Category: Speeches

  • Steve Baker – 2024 Statement on the United Kingdom Internal Market

    Steve Baker – 2024 Statement on the United Kingdom Internal Market

    The statement made by Steve Baker, the Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2024.

    I beg to move,

    That the draft Windsor Framework (UK Internal Market and Unfettered Access) Regulations 2024, which were laid before this House on 31 January, be approved.

    It is the view of the Government and, I believe, of the overwhelming number of right hon. and hon. Members across the House that the Union ought not be reduced to matters of the law or the constitution alone. Ours is a thriving economic, cultural and political Union whose health is insured, in no small part, by the free flow of trade across it. Enhancing that economic aspect of the Union is the purpose of this second set of regulations before the House today.

    The views of businesses and traders on the progress that we have made are also important in the context of today’s debate. I am pleased to confirm that the early reaction from business has been promising. The view of a collaboration of 14 key Northern Ireland industry bodies was clear yesterday in saying that they welcomed the agreement.

    The Government are clear that the old protocol created unacceptable barriers within our internal market, and I invite anyone to consider the full implementation of the old protocol against what we have achieved in the Windsor framework. The Windsor framework takes major steps forward, and I acknowledge that this is first and foremost an achievement of the Democratic Unionist party and also a great achievement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

    The framework restored the functioning of the UK internal market by ensuring the smooth flow of trade within the UK, and disapplied a range of EU laws, including ensuring that Northern Ireland benefits from the same VAT and alcohol taxes as the rest of the UK. Members of the House can also be encouraged by the smooth functioning of the framework since October 2023, when the first phase of arrangements came on stream, supporting trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I should just say that colleagues did ask me how it was going. I said, “Have you seen any news on it?” Of course, no one has; it has been going very well, and I want to thank and congratulate all those officials here and in Northern Ireland who have made that possible.

    These regulations go further in that aim to strengthen our UK internal market now and in the long term. Following the agreement of the Windsor framework, the border target operating model sets out that we will begin phasing in checks and controls for Irish goods and non-qualifying goods moving from the island of Ireland to Great Britain from 31 January—indeed from yesterday. This is a powerful demonstration of Northern Ireland’s integral place in the UK’s internal market, and it rebuts incorrect claims that it is instead a member of the EU single market. The reality is that third country members of the EU single market will now have full third country processes applied, while Northern Ireland’s businesses will have full unfettered access to their most important market in Great Britain.

    Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)

    The Minister is absolutely right. Perhaps the most powerful illustration of the change that we have secured is to consider what will happen now on the ferry route between Dublin and Holyhead as a result of these new arrangements. A Northern Ireland haulier using that service will board the ferry, travel to Holyhead, leave the ferry and travel straight out of the port and on to their destination, with no customs procedures and with full unfettered access. In contrast, a southern Irish haulier arriving at Holyhead will be subjected to full UK customs procedures at the port before they can proceed. Does he join me in welcoming Northern Ireland’s restoration fully within the UK internal market?

    Mr Baker

    Yes. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in what he has just set out, and I do join him in that. It is a proud day for me, as it is for him, and I join other Members in congratulating him on his courage in bringing all of us this far.

    As a result of these regulations, we now have guarantees for Northern Ireland goods moving to the rest of the UK, via Dublin. This unfettered access is future-proofed, regardless of how rules evolve in either Northern Ireland or Great Britain. These regulations will more squarely focus the benefits of unfettered access on Northern Ireland traders. The regulations tackle avoidance of the rules and ensure that, for agri-food goods to benefit from unfettered access in avoiding sanitary and phytosanitary processes, they must be dispatched from registered Northern Ireland food and feed operators. We will also expressly affirm through these regulations that export procedures will not be applied to goods moving from Northern Ireland to other parts of the UK’s internal market.

    John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)

    It has been said that maybe 80% of goods moving from GB to NI will be able to use the internal market lane. Why will 20% not be able to do so, and why would the UK Government, who I was told were in charge, not want to ensure that practically all goods use the internal market lane?

    Mr Baker

    With great respect to my right hon. Friend, with whom I have gone a very long way in this cause, he might like to revisit the text. The point is that the 80% of goods going on that route are staying in Northern Ireland; they are UK goods. The other 20% are goods that are going on to the European Union. That is the point: 80% is UK internal market trade, and 20% is trade going on to the European Union.

    Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson rose—

    Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)

    Will the Minister give way?

    Mr Baker

    I will. I cannot say that I am astonished; this is the important moment.

    Sammy Wilson

    Does the Minister accept that all the statistics show that it is not true that 20% of the trade that goes through Northern Ireland goes to the Irish Republic? In fact, it is about 0.1% to 0.4%. Much of that trade, which will go through the red lane, consists of goods going into Northern Ireland, either to warehouses or to manufacturers in Northern Ireland. They might never go near the Irish Republic. They might stay in Northern Ireland, go back to GB, or go to the rest of the world, yet such products will still be subject to checks going into Northern Ireland.

    Mr Baker

    I would not accept that. I am not in a position to set out the statistics, and I do not doubt that the statistics need some work applied to them. It pains me to say this, as I have always regarded the right hon. Gentleman as a great friend—he and I have walked a long way together on this and I have always regarded him as an ideological bedfellow, both on the Union and on Brexit—but as his group leader, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), said earlier, we voted for, and fervently supported, the protocol Bill. We said that we were willing to have a red lane in order to safeguard the legitimate interests of our friends and partners—and family members, as the Irish ambassador Martin Fraser said. This was always a family dispute, and we were always going to get through it.

    Our friends in Ireland, and indeed in the EU, have legitimate interests, which we should have the humility to respect. Even if we had acted unilaterally as a single united Parliament, ridden roughshod over any international negotiation and just done what suited ourselves with the protocol Bill, we would have implemented the red lane. I am afraid that I will part company now with anyone who says otherwise. We would rightly have implemented the red lane, even acting unilaterally, out of respect for the legitimate interests of our friends and trading partners.

    Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson

    Will the Minister join me in welcoming the announcement on Tuesday of agreement on a joint legal text that will significantly change the status of goods coming from the rest of the world into Great Britain and travelling on to Northern Ireland? The effect of that change, which is part of the arrangements and the published Command Paper, will be that some 4 million goods movements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland will now be moving out of the red lane and into the UK internal market system. That is this party delivering, and securing real change that ensures that more goods flow freely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, save for those going into the EU or that are at risk of doing so because they are part of a manufacturing process for goods being sold to the EU.

    Mr Baker

    I strongly welcome that intervention. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was going to mention the draft joint agreement on tariff rate quotas. For a while I was concerned that TRQs needed to be applied to Northern Ireland so that Northern Ireland could share fully in the benefits of free trade agreements with the rest of the world.

    I hope to return to this later, but in case I do not have the opportunity to do so, I want to say what an extraordinary situation Northern Ireland is now in. Northern Ireland is not in the single market. I draw everyone’s attention to page 4 of the Command Paper, which sets out checkmarks comparing Northern Ireland with Ireland, as a member of the EU, and with Norway, which is a member of the single market through the European economic area but is not in the customs union or the European Union. Northern Ireland really has the minimum of EU law compatible with unfettered—or privileged, perhaps—goods access to the EU market, and consistent with having an open, infra- structure-free border.

    I wonder at people who thought that we could leave the European Union and establish a hard border, or do absolutely nothing about the border. We were always going to leave the European Union and have special arrangements in relation to Northern Ireland. This is a moment of great feeling for me, because before the referendum vote, I and other colleagues set up a committee of Eurosceptics to consider how we might deal with these issues. I confess that we did not have the SPS and customs expertise to proceed. That then became the great story of this battle.

    If the United Kingdom had united in accepting the result of the referendum, if this Parliament had united in going forward with resolve to further our own interests as an independent nation state outside the EU, but crucially with the humility to respect the legitimate interests of our friends and partners, and if from the beginning we had had united resolve and clarity of vision, I do not doubt that in a spirit of friendship and good will—the kind that exists today between Ireland and us, and between the European Union and us, thanks to the work of the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and others—we would have been, as we are now, in a totally transformed position to make our way forward as friends, respectful of their interests and resolved on ours.

    That is not what happened. The House does not need me to rehearse it. It has taken eight years of drama for us to arrive at this moment, when we have reduced EU law to this extent and put in place a red lane to protect the legitimate interests of Ireland and the EU. That is something that we should all be very proud of, after everything that we have faced and all the risks that could have put us in a far worse position.

    Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)

    I totally understand the need for a red lane to ensure that goods going into the Republic of Ireland are checked, but there is a business in Northern Ireland 98% of whose sales are into Northern Ireland. The stuff all comes to it in one container. Maybe 2% of that load might make its way into the Irish Republic as part of a service agreement with another dealer. I am talking about a major firm in my constituency that has an all-Ireland approach. That means that the red lane applies to every single item, even though 98% of its stuff is used in Northern Ireland, Scotland or England. It is a main distributor, and it will end up having to put all its goods through that. A job of work might need to be done to try to ameliorate its problems.

    Mr Baker

    The hon. Gentleman is right that a job of work will need to be done; I assure him that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has just said that of course it does. I am grateful that we will be doing that further work in a spirit of good will and co-operation through the joint committee with the European Union. If the hon. Gentleman drops an email to my Northern Ireland Office address, I shall be glad to visit the firm with him, bringing officials, and we will see whether we can move further to assist it. I need to find out more about its exact circumstances.

    My goodness, that was a long series of interventions. This legislation ensures that we can avoid any unnecessary gold-plating in the implementation of new arrangements through new statutory guidance on section 46 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, setting out how public authorities should have special regard to Northern Ireland’s place in the UK’s internal market and customs territory, and the need to maintain the free flow of goods from NI to GB. We will take a power through the regulations to issue such statutory guidance, and public authorities will be required to have regard to it. Those changes to the law will help to ensure that public authorities take every proper effort to prevent new barriers to intra-UK trade. In doing so, they will maintain and strengthen the health of the UK internal market in the long term.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

    One issue that greatly vexes those in my party is that farmers in my constituency, and in others, have said that vets now cost even more, as they have to source medicines and devices from an acceptable source. The Command Paper suggests that the issue has not been resolved but will be worked on. Is that a firm demand on the Government, or is it just another working group that will talk about things? My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) has been at the fore on this. We need a person on that committee to push things forward. If we have a solution through the committee, we need a timescale for delivery.

    Mr Baker

    We understand that point and we are listening to the hon. Gentleman and others. We are resolute that of course Northern Ireland must have proper access to veterinary medicines, and will be glad to work with him and others. He will appreciate what the priorities are and have been, and we will certainly continue to make pursuing veterinary medicines a high priority. I am personally resolute on the issue and look forward to pursuing it.

    The regulations must be seen in the context of the overall package agreed between the Government and the DUP. The passage of these regulations demonstrates the Government’s commitment to taking forward that whole package and to maintaining the participation and trust of the whole community in Northern Ireland’s political processes and the Stormont institutions going forward.

    If I may touch on what the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) said earlier, I, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the whole Government are completely committed to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions. As I said to one nationalist politician—about a year ago now, if I recall—it is perfectly possible to be a Unionist and support the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions, just as it is possible to be a nationalist or a republican and support the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions. It is the beauty and the triumph of the agreement that we can all support it and move forward.

    I am trying to say this as gently as possible: I can understand a degree of discomfort from the hon. Gentleman, because this is a big breakthrough for Unionism. A Unionist Conservative Government have agreed to do Unionist things with the Democratic Unionist Party, and that is something I am very proud of. However, that does not in any way diminish our impartiality, or our commitment to governing or seeing to the government of Northern Ireland in a proper manner.

    Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP) rose—

    Mr Baker

    Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, may I just say that I think, after the experience of the last eight years—perhaps the last 14—I need defer to no one in my vociferous commitment to democratic self-determination.

    Colum Eastwood

    The Minister says he supports the Good Friday agreement in all its parts. Does he support the bit that says that the Government should be rigorously impartial?

    Mr Baker

    Yes, I—[Interruption.] I do not quite hear the comment from the leader of the DUP.

    Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson

    Not on the Union!

    Mr Baker

    It has long been said that this is the Conservative and Unionist party and we have long been understood to be a Unionist party. This agreement is entirely consistent with both our Unionism and our full respect for all dimensions of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. We will continue to govern in a spirit of good will and impartiality.

    Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)

    Will my hon. Friend give way?

    Mr Baker

    I will, but after I have given way to my right hon. and learned Friend, I will make progress and finish so that other colleagues can have their say.

    Sir Robert Buckland

    I have listened carefully to the interventions from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and the concerns that he and others will have about the scrapping of the legal obligation with regard to the all-island economy. Is the point not that while, as a UK Government, we have to uphold the rules that apply within our United Kingdom and the promotion of our own internal market, that does not detract from the access to the single market that Northern Ireland businesses will continue to enjoy? That is the compromise that has been reached here. Therefore there is not a binary either/or choice; the hon. Gentleman’s concerns can largely be met and continue to be met in a way that is fully in accordance with the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement.

    Mr Baker

    I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend, who demonstrates his expertise.

    I look forward as much as anyone to the re-establishment of the Assembly and the Executive, and along with that the re-establishment of the north-south institutions. They are much needed and I look forward to their work. I do not mind admitting that I find myself able to work constructively with politicians of all political parties in Northern Ireland, and I am glad to do so.

    Let me return, in concluding, to what is at stake in this process. I firmly believe that all parties in this House and all parties eligible to form part of an Executive want Northern Ireland to work. I have seen what unites political leaders in Northern Ireland: a real determination to make life better for their constituents—and, my goodness, on a wide range of fronts that is necessary—and to allow Northern Ireland to grasp the opportunities of the future—and what opportunities they are. I elaborated on some of the things Northern Ireland has before it right now. If we combine the institutional arrangements before Northern Ireland with the very substantial financial package to transform public services and deal with the public finances, and if Northern Irish politicians reach out and grasp the opportunity now before them, they can make Northern Ireland a beacon to the world—a beacon of prosperity and, I hope, of reconciliation. These regulations are part of that process and I commend them to everyone in the House.

  • James Heappey – 2024 Statement on Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy Eligibility for Afghan special force

    James Heappey – 2024 Statement on Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy Eligibility for Afghan special force

    The statement made by James Heappey, the Minister for Armed Forces, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2024.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to update the House on developments relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme, and to answer the specific question raised by the hon. Gentleman in relation to former members of commando force 333 and Afghan territorial force 444.

    Many colleagues across the House are passionate advocates for applicants to the ARAP scheme—whether they served shoulder to shoulder with them in Afghanistan, or represent applicants and their family members who are residents in their constituencies. We owe a debt of gratitude to those brave individuals who served for, with, or alongside our armed forces in support of the UK mission in Afghanistan. Defence is determined to honour the commitments we made under the ARAP scheme, which is why we have robust checks in place and regularly review processes and procedures.

    Although many former members of the Afghan specialist units have been found eligible under ARAP and safely relocated to the UK with their families, a recent review of processes around eligibility decisions demonstrated instances of inconsistent application of the ARAP criteria in certain cases. The issue relates to a tranche of applications from former members of Afghan specialist units, including members of CF 333 and ATF 444—known as the Triples. Having identified this issue through internal processes, we must now take necessary steps to ensure that the criteria are applied appropriately to all those individuals.

    As such, I can confirm that the Ministry of Defence will undertake a reassessment of all eligibility decisions made for applications with credible claims of links to the Afghan specialist units. The reassessment will be done by a team independent of the one that made the initial eligibility decisions on the applications. The team will review each case thoroughly and individually. A written ministerial statement to that effect was tabled this morning, and I commend it to colleagues. A further “Dear colleague” letter will follow by close of business tomorrow.

    It is the case, however, that ARAP applications from this cohort present a unique set of challenges for eligibility decision making. Some served in their units more than two decades ago, and some while the Afghan state apparatus was still in its infancy or yet to come into existence all together. It is also the case that they reported directly into the Government of Afghanistan, meaning that we do not hold comprehensive employment or payment records in the same way as we do for other applicants.

    I fully understand the depth of feeling that ARAP evokes across this place and beyond. I thank Members from across the House for their ongoing advocacy and support for ARAP. We have that same depth of feeling in the MOD and in Government, and we will now work quickly to make sure that the decisions are reviewed, and changed if that is necessary.

    Luke Pollard

    Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

    The Triples Afghan special forces, trained and funded by the UK, are some of the top targets for Taliban reprisals. Around 200 Triples face imminent deportation from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and at least six members of the Triples are reported to have been murdered by the Taliban since the withdrawal from Kabul. Ministers have allowed media speculation to build for almost a week before setting out to Parliament today the Government’s plan to U-turn and look again at the applications.

    The Minister highlighted inconsistencies in processing the applications—failures, flaws. How was that allowed to happen on his watch? How long will the reviews take, and what new information will be factored in? Tragically, today’s decision could be too late for many. Does the Minister know how many of the Triples who were wrongly denied support have already been deported to Afghanistan, tortured or killed? What conversations has he had with Pakistan to halt deportations of those who could now be granted sanctuary? There is no time to waste.

    The least the Triples deserve is clarity over ARAP policy, but for months a public spat has played out between the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and the Minister for Armed Forces. We should all remember that the people who matter here are those Afghans who have been left in limbo, fearing for their lives and their futures. That is why clarity matters. Britain’s moral duty to assist Afghans is felt most fiercely by those in the UK forces who served alongside them, many of whom sit on both sides of the House. British personnel who have offered references to former Triples say that they were never even contacted by the Ministry of Defence. Many of their ARAP applications were denied. Will such basic errors happen again, or will that be reviewed properly?

    The British public do not understand why Afghan special forces personnel who served and fought alongside our troops and who are eligible for safety have not yet received sanctuary here. Will the Minister now sort this out?

    James Heappey

    I know that the hon. Gentleman, who has been advocating for some cases and is as passionate about the matter as anybody, will feel aggrieved, as will many colleagues around the House. The responsibility of any Minister is to own any failure of process that happens in their Department, and I accept that responsibility.

    The reality is that these are very difficult decisions to make. The hon. Gentleman said that the Triples were funded by the UK Government. That is not entirely accurate; they were funded as a donor alongside many other donors, into the Government of Afghanistan, who funded the units. As he will well know from colleagues on his own Benches who commanded units that worked closely with the Triples, top-up payments were made in order to generate loyalty and, frankly, to avoid the Triples being poached by other coalition partners, which had similar forces of their own.

    The records of those top-up payments were very ad hoc. I take my responsibilities for accuracy to the House seriously, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman in all seriousness that we have looked for employment records and none of those ad hoc records of additional payments is available to us. We have spoken to colleagues who have experience of these matters in the House and beyond, to ask for any records that they have, but even then a lot of the records produced are those that are put together by charities advocating for the Triples, rather than contemporary records of those top-up payments.

    The reality is that whatever the challenges have been, some decisions were made in an inconsistent way. That is why they must be reviewed. We will aim to get the review done as quickly as possible—we anticipate that it will take around 12 weeks. Before that, we need to put in place the people who will do the review, who will be independent of everything that has gone before. In the first instance, it will be a review of the robustness of the decisions themselves, and where it finds that decisions were not robust, we will, of course, seek new information both from the applicant and from colleagues in the House who have advocated for them.

    The shadow Minister makes some good points about what this means for people who are in Pakistan. It is impossible to say who, of those who were not already in the pipeline as approved applicants, has been deported. We do not track that, so I cannot answer his specific question but, of course, we will alert the Government of Pakistan to those who are included within the review, so that they can enjoy the same protection from deportation as those who have already been approved and are awaiting their onward move to the UK.

    The shadow Minister necessarily points to the politics and the alleged disagreement among Conservative Members —that is the nature of his role—but I am simply not motivated by such things. The reality is that we are trying our best to bring as many people to the UK from Afghanistan as possible. Some decisions are relatively straightforward, because we hold the employment records, but others are far more complicated. Although there have undoubtedly been some decisions that are not robust and need to be reviewed, I put on record that the people involved in making those decisions, across the MOD, have been working their hardest and doing their best. I stand up for their service and for what they have done, and I take responsibility for their shortcomings.

  • Kwasi Kwarteng – 2024 Statement on Standing Down at General Election

    Kwasi Kwarteng – 2024 Statement on Standing Down at General Election

    The statement made by Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 6 February 2024.

    Yesterday I informed my Association Chair of my decision not to stand at the next General Election. It has been an honour to serve the residents of Spelthorne since 2010, and I shall continue to do so for the remainder of my time in Parliament.

  • Grant Shapps – 2024 Speech at the World Defense Show

    Grant Shapps – 2024 Speech at the World Defense Show

    The speech made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Defence, in Saudi Arabia on 4 February 2024.

    60 years ago, the skies above Riyadh bore witness to a remarkable demonstration as a supersonic aircraft shot into the atmosphere at twice the speed of sound.

    Just two years later and 40 of those iconic English Electric Lightning jets were heading to Saudi Arabia where they became as revered an icon of the skies over here as they were back in the UK.

    Yet that special flight also seemed to send our own partnership into the stratosphere.

    1964 saw the first British military mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, and 14 years after that we brought across a project team which has been supporting you with advice, information and communications service ever since.

    So that one pioneering flight demonstrated ours is a partnership built from the strongest of frames. An understanding of the value of Defence, an appreciation of the merits of innovation, and a desire to keep working together.

    And how fitting then that 60 years on, here at this fantastic World Defense Show, we are once again celebrating a partnership that’s putting on the afterburners.

    Not only can we reflect on a mutual commitment to combat air that’s taken us from Lightning, to Tornado, to Typhoon – with hundreds of UK military personnel now committed to Saudi programmes.

    But we have also stepped up the pace on the ground as well, with our Defence Cooperation Plan catalysing deeper cooperation between our Land Forces.

    However, my purpose in attending this great exhibition is not to reminisce about our past, nor even to reflect on our present, it is to talk about our future.

    Because if the incredible story of the Lightning tells us anything, it’s that when an opportunity arises in our mutual interests, we know how to seize it together.

    And frankly, when I look around me, I see opportunity abounds.

    Yours is a nation buzzing with energy. Creating new cities out of sand, redefining sport by hosting the World Cup in E-sports. Spearheading the charge towards a greener future.

    Yet if there’s one event that seemed to encapsulate your sense of ambition, it was what happened last year, when Saudi fighter pilot and astronaut, Ali Al-Qarni, and his crew member, Rayyanah Barnawi, became the first two Saudi astronauts to visit the International Space Station.

    Proof – if it were needed – that you are nation in fast forward.

    You’ve bottled lightning, and now you’re accelerating towards the future with increasing velocity.

    The UK wants to be on that journey with you. But there’s only one thing that can pull us back down to earth.

    Instability.

    For decades our prosperity and progress has been underpinned by the international rules-based order, yet today we live in a far more dangerous world. Our once reliable order is under threat from the likes of big state aggressors and from rogue states, whose terrorist proxies are hell-bent on destroying our freedom and damaging our wealth.

    So now is the time to tighten our ties.

    How? First by working together – in the words of your conference, to be equipped for tomorrow.

    Once upon a time we showcased a jet in your skies. Today we’ve brought more than 30 of our finest UK firms to your show, including a Wildcat helicopter, delivered by one of our Royal Air Force’s A400M transport aircraft.

    Demonstrating our skills not just in the air, but on land, sea, cyber and space. Our delegation are experts in power and engines, in critical components and complex weapons, in state-of-the-art surveillance and next generation electronic warfare.

    Our people know everything there is to know in mine counter-measures and military suspension and durable materials, 3D sensors, sonars, and uncrewed systems.

    But my second point is that we are looking for much more than a transient transaction.

    We want to build an even deeper industrial partnership.

    Saudi Arabia quite rightly wants to develop its own defence industrial base – and we want to help you get there – developing mutually beneficial capability programmes to support regional security.

    Already we have a deep industrial partnership stretching across air, land, sea and cyber.

    To take just one example, BAE’s workforce here in Saudi Arabia is almost 75 per cent Saudi.

    Which brings me to my third and final point: Both our nations share pressing strategic priorities.

    We both seek to calm conflicts. We both desire de-escalation. And even as Saudi Arabia aims for the stars, so its influence on terra firma is increasing too.

    It has a critical role to play in this region as interlocutors, as mediators and as leaders.

    So I see us doing more together to help shore up our international rules-based order. Doing more to ensure adherence to international humanitarian law. Doing more to prevent a breakdown in regional security, so we guarantee the safety and security of all people.

    Sixty years ago, we brought Lightning to this great Kingdom and helped transform our partnership.

    Sixty years on, we’re now looking to elevate our relationship to even greater heights.

    I, for one, am a strong believer that Lightning can strike twice.

  • Stuart Andrew – 2024 Speech at the Active Uprising Conference

    Stuart Andrew – 2024 Speech at the Active Uprising Conference

    The speech made by Stuart Andrew, the Sports Minister, in London on 1 February 2024.

    Hello everyone,

    Thank you for the introduction, and for inviting me to speak today. I am delighted to be here with you all.

    Firstly I want to thank you all for the important work you do to help build a healthier and more productive nation. Being active promotes individual wellbeing, reduces loneliness and strengthens communities.

    A fit and active workforce also has a positive effect on employment skills and job readiness and contributes significantly to our economy.

    As you know, we recently published our new Sport Strategy, ‘Get Active’, where we set out our unapologetic ambition to build a more active nation and ensure the sector can thrive in the years ahead.

    As part of the strategy, we committed to the target of 2.5 million more adults and 1 million more children being classed as ‘active’ by 2030.

    Whilst the Government has a vital role to play in meeting this ambition, securing the sport and physical activity sector’s active involvement is central to making this ambition a reality. Each and every one of you can help us to make a difference.

    That is why, as part of Get Active, we launched the National Physical Activity Taskforce. It aims to connect government departments with the sector and independent experts, to focus on measurable actions that will get an additional 3.5 million people active.

    I am delighted that ukactive – as part of the National Sector Partnerships Group – is a standing member of the taskforce. This helps to ensure that your voice is heard and your views represented at the table.

    Lioness legend Jill Scott is also a permanent member of the taskforce, helping to provide a fresh perspective on how we get the nation moving. It is great to see that she will be joining you later today.

    Get Active also sets out our desire to ensure that our country has a sport and physical activity sector which is efficient and resilient – one which is financially robust and environmentally sustainable. The Government is committed to working in collaboration with all of you to achieve these ambitions.

    It is great to see that data will be a key theme throughout today’s conference. It is something that is a top priority for DCMS – helping to ensure the role and impact of sport and physical activity is articulated clearly.

    We have already come a long way as a sector in achieving this. We now need to ensure that the evidence base is indisputable, so that those ‘outside the tent’ can be convinced. We need all of you to do your part in helping push this forward, by sharing data and helping us react to its findings.

    A great example of where data is being used to empower the sector and drive forward participation is within public leisure. Alongside the private sector, public leisure provides a vital contribution to the wellbeing ecosystem.

    Sport England’s Moving Communities service helps us understand the social value of public leisure centres to those who use them most. They recorded over 211 million visits to over 1000 public leisure facilities in the last 12 months alone.  A third of those visits were to the gym and a fifth were for using the pool. These visits were made by just over 10 million people, with more than half women and just over a quarter under the age of 16.

    This data helps build a picture of what interventions are needed to get specific groups active and ensure there is an inclusive offer for all.

    This insight also helps open the door to understanding other opportunities where sport and physical activity could make a difference.

    As we set out in the Get Active strategy, facilities provide important community hubs, connect individuals with the areas in which they live and help to deliver on important social and mental health outcomes.

    The Government is playing its part – the Swimming Pool Support Fund is helping to keep the nation’s public swimming pools afloat. I am delighted that we have been able to support hundreds of swimming pools across England.

    In particular, through the Fund we are improving the energy efficiency and sustainability of facilities to safeguard them for future generations.

    This investment is part of our wider efforts to improve facilities across the country – with over £400 million from 2021 to 2025 which includes multi-sport pitches, tennis courts and swimming pools, to make sure every community has access to the facilities they need.

    Likewise, the Department for Health’s new WorkWell service will support Integrated Care Services in developing localised plans for work and health strategies. It is clear that both the private and public leisure sector have a role to play in this work in helping to empower individuals to get back on track.

    Nonetheless, there is clearly more work that needs to be done. Too many people are still not getting the benefits that being physically active brings.

    As a Government we continue to consider ways in which we can ensure that the sector has the conditions to enable it to prosper. Because we know the more active we are, the stronger and healthier our communities and economy, and the more prosperous our society.

    I thank you for all you do and I urge you all to continue to make sport and physical activity an essential part of everyone’s daily life.

    No matter how big or small your business, together, we can make a difference.

    I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference today –  and make the most of the opportunity to build connections across the sector and to share successes with each other.

  • Alex Chalk – 2024 International Rule of Law Speech in Washington

    Alex Chalk – 2024 International Rule of Law Speech in Washington

    The speech made by Alex Chalk, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, in Washington, the United States, on 31 January 2024.

    Friends, ladies and gentlemen.

    It is a huge pleasure to be here in Washington DC and an honour to address this distinguished audience.

    When Britain’s great novelist, Charles Dickens, who of course you all know, visited the United States in 1842, he wrote that on the occasions he encountered his fellow Brits here, the British displayed, and I quote ‘an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous to behold.’ I want to be clear that I am not intending to repeat that!

    I’ll do so not least as an admirer of America, and a humble student of American history at university. It was there I was first introduced to the defining principle, first set out by John Adams, of America as a ‘nation of laws, not of men’. And also as a barrister – i.e. attorney myself – of the inalienable right of citizens to be defended in court however unpopular their cause, also indelibly demonstrated by John Adams in his famous defence of British soldiers in the eighteenth century.

    The US today is, of course, a beacon of the values that our two countries demonstrate in the world – of democracy, of diplomacy and of deference to the international rule of law, and that’s what I want to focus on today: on the importance of the rule of law, the existential threats it faces, and how together we can – and indeed we must – face down these threats and emerge stronger.

    What do I mean by the rule of law in the international context? The idea that all nations are bound by common rules and principles that govern the way we interact with each other, no matter our size or power. And it’s underpinned by mutual consent and agreement, peaceful resolution of disputes, and regard for international institutions.

    My central argument is that we need to restate that these are not quaint notions to get dewy-eyed over, or trite phrases to trot out in seminars; rather they can be the guarantors of freedom, security and prosperity for all our people.

    And it’s worth pointing out that the order has brought about an extraordinary growth in international trade – indeed, the volume of world trade has multiplied roughly 45 times since 1950, while worldwide living standards have almost tripled. So this is no tedious law lecture. It’s food in citizens’ stomachs.

    But this is now under threat. The truth is we are in a global contest of ideas, a contest between rule of law nations like ours and those who offer an authoritarian alternative, a solution that says ‘might is always right’. And it means that a global post-war consensus, which we assumed was unshakeable now needs shoring up. But rather than letting complacency reign, we must reinforce the rule of law foundations on which it was built.

    We don’t need a history lesson to remind ourselves how the international rules-based international order came into being in the long shadow cast by World War II. What’s important is that it lit the way towards a new era: one based on mutual consent and common obligation…  where states could resolve their disputes peacefully, act with restraint, and hold each other to account for their actions. It allowed us to achieve a depth of international co-operation that would have been unfathomable just a few short years before.

    And this was properly expressed in the late George Bush senior’s visionary 1990 address to Congress following the fall of the Berlin Wall – which I was reminding myself of before I came here to America. As that authoritarian regime crumbled, he set out a vision of the world where in his words: ‘ the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak’.

    But the world is very different today. The accord they worked so hard to build is not just fraying at the edges, it is threatening to break down altogether due to the actions of international actors – such as Russia and Iran. Many believed – and this is important – that it had a remorseless momentum… that it would inevitably draw rising powers into its orbit… that its future would grow and was guaranteed. I believe the illusion and assumption that nations would automatically see the benefits of the Rules Based International Order has been eroded. But why? Why has it been eroded?

    The rule of law is being attacked on three fronts, contributing to this current crisis of consensus.

    First, the agreements that have helped secure the world’s stability and success since 1945 are no longer respected. By ‘those agreements’ I am referring to the legally recognised borders that have been the guardian of peace over decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the starkest but not the only demonstration.  And of course, it’s from a country, Russia, which after all is the successor state to the Soviet Union which signed and for a time broadly abided by arms reduction treaties for the benefit of all humankind.

    And looking further afield, when Hamas carried out armed incursions into Israel, butchering over a thousand innocent men, women and children in their homes and taking approximately 250 more as hostages, it was an unprecedented, and wholly unlawful assault.

    Amid this growing normalisation of illegality, of states disregarding borders and flouting international law, hostile geopolitical spheres of influence and indeed axes are being formed and strengthened in direct opposition to the Rules Based International Order. Recent assaults on commercial cargo ships in the Red Sea by the Hamas-supporting Houthis are just one example of these deadly alliances in action. And why have the Houthis been able to wreak so much havoc in the Red Sea? Because they are backed by agents of chaos in Iran.

    And all this geopolitical unrest brings me to the second threat to the rules-based order. The reality is that this unstable geopolitical landscape is making middle ground and non-aligned states feel caught in the crossfire of conflicts for which they bear no responsibility. They understandably fear the repercussions, and some are beginning to equivocate. Desperate to avoid the costs of dispute and conflict, states are left unsure which way to turn to seek reassurance, stability, and protection.

    And we must ask ourselves whether sustained instability of the type we are seeing risks making states like these feel they have no choice but to enter into alliances which undermine the Rules Based International Order. These alliances are pursuing a zero-sum outcome through fear, rather than mutual prosperity through shared values. They not only undermine the rules based order, but could shift the balance of power so the contest of ideas about how we should be governed – whether through the rules-based system as we cleave to, or through the chaos preferred by our competitors – is lost. So it is imperative that we ensure that non-aligned states and rising powers make the right choice.

    And what of the poorest and most vulnerable countries? This brings me to the third risk I think we must consider. Despite huge economic advances in the Global South enabled by the Rules-Based International Order, many of the poorest countries are struggling to protect their citizens from hunger, the effects of climate change and the impact of increased populations. That in turn can pull them into the orbit of authoritarian nations who offer them a quick fix.

    While rule of law underpins prosperity, its absence feeds poverty, insecurity and instability. And for citizens, this leaves many feeling they have no choice but to leave their home country and seek better opportunities elsewhere in the world. This has led to record levels of migratory movements, and fuelled illegal migration. It is clear that unmanaged illegal migration disregards borders and is putting unacceptable pressure on the national systems of rules-based countries like ours – as countries whose sovereign legislatures believe in, and consciously have chosen to be part of, the order I refer too.  The actions of criminal gangs smuggling people across borders brings those very rules into disrepute, particularly if they are perceived to afford, perversely, an unfair advantage to those who break the rules rather than those who abide by them.

    For rule of law countries in Europe, we are experiencing an influx of illegal migration. In the UK, that manifests as a steady stream of small boats across the English Channel bringing illegal migrants into our country. And in 2023, we saw a 36% reduction in the number of small boat arrivals compared to the year before, but we must continue to go further. Because we see dangerous tactics used by Organised Criminal Gangs to facilitate crossings and people who put their lives in the hands of criminal gangs. Too many perish. I know tragedies are also happening at your southern border.

    So, what does all this mean for the rule of law, and, crucially, how we strengthen it?

    Well as Thomas Paine put it in his rallying cry of 1776, “in America the law is king” – now those were heavily loaded words at the time. It meant, among other things, that the law is supreme. And if the law is supreme, it must have power, and if it must have power, it must therefore be respected. Put another way, it must be enforced.

    That means ensuring accountability, it means consequences. And it means bearing down on those who commit international crimes, until justice is served.

    And we can be proud of the leadership our two nations have shown. Together, we have, along with the European Union, established the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, to support Ukraine’s Prosecutor General with funding and expertise in the domestic investigation and prosecution of more than 120,000 alleged conflict related crimes.

    In 2022 the UK led a state party referral to expedite the International Criminal Court’s investigation into the situation in Ukraine, and we continue to support the ICC so it has the resources it needs to carry out its independent investigations. We welcome the recent legal changes here that have enabled America to assist the ICC’s investigation into the situation in Ukraine.

    And we continue to fight international terrorism in all its contexts. The UK and US were right to stand up to the aggression in the Red Sea by carrying out air strikes on strategic Houthi targets in Yemen, and the international community clearly accepts that it was the correct course of action in the circumstances.

    So, amid the contest of ideas, and conflicting narratives, it is incumbent on all of us – the UK, the US and our allies in the G7 and NATO – to show that the rules-based international order works and it is worth upholding.

    While others cause chaos, as part of the International Rules-Based Order – as nations who believe in the rule of law – it is our legal systems that are the engine room for prosperity across the globe, supporting trade the world over. English common law and US common law are the basis for no less than 27 percent and 20 percent of the world’s legal systems respectively.

    However, both international and domestic law must evolve if they are to meet the challenges posed by insecurity, and to win what I’ve called ‘the global contest of ideas’. Because, as Thomas Paine also famously said, “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

    In the UK, we are making clear once and for all that it is Parliament that should decide who comes to our country, not international criminal gangs. Through landmark emergency legislation, we will control our borders, deter people taking perilous journeys across the channel, and help end the continuous legal challenges filling our courts. We are a humane, welcoming nation but it’s fair that everyone plays by the rules.

    Our legally binding removal treaty with Rwanda makes absolutely clear that individuals relocated will not be returned to a country where they might be placed in danger.

    But above all, the principle of relocating people to another country to have their asylum claims processed is lawful – the UK High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court too have found it to be so. Indeed, the UN Refugee Agency itself has its own scheme for refugees in Rwanda, albeit not through treaty.

    And look, the unique genius of the common law, of course, is its flexibility – its readiness to adapt and respond to societal changes and perspectives. As the UK Government has made clear, we need some of that same spirit when it comes to the challenge of uncontrolled migration, and the evolution of the rules-based system as a whole.

    As countries that believe in the rule of law, it’s crucial for us to demonstrate that it works for citizens in our own countries. For our justice systems that means that while we update them to make them fit for the 21st century, we must do so in a way which strengthens the values and principles on which they are built.

    Access to justice is a key part of that – probably the single biggest reason I came into politics – and the current era of rapidly changing technology is opening up new possibilities for improvement all the time. For criminal and civil justice, we must ensure that citizens can continue to access justice in ways that work for them today. And there are a number of important ways we can do this.

    First, by making sure our legal systems adapt to a changing world – updating our legal frameworks to take account of advancing technology, and fostering environments in which our legal professionals are properly equipped to practise the law both now and in a more technologically driven future.

    Second, by showing our communities and victims that criminal justice works – so that justice is not just done, but seen to be done. Whether that’s the worst offenders being imprisoned for longer, or those at the lower end of the scale repaying their debt to the communities they’ve wronged.

    Third, by harnessing new technology to ensure that the order of the Court is properly enforced. In England and Wales, GPS and alcohol monitoring tags mean we can deliver tough community sentences, avoiding short, costly stints in prison which research shows do little to reduce reoffending. I’m looking forward to visiting New York this week to see similar projects in action.

    Fourth, by developing digital tools to improve how individuals and businesses can access the law in ways that work for them, opening up early legal advice and support so they can, where appropriate, settle disputes outside of court.

    Fifth and finally, by keeping pace with advancing methods of delivery, such as transformational technologies like generative AI, and fostering innovation and the growth and adoption of lawtech – so that we can maintain the attractiveness as destinations for global businesses that are a boon to both our economies.

    In each area, there are opportunities; to improve justice for our citizens and to demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law; to show that we believe in its ability to make our societies fairer and allow them to flourish further; to show that we can evolve and adapt while our opponents remain rigid and dogmatic. These are some of the most powerful ways that we can make the case for the rules-based order.

    So look, as others have said before me, the relationship between our two nations is not just special – it is essential. Because when we stand together in the face of the chaos that our opponents seek to create… when we pursue accountability for the wrongdoing that others wreak on their neighbours… we will win the argument for the international order that our predecessors worked so hard to build and which has served the world so well.

    To end where I began, with Charles Dickens. As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher observed when she visited Washington in 1981, Dickens was right to say that the people here are ‘…hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy.’ Those are the qualities we need, you and us – as we fiercely defend the rule of law and make the case for a more secure and more prosperous future in the world.

    Thank you.

  • Ed Davey – 2024 Apology on His Involvement with the Post Office Horizon Scandal

    Ed Davey – 2024 Apology on His Involvement with the Post Office Horizon Scandal

    The comments made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the Guardian newspaper on 1 February 2024.

    The Post Office Horizon scandal is the greatest miscarriage of justice of our time, and I am deeply sorry for the families who have had their lives ruined by it. As one of the ministers over the 20 years of this scandal, including my time as minister responsible for postal affairs, I’m sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies – and that it took me five months to meet Alan Bates, the man who has done so much to uncover it.

    The Post Office is owned by the government but not run by it, so the official advice I was given when I first became a minister in May 2010 was not to meet Bates. He wrote again urging me to reconsider, and I did then meet him that October. But he shouldn’t have had to wait. When Bates told me his concerns about Horizon, I took them extremely seriously and put them to the Post Office. What I got back were categorical assurances – the same lies we now know they were telling the subpostmasters, journalists, parliament and the courts.

  • Oliver Dowden – 2024 Statement on Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC

    Oliver Dowden – 2024 Statement on Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC

    The statement made by Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, on 26 January 2024.

    The UK Government has approved the Strategic Relationship Agreement between Vodafone and e&. Using the National Security & Investment Act it has put in place proportionate measures to address any potential national security concerns.

    The UK is rightly a magnet for global investment and, in this spirit, the Act is entirely country-agnostic.

    Where investment might impact the UK’s national security – for example through the acquisition of certain technologies or infrastructure – we will work with investment partners to minimise any risk. As part of our Critical National Infrastructure, telecoms is one such sector. Vodafone is also a particularly important company for the UK Government given its critical functions, including as a key partner in HMG’s Cyber Security Strategy.

  • Bim Afolami – 2024 Speech at Bloomberg

    Bim Afolami – 2024 Speech at Bloomberg

    The speech made by Bim Afolami, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, on 25 January 2024.

    This building and indeed this city, but this building in particular, reflects the UK’s commitment to openness, competitiveness and innovation in financial services and the significant role that financial services can play in growing our broader economy, and there’s been a great deal of talk in recent months about this.

    Since 2010, the British economy has seen the third fastest growth in the G7 faster than France, Germany, Italy, Japan. It is clear that our long-term underlying growth rate needs to rise in order for us to deliver prosperity, lower taxes and more effective public services.

    And it’s right then, that our long-term plan for this country’s growth is our commitment to openness, competitiveness and innovation writ large.

    That’s why we’re cutting taxes, to ensure hard work is rewarded, and to allow businesses to take long, firm decisions and investment in R&D.

    That’s why we’ll continue to reduce our national debt, to fight inflation and deliver affordable mortgages for working people.

    That’s why, through investment, we will ensure that our supply of homegrown, clean, affordable power is matched by home grown teachers, doctors and nurses.

    Because since the beginning of 2023, we’ve seen real progress. Inflation and borrowing costs have fallen with inflation more than halving, our economy has bounced back, outperforming the forecasters, outperforming many of our European neighbours, and our national debt continues to fall.

    I know that all of you, not just in Bloomberg, will continue to monitor our progress closely. But today I want to focus on the role that our capital markets can play in building our economy for the future. Rising to our economic challenges and achieving Britain’s economic potential.

    Well, the first thing we should say is, well, what are we talking about? What are capital markets? Why do they matter? They play a key role in our economy because by allocating capital, facilitating investment, growth and job creation, they create investor returns. And those investors are not just international conglomerates. They’re British businesses. They are British people. And all of this drive’s activity across the economy.

    London in particular, is an international powerhouse with a foreign exchange market three times the size of the American one. The derivatives market 50% bigger than the American one, all of which helps to make us a global hub for investment.

    Now, I have, this Chancellor, this government, we’re not the first to recognise the potential of capital markets to grow the British economy in the 1980s, Nigel Lawson’s reforms, the Big Bang suspect, so to speak, unlocked the UK’s capital markets.

    However, in recent years they have lost some of the dynamism for which they became well known in that generation. We in this country have not been immune to the global shift away from public equities to private equity.

    According to a recent paper by McKinsey, total private market assets under management have grown at an annual rate of nearly 20% since 2017, which was the first year I was elected to parliament.

    But between 2015 and 2020, London accounted for only 5% of global IPOs, and the number of listed companies in the UK has fallen by about 40% from as recently as 2008, the year of the financial crisis. Now those, I’m sure you agree, are sobering figures. And we take that on, and we know that we need to change them. But to change them, we must first understand what’s driving them.

    A large part of this story is the success of New York across the pond. Over the past five years, the FTSE 100 increased by 12%, while the S&P 500 increased by 81%. Nasdaq has been very successful in attracting new listings, especially big tech firms. There, American home grown American tech firms like Apple, Meta and Alphabet.

    And interestingly, if you remove the seven big tech companies from the S&P 500, the gap in performance is not anything like as wide as one thinks. Indeed, at one point in time, and this is quite an interesting fact, at one point in time, Apple alone out valued the entire FTSE 100. And we are also seeing greater competition from smaller EU exchanges such as Amsterdam.

    It’s true however, there has been a broader trend over the past decade or so of a change in British investor behaviour, with domestic British investors shifting away from investing in UK equities and moving beyond our shores. Why has that happened?

    My thinking after speaking with I don’t know how many people in the last few weeks a month since taking this job. Is that our approach to capital markets must carefully balance appropriate regulation with investors’ appetite for risk. And our post 2008 approach has focused too much on the former and not enough on the latter. In part that reflects the culture mindset of the government and our regulators.

    Now, as many of you may know, I’ve spent some time in this office and beforehand making the case for the importance, the importance of risk in our society. And I pushed against the modern trend across the whole Western world. It’s not just Britain. Pushed against the modern trend to seek to eliminate all risk, which has only accelerated after the Covid pandemic.

    Now, look, this is an understandable, but it’s a deeply damaging instinct. We have to move faster. Yes, with speed limits and controls. But accepting that innovation and growth cannot come and an entirely risk free environment.

    As I argued in my remarks to the FT banking summit, which was, I think, the first public statement I made in this post. There is no point us in the UK having the safest graveyard.

    Through a journey of root and branch reform. We need to move from a risk off to a risk on outlook, to move from a complacent incumbent mindset to an insurgent one, whilst recognising the challenges that we face because it’s only through measured and purposeful risk taking that we can deliver progress, economic growth and a capital markets renaissance.

    Here’s what we’ve already achieved. Here’s what we’ve already done. First step on our reform journey was to properly diagnose the problem that started in earnest in 2020, the end of 2020 with my very good friend Lord Hill. The UK Listings Review, which built consensus across government and the industry on how to boost IPOs and capital raising on UK markets.

    Then 2021 Mansion House, our then Chancellor, now Prime Minister mapped out our destination and he said he wanted a more open, competitive, technologically advanced financial services sector. And he launched the Wholesale Markets Review to consider how we could use our newfound regulatory freedoms to make UK markets more competitive. So having diagnosed the problem, next came our solutions.

    Reforms progressed across all areas in our legislation and regulatory regimes, but also in the culture and mindset of government and regulators. On the legal and regulatory front, we have passed a huge act, the new Financial Markets and Services Act 2023. This delivered the Wholesale Market Review’s most urgent changes, and as a result, firms can now trade in the most liquid market and get the best price for investors.

    We’ve also set statutory growth and competitiveness objectives for our regulators, established the new Regulatory Complaints Commissioner, Rachel Kent, who is here in the front row. So, she is, to ensure that regulators are fully accountable to market participants as well as accountable to consumers. And we’ve worked hand in hand with industry to carefully review every single aspect of our rulebook.

    Now, this issue is very close to my heart. As the former chair of the Regulatory Reform Group in Parliament, which I set up. I’ve long been a critic of the accountability gaps in our regulatory system and the disproportionately anti-growth mindset of many regulators.

    However. As my thinking has evolved over time, I’ve come to understand the responsibility that politicians have, not just regulators. Politicians from all parties. We as politicians must take a lot more responsibility for this. We created the system and incentives that the regulators operate in, whilst often blaming them for not acting fast enough on an issue of consumer harm, and then staying silent when industry complains about an ever more complex and costly rulebook.

    This culture of risk aversion has been very present in politics as much as it has been present in the regulatory state, and this must change. So be in no doubt. While I’m closely monitoring how the new system breaks down and closely monitoring how our regulators take on this growth and competitiveness objective that we have given them.

    I will act and we will act further if we don’t see a sensible shift in our regulators toward more pro-growth mindset. At the same time, I want to lead a cultural shift within our politics and within our politicians. More immediately, we are taking forward a host of new initiatives like the Digital Security Sandbox, which will test the use of distributed ledger technology in trading and settlement. That’s just one of the huge range of reforms coming up stream. The results of these reforms is that after three and a half years, we are now within sight of making the UK’s public markets match fit again.

    But you and I know we must go further to fully deliver on the promise of our capital markets. The regulatory and legal reforms are a necessary but not sufficient condition. So let me tell you about the steps that we are taking now to go further, because we’re supporting companies through every stage of their investment life cycle.

    First, we will ensure that companies can scale up effectively so that they are primed and ready for listing. To do this, we are establishing a world first, a new class of exchange, which will allow private companies to raise capital on an intermittent basis.

    Now, the private intermittent securities and capital exchange system. And this came across my desk and I said, guys, this isn’t going to work. I don’t even understand what that is. So, what I did was I played around with the acronyms with the words, and we’re going to call it Pisces. Pisces for short will be established before the end of this year.

    The Pisces platform will give private companies better access to UK capital markets, break down the artificial regulatory cliff edge that exists between the public and private markets. This development will allow us to take advantage of the structural shift that I was discussing earlier to private markets, rather than suffer from.

    Secondly, we want to ensure that when companies choose to list, when they do that, the process of doing so is as frictionless as possible. And as I’ve now taken the UK’s new prospectus legislation through Parliament in recent days, the FCA can now complete their entire rewrite of the prospectus regimes rulebook to deliver on the recommendations from the Lord Hill reforms and indeed the Mark Austin reviews. This will boost the operating environment for our capital markets in two principal ways.

    First, by increasing the pool of investors in participating capital raises and enabling firms to raise larger sums of capital more quickly and more easily.

    Finally, we want to ensure that once listed companies are matched with the best investors for their offering, we will achieve this by taking forward Rachel Kent’s Investment Research Review recommendations.

    We aim to revive the research market, which has been damaged in recent years, by delivering more efficient and accurate pricing, in particular for small and medium sized businesses, whilst attracting a more diverse range of investors, including retail investors.

    And I’m not going to have any more time to list some of our wider initiatives, like Charlie Gatlin’s Accelerator Settlement Taskforce, which will upgrade our back office operations for the 21st century by moving from a T2 to a T1 settlement, or our form of Solvency II which were released 100 billion pounds of investment into our economy.

    But given present company that, of course, seeking a balance of risk and reward, I’m prepared to make a bet with you about our future delivery of these reforms and then make a bet with you. This is dangerous. The Mansion House 2024 will mark substantial progress in all three of the investment lifecycle stages that I’ve set out today.

    First, the FCA’s new listing rules will consolidate our dual segment structure into a simpler single listing segment. And that would have narrowed the gap with our international competitors. I am confident that as part of this transition, the FCA will engage with firms who want their IP to benefit from our new regime, ensuring that the UK IPO pipeline is ready for action.

    Secondly, we will be well on our way by Mansion House midway through this year to delivering the regulatory framework for Pisces by the end of 2024.

    And finally by taking forward Rachel Kent’s IRR recommendations, the Investment Research Review recommendations, we will allow much more investment research to be produced in this country on smaller, mid-cap British businesses giving more information to investors, particularly retail investors.

    Now, why am I so confident in this agenda? Well, partly that’s just because that’s an occupational hazard of being politicians. But in all seriousness, I’m confident in this agenda. I’m saying it to all of you today because it’s underpinned by our commitment to where I started to openness, competitiveness, growth, dynamism, innovation in financial services. That is not for financial services. It is for the British economy as a whole.

    Now, I know, or at least I hope very strongly that the people in this room share those values. When they are properly applied, they will have an impact far beyond financial markets. After all, the Big Bang improved the lives of millions across this country. And I’m confident that when we have delivered our capital markets renaissance, those will too. Thank you.

  • John Glen – 2024 Speech at the Institute for Government’s Annual Conference

    John Glen – 2024 Speech at the Institute for Government’s Annual Conference

    The speech made by John Glen, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, on 23 January 2024.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to be here with you all today.

    I would like to start by thanking the Institute for Government for hosting this event. In particular, thank you to Dr Hannah White for her engagement leading up to it. I enjoyed your blog and the recently released Whitehall monitor.

    Today, I want to outline the next steps of civil service reform and how I will build on my predecessors’ work to make the Civil Service a lean, keen and productive machine.

    But, before I look to the future, I would like to look to the past.

    Modernisation and reform have always been a crucial part of the Civil Service.

    In fact, the modern Civil Service was born out of a report f- as I’m sure many of you know – from 1854, one that argued the case for urgent reform.

    The Northcote-Trevelyan Report focused on creating a permanent Civil Service based on integrity and honesty.

    Now, I’m paraphrasing here, but the report ends by stating: “Our priorities are, to provide efficient public servants, to foster merit, to overcome the fragmentary nature of the service”.

    To get the best people to encourage good work, to improve the structures of central government.

    It could have been written yesterday, but actually next month that report celebrates its 170th anniversary.

    I think these priorities will speak to the public’s concerns. They want a public service that is easy to navigate, one where the best people are in the right jobs, where their lives are made easier by Government decisions.

    It’s these priorities that I will discuss today and how I will seek to help the Civil Service to achieve them.

    Recent Change & Future Challenge

    Now, the size of our Civil Service has always shifted.

    It shrunk following the financial crisis after 2010, in 2016, it grew to deliver Brexit and it grew in 2020 to respond to the pandemic.

    It’s clear that if the world changes, the Civil Service must change, too. And this is right – the public would expect an adaptive and agile service, one that can respond to the big challenges facing the country.

    Just think of the Furlough scheme, the AI Safety Summit, or all the work that’s gone into making us one of the highest performing education leaders in the world, these are significant achievements worth remembering.

    It is also worth remembering the range of roles in the Civil Service.

    They make up our government departments, agencies and public bodies, but they’re also the people who translate policies of politicians into action.

    They work incredibly hard but crucially hard work does not always equal great productivity.

    We must improve to keep pace with innovation in the private sector. For too long, productivity in the public sector has not been a high-enough priority, we have thrown more people at our biggest challenges, but have more to do to embrace the potential of technology and innovative ways of working.

    As a recent Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I know that public finances are tight, they are always tight. Having established the Public Sector Productivity Review, I focused on squeezing every pound to deliver for taxpayers and I carry that focus with me in my new role in the Cabinet Office.

    I know how important it is that the Civil Service cracks its productivity puzzle, because doing so will open the door to greater productivity across our entire public sector.

    We can only afford a Civil Service that embraces innovation, especially when we consider the challenges ahead.

    Demand for public services is growing – not just because of the immediate cost-of-living pressures, but an ageing population means we need to carefully consider many of our policies.

    The cost of running Government is also increasing – tech costs more, and Government debt costs more to manage.

    So, we have a public that is rightly expecting more, but it is also costing us more just to stand still.

    As the Minister responsible for Civil Service reform, I am relentlessly focused on its future.

    It is clear we have to do more with less, but I don’t think it’s about cutting corners.

    It’s about being more productive. It’s about encouraging the best possible performance. It’s about bringing our people with us, to embrace the possibilities that modernisation brings.

    Changes Already Made

    Now, I hope I’m not arrogant enough – 10 weeks into the job – to think I’m the first to recognise these challenges.

    My predecessors have set some fantastic work in motion already – most recently Sir Jeremy Quin, and not least the inimitable Lord Maude and his series of reforms. I was happy to discuss this speech with him yesterday evening.

    The foundation for my work is the Declaration on Government Reform led by Michael Gove in 2021, where all permanent secretaries and the Cabinet agreed a programme of reform.

    It was an ambitious programme focussed on greater efficiency and productivity – and we’ve already made some great progress.

    Like merging 200 legacy IT systems into 5 corporate services.

    And we’ve moved 16,000 London Civil Service roles into cities like Aberdeen, Cardiff, Wrexham and Belfast, making a Civil Service representative of the public it serves.

    That’s all good, but what’s missing?

    For me, there are three areas we can focus on to accelerate Civil Service modernisation: embedding technology, embracing simplicity, and enabling people’s potential.

    Embedding Technology

    So, first, let me turn to technology.

    My vision is that every single civil servant is either actively delivering – or enabled by – digital technology in their day-to-day job, whether that’s eliminating bureaucracy. or coming up with new ideas to support our citizens.

    Much of the focus is on how we in Government use AI, but I am clear that is not an inevitable solution.

    AI will only work if it’s properly embedded, if it’s clear why and how we’re using it, and that civil servants get the right training and support to use it well.

    I’m pleased to say we are already taking exciting first steps to unlock the benefits of generative AI, ensuring that our AI teams are working with industry experts, in order to solve some of the public sector’s most pressing problems.

    Like launching AI pilots to make it easier for people to claim compensation in the case of criminal injury.

    I believe better use of technology allows us to encapsulate everything that I’ve already spoken about: powered by the right people, it will improve how we deliver to the public at lower cost.

    For example: before, if you wanted to sign a mortgage deed, complete a DBS check, or manage your company’s apprenticeship scheme, you had to sign in to each specific Government website, re-enter your personal details again and again and again.

    So, we released a Gov.UK app that uses the One Login system, it’s already been downloaded 4.5 million times, and it has whittled 29 service logins down to just one sign-in process.

    It’s so successful we’re rolling it out to over 100 other services this year.

    It’s a great example of how we can better serve the public especially where they engage directly with public service.

    Embrace Simplicity

    But tech and artificial intelligence are not a one-size fits all solution to our issues, I believe there is a lot we can do by simplifying our processes.

    Inevitably, the Government is – and always will be – a complex organisation. But I fear that now, it’s more complex than it needs to be.

    Complex processes hide inefficiencies, simplifying how we work will make the Civil Service more productive, and will help us improve public services.

    I want to acknowledge the work of my Ministerial colleague Esther McVey, who has come into her new post in the Cabinet Office to root out our inefficiencies.

    She brings a refreshing clarity and analysis to how the Government works, a clarity which I – and the public – truly welcome.

    It was a vision shared by Lord Maude, who also wanted to see improved accountability.

    Today, we are considering ways to improve accountability in the Civil Service, including accountability to ministers.

    The public expect no less, because they too want the processes and services they use to be more straightforward.

    Take Universal Credit, for instance: it replaced a complicated landscape of multiple benefits administered by multiple organisations.

    When we were delivering it, people were complaining it was taking too long, but we stuck to it, and steadily implemented it, and now, five years after its introduction, the change it has brought is remarkable.

    It provided essential support throughout the pandemic rapidly, and will save £650m per year by 2027.

    Now – that was a big idea with big benefits and it didn’t just happen.

    It took the combined effort of civil servants, local councils, politicians and thousands more to make it work.

    I pay tribute to them all, who – over half a generation – have transformed this complex service into a simple and productive one.

    Projects like that demonstrate how our approach to policy development needs to change.

    It needs to prioritise productivity as a goal from the outset, and ensure we are building an evidence base demonstrating which interventions work and which don’t.

    But it’s not just the public-facing work we need to reconsider we also need to re-evaluate the labyrinth of processes that make up the back office of government.

    That means doubling down on the functional reform agenda that Lord Maude began.

    Which is why we introduced functions in 2013 to raise standards of specialist work across government.

    Renewed approaches to functions like commercial, finance and project delivery have delivered £7.8bn in efficiencies just between 2020 and 2022.

    But we need to go further, and actually create a way of doing things that gets things done well and done quickly.

    So let me give you an example of the kind of efficiency I’m talking about.

    Let’s say you’re a new civil servant, and it’s your first day in a Government department.

    You need to get an ID card, but security clearance is a rigorous process, and for some that can take many months, so you get a temporary pass.

    You need a laptop, but I.T. don’t have one available, so you have someone else print out all your induction material, and you remain offline for a while in a very online world.

    It’s now a couple of weeks. Without proper access to the building, you don’t have a laptop and you don’t have an online account, and to resolve each one of these pressing issues, you have to speak to a different person.

    Does this sound productive to you? Of course it doesn’t.

    From launching a job advert to getting that new civil servant sat at their desk, takes – an astonishing average – of up to 115 days.

    We can, we must and we will do better.

    Which is why we are piloting a new model to make one person accountable for this process end to end, making sure that new starters in the Civil Service can start quickly with all their needs met and be productive from day one.

    Enabling People’s Potential

    That leads me on to my final focus for my speech – people.

    Undeniably, people are the Civil Service’s greatest asset, but I believe that the current system is letting us all down and doesn’t enable our staff to achieve their best.

    Complex structures mean that measuring progress can be difficult, our ways of incentivising high-quality performance are limited, people feel like the only way they can progress is to shuffle roles, all leading to dissatisfaction which, of course, results in the Civil Service churn being too high.

    It’s a serious challenge for us – one which the IFG says costs the public nearly £36m a year on recruitment, training and loss of productivity.

    We know that pay isn’t everything for civil servants, but it is undeniable that it is a deciding factor for them to move roles.

    Pay, too, can prevent the external talent the Civil Service desperately needs.
    Only one in five successful Senior Civil Service recruits is external, and vacancy rates for crucial digital and data professionals are at 15%, which undermines our digital transformation ambitions.

    So, my ambition is simple: a smaller, more skilled Civil Service that is better rewarded.

    Its simplicity masks the challenge, however, in implementing it, but I believe the time to make that change is now.

    Which is why I am pleased that we are reviewing our pay framework for digital and data professionals, to ensure these roles can compete with similar roles in the private sector, especially those that will be at the forefront of AI delivery.

    Not only will this attract and retain talent, but it will also save the taxpayer money, with savings of up to £270m by reducing reliance on expensive contractors.

    My message to today’s tech leaders is this: yes, the Civil Service is doing everything it can to compete on pay – but no tech giant, no FTSE100 company, no unicorn anywhere will ever compete with the level of the work you will do in the Civil Service.

    I have been fortunate enough to work in a number of Government departments, alongside many great people and some of them are here today. I’m loathed to name any of them individually, yet the commitment they showed me, the great advice they have given me, and go the extra mile –  all this allowed me to achieve everything I could.

    That environment often comes down to the culture our line managers create, they help improve performance, giving their teams clarity, support and accountability.

    When line management is done well, it is transformational. There are over 100,000 civil servants with line management duties and, if they’re good at their job, this can improve productivity by providing clear expectations, training and support for their teams.

    We also know that standards of performance management can too often vary between teams and departments.

    Staff might not be getting full, honest feedback that helps them address issues, or help them progress their career at the right pace.

    That is why we will be setting out the line management standards we want across the Civil Service and providing the support to managers they need to achieve these.

    Yet, in some cases, consistently underperforming staff can languish in roles, or move between departments without properly addressing the reasons for poor performance.

    In the worst cases, managers can too often feel unable to remove consistently poor performers

    This is a problem that needs a solution, which is why I’m pleased to announce that I will work with Civil Service leaders to review our performance management approach.

    This will build on the best practice already happening across much of the Civil Service and it’s only fair to our staff that we support them with proper, honest management.

    But let me be clear – we are not dodging our responsibilities to deal with bad performance.

    Where there is consistent poor performance in a very small minority of staff, we must take necessary action to address that.

    It’s something which is a cause of real frustration for our civil servants – particularly senior civil servants – some of whom can feel they have to tiptoe around a colleague’s lacklustre performance, or have to work extra hard to make up for it.

    It’s just one of the many things that frustrate them which can be resolved by better management. Another is working from the office.

    There is no denying that there are many benefits to colleagues working all together in an office. People can be more productive, and complex tasks often can be overcome more efficiently.

    I have already set out the expectation for staff to be in the office at least 60% of the time, and I believe that our senior civil servants need to set an example as leaders.

    I want to consider how this expectation can be baked into our management of senior staff, which is why we will be making this distinction clearer for senior civil servants at the start of the performance year.

    Ultimately, I want staff to bring themselves – their ideas, their passion and their dedication – into the office to tackle problems together.

    I’ve already spoken about how we are building a public sector that reflects the society it serves, but I know there have been questions raised on the role of staff networks in supporting that effort.

    Now, I’m sincerely grateful to the work of civil servants to make their profession open and inclusive.

    Staff networks can create collaborative spaces, build a sense of belonging, helping us to work across-departments.

    But, managing these networks should not become a second job.

    I believe we have an opportunity to improve how these networks operate and ensure they do not impact our broader productivity.

    So I have been working with Ministerial colleague Esther McVey to look into how staff networks operate across the civil service, and we will be publishing guidance in due course.

    We must also ensure these networks uphold the Civil Service’s long-established rules on impartiality.

    That’s why we are introducing new impartiality guidance which will support Civil Servants to remain objective when engaging in diversity and inclusion work.

    We must make sure our civil servants can express themselves and maintain the trust and confidence of the public.

    Conclusion

    So, ladies and gentlemen, we have seen – whether it’s in 1854 or in 2024 – our civil servants have the capacity to adapt to the challenges of the day, but we must adapt today to prepare for the urgent challenges of tomorrow.

    Over the next six months, I will address these and other Civil Service priorities, including the use of consultants in the public sector, and the responsibility of public bodies to the government.

    But, for today, I want to reaffirm the kind of Civil Service I want to help create: a Civil Service that can meet the productivity challenge, where the most innovative and inspired minds are called to serve, to stay, and to be successful and fulfilled, where our processes are borne of robust evaluation, where innovation supports how people actually use our public services.

    Our citizens deserve nothing less, and I believe we can do so much more to serve them better.

    Thank you very much.