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Tag: 2001

  • John Reid – 2001 Speech at the Belfast Telegraph Awards

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Reid in Belfast on 4th April 2001.

    I am delighted to be here tonight to celebrate the very best of business in Northern Ireland.

    We are here to celebrate your achievements. In different ways all of you are pushing forward the boundaries of what is possible. Exploring new avenues, forging new partnerships.

    And we are here because we share a vision. All of us are actively seeking to build a new Northern Ireland:

    – a new political landscape, based on equality, mutual respect and lasting peace

    – and an economy based on innovation, enterprise and investment.

    And everywhere there is evidence that peace pays:

    – unemployment continues to fall – unemployment in Northern Ireland now stands at 5.9% – well below the EU average of 8.1%.

    – investment in manufacturing is up 75% over the last 5 years (compared to a UK average of 16%).

    – overseas investment is pouring in. Last November Fujitsu announced that they were setting up a £29.4 million engineering centre in Belfast. This will create 400 jobs for skilled engineers over the next 4 years.

    – new domestic investment has been just as impressive, with £564m invested in the last 4 financial years.

    There has never been a better time to do business in Northern Ireland. But you don’t need me to tell you that we cannot rest on our laurels.

    The world is changing. The coming years will bring advances that our minds cannot even conceive of today. They will bring new political alignments in Europe and further afield.

    But these rich promises come with a warning: as the globe shrinks, as the communications revolution permeates even the remotest areas, we will have to fight harder not to be left behind.

    Because business is changing.

    E-commerce and e-business are radically changing the nature of individual businesses and indeed entire economies around the world.

    Northern Ireland has made a good start. It is at the leading edge of the design and development of communications hardware and software for a worldwide market.

    There is an advanced and reliable telecommunications network that ensures fast Internet access. An environment that encourages and rewards innovation through support for research and development in knowledge-led areas.

    And the educational infrastructure is in place: university research centres of excellence, working alongside industry. A supply of quality IT and electronics graduates, post-graduates and experienced personnel. And there is already a significant cluster of internationally successful IT companies.

    But business will only get faster, competition fiercer. And Northern Ireland simply cannot afford to be left behind.

    Thousands of new jobs could be created in Northern Ireland over the next five years and hundreds of thousands of existing jobs sustained if we immediately grasp the exciting opportunities presented by the Information Age.

    It presents us with a simple choice: we can do what we’ve always done and lose out. Or we can transform the economic landscape, with the simple tool of human intelligence.

    Education is the single most important weapon in our fight to promote innovation, excellence and inclusion.

    In this new world it will be knowledge that divides the haves and the have-nots. So, above all else, we must equip our younger generations to lead the line in technological advances.

    We must build a society, a political culture and the sort of progressive, innovative economy that makes young people want to stay here in Northern Ireland.

    For too long we have had a political culture of ‘name and blame’ rather than one that seeks collective solutions.

    For too long, too many young people have felt that their talents are wasted here, that their lives are less than they might be elsewhere. They are the forgotten casualties of past conflict.

    For too long the images that have gone round the world associated with Northern Ireland have been those of conflict and there are still those like the bombers who placed the device outside the BBC in London who are determined to condemn Northern Ireland in the eyes of the world. Every television bulletin that carried those pictures was one less potential job for Northern Ireland.

    That is the perception that we must reverse. That is why we all – Governments, political parties and people – must accept our responsibilities as well as our rights under the Good Friday Agreement.

    Opportunity for all, matched by responsibility from all.

    That is our duty to the next generation.

    The political progress of recent years has helped to stem that haemorrhage. But we must do more: we must attract the Northern Ireland diaspora back from Silicon Valley and from the Boston corridor.

    We must build centres of excellence of our own.

    Northern Ireland has a talented, motivated, educated young population. They are crying out for the chance to fulfil their potential where their homes are and where their families live.

    Already that outward migration has been reversed. For the first time in our history, more people are streaming back than are leaving our shores. But I want to turn that stream into a tide.

    That should be our promise to the next generation.

    They – and the world – will not understand if we choose to cripple ourselves in parochial disputes, to channel our potential into destruction, not creativity.

    We will only survive if we command respect, not inspire sympathy.

    The last century in Ireland was one of almost continual political conflict. A century of devastating, futile violence. Of wasted lives.

    This must be a Century of opportunities seized, not squandered.

    Tonight I can tell you: this Government will not shy away from change – social, political or economic. In partnership with business we can take this new world by the scruff of the neck. We can shape it and make it work for us.

    And we can look our younger generation in the eye and say: there need never be refugees from Northern Ireland again.

  • James Purnell – 2001 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    jamespurnell

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by James Purnell in the House of Commons on 17th July 2001.

    I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Rosindell). A couple of my hon. Friends have mistaken me for him in the Corridors, but I can tell that we shall probably not agree on a huge amount over the next few years. However, I pay tribute to him on his maiden speech for his humour, his conviction in his views and his obvious pride in his birth place and the town that he represents. I am sure that hon. Members will join me in wishing him the best for a successful parliamentary career.

    I am extremely grateful to you, Sir Alan, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this debate on Europe. I should like to start by saying a few thank yous: first, to members of the Stalybridge and Hyde Labour party for selecting me as their candidate, and, secondly, to the voters of Stalybridge and Hyde for returning me to Parliament; but most of all, on behalf of both of those groups, I thank Tom Pendry for his service to the constituency over 30 years.

    It is common and traditional for Members in my position to pay tribute to their predecessors as good constituency MPs, but I doubt that many have had part of their constituency named after their predecessor. Tom Pendry square in Stalybridge will stand as a reminder of the exceptional work that he did for his constituents, who are now my constituents, and in particular of the leading role that he played in attracting £30 million of investment to the town to bring it back to life.

    Members on both sides of the House will remember Tom not just for his humour and love of the good life but for his time as a Whip and as an Under-Secretary of State in the Northern Ireland Office. They will remember him for his dedication to issues associated with sport and tourism and for his participation in debates in the House, but in Stalybridge and Hyde, Tom will be remembered as a friend, an ally and a fighter.

    Members will also remember that before coming to the House Tom was the colonial boxing champion, so, at least until the last general election campaign, he could lay claim to having the most famous right hook in the Chamber. Now that that title has passed on, I must report that Tom has also been overshadowed locally by Ricky Hatton from my constituency, who last week successfully defended his light-welterweight world title for the first time. I am sure that the House will join me in congratulating him and in passing on our best wishes to Tom for an active and successful future.

    Other than Tom, Stalybridge and Hyde is probably best remembered politically as the venue for Hugh Gaitskell’s speech immediately after the 1952 Labour party conference at which Herbert Morrison and Hugh Dalton were voted off the national executive. Last weekend, I was speaking to Councillor Jim Wainwright, who picked Gaitskell up from the station that day. He told me that on the way to the conference he asked Gaitskell what he was going to speak about. Gaitskell replied that he was going to launch a counter-attack against the Bevanites and, in effect, accuse up to a sixth of them of being communist fellow travellers.

    Councillor Wainwright stopped the car, turned to Gaitskell and told him in language that I could not possibly repeat in the House that he might as well get straight back on the train and go back to Leeds. Apparently the only way that Gaitskell could persuade Councillor Wainwright to drive on was by saying that he had already released his remarks to the press, so he might as well go ahead and make them. I am afraid that spin was alive even then.

    I hope that I shall receive a milder reception this afternoon than Gaitskell received that day. In his diaries, he speaks of the speech being, for him, “unusually violent”. He adds: At the time, most of my friends were horrified. They thought I would lose a great deal of support. Most of the Labour party hated it, and hundreds of resolutions were sent in criticising him.

    I hope also that my party will remember the lessons of those events. It is vital that in our second term we find a way to allow debate, discussion and even criticism within our party. However, there should be no place in our party for talk of counter-insurrections or coups; nor should we ever forget the importance of the unity of purpose that got us where we are today.

    Apparently, after making his speech Gaitskell offered to return to my constituency later to make amends. The offer was politely refused, but if he were to return today he would barely recognise Stalybridge and Hyde. At the peak, there were more than 50 mills in my constituency; today, there are only two. More than a third of the population worked in those mills; today, barely a handful do. Most of the rest of the work force were employed in manufacturing in famous factories throughout the north-west; today, almost all of those factories have gone. The last to go was Gallagher’s, which closed in 1997; I think that more than a 1,000 jobs were lost in the chase for Government subsidies in Northern Ireland.

    My constituency has known hard times and unemployment, but one thing that Gaitskell would find has not changed since his day is the people of Stalybridge and Hyde. They continue to pride themselves on being blunt, straightforward even; and they pride themselves on their self-reliance and hard work. The people of Stalybridge and Hyde, Dukinfield, Mossley and Longdendale refused to lie down and suffer the closures. They were determined to fight back, community by community, village by village, street by street, family by family, to overcome the closures and to attract new companies and jobs. I am delighted to be able to say that they succeeded. Stalybridge and Hyde are now thriving towns. At barely 3 per cent., the unemployment rate is less than the national average. Firms in my constituency export chemicals, plastics and industrial machinery all over the world. I am extremely proud of the fact that my constituency has one of the highest rates of manufacturing employment in the north-west.

    If there is one image I should like to leave hon. Members with this afternoon, it is not of our beautiful countryside, although I believe that Werneth Low, the Longdendale valley and the hills around Mossley rival anywhere in the country; it is the people of Stalybridge and Hyde that I want the House to remember. Jay McLeod, a vicar in Micklehurst, is breathing new life into his community and using basketball to give young people an alternative to crime. The teachers in the sure start project in Hattersley are working to give the children of that neglected council estate at least the chance of an equal start in life. Barry Cooke, the retiring head teacher of Hyde technology school, showed by turning that school around that no matter the deprivation facing the local community, it is still possible to have high expectations of every child and match the results achieved in the rest of the country.

    That is why I am so proud to represent Stalybridge and Hyde. The people of my constituency have shown that the best way to respond to change is not to suffer it, nor to resist it, but to welcome it and be in its vanguard so that we can shape it to our ends. We believe that every individual should have the chance to fulfil himself, but people can do so only through an active and enabling state. Those are the people for whom I will fight in my time in Parliament. I will fight for better public services and higher pay. Most of all, I will fight, fight and fight again so that Stalybridge and Hyde is given its fair share of resources, not out of pity or because of the problems we face but as a reward for our role as pioneers of change in the vanguard of Government policy.

    I am especially pleased to speak in today’s debate on Europe. The most famous of Gaitskell’s other speeches was the last he made before his tragically early death. At the Labour party conference he spoke of his fear that going into Europe would mean the end of 1,000 years of history. I can tell from this afternoon’s debate that that view still has some supporters among Opposition Members, but during my time here I want to argue that it has been conclusively disproved. To people of my generation, the idea that Britain’s interests are fundamentally opposed to Europe’s is fanciful. The idea that Germany and France should be considered our enemies strikes them as beyond belief.

    I am not unlike many members of my generation in having spent a lot of my life in Europe. When I was two, I moved with my parents to France, where I went to school. As the cliché goes, some of my best friends are French. That has never made me any less patriotic or less proud to be British, but it has made be proud to be European. I am proud that we have lived in peace on this continent for nearly 60 years. and proud that, in the treaty that we are debating, we have the opportunity to let in the states of eastern Europe and lift the iron curtain that descended on our continent after the second world war. Most of all, I am proud that on this continent we have the opportunity to build a society that can stand as an alternative role model to American capitalism, an alternative voice in diplomatic debates and an alternative source of power.

    I remember going to Berlin the week that the wall came down. I have one burning memory from that trip of going to a church in east Berlin, which had been a centre of reform and resistance to the East German Government. I walked into the church where, all over the walls, people had pinned up bits of paper—poems, essays and letters—about their hopes for their new country. They were clear that they wanted to be free of authoritarian rule, but they were crystal clear that the acceptance of markets did not mean the acceptance of squalid public services, environmental damage and alienated communities. That is the challenge to which my generation must respond. We must live up to the hopes and aspirations expressed in that church, and build a Europe that is as dedicated to equality as it is to efficiency; a Europe that tries to build competitive markets, but also has successful public services and a fair welfare state to ensure that our prosperity is fairly distributed.

    Those are my politics. An activist in my constituency bet me that I would not use the word “socialist” tonight. Well, I just have, although personally I have never been afraid to call myself a socialist. Members who know what I was doing before I came to the House will probably not be surprised if I do not plan to incur the wrath of the Whips regularly. Having said that, I make no apology for tempering my discipline with a dose of idealism. I believe in a politics of hope, courage and opportunity. My Government have a historic chance to show that courage to transform our public services and our relationship with Europe. I thank the voters of Stalybridge and Hyde for giving me a chance to play a part along the way.

  • Vera Baird – 2001 Maiden Speech

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Vera Baird in the House of Commons on 9 July 2001.

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech to the House.

    We are debating a topic of considerable public interest. I say that in particular because the first parliamentary correspondence that I opened when I arrived here four weeks ago was a letter from the Redcar branch of Campaign Against Arms Trade bemoaning the failure to pass such a Bill in the previous Session and asking whether I would support its introduction.

    The second letter that I opened four weeks ago was from the Redcar branch of Campaign Against Arms Trade bemoaning the fact that no such Bill had been passed in the previous Session and asking whether I would support its introduction.

    The third letter that I opened as a new Member of Parliament was from the Redcar branch of Campaign Against Arms Trade. And so on. I replied to all 34 letters, saying that I would support the introduction of such a measure and that, furthermore, I would write to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to commend the Bill to her. So I sent the letters on to her. We are all very pleased to see the Bill, but I think this is an unpromising first step towards the eventual publication of my collected parliamentary correspondence.

    My distinguished predecessor is said to be about to publish. As to that, I cannot say; but I do know that the right hon. Dr. Marjorie Mowlam—my distinguished predecessor—has earned, and will keep, what can only be described as the affectionate veneration of the people of Redcar. I suspect that she will also long retain the admiration of the House. In Redcar, she has helped countless people. On the doorstep, stories of Mo’s good deeds were legion—and she did them, famously, always remembering an individual’s name, and treating that individual as a friend.

    Mo did so much for the place. Legendary is the occasion on which the biggest retailer for our new town centre might have pulled out. Mo left her Whitehall office. Mo strode down the street. Mo entered the developers’ office and told them, in what I believe was a quite straightforward way, what they had better do. The supermarket, happily, was re-engaged.

    Mo’s well known warmth, her openness and her lack of pretension undoubtedly played a great part in all that she did, but, centrally, she was a great shadow Minister, a great Minister and a stateswoman, because she is a formidable intelligence. She will go on to a different career; I know that the whole House, together with the people of Redcar, will wish her good health, success and satisfaction in that new career.

    Redcar was fortunate in having Mo as its Member of Parliament, and now I am its lucky representative. The constituency’s western boundary is the River Tees, which, although it is an industrial artery for much of its old age, is pure enough at its mouth for seals to play around the lighthouse at the tip of the breakwater. There is usually a chain of massive ships anchored off, until the pilot cutter can come to guide them through the narrow channel into Teesmouth, the second busiest port in the United Kingdom.

    I pause to indicate what a debt of gratitude hon. Members and the public owe to Customs officers who serve at Teesport, for it was they who, on 10 April 1990, detained eight large steel tubes which they believed might require an export licence and which were, in fact, the components of the Iraqi supergun. There can be no doubt that, but for their vigilance, serious military consequences could have followed. I believe that those diligent officers—who, in many senses, have brought about this Bill—will welcome its introduction.

    A mile from the estuary where the officers work, down a duney coast, is the seaside town of Redcar itself, set on miles of golden sand. Fish and chips, amusements, buckets and spades and bracing walks along the esplanade summarise its principal attractions. Until 1872, the beach was used for horse racing; then they built our famous Redcar race course. It is in the middle of the town, and race days fill the streets with a carnival atmosphere.

    Four miles away is Marske, an ancient fishing village, now a pleasant residential area. Inland lies the leafy Domesday book village of Kirkleatham, with its newly renovated Sir William Turner almshouses. Inland, also, is Dormanstown, built in 1917 as a garden city for the steelworkers of Dorman Long. It is green and it is spacious, but it now suffers from the inner-urban deprivation that is all too often the concomitant of a damaged industrial base, and to which I must later return.

    Within a tiny distance of pretty Kirkleatham lies, rather less prettily, the Wilton International chemical site. It is a major manufacturing location for petrochemicals, polymers and fibre intermediaries, and is one of three complexes on Teesside that, together, make up the United Kingdom’s largest cluster of chemical manufacturers. Currently, they directly employ 11,000 people; indirectly they employ 25,000 more; and they contribute an annual cash turnover that sustains many more thousands of jobs.

    There is one matter about the complex that I hope to pursue with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—namely, that it is imperative to our Teesside economy that she support as actively as possible proposed new investment in the complex. That is particularly so since the complex is in cluster formation, with plant linked with plant, and some components of some chains are now approaching the end of their viable life.

    The Tees has a proud history of shipbuilding and repair. In April, however, Cammell Laird went into receivership. The next day, 110 workers at the South Bank yard in my constituency were told, “Pack up and go.” The yard, which used to be called Smiths dock, is a byword in the north-east for the highest skills and craftsmanship. It was a shattering blow, dealt in an unacceptable manner. The council, regional agencies and I are doing everything that we can to support the efforts of a respected local business man to restart the yard, to run it on its own as a viable local enterprise.

    Between Redcar and the river is the mighty Cones Teesside steelworks. In the same week in April as the shipyard went down, the closure of the Lackenby coil plate mill was confirmed. In all, 1,100 jobs are to be lost in a work force who have improved productivity year after year. They, too, were treated with scandalous disregard. Both of those body blows to the traditions, morale and economy of my constituency have made it plain to me that it is unacceptable that such restructuring and cutting should be lawful without any reference to loyal employees. Those of my constituents who have suffered thus join me in giving a strong welcome to the directive on information and consultation rights for employees.

    Travelling west in the constituency, one comes to Eston, at the foot of the Eston hills, where the iron ore that gave Teesside that industry was found. The first blast furnace was built in 1851, after which the area produced one third of the country’s output, with nearby South Bank and Grangetown two of its proud industrial producers.

    Now, Grangetown has a 14.6 per cent. unemployment rate, which is about four and a half times the national average. With South Bank, it suffers according to every index from critical social deprivation. I need not list its characteristics, as they are all too familiar to hon. Members whose regional constituencies were, like mine, neglected to the point of abandonment by the previous, Conservative, Government. Those hard-hit communities house what that Government called an underclass, but what I see, and what I believe the Government recognise, are families who want nothing more than to work, earn a living, educate their children and live in dignity and safety.

    Although the figures all remain high, critical ones such as youth unemployment, nursery provision and five A to C GCSE scores in schools are much improved in the past three years. Such communities welcome the Government’s certainty that regional economies must be made to flourish if the national economy as a whole is to grow still stronger. We applaud the Government’s resolution to apply substantial regeneration resources on a regional basis to poor areas such as these.

    The constituency could therefore be described as going from Redcar rock to many a struggling industrial hard place. The Redcar people are positive, however. That can be seen by the fact that, despite a heavy industrial culture, which usually reinforces traditional polarised gender roles, they have elected two successive women Members of Parliament. I do not know what comment to make about the fact that they have now elected their first lawyer, but I do know a lot of jokes about lawyers.

    My two roles merge when I welcome the Bill to encourage women further into democratic life. It is a far from straightforward legislative drafting task, and one that I urge be carried out in time to legislate this Session. Local authority elections for, among others, Redcar and Cleveland council, are but a short time away. We intend, in our new party women’s forum, to set up a system of prospective councillor candidates, so that those who are selected to stand can get involved early in their wards’ affairs. It is essential, if we are to build on the confidence that my electors have shown in women, quickly to have available to us weapons to use against any reactionary backlash.

    As a criminal lawyer, I am interested in issues of crime control, access to justice, the courts and criminal sentencing. Sadly, the communities that I have described in my constituency have high crime rates and seemingly intractable drugs problems. This morning’s bad news was that knife crime has soared on Teesside. In the past six months, there were 62 stabbings, three of them murders, one of which was in Grangetown.

    The police see the problem as drugs related, with dealers mainly arming themselves in self-defence in this dangerous world. In that context, I welcome the Home Secretary’s weekend announcement that he will hold an open-minded inquiry into the possibility of legalizing cannabis. Unless it proves to be a gateway to hard drugs, it is an area of crime on which I suspect that police have to spend an amount of time disproportionate to its social mischief, leaving them less time for graver criminal matters.

    I further welcome many of the proposals in “Making Punishment Work”, the report on sentencing by Mr. Halliday, delivered last week—especially its emphasis on extended periods of post-prison supervision in the community for violent offenders, and its revelation that the social exclusion unit is already working with the Home Office on ways of cutting ex-prisoners’ reoffending rates by boosting employment and lowering homelessness: joined-up government of the very best kind.

    Our phrase, “A lot done, a lot still to do,” applies to crime. I resort again to my dual role as a woman representative and a lawyer in mentioning that I hope to ask Ministers to examine again the question of rape and the use of women’s previous sexual history in trials; to reassess the criminal defences to murder, which ill serve women victims of domestic violence who finally kill their batterers; and to implement straight away the gender impact assessment scheme for criminal justice measures, which was set up at the Home Office when my right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio was Minister of State there, but which is not yet in operation.

    I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on her appointment to high office, and seriously return to where I facetiously started in complementing her on the coincidence of her judgment with that of many of my constituents in the wisdom of the measure that she has introduced today.

  • Peter Hain – 2001 Speech at the Africa Educational Trust

    Below is the text of the speech made by Peter Hain, the then Foreign Office Minister, to the Africa Educational Trust on 23rd January 2001 in London.

    It is a great honour for me to be delivering this speech this evening in memory of the Reverend Michael Scott. He was a great inspiration to me and many others who campaigned against the evils of apartheid. He left an indelible mark in southern Africa, particularly in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

    Education is vital to the British Government, here and in Africa: education for all not just an elite few. And I am therefore a great admirer of the Africa Educational Trust, which for 40 years has helped educate young Africans who have escaped from oppression and conflict. A galaxy of stars have returned home to play major roles in the transformation to majority rule in southern Africa. Many of the southern African politicians, officials, teachers and businessmen I meet have benefited in some way from your work.

    I was born in Nairobi. I am a son of Africa. As an African born British Minister for Africa, I have a personal commitment to the African continent. I want to help build a genuine partnership between the continent of my birth and my adopted homeland. The future of the United Kingdom is inexorably linked to the future of Africa. We have much in common. Britain cannot afford to ignore the plight of our African brothers and sisters.

    Our policy is straightforward. We back success in Africa. We are work in partnership with Africans to overcome past failures: African and western. We support Africans who stand up for democracy. We help those who want economic reform. And we encourage and support those who strive for peace.

    THE YEAR 2000 IN AFRICA

    On the eve of the new millennium, there was an air of optimism. Much was made about the 21st century being Africa’s century. The future looked bright. Africa had finally broken free from the shackles of colonialism. From the divisive politics of the Cold War. It was ready to decide its own future. Talk was of an ‘African Renaissance’.

    But, if we are to believe national and international media, the year 2000 was a disaster for Africa. Afro?pessimism ruled supreme. Commentators called Africa ‘the hopeless continent’, riven by conflict, bad leadership and economic failure. Journalists queued up in their attempts to put Africa down. And in doing so, one could almost sense an air of relief. Why? Because African failure lets the international community off the hook. If Africa is ‘hopeless’, then there is no point in even trying to help. With a shrug of the shoulders, attention can turn away.

    Can we blame the Afro-pessimists? At times, last year tested even my faith in Africa’s future. Pictures of Ethiopian and Eritrean armies slaughtering each other across barren and inconsequential land in scenes reminiscent of 1914 Europe. Brutal conflict in Sierra Leone, caused by rebels backed by a neighbouring state and destabilising the region. Seemingly never-ending conflicts in the DRC and Angola fuelled and sustained by the illegal trade in diamonds. Civil war in Burundi. Successive coups and counter coups in Cote d’Ivoire. And government-motivated political intimidation and violence in Zimbabwe.

    And even where Governments were trying to make positive changes, disaster struck. Devastating floods in Mozambique. Drought in Kenya. Forest fires in South Africa all set back development efforts. The collapse in cocoa and gold prices and the rise of oil prices undermined Ghanaian economic success. The terrifying plague of AIDS continued to engulf and ravage the continent. And malaria kept killing thousands of Africans.

    So, it is easy to see why Afro?pessimism dominated the headlines. In the words of President Mbeki, what happens in one part of Africa affects the continent’s image as a whole. Unfair, but it is a fact.

    And yet, as so often, the headlines betrayed the superficiality of journalism. I travelled extensively in Africa throughout last year. During my travels and my many discussions with Africans and Africa watchers, I picked up a common theme. Yes, Africa does face enormous challenges in this new era of globalisation. But a new shared vision of Africa’s future is emerging. There is a growing consensus among African leaders that they must implement urgent economic, political and governance reforms. Leaders are defining more clearly the resource needs, and development priorities required to meet these challenges. A new generation of African leaders is coming to power. Democracy and political participation are growing. A new generation of African entrepreneurs is emerging.

    The UN Millennium Assembly in September 2000 was a watershed for Africa. A succession of African leaders came to the podium and spoke about what they, not the rest of the world, but they needed to do to set Africa on the road to recovery and growth. And in response, Tony Blair led the way for the developed world. Let me remind you of a little of what he said. ‘…we need a new partnership for Africa, in which Africans lead but the rest of the world is committed; where all the problems are dealt with not separately but together in a coherent and unified plan. Britain stands ready to play our part with the rest of the world and the leaders of Africa in formulating such a plan.’ This is the cornerstone of our policy. We want to see a step change in the way that Africa and developed countries engage with each other. The future involves a modern, forward looking relationship, based on equality, respect, shared convictions, mutual interest and mutual obligations.

    The OAU itself has recognised that the time is right for Africa to develop its own development strategy: entitled the ‘Millennium Africa Programme’. The Presidents of South Africa, Nigeria and Algeria have been mandated to develop it. We are working hard with these countries, across Whitehall and with the private and NGO sectors to ensure that we are ready to respond promptly, positively and productively to this African led strategy.

    I have been saying since I began this job that democracy in Africa is growing rapidly. Last year we saw further evidence of this in Senegal, Tanzania, Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Yes there well publicised problems in Zimbabwe. But elections were held. And the world quickly learned of the terrible events surrounding them. Further proof that that African governments are becoming increasingly accountable. And Zimbabwe now has a functioning opposition party represented in Parliament. Earlier this month we saw the first peaceful, democratic change of government and President in Ghana. Throughout Africa, civil society has developed a voice. And that voice is increasingly being heard, loud and clear. In 1973, only three African Heads of State were democratically elected. Last year the figure was 32 – 10 times greater.

    The decision by the OAU Summit in Lome in July to exclude the Presidents of Cote d’Ivoire and the Comoros sent a clear message of rejection of coup d’etats and military juntas. Africa’s leaders made clear that only leaders who come to power through accountable and transparent means would be welcome at their table. I believe this brave decision and other efforts by African leaders played some part in the removal of the military dictator General Guei by the people of Cote d’Ivoire.

    The refrain of African solutions to African problems has been ringing for some years now. Too often, it has been used as an excuse for the rest of the world to abdicate responsibility for helping to resolve Africa’s disputes. We demonstrated through our efforts in Sierra Leone last year that we take seriously our responsibility as members of the UN Security Council and wider UN family. But we also saw renewed African efforts at conflict resolution. President Bouteflika of Algeria worked tirelessly to bring the warring parties in Ethiopia and Eritrea together. He personally, and the OAU as an organisation deserve great credit for the fact that Ethiopia and Eritrea have signed a peace deal and UN peacekeepers have been deployed. Nelson Mandela, even in retirement continues to work for peace. His efforts in Burundi following on from the work of the late Julius Nyerere – who gave this lecture in 1997 – appear to be bearing fruit. Largely through the efforts of President Guelleh of Djibouti, we are now seeing early positive signs that the largely forgotten tragedy of Somalia could be coming to an end. After more than 10 years of civil war and a failed state, reconciliation will not prove easy. But there is now hope.

    So, I would describe the year 2000 as the year of African peacemaking. Africa’s leaders demonstrated that when given appropriate international support, they can resolve African disputes. Of course, problems remain. Africa’s ‘First World War’ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drags on with unmitigated humanitarian suffering. Of course, I deplore the use of violence and I regret the assassination of President Kabila. But I hope that creation of a new government in Kinshasa will deliver fresh impetus for peace. But importantly, no new African conflicts erupted in 2000. This is a new trend on which we must build.

    THE CHALLENGES FOR AFRICA

    But despite these positive signals, Africa still faces enormous challenges. Africa is poorer now than 30 years ago. Over 250 million, that is 40 per cent of the population of sub Saharan Africa live on less than one dollar a day. Average output per head in Africa is now lower than it was 30 years ago. GDP per head in the EU is more than 45 times greater than in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa’s share of world trade has fallen sharply, and investment has declined. Average real economic growth is currently two per cent a year. But as population growth is also around two per cent a year, GDP per head is stagnant. If Africa is to meet the international target of halving poverty by 2015, GDP will need to grow by an average of seven per cent a year. If the terms of trade continue to deteriorate, conflict proliferates or if international development assistance continues to decline, this growth requirement will be even higher.

    At the dawn of the 21st century more than 250 million people in Africa do not have access to safe water. More than 200 million do not have access to health services. 533 million do not have access to electricity. Only 10 African countries have achieved Universal Primary Education. In most countries literacy rates have stagnated over the past twenty years.

    So, while I recognise the early signs of positive change, I still have profound fears for Africa’s future. The list seems endless: HIV/AIDS, poor governance, conflict affecting half the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, economic marginalisation, deteriorating infrastructure, low levels of saving, capital flight and human migration, the continuing debt burden, deterioration of the terms of trade, declining incomes and worsening education. These all point to a continuing decline in economic and human development in Africa.

    The statistics I have seen on the impact of HIV/AIDS in sub Saharan Africa are horrific. Ten times as many people in Africa died of AIDS in 1999 as died in conflict. In some countries, a quarter of the adult population will die in the next six years. Skills will be lost. The time and energy of the healthy will be diverted from economic and agricultural production to caring for the victims of AIDS. But in despair, there is hope. The Governments of Senegal and Uganda have made great strides towards bringing the AIDS pandemic under control. There are also early signs of success in Tanzania and Zambia.

    But Malaria also offers a huge threat to Africa’s future. If it were possible to control malaria, this could translate into an additional 20 per cent growth in Africa over a 15 year period.

    New drugs are urgently needed to combat the increasing problem of drug resistance, as well as new vaccines to prevent HIV, TB and Malaria. But there is inadequate research for most of these rampant diseases and it is regarded as unprofitable for drugs companies to develop drugs and vaccines to prevent or treat them.

    The challenge is enormous, but we have examples of what can be done if there is a determination to make a difference. Polio was once a huge threat to Africa. But now Africa is well on the way towards eradicating it, even in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola. There are efforts underway to tackle the threat of communicable diseases. Across Whitehall we are working hard to assess what more we can do.

    If we are to halt Africa’s economic marginalisation and decline in the global economy, international investment and flight capital must return. But international business sentiment is increasingly negative about Africa’s prospects. As Africa missed the industrial revolution, it now risks missing the knowledge revolution. Investment rating services list Africa as the highest risk region in the world. But Africa has huge economic potential. It has great strength in natural resources, and potential for processing and manufacturing. There is a new generation of entrepreneurs emerging in a number of countries. In Uganda, following debt relief, there are early signs that flight capital is starting to return. We must build on this and help our businessmen and women to discover and invest in those areas of potential. We must educate potential investors to look beyond the negative headlines.

    For example, I mentioned earlier that only nine per cent of Africans outside South Africa have access to any form of electricity. That means over half a billion people are effectively cut off from the benefits of modern technology. And these numbers are growing as electrification fails to keep pace with population growth – and grid extension stalls due to high costs.

    For Africa to catch up with the rest of the world, it may need to focus upon free-standing technology rather than fixed networks which require massive and prohibitively costly investment across huge geographical areas. A combination of mobile telecommunications and solar and renewable power could enable Africa to make the necessary leap forward.

    Modern renewable energy – including solar, wind and micro hydro – could drastically improve communities’ livelihoods and quality of life: powering equipment, pumping clean water, cooling essential vaccines and providing light for remote schools. New public/private partnerships are beginning to take forward viable and profit making schemes.

    CONCLUSION

    I would like to end by answering a question I occasionally hear expressed: why does Africa matter to us? There are many reasons why Africa matters. Firstly we have a strong humanitarian imperative to end the misery of poverty. But there are also economic incentives. Africa is an essential provider of raw materials, from platinum to timber. There is huge potential for shared economic benefits from increased trade with over 700 million people in countries with valuable natural and human resources, and with whom we have many historical, cultural, family and business ties.

    If we do not work to stop it, conflict and violence within and between African countries could grow to epidemic proportions. It could spread beyond Africa, as people become refugees and economic migrants.

    Increasing levels of crime in Africa, particularly in the trafficking of drugs, damage lives and societies here and in other developed countries as well as in Africa. The continuing spread of disease, including but not only HIV/AIDS, increases the risks to the health of people throughout the world. Three quarters of all new British heterosexual HIV/AIDS victims last year were infected whilst travelling in Africa. The global environment is threatened by continuing environmental degradation, including deforestation, global warming, erosion of bio-diversity, and air and water pollution from environmentally unfriendly industrial and other production processes.

    For all these reasons, the world shares a keen interest in halting the decline of social and economic conditions in Africa. Moreover, as the demonstrations in Seattle, Prague and Nice have shown, there will be increasing political tension if poor countries are left behind as the rest of the world moves ahead with globalisation. These are powerful self-interest reasons for action. But they merely supplement the most important motive: the human cost in Africa of lives lost and unfulfilled potential stands as an indictment against our common humanity. We have an opportunity to build a better future for Africa’s children; we must not miss it.

  • George Osborne – 2001 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

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    Below is the text of the maiden speech made in the House of Commons by George Osborne on 3rd July 2001.

    I congratulate my hon. Friends on their maiden speeches. They have a great advantage over me: they have completed this ordeal, which is still ahead of me.

    I should like to begin by paying tribute to my predecessor, Mr. Martin Bell. He was the first Independent Member elected to the House for 50 years. He tells the story of how, shortly after his election, he was invited to tea by Barbara Castle. Over tea and biscuits in the House of Lords, she summed up her advice, drawn from her 60-year career in politics. She said to him, “Young man”—which, he confesses, completely won him over—”whatever else you do, you must never be afraid to stand alone.” Of all people, this former war reporter probably needed that advice the least.

    Martin Bell had stood alone courageously in the Balkans when he reported the wars in that region in all their brutality. In the House, too, he stood alone. He stood alone when he forced the Government to find time to ratify the Ottawa convention on land mines. He stood alone when he controversially spoke out against the air strikes against Iraq. He also stood alone when he campaigned to overturn 50 years of Whitehall stonewalling on the question of far east prisoners of war.

    Be it Serbia, NATO or the Ministry of Defence, Martin Bell took on powerful opponents and won. However, two opponents in the end defeated him. The first, I am happy to say, was my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) who defeated him in the general election. The second was the Speaker’s Chair, because he campaigned long and hard for the Cross Benches below the Bar of the House to be recognised as part of the Chamber, but he failed miserably. That is a good lesson to all new Members on the power of the Speaker’s Chair in such matters.

    Many people come to the House as idealists and leave it as cynics. I have got to know Martin Bell quite well in the past couple of years, and it strikes me that he came to the House as a cynic and left as an idealist. The man in the white suit will be as missed in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster as he will be by people on the streets of the Tatton constituency, whose interests he represented so well. I am greatly honoured to take his place in the House.

    The very name of the Cheshire constituency that I now represent is a clue to the fact that it is not a single community, but a collection of communities. Tatton is not a town or a village. In fact, no one lives in Tatton—or not any more. Tatton is a building. I believe that I am one of only two Members whose constituency is named after a building. If hon. Members are trying to remember who the other one is, I shall put them out of their misery—it is the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper).

    Unlike the Brighton Pavilion, Tatton Park is the rather austere, imposing ancestral home of the Lords Egerton, who are now deceased. It is now the National Trust’s most visited property, and home to many popular exhibitions and concerts in my constituency. On Tatton Park’s doorstep is the beautiful and historic market town of Knutsford. Once a major stop for travellers on the road to Manchester, it has long been replaced in that function by the less historic and frankly less beautiful M6 Knutsford service station. Thankfully, the coaching inns on King street remain, and more leisurely tourists still visit in large numbers.

    Knutsford got its name from the place where the Danish King, King Canute, forded the River Lily—hence Canute’s ford. I can report to the House that the majority of the residents in Knutsford, like me, take what could be called a Danish view of the Government’s plan to join the single currency. Knutsford may be steeped in history but it has its modern problems, such as the constant pressure of development and traffic and the fear of crime. I shall seek to overturn the recent decision of Home Office Ministers—the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is a former Home Office Minister—to deny us funding for closed circuit television. There is also the noise and pollution from Manchester airport’s second runway. One of my priorities will be to try to change the law to allow airports to fine planes that deviate unnecessarily from agreed flight routes and noise limits.

    Around Knutsford stretches the fertile Cheshire plain, in which lie the beautiful rural villages of Mobberley, Pickmere, Plumley, Allostock, Byley, Whitley, Comberbach and Lower Peover—I have left out half of them. Lower Peover is an idyllic village with a fantastic local pub called “The Bells of Peover”, in which General Eisenhower and General Patton once planned the D-day landings. These days drinkers plan who will buy the next round.

    All those villages have suffered from the collapse of rural services, the deep recession in agriculture and the disaster of foot and mouth disease, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) eloquently referred. Farmers in Crowley, who are now struggling with a recent outbreak, or employees at the Chelford market who have seen their jobs disappear, do not agree with the Prime Minister that we are on the home stretch in tackling the consequences of this disease. I shall do everything that I can to ensure that Cheshire’s rural communities get the support they need.

    On the western edge of the constituency are Barnton, Rudheath and Anderton—three suburbs of the old ICI salt town of Northwich—which have often been neglected in the politics of the constituency. I am determined that that will end. At the other end of the constituency lie the former cotton towns of Wilmslow and Handforth, and the famous village of Alderley Edge, which is known to locals for its infamous traffic problems. Together they make up a wonderful residential area that is also home to many successful companies, including the research laboratories of Astra Zeneca, where world-leading research is carried out into cancer and heart disease.

    Wilmslow is famous across Britain as the home of football players, “Coronation Street” stars and pop singers. However, the town’s most famous celebrity is known simply as Pete. He was an unfortunate man who was found garrotted, beaten and stabbed on Lindow common. Wilmslow is not a violent place, so that discovery came as a bit of a shock. The local police launched a murder investigation. Inquiries were made and suspects were interviewed, but even the excellent detective work of the Cheshire police could not solve this murder, for it turned out that Pete had been dead for 2,000 years, preserved in the peat bog that gave him his name. He now lives in the much safer surroundings of the British museum.

    Another famous Wilmslow resident was the code breaker and computer pioneer, Alan Turing. It is a sad irony that the man who did more than almost anyone else to defeat the Nazi tyranny by breaking the Enigma code was persecuted in Britain for his homosexuality, and committed suicide. It is a welcome sign of a more understanding age that a statue of Turing has just been unveiled in Manchester.

    Although much of the Tatton constituency is prosperous—not for nothing is it the place where Mr. Rolls met Sir Henry Royce—there are pockets of deprivation on the Longridge, Spath Lane and Colshaw Farm housing estates, and in many of the rural areas. I shall do everything that I can to help those communities.

    I am delighted to have been elected to represent such a tine constituency, but it deeply concerns me that so many fewer of my constituents chose to participate in the election. Our turnout, like that of many constituencies, fell by more than 10 per cent. Some people argue that that is nothing to worry about, as it is a sign of a contented population who are happy with the present state of affairs. I believe that that is a dangerous and mistaken understanding of what is happening out there in the country.

    My constituents are not content with the state of the national health service, the education system or the transport system. They are not happy to go on paying ever more taxes, or that their streets are not safe. Far from it—they are deeply angry about all those things, and they feel that we, their politicians, are not listening to them. The people of Cheshire feel remote from what is going on in Westminster. They see our debates and watch Ministers on television, but they do not hear much that relates to their daily lives. They feel even remoter from what is going on in the institutions of the European Union, whose financing we are discussing.

    New directives emerge from the bureaucratic ether, and no one bothers to explain to the people and the companies affected where they came from or why they are needed. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is spent on hugely wasteful EU projects, such as the aid budget or the common agricultural policy. Everyone throws up their hands and says, “We know it’s a waste of money, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

    The politicians of Europe, including our own British Government, proceed down the path of ever closer European integration, drawing up plans for European armies, European constitutions and European taxes. No one stops to ask the people of Europe whether this is actually the direction in which they want to travel. It is striking that the only two countries that have asked their peoples, in the last year, whether they are happy with the direction that Europe is taking have received a resounding no as an answer. But the reaction of European politicians to the results of the Irish and Danish referendums has been to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they did not happen.

    This Bill and the Bill that we shall debate tomorrow are supposed to pave the way for the enlargement of the European Union. No one is more passionate about enlargement than I am; no one is more anxious than I am to see the countries of central and eastern Europe brought in from the cold, and welcomed fully into the concert of democratic European nations. Let me declare an interest: I am part-Hungarian. My grandmother’s family fled to Britain from Budapest just after the war because they had lived through the devastation of the Nazi tyranny, and wanted to escape the tyranny of Soviet rule. In 1956, their house in London became a home for refugees from the Hungarian uprising.

    The lessons that I learn from my family’s past are these: one must not impose political systems on peoples who are unwilling to accept them; one should not allow a gap to open up between the governed and the governing; and one cannot afford to stop listening. The situations are of course very different, but the lessons are ones that we in Westminster, and those who are shaping the future of the European Union, would do well to remember.

    I thank the people of Tatton for sending me to this House.

  • William Hague – 2001 Conservative Councillors Association

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    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Leader of the Opposition, William Hague, at the Conservative Councillors Association conference on 24th March 2001 during the General Election campaign.

    It is always a great pleasure for me to be with so many friends and colleagues at the annual conference of the Conservative Councillors Association. Whenever I speak at your conference, I am reminded of the great tradition of public service and duty that exists throughout all sections of our party – locally and nationally. It is not borne of personal ambition or self-fulfilment, but of a desire to serve our districts, our communities and our nation. And looking around the hall today, I see that great Tory tradition of service on full display once again.

    The Conservative Councillors Association represents all that is best about the Conservative Party in local government, and in your Chairman Paul Hanningfield you could have no better representative for your views on the Board of the Party.

    At this conference, though, we begin again by thinking of those colleagues who are unable to be with us today because of the foot and mouth crisis that has engulfed the British countryside.

    As the record increases in the number of cases this week has shown, for farmers and for huge numbers of rural businesses and tourist attractions facing financial ruin, the end is far from in sight. In the last 10 days, I’ve met farmers in Devon desperate because the spread of the disease has not been halted. I’ve met hotel owners and tourist operators in the Lake District facing bankruptcy because emergency help has not arrived. Anyone who has spent any time in the countryside knows that this crisis is clearly not under control. In fact it is getting worse.

    We’ve supported the Government’s measures to halt the spread of the disease. But we have watched with increasing exasperation and anger as the Government has continually underestimated the scale of the crisis, has failed to act with anything like the necessary speed or vigour and has consistently shown itself to be behind the game.

    There is much more they could be doing and yet for some reason they refuse to do it.

    It’s time to get the army properly involved. They’ve got the manpower, they’ve got the machinery. They should be used to help clear the backlog of rotting carcasses. They army are used to moving things. They are used to acting quickly. It’s time to move them in. It’s common sense, so let’s get on with it.

    We should speed up the slaughter programme. The backlog is growing by thousands every day. We should be sending in the valuers with the slaughtermen so there’s no more delays.

    There are 80,000 dead animals lying in fields. Everyone acknowledges that burial is the most effective way of disposing of them. We should be putting pressure on the Environment Agency to find the right sites so we can get on with it.

    Rural businesses need immediate help. They’re faced with thousands of pound of expenses but with no income. What they need is a Government backed loan scheme, like the one we put forward four days ago. They can’t wait any longer so let’s get on with it.

    If all these things are going to happen we need the full weight and authority of government to drive them. When there is a war, there is a War Cabinet. Well this is a national crisis, and we need a Crisis Cabinet.

    The Prime Minister should set it up now. It’s not enough to involve just the agriculture, environment and tourism ministers. The Chancellor, the Home Secretary, the Defence Secretary, the Trade Secretary, the territorial ministers should all sit on it too. The Prime Minister should chair this Crisis Cabinet himself. And it should meet every day until they’re on top of this crisis.

    My message to the Government is: Get it together. Get a grip.

    And there’s another thing. In parts of the country severely affected by Foot and Mouth, fighting the disease must have priority over fighting elections.

    So Tony Blair should bring forward legislation now to take on the power to postpone some county elections should it become clear later that people cannot participat e fully and freely in them. The time to do that is fast running out.

    The foot and mouth crisis comes on top of all the other crippling blows that have hit the countryside like the worst agricultural depression for sixty years, the plunging farm incomes and the closure of rural services. While Labour can’t be blamed for the outbreak of foot and mouth they can be blamed for policies that threaten to destroy the liberty and livelihood of thousands of people.

    And it’s time it came to an end.

    So I’ll give you, and millions of people in rural Britain desperate for a change of Government, this assurance. The next Conservative Government will stand up for the interests of the British countryside, we will fight for the hard-pressed British farmers and we will do everything we can to defend a rural way of life that Labour have so brutally and systematically undermined.

    We will do these things because Conservatives believes in the countryside, because unlike Labour that has pitted town against country we are the party of One Nation. We will do it because we will govern for all the people. And we’ll do it by winning the next Election.

    Whatever happens, in a few weeks time many of you will be facing the electorate locally, while our party could once again be asking the British people to entrust us to form the government of our country.

    Let nobody be in any doubt. We are determined to win in the county council elections on 3 May, just as we are determined to win in any other elections that might take place on that day. And we can win together.

    I have no hesitation in saying we can win. We can win because we have in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet a team brimming with the talent, the policies and the drive to take on the governance of our country.

    We can win because of the reforms that together we have made to make our party the most open and democratic in British politics.

    We can win because of the hard work, the tireless dedication and the commitment of the people in this hall.

    We can win because of the efforts of people like you who through some of the most difficult times in our long history have been the backbone that has kept this party strong.

    We can win because of the way you have championed the Conservative cause on the doorsteps and in the council chambers, fighting for Conservative principles when those principles were under attack as never before.

    And we can win because week in, week out, you have been winning elections when all the pundits said that those elections couldn’t be won.

    It’s thanks to you that the Conservative Party now has nearly 2,500 more councillors than we did four years ago. It’s thanks to you that we control four times as many councils than we did four years ago. It’s thanks to you that we are the largest party of local government in district councils and county councils and after 3 May we’ll be larger still.

    It’s thanks to you that under Michael Ancram’s Chairmanship we are ready to fight the most disciplined, professional and effective campaign we have ever fought.

    Because it doesn’t matter when it comes. The Conservative Party can win the General Election, and make no mistake the Conservative Party is fighting tooth and nail to win the General Election.

    And I’ll give two more reasons why we can win. Tony Blair and New Labour.

    We could give no greater service to our country than to get rid of this sleaze ridden, crony stuffed, promise breaking, miserable excuse for a Government, led by a Prime Minister so consumed with his own self importance that he commissions memos entitled ‘Getting the Right Place in History’ and doesn’t even hide the fact that his only guiding purpose in politics is to be re-elected for a second term.

    Remember that day four years ago when Tony Blair walked into Downing Street. He told the country that things could only get better. He pledged that his would be a government that would only promise what it c ould deliver. He said he was offering the country a new kind of politics and a government that would be purer than pure.

    Yet four years on the hopes and aspirations of millions of people have been destroyed, and their trust has been betrayed.

    Four years on we know that for millions of people still waiting for their hospital operation, for better education, for more police, for improved transport and for lower taxes the only certainty under Labour is that things have got worse.

    Four years on, we know that all the promises, the pledges and Tony Blair’s vows have been broken by a Government that lives by cynicism, deception, distortion, manipulation and half-truth – a Government that is all spin and no delivery.

    Four years on we know that Tony Blair’s new kind of politics meant Formula One, favours for lobbyists, the home loans scandal, the Lord Chancellor’s dinners, the two resignations of Peter Mandelson, and everything to do with Geoffrey Robinson.

    Four years on we know that being purer than pure really meant allowing Robin Cook wilfully to mislead the House of Commons and get away with it and the scandal of allowing Keith Vaz to cling on to office when everyone knows that Tony Blair should have sacked him weeks ago.

    And after four years of failure, cushioned only by the strength of the economy that we Conservatives bequeathed him, Tony Blair now asks for four more years. You’ve got to hand it to him. He’s certainly got some nerve. He’s the first Prime Minister in history to ask for a second term of office so that he can begin to get round to delivering on all the promises he has broken in his first term.

    Well I’ve got news for Tony Blair. We are not going to sit back and let him inflict four more years of damage on the country we love. We are going to fight him every inch of the way and with every ounce of energy we’ve got.

    We all know what four more years of Labour would mean for Britain. And we are not afraid to spell it out.

    Four more years of stealth taxes, of fewer police, of more criminals released early to commit even more crimes, of more cancelled operations, of more crises in our schools, of more chaos on our roads and of even more expensive petrol.

    And yes, after four more years Britain railroaded into a European single currency, with the British pound gone forever and ever more of our precious rights to govern ourselves handed over to Brussels. The steady and certain march into a European superstate – on course.

    I make no apology for warning of the dangers of a second term of Labour. Just as I’m not going to be deterred by a self appointed, self opinionated liberal elite from speaking up for the common sense instincts of the British people.

    In New Labour’s Britain, there are certain subjects that we are not supposed to talk about. Talk about tax and they call you greedy. Talk about crime and they call you extreme. Talk about asylum and they call you racist. Talk about your country and they call you a xenophobe.

    Well I don’t believe that the British people are any of those things. They recognise that a decent society needs properly funded public services. But they don’t see why they should pay higher and higher taxes when they can’t see any improvement in those services.

    They are not reactionary. But they understand that, in order to tackle crime, we should be increasing police numbers not cutting them. And they can see that letting violent criminals out of prison early is likely to cause more crime.

    Our people are not intolerant. They recognise, as Conservatives have always recognised, that Britain must offer sanctuary to those fleeing from persecution. But they believe that Britain should be a safe haven and not a soft touch.

    Above all, our people are not xenophobes. They understand that the United Kingdom works internally as a partnership of nations, and externally as a partner in the international community. They know that we are a maritime, trading country, connected by our history and geography to other continents.

    And they also believe in democracy. They can see that if our interest rates, our exchange rates and even our tax rates were set in Frankfurt, then yet more of our rights would have been signed away.

    So Tony Blair and his ministers can sneer all they like. But the reality is they are not sneering at me. They are sneering at the British people, whose opinions they hold in contempt.

    That’s one of the differences between Tony Blair and me.

    I am not ashamed to speak for the people of our country who don’t feel they have a voice, the people who despair at the way in which common sense is brushed aside by the politically correct, the people who look on with anger as they see their country increasingly being taken from them by an arrogant and out of touch liberal elite.

    I am proud to speak up for the common sense instincts of the British people and that is what I will continue to do.

    But I know I don’t have anything to teach you about the nature of the Labour Party or their Liberal allies in government. After all you see how they behave at first hand every day in town halls the length and breadth of Britain.

    You see at first hand Labour and the Liberals who control seventeen out of the top twenty highest charging councils in England and Wales.

    You see how the Council Tax has been turned into the ultimate in stealth taxes, engineered by central government, but with councils rather than Gordon Brown having to face the anger of local residents as their bills soar.

    You see how the other stealth taxes imposed by Gordon Brown – like the higher fuel tax, landfill tax and the raid on pension funds – have helped make the Council Tax for a Band D property rise by an average of £212 since Labour came to power.

    You see the waste and mismanagement that causes Labour county and district councils charge £100 a year more on Band D properties than in areas where Conservatives are in control.

    You have seen at first hand the profligacy of Labour in establishing their costly and totally unnecessary extra tier of bureaucracy, Regional Development Agencies that they then pack with their own supporters.

    You have seen at first hand the high handed and arrogant Labour Government that is forcing councils to adopt Cabinets or directly elected Mayors whether they are wanted or not.

    You have seen at first hand Labour’s war against drivers as they press ahead with their crazy schemes for workplace parking taxes and road charges that will pile extra costs onto business and threaten to force businesses them to abandon the city centres.

    You see at first hand the extra red tape created by the introduction of Labour’s flawed schemes like Best Value.

    You see at first hand the lunatic political correctness in Labour controlled authorities like Birmingham that puts forward plans to abolish Christmas because it’s ‘offensive’ to minorities and replace it with a ‘Winterval’ or in Liberal controlled authorities like Colchester that tried to ban Punch and Judy because it ‘promotes domestic violence’.

    But why should any of this surprise us? Because the reality is Labour and the Liberals in the Council chamber are no different to their colleagues in the House of Commons. Wherever they are given the opportunity to govern – in Whitehall or your town hall – the song remains the same. Higher taxes and poorer services. All spin and no delivery.

    On indicator after indicator, Labour or Liberal councils provide a worse standard of service than do those that are Conservative run. They have dirtier streets, poorer street lighting, pay less of their bills on time, have more empty council housing, collect less of their rent and council tax and have worse schools exam results. They are the Labour and Liberal rotten boroughs, and they are a national disgrace.

    People don’t want to see more of their hard-earned money taken away in ta x, for it then to be frittered away on Labour’s pet projects and crazy schemes. They pay their tax in order to get a well run, efficient council that concentrates on delivering the services it is supposed to deliver and delivers them well. That is what they get when they vote for Conservative councils. Lower taxes and better quality services.

    Since becoming leader of the Party it has been one of my key objectives to re-assert the Conservative commitment to local government. That’s why, as one of the reforms to our Party, I established the Conservative Councillors Association and ensured that the Chairman should have a place on the Party’s Board.

    I did this because I believe in local government. I value local government. And I want to see local government thrive.

    I want to see open, transparent and accountable local democracy with the power of the central state rolled back. I want to decentralise power away from Whitehall and back to local communities and neighbourhoods. I want to end the nanny state culture of interference and meddling that has run amok under this Government and put decision making back into the hands of people who best understand local concerns. I want to do this because it makes common sense. And I want to do it because unlike Labour, whose idea of local government seems to be a never ending series of circulars and diktats, I trust the people.

    It’s because I trust the people that the next Conservative Government will make every school a free schools with the power to set their own admissions policies, and impose their own discipline. It’s common sense that when teachers and parents are put in charge, standards will rise. And Conservatives will deliver common sense in education.

    It’s because I trust the people that the next Conservative Government will create free councils with responsible and efficient councils being subject to less Government interference and given more financial freedom. It’s common sense that well run councils shouldn’t be held back because of a minority of them that are badly run. And Conservatives will deliver common sense in local government.

    The next Conservative Government will deliver common sense by giving councils discretion over local development by abolishing Labour’s regional and national housebuilding targets.

    We will deliver common sense by giving councils new powers to promote economic development and regeneration and by abolishing Labour’s Regional Development Agencies and their Brussels offices too.

    We will deliver common sense by stopping the introduction of directly-elected regional assemblies and by ending Labour’s plans to abolish England’s county councils.

    We will deliver common sense by giving councils the powers to choose whether they keep the committee system and ending Labour’s policy of forcing councils to adopt a Cabinet or directly elected mayor.

    We will deliver common sense by freeing councils from mountains of red tape and by abolishing in its current form the unpopular and bureaucratic Best Value regime.

    We will deliver common sense by ensuring that councils are more accountable to the electorate for the money they spend and by ending Council Tax capping.

    And we will deliver common sense by ending the constant upheavals and reforms that have taken place in local government and by providing a period of stability for councils to get on with the job they’re supposed to be doing.

    So you have my assurance. Under the next Conservative Government, there will be no more costly and disruptive reorganisations of local government.

    That is our approach. Common sense Conservatism, based on trusting the people. It’s an approach that can take us to victory in the local elections in May. And it’s the approach that can take us to victory at the General Election too.

    That is what I will be offering as we set out our programme for the General Election campaign. It will be a programme that will go further than any that has gone before to give people greater freedom and responsibility for their lives.

    It will be nothing less than the most radical, exciting and imaginative Conservative programme for a generation, giving back to people greater freedom and responsibility for their everyday lives. It will reflect the common sense instincts of the mainstream majority of the British people. And it will offer a decisive shift away from the politics of the past four years.

    It will reflect the common sense instincts of the mainstream majority on tax. People know that Governments cannot simply go on spending more than the nation can afford. They understand it because that’s how they run their own budgets. But while that seems like common sense to you and me, it clearly isn’t to Gordon Brown.

    Not content with piling on his stealth taxes, the Chancellor has set a course for public spending that will eventually have to be paid for by even higher taxes. Gordon Brown claims that his policies are prudent. I say they are simply irresponsible.

    The people of this country have been overtaxed for far too long and the time has come to give them back more of their own money. That is what the next Conservative Government will do. Unlike Labour, who tax more and deliver less, we will spend only what the nation can afford, and tax no more than we need.

    All of this is common sense, and Conservatives will deliver common sense.

    We will reflect the common sense instincts of the people on crime too by going to war against the criminal like never before. The British people aren’t stupid. They see the connection between falling police numbers, morale at record lows and rises in violent crime. They know that there’s something fundamentally wrong when thousands of serious criminals are let out of prison under Labour’s special early release scheme, only to offend again. They know that crime will never be defeated when our criminal justice system often has more to say about the rights of the criminal rather than the rights of the victim.

    So the next Conservative Government will end Labour’s special early release scheme for serious criminals.

    We will restore the cuts in police numbers to at least the levels they were at when we left office, and we will sweep aside the bureaucracy and political correctness that has so damaged police morale.

    We will review the criminal justice system to ensure that the law is on the side of the victim, and not the criminal.

    And we will make sure that when a sentence is handed down in court, then that is the actual sentence that is served in prison.

    All of these things are common sense. And Conservatives will deliver common sense on crime.

    It will reflect the common sense instincts of the British people on public services who sick and tired of listening to Labour’s spin while the health service deteriorates, teachers shortages get worse and Britain grinds to a standstill.

    The next Conservative Government will set our public servants free. We will establish free schools. We will end Labour’s clinically distorting waiting list initiative, and let doctors and nurses get on with the job of treating patients according to their clinical needs. And we will stop Labour’s policy of taxing drivers off the road without providing an alternative. We will deliver common sense on public services.

    But we won’t be able to do any of these things unless we maintain our ability to govern ourselves. That is why, at the coming election, we will reflect the common sense instincts of the British who want to be in Europe, not run by Europe and who want to keep the pound.

    A few weeks ago Tony Blair was finally forced to admit that if Labour win he will set about scrapping the Pound within two years.

    So be in no doubt. The next General Election will be the final battle for the pound. A vote for Labour or the Liberals is a vote to get rid of the pound. A vote for the Conservatives is a vote to keep the pound. And a vote for the Conservatives is a vote to stop more of our rights to govern our own affairs through the Supremacy of the Crown in Parliament being handed away. It will be a vote to maintain the independence and integrity of the United Kingdom.

    All of this is common sense, and Conservatives will deliver common sense on Europe.

    We will deliver common sense for the British people. And we will trust the people.

    We will trust the instincts of the British people who want to see want a Government that doesn’t spend more than the country can afford and doesn’t tax more than it needs.

    Who want a Government that will wage war on crime and deliver more PCs and less PC.

    Who want to doctors to treat patients and who want to let teachers teach.

    Who when it comes to asylum seekers want their country to be a safe haven not a soft touch.

    Who believe in Britain and want to maintain the union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Who want to be in Europe and not run by Europe.

    Who want to keep the pound.

    Who want their country back.

    We say come with the Conservatives, and we will give you back your country.

  • Lord Falconer – 2001 Speech on Housing

    charliefalconer

    Below is the text of the speech made by Lord Falconer on 11th September 2001.

    Thank you all very much for coming today to the launch of Better Places to Live: By Design.

    We all know the huge cost of bad design. Bad design can facilitate high crime. It can repel people rather than attract them.

    Too many housing estates are designed for nowhere but are found everywhere. They fail to sustain local services, they waste land and they promote dependency on the car. They easily end up being soulless and dispiriting.

    Bad design creates barriers to building communities. It is socially destructive – and can be hugely costly as councils and social and private landlords struggle to maintain living communities against the odds.

    It contributes to poor services and undermines social regeneration.

    And it’s not just in cities – and not just in the rented sector. Across the country identikit estates, often sold as executive homes, have mushroomed. They make no architectural reference to their region.

    So launching Better Places to Live is not simply some dry abstraction. It is about creating high quality living environments through good design. Places where people will want to live – and thrive.

    It is the result of close partnership between my Department and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. So I’m delighted that Sir Stuart Lipton is here to help launch the guide and, of course, extremely grateful to CABE for their commitment and help with this document and agenda.

    I am also pleased to welcome Geoff Ball, President of the House Builders Federation and Sir Terry Farrell, an architect and urban designer well known to you all. Geoff and Terry share this platform because we are also launching today Building for Life. This is an industry initiative with CABE and the Civic Trust to drive up the standards of design in new housebuilding. It is the perfect complement to Better Places to Live.

    We are not setting ourselves up as style gurus. But we are challenging all those involved in the planning and development of new homes to think more imaginatively about design and layout.

    Housing accounts for the vast majority of new development in this country. New housing changes places. That it is why it is so vital for places to be designed around the needs of people and not the other way round.

    Yesterday I was in Plaistow to launch the New Deal for Communities annual review. This is a £2 billion programme already delivering real benefits to neighbourhoods.

    The involvement of communities, local political leaders and businesses have proved crucial to the success of New Deal areas. They have proved what can be achieved by partnership – and good design.

    Many of the crime cutting measures they have taken are simple. For example, putting gates across alleyways in Manchester and Salford has stopped criminals getting access to the backs of houses.

    On the Hulme estate, simply fitting corner windows onto flats and houses has allowed people to see and be seen.

    Good design is the key. This is a shared commitment by all of us on the platform today. Government, industry and our partners are clearly committed to deliver better design. This strikes me as a powerful combination.

    The guide is intended to support the new approach to planning for housing we set out in PPG3.

    Most of you will know that PPG3 is a fundamental change It has a brownfields first policy. At its heart is the challenge to create well-designed places for people to live.

    Through it we want to deliver:

    – more efficient use of land through higher densities;

    – community safety by designing out crime;

    – a better mix of housing types and sizes to promote social inclusion and affordable housing; and

    – better access to local facilities and public transport.

    In the past too much housing development has fallen short of what we should expect.

    Better Places to Live shows this does not have to be so. In drawing up the guide we have looked at a number of contemporary developments and at places that have stood the test of time. Some will be familiar to you. Others less so. Look around the walls and you’ll see examples and photos of places.

    We wanted to draw out the transferable lessons and explain how they can help create better residential environments. We are not saying the case studies are a template to follow in all aspects. But what they have in common is how good design can enhance the quality of life.

    The challenge we face is delivering a fundamental change in the quality of the places we build. It is not meant to be a substitute for skilled designers. But we will achieve nothing without a shared ambition for quality. Above all, we need investment in design and people with the right skills working in the industry.

    The prize is better communities. The penalty? The chronic social problems that leads to riots, disaffection, low voter turnout and a low quality of life. What you do today will have an affect on the way people live tomorrow.

    I would now like to hand over to Sir Terry who will lead the initiative to say a words about it.

  • Lord Falconer – 2001 Speech to the British Retail Consortium

    charliefalconer

    Below is the text of the speech made by Lord Falconer to the British Retail Consortium on 27th November 2001.

    Thank you for that kind introduction.

    The retail industry is vital to the national economy. This morning I was in Eccles to open the new town centre and new transport interchange. The interchange helps link people to the centre. The importance of retail to the region is obvious. It’s a key sector, a major employer and an indicator of public confidence.

    We in government appreciate your role.

    We need your investment and innovation to help regenerate our towns, cities and local centres.

    We need your help to deliver the urban renaissance.

    And we need your help in tackling social exclusion by bringing shopping choice to communities.

    We want to encourage the right development in the right place. We want you to develop and expand stores in town centres.

    Investing in town centres and neighbourhood centres, providing good jobs for local people and creating confidence in the future – these are good for business and good for communities.

    Changing the Planning System

    As retailers you know how you are doing – your customers tell you.

    You are our customers as far as the planning system goes. And you’re telling us that it’s not going well at present. That’s in terms of the process rather than the policy.

    What do you want? As Terry Leahy put it at the CBI Planning Conference – certainty, consistency and transparency. But you’re not getting it.

    Take development plans – they should deliver certainty. Since 1991 applications are supposed to be decided in line with the plan, unless there are good reasons not to. And all local authorities should have up-to-date plans.

    Ten years on more than 10% of authorities still have no plan at all and nearly 40% of plans are out of date. Without up-to-date plans you have to rely on Government guidance.

    In the retail field you have PPG6. It says plans should lead – providing positive guidance to retailers where to invest, allocating and helping assemble sites.

    But today’s plans are often reactive – simply reasons for saying “no”.

    The big uncertainty is not just what the decision will be, but how long the decision will take.

    Complicated applications like major town centre shopping schemes take longer. Nobody’s suggesting the same time-scale for all applications.

    But planning authorities need to ensure that larger, more complicated applications get sufficient resources. Some authorities lack resources and skills. This leads to delay. And delay costs money.

    Another source of delay and uncertainty is planning obligations. The amount to be paid by developers and how it is resolved lacks clarity and certainty. And negotiations take too long.

    Solutions

    So what’s the solution?

    You need greater certainty and a better service. You need to know the vision and strategy for town centres – developed with help from business and the community.

    And you need to know where development will be encouraged.

    We see town centres as places where the action will be.

    We must change the culture of planning – we want positive planning – planning for development.

    We want a system that is predictable.

    And it has to be accessible. Both business and the community must be actively involved.

    Plans

    We will address the problem of complicated, out-of-date and contradictory plans.

    We need a local planning framework that can be put in place quickly and kept up to date. We need to focus more on places that are changing. Like town centres.

    We also need to simplify planning guidance, to focus on those things that are of national and regional significance.

    We know PPG6 could be improved. We are reviewing its effectiveness in promoting retail investment in city, town, district and local centres. We are not proposing to change the policy, but to express it more clearly. Because clarity and certainty are vital in the planning field.

    To give you greater certainty, we need clear, unambiguous policy guidance and to apply it firmly and consistently.

    For planning applications, a more focused, user-friendly approach is required.

    We will stress the importance of clear procedures, agreed timetables and time limits, so that you know when you will get your decision.

    We must promote the importance of good, timely and predictable decisions as vital to the well-being of the community.

    Both the Planning Inspectorate, who handle planning appeals, and we in Central Government need to improve our act. The call-in and appeals process creates uncertainty. It needs to be more transparent, more efficient and quicker.

    We are also concerned about planning obligations. We know these can hold up development significantly in many cases. We need to streamline the procedure, providing certainty, while ensuring that the community shares in the benefits of development.

    Compulsory Purchase

    Having positive planning policies and timely decisions is vital. But local authorities can do more to make things happen. Land assembly, through compulsory purchase powers, has an important part to play in town centre renewal, bringing forward brownfield sites and regeneration.

    We all know the process is archaic and complex, it takes too long, with too much uncertainty for acquiring authorities, for developers and for those whose land is taken. We are going to take action to put those problems right.

    We will soon publish a consultation document setting out proposals for changes to the CPO system. The aim is to ensure that local authorities have adequate powers, to simplify and speed up the procedures, but equally to ensure that those affected and those whose land is taken are properly compensated.

    One of the conclusions of our review was that many local authorities have lost the expertise to deal successfully with compulsory purchase orders.

    We therefore commissioned a comprehensive manual to guide authorities through the procedures, with examples of good practice.

    Therefore, over the next few weeks you are going to see:

    – a Green Paper on reforming the planning system;

    – a consultation document on new Parliamentary procedures for major infrastructure projects;

    – a consultation document about compulsory purchase and compensation;

    – new proposals for planning obligations; and

    – a consultation paper on use classes.

    This is a comprehensive, wholesale, radical look at planning. It will set out how we propose to deliver a fundamentally reformed planning system.

    The time is right. Everyone agrees from central government to business to the community that action needs to be taken. We must deliver change.

    Town Centre Regeneration

    One of the key themes of PPG6 is town centre regeneration – developing a shared vision and strategy, taking a positive approach to planning, working in partnership and committing to the long term.

    These are the lessons of our Beacon Council Town Centre Regeneration theme for 2001. Retailers need to be fully engaged in the future of the town centres in which they trade. Where there are genuine partnerships this will be achieved.

    Based on the experience of the successful Beacon Councils we will disseminate good practice. Learning from the best will help town and city centres maintain their competitive edge.

    We will also work with others to develop good practice. We are co-funding a National Retail Planning Forum good practice guide to improve pedestrian access from arrival points to key attractions in town centres.

    Social Inclusion

    Developing successful retail businesses in deprived areas is particularly challenging. It is difficult to attract new investment to these areas.

    Local communities want a say in their own future. They want a part in developing local retail strategies. This will often mean revitalising local and district centres and attracting investment.

    They need to find formats that meet the needs of their communities, not off-the-shelf, “big-bang” solutions. It requires a degree of sensitivity and means working with the community.

    Town Centre Management and BIDs

    Finally, could I turn to town centre management and ways of funding it.

    Town centre management has come of age – over 300 town centres are now managed. But we have not yet delivered a sustainable system of funding.

    We all recognise the need for new partnerships to develop and deliver a town centre strategy. But are we all committed to their continuing management?

    In a managed shopping centre shops pay rates and service charges to ensure a well-managed operating environment. Why should town centres be different?

    That is what Business Improvement Districts are all about. As you know, the Prime Minister has said that we propose to promote BIDs. With your help we will work up the proposal. We want consensus on the best way forward.

    But we don’t need to wait for legislation. We want to work with business and property owners to devise equitable methods of funding town centres.

    For our part, we will look at what we are putting into town centres and see how that funding can be used more effectively. That is why we have commissioned a cross-cutting review of the public realm.

    Conclusion

    Let me finish by encouraging you to keep investing in town centres. It is a barometer of your confidence in them as places to trade.

    Last year, for the first time since the mid 1980s, more retail floorspace was completed in town centre schemes than in out-of-town shopping centres and retail warehouse parks.

    We look to you as partners in a retail-led renaissance. We look to you to help:

    – revitalise our town centres; and

    – strengthen our local centres as part of our efforts in neighbourhood renewal.

    We are pledged to make the system work better for you. To give you certainty and consistency through the planning system.

    Ultimately success lies in local partnerships – between business, the local authority and the local community. Let me encourage you to become active partners working to deliver the local vision. Working for a retail-led renaissance.

  • Lord Falconer – 2001 Speech to CBI Conference

    charliefalconer

    Below is the text of the speech made by Lord Falconer to the CBI Conference in Birmingham on 6th November 2001.

    Decisions on the use of land vitally affect business.

    If the system is one which commands the confidence of the people who apply to develop, and the community whose land is affected then that system is capable of bold and sensible decisions for the future.

    We do not have such a system in this country. And it costs us dear – in economic prosperity, in the quality of our development, and in cost to business.

    Business is not confident that sensible long-term planning on its part will be reflected by clear, predictable, and timely decisions by the planning system.

    They are not confident that the planning system is capable of making sensible timely decisions for improving the infra-structure of this country.

    And they are right. Our planning system lacks the widespread support that would allow it to take good decisions both to develop, and not to develop.

    What are the problems?

    First, it is much too complicated, and uncertain.

    Currently we have a plan-led system. Where the proposed development accords with the plan, normally development should be allowed. That’s the principle of the system. Unless there are material considerations to prevent the grant of planning permission.

    Sounds simple. But it’s a quagmire.

    Despite the fact that the requirement for plans was introduced in 1992, over 40 local authorities haven’t yet produced any plan. The process for producing local plans involves complicated, lawyer-driven enquiries. These enquiries often take years.

    Community, and business alike feel excluded by the process. Only the professional developer, and the pressure group will have the stamina to last the course. Even they resent the cumbersome nature of the process.

    Moreover, once produced the plan is very difficult to change.

    Because production takes so long, plans at the moment of the production are very frequently already inconsistent with regional plans, or county structure plans or national planning guidance. National planning guidance now runs to more than 800 pages. All of these matters will be material considerations.

    The business, whose investment involves land use decisions, has no easy way of telling if its proposal is going to be allowed. It may be in line with the local plan but not with national guidance. The business will ask what changes should be made to give the application a better chance of success. Sometimes there will be a clear answer. But all too often the local plan is so outdated that neither the local authority nor the planning advisers will know what the answer is.

    Linked with this first point of complication and uncertainty, is the length of time decisions take, and the uncertainty about how long it will take to get a decision.

    There is a widespread recognition that complicated applications with widespread economic and social consequences will take longer to decide than simpler more limited proposals.

    Nobody is arguing for a rigid time-scale for all applications.

    The demand is that first, the system decides applications within a reasonable time, having regard to the nature of the application. And second, that what that reasonable time is, should be predictable. Delays in planning decisions will frequently have an effect on the viability of a proposal. Uncertainty about both result and time deters a sensible business from basing plans around an issue whose result cannot be predicted.

    The system is not remotely user-friendly. The local planning authorities have to deal with a great burden of decision making, not just the business applications – around 150,000 in a year. But the domestic ones as well – over 300,000 in a year.

    In many places, this makes the local planning department unable to devote the time and the understanding which many more complicated applications require.

    Whilst there are shining examples of good practice – the city we are in was able to process bold plans for its city centre with great speed and understanding recently – there are all too many places where applicants despair of making their plans understood, and watch, bewildered, as their applications get lost in the incomprehensible meeting cycle of the local planning committee.

    The frustrations which applicants feel are shared by those who wish to object.

    Neither side knows what the timescale is, what the important milestones are, and how and when the decision will be made.

    The system does not connect with other aims the government or the regional or local community have. What, people ask, is the point of an economic strategy for the region which is not capable of implementation because there is no way of knowing when, and how the planning system will react to applications made to it which are consistent with that strategy.

    The system by which planning obligations to be paid by developers are resolved lacks clarity, and certainty. Frequently, all issues save planning obligation, will have been resolved. Then there will be long delays whilst a lengthy negotiation proceeds to resolve these issues. Sometimes the LA will ask for so much the development is lost. On other occasions they will ask for too little and the community will lose. Certainty and agreements which promote sustainable development without reducing the flow of developments should be the goal.

    Finally, the system is poor at making decisions about major infrastructure projects.

    We have the busiest airport in Europe at Heathrow. It makes a huge contribution to the country’s GDP. The BAA made a planning application to expand its terminal capacity there eight years ago, and there is still no decision. Whether it is granted or not it shouldn’t have taken so long.

    The consequences of failing to remedy the defects in the system will be felt at every level. For small and medium size businesses, the current system discourages sensible planning applications to facilitate expansion and change.

    For bigger businesses, in particular those with a choice of country in which to operate, the vagaries of the system make other countries where planning is predictable and timely, more attractive to do business.

    For repeat users of the system – housebuilders, retailer, commercial developers – the system incurs unecessary costs on process rather than on core business.

    For all business, delays in the development of the national infrastructure decrease international competitiveness and reduce the ease of trading domestically.

    Make no mistake, we are aware both of the nature of the problem, and the consequences of the problem not being solved.

    As everybody understands, the solution does not lie in anything remotely like a free for all in the planning system.

    The system must address, and deal effectively with the legitimate complaints of complication, uncertainty, delay, and lack of user-friendliness. It must have the confidence of the community that it is coming to the right results. And it must be able, confidently, to make decisions about the vital major infrastructure problems on which the trading future of this country depends.

    We are not going to mend the present system and make it work without wholesale change.

    We must keep the best and provide continuity but improve.

    But the time is right. There is a widespread desire for change in the system. People recognise the system does not work. They also see that tinkering will not deliver results.

    My vision of a good planning system is one that is predictable. It allows both business and the community to be fairly certain that if there is a development in accordance with national and local policies, it will get consent.

    It has to be accessible. The community must have understood, and been involved in the process of drawing up the local plan. Planning has to understand how business works. Planning is a public service and it has to deliver in a customer focused way.

    It has to be robust. A planning system that rolls over every time it faces pressure from an aggressive developer or a community group with a powerful lobby is no use to anyone.

    Plans

    We need to address the problem of complication, out-of-datedness, and contradiction in the existing network of plans, policy guidances, and frameworks. We need a structure that is mutually reinforcing and not, as at present, potentially contradictory.

    We need a local planning framework that can be put in place quickly and kept up to date.

    But we also need to simplify and clarify the contents of national and regional planning guidance. They must focus only on those things that are, truly, of national and regional significance.

    Planning applications

    At each of the three levels at which planning applications can be heard a more focused, user-friendly approach is required. All three levels take a long time. All are uncertain, both in timing and result. All of them need an overhaul.

    At local authority level, a greater focus on the users of the system is required. An understanding of the importance of time-limits. A realisation of the need for certainty. A reduction in the number of decisions which have to be taken. An ability to prioritise. Clarity of procedure, so that the timing of decisions is understood, and they only take such time as is necessary and reasonable for the particular applications.

    Of all the levels this is probably the most important. Making the system work at LA level is absolutely vital to delivering the system we all want. The steps we envisage taking must promote, and, over time, be accompanied by a change culture in planning depts. A culture where the importance of good planning is recognised. But also a culture where the importance of good, timely and predictable decisions is recognised as vital to the well-being of the community.

    The Planning Inspectorate has already introduced a number of significant reforms to improve the appeal and enquiry process. But we need to do more. The process needs to be faster, and more accessible.

    At central government level, the system is obscure, slow and inconsistent. The call-in, and recovered appeals process represents a significant uncertainty both as to result, and as to how long the process will take. The process, within central govt, needs to become more transparent, more managerially efficient and quicker.

    Major infrastructure

    Up to now, we have seen projects of vital importance to our national economy planned on an ad hoc basis and bogged down in the system.

    Governments have not been as clear as they should have been about the priorities for infrastructure investment.

    We don’t, for example, have a clear statement at the moment about the need to plan for increasing airport capacity in England over the next few decades.

    Stephen Byers announced that we would tackle the planning issues on three fronts. He said that we would be introducing clear statements of national policy on infrastructure – and the first is likely to be one on airports.

    Secondly, he said that we could speed up inquiry procedures.

    And thirdly he said that we would be consulting on new Parliamentary procedures for agreeing major infrastructure projects. That consultation document will be out shortly as part of our package of planning reforms.

    Planning obligations

    We shall be consulting on planning obligations. We know that these can hold up development significantly in some cases. We need to consider streamlined procedures while ensuring that the community shares in the benefits of development.

    There is not much disagreement on the platform, including from Fiona, on the problems. That consensus is important because it will facilitate the changes that are required. Over the next few weeks you are going to see:

    – a Green Paper on reforming the planning system

    – a consultation document on new Parliamentary procedures for major infrastructure projects

    – a consultation document about compulsory purchase and compensation

    – new proposals for agreeing planning obligations

    – consultation on use classes.

    This amounts to a pretty comprehensive look at planning. It will set out the detailed “how” of delivering a fundamentally reformed planning system. It will be informed by the principles I have discussed today.

    It will deal with the problems that we have jointly identified.

    There is much detail to discuss. There is much debate to be had. But on the need for wholesale reform, there appears no doubt.

    We must restore peoples’ confidence in the planning system, so it can robustly defend that which we cherish, and effectively promote the changes we need.

  • David Cameron – 2001 Maiden Speech

    davidcameron

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by David Cameron in the House of Commons on 28th June 2001.

    I am pleased to follow the maiden speeches of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Ann Mckechin) and the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke). Both spoke movingly and amusingly about their constituencies. I am glad that the hon. Member for Dundee, East is a true blue in the sense that he supports Dundee. It is our role to turn him blue in other ways; I look forward to trying to do that.

    I am delighted to make my maiden speech in a debate on our procedures. I have worked in two Departments—the Treasury and the Home Office—as a special adviser, and I was therefore one of the bad guys, always in a rush to get legislation through the House in order to prove that the Executive were delivering their programme. However, experience shows that too many Bills are passed too quickly, often with too little scrutiny and to little concrete effect. I have therefore enjoyed listening to the debate on the Government’s suggestion for improving matters. I remain sceptical about their solution.

    I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). Both his speeches today were incredibly inspiring. As a new boy, I shall try to remember those lessons about our role and that of the House of Commons. The balance has tipped too far in favour of the Executive, and I am highly suspicious about programming Bills in advance and separating debates from votes.

    I listened carefully to the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) about being independent Members and listening to the arguments. I remember working with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) when he was Home Secretary. We lost many votes in the other place, and my right hon. and learned Friend asked our Minister there why we kept losing them. He replied, “Home Secretary, I am afraid that, although I get all our peers to come and vote, they listen to the arguments and they do not always go the right way.”

    It is a privilege and an honour to represent the constituency of Witney and the people of west Oxfordshire. Witney is a seat rich in history and blessed with some of England’s most stunning towns, villages, buildings and countryside. It stretches from the market town of Chipping Norton in the north to the banks of the Thames in the south, and includes the thriving market towns of Witney, Carterton, Woodstock, Burford and Eynsham.

    The western boundary is Oxfordshire’s county boundary and includes Cotswold villages of great beauty such as Taynton and Idbury. To the east, the seat stretches towards Oxford’s city limits, taking in Begbroke and Yarnton. There are 115 villages and settlements in valleys and plains watered by the Dorn, the Glyme, the Evenlode and the Windrush.

    Burford was home to one of our great Speakers, William Lenthall, who stood up so clearly for the independence of the House and his office. West Oxfordshire can also boast of great statesmen. It contains the birth and burial places of Winston Churchill—Blenheim and Bladon.

    We have great generals, such as John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who was rewarded with Blenheim palace for his victories in the war of the Spanish succession. As we, on the Conservative Benches, settle our own issue of succession—Spanish or otherwise—I hope that our battles are shorter and slightly less bloody.

    West Oxfordshire’s political history extends to all traditions. The Levellers, who are now regarded as heroic early socialists, rebelled during the civil war because they believed that their leader, Cromwell, had betrayed the principles for which they fought. I am sure that Labour Members who might sometimes feel the same way do not need reminding that the leaders of that rebellion were rounded up and shot in Burford’s churchyard. William Morris, the socialist visionary, lived and is buried at Kelmscott manor in my constituency, and I have no hesitation in urging all hon. Members to visit that beautiful village on the banks of the Thames which time seems to have passed by.

    Since 1945, west Oxfordshire has been represented by Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, who parachuted into France in the 1940s; by Neil Marten, who served with the special forces during the war before embarking on a long and distinguished ministerial career; and by Douglas Hurd, now Lord Hurd, who was an outstanding Foreign Secretary. This brings me neatly to the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward).

    I know that it is traditional to pay tribute to one’s immediate predecessor, and I have no hesitation in saying that I agreed with almost everything that he said in the first half of the previous Parliament, when he was a trenchant critic of the Government. It was only when he moved to the Labour Benches and supported that Government that our views started to diverge. I know that he worked hard for people in west Oxfordshire and must have felt strongly to leave such a magnificent constituency with such friendly and welcoming people. However, he remains a constituent, and a not insignificant local employer—not least in the area of domestic service. We are, in fact, quite close neighbours. On a clear day, from the hill behind my cottage, I can almost see some of the glittering spires of his great house.

    West Oxfordshire’s economy includes a wide diversity of agriculture and small and medium-sized businesses. Witney was for years dominated by blankets, beer and its railway. There remains just one blanket factory, the beer is predominantly brewed elsewhere and the railway has been closed. I will always support moves to examine reopening our railway to Oxford and extending the line to Carterton. Witney and west Oxfordshire are now beacons of enterprise and success. A range of service, technology and light industrial businesses have thrived in our area, and with the Arrows and Benetton Formula 1 teams, we are becoming the grand prix capital of the world. Our unemployment rate is close to the lowest in the country. However, our farming and tourism businesses have suffered badly from the foot and mouth outbreak and need time and an understanding, enabling Government to recover.

    RAF Brize Norton, adjoining the relatively modern town of Carterton, is now one of our largest employers. It is one of Britain’s longest-established air bases, and has played an important role in the defence of this country and in servicing our armed forces. Its facilities and expertise in air-to-air refuelling make it the perfect location for the future strategic tanker aircraft and I will always support its role. The now ageing VC10s that thunder down the runway loaded with fuel for our fighter aircraft are fondly known locally as “Prescotts”, because they are able to refuel two Jaguars simultaneously—one under each wing. There was some suggestion during the election campaign that the right hon. Gentleman’s name should be appended to some other type of aircraft, perhaps a fighter that packed a bit more of a punch.

    Carterton is a rapidly growing town and in need of new services, such as a sixth form for its excellent community college, the campaign for which I strongly support. West Oxfordshire has an excellent Conservative-led district council, which has invested in those kinds of facilities, including some in Carterton. and I look forward to working with it in the years ahead.

    Chipping Norton, long famous for William Bliss’s tweed mill, which remains a striking landmark, is a classic Cotswold market town. It is also home to the kennels of the Heythrop hunt. There is a long tradition of hunting in west Oxfordshire, originally based in the royal forest of Wychwood, where Ethelred II established the first royal hunting lodge more than nine centuries ago. I will always stand up for the freedom of people in the countryside to take part in country sports, and, in the light of today’s debate, would always be concerned about any limits set on a debate on a hunting Bill that could curtail that freedom.

    Under its beautiful and serene exterior, west Oxfordshire faces important issues and problems. Rural poverty has been exacerbated by foot and mouth. The decline of local services, emphasised by the tragic closure of Burford hospital during the last Parliament, has angered local people. We still have cottage hospitals in Witney and Chipping Norton, which I strongly support.

    Rumours of budget cuts for our hospitals and the dreaded “r” word—rationalisation—for our ambulance service are rife. Those emergency services and hospitals play a vital role in rural communities and they should be expanded, not discarded. In the context of today’s debate, the health reform bill promises decentralisation, but we shall need a lot of time to scrutinise it and ensure that it really will deliver a local NHS. I hope that that can happen under the proposed system.

    In Witney, there is huge pressure on housing and great concern that the Government’s top-down housing targets will mean building on greenfield sites and wrecking the countryside that we love. That is another issue of great local importance.

    The theme of how we make and scrutinise decisions runs through today’s debate. I wanted to be elected to the House because I believe in what it stands for and what it can do to hold Governments to account, air grievances and raise issues that people in west Oxfordshire care about. I also wanted to be elected because, through action here, one can get things done.

    I shall support all the efforts being made to restore the House as the cockpit of debate, and the place where policies are announced, debated and decided and where the Government are scrutinised and challenged, whether on the Floor of the Chamber or through strengthened, independent Select Committees. I cannot see how deciding in advance how much time should be given to a Bill and systematic guillotining can help in that regard, but I am a new boy and I am listening to the arguments.

    The beauties of west Oxfordshire of which I have spoken—the glorious view from the top of Burford high street and Pope’s tower in Stanton Harcourt—sum up for many people what they feel about their British identity. I know that we shall always be able to treasure that identity, whether it rests on those feelings or on something else, but what matters just as much as our identity is our self-determination, and our ability to make decisions as a nation and to question and challenge them properly in this place. The ability to continue doing so rests in our own hands. It is a privilege that I shall try to preserve while serving the kind and generous people of west Oxfordshire.