Tag: 2000

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 16 March 2000.

Today’s seminar could not be better timed. Next week, a special European Council will be addressing the crucial need for the European Union to take up the challenge presented by the knowledge economy. The European Parliament is just starting its second reading of the Electronic Commerce Directive, which will provide the platform for barrier free electronic trading across the EU. This morning, I will give an overview of E-commerce development in Europe, and the challenges now facing policymakers. I will also tell you about the Conservative approach to boosting E-Commerce activity at a European level, complementing the actions of our Westminster team. The Conservatives are playing a leading policy making role within our Centre Right Group (EPP/ED) in the Parliament, in making sure that our Open Market agenda is delivered successfully.

E-commerce going to be of great importance to Europe’s global competitiveness. Big progress has been made towards a true Internal Market – in market opening, in uniform product standards, in eliminating trading barriers. We have an excellent climate in which to encourage cross border e-commerce activities. E-commerce offers a huge opportunity to finally complete the internal market, by allowing market forces to operate in levelling market barriers, exposing high tax, high cost economies and making protectionist practises (such as unnecessary advertising restrictions) completely transparent.

Given its importance, it is a concern that Europe lags significantly behind the U.S.A. in the development of electronic commerce. Within the EU there are very significant variations in E-Commerce activity – with the Nordic countries, and Benelux being the leaders in PC use per household. In translating this into Internet activity, the Nordic countries lead is even more pronounced. Recent studies suggest that Spain and Ireland are among the leaders in their economic and business climate for e-commerce. There appears to be no in-built factor within Europe stopping the growth of e-commerce – which suggests that, as in the U.S.A, we should not flirt with market intervention, but allow market forces to work.

Companies operating in e-commerce would like the security of a legal framework within their activities can develop. Since 1997, the Commission has been moving ahead with framework directives in crucial areas such as electronic signatures and copyright. The Commission has followed the right approach – ensuring market openness by preventing member states from blocking cross border transactions. At the same time, business participation will be encouraged – especially smaller companies. Consumer protection will generate trust and confidence. There will be special provisions for internet service providers. The legislation is ‘technology neutral’ – thus being flexible enough to encompass future developments in a fast moving market place. It also requires member states to encourage self-regulation for consumer protection and redress – the right approach given the immense change ahead in retailing and consumer services.

The e-commerce Directive, which embraces all these provisions, has now been agreed by the Member States and is just starting its Second reading in the European Parliament. We intend to push forward quickly, with minimum changes, to secure approval by mid 2000. This will send out a strong signal that the Conservatives wish to encourage e-commerce and are prepared to move quickly to help end uncertainty for consumers and investors.

But there is much more to be done if Europe is really going to take advantage of the knowledge economy. Europe needs the economic infrastructure to encourage entrepreneurs to exploit the power of e-commerce. It needs the communications infrastructure to deliver widespread, low cost access to the Internet for businesses and private consumers. It needs a new approach by public authorities to the use of electronic information. It needs the right training and skills base on which new industries can be developed.

The Commission has produced an e-Europe strategy that claims to address these issues, but this document is a rather unfocussed collection of undeveloped promises. In reality, the major area that the European Governments must address is the tax and business climate to stimulate new, internet based businesses. We are promised yet another new ‘initiative’ for the Lisbon summit. A very welcome impact of e-commerce is that it is forcing Governments to address the well-known problems of the European labour market and the reasons why its job creation has been so poor:-

· High social costs of employment

· Inflexibility imposed by excessive employment regulation

· High cost of company start ups and high penalties for failure

· Excessive taxes on capital gains, particularly stock options, discouraging new entrepreneurs from taking risks

We shall push strongly for these issues to be properly addressed, and will press our own ideas for encouraging e-business start-ups. For example, we should encourage e-businesses to register their companies, and take on employees, in any EU country that offers the most advantageous conditions. A market driven approach would soon have governments competing with each other in encouraging e-business. This could be stimulated by a start-up scoreboard giving fledgling entrepreneurs all the facts needed to make their decision.

The new companies will need access to capital. There appears to be no proven need for market intervention at this stage, as there appears to be more capital available than good ideas on offer. The development of the Single European Market for financial services will bring about more dynamism and competition in the capital market. Unlike the Commission, which is toying with the idea of publicly backed funding, we see only a limited role for central intervention.

We would also like to develop a tax incentive framework that would encourage large companies to spin off e-commerce start ups, using their existing human and financial resources. There are many middle managers who would leap at the chance of developing a new business idea, and becoming their own boss. Spin off companies, with the risks being underwritten by the strength of their parent, would have the chance to grow quickly. They would also encourage the development of entrepreneurial skills and practical knowledge within their feeder company and help its competitiveness in the new information driven economy.

Governments also have a key role in market development as purchasers of e-commerce services. They should be encouraging ‘best practice’ and ensuring that their procurement systems are open to smaller, innovative companies.

Although open markets will be the prime enabler of e-commerce, the existing European grant instruments – regional and social funds – can be targeted to help e-commerce ventures. In both rural and urban communities, e-commerce will provide powerful tools to tackle unemployment – by encouraging new business ideas, by giving fast and cheap access to market information, by developing networks of entrepreneurs and job seekers. In many cases, e-commerce will help to reinvent old business models and transform large, slow moving industries. People with existing skills can be encouraged to develop niche products for targeted customers and market them globally.

The other key element to address is infrastructure. Low cost, widely available, broad band electronic communications will be an essential foundation for a powerful e-economy. The European Commission has published a bold plan for a single, open, electronic communications market, integrating fixed-line services, cable, digital television, and mobile. This structure, to be in place by mid 2000, would offer service providers open licensing and market entry opportunities across the EU. A key aspect of the proposals would be access to the local loop in every market, opening competition for services to every connected household.

The EU is already significantly ahead of the US in mobile telephones. 3rd generation mobile technology will bring internet access to consumers at a much lower capital cost than a fixed computer based (or TV based) system.

EU governments must encourage fast mobile internet growth by facilitating common standards and rules. They should be re-investing license fees or auction proceeds in repositioning public service operations in the radio spectrum and encouraging fast infrastructure investment and wide spectrum availability. Competition rules must allow global players to develop across one, barrier free, European market. The speedy growth of internet mobiles will also encourage new providers of simple, fast, useful data for phone users – based on travel, news, business and general information services, integrated with other services such as geographical data. These are areas where new European companies can gain a global lead.

In thinking about the developing market, we must also be considering the implications for society as a whole of the widespread availability of information technology. Education must increasingly equip young people to be active on-line consumers and to develop the skills to work in the new information companies. Retraining and reskilling will be needed in existing organizations in public and private sectors. The information society offers big benefits for the less fortunate and the less mobile – disabled people, and the elderly, for example. There will be very significant security and privacy issues to be addressed. The European Commission, and member governments, are now working on many ideas to help the spread of information society benefits – and some of them would be worthy candidates for reinvestment of licence fees, as they would further stimulate adoption of e-services. But the priority, at this stage, must be to drive forward market adoption of the new technology.

I have summarised the key aspects of the European scene for electronic commerce. The Conservative team in the European Parliament has taken a special interest in this area, and has raised the political profile of the issue across the Parliament. There is a big policy agenda to work through. Following the Electronic Signatures and E-commerce directives, there will be the Copyright Directive, the Distance Selling Directive and the Directive setting up a Single Financial Services Market, including Internet selling. We will be heavily involved in Electronic Communications liberalisation, both in the strategy and detailed legislation. The stimulus to Business start-ups will also be a focus of attention. Industry practitioners are invited to keep closely in touch with us to ensure that we have your views.

You have seen today a united Conservative approach, in Europe and Westminster, focused on meeting and mastering a key challenge for all of us. We firmly believe that a market-based, light-touch approach will be the way forward. E-Commerce represents a huge opportunity to enhance the power of markets to provide real benefits for customers across, to stimulate business activity and economic growth. The Conservative team will work together quickly and effectively to make sure that this opportunity is fully realised.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 16 March 2000.

I am delighted to welcome you here today for the Conservative Party’s e-business conference. Many thanks to freecom.net for sponsoring this event; and to all of today’s speakers for giving their time to discuss the knowledge economy with all of us here today.

It is the measure of how important e-business has become as an issue, that a political party is holding this kind of event – and, that so many of you are here to take part in it.

Electronic commerce and its value to business has become one of the most important parts of the economic equation. You have been aware of this for some time, but it is now dawning on governments, the media and consumers that here is something that is changing the rules.

It has the power to transform the way we live and it will become ever more central to our future success as a country. If we take the sensible route, the route that I will map out today, then e-commerce can do for this country in this century, what the railways did in the nineteenth century and the automobile in the twentieth century.

It is vital therefore, that Government provides the right environment to nurture and support the talented business people who can lead us in this new economy and help to make Britain a leading player.

When we left office three years ago the Conservative Government had already delivered the foundations for the E-revolution, and you in your businesses had already started to build on those foundations. There was draft legislation in place to enable e-commerce to flourish, bring our laws up to date and to further deregulate the communications industry. But that was three years ago – and the world of the internet, like the world of politics, has changed a great deal since then.

Building on the knowledge economy that is springing up at such a fantastic rate will have huge implications for you in business – and for us in Government. I intend to touch on both of these areas this morning.

Success in e-business will of course rely on many of the policies that we have long championed.

So today I want to outline to you why low taxes are essential if Britain is to become a leader in the new economy.

I want to talk to you about our Tax Guarantee and a war on over-regulation that will widen our competitive advantage in the age of e-business and trade without frontiers.

I want to talk to you about the importance of nations competing with each other to be an attractive place for e-business, rather than driving that business away with higher taxes, more regulation and ever more centralised political systems.

I believe there are two very clear choices before us.

The first is to act in the belief that in a big jungle only big beasts survive; that as markets grow, so must the size of government. We can see this belief driving the way a number of Western European Governments behave, including our own.

They are interfering more and more in the labour market, imposing statutory working hours, levy new taxes and enforcing new regulations in a mistaken belief that this will protect small citizens from the chill winds of the new economy. I say such an approach does not protect citizens. It puts them on the dole. Higher taxes and more regulations only serve to make it that much harder for any business, dot.com or more traditional, to be successful in the global market. Which is why my Party is particularly concerned that business in Britain is having to find £10 billion a year to meet the costs of new regulations and £30 billion of extra business taxes over the lifetime of this Parliament.

I take a different approach, and I suspect many of you do as well.
I believe Governments must recognise that this is the age of the small unit, the individual on the internet, the small business and large business alike using e-commerce, and that in this age it is the low tax, low regulation nation state is best placed to succeed.

For in the dimension-less, go-anywhere world of the new economy, no country can take industry for granted – for industry can go to any country. The common sense approach would be to build on Britain’s existing advantages of the English language, our excellent software skills, and our entrepreneurial spirit by keeping government interference to a minimum.

That is the way to command the electronic frontier. That is what the Conservative approach will be.

We know this works. Take the example of Florida, which I visited a few weeks ago. There Governor Jeb Bush is attracting high technology companies to the state by creating what he calls Silicon Beach. He is doing it by building a low tax, low regulation, high skill economy.

Already Florida has seen a wide array of companies begin to cluster in Miami. These are companies offering services such as chat-rooms and search engines – email and e-commerce opportunities – as well as sites in Spanish and Portuguese specifically designed for Latin American and U.S. Hispanic audiences.

Britain is competing against places like Silicon Beach – and we cannot even offer the sunshine.

So the danger is that as all this develops, we fall behind. We already lag behind the US and much of mainland Europe in terms of Internet access; and American sites today dominate the competitive landscape – just three of the top ten most visited sites in Britain are UK based.

We also face higher costs and slower access to high speed services in Britain. As wireless and fixed communications are increasingly overlapping, it is absurd to have a regulatory structure that does not keep up with this technology.

Educationally too, there is work to do. We need flexible learners who can cope with constant change, always hungry for new knowledge and ready to lead in the knowledge economy.

A shift in skills is required right across the UK economy. Just look at recent employment headlines:

‘Tesco on-line business to create a further 7,000 jobs’ and;

‘Abbey National Internet Bank to create 500 new jobs’ are just two examples, while companies, such as Barclays Bank, cutting jobs in low skilled areas and creating them in what they term ‘knowledge areas’.

While access to Information Technology in our schools and universities grows there is still too little evidence that IT is being used to enhance the learning process rather than IT just being an “add on”.

We must also be sure that we don’t miss an important opportunity. The global reach of the Internet will drive students to look abroad for higher education qualifications. The UK is in a strong position to capitalise on this as UK qualifications are internationally well regarded. We must do so.

If these problems are not tackled we lose out. We do not have the luxury of time. The scale and speed of the new global economy is staggering.

Our sponsors today, freecom.net, state that the forecast for growth in the worldwide e-Commerce market has gone from £61 billion in 1999 to £0.7 trillion by 2003 – a phenomenal growth of 1,119% in four years.

What then should be involved in a light touch approach? What can we do to build on the knowledge economy?

You, of course, are in the driving seat. The new economy will create some big winners in business, and perhaps some big losers too in the years ahead. Like all of you, I watched with some amazement as new high-flying technology stocks ousted some of the ‘old economy’ giants from the FTSE 100 index.

Shares in the hi-tech and dot com companies are soaring, mostly based on future profits – such is the expectation for the future of e-business.

The challenge for professional investors is immense. We have to welcome the willingness of investors to bring their capital to help the growth of these companies, but they now have to develop their businesses in a way to deliver profits.

But the knowledge economy is not just about new dot-coms. It is about all businesses, old as well as new.

The Internet is reorganising the whole distribution process and taking out costs from the supply chain. It is lowering the cost of procurement, shortening delivery cycles and improving productivity.

Businesses that belong to the ‘old economy’ can use the new one to breathe new life into their operations, providing they do not make the mistake of assuming the Internet nothing more than an on-line version of a company or organisation.

Everything that I have said about the potential of e-commerce assumes of course, one thing – actually being connected to the Internet.

Whether it is business-to-business, or business-to-consumer, e-business is no business unless we’re connected. For the past few weeks the television news has been full of ‘the great Internet race’.

However it is important not to ignore the fact that the essence of e-commerce is that telecoms and service providers are interconnected. At one level you have the providers of the net, which is the backbone of the Internet, carrying the traffic. At the next level down, there are providers – the ISPs.

Currently, the Government and the media are talking about reducing the costs of access between the ISPs and the consumers. This is very welcome but it s is only one level.

There seems to be much less debate about the telecom providers, and the control that they wield over the Internet backbone. We must encourage openness and competition at every level of the Internet; over excessive dominance or control at any level would be detrimental to the system as a whole.

At present 70% of all Internet access travels via the USA and is re-routed back to Europe. Too much control at the backbone, or ISP level could only serve to push this figure up further.

If the providers of the Net take ‘ownership’ of the Internet, there is the potential of increased Internet costs, regardless of what the ISPs want to do. As one, or a few big, companies in effect start to own large parts of the Internet; the omens for healthy competition are not good.

Nor does it help that for each method of delivery of internet by telephone wire, satellite, radio-waves, cable, digital broadcasting and analogue broadcasting there is a different set of regulators trying to enforce different sets of regulations. Which is why, as I say, if we are to have regulation, then it must keep pace with technological change.

The internet revolution poses challenges for all your businesses. It also poses challenges for politicians too.

It is not enough for us to stand up at these events and proclaim the obvious about how e-commerce is ‘dissolving physical barriers, and levelling the business playing field’. Politicians of all parties must avoid the temptation to take credit for what is already happening.

I start from the position of someone who is profoundly sceptical about the extent to which the new global economy should be, or indeed can effectively be, regulated or taxed. This new economy has arisen in an astonishingly democratic fashion. And it has done so through the actions and ingenuity of countless individuals in what has probably been the most open and least regulated market in history.

Therefore, the right policy is for Government to stay out of the way and let it flourish. I have to say that this is not the approach currently being adopted by this Government

Take tax. Next Tuesday is Budget Day – a day on which some people think I earn half my salary since I have to give an immediate and detailed response to the Chancellor’s speech with no forewarning of what he is going to say.

But this year I know one thing for certain. Whatever Gordon Brown says, taxes, including taxes on business, will be higher when the Chancellor sits down than on the day he walked into the Treasury.

Even Downing Street now conceded that Britain’s tax burden has risen under this Government. Nearly £500 million of it will come in the form of the IR 35 stealth tax. Its name shows just how stealthy it is – it was sneaked out in Inland Revenue Press Release number 35 on Budget Day last year.

IR35 is a tax on contractors. Small IT companies are deeply worried about this new tax regime, which is forcing them to consider setting up shop away from the United Kingdom. The outgoing Chairman of the Professional Contractors’ Group said that he fears IR35 will deal a massive blow to Britain’s enterprise culture. “American multinationals will be laughing all the way to the bank as the British Government destroys their home-grown competition”, was how he put it. IR35 could cause a brain drain not seen here since the 1970s. It is exactly the wrong approach to the new economy.

This Government’s stealth tax increases also threaten the share option schemes that many high-tech companies need to attract highly skilled workers. Changes introduced by this Government which impose national insurance charges on employers offering share options badly undermines one of the best ways for dot.com companies to retain and motivate their workforce.

Far from driving away the very people whose enterprise and innovation can build and drive the knowledge economy, we should be doing everything in our power to make them want to stay.

Central to the our Common Sense Revolution is the promise that at the end of the next Conservative Government the state will take a smaller share of the nation’s income than at the beginning. In other words, we will cut the overall burden of tax on individuals and businesses.

For while our tax burden as a proportion of GDP is now 8 per cent lower than the Italians and 13 per cent lower than the French, it is also 5 per cent higher than the Japanese, 9 per cent higher than the Americans and a full 14 per cent higher than the Koreans. If we are to prosper in the new economy, that must change.

There is scope for tax reform too. For instance we must simplify our Capital Gains Tax. It is absurd that the reforms of the past few years have resulted in a more complicated, more distorting CGT system. Capital Gains Tax is now more difficult to collect than ever before. The British Venture Capital Association are right to favour a much simpler system and we are looking closely at how that might be achieved.

Alongside lower, simpler tax we should ensure the minimum of government interference and regulation imposed by Acts of Parliament.

Of course, some legislation in this area is needed. The Electronic Communications Bill will put into law the use of electronic signatures for the benefit of e-commerce, and we welcome that. But we had deep concerns about proposals included in that Bill, which could have imposed draconian new law enforcement powers and introduced the dreaded key escrow by the back door.

A great deal of hard work by our first-rate Shadow DTI team, some of whom you will hear from today, saw this removed from the e-commerce Bill – to the relief of business and the IT professionals.

The threat however, has only temporarily receded. Similar measures have re-surfaced in the Home Office Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, which is now before Parliament.

We support the Bill in its aim of updating existing interception law and allowing law enforcement agencies to do their job in the information age, but we will once again seek to ensure it only reaches the statute book as a help and not as a hindrance to e-business.

All businesses, new and old, are affected by the general increase in regulation and red tape. The British Chamber of Commerce has highlighted 17 major expensive new regulations that have hit firms since 1997 – including the Working Time Directive, trade union recognition and the European Social Chapter.

In our Common Sense Revolution, our Party set out some initial proposals for driving down the cost of regulation on business. We will introduce regulatory budgets for government departments by costing the regulations they currently impose on business – and then force them to cut that budget year on year. We are also considering a legislative framework under which we could exempt small businesses altogether from whole classes of regulation. We are currently consulting business about the precise categories of legislation and sizes of business to which this principle could be extended.

Some of you are no doubt a bit fed up with Politicians who tell you to reform but then do not themselves reform the way government does it’s business.

Government has a very poor record in delivering IT. Angela Browning, our Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary will talk about this in greater detail later today. Let me just say that we believe Whitehall can use the Internet to deliver faster, better and cheaper government.

Today I have touched on many of the challenges that lie ahead for all of us in this exciting new age.

Although I believe passionately the role for the state is and must remain as small as possible, the responsibility on the shoulders of politicians is great. We did not create the new economy, but get it wrong and we could certainly destroy it.

So we must get it right. We must act swiftly and decisively to let enterprise and innovation flourish. We must act swiftly to create the kind of environment in this country that really will make the UK the best place in the world to do e-business.

We must create the low tax burden and low regulation base that gives all businesses, new and old the best possible chance to succeed in the new global.

So the responsibility for politicians is great. Yet for you, for business, it is far greater still. The prosperity of our country depends on your imagination, your courage, your creativity, your skill. I know you will not let us down.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 26 April 2000.

The Tony Martin case lit a touch-paper that has led to an explosion of anger and resentment among millions of law-abiding British people who no longer feel the state is on their side.

The specifics of the particular case are best left to the criminal courts. But politicians aren’t doing their job if they don’t listen and respond to the unprecedented public outcry which has greeted the murder conviction for this Norfolk farmer who was defending his home against burglars.

I understand the outcry and I share it. It is time we asked ourselves some blunt questions:

What is the point of having a police service and prisons when three criminals, with 114 convictions between them, are allowed to wander about free to terrorise rural communities?

What has happened to our courts system when career burglars and muggers get a few dozen hours community service, or a couple of months in prison if they’re unlucky, while people defending their homes against the very same criminals risk long prison sentences?

Why is the Government cutting police numbers, and why has it hamstrung the job of those policemen and policewomen who remain, at the very moment when crime is starting to rise again?

Politicians need to provide answers to these questions if public confidence in the criminal justice system is not to collapse altogether. If the Labour Government cannot or will not, then it is the duty of the Conservative Opposition to do so.

These are the broad principles of our response to the anger expressed by the British people in recent days and months. I will expand on them further when I speak to the Police Federation Conference next month.

First, we are going to restore confidence in our courts and prison service.

The three men who broke into Tony Martin’s farm had each been convicted of dozens of criminal offences, ranging from burglary and theft to wounding and assault of a police officer. Most of the time they were fined paltry sums or given community service. Occasionally they got short prison sentences, and even then were released early after just a few months behind bars.

Their histories of repeated crime and repeatedly lenient sentences is sadly familiar in today’s courts. No wonder the public despair and the police ask what the point is of catching criminals when they just get released back on to the street. Part of the blame lies with a liberal legal establishment that too often appears to put concerns for the rights of criminals before the rights of the millions of vulnerable people who live in fear of crime.

The next Conservative Government will take a different approach.

We will introduce honesty in sentencing, which means that criminals serve the sentences handed down in court. Automatic early release on licence will be ended. We will extend the ‘two strikes and you’re out regime’ to other crimes, such as selling drugs to children. We will greatly expand the number of Secure Training Centres so that young thugs are actually taken off our streets and locked up. And we will make prisoners work in prison, rather than sit about learning from each other about how to commit more crimes.

These common sense policies are tough. Criminals won’t like them; nor will some left-wing pressure groups. That is because they restore the proper balance between justice and a safe society, and because they are true to the instincts of a British people fed up with the failure of the courts and prisons to deal with persistent criminals.

Second, we are going to give the police the support and backing they deserve.

One of the greatest deceits of this Government has been to promise to be tough on crime while at the same time cutting the number of police who fight crime.

By the end of this Parliament, there will be 2,500 fewer police than there were at the beginning. What sort of message does that send to career criminals about our determination to catch them? What does it say to rural communities miles from the nearest police station, or families terrorised on sink estates, or elderly people and young women afraid to walk down our streets at night?

This Government’s cut in police numbers is a total disgrace. Tony Blair and Jack Straw are failing in their most basic duty, that of protecting the public.

The next Conservative Government will reverse Labour’s cut in the number of police. We will also give the police the support and backing they need. At the moment many policemen and policewomen spend just 20 per cent of their time actually fighting crime. We will make sure the police spend less time filling in forms and hanging around in court waiting rooms, and more time on the streets catching criminals.

Third, we are going to re-balance the justice system to protect people who defend their families, their homes and their property against criminals.

Vigilantes have no place in a civilised society. But there is all the difference in the world between the career criminal who sets out deliberately to burgle a house and the terrified home-owner who acts to protect himself and his home. Unless our laws reflect natural justice, then they fall into disrepute.

The next Conservative Government will overhaul the law with a strong presumption that, in future, the state will be on the side of people who protect their homes and their families against criminals.

Restoring confidence in our courts, supporting our police and tipping the balance of justice in favour of those who defend their homes and their families: these are three key principles which will guide any Government I lead.

Conservatives believe in the first and foremost responsibility of the state is to protect its law-abiding citizens. This Government is failing in that responsibility, which is why the outcry over the Martin case has reverberated far beyond a small village in Norfolk.

The Conservative Party has heard the outcry and is responding.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 12 May 2000.

It is a great pleasure to be here today to open the Aske Hall Stable Block. I am particularly grateful to Lord Ronaldshay for issuing the original invitation for me to do this and to all of you for being here to give your support.

And I am sure you will all agree what a truly excellent job has been done in converting an historic, but disused, Stable Block into premium, state of the art commercial offices. Thanks to this project we now have some of the most prestigious offices in the North-East of England. I can think of no more attractive environment, here in the Aske estate, in which a company could wish to locate. They are ideally situated for access not just to the major commercial centres in the North-East such as Darlington, Middlesborough and Newcastle, but also to Leeds, Bradford and York. London is only 2 ½ hours away from Darlington station, while Teeside airport is only half an hour away. And of course Richmond itself is only a mile away.

All of us hope that in addition to securing the long-term future of this magnificent listed building, and providing these modern offices, the Aske Hall conversion will help to bring much needed jobs back into the rural economy. As Roger Tempest pointed out, this entire scheme has been devised and completed by his company, Rural Solutions – a Yorkshire company I am pleased to say – that specialises in the regeneration of rural buildings and land. Rural Solutions are providing a model of rural regeneration and diversification not just here in Yorkshire but across the entire country.

I strongly welcome that, because far too often we hear politicians glibly talking about the need for diversification in the rural economy not just as the answer to everything, but also in the mistaken belief that it can suddenly be achieved overnight – as if just talking about it will somehow make it happen. Such attitudes reveal a profound ignorance of the countryside and agriculture. As you and I know the reality is far different.

For many farmers, already struggling to make any sort of living in current conditions, diversification is not something they can suddenly achieve on a whim, or on their own. Diversification can raise highly complex issues in which farmers are not necessarily experts. They require help with things like access to new capital, marketing advice, help with planning applications, somebody to carry out construction work. That is why I believe that the private sector has such an important role to play. The work of Rural Solutions in the Aske Stable Block conversion demonstrates that role clearly, and with such impressive results.

But there are things that the Government could be doing too. Many farmers find that when they try to diversify they face many costly and bureaucratic obstacles. That is why my party is looking at new policies that would help to ease many of the burdens that are currently associated with diversification. We would like to hear direct from farmers which of those obstacles they would most like to see removed.

Issues like diversification have never been higher on the agenda for Britain’s farmers. And for one good reason – because farming, the countryside and our entire rural way of life is under threat as never before. Put bluntly, the countryside faces an uncertain and bleak future.

Take agriculture. I hardly need to spell out the basic facts. Farm incomes are down a massive 75 per cent since 1997; the average incomes of hill farmers are down by another third this year; 25,000 jobs linked with the pig industry have been lost. And behind those statistics are stories of misery, bankruptcy and hardship not seen in rural Britain for generations.

Nobody pretends that every problem in British agriculture began on 1 May 1997, but nobody can ignore the fact that since then the problems have become much worse. In response we have had platitudes, re-announcements and endless phoney initiatives and summits none of which have begun to tackle the chronic crisis that we face.

Even the extra £200 million that Tony Blair promised in emergency aid after his Downing Street “Farm Summit” has turned out to be fraudulent. Just like last year’s much trumpeted farm-aid package that was condemned by the all-Party House of Commons Agriculture Committee as “misleading”. This year the Government has pulled off the same accounting tricks. For instance they portray the maintenance of the existing levels of support for hill farmers as new money, and seek the credit for waiving regulatory charges that they themselves had introduced.

The fact is that even if we could believe the Government’s own figures, the money amounts to little more than sticking plaster for an industry in danger of bleeding to death. There is still no sign that the Government has any long-term solutions.

I can’t pretend that there are any quick fixes or easy solutions. The problems facing farmers are in many cases too deep-seated for that. But I can set out what a Conservative Government would be doing differently or not at all.

One of the solutions that I would not be putting forward is that farmers would be in a better position if Britain joined the euro. Of course I understand the problems of that the high pound causes as farmers try to maintain their competitive position. But I do not accept the case that this would be helped by the euro. In fact signing up to the euro now be disastrous for our farmers as we simply maintain the disadvantage caused by the current exchange rate in perpetuity. No – the only answer to the high pound is a different economic policy that contains spending, keeps inflation firmly under wraps and helps to bring down interest rates.

But if there are no quick fixes, there are things that the Conservative Party in government would be doing to ensure a fair deal for Britain’s farmers and a secure, long-term future for the countryside.

For a start we can stop the import of food into Britain that falls short of the hygiene and animal welfare standards that we impose here. It defies common sense to expect our farmers to survive when they are faced with regulations that do not apply elsewhere.

We can also make sure that there is honesty in food labelling. It is crazy that food can be packaged and produced as if it were British without it containing any ingredients grown in this country. So we shall ensure that all consumers know the country of origin and the method of production of the food we are eating.

We can stop farmers being crushed under the weight of pointless, ill thought out and ill conceived regulations which mean that many farmers spending as much time filling in forms as working on their farms. So we would bring common sense to farming regulations and force Ministers to cut the burden of red tape on farming year on year.

We can stop the Government stealth taxes on farming – like the energy tax that will still cost farmers millions despite the temporary concessions made in the Budget.

We can encourage our young people to go into farming and introduce retirement schemes so that family farms can be passed on to future generations.

We can stop the bulldozing of our best agricultural land and the current policy of allowing housing development to go ahead on previously protected land. The Government should not be building on our best farmland.

And we could ensure that British farmers at least have a Government that will actually stand up for and defend their interests in Europe. Regrettably, under the current Government it has all too often been a story of repeated failure. Failure to have the lifting of the beef export ban actually lifted; failure to gain adequate help for our pig farmers; failure to secure extra milk quota; and failure to achieve proper reform of the CAP

The Government should go to Brussels with the determination to fight Britain’s corner as our European partners fight for theirs and to ensure that Britain’s farmers can compete on a level playing field.

So there are real and practical measures that the Government should be taking to help ease the crisis in British agriculture and help to promote a flourishing rural economy.

But agriculture is only one part of a much wider crisis that is afflicting the whole of rural Britain that has been caused by an urban culture at the very heart of Government.

It is an urban culture that has no instinct or sympathy for the countryside and our rural way of life. It is an urban culture that cares even less about the people who live there. It is an urban culture that arrogantly dismisses and discounts the views of those who live in rural Britain, those who know the countryside best, while at the same time trying to impose the values of Islington wine bars on them.

All too often the impression is given that this urban elite sees the countryside as some kind of theme park – a kind of rural version of the Dome – rather than a place in which real people work and live. The results have been disastrous.

It has produced swingeing increases in petrol duties so that we now have the most expensive petrol in Europe and people in rural areas – where the car is essential – are priced off the road.

It has produced cuts in the numbers of police that has left rural communities feeling isolated, exposed and vulnerable, in the face of rising crime, as was so tragically illustrated in the Martin case

It has produced the remorseless bulldozing and concreting of the countryside to build homes for commuters to satisfy John Prescott’s arbitrary housing targets.

It has produced plans that threaten the closure of rural post offices, for so long a cornerstone of village life in rural areas.

It has produced the statutory right to roam without a thought for farmers or of the real needs of conservation.

It has produced vindictive, ignorant and opportunistic attempts to ban country sports despite the facts that it would destroy centuries of tradition, strike at traditional bonds of community and endanger thousands of jobs.

So it is little wonder that the Countryside Agency’s ‘State of the Countryside’ report, published last month, described a rural economy which contrasts sharply with the Government’s own claims that ‘in broad terms the countryside is prosperous, contented and reasonably well served’ or the Prime Minister’s comments in the west country in February that despite the headlines the countryside had no real problems. Instead it revealed deep-seated economic, social and environmental problems many of which have are the direct result of Government policy.

I believe that rural Britain deserves better. Rural Britain deserves being listened to rather than being lectured. It deserves to be understood rather than ignored. It deserves to be protected rather than plundered. It is crying out for policies that help it rather than continue to harm it. Rural Britain is crying out for a Government that believes in the countryside, that values the countryside and will work for the countryside.