Tag: 2011

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, in June 2011 at the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre.

Thank you for coming this morning.

The issue I want to talk about today can be summed up in a couple of stories.

While out campaigning during the local elections, not for the first time, I met someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a decade.

He hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.

It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children.

But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.

And that it’s just not right for the country to be supporting him not to work, when other families on his street are working all hours just to get by.

The other story is about people in a very different world from that man.

The story of Southern Cross care homes – where millions were plundered over the years leaving the business vulnerable, the elderly people in their care at risk and their families feeling betrayed.

Those elderly people were treated simply as commodities.

This story shames our country.

And there is a link between the man on incapacity benefit and those executives at Southern Cross.

What is that link?

That these are people who are just not taking responsibility – and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.

It’s not about responsibility to the state, or the government, but responsibility to your neighbours, your friends and many others who you may never meet but who are affected by your actions.

For my party, these two stories point to some hard truths about what people think about us and what we must do if we are to win their trust again.

For too many people at the last election, we were seen as the party that represented these two types of people.

Those at the top and the bottom, who were not showing responsibility and were shirking their duties. From bankers who caused the global financial crisis to some of those on benefits who were abusing the system because they could work – but didn’t.

Labour – a party founded by hard working people for hard working people – was seen, however unfairly, as the party of those ripping off our society.

My party must change.

We were intensely relaxed about what happened at the top of society.

I say – no more.

We must create a boardroom culture that rewards wealth creation, not failure.

To those entrepreneurs and business people who generate wealth, create jobs and deserve their top salaries, I’m not just relaxed about you getting rich, I applaud you.

But every time a chief executive gives himself a massive pay rise – more than he deserves or his company can bear – it undermines trust at every level of society.

We cannot and we must not be relaxed about that.

We did too little to ensure responsibility at the bottom.

I say – No more.

We will be a party that rewards contribution, not worklessness.

If you believe in wealth creation and the welfare state like we do, we must acknowledge the only way to protect both of them is through responsibility.

We must be once again the party of the grafters.

And these stories are not just important for Labour. They are important for the country, too.

When I think about the kind of country I want my sons to grow up in, it is a country where they—and millions of their generation—can do better than their parents.

It’s what I call the ‘promise of Britain’ – that the next generation does better than the last.

But what does a better life mean?

Better in terms of jobs, housing and the material things that matter. Of course.

But better for me, and indeed I think all of us, is not just about the material – not just about earning money and owning things.

Because that doesn’t tell us anything about the feel, fabric and character of our country – or about the most important thing in life, which is about our relationships with each other.

That’s what I want to talk about today.

We need to understand the value of responsibility to each other and what it really means.

We need to understand why Labour in government talked about fixing it but didn’t.

Why the Conservative-led government’s approach is woefully inadequate.

And what the way forward is if we are to build a greater sense of responsibility and national mission for our country.

Let me start by talking about why these values of responsibility, of duty to each other, matter.

One of my earliest memories is listening to my father talk about his experiences of Britain during and after the Second World War.

He talked about his life in the Navy—how it brought people together from all backgrounds and walks of life in a common spirit.

He talked of the sense that they all looked out for each other, despite all the things that could have kept them apart.

He remembered most the deep fellowship that helped win the war and build the peace.

When I think about my children, I want them to grow up in a Britain like that.

I want them to understand what makes this country special.

I want them to live in a country where people look after each other, look out for each other, care for each other, where compassion and responsibility to one another are valued.

Tony Blair once said he wanted a country ”where your child in distress is my child, your parent ill and in pain is my parent, your friend unemployed or homeless is my friend; your neighbour my neighbour. That is the true patriotism of a nation.”

This patriotism is all around us. We see it every day.

The unsung heroes who make such a difference to the lives of others.

The people who will give up every Friday night so young people have somewhere to go and something to do.

The volunteers who help out the local hospitals at all hours of day and night.

The young men and women who risk life and limb in the armed forces for our protection.

Care, common-feeling and compassion are all around us.

But let’s be honest. We also look around and see how those ties which bind us together have become frayed.

In my father’s war-time generation, people had a deeply-held feeling of responsibility to others.

Today, the overwhelming majority of people – at every level of society from rich to poor – still play by the rules.

Working hard. Paying taxes. Obeying the law. Caring for others.

Good citizens.

But they feel others are not doing the same. They are having to pay the price for the behaviour of an irresponsible minority.

They feel that while they stick to the rules, others are getting one over on them.

It’s part of the squeeze on the middle.

The services on which they rely are being cut by an austerity government after a global crisis caused by bankers who still get multi-million pound bonuses.

The gap grows every wider between the rewards for those at the top and the squeeze on the living standards of everyone else.

And they still have to pay taxes to fund the bankers and to fund some people on benefits who aren’t bothering to work.

People who act responsibly – people who do their duty – are getting angry. And I understand why.

That irresponsibility is not only unfair on everyone else; it is bad for the economy.

And people feel the consequences of irresponsibility in different parts of their lives.

The rubbish fly-tipped by the roadside.

The throb of loud music, played by the neighbour in the small hours.

The overgrown and litter-strewn front garden.

And every time someone acts with casual indifference to the lives of those around them, it undermines the trust of others and frays the bonds which bind our society together.

We should not demonise people anywhere in society.

I do not accept the Conservative characterisation of those on benefits as being feckless and worthless.

The man was I talking about earlier cared about his children and wanted to bring them up right, but the system neither demanded nor encouraged him to do the right thing.

We have a responsibility to provide people with opportunities to improve their lives and escape poverty.

And we have a responsibility to look after the vulnerable.

But those who can work have a responsibility to take the opportunities available.

The same is true of high earners.

It is vital that we reward and nurture wealth creation.

But too often we see people getting pay and rewards which are not linked to what they have achieved.

This isn’t just unfair – it’s bad for business, jobs and our economy.

Take an example. Rolls Royce is a great British business, world -leading, innovative.

Sir John Rose who recently retired as their Chief Executive was a great British business leader – creating wealth and keeping jobs in this country.

In contrast Fred Goodwin, who ran the Royal bank of Scotland, was at the heart of the irresponsibility which led to the collapse of the banking system.

He helped bring our country’s banks to their knees.

And yet at the time the financial crisis hit, Fred Goodwin was being paid over three times more than Sir John Rose.

What greater evidence could there be of the failure to link pay and performance in our boardrooms.

Back in the 1970s, very high rates of taxation put people off creating greater wealth.

The link between pay and performance was broken.

There can be no going back to that.

But the danger today is that pay and performance have become detached again.

Over the last twelve years Chief Executive pay in Britain’s top companies has quadrupled while share prices have remained flat.

And according to the recent High Pay Commission report, just in the last 10 years, the pay of someone at the top of a company has gone from 69 times the average wage to 145 times.

Things haven’t always been this way.

It is worth recalling that JP Morgan founded his financial company on the idea that the ratio of pay between the highest and lowest paid employee should be no more than 20 to 1.

It isn’t for government to set maximum ratios but we do need change to encourage the responsibility we need.

To carry that out, my party needs to understand where New Labour succeeded and failed.

Those who founded the Labour movement were motivated to do so by the idea that they could achieve more together than as isolated individuals just looking out for themselves.

We continued that tradition in government.

Repairing the fabric of society through investment in schools, hospitals and the police.

But we did not do enough to change the ethic we inherited from the 1980s – ‘the take what you can culture’ of those Conservative governments.

New Labour in office talked about rights and responsibilities.

So, why didn’t we succeed in changing the ethic of our society in the way we wanted?

Because we were not consistent enough in applying these values across our society.

We were too slow to recognise the need for greater responsibility among those on benefits.

And we saw responsibility as only applying to those on benefits, because they were getting something from the state.

That meant the responsibilities of others were ignored – the business executives, the bankers, the Chief Executives.

Just because they – or anyone else – weren’t getting something from the government it doesn’t mean they don’t have responsibilities.

Because the most important responsibility is not to government, it is to each other.

Whether it is not abusing the trust of your neighbour by claiming benefits when you can work….

Or not paying yourself an inflated salary to the detriment of your company, your shareholders or your staff.

So we sent out the wrong message to those at the top of society.

And we all know what happened: the banks acting as if there was no tomorrow and causing the worst financial crisis in a century.

And even after that happened the Confederation of British Industry, the Financial Services Authority and even the Governor of the Bank of England sounded more willing to speak out on top pay than we did.

And we did not do enough either to acknowledge the difficulty in creating a responsible society when there is a huge gap between the rich and everyone else.

When people lead parallel lives, living in the same town but different worlds, we should not be surprised that it’s hard to nurture a sense of responsibility and solidarity.

That is why we have to tackle the new inequality in this country between the top and everyone else.

Now what about the current government and its approach?

On the surface, our responsibility to each other is a big concern of theirs and indeed we hear repeated tirades against people on benefits.

But because of their values—and true intentions— they cannot build the kind of responsibility that I have been talking about.

Just take their current welfare reform bill.

We support their attempts to build on our plans to make those who can work do so.

But their bill will make it harder for people to be responsible.

It undermines childcare support for those seeking work.

It punishes people in work who save, denying them the help they currently get through tax credits.

It cuts help for the most vulnerable, those living in care homes, who receive support to get out and about.

And, it takes away money from those who are dying even though they have contributed to the system all their lives.

None of this will help people show more responsibility. In fact, it does the opposite.

Nor are they ensuring there is the work available for people who are responsible.

And when they talk about the Big Society, and people showing responsibility through volunteering, they don’t seem to get that you can’t volunteer in your local Sure Start centre or library when it has been closed.

You cannot create a good society – or even a big one – simply with pleas for more volunteers.

Finally we will never encourage a sense of responsibility if society is becoming more and more unfair, and more and more divided.

The idea that we’re all in it together under this government is just a cruel joke.

So what are the lessons we should learn to build the kind of society we want to see?

Above all, it is that responsibility and duty to one another must apply across our country.

We cannot lecture people on benefits about responsibility if we do not also address the problem at the top—in the public and private sectors.

It is why it is right that proper action was taken against MPs who defrauded our nation through their expenses.

It is why corporate tax avoidance and evasion are so wrong and need to be tackled relentlessly.

So how do we change things to ensure a better link between top pay and performance?

As other countries require, we need companies to justify and explain what they are doing.

On pay, companies should publish the ratio of the pay of its top earner compared to its average employee.

If it can be justified by performance, they should have nothing to fear.

We need shareholders to better exercise their responsibilities to scrutinise top pay.

And we also need to recognise – as many great companies do—that firms are accountable to their workers as well as their shareholders.

Some companies already understand that having an employee on the committee that decides top pay is the right thing to do.

We should debate whether this requirement should be extended to all firms.

And of course the same should be true in the public sector.

So we need responsibility at the top of society, but we also need it at the bottom.

Again, the principle should be that we reward those who make a contribution.

I strongly believe in a welfare state that looks after those in need, including those suffering from ill health.

That principle of compassion should always be at the heart of what we do.

That is a view shared by people right across this country.

But if we are to improve the British welfare state, we must reform it so it genuinely rewards people who are responsible and contribute, as well as protecting those in need.

One area where people’s sense of fairness is under threat is social housing.

There is a terrible shortage of social housing in this country.

It will be one of the key tests of the next Labour government that we address this issue.

But we also need to do so in a way that commands public support and respect.

Need is and will remain a crucial test of who gets a house.

But across the country, there are examples of how we can also encourage people to display the responsibility that our society needs.

In Manchester, as well as helping the most vulnerable with housing, they give priority to those who are giving something back to their communities – for example, people who volunteer or who work.

They also look to reward people who have been good tenants in the past and who have paid their rent on time and have been good neighbours.

This approach means that rather than looking solely at need, priority is also given to those who contribute – who give something back.

It’s fairer and it also encourages the kind of responsible behaviour which makes our communities stronger.

It is not about punishing people. It is about rewarding people who do the right thing in their communities.

We are looking at all these issues in our policy review – but this is a principle we will seek to apply so that, as far as possible, the benefits that people receive also encourage them to do the right thing.

Let me end on this thought.

What builds a community and a country is a sense of shared responsibility, common endeavour and big national ambitions.

The Tories have no vision for our country.

No sense of national mission.

No vision for how we can deliver on the promise of Britain for the next generation.

We need a culture in our country which marks a real break with the ‘take what you can’ ways of the past.

I know that there is a yearning for that different culture.

A more responsible economy.

A more responsible society.

And a sense of common life that offers meaning and purpose.

That is the mission for our party.

That too should be the mission for our country.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the TUC Conference on 13th September 2011.

Friends, 10 years ago, Tony Blair came to the TUC.

But he didn’t deliver the speech he came with.

We all know why.

Indeed some of you were there that day in Brighton.

Trying to comprehend what had happened.

United in shock and sorrow with those who feared for their loved ones.

We said at the time, we would never forget.

And we won’t.

So let us today remember all those who died, including the British citizens and the heroic public service workers, the 343 New York City firefighters.

I am proud to come here today as Labour’s leader.

Proud of the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party, based on shared values of equality, fairness and social justice.

But most of all, I’m proud to be here because of who you represent:

The hard working men and women of Britain.

The people who look who look after the sick, who teach our children, and who through their hard work create the wealth of this country.

People like the Sodexo dinner ladies I met in Richmond last year.

They told me of their situation:

No sick pay.

Shift patterns changed without any notice.

Having to buy their own uniforms.

We can all imagine the strain that put on them and their families.

Struggling to make ends meet.

Not knowing when they were going to be called to work.

Losing money if they were ill.

This is the story of too many people in Britain today.

And surely these low-paid women had no chance against one of the most powerful companies in the world?

Wrong.

They got together, they sought the help of a union, Unison, and they campaigned for these basic rights.

And friends, thanks to their determination, things have changed.

They won better pay, sick pay, and recognition for their union.

Let us applaud them for what they have achieved and the example they have shown.

I also think of the Vauxhall car workers I met in Ellesmere Port.

During the recession in 2008, their whole plant and the livelihoods of those workers were under threat.

What did they do?

They sat down with the management.

They worked through the problems.

They made some sacrifices.

And by doing that they saved their jobs.

Let us applaud them too for what they achieved.

These two stories show what trade unions can do for the hard working people they represent.

But you won’t hear about this in most discussions of your work.

Too often the spotlight of publicity falls elsewhere.

But I come to this conference as a Labour leader who believes you deserve credit for these stories, the daily work you do.

And what do people say about new democracies around the world?

Even the Tories.

They say the right to join a trade union is vital.

If we say it abroad, we should say it at home too.

These are the reasons why I value the link between the trade union movement and the Labour Party.

It is why I will resist any attempt to break it.

And it explains why I want reforms to the Labour Party to strengthen our movement.

The three million trade union levy payers – working men and women – are a huge asset to our party.

They should never, ever, feel like passive or unwanted members of our movement.

I want them to feel part of it.

Proud of it.

And I want us reaching out to the people who are not members of our party, not even members of the trade unions, to hear their voices too.

That is the way we become a stronger movement.

Of course, there are times when you and I will disagree.

You will speak your mind.

And so will I.

But our link is secure enough, mature enough, to deal with disagreement.

Because the relationship between party and unions is not about romance or nostalgia.

It is about respect and shared values.

It is a relationship in which we listen to each other when we disagree.

And we know that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

OK, by now maybe you’re thinking, hang on, we’ve seen this movie before.

He’s about to get to the bit where he tells us to “modernise or die.”

You’re half right.

I am going to talk about change.

But I’m not just going to talk about how people need to change to suit our economy.

I’m also going to talk about how we change our economy to suit the needs of people.

Because I reject the fatalism and pessimism that can surround the debate about economic change.

Leadership is not simply about telling people to accept change being forced upon them.

It is also about helping people to shape change, and shape their futures.

That is what our movement at its best has always been about.

So today I want to talk about the big choice our country faces over the coming years.

Whether we carry on as we are, or change the way our country works for the hard working men and women you represent.

Let’s face facts.

The British economy isn’t working for millions of people in our country.

Most people’s living standards are squeezed while those at the top see runaway rewards.

In the face of massive competition from countries like China and India, too often the British answer has been to compete on the basis of low pay and low skills.

And too often it leaves workers facing insecure prospects.

My message to you today is not simply about this Government.

Not simply about the immediate economic difficulties we face.

It is something more profound.

We have to challenge many of the assumptions on which economic policy has been based for a generation.

If we don’t, we will fail the next generation.

Financial services are important to Britain and will continue to be so.

But unless we broaden our economic base and tackle irresponsibility of the banks we will be exposed to crisis as we were in 2007.

Jobs must be our priority, and we must ensure they are decent jobs at decent wages and opportunities are extended to all our young people.

We need to reward entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

But if we just shrug our shoulders about inequality, as we have too often in the past, it will hurt not just our society but our economy too.

Changing these assumptions presents huge challenges for all of us.

For the next Labour Government.

For business.

And for the trade union movement.

I want to talk to you today about how we as a country can build that new economy.

That starts with a plan for growth.

We all know there needs to be a Plan B.

We know what the Tories’ Plan A stands for.

Austerity.

We have had nine months of the British economy flat on its back.

Growth close to zero.

Unemployment up.

1 in 5 young people out of work.

And what does George Osborne say?

Britain is a “safe haven”.

Tell that to the thousands of people who lost their jobs last month.

Tell that to the 16,000 businesses that have gone bust in the last four quarters.

Tell that to the millions of British families struggling to make ends meet.

There is no safe haven for them.

The Tories have forgotten the fundamental lesson:

You cannot simply cut your way out of a deficit.

You need to grow your economy as well.

The Government’s policies are hurting.

But they are not working.

And what is the result?

Tens of billions of extra borrowing over the coming years, above what they had predicted.

The evidence is piling up showing how the Tories are wrong to be cutting too far and too fast.

And how they are failing to share the burden of deficit reduction fairly.

Between those who were responsible for creating the crisis.

And those who were not.

A trebling of student fees.

Rising rail fares.

And higher pension contributions.

In government, we worked with trade unions to reform public sector pensions.

We sat down and we negotiated.

It was difficult but we got an agreement.

That shows the way we should reform pensions in this country.

It’s not about change versus no change.

It’s about what kind of change, and how it’s done.

The Tories have set about reform in completely the wrong way.

Even before John Hutton’s report was complete, they announced a 3 per cent surcharge on millions of your members.

It was a typically bad move by a bad government trying to pick a fight.

So I fully understand why millions of decent public sector workers feel angry.

But while negotiations were going on, I do believe it was a mistake for strikes to happen.

I continue to believe that.

But what we need now is meaningful negotiation to prevent further confrontation over the autumn.

Ministers need to show public sector workers – and the people who rely upon those services – that they are serious about finding a way forward.

The Tories claim to be the party of reform.

But their actions risk derailing the vital reform of public sector pensions because many people may now opt out of the system.

That won’t save money.

It will end up costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.

And at the same time as we see millions of hard working families being hit, who is getting a tax cut?

This year they are cutting taxes for the banks.

And now what is George Osborne obsession?

Cutting the 50 pence tax rate.

For the richest 1 per cent of the population.

For people who earn over £150,000 a year.

They have raised VAT.

They have cut tax credits.

And they say that these changes are set in stone, and will not be reversed.

It tells you everything you need to know about this Government that at the same time they are chomping at the bit to cut the 50p tax rate.

And what excuse do they plan to hide behind?

The claim that it doesn’t raise that much money because people avoid paying it.

It is nonsense.

But if that is the best they can do, I’ve got a suggestion:

Mr Osborne, I’ve got a message for you.

If people are avoiding their taxes it’s your job to stop them.

And what do they offer for the other 99 per cent of the population?

Greater insecurity.

Make it easier to sack people.

Reduce protection against unfair dismissal.

This isn’t an accident.

It’s because of their values.

What they believe.

The message is clear.

It’s one rule for those at the top.

Another rule for everyone else.

They say there is no alternative.

But there is.

It is fairer and it makes economic sense.

First, prioritise tax cuts for the hard-working majority, not the super-rich.

Cut VAT now to 17.5 per cent to get the economy moving again.

Second, insist that those who caused the crisis help pay to put it right.

Renew the bankers’ bonus tax and use the money to support enterprise, put the young unemployed back to work, and to build homes.

Third, provide some international leadership.

Because if every country and continent simply focuses on it s own strategy we will never get the growth we need.

And I say to this Government, if you want an export led recovery, you won’t get it from the world engaging in collective austerity.

So these are things Ed Balls and I would be doing to get growth going at home and abroad.

But the challenge we face is even greater.

This is not just another turn of the business cycle.

A successful economic future can only be built on a different set of values.

Hard work.

Long-term commitment.

And responsibility.

A new economy will mean rejecting outdated ideas.

Rejecting the old view that the best government is always less government.

The old view that short term shareholder interests are always in best for Britain’s companies.

And the old view from some on both sides of industry, that employee representation must mean confrontation not cooperation.

A new economy will mean the government, employers, and t he workforce all shouldering new responsibilities.

Government must ensure the rules of the system favour the long term, the patient investment, the responsible business. Because paying our way in the world is going to be tougher than it’s ever been.

The short-term, fast buck, low pay solution.

That won’t win when we are competing with China and India.

And it’s no good government just walking away.

If we’re going to be the very best at the things we are good at – advanced manufacturing, creative industries, business services, pharmaceuticals, renewables – then government has to work in partnership with business.

To understand what technologies and skills we need for the future.

To provide the certainty they need to invest.

To look at what government buys so that innovative companies can grow.

And that includes companies like Bombardier – being sold down the river by this Government.

To make sure good regulation lets companies win new markets.

And to build in every region and nation the universities, the skills, banking services, and the leadership in cities and regions, that will let companies grow and create jobs.

Sometimes government should get out of the way.

Sometimes the way it regulates does hold back small business.

But sometimes government should lead.

And the financial crisis showed that.

The crisis also has significant implications for the way government will operate in the coming years.

We are not going to be able to spend our way to a new economy.

The deficit caused by the banking crisis is not going to be cured easily.

We need economic growth, and we need people to pay their fair share of taxes.

But if we were in government, we would also be making some cuts in spending.

I sometimes hear it said that Labour opposes every cut.

Some people might wish that was true.

But it’s not.

We committed ourselves to halving the deficit over four years.

That would mean cuts.

Like our plans for a 12 per cent cut in the police budget – not the 20 per cent being implemented by this Government.

Like cuts to the road programme.

And yes, reform of some benefits too.

And there are cuts that the Tories will impose that we will not be able to reverse when we return to government.

And getting the deficit down means rooting out waste too.

We all recognise that not every penny that the last Government spent was spent wisely.

All of us know that there is waste in any government.

In this Government too.

I say stop the waste.

Stop the waste of £100 million on creating another tier of politicians with elected police commissioners.

And stop the waste of billion s of pounds on an NHS reorganisation.

A reorganisation that nobody wants and nobody voted for.

So government has to change if we’re to support the new economy.

But so do our businesses.

In Britain, we should reward productive companies, not predators.

So the way our banks work needs to change.

Not just separating the retail and investment divisions, but greater competition too.

If we can strike off rogue doctors and lawyers, the banking industry must be willing to strike off those bankers who do damage to their customers, their institutions and their country.

And we shouldn’t pretend to be neutral about the way different businesses are run.

Between the way Southern Cross ran its business, and how Rolls Royce chooses to run its.

The new economy must mean more firms who invest long-term and pay their employees fairly.

That is why, back in power, we will ensure that every firm that gets a major contract from government provides apprenticeships.

Good employers recognise the need to foster co-operation between managers and workers.

Others need to do this better.

And, let’s face it, some need to make a start.

Business leaders need to explain how their salaries are related to performance.

Over the last 12 years, chief executive salaries in Britain’s top companies have quadrupled while share prices have remained flat.

In some cases these rewards are deserved.

But in others they are because of the closed circle of people that sit on remuneration committees, handing out pay and bonuses.

Frankly it’s not good enough and it has to change.

Some companies already have workers on the committee that decides top pay.

I say, every company should have an employee on their remuneration committee, so the right pay is set and it is justified.

So for me, the demand for change is from government, employers and trade unions.

For you, the trade unions, the challenge of the new economy is this:

To recognize that Britain needs to raise its game if we are to meet the challenges of the future.

And to get private sector employers in the new economy to recognize that you are relevant to that future.

Unions can offer businesses the prospect of better employee relations.

As you did during the recession.

Of course the right to industrial action will be necessary, as a last resort.

But in truth, strikes are always the consequence of failure.

Failure we cannot afford as a nation.

Instead your real role is as partners in the new economy.

But, as you know better than I, just 15 per cent of the private sector workforce are members of trade unions.

You know that you need to change, if that is to change.

That is why so many unions are making huge efforts to engage with the other 85 per cent.

But you know the biggest challenge you face when you try to do this: relevance.

Relevance in how firms grow.

Relevance in how workers get on.

Relevance right across the private sector.

And you know you will never have relevance for many workers in this country if you allow yourselves to be painted as the opponents of change.

No.

In the new economy you can, and must, be the agents of the right kind of change.

You know the new economy that emerges from this crisis must be built on foundations of co-operation, not conflict, in the workplace.

Let me end with this thought.

I know what a tough time many of your members are having at the moment.

Tough times that are also being felt by millions who aren’t your members around this country too.

The economic crisis is casting a long shadow over the hard working families of this country.

The decent men and women, who do the right thing, and who just want their kids and grandkids to hav e better chances than them.

So it feels like quite a dark time.

But the reason I am in politics, the reason I believe in the power of politics, is because these things are not inevitable.

So yes this generation, in one sense, faces a huge set of challenges that come out of the economic crisis.

But in another sense, as we always know, out of crisis comes the chance to think about the kind of economy and society we want to build.

The opportunity to grasp the change we need in this country.

To say, it doesn’t have to be this way.

An opportunity to rewrite the rules.

To build an economy that works for the hardworking majority.

To build a society that restores responsibility from top to bottom.

To build a country that stands up for the next generation, that fulfils the promise of Britain.

And to build the more prosperous, the more just, the more equal, Britain we all want to see.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the Social Market Foundation on 17th November 2011.

I am grateful to Arup, and to the Social Market Foundation and Nationwide for making this event happen.

Today I want to return to the territory that I entered in my Conference Speech six weeks ago about how we build a new economy.

An economy based on the sense of purpose and responsibility which has always underpinned the best of British business.

But let me just say this before I do.

A year ago at the time of the Government’s spending review, some people agreed with Labour that David Cameron and George Osborne were going too far and too fast and endangering our recovery.

But there were plenty of others who disagreed with us.

Today I ask those people to recognise that we have reached an economic turning point.

Not just one month’s bad news, or some disappointing figures.

But the economy flatlining for a year;

Unemployment rising rapidly;

And growth prospects bleak.

We cannot carry on like this.

With austerity at home, collective austerity abroad.

It is no solution to the problems of jobs, growth or the deficit.

Don’t believe those who would tell you that any change in course will make us like Greece.

As the Managing Director of the IMF said, the markets are as worried about the lack of growth in the economy, as they are about debt levels.

Why?

Because there is no solution to the problems of deficits without a solution to the problems of growth.

Slower growth, higher unemployment and higher inflation are why, according to the average of independent forecasts published by the Treasury yesterday, the Government may have to borrow £100 billion more over this Parliament than they had planned.

Knowing what we know now, about our economy, about growth prospects, about unemployment, about higher than expected borrowing, it would be the height of irresponsibility for the Government to carry on regardless.

Their plan is not working.

But it is hurting.

How will we ever fulfil the immense potential of our country – the promise of Britain – if we allow more than one in five of this new generation to be out of work?

This government appears to be out of touch with the real challenges facing businesses, families and young people.

It needs to start listening.

I urge David Cameron: change course now

Change course for the sake of our young people

Change course for the sake of our country.

But as well as the immediate issues we face, and this is my theme, there is a deeper sense that things aren’t right.

That the values of the British people and the values of the best in British business, are not reflected in the way our economy works.

Just in the last few weeks, top pay up forty nine percent, profits of energy companies at record levels, and concerns raised round the world about the system not working for the 99%.

Since my Conference Speech, I am delighted that the argument I made about the values we need to put back into the heart of our economy has been widely echoed, at least in part by voices as diverse as Bob Diamond and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It shouldn’t surprise us that people are looking for new answers because we live at a time of unprecedented uncertainty and insecurity.

But today I want to argue that this is not simply because of the more obvious moral case, that has rightly stirred people’s anger, but also an essential economic case.

That our argument for a new, more responsible, productive capitalism is hard-headed – not soft-hearted.

It is based on how we pay our way in the world, build long-term wealth and deliver rising living standards for the majority of people.

I’m not suggesting that the answers are easy, quick or that I have all of them.

But I am saying that the debate about the future of our economy must turn in a new direction.

The most important place to start is by pointing to the strengths we have as a country:

Great industries, from creative industries to financial services, to some fantastic hi-tech manufacturing and engineering companies, like Arup.

Great people, who I meet every day I do this job, committed to good business and working to build a better Britain.

And our country has other strengths too.

The English language, our location, even our time zone.

These are all huge assets for our economy.

But in order to understand the economic case for change, we need to understand what has been going wrong in our economy.

Events of recent years should teach us much. An economic crisis caused by poorly understood, and inadequately regulated, financial activity.

A deficit which went up sharply after the 2008 crisis, in part because of Britain’s dependence on one sector in particular: financial services.

And long before the credit crunch, a crisis of squeezed living standards of those in the middle.

We must understand these phenomena not as separate events or as the result of a small and limited failure.

In fact, they are connected because they are the result of the rules by which our economy is run.

Rules which encouraged wealth creation focussed on short-term returns not the productive creation of long-term value.

Rules that created over-dependence on one sector, not just because of the relative success of financial services in Britain, but because that success was rooted too much in financial dealing, not enough in long term investment in the real economy.

And rules that led to a distribution of rewards increasingly skewed between those at the top and the rest.

That inequality did not just have bad consequences for our society; it had real consequences for our economy as well.

The struggle to maintain living standards for people became too dependent on higher levels of personal debt.

So the financial crisis should make us look deeply at the rules by which our economy is run.

And so must any examination of our future prospects.

The rise of China and India is possibly the single most striking feature of the 21st Century.

It offers great opportunities for British firms.

But it brings too the certainty that the old ways of working simply won’t deliver.

Which European country sells most to China?

Germany.

Winning on the basis of high value production, where quality counts.

That is part of the new economy we need to build if we’re to pay our way in the 21st Century.

And for my party, committed to social justice, the economic case for change is even stronger.

The fiscal challenges we face mean we need to find new ways of delivering social justice.

The last Labour government made Britain a better place.

I believe our progress on the NHS, schools and crime shows that.

The Blair/Brown approach, with social progress resting on higher investment, was right.

But the failure of the Government’s austerity plan means that the next Labour government is likely to inherit a deficit that still needs to be reduced.

So even then resources will have to be focused significantly on paying down that deficit.

Therefore if the next Labour government is to tackle the challenge of social injustice, reform of our economy will be vital.

Creating good jobs at good wages, with sustainable long-term business models.

A better, more responsible, capitalism would mean the taxpayer does not have to pay the price for financial failure by bailing out the banks or paying the welfare costs of spiralling unemployment.

That is the Labour Party’s answer to the question of how we deliver social justice in straitened times.

So what are the key aims of the new economy we seek to build:

An economy that creates long-term value based on investment and commitment.

Better-quality jobs that reverse the decline of middle-class incomes, and set firms up to compete on the basis of skills and quality.

And a sustainable economy, diverse enough to protect Britain against external and fiscal shocks, with environmental sustainability built in rather than bolted on.

This cannot be reduced to a case for more government and less markets.

We should be passionate about the progress healthy markets can bring.

But passionate too about the difference government can make working with the private sector.

The change we need is about the rules of the system, it is about the culture of shareholding, it is about the norms our society expects.

Today I want to outline five areas in which fundamental change is necessary to build this new economy.

I do so in part because of what I have heard travelling round the country listening to, and talking with, business over the last few months.

First, we need to refound the relationship between finance and the real economy.

The old way told us that financial services were a separate sphere, disconnected from the rest of the economy.

It told us that the job of government was to stay out of the way, in exchange for a growing source of wealth creation and tax revenue.

But what businesses have told me is that it hasn’t worked well enough.

Not for them or for the country.

And that it won’t work, unless we start from the understanding of the hugely important role finance plays in serving the real economy, the economy of businesses, savers and investors.

The short term approach to finance, has held back investment for years.

And that was before the credit crunch.

And since then, not only has a financial crisis left a huge dent in the size of the British economy, but our recovery is now held back by a lack of credit.

I heard last week about a high tech company, bringing an innovative pricing display system to market.

They’ve put years of research and development into the product.

And they’ve got their first big order for over £10m.

Right now they’re working with their suppliers to get the product produced on a sufficient scale.

And that means they need working capital.

But they can’t get it.

Banks don’t seem to be interested.

And the one that is wants to charge an interest rate of 17%.

So in the new economy we need to see a finance sector, the success of which isn’t measured simply by short term profits made and taxes paid.

But by whether those profits are sustained by fulfilling its role as the beating heart of the economy.

Getting finance to the right businesses at the right time, and so providing returns for savers and pensioners.

Standing behind, not turning away from, companies taking a long term approach to wealth creation.

Businesses deserve a finance system there for the long haul when it comes to creating value in the real economy.

Everyone should be clear that banks and financial services are important to Britain.

They employ thousands of people across the country.

Financial services will be important to Britain in the future.

But they must become part of the solution to our economic future, not part of the problem.

We need a more competitive banking system, so that there is genuinely a challenge to existing players in business lending.

There will be serious questions asked about the deal done today to sell Northern Rock, in particular about the scale of the loss to the taxpayer.

But whatever the right decisions about the timing of disposal, there does need to be greater competition in the market.

And we also need to address the market failure in the finance gap for SMEs that want to expand.

From Germany to the United States to Singapore, governments don’t just shrug their shoulders and stand aside but step in.

There will need to be a greater role for the government in ensuring that market failures in our finance system don’t leave British business behind.

That’s why our policy review is looking in detail at proposals for a UK Investment Bank, and at the American experience of the programs run by the SBA, like the Small Business Investment Company which has helped firms such as Apple, FedEx and Intel succeed.

The second area where we need fundamental change is in the way companies have been told to think about their worth.

The old way said that short term shareholder value should drive business strategies, and that would deliver for everyone.

That the board should first and foremost be concerned with the short term share price.

That institutional investors were right to be impatient for quick returns.

But again what business has told me is that it is hampering their ability to create productive wealth.

Instead, our economy has been held back by the short-term pressures under which our companies operate.

Examples abound.

The inability of a great British firm like Cadburys to resist Kraft’s takeover once speculating shareholders had decided there was a short term profit to be made.

The battles with institutional shareholders in which Rolls Royce had to engage during the 1990s, so that it could make the long term investments that have made it such a success today.

In recent weeks, travelling around the country, I have met business people over and over again who tell me they simply cannot get support for the long-term investments they need.

What is interesting is that sometimes it is different forms of ownership, from mutuals to family owned businesses, that provide protection against the predatory short-termism of the system.

So to address this short-termism we will need to address a whole range of areas.

Including those raised by Richard Lambert, the former Director General of the CBI.

We need to look at why so many funds of institutional investors seem to be managed as if the only important issue was the next quarterly announcement.

We need to look at whether the voting rights of shareholders should always be the same from day one of ownership.

And we need to look at how the tax system can encourage and discourage short-term behaviour that holds Britain back.

Third, we need to understand the inadequacies of our system of skills in the UK, particularly vocational skills.

The old view was that in the modern labour market, time honoured vocation skills and apprenticeships were simply out of date.

But the reality is that business has been telling me the current system is not working well enough. For them, for our young people and for the future of our economy.

We face the paradox that many businesses say they can’t find workers with the skills they need, while many employees feel their skills go unused.

Firms are held back from adopting the high value, high skill business models we need.

Recently a high-tech welding firm based near Cambridge told me that they’d spent three years trying and failing to fill one job, because there just weren’t people with the vocational skills they needed.

So on skills we need a new something-for-something deal between government, business and employees.

That is the only way to make progress in a world where the benefits of training are shared between the firm, the worker and society.

The new deal should be rooted in the different sectors of our economy.

With the firms involved given a leadership role by government in setting the standards for the vocational skills they need.

And, in exchange, accepting a shared responsibility to bring on the next generation with the training that is required.

Government must do its bit. Making sure our secondary school system produces students with the basics on which firms can build.

Realising that walking away from supporting skill provision now is the most short term of decisions.

And where it can, setting the rules of the game to support those firms that do the right thing.

That’s why Labour has said, for example, that major government procurements should only go to firms that offer apprenticeships.

Fourth, we need a new commitment to responsibility at the top as well as the bottom of society.

The old view was that rewards at the top were irrelevant to the rest of the economy.

That it didn’t make sense to ask if they were right or wrong.

But my sense is that most business people don’t take this view.

They believe, as do I, that those who create wealth, particularly those who take risks, should do well.

It is right that they are properly rewarded.

We must be a society that encourages entrepreneurs and those with aspiration.

But the system isn’t working well enough when top pay seems to have become disconnected from the value created.

That is bad for our economy because it fails to distinguish between success and failure, fails to link the individuals and the firm’s interests together.

And beyond the individuals involved, if people see those at the top making unjustified rewards it corrodes the sense that our society rewards those who do the right thing.

Just as in our welfare state we need to ensure a greater relationship between contribution and reward, so too at the top.

What does this require?

As a starting point, a revolution in transparency about pay for those at the top so shareholders and others can come to view about what is justified.

A change in who makes the decisions about pay, and an employee on the remuneration committee of every major company.

This simple reform would help forge a new compact between workers and employers.

Building trust that salaries at the top are deserved.

That long term decisions are being made.

Fifth, we need to recognise that beyond the banks, it doesn’t make economic sense to allow large concentrations of unaccountable private power which do not work in the interests of the country.

The old view was that some companies were too big to be challenged, never mind too big to fail.

They would threaten to leave the country or not invest in Britain.

The old view that we should let predatory behaviour continue unchecked has let down our country and business.

Vested interests, predators that do long term damage, are bad for our business and our economy.

They raise prices, exploit consumers, and lead to inefficiency.

Government has a responsibility, on hard-headed economic grounds, to use its power to break up vested interests.

This will sometimes require regulation, sometimes require the strengthening of markets.

It is true in finance, where high bonuses can be a sign of lack of competition in investment banking.

It is true in the energy sector, where the grip of the big six freezes out other companies and the consumer loses out through higher bills.

It is true in parts of the media, where as I have said in the past, I believe a company like News International has had too much power.

So these are the five areas areas that we will focus on in the months ahead.

Signalling a new direction for our economy.

But I also believe the change in rules I am talking about—built on a different ethic—is about more than our economy.

It is about putting the values of the British people back at the heart of the way we run our country.

I will return to this in future speeches but this about a different way of living together.

With values of responsibility, fairness, concern for each other at the heart of it.

Where we reward contribution and respect talent, not privilege.

If we don’t rise to that challenge, we cannot address the lack of faith the public have in politics and politicians. Or indeed in business and finance.

Because to do otherwise is to tell the public that there is no hope for a better future.

And that takes me to my final point.

I want to end on the nature of the challenge.

There are some things, notably the problems of unemployment and growth, that must and can be tackled right here right now.

But beyond that, there is a longer term task which will not lend itself to instant solutions.

It is about how we develop our economy and society in a different direction.

By its nature, this agenda must be led.

But it can only happen with the broadest possible alliance.

Across business, civil society.

It is a profound challenge.

But it can make our country a better, more prosperous, fairer place to live.

I look forward to working with you to try and make it happen.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, on 18th July 2011.

Today marks two weeks since we found out that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World.

Rebekah Brooks has been arrested, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has resigned.

Tomorrow we will have some of the most important select committee hearings in modern times.

It feels that everything has changed.

But the real risk remains that too little will really change.

I want to talk today about how we ensure this is not a brief moment which people will look back upon and wonder what was that all about.

Instead, I want to ensure this is a moment which will bring about a far greater sense of responsibility in our country.

In particular, a new era of responsibility among the most powerful in our country.

The heroes of the last fortnight have been the Dowler family.

In the last week, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Rupert Murdoch have all met them.

As have I.

It was incredibly moving to meet a family who have acted with such dignity after being put through so much.

Theirs is a tragic story, not just of what happened to Milly, but of the way their pain was made so much worse by:

The hacking of her phone

The failures of the police

The intrusions by the press.

The bravery of Bob and Sally, her parents, and Gemma, Milly’s sister, in being willing to come forward is humbling.

And when we were discussing what the inquiry should look at, Gemma said to me:

‘Everything about us was in the open at the trial, why do you politicians not want to get everything in the open?’

She was right.

We owe it to the Dowlers, and all the other victims of phone hacking, to get everything in the open.

The Prime Minister is out of the country, but has now agreed with me to extend the parliamentary session for at least 24 hours so that the House of Commons meets on Wednesday.

It is very important that when it does we have a proper debate led by the Prime Minister on all the issues, rather than simply a statement.

We must give MPs the chance to debate the issues arising from the select committee hearing and ensure the Prime Minister addresses the many unanswered questions that he faces.

Sir Paul Stephenson yesterday made an honourable decision and took responsibility.

It is of great concern, however, that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was unable to discuss vital issues with the Prime Minister because he felt that David Cameron was himself compromised on this issue because of Andy Coulson.

It is also striking that Sir Paul Stephenson has taken responsibility and resigned over the employment of Mr Coulson’s deputy, while the Prime Minister hasn’t even apologised for hiring Mr Coulson.

We need leadership to get to the truth of what happened.

But David Cameron is hamstrung by his own decisions and his unwillingness to face up to them.

But it is also important for the country to do something more than have full transparency on what has happened.

Every so often, an event like this happens.

And we have to ask ourselves deeper questions

What does it say about our country?

How did we let this happen?

And how do we change to ensure this does not happen again?

A few weeks ago I talked about a set of values which are the essence of Britain’s character.

Working hard.

Obeying the law.

Caring for others.

Knowing the difference between right and wrong.

Responsibility.

These are the values which bind our nation together

I want my children to grow up in a country where those values are respected.

The hacking scandal has shown some of the awful consequences of the powerful shirking their responsibility.

And this is not the first example.

Indeed, in the space of just a few years, we have now seen three major crises in British public life among people and institutions that wield massive power.

First the banks.

Then MPs’ expenses.

And now in our press.

Superficially, each might look quite different in its causes.

But there are common themes running through all three.

The banker who paid himself millions of pounds for taking the most risky investments which would land his company and the country in the mire.

The MP who fiddled the expenses system, landing himself, his party and our politics in disgrace.

The editor of a newspaper which had a culture of illegality not for the public interest but simply in the search for sales, landing their paper and the whole industry in the dock.

All are about the irresponsibility of the powerful.

People who believed they were untouchable.

This issue of responsibility is one which must be tackled throughout British society.

From top to bottom.

The failure of our country to recognize and encourage responsibility isn’t just bad for fairness or people’s sense of right and wrong.

It’s also holding Britain back in profound ways.

Let me start with what has happened in our media because I said the Dowler family were owed an explanation of how we got here.

The whole country wants to know, how it was possible for an organization which claimed to have great sympathy to the Dowler family to act as they did.

How could those responsible for phone hacking have lost all sense of right and wrong?

And then all the other grotesque hypocrisy.

The paper which displayed such sympathy for the 7/7 victims then, apparently, hacked their phones.

The paper which claimed to stand for the military covenant then allegedly hacked the phones of the families of those who died serving our country.

A company whose papers claimed to speak for the people of Britain displayed contempt for those same people.

As each of these revelations has emerged, I have thought long and hard about how all this happened.

Ultimately, it was about individuals who had forgotten their fundamental responsibility to their fellow human beings.

But it wasn’t just the particular individuals who perpetrated these actions who were at fault.

Because we also have to explain, why it was so widespread, so systematic and why it wasn’t stopped.

Why did News International engage in denial for so long?

How could Rupert Murdoch say they have handled these allegations “extremely well” with “only minor mistakes”?

I think the answer is simple: this was an organization which thought it was beyond responsibility.

Its power was so immense, its influence so great, from Prime Ministers downwards.

Nobody confronted them.

Nobody held them to account.

Nobody seemed willing to really challenge them.

Not the police, not most frontline politicians, nor most of the press.

An organization whose newspapers demanded greater responsibility among the powerless in our society, believed it was so powerful that it was beyond that self-same responsibility.

It was one of the great failures of politics that their power went unchallenged for so long.

For all that the reputation of politics has been damaged of late, who else can stand up to powerful interests?

That is part of what politics is for.

We cannot allow it to happen again.

And we must also make sure we get to the bottom of the relationships between the press and the police.

Clearly, the resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson speaks to the scale of the issues that need to be faced.

There are questions about why the first police investigation failed.

And why it wasn’t reopened.

Whether the police were too close to those they should have been investigating.

And there are wider issues that will need to be looked at about information flows between the press and police, and the specific allegations made about payments to the police.

I said earlier that the crisis in our media had something in common with what happened in politics and banking.

Of course, there are differences; not least that nobody responsible for the banking crisis appears likely to end up in prison.

Yet that should not obscure the similarities.

The banking crisis too was a story of vaulting power and of shameful failures of responsibility.

It was the closed culture of recklessness and excess in the banks that completely disconnected them from the reality of most peoples’ lives.

It allowed some executives to receive vast salaries and bonuses which often did not reflect the contribution they made or the way they were putting our entire economy at risk.

Powerful people who answered to nobody.

And when they were in crisis, they turned to the rest of us to rescue them.

They were too big to fail and all of us bailed them out.

Yet they have now returned to business as usual.

Still getting the big bonuses.

Still not lending the money to the firms and entrepreneurs that will create the jobs we need in the future.

And what about my profession?

Again there are differences.

But there are similarities too.

We saw the same shirking of basic responsibility.

A culture of entitlement in Parliament, where some MPs thought it normal to take as much as they could.

They had lost touch with the people who sent them there.

They abused the people’s trust.

They stole from the taxpayer.

And that is why they went to jail.

The expenses system which brought MPs low was seen as outside the law.

The people who fiddled the system thought they were untouchable.

Nobody would hold them to account.

So in the press, in finance, in politics, we have seen behavior by the powerful which has shown the greatest irresponsibility.

People who thought they were beyond the law and responsibility, people who let down our country.

The irresponsibility of the powerful is particularly wrong.

But irresponsibility is not confined to the powerful.

And irresponsibility, wherever it is found, is holding Britain back.

Irresponsibility has undermined our press and politics, reducing public trust.

It has undermined enterprise and business, making it harder to build support for the wealth creation we need.

It has undermined our welfare system, making it harder to provide the security we all want when we lose our job, when we get old.

Across the country, there is a yearning for a more decent, responsible, principled country.

It is not only the duty of those with power to exercise responsibility.

It is the duty of us all to ensure that they do.

We need to restore responsibility as the great British virtue. We need to build a culture from the boardroom to the benefits office.

So how do we achieve that goal?

If we are to restore responsibility to its proper place in our nation’s culture, it must start with the most powerful.

Because when those at the top of our society behave in the way they have, it sends a message about what is and isn’t acceptable.

What is a young person, just starting out in life, trying to the right thing, supposed to think when he sees a politician fiddling the expenses system, a banker raking off millions without deserving it or a press baron abusing the trust of ordinary people?

Or when large corporations avoid paying their fair share of tax, or any chief executive pays himself over the odds?

It sends the message that anything goes, that right and wrong don’t matter that we can all be in it for ourselves as long as we can get away with it.

Politicians must be willing to speak out on these issues without fear or favour, about the top to the bottom of our society.

Secondly, we need the right rules,

We needed to reform the benefit system to encourage a sense of responsibility.

We can’t endorse a something-for-nothing society

But we also need rules at the top.

For MPs, we have reformed the expenses system, but there is a long way to go before we earn back trust.

In banking, we have further to go still.

We have not properly tackled the bonus culture and we need to do so.

That is why Labour has proposed another year of the tax on bonuses.

In the press we need the right rules in place so that we can have a free press, not regulated by politicians, but acting responsibly.

That means we need a proper system for when things go wrong.

When a newspaper makes a mistake, it should have to publish a prominent apology. Not bury it away on an inside page.

When a newspaper wrongs someone, it should have to pay compensation and not force them to go to the Courts.

And the ethics of newspapers should be judged not by their fellow editors but independent people.

Third, we all know that it is large concentrations of power that lead to abuses and to neglect of responsibility.

Markets work in the public interest when there is proper competition and excessive power does not reside just in a few hands.

The banks were too big to fail and neglected the interests of their customers.

That is why we must ensure that when the reform of our banking system is completed, it is on the basis of a genuinely competitive banking market, without relying simply on a few big institutions.

And the same is true in our media.

Before the closure of the News of the World, News Corporation controlled nearly 40% of the newspaper market.

It also owns 39% of BskyB, giving it huge power, including effective control of two thirds of the pay TV market through the Sky platform, alongside Sky News.

Politicians should have confronted this earlier.

And, let’s be honest, the reason we did not was, in part, because News Corporation was so powerful.

I do not think that is healthy.

It is not healthy for a country that believes in responsibility all the way to the top of society.

It is not healthy for our democracy, where we see too much power in one set of hands.

It is not healthy for consumers.

That is why Labour will be submitting proposals to the judicial inquiry for new cross media ownership laws.

And I urge David Cameron and Nick Clegg to join with us in pressing for the change we need.

We should all find the courage to challenge other areas where concentrations of power damage our country.

Six energy companies control 99.9 per cent of the consumer market.

This cannot be right and we must take action to open up the market over the coming months

To ensure a more responsible country we need a culture which demands it, rules which enforce it, and to break up concentrations of power which undermine it.

When I think about the kind of country I want my kids to grow up in, I think about a country where people look out for each other, look after each other, care for each other.

Every big challenge Britain faces, requires this sense responsibility to each other.

We need greater responsibility at the top so there is not simply greater and greater inequality in our country

We need to show greater responsibility to the next generation so that they can do better than the last, so that a decent education, access to housing or the chance of a good job, does not become the preserve of just a privileged few.

And we all need to show responsibility if we are to build strong communities based on trust and mutual respect.

The resolve to address irresponsibility, including among the most powerful, reflects the common ground on which the vast majority of British people stand.

There was a time when criticising people at the top was seen as being anti-aspirational.

But now, when irresponsibility at the top is holding Britain back and corroding our culture, it is our duty to speak out.

Anything else would, frankly, be anti-aspirational.

The task for all politicians is to speak directly to the concerns and common decency of the British people.

We have been for too long, too reluctant to look the powerful in the eye and tell them that they, too, must change.

Without fear, and withour favour.

Britain won’t accept anything less.

That is what has been different about the last fortnight.

The old games played our between the powerful to the exclusion of everyone else, must stop.

But the danger is that this whirlwind blows through our country, and then we go back to business as usual.

I am determined that we must not let this happen.

We must make the lasting change that is necessary for the sake of the Dowlers and all the victims of phone-hacking.

To insist that everyone must show responsibility, including the most powerful.

That everyone must play their part.

That we can build the responsible society that Britain demands.

Below is the text made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the British Chambers of Commerce on 4th July 2011.

Let me start by thanking you for inviting me here to speak to you today.

It is a privilege to meet, and hear from, such a large and diverse group of Britain’s leading businesses.

And I want to pay tribute to your departing Director-General David Frost who has been such an eloquent champion of the work your chambers do.

I come here as a Leader of the Opposition who knows that the things that brought me into politics, the wish for a fairer, more prosperous country, can only be achieved if the businesses represented by the BCC are able to thrive.

As befits a Party that lost an election less than a year ago I’m here to listen to you, and say how important that dialogue is for us.

I recently spent time with one of your members, Gordon Yates, who runs a firm in my constituency called Sentry Doors, employ ing over 60 people.

And what I know most of all is that he, and the people in this room, are doing what they do not just to make a living.

But because of the pride you have in your work.

The sense of responsibility you feel to your employees.

And your commitment to your local communities.

It is you who represent the best of businesses in Britain.

Success based not on short term speculation, but on hard work, productive investment and enterprise.

In the 1990s New Labour’s core insight was that a successful and dynamic market economy is the foundation on which a strong and just society must be built.

I am determined that Labour will be continue to be a pro-business party, celebrating enterprise and wealth creation.

Being pro-business today means confronting challenges very different from the ones we faced in the 1990s.

My argument is that we must learn the right lessons from before and after the financial crisis.

Three stand out:

First we need an economic policy that sustains growth and cuts the deficit.

Second, a narrow economy is not a healthy economy – we need a more balanced industrial base in the future.

Third we need a new, safer, banking system, but also one that will support not hinder the changed economy we need.

First let me talk about growth and cutting the deficit.

Clearly attention today is focused on events in Portugal.

And we are right to be concerned about problems in parts of Europe, our largest trading partner, at a time when growth is so important here at home.

What we know from across the world is that all economies need a credible plan to cut the deficit, but also a plan which means the economy can grow and pay its way.

If we were in Government we would have halved the deficit over four years.

Let me say plainly to you, that would have meant some difficult cuts to public spending.

The Government have set out a different approach to cutting the deficit.

I will not rehearse today the details of that argument.

I want to make just one point.

Our argument with the Government is about the scale and pace of their plans, and the implications for the health of the UK economy.

It is driven by a different view about how we can achieve the strong growth and lower deficit we need as a country.

Let me put it this way.

The lower growth forecasts and higher inflation presented in the Budget mean an extra £12bn spent on social security over the next five years.

They mean borrowing being £46bn higher in total over the same period.

And why is our economy suffering from sluggish growth?

Underneath the headlines is the reality of squeezed living standards and weakened consumer confidence.

And we saw the impact of that on business confidence in this week’s BCC’s survey.

I know it is smaller businesses that get hit first and worst when growth slows.

I hope that the economy will return to strong growth this year, but I hope also that the Government will show flexibility if circumstances require it.

But if we are to build the economy we need for the future, we need to do a lot more than get the macro-economic policy right.

Being pro-business in this decade means learning the deeper lessons of the crisis.

So second, we need growth rooted in a much more diverse economic base.

That means a broader range of sectors, in every part of Britain.

And it means understanding the contribution of small and medium sized businesses to the future of our economy.

The financial services industry will always be important.

But what we discovered at the end of the financial crisis is that we were too exposed as an economy to the instability of that industry.

With Labour having been in Government I take our share of responsibility for that.

Part of the answer is of course better bank regulation.

But part of it is also broadening the sectors which succeed in our country.

In many of these there is a global race, and the danger for us is that we find ourselves left behind.

Take the green economy as an example.

I saw as Energy Secretary the potential this sector had to be a source of jobs and growth for Britain.

But that won’t happen by accident.

It will happen because private and public sector together establish a coherent vision for success.

And government needs to do its bit.

Creating a stable domestic market.

Providing the right incentives.

And giving business the assurance it needs that we will have the skilled workforce it can rely upon.

Nearly one year on from our period in Government, as I look at the green sector in particular I see warning signals.

When a pioneering company at the cutting-edge of electric vehicle production like Modec in Coventry goes into administration we need to ask, is the right support in place to ensure we succeed as a country?

In particular I urge the Government to provide as much certainty as it can to you about the incentives and support that are available.

And just as succeeding in green industry requires this vision, focus, and certainty, so too in other key sectors.

Biotech, higher education, advanced manufacturing and the creative industries – in all these areas we need to seize the opportunities that the global market provides.

That means a coherent and active approach across Government policy.

Just as we need to diversify the sectors in which we succeed, so too in ensuring balanced growth across our country.

My local experience as a Member of Parliament was that Yorkshire Forward, our RDA, did make a difference in bringing together businesses, universities, local government t ogether to help businesses start and grow.

We need to ensure that Local Enterprise Partnerships are able to continue that work:

In our view they should be able to take over the RDAs assets to drive economic development, should have the right influence over local skill and planning decisions so they can be properly matched to business needs.

I believe that broadening our economic base, must not simply mean success in more sector and regions, but also recognising that growth for the future will come not from a small number of large businesses but from a large number of small and medium sized enterprises.

That it why, in our Budget representations, we urged the Government to use funds from repeating the bank bonus tax to expand the Regional Growth Fund so that it could be opened to small businesses, which are currently locked out.

I also know that for you to succeed, Government must be a better partner with you.

We have a shared commitment t o fairness in our country.

And you want to do the best for your employees.

But we also know that regulation places the greatest burden on small rather than large businesses.

I’m not going to make you promises I cannot keep, or pretend there are easy answers.

But I do want to say that we understand the need for balance, because of the costs that change can impose upon you.

That applies both to the number of regulations that are introduced, and the way they are implemented.

We also need a competitive, simple, tax environment.

And an approach to procurement which supports your success.

To give one practical example, Government was right to promise that suppliers would be paid within five days – because cash flow matters.

But we need to recognise that these suppliers are too often our very largest firms.

As well as giving SMEs more access to government procurement, we should go further and require those la rge firms to pass 5-day prompt payment terms down the supply chain.

So we need to see a broader economy in all respects, more able to withstand the shocks the world economy brings.

A banking sector that works for business

And that takes me to the third lesson we must learn.

It’s about the deal you get from the banking system.

Next Monday the Banking Commission will set out its interim findings.

The issue with the banks goes much deeper than regulation.

Particularly for small and medium sized business.

British industry has been failed by the banking system for too long.

When everybody up to and including Mervyn King says that banks are exploiting their customers, there clearly is a problem.

We all know of sound businesses that have had credit withdrawn– despite being loyal customers for years.

We need to restore the primary role of banks as intermediaries between savers and productive investment i n the economy, rather than as institutions that derive massive profits from speculation.

Britain’s banking sector has become just too disconnected from the communities and businesses it serves.

We are seeing too much evidence that the banks are simply going back to business as usual before the crisis hit.

We see it for example in the complaints from small businesses about their banks.

That isn’t good enough for our businesses.

We need to move from call centre banking to relationship banking.

It just doesn’t make sense that hugely important decisions about credit, that can make the difference between a business succeeding or failing, are taken by someone hundreds of miles away who knows nothing about the business involved.

The owner of a small music industry business recently told about applying for a loan from his own bank.

It took a year for the head office to say no to that loan application – an application which an other bank approved after just 2 weeks.

Just as you believe in your responsibility to the communities you serve, Britain’s banks need to take seriously their responsibilities to you, their customers.

A small business is not and should not be treated as a set of numbers on a spreadsheet.

Key to changing the way our banks work with businesses is the greater competition we need in the banking sector.

I urge the Government to be bold in implementing the recommendations of the Banking Commission.

We also need to ensure there is proper funding in place for businesses at every stage of their growth – from bank loans, to export finance, to equity.

To do that we can’t leave financing of businesses simply to the banks to do it on their own.

I think here Britain can learn lessons from abroad.

The Small Business Investment Company in the US has used government-backed guarantees to provide critical, early stage finance to some phe nomenal business success stories, like Apple and Intel.

And in both France and Germany firms have long been able to access state-backed finance for exports – an area in which I know the Chamber have done a substantial amount of work.

As part of our policy review I want us to look at whether we can make public-private financing models work here, building on schemes we introduced like the Enterprise Finance Guarantee and the Working Capital Scheme for exporters.

So I believe we need to learn the right lessons from the financial crisis.

Cutting the deficit at the same time as understanding that growth matters.

Building a new economy which is more broadly based than what went before.

And reforming our banking sector.

As we look ahead to our next manifesto, our relationship with business is hugely important to me.

To get policy right we need your input.

It is why our Shadow Business Secretary has written to every Chamber to ask for their views on our policy review.

I am very grateful for the response we have had so far.

We all believe in a more prosperous and fairer country.

I look forward to working with you to help make that happen.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the 2011 Progress Conference.

Friends, let me tell you today how we are going to win the next election.

Three moments in the history of our Party when hope defeated fear.

1945.

1964.

1997.

When Labour took office with a sense of national mission

Establishing that national mission.

Persuading people of it.

That is our task.

To do that we need to be honest about where we are as a Party, and how tough this is going to be.

Frank about our successes and failures at the recent elections.

Clear about the condition of Britain, and what needs to change.

We need to reject some of the easy answers that people will tell you are out there.

Instead we should start to explain what our national mission for the country should be.

And how it contrasts with the narrow pessimism of the Conservatives.

Let’s talk about what we heard on the doorstep at the elections.

Some people are still unwilling to come back to us.

We all know what their concerns are: from immigration to bankers to welfare to waste.

But other people, who couldn’t look us in the eye last year, are now willing to listen again.

They agree with us that the government is going too far and too fast on the deficit.

They wanted a voice in tough times.

And we were that voice.

But from everybody I met, I heard something else.

People wanted more from us.

People wanted more from our politics.

And we saw that in our election results on May 5th.

We have started to win back trust.

But we have many more people to convince.

The progress we made in the East and West Midlands, where we had some of our worst general election results, matters.

But of course we need to do better in the South.

It is essential that we won back the Liberal Democrat voters we did.

They felt betrayed by their leadership.

And recognised we had the courage to change on difficult issues like Iraq and civil liberties.

But Conservative voters do not yet feel the same depth of betrayal with this government or yet sufficient confidence in us.

That’s the reality of the results.

And friends, let’s avoid the old Labour disease of setting out a false choice.

That we must either conclude that the elections were a triumph or a disaster.

We made progress in these elections. But people want more from us.

That we need only ex-Lib Dems or only ex-Conservatives.

We need both.

So let’s leave the false choices where they belong.

In the past.

What about our results in Scotland?

I don’t need to tell you they were terrible.

On the living wage, on jobs, on the NHS, we had good pledges.

But the lesson of Scotland is this.

Our opponents won a bigger battle.

Because we did not succeed in providing a clear vision of Scotland’s future: a national mission.

People wanted more from us.

And let’s be honest about the last general election too.

Our message, too weighted to fear over hope, stopped the Tories getting a majority.

But it was never enough for Labour to win.

Because we did not own the future.

Indeed none of the parties met the standard that voters deserved.

David Cameron won on what you might call the away goals rule of politics.

And we must recognise the reason the Conservatives failed to win a majority was did not inspire.

They failed a national mission for our country.

All David Cameron was offering then, and all he is offering now, is a shrivelled, pessimistic, austere view of the future.

Now I have absolutely no doubt that reducing the deficit is vital for our future.

But the real difference between us is this.

He plans to cut the deficit and see what is left of Britain at the end.

Instead we should start with our vision for the country and cut the deficit in a way which supports it.

Even Michael Ashcroft recognises this.

He rightly asks of the Tories “what is the end to which deficit reduction is the means?”

That’s why I say people want more from us.

Why people want more from our politics.

What kind of country will we leave to our sons and daughters?

How am I going to make ends meet when my living standards are being squeezed?

Why do I always seem to work longer and longer hours for the same money?

Where are the Tories on the big questions people are asking.

Nowhere.

And they have nothing to say.

I say politics can be better than this.

Our country can be better than this.

How do we answer peoples yearning for something more from us, for something more from our politics?

We must root our national mission, not just in our values, but in our understanding of the condition of Britain

We need the honesty to admit that the challenges facing Britain did not begin with this government.

Although they are making them worse.

They are deeper than that.

People see a new inequality that our country faces between those at the top and everyone else.

We should have the humility to acknowledge this was there under Labour.

But also warn that this Government is making it worse.

People worry about the erosion of what I call the promise of Britain – the expectation that next generation will do better than the last, whatever their birth or background.

This concern is part of a deeper long term trend.

But again, this government is making matters worse.

And while people struggle to make ends meet and worry about their children, they  feel what really matters – family, friends and the quality of community life – is being put under strain.

Again, it did not just start with this government.

But they are making matters worse.

For me these three issues, the new inequality, the promise of Britain, strengthened communities, are the challenges to which the next Labour government must be the answer.

Given the scale of these challenges.

The desire for more from our politics.

It will never be enough for us to simply take the traditional paths of oppositions.

There will be those who say it is enough for Labour to hunker down and benefit from an unpopular government.

I hear it quite a lot: let’s be a louder, prouder Opposition.

Maybe somehow people will then remember what a good government we were and re-elect us next time.

The Conservative Government is unpopular.

They may become more so.

And we are showing, and will continue to show, that we can be an effective opposition.

But to think that is enough is to fail to understand the depth of the loss of trust in us and the scale of change required to win it back.

We must recognise where we didn’t get things right.

And we must show that a changed Labour Party can again be trusted.

It’s not about dumping on our past, because I am proud of our record in government.

But it is about being honest about what we got right and what we got wrong.

The cardinal mistake of Opposition is to conclude that it’s the voters, not us, that got it wrong.

It was a mistake we made in the 1980s.

We cannot afford to make it again.

Then there is a second strategy – a Cameron style detoxification.

I hear the advice to follow this path: find the equivalent of hug a hoodie.

Or even a huskie.

And that will do it.

That will get us back into power.

Now we must be honest about mistakes that lost us trust, on issues like immigration, welfare, or banking.

I have done that in the past months.

And I will continue to do that.

Because the public will not return to us until we show we get it.

But restoring trust cannot simply be an exercise in dealing with the negatives.

These issues matter in themselves.

And we must address them.

Not superficially.

But in a way true to our values.

Rooted in our understanding of the condition of Britain.

The challenges we face.

The challenges our national mission must address.

Start with the new inequality.

Inequality is no longer an issue just between rich and poor.

But between those at the top and those both in the middle and on lower incomes.

Since 2003, those at the top have seen their living standards continue to rise at extraordinary rates, while those of the rest have stagnated.

For most flat wages, rising prices, longer working hours, and the burden of debt and insecurity increasingly being placed on them and their kids.

This is about the middle income people in the South of England and elsewhere who don’t consider themselves rich even though they may be higher rate taxpayers.

Like the mother I met in Gravesham during the election campaign, worried about the loss of child benefit who said she would never vote Conservative again.

It is about the squeeze not just on living standards but on time.

People working fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week and not having enough time with their children.

Frankly, I don’t need to meet other people to know how that feels and know we have to change it.

And it is through this squeeze on the middle, this new inequality that we need to understand issues like immigration and responsibility.

Eastern European immigration did place downward pressure on wages.

People can argue about the extent.

We were too relaxed about that.

People felt particularly angry about those they felt could work, but didn’t, as making ends meet became more and more of a struggle.

We were too relaxed about that too.

And people saw those at the top making off with millions they didn’t deserve.

We were far too relaxed about that as well.

So the old social contract – the one which said, if you work hard, you will do well for yourself, have security at work and be able to provide stability for your family – has broken down.

The Conservative answer is to exploit people’s fears but to do nothing to solve the problem.

In fact this Government is making matters worse.

VAT rises, cuts in Child Benefit and higher tuition fees.

The Government is not simply cutting the deficit, but privatising it.

The way it is cutting the deficit loads more and more of the financial burden onto those who are already struggling.

The truth is that we cannot create a society that is equal to the aspirations of the British people in a world of wide and growing inequalities – a world in which there are bailouts for bankers and austerity for the rest.

We need to get away from the notion – I hear it quite a lot – that we have to choose between supporting aspiration and tackling inequality.

It is another false choice.

Because the great irony is that one of the biggest barriers to aspiration in this country, and in this time, has been inequality.

Not just because I believe that inequality makes us poorer as a society but because when incomes stagnate, people borrow more to keep up.

That fuelled the rise in personal debt.

So our answer must be different.

To construct a new social contract.

Because it should be clear to all of us that we cannot move forward as a country simply by getting back to business as usual as if the financial crisis never happened.

Indeed, the lessons of this have still not been properly absorbed.

In power after 1997 we did something that few countries managed to do – stem the rising tide of inequality.

We did this by redistributing through the tax and benefit system.

Leading to cuts in child poverty.

This was a significant achievement.

But having the courage to change means facing up to the limitations of this approach.

Asking more of our economy, good jobs and wages, means asking less of the state.

At times, we hung on to a picture of Britain in which people were either poor, and desperately in need of our help, or affluent, aspirational, and doing okay.

We failed to understand that for millions of people in the middle, life was becoming more and more difficult.

In the future the Labour offer to aspirational voters must be that we will address the new inequality by hard wiring fairness into the economy.

This is not the easy path.

But it is the right one.

Because people want more from us.

We know some of the things which will make a difference.

A living wage.

A new industrial policy.

Proper reform of finance, so it works for the wider economy.

Responsibility at the top, and at the bottom.

This is the path I see for us.

People want an economy with fairness and social responsibility built-in.

But we are only going to get that by thinking radically and building a better capitalism – one that is true to our values as a country.

Building a stronger, fairer economy is vital to our second challenge – the kind of country we leave to the next generation.

This is what I call the promise of Britain.

Ask any parent what they want for their children and they will say the same-to have better chances than they had.

But ask people today-and the gap between that aspiration and the reality is wider than it’s probably ever been.

People just don’t know how their kids are going to get on.

How they are going to afford the rising cost of a university education.

How they are going to get their feet on the housing ladder.

How they are going to finds jobs that provide security and opportunity.

I saw it too as I went round during the local elections.

I saw it in the eyes of the grandparents I met in Leicester.

I saw it in the faces of the students at De Montfort University where Nick Clegg had made false promises a year earlier.

I heard it from parents the length and breadth of the country.

It didn’t start under this government.

But they have made it worse.

They seem to accept it as inevitable.

Because they make the deficit both the judge and the jury of what is right, they have made short-term choices, posing as long-term ones.

On Education Maintenance Allowances, tuition fees, on all the issues that matter.

People want more from us.

People want more from our politics.

What is the lesson for us?

That equality is not just a concern within generations.

It is about what happens between generations.

That the easy path is to take short-term decisions which don’t properly understand the importance of this issue.

And if we really do care about the next generation, we will have to show it in the decisions we make-from housing to the environment, from education to the kind of economy we create.

The third is to understand what really matters to people

It goes to the heart of what Maurice Glasman calls Blue Labour.

Some have presented this as a nostalgic vision of the past.

The Labour equivalent of warm beer, leather on willow and bicycling maidens.

I think this is to wholly misunderstand what this is about.

It starts from what we see in our country.

A sense of people being buffeted by storm winds blowing through their lives.

A fear of being overpowered by commercial and bureaucratic forces beyond our control.

And a yearning for the institutions and relationships we cherish most to be respected and protected.

You see it in the concerns people have about what is happening to their local high street, post office and pub.

The sense of loss in Birmingham from the takeover of Cadbury’s.

The football supporters fed up with billionaires who see their clubs simply as financial assets.

The campaign to stop the Port of Dover being sold off to the highest bidder.

The justifiable suspicions people have about the Government’s real agenda on the NHS.

We can’t save every pub.

We don’t want to preserve every high street in aspic.

And we can’t stop the takeover of all British companies.

But let’s face it: our apparent indifference to some of these issues told people a lot about us.

It made us seem like remote technocrats who defended the market even when people wanted protection against it.

And it spoke to a deeper sense about us.

Were we really people who cared about or defended traditional British institutions?

Of course, the record of these Conservatives is already far worse.

At times they show an almost Maoist contempt for any institution that doesn’t conform to their ideological beliefs.

In their case that everything can be turned into a commodity and sold to the highest bidder.

That’s why they tried to sell off our ancient forests.

It’s why David Willetts saw nothing wrong with the suggestion that the wealthy should be able to buy their way into university.

What does this mean for us, for our future?

It means showing we are people who understand the value of things beyond the bottom line.

We do want local people to have more of a say about local retail development.

Because sometimes another local supermarket chain isn’t what people want.

We do celebrate and value institutions like the BBC and the NHS.

So these are the three deep challenges Labour’s national mission must address.

How we can enable everyone to get on.

How we can protect and enhance the British promise for the next generation.

And how we preserve the things people value.

Let me end with this thought about the journey we are on together.

There is a prevailing idea that this is a Conservative country.

That there is little we can do apart from accommodate to that fact.

I think the people who believe that are wrong.

Not just because the majority of people at the last election voted for parties other than the Conservative party.

But because I know that voters want something more than this government can provide.

Just as we should not accept a politics of pessimism for our country, so we shouldn’t for our party either.

But to deliver that better, optimistic politics requires ambition for our future, for what our politics can achieve.

We could accept a politics of decline and pessimism.

But we cannot let the Conservatives pessimism stunt our ambition for our country or our party.

I say: we have always been at our best when we have lifted our horizons and acted on our desire to make Britain better and stronger.

We the Labour party.

We the country.

We reject the defeatist mantra that “there is no alternative”.

We can create a fair society in which wealth and opportunity go to those who deserve them.

We can build an economy that reflects the best of our values as a country.

We can secure for our children the opportunity to lead more prosperous and fulfilling lives.

We can have the confidence to stand up for the things we really love about Britain.

Because the public want more from us.

The public want more from our politics.

Let’s make it happen.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the National Policy Forum on 25th June 2011.

We meet today thirteen months on from the General Election.

I am proud to be speaking to you in Labour Wales.

Labour Wales showing there is a practical alternative.

Where tuition fees are not being trebled.

Where the health service is not being broken up.

And where we have a Government with a vision for the future.

And what have we learnt about the Government back in Westminster?

After this week, I’ve lost count of the u-turns, the handbrake turns, and the three point turns:

– Forests

– School sport

– The NHS

– Sentencing

– And this week’s highlight? Circus animals.

I know David Cameron doesn’t do detai l, but for goodness sake.

They couldn’t even get their policy right on Nellie the elephant.

What a bunch of clowns.

These changes in direction show this Conservative-led Government is already losing its way.

But they show something else.

Why is it that David Cameron and this Government get themselves into these problems in the first place?

The answer is that they are reckless.

Reckless with the future of our young people.

The next generation on whom Britain depends.

From cuts to Surestart, to £9,000 tuition fees, to almost a million young people out of work.

Reckless too with the lives of families already struggling to get by; now seeing their household budgets squeezed ever tighter.

And reckless with what we value in our communities as well.

With our National Health Service.

With the local services on which people rely.

The home help, the meals on wheels, the drop in centre for the elderly.

And they are undermining the responsibility that is so vital.

Just in the last couple of weeks, cancer patients who have worked hard all their lives and paid into the system, have been told they will have their help cut.

Women in their 50s who have worked hard all their lives are now seeing their plans for a dignified retirement undermined.

What have we learnt about this Government?

They have no clear idea where they want to take our country.

They are reckless.

And the only thing they have to offer the British people is a deficit plan that goes too far and too fast.

Driven by dogma not sound economics.

Pessimism, austerity and no mission for the future.

That is this Government.

But you know, the next election won’t just be about the Tories.

It will be about us as much as them.

None of us should be in any doubt about the scale of the task in front of us.

To go from losing a majority at one election to regaining a majority at the next is something that no political party has achieved for a generation.

And the challenge is greater because our starting point is the aftermath of one of our heaviest election defeats.

During our thirteen years in office we did many great things.

We should be proud of all of them.

The new schools in our communities.

The hospitals we rebuilt.

The extra police officers, who helped cut crime by 43%.

The millions who got a job.

I will never turn my back on our record.

Britain did get better under Labour.

We also, though, must face up to the truth of what happened to us.

We are in opposition today, because in addition to the many good things we did, we also made mistakes.

Over the last nine months, we’ve gone out and listened to the country.

Our policy review hasn’t been focussed on what people are saying at Westminster, but on thousands of conversations with people right across Britain.

We’ve gone direct to the British people – some Labour supporters, others not.

And a lot of it wasn’t easy listening.

People were blunt with us.

You’ve all heard it.

Because week in week out, you are out there on the doorsteps.

Talking to people about their concerns.

You know they were livid about the banks.

Worried about the squeeze on their incomes.

Frustrated that their concerns on immigration were not addressed.

Angry when they thought some could work, but didn’t.

And you know we lost trust, including because of what happened in Iraq.

We must prevent this happening again.

And you know it’s not just about policy, it’s about the way we do politics too.

A party created by working people for working people lost touch with them.

We need to be honest about the way we operated as a party.

Because only by being honest can we rebuild.

We need to confront some hard truths.

And if we ever doubt why we need to do this, if you find what I say today difficult, think of the people in your communities suffering today as a result of this Conservative-led Government.

These truths may be uncomfortable for us; but life is more uncomfortable for the people we serve suffering under this Government.

It’s not their fault; it’s ours that we lost the last election.

We owe it to them not to shy away from any of the difficult changes we need to make.

And I want to say how we will build a party fit for the future.

Above all, my message is that Labour cannot hope that power will come automatically.

That all we need is one more heave.

We can only win if we change.

I became your Leader to change our country.

But to do that I know we need to change our party.

So that once again we are a party in touch w ith people.

Once again, the party standing up for a fairer country, for those who do the right thing, for the grafters.

So painful as it is, we need to understand how we got to this point.

In the 1980s, people in our party argued that for too long, we had been centralised, top-down and dominated by the leadership.

They argued for giving more powers to our members.

Some of it was right, some of it was wrong.

But one crucial element was missing: the connection between our party and the public.

As the leadership and the members slugged it out over policy, it was the British people that got left out.

Three election defeats followed.

New Labour got us back in touch with the hopes and aspirations of the British people.

It was right to change Clause 4.

We gained hundreds of thousands of members.

And millions of voters.

We won three elections.

But let’s be honest, the leadership believed its role was to protect the public from the party.

It never really believed the party could provide the connection to the British people.

And we didn’t build a genuine movement.

By the end, it was our party members that were trying to tell the leadership what people wanted it to hear.

You were telling us about immigration, about housing, and about the 10p tax.

But the leadership did not listen enough.

So we went from six people making decisions in a smoke-filled committee room in the 1980s to six people making the decisions from a sofa in Whitehall.

Old Labour forgot about the public.

New Labour forgot about the party.

And, by the time we left office, we had lost touch with both.

That wasn’t all.

We talked about the importance of solidarity and respect, but too often looked inwards, distracting us from the task of serving the country.

The internal squabbles damaged our reputation and distr acted us from the task of serving the country.

And some of our MPs let down our party too – because of what they did on expenses.

People expected higher standards of Labour, and rightly so, and that is why they were so disappointed.

We’ve got to change the way we work as a party.

We cannot go back to the 1980s, simply making decisions within our own four walls.

We’ve got to knock those walls down.

We need to build a party which is rooted in the lives of every community in this country.

Our consultation, Refounding Labour, only closed yesterday, but today I want to provide a down-payment on some of the ideas that I believe are necessary.

And there will be more to come in the weeks ahead.

The responsibility on our elected representatives needs to be clear.

The idea of Shadow Cabinet elections was supposed to be about accountability.

But it didn’t work out that way.

I have talked to some of our old hands in the party about this.

As they have told me, all it did when we were last in opposition was to force members of the Shadow Cabinet to look inwards not outwards.

Jockeying for position, spending months campaigning against colleagues, and organising to get elected.

All of this was a huge distraction and only emphasised differences.

If we are serious about moving on from the patterns of the past, and never returning to the factions that divided us, we cannot persist with this system.

That is why I am therefore proposing that in future the Shadow Cabinet should be chosen by me rather than the Parliamentary party.

I want us to be an alternative government.

The only election members of my Shadow Cabinet should be worrying about is the General Election.

Just like I want the focus of every party member to be on the public, so too it must be for my top team.

Just like the football manager picks his team, so it is right that I pick mine.

And I will keep in place a requirement to ensure that the proportion of women in the Shadow cabinet at least reflects the Parliamentary Labour Party.

We currently we do better than that and I want to keep it that way.

We will also set out a simple set of principles based on transparency, accountability and representation for all our local representatives too.

Many good Labour groups already do this, making sure local councillors serve their constituents to the best of their ability.

I want every one of our elected representatives to be the best: the most active, the most in touch with their communities, the most involved in the life of their local parties.

Second, policy-making has got to change.

Let me say it plainly.

This policy forum and party conference do not have sufficient legitimacy in the eyes of members.

Too often, they submit ideas with great enthusiasm, and never hear anything again.

That has to change.

But equally, we don’t simply need ideas from party members.

We need ideas that are based on real conversations with the public.

What can we learn from community organisations like London Citizens?

The best policy does not come from a few people locked in a room; it comes from conversations, on the doorstep, at the school gate, in our workplaces.

The living wage came from conversations among working people in America.

Or take the idea of safe havens, being pioneered in South London – shops, community centres, churches, places where young people worried about gun or knife violence can go and seek help.

This idea came out of conversations with those young people and their communities.

Much more of our policy needs to come from the everyday experiences of people.

So we do need more of a voice for party members.

But those we should hear the most, are those who do the most in their communities.

If local parties get enough support for a particular cause, it should be debated at the National Policy Forum or conference.

Here’s the offer: the more support from the public you get for your ideas, the more weight they will have.

I don’t promise all of them will become policy, but I do promise they will be taken seriously in a party that does policy in a different way.

And just as we need to change the way the policy forum works so too party conference.

In the 1980s, conference was just about us talking, sometimes fighting, with each other.

Let’s not romanticise the way policy was made: late night deals, thrashed out in locked meeting rooms by a handful of people.

A local party going into conference with a motion they wanted to debate and returning home, at best, with one word in someone else’s resolution.

It was no way to make policy.

By the 1990s conference had just become a rally fo r the leadership.

Neither is right for the 21st Century.

That is why I want members to have more of a voice.

But to those who want conference to have a greater role, it must be a two way street.

If we want conference to have more legitimacy inside the party with the leadership, the conference must be more legitimate in the way its decisions are made.

We can’t modernise our party and make it fit for the 21st century unless we look at the way conference works and that’s what we are going to do.

I also want to open up conference to the public.

We should reach out to the thousands of organisations of civil society.

Charities, pressure groups and community organisations should come and speak at our conference.

And members of the public should too.

Thirdly, we have fantastic local Labour parties.

Which make real change in our communities.

But we all know every local party could do more to reach out and we all know we’ve got to change.

Let’s confront the most difficult fact for all political parties.

I am so proud of our 65,000 new members since the general election.

I want tens of thousands more, if possible hundreds of thousands more.

But membership of political parties has been declining since the 1950s.

Only one voter in a hundred is a member of any of the three main political parties – a third of the level only 20 years ago.

So we have to find new ways to reach out to people as well.

Nearly three million ordinary men and women – we call them trade union levy payers – are linked to this party.

Nurses, call centre workers, engineers, shop workers.

We are unique in having that relationship with working people.

But for years we have done nothing to reach out to these men and women.

When did any of us see substantial numbers of them involved in our party?

All of that has to change.

Let me tell you.

Many of them did not vote for us at the last general election.

Every local Labour Party should be holding regular meetings open to them and make them genuinely part of our movement.

And we need to reach beyond union and party members.

A few years ago, Labour had a good idea: the supporters’ network, for people that didn’t want to be a fully paid up member of our party but wanted to be involved.

But this network was undermined because it was centralised.

Let’s congratulate those MPs and local parties, like Gisela Stuart in Birmingham Edgbaston and Andrew Smith in Oxford East who have, under their own steam, managed to sign up local supporters.

It’s not about undermining the membership offer, but it’s acknowledging the fact that many people aren’t by instinct joiners anymore; they are supporters and doers.

I want every local party to be able to sign up their strong supporters a nd then involve them in party activities.

And I believe that once those supporters know what we are about, many of them will want to join us.

Let me end with this thought.

I am determined we win the next election.

I am determined we are a one-term opposition.

I know where we need to take this country.

We need to uphold the promise of Britain that the next generation does better than the last.

We need to build a new economy that stops the rising inequality that we see between those at the top and the rest.

And we need to build communities where we look after each other and strengthen the responsibility that holds our society together.

But I know this also.

We cannot change Britain in the ways we want to unless we become a genuine movement again.

A movement that starts with party members

That reaches out to our supporters in the country.

That goes beyond them to new recruits.

Millions of people that argue our case up and down Britain.

We cannot do that either with central control from the top.

Or a party that looks inward to itself.

Let me be clear what my ambition is:

For Labour to be:

A cause not just a party.

A mission not just a programme

A movement not just a government.

Then, together, we can build the country people deserve.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to Reuters on 8th July 2011.

I want to thank Reuters for hosting this speech this morning.

This has been a tumultuous week for British journalism.

With allegations that have shocked the British public’s sense of decency.

And the largest circulation newspaper in the country, the News of the World, being forced to close.

But it is right to take a step back from the daily revelations and to reflect on what it all means.

And I am glad I can do it here at the London headquarters of an internationally renowned news organisation that for more than 160 years has maintained its independence and its integrity.

Today I want to talk to you about why now is a time for strong leadership from both politicians and those in the newspaper industry who feel passionately about its integrity and ethics.

We must deal with the immediate issues but also ensure we use this crisis of public trust and confidence as a catalyst for a better future.

So I want to deal with the choices we must make now to start to chart a path back to British journalism being the envy of the world.

This is my argument today.

A strong, vital press is at the heart of our democracy.

We must protect it and defend it.

We all know politicians must be wary of tampering with the precious institution of the free press.

Yet there come moments when it is up to us to defend, not ourselves, but the public from parts of the press.

We must not only speak for the public, but also show we can act on their behalf.

Let me start with what might seem obvious: why a free and buccaneering press matters.

British journalism has been – and is – some of the best in the world.

Our newspapers are part of our way of life.

Very few countries have so many titles redolent with history, vying with each other for a place in the home of tens of millions of British families.

Great titles. Great newspapers. They come in many forms.

They reach different markets. They have different politics.

I want to defend them all in doing their work.

And we in this country have a long and proud tradition of journalism exposing what needs to be exposed.

From campaigns on Thalidomide, to the investigation of match-fixing in cricket by the News of the World.

When people talk about the idea of democracy, we mean much more than the right to vote.

We can think of countries round the world where people have the vote, but we know the press is not truly free.

People are intimidated from expressing their view.

Journalists are jailed for what they write.

Newspapers are closed down – not by proprietors but by government.

All of that represents a gross interference and perversion of what we think of as a true democracy.

What is more, within our democracy, a free press is an essential part of what makes political change happen.

Too often, we think of politics as being about politicians.

In fact, political change happens often because of people outside politics, including our newspapers.

So, precisely because one of the roles of the press is to hold politicians to account, we need to take the greatest care when addressing the issue of press freedom.

And the relationship between politicians and the press has always been fraught.

The history of politicians complaining about bias, character assassination and falsehoods in the press goes back a long way and certainly predates the invention of the internet, or the arrival of Rupert Murdoch in Britain.

One of my predecessors as Labour leader said that the outstanding mark of modern times was “A snippety press and a sensational public”.

It was Keir Hardie, a century ago.

So, newspapers often campaign on their readers’ behalf, speak truth to power and stand up for the people against politicians.

But what happens when journalism does not do right by the public?

What happens when newspapers, who claim, and often rightly claim, to be the protectors of the rights of the people, themselves infringe those rights?

When those who claim to protect the public from the arbitrary workings of power indulge in arbitrary, cruel, even criminal abuse of power themselves?

And at such a time, our job must be to stand up for people against those who exercise power without responsibility.

For too long, political leaders have been too concerned about what people in the press would think and too fearful of speaking out about these issues.

If one section of the media is allowed to grow so powerful that it becomes insulated from political criticism and scrutiny of its behaviour, the proper system of checks and balances breaks down and abuses of power are likely to follow.

We must all bear responsibility for that.

My party has not been immune from it.

Nor has the current government and Prime Minister. All of this is difficult because of his personal relationships and the powerful forces here.

But just because we didn’t get it right in the past, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put it right now.

Putting it right for the Prime Minister means starting by the appalling error of judgement he made in hiring Andy Coulson.

Apologising for bringing him in to the centre of the government machine.

Coming clean about what conversations he had with Andy Coulson before and after his appointment about phone-hacking.

The truth is that all politicians been lagging behind the public’s rising sense of anger and indignation about the methods and culture of sections of the press.

There are moments in our national life when the public looks to political leaders not just to express sentiment, but to accept the responsibility for leading the call of change.

There has been a pent up demand for change for many years.

But this week the dam burst.

We should stand up for the public, without fear and without favour.

The full horror of the revelations of the last few days has shocked and disgusted people across this country.

I know it has shocked many journalists, including many journalists at News International.

We have heard allegations, that in the pursuit of a story, people working for the News of the World hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler, an abducted child, even deleting some of her messages.

Hacked the voicemail messages of the grieving parents of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, the two girls murdered in Soham.

Hacked the voicemail messages of victims of the 7/7 bombings.

Even allegations of the hacking of the families of fallen soliders.

Each and every one of these has rightly sickened the country.

They can’t simply be dismissed as isolated examples committed by a rogue reporter.

There appears to have been a systematic pattern of activity.

Affecting not simply members of the Royal family, the cabinet and celebrities, but also private people who never expected or wanted to see their names in the papers.

And the activities don’t seem to have been limited to phone hacking.

It is now also alleged that it included payments being made to police for stories.

In so many cases there was absolutely no conceivable public interest.

Clearly in a highly competitive media market, the ethics of those involved come under pressure.

In too many cases, people lost a sense of right and wrong.

Papers which prided themselves so much on speaking for their readers lost touch with the British public’s sense of decency.

As I have already said, part of blame for this being allowed to go unquestioned for too long must be shared by politicians of all parties.

Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with politicians engaging with the media at any level.

Editors, proprietors, reporters, columnists, whoever.

What matters isn’t whether these relationships exist.

It’s whether they stifle either the ability of the press to speak out against political leaders, or political leaders to speak up for the public when the press does the wrong thing.

Looking at these events, some have insisted the answer is merely to leave it to the police.

It is, of course, right that a proper police inquiry gets to the bottom of what happened, and prosecutes those involved.

But this is not enough.

Why?

Because it seems to be part of a culture in parts of the industry.

And because it is absolutely clear that the system of self-regulation we have has hopelessly and utterly failed.

All of us have an interest in a press that can be trusted by the British public.

It is right that we restore that reputation of decent, hard-working journalists who have professional integrity and the highest standards.

So what is to be done?

We need a judge-led inquiry to shine a light on the culture and practices which need to change.

This should be establised immediately with terms of reference agreed before the summer.

The inquiry should cover the culture and unlawful practices of some parts of the newspaper industry, the relationship between the police and media, and the nature of regulation.

However, public confidence will not come simply from a judicial inquiry but also from fair dealing in all major decisions concerning the media.

Most immediately, the decision on BskyB has significant implications for media ownership in Britain.

The public must have confidence that the right decisions are being made.

That is why we have consistently said there should be a reference to the Competition Commission, the proper regulatory body.

The government has chosen a different path which relies on assurances from executives at News Corporation.

Given the doubts hanging over the assurances about phone hacking by News international executives, I cannot see, and the public will not understand, how this can provide the fair dealing that is necessary.

I strongly urge the government to take responsibilty and think again about how it is handling the BskyB decision.

Those who were in senior positions at the News of the World at the time phone hacking was taking place must also take responsibility.

I talked recently about the need to restore the principle of responsibility throughout society.

From the benefits office to the boardroom.

This principle cannot stop at the door of the newspaper boardroom.

When the banks precipitated the financial crisis, politicians were quick to demands head needed to roll.

If an oil company was found to have contaminated the coastline, I have no doubt its chief executive would have faced calls from politicians, including the Prime Minister, to resign.

The practices at the News of the World have harmed innocent victims and contaminated the reputation of British journalism.

I welcome James Murdoch’s admission of serious errors.

But closing the News of the World, possibly to re-open as the Sunday Sun, is not the answer.

Instead those who were in charge must take responsibility for what happened.

And politicians cannot be silent about it.

Finally, we need wholesale reform of our system of regulation.

The Press Complaints Commission has failed.

It failed to get to the bottom of the allegations about what happened at News International in 2009.

Its chair admits she was lied to but could do nothing about it.

The PCC was established to be a watchdog.

But it has been exposed as a toothless poodle.

Wherever blame lies for this, the PCC cannot restore trust in self-regulation.

It is time to put the PCC out of its misery.

We need a new watchdog.

There needs to be fundamental change.

My instincts continue to be that a form of self-regulation would be the best way forward. That is a debate we should have.

But it would need to be very different to work.

Let me make some initial suggestions, drawing on many of the debates about the inadequacies of the system.

A new body should have:

– Far greater independence of its Board members from those it regulates

– Proper investigative powers

– And an ability to enforce corrections.

Change should be led by the many decent editors and people in the industry who want to see change.

I call on journalists, and those concerned with decent journalism, to put the reform of the system of self regulation at the centre of their concerns.

To see in that a way of regaining and retaining the trust of those you need most: your readers.

The inquiry is one place from which this reform can be made.

But change does not need to wait for the judge-led inquiry.

If we can make change in the meantime, we should.

The press would be showing to the public that it was taking the first steps to cleaning up its act if it started to make change now.

Today, I want to call on all the many decent people in the industry to take the initiative and start to make this happen.

So there are four essential things that need to happen — that all political leaders must stand up for — if we are to start to restore trust.

The right kind of public inquiry, accompanying the police inquiries.

Proper decisions in respect of media ownership, in particular the BSkyB bid.

The taking of responsibility by those at News International.

And reform of our system of press regulation.

Nothing less will do.

Let me conclude on this point.

The mainstream media, what some people call old media, is fighting ever harder to protect its shrinking share of a market which now demands updated information minute-by-minute, 24 hours a day.

Many British newspapers are in the lead in making this change.

But despite this there is a crisis of economics in a newspaper industry under threat from the availability of free information on the internet and unsure of whether it can generate a sustainable income from its own online services.

This creates new pressures on newspapers, seeking to produce ever more journalism on ever lower budgets.

It is incredibly important that British journalism survives and thrives in the new world.

But what we know after this week is that journalism must deal not just with a crisis of finance, but with a crisis of trust.

Political leaders should be prepared to work with those in the media to make change happen.

If we do so I am convinced Britain can have the frank, free and fearless, and trusted press, the public deserve.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the 2001 Federation of Small Businesses conference.

I’d like to start by apologising for the changes to your timetable today.

I have come to you straight from the House of Commons where the Prime Minister made a statement about last night’s UN resolution on Libya and set out how the UK would play a part in implementing that resolution.

This is an approach that the Labour Party fully supports as part of an international effort to protect the Libyan people from the actions of the Libyan regime.

Given the commitment of UK forces, I thought it was right that I was in Parliament to respond

I hope you will therefore understand the reason for the delay in arriving here this afternoon.

Turning to the business of your conference.

I want to offer my thanks to the Federation of Small Businesses – and your chairman, John Walker – for inviting me here today.

The Federation continues to make a huge contribution both to the national debate about the future of our economy but also day by day in its support and services to businesses.

And I particularly want to thank a company called Sentry Doors, in my constituency that I have been able to spend some time with, so I better understand how the small business environment looks from the inside.

It’s a great privilege to be given the opportunity to speak with so many of Britain’s leading small businesses, which make up such a diverse and vibrant part of our economy.

I come here today above for a dialogue with you.

We lost the election ten months ago and part of my job is to learn the right lessons and plan for the future.

What I want to do today is this:

First, explain how I understand the role of small business in creating the country I believe in.

Second, say something about my party and the journey I believe we need to go on to win the confidence of small business.

Third, highlight some particular issues that I have learned from you are important and chart how I hope we can move forward on them.

My beliefs

Let me start by saying something about why I am in politics because as someone who aspires to be the Prime Minister of the country, you deserve to know how small business fits into my vision for Britain.

My politics –and who I am—are defined very much by my background. The child of two refugees fleeing from the Nazis, people who saw the difference that governments could make.

People who out of the darkness of the second world war constructed a home for me and my brother.

My parents were not in business, although my father’s father was.

First in Belgium, including during the depression of the 1930s, and then in a small shop in London after the war.

I never met my grandfather because he died before I was born.

But I do remember my Dad telling me what hard times he went through-and yet how devoted he was to his business.

Like most parents, my Mum and Dad taught me right from wrong, they taught me to work hard, but they taught me something else: that you had a responsibility to leave the world a fairer, more just place than you found it.

That is why I am in politics.

And what I know is that we cannot create that more just society, without creating the wealth that is necessary for it.

You are incredibly important wealth creators for our country and I salute what you do.

If we are to pay our way in the world and succeed as a country, all the evidence I have seen says our future success will come from small, fast growing enterprises.

But what I know also, from the time I have spent talking to small businesses, is that what you do is not simply about the creation of wealth, important though that is.

It is about something more.

It is about, in a different way, what my politics is about: ensuring that as many people as possible can have life which has meaning and fulfilment.

As I said at the outset, recently I spent some time with a firm call Sentry Doors in my constituency.

Run by Gordon Yates.

Gordon set it up in 1989 in a garage with just a couple of thousand pounds. He has grown it to employ about 60 people.

There is a huge amount of loyalty – flowing both ways – between the employees and those running Sentry Doors.

I’ll tell you as the local MP, I know Sentry Doors is part of the fabric of the local community.

And what you know is that the five million small businesses of this country are all part of the fabric of our communities.

Now Gordon told me that these days he would be able to get by renting out his building as a warehouse.

That might be an option with lower risks and with less heartache.

But he doesn’t want to because he feels an obligation and responsibility to the company, to the people who work for him and to what they do.

For him, and for millions of you, running a small businesses is not just about making a living, it’s a labour of love.

And when I think about the young people in my constituency just down the road from Gordon, I care about the meaning and fulfilment they can have in their lives

Whether we can pass on greater opportunities to them than their parents had.

What I call the British promise.

And I want them to see the possibility of setting up a small business as central to that, a route to social mobility and a better life.

So that is something about me and why I believe so much in what you do.

Now let me say something about my party.

In the 1990s New Labour took the very important step of reaching out to business.

It was essential to showing we understood the modern world and cared as much about a good economy as fairness.

We spent a lot of time reaching out to big business then.

For me in the months and years ahead, I want to see an equal effort by my party, as we begin our policy review, to understand the needs of small business.

When we have been at our best as a party, in my view, it has been when we have stood up for those who are up against vested interests, private and public, that prevent them fulfilling their ambitions for their own lives.

Fundamentally, I hope we can be a party that has something to offer small business, because our values speak to your concerns.

Talking to small businesses round the country, I’ve heard the issues people are facing:

From the banks suddenly calling in the overdraft.

To big firms who delay payments to you by 60, 90, even 100 days.

To the government inspectors who didn’t seem to listen.

You tell me that too often small businesses have missed out because of a system which is stacked against your interests.

Let me say immediately, I know many politicians have come to this Conference and said they will do better on all of the issues I have mentioned.

Then failed to act.

I am not going to make you promises we can’t deliver.

What I do want to say is I will listen and then act where I can.

And as part of the listening process, we are establishing today our small business taskforce, led by Nigel Doughty with the FSB’s own Stephen Alambritis.

I have asked the taskforce to spend the next few months consulting with businesses from across the country on what gets in the way of you achieving.

It will report back to me and John Denham, Labour’s shadow business secretary, as part of Labour’s policy review.

Thirdly, then, let me say something about the wider context we currently face.

We need to get the macroeconomy right.

I won’t rehearse the arguments between us and the government, except to say, we do care about getting the deficit down and would have halved it over four years.

But I am worried about the Government’s decision to go too far and too fast.

The risks to growth are only too clear.

And we have seen only too often that it is small business that are affected first, and worst, when growth slows.

The squeeze on families’, on your customers’, living standards is a real problem for our society today.

And the impact of the VAT rise on fuel is only the most visible aspect of that.

For businesses the cost of loans – where they are available – are a serious issue.

Causing cashflow problems in far too many cases.

In the months ahead we need to address these problems.

But if we are to succeed we need to aim at more than simply getting back to business as usual before the crisis hit.

I think that starts with our finance sector and the way the banks work.

When even the Governor of the Bank of England says that banks are exploiting their customers, there clearly is a problem.

I’m concerned that the Govenremnt’s new lending targets won’t make much difference to how banks work with small businesses .

It’s precisely because of the difficulty of implementing lending targets that we proposed an independent small business adjudicator.

I still hope the Government takes up that idea.

But I also think these problems go back further and deeper than just the global financial crisis.

Britain’s banking sector has become too disconnected from the communities it serves.

We have a chance to address that with the Independent Banking Commission and as we consider how to dispose of the stakes we own in banks.

Here I think Britain can learn lessons from abroad.

The Small Business Investment Company programme in the United States has used government-backed guarantees to expand access to finance.

It has provided critical, early-stage financing to some phenomenal business success stories, such as Apple, Intel, and FedEx.

And in Germany, the KFW state bank has a strategic objective of investing in small- and medium-sized companies.

As part of our policy review, I want us to look seriously at whether we can make public-private models of financing work here in Britain, building on the

Enterprise Finance Guarantee – something the FSB rightly fought for.

Second, there are real issues in public procurement.

How government spends money is a key determining factor in the kind of economy we have.

Government should be leading by example.

But I know procurement can be so bureaucratic and complex that it effectively locks out small businesses from bidding for publicly-funded contracts.

John Denham, Labour’s shadow business secretary, recently met FSB members here in Liverpool.

One of the stories that stood out was of a family-owned small chain of nurseries effectively being excluded from tendering for local contracts to run nurseries by the high costs of certification.

And I know that story is probably reflected in hundreds of stories round this room.

I also know that there is a lot of concern about the impact deep spending cuts will have on procurement budgets, particularly in local government.

There is a danger they will choose to consolidate their purchasing from larger suppliers rather than supporting local small businesses.

So we will certainly focus on holding the Government to account over the next few years on the shared goal that small businesses should get an increased share of government contracts.

Let me say one other thing about the way government works with you.

We were right to introduce prompt payment terms of five days for businesses that contract with government departments.

But these are normally large firms.

I believe we should go further and require those firms to meet prompt payment terms of five days to the thousands of businesses with whom they sub-contract to deliver for government.

We must end the situation where government procurement works for big businesses but doesn’t do enough for small businesses.

I want to ensure that in every contract, government gives the same deal to small businesses as we give to large businesses.

And third, there is the issue of how government interacts with you – on tax, and on regulation.

I started by talking about my belief in social justice and wealth creation.

I know that sometimes the two appear to be in tension, particularly when it comes to the regulation of small business.

From the living wage to the end of the default retirement age, we can all see the benefits to society.

But of course you can see better than us the hit to the narrow margins under which you operate.

I’m not going to pretend that we can wish these tensions away, but I do want to say that I understand the need for balance.

I also understand that there is too much bad, and poorly implemented, regulation out there.

That is why the big issue at stake is about the very process of how government makes and implements legislation.

That is why I want us to do the thorough work with you through our taskforce on how we can make a difference.

And we recognise too the importance of a favourable, and simple, tax environment for small business.

That’s why we introduced HMRC’s time to pay scheme in Government.

A common sense, practical approach, to helping businesses manage tax bills.

Let me end with this thought:

I am fundamentally an optimist about our country and what it can achieve.

I see big challenges around us:

How we ensure that all families and not just a few, benefit from prosperity.

How we fulfil the promise to the next generation in Britain.

And how we protect the things people value in our communities.

Small businesses are central to all of these challenges.

That is why I hope we can have a successful dialogue between my party and you so that together we can meet our common goals for a prosperous and fair country.

I look forward to making this happen in the months and years ahead.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the Local Government Association Conference in Birmingham on 30th June 2011.

Thank you for inviting me to address your conference here in Birmingham today.

I want to thank all of you – councillors and officials, people of all political parties and none – for the work you do on behalf of your local communities.

I see the work of my own local councillors.

So much of it unrecognised.

Men and women, young and old, who know their neighbourhoods.

Who make that extra call on behalf of the family who desperately need a home.

Who make it possible for young people to have somewhere to go and something to do.

Who back the community group who need new changing rooms at the sports ground.

At a time when politics gets a bad name, let me thank every councillor in this country for your work.

And I want to pay particular tribute to one person, not from my party.

For the work she has done and her willingness to speak truth to power, the outgoing chair of the LGA, Margaret Eaton.

Margaret, we all thank you.

Your job in local government has never been more demanding than today.

Because you are the ones in the frontline.

Today I want to talk to you about my priorities for our country and how we can achieve them together.

I see three big challenges, and in each local government has a vital role to play.

The first is to honour what I call the “Promise of Britain” –that each generation should have the opportunity to do better than the last.

That promise is in doubt for the first time in living memory.

You hear it in your communities:

Can my son or daughter get a job?

Can they even afford to get the qualifications they need?

How can they buy or rent a house?

We can only honour the Promise of Britain with strong local government delivering the Sure Start centres, the good schools, and the affordable housing.

The second challenge must be to address the crisis of living standards facing so many people in this country.

Struggling to make ends meet.

The plight of the squeezed middle is holding our economy back.

That’s why Ed Balls and I have called for a temporary cut in VAT to secure stronger economic growth and create jobs.

And it’s why central and local government must ensure all tax payers get value for money.

But the squeeze on families is not just financial.

People are finding themselves squeezed between the demands of looking after their kids, and caring for their aging Mum or Dad.

Again local authorities are on the front line.

From nursery places to meals on wheels.

The third challenge is how we help people build a life beyond the bottom line.

Strong communities are not built by market forces or Whitehall targets.

They are built by people working together at local level.

But this is a world changing so fast that people ask, who will be there to protect the things we value?

Local government should be empowered to be that champion, so you can shape and improve your communities.

How we address these three challenges is my test for our generation of politicians.

If we pass on to our children diminished life prospects, stagnating living standards, and weakened communities, then we do risk national decline.

But if we pull together as a country, as we have done so often in the past, I believe we can meet the challenges head on and emerge stronger as a result.

Of course there are difficult decisions to be made, including on public spending.

But we should set our deficit reduction plans in a way that supports our vision for the kind of country we want to be.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Government has chosen that course.

That is why they have failed to build a national consensus for their plans.

Nothing symbolises that more clearly than the strike action by hundreds of thousands of public sector workers taking place today.

I understand the anger of workers who feel they are being singled out by a reckless and provocative government.

But I believe this action is wrong.

Negotiations are ongoing.

So it is a mistake to go on strike because of the effect on the people who rely upon these services.

And it is mistake because it will not help to win the argument.

The Labour Party I lead will always be the party of the Mums and Dads who know the value of a day’s education.

But as I have also said, strikes are a sign of failure on both sides.

This disruption could have been avoided if ministers had been willing to engage with the concerns of those affected by changes to public sector pensions.

The Government’s handling of the issue has been high-handed and arrogant.

And as the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, showed this morning, ignorant of the facts as well.

As you know when we were in government, we made significant changes to public sector pension schemes.

We did so without strike action.

With an ageing population, there is a need for change.

But the Government has gone about making that change happen in exactly the wrong way.

Announcing a 3% surcharge on public sector workers before John Hutton had even published his report setting out sensible starting points for reform.

Then announcing their final position, when negotiations were still going on.

My message to both sides is this:

What the British people want and expect is that you now get back to the negotiating table and redouble your efforts to find an agreed solution.

Put aside the rhetoric, and avoid any further disruption to parents and the public.

Unfortunately we see the same high-handedness, the same unwillingness to work for a national consensus in the Government’s approach to local authorities.

No government has been immune from taking high handed decisions when it comes to local government.

But I cannot be alone in being appalled by both the substance and style of this Government’s approach.

The way you have been singled out for disproportionate cuts.

The front-loading of those cuts, making it nearly impossible for local leaders to sensibly plan ahead.

The unfairness so that poorer communities will be hit hardest.

On top of that, the breathtaking arrogance.

The decisions you are making will profoundly affect the lives of millions.

So people deserve a grown up politics.

You deserve a grown up politics.

You know that you need to bear down on the costs of consultants and senior pay.

But it’s not grown up politics for the government to pretend that this will deliver 28% savings.

You know that it’s important to save money on back office functions. That’s what many of you have been doing.

But it’s not grown up politics for the government to pretend that the 9% that is spent on the back office can deliver all the savings.

You know that we should be protecting frontline services.

But it’s not grown up politics to blame you for the cuts being imposed too far too fast by central government.

It’s not grown up. It’s grotesque.

They singled out one council, and claimed that the council were making people redundant as a political gesture.

What a disgraceful slur.

But let’s be honest, it could have been any of you if it had suited them.

It’s the politics of arrogance and smear.

None of us, from whatever party we come, should have any truck with it.

It’s an insult to you, the people you represent, and to your communities.

Let’s say today from Birmingham, end the insults, end the smears, it must stop.

And the Big Society idea that volunteers will simply fill the void left by these cuts is being exposed as a fantasy.

Those of you who have devoted your lives to local government know that civic improvement needs more than goodwill.

They talk about volunteering.

But the Government’s plans have turned into the biggest attack on the voluntary sector in living memory.

The same applies to the Government’s much heralded commitment to localism.

It has ended up devolving responsibility for the cuts and little else.

A reduction in the number of top down targets is something I support.

But has the Government really given power away to local authorities and communities?

If anything we are seeing the opposite.

The Secretary of State for Local Government is creating a hundred and forty two new powers for himself in the Localism Bill.

It’s the same in education – 50 new powers for Michael Gove, including the right to micro-manage individual teachers.

And by attempting to cut local government out of education we know what their goal is.

To manage Britain’s 20,000 schools from Whitehall.

So much for localism.

This Government has used the language of localism, simply to centralise power while devolving blame.

We can do better than this.

What you know is that many councils across the country have improved year on year on year.

And more and more it is to innovative Local Authorities that people turn for inspiration.

So now is exactly the wrong time to return to the distrust, and disempowerment of the past.

How do we get it right in the future?

Let me set out the key arguments that underpin our thinking, and the work Caroline Flint is leading in our policy review.

First, we need a genuine partnership between central and local government.

One based on mutual respect.

Above all, getting away from the idea that it’s clever to shift blame to local government while hoarding power.

When government makes tough decisions at the centre, it should be candid about them.

The government at Westminster does need to set national priorities.

The answer won’t always be local discretion.

But in my experience if central government sets priorities, then from Sure Start to safer neighbourhood teams, we can work together with great success.

And central government should recognise there are things you can do that it can never do and should never do.

Co-ordinate the work of your local schools.

Give voice to local health priorities.

And shape the character of the local community on behalf of your citizens.

Second, we need to devolve real powers to the local level, including city regions.

Let me say it plainly: Britain is still far too centralised as a country.

We should ask ourselves why it is that many European cities and regions seem to find it easier to develop dynamic economic futures and generate jobs.

What is it that constrains some of our own cities from achieving this?

One vital factor is leadership with real powers over issues which matter to local people – transport, economic development and policing.

Different people have different views about the Mayoral system.

But I do believe done right, especially in major cities, it can make a positive difference.

It is right to give people that choice.

Because, in the end, it is for local people to make the decision.

And it is right to say that local leaders, with clear accountability, should be given real powers to drive economic growth and create jobs.

That is why Caroline Flint and I welcome the ideas coming forward from the leaders of our big cities to learn the lessons from London of devolving housing, transport and wider powers over economic development.

Let’s devolve real power to our cities, and towns across England.

Thirdly, strong local leadership should have a wider role in championing your communities far beyond the important role of service provider.

We want to build on the idea of Total Place, which gave you that voice around all local services.

And you need to have the power to stand up for local people whenever the things they value most are under threat.

The high streets colonised by betting shops.

Inappropriate adverts that spring up on billboards close to our schools.

Local councils should be there in the first line of defence against bureaucratic or corporate interests.

It is why we proposed an amendment to the Localism Bill giving local councils power to shape the character of their high streets in line with the wishes of people.

The Government rejected our proposal, but it is something to which I am determined a future Labour government will return.

Fourthly, the partnership between Town Halls and local communities must continue to evolve.

Some of you have been leading the way in rethinking this partnership locally for many years.

In Durham, area action partnerships have devolved millions of pounds, successfully engaging and involving thousands of local people in deciding how money is spent.

Later this year, Lambeth and others will be launching the Co-op councils’ network– looking to different solutions for providing frontline services.

The real test of experiments like this should be the contribution they make to building stronger communities and delivering services that are more responsive to local needs.