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Tag: 2003

  • Queen Elizabeth II – 2003 Christmas Broadcast

    Queen Elizabeth II – 2003 Christmas Broadcast

    The Christmas Broadcast made by HM Queen Elizabeth II on 25 December 2003.

    I am sure that most of you will be celebrating Christmas at home in the company of your families and friends, but I know that some of you will not be so lucky.

    This year I am speaking to you from the Household Cavalry Barracks in Windsor because I want to draw attention to the many Servicemen and women who are stationed far from home this Christmas.

    I am thinking about their wives and children, and about their parents and friends. Separation at this time is especially hard to bear.

    It is not just a matter of separation. The men and women of the Services continue to face serious risks and dangers as they carry out their duties. They have done this brilliantly.

    I think we all have very good reasons for feeling proud of their achievements – both in war, and as they help to build a lasting peace in troublespots across the globe.

    None of this can be achieved without paying a price. I know that all our thoughts at this time are with the families who are suffering the pain of bereavement. All those who have recently lost a close relative or friend will know how difficult Christmas can be.

    These individual Servicemen and women are our neighbours and come from our own towns and villages; from every part of the country and from every background.

    The process of training within the Navy, the Army and the Air Force has moulded them together into disciplined teams.

    They have learnt to take responsibility and to exercise judgement and restraint in situations of acute stress and danger. They have brought great credit to themselves and to our country as a whole.

    I had an opportunity recently at the Barracks to meet some of those who played their part with such distinction in the Iraq operations. I was left with a deep sense of respect and admiration for their steadfast loyalty to each other and to our nation.

    I believe there is a lesson for us all here. It is that each of us can achieve much more if we work together as members of a team. The Founder of the Christian Faith himself chose twelve disciples to help him in his ministry.

    I was reminded of the importance of teamwork as I presented, for the first time last summer, The Queen’s Awards for Voluntary Service by groups within the community.

    I have been struck by how often people say to me that they are receiving their award on behalf of a team and that they do not deserve to be singled out. This annual award recognises the team rather than the individual.

    In this country and throughout the Commonwealth there are groups of people who are giving their time generously to make a difference to the lives of others.

    As we think of them, and of our Servicemen and women far from home at this Christmas time, I hope we all, whatever our faith, can draw inspiration from the words of the familiar prayer:

    “Teach us good Lord
    To serve thee as thou deservest;
    To give, and not to count the cost;
    To fight, and not to heed the wounds;
    To toil, and not to seek for rest;
    To labour, and not to ask for any reward;
    Save that of knowing that we do thy will.”

    It is this knowledge which will help us all to enjoy the Festival of Christmas.

    A happy Christmas to you all.

  • Damian Green – 2003 Speech to Conservative Party Spring Conference

    Damian Green – 2003 Speech to Conservative Party Spring Conference

    The speech made by Damian Green, the then Shadow Secretary of State for Education, at the Conservative Party’s spring conference on 16 March 2003.

    A year ago Iain Duncan Smith told this conference that the Conservatives would take the fight to Labour on public services.

    If you need a reminder of why our drive for better schools is more important than ever, let me take you through the 12 months since we were last here.

    A year in the life of Labour’s Education Department. A year in which pressure from us, from parents, and from teachers forced Estelle Morris to resign. She went, saying she was useless. Six months later, many of her Cabinet colleagues still can’t quite understand why that’s a reason for resigning.

    As it’s Sunday, I am feeling charitable, so let’s start with the Government’s own assessment of its performance.

    Labour set themselves nine targets. They have had two hits, two near misses, and five failures. The Government describes this as ‘significant progress’. I wish my chemistry teacher had been that generous.

    But of course the real truth lies behind the missed targets.

    With the one in four children leaving primary school unable to read, write and count properly.

    With the 50,000 children playing truant everyday. Many of these children are probably already on the conveyor belt to crime.

    With teachers like the one in Surrey who not only suffered abuse and even death threats, but was then forced to take back the very pupils who had threatened him.

    With the 30,000 young people who left school this year without a single qualification, unskilled and unprepared for life in the working world.

    With the hundreds of thousands of A-level students who had their futures thrown into doubt by Government incompetence.

    And with the schools up and down this country that are cutting their budgets and laying off staff. Six years into to New Labour, and the council tax goes up, while the schools are cutting back.

    Look at that record and don’t tell me that New Labour is a One Nation Party. They are as deceitful and vindictive as Old Labour—just better dressed.

    And to cap this year of failure look at our universities. Students were told before the election there would be no top-up fees.

    There are now top-up fees. Students were told admissions will be on merit and potential. But that doesn’t apply if you go to the wrong type of school, or if your parents went to university or if they earn too much.

    Let me take this chance to assure you that a Conservative Government will scrap quotas, scrap the Access Regulator, remove secrecy in admissions policies and get rid of anything else that makes university admissions unfair. The best places should go to the best students—whatever their background—that’s the Conservative way.

    And since we are in the constituency of the Liberal Democrats Education Spokesman they deserve a word too. That word is dishonest. This is party that is against selection, unless you have a popular local grammar school. That says it has abolished tuition fees in Scotland, when you just pay them after the course, instead of during it. The only real LibDem contribution to education is creative maths. As in the LibDem canvasser who comes to the door, you ask him “What does two plus two make,” and he replies “What do you want it to make.” You know you can’t rely on the Liberal Democrats to attack Labour.

    But let me assure this conference: you will never hear me apologising for highlighting Labour’s failures time and time again.

    We have an alternative – a Conservative alternative – that will bring better schools and universities for our children.

    People often ask what is our message. I’ll tell you.

    Power to schools, power to parents.

    Because we believe that heads and teachers know how to run their schools best. And we believe that parents know which schools are best for their children.

    We already have some of the policies that will turn these principles into reality.

    We will create State Scholarships. These will give parents the right to decide which school deserves the money the state spends on their child’s education—not the politicians or the bureaucrats. And if there is no acceptable school nearby, we will encourage new schools to set up, funded by the state but run independently. That will give real choice to millions of parents for the first time—and that’s the Conservative way to drive up standards.

    And in all our schools, we will give heads and governors the power to decide how they run their schools, and where they spend the money.

    We will abolish the independent appeals panels that second-guess teachers’ decisions on disruptive pupils. And we will allow heads to use legally backed behaviour contracts, signed by the parents, to instil discipline in their schools. We won’t undermine the authority of the head and the teacher—we will back them against the disruptive child, and the disruptive parent.

    We will also cut back the National Curriculum, which has become too rigid. We will reduce the number of exams, because the purpose of school is to learn and to grow intellectually, not just to pass the next test.

    There will be much more to come. Our fresh thinking won’t stop there.

    A future Conservative Government will introduce a fairer funding formula for schools. It will make sure that, wherever they are from, children are supported on the basis of their need and not punished because of where they live.

    Of course children with problems deserve help. But a poor family in Surrey deserves help just as much as a poor family in South Shields. The current funding system for schools is arbitrary and unfair—we will get rid of it.

    In the coming months we will unveil our policy on vocational education, which for too long has been the second-class citizen in education.

    Iain Duncan Smith and I visited Holland recently where we saw children of 12 and 13 learning to rewire a room, and fit up a bathrooms all in the course of their normal lessons. They don’t see it as second best. Why should they? Let’s organise school time so that everyone can find something they are good at and want to concentrate on.

    And we will be turning our attention to the most vulnerable in our society – children with special educational needs.

    I believe the Government’s relentless policy of inclusion at all costs is harming the care and education of too many children. The closure of special schools threatens to rob us of vital centres of expertise forever. Those children, and the dedicated staff who work in those schools, deserve better.

    And we will have more to say on our university policy. It will be based on the principles that students deserve a fair admission system, universities need to be strong independent institutions, and opportunity needs to be offered to everyone. Just like our schools, our great universities will need rescuing from the damage this Government is doing, and we will be proud to come to the rescue.

    So the power we will give to schools and parents will mean a fair deal for everyone.

    The Labour way in education is to interfere, bully, discriminate, fiddle figures, tax, spend, and fail.

    The Conservative way will be to back heads, trust teachers, empower parents, take decisions locally, and above all promote choice as a route to excellence.

    We will not leave children behind in sink schools. We will not cheat deserving students out of their university places.

    We will reward hard work, good discipline, and those who aspire to the best.

    So tell them on the doorstep between now and May 1st. If you want a good school get a Conservative Council. If you want an education system we can all be proud of—get a Conservative Government.

  • Michael Ancram – 2003 Speech on Zimbabwe

    Michael Ancram – 2003 Speech on Zimbabwe

    The speech made by Michael Ancram in the House of Commons on 1 April 2003.

    I congratulate HF on securing this important debate and on the way he has introduced it. It is a crucial debate because of what is happening now in Zimbabwe and why.

    It is however wrong that once again it is a member of the opposition who raises the question of Zimbabwe within this House. It should have been debated on the floor of the House. We have used an opposition day once to do so. Not so the Government.

    For them Zimbabwe is a problem to be swept under the carpet. Two years ago the PM boasted that he had a moral duty to act. Instead he has walked timidly by on the other side.

    The Government are still walking by. They connived in the technical arrangement which allowed the French to invite Mugabe to visit Paris in February. They have done nothing since to bring genuine pressure on Mugabe. They have never explained what the Prime Minister meant by his 2001 declared ‘moral duty to act’. Presumably the thespian interpretation of the word!

    I went to Zimbabwe last July. I experienced the sense of betrayal by the British. No surprise that Amnesty International says “there seems to be no limit to how far the [Zimbabwean] government will go to suppress opposition and to maintain its power”. No surprise that the very courageous MDC MP Roy Bennett, no stranger himself to beatings and imprisonment, states “we feel forgotten by the rest of the world. Mugabe is getting away with murder, torture and rape, and no-one is taking a blind bit of notice”. It is unbelievable that our Government is still doing nothing.

    The horrors in Zimbabwe are getting worse. Over the last two weeks there has been a massive increase in state sponsored violence and intimidation. No coincidence that this upsurge comes at the same time that the world’s media are concentrating on Iraq and the two by-elections which thank goodness the MDC held. The smoke of even a distant war has provided a cover behind which Mugabe’s brutality has grown and flourished. The by-elections yesterday, although fantastic victories for the MDC, were marred by government vote-rigging and vicious intimidation.

    While won by the MDC, Mutable gave notice by his brutal attempts to steal these contests that he is determined by any means to achieve the five parliamentary gains he needs constitutionally to entrench his vile dictatorship. No wonder he describes himself as the African Hitler.

    Levels of government-sponsored violence have spiralled since the Iraq war began. On top of the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of black farm workers, and the state provoked and politically directed mass starvation, there are now the false prosecutions, the murders, the official use of sexual assault and rape as a weapon of intimidation, and the ever increasingly vicious beatings.

    The violent government reaction to the Stay-away two weeks ago has signaled the end of even the last vestiges of human rights in Zimbabwe. People are angry, they are hungry and they are at the end of their tether.

    If the international community does not act, I fear we will see the law-abiding , decent, peace loving people of Zimbabwe, black and whites alike, taking the law into their own hands. All the ingredients for an enormous humanitarian disaster are present. It would be a conflagration from which we would not be able to walk away.

    Zimbabwe is at the front line of the food crisis. The World Food Programme estimates that 7.2 million people are vulnerable. Food production has dropped to about one-third of previous years’ levels. Thirty-four percent of the adult population are now infected with HIV/AIDS.

    And then there is the oppression. The main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangerai and his MDC have reached the limit of what they can do to force the government to change. Since the recent strikes at least 1000 people have been arrested, assaulted and hounded from their homes.

    And what is our Government’s response? The Noble Baroness Amos said last week, “the United Kingdom Government are working with our EU partners on a statement condemning the action which has been taken”. Working on statements of condemnation! Mugabe’s thugs are working not on a statement. They are ‘working-over’ the opposition. The time for words is long past. We need to see action.

    The US has just signed a new and broad sanctions order. Will we now toughen up EU sanctions? Presumably the Government got some promises in return for their supine surrender to France over Mugabe’s recent visit to Paris? We need harsh sanctions which include the families of the regime and its financial backers and which freeze the assets of all these people as well as banning travel.

    Over and above that the problem of Zimbabwe needs urgently to be internationalized. We need UN action as well. The Minister the noble Baroness Amos asserted last week that Zimbabwe does not pose a challenge to international peace and security, remains a domestic issue and that the UN cannot intervene.

    I totally disagree.

    Given its geographical position, the impact of Zimbabwe’s escalating crisis will extend way beyond its borders:

    The crisis will destabilise Zimbabwe’s immediate neighbours, particularly South Africa, Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique by driving thousands of refugees into these countries.

    University of Zimbabwe political scientist Masipula Sithole says: ‘Given its pivotal position, Zimbabwe has the potential to destabilize SADC both economically and politically on a much wider scale.’ If that is not the definition of an international problem I don’t know what is.

    I would like to see a UN Security Council Resolution with good precedent condemning what is happening in Zimbabwe and calling for international monitoring of humanitarian aid and its distribution. That would be a start, and if the Resolution is firm enough it could also deal with refugees and ethnic cleansing as well.

    Will the Government table such a Resolution?

    The SADC, and especially the region’s economic powerhouse South Africa, should take more resolute action. Morgan Tsvangerai last week stated that the MAC is willing to enter into talks to discuss how to solve Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.

    The signs are not hopeful. Following last week’s strike, President Mugabe called the MDC a terrorist organization and vowed that it would be crushed.

    Nevertheless this is a moment for renewed vigour. Even President Mbeki of South Africa, which holds the key to pressurizing Mugabe and Zimbabwe, is now condemning the violent crackdown in Zimbabwe. The openings are there.

    Our Prime Minister last year talked about “a coalition to give Africa hope.” Where is that new coalition?

    The Government must act. To stand idly by and watch genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, starvation, torture and to do nothing is, if it ever was, no longer an option. Go to the UN, get a Resolution; go to the SADC, strike a new alliance; go back to the EU, toughen the sanctions; and give back hope to the people of Zimbabwe.

    We acted in Kosovo because of unacceptable flouting of human rights, because of ethnic cleansing, because of rape camps and torture chambers and hideous levels of violence. What in those terms in Zimbabwe is the difference? The Foreign Secretary may be paralysed by the post-colonial guilt to which he referred in his interview with the New Statesman before Christmas. It does not mean that the rest of us need be.

    The oppressed and persecuted people of Zimbabwe, most of them black, see nothing post-colonial in asking us to intervene, rather a moral obligation. They cannot understand why the British Government does not.

    The Government can act. Even at this desperately late hour it must. The time for walking by on the other side is over.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech in Response to the Budget

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech in Response to the Budget

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Commons on 9 April 2003.

    On behalf of the whole House, I congratulate the Chancellor on his happy announcement last weekend. I can assure him . children are a great blessing.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, over the past six years we have come to learn that the Chancellor’s Budget speeches are characterised as much by what they conceal as what they disclose.

    He prefers to let the damaging detail, the fine print, leak out over the days and weeks that follow.

    Today, nonetheless, despite all the Chancellor’s bombast and bravado, we learnt a lot.

    We learnt that the Chancellor has got his forecasts wrong. Again.

    We learnt that borrowing is up. Again.

    We learnt that taxes are up. And will stay up – from this week, a typical family is another £568 a year worse off.

    And we learnt that the Chancellor has no intention of being candid with this House or with the British people.

    Just look at today’s Red Book.

    1. On page 235 we see the savings ratio this year is forecast to be even lower than it was last year.

    2. On page 241 – we see that manufacturing output fell last year by 4 per cent, and that the Chancellor’s forecast for this year has been slashed.

    3. And on page 238 – we see that business investment, forecast last April to grow this year by up to 6 per cent, is now forecast to fall.

    We didn’t hear any of those details from the Chancellor today.

    The Chancellor who promised us prudence has now given us higher borrowing and higher taxes at the same time.

    His Budget message to the British people is. Higher taxes – that’s pain today.

    Higher borrowing – that’s more pain tomorrow.

    This is the Chancellor who has put up taxes…on pay and on jobs..on homes and on homeowners..on mortgages and on marriages..on petrol and on pensions.

    The Government is taking an extra five and a half thousand pounds per household per year.. an extra £44 a week in tax for every man, woman and child.

    The Chancellor’s excuse was that this money would make our public services world class.

    Instead. .we have a million people on hospital waiting lists. .a crime is committed every five seconds..and thousands of children are leaving school without a single GCSE.

    More tax, more spend, more waste – that is the sum of the Chancellor’s approach.

    This was the Government that promised: “We have no plans to increase tax at all.”

    And: “Our proposals do not involve raising taxes.”

    And even: “We want people to pay lower taxes.”

    And now, 53 tax rises later.This week, when people receive their pay packets, they will find that their take home pay has fallen for the first time in twenty years.

    Now they know what this Chancellor really stands for.

    Promises, promises, promises.

    Every year he makes them and every year he breaks them.

    And just as he has broken his promises to individuals, so has he broken his promises to business.

    In 1998, the Chancellor promised “major changes” to help business.

    In ’99, he promised tax cuts for business.

    In 2000, he promised incentives for business.

    In 2001, he promised more good news for business.

    Today we see what his promises are worth.

    An £8 billion tax on jobs.

    That’s the cost of his National Insurance hike.

    It’s hitting business. And it’s hitting them hard!

    So hard, say the British Chambers of Commerce, that one in five firms may cut jobs as a result.

    In fact, this Chancellor has been so hard on business that, since 1997, he has taken an extra £47 billion from them in tax.

    No wonder he didn’t tell the House today about the real cost of his policies.

    He didn’t say insolvencies are at their worst level for a decade.

    Or that analysts say that another 70,000 firms will go bust over the next three years.

    And he didn’t say that manufacturing has lost 300 jobs every single day since Labour came to power.

    And he didn’t say that manufacturing output and investment are both now lower than when he delivered his first Budget.

    And just as he has broken his promises to business, so he has broken his promises to hard-working families.

    Since 1997 council tax has gone up by 60 per cent, adding more than £400 to a typical bill.

    Just look at the Red Book – council tax up by £8 billion since Labour came to power.

    Stamp duty increases have added over £5000 to the cost of the average detached home in the South East.

    The abolition of mortgage tax relief has cost homeowners over £200 a year.

    The abolition of the Married Couples’ Allowance has cost families £300 a year.

    Higher petrol taxes have cost the average motorist another £300 a year.

    In short, the Government’s tax take has now risen by 50 per cent since he became Chancellor.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, of all those who have been hit by the Chancellor, there is one group who will be hurt more than most.

    The savers of today are the pensioners of tomorrow.

    And he has blighted their old age, their retirement . . . what should have been their golden years.

    In 1997, he promised, “to encourage personal savings”.

    In 2001, he promised, “to reward savers, pensioners and hard working families”.

    Promises, promises, promises.

    But under him, saving has halved.

    When Labour took office in 1997 the savings ratio was 10 per cent.

    Today it is 4.75 per cent. It’s there in the Red Book.

    So he’s destroyed savings.

    And his so-called “reform” to the pensions system has hit future pensioners with a £5 billion a year tax. .it has created a pensions crisis..and, perhaps most damaging of all.someone retiring today will do so on half the income they would have received in 1997 – – Half.

    And he hasn’t just let down future pensioners.

    Because this was the man who promised to end the means test for pensioners.

    But under him, the proportion of pensioner households subject to a means test is up by 50 per cent.

    I want to turn now, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the financial impact of war in Iraq.

    We support the Government in their waging of this war and we naturally support its full and proper funding.

    But the Chancellor should be warned. He cannot get away with using this war to get him off the hook for his long-term mismanagement of the economy.

    And he can’t get away with blaming Europe for his problems.

    He simply cannot blame his flawed and missed forecasts solely on world events.

    Last April, the Chancellor delivered his forecasts for the coming year to the House.

    And he got them wrong.

    He got his forecasts for growth wrong.

    His excuse, in other words.

    He got his forecasts for tax revenues – wrong.

    And he got his forecasts for borrowing – wrong.

    In November, the Chancellor admitted that his central growth forecast for 2002 – two and a quarter per cent – was wrong.

    He conceded that tax revenues had failed to meet his projections.

    He announced that borrowing would have to rise – by £20 billion in just two years.

    And then he blamed everything on the fact that world trade and world GDP growth had not been as fast as he had forecast..was not that the Chancellor had failed Britain….but that the World had failed the Chancellor.

    Now, that’s a serious charge, Mr Deputy Speaker.

    So I went back to last year’s Red Book.

    And when you look at it, you see that.

    At the time he delivered his Pre-Budget Report in November.

    The only forecasts that were right were his forecasts for world trade and his forecasts for world growth.

    So, he blamed the world for getting it wrong, but actually that was the only forecast he got right.

    Today, the Chancellor had to admit he has got his growth forecast wrong yet again.

    So his growth forecasts were wrong and his assumptions for tax revenues were wrong as well.

    The result is that his projections for borrowing are wrong.

    Now, the Chancellor sprinted through his borrowing figures, so let me recap.

    Last April, the Chancellor predicted that he would have to borrow £13 billion this financial year.

    Today, he admitted he would actually have to borrow £27 billion.

    And that only takes us to the end of this financial year.

    Look at the longer term picture.

    Just two Budgets ago, the Chancellor told the House that he would need to borrow £35 billion between 2002 and 2006.

    Today, he admitted that the true figure for total borrowing over that period is actually £98 billion.

    So in just two years, his medium term borrowing requirements have risen by £63 billion.

    That’s an extra £2600 per household.

    But borrowing is not something the Chancellor can do indefinitely.

    More and more borrowing will mean higher and higher taxes.

    Throughout, independent forecasters have long been warning him that he was far too optimistic.

    They questioned his revised predictions.

    Some called them, “overly optimistic” and “rose-tinted”.

    And we know what the independent experts think now.

    78 per cent of them think that, by 2006, the Chancellor will have to raise taxes by between five and eight billion pounds.

    And these are the experts on the Treasury’s own panel.

    But you won’t hear this from the Chancellor.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, the Chancellor’s broken promises and missed forecasts might be more palatable if we were seeing real reform of our public services.

    But the facts speak for themselves.

    Take health: A million people on NHS waiting lists. Hospital admissions down, not up. And, last year, three hundred thousand people forced to pay for their own operations – a figure that has trebled since 1997.

    Or education. 50,000 children play truant every day one in four leaves primary school unable to read, write and count properly and more than 30,000 children leave school each year without a single GCSE.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, this Government has tested to destruction the theory that more and more money alone can transform our public services.

    They have talked about reform, but they have delivered none.

    Today, he could have delivered.

    Six years of spin and spending can’t hide the fact that our public services are just not good enough.

    They don’t simply need more money, they need a new approach.

    An approach based on giving power back to people, so they feel in control of their lives – whether they are nurses and teachers or patients and parents.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, the Chancellor has just delivered his seventh Budget.

    Six years.

    Seven speeches.

    Promises, promises, promises.

    He promised . . .

    Prudent Budgets . . Fair Budgets. . . Budgets for enterprise. . . Budgets for the public services.

    And he hasn’t delivered any of it.

    He has got it wrong because he puts systems and initiatives, targets and schemes, before real people and real results.

    He has got it wrong because he thinks he knows better than the people of this country how they should be living their lives.

    He has got it wrong because he is driven not by the facts – which are staring him in the face – but by an ideology that has gripped his mind and will not let it go.

    His sole mission is to prove that the old ways still work.

    Never mind the evidence, never mind the consequences.

    So it’s just more failing policies and more downgraded forecasts from a discredited Chancellor.

    Last week, before it was too late, he could have scrapped his tax on jobs and pay.

    He could have stopped punishing people who work hard and save hard. Security and independence, for the young and the old, for hard-working families and individuals, for those who create jobs and those who need them, for those who pay for our public services and for those who rely on them.

    He could have delivered a fair deal for all of them.

    But he didn’t.

    He never will.

    And it’s the British people, Mr Deputy Speaker, who will pay the price.

    More taxes, more spending and public services that simply aren’t good enough.

    The message of this Budget is clear.

    For the British people – it’s pain today. And as borrowing spirals while the Chancellor blocks real reform, today’s Budget means more pain tomorrow.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at Toynbee Hall

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at Toynbee Hall

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 29 April 2003.

    Thank you very much, Luke, for again inviting me to speak at Toynbee Hall.

    I pay sincere tribute to the dedication to London’s East End of all your staff and all of Toynbee’s many volunteers.

    Toynbee Hall’s national reputation for social policy is deeply rooted in your commitment to innovative community service.

    The Barnetts, Atlee, Beveridge and other Toynbee greats would – I am sure – be very proud of Toynbee Hall’s work today.

    And I know I speak for all of us here when I say a special thank you to your inspirational President, Jack Profumo.

    It was nearly six months ago – when on my visit to you – I named five new giants stalking Britain.

    Five key social challenges facing our people:

    Rising crime;

    Failing schools;

    Substandard healthcare;

    Child poverty; and

    Insecurity in old age.

    Those five giants already affect or threaten every community in Britain.

    Defeating them isn’t just a moral obligation.

    Turning the tide on crime and public service failure is in everyone’s interest.

    Not just because none of us are immune from the damaging effects of social decline.

    But also because unless we come together as a nation – in order to advance the interests of everyone – we forfeit the right to call ourselves civilised.

    People from minority communities, our poorest citizens and the very young and very old remain Britain’s most vulnerable – they are hurt most by the giants.

    In the past some Conservatives gave the false impression that poverty had been overcome.

    During my leadership I’ve made it clear that that’s not my belief.

    Last year, David Willetts gave a speech entitled ‘The Reality of Poverty’.

    In it he surveyed the complex material and relational dimensions of twenty-first century poverty.

    He noted that fighting poverty wouldn’t be cheap but it couldn’t be just about money.

    Communities stay poor because of crime, community breakdown and the disempowerment that can be passed from one generation to the next.

    He and other shadow cabinet ministers held a number of investigative One Nation Hearings in hard-pressed areas.

    And I told last spring’s party forum that restoring hope in places like Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate was a personal commitment.

    In recent months the Conservative Party has begun the process of unveiling policies that underpin our determination to restore that hope.

    Take education.

    Far too many inner city schools are failing.

    And when they fail – one of a young person’s best hopes of a better future is lost, perhaps forever.

    Damian Green has proposed a system of state scholarships to provide children from inner city areas with an escape route from failure.

    State scholarships will give parents a chance to send their child to a good school.

    One more suited to their child’s needs and their own values.

    This system of scholarships will, I hope, encourage higher standards in existing schools.

    But it will also encourage – and pay for – the establishment of new schools that serve children’s diverse needs.

    If education is a springboard out of poverty; then crime can entrap children in it.

    Oliver Letwin’s innovative policies will cut the conveyor belt to crime for tens of thousands of young people.

    A greater emphasis on early intervention – including parent support services – will stop the conveyor belt at its earlier stages.

    And the Conservative commitment to fund 20,000 new drug rehabilitation places will give other young people a chance to find freedom from addiction.

    I’ve sat with parents of drug users who – already devastated by their child’s drug habit – are close to being broken by the failure of the current system to provide rehab.

    That has to change.

    Another change we must make is to the level of policing on Britain’s streets.

    The 40,000 extra neighbourhood police officers Conservatives are committed to provide are not just a sign of our commitment to beat crime.

    They’re a symbol of our commitment to restore community and reclaim it from the gangs that imprison people in their homes.

    Through commitments like these on education and crime – and other policies focusing on better healthcare and housing – Conservatives will reverse the decline in Britain’s public services.

    Our policies are built on the rock of successful models throughout Europe and in Australia and America.

    We build, too, on what local Conservative councils are already achieving.

    Last year it was Conservative councils that received the most star awards for the quality of their social service provision for vulnerable people.

    Conservative councils run schools with the lowest levels of truancy and the best exam results.

    Local Conservatives are more committed to provision of street lighting and CCTV.

    By this time on Friday I hope more Conservative councillors will have been elected to deliver such practical compassion.

    Labour’s record on public service reform has failed the whole nation but the poor have suffered most.

    The revitalisation of Britain’s public services is vital and urgent but – on its own – it won’t be enough to reduce child poverty and other forms of social injustice.

    Progress will need to be underpinned by a strong, job-creating economy.

    Success will also depend upon a stronger, cohesive society.

    A society of which we can all feel proud.

    And by society I do not mean the state.

    The free institutions of society – like families, charities, local schools and other people-sized institutions – provide diverse, innovative and face-to-face care that state bureaucracies cannot match.

    It’s these associations within society that give me the greatest hope that even the worst effects of the Five Giants can be overcome.

    Since I named the Five Giants I’ve travelled to almost every part of Britain.

    The Five Giants are at least as menacing as I feared.

    Too much of what I have seen has made me conclude that society is being hollowed out from within.

    In Glasgow, Jim Doherty and Janis Dobbie of the Gallowgate Family Support Group, showed me around Parkhead Cross.

    It’s a neighbourhood in the grip of drug abuse and the havoc it wreaks.

    At night criminal gangs rule the streets.

    Two of Jim’s own sons have become addicts.

    He can’t understand the failure of government to provide proper rehab for his children and the children of the other families who flock to the Gallowgate Support Group.

    He told me “We have already lost our children’s generation to drugs.

    The battle we’re fighting now is to save our grandchildren.”

    Jim’s words – Jim’s challenge – affected me deeply.

    If Britain doesn’t act to save his grandchildren my generation of politicians will have failed.

    And we will certainly fail if we don’t do something about the state monoculture.

    The state is already too pervasive on many of the poorest communities -crowding out any and all alternatives to its own bureaucratic agencies and its metropolitan worldview.

    Beneath an artificial plantation of conifers nothing grows.

    All light is absorbed by the dense and impenetrable canopy far above the soil.

    The five giants won’t be defeated if government acts as if the work and values of groups like Jim Doherty’s don’t matter.

    Government must become an active and enthusiastic servant of society’s many poverty-fighting and community-building groups.

    In natural woodland, trees are spaced apart – allowing light and rain to nourish a diversity of plants and wildlife.

    An enriching and highly-interdependent ecosystem develops.

    It’s still like that in parts of Britain.

    For a very long time the people-sized institutions of society have lacked political champions.

    Their vital role has been taken for granted – or worse still dismissed – by big state and free market fundamentalists.

    That must change.

    Government can and must do much more to unlock Britain’s social capital.

    Soon, I’ll be publishing a Green Paper that will investigate how the next Conservative government will do that.

    It will contain proposals that are themselves as ambitious as the aspiration to serve of our nation’s volunteers, charities and social entrepreneurs.

    It will applaud the work of faith-based groups like Manchester’s Message Trust and Cardiff’s Care for the Family that have impressed me so profoundly.

    The government is wedded to the idea that more government spending and control is the answer to today’s challenges.

    But this government is not unlocking the potential of Britain’s social capital.

    It is not helping the people who have the ideas and values to rebuild their communities.

    Luke – on behalf of Toynbee Hall – has been one of a large number of voluntary sector representatives who have kindly contributed to the formulation of the Conservative Green Paper.

    That Green Paper will be a next stage in my party’s continuing commitment to offer a fair deal for Britain’s most vulnerable communities.

    I look forward to as many of you here as possible helping us to first develop – and then deliver – that fair deal.

    It’s time for politicians to help people rebuild their communities.

    And to return hope to neighbourhoods where – today – there is none.

  • Oliver Letwin – 2003 Speech on Rebalancing the Weight of Authority

    Oliver Letwin – 2003 Speech on Rebalancing the Weight of Authority

    The speech made by Oliver Letwin on 6 May 2003.

    Back in February I gave a speech on the retreat of civilisation in Britain’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods. I told the story of the Clarence Way Estate in Camden and the efforts made by local residents to reclaim their community from local drug dealers. Though policing of the estate is clearly inadequate, funds have been found for private security patrols. These have succeeded in moving on the junkies that use the estate’s stairwells, balconies and doorsteps to jack up – in full view of the tenants and their children. But there is only so much the security guards can do. For instance they are not allowed to tow away the illegal abandoned cars that the junkies and the dealers use as a cover for their operations. No, that is a job for the organs of the state, although when I visited Clarence Way they had yet to do it. However, the law enforcement authorities are not entirely absent from the estate. That much was made clear to the security guards when they returned from a patrol to find a parking ticket on their van. Residents were outraged and asked if free parking could be made available – as it is for, say, police officers and councillors. But the council said no.

    February saw another example of officialdom at its worst, this time in the Suffolk village of Trimley St Mary – home to Mary Martin, a grandmother of ten. Ms Martin was in fact born in the United States but has lived in Britain for 54 of her 56 years. Nevertheless, when she applied for British citizenship, following the death of her mother two years ago, she was turned down by the Home Office, which did not accept her claim of long-term residency. She was then given a few days to leave the country or be deported. Fortunately, the story was brought to national attention by local MP John Gummer, forcing the Home Office to back down. But as Mr Gummer said at the time: “She should never have been put in this position. In all my time as an MP, I have never seen a case as appallingly bad.”

    Unfortunately, appalling decisions are made all the time. Moreover, the government is continually extending the scope for such decisions. For instance, the new Draft Regulations for the Registration and Monitoring of Independent Schools threaten a regulatory framework so onerous that many schools will be force to close down. Not, of course, the likes of Eton or Harrow that have the resources to cope. But small neighbourhood schools such as those serving vulnerable children from Britain’s minority communities. It would seem that the Department of Education has learned nothing from the Department of Health’s ruinous attack on our old people’s homes.

    Bureaucracy gone mad?

    But my purpose tonight is not to recount isolated examples of bureaucracy gone mad. For one thing these examples are not isolated. They are part of a systemic problem that I believe is eating away at our respect for authority. Also, while bureaucracy is certainly involved, I don’t believe that it has gone mad. Rather we have created a bureaucratic system that for entirely rational, if self-serving, reasons is programmed to operate in a manner that defies fairness and justice.

    Nor is this speech just about the accumulating burden of regulation and red tape, though undoubtedly that burden is increasing. Rather, what I want to look at is how and where that burden falls. Because it appears to me that the blows of bureaucracy rain down in a systematic pattern of unfairness and injustice.

    Easy case / hard case

    That pattern can be seen in all three of the examples I have given.

    To start with, the Draft Regulations which threaten small independent schools. The stated rationale for the new provisions is to protect the safety of pupils in new schools – though, of course, the government has given no evidence that safety is compromised under the existing rules. Nevertheless even the smallest community schools will be subject to an intensive inspection regime covering such matters as sound insulation, acoustics, lighting, heating and ventilation. The compliance costs will shutdown existing schools and ensure that new ones are never started. The irony is that such regulations only ensure that procedures are followed, they do not guarantee outcomes. For instance, only this year, the Audit Commission warned that schools built under the Private Finance Initiative are significantly worse in terms of space, heating and lighting than new publicly-funded schools. But of course it is easier to pick on neighbourhood schools then to sort out the top-level mismanagement of the PFI programme.

    And, no doubt, the Home Office found it easier to pick on Mary Martin, an unsuspecting Suffolk grandmother, than to deport the failed asylum seekers that disappear into the netherworld of black market employment and unregistered accommodation. In the same way, for security reasons, they make it harder for British citizens to get a passport at short notice, while allowing thousands of people who entered this country without a passport to stay without security clearance of any kind.

    And even in a matter as mundane as parking restrictions, it is easier to slap a ticket on a security patrol van than it is to tow away a stolen car dumped in the middle of a housing estate. The former is achieved in minutes, the latter in months.
    Picking on the easy case

    Three very different cases, but there is a link. In each case, those whom the authorities target have three things in common:

    · First, they’re not very powerful – we’re talking about ordinary individuals and families, or small businesses and community groups.

    · Second, they’re easy to get at – through their property, their livelihoods, their reputations, these are sitting ducks as far as the authorities are concerned.

    · Third, they’re law abiding and honest, if not positively public-spirited – their every instinct is to obey the rules or, if they slip up, to take their punishment meekly.

    In each of our three examples, the authorities have picked on the easy case – by which I mean the person or organisation unable or unwilling to resist, evade or ignore the demands of the system.

    Avoiding the hard case

    But just as there are easy cases, there are also hard cases – as we can see in each of our three examples:

    · The powerful political, bureaucratic and corporate interests responsible for the poor performance of so many PFI projects.

    · The illegal immigrant that disappears off the official radar.

    · Or the drug abusing petty criminal who couldn’t care less what happens to the car he just dumped, which he probably stole anyway.

    So we have three kinds of hard case – the powerful, the invisible and the uncivilised. All of these make life difficult for those in authority, which is why the easy cases, who are neither powerful nor invisible nor uncivilised, present a more attractive target.

    A general phenomenon

    The easy case syndrome is an everyday fact of life. Examples are not isolated. They litter the system:

    · A month ago, millions of us received a self-assessment form from the Inland Revenue. This gives you the privilege of collaborating in the taxation of your income, patience and honesty. Meanwhile the cash-in-hand brigade enjoy the public services your taxes have paid for, without contributing anything themselves.

    · Even if your builder declares his income down to the last penny, you may still fall foul of our planning system, which regulates the placement of each and every garden shed, while whole townscapes are defaced by tower blocks.

    · And if you should find an intruder breaking into your garden shed, do not let him tread on a garden fork as it may be you and not the criminal that gets sued.

    · I have seen much the same attitude displayed by the ticket inspectors of more than one train operator, who while happy to fine the commuter who misplaced his or her ticket, are unlikely to challenge the carriage full of louts who didn’t have tickets to lose in the first place.

    · All too often, when some of life’s freeloaders see the inside of a courtroom, they will leave it laughing. Whereas, for those that respect the law, the courtroom is a near infallible means of enforcement, the mere threat of which ensures that fines for overdue parking tickets, misplaced train tickets, overdue tax returns and misplaced garden sheds are paid without protest.

    · The same threat ensures that responsible fathers who disclose both paternity and income provide easy work for the Child Support Agency, while deadbeat dads are allowed to disappear into a genetic and financial fog.

    · There is a strong European dimension to all of this. One only has to compare the British farmer, clobbered for making a small mistake in his IACS form, with the EU commissioners, who can’t even account for £3 billion in their annual budget.

    It is hard to think of single significant area of regulation where the authorities do not systematically target the easy case to the relative or absolute benefit of the hard case.

    Causes and consequences

    And the problem is getting worse. It pervades our regulatory culture. As the volume of regulation and legislation grows, so does the distortion of the system towards the clobbering of the easy case and the escape of the difficult case.

    Easy money

    We have arrived at a position where the easy case syndrome is not even always an unintended by-product of regulation – increasingly the pursuit of the easy case is becoming a positive intention of government.

    For instance, picking on the easy case is great way of raising revenue. One need think only of the spread of speed cameras and the introduction of congestion charges. The motorist, that is the legally registered fully insured motorist driving his own vehicle, is the ultimate easy case. The registration plate of the legally registered driver is a perfect identifier and the car itself a hostage subject to clamping, crushing or confiscation so as to extract a ransom from its owner. Meanwhile the joy-riders travel free of charge, free of speed restrictions and free of parking tickets. In a slight adaptation of the proverb, they have learned that to travel joyfully is better than to arrive in court.
    Cheap gestures

    The easy case also provides the state with an easy way of being seen to do something.

    How much easier to subject schools and charities to the bureaucratic disaster area that is the Criminal Records Bureau than to track down the real paedophile. Decent teachers, youth workers and volunteers dutifully submit themselves to the police check procedure in their tens of thousands, giving every impression that the authorities are on the case, when of course it will take more than a form filling exercise to stop the determined paedophile.

    Then there is the issue of animal welfare – again a proper concern, and again the subject of meretricious government initiatives that exploit the easy case. The laws protecting the welfare of British farm animals are the toughest in the world. Yet our livestock sector is sinking beneath a flood of foreign imports produced in conditions of sickening cruelty. By ignoring the hard case, the government actually increases the UK market for inhumanely produced food.

    The targets culture

    The tendency of the bureaucracy to deal with the easy case instead of the hard case has been exacerbated by New Labour’s penchant for targets and indicators. It is easier to meet a target for hospital waiting lists by prioritising patients with easily treated minor ailments than those with life threatening diseases, even though this is a policy for shortening queues by filling mortuaries. It is easier to meet targets for crime clear-up rates by concentrating on traffic offences than by concentrating on the lawlessness of gangs that terrorise council estates.

    The blame culture

    Allied to the targets culture is the blame culture, fuelled by a toxic concoction of European rights legislation and American-style litigation. The result is a predatory legal system always on the look out for an easy case – meaning any individual or organisation without the resources to fight their way through the courts, but with enough money to settle out of court. No one need have an accident these days, when they could be the victims of criminal negligence. Taxpayers, employers and volunteers pay the price in legal bills and insurance premiums – they are the easy cases.

    The hard cases are getting harder

    I have advanced five causes for the worsening of the easy case syndrome: regulation, easy money, government’s addiction to cheap gestures, the targets culture and the blame culture. But there is a sixth reason, which is that the hard cases are getting harder. If you remember, I identified three kinds of hard case – the powerful, the invisible and the uncivilised. In an increasingly globalised economy it is easier for the powerful to escape the constraints of national law; in an increasingly anonymous society, it is easier for those without a stake in the mainstream to drop out and disappear; and in an increasingly chaotic culture it is easier for those who just don’t care, to flout the norms of civilised behaviour. As a result the hard cases become harder for the state to deal with and the easy cases look much more tempting as objects of attention.

    The coming crisis

    It is inevitable that in any system of enforcement some cases will be easier than others. Moreover, it is important that the system holds the line against the easy cases. We’re all guilty of occasionally pushing the rules and if we all got away with it, there’d be chaos. I don’t know if you remember the traffic wardens’ strike back in the 1970s, but it wasn’t long before some streets were clogged with double and even triple parking.

    However, the system is out of balance. And so the question is this: how much more can the easy cases take? The weight of authority is sliding onto their backs, and that weight increases with every new law and every new tax. If this continues there will come a point at which those that respect the law respect it no longer. And at that point our society will be in serious trouble.

    Certainly we should not expect a loss of respect by the law-abiding to be offset by the gratitude of the lawless – who return nothing but contempt to so weak a system.

    Solutions

    The good news is that there are solutions. The even better news is that they are embedded in Conservative philosophy and policy.

    Conservatives stand for less regulation, red tape and bureaucracy. We do not share Labour’s love of taxation and we reserve particular contempt for Labour’s stealth taxes. We do not base our policy initiatives on the easy cases. There was nothing easy about the economic challenges we met in the eighties and nineties; and there is nothing easy about the social challenges we focus on today. We will abolish the targets culture. Recognition of risk, and the commonsense of British legal tradition, will be the foundations on which we build defences against the blame culture.

    In all these ways we will radically reduce the weight of authority on the law-abiding majority.

    The easy case side of the equation.

    But that is not enough. We also need new measures to make life harder for the hard cases.

    That is why the next Conservative Government will increase police numbers by 40,000. What’s more we will put them back on the beat, reclaiming the streets from the drug dealers, pimps and muggers that blight the lives of decent people. We will do for Britain what Rudi Giuliani did for New York – the proof that neighbourhood policing works. And it works precisely because it focuses the whole system on the hard cases – wherever, whenever and as soon as they arise.

    We will apply the same principle to the flipside of our law and order policy, which is to get young people off the conveyor belt to crime. We will deal with the hard case. We will rescue young people caught in the hard drug vortex by forcing them into intensive treatment. We will provide long-term rehabilitative sentencing for persistent young offenders to reform characters and change lives and make a profound impact on recidivism. We will draw inspiration from examples of success at home and abroad that prove that even the hard cases can be turned around.

    Triggers and trip wires

    It is said that no good deed goes unpunished. And in a society where the easy case takes the punishment, that is not far from the truth. It is certainly true that we cannot rebuild the neighbourly society through unfairness and injustice. That is why I am determined that in every aspect of Home Office policy – from drugs to asylum – we will focus the system on the hard case.

    That means setting clear boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not. It is only through such boundaries that the hard cases can be identified and isolated. This is not a prescription for boneheaded rigidity, like that suffered by Mary Martin at the hands of the Home Office. Any system of boundaries should have a degree of give, but this flexibility should be matched by a series of triggers for interventions of authority that increase in strength with the distance travelled from the civilised norm.

    This is our model for all systems of enforcement: boundaries which, when breached, prompt a proportionate response, instead of a system that stretches trip wires across the straight and narrow road, while those that walk a crooked path carry on regardless.

    Things have come to a pretty pass when it is necessary for the Shadow Home Secretary to preach the virtues of proportionate response. But things have come to that pass – and I am preaching precisely that doctrine. We need, with some speed and resolution, to rebalance the system of the state so that its weight bears down more heavily on the lawless than the just. Proportionality demands such rebalancing. I demand such proportionality.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Central London

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Central London

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 19 May 2003.

    It’s a great privilege to be here to speak to you today. The British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce has a vital role to play in developing business relations between Britain and Switzerland.

    It’s a role you play with distinction.

    I would like to address three issues which are of common interest to all those concerned with the future- its business environment and, its place in Europe.

    In turn, I want to deal with our competitiveness, the euro and the proposed European Constitution.
    I have three propositions for you today.

    First, that Britain’s competitive position is being undermined…

    both by the micro-economic management of a Government that does not understand how business works and by the impact of its failure to reform our public services on our tax position, our public finances and our quality of life.

    Second, that addressing these root causes of declining competitiveness is what matters most to Britain and its business economy – not focusing on joining the euro. Labour’s political obsession with the latter is to the detriment of us all.

    Third, that Europe will not be improved by deeper integration and the strengthening of its institutions – but rather by bringing democratic power and accountability closer to all the peoples of Europe by reinforcing the autonomous power of nation states.

    We will lead this fight.

    Competitiveness

    Britain does not enjoy the quality of life it should.

    · There are a million people on Britain’s hospital waiting lists.
    · One in four children leave our primary schools unable to read, write and count properly.
    · Thirty thousand children leave our secondary schools without a single GCSE.
    · 39 out of every 40 crimes go unpunished by a conviction.
    · And British people spend longer commuting to work than any other people in Europe.

    The Labour Government’s only answer has been to spend more and more taxpayers’ money.

    By the end of their current plans, real terms spending on health will have doubled — and on education will have risen by 50 per cent.

    That’s why the government tax take has already risen by the equivalent of an extra five and a half thousand pounds a year for every household in Britain.

    And that’s why public borrowing is now spiralling upwards too.

    This is nothing less than a massive tax and spend gamble.

    And our competitiveness is fast being eroded.

    Britain is once more becoming a place where people do not want to do business.

    Business investment is falling and savings have collapsed.

    Burdens on business are up and our competitiveness and productivity growth are down.

    The CBI believes Labour’s extra tax and regulations have added as much as £15 billion a year to the cost of doing business in Britain.

    And since 1997

    · we’ve lost over half a million jobs in manufacturing,
    · we’ve seen the number of days lost to strikes increased sixfold
    · and we’ve fallen from 9th to 16th in the World Competitiveness rankings.

    But more than this, we understand that competitiveness is not just about economic efficiency.

    To compete means being a country where people want to live and where businesses actively choose to locate their operations.

    A place that can attract and retain the best talent and the most investment.

    A place with something extra to offer.

    To compete means being a nation with a well educated, highly qualified workforce that doesn’t waste weeks every year, off sick, or stuck in traffic jams.

    As a global competitor, we have lost a lot of ground.

    With taxes up, we’re a more expensive place to do business.

    With regulation up, we’re no longer an easy place to do business.

    With our public services in decay, we’re no longer a magnet for talent or investment.

    So how would a Conservative administration be different?

    First, we are, by nature, a party of lower tax.

    We believe that governments should measure success not by how much money they spend, but how well – and how carefully – they spend it.

    Second, a Conservative Government will not second-guess everything business does.

    We will not be over-interfering in the way businesses are run.

    Third, on public services we are committed to a strategy of real reform — widening choice and rooting out bureaucratic waste.

    This is what it will take if we are to begin to deliver a fair deal for everyone.

    And if we fail, Britain will be a less competitive place as a result.

    Euro

    My second proposition is that rather than addressing these problems, the Government is obsessed with the euro.

    Look at the mess they are in.

    Last Wednesday, they told the BBC they had reached an agreement.

    By Thursday morning they were having to deny that.

    And shortly afterwards, they announced that the Chancellor’s conclusions on the euro would be delayed until June 9.

    In the meantime, special Cabinet sessions have been called to thrash out the issue.

    The Chancellor, the Prime Minister and their factions are still clearly miles apart on whether they will rule out a euro vote before the next election.

    And Cabinet Ministers have been contradicting each other every other day.

    Last Sunday, John Reid said it was a question of when Britain would join the euro.

    Then on Wednesday, Jack Straw said it was first of all a question of if Britain should join.

    On Thursday, John Prescott said they hadn’t even decided whether the question itself was if or when.

    On Friday, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor were so concerned about the depth of the splits that they issued a joint statement to deny there were any splits at all.

    And yet we now hear that the Prime Minister does not want to hold a full Cabinet discussion on the euro until he has marched members of the Cabinet in one by one to beat up the Chancellor in private.

    I have a simple message for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor – let us all see the available evidence now.

    That way, we can weigh all the facts up for ourselves and come to our own conclusions.

    The Conservatives’ position is clear.

    We would not take Britain into the euro because we believe that giving up our ability to set our own interest rates would be…

    · bad for British jobs…
    · bad for the British economy….
    · and bad for the British people.

    We believe Gordon Brown’s five tests are a sham.

    Of course the Chancellor is right to say that it would be damaging to join the euro…

    · without the necessary convergence or flexibility…
    · or if joining would be bad for investment, financial services, or jobs.

    But there is no case for saying that any of these tests have been met.

    France has 2.5 million people unemployed; and Germany nearly double that.

    It is impossible to see how the Government could argue that joining the euro would be good for jobs.

    In fact, the opposite is true.

    But, of course, these economic tests are no more than an elaborate smokescreen.

    Because the only test that matters to the Government is the political one.

    They may pretend that they want to join the euro for economic reasons.

    They may argue that remaining outside the euro will damage our economic prospects – hitting our competitiveness, our trade performance and our ability to attract investment.

    But the fact is that despite being outside the euro, Britain remains a more attractive destination for inward investment than any eurozone country.

    We remain the world’s third favourite location for inward investors, after China and the United States.

    Not being in the euro has done our investment performance no harm at all.

    And the example of Switzerland, for that matter, shows that it is possible to live prosperously alongside the euro, at the heart of Europe, without adopting the single currency.

    But we will not retain our position for long if our domestic competitiveness continues to be undermined and we cease to be an attractive place to do business.

    Our trade performance tells the same story.

    In the euro’s first three years, British goods exports to the eurozone grew by 26.4 per cent – faster than France, Germany or Italy.

    But again, in the long term, our trade performance will depend on our ability to provide goods and services to a competitive standard at a competitive cost.

    So long as our productivity growth stagnates as it has for the past five years, we are in danger of slipping behind our competitors.

    And by that I do not just mean our competitors in the EU, but all those around the world.
    As we speak, the current uncertainty is doing damage to our competitive position.

    The Government is split and concentrating on healing political rows rather than on healing the public services.

    And, meanwhile, business is crying out for more certainty.

    My message to the Prime Minister is simple.

    Ever since becoming Prime Minister he has made it clear that he is in favour of the euro in principle.

    If, despite all the economic evidence, and despite all the splits in his Cabinet, he remains determined to take Britain into the euro, then…

    …he should admit that his is an entirely political decision…
    …and he should get on with calling a referendum so the British people can have their say.

    If not, he should forget about it and get on with what matters to the British people – delivering sustained prosperity and world-class public services.

    Constitution

    I am going to turn now to my third and final proposition – that the Government’s policy on the European Constitution, like its policy on the euro, threatens to give people a raw deal.

    The Convention on the Future of Europe is drawing up a draft constitution that may determine the shape of Europe for the next half-century.

    But right now, Europe faces tougher challenges than it has for many years.

    For a long time, we Conservatives have argued that the European Union is faced with a crisis of democracy and accountability.

    Turnout in European elections has fallen below fifty per cent across Europe.

    The peoples of Europe feel little ownership of European institutions.

    But at the same time the Europe Union is growing.

    Ten new states will join next year, increasing the EU’s population to four hundred and fifty million.

    We have always seen enlargement as one of the European Union’s most important tasks.

    But I fear that the direction being taken by the draft European Constitution will do little to serve the interests of the people of Europe, present or future.

    The peoples of Europe, and most particularly those in enlargement states, want jobs and prosperity — but the EU’s economic performance has been poor, and unemployment is far too high.

    Across the EU, people also want to feel connected to the laws and institutions that government them — but at present, our democracies face a great challenge — people feel alienated from the political process.

    Economic reform and political connection – these are the two points a modern, forward-looking EU should focus on.

    But though it is clear — and almost universally agreed — that the EU is in desperate need of reform — the Convention is looking backwards towards a vision of Europe that is wholly outdated.

    Now is not the time for more centralization and deeper integration in the EU.

    It’s time, as can be seen so clearly from the health of democracy in Switzerland, to reinforce democracy in nation states.

    The Conservative Party has a different vision of the future of the European Union.

    We want to see the decentralising of powers back towards national parliaments.

    Not least because, in the case of many of the new, enlargement states, these Parliaments are young, hopeful institutions we should seek to support, not to undermine.

    That way we can achieve a Europe that is more democratic, more accountable, and better suited to enlargement.

    And it is because we believe so passionately in an alternative and, we think, better vision of a modern Europe…

    …because we believe in the dream of a prosperous, harmonious, enlarged Europe that works for all its people…
    …we believe that the people of Britain should have the opportunity to vote on any proposed European Constitution.

    Since the current Labour Government came to power in 1997, there have been 34 referendums in Britain.

    Referendums have been held on everything from devolution to elected mayors – and have been promised on regional assemblies.

    In short, referendums have become the norm wherever changes have been proposed to the way people are represented and governed.

    But when it comes to the European Constitution – a constitution that will decide how every person in this country is governed, regardless of where they live – the Government doesn’t think the British people need a say.

    The Government’s defence is that the European Constitution will merely be a ‘tidying-up exercise’.

    Let’s challenge that assertion.

    The Prime Minister meets Giscard d’Estaing tonight.

    If this is merely a tidying up exercise, then a lot of what is currently being proposed must be dropped.

    Not least the plans for…

    · a single European foreign minister
    · a Constitution with legally enforceable fundamental rights
    · the establishment of legal status for the EU – the prerequisite of a state
    · the bringing of foreign, defence and home affairs, including asylum and immigration policy, under European jurisdiction
    · the extension of EU competence over criminal law including the establishment of an EU public prosecutor.
    · the adoption of qualified majority voting, rather than unanimity, as the default mode of European decision making
    · and plans to establish a fixed term five year presidency of the EU, even if that means Tony Blair having to reconsider what he will do with his retirement.

    Unless these, and other, items are dropped, then this cannot be called mere tidying up.

    As things stand, there can be no doubt that the draft constitution proposes deep and dangerous changes to how the British people, and all other peoples of Europe, are governed.

    What could strengthen the Prime Minister’s negotiating position more, and what could reassure those who fear what will emerge from this Convention more, than a commitment to giving the British people the right to make up their own minds on a proposed European Constitution?

    In just six years they have held 34 referendums.

    And there are many more to come.

    But on the only two issues of absolutely crucial importance to every single person in Britain – membership of the euro and signing up to a European Constitution – the Government is playing political games.

    On the euro, it has promised a referendum – but is clearly planning to call one only if and when it believes it can win.

    On the Constitution it speaks volumes that the Government has so arrogantly dismissed calls for the British people to have any say at all.

    It refuses to grant them a referendum.

    Contrast this with Switzerland, where a series of referendums were held only yesterday.

    Conclusion

    Historically, Britain is a great trading nation.

    Globally, we were the forefathers of free trade.

    We retain close and important ties with Switzerland and with so many countries across the world, within the EU and outside it.

    At home, a Conservative Government will recognize that it is the flexibility and innovation at the heart of our economy that determines our ability to compete internationally, far more than whether or not we share the same currency as others.

    We believe that if we hold no-one in our society back, we will be better placed to achieve this competitiveness and to ensure that no-one in our country is left behind.

    Internationally, we recognize that people don’t want a European super-state that leaves them feeling alienated from the faceless institutions that make their laws.

    The people of Europe deserve to live in a harmonious union of free moving, free trading nations, fostering prosperity and stability.

    The nations of Europe should settle for nothing less.

  • Caroline Spelman – 2003 Speech on Government and Iraq

    Caroline Spelman – 2003 Speech on Government and Iraq

    The speech made by Caroline Spelman in Westminster Hall on 4 June 2003.

    I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner) for securing this debate. There has been a dearth of debate on Iraq, particularly in the post-conflict period. Since Baghdad fell, we have been short of opportunities to discuss the matter. I believe that we are all glad to welcome the Minister back to the Department for International Development, but I am sure that the frustration of Members is tangible to him. He should be exonerated from the comments and criticisms that I am about to make because he was not in the Department during the period in question, but I have to ask why the contingency planning was so poor.

    As the former Secretary of State admitted in an interview on the Politics Show this past weekend,

    ‘the preparations for post conflict were poor, and we’ve got the chaos and suffering that we’ve got now.’

    She went on to say that the advice that she was giving about the need

    ‘to keep order, to keep basic humanitarian services running’

    was, to quote her, ‘all being ignored’.

    Those extremely serious allegations need further scrutiny. We cannot expect the Minister in a Westminster Hall debate of an hour and a half to give adequate answers to all the questions that have been asked, but there must be a thorough post mortem on why the contingency planning for the war was so poor.

    There is no excuse for the terrible sense of déjà vu that we are experiencing. The lessons from Afghanistan, which was a recent conflict, were not applied. The record in Hansard shows that in November and December last year the Secretary of State was deluged with questions, in which she was asked what contingency plans her Department was making for a possible conflict in Iraq. The record bears me out that a one-word answer of ‘None’ was given. In January, when asked what discussions were taking place with the Governments of surrounding countries about dealing with the impact of the conflict, the answer that came back was, ‘None.’

    I do not exonerate the former Secretary of State (Clare Short) from blame. It is unfortunate that she is not here this morning, participating in the debate. While criticising the poor planning, she should also be willing to answer some criticisms about her role in the matter. I feel strongly about such issues. There is a clear need to prioritise quickly. As other hon. Members have said, the key lesson is security, security, security. That should have been learned from Afghanistan and should have come as no surprise. The lack of security hits the vulnerable in Iraq most severely. As the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) said, it is women who suffer the most in the post-conflict scenario. It was recently reported that 13 schoolchildren were abducted from school in central Baghdad. It is not safe to get on with ordinary life. That is the reality of the situation, so we can hardly say that we have fulfilled our role in accordance with the Geneva convention as an occupying force restoring and maintaining law and order. That is a clear failing.

    Children are the other vulnerable group. I was appalled to learn that there is no possibility of a child nutrition survey. I saw shepherd boys lying in hospital in Kuwait, who had been injured in the conflict. A 14-year-old weighed only four and a half stone as a result of chronic malnutrition. There is an urgent need to help the most vulnerable, but that cannot be done without security.

    I join other hon. Members in chiding the Government on their contingency planning for phase 4. Clearly, it has failed. Phase 4 envisaged taking on board the Iraqi army and police, purging and vetting the Ba’athist elements and recycling them to help keep the peace in their own country. We were told that that did not work out because people removed their uniforms and went home with their automatic weaponry, which aggravated the security situation. Given the lessons learned in Afghanistan, will the Minister explain why there was no back-up plan for phase 4? The advantage about Iraq was that at least there was an army and a police force, and some possibility of recycling them.

    What is the thinking about inter-ethnic tension? Kirkuk has become a no-go area for the non-governmental organisations to work in because the returning Kurds are at loggerheads with the Arabs. The problem is spreading to Mosul. The situation is entirely predictable. It could have been envisaged in any contingency plan that was made last year. How does the coalition intend to deal with a situation that is only likely to become worse? I flag that up now to try to prevent a disaster from happening.

    After decades of distorted priorities under Saddam Hussein and the impact of sanctions, it is no surprise that the utilities are in such a bad state. It is a good deal worse than a sticking plaster job. The fact that there were no spares for the power stations and water supply plants has produced a chronic situation. It could all have been envisaged in the contingency planning. I have received calls from people who work in the utilities here and who want to help to restore the utilities there. Why were such matters not factored into contingency planning? Why were experts who were willing to help with the problem not lined up in advance? I reiterate that we need a proper post mortem into why the Government’s contingency planning for Iraq was so weak.

    What about the relationship with the United Nations? Resolution 1483 gives America and Britain legal cover to occupy and govern Iraq, but it has been said by the leaders of our countries that the UN will have a “vital” role to play. However, so far it seems to be very much the junior partner. The group whose role is most consistently eroded seems to be the Iraqi people. On 2 April, the Prime Minister said:

    ‘Iraq should not be run either by the coalition or by the UN but should be run by the Iraqis.’

    Is that still the case? Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s envoy to Iraq, John Sawers, told The Times that the Iraqis are not ready for democracy and that the coalition would appoint a political committee of 25 to 30 Iraqis. What role do the Government expect the Iraqi people, and women in particular, to play in running their own country?

    None of my remarks is intended to denigrate the hard work and accomplishments of our armed forces—we are all proud of what they have achieved in Iraq.

    The information that I have received from recently returned aid workers is that the Iraqi people are, contrary to much of what we hear in the media, delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein and glad to have British forces there trying to restore order amid the anarchy. Of course, they would like the current phase to end, and they would like to see a plan setting out the way forward.

    However, that should not detract from the role that our armed forces played in liberating the country from the repression that it suffered for far too long. The coalition’s victory over Saddam was swift and impressive, and our forces did Britain proud in their successful prosecution of the campaign. Our responsibility is to ensure that we do not ruin the peace.

  • Jonathan Evans – 2003 Speech Ahead of the Preparation for the European Council in Thessaloniki

    Jonathan Evans – 2003 Speech Ahead of the Preparation for the European Council in Thessaloniki

    The speech made by Jonathan Evans, the then Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, on 4 June 2003.

    Mr President,

    I congratulate you, President-in-Office, on the progress that has been made during the Greek Presidency on progressing enlargement. The special Athens Council in April was a landmark in the history of Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and we look forward to the ten applicant states taking their rightful place in the new Europe.

    However, looking at the priorities which were set out by the Presidency, two of them in particular have, sadly, been a disappointment.

    First, the Lisbon process. After three years, this agenda is stalled, indeed going backwards. It is disappointing that the Presidency has been unable to persuade Governments to get their act together on an issue that is fundamental to the prosperity of people across the Union. As a result, many EU countries are looking to a future of economic stagnation and deflation.

    Second, the Presidency wanted to see “the new Europe as an international motor for peace and co-operation”. Of course, the Iraq crisis was a difficult one. However, the way in which, during the Greek Presidency, the ‘Gang of Four’ convened in April in Brussels to consider alternative defence structures to NATO, merely reinforced anti-American sentiment.

    Thessaloniki will also mark the end of the Convention on the Future of Europe, when former President Giscard presents the conclusions of eighteen months of discussion. The Convention still has work to do in the coming two weeks, but I wanted to comment today on the emerging draft Articles published last week.

    At Laeken, Heads of State and Government said: “Within the Union, the European institutions must be brought closer to its citizens”. Having looked at the draft Articles in this Convention document, I fear that this noble ambition has fallen somewhat short of the mark. Indeed, I would say that, in many ways, it heads in precisely the opposite direction.

    The Convention is proposing a European Union that is more centralised, more bureaucratic, in many ways less democratic and certainly more federalist than is currently the case.

    I am a long-standing supporter of Britain’s membership of the European Union. But, the document that Heads of Government are likely to see in Thessaloniki is one that does, in my view, change the nature of the relationship between Member States and the European Union.

    In summary:

    A Constitution

    Incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights

    Legal status for the Union

    A President for the EU

    A Foreign Minister for the EU

    The collapse of the second and third pillars

    A Common Foreign and Security Policy

    The eventual framing of an EU defence policy

    A requirement for economic policies to be co-ordinated

    Harmonisation of certain taxes

    The establishment of a European Public Prosecutor

    The British Government has called the Constitution a “tidying-up exercise”, and therefore not worthy of being put to the people in a referendum. In contrast, the Danish Prime Minister is to submit the Constitution to a referendum because: “the EU’s constitution is so new and large a document that it would be right to hold a referendum on it”. 80% of the British public agrees.

    The former Prime Minister of Italy, Lamberto Dini, who also sits in the Convention, has said: “The Constitution is not just an intellectual exercise. It will quickly change people’s lives … “.

    This is not just a case of the British Government dismissing the right of the British people to have a say on their own future, it is also that the Convention proposals fundamentally change the relationship between the Union and the Member States and the way in which we are all governed.

    For those who have cherished the concept of a United States of Europe, the blueprint has been set out by Giscard, and the debate on the consequences of this draft Constitution should be based on this fundamental fact so honestly and sincerely articulated by President Prodi and many speeches in this debate.

    When the Inter-Governmental Conference begins its work later this year, my Party is determined to see that the accession states not only have a right to contribute to the discussion, they must also have a vote in Council on the crucial decisions it will take. The outcome of the IGC will impact on people in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, just as much as London, Paris and Berlin. It is unacceptable for the EU 15 to impose a radical new Constitution on these new Member States without them having a proper, democratic role in the outcome.

    We have long been the most ardent supporters of enlargement and the rights of the accession states to take their place at the European top table. But our Europe is one where diversity is celebrated, not one where countries are forced into an institutional straightjacket. We want a Europe that is democratic, prosperous, works with the United States to defend our freedoms and confront common threats. The Convention takes us down a different route to a Europe where the nation state is no longer the foundation on which the Union rests.

  • Damian Green – 2003 Speech at the LGA Conference

    Damian Green – 2003 Speech at the LGA Conference

    The speech made by Damian Green, the then Shadow Secretary of State for Education, on 5 June 2003.

    Last summer when I addressed your conference in Swindon, I arrived to be greeted by the local paper, which had as its entire front page a strong attack on Estelle Morris for snubbing the LEA and letting down Swindon’s schools. It is interesting to see that 12 months on, with a new Secretary of State, there has been such a huge improvement in relations between the Department for Education and Local Government—or so David Miliband tells me.

    I am for obvious reasons going to talk today about the funding crisis that is hitting schools up and down the country, in areas controlled by different political parties, in urban as well as rural areas. But I want to be constructive. I want to devote most of my speech to positive proposals about the future freedoms we need to give to schools, and the future role for successful LEAs.

    I will just say a few words about the current fiasco. It is not often that a Conservative politician has the pleasure of quoting the New Statesman, so I will enjoy agreeing with Francis Beckett in last week’s magazine. He wrote “Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, has for three weeks focussed his formidable political intellect on the schools budget crisis. Unfortunately he has not focussed on solving it. He has focussed on shifting the blame.”

    Exactly right. I think the Government owes an apology to LEAs for trying to set them as the fall guys for this crisis. I have seen many of the letters your councils have written showing how much money you were passing to schools. Detailed, factual letters, which have blown out of the water the idea that there is a five hundred million pound gap where the money has simply disappeared. I think everyone here knows that the crisis has been caused by a toxic combination of a local Government settlement that treated some councils much better than others, and a raft of increased costs on our schools which all but cancelled out the extra money that was put in. Stir in a dash of fancy footwork with standards fund money and you have the current mess.

    So let’s spend today looking forward instead of back. What I think would be the worst outcome from this crisis would be a new funding system devised in a hurry, because the Secretary of State is having a fit of pique with Local Government. Whatever your views about how to fund our schools, policy making on the hoof, driven by a sense of crisis and the search for scapegoats, will always be bad policy-making.

    It is extraordinary to realise that in one part of the Whitehall jungle the Deputy Prime Minister is running a committee designed to provide an LEA-based solution for future school funding, which is told to report by the end of this month, and next door the Prime Minister’s officials are working hard on a solution which cuts out the LEAs altogether. We are told that the Education Secretary is in the second camp.

    This is a lousy way to make policy. If we are to have effective and long lasting policy, rather than eye-catching press releases and poor delivery, Policy needs to be considered and evaluated. It should not be a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis, however serious, and it should certainly not be used as an excuse to shift the blame for current problems.

    The first step towards devising a funding system which will stand a chance of being fair and durable is to set it in the context of a regime which gives a clear role to Local Education Authorities, and freedoms for schools so that they can be the driving force for improvements in standards.

    Every policy these days needs a road map. So I think there should be a road map by which schools can become genuinely autonomous institutions. I think there should be a radical cut in the power of Government to interfere in the day-to-day running of our schools. I want this because the decisions that will improve the performance of schools year after year have to be made by heads, teachers, governors and parents.

    The guiding principle, as I have said, is that schools run schools best. By far the biggest influence on the standards set by a school is the effectiveness of the Head. So I want to go much further than the rather half-hearted attempts at decentralisation that the Government has already set out. The concept of ‘earned autonomy’ is, by any standards, a nonsense. The phrase itself is an oxymoron. If you are autonomous you cannot have earned it from a higher authority. And in practice the policy of earned autonomy is being implemented a rather arbitrary and centralising way.

    So we will replace this with a concept of assumed autonomy. If a school wants to be autonomous, and they have met some transparent criteria about standards in performance, discipline and governance, it will be their choice as a school whether they accept autonomous status. If they do, they will have control over how you spend they money, which will come to the school in a direct lump sum, and therefore mean that they will have more freedoms in other key areas.

    This autonomy will give schools the choice to manage their own affairs, remain under the control of their local authority, or join a federation of other autonomous schools. They could choose to employ their own teachers, have control over their own spending, and decide from where they buy support services such as transport, payroll, or catering.

    My intention is that the vast majority of schools would qualify for these freedoms. Obviously those who are seeing poor results, unacceptable disciplinary standards, or problems with general governance will need to be helped to reach the acceptable standard. But these will be the exceptions. One of the key functions of OFSTED, which will continue to undertake inspections, will be to look at these schools to put them back to full health.

    Clearly if schools are to be given the choice to be autonomous there is a significant change in the role of the Local Education Authority. Good LEAs will have a role in providing services that schools do not want to manage for themselves. For example, transport in many rural areas, perhaps Special Education Needs, payroll services. I am sure that local authorities that have a good track record in providing support services will continue to find a ready market for their services. Indeed, those who do not have a good track record would find themselves considerably sharpened up if they wished to continue to be significant service providers.

    The other key role for LEAs will be monitoring the progress of schools, particularly those that are struggling. There is enough data—at least enough data—demanded of schools now for this to be monitored on a continuous basis without the imposition of any new form-filling. This would allow the LEA to act as an early warning system between OFSTED inspections.

    And there is a potential new role for LEAs under our scheme for State Scholarships, which will allow new schools, state-funded but not state-run, to meet the needs of parents who are dissatisfied with the current provision. We want to create a new type of school within the maintained sector, of particular benefit to those in the inner cities who so often are unable to exercise the choices about their children’s education which the middle classes take for granted. I believe that an excellent education should be within the reach of everyone regardless of their personal circumstances. Now if we are to allow new bodies, whether voluntary or private, to set up new schools there needs to be a gateway body through which they pass, to check they meet the criteria. This could be an important role for local authorities. Since we would abolish the surplus places rule to enable the creation of these new schools, this role would replace the school planning function at local authority level.

    So there is a role for good LEAs in my vision of the future. A role in providing services for schools that want them, helping to provide information for parents so that standards can be continuously monitored and improved, and acting as a gateway for new schools from new providers within the maintained sector.

    All of this will necessarily entail a simpler funding system. Before this recent crisis I hadn’t met many who thought that the current system was simple enough to understand, or fair enough to deal justly with the different needs of different areas of the country. In the aftermath of this crisis, I suspect I never will. We are close to the position in the old joke about the Schleswig- Holstein problem. Only three people understood it, and one had died, one had gone mad, and the third had forgotten the answer.

    So we are working on a national funding formula for schools, and for the education functions of local authorities. This would remove the need for central Government to set minimum levels of delegation and to ring fence budgets. Which will mean that many of the problems that have arisen this year will have less chance of rearing their heads in the future.

    It will also allow parents to compare funding levels in different areas, force Governments to defend the weighting applied to different factors, and allow good local authorities to use savings from administration for improved services. The funding formula per child in a given area would provide a base figure for the State Scholarships—money which would follow the child.

    Now do I have a detailed plan that I can hand out afterwards? No. I try to take my own advice, and decide policies slowly and carefully, in consultation with those who will have to implement them. I have already had a number of useful discussions with practitioners pointing out the various difficulties, and I know that the Education Commission under the Chairmanship of Sir Robert Balchin is also looking closely at this issue. I look forward to hearing their findings on the issue.

    What is important is not just getting this central policy right, but putting it in the right overall context. That context is the one I mentioned a few minutes ago, in which the most important decisions in the Education System are taken by heads, teachers, parents and governors, rather than politicians.

    I hope it is clear that I am not, by habit or inclination, a centralist. But I am also not an anarchist. All schools, however independent we can make them, need to demonstrate to the wider community on a continuous basis that they are doing well for their pupils. That is why I see a continuing role for OFSTED both in inspection and in providing advice so that improvement programmes can be set in place in schools with severe problems. The assessment of the progress of improvements will also be a job for OFSTED.

    What I want to see is a system of much more independent schools, fulfilling their obligations to their local communities in an open and transparent way, checked regularly by outside bodies, and buying services they need from their preferred supplier. The main drivers for improving standards in these schools would not be central Government targets; it would be the heads and teachers, answerable to parents who will have been given choice in a way that the current system denies them.

    In this system the role of Governors will be at least as important as before. Good Governors are crucial to a well-run school. We are looking at the size of current boards of Governors, to see if they are not too large in some cases, and also at the detailed responsibilities of Governors, to see if they are not too onerous. It may well be that a more strategic role is necessary, both to make the job feasible for busy people, and to allow Governors to concentrate on what they should be doing.

    There is a thread running through all the proposals I have set out this morning. It is the notion of trust. We all say we want a more responsive school system, which offers excellence in our inner cities as well as the leafy suburbs. But we will never achieve that spread of excellence by diktat from Whitehall, and we will certainly never achieve it if the Government uses the notion of reform as a chance to pass the buck.

    There is a route out of the current morass. It requires a policy that puts the school at the centre of improving standards, and gives the appropriate role to politicians at both local and national level. Only if we trust professionals and parents to know what they want and how it can be delivered will we release the latent energies and talents of everyone within our school system.

    It is not a risk-free option. Some schools will do better than others. Some schools will fail, as they do under any system. But what I become more convinced about with every new crisis in our school system is that we will never achieve excellence under a centrally-driven, top-down, Whitehall-dominated system which generates more initiatives than improvements, and which demoralises teachers, heads, and local authorities. We need a complete change of direction. At present a quarter of our children leave primary school unable to read, write and count properly. 30,000 leave secondary school without a single qualification. The culture of truancy is growing, with a 15 per cent growth in the number of truants since 1996/97. Nearly half of all fourteen year olds do not reach the required standards in English, Maths and Science. And finally, the DfES now sends out 20 pages of paperwork every day of the school year, a real sign of the Whitehall knows best culture.
    We need a complete change of direction away from centralisation and towards local control.

    The ideas I have set out are designed to achieve just that. If we bring them to fruition, we will be able to ensure that no child is left behind, and no child is held back by the failures of a distant civil servant or Minister. We must give every child a fair deal, and a real chance to fulfil his or her potential. That is what our schools can achieve, and that is what we must achieve if we are to become a successful and civilised community in this country.