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  • Gordon Brown – 2003 Speech at the Wall Street Journal Conference

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Wall Street Journal Conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel in London on 24 November 2003.

    Introduction

    I am grateful to have the opportunity to address this Wall Street Journal conference.

    To have the chance to thank the Wall Street Journal for its contribution to the debate about the future of Europe.

    And to have a further opportunity beyond your columns to engage in the most critical debate about the future of Europe – what changes Europe must make to meet the competitive challenges of globalisation.

    I want to demonstrate that to be fully equipped for the global economy Europe must become open, outward looking, flexible, competitive and reforming.

    To detail the agenda of policy change – in monetary and fiscal policy, liberalisation, employment policy, taxation and trade – that is essential if this is to happen.

    And then to show how around such a new, enlarged, reforming Europe a deeper consensus around Europe’s future and Britain’s destiny in Europe can be built – a new consensus that – as Tony Blair and I have both said, Tony Blair most recently at the CBI last Monday – sweeps aside both unacceptable federal assumptions rooted in the past and anti-European prejudices of the present.

    Context

    It was once said that Europe was divided into two – those in the West who had Europe and those in the East who believed in it. Today East and West are united in one Europe, thus ending centuries of division.  A European Union that started with a desire for a Europe at peace is, with enlargement, entrenching that commitment to peace and seeking to generate prosperity in all parts of Europe. Peace and prosperity remain the central reason why we must make the European Union work well and why I believe as a pro European that Britain – linked by geography, history and economics to Europe – must play a leading role in Europe and in that reform process

    But even if enlargement has been the catalyst for the new constitutional debate, there is an economic transformation taking place that is of even greater long term significance than the fifteen becoming twenty five – and that is the impact of globalisation on all of Europe’s nations.

    A moment’s reflection will convince that it is globalisation – global flows of capital and global sourcing of products, not least from Asia – that is putting all of Europe under intense and sustained competitive pressure, forcing Europe to change – and change quickly.

    The Europe that progressed from coal and steel community to customs union to common market to single market and then to European Union was, in effect, the worlds first modern trade bloc – its advanced internal rules and preferential agreements separating Europe off from the rest of the world.

    Understandably the discussion then was how this new trade bloc of Europe could manage its own internal affairs, what institutional arrangements were required, whether a social dimension was needed.  And an assumption became rooted in the very rhetoric of European integration that the single market would lead inevitably – through the single currency – to tax harmonisation, a federal fiscal policy and the completion of a federal state.

    But because of the intense pressures that arise from globalisation, Europe is now entering the second stage of its history as a union and is finding that the agenda relevant to its first phase – the era of a trade bloc – is quite different for its second stage – the Europe facing global competition.

    Let me give one example of how in the move from trade bloc Europe to global Europe old policies are not just out of date but counterproductive for the global era.

    When I first attended European Finance Ministers meetings in 1997 I found that it was simply assumed that tax harmonisation within Europe would happen.

    For years for example it had been assumed that to eliminate tax avoidance by for example German citizens failing to pay tax on their savings income in Luxembourg, there should be a harmonisation of taxes on non-domestic savings throughout the European Union. This was a proposition that from the moment we came into power we fought for two reasons: harmonisation of tax would reduce competitiveness and would be unacceptable to the peoples of Europe because decisions on what to tax, and how, reflect national choices and cultures.

    In the years after 1997 a detailed proposal was drawn up under which similar tax rates would be levied on savings in Europe under the auspices of the Commission. But when such a plan was finally explored in detail, European leaders found that in an open global economy, where savings could move worldwide, Europe’s savers would respond to a harmonised tax not by bringing their savings back to their country of residence but sending their savings out of Europe altogether to lower taxed countries.  So instead of, for example, Germany receiving tax on its citizens savings in Luxembourg both Germany and Luxembourg would lose these investments to Switzerland and Liechtenstein or non European tax areas like the United States.

    It is now obvious that – national cultural factors notwithstanding – it is the very openness of global capital markets that undermines the European Union’s proposals for tax harmonisation and would, if harmonisation was implemented, reduce European competitiveness.

    But it is not only rigidities in tax policy that global economic change challenges.

    Ministers are coming to recognise that in a global economy it is not only tax barriers but other rigid barriers and inflexibilities that shelter and protect countries and companies from global competition that have to be removed in the interests of competitiveness. Indeed, in every part of the world rigidities, inflexibilities and lack of competitiveness – that could once be sheltered in the era of trade blocs – are now fully exposed in the era of global competition.

    The global flows of capital and the global sourcing of products mean that there is hardly a product that is manufactured in Europe does not now have an Asian or American competitor able to exploit their advantages in either low wages or higher productivity.  And even services – that once could be located only close to the customer – can now be run from thousands of miles away, outside Europe.

    Indeed Europe’s low growth, its 14 million unemployed, and the productivity gap with the USA…all underline the same challenge: that globalisation forces the European Union to shift from an old often inward-looking trade bloc to a flexible, reforming, open and globally-oriented Europe – able to master the economic challenge from Asia and America.

    So the driving force for radical change in Europe is not so much political enlargement as global economics; not so much the 15 becoming 25 but the whole of Europe facing up to global competition. And the agenda that flows from this demands a programme of liberalisation, tax reform, new employment policies, the opening up of trade and commerce and a modern monetary and fiscal regime.

    And more than that: the same global pressures that force tax competition and economic reform onto the European agenda also force Europe to rethink the most basic of assumptions that have underlain 50 years of development.

    The authors of European integration made two major assumptions: that the nation state would increasingly be too small for the big issues of, first, economic management and second, political identity. And they went on to assume that national economic, political and cultural integration would lead inevitably to European economic, political and cultural integration.

    But those who in the 1980s thought that we would move from being economically integrated at a national level to being economically integrated at a European level have been only partially right.  Increasingly, the nation states of Europe have become economically integrated not just at a European but at a global level.  Indeed it is global not European flows of capital; the global, not European, company; and the global, not European, brand that dominate.

    And under challenge too – not least because globalisation’s insecurities lead people to cling to old identities – is the second assumption of the old European model – that side by side with growing economic integration from nation states to a European stage would come growing cultural and political integration where national political and cultural identities would be superseded.

    In an interdependent world which opens up new opportunities but not necessarily on an even handed basis – and which leaves people anxious and insecure – people are more likely to cling to their national cultural and political identities.  And right across Europe – side by side with new global economic realities – political and cultural identities have remained firmly rooted in the nation state.

    It is interesting that just one in ten think of themselves primarily as European, even fewer amongst those due to join the EU over the next few years.  We are Europeans but we are British, French, Polish, German, Dutch, Italian first.

    So the debate about Europe’s future and its role in the wider world has to be understood in this context: that the economic reality is no longer – as it was in the 80s – how this or that trade bloc develops on its own but how each continent is part of – and benefits from – globalisation as a whole; and that the political reality remains people’s attachment, for example on issues of what is taxed and by whom, to their national values, their national identities and thus to their nation state.

    And with Europe’s intergovernmental conference now entering its final stages, it is important that Europe responds to these new challenges with clarity.  And we must do so without ambiguities that might, if unravelled, undermine even the best of intentions – to the detriment of jobs and economic dynamism.

    Economic reform

    First, the economic reform programme

    Europe will only maximise the benefits of globalisation – and solve its problems of low growth and high unemployment – by becoming more efficient and increasing its productivity – pushing ahead with the necessary structural economic reforms to promote sustainable growth and increase the flexibility of our labour, capital and product markets. This is particularly important for successful economic integration as new entrants seek to catch up with higher rates of growth.

    Global Europe must be more aggressive in making sure that in its operation the single market does not shelter inefficient industries but does what it should do: forces them to be more competitive; fosters investment in key areas like R&D and infrastructure; and by encouraging new enterprise – and rewarding it properly – generates the growth, productivity and employment we need.

    So having created a single market in theory, we should make it work in reality so we achieve lower prices for the consumer.

    Since 1992, the single market has produced a gain equivalent to £4000 pounds for every household in Europe.  Goods now move freely across Europe, whereas before 1992, internal customs borders meant that around 90 million forms were filled in each year, a massive burden on businesses and individuals.  And markets have been opened to the benefit of consumers.  In telecommunications, for example, the average price of calls has dropped since 1996 by around 30 per cent for businesses and 16 per cent for households.

    But while the single market encompasses 375 million people today – and will rise to 450 million next year – we have still a long way to go to secure for business and consumers the full benefits in commercial opportunities and consumer prices.

    While in 1988 Cecchini estimated that single market liberalisation would add 4.5 per cent to Europe’s GDP, cut prices by 6 per cent and increase employment by 1.75 million, many of the gains have yet to materialise. And the single market is often more honoured in rhetoric than in reality.

    And to ensure well informed and open markets that ensure capital flows to productive uses and that labour and capital are used efficiently, we favour:

    • Faster progress towards the integration of capital markets;
    • Full liberalisation of energy markets by 2007;
    • Full market opening of postal services by 2009;
    • In aviation, rapid progress towards a fully liberalised EU-US open aviation area and the use of market mechanisms for allocating slots at airports;
    • And making the single market a reality for services as well as goods where we must agree the principles of an approach in the next year.

    Too often we have depended upon political fixes to make progress in our journey towards a single market.  Too often, the aims of liberalisation and opening markets have resulted instead in increased regulation.  So we need a new model for opening European markets and for removing barriers to competition.

    In the UK, we decided that the way forward was that competition authorities, rather than politicians, should make the crucial decisions necessary for opening up markets.

    In Europe, we should make the same move.  Rather than political initiatives based on harmonisation, Europe needs competition decisions which make a reality of the single market.  We need a more proactive EU competition regime – with investigations into particular European markets and sectors to drive up competition and prevent British firms from being excluded from markets from energy to telecommunications

    A similar proactive approach must be taken to state aid reform.   We must tighten up the rules on the most distortive state aids in order to avoid inefficient subsidies which impose costs on taxpayers and consumers – and prevent full and fair competition.  And we fully support the commission’s efforts to ensure the rules on distortive aids are properly applied in all member states.

    But we must also ensure the rules do not prevent measures which help make markets work better.  It took Britain more than a year to secure European permission to create regional venture capital funds for localities desperately in need of strong local capital markets that work for small businesses. And it took months more for permission to abolish stamp duty for business property purchases in areas urgently in need of local property markets that work and the new businesses and jobs that can ensue.

    We are ready to work with the Commission and other Member States to develop state aid guidelines which would allow such measures to be approved more quickly in the future.  And we support proposals for a significant impact test to deal quickly and simply with aid which does not have a major effect on trade and competition – and urge the Commission to implement such a measure as soon as possible.

    Alongside structural reforms, well-targeted public investment can also play a role in driving long-term growth.  Europe needs to do more to improve planning, management and better design and development of infrastructure projects – and support the development of a more effective partnership between public and private sectors using the efficiencies of private finance initiatives.  Indeed we believe that private finance can be extended from hospitals, schools and transport to prisons, urban regeneration, waste management and housing.

    And at the same time, in an increasingly competitive world where investment in R&D is vital to promote both innovation and growth and the gap between our research and development performance and that of Japan and the US is still too wide, Europe must raise R&D investment to move closer to our aspiration of 3 per cent of EU GDP.

    Capital markets can and should help us manage risk more efficiently between sectors, over time and across national boundaries. While America has achieved a high degree of diversification across state borders, investment in Europe remains fragmented on national lines and there is a need to remove barriers to diversification of investments across borders, for example in pension and mutual funds.   So we will support the European Financial Services Action Plan as it improves mutual recognition of financial services providers in insurance, banking and capital markets.

    And just as greater integration – a common approach to research and development and capital markets – is to our benefit, so too greater subsidiarity in regional policy is the best way forward for Europe. Why? Because while Europe’s money can be best used to supply vital aid to the poorest countries of Europe richer countries need greater freedom to use their own resources to pursue modern, locally-led regional policies.  And we hope that the current review of regional aid will lead to a new regional aid framework before the end of 2004.

    It is not enough to ensure that EU funds are spent better, the European Union must also make sure that its own finances are well protected against fraud.  Despite changes introduced since 1997 – including a complete re-write of the budgetary rulebook, a more independent internal audit service and, from 2005, a new, modernised accounting system – the latest report by the court of auditors and the recent allegations of financial wrong-doing at Eurostat suggest that EU funds are still too vulnerable to fraudsters and Europe must introduce further reforms to address these shortcomings.

    Tax harmonisation

    Second, the same globalisation that demands open, flexible liberalised markets demands more open, flexible and competitive tax systems.

    Competition between tax systems exists in the United States of America even where they have not just a single currency but a federal state. So far from the single currency requiring tax harmonisation, it is becoming generally recognised that tax competition is an essential element of the economic reform agenda. It can encourage innovation and thus more efficient ways of raising revenues; can help cut through bureaucracy and reduce compliance costs; and while tax competition must be fair and above board – the UK is working with our international partners to root out unfair and discriminatory tax competition – tax competition allows governments to respond to national preferences on the role, structure and aims of taxation.

    If we look round Europe today some countries wish to tax wine and champagne according to their national priorities; others beer and spirits differently; others energy differently; others tobacco. And tax competition recognises that Member States have different preferences that often reflect different long standing national values as well as preferences at any one time, and may also have different preferences for the level of social provision, the size of their public sector and accordingly the required tax take.

    So it is right to resist schemes for the harmonisation of corporation tax or further harmonisation of VAT, just as it has been right to support exchange of information as the means to tackle avoidance of savings taxation.

    Social dimension

    Third, Europe’s founders recognised that markets are social structures and work best when there is an explicit social dimension.

    And for its time and era the European social model which argued that enterprise had to be matched by fairness was an advance on responses to industrialisation in many other parts of the world.

    But with competitive pressures now global and not just European, the social dimension of a global Europe cannot be one that stops the clock, freeze frames and protects people against change. The social dimension must be one that does not replicate an indefensible status quo but equips people to meet and master change.

    Therefore it is right that Europe move from what are often called passive labour market policies to active labour market policies – policies which do not simply pay people to stay out of work but which encourage people to move from welfare to work and give them the skills they need.

    So here, and in the treatment of employment legislation, Europe must embrace greater labour market flexibility as the only modern route to full employment and put new regulations to the flexibility test as well as devise new incentives that help the unemployed. And the prize of a modern agenda for a flexible, job creating Europe based on independent states working together is that we are able to answer peoples anxieties about the great insecurities that arise from globalisation.

    Take long term unemployment

    In France over 30 per cent of unemployed have been unemployed for more than a year, in Germany nearly 50 per cent, in Italy nearly 60 per cent.   On average across the euro area it is 43 per cent but only 8 per cent in the USA. In other words only one in twelve of the unemployed stay unemployed for more than a year in the USA but in Europe nearly half the unemployed are still out of work.

    Today 14 million people across the EU are out of work – including more than 15 per cent of young people

    So it is clear that the post-war objective set by all countries of high and stable levels of growth and employment cannot be achieved in the old ways: just by maintaining high levels of demand in, essentially, sheltered and protected economies.

    Instead there are modern ways to make opportunity count and advance towards full employment that take us beyond the old idea that social cohesion had always to be bought at the cost of enterprise.

    Instead of viewing flexibility as the enemy of full employment, we should recognise that the right kind of flexibility in European as well as British labour markets is essential for jobs.

    So it is right that in the Wim Kok Employment Taskforce Report, Europe examines how, in the search for higher employment levels, we reform employment services, seek greater local flexibility, ensure social security benefits can encourage the return to employment, and sharpen tax incentives for work. And it is right both to create flexible markets and to equip people to meet and master change – through investment in skills and training, through the best transitional help for people moving between jobs, and through the operation of incentives to work like a minimum wage and a tax credit system, tailored in each member states to national circumstances.

    Take the British working tax credit which combines the flexibility of a labour market working smoothly with minimum standards of fairness for every employee returning to work. An unemployed adult on a modest income moving from a higher paid job from which he has been made redundant to a lower paid job recoups through the tax system up to 70 per cent of the wage loss — with the generous British child tax credit making the same true for employees with children whose incomes extend up the income scale. So the tax credit makes possible labour market flexibility – and thus the creation of new jobs – while ensuring there is a minimum below which families cannot fall. Many in the rest of Europe are now examining tax credits.  And by providing a real and effective safety net for people moving jobs or moving into work, the tax credit system helps the flexible creation of jobs.

    But regulation should only be used where necessary and the regulatory burden reduced wherever possible.  The impact, cost and benefit of new EU regulation should be considered rigorously before any proposal is adopted – especially regulation which threatens our commitment to more and better jobs.

    Here again mutual recognition is a better way forward than harmonisation.

    Research suggests that around half of all new regulations now emanate from Brussels.  In particular, Europe must reform existing rules to make it easier for entrepreneurs to start up and grow their businesses, instead of facing the same regulations as large businesses and suffering most from their impact on costs and time.

    And as we move forward, we must strengthen our commitment to rigorously assess the impact of all new legislation on the competitiveness of the EU economy, and lessen the burden of existing legislation.

    So we will:

    • resist the quarterly accounting requirements imposed under the proposed transparency directive;
    • call for changes in the Investment Services Directive to prevent the financial services sector facing over-burdensome regulation;
    • make sure the Financial Services Action Plan is about reducing red tape and not increasing it;
    • and resist inflexible barriers being introduced into the Working Time Directive and Agency Workers Directive.

    I am proposing to Finance Minister colleagues that in the year 2004 a European wide push against wasteful regulation forms a central part of our economic reform agenda.

    In this new initiative – where I believe there is a willingness of member states to cooperate – I believe the two European Councils – the Dutch Presidency summit of December 2004 and the British Summit of December 2005 – should be summits that sweep aside wasteful regulation

    And in the next two years every proposed regulation should be put to the costs test, then the jobs test and then the “is it really necessary” test. Existing regulations should be put to the same tests.

    Trade

    Fourth, in the old trade bloc economy Europe could worry most about internal trade and least about trade with the rest of the world

    It is now trade with the rest of the world that is growing fastest of all

    Take investment flows. For fifty years from the 1940 America invested heavily in Europe

    In the 1990s it is Europe that is investing heavily in the USA

    Indeed for nearly ten years funds invested from Europe in America have exceeded funds invested in Europe by America

    Globalisation means that trade is rising nearly twice as fast as output.

    And it is obvious that while in the trade bloc era Europe could be protectionist and shelter its goods and services, globalisation forces Europe, like Britain, to be open and outward looking.

    It is a long academic debate about the virtues and inefficiencies of trade blocs and the efficiency gains from a more open trading system. What is clear is that warring trade blocs will increasingly seen as not just inefficient but dangerous.

    And in a new global environment where all the arguments for the benefits of free and open trade are now more pressing than ever before, but where political resistance is strong, we must stand firm.

    So Europe needs to confirm its rejection of the protectionism and parochialism of the past and be open, outward looking and internationalist.

    The breakdown of talks in Cancun – where the EU, US, Japan and many developing countries were unwilling to accept the necessary cuts in tariffs and trade-distorting support to reach agreement – is a bitter disappointment and a serious setback to the multilateral process.

    There are now real risks that the response to globalisation is not to embrace change by opening up trade but to set our face against change, by becoming more protectionist.

    And there is indeed pressure to create greater barriers, pursue bilateral deals, build regional blocs that are inward looking, economic fortresses that resist change.  Talking about free trade but not engaging with the benefits of it.

    Any danger of European protectionism – or Japanese or American protectionism – should be resisted.

    To present an inward looking “Fortress Europe” – rivals with America in a multi-polar or bipolar world – as the sequel to the nation state and the alternative to the embrace of globalisation would be to miss the major opportunities for prosperity: a failure to recognise the real gains that can come from embracing globalisation and open trade and an unwillingness to make the reforms necessary to equip Europe to benefit.

    So to secure the gains from the opening up of trade in the twenty first century we need to take on vested interests in exactly the way Cobden and Bright did in the nineteenth century.

    Europe must lead in the World Trade Organisation.

    Along with America, the EU should not wait for the Doha development agenda to conclude.  We should start liberalising now and deliver the benefits that such reforms – properly sequenced – would have on growth, consumer prices and developing countries economies.

    In particular Europe and America must, sooner or later, come together to tackle, at root, agricultural protectionism which is failing consumers, taxpayers, farmers and the environment, as well as seriously damaging the economies of the world’s poorest countries.

    This summer Europe achieved an important step forward, breaking the link between production and subsidy for many products and reducing the trade-distortion impact of the common agricultural policy.

    The CAP imposes enormous costs on the EU economy:  at 45 billion euros a year absorbs nearly half the EC budget; member states provide an additional 15 billion euros in support from national budgets; on top of that consumers bear a burden of 50 billion euros through higher food prices.  And agricultural subsidies and protectionism costs developing countries $30 billion a year leaving millions in poverty.

    But at the same time as pursuing a multi-lateral agenda, Europe should also recognise that a strong transatlantic economic partnership is critical to long term prosperity

    The transatlantic economic relationship now accounts for up to $2.5 trillions of commercial transactions each year, including $500 billions of foreign trade, and provides employment to over 12 million people.

    This changes the relationship between Europe and America and it is in the interests of the whole of Europe that we have a strong high growth us economy just as it is in the interests of the USA to have a strong European economy.

    So I believe that in the best and most forward looking responses to globalisation, Europe and America see ourselves as partners not rivals — not fortress Europe versus fortress NAFTA, but working together to be beneficiaries of global change and ensure that all continents benefit.

    Last spring we submitted to the Commission the results of a new study showing that if we broke down the tariff barriers and the barriers to trade in services between Europe and America Europe could increase employment by 1 million, raise growth by up to 2 per cent in Europe and up to 1 per cent in America.

    So Europe should recognise that a strong transatlantic economic partnership is critical to long term prosperity.  It is not just in Britain’s but in Europe’s interest that the EU and USA – with 60 per cent of the world’s output – seek common approaches to competition, liberalise services and capital markets, remove remaining tariffs, reinvigorate the transatlantic business dialogue, and together make multi-lateralism work for developing countries.

    And last week the US Treasury Secretary John Snow and I agreed to take this work forward with our European partners – including proceeding with an independent study on how by liberalisation, the removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers, and agreed approaches to competition and regulation we can reap the benefits from greater trade and investment between our two continents.

    The prize of being partners not rivals is that each of us – and our trade partners – stand to gain much more from globalisation.

    And Europe’s role must not end there.  We also ought to be at the heart of the new relationship between developed and developing countries – especially the poorest African nations.

    In the same way that under the Marshall Plan America helped the regeneration of Europe, Europe and America should work together for a new Marshall Plan – the economic development of the poorest countries.  Not just a moral and social imperative, but an economic priority.

    Monetary and fiscal policy

    Fifth, a Europe serious about meeting global competition should, as Britain has, move beyond the old short-termist approach to monetary and fiscal policy.

    The lessons all advanced economies have learned are that in the new global economy, where investors will put a premium on maintaining monetary and fiscal stability, monetary and fiscal policy has now to adjust quickly to fast moving changes and to heightened risks of instability – and to do so it has to be proactive and forward looking

    Fixed intermediate monetary targets assume a stable demand for money and therefore a predictable relationship between money and inflation.  But since the 1970s, global capital flows, financial deregulation and changing technology have brought such volatility in the demand for money that across the world money supply targets have proved unworkable.  So domestic policies which held to rigid monetarist targets are exposed by the liberalisation of capital markets.

    At the same time, the old inward looking policies which manipulated supply and demand year to year at a national level – best characterised by short term domestic fine tuning – are as out of date as those which have held simply to rigid monetary targets.  The only reason politicians bound themselves to annual surplus or deficit targets was that no one believed that they had the discipline to meet long term fiscal objectives. But a fiscal policy that is not planned over the economic cycle is one that cannot respond to the ups and downs of a fast moving global economy.

    Instead, the flexible and proactive approach a modern economy needs demands a framework – whether monetary or fiscal – based not on short term targets but on clear long term objectives that are met and seen to be met; well understood operational rules of procedure that are painstakingly followed; and an openness and transparency that helps build public trust and market credibility.

    That is why my first acts as Chancellor in 1997 were not only to make the Bank of England independent but to introduce a new British model for monetary and fiscal stability with:

    • Instead of monetary targets, a symmetrical inflation target that is as concerned about deflation as it is about inflation
    • Instead of the old annual fiscal fine tuning, clearly established fiscal rules set over the cycle
    • And because it is important not just to build trust but to educate decision-makers about the costs and benefits of different courses of action, an openness and transparency.

    And it is precisely this kind of monetary and fiscal policy that is most attuned to the news of an open trading global economy.

    First, the credibility that has come from independence for the Bank of England and the symmetric target has enabled the monetary policy committee to respond early and decisively  – raising interest rates in 1997, cutting them sharply in 1998 – and again with nine interest rate cuts since the latest global downturn began with the result that, even when more exposed than any European economy to the it shock, growth continued and unemployment continued to fall.

    And I believe that the MPC is right to take the forward-looking approach of pre-emptive action – taken as the economy strengthens – to lock in stability.

    Second, it is right that the system be open and accountable.

    Most instability and high inflation in the past was caused by a breakdown of the consensus in our society on who gets what.  And Britain usually fell into recession after two inflationary bursts – an initial burst of inflation when demand got out of control and then a second burst of inflation when wage negotiators sought to catch up with higher inflation in their pay claims.

    So in 1997 we knew that we had to fashion a model for stability that was seen as legitimate and fair and got the balance right between technical expertise and political legitimacy so wage negotiators would believe that the targets set will be met.

    This required an open public debate about the target and the value of it being met.  The greater the degree of secrecy the greater the suspicion that the truth is being obscured and the books cooked.  But the greater the degree of transparency – the more information that is published on why decisions are made and the more the safeguards against the manipulation of information – the less likely is it that investors will be suspicious of the government’s intentions.

    And that openness needs to be underpinned by accountability and responsibility.  Public trust can be built only on a foundation of credible institutions, clear objectives, and a proper institutional framework.

    But, third, it is only within a framework of being long term and rules-based that markets will allow monetary policy to be proactive. This is what we mean when we talk about discretion being possible only when there is a long term discipline or constraint accepted by policy makers.

    It is where there is no credible long term commitment to fiscal stability over the cycle that economies can find themselves in the position of cutting spending or raising taxes at the wrong time of the economic cycle, putting growth and stability at risk. And it is precisely at this point in the economic cycle that past British governments have made mistakes.

    So in 1997, breaking from the old familiar annual public spending rounds, the old annual promises and breaking of promises over surpluses and deficits, we set long term fiscal rules over the cycle – rather than rigid year to year targets – and these have supported monetary policy in helping us continue to grow.

    It is because of this long-term commitment to fiscal stability that:

    • In 1997 and for two years we froze spending and turned the large deficit that we inherited into a large surplus;
    • We then aggressively cut the national debt;
    • We then paid off more debt in one year than in the whole of the period since the Second World War;
    • And we then were able to reduce debt interest as a share of national income to its lowest in almost a century, since 1914.
    • And our long term fiscal decisions will ensure that while debt is rising substantially in many other countries, levels of debt in Britain will remain low and sustainable.  At all times we will meet our fiscal rules and, more than that, we have examined the sustainability of the public finances over the next 50 years

    In the Pre-Budget Report we will publish our plans showing that after tough decisions made on pensions – state pension spending will rise towards 15 per cent of GDP in Germany and France but remain at 5 per cent in Britain – our fiscal position is sustainable over not just a year or two but over the next decades – the necessary timeframe to assess the potential impact of an ageing population on public finances.

    So with all the reforms we have already made in Britain, we have – I believe – a sound and credible British model for long term economic stability

    Just like Britain, the euro area has been establishing a framework for economic stability.  In parallel with the creation of the independent Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England and our new fiscal regime we have seen the creation of the European Central Bank and the evolution of the Stability and Growth Pact.

    Overall the euro area has managed to maintain both low inflation and relatively low fiscal deficits even in a period of world instability.  But there has been low growth. So just as we in Britain are examining how we advance, the ECB has been reviewing its monetary policy strategy and the EU has been looking at how the stability and growth pact can work most effectively.

    And I believe that Britain, having had to learn from our experience of the 1980s and 90s of stop go policies – and having learnt from Europe and America – has today something distinctive to contribute.

  • Paul Murphy – 2003 Speech to Labour Party Conference

    paulmurphy

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Paul Murphy, at the 2013 Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth on 2nd October 2003.

    Chair, Conference.

    – the minimum wage and union recognition;

    – the lowest unemployment in a generation and record investment in public services;

    – defence of liberty abroad and economic stability at home.

    Just some of the achievements of your Labour government.

    However, I’d like today to point you to another achievement of which we can all be equally proud; the Good Friday Agreement.

    Before the Agreement, politics in Northern Ireland had been in cold storage for 30 years.

    In its absence, bigotry, hatred and sectarianism flourished, until Ulster became a by-word for terror and tragedy throughout the World.

    Three and half thousand people killed, out of a population of one and a half million souls.

    Almost every household touched in some fashion by a conflict that became banal, so familiar had it become.

    And outside Northern Ireland, when the Troubles elbowed their way into the running order of a TV bulletin, or inspired some journalist to write, all too often the unspoken response was a sigh and a weary shrug of the shoulders at the insoluble problems of that part of the United Kingdom.

    When I first arrived in NI as a minister, with Mo Mowlem, we were determined that Labour would never succumb to such defeatism.

    We were determined that a resolution of the problems could be found and that politics – that democracy – could supplant terror in the future of Northern Ireland.

    The Belfast Agreement marked the beginning of that process.

    The Assembly, where nationalists and unionists, loyalists and republicans, worked side by side and delivered good government for Northern Ireland, marked a new era of politics and of peace.

    It is, of course, an imperfect peace.

    Though the ceasefires hold firm, and the deaths are counted in tens and not hundreds, stability and trust are still lacking.

    The paramilitaries – whose day should have ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement – have not yet gone away.

    Their continuing activities lay behind our reluctant decision to suspend the Assembly almost a year ago, and the cessation of those activities is the key to its restoration.

    People in Northern Ireland know that Tony Blair, our Prime Minister, has invested unparalleled time and energy in the peace process.

    They know, too, that he – and I – have said consistently that we want to see an election to the new Assembly in the coming weeks.

    But an election serves a purpose: it must create a government.

    And without action and words from the IRA, that can build trust and cement confidence, we risk either more direct rule or an election to a dysfunctional assembly and renewed cold storage for politics in Northern Ireland.

    And direct rule cannot continue.

    When we have an Assembly in Wales and a Parliament in Scotland, with local ministers and local accountability, it just isn’t right that Northern Ireland should be run by MPs from Torfaen, Merseyside, the Black Country and Essex.

    While we are there, however, Jane Kennedy, John Spellar, Angela Smith, Ian Pearson and I will continue to try and provide good government for the people of Northern Ireland.

    When those people – over 70% of them – voted for the Belfast Agreement, they signalled their determination to write a new chapter in their troubled history.

    The foundations of that agreement are tolerance and compromise, justice and equality, rights and responsibilities.

    The agreement leaves no room for hatred and violence, nor for bigotry and sectarianism.

    And we are determined that the agreement will be implemented in its entirety and that it will realise the potential that people saw in it five years ago.

    We are also determined that we will find other measures to bring about the changes in Northern Ireland society that the Agreement envisages.

    That is why today I am announcing changes to the law in NI which will prosecute crimes motivated by sectarian hatred.

    Intimidation and violence inspired by sectarian malice has no place in modern Northern Ireland.

    The threats and terror visited upon the courageous men and women who are members of the Policing Partnerships in NI are just the latest examples of such vile behaviour.

    The thugs who are responsible, and those behind recent death threats aimed at priests, or the cowards who placed pipe bombs in the yard of a catholic primary school, should know today that their actions will, when they are caught, result in prison sentences which properly reflect the sectarian motivation of their crimes.

    The changes I am announcing will oblige judges in Northern Ireland to take into account the motivation of crimes by hatred of the victim’s religious faith, racial background or sexual orientation, and will empower them to hand out significantly heavier sentences where such motivation is proven.

    I am also increasing the maximum sentences available to judges in such cases.

    In so doing I am sending a message that I’m sure will be welcomed by the good people of Northern Ireland.

    Sectarianism has no place in our society.

    This government will not tolerate it, in Northern Ireland, or anywhere else in the UK.

    Since my return to Northern Ireland, despite the difficulties which have ensnared the political talks, I’ve witnessed tremendous improvements in life there.

    The transformation of the police is one of the greatest.

    The PSNI is now a modern force which enjoys support across religious and political divides and which polices the whole community with fairness and justice.

    But there are other changes too…

    The economy is growing – faster in many sectors than anywhere in the UK.

    People are in work, unemployment at 5%.

    Tourism is booming, and figures out just last week show that Belfast is now the 4th most visited city in the country

    This is a part of the World which is changing – and at a rate with which we politicians sometimes struggle to keep pace.

    But we must now redouble our efforts.

    People in Northern Ireland want devolution back.

    They want decisions about their schools and hospitals to be taken locally.

    And they want their Ministers in government in a locally elected and locally accountable Stormont Assembly.

    In conclusion, I’d like to pay tribute to the Party Leaders in Northern Ireland who, for years, have striven to make this peace process work – to David Trimble, Mark Durkan, Gerry Adams, David Ervine, Monica McWilliams, and David Ford.

    I applaud too Bertie Ahern and the Irish Government for all their work.

    We cannot return to the troubled past.

    We must make progress…

    And all my instincts tell me that we will.

  • Chris Mullin – 2003 Speech on Britain and South Africa

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Office Minister, Chris Mullin, in Cape Town, South Africa, on 3rd November 2003.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

    Last week in London a series of events was held to celebrate the tenth anniversary of your country’s freedom. I myself had the pleasure of hosting a reception to mark the occasion, which was attended by many members of the South African and British governments, including your Foreign Minister, Dr Dlamini Zuma. I will say to you what I said to them. Namely, that for many of us active in British politics, the release of Nelson Mandela and the subsequent peaceful transfer of power from the Apartheid regime to South Africa’s first democratically elected government was one of the seminal events of our political lives. What made a particular impression in the UK, where we sometimes tend to take democracy for granted, was the sight of long lines of impoverished people queuing patiently for hours in order, for the first time in their lives, to cast their vote.

    South Africa has come a long way during the last ten years. It has assumed its rightful place as a major player, both of the continent of Africa and in the world as a whole. It plays an important part in the Commonwealth, in the Non-Aligned Movement, in the United Nations and in the African Union. It has contributed peacekeepers to war torn neighbours. It is playing a leading part in NEPAD, the New Partnership for African Development – of which we all have high hopes.

    But what has impressed us most in the ten years since you won your freedom is the dignity with which you went about coming to terms with your past. How you did not allow yourselves to become consumed with bitterness or a desire for revenge which might so easily have poisoned the future. How instead you have built a coalition in which there is a place for everyone who wants to play a part in a multi-racial democracy. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has become a model for other divided societies struggling to overcome their terrible past – only the other day a prominent Iraqi remarked to me that Iraqis could do with something similar in their own country.

    THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

    Friends, I congratulate you on what has been achieved so far. We are proud to be your partners. But, as I am sure you will be the first to agree, it is not enough to celebrate what has been achieved so far. Other large challenges lie ahead. I want, if I may, to use this opportunity to set out some of those challenges and how we hope, in partnership with our friends in Africa, to tackle them.

    First however, I want to assure you that we will not allow events in Iraq to distract us from our commitment to Africa. Prime Minister Tony Blair has long made clear his personal commitment to Africa and he has re-iterated this commitment on several occasions. DFID has reaffirmed 2 commitments; that it’s spending in Africa will continue to rise substantially (set to reach £1billion per year by 2006); and that the proportion of DFID programmes going to low income countries will rise to 90% by the same date. We had already planned to reduce our overall allocation to middle income countries (MICs) in order to increase spending in the poorest countries. In light of the needs in Iraq we will make reallocations within our overall MIC programmes. No decision has yet been taken on changed spending for individual countries. But Hilary Benn has made clear that he intends to maintain a substantial programme in South Africa. It is not my place to preach about Africa’s problems, indeed you are as well aware of them as I am, but the grim facts will not go away unless they are faced. Since 1960 over eight million Africans have died as a result of war and ninety percent of the casualties have been not soldiers, but civilians. Many millions more have become refugees, fleeing war and chaos. It is the responsibility of all of us to tackle poverty in Africa. We are committed to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve the proportion of the world population living in poverty. Africa requires annual growth of 7% to meet this goal.

    Second, we should remember that there is much good news in Africa. Democratic governance is taking root. Ghana, Senegal and Kenya, which I have just visited, have all seen peaceful transfers of power in the last four years. Some countries have seen very strong economic performance. Uganda is among the ten fastest growing economies in the world. The recovery of the South African rand is a tribute to the strength and sound management of Africa’s largest economy.

    There is also hope of an end to Africa’s most intractable conflicts. Angola is at peace for the first time in thirty years. Sierra Leone is rebuilding itself. The DRC and Burundi are all making fresh starts. The role which President Mbeki played personally in helping to broker agreements including the signing of the Pretoria Protocol yesterday, together with the commitment of South African troops to sustain them, reflect great credit to your country. I am encouraged by the prospect of a peace agreement in Sudan, and the success of ECOWAS in ensuring a peaceful transition in Liberia.

    Africa’s leaders are leading this progress. They have made clear that they will not wait for the rest of the world to solve the continent’s problems. NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development demonstrates this approach. It is about Africa taking responsibility for African problems; and development partners accepting their role in supporting it. The G8 has responded by making clear commitments to reinforce the efforts of regional leaders.

    Thirdly, good governance is critical to Africa’s development. As President Mbeki has said, democracy, good governance and respect for human rights are not alien conditions imposed by western donors. They are African values rooted in the councils of the chiefs for many generations. The African Peer Review Mechanism is a bold commitment, establishing a process for monitoring good governance that goes further than any other in the world. It will give business, African and foreign, the confidence to invest.

    ZIMBABWE

    I am sure that you are expecting me to say a little about Zimbabwe in this context. I will disappoint some journalists when I point out that Britain and South Africa agree to a large extent about Zimbabwe. When Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited South Africa in May, he and Foreign Minister Dlamini-Zuma agreed a communiqué on a range of bilateral issues. Let me quote to you the section on Zimbabwe: ‘both countries agreed on the need to encourage the parties to commit themselves to removing the obstacles to the negotiations. They underlined that the longer the problems in Zimbabwe remain unresolved, the more entrenched poverty will become. They stressed their commitment to an outcome in which the people of Zimbabwe enjoy independence, freedom, peace, stability, democracy and prosperity. The Working Group noted, unequivocally, that no lasting solution to the challenges that face Zimbabwe can be found, unless that solution comes from the people of Zimbabwe themselves’.

    We know that President Mbeki and others have been working hard to help the negotiations between ZANU (PF) and the MDC bear fruit. We applaud those efforts, and wish them every success. But for these talks to succeed there has to be a serious commitment to dialogue – in this context the recent closure of the Daily News and the locking up of trade union leaders sends the wrong signal, and these must be reversed.

    The British position is often misrepresented. We support the people of Zimbabwe. We support their human rights. We recognise and have said clearly that the colonial inheritance on land was both unjust and unsustainable. We fully support land reform, but only if it is done transparently, sustainably and for the benefit of the poor. And we are helping keep Zimbabweans alive, by helping to finance the international humanitarian relief effort. Last winter the World Food Programme, to which we are major contributors, helped to feed more than five million Zimbabweans. How can it be that this beautiful country that was the bread basket of Southern Africa has been reduced to relying on foreign aid to keep its people alive? I should also make clear that, once there is a democratically accountable government in Zimbabwe, working for the interests of its own people, we are ready to help lead the international community’s efforts to rebuild the country. In the meantime, we will do all in our power to ensure that no Zimbabwean starves, and to help tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis.

    BRITAIN’S WIDER ROLE IN AFRICA

    But enough on Zimbabwe. Let me say a little about the role that Britain hopes to play more widely in Africa. Our aim is a relationship with African countries as equal partners. We recognise the moral obligation to support African efforts. But we also recognise that there are wider reasons. Terrorism and extremism thrive where there is oppression and poverty.

    So what are we doing to help Africa to achieve the recovery is seeks? First, our bilateral commitment. We will commit £1bn a year in development assistance to Africa by 2005. The funds will be used in the countries that need them most – the poorest. We will focus development assistance on the areas that can best reduce poverty – health, education, and building accountable and effective governments.

    Secondly, we recognise that trade is much more important than aid. The disappointment of Cancun should not discourage us from pursuing a fairer global trading system. We will build on alliances with developing countries, including South Africa, to get the Doha Development agenda back on track. We will not continue to tolerate a situation in which a cow in Europe is subsidised at $2 a day (twice the amount that half of all Africans live on). With our support the European Union has made substantial reforms to the Common Agricultural Policies Policy which when implemented will cut damaging European subsidies and open European markets. We want to go further.

    Thirdly, we will continue to use our influence to ensure the developed world is prepared to give Africa a fairer chance. We are leading the effort to provide debt relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. This is releasing up to $41.2 billion for the twenty countries in Africa that are participating. We have also proposed, with South Africa’s support, an International Financing Facility. Including debt relief this should lead to the release of up to $50 billion of development assistance in a reasonably short time frame, making the Millennium Development Goals more achievable. We will support African national, regional and continental institutions to build the capacity to absorb these levels of funding.

    I highlighted Africa’s efforts to end its wars. We will support these. The UK is providing resources and expertise for conflict prevention, peacekeeping and conflict resolution missions as the AU Peace and Security Council establishes itself. We are closely involved in the process of peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, and we supported deployment of South African troops in the DRC. In Burundi, we have provided £3.9m to the cost of peacekeeping efforts led by South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia. In this context, I am happy to announce that South Africa and Britain will in the next few days conduct a bilateral command and control exercise in South Africa – Exercise African Shield. British and South African military and civilian personnel will share experience and techniques in regional peacekeeping. We hope this practical co-operation will help the AU and UN to meet the challenges ahead.

    Like you, we will give increasing attention to HIV/AIDS. We are already engaged in battling TB and malaria throughout Africa, but tackling this new disease poses unique challenges. So far, Africa has borne the brunt of these, although HIV is now spreading fast in other parts of the world too. The world has had to learn fast, we now know that we need a comprehensive response – preventing the spread of infection; treatment and care of those infected; addressing the wider impact on society. Britain is working with African countries and with international organisations to promote this sort of response. Like many round the world, we welcome South Africa’s recent decision to expand access to anti retroviral treatment as part of a comprehensive approach.

    Finally, we will continue to act as champions of NEPAD and the African Union. Tony Blair intends to make Africa a central focus of the UK’s Presidency of the G8 in 2005.

    CONCLUSION

    Our relationship with South Africa exemplifies this partnership. Tony Blair and President Mbeki have worked closely together on the progressive governance. South Africa and Britain have £6bn worth of two-way bilateral trade every year. We are working together in multilateral fora to combat crime, terrorism and money laundering. We also share goals in the pursuit of free trade, in the Renewable Energy Partnership that followed the Johannesburg summit, and in ethical business practise, in particular the efforts to promote transparency in the Extractives Industry.

    Friends we regard South Africa as a role model for the rest of Africa. In 10 short years you have managed a peaceful transition from Apartheid to a modern democracy in which there is freedom of speech, the rule of law, a market economy and a real effort to improve the lives of your poorest people. We recognise that great challenges still lie ahead and we want to help you meet them. Success is important not only for you but for the whole of Africa.

  • Rhodri Morgan – 2003 Speech to Labour Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Welsh First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, to the 2003 Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth on 28th September 2003.

    Conference, twelve months ago, in the steamy heat of Blackpool, I suggested to you that, if we could draw on the determined effort of the whole Labour movement, we in Wales were in a position to take outright control at this year’s Assembly elections.

    Well, we make that effort, we took outright control and today I’m here to thank everyone in the Labour family who helped to make it happen.

    Immediately after that election, the Labour Party in Wales met together in a special conference in Cardiff.

    What I said on that Saturday seems to me to be even more important today.

    We fought our Welsh Assembly campaign as the most united Party which I could ever remember.

    United Parties win elections. Divided Parties lose them.

    It’s the simplest law of successful politics – and all of us need to remember that today.

    And by all of us, I mean what I say.

    I mean the platform, as well as the people in the hall.

    I mean those who get elected, as well as those who help to get them elected.

    I mean the trade unions, as well as political wing of this Movement.

    We win when we are united for two main reasons.

    Unity means that we get our message across in a direct way, without the discord which disunity brings. When we are all really singing from the same hymn sheet, then not only do we make more noise –  we make it in harmony.

    But united parties don’t only deliver messages better. They have better messages to deliver.

    I don’t underestimate, for a moment, the struggle which our Party has always had to wage, to get our messages across. The vested interests of power and privilege may change as the years go on – but they are always there, and the message of this Movement will always be – must always be – a message which the powerful and privileged will find so uncomfortable that they will wish to stifle and suppress it.

    Let me give you just one example. For 18 years the Conservative Party made a concentrated attack upon our core public services. Nowhere was that attack more sustained, more insidious and more successful than in the case of NHS dentistry. Nor was that the whole of their plan. They wanted dentists out of the NHS, just as they had already got rid of opticians, before moving on to family doctors next.

    Since 1997, we have had to pick up the pieces and grow back dental services in parts of Wales where they had been completely abandoned. Since that time, because of the decisions which Labour has made, 31 practices have been expanded and 9 competely new ones opened, 90 dentists have benefited and 52,000 extra NHS places have been created.

    Of course, there is more which needs to be done. Many of you will have seen pictures of the queues which formed when an additional 300 NHS places were on offer at a West Wales dental practice over the summer.

    But what are the lessons which are really to be drawn from this story?

    Firstly, it reminds us, if we needed any reminding, that the NHS remains an institution which people in Wales, and beyond, value beyond almost any other. When people who had been denied such services were offered an opportunity to take them up again, then they welcome it hugely.

    Secondly, that the expansion in services only came about because of the actions of government – a Labour government in Westminster prepared to provide the additional investment and a Labour government in the Assembly committed to the NHS. Comrades, that so many should have been denied treatment for so long is a disgrace – but it is a disgrace which only this Party is committed to putting right.

    Those 300 places which were the focus of so much attention are only one part of the 6 practices where new and expanded NHS services have been provided in West Wales over the past two years. Even since those pictures appeared earlier in the summer, a  further practice has been expanded in the same part of Wales, using a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government to create 1,300 new NHS places, guaranteed for the next five years.

    The third thing we learn from all this is that, even when we are extending services, even when we are doing so in a way which so clearly meets a powerfully felt need, the media, and our opponents, will try to find a way to portray all this as some sort of government-induced crisis. It really is the height of hypocrisy to hear the Tories bleating about a lack of NHS dentists when they set out so deliberately to decimate that service.

    That’s why, looking back at our experience in the Assembly elections, I want to suggest to you that parties which win elections don’t just get better at getting their message across. They have to have the best messages – and that means messages which unite us, rather than divide us: messages which connect us with our supporters in the country, rather than cutting us off from them, messages which tell a real story, of real policies, benefiting real people.

    In the Assembly elections, we deliberately set out to make our Manifesto the centre-piece of our campaign. It’s become fashionable in some quarters to look down on Manifestos, to portray them as irrelevant to voters and a weak guide to what governments elected upon them will actually deliver. We tried to break out of that destructive circle by concentrating our Manifesto upon a series of practical measures which make a day-to-day difference in the lives of those who look to this Party to be on their side, the vehicle for help and for improvement.

    So, over the next four years, we will abolish all prescription charges in Wales and we will see to it that free breakfasts are on offer in all our primary schools.

    Why did we chose to make such commitments? Well, they bring direct health and education benefits. When I visited the South Wales Valleys, in the run up to the election, a headteacher of 30 years standing told me that free breakfasts had made the single greatest contribution to learning, of all the many initiatives which she had witnessed during her career. Children who begin the day properly fed are children who are ready for learning, whose behaviour is better, whose sociability is improved and whose alertness and receptivity has been secured.

    But there are vital economic as well as social benefits which these measures bring. In Wales, we have to tackle the problems of economic inactivity – people who could be in work, but who the Tories pushed onto the scrap heap. Thanks to the  astonishing success of Labour’s record since 1997, the Welsh economy has been transformed. During that period we have closed two thirds of the employment gap between Wales and the rest of the UK. Employment in Wales has increased by 78,000 comparing the three months to July this year with the same period a year ago. The employment rate in Wales is now higher than all the G7 countries (apart, of course from the UK) and higher than all EU countries apart from Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. And unemployment has fallen in the less well-off parts of the country at an even faster rate than elsewhere.

    Now we have to help back into work, those people who, after two decades of Tory neglect, have come to see themselves as cut off from the economic mainstream. To deliver that assistance we have to smooth the path back to work. Prescriptions are free when out of work. Now, in Wales, they’ll be free when working as well.

    Conference, the experience in Wales has been that when the Labour Movement offers the sort of policies which connect in this direct way with people’s lives, then this Party remains the natural home for all those who understand that we all do best when we know that we are  part one of another, stronger when united than divided, shaping that society which gave us our chances, so that there are better chances still for those who come after us.

    Now, of course, not all our political opponents understand the importance of this sense of inter-dependence.

    Our friends in Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Independence Party, have just spend an agonising weekend deciding that independence is, after all, the main aim of their game. Or at least for some of them. Their new President, Dafydd Iwan, a plucker of the more morose form of folk song, was enthusiastically in favour of  a seat at the United Nations, a Welsh army, navy and airforce and, as far as I know, a Welsh man on the moon. Their former president, Lord Elis Thomas, the far from morose Presiding Officer of the Assembly, is adamantly opposed. Their former, and now born-again leader at the Assembly, Ieuan Wyn Jones, nailed his colours so firmly to the fence that he didn’t vote at all.

    Ieuan Win – Ieuan Lose – Now it’s Ieuan abstain.

    Chair, we live in an interdependent world. What each one of us does in our own lives directly affects the lives of others. What each of us does in our communities affects other communities too. This idea is etched deep in the Welsh political psyche. It is the ethical foundation of our socialism. It is the reason why the narrow nationalist notion of independence is such a one-way ticket to political obscurity.

    That’s why when we face the electorate again next year, in our local government and European elections, and in the general election which will follow, it is not the nationalists who we need to draw back to the attention of the voters. It is the Tories, with their own brand of narrow minded malice, whom we will have to hold to account. Now, for two general elections in a row, Wales has been that socialist nirvarnah – a Tory-free zone. And we plan to keep it that way again next time. In the Assembly, however, our voting system means that we’ve been able to see that endangered species – the Welsh Conservative – at close quarters. And the truth is that they are both nastier and more resilient than we sometimes remember. Nastier in their willingness to attack every progressive measure. More resilient in their ability to attract a core vote based around the worst sort of political appeal to fear and to envy.

    Conference, we’ve had a Labour Government in Westminster for six years. We’ve had a wholly Labour Government at the Assembly for less than six months.

    Now we have a golden chance, the chance of a generation, to use out combine will and our combined skill to make those changes which matter to Labour voters up and down the land.

    And when we do that together, we will not let you down.

  • Jonathan Morgan – 2003 Speech to Conservative Welsh Spring Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jonathan Morgan to the 2003 Conservative Welsh Spring Conference on 8th March 2003.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Four years since Labour’s promises of better public services.

    Four years of Labour’s dogma, interference and Minister knows best mentality.

    Four years of missed opportunities for getting increased funding to schools.

    Four years of Labour government in the National Assembly happily supported by the Liberal Democrats who do as they’re told.

    It’s a strange partnership. Labour get the blame for what goes wrong, the Lib Dems try to claim the credit for any thing that goes right, the Lib Dems say the government is driven by them, and Labour are driven to attacking the Lib Dems. A bat man and robin outfit where no one seems to wear the trousers. School teachers, pupils, parents and governors are asking, “where did it all go wrong?”

    I thought that devolution would have meant new ideas and new imagination for helping our public services. Perhaps I was being too optimistic, perhaps I was being youthfully naive, perhaps I was hoping for too much that the Labour government would start seeing our education service from the point of view of teachers, pupils, parents and governors instead of Labour councillors, Labour councillors and…well more Labour councillors.

    The present education Minister would make a very good local government minister. She has excellent local government credentials, former councillor, and former employee of the Welsh Local Government Association.

    For my part it has been a privilege to serve as this Party’s Education Spokesman in the first term of the National Assembly, without any baggage like the minister. 4 years of constructive Conservative ideas, of renewed determination to back our teaching profession 100%, to support our pupils and provide choice and opportunity for Welsh families.

    We have built up our working relationship with the teaching unions, consulted with schools on our ideas, and have produced a manifesto demonstrating our commitment to our education service, and also our willingness to be innovative and exciting in our ambitions for Wales.

    Labour and their Liberal Democrat helpers are settling for second best. They do not have any ambition for Wales. During these 4 crucial years there have been 4 big missed opportunities, which could have provided crucial resources to schools. No one will doubt that education spending has gone up, but spending does not equate investment unless there is a return.

    Last year the Education Act was hailed as supporting devolution with new powers to protect school budgets. The minister refuses to use powers to ring fence budgets. Because of her fixation with local government she refuses to protect school budgets.

    Labour’s reluctance to act has cost Welsh schools money, but a Welsh Conservative administration would protect school budgets.

    The refusal of the government to introduce a 3-year cycle of funding is stopping schools from planning for the future. How can we expect schools to run effectively when they don’t know how much money they will get from one year to the next? Head teachers want to know what resources they will require, how many teachers they can afford, and this needs certainty.

    Labour’s reluctance to act is preventing schools from planning ahead, but a Welsh Conservative administration would provide that certainty.

    Since 1999 the government have announced lots of little schemes, schemes with duplicated aims and huge amounts of cash. This is where a substantial amount of the money goes, hundreds of millions of pounds into various pots. These pots are there, not for the taking, but for the bidding. Schools are caught up in an endless stream of bidding cycles, begging for money. We need to see these pots merged, and money targeted at school budgets – let schools decide how to spend the money according to their local needs.

    Labour’s reluctance to concentrate on core funding is costing schools money and their time, but a Welsh Conservative administration would focus on money going into school budgets and not little schemes designed by government ministers.

    Lastly, Labour’s political interference in the way that schools budgets are allocated will mean that schools in Wales are set to lose money. Just ask schools in Cardiff North or in Flintshire, school budgets are about to be attacked and redistributed according to a politically correct formula. Labour don’t want to support schools that do well, that raise standards, that attract good teachers and supportive parents. Labour’s reluctance to shake off its political dogma will cost schools money and staff.

    But there is an alternative.

    We have a vision of a Wales where teachers are trusted as the professionals that they are, where schools are supported by a government that does not interfere, where pupils are given the chance to succeed according to ability and aspiration not background and status.

    But to realise that vision the people of Wales need their eyes opened, so go out and help them.

  • Alan Milburn – 2003 Speech to NHS Executives

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, to NHS Executives on 11th February 2003.

    I would like to begin by thanking you for the leadership you show in the NHS. It has never been more vital.

    In the months to come that leadership will be more important still. We are a critical juncture for the NHS. It is over two years since the NHS Plan was published. Investment in the NHS is rising fast. This April taxes will go up to pay for the extra resources.

    As a result, capacity is growing. From the late 1970s to the mid 1990s only ten major new hospital developments were completed. Since 1997 13 have been built, seven more are under construction and a further 34 are in the pipeline. In each of the five years before 1997 the number of GPs in training fell. In each of the last five years they have risen. There are 10,000 more doctors, 40,000 more nurses, and 11,000 more therapists and scientists working in the NHS now than then. In primary care prescribing of cholesterol lowering drugs has doubled in 3 years. For decades acute and general beds in hospitals were cut back. For the last two years they have grown.

    The local plans PCTs and NHS Trusts are concluding for the next three years will need to increase capacity further: in primary and community services, not just hospital services; in staffing, especially in doctor numbers; in new ways of working, not just the old ways of doing things.

    Extra capacity is needed because the NHS is still working under very real pressure. It is tough out there. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that the journey we have begun is well underway. Of course, there is a long way to go but the momentum is now forwards.

    Take waiting times. Thanks to your efforts waiting times – which had risen for decades – are falling – and doing so on virtually every indicator. In heart surgery, for example, the maximum waiting time which was eighteen months at this time last year will have been halved to nine months by April this year. So, in what remains of this financial year, it will be important to deliver the continued progress we have promised towards an NHS where waiting times are lower and quality is higher.

    For patients, progress will be judged not just on whether waiting times are shorter but on whether their own experience of the service is better. There is no doubt that waiting – whether it is to see the family doctor or the hospital specialist – is the single biggest public concern about the NHS. But unless we can improve the quality of the patient experience we could end up hitting every target and ticking every box – and finding that the public believe the NHS is no better.

    That is why the resources have got to lever in reforms. The investment cannot be used to ossify the system. It must be used to change it.

    Last week I argued for devolving power and resources from Whitehall to the NHS frontline. The move to a more diverse, more devolved NHS will help make local services more responsive to the needs of the local communities they serve. Today I want to set out another crucial element of our reforms: greater choice for patients. I want to describe why I believe choice is important and how we plan to make it happen.

    The starting point is this: when the NHS was created expectations were lower; deference was greater. Today it is the other way around. Some argue that in today’s consumer world the only way to get services that are responsive to individual needs is through the market mechanism of patients paying for their own treatment. I believe that is wrong and would fail. In a world where health care can do more but costs more than ever before, such an approach would make the best health care an exclusive club for only the very wealthy. The new possibilities brought by medical advance and – in our generation, the genetics revolution – make the case for an NHS where care is free and based on the scale of people’s needs, not the size of their wallets.

    So public service values are right. But winning the argument for investment and reform means accepting that the era of one-size-fits-all public services is over. At the heart of public concerns about the NHS is the sense that its services are simply too indifferent to the needs of its patients. Staff and patients alike are up against a system that feels too much like the ration book days of the 1940s. Public confidence demands not just a change in structure but a change in culture too.

    In our first term we tried to make services more responsive from the top down through service targets, inspection regimes and national standards. This national framework of standards is important to guarantee equity but in the period we are now in the transition is towards improvement being driven from below. Hence these three crucial elements of our reform programme:

    Devolution – with Primary Care Trusts having the power to commission local services to meet the needs of local communities.

    Democratisation – with NHS Foundation Trusts transferring ownership from a centralised state bureaucracy into the hands of local people.

    Diversity – with different providers – public, private and voluntary – providing NHS services to NHS patients according to a common ethos, common standards and a common system of inspection.

    These reforms make possible greater choices for patients. There are of course limits to choice in the health service, just as there are in any other service. For one thing, health care is often an emergency service. The last thing the patient in the back of the ambulance wants is to be asked to name their A&E of choice. They want the nearest, fastest service. And for another, patients do not just have a relationship with the NHS as consumers. They are also citizens who recognise that in A&E it is necessary for the less serious injuries to give priority to the more serious ones. In other words patients have both rights and responsibilities. Indeed I believe that as we strengthen rights and choices so we can demand more responsibility from patients – to use services appropriately and to treat staff respectfully.

    But the NHS is a lot more than an emergency service. In fact, only one in three NHS hospital admissions are for emergency cases. Half are for routine, planned surgery where patient choice could play a role. A further one in seven are for maternity services where many mums and dads already exercise choice: between this hospital and that, between a midwife-delivered service and a doctor-delivered one, between a birth at home and one in hospital.

    Indeed, it is precisely because women have been able to exercise choice for themselves that those services have become more sensitive to their needs. When we publish the new national service framework on children’s services later this year it will include proposals on how we can extend choice further in maternity care.

    In other parts of the NHS patients also exercise choice. In primary care for example, most patients are able to choose their own family doctor. Between July and September last year almost quarter of a million patients, through their GPs, booked the time of their hospital appointment at their own convenience rather than the hospital’s.

    No health care system, whether it is public or private, however, can provide unlimited choice. Most private health insurance schemes, for example, exclude maternity care and primary care as well as psychiatric and other long-term treatments.

    But I believe we can open up more choices to NHS patients. The issue is firstly, whether we should and secondly, how we could.

    Let me deal with the first of these issues. It is often argued that capacity constraints mean that choice on the NHS is not possible. It is certainly true that choice can only grow as capacity grows. What is not true is that some capacity is not already available or that more cannot be grown.

    In London, for example, today the average waiting time for elective surgery in different hospitals varies between 10 weeks and 25 weeks. With the right incentives some hospitals would take on more work. When UCLH bought the London Heart Hospital from the private sector last year that doubled local heart surgery rates. In that area today only 40 patients are waiting more than one month for a heart operation, many for personal reasons. That hospital could easily take on more patients. There will be others elsewhere in the country which could do the same. Many more will be able to do so as extra resources produce extra capacity. So the capacity argument against more choice does not work.

    The main argument against more choice has been that it will bring less equity. I want to argue the reverse: that greater choice can mean greater equity.

    We do not start from a position where uniformity of provision in the NHS – with precious little choice for patients – has guaranteed equality of outcomes. In fifty years health inequalities have widened not narrowed. Too often even today the poorest services are in the poorest communities. Choice has only ever been available to those with the ability to pay. Those with the money have been able to exercise more choice – and buy faster, if not better, services as a result.

    This institutionalised two-tier health care is anathema to those of us who believe care should be based on need and not ability to pay. The real inequity is to force the pensioner with modest savings who has worked hard all their lives and then needs a heart operation to choose between paying for treatment or waiting for treatment. That is a dilemma I want to solve.

    We can do so by making choice more widely available on the NHS so that it is extended to the many not just the few. Some say poorer people do not want to exercise choice or are not able to do so. I disagree profoundly. That is patronising nonsense.

    When I grew up on a County Durham council estate it didn’t much impress me that it was the council, not my family, who chose the colour of my front door. Perhaps unsurprisingly hundreds of thousands of council tenants opted out of council ownership when they had the chance to do so. The old-style, often paternalistic take-it-or-leave-it, like-it-or-lump-it relationship between council housing services and council tenants weakened public attachment to public services. Expanding choice can strengthen it.

    And by linking the choices patients make to the resources hospitals receive – alongside the systems of standards, inspection and intervention we have put in place – we can provide real incentives to address under-performance in local NHS services. As we know poorer performance is often concentrated in poorer areas. Giving people the power to choose between services will drive standards up. In this way, greater choice can enhance equity, not diminish it.

    The world has moved on from the days when Henry Ford said you could have any colour car as long as it was black. The Ford Motor Company is 100 years old this year. Today, Ford produce cars so that you can have any colour – including five different shades of black!

    Of course, choice in public services is more complicated than choosing the colour of a new car but unless the NHS offers some choice to patients, more of them – at a time when personal disposable income continues to rise – will simply take their custom elsewhere. More will abandon collectively funded public services for privately paid-for services. In the mid-1950s only half a million people had private cover for health care. Today it is almost 7 million. Ironically, those who rail against choice in public services on the grounds that it is a market-based reform risk ending up strengthening private markets not weakening them.

    The trap we must avoid, is that identified by Richard Titmuss four decades ago, of middle class people opting out so that public services become only for the poor and then end up being poor services. By strengthening the appeal of NHS provision across social classes, greater choice can enhance social cohesion not diminish it.

    The question in my mind is not whether NHS patients should have more choice but how to make choices more widely available.

    We have made a start. And again I want to thank you for the role you have played. Since July last year heart patients waiting more than 6 months for surgery have been offered the choice of early treatment at an alternative hospital – public or private – which has the capacity available to treat them. Over 1,700 out of 3,800 patients – almost half – decided to make that choice.

    They are not the only patients to benefit. Since October last year patients in London waiting for a cataract operation have been able to go to another hospital for treatment if they have waited 6 months. Over two thirds have chosen to do so.

    I now want to explain how we intend to build on these first pilot schemes. We want to extend choice to other geographical locations and other clinical specialities. In the next year around 100,000 extra patients will be able to choose in which hospital they are treated. The sites we have chosen include those where waiting times are longest and where electronic booking of hospital appointments is being tested.

    First, from this summer all patients in London waiting more than 6 months for any form of elective surgery will be offered the choice of an alternative hospital.

    Second, from July patients in West Yorkshire needing eye operations will be offered choice when they are referred to a hospital specialist by their GP. In Greater Manchester those needing orthopaedic, ENT and general surgery will also be offered choice if they have been waiting longer than 6 months.

    Third, also from July, choice will be extended to patients, mainly older people, needing cataract operations in the south of England where waiting times are currently longest. Patients will be able to choose, initially from two and then normally from four hospitals, where to have their cataract operation. The aim is to cut waiting times to 6 months by 2004 and to 3 months by 2005. For cataract patients in the south, this means that the NHS Plan target will be achieved three years ahead of schedule.

    Fourth, the lessons learned from these areas will inform the extension of choice across the whole of England’s health service. From summer 2004, as the Prime Minister announced recently, all patients waiting six months for any form of elective surgery will be able to choose at least one alternative hospital and normally four – public or private – for treatment.

    Fifth, from December 2005, by when extra capacity will have come on stream, choice will be extended from those patients waiting longest for hospital treatment to all patients. They will be offered choice at the point the GP refers them to hospital. Patients needing elective surgery will be able to select from at least 4 or 5 different hospitals, again including both NHS and private sector providers. Millions of patients a year will benefit.

    Sixth, as capacity grows further in the NHS so choice will grow. Beyond 2005 patients needing surgery will be able to choose more hospitals in which they can be treated.

    And choice needs to be embedded across other parts of the NHS where it is appropriate to do so. In primary care, for example, pharmacists will help more patients manage their medicines. More drugs will be sold over the counter rather than needing a doctor’s prescription. NHS Direct will provide more advice and information to more patients. And more NHS Walk-in Centres will allow more patients the choice of where to be treated.

    There need to be other changes too. In a busy mobile society patients should be able to register with a GP practice near where they work if that is more convenient for them. The published Framework Agreement for a new GPs contract also opens up the prospect of greater choice. Patients who have traditionally been referred to hospital for minor surgery or for outpatient consultations could be seen instead in their local health centre by a specialist GP.

    These reforms are about embedding choice across the NHS – from primary care to hospital services. They will require changes in the way the NHS works.

    Patients will need help to make informed choices. Knowledge is power. To make choice work, the NHS will need to provide reliable and relevant information to patients in a way people can understand.

    In primary care, for example, PCTs will need to use the annual patient prospectus, they issue to all the households in their areas, to highlight where women patients are able to see a woman GP. I can also announce today that later this year we will publish local guides to maternity services so that mums and dads-to-be are better informed about the choices available to them.

    More generally we intend to make available easily accessible information on hospital performance, quality and waiting times so that as capacity grows in the NHS patients are able to exercise greater choices. The job of GPs, nurses and other members of the primary care team will increasingly focus on helping navigate patients through the care system so that they can make the choice that best suits them.

    To make choice work there has to be better IT across the whole of the NHS. The huge investment we are making in IT will support this extension of choice. Electronic booking of hospital appointments from the GP surgery will be a reality in all parts of the NHS by December 2005. There will be more information to compare hospitals not just on the internet but through NHS Direct and touchscreens in GP surgeries, pharmacies and other locations. We are also exploring experience from other countries. In Bologna for example, patients themselves, after they have been seen by their GP, can book their hospital appointment, not just through their family doctor or pharmacist, but through a specialist call centre. The system gives patients more direct control and relieves burdens on GPs.

    Choice requires diversity in capacity. A new generation of DTCs will be providing care to 250,000 patients a year by 2005. Insulated from emergency work these will be able to concentrate on elective surgery and shorter waiting times. Some will be run by NHS providers. Others by private sector providers. In making their commissioning decisions PCTs will need to consider how best to use both existing and new private sector provision for the benefit of NHS patients. They will also need to consider how best to use voluntary sector providers. I can tell this conference that, following discussions with key voluntary health care providers, I am planning to draw up a concordat to extend the relationship between the NHS and the voluntary sector.

    And choice will only work if there are the right incentives in the system. From this April we will begin to move to a new system of payment by results for NHS hospitals. Resources will follow the choices patients make so the hospitals which do more get more; those which do not, will not. We will put in more help for hospitals that are struggling to improve. And, alongside this external assistance, these new incentives will act as a spur to improvement. Over the next four years an increasing proportion of each hospital’s income will come as a result of the choices patients make. Choice in other words is not just about making patients feel good about the NHS. It is about giving the patient more power within the NHS.

    All these changes will take time of course. Giving patients greater choice in the NHS requires a fundamental culture change in how the health service works. It will put patients in the driving seat – at the heart of the health service – and not before time. Patients will be able to choose hospitals rather than hospitals choosing patients. There will be more choice in primary care and in maternity care too. This is a world away from the 1940s take-it-or-leave-it top down service.

    For too long, for too many, the choice has been to pay or wait. Mrs Thatcher talked about getting treatment at the hospital of her choosing, at the time of her choosing. Her choice though was to opt-out of the NHS altogether. Our choice is for the NHS but a reformed NHS.

    An NHS where more can have that choice of time and place of treatment; where more can share in choices previously only enjoyed by the few who could afford to pay; where people choose to stay with the NHS not opt-out. An NHS which genuinely puts need before ability to pay. That is what our reforms are about. That is what we intend to deliver.

  • Theresa May – 2003 Speech to Conservative Spring Conference

    theresamay

    Below is the text of the speech made by Theresa May at the 2003 Conservative Spring Conference on 15th March 2003.

    Today, we meet in the shadow of great and terrible events.

    The situation currently unfolding in the Gulf dominates all our thoughts.

    British servicemen and women are preparing to risk their lives to disarm Saddam Hussein and to uphold the rule of international law.

    The debt we owe them is immense.

    Let us send them a message today: we’re thinking of you. We back you. We believe in you.

    But while we support what our armed forces are doing, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. There is widespread concern about war. Many people feel the Government’s actions should be opposed and they ask us why we aren’t doing it.

    The reason is because we believe Tony Blair is taking a risk to make the world safer. And as a matter of principle, he deserves support.

    But I know we need to continue to make the case. Leadership isn’t just about embarking on a course and expecting others to follow. It’s also about explaining. It’s about taking people with you. It’s about being open and honest.

    We must set out point-by-point why this conflict is necessary.

    And we owe it to the people of this country to take their concerns seriously and explain why it is right, indeed it is moral, for Britain to act.

    So let’s firstly be clear about what this war is not about.

    This is not about oil and profit.

    If it were we could achieve our aims far easier by striking a trade deal with Saddam Hussein.

    This is not a war against Islam.

    Many Muslims would like nothing more than to see the back of this evil dictator.

    And above all this is emphatically not about American global domination.

    Critics often accuse Americans of being isolationist. Now they accuse them of Imperialism.

    But can anyone really question why – today – Americans are determined to act against those who have shown a willingness to do them harm?

    No. When people ask what this conflict is about, we must be clear and honest.

    This is about forcing Saddam Hussein to comply with international law.

    This is about forcing him to disarm.

    Above all, this is about the safety and security of Britain.

    On September 11th, billions of people around the world saw for the first time the immense destructive power of the new terrorism.

    We now all know, in a way that many didn’t realise before, that there are people and organisations that have no moral limits, who are prepared to butcher totally innocent people, however young, however helpless, just to advance their own fanatical cause.

    The new terrorists are well organised, lavishly funded and highly motivated.

    They are actively seeking terrible new weapons of mass destruction.

    And, let’s not kid ourselves, we are a target.

    Not because of anything we’ve done. But because of who we are.

    The new terrorists of Al-Qaeda are at war with the West because our free societies are everything they hate.

    The question we must ask ourselves is this:

    Should we wait…

    Or should we take action now to stop it happening?

    You only have to ask the question to know the answer.

    The western democracies must have a proactive strategy for identifying and neutralising terrorists.

    And not only those who carry out the atrocities – but those who have the means, the mentality and the motive to help them.

    I believe Saddam Hussein is such a man.

    Any objective observer attempting to identify those who might have the means and the motivation to supply weapons of mass destruction to Al-Qaeda or other similar groups would have his name right at the top of their list.

    He has shown he does not recognise the rule of international law.

    Some people say we have known about his evasion for years. Why act now?

    To them I would say one thing: Remember September 11th.

    ‘Why now’, cannot – and should not – mean not now.

    Resolution 1441 didn’t just ask Iraq to work with the weapons inspectors. It demanded full compliance and active cooperation so there could be no conceivable doubt.

    Since that Resolution was passed, Saddam Hussein has done everything in his power to resist full compliance and delay active co-operation. His time is running out: of that, there can be no conceivable doubt.

    It is time for him to disarm by choice or by force.

    Our policy on Iraq is based above anything else on this country’s national interest.

    And over the past months, we have been fortunate to be led by Iain Duncan Smith who has shown the capacity to look beyond passing newspaper headlines and tackle the big challenges of our time.

    Iain has been warning of the threat from Saddam Hussein since 1995. He has consistently advocated strong international action to force him to disarm.

    After I have finished speaking, Iain will address the international situation. We’re lucky to have as our Leader a man who is not afraid to take a stand of principle on the really big issues.

    At times of crisis like this people expect their politicians to be able to put aside short-term party advantage in the country’s interests.

    But, the problem for most people is why, when major crises pass, do politicians go back to point-scoring rather than working together…

    Bad mouthing rather than supporting others when they know they’re right…

    Mud-slinging when what people want are ideas and solutions.

    Britain is changing. The public have become more discerning. A world in which most people are automatically Labour or Conservative no longer exists.

    We could just accept this as a new fact of life in the 21st Century.

    But I believe this is an opportunity – an opportunity to show people we have solutions to their problems.

    And we must seize the opportunity to build a bridge to the millions of people who feel their voice is simply not being heard.

    People who hope that by paying extra taxes they will get the operation they need when they need it – but fear they will not.

    People who hope their savings will provide them with a secure future – but fear their pension will be worth nothing.

    People who hope their child’s hard work will be rewarded by a university place – but fear they won’t be able to afford it.

    People who hope that their children are safe going out at night – but fear that they are not.

    These are the voiceless millions who hope for a party to speak for them.

    We must be their voice.

    We must be that Party.

    This Government has dashed people’s hopes and played on their fears.

    We must show that we are a credible alternative to this Labour Government.

    That means working together as one party united.

    It means talking the people’s language – living in their world.

    It means showing that we agree with them that everyone should have a fair chance to fulfil their potential.

    It means showing that we care passionately about the things they care about.

    It means being 21st Century Conservatives.

    Conservatives who are open and honest, clear about where we stand, and ready to take the tough decisions necessary to make this country better.

    It means challenging the artificial divisions that have built up in politics in this country and that have so bedevilled our chance to get things right.

    There is no contradiction between helping young criminals off the conveyor belt to crime and putting more police on the streets.

    There is no contradiction between supporting businesses and helping the vulnerable.

    There is no contradiction between a low tax economy and better public services.

    You see, we understand how to improve public services without wasting taxes, because that is what Conservative Councils do.

    Over the past few months, I have seen a great example of the Conservative Party in action at its very best. Our councillors at work.

    They’ve been working hard to provide a fair deal for local people.

    But don’t take my word for it. Look at what the Audit Commission has to say. Conservative councils are the best. They take less of your money but deliver better services than others.

    A real record of success. Conservatives in Government delivering results.

    Our Conservative councillors record helps us show that Conservatives in government can make people’s lives better.

    It will be a great help when it comes to persuading people of our case at the general election.

    But it won’t be enough.

    We have to show in everything that we believe, say and do that we are 21st Century Conservatives.

    Conservatives whose belief in freedom makes them cherish the diversity it brings.

    Conservatives who know the virtue of paying your own way but believe in helping those who can’t.

    Conservatives who believe in their country and recognise that Britain is at its best when it is helping to build a better world.

    The people who have supported this party through thick and thin know these things in their hearts. But this Party has always been at its best when our appeal has extended beyond those who think of themselves as life’s Conservatives.

    When our hopes have matched people’s hopes and we’ve worked together to realise them.

    Helping people from across the spectrum, because the right policies give a fair deal for everyone – regardless of background, income, gender, religion or race.

    The Conservative Party is at its best when at its broadest.

    We must show people now that we have the policies and the commitment to deal with the problems of today.

    Challenges where Conservative values point the way forward.

    Challenges in health.

    The challenge of one million people on waiting lists.

    People waiting for hours in accident and emergency when they would be seen much quicker in other parts of Europe.

    But only Conservatives have the vision to learn from abroad how those values could be better delivered.

    Challenges in Education.

    The challenge of one in four children leaving primary school unable to read, write and count properly.

    30,000 children finishing school without a single GCSE.

    It’s the Conservative belief in standards, discipline and effective teaching methods that points the way out.

    Challenges in law and order.

    The challenge of a crime being committed every five seconds.

    Criminals with only a one in forty chance of being caught.

    It’s the Conservatives who are looking at innovative ways to help young people off the conveyor belt to crime.

    And trusting local people when they say they want more police on their streets.

    In every area of our lives, Conservative values can deliver results.

    That’s why people in today’s Britain should be at home with today’s Conservative Party.

    People who are determined to help the poorest in society, and who believe that penalising the rich for being rich helps no one.

    People who believe they have a duty to pay their taxes, and who believe that the Government owes it to them not to waste their money.

    People who want a successful NHS for everyone, and who believe that people let down by the NHS should be helped to go elsewhere.

    People who hope the best possible schools for their own children, and for everybody else’s.

    People who believe that Britain is a force for good in the world and that we can learn from other countries too.

    That’s what people in 21st Century Britain believe, and what we as 21st Century Conservatives believe.

    Our job now is to build a bridge between us.

    And the careful and sensible way we have been developing our programme over the past 18 months helps us to do just that.

    We have begun to build that bridge.

    We have an ambitious and progressive agenda for government.

    Our country faces huge challenges in the years ahead.

    We must be open, honest and clear.

    Clear about who we are and what we stand for.

    Clear about what we can deliver and what we want to achieve.

    To those people who feel the country is going in the wrong direction…

    To those who feel let down or betrayed…

    To those who feel they are being ignored…

    We say simply ‘join us. Come with us.

    We will be your voice’.

    Together we can build a bridge to a better future.

    Let’s show them we can do it.

  • Denis MacShane – 2003 Speech on the European Constitution

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Office Minister, Denis MacShane, on the subject of the European constitution. The speech was made in Strasbourg on 29th January 2003.

    Mr President, it is a great honour to have been invited to take part in this debate in this Assembly, the oldest European Parliamentary Assembly.

    I would like to thank the distinguished Rapporteur, Mr Pangalos for a stimulating and timely report on the Council of Europe’s contribution to an EU constitution. Timely, because the Future of Europe Convention which is looking at reform of the EU is in full swing. And while EU states are naturally preoccupied with the internal reforms which are vital to allow for an expanded EU, its appropriate to remind them that Europe extends far beyond the EU. Even a 25-member EU with 450 million citizens does not cover the whole continent. The 44-member Council of Europe, with an 800 million population, has a much better claim to do so.

    Mr Pangalos’ excellent report puts forward a number of suggestions on the Council’s contribution to the EU constitution-making process. The report recommends incorporation of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights into the constitutional treaty. We can see the argument that a Constitutional treaty should refer to the values we all share. But at the same time we are alive to serious legal and practical problems including the potential for confusion in the European legal space which could arise if the Charter were incorporated into the treaty structure in the form in which it was declared at Nice.

    The Report suggests tackling this problem by the accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights. This will create harmony between the two legal orders; it would also make the EU institutions directly accountable for violations, rather than through the member states. But the United Kingdom does have concerns about the impact accession may have both on EC/EU competence and regarding the position of the individual member states in relation to Protocols, reservations, and the ability to derogate. The Convention on the Future of Europe’s Charter Working Group Final Report acknowledges these concerns. But it is fair to point out that it offers no answers.

    Furthermore, not all ECHR Protocols have been ratified by the member states,; indeed some have entered, reservations and derogations. EC/EU accession to the ECHR, without taking into account the individual legal positions of the member states, could entail a lot of confusion. The need, as the United Kingdom sees it, would be to ensure accession took place without prejudice to the individual legal positions of the member states in respect of the ECHR.

    These are indeed important and difficult questions. The United Kingdom is playing a full part in the Future of Europe debate to work out how they are best answered.

    How the EU frames its human rights is one of dozens of questions under discussion at the Future of Europe Convention. But the EU must not be so absorbed with its plans for internal reform that it neglects the impact the Convention outcome will have on the millions of Europeans who are not part of the EU. This is where the role of the Council of Europe is essential and must be protected from collateral damage as the future EU is being shaped. The European Court of Human Rights’ place in the European human rights architecture must not be undermined.

    The debate on the Future of Europe, coupled with EU and NATO enlargement, is throwing a spotlight on the European human rights and security architecture. This is an ideal opportunity for the Council of Europe to assess its own role in the future of Europe. The Council could be well-placed, perhaps, to provide the framework for the privileged relationship between the EU and its neighbours mentioned in the draft EU constitution.

    But the Council’s future is not simply defined by the EU. Seen from the United Kingdom perspective, the Council should continue to play a unifying role as the one, truly pan-European forum where EU and non-EU states engage on the human rights, political and social issues. The Council should continue to lead the way in setting and developing human rights standards. Its careful watch of how member states are living up to those standards, sometimes resented as intrusive, is essential for ensuring that all of its members, new and old, live up to their obligations and the values they espouse. The Council will continue to have a vital role as a common European forum.

  • Andrew Smith – 2003 Speech to Labour Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Work and Pensions Secretary, Andrew Smith, to the 2003 Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth on 2nd October 2003.

    [NB, the numbers on this speech have been distorted and are not available]

    Conference, this Welfare Reform debate defines the party we are, the values we stand for, and the fight we must win.

    Our mission is to win the war on poverty throughout people’s lives.

    The Tories gave the poorest families just � a week to cover the cost of a child.  Through record increases in child benefit and tax credits, Labour has increased that to �.

    Where the Tories left over 4 million children in families on under �0 a week Labour has cut that by one and a half million.

    But it’s right that as Labour’s most ambitious goal we want to see not just fewer children in poverty, but no child in poverty.

    It’s about more than income alone.  It’s about education, housing, and health, with freedom from crime, drugs and abuse.  Sure Start is transforming the life chances of Britain’s poorest children.

    Giving children the best start also means helping hard working parents.  Eight times as many people are getting help with their childcare than under the Tories, with the new tax credits giving up to �0 a week for childcare.

    But we need to make more places available.  It’s ridiculous that so many school buildings stand empty after hours and in the holidays.

    So conference, I can announce today that from April we will offer in 3 areas school-based childcare -available 7 to 7, 50 weeks a year, to ensure good care for children and the chance to work for parents.

    We will also pilot payments to help lone parents move into work – an extra � a week to look for a job and an extra � a week when they get one.

    Conference, we will keep driving forward with welfare to work. It’s one of Labour’s greatest achievements that even in a turbulent world with unemployment rising elsewhere, Britain has not only more people in work than ever before but the lowest unemployment for a generation.

    That is not down to chance but to the choices of a Labour Government committed to economic stability and active steps to help people into jobs.  It’s not something to be taken for granted.

    Britain must never go back to those Tory days where  three million unemployed were their “price worth paying” with the young condemned to idleness  and older workers thrown on the scrapheap.

    So where the Lib Dems and Tories would  axe  the New Deal, Labour will extend it, with extra help for those who need it most, because we are determined to achieve our goal of full employment in every region.

    That means removing barriers which still stand in the way of ethnic minorities.  We must ensure that training recruitment, and promotion depend on ability and not the colour of people’s skin. We will challenge racial disadvantage and racism wherever it occurs so that full employment really does mean employment for all.

    That also means helping the million disabled people who want to work. This month we start new programmes combining focussed help in finding work, better NHS rehabilitation and extra payments of � a week for those who get jobs.

    If everyone is to make the most of their potential, we must change the whole approach to disability from one based on what people can’t do to one based on what they can.

    Disability rights is about more than jobs.  It is about people’s equal worth as individuals so they are not disabled by the preconceptions of others.

    In years to come the treatment of disabled people typical of the last century – and still too often the case today – will be seen as an affront to their humanity.

    This is a great cause of emancipation of our time. Labour wants Britain to lead the world on the rights and opportunities of disabled people.  We will extend anti-discrimination law and publish this year a Draft Bill, to fulfil in this Parliament our manifesto pledge to the full civil rights of disabled people.

    Thanks to health and safety reps and workplace partnership, industrial deaths were down 10% last year. But we must do more. I am announcing today a new Challenge Fund, working with unions and employers, to extend workplace safety advice in small and medium size businesses, and we support the Freedom from Fear campaign, because we believe every worker has the right to workplace safety.

    As people live longer, opportunities for older workers are critical.

    1.2 million more people over the age of 50 are now in work than in 1997 but too many still face barriers.  For young and old alike it is wrong to base opportunities on age rather than aptitude and it’s right that we press ahead to outlaw age discrimination.

    Our pensions consultation shows that people want flexible options for retirement.

    We will change the rules so people can draw down a pension and continue working for the same employer.

    Where people choose to take their state pension later, they deserve a better deal.

    So I announce today, we will offer people the choice – for the first time ever – of a lump sum, as much as �,000 where they defer for 5 years. So poorer pensioners can get sums which until now have been the preserve of the better off.

    We are giving people more choices.  But it would be wrong to force longer working on the least well off, often with the hardest working lives and the shortest retirement to look forward to. We reject putting up the State Pension Age.

    Conference, partnership should be the basis for security in occupational pensions.

    We have set up the Pension Commission; it’s work will include the case for greater compulsion.

    While we applaud those employers taking tough decisions to meet their pension commitments, we condemn those who walk away from their responsibilities, short-changing workers who saved all their lives. They can’t claim workers’ loyalty, then dump them in retirement. Labour is in government not just to challenge such injustice but to do something about it.

    So we will change the law …

    – To stop employers walking away from their obligations.

    – To stop companies using take-overs to scrap pensions; and,

    –  To stop firms changing schemes without consultation

    A pension promise made must be a pension promise honoured. When a firm goes bust, it can’t be right that workers see their life savings destroyed. So, conference, our Labour Government will legislate for a Pension Protection Fund…

    We build on the improvements we have already made –

    –  with the state second pension, extending pension rights to 20 million low paid workers, carers and disabled people, most of them women

    –  free TV licences for the over 75s; and

    –  the winter fuel payment,  going up to �0 for the over 80s.

    And where the Tories want to privatise the state pension, Labour has increased it by �a week more than inflation and will continue to build on it as the foundation of security in retirement.

    Labour has already raised the incomes of the 2 million poorest pensioners by more than � a week,  narrowing the gap between them and the society as a whole.

    But the system has until now penalised those who’ve put something by for their retirement, with each pound of income knocked straight off benefits.

    On Monday we change that. The new Pension Credit – the most significant increase in help for a generation – not only guarantees a minimum income but rewards those who have saved and so often missed out in the past.

    It is straightforward, awards are backdated and half of pensioner households – the poorest half – gain, by an average of �0 a year.

    From next week – as the Tories debate privatising state pensions – already more than 1 million pensioners will see their income rise with Pension Credit and that number will go up with every passing day.

    It’s a key dividing line for the next General Election.  The Tories and Lib Dems will have to explain why they plan to take �0 off half the pensioner households in the country.

    So let us get out there, campaigning to ensure pensioners get, and keep, what is rightfully theirs.

    And let’s thank all the staff of  the new Pensions Service, the first ever dedicated service for pensioners, just as we value all the New Deal Personal Advisors, the Disability employment workers and the child support staff. They are the front line troops in the war against poverty – and we’re proud of them.

    – progress on full employment,

    – child and pensioner poverty,

    – occupational pensions, and tackling discrimination

    – it all shows the difference Labour is making – and how much more Labour can do.

    So let’s go from here proud of our achievements, clear in our vision, confident in our purpose to build a Britain of fairness and opportunity, where no-one is left behind.

    The campaign for social justice is at Labour’s heart.  It’s what brought all of us into the Labour Party. It is changing Britain for the better and it will be our inspiration until the job is done.

  • Clare Short – 2003 Resignation Statement

    With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a personal statement.

    I have decided to resign from the Government. I think it is right that I should explain my reasons to the House of Commons, to which I have been accountable as Secretary of State for International Development, a post that I have been deeply honoured to hold and that I am very sad to leave.

    The House will be aware that I had many criticisms of the way in which events leading up to the conflict in Iraq were handled. I offered my resignation to the Prime Minister on a number of occasions but was pressed by him and others to stay. I have been attacked from many different angles for that decision but I still think that, hard as it was, it was the right thing to do.

    The reason why I agreed to remain in the Government was that it was too late to put right the mistakes that had been made. I had throughout taken the view that it was necessary to be willing to contemplate the use of force to back up the authority of the UN. The regime was brutal, the people were suffering, our Attorney-General belatedly but very firmly said there was legal authority for the use of force, and because the official Opposition were voting with the Government, the conflict was unavoidable. There is no question about that. It had to carry.

    I decided that I should not weaken the Government at that time and should agree to the Prime Minister’s request to stay and lead the UK humanitarian and reconstruction effort. However, the problem now is that the mistakes that were made in the period leading up to the conflict are being repeated in the post-conflict situation. In particular, the UN mandate, which is necessary to bring into being a legitimate Iraqi Government, is not being supported by the UK Government. This, I believe, is damaging to Iraq’s prospects, will continue to undermine the authority of the UN and directly affects my work and responsibilities.

    The situation in Iraq under international law is that the coalition are occupying powers in occupied territory. Under the Geneva convention of 1949 and the Hague regulations of 1907, the coalition has clear responsibilities and clear limits to its authority. It is obliged to attend to the humanitarian needs of the population, to keep order – to keep order – and to keep civil administration operating. The coalition is legally entitled to modify the operation of the administration as much as is necessary to fulfil these obligations, but it is not entitled to make major political, economic and constitutional changes. The coalition does not have sovereign authority and has no authority to bring into being an interim Iraqi Government with such authority or to create a constitutional process leading to the election of a sovereign Government. The only body that has the legal authority to do this is the United Nations Security Council.

    I believe that it is the duty of all responsible political leaders right across the world – whatever view they took on the launch of the war – to focus on reuniting the international community in order to support the people of Iraq in rebuilding their country, to re-establish the authority of the UN and to heal the bitter divisions that preceded the war. I am sorry to say that the UK Government are not doing this. They are supporting the US in trying to bully the Security Council into a resolution that gives the coalition the power to establish an Iraqi Government and control the use of oil for reconstruction, with only a minor role for the UN.

    This resolution is unlikely to pass but, if it does, it will not create the best arrangements for the reconstruction of Iraq. The draft resolution risks continuing international divisions, Iraqi resentment against the occupying powers and the possibility that the coalition will get bogged down in Iraq.I believe that the UK should and could have respected the Attorney-General’s advice, told the US that this was a red line for us, and worked for international agreement to a proper, UN-led process to establish an interim Iraqi Government – just as was done in Afghanistan.

    I believe that this would have been an honourable and wise role for the UK and that the international community would have united around this position. It is also in the best interests of the United States. Both in both the run-up to the war and now, I think the UK is making grave errors in providing cover for US mistakes rather than helping an old friend, which is understandably hurt and angry after the events of 11 September, to honour international law and the authority of the UN. American power alone cannot make America safe. Of course, we must all unite to dismantle the terrorist networks, and, through the UN, the world is doing this. But undermining international law and the authority of the UN creates a risk of instability, bitterness and growing terrorism that will threaten the future for all of us.

    I am ashamed that the UK Government have agreed the resolution that has been tabled in New York and shocked by the secrecy and lack of consultation with Departments with direct responsibility for the issues referred to in the resolution. I am afraid that this resolution undermines all the commitments I have made in the House and elsewhere about how the reconstruction of Iraq will be organised. Clearly this makes my position impossible and I have no alternative than to resign from the Government.

    There will be time on other occasions to spell out the details of these arguments and to discuss the mistakes that were made preceding the conflict. But I hope that I have provided enough detail to indicate the seriousness of the issues at stake for the future of Iraq, the role of the UN, the unity of the international community and Britain’s place in the world.

    All this makes me very sad. I believe that the Government whom I have served since 1997 have a record of which all who share the values of the Labour Party can be proud. I also believe that the UK commitment to international development is crucial. The levels of poverty and inequality in a world rich in knowledge, technology and capital is the biggest moral issue the world faces and the biggest threat to the future safety and security of the world. We have achieved a lot, and taking a lead on development is a fine role for the UK. There is much left to do and I am very sorry to have been put in a position in which I am unable to continue that work.

    I do think, however, that the errors that we are making over Iraq and other recent initiatives flow not from Labour’s values, but from the style and organisation of our Government, which is undermining trust and straining party loyalty in a way that is completely unnecessary. In our first term, the problem was spin: endless announcements, exaggerations and manipulation of the media that undermined people’s respect for the Government and trust in what we said. It was accompanied by a control-freak style that has created many of the problems of excessive bureaucracy and centralised targets that are undermining the success of our public sector reforms.

    In the second term, the problem is the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion. It is increasingly clear, I am afraid, that the Cabinet has become, in Bagehot’s phrase, a dignified part of the constitution – joining the Privy Council. There is no real collective responsibility because there is no collective; just diktats in favour of increasingly badly thought through policy initiatives that come from on high.

    The consequences of that are serious. Expertise in our system lies in Departments. Those who dictate from the centre do not have full access to that expertise and do not consult. That leads to bad policy. In addition, under our constitutional arrangements, legal, political and financial responsibility flows through Secretaries of State to Parliament. Increasingly, those who are wielding power are not accountable and not scrutinised. Thus we have the powers of a presidential-type system with the automatic majority of a parliamentary system. My conclusion is that those arrangements are leading to increasingly poor policy initiatives being rammed through Parliament, which is straining and abusing party loyalty and undermining the people’s respect for our political system.

    Those attitudes are also causing increasing problems with reform of the public services. I do believe that after long years of financial cuts and decline, the public services need reform to improve the quality of services and the morale of public sector workers – the two being inextricably linked. We do not, however, need endless new initiatives, layers of bureaucratic accountability and diktats from the centre. We need clarity of purpose, decentralisation of authority and improved management of people. We need to treasure and honour the people who work in public service. As I found in my former Department, if public servants are given that framework, they work with dedication and pride and provide a service that, in the case of the Department for International Development, is known throughout the world as one of the finest development agencies in the international system. Those lessons could be applied in other parts of the public service.

    I have two final points. The first is for the Labour party and, especially, the parliamentary Labour party. As I have said, there is much that our Government have achieved that reflects Labour’s values and of which we can be very proud, but we are entering rockier times and we must work together to prevent our Government from departing from the best values of our party. To the Prime Minister, I would say that he has achieved great things since 1997 but, paradoxically, he is in danger of destroying his legacy as he becomes increasingly obsessed by his place in history.

    Finally, I am desperately sad to leave the Department for International Development. I apologise to those in the developing world who told me that I had a duty to stay. I shall continue to do all that I can to support the countries and institutions with which I have been working. It has been an enormous honour to lead the Department. It is a very fine organisation of which Britain can be proud. We have achieved a lot but there is much left to do, and I am sure that others will take it forward. I hope that the House and party will protect the Department from those who wish to weaken it.