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  • Boris Johnson – 2018 Statement on Syria

    Below is the text of the speech made by Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 26 February 2018.

    Mr Speaker, I’m grateful to the Hon Member for Barrow and Furness for raising this vital issue. In 7 years of bloodshed, the war in Syria has claimed 400,000 lives and driven 11 million people from their homes, causing a humanitarian tragedy on a scale unknown anywhere else in the world.

    The House should never forget that the Asad regime – aided and abetted by Russia and Iran – has inflicted the overwhelming burden of that suffering. Asad’s forces are now bombarding the enclave of Eastern Ghouta, where 393,000 people are living under siege, enduring what has become a signature tactic of the regime, whereby civilians are starved and pounded into submission.

    With bitter irony, Russia and Iran declared Eastern Ghouta to be a ‘de-escalation area’ in May last year and promised to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

    But the truth is that Asad’s regime has allowed only one United Nations convoy to enter Eastern Ghouta so far this year – and that carried supplies only for a fraction of the area’s people. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Eastern Ghouta in the last week alone and the House will have noted the disturbing reports of the use of chlorine gas.

    I call for these reports to be fully investigated and for anyone held responsible for using chemical weapons in Syria to be held accountable.

    Over the weekend I discussed the situation with my Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, and Sa’ad Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon. Earlier today, I spoke to Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, and I shall be speaking to other European counterparts and the UN Secretary General in the coming days.

    Britain has joined with our allies to mobilise the Security Council to demand a ceasefire across the whole of Syria and the immediate delivery of emergency aid to all in need.

    Last Saturday, after days of prevarication from Russia, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2401, demanding that “all parties cease hostilities without delay” and allow the “safe, unimpeded and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid”, along with “medical evacuations of the critically sick and wounded”.

    The main armed groups in Eastern Ghouta have accepted the ceasefire, but as of today, the warplanes of the Asad regime are still reported to be striking targets in the enclave and the UN has been unable to deliver any aid. I will remind the House that hundreds of thousands of civilians are going hungry in Eastern Ghouta only a few miles from UN warehouses in Damascus that are laden with food. The Asad regime must allow the UN to deliver those supplies, in compliance with Resolution 2401, and we look forward to Russia and Iran to making sure this happens, in accordance with their own promises.

    I have invited the Russian Ambassador to come to the Foreign Office and give an account of his country’s plans to implement Resolution 2401. I have instructed the UK Mission at the UN to convene another meeting of the Security Council to discuss the Asad regime’s refusal to respect the will of the UN and implement the ceasefire without delay. Only a political settlement in Syria can ensure that the carnage is brought to an end and I believe that such a settlement is possible if the will exists.

    The UN Special Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is ready to take forward the talks in Geneva and the opposition are ready to negotiate pragmatically and without preconditions. The international community has united behind the path to a solution laid out in UN Resolution 2254 and Russia has stated its wish to achieve a political solution under the auspices of the UN.

    Today, only the Asad regime stands in the way of progress. I urge Russia to use all its influence to bring the Asad regime to the negotiating table and take the steps towards peace that Syria’s people so desperately need.

  • Nadhim Zahawi – 2018 Speech at National Learning Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Minister for Children and Families, at the National Learning Conference on 27 February 2018.

    Good Morning. I’m delighted to see so many people have braved the arctic weather to be here today – thank you.

    I know you all have incredibly busy jobs and that it’s not easy to take time away, but I do believe that you will leave at the end of the day pleased that you did make the time. I hope you will leave enthused and with the ideas, connections and tools to continue that ever important quest of providing the best support to children and their families.

    I am delighted to have been appointed to my first ministerial role – and even more happy and elated for that role to be focusing on supporting our most vulnerable children and families. I genuinely think I have the best portfolio in the department, if not the best job in government!

    As you know, my background is in business and in particular in market research. But if setting up and running YouGov taught me anything, it’s that if you want to really understand an issue you need to get out there and talk to the people who live and breathe it every single day.

    So I wanted to get out and meet social workers and leaders across the country straight away – literally two days into the job I went to Hackney with our Chief Social Worker, Isabelle Trowler, to learn about how they turned that services around and to discuss our reform programme.

    I’ve since been to Doncaster and Wigan, and have met with our Partners in Practice. I am excited and looking forward to getting out more over the coming months.

    I can honestly say that the social workers I’ve spoken to are some of the most dedicated and inspiring people that I have had privileged pleasure to met in my life. As an MP, I would often get people in my surgery talking about their experiences with children’s social care, and it was often so overwhelming. By the end of a 15-20 minute appointment with a family, I would find it almost impossible to breathe, let alone think. You do this every day. So I have the upmost respect and admiration for our people who do this job day in and day out.

    I have been particularly struck by the commitment and passion of the social workers I’ve met doing the best they can for the children and families they are working with. That includes constantly looking for more effective ways of supporting children, building their understanding of what works and learning from the experience of their peers.

    I don’t think I need to tell you that social workers are central to solving the challenges we face in children’s social care, or that investing in them is absolutely key.

    But as leaders, you know as well as I do that enabling social workers to do the best for children is about more than training, or caseloads, or staff turnover.

    Not that those things aren’t important – they absolutely are important. But to achieve the scale of improvement that Eileen Munro identified we need, we must build a whole system that creates the space for excellent social work practice to flourish.

    That’s the ambition that we set out in ‘Putting Children First’ – taking action across the whole system to transform social work practice. An ambition that I’m determined to deliver on – building on the hard work of my predecessors and working with you as leaders across the country. And of course I have to pay tribute to Graham Archer and my team who I have to say, coming from the private sector, are phenomenal human beings.

    If we want dynamic social work where excellent practitioners can reach their potential then we have to build a permissive, creative and supportive environment in which social workers have the confidence and freedom to develop and test new ways of working.

    That is exactly what the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme was set up to do – providing funding and support as well as the ‘licence’ to test different ways of working. And helping to build a system that is open to innovation and that learns from best practice as well as from when things go wrong.

    Through the Innovation Programme we have invested almost £200m in 95 projects. Some of these projects are rethinking the whole of a children’s social care system in a local authority. Others are redesigning support for young people around a single trusted person. And others still are adopting and adapting from elsewhere new ways of supporting foster parents.

    Many of those projects are already having a positive impact on systems, practice and, most importantly, on outcomes for children. You will have the opportunity to hear from many of those today.

    But to give just one example – the first ever project funded through the Innovation Programme was ‘Focus on Practice’ which aimed to completely redesign the Triborough’s entire children’s social care system so that professionals could spend more time with children and families, and so that practice was rooted in greater expertise and evidence. The project has already started to show positive results including Ofsted finding that Focus on Practice was making an effective contribution to practice. The independent evaluation found that, as well as reductions in placements costs, staff absence and use of agency staff had also reduced, indicating improved staff wellbeing.

    And Triborough has now set up the Centre for Systemic Social Work to share their learning and enable other authorities to embed systemic practice, improving services and outcomes for children.

    With the Innovation Programme we set out to support genuine innovation to catalyse a real step change in practice.

    And I’m delighted to announce today three new innovation projects supported by the Programme. We are investing up to £5m in Social Impact Bonds to support care leavers as they transition to adulthood and independent living in Sheffield, Bristol and in Lewisham. These Social Impact Bonds are a first for the Innovation Programme and a first for care leavers – testing new commissioning and funding models to support care leavers in to education, training and employment.

    I’m also pleased to announce that Spectra First will deliver the Care Leaver Covenant on behalf of the Department. The Care Leaver Covenant is a fantastic opportunity for organisations in civil society to sign up to helping care leavers get the practical support other young people get from their families when starting out in life and becoming more independent. That means helping them in a range of practical ways. It could be helping them access and benefit from education, employment and training opportunities, for instance by offering apprenticeships, making sure they’ve got a set of interview clothes so they feel confident when they walk through the door, or providing discounted and free offers such as gym membership that helps combat social isolation and loneliness. The Covenant is a way of making that happen and getting a wide range of organisations involved providing care leavers with the chances they need and deserve.

    We know the difference that local authorities at their best can make to the lives of care leavers and the work Mark Riddell did in Trafford before being appointed the Department’s national adviser for care leavers is testament to that. I know from my conversations with Mark that together we could do so much more to help care leavers raise and achieve their aspirations. So I very much look forward to seeing the exciting possibilities that I know all those Covenant pledges will bring.

    Now I don’t underestimate the impact that individual innovation projects have had on systems, practice and on outcomes for children.

    But the collective impact of the Innovation Programme is arguably even more important – the potential it has to build our understanding of what works in supporting vulnerable children and in driving improvement across the whole system.

    Robust, independent evaluation is critical to building the evidence base of what works. I hope you have seen the 57 individual project evaluations that we have published to date, as well as thematic reports, and an overarching evaluation report? Huge thanks to Professor Judy Sebba and her team at the Rees Centre at Oxford University for their work coordinating the evaluations.

    Understanding and learning from what works isn’t enough, though. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that we learn most from failing. But like most clichés, it is essentially true. Learning from when things go wrong is just as important – and we must make sure that the system as a whole learns from when things go wrong.

    That is why we are committed to strengthening arrangements for learning from the cases involving the serious harm of children to swiftly inform child safeguarding policy and practice at all levels.

    We are in the process of setting up a new independent Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and hope to be able to announce the chair and members very soon.

    This first National Learning Conference is an important part of sharing the learning from the Innovation Programme. And I hope it won’t be the last opportunity to share learning nationally, both from the Innovation Programme and of course more broadly.

    I’m delighted that we are working with innovation experts from Nesta, SCIE [sky], and FutureGov, as well as expert researchers from Cardiff University to establish a new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care.

    The What Works Centre’s focus is to improve outcomes for children and their families by developing a powerful evidence base, and supporting its translation into better practice on the ground. It aims to identify the most effective interventions and practice systems and support their implementation by practitioners and decision makers.

    It will join the world’s first network of What Works Centres, which support policy makers, practitioners and commissioners to make decisions based on strong evidence of what works.

    I’m really excited about the potential here to make a real difference to establishing a credible, trusted voice on what works in children’s social care that is integral to social work practice and development.

    The What Works Centre will only reach that potential though, if it is delivering what you as leaders and practitioners in children’s social care need in a way that is accessible and practical. And to do that they need to hear from you and to work with you.

    I know the What Works Centre team have spent much of the last few months talking to you to understand what you need and how they can work with you to fill the gaps that are there.

    I would encourage you to continue to talk to them, to challenge them, and to support them. They are here to work with you, to make your work easier and support you to do the best for the children you work with.

    That’s probably enough from me. Today is really about you going out and learning from the experts – each other. You are the experts. I look forward to meeting you and discussing ideas with you over the course of today and the coming months.

    Enjoy the rest of the day – thank you for being here and for the work you do for our children.

  • Penny Mordaunt – 2018 Speech at Bond Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State for International Development, on 26 February 2018.

    We’ve just 12 years left to fulfil our promise to the world’s poorest, and the commitment so central to the Global Goals – to Leave No One Behind.

    We set ourselves the task that by 2030 every child will have the chance of a decent education, but we are 85 years adrift on current projections – not set to achieve that until 2115.

    That is better though than our current assessment on when we will end malnutrition – we are looking at least a century before delivering that.

    And we’ll be well into two centuries hence before we do make extreme poverty history.

    You know that on current trajectories, achieving the Global Goals – which we talk about and show our commitment to in the pin badges we wear – is simply out of reach.

    We’ve known for some time we are failing.

    The facts speak for themselves – and the many we are letting down.

    If we want those facts to change we have to change what we do.

    To deliver on the promises we’ve made to the world’s poorest, business as usual isn’t going to cut it.

    And to understand how we need to change we need to understand why the world, and we as a sector, are falling short.

    Let us reflect for a moment on the issue currently dominating the headlines: sexual exploitation of the vulnerable, known by some, ignored by others.

    How did we get to this?

    How did those, there to protect, support and serve the most vulnerable people on earth, become complicit in their exploitation – by protecting the perpetrators, by failing to grip the problem or turning a blind eye?

    Because we failed to put the beneficiaries of aid first.

    How did we lose sight of that fundamental duty, for all the good people, many in this room today, and all the good works done? For be in no doubt that is what has happened.

    It may have started with an attitude born of fundraising pressures, fierce competition for bids or work, guarding an organisation’s reputation to maximise its reach and offer.

    That attitude found a justification, via the chaotic and complex situations we operate in, the belief that reporting wrongdoing would do more harm than good, that we’ve so many other things to worry about, or that peacekeeping troops are doing far worse.

    And then any nagging doubts that lingered, as predatory individuals moved to another organisation’s payroll, were banished, in order to avoid any criticism of the sector.

    Maybe that’s how it happened. Maybe.

    However it did, the result was the grotesque fact of aid workers sexually exploiting the most vulnerable people, and threatening whistle-blowers if they protested.

    In our respective walks of life – in aid and in politics – we have difficult choices to make, some of life and death: Who to help. Who to save. Who to rescue. How to do the most good. How to do the least harm.

    But on some issues there is no choice.

    You cannot help and support people, you cannot give them hope and a chance, you cannot promote human rights or the dignity of every human being – whilst paying them for sex, and whilst funding an industry that exploits them.

    So why do we find ourselves here?

    We find ourselves here for the same reasons we find ourselves so far from delivering the Global Goals.

    Because we’ve forgotten three things: The needs of those we are here to serve. The expectations of those who enable us to – the British people. And the values that make us who we are.

    To recover we must put the beneficiaries of aid first.

    We must live up to the values of our nation.

    And as a sector, as well as a “to do list” we also need to have a “to be list”.

    We cannot separate the aid this nation gives from the values this nation has. So, how will those principles and values help us deliver the goals?

    First, they will improve our performance.

    I’ve seen great things from organisations when they put aside concerns about information and knowledge sharing, Intellectual Property ownership – stop competing and start collaborating.

    In Somalia, by putting beneficiaries first, sharing data and working together, aid organisations have staved off famine.

    In Kenya, I’ve seen technological innovation IP shared to utterly transform options for communities to become more resilient.

    And I’ve seen so many nations, frustrated at a humanitarian system which if it worked better would give us a billion more to spend on helping people, start to come together to speed up the pace of reform.

    Second, it will enable others to help.

    I’ve seen entrepreneurs forfeiting profit and their own security to bring water, healthcare and childcare to their workforce.

    Major companies wanting to make this their mission.

    Small community organisations and businesses connecting with and supporting those in the developing world.

    And I’ve seen the courage and commitment of our armed forces opening up the space for us to operate in.

    We need the humility to recognise what others can bring will multiply our efforts. And we need to let many others help.

    Third, it is a necessary condition of the British public’s support – and their support is a necessary condition of our work.

    I’ve seen the poorest in our own nation giving generously to others less fortunate than themselves, time after time – whether it’s in DEC appeals, or in Oxfam’s shops.

    They’ve seen Ebola defeated, girls educated, hurricane victims rescued, polio near eradicated, and hope and help brought to Syria’s hell on earth, by individuals risking everything, everything, for the love of humanity.

    They continue to give, but I can tell you on many fronts they want us to raise our game: on what you do, on what I fund, and what together we can achieve.

    And finally, we must live our values because what you do, what Britain’s aid sector does, is more than satisfy the practical needs of life.

    In addition to food, water and shelter we bring the rule of law, security, justice.

    We bring protection for refugees and human rights.

    We bring freedom – of thought, of religion, of scrutiny, of the press.

    We bring empowerment – of women, of people with disabilities, of children.

    Without us bringing our values to work, we will fail in that work.

    So, let this moment not just be a wake-up call to improve safeguarding.

    Let it also be a wake-up call to all that we must be, if we are to deliver on our promise to the world’s poor.

    I will shortly bring forward a new development offer focussed on delivering the Global Goals.

    It will require others to help.

    It will require us to change where we work and who we work with, and greater cooperation between DFID and our armed forces.

    It will depend on the private sector.

    It will require more sharing of data and working together.

    It will compel us to leave no one behind.

    It will make UK aid work harder – delivering for the world’s poor, but also for the UK’s security and prosperity, upon which UK aid depends.

    It will require me to stop funding organisation that do not deliver our objectives, contribute to the Goals, or live up to our standards.

    It will have our national values and freedom at its heart.

    It will require leadership and courage to deliver.

    And it will put our beneficiaries first.

    They are the 10 million more children who will see their 5th birthday. The 81 million who will have enough food to develop normally. And the 400 million more able to read and write. If we do deliver the Global Goals by 2030.

    In my first week in this job I told you that I believe in aid.

    And I’ve not changed my mind.

    And I believe in you, in why you chose this career, in why you are here today.

    The organisations in this room do great work. I know that. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

    All the vital work that Bond members, organisations of all sizes, from small to large, do each and every day. Passionate, committed, tireless individuals doing amazing work, in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

    I believe in British compassion and charity. From the Magna Carta to universal suffrage, from William Wilberforce to Peter Benenson to Leonard Cheshire – as a nation we can and we have made the world a better place.

    Since the Oxfam scandal broke, you and UK aid have helped vaccinate around 1.5 million children from polio.

    That’s heroic.

    But if we have the courage and the will to change we can do more.

    And we must.

    We know what to do.

    We know what to be.

    So let’s get to it.

    Thank you.

  • David Lidington – 2018 Speech on Brexit

    Below is the text of the speech made by David Lidington, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, in 26 February 2018.

    It is a pleasure to be with you all this afternoon in Broughton and I want to thank Airbus for their hospitality today.

    This company is a great success story for Wales, for the United Kingdom and for Europe: the biggest private sector employer here in Broughton, but with two-fifths of its workers commuting each day from homes in England and part of a European enterprise now operating in five continents and employing people from 130 different nationalities. Airbus is a vivid example from the business world of how diversity in unity can make for global success.

    Those same characteristics have defined the success of the United Kingdom.

    The different nations that make up our country have had a long, often uneasy history. The castles just a few miles down the road from here at Chirk, Holt and Caergwle remind us of ancient quarrels.

    But the shared experience and solidarity of our four nations at times of great success and grave danger alike have come to represent one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of freedom, liberty and democracy anywhere in the world and the proudest citizen of Aberdeen, Plymouth, Coleraine or Broughton can take huge pride in also being part of the United Kingdom – a union greater than the sum of its parts.

    And now, as we prepare to leave the European Union, preserving and strengthening that union of the United Kingdom matters more than ever.

    As we negotiate a new deep and special partnership with our friends and neighbours in Europe and forge a new role for the United Kingdom in the world, we must work for a future that fosters wealth-creation, opportunity and innovation in every part of the United Kingdom, and which strengthens the sense of security, belonging and solidarity in all communities, building a country that really does work for everyone.

    And we as a country are at a crossroads in our history.

    We face a choice: a choice that represents the difference between a prosperous, secure nation that is united at home and stronger abroad, and a poorer country that is divided at home and a weaker player on the global stage.

    Now let me be clear at the outset: this choice is not about whether we leave the European Union.

    As many of you here will know, I voted and campaigned hard to remain in the EU – as did many people in this country.

    But I recognise as indeed do our 27 partners that people in the UK took a democratic decision to leave the EU – and that is what we must now focus our energies on delivering, seeking to minimise the risks and to seize the opportunities.

    So the choice is therefore not whether we leave, but how we choose to do so.

    We could leave as a nation divided; a country split; an economy disjointed – struggling to forge a unified consensus on the way ahead.

    But there are opportunities too – opportunities we can seize if we come together, unite, and develop into that stronger, global Britain which we can be.

    There were many different reasons why people voted to leave the European Union in 2016.

    But reflecting on that campaign, I think that above all else, people throughout this country sought to regain a feeling of control, not just control over our laws, but over our lives too, and the people we elect into office.

    And when you talk to people on the doorstep, it’s clear that that vote expressed not just a rejection of membership of the European Union, but a demand to bring decision making and accountability closer to home, to restore a sense of belonging in communities, a feeling of connection between the elector and the elected.

    So yes, we have to ensure, as we are determined to do, that Brexit means more powers going to the devolved governments and not fewer.

    But I believe too that to renew that sense of connection between citizen and government, we need to press on too with our broader mission to devolve greater freedom, more power to act to cities, towns and counties in all parts of the United Kingdom. And I hope that the devolved governments will choose to take that approach too. After all, for someone in Broughton or Llandudno or Welshpool, Cardiff can seem as distant as London; from the perspective of Orkney, priorities may look very different from those of Central Scotland.

    Our aim should be nothing less than to see our entire country coming together and having their voices heard. It means people here in Wales, as well as in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England – and it means our villages, towns cities and communities throughout the United Kingdom all having a voice too.

    Our commitment to devolution

    At the heart of the Conservative political tradition is both patriotism, loyalty to the special, shared union of the United Kingdom, but also a commitment not just to individual rights but to the vital importance of family and community, of village, town and county in enabling individual men and women to find meaning, value and fulfilment in their lives.

    As Edmund Burke put it more than 200 years ago:

    To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link by which we proceed to love of our country and of mankind”.

    I suspect that most of us here derive our sense of who we are from many different sources – from our family, from where we live, perhaps from a sports club, choral society or community group that we support, in many cases from our religious faith, and of course from our nation.

    And in the United Kingdom we know that there is no contradiction between being an ardent Welsh or Scottish patriot and being a committed supporter of the Union. If I needed any reminder of that truth, it was when the Secretary of State for Scotland was gloating to me about the rugby result on Saturday.

    Looking back to the last century, I think – being honest – that my party was too slow to recognise that the increasing calls for devolution and decentralisation represented a genuine shift in public mood.

    But I think if you look at our record in government in the last eight years demonstrates that we have got the message.

    The two Scotland Acts, in 2012 and 2016, have made Holyrood one of the most powerful parliaments of its kind in the world.

    City deals in Scotland – backed by more than £1 billion of UK Government spending – have now either been agreed or committed to for all of Scotland’s seven cities.

    The Wales Act is delivering a stronger, fairer, more accountable devolution settlement for Wales.

    City deals for Cardiff and Swansea and the future North Wales Growth Deal are supporting the industries and jobs of tomorrow.

    The passage of English Votes for English Laws at Westminster means that MPs representing English voters rightly have the final say on issues which matter directly to them and their constituents.

    We have created new combined authorities with elected mayors across England – putting power firmly in the hands of local people in the West Midlands, the West of England, Tees Valley, Cambridgeshire, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield.

    And this government will continue to strive to restore devolution in Northern Ireland, and will remain fully committed to the Belfast Agreement. We will continue to govern in the interests of all parts of the community in Northern Ireland, and to uphold the totality of relationships embodied in that agreement, both East-West and North-South. And we shall stand by the commitments in the Joint Report between the UK and the European Union that was agreed in December last year.

    But while we can take pride in that record of decentralising power, we can and should go further to drive forward both the economic and the political regeneration of our country.

    So we are working with local authorities to help them co-ordinate their own economic plans with our UK-wide national industrial strategy – bringing together local businesses and leaders to deliver growth, enterprise and job creation in every part of our country.

    We are supporting combined authorities located around our English cities to adopt elected mayors, should they wish to do so.

    We will bring forward a Borderlands Growth Deal – including all councils on both the Scottish and English sides of the border – to help secure prosperity in southern Scotland.

    We will build on the future North Wales Growth Deal by also fostering opportunities between Welsh cities and the rest of the UK, for example by linking economic development opportunities in Cardiff, Newport and Bristol.

    And we have committed to looking at a city deal for Belfast.

    Our commitment to the union

    Now at the same time, we are unapologetically committed to the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom.

    So, alongside those initiatives to bring more powers closer to the people, we are working to ensure that the institutions and the power of the United Kingdom are used in a way that benefits people in every part of our country.

    For a country that not only has a shared past, but continues today to draw strengths from all parts of the union.

    There are more than 31,000 UK civil servants are based here in Wales, including in our new UK Government Hub in Cardiff.

    Eight out of ten goods lorries leaving Wales go to the rest of the UK, highlighting the importance of our United Kingdom wide market.

    Bombardier’s factory in Belfast has a supply chain of 800 companies throughout the UK and Ireland, supporting thousands of high-skilled jobs.

    It is from the Department for International Development’s joint headquarters in East Kilbride, Scotland that the ‘United Kingdom’s international work to vaccinate children against killer diseases, to educate girls and to provide clean water and sanitation to people who desperately need it is being driven.

    And of course our base on the Clyde, home to thousands of shipbuilding jobs, is central to the UK’s defence capabilities.

    Put simply: we are all more prosperous and more secure when we all work together for our common good as one United Kingdom.

    Now leaving the EU presents many challenges for our centuries-old union story – and opportunities too.

    And some want to use it as an excuse to loosen these ties that bind us together – even sever them completely. Such an outcome would leave every one of our four nations both weaker and poorer.

    Why we need frameworks

    The task before us isn’t an easy one, it is complex.

    How do we allow greater control across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland over the things that affect them separately – while preserving the things that affect us all collectively as we return powers from Brussels to the United Kingdom.

    How do we ensure that a new wave of devolution delivers for the people of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland – but at the same time protects the essence of our union?

    For a start, we have all – the UK government and the devolved governments together – agreed that we will need to have frameworks that break down which powers should sit where once they have returned from Brussels.

    And that is a sensible and constructive approach – because these powers are not all the same.

    Some are very obviously for the devolved governments and parliaments to exercise, and don’t need any involvement on a UK-wide basis.

    For example, the devolved governments are best placed to manage the safety and quality of the water they drink, as well as looking after and caring for their natural environment.

    At the same time, there are other powers that are yes for the devolved governments to shape according to their own needs or ambitions and where they don’t need legislation to underpin how what they do relates to the other nations of the UK, but where it would still be in everybody’s interests to agree a looser form of cooperation – such as Memoranda of Understanding – between the devolved and UK governments.

    For instance, we will need to continue to work together on important domestic policy areas, for example by ensuring that a vital organ donated by someone in one part of the UK can be used to treat a patient in another part of the United Kingdom.

    Now those powers should rightly be devolved, not centralised – and that is the offer we have put forward on the table.

    But on the other hand, some powers are clearly related to the UK as a whole and will need to continue to apply in the same way across all four nations in order to protect consumers and businesses who buy and sell across the UK, in all parts of what we might call the United Kingdom’s common market. That market is one of the fundamental expressions of the constitutional integrity that underpins our existence as a union.

    The Government will protect that vital common market of the UK. And by retaining UK frameworks where necessary we will retain our ability not only to act in the national interest when we need to, but to do so with a unity of purpose that places the prosperity and security of all of our citizens, no matter where they’re from or where they were born, to the fore.

    For example, at present EU law means that our farmers and other food producers only need to comply with one set of package labelling and hygiene rules.

    Four different sets of rules in different parts of the UK would only make it more difficult and more expensive for a cheesemaker in Monmouthshire to sell to customers in Bristol or for a cattle farmer in Aberdeenshire to sell their beef in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

    Now these are everyday issues affecting how people live their life – they are issues that people in the UK expect us to get on and agree in the clear interests of families and businesses in every part of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland alike.

    So that is exactly what the UK government stands ready, waiting and willing to do.

    They are the steps that will ensure the United Kingdom’s market continues to work as it always has done:

    to ensure that the factory in Paisley can continue to sell freely to Preston;

    that the family firm in Swansea can continue to buy supplies from Swindon;

    and customers in Londonderry can still place their order in Leeds, without any extra red tape or expense.

    And I want to say one thing further. The Prime Minister has been clear throughout the negotiations with the European Union that we want to preserve the standards that protect employment and workers rights, to deliver consumer protection, and safeguard the environment.

    And that means keeping these high standards across the whole of the United Kingdom, and for our part as the United Kingdom government, we are committed to working in partnership with the devolved governments to ensure those standards are universal in all four parts of our country.

    Clause Eleven

    Now, it is fair to say that the road to agreeing how we go forward together has not always been a smooth and straight one.

    I, along with my predecessors in the Cabinet Office and the Secretaries of State for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, have engaged closely with the devolved governments in order to understand their concerns and to respond to them.

    Those concerns have been expressed clearly – and often forthrightly – throughout those conversations!

    But we have continued to talk – both at political and official level – and, even more importantly, we have continued to listen.

    The Prime Minister’s first visit after entering Downing Street was to Edinburgh.

    Two of my first phone calls upon moving across to the Cabinet Office last month were to the Deputy First Minister of Scotland and the First Minister of Wales.

    I met them both in person during my first weeks in this role, in Cardiff and in Edinburgh – to underline my personal commitment to engaging constructively and striking the agreement that is in all our interests.

    While they have always acknowledged that the Government has said we want to see many of the powers from Brussels go straight to the devolved governments, there has been a question throughout about what our starting point should be.

    Should those powers sit at a UK-wide level while we agree the future frameworks?

    Or should they sit at a devolved level while we then agree the future frameworks?

    The Government has listened to the different points of view – from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, from Welsh and Scottish colleagues in both Houses of Parliament at Westminster and to views expressed in the devolved parliaments.

    And just last week, we held constructive discussions in London where we put forward a considerable offer. A commitment that the vast majority of powers returning from Brussels will start off in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – and not in Whitehall.

    And let me be in no doubt: this would mean a very big change to the EU Withdrawal Bill that is before Parliament and a significant step forward in these negotiations.

    It would put on the face of the Bill what we have always said was our intention: wide-ranging devolution not just away from Brussels, but from Westminster too.

    And if accepted, this offer puts beyond doubt our commitment to a smooth and orderly departure from the European Union, in a way that doesn’t just respect the devolution settlements, but strengthens and enhances them.

    So our proposal is to amend the Bill before Parliament to make clear that while frameworks are being agreed, the presumption would now be that powers returning from the EU should sit at a devolved level.

    Westminster would only be involved where, to protect the UK common market or to meet our international obligations, we needed a pause – I stress pause – to give the governments time to design and put in place a UK-wide framework.

    As I have said before, we expect to be able to secure agreement with the devolved governments about what frameworks should – or should not – apply to each power.

    And where powers do need to be returned to a UK-wide framework, we will maintain the ability for the UK Parliament to legislate to do so.

    Just as the current provisions within the EU Withdrawal Bill on releasing powers to devolved governments are intended to be by consensus and agreement with the devolved governments themselves, so we should expect this new, inverted power to operate in the same way – by consensus and by agreement.

    Nor would this proposed arrangement prevent the devolved governments from doing anything that is already within their competence.

    At the same time, our proposal offers an important protection too. It would ensure that, if there were not to be an agreement – and not having an agreement on a framework would put at risk the smooth and orderly exit that we all need – the UK Parliament could protect the essential interests of businesses and consumers in every part of the Kingdom.

    A deal is there to be done.

    So I am clear that it is in the interests of all parts of the United Kingdom to agree a way forward that:

    fully respects the devolved settlements.

    preserves the integrity of the United Kingdom market.

    and maintains the UK’s ability to secure an agreement with the European Union on our future partnership.

    Our new proposal is a reflection of the seriousness of our desire to strike agreements with the devolved governments.

    Our seriousness about delivering more powers to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, while at the same time ensuring there are no new barriers for people across the nations of the United Kingdom.

    So families can continue to buy and sell freely, so businesses won’t face extra bureaucracy and higher costs, so people face minimal disruption to their everyday lives, and maximum certainty that things can carry on as normal, as we look ahead to the future.

    So I hope that the talks that are now continuing between the UK and devolved governments will lead in coming weeks to an agreement that can be taken forward in the EU Withdrawal Bill and which we can all welcome as being to our mutual benefit.

    Seizing the opportunities

    And so as we look to the future, this is the balance that, working together, we can strike a strong and fair devolution settlement for our devolved partners, with powers sitting at the most appropriate level and common UK frameworks where necessary, with our constitutional integrity intact.

    By making that kind of agreement, we can truly become that United Kingdom we need to be here at home – and that greater, stronger United Kingdom abroad.

    For that is the task we now face. Building a global Britain that is fit for the future, equipped not only to tackle head on future global challenges, but confidently seize the new opportunities available to us as well and so when we do speak and act on the world stage we do so with one authoritative voice, which reflects and represents the interests of all four nations. A country that has the strength and flexibility needed to survive, and indeed thrive on the international stage.

    And with our considerable existing strengths, I am confident this future can be a secure and prosperous one:

    We are the sixth largest economy in the world, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the biggest European defence spender in NATO, with significant military capabilities and a proven readiness to deploy them in defence of our interests. A key player in a highly developed set of security relationships such as Five Eyes.

    Our country has:

    One of the best diplomatic services in the world and one of it’s biggest aid and development programmes.

    We have world leading universities that attract the best talent from around the globe; more Nobel Laureates than any country bar the United States; a globally competitive economy, with some of the most exciting burgeoning industries such as digital and fintec; a language that is the language of the world, and, thanks to institutions like the BBC and the NHS, the greatest soft power of any nation on the planet.

    But just imagine if we spoke with four conflicting voices: each would be weaker, fainter and misheard as our global competitors shouted louder with a strong, single voice, and a divided country at home would be weaker, less secure, and less prosperous overseas.

    The unity that exists between our four nations gives us a scale of ambition none of the four of us could possess alone.

    We need to use our collective economic clout and the experience and reach of our diplomatic network in the United Kingdom to sell Scotch whisky and engineering expertise, Welsh cheeses and mini-computers, buses and linens from Northern Ireland right around the world.

    And maintaining the common market of the United Kingdom will give us the heft to lead the charge for common regulatory standards at a global level. Having the right framework in place at home means we can be at the forefront of developing the new regulatory environment we need for the exciting technologies of tomorrow.

    And what we want is innovators and producers right across Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland to be able to get ahead of the curve and edge ahead of their global competitors.

    And it’s also by sticking together that we’ll be able to provide global leadership, discharging our international obligations, standing up for human rights, democratic values and the rule of law and defending the rules-based international order that is so vital to our security and our prosperity together.

    Conclusion

    It would be easy to loosen the bonds that connect us.

    But with a strong, fair devolution settlement that ensures powers and decision-making are exerted as close to people as is practical, I believe a sense of trust can be restored between the people of the United Kingdom and those they choose to govern on their behalf.

    And with common frameworks in place that maintain the integrity of our union, we can ensure that we continue to speak with that powerful voice globally.

    Each of those two principles strengthens the other.

    So let us seize the moment and focus on that prize that is on offer:

    a union greater than the sum of its parts; a country that remains a strong, global leader; a United Kingdom at home, and an active, force for good in the world.

    Thank you very much indeed.

  • Jeremy Corbyn – 2018 Speech on Britain After Brexit

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, on 26 February 2018.

    Thank you Rebecca for that introduction and thank you all for being here today.

    It’s great to be speaking here in Coventry, which has long been at the core of Britain’s industrial heartland and is now set to be our next city of culture.

    Next month, the government will embark on the second and most crucial phase of negotiations to leave the European Union to set the terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU for the long-term.

    We are now 20 months on from the referendum that voted to leave and a year on from the triggering of Article 50.

    But the country is still in the dark about what this divided Conservative government actually wants out of Brexit. They can’t agree amongst themselves about what their priorities are or what future they want for Britain after Brexit.

    They’ve got no shortage of soundbites and slogans of course.

    The Foreign Secretary says it will be “a liberal Brexit”, the Prime Minister says it will be a “red white and blue Brexit”, or on other days it’s a “bespoke economic partnership”.

    The Brexit Secretary at least now promises it won’t be “a Mad Max-style dystopia”, which you might think was setting the bar a little bit low.

    While the Trade Secretary can’t contain himself at the prospect of pushing Britain into a spiral of deregulation in rights and standards and the cabinet seems to have agreed at Chequers to leave the door open to that with their “ambitious managed divergence”, whatever that means.

    But the truth is we really don’t know much more about where they’re actually heading in these talks.

    While workers, businesses and everyone who voted in the referendum just want to know what the government’s approach to Brexit is likely to mean for their future and the future of the country.

    As the Opposition, we have been trying to hold this government to account. Our message has been consistent since the vote to leave 20 months ago. We respect the result of the referendum.

    Our priority is to get the best deal for people’s jobs, living standards and the economy. We reject any race to the bottom in workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, consumer protections or food safety standards.

    And we’ve pushed the government to act to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living here and of UK citizens who have made their homes elsewhere in Europe; to ensure a transition period on the existing terms; to minimise disruption and avoid an economic cliff edge; to avoid any return to a hard border in Northern Ireland; and to guarantee Parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal.

    This Conservative government has dithered and delayed. Their divisions, their incompetence and their deregulation obsession risk putting jobs and living standards at risk as we leave the EU.

    This is an economy that has already been damaged by eight years of Conservative austerity, where wages are still lower today than they were a decade ago, where productivity lags dangerously behind the other major economies, where the government has failed to invest and modernise, where more people are living in poverty. And where closing the deficit, that was due to be eradicated by 2015, then 2016, then 2017, then 2020 has now had to be put back to 2025.

    After years of Tory bluster and, the Conservatives have been found out. They have no economic plan and they have no Brexit plan.

    Every so often they wheel out Boris Johnson to promise once more that they’ll cough up more money for the NHS after Brexit. But they’ve spent the last 8 years not giving more money to the NHS.

    Even while they’ve been able to find billions of pounds to cut taxes for the richest corporations, to cut capital gains tax for the super-rich elite and to scrap the 50% rate for the richest too, and found billions more to cut inheritance tax on the wealthiest estates and to slash the bank levy.

    Yet the NHS has been subjected to the longest financial squeeze in its history. This is a government that’s failed our NHS, pre-Brexit and during Brexit. And it certainly can’t be trusted with the NHS post-Brexit either.

    Labour will give the NHS the resources it needs, because we will raise tax on the top 5% and big business, those with the broadest shoulders to pay. Not by making up numbers and parading them on the side of a bus.

    And we will use funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services and the jobs of the future, not tax cuts for the richest.

    Today, I want to set out Labour’s approach to Brexit in more detail. How we would do things differently, what our priorities are for the Brexit negotiations and the values that underpin them.

    The first is our overriding mission: that whatever is negotiated must put people’s jobs and living standards first. The Brexit process must not leave our people and country worse off.

    We are committed to building a more prosperous and a more equal Britain, in which every region benefits and no community is left behind, as we set out in our manifesto. And that is what underpins our approach to Brexit.

    The second is unity. Most people in our country, regardless of whether they voted leave of remain want better jobs, more investment, stronger rights and greater equality.

    So we will not let those who want to sow divisions drive this process. No scapegoating of migrants, no setting one generation against another and no playing off the nations of the UK.

    No one should be willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for 20 years of relative peace, development and respect for diversity in Northern Ireland.

    The third is our global perspective. We are leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. We are not throwing up protectionist barriers, closing the borders and barricading ourselves in. And we want a close and cooperative relationship with the whole of Europe after Brexit.

    We are internationalists. We know that our interests are bound up with millions of others across the world, whether that’s in order to tackle the huge challenge of climate change, build a more peaceful world or clamp down on the tax dodging elite, who think by bestriding the globe they can avoid paying their share for vital public services.

    I want to address each of these principles today because together they define Labour’s approach to Brexit the Labour Party’s values and what the next Labour government will seek to deliver in office.

    So many of the areas that voted to Leave are the same areas that have lost out from years of chronic under-investment.

    Areas where too many people are held back by a lack of opportunities, where people feel the system is rigged against them because they can’t get a decent secure job, can’t afford to buy a home, can’t get more hours or higher pay, can’t afford to retire or aren’t able to escape the spiral of debt.

    Labour’s priority is to get the best Brexit deal for jobs and living standards to underpin our plans to upgrade the economy and invest in every community and region. To shift it away from the low pay, low skill, low investment economy it has become. And rebalance that investment across the whole country so that no longer will some regions get a mere one-sixth of the investment that goes to London.

    That is why Labour wants a Brexit for all our people. One that offers security to workers in the car industry worried about their future, hope to families struggling to pay the bills each month and opportunity to young people wanting a decent job and a home of their own.

    Those are the people we are thinking of and working for. It is a different story around the away day table at Chequers.

    The government seems much more concerned about cutting deals with each other and for their friends and funders in the City.

    Labour is looking for a Brexit that puts the working people first. Leaving the EU, whenever that exit date comes, risks delivering a shock to the UK economy unless the right plans and protections are in place to allow the kind of investment and economic transformation programme that the country needs and that Labour is committed to.

    For 45 years our economy has become increasingly linked into the European Union. Many of our laws and regulations are set and monitored by joint European authorities, from implementing rules on use of pesticides to assessing the levels of fluoride in our drinking water.

    The European Food Safety Authority plays a vital role in monitoring the substances used in manufacturing or growing our food using the latest scientific evidence to assess whether substances are likely to have harmful effects on human or animal health. While the European Chemicals Agency carries out the vital task of evaluating and authorising chemicals as safe for use.

    And many businesses have supply chains and production processes, interwoven throughout Europe. Take the UK car industry, which supports 169,000 manufacturing jobs, 52,000 of which are here in the West Midlands.

    If we look at the example of one of Britain’s most iconic brands in this sector, the Mini, we begin to see how reliant our automotive industry is on a frictionless, interwoven supply chain.

    A mini will cross the Channel three times in a 2,000-mile journey before the finished car rolls off the production line. Starting in Oxford it will be shipped to France to be fitted for key components before being brought back to BMW’s Hams Hall plant in Warwickshire where it is drilled and milled into shape.

    Once this process is complete the mini will be sent to Munich to be fitted with its engine, before ending its journey back at the mini plant in Oxford for final assembly.

    If that car is to be sold on the continent then many of its components will have crossed the Channel four times.

    The sheer complexity of these issues demand that we are practical and serious about this next stage.

    I want to pay tribute to Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Barry Gardiner and Emily Thornberry, who are grappling with these issues.

    They are a serious and united team. Now you know I don’t do personal but let me simply say this: that is in some contrast to their opposite numbers.

    It makes no sense for the UK to abandon EU agencies and tariff-free trading rules that have served us well, supporting our industrial sectors, protecting workers and consumers and safeguarding the environment.

    If that means negotiating to support individual EU agencies, rather than paying more to duplicate those agencies here then that should be an option, not something ruled out because of phoney jingoistic posturing.

    So we will want to remain a part of agencies like Euratom, regulating nuclear materials in energy and health sectors and programmes like Erasmus that give students opportunities to study across Europe, because they serve our interests.

    We are leaving the European Union but we will still be working with European partners in the economic interests of this country.

    When 44% of our exports are to EU countries and 50% of our imports come from the EU, then it is in both our interests for that trade to remain tariff-free.

    It would damage businesses that export to Europe and the jobs that depend on those exports for there to be the additional costs of tariffs and it would damage consumers here, already failed by stagnant wages and rising housing costs.

    So we will remain close to the European Union, that’s obvious.

    Every country, whether it’s Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway that is geographically close to the EU, without being an EU member state has some sort of close relationship to the EU. Some more advantageous than others.

    And Britain will need a bespoke, negotiated relationship of its own.

    During the transition period, Labour would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market. That means we would abide by the existing rules of both.

    That is so the government, businesses and workers only have to make one adjustment, from the current situation to the final terms.

    Labour spelled out the need for a stable transition period last summer. Both the TUC and CBI agree. We thought the government had accepted that case but they now seem to be in disarray on the issue again.

    Time after time with this government, anything agreed at breakfast is being briefed against by lunch and abandoned by teatime.

    Disarray is, it seems, the new ‘strong and stable’.

    And the government’s muddle and division risk two costly adjustments for both government and businesses from the current terms to the transition terms and then again to the final terms.

    Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union as the Brexit Secretary, David Davis promised in the House of Commons, with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections.

    We have long argued that a customs union is a viable option for the final deal. So Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland.

    But we are also clear that the option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals.

    A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest.

    Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule takers.

    In contrast the Conservative government has moved from saying it wanted trade with the EU after Brexit to be “tariff-free” to saying it wants trade to be “as tariff-free as possible”.

    In which sectors of the economy and industry does the government think it would be acceptable for there to be tariffs? Like with so much else, they haven’t spelled that out.

    But that is the consequence of ruling out the option of a customs union, which this government has done.

    So I appeal to MPs of all parties, prepared to put the people’s interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting the option of a new UK customs union with the EU, that would give us a say in future trade deals.

    Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards.

    Some seem very keen on downgrading our trading links with Europe. But we do not believe that deals with the US or China, would be likely to compensate for a significant loss of trade with our trading neighbours in the EU, and the government’s own leaked assessments show that.

    Both the US and China have weaker standards and regulations that would risk dragging Britain into a race to the bottom on vital protections and rights at work.

    And Labour is implacably opposed to our NHS or other public services being part of any trade deal with Trump’s America or a revived TTIP-style deal with the EU, which would open the door to a flood of further privatisations.

    And we are not prepared to ask the British public to eat chlorinated chicken and lower the standards of British farming.

    We would ensure there will be no reduction in rights, standards or protections and instead seek to extend them.

    A deregulatory race-to-the-bottom would damage people’s jobs and living standards.

    And Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections.

    That new relationship would need to ensure we can deliver our ambitious economic programme, take the essential steps to intervene, upgrade and transform our economy and build an economy for the 21st century that works for the many, not the few.

    Labour has set out how we would create a National Investment Bank to drive investment in every community through a network of regional development banks so that every area has an industrial strategy, based on investment in a high skill, high wage and high productivity economy

    And through our £500 billion National Transformation Fund we would invest in a decade-long programme of renewal so that Britain has the infrastructure that matches, if not exceeds, that of other major economies.

    In our transport networks, our energy markets and our digital infrastructure, too often Britain lags behind.

    So we would also seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions where necessary in relation to privatisation and public service competition directives state aid and procurement rules and the posted workers directive.

    We cannot be held back inside or outside the EU from taking the steps we need to support cutting edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing or from preventing employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions.

    It was alarming that after the Brexit vote there was a clear rise in xenophobic and racist attacks on our streets.

    The referendum campaign was divisive and some politicians on the Leave side whipped up fears and division in order to further their cause that built on the shameful vans telling immigrants to ‘Go Home’ that the then Home Secretary instructed to trundle round the country stirring up division.

    I remember just after the referendum result receiving a text from a young person in my constituency who had been subjected to abuse in the street for the first time and who was afraid.

    Our immigration system will change and freedom of movement will as a statement of fact end when we leave the European Union.

    But we have also said that in trade negotiations our priorities are growth, jobs and people’s living standards. We make no apologies for putting those aims before bogus immigration targets.

    Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration.

    We would not do what this government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards.

    As Diane Abbott, our Shadow Home Secretary, set out last week, “We do not begin with, ‘how do we reduce immigration?’, and to hell with the consequences. Those are Tory policies and Tory values”.

    Part of the reason why net migration has been relatively high in recent years is because of skills shortages in the UK labour market.

    At the general election, Labour set out plans to invest in a National Education Service with free college and university training to tackle those shortages.

    People do feel frustrated when they are denied opportunities to re-train or improve their skills and employers instead import skilled labour from abroad.

    We will also restore free ESOL courses so that people who come here whether as migrants or refugees can learn English and fully participate in their communities and workplaces.

    We also set out how we would tighten labour market regulations and strengthen trade union rights to tackle the insecurity and exploitation of all workers.

    When migrant workers come to Britain, they must not be exploited or used to undercut or suppress better working conditions or higher pay. Those issues can only be tackled by stronger employment law.

    To stop employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions, collective agreements and sectoral bargaining must become the norm. Labour stands for ‘the rate for the job’, not ‘a race to the bottom’.

    But let’s also be crystal clear it is not migrants that drive down wages, it is bad employers that cut pay and bad governments that allow workers to be divided and undermined, and want unions to be weak and passive.

    We will strengthen our employment law invest in the skills of workers in Britain so they can progress, and we will oppose all those who instead of seeking to solve problems seek to scapegoat instead.

    The devolution of the last Labour government completed the peace process in Northern Ireland, which we must cherish. The Good Friday Agreement was a great achievement and I pay tribute to the work done by Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam and all sides in Northern Ireland to secure that Agreement.

    We must continue to support the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to ensure we maintain the situation of no hard border in Northern Ireland.

    The previous Labour government also brought powers closer to home in Scotland and Wales establishing the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

    And so, Labour believes that powers over devolved policy areas currently exercised by the EU should go directly to the relevant devolved body after Brexit, so that power is closer to the people.

    That is the same principle that informs the regional development banks that the next Labour government will deliver.

    The constitution of the Labour Party includes a commitment to support the United Nations.

    A promise “to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all” Some want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself, seeing everyone as a feared competitor.

    Others want to use Brexit to put rocket boosters under our current economic system’s insecurities and inequalities, turning Britain into a deregulated corporate tax haven with low wages, limited rights, and cut-price public services in what would be a destructive race to the bottom.

    Labour stands for a completely different future drawing on the best internationalist traditions of the labour movement and our country.

    We want to see close and cooperative relationships with our European neighbours, outside the EU based on our values of internationalism, solidarity and equality, as well as mutual benefit and fair trade.

    We are proud that Britain was an original signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1948 and in 1998 Labour’s Human Rights Act enshrined it in our law.

    So Labour will continue to work with other European allies including through the Council of Europe to ensure our country and others uphold our international obligations.

    We must work with other countries to advance the cause of human rights to confront the four greatest and interconnected threats facing our common humanity:

    First, the growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite.

    We must challenge that working with our European neighbours to stop those who would play one country off against another or those who hide their wealth offshore to avoid paying their dues.

    Second, climate change which is creating instability and fuelling conflict across the world and threatening all our futures.

    No matter how much we enforce them pollution stubbornly refuses to respect our borders.

    We can only tackle climate change, pollution and environmental degradation by working together and many of our closest allies in that struggle are in Europe.

    The Green Alliance estimates that trade in low carbons good and services contributed over £42 billion to the economy in 2015.

    The UK low carbon and renewable energy sector was expected to increase fivefold by 2030 potentially bringing 2 million jobs and contributing more than 8% of the UK’s total output.

    But that needs us to maintain our standards to ensure barrier-free trade of low carbon goods.

    These include eco-design and energy labelling standards, greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles, the internal energy market, construction product standards, chemicals regulation and nuclear safety and safeguards.

    So the importance of getting our Brexit settlement right is vital in this area both in terms of Britain’s industrial role in reducing climate change and in terms of protecting jobs and industry.

    Third, the unprecedented numbers of people fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights abuses, social breakdown and climate disasters.

    The global refugee crisis and there are 65 million refugees across the world that crisis is a challenge, much of which is on the borders of Europe and that challenge can be met by co-ordinating with our European neighbours, both to crack down on the people smugglers who put men, women and children to sea in unseaworthy vessels.

    And as Operation Sophia tried to rescue those from the seas around Europe as too many desperate people are drowning in pursuit of sanctuary. These are people who are simply seeking refuge from cruelty and suffering they want to make a contribution and, but for accident of birth, it could be any of us.

    I pay tribute too to the role of the Royal Navy for their contribution in the Mediterranean.

    And finally, I want to briefly address the use of unilateral military action and intervention rather than diplomacy and negotiation to resolve disputes and change governments.

    Let us learn the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and be clear that we will not take our country down the road of regime change wars again.

    The real answer is genuine international cooperation, which confronts the root causes of conflict, persecution and inequality, and we will continue to play a role in partnership with the EU in that effort.

    We live in a globalised world, the lives we lead are dependent on the work of others and our trade with those from around the world.

    Many of us have friends and family that are from or who live in other parts of the world.

    In contrast to the Prime Minister who said, “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.

    We believe in fact that we can only fully achieve what we want to as citizens of Britain by also recognising we are “citizens of the world”.

    I have long opposed the embedding of free market orthodoxy and the democratic deficit in the European Union, and that is why I campaigned to ‘remain and reform’ in the referendum campaign.

    Scepticism is healthy especially when dealing with politicians or the received wisdom of the political and media establishment, but often the term “Eurosceptic” in reality became synonymous with “anti-European”.

    And I am not anti-European at all, I want to see close and progressive cooperation with the whole of Europe after Brexit.

    Labour is the Party of the new common sense on the economy, on public services and on Brexit.

    The only party which recognises the world has changed these last ten years and know we cannot continue with widening inequality deregulation of industry and privatisation of public services.

    We are in a country where Tory-run councils are collapsing because of cuts. Where homeless people are dying on the streets in the shadow of the Parliament. Where good jobs are being lost, because we have a government that will not get a grip on the casino economy.

    In or out of the European Union, we have to deal with that reality, the reality of market failure and austerity.

    The free market has not worked in the banking sector. It has not worked in the water industry. It has not worked in the energy utilities. It has crashed in out-sourcing and it has failed our fragmented railways. And it has led to a labour market where abuse is rife.

    The European Union is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems.

    Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom for our country.

    There will be some who will tell you that Brexit is a disaster for this country and some who will tell you that Brexit will create a land of milk and honey.

    The truth is more down to earth and it’s in our hands.

    Brexit is what we make of it together, the priorities and choices we make in the negotiations.

    This Conservative government is damaging our country and their priorities for Brexit risk increasing the damage.

    But I also know, what a Labour government could do for this country and that our priorities for Brexit negotiations are the right ones, to create a country that works for the many not the few.

    Thank you.

  • Edward Timpson – 2014 Speech at BASW Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the then Children’s Minister, at the BASW Conference on 10 June 2014.

    Thanks, Bridget [Bridget Robb, BASW Chief Executive], it’s a pleasure to be here.

    Many of those speaking here today will, quite rightly, pay tribute to what an incredible, inspiring, life-changing job all of you do – and I can only add my own gratitude and admiration.

    But social work has a personal resonance for me that goes beyond politics, beyond my role as a minister.

    Having grown up with around 90 foster children – 2 of whom we adopted – and worked as a family lawyer in the care system for 10 years, I’ve seen up close and personal the pressures that social workers are under – and also the wonders they can work in the most desperate circumstances. It’s something I always remind myself of when I see social workers being pilloried.

    I remember, as a young child, social workers coming to our home so regularly that on occasion I naively thought they were family friends. But what I also saw were social workers (as I now know them to be) coming round irrespective of the time day or night, to settle in a new foster child fulfil a long-distance contact arrangement or deal with another emergency on their watch.

    And I’ll never forget the look of sheer relief on the face of a social worker who arrived at our house to drop off 9-month-old triplets having ended a desperate search for a suitable placement. An example of never knowing what the life of a social worker and a foster family can throw at you.

    And later, in my work in the family courts, there were many times I sat alongside social workers making difficult and momentous decisions that would change lives and having to justify them both in and out of court. Often cooped up in a stuffy conference room for most of the day, planning, negotiating, resolving conflict, seeking legal advice, seeking out a sandwich, all whilst trying to juggle the other cases outside of court they were responsible for. A tough environment and a tough job.

    So I understand better than most what you’re up against and the hard work and dedication it takes to deliver for our most vulnerable children. Now I’m not in the business of ignorantly criticising the social work profession. Yes, I think it needs improvement. Yes, I think we can do better. And yes, I think the structures you work in are often outdated and don’t support you as they should. But I’m not negative about the profession as a whole.

    Because, as the Prime Minister has also acknowledged, you carry out some of the most important work in our society – work that’s on a par with other front-line professionals – doctors, nurses, police and firefighters – who save lives.

    But, as we know, too often you only get public recognition for the bad things – when things go wrong. I’m keen to work with you to break this cycle, to build public confidence in the profession so you can get on with doing what you came into social work to do: your best for our most vulnerable families.

    It’s why we’ve supported Frontline and Step Up, programmes which both, in their way, are changing the image of social work; making it an aspirational profession rather than one which has too often been viewed by the public as a last-choice career. So it’s hugely encouraging that Frontline received 2700 applications for its first 100 posts, all of them from top graduates. That shows that we can change the image of the profession.

    But it isn’t just about image, as you all know well. I also want to change the way social work operates. It’s right to say that we’ve made some progress already in reducing red tape and freeing you from unduly restrictive assessment timescales. But as social workers I’ve met on recent visits have told me, there’s no point us telling you we’ve removed a timescale if you’re spending your life filling in forms.

    And there’s no point claiming that our new graduates to the profession are going to change the way we do things, if they end up operating in the same old unchanged structures of the past – undersupervised, overwhelmed by the responsibility of individual case-holding, exhausted within a few years and looking for a way out.

    The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Work’s Inquiry into the State of Social Work, published by BASW last December, rightly picks up some of these themes too.

    And that’s why our innovation programme is so important. It’s our attempt to free you from traditional structures which I believe have held the social work profession back.

    We want to trust you to innovate and raise standards – as we do other professionals in health and in education – and not just when things are going wrong, but when they’re going right.

    This isn’t about privatisation, as I’ve read a couple of times. If we wanted to privatise failing local authority children’s social care departments, we already can. The legislation already exists. But the fact is that we’ve never done it.

    The innovation programme isn’t about failure. It’s about improving the adequate and the good – making them better, good, even great. It’s about letting you show us what you can do to raise standards if we liberate you from the same old structures that social work has operated in for so long. I want to see new partnerships with the third sector, with the private sector too if they can find a role to play – but driven by you, social workers and councils. This isn’t something that’s going to be imposed from the top. It’s the front line that needs to be in the driving seat, helping design services that are unashamedly geared towards the interests of children.

    Look at Kingston and Richmond – an entirely new community interest company set up outside the local authorities to deliver social care for children in the two boroughs. This has been set up in the interests of children – and only for their benefit.

    But I’m alive to the debate within the sector – and I know BASW’s own consultation response highlighted several concerns – and we will look carefully at what we can do to take account of concerns raised about profiteering by the private sector, but without limiting too far the freedom I want to give you.

    Because, this freedom we’re trying to offer to social workers to create new, innovative modes of service delivery is an expression of our faith in you.

    Why can’t social workers – like the ground-breaking Evolve YP practice, or local authorities – be trusted with any flexibility, any freedom at all in how they deliver services?

    Family doctors – independent contractors to the NHS – are trusted with it. Academies – free to innovate subject to the same inspection regime as other schools – are trusted with it. But why not social workers? I find it frustrating that this case still needs making, so would welcome, really welcome it if the profession did more to stand up for itself here. And if you do, you have my support.

    Because what we’re doing is freeing you, but yes also challenging you as never before, to do what you do even better. Which is why the proposals have been supported by the LGA, by SOLACE and to a large extent by ADCS – none of them exactly market radicals!

    Anyway, I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more of this debate in weeks to come so I won’t labour it any more today, but I would ask you all to think about it and ask yourselves: why shouldn’t we be trusted with greater flexibility? Why does innovation have to be imposed from the top down and only when local authorities have failed, rather than us being allowed to develop it from the bottom up, to make good services better?

    Isabelle Trowler, our Chief Social Worker, who spoke at the BASW AGM in April, worked from the bottom up in Hackney to transform services there. Reclaiming Social Work has been an effective model and offers an approach which others are considering around the country. We’ve had a number of bids into the innovation programme aiming to do similar things, and I‘m encouraged by that.

    Isabelle’s now leading the work recommended by Sir Martin Narey, working with children and family social workers to identify and define what a children’s social worker needs to know and be able to do. We’ll be consulting on this in July, and I’m sure that BASW will wish to contribute.

    And we’ll be piloting around the country the licence to practise, to see whether that is a better way of testing the high skills levels needed in the toughest areas of child and family social work which are critical to secure safer, better lives for children.

    I’m also pleased to announce today that we’re supporting another cohort of Step Up to Social Work as well. It will begin in January 2016.

    Step up has been a big success – producing 415 new social workers, with another 304 currently undergoing training in 75 local authorities.

    According to an evaluation by Kings College London, an impressive 93% of those who completed the course have got a job in social work. And a whopping 97% of this second cohort of trainees, who come from varied backgrounds, tell us that the combination of intensive hands-on experience, academy study and close supervision left them well prepared to begin work. To quote a Step Up trainee Jessica, a manager with a background in youth work:

    I’ve been raving about Step Up to all my friends and family, I’m really impressed and grateful to be on such a high quality course with such dedicated staff supporting us.

    Jessica had previously been considering a move into social work, but wasn’t sure if she had the relevant skills and how she could cope financially with a more traditional entry route. Step Up has proved to be the perfect fit. We’ve had teachers and Samaritans, nursery nurses and legal executives, even a forensic examiner, joining the course.

    So it’s hardly surprising that, as with Frontline, demand for places is high; with an unprecedented 3,633 applications for a little over 300 places in 2013. We receive over 200 inquiries a week about joining. So for this fourth cohort starting in January 2016, I’d like to encourage councils who haven’t yet participated to join in. We’ll be contacting all the local authorities currently participating – so if you want to join, please contact us.

    Because, aside from the benefits for its trainees, Step Up stands out thanks to the way in which it gives councils the opportunity to take the lead on training social workers and raising standards.

    But it’s worth remembering that when it launched in 2010, Step Up was seen as controversial and ground breaking. A bit of a daring leap.

    And that’s exactly the leap I’m asking you to make when I urge you to contribute to the new children’s social care innovation programme. There’s £30 million available this financial year, and there’ll be more the following year, if the ideas are there to merit it. We want your proposals for how to develop and spread new, more effective ways of supporting vulnerable children. They don’t have to involve delivering services outside of the local authority – in fact we expect very many of the projects we fund will be about transforming things within local authorities.

    We want people from every area – local authorities, social enterprises, companies, not-for-profit bodies – to come forward with their most ambitious, most adventurous ideas.

    We’ll help develop, test and look to expand the most promising schemes; providing whatever tailored support is needed.

    And although we welcome proposals for all areas of care, we’ve decided to focus particularly on two: rethinking support for adolescents in or on the edge of care, and rethinking how children’s social work operates.

    But the innovation programme isn’t just about supporting a bright idea here and there.

    It’s about creating the conditions where innovation can thrive throughout the system. Increasing incentives to excel. Removing blocks that stand in your way. And allowing the best in the field to expand and spread what works.

    This isn’t – as you may have read – about ideology. It’s about what works.

    We do hope that some people will ask how we can “combine the skills of local authorities with the best of the voluntary and commercial sector”.

    These aren’t my words. They’re the words of Alan Wood, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and also Director of Children Services in Hackney.

    Frankly, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

    So, let me stress again, this isn’t about privatisation and nor is it about centralisation. It’s not about the government taking decisions and overriding local decision making.

    It’s not about government letting giant contracts to big companies and losing sight of what – or rather who – really matters: the children.

    But it is about saying to councils that they can decide how best to manage their children’s social care – by removing artificial restrictions. It’s the outcomes you achieve, not the structures you work in, that matter.

    Some of our major children’s charities have welcomed the initiative, though I accept that several are anxious about private sector involvement and are keen for more discussion about the practical implications. And that’s absolutely right that that happens.

    As Javed Khan, Barnardo’s’ new chief executive has said:

    The future has got to be about how you invite an organisation like Barnardo’s to the table of the thinking, the planning, the rethinking and then service commissioning.

    It is organisations like Barnardo’s that are big enough, experienced enough, knowledgeable enough about what the right thing to do is from the frontline that can be part of that right at the start as a strategic partner.

    So my conclusion is simple. I want to do whatever it takes to help you to put children’s needs first. But you have to seize the opportunity here. It won’t be there forever – the money behind the innovation programme is only available for two years although we hope its impact will last a lot longer than that. So we’ll be seeking to spread the best ideas around the country and embed them in practice.

    I’m under no illusions about the pressures you’re under to meet ever-growing demand for your services and I am genuinely grateful for all that you do. I only need to cast my mind back to some of the almost impossible situations social workers involved with my own family had to try and resolve over the last 30 years to appreciate the sacrifices you make in the pursuit of giving every child the protection, care and bright future they deserve.

    But I’m also challenging you to do better, and offering you help and support if you want to step up and take it.

    My hope is that we can work together to do this and give the most vulnerable children in our society what we want for own children – nothing but the best.

    Thank you.

  • Edward Timpson – 2012 Speech on the Catalysation of Childhood

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the then Children’s Minister, on 17 October 2012.

    Thanks for that kind introduction Mark. It’s a pleasure to be here.

    This morning I want to concentrate on some of the big challenges facing parents, politicians and industry leaders in making sure advertising and media doesn’t catalyse children into adults too quickly.

    Some of these challenges are still very new to us. We don’t know what impact they’ll have on children in the years ahead. Others are far more familiar. These are the age-old issues that parents have been fretting over for decades and continue to fret over today.

    So on the one hand we have the march of weird and wonderful – sometimes frankly bizarre – technologies that are transforming the way our children access information and socialise. I read an article in The Telegraph the other day about a puffer jacket that automatically expands to give you a hug when someone likes your Facebook status. I’ve resisted the temptation to buy one…

    On the other hand, we have what might be classified as the ‘bad penny’ challenges. The ones that keep on turning up over the years. Issues over the messages young people are exposed to in the home or in the street. Swearing, violence, sex or inappropriate imagery.

    Neither challenge – whether originating in the 21st century or 20th – is remotely simple to deal with.

    So I’d like to offer my real appreciation to the Advertising Association, and its members, for their thoughtful, positive engagement with Government on the Bailey Review over the last year.

    It is very difficult for those not directly involved – and I have to include myself here – to appreciate fully the very fine judgements involved in regulating advertising and media.

    Arbitrating over matters of public taste and decency is not remotely straightforward: particularly when opinion varies so subtly between the regions, sexes and generations – even between parents. One person’s supreme indifference can easily be another’s grave concern.

    In this context, I must applaud the industry as a whole – including major brands and retailers – for their intelligent approach over the last year in tackling the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

    Thanks to your leadership, we are now making steady progress against most of Reg Bailey’s major recommendations. Better than that, we are making swift progress.

    In the space of a few short months, you have made it simpler for parents to navigate media regulation with the launch of Parent Port. Only a year after its launch, a good proportion of parents already know about it. A great achievement.

    On top of this, the ASA has issued new guidelines on outdoor ads: aimed at reducing children’s exposure to provocative on-street advertising.

    Internet Service Providers are making it easier for parents to police the material their children see online.

    The Advertising Association has been working with Media Smart to develop the excellent new Digital Adwise Parent Pack – which is being previewed today ahead of its public launch later this month – to give parents invaluable guidance on digital advertising.

    And the industry is meeting parents’ expectations better when it comes to pre-watershed TV, with new guidelines issued for TV and radio.

    These achievements deserve considerable fanfare and fireworks. So my thanks again for your positive engagement with government – and my congratulations.

    Over the last year, we have seen that advertising in the UK has some of the most rigorous protections for children in the world. It is exceptionally well regulated. It is responsive. It is effective. It is regarded globally as the gold-standard for all others to follow.

    From a personal perspective, I have no desire at all to rock this particular boat. I am firmly of the belief that heavy handed and unnecessary government regulation of the ad industry is to be avoided.

    But looking ahead, it’s vitally important that advertisers and the wider business community continue to contribute towards, and lead, this debate. I’m very keen on the ‘work together’ approach espoused by today’s conference.

    So it is encouraging to see so many major brands here, alongside advertising agencies and the media. And to see them put pen to paper on improved ways of working.

    The industry’s pledge, led by the Advertising Association, on reducing commercial pressures on children – restricting the recruitment of under-16s as brand ambassadors or peer-to-peer marketers – is a case in point: embraced by global brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Unilever.

    On top of this, it is refreshing to see so many of the UK’s leading high street chains drawing up their code of good practice – through the British Retail Consortium – on appropriate retailing to children, including the design, materials and display of children’s clothes.

  • Edward Timpson – 2011 Speech about Children in Care

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the Conservative MP for Crewe and Nantwich, in the House of Commons on 10 February 2011.

    Mr Speaker, I should like to begin by thanking you for granting this short but none the less invaluable and timely debate on improving outcomes for children in care. With Eileen Munro’s final report on child protection due out in April, the spotlight on looked-after children in this country is rightly intensifying, as we strive to narrow not the gap but the chasm that still exists between the life chances of children in care and others. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on looked-after children and care leavers, I was disappointed not to be able to contribute to the recent excellent Backbench Business Committee debate on disadvantaged children, which was opened with great force by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). I am therefore delighted to have this opportunity to speak up for all those children and young people in care.

    I also declare an interest as a non-practising family law barrister specialising in care cases and, perhaps more importantly, as someone who shared their home for more than 30 years with 90 foster children and two adopted brothers. I have no doubt that that experience not only shaped and hardened my strong sense of social justice but propelled what some would argue was my misplaced desire to come to this place and fight for better outcomes for children in care. Indeed, I had no hesitation in using my maiden speech almost three years ago to do just that.

    I want to pay a warm—and, I stress, in no way sycophantic—tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is replying to the debate today. He has shown a profound interest in and deep knowledge of this subject. In government, he has embarked on the direct, purposeful, common-sense programme of reform that he advocated in opposition. As he has said, the programme is committed to

    “infusing the entire care system with a culture of aspiration, hope and optimism for each young person”.

    I am sure that his recent appearance before the all-party group, when more than 100 passionate young people came to Parliament to make their views known directly—and, on occasion, quite forcefully—to the Minister, did not put him off his stride. Instead, I am sure that the experience provided him with ample proof of the importance of the work that he has undertaken.

    I am sure that much of what I am about to say will sound as though I am teaching the Minister to suck eggs, but I hope to persuade him that, in supporting his efforts, there is even more we can do to help children in care to overcome the odds that are still so heavily stacked against them. Let us look at the facts. Looked-after ​children are four times more likely than others to receive the help of mental health services, nine times more likely to have special needs requiring assessment, support and therapy, seven times more likely to misuse alcohol and drugs, 50 times more likely to end up in prison, 60 times more likely to become homeless, and 66 times more likely to have children of their own who will need public care. As if that were not enough, there are four times fewer children in care getting five good GCSEs including English and maths than their peers.

    The financial and societal cost of those appalling statistics is heavy. According to Demos’s recent report “In Loco Parentis”, published last year, a young person who leaves care at 16 with poor mental health and no recognised qualifications could cost the state more than five times as much as one who leaves care with good mental health and strong relationships and who goes on to university or an apprenticeship and finds a job. The costs to society are, perhaps, immeasurable.

    I recognise that there are a number of counter-arguments to the picture that I have just painted. We must exercise a degree of caution about making direct, unqualified comparisons between children who have been through the care system and those who have not. In too many cases, children who enter the care system are already deeply damaged by their early-life experiences, which even the best possible care might be unable to unravel and overcome by the time they reach adulthood. We must therefore be careful to view such children’s outcomes in that context.

    We must also acknowledge the tremendous amount of fantastic care and support that is benefiting thousands of children in care every day. I have seen it and lived with it myself; I have witnessed at first hand what good parenting and appropriate emotional support can achieve. We should not forget that there are many children whose time in care was an enriching life-changing experience that led to a successful career and a fulfilling personal life. We need to be better and more open about accentuating the positive work that is done and not drag all those who work in the care system down with the structural failures within it.

    In many ways, we do not have a single care system, but more of a fragmented patchwork of care systems where good practice thrives in some parts of the country, despite the design of the system. In other areas, however, as noted in the Select Committee report on looked-after children during the last Parliament:

    “The quality of experience that children have in care seems to be governed by luck to an…unacceptable degree”.

    Let us be clear. As I know the Minister accepts and appreciates, there is no quick fix. This is going to require a cross-party commitment over a generation to build a care system that is proactive, responsive, joined up and brimming with high-quality multidisciplinary support, giving a real and enduring priority to improving outcomes for children both in and on the edge of care.

    As Sean Cameron and Colin Maginn lay down in their paper of March 2007:

    “The challenge for social work is to provide the quality of care and support that is to be found not just in the average family home, but also in the most functional of families.”

    So how do we achieve that end?

    Based on strong body of evidence and research by Demos, the three main factors associated with achieving the most positive experiences of care and the best ​outcomes for looked-after children are: first, early intervention and minimal delay; secondly, stability during care; and, thirdly, supported transitions into independence. This is backed up by Mike Stein of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who similarly identified the priorities for ensuring resilience and well-being for looked-after children in later life as preventing children entering the care system through pre-care intervention, improving their care experience and supporting young people’s transitions from care.

    The fact is that we need a comprehensive response at all stages of childhood, but there is unquestionably in my mind, amid a growing consensus, the need for a strong emphasis on and commitment to early intervention and prevention, which are absolutely key. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—a standard bearer for all things early intervention—said in his latest report, which was commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, that

    “we need to rebalance the current culture of ‘late reaction’ to social problems to help create the essential social and emotional bedrock for all children to reap the social, individual and economic rewards.”

    To that end, I welcome the Government’s financial commitment to that programme through the early-intervention grant, the expansion of family nurse partnerships and the widening of free nursery care for two-year-olds. Like others, I would also want to highlight the superb work done by Home-Start in my Crewe and Nantwich constituency and across the country to help families struggling with the demands of very young children. They deserve proper and longer-term support, so I look forward to the Minister taking the opportunity today to reiterate that to local authorities in no uncertain terms.

    By getting in early before problems become entrenched, Action for Children and the New Economics Foundation have calculated a potential saving to the economy of £486 billion over 20 years—imagine that. Just as relevant would be the transformation of life chances for so many young people. The brutal truth is, however, that even with more targeted and consistent preventive work, there will still be children who need the state to intervene in their lives. For them, stability is the foundation stone.

    Young people who experience stable placements providing good-quality care are far more likely to succeed educationally, to be in work, to settle in and manage their accommodation after leaving care, to feel better about themselves and to achieve satisfactory social integration into adulthood than young people who have experienced further movement and disruption during their time in care. With stability comes the security as well as the time for children to develop those all-important secure attachments, but much of that is undermined by frequent and disruptive moves, which are too often a feature of a child’s experience in care. As one year 8 child in care put it:

    “What was the point in trying to please people, because you would just get moved on again?”

    Children need and want a sense of belonging, of family, to feel reciprocal emotional warmth and to have someone who loves them unconditionally and believes in them.​

    It is true that in recent years there has been a small drop in the number of looked-after children with three or more placements during the year, but there is still a long way to go. We are short of about 10,000 foster carers. Given that foster placements make up about three quarters of all care placements, and given that in 2010 the number of looked-after children stood at 64,400—up 6% on 2009—a relentless recruitment and retention drive for foster carers remains crucial if we are to increase the prospect of providing every child with the right placement, rather than providing the right child for the placement.

    However, foster carers are only part of the stability equation. The recruitment and retention of social workers continues to cause concern, which is the driving force behind the Government’s new “step up to social work” scheme. With a high staff churn rate comes more instability for the child. That is not new. Lord Laming, Moira Gibb and, most recently, Eileen Munro have produced reports in the last few years that pinpoint the tick-box culture that has spread its tentacles across social work and has sapped the morale and professional judgment of social workers. Eileen Munro hit the nail on the head when she said:

    “Compliance with regulation and rules often drives professional practice more than sound judgment drawn from freed up social workers spending meaningful time interacting and building a trusting relationship with children, young people and families.”

    As the Minister has said previously, taking a child into care is not a science but a subjective judgment. To be able to make that and other judgments correctly requires experience, consistency, and the time and space that make it possible to really understand the needs of a particular child. A change of social worker every five minutes will not lead to good child-focused decisions. But it does not have to be that way.

    I am conducting a cross-party inquiry into the educational attainment of looked-after children, with the welcome support of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and Lord Listowel. A few weeks ago we visited Hackney children’s services to observe the way in which children’s social care in the borough had undergone a complete shift in the culture of practice and management by reclaiming social work through the establishment of social work units. There are teams consisting of a social worker, a family therapist, a children’s practitioner, a unit co-ordinator who takes all the red tape out of the hands of the social worker, and a consultant social worker who, under the old system, would have gone into management and had little or no contact with children of families, but is now using his or her experience on the front line.

    The results have been dramatic. We have seen a reduction in the number of looked-after children from 470 to 270, a reduction in the number of agency staff from 50% to just 7%, a 50% reduction in sickness levels, a 5% reduction in overall costs, high levels of morale, and a strong increase in academic achievement among the children in the care of those teams. That example of best practice shows what is possible at a lower cost. Other local authorities have shown an interest in copying the model, but let us make sure that they all know about it. The Government have rightly embarked on a trial of flexible assessment time scales enabling social workers to exercise their professional judgment more effectively, and I note that Hackney council is among those taking part.​

    Despite those welcome initiatives, the lines of accountability in local authorities remain cluttered, blurred and confusing. Local safeguarding children boards, directors of children’s services, children’s trusts, children in care councils, virtual school heads, corporate parenting boards, independent reviewing officers and others are all there to champion the voice of the vulnerable child, but, as Roger Morgan, the children’s rights director, will confirm, many children in care feel that their voices are lost in the myriad management decisions being made in their name. The problem needs to be sorted out. I would welcome a commitment from the Minister to look formally into how the voice of children in care can be better and more clearly represented, so that all who act as corporate parents have them constantly at the forefront of their thoughts, words and deeds.

    I mentioned my current inquiry into the educational attainment of looked-after children. I do not want to pre-empt its outcome, but the very fact of its existence demonstrates the central role that education plays in improving outcomes for children in care. Evidence that the inquiry has taken from young people in or leaving care suggests strongly that when they have had a stable educational experience not only are their prospects of future employability and independent living greatly enhanced, but their self-esteem, confidence and belief in themselves are significantly boosted. That is why I am reassured by the Government’s guarantees that all looked-after children will receive the pupil premium, and that that additional money will be attached—metaphorically speaking—to all children wherever their education is taking place. However, it would be remiss of me not to add a further plea to my hon. Friend the Minister. If it is right that the personal education allowance is to be rolled into the pupil premium, I urge him to make robust representations to his ministerial colleagues in the Department and the Treasury and to put to them the compelling case for looked-after children to receive an additional sum—a pupil premium-plus, as it were—to reflect their often acute problems, and therefore their heightened need for one-to-one support, psychological input such as cognitive behavioural therapy and other specific interventions relevant to ensuring their prospects at school are not compromised in any way by their looked-after status.

    Good quality support does reap rewards. We need only look at the achievements of the Horizon centre in Ealing, which was opened by the Minister and which I recently visited. Through offering young people in and leaving care a safe space where they can get financial, emotional and psychological support, and education and training, the centre has helped to increase the number of children in Ealing borough going to university from 7% to almost 20%. It is an example to others that the transition from care into independence can be successful with the right level and length of support. The so-called cliff-edge that many children leaving care face needs to become a thing of the past, and be replaced by an appropriate and incremental release of support backed up by a safety net when needed, something their peers—who on average do not now leave home until the age of 25—often take for granted, me included. Why should looked-after children be any different?

    If time had allowed, I would have wanted to cover much more ground, but before giving the Minister his opportunity to reply, there are four specific issues I want him to respond to in detail, if not today, then at a ​later date. First, we need to widen the range and choice of care. At present, about 14% of looked-after children are in a residential setting. That may be too high, or it may be too low; I simply do not know. Yet in Denmark and Germany more than half of looked-after children are in residential care. Why the huge difference? Is residential care in our country now seen as a placement of last resort? As my hon. Friend the Minister has said, there is scope for seeing whether a greater use of children’s homes is appropriate. The Select Committee report on looked-after children to which I have referred stated that

    “the potential of the residential sector to offer high quality, stable placements for a minority of young people is too often dismissed. With enforcement of higher standards, greater investment in skills, and a reconsideration of the theoretical basis for residential care, we believe that it could make a significant contribution to good quality placement choice for young people.”

    Indeed, the New Economics Foundation report, “A False Economy”, estimated that for every pound invested in providing an appropriate residential placement leading to good outcomes, a return of between £4 and £7 was created for the economy. With the continued shortage of foster carers and the hit-and-miss aspect of matching children to the right placement still prevalent, I invite the Minister to consider seriously the case for a full and proper national review of residential care, to ensure we can be confident that we are offering children the right placement for them, not simply the only placement available.

    Secondly, on looked-after children in custody, I urge the Minister to look urgently at ending the continuing and unjustified anomaly whereby, unlike a child placed under a care order, a looked-after child who was voluntary accommodated prior to custody loses their looked-after status on entering custody and therefore the support of their social worker and other key professionals. I know that people’s minds have been on prisons for another reason today, but this is a serious issue that merits action. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister spoke in favour of putting this discrepancy right during the Committee stage of the Bill that became the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, so I hope that now he is in a position to do something about it, he will do so.

    Thirdly, I echo the words of Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the family division, who has called for the prioritising of children’s cases in court above all other family law proceedings, especially judicial decisions on placement in care and adoption. I am aware that there is currently a review of all aspects of family law, so I hope this plea from our most senior family judge does not go unheeded.

    Fourthly, more than 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are being looked after by local authorities, but there continue to be concerns about their access to fundamental services such as education, as well as their vulnerability to trafficking. I know the Minister is vexed by this issue and trust he will look into it closely.

    I do not doubt that this Government and all previous Governments of whatever political hue have been, and are, determined to improve outcomes for children in care. So am I. With the tightening of purse-strings, the temptation for some will be to continue on a course of crisis management. My message to the Government, local authorities and all those who work with children in care is this: “Be bold, be smart and, above all, show you really care.”​

  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2018 Speech on the Eider Duck

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Conservative MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2018.

    After all that excitement, I hope now to take the House in a slightly different direction.

    We might think of St Francis of Assisi as the original saintly animal conservationist but, although St Francis preached to the birds, Northumberland’s own St Cuthbert is popularly believed to have taken steps way back in the 8th century to ensure that some of Northumberland’s eider duck population enjoyed his personal protection.

    There are a number of animal stories attached to St Cuthbert. A famous episode in Bede’s “Life of St Cuthbert” involved Cuthbert standing neck-deep in the sea and praying, after which two otters came and dried his feet with their fur. The animals were rewarded with a blessing and went on their way.

    Perhaps the animal most associated with St Cuthbert today is the eider duck, or Cuddy duck—Cuddy being a shortened form of Cuthbert. The first we hear of their association with Cuthbert is in the 12th century, some 500 years after his death. The monks had a small cell and chapel on the island of Inner Farne, one of the beautiful Farne islands in my constituency that are now visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. The monks shared this island home with a large nesting population of eider ducks. Cuthbert is said to have tamed the ducks so well that they would nest everywhere, even next to the chapel altar, without fear.

    Cuthbert also placed the ducks under his protective grace, so that no one should eat or even disturb them. Every spring, on the many Farne islands and on Coquet island, all in my constituency, Mrs Eider and her babies can be found snuggled into a shallow hole in the ground, safe from predators thanks to island life and the careful and diligent work of the RSPB and the National Trust rangers who look after the island reserves.

    The ducks cannot have remained entirely undisturbed by the monks, as we note the appearance in inventories made of Cuthbert’s shrine at Durham of cushions made of “Cuthbert doun”—downy feathers from St Cuthbert’s eider ducks on Farne. Perhaps the sacred purpose of the plucked feathers excused the necessary disturbance to the ducks. Certainly, other monks who had eaten or harassed Farne’s eiders were struck down by Cuthbert’s curse, with one even dying after mocking the saint’s protection.

    So it is that the association with place is very strong and that I have the great privilege of being the eider duck’s advocate today. In St Cuthbert’s time, only the Cuddy ducks of Inner Farne were protected; the eider ducks on the other islands were not protected. Today, in modern protection terms, many other species of our spectacular island birdlife are protected but not the eider duck.

    The creation in recent years of 50 marine conservation zones by this Government, with more planned, would no doubt receive the approval of St Cuthbert, as the delineated zones along my constituency’s unique coastline provide protection for wildlife and our marine environment. The MCZs have been created to protect ​important marine wildlife and their habitats, and they form part of what is now popularly known as the “blue belt.”

    Our spectacular Northumberland coast is teeming with wildlife, from seabirds as rare as the roseate tern to my personal favourite, the delightful and slightly ungainly puffin—she flies like a fast jet—to porpoises, grey seals, dolphins and even the occasional whale. And that is just what can be glimpsed from above the water. Below the surface, Northumberland’s blue belt is a bustling city of crustaceans and molluscs, alongside an extensive and healthy fish population.

    It is wonderful that the creation of MCZs means that our rich and diverse sea life will now be further protected from the effects of dredging and trawling, so that many more future generations can enjoy, explore and learn about nature’s world under the waves. But St Cuthbert would be disappointed to discover that within the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ lies the uninhabited—by humans, at least—Coquet island, which does not yet include the eider duck among its protected species.

    The common eider is a large sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and all the way to eastern Siberia. It breeds in Arctic and some northern temperate regions, but winters farther south, in temperate zones, when it can form large flocks on coastal waters. Our cuddy duck can fly at speeds of up to 70 mph. The eider’s nest is built close to the sea and is lined with eiderdown, plucked from the female’s breast. This soft and warm lining has long been harvested for filling pillows and quilts. Although eiderdown pillows or quilts are now a rarity, eiderdown harvesting continues and is sustainable, when it is done after the ducklings leave the nest with no harm to the birds.

    The common eider is both the largest of the four eider species and the largest duck found in Europe and in North America. The male is unmistakable, with his black and white plumage and green nape. The female is a brown bird, but can still be readily distinguished from all ducks. This species dives for crustaceans and molluscs, with mussels being a favourite food. The eider will eat mussels by swallowing them whole; the shells are then crushed in the gizzard and excreted. When eating a crab, the eider will remove all its claws and legs, and then eat the body in a similar fashion.

    Eiders are colonial breeders. They nest on coastal islands in colonies ranging in size from as little as 100 to up to 10,000 in some parts of the world. Female eiders frequently exhibit a high degree of natal philopatry, returning to breed on the same island where they were hatched. This can lead to a high degree of relatedness between individuals nesting on the same island, so I feel that those eider ducks from Coquet island and from the Farnes are very much part of our family. Breeding eider fly from Coquet island and across the sea to use the mudflats adjacent to the Coquet estuary as a feeding ground for their young. Eider is a true sea-duck and is rarely found away from coasts. Throughout the year, breeding eider from Coquet feed in the intertidal zone of the Northumberland Shore SSSI—site of special scientific interest—and later in the year non-breeding eider also migrate here to feed during the winter months.

    Although sea-bird and sea-duck colonies benefit from protection provided by the SSSI, these sites provide protection only on land. The site was designated in 1980 for about 500 nests, but by 2015 estimates of this ​number had dropped to about 300. The site is now being managed to address this long-term decline. The area is also an important winter feeding area for migrating eider from across Europe. Eider is a species listed as “near threatened” globally and “vulnerable” in Europe by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; a vulnerable species is one that has been categorised by the IUCN as likely to become endangered unless the circumstances that are threatening its survival and reproduction improve. These declines are thought to be driven by a range of threats, including the overharvesting of aquatic resources, pollution, disturbance and hunting.

    In Britain, eider are currently classified as “amber” on the birds of conservation concern in the United Kingdom list. Disturbance is the primary threat to our eider; it results in a loss of access to feeding areas and increased predation at breeding grounds. There are several studies considering the common eider in relation to human disturbances. The study of the effects of human disturbance at breeding sites found that when disturbed, some or all ducklings and sometimes the mother dived, and the breeding colony was temporarily dispersed. During this disturbance, attacks by predators such as greater black- backed gulls and herring gulls increased. The study found that predation of chicks by gull attacks was more than 200 times higher on disturbed breeding colonies than on undisturbed ones, and this resulted in significantly lower numbers of chicks fledging each year.

    The excellent Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 seeks to address management issues, such as disturbance, by creating marine conservation zones—MCZs. MCZs can be used to protect biodiversity in UK seas and are intended to allow a wide spectrum of protection. They form a key part of a wider suite of management measures including marine planning, ecosystem objectives, licensing and fisheries management. However, the designation of protected areas is the best means of securing the necessary commitment from marine managers and sea users to ensure that activities can be restricted, where necessary, to protect biodiversity.

    Although the area used by eider around Coquet island and the Northumbria coast overlaps with an existing European marine site—EMS—eider do not receive any legal protection from the existing designation within the new MCZ. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has asked the Government to add the eider duck to the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ list of protected species. Our friendly cuddies reside within this zone all year round, yet are not covered by the existing legislation. Our Northumberland coast’s resident eider populations have continued to decline steadily over the last few decades, so protection of their sea-based feeding and wintering habitats is essential.

    Across Europe, hunting, pollution and land disturbance means that other colonies are also in decline. The Coquet island colony is therefore all the more in need of protection. In so doing, the Minister would be allowing protection and management for these special birds to be put into place. Adding eider to the existing Coquet to St. Mary’s MCZ would enable proactive management to reduce and manage the threat of disturbance. The management requirements would be to carry out formal disturbance monitoring, management and enforcement, where necessary, such as by imposing speed restrictions or limiting boat traffic in sensitive areas.​

    The publication of codes of conduct increases public awareness of species of interest in an area, which may increase local tourism with benefits to the economy, so the proposals should include education and awareness of conduct in the MCZ.

    Are the Government willing to include eider ducks in the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ? Will they go further and commit to giving them protection across the Farne islands, too, as these unique islands and surrounding waters become incorporated into the MCZ as it reaches further north in the months ahead? I understand that informal conversations are already taking place and urge the Minister to drive them forward, so that my constituency’s extraordinary coastline and her feathered residents, whom I consider constituents worthy of representation just as much as the human ones, can live in a place of safety and protection and so that their long-term future is assured.

  • Boris Johnson – 2018 Article on Fourth Anniversary of Crimean Annexation

    Below is the text of the article released by Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, on 22 February 2018.

    On the night of 22 February 2014, the most powerful men in Russia gathered in the Kremlin and resolved to seize Crimea from Ukraine.

    They would later make elaborate efforts to give their decision a veneer of legitimacy – including by staging a bogus referendum – but that meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his security chiefs was designed to seal the fate of Crimea’s people.

    We know this because Mr Putin said as much. In a documentary for Russian television, broadcast in 2015, the President described the sequence of events.

    He decided to grab Crimea during that conclave in the Kremlin 3 weeks before the sham referendum. All those claims about how he acted to protect the region’s people or uphold their wishes were, by Mr Putin’s own account, utterly mendacious.

    So it was that Russia seized 10,000 square miles from Ukraine and broke the first principle of international law – that countries may not acquire territory or change borders by force.

    Mr Putin formally annexed Crimea into the Russian Federation on 18 March 2014. Four years after that event, we should remind ourselves of the enormity of what happened and redouble our determination to stand up for our values and uphold international law.

    Russia’s land grab in Crimea amounted to the first forcible annexation of the territory of a European country – and the first forcible redrawing of a European frontier – since 1945.

    In the process, Russia broke so many international agreements that listing them all is a challenge. To select a few examples, Mr Putin trampled upon Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and the Russia-Ukraine Treaty of Friendship.

    He also broke Russia’s specific pledge, contained in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, to respect the “existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”.

    And after annexing Crimea Mr Putin went still further, igniting and vigorously fanning the flames of conflict in eastern Ukraine. To this day, Russia continues to deploy troops and tanks in a conflagration that has claimed over 10,000 lives and driven 2.3 million people from their homes.

    Flight MH17 became another victim of this tragedy when a Russian missile launched from an area controlled by Russian proxy fighters blew this passing airliner out of the sky, killing 298 innocent people, including 10 Britons.

    All the while, reports have emerged from Crimea of the oppression of the indigenous Tatar population and the harassment of those opposed to Russian annexation. Despite repeated calls from the UN General Assembly, Russia has refused to allow international human rights monitors to enter the peninsula.

    In the end, the security of every nation depends on the essential principle that countries should not change borders or acquire territory by force. That is why the fate of Crimea matters to all of us.

    We all have an obligation to stand up to Russia in a measured and resolute way. That means sustaining our Crimea-related sanctions against Russia for as long as the region remains under Kremlin control, and keeping further sanctions in place whilst the Minsk Agreements in eastern Ukraine go unheeded.

    These measures are intended to demonstrate that no country, however large, can dismember its neighbour and break international law without consequence.

    Nevertheless, while holding fast to our principles, we should engage firmly and purposefully with Russia. We need to communicate with clarity and directness our concern over the Kremlin’s actions.

    There is no contradiction between dialogue and deterrence – indeed the one can reinforce the other – as I made clear when I visited Moscow in December. As permanent members of the Security Council, Britain and Russia also share special responsibility for international peace and security.

    Our motto with Russia must be to ‘engage but beware’ and both halves of the formula should be pursued with equal resolve. But we must never forget the terrible consequences of that late night gathering in the Kremlin.