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Tag: 2002

  • Estelle Morris – 2002 Labour Party Conference Speech

    Below is the text of the speech of the then Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, to the 2002 Labour Party Conference.

    A few days ago some youngsters asked had it been tough in the last two weeks. I said yes, but not as tough as it has been for our students who have been left uncertain about their examination results.

    Today the inquiry I initiated has given further details of what happens next and a firm date by which we will know of any changes.

    The reason the last few weeks have been so difficult, why it’s worried so many people, is because it’s uncertainty about something that is so very important. It matters that we have an exam system in which everyone can have confidence, that’s why we must make sure this never happens again.

    You know, in this job I am invited to do a lot of prize givings, in schools up and down the country. And a bit like now I get to be on the stage. And from the stage you can see the faces of all the parents. You can spot the parent whose child’s name has just been read out. You can see the pride in their faces and the light in their eyes.

    As parents, you know that feeling. And we know as a party that pride we have in education.

    Education has always been at the heart of everything we’ve wanted to do. We have always wanted to tear down the barriers that hold people back.We have always said that the street you were born into should not determine what you will achieve. We have always told people to aim high and believe that what you dream about as a child you can achieve as an adult.

    That gives us a responsibility. If as a party we give people that hope, we must give them the means to achieve it.

    Think how much more important education is for our children then it was for us. More than any other generation, they need qualifications to get jobs. Yes, they have opportunities unknown to their grandparents but when they grow up into a world where the challenges are greater than any previous generations.

    Our children are the genome generation. It is they who will have to grapple with the big decisions about how far we go with genetic research, how we temper the advances in technology with the needs of our environment, how we plan for our society as more people live longer.

    What we give tham to help them on their journey, our inheritance to them, is education. It is education that provides the bridge from ambition to opportunity to reality. That is why we need a world-class education system and that is why those who work in schools, colleges and universities are in one of the most important professions there is.

    We know that our government has achieved a great deal:

    · Sure Start

    · Literacy and numeracy

    · GCSEs

    · Standards rising in our inner cities

    · More students in our colleges and universities

    · EMAs

    · More adults with basic skills

    · The fabric of our schools never better

    But you know there is another list as well:

    · One in four children cannot read and write at the proper level at age 11.

    · 50 per cent of children have still not got five good GCSE passes.

    · Seven million adults still do not have basic skills.

    · The link between social class and poverty is still strong.

    Now we face a choice. A choice that comes to every generation perhaps only once. And the choice is this. We can settle for what we have got , which is a good education system, or we can have the courage of our ambitions and go for being great.

    And if we show that courage, as Tony said yesterday, there’s nothing we cannot do. New Labour is doing a lot. Bold Labour will do even more. But if we turn our back on this chance, it may never come our way again.

    That choice between settling for what we’ve got, or striving for what we [want], is at the core of every challenge we face in education.

    I believe in the comprehensive ideal – every child of equal worth; the highest expectations of everyone. I know the achievements of comprehensive education. I’ve seen it. It’s stopped us writing off children at the age of 11. I don’t believe we’d have the made the progress we have with girls’ education without comprehensive education. The expansion of higher education has been on the back of comprehensive schools.

    The old rigid selection system – so valued by the Tories – couldn’t have achieved that.

    But it has not delivered everything I wanted. It hasn’t achieved all that we campaigned for. I thought it would break the link between poverty and achievement. It hasn’t. I hoped it would end the massive underachievement of ethnic minorities. It hasn’t.

    So we face a choice. We can settle for what we have already or we can have the courage to reform. I tell you what I mean by a post-comprehensive era. It cherishes the values of opportunity and worth, but it’s honest about it’s strengths and weaknesses, and brave about where it goes next.

    I know that we’ve got many good schools, but I know some are better than others and I know that there are some schools that parents avoid. I know our best schools have a strong identity and sense of mission. I know that schools need incentives to improve. I know that successful schools need rewards and that failing schools need to be supported and turned round. One child spending one day in a failing school is one child, one day too many.

    I know that schools learn best from each other and that the secret to success is in the corridors of our schools not the corridors of Whitehall.

    And that’s why over time we want every school to be a specialist school – teaching the national curriculum, but playing to its strengths and developing a centre of excellence.

    And that’s why we’ll develop advanced schools – our best schools responsible for leading the rest.

    And that’s why we’ll develop city academies, a new model of schools in areas where everything else has failed.

    And that’s what we mean by getting rid of “one size fits all.” Each area, each pupil is different, so we need different types of schools to meet their needs.

    And when we come to the school workforce we’ve got a choice here too. We can carry on as we are now – a model of staffing schools that has hardly changed for half a century, teachers working harder than ever before but using their time on things that others could do, a school timetable that offers too little flexibility.

    Or we could do what we’ve always wanted to do – staff our schools so we can meet the needs of each individual child. But that’s the harder choice. It will mean new staff with new skills, new ways of working, so teachers are freed to do what they do best, teach. And it will mean using our classroom assistants – properly trained and supported – in more productive roles. It will mean teachers rewarded for high performance. It will mean every school with state of the art information technology. And that way we can change how our children learn.

    And this is not a pipe dream. It’s beginning to happen in our best schools.

    And there’s a choice for parents and children as well. We have a wonderful generation of young people. They achieve more. They work harder. You only have to listen to them play music and perform to see how good they are.

    We know what they’re like at ICT – better than most adults, and certainly better than me.

    They are a credit to themselves, their families and their schools and we should be proud of them.

    But there is a minority who misbehave and are out of control. And they make life a misery for teachers and their classmates.

    Teachers cannot teach if children are disruptive. One child threatening or abusing one teacher in one of our schools is one too many. Actually, one child showing just disrespect to a teacher is one child too many.

    So we have a choice. The easy choice is to say nothing can be done. It is a sign of the times. We can choose to be a society that throws up its hands in horror but is unwilling to do anything about it.

    Or we can give a clear message about the behaviour we expect from our pupils. We must back teachers and make parents take responsibility.

    It’s not asking a lot. Why shouldn’t all children start school knowing the difference between right and wrong? Why shouldn’t our children know it’s wrong to swear? Why shouldn’t they understand that they should respect the authority of the teacher? How is it that most primary aged school children who are found truanting are with a parent or another adult?

    And although almost all parents support teachers, the small numbers who do not, damage their childrens’ future. I hear too many stories of parents questioning a teacher’s right to exercise discipline in the classroom. It has to stop.

    Parents do have rights. They should know how a school performs. They should always be able to question what is going on. But they have responsibilities as well. And if they do not exercise those responsibilities, then they will have to face the consequences.

    It sometimes seems as if we put the responsibility for solving all the ills of society on the shoulders of those who teach in our schools, colleges and universities. But the truth is that we all have our part to play.

    We have responsibilities as a government. For the first time ever, every permanently excluded child is now guaranteed full time education. They’re no longer slung out of schools, dumped on the streets, allowed to run wild and finally end up as a law and order statistic in the magistrate’s court.

    In all these areas, in all that we do, this is the choice the education service faces. To settle for what we’ve got, or to do what we came into politics to do.

    We’ve made our choice. That’s why we set high targets. Some don’t think we can make it. But I’ll tell you this. All we have to do to meet the targets we have set, is for poor children to achieve at the same level as more affluent children; black children to achieve at the same level as white; and boys to achieve at the same level as girls.

    Don’t tell me it can’t be done. I see it every single day in our best schools.

    We all know the success of literacy and numeracy. But do you know what is its greatest prize? That it has raised standards for everyone, and closed the achievement gap as well. In literacy and numeracy, we’ve raised standards everywhere but most of all in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

    So don’t let anyone say that more means worse. Don’t ever be persuaded to drop our sights. Don’t any one of us ever be embarassed by excellence.

    I say this to those who work in education. When I ask for reform, it’s not because I go around the country and see that everything is bad. It’s because I go around the country and see what’s possible.

    If ever there was a time when education should have the confidence to take on reform, it’s now. We’re a party that understands that education matters. We’ve got a government that’s consistently invested in education in a way that’s never happened before. And we’ve got the best generation of teachers ever. Don’t let’s falter now.

    If in five year’s time our schools look the same way as they do now, we’ll have made the wrong choice. If in five year’s time. they’re staffed in the same way as they are now, we’ll have made the wrong choice. And if in five year’s time we as a country do not believe that all our children can achieve more than they do now, we’ll have made the wrong choice.

    I have made my choice. I have chosen ambition and reform over caution and settling for second best.

    If we sit on our hands and do nothing, if we spend nothing, if we create nothing, if we change nothing, we’ll end up like the Tories – doing nothing, investing nothing, meaning nothing.

    Just remember, all this talk of reform, all this talk of investment, all this talk of change – it’s not just about politics, it’s about people, it’s about every child, every student, every parent.

    That’s why though it’s hard, there is only one choice. Falter now and I know we’ll live to regret it. Make the right decision and it will be one of the proudest achievements of Labour in power.

  • Alan Milburn – 2002 Speech on Healthcare

    Alan Milburn – 2002 Speech on Healthcare

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, on 15th April 2002.

    The debate in the country about the future of our public services is crystalising. The Budget this week will make those dividing lines even clearer. As the Prime Minister, Chancellor and myself have all made clear in recent weeks, the biggest political issue today is whether we are prepared as a country to provide the resources and make the reforms necessary to bring about improvements to our key public services, in particular to the National Health Service

    As a party and as a government we believe that we should be prepared to do so. Our formula is simple: investment + reform = results.

    The debate is now sharpening, not just because of the imminence of the Budget and the progress of the Spending Review, but also because of the position now being taken by our political opponents.

    Today I want to set out both our analysis of the position being taken by the Conservatives and our own analysis that we have made of why a reformed NHS – funded through general taxation – is the right way forward for Britain.

    Our report – The Right’s Remedy – which we are publishing today, highlights where the Conservatives have got it wrong.

    Within the last week we have heard twice from the Conservative Party about the future of health care in our country.

    First, Liam Fox spelling out – in his Secret Speech – the Conservatives’ strategy on the NHS seeking to “persuade the public that the NHS is not working…it has never worked before and will never work” as a prelude to what he called more people having to “self-pay”.

    Second, yesterday the Conservative’s publication outlining what they call “Alternative Prescriptions” for health care in our country. Whilst this second publication avoids plumping for any specific solution – that as Liam Fox makes clear will come later and is dependent upon first undermining public confidence in the NHS – it does now illustrate the clear direction both of Conservative thinking and the Conservative’s strategy.

    They are in the first stage of their approach: undermining the NHS and suggesting there is a better alternative to it. This is a cynical and destructive softening up operation that should be seen for what it is.

    For them the NHS, as Liam Fox puts it “cannot work and won’t work”, and as IDS puts it in today’s publication, “the system is not working.”

    They quote approvingly in their document (page 54) those countries with up to 30% of spending undertaken in the private sector as offering an acceptable level of fairness. This sits interestingly with Liam Fox’s determination to encourage more people to “self-pay” and is the equivalent of up to £20 billion of UK NHS spending.

    What this all points to is that for all their grand study tours of Europe the Conservatives are opting for an American-style solution. A two-tier health care system – for the poor a Medicaid style NHS and “self-pay” solutions for middle income families with top-up services having to be paid for privately. Low income Britain would pay the price through second rate services that are poor because they only serve the poor. Middle income Britain would pay the price through increased costs and extra charges.

    The Conservatives have brought the post war consensus on health to an end. Indeed it is revealing that no-one reading their document could believe they remain committed to a universal NHS that is free to all and accessible to all. Instead they talk up the advantages of other health care systems.

    Their examination of the supposed superiority of other systems for funding health care tells is partial and selective. We too have examined the case for other systems of funding. But, like the BMA who conducted a similar examination last year, we have found these other systems wanting.

    The report we are publishing today contains analysis from a range of academic sources across the world about the fault lines in different systems of health care funding.

    In essence, the problem with social insurance systems is who bears the majority of the costs of the total health care budget. It is estimated that at 2003-4 levels of funding the additional costs of a wholesale move to a social insurance system here would be the equivalent of an extra £1,500 per worker per year using the French model and an extra £1,000 per worker per year using the German model without a single extra penny to currently planned NHS funding.

    In essence the problem with private health insurance – whether compulsory or voluntary – is that it would increase bureaucracy and decrease efficiency. Compulsory private insurance is simply replacing a single state-managed risk pool with numerous, complicated, less efficient private risk pools. Tax incentives to encourage voluntary private insurance are costly, inefficient and inequitable. They tie up millions in dead-weight tax breaks for people who already have insurance before a single extra person takes out private cover. Tax incentives have a cost to the Exchequer and thereby, reduce the levels of investment available to the NHS.

    The truth is there is no perfect health care system in the world. All have strengths. All contain weaknesses. What is wrong is to pretend that the only way to address the weaknesses is to move hook line and sinker to a new system. When the Conservative Party says the NHS should be reformed, what they really mean is that it should be adandoned.

    From a pragmatic point of view the disruption in doing so – not to say the costs of doing so – would delay precisely the improvements in services that people long to see. From a principle point of view we would end up throwing out the baby with the bath water.

    There are many things wrong with the NHS but it does have great strengths. It should be a cause of national pride in our country that no-one asks for your insurance policy or credit card before you get the care you need.

    Without the NHS the sophistication of modern treatments – and of course their cost – would put individual provision of health care beyond all but the very wealthiest in society. Without it the sick would end up paying for the privilege of being sick. In a world where health care can do more and costs more than ever before having an NHS based on need not ability to pay, with services that are free and comprehensive, is a real source of strength for our country and security for our people. So the NHS should be supported with our heads as well as our hearts. The relevance of its values make it the best insurance policy in the world.

    Where it is weak is on two counts

    First, while its values are right its structure is wrong. For decades it has been run as a top down, centralised, monopoly service where patients interests have too often played second fiddle to the system’s interests. It is these faultlines in the system that the NHS Plan seeks to address. By devolving power so that locally run primary care trusts control NHS resources.

    By introducing new incentives so that the best hospitals get more freedoms and the poorest are helped to change or else are taken over. By securing greater diversity with better co-operation between the public, private and voluntary sectors. By giving patients more choice over when and where they are treated. These reforms address precisely the structural weaknesses that the critics of the NHS pretend can only be delivered by rejecting the health service.

    Second, the shortages of capacity that are the cumulative effect of decades of under-investment. On any count comparing health care investment in this country with investment in other developed countries shows that the NHS has been short-changed for decades. It is not a superior system of funding which France and Germany have enjoyed. It is a superior level of funding. The gap on public spending between France and Germany and the UK has been substantial: according to latest OECD figures French per capita public spending on health as a precentage of GDP stood at 7.1%. German public spending at 7.8%. The UK figure was 5.7%. It is this gap that is now being closed. Indeed in the last few years while in France and Germany health spending as a proportion of GDP has been falling, since 1997 in Britain it has been rising.

    The point is this: the NHS can be fixed providing there is the right level of resources and the right programme of reform. The reforms are as important as the resources. Indeed the more cash goes in the more the public have a right to expect they get out. The greater the programme of investment, the bolder the programme of reform. It will take time – the NHS Plan is for 10 years – but what we have started we should now finish.

    This week the battle lines for this Parliament will become clear. Labour committed to building up and reforming the NHS and the Conservatives committed to talking it down, as a prelude to forcing more people into paying for their own care.

  • Andrew Smith – 2002 Speech at Lancaster House

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Andrew Smith, at Lancaster House on 26th March 2002.

    Just a few years ago, The Government set out its thinking on how Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) could be used to create new businesses – with both the public and the private sector involved.  I am very pleased to see, from the wide range of speakers here today, that these ideas are becoming a reality.

    Through the Wider Markets initiative (WMI), we have entered into a new type of partnership: not changing the responsibility for, or the funding of, public services, but liberating the underlying potential.

    WMI is about enabling public sector workers to realise their full potential and about getting the full value out of public sector assets.

    WMI is not about transferring assets, or the responsibility for assets, from the public sector to the private sector. Rather, it is about generating commercial activities from public sector assets in addition to fulfilling their public sector purpose.

    The best of our Government agencies, research institutes, armed forces facilities and hospitals are, as we know,  a match for any in the world.  Our scientists, our technicians, and our managers, some of the people I see in the audience today, are highly motivated, highly trained, and ready to embrace change and modernisation.

    They recognise that PPPs – and the WMI – are not about transferring responsibility out of the public sector, they are about bringing the public sector’s ideas and expertise to commercial markets so we can realise their full potential.  This is all about getting additional value from the assets and ideas that underpin the delivery of services, services that are with, and will remain within, the public sector.

    The aim is to allow the entrepreneurial talent in the public sector to flourish.  It is about public enterprise. That is why public bodies and the private sector are entering a range of public private partnerships – creating new activities and generating value by bringing together their respective skills and assets.

    In Government, we want more of these PPPs to be formed. That is why we have established Partnerships UK as centre of expertise with a specific remit to help the public sector generate new sources of commercial income.  That is why we have published new guidance on forming joint venture companies: making it easier for the public sector to set up new businesses and new partnerships across the whole range of economic activities, including science and technology.

    This conference is about making it happen.  Across the public sector, in the BBC, in the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and at the Radiocommunications Agency, there are already a number of success stories.

    There is a responsibility on all of us to make sure these stories get heard, and to write the next chapter, deploying successful approaches across the public sector.

    Our approach brings together the WMI and Governments policies more generally on PPPs.

    WMI encourages public sector bodies to exploit their assets – physical and intellectual, enabling them to undertake commercial activities that are additional to their core function as public sector organisations.

    The public sector owns over £274 billion of physical assets.  That is £274 billion of latent energy.  Liberating the potential in these assets, and in the knowledge base and intellectual excellence of the public sector, will mean more money for public investment and higher levels of productivity across the entire economy.

    It is vitally important that we improve the commercial uptake of ideas and technology coming from public sector, and in particular for research establishments.  We need to bridge the gap between the supply of ideas and assets that flows naturally from the delivery of public services and the demand in wider markets.

    That means a tailored approach, providing for different forms of partnerships which meet the particular objectives of a project.

    The form of PPPs range from joint ventures to licenses, concessions and other partnership arrangements. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach.  The aim is always to ensure that the taxpayer gets their fair share of the rewards while at the same time protecting public sector interests.

    In some cases the public sector is major partner, in others it plays a minor role. We are developing ideas across the entire range of Government activities and assets: property, equipment and facilities, skills and expertise, databases and IT systems, research and scientific developments.

    So there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach – but there are guiding principles. The aim is to ensure that all partnerships:

    – align public and private sector interests

    – extract best value from assets and investments

    – generate activities which develop, not detract from, delivery of core public services

    – provide the desired level of public sector control.

    Bringing together wider markets and PPPs, we are in fact creating whole new businesses – developing new commercial activities as well as supporting traditional public services.

    Over the course of this conference we will be hearing about a vast array of value-generating PPPs.  Success stories which show our approach does work:

    – how the BBC has brought in investment of around £350 million to market its programmes internationally through its joint venture with Discovery;

    – how the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture (an agency of DEFRA) and the Army Training and Recruitment Agency have managed through WMIs to build up their revenues from virtually nothing to well over £5 million per year from their wider markets activities

    – how best estimates suggest the Radiocommunications Agency has achieved annual savings of around £1 million in its IT systems through a joint venture with CMG.

    This is revenue on top of that raised through taxation, and of course savings that are recycled back into public services.  This extra money will be used to improve the quality of public services with benefits too for the working conditions of public sector staff.

    Accordingly, the wider markets initiative is:

    – encouraging public sector workers to develop and demonstrate their entrepreneurial expertise by building new businesses; and,

    – training staff in the new skills needed to enter commercial markets.

    We are opening up new vistas of opportunity for public sector staff.  We value public sector workers, the effort they make, the ideas they have, the ethos that drives them – WMI is about giving them more opportunities.

    Entering partnerships with the private sector to commercialise public sector ideas and assets can benefit staff at all levels in an organisation.

    Through its commercialisation activities, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture has been able to maintain and enhance its reputation as a world class research institute, attract more staff, and improve morale through enhanced training and opportunities for interchange with private sector partners.

    It is quite simple: WMI means a better deal for public sector staff.

    PPPs generate additional value: increasing revenue for the organisation; enhancing opportunity for the staff.  To release that value, working together, there are a number of things we have to get right. We have to :

    – make sure we have the right incentives in place

    – manage and distribute risk appropriately

    – safeguard the public interest and the reputation of the public sector because trust is in itself a valuable commodity

    – create a more entrepreneurial culture in the public sector: this will not happen overnight, and we have to make sure we have the right staff with the right skills to make it happen.

    We have taken decisive action to move forward on all of these issues.

    In 1998 we introduced a framework for WMI, ensuring that Departments automatically retain the benefit of money generated by sales into wider markets – creating the incentive to innovate. We have given Departments delegated powers of approval over the majority of projects – creating a flexible and responsive system. The framework aims to ensure each Department has a wider markets officer – creating a single point of contact, enabling expertise to develop and spread best practice.

    The right incentives, a flexible system with authority delegated downwards, and a central point of contact in each Department.  It is all about making sure we getting extra value out of the Government’s assets without detracting from the responsibility for or the delivery of the services on which we all rely.

    To make sure we do, we are scrutinising carefully the National Asset Register – identifying where the opportunities are. We are making the move to resource accounting – so the true cost of capital is reflected in the value of fixed assets.  And we are utilizing Departmental investment strategies as a means of reviewing new and existing assets – considering their potential for generating commercial revenues.

    Behind the success of the wider markets initiative stands Partnerships UK – a dedicated organisation working solely for the public sector with the objective of supporting the implementation of PPPs.

    Their team works on science and technology commercialisation, and wider markets, helping us to release the potential of public sector staff and assets.  Acting as a central point of contact, PUK provides a free support service, helping with anything from simple enquiries and troubleshooting to support in taking a PPP from an abstract idea to making it a commercial reality.

    Partnerships UK is also producing guidance and best practice materials for the Treasury – helping us develop a body of expertise on wider markets. The first major document, guidance for public sector bodies forming joint venture companies with the private sector, was published in November last year.

    With the ability to share development costs and invest in a PPP, alongside the public sector, Partnerships UK will be a powerful catalyst as we take forward our programme of public sector reforms.

    This is a programme of reforms for the public and for the public sector staff. Getting extra value out of public sector assets is good news for both. WMI means the freedom for staff to innovate, to develop new ideas, and to reach their full potential.

    And it is good news for the public as:

    – WMI leaves responsibility for funding and delivery of public services unchanged

    – commercial activities releases extra resources for priority areas such as health and education

    – the flexible use of assets releases stored potential and boosts productivity across the entire economy.

  • John Spellar – 2002 Speech to UK Aviation Club

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Transport Minister, John Spellar, to the UK Aviation Club on 3rd July 2002.

    Thank you for inviting me here today. It’s a delight to be able join this auspicious occasion, which brings together so many of the leading lights in the aviation industry.

    And with that in mind, I’d like to begin today by making an announcement about the launch of our consultation proposals on airport capacity . . . but unfortunately, I’m going to have to disappoint you.

    In the meantime, please be assured the air transport White Paper remains very much a top priority. And to that end we want to issue our consultation documents covering all the UK regions as soon as we can.

    And whatever you might have read in the papers let me stress here and now, we’ve not made up our minds in advance about what or where.

    It’s vitally important that we have an informed public debate on these matters – and one that is genuinely open and frank.

    With that in mind, the consultative process will be what it says – the documents will inform key stakeholders and the public on the issues, as fully and as fairly as we can.

    And once those documents have been finalised and dispatched, your comments and that of others on the different options will be genuinely welcomed. The industry needs to realise the importance of engaging actively.

    At the end of this process, we’re going to be setting the pattern for aviation in the UK…not just for today and tomorrow…but for the next 30 years.

    Currently, Britain is a major player in the aviation industry. You probably know the facts and figures better than I do. But let’s remind ourselves:

    A quarter of all international air journeys in the world are to or from the UK.

    In turn, the UK accounts for over 40% of all air travel between Europe and the USA.

    We have an annual £13 billion of inward tourism – 1½ per cent of GDP.

    Industry and commerce, increasingly relies on the efficient and rapid transport of goods by air.

    And in total, the aviation industry, directly employs over 180,000 people in the UK, and indirectly supports up to 3 times as many jobs on top of that.

    I make no apology for repeating those facts. Our current prominence in this transport sector is what makes the issue of future capacity so crucial. Not just to the businesses and individuals in the industry and all they serve – but also to the economy as well.

    As we all know, in an age of increasing globalisation, where products can be designed and developed in one country, assembled in another and then distributed around the world – for many people, international business travel by air is a way of life.

    However, let’s not forget that by value, one fifth of all UK trade now goes by air – much of it in high-value pharmaceutical and IT goods.

    And whilst the great majority of air freight continues to be carried in the bellyhold of passenger aircraft, and from airports in the South East – dedicated freighter traffic has been growing steadily by around 27% a year, in the regions.

    And nearly half of all dedicated freighter traffic – by value and tonnage – is concentrated on East Midlands airport. The presence there of several dedicated express freight operations has served to create strong growth in this market sector.

    And this growing success story reminds us of course, that airports are not only central to our trade and competitiveness as a country. They are also significant employment generators in their own right.

    The most obvious example is of course, Heathrow. The UK’s premier airport for half a century, it handles 20 million more international passengers per annum than any other airport in the world. As such, it contributes very significantly to London’s position as a world city.

    But the airport is also the largest employer in the locality. Half of its 68,000 workforce live in the London Borough of Hillingdon and its immediate neighbours.

    In turn, it’s not just the dominant employer. BAA’s education programme helps many thousands of young people in those areas every year prepare for the world of work, through ‘work experience’ placements, workshops and other training initiatives.

    What’s more, the airport promotes business with local firms. Much of this is done via an annual trade event designed to foster links with local businesses in the area. In the year before last, contracts worth a substantial £10 million were generated between major airport companies and local businesses following this event.

    And in total, BAA Heathrow procurement to the Region is estimated to be worth over £180 million. So the impact the airport has on the surrounding community and its economy is very substantial indeed.

    Neither can we forget that many large and international companies chose to have corporate headquarters within a stone’s throw of Heathrow – each of which brings additional employment, prosperity and prestige to those localities.

    And although the East and South East of England clearly predominate, aviation also accounts for significant direct employment in other regions too, especially the north of England. I mentioned growth at East Midlands airport, in Manchester too, many new jobs have been created as a result of the airport’s expansion. At least 12,000 extra jobs are predicted by 2005 as a result of the airport’s expansion.

    In addition, just as in the case of Heathrow, regional airports generate significant amounts of indirect employment – either in terms of attracting inward investment, or clusters of businesses needing easy access to air services.

    However, we all know that our obvious success in the international aviation market and the associated economic benefits cannot be sustained unless we review and make decisions about future capacity. And if we fail to accurately respond to capacity needs, Britain will lose out.

    For example, if the right capacity isn’t there, as in any market, shortage of supply will push up prices. Our studies show, for instance, that flights from the main airports in the South East could typically cost £100 more, in real terms, by 2030 if no additional runway capacity were provided over that period.

    In contrast, our studies clearly indicate that the provision of additional airport capacity in the South East of England would generate large economic benefits.

    Needless to say, benefits would mainly be to air passengers, but by default additional direct and indirect benefits would inevitably accrue to UK airlines and the UK economy through increased productivity and inward investment.

    But our studies are not about ‘predict and provide’. As I say, our minds are not made up.

    However, Government does recognise that there are distinct benefits in having a major hub airport, capable of serving the widest range of destinations. There are also difficulties. However, it’s the only viable means for airlines to operate wide route networks, with more frequencies on the thicker routes that are in turn supported by good domestic and regional connections.

    This is something our main European competitors already understand only too well, and have sought to provide for at Amsterdam Schipol for example, as well as at Frankfurt and, notably Paris Charles de Gaulle.

    Indeed. Charles de Gaulle was conceived in the 1970s as a hub, and who would have thought 30 years ago that the subsequent expansion in air traffic would have been sufficient to merit its considerable expansion and growth. Yet it has and with that in mind, the French Government wisely located the airport in an area that could easily cope with high levels of growth.

    Other countries have also recognised, and sought to exploit, the benefits of a large airport with a good network of services. You only have to look at the growing success of Copenhagen airport.

    It’s not dissimilar in size to Manchester airport, with two runways. But with its network of routes, Copenhagen has been able to develop into a hub for Scandinavia as a whole, feeding traffic to Sweden, Norway and Finland.

    This arguably gives it a prominence well above what natural geography might suggest and is impacting on the business of other airport outside of Scandinavia. And by attracting international traffic, Copenhagen is reaping the benefits, rapidly boosting its regional and economic status.

    But while it’s true to say that size matters – the larger the airport, the bigger the potential problems, too. We know from previous public consultations that the key concerns of the public about airports (not surprisingly) revolve around noise, air quality and local road congestion.

    If the consumer benefits of further development in the South East are potentially large, so too are the potential environmental concerns. As such, the willingness of the aviation sector to tackle these environmental factors vigorously and effectively will be crucial to any decision to expand.

    As a part of the consultative process, we shall be specifically inviting views on what sorts of steps will be needed to deal acceptably with these issues, particularly in those cases where expansion of existing airports may be an option.

    On noise, for example, it’s true to say that the number of people affected by noise at Heathrow has dramatically reduced over the last 20 years. And our policy is to do everything practicable to continue improve the noise climate at Heathrow over time. That’s why strict conditions have been imposed in the planning approval for Terminal Five.

    But maintaining the progress on noise will require the industry to commit itself to further improvements. So is the industry prepared to invest in engine and airframe technology, and produce quietest available aircraft in return for further capacity?

    On air quality, the UK will be obliged to comply with mandatory EU limit values in relation to various air pollutants – nitrogen dioxide (NO2) for example being one of them and of which aircraft are a major source of emissions.

    The third big issue we have to deal with in terms of extra capacity is land access, particularly road congestion.

    We are very committed to seeing public transport access to airports improved to help reduce both congestion and pollution on nearby roads. Our consultation documents will address that, including how improvements to rail access might be made, and paid for.

    There are undoubtedly large benefits to be reaped from further growth. But we must also have a clear programme for tackling the impacts which come from growth. The public deserves nothing less. And nothing less will satisfy our commitment to the sustainable long-term development of aviation in the UK.

    Before I conclude, let me say a brief word on security. Not surprisingly, it is an issue that has been particularly prominent in people’s minds since the tragic events of 11 September last year.

    Having learned our lessons the hard way, following the equally tragic attack on flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, the UK already had one of the most demanding aviation security regimes in the world. That meant we were in a far better position than most countries to respond to the attacks in New York and Washington. Earlier in the year I was involved in a visit by a US congressional committee, who were looking to draw on our hard-won expertise in aviation security.

    But we are not complacent. Aviation security in the UK remains at an enhanced level, in recognition of the continuing threat – which remains higher in the UK than in most other European countries.

    We took new powers in last year’s emergency anti-terrorism legislation, and we’re in the process of using those powers to introduce a system for approving providers of contract security services.

    In turn, we are engaging with the industry to consider how day to day implementation of security measures can be improved – my Department’s Director of Transport Security recently hosted a seminar with a hundred industry representatives to discuss how standards could be raised.

    And we’re also busy on the international front to ensure appropriate enhancements in international security standards. This is in recognition both of the need for a “level playing field”, and the fact that the threat could come from incoming aircraft as well as from those departing the UK.

    To sum up, I think you’ll agree that there are some tough decisions ahead with regard to future capacity. To succeed, we must face up to and be prepared to address the longer-term realities.

    When it comes to taking decisions on capacity, the Government needs to know what the industry, for its part, can – and will – deliver.

    The challenge is as much for you – as it is for Government – to convince the country that the potential benefits can be obtained at an acceptable cost and with minimal impact on individuals and society at large.

    So now I look to you to take that lead. The continuing commitment and energy of all those who work within UK aviation will be a vital part of the process, to help us forge a responsible and sustainable future for the industry.

  • John Spellar – 2002 Speech on Air Transport

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Transport Minister, John Spellar, on 11th November 2002.

    Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words at the start of your conference today.

    I note that your conference papers describe the current exercise as “the biggest consultation ever undertaken on air transport”. I have to say, we did not consciously set out to break records in that particular respect. But I am happy to take the credit!

    The issues are necessarily complex and far-reaching; and we have indeed tried our level best to do justice to them – and to give parties adequate time to comment.

    Clearly, an enormous amount of work went into preparing the suite of consultation documents issued in the summer. But they are only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath are several years’ worth of technical detail and analysis, open to public scrutiny. No-one can accuse us of being superficial.

    All told, we have issued nearly a quarter of a million summary and main consultation documents and there have been some 600,000 downloads on the Department’s special website.

    Many of you will perhaps have attended one of the public exhibitions around the country. These have tried to give people a further opportunity to understand and explore the issues. Those in the South East attracted over 11,000 people.

    So here we are, with just under a month still to go before the end of the consultation period. And you may be thinking there is nothing more that can be said.

    Well, I’d actually like to take this opportunity to address some of the issues you will want to take into account in framing your response. And I will do so by hopefully answering some of the questions that may still be uppermost in your minds.

    Demand forecasts

    Firstly, the demand forecasts. Questions have been raised regarding the Government’s assessment of future demand.

    Our forecasts envisage a three-fold increase in passenger numbers over the next 30 years, if demand is unconstrained and we think that’s realistic for three reasons.

    Firstly, the forecast recognises the increasing maturity of the aviation market. So future growth should be less rapid than historic growth.

    In fact, the forecasts assume a future rate of growth for the next 30 years at only half the rate that we have seen in the past 30 years.

    Second, we have worked on the basis of a central forecast, pitched in the middle of a range which could see passenger numbers increase to anything between 400 and 600 million passengers a year over the period.

    Of course, forecasting up to 30 years ahead cannot be precise. Aviation is a dynamic industry, and is constantly changing – witness the continuing burgeoning of the “no frills” sector for example.

    In the space of 5 years to the Year 2000, “no frills” carriers in Europe achieved the same rate of growth as the total UK air travel market achieved over the last 30 years.

    But the point is this. Our past record on air traffic forecasts is generally good. If anything, events have shown it to be a touch conservative.

    And third, the lesson of history is that aviation enjoys strong trend growth. A little over a year ago, the doom-mongers were saying that September 11 would change everything.

    Those tragic events have certainly had a profound effect on many aspects of the aviation industry. But traffic is returning, albeit more slowly in some areas than others. In short, the trauma of last year does not look set to overturn the long-run growth trends.

    So, on the forecasts, we are confident that the underlying basis for the options appraisal is robust.

    However, we’ve been accused of “predict and provide”. But in fact, there are likely to be major economic benefits from meeting at least most of this forecast demand. Much of this would accrue to air passengers. But there would be additional benefits to airlines and the UK economy.

    Airports can help to attract inward investment. But they also help to keep UK business competitive: 30% of our visible exports, by value, go by air – worth some £60 billion a year.

    And the ability of the small businessman to fly from his local airport can be just as important as it is for the giant corporation.

    But there are also likely to be major environmental disbenefits from meeting the forecast demand in full. This is why the first question in the consultation is: How much airport capacity should be provided?

    Alternative modes?

    The benefits of air travel are all very well, but its arguable that a better alternative would be for some of this air traffic to go by rail.

    The answer to this point is that we need to be realistic. Many passengers on domestic flights are interlining with international flights out of the UK – in the case of Manchester to London, about 50% of all passengers.

    Others, for example, are doing business near to the airport rather than wanting to access central London, where the major rail terminals are. Rail travel, even where it is reasonably time-competitive with air, will not be a particularly attractive alternative for such people.

    In some cases, we can expect to see some rail/air substitution, particularly where rail service improvements offer the prospect of markedly shorter journey times and good airport connections. We acknowledge that in the consultation documents, and have taken it into account in our analyses.

    And, for all the regions which currently enjoy air services to London, we ask in our consultation documents about the scope for switching from air to rail links.

    We will expect the SRA, in considering rail proposals, to continue to take account of the potential for abstraction from air. But it does not get us off the hook in terms of having to confront the issue of airport capacity.

    The Regional Question

    Make no mistake, regional airports are a crucial part of the transport mix. Again, we say this quite clearly in the consultation documents. They help to ensure that economic benefits are enjoyed as widely as possible across the UK.

    Indeed, regional airports have a role to play, not just in maintaining links to other parts of the UK, but also in linking the regions to key continental hubs connecting with European and long haul destinations.

    We want to strengthen the contribution that our regional airports can make to the country’s overall economic prosperity, and the prosperity of their own region, and support those getting up to critical mass and mini-hub status.

    But we cannot escape the fact that it is the South East of England which accounts for the lion’s share – 60% – of UK air travel, and where demand is strongest.

    On population grounds alone, London is a major generator of travel. Since 1989, the capital has seen its population grow by nearly 600,000 – equivalent to absorbing a city the size of Sheffield.

    And in the next 15 years the population is set to increase by another 700,000 – equivalent to adding a city the size of Leeds.

    Access to high quality air services has been cited as one of the main reasons why London ranks as a world city, and the best city in Europe for business; and why London is the chosen headquarters location for one quarter of Europe’s largest companies.

    The South East is important, not just because there is a higher ‘propensity to fly’ – with 60% of the population of the region making at least one trip a year, compared with a national average of 50%. In itself the figure of 50% represents a remarkable change for this country.

    Heathrow in particular handles a significant number of passengers from overseas who are en route to destinations beyond the UK. That simply reflects the advantages of a major airport which is capable of serving a wide range of destinations around the world. It then tends to act as a hub, generating yet more connecting services.

    We recognise there are real benefits to be gained from having an airport, or perhaps more than one, which can act in that way. But the consultation seeks views on that, and accepts that such a hub need not be limited in future to Heathrow, or indeed to the South East. And we specifically seek views on whether Manchester Airport could, and should, seek to become a major hub airport.

    Environmental costs

    So far I have covered demand forecasts, rail substitution and the regional issues. I now want to move on to environmental issues.

    Some people will argue that aviation is of itself ‘unsustainable’. We have never sought to deny that, unless properly managed, aviation has substantial environmental disbenefits, both local and global. And we expect aviation to cover its external costs, including the environmental costs it imposes.

    That is why, from the outset, we have made clear our commitment to sustainability. There will need to be a proper balance between economic, social and environmental considerations. And if there is to be further capacity, steps will need to be taken to address the environmental impacts.

    In most cases, this will mean local solutions to local problems

    – first, through appropriate environmental controls;

    – second, through mitigation of effects such as noise

    – and third, through arrangements to ensure that those most affected receive due compensation.

    Responses to our Future of Aviation consultation showed that this is what the public expects.

    Research further suggests that noise and air quality top the list of people’s concerns. Public feeling on these matters often runs high – borne out, as you would expect, at the public exhibitions.

    First, noise. Aircraft noise has got progressively less over recent years, due to quieter engines. Nearly a quarter of a million fewer people are affected by noise at the four biggest airports in the UK, compared with the position 20 years ago.

    At Heathrow, it remains our policy to do everything practicable to continue to improve the noise climate over time. As you will be aware, conditions have been imposed in the planning permission for Terminal 5 both to cap air traffic movements and to limit the noise contour.

    And we’ve suggested in the consultation documents that future growth in air traffic may call for the imposition of similar noise contour caps elsewhere.

    Night noise is another sensitive issue. I appreciate the genuine concerns, but it is not directly related to the question of airport capacity. Night flights at major South East airports continue to be regulated, and we will be consulting specifically on the future regime at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted later this year. Meanwhile, we are doing further work on public attitudes to night noise.

    A key part of sustainability is also that the aviation industry bears the costs of mitigating effects on communities living near airports. And if capacity enhancements are to be provided, a quid pro quo may be for aircraft and engine manufacturers to accelerate the delivery of reductions in noise.

    Air quality is a second major concern. Further action may well be needed in some cases to tackle local problems, for instance from ground-based emissions.

    At Heathrow, where the problems are exacerbated by high levels of road traffic emissions, concerted action will be needed to tackle the problems. We have made it abundantly clear that any airport expansion could only be approved if air quality standards can be met.

    But by far the biggest element in the environment debate is climate change – the effects of CO2 emissions from aircraft. We have allowed for this in our demand forecasts, on the basis that the aviation industry will be expected to bear the costs of the damage which aviation causes through its contribution to global warming.

    Precisely how this is achieved is a matter of continuing debate. Climate change issues are best pursued internationally, through the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

    We’re actively seeking to encourage work on possible measures such as an open emissions trading system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, assuming this was widely supported among the international community.

    Our conclusions on these matters will be set out in next year’s White Paper.

    Next steps

    As you know, the consultation period on airports runs until November. We will then carefully assess the responses and use them to inform our decisions on what additional capacity we think is deliverable and sustainable, and where we think it should be located.

    Any future infrastructure developments will of course continue to be governed by the planning system. Reforms have already been announced, with a view to speeding up the arrangements for projects of national importance, such as airports.

    As for timing and funding, these will be commercial decisions stemming from the private sector. But with the White Paper in place, setting out a clear and long-term strategy, the industry should be in a position to plan with confidence.

    In the White Paper, we will also be setting out our policies across a range of other air transport matters, from airline policy to air traffic management and consumer protection, on which we consulted previously.

    In many of these areas, we operate within European and international frameworks and must work in conjunction with our partners – and in some cases, competitors – to realise our objectives.

    To sum up, the air transport industry is undoubtedly one of the UK’s great business success stories. In turn, it contributes much to the success of our economy. We want to ensure that it continues to flourish in an increasingly competitive world. But it needs to do so in a way that respects the environment and the needs of the communities it serves and affects.

    The challenge in the coming months will be to strike the right balance to secure a sustainable future for aviation. And your responses to that debate will help us get it right.

  • Jack Straw – 2002 Speech on the European Union

    jackstraw

    Below is the text of a speech made by the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, on “Critical Decisions for the EU” on 5th December 2012.

    Next week at Copenhagen, the EU will take some critical decisions which will define the shape and stability of Europe for the next half century. Europe has to decide:

    – its conception and its boundaries;

    – whether the boundaries are geographical or in truth religious;

    – and whether we have a vision which is strategic or myopic.

    At the heart of these decisions lie two issues, one very specific – Turkey – but resonant way beyond its borders. The second, political, about the role of the nation state.

    TURKEY

    On Turkey, we in the United Kingdom want to see a ‘firm date’ set – to pick up the Prime Minister’s words – for the start of accession negotiations with the European Union.

    This is now a matter of obligation both to previous EU decisions and to history. Three years ago at the Helsinki Summit all heads of state and government said that ‘Turkey is a candidate state destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to the other candidate states.’

    Of course Turkey has to meet the same Copenhagen criteria on human rights, the rule of law, and the market economy. No less than other applicant states but neither no more.

    And Turkey has made significant progress since then. If the principal definition of a functioning democracy is that it allows the peaceful change of government then Turkey more than passes that test. Turkey has also introduced 48 separate constitutional amendments and 32 legislative changes towards meeting the Copenhagen criteria. Of course they are the first to acknowledge that there is a long way to go before they are ready formally to become members of the European Union. But there is no reason why a firm date cannot now be set for the beginning of those negotiations.

    The most disreputable reason of all for feet dragging on Turkey would be to treat it differently from other applicant states because the majority of the country’s population was Muslim.

    When Turkey was the most formidable defence of Western Europe’s eastern and southern flank against the Soviet bloc, I do not remember any Western European nation denying Turkey’s help in NATO because it was ‘a Muslim nation’. They have been full and active members of NATO for 50 years, loyal and effective. There is no reason why they will not become the same inside the European Union.

    A state in which the overwhelming majority of its peoples are Muslim, which has parties which celebrate that fact (just as we have the equivalent in Western Europe) but which is secular, and which accepts our conception of liberal democratic values would be of huge importance to the stability not just of Europe but of much of the rest of the world. And we need to remember this – that so much of Europe’s own history, written in blood, has arisen through violence and conflict defined by religious strife.

    THE FUTURE OF EUROPE

    The second issue for Europe – now being actively raised in the Convention on the Future of Europe – is the role of the nation state. Yes, the European Union only works if nations are ready to pool their sovereignty in appropriate areas. But for the EU to work effectively at 15, and still more at 25, 27 or 28, its institutions have to work with the grain of the nation state, not against it.

    Slovenia is a small country. Some might claim the kind of nation state who should be protected by the European Commission from ‘the bigs’. But yesterday when I was in Slovenia, a proud nation state, which only gained its independence just over a decade ago, I was poignantly and unexpectedly warned of the dangers of failing to give proper expression to nations within the EU.

    The way we ensure that the Union works is not by strengthening one institution at the expense of the others but by strengthening them all.

    IRAQ

    Mr Chairman, let me turn to one of the other major international news stories – Iraq.

    Last month, the UN Security Council finally recognised that the world could no longer afford to ignore Iraq’s contempt for its disarmament obligations. After 11 years of Iraqi prevarication, intimidation and deceit, UNSCR 1441 gives Saddam Hussein a ‘final opportunity’ to comply with international law.

    The text is sufficiently clear that even Saddam Hussein will find it difficult to find any loopholes. The first crucial test of Saddam’s intentions now looms. The regime must submit a full account of its holdings of weapons of mass destruction and dual-use technologies to UN inspectors and the Security Council by 8 December.

    We have been here before. For seven long years between 1991-98, UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors sought accurate Iraqi declarations for chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The inspectors were frustrated at every turn. For four years the Iraqi regime refused to admit the very existence of a biological weapons programme. An admission of guilt came only with the defection of Hussein Kamal in 1995.

    As our dossier showed in September, Iraq has continued to develop its weapons of mass destruction. But even if we put to one side what has happened since 1998, the fact is that when the inspectors left Iraq four years ago, the regime had yet to account for significant amounts of WMD materiel. This included:

    – up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals;

    – up to 360 tonnes of bulk agent for chemical weapons (including 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve agent);

    – over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents;

    – and large quantities of growth media acquired for the production of biological weapons.

    These are not small quantities of WMD materiel which might easily slip off the balance sheet. They provide the basis for a huge chemical and biological weapons programme, with the potential to inflict many thousands of casualties. And they must be accounted for.

    Given his record of evasion and deceit, it is unlikely that Saddam will provide a full and accurate account of his WMD holdings on 8 December.

    He may declare that it has no holdings of WMD; or he may fill the declaration with meaningless detail designed to put the inspectors off the scent. Either way, this will be a serious mistake. The inspectors will test his declaration with robust inspections and hard questions. Even if Saddam makes the mistake of lying once again, we will want to nail his lies. While this weekend will not be the moment to declare Iraq either in breach or in compliance, a false declaration would make clear to the world that Saddam’s strategy is deceit. We will not allow him to get away with it.

    If he is true to form, Saddam Hussein will try to confuse and divide international opinion. He will be seeking the benefit of the doubt. He does not deserve it. That is the relevance of the briefing paper the Government released on Monday setting out his vile human rights record. A man who flouts every law of humanity internally cannot be taken at his word that he is abiding by international law.

    We will continue to make our argument robustly here in the United Kingdom, in the Arab world and as far as we can to the people of Iraq. We will take every opportunity to ensure that our voice is heard in Iraq. Yesterday I gave an interview to Al Jazeera which will have been seen by the regime. My message to them is:

    – Don’t play games.

    – Don’t make the wrong choice.

    – Don’t reject the final opportunity provided by the Security Council.

    And our message to the proud people of Iraq is that we know what they have suffered. We believe they deserve a better life. Without his weapons of terror, it will be harder for Saddam Hussein to intimidate and oppress them.

    The choice is Saddam Hussein’s. We not only want a peaceful solution, we have designed a pathway to peace in Resolution 1441. But the only way of convincing Saddam to stop cheating and take that path is with the credible threat of force. We will continue to pursue that policy with consistency and determination.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Speech to Welsh Conservative Conference

    Ian Duncan Smith
    Ian Duncan Smith

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Leader of the Opposition, Iain Duncan Smith, to the Welsh Conservative Conference on 24th May 2002.

    I have spent much of the last three months looking first hand at the symptoms of political failure.

    I have seen evidence of drug abuse – lying alongside evidence of children playing.

    I have seen poverty – not just a lack of money, but of hope and ambition.

    I have seen the evidence of crime – graffiti on walls of abandoned houses where people have lost respect for their own community.

    The failure of politics is evident here in Wales.

    We must be a Party that speaks for vulnerable people as well as for the rest of society.

    And we are becoming that Party again.

    Here in Wales you’re leading the way.

    You have shown how the interfering policies of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties are letting these people down.

    If Labour have achieved anything through their devolution settlement, it is to expose the myth that they are on the side of people in Wales.

    For they are now in government in Wales, propped up by their Liberal Democrat allies.

    The Liberals claim to be the real opposition to Labour in Westminster. They stood on their manifesto here in Wales.

    Yet at the very first sniff of power they have rolled over. Their cynicism takes your breath away.

    So where before Labour and the Liberals blamed all Wales’ problems on the Conservatives, they now have to take responsibility themselves.

    The Labour Party has to explain why hospital waiting lists in Wales are spiralling out of control.

    Labour politicians have to explain why one hospital in South Wales has the longest waiting lists in the developed world.

    When parents and children look at their crumbling school buildings and ask why they are being educated in such appalling conditions, they will remember that Labour told them it would all be better after devolution.

    Of course, it is not.

    Because Labour in Cardiff have the same instincts as their colleagues in London.

    Rhodri Morgan may not call himself ‘New’ Labour, but beneath the surface the same instincts and prejudices remain.

    Centralised control, rather than devolution to the front-line.

    Stifling innovation, rather than encouraging initiative.

    Outdated dogma, instead of new ways of thinking.

    For the past five years Labour has spent its time centralising our public services with targets and ten-year plans. It has drowned individual initiative in directives and dogma.

    British People deserve better than this. Wales deserves better than this.

    Yet Labour plough on regardless. When something doesn’t work they throw more money at it. They are the ultimate proponents of ‘one-more-heave’ politics. They believe everything is basically fine, as long as we push a little bit harder everything will fall into place.

    Wales spends more as a nation on health than Holland does, but waiting lists are longer now than they were in 1997. In Holland they get the right to treatment 4 weeks after seeing their GP.

    This approach is delivering neither fairness nor efficiency.

    In this new century, we are still trying to run our public services in the same way we did after the Second World War.

    The result is disastrous – and vulnerable people suffer the most.

    When the health service fails, it is the vulnerable who suffer. It is the elderly person who cannot be discharged from their hospital bed because there is no care home for her to go to. It is the small child left waiting hours in A&E. It is the person who has to spend their life savings on a heart by-pass operation in South Africa.

    When the transport system doesn’t work, vulnerable people can’t get to work or seek out training opportunities. Pensioners can’t access health care or even do something as simple as their shopping.

    When schools are struggling to find enough teachers, it is children who suffer the most.

    After five years of undermining the authority of teachers in the classroom and the ability of heads run their own schools, is it any wonder that so many people are turning their backs on the profession?

    These are all problems politics is supposed to help solve. Instead, Labour’s politics is making them worse.

    Conservative solutions

    So it falls to Conservatives to provide the solutions where Labour have failed.

    And our solutions are based on a simple message – Trust People.

    Trust people to choose what’s best in education.

    Trust people to know what’s best for their community.

    Trust people to run their own lives.

    It is a concept that’s alien to our opponents.

    It’s not just Labour. Liberal Democrats don’t even trust people enough to tell them the truth.

    At one press conference in London during the General Election last year. Charles Kennedy said that, because of their involvement in the National Assembly: ‘Rather than just promising what we would do if we were elected, we can show you what we have done where we are in power’.

    And what have they achieved?

    Hospital waiting lists – up.

    Teacher shortages – up.

    Manufacturing job losses – up.

    And what about Plaid Cymru?

    Well, what about them?

    They are increasingly becoming an irrelevance. Their only concern seems to be whether their former leader should stand for the Assembly again.

    Frankly, I think that says more about them than anything else. While everyone else is discussing the future, they’re debating the past – or whether Merthyr should host the Olympics.

    People in Wales cannot look to them for solutions to today’s problems.

    So it falls to us. Wales has always been our priority. That is why I recreated the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Wales and that is why I asked Nigel Evans to join me in the Shadow Cabinet to lead the charge.

    That is why I asked Nick Bourne to come to Shadow Cabinet and show us how his leadership in the assembly is proving so efficient.

    And that is why I asked Jonathan Evans to come to Shadow Cabinet to show how he is battling for us in Europe.

    Three big hitters – three big targets – Labour, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru – I almost feel sorry for our opponents.

    Next year’s Assembly elections will be a referendum on Labour’s record.

    But they will also be a judgement of how much we’ve changed as a Party.

    It is not enough for us to wait for Labour to lose the trust of the people. We have to ensure that people trust us again. We have to be a credible alternative. Thanks to Nick Bourne and his team, we are providing that alternative.

    If it had not been for Conservatives in the National Assembly the decision to spend millions of pounds on an unnecessary new building would have gone largely unopposed.

    The self-indulgent waste of time and money on new logos and titles would have gone unnoticed.

    Most important of all, the Administration’s decision to spend vast amounts of money while utterly failing to improve public services in Wales would go unchallenged.

    Without us, there would be no opposition at all in the Assembly. And that’s why I want to see many more Conservatives elected to serve in Cardiff Bay next year.

    The Assembly elections must be the springboard for our fight back to win back Welsh seats in Parliament.

    Because I am an unashamed Unionist.

    I am a proud Scotsman by birth, but I was educated in Wales. Anglesey, just up the road from here, was my home for some of my formative years.

    I went on to serve in Northern Ireland and now I represent a seat from an English constituency. So I know that the things which unite the constituent parts of the United Kingdom vastly outweigh the things that divide them.

    And I know we need to win again in Wales.

    We are already attracting support from a wider cross-section of society than ever before.

    You need look no further than here in Conwy.

    Your candidate for next year’s elections here is Guto Bebb.

    He is the former Chairman of Plaid Cymru’s Caernarfon constituency. He even ran Dafydd Wigley’s election campaigns. But he said the Party’s lacklustre performance in the National Assembly, and its internal divisions, led him to join the Welsh Conservatives.

    He is an excellent candidate, and I look forward to seeing him serving under the Conservative banner in the National Assembly.

    And they’re not just coming over to us from Plaid Cymru.

    Last November we welcomed Dan Munford into the Conservative fold.

    Dan used to be a Liberal Democrat. He worked for them as a researcher, he even stood as their candidate for Parliament, but he came to conclude that the Party was ‘neither liberal nor democratic’.

    He is an excellent addition to our team.

    And just last month we welcomed back a former Conservative supporter. Heather Douglas was a Liberal Democrat councillor in Cardiff, but she has recognised that the Conservatives are the only principled opposition party in Wales.

    We are glad to have her back.

    The choice that these people and other like them have made to join the Conservative Party is proof that we are changing.

    But as we change we will remain true to our principles. We do not have to ditch all that we believe, like Labour, to win the trust of the people again.

    We want to help people be more independent of the State; we want to reduce the power of the State over people; to increase the choices available to citizens; to provide greater security for our fellow citizens; and we want to remove obstacles to enterprise, both at home and abroad.

    Conservatives believe in a government that devolves power and responsibility to local communities.

    A community can consist of many things – families, local schools, charities and places of worship, but it cannot consist of government taskforces and committees, run by politicians from Whitehall or even Cardiff.

    This morning I visited a day centre for people with learning disabilities right here in Llandudno. It helps people cope with everyday tasks, it gives them an opportunity to take part in sport and offers the chance for them to work.

    It isn’t run by Central Government or by the Assembly, but by local volunteers: people from the community supporting the community, helping vulnerable people who are too often left behind.

    It is in such places that problems are confronted and overcome.

    Across Wales, there are voluntary groups working in local communities to improve things like housing, childcare and the environment. There are 250,000 voluntary organisations in Wales, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.

    They are the glue that binds our society together.

    Government cannot solve every social challenge but government can support these institutions and the values that energise them.

    That’s why our manifesto for next year’s Assembly elections will contain practical ideas to support these groups – families, charities, social entrepreneurs.

    And it will contain measures that will deliver real change in our public services.

    I’m not talking about Labour’s tinkering reforms – a lot of spin and disruption, ending up with more of the same.

    Labour want to replace 5 health bodies with up to 37 new organisations.

    This is madness.

    We want to replace 5 Health Authorities with one all-Wales health commissioning organisation.

    That way we can keep politicians out of the day-to-day running of the NHS and let doctors and nurses get on with what everybody wants them to do: treating patients.

    On education, we want to see more money going directly to the schools, rather than being siphoned off by politicians and bureaucrats.

    On crime, we don’t just want to see more police. More police filling in more forms helps no one.

    When I met Mayor Giuliani recently, he told me how he’d cut crime in New York by 60% in the past nine years.

    It wasn’t by concentrating on the Mr Bigs. It was by putting more police where they belong out on our streets.

    That’s what we need to work towards in this country.

    These are the policies that will turn public services into services that the public want.

    And people want the Welsh economy to be competitive again.

    Nothing marks out the true instincts of the Labour-Liberal Administration more than its hostility to business, in this they take their lead from Westminster.

    What is the £4bn tax on employers’ National Insurance if it isn’t a tax on jobs and wealth creation?

    What is the extra £214 than an average worker will pay a year in tax on their income, if it isn’t an increase in income tax?

    These measures say a great deal about what the Government really thinks about enterprise and working families.

    And the recent speculation about the Euro says a great deal about their priorities for the country.

    The Prime Minister has been dropping hints at a referendum on the single currency next year.

    At a time when everyone is concerned about the state of their schools and hospitals, when we feel threatened by the rise in violent crime, he should be focusing on these issues instead of playing games.

    If the Prime Minister wants Britain to adopt the single currency, he should say so, name a date and let the people to decide.

    When he does, we will campaign vigorously for a ‘no’ vote.

    Then get back to the urgent task of making this country fit for the century we are living in.

    Helping the vulnerable means supporting communities and in Wales there is one community which has been particularly hard hit by Labour’s policies – the countryside.

    Agriculture is central to the Welsh economy and to the Welsh way of life, but it is in a state of crisis.

    Foot and Mouth, Bovine TB and the restrictions on the movement of livestock, Welsh farmers have received one slap in the face after another.

    Labour’s refusal to sanction a full public inquiry into the foot and mouth is nothing short of a scandal.

    And no-one should ever forget that the Liberal Democrats in Cardiff voted against our calls for a public inquiry. Shame on them.

    Nor should anyone forget that it was Jonathan Evans, the leader of our MEPs in Strasbourg, who led the calls for a public inquiry there.

    He stands up for the interests of Wales in Europe, not for the interests of Europe in Wales.

    Of course the countryside is not simply about farming.

    People in rural areas rely on local schools. Too many of them are in a poor condition in Wales and too many suffer from a lack of teachers.

    Rural people need access to family doctors and hospitals. But they need to be able to get to them. High fuel costs continue to hit hardest in rural areas.

    So does the decline in the postal service. Which is why I promise you this: whatever else happens, our commitment to universal postal delivery remains total.

    These are the problems that Welsh politicians should be tackling. The Assembly would be held in higher esteem if it faced up to these issues rather than talking about banning hunting.

    Welsh Conservatives face the same challenges as Conservatives everywhere.

    We need to re-engage with people. That means talking about the things they want to talk about.

    It means changing not who we are but the way we have been seen for far too long.

    Here in Wales that process has already begun.

    We are addressing people’s concerns. We are developing policies to tackle the problems they face.

    Next year we have the chance to put those policies to the test.

    I know that in Wales we have a team who can rise to the challenge ahead.

    The tide will turn, but when it does we have to be ready.

    Ready to give the people the public services they deserve.

    Ready to give local communities the support they need.

    Ready to make life better for all the people in Wales.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Nicholas Ridley Memorial Lecture

    Ian Duncan Smith
    Ian Duncan Smith

    The below speech was made by the then Leader of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, on the 21st November 2002. The speech was made as the Nicholas Ridley Memorial Lecture and held at the Portman Hotel, Portman Square, London.

    There are three popular prejudices about modern politicians.

    The first is that they have no interests outside politics.

    The second is that they are all spin and no substance.

    And the third is that they are desperate to please whoever they happen to be talking to at the time.

    Well, none of these were true of Nick Ridley. It is a real privilege to give this lecture in his honour tonight.

    It would be an understatement to say that Nick liked to speak his mind.

    He was that rare creature in Conservative politics of the 1980’s, a dry who was a patrician dry.

    He was once emerged from a debate when he was a Foreign Office Minister, having been needled by a Labour MP, and muttered under his breath: “He was my fag at Eton, I wish I had beaten him more.”

    The object of his wrath was – Tam Dalyell.

    Nick was a younger son, and knew he was never going to have a large and comfortable inheritance.

    Instead, he was going to have to make his own way in the world.

    Perhaps this is why he seemed to see himself as an outsider.

    He genuinely saw himself as fighting for the little man, struggling on a modest income, who couldn’t afford high taxes. He loathed political correctness.

    And Nick, of course, was gloriously and triumphantly politically incorrect.

    This is what he wrote in his memoirs, “My Style of Government” –

    “The French glory in making their lives as enjoyable as possible: I sometimes wonder whether the lobbies in Britain don’t glory in trying to make other people’s lives as unenjoyable as possible.

    “We are told we must eat less fat, less cholesterol, fewer calories and all the rest of it. Growing numbers of people want to ban this, that or the other blood sport.

    I hardly dare mention smoking; smokers, of which I am one, are treated like outcasts.”

    Gordon Brown said that when Nick was a Minister his idea of the perfect office was an empty in-tray, an empty out-tray…and a full ashtray.

    But Nick’s eccentricities were based on a practical judgement of what would worked and what wouldn’t.

    There was a time when he was in Brussels to attend a meeting of the Council of Ministers.

    The night before, he and his team of officials had a briefing meeting in his hotel room over supper, but the room was overheated.

    The air conditioning was out of control and the windows were sealed, much to Nick’s fury.

    So after the team of officials had left, he removed all his clothes before starting to work on his briefing papers.

    At that point the waiter arrived to remove the remains of supper to find the British Minister naked at his desk, just like a scene from Monty Python.

    Nick’s quirkiness and angularity, his originality and outspokenness, reflected the character of a man who had lots of interests outside politics – more than I can possibly do justice to.

    Engineer, architect, writer and cook, Nick helped create one of the finest water gardens in England in his own house with his own hands, and was a distinguished painter of watercolours – one of the most gifted artists in the Commons since Winston Churchill.

    He also designed the gates that now stand at the end of Downing Street a few feet away from the Cenotaph.

    Apparently, there had been a bureaucratic muddle about the construction of the gates. Nick was present during a Cabinet discussion about how to resolve it.

    “If my grandfather could design the Cenotaph,” he said. “I can surely design the gates.”

    And he did there and then. It took him twenty seconds.

    The breadth of Nick’s interests helps to explain what for me was the most important aspect of his public life.

    The last century was shaped partly by those who believed that politics is the be-all and end-all of human existence.

    By Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao-Tse-Tung.

    By the ideologies of fascism, communism, and socialism.

    Who dreamed, as T.S.Eliot once wrote, “of systems so perfect that no-one will need to be good”.

    These ideologies had their differences.

    But they had one belief in common.

    That government could bring about the satisfaction of all human desires.

    As this century begins, those over-arching systems have collapsed into a heap of rubble.

    Taking with them the lives of millions of innocents.

    The belief that government can make people’s lives perfect, was anathema to Nick.

    Like Sir Keith Joseph, his great contemporary, he believed that there were limits to the good which government can do, but almost no limits to the harm.

    And like Sir Keith again, he played an irreplaceable part in the Conservative revolution during the opposition years of the 1970s, which prepared the way for the Thatcher governments of the 1980s.

    This group, Conservative Way Forward, was founded to keep the spirit of that revolution alive, and drive it into the future.

    And it can truly be said that Nick Ridley always looked for the conservative way forward.

    Now, once again, we are in opposition.

    Again, we seek to serve the British people in government.

    However, times have changed.

    During the 1980s, people were menaced by double-digit inflation, trade union power and the Cold War. Their overriding concern was their standard of living.

    But today, people are confronted by the declining quality of our public services. They face queues for treatment in hospitals or for places in good schools. They have to cope with trains that don’t arrive on time and roads that are clogged by traffic. Even their pensions are in peril.

    They are alarmed by the rise in violent crime, anti-social behaviour, disorder and incivility. In short, their overriding concern is their quality of life.

    Times may have changed, but our beliefs should not.

    They are just as relevant today as they were in the 1970s and 80s.

    The Conservative Party needs to take the Conservative Way Forward which inspired Nick Ridley and won us 18 uninterrupted years in office. Once again we must ignite a Conservative revolution in opposition.

    And it is very clear what that revolution needs to overthrow today.

    It is New Labour’s ever-growing centralised control of government, civil society and people’s lives.

    Because it is centralisation which grows those queues for hospital treatment and places in good schools.

    Centralisation which allows anti-social behaviour to rampage unchecked.

    And centralisation which is damaging our quality of life in Britain.

    It’s not just that we need less government.

    We need more responsibility exercised at a local level.

    I don’t just mean by that giving back more powers to local government.

    I mean enabling people to take power themselves.

    It’s what I call community government.

    Tonight I will tell you how a Conservative Government, drawing on the concepts which inspired Nick Ridley, would help to make this idea a reality.

    But first, let’s look at how the problem has grown.

    There is a cycle in modern political life.

    The media identifies a problem.

    People demand that the problem must be solved.

    They call upon central government to solve it.

    So central Government forces more laws and rules and regulations through Parliament, often without proper scrutiny.

    Those laws leave central Government with more power to intervene and interfere.

    Because politicians at the centre feel they must keep control.

    But the problem remains unsolved.

    Indeed, it often gets worse.

    People get frustrated with government and fed up with politicians.

    Which leads to more media calls for action…

    …and the cycle begins once again.

    Here’s an example from the Queen’s speech.

    There are media reports of bed-blocking in hospitals.

    Local authorities haven’t enough places in care homes for those who are being discharged.

    People demand that bed-blocking must end.

    So New Labour proposes in the Queen’s Speech to fine local authorities wherever there is bed-blocking.

    Of course, local authorities didn’t cause the bed-blocking.

    The cause was this Labour Government.

    By burdening care homes with new rafts of rules and regulations and red tape.

    These rules and regulations have helped to close 60,000 care home places since New Labour came to power.

    Places which would otherwise have been available to patients leaving hospital.

    And which now aren’t available – hence the bed-blocking.

    It is a perfect of example of central government first causing a problem and then punishing someone else for it.

    And, in doing so, making the problem worse.

    Because, you see, if local government is fined because beds are blocked, the consequence will be cuts in services or higher council taxes or both.

    Causing people to be even more fed up and frustrated.

    This is consistent with what New Labour is doing everywhere.

    Five years of New Labour have seen five years of greater government power – an ever-extending web of centralization and control.

    When it comes to decentralisation, their slogans are “constrained discretion” and “the new localism”.

    They promise the roar of a lion – but deliver the squeak of a mouse.

    Our teachers, doctors, nurses and police are being steadily buried beneath a blizzard of targets, directives, indicators, circulars, contracts, inspections, performance agreements and best practice demands.

    For example, central government sets waiting times for hospital appointments.

    And targets for a 50 per cent pass rate at A-C grades in GCSE exams.

    But in setting artificial targets, New Labour distorts good practice.

    And demoralizes doctors, teachers, nurses, and police officers at the same time.

    In hospitals, urgent operations are put off so that routine operations can go ahead – because New Labour’s targets must be met.

    In schools, fewer students in inner city schools gain any GCSEs at all – because New Labour’s targets must be met.

    Although New Labour are incapable of meeting their own targets themselves.

    New Labour has failed or is on course to fail nearly 40 percent of targets it set in 1998.

    And it has failed or is on course to fail 75 percent of targets it set in 2000.

    More departmental target performance figures are supposed to be released later this month. We expect more slippage, more watered down targets, more failures.This is the Labour Government’s classic combination:

    More spending and more centralisation without any real reform is failing.
    Productivity in the public services is actually falling.

    In the Health Service, for every extra pound spent, we are only getting 60 pence worth of extra services.

    But this deluge of directives is not just swamping our public services.

    It is also burying what is left of local government.

    Because in local government, the link between taxation and representation has been broken.

    Just as, with the public services, the link between what you pay and what you get has been broken.

    Central government funds 80 per cent of what local government spends.

    It judges local councils against 140 specific performance indicators.

    Insists they must agree up to 66 plans.

    And monitors them through four different inspection regimes.

    So byzantine are the financial affairs of local government that a typical local authority would need to increase council tax by two-thirds to raise local spending by 10 per cent.

    And now New Labour plans to bind the hands of councils with Comprehensive Performance Assessments.

    To instruct them how to spend money by using more specific grants and fewer block grants.

    And impose more of John Prescott’s decisions on them through Public Service Agreements.

    But this torrent of targets doesn’t just threaten public services and local government.

    It threatens to bury civil society too.

    Because greater centralised control by government isn’t just bad for our public services.

    It isn’t just bad for local government.

    And it isn’t just bad for individuals.

    It’s bad for civil society as well.

    There is a space between the individual and government.

    Here in Britain, Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has referred to it as the “public square”.

    In that public square live families, charities, clubs, colleges, voluntary groups and the faith communities. They are Britain’s free institutions.

    I believe it is no coincidence that as government grows ever-bigger, the free institutions seem to shrink ever-smaller.

    As central government does more, our free institutions do less.

    And as our free institutions do less, our social capital declines.

    Social capital is the connections between people: the self-knowledge, abilities and good habits we develop by working with others.

    The local Church-run drugs counseling project and the Council meals-on-wheels service,

    the Red Cross and the mothers-and-toddlers group,

    the Rotary dinner and the school parenting class,

    the local hunt and the debt advice centre,

    the women’s self-defence class and the Sunday morning football league – all these are generators of social capital.

    These generators, and others like them, encourage the work ethic, self-discipline, teamwork, helping others, and build opportunity and achievement.

    If social capital declines, civil society declines with it.

    And when civil society declines, people feel not more free, but less.

    If there’s no order in the public square, you can’t be free in it.

    In America, the academic Robert Puttnam has chronicled the decline of social capital there in his book “Bowling Alone”.

    The same phenomenon is happening here.

    In the 1970s, the centralised state was crowding out private capital.

    In the early years of this century, it is crowding out social capital.

    And this process is endangering democracy.

    Let me be clear what I mean by that.

    Democracy has many aspects.

    Voting in elections is perhaps the most obvious.

    As it happens, we’re not doing so well at that.

    At the last general election, turnout fell to its lowest since the First World War.

    And voters turned increasingly to single-issue candidates.

    In Wyre Forest, they voted for an independent – a respected local doctor who campaigned to save Kidderminster Hospital.

    Of course, he can’t save the hospital now he’s elected.

    That’s centralisation for you.

    In Hartlepool, during the recent Mayoral election there, they voted for a monkey.

    Perhaps they were making a point about their local MP.

    He was parachuted into Hartlepool from far-away London.

    Again, that’s centralisation for you.

    Political evolution in Hartlepool seems to work from man to monkey.

    Indeed, Peter Mandelson is like a New Labour Washing Machine: he is the master of the Spin Cycle.
    This is how the cycle works:

    The media story,

    The public protest,

    The panic, spin and interference from central government,

    The botched legislation,

    The consequent frustration

    …and the problem growing all over again.

    There are many reasons why turnout in elections is falling.

    With the defeat of old-fashioned socialism, the clash between the main parties lacks the drama of the Cold War years.

    Rightly or wrongly, people feel that the combats in the Commons and the arcane procedures of Parliament are all too often meaningless.

    They sense that there is a political vacuum in modern Britain.

    That vacuum is being filled by a new governing class.
    An elite of appointees accountable not to the people, but to central Government.

    New peers, top judges, chief police officers, the people who run health authorities and oversee exam boards; who plan roads and railways or power stations; who design our welfare systems or administer health and safety.

    In short, the quangocracy – an ugly word for an ugly thing.

    But democracy is about more than just voting.
    It’s also about participation in our public life and in civil society.

    In building up our social capital.

    And it’s no coincidence that voter turnout and public participation are falling together.

    New Labour believe that the public services and local government are accountable to central government.

    Well this is a meagre view of accountability.

    We believe that the public services and local government should be accountable far more widely and diversely

    To consumers.

    To customers.

    And to local communities.

    In fact to civil society itself.

    And in doing so, we are moving with the tide.

    At the last election, people were willing to give the old model of centralised control one last try.

    But now people’s attitudes are changing as the information age gathers pace.

    They no longer trust national government to deliver.

    Indeed, they no longer trust the central media to deliver.

    The information they trust is the information they find for themselves.

    They are better informed about the mixed blessings of public sector delivery.

    And their expectations are higher.

    And they recognize that in many instances they can make better provision for themselves by paying for extra services individually, such as healthcare, or paying for them communally, such as home and estate security.

    Furthermore, they are no longer prepared to put up with the frustration caused by top-down systems of service delivery.

    We are living in the information age.

    But our public services seem rooted in the industrial age.

    Just as the Soviet Union lost its power to real nations when the Berlin Wall came down. In the same way, central government is losing its power to real communities.

    I have seen this for myself while travelling Britain to find out what is happening outside Westminster.

    When I first went to Easterhouse, one of the poorest parts of Glasgow, I talked to local people there.

    And they told me about a different kind of visit.

    The great and the good gathered at a local primary school to solve the problems of Easterhouse.

    They analysed.

    They conjectured.

    They debated.

    They discussed.

    And afterwards, like colonial administrators sent out to govern some far-flung part of the Empire,

    they prowled the streets of Easterhouse,

    peered at the local inhabitants,

    met up to compare notes…

    …and then went home.

    Without having spoken to anyone who actually lived there.

    But the people of Easterhouse are working together to build up social capital and civil society.

    In Gallowgate, elsewhere in the city, local people have come together to offer support and help to the families of heroin and crack cocaine addicts.

    In Barry Comprehensive in South Wales, an inspirational head teacher, David Swallow, has revitalised the school by providing vocational courses to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    I have seen all these projects and many others at work.

    And there are thousands of others like them all over Britain.

    They are the very opposite of New Labour’s plans for Regional Assemblies.

    Which will destroy our historic counties and create a new layer of government,

    employ fresh armies of bureaucrats and create new reams of red tape,

    and impose a new tier of politicians on local people and place new burdens on business.

    Regional government will do nothing to bring about community government.

    The people of Carlisle will not feel closer to power for being bossed around by Manchester.

    And the last thing the people of Cornwall want is to be controlled by Bristol.

    Regional government has one objective only.

    Not devolving power down.

    But grabbing power up.

    Regional Assemblies and community government just don’t mix.

    And I am determined to find a new Conservative Way Forward for community government in Modern Britain.

    We have already begun a process of policy renewal as sweeping and extensive as that of the 1970s.

    We have published a detailed critique of Labour failure in a series of pamphlets about the public services.

    And recently at party conference we announced 25 new policies.

    Tonight, I want to announce the next stage of our programme to restore community government.

    We will further be examining ways in which this is done both here and abroad –

    First of all, in the delivery of public services.

    In healthcare, we will be closely examining the system used in other countries.

    In Sweden, for example, patients have the right to choose hospitals, doctors and treatments.

    In education, we will be doing the same.

    In Holland, for example, parents have the right not just to choose schools for their children, but also to have new schools set up.

    Our second aim is to strengthen society itself.

    In crime prevention, we will learn from examples of community institutions which have played a major part in taking young people off the conveyor belt to crime.

    In welfare reform, we will learn from the ways in which Kent County Council has begun to reduce welfare dependency by intervening early and strengthening civil society through social independence projects.

    The third area we will look at is how we can revive the powers of local government.

    In other countries, local government is financed in a more open and transparent way.

    In Australia an independent grants commission allocates money free from central government interference.

    Elsewhere, local government is allowed to borrow money or issue bonds.

    In the United States, as elsewhere, both the financing and the powers of local government are different from Britain.

    In America, judges, police chiefs and others are often held accountable by election.

    We will want to examine how this system works and why it works.

    So I am announcing today that we have set up a task force on community government which will cut across departmental boundaries.

    It will be chaired by David Davis, and those Shadow Cabinet members who cover the Treasury, Home Office, Health, Education and Local Government and the Regions will also serve on it.

    The task force will find the best way for the next Conservative Administration to roll back the boundaries of New Labour centralised control and roll forward the new age of community government.

    In the 1970s, when Nick Ridley was pioneering the Conservative revolution, there was a sense that the tide of ideas was flowing in our direction.

    It is flowing the same way today.

    Away from top-down politics.

    Away from the quangocrats.

    Away from the control freaks in Downing Street and the Treasury.

    Away from New Labour’s ever-growing centralised control of government, civil society and people’s lives.

    We have always believed in our country and in the people of Britain.

    A generation ago, pioneers like Nick Ridley used that conviction to transform the economic prospects of millions.

    He had the courage to defy the prevailing consensus and the vision to point to a better way.

    Armed with this same conviction, we must now show the same courage and capture that same sense of radicalism as we seek enrich our society, improve our public services and renew our democracy.

    We can do no greater honour to Nick Ridley’s memory. We can perform no greater service to our country.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Confederation of British Industry Speech

    Ian Duncan Smith
    Ian Duncan Smith

    Below is the text of the speech made in December 2002 by the then Leader of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, to the Confederation of British Industry.

    A lot has happened over the past year since I spoke at your National Conference, but very little has happened to change my view of the way this Government is running our economy. Indeed, my views have only been reinforced.

    Last year, I warned that Labour’s approach to the public services would not deliver the improvements we all want to see, and I said that their failure to deliver real reform would end up costing you money and eventually undermine our economic stability.

    This is the message I have been giving the Government ever since I took over as Leader of my Party.

    Well, they are still not listening.

    The Chancellor has enjoyed the benefit of the doubt from media commentators who rarely referred to him without the words ‘iron’ or ‘prudent’ appearing in the same sentence.

    The story coming out of Number 11 was one of stability and optimism.

    Small wonder. When the current Government came to office in May 1997, this country had low inflation, falling unemployment that was less than in France, Germany, Italy or Spain, the lowest business taxation among our major competitors, and a third of all EU inward investment.

    Until then it was so easy for him to sneer at anyone who dared to doubt him.

    Only last Monday, when the Chancellor addressed the CBI, he was all-to-ready to dismiss your concerns about the incessant creep of regulation. But last Wednesday was a significant day in the history of this Government. Last Wednesday the cracks began to show.

    The Iron Chancellor has got metal fatigue.

    ‘I do not accept that Britain is a worse place to do business than it was five years ago’, he said. ‘That would be defeatist and wrong’.

    But now we know this: Just because Gordon Brown does not accept something doesn’t mean it’s not true.

    In his pre-budget report, the Chancellor refused to accept that the downgrading of the growth forecasts was his fault.

    He blamed it on the world economy; he blamed it on the threat of terrorism; he blamed it on everyone else.

    But the fact is that the Chancellor simply got it wrong.

    Forecasts for world trade and world growth have changed little since the time of the Budget. Independent forecasters told him that his estimates were too high, but he just didn’t listen.

    Everybody else knew, but the Chancellor did not.

    So in just 7 months he has had to nearly double the amount of UK borrowing in the coming year to safeguard the public spending increases he has promised.

    And, of course, he would have far less flexibility to respond to the changing economic conditions if the UK were part of the Eurozone, because joining the Euro means giving away the ability to control our own economy.

    Now I know some of you will disagree with me here, but I believe it is simply not in our long-term economic interests to enter the Euro.

    However there is one thing that I think we can all agree on, that the briefing and counter-briefing between the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and their acolytes can only damage British business.

    The flaws now appearing in the Government’s economic management and their failure to reform public services has sparked a bitter feud in Downing Street.

    But we will all suffer if the Prime Minister and his Chancellor now indulge in the blame game.

    You need certainty and stability, not spin and mutual recrimination.

    If the Government wants us to join the Euro, it should make the case and get on and hold a referendum. If it does not, it should shut up and let businesses plan accordingly.

    With our policy you get that, with the Government’s current policy you don’t.

    The Chancellor has been able to increase borrowing by £20 billion over two years, thereby attempting to ensure he can meet the spending commitments he has set himself.

    This is the way New Labour judges success. It’s about what you put in not what you get out.

    So they are committed to huge increases in public sector spending over the next few years, spending which presumes a buoyant economy and a thriving business sector.

    But as the CBI has shown have shown, their approach to business is threatening to undermine their approach to public services.

    Over the last five years, despite what Gordon Brown thinks, Britain has become a less attractive place for business to invest.

    I know that. Your members know that. Everybody knows except the Chancellor.

    The burden of regulation – and the gold-plating of regulations by the British Government – will do significant damage to the performance of British businesses.

    I know that. Your members know that. Everybody knows except the Chancellor.

    Because the reality is that he simply doesn’t understand how business works.

    Business and enterprise create jobs and generate wealth. Jobs and wealth raise living standards, encouraging a strong economy.

    And a strong economy is the foundation stone of strong public services.

    So you might expect a Government that says it’s committed to improving public services to be equally committed to supporting business.

    But instead, this Government’s anti-business policies are striking at the very heart of our enterprise economy and threatening to undermine our public services.

    They have created a vicious cycle: the Government’s approach to business contradicts its approach to public services.

    And its approach to public services perpetuates its destructive approach to business.

    Ultimately, the success or failure of this Government lies in the hands of the Chancellor – the man who even his own colleague calls the ‘money god’.

    Well, he is a false idol.

    Five years ago, he said: ‘We will not impose burdensome regulations on business, because we understand that successful business must keep costs down’.

    Yet you have shown that Labour have added £47 billion of extra taxes onto business since 1997. In total, you estimate that business is paying up to £15 billion a year including tax and red-tape.

    Two weeks ago, I attended a dinner at the Institute of Directors. One of their surveys shows that as many as 93% of businesses believe that the burden of red tape relating to employment law has got heavier in the past five years.

    Last year, Labour passed the Regulatory Reform Act, promising more than 250 regulations would be cut. But more than a year later only six Regulatory Reform Orders have actually been passed

    According to the Financial Times, Government Officials say that these orders are simply too bureaucratic to draw up.

    Now, the Government wants to introduce yet more regulations through costly and bureaucratic regional assemblies throughout England. They say these will help economic regional development, but there is absolutely no basis for this claim. Indeed, the evidence suggests the opposite.

    And if we wanted still more proof that this Government doesn’t understand the needs of business, let us consider the decision to increase National Insurance contributions from next year.

    This means an extra £4 billion a year in higher employers’ contributions for a start. Then, of course, businesses could come under pressure to pay even more as employees seek to win back some of their extra contributions through higher pay claims.

    Did Labour tell you about this before the last election?

    I was struck when you said that France is the only one of our top five trading partners to have a larger burden of business taxation than we do.

    In the 80s and 90s,a lot of hard work transformed a failing economy into one of the best places in the world to do business,

    All that work is now being thrown away.

    That transformation took place because we had a Government which understood and worked with business, not against it.

    But now we have a Government that thinks it knows how to run business better than you do.

    A Government that has presided over half a million manufacturing job losses over the last five years.

    A Government under which business investment has suffered its sharpest fall for three decades.

    And a Government under which the UK has recorded a trade deficit every month since January 1998.

    Last month Patricia Hewitt blamed the quality of British management for the growing productivity gap.

    Notice it is not the fault of the DTI or the Treasury or the fact that this Government has introduced one new regulation every 26 minutes of every working day. Apparently it’s all your fault.

    And they must take responsibility for the problems in the wider economy too.

    They must take responsibility for the massive expansion of means testing in the tax and benefits system, which has imposed yet more administrative costs on business.

    The entire tax credit system is so confused that millions who are entitled to them cannot even be bothered to take them up.

    The government must take responsibility for distorting incentives to work.

    Because of the way tax credits work, two and a half million people on low incomes now face effective marginal tax rates of 40% or more and nearly two million face a marginal rate of 60% .

    And this Government must take responsibility for reducing incentives to save.

    Last week, I challenged the Chancellor to apologise for the damage he has caused to the pensions industry with his £5 billion a year raid on pension funds, a measure that will have cost £40 billion by the time of the next Election.

    I told him that 300,000 stakeholder pension schemes – 90% of them – have no members.

    I told him that the proportion of recently-retired pensioners taking an income from an occupational pension has fallen to just 59%.

    But the Chancellor refused to apologise and refused to accept responsibility.

    Once again, the Chancellor thinks he knows best.

    And this is also his approach to the public services.

    That is why he sets targets and imposes restrictions on professional people. Public Service Agreements were supposed to deliver value for money and ensure that the money going in to public services was met with improved outputs.

    But in reality, they have simply led to a culture of deceit, where professionals are forced to manipulate figures to meet centrally decided targets.

    Huge pressure is brought to bear on doctors, nurses and teachers by bureaucrats who have boxes to tick.

    The government has allowed political objectives to take priority over public service.

    Hospital trolleys have their wheels removed so that they can be called beds.

    Hospital corridors have partitions erected so that they can be called wards.

    Examining boards manipulate A-level results to meet the latest Government objective.

    And if after all this the target is still missed, the Government simply changes the target.

    In fact, the Government has missed 40% of the targets it set itself in 1998 and 75% of the targets it set two years ago.

    All this, despite the huge amounts of money going into public services.

    This Government is very good at spending people’s money but not very good at producing the results people want to see.

    They’ve spent more on the police – but street crime actually rose by more than 30% last year.

    They’ve spent more on education – but 200,000 seven year-olds still can’t master the basics of reading and 1 in 4 eleven year-olds can’t deal with even basic maths.

    They’ve spent more on the health service – but while activity has scarcely increased the number of administrators has.

    All this suggests that productivity in our public services is deteriorating rather than improving.

    And yet the Chancellor’s promise of more money for the public services has raised expectations and sparked a new round of public sector wage claims.

    The Government has promised that it will be uncompromising, that higher wages have to be earned through modernisation and reform.

    But how are these productivity gains to be measured?

    By whom are they to be measured and over what period of time?

    And what will happen to the wage increases in future years if the productivity gains fail to materialise?

    For all of the tough talking coming out of No. 10 and No. 11, no-one is providing the answers to these questions.

    Instead, yesterday morning we had stories emanating from Downing Street that future fire disputes would be made illegal. This morning the Minister responsible for the Fire Service both denied any plans for a strike ban and said he was ‘keeping all options under review’.

    At a time when lives are at stake, the public has a right to demand clarity and consistency from its political leaders; instead it is being fed a daily diet of spin and political posturing.

    We simply cannot allow this current dispute to drag on for weeks or even months. I welcome the fact that the FBU has suspended its next strike and is seeking talks with its employers at ACAS.

    The firemen should not go back on strike. No more lives should be put at risk from industrial action.

    The Prime Minister already has the power under the Trades Union laws passed by the previous Conservative government to seek an injunction against the FBU.

    How ironic that the Government talked over the weekend about new powers to ban strikes, while their new Criminal Justice Bill is about to scrap powers they already have. And he also has Emergency Powers to keep the public services running.

    So he does have the tool at his disposal to bring the current dispute to a swift end. He should use them.

    At the beginning of the 21st century it is simply unacceptable for people in this country to be left without adequate fire cover.

    It is equally unacceptable to have a model of public service delivery that has scarcely changed since the end of the Second World War.

    And why does this affect you?

    Not only because business suffers when employees can’t read or write properly;

    Not only because business suffers when employees spend long periods on sick leave waiting for treatment;

    And not only because business suffers when employees spend hours stuck on congested roads or waiting for trains which never come.

    This Government’s failure to improve public services affects you because, as they fail, Labour’s only answer is to plough more and more money in – and that ultimately means more taxes.

    Labour are investing in failure and you and I are funding that investment.

    But there is an alternative.

    It’s not the scare tactics that the Government likes to deploy; it’s not simply a choice between spending more money or cutting that money.

    The choice is this:

    Between spending more and more on old, unreformed public services.

    Or delivering the reforms which are the only way to achieve real improvements.

    Between a Labour Government that believes taxing more, spending more and reforming nothing.

    Or a Conservative Party that believes in lower taxation and less regulation as the best way to a dynamic economy and thriving public services.

    We have already begun to set out how we intend to go about this task, by taking politicians out of the day-to-day running of schools and the health service and by cutting the bureaucracy Police Officers face everyday.

    So our direction on public services is clear.

    But it’s also a choice between a party which thinks that Governments make the best managers and one which says managers make the best managers.

    I am pleased that, following on from our successful regulation summit in September, Tim Yeo and his team will be inviting respected figures from the business community to join a new Conservative Regulation Commission.

    This will examine both specific regulations and the general burden of regulations and provide a systemic approach to reducing them.

    I hope you will agree to play your part in this to find a way through the jungle of red-tape this Government has created.

    So – the Conservative approach will be very different.

    We have to break the cycle of failure this Government has created.

    We have to support business.

    Because we recognise that business is the very heart of a successful enterprise economy; an economy we need to create if we are ever to deliver our objective of delivering world-class public services.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Speech to Conservative Spring Forum

    Ian Duncan Smith
    Ian Duncan Smith

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Leader of the Opposition, Iain Duncan Smith, to the Conservative Spring Forum on 24th March 2002.

    Last month I visited Easterhouse in Glasgow; one of the poorest public housing estates in Europe.

    I walked around part of the estate with a local Baptist minister.

    The grey, wet day matched the bleakness of nearly everything that I saw.

    He showed me abandoned, boarded up houses surrounded by litter and disfigured by graffiti.

    We stopped in a sheltered walkway where heroin addicts inject the drug into their bodies.

    I looked into one building, in a stairwell I saw a place where a child had been playing. A discarded teddy bear lay in the corner. A perfectly ordinary sight.

    Except that next to it lay the paraphernalia of a crack cocaine addict. What hope does that child have?

    ‘What are you doing here?’ shouted one resident.

    ‘This has always been a Labour area,’ he told me.

    ‘Yes and look around you’, I said.

    It’s political failure that hurts vulnerable people.

    However, the bleakness of my visit to Easterhouse was redeemed through witnessing the courage and resolve of many local people.

    I visited one neighbourhood project run by local people for local people.

    The Baptist minister runs a breakfast club for children who would otherwise go to school hungry.

    In contrast to some of the public sector schemes that come and go, the leaders of the project knew the people they helped.

    And the person in need is helped by someone who has often themselves struggled with – and conquered – the same issues of literacy, desertion or addiction.

    It’s not just about winning votes for the Conservative Party in places like Easterhouse.

    It’s about meaning what we say: that there are no ‘no-go’ areas as far as we are concerned.

    It’s about being a Party that doesn’t just drive past Easterhouse on the motorway.

    Whilst there, I was told about a recent conference entitled ‘Education, schools and social inclusion’ that was held at the school. It included all the usual bureaucrats and experts, but excluded all the local people. They might as well have held it in Whitehall.

    The family networks and people-sized institutions that hold communities together have no place in an ideology that sees government task forces and consultants as the solution to every problem.

    But it’s not just there. Recently I visited two mothers in Faversham who had set up a drug rehabilitation unit. Their sons had stolen to feed their addiction. One of the mothers had been forced to turn her son into the police.

    The authorities would do nothing to curb drug dealing on the estate, so the two women had set up a counselling and advice service. They had shown tremendous courage in taking matters into their own hands, trying to solve a problem no one else would address.

    Critique of Labour

    Labour won in 1997 because they said they understood the vulnerable and the problems they faced.

    In his first speech as Prime Minister, Tony Blair promised the residents of Southwark’s Aylesbury estate that he would bring back the ‘will to win’.

    Like much of what the Prime Minister said in those days it struck a chord. Like too much of what the Prime Minister says it has failed to come to pass.

    This is a Government that had more going for it than any in the modern era.

    Two landslide election victories.

    The unparalleled patience of the British people.

    The foundation of economic success inherited from its Conservative predecessor.

    Never has a Government had so much and achieved so little.

    Just compare that to the way Margaret Thatcher turned around the economic collapse she inherited 1979.

    We thank her and wish her a speedy recovery with all our hearts.

    Tony Blair talked about the ‘post-euphoria, pre-delivery’ phase of New Labour. The problem is he said that at the beginning of 1998.

    The Prime Minister is fond of his phases. But I would offer you my own interpretation of his five years in power.

    In the beginning were the promises.

    ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, ’24 hours to save the NHS’, ‘education, education, education’, ‘no plans to increase taxes at all’.

    Then there were the breaking of those promises.

    The rise in street violence, the lengthening waiting lists and the teacher shortages. A litany of failure paid for through stealth taxes on mortgages and marriage, pensions and petrol.

    Last of all they blame everybody else.

    It’s all the fault of the ‘wreckers’, the public servants who leave scars on the Prime Minister’s back. Or it’s the fault of the previous Conservative Government.

    And when that doesn’t work, it’s the fault of his own ministers.

    David Blunkett says it’s all Jack Straw’s fault. Jack Straw says it’s all Robin Cook’s fault. Robin Cook that it’s all Gordon Brown’s fault. Brown says it’s Blair’s fault. The only thing they can all agree on is that it really is Stephen Byers’ fault.

    Shorn of any principle or purpose apart from the naked pursuit of power for its own sake, this is not a joined-up Government, it is a Government coming apart at the seams.

    They used to boast about the way they would keep the private sector out of the health service, now they turn to it in desperation.

    They fiddled with rail privatisation, then renationalised the rail network.

    They attacked me for standing up for rail investors, and now they are being forced to compensate them.

    They were once in favour of a democratic House of Lords, now they propose a Chamber of Cronies.

    They claimed to be on the side of patients, but when the family of a 94 year old complained about her treatment they insulted her and sent out ministers and hospital managers to rubbish her story.

    Ministers change tack almost as often as the Prime Minister changes his wardrobe on a foreign trip.

    Over five years, Labour have had more summits than the Himalayas, more Czars than Imperial Russia, and more five year plans than Stalin.

    The Government is in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown They have lost sight of who they are and have become fixated with how they look.

    We know what the Prime Minister likes to wear up his sleeve, but the naked truth is he has no answers.

    And as events lurch out of his control the Government falls back on their worst instincts.

    To spin faster, to manipulate figures and to compromise public servants and the civil service even further. This not just what New Labour does, it is who they have become.

    They seek headlines not policies. Slogans not solutions. This isn’t a Government; it’s an advertisement.

    They are caught in a corrupting spiral where politics for its own sake is not only failing to improve people’s lives, it is also undermining everyone’s faith in our political process.

    Labour’s failure doesn’t just present us with an opportunity to offer a different way of doing things, it also presents us with a challenge.

    Not being Labour is insufficient, we have to be an alternative Government. We have to win the next Election, not wait for them to lose it.

    We will provide solutions to the problems Labour ignore. We’re going to be patient, take the time to do it properly and get it right.

    But we must also come up with a different way of presenting ourselves to an electorate disillusioned with politics.

    We will never convince people of our motives simply by shouting louder.

    We have to transform the way we conduct ourselves if people are to have any idea about how we wish to transform the country.

    In short we need a new approach to politics.

    ‘New’ politics: tone 

    It’s been done before. Cast your minds back a couple of years to the United States.

    There too, they had been living through one of the longest and largest upturns in their economic history.

    There too, an administration addicted to the Third Way wasted two terms and failed to deliver on their promises.

    And yet in the midst of economic success, the American people elected a Republican, George W Bush, over the then sitting Democratic Vice President.

    Quite simply they trusted him to deliver the changes they thought necessary precisely because they saw someone with principles who wasn’t afraid to articulate them.

    I met President Bush when I visited America last December and we can learn a great deal from him.

    About showing that what we believe helps everyone particularly the most vulnerable in our society.

    About mapping out a distinctively conservative agenda that appeals to the common ground.

    Above all we talked about challenging those popular prejudices about conservatives.

    It is the hardest thing in the world to see ourselves as others see us. They think we are not like them, they think we don’t care about them.

    And yet you and I know that we share the same concerns as everyone else, we want the same things, we have the same ambitions.

    The way we live our lives should be the way we practice our politics: as decent, honest, tolerant and generous people.

    We need to be passionate and positive about the things and the people we are in favour of, not just the things we are against.

    We all laugh at Victor Meldrew on television, but you wouldn’t want to live with him. And you certainly wouldn’t vote for him.

    If we want people to vote for us, I say to everyone in this hall:

    You are the people who select our candidates.

    You have a vital responsibility.

    I want you to select the best line-up of new MPs this country has ever seen.

    I want you to seek out talented people on their merits wherever they may be – whatever their age, sex or background.

    Because if we don’t reflect the Britain we want to lead, we will never be asked to lead it.

    It isn’t about changing what we believe in, it is about being ourselves again.

    It’s about doing the right thing and being true to our principles and values.

    ‘New’ politics: policies

    If there’s one message that will shine out through all our policies, it is this:

    Trust people.

    Trust people to do their jobs.

    Trust people to know what’s best for their families.

    Trust people to create wealth and create jobs.

    Trust people with their own money.

    Trust people to live their lives.

    And if you trust people, you will find that they will build communities. They will support each other.

    Our job is to support them.

    It marks a fundamental difference between us and Labour.

    The message that shines out from Labour’s policies is equally clear.

    They distrust you.

    They distrust how you do your job if you are a teacher, a police officer or a doctor.

    They distrust you in knowing what is best for your family.

    They distrust your ability to manage your own finances, so they want to take more of it from you and hand it back like pocket money.

    That’s why every week they launch a new long-term plan.

    That’s why they fire off a directive a week at teachers.

    That’s why they want to make police officers fill in a form before they can even stop a suspect in the street.

    This Government has become the most controlling, centralising, bullying and manipulating government we have had in my lifetime.

    We must break once and for all with the top-down agenda of central control.

    We will base our reforms of the public services on reviving them as community institutions, not branch offices of the Government.

    GPs are part of the fabric of the local community:

    They understand the concerns and priorities of their neighbourhood far better than Alan Milburn can.

    I want the whole of our health service to be responsive to local needs, local patients and local GPs.

    As Liam Fox and I have been visiting health services across Europe to learn what makes them deliver better care, one thing is clear: the best systems are based on patients and their doctors having a choice over their hospital treatment.

    We will free our hospitals from control by Whitehall.

    They will be more independent of politicians.

    They will be part of the communities they serve.

    The same is true of our schools.

    I want to axe layers of control from central government and re-establish the identity of schools as local institutions.

    I’ve seen what that can mean in my own constituency. I am a trustee of Whitefields, a special needs school that was the first of its kind in the country to go grant-maintained.

    Not only has it achieved amazing results for its pupils, it has also become a centre of excellence advising other schools on how best to cope with special needs pupils.

    I want to replace the directives of ministers with discretion for head teachers and boards of governors.

    If the head teacher and governors find a disruptive pupil is damaging the education of other children and making life a misery for teachers, out they’ll go.

    Why should the education of the many be sacrificed for the rights of the few in our schools?

    And why should the law-abiding majority be sacrificed for the rights of criminals?

    The result of nationally set rules is that our police officers have less and less discretion in how to police.

    Some police forces have themselves, often in response to Government targets, retreated into a distant and centralised form of policing within their areas.

    In New York, Mayor Giuliani recognised that high-level policing – looking for the Mr Bigs of crime – was not enough to keep the streets safe.

    Neighbourhoods need policing.

    Officers need to know their neighbourhoods.

    And neighbourhood yobs need to know their police officers. Very well indeed.

    That’s what they did in New York.

    They resurrected the old concept of the beat with police officers serving a close patchwork of overlapping neighbourhoods.

    Oliver Letwin saw at first hand how the NYPD are no more than two minutes away from any crime that is reported.

    As a result they cut crime by 60 per cent in the last 9 years.

    Robbery, burglary and car theft are down by over 70 per cent.

    And violent crime is down by 75 per cent.

    How many of us can say that that is our experience today?

    Under a Conservative government Britain will have neighbourhood policing.

    In the past, Conservative governments have been guilty of taking power away from local government to Whitehall.

    That was a mistake.

    We will reverse this process and restore to local councils the discretion to act according to the interests of the communities they serve.

    And in this hall today many of you are councillors and are making life better for the people you serve, every day.

    You show, by your dedication and hard work, that we can make a difference.

    And on 2 May I want more Conservative councillors.

    But local councils should never be the only local institutions to which people turn.

    In Manchester, I’ve seen at first hand how people have come together to create, Langdon College, a residential school for Jewish children with disabilities.

    Because our policies will be built from the bottom up – on the natural communities that people feel part of – we will have no truck with Labour’s bogus regions.

    Why would the people of Carlisle want to be bossed around by Manchester?

    And the last thing the people of Cornwall want is to be controlled by Bristol.

    When we give power to real communities in Britain, we will not stand by and let it be taken away by Brussels.

    If we don’t want a Britain of bogus regions, we certainly don’t want a Europe of bogus regions.

    The challenges abroad

    We are the 4th largest economy on earth. We gave the world free trade, common law and the English language. We want to secure our nation’s place in the world that we have done so much to shape.

    We need to work to create a European Union that is modern, outward-looking and decentralised.

    An EU capable of adapting to the future.

    An EU where Britain still maintains control over its own destiny.

    There must be something seriously wrong with the way this Government works when British troops are sent into danger in Macedonia as part of a Euro Army simply because the Government does not want to offend our European partners.

    So I tell you this. When Tony Blair finally has the courage to call a referendum on the single currency, we will fight him and we will win.

    A strong foreign policy must be based on an understanding of our history, not on attempts to deny it.

    Nor should we deny human nature. We need to take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be; to understand what has changed since September 11th and what in fact has remained the same.

    There have always been evil people in this world but now these people have access to more terrible technologies.

    Saddam Hussein poses a growing threat to us all. He should no longer be allowed to develop and deploy his weapons of mass destruction.

    Time is on his side, not ours.

    History teaches us that appeasement is not an option.

    It also teaches us that compassion is a part of realism.

    Spreading democracy, economic reform and free trade among developing countries will benefit us as well as the people who live there. This is modern conservatism.

    Helping the poor, the hungry and the persecuted is a moral challenge which we must meet.

    Peroration

    The relentless pace of the modern world creates opportunities. Yet as these opportunities grow, so do the things which seem increasingly beyond our control.

    The world has shrunk, our horizons have expanded, but our concerns are as local as ever.

    We travel further, but is it safe to walk down the street?

    Our jobs are more challenging, but can we get in to work in the morning?

    Science can alter our genes, but who will look after us when we fall ill?

    Our children can surf the internet, but are they learning to read and write properly?

    Politicians can use change to help answer these questions or block change and hope the questions will go away.

    Politicians can push power down to public servants and make them properly accountable for the way they use it, or we can subject them to minute-by-minute political control.

    Politicians can truly modernise our public services or we can chant the mantra of modernisation to disguise fear of real reform.

    What is absolutely stark is that we cannot go on using 1940s solutions to tackle 21st century problems.

    We have to find a better way for all our sakes, but particularly for those whose need is greatest.

    A nation that leaves its vulnerable behind, diminishes its own future.

    Britain will never be all that it should be until opportunity and security mean something to people in Easterhouse.

    To make this country theirs as much as it is ours.

    That is a mission fit for the new century.

    We are the Party fit for that purpose.