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Category: Speeches

  • Francis Maude – 2001 Speech to Conservative Spring Forum

    Below is the text of the speech made by Francis Maude to the Conservative Spring Forum held on 4 March 2001.

    Thank you, Edward, for your introduction. As you say, we at Westminster and the MEPs have never worked so closely together. We’re part of one team. Working together for our high common purpose, under William’s leadership.

    We must never again allow our party to disable itself by infighting and division. You, our party in the country, would never forgive us if we did. And I pay tribute to Edward’s leadership in Brussels. Never-resting, ever-working; you and your team of MEPs just don’t let up. Probing, questioning, amending; spearheading Conservative plans for real Brussels reform. And you’re a daily reminder to us all.

    Back in 1999, before the European elections no one gave us a prayer. The pollsters and the pundits: they were all the same. But we never gave up. Calmly and relentlessly we carried our message out to the public. And we won a terrific victory. We confounded the pollsters then. We showed – all of us working together – that we can do it – and, yes, we can do it again.

    By God we need to. Because this wretched Government has let the country down so badly. Remember Labour’s promises back in 1997? Robin Cook and his so-called ethical foreign policy. How Labour were going to stand up for Britain in Europe. Tony Blair’s love for the pound. His promise to slay the dragon of the European superstate. They failed to deliver.

    Well, it didn’t last long, did it? It was – yes, it really was – all spin and no delivery. Ethical foreign policy. Take Robin Cook’s famous ethical foreign policy. I spent last weekend, in Zimbabwe. I met some of the bravest people it has ever been my privilege to meet. I met residents in Harare’s high density areas who see their freedoms and jobs disappearing. I met farmers who have been thrown casually thrown off their farms. I met their workers who have been dispossessed of their homes and livelihoods. I met lawyers, and let’s face it, Zimbabwe’s judges are the last redoubt of the rule of law. I met Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Opposition Movement for Democratic Change, whose offices have been bombed, whose activists are beaten up and murdered, who himself lives in daily threat of his life.

    I saw a desperate Zimbabwe. Yet all we hear from this Labour Government is the sound of silence. Their silence is Britain’s shame. Ethical foreign policy? Labour have squandered Britain’s moral authority.

    I tell you this: I think Britain should stand for something in the world. I think Britain should stand up for the rule of law, stand up for free speech, stand up against tyranny.

    So we will speak out. We will lead international opinion, work with Zimbabwe’s neighbours. We will target those people who keep Mugabe in power. We will push for a travel ban on Mugabe’s associates and a freeze on their overseas assets. We will instigate international investigations into their history of murderous wrongdoing. The message will once again ring out across the world: Britain does not appease dictators.

    No one who heard James Mawdsley earlier could have any doubt: the love of freedom and hatred of tyranny burns as strongly in British hearts as it ever has.

    And we will revive that great global network of shared history and common values, the Commonwealth. Conservatives are proud of the Commonwealth. It covers a third of the globe; it unites people of different races, creeds and continents. Our Commonwealth Commission is examining ways in which it can be transformed into a modern and dynamic network organisation, promoting the values of the rule of law, the open economy and democracy.

    We’ll support our American allies in developing a missile Defence system that will give us protection against the Saddam Husseins of this world. And we will ensure that Britain’s armed forces, among the best in the world, are not hamstrung by the faddish imposition of political correctness. Somehow, I just feel that anyone who suggests that to Iain Duncan Smith will get a pretty brisk response.

    Labour: all spin, and no delivery. Tony Blair’s love for the pound? It was a love that didn’t even survive election day morning. Standing up for Britain? So far, at Amsterdam and more recently at Nice, Labour have scrapped Britain`s veto in no fewer than 54 areas. In a rare moment of honesty, Tony Blair admitted that the Working Time Directive was `over the top`. Now, thanks to him, there’s nothing we can do about it. Because Britain no longer has a veto. Because when it comes to it, Tony Blair and his colleagues simply don’t believe in Britain. They don’t understand how Britain can survive and thrive as an independent self-governing country. So they went along with a European Army entirely separate from NATO. Nothing wrong with greater European defence co-operation. We strongly favour it. But it should be within NATO, not outside it. As the Americans now realise, what is being constructed here threatens the future of NATO. We will never allow that.

    And Labour say none of it matters. The European Army is not an army. No? With 60,000 soldiers on standby? Expected to operate as far away as Central Asia? It’s anchored in NATO, they claim. Absolutely untrue, as anyone who examines the documents will confirm. They’ve created an EU Military Committee, an EU Military Staff. Nothing to do with NATO. Indeed, the agreement makes crystal clear that Euro Army operations must remain under EU control at all times. Romano Prodi, as so often, let the cat out of the bag. The European Army, he said, is ‘a milestone in the creation of a united political Europe’.

    And Labour have agreed a Charter of Fundamental Rights, binding in law, which will enable the Luxembourg Court to impose changes in British law without our consent. The Charter of Rights is no more important than the Beano, says the egregious Mr Vaz. Yes, Mr Vaz, we’re really going to take your word for it. Happily the European Commission have been a bit more honest. They say, and they’re right, that it will be mandatory.

    So don`t believe a word Labour says. It’s all spin. They don’t deliver. And they’ll never deliver. Because they simply don`t believe in Britain.

    And no-one should have any illusions about what Labour would do if they won a second term. First, they’ll scrap the pound as soon as they think they can get away with it. And let no-one be taken in with the promise of a referendum. There is as much chance of this being a even-handed referendum as there is of Robin Cook winning an award for humility. With the rules rigged to ensure that the campaign to scrap the pound is allowed to spend millions more than the campaign to keep the pound; with the watchdog Commission being prevented from insisting that the question is fair? Forget it.

    There’s only one way to be sure of keeping the pound. It’s by voting Conservative.

    And that’s not all. Another Labour Government, eagerly backed up by their LibDem lapdogs, would take Britain ever further down the one way street towards the European superstate.

    Here’s an early indication of what’s in store. On 8 May, the Party of European Socialists, of which the Labour Party forms part, will launch a new group. Its name? The New Federalists. Its aim? The Political Union of Europe, and a federation of its states and peoples. Lucky we spotted that one, because something tells me that we wouldn’t have heard about it from Robin Cook or Tony Blair.

    So it’s clear what Labour would do. And it’s not what the British public want. The mainstream majority agree with us. The mainstream majority believe in Britain. They want to be in Europe, not run by Europe. But they think we’re already run by Europe more than they like. There are people who think it’s somehow inevitable that Britain will lose more and more of her powers. That we can only go further and faster down the road to the European superstate. It doesn’t have to be like that. It is only inevitable if Britain lets it happen.

    A Conservative Government will stop the slide to the superstate. And we’ll make sure that in future Britain is run by Europe less than we are today. After all, what other organisation in today’s world is centralising more and more? What business, what international organisation today thinks that the answer is to force more and more decision through the same central meatgrinder?

    We have to move away from the old outdated one size fits all dogma. That belongs to the era of the Cold War, the bloc era. This is the age of the network. We have to reform the EU to make it a modern network organisation. We need a modern multi-system European Union, with different countries working together in different combinations for different purposes.

    So at the first European summit after the election, William and I are going to have a pretty full agenda. Working to bring the European army back within NATO. We will not undermine the military alliance that has kept our world safe and free for fifty years. We make you this pledge. The next Conservative Government will only allow British troops to serve in a European Rapid Reaction Force if it operates within NATO’s command structure.

    Then starting to renegotiate the Common Agricultural Policy. It is absurd that everything still gets decided at EU level. There is growing support in Europe for our policy that much more should be decided at national level. The same with the Common Fisheries Policy. This outdated failure of a policy has got to change. Why should the management of the North Sea fisheries be decided by Greece and Italy, when the Mediterranean isn’t even part of the CFP?

    And, yes, we’ll renegotiate the Nice Treaty. We will not ratify a treaty that gives away Britain’s veto. We want enlargement of the EU, and we want it more quickly. The first wave should be admitted by 2004. It’s a scandal that more than 11 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall it hasn’t even started.

    And we’ll insist on a common sense Flexibility Clause that will make the EU function better. That’ll speed up enlargement, too. It is absurd to require every member state in an EU of nearly thirty countries to sign up to every dot and comma of every EU law there is. Outside the single market and other core areas, countries should be able to decide for themselves whether EU laws make sense for them.

    And there’ll be an end to the continual intrusion of the EU into areas beyond what Parliament agreed. In the first Parliamentary Session after the election, we will enact a Reserved Powers Bill that will guarantee that beyond the powers we intended to transfer, EU law will not override the will of Parliament.

    We don’t have to go ever further down the one-way street towards the superstate. Britain can choose. We can choose to keep the pound. We can choose that Britain will be in Europe. And really will be run by Europe less than we are today.

    This has been a tremendous gathering. A great party has met, knowing that on its shoulders rests the destiny of a great nation. A great nation, and a great people. A people sickened by a government that has abused their trust. A people who are crying out for leaders who deal fairly, who speak the truth. A great English poet once wrote ‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget. For we are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet.’

    Before long the people of Britain will speak. We will be their champions. We will be their voice. With William as our leader, we will be a government of which Britain can again be proud.

  • Michael Portillo – 2001 Speech to Conservative Spring Forum

    Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Portillo, the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the Conservative Spring Forum held on 3 March 2001.

    I joined the Conservative Party just after Margaret Thatcher had become leader. I had a burning sense that we had to change Britain. We were overtaxed. The state was taking over people’s lives, making them dependent on government for handouts. But we let them keep more of what they earned, to take on more personal responsibility and have more choices in life.

    After four years of Labour government, we’re headed back to square one. We have a meddling, nannying government, and Labour’s stealth taxes have reduced people’s independence.

    Gordon Brown’s taxes have fallen not on the rich, but on the people who have least. Families and pensioners are dismayed by the cost of petrol and the many sneaky ways he’s raised their income tax. He insulted pensioners with a miserly pension increase of just 75 pence. Having made them poorer with his taxes, he now forces more and more of them to rely on means-tested benefits.

    In Gordon Brown’s Britain well over half our pensioners will face the indignity of revealing all their personal details to the state, in the hope of being granted an income sufficient to pay the Chancellor’s taxes. The form they must fill in even asks if they are pregnant.

    There’s one party that doesn’t forget what we owe to the older generation. One party respects them for their experience and for the sacrifices they made. That party is the Conservative Party.

    We think it crazy to tax people more than they can afford and then make them bow the knee to the state for their basic needs. There’s a better way. We’ll allow people to keep more of their own money.

    Gordon Brown boasts of his surplus. It isn’t his. He’s got it because he’s taxed people so much that he’s outstripped even his own ability to spend our money. Even the government that brought us the Dome can’t waste money as fast as Gordon Brown taxes it. It isn’t Gordon’s surplus, it’s the people’s surplus. Government money is people’s money. And the Conservatives will render unto the people that which is the people’s.

    Everywhere people are disappointed that Labour’s broken its promises. But having failed to deliver, Labour promise more and more and further and further into the future. They promise a spending splurge. As prudent countries around the world wisely cut taxes Gordon’s cut loose on his programme of tax and spend.

    Would it mean still higher taxes? Would there be more stealth taxes, more raids on your pension fund and lower living standards for those on low incomes? You bet your life there would.

    We’ve set out a different way. Each year on average our economy grows. The national cake gets bigger. So each year we can spend more on vital public services, but also allow people to keep more of their own money. But to do that we must plan increases in government spending that the nation can afford. Plans that don’t depend on never-ending growth, as Gordon Brown’s promises do. Plans that are robust and prudent.

    William and I have established five disciplines that will govern the economic policy of a Hague Government. A Hague Government – I like the sound of that.

    First, we’ll ensure that Britain keeps its own currency and that interest rates are set in Britain.

    Second, we’ll increase the independence of the Bank of England.

    Third, we’ll set up an independent Committee of Economic Advisers to give open and public advice on our policies.

    Fourth, we’ll appoint a National Accounts Commission to lay down rules about the government’s accounts, bringing to an end Labour’s era of fiddling the books.

    Fifth, we’ll increase government spending only in line with what the country can afford.

    We can plan to spend as much as Labour on health and education. We don’t need to propose changes to spending on the police or defence. But we will make other changes, changes that improve the performance of government and of the economy and bring about social reform. We’ve set out the most detailed proposals on government spending ever drawn up by a party in opposition.

    We’ll tackle the reform of the welfare state that Labour has ducked. We’ll require single parents with children over eleven to seek work, because studies show that children brought up by a parent who works are much more likely later in life themselves to get jobs.

    We’ll cut programmes in the Department of Trade and Industry because what business needs isn’t more fiddly schemes but lower taxes and less regulation. We’ll transfer public housing to the private sector. We’ll revolutionise the system of student finance. We’ll implement the tough proposals to fight benefit fraud that this government rejected out of hand. And we’ll cut the cost of government.

    We have set out our proposals in minute detail. After two years we’ll be able to save £8 billion compared with Labour’s plans. After two years we can make £8 billion of tax cuts.

    Now, in the next few days you’ll hear the Chancellor talk of tax cuts too. Strange that. He’s spent four years relentlessly putting taxes up, but now suddenly he talks of tax cuts. Could it be there’s an election coming? Could it be he’s afraid we’re winning the argument? Could it be that once again the political agenda is being set by the Conservatives?

    The Chancellor can make tax cuts now simply because he’s over-taxed us. Whatever he gives us back will be small by comparison with what he’s already taken. Because the stealth taxes he’s imposed so far, if they’d been raised honestly and openly, would have raised income tax by 10 pence in the pound. Suppose next week he knocks 2 pence off income tax. He’d still be the 10 pence on, 2 pence off Chancellor.

    If we gave him the chance, once he’d won the election, he’d take back even that. So we’re not going to give him the chance.

    The tax cuts that we offer don’t depend just on today’s surplus. Our tax cuts would be durable and they’d be on top of anything Labour offers us now. We’ll make the tax cuts that Labour can’t because we’ll make the spending changes that Labour won’t.

    It’ll take us the first two years to turn government spending away from Labour’s unsustainable course. But once we’ve done that, we can look forward to more room for manoeuvre – more room for tax cuts.

    We Conservatives haven’t merely set out how we’d cut taxes. We’ve mapped out a way to change Labour’s culture, to create a society that’s fairer and more responsible. We’ve laid out a different vision for our country.

    We’ll abolish taxes on savings and shares. Most of the 17 million families that save will benefit and millions more will be encouraged to save for the first time.

    We’ll raise sharply the amount people over the age of 65 can earn before they pay income tax. Their allowance will rise by £2000 per year. A million pensioners will be taken out of income tax altogether. Most of the remaining 2.7 million will pay £8.50 per week less in income tax.

    Under our plans pensioners will be able to look back on a lifetime of saving and know they did the right thing and were rewarded for doing it.

    We want families with children also to keep more of their money. We’ll reform the new children’s tax credit scheme which is hopelessly bureaucratic. And we’ll make it more generous. We believe that families face the greatest strains when their children are very young. So we’ll allow families with children under five to keep an extra £200 a year of their own money.

    We’ll bring help to widows. We’ll sweep away most income tax on the allowances paid to a widowed parent, leaving her or him about £1000 a year better off.

    I know many parents who aren’t married who make great parents. I’m also aware that statistically children whose parents are married do better in life on average, and their parents are less likely to split up.

    Gordon Brown swept away support for marriage from the income tax system. But marriage is a civic institution: a contract with clear responsibilities. We believe the tax system should recognise it.

    We’ll give people who are married and have youngish children or disabled relatives an allowance worth £1000 a year. Parents will be relieved of some of the pressure to go out to work.

    Our plans help many different types of family. The Conservative Party believes in choice. We want parents – in particular we want women – to have more choice.

    The way we’ve targeted these tax cuts says a lot about this party, our sense of priorities and our aspirations for the British people.

    We’ll encourage personal responsibility. Because people who take responsibility for themselves are more likely to accept it for their families and to recognise their obligations to society. We’ll replace Gordon Brown’s means-tested dependency Britain with William Hague’s responsible society. Britain will be different under the Conservatives.

    One thing won’t change. Under the Conservatives Britain will keep the pound. Britain will remain amongst the huge majority of nations in the world who believe that in a highly competitive world they’ll do best if they have their own currency and set their own interest rates.

    By contrast, across Europe they’re trying to apply just one rate of interest to a wide variety of economies. The strains are beginning to show. Inflation in Ireland and Spain. Unemployment in Germany. Britain remembers only too well how we suffered under the ERM from an interest rate suited to Germany but not to Britain.

    We’re on the side of the moderate majority of the British people. During our Keep the Pound campaigns across the country, people have flocked to register their support. In particular they turned out to cheer a politician who took the campaign to high streets and market squares across Britain. One politician had the energy and guts to do it. His name is William Hague.

    Our job is not so much to convince people to keep the pound. The moderate majority agrees. Rather it’s to convince them that this election may be their last chance to vote to keep the pound.

    The prime minister has rigged the referendum rules. If Labour won the general election, then come the referendum the parties wanting to kill off the pound would be allowed to spend twice as much as we Conservatives would be allowed to spend defending it. The government would soften up public opinion by spraying around taxpayers’ money. And does anyone think that Mr Blair would allow the British public to be asked a straightforward question on the euro? You have more reason to believe in Santa Claus.

    The question would be Do you authorise the government to negotiate the best terms for entry into monetary union when it judges the time and terms to be right? That’d be the question if we were lucky.

    People know there’s more at stake than economics. I referred before to that moment in the New Testament, when Christ held up a coin and asked “Whose head and insignia are on this coin?” The answer was Caesar’s, so render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. My point is that right back to Biblical times people have known that there’s a very close connection between the currency and political power. The Queen’s head appears on Britain’s coins. There’s a reason for that. Her head wouldn’t appear on the euro. There’s a reason for that too. Just think about it.

    If the pound matters to you, if you believe in keeping it, if you haven’t given up on Britain, the only way to be sure is to elect a Conservative government under William Hague.

    I think back to those early days of Margaret Thatcher. I remember our preparations for government then and I’m part of those preparations today. I believe that under William Hague we’re radical today, just as we were radical then.

    We’re willing to show how we’d change the role and scope of the state in order to have lower taxes, to make Britain competitive and allow people more personal choice.

    First, we’ll set our universities free from state control. We’ll use future windfalls to the government to endow our great universities. They’ll no longer need to rely on a drip feed from the state. They’ll be free to attract Nobel Prize winners, to direct their research towards innovation and like a Stanford or a Harvard in the United States, provide the British economy with a huge dynamic stimulus.

    Second, we want young people to have bigger pensions than pensioners have today. At present we all contribute to the national insurance fund throughout our working lives and we get a pension of £67 at the end of it. With the single exception of Robert Maxwell, this must be the greatest pension rip-off of all time. The national insurance fund isn’t a fund at all. The money paid in this year goes straight out to pay this year’s pensions. It’s never invested and never grows.

    We should do better. If we allowed our young people the option of putting their contributions into a properly-funded pension, they could carry through their lives something of real and growing value. It would be the modern day equivalent of buying their council house. And that would gradually relieve the enormous liability that will fall on future generations of taxpayers.

    Third, we’re committed to increase spending sharply on the National Health Service. But we don’t pretend that’s going to get Britain up to the standards of health care that people rightly demand. Now what I’m about to say may come as a surprise from me; but in this area we need to become more like the rest of Europe. Yes, you heard it here first.

    Our European partners don’t try to meet all their health needs from taxation alone. They know it can’t be done. They recruit their trades unions and employers to help get their members and employees insured. That way more money pours into health care. We need to do the same, to create a better partnership between public and private sectors, allowing us to have more hospitals and train more doctors and nurses. It’s the only way Britain will have the health care it deserves.

    This party doesn’t rest easy with things as they are. We don’t shy away from far-reaching change. The Conservative Party of today has the courage to look ahead and be radical.

    Labour believes after all these years that society can be made better by government, passing laws, centralising power, issuing directives and raising taxes. Conservatives don’t look to governments to make society better, we look to people.

    We look forward to winning people’s trust and to being in office. We’ll give responsibility back to people: we’ll put trust in our police officers, in our head teachers and our doctors and nurses; and return responsibility to people who save, to pensioners and to parents.

    We’ve set out our policies. They’re Conservative through and through, but they’re Conservatism for our times. They reinforce our long held values, but they’re directed to this new century.

    Our policies will give people choices, leave them with more of their own money and reward them for their efforts. Our policies point the way to a better Britain.

  • Ann Widdecombe – 2001 Speech to Conservative Spring Forum

    Below is the text of the speech made by Ann Widdecombe, the then Shadow Home Secretary, to the Conservative Spring Forum held on 3 March 2001.

    Four years on, they have failed to deliver. Instead, they’ve been tough on the crimefighters. There are 2,500 fewer police since 1997. 6,000 fewer special constables. The Chairman of the Police Federation says that morale is the worst he has ever seen it.

    They’ve been tough on the victims of crime. Remember what their manifesto pledged? That they would ‘ensure that victims are kept fully informed of the progress of their case’. But just this week, Labour’s so-called 10 Year Crime Plan said, ‘Victims and witnesses want to be kept informed. Current performance is not good enough.’

    What a damning indictment of their own record. An admission that they have failed to deliver on their promises.

    This week Labour made a new set of promises in their so-called Crime Plan. They’ve failed to deliver on the promises they made last time – their solution is to make yet another set of promises.

    But let’s take their record into consideration. Broken promise after broken promise. In 1995, Tony Blair said Labour would put ‘thousands more police officers on the beat’. Instead there are 2,500 fewer officers. In 1997, Tony Blair said his child curfew orders would prevent ‘young children wandering the streets at night, getting into trouble, growing into a life of criminality’. Result? Not one child curfew has ever been made. Not a single child has been turned away from a life of criminality. Their manifesto pledged to support the police – but 250 criminals who have assaulted police officers have served less than one third of their prison terms on Labour’s special early release scheme.

    This week, Labour talked about tougher sentences. Don’t you believe it. They’ve already let more than 31,000 criminals out of jail up to 2 months earlier than normal on their special early release scheme. Under Labour, if you get six months, you’ll be out in six weeks. Even John Prescott gets through more of his sentences than that.

    And 1,000 extra crimes have been committed by those criminals, released early by Labour, when they should have been in prison. That’s Labour’s real approach – to let more and more prisoners out of jail earlier and earlier.

    The next Labour Government will give the ‘get out of jail free’ card to even more criminals. Last week, Jack Straw’s special adviser admitted in a leaked memo that their new sentencing plans involve 11,500 more criminals spending less time in prison each year – something he described as ‘a significant softening of sentencing arrangements’.

    Before the last election, Labour promised they’d be ‘tough on crime’. Now Jack Straw says that it depends on the criminals whether crime falls or not. An admission of failure.

    The next Conservative Government will go to war on the criminal as never before.

    Right now, the police force stands depleted and demoralised, burdened with bureaucracy and performance indicators. That has got to change, and fast. So the next Conservative Government will reverse Labour’s cuts in police numbers. We will ensure that they spend their time doing just what they joined up to do, and just what the people of this country want them to do – fighting crime.

    Our ‘cops in shops’ proposals will mean that more communities see their local police officers out and about. It’s a simple, common sense initiative. The officer doesn’t go back to the station to write up his reports, he writes them up in shops and other public places. This has a threefold advantage. First of all, he’s visible. Secondly, he can interact with the community. And thirdly, he is a deterrent.

    And we’re going to have a national police cadet force to make sure that more young people choose a career in the police, and to ensure that their first contact with the police is a positive, confidence-building experience. That’s Common Sense.

    Labour have admitted that they’ve broken their promises to victims and given them a raw deal. The next Conservative Government will change that. We’ll overhaul the law so that it’s on the side of the victim, not the criminal. And victims will be given new statutory rights. The right to a named police officer and lawyer as a point of contact. The right to be kept informed of progress in their cases. The right of access to files if they want to mount a private prosecution. We’ll put Victims First.

    Conservatives will put in place new laws to tackle drug dealers. Those who repeatedly deal to children will in future be given tough mandatory prison sentences. And why should we have laws which give the police powers to combat opium dens, but not crack houses?

    We’ll end Labour’s special early release scheme, under which thousands of robbers, burglars and drug dealers have served less time in prison. Honesty in sentencing will ensure that the sentence handed down in court is the sentence that is served. And when they’re in prison, rather than lying around in idleness, prisoners will do meaningful work, work from which money can be paid to support their families on the outside and as reparation to their victims. Young menaces will be taken off the streets, put into Secure Training Centres, and given a real chance to change.

    Labour will always spin and never deliver. They’ve broken the promises they made at the last election and now they’re making new promises to break after the next one.

    Let’s leave the final word to Jack Straw’s own political adviser, who says that Labour’s policy “doesn’t look very impressive”.

    There can only be one verdict on Jack Straw and Tony Blair: guilty as charged.

    There can only be one sentence passed on Labour: to be thrown out of office for a term of at least five years.

    The next Conservative Government will deliver. And with your help, we’ll win the next election and send the whole Labour Party down.

  • William Hague – 2001 Speech to Conservative Spring Forum

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, to the Conservative Spring Forum on 4 March 2001.

    As we gather here this weekend, we think of our fellow members and friends who had planned to be with us today in Harrogate, but who have had to remain at home or on their farms.

    The thoughts and sympathy of the whole Conference are with all those whose livelihoods are at risk from the spread of the foot and mouth disease.

    The pall of black smoke from the funeral pyres of slaughtered animals across our nation today tells the desperate story of a countryside in crisis.

    I know from my own constituency that, for farmers already struggling in the depths of the worst agricultural depression for sixty years, this latest blow could not be more cruel or more bitter.

    We support all the Government is doing to eradicate the disease and we welcome the financial support they have announced.

    People have responded with calmness and restraint to this crisis. In postponing a protest in which they had invested months of preparation, the hundreds of thousands of people who were due to take part in the Countryside March for Liberty and Livelihood have shown great responsibility and courage.

    I believe it would show the nation’s solidarity with the countryside in this terrible hour if the Government were to suspend consideration of the Hunting Bill in Parliament at least until those who wish to protest against it are free to do so again.
    This morning we have also heard of a different kind of courage – the courage of one young man in a Burmese jail. James Mawdsley.

    We heard about his unwavering belief in freedom.

    We heard of his passionate commitment to democracy and hatred of oppression.

    We heard of his defiance in the face of the extraordinary efforts made to silence him.

    And we heard of his pride that he is part of this Conservative family.

    By his actions James Mawdsley reminded us of all that is best about our Party.

    We remember the enduring values that have run through two centuries of Tory history.

    The Tory values that stretch back to the days when Wilberforce freed the slaves, and Pitt led a war against tyranny, and Burke wrote his great tracts and Shaftsbury stood and watched the pauper’s funeral and dedicated his life to the poor.

    The values that animated the Conservative leaders of the Twentieth Century: the leadership of Winston Churchill, the resolve of Margaret Thatcher and the decency of John Major.

    All of us are proud to be part of this Conservative family.

    And the values that have shaped our past must also guide our future.

    The determination to fight for freedom and democracy.

    The resolve to protect our national independence.

    The courage to speak the truth in an age of spin and political correctness.

    The self confidence to fight for our beliefs even when the odds are against us and to fight so hard against those odds that we win.

    The boldness to fight the next election on the most ambitious Conservative programme for a generation.

    For we are going to go further than any government has ever gone before to hand back to individuals and families the ability to shape their own lives.

    At his Party’s Spring Conference, Tony Blair said that we were to blame for cynicism about politics. What a typically cynical attack from a man whose entire career has been built on one piece of cynicism after another.

    When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister – no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

    When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says ‘I’m not sorry, and I’d do it again’ – no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

    When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself – no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.

    And when the man who holds the highest office in politics will say anything and do anything to stay in power, when he thinks nothing of deceiving the public and Parliament, when he stuffs offices of the Crown with his cronies from Islington, breaking every promise on which he was elected, spinning yet another gimmick and yet another re-announcement in order to disguise his failure to deliver on anything at all – no wonder the public say they don’t trust their Government.

    This morning we read in the papers that, at the last election, the Labour Party hired American students to infiltrate our campaign.

    Well, we have a confession to make. They weren’t the only ones playing that game. We hired a bearded buffoon to infiltrate their campaign. But we never thought in our wildest dreams that he’d end up as Foreign Secretary.

    None of the worthless promises and miserable failure of Labour’s first term compares to what they have in store if we were to let them win again.

    Just imagine four more years of Labour. Try to picture what our country would look like.
    Let me take you on a journey to a foreign land – to Britain after a second term of Tony Blair.

    The Royal Mint melting down pound coins as the euro notes start to circulate. Our currency gone forever.

    The Chancellor returning from Brussels carrying instructions to raise taxes still further. Control over our own economy given away.

    The jail doors opening as thousands more serious criminals walk out early to offend again. Police morale at a new low.

    The price gauge on the petrol pump spinning ever faster as fuel taxes rise still further.

    Letters arriving on doorsteps cancelling yet another round of hospital operations under a Government that is all spin and no delivery.

    That’s Labour’s Britain four years from now.

    And if there are meant to be so many people enthusiastic for another four years of Labour, how come you never meet any of them?

    Labour’s Britain four years from now.

    Could anybody stomach it?

    The Dome still for sale.

    Peter Mandelson re-appointed to the Cabinet for a fourth time.

    The Liberals, on the edge of their seats, still convinced that a referendum on proportional representation is just around the corner.

    We’re not going to sit idly by and let this happen to our country.

    That’s why Michael Ancram has prepared us to fight the best organised, most vigorous, most spirited campaign we’ve ever fought in order to save Britain from this nightmare.

    We are going to say to all the people who have been hit by Labour’s stealth taxes: Can you afford another four years?

    To all the people who are still waiting for their operation: Can you really wait another four years?

    To all the people who are still waiting to see a policeman on their street: Can you really wait another four years?

    To all the parents who are waiting for better education: Can you really wait another four years?

    So we’re ready for the fight. We’re ready because of the changes you have made to our Party. We’re ready because of the victories that you have won in local and European elections.

    But above all we’re ready to speak for the people of Britain: for the mainstream majority who have no voice, for the hard-working people who feel they are ignored, for the men and women who despair that their country is being taken from them. We are not going to let them down.

    We’re ready and we can win.

    As the next election draws near, people are beginning only now to focus on what the two parties stand for.

    Well if there’s one thing above all that sets me apart from Tony Blair, it’s this: I’m not embarrassed to articulate the instincts of the British people.

    The governing of this country has drifted far away from the decent, plain speaking common sense of its people. Its time to bring it back. It’s time to bring Britain home.

    We have a Government that has contempt for the views of the people it governs.

    There is nothing that the British people can talk about, that this Labour Government doesn’t deride.

    Talk about Europe and they call you extreme. Talk about tax and they call you greedy. Talk about crime and they call you reactionary. Talk about asylum and they call you racist. Talk about your nation and they call you Little Englanders.

    This Government thinks Britain would be alright if only we had a different people.

    I think Britain would be alright, if only we had a different Government.

    A Conservative Government that speaks with the voice of the British people.

    A Conservative Government never embarrassed or ashamed of the British people.

    A Conservative Government that trusts the people.

    I trust the people.

    I trust the people on tax. People know that you can’t spend more than you have. And they know that that holds true for governments as well for them. It seems like common sense to you and me. But not to Gordon Brown.

    He’s already running up huge bills on your behalf. He’s promising to blow billions of pounds of your money. And what’s spent today will have to be paid for tomorrow.

    With Michael Portillo as Chancellor, Britain will spend no more than it can afford; and Britain will tax no more than it needs.

    We will scale back the waste and bureaucracy that has grown up like a fungus under this Government. We’ll cut the size of Whitehall and cut the number of politicians.

    I’m going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour’s regional bureaucracies and agencies – and their offices in Brussels.

    It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society. That’s why I want to support the people who are trying to do the right thing.

    To the hard-working people who set a little bit aside each month, to provide for their children, or to fund their own retirement, I say: you should be rewarded not punished. You should be allowed to keep every penny of the interest on your savings. You’ve already paid tax on your money once; you shouldn’t have to do it twice. We’re going to make your savings tax free.

    And to the pensioners who have paid their contributions throughout their lives, and who now want the dignity of independence, I say: you have already done your bit. You shouldn’t have to go on paying. We’re going to take a million pensioners out of the tax system altogether.

    And to the younger people who don’t want to rely on the state in their retirement, I say: you should have the opportunity to build up your own pension fund. You should be able to use the National Insurance system to fund your own retirement. We’re going to give you the choice we never had to be independent of the Government.

    And to married couples, struggling and sacrificing to do their best for their children, I say: you are doing the right thing. You are providing the stable homes that children need. Your contribution should be recognised. That’s why we’re going to introduce a new Married Couple’s Allowance – a transferable allowance worth as much as £1000. It’s time we had a Government that supported the idea of marriage instead of doing everything it can to undermine it.

    Spending only what the country can afford, rewarding savings, encouraging independence, supporting marriage: people know that these things are common sense. And I trust the people.

    And I also trust our doctors and nurses and teachers and policemen. I say let them get on with their jobs without politicians peering over their shoulders.

    To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you’ve been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

    Listen to Chris Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector of Schools: ‘David Blunkett has … wasted taxpayers’ money, distracted teachers from their real responsibilities and encapsulated the worst of the discredited ideology that has done so much damage since the 1960s. He has just not delivered. A generation of children has been betrayed’.

    The end of term report on a Labour Government. A generation of children has been betrayed.

    Labour have been listening for too long to the so-called experts who think that competition is a dirty word and that communicating facts to our children is elitist. Well, they’ve had their chance and, in all too many schools, we can see the result: poor discipline, declining standards and low expectations.

    Let’s not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can’t have high standards without good discipline.

    Let’s trust the common sense instinct that says that children need a structured day, that heads know most about their own school, and that teachers should be free to get on with teaching.

    When Theresa May is Education Secretary we’re going to set our schools free with their own admissions policies. Parents will get higher standards and a real choice about where to send their children. And teachers who run disciplined classrooms will get our support not end up in court.

    And what’s true for our schools is true for our hospitals. To the patient queuing up even to be allowed on to a waiting list, I say: you’ve waited long enough. Doctors, not politicians, should decide when you are treated.

    When Liam Fox is Health Secretary, there’ll be guaranteed waiting times and those with the most serious conditions will be treated first. Nurses will be nurses, not pen pushers. And instead of Labour’s dogmatic hostility to any form of private medicine, we’re going to expand the total health care available in the country by supporting instead of attacking those who take out personal medical insurance.

    People know that it’s just common sense. And I trust the people.

    And I trust the people on crime. Labour may dismiss the views of the mainstream majority as prejudiced and ignorant. They may scoff at our calls for punishment that fits the crime.

    But we know, and the British people know, that we will never defeat crime until we put more police on the street and given them the support they need to do their job.

    It seems common sense to you and me. But Labour, once again, prefers to listen to the self-appointed experts: to the liberal sociologists, who have so much to say about the rights of the criminal, and so little about the rights of the victim.

    I met a lady a few weeks ago on a housing estate in Newark who said to me: ‘I can’t remember when I last saw a policeman on my street. And I’m frightened to go out after 5 o’clock’.

    I say to her: every street should be safe. And to the people who feel that their own town centres are closed to them on a Friday night, I say: we will crack down on violence and yobbery.

    We will stop releasing prisoners early. We will reverse Labour’s cuts in police numbers. We will support our police where Labour has undermined them.

    And we will take on the compensation culture that pays out thousands of pounds to IRA terrorists who shoot their way out of jail. Such payments insult the victims of terrorism and disgrace our country: I believe it is an outrage.

    The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal. Ann Widdecombe will be that Home Secretary.

    And it’s common sense that when we’re dealing with an international trade in asylum seekers, we should make Britain a safe haven not a soft touch.

    So to the law-abiding citizen, who wants to help those genuinely fleeing persecution, but who also wants fairness in the system, I say: we will sort out the asylum crisis. The next Conservative Government will assess the validity of asylum claims within weeks, not years. And, where applications are unfounded, immediate deportation will follow.

    This country must always offer sanctuary to those fleeing from injustice – Conservative Governments always have, and always will. But it’s precisely those genuine refugees who are finding themselves elbowed aside by claimants who have been rehearsed in how to play the system.

    Once again, Labour despises the opinions of the people it is supposed to represent.

    But we trust the people. They are not bigoted or ungenerous. They understand that Britain has responsibilities to those who have been displaced by war or persecution. But they can also read maps. And they can tell that something is going badly wrong when tens of thousands of people are crossing the entire length of the European Continent, travelling through safe countries en route, before suddenly lodging an asylum claim in Britain.

    And they can tell that something is going badly wrong when desperate people hide in the undercarriage of high speed trains to get through the Channel Tunnel.

    We will clear up Labour’s asylum mess. We will welcome genuine refugees, but we will be a safe haven not a soft touch.

    That is not bigotry. It’s plain common sense. People know it. And I trust the people.

    Above all, the people of Britain believe in their country. They are not narrow nationalists. They are not xenophobes. But they take pride in what our country has achieved.

    No country has contributed as we have to the freedom of mankind. Through the centuries, we have aligned ourselves with the cause of nationhood everywhere. In the Nineteenth Century, we sponsored the independence of Italy and Greece and Hungary, and we nurtured the freedom of the South American Republics. In the Twentieth Century, we twice fought for the cause of all nations against tyranny.

    We introduced the world to free trade. We carried law and freedom to new continents. These were our achievements as a sovereign and united country. And they are achievements that we should be proud to teach in our schools.

    But now we have a government that scorns and despises all the things that have made our country what it is. A government that holds Britishness cheap.

    You can see it in their failure to defend the Union of the United Kingdom.

    It is because we believe in the Union that we have accepted the wishes of the peoples of Scotland and Wales to have a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly. But there is a logical consequence, also vital to the survival of the Union.

    In the opening days of our administration, we will change the rules so that when matters that only affect England come before the House of Commons only MPs from England will vote.

    And we have a Labour Government that scorns and despises the very Parliament to which they were elected.

    Prime Minister’s Questions reduced to once a week. The Speaker driven to complain because announcements are being leaked to the press, not made at the Dispatch Box. The Prime Minister and his MPs rarely even in the Chamber. Parliament’s powers parceled out in every direction – outwards to Brussels, downwards to the devolved assemblies, sideways to our judges through the Human Rights Act.
    Now, Tony Blair intends to give up the first and greatest of Parliament’s prerogatives, namely the right to control revenue.

    Within two years of winning an election, Tony Blair would force this country into the euro.

    It’s true that he’s had to promise us a referendum. But who will set the terms of that referendum? Tony Blair. Who will decide when to hold it? Tony Blair. Who will draft the question? Tony Blair.

    If anyone believes that we’ll be allowed a free and fair vote, just take a look at the way in which Labour have already rigged the rules.

    They’ve given themselves the right to use the Government’s resources to push for a “Yes” vote. They’ve fixed artificial spending limits, to give the “Yes” campaign a huge financial advantage. They’ve even written in a special exemption so that the “Yes” campaign can receive money from elsewhere in the EU.

    They’ll spend every pound they can lay their hands on, until there’s no Pound left at all. And I say to everyone who believes in our country: make no mistake about it, this election is your last chance to keep the Pound.

    And it’s your last chance to vote for a Britain that still controls its own destiny. Labour and their Liberal lapdogs have said that if they win the election, they will ratify the Nice Treaty, and establish a European constitution and the start of an EU legal system. And they’ll agree to the European Army.

    If taxes and defence policy and even criminal justice were run from Brussels, what would be left for Westminster? What would be the point of holding elections here?

    That is why the next election will be different. Because we won’t just be voting for the next government. We’ll be voting on whether the British Crown in Parliament should remain supreme in Britain. We’ll be voting to decide whether our people will remain sovereign their own country.

    With Francis Maude as Foreign Secretary, the next Conservative Government will defend the independence and integrity of our country. We will renegotiate the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy because, as Francis said, these outdated and failed policies have got to change.
    And our Reserved Powers Act will write into the law of our land the powers and rights that we hold today and which we will pass to the next generation, so that no stroke of a pen from Brussels, or retrospective court judgement, can take those rights away.

    In defending the sovereignty of our parliament, we defend the sovereignty of our people. We defend our right to live under our own laws.

    So I appeal today to all those people who may not have voted Conservative before, but who believe in an independent Britain. At this coming election, lend us your vote. Vote for us this time, so that your vote will mean something next time, and the time after, and the time after that.

    Each of you in this room will know people who are not Tory supporters, but who share our concerns about the way in which powers are draining away from our Parliament. Good, patriotic people, who may be lifelong supporters of another party, but who are not willing to watch their country being handed away.

    They are people we must reach out to between now and polling day. And we should carry this message to them: we are the only Party that believes in an independent Britain. We are the only Party that has confidence in the character of our people. We are the only party that will articulate their common sense instincts.

    The common sense instinct that the Government should be on the side of the victim not the criminal.

    The common sense instinct that Britain should be a safe haven, not a soft touch.

    The common sense instinct that we should not spend more than we can afford, nor tax more than we need.

    And the common sense instinct that we should be in Europe, not run by Europe.

    We are taking the fight to other parties that scorn and despise the instincts of the people they purport to represent. Other parties that dislike and mistrust all the things that make our country what it is.

    Only the Conservatives have faith in Britain as an independent country.

    Only the Conservatives want to pass on to our children the rights that we have inherited from our parents.

    So as we go out in the next few weeks to campaign, we will be setting out our bold promise.

    Elect a Conservative government and we will give you back your country.

    We say to the pensioner trapped at home after dark for fear of crime: we will give you back your country.

    We say to the pensioner trapped at home after dark for fear of crime, and the young woman afraid to walk down their own street at night – we will give you back your country.

    We say to the parent who despairs of the onward creep of political correctness, and the patriot who sees a political class embarrassed of our proud history: we will give you back your country.

    We say to businessmen overloaded with yet more red tape and regulation, and the family overburdened with extra tax: we will give you back your country.

    We say to the people of our countryside who see their livelihoods and lifestyles under attack, and the people of our deprived inner cities who live in hope: we will give you back your country.

    We say to millions of people who see our right to govern ourselves being steadily eroded, and the independence of our nation dismantled, and the currency of our people threatened with extinction: we will give you back your country.

    In the election about to commence, to all these people, in every part of our land, from every walk of life we say: come with us, and we will give you back your country.

  • Jeremy Hunt – 2005 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

    jeremyhunt

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Jeremy Hunt in the House of Commons on 24 May 2005.

    I congratulate the many new Members who have made their maiden contributions this evening. The hon. Members for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) and for Brent, South (Ms Butler) expressed great pride at being the first women to represent their constituencies, and I am particularly proud to be the first man to represent mine in more than 20 years. I am also proud to be standing next to my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton). She worked extremely hard to win her seat, and no one is prouder than I am to be with her this evening. [Hon. Members: “Love on the Benches!”] I believe that my hon. Friend is married.

    Let me now undertake the enormously pleasurable task of paying tribute to my predecessor, Virginia Bottomley. This House will know that she played a distinguished role on the national stage as Secretary of State for Health and as Secretary of State for the then Department of National Heritage. The House may be less aware that she was also a hugely conscientious constituency MP, a determined champion of local causes and a passionate advocate of the many charities and voluntary organisations in my constituency. She is also immensely photogenic and cuts a wonderful dash in the hills of Haslemere, the gardens of Godalming and the fetes of Farnham. That, I fear, is an area in which I will be unable to follow in her distinguished footsteps.

    [Jacqui Smith: You’re not so bad yourself.]

    I am grateful for that compliment from the Labour Benches; I fear that that may be the end of them.

    My constituency consists of three historic towns and a number of villages that lie between them. Farnham is the largest of the towns, Haslemere is a town of great charm and character, and Godalming has a special place in my heart as I went to school there and my family are originally from there. My late grandmother was still alive when I was selected as a prospective parliamentary candidate, and no one could be happier than she would have been to see me standing here today.

    In many ways, both the problems and the opportunities in my constituency reside in the same fact: we are only an hour from London. That creates not only huge economic opportunities—more than half the working population in my constituency commute to London—but huge development pressures that threaten the special character of my constituency’s towns and villages. I do not wish to depart from the tradition of not being controversial in a maiden speech, but I want to let the House know that I will be campaigning vigorously against the housing targets set for my constituency by the Deputy Prime Minister, who used as his vehicle the unelected, unwanted and unnecessary South East England regional assembly.
    I will also be campaigning strongly for a tunnel for the A3 at Hindhead. There is a huge traffic bottleneck there and enormous problems for traffic coming from London to Portsmouth. The tunnel is a project of national importance, and I urge the Government to reconsider their decision last December effectively to withdraw funding for it.

    The final issue currently of great concern to my constituents is the future of Milford hospital, which is a specialist rehabilitation hospital. More than a quarter of my constituents are retired, and the demand for the services offered by Milford is only likely to increase. However, I am told by my primary care trust that a short-term cash crisis leaves its potential future funding in doubt. I will be campaigning very strongly, locally and nationally, to ensure that Milford hospital does not become a victim of that cash crisis.

    My own background is in education. With a business partner—he is in the Gallery—I set up an educational publishing business that produces guides and websites to help people choose the right university, college or course. I will mention it in the Register of Members’ Interests, and I declare it today because I want to say something about education. I am most grateful to the Secretary of State for Education for sparing time from her schedule, and for making the effort to come and listen to what I have to say.

    We live in a highly competitive world, and most Members in all parts of the House would accept that some inequality is the inevitable consequence of maintaining the link between effort and reward in our society. But given that that is so, there is surely not just an economic necessity but a moral duty to ensure that we give every child in this country the best possible start in life.

    As a prospective parliamentary candidate, I followed in the footsteps of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) and did a week as a teacher in a local secondary school; I also did a week as a classroom assistant in a primary school. I welcome some of the changes in education that we have seen in the past eight years, particularly the literacy and numeracy hours, which have been important contributions. However, if we are to address the shortfalls in our education system, we have to recognise that it is not just a question of funding; we also need a disciplined learning environment and academic rigor. Respect for teachers is vital, but we also need to pay due attention to academic standards. If everyone gets a prize, in the end the prize itself becomes worthless, and the people who suffer most are those with the least. For them, a credible exam result is the very passport that they need to help them to break out of the cycle of low expectations with which they may well have grown up.

    I come briefly to education in the third world, given that the developing world will be discussed at the forthcoming G8 summit. I was recently involved in setting up a charity to fund education for AIDS orphans in Kenya. I did so after sponsoring an HIV-positive child for a couple of years, and I make no apology to the House for coming to the problems of Africa through the prism of a small child’s experience, because in the end this is about individuals and individual suffering.

    I was greatly helped in setting up that charity by Estelle Morris, who was willing to work across party lines to help me get it off the ground. She once said to me, “Jeremy, you care a lot about education and you care about the developing world. Just why are you a Conservative?”, to which I say this: no party has a monopoly on compassion—the challenge is how to apply that compassion in a modern context. For my part, compassion alone is not enough; it needs to benefit the people to whom it is directed. Compassion should lead to independence for those who lack it, to freedom for those who need it and to opportunity for those who crave it. Creating opportunities for those who really need them—whether in this country or in the developing world—will be a major preoccupation of mine for as long as the people of South-West Surrey give me the privilege of representing them in this House.

  • Jeremy Hunt – 2015 Speech to Local Government Association Conference

    jeremyhunt

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, to the Local Government Association Conference held in Harrogate on 1 July 2015.

    Let me start with a thank you.

    Right now the health and care sectors face a triple whammy: an ageing population, a budget squeeze and rising consumer expectations. And you are operating at the coalface of those pressures, and I want to thank you for the superhuman efforts you are making to make sure we do not let down our most vulnerable citizens.

    Elections focus on the differences between parties. But 2 months on from this last one, we should reflect that there was actually consensus on a critical aspect of health and social care policy: all parties were committed to going further and faster on integration. It also appeared prominently in the Queen’s Speech – and as we have been talking about it you have been getting on and delivering it through the Better Care Fund, where remarkable progress has been made. This includes:

    • 84,000 fewer hospital bed days; around 13,000 more older people remaining at home after discharge; and 3,000 more people being supported to live independently according to current plans
    • every part of the country now on track to start sharing records with the NHS, the most vital bit of integration ‘plumbing’
    • 72 areas – around half the total – actually putting additional money of their own into the pooling arrangements because they’re so enthused about its potential to improve care

    And they are right to be enthused, because some of the plans we’re seeing are truly transformational. 75% of the pooled budgets are being ploughed not into NHS acute care, but into social and community care – exactly the shift we need to keep people healthy and happy in their own communities, to prevent rather than cure, and to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.

    One piece of the jigsaw, though, is missing as we embark on this journey, and that is effective metrics. Integrating health and social care is a first – perhaps a global first – so it would be fatal if the dead hand of Whitehall tried to tell you how to do it. But we do need to know how well it is going, area by area, so we can identify best practice, learn from each other and provide support where things are going wrong.

    And to help that I am developing a set of unified metrics, bringing together the work on the Better Care Fund with the broader objective of health and social care integration. These will use a methodology agreed by the Department of Health, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the NHS and local government through the Local Local Government Association (LGA), they’ll be independently verified and published quarterly with the first set coming out in December. This way we will help ensure that the process of integration carries on at the pace we need over the coming years.

    Money

    Now integrated care is safe to talk about – because we all agree on it. Trickier is the other issue on your mind right now, which is the spending review. I know that you know I am not in a position to gainsay the Chancellor on this. But I can set out some of the principles guiding our approach.

    The first is that proper funding for all public services in the end depends on a strong economy. So we do need to stick to our challenging deficit-reduction plans as outlined before the election – which we recognise will be particularly challenging for local government.

    Indeed even with a protected budget it will be challenging for the NHS too. On a do-nothing scenario, demand for our services will rise by £30 billion by 2020, with only £8 billion of additional funding – so we are having to find £22 billion of savings, the most difficult efficiency ask of the NHS in its history.

    I am of course only too well aware of the financial challenges that local government has faced over the last 5 years, and we all know there is still more to do.

    But – and this is our second principle – we will fail in our responsibilities to the most vulnerable if we approach those efficiency challenges separately, allowing the pressure of budgets to entrench a silo mentality between the NHS and local government.

    What happens in social care is inextricably linked to what happens in the NHS. A strong NHS needs a strong social care system and a strong social care system needs a strong NHS. It would be easy – but quite wrong – to balance the books by reducing access to care or the quality of care delivered. But if local authorities do that NHS A&E departments will be overwhelmed – and if the NHS does that the demand for permanent residential care that you will have to pay for will mushroom. So we must follow the harder path: finding smart efficiencies that improve patient care – something we can only do by joining forces and facing those efficiency challenges together.

    Personal responsibility

    But there is a third partner we need in this endeavour – and that is the people who actually use our health and care system.

    When Beveridge first called for a National Health Service he attacked the five great evils of ‘want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.’ His guiding principle was that the security of a national health service should be dependent on co-operation between the state and the individual. In other words, ‘the state should offer security for service and contribution.’

    Sometimes the state has not delivered as well as it should – whether Shipman, Bristol Heart, Mid Staffs or Winterbourne View. So my biggest priority as Health Secretary has been a move towards intelligent transparency so we find out quickly where any problems might be happening.

    As a result, for the first time we now know how good our local hospital is; we have independent ratings for GP surgeries and care homes; we publish consultant surgery outcomes and are looking to do the same for medical specialties. From next March Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), too, will be held accountable for the overall quality of healthcare delivered in their area. The NHS is moving from a closed organisation to an open one, with real accountability to taxpayers and patients for the quality of service delivered.

    But to deliver the highest standards of health and care the people who use those services need to play their part too: personal responsibility needs to sit squarely alongside system accountability.

    And that is the national conversation I want to start today.

    Personal responsibility for our health

    We need to start by taking more personal responsibility for our own health.

    The independent, American-based Commonwealth Fund recently ranked the UK first of all major health systems in the developed world. On access to health services the UK is unparalleled. On the safety of care we’re amongst the best. Yet on one key measure we fell far behind. When it comes to preventing illness or leading ‘healthy lives’, we are bottom of the pack, ranked 10th out of 11. That is deeply undesirable in a taxpayer-funded system that relies on a sustainable level of demand for services.

    This country pioneered through local government clean drinking water and clean air in cities – we effectively invented what is now called public health.

    But looking at some of the indicators you wouldn’t know it.

    Despite falling smoking rates, nearly 8 million people in England still smoke, and treating smoking-related illnesses costs the NHS an estimated £2.7 billion a year. Half the difference in life expectancy between our richer and poorer areas is caused by smoking-related illness, with two-thirds of smokers starting as children.

    We also have higher obesity rates than nearly anywhere else in Europe. This is closely linked to soaring type 2 diabetes rates – up 61% in a decade, now affecting 1 in 16 of the adult population and costing the NHS £8 billion a year. While childhood obesity has plateaued, are we really content with 1 in 5 children leaving primary school clinically obese, with three-quarters of their parents not even aware that they have a problem?

    Thankfully people are starting to take more responsibility. Doctors report dramatic increases in the number of expert patients who Google their conditions and this can be challenging for doctors not used to being second-guessed. But it is to be warmly welcomed: the best person to manage a long-term condition is the person who has that long term condition. The best person to prevent a long term condition developing is not the doctor – it’s you. Which is why last year, following changes to the GP contract, the number of GPs offering their patients online access to a summary of their medical record has risen from 3% to 97%. This needs to be the start of a much bigger change where everyone feels firmly in the driving seat for their own health outcomes and an area where the NHS and local government can work together.

    Responsible use of NHS resources

    Part of this change in mentality needs to be more personal responsibility for use of precious public resources.

    On the back of Lord Carter’s report on inefficiencies in procurement and rostering in the NHS, we have recently begun a big piece of work to bear down on waste in hospitals. We are insisting on a laser-like focus from the hospital sector to make sure every penny counts.

    But there is a role for patients here too. There is no such thing as a free health service: everything we are proud of in the NHS is funded by taxpayers and every penny we waste costs patients more through higher taxes or reduced services.

    Yet estimates suggest that missed GP appointments cost the NHS £162 million each year and missed hospital appointments as much as £750 million a year. That is nearly £1 billion that could be used for more treatments or the latest drugs. On top of which we spend £300 million a year on wasted medicines.

    People who use our services need to know that in the end they pay the price for this waste.

    So today I can announce that we intend to publish the indicative medicine costs to the NHS on the packs of all medicines costing more than £20, which will also be marked ‘funded by the UK taxpayer’. This will not just reduce waste by reminding people of the cost of medicine, but also improve patient care by boosting adherence to drug regimes. I will start the processes to make this happen this year, with an aim to implement it next year.

    Responsibility for our families

    The third and perhaps most important area where we need to take more personal responsibility is around care for the elderly. Here yet again health and local government must surely work together.

    You don’t need me to describe the burning platform. By the end of this parliament we will have a million more over 70s, one third of them living alone. Yes the health and social care system must do a much better job at looking after them. But so too must all of us as citizens as well.

    Shockingly, in Edinburgh last week police had to break down the door of a top floor flat because it had been so long since the door had been opened, they had to pick their way through mounds of unopened mail, to reach the body of a man who may have been left undiscovered in his flat for up to 3 years.

    Statistics from the LGA indicate that in 2011 in England there were 2,900 council funded funerals. That is around 8 ‘lonely funerals’ every single day, half of which were for over 65s.

    Are we really saying these people had no living relatives or friends? Or is it something sadder, namely that the busy, atomised lives we increasingly lead mean that too often we have become so distant from blood relatives that we don’t even know when they are dying?

    In Japan nearly 30,000 people die alone every year, and they have even coined a word for it, kodokushi, which means ‘lonely death.’ How many lonely deaths do we have in Britain – where according to Age UK a million older people have not spoken to anyone in the last month?

    It is not all bad news: we have 6 million carers in the UK who do a magnificent job, even if they do not always get the thanks or support they deserve. We have some of the most active charities and social support systems of anywhere in the world. But the uncomfortable truth is that praising that heroic army of carers and volunteers – as all politicians do – is not enough. If we are to rise to the challenges we face, taking care of older relatives and friends will need to become part of everyone’s life.

    International comparisons

    Other countries are starting to wake up to this challenge.

    A Chinese proverb states that ‘an elderly person at home is like a living golden treasure’. At the moment, around 40% of Chinese older people live with their children, but in Beijing they have a policy to increase that to 90% by 2020. China even passed a new ‘elderly rights law’ against ‘neglecting or snubbing elderly people’, which mandated that people should visit their elderly parents often, no matter how far away they live, with fines or prison sentences as penalties.

    Western traditions would rightly resist state interference on this scale. But France too passed an elderly care law in 2004 requiring its citizens to keep in touch with their elderly parents. They did this after a heatwave left 15,000 elderly dead, many of whom were left for weeks before they were found.

    In Italy, they have a well-established system of ‘badanti’ – a system of au pairs or ‘nannies for grannies’. They provide the majority of elderly care in Italy and take care of older relatives while busy parents go out to work.

    In the Netherlands, they’ve introduced a different type of au pair system for elderly people, where students are offered rent-free accommodation in nursing homes in return for spending at least 30 hours a month with some of the elderly residents.

    Another model is championed by the remarkable organisation L’Arche’, which has adopted a revolutionary approach to the care of people with learning disabilities. As a young man in the aftermath of World War II, Vanier L’Arche visited a grim institution in Paris for people with learning disabilities. He was accosted by a young resident who asked him simply: “Will you be my friend?” He was so struck by this cry of loneliness that he invited 2 men from the institution to live with him in his home. This became an international movement where people offer a year of their time to live alongside their charges. As Vanier said: “When you share the same bathroom, and your toothbrush shares the same mug, it’s different”, and there are now 147 thriving L‘Arche communities in 35 countries including our own.

    And we have some remarkable home-grown schemes, too, such as the HomeShare scheme in Dorset to Forth Valley, Scotland; and the Shared Lives programme in 150 locations from Bradford to Brighton. Or the extraordinary efforts of individual citizens like Maria Boot-Handford, a speech therapist from Greenwich, who was so moved by the plight of her elderly neighbours that she negotiated with her NHS employer to work 4 days a week so that she could use her Fridays to spend quality time with 3 different elderly neighbours and visit local nursing home residents.

    But individual examples of inspiration should not mask our national shame: 1 in 10 older people have contact with their family less than once a month and 4 million people say TV is their main source of company. Despite many local examples of innate British kindness and decency, the national picture is far from kind and far from decent.

    New carers’ strategy

    We should also note the hard-headed economic arguments that impact on this debate.

    All families have different needs and situations, and for some residential care will be right. But carry on as we are and we will need 38,000 more care home beds in the next 5 years – the equivalent of around 20 new care homes a month for the next 5 years.   The impact of this on you, the local authorities who fund 40% of all residential care beds, would be disastrous. Care home residents are some of the most frequent users of NHS services, so the financial impact on the NHS would be equally severe.

    Recent evidence suggests change is starting to happen – the latest ONS figures showed a welcome increase in multi-generational households. But with only 16% of older people living with their children in this country compared to 39% in Italy, 40% in China and 65% in Japan, we are starting from a low base and need to ask whether the pace of change is sufficient.

    We are proud of the new rights for carers enshrined in last year’s Care Act and made a manifesto commitment to increase support for fulltime unpaid carers. Passing new laws requiring people to care for relatives is not the British way, but I do want to make sure we are learning from the best of what happens around the world. So I can also announce that my new Minister for Community and Social Care Alistair Burt will develop a new carers’ strategy that looks at the best of international practice and examines what more we can do to support existing carers and the new carers we will need.

    The new strategy will ensure we deliver that – but it will do more. By looking at best practice from around the country and the world, it will seek to answer the big question: what do we need to do as a society to support people who are caring now, and crucially, for the millions who will have a caring role in the future? We can’t put our heads in the sand on this critical issue.

    Conclusion: a new social contract

    I have said before I want Britain to be the best country in the world to grow old in.

    But the government – nationally or locally – can’t do this alone. Attitudes need to change too, so that it becomes as normal to talk about elderly care with your boss as about childcare. Family planning must be as much about care for older generations as planning for younger ones. A wholesale repairing of the social contract so that children see their parents giving wonderful care to grandparents – and recognise that in time that will be their responsibility too.

    Responsibility for our health, responsibility for our families, responsible use of public resources. A revolution in personal responsibility to match the revolution in health and care provision that we are all determined to offer.

    Thank you very much.

  • Jeremy Hunt – 2015 Speech on Patient Power

    jeremyhunt

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, at the Health Service Journal, Barber-Surgeons‘ Hall, London, on 29 October 2015.

    I want to talk about the most interesting issue in global healthcare. This is something that I believe we will all be talking about long after new models of care, accountable care organisations or any of the current ‘hot topics’ have long become too normal to be interesting.

    I am talking about the inescapable, irreversible shift to patient power that is about to change the face of modern medicine beyond recognition. And I want to talk about how this can ease pressure on frontline doctors and nurses, already working incredibly hard, by creating a stronger partnership between doctor and patient that leads to better outcomes.

    Emma Hill, editor of the Lancet, said that every patient is an expert in their own chosen field, namely themselves and their own life. Doctors now regularly find patients who know more than they do about their rare disease in a way that fundamentally changes the dynamic between doctor and patient to a partnership, or even one where the patient is boss. Perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this change is Professor Eric Topol in his latest book ‘The patient will see you now’. He describes it as the death of medical paternalism and the democratisation of healthcare.

    These changes are being driven by technology and by our ability to use data differently. And although healthcare has lagged behind the travel, retail and banking sectors in embracing what is possible, we are now on the cusp of changes in modern healthcare that will be as profound for humanity as the invention of the internet. Changes that will be as welcomed by doctors as by patients, given the evidence-based improvements in care that follow when patients take more responsibility for their health outcomes.

    It won’t surprise you to know I want our NHS to get there first. It may surprise you, however, to know that with the British people and the government’s strong commitment to NHS values, and the extra £10 billion being invested this Parliament, I believe we are well placed to do so. And it may surprise you even more that I believe that by running faster towards that destination we are more likely – not less – to be able to cope with the huge pressures doctors and nurses face on the frontline now.

    Patient power: the future

    Last month I met Michael Milken, the Wall Street junk bond trader who went to prison, became a philanthropist and is now a major funder of cancer research. I asked him what advice he would give his grandchildren about how to lead their lives. He said ‘think of the world as it will be, not as it is now’.

    So how will the world of medicine look in a decade’s time?

    Take people with complex, long-term conditions. Many of them are prescribed a confusing cocktail of medications, each with a different set of instructions which make it easy to forget or mistake doses. So a British entrepreneur living in California has invented a microchip the size of a grain of sand to make these patients’ lives much easier. This chip is attached to every pill you swallow, and is activated by the liquids in your stomach so your phone records exactly which medicines you have actually taken. Early evidence suggests that this could result in significant behaviour change by patients, notably much better adherence to drug regimes. In one study nearly 40% more patients reached their target blood pressure when using the digital pill.

    Or think about those suffering from mental illness. An app called Ginger has now been developed which advocates say can detect depression or suicidal tendencies with greater accuracy than a psychiatrist. Without even being opened, this app monitors whether you got out of bed, if you skip a meal and if you are texting or calling friends in line with normal social activity. By tracking what an average day looks like for that patient, the app detects deviations from the norm and alerts clinicians or relatives when they should check in to see how you’re doing.

    Or take a child with earache. At the moment his or her parent has to book an appointment with a GP, travel down to the surgery, and get their child’s ear checked for infection with an otoscope. But now entrepreneurs have developed a simple attachment for an iPhone which can take an incredibly powerful and accurate picture inside someone’s ear. This means with 2 clicks the parent can send an image to their doctor and with e-prescriptions and home delivery, the problem can be rectified without stepping outside your home. Time and money are saved, and that family’s consumer experience is revolutionised.

    In some ways this is just the onward march of modern technology finally taking place in healthcare. But these changes are doing something more: all of them are giving patients much greater control of their own healthcare and responsibility for their health outcomes.

    Opportunity for doctors

    Is this good or bad for doctors?

    US health-tech entrepreneur Vinod Khosla says that soon we will never ask a doctor for a diagnosis. Somewhat provocatively he asks why would you trust a human brain to make a judgement when a single drop of blood contains 300,000 biomarkers that can be analysed by a computer before you even have any symptoms. More likely than his prediction is a partnership between a doctor’s judgement and the information provided by data analysis: while the best computer chess programme can now beat the best human player, it has not yet defeated a human working in partnership with a computer.

    That partnership will seem blindingly obvious when it happens.

    Like the transition in tennis from depending on linesmen at Wimbledon to using Hawkeye, the move to the ‘quantified self’ in medicine presents a huge opportunity to improve the quality and accuracy of a diagnosis. Perhaps the most high profile example of this is Angelina Jolie choosing to have a double mastectomy after genetic sequencing. But it is also clear that in an era of chronic conditions, when patients take responsibility for managing their condition, the outcomes are better. The Expert Patient Programme showed that, after training patients to self-manage conditions, 40% felt reduced pain, tiredness or breathlessness within months; and some reported a reduced use in NHS services such as GP consultations and hospitals visits. Likewise when it comes to lifestyle decisions like obesity or relating to smoking, doctors cannot be held responsible. But working with patients who are prepared to take responsibility, they can transform life chances.

    No one disagrees with this – so now it is time to move away from the ivory towers of theory to the gritty job of implementation. Today I will therefore talk about this government’s plan to make this happen and the 4 elephant traps we need to avoid in the process. But first let’s look at our progress to date.

    NHS progress to date

    Over the last few years we have been pursuing an ambitious digital strategy in the NHS. Three years ago I – perhaps foolishly – said I wanted the NHS to go paperless by 2018. I am sure someone somewhere will be able to find a lone sheet of paper in use in 3 years’ time, but the spirit of that ambition remains alive and well, not least thanks to the inspirational leadership of Tim Kelsey and his team and NHS England.

    For example last year the number of GP practices offering access to summary GP records rose from 3% to 97%. And in the last 2 years the number of practices offering e-booking and e-prescribing rose from 45% to 99%. Take-up by the public is still lower than we want, but from April next year all patients will be able to access their full GP electronic record and not just a summary. By 2018 this record will include information from all their health interactions across the system and by 2020 it will include interactions with the social care system as well. By then patients will not just be able to read their medical record but add their own comments. They will also be able to link it to wearable devices like Fitbits or Jawbones.

    As important as the improvements in clinical care that come from electronic health records is the cultural change that comes from transparency. In January, the World Wide Web Foundation ranked the UK first in the world for open data, which includes a health category. Similarly, Professor Don Berwick of the world renowned Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has commended our ‘serious commitment to evolving the NHS as a learning organisation committed to the never-ending pursuit of safer care’. [describes slide]

    From a standing start a year ago, the new MyNHS website has drawn together outcomes and performance data across the whole health and care spectrum, from individual consultants, GP surgeries and dentistry practices, to care homes, hospitals and mental health facilities. The site now holds 700,000 individual pieces of performance data and has been visited over 300,000 times – with many of those via the BBC! We now have a new-look MyNHS with much more user-friendly functions, and we will continue improving it to help drive this consumer revolution in our NHS.

    But we didn’t stop with a new website. There’s now monthly publication of ‘never events’; some 10.5 million responses to the Friends and Family Test; the new duty of candour; the new ‘no-blame’ patient safety investigatory service, IPSIS; CQC ratings by hospital department; GPs soon telling patients about local hospitals’ CQC ratings to inform referral choices; Sir Bruce Keogh’s review of the professional codes to ensure people are able to report openly and learn from mistakes; and from next March the publishing of estimated avoidable deaths by hospital.

    I said in July this kind of intelligent transparency would not just empower patients, but could also help make the NHS the world’s largest learning organisation.

    But while we can be proud of our progress in building a patient-focused culture, for anyone who believes in the NHS as passionately as this government does there is still much work to do. We still put too many obstacles in the way of doctors and nurses wanting to do the right thing; bureaucracy, blurred accountability and a blame culture are still too common.

    So here are 4 ‘elephant traps’ that we need to avoid followed by some areas where we need to go further and faster to harness the opportunities offered by empowering patients.

    1 The bureaucracy trap

    Surely people say technology will help to reduce bureaucracy by eliminating repetitive form filling? Not in parts of the US. While thanks to President Obama’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, the US has gone further and faster than most countries in digitising hospital records, this change has met huge resistance from doctors because of the extra burden that can reduce contact time with patients. Put simply for many doctors it feels like screen contact has replaced eye contact.

    One recent US study videoed 100 patient visits and found doctors were spending around one third of the time looking at their screens. Another found that emergency room doctors spend 40% of their time filling out online forms and just 28% with patients. An emergency department in Arizona tried to attract applicants by stating on the advertisement that they had no electronic medical records. This was a selling point for the hospital. In the UK, some think the new IT system at Addenbrooke’s helped tip it into special measures.

    The lesson here must be to ensure that new IT systems improve rather than reduce clinician productivity – so that it helps rather than hinders them in their jobs. Professor Robert Wachter of the University of California San Francisco says this means understanding that the digitisation of healthcare is about ‘adaptive’ change rather than just ‘technical’ change – a change in behaviour rather than just a new process. And I will discuss later the need to get this right in general practice as well as hospitals.

    2 The accountability trap

    One of the best reasons for investing in digital records is to allow communication between multi-disciplinary teams in different organisations for patients with complex needs. But by making cross-team and cross-agency working easier, there is also a risk that accountability to the patient is blurred.

    Let me read you a line from a recent report about a tragedy in our NHS: ‘Assurance had become circular. The CQC was taking reassurance from the fact that the PHSO was not investigating; the PHSO was taking assurance that the CQC would investigate, the SHA was continuing to give assurances based in part on the CQC position. Monitor asked for assurance and received the perceived wisdom.’

    Now let me read you a line from a completely different report about a different tragedy: ‘There was a systemic culture where organisations took inappropriate comfort from assurances given by other organisations. As a result, organisations often failed to carry out sufficient scrutiny of information, instead treating these assurances as fulfilling their own, independent obligations’.

    That was Morecambe Bay and Mid Staffs respectively, perhaps our 2 greatest healthcare scandals in recent history, with more in common than we’ve cared to admit. One of the biggest lessons that I have learnt in my time as health secretary is that if the buck stops with 6 people, it stops with no one. Technology should allow easy communication with the person responsible for your care. But what if no such person exists? We must never let shared records become an excuse for diluted accountability or the lack of a personal touch, which is why the work done by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges about clinical accountability outside hospitals is so important. I am delighted that guidance has been published today.

    3 The cost trap

    Computer systems are expensive. They can also be a total waste of money. Just look at the Connecting for Health catastrophe. £9 billion over 10 years came to virtually nothing in our biggest ever IT disaster. While all such investments have the right intentions, many in practice divert resources away from frontline care. And often the investment was targeted at improving organisational convenience rather than patient experience. The lesson here is surely that incremental improvements closely tied to clinician productivity and patient experience are as valuable as big bang changes which carry much greater risk.

    4 The data security trap

    We need to be honest. None of this – none at all – will be possible if the public do not trust us to look after their personal data securely. Remember Vinod Khosla’s 300,000 biomarkers in a drop of blood? But who will send their sample to a laboratory if they are worried about the security of highly personal information? The plain truth is that the NHS has not yet won the public’s trust that it is competent in protecting basic personal information. Hospitals, GP surgeries and social care organisations do not yet all have proper data security protocols in place. So the new data guidelines being developed by Dame Fiona Caldicott, our National Data Guardian, as well as the CQC’s review will be vital.

    Let’s be ambitious when it comes to technology – but let’s be humble as well. We haven’t always got this right, especially when it has interfered with rather than enhanced the relationship between doctor and patient.

    So I am delighted to announce today that Professor Robert Wachter, not only UCSF Professor but also author of The Digital Doctor and a world expert on the promise and pitfalls of new IT systems, will conduct a review for the NHS on the critical lessons we need to get right as we move to a digital future. He will guide and inspire us as Professor Don Berwick did on safety and we look forward to receiving his report next summer.

    Five point patient power plan

    Four elephant traps to avoid – and 5 suggestions where we need to go further to make a reality of patient power. Because we have already started this journey these 5 points are more about plugging some gaps in the architecture and making sure we square the opportunities ahead with the significant financial and operational pressures we face. But if we plug those gaps and stick to the plan I am confident as promised in July – we really can make NHS patients some of the most powerful in the world.

    First we need to plug the transparency gap. We publish more information than anywhere else, but we need to go further, and ensure that we have truly intelligent transparency. That’s why the King’s Fund report on CCG accountability is so important. I can announce today that we are pressing ahead with these changes in accordance with their advice. Chris Ham advised us that aggregated ratings were only possible if human judgement was used to interpret the data we have, so NHS England will provide ratings of all CCGs, similar to the ratings that Ofsted and the CQC provide in the following categories: outstanding, good, requires improvement, inadequate. This will have that element of human judgement that the King’s Fund advised was important and will help people have a good sense of the quality of healthcare provision in their area and how it compares to other localities.

    By June next year we will publish these – both as an overall rating, and for cancer, dementia, diabetes, mental health, maternity and learning difficulties. In line with the Kings Fund recommendations, the ultimate judgements for these ratings will be made not by algorithm but by expert committees. I am delighted to announce the names of the people chairing two of these expert committees today: Harpal Kumar of Cancer research UK for cancer and Paul Farmer of MIND for mental health. The overall CCG rating published next June will use 2015-16 data and be informed by the current NHS England CCG scoring methodology.

    However under Ian Dodge’s leadership NHS England will be developing a new methodology based on the wider responsibilities CCGs now have for their local health economies. Ian will consult with CCGs on this so that the new methodology is in place from the start of the next financial year, to inform the next set of ratings published in June 2017. We will also to do more to ensure the public get clear information about the quality of their local GP surgery, informed by the Health Foundation’s work. We should not underestimate the boldness of publishing these ratings. This has never been done anywhere else in the world.

    Secondly, we need to tackle the accountability gap that I touched on earlier. How can patients be truly in control if they don’t know where the buck stops for their care? We’ve made good progress on this front with the introduction of named GPs, names above the bed in hospitals, and the Academy report into named responsible hospital consultants. We’re now going further, and hard-wiring the principle of named, responsible clinicians into planning guidance next year. Today’s report from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges will be another big step forward as I mentioned.

    Thirdly we need to tackle the time gap. Patients will never be powerful if we do not give their doctors enough time to listen to them. Managers will never make the right decisions if they do not have time to listen to their own frontline staff. We need to think about this across the system, but today I am announcing a 4 point NHS England plan to help one group in particular: GPs.

    Firstly, by cutting down on the ludicrous amounts of time they have to spend chasing different organisations for payment by allowing everyone access to GPs’ own payments system. Secondly, to stop the pointless referrals from hospitals back to GPs when they miss an appointment – a total waste of professional time that accounts for around 3% of all GP appointments. Thirdly, we must make general practice truly paperless by 2018. Embarrassingly someone told me that we believe the NHS is currently the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines.

    Finally, we need to support GPs to innovate locally across organisational boundaries. Today an independent review on the PM Challenge Fund has shown a statistically significant 15% reduction in minor self-presenting A&E attendances by patients at those practices. This is family doctoring at its best: keeping people happy and healthy outside hospital.

    Next, a patient-centred system needs to ask whether it really is really giving patients choice and control over their care at every available opportunity. So we will continue to explore ways to increase choice in maternity, end of life care and the roll out of personal budgets, where NHS England has promised plans before the end of the year.

    Finally, and most difficult of all, we must continue to tackle the culture gap which still acts as a barrier to putting patients first. Professor Sir Mike Richards frequently expresses astonishment at the variations in care he has found in NHS hospitals – much greater than he anticipated, with world class hospitals like Frimley and Salford Royal alongside 22 hospitals which sadly have had to be put into special measures. The CQC say this variation is not principally about money, challenging though the current financial situation is, but about leadership and culture. People become doctors and nurses because they want to do the right thing for patients. But too often a defensive culture makes them pay too high a price for speaking out if they think they have made a mistake or seen others making a mistake. We must accept that there will always be mistakes, sometimes with tragic consequences. But the overwhelming patient interest is in an open and transparent culture that learns from those mistakes and stops them being repeated.

    And that patient interest is served not just by eliminating variation between hospitals – but within them as well. A patient-centred system cannot justify mortality rates 15% higher for those admitted on a Sunday compared to those admitted on a Wednesday. Hospitals must be allowed to roster according to patient need – and to those who point to low morale as a reason not to change this, I simply say the highest morale is almost always found at the hospitals that are best at looking after patients. There is no conflict between a motivated workforce and a patient-centred culture – on the contrary the overwhelming evidence is that they go together. So we must challenge those who resist improvements that put the patient interest first with the utmost vigour.

    Conclusion

    Technology in healthcare should never be an end in itself. It must be about improving the safety of your baby’s delivery, accurately identifying if you’re having a heart attack, or diagnosing your cancer more quickly. But most of all it must be about control – about moving away from a culture when you ‘get what you’re given’ to a democratic culture where for the first time in centuries of medical history the patient really is the boss. Both the tech optimists and the tech sceptics have plenty of evidence to use. But I am unashamedly one of the optimists. When it comes to the coming changes in healthcare, it’s not man versus machine, it’s what man and machine can accomplish together. And to that there really are no limits.

  • David Cameron – 2015 Speech in Poland

    davidcameron

    Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in Warsaw, Poland, on 10 December 2015.

    Thank you Prime Minister for welcoming me here to Warsaw.

    It is an honour to be the first leader to make a bilateral visit to Poland since your inauguration.

    The relationship between the United Kingdom and Poland matters – it matters for our prosperity and for our security.

    It always has. It always will.

    This year we commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and it was an honour to do so in St Paul’s Cathedral in London standing alongside President Duda.

    People in Britain never forget how brave Polish pilots played such a critical role in standing up for freedom and in fighting fascism.

    And we will never forget the role that Poland played in standing up to communism and restoring liberty to this continent.

    The images of Solidarity, defying and defeating a repressive government and ultimately helping to tear down the iron curtain – these are the images of my childhood, images which have shaped my entire political outlook.

    Today, in 2015, I believe we are natural partners.

    Partners in trade – the UK is Poland’s second largest trading partner and British companies invested over 3 billion euros here last year.

    Partners in defence – as fellow NATO members, we are steadfastly committed to the security of our allies.

    And as partners in the EU – it is great to see a sister party in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group back in power.

    Together we founded that group, now the third largest grouping in the European Parliament.

    I look forward to building stronger links between our parties – in Brussels but also in Poland and in Britain too.

    We have had very good discussions here, particularly about working together on defence and on EU reform.

    Let me say a word on each.

    Defence and security

    We are both strong members of NATO.

    We are both meeting the target of spending 2% of GDP on defence.

    And Britain is committed to making the next NATO Summit, which will be held here in Warsaw next July, as much of a success as the Wales Summit was.

    The United Kingdom is firmly committed to protecting the security of NATO’s eastern flank.

    The Royal Air Force regularly participates in the Baltic Air Policing mission and we have deployed 3,000 troops on training exercises in Poland in the last 15 months alone.

    But we want to do more, that’s why Britain is one of the first countries to join NATO’s new training and capability initiative that will mean the persistent presence of NATO troops in Poland and its neighbours.

    And we will lead NATO’s high readiness joint action task force in 2017 and provide around 1000 personnel for the task in subsequent years.

    We also want to reinvigorate our bilateral security relationship, so today we have agreed to hold the next meeting of our foreign and defence ministers in the UK early next year, and we’ve to work together on the situation in Ukraine and in countering Russian propaganda.

    We also want to enhance the collaboration between our defence industries, in particular by looking at what more we can do on technology transfer.

    EU reform

    Turning to EU reform.

    We both believe in a Europe of nation states, in a European Union that recognises that its strength comes from diversity, and which has the flexibility to respond to the concerns of member states.

    We have discussed in some detail the reforms I am seeking to address the concerns of the British people about the status quo.

    And there is much on which we agree, as you’ve just said.

    We both want to see a stronger role for national parliaments and an acceptance that ever closer union is not the aim of all.

    We both want new rules to govern the relationship between those inside the eurozone and those like both Poland and the UK who are outside.

    We both think much more should be done to make the EU a source of growth and jobs – cutting back needless bureaucracy and driving forward completion of both the single market and trade deals with fast growing parts of the world.

    Even on the most difficult issue of welfare, we have agreed to work together to find a solution.

    I support the principle of free movement and I greatly value the contribution that many Poles and other Europeans make to Britain.

    The challenge is the scale of the vast movement of people we have seen across Europe over the last decade and the pressure that can put on public services.

    That is the problem we need to address and I believe with the type of political will I have seen here in Poland we can find a way.

    I want Britain to stay in a reformed European Union, and the Prime Minister has made clear that Poland wants Britain to remain in the EU.

    Conclusion

    So I think these have been excellent discussions.

    We are 2 leaders that want to work together to get things done – to create jobs for our citizens and to help keep them safe too.

    The relationship between our countries is already good but I believe we have the opportunity to make it great.

    And I look forward to working together to achieve just that.

    Thank you.

  • Matthew Hancock – 2015 Speech on Open Data

    Matt Hancock
    Matt Hancock

    Below is the text of the speech made by Matthew Hancock, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, in Berlin, Germany on 10 December 2015.

    Thank you to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for hosting me to speak today. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation has done excellent work to build foundations between Germany and the UK for 50 years. It’s a great honour to be here.

    (Guten Tag. Wir bedanken uns bei der Konrad Adanauer Stiftung, die mich heute als Gast eingeladen hat, hier zu sprechen. Seit fünfzig Jahren macht die Stiftung ausgezeichnete Arbeit, um solide Grundlagen zwischen Deutschland und England zu schaffen.)

    And for me, there’s something very special about coming to Germany to talk about open data, because this country was the birthplace of a much earlier data revolution.

    In about 1450 a Mainz goldsmith – Johannes Gutenberg – perfected the mechanical printing press.

    Gutenberg’s process radically cut the cost of copying information.

    And because the process itself could be easily copied, the number of printed texts in Europe exploded: from virtually none in 1450 to around 20 million by 1500.

    The result of that technological improvement was the birth of mass literacy, the rise of mass culture, and ultimately, the end of feudal society.

    Now, with the shift from paper to pixel, the cost of storing and copying information has once again fallen dramatically, to almost zero.

    We are already in the very early stages of the next data revolution.

    Its contours are visible in everything from smart energy, to driverless cars, to the sharing economy.

    And just as government had a key role to play in the rise of print – repealing censorship laws and developing the principle of copyright – so too we have the power to unlock the awesome power of data.

    It’s a whole new area of challenging policy and challenging political questions:

    • how to protect privacy
    • how to enable improvements
    • how to keep data secure
    • how to unlock its value

    The UK has gone further down this path than most other governments around the world.

    So today I want to set out some guiding principles on open data, based on the lessons that we’ve learnt and where we can go next.

    Usability

    The first principle is that openness on its own is not enough; data also has to be usable.

    In the early years, our UK data strategy was deliberately focused on volume. We wanted to get as much data as possible out into the open.

    Today we’ve published over 20,000 datasets on our government data portal.

    This was a great way of building early momentum.

    Government officials are trained to ask: where’s the evidence base, what’s the justification for doing this?

    But with open data, the only way you can assemble an evidence base is by publishing it first.

    For example, some were sceptical about the idea of crime maps: interactive maps showing recent crimes in a given area.

    No one would be interested in local crime figures, they said.

    In fact, the website was so popular with the public that it crashed on the day it went live. Now people use it for all sorts of reasons. Open transport data makes it easier and quicker to navigate our cities. Open education data helps people choose options and drive up standards in schools.

    So quantity does matter. The more data you publish, the more evidence you’ll find of its usefulness, and that’s critical for changing attitudes within government.

    But what we’ve learnt is that quality, reliability and accessibility are just as important.

    Indeed, open data that isn’t usable isn’t really open at all.

    Think back to the printing press.

    It transformed Europe not just because printing was faster than copying out by hand, but because books were printed in vernacular languages not just in Latin.

    Today the modern equivalent of printing in Latin is publishing a key dataset as a PDF.

    So our focus now is on developing common data standards for use across government.

    On auditing our data, so we can be sure of its accuracy and integrity.

    And on modernising our data infrastructure, replacing competing and often contradictory datasets held by different government departments with a series of high quality data registers that can be used across the public sector.

    Government as a consumer of open data

    Yet the best way of all to guarantee to the usefulness of open data is if we as governments use it ourselves.

    And this brings me onto my second principle: open data should be treated not as an optional extra – something that’s ‘nice to have’ but inessential – but rather as a key driver of public services reform.

    When we started to publish open data in the UK we thought of it mainly as a tool of accountability, a way of being more transparent about where taxpayers’ money was going and how well it was spent.

    Government using our own data, ‘hundefutter’, or dogfooding as it is called in English, also ensures that we publish high quality data because we know what it feels like to use it. This is taken from a US Chief Executive of a dog food company who ate a can of his own product to prove its quality.

    And it absolutely does deliver greater accountability.

    When we started publishing travel data, for example, we found that senior officials became much happier to book themselves into economy class on long-haul flights.

    But what we’ve learnt since is that open data can also be used to improve the effectiveness of public services.

    Deaths in coronary artery surgery dropped by 21% after publication of surgeons’ performance data.

    Publishing contract data allowed one of our officials to find £4 million in savings in just 10 minutes, simply by spotting that several government departments had all been buying the same expensive report.

    Openly available demographic data has been used by government agencies in everything from forecasting pressure points in doctors’ surgeries, to finding the best locations for defibrillators.

    And this is before you even get to the entirely new services that have been built by innovators outside government using government data.

    Travel apps, property valuation software, a home swap service, food hygiene ratings for online takeaway platforms, footfall simulations for retail businesses, a service to check whether your second-hand bike’s been stolen – these are just a small fraction of the applications that have so far been engineered by third parties using government data.

    Our focus is on making sure that every part of government, at every level, understands how data can help us achieve our objectives, whether as consumers or compilers of open data.

    This is all based on a very clear principle: government data is a public asset and should be used for the public benefit.

    Collaboration

    But we can’t do it alone, and this brings me onto my third principle: being open to collaboration – and challenge – from the wider community.

    In the UK we’ve worked closely with the Open Data Institute, an internationally recognised research and education body, co-founded by 2 of our most eminent data scientists, Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

    They play a dual role: holding us to account for delivering our open data programme, and connecting us to the leading businesses and innovators progressing this field.

    We’ve found them incredibly valuable partners:

    • in identifying the datasets with the greatest potential
    • helping to demonstrate the business case for the release of those datasets
    • as an incubator for the start-ups which go on to use them

    But as well as collaboration within countries, we can also benefit from collaboration between them.

    Open data is a powerful weapon in the fight against cross-border crimes like fraud, corruption and money-laundering.

    By working together and standardising our approach, we can compare more data across borders, design better policies and make it harder for crime to evade detection.

    Trust

    Data is power, which is why governments have traditionally hoarded it. But even in open form it must still be handled responsibility.

    And this brings me onto my fourth principle, which is trust.

    Citizen trust must be at heart of the open data agenda.

    If the first duty of government is to keep citizens safe, then the first duty of a digital government is to keep citizens’ data safe.

    We will only realise the full benefits of an open, data-driven economy if we can show people that their personal data is safe, secure, and handled with utmost care.

    So one of the most important things we can do as a government is develop a strong ethical framework – in partnership with civil society – so policymakers and data-scientists can be sure that they’re getting this right.

    This is a key priority for the UK.

    Yet far from being in conflict, more openness and better security actually go hand in hand.

    Both require effective data management: knowing exactly what you own, cutting out duplication and making sure it’s properly audited.

    And both require a clear focus on data integrity: making sure that data can’t be changed or corrupted.

    On this, as on so much else, we are committed to working closely with our European partners to secure that trust: on the successor to Safe Harbour, so companies can safely transfer data to third parties outside the EU.

    And on an EU data protection package that protects the rights of citizens while, crucially, supporting innovation.

    So these are my principles for living the open data revolution.

    Make it usable, make sure that government itself is a user, collaborate, and put citizen trust front and centre, remembering always that data paid for by the citizen belongs to the citizen.

    Conclusion

    With half of Berlin closed up and walled off for nearly 40 years, this city knows a lot about the value of openness.

    Now we must bring down the wall on government data, returning to citizens what is rightfully theirs, using it to solve age-old problems and unlock brand new possibilities.

    Unleashing the free flow of information, innovation and ideas in the service of human progress.

    It won’t be easy, it will take time, effort, patience and debate, but we in the UK are looking forward to working with you in Germany to make it happen.

  • Benjamin Disraeli – 1843 Speech on the Treaty of Washington

    bendisraeli

    Below is the Hansard record of the speech made by Benjamin Disraeli in the House of Commons on 22 March 1843.

    Mr. Disraeli said, that he was not surprised, although the hon. and gallant Commodore had found fault with the length of the two speeches which were delivered at the commencement of the debate, that he should, nevertheless, have said one word in favour of that which had emanated from the noble Lord; for it happened, that he (Mr. Disraeli) had that day met two spirited horses, which, he believed, had run over an old woman, and, upon inquiry, was informed, that they belonged to Commodore Napier, who was paying a visit to Lord Palmerston, and who appeared to have been crammed for the delivery of what he called a condensed speech.

    To that speech of the noble Lord he had listened with uninterrupted attention, and unbroken admiration. He did not consider that speech to have been too long. It was distinguished by that knowledge of his subject which always characterised the addresses of the noble Lord, when he dwelt upon any topic connected with the office over which he had presided. It exhibited one of the most complicated questions that had ever perhaps been introduced in a popular assembly in a manner the most luminous he had ever listened to. It was, without doubt, a great Parliamentary exhibition, he might add, one of the most able he could well recall. He would say unquestionably so, but for one circumstance. All that it required to make it a memorable display in the history of our Parliament was, that the noble Lord should never himself have been a diplomatic actor in the lengthened diplomacy he had criticised. Had the noble Lord never had anything to do with those circumstances which he had yesterday explained to them so perspicuously, his speech would have been complete.

    The noble Lord had called their attention to a treaty which had settled a question that had been longer in agitation than probably any other in our diplomatic annals; and the noble Lord objected to that treaty because it embodied terms which were, in point of fact, more favourable than those which the noble Lord himself was some years ago prepared and anxious to accept under the award of the King of the Netherlands. That was a point which the noble Lord had not denied. [Lord J. Russell: No.] The noble Lord said “No.” But would that noble Lord deny that the treaty of Washington gave us a greater amount of territory, a better barrier, and a more efficient boundary, than the award of that Sovereign arbitrator which had been repudiated by the United States, and which the noble Lord (Lord Palmerston) was so long and anxious a solicitor to the United States to accept? The noble Lord could not deny that. He meant, no doubt, to say, as the noble Lord, the Member for Tiverton, had said yesterday that circumstances were changed; that that award had been refused by the United States; and that since we had withdrawn our adhesion to it, fresh information had been obtained. That was the position which the noble Lord and his Colleagues adopted, and to which he would presently address himself.

    He would first express his own deep regret that the award of the King of Holland had not been accepted. He would himself have preferred that that award should have been accepted in 1831, than that we should now, in 1843, enjoy the advantages of the treaty of Washington; because, by the settlement of the King of Holland, we should have avoided the insurrection in Canada. We might not, perhaps, have had a boundary so efficient, or a territory so extensive; but let the House consider, whether they looked to political influence, or to the amount of expenditure which had been incurred, that the consequence of the settlement of 1831, would have been to prevent the insurrection in Canada.

    Let him remind the House, before it agreed to the motion of the noble Lord, what were really the terms, divesting them of all diplomatic mystification, which had been gained for this country by Lord Ashburton, in the treaty of Washington; let him remind the House what those terms were, simply, truly, and clearly. Lord Ashburton had relinquished one strip of land, which was a border near the counties of Vermont and New Hampshire, and had also given up an angle of land which was formed by the sources of the Connecticut river. These were the two portions of territory which the noble Lord had consented to abandon, but we received an equivalent for that portion our title to which had not been disputed. For the strip of land we abandoned near Vermont, we received a strip of land contiguous to New Brunswick. While for the surrender of the angle of land formed by the sources of the Connecticut. Lord Ashburton obtained the concession of a district of territory, which afforded an important military frontier.

    As regarded extent of territory—and the arrangement was confined to these points—we had renounced about 100,000 acres, and we had received in return nearly 1,000,000 acres, which, as he had observed, embraced a most important military frontier. We had received such a settlement of boundary line as regarded Quebec, that at no point was the boundary of Maine nearer to Quebec than the nearest point of the undisputed frontier of the United States. So far as he had stated, and he had done so accurately, the advantages were clearly on the side of England. “But,” said the noble Lord, “you have given up the free navigation of the St. John’s.” supposing we had, he still maintained that relinquishing 100,000 acres, and obtaining 1,000,000, including a most important military frontier, gave us the best of the arrangement, or at least proved that the arrangement had been adjusted with a due consideration to the claims of either party. But nothing could be more erroneous than the statement which had been made, in the House and out of it, about the free navigation of the St. John’s, as if we had renounced some important rights, as if we had sustained some great and unheard-of loss, and extended to America some great and important advantage.

    If hon. Members would look to the treaty itself, that delusion would soon vanish. That river was fixed upon as the boundary between the two countries; and he was sure the House would admit, that the navigation of that river, washing the shores of the two countries, should be open to those two countries. The article in the treaty of Washington gave no greater advantages to the United States than to us; but when the navigation of America, under that treaty, entered into that part of the country which was our own on both sides of the St. John, then the navigation of America was subject to the laws of Eng land. We had, in fact, only by the 7th article of the treaty, opened the navigation of the St. John, to the inhabitants of both countries through which it flowed; we had only acted on a principle which the abstract law of nations laid down, and which he was certain every treaty for the last 150 years regulating the boundaries of rivers had recognised over and over again. But supposing we had extended to the Americans the navigation of the St, John’s, and that that was a great advantage to them—would the House omit to observe, that in the seventh article of the treaty of Washington America had extended to England an equivalent advantage in granting to us the free navigation of the St. Lawrence.

    Under the treaty of Ghent certain diplomatic arrangements were made as to the navigation of the St. Lawrence. It appeared, however, that there were separate channels in the river St. Lawrence, on both sides the Long Sault islands, and Bouchart Island, the channels in the river Detroit, on both sides of the island Bois Blanc, and between that island and both the Canadian and American shores. The navigation of the river St. Lawrence, then, might be taken as being divided at this spot into two channels, one of which was broad and shallow and almost dry, and, therefore, often unnavigable in the summer; this was the Canadian channel. The American channel was much narrower, but was of considerable depth, and was always open. This division of the navigation of the river between the two countries at this place, was made by one of the articles of the treaty of Ghent, and ever since that time, if the channel on one side of the river was shallow, our vessels could not pass through the American channel without asking permission. He contended, therefore, that, by opening the navigation of this important river to both nations, we had gained more than an equivalent to any sacrifice that could be made by opening the navigation of the river St. John.

    So far, therefore, as the treaty was concerned, we had obtained the navigation of a river for the navigation of a river. But the noble Lord had dwelt upon two other subjects on which he said the honour of the country had been trifled with. The first of these was the cession of Rouse’s point, on which the gallant Commodore had also dwelt with great confidence. It was not for him to contest the value of military positions with the hon. and gallant commodore, but he would place before the House simple facts, the inferences to be drawn from which were, in his mind, so irresistible that he felt disposed to leave the question to the impartial consideration of the House, convinced that no opinion of any military man could mystify the decision to which they ought to come. Lake Champlain was an American lake, the upper part of which ended in a river. Rouse’s point was a fortification about two miles from this river, and could command the lake only in its vicinity.

    Where Lake Champlain emptied itself into this river, or rather, farther up, were two forts which commanded the lake, one of them being situated in the middle of an island called Isle aux Noix. Rouse’s-point did not command the lake. [Sir Charles Napier: “The entrance to the lake.”] That was what he denied. Rouse’s-point was two miles from the entrance. The entrance to the lake was commanded by these two strong forts—one from the middle of an island, and the other contiguous. But the fort of Rouse’s-point was really not a fort of consequence; America had neglected it; it was at present in ruins; he believed it never would be rebuilt, or if it were to be rebuilt, he was sure the Americans would choose a more important position. But it could not hold for a moment in comparison with our fortifications in the river.

    He knew that the noble Lord would reply to this view of the settlement of the boundary, by assuming that the disputed territory was one to which we had a clear right and title. Now he denied the right of that assumption. The great fallacy of the case of the noble Lord and the school which he represented was, the clear assumption from the origin that there was no question that England was entitled to all the disputed territory. The making assertions of this kind was a very common affair; but mere assertions of this kind would not satisfy foreign nations. The fact was, that this was the whole point at issue, and the noble Lord had never succeeded in proving to any impartial persons that England alone had a just claim to this territory.

    The noble Lord had said a great deal about the reports of Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh; but it appeared from documents on the Table, that soon after he had received these reports, which he alleged last night were conclusive as to the justice of our claim, that he wrote to the United States, and strongly urged a renewal of negotiation to settle the question. They had heard the case respecting the original title to the disputed territory discussed so often that one was unwilling to dwell upon it, and if he alluded to it, it was only because he thought he might offer some considerations to the House which might have the effect of influencing their minds upon the subject. Which of the two countries was really entitled to the disputed territory was not a matter of mere political curiosity. Peace was maintained between countries not merely by treaties, but by the Governments and countries between which those treaties were entered into having a general and profound conviction that they were fair and equitable agreements. If it rankled in the minds of the people that this treaty of Washington was an inconvenient settlement, or that it had been made with a great sacrifice on either side great public mischief might be the result.

    He would not, therefore, venture to express an opinion, which under our circumstances was now unnecessary, as to which country had the best title to the disputed territory; but he would offer one fact to the House, which he thought would cause them to pause before they so boldly and so decidedly, and so uncompromisingly as of late was the fashion in journals and in Parliament, come to a decision on the subject. He believed that a very general opinion prevailed in favour of the Washington treaty, as an advantageous settlement of a great and difficult question; but he believed that the opinion was equally general, that we had a right to the disputed territory, and could afford to be generous of our right. Now, he questioned whether that right was not of a very doubtful character; and he should offer but one fact to the House never before introduced to its notice, which he thought might have the effect of producing on their minds not a dissimilar impression.

    They had all heard of a map with a broad red line; which map, making out the boundary according to the original claim of the English Government, was discovered apparently in the archives of the Foreign-office in Paris, subsequent to the settlement of the question, and had been talked of and written of by many who had never seen it. He, however, perhaps, was in a position to speak of it with more authority, than some Members of the House, for he had seen it. It was a map eighteen inches square, and was drawn by D’Anville. He believed, that it was one of the smallest maps that D’Anville had ever drawn. It was not, by the bye, a map of the disputed territory, nor a map of Canada, but a map of the whole of North America; and, consequently, this broad red line—[Lord John Russell: Strong.] Well, this strong red line would itself occupy no slight part of the disputed territory. In fact it blotted out no inconsiderable portion of the State of Main, which could occupy but a very small space in a map of North America, eighteen inches square.

    That was the map by D’Anville, but there was in Eng land another map, which he (Mr. Disraeli) supposed was the map yesterday referred to by the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, of far greater dimensions, and which was also marked with a strong red line, giving the limits according to the American claim. That was the map drawn by Mitchell—a map which was recognised as of authority, having been brought from the collection of his late Majesty King George 3rd, who, it was well known, had taken a great personal interest in the affairs of Canada and of North America generally. Now, it might be a question whether any argument at all ought be raised on these marked maps. It was not he who raised it; yet as so much stress had been laid upon these circumstances, he was bound to state that evidence existed, which, if they were forced to decide on such a question, must, in his opinion, force them to a conviction that the map drawn by Mitchell, was the map which guided the American negotiators, and none other. On this point he would trouble the House with an extract, which bore directly upon it, from the private correspondence of Dr. Franklin.

    There was a letter from Dr. Franklin addressed to Mr. Livingstone, after the settlement of the treaty; he had found it not in the work of Mr. Jared Sparks, but in a book published a quarter of a century ago, by Mr. Temple, the grand son of Dr. Franklin, and which contained all the private and diplomatic correspondence of Dr. Franklin while at Paris. In that letter he writes, I am perfectly clear in the remembrance that the map we used in tracing the boundary was brought to the treaty by the commissioners from England, and that it was the same that was published by Mitchell twenty years ago.” … “I remember, too, that in that part of the boundary (Passamaquoddy Bay in Maine) we relied much on the opinion of Mr. Adams, who had been concerned in some former disputes concerning those territories, and that the map we used was Mitchell’s map, Congress was acquainted with it at the time by a letter to their Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He had already stated, that D’Anville’s map was so small that no person could form any satisfactory opinion from it, and besides this, there was a total want of all proof to connect this famous Paris map, which was only one out of some thousands, with Dr. Franklin. Now, Dr. Franklin at the time was extremely ill: his illness continued for about two months, and he had not been present at any of the meetings of the negotiators at which the boundaries had been arranged. This circumstance he, in his correspondence, repeatedly referred to, and in one of his letters he congratulated the Congress upon the arrival of Mr. Adams (by whom the boundaries had been settled), who “was so well acquainted with the country.”

    He might also observe, that even if this French map had been addressed to Dr. Franklin, that fact, under the circumstances, proved nothing, for Dr. Franklin was one only of four negotiators, the others being Mr. Adams, Mr. Laurens, and Mr. Jay. Above all, the existence of such a map did not appear in the journals of the commissioners, nor in the report made by them to Congress. Again, nobody seemed to know that the very preliminary articles of peace, drawn up by Dr. Franklin, had been published with his own manuscript notes upon every article of the treaty, and that upon the 4th article there was this note, which at least would show to the House what, a mistake it was to suppose (as the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, had supposed) that this had been a treaty scrambled up without any know ledge, and under an entire misconception, and that this had arisen from the employment of persons who were ignorant upon the subject, the localities and their details. There never had been a treaty negotiated with more labour, or conducted by men of more ability, than the treaty of 1783, between this country and the United States.

    Now this was Dr. Franklin’s note on the preliminary articles:— The Court of Great Britain insisted on retaining all the territories comprehended within the province of Quebec by the act of Parliament respecting it. They contended that Nova Scotia should extend to the river Kennebec; and they claimed not only all the lands in the western country and on the Mississipi, which were not expressly included in our charters and governments, but also all such lands within them as remained ungranted by the King of Great Britain. It would be endless to enumerate all the discussions and arguments on the subject. We knew this Court (Versailles) and Spain to be against our claims to the western country, and having no reason to think that lines more favourable could ever have been obtained, we finally agreed to those described in this article. Indeed, they appear to leave us little to complain of and not much to desire. Congress will observe, that although our northern line is in a certain part below latitude 45, yet in others it extends above it, divides the Lake Superior, and gives us access to its western and southern waters, from which a line in that latitude would have excluded us.”.. “The map used in the course of our negotiation was Mitchell’s.

    Now, he should like to know how any person could get up and make a speech, or sit down and write an article for a newspaper, upon the conduct of the American Minister against such irresistible documentary evidence as this—against evidence which went directly to prove that the map used was an English map. This established the fact that D’Anville’s map had never been appealed to; if it had it ought to have been in the Foreign-office. There, however, it had not been obtained, but had been got from France, while we had found Mitchell’s map in the collection of our Sovereign of that day, who had taken an intense interest in American Affairs, and who, when he got hold of the map marked by Mr. Oswald, added to his collection that map, which was all he had left after the loss of his American provinces. If they were to go by maps, which he was far from maintaining this was irresistible evidence, he (Mr. Disraeli) contended, in favour of the original claim of the United States. He had mentioned just now that the important matter had not been attended to in a slovenly manner by the Government of the day, and that the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, who had laid down that the origin of all the difficulties and misconceptions which had arisen was the employment of persons incompetent for the offices they had been called to fill, had made an observation which was perfectly unwarranted by facts. The Minister of that day was a man inferior to none who had ever guided the destinies of this country—he was a man who, independent of his natural ability, was remarkable for his amount of information—a man who combined within himself qualities which in ministers are rare—a man equally celebrated for his economic knowledge and his extensive acquaintance with external affairs.

    No man had jester views on commerce than Lord Shelburne; and even when out of office, when information on foreign affairs was required, his successors had been obliged to send to Calne. Lord Shelburne was moreover, peculiarly eminent for his knowledge of America and of American colonies. He had the whole diplomatic body under him, from which to select an instrument for his purpose. The diplomatic body in those days were renowned for their abilities and information, though at a subsequent period, in con sequence of the system pursued by Mr. Pitt, we had withdrawn from the world; and a long war had deprived the country of the opportunity of forming public men competent to advance external interests.

    This was not the case in 1782, 1783. In those years there existed men formed in the school of Lord Chatham—in those years the greatest diplomatists flourished. And what had Lord Shelburne done? He selected for this important affair Mr. Oswald. Now, that appointment had not only at the time been violently attacked, but the treaty Mr. Oswald formed had been vociferously and actively criticised by a powerful Parliamentary party in both Houses. That opposition too had been supported by a great writer who then adorned the Whig party—he meant Lord George Sackville, who had been more than suspected of being the author of Junius’s Letters. There was besides a certain noble Viscount who then took a great interest in the foreign affairs of the country, in which he had himself once been employed, and who came forward to criticize the treaty which Mr. Oswald had effected.

    That noble Viscount designated the treaty as worse than a “Saratoga capitulation.” So the noble Lord opposite (Lord Palmerston) might perceive that even invective was not al ways original. But what had Lord Shelburue said, when the noble Viscount to whom he alluded, attacked the appointment of Mr. Oswald and his treaty with all the critical bitterness which a thorough knowledge of the subject by an individual out of office could afford to the ranks of an opposition? What were the reasons which Lord Shelburne gave when the appointment of Mr. Oswald was attacked and his treaty criticized in Parliament? Lord Shelburne said:— A noble Viscount asks why Mr. Oswald was appointed a negotiator against such odds? Because he was fitted for the great work in question by the qualities both of his head and his heart. He was inflexibly upright, had long and liberally been engaged in commerce, and was well versed in the local knowledge of America; no man therefore would deny Mr. Oswald’s fitness for his station.

    Now, he begged to recommend to the noble Lord who had brought forward the present motion this sentence as worthy of his consideration. He would beg to point out to the noble Lord’s attention the qualities which Lord Shelburne thus stated to have recommended Mr. Oswald to the confidence of the Government; and he might thence observe that history was constantly repeating itself, and that the same circumstances will often produce the same situations and even the same characters. Circumstances, too, in one time might render it expedient for the Minister of England to say, “I want a man who is not a mere diplomatist. I want a man who has been long and liberally engaged in commerce, and who is also well versed in a local know ledge of America.” Now, he had endeavoured to show to the House, first, that looking to the details of the treaty, which the right hon. Baronet at the head of her Majesty’s Government had not done, equivalent had been given for equivalent—that a strip of land had been exchanged for a trip of land, that an angle of land had been given for a great military frontier, and, therefore, according to the noble Lord’s (Lord Palmerston) own facts, this country had positively gained an advantage by the treaty effected by Lord Ashburton.

    He reminded the House that the boundary question had been sixty years under discussion, and might have led to a war but that we had given up strip for strip of land, an angle for a considerable district—100,000 acres for 1,000,000—and also a powerful military frontier. He had shown also that Rouse’s point, as a military position, was utterly valueless, and he had given his reasons for so saying. True, it was that the hon. and gallant Commodore opposite (Sir C. Napier) had told the House that Rouse’s point commanded the lake or river, but he (Mr. D’Israeli) had shown that it could not do so, because it was two miles distant from the point where the lake narrowed, and because the river was commanded by two important fortresses, within it, which were now, and he trusted always would be, in the possession of England.

    As to the sentimental outcry about the settlement of “Muscovado,” as the hon. and gallant Commodore had been pleased to pronounce the name—a pronunciation which would make any one imagine that the hon. and gallant Gentleman had mistaken the settlement in question for “the sugar island,” of which last night they had heard so much—he entirely agreed with the American Government, that if the river was recognised as a convenient boundary, it was ridiculous to depart from that principle for the moiety of a straggling settlement of fifty miles in extent. He thought that Lord Ashburton, with reference to the surrender of that settlement, might have been influenced by feelings of humanity. Suppose the treaty had not succeeded, and that war had commenced, what would have become of the “Madawaska settlers? They would have been the first victims of the war—plundered and massacred. But it was said that the river ought to have been taken as the boundary throughout. It certainly was not a principle in diplomacy to adopt a river as a frontier in every one of its windings. If the river had been found to be a convenient boundary, let it be taken as far as it would go as such, but if it had windings almost unparalleled in the sinuosities of streams, baffling all arrangements, it ought to be, as it had been, rejected. He thought he had now adverted to every point in the speech of the noble Lord opposite (Lord Palmerston) which had reference to the boundary. He thought he had shown that our title to these lands was not that complete and perfect title it was often represented, and, on the whole, he hoped he had submitted some considerations to the House which might make it hesitate before it accepted the conclusions of the noble Lord.

    With respect to the conduct of the American Government, he must say, that he did not think that Mr. Webster was called upon to produce the map marked with the strong red line, even if it were the identical one to which the letter of Dr. Franklin referred. But when bitter invectives were uttered against the Americans—when charges of bad faith were brought against American statesmen—he must remind the House that Mr. Webster had in his hands, two months before the arrival of Lord Ashburton, the report of the American commissioners, which was the reverse of the report of the English commissioners; and which would have afforded a complete answer to Lord Ashburton. Mr. Webster did not produce that document, and for this reason, he understood that a special mission had been appointed on condition of compromise and a conventional line, and therefore it would be unwise to produce the old elements of misconception. He said this because he believed that the American people, speaking of them generally, taking no account of isolated instances of intemperate conduct of language, had acted throughout this business with sincerity, and the American statesmen with honour.

    There was only one other topic upon which he proposed to make any observation. The noble Lord opposite, (Palmerston), after disposing of the boundary, which, of course, was the real object of his motion, had adverted to another subject of the treaty. Great as was ever his admiration of the noble Lord’s courage, he must confess he was astonished when the noble Lord last night advanced to the Table and delivered a lecture on the right of search, and that, too, especially addressed to France. That was an event which would astonish those, at least, who lived on the other side of the Channel. And undoubtedly Lord Ashburton had great difficulties to contend with, requiring the exercise of much ability to produce a settlement. But he would tell the noble Lord what was the greatest difficulty of Lord Ashburton; it was that unfortunate treaty of July, which created such an ebullition in France, and which was sympathetically communicated to America; it was that which, he believed, ultimately led to this unsatisfactory settlement with respect to the right of search. It was the conduct of the noble Lord in July 1840—it was the feeling of the French people that they had been insulted by the noble Lord, which had opened a communication in Paris with the American minister, and which had led to that misunderstanding with the two countries which had very nearly ended in our not having the Washington treaty at all, but a war with France and America. And the noble Lord had explained how it was that France had not negotiated the right of search treaty with him, as if his name had never before been coupled with the transaction—as if he himself was not one of the prime causes of the difficulties which Lord Ashburton had experienced!

    Why, the noble Lord had told them last night, as he told them on every occasion—that he was Minister of this country for ten years, and that he had maintained peace for those ten years, which was extremely wonderful, as once we had been on the point of declaring war against Russia, and once we had been on the point of receiving a declaration of war from France, and, as now was pretty apparent, had once been on the point of having a war with America. Though the noble Lord had avoided having three wars with three great countries, he had contrived, however, to secure three wars with three small ones. In 1840 the noble Lord signed a treaty which had alienated from this country the confidence, and he would say, the affection of a great and generous people. The noble Lord signed that treaty—the treaty of July, to extricate himself from the consequences of his own neglect in having permitted Syria, in 1831, to be invaded. Now, see how one thing led to another in this diplomatic history! That invasion of Syria had led to the occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, to consequent intrigues on the part of the noble Lord in Circassia, to retaliatory intrigues in Affghanistan, to the fatal invasion of that country, and as it had recently been avowed by the noble to the war in China. That invasion of Syria had produced also the treaty of July, and the war of the Levant. All these events sprung from that single act of the noble Lord, and now, according to the noble Lord, they must add to this catalogue the treaty of Washington.

    If it were an unsatisfactory treaty—if it were a settlement which had compromised the dignity, which might injure the interests of England, he told them they must look to that bench (the bench occupied by the late Ministers) for the cause of this treaty and this compromise, and there was the individual who yet was responsible for these consequences. But he would imitate the tone of the noble Lord; he would believe that the consequences might be lasting peace—and that not only with America, but with France, there might subsist relations of enduring amity. But equally certain was he, that that great result could not be obtained, if the interests of this country were intrusted to a Minister who had forfeited the friendship of France by one treaty which was unnecessary, and nearly cost us the friendship of America by not negotiating another treaty which was indispensable.