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Tag: 2016

  • Elizabeth Truss – 2016 Speech on Reforming DEFRA

    Liz Truss
    Liz Truss

    Below is the text of the speech made by Elizabeth Truss, the Secretary of State for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at The Institute for Government, Carlton Gardens, London on 1 February 2016.

    Thank you very much. It is hard to believe that the Institute for Government (IfG) has been around for just eight years.

    In that time, there is scarcely a corner of Whitehall it hasn’t shone a light into. It is a rare combination of a think tank, a classroom and a critical friend.

    And I don’t think I would be standing here if I agreed with the blogger Guido Fawkes, who described the Institute as the “most serious threat to freedom in Britain since the Communist Party”.

    It’s an exciting time for us to be talking about reform in government.

    Why this matters

    I’m someone who has always cared about this issue but I think that more of us should care. It matters far beyond the world of Whitehall-watching, because it is critical to our mission to build Britain’s economy and society in this turnaround decade.

    I believe that the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ are inevitably linked to the ‘how’. If we want Britain to lead the world, our governance needs to lead the world too. It needs to enable talent and enterprise, to do less – and where it acts to be more productive and more open to ideas.

    Global changes

    As the introduction said, I worked at Shell and Cable & Wireless in the 1990s and 2000s and I saw the changes that technology bought, from the carefully drafted memo right through to the slapdash blackberry message. The arrival of the internet did not just mean automating what we already did. It meant companies making huge efficiency savings and the whole culture of organisations changing. Layers of management were stripped out and we had to be more nimble and responsive.

    We face ever-fiercer global competition and shifting patterns of climate, trade and economic power. To meet these challenges, our productivity must match and exceed the level of the best-performing nations.

    The government’s supply side reforms to taxes, welfare and education are all vital to closing the gap.

    We are also getting out of the way and allowing enterprise to thrive – since 2010, five private sector jobs have been created for every job lost in the public sector.

    And we must improve our own productivity and make sure that our actions drive competitiveness. This means breaking up monopolies, opening up competition for the supply of public goods and minimising the burdens of regulation.

    Changing government

    Making government work better is something we’ve been grappling with for generations. The Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of 1850s were about meritocracy and efficiency in Whitehall.

    Government departments coordinated by the Cabinet Office were the product of the First World War and David Lloyd George, with the Hankey and Haldane reforms which he started.

    The post-war growth of government led to massive delivery departments. The Fulton Committee in 1968 called for much greater separation of services and policy – the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ – and for openness to outside experts.

    This led to the creation of Next Steps agencies starting in the 1980s. We saw real improvements as a result of this, but the creation of so many arm’s-length organisations also brought duplication, friction and extra costs.

    Since 2010, we have been reshaping this landscape by sharing more expertise across government – like the Government Digital Service. In the case of Defra, we have seen the number of organisations reduced from more than 90 in 2010 to today’s 34.

    I want Defra to be leading the way in the next phase of change and I believe the four key principles are about government being more integrated, more open, more modern and more local.

    Integrated

    The technology revolution means that people today expect responsiveness and seamlessness, they want services shaped around their needs not around organisational convenience. The days of traditional government departments saying “take it or leave it” are over.

    Defra touches the lives of every individual and every business in the country. And our starting point has to be the people who deal with us and the landscapes we are trying to enhance, not our organogram.

    We will structure our work around river catchments and landscapes that make up the environment. For the first time, we will have a plan and budget for each area rather than 34 organisations operating with different plans. We are going to be integrating these plans with the 25-year framework we are creating for the environment, which we are going to be launching this spring. When community groups, NGOs, farmers and businesses talk to us, they won’t be passed from pillar to post.

    The important legal independence and regulatory role of Natural England and the Environment Agency will be maintained whilst more flexible operations will mean the same spending delivering results several times over. We will share the same IT, HR and communications, releasing resources for the front line.

    A new Environment Analysis Unit will pull together data, stats and economics from across our organisation meaning that flood alleviation, flora and fauna, farming, water soil and air will be considered together; not as isolated issues.

    The idea of integration goes beyond the Defra border. The same principle applies across government and into the business and voluntary world. We are turbocharging our food exports and inward investment by establishing the Great British Food Unit – where companies from Halen Mon Sea Salt to Weetabix have a platform for their products.

    By bringing together UKTI, Defra and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which is funded by farmers – we have created a UK and international network with 40 staff in London, 5 in China and other locations around Britain and the world.

    Open

    Free and open debate is one of our great advantages as a nation.

    I’m not sure that government and policy wonks ever had a monopoly on good ideas – but we certainly don’t now and modern technology makes it easier than ever for us to access the most creative minds.

    Matt Hancock is leading the changes to the civil service, like requiring all senior appointments to be advertised outside Whitehall.

    This draws on previous experience as Lord Wilson, the former Cabinet Secretary, has said: “Nearly 30 per cent of Permanent Secretaries appointed between 1900 and 1919 had begun life in another profession. Their average age was under 40. It was not unknown for former MPs and Junior Ministers to become Permanent Secretaries.” Now there’s a threat!

    The Extended Ministerial Office (EMO) is a much discussed idea, some might think it’s a goth punk movement, but it isn’t as I’m sure everyone in this room knows, it’s an innovation introduced by Francis Maude. I’m a huge fan of the EMO, because I think it complements the superb expertise we already have in Defra and helps us do more and reach more people.

    We have Ellen Broad from the Open Data Institute driving forward reform with our Head of Data Alex Coley.

    We’ve got Fiona Gately, who has worked for Duchy Originals and school food campaigns in Britain and America. She is promoting British food and drink with our Food Director, Sarah Church.

    We’ve got the economist Adam Memon and government reform specialist Kanishka Narayan bringing new ideas to the department. And we’ve got other outside experts including Ian Hall, a financial services specialist.

    I am pushing Defra to welcome good ideas wherever they come from, creating a flourishing greenhouse of creativity. This means consulting as widely as possible and “showing our workings” in public. For the environment framework for example, we are going to be launching the framework in spring, with the final results through at the end of this year, and we are using a platform called Dialogue to enable contributors to have their say.

    Open to people

    I think we have a huge resource to tap. The British people have an unparalleled love and pride for nature and landscapes. Millions join groups like the RSPB and the National Trust – and farmers and volunteers are working to improve the countryside, like the ones I met last month who have brought the harvest mouse back to Selborne in Hampshire.

    But there are too many people in our country who are not aware of these natural wonders, how food is produced or benefiting from the experience of climbing Catbells in the Lake District or visiting the National Arboretum in Gloucestershire.

    As well as opening our policy making for new ideas – I want to open our environment to new people.

    This means National Parks, Kew, the Forestry Commission attracting more visitors, especially children from all backgrounds and parts of the country. It means making training, volunteering and apprenticeships in countryside management, farming and the environment more widely available.

    These are huge public assets and we should ensure they are benefiting the public as a whole as widely as possible.

    Modern

    I’m pleased to say that Defra is at the forefront of the open data revolution. By June, we will be on target to release 8,000 datasets as I promised last summer.

    I think it’s an immense achievement of our department that one third of all of the government’s open data will be Defra’s – we don’t have one third of the government budget, but we’ve got one third of all the data out there.

    This is a major resource that entrepreneurs already use to design new tools, from websites for people to check their local river levels to software for the latest precision farming techniques.

    Our data is driving exciting advances in mapping. Architects are using our Lidar data, a 3D map of the country built up with airborne laser readings, to build a model of London as they plan the next skyscraper. Game developers are using it to build new landscapes for Minecraft and archaeologists are discovering lost networks of Roman roads from Lancashire to Dorset.

    As a department, we are increasing our capital investment by 12 percent over the course of this parliament. This means that as well as increasing our spending on flood defences, we can raise our investment in IT, science and facilities by 30%. This new technology will help us to assess risk more precisely and to automate more monitoring and inspection, enabling us to reduce our running costs by 15 percent.

    That means we can do things like introduce a single helpline for farmers and streamline the way people apply for environmental permits and track animal movements. Our Single Farm Inspection Taskforce, which we promised in our manifesto, will cut tens of thousands of official visits – without sacrificing standards. This all reduces the time and money people will have to spend dealing with us so that by 2020 we will have swept away £470m worth of unnecessary costs for businesses.

    Local

    The world is more educated than it has ever been before. People have better information for making decisions at the touch of a screen. Government should move from making decisions on people’s behalf to ensuring they have the information, tools and structures to act.

    At the most basic level this means individuals being given greater information, tools and capability to contribute to their local environment, for example, providing habitats for bees in their gardens. It also means communities having the wherewithal to make local decisions. In the “Slow the Flow” project in Pickering, the community are using the landscape to provide flood protection and environmental benefits.

    I think it’s important to note though that empowering individuals and communities requires Defra staff on the ground to be able to take genuine decisions and resolve issues rather than passing them up the line. During the flooding in the North of England – Environment Agency staff were communicating directly with communities online and through broadcast at a level never seen before. I want to see more people in our organisation having that ownership and fulfilment and to be able to get things done locally.

    The tools being designed by the Environment Analysis Unit and the Natural Capital Committee, under the leadership of Dieter Helm will give a consistent framework for people to take decisions nationally and locally. For example, natural capital accounting will help calculate where woodland planting would provide the greatest benefits for plants and animals, recreation and reduced flood risk alongside the economic gains for forestry and farming. We’ll be starting three pathfinder projects later this year—one on the coast, one in an urban setting and one in a large rural landscape.

    The governance reforms through the 25 year plan for the environment will also make it easier for us to bring in talents and finances from other organisations. People could use Environmental Impact Bonds, for example, to raise money to plant trees based on the value they provide in the future.

    Conclusion

    In the 1980s, government took on and broke up entrenched monopolies in public utilities and the City of London, releasing the pent-up energy of the economy.

    Today, we are doing the same for how we are governed. We are harnessing new ideas and technology with an open approach to policy and decision-making. We are devolving power and responsibility to the both people inside and outside government who can bring the best solutions.

    Just as our economy was turned around in the 1980s, in this turnaround decade we are creating a state that is more responsive to people and place and the realities of a more integrated and open world.

    Together we can create the smarter, leaner state that will deliver the results for Britain.

    Thank you.

  • Patrick McLoughlin – 2016 Speech on the Rail Supply Group

    Patrick McLoughlin
    Patrick McLoughlin

    Below is the text of the speech made by Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport, at The Manufacturing Technology Centre, Ansty Park, Coventry on 1 February 2016.

    Introduction

    Thank you.

    It’s a real pleasure to be here today (1 February 2016) for the launch of the Rail Supply Group’s sector strategy.

    This strategy comes at an important moment for the rail industry.

    In the 20 years since privatisation, customer numbers have doubled.

    Rail freight has grown by 75%.

    And our rail supply chain has created the safest network in Europe.

    It is a remarkable achievement.

    More people are using our railways than ever before.

    More even than in their pre-Beeching heydays.

    We have begun a new era of the railway.

    An era in which record passenger numbers are being matched by record government investment.

    To maintain and enhance our existing network, we are spending £38 billion.

    We are spending £15 billion building Crossrail.

    We are building new stations and refurbishing old ones.

    We are laying new tracks, electrifying more than 850 miles of the network and bringing thousands of new train carriages into service.

    And on top of all that, we are on target to start building HS2 just next year.

    For the supply chain, all this means a steady stream of work for decades to come.

    It’s a huge challenge.

    But a huge opportunity.

    Now we need the supply chain to pull together and to plan for the future.

    The RSG sector strategy

    And that’s what this strategy is: a plan.

    For the first time, the rail supply chain has an agreed plan for how it will grow in numbers, productivity and expertise.

    A plan for how, by 2025, the industry will more than double exports, attract new talent, develop new technology, harness the energy, drive and innovation of the sector’s SMEs, and become a global leader in high speed rail.

    It’s a plan with some great ideas, such as for a rail supplier excellence scheme, to recognise the best firms, services and products.

    Ideas for working with the Small Business Commissioner, to find ways of speeding up payments to small businesses.

    And ideas for creating a Rail Supply Chain Finance Forum, to improve banks’ understanding of the sector and reduce the cost of finance.

    Skills shortage

    But I am particularly pleased that the strategy faces up to our greatest challenge; the need for new skills, and new entrants to the industry.

    As things stand today, parts of the rail industry will lose half their staff to retirement within the next 15 years.

    And yet for the improvements to our existing network, we estimate we need 10,000 new engineers.

    And we expect HS2 alone to create 25,000 jobs during construction and 3000 jobs in operation.

    If we do nothing, the supply chain simply won’t be able to get the work done.

    As the strategy explains, the skills shortage is already driving up costs and delaying projects, with the cost to government estimated at over £350 million pounds a year.

    And without action, it will keep getting worse.

    Shared response to skills shortage

    So I am pleased that the Rail Supply Group will produce a rail skills plan, will co-ordinate a service so people can apply for jobs across the sector, and will support the sector in hiring more engineers, planners, technicians and project managers.

    All this builds on the government’s own ‘Transport infrastructure skills strategy’, led by Terry Morgan, and published just last week.

    Our skills strategy will help create 30,000 apprenticeships in the road and rail sector by 2020, through requiring contractors to either hire 1 apprentice for every £3 to £5 million spent on the contract, or to ensure that for every 200 people employed 5 apprenticeships will be created each year.

    So there’s much shared purpose between the RSG sector strategy and the government’s skills strategy.

    Women in rail

    But both strategies also recognise that we need more women in the industry.

    Women make up 47% of the national workforce, but less than 20% of the rail workforce.

    In some roles women are hardly represented at all.

    For example, women make up only 4% of engineers and train drivers.

    It’s a challenge that both the government and the rail supply chain must address together.

    We have already set a target to increase the number of women in the industry in line with the number of women at work in the wider economy.

    And through ‘returnship’ programmes, we want to make it easier for women to return to work after time out.

    So it’s very good news that the Rail Supply Group’s strategy has now committed to raising the profile of the industry and to attracting a more diverse workforce.

    Conclusion

    So, in conclusion.

    I am delighted with the publication of this strategy.

    It’s a clear sign that the rail supply chain is grasping the challenges ahead and that there is great unity of purpose between government and the industry.

    We know where we are heading – to a future in which railways are even more in demand than they are now.

    A future in which we will have electrified our main-lines, built Crossrail, and finished HS2, among much else.

    And now, thanks to this plan, the rail supply industry also knows how it’s going to get us there.

    It will be a great journey, and you can count on the government’s support.

    Thank you.

  • Alun Cairns – 2016 Speech on Welsh Devolution

    aluncairns

    Below is the text of the speech made by Alun Cairns, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Wales, at the Capita Devolution Conference in Cardiff on 28 January 2016.

    Introduction

    Thank you Sir Paul for that introduction and indeed for chairing this event today. I am very pleased to be here to set out how the Government is meeting its commitments to devolve more powers to the Welsh Government and the Assembly.

    This is an exciting time for devolution in Wales and across the UK though it is fair to say that my party were not natural devolutionists at the outset.

    But, once the Welsh people had given their view in the 1997 referendum, we embraced it with a determination to make devolved government succeed. As William Hague remarked, good generals don’t fight yesterday’s battles.

    And since then, my party has become a party of committed devolutionists. In Wales and elsewhere in the UK we are making historic changes to how the country is governed; devolving decision making closer to the communities affected by those decisions.

    But before I talk about the future, I want first to reflect on how we have got to where we are today.

    The Story So Far

    The Assembly of 1999 was of course a very different place to the legislature we have today, with very different powers.

    Having been an Assembly Member for 12 years I am more than familiar with the limitations and the challenges of working in an Assembly under the various Government of Wales Acts. I hope to be able to use my experience as an AM with an understanding of its culture and expectations in a positive and constructive way in developing the new settlement.

    It was not until the Government of Wales Act 2006 that the Assembly truly became a legislature.

    Even then, despite the Richard Commission recommending full law-making powers two years before, devolving competence was subject to the convoluted and complicated Legislative Competence Order process that I think we all would sooner forget.

    When the Conservative-led Coalition Government was elected in 2010, we stepped up the pace of Wales’ devolution journey. We took forward the 2011 referendum which saw full law-making powers devolved to the Assembly for the first time. We established the Silk Commission to engage with the public, businesses, and others in Wales, on the future of Welsh devolution.

    The Wales Act 2014 saw the coalition government implement almost all the recommendations the Silk Commission made in its first report on fiscal devolution. We are devolving stamp duty land tax and landfill tax, proving the Welsh Government with new capital borrowing powers and taking forward the devolution of a portion of income tax.

    Sir Paul’s commission turned next to looking at the Assembly’s powers and published its second report in 2014.

    By then it had become clear to us all that the current Welsh devolution settlement was not fit for purpose. It does not do the job of providing a clear devolution boundary because it is silent in many areas and unclear in others.

    The Silk Commission’s headline recommendation that Wales should move to a reserved powers model reflected the broad consensus of opinion across Wales.

    But although the Silk Commission included representatives of the four main parties in Wales, those representatives had no mandate to bind their parties to the recommendations it made.

    The St David’s Day process, which the Secretary of State led a year ago, identified which of the Silk Commission’s recommendations commanded the support of the four main political parties in Wales.

    It is fair to say that the process was not easy but the Secretary of State was determined that Welsh devolution progressed on the basis of cross-party agreement

    And whilst the views of the parties here in Cardiff are often widely publicised I think all involved in the process were surprised by the less publicised divergence between those views and the views of the same parties in Westminster.

    This complicates the matter still further.

    The outcome of this process became what is now called the St David’s Day Agreement and the Conservative manifesto for last year’s general election committed to implement that agreement in full.

    We’ve wasted no time in getting on with that job.

    We have already put in place a funding floor. This was something that had been shied away from in the 13 years leading up to 2010.

    The significance of this should not be understated. When I was an AM, it took years for the Assembly to recognise the case of underfunding. It wasn’t until 2008 that the Welsh Government agreed to commission Gerry Holtham to conduct an investigation. Even then, the-then Chief Secretary, Andy Burnham, simply acknowledged the contents without any direction.

    This government recognised that devolution could not operate effectively while the issue of relative levels of funding loomed large in the minds of public and politicians alike.

    The funding floor will ensure that relative levels of funding for Wales will not fall below 115% of comparable funding in England. That is a real commitment and it is in place now.

    We are also taking forward income tax devolution and in November the Chancellor committed to implementing the Welsh Rates of Income Tax without a referendum.

    The draft Wales Bill, which was published in October for pre-legislative scrutiny, further delivers on the St David’s Day Agreement.

    It provides a reserved powers model for Wales and it will devolve new powers over energy, transport, the Assembly, local government elections and many other areas.

    The Changing Context: Further Devolution in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland

    But all of this is not happening in isolation.

    We are taking forward the Smith Commission recommendations for Scotland through the Scotland Bill, which is at Committee stage in the House of Lords.

    We will implement the Fresh Start commitments for Northern Ireland.

    And we are devolving powers to our great cities reflecting the need for responsive decision making at a local level on some key issues to reflect local needs. Manchester will soon have an elected mayor and we are agreeing City Deals for cities as far apart as Bristol and Glasgow.

    The Chancellor also confirmed earlier this month his commitment to delivering a Cardiff City Deal. The £50 million we have committed to establish a UK national centre to develop semiconductors is a down payment on a City Deal we want to see agreed in time for the Budget.

    But there needs to be wider recognition in Wales of the need to devolve decision making from Cardiff Bay. The case for Wales having different needs to other parts of the UK rightly generated the calls for devolution. The same logic also applies to the needs in different parts of Wales.

    Where we Have Got to and Why

    Since its publication, the draft Wales Bill has generated intense debate. And it has exposed some oft-repeated misconceptions about devolution.

    Through the Wales Bill, we want to devolve more powers to Wales. But in establishing a new reserved powers model we want to see a clear boundary between what is devolved and what is reserved.

    Clear boundaries so that policy makers and law makers who need to navigate the settlement every day understand who is responsible for what.

    More importantly, clear boundaries so that people know who to hold to account for decisions on the services they use every day, be it the UK Government or the Welsh Government, the Assembly or Parliament.

    It can’t be right that we have to go to the Supreme Court to get clarity on what is devolved or not devolved.

    And it can’t be right that the focus of debate stagnates around the extent of Assembly powers not on what they want to achieve.

    Much has been made of the consent requirements in the draft Wales Bill but to my mind, they provide flexibility for the Assembly to legislate but with a demarcation of responsibility between the Assembly and the UK Government.

    It is absolutely right that the UK Government seeks the consent of the Assembly to make changes to the law in devolved areas. This happens regularly through Legislative Consent Motions.

    Then surely it is equally right that the consent of a UK Minister should be gained to amend the functions of bodies which are accountable to the UK Parliament.

    The UK Government has sought over 50 Legislative Consent Motions in the Assembly for UK Parliament Bills since the Assembly gained full law making powers in 2011. This is quite a regular and mature part of governance.

    My logic is that it is only right that there should be a similar process when the Assembly seeks to change functions of reserved bodies.

    But, that said, we understand the doubts and concerns about the Bill that remain and we are looking positively at the issues that have been raised.

    And we are looking at the list of reservations. A reserved powers model for Wales was never going to be simple and the list of reservations was never going to be short – it isn’t for Scotland where more powers are devolved.

    We are looking to reduce the number of reservations and to include only those where there is a good reason to do so. But the focus here should not be on the number of reservations, the focus needs to be on getting the devolution settlement right.

    Finally, most of the debate around the draft Bill has been about the so called “necessity test”.

    I recognise the concerns that have been raised about this issue..

    I respect the views that have been expressed but let me make clear that this is not, as some would have us believe, a part of some Machiavellian plot to prevent the Assembly being able to enforce its legislation.

    Rather it is simply to ensure that the fundamental principles that underpin the legal jurisdiction in England and Wales are not modified any more than they need to be for that enforcement to be effective in Wales.

    We are looking at whether this aim can be achieved in a different way but the answer is not a separate jurisdiction.

    The single jurisdiction works and has served Wales well for centuries.

    A separate jurisdiction would be expensive with more complicated structures.

    It is not what the legal profession in Wales wants – a profession that currently punches above its weight across England and Wales.

    Be it from law schools based in London, Cardiff or Llandudno, there could be a risk that legal talent would desert law firms in Wales for better opportunities in London, Manchester or Birmingham.

    And we do not want potential inward investors having to factor in a separate jurisdiction into their decision making when they are choosing between Flint and Farnborough or Llanelli and Lincoln.

    We do not need a separate jurisdiction to make a reserved powers model work, nor do we need one just for the sake of being different.

    We do not need a separate jurisdiction to make a reserved powers model work, nor do we need one just for the sake of being different.

    I absolutely agree that Welsh legislation will continue to diverge and that the legal system must account for that.

    There are well established systems in place to ensure that the justice system in Wales can react to changes in the law in Wales but we believe that these arrangements can be made more robust to reflect the distinct arrangements needed in Wales to take account of the laws made by the Assembly.

    There are also some who call for a separate or distinct jurisdiction simply for Wales to be different; as if it is somehow an important assertion of Welsh identity to rebrand our courts.

    They argue for an outcome without ever explaining why that outcome should be where we want to get to.

    That is not how good policy is made and it would not deliver a clearer, stronger and fairer settlement as we are aiming to do.

    It is the very opposite of devolving powers for a purpose and that is why I would argue for a different outcome; on the issue of the jurisdiction and for Welsh devolution more generally.

    The Goal: More Accountable Government and More Mature Debate
    We need to move the debate in Wales onto a more mature footing.

    When the Wales Bill is settled, I want the focus of political engagement in Wales to be on policies, not on powers.

    In the early days of the Assembly, policies were routinely implemented on an England and Wales basis, not so that Westminster kept control, but so that the best policy was delivered in the most efficient and effective way.

    Sadly, that has happened less and less in recent years.

    The boiler scrappage scheme is an example I remember from my time in the Assembly. Rather than agree to the scheme being implemented on an England and Wales basis, the Welsh Government asserted that it could implement its own scheme. By the time that it did, much of the momentum had been lost and the Welsh scheme was far less effective than the scheme in England.

    The Help to Buy Scheme in Wales is another more recent example where a people in Wales had to wait several months for a rebranded Welsh version.

    Are these policies different for the sake of being different?

    On the other hand, there have been innovative policies in Wales in recent years..

    Organ donation and carrier bag charges are just two examples.

    I want to see a position where other parts of the UK are demanding the same changes in legislation where Wales has led the way.

    The tax powers we are devolving offer a great opportunity for just this sort of innovation.

    They offer the opportunity to make Wales a low-tax nation or even a high spending country if that is what the Government of the day would want to justify.

    Sir Paul’s report highlighted that a penny cut in the higher rate would cost the Welsh Government around £12 million, less than 0.1% of their budget.

    But it would set Wales apart as a nation that is prepared to be bold and innovative in its tax policies.

    Alongside this, the devolution of tax powers offers a chance to cost the value of everything, rather than just measuring inputs.

    Tax powers alongside the Wales Bill will deliver a more mature debate about tax and spend and about policies and service delivery.

    So how do we get to this outcome?

    How We Get There – The Next Steps

    Firstly, we will deliver the Wales Bill this year as we have promised to do.

    The Bill will reflect issues that have been raised in the debate that has gone on since the Bill was published in October and it will take account of the pre-legislative scrutiny recommendations made by the Welsh Affairs Committee and by the Assembly’s Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee.

    The Bill will deliver a new devolution settlement and significant new powers over energy, transport and elections.

    It will also give the Assembly significant new powers over its own institutional arrangements.

    But then there needs to be a response to these new powers from whoever forms the Welsh Government after the Assembly elections in May.

    I want the Welsh Government to be ambitious about these new powers.

    I want it to be innovative with these new opportunities.

    And to show that it can develop policies that make a real difference.

    We have had far too many policies that are different for the sake of being different.

    Wales may need different policies to the UK but different parts of Wales may also need tailored approaches.

    Only then can the debate move on from squabbles about powers to mature debate about services, taxation and spending.

    And that is the goal of the UK Government, the Assembly and I hope the UK Government.

    Conclusion

    As I said at the beginning, this is an exciting time for devolution in Wales, and across the UK.

    And in Wales this is not just an exciting time but a time of opportunity.

    We have a chance to move the political debate forward in Wales so we are talking about the issues that really matter to people on the doorstep.

    A chance to move on from complaints about Westminster funding to real debate about taxation and spending.

    A chance to develop ambitious and innovative policies for Wales not for the sake of being different but to address the health challenges, the social care challenges and the education challenges we face.

    That is my ambition for Wales. I hope very much that you share it.

    Thank you.

  • Greg Hands – 2016 Speech on Financial Management

    Gregg Hands
    Gregg Hands

    Below is the text of the speech made by Greg Hands, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in Birmingham on 28 January 2016.

    Good morning, and thank you for inviting me here to Birmingham today.

    I feel I am returning home to some extent – because half my family is from Birmingham.

    My parents met here, and my father grew up here, one of 18 children in a terraced house in Handsworth.

    He attended Handsworth Grammar School, was brilliant at mathematics – I suppose with 17 siblings you get very good at long division – and went on to study at Birmingham University.

    He was a great example of what we politicians call “aspiration” – that drive which spurs people on to achieve.

    I will speak about my own aspiration shortly!

    It’s great to see so many people here – but then again, HMG Finance is quite a major operation…

    It employs 14,500 staff across 39 departments, manages 4000 billion pounds’ worth of assets and liabilities, and is responsible for over 700 billion pounds’ worth of expenditure a year.

    There are, by the way, many people in the City of London who would like to manage a £742 billion portfolio.

    The difference is, of course, that my indicator of success is not how big I can make that number!

    The point about these numbers isn’t just their size: it’s also that they have a direct impact on the lives of every single person in this country, as well as quite a few beyond.

    However, I never like thinking of it as government money. It is public money.

    That distinction is important, because it’s the public who pay the taxes we allocate; and it is ultimately the public to whom we are accountable.

    Spending that money wisely is one of the most important aspects of public service. I would argue that that should be the case at any time.

    But when the country is on a path of economic recovery, it is particularly crucial.

    So my first message today is this: thank you for the hard work you have put in, over the last few years, to make sure we get the best possible bang for our buck.

    Getting the public finances in order has been one of our biggest areas of focus since 2010, to reduce the deficit – indeed, to eliminate it altogether.

    We’re here now to finish the job. And that’s precisely what we are doing.

    At the same time, we have also been asked to cut taxes; to protect and indeed increase spending in several major areas; and to deliver better public services.

    This builds on the important changes made since 2010 to the way the country is run – with the aim of creating a modern, reformed state.

    Whether that’s reforming the criminal justice system; making tax digital; introducing fresh safeguards to UK borders; or recalibrating the way we finance our infrastructure projects – plenty of big decisions have been taken, and HMG Finance has been at the heart of them.

    So, even at a time of deficit reduction, we also have to continue the important reforms we started five and a half years ago.

    In other words, we have our work cut out.

    To make the job even more of a challenge, in recent months we’ve seen the economic storm clouds once again begin to gather on the horizon: whether it’s the China slowdown, the tumble in oil prices, or the turbulence in various markets.

    Our economy is inextricably linked to other economies across the world – as one would expect from a country whose products and services are sought after worldwide.

    Unfortunately, that means that when other markets slow down, that has an impact on us.

    The best possible antidote to all those external economic risks is making sure that our economy is healthy enough to withstand them.

    As the Chancellor said earlier this month in Cardiff, though we’ve made a great deal of progress, on the deficit as well as on the wider economic picture; it’s still “mission critical” rather than “mission accomplished”.

    So we cannot let 2016 be the year where the foot is taken off the pedal.

    Our long-term economic recovery depends on us continuing to seek ways to be more efficient, more effective, smarter in the way we use our resources.

    That is my aspiration!

    Agreeing settlements with my Cabinet colleagues was one of the major tasks of last year.

    The task now is to ensure that those settlements are delivered – even though we will of course have to maintain the flexibility to deal with unforeseen issues that will inevitably arise.

    What that means in practice is that the work you all do, as finance experts, will only become more and more important.

    That’s why I regard it as essential that the Civil Service – right across the departments – has the best possible financial capacity and expertise.

    The 2013 Review of Financial Management gave us a set of recommendations to improve our finance function.

    In response, we developed the Financial Management Reform programme – a programme that’s now recognised as the model for delivering change around Whitehall.

    The programme is committed to ensuring five things in particular.

    First, creating a pipeline of talent, one that extends to senior roles.

    Second, developing the skills of everyone working in Finance.

    Third, sharing expertise and developing more standardised processes across departments.

    Fourth, enhanced use of data and management information across Government.

    And fifth, introducing new projects on specific areas of Government spend, so we can develop a more detailed understanding of the spending issues involved.

    Already, you, as our Government Finance Function, have made great strides in putting finance at the heart of decision-making in Government.

    And there’s been impressive progress on all fronts.

    We have a Finance Fast Stream, for the first time ever, alongside two intakes of Finance Fast Track Apprentices.

    There are now established talent forums, and recruitment campaigns, higher up the career ladder.

    And there’s the launch of a Finance Academy in the pipeline – something which will really serve to improve our capabilities in this area.

    We have 10 costing projects completed. Working across government, these have allowed us to implement savings of £100 million for infrastructure policing, or – another example – announce £600 million extra for mental health services.

    I can tell you that the work done in this area was extremely helpful in my cross-Departmental negotiations last autumn!

    And within the Treasury, we now have a Costing Centre of Excellence. Down the line, this will make government much better at forecasting what specific projects will cost – which is invaluable for agreeing budgets.

    We have a strategy in place for improving the data from which we make decisions – not least through “data sprints”, which are 6-week projects to provide immediate insight into particular issues.

    Not least, we’re in the process of agreeing a Finance Operating Model for government. This will enable us to share expertise, and make the finance profession much more effective.

    The future is going to see much more of the same – and to that end, in last year’s Spending Review, we committed to resource our Financial Management Reform programme, setting up standing teams to drive forward our work.

    I wouldn’t call this the sexy part of running a country, necessarily! And I certainly don’t expect to see, for instance, data sprints on the front pages of national newspapers…

    But without getting the finances right, it’s extremely unlikely that in the future, we will be able to meet this country’s aspirations for the public services it receives.

    People demand more from government. They demand better.

    They demand services more quickly, and for longer.

    They want those services to be more accessible. And of course they also have to be affordable.

    Through your work, we can make that happen.

    The last thing I want to do today is to talk for too long.

    Nobody ever leaves an event saying “I wish the Minister had spoken for longer”! And I know that on these kinds of occasions you will be very keen to ask me questions.

    But before I’ll take those questions, I’ll leave you with two quotes, which I hope will provide food for thought for the rest of this conference.

    The first is from the founder of FedEx, Fred Smith. As well as founder, he is also Chairman, President and CEO. I guess he likes to leave no doubt about who’s in charge…

    An interviewer asked him to what he owed his success. His answer, after a brief pause, was:

    “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.

    Our “main thing” is the public finances. I know that, and you know that!

    But it’s in all of our job descriptions to persuade our other colleagues of it, too.

    The second quote is a little less recent.

    In fact, it comes from the earliest ever guide to running the British economy, printed as far back as 1178.

    It says: “The highest skill at the Exchequer does not lie in calculations, but in judgements on all kinds”.

    I find that invaluable advice.

    Because it places the emphasis, when you’re making decisions, on realising it’s never a matter of black or white.

    There are trade-offs and nuances to consider, and the best submissions and briefings I see invariably take those into account.

    Thank you, once again, for the hard work you have put in over the past years.

    Have a great conference. And I’m looking forward to working with you over the next few years, as we secure the foundations of our long-term economic recovery.

  • Nick Gibb – 2016 Speech at the Jewish Schools Award

    nickgibb

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Gibb, the Minister of State for Schools, at  a Jewish Community Centre in London on 27 January 2016.

    Can I start by saying thank you for inviting me here – it is a great privilege to join you at the inaugural Jewish Schools Awards.

    Working as Schools Minister, it has continually struck me how powerful it is for a region, nation, or group of people to have a pro-education culture, which emphasises the value of study and hard work.

    Scotland was famous for its pro-education culture, particularly during the nineteenth century; a pro-education culture can be seen in abundance in Far Eastern countries such as Singapore and cities such as Shanghai; and the Jewish community, aptly known as the ‘people of the book’, remain famous for theirs.

    A pro-education culture, so difficult to win back if lost, is an enviable inheritance for any society – and I believe that it is what we should be celebrating, and are celebrating, today.

    Amongst Jewish communities around the world, the fruits of this pro-education culture are unmistakable. Despite making up only 0.2% of the world population, a remarkable 22% of Nobel Peace Prize winners have been Jewish. From Harold Pinter and Boris Pasternak, to Henry Kissinger and Daniel Kahneman, Jewish communities have always punched well above their weight as writers, researchers and scholars. Perhaps there are some future Nobel Laureates amongst the classes being taught by the teachers here today.

    A well-educated population does not occur unprompted. Behind every child’s story of academic success, there are the dedicated teachers who make such achievements possible.

    One does sometimes hear it said that teachers do not have much impact. People like to quote great intellects, such as Mark Twain, who stated “I’ve never let my school interfere with my education”.

    In addition, there are those of a sociological bent within education, who argue that teachers cannot be expected to change the life chances of children born into poverty and inequality.

    I disagree profoundly with each of these ideas. My mother was a primary school teacher, and I am a committed believer that teachers can and do change children’s lives. Great teachers are masters of their subject, who tell stories, impart wisdom and inspire curiosity. They motivate, cajole and guide pupils to surpass their own expectations of themselves.

    I have served as Schools Minister in 2 successive governments, and we have been dedicated to raising the prestige and quality of the teaching profession. In contradiction to the naysayers, evidence from both England and America shows that pupil outcomes vary significantly according to teacher quality.

    Research in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics has shown that being taught by a teacher in the top 25% of effectiveness, compared to one in the bottom 25%, adds almost half a GCSE grade per subject to a pupil’s outcomes.

    This effect is more significant still for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, where the difference between a good and a poor teacher can be up to a whole year’s worth of learning.

    Since 2010, we have put teachers in the driving seat of our reforms to improve state education in England. We have given schools, and teachers, unprecedented freedom to teach as they see fit, without an overbearing education bureaucracy driving their actions.

    To this end, we have removed 21,000 pages of unnecessary school guidance, reducing the volume by 75%. We have worked with Ofsted to ensure that inspectors no longer penalise teachers for how they teach. Ofsted guidance was reduced in 2014 from 411 to 136 pages, and last year guidance was further reduced despite the increased reach of the common inspection framework.

    In addition, teachers who believe that they are able to create something better within the state education system than the status quo, are now empowered to do so through the free schools programme, which is providing outlets for idealism across the country. And of course, it was the example of the Jewish Community Secondary School, a parent promoted school founded in 2010, which in part offered inspiration for this ground breaking reform.

    And I am delighted to observe that the quality of teachers in our schools is steadily improving: in 2010, 61% of trainee teachers had an undergraduate degree at 2:1 or better. This year, that figure is 74%.

    Crucially, in 2012 the proportion of trainee teachers with a 2:1 or above surpassed the national average of that year’s graduating cohort for the first time, and the annual initial teacher training census shows us that the proportion of new teachers holding a first-class degree is at an all-time high. Such evidence demonstrates that teaching is finally gaining the status it deserves in this country.

    To ensure that the calibre of teachers keeps on improving, we have expanded schemes like Teach First, which this year has sent over 1,500 teachers to every region of England.

    A good teaching workforce is one where teachers stay in the profession, so we are taking action to combat the unnecessary workload which for too long has weighed down teachers. More than 44,000 teachers responded to the Secretary of State’s ‘workload challenge’ in 2014, and in response we have pursued a series of measures to combat the debilitating effect of unnecessary workload.

    The 3 biggest concerns that teachers raised during the challenge were marking, planning and resources, and data management, so we established working groups to address each of them in turn. The groups will be reporting in the spring, and I am certain that their findings will contribute to a culture shift in schools in the coming years, away from energy sapping and bureaucratic practices, and towards a teaching profession which is autonomous and empowered.

    I recently attended a talk by a Swedish economist, who was explaining why Finland had such a remarkably strong education system towards the end of last century. Historically, Finland has had a classic pro-education culture, due to their use of schools as vehicles for nation building after Finland gained its independence from Sweden in 1809. He stated that in Finland, teachers were heralded as the ‘candles of the nation’, instrumental to building national solidarity.

    Without wanting to sound too grandiose, if it is not too late, I would like to see teachers in England take on the ‘candles of the nation’ mantle today. We are living through a period of British history where integrating different groups of varied ethnic backgrounds is perhaps the leading challenge for this country’s future.

    Our government has placed schools at the forefront of this process, ensuring that all schools promote the fundamental British values that define our country: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs.

    In the past, we in Britain have perhaps been guilty of being too shy about promoting Britishness. But we should be resolute that there is nothing exclusionary about a host nation welcoming new groups into a national culture – an inclusive national identity is an eminently liberal and forward-thinking principle for a country to hold.

    The assimilation of Jewish people into British national life is a case study of remarkable success. Since Jewish people began arriving in Britain in larger numbers during the late 1800s, they have not just assimilated into British society – they have become some of the leading proponents of it. Just look at Simon Schama becoming one of the foremost chroniclers of Britain’s history, or Lionel Bart one of Britain’s greatest popular composers.

    For a diverse society to prosper, mutual understanding between different groups is vital. That is one reason, amongst many, why we have been preoccupied – through reforms to the national curriculum, GCSEs and A levels – with restoring the importance of knowledge to its rightful place in educational life. For years, the educational establishment has devalued knowledge in favour of skills and processes such as ‘problem solving’ and ‘critical thinking’.

    But the great problem with this outlook, is that with limited knowledge, a pupil has very little with which to think critically about, or with which to solve problems.

    Today, of course, is Holocaust Memorial Day – and what better example of the paramount importance of knowledge in a child’s education is there? History has the potential to widen our understanding of humanity’s potential for both greatness and evil, and a history of the 20th century provides ample examples of both.

    Through the national curriculum, we ensure all secondary schools teach the Holocaust at some point during key stage 3.

    However, as the October report from the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London showed that, though 83% of pupils thought the Holocaust an important subject to study, many still did not have a sound grasp of the basic facts and events.

    Two-thirds of the 8,000 British schoolchildren surveyed did not know what is meant by the term ‘antisemitism’, and when asked how many Jews died during the Holocaust, 1 in 10 chose fewer than 100,000. How can you think critically about the Holocaust when you have such fundamental misconceptions about the events?

    For the past 10 years the Department for Education has funded the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz project which has taken more than 28,000 students to visit the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. It is vital that all young people continue to learn in detail about the Holocaust, and that is why the department will continue to promote, support and fund teaching of the Holocaust.

    There are other areas of the curriculum where we have broadened the scope of what pupils study. Religious education is an example where knowledge is a powerful aid to understanding British society in the 21st century.

    The new religious studies GCSE, which will be introduced for first teaching in September 2016, will ensure that all pupils study not 1, but 2 religions in depth – an aspect of their education which will give pupils greater insight into the multi-faith society that we inhabit today.

    Faith schools, of all denominations are a valuable component of Britain’s tapestry of school provision. In 2015, 3 non-selective state Jewish secondary schools – The King David High School, Yavneh College and the Jewish Community Secondary School – were amongst the 100 top-performing such schools nationwide at GCSE. In 2015, 4 Jewish primary schools had 100% of pupils attaining level 4 or above in reading, writing and mathematics.

    Though defined by their faith, it remains important that such schools sit within a wider appreciation of British cultural life, and they must prepare pupils for life in Britain’s modern, liberal democracy.

    Jewish education in this country provides an exemplar of how this balance can be struck, and I would like to say thank you for the enormous contribution that you all make to the educational life and cultural life of this country.

  • Stephen Crabb – 2016 Speech on Wales and Europe

    Stephen Crabb
    Stephen Crabb

    Below is the text of the speech made by Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Wales, on 28 January 2016.

    Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and thank you for this very kind invitation to come and speak to the Cardiff Business Club today. It is a huge pleasure and a privilege to be here with you.

    I was really pleased that the Chancellor made Cardiff the location for his start-of-the-year speech about the global economy.

    I did tell the Chancellor when we were planning the speech just before Christmas that he would need to bring his chequebook if he wanted to visit Wales.

    And I was delighted that during the visit he announced funding for the new Compound Semiconductor Catapult which will make Cardiff a UK centre of excellence in terms of high tech innovation. This was something the business community in this city had been calling for. And it is a down-payment from UK Government on what we hope will be a massively significant City Deal for the Cardiff Capital Region – which we are all working hard right now to seal before Budget day.

    One of my favourite moments of last year’s election campaign – aside from 10pm on election night when the exit poll was released – was the visit we did with David and Samantha Cameron to Brain’s Brewery. And I’m grateful to Scott Waddington for facilitating that visit.

    The discussion we had with Scott in the boardroom beforehand about a range of key Welsh and UK business issues was really excellent. The PM found it genuinely insightful, and has remarked upon it to me since.

    When I spoke to him last week about doing this speech today, he reminded me about the time he spoke at Cardiff Business Club back in 2007… Who knows, I’m sure the PM would welcome another visit back one day.

    Because I do see it as one of my tasks as Secretary of State for Wales to get senior Cabinet members visiting Wales regularly.

    Firstly, because – and we don’t shout enough about this – there are some truly remarkable things happening in certain parts of the Welsh economy right now. Things which deserve national and international attention, and which I’m determined to help profile.

    And secondly, because we do face some major challenges and constraints which are holding the Welsh economy back. And it is vital that these are understood at the highest levels of government.

    One of the characteristics of this government, I believe, and why I feel genuinely exhilarated by being a part of the team, is that we don’t shy away from the big challenges.

    When we sit round the Cabinet table at 9.30am each Tuesday morning, we do try to wrestle with some of the really knotty issues facing this country and focus on solutions; in areas where we know we have to drive up the UK’s performance – on exports, for example, or on productivity.

    And over the last year and a half, I have tried to make the hallmark of my time as Secretary of State for Wales a really strong emphasis on the need to raise our sights in Wales, to raise our ambition, to drive our economic transformation and be honest about where we are as a nation…

    …never talking down who we are as a people, but neither ducking from addressing what I think are the big challenges we face in Wales.

    And that means, yes, asking from time-to-time the hard questions about how well we’re doing, and it also requires being willing to challenge the dominant way of thinking on certain issues.

    This approach also means fronting up to global issues and events, and meeting head-on the big questions that come along to confront us.

    And one of the big issues we’ve been wrestling with in recent months is, of course, the question of our membership of the European Union.

    And that’s exactly what I want to spend a few minutes speaking to you about today.

    Because at some point in the coming weeks and months – certainly by the end of 2017 – this issue will, for a time, totally dominate our political life in the UK. It will become one of those rare issues that gets talked about down the pub and at the hairdressers. It will attract media curiosity from right across the world, and be a point of discussion in the boardrooms of major international companies.

    Make no mistake, this referendum will be a global talking point.

    But, whether or not the referendum is held during this year, it is already clear that 2016 will be a year of turbulence and uncertainty.

    If you follow international markets you will see that this has already been the worst start to the year for global financial markets in more than forty years.

    There are some profound things happening in the world economy right now which we are not immune from. We only have to look down the road to Port Talbot to know that we’re not immune from the global head-winds…

    … the so-called “slump” in the Chinese economy with growth declining to a mere 6% (enough, by the way, over the next four years to add to its GDP a level of activity equivalent to the size of the German economy).

    The key point about China is, of course, that the nature of its growth is changing as it moves to a more consumption-driven economy. And that will present major opportunities and risks to the UK economy…. Not least through massive excess Chinese industrial capacity which is turning international steel markets on their head right now.

    Factor in what is the longest, and almost the deepest, slump in global oil prices for 20 years, which can have both benign and negative consequences, then it is pretty clear to me that 2016 will be a year of economic turbulence and big geopolitical challenges.

    So this is the backdrop to the decision we will be taking as a nation as to whether we remain a member of the European Union or whether we leave.

    We are clear that global turbulence and uncertainty are not reasons not to deliver on our commitment to secure a renegotiated membership of the EU and to present this renegotiation to the people of the country in a referendum.

    Because let’s not forget the key reasons which have brought us to this point – in terms of both the demand for the referendum and the necessity of renegotiation.

    I’m not going to guess how many of you fall into this category, but you would need to be aged at least 59 to have had a vote in the last referendum on Britain’s membership of the then European Community.

    Given how profound the changes inside the EU have been over the last four decades, I think it’s a reasonable proposition that people of this country should have the opportunity to have their say on this issue again…

    …made even more urgent by a growing discontent in many quarters about the nature – and the cost – of our membership of the EU, not least in parts of the business community where there is a strong desire to see the EU become more focussed on competitiveness and for EU regulations and directives to have a less burdensome, less intrusive impact.

    So we have taken a decision as a Government, backed up by a manifesto commitment, not to just sit back while the sense of alienation, frustration and disillusion felt by many people towards the European Union festers and grows. As a political party, we have been at the forefront in the last twenty years of articulating that discontent and making the case for change…

    …for change within the European Union itself (to achieve a better European Union overall) but change also when it comes to the specific terms of our own membership of the EU.

    The UK has been protected from membership of the Euro, from Schengen, and from a raft of other integrationist measures while still capturing the enormous trading benefits of the Single Market which was one of Margaret Thatcher’s key achievements…

    …And it is that instinct which has driven the need for renegotiation at this time and brought the other Member States back around the table to take seriously the UK’s concerns.

    The case for change that is at the heart of our renegotiation is as much about looking to the future as about looking at the past or present failings of the EU. Because we know that in the years ahead the EU will undoubtedly need to change in response to major events like the sovereign debt crisis and the migration crisis.

    The EU is going to change in profound ways – the nature of which we do not yet know for certain. But change within Europe is coming.

    The answers to these crises which many EU leaders are already reaching for is essentially one of “more Europe” – more and deeper integration across more policy areas. I actually do not believe these are the correct answers as far as Britain’s own interests are concerned.

    And so renegotiating the terms of our membership now is as much about trying to anticipate and safeguard against future changes within the EU, or within just the Eurozone, which could present a threat and challenge to key UK sovereign interests.

    And I believe this renegotiation matters in very, very significant ways – and it matters for Wales.

    There are four objectives at the heart of our renegotiation:
    Firstly, to protect the Single Market for Britain and for the other member states who have chosen not to adopt the Euro currency. As I have said previously, the Single Market is an enormous strategic prize for UK business. We have taken the correct view as a nation that membership of the Eurozone, however, would not be. And it is really essential that the rules that the Eurozone countries adopt to ensure a stable common currency must not be detrimental to the interests of those other member states that use sovereign national currencies. That is our first objective in this renegotiation.

    Secondly, boosting competitiveness by reducing the burden of red tape coming from Europe. In an unforgiving global economy which increasingly demands that nations become leaner, fitter, more agile, more competitive, the current way that the EU makes and enforces directives and regulations is a recipe for decline; with every year the cumulative impact of EU red tape becoming more and more of a deadweight. If the EU cannot and will not change its approach then the UK must have the ability to tailor its own approach. We have probably the most open economy of any European country. We understand better than anyone else the nature of the global economy. And we are determined to do everything possible to be in a position to compete and win within this global economy.

    Our third objective in the renegotiation is to exempt Britain from that central Treaty phrase “ever-closer union” and to bolster the role within the EU of national parliaments. This is not a symbolic change – because that phrase “ever-closer union” has provided the drumbeat for all of the previous treaty changes we have seen in recent decades. It is not a drumbeat I believe should bind and dictate the terms of the UK’s own membership.

    Fourthly, and perhaps most difficult and most controversial with some member states, is our determination to restrict the access of EU migrants to in-work benefits such as tax credits when they first come to the UK. My vision of Britain is of a country which absolutely does welcome talent and skills from across the Single Market area but where welfare policies do not create an additional powerful pull factor.

    So this is the approach we are taking at this renegotiation. And I believe it is absolutely in tune with where mainstream business and also wider public opinion is at.

    The centre-ground is a place of both pragmatism and principle. And that is why businesses across the length and breadth of Britain get what we are trying to achieve. They recognise that the status quo is simply not good enough for Britain.

    And confident in the support we have from business, and with a general election mandate behind us, we have gone into this renegotiation determined to get a better deal.

    Sure, it is painstaking and difficult work. But actually when you look at the record of the Prime Minister when it comes to European reform, he has shown that he can land a deal even when most commentators were predicting otherwise…

    ….protecting the British rebate …securing a real terms cut to the EU budget …negotiating vital opt-outs from ever deeper integration.

    That is a strong reforming track record. David Cameron has reset the bar in terms of how British Prime Ministers should handle the European question.

    I believe a healthy pragmatic scepticism must be a defining characteristic of any future Prime Minister when it comes to Europe. And that same mind-set should be what informs and builds the case to remain inside the EU if the renegotiation is successful.

    Beware the wide-eyed shouty enthusiasm of those whose positions, either for leave or for remain, were already fixed long before the renegotiation had begun. And pity the audience who has to watch when these sides go head to head.

    Here in Wales, since the start of the year, we have already been served up some of this style of debate. And a pretty unedifying and unenlightening spectacle it was, most commentators seemed to agree.

    And the reason why it’s so unenlightening is that essentially the arguments are being made from the two most extreme possible positions – from the viewpoint that basically says the EU has been a disaster for Britain (and hence Wales) and therefore we need to head to the exit door as quickly as possible; and from the opposing viewpoint that says Wales is somehow linked with an economic umbilical cord to the EU and must stay in at any cost.

    And to back up these two positions, the temptation for protagonists is to deploy ever more outlandish arguments.

    And so those who argue for Brexit have started to present some kind of apocalyptic vision of the EU collapsing amid a wave of migrants which threaten Europe’s very economic, social and cultural foundations…. And that Britain basically needs to get the hell out of there.

    The other side say no way, the EU keeps Welsh men and women in jobs and is the only sure foundation on which we can rely – more so than our own talents or productive capacity, more so than our own innovation and enterprise, more so than our own stock of human and intellectual capital. Outside of the EU, they say, Welsh families would be forced onto the breadline. The only possible prosperity is an EU prosperity.

    These people say its membership of the EU which creates jobs …Overlooking some much more fundamental things I would argue.

    If you think I am exaggerating their position then please look back at the news stories before Christmas where some senior figures in Wales – people who should know better – argued that Welsh farming would be decimated (i.e. reduced to the point of non-existence) if we were outside the European Union.

    Sadly, this latter viewpoint has become pretty much the mainstream view in Welsh politics: Stay in at any cost. For some in Wales, EU membership actually seems to be even more important than membership of that one truly successful and dynamic currency union and trading bloc which is of course the United Kingdom.

    But if, as a government, we allowed this viewpoint to dictate our posture on the EU, we would never have a renegotiation in the first place. There would never be any hard-headed determination to go back to our European partners and say “hey, this actually isn’t in the UK national interest, we are not going to go along with this.”

    No, the case for Wales remaining within the EU cannot be left to those who say stay in at any cost; the argument has to be won with clearer and more thought-through arguments than those that are so often offered up by Welsh politicians.

    It won’t be enough to point to the Objective One funding from Europe as some kind of prize we need to hang on to; structural funds are a mark of economic failure not an accolade for Wales…

    Wales – where there is an assumption that if you are a senior politician then you must be a bought-and-paid-for member of the EU fan club. I am not, and I reject the notion that this should somehow be an article of faith.

    Wales – where the European flag is now more common than the Union Jack; but, by the way, where there has been a collapse in the teaching of French, German and Spanish in Welsh schools.

    And as for those Welsh politicians who pray-in-aid the names of major firms with operations in Wales to say we should stay in at any cost, well let me just say that most companies have made it absolutely clear that membership of the EU will not affect their operations in the UK. Airbus, too, is here fundamentally because of the concentration of skills and the generations of high-level aerospace expertise which is located in North Wales.

    The case for staying in has to be built on stronger arguments. And for me the starting point is the potential additional benefits we can secure for the UK through a successful renegotiation and a reformed EU. Neither of the two extreme positions is where the centre of gravity of Welsh public opinion or Welsh business opinion is at. The argument about our membership of the EU will not be won or lost on these extremes.

    No, the case for remaining inside the EU will be won by the reformers, informed by that healthy pragmatic scepticism I have talked about, who approach this question in a hard headed and clear sighted way, recognising that the story of the 21st century will be a global one and that successful renegotiation will provide the basis on which to say confidently that, in terms of the global risks and opportunities that lie ahead, staying in a reformed EU is the right choice.

    Straight after the lunch today, I will be attending an event with Her Excellency Sylvie Bermann the French Ambassador who is here in Cardiff to present the Legion d’Honneur award to a number of servicemen from Wales who fought for the liberation of France during the Second World War. It will be a deeply humbling experience I am sure.

    My late father-in-law grew up in Nazi-occupied Paris and was a teenager in 1945 when the war ended. He and I used to argue a lot about the future of Europe back in the late 1990s just before he died.

    For him, and for so many people of that generation including many here in the UK, the emergence of the European Union was a matter of cementing the peace in Europe and guaranteeing economic security. And it became for him and so many others an article of faith. What they lived through and what they saw meant this faith was unshakable. I have total respect for that view.

    But that is not how many people of my generation think.

    The world that shaped my own political outlook has been one which has seen the rapid internationalisation of markets and the extraordinary global digital and communications revolution which has changed forever how we work and how we live.

    That’s what’s shaped my thinking about Britain, Europe and the world.

    More than ever, economic success requires a global focus and not one limited to the European continent. And that is no different for Wales, I believe.

    Take a look at the list of the Welsh Government’s ‘Anchor Companies’. These are the fifty companies in Wales that have been identified as being crucial to the creation of jobs, growth and wealth within the Welsh economy through the size of their operations in Wales and the supply chain effects.

    As some of the most important businesses in Wales, they provide an insight into our links with the global economy.

    Of the fifty companies highlighted, only seven are headquartered in the European Union. By comparison, 15 are from North America. A number of others are from Japan, Asia and the Gulf.

    In fact, more than half of these anchor companies are based outside of the UK, highlighting exactly how attractive we are as an inward investment destination, to both EU and non EU countries.

    One of the huge privileges of my job is that I get to visit companies all over Wales, and I can tell you now it’s like a tour of the world in terms of where the investment is coming from and where the trade is going. More than half of all Welsh exports are to countries outside the EU and that share is growing.

    Britain’s and Wales’ future is as an outward-looking nation with major links to the powerhouses of the global economy.

    I have made clear this afternoon that I believe Britain and Wales’ interests are best served in a reformed and reforming European Union.

    If the Prime Minister gets the renegotiation then I will be out there making the case for Britain to remain in the European Union… making a strong and pragmatic case, not based on wild and flimsy arguments. But based on a clear-sighted and hard-headed assessment of the risks and opportunities of both outcomes.

    And I believe it will be the reformers who will carry the day – the reformers who come from a position of pragmatic scepticism.

    But this will hinge on us being able to explain the impact and benefit of the deal we land.

    But even after a successful renegotiation, and having put that renegotiation to the British people in a referendum, the issue of European reform won’t disappear.

    The truth is, whichever party forms the British Government after this one, and the one after that, needs to be characterised by the same reforming approach that the Prime Minister has shown when it comes to our relationship with Europe.

    Because the pressure being exerted back on the UK by a deepening European Union will continue to grow.

    It will continue to throw up profound questions about our nationhood and sovereignty and it will be incumbent upon every PM from here on to find answers to them.

    We can’t stop pushing for the EU to become a more competitive, more productive component of the global economy. It’s not in the British interest for Europe to wither as a global economic force. So for me it is a question of the balance of risks and opportunities in an increasingly uncertain and turbulent world.

    There is no safe, easy, risk-free option. But with a successful renegotiation deal I believe there will be a clear and correct choice – and that will be to remain.

  • Greg Clark – 2016 Speech on Holocaust Memorial Day

    gregclark

    Below is the text of the speech made by Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, at the Guildhall in London on 27 January 2016.

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    It is an honour to be speaking here this evening, on this most sombre and important of days.

    It’s not only my privilege to represent Her Majesty’s government.

    The government wishes, of course, to pay its respects to those whom we honour this evening, such as the 10 British prisoners of war who saved Hannah Sarah Rigler from the Danzig death march.

    Hiding her, feeding her, nursing her back to health.

    But it is also my privilege and responsibility to speak as a citizen, husband and father, one who wants his children to grow to maturity in a peaceful, tolerant and supportive society, free from the blight of sectional hatred.

    This duty to speak up is one borne by each of us.

    Because Nazi Germany taught us – hard though it is to say – that genocide happens not just through the choices made by those who perpetrate it, but through the choices made by those who fail to stop the perpetrators.

    It’s not just that bystanders look away; it’s that they choose to look away. The soil of hatred is fertilised by indifference to wickedness.

    That starts with tolerating small acts of hatred, such as casual stereotyping; only if “everyday evil” remains unchecked can wickedness take root, and grow, into the acts which blight humanity.

    William Wilberforce urged Parliament towards the abolition of slavery by saying:

    “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know”.

    On Holocaust Memorial Day, on behalf of the government – and myself – I commit never to choose to look away.

    We must all recognise hatred, and challenge it; wherever and whenever we see it.

  • Jo Johnson – 2016 Speech on Science in the UK

    jojohnson

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jo Johnson, the Minister of State for Universities and Science, at the Royal Institution in London on 27 January 2016.

    It’s a pleasure to be speaking to the Campaign for Science and Engineering in this, your thirtieth year. That’s 30 years since Save British Science was formed. Three decades of campaigning on behalf of Britain’s science and engineering community. And 3 decades holding ministers like me to account!

    You, like others, told us that science was vital. And we didn’t disagree on that point. We have a Chancellor who lives in lab coats and high-vis jackets and the Spending Review was the clearest signal yet that science and innovation sit at the very heart of this government’s economic plan. This evening, I want to start by setting out in a bit more detail what that science settlement means.

    A world-leader in science and engineering

    First though I want to throw your minds back to December 15 last year. I know where I was. Counting Tim Peake down to blast off at the Science Museum, along with 3,000 schoolchildren waving Union Flags, their young minds fired by the magic of space and the power of science.

    It’s a phenomenon I’ve seen time and again, as I’ve travelled the country, learning about our extraordinary research base.

    It’s been a privilege to break ground at brand new facilities, to open new labs, and to meet the Nobel prize winners and the research teams keeping British science on the map.

    In Manchester, I held a jar of liquid graphene, a substance which promises to revolutionise materials and how we use them.

    In Wales, I saw the 5 millionth Raspberry Pi roll off the production line. These tiny computers, made in a technology park west of Cardiff, are spreading the benefits of the digital revolution to the furthest parts of the globe.

    And on board the Royal Research Ship Discovery, I announced the winning bidder for our brand new £200 million polar research ship. Tonne-for-tonne, the UK will soon have the most advanced floating research fleet of any country in the world.

    Our global scientific impact far exceeds our size as a nation. With just 3.2% of the world’s R&D spend, the UK accounts for 16% of the most highly-cited research articles.

    And we’ve overtaken the US to rank first among comparable research nations for field weighted citations impact.

    Last night, over supper in Amsterdam at the Competitveness Council, I asked Bill Gates what his assessment was of the UK science base. We were sitting around a table, along with the Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, and the science ministers of a number of other EU countries.

    Unfortunately, the Chatham House rules of the dinner prevent me from repeating his answer, but I can tell you this: it made me unbelievably proud of all the work you do.

    Our scientists and engineers truly stand tall on the world’s stage. And this government wants the next generation – all the young people across the country who were watching Tim Peake leave Baikonur that day – to be in a position to build on your legacy.

    A decade of protection for science

    Because of the difficult decisions we have taken elsewhere in government spending, we have been able to prioritise investment in science and research.

    The commitments from the Chancellor in the Spending Review could not have been clearer. We are protecting science resource funding in real terms, at its current level of £4.7 billion, for the rest of the Parliament. At the same time, we are investing in new scientific infrastructure on a record scale – delivering on the £6.9 billion science capital commitment in our manifesto.

    That means total investment £30.4 billion to 2020, building on the protections for the science budget in the last Parliament. That’s a decade of protection, and a decade of sustained investment by this government. And all this in the context of significant savings in other areas of expenditure, a clear sign of the place of science in our decision-making.

    Best place to innovate

    A stable funding environment is a start, but it’s not the end of the process. I’m not the first Science Minister to urge closer partnerships between the research base and industry, or to call for greater efforts on collaboration.

    Our universities are already extending their work with charities and industry. In 2013 to 2014, they earned nearly £4 billion from working with businesses and others, up 20% on 2010. And in last year’s productivity plan, we set out our ambition to increase this income to £5 billion per year by 2025.

    This collaboration is important because innovation is a shared endeavour. As we set out in our manifesto, we want Britain to be the best place in Europe to innovate and we will be setting out the support the government will be providing to help innovative businesses to flourish in a national innovation plan.

    Our R&D tax credit now supports 80% of all business investment in R&D. In 2013 to 2014 over 18,000 companies used the schemes, claiming a total of £1.75 billion. This is a 78% increase in the companies claiming tax credits and a 58% increase in funding provided against 2010 to 2011.

    Of course, government does not create innovation; it’s the scientists and engineers, the designers and the entrepreneurs who make it happen. But government can be a catalyst. Currently, every £1 of government spending on research leverages an estimated additional £1.36 of private funding. And for every £1 spent by the government on R&D, private sector productivity rises by 20p per year in perpetuity.

    Getting the business environment right is key. The fiscal incentives we provide for research is the government’s single biggest source of business R&D support.

    But, as a country, we can’t stand still. Our international competitors are continuing to innovate and develop new ways to support firms.

    We’re looking carefully at what our partners in France, Finland and the Netherlands are doing, ensuring we have a range of financial instruments to support innovation.

    At the Spending Review, we committed to protect the funding we provide through Innovate UK over this Parliament. This will include up to £165 million per year through new innovation finance products. With this funding our innovation offer will now span grants through to new financial instruments. These will support innovation and ensure the taxpayer can share in the success new ventures.

    Alongside the finance, we’re providing the essential innovation infrastructure to help bring businesses and the research base closer together. We’re not just protecting the Catapult network, but expanding the programme to support growth in the high-tech sectors where Britain excels.

    Earlier this month, the Chancellor announced our first Catapult in Wales. This will focus on the compound semiconductors that will underpin the next-generation of advanced electronics.

    This joins 10 other Catapults that span the life sciences, satellite applications, energy, digital industries and high-value manufacturing. The Catapults will receive total public and private investment in excess of £1.6 billion over their first 5 years of operation. This is shared infrastructure that businesses on their own simply could not afford – and yet another example of the way we are supporting collaboration across the research base.

    Science budget allocations

    While we’re building new infrastructure, we are also ensuring we get the best return on our investments.

    Sir Paul Nurse set out his plan to bring together the 7 Research Councils under the banner of Research UK, and as the Chancellor confirmed in the Spending Review the government is now moving forward with these recommendations.

    Many of you will want to know that we’re preserving what works well, and building a stronger base for the future.

    We have made clear our commitment to retaining the dual support system and the Haldane principle. These are vital characteristics of our research base. They protect curiosity-driven research that has underpinned so many serendipitous discoveries, and they ensure scientists are in the driving seat when it comes to assessing specific projects.

    But there is also an opportunity, as set out in the Nurse review:

    – to free up scientific leadership to focus on the research

    – to reduce the duplication between funding bodies

    – to improve support for multi-disciplinary research

    – and to respond much more effectively to major global challenges – such as Ebola .

    We fully recognise the importance of retaining strong leadership in individual discipline areas, and that will remain. The idea set out in the Nurse review was “one university, multiple faculties”. We are also clear that any inclusion of Innovate UK as part of Research UK must be done in a way which protects the ring-fence and Innovate UK’s business-facing focus.

    But as we protect science and research funding we must also ensure on behalf of the taxpayers that we’re getting best possible return on investment. The Nurse review is part of that, and I’m also grateful to Lord Sterne for agreeing to review the Research Excellence Framework. He will be looking carefully at how funding could be allocated more efficiently; offers greater rewards for excellent research; and reduces the administrative burden on institutions.

    In the meantime, we are working with the Research Councils and other delivery partners to agree the detailed allocations of the science budget.

    Our intention is to formally allocate budgets to individual funding bodies by mid-February. The whole research community will then have the opportunity to feed in to Research Council and Innovate UK delivery plans towards 2020.

    Global challenges

    In this round of allocations, we have a unique addition in the form of the Global Challenges Research Fund. That’s £1.5 billion extra for the science budget by 2021 – additional funding that will help us stay at the forefront of global research.

    This is a unique opportunity for UK academics to work with partners around the world and at the same time to address some of the biggest challenges of our time – it’s an opportunity for a double win.

    The additional funding is possible because of 2 commitments set out by this government: to protect science and to protect overseas development assistance.

    This new Official Development Assistance funding will enable us to build on the success of the existing Newton Fund, which since its launch in April 2014 has already galvanised academic partnerships in 15 countries across 4 continents.

    I am pleased to confirm the expansion of the Newton Fund to £150 million a year by 2021. This means a total Newton Fund investment of three-quarters of a billion pounds, in addition to the £1.5 billion for the Global Challenges Research Fund.

    With this investment, we will ensure Britain remains a scientific powerhouse in the years to come.

    ‘STEM capital’

    None of this would be possible without a healthy supply of talented young scientists and engineers.

    There have been positive signs recently. Apprenticeship starts in engineering and manufacturing technologies shot up by 52% between 2010 and 2014. Last year saw a 30% increase in the number of young people studying computing at A-Level. And this year saw the number of acceptances for STEM undergraduate degrees jump 5% on last year.

    But I know from personal experience that a lack of ‘science capital’ in a family can pass through the generations. One of the reasons I didn’t major in science is that I was clearly better at other subjects. But I strongly suspect there was another issue at play: members of my immediate family have scarcely a science O-Level to rub between them. My father’s strong view was that history, which I loved, was basically a subject you could do in the bath, and that the best thing by far and away was to study classics.

    Tackling deficiencies in STEM capital is not a job for government alone. I am discussing with Nick Gibb, our brilliant schools minister, how we can best help pupils that lack ‘STEM capital’ and may need extra encouragement.

    Bill Bryson, as ever, captured it well. Writing about his dissatisfaction with his own level of scientific knowledge, he remembered the school science books that seemed to “keep all of the good stuff secret”, making the contents “soberly unfathomable.”

    We have come a long way in the last decade in mainstreaming science, thanks in no small part to stars such as Brian Cox and Jim Al-Khalili and the important work of organisations like Science Grrl.

    But cracking this is a whole country effort, and there is much more to do.

    Science and Discovery Centres around the country play an important role, offering schools and families a hands-on experience that brings science to life. So I’m pleased to announce that we are partnering with the Wellcome Trust to set up a £30 million Inspiring Science Capital Fund to support these centres for the rest of this Parliament. This will be a competitive fund that centres can bid into ensuring these hands-on experiences are accessible to young people to the end of the decade.

    This fund complements our wider support for ‘STEM inspiration’ programmes, including the CREST awards, the National Science and Engineering competition and, of course, STEM Ambassadors, a network of 31,000 people from science, engineering and academia.

    Indeed, we’re taking this so seriously Britain even has a STEM ambassador currently orbiting the earth!

    Best in Europe, best in the world

    So we have the investment, the infrastructure and the people.

    But to keep our knowledge factories winning Nobel Prizes, and attracting the best minds, we need to recognise that research these days is rarely a solitary undertaking, or even a narrowly national one. It is about partnerships.

    The scientists and engineers that I meet, and the innovative start-ups that spin out from their universities, are usually part of a wider international endeavour. Their work often demands intellect, insight and investment no one country could provide.

    Around half of all UK research publications involve collaborations with other countries. Papers involving international collaboration have almost twice the citation impact of those produced by a single UK author. And EU countries are among our most crucial partners, representing nearly 50% of all our overseas collaborators .

    Indeed, our links with Europe are deep and longstanding. Free movement of people makes it easier for our universities to attract the best talent, and for British students to spread their wings across the continent, as I was able to do as a student at institutions in France and Belgium. Over 125,000 EU students are studying at UK universities, and over 200,000 British students have ventured overseas on the Erasmus exchange programme (UUK). I want many more to have the opportunities to study overseas that I enjoyed.

    European research funding is, in many ways, an example of how the EU can get it right. While applying for funds must become simpler, especially for smaller firms, the key thing is that we have successfully argued for research money only to flow to where the best science is done, regardless of geography, regardless of political pressure.

    Because of the excellence of our research base, it is no surprise that the UK is one of the most successful players in EU research programmes. The UK received €7 billion under the last framework programme (2007 to 2013). That made us one of the largest beneficiaries of EU research funding. In this funding round, Horizon 2020, we have secured 15.4% of funds, behind only Germany on 16.5%, and with the second largest number of project participations.

    Some will make the point that non-EU countries also benefit from EU Research programme – Norway, Turkey and Israel, for example. But there is a fundamental difference. While some non-EU countries are part of the European Research Area, and sit on the European Research Area Committee, they don’t get a seat at the table when the Ministerial Council or the Parliament are setting the rules or deciding the budgets. Even those international bodies, like the European Space Agency, which sit outside of the EU, benefit from close institutional links. Around 20% of ESA funding comes directly from EU space programmes.

    Of course, we cannot be starry eyed. There is a real need for reform, and the Prime Minister is fighting hard to fix aspects of our EU membership that cause frustration to many people. We need protections for those outside the Eurozone. More focus on competitiveness, to help create jobs. We need to take Britain out of “ever closer union” with more power for our Parliament, and we need to control immigration – so that “freedom of movement”, as the Prime Minister has said, means freedom to work and study, not claim benefits.

    No one doubts Britain could stay a science player outside of the EU – indeed some of our universities have been successful for longer than many of its member states have even existed. But the risks to valuable institutional partnerships, to flows of bright students and to a rich source of science funding mean the Leave campaign has serious questions to answer.

    While there is nothing in our EU membership that limits our ability to work with other countries, the onus is now on those who want to leave the EU come what may to explain how they would sustain current levels of investment and collaboration under very different circumstances.

    As science becomes more international, we should nurture partnerships, not reject them. In the end, the British people will decide whether we are safer, stronger and better off as part of the EU, but our future security as a knowledge economy hinges on this decision.

    Conclusion

    This willingness to embrace global collaboration has been a central pillar of Britain’s proud scientific legacy.

    And this government has shown its commitment to extending that legacy well into the future.

    The Spending Review confirmed a decade of investment in our science and research base.

    We have the tools.

    We have the people.

    We have the ambition.

    Together, we will make Britain the best place in the world for science, engineering and innovation.

  • Patrick McLoughlin – 2016 Speech on Aviation Capacity

    Patrick McLoughlin
    Patrick McLoughlin

    Below is the text of the speech made by Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport, at the British Air Transport Association annual dinner on 27 January 2016.

    Introduction

    Thank you Sir Michael.

    I’m delighted to join you this evening.

    And I’m grateful to BATA for giving me this opportunity to say a few words.

    A lot has happened since I last spoke at this dinner in 2014.

    UK airlines have enjoyed sustained growth.

    Passenger numbers at our airports have reached record levels.

    And Britain itself is in a much stronger position.

    A much reduced deficit.

    A flourishing economy.

    A majority government.

    We put infrastructure investment at the top of our manifesto.

    Infrastructure investment

    If anyone doubted our commitment.

    In November 2015, the Chancellor confirmed that we’ll spend 50% more on transport this Parliament than in the previous 5 years.

    Wherever we can, we’re improving transport as fast as possible.

    But we’re also doing something that this country hasn’t seen for many decades.

    Planning and delivering a long-term transport infrastructure programme.

    Building the capacity to fulfil the needs of future generations.

    And when you consider investments that will help Britain thrive …

    Airport capacity in the south east is about as important as it gets.

    Aviation growth

    Our prosperity today is intimately linked with the global ties we built in the past.

    We still have the third largest aviation network in the world.

    We also have fantastic, innovative, world-leading airlines.

    Investing in new aircraft and routes.

    More people fly with British airlines each year than carriers from any other country outside the US and China.

    That’s thanks to you.

    The success of UK aviation is also reflected in our airports.

    Last week I was at Luton.

    Which is investing £110 million developing facilities.

    And celebrating record passenger numbers in 2015.

    But that sort of investment and growth is being replicated at airports around the country.

    A billion pound programme at Manchester.

    Edinburgh.

    Bristol.

    New routes from regional airports to fast growing global destinations.

    I could go on.

    But growth at these airports will be in addition to growth in the south east, not instead of it.

    Nothing will change the fact that without action, London’s aviation network will be full by 2040.

    But constrained capacity is already costing us business and jobs.

    With every new air route to the Far East or South America, Paris, Frankfurt and Dubai are making themselves more attractive to investors.

    The advantage we’ve enjoyed for so long.

    Through the strong global connections provided by Heathrow and Gatwick.

    Is becoming less of an advantage as time goes on.

    So sorting out the capacity issue is critical.

    Delayed decision

    That is why I asked Sir Howard Davies to lead the Airports Commission review.

    And that is why.

    Before Christmas.

    The government accepted his case for expansion.

    That in itself was a big step forward.

    It showed that the debate’s moved on.

    From whether a new runway should be built, to where.

    We also agreed to choose 1 of the 3 short-listed schemes.

    And we intend to meet the Commission’s requirement for an additional runway by 2030.

    Of course I know that many in the industry were disappointed that we delayed the final decision.

    It wasn’t something we took lightly.

    But when opponents of expansion hailed the delay as some sort of victory.

    They could not have been more wrong.

    The decision was delayed because it was the right thing to do …

    The responsible thing to do.

    To make sure we’re fully prepared.

    So we know from the outset that we will get the job finished.

    You understand more than most.

    That Britain’s deep-seated, infrastructure-averse culture.

    Has a history of de-railing vital transport schemes.

    And although we are slowly changing that culture.

    To risk any chance of failure at this stage would be unacceptable.

    It’s why we’ve been so thorough with HS2.

    Six years of intense planning.

    The biggest consultation in government history.

    Perfecting the design.

    Building the case, town by town, region by region.

    Getting the widest possible public and political support.

    Making sure the HS2 project is the very best it can be.

    With minimum impact on the countryside and people’s lives.

    And that’s what we’re doing with aviation capacity.

    Does the delay mean we lack the evidence today to make a convincing decision?

    Absolutely not.

    We’re using this time to make the case for new capacity even more watertight.

    It means we can test the Commission’s work further against the government’s new air quality plan.

    This is additional work to test compliance.

    And build confidence that expansion can take place within legal limits.

    We’re also doing more work on carbon.

    To address concerns on sustainability, particularly during construction.

    We’re dealing with concerns about noise.

    To get absolutely the best outcome for residents.

    We want to make sure that communities get the best possible mitigation deal.

    Finally, we’re carrying out extra economic analysis.

    To assess the runway’s potential locally and nationally.

    So it can deliver more jobs, more growth and more apprenticeships.

    Local UK growth

    And this is crucial.

    We don’t just need new runway capacity so Heathrow or Gatwick can better compete with Paris, Frankfurt or Dubai.

    We also need it for the benefits it will bring to the wider UK economy.

    One of the most persuasive arguments for new capacity is the links it will provide to the north, the south west, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

    Opponents have tried to suggest that a new runway would somehow undermine our domestic network.

    In fact the reverse is true.

    Wherever we decide to build new runway capacity.

    You can be sure that local economies throughout the UK will benefit.

    With more flights, more routes, and more connections.

    So as we complete our work this year.

    Let’s make sure these localised benefits are articulated.

    From the airports and airlines that serve the regions.

    Your voice is a powerful one.

    And BATA members understand better than most the importance of domestic flights to every part of the UK.

    So let’s keep beating the drum for the regions in this debate.

    New BATA Chairman

    Before I finish, I’d like to offer my congratulations to Jane Middleton.

    BATA’s new chairman.

    Jane, I look forward to working with you.

    Conclusion

    So, as you can imagine, there is a huge amount going on in the department at the moment.

    But there’s also a real sense of purpose.

    To do the job as thoroughly and effectively as we can.

    And to maximise the opportunities that new capacity will bring.

    Opportunities for passengers.

    For the aviation industry.

    And for every part of Britain which relies on air links to the south east.

    Of course I understand the concern and impatience within the industry.

    But getting this decision right.

    So the benefits are widely appreciated.

    So environmental impacts are clearly mitigated.

    And so it’s supported by a majority of cross-party MPs and Peers.

    Is absolutely paramount.

    So let me assure you.

    We will make a decision once this work is finished.

    It will be the right decision for Britain.

    And it will ensure that the Commission’s timetable for delivering the capacity can be met.

    Thank you.

  • Theresa May – 2016 Speech at the Police ICT Company suppliers summit

    theresamay

    Below is the text of the speech made by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, at the Police ICT Company suppliers summit held in London on 27 January 2016.

    Thank you. I am delighted to be at this Police IT Suppliers Summit once again. I know that today we have representatives from police forces across England and Wales, police and crime commissioners, and experts from industry. So I want to thank you all for coming and I want to thank the Police ICT Company for hosting this event.

    The last time I stood before you I said that if we can get police IT right, the prize will be invaluable.

    I was clear it was not simply because sorting out police IT means we will cut unnecessary waste and save money, although those things are true.

    But because since I became Home Secretary more than five and a half years ago, I have seen how technology has the power to transform policing immeasurably.

    Everyone in this room knows that there are huge benefits to policing if we can take the right steps forward, and great risks if we stand still.

    Today too much money is still spent on expensive, fragmented and outdated systems. Police officers all too often use technology that lags woefully behind what they use as consumers. And there is an unacceptable lack of digital join up with the criminal justice system and other agencies.

    But the scale and reach of the internet has changed the nature of crime, giving rise to new crime types and allowing criminals to carry out traditional crimes in new ways. These crimes are sophisticated and they can create huge numbers of victims at a keystroke. As technology continues to evolve, so too do the opportunities for the criminals to exploit.

    Last year, organised criminals used malicious software to infect thousands of computers in the UK to access personal or banking information, steal passwords and disable antivirus protection.

    This information was then used to steal money from people and businesses around the world, including an estimated £20 million from the UK on this occasion.

    Thankfully, the National Cyber Crime Unit at the National Crime Agency led a major European operation to tackle these criminals and prevent further cyber crime being committed.

    But this one example shows how criminals are exploiting the internet to gain access to a much larger number of potential victims. But criminals – like the rest of us – use a myriad of modern technology and can leave a digital as well as a physical trail. So there is an ever growing demand for officers who can carry out digital investigations, and use digital forensic techniques to extract, analyse and interpret data found on devices. And our ambition must be for every frontline officer to have the ability to capture digital evidence and to carry out basic digital investigations – such capabilities can no longer be the preserve of specialist units alone.

    Technology is moving fast. It continues to reshape the way we live and work. It can keep us permanently connected with others and link us digitally with our homes and our possessions.

    And it is also reshaping the way criminals carry out crimes.

    So policing must keep up.

    That’s why today’s conference is so important. Because everybody here has a role to play in helping to transform police technology.

    In ensuring that procurement is carried out intelligently so that contracts deliver value for money for officers and the taxpayer.

    In ensuring that the devices and systems officers use are up-to-date and efficient so that they spend less time behind desks, and more time out on the beat. And in ensuring that the police understand and exploit the potential of technology, to help them protect the vulnerable, prevent crime, and investigate crime – online and offline – when it does occur.

    It is not my job to do this for you. As Home Secretary I have put in place a radical programme of reform to take the Home Office out of policing, and put the professionals in charge. And I give you two challenges.

    Firstly, these are police systems, it is police officers who use them day in and day out, and it is up to police and crime commissioners and chief constables to scrutinise how money is spent to deliver for forces and the taxpayer. And both communities require intelligent and effective engagement from the police IT supplier community to drive the efficiency and innovation that is so critical.

    Secondly, I challenge you to be ambitious in shaping the future: understanding the potential for technology to make a difference and to embrace it, for the good of policing and, of course, for the public.

    The slow pace of gritty reform

    So we know the scale and complexity of the challenge of replacing and improving existing police systems, and the size of the potential prize.

    But frankly it has taken too long to take that challenge seriously.

    As I have said before, the reform of police ICT is gritty and unglamorous.

    The systems are complex, the landscape is fast moving and the market can be daunting to the uninitiated.

    The vast majority of chief police officers and PCCs are not IT experts – and we don’t expect them to be. We know that suppliers are frustrated too by the fragmented and complicated police market. In particular SMEs – who can often have the most innovative ideas – can be deterred by the complexity.

    But that does not mean that this type of reform is not important. It is fundamental to making policing more effective and necessary to tackle changing crime.

    Now many of you have called for “thought leadership” on police IT: an intelligence customer who can broker on behalf of police forces and advise them on solutions.

    Today, the Police ICT Company is up and running – funded not by the Home Office, but by policing.

    I would like to welcome Martin Wyke who joined as Chief Executive of the Company last year. He brings with him real commercial experience and expertise.

    And I am pleased to hear he has already been up and down the country making connections and getting to grips with the complexities that exist.

    I believe that the Company will deliver for policing as a whole, as well as for individual forces – and it has already started doing just that.

    Thanks in large part to the positive engagement from IBM, the Home Office and the Police ICT Company were able to consolidate 122 contracts for analytic services with more than 50 government organisations into a single contract, releasing multi-million pound savings.

    It’s worth stepping back and thinking about that number. Not 43 contracts – one for every force. But one hundred-and-twenty-two – the equivalent of nearly three for every police force IT department in the country.

    It is precisely this type of opportunity that I think the ICT Company can grasp for policing – working as a single, intelligent customer for police technology, and consolidating contracts and licenses. Not of course that all police forces need or want identical solutions; but the work that the ICT Company is driving to develop common standards is crucial. Shared standards facilitate interoperability and data sharing and make life easier for suppliers too.

    At a local level police and crime commissioners and chief constables are working together across force boundaries to deliver savings and improve the working lives of their officers and staff.

    Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire are streamlining business processes to allow what they call the “seamless flow of common data”. Between 2015 and 2019, the forces are expected to make total cashable savings of over £23 million combined, saving potentially 20% on today’s ongoing maintenance and support costs.

    This is just one example. We are seeing other collaborations between forces including Cleveland, North Yorkshire and Durham, Thames Valley and Hampshire, South Yorkshire, Humberside, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire – together aiming to save millions more on IT and business support functions.

    So nationally and locally, you are starting to put right the mistakes of the past and join up systems together. And make a real difference to police officers, victims of crime and taxpayers.

    But we need to go further still.

    As I said at this Summit previously, when the Government came to power, police forces spent £1 billion annually on IT.

    This included 2,000 different IT systems, spread over 43 forces. And in 2011/12 a survey indicated this was supported by approximately 4,000 staff.

    Today we are doing a little better. According to HMIC, estimates for the net revenue expenditure on ICT by police forces in England and Wales will be around £600 million in 2015/16 – once spend for systems, devices and staff have been taken into account.

    In addition, the Home Office has responsibility for a portfolio of 21 national policing systems with estimated costs for 2016/17 to be £104.4 million – not including Airwave – a proportion of which is recharged to forces.

    And according to HMIC estimates police IT is supported by approximately 3000 staff.

    So we have saved money and freed up staff to focus on cutting crime, but there are still too many examples of inefficient IT holding back police officers, wasting public money and preventing the join up with other public services.

    While the Common Platform programme will in due course digitise the criminal justice system, in some areas criminal evidence still has to be burnt onto CD and taken round to the Crown Prosecution Service in sacks – because the ability to link police systems with that criminal justice system barely exists. Digital First, a national programme led by Chief Constable Giles York, is starting to address this need for a digital interface between the Common Platform and police systems, but there is a long way to go.

    Sometimes elaborate business processes compound problems with basic IT. For example when force shift and rostering systems are so complex, compared to other sectors, off the shelf systems are incapable of handling them without expensive bespoke adaptations.

    Multiple systems mean very mundane things can be crucially important. How one describes hair colour in a crime report may not seem that important. But not having a single list of hair colours for identifying suspects or convicts and describing victims, agreed across all forces, makes automated comparison of records impossible. One force lists the colour maroon which other forces don’t recognise, while others disagree on whether a hair colour is brown-auburn or simply auburn.

    And over the years the architecture of forces’ IT systems has grown so confused and archaic that we know of one case where a simple domestic Actual Bodily Harm case required – from call out to court – the suspect’s name to be handwritten or re-keyed no fewer than 20 times, and the victim’s name 12 times.

    These practices just cannot make sense – in the modern age or in any before it. They show that the necessary changes do not need to be complex.

    Some can be simple – like ensuring names do not need to be rekeyed endless times, and having a single version of hair colours that all forces use.

    As an organisation working for all of you, with commercial expertise, the Police ICT Company is well positioned to identify these types of inefficiencies and pursue rapid standardisation and rationalisation.

    And for those changes that are complex, the Company can act – as I have said – as a “single intelligent customer” to help bring commercial nous to the way police forces buy and manage contracts, services and products. This is not about “one size fits all”, or a single national programme for police IT – we all know how successful that would likely be. But the Company can bring together groups of forces, with common interests, to develop coherent, shared propositions to develop with suppliers.

    So I implore the supplier community to partner with the Company in identifying the next wave of reform to police ICT – like IBM did – to simplify contracts and improve services in the process.

    According to a report by Bluelightworks in 2015, the Police ICT Company could support forces to make £75 million savings in their IT budgets and a further £390 million in wider organisational savings, enabled by combining and streamlining operational services supported by shared IT platforms.

    So the days of suppliers negotiating contracts with every force in the country, at different rates, must come to an end. But if, together, you can achieve savings of this scale, the potential for reinvestment in technology solutions – as well as for budget reductions – is significant. That should be an incentive to everyone here.

    Rationalising the system

    Which brings me to the opportunity to transform police capabilities.

    As I told the Police Reform Summit in December, the next stage of reform in policing requires us to understand what capabilities are needed to combat a changing crime mix; to explore where those capabilities best sit, and determine how they are best delivered.

    Some threats, like cyber crime, require new skills, which may be in short supply in the private sector, as well as policing. Some of these capabilities may best be delivered by specialist units owned jointly by a number of forces or regionally through the Regional Organised Crime Unit structure. But as I said earlier, in a world in which many of those detained in custody suites have smart phones and in which victims of crime may have videoed the criminal, all frontline officers need basic skills in digital evidence capture and digital investigation.

    This work is being taken forward by the Specialist Capabilities Programme of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the operational leaders of policing, in conjunction with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, who are accountable locally and financially.

    And as a Government, we are investing in these new capabilities. The Spending Review protected in real terms the overall policing budget over the course of this Parliament, the equivalent of up to £900 million more in cash terms, which will enable us to fund major investment in transformation.

    Given that workforce costs represent 80% of total force budgets, it is essential that we invest in new skills and technology to improve productivity and maximise the time officers spend fighting crime. And in the Policing and Crime Bill we will legislate to reform the roles and powers of police staff – which we consulted on last autumn – so that we give chief officers greater flexibility to have the right types of people in the right roles with the right mix of skills and experience.

    At the NPCC and APCC’s request, I have reallocated £4.6 million of this funding for the Digital Intelligence and Investigation programme, led by Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh, which will help transform the way the police investigate and respond to the full range of digital crime types.

    At the same time, we are investing nearly £1 billion across the Parliament to establish a digital network over which the police, along with the other emergency services, can operate.

    At the end of last year the Government signed contracts for the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme to deliver critical voice and data to all three emergency services across the country. This marks a significant milestone. The new system will be considerably cheaper than the existing model and will, once fully operational, free up officers’ time and connect all emergency services on the same broadband network for the first time. It will enable officers to access key police databases, take mobile fingerprints and electronic witness statements and stream live body worn video – all while on the move. Further, it has the potential to support a wide range of applications, designed by and for policing.

    In short, officers will have more coverage, better connectivity to the services and databases they need at lower cost.

    Making the most of this new system

    By reforming police capabilities and upgrading the emergency services network, we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to finish the job of police reform.

    The Police Transformation Fund will run throughout this Parliament and the three emergency services will begin the transition to the new service in mid 2017, to be completed by early 2020.

    But these national changes are only part of the story; forces will need to drive change locally too.

    For example, most forces in England and Wales now use body worn video to some extent, and in new and different ways. In one example, officers dealing with individuals with mental health issues have used body worn video to inform NHS partners and demonstrate the need for a place of safety, while in others, they have used body worn camera evidence to inform partners, such as a coroner.

    Sussex and Dorset’s single mobile policing solution – which allows officers access to data while on the move – will not only significantly improve police visibility but save nearly half a million operational hours.

    And South Wales and Gwent’s FUSION project aims to provide a single picture of police resources at any one time, to help manage demand and ensure officers on the beat are best deployed. Staff will have access to information and systems at point of need regardless of which force’s domain the service is hosted on.

    I am delighted to see the interest in digital ideas coming through this year’s Police Innovation Fund.

    Last year 59 of the 71 successful bids were IT-enabled, including Kent Police’s bid to develop innovative solutions to tackle online child sexual exploitation and protect children, and West Mercia’s bid to develop a single integrated public contact and command control system for Warwickshire Police, West Mercia Police and Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service.

    Bidding for this year’s fund recently closed, with a total of 141 bids submitted. And I want to thank the Police ICT Company for supporting those bids, providing advice to forces in the early stages of that process, and reviewing all submitted bids by giving feedback and helping to identify opportunities for collaboration.

    But we still have a mountain to climb

    As more and more people use digital devices, forces will need to exploit digital information to investigate crimes and better protect the public. We need digital investigation capabilities at every rank, in every force.

    And the unprecedented amount of digital information being generated by people every day has led to an increase in demand of for the use of digital forensics to solve crime, first in high harm crimes such as child sexual exploitation, but increasingly across the spectrum of cases.

    Citizens increasingly capture what is happening around them on video, generating potential evidence of crimes. Policing has not yet caught up: the most common means of contacting the police remains the telephone. Police forces must follow the example of banks and retailers and do more to connect with citizens who increasingly live their lives on line.

    All this technology generates data, in vast quantities. Forces have not yet begun to explore the crime prevention opportunities that data offers. Subject to the proper restrictions to ensure privacy and that access and use of data is lawful and appropriate, the use of predictive analytics could help police forces identify those most at risk of crime, locations most likely to see crimes committed, patterns of suspicious activity that may merit investigation and to target their resources most effectively against the greatest threats.

    There are people in this room who can help with all of that. The supplier community have already developed products and services that could, today, provide a huge step-change in the capabilities available to forces. So as well as rooting out inefficiencies and old systems and contracts, I urge everyone in this room to work together to create space to engage with new ideas, and invest where there is clear value in doing so.

    Everyone in this room knows the scale of the challenge with police technology, and the sheer weight of opportunity if we grasp the nettle.

    It is not enough to acknowledge everything we know is wrong with the system. And it is plain wrong to use the 43-force structure to break up contracts that could be better provided once to all forces.

    The Police ICT Company is at the heart of my vision for a reformed policing landscape and I urge each and every PCC and any commercial supplier looking to do business in policing to work constructively with Martin and his team.

    As I said earlier, the prize is there for the taking. Millions if not billions of savings. Thousands of police officer hours saved. Untold crimes solved and victims satisfied. And all by getting the fundamentals – information communications technology – right.

    We have a long way to go, and as I said before, much of it is gritty, complex and unglamorous. But we must pursue it, work for it, and reach for it.