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Category: Speeches

  • Paul Fisher – 2014 Speech on Inflation and Interest Rates

    Below is the text of the speech made by Paul Fisher, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, in London on 23rd January 2014.

    This morning I would like to discuss some of the important issues currently influencing the setting of monetary and financial policy by the Bank of England. Those policies may have a direct bearing on pension funds; most obviously you might think via the yields on financial assets but perhaps more importantly via the stability of the real economy.

    Developments in inflation 

    First of all I want to note the importance the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) attaches to CPI inflation being close to its target of 2%. Indeed it is currently at exactly its target of two point zero per cent for the first time since April 2006! (Although it did drop below 2% for a time in 2007 and 2009). Although we can’t expect inflation to be exactly 2.0% very often (just four times since it was announced as the target variable in December 2003), inflation has been above target for most of the past six years. Both the extent of the overshoot and its persistence were greater than the MPC initially expected. The pain of that experience of high inflation over the past few years should remind us all why the UK attaches so much importance to keeping inflationary pressure under control and why we have an inflation target.

    Inflation is costly in all sorts of ways. It can destroy real incomes, for example by acting as a hidden tax, and destroy wealth through a misallocation of resources. Those on fixed nominal incomes or who depend on savings income may be badly affected whereas it can inflate away the debts of others. And it generates a variety of other economic costs and distortions as changes in the general level of prices start to dominate the information contained in relative or ‘real’ prices. Many of these costs are pernicious by being implicit; for example in businesses having to change price lists, or consumers having to spend more time looking for real value.

    The MPC could have set a tighter monetary policy to try and limit the rise in inflation. Why didn’t we? First, because we were pretty sure that the factors driving inflation higher were going to cause changes in the price level rather than being consistent with, say, excess demand generating persistently higher inflation. We expected inflation to fall back, once those changes had passed through. And, second, to prevent even a temporary rise in inflation consequent to those price level shifts, the MPC would have had to try to depress the economy even further, by consciously pushing down on output, employment and nominal wage growth – so real wage growth would have been weaker, not stronger – at a time when the economy was already very weak. So, despite the costs of the inflation which were experienced, the costs of the policy needed to counteract it would have been even greater in this specific circumstance of one-off shocks and left the UK economy in a much worse position now.

    I want to stress that these calculations would not lead to the same conclusion were inflation being driven by pressure arising from excess demand or if inflation had led to expectations of above-target inflation in the medium-term. In those circumstances, where inflation would be more persistent and hence much more costly, the benefits of bringing inflation back to target would outweigh the short-run costs of doing so. The recognition of these different short-run trade-offs, depending on the forces driving inflation, lie right behind the specification of the Remit we have been given by the Government.

    The fact that inflation has now returned to target confirms to me that we were broadly correct in our underlying assessment that the factors pushing up on inflation would be temporary, although the near-term path for inflation hasn’t always been what we expected. It is very difficult to anticipate the precise trajectory of prices and we have certainly learned more about the dynamics of inflation during this difficult period: the effects of the 25% depreciation in the sterling effective exchange rate between mid-2007 and early 2009 were larger and longer-lasting than we anticipated for example. But tightening policy in response would have been a major mistake: a tighter policy then and we could now be facing the threat of deflation and depression, rather than inflation around target and the prospect of real recovery.

    The MPC’s policy has been to keep short-term interest rates low, by setting Bank Rate at 0.5%, and to stimulate the economy through asset purchases and latterly through forward guidance. Although asset purchases work through several channels, I want to spend a little time on their contribution to depressing longer-term interest rates. Low interest rates – at all maturities – have been necessary to help stimulate spending and so help set the conditions for a recovery in the economy. But for many investors, such a policy generates low financial returns which are difficult to cope with. Pension funds, for example, need relatively long-term, low credit risk investments – such as gilts – and those have been generating lower than normal returns for some years. In fact, the search for yield has tended to depress all financial returns. But I want to reflect on the relationship between rates of return and the real economy. As a general proposition, one cannot expect to earn high risk-adjusted real returns from financial investments if the underlying real economy is not growing. For example, it is business profitability which drives equity dividends and prices.

    The real ‘risk-free’ interest rate is also associated with real growth. Slow economic growth and low financial yields have been a feature of most of the developed world in recent years because of the global nature of the recessionary forces at work. Once a recovery in the UK economy has been firmly established then one would naturally expect real financial returns to be higher, and the real policy rate (i.e. Bank Rate minus expected inflation) can start to normalise.

    We can express this thought in a different way. Would it have helped financial investors to have had higher nominal interest rates over the past few years? If that had meant a deeper recession, deflation and an even longer-lasting malaise in the economy, then very few UK-based medium-term investors would have been better off as demand and activity would have dropped off further, credit risk crystallised and a range of credit investments went bad. Those with longer term investment horizons – such as everyone in this room should have – will appreciate that the best outcome for UK monetary policy is for it to be set at the right level to lay the foundations for a stable economy.

    In that regard, we should bear in mind that the economy will always be subject to unforeseen shocks which tend to push it away from stability for a period of time. The job of the MPC is to react to those shocks by bringing inflation back to target and, subject to that primary objective, in a manner which helps sustain output and employment.

    As well as inflation back around target, we have also seen a resurgence in growth over the past year. It was difficult to explain the suddenness of the change in sentiment which accompanied the recovery during 2013 but growth in itself should not be regarded as surprising. It is the near stagnation from 2010-12 which was harder to understand. We have been stimulating the economy with historically extreme levels of monetary policy for a long time and a variety of headwinds (including the problems in the euro area, a tightening of credit conditions, the drag on activity from fiscal consolidation, and a squeeze in household real incomes resulting from the fall in productivity and higher energy and commodity prices) have all contributed to limit the effect of that stimulus. What seems to have happened in 2013 is that at least some of those headwinds were perceived to have diminished, allowing the policy stimulus to come through and the resulting growth has generated the renewed consumer and business confidence which reinforces demand.

    We are very conscious that the headwinds have not gone away: much of Europe and some other parts of the world continue to struggle for sustained growth; fiscal consolidation in the UK (and elsewhere) is likely to continue for a while to come; and the financial sector still needs some rebuilding. Indeed, the official production and construction data released earlier this month were rather disappointing, reminding us that strong growth from here on is by no means guaranteed. But to varying degrees perhaps the very worst of the storms may be behind us. Just a tailing off in some of their negative impacts may have been sufficient to allow the economy to start growing again.

    Interest rates and forward guidance 

    So why aren’t we moving to tighten policy straight away, why did we issue forward guidance around monetary policy? The answer is in the levels of output and employment, not their growth rates. After nearly 6 years since the start of the crisis, the level of output in the economy is still 2% below its peak in 2008. A conservative extrapolation of the pre-crisis trend would suggest that UK output is some 15-20% below where it would have been expected to be by this time in the absence of the crisis. It seems unlikely that we will recover much of that gap and in any case the calculation is getting less precise and less relevant.

    Eventually, economic historians may work out what happened to potential output and we should establish a new reference point. As things stand today, it is difficult to know precisely where the new sustainable growth path of the economy lies (especially as data for the past few years are still likely to undergo significant revision by the ONS). But with unemployment still elevated, and diminishing signs of inflationary pressure in both goods and labour markets, we can be reasonably confident that the economy needs to grow strongly for some time to come, to regain a stable and sustainable medium-term trajectory.

    The challenge for the MPC is to assess when inflationary pressures will be building and thus when we need to start withdrawing stimulus, so that once we have eliminated slack in the economy, monetary policy is consistent with stable, sustainable growth and hence stable inflation around the target (subject of course to the other forces acting on the economy at the time). That’s an extremely optimistic expectation of what policy can achieve, so let me put it slightly differently. The realistic challenge for the MPC is to avoid a big mistake either by choking off the recovery too soon, leaving the economy in a quagmire, or by allowing inflationary pressures to build excessively, requiring a sharp tightening in interest rates (and the potential for another recession) to bring inflation back under control.

    Forward guidance is a policy framework designed, amongst other things, to help avoid big mistakes. We can encourage and probe growth in the economy by committing not to tighten policy until the economy has used up more of its spare capacity. On one view the policy is simple – we must give the economy plenty of time to establish the recovery before we start to raise interest rates or unwind asset purchases. At another level, some critical judgements are going to be needed because the timing is inevitably uncertain. Given those uncertainties, forward guidance delivers a framework within which the MPC can explore the scope for economic expansion without putting price and financial stability at risk. That guidance should help to give confidence to businesses and households and help to support demand growth. By reducing uncertainty about our reaction function, guidance should also have helped to counteract the pressure in financial markets to price in the chance of a rapid increase in Bank Rate.

    We chose unemployment as the threshold indicator not because it was ideal – far from it – but because other indicators were all less attractive. Of course, no sooner had we announced a policy linked to the unemployment rate than it began to fall unusually precipitously. But what is there not to like about sharply falling unemployment? After all, getting the economy back to a medium-term path quickly, allowing policy to normalise, would be a good thing? Right?

    Well, falling unemployment is undoubtedly a good thing for the individuals who are back in work and on many other social counts. It could only be a purveyor of the dismal science who found rapidly falling unemployment disappointing! Yet, in order to see rising living standards on average, it is crucial to see rising output per head (i.e. rising productivity) – which ultimately drives real national income per head and hence how well off we are as a country. So we need to see rising employment accompanied by even faster growth in output.

    The implied productivity performance of the UK economy has, in fact, remained poor – according to the official statistics, output simply doesn’t appear to be growing fast enough to support the employment growth recorded as well as generate the rapidly rising real incomes one would like to see. Something has to give. I hope that it will be that output grows faster – either through upwards revisions to recent growth rates or faster growth in future. If, on the other hand, the UK economy uses up all its spare capacity, without having had a substantial rise in real national income, then we should all be disappointed.

    The weakness in productivity growth has been well documented, but a convincing explanation remains elusive. There are many plausible explanations of factors which could have contributed to the weakness, but each explains only a small part of the whole puzzle. I don’t have time to get into that debate today, but we do offer a variety of candidate explanations in recent Inflation Reports.

    One better feature of the current situation is that price pressures seem to be subsiding, not growing. Despite good rates of employment growth, there is no sign of nominal wages over-reacting to general tightness in the labour market. Other price pressures also appear to be easing somewhat. Month by month there have been a series of small downside surprises in the inflation rate as oil prices have been relatively stable; the effects of administered and officially regulated prices now seem to be a bit less than previously expected; inflation expectations remain well anchored and the exchange rate has been rising which may help keep a lid on imported costs for a while (but importantly, at the cost of less balanced growth which is a separate problem). Taking the inflationary news together, it would appear that we have a favourable situation in which to explore how much more capacity the economy has, before inflationary pressures begin to build.

    Another positive factor supporting our probing strategy is the emergence of macro-prudential policy. Monetary policy has a difficult challenge ahead, as I have outlined. It will help enormously if financial policies can help deal with, or at least mitigate the risks from, some of the imbalances that are arising in the economy while the MPC aims to restore medium-term stability in the economy as a whole. The housing market is an example of where monetary and macro-prudential policies can helpfully interact and the November 2013 Financial Stability Report sets out some of the policy measures that are underway or could be called on if necessary.

     

    Funding for Lending Scheme 

    One decision that has been implemented is in relation to the Funding for Lending Scheme (the FLS). The FLS contributed to a substantial fall in bank funding costs after it was launched in July 2012. This fed through to a significant improvement in household credit conditions. Rates on new household lending have fallen markedly since mid-2012, with falls of more than 100 basis points in some representative mortgage rates. Both gross secured lending and repayments have picked up strongly. And the number of approvals for house purchase has risen significantly, indicating higher mortgage lending in future. The Scheme has probably been one of the driving influences behind the resurgence of business and consumer confidence – although there are many other factors behind the sort of swing we have seen.

    Partly because of its own success, there is no longer a need for the FLS to provide broad support to household lending. It is not the case that net lending for mortgages by UK banks is, as yet, excessive. Indeed, the annual rate of growth in the stock of secured lending to individuals was under 1% in November 2013. But sharply rising house prices are a potential source of instability and we should not risk adding policy oil to that particular fire. Credit conditions for smaller businesses have also improved, but to a lesser extent, and lending to businesses overall remains muted. The FLS extension will therefore provide continued substantial support for lending to businesses, with incentives in the scheme skewed heavily towards lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As the MPC noted in the minutes of its December 2013 meeting, the changes to the FLS provided support to the MPC’s policy guidance by reducing the risk of triggering the financial stability knockout.

     

    Conclusion 

    Yesterday, the Labour Force Survey headline unemployment rate for the three months to November was published at 7.1%, after another large fall. But even if the 7% unemployment rate threshold were to be reached in the near future, I see no immediate need for a tightening of policy. The MPC has been clear all along, that upon reaching the 7% threshold we will have to consider what the medium-term pressures on the economy are and make an appropriate judgement about the direction and pace of policy, and any further guidance that we may choose to issue in future. It is probably best to think about that in the context of our medium-term inflation projections published in the Inflation Report.

    Overall, the macroeconomic outlook is much more comfortable than it was – but we still have much to do and much to concern us. There is no room for complacency. Can the UK keep growing at the sort of rate consistent with recovery if our key European export markets remain so sluggish? How much more adjustment is needed in the financial sector and in the fiscal position? Have households sufficiently rebuilt their balance sheets to be able to withstand a normalisation of policy? Many of these considerations argue against being hasty in tightening monetary policy. But the inflation target remains our primary objective and we will have to be careful not to allow pressures to build up from excess demand. It would be a relief, probably for both you as investors and for us as policy makers, to get back to more normal policy conditions, but my own judgement is that we are still some way off the point where it is appropriate to start raising Bank Rate and that when it is time, it would be appropriate to do so only gradually.

  • Alex Fergusson – 2003 Speech at Conservative Spring Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Alex Fergusson at the 2003 Spring Conference on 7th March 2003.

    One of the principle factors which motivated me to put my name forward as a candidate for the first Scottish Parliamentary election of 4 years ago was the absolute certainty that rural Scotland would need every voice it could get to speak in its defence in a Parliament that would, inevitably, focus on the urban agenda of the majority of MSPs. Many people, from all parties and all walks of life in rural Scotland feared the consequences of that agenda. Today, 4 years on, those fears are proven to have been entirely justified and rural Scotland today is more divided and distrusting than it has ever been. No wonder.

    I don’t blame the Labour party. They are, and always have been, an urban party with an urban agenda. They don’t understand the problems of rural Scotland and I have sympathy with that. What saddens me is that they show no signs of even wanting to understand those problems. No, the real tragedy is that, because of Labour’s indifference, they have left the fate of rural Scotland in the hands of their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats who are the architects of the muddled thinking and the mixed messages which are the real cause of the cynicism and enmity that I encounter all over Scotland whenever the legislative performance of this first Scottish Government is debated.

    Who, other than the Liberal Democrats could give virtually free access to all land – field and hill alike – to anyone who wishes to take it – on the one hand – and tell all farmers, in the biosecurity Code of Practice – that they must keep people away from livestock at all costs on the other?

    Who – other than the Liberal Democrats – could restructure Scotland’s fishing industry by destroying our fishing communities?

    And who – other than the Liberal Democrats could make such a mess of Agricultural Tenancy reform that a Bill which purports to revitalise the tenanted sector (an aim with which we wholeheartedly agree) has already effectively killed it stone dead?

    Over the last four years it often seems that it is the bureaucrats who have taken over the running of rural Scotland. How else do we explain the almost savage authority with which SNH now carries out its remit? How else do we explain the crippling penalties imposed on farmers who make the tiniest of errors in filling out the increasingly complex forms which they are required to complete? How else can we explain the ever increasing influence of so-called charities and partnerships such as RSPB, Environmental Link and the many others whose place in the decision making process seem wholly inappropriate, unduly influential, and highly questionable?

    Rural Scotland must be offered a real alternative, and it won’t be offered one by the SNP. Perhaps that is unfair, at their conference – they will offer an alternative but it’s an alternative that is more likely to resemble the politics of Stalin and Karl Marx than the politics which are needed in rural Scotland today.

    That real alternative won’t come from the SNP it won’t come from the Greens, from the Scottish Socialist Party, the fisherman’s party or even the often rumoured but entirely invisible Country Party. The real alternatives will be offered by the Scottish Conservative Party whose natural understanding of what makes rural Scotland tick has become increasingly obvious over the last four years.

    Accordingly, as soon as we are given the opportunity, we will instigate a total review of the regulatory burden which is suffocating rural Scotland today, with a yardstick of minimising regulations rather than maximising them, and I include outright rejection of the proposed sheep tagging regime and abolition of the 13 day rule. We will overhaul agri-environmental funding, in conjunction with the industry, to identify a more equitable pattern of distribution rather than continuing the current lottery of applications for the Rural Stewardship and Organic Aid Schemes.

    We will trim to a minimum the remit and operations of SNH, while maximising the local knowledge and practical input which should influence all their operations.

    We will reinstate the much-lamented Rural Forum in a more up to date form and explore every possibility for the greater regionalisation of production and marketing of the high quality products for which Scotland is so justly famous.

    We will restore a tenable balance between communities, tenant farmers, access takers and landowners by repealing parts 2 and 3 of the Land Reform Bill and reviewing the Access provisions of Part 1.

    Never let it be said that this party is against community ownership, access to land or tenants buying their farms. We are not – but it should always be done by mutual agreement and co-operation rather than by the confrontational approach which this Government has turned into an art form.

    In short, conference, we will deliver genuine integrated rural development – an overall package which encompasses housing, health service delivery, education, transport and infrastructure priorities alongside the traditional rural industries of farming, forestry, fishing and tourism.

    That is the approach which rural Scotland needs and which only we will offer. I believe that the electorate will endorse it strongly on May 1st and I commend it to you today.

  • Tim Farron – 2011 Speech on Fairer Votes

    timfarron

    Below is the text of a speech made by the Liberal Democrat Party President and Chair of the Liberal Democrat Yes to Fairer Votes Campaign, Tim Farron. The speech was made on Friday 18th March 2011.

    We have a medieval voting system that has failed.

    It’s failed to give most people the MP they voted for, it’s failed to hold MPs to account, it’s failed even to do the one thing it was supposed to be good for – you know, delivering a majority single party government!

    First Past the Post has been past its sell by date for decades. It’s made for a two party system. It sort of still works in the USA, mind you, if they’d had fairer votes in the US 10 years ago, Al Gore would have defeated George W Bush and there’d have been no Iraq war.

    But this broken system is a complete anachronism in the UK where we have multi-party democracy.

    In 1951 Labour and the Tories got 97% of the vote between them.

    In 2010 they couldn’t even muster two thirds of the vote.

    Research has shown that the result of the last election was decided by fewer than 500,000 votes in a handful of constituencies that, by mathematical accident, happened to be marginal.

    That’s out of nearly 40 million eligible voters.

    That means that only one in every 80 voters actually mattered last year.

    That is a disgrace. How is that fair?

    Almost every vote cast at the last election didn’t really count. But the fairer votes referendum offers us the chance for change…and we must grasp it!

    Over the last two years we have had a political crisis. The reputations of MPs have been tarnished. No wonder a third of the population didn’t even vote.

    They didn’t vote because they knew it wouldn’t change things – their MP would get back in and nothing would change. Their life would carry on and their MP would continue to sit in Westminster and continue to pay scant attention to their concerns. Oblivious to life in the real world.

    We looked on in horror at the expenses scandal, tax payers funding MPs’ duck houses, moat cleaning and bell tower restoration…. and don’t let anyone tell you that all that was due to the expenses system.

    It wasn’t.

    No system forces anyone to fiddle their expenses.

    No, the expenses scandal grew out of an outrageous culture of complacency arising from an electoral system that gives MPs safe seats for life, no incentive to earn the support of their constituents and every incentive to go native and to stay completely out of touch with normal people.

    We should be angry about this and we should seize our chance to change it with both hands and seize it now.

    It seems nowadays parties only care about the ‘swing seats’ – the few constituencies that can change the outcome of a general election.

    In my constituency, Westmorland & Lonsdale, turnout was a massive 77%. I’m not going to claim complete credit for that! But at the last election, I was defending a majority of 267, and so the parties and the media paid particular attention.

    And local residents knew their vote could make a difference.

    My job is to continue to behave as though I did have a tiny majority, it would be an insult to my communities if I were to take my foot off the gas now.

    I won by 12,000 last May, but though I say so myself I had to earn it – and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t continue in that vane.

    But sadly Westmorland is just one of a few seats at the last election where your vote really could make a difference. I want everyone to feel like voters in Westmorland.

    Everyone deserves that.

    And now we have a chance to change things. We have a momentous opportunity ahead of us on May 5th – the fairer votes referendum.

    Electoral reform is finally within our grasp – for the first time in our lifetimes…. Voting yes on May 5 will send a message to Westminster that things need to change.

    That it’s not business as usual, that politics can and will change for the better.

    I don’t know if you’ve been following the antics of the No campaign, but the old Westminster establishment will say anything to keep business as usual. I think Westminster needs shaking up out of its complacency.

    A candidate applying for a job has to persuade the majority of the panel they are the best person, not just one of the three interviewers!

    AV means that MPs have to persuade the majority of voters they are the best person. Just like the rest of us applying for a job.

    And it’s easy. As easy as 1, 2, 3. The only change for the voter is that instead of just having to mark an X, you can choose candidates in order of preference, 1, 2, 3.

    It makes me suspicious that the No campaign seem to think that it’s good enough to use in electing the Tory Party leader, but not good enough for the rest of us to elect our MPs.

    You see AV is a small change that will make a big difference.

    And if you think its time that politicians listened to you, that they were forced to take notice, that they weren’t molly-coddled by an electoral system that keeps them safe from you and safe from defeat, then voting Yes to fairer votes is your chance to make that happen.

    Voting yes in May is not like voting in any other election.

    Voting yes in May will be the most positive and the most important vote you will ever cast.

    We have the chance to have fairer votes for everyone in Britain for the first time in our lifetimes but, if we lose, for the last time in our lifetimes.

    And we face an opposition just as determined as that which fought against votes for women in the 1920s.

    You see every generation has their harrumphing majors, desperate to prevent progress – we mustn’t give women the vote, it’ll lead to disaster, you can’t trust them, you know? The harrumphing majors of 2011 are in the No camp.

    They are reactionary, ridiculous but very well resourced – funded by the Tories, backed by the BNP, encouraged by the establishment.

    On the YES side we are building a progressive alliance – the Lib Dems, Labour, Greens, Plaid Cymru and even UKIP. But I wouldn’t call UKIP progressive…so let’s just call it a broad church then!

    Earlier this week Labour kicked off their part of the Yes to AV campaign.

    And as party president I welcome Ed Miliband to the campaign – he has decided to take a lead in his party and to fight for fairer votes and to become part of a campaign that extends well beyond politics, a campaign that is about reducing the power and privileges of politicians and putting that power in the hands of the people.

    Ed Miliband rightly said that AV will restore the balance of power in favour of voters.

    So we’ve got the Labour Leadership, the Lib Dems, the Greens, 38 Degrees, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Joanna Lumley, Honor Blackman, Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham Carter.

    And on the No side? Norman Tebbit, Nick Griffin, David Cameron, and John Prescott.

    So I don’t know about you but that seems to me the worst possible guest list for a celebrity come dine with me episode, let alone a political campaign.

    Maybe they’re having their campaign strategy meetings in Margaret Beckett’s caravan!

    But seriously. If you are fed up with the way Britain is run, if you think politicians take too little notice of you, if you think your MPs should actually have to work hard to earn your vote, if you want your vote to count, and if you reckon that counting to three is something you can just about manage, then vote Yes.

    You have nothing to lose; but the establishment has everything to lose.

    A no vote on May 5, means an establishment rubbing its hands with glee on May 6, no need to change, no need to listen, business as usual.

    All the more reason to leave our anti-democratic voting system behind and choose to give yourself the power to choose.

    Stop allowing politicians to protect themselves from you through their safe seats.

    The British people deserve better, on May 5 they can get what they deserve.

    Yes to less power for politicians.

    Yes to more power for voters.

    Vote yes to fairer votes on May 5.

  • Nigel Farage – 2013 Speech to UKIP Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nigel Farage, the Leader of UKIP, to the Party conference on 19th September 2013.

    Well, here we are. After twenty years. What an audience. Look at you. All that work. All those leaflets. Up at dawn. I know well those streets you have trodden. But you have done magnificently. And how it’s paid off.

    We are changing the face of British politics.

    Jane Collins second in Rotherham parliamentary by-election last year. 16 per cent up, second place, you have no idea what that did to them in Westminster! And in Downing Street it was even worse. Even better, I mean.

    Richard Elvin, in the North East came second in Middlesbrough’s parliamentary by-election and second in South Shields. They weigh the Labour vote in South Shields but they obviously use Imperial measures because Richard took UKIP from 0 to 25 per cent in three weeks.

    Diane James, second in Eastleigh’s parliamentary by-election. Over 11,000 votes – 24 per cent up. Close, so close. Next time, Diane.

    That’s the change.

    I said then we were overtaking the Lib Dems to become the third party in British politics.

    We’ve thirty thousand members and growing fast.

    Certainly by the time of the general election we’ll be the third highest-membership party in Britain.

    Every other party is fighting their decline.

    We’re delighted, they’re appalled; the commentators are amazed.

    In eight months’ time there are the European elections and the Council elections.

    UKIP will be standing in both sets, fielding thousands of candidates.

    I’m taking nothing for granted but I think we’re going to do well in the European elections. My ambition, my conviction is that we can come first and cause an earthquake.

    But I also believe that the Council elections may turn out to be more important.

    We made a breakthrough this year and we now have 227 council seats.

    I wouldn’t presume to make predictions about what May will bring. But we do want more – hundreds more.

    It’s possible. I think we can all feel it.

    On the doorstep we tell voters that UKIP councillors aren’t constrained by Labour or Conservative affiliations. They are un-whipped. Free to represent the interests of the community. To fight for the right for local people to have referendums on key local issues such as fracking and the building of wind farms.

    And what support we find out there. What eclectic support. Look at you!

    You did it. We did it. Everyone in this hall.

    When I heard MPs had voted against a strike on Syria. When I heard the Tories were voting for a referendum, I thought it again – we may not have MPs but we’re changing the face of British politics.

    Politicians in Parliament are listening not to their party whips but to their voters.

    It’s a change that’s been gathering force for twenty years.

    Part hope, part fear, part disillusionment, part engagement.

    When we launched our party just 17 per cent of British people agreed we should withdraw from the European Union.

    Today, that figure is 67 per cent.

    The British Social Attitudes Survey shows how much Britain has been moving UKIP’s way.

    On many different areas of our national life.

    On welfare – that benefits should be there for need, not as a lifestyle choice.

    On education – that grammar schools are a great engine of social mobility.

    And yes, on the European Union.

    Yes, on immigration.

    It’s the biggest single issue facing this country. It affects the economy. The NHS. Schools. Public services. The deficit.

    But the establishment has been closing down the immigration debate for 20 years.

    UKIP has opened it up. We need to. From the 1st of January next year the stakes are rising dramatically.

    Let’s have that debate! Openly. We need to talk about it!

    We are a nation that has always been open minded about immigration. But more people came to this country in one year, 2010 than came in the thousand years before it.

    I’m not against immigration. Far from it. Migrants have qualities we all admire. Looking for a better life. They want to get on. I like that. We admire that.

    So I’m speaking here as much as for the settled ethnic minorities as for those who have been here forever.

    Half a million new arrivals a year!

    It’s just not sustainable.

    Anyone who looks at it honestly knows it’s not sustainable.

    UKIP talks about it honestly. Directly. We’ve had a lot of stick for it.  Normal, decent people have been bullied out of the debate.

    Maybe that’s why none of the London commentariat has noticed what’s going on out there in Telford, and Aylesbury, and Kettering, and Buxton and Harrogate. It’s a long way from London. But all over the country, I’m getting audiences of five hundred or six hundred a night to talk about this.

    This debate has been filling theatres. And not with party members. On a show of hands 80 per cent are non-members.

    But they’re interested. They’re engaged. They’re concerned.

    These people aren’t disconnected from politics.  They’re disconnected from politicians.

    And UKIP is the only party that isn’t afraid to talk to them about it.

    So who are we? Who is the typical UKIP voter? I’ll tell you something about the typical UKIP voter – the typical UKIP voter doesn’t exist.

    When I look at the audiences in those theatres there is a range of British society from all parts of the spectrum. Workers, employers, self-employed. Big businessmen, corner shop owners. Well off, comfortably off, struggling. Young as well as old.  Not ideologues. Some left, some right, mostly in the middle. Some activists, some haven’t voted for twenty years.

    One thing many have in common: they are fed up to the back teeth with the cardboard cut-out careerists in Westminster.

    The spot-the-difference politicians.

    Desperate to fight the middle ground, but can’t even find it.

    Focus groupies.

    The triangulators.

    The dog whistlers.

    The politicians who daren’t say what they really mean.

    And that’s why UKIP attracts this eclectic support.

    Because when we believe something – we don’t go “are you thinking what we’re thinking”. We say it out loud.

    That’s why UKIP is the most independent-minded body of men and women who have ever come together in the name of British politics.

    Which presents occasional difficulties.

    We have some people with overactive Facebook accounts. And we have some who make public pronouncements that I would not always choose myself.

    Indeed I had the most blistering row with Godfrey Bloom in a Strasbourg restaurant the other day. He wants to fight for his beliefs and I was saying that we need to stick to the big messages. I don’t always agree on policy with Stuart Wheeler either.

    But, the essence of our recent success is our ability to push the boundaries of debate and with that, the national debate on many issues.

    If the choice is between our being browbeaten through political correctness to stay within the current received wisdoms or to be a party of free debate then be in no doubt we must be the party of radical alternatives and free speech.

    There is however one important qualification…

    We oppose racism. We oppose extremism. We oppose sectarianism of the left or right.

    We are the only party that bans the BNP from membership.

    I’ve got a card here which says what UKIP is, and in the first line, it says as strongly and clearly as it can be said, UKIP opposes racism.

    UKIP is a free-thinking, egalitarian party opposed to racism, sectarianism and extremism.

    UKIP is dedicated to liberty, opportunity, equality under the law and the aspirations of the British people.

    We will always act in the interests of Britain. Especially on immigration, employment, energy supply and fisheries.

    We know that only by leaving the union can we regain control of our borders, our parliament, democracy and our ability to trade freely with the fastest-growing economies in the world.

    And £55 million a day, incidentally, we get that back as well.

    A referendum to allow the country to decide this matter will create the greatest opportunity for national renewal in our lifetime.

    That’s us.

    Optimistic. Open to the world. The opposite of insular. Out there trading with countries that have growth rates of six, seven, ten per cent a year. Not hemmed in by the European Union – but open to the Commonwealth. Not headed by my old pal Herman Achille van Rompuy but by the Queen. Our real friends in the Commonwealth.

    Because the fact is we just don’t belong in the European Union.

    Britain is different.

    Our geography puts us apart. Our history puts us apart. Our institutions produced by that history put us apart. We think differently. We behave differently.

    I’m not giving you the Love, Actually version of what makes Britain different.

    The roots go back seven, eight, nine hundred years with the Common Law. Civil rights. Habeas corpus. The presumption of innocence. The right to a trial by jury. On the continent – confession is the mother of all evidence.

    Four years ago, Andrew Symeou was charged with manslaughter on statements extracted by the police and later withdrawn – taken on the European Arrest Warrant, held for 10 months in the most appalling conditions, detained in Greece for four years and then walked free when the prosecutor pulled the case. The European Arrest Warrant is an abomination to those of us who care about freedom and justice.

    And in some sense it was ever thus.

    The idea of free speech was a reality in England when Europe was run by princes with tyrannical powers.

    Throughout Europe, England was known as the land of liberty.

    Here you had the possibility of dissent. Of free thinking. Independent minds and actions. That’s us. UKIP belongs in the mainstream of British political life throughout the centuries.

    I always believed since 1999 that Britain was a square peg in the round hole I’ve come to realize something bigger than that. The union is not just contrary to our interests but contrary to the interests of Europe itself.

    The Commission has hijacked the institutions of Europe by adopting a flag, an anthem, a president, and through their mad euro project they have driven tens of millions into poverty.

    Their climate change obsession has destroyed industry across Europe, and their refusal to listen to the people will lead to the very extreme nationalisms the project was supposed to stop.

    We are the true Europeans. We want to live and work and breathe and trade in a Europe of democratic nations.

    But in the last ten or fifteen years this country has seen astonishing change. There has been a phenomenal collapse in national self-confidence.

    When we signed up to government from the Continent, most Britons didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for.

    Our laws have come from Brussels – and what laws. What directives. What a list of instructions. How this shall be done. How that shall be regulated. Process and compliance and inspection and regulation are taking over from production and leadership and enterprise.

    Financial services make up 10 per cent of the economy. It’s not just the City of London; it’s Southampton as well. Cardiff. Birmingham. Newcastle. And it’s insurance. Reinsurance. Stocks and shares. Futures. Commodities. Pension funds.

    It is totally irrelevant to this industry whether we have a Labour or a Tory government because their livelihoods are now regulated by a Frenchman who is no friend of ours.

    Parliament is reduced to the level of a large council. No one knows for sure exactly how much of our law comes from Brussels.  Could be 70 or 80 per cent.

    We have given up our concept of civil rights. Magna Carta, 800th anniversary the year after next, at the general election.

    Habeas corpus. Rights of inheritance. And not just for the aristocracy, as time went by.

    Our civil rights grew and kept pace with the times and expanded through the Common Law into the modern world – Europe has supplanted it with their Human Rights charter. While they can hold Andrew Symeou in Greece on trumped-up charges for four years – we can’t deport a rapist and murderer because he has a right to a family life.

    How did they do that to us?

    They lied to us. They had to. We’d never have agreed to it if they told us the truth and asked for our agreement.

    And it’s created a complete charade in our national life.

    All the parties now talk tough on immigration.

    David Cameron said he would bring it down to the tens of thousands.

    There are still half a million people a year coming in.

    Do you know, I really think they haven’t made the connection.

    I was in an immigration debate chaired by Nick Robinson. I started to talk about Europe, the rights of entry and residence that EU citizens have. He stopped me. No, he said, this debate is about immigration it’s not about Europe.

    That’s how deep the disconnect goes.

    Ten thousand a week. Half a million a year. Five million economic migrants in ten years coming to this country.

    Unprecedented. Never happened before.

    The effects are obvious. In every part of our national life.

    The strain these numbers are putting on public services.

    Schools. The shortage of school places in primaries and secondary schools.

    The NHS. The sheer weight of numbers that adds to the other problems of that

    Housing. Demand pushes up prices.

    Wages are driven down by the massive over-supply of unskilled labour.

    And from the 1st of January next year, the risks increase massively.

    The seven year period is up and nearly 30 million of the good people of Bulgaria and Romania have open access to our country, our welfare system our jobs market.

    How many will take advantage of that no one knows.

    The Home Office don’t have any idea at all. The previous estimate was 13,000 in total. Migration Watch thinks 50,000 a year. It could be many times that.

    No one knows. It’s no way to run a policy.

    And you can’t blame people wanting to come here.

    I don’t blame them.

    I’d come here myself if I was in their position.

    So would you. Anyone would be tempted.

    In Bulgaria and Romania, average earnings are a fifth of ours.

    The purchasing power of £20 of child benefit a week is five times over there what it is here.

    So consider a family of mum, dad and three children. They’re going to think, let’s send Dad over to get work in Britain. That enterprising and industrious fellow can come here, find a job, and be eligible for child benefit for his three children – even though they aren’t living here.

    £60 a week – with the purchasing power of five times that. Sent back to Romania or Bulgaria. What an incentive. What a draw. What a pull factor, as they call it in immigration circles.

    And while you can’t blame them – is it fair? Is it fair for the people who are already here in this country. Who’ve paid in to the system?

    That migrants can come and immediately start drawing benefits?

    When we, the host country, is strapped for cash, when youth unemployment is at a million, when the NHS is groaning and the deficit is a burden on every family?

    I know it isn’t fair. I know it isn’t right. And I know there isn’t a thing the Government can do about it.

    There is an even darker side to the opening of the door in January. London is already experiencing a Romanian crime wave. There have been an astounding 27,500 arrests in the Metropolitan Police area in the last five years. 92 per cent of ATM crime is committed by Romanians. This gets to the heart of the immigration policy that UKIP wants, we should not welcome foreign criminal gangs and we must deport those who have committed offences. Mr. Cameron, Clegg and Milliband are you listening?

    If they are listening there’s not a thing they can do. They are tied up in the cat’s cradle of EU laws, regulations, directives and treaties.

    The only way this can be dealt with is by leaving the EU.

    Not prolong the agony. But leave, and leave soon. That’s what UKIP has been arguing for twenty years and what an increasing majority of the British people are – with very good reason – coming to believe as well.

    Sixty seven per cent. Research suggests that 67 per cent of Britons now support leaving the Union.

    I’m not sure how carefully everyone has thought this through, so let me say a little about what life outside the Union looks like to me.

    I believe that leaving the Union and reclaiming our destiny will create the most exciting opportunity for national renewal in our lifetime.

    At the most basic level we get back £55 million a day. It adds up. It’s £20 billion a year. We could reduce the deficit. We could reduce corporation tax to 10 per cent. Give us the most competitive and attractive business taxes in the western world.

    We get our money back.

    We get our borders back.

    We get our Parliament back.

    We get our fisheries back.

    We get our own seat in on the bodies that actually run the world.

    We get back the ability to strike free trade deals. We can abolish tariffs on African produce and do more to raise living standards there than any amount of aid.

    There are those who say we can’t go it alone. That our global influence will decline because we are small.

    Those are the true voices of Little England. We speak for Great Britain.

    No longer bound into an ageing and increasingly arthritic trade bloc where growth of 2 and 3 per cent is an ambition.

    Instead, the world. The Commonwealth. Trading with Brazil, Asia, the Commonwealth where growth rates in double figures will bring wealth back to this country.

    No more relying on debt-fuelled booms to get things going. No more growth through credit card excesses. We earn our way to national prosperity by free trade with the world.

    And just to counter the scare stories the status quo put up to frighten people back into line, I’ll tell you what won’t happen.

    Those ten thousand trucks a day coming in from the continent bringing goods into this country. They won’t stop coming.

    The £25 to £35 billion trade surplus the rest of Europe runs with us. That’s not going to stop.

    The idea that the EU will start a trade war with Britain is simply not credible.

    The real reason the EU won’t be able or willing to stop trading with us is that the German car industry won’t allow it. I just can’t see Mrs Merkel explaining to Mercedes that they’re not going to be selling into Britain any more.

    It’s not going to happen.

    Leaving the Union will give us our country back and open a door to the world.

    We are changing the face of British politics and all our arguments are gaining traction. In rhetoric the other parties are attempting to move in to our territory but without the slightest intention of delivering.

    So Mr. Cameron wants a referendum … well we’ve heard it all before with his “cast iron guarantee” and we don’t believe that he is sincere. The use of the word renegotiation is no more than a cynical tactic to kick the issue into the long grass after the next election. I have no doubt that Labour and the Lib Dems will do exactly the same thing. They all promise a referendum at every General Election and renege on their promises.

    But the next election is not, as you would believe reading the newspapers, in 2015. The next election is on May 22nd 2014, the European Elections.

    They offer voters a chance to really express their view without worrying which lot get in to Downing Street.

    The campaign will be dominated by open door immigration to Eastern Europe. If the coalition wants to save their electoral skins they must, before January 1st, tell Brussels that we will not unconditionally open our door to Bulgaria and Romania.

    That is my challenge to them. If they ignore it then we must turn the Euro Elections into the referendum that we have not been given.

    Let’s make May 22nd as our referendum on EU membership, let us send an earthquake through Westminster. Let us stand up and say: Give us our country back!

  • Michael Fallon – 2014 Speech at Eurelectric Dinner

    michaelfallon

    Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Fallon, the Energy Minister, on 2nd June 2014.

    Introduction

    It is a pleasure to be speaking at an event that is focusing on a key challenge facing Europe.

    This is a crucial time for EU energy policy. Recent events have brought into focus the importance for all our citizens of energy security. In gatherings such as this there is often very fashionable talk of the so-called trilemma that posits security, affordability, and decarbonisation at opposite points of the triangle. This is false geometry. Without secure, affordable energy we will not be able to move to a more sustainable, lower carbon energy future.

    A Common approach

    The Rome G7 Energy communique set out with welcome clarity what we need to do as a Union and as countries to strengthen energy security – more home-grown energy, reducing energy demand, diversifying supplies and supply routes, and building the missing internal energy infrastructure and integrated markets so energy in all forms can flow smoothly and freely.

    It is vital that we use this momentum to inform decisions that are needed on our objectives for 2030. By acting now we can give investors the certainty they need to commit the enormous sums of money required to modernise and reinforce the EU’s energy infrastructure over the next decade.

    This evening I want to focus on the priorities the UK sees for the EU –

    First, taking full advantage of the benefits that a single EU market in energy has to offer.

    Second, we need to maximise home grown energy sources and diversify supplies.

    Third, the 2030 package needs to be a driver of competitiveness that benefits consumers and industry and allows member states to determine their own energy mix and to decarbonise at the pace best suited to their economic situation.

    Single market

    A well-functioning and integrated internal energy market in electricity and gas will be a critical part of ensuring security of our energy supplies and in keeping energy costs down.

    By opening up and integrating markets across national boundaries, we can increase competition, access the cheapest energy and reduce the level of back-up generation needed.

    The benefits of a single market are clear and undisputed. So, we must ask what we need to do to achieve them.

    The European Council has already agreed that the internal energy market should be completed by 2014. This is something the UK strongly supports.

    This means full and effective implementation of the Third Package in every Member State. It also means agreeing on key technical rules aimed at removing the remaining barriers to cross-border trade.

    On top of that, Europe need much more investment in interconnection to better link markets.

    If we can seize the opportunity we can deliver a more resilient and competitive energy market.

    Home grown sources

    To deliver these benefits we need diverse sources of energy. We have an abundance of energy resources that it can, and must take advantage of.

    That means that exploiting the full use of all energy technologies, from shale gas to renewables, from nuclear to shale. We should not any longer be ideological about energy.

    Renewables play, and will continue to play, an important role both in the European energy system and here in the UK. Through the Levy Control Framework this government has set out support through to 2020; with many countries making retroactive changes and reducing their subsidies, our move is unparalleled.

    In addition to renewables, new nuclear is critical for the future. The UK has already attracted significant levels of investment into the new nuclear build programme. We reached agreement with EDF on the key terms of a proposed investment contract for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. We are now working closely with the European Commission on the Hinkley state aid investigation.

    Given the continuing need for gas, we cannot afford to ignore the potential for domestic less sources. The development of shale gas in Europe could reduce our reliance on imports, could place downward pressure on energy prices and it could support the move away from high carbon fuels.

    So we are very pleased that the Commission responded to calls from the UK and other Member States to adopt a proportionate approach on the regulation of shale. We are conducting a study with Poland on the impact of shale for our countries and the whole EU which I hope will inform the new Commission and the new Parliament on the need to incentivise exploration, rather than bureaucratise.

    Diversify sources

    We will, of course, continue to need to import energy into Europe for the foreseeable future. Diversification of routes and sources of gas supply to the EU is an important element of the EU’s energy security policy. In that context I was delighted to hear – earlier this year – of the Final Investment Decision for the development of the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan. This means that the Southern Corridor bringing Caspian Gas via the Trans-Adriatic pipeline to Europe is a significant step closer.

    The Southern Corridor itself will help to improve Europe’s competitiveness, by providing consumers and industry with a new gas import route and supply source, increasing the continent’s energy security, bringing more competition our market.

    2030 Framework

    What we saw in the European Elections was voters reacting against a European Union that they consider to be heading in the wrong direction. We need an approach that recognises far more sharply that Europe should concentrate on what matters, on growth and jobs.

    And it is that message which must be reflected in the framework for 2030 – 2030 must be a driver for competitiveness and resilience that secures investment in a diverse and low carbon technology base.

    Signing up to yet more targets, irrespective of the impact on consumers and business, would be, in our view, deeply irresponsible. That is why we support greenhouse gas emissions reduction target without a binding renewables target.

    As I said, Member States must be free to choose the least cost pathway that they determine as appropriate.

    And in cutting emissions Members states too must retain the flexibility to take action at their own pace – to go no slower and no faster than other European countries if they so wish.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, I would like to share three thoughts.

    The importance of energy to our way of life means that keeping it secure is not an option- It’s an imperative.

    Secondly, energy is not limited to national borders. Our energy security challenges are best addressed together.

    Thirdly, we can only speculate on and not predict the future. Costs of technologies change, as do national circumstances. We need to be ambitious in our objectives, but we must be flexible in how we meet these.

    So I think this Convention comes at a crucial time. The next few weeks and months will be important in setting the future direction of the EU energy and climate policy; we, the UK, will play a full role to ensure ambitious climate targets, enhanced energy security and above all strenghten EU competitiveness.

    Thank you.

  • Michael Fallon – 2014 Speech on Middle East and North Africa Energy

    michaelfallon

    Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Fallon, the Energy Minister, at Chatham House in London on 27th January 2014.

    Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here with you all today. I’d like to thank Chatham House for providing this forum. The focus of today’s discussions – the future of oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and North Africa – is certainly of critical importance to us all.

    Future role of oil and gas in meeting global energy demand

    The world will continue to rely on oil and gas for the foreseeable future, making the security of competitively priced oil and gas supplies of vital importance to the world’s economy.

    Oil and gas consumption is expected to rise significantly for some time, even as we move towards a low carbon economy. In particular demand for transport fuel is projected to continue to grow outside the OECD, while gas is increasingly replacing coal as a fuel for power generation around the world.

    The latest predictions from the IEA are that that under its central scenario the world will be consuming over 100 million barrels of oil a day in 2035, up from 89 million barrels a day in 2012.

    However over the same time the IEA expects that conventional crude oil output from existing fields is set to fall by around 40 million barrels per day by 2035. This means that new sources of oil will need to be developed to make up the difference.

    The development of unconventional oil will clearly have an important role in the coming years. And the same is true for gas – with unconventional gas expected to account for almost 50% of the increase in global gas production to 2035. Further work is required on how to safely and sustainably exploit these resources.

    But this is not the whole answer. Indeed, the IEA emphasises the Middle East as being at the centre of the longer term oil outlook. Even with projections that domestic consumption in the region will increase significantly, exports from the region will continue to be integral to global supply.

    This requires huge investment in production – an estimated $660bn per year will need to be invested in existing and new oil and gas fields to meet global demand. British companies are well placed to make this investment and are already active in many places around the world, including the Gulf. BP and Shell, for example, are already present in Iraq, while Shell is a partner in the Qatargas 4 LNG and Pearl GTL projects in Qatar.

    The IEA highlights Iraq – with its huge oil reserves – as the country that could be the single largest contributor to global production growth. That requires investment now, in infrastructure, sustainable water management, and the strong legal and financial frameworks that investors need.

    The IEA also projects increasing gas production from the Middle East and North Africa from both conventional and unconventional sources. When I visited Qatar in November, I was struck at how important Qatar is and will continue to be as a gas supplier to the wider MENA region and beyond. Qatar is of course a significant supplier of LNG to the UK. I also met the Algerian energy Minister last year, and was interested to learn more about the potential scale of Algeria’s unconventional gas resources. Of course there remain uncertainties as to the extent to which these resources will prove to be economically recoverable. In global gas markets, MENA gas producers are likely to be faced with growing competition from new sources of LNG from suppliers in the US, Canada, Australia and East Africa.

    International Cooperation

    I mentioned the significant investment required. Key to supporting this is helping to ensure that we have well-functioning oil and gas markets. This is a shared challenge, which transcends national boundaries, and we value international collaboration on this agenda.

    We saw in 2008 how damaging severe price fluctuations can be, when a mid-year spike of $145/barrel was followed by a fall to $30/barrel by year end.

    These swings severely damaged the confidence of consumers and producers alike: the price rise led to consumers sharply reducing demand for oil and goods and services in the wider economy; and the price drop created major challenges and uncertainties for many producing countries, both in terms of meeting the wider needs of their populations and in deciding the investment needed for future production.

    When the world met in Jeddah and London that year to discuss how to avoid such sharp fluctuations happening in the future, the central conclusion that emerged was the need to improve the functioning of the global oil market. Participants agreed that delivering such reform required significant improvement in the dialogue between consuming and producing countries facilitated by the International Energy Forum.

    This led to the re-launch of the IEF in 2011. Since then the Forum has done important work with the IEA, OPEC and others to improve market transparency through the development of Joint Organisation Data Initiative, it has investigated the links between physical and financial oil markets and has worked to improve energy outlook data.

    Maintaining this dialogue and work is essential if we are to ensure the world economy has the secure and competitively priced energy supplies it needs. In a period of relative price stability such as we have recently had, it would be all too easy for complacency to set in and for the world to downgrade the importance of such discussions. We should not, and I look forward to the IEF Ministerial meeting this May.

    The UK also supports international efforts aimed at removing inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. The IEA estimates that $544bn was spent globally on consumption subsidies in 2012. The G20 and APEC have committed to action on this issue, and I would encourage all those with such subsidies to consider their long term impact.

    A well-functioning and integrated European energy market in electricity and gas will be a critical part of ensuring security of our energy supplies and keeping energy costs down.

    The European Council has already agreed that the internal energy market should be completed by 2014. This is something the UK strongly supports. This means full and effective implementation of the Third Package of energy legislation in every Member State.

    We will need to effectively implement rules to allow energy to flow properly across markets. And Europe will need significant investment in interconnection to better link markets together.

    And international efforts are – of course – crucial to facilitating the shift to low carbon energy. I welcome the role being taken by many countries in the Middle East and North Africa to support this transition, for example the World Future Energy Summit hosted by the UAE last week.

    The draft 2030 package the European Commission adopted last week will set the long term perspective on this low carbon shift for the EU, and I welcome both the ambitious approach to a greenhouse gas emissions target of 40% for the EU but hopefully going higher in the case of a global deal, but also the acceptance by the Commission on the need for Member States to decarbonise in the most flexible and cost-effective way for each of them, moving away from binding national technology specific targets.

    UK energy policy

    I’d like to turn now to reflect on UK energy policy. We are seeking to achieve three key aims – energy security, emissions reduction to meet our ambitious climate changes targets, and maintaining affordability for consumers.

    The North Sea continues to be hugely important for the UK. We are determined to maximise production of these oil and gas reserves and are currently conducting a review – the Wood Review – to ensure our regulatory regime is as business friendly as possible.

    Unconventional oil and gas is an exciting prospect for us, and we have recently announced changes to our tax regime which will make the UK the most attractive location for investment in shale gas.

    And we are working hard to put the policies in place to enable the shift to a low carbon energy system. We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Our energy policies include a number of flagship programmes to achieve this, including our far-reaching Electricity Market Reforms, the ambitious energy efficiency programme through the Green Deal.

    Nevertheless, UK import dependency for oil and gas is set to rise over coming years.

    We became a net importer of oil in 2005. In 2012 our oil import dependence increased to 36%, and is expected to rise to 47% by 2020.

    For gas, we became a net importer in 2004; and in 2012 our gas import dependency stood at 50% – with Qatar one of our key suppliers. By 2020 imports are likely to rise to 58% and it is clear that gas will remain an important element of our energy mix for decades to come.

    And as we increasingly look to international markets for our energy supplies, we also welcome the interest from international investors in the UK energy sector.

    It is estimated that replacing and upgrading our electricity infrastructure alone will require up to £110 billion of capital investment between now and 2020. I recognise that policy certainty is key to this – and the Energy Act and our electricity market reforms deliver this.

    I have been delighted to see investments in the UK energy sector ramping up. For example I welcome Masdar’s investment of £500m in the London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm. And the decision of the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company to lead in the development of the Morrone field in the North Sea.

    Conclusion

    Perhaps I can end by noting that common challenges face us all. We need to ensure that energy markets can provide the supplies consumers need at affordable prices while providing the necessary long term incentives for producers and investors. Achieving this is no mean feat, but dialogue and cooperation has a central role to play.

    Thank you.

  • Michael Fallon – 2008 Budget Response

    michaelfallon

    Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Fallon in the House of Commons on 13th March 2008.

    What a disappointing Budget. I thought that the new Chancellor would emerge from the shadows as his own man through the Budget, but we ended up with a Chancellor who dithered over Northern Rock and capital gains tax and cannot even decide whether the plastic bags levy should be voluntary or compulsory.

    Let me begin with the public finances and our problems. Five years ago, in the Budget of March 2003, we were promised that we would be in surplus by March 2006. Each subsequent Budget and pre-Budget report postponed that. Yesterday, we were told that we would not be in surplus until 2010-11, exactly five years later than originally planned.

    Let me put it another way. In the financial year that we are completing, we were supposed to have a surplus of £9 billion. Instead, we have a deficit of £7.9 billion. That is a turnaround of £17 billion—half the defence budget—because the Government failed to keep to their original plans.

    Alternatively, let us look at net borrowing. Five years ago, we were told that net borrowing in the year that we are about to start would be £24 billion; yesterday, it was admitted that it would be £43 billion, almost twice as much. Worse still, for the first time that I can see in 11 consecutive Budgets and pre-Budget reports, the borrowing figures will be higher in the next two years than they were in the last two. The figures will increase to £43 billion and £38 billion, both of which are higher than the figure for borrowing in the year just ended. Not until 2012-13 will we get back to the borrowing level of £23 billion that we last saw as an outturn in 2002-03—a decade of binge borrowing.

    Finally, there is overall public sector net debt. That will rise, according to the Red Book figures, to £731 billion in 2012-13, which is almost double what it was 10 years earlier. This comes at a time when we are already paying almost as much in debt interest, at £31 billion, as we are on the entire defence budget, at £33 billion, as we can see in chart 1.1 of the Red Book. Indeed, debt interest is now our fourth biggest spending programme. We on the Conservative Benches do not need to take any more lessons about unfunded tax promises, because that scale of collapse in the public finances is simply unfunded Government spending.

    To put it another way, the Treasury got the growth that it expected from the economy last year, so why does public sector borrowing need to jump from £36 billion to £43 billion? Why do we need to force the motorist, the drinker and the small business to pay more taxes? Growth was around 3 per cent., as forecast and above its historic trend, but we are spending 45 per cent. of our national income while tax receipts account for only 41 per cent. Why? Because the then Chancellor failed to prepare during the stronger years. The Government failed to control spending or pay down debt. That is not just sloppy forecasting; rather it shows clearly and conclusively that the Government, and especially the former Chancellor, cannot plan their public finances properly. Therefore, we cannot trust the current Chancellor when he tells us that everything else will be okay. That is the failure in our public finances.

    Secondly, I want to address the question of who really pays for that failure. It is not the public sector, which now faces relatively smaller increases in its growth. There will of course be fewer additional police community support officers and fewer additional NHS physiotherapists. However, we know that public sector pensions are still protected and that some pay restraint in the public sector is already being breached by the more and more widespread use of bonuses. For instance, one third of HM Revenue and Customs staff received bonuses last year.

    It is not the public sector that will pay. The real losers from the collapse in our public finances are the people at the bottom. The first group are the lowest- paid of all. An unmarried person without children who earns only £11,500 year, on the minimum wage or just above it, pays tax and national insurance at 16 per cent. of their earnings. Someone in Ireland in exactly the same position would have to earn almost twice that amount—more than £22,000 a year—before they paid tax at 15 per cent. Why should single people starting their working lives be hit the hardest? Why should they be discriminated against by the myriad rules against part-time working, which make it less worth while to work between four and 16 hours a week, for example, because of the interaction of income support, working tax credit and child tax credit? The tax credit system is fine in itself, as we on the Conservative Benches have accepted. However, because it goes so far up the income scale, it simply does not give enough help to those who need it at the very bottom.

    The second category having to pay for all the mistakes is our pensioners, particularly those on fixed incomes and those facing year-on-year real increases in council tax of around 4 or 5 per cent. Let me give an example from Sevenoaks district council, which is one of the southern district councils that has been worst treated by this Government. My constituent, Ms Earnshaw-Whittles, keeps a careful record, going all the way back, of the exact amount that she pays. In 1998-99, the first year for which the Government made the allocation, she paid £90 a month in a band G house. Had that amount been increased with inflation, she would now be paying £115.63. In fact, she has to pay £171, which is 48 per cent. higher. We are talking about people on fixed incomes paying half as much again in council tax they would as if the figures had been indexed. They are the people paying for the Government’s mistakes.

    We know, too, that every council has had to plug the gap in its pension funds caused by the then Chancellor’s disastrous raid on pensions in 1997. Every local authority has had to cope with all the extra legislation passed through the House and the multitude of directives issued by Whitehall, but on a reduced grant.

    Finally, small businesses are paying the price for the failure to control our public finances. Not only are they over-regulated, as Conservative Members have pointed out time and again, but they are constantly forced to act as the Government’s agents, by operating the tax credit system, checking on immigrant status and sorting out graduate loan repayments. As thanks for that, this year of all years, corporation tax will be increased by 2 per cent. We have been asking why since the last Budget, but we have not received an explanation. Rather than putting the burden of their mistakes on to those who simply cannot pay, the Government should look much harder at putting their own house in order.

    I want to conclude with some remarks about the waste and inefficiency in central Government. There was not much in the Chancellor’s speech yesterday about the efficiency savings programme. We have had the Gershon savings and it is claimed that the £30 billion is on course to be realised. However, we know from the work of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee what a small proportion of those savings have been fully realised, fully audited and cashable. I understand that the NAO has endorsed only about a quarter of the current savings as real, in terms that the private sector would understand.

    Secondly, there is the period after the Gershon review, post 2010-11. We were told yesterday that we would have to wait until the 2009 Budget before we saw the details of those savings, although yesterday we were promised something called the “public value programme”. It is not immediately clear to me how the public value programme differs from the current value-for-money delivery agreements. We have learned from bitter experience that changing the labels does not mean that we will get real cost-cutting in the administration of government, better ways of working, a reduced rate of absenteeism and an improvement in the efficiency of the back office systems. Those are all things that the private sector has had to cope with and implement over the past 10 years, but which still seem so difficult in the public sector.

    Then there is pay, of course. I welcome the suggestion in the Red Book that Whitehall wants an increasing number of multi-year agreements, but I have warned before, including earlier in my speech, about the ever-widening use of bonuses to circumvent pay ceilings instead of adopting the performance-related pay measures that are now common in the private sector.

    There are also asset sales. The Government have another £12 billion to go before they realise their 2010-11 target, and only two years left to get on with it. It seems to be taking them an awful lot of time even to sell the things that they have said for years that they wished to sell, such as the Tote. They have been playing around with that for years. A couple of weeks ago, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced that it intended to appoint financial advisers. If the Government are to realise their intended gains from asset sales, they must get on with it.

    As I said on Monday, this country is in a financial crisis. We see that in the lack of confidence in commercial banking, the deep-rooted problems in the bond markets and the serious downturn in the United States. I suspect that we are nowhere near the end of that crisis. Just because this business cycle has run twice as long as previous cycles, that does not excuse the Government for not having prepared properly for its end. That is what Governments are for. Instead, just as our constituents face rising food and fuel prices, we find the Government being caught out. They have unfunded spending commitments, which are being met each year only through higher taxes and increased borrowing. They failed to prepare and have now been found out. Next year, they must prepare to fail.

  • Cecil Parkinson – 1971 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Cecil Parkinson in the House of Commons on 4th February 1971.

    I had wondered, as all new Members wonder, I am sure, just what my experiences in my by-election had to do with the very strange life I have found myself leading since my election. Tonight I realise that one of my experiences was very relevant. Night after night in my by-election campaign I listened to the star speaker from London make my speech. All of a sudden, the chairman called on me and with the tatters of my brilliant speech I then had to entertain an audience for 25 minutes. My experience tonight has brought those memories very vividly back to me.

    I entered the House as the representative of Enfield, West after the by-election in November, and I am the newest Member. The constituency of Enfield, West is comprised of the residential part of Enfield, Hadley Wood, which has some very distinguished-looking hon. Members, who I am sorry to say sit on the benches opposite when they are here, the urban district of Potters Bar and South Mimms. It is comprised of beautiful rolling countryside, some of the loveliest parts of what is left of the green belt in the north of London. One of the great ambitions which I as the Member, kin Macleod as my predecessor, and all my constituents have is to make sure, for our sake and the sake of London, that we work very hard to keep that green belt.

    There is very little industry in my constituency, as the officials of Transport House who came down for the by-election found out. They arrived with a plan to have a series of factory gate meetings and found to their horror that it would not work. We have only one factory in the constituency, with a single gate, and they felt that 21 appearances by my opponent might injure rather than help his case.

    In case hon. Members opposite think that this seems to mean that I am not qualified to speak about anything to do with working people, may I add that I was born and bred in the north of Lancashire, in a very tough part of the country, and I am not talking about things that I have read about when I talk about the plight of pensioners and the working man.

    One of Enfield’s greatest distinctions is that it was represented in this House for 20 years by Iain Macleod, one of the great Parliamentarians of this or any century. He was a great man, a great patriot and a great servant of the people of his constituency. Hon. Members will not be offended if I take this opportunity to pay tribute both to his work and that of his wife Eve. Together they worked for more than 20 years for their constituency. I am very proud to have been chosen to succeed him; I am very sad that the opportunity for me to do so ever arose.

    Iain Macleod had a great interest, which he shared with his wife, in the welfare of the elderly and disabled, and it is partly because of that that I wish to speak in this debate. None of us on either side of the House can fail to be concerned about the plight of the pensioner. I am sure that we all accept that society has a great obligation to do as much as it can for the pensioner.

    This Government, in spite of the rather cavalier way in which the hon. Lady the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) dealt with the things they have done already, have, I claim, demonstrated their real concern for the plight of the pensioners through the actions that they have taken already and the assurance we have had from my right hon. Friend—a man who is known to keep his word and who is determined to carry out our pledge. I think we can rest assured that the Government are aware of and are concerned about the plight of the pensioners.

    It is entirely right that we should accept a special responsibility for this generation of pensioners, the vast majority of whose careers suffered the economic consequences of two world wars and the world depressions of the 1920s and 1930s. Many of these people would have been at their optimum age at the time when there was not an opportunity to use their talents, and I have never heard any Conservative worker or hon. Member reproach any pensioner about the fact that he is poor. In fact, to make a party point—although I know that I am not supposed to—Conservative workers are too busy working with the meals-on-wheels service and other social work to bother to recriminate with the people they spend so much time trying to help. I thought that that was an unworthy remark by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans), and I am sure that when he thinks about it he will wish to withdraw it.

    Every day I get letters and receive visits from pensioners who seek help. It is important at this time for the House not to appear to be trying to turn the pensioners into a sort of political football, for neither side to be trying to steal a march on the other in terms of talk about concern, in terms of trying to prove that if only they were in Government they would be doing more and more. I was surprised to hear the hon. Lady refer to the claim, which is often pointed out by hon. Members opposite, that the Labour Government’s first action when they came to power in 1964 was to increase pensions. One of the shabbiest incidents of those early months was the fact that they promised to increase the pensions but when pressed said that administratively it was not possible. It was Lord George-Brown, at the mini-conference the Labour Party held after the 1964 election, who confessed that it was not administrative problems but financial ones which were delaying the increase and who once again, as so often in his parliamentary career, blew the gaff.

    I share the concern of my hon. Friends about the attempt by certain sectional groups to grab the old-age pensioners, for their own particular ends and who appear to be using them. One man in particular who claims that it is his responsibility to extract the maximum for his workers, seems to spend six days a week—this is the only controversial thing I shall say—stirring up inflation in trying to grab more than his share of what is going and on the seventh day organises rallies for the people who will suffer most from his activities of the previous six days. It is perhaps the eleventh Commandment—”Six days shalt thou labour to stoke inflation and on the seventh thou shalt organise and finance rallies for the victims of inflation and shed crocodile tears at the effect of thy previous six days work.” It is neither convincing nor worthy and I hope that it will be dropped. It is worsening a situation for a section of the community who cannot look after themselves, who are defenceless. The last thing they need is to have their hopes falsely raised to be used by people for any ends other than just getting the best deal they can for pensioners.

    Apart from joining hon. Members on both sides of the House in the hope that, when my right hon. Friend says that an announcement will be soon, he means very, very soon, I want to make two specific points. One has been made by a number of hon. Members and concerns the earnings rule. I think that this must be relaxed so that those who can and wish to help themselves may do so without, as so often happens now, having to be party to bending the law. I think it is undignified and unworthy that pensioners should be paid a bit under the table, as is done in many instances, because people realise that to pay them any more would cause them to lose some of the pension they have richly earned. I urge the Government not to be put off by this temporary crisis and to press on with long-term plans to encourage earnings-related occupational pension schemes.

    I cannot share the sorrow of hon. Members opposite that the Crossman plan was abandoned. I do not think that it was a very sound plan. I think that it had the potential of being highly inflationary. We prefer properly funded diverse occupational schemes. We believe in them for two reasons.

    The first is that they are a better hedge against inflation than a promise by the Government to take inflation into account, because Governments always want to underestimate inflation. Secondly, we believe that, by having this diversity, giving people a choice and having a variety of schemes, we are taking away from the State the ability to interfere with and control a vast number of people’s lives. I view with great distaste the fact that at the moment millions of people are forced to rely on the judgments of this House for the amount of their pensions. I look forward to the day when people are members in very large numbers of occupational schemes, properly handled, properly funded and properly resistant to inflation. I look forward to hearing more from the Government about plans for their fall-back scheme, and I hope that it will be treated as a matter of great urgency.

  • Ian Paisley – 2007 Speech at Stormont

    Below is the text of the speech made by Ian Paisley at Stormont in Northern Ireland on 8th May 2007.

    How true are the words of Holy Scripture, ‘We know not what a day may bring forth’.

    If anyone had told me that I would be standing here today to take this office, I would have been totally unbelieving. I am here by the vote of the majority of the electorate of our beloved province.

    During the past few days I have listened to many very well placed people from outside Northern Ireland seeking to emphasise the contribution they claim to have made in bringing it about.

    However, the real truth of the matter is rather different.

    If those same people had only allowed the Ulster people to settle the matter without their interference and insistance upon their way and their way alone, we would all have come to this day a lot earlier.

    I remember well the night the Belfast Agreement was signed, I was wrongfully arrested and locked up on the orders of the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland. It was only after the assistant chief of police intervened that I was released. On my release I was kicked and cursed by certain loyalists who supported the Belfast Agreement.

    But that was yesterday, this is today, and tomorrow is tomorrow.

    Today at long last we are starting upon the road – I emphasise starting – which I believe will take us to lasting peace in our province. I have not changed my unionism, the union of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, which I believe is today stronger than ever.

    We are making this declaration, we are all aiming to build a Northern Ireland in which all can live together in peace, being equal under the law and equally subject to the law.

    I welcome the pledge we have all taken to that effect today. That is the rock foundation upon which we must build.

    Today we salute Ulster’s honoured and unageing dead – the innocent victims, that gallant band, members of both religions, Protestant and Roman Catholic, strong in their allegiance to their differing political beliefs, unionist and nationalist, male and female, children and adults, all innocent victims of the terrible conflict.

    In the shadows of the evenings and in the sunrise of the mornings we hail their gallantry and heroism. It cannot and will not be erased from our memories.

    Nor can we forget those who continue to bear the scars of suffering and whose bodies have been robbed of sight, robbed of hearing, robbed of limbs. Yes, and we must all shed the silent and bitter tear for those whose loved one’s bodies have not yet been returned.

    Let me read to you the words of Deirdre Speer who lost her police officer father in the struggle:

    Remember me! Remember me!

    My sculptured glens where crystal rivers run,

    My purple mountains, misty in the sun,

    My coastlines, little changed since time begun,

    I gave you birth.

    Remember me! Remember me!

    Though battle-scarred and weary I abide.

    When you speak of history say my name with pride.

    I am Ulster.

    In politics, as in life, it is a truism that no-one can ever have 100% of what they desire. They must make a verdict when they believe they have achieved enough to move things forward. Unlike at any other time I believe we are now able to make progress.

    Winning support for all the institutions of policing has been a critical test that today has been met in pledged word and deed. Recognising the significance of that change from a community that for decades demonstrated hostility for policing, has been critical in Ulster turning the corner.

    I have sensed a great sigh of relief amongst all our people who want the hostility to be replaced with neighbourliness.

    The great king Solomon said:

    ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

    A time to be born and a time to die.

    A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

    A time to kill and a time to heal.

    A time to break down and a time to build up.

    A time to get and a time to lose.

    A time to keep and a time to cast away.

    A time to love and a time to hate.

    A time of war and a time of peace.’

    I believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule.

    How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in our province.

    Today we have begun to plant and we await the harvest.

  • Ian Paisley – 1970 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Ian Paisley to the House of Commons on 3rd July 1970.

    Mr. Speaker, when I came into this House on Monday last and heard you elected to your high office, you said: At the heart of all the tensions that exist, rightly, between free citizens and which rightly divide them, we meet to resolve those tensions by free and fair debate, respecting not only one’s own right to hold an opinion but equally the right of the other man to hold diametrically opposed opinions and to express them equally freely …. And at the heart of that heart sits a neutral chairman, favouring neither side, except for his sworn duty to protect minorities”.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th June, 1970; Vol. 803, c. 7–8.] The views which I shall be putting to this honourable House from time to time will be the views of a minority, and probably views which have never been expressed in this House before, concerning the situation in my homeland of Northern Ireland. I take your words, Mr. Speaker, as a charter for my individual right and freedom to express those sentiments.

    There is another great principle which I believe lies at the very heart of democracy. It can be set forth in a question: Does our law judge a man before it heareth him? I am extremely happy that I am able to answer both for the people I represent and for myself in this House today.

    I should like to make it perfectly clear that, although I sit on the Government back benches, I came to this House having smashed the 23,000 majority of a sitting Unionist Member of this House. Therefore, I am expressing the viewpoint of those Protestants who are against the present policies of the Ulster Unionist Party, and I shall from time to time take the opportunity of putting as forthrightly as I can the views of the people who have sent me here to speak for them.

    I have just come from Northern Ireland and from those very areas which suffered through the disturbances of last weekend. I have also come from another place where there has been a long and protracted debate on these matters and where contributions were made by every politician in that place concerning these very serious and tragic happenings. What is more, the main substance of the facts of the situation as I know them and as I would put them in this speech can be confirmed by the Army authorities in Northern Ireland. I use the phrase “main substance of the facts” deliberately, for it is a tragedy that when gunfire was being heard in the streets of the City of Belfast, and when people were being mown down by that gunfire, no personnel of the British Army were available to give the people who were being slaughtered any protection whatsoever. The police authorities who were there can confirm the facts of which the Army was not cognisant.

    I noticed that yesterday the Leader of the Opposition mentioned that a solemn promise was given to people in every section of the community in Northern Ireland, irrespective of their political views and religious beliefs, that they were entitled to the same equality of treatment. It is a tragedy that the Protestant people of East Belfast should have to suffer gunfire in the early hours of last Lord’s Day morning and that for two hours they were given no protection whatsoever. When I describe the scene which took place it will be clear to hon. Members—and if they want to confirm it they can do so with the Government of Northern Ireland—that no troops were available to give the necessary defence to these people who were being attacked.

    What is meant by freedom under the law? It needs to be made perfectly clear to all citizens of Northern Ireland what that really means. Does it mean that there is freedom to throw stones, to use petrol bombs and to use guns, and to know that the more stones you throw, the more petrol bombs you use, the more people are slaughtered, the more you will be heeded and hearkened to and the more the concessions which you want will be given to you? It is this pernicious principle which has bedevilled the scene in Northern Ireland. There are people who think that the more they agitate and the more they march and cause confusion, riot and anarchy, the more they will get from the Government of Northern Ireland and from the Government here in Westminster.

    I will tell hon. Members of the type of speech which sets out the point which I am making. I refer to a speech made by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) reported on 22nd July two years ago. It sets the pattern for the Northern Ireland theme.

    It was reported that the hon. Member for Belfast, West said that nothing could be gained from speeches at Stormont and Westminster. The time for action had arrived. By changing the situation in Derry, change would follow not only in the North but in the rest of Ireland as well.” Mr. Fitt declared that it was not possible to get reform by constitutional methods. “People in Derry and all over Northern Ireland who are victims of this system will have to end these wrongs by any means at their disposal. I may not have a great deal of time to stay on the political scene in Northern Ireland,” Mr. Fitt continued. “If constitutional methods do not bring social justice, if they do not bring democracy to Northern Ireland, then I am quite prepared to go outside constitutional methods”. It is in going outside constitutional methods that the scene at the weekend has been enacted.

    Three points have been made concerning the reasons for the outrages at the weekend. One is the imprisonment of the hon. Lady the Member for Mid-Ulster (Miss Devlin). The second is the Orange processions—should they go on and should they be continued? The third is the particular procession which took place on Saturday of last week. I will first apply myself to the first of those reasons.

    If any Members, no matter what their privileges may be in the community, set themselves out on a career of attack on the forces of the Crown, then, when they are apprehended, brought before the courts, tried and found guilty, no matter who they are, they must bear the full rigour of the law.

    Here I take issue with the members of the official Unionist Party: for too long the citizens of Northern Ireland have been brought to the courts not as citizens of Northern Ireland but in regard to their particular political affiliations and their relationships to the controlling Unionist Party. It is not only Roman Catholics who have felt aggrieved concerning injustice in Northern Ireland but also many Protestant people who refused to go by the dictates of the Unionist Party and who set themselves up in opposition, constitutionally, against the Unionist Party. These people, too, have suffered from the same thing. I need not remind this House, for this House very well knows, that twice I have been behind prison bars. When I listened to what was said by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at the Dispatch Box the other evening I felt that it would not be very long before I, too, would be back behind prison bars.

    The time has clearly come when every citizen in Northern Ireland, whether he be an Orangeman or a Hibernian, a Jew or a Hindu, or anyone else, should know that before the law he stands not as a person with certain religious affiliations or political affiliations but as a citizen of the country. No matter what his faith may be or his pedigree may be, no matter what the blood that flows in his veins may be, he should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. I have been in court cases in Northern Ireland in which certain citizens were summoned to appear as witnesses and in which the magistrates refused to allow them to come because those people who had been summoned had special privileges in the Unionist Party. Those things ought not to be.

    I should like to make it clear to the House that, no matter what the Press may say and no matter what image may be painted of me, in my constituency both Roman Catholics and Protestants receive equal treatment from me as a Member of Parliament. It is because of this that the Unionist Party fear the Protestant Unionists more than they fear anyone else at the present time in the Province.

    It is the duty—I need not tell hon. Members—of every Member of Parliament to treat all his constituents equally. That is something which the Unionist Party dread, for they would dread it if the Roman Catholics of the Province in a marginal constituency found out that a representative such as myself would give them the equal treatment which they ought to receive. I make this clear not only here today but also in the constituency.

    I want to talk about the imprisonment of the hon. Lady the Member for Mid-Ulster. If the law had been kept in the way in which it has been kept at other times, the hon. Lady would never have left the court. Her bail was up and it was a wrong move to give her the privilege even to leave the court where she had been sentenced. Other persons who have been sentenced in a court of law have been held there, some of them for six hours.

    Mr. Speaker Order. I hesitate to do what is most unusual—to interrupt a maiden speaker. But it is not in order to criticise by implication the special magistrates—unless by putting a Motion on the Order Paper.

    Mr. Paisley Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If anything in my remarks tended to criticise the decision of the magistrates, I make it clear that that was not the intention which I was seeking. I was seeking to criticise the police authorities, who should have held the prisoner in the court, as they have others, until the warrant arrived for arrest. But I will leave that aspect.

    The second aspect is that of processions. Both the Home Secretary and the former Home Secretary talked of the rerouting of processions. Let me say that the Orangemen who marched last Saturday accepted every ruling and re-routing required of them, and every proposal made by the Security Committee, by the Army authorities and by the police authorities. All those rulings were accepted, and the parade marched in a roadway agreed by the security forces. Let it not be said that these men refused to accept the rulings of the authorities.

    So this was a legally constituted parade, but at Mayo Street, where it comes out to Springfield Road, for two hours before that parade reached the mouth of that road, preparations were being made to attack it. I must criticise here today, on behalf of those who suffered as the result of that attack, the Army authorities for not taking the necessary steps to ensure that stones, and potatoes in which were inserted razor blades, were not gathered for an attack upon that parade. When that parade was at the mouth of Mayo Street it was savagely attacked, and the Army personnel there stood with their backs to those who assaulted the parade, and facing the Orangemen as they marched, and eventually they released tear smoke at those who were marching, many of whom were injured as a result of the release of the tear smoke upon them.

    These are the facts. These facts have been put in another place and have been admitted by the Government in another place.

    It has been said that this procession sparked off the trouble in the City of Belfast. Anyone knowing the geography of the City of Belfast will know that Springfield Road and the Whiterock Orange Hall are many miles away from the centre of the city. In the centre of the city there was a carefully connived scheme to cause explosions and burnings, and many of the large stores in the centre of the city, including Burton’s, Woolworth’s and Trueform, were set on fire, and this was going on at a time when the procession was not anywhere near the vicinity, where, within those buildings, the people were carrying on their legitimate occupations.

    Let me say today that in East Belfast there was a very serious riot, as everyone is now aware. This happened because a tricolour was brought out of Seaforde Street and used to provoke the Protestants on the other side of the road, which happens to be the Protestant side of the road. When the people on the other side moved towards this tricolour, gunfire came from Seaforde Street, and many of the people were shot. At the same time two policemen were fired on further up the road as they attempted to control the crowd of people coming down to join in the fray, and, almost at the same time, from the Roman Catholic chapel on that road there came a burst of gunfire and it was as a result of this gunfire that almost 30 people were injured, and as a result of this gunfire a very serious situation arose on that road.

    People came to my home on a deputation, and they said, “What can we do? The Army are not there. The police have had to withdraw.” Because the police are a civilian force now there they must be withdrawn when there is gunfire. I got in touch with the Prime Minister’s secretary, and after listening to me he told me to get in touch with the British Army authorities, and after I got in touch with them they said they were sorry but the lines of communication were so far stretched they were not able to give protection to those people who were under gunfire at that particular time. The facts of this are already available to the Home Secretary if he will make himself available to the Government of Northern Ireland—these facts as I put them here today.

    So here we have a situation in which the citizens of Northern Ireland—and it does not matter what religion they may belong to—should be given equal treatment. What matters is that they should be given equal treatment. I come back to what the former Prime Minister said, that every citizen is entitled to equality of treatment. At the very same time as the Protestant people were being slaughtered in other parts there were plenty of Army units to give protection to the Roman Catholic people who sought protection. The only thing that can bring peace in Northern Ireland is a sense of security, so that every citizen of Northern Ireland may feel perfectly secure.

    Before I left my home I had a telephone call from a young lady who married a member of the British Army the other day. When she arrived at the church for her wedding she was attacked as she got out of the bridal car, and many of her friends were attacked and her guests were attacked and had eggs and tomatoes thrown at them, and someone called out “Orange b—” from the crowd which had gathered there. After the wedding was over her guests were again attacked.

    It is this type of thing which is going on in Northern Ireland and which leads to the unrest and the troubles in the province. Every citizen is entitled to protection, and I want to say on behalf of the citizens of Northern Ireland that we demand that we get the protection which we need. Because of the arrangements between the Government of that day and the Government of Northern Ireland arms were taken from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Ulster Special Constabulary—a very fine force of men, irrespective of what any Member of the House may think—were disbanded, and as a result of their disbanding and the disarming of the B Specials there are parts of Belfast today which have no protection whatsoever.

    I am speaking on behalf of those people. It is all right for the former Home Secretary to stand at the Despatch Box this day and say that now it is a matter of Catholics fighting Protestants. It is no such thing, for in Londonderry it is a matter of Roman Catholics fighting the Army at the present time, and there is no confrontation whatsoever at the moment between the Protestant people in Londonderry and the Roman Catholic community.

    This House needs to hear first hand of these things. I know that there are others who take a view opposite from mine, and, no doubt, they will give their interpretation of what I see as certain facts, but what I want to say is that we should get away from mere academics today and realise that men and women are being slaughtered on the streets of Belfast and that this has resulted because adequate protection has not been given to the citizens of our province.

    I want further to say in regard to processions that it seems strange to me that there is all the plea today that Orange processions should be put off. What about the processions—provocative processions—which took place at Easter? There was no clamour from the benches opposite then for these celebrations to be put off. What about the recent procession of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. McManus) through the predominantly Unionist town of Enniskillen? That procession, carrying an Irish tricolour, marched through the area provocatively, broke the windows of the local Orange hall and pulled down the Union Jack from the masthead of the town hall. That is the sort of procession that leads to unrest. Yet the Protestant people of that town did not lift a stone or throw a petrol bomb at that procession.

    These are some of the facts that I feel this House should hear. I know that many of them will be unheeded. I know that I shall stand alone in many of the views that I have preached, but I will still continue to do my best to bring to the attention of this House from time to time the needs not only of the Protestant people of Northern Ireland but of all citizens who deserve full protection and security from the forces of the Crown.