Britain, there are continuing challenges – and a next step:

    To entrench our new won and hard won stability – to lead the process of labour, capital, and product market reform in our own country and in Europe and to build a new more open market across the Atlantic.

    The first indispensable imperative is stability. Every time in recent decades when the British economy has started to grow, governments of both parties have taken short-term decisions which too often have created unsustainable consumer booms, and sacrificed monetary and fiscal prudence.  In 1997, Britain needed a wholly new monetary and fiscal framework based on clear policy rules, well established procedures, and an openness and transparency not seen in the past. Hence the independence of the Bank of England, the new fiscal rules, the open letter system, the symmetrical inflation target and our new code for fiscal stability.

    I believe that as we in Britain are tested by events like rising oil prices, exchange rate pressures, and now the slowdown in the US economy, our new framework makes us better placed than before to cope with the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

    And I can say categorically that we will continue to steer a course of stability and support our monetary authorities in difficult decisions essential to ensure that we remain on track to meet our inflation target and sustain high and stable levels of growth and employment.  We will lock in not let down our fiscal discipline and at all times avoid short-termism – a return to the mistaken monetary and fiscal policies of the past.

    Last month, I announced the next stage in our own competitiveness reforms with a policy of opening up enterprise to all:

    a new competition regime; deregulatory measures to help small business; measures to improve skills; reforming our physical planning laws; historic cuts in capital gains tax to 10% for business assets held for 2 years, new cuts in small company corporation tax and a simplification of the vat system; and a new extension of the work permit system that has already raised entrants to the UK from 50,000 three years ago to 150,000 this year. As well as our plans for investment and modernization through public-private partnerships such as our transport plans including the London Underground.

    At the same time we will continue to pursue the economic reform agenda in Europe – in labour, capital, and product markets.  And we have argued not just for action plans which signal intent but timetables which signal deadlines:

    •   liberalisation in telecoms by the end of 2001;
    •   liberalisation in financial services by 2004;

    energy liberalisation – where we continue to push our neighbours;

    and liberalisation in the capital markets by 2003.

    As has Britain, the Euro area has been establishing a new framework for economic stability with clear rules, better understood procedures and a new accountability.

    And a single European currency, with a fully developed single market, could in principle bring benefits:

    •   it could increase trade and competition through the elimination of exchange rate risk and through more transparent prices;
    •   it could reduce transaction costs, again increasing trade and investment, and benefiting everyone travelling in Europe;
    •   and a strong single currency zone could mean lower long-term interest rates, again good for investment and so good for growth and jobs.

    And the five tests we set out, on employment, investment, flexibility, financial services and sustainable and durable convergence are the necessary economic pre-requisites for deciding Britain’s membership of a successful currency union.

    Our approach is and continues to be, considered and cautious – one of pro-euro realism.

    I am pro-euro because, as we said in 1997, in principle British membership of a successful single currency offers us these obvious benefits and could help us create the conditions for higher and more productive investment and greater trade and business in Europe.

    I am a realist because to short-cut or fudge the assessment, and to join in the wrong way, or on the wrong basis, would not be in Britain’s national economic interest.

    Around the future of the euro there is, of course, an ongoing and wider debate on the future of Europe: a debate on economic reform amidst the challenge of globalisation, enlargement into the east, and the wider agenda for 2004, to make decision-making in Europe more open, accountable and relevant to the population as a whole.

    At one time the case for Europe was simply peace – the opportunity to set aside old enmities and feuds, to contribute to a mission that has helped secure half a century of peace in western Europe, and now the historic task to cement peace and democracy in central and eastern Europe as we have done in the west.

    It was once said that Europe is divided into two, between the west who have Europe and the east who believe in it, and completing the reunification of Europe through enlargement is indeed a historic event.

    But today the case for Europe must be not only that, working together, we can maintain peace but that, working together, we can maximise prosperity.

    Indeed the more Europe extends its single market, the better it is for the prosperity of Europe and the world.

    The more Europe embraces economic and institutional reform, the better it is for all.

    The more Europe looks outwards, the better it is for all.

    And indeed – my theme – the more Europe and America work closely together, the better it is for Europe, America and the world.

    And we must not let slip the unique opportunity we have to build stronger relationships.

    Let me explain.

    In the post 1945 period the shaping of the European common market took place in the shadow of war, as our predecessors resolved to move forever beyond the recurring and devastating conflicts of the past.

    Today, there is a second reshaping of Europe happening not just as a result of the internal forces making for enlargement but in response to vast global changes – not least fast increasing trade and capital flows between Europe and the rest of the world and the growth of transcontinental companies.

    The annual two way flow of goods, services, and foreign direct investment between the United States and the Europe is now nearly a trillion dollars. One-fifth of total US merchandise exports, and one-third of total us services exports go to the EU.

    But the astonishing change has been the growth in direct European investment in the USA. In one decade it has increased more than ten-fold and we need only look at the impact of the American slowdown on European economic growth to understand this growing economic interdependence.

    Total US direct investment in Europe amounted to $520 billion at the end of 1999, almost half of all US direct investment abroad.

    Perhaps even more significant, by 1999 EU direct investment in the US totalled over $600 billion, more than 60% of all foreign direct investment in the US.

    While in 1999, $68 billion flowed from the US to the EU in direct investment, the flow from the EU to the US was over $235 billion and as a result our economic ties are strong and getting stronger.  Now French, German, British, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, and Italian companies are prominent in America.   Indeed in America today, one in 12 factory workers is employed by one of the 4,000 European-owned businesses active in the US.

    But this brings me to a fundamental question: it was said of one of our Prime Ministers that he never missed a chance to let slip an opportunity.  And the question I ask is – have we made the most of the opportunities that have come from the collapse of the Berlin wall, the end of the cold war and the opening up of eastern and central Europe?

    Two decades ago, it would have been unthinkable to suggest that before the before the end of the 20th century, eastern and central Europe – and even Russia itself – would all turn to democracy and look westwards for economic guidance, or that in the rest of Europe, the old ideological conflict between state and market would be transcended by a more consensual view of states and markets working together.

    But that, of course, is exactly what has happened.  But have we made the most of this turning point?

    A decade ago, when the Berlin wall did fall, it would have been equally unthinkable to suggest that western Europe would respond to the collapse of communism by turning inward; or that the United States would respond by appearing to engage less rather than more with the rest of the world.

    Of course, with the seismic shifts brought by the cold war’s end, all nations had to reconsider the geopolitical landscape, reassess their positions, and rethink their relationships in this very new world.  That was a smart, sensible and essential thing to do.

    But it would be tragic indeed if the annals of the future record 1990, when common interest in our future was in the ascendant, not just as a point when history turned toward freedom, but as the point when those who had carried the cause of freedom turned inwards.

    So I want to answer those voices on both sides of the Atlantic who believe that detachment is preferable to partnership; that isolation is more secure than a wider and deeper alliance; that our military cooperation, which should be spurring more Economic co-operation, can be downgraded.  In short, all those who wrongly believe that somehow in the post-cold war world, Europe and America need one another less, not more.

    I could not disagree more profoundly – not merely with such arguments as expressed but with their very premise.

    Neither America nor Europe has fully grasped the moment for a new age of economic interdependence – the realisation of President Kennedy’s vision.

    With the old ideological conflicts finally behind us and with the new opportunities from globalisation ahead of us, the conditions now exist for the expansion of our economic partnership – not just incrementally, but comprehensively increasing the trade and commercial links between the EU and the USA.

    So instead of the end of the cold war inviting a weakening of transatlantic ties, this is the time for a new era of enhanced engagement between America and Europe – a new transatlantic alliance for prosperity as important to our long-term economic strength as NATO has been to the cause of peace.

    We must not let the banana or the genetically modified product become sad symbols of a frayed transatlantic trade relationship.  Nor must we let one dispute over a merger however large or another dispute over a sector however important obscure the scale of two-way trade and investment across the Atlantic which amounts to over $2 billion – each and every day.  However big the disputes that are temporarily in the headlines, they account for a fraction of our total trade.

    Indeed the scale of our interdependence makes the case that Europe and America together not only make for the stability and growth upon which the world economy depends, but that it is possible by common endeavour for that stability and growth to be enhanced to benefit not just our nations and regions, but all nations and all regions.

    That is why our first and most immediate obligation is to lead the world in advancing the multilateral trade agenda, ensuring that the Doha ministerial meeting launches a comprehensive and balanced round – and I am pleased to see the approach adopted by Mr Lamy and Mr Zoellick in this respect.

    And it is because of the scale of our interdependence that we must also begin a new dialogue and build a new consensus aiming for a stronger economic partnership.

    Let me give one basic example of why such a partnership is so important.

    While America has been so critical to securing the freedom of eastern and central Europe there is a risk that, in a few years times, America will find its trade relationship with these markets declines as trade is inevitably diverted towards those countries in and beyond the European Union with which they will have preferential agreements by virtue of joining the Union.

    When these countries enter the EU, under existing trade law they would need to respect the EU’s common external tariff which means, of course, aligning many tariffs downwards but on imports from the US actually raising some new tariffs.  Of course the GATT  (now WTO) article 24 provisions will be invoked to ensure this does not become another source of trade friction and the US gets due compensation.  But we need to ensure this is done amicably and with a view to advancing the cause of trade liberalisation in agriculture. And in industrial goods, instead of requiring candidates for membership to hike some of their tariffs to EU levels at the point they join, the EU and US should surely aim to have achieved the multilateral elimination of such tariffs by the time the first wave of new countries is ready for EU membership.

    Here we should not move backwards by accident but move forwards by design.

    Indeed more generally today, I fear that both the EU and US are, inadvertently more than by design, moving towards according each other almost “least favoured nation” status in each other’s markets.   As we both turn increasingly to preferential trade agreements with other partners which perhaps seem to promise easier progress and faster results, there is a risk that we neglect the relationship between the two most advanced and open blocs in the world with the consequent danger that we accord many of our other partners better trade and investment conditions than we do each other.

    Open regionalism has its rightful place in liberalising trade and investment but the scale of our interdependence, our centrality to the stability and growth on which the whole world economy depends and the need for our leadership requires us to do more.

    I think we should now think seriously about the future alliance for prosperity of which I speak between the NAFTA area and Europe.

    It has been estimated that the annual income gain to the EU from a transatlantic marketplace would be of the order of 1.1% of EU GDP – or $140 billion – and 0.5% of US GDP, the equivalent of the estimated us gain from NAFTA.

    And the gain together for the EU and the US if we also eliminate industrial tariffs on an MFN basis could be as high as $150 billion a year, a figure that means more prosperity and more jobs for both continents.

    So there are potential gains in total of nearly $350 billion.

    In 1988, when Europe was at the outset of the huge project to move towards deeper economic and trade integration via the creation of a genuine single market, we commissioned the so-called Cecchini report that examined in depth, and quantified the economic gains of the much deeper cooperation that a single market entailed. The figures were so impressive that European policy-makers saw the necessity of moving forward, and could explain to their citizens what was at stake in terms of growth, jobs and prosperity from changes which, at the time, looked dauntingly difficult.  And I am pleased to say that Signor Cecchini is going to chair a further study over the coming months looking specifically at the benefits from further financial services liberalisation within the EU, and the costs of failing to complete the single market in financial services.

    I believe what we need now is a Cecchini-style report that investigates the potential benefits for growth, prosperity and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic from a wide-ranging effort to tackle all the remaining barriers to a fully open trading and commercial relationship between Europe and America.

    With high-level political commitment we can then move forward to address those barriers in a systematic and balanced fashion.

    First, industrial tariffs

    It is to the credit of negotiators in previous multilateral rounds that the vast bulk of transatlantic merchandise trade is already duty-free or at low duties.

    Only 41 of the EU’s 8200 industrial tariff lines now represent genuine tariff peaks while the US figure is 166 out of a total of 8300.

    But, as I said a moment ago when talking about the challenge of enlarging the EU, we now need to question whether it makes sense to have any remaining industrial tariff barriers.  We should go into the new WTO round promising jointly to reduce our industrial tariffs to zero on a strictly MFN basis – on condition that a critical mass of the rest of the world, measured as a percentage of global trade, agrees to do the same. This would add over $50 billion a year to the national income of the US and over $90 billion for the EU.

    In the information technology agreement which US and the EU led, states representing more than 95% of world trade agreed to the complete elimination of tariffs on the bulk of it goods in what was the biggest single trade agreement since the end of the Uruguay round in 1994.  It was in a real sense a joint “platform” created by the US and Europe subject to the agreement of others to join us.  We must look to replicate that US and EU leadership.

    Second, services

    We should also seek to remove market access limitations to commonly traded services, legal and other professional services.  This is an area where we, as two advanced economic blocs, should be able to move much further bilaterally than we can expect others to sign up to multilaterally in the GATS.

    We should promote the same “deep” liberalisation that is a major feature of the single market, aiming to make the maximum progress towards mutual recognition agreements which the EU has pioneered across a wide range of service sectors with a view to constructing a genuine transatlantic marketplace.

    Let me take, for example, financial services.  We in the EU are committed to an effective single capital market within the next 30 months and the single market in retail financial services will follow quickly after that.  This must be based on mutual recognition of regulatory practices, core standards of consumer protection and effective cross order redress to raise confidence.   And today I call on the EU and US to sit down to discuss how we can apply these concepts of mutual recognition and core standards to e-trade in financial services not just within the EU but across the Atlantic, in recognition of the ease with which these services can be delivered across boundaries using the internet.

    Third, other non tariff barriers

    We must also take a more pro-active approach to removing other non-tariff barriers.  I welcome the ideas emerging on both sides to improve each other’s intelligence on legislative/regulatory initiatives by the other which might impact on the trade relationship. But early warning devices are not enough.  We need to be more vigorous in addressing the “system frictions” arising from domestic regulation that now underlie the bulk of the “new” trade disputes.

    We should set an example to the world with new levels of bilateral regulatory co-operation. We need to improve the transparency to each other of our respective regimes, to exchange more information and share more best practice and, crucially, on issues like consumer and food safety which are at the source of many of the immediate tensions in transatlantic trade, to share with each other the scientific evidence and risk analyses underpinning domestic regulation.

    Ultimately our aim should be comprehensive agreements across industrial goods and service sectors, enabling companies that have a product or service approved in one regulatory system also to market it straightaway in the other.

    And we should also aim to eliminate the existing barriers to EU and US firms wishing to establish and do business in each other’s markets. This could be achieved through the mutual recognition of regulatory and licensing authorities.

    Already the EU has got further with Australia, New Zealand and Canada than with the US in tackling problems of standards, testing, certification, labelling and mutual recognition. Again, it cannot be sensible that the economies with vastly the largest two-way trade relationship fail to keep pace, particularly when both our business communities are clamouring for faster progress. So, with political will, it must be possible to make the same breakthroughs with each other to everyone’s advantage that have been made in our bilateral relationships with other countries.

    Fourth, competition

    Recent cases have shown most clearly why we need an increasingly convergent approach to competition by US authorities and the EU. We should not allow one high-profile case to mask the very considerable progress we have already made under the EU-US bilateral positive comity agreement in co-operating and sharing burdens on individual cases to reduce the risks of incoherent or divergent rulings. Nor should we aspire, in the new world I have been describing, to return to a world in which neither jurisdiction supposedly “meddles” in the affairs of the other. That would be to try to turn the clock back to a pre-globalisation world: we have no other option than to recognize that in a world of massive cross-border and transcontinental mergers, our respective competition authorities will increasingly be called on to assess the same transactions.

    Instead, I think we now need to take bilateral co-operation on to a new level. I am not suggesting a harmonized global competition law framework. But we can and should look for greater convergence in competition analysis and methodology, and more commonality on the identification and implementation of remedies, on the analysis of our respective approaches towards oligopoly and collective dominance (“co-ordinated interactions” in America) and on how to achieve procedural convergence of the review process, starting with greater alignment of EU and US  timetables.   In other words, our bilateral co-operative relationship should become substantially deeper and aim at increasing convergence of analysis and outcomes on a scale to which no other bilateral relationship in the world could aspire.

    But for that very reason, there is a need at the same time for the EU and US together to demonstrate leadership on multilateral solutions – not because we should aspire to anything like the same intensity of co-operation at global level as we do across the Atlantic but because, for developing countries to claim their share of the benefits of globalisation, it is crucial that they introduce and implement genuine competition policies and can look to us for support and assistance, and to a multilateral WTO framework for the core principles to which any system must adhere.

    Mulitilateral agenda

    But, as I have said, deepening the transatlantic economic relationship should not be and must not be at the cost of an ambitious multilateral agenda.

    Indeed the agenda I set out makes it more important than ever that we work closely together in the run up to, and at, the Doha ministerial to ensure the launch of a comprehensive and balanced round.  In this round the EU and US should work closely on pushing for greater market access in third countries on services, have high ambitions to eliminate industrial tariffs, and make genuine liberalising deals on agriculture and the “new” issues: investment, competition, and environment.  And above all, because we cannot afford a repeat of the failure at Seattle, we must demonstrate to developing countries that a round with these ambitions will be of material benefit to their people; and that the WTO, like the other Bretton Woods institutions, has a vital role to play in ensuring the benefits of globalisation can be enjoyed by all.

    Conclusion

    So my case for a Cecchini style report that investigates the benefits for growth, jobs, prosperity, and world trade of a truly open relationship between the EU and the US is very strong indeed.  And in forging that stronger relationship, Britain can and must play a pivotal role.  Britain does not have to choose, as some would suggest, between America and Europe, but is instead well positioned as a vital link between America and Europe.

    It is worth noting that of all the American investment in Europe, 40% goes to Britain and more than 2,500 US companies are based in Britain.

    We know that American companies invest in our country not just because Britain is Britain, but because Britain is part of Europe.

    We are the bridgehead from which those companies trade in mainland Europe.

    It is in the interests of British business and British jobs not to detach Britain from Europe or from America but instead to build stronger links in both directions. And it is in the interests of Europe to build a long-term relationship with America based not on an assertion of complete independence from one another, but on a frank recognition of our interdependence.

    For we will succeed in this new century only if we succeed together.  This is what some theorists are calling – non-zero – thinking – non-zero-sum solutions in which both sides win.

    I believe this is the way forward – for Britain, for Europe, for the United States.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech at the TGWU Conference

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech at the TGWU Conference

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 5 July 2001.

    I am delighted to be here today to address this conference.

    And as we thank you we give you this promise too: as a Government we will work every hour, every day, everywhere we can be, to justify the faith you and the British people have placed in us.

    And after four years of Government under Tony Blair’s excellent leadership, I believe that we are more determined than ever to implement in Government our values of justice and fairness.

    Since the time I went to school and grew up beside a mining community – since the first factory closure I remember being announced in my home town – and for a whole generation our lives have been dominated by unemployment: long term unemployment, youth unemployment, the fear of unemployment, the poverty and insecurity caused by unemployment.

    I remember when I first became an MP a young couple coming to see me, both in tears, who having lost their jobs, knew they would lose their homes too.

    I remember too the tragedy of the miners in my constituency, steel workers, dockyard workers, transport workers TGWU workers redundant in their forties who feared they would never work again.

    So I want communities where young children getting up and going to school each morning see a whole community going to work.

    And 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even 5 years ago young people tried as hard as now to find work – they were applying for jobs, they were training for jobs. Don’t tell me these generations of young people didn’t have talent or potential, couldn’t learn or hold down a job. What they needed was a government on their side.

    But for years in opposition we could do nothing about it. All we could do was protest. Together we marched for jobs, we rallied for the right to work, we petitioned for full employment. All of us, trade unionists, Labour party members, Labour MPs. But out of government we could not create jobs.

    So the day we came into Government we acted – with a windfall tax to pay for our New Deal.

    And I say it was right that five billions be transferred from the richest utility companies in our land to create jobs in the poorest and most deserving communities of our country.

    And every time a young person denied a job under the previous Government gets a job under this one we should be proud of the New Deal – that this is what can happen when we work together.

    And we took action too, to secure the essential precondition for full employment – economic stability not boom and bust.

    Remember all those who said we could never manage the economy.

    But it is because we rejected short-termist free for alls, the take-what-you-can, irresponsibility – and it is because we put faith in our values of economic responsibility – building from solid foundations, looking to the long term – that with Bank of England independence, tough decisions on inflation, new fiscal rules, hard public spending controls, we today in our country have had economic stability not boom and bust, the lowest inflation in Europe, long term interest rates and mortgage rates for homeowners lower than for thirty five years.

    And when we are told that low inflation, low interest rates and low borrowing are nothing to do with the decisions of this Government and are just a matter of good luck, let us ask them: if it was so easy to keep interest rates and inflation low, why did their policies give us 15 per cent interest rates, 11 per cent inflation, a £50 billion deficit and why did they repeatedly plunge Britain into boom and bust?

    It was not by lucky chance but by difficult choices that we now have a more stable economy. And it won’t be by a lucky chance but by hard choices in this Parliament – on extending competition, enterprise incentives – including our capital gains tax reforms – and reform – that we will build upon that stability a deeper and wider prosperity.

    Now I understand the concerns people have today in the high technology sectors because of the American downturn – and as a Government we will help people, on their side to cope with change – and I understand also the worries people have about the exchange rate and we will continue to do more to recognise the vital contribution of modern manufacturing to exports, innovation, and our great regions.

    But we know too that what manufacturers fear most is a return to the old boom and bust.

    So there will be no return to the short-term lurches in spending policy or tax policy that would put long-term stability and public services at risk.

    No inflationary or irresponsible pay rises, which put youth or other jobs at risk.

    No relaxing our fiscal disciplines as some would like.

    No change but consistency in our European policy – in principle in favour of the euro, in practice the five tests that have to be met.

    And no change in the drive that Bill, you and I are all engaged in – with more competition not less, more innovation not less, more investment not less, and more not less small business development – to make Britain the most enterprising, productive and therefore prosperous economy over the next decade.

    Our stability is for a purpose and I can report to you today that the full total of jobs we have together created since 1997 is 1 million 250 thousand jobs, more people in work today than at any time in the history of our country.

    Unemployment among men the lowest since 1979.

    Unemployment among women the lowest since 1976.

    Youth unemployment now the lowest since 1975.

    Long term unemployment now the lowest since the early 1970s. Unemployment among single parents and the disabled lower than ever.

    But as long as there is unemployment we will not be complacent.

    With 300 million a year we are extending the New Deal so that every one of the long term unemployed and their partners in all parts of the country can have new opportunities. And as we offer special coaching help for others hard to employ we will not hesitate to take additional measures, including greater sanctions, in those few instances where they are needed, to get people back to work and achieve full employment in this country.

    Unemployment in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North, South West, and Midlands, the lowest for more than twenty years.

    But that is not good enough. With an additional 500 million pounds allocated to Regional Development Agencies in every area of Britain and our request for jobs plans for the regions, our aim is full employment not just in one region but in every region of the country.

    Unemployment among the over 50s is now falling and is at its lowest on record – half a million more over 50s in jobs since 1997. But we want to do more to end what has been a scandal in too many areas: age discrimination against the over 50s, hence we have a guaranteed minimum income of nearly 190 a week for the over 50s returning to full-time work after being unemployed for more than 6 months.

    And for men and women with disabilities who suffered most in the 80s and 90s and those able to do some work who for too long were denied their right to work, we are establishing new rights as well as new opportunities.

    So it is the right policy to offer regular interviews on a three yearly cycle as we invest £130m in a New Deal service for the disabled, offer a guaranteed minimum family income to disabled men and women of £246 a week for full time work; and invest in the advice, help, training and support that ensures there is work for those who can work as well as security for those who can’t. A Britain where now no one is excluded from opportunity.

    And because we believe a fair society is essential to a productive economy, just as there are new responsibilities at work, we are ensuring new rights:

    new rights of recognition for trades unionists;
    the right to four weeks paid holiday;
    and because never again do we want mothers or fathers refused time off to see their sick child through a hospital operation, the right to time off when a family member is ill. This is what a good family policy is all about, backed up by the first ever National Childcare Strategy.

    My belief is in equal opportunity for all.

    Yes the minimum wage was a start as was the Equal Pay Act and I salute all those in this Union and other Unions who had the courage to take pioneering action to establish the right to equal pay.

    But after 30 years of equal pay legislation it is now the right time to go further in ending discrimination to speed up procedures and ensure new rights for women so that no one will have – as in the past – to wait years for their right to equal pay to be realised.

    And for part-time workers the right to the same treatment as full-time workers – same hourly rate of pay, same access to company pension rights, same rights to annual leave and maternity leave.

    And because in no part of our society should there ever be discrimination – and in particular never racism tolerated – we will continue to remove barriers of prejudice, discrimination and racism.

    And we will extend women’s rights. Maternity pay which is 62 pounds will be increased in successive stages to 100 pounds a week – as big a rise in two years as in the previous forty. And from 2003, the statutory obligation to maternity pay will be raised from 18 weeks to 26 weeks. And we will introduce two weeks paid paternity leave, set at the same level of 100 pounds.

    And we will support every trades union as you work with employers for access to learning direct in every workplace and to advance training so that together – employees, employers and government – we can create the best trained workforce in the world.

    Under the previous Government more was spent on debt interest than on our schools. Next year we will spend £10 billion more on schools than on debt interest.

    The reason that we can invest in health and education is that we have managed to transfer resources from paying the bills of past failure to investing in future success.

    £9 billion cut from the typical costs of debt and unemployment before; £9 billion more each year for the NHS and education now.

    That is what we mean by putting schools and hospitals first.

    The reason I am concerned not just about nursery education and standards in the schools but higher staying on rates and wider access to college and university, is that I remember my school classes of the 1960s when it was for only a fraction of young people that a university place was available.

    It was a scandal of wasted potential.

    And I see today that there are still thousands of young people who have the ability and should have the chances that I – and others – were able to enjoy.

    It was a scandal of wasted potential then and it is still a scandal now.

    It is time to ensure that not just a minority have access to higher education but for the first time a majority by opening up recruitment and widening access so that our colleges and universities can draw on the widest possible pool of talent.

    And let us be clear about the choice in this Parliament on our great public services.

    It is between investment matched by reform under us and cuts leading to the run down of public services under the Opposition.

    Our choice is not to cut but to invest more.

    That is why in the Budget we announced a long-term assessment of the technological, demographic and medical trends over the next two decades that will affect the health service. This review, led by Derek Wanless will report to me in time for the start of the next spending review.

    Let me be clear about my commitment to the public services. Every opportunity I have had – the best schooling, the best of health care when ill, for many of us the best chances at university – every opportunity I have enjoyed owes its origin to the decisions of past Labour Governments, decisions we made as a party to open up opportunity, to create a welfare state that takes the shame out of need and to fund a National Health Service open to all.

    So under this Government the NHS will remain a National Health Service – a public service free at the point of use with decisions on care always made by doctors and nurses on the basis of clinical need.

    And we will never tolerate replacing the NHS by privatised medicine where poverty bars the hospital entrance, where they check your wallet before they check your pulse.

    And because we believe in nothing less than the vision of 1945 – an NHS free to everyone on the basis of their need not on the basis of their wealth – we will raise health service spending from 54 billion last year to 59 this year to 64 next year to 69 by 2003-04, an annual average increase over those years of 6.5% above inflation – the largest, sustained growth in NHS spending in the history of the health service.

    And let me say: it is because as Tony Blair said yesterday, we have expanded and reformed the private finance initiative – and will continue to implement the ten year NHS plan – that it has been possible to design and start 68 new hospital projects worth 7.6 billions since we came to power.

    In the public services we are employing more, investing more, and – in partnership with the private sector – building more. And will continue to do so.

    But let us also be clear: just as schools exist for school children the NHS exists for patients; public services exist not for the public servant but for the public who are served.

    And our aim must be that every classroom has the best teacher, every school the best staff, every operating theatre the best doctors and nurses, every hospital the best NHS staff.

    Our aim is that every public service has the best public servants.

    And those of us who believe passionately in the public services must modernise and reform so that public services can best serve the public.

    Those of us who believe in the public services must learn from both the public and the private sectors and revitalise our public services from the inside.

    And – as Bill Morris has said this week – we should aim for higher productivity in our public services, backing management as well as employee training. And can I tell you that we are supporting the National College of School Leadership and the Leadership Centre for the NHS, devoted to doing more to improving within the public services the quality of public service management.

    And we will invest in transport.

    For years this union has rightly told us of the social and economic importance of investing in transport.

    And you have led the campaigns for free concessionary travel for the elderly.

    And because of your and others representations we are now, over the next ten years, investing 180 billions in public transport – on our roads and in rail.

    It is the biggest public investment programme in transport history.

    Hundreds of new roads, 60 billions invested in rail and of course the proposals for investing in the London Underground which Steve Byers is going to be announcing today, proposals that I believe are the best ones for London and Britain.

    Under the previous Government the average public investment in London Underground was just 395m a year. In the next 15 years the average public investment will not be £395m but rise as high as 900m a year – investing at nearly three times the old rate – the biggest single investment in the underground in its history. More investment by the public sector in the next 15 years than we saw in the last hundred years

    And when billions of your money are being invested you would want us to ensure not only best value for money but the best possible public service.

    So to construct the new infrastructure that will increase the underground’s capacity to 1.3 billion travellers each year, the construction and engineering companies – like many of you work for – these private sector contractors will simply continue to do the work as they always have in digging the tunnels, building the infrastructure and replacing the track. But now for the first time they will have to take responsibility for what they deliver. So they will have to pay for the overruns, the delays, the faults in the construction and the mistakes that lead to extra maintenance.

    So that we do not have another Jubilee Line fiasco – 2 years late, massive overruns – which if repeated in the new Underground investment programme would cost us two billion pounds.

    And while the private sector directs its skills and expertise in risk and project management towards maintaining and improving the infrastructure, the public sector in the underground – and public sector staff – will operate the track, run and provide signalling, run trains and stations on every line, set service levels, set the standards and ensure safety, and be in charge of an integrated tube network from 5.00am to 1.00am.

    At all times safety paramount with the London Underground and the safety inspector the final decision-maker on what needs to be done.

    And we will do nothing unless we have the approval of the health and safety executive on the highest of safety standards.

    Our choice is clear. Not a return to the old ways, not the short-termism of the past, but an approach that makes sure that the billions we invest provide the best service for the public.

    Because of the work done by the TGWU, the retired members association whose conference I visited many years in the eighties and nineties, and in particular Jack Jones – the champion of justice for pensioners – we can now aim for the end of pensioner poverty in our generation.

    And let me promise today that in addition to free TV licenses for the over 75s, raising the basic state pension by £5 – and £8 for couples – this year, we plan to pay the winter allowance at 200 pounds this year and our new pension credit – introduced from 2003, for most rising higher than an inflation link or an earnings link – will reward rather than penalise modest occupational pensions and savings to ensure my aim: that every pensioner enjoys a share in the rising prosperity of our country.

    And as stage by stage we do more year on year to improve care of the elderly, so we must recognise we must do more to tackle child poverty which is, in my view, a scar on the soul of Britain.

    It was a matter of shame for Britain that when we came into power one child born in every three was being born poor and, having taken one million children out of poverty in our first term, our ambition, in what I believe is the best anti-vandalism, anti crime, anti delinquency, anti deprivation policy, is to take the next one million children out of poverty. And I urge you all to support our nationwide crusade so that no child is left behind.

    Why we can’t be cynical

    So let us affirm our commitment to full employment, ending child and pensioner poverty, and the best public services and action to end poverty.

    Let us reaffirm that giving every child the best start in life, every adult a job, every pensioner dignity in retirement, everyone decent public services are great causes worth working for, campaigning for and fighting for.

    And let us affirm that there are great causes not only at home but all across the world that are worth fighting for, campaigning for and voting for.

    We reject the idea that there are no great causes when there are one billion people in this world trapped in avoidable poverty, millions weighed down by the unnecessary burden of debt.

    On Saturday I go to the G7 meeting and then in September to the Children’s Summit, in October to meet the IMF and the World Bank – a campaign which Nelson Mandela and others are leading so that instead of one child in every seven in Africa dying before the age of five, calling on the pharmaceutical companies and all governments to join us in widening access to life saving drugs and health care and eradicating avoidable infant deaths.

    Instead of 120 million children denied education our objective is clear: every child in primary education.

    Instead of 1 billion condemned to poverty, our aim is to halve poverty by 2015.

    So let us answer the cynics by our actions, showing that when governments intervene to tackle injustice they are not violating rights, they are righting wrongs.

    And when I visit Asia and see children dying avoidable deaths in poorer countries, when I see in South Africa young men and women wanting to know that the right to vote will mean the right to work too, when I see in all continents needless, avoidable, remediable suffering and pain that is the result of a poverty that we can eradicate and an injustice we must fight, I know – as the founders of this union knew one hundred years ago – that we as a union and as a party exist not for ourselves but for a larger and noble purpose: that we are all men and women who feel, however distantly, the pain of others; who believe in something bigger than ourselves; who in Robert Kennedy’s words, see suffering and seek to heal it, see pain and seek to end it, see injustice and seek to overcome it, see prejudice and seek to triumph over it.

    Let us answer the cynics and tell the people that it is when politics fail and governments walk away that children are malnourished, that men and women go without jobs, that pensioners die in poverty, that public squalor exists alongside private affluence and potential is left unrealised.

    It is when politics succeeds and governments engage that all can begin to have opportunity and no one is left out; that all our people have the chance to make the most of themselves and no one and no area is excluded; and that justice can triumph.

    If by our actions we can lift one child out of poverty, give one young person a chance of training and a job, give one more person suffering from pain the chance of the treatment they deserve, give one more classroom the books and computers it needs, secure for one more pensioner a greater measure of dignity and decency in retirement, then we can be proud to have done something, not just for ourselves, but for our community and our country.

    But if we can help millions we can in Tom Paine’s words make the world anew. So let us be the generation that abolished child and pensioner poverty, built modern public services, created full employment, tackled world debt and poverty and took the next steps to prosperity for all – causes worth fighting for.

    Our task, our challenge, our manifesto commitment, a programme of change for a generation and working together this can be our achievement.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in New York, the United States, on 16 November 2001.

    Introduction

    Let me first of all express my and our Government’s heartfelt sympathy for, and our solidarity with, the city and the people of New York.

    Henceforth New York will forever be seen by as the city of courage.

    In the two months since September the 11th, I have – of course – sensed the vulnerability that many in the world have felt, but Tony Blair – our Prime Minister – and I have been struck even more by the resilience and bravery in the face of tragedy that so many have shown.

    New York is a city of such global reach that it is a human monument to our interdependence – the global meeting point of a hundred nationalities and more.  And in our work I hope we will keep in mind the powerful example and sense of purpose that radiates outward from New York – the Statue of Liberty sending out a beacon of liberty in the face of tyranny, an indomitable light shining through the smoke and darkness of terror.

    This city, by its conduct, shows us that while buildings can be destroyed, values are indestructible; that while hearts are broken, hope is unbreakable; and while lives have ended, the cause of freedom never ends.

    It would be understandable, at a time like this, for each of us to turn inwards and focus on our own country’s domestic concerns.

    But I say to you today, in this time that has so powerfully reaffirmed our interdependence, that it is not only right to focus on globalisation, but it has never been more important to get globalisation right.

    The alliance we have forged against terrorism since September 11th – an alliance across thousands of miles, across boundaries of nationality, faith and race, across all conditions and stages of economic development, confirms a profound and pervasive truth:  that in the new global economy we are, all of us, the richest countries and the poorest countries – inextricably bound to one another by common interests, shared needs and linked destinies; that what happens to the poorest citizen in the poorest country can directly affect the richest citizen in the richest country; and that not only do we have inescapable obligations beyond our front doors and garden gates, responsibilities beyond the city wall and duties beyond our national boundaries, but that this generation has it in our power – if it so chooses – to abolish all forms of human poverty.

    Some critics say the issue is whether we should have globalisation or not.

    In fact, the issue is whether we manage globalisation well or badly, fairly or unfairly.

    And we have a choice.

    Globalisation can be for the people or against the people.  Just as in any national economy economic integration can bring stability or instability, prosperity or stagnation, the inclusion of people or their exclusion, so too in the global economy.

    Managed badly, globalisation would leave whole economies and millions of people in the developing world marginalised.  Managed wisely, globalisation can and will lift millions out of poverty, and become the high road to a just and inclusive global economy.

    Whatever our concerns about the sheer scale of the challenge of globalisation, we must equally resist two opposite temptations:  the first is to retreat into the outdated protectionism and isolationism that would deprive developing countries of what they need most – development itself; the second is to recycle the old laissez-faire that says there is nothing that can be done.

    To succumb to either temptation would hurt both the powerless and the prosperous.

    And because in the last 50 years no country has lifted itself out of poverty without participating in the global economy, we will best help the poor not by opting out or by cutting cooperation across the world but by strengthening that cooperation, modernising our international rules and reforming the institutions of economic cooperation to meet the new challenges.

    So the question is not whether we move forward with globalisation but how, and to whose benefit.  And while there are extreme views that cannot, and never should be, accommodated, I believe that in the last few years – within the reasoned debate about globalisation – there is, for reasons I shall detail shortly, increasing scope for agreement about the next steps forward.

    While thirty years ago, twenty years ago, perhaps even ten years ago, the disagreement between pro- and anti-globalisation campaigners would have been so fundamental that no meeting of minds would have been possible, today many people who are wrongly labelled “anti-globalisation campaigners” – and who rightly campaign for trade on fair terms for developing countries – would also acknowledge:

    • The importance of markets;
    • The pivotal role of private capital; and, indeed,
    • That while the unfettered power of any vested interest anywhere is unacceptable, private companies and private – not just public – investments are crucial to making global economic development work in the interests of the excluded.

    But experience from the 1980s onwards has moved us on from the assumption that, just by liberalising, deregulating, privatising and simply getting prices right, growth and employment would inevitably follow – a set of assumptions that has proved inadequate to meet the emerging challenges of globalisation in, for example, South East Asia where public investment has played a catalytic role in securing growth.

    We know that stability is the precondition for global prosperity and growth.  And, because there is no long term trade off between inflation and growth or unemployment, it was of course right in the wake of the oil price rises of the 1970s that in the eighties the control of inflation was the overriding priority – and today, country by country, the importance of monetary regimes that ensure low inflation is well understood.

    And, as different understandings of the world economy converge, we can and must comprehend a new paradigm in which low inflation and fiscal stability are the necessary but not sufficient conditions for securing prosperity for all.  The new paradigm seeks to restore to the heart of economic policy the high ideals and public purpose of 1945 which made governments and countries seek for every country the highest sustainable levels of growth and employment as the means to prosperity for all – a new renewal project which – as the UK Government’s White Paper on Globalisation led by Clare Short, our International Development Secretary stated – must now recognise the vital role of:

    • The pursuit of competition and not just privatisation;
    • The importance of public as well as private investment; and
    • The need for proper financial supervision as well as liberalisation, including a route map sequencing the liberalisation of capital markets.

    And progress on the trade round at Doha has shown that there is an understanding that extending trade is not a threat to the poorest countries but a benefit to all, including them.

    It is this commitment to prosperity for all – to combine economic success with social justice and to tackle the causes of poverty as a key step in building the foundations of prosperity -that has led all major countries and all international organisations – the IMF, World Bank, OECD and the UN – sign up here in New York – in perhaps the most economically significant statement of recent decades – to the historic shared task of setting and meeting millennium development goals to deliver for the world social justice:

    • That by 2015 instead of 110 million denied primary education, every child has the chance of schooling;
    • That by 2015 instead of 7 million avoidable deaths each year, child mortality is reduced by two thirds;
    • That instead of 1 billion living in absolute poverty, poverty is halved by 2015 on the way to its ultimate removal.

    To will these historic and shared ends we must now will the means.

    So, at the weekend – on the occasion of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Ottawa, only a few months away from the Financing for Development Conference next March and the reconvened Children’ Conference of next May – I want to propose not just a new approach to poverty and development that refocuses development aid – treating it as investment for the future – but also a new deal for the global economy.  A new deal between developed and developing countries, grounded in new opportunities for, and new responsibilities accepted by, developed and developing countries alike.  It is a global campaign against poverty and for social justice that builds the economic foundations for a virtuous circle of debt relief, poverty reduction and sustainable development and can ensure that the world’s poor can earn a fair share in the benefits of global prosperity.

    The post-war generation of leaders who created the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations – and, with them, a new global economic constitution – sought a world order that had, as its ambition, opportunity and prosperity not just for some but for all. They argued that, like peace, prosperity was indivisible; that to be sustained it had to be shared; and that international cooperation was essential to achieve their economic goal: the highest sustainable levels of growth and employment.

    Today’s global new deal is based on these enduring values, but it is being constructed in new times.  And, just as our predecessors built an economic constitution for the post-war world of distinct national economies, we must achieve our economic and social goals in a wholly different world of open – not sheltered – economies, international – not national – capital markets and global – not local – competition.

    My argument is that by each meeting our obligations to each other we can best ensure that all countries, rich and poor, can share in the benefits of this new global economy.

    For the poorest countries:

    • New obligations – to pursue stability and create the conditions for new investment; and
    • New opportunities – access to increased trade supported by a transfer of resources from rich to poor.

    For the richest countries:

    • New obligations – to open our markets and to transfer resources; but
    • New opportunities too – increased trade and a globalisation that works in the public interest.

    Badly managed, globalisation will lead to wider inequality, deeper division and a dangerous era of distrust and rising tension.

    But my argument is that, well managed, globalisation – with each accepting their obligations to one another – is the road to rising prosperity and social justice on a global scale, and there are four policies that are the building blocks of this global new deal:

    The first building block is an improvement in the terms on which the poorest countries participate in the global economy and actively increasing their capacity to do so: new rules of the game in codes and standards that all countries – rich and poor – can sign up to.

    The second building block is the adoption by business internationally of high corporate standards for engagement as reliable and consistent partners in the development process.  My main proposal is to back up a code of corporate standards with financial support for the creation, in developing countries, of investment forums between public and private sectors.

    The third building block is moving forward the great progress made at Doha by the swift adoption of an improved trade regime essential for developing countries participation on fair terms in the world economy.

    Stability, investment and trade are the main long term drivers of global prosperity but not all will benefit without a fourth building block: a substantial transfer of additional resources from the richest to the poorest countries in the form of investment for development.  Here the focus must not be on aid to compensate the poor for their poverty, but investment that builds new capacity to compete and addresses the long term causes of poverty.

    Let me discuss each of these building blocks in turn.

    Rules of the game for the global economy

    The first building block is improving the terms on which the poorest countries participate in the global economy and actively increasing their capacity to do so.

    In a world of ever more rapid financial flows, developing countries who need capital most are, at the same time, the most vulnerable to the judgements and instabilities of global financial markets.  We know that capital is more likely to move to environments which are stable and least likely to stay in environments which are, or become, unstable, and such flows today are swifter than ever they have been before. So for every country, rich or poor, macroeconomic stability is not an option but an essential pre-condition of economic success.

    And I have become convinced that it is in the interests of stability – and of preventing crises in developing and emerging market countries – that we seek a new rules-based system: a reformed system of economic government under which each country, rich and poor, adopts agreed codes and standards for fiscal and monetary policy and for corporate governance.

    This adoption of clear transparent procedures – essentially new rules of the game – in monetary and fiscal decisions – for example, presenting a full factual picture of the national accounts, usable central bank reserves, foreign currency borrowings, and indicators of the health of the financial sectors – would improve macroeconomic stability, deter corruption, provide to markets a flow of specific country by country information that will engender greater investor confidence and reduce the problem of contagion.  And the adoption of systems and standards is important because confidence about the future is essential for there to be confidence about today.

    And just as I believe that – over time – the implementation of the codes should be a condition for IMF and World Bank support, so too I believe that the international community should offer direct assistance, transitional help and – in some specific and difficult cases – compensation for the early implementation of such codes.

    The codes can also support countries along the way to liberalisation of their capital markets, helping to avoid destabilising and speculative inflows.  A dash to full capital liberalisation was once thought of as the best signal of a modernising economy.  But we know that instability often followed.  Our approach – the introduction and operation of transparent codes and standards with proper sequencing of capital liberalisation – is a better guarantee of both an investment friendly environment and long-term stability.

    So the adoption of codes and standards is not, as some have argued, a modern version of imperialism – demands from the rich countries on the poor in the interests of the rich.  For all countries – rich and poor – would be asked to operate the codes and standards and they are a means to fairness – with markets working more effectively in a more secure and transparent environment, advancing the public interest, securing growth and prosperity.

    Implementing these codes will mean radical changes in the way governments and financial markets operate.  These new rules of the game are not incidental to the financial architecture for the new global economy: they are the financial architecture for the new global economy.

    And, as part of this process of adopting codes and standards that help developing countries, and indeed all countries, there must be:

    • An enhanced role for the IMF monitoring and reporting on the operation of codes and standards; and
    • More effective systems of crisis prevention and management with support from the international community for the good performers and the private sector accepting matching commensurate responsibilities.

    The IMF Article IV surveillance process is an invaluable tool in crisis prevention – indeed it has some of the characteristics of a global public good.  Over recent years we have seen greater openness in publishing Article IV assessments and their press notices; set up the Independent Evaluation Office; and established the Article IV process at the centre of the monitoring of codes and standards.

    But there is a case for going further.  Enhancing the IMF’s role in Article IV surveillance of the world economy – making it more transparent, more independent and, therefore, more authoritative  – would contribute to greater stability and ensure it is seen to be providing impartial advice independent of the inter-governmental decision-making process.  Whilst governance of the IMF and decisions about financial support for countries are, of course, matters for the IMF Board, there is a case now for enhancing the IMF’s surveillance and monitoring functions so that surveillance is – and is seen to be – independent of decisions about crisis resolution.

    And to tackle national financial sector problems which have international repercussions, the Financial Stability Forum – which brings together the combined expertise of the IMF and key regulatory authorities – should evolve into an effective early warning system.    Where countries do operate transparent and effective systems, fully monitored by the international community, they should receive due support through a reformed contingent credit facility.

    Each time the international community encounters a national financial crisis, it is faced with the dilemma of either standing aside or putting tax payers money at risk bailing out lenders.  There is a better way – a way forward where governments discharge their responsibilities for transparency and subject themselves to surveillance, and there is recognition of commensurately increased responsibilities by the private sector.

    Certainly the private sector should not run away at the first sign of difficulty, but we also need to resolve the legal obstacles that stand in the way of effective debt rescheduling – including the steps that would create an effective international bankruptcy procedure.  And we should be prepared – where other reasonable options have been exhausted – to support a country that must impose temporary capital controls, or a standstill on its debts, as part of an orderly process of crisis resolution.

    So with codes and standards the foundation, and more effective systems for surveillance built upon them, including new duties:

    • for governments to be open;
    • for the IMF to scrutinise; and
    • for the private sector to engage.

    There is a real opportunity now to transform international financial governance in the interests of the poorest countries and of us all.

    From letting crises happen and then intervening we move on to a new paradigm:

    • Systems that in themselves diminish the likelihood of crises;
    • Earlier awareness as difficulties arise; and
    • More measured orderly responses when crises have to be resolved.

    Investment

    But stability is only the precondition.  To ensure growth and development we must not just put in place stable economic foundations but take steps to make both domestic and foreign investment more attractive and find better ways for public and private sectors to work together in raising investment levels.

    In the last decade, private financial flows across national boundaries – including to, and between developing countries – have increased six-fold: from $200 billion to $1,270 billion between 1990 and 2000.   And evidence shows that investment is an important driver for growth and development, generating higher productivity, employment and wealth, and transferring knowledge, skills and technology.

    But the poorest and least developed countries suffer a double handicap:

    First, foreign investment is too low with 20 per cent of FDI today going to developing countries with 5 billion people, 80 per cent to developed market economies with only 885 million people. Investment per head in developing countries is $51 compared with $1,136 in the higher income countries.

    And second, in these least developed countries domestically generated savings and investment are also low and often the savings that do exist leave the country in capital flight.  In South East Asia successful growth has been supported by a level of domestically generated savings and investment between three and five times higher than the flow of foreign capital, but in Africa average domestic investment levels barely match capital inflows.

    To encourage greater investment – both domestic and foreign – developing countries must first work to establish a more favourable business environment.   Already the country owned poverty reduction strategies agreed by the IMF and World Bank under the purposeful leadership of Horst Köhler and James Wolfensohn – which replaced the old structural adjustment policies – have correctly focused on creating the right domestic conditions for investment and highlighted the importance of:

    • Investment in infrastructure;
    • Sound legal processes that deter corruption; and
    • The creation of an educated and healthy workforce.

    Recent reform in Mozambique, for example, has brought a six fold increase in foreign direct investment.

    As good practice emerges, the lessons learned from country-by-country experiences of development can, region-by-region, be applied.  And Clare Short’s Globalisation White Paper suggests how poverty reduction strategies can be improved.  I therefore propose investment forums which bring public and private sectors together, share best practice, examine the current barriers to investment and seek to build consensus, in the light of regional conditions, on how to secure higher levels of business investment.  I believe that the IMF and World Bank are ready and willing to play their part in encouraging and sponsoring more of these investment forums.

    And as part of the poverty reduction strategies, we must also do more within the world’s poorest regions to facilitate cross-border trade creating a large enough domestic market.   The New Partnership for African Development, for example, is calling for increased economic integration and harmonisation of investment policies at a regional level.

    One of the main fears of anti globalisation campaigners is that lax regulation is a precondition of commercial engagement in developing countries, resulting in a downward spiral of poor labour, environmental and regulatory standards.  Companies and governments must recognise the distinction between a strong market achieved by competition and a distorted market achieved by anti-competitive behaviour.  And where multi-nationals are unaccountable across borders – and sometimes appear more powerful than the developing countries in which they operate – companies and governments must do more to restore the right balance, increase stakeholder awareness and achieve cross-border corporate accountability.

    There are already agreed international standards of best practice for multinational companies drawn up by the OECD – to which 33 countries have already signed up – and we must continue to examine how these are being implemented.  At the same time, the demand from consumers and shareholders for the best socially responsible business practise is growing.

    Building on these corporate standards, on the Global Compact – introduced by Kofi Annan in 1999 – and on the Global Reporting Initiative – through which 60 major companies already report their activities – multinational companies should assess and make public to all communities in which they operate their economic and social impact in developing countries.

    The challenges are formidable; the suspicions remain considerable.  But I believe that the debate can move forward.  And that the real prize from all the difficult and necessary work to create the right conditions for long-term investment is economic stability country-by-country, diminished inequality across the globe and a world that is not only richer but safer.

    Trade

    Our third building block is widening and deepening trade.

    In the last forty years those developing countries which have managed to be more open and trade more in the world economy have seen faster growth rates than those which have remained closed.  From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, developing countries that were able to pursue growth through trade grew at least twice as fast as those who kept their tariffs high and their doors closed to imports and competition.  We must ensure that all countries have the opportunity to reap these benefits.

    Full trade liberalisation could lift at least 300 million out of poverty by 2015.  Even diminishing by 50 per cent protectionist tariffs in agriculture and in industrial goods and services would boost the world’s yearly income by nearly $400 billion: a boost to growth of 1.4 per cent.  And while developing countries would gain the most in terms of GDP growth – an estimated $150 billion a year – all countries and regions stand to benefit.

    It is for these reasons that I warmly welcome the WTO agreement in Doha – the so-called “Doha Development Agenda” – just two days ago to launch a new trade round.

    It was agreed that all WTO members should follow the lead of the EU in offering free access to all but military products from the least developed countries.  If the US, Canada and Japan alone carried out this undertaking it would raise the growth of the 49 poorest countries by 11 per cent.

    And since three-quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas, opening up agricultural markets offers the best and quickest route out of poverty.  Subsidies to agriculture which run at one billion dollars a day – six times development assistance – are in urgent need of reform.  So again I welcome the agreement at Doha to open up trade in agriculture and, in particular, to negotiate reductions in export subsidies with a view to phasing them out.

    Services such as telecommunications are one of the fastest growing sectors in developing countries.  A 50 per cent cut in barriers to services trade would produce an annual global gain of $250 billion, most of it to the developing world.

    Developing countries – including the smallest nations – must be supported if they are to participate effectively in the world trade process.  So the UK is doubling its funding for this to £30m over the next three years, and has asked the IMF and the World Bank to give further help.

    Since our goal is growth and prosperity, we must do everything we can to discourage and diminish the subsidies for the arms trade with developing countries.  By banning exports credit guarantees for unproductive expenditure to 63 of the poorest countries, the UK has made it clear its desire to support only productive enterprise that assists social and economic development, and we call on all countries to follow.

    Financing development

    Radical trade reform could be worth $150 billion a year to developing countries: three times the development aid they receive today. That is the third proposal we make.

    But, as I have said, there cannot be a solution to the urgent problems of poverty these countries face – and to the need for public investment as a partner with private investment – without a fourth reform: a substantial increase in development aid to nations most in need.

    By disassociating aid from the award of contracts to maximise the impact on poverty, gains to anti-poverty programmes can be as high as 25 per cent; more effective in-country use of aid can release extra resources for anti-poverty work; and better collaboration among donors – pooling of budgets, monitoring their use to achieve economies of scale and hence greater cost effectiveness, and better targeting of aid – can also maximise the efficiency of aid in diminishing poverty.  And we must continue to move forward on debt relief – now extended to 24 countries – and make provision for a special route to debt relief for post-conflict countries coping with the double burden of debt and reconstructing their ravaged economies.

    One of the challenges we face is that of changing the way we think about supporting development in developing countries.

    We are moving – as Clare Short has argued – from providing short term aid just to compensate for poverty to a higher and more sustainable purpose: that of aid as long-term investment to tackle the causes of poverty by promoting growth, prosperity and participation in the world economy.

    The suggestions I am making today will work only if we see development assistance as investment that is untied, targeted, where possible pooled internationally, conditional on reform, and cost effective in its delivery.

    My proposal involves the richest countries making a substantial additional commitment of resources beyond 2015.  It involves the creation of a new 2015 international development trust fund which will build on the existing achievements of the World Bank, the IMF and the Regional Development Banks but go further by seeking to address the sheer lack of investment that the poorest countries face.

    Bridging this investment gap will require contributions from developed country donors and institutions – possibly channeled as paid-in capital to the trust fund – but the international capital markets could be used to leverage up these contributions.

    In future no country genuinely committed to economic development, poverty reduction and the transparency and standards I have outlined should be denied the chance to make progress because of the lack of basic investment.

    The fund could be overseen by a new joint implementation committee of the IMF, World Bank and possibly other donors, and to minimise bureaucracy, its resources distributed through existing mechanisms.

    Because we must never return to the unsustainable burdens of debt of the 80s and 90s, the very poorest and most vulnerable countries should receive investment help in the form primarily of grants to partner their soft IDA loans and all other low income countries should be offered interest free loans.  Some beneficiaries will be countries with millions of poor but today classified as middle income countries.  Here assistance should be given via interest-reduced loans conditional upon implementing the agreed poverty reduction strategies and engaging civil society.

    In recent months proposals have been made for new and innovative ways to meet this funding gap – the Tobin Tax, Arms Tax, Special Drawing Rights – and it is right that we examine – as European finance ministers have asked the European Commission to do – the practicalities of all these proposals.  We in Britain approach further evaluation with an open mind.

    But in today’s world every international initiative relies ultimately on political will by national governments and their people.  And it comes down, in the end, to the duties national governments – especially the richest national governments – recognize and are prepared to discharge.

    If we are to move with the urgency that the scale of today’s suffering demands, we must each, as national governments, be bold and acknowledge the duties of the richest parts of the developed world to the poorest and least developed parts of the same world.

    Currently, development assistance amounts to $53 billion – of which $30 billion goes to the poorest countries.

    World Bank and Regional Development Banks lend around $30 billion in the developing countries in total with $10 billion to the poorest.

    A report prepared by Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico with the help of many including Robert Rubin the former Treasury Secretary, estimates that to ensure primary education for all, we will need $12 billion extra a year; to achieve our health targets, more than $10 billion extra per year; to halve poverty with policies of sustainable development, $20 billion more a year.

    They conclude that if we are to succeed in achieving the 2015 millennium development goals, there will be required each year until 2015 an extra $50 billion a year.

    To raise investment by $50 billion a year to 2015 would require unprecedented action by the developed world.

    But I believe it is not beyond us.

    I see it as a challenge we must try to meet.

    Reordering priorities; untying aid; pooling funds internationally; enhanced debt relief; and, in Europe’s case, achieving a better use of European Union aid, could release additional funds for anti-poverty programmes in the poorest countries.

    But to try to reach $50 billion a year each year until 2015 we must all substantially increase development assistance budgets.

    One of a number of possible ways is for national governments to pre-commit development resources – for say 30 years or more – and with national governments offering a guarantee, either through callable capital or other means as security, it is possible to lever up these contributions to reach our targets.

    The international community has already made a commitment to raising the level of overseas development assistance to 0.7 per cent of GDP.   And, in Britain, since 1997 we have increased the aid budget of the Department for International Development to £3.6 billion – $ 5.2 billion – a 45 percent real terms increase by 2004.  And we are committed to making substantial additional progress.

    Today I am challenging each country to accept their responsibility to play their part and to go further than they have been prepared to go in the past.

    In the 21st Century, increased development assistance to tackle poverty is essential to match gains from liberalising trade, raising private investment and entrenching stability.  And it is right that there now be a full debate in the IMF, World Bank and the United Nations as we prepare for next spring’s meeting, including those of the World Bank and IMF.

    Conclusion

    The challenge we face is immense.

    Our vision of the way forward is that in an increasingly interdependent world, all can benefit if each meets agreed obligations for change.

    And just as George Marshall affirmed with massive resources for his Marshall Plan of the 1940s a unifying vision in the fight against “hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos”, so again we must transfer the resources necessary to secure for our time “a working economy in all parts of the world that would permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist”.

    So the answer to anti-globalisation campaigners is that we shall not retreat from globalisation.   Instead we will advance social justice on a global scale – and we will do so with more global cooperation not less, and with stronger, not weaker, international institutions.

    I am optimistic that we can succeed.

    Optimistic because I believe that across the world there are millions of people of conscience who believe in something bigger than themselves.

    Optimistic because our interdependent world means that millions now feel acutely what they once regarded distantly: the pain of all those in suffering, and they understand that by the strong helping the weak, all of us become stronger.

    I want this generation to be remembered as the first generation in history that truly made prosperity possible for the world and all its people.

    I want us to be remembered not only as the generation which – in the face of terrorism – freed the world from fear, but as the generation which – in the face of deprivation and despair – finally freed the world from want.

    This is a great ambition – a grave responsibility – but a genuine possibility given to no other generation at any other time in human history.

    The challenge is as new as today’s debt crisis, but it is as old as the call of Isaiah to ‘undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free’.  The difference is that thousands of years after those words were first written, we now hold in our hands the power to obey that ancient command.

    So from this great city of New York, let the message ring out:  even amidst evil, an even greater sense of our obligations to each other has been born.  And now this generation has the confidence and the commitment, the might and the means, to lift the scar of poverty and hopelessness from the world’s soul.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Institute of Directors

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Institute of Directors

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 15 November 2001.

    I am delighted to join you at your annual dinner this evening and to pay tribute not just to the work of British business but to commend you – as individual company directors, executives and managers – on the work you do, the service to our country you give, the difference you make to the economy, to employment and prosperity to all.

    The Institute of Directors has always stood for an enterprise economy – a dynamic high productivity, high investment, economy built on a strong entrepreneurial culture. And this evening I want to devote my remarks to how to widen and deepen the enterprise culture in our country – strengthening the stability that is its foundation, the competitive environment that is its essential building block and opportunities for the talents of people- their ideas their skills and their initiatives – that are its driving force – to flourish.

    Now I am grateful for the opportunity on the eve of my visit to the IMF, World Bank and G20 meetings in Ottawa to speak to you about the challenges we face in Britain and globally.

    The tragedies of September 11th will never be forgotten and there are many here this evening whom I know lost friends and colleagues in the collapse of the twin towers.

    I can tell you that in Ottawa Finance Ministers and Bank Governors will match the successful military action against terrorism with agreement on an international action plan to cut off the supply of finance to terrorism.

    Those who finance terrorism are as guilty as those who practise it and having in Britain alone frozen and immobilised £70 million of suspect terrorist funds we will ask all 183 member countries to outlaw and seize suspicious transactions which may abet terrorism.

    And I can tell you that from Britain we will offer to coordinate a central register for technical assistance to countries implementing anti-terrorist measures. And now that anti-terrorist finance units are being set up in all major financial centres we will offer London as an international clearing house for information exchange on asset tracking.

    In times like these that challenge and test us, the essential economic function of government is to maintain the conditions for stability and growth and more than ever this must be done not just nationally but internationally.

    And it is a tribute to international cooperation that this challenge to the global economy is being met by a global response – that not only have interest rates been brought down worldwide but the central banks of America, the Euro area and Japan as well as Britain have made clear their willingness to take any necessary further action.

    All of us should be heartened by not just the spirit but the letter of the historic agreement reached at Doha, developed and developing countries working together to agree to enter a new round of world trade talks – the so called “Doha development agenda” that will engender among the economies of the world greater confidence in the months ahead.

    Oil prices – which have previously risen in times of trouble — have fallen in the last month and we will continue to work with the oil producing countries to ensure steadiness of supply and prices. Where markets have failed, as on airline insurance, governments across Europe and America acted to fill the gap — with a new short-term insurance guarantee.

    Because no country can insulate itself from the global economy, with world trade slowing, recession threatening in America as well as Japan, and no-one yet sure about the final impact of the events of September 11th, these are still times that are uncertain, times that test us here in Britain.

    I understand people’s worries about the effects on their jobs and livelihoods of a global slowdown which will inevitably impact on Britain’s economic growth. And in the Pre-Budget Report we will do more to recognise the vital contribution of modern manufacturing to exports, innovation and our great regions.

    But it is because of the tough decisions we took from 1997 to create monetary and fiscal stability that we are today in a better position to withstand the ups and downs of the economic cycle and the pressures of today.

    Over the last four years the message you – and the whole of business – have consistently sent us is: maintain the conditions for long-term stability.

    Since we introduced a new monetary and fiscal framework four years ago – with bank independence, a symmetrical inflation target, debt reduction and new fiscal rules – inflation has remained at or near the Government’s target of 2.5 per cent.

    Indeed, before bank independence the financial market expectation of inflation 10 years ahead was 4.2 per cent– even when there was a 2.5 target – this year the long-term inflation expectations have been averaging 2.5 per cent – exactly on target.

    And interest rates have come down to 4 per cent – the lowest for nearly 40 years – precisely because we have a low inflation economy. And we will continue to back the Bank of England in all the difficult decisions it makes.

    Central to our fiscal stability is the tough decisions we took in the first Parliament to cut national debt to sustainable levels. Debt was 44 per cent of national income in 1997 when this Government inherited a £28 billion deficit and we immediately took the difficult decisions to freeze spending, introduce new fiscal rules, make the tax changes that were necessary and so cut the burden of unsustainable debt. And in future years, we will also have the strength to take any difficult decisions where they are necessary.

    Today debt is falling towards 30 per cent, in contrast to 41 per cent in America, 49 per cent in France, 51 per cent in Germany and 102 per cent in Italy. Britain’s debt as a share of national income is now the lowest in the G7 and lower than our major European competitors.

    These sustainable levels of debt allow us to meet our health, education, and transport commitments, deal with emergencies as they arise and at all times maintain and hold both our fiscal rules.

    Both you and I want a culture that entrenches low inflation and fiscal discipline – not just for a year or two but also over the long term. So even when tested by events and pressures for spending here and there, the resolve you asked us to demonstrate in 1997 will be maintained. We will not bow to short-term pressures or the old quick fix solutions – we will not abandon the inflation target, relax our fiscal discipline or put our hard won stability at risk but will stay the course.

    And we will not change our European policy either: in principle our support for the single currency, in practice the five economic tests that have to be met.

    Stability is the foundation but productivity achieved from that platform of stability is – as you know – the key to our future prosperity. And the central economic theme of our Pre-Budget Report will be our support for enterprise – for building a stronger, more dynamic, enterprise economy.

    In the past, politicians – indeed both my predecessors and I – have been accused of saying one thing to one audience and another thing to another. So I want to share with you today the agenda for modernisation that I have put to both the Labour Party and the TUC. I am not saying to you what I have not already said to them.

    I told them that we must never again be seen as anti-success, anti-competition, anti-profit, and anti-markets.

    I said that the new information age economy would need not less but more competition, and not less but more entrepreneurship and flexibility.

    It is undeniable that for fifty years after 1945 the British economy and Britain suffered from backward looking and self-defeating conflicts between capital and labour, between state and market, and between public and private sectors – denying Britain a shared national economic purpose.

    I believe Britain and the British people have moved beyond these outdated divisions.

    As we have entered a new century we have been leaving behind the old disputes and I am optimistic that together – directors, managers and workforce, public and private sectors – we are defining for our times a shared national economic purpose for Britain.

    And my reasons for optimism are these:

    First, there is now public support from the board room to the shop floor for our framework for monetary and fiscal stability that together we have to build and sustain – even when it means making unpopular decisions;

    Second, the work ethic – so important to success in the years of the first British industrial revolution – is being once more re-invigorated in high unemployment communities where it had in recent decades withered – thanks not least to the contribution your companies are making to the New Deal;

    And third, perhaps of even more long term importance, we are rediscovering our essential strengths as a nation: our inventiveness and flexibility; our internationalism and openness to the world; our willingness to adapt to change; and our belief in self-improvement and the importance of education.

    These historic strengths, which represent some of the proudest parts of our heritage, can contribute most to a successful future and are reflected in:

    British initiatives in trade and development designed to advance our national goals of free trade and open markets;
    a new emphasis on science and innovation to release the creativity and inventiveness of the British people, not least in knowledge based industries; and

    putting education in our schools first to reassert the importance of learning, to raise standards at all levels and to allow young people to develop the talents necessary for high productivity growth.

    So how can we build on this in the Pre-Budget Report and beyond?

    Our aim for this decade should be to achieve the fastest rise in productivity of competitor countries. Indeed, in a period where the world is slowing down it is the high productivity performers that will gain the most. And beyond our responsibilities for stability, the modern, more focussed, role of government is to:

    ensure there is a competitive environment throughout the economy so the companies that are the most innovative and dynamic can flourish; and maximise educational employment and economic opportunities so people can make the most of their talents, ideas and initiatives
    Thus creating a wider and deeper enterprise culture that promotes investment and entrepreneurship and rewards success. And I can say tonight that our budget tax decisions will promote these goals and help build an economy that is not only enterprising but where enterprise is open to all.

    Having already cut corporation tax for companies from 33 to 30 pence – the lowest rate in the history of British corporation tax and now the lowest rate of any major industrialised country anywhere, including Japan and the United States – and having also cut small business tax from 23 to 20 pence and introduced a new starting rate of tax for small companies of 10 pence in the pound we are considering further measures to extend the cuts in small company tax.

    And of course businesses will also benefit from the reduction in long-term capital gains tax from 40 pence to 10 pence.

    When we came into power we had many priorities: health, education, transport, pensions. Amidst all these priorities we decided that enterprise and long-term investment would be enhanced by reforms in capital gain tax including cutting rates – and we set aside hundreds of millions of pounds to do so.

    Capital gains had been fixed at 40 per cent for almost ten years. So in 1998 we cut the long term rate of capital gains tax for business assets and next April we propose doing so again: from 40 per cent to 20 per cent for investments held for one year; and to 10 per cent for investment held for two years.

    And because Britain’s challenge is to grow more successful dynamic businesses, I am introducing new measures that help dynamic managers build up these businesses and rewarded for doing so.

    The new Enterprise Management Incentive scheme allows growing companies to give options of up to 3 million pounds of shares – free of income tax and national insurance – to recruit and retain the employees they need to be successful. Since it was introduced in July 2000, over 1500 companies have used EMI for more than 12,000 of their employees. In the Budget I am considering doubling the asset limit to £30 million – doubling the asset size of companies which can benefit from EMI.

    We know that open not closed economies are the driving force in productivity growth. And we know that it is the global reach of business, not protectionism, that is the key to dynamism and growth.

    Because competition is the spur to efficiency and innovation, and because greater competition at home will mean greater competitiveness abroad, we are creating the most open competition policy this country has ever seen.

    In 1997, we made monetary decisions independent of political influence within a long-term framework where the policy objective is clear, the division if responsibility is clear, and there is maximum transparency and accountability. Now we must do the same for competition policy – sending an important message that the days of picking winners and uneconomic state subsidies and corporate fixes are over and cannot return and wherever there are barriers to competition we will tackle them.

    And because we recognise the increased importance of innovation to economic growth we have already:

    invested 1 billion pounds extra in science;
    established a new University Challenge Fund to help commercialise British inventions; and
    created eight new Institutes of Enterprise to bring management skills into engineering and science.

    The new Research and Development Tax Credit gives even the newest and smallest business cash help to research and develop their innovations, even before they make their first profits. At a cost of £100 million this year, rising to £150 million next year, this targeted tax cut ensures that nearly a quarter of small business research and development costs will be underwritten by Government.

    But we need to do more to turn scientific inventions in Britain into jobs for Britain by honouring the spirit of invention, facilitating the exploitation of invention and encouraging the commercialisation of invention.

    So we are discussing with large companies a further tax cut for innovation and R&D that will give Britain one of the best incentives for innovation anywhere in the industrialised world.

    Because we understand the importance of e-commerce we have set ourselves the task of making Britain the most favourable environment in which to conduct e-commerce – creating a new legal framework to give new incentives for businesses to use the internet, putting government services themselves on line, and gearing our education and training system to the IT revolution.

    All our reforms are designed to create a more adaptable workforce for the modern dynamic labour market where people change jobs more often and skills are at a premium.

    I am grateful to the 60,000 employers in Britain who have signed up to participate in the New Deal and are now working on the Ambition programme to link people without jobs to the skills we now need. To ensure proper supply of labour, we will continue to tighten the responsibilities expected of the unemployed, and with our tax and benefit changes we will ensure that for families work pays more than benefits.

    I am grateful too for the IoD’s support in extending employee share ownership. Two years ago only a fraction of British employees, and an even smaller minority of those outside senior management, owned shares in the companies that they worked for. Today, 470 companies are set to enjoy the benefits of the share incentive plan – involving 700,000 employees – moving towards the first one million to benefit – representing a key milestone in removing the “them and us” culture.

    Many of you have rightly complained about complexities, delays and anomalies in our physical planning system. We will reform and modernise our physical planning laws and Steven Byers will publish in the next few weeks a green paper promoting reform which will strike the right balance in a modern economy which puts an ever higher premium on speed, efficiency and flexibility – especially to reflect the widely differing needs of all our regions.

    And the efficiency we seek in the private sector we demand on the public sector. Having doubled net public investment by 2003-04 to £18 billion per year, and agreed £180 billion of new public and private investment over ten tears for transport, government at every level – national, regional, and local – must raise its game.

    And, early next year, we will take the enterprise agenda forward in Europe with proposals in a European Economic Reform White Paper to modernise capital and product markets, encourage innovation and an enterprise culture, and develop a modern skills base.

    I want a Britain where just as employment is for all, enterprise is open to all – a Britain with a creative, innovative and enterprising economy in every area.

    Indeed we must do far better than we have in the past. We must go beyond what was achieved in the eighties giving more people the chance to turn their ideas into profitable companies, to start firms, create jobs and win business for Britain.

    And I want to send a message to every business and every would be businessman or woman: if you are starting up, hiring for the first time, growing and looking for capital, seeking to export or seeking to float as a company: we are on your side, whatever your trade whatever your region, whatever your ambitions.

    So we are simplifying vat for half a million small firms and have published proposals for a new flat rate scheme – reducing business costs by up to £1,000 a year – a move widely supported by trade bodies.

    And we introducing a further deregulatory measure – at present companies must compile separate accounts for Companies House and for the purpose of calculating their tax. We are now consulting with business on abolishing the requirement for separate accounts for tax, cutting both red tape and business costs.

    I would like to ask directors and managers here and throughout the country to take in interest in helping renew and regenerate our high unemployment areas – often inner city estates and old established heavy industry communities where small business creation is, and remains, low.

    As I told the Labour Party conference there is no solution to the problems of these high unemployment areas without the creation of more small businesses and more businesses generally. I see old established areas as new opportunities for business, new markets with untapped resources for economic development.

    So to cut back the cost of investing in high unemployment areas, and regenerate out towns and cities, in August this year we introduced:

    a cut in VAT on residential property conversions to 5 per cent;
    100 per cent first year capital allowances for bringing empty flats over shops back into the residential market; and
    an accelerated tax relief set at 150 per cent for cleaning up contaminated land and considering a further corporation tax relief, for firms investing in our new urban regeneration companies.

    And to make the first stages of buying property and bringing land back into use tax free we are considering introducing a stamp duty exemption on property sales in our most disadvantaged areas.

    To cut the cost of small business borrowing we have introduced a new Community Investment Tax Credit will create the first Community Development Venture Capital Fund – a partnership between government, financial institutions and the charitable sector for which the chairman of our review, sir Ronald Cohen, proposes a capitalisation of £40 million.

    But we can do more. I want us to spread the message of enterprise throughout the country and to open up the opportunities of enterprise to all.

    I care passionately about this. And I know George Cox your director general does too and I praise him for the work he has done in Enterprise Insight, taking the enterprise message to schools and colleges.

    When I was at school the world of education was far too remote from the world of business.

    I want every young person to hear about business and enterprise in school; every college student to be made aware of the opportunities in business, even to start a business; and every teacher to be able to communicate the virtues of business and enterprise.

    I want businessmen and women going into school and into the enterprise classes; I want every student to have a quality experience of working in a local business before they leave school; I want every community to see business leaders as role models.

    We have begun to improve the national network that brings schools and businesses together – increasing the scale of enterprise classes in our schools. But I want to see more businesses even more involved with their local schools – improving the quality of work experience for year 10 students and business placements for teachers.

    Around Britain there are many successful examples of schools and businesses working together for the benefit of both. And I want all schools – especially those in disadvantaged areas – to benefit.

    I applaud the new national enterprise campaign “Enterprise Insight” – promoting the work of partners including Businessdynamics and Young Enterprise, bringing schools and businesses closer together and providing more than 100,000 young people every year with hands-on experience of what it is like to be in business. Since its launch earlier this year 246 companies have already signed up to take part.

    If we are to have a deeper and wider more entrepreneurial culture we need, we must start in our schools and colleges. The Secretary for Education and I have asked sir Howard Davies to examine how we can make progress.

    And I urge all businesses throughout the country to adopt a school – whether it is by taking students on work experience and teachers on work placements, sending employees into schools to help run enterprise classes, or being business governors.

    In this way, every business in the country will be helping to build the new enterprise culture that we all want to see.

    Conclusion

    We must not rest but be determined about Britain’s future, not relax our efforts but step them up and prepare for the next stage of our productivity drive by removing all the old barriers to employment and prosperity.

    If we do so there is a great prize – not only the long-term stability you asked us to build but sustained rises in growth and prosperity for our communities and our companies, and from which the whole country can benefit.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the CBI Annual Conference Dinner

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the CBI Annual Conference Dinner

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 5 November 2001.

    I am delighted to be here this evening to pay tribute not just to the work of the CBI and to British business but to commend you – as individual company directors executives and managers – on the work you do, the service to our country you give, the difference you make to the economy, to employment and to the prosperity of Britain.

    As we all know this conference is being held at no ordinary time, but in the wake of a terror so awful and so momentous that it has transformed our times and our task.

    All of us here today will wish to express our sympathies to the families of those employees in the financial services and other industries and in the fire, police and other public services who lost their lives on September 11th. Many companies represented here today lost valued employees.

    And because terrorists intended to bring the world’s financial system to a halt, to undermine the very prospect of global prosperity, we – Governments and business – must continue to show — as we have shown by our actions in maintaining the conditions for stability and growth — that we will not succumb or surrender to their threats.

    And we have found that action, more than ever, must be coordinated not just nationally but internationally.

    Britain will continue – as Tony Blair has said – to stand shoulder to shoulder with America. And it is a tribute to international cooperation that this challenge to the global economy is being met by a global response – that not only have interest rates been brought down worldwide but the central banks of America, the euro area and Japan as well as Britain have made clear their determination to take any necessary further action.

    Oil prices – which have previously risen in times of trouble – have fallen in the last month and we will continue to work with the oil producing countries to ensure steadiness of supply and prices. And where markets have failed, as on airline insurance, governments across Europe and America acted to fill the gap — with a new short-term insurance guarantee.

    Because no country can insulate itself from the global economy, with world trade slowing, growth slowing sharply in America, Japan and Germany and no-one yet sure about the final impact of events, these are times that are uncertain, times that test us here in Britain.

    I understand people’s worries about the effects on their jobs and livelihoods of a global slowdown which will inevitably impact on Britain’s economic growth. And in the pre-budget report we will do more to recognise the vital contribution of modern manufacturing to exports, innovation and our great regions.

    But it is because of the tough decisions we took from 1997 to create monetary and fiscal stability that we are today in a better position to withstand the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

    Ten years ago when the US slowed at a time of international conflict, British inflation had risen above 10 percent and Government had to raise interest rates even when unemployment was rising above 2 million.

    Today because we have made the Bank of England independent and have a credible monetary framework based on a symmetrical inflation target, inflation has been at or near our target of 2.5 per cent for four years. The longest period of low inflation since the 1960s.

    A decade ago British interest rates peaked at 15 per cent and were above ten per cent for four years.

    But because since 1997 we have combined monetary discipline with fiscal disciplines which people know we will keep, they have averaged 6 per cent. And today they are 4.5 percent, for homeowners and businesses the lowest long-term interest rates for nearly 40 years.

    And while we will never be complacent, at this time of global slowdown – unlike 10 or 20 years ago – the fundamentals are sound: low inflation, stable public finances. So despite the difficulties and pressures we now face, with interest rates cut 6 times since the start of 2001 and fiscal policy supporting growth this year, I am cautiously optimistic.

    We all know that as long as terrorism is allowed to threaten, our economy can never be fully secure, our society never fully at ease. So meeting the necessary cost of military action – and our international development responsibilities in Pakistan and Afghanistan – is a duty we must and will discharge, paying what it needs to root out terrorism and the supply of funds and equipment to terrorism. And it is a duty we are able to discharge because of the discipline and tough rules we have applied to public spending in the past.

    But – as I have told my Cabinet colleagues and I now repeat publicly – in other areas of spending this is the time for more discipline not less. And I can say to you that, throughout, we will not relax our fiscal disciplines and we will work within the fiscal rules we set in 1997 and have upheld throughout.

    Stability is the precondition but you all know as businessmen and women that it is not enough.

    As the CBI and the TUC recognised when we met at Downing Street last week, at this time of global uncertainty it is even more important that we work together to enhance wealth creation and raise productivity. In the years to come we will need substantial productivity gains to continue to raise our trend rate of growth and thus our national prosperity.

    While we have world class companies represented here tonight, and I applaud you for your contribution to Britain’s success, the conclusion of the CBI-TUC review submitted to the Government last week is that overall productivity in Britain is still far too low and that if we are to achieve our aim for this decade – the fastest rise in productivity of our competitors – we will, all of us, with labour market, capital market and product market reforms have to modernise, change and reform.

    Tonight I want to assure you from the Government that not only will we continue our policy of moving the unemployed from welfare to work – indeed we will enhance both the New Deal’s opportunities and sanctions – and our measures to enhance labour market flexibility as a contribution to higher productivity, but we will also, in consultation with you, move forward the enterprise agenda:

    First, to reward enterprise and entrepreneurship I can say tonight that the Budget will significantly extend our cuts in capital gains tax. I will propose that for business assets held for 2 years, capital gains tax which in 1997 was 40 per cent will be cut to 10 percent – designed to provide incentives for investment in wealth creation and greater rewards for success – indeed a more attractive capital gains tax regime overall than the United States.

    Second, in the next Budget I will also propose extending our cuts in small company corporation tax where instead of 23p in the pound the rates are now 20p and in many cases only 10p, and there will be a simplification of the VAT system as we introduce further deregulatory measures to help small businesses.

    Third, many of you have rightly complained about complexities, delays and anomalies in our physical planning system. We will reform and modernise our physical planning laws and Steven Byers will publish in the next few weeks a Green Paper promoting reform which will strike the right balance in a modern economy which puts an ever higher premium on speed, efficiency and flexibility – especially to reflect the widely differing needs of all our regions.

    Fourth, we are introducing a new competition regime – with decisions taken out of the hands of politicians and truly independent of the political process – that will match the best in the world.

    Fifth, your needs include the best skilled manpower and work ready staff, and we are ready to fulfill our responsibilities by putting additional resources into a reformed training system and ready to sanction an extension of the work permit system that has already raised entrants to the UK from 50,000 three years ago to 150,000 this year.

    Sixth, the efficiency we seek in the private sector we demand in the public sector. Having doubled net public investment, Government at every level – national, regional and local – must raise its game. We will maintain our £180 billion ten year plan to modernise our transport infrastructure – and any one of you who have travelled across Britain know the importance to business and communities of this doubling of transport investment

    And I leave you in no doubt that we will continue our programme of public private partnerships. Whether it be in the London Underground or in the air traffic control service, I am convinced that instead of the old sterile divide which pitted public against private, we do best when public and private sectors work together to enhance investment in our transport and infrastructure.

    And if we as a nation are to have a deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture we must do more to extend knowledge of enterprise to every community. We all know that for too long the world of business and the world of education existed apart from each other. With your support I want every young person to hear about business and enterprise in school, every college student to know there are opportunities in business, every teacher able to communicate the virtues of enterprise, and I want young people growing up to see successful business leaders locally and nationally as role models, so encouraging a stronger pro-business, pro-enterprise, pro-wealth creating environment in our country.

    It is not just in Britain but in Europe as a whole that a modern route to both economic stability and a more entrepreneurial economy based on economic reform is needed.

    As in Britain, the euro area has been establishing a new framework for economic stability.

    As I set out at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet earlier this year, our approach is – and will continue to be – considered and cautious: one of pro-euro realism.

    Pro-euro because, as we said in 1997, we believe that – in principle – membership of the Euro can bring benefits to Britain.

    Realist because to short-cut or fudge the assessment, and to join in the wrong way or on the wrong basis without rigorously ensuring the tests are met, would not be in the national economic interest.

    A single European currency – with a fully developed single market – could in principle increase trade and competition through the elimination of exchange rate risk and through more transparent prices; reduce transaction costs, again increasing trade and investment, and benefiting everyone travelling in Europe; and lower long-term interest rates, again good for investment and so good for growth and jobs.

    Because the Government is determined that we will make the right long-term decisions for Britain, we will not take risks with Britain’s hard won stability.

    So the assessment as to whether it is in the British national economic interest or not will be comprehensive and rigorous. It is only on this basis – taking into account all relevant economic information – that the Cabinet will decide whether to recommend membership to Parliament and then to the British people.

    While the assessment has not yet started, the necessary preliminary analysis – technical work that is necessary to allow us to undertake the assessment within two years as we promised – is underway.

    The scope of the technical and preliminary work for the next assessment of the five tests is as set out in the original October 1997 assessment. Although there have been new developments since the 1997 assessment, the underlying issues to be analysed remain the same.

    The 1997 statement detailed five economic tests:

    – First, sustainable convergence between Britain and the economies of a single currency;

    – Second, whether there is sufficient flexibility to cope with economic change;

    – Third, the effect on investment;

    – Fourth, the impact on our financial services industry; and

    -Fifth, whether it is good for employment.

    Now the preliminary and technical work is updating the analysis on:

    The cyclical behaviour of the UK economy relative to the euro area and their relative responses to economic shocks;

    The mechanisms by which product, labour and capital markets adjust and how well and how quickly they work;

    The impact of the single currency on the cost and availability of capital, macroeconomic stability, the stability of the real effective exchange rate and the location, quality and quantity of investment;

    The effect of the single currency on financial services, including the changes that have occurred in this sector in the UK and the euro area since 1997; and

    The impact of the single currency on trade, competition, productivity and employment.

    Our commitment is to complete a full assessment of the five tests within two years of the start of this Parliament.

    And I can tell the dinner this evening that our commitment “to prepare and decide” is being maintained with the publication of the latest euro preparations study today.

    We have always said that we must prepare together – not one or two businesses, but Government and business working together.

    The Government’s Standing Committee on Euro Preparations – with membership drawn from the public and private sectors, including the president and Digby Jones – met again last Monday as a key part of our consultation.

    And we are today publishing our latest Progress Report on Euro Preparations. In just a few weeks’ time, Euro cash will displace existing currencies in the euro area. This will have an impact on many UK businesses and also on citizens in their capacity as tourists. I an pleased that Government and the CBI are working together to give advice to businesses – indeed the next phase of our information campaign starts today, including the direct mailing of sample case studies and an information booklet to 1.5m SMEs.

    And in addition to this help for business, together Peter Hain and Ruth Kelly will also be sending out an information leaflet for UK travellers to help them with the transition to notes and coins.

    Planning for possible UK entry also continues under the national changeover plan. The Government has invested £13m since the publication of the last Report on Euro Preparations in November last year, bringing the total invested on changeover planning to £23.5million.

    These are the preparations we are making together. Because we are resolved we will not leave Britain economically unprepared.

    Around the future of the Euro there is of course an ongoing national debate.

    But across Europe a wider debate on the future of Europe is also taking place and Britain must be at the centre of that debate too – a debate on economic reform amidst the challenge of globalisation, enlargement into the east and the wider Nice agenda to make decision making in Europe more accountable and relevant to the population as a whole.

    Europe is where we are, where we trade, from where thousands of businesses and millions of jobs come. We are part of Europe by geography, by history, by economics and by choice. So the case is not only for a reformed Europe but for Britain leading reform in Europe.

    Getting the economic future for Europe right matters for Britain because over three quarters of a million UK companies now trade with the rest of the European union. When we joined Europe in the 1970s, less than 8 billions of our trade was with the rest of Europe. Today it is £138 billions – more than half our total trade – with 3 million jobs affected.

    But while the single market encompasses 375m people today – and potentially nearly 500m in the future – we still have a long way to go to secure for British business and British consumers the full benefits in commercial opportunities and consumer prices.

    The 1988 Cecchini report examined in depth the potential economic gains of the single market, asserting that completing it would raise GDP by 4.5 percent and create 1.8 million new jobs.

    Yet by 1996, the boost to GDP had been only 1.5 percent and almost 1 million new jobs had been created. And there is little to suggest that by 2001 we have realised even half of the potential gains. So we will publish a White Paper on Economic Reform setting out the next stage of our plans to liberalise capital labour and product markets

    There are those who say that in the current climate Europe can justifying going slow on its programmes of economic reform, that now is not the time for pushing forward with change. I say to them that now is the time – when we can see the interdependence of our economies and the challenges of globalisation more clearly – now is the time to drive forward the reform agenda to improve the flexibility and productivity of the European economy.

    Firms across the UK will benefit with new opportunities to trade in the 14 member states if:

    – We complete liberalisation in telecoms by the end of 2001, capital markets by 2003, financial services by 2004;

    – Continue to push energy liberalisation, promote tax competition not tax harmonisation, drive down old fashioned state subsidies which undermine the single market while ensuring the state aid regime tackles market failures and promotes efficient dynamic competitive markets;

    British financial service firms are well positioned to benefit from the completion of the internal market in financial services.

    But what we do not want are directives simply designed to increase regulation at the expense of liberalisation. I know that the prospectus directive is a particular concern for the CBI and its members in this respect and the Government will continue to focus on the outcomes for firms and consumers that we are trying to deliver.

    And Europe must focus not just on internal reform but because I believe fortress Europe is an idea that has had its day we must focus on how Europe can be less inward looking and more outward looking and more open to trade and commerce with the rest of the world.

    Here again the economic reform agenda is clear and challenging: and first and foremost it is crucial that we ensure the launch of a broad and balanced trade round in Doha. The EU and the US should work closely on pushing for greater market access for the developing worlds, have high ambitions to eliminate industrial tariffs, and make genuinely liberalising deals on agriculture, investment, competition and the environment. The gains can be in the order of 400 billion dollars a year, 150 billion for the developing countries. Moving forward trade liberalisation at Doha in the next few days will send out a powerful message of our confidence in the future of the world economy.

    And we can do more. The annual two way flow of goods, services and direct foreign investment between the United States and Europe is now nearly a trillion dollars and we need only look at the impact of the American slowdown on European economic growth to understand this growing economic independence.

    So strengthening our ability to push forward with the multilateral trade agenda, the conditions now exist for the expansion of the transatlantic economic partnership, mirroring our security alliance in NATO. And here what we need now is a Cecchini-style report that set outs in detail the benefits for growth, prosperity and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic from a wide-ranging effort to end the remaining industrial tariffs multilaterally, achieve deeper liberalisation of trade in services, remove unnecessary non-tariff barriers, increase competition and develop more effective ways of pre-empting damaging transatlantic trade disputes.

    We in Britain do not have to choose – as some would suggest – between America and Europe, but are instead well positioned as a vital link between America and Europe.

    So this is a time of great challenges and risks but also a time of great opportunities – in Britain, in Europe and across the world.

    I believe that, learning from each other, all of us – businesses and Governments working together – can face the great challenges of today’s economy not by resisting change but by helping people cope with it; not by standing still but by radical economic reform; and not by protectionism but by promoting open, competitive markets and international cooperation.

    It makes for a Britain that is true to its great historical qualities: outward looking and open to the world, committed to an enterprise culture and ambitious to succeed; fully equipped to lead in the 21st century economy.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Local Government Association General Assembly

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Local Government Association General Assembly

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in London on 19 December 2001.

    I.   Introduction

    I am delighted to be addressing the Local Government Association General Assembly.

    You represent the democratic leadership of our cities, towns and communities across England and Wales, and I want to begin by acknowledging and indeed congratulating you for the work you undertake, the hours you give up, the service you offer, the good you do and the difference you make in building stronger communities – making the very idea of community work in practice.

    And I am here today to celebrate the importance of our strengthening partnership, a modern partnership between central and local government without which neither of us will be able to deliver the stronger economy and better services the British people have demanded of us.

    It is a partnership not of convenience but a partnership of principle because whenever we walk down the street, collect our kids from school, turn to the emergency services, or look for help for the weak and the frail we know we all depend upon locally provided services.

    It is a partnership of principle because every day a millions of acts of service by dedicated public servants  – inspired not just by individual commitment but by a higher ideal of duty and obligation – shape the ethos of public service in our country.

    And our partnership -local and central government working together – is strengthened by an equally important belief we share in common: whatever people said in the past we know that Whitehall does not know best, and we know that effective service delivery for families and communities cannot come from central command and control but requires local initiative and accountability.

    For all the time I have been involved in politics I have believed in devolving power, so that those who are affected by the decisions are close to and can hold accountable those who make the decisions – and our aim must always be the maximum devolution of power possible: government encouraging not stifling local action, local people making local decisions about local needs.

    And our strengthened partnership today in 2001 is built on something equally fundamental: on our commitment to advance shared goals, to ensure opportunity and prosperity not just for some in our country but for all.

    First: to strive for full employment – from a foundation of economic stability strengthening the programme to move the unemployed from welfare to work, so that in every region there is employment opportunity for all;

    Second: raising productivity to match our European competitors and thus raising our living standards – with a commitment for every region to high quality long-term investment in science and innovation, new technology and skills;

    Third: eliminating child poverty – ensuring not just some but all children have the best start in life;

    Fourth: tackling pensioner poverty and ensuring pensioners enjoy dignity in retirement;

    Fifth: from transport and housing to health and education renewing our public services to rise to today’s needs – meeting people’s rising expectations by delivering high quality public services for all.

    In the LGA’s six commitments portfolio – which I am delighted to launch today – you are also setting out your priorities and I see exactly the same focus on full employment, world class public services, no child left behind and for every pensioner the best of care.

    And my message today is that the great challenges that face our country cannot be met if we stand apart from each other, can only be met if we work together. Indeed the key insight of these last four years is that the goals we share cannot be realised in practice without central government devolving power to local communities.

    II.   A new central- local government partnership

    Our first task in 1997, and the foundation of all we do, was to create a national framework for stability, for sound public finances and for employment growth

    And the difficult decisions we took then – to make the Bank of England independent, to rein in spending, to cut debt, to put up interest rates – are the platform not just for low inflation and 1.2 million more in jobs but also for the largest sustained growth in investment in our public services for fifty years with:

    – Growth in spending of 4 per cent on average this year, next year and the year after;

    – public investment almost doubling year on year this year, and rising to three times its 1996-7 level by 2003-4;

    – £10 billion a year saved from debt and low unemployment now invested in health, education and our public services.

    And as we started putting in place this new national economic framework we also began putting in place the building blocks that allow us to devolve power and responsibility.

    In the first parliament we created a devolved legislature in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, restored city-wide local government to London, and created regional development agencies. And at the beginning of this year John Prescott and I set out our plans for a new generation of regional policies – strengthening, within the regions, the essential building blocks of self generating growth, the capacity to innovate, invest, build skills and match the unemployed to jobs available. Offering development agencies new freedoms and flexibilities and in return demanding strenuous targets be met in skills, innovation, business creation, new technology and employment. A new regional policy – locally sensitive and locally delivered, one through local management decisions.

    And 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 characteristic of the years marked by universal capping, Compulsory Competitive Tendering and the Poll Tax.

    So in the past few years we have:

    – Boosted financial support for councils, through real terms increases in revenue and in capital expenditure for four years in a row

    – Replaced the bureaucracy of CCT with the duty of best value, enabling councils to develop their own methods of service delivery rather than being constrained by the requirement to cut costs at all cost

    – Improved the transparency and efficiency of local leadership through provision for new constitutions for local government following local consultation;

    – Expanded the capacities of local government by introducing statutory community strategies, and a new power to promote community well-being through coordination and partnership with other local actors, via local strategic partnerships and the neighbourhood renewal fund.

    Showing our approach is a belief in local government not local administration.

    In the first parliament, to support our national public service agreements we developed local public service agreements. And as I said to the Labour party conference in February this year, over the next two years the number of local PSAs matching resources to outcome targets signed with local authorities is rising from 20 earlier this year to 150 by 2003  – which we will match with further steps towards greater flexibility: flexibility and resources in return for reform.

    III.    New partnership

    These are only the first steps in expanding our partnership and we are now ready to do more to achieve our goals of full employment, higher quality of public services, and an end to child and pensioner poverty – combining more flexibility and more resources in return for more reform and better results.

    And as set out in the White Paper launched by Stephen Byers last week, we are:

    – Abolishing the council tax benefit subsidy limitation scheme and providing greater freedom for all councils to decide council tax discounts and exemptions

    – Making councils themselves responsible for deciding how much they can prudently borrow; providing greater freedom for councils to invest;

    – Removing unnecessary bureaucracy as well as targeting a reduction of 50 per cent in the numbers of plans and strategies that government requires councils to produce;

    – Providing councils with wider powers to deliver services to others and to work in partnership;

    – Restricting ring-fencing to cases which are genuine high priorities for government and where we cannot achieve our policy goal by specifying outcome targets.

    And high performing councils will receive extra freedoms to lead the way to further service improvements including:

    – The ending of reserve powers over capping, as a first step towards our long term goal of dispensing with the power to cap altogether

    – Further reductions in ring fencing of revenue from central government, and of support for capital investment

    – More freedom to use income collected locally from fines and charges

    – Extra exemptions from the plan requirements of central government, and more discretion over best value programmes

    – And a much lighter touch inspection regime

    Reforms that will significantly expand the freedoms and flexibilities available to local government.

    Our approach is to devolve power and responsibility so that these freedoms will be accompanied by greater accountability to local communities.  That is why alongside devolution of power we will introduce a new comprehensive performance framework – providing clear and concise information about councils? performance, enabling 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.

    A democratic framework for devolving power to modern local authorities based on new rights and new responsibilities – the power you need to improve your performance – the responsibility expected of you to serve your communities.

    And in this Parliament we are ready to go even further to enable local people to do more to make local decisions about meeting local needs. Already the option of congestion charging is now available and being implemented in London. I believe that we should be prepared to consider further radical options to ensure devolution of power and responsibility go hand in hand so that the public can get the best possible services.

    And once we have carried out further analysis, we shall establish a high level working group involving ministers and senior figures from local government to look at all aspects of the balance of funding, reviewing the evidence and looking at reform options.

    IV. Putting partnership into practice

    So let me set out how – through local and national government working together, building on the new freedoms and flexibilities the white paper has put in place – we can rise to today’s challenges and meet our shared goals.

    First, employment.

    I could talk about the 1 million jobs we have created, but i am more anxious about the 1 million men and women still left out, still unemployed – and as local councillors I hope you will want to play a bigger role in the next steps to help the newly redundant get back into work quickly and expand the new deal to assist those hard to employ. This means following the innovative example of councils such as Brighton and Bristol, councils that have tailored supplementary employment programmes to complement the new deal.

    Last month Alistair Darling announced 20 special projects to test whether guaranteed jobs for the long term unemployed could get more people permanently off the dole. It is a new opportunity – a guaranteed job – but there is also a new obligation to take it up. And as we learn from these successes, I hope we can work together to make long-term unemployment a thing of the past, and make possible full employment in every region and every community.

    Second, the economy and enterprise.

    Every one knows that the sources of growth in every local economy are local innovation, local skills, and local enterprise. More jobs of the future will come from small businesses growing in each of your areas than from large inward investment projects.
    So together we must remove the barriers that prevent local firms starting up, growing bigger, getting investment in capital, finding export markets and training skilled staff.

    That is why together in every local area we must bring about a revolution in education, skills and training.

    As long as prosperity by-passes a single community or a single family our work is not yet done.

    And it is why together we must concentrate on lifting up the high unemployment areas that for too long have been left behind and why we have introduced – and i hope you can encourage local economic activity to benefit from:

    – A cut in VAT on residential property conversions to 5 per cent

    – 100 per cent first year capital allowances for bringing empty flats over shops back into the residential market;

    – Legislated for an accelerated tax relief set at 150 per cent for cleaning up contaminated land;

    – The abolition of stamp duty for property transactions up to £150,000 so that in 2000 wards across the country the buying of property and bringing land back into use will be tax free; and

    – Legislate in the budget for a new tax credit for local community investment.

    We want to see a dynamic, enterprising public sector at all levels. And that is why we will give you new freedoms to innovate and to experiment, with wider powers to trade in public, private and voluntary sectors, as well as allowing councils to introduce business improvements districts. And just as we have released borrowing restrictions on local airports, I am prepared to consider how within the new prudential borrowing regime we can engender more freedoms for local government consistent with macro – stability and our fiscal rules.

    Third, ensuring every child has the best possible start in life.

    You have been responsible for pioneering the development of childcare in the most difficult of circumstances.  Since 1997 we have learned from your successes and it is thanks to you as councils that we can have nursery education with places for all four-year olds – and soon all three-year olds.

    And thanks to your imagination and commitment we now have a national childcare strategy to ensure affordable, accessible and quality childcare in every neighbourhood, creating by next year new childcare places for 1.6 million children.

    Child poverty is a scar on the soul of Britain, and we must work together – local and national government to make sure that we give each and every child the best possible start in life  – and that no child is left behind.

    Our first task as a government was to boost the income of all families with children, with the greatest help for those in greatest need. And that is why since 1997 we have increased child benefit to £15.50 for the first child so that, combined with our other tax and benefit reforms, our poorest families are now better off by 1700 pounds a year on average – money to all children. And having already lifted more than 1 million children out of poverty, we will introduce the child tax credit as well as work towards taking the second million out of poverty – moving closer to eradicating poverty completely.

    Our second task is to match higher incomes for these families with better services. I welcome the LGA’s commitment in this area. And I hope that we can work together to develop imaginative ways of delivering these services for the communities you represent building on the innovative examples set by councils such as Sunderland, whose local PSA is providing an active citizenship plan for its children and young adults, or Darlington, which has created a one-stop shop delivering an integrated service for all children in need – demonstrating to us all what pioneering local government is able to do.

    In the new economy, which depends on knowledge, innovation, on mobilising the talents of all – getting the best out of everyone – it is essential to develop all the potential of our children. And it has been a tragedy of wasted potential for our country that there are thousands of young people with talent and ability still denied the chance to make the most themselves.

    That is why in the four years up to 2003 the real terms growth in education spending will be more than 5 per cent a year and we will in the new spending round make education a priority.

    And in the past five years we have worked with you to put in place the framework for addressing the needs of our nation’s children, with local government directly engaged in:

    – Sure start for under fives;

    – The children’s fund, now rolled out across 40 areas, for 5-13 year-olds;

    – Connexions for 13-19 year olds;

    – “quality protects” for all children in need;

    – And professional learning mentors

    Programmes with a new partnership between local government and voluntary organisations to support all our children and identify those who are showing signs of difficulties – providing them and their families with the support they need to overcome personal and social problems.

    Fourth: pensioners

    Pensioner poverty is a reproach to us all.

    And just as we are working to eliminate child poverty – so too we must act now to ensure that pensioners are able to enjoy a higher standard of living.

    So we are building on the Basic State Pension – cash increases which boost the incomes of all pensioners – with the Minimum Income guarantee – targeting extra financial support on the poorest pensioners. We have also set aside new funds to ensure that, from 2003, pensioners whose hard work has secured a small occupational pension or modest savings, will be rewarded through the new Pension Credit by extra money, not penalised – as in the past – by losing their benefits – ensuring that pensioners enjoy a share in the rising prosperity of our country.

    But we must match higher incomes for pensioners with improved community services – both for pensioners in care and those living in housing which needs to be maintained to a higher standard. We have made a commitment to make decent all social housing by 2010 and have already invested £7.3 billion in local authority housing.

    Our task is to match resources with reform in social services and housing. And to help local authorities to be more flexible and innovative, we are:

    – Providing local authorities with increased freedoms in the way they deliver social services as their performance improves;

    – Investing £460m in high performing local authorities to set up companies to manage their housing stock, leaving them free to think more creatively about the housing strategies they wish to pursue; and

    – Extending the prudential borrowing freedoms to housing expenditure, allowing local authorities to choose the best way to invest in their housing.

    And in the forthcoming spending review we will do more.

    Finally, fifth: I turn to our shared commitment to public services as a whole.

    For 20 years at least your job as local authorities had been to protect public services against those who wanted to dismantle them.

    Our task together now is different.  It is to move from the old narrow agenda of the years of self protection – when many argued that saving the service had to come first – to the positive task of building, investing, reforming and modernising.

    In the public services we are employing more – 140 thousand more in jobs, investing £8 billion more, and with private sector investment of £4.4 billion – making public investment go even further.

    There is a new debate in this country – not just about the future financing of our public services, including our health service, but about more than finance – about the future of our public services.

    And those of us who believe passionately in the public services must be the most determined to modernise and reform so that public services can best serve the public.

    Just as schools exist for school children, the NHS exists for patients; public services exist not for the public servant but for the public who are served.

    And our aim must be that every classroom has the best teacher, every school the best staff, every operating theatre the best doctors and staff, every police station the best police men and women – that every public service has the best public servants.

    Just as we cannot serve the public if investment is low, staffing poor and conditions unacceptable, we cannot serve them either if service is poor, if performance is faulty, if the atmosphere is confrontational.

    Those of us who believe in the public services must learn from both the public and the private sectors and revitalise our public services from the inside or others will seek to dismantle them from the outside.

    We will maintain our 180 billion pound ten year plan to modernise our transport infrastructure – a doubling of transport investment.  And we will continue our programme of public private partnerships.  Whether it be in the London underground or in the building on new hospitals, I am convinced that instead of the old sterile divide which pitted public against private, we do best when public and private sectors work together to enhance investment in our transport and infrastructure.

    And we should aim for higher productivity in our public services, backing management as well as employee training. And i can tell you that we are supporting the national college of school leadership and the leadership centre for the NHS, devoted to doing more to improving the quality of public service management.

    In Britain we rightly pride ourselves in our ethos of public service – an ethos across all areas of the country and across all political persuasions – and a tradition of distinguished public service in Britain that run deep in our history- a tradition for which people from all over the world rightly look to Britain.

    All of us can tell our own story about the importance of that ethos of the public service – not just about the past but about the present.

    For me, every opportunity I have had – the best schooling, the best chance at university, the best health care when ill – every opportunity I have enjoyed owes its origin to the decisions the British people made to open up opportunity, and ensure there are decent public services.

    Just as good teachers have an extraordinary power to make a difference to peoples lives – so too we know nurses and doctors who everyday can make the difference between life and death – social workers, who can transform hopelessness into hope – home helps and care assistants who for the frailest and the weakest make public service the mark of civility – street orderlies and ancillaries who show by their commitment why public service is about improving the quality of life. And if you’ve ever been involved in an emergency remember the calm unflappable skill, the professionalism, and offering self-sacrifice of all our public service.

    It shows we are not simply self interested individuals isolated or sufficient unto ourselves but men and women who share the pain of others, a belief in something bigger than ourselves, and who – to paraphrase Robert Kennedy – see pain and seek to heal it see suffering and seek to triumph over it see injustice and seek to overcome it.

    Each time a good is done it sends out a message that duty, obligation and service are at the heart of a country that believes there is such thing as a society.

    And it is from these acts of selfless dedication inspired by a higher ideal of duty and obligation that not just the ethos of public service is shaped but the very character of our country.

    And just as under this government a NHS will be modernised for the coming generation as a national health service free at the point of need – so too public services will be reformed for the coming generation as locally managed public services there to serve the public.

    If by our actions you or I, each of us, could lift just one child out of poverty, give one young person a chance of training and a job, give one more person suffering from pain the chance of the help they deserve, give one more classroom the books and computers it needs, secure for one more pensioner a greater measure of dignity and decency in retirement, then we are doing something not just for ourselves but for our communities.

    But if working together, national and local government, we can be at the service of whole communities, we can do far more- giving every child the best start in life, creating a Britain where there is employment opportunity for all, offering security for the elderly in retirement, building from the foundation of economic stability public services we can all be proud of. Working together in our partnership of principle.

    This is our shared challenge and – working together in partnership – that can be our achievement.

  • Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Press Club in Washington

    Gordon Brown – 2001 Speech to the Press Club in Washington

    The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Washington, the United States, on 17 December 2001.

    Let me first on behalf of Tony Blair and the entire UK Government, which has been proud to be America’s first and strongest ally from the first moment the planes struck the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, salute the courage of America in face of tragedy: your bravery and resilience in the most testing of times.

    America has shown by the actions of all its people that while buildings can be destroyed, values are indestructible; while hearts are broken, hope is unbreakable; and while lives have ended, the cause of liberty never dies.

    The war that together we are fighting against terrorism – not as a war for territory but as a war for values – we will win.  Of that I am confident. But the question I want to address today is how we will win the peace.

    This is not the first time the world has faced this question – so fundamental and far-reaching.  In the 1940s, after the greatest of wars, visionaries in America and elsewhere looked ahead to a new world and – in their day and for their times — built a new world order.

    And what they sought to create was not simply a new military and political settlement that guaranteed peace but also new rules and institutions for a new international economic and social order that would guarantee prosperity.

    Coming to America from Europe – the beneficiary of that post 1945 American generosity – I can testify to the greatness of the achievement.  Indeed such was its scale that one of the architects of the new order – Dean Acheson – recalled that he had been present at the creation.

    In the truest sense they fought on after victory.  They understood that, tempting as it might be, a retreat into isolationism was neither possible nor desirable.  And what they achieved as they fought their day’s greatest evil – totalitarianism – is what we must seek to achieve as we fight today’s greatest evil – terrorism.

    I want to urge that together we form a new global alliance for prosperity that starts from the shared needs, common interests and linked destinies of developed and developing worlds working together.

    I want to describe how America’s post-Second World War achievement in what we now call the Marshall Plan should be our inspiration in this post-cold war world — not just for the reconstruction of Afghanistan but for the entire developing world.

    The plan proposed by US Secretary of State George Marshall transferred one per cent of national income every year, for four years, from America to Europe – in total the equivalent in today’s money of 75 billion dollars – not as an act of charity, but as a frank recognition that, like peace, prosperity was indivisible; that to be sustained it had to be shared; and that to achieve this goal would require a new public purpose and international action on a massive scale.

    Marshall and his colleagues also understood that the challenge extended far wider than the war-torn countries and was about more than temporary aid;  that by combining historic American compassion with enlightened self interest not only did they advance the spread of prosperity but the spread of democracy too.  Indeed by identifying undemocratic as well as unstable regimes as a problem – and the attainment of democratic reform as well as economic reform as a solution – the world could best move forward.

    This is what George Marshall meant when, in his great Harvard speech, he articulated his great, unifying vision for a global fight, not against one country or one ideology, but against “hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos”.

    And this is why he proposed to transfer resources on such a scale: not merely to secure “a working economy in the world” but, even more important, to “permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist”.

    These were George Marshall’s fundamental aims in 1947, and his vision resonated across the decades that followed – defining the very character of the next half century, defining the very essence of global cooperation.

    And they ring with relevance in our own time too.

    Just as the urgent needs of Greece and Turkey provided the catalyst for the Marshall Plan, today’s plans for global reconstruction are precipitated by a specific challenge – that of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Like our predecessors, we understand that national safety and global reconstruction are inextricably linked.  Like them we see the need for a new economic leadership – a comprehensive plan that goes beyond temporary relief to wholesale economic and social development. Like them we see the need for a new global economic and social order grounded in both rights and responsibilities accepted by all. Like theirs, our proposals call on the poorest countries themselves to rise to the challenge.

    But while there are parallels between our time and 50 years ago no historical analogies can ever be exact.  Far more so than in Marshall’s time, our interdependence means that what happens to the poorest citizen in the poorest country can directly affect the richest citizen in the richest country. And while the Marshall Plan deserves an honoured place in our history its remedies cannot be blindly or rigidly applied to efforts to solve the challenges of today and the future.

    The Marshall Plan was constructed in a post-war world of distinct national economies in need of rebuilding.  Our job is now, in a more interdependent world, to help build – for the first time – market economies for a wholly different environment of open not sheltered economies, international not national capital markets, and global not local competition.

    And 50 years on we not only see more clearly our interdependence but the gap between what technology enables us to do – abolish poverty – and the reality of 110 million children without schooling, 7 million avoidable child deaths each year and 1 billion of our citizens in poverty.

    It is for these reasons that the whole international community – the IMF, World Bank, the UN and each of our countries – has solemnly committed to the most ambitious development goals for 2015: to halve world poverty, cut child mortality by two thirds and guarantee every child primary education.

    Our plan is this:  developing countries must pursue corruption-free policies for stability, for opening up trade and for creating a favourable environment for investment.  In return, we should be prepared to increase by 50 billion a year in the years to 2015 vitally needed funds to achieve these agreed millennium development goals.

    The development funding I propose is not aid in the traditional sense to compensate for poverty, but new investment in the future to address the causes of poverty.  In the last 50 years the Marshall Plan’s European model could not be applied wholesale to developing countries because neither the economic foundations nor the necessary open, transparent and accountable systems for managing the public sector were properly in place to prevent corruption and waste.  And too often we saw development funding as short term charity aid, charity for being poor, instead of for a higher and more substantial purpose – long term investment tied to tackling the underlying roots of poverty and promoting sustainable growth.

    Indeed the proposal I am making today will work only if we see development assistance in this light:  more effective in-country use of funds to help countries invest and compete; the multi-national pooling of budgets and the proper monitoring of their use to achieve the greatest cost effectiveness of new investment; untying aid so maximising its efficiency in diminishing poverty; and development funding conditional on pursuing agreed goals for social and economic development.

    Indeed our proposals are designed to create the best environment for private investment to take off and flourish by increasing funds for investment in health and education – not typically areas in which private capital flows but areas in which public investment is necessary to create an environment in which private investment can flourish.

    Our vision of the way forward — akin to Marshall’s challenge to rich and poor countries alike — is that by each meeting their obligations for change all countries can benefit.

    For the poorest countries: new responsibilities – to pursue transparent corruption free policies for stability and the attraction of private investment – and new opportunities – with access to increased trade and development supported by a transfer of resources from rich to poor for investment in health and education.

    For the richest countries: new responsibilities – to open our markets to reform our international institutions and to transfer resources – and yet new opportunities too – increased trade and a globalisation that works in the public interest.

    In future no country genuinely committed to pro-stability, pro-trade and pro-investment policies should be denied the chance of progress through the lack of basic investment in education, health and the basic infrastructure for economic development.

    And this is our answer to globalisation and to the critics of globalisation.

    Some critics say the issue is whether we should have globalisation or not.  In fact, the issue is whether we manage globalisation well or badly, fairly or unfairly.

    Globalisation can be for the people or against the people.  Poorly managed, globalisation can create a vicious circle of poverty, widening inequality and increasing resentment. Managed wisely it can lift millions out of deprivation and become the high road to a more just and inclusive global economy.

    Our answer to anti-globalisation campaigners – as I will demonstrate today – is that we shall not retreat from globalisation.

    Instead we will advance social justice on a global scale – and we will do so with greater global cooperation not less, and with stronger, not weaker, international institutions.

    We will best help the poor not by opting out or by cutting cooperation across the world, but by strengthening that cooperation, modernising our international rules and radically reforming the institutions of economic cooperation to meet the new challenges.

    Rules of the game for the global economy

    So what are the building blocks for putting this new alliance for prosperity in place?

    The first is the most basic: the pursuit by developing countries of corruption free, pro-stability policies building their capacity to compete and improving the terms on which they participate in the global economy.

    Round the world the importance of monetary regimes that ensure low inflation is now well understood. There is a greater consensus now than ever before that there is no long term trade off between inflation and growth or unemployment and that without control of inflation long term growth is impossible.

    But building from that basic understanding, we need to do more to ensure stability in a new world of ever more rapid financial flows.

    Developing countries who need capital most are at the same time the most vulnerable to the judgments of global financial markets.

    We know that capital is more likely to move to environments which are stable and least likely to stay in environments which are or become unstable.  And such flows today are quicker than ever they have been before.   So for every country, rich or poor, macroeconomic stability is not an option but an essential pre-condition of economic success.

    And I have become convinced that it is in the interests of stability – and of preventing crises in developing and emerging market countries – that we seek a new rules-based system — a reformed system of economic governance under which each country, rich and poor, adopts and operates agreed codes and standards for fiscal and monetary policy and for corporate governance.

    Clear transparent procedures for monetary and fiscal decisions include presenting a full factual picture of the national accounts, usable central bank reserves, foreign currency borrowings, and indicators of the health of the financial sectors. Such openness – and a willingness to be monitored for it – would improve macroeconomic stability, deter corruption, provide to markets the flow of specific country- by-country information necessary to engender greater investor confidence and reduce the likelihood of contagion. Operating such codes can also support countries along the way to liberalisation of their capital markets, offering them a route map to avoid destabilising and speculative inflows.

    Just as I believe that – over time – the implementation of codes and standards should be a condition for IMF and World Bank support, so too I believe that the international community should offer direct assistance, transitional help and – in some specific and difficult cases – compensation for the early implementation of such codes.

    And where countries do operate transparent and effective policies, the IMF’s contingent credit line facility should play a far more proactive role in helping member countries strengthen their financial position, guard against contagion and thus avoid crises.

    So these codes are not incidental to the financial architecture for the new global economy: they are the financial architecture for the new global economy, as we move from a global economy which has simply let crises happen to one where we work to diminish their likelihood.

    Our capacity to prevent crises is enhanced not just by the operation of codes and standards – and the offer of proportionate help to countries who adopt them – but also by rigorous surveillance, effective international early warning procedures and a more consistent engagement by the private sector.

    The new architecture must therefore involve an enhanced role and authority for the IMF, monitoring and reporting on the operation of codes and standards, and my proposal is that we make the IMF’s surveillance and monitoring functions independent of the inter-governmental decisions about financial support for crisis resolution.

    Alongside greater independence for the IMF, the capacity to prevent crises would be improved by expanding the work of the financial stability forum – which brings together the combined expertise of the IMF and key regulatory authorities – as an international early warning system to tackle national financial sector problems which have international repercussions.

    Where governments discharge their responsibilities for transparency and subject themselves to surveillance, then commensurately increased responsibilities by the private sector should include a willingness to participate in ongoing dialogue with their host countries to identify problems early and develop cooperative solutions for restoring stability.

    Where crises do occur, better crisis resolution procedures should involve private creditors, with improved arrangements for the use of standstills and more effective international bankruptcy procedures.

    Investment

    Open, transparent and accountable national policies, internationally monitored, are the foundation for monetary and fiscal stability. But to ensure the long term investment necessary for growth and development we must do far more.

    Rich and poor countries must work together to make investment itself more attractive to both domestic and foreign lenders and find better ways for public and private sectors to cooperate to raise investment levels.

    Experience from the 80s onwards has moved us on from the assumption that just by liberalising, deregulating, privatising and simply getting prices right, growth and employment would inevitably follow – a set of assumptions that has proved inadequate to meet the emerging challenges of globalisation in for example Asia where public investment has played a catalytic role in securing growth.

    In the new paradigm low inflation and fiscal stability are necessary but not sufficient conditions for securing employment and growth. The new paradigm recognises other drivers of growth in:

    • The pursuit of competition and not just privatisation,
    • The importance of public as well as private investment not least in education,
    • And the need for sound laws and proper financial supervision as well as liberalisation including a route map sequencing the liberalisation of capital markets.

    Indeed the country owned poverty reduction strategies  – imaginatively led by Horst Köhler at the IMF and Jim Wolfensohn at the World Bank – are now correctly focusing on creating the right domestic conditions for investment and have highlighted the contribution of public investment to development in infrastructure, sound laws of contract and legal processes that deter corruption, and an educated and healthy workforce.

    The challenge is immense:  while in the last decade foreign direct investment flows across national boundaries, including to and between developing countries, have increased fourfold – dwarfing aid – the poorest and least developed countries languish under a double handicap – insufficient foreign investment and inadequate domestically generated savings, with the result that investment per head is in Africa less than 50 dollars a year.

    I believe that in return for developing countries implementing codes and standards, there can and should be a new engagement by business as reliable and long term partners in economic development.

    Indeed where developing countries guarantee transparency and proper legal and financial systems that deter corruption, the developed world and business should work together to raise levels of investment.  One way forward is joint investment forums.  These councils would bring public and private sectors together, examine the current barriers to investment and discuss in the light of regional conditions how developing countries can secure higher levels of business investment and take the first steps in the international marketplace through intra-regional trade.

    And companies investing in developing countries should seek to answer one of the main fears of anti-globalisation campaigners: that where there is no cross border corporate accountability large companies can often seem more powerful than the elected governments of the countries in which they operate.  One way forward is adopting the OECD international standards of best practice for corporate responsibility and advancing both the global compact – introduced by Kofi Annan in 1999 – and the global reporting initiative under which multinationals assess their impact on developing countries.

    Trade

    The third building block is progress on trade.  We know that developing countries that are open and trade have seen faster growth rates than closed economies. Indeed it is a matter of record that in the last half century no country has managed to lift itself out of poverty without participating in the global economy.

    Full trade liberalisation could lift at least 300 million out of poverty by 2015. Even diminishing by 50 per cent protectionist tariffs in agriculture and in industrial goods and services would boost the worlds yearly income by nearly 400 billion, a boost to growth of 1.4 per cent. And while developing countries would gain the most – an estimated $150 billion a year – all countries and regions stand to benefit.

    That is why we strongly welcome the WTO agreement in Doha to launch a new trade round focused on development. And in the next phase we must take forward the agreements to open up trade in agriculture, build the capacity of developing countries to participate more effectively in the negotiations and open up greater access to medicines.

    Indeed all developed countries should offer access to all but military products from the least developed countries and by banning export credit guarantees for unproductive expenditure discourage and diminish the diversion to arms expenditure of resources needed for education and health.

    Financing development

    Progress on trade could be worth 150 billion dollars a year to the poorest countries, three times the development aid they receive today. So in addition to policies for stability and investment, new policies for open trade are fundamental building blocks of the new alliance for progress.

    But there cannot be a solution to the urgent problems of poverty the poorest countries face without a fourth reform: a substantial increase in development funds for investment in the very least developed countries.

    By insisting on dissociating aid from the award of contracts, gains to anti-poverty programmes can be as high as 25 per cent; more effective in-country use of aid can secure further resources for anti poverty work; and better collaboration among donors – pooling of budgets, monitoring of their use to achieve economies of scale and hence greater cost effectiveness and targeting of aid – can also maximise the efficiency of aid in diminishing poverty.

    Most of all we must move from providing short term aid just to compensate for poverty to a higher and more sustainable purpose, that of aid as long term investment to tackle the causes of poverty by promoting growth.

    The Zedillo Report, whose authors included several prominent Americans, costed meeting the Millennium Development Goals at a total of $50 billion a year, including $20 billion for anti-poverty programmes and nearly $10 billion for education. To meet this challenge my proposal involves the creation of a new international development trust fund which builds on the existing achievements of the World Bank and the IMF but goes further by seeking to address the sheer lack of investment from which the poorest countries suffer.

    From the fund, countries operating the poverty reduction strategies can draw investment support and it might be overseen by a new joint implementation committee of the World Bank, IMF and possibly member countries.  To minimise bureaucracy its resources distributed through the existing mechanisms used in the poverty reduction strategies.

    Because we must never return to the unsustainable burdens of debt of the 80s and 90s, the very poorest and most vulnerable countries should receive investment help for poverty reduction in the form primarily of grants to partner their soft IDA loans. All other low income countries should be offered interest free loans.  Some beneficiaries will be countries with millions of poor but today classified as middle income countries. Here assistance should be in the form of interest reduced loans, conditional upon implementing agreed poverty reduction strategies and reforms with a national monitoring process including civil society.

    In recent months proposals have been made for new and innovative ways to meet this funding gap – the Tobin Tax, arms tax, an airline fuel tax, IMF special drawing rights.  The European commission is examining the Tobin Tax and we are open to investigating other proposals in addition to our suggested development fund.

    But in today’s world every international initiative relies ultimately on approval by national governments and their peoples. And it comes down, in the end, to the duties national governments – especially the richest national governments – recognise and are prepared to discharge.

    There are many proposals that have been put forward.  We are open to a discussion of their effectiveness.  But if we are to move with the urgency that the scale of today’s suffering demands, we must each as national governments, be bold and recognize the duties of the richest parts of the developed world to the poorest and least developed parts of the same world.

    Through richer countries making a long term commitment of increased resources for development for, say, 30 years and with national governments offering a guarantee, either through callable reserves or appropriate collateral as security, it is possible to lever up these contributions to meet our target for extra funds now.

    In this way, each year 50 billions dollars more could be available to the poorest countries for investing in economic development.

    These proposals are challenging but they are achievable.

    The international community has already made a commitment to raising the level of overseas development assistance to 0.7 per cent of GDP.   And in Britain since 1997 we have increased the aid budget of the Department for International Development to 3.6 billion pounds – a 45 per cent increase by 2004.  And we are committed to making substantial additional progress.

    Today I am challenging each country to accept their responsibility to play their part and to go further than they have been prepared to go in the past. And it is right that there now be a full debate in the IMF, World Bank and the United Nations as we prepare for next spring’s Financing for Development Conference at Monterrey.

    Conclusion

    Marshall’s plan was investment for a purpose for a Europe rebuilt.  He summoned forth a new alliance for prosperity between rich and poor countries that, for his time, played a vital part in winning the peace.

    So too today – summoning up the spirit of Marshall – the new plan I suggest for developing countries is investment for a purpose, so that they can play their part in a peaceful world.

    By each meeting their obligations for change all can benefit.

    First, the obligations on developing countries: to end corruption, put in place stable economic policies, to invite investment, to meet their commitment to community ownership of their poverty reduction strategies and to ensure resources go to fighting poverty including education and health.

    Second, the obligations on business to engage with the development challenge and not to walk away, including participating in business investment forums and playing their part in preventing and resolving economic crises.

    Third, the obligations on the world community as a whole  – international institutions – to reform systems to ensure greater transparency and openness, to open up trade and the opportunities for faster development and to focus on priorities that meet the international development targets.

    Fourth, the obligations on the richest governments to the poorest of the world – our commitment to tackling the inequalities through a substantial and decisive transfer of resources; not aid that entrenches dependency but investment that empowers development – investment money that is, in the truest sense of the world, increasing the capacity of the poorest countries.

    A $50 billion a year investment fund that invites applications for health, education and anti poverty work will help build the capacity of the poorest countries to compete and engage. And is the high road to a more just and inclusive global economy.

    Our answer to anti-globalisation protestors is that, in the spirit of Marshall, we shall not retreat from globalisation.  Rather, we will advance social justice on a global scale, as today’s global alliance for peace is transformed into tomorrow’s global alliance for prosperity.

    Since September 11th, President Bush, your government, your armed forces and your people have led a great and global effort worthy of America’s history and its ideals.

    With steadfast resolve we work together to win the war against terrorism.  Now, in the great tradition of Truman, Marshall, and that earlier generation, let us also resolve to fight on after victory. Let us together seize our moment of opportunity to win the peace.

    In the words of Victor Hugo:

    “The future has many names
    For the weak it is unattainable
    For the fearful it is unknown
    For the bold it is opportunity”

    This can be our permanent memorial to those whose lives have been lost – that, in remembrance of them, we build the world anew.

    Let it be our generation that takes up the challenge and discharges our duty to remove the scar of poverty and hopelessness from the worlds soul.

    Let it be our generation that shows those who suffer in the bleakest places of the world that we can light a candle of hope which, radiating outwards, can cut through the darkness and shame of injustice and emblazen across the world a message of confidence and faith in the future.

  • Dawn Primarolo – 2001 Speech to the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce

    Dawn Primarolo – 2001 Speech to the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce

    The speech made by Dawn Primarolo, the then Paymaster General, on 12 December 2001.

    Ladies and Gentlemen,

    I am delighted to be here in Zurich today and very pleased to have the opportunity to address such a distinguished audience. I know that the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce plays an important role in developing the commercial relationships between our two countries And I applaud the success of your efforts not only in relation to trade but also in promoting friendship and understanding between the British and Swiss peoples. The value of that contribution is fully recognised by the British government and I am confident that your work will continue to strengthen the ties that we are here to celebrate.

    The United Kingdom and Switzerland have a particular affinity as world leaders in banking and international finance. We often find ourselves in competition in the market. But we share a common understanding of the elements that have to be in place to enable our banking and financial sector to develop and prosper.

    Both of our countries have enjoyed a long period of stability in our political structures. And that stability provides an essential foundation for economic prosperity and growth. It has reinforced the attractions of our two countries to international investors and has enabled us to offer a firm base for stable and successful banking businesses.

    As you know, I am here primarily on inter-governmental business and to meet the leaders of the Swiss banking community. And I am grateful to all those that I have met for making their time available to me.

    As the minister responsible for business taxation within Her Majesty’s Treasury, I want to take this opportunity to say a few opening words about our approach to business taxation and then to spend some time on what I see primarily as a banking industry issue.

    The year ahead looks set to be fuller than most of developments in the area of corporate taxation. On the European front, we have the promise of the Commission’s conference on company taxation; and a number of initiatives that they have recently announced in such areas as transfer pricing and cross border loss relief. The Commission has set out its priorities and there will be no shortage of issues to discuss under the Spanish and Danish presidencies. And, of course, my own work, as Chair of the Code of Conduct Group, will continue as we tie together the strands in the tax package for the end of 2002.

    In the UK, we see economic reform as the priority for the European Union and taxation as an issue under that umbrella. In Brussels, there is some danger that discussion on taxation takes on a life of its own. We need to guard against that and against the danger of introspection.

    In our domestic economy, we have continued to work towards a more neutral system of business taxation. But we have also seen it as a responsibility of government to intervene in areas where there has been significant market failure. And to take action where we believe there is an opportunity to bring about change that will help us achieve higher, sustainable levels of economic growth.

    For example, we are currently consulting with business on a range of improvements to our corporate tax system. Among them is a proposal to extend to large companies the system of tax credits for research and development that we successfully introduced for small and medium sized companies.

    Research and development, with its spill-over benefits into the wider economy, is essential to sustainable growth. And the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has already signalled our conviction that there should be wider support across the European Union, for a higher level of commitment to research and development spending to raise the quality and volume of the r&d carried out in Europe.

    There are many challenges ahead in the process of economic reform and changes in taxation can undoubtedly contribute to the better fulfilment of the objectives set at Stockholm and Lisbon.

    But let me return to the banking industry and, in particular, to the subject of private banking.

    I am particularly pleased to have had the opportunity yesterday and today, to meet representatives of the private banking businesses based in Switzerland and to enter into a dialogue with them.

    I have spent only 24 hours here but, with grateful thanks to my hosts, I already feel that I have a much better understanding of the private banking sector. And a better appreciation of the factors that contribute to a successful relationship between the banker and his client and, therefore, to a successful private banking business.

    It is not simply the efficiency and service levels of the bank itself or the returns on the funds invested. Both of these are important, but to be successful the private banker has to offer more than that.

    There has to be mutual trust. There has to be respect and confidence. And, from the banker, there has to be a sense of obligation – obligation that is more deeply rooted than the simple obligation of a deposit-taker to its depositors. It is these qualities that differentiate the private bank from the mass market provider.

    And underpinning all of this is reputation. Without reputation, at home and abroad, there is no prospect of building a successful private banking business.

    I want to stop with reputation for a moment. Politicians and private bankers. We both rely to an enormous extent on our reputations. In politics, a reputation can be lost irretrievably by a careless word or act, by an omission, by a failure to see that the world has moved on. And through the continual public gaze of media attention.

    Governments of every shade of opinion, around the world, and the individual politicians within them have become increasingly aware of the pressures of public interest and have had to respond to them. The media reflect the public desire to know and it is a brave or foolish politician who tries simply to put up barriers to it.

    Increasingly, we are pressed for greater transparency – in our lives and in our decision-making. And most of us would have to agree, that transparency is essential in a democratic society.

    But these are not pressures that are unique to politicians. I think that it would be fair to say that most of us in this room feel the demands for greater openness and more transparency in the different facets of our everyday lives.

    Within financial services, investors are looking for greater transparency and improved information when financial products are sold; and so are the regulators that serve them. And when it comes to fees, commissions and charges, investors and regulators are looking for that same openness and transparency. We can all point to situations where transparency has been lacking , investors misled and products mis-sold.

    Transparency has a cost. It has a cost for politicians as well as for bankers. But it is a cost that we have both to accept. Because without transparency in what we do and how we do it, without the ability to withstand scrutiny, there is no reputation. And without reputation, neither politician nor banker can stay in business for long.

    Coming out of September 11th, I think that all of us have had some re-assessments to make. We have had to look again at what is really important to us and what isn’t. Where our obligations lie and to whom. And above all, how we need to act to be worthy of our reputations. The last few months have been a time of action but they have also been a time for reflection.

    Terrorism is a serious crime. And there can have been few crimes more serious than those carried out in Washington and New York on September 11th.. We rightly take action to strengthen our hand against those within our societies that would seek to damage or destroy them and against those who provide the terrorists with the financial means to do so.

    But these are not the only threats that we face. And this is not the only kind of crime against which we need to strengthen our laws.

    It is easy to turn our backs on other forms of crime, particularly those forms of crime that are much less dramatic, involve no violence against the person and that apparently have no victims. But financial crime is crime none the less.

    When the crime is tax evasion, it shifts the burden from the evader to the honest citizen. And the victims are all of those – all of us who – pay more as a result, or who go without the services that additional tax revenues would have funded.

    I just want to pause here a moment. And to put down some points about taxation, tax competition and tax evasion. Because some of the things that I have read recently make me think there is scope for misunderstanding here in Switzerland and I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.

    Bruno Spinner, the Swiss ambassador to London, recently summarised the EU and OECD action against harmful tax competition as “…high tax countries… resisting the outflows of capital to countries which impose only modest taxes, or none at all…”.

    I do not share his analysis.

    I have already said a few words about our approach to taxation in the United Kingdom and our views on taxation in the wider context of economic reform in Europe.

    There was a time when the UK taxed investment income at 98% in the hands of wealthy individuals. The highest marginal rate is now 40%. And the present government has provided many opportunities for tax-favoured investment to encourage savings and a strong and dynamic economy. We have also introduced major capital gains tax changes that give entrepreneurs and investors alike the potential to realise their gains at an effective tax rate of 10%. The UK is not a high-taxing country for individuals.

    Nor is it a high tax country for the corporate sector. We have brought down the headline rates of corporation tax to unprecedented low levels. And we are in the process, as I have explained, of simplifying and modernising the system to provide a more consistent and coherent framework. A system that will allow more structural flexibility to companies than they have ever enjoyed before.

    By global standards, the UK is an attractive place to invest. And we, as a government, are proud of our ability to attract, year in, year out, more inward direct investment than any other country in the world except the US.

    So let’s be clear. The harmful tax competition agenda, from a UK perspective, is not a protectionist agenda. It is aimed at levelling the playing field and opening up markets and opportunities to truly global competition.

    Like the Swiss government, we are committed to tax competition. To fair tax competition. And to the sovereignty of the state in tax matters.

    We respect the right – the absolute right – of sovereign states to tax their citizens as they wish. And we do not stand in their way.

    And we expect, in return, that other sovereign states will not stand in our way. Or prejudice our ability to tax our citizens, our residents, in accordance with the laws that our parliament has passed.

    Like the Swiss government, we have a democratic mandate and our taxation system derives its validity from that mandate. We tax our citizens, our residents, on their world-wide income at their marginal rate and give them credit for foreign taxes suffered. There is nothing radical or new in that approach. It is not unusual as a way of taxing individuals and we believe that it is fair.

    Within any society there are, of course, those who want to make sure that they pay as little as possible to the state in taxation. And while they stay within the law, that is their right.

    But there are unfortunately some who want to pay even less than that. And choosing not to report income is one way, albeit a rather crude way, that some of those individuals seek to side-step their obligation to pay tax.

    This is tax evasion. In the UK, as in many countries, it is a criminal offence. Those who evade tax take advantage of government spending on health or education, roads or railways, power or policing. But don’t want to pay towards it.

    Within the European Union, we have joined the fight against this kind of crime. Against tax evasion. We have agreed, without discrimination, to share information freely, openly and automatically between our revenue authorities about cross border flows of interest to those who are resident in our countries. Subject to all the stringent rules and safeguards that prevent the wider use of that information. And, in doing so, we have committed to making it more difficult for individuals who want to evade their responsibilities towards their neighbours and fellow citizens.

    We would like Switzerland to join us in that project.

    I spoke a few minutes ago about the need for relationships built on trust. On confidence. On a sense of obligation. To be successful in private banking.

    I also spoke about transparency and indeed the increasing demand for transparency from both the public and the regulators.

    And I spoke about reputation, which underpins everything else, whether you are a politician or a banker.

    Switzerland has enjoyed an enviable reputation for its banking business. And many Swiss banks have emerged to become banks of truly international standing.

    When I stand back and reflect on that reputation, I have no doubt as to its strength today. And no doubt about the quality of what has been built on it. Or how its strength is nurtured through bonds of trust, respect and confidence and through the sense of obligation that I referred to earlier.

    And I find it difficult to believe that a reputation and a business as strong as this can be balanced so precariously on the pin-point of banking secrecy.

    I think that Swiss banking is stronger and better than that. And I have become more convinced of that the more of its leaders I have met. And I hope that they will have the confidence to see their reputation burnished by a greater transparency rather than cloaked by an over-attachment to secrecy.

    In the UK, banking and financial services are among our most important industries. And we, like the Swiss, started off by being sceptical of a proposal that looked as if it would only damage those industries without achieving its objective. But we worked with the proposal and, with the increasing help and understanding of other member states, it was refashioned into something more logical and more effective. And something that we are confident will not damage the City even though there will be some additional costs.

    We concluded that we could and should take up the responsibility to join a project to help our neighbours. And ask others to work with us and to join the fight against tax evasion.

    If we had turned our back instead, we would surely have lost our reputation and, in time, we would have lost what had been built on top of it as well.

    These are uncertain times. The global economy has been strong but we have entered a period in which none of us can look to the future without some shadow of recent events passing across our minds.

    We have learned, or perhaps re-learned, the strength that can come from acting together. Nation with nation. Voluntarily. Sharing a common goal. Even where the threat is not, initially, a threat directed at us.

    The bond between the Swiss and the British people is strong. The bond between Swiss and British businesses is strong. And we can celebrate that. And if we value it as well, we can and must continue to work together towards common, achievable goals that will reinforce and strengthen our economic and cultural relations.

    Thank you.