Category: Speeches

Caroline Spelman – 2005 Speech on Traveller Camps

Below is the text of the speech made by Caroline Spelman on 21 March 2005.

Last November we began consulting on the best way to deal with illegal traveller camps.

Today we can announce a seven-point plan to deal with both illegal and unauthorised development, to give stronger rights to local residents and to ensure planning controls are fairly enforced for all.

First, as Michael has said we are reviewing the so-called Human Rights Act – if it cannot be improved, we will scrap the Act.

Second, Conservatives will give councils the power to refuse applications for retrospective planning permission. This will stop the cynical manipulation of the planning system by travellers or rogue developers who wilfully ignore the rules.

Third, we will make traveller trespass a criminal offence as they have done in the Republic of Ireland. This will stop local residents having to pay up to evict travellers from their land and give the police a fast track system to evict illegal occupiers.

Fourth Conservatives will give councils new powers to ensure the rapid removal of caravans from illegal sites, and allow the courts to levy larger fines to stop travellers from profiting illegal developments.

Fifth we will extend councils powers of compulsory purchase, where the land is the subject of a continuing breach of a Stop Notice. This will protect local residents from being forced to purchase land from speculators, at vastly inflated sums, just to avoid the threat of illegal encampments.

Sixth, we will provide clearer, more effective guidance for the police. Mr Blair’s Government’s new guidance is a trespassers’ charter, restricting the ability of the police and councils to take action. We will issue revised guidance, undoing John Prescott’s changes, and encouraging police to tackle criminal or anti-social behaviour on traveller sites.

Finally, Conservatives will give local people a greater say on where sites go. We oppose the imposition of arbitrary quotas on councils to provide traveller camps. We will abolish the unelected regional assemblies and regional housing boards which now threaten to silence the voice of local communities.

Our proposals are sensible and practical. They will deal with the problem of illegal traveller camps – a problem which Mr Blair’s Government has created. Yesterday Labour said that action to tackle this issue was “tapping into … bigotry”.

They’re wrong. It’s not bigoted. It’s about fairness. And it’s about standing up for the right values. People want a government that upholds the law – not one that turns a blind eye when the law is flouted.

10/05/2020
Michael Howard – 2004 Speech on Housing

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Howard, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 27 October 2004.

There are few things more important to us than the home we live in.

People in this country want to own their home. Owning your own home gives you security, stability and a base. It gives you a real stake in society. It gives you freedom and security.

A lot of people do already own their own home. But for more and more people – particularly first time buyers – it’s becoming very difficult.

Everyone knows someone who is desperate to buy their own home – someone just starting out on a career, or a young couple that have just got married and want to start a family.

Twenty or thirty years ago, their parents would have found it difficult, but they would have managed. But for today’s young people, the difficult dream has become the impossible dream.

But it’s not just young people who have a problem. It’s easy to forget that many older people want to move home – to a home that is more suitable or to one that is nearer their family.

So we need practical policies that that will help put a home within their reach.

Some people think the answer is to build more houses. We certainly do need more homes – the level of homebuilding in this country is at its lowest for more than eighty years – and we will be publishing our detailed proposals on this shortly.

But what we emphatically do not want is to concrete over the south east with millions of homes, which are simply dumped on communities and which are unsustainable.

Labour have been all talk. They have promised action, but they have not delivered. In many ways, through stealth taxes such as stamp duty and council tax, they have made owning your own home even more difficult.

I won’t promise to solve the housing problem overnight. But we are putting forward today a series of practical policies that will make a difference, policies that will address different housing needs and tackle the problem of affordable housing.

As Caroline said, we’ve been working on our policies for many months now. We’ve talked to a huge range of people and held wide-ranging discussions. Today’s document is the fruit of a lot of hard work.

The policies in this document will help increase home ownership in this country. They will help give young people the start they need and support older people who want to move house.

At the heart of our approach is people, not buildings.

We haven’t simply asked – how can we build more homes?

We’ve asked some different questions – how we can we make homes more affordable? How can we open up the existing supply of homes? How can we give more people a greater stake in the home they live in?

In short, how can the Party that gave people the Right to Buy today give people the Right to Own?

This is what we are going to do:

First, we will extend the Right to Buy to over a million housing association tenants who don’t have that right at the moment.

Second, we will allow social housing tenants to buy the home of their choice, not just the house in which they currently live. We’re going to do that by giving tenants transferable discounts that can be used towards the cost of any suitable property on the market.

Third, we will enable tenants to steadily build-up a stake in their home through a Right to Shared Ownership.

Fourth, we will bring the property ladder back within reach of ordinary home buyers – young and old – by extending shared equity schemes.

These proposals will help bring more homes within reach of more people.

They will increase home ownership.

They will make homes more affordable.

They will help people live in the homes that are right for them.

And they will help us invest in building more social housing.

10/05/2020
Tim Yeo – 2004 Speech on the Loyal Address

Below is the text of the speech made by Tim Yeo, the then Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 25 November 2004.

On Tuesday we heard the last Queen’s Speech before the general election. It was given after seven and a half years of a Labour Government. So it is fair to say that this is a time to pass judgment first on the Government’s record and secondly on their intentions. I am genuinely sorry—because it matters very much to this country—to say that the Government’s record is a bad one.

Our transport system increasingly resembles that of a third-world country. The Government’s failure to bring roads and railways into the 21st century is damaging business. The Confederation of British Industry has estimated that the cost of congestion is £15 billion per year. It damages the competitive position of British firms and makes Britain a less attractive country for new investment.

Congestion does not hurt just business; it hurts families. Although Ministers like to talk about the work/life balance, they seem to have their heads firmly in the sand when it comes to transport policy. One simply cannot put a price on the time that mums and dads lose because the train has let them down again or the road is too congested and they are not home in time to say good night to their children.

Let us look at the facts. We will start with roads. In Britain, the proportion of road links that are congested for more than an hour a day is three times greater than in Germany and five times greater than in France. Our motorway provision per head of population is less than half the European average. We have a lower motorway density than any of our European competitors. That is despite the fact that motorists pay £8 billion more in vehicle excise duty and fuel duty than in 1997. Indeed, the Treasury now takes more than £40 billion a year in tax from road users, but the Government spend only £1.6 billion on new trunk roads and motorways and only £10 billion a year on all road infrastructure. Some of the extra tax goes to subsidise bus services. Although subsidies to buses have doubled to more than £1.4 billion a year, outside London bus use is falling.

The picture on railways is similarly depressing. Twice as many trains run late now as in 1997.

New rail schemes have been kicked into the long grass, even though rail subsidies have soared from more than £1 billion a year in 1997 to more than £3.5 billion now. Fares have risen faster than inflation, despite the Government’s promises to the contrary. Nothing that we have heard in the Queen’s Speech addresses those failings. The Crossrail Bill will have our support, but as everyone knows, and the Secretary of State acknowledged, it does not advance the starting date for that important project by a single day, because the Government are still dithering over the funding.

I will deal with the Railways Bill in detail in a moment, but let me say initially that it is hard to see what the Bill contains that will improve the lot of passengers. Its central feature and the reason why it is being introduced is the abolition of the Strategic Rail Authority. The House will remember that two years ago the Department of Transport’s own review of the 10-year transport plan said that the SRA would provide the

“firm leadership envisaged for it: that of providing strategic direction and funding for the rail industry.”

The Labour general election manifesto said that the body would provide

“a clear, coherent and strategic programme for the development of the railways so that passenger expectations are met.”

Now, having consumed £237 million of taxpayers’ money, that very body is being abolished. The Secretary of State’s only strategy for the railways is one of utter incoherence.

To be fair to the Secretary of State and the Government, we should judge them according to the performance criteria that they set out. The 10-year plan launched with such fanfare four years ago by the Deputy Prime Minister—and I am sorry that he is not here to enjoy the debate—contained a number of commitments.

According to the plan, congestion on Britain’s roads was to be reduced by 2010. In practice, it has got worse. According to the plan, trains were to be made more punctual. In practice, they have become less punctual. According to the plan, rail passengers were to increase in number by 50 per cent. In practice, the increase has been 5 per cent. According to the plan, bus travel throughout England was to grow by 10 per cent. In practice, outside London, it is falling. According to the plan, the maintenance backlog on local roads was to be eliminated. In practice, that target has been dropped.

According to the plan, Thameslink and the East London line were to be built by 2010. In practice, those targets cannot be met. According to the plan, rail freight was to increase by four fifths. In practice, the amount of freight carried by rail in the past two years has fallen. According to the plan, passengers were to travel by train more quickly and comfortably. In practice, as those of us who use the railways regularly will know, overcrowding has reached chronic proportions and is likely to get worse, while reliability is worse than in 1997. According to the plan, the east coast main line was to be modernised and capacity increased. In practice, that scheme has been put on ice. According to the plan, local roads were to be improved. In practice, the Freight Transport Association reports that their condition is worse than a decade ago.

Not one of those 10 failures was mentioned by the Secretary of State today, but they are what concern road and rail users every day. Their consequence is an economy whose competitive position is being steadily worsened by this Government’s refusal to address them. Absolutely nothing in the Queen’s Speech suggests that the Government have any idea about how to tackle those problems, or even any intention of trying to do so. Let us look at what the Secretary of State is proposing.

When it comes to new roads, the most decisive step that he can muster is more talk about road pricing, along with yet another consultation exercise about a possible extension northwards of the M6 toll road. Yet the Secretary of State told the House on 20 July that

“Doing nothing would be the worst possible option.”

Yet that is the very option that he is pursuing.

A carefully argued study by the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Automobile Association, the FTA and other organisations identified the need for improvements to key motorways and trunk roads, but it is simply being ignored. The only certain consequence of this Queen’s Speech and of the actions of this Secretary of State is that road congestion will get worse.

When it comes to the railways, now that the SRA has been condemned to death, power is shifting decisively back to civil servants in the Department of Transport and Network Rail. None of that bodes well for passengers, but I suppose that we should not be surprised that this Government should want to give more power to a body such as Network Rail, which is not directly answerable to anyone—least of all to its customers or the paying public.

There will be anxiety too among train operators about how decisions over the allocation of franchises will be taken under the new regime. Most alarming of all, however, is the Government’s proposal to hand more power over the railways to Ken Livingstone.

Two out of three train journeys begin or end in London, so that proposal is worrying indeed, especially for passengers travelling to or from stations outside the area for which Ken Livingstone is responsible. Passengers may now find that it suits Ken to stop their fast trains on the edge of London to pick up a few of his voters. They may also find that their fares go up because Ken says so.

Just this week, Ken Livingstone’s officials at Transport for London caved in to trade union demands for tube workers to be given longer holidays than anyone else in the country. That is a warning of what lies ahead. I wonder whether it was Ken’s attitude to cost control that tipped the balance when Ministers in the Department of Transport were deciding about handing over to him a bit more say about how our railways are run. Giving Ken Livingstone power over how trains are run is a sure-fire way to discourage the extra private investment that railways need to attract.

Where will it all end? Will the local councils in Birmingham, Rugby, Milton Keynes and Watford all be given a say over the trains that run from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden to London? Will all those councils be involved, too?

The Railways Bill has exposed the Government’s complete disarray over the strategic direction of the rail industry. It will increase the extent to which politicians and bureaucrats interfere in the running of the railways. For that reason, the Conservative party will oppose it.

We look forward to the imminent publication of the road safety Bill. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of many of the measures for which the Conservative party has been calling for some time. They include measures such as a crackdown on uninsured drivers—long overdue—and action to tackle the disappointing upturn in drink driving. Other measures include the introduction of variable penalty points to reflect the relative seriousness of different traffic offences.

I was not entirely surprised that the Secretary of State got on to the subject of money in his speech, but he did not mention the cuts that he has made in transport spending. They must be something of an embarrassment to him. The spending plans that he inherited were set out in the 2002 spending review. That document said that, in the current year, 2004-05, the Government would spend £11.2 billion on transport. In the 2003 public expenditure statistical analysis, that figure was cut to £10.75 billion, and in the 2004 spending review, there is a further cut in transport spending for this year. The figure is now down to £10.4 billion—a reduction of 7 per cent. from the planned total for spending in 2004-05 that was announced before the Secretary of State took over.

Breaking a pledge so spectacularly is not unusual for this Government, of course, but it is a reason why we cannot rely on any promise about future spending increases from this Secretary of State. It makes a total mockery of the right hon. Gentleman’s attempt to attack the Conservative party’s transport plans when he has personally overseen a cut of nearly £1 billion in transport spending for the current year.

In any event, almost everyone—and I suspect that that includes the Secretary of State—recognises that taxpayers alone cannot fund the improvements needed in Britain’s transport infrastructure. The key to a modern transport system is more private investment. Unfortunately, even if he realises that, the Secretary of State is not taking the necessary action to encourage it. Instead of getting on with extending the M6 toll road northwards, he is conducting yet another consultation process. That is another example of how this Government are all talk.

The M6 toll road was first approved when my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) was a Transport Minister, and it took more than a decade to complete. The need for immediate action is therefore obvious.

On railways, the Government’s insistence on short-term contracts for train operators is an obstacle to increased investment. The bungled renationalisation of Railtrack is another deterrent to private investors. At the same time, the potential to bring vastly more private capital into the railways by unlocking the huge development potential in and around our stations, which are adjacent to some of the most valuable brownfield sites in the country, remains shamefully unexploited.

Unlike the present Government, the next Conservative Government will have a timetable for action. That will include longer contracts for the best train operators and a major programme. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Jamieson) appears to think that that is amusing, but he did not hear the earlier part of the debate. We will also have a major programme of investment in stations which will bring benefits to passengers without any contribution from the taxpayer or any increase in fares.

I turn now to the other subject for today’s debate. It would have been too much to hope that the Queen’s Speech would include a reference to farming. After all, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs could not bring herself to mention farming in her speech to this year’s Labour party conference. Nevertheless, everyone involved in agriculture has plenty about which to be concerned.

We are at a potential turning point in the industry. The effect of the mid-term review is to break the mould of 40 years of supporting farming by linking payment to production. Now that link is broken. I am not against that change in principle, but the potential consequences for the industry are far reaching. We may not see the changes take effect until 2006, because the Government’s incompetence in sorting out the rules under which the new arrangements will work mean that, for the time being, farmers have to operate in a climate of uncertainty.

The difficulty that the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality had last week in answering my question about whether the Government have assessed the likely impact of the changes in the method of farming support on British agricultural production was revealing. Clearly, the Government have not assessed that. I ask again today: does the Minister agree that it is now possible that over the next five years farm output will fall dramatically? Are the Government happy to see Britain become more and more dependent on imports for more and more of its food needs? Does the Government regard farming as a strategically important industry. What assessment have Ministers made of what all that will do for jobs in the countryside, the effect on the rural economy and how our rural landscape will look?

If we are to import more and more of our food, it is even more urgent that we require honesty in food labelling by law. British consumers are entitled to know where the food they buy comes from and how it was produced. British farmers are entitled to know that when food grown abroad—often to lower environmental and animal welfare standards—is sold in British shops, consumers will be informed of the differences between British methods of production and those overseas. Why are the Government so afraid of what Brussels might say that they continue to shirk their duty to consumers and producers alike on the vital question of labelling?

Will the Minister confirm that, because of the Government’s failure in yet another computer project, farmers are likely to suffer severe cashflow problems? The Rural Payments Agency will be unable to make payments due to farmers when the single farm payment comes in, because of the Government’s failure to complete the necessary preparations.

Why on earth have the Government not abolished the over-30-month scheme? Even the European authorities now accept without qualification that British beef is safe, but Ministers are unwilling to take the action that is needed to relieve our beef producers of a burden that could and should have been lifted a considerable time ago.

Will the Minister confirm the report in The Daily Telegraph today about the European Commission’s refusal to allow two thirds of Britain’s claim for help with the costs of foot and mouth disease? It appears that British taxpayers must pay an extra £600 million towards the £8 billion cost of foot and mouth disease because the Government refused to respond to the outbreak in a timely and prompt manner. The House will recall that in the last few days of February 2001 and the first three weeks of March 2001, my colleagues and I constantly urged the Government to take the steps, such as bringing in the Army, that were needed to bring foot and mouth disease under control. Because the Prime Minister did not want to admit the scale of the crisis in the run-up to the general election, he refused to act until forced to do so in the face of overwhelming evidence. That failure—those lost weeks during which I and others set out day after day exactly what needed to be done—cost our farmers, the countryside, the tourism industry and the country very dear. Today we learn that it will cost the taxpayer another £600 million on top of the billions of pounds already wasted. If the Minister says just one thing when he winds up, will he say sorry to all those people who suffered because of the way in which the Government bungled the handling of foot and mouth disease?

The Government now propose an integrated rural agency. That proposal will weaken both the important statutory functions carried out by English Nature and the rural advocacy role performed by the Countryside Agency. I do not believe that making greater use of regional development agencies to deliver rural services will help the countryside or the people who live and work there.

We support the principles behind the animal welfare Bill, although we have some concerns about the extent to which it will give Ministers powers to act through secondary legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden will refer in more detail to the clean neighbourhoods and environment Bill when she winds up later. Those measures are certainly necessary. Fly-tipping has increased by two fifths since 2001, littering increased by 12 per cent. last year, and the number of abandoned vehicles increased by 39 per cent. in two years. Unlike the present Government, we will take environmental crime seriously and we will start by making fly-tipping an arrestable offence.

I now turn to what was not in the Queen’s Speech. There was a serious omission from the programme, which I hope the Minister will address: the absence of a marine conservation Bill. Will he explain the reason for that extraordinary omission? Is it, as many people fear, that his Department has simply been outgunned by the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry? If so, it is another worrying sign that on environmental matters the Government are all talk and lack real commitment. The Bill is urgently needed and, if introduced, would have our support.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who has worked tirelessly on that subject. His early-day motion 171 in the last Session attracted the support of about half the Members of the House. Both that early-day motion and his private Member’s Bill in 2001 enjoyed all-party backing, as well as the endorsement of many outside organisations, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the World Wildlife Fund, the wildlife trusts and the Marine Conservation Society. It also enjoyed endorsement from the Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. The absence of any marine equivalent to the sites of special scientific interest, despite the fact that more than half our biodiversity is in the marine environment, is scandalous. Furthermore, a marine spatial planning framework would enable rational decisions to be made about the priorities to be attached in different places to development, nature conservation, fisheries and so on. The Government’s attitude to that Bill is a litmus test of whether they take environmental issues seriously. What the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality says this afternoon will show whether the Government have passed or failed that test.

I turn to a subject that did get a mention in the Queen’s Speech: climate change. I am pleased that the Prime Minister intends that to be a theme of both Britain’s chairmanship of the G8 and our presidency of the EU, but I should be much more pleased if he backed his fine words with a bit of action. On climate change, so far the Government have been all talk. Let us consider carbon dioxide emissions, on which Britain is committed to a reduction of 20 per cent. by 2010. Up to 1997, under the last Conservative Government, carbon dioxide emissions were falling; over the first six years of the Labour Government, they have risen. Unless there is an urgent policy change, Britain has no chance of meeting its targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

To make matters worse, the Prime Minister has failed to show the international leadership that Baroness Thatcher provided. When my noble Friend Baroness Thatcher was Prime Minister, she was the first Head of Government of any substantial country to take the issue of climate change seriously. The Prime Minister has failed, too, to use his unique relationship with President Bush to persuade the United States Administration to address the issue of climate change constructively. As Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace said recently:

“The Prime Minister can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. So far his record on climate change is almost entirely a record of fine words and no action. His repeated failure on this issue is undermining his diplomatic efforts . . . Fancy speeches are not enough.”

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth was equally forthright:

“The leadership position of the country is jeopardised by the position at home.”

He went on to say that

“Britain’s credibility is essentially derived from the policy choices taken by the Conservatives in the 1980s.”

His predecessor at Friends of the Earth, Charles Secrett, summed it up when he said:

“Blair thinks he can get away with boosting his green credentials by making a big speech every year on climate change. When it comes to putting his own house in order it’s always business as usual.”

In the transport sector, the Government’s efforts to encourage greener practices are pitiful. The Conservative party is looking at how we can encourage a much faster switch to more environmentally friendly vehicles. We have already advocated colour-coded licence disks so that the public can instantly recognise which vehicles are environmentally friendly and which are not. We are now examining how the tax system can be used much more extensively to encourage the purchase and the use of greener cars. We want Britain to be in the forefront of the trend, which is already under way, for hybrid vehicles that do not run at all times on fossil fuels.

Aviation is the fastest growing single source of carbon-dioxide emissions in the transport sector. It is an area where international leadership is desperately required to move the world towards recognition of the need for an agreement on an aviation fuel tax—leadership which Britain could provide if we had a Government who took climate change seriously.

Progress in curbing emissions from aircraft depends on international agreement, and sadly the Government have neglected this subject entirely. One step forward would be the inclusion of aviation within the EU emissions trading scheme. Why on earth are the Government giving the go-ahead for further expansion of runway capacity in south-east England before agreement has even been reached on a robust European emissions trading regime for aviation? The Department for Transport’s own survey in 2002 shows that only one person in eight is aware of the link between aviation and climate change. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has commented that

“rapid growth in air transport is in fundamental contradiction to the Government’s . . . goal of sustainable development.”

On this issue, the Government are not even all talk; they are no talk. Surely it would be a start if air travel documents contained information similar to that which now appears in car advertisements, disclosing the emissions that the relevant flights caused.

Home energy efficiency is another crucial aspect of the solution to climate change, and it is another area where the Government’s approach has been lacklustre. The domestic sector accounts for a quarter of all UK carbon dioxide emissions, largely from heating homes and generating electricity for appliances. Households could cut their bills by one third through energy efficiency measures.

Under pressure from the Conservative party and others, amendments to the recent Housing Bill, now the Housing Act 2004, have finally forced the present Government to accept a target for improving domestic energy efficiency equivalent to that set under the last Conservative Government. The next Conservative Government will make it easier for homes to be powered by clean, green, renewable energy and to save on energy consumption. Fiscal instruments can promote those aims, whether in the form of lower stamp duty for energy-efficient homes—an option that we are now examining—or through council tax concessions for tenants and owners who have invested to make their homes more energy efficient. The scheme pioneered by Centrica with Conservative-led Braintree district council, under which householders who install cavity wall insulation can claim a £100 council tax rebate, is a good model that could be replicated elsewhere. More could be done in the social housing sector too, where faster progress is needed to bring all social housing up to an energy-efficient rating of 65, to reduce fuel poverty and to comply with the law.

Another area of Government neglect is micro-generation. To realise the enormous potential that that could make, changes to the distribution network would be needed, and discussions with the industry and with Ofgem about how to promote those changes should be underway now. The role that combined heat and power schemes can play has been well demonstrated in Woking, and it is disappointing that that model has not been more widely followed.

That leads directly to the topic of renewable energy. The Government’s fixation, which I mentioned, with covering our countryside with onshore wind farms at the expense of encouraging other renewable energy technologies is undermining both our ability to raise the proportion of Britain’s energy derived from renewable sources and our chances of gaining a commercial advantage by leading the world in the development of offshore wind, wave and tidal power. Our island status gives us a big natural advantage, which Ministers are busy throwing away.

Biofuels and biomass could also make a bigger contribution than they currently do, and at a time when farm output is likely to fall, biofuels could take up some of the slack. If that is to happen, more encouragement, whether in the form of a further duty cut or through a renewables transport fuel obligation, is needed. As usual from a Government who are all talk, nothing is happening.

In conclusion, let me just say that the issues for which the Department for Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are responsible affect every family and every business in the country. They affect Britain’s reputation abroad and the influence we can exercise, as well as our ability to attract new investment and to compete internationally. Sadly, the failure of Ministers, from the Prime Minister downwards, to tackle these challenges with the urgency needed is damaging our economy, our environment and the quality of life of every man, woman and child in the country.

Instead of action, we have consultation. Instead of decisions, we have delay. Instead of leadership, we have posturing. This is a Government who are all talk, and they must be replaced at the earliest opportunity.

10/05/2020
Michael Howard – 2004 Speech on the Voluntary Sector and Public Services

Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Howard, the then Leader of the Opposition, at Toynbee Hall on 30 November 2004.

Since becoming Leader of the Opposition, I’ve spent a lot of time travelling round Britain. And wherever I go, I meet remarkable people who give up their time to help those who are less fortunate.

I meet people that have pulled together to tackle the problems they face. I visit communities who have been emancipated by the realisation that they can help themselves. And I see society working to meet the needs of its most vulnerable people, often more successfully than the State.

As Beveridge wrote in 1948:

“The making of a good society depends not on the State but on the citizens, acting individually or in free association with one another, acting on motives of various kinds, some selfish, some unselfish, some narrow and material, others inspired by love of man and love of God. The happiness or unhappiness of the society in which we live depends upon ourselves as citizens, not on the instrument of political power which we call the State.”

Central to my approach is a belief that voluntary organisations are often better at delivering services than government.

Just because the State pays for services, it doesn’t always have to provide them. Involving the voluntary or private sectors helps to drive up standards – benefiting everyone.

Voluntary organisations are often more flexible and more responsive than the State. They tailor their services to the communities they work in. They do not simply hand out money – they know how it’s going to be used. They rarely suffer widespread fraud – because they know their clients personally. Some of the most successful organisations in the country – the schools, care homes and child care centres catering to the poorest people in society – are independent charities.

Institutions like Toynbee Hall do not simply offer a contract with their customers. They offer a covenant: a relationship, an understanding of the emotional aspects of life, a recognition that we are not economic units or faceless statistics, but human beings.

That’s why I would like to involve the voluntary sector much more in the delivery of public services. In education, we want charitable schools to be able to compete for the money which the taxpayer spends on each child – so that parents have a greater choice of school. In health care, we want charitable hospitals and clinics to qualify for NHS funding, if they can deliver care at NHS standards and NHS prices.

But voluntary activity is more than about providing services to people in need. It’s part of a mindset, it’s a set of values, it’s a sense of humanity by which people can show responsibility for others. It’s practical. But it can also be wonderfully inspirational.

A thriving voluntary sector, by virtue of the fact that it is voluntary, is a sign of a society in which people recognise that freedom brings responsibility – responsibility not just to our communities but to those less fortunate than ourselves. It offers the decisive and positive answer to that age-old biblical question: am I my brother’s keeper?

What drives me forward is my trust in people.

I believe that if people are given a choice they will make the right decisions for themselves and their families.

I believe that if professionals – doctors, nurses and teachers – are trusted to exercise their judgment, they will take the right decisions: decisions that are in the best interests of patients and pupils.

And I believe that if the voluntary sector is trusted to help run our schools and hospitals, we can improve the services on offer.

My ambition is simple – to give everyone the choice in health and education that today only people with money can buy.

As Winston Churchill said in 1940:

“When this war is won, as it surely will be, it must be one of our aims to establish a state of society where the advantages and privileges which have hitherto been enjoyed by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many”.

It’s a dream worth turning into reality.

10/05/2020
Nicola Sturgeon – 2019 Speech at Lord Mayor’s Burns’ Supper

Below is the text of the speech made by Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, on 28 January 2019.

Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress, Your Excellencies, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Chief Commoner, Ladies & Gentlemen

It is an absolute pleasure to be here in these grand surroundings with all of you this evening. I am grateful to you, Lord Mayor, for hosting us, and I am grateful to all of you for attending.

I do feel as if we are partaking in something of an historic occasion here this evening – the first ever Burns supper here in the Mansion House. I hope it’s not the last Burns supper to take place here. I think we should declare it a tradition.

It is a real pleasure to be here. The Lord Mayor mentioned some of the many Scottish inventions – those that were invented by Scots, and those that we claim were invented by Scots. I’m not sure which list is the longest. Penicillin, the telephone, the television, the pin number. We also claim, of course, to have invented the Bank of England and the overdraft. Nobody said all of those inventions were good inventions. I actually just discovered that Scots also founded the state bank of India as well, so the list grows longer every day.

But undoubtedly, one of Scotland’s greatest exports is Robert Burns – a wonderful poet. His poetry, his words of wisdom on so many different topics remain as relevant today as they were when he wrote them. So it’s wonderful to be here this evening celebrating the memory and the legacy of Robert Burns.

I know that as well as many people from the Scottish and London business communities this evening, we’re also joined by diplomatic representatives from a number of countries across Europe, from Mexico and New Zealand.

That’s actually really fitting because Robert Burns was a proud and very committed internationalist.

In fact – and this is relevant to a point I’ll make later on – when the Scottish parliament reconvened in 1999, one of the songs chosen for the opening ceremony was Robert Burns’ A Man’s a Man, and that song contains these words:

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)

That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

Those words are resonant, perhaps in many ways more resonant today than in the day that Robert Burns wrote them. So, to celebrate not just his legacy but his internationalism this evening, it’s wonderful to be joined by people from across the globe.

Now of course the other purpose of this evening’s event is to celebrate and strengthen the ties between Scotland’s financial services industry, and the City of London.

In a week like this, it’s impossible to completely avoid Brexit in reflecting on that. However I’m sure you don’t want me to spend too much time on Brexit this evening. And believe you me – I don’t want to spend too much talking about Brexit.

Apart from anything else, the Scottish Government’s view is well-known. We think leaving the EU will be damaging to the UK as a whole.

We would prefer to stay in the EU, and short of that we’d prefer to stay in the Single Market and in the Customs Union. We hope that the prospect of no deal will very soon be removed completely as an option, and if necessary to avoid a Brexit cliff edge, we believe that Article 50 should be extended to allow parliament more time to come up with a proper and managed way forward.

However – and this is the message I want to emphasise this evening – regardless of what happens with Brexit, there is a bright future for financial services in Scotland.

I’m sure this is the case in many parts of the UK today, but certainly in Scotland we see Brexit as creating a necessity to be more firm in our determination to look outwards, to build links and to foster collaboration, and that is as true in financial services as it is in many other areas.

The sector right now in Scotland is flourishing – and the Scottish Government is working very closely with business to help it flourish further in the years ahead.

We’ve seen good evidence of that in the last year. One of them many of you will be aware of already – the decision by Barclays to invest in Glasgow.

That investment, which was hugely welcome, could create up to 2,500 jobs. And perhaps more significantly, in what was a truly global field of options – the other centres are in New Jersey and India – it is a major vote of confidence in Scotland and in Scotland’s workforce.

In the last two years HSBC and Computershare have both hired hundreds of additional staff in Scotland. We’ll hear from George Quinn later this evening about Zurich’s major investment in Glasgow.

What all of these businesses – and many more besides – recognise is that Scotland is one of the best places anywhere in Europe to base financial services operations. That’s why we are the UK’s most important financial centre outside London. We have strengths across a range of areas from asset management to insurance and banking.

First and foremost, that is because of our people. We have world-class universities and colleges. In fact by some measures, Scotland has the most highly qualified workforce in Europe.

For example, at present, more than 70,000 students are studying subjects relevant to financial services in Scotland’s universities.

But of course that skills base goes far beyond financial services. That’s why businesses across a range of economic sectors – several of which are represented here this evening – choose Scotland for inward investment.

However to take an example which is closely connected with finance, we are widely acknowledged as a UK leader in data and informatics. We are also investing significantly in wider digital skills – an issue which I know has been a major focus of your time in office, Lord Mayor.

That skilled workforce is a major reason why Technation last year named Edinburgh as the best location in the UK for establishing a technology company. That in turn is why our fintech sector is starting to gain international recognition.

In addition, having a devolved government allows us to respond rapidly to the needs of business. That makes it easier for the public sector to provide co-ordinated support for inward investors. And of course we offer a brilliant quality of life – with vibrant cities and beautiful landscapes, if not always fantastic weather.

To build on all of these strengths, we already work closely with businesses in Scotland. I co-chair Scotland’s Financial Services Advisory Board with Scottish Financial Enterprise, and of course we’ve just worked very closely together to produce the financial services prospectus that the Lord Mayor referred to.

But we also want to work with companies based in London, and with the City of London itself.

And there’s a point which I think is worth emphasising here. The City of London and Scotland can sometimes be seen as rivals or competitors. And of course, every now and again, that will undoubtedly be the case. But far more frequently, we will benefit from working together.

After all, as all of us know, London’s scale is unique within the UK and indeed Europe. That gives you an important comparative advantage in many areas.

But we also know that Scotland offers a fantastic range of expertise and facilities, and that office costs are significantly lower than in London.

So – and many of you have direct experience of this – companies which already have big operations in London, can benefit from offices in Scotland which complement their London bases. Working together is undoubtedly good for Scotland, but also brings benefits for London as well.

That’s indeed why we established a new Scottish Government base in London in 2017. It demonstrates that – whatever the future holds for all of us – it will always be in our interests to encourage close ties with London.

And it also symbolises something wider. In the last couple of years the Scottish Government has also established new bases in Dublin, Berlin and Paris. Our enterprise agencies have doubled their representation across Europe, and are also strengthening their presence in other parts of the world. What that symbolises is a determination to be firmly outward looking and firmly open for business

I mentioned earlier how appropriate it is that there is an international dimension to this evening’s event.

That’s because Scotland – like the City of London – benefits enormously from our connections with friends and partners the world o’er. We have world class businesses which prosper by trading the world o’er. And so we are determined to forge new partnerships and to strengthen existing ones – here on these islands, across Europe, and right across the world.

That definitely applies to the partnership Scotland enjoys with the city of London. We believe that it benefits the City, and that it also benefits Scotland. And so we are determined to work with you, Lord Mayor, to strengthen that relationship further.

That’s why I am delighted to see so many people here. I hope you all have a wonderful evening. And I look forward to working with many of you, in the months and years ahead.

09/05/2020
Grant Shapps – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

Below is the text of the statement made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, on 9 May 2020.

Opening remarks

Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s Downing Street press conference.

I’m pleased to be joined today by Professor Jonathan Van-Tam.

Latest data

Let me start by updating you on the latest information from the COBR data file.

I can report that through the government’s monitoring and testing programme, as of today…..

1, 728,443 tests for coronavirus have now been carried out in the UK, including 96, 878 tests yesterday

215,260 people have tested positive, that’s an increase of 3,896 cases since yesterday

11,809 people are currently in hospital with coronavirus in the UK, down from 12,284 yesterday

And tragically, of those hospitalised with the virus, 31,587 have now died. That’s an increase of 346 fatalities since yesterday.

These deaths are devastating for the families and friends of victims, who are in our thoughts and prayers are with all of them every day.

But they also strengthen our resolve to fight this pandemic with all the resources we can muster in the weeks ahead….

Planning for restart/opportunity for lasting change

Tomorrow, the Prime Minister will set out a roadmap for the next phase in our strategy to tackle coronavirus.

In support of this, I am setting out today an ambitious programme to help prepare our transport network for the critical role it will play as we emerge from this crisis.

Importantly, it is true to say that moving beyond COVID will be a gradual process… not a single-leap to freedom.

When we do emerge, the world will seem quite different, at least for a while.

The need to maintain social distancing means that our public transport system cannot go back to where it left off.

Here is a very stark fact…

Even with public transport reverting to full service – once you take into account the 2 metre social distancing rule – there would only be effective capacity for one in ten passengers on many parts of the network.

Just a tenth of the old capacity.

So, getting Britain moving again, while not overcrowding our transport network, is going to require many of us to think carefully about how and when we travel.

Everyone involved

We have accomplished so much over the past 7 weeks of lockdown.

The whole country has been responsible for reducing the COVID reproduction or ‘R’ rate…

Millions of households across the UK have changed their behaviour for the greater good.

Getting Britain moving again, whilst not overcrowding our transport network, represents another enormous logistical challenge.

Yet this is a problem which presents a health opportunity too…. an opportunity to make lasting changes that could not only make us fitter, but also better-off – both mentally and physically – in the long run.

Active travel

During the crisis, millions of people have discovered the benefits of active travel.

By cycling or walking, we’ve been able to enjoy this remarkably warm spring whilst sticking to the guidelines.

In some places, there’s been a 70% rise in the number of people on bikes whether it’s for exercise, or necessary journeys, such as stocking up on food.

So, while it’s still crucial that we stay at home, when the country does get back to work, we need those people to carry on cycling and walking, and to be joined by many more.

Otherwise, with public transport capacity severely restricted, more cars could be drawn to the road and our towns and cities could become gridlocked.

We also know that in this new world, pedestrians will need more space.

So today (9 May 2020) I am announcing a £2 billion package to put cycling and walking at the heart of our transport policy.

To set out how we will deliver this, I will bring forward a national cycling plan for publication in early June, in line with the statutory Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy to help double cycling and increase walking by 2025.

The first stage, worth £250 million, is a series of swift, emergency interventions to make cycling and walking safer.

Pop-up bike lanes. Wider pavements. Cycle and bus-only streets. All examples of what people will start to see more of.

Accompanying the new money, we are today publishing fast-tracked statutory guidance, effective immediately, requiring councils in England to cater for significantly-increased numbers of cyclists and pedestrians, and making it easier for them to create safer streets.

For employees who want to start cycling to their place of work, but who don’t have a bike right now, the popular Cycle to Work Scheme already allows employees to save between 25% and 39% on the cost of a new bike or an electric bike.

There has been a huge increase in people using the scheme, and we will work with employers to increase uptake further.

And for those who may have an old bike in the shed, and want to get it back into a roadworthy condition, there will be a voucher scheme for bike repairs and maintenance.

Plans are also being developed to boost bike fixing facilities.

What’s more, over the next few months, we will set out further measures to make a ‘once in a generation’ change to the way people travel in Britain.

These will include tough new standards for cycling infrastructure;

a new national cycling champion to inspire us

much closer links with the NHS, with GPs prescribing cycling to help us get fitter

legal changes to protect vulnerable road users

at least one “zero-emission city,” with its centre restricted to bikes and electric vehicles

and the creation of a long-term cycling programme and budget, just like we have for our roads

There’s clear evidence, including from the Prime Minister’s time as mayor of London, that making streets safe for walking and cycling is good for retailers, business and the economy.

Green travel / E-scooters / E-vehicles

And in making these changes, our national recovery can also become a green recovery.

One of the few positive benefits about the crisis is drastically better air quality and the health benefits that that brings.

More than 20,000 extra deaths a year in the UK are attributed to nitrogen dioxide emissions, which are highest in areas with most road traffic.

We want to try to preserve this as much as possible.

So today I’m also fast-tracking trials of e-scooters, bringing this programme, already underway, forward from next year, to next month….

And extending those trials from four local authorities to every region in the country that wants them….

… in a bid to get e-scooter rental schemes up-and-running in our cities as fast as possible….

Helping reduce car use on shorter journeys, and taking some pressure off buses, at this vital time.

These trials will help us assess their safety and benefits, together with their impact on public spaces.

The car industry has of course been very badly hit during this crisis, but April’s new sales figures showed – for the first time – that the two biggest selling models were both electric vehicles.

So, to help keep this quiet, clean car revolution going, I can also announce today, £10 million of additional support for car-charging points on our streets.

The car will remain the mainstay for many families and, as well as backing electric infrastructure, we’re going to accelerate the filling of pot-holes that plague so many road users.

Data

And just as new technology is changing the vehicles we use, so new digital technologies will help us make more informed transport choices in our battle against Covid.

At a time when transport demand could quickly overwhelm capacity if users have no access to real-time travel information…

… It is crucial that we take advantage of the UK’s digital tech expertise.

With the right mobile apps, people can find out which parts of the transport network are overcrowded. And avoid them!

They can choose alternative travel options, to help maintain safe social distancing…

… or they can get information to help stagger their journeys – and lift the burden on public transport at peak times.

This week I chaired a roundtable with key players like Google, Microsoft, and British firm, Citymapper, to develop both data and apps to help the public view crowding across the transport network, in real-time.

Overall package

This £2 billion announcement represents the most significant package of cycling, walking and green travel by any British government.

Clearly, it will never be possible to cycle, walk or e-scooter everywhere. Cars will remain an absolutely vital form of transport for many….

And so in the coming days…

as we look to the future…

… there will be further announcements about the huge investment we’re making in road and rail networks – taking advantage of their low usership during this COVID crisis.

Closing remarks

Finally, as we begin the process of preparing public transport to get Britain moving again, no-one should underestimate the sheer scale of the challenge ahead.

Even with every train, bus and tram fully restored to service – this will not be enough.

Social distancing measures mean that everyone who travels will need to contribute to meeting this capacity challenge.

Changing our behaviour is the single biggest thing that’s beaten back this virus.

The welcome fall we’ve seen in deaths is not only the achievement of our doctors and nurses and careworkers – but of everyone in the country for following the stay at home guidance.

To re-iterate, nothing I have said today changes these basic rules.

But as we contemplate the future, we will have to carry on making changes, particularly after we leave our homes.

Preventing overcrowding – which could lead to a second spike and more deaths – will be the responsibility of each and every one of us.

So please, only travel when you need to.

Be considerate to others, and help us prioritise essential workers.

And let’s all play our part in Britain moving safely again when that time comes.

09/05/2020
Vaughan Gething – 2020 Statement on Scientific Advice in Wales

Below is the text of the statement made by Vaughan Gething, the Minister for Health and Social Services in Wales, on 4 May 2020.

The Welsh Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor for Health Dr Rob Orford joined the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) COVID-19 meetings on 11 February 2020.

SAGE is responsible for ensuring timely and co-ordinated scientific advice is available to decision makers to support UK cross-government decisions in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR).

Wales’ Chief Medical Officer Dr Frank Atherton and Dr Orford agreed a formal technical and scientific advisory structure within Welsh Government was also needed to provide official sensitive advice to Ministers. The terms of reference for a Technical Advisory Cell (TAC) were agreed on 3 March, in accordance with SAGE guidance. TAC meets three times a week.

The TAC is designed to:

Interpret SAGE outputs into a Welsh context

Relay relevant information and questions from Welsh Government to SAGE

Ensure indirect harm is not caused by the proposed interventions

Help inform NHS and social care planning guidance

Ensure Welsh Government and Public Health Wales have timely access to the most up-to-date scientific and technical information

Brief Local Resilience Forum and Strategic Coordinating Group chairs about scientific and technical outputs, via the

Strategic Health Coordinating Support Group, which is chaired by Public Health Wales.

TAC does not replace statutory functions of Public Health Wales or use the technical or scientific information, which has not been agreed or discussed by SAGE, unless this has a specific Welsh context.

The priorities of TAC are aligned to SAGE and include:

The detection and monitoring of coronavirus

Understanding effective actions to help contain a cluster

Understand, measure and alter the shape of the UK epidemic

Ensure indirect harm is not caused by the proposed interventions

Model the UK epidemic and identify key numbers for NHS planning

Understand risk factors around demographics, geographies and vulnerable groups

Generate behavioural science insights for policy makers

Ensure NHS tests and trials key interventions

Consider emerging therapeutic, diagnostic and other opportunities.

TAC is co-chaired by Dr Orford and the Deputy Director for Technology and Digital. Membership is drawn from Welsh Government, Public Health Wales, Cardiff University and Swansea University. A range of experts from different disciplines are included covering public health, health protection, medicine, epidemiology, modelling, technology, data science, statistics, microbiology, molecular biology, immunology, genomics, physical sciences and research.

Membership of TAC is kept under constant review.

09/05/2020
Vaughan Gething – 2020 Statement on the NHS and Covid-19 in Wales

Below is the text of the statement made by Vaughan Gething, the Minister for Health and Social Services in Wales, on 6 May 2020.

We are moving out of a period of COVID-19 critical planning and response and into a longer period where our health and care system must remain both prepared for any future peaks and effectively providing essential services and other high quality care and treatment for the people of Wales.

In March I made a number of decisions to ensure early and decisive action to continue to provide care and support to the most vulnerable people in our communities, whilst also making sure organisations and professionals were supported to prepare local responses to the public health emergency. The NHS in Wales has already delivered a remarkable response to the COVID-19 health emergency since receiving the first coronavirus patients and now we must take the next steps.

To maintain momentum and to ensure the system continues to focus its attention on the provision of a wider range of services, I have issued an NHS Wales COVID-19 operating framework for quarter 1 (2020/21).

The document highlights four types of harm that could emanate from Covid-19 which we must remain focused on and guard against. These are;

Harm from COVID-19 itself

Harm from an overwhelmed NHS and social care system

Harm from a reduction in non COVID-19 activity

Harm from a wider societal actions / lockdown

This framework will drive, even further, our systems focus on the two components of ensuring both a continued effective response to COVID-19 whilst providing other essential services in a careful and balanced manner.

I have taken advice from professional colleagues, including NHS Chief Executives and Medical Directors. This advice demonstrates consensus across the health and care system that we must ensure delivery of essential services for our population and where possible recommence more routine care. The advice I have received also says that this must be done progressively, with caution and in a flexible and agile manner to ensure confidence for the public and staff.

This framework is set under a number of themes;

New ways of working and workforce wellbeing – Staff have created and quickly embraced new ways of working to respond to the COVID19 challenge- offering benefits in terms of safety and quality to both staff and patients whilst also contributing to reduced congestion in primary care and hospital settings. We must continue to build on this work and harness the opportunities it has provided.

Examples of the scale of transformation include the rollout of video consultations safely to primary care. Locally and nationally these new ways of working must be sustainably embedded.

This framework recognises the importance of the wellbeing of our workforce, and in particular those staff who have been under significant pressure in responding to COVID 19 and they must be at the forefront of our minds. Pressures may increase again in the next few months. I am clear that appropriate testing systems must be in place and be informed by the impending Testing Strategy being developed to support and help sustain staff.

Managing COVID 19 – It will always be difficult to guarantee that health and social settings will be COVID free, however patients using the NHS must be confident that hospital environments are as safe as possible. The key criterion I will looking to organisations to be assured on include:

Ongoing and consistent application of Infection Prevention and Control guidance.

Identification of COVID “zones” and dedicated isolation facilities. I will be anticipating that regional solutions are explored along with the targeted use of independent sector hospitals and field hospitals to support the separation of covid and non-covid activity in the immediate term.

New service or specialty based triage and streaming processes in both unscheduled and planned care to support the separation of patient services.

Continued implementation of Acute Pathways for COVID 19 and the related rehabilitation
Assurance on the availability of sufficient physical and workforce capacity that reflect the need to maintain social distancing and infection prevention and control measures.

The framework reflects my determination that we retain our ability to quickly activate additional critical care capacity, if we enter into another peak.

“Essential” services – I am clear that Essential Services should be maintained at all times throughout the pandemic. An Essential Services technical document has been developed in line with The World Health Organization (WHO) guidance. If, in any areas of essential services, the response to COVID 19 has led to backlogs they must be urgently addressed. Ultimately I recognise that some decisions on treatment will rest between patients and their clinicians, taking account of their specific risks during the COVID outbreak.

“Routine” services – We know that capacity exists in some parts of our system to support the re-introduction of routine services. The reintroduction of these services is a local operational decision for Health Boards and Trusts in conjunction with relevant partners. These decisions must be taken with care, and organisations need to assure themselves that it is safe and appropriate to do so. I outline how they need to assure themselves in the framework.

Primary care – For General Medical Services we have seen a shift to telephone first triage; this must remain in place during Quarter 1 and I encourage it longer term. Equally our community pharmacy services have been under significant pressure and have introduced new ways of working to manage patient care safely and efficiently, these too must continue where the benefits are clear.

All routine primary care dental treatments and check-ups continue to be cancelled. Dental practices with NHS contracts remain ‘open’ for remote triage, the provision of advice and the issuing of prescription. Further guidance will be issued separately to this framework about the future status and restoration of dental services. In optometry services, a number of practices remain open for emergency and essential eye care services. Health boards must continue to ensure urgent patients are seen.

Social Care Interface – Finally the framework makes clear that NHS organisations must continue to work with partners to ensure an effective interface with social care. This is in line with the approach set out in “A Healthier Wales” and the framework makes clear how this must happen.

There has been clear and consistent messages for the public that the NHS is still available at times of need despite COVID-19. We must continue to ensure that key services are available and patients can access them, now and in the future.

To help patients access these services over the last eight to ten weeks there has been a seismic level of transformation across our system. We must reflect on these changes but not dwell on them. They must be adopted, adapted and applied. This framework supports the health and care system in moving to the next phase of providing services.

09/05/2020
George Eustice – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

Below is the text of the statement made by George Eustice, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on 8 May 2020.

Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s Downing Street Press Conference. I’m pleased to be joined today by Steve Powis the medical director of NHS England.

Before we give an update on the latest figures on the Coronavirus and also our work to help support the vulnerable get access to food.

Today is of course the 75th anniversary of VE day and although many of the lockdown measures and the social distancing measures that are in place mean that many of the planned events have been unable to take place as originally envisaged, today is an important day to pause and remember and 75 years ago people poured into the streets of our scarred cities to celebrate the end of that most difficult conflict.

Our soldiers fought around the world, there were countless acts of bravery, 450,000 British people sadly lost their lives and it was a moment when our whole country pulled together.

As Defra secretary I would like to take this opportunity to record the efforts of those who also contributed in a non-military way, in particular our farmers who stepped up to ensure the nation was fed and the many women who responded to the call to join the Women’s Land Army.

In a moment I am going to give an update on our work to support the vulnerable get access to food, but firstly let me give you an update on the latest data from the COBR coronavirus data file. I can report through the governments ongoing monitoring and testing programme as of today:

1,631,561 tests for coronavirus have now been carried out in the UK, including 97,029 tests carried out yesterday;

211,364 people have tested positive, that’s an increase of 4,649 cases since yesterday;

11,788 people are currently in hospital with coronavirus, down from 12,688 the previous day.

And sadly, of those tested positive for coronavirus, across all settings, 31,241 have now died. That’s an increase of 626 fatalities since yesterday. This new figure includes deaths in all settings not just in hospitals.

We express our deepest condolences to the families and friends of these victims.

Turning now to our work to help the vulnerable get access to food, firstly for the so called shielded cohort. That’s those who are clinically vulnerable.

Over a million food parcels have now been delivered to these households and in addition, all those in the shielded cohort have been added to a list giving them priority access to supermarket delivery slots. So far around 400,000 people have been offered priority delivery slots by supermarkets and around 1 million orders have been placed ensuring that people can shop normally and purchase the goods that they want to buy.

There is of course a wider vulnerable group, those who perhaps have disabilities or who are elderly and perhaps don’t have neighbours or relatives close by to help them. Or indeed those with other conditions that don’t put them in the clinically shielded group but nevertheless make them vulnerable and we have been working with local authorities, and some of the leading charities such as Age UK to put together a package of support to help these people get access to food.

And many local authorities and charities have also been accessing the Good Samaritan app as part of the NHS responder volunteer programme and so far 79,000 shopping runs have been carried out by volunteers engaged in that programme.

In addition we are continuing to work with supermarkets to make available additional priority slots for those in this group. But we also recognise that the economic impacts of coronavirus means that vulnerability is not about physical access to food, for some there is also financial vulnerability, so today we are announcing a new £16 million fund to support frontline food charities. The fund will be used by Fareshare and WRAP to continue and support and increase the food redistribution work that they already do and will significantly expand their sourcing capacity. They will be delivering food to around 5,000 frontline charities and these include refuges, homeless shelters and rehabilitation centres.

Finally I am conscious that there is a great deal of speculation about what the Prime Minster might say on Sunday when he outlines the roadmap for the future and how we will evolve the current restrictions. The Prime Minister will outline any changes to the guidance on Sunday but in the meantime in spite of the sunny bank holiday it is vitally important that we continue to abide by the current restrictions, stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

Concluding the press conference the Environment Secretary said:

I would also as I have done before like to conclude by recording my thanks to all those working in the food industry; from supermarkets and food manufacturers right through to farmers, there has really been quite an extraordinary effort over the last couple of months to ensure that we keep food on our supermarket shelves.

Thank you all very much.

09/05/2020
Harold Wilson – 1978 Speech on Rhodesia

Below is the text of the speech made by Harold Wilson, the then Labour MP for Huyton, in the House of Commons on 7 November 1978.

I associate myself with what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym) said about the retirement of John Davies. We shall remember his unfailing courtesy and his diligence in whatever task he was given. Some of us, of course, remember him in his FBI—and later CBI —capacity, I am glad to have the opportunity today to comment on all that has been said and written before and since the publication of the Bingham report on Rhodesian oil sanctions. I was abroad when it was published. When I returned to London, I said then that I would reserve all public comment until this debate since, as I was Prime Minister during part of the relevant time covered by Bingham, I was answerable then to the House and therefore the statement is due to this House.

At the same time, I called for a full public inquiry involving or invoking whatever powers were needed, which must mean the right to call for the appearance of persons and the production of papers, including all relevant Government documents, Cabinet minutes, Cabinet committee minutes—all papers submitted to the Cabinet and its committees and all interdepartmental exchanges. I have called also for all the relevant papers to be laid as soon as possible before the House itself and to be published. Before I sit down I shall say why I think that that is necessary.

Even since that time a month ago when I made that statement, still further facts have emerged which keep putting the controversy into a yet different light. A fortnight ago, The Sunday Times carried a story asserting that one of the two British oil companies was still supplying oil to Rhodesia, on a transfer arrangement with Mobil, Caltex and others, right up to a date four days before the Bingham report was published. What that means, of course, is that not one but three Prime Ministers in office from 1968–69 to 1978 were unaware of this disreputable traffic. Whether it was disreputable and illegal must be a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions and the courts. But over this period there have been three Prime Ministers, five successive Foreign Secretaries and nine Energy Ministers— counting my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Energy as two because he held the position both in 1969 and from June 1975.

I am perfectly certain that none of those Ministers—none of the holders of those posts in successive Governments—knew of any of these events. Indeed, I should mention that you yourself, Mr. Speaker, received an honourable mention in the Bingham report, particularly for putting inconvenient questions to Shell at one of the meetings when, I think, you were Minister of State. There is in a letter reference to both my noble Friend Lord Thomson and to the then Minister of State, whose name at that time was George Thomas and, I understand, still is.

The situation regarding knowledge of these facts has not changed from that time right up certainly to 1976. In 1976 the Government sent a report to the United Nations sanctions committee, and this is what it said:

“The competent United Kingdom authorities have studied the report most carefully, and have discussed its contents with the British oil companies mentioned. These authorities are satisfied that the report contains no evidence of sanctions breaking by any British companies or individuals and have accepted the assurances given by Shell and BP that neither they nor any company in which they have an interest have engaged either directly or with others in supplying crude oil or oil products to Rhodesia.”

I emphasise that the report said:

“neither they nor … with others. This is the same position”

—the report continued—

“established as in 1968 when Her Majesty’s Government investigated similar charges at the highest level with the same companies.”

That was 2nd September 1976. The Government made it plain that in 1976 it did not regard the position as having changed since 1968 and that no more about the illegal or disreputable traffic was known in 1976 than in 1968.
In my own case the first time I received any information—I shall give details to the House in a moment—indicating this traffic now exposed in Bingham was last April, seven months ago. In a speech at Oxford I criticised on that occasion Mr. Andrew Young’s attack on my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary the previous day, when Mr. Young accused my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench of wanting to get rid of the responsibility for Rhodesia. On the following day, 2nd April, I was asked to appear on BBC radio to discuss Mr. Andrew Young’s position.

I was asked in the course of that interview about sanctions. I repeated what I had always been told and what I had made public, namely, that in my view the breach of sanctions was due to President de Gaulle, who appeared to connive at oil shipments through Mozambique, crossing the border into South Africa, and then, some miles further into South Africa, forking right into Rhodesia. It was a tortuous route, now described in detail in the Bingham report, with place-names and maps. That was what we understood to be the position and it was what I told the House and said publicly.

Indeed, I had been asked by the Cabinet, as the House knows, to raise this matter of French behaviour with President de Gaulle on my visit to Versailles in June 1967. Our conversation on that occasion and what President de Gaulle said has been reported and is public knowledge.

My reference to this matter in the BBC programme led to my receiving a somewhat intemperate letter from Mr. Rowland, of Lonrho, which he has recently published. He said that I must have known about the action of BP and Shell, and he enclosed a number of documents of his own purporting to substantiate his allegations about them. I replied to him that I knew no more than what I said on a number of occasions, including the BBC broadcast, but that since his documents seemed to relate to his legal action against the oil companies concerned, I could not comment.

At this point it is appropriate to quote the Bingham report. At the beginning—

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop (Tiverton) rose

Sir H. Wilson

I am sure that I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point later.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

Could not the right hon. Gentleman send his dirty linen to a laundry—

Sir H. Wilson rose—

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

—so that the House can get on with the debate? Will he not—

Mr. Speaker

Order. Once the right hon. Member who is addressing the House gets back to his feet, the hon. Gentleman must he aware that those who are intervening must resume their seats.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop rose—

Hon. Members

Sit down.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I thought that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention was Over.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop rose—

Mr. Speaker

I know that the House wants to give a good hearing to the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), who has an important statement to make to the House.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

Ex-Prime Ministers are not absolved from the normal rules of the House. The right hon. Gentleman gave way to me. [HON.MEMBERS: “Sit down.”] I have the same rights as any other hon. Member of this House in debate. The point I wish to make—[HON. MEMBERS: “No.”]

Mr. Speaker

Order. May I explain the position? I thought that the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop), who knows procedure very well indeed, knew that if the person who is being called to speak rises to his feet again he must be allowed to continue, otherwise it will be possible for an hon. Member with an intervention to speak for 20 minutes. The right hon. Gentleman had got back on his feet. Sir Harold Wilson.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is not in accordance with the rules of order of this House that when a Member gives way to another he can then terminate a short intervention by rising again. [HON. MEMBERS: “It is.”) It is not. I put the question to the right hon. Gentleman—

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman is on one of those rare occasions when he is not correct. [HON. MEMBERS: “Quite right.”] Order. I wish the House would leave this to me. The hon. Gentleman, on reflection, must realise that the House wants the right hon. Gentleman to continue.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I willingly and gratefully give way to your ruling.

Hon. Members

Oh.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I wish that some of those who laugh would give way as quickly.

Sir H. Wilson

There are some important matters to discuss, and I am sorry that I gave way and caused that long delay.

At this point it is appropriate to quote the Bingham report. At the beginning of what he calls “Factual conclusions” on page 212, chapter 14, paragraph 3(b), Mr. Bingham says:

“In making this summary we would emphasise … that the summary is of facts now known”.

The word “now” was underlined by Mr. Bingham. He goes on:

“many of the facts now summarised were not contemporaneously known to one or other or both of the Groups ”
—that is BP and Shell—

“in London; some were not known until the relevant documents were assembled from many sources for presentation to us”

—that is, the Bingham pair. He continues:

“some came to light in the course of the investigation. It would be wrong to assume that all the events now summarised were known to the Groups in London at the time the events were taking place.”

That is certainly true. Bingham’s examination of 40 witnesses, mainly South Africa-based—especially Mr. Walker— has unearthed many facts. Some, I am sure, were not known to Shell and to BP headquarters. All the more so, they were not known to Her Majesty’s Government until Bingham was published.

The Sunday Times report of 22nd October this year, referring to the supplies continuing until September this year until four days before Bingham was published, was first denied by BP within the day. The report was then confirmed by BP the following day. If BP did not know that, Her Majesty’s Government had an even smaller chance of knowing. Yet this was going on all the time until September this year. The same is true of fact after fact catalogued by Bingham—some but not all of which the London headquarters of the major oil companies did know, but they were facts, which we, the Government, did not know.

In August, while I was on holiday, I read press reports seemingly anticipating what the Bingham report would say. They were mainly leaks of Lonrho’s submissions to Bingham. Therefore, in September I availed myself of a former Minister’s right to look at all relevant documents, as well as Cabinet documents and papers, as well as two other documents sent from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to No. 10. One of these was the letter from Lord Thomson of Monifieth. He said in a Granada Television programme that he had apprised me of the fact that British oil was getting through to Rhodesia. In fact, his letter said that British, French and American oil was getting through to Rhodesia.

The second of the documents which I especially asked to see, and almost know by heart now, was the minute of the meeting chaired by my noble Friend on 6th February 1969, now published in Bingham, annex II pages 268 to 271. I shall address myself first to those two documents because most of the discussion was centred on them. My study of the documents at No. 10 confirmed that the letter of 15th March 1968, to which he had referred, was sent to me and that I had seen it. I had ticked it in the usual way. Now let me refer to its contents. The letter was from Lord Thomson’s secretary to mine. It was in reply to a memorandum from my office which had asked for an investigation into President Kaunda’s allegations of British breaches of oil sanctions.

The reply began by outlining the action taken by the Commonwealth Office to secure a rebuttal of the suggestion that the British major oil companies were breaking the sanctions. It stated that it had been decided to use a Question tabled by my noble Friend Lord Brockway in another place that was answered by Lord Brown, then of the Board of Trade. The letter recorded the Minister’s answer of 5th March 1968, which read:

“The investigations done into the activities of British oil companies leave Her Majesty’s Government satisfied that the British oil compaines themselves are not supplying oil to Rhodesia.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5th March 1968; Vol. 289, c. 1220.]

That was an arranged answer that will be found in Hansard of another place.

Hon. Members will have noticed the word that I accentuated—namely, “themselves”. I inquired into that. That was a reference to “unreliable purveyors” as we knew them in those days, secondary dealers in Lourenco Marques who were suspected by our people of not being above passing on their supplies to South Africa. Some of them were suspected by our people of not being above sending on to Rhodesia by one of a number of routes the oil that they had bought. The oil majors and the British Government were all at one in warning British companies in Mozambique to be vigilant in checking the bona fides of those whom they supplied. The letter went on to refer to assurances of Mr. McFadzean of Shell and Mr. Fraser of BP on careless sales to those who were really spivs.

The letter included another much publicised phrase that justified my noble Friend’s answer to a question put to him on the Granada programme. The passage in the letter reads:

“although we are satisfied that British oil companies have at no time been directly involved in the supply of oil to Rhodesia through Mozambique, we now know that a good deal of the oil which is getting to Rhodesia has been corning from refined products delivered to Lourenco Marques by the French, British and US oil companies. In other words, the oil which is getting through to Rhodesia, does not all come from Sonarep or CFP”.

My check on that point was again answered in terms of the spivs, the unreliable secondary dealers, whom the Government and the oil companies agreed should be investigated and dealt with by denying supplies case by case.

The conclusion drawn at almost every Cabinet and Cabinet committee every time we met throughout the period, and for a long time afterwards, as the House was told on many occasions, was that French, Portuguese and some American companies were the real culprits. At every stage that was recognised, and at almost every ministerial meeting renewed demands were made for bilateral approaches to be made to France, Portugal and the United States and reference made to the need for a comprehensive United Nations resolution binding on all these suppliers.

I have referred to my meeting with General de Gaulle. In the event—much later—we had the United Nations resolution. The countries that I have named ignored it or got round it.

I have set out the Government’s aim during that period. I do not know what more we could have done. I take up a point, with which I totally agree, that was made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. We knew that we could not have a major military confrontation with South Africa. It would have been necessary to impose a blockade on South Africa. The Beira patrol took five frigates. A study of a possible Lourenco Marques patrol suggested that a further 17 would be needed. Any question of blockading South Africa would have been utterly unreal. Even if it had been possible, what would it have meant? Would it have meant cutting off all oil supplies to South Africa? If we had “rationed” South Africa, Rhodesia could still have been supplied. The oil consumption of South Africa was far greater than Rhodesia’s needs.

At the beginning of the Bingham report it is made clear that South Africa needed 5 million tons a year while Rhodesia needed only 400,000 tons. Rhodesia’s consumption was 8 per cent. of South Africa’s. In an old phrase, the South Africans could have put aside the supplies needed for Rhodesia in their eye corner and seen no worse. The hope, forlorn as it proved, was to try to get a United Nations resolution and South African compliance.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has mentioned the arms embargo on South Africa. That was something we were able to deal with and we did. We had made an announcement before the General Election of 1964 that we would immediately impose an arms embargo. That was done the morning after the Government were formed—indeed, before the Cabinet had ever met. I gave an order that all shipments of arms to South Africa must stop. I heard to my surprise on the Sunday that arms were being unloaded from some ships at Southampton. Opposition Members may or may not have agreed with our policy, but they will recall that in 1974—some shipments of arms to South Africa had taken place while Labour was out of office—we announced to the House a short time after taking office that we had stopped the aircraft shipments and the shipments of other arms to South Africa.

I turn to the second important document to which I referred—namely, the Foreign Office note of the meeting held between my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Thomson, Foreign Office officials and the chairmen of Shell and BP. My right hon. and noble Friend took that meeting, but by that time he had no direct responsibility for Rhodesia and sanctions. The Commonwealth Office had been merged with the Foreign Office. In 1968 he had, as Minister without Portfolio, maintained a sort of residual responsibility for Southern African affairs. By 1969 he had entirely different duties as Minister without Portfolio. Later as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster he had a number of entirely different duties—for example, the co-ordination of Government action on the Redcliffe-Maud report on local government reform to a growing, later full-time, preoccupation with renewed plans for seeking entry to the EEC. Nevertheless, at that time my right hon. Friend the then Foreign Secretary was away and my right hon. and noble Friend was asked to chair the meeting with the oil majors.

The only Minister present with direct responsibility for African affairs was Maurice Foley. The House will remember that he had a great knowledge of Africa. As we can see in the note now published, his only contribution was on an entirely separate point that had nothing to do with the so-called laundering—namely, the rationing of South Africa.
The text of the note of the meeting is published in the Bingham report. The report makes clear its circulation. A copy was sent to No. 10. It was not circulated to the Cabinet either by the Foreign Office or by No. 10. I have checked on that on a number of occasions in recent weeks.

I have seen the copy that came over. It was not marked to me. There is no record of my seeing it. Nor is there any record of it having been seen by Sir Michael Palliser, as he now is. That may sound bizarre, but hundreds of documents, telegrams, despatches, notes of meetings, reports and assessments from the Foreign Office come in every week from the Foreign Office. This particular document—I note that the Prime Minister agrees with me—was not marked urgent or highlighted in any way. It was not marked in any way.

A copy was also marked—I must tell the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) that this is not a laughing matter—to the private secretary to the Cabinet secretary, Lord Trend. Again it was not marked for special attention by him. If Lord Trend had thought that it contained anything of the sort that the Bingham report has imported into it, I am sure that he would have come steaming in right away to insist that it go to the Cabinet. It was the document that set out the minutes of the meeting that I have mentioned, the Shell-BP-Total deal.

The text of the meeting suggests that there was little realisation of the import of the disclosure. Partly in the light of material only later available, the Bingham report clearly regards it as important. If we had had the same material available, we would have regarded it as important. There is also published in the Bingham report a report of the oil companies of the same meeting. No one took the view that it was important at the time. They did not even open a file on it.

My right hon. Friend the then Foreign Secretary saw me shortly after the document had been circulated. He saw me not about Total but about the Soames affair, which was greatly engaging the interest of the Foreign Office at the time. My analysis is that Michael Palliser was similarly preoccupied. He had been appointed to the post of Minister at the Embassy at Paris. He was being briefed and was, indeed, regularly visiting Paris at that time. He was also heavily engaged in preparation for my visit with him to Nigeria and Addis Ababa at the height of the Nigerian war. There is no reflection on him whatsoever for failing to realise what nine and a half years afterwards is now recognised in that particular document.

It is tempting to ask: what would have happened if someone—a Foreign Office Minister or official—had realised the document’s importance? I know what would have happened. The Foreign Secretary, my right hon Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart), would have dropped everything and come round to see me, perhaps stopping for a moment to telephone me to say that he was on his way. He would have put it as the first item on his weekly general report to Cabinet on foreign affairs. My right hon. Friends who were members of Cabinet know that this would have been reported there. But it was not in fact reported to the Cabinet or to any relevant Cabinet committee or any other. I ask the House to consider what would have happened if our attention had been drawn to its implications.

The Bingham report, nearly 10 years later, has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Obviously, I cannot comment further on this.

Sir Bernard Braine (Essex, South-East)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir H. Wilson

I am sorry, but I have given way once too often. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] I shall certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman. I always used to do so on similar subjects. However, I should like to develop this point before I give way.

The then Attorney-General, now my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, would in these circumstances have been no less vigorous in taking action, if the meaning of the minute had been realised, than the Director of Public Prosecutions. I do not think that my noble Friend the present Lord Chancellor would object to my saying—and there are former colleagues present tonight who will confirm it —that no member of the Administration was more hawkish on Rhodesia than my noble Friend when he was Attorney-General. He had been intimately involved long before UDI. He had been with me to Salisbury in our October 1965 mission, hoping to head off UDI. He was with me on HMS “Tiger” and on HMS “Fearless”. He was, if anything, critical of any willingness to do any kind of a deal with Mr. Ian Smith on those occasions, as indeed, equally, was my noble Friend Lord Thomson. Both of them were very critical of apparent easy ways out. So his duty as Attorney-General would have been clear if the significance of the Total deal had been recognised.

Therefore, unless one suspects a conspiracy of the then Foreign Secretary, my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, a wide circle of foreign officials and the Cabinet Secretary to deceive both the Cabinet and Parliament, it is certainly the case that the future conduct of every ministerial meeting involving Rhodesia would have been entirely different, and we would have been taking up these questions many years ago.

Sir Bernard Braine

The right hon. Gentleman is taking us through a catalogue of events as he remembers them. Will he take his mind back to the date when he saw President de Gaulle? Am I not right in saying that precisely 12 days before that Foreign Office officials had met French Foreign Office officials in Paris in order to discuss alleged breaches by British oil companies of sanctions? Is the right hon. Gentleman telling the House that he was not told of that at the time, that he and his senior civil servants were totally unaware that sanctions were being broken? I think that the right hon. Gentleman owes the House an explanation in view of the statement that he has been making, which would suggest that neither he nor his senior officials, at any time, knew anything about what was going on, and that is very hard to believe.

Sir H. Wilson

No, Sir. There were two cases in those years, and certainly at that time, in which allegations were being made about Britain. Indeed, the meeting to which I have referred concerned allegations from the Portuguese. The Portuguese themselves were spreading allegations that Britain was breaking sanctions at that time. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] It is all in Bingham. They were making allegations and our officials discussed with the French the allegations that were made against us. That was when we were trying to get the French to agree, before I met de Gaulle, that they would stop breaking sanctions. That is as I recall it. Certainly there was a meeting just before I went for that purpose.

Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar (Belper)

Accepting my right hon. Friend’s statement, of course, that there was no vast conspiracy of the type that he indicated at the end of his last set of remarks, may I ask whether he would not at least accept that there must somewhere have been a grotesque error of judgment and that it is impossible to see, in his catalogue of all the people who could not have been guilty of that grotesque error of judgment, where it lay?

Sir H. Wilson

Before I sit down I intend to say where I think criticism may be applied. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] Certainly. But the very point raised by my hon. Friends is my reason for pressing so strongly for a full and independent inquiry. Let the inquiry see all the papers and all the facts and let the inquiry say, independently—not those who were involved in this matter or those who were not involved, or those who put questions about it now—who, if anyone, was guilty of this evasion.

As I have said, I have been through the record of every Cabinet and Cabinet committee meeting during those three years. These are the ones that I have suggested ought to go to an inquiry, and not only to an inquiry but to the House. I do not know whether the assent of one Prime Minister is enough to get the papers for his period. As far as I am concerned, if it is necessary to have my consent, I am agreeable, if the rules and conventions permit. I am sure that they do.

I will say this much: at the Cabinet meeting of 7th March, one month after the famous meeting in February chaired by my noble Friend, we discussed sanctions. No reference was made to the 6th February meeting. At none of the meetings held that year—I cannot go into details, though I have read all the minutes and all the papers—was any reference made to that particular meeting of 6th February. At a sub-committee in April, I asked for a full report on sanctions to be submitted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, and we got a full report, on nearly 30 pages, both by my right hon. Friend and by a committee of all the officials of all the Departments concerned. There was no reference there to the Total deal, CFP, nor was there any reference whatsoever to the meeting on 6th February.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Sir H. Wilson

No, I am sorry. I have given way too often. I might give way when I have finished developing my point.

In addition to the Cabinet and associated minutes and documents, I asked No. 10—the people there are always ready to do this—to make available every letter, every minute, every comment, notes of telephone calls, the lot, during this relevant period—four bulky files, in all about 8 in. or 9 in. thick. I have been through them. They cover inquiries mainly by myself or by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on drought in Rhodesia, registration of trade marks, successive drafts of speeches for my noble Friend Lord Caradon, a scheme of mandatory certificates of origin in reducing exports from Rhodesia, queries about Orders in Council, queries about reports from Lisbon about a questionable sugar deal, demands to chase up reports from Greece, Norway, Italy and West Germany, two more about dubious shipments of ferrochrome and maize, questions about certain European countries and Japan concerning CKD cars, and where the Dutch were getting their tobacco from.

I cite all this. I think that Opposition Members felt that this was work that should not have been being done. I am just making it clear that so much work was going on and I was so much involved in this myself that it is inconceivable that any of us could have known about or colluded with the story about a total breakdown of sanctions on this important question of oil.

As I say, some hon. Members might feel that I should have been concerned with weightier matters, but that was what was inevitable. As I say, it is inconceivable that it could have been involved at the time if we had known anything about an oil swap with France, Total or anyone else.

I have mentioned these as well as the whole history that I have unfolded, and even the documents that I have quoted, because I believe that I have the right to ask the House to conclude that it would have been inconceivable for my Cabinet colleagues, myself, the Attorney-General or the officials to have connived at any action brought to our notice constituting a body blow to our sanctions policy.

There was therefore, as far as the Government as a whole and individual Ministers were concerned, no awareness that the meeting of the oil company chairman with Lord Thomson had created a new situation. With the advantage of hindsight and what Bingham has revealed, this collusive agreement had shown the situation very clearly in terms of BP and Shell’s relationship with Total. Had we known then what Bingham has reported, it would have been taken much more seriously. It would have been the duty of myself or the Foreign Secretary, or the duty of us both, to report to Ministers collectively. We would have to have initiated a fresh look at the whole situation and involved the whole Cabinet. The Attorney-General would have had to look at the situation and the Director of Public Prosecutions would almost certainly have been involved—nearly a decade earlier than he has been involved. All the heart-searching of Cabinet and Cabinet committee meetings in 1969 would have had to take account of this situation. Instead, the whole emphasis was placed on trying to secure South African, as well as French and Portuguese, adherence to United Nations policy.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon

The whole implication of what my right hon. Friend is saying is that our colleague Lord Thomson did not disclose to him what we know, through the Bingham report of the meetings, was disclosed to the noble Lord. Is my right hon. Friend really saying that that would happen between the Commonwealth Secretary and the Prime Minister on an issue of this importance? How does my right hon. Friend meet the denial of Lord Thomson that he failed to disclose to the Cabinet what took place at the meetings?

Sir H. Wilson

Let me say first that Lord Thomson was not Commonwealth Secretary at the time. He was working on other things entirely. He might not have known whether there had been any developments. I certainly do not believe that when my noble Friend heard what was said he realised the implications. It is easy to he wise and critical 10 years after, but it is clear and the Commonwealth Office official—and I am not resting on officials here—interpreted it to him in terms which suggested that there was no necessity to get worried about it.

We knew that, because of South Africa, oil was getting through to Rhodesia. Even if we had realised the extent and implications of the BP, Shell and Total agreement, apart from action with BP-Shell, I do not think that we would have gone to the United Nations and asked for oil sanctions to be ended.

There have been recent press comments suggesting that, with this problem, we should have ended oil sanctions, but, with or without the knowledge that we now have, we would have been right in seeking, as we were all the time, a United Nations ban—even though the countries I have mentioned proceeded to disregard it. There was no question of dropping the other sanctions which were, to a high degree, effective. In answer to a Question in the House, I said that, as a result of sanctions, Rhodesia’s gross product had fallen very considerably and I gave the figures. All the criticisms from Conservative Members were that we were doing too much damage to Rhodesia. There was never any suggestion that we had been slack in what we were doing.

Though there was no change in the situation after the time the Conservative Party became the Government, despite the United Nations decision, even though, as we now know, the Total-British arrangement was still working throughout the early 1970s, I am sure that the incoming Conservative Government were no more aware than we were of the implications. I do not believe that they were told. The right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) will no doubt say whether this was so or not. My strong impression is that no one thought of telling him or Lord Home any more than they had during the period when we were in office. Lord Home was very active in relation to Rhodesia. He visited the country and made proposals for a settlement which were put to a test of the opinion of the people of Rhodesia. Clearly the Conservative Government knew as little and as much as the outgoing Government. Their ignorance of what was going on and their inability to stop the flow of oil to Rhodesia was the same as ours.

I should like to rebut some views expressed in press comments about the conventional practice relating to the briefing of an incoming Administration. The suggestion has been made, apparently with authority, that an incoming Government are not told of anything that occurred under the previous Administration unless it has been made public. It is true that an incoming Government are not told of internal discussions round the Cabinet table during the outgoing

Administration, but anything that bears on relations with external bodies, whether overseas Governments or, say, industrial corporations in this country, must be explained, whether those relationships have been publicly explained in detail or not. For example, if we had been involved in discussions with the United States or the EEC, and they had not been announced, it would have been the duty of officials to tell the incoming Government how far that process had gone, though to do so with discretion, of course. Equally, the incoming Government in 1974 had to be told about the degree of commitment made by the previous Government in respect of Rolls-Royce engines. Were there to be a change of Government in a foreseeable period, the incoming Administration have to be told about the commitments entered into by the National Enterprise Board or Government Departments in relation to help for industry. I believe that the alleged constitutional bar is a fiction.

I remind the House that in my statement on 6th September I expressed my strong support for an independent, high-level inquiry. Should the House, at the end of this debate, still have doubts or reservations, I would repeat my view in favour of such an inquiry and, as the Prime Minister responsible for the Cabinet and Cabinet committee meetings during part 1 and part 3 of the various phases of this period, I express the hope that all the internal papers of the Government during that period—I cannot speak for others—including the minutes and associated documents should be made available to the inquiry and to the House.

This is only fair, not just to the three Prime Ministers who have been involved during this period, but to my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham and his successors and, as is underlined by a careful study of the Bingham report, to my right hon. Friends who were Ministers or Secretaries of State for Energy, including my right hon. Friend who was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland until November 1969 and my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Energy who took over the old Ministry of Fuel and Power in November 1969 and has got it again now. Was he told? I would judge that he was not. Only the internal papers of the Ministry, which I have not seen, can tell us.

Ever since I prepared these notes last week, new evidence has come to light. Hon. Members will be able to form their own view on how far Foreign Office officials withheld information from Ministers. I would judge very little, though at the famous February meeting, Lord Thomson’s conclusion followed advice. I believe that there is no complaint against Foreign Office officials about informing Ministers and doing so quickly, but if we are to believe what was published in the press this weekend, officials of the Energy Ministry were in much closer contact with the oil companies—that is to say, with the London headquarters of the major companies, not with the pro-consuls of the oil companies in South Africa.

A book on the Bingham report was published yesterday. It has been written by a solicitor. I have not read it and few other hon. Members will have had time to read it, but The Sunday Times published an extract two days ago. In February 1968, Mr. Francis of Shell did not tell the Ministry. The Bingham report confirms this but points out that while the Shell note was explicit about the Total deal, the note of the meeting sent to the Foreign Office was not. The report goes on to say that in May 1968 much more detail was given to a Ministry official. The report in The Sunday Times said:

“although the view was taken that neither the groups nor H.M. Government would wish to be too much involved with the details”.

That is a quotation from what the oil companies said. The Sunday Times said that, according to the book by Mr. Andrew Phillips,

“by this time it was too late for Ministers to undo the swap”.

I believe that that would have been for Ministers to decide, but the accusation here is that information about the swap was given and that it was not until many months afterwards that we were told about it, even if one accepts that Lord Thomson meeting as being full information. It is alleged that it was known in the Ministry nearly a year before.

What is even more suspicious—and this is something which, even if there had been no case before, makes the case for an inquiry now—is the suggestion in Sunday’s article that BP and Shell were giving assurances to Rhodesia before UDI and therefore resolving Smith’s doubts about going ahead. This is the accusation in a serious book, published after a lot of study and based on the Bingham report.

Still worse, there are suggestions that there had been discussions between British oil companies and Total for a swap even at that time, before UDI. There have been all the stories about the letters which were missing. Bingham could not find them. There were the letters that were not written because it was thought that it would not be safe, and there were the letters that were destroyed.

These matters really do provide the need for an inquiry, but perhaps most of all the need for an inquiry if there is any suggestion at all that Ian Smith—who was considering whether to go for UDI or not, and was being pushed this way and that—was helped to be persuaded into UDI by oil companies saying that they would look after him in regard to sanctions and “There is no need to worry, old chap”, and so on. These are the allegations, and there is certainly a case for their investigation.

Some of my hon. Friends are deeply concerned about the power of multinational companies. I have not shared, and I do not share, their anxiety about many of them, and never have. But the Bingham report, and now the facts published this week, if verified, might suggest that their case has been not overstated but understated, certainly in respect of Shell, arrogantly asserting power with scant regard for responsibility. There were the BP revelations of only a fortnight ago, showing that, even while the Bingham report was being duplicated, the company was still engaged in sordid swaps with a group of international oil corporations, Caltex, Mobil and the rest.

Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham and Heston)

It is in the nature of the beast.

Sir H. Wilson

It may be a laughing matter to Conservative Members, but they wanted this debate, as I wanted it. They have to be told these facts, whether they like them or not. Certainly, as I pointed out, while I do not go along with some of my hon. Friends in what they say about the multinationals, I have always felt—

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

My right hon. Friend ought to now.

Sir H. Wilson

My hon. Friend is having so many successes, he might be put in charge of this one day.

Mr. Skinner

If anyone has learned a lesson over this, my right hon. Friend has.

Sir H. Wilson

I absolutely accept this. But, concerning the multinational oil companies, it is a fact that successive Governments have had difficulties with them on the home front. For example, I remember a Minister of Fuel and Power who was flatly refused any statistics from the oil companies, although he could get statistics from all his other clients. I remember very well indeed that senior Treasury officials have told me that they could not get the information necessary from the oil companies. I believe, therefore, that if the latest book to which I have referred is true, we are up against a much more serious problem than any of us thought when this debate was decided upon some weeks ago.

Mr. Stephen Hastings (Mid-Bedfordshire)

I do not wish to be discourteous to the right hon. Gentleman. I recognise that he is making an important statement of a kind. Nevertheless most of us, I think, are here to discuss the tragedy of Rhodesia, which may seem to a good many of us to be even more important. You have appealed to all of us, Mr. Speaker, for brevity. I wonder if you would prevail on the right hon. Gentleman to move a little more rapidly towards his denouement or conclusion, or whatever it is.

Sir H. Wilson

The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings), if he was here earlier, will remember that we wasted 10 minutes as a result of an intervention of one of his hon. Friends on what, if this were not the House of Commons, I would call a piece of pure tomfoolery.

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Motherwell and Wishaw)

My right hon. Friend will recall that I was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power in 1966–67. He will also be aware that I do not owe him any particular political debt. Will my right hon. Friend accept that if I catch Mr. Speaker’s eye I shall seek substantially to support and to elaborate some of the points that my right hon. Friend has made concerning the Ministry of Fuel and Power?

Sir H. Wilson

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will just say this about the Ministry at that time. Looking back on it—it is a bit ludicrous, and we are all to blame for this—I recall that to police what was being done by these powerful corporations, as we now know, we had only a very small group. That was in addition to doing all the other oil work of the Ministry. There were three under-secretaries and five assistant secretaries, one of whom took up employment in BP in 1970. That is what we should look at.

Suppose that we had had the reports to which reference has been made. Suppose that we had known—this is hypothetical—what could we have done? We would have informed the Attorney-General. Perhaps there would have been a cease and desist order under the sanctions power. This might have led to the oil companies withdrawing from South Africa, or the Government might have pressed them to do so. But Rhodesia would still have got the oil. South Africa would have seen to that. We should have had to come to Parliament for all the powers needed in that situation. Parliament would have had to comment on the cease and desist order.

I believe that if all that had happened. Rhodesia would still have got the oil, because oil is a viscous fluid, and nowhere is it more viscous than in South Africa.

We have learned a lot about that viscosity in South Africa. It would have flowed to Rhodesia, but the Government strategy would still have had to be what it was, in those circumstances, namely, to get a mandatory United Nations order binding on South Africa, France and Portugal. We did get action in the end by the United Nations, and it was defied by all three of those nations. But that is hypothetical, because Ministers were not told.

Although that was the case all those years ago, there is one institution, the House of Commons, which cannot be denied a full disclosure, and which has the right and the duty to see all these facts—and, by the tabling of the information that I have asked for, the media and the British people also have the right to know. That is why I press for an inquiry, whether by Privy Councillors who are Members of this House or by Privy Councillors who are Members of another place, provided that they have had no connection with these problems during this period. That is why I press for such an inquiry, however it may be done. I also press for all the papers to be laid, not just for the members of the inquiry but for this House and those we represent.

08/05/2020