Tag: Gordon Brown

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Church House in London on 10 March 2003.

If the last decade of the 20th century will go down as the decade that ended the cold war, the first decade of the 21st century will be remembered as the time when nations had to adjust to both the opportunities and insecurities of globalisation.

A generation that has grown up free of the horror and pain of world wars, survived the uneasy truce of the Cold War, dared to hope that the fall of the Berlin Wall would mean a halt to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, is now having to confront the proliferation of chemical, biological and, often, nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and failed states.

And this is why at our first global test of resolve in the post cold war world, and after repeated demands by the international community for Saddam Hussein to disarm, the world should stand firm.

We know that the only way he has considered disarming without war is the threat of being disarmed through war.

And just as the Treasury stands ready to fund necessary defence and security commitments, the whole country should support Tony Blair in his determination to secure international agreement for a second United Nations resolution and for the disarmament of Saddam Hussein.

Just as in foreign policy this new era of globalisation brings insecurities as well as opportunities, so too in economic policy insecurities and opportunities arise together and challenge us to devise modern ways of achieving our traditional economic objective: high and stable levels of growth and employment.

Globalisation means that there is hardly a good we produce here in Britain that is not subject to intense competition from at home and abroad, competition not just from traditional competitors in the advanced industrial economies but competition from emerging market economies not least in Asia and the east of Europe — competition which is itself a spur to growth and prosperity.

Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, it was just about possible – if costly and wrong – for countries to shelter their industries and sectors, protecting them from global competition.

But today there is no safe haven, no easy escape from global competition without putting at risk long term stability, growth and employment.

Some say governments are powerless facing these new global forces, that they cannot any longer play their part in achieving the old objectives: high and stable levels of growth and employment.

I believe the opposite to be true.

Globalisation has rightly limited the scope of government and in the modern, open, more fiercely competitive global economy governments cannot use the old levers to achieve their objectives.

They cannot easily impose exchange controls, trade off inflation for growth, resort to old style protectionism, competitive devaluations or costly state aids – the policy of subsidies in one country – without undermining their long term goal of high and stable levels of growth and employment.

But it is because in a more open global economy countries pay such a heavy price, not least in long term investment, for getting the big decisions wrong that I believe governments are even more important today to the attainment of high levels of growth and employment.

Because investment will flow most to those countries that are the most stable, and ever more rapidly away from those that risk stability, there is an even greater premium than before on governments running a stable and successful monetary and fiscal regime to achieve high and stable levels of growth and employment. That is why we attached so much importance to the first decision our Government made – to make the Bank of England independent – and why, with low inflation, low interest rates and low debt, our stability makes us a far stronger economy today.

Globalisation also describes a world whose very mobility of capital and openness to competition is ushering in a restructuring of industry and services across continents.

And while emerging market countries are ready to attract low value added, low investment and low skilled work, we have to compete on ever higher levels of skill and technology rather than ever lower levels of poverty pay.

So countries that make the right forward looking decisions to create the best environment for high quality investment – through policies for education, research and development, and infrastructure – will be better placed to achieve high and stable levels of growth and employment. It is for this reason that in our recent spending review we decided to match new resources to major reforms in education, science and innovation.

But because high levels of productivity growth are essential to high levels of growth and employment, there is a third essential element that distinguishes the successful high employment, high growth economies from the least successful – and it is also one where governments can also make a difference. And it is this I want to talk about today both for Britain and for the euro area: how enhancing productivity and competitiveness in a more open economy demands a new flexibility in labour, capital and product markets.

A few weeks ago I urged Labour to reverse traditional, often hostile attitudes to markets and recognise the need to strengthen markets in important areas. And today I want to set out how Britain proposes to lead the way in labour, product and capital market reform and how in this process of market liberalisation we can make progress with European economic reform.

Some still argue that when global competition is challenging every industry and almost every service, the state should replace markets or, as difficult, seek to second guess them through a corporatist policy of supporting national champions.

But competition at home is not only essential for competitiveness at home and abroad, but if we are to make the most of the potential of open trade and the European single market, we will need greater flexibility as we respond to new technologies, and adjust to changes in consumer demand.

Indeed in a single currency area where the old flexibilities to adjust exchange rates and interest rates are no longer available at a national level, labour, product and capital market flexibilities are even more essential.

Adjusting to shocks without putting at risk high and stable levels of growth and employment demands even greater market flexibility.

America’s experience as a large and mature monetary union demonstrates the importance of sufficient flexibility to ensure that monetary union works well.

In monetary unions, whatever their size, local economies need to respond to shocks and there is a premium on effective internal market adjustment mechanisms.

In the USA competitive pressures are strong ensuring that prices respond quickly and efficiently. With risk sharing diversified across a broad and deep capital market they can limit the impact of shocks. And a high level of product and capital market flexibility complimented by a high level of labour flexibility has helped sustain high levels of employment and growth.

In the past, supporters of full employment have not been in the habit of thinking of flexibility as a route to full employment. And supporters of greater flexibility in our economy have seldom described its benefits as the attainment of full employment.

Yet today flexible economies are also the economies with higher employment.

And I want to demonstrate how in the new world of global competition it is by creating a more flexible and dynamic economy in which firms and individuals respond to the challenges of change that we will best achieve our historic goals for full employment.

Britain and Europe have, of course, long since moved from the old assumption that there is a long term trade off between inflation and growth and employment.

But, in a world where business must respond quickly and people must adapt to change, Europe has too often been unwilling to go beyond old assumptions that the labour, capital and product market flexibility necessary for productivity is the enemy of social justice.

Yet the road to full employment starts with monetary and fiscal stability, is built on investing in skills and responsibility in the workplace, and demands attention to enterprise, competition and employability as necessary means of achieving high productivity.

And this road to full employment in Britain depends not just on achieving economic reform in Britain but in Europe too.

In the past the Labour Party – like the rest of Europe – has not been very good at facing up to issues relating to flexibility.

Indeed flexibility has often been a term of abuse, derided as the antithesis of fairness, as the race to the bottom, as poverty pay – and it is often suggested that flexibility is a synonym for exploitation.

Yet flexibility is, in reality, the ability to respond to change with speed.

Changes in a marketplace include the impact of innovation and changing technology, changing consumer preferences and the changing need for particular skills.

Failure to respond to these changes by companies and by individuals leads to an unproductive use and wasteful allocation of resources in the economy and thus huge costs in lost output, jobs and prosperity.

So in an open and far more rapidly changing global trading economy, flexibility – the ability to respond quickly – is not an option. It is a necessary precondition of success.

Without firms prepared to innovate and adjust, economies become sclerotic. Without the capacity to develop the new skills needed, countries will simply be left behind.

Indeed there are just two modern routes to achieving high levels of growth and employment — flexibility without fairness, which leaves people helpless in face of change, or flexibility with fairness, where governments and firms equip people to cope with change and tackle the insecurities that surround it. The issue of the best modern policies for fairness is one I will address in detail in a later speech.

But it is right both to create flexible markets and to equip people to master change – through investment in skills and training, through the best transitional help for people moving between jobs, and – as I hope to demonstrate – through the operation of a minimum wage and a tax credit system.

And flexible markets and active labour market policies are not incompatible opposites but can be essential allies of each other as we seek high levels of growth and employment. So the issue is not one of abandoning fairness but of achieving the right kind of flexibility. And what people should oppose is not governments that insist on flexibility but governments that fail to insist on matching that flexibility with fairness.

In other words, we should recognise that, with the right kind of flexibility in British and European labour, capital and product markets, economic efficiency and employment opportunity for all can advance together.

So our goal – enterprise and fairness in a dynamic, flexible economy that delivers full employment and prosperity for all – demands that we match policies for stability, employment and fairness with flexible capital, labour and product markets.

Since 1997 we have, in pursuit of this:

made our competition authorities independent and opened up product markets;
revamped the physical planning system;
encouraged our capital markets by cutting capital gains tax and introducing new incentives for venture capital;
encouraged enterprise with lower tax rates for small businesses;
offered new incentives and resources to encourage greater investment, skills, and innovation;
and we have devoted time and energy to promoting economic liberalisation in Europe.

At the same time as we have created a more flexible economy we have advanced fairness with the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, the Working Families Tax Credit and Jobcentre Plus – an employment service that offers personal help to people moving into and between jobs —- not reforms at the expense of greater flexibility but consistent with greater flexibility.

But we can still go much further in product, capital and labour market reform in Britain and in Europe to make our economy more flexible.

Product and capital markets

First, product and capital markets.

When I argue for flexible capital and product markets I want open well informed markets that ensure capital flows to productive uses so that the price mechanism works to balance demand and supply and labour and capital are used efficiently.

So flexibility in product and capital markets means that instead of being suspicious of competition, we should embrace it, recognising that without it vested interests accumulate. Instead of tolerating monopoly or cartels which were never in the public interest, or appeasing special interests, we should systematically extend competition – forcing producers to be efficient, extending the choices available to consumers and opening up opportunity for the ambitious and the risk-takers.

To back up independence for the Competition Commission and the new proactive role of the OFT, we will take action where investigations reveal challenges that have to be met and demand that the same rigorous pro competition policies are applied to the public sector as well as the private sector.

As the DTI Secretary of State, Patricia Hewitt, is showing: the old days of the ‘sponsorship’ department are over, freeing up resources to enhance the DTI’s role in promoting competition and enabling markets to work better.

And it is right to demand the same liberalisation throughout Europe to make the single market work. Britain has learned much from the steps taken in the European Union, before and after the Lisbon agenda, that promote liberalisation and economic reform. And we have supported wholeheartedly the attempt to restrict the wasteful use of state aids that prevents markets functioning well.

Yet while in 1988 Cecchini estimated that single market liberalisation would add 4.5 per cent to Europe’s GDP, cut prices by 6 per cent and increase employment by 1.75 million, many of the gains have yet to materialise. The way forward is mutual recognition of national practises not harmonised regulations; and tax competition not tax harmonisation.

So we support:

A more proactive EU competition regime furthering a strong and independent competition policy for Europe;
Investigations into particular European markets and sectors to drive up competition and prevent British firms from being excluded from European markets from energy and telecommunications to agriculture;
Faster progress on the reform of airport slot allocation and liberalisation of postal services;
And support for private finance initiatives in Europe.

And Britain remains at the forefront of countries supporting the European Commission’s demands for tougher state aid rules to prevent unwarranted subsidies for loss making industries and at the European Economic Reform Summit we will continue to push for a more aggressive approach to tackling unfair competition and state failure.

In the UK we are removing the last of the permanent, ongoing subsidies — thus removing aids which have no market justification.

But while it is right to remove state aids which distort the single market, it is also right to reform state aids to target market failures which need correction.

It took Britain more than a year to secure European permission to create regional venture capital funds for localities desperately in need of strong local capital markets that work for small businesses. And it has taken months more for permission to abolish stamp duty for business property purchases in areas urgently in need of local property markets that work and the new businesses and jobs that can ensue.

Here again, as I said in a speech on markets a few weeks ago, the case for state intervention is not to extend the role of the state but, by tackling market failure, to help make markets work better: instead of thinking the state must take over responsibility where markets deliver insufficient investment and short termism in innovation, skills and environmental protection, we must enable markets to work better and for the long term.

An effective competition policy helps new and small businesses enter markets and prevents them being held back or penalised by large vested interests. And instead of being suspicious of enterprise and entrepreneurs, Labour should celebrate them – encouraging, incentivising and rewarding them, hence our capital gains tax (from 40 pence to 10 pence) and our small business tax reforms (from 23 pence to 19 pence and the lower rate from 10 pence to zero).

With their recommendations on small business banking, the competition authorities have tried to cut the cost of investing for small businesses. The next stage is to help small and medium sized businesses get fair access to public sector procurement. Opening up markets to new suppliers intensifies competition as well as encouraging innovation. That is why we have asked the Office of Government Commerce to identify what more can be done to increase competition in markets where government has substantial purchasing power and to enable small businesses to compete for government contracts and deliver value for money.

I have said that instead of maximising regulation to restrict the scope of markets, we should systematically pinpoint regulation that does not serve the public interest and can be reduced.

So as I examine measures for the budget we will continue the process of cutting the cost and burden to small business of starting up, investing and growing, especially in areas of high unemployment. And as the Government strengthens our assessments of the impact of regulation on small firms which have included examinations of the retail and chemical sectors we will also look at transport, pesticides, food and drink processing, and the collection of statistical data.

Because 40 per cent of new regulations originate in the EU, the European Economic Reform Summit this month should call for the same rigorous assault on unnecessary regulation throughout the European Union: an agreement to examine all new directives for their impact as well as taking stock of existing EU directives.

Achieving greater flexibility not just in product markets but in capital markets is essential for high levels of growth and as we press ahead with the Cruickshank, Myners, Sandler and Higgs reforms and build on our cuts in capital gains tax we should continue to examine where local capital markets have had least success, and continue to cut the barriers to entry faced by small businesses and to open up venture capital markets in our regions.

State aid rules – and thus the treatment of early stage research – should be reformed to help Europe bridge the gap between our research and development performance and that of Japan and the USA. With the R and D tax credit we are trying to cut the cost of investing in innovative research, but state aid rules should make it easier to address the market failures that obstruct research and innovation in its early and pre commercial stages.

Capital markets can and must help us manage risk more efficiently, between sectors, over time and across national boundaries. While America has achieved a high degree of diversification across state borders, investment in Europe remains fragmented on national lines and there is a need to remove barriers to diversification of investments across borders, for example in pension and mutual funds.

So we will support the European Financial Services Action Plan as it improves mutual recognition of financial services providers in insurance, banking and capital markets.

It is also true that competition between trading systems in capital markets is vital to improve efficiency and reduce dealing spreads, and so cut the cost of capital and raise the returns from investment. And where EU regulation such as the proposed new Investment Services Directive threatens to weaken rather than strengthen competition we will fight to change it.

And instead of the old protectionism we must embrace open markets and thus free trade. Efforts to improve the flexibility of product and capital markets should not stop at the EU’s borders. Greater openness to global trade and investment creates new opportunities for European producers and consumers, and strengthens the incentives for reform. A more flexible and dynamic Europe would, in turn, play a leading role in breaking down barriers to trade and investment in the rest of the world – a virtuous circle of reform and openness, leading to a stronger and more resilient economy from which the EU, and the global economy, would benefit.

So we must drive forward the Doha agenda and also do more to strengthen the trading links between the EU and USA. Deepening what is already the world’s largest trade and investment relationship would do much to stimulate flexibility and reform in Europe.

Regional and local flexibilities

By looking for market solutions to market failures, we move beyond the old centrally imposed industrial policies – the corporatist policy of picking winners – in favour of a new regionally driven focus on local enterprise, local skills and local innovation.

For it is not just how national economies adjust that matters but how local and regional economies and their markets adjust and respond that will determine whether full employment can be achieved in each region and on a sustainable basis.

And that requires us to move beyond not only the first generation of regional policy that was centrally delivered first aid but the second generation of regional policy which was London and then Brussels imposing centrally set rules focusing on incentives for incoming investors.

Today, in the third generation of regional policy, the focus is, rightly, moving from centrally administered subsidies to locally–led incentives that encourage local skills, innovation and investment and boost the indigenous sources of regional economic growth.

And to achieve this we also move from the old idea that regional policy is just the work of one or two departments. In the new regional policy for a more flexible economy each department must step up the pace of reform and devolution:
from centrally administered R and D policies to the encouragement of local technology transfer between universities and companies and the development of regional clusters of specialisms;
from a national one size fits all approach to skills to devolving 90 per cent of the learning and skills budget, so that we can promote regional excellence;
from centrally run housing and transport policies to greater regional coordination…offering greater flexibility in response;
and from centrally administered small business polices to more local discretion starting with, in the East and West Midlands and the North West, the small business budget locally administered with the Regional Development Agencies.

Because small business creation is so important to the success of local economies it makes sense to examine why the rates of small business creation vary so much between localities and regions and what we can do about it.

In the UK just 5 per cent of adults think of starting a business, in the United States it is 11 per cent – so we have a long way to go. And there are also large variations in the rates of business creation between areas of the UK with ten times the number of firm start-ups in the best performing areas of the UK than in the worst performing.

So to remove the barriers preventing firms from starting up and growing in our most deprived communities, we have designated 2000 new Enterprise Areas — where we encourage economic activity by cutting the cost of starting up, investing, employing, training, managing the payroll. Here we are bringing together industry, planning, employment and social security policies to tackle local property market, capital market and labour market failures — hence the new community investment tax relief, the relaxation of planning regulations, the abolition of stamp duty, the engagement of the New Deal — government and business working together to bring investment, jobs and prosperity to areas that prosperity has still by passed.

It makes sense for Europe to help this process forward. And while, as I argued last week, Structural Funds will inevitably be concentrated on the poorer regions of central and eastern Europe, more prosperous countries with large regional inequalities should be given the freedom to tackle capital, labour and product market failures through a reform of state aid legislation.

Labour markets

And we need to extend our approach of encouraging regional and local initiatives from R and D, skills, small business, transport and housing policies to the critical area of employment and welfare policy.

Because we seek local and regional labour markets that match labour demand and supply efficiently and help us meet our aim of full employment, Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is focusing on how regional and local employment and social security policies can help our labour markets get people back to work more quickly and help people move more easily from the old jobs that are becoming redundant to the new jobs that can give them greater security.

So while the preconditions for full employment are national stability, employability and an environment for investment and high productivity, the achievement of full employment and high levels of growth and prosperity depends upon regions and localities becoming better equipped to adapt to change.

In particular, when there are negative economic shocks, it is all the more important that the economy can adjust and ensure that temporary output and job losses are minimised and do not become more permanent.

And while it is true that in recent years in the United Kingdom earnings growth has been consistent with the inflation target, and what is called the NAIRU (non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) has fallen, it is still the case that UK labour market flexibility – while greater than much of Europe – is lower than in the USA.

A dynamic economy needs adaptable and flexible labour markets where there is

· first, mobility – a willingness to be more mobile, and firms and a labour market that supports the ability to do so;
· second, what economists call functional flexibility – the skills to meet new and different challenges;
· third, employment flexibility – the ability of firms and individuals to adjust working patterns to new challenges;
· and fourth, at a local level the ability of our employment and wage systems to respond more quickly to shocks and imbalances between supply and demand.

And to meet the challenges of a global economy we have, in each of these areas, much further to go.

While the rate of job turnover in Britain is higher than the 7 years per job in the euro area but lower than in America – 5 years against 4 years – it is also true that there is far less geographical mobility in response to change in Britain and in Europe than in the USA.

While around 25 per cent of the UK’s workforce have degree level skills, the UK, with 8 million men and women with low or no skills, 20 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds, has a long way to go.

While nearly 25 per cent of British employees work part-time compared with less than 15 per cent in the euro area, and while working outside the five days a week is common in Britain – 13 per cent working on a Sunday compared to 11 per cent in the EU and as low as 4 per cent in some countries – adjusting to the global economic challenge will require firms and individuals to be more flexible.

Indeed it is because our aim is not just achieving but sustaining full employment in our regions that we need not only stability but this flexibility to respond to shocks.

And this is more important than ever in a single currency area, with the US experience demonstrating labour mobility and wage flexibility to be critical to the success of their single currency.

Labour mobility

In the American single currency area geographical mobility, which can help tackle skill shortages and help people find new opportunities, is twice the level of Britain and Europe today.

It is often argued that mobility will be greater:

the more flexible the housing market;
the easier it is to commute; and
the easier it is to attract economic migrants to high demand areas.

Britain has a smaller privately rented sector than most countries. And John Prescott is examining how we can encourage more flexibility for those in social housing through initiatives such as Choice-based Letting and the new Housing and Mobility Scheme to help tenants relocate to access employment.

And because we also need to ensure we are building sufficient housing in areas of high employment, the Deputy Prime Minister has also set out ambitious plans to deliver a step change in housing provision and expand assistance for key workers to enable them to rent as well as buy in high demand housing areas.

Around 3.8 million tenants currently rely on housing benefit for help with their rent, but delays in processing new applications after a claimant returns to employment can lead to rent arrears and debt, dissuading some people from moving into work. So because housing benefit can constrain mobility, affecting an individual’s ability to move into jobs and move between localities, Andrew Smith is piloting major reforms in housing benefit administration and incentives that make it easier for the unemployed to return to work.

The current Housing Benefit Pathfinders Scheme offers a flat rate in the private rented sector and it makes sense to pursue the pilot of a flat rate payment based on household circumstances and location.

International migration can help tackle skill shortages and aid adjustment to shocks,

Migration into the UK through the Work Permits System has risen from 50,000 in 1997 to 170,000 this year and is projected to rise to 200,000 by 2004. And while tackling illegal immigration, David Blunkett and I have been considering further extensions to the successful Work Permit System for legal migration.

Functional flexibility

The more skilled men and women there are. And the more they are willing to develop new skills, the more flexible and productive the economy is likely to be. And the more globalisation opens up the world economy to fierce competition across continents the more competitive advantage countries like Britain will gain from a higher level of skills.

Yet despite our successes at university and college level, skills – particularly in basic and intermediate qualifications – are Britain’s Achilles heel, the most worrying inflexibility of all within our labour market. And we are learning a great deal from successful industrial training policies in other parts of Europe.

So Charles Clarke the Education Secretary is right to forge a new partnership between government, employee and employer with a view to expanding our skills and making labour markets work more flexibly.

Here, as elsewhere, a partnership between employers and workforces is the best means of combining flexibility with fairness. Building on the Union Learning Fund and other innovative partnerships, I believe we can do more to encourage and help trades unions expand their role in training and education.

The increased registration for the University for Industry, (providing courses for over 700,000 people already), the high levels of young people undertaking Modern Apprenticeships (now over 220,000 a year) and the success of the new Employer Training Pilots prove that the issue is not an unwillingness to get new qualifications and skills but the availability of training at the right time, price and standards.

So we are expanding the Employer Training Pilots now operating in six areas to around a quarter of the country — offering incentives for firms to give their staff paid time off to train towards basic skills and NVQ Level 2 qualifications. And a major shake-up in skills training will be announced this summer.

From April, we are piloting devolved pooled budgets for adult learning in four areas of the country — providing greater incentives to employers and individuals to develop their skills, reducing bureaucracy and strengthening the regional and local dimension in skills development

Looking to the workforce of the future we are not only investing heavily to raise standards in schools but, from September next year, rolling out Educational Maintenance Allowances in England — providing young people from poorer families with up to £1,500 a year to encourage them to stay on at school and get the qualifications they need.

And we have set up the National Modern Apprenticeship Taskforce which will look at how to increase the opportunities for young people to participate in Modern Apprenticeships and how to engage employers more fully in the programme.

Employment flexibility

More flexible patterns of employment can remove unnecessary inflexibilities and enable more men and women to balance work and family and other responsibilities.

And it is important to look at new ways of ensuring that firms have the flexible working patterns they need and families have the flexible arrangements they need.

So the Government is not only looking carefully at employment regulation, but also at how we can empower mothers in particular to secure the benefits of more flexible working arrangements.

So we will resist inflexible barriers being introduced into directives like the European Working Time Directive and we will support flexible interpretations of existing rules and remove unnecessary regulations and restrictions.

In recent years attitudes to part time work have changed. Companies have found flexible working patterns help them be more productive. Families have found that flexible working arrangements help them balance work and family responsibilities.

So most people who work part time today do so not because there are no full time jobs available but out of choice. So while temporary employment is half the European Union average, 6 per cent compared with 13 per cent in the EU, 25 per cent of our total employment is part-time and employees already work far more flexible hours than most EU countries.

One reason is our tax credit system and the child care tax credit. And we continue to seek ways of making it easier and less costly for employees to balance their work and family responsibilities and for businesses to recruit.

That is why building on:
our rise, from April, in maternity pay to £100 a week the extension in paid maternity leave to 26 weeks;
the first ever paternity and adoption pay;
a new right for parents of young or disabled children to request flexible working;
and the first ever National Childcare Strategy…

…we will consider further reforms: new tax and national insurance incentives to expand employer supported child care; paying the child care credit for approved home child care by carers who are not already childminders; and increased flexibility in parental time off including giving fathers time off to attend ante-natal appointments.

Lone parents genuinely worry that without flexible working patterns they will end up neglecting their children and fear that the price of employment may make it difficult to discharge family responsibilities. To ensure the balance is better, the child care and child tax credits are not only making work pay for the single parent – £10 an hour for a part time job – but ensuring that a decent income does not require them to work excessive hours damaging to their family life.

And because employers recognise these anxieties, a new Employer Taskforce is now examining how, among other measures, working patterns can be more flexible and child care provision better to suit the needs of lone parents.

With a national discussion of how we help lone parents balance work and family responsibilities, we can offer companies a smart solution to their employment needs, help thousands of lone parents move out of poverty from welfare into work, and reach our target of 70 per cent of lone parents in employment. And similar initiatives will also be forthcoming for men and women who have previously lost out in the old economy – such as the ethnic minorities – but who, by more flexible recruitment patterns, could gain in a new economy where we should see diversity as a source of strength.

While there are more 900,000 men and women over 50 now in work compared with 1997, more flexible recruitment patterns could make it easier for older workers to move between jobs and tomorrow Andrew Smith will host a summit of employers aimed at more flexible recruitment incentives for firms to take on the 1 million disabled men and women who want to work to find suitable employment.

Local labour market flexibility

To reduce unemployment and to achieve full employment we must not only focus on the needs of particular groups of the unemployed but also focus on regional and local flexibilities and so tackle the regional and local variations in unemployment rates, in skills, in the ability to create new jobs and generate new businesses. And here we are able to learn from the success of active labour market policies especially in the Nordic countries and the low unemployment countries of the European Union.

Without the New Deal, youth long term unemployment would be twice as high and today inflows to Jobseekers Allowance are at their lowest since records began in 1967. Unemployment in the UK is 5.1 per cent, compared to 6 per cent in the US and 8.5 per cent in the euro area.

But after six years of a national programme I am more convinced than ever that if we are to get more of the long term unemployed back to work, and more successfully match vacancies to jobs, a full employment strategy now demands regional and local flexibility as well as a national framework of incentives and sanctions. And this is needed too to increase the New Deal’s ability both to respond in the event of a local or regional shock and to help the unemployed move into work more rapidly.

Today vacancies – 2.5 million notified at Jobcentres every year, 5 million overall – are still at historically high levels in almost every region and nation of the UK. And in relatively low skilled trades like in hotels and catering 350,000 vacancies were reported last year.

Often large numbers of vacancies exist side by side with large numbers of unemployed in adjacent communities.

Tottenham, for example, has some of Britain’s worst long term male unemployment among its 5,000 unemployed while neighbouring districts have seen nearly 90,000 vacancies in the last nine months, with many more in the wider London economy.

So it makes sense for Jobcentres to develop programmes more sensitive to, and tailor made for, local and regional conditions and to have greater flexibility and discretion to move people quickly into work, to stop too many long term unemployed falling through net, and to tackle shocks when they arise.

So we should consider extending the areas of job search for the newly unemployed and as we combine flexibility with help for people coping with change we are prepared to help with initial transport costs where appropriate.

And while in France nearly 40 per cent of unemployed have been unemployed for more than a year, in Germany more than 50 per cent, in Italy more than 60 per cent, Britain’s 27 per cent compares unfavourably with 6 per cent in the USA so, with our step up and other programmes that require the long term unemployed to take jobs on offer, we will consider an even greater emphasis on responsibilities as well as opportunities in moving the long term unemployed back to work.

In the global economy it has been easier in the past for nations to respond to shocks when wages are either highly centralised at a national level or highly decentralised at a local level.

In Britain only 5 per cent of private sector workplaces are covered by multi-employer collective bargaining arrangements – and many have profit related pay schemes, helping to make pay more responsive to the economic cycle. Wage setting tends to be local, annual and normally at a plant or workplace level.

But a willingness to be flexible in both the private and the public sectors can be matched with a guarantee of fairness.

Indeed as the government has implemented its reforms to the tax and benefit system, two of the critical guarantees that have been put in place for people in work are the minimum wage and the working and child tax credits.

Critics of the minimum wage have argued that it reduces the flexibility of the labour market by inhibiting the workings of the price mechanism, with the potential to create stronger wage growth throughout the economy and reduce employment.

But research suggests that the minimum wage has not led to increased unemployment or inflationary earnings growth across the economy. Adjusted through regular reviews by the Low Pay Commission who consider the effect on pay, employment and competitiveness, wages can still respond effectively to labour market changes and there is no reason why the minimum wage cannot continue to be uprated and rise this year.

But an even stronger guarantee of fairness at work are the tax credits which provide not only an even more generous floor but work to sustain incomes up the earnings scale.

While the minimum wage today is £147 for a 35 hour week, the minimum for a family with two children – through tax credits – is a net £275, almost twice as much

The minimum for a couple in work without children is £183

And for a single adult over 25 is £154

A single parent working sixteen hours is guaranteed £179, the equivalent of £10.10 an hour after taxes

Compared with a minimum wage of £4.20 an hour.

It is the guarantee provided by tax credits on top of the minimum wage – not just a minimal safety net but support right up the income scale – which makes it possible for regional and local wage flexibility to operate without undermining basic fairness.

And this guarantee would matter even more in circumstances where, as happens in the United States single currency area, real wages may have to adjust in response to a shock. Because of the tax credits, a fall in wages of £1 impacts to the tune of 30p on the earner – just one third – with the generous child tax credit making the same true for incomes extended up the income scale.

So what are the next steps?

First, we need to do more to do more to help the newly unemployed and the long term unemployed back into work and help our labour market work better and more rapidly.

Second, we need to take forward our tax credit reforms which match flexibility with fairness.

Thirdly, all key public sector workers in London receive some form of London premium. There are London arrangements for teachers, nurses and policemen with officers in the metropolitan police receiving free travel in the London area. And there are attempts at special housing cost arrangements for public sector workers with 10,000 key workers helped through the Starter Homes Initiative.

Yet while professionals have benefited from London weighting and other arrangements it is clear that many lower paid workers have been at risk of losing out.

A more considered approach to local and regional conditions that pays attention to the needs of recruitment and retention makes sense. Reliable, timely regional prices and cost of living data can help inform the debate. So the review of regional information and the wider examination of statistics by Mr Chris Allsop will help us address some of these issues, providing greater impetus to our objective of promoting economic growth in all regions and reducing the persistent gap in growth rates between the richest and poorest areas of our country.

But evidence so far suggests that the tax and benefit reforms introduced since 1997 have already improved the flexibility of the UK labour market. The unemployment trap – the trap that made it not worthwhile for unemployed men and women to take a job – has been addressed, work now pays more than benefits, and the reforms have extended support for families with children up the income scale, ensuring not only that work pays but that more people are protected from the impact of economic shocks.

Conclusion

So by examining the challenges ahead, we open up a rich reform and modernisation agenda for our product, capital and labour markets, an agenda of economic reform not just for the future of Britain but for the future of Europe.

And policies for flexibility need not be implemented at the expense of fairness but can move forward together, indeed in support of each other, in ways that ensure that genuine concerns in Britain and in Europe about the importance of social cohesion are not swept aside or forgotten but rather recognised and addressed in ways consistent with the realities of today’s global economy and tomorrow’s.

And we have shown today that greater flexibility in both Britain and Europe is good for Britain and Europe.

We have learnt from Europe’s emphasis on skills, on the social foundations of markets, and on social cohesion. And through the Luxembourg employment initiative and then the Lisbon economic reform agenda we continue to learn from each other.

But we also learnt – and this is important message especially for trade unionists committed to full employment – that to achieve full employment in Europe we have to learn from the best of American flexibilities and sweep aside the worst of European inflexibilities. Indeed, in the future, achieving a full employment economy will need much of the flexibility of America applied to much of Europe. And I have suggested a programme of economic reform not just in Britain but in Europe – a programme upon which I will elaborate in greater detail in my budget and beyond.

In its history – from our industrial revolution through empire – Britain has stood out: a beacon to the rest of the world as a land of enterprise — of invention, of commerce of creativity – and of fairness.

As we prepare for the world upturn and to meet the long term challenges of globalisation, Britain has a unique opportunity to be, once again, a beacon to the world advancing enterprise and fairness together — a dynamic vibrant economy that is the first economy in the new era of globalisation to match flexibility with fairness and, in doing so, attain the high levels of growth and employment that are the best route to prosperity for all.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Hull on 11 October 2002.

Empowering Local Centres of Initiative

The Deputy Prime Minister has pioneered a new regional policy for Britain. With the Department for Trade and Industry and the Treasury, he has championed regional devolution with strategic economic policy making devolved away from central government to the regions.

Instead of the old “Whitehall knows best” command and control regimes, he and I want to see a Britain of not one but many centres of initiative and decision-making power.

Now it is time to devolve power even more – empowering high performing local government and the many community and voluntary organisations that make such a difference to the strength and vitality of our communities.

The first generation of regional policy, before the war, was essentially ambulance work getting help to high unemployment areas. The second generation in the 1960s and 1970s was based on large capital and tax incentives delivered by the then Department of Industry, almost certainly opposed by the Treasury. It was inflexible but it was also top-down. And it did not work.

The new approach to regional economic policy, wholeheartedly promoted by the Treasury, is based on two principles. It aims to strengthen the long-term building blocks of growth, innovation, skills and the development of enterprise by exploiting the indigenous strengths in each region and city. And it is bottom-up not top-down, with national Government enabling powerful regional and local initiatives to work by providing the necessary flexibility and resources.

So there should be more responsibility and accountability for the Regional Development Agencies so that local people do make local decisions about local economic needs. A new generation of regional policies concentrating on indigenous measures – strengthening, within the regions, the essential building blocks of self generating growth, the capacity to innovate, invest, build skills, match the unemployed to jobs available, and offering Development Agencies new flexibilities and in return demanding strenuous targets to be met in skills, innovation, business creation, new technology and employment.

A new regional policy – locally sensitive and locally delivered, local people meeting local needs through local agencies.

This new regional policy is based on a genuine devolution of power in economic policymaking to the Regional Development Agencies with expanded budgets and – just as important – a Single Budget with 100 per cent flexibility, including full End Year Flexibility, to spend these resources to meet regional priorities.

And to ensure proper regional and local accountability, after the last Spending Review the Deputy Prime Minister and I allocated £5 million to fund the eight Regional Assemblies outside London. Earlier this year, the Deputy Prime Minister’s White Paper set out the detailed route map for those regions that want to go further and move to elected Regional Assemblies. And the Treasury worked closely with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office to draw up a package of financial freedoms and flexibilities to match greater accountability.

Let me turn to local government. Just as we made a start with regional policy in the last Parliament, we also made a start in devolving power to local government, moving away from the destructive centralism of the 1980s and early 1990s – years characterised by universal capping, strict limits on borrowing and then the poll tax.

As in regional economic policy, so in local service delivery, a proper strategic division of responsibilities requires us to recognise that Whitehall does not know best – that effective service delivery for families and communities cannot come from central command and control but requires local initiative matched by local accountability.

So to build a long-term and strategic partnership between central and local government, and to deliver improved public services, this Government has begun to reverse the trend towards ever-greater centralisation. We have:

boosted financial support for councils, through real terms increases in revenue and in capital expenditure for four years in a row;
matched devolution with greater accountability and with new constitutions for local government following local consultation;

recognised the key role of local government by introducing statutory community strategies, supported by a new power to promote community well-being through coordination and partnership with other local actors;

introduced local Public Service Agreements with councils, which link resources and greater flexibilities to stretching outcome targets for both national and local priorities. By this time next year we will have concluded local PSAs with virtually all upper-tier authorities. And in 2004 we will launch a new round of local PSAs that will boost partnership working and local innovation still further.

These are important measures, but they are only the first steps in developing this new partnership. We must now be ready to do more to achieve our goals. The White Paper last December set out our vision of local authorities as strong community leaders responsible for high quality public services. And we have made good progress since then in developing further reforms that will let councils make more decisions for themselves free from central control.

So we are introducing a range of new financial freedoms – new powers for local authorities to trade, retain fines, develop new services and decide council tax exemptions and discounts – allowing responsible councils to innovate and respond to local needs

We are making councils themselves responsible for deciding how much they can prudently borrow, providing greater freedom for councils to invest in local services.

We are removing unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy and will cut the numbers of plans and strategies that the Government requires councils to produce by 50 per cent.

We are developing a more coordinated and proportionate inspection regime to generate real performance improvements for all local authorities.

And we are restricting ring-fencing of central grants to cases which are genuine high priorities for Government and where we cannot achieve our policy goal by specifying outcome targets.

But with freedom comes responsibility and the need for greater accountability to local communities.

That is why the Treasury has worked with John Prescott to introduce a new Comprehensive Performance Assessment – for the first time providing clear and concise information about each council’s performance across a range of local services. The assessment will enable us to make our inspection regimes more proportionate, to target support where it is most needed, and to identify the small minority of failing councils in need of tough remedial action.

And to encourage all councils to deliver the best public services, high performing councils will receive substantial extra freedoms to enable further service improvements. Our best local authorities will see a dramatic reduction in the amount of their funding that is ring-fenced, plan requirements reduced to the absolute minimum and inspection cut by around 50 per cent. We will also withdraw reserve powers over capping, as a first step towards dispensing with the power to cap altogether.

This is our vision of a modern partnership between central and local government – a new localism where there is flexibility and resources in return for reform and delivery – local authorities at the heart of public services, equipped with the freedom they need, and accountable to the communities whose needs they serve.

This is the shape of a Government that enables and empowers rather than directs and controls.

Many social problems once addressed only by the state gaining more power can be solved today only by the state giving much of its power back to the people.

And this is why there is renewed interest in voluntary organisations – devolving more power from Government altogether, and into the hands of local communities.

It is because we are committed to matching local devolution with agreed national goals that we can encourage local innovation without putting at risk our shared commitment to the highest quality public services available not just to few but for all.

A few illustrations will show how Britain is changing.

With Sure Start – new local partnerships to run services for the under-fives – we break new ground. For the first time, services for the under?fours not only involve private, voluntary and charitable organisations, but can be run through and by them – not implementing a standardised central plan, but reflecting the needs of local communities and families.

And this is just one of the new social initiatives at the heart of a new relationship now being forged between individual, community and state. Our children’s policy is evolving not just through better financial support for mothers and fathers, balancing work and family responsibilities, but with a national and local network of Children’s Funds, seed-corn finance to enable and empower local community, charitable and voluntary action groups to meet children’s needs.

Through the New Deal, we are working in ever closer partnerships with third-sector organisations; our Healthy Living Centres bring together public, private and voluntary sectors; we have introduced new Computer Learning Centres run not centrally but locally as we work to ensure that no one is excluded from the computer revolution – even more not being run by Government agencies but by community organisations and partnerships.

And of course voluntary action extends to community economic regeneration. Today the Phoenix Fund is pioneering new community finance initiatives and the boards of New Deal for Communities have strong voluntary and community sector involvement. The whole purpose of Communities Against Drugs, and the Safer Communities Initiative, is to engage voluntary, community and local organisations at the centre of the war against drugs and crime.

What do all these initiatives have in common?

In the not-so distant past, each of these public efforts would have been initiated, planned and run by the state. Today, instead, they are the domain of local leaders, local and community organisations, private sector leaders working in partnership for the public good. In Britain today there is not one centre of initiative but many centres of local initiative ready to flourish in all parts of the country. So in the provision of these services the old days of “the man in Whitehall knowing best” is and should be over: men and women in thousands of communities round the country – the mother in the playgroup, the local volunteers in Sure Start, parents in the fight against drugs – know much better.

So instead of people looking to Whitehall for solutions in locality after locality, more and more people will themselves take more control of the decisions that most affect them – a devolution of power, an empowerment of local centres of initiative that is now ready to spread across regions, local government and communities, large and small.

The Government’s approach to localism empowers people – bringing public, voluntary and private sectors together, encouraging innovation to deliver our shared goals of high quality public services for all.

Others appear to be simply advocating privatisation under another name – public services taken over by private companies with the best provision guaranteed just for the few not the many.

Instead, for us, a new era – an age of active citizenship and an enabling state – is within our grasp. And at its core is a renewal of civic society where the rights to decent services and the responsibilities of citizenship go together.

Much more needs to be done and as we help voluntary, community and charitable organisations meet new needs, David Blunkett and I will publish a discussion document that will highlight how by our decisions in the Treasury and Home Office we can do more to devolve power to communities.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Birmingham on 1 November 2022.

It is a pleasure to be here in Birmingham today – a city which is a leading example of urban renaissance in progress.

A city with some of the largest regeneration projects in Europe, with new arts facilities, top quality commercial developments and now your nomination this week for the 2008 European City of Culture.

But here to in Birmingham – one of the country’s most successful cities – we have growth side by side with large pockets of deprivation — and so today I want to talk about the challenges of poverty and unemployment in our urban areas:

The steps we have taken.

The challenges ahead.

The lessons we have learned.

And the new policies I think we must introduce.

And I want to congratulate participants here – councillors, local authorities, public servants, academics, community groups, companies, urban specialists in every field – on the huge advances that have been made in our understanding of, and action on, what makes for quality of life in our urban areas: advances in the study and practice of geography, planning, the built environment, the role of cities in regions and – my theme today – understanding of the economic and social forces at work in poorer urban areas. And I want to thank you for the work you do, the service you give and contribution you make.

I think most of you would agree that 50, 20 or even 10 years ago the idea that the treasury would be interested in issues like public space, the design quality of public procurement in urban areas, devolution, regionalism and social exclusion would be almost unthinkable. But we know that not only are these questions vital to successful, economically vibrant cities but they are at the heart of the agenda for social and economic progress.

And I can genuinely say that I and the Treasury are privileged to be associated with the challenge, led by the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, of creating sustainable communities in our towns and cities.

One hundred years ago Winston Churchill, then an economics minister, spoke to an audience in the midlands about the unacceptable gap in Britain between the excesses of accumulated wealth and the gaping sorrows of the left out millions.

And I know that today – as one hundred years ago – we must and can do better.

I know that we cannot talk of real prosperity for all of Britain if thousands are left behind on the margins; that for economic efficiency and social justice reasons Britain needs an economy that works not just for some people some of the time but for all of the people all of the time; and that, learning from the work many of you here have done and the service you have given, we must – to achieve our objective that no area is bypassed and no one excluded from the mainstream of economic prosperity:

Not only continue to make the right long term choices about stability and growth – avoiding the old economic instability of boom and bust so damaging to economic activity in the past;

Not only ensure the finance necessary to back reform and modernisation in local public services – the task of last July’s spending review for health, education, the environment, tackling crime and local government services where – for deprived areas where outcomes are worst and the need for good schools, hospitals and other services is greatest – we have introduced new floor targets to raise the performance of public services;

And not only directly tackle low incomes – with the introduction of the new child and working tax credits – expenditure of £4.5 billion pounds more for low paid workers, families with children and pensioners.

…but we must also, more fundamentally, tackle not just the consequences of unemployment and poverty and its symptoms, but the underlying causes — being aware more than ever before of just how much poverty and deprivation are rooted in low levels of economic activity. People are poor because they have no jobs, no skills for jobs – or if disabled, old or sick are poor because of inadequate provision where they or their families have had historically low earnings from employment.

And second – and this is the main point I wish to make to you today – we must recognise that the old approaches to renewing economic activity which have been less than successful must give way to the new:

Neither an old style bricks and mortar only approach which, for example with the experience of enterprise zones in the 1980s, targeted subsidies for property development, often at huge public cost diverting economic activity from one area to another with no overall economic gain;

Nor the old style benefits approach which gave hand-outs to compensate for unemployment but provided no real help to get people back to work, leaving whole communities abandoned on the dole;

…both of which failed to tackle the causes of unemployment and poverty or secure long-term environmental regeneration and social inclusion. And both of which failed to invest, as we must, in the forces of renewal – education, training, jobs, enterprise and business development

So increasingly the emphasis of our approach will be measures to encourage and foster the indigenous skills, talents and potential of local people and communities.

This focus on the drivers of homegrown local economic activity is also at the heart of our new approach to regional policy.

There have been three phases of regional policy in our country

The first generation of British regional policy – from the 1930s – was designed to support hard up areas with emergency measures.

So the second generation – from the 1960s – sought to encourage inward investment with new incentives.

Now we are moving to the third stage of modern regional policy – creating regional development agencies where the emphasis is not just on encouraging inward investment but also on local innovation and local investment and building indigenous strength with freedom and flexibility for local people to make decisions based on local needs.

So first today I want to put the spotlight specifically on measures to renew economic activity and encourage enterprising communities across the country.

And I will secondly suggest that in modern economic regeneration our aims – high and stable levels of economic growth and employment – can best be met by protecting and enhancing the local environment.

Third, modern economic regeneration with its emphasis on local activity not only means but requires the devolution of power – local people making local decisions about local needs.

And fourth, special new measures will be needed to tackle unemployment, measures that recognise that the problems are not simply in the creation of jobs but in the employability of the unemployed.

First, because our comprehensive solution to urban poverty and unemployment has to involve raising levels of economic activity – more businesses if you like rather than more benefit offices – we should start to see inner cities and old industrial areas not as no-go areas for business or simply “problem” areas but as areas of opportunity: new markets where businesses can thrive because of the competitive advantages they often offer – with strategic locations, untapped resources, a high density of local purchasing power and the potential of their workforce.

In the late 1990s the rate of business creation in our high unemployment communities was one sixth of our prosperous areas so we recognise not only that barriers to enterprise are greater in poor communities – many people, for example, trying to start up businesses face special problems – but also that we need to put in place the right incentive structure to stimulate business-led growth.

So if a key that unlocks inner city regeneration is fostering the potential strengths of local people, we need to systematically tackle all barriers to development: cutting the cost of buying, starting up, investing, hiring, training, attracting equity, and growing.

Renewing the economic base is one of the main aims behind not only neighbourhood renewal funding in 88 areas worth almost £1.9 billion pounds over this parliament and the new deal for communities in 39 areas worth £2 billion pounds over ten years; but the creation of regional development agencies and the small business service; the new encouragement for local authorities in their economic role; and the creation of local strategic partnerships which can do more to drive forward policies on enterprise and employment at the local level.

And it has led to our policies for enterprise in high unemployment areas to help firms start up, invest, hire and expand:

Encouraging investment – through the community investment tax credit, the community venture capital fund, the phoenix fund, and reforms to the small firms loan guarantee scheme;

Help with hiring, employing and training – the special work of the new deal and training programme;

Support and advice for business – the remit of the new small business service;

Cutting the cost of property purchases – with reforms in stamp duty;

And reforming our planning system to make it quicker, more flexible and more responsive.

Central to this is recognising the importance of regenerating the environment, attracting new businesses to our inner cities. And following the recommendations by Lord Rogers – to whom we owe a debt of gratitude – measures to renew local high streets and urban estates have included:

A 150 per cent accelerated tax credit to clean up contaminated land and bring it back into productive use;

100 per cent capital allowances to enable owners and occupiers to obtain full tax relief when creating flats for letting over shops and other commercial premises;

Breaking with flat rate vat by targeted vat reductions to encourage the renovation and conversion of existing properties to bring vacant homes back into use; and

Measures to tackle the crime that hits businesses, particularly retailers, in inner city areas …showing that our objectives for growth and employment are not at odds with but complimentary to our objectives for environmental care and protection.

We talk a great deal about the 1944 economic objectives that governments across the western world have followed – high and stable levels of growth and employment. With the understanding we have now i believe that these objectives are better expressed as high and stable levels of growth, employment and sustainable development.

Good management of public spaces and high standards of urban design are key to creating urban areas that are attractive, sustainable places to live in, invest in and do business in, as John Prescott said. And so too is investing one billion pounds more in housing over the next three years – the most sustained rise in housing investment for 25 years – with an additional four billion pounds for the transport infrastructure, including money for local authorities to provide transport systems that revitalise recently renovated urban areas and improve the quality of the urban environment.

But there is still much more to do.

So, working in partnership with local authorities and regional development agencies, we will designate 2000 new enterprise areas – not the old enterprise zones of the 1980s where property subsidies diverted activity from one area to another, but 2000 new enterprise areas where we encourage home grown economic activity by cutting the cost of starting up, investing, hiring, training, managing the payroll.

In these enterprise areas – the 2000 most deprived wards in the country – I can state that:

First, having already cut stamp duty in these areas, we plan to abolish it entirely with full stamp duty exemption for all business property purchases;

Second, we will give planning authorities powers to create business planning zones that will cut red tape for growing businesses by removing the need to apply for planning permission;

Third, we will offer businesses special investment help through the community investment tax credit – which offers for every hundred pounds of private investment an extra 25 pounds of public investment – and risk capital from the community venture capital fund;

Fourth, we will increase funding for the phoenix fund by £50 million pounds – providing support to thousands of small businesses with special encouragement for women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from ethnic minorities

Fifth, the small business service will provide additional help to firms in these areas – a package of advice and support worth at least £2000 for each new businessman or woman;

Sixth, we will make improvements to the business incubation fund to stimulate the availability of flexible managed workspace for start-up companies;

And all businesses will benefit from financial incentives to help them bring their tax and payroll systems on line.

And because we know that to get the deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture we need we must start in our schools and colleges, by 2006 every school pupil will have the opportunity of five days worth of enterprise education, with extra help for schools and colleges in high unemployment areas.

Together, these measures – combined with help for infrastructure and employment – offer substantial additional resources based on a systematic and coordinated attempt to create a stronger economic base in previously run down and high unemployment areas.

And all these measures are underpinned by devolution of power and responsibility – local people making local decisions about meeting local needs – as the way forward.

While it is right for central government to establish clear long term goals, the people closest to the ground in the regions and our local communities should be equipped and empowered with maximum local flexibility and discretion to innovate, respond to local conditions and meet special needs.

That is why the regional development agencies, who have been given responsibility to promote enterprise in their regions, have been given substantial resources and unprecedented freedoms – within a single budget without the old ring fencing – to decide how to use these resources to create the right conditions for local businesses to grow and prosper.

And because it is crucial for city growth strategies to be embedded within wider regional policies for growth and development, we are making regional planning a statutory activity, and setting up regional housing bodies with a single regional housing budget to match policy decisions to the regional housing market, and link policies on housing with decisions on planning, transport, infrastructure and anti-poverty programmes.

Local public service agreements between central government and local councils are also playing their part in regenerating our urban centres.

Across the country, councils are being given additional powers and flexibilities to allow them to tackle national priorities in the way that works best for them locally. Newcastle city council has set a target to regenerate an extra five hectares of brownfield land each year for the next three years – a one third increase. Hammersmith and Fulham are concentrating on working with government agencies to increase job entry and retention rates. And Leeds city council are using their local PSA to close the gap in the educational attainment of Bangladeshi pupils who lag behind those from other communities.

But the true devolution of power goes beyond regional and local devolution to public authorities – it means devolving more power from government altogether, and into the hands of local communities. Giving local people the tools to make improvements to their own neighbourhoods.

Neighbourhood renewal and new deal for communities are excellent examples of policy areas where local communities are in the driving seat; where we know that Whitehall does not always know best. Within a strategic national framework, including challenging floor targets, neighbourhood renewal gives local strategic partnerships both responsibility for deciding what is needed in their area and discretion for deciding how it will be delivered.

And we must also harness the expertise of the private and voluntary sector alongside the public sector. Sure Start, the New Deal, Neighbourhood Renewal, New Deal for Communities, Urban Regeneration Companies – all these programmes are putting these principles into practice.

But any solution based on renewing economic activity in our urban areas must tackle the persistent, often chronic, problems of employment and employability

In the mid 1980s, Glasgow had over seventy thousand unemployed, in Liverpool there were over fifty thousand and in London over four hundred thousand – rising to nearly half a million in the early 1990s — an arithmetic of poverty and deprivation so great that the whole fabric of community life was undermined.

So when we came to power, five years ago, our new programme – the new deal – was not only based on the principle that work was the best route out of poverty and the need for rights and opportunities to work to be accompanied by new responsibilities and obligations to work, but the new deal and our make-work-pay measure – the working families tax credit – was designed to offer special help to people and areas left behind.

Helped by the new deal, and our other employment programmes, 1.5 million more people are in work than in 1997. And I can report that unemployment has fallen furthest, and vacancies risen fastest, in those regions that were hit the hardest in the 1980s. It is a measure of the achievement of the new deal – for which i thank local authorities, voluntary and charity groups and the public services – that in the 1980s 350,000 young people were long term unemployed. Today the figure is less than 5,000. But this is not the time to relax our efforts but to step them up.

Improving employment means improved employability – with more investment in inner city schools, more further education places, a 50 per cent target for young people reaching universities by 2010 with enhanced measures to ensure access, and for the unemployed, literacy and numeracy training and help.

But while more people are in work than ever before, there are still areas of high unemployment in every region of the country, and particularly in our most deprived urban areas where a quarter of the unemployed live.

Our analysis shows that too often side by side with long lists of vacancies are large pools of the unemployed.

In Liverpool, while there are no longer fifty thousand unemployed there are now fifteen thousand people registered as unemployed but eighteen thousand vacancies registered at jobcentres over the last six months. In Glasgow, while there are no longer seventy thousand there are now seventeen thousand unemployed, but over thirty thousand vacancies. Here in Birmingham, there are thirty thousand unemployed and over thirty six thousand vacancies.

Too often in too many areas the long-term unemployed have slipped through the net in these areas

Too often there are workers without jobs side by side with jobs without workers

Tottenham, for example, has 3,500 men, 4,800 adults, unemployed while neighbouring jobcentre plus districts have seen over sixty thousand vacancies in the last six months, with many more in the wider London economy.

Labour shortages exist today in large numbers in retail, hotels and restaurants, transport and communications and in every region

To match the unemployed to vacancies we have introduced intensive area-based initiatives in difficult areas:

– fifteen employment zones

– 63 action teams

Which have helped nearly seventy thousand people into jobs so far.

And building on this, we are piloting the step up scheme in fourteen areas, with another six starting in December — obliging the long-term unemployed to accept a guaranteed job which will offer, instead of the dole, secure waged employment. In London and selected cities, we are matching this new regime with mandatory work preparation courses for the long-term unemployed.

But we must go further and so tackling the barriers to full employment and encouraging the unemployed back to work in our most deprived areas will form a major feature of the pre-budget report.

Because we must break the destructive culture that “no-one around here works” which damages both the areas themselves and people’s chances of jobs, we will provide far more help than in the past in these areas, using the sanctions and opportunities available in the new deal and where necessary taking job advisers onto estates, and extending access to the help available through the new deal and equip the unemployed with the skills they need to get into work, including providing training in literacy, numeracy and other basic skills. But in return we will expect the unemployed to take up the jobs that are available.

In pilot areas, we will look to test a more intensive approach to tackling the worst concentrations of unemployment, street by street, estate by estate. As we insist on unemployed adults and young people getting back to work, we will identify the barriers to their employability, offering them training, advice and sometimes cash help, and linking them to jobs in the vicinity.

This will be an onslaught in favour of full employment and against the unacceptable culture of worklessness that ruined some of our communities in the 1980s and early 1990s as we address the underlying causes of poverty in Britain.

So in conclusion I want to match the radical environmental, social and quality of life improvement that you are all contributing to with three changes, economically, over the next few years in our urban areas that will help enhance the quality of life:

More people moving into jobs, with the work ethic reinvigorated in every community of Britain as we advance to full employment not just in one region, but in every region;

More people able to transfer their ideas and hopes into small firm start ups and growing businesses as we create a Britain of high and stable levels of growth and sustainable development where enterprise is open to all;

And more people taking advantage of education, thus true equality of opportunity in education – life-long recurrent education open to all, regardless of where they live.

I want Britain’s cities to be world leaders.

And just as this conference has already shown that public space, quality of life, the built environment and quality infrastructure can help create world class cities, so too I hope I have shown that new economic and employment policies can contribute to urban regeneration with Britain leading the world in its commitment to full employment and enterprise for all.

More importantly I believe this conference shows that working together – central and local government, business, voluntary organisations and local communities – we can, and will, deliver our aim that prosperity should be not for some but for all in every city, every town, every community in our country.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Brussels on 5 November 2002.

We live in a highly globalised world and global movement of capital – essential for the effective operation of the world economy – brings vastly increased opportunities for countries, business and individuals. But with these gains come new challenges – tackling terrorist financing and preventing money laundering, as well as avoiding a situation where people are given the opportunity to evade paying their taxes.

Countries right across the world face problems caused by a minority of their residents who seek to evade the taxes they owe by hiding their money in other jurisdictions — making it harder for Governments to fund the schools, hospitals and public services that their citizens expect, and unfairly penalising the honest taxpayer.

When individuals hide their income from their tax authorities, and make false tax returns, most countries recognise this as a serious offence — one that they are determined to combat individually and collectively.

There are those who argue that there are two equally effective and desirable ways to ensure people pay the right amount of tax on cross border income from savings – and that a withholding tax is as effective as co-operation and exchange of information between countries’ tax authorities.

I believe they are wrong.

At the Helsinki European Council in December 1999 the European Union agreed that all citizens in a Member State of the European Union should pay the tax due on all their savings income. And at the Feira European Council in June 2000, the European Union agreed that the best way to achieve that was exchange of information on as wide a basis as possible.

The previously proposed harmonisation of savings taxes by a withholding tax – a centrally imposed, one-size-fits-all solution – was exposed as an inadequate response to tax fraud.

And we should recall why.

A withholding tax on cross border income flows will almost invariably result in the wrong amount of tax being paid, and in the wrong country.

It will always be the wrong amount unless the tax is levied at the same rate as the individual’s marginal tax rate in their home country.

And it will be paid to the wrong country because authorities will collect tax in the country it is deposited in rather than the country where the citizen is resident. You would need a cumbersome revenue sharing arrangement to get the money back to where it belonged.

Besides which, people who cheat on tax are generally interested not only in evading tax on interest income but in hiding their wealth. Withholding taxes do nothing to address this issue. And they typically have huge avoidance problems.

So without the most pressing reasons, the introduction of new taxes across Europe is in nobody’s interest. It runs counter to the sort of healthy, fair tax competition which benefits countries, business and individual taxpayers.

By contrast, exchange of information delivers the right amount of tax to the right country as the tax authorities in the individual taxpayer’s home country receive the information they need to determine the tax due on the overall income of their residents.

It involves countries exchanging information in respect of non-residents, so that the home country can collect the tax properly due under its laws. Exchange of information does not impact on how a country chooses to tax and deal with its own residents so protects the sovereignty of individual nation states.

Exchange of information enables governments to apply correctly the tax rules voted for by their people, without constraining their capacity to indulge in fair tax competition.

And exchange of information addresses the issue of capital, as well as income, offshore.

So the European Union had compelling reasons for the choice it made.

At Feira, the blunt instrument of tax harmonisation lost and economic reform based on exchange of information won.

But transparency and exchange of information are not only important for tax purposes but are also vital to our efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Since the tragic events of September 11th it has been crucial for countries to work closely together to ensure that criminals and terrorists have no place to hide their funds.

As terrorists and money launderers become more sophisticated, Governments have to respond, making financial systems more transparent and utilising high quality, comprehensive information exchange. Because terrorists and money launderers do not distinguish between tax and non tax issues, we cannot afford to have a loophole that means that information is not exchanged in respect of tax matters.

It is also important that developed countries set an example to the rest of the world. Lack of transparency in developed countries gives cover for smaller, and less developed countries, to engage in illicit transactions – be they related to drug trafficking, or terrorist financing, or illegal arms trading. Developed countries cannot stand up effectively to these countries if they are able to point a finger back.

At Feira we had good reasons for saying that, in a globalised economy, a solution to tax evasion will do best when it extends wider than Europe alone. And so analogous co-operation between tax authorities is being extended at least to key third countries, and to offshore territories with the closest cultural, political and financial links to the EU where EU residents’ savings might already be invested or to which they might be transferred.

The US is one example and there is a long history of close co-operation between America and its tax treaty partners in providing and receiving information and in joint efforts to tackle tax evasion. The US has taken the lead in entering into exchange of information agreements with offshore centres whilst respecting their fiscal sovereignty. And in the aftermath of September 11, cooperation with the US has been – and will continue to be – particularly vital in our efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The best chance of agreeing an approach that reaches across both America and Europe is exchange of information not a withholding tax. And I also welcome the clear signs of greater transparency, openness and a willingness to co-operate in the fight against tax evasion in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey – which will undoubtedly help them to develop, diversify and remain competitive in line with international standards.

Switzerland is one of the world’s key financial centres and it ought to remain so. Their professional expertise is exceptional, their economy and political situation sound and stable, and their history of prudence invaluable.

But the Swiss system is unique amongst the world’s leading financial centres in that it allows clients of its banks to be shielded from their own tax authorities.

Clearly there are sensitive and closely linked political and legal issues involved, but their cooperation in helping to combat tax evasion is crucial.

The arrangements the Swiss make for dealing with Swiss taxes to be paid by Swiss residents are clearly a matter for them.
But the arrangements they make for dealing with non Swiss taxes due by non Swiss residents affect us all.

We are not suggesting how the Swiss tax Swiss residents – indeed our whole approach is to uphold the sovereignty of Member States with reference to tax – but we have a deep interest in securing the tax due to Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Britain and other countries by German, French, Italian, Dutch, British and other taxpayers who have accounts in Swiss banks and financial institutions.

These are taxes due not to Switzerland but to France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries.

They are our citizens and our taxes and we have not only an interest in ensuring that tax evasion is prevented but ensuring this is achieved by the best and most effective means possible.

So the presence, on the EU’s immediate borders, of a system that fails to recognise the deliberate submission of a false tax return as fraud is an open invitation for abuse and causes us concern.

All we are asking is for Switzerland to exchange information on the savings accounts of EU residents, not their own citizens. And in a world in which the general drive is for cross-border co-operation and transparency, I have no doubt that if Switzerland respected the international consensus in favour of exchange of information it would be better placed than ever to maintain its role as one of the world’s leading financial centres.

I also believe that, as a major world financial centre, Switzerland has a responsibility to lead by example.

The Swiss have taken many positive steps to combat terrorism and money laundering. I welcome that. But tax evasion is not a predicate offence in Switzerland so criminals have the opportunity to avoid legal action if they can persuade the authorities that their activities are to do with tax evasion. And the Swiss have abstained from the OECD’s initiative on harmful tax competition, which promotes exchange of information and transparency for tax purposes.

We recognise that the transition to automatic exchange of information can’t always happen overnight. The EU has agreed that some Member States may need up to seven years to make the transition – and it would not be unreasonable for the Swiss to negotiate for similar arrangements or to make their commitment subject to endorsement by the Swiss people.

But the ultimate objective internationally must be automatic exchange of information.

There is growing recognition around the world in favour of exchange of information. It has been endorsed not just by the European Union but by the OECD in its work on harmful tax competition, banking secrecy and double taxation. And two prominent Swiss academics have themselves criticised the Swiss Government’s approach to banking secrecy.

If we are to have a consistent principle rather than an ad hoc approach for tackling international terrorist financing, money laundering and tax evasion effectively, we need exchange of information across the world.

Developed countries need to act together and set a strong example. And I call upon all countries to help us achieve this goal.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in London on 5 November 2002.

Can I say first of all what a pleasure it is to be present at these awards for Inner City 100 – these “Oscars for Business”; to thank not only the New Economics Foundation, for their work in developing and running IC100, but the lead sponsors, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest; to be able to congratulate all of you who are finalists for the contribution you make both to your community and to the British economy; and to say that Inner City 100 is not just a competition between new high growth firms in our inner cities but a celebration of the dynamism of new enterprise in our inner cities.

Having started last year with only a few entries, Inner City 100 has, with 400 nominations from across the country this year, become the premier showcase for the initiative, innovation and renewal that is a feature of so many of our inner cities today.

And in thanking all of you for what you have achieved – and will achieve – I want, in the minute or two I have, to show how your achievements, your ingenuity and your creativity are building a new Britain of enterprise and initiative.

For just as the work ethic is being restored in Britain I believe we are now engaged in an even greater and more ambitious project – encouraging not just in the most successful or wealthiest areas of our country, but in all areas of our country, the spirit of enterprise.

For too long, in too many areas, for too much of our recent past, enterprise has been seen as something for someone else, for a small elite. People thought the opportunity to start a business or become self-employed was, somehow, not for them.

And so the business league tables I am publishing today show that the rate of British business creation, while higher than in France and Germany, is still only two thirds of that in the United States. And in the best performing areas of the UK, there are ten times the number of firm start-ups than in the worst performing.

The chance to start a business should not depend on your background, contacts or just luck. In every area of Britain I want the enterprising to go as far as their talents and potential can take them. The British economy will do best when enterprise is – and is seen to be – open to all.

We should start to see inner cities and old industrial areas not as no-go areas for business or simply “problem” areas but as areas of opportunity: new markets where businesses can thrive because of the competitive advantages they often offer – with strategic locations, untapped resources, a high density of local purchasing power and the potential of their workforce.

And to achieve all this we must modernise our attitudes to enterprise, embrace a wealth creation agenda and build a new British and European consensus around the importance of enterprise and business success to prosperity and social cohesion.

I want British young people to see businessmen and women as role models in their communities. I want teachers willing to extol the virtues of enterprise and a career in commerce. And because I believe the way forward is to open up enterprise to all who have the talent, I want, even in our poorest communities, men and women to see an expansion of enterprise as the best solution to unemployment and deprivation and there to be no no-go areas for the enterprise economy in Britain.

Most of all I want to entrench a consensus where from the poorest to the richest community, from left to right of the political spectrum, across all countries in Europe, there is a deep and enduring understanding that enterprise is open to all as a force for wealth creation and equality of opportunity, and that enterprise and fairness are not mutually irreconcilable opposites but depend upon each other.

And building on the new Enterprise and Competition Bills, on our capital gains, small business and corporation tax cuts, and our measures to encourage enterprise in schools and colleges, the Pre-Budget Report will contain new measures that open up competition, cut red tape, abolish tax barriers to business creation and, from the classroom to the boardroom, deepen and widen the enterprise culture in our economy.

And working in partnership with local authorities and Regional Development Agencies, we will designate 2000 new Enterprise Areas – not the old Enterprise Zones of the 1980s where property subsidies diverted activity from one area to another, but 2000 new Enterprise Areas where we encourage home grown economic activity by cutting the cost of starting up, investing, hiring, training, managing the payroll.

In these Enterprise Areas – the 2000 most deprived wards in the country – I can state that:

first, having already cut stamp duty in these areas, we plan to abolish it entirely with full stamp duty exemption for all business property purchases;

second, we will give planning authorities powers to create Business Planning Zones that will cut red tape for growing businesses by removing the need to apply for planning permission;

third, we will offer businesses special investment help through the Community Investment Tax Credit – which offers for every £100 of private investment an extra £25 of public investment – and risk capital from the Community Venture Capital Fund;

fourth, we will increase funding for the Phoenix Fund by £50 million – providing support to thousands of small businesses with special encouragement for women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from ethnic minorities

fifth, the Small Business Service will provide additional help to firms in these areas – a package of advice and support worth at least £2000 for each new businessman or woman;

And sixth, we will make improvements to the Business Incubation Fund to stimulate the availability of flexible managed workspace for start-up companies.

And because we know that to get the deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture we need we must start in our schools and colleges, by 2006 every school pupil will have the opportunity of five days worth of enterprise education, with extra help for schools and colleges in high unemployment areas. And I call on businesses and colleges to look for ways in which they might help build on the popularity of summer schools to offer enterprise experience to secondary school pupils during the school holidays.

Together, these measures are a concentrated attempt to recreate economic activity as a basis for prosperity in previously run down and high-unemployment areas.

Our aim – to work together to build a wider, deeper enterprise culture where starting a business or becoming self employed is seen as open to all with the talent, ideas and will to do it — so building a strong, dynamic, economic culture not just in prosperous areas but across Britain.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Mansion House in London on 20 June 2001.

Mr Lord Mayor, Mr Governor, My Lords, Aldermen, Mr Recorder, Sheriffs, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Tonight I want to talk about how our new-won and hard-won stability can strengthen Britain for the future: how, building upon that stability and a wider and deeper culture of enterprise, our country can aspire to, and achieve, the best levels of productivity growth.  And how, just as stability and reform can create a more competitive and prosperous Britain, so too stability and reform can create a more competitive and prosperous Europe.

But first, in thanking you for your invitation, let me at the outset pay tribute to the contribution you and your companies and institutions make to the prosperity of Britain, the service you give and the difference you make.

You are leaders in a financial services sector that generates 50 billions of wealth each year for Britain, provides work for over 1 million British citizens, and represents those enduring British qualities of creativity, enterprise, duty and openness to the world.  With the London Stock Exchange, the largest trading centre for foreign equities in the world, and the foreign exchange market the largest and most important in the world, you lead for Britain in the world.

The context for my remarks is the changing global economy.

My theme is that in just a few short years the world has moved from sheltered to open economies; from local to global competition; from national to world wide financial markets; from location, raw materials and indigenous capital as sources of national competitive advantage to skills, knowledge and creativity as what makes a difference.

To rise to these global challenges we have this week announced the next stage in our competitiveness reforms:

The Secretary for Industry Patricia Hewitt has announced a major reform in the competition regime and deregulatory measures to help small business;

The Secretary for Education new measures to improve skills and, under the leadership of Sir Howard Davies, an examination of how schools and business can work to promote the enterprise culture;

The Secretary for Local Government a reform in our physical planning laws;

And I have been able to announce cuts in Capital Gains Tax, in small company Corporation Tax and deregulatory measures including a simplification of the VAT system that will help small businesses.

These reforms reflect the modern role of Government – not to interfere but to enable: by breaking down the barriers to enterprise and ensuring that more people with ideas have access to the finance, technology, advice and skills they need to transform their insights and initiative into business success.

But, as I have said on each occasion I have addressed you in the mansion house, the foundation of all we do is economic stability.

Every time in recent decades when the British economy has started to grow, Governments of both parties have taken short-term decisions which too often have created unsustainable consumer booms, let the economy get out of control and sacrificed monetary and fiscal prudence. And everyone here will remember how quickly and easily boom turned to bust in the early nineties.

So Britain did need a wholly new monetary and fiscal framework that went beyond the crude Keynesian fine tuning of the fifties and sixties and the crude monetarism of the seventies and eighties and, instead, offered a modern British route to stability.

With first, clear policy rules: a symmetrical inflation target and our fiscal disciplines.

Second, clearly established procedures: the Code for Fiscal Stability and, most of all, Bank independence – and here I thank Sir Eddie George the Governor of the Bank of England for his leadership, leadership which we rightly applaud.

And third, an openness and transparency we have not seen in the past.

I believe that as we are tested by events like rising oil prices, exchange rate pressures, and now the US slowdown, our new framework makes us better placed than before to cope with the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

And I can say categorically that we will continue to steer a course of stability and support our monetary authorities in the difficult decisions they have to take to ensure that we remain on track to meet the inflation target and sustain high and stable levels of growth and employment.  We will entrench not relax our fiscal discipline and at all times avoid short termism – a return to the mistaken monetary and fiscal policies of the past.

Not just in Britain but in the euro area a modern route to economic stability is being sought based on a shared recognition that the old fine-tuning cannot work, that in liberalised markets rigid monetary targets cannot on their own deliver stability and that the discretion necessary for effective economic policy is possible only within a framework that commands public and market credibility.

And there is, I believe, also a growing understanding that this credibility depends upon clearly defined and publicly understood long-term policy objectives.

So, just like Britain, the euro area has been establishing a framework for economic stability.

And, as I said in October 1997, in principle British membership of a successful single currency offers us obvious benefits – in terms of trade, transparency, costs and currency stability.  And membership of a successful single currency could help us create the conditions for higher and more productive investment and greater trade and business in Europe.

In 1997, the Government said that, while we recognise the constitutional issue as a factor in the decision, we do not consider it a bar to entry if there is clear and unambiguous evidence of the economic benefits of joining, and if the people have the final say in a referendum.

And that commitment to a referendum – if the economic tests are met – is a promise we made in our election manifesto only a few weeks ago.

The 1997 statement also set five economic tests:

First, sustainable convergence between Britain and the economies of a single currency; second, whether there is sufficient flexibility to cope with economic change; third, the effect on investment; fourth, the impact on our financial services industry; and fifth, whether it is good for employment. These tests are the necessary economic pre-requisites for membership of a successful currency union.

So I reject the view of those who would rule out membership of the single currency on principle. They would refuse to join even if it were in the national economic interest to do so. To rule out membership of the single currency on dogmatic grounds would in my view be damaging for investment, jobs and business generally.

Similarly, I reject those who would urge us to join regardless of the assessment of the five tests.  Such a course would risk repeating past failures, would prejudice our stability and would also be damaging for investment, jobs and business generally.

Our approach is, and will continue to be, considered and cautious – one of pro-euro realism.

Pro-euro because, as we said in 1997, we believe that – in principle – membership of the euro can bring benefits to Britain.

Realist because to short-cut or fudge the assessment, and to join in the wrong way or on the wrong basis without rigorously ensuring the tests are met, would not be in the national economic interest.

Because the Government is determined that we will make the right long term decisions for Britain, we will not take risks with Britain’s hard won stability.

So the assessment as to whether it is in the British national economic interest or not will be comprehensive and rigorous.  It is only on this basis – taking into account all relevant economic information – that the Cabinet will decide whether to recommend membership to Parliament and then to the British people.

Before any such assessment is started, we must, of course, continue to do the necessary preliminary work for our analysis – technical work that is necessary to allow us to undertake the assessment within two years as we promised.

Indeed, since 1997, our strategy has been, as I set out then, to prepare and decide.  This has already involved the publication of the draft national changeover plans and the work of our standing committee with business.

To prepare and then decide is the approach that we will continue to pursue.

Around the future of the euro there is, of course, an ongoing national debate.

But across Europe a debate on the future of Europe is also taking place and Britain must be at the centre of that debate too – a debate on economic reform amidst the challenge of globalisation, enlargement into the East, and the wider Nice agenda to make decision-making in Europe more open, accountable and relevant to the population as a whole.

Because this is a time of great change and challenges for the European Union, every country must not only debate its place in Europe but what kind of Europe we want.

Britain’s relationship with Europe is a question that every generation in this country has had to ask and answer.

And in this generation – for our time – let us remind ourselves why Europe is so important.

It is sometimes said that there are no great causes left.

Being part of Europe is itself a great cause – to have granted to us, in our generation, the opportunity to set aside old enmities and feuds, to contribute to a mission that has helped secure half a century of peace in Western Europe, and now the historic task to cement peace and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe as we have done in the West.

At one time the case for Europe was simply peace. But today the case for Europe must be not only that, working together, we can maintain peace but that, working together, we can maximise prosperity.

And getting the economic future of Europe right matters for Britain because over three quarters of a million United Kingdom companies now trade with the rest of the European Union.  It is a fact that in the 1970s, when we joined Europe, less than 8 billions of our trade was with the rest of Europe.  Today it is £132 billions – half our total trade – with 3 million jobs affected.

So Europe is where we are, where we trade, from where thousands of businesses and jobs arise. And we are part of Europe by geography, by history, by economics and by choice. The channel has always been a route to the wider world, not a moat cutting ourselves off from it. And, as a trading nation, the greater the stability in our relationship with our major trading partners, the greater the benefit to us.

I believe that those who seek to renegotiate the very basis of our membership with Europe, even when they simultaneously protest they do not want to leave, put at risk the stability that is so central to modern business and investment decisions. And I believe that government and business must join together in putting the case unequivocally for Britain being in Europe – a stronger Britain on the basis of a strong and secure relationship with Europe.

And as the great debate on Europe’s future begins, we should not only put the case for Europe but for a reformed Europe – and for Britain leading reform in Europe.

Indeed the more Europe extends its single market, the better it is for Britain and Europe.

The more Europe embraces economic and institutional reform, the better it is for Britain and Europe.

The more Europe looks outwards, the better it is for Britain and Europe.

And the more Europe and America work closely together, the better it is for Britain, Europe and the world.

While the single market encompasses 375 million people today – and potentially nearly 500 million in the future, we have still a long way to go to secure for British business and British consumers the full benefits in commercial opportunities  and consumer prices.

So here the economic reform agenda is clear and challenging: it is to complete the single market in utilities, energy, telecoms and financial and professional services that we have argued not just for action plans which signal intent but timetables which signal deadlines.

Liberalisation in telecoms by the end of 2001 Liberalisation in financial services by 2004 Energy liberalisation – where we continue to push our neighbours.

Potentially too air liberalisation, with reforms to the allocation of take-off and landing slots that introduce market mechanisms to allocate scarce capacity.

And liberalisation in the capital markets – a cause you and I share – promoting more open markets and more choice in pensions, insurance, savings and mortgages for people across Europe is a development from which Britain – because of our vibrant and successful financial services sector – stands well placed to benefit.

And it is to complete the single market and create a level playing field for British companies that we have opposed state subsidies, whether through public expenditures or through discriminatory tax practices, and we have led the way in arguing for the new Code of Conduct group and work by the OECD to tackle unfair tax competition.

In the coming year the economic reform agenda must be pushed forward to enhance labour market flexibility and capital and product market modernisation and reform. We will publish proposals for the Spanish economic reform summit next year and I can confirm that for the Spanish Presidency the Government will be producing a white paper on economic reform in Europe.

A Europe reformed is a Europe that serves Britain and Europe best. As Europe enlarges, the reform agenda is again equally clear – and challenging reform of the CAP and of the budget – which has always been necessary – will become urgent.

Leading up to the IGC of 2004 there is now a debate on the future of Europe where matters not just of economic integration and reform, but of political legitimacy and accountability, are coming to the fore.

Our Government’s vision of Europe, as set out by Tony Blair in Warsaw, is not a federalist one but one in which independent nation states work together to shape the decisions. It is one where there is, increasingly, mutual recognition of national standards and solutions based on exchange of information, peer review and benchmarking rather than the central imposition of “one size fits all”.

It is of a market that must, rightly, have a social dimension, but with subsidiarity or national decision-making the way forward.  It is of tax competition not tax harmonisation.

And as Tony Blair also said, it is of an open and accountable administration subject to the direction of elected ministers, not an unaccountable bureaucracy.

Alliances are being built for reform. The old pressures for tax harmonisation are already now being vigorously pushed back as we argue for the principles of tax competition.  Countries are coming together to insist the European budget is brought under control and following Britain’s initiative on fraud to set up an independent fraud office, there is a need to expose and tackle waste and fraud vigorously. It is now also accepted that widespread reform of the commission must take place.

So here again the reform agenda is clear and challenging. And right across Europe people now clearly want the debate on integration to be complimented by a debate on accountability. And on these issues relevant to the 2004 IGC the Prime Minister will, during the next year, be setting out our Government’s proposals.

I believe that those genuinely committed to advancing Britain’s national interest should support rather than dismiss a practical approach to making the reform agenda work.

And, perhaps most important of all, the new Europe must be outward looking rather than inward looking.

The first post-war reshaping of Europe into a common market took place in the shadow of war as we moved beyond the old conflicts of the past. The second reshaping of Europe is happening not just as a result of internal forces at work within Europe but in response to vast global changes – not least fast increasing trade and capital flows, between Europe and the rest of the world and the growth of transcontinental companies.  In just one decade, direct European investment in the USA has increased more than ten fold, from 20 billion dollars a year to 230 billion dollars a year. And we need only look at the impact of the American slowdown on European economic growth to understand this growing economic interdependence.

I give just one example of the implications for policy. When European finance ministers examined whether to impose a Withholding Tax on savings which – as we argued – would have done huge damage to the bond market here in the City, they were persuaded to opt for exchange of information instead of a European wide tax. They were persuaded that, in the new global economy, tax decisions could not be taken in Europe in a vacuum.  If capital could move freely out of the European Union – to either Switzerland or Liechtenstein or the USA – tax decisions had to be taken with a view to forces at work round the world.

Here again the economic reform agenda is clear and challenging. Rightly, with its initiative to open our economies to the Least Developed Countries free of tariffs and free of barriers, Europe is leading the efforts to get an ambitious world trade round underway. And we lead too in retargeting international aid and development.

Between them, Europe and America together account for 55 percent of world trade, 60 per cent of trade in services and – remarkably – 80 per cent of world wealth. But it is more than commerce that binds us. Increasingly, in this age of globalisation, our national goals are shared international goals, our responsibilities are shared responsibilities, and our opportunities are shared opportunities.

And, together, Europe and America have an even greater responsibility for world stability and growth, not least as they affect developing countries. So we must think transcontinentally as well as continentally.

If someone had said to any of us 20 years ago that Eastern and Central Europe would soon embrace Western Europe, Russia would start to look westwards, and that in Western Europe the old ideological conflicts between state and market would be resolved such that state and markets work together and that there would be a free flow of capital round the world, all of us would have been astounded to the point of disbelief. But we would have been even more astounded if we were told that at precisely that point of opportunity for the world economy, voices would advocate American disengagement and settle for a Europe that looks inwards.

The end of the Cold War should not be the signal for disengagement or parochialism but for a new and enhanced form of engagement between our continents, where shared interests that could yield mutual benefits lead to a reform agenda that is yet again clear and challenging and as ambitious and wide ranging as:

• the elimination of industrial tariffs;
• open skies;
• the mutual recognition of standards across the professional services;
• common rules of competition;
• eliminating barriers to the establishment of European and US companies in each other’s markets;
• and a joint strategy for oil supplies as well as for tackling debt and poverty in developing countries.

In 1988 the Cecchini report looked at the advantages of cooperation for a European single market. We need a Cecchini style report that investigates the benefits for growth, jobs, prosperity and world trade of a stronger trading and commercial relationship between Europe and America.

In forging that stronger relationship, Britain plays a pivotal role.  Britain does not have to choose between America and Europe, but is well positioned as the vital link between America and Europe.

And so this Government believes in a Europe where cooperation is widening and deepening as we extend the single market and embrace economic and institutional reform – not at the expense of the rest of the world but in concert with it.

Mr Lord Mayor, Winston Churchill said that those who build the present only in the image of the past will miss out entirely on the challenges of the future.

I believe that, learning from each other, all of us – businesses and  governments working together – can face the great challenges of today’s economy not by resisting change but by helping people to cope with it; not by standing still but by radical economic reform; and not by protectionism but by promoting open, competitive markets and international cooperation. It makes for a Britain that is outward looking and open to the world, ambitious to succeed, wholly committed to an enterprise culture and determined to be fully equipped to lead in the 21st century economy.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 18 June 2001.

Enterprise for all

When four years ago we made the Bank of England independent, we said that the aim of economic policy in Britain should be high and stable levels of growth and employment.

In our first term we put stability and employment creation first. From today our energies — building on the platform of stability and employment creation — must now be directed to raising our country’s productivity.

Britain needs radical reform and modernisation of our product, capital and labour markets to create, for the first time, a truly entrepreneurial culture that is not confined to the few but open to all:  one where, in every community, people with ideas and initiative have the chance to start and succeed in business.

The new Britain of enterprise for all cannot be built on inadequate investment, low skills, boardroom complacency, workplace resistance to change, or on cartels or restrictive practises from whatever quarter they arise.

So first, competition open to all.

Because greater competition at home is the key to greater competitiveness abroad, the Secretary for Industry and I believe that a step change in competitive pressures within the British economy is essential if we are to reach for US levels of productivity growth and to deliver over this decade faster productivity rises than our industrial competitors.

In the last Parliament we made monetary decisions independent of political influence within a long term framework. In this Parliament we must do the same for competition policy and the Secretary for Industry is setting out today her plans to make British competition decisions – and the competition authorities – fully independent of political influence.

In the United States, it has long been recognised that cartels are simply a sophisticated form of theft — and that the threat of prison sentences for such clear-cut abuses is the most powerful and effective deterrent. So it is our intention, following consultation, to introduce a new criminal offence for individuals who engage in cartels. We will consult on the details.

By next year we will have put in place the framework to deliver a pro-competition regime to match the best in the world.

The small businesses of today are the big businesses of the future.  And so, in addition to opening up competition, we are today sending a message to the  entrepreneurial, the innovative and dynamic: if  you are starting up, growing a business, investing,  taking people on, seeking new capital or  working your way up in business – we are  on your side.

So today the Government makes proposals to create a Capital Gains Tax regime for entrepreneurs and business assets that, overall, will be more favourable to enterprise than that of the United States.

The Capital Gains Tax rate we inherited was 40p for investments held for one year.  We cut it in Budget 2000 to 35p. I now propose a cut to just 20p.

For investments held for two years, I propose to cut the rate from 30p to 10p.

With this new regime, the Inland Revenue estimates that three quarters of taxpayers with business assets will pay only a 10p rate.

And for non-business assets we will now consider the case for further changes to improve incentives to invest.

The Enterprise Management Incentive scheme helps innovative and growing companies attract the best talent. I now propose to double the reach of the scheme to include all businesses with assets of up to £30m.

For large companies we have already cut Corporation Tax from 33p to 30p, the lowest rate of Corporation Tax in our history. Our approach is one based on a broad base and low tax rates, that is stable and transparent, reflecting our belief in fair tax competition — and our opposition to harmful tax competition and niche regimes — so that companies make decisions to exploit real business opportunities. All reflecting our goal to make and keep the UK as the best place for international business. And as we discuss with business the next steps we will take in pursuit of these principles we are next month publishing a further consultation document.

It is not enough to offer new incentives for existing businesses. Britain should also be the best place to start a business.

Compared with Britain, three times as many Americans say they want to start a business.

The chance to start a business should not depend on your background or contacts or just luck. In every area of Britain I want the enterprising to go as far as their talents and potential can take them. Instead of the old Britain under-performing when enterprise was seen to be restricted to a closed circle of the few, the British economy will do best when enterprise is — and is seen to be — open to all

First, to simplify VAT for half a million small firms, we are publishing details today of a new flat rate VAT scheme — reducing business costs by up to one thousand pounds a year.

Second, at present companies must compile separate accounts for Companies House and for the purposes of calculating their tax. We are now consulting with business on abolishing the requirement for separate accounts for tax, cutting both red tape and business costs.

Third, I can announce that in the Budget of 2002 there will be a cut in small company Corporation Tax bills. More of small companies profits will be taxed not at 20p but at half that rate, 10p.

Fourth, as we introduce an on-line electronic gateway for small firms to access services, Mr Pat Carter will report on how we put new technology to use to help small firms cut the cost and time of running payroll systems.

Fifth, for half a million businesses with turnovers of less than one hundred thousand pounds, we will remove the presumption that fines be levied automatically. In future, automatic VAT fines will be levied only after a written communication is first sent offering advice and help to sort out the problem.

Sixth, because small business growth rests not just on increasing the rewards for success but minimising the costs of failure, the Secretary for Industry will announce major changes to the rules on insolvency, including abolishing administrative receivership and, at a cost of around £100m a year, the Treasury will abolish Crown preference — the right of the Revenue and Customs to have first call for tax payments ahead of other creditors already in the queue.

Finally, to make the enterprise culture work for people and places too long forgotten, I can announce that a £40m community development venture capital fund, comprising Government, private sector and charities, is to be opened and we will set out, in the next few weeks, the detail of the stamp duty exemptions, VAT reductions and enhanced capital allowances that will be on offer to encourage new  economic activity in  high unemployment areas.

Fresh incentives to start a business will be accompanied by new measures to encourage venture capital — vital to bridging the investment and productivity gaps with our competitors — in all our regions and nations. I can announce today that, following our agreement with the European Commission and backed by £80m of Treasury funding and up to £60m from the European Investment Bank, our Regional Development Agencies — leaders in a new industrial policy for Britain’s regions  — will issue prospectuses for a one billion pound fund. Regional targets are being set out today.

The modern way to personal prosperity is higher earnings through higher skills. To tackle the most serious skills problem in the modern industrialised economies — 7m adults with less than 5 GCSEs and 3m with no qualifications at all — the new Education Secretary is preparing plans for  a step change in the skills of the adult workforce.

Our new British tax credit system that applies to work and families allows the tax system to pay out money as well as receive money. Because of its strategic national importance to the future of our economy — and because the voluntary approach has not achieved enough so far — we are prepared to apply to workplace training the same radical approach, with the government not only recognising companies? investment in skills when they pay tax but looking at contributing more through a new workplace skills tax credit or grant.  But we will only move ahead with this reform if the opportunities we offer are matched by new responsibilities accepted by both employers and employees.

A tax credit is already boosting research and development and encouraging innovation among smaller firms. In the next Budget I intend to introduce a new research and development tax credit for larger firms

Britain benefits from entrepreneurial talent joining us from all over the world. In the last Parliament we extended the work permit system and skilled people coming to the UK have risen from 50,000 a year to 150,000 a year. The next step is to attract those with a business track record that demonstrates their value to the economy and building upon this new scheme it is our intention to do more.

Closing the productivity gap requires us to raise the quantity and quality of investment in private and public sectors.

Institutional investors control 1.5 trillions in assets, including half the quoted equity markets. We will see through the reforms Paul Myners has prescribed to encourage long term investment and there will be a further review – as he recommended – on the extent to which our pension funds have risen to the challenge he has laid down.

I can also announce today that Ron Sandler, former Chief Executive of Lloyds and Chief Operating Officer of Natwest Group, will undertake an independent review of the long-term retail savings industry including life insurance, a sector which manages more than one thousand billions in assets.

Working closely with the FSA, he will examine the forces and incentives which drive the industry and its approach to investment.

The efficiency we seek in the private sector we demand in the public sector. Having doubled net public investment, including  £180 billion of new public and private investment over ten years for transport, Government at every level – national, regional and local – must raise its game.

The planning system is a key issue for business and the economy.  Much of our planning system is based on the needs of the post war world. The Secretary for Transport, Local Government and the Regions will now bring forward detailed proposals for modernisation in a Green Paper on reform to the planning system which we will publish later this year and which will strike the right balance in a radically different economy which puts an ever higher premium on speed, efficiency and flexibility – especially to reflect the widely differing needs of all our regions.

Today, Martin Cave, who is conducting the independent review of radio spectrum management launched in the Budget, is publishing a consultation paper on his approach.  His preliminary conclusion is we need better incentives so that users, in the public or private sectors, do not waste or hoard what has previously been a free good – especially if we are to encourage innovation and productivity in this area.

Our universities have a major role to play in generating ideas and providing high level skills crucial for productivity and growth.  In the last Parliament, we provided substantial new funding, especially for science.  The universities too have begun to respond, and a process of culture change is underway.  In this Parliament we will take this further, ensuring that the right freedoms and incentives are in place for universities, and that talented people from all backgrounds are able and encouraged to get the best education.

The same radical programme of reform of capital, product and labour markets we have announced for Britain, we will also pursue in Europe.

If we are to have the deeper and wider  entrepreneurial culture we need, we must start in  our schools and colleges,  and the Secretary for Education and I have asked Sir Howard Davies to examine how we can make progress. We want every young person to hear about business and enterprise in school; every college student to be made aware of the opportunities in business – and to start a business; every teacher to be able to communicate the virtues and potential of business and enterprise.

So as we spread the spirit of enterprise from the classroom to the boardroom, our aim for this Parliament is to contribute to the creation of a deeper and wider entrepreneurial culture where enterprise is truly open to all.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in New York, the United States, on 26 July 2001.

Travelling from London to New York reminds me of just how much both of us are stronger because of the shared history that shapes our countries and links our destinies – and because of the shared values that bind us even more closely together.

Indeed for centuries, your land and the islands of Britain have been linked not only by history but by ideals.  For while the United States was born in a revolution against a British government, it was also a revolution for an assertion of fundamental values that Britain and America hold in common and represent to all the world: a passion for liberty and opportunity for all; a belief in the work ethic and in opening enterprise to all; a commitment to being open not isolationist – a commitment which in our day and generation increasingly depends on a shared conviction that economic expansion through free trade and free markets is the key to growth and prosperity.

In this century our shared values can become our common destiny, and I stand for a Britain and you stand for an America outward looking, ambitious to succeed, determined to advance an enterprise culture fully equipped to lead in the 21st century economy.

Winston Churchill said that those who build the present only in the image of the past will miss out entirely on the challenges of the future.

And I want to suggest now that all of us – businesses and governments working together – should face the great challenges of today’s and tomorrow’s economy not by risking stability but by strengthening it; not by resisting change but by empowering people to cope with it; not by standing still but by radical economic reform; and – the main theme of my remarks today – not by protectionism but by promoting open, competitive markets and international cooperation.

Specifically I am certain that we must think transcontinentally as well as continentally. Today, between us, Europe and America account for 55% of world trade, 60% of trade in services and, remarkably, 80% of world wealth.

One American leader, speaking about the changing relationship between the US and Europe said:

“As the worldwide effort for independence, inspired by the American declaration of independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort -for interdependence – is transforming the world about us.”

“I say here and now that we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership.”

Remarkably, this statement was not made by a present-day politician.  In fact it was made 40 years ago by President John F. Kennedy, on independence day in Philadelphia.

Kennedy’s words ring with relevance in our own times.  He continued:

“We believe that a united Europe will be capable of joining with the United States and others in lowering trade barriers, resolving problems of commerce, commodities, and currency, and developing coordinated policies in all economic, political, and diplomatic areas.”

“For the Atlantic partnership of which I speak would not look inward only, preoccupied with its own welfare and advancement. It must look outward to cooperate with all nations in meeting their common concern.”

So as John Kennedy makes clear, it is more than commerce that binds us.  And, increasingly, in this age of globalisation, our national goals are shared international goals, our responsibilities are shared responsibilities, and our opportunities are shared opportunities. And we must not underestimate the good that can be done for the whole world, not least for developing countries, if the relationship between Europe and America is deepened.

And as President Bush reminded us just a month ago when he was in Poland:

“When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy.  When Europe and America are partners, no trouble or tyranny can stand against us.”

So this is the challenge I address today.

Let us be clear: in just a few short years the world has moved from sheltered to open economies; from local to regional to global commerce; from national to world-wide financial markets; from location, raw materials and indigenous capital as sources of competitive advantage to skills, knowledge and creativity as the factors that make the decisive difference.

We should welcome this change, not shrink from it. So, for us in Britain, there are continuing challenges – and a next step:

To entrench our new won and hard won stability – to lead the process of labour, capital, and product market reform in our own country and in Europe and to build a new more open market across the Atlantic.

The first indispensable imperative is stability. Every time in recent decades when the British economy has started to grow, governments of both parties have taken short-term decisions which too often have created unsustainable consumer booms, and sacrificed monetary and fiscal prudence.  In 1997, Britain needed a wholly new monetary and fiscal framework based on clear policy rules, well established procedures, and an openness and transparency not seen in the past. Hence the independence of the Bank of England, the new fiscal rules, the open letter system, the symmetrical inflation target and our new code for fiscal stability.

I believe that as we in Britain are tested by events like rising oil prices, exchange rate pressures, and now the slowdown in the US economy, our new framework makes us better placed than before to cope with the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

And I can say categorically that we will continue to steer a course of stability and support our monetary authorities in difficult decisions essential to ensure that we remain on track to meet our inflation target and sustain high and stable levels of growth and employment.  We will lock in not let down our fiscal discipline and at all times avoid short-termism – a return to the mistaken monetary and fiscal policies of the past.

Last month, I announced the next stage in our own competitiveness reforms with a policy of opening up enterprise to all:

a new competition regime; deregulatory measures to help small business; measures to improve skills; reforming our physical planning laws; historic cuts in capital gains tax to 10% for business assets held for 2 years, new cuts in small company corporation tax and a simplification of the vat system; and a new extension of the work permit system that has already raised entrants to the UK from 50,000 three years ago to 150,000 this year. As well as our plans for investment and modernization through public-private partnerships such as our transport plans including the London Underground.

At the same time we will continue to pursue the economic reform agenda in Europe – in labour, capital, and product markets.  And we have argued not just for action plans which signal intent but timetables which signal deadlines:

•   liberalisation in telecoms by the end of 2001;
•   liberalisation in financial services by 2004;

energy liberalisation – where we continue to push our neighbours;

and liberalisation in the capital markets by 2003.

As has Britain, the Euro area has been establishing a new framework for economic stability with clear rules, better understood procedures and a new accountability.

And a single European currency, with a fully developed single market, could in principle bring benefits:

•   it could increase trade and competition through the elimination of exchange rate risk and through more transparent prices;
•   it could reduce transaction costs, again increasing trade and investment, and benefiting everyone travelling in Europe;
•   and a strong single currency zone could mean lower long-term interest rates, again good for investment and so good for growth and jobs.

And the five tests we set out, on employment, investment, flexibility, financial services and sustainable and durable convergence are the necessary economic pre-requisites for deciding Britain’s membership of a successful currency union.

Our approach is and continues to be, considered and cautious – one of pro-euro realism.

I am pro-euro because, as we said in 1997, in principle British membership of a successful single currency offers us these obvious benefits and could help us create the conditions for higher and more productive investment and greater trade and business in Europe.

I am a realist because to short-cut or fudge the assessment, and to join in the wrong way, or on the wrong basis, would not be in Britain’s national economic interest.

Around the future of the euro there is, of course, an ongoing and wider debate on the future of Europe: a debate on economic reform amidst the challenge of globalisation, enlargement into the east, and the wider agenda for 2004, to make decision-making in Europe more open, accountable and relevant to the population as a whole.

At one time the case for Europe was simply peace – the opportunity to set aside old enmities and feuds, to contribute to a mission that has helped secure half a century of peace in western Europe, and now the historic task to cement peace and democracy in central and eastern Europe as we have done in the west.

It was once said that Europe is divided into two, between the west who have Europe and the east who believe in it, and completing the reunification of Europe through enlargement is indeed a historic event.

But today the case for Europe must be not only that, working together, we can maintain peace but that, working together, we can maximise prosperity.

Indeed the more Europe extends its single market, the better it is for the prosperity of Europe and the world.

The more Europe embraces economic and institutional reform, the better it is for all.

The more Europe looks outwards, the better it is for all.

And indeed – my theme – the more Europe and America work closely together, the better it is for Europe, America and the world.

And we must not let slip the unique opportunity we have to build stronger relationships.

Let me explain.

In the post 1945 period the shaping of the European common market took place in the shadow of war, as our predecessors resolved to move forever beyond the recurring and devastating conflicts of the past.

Today, there is a second reshaping of Europe happening not just as a result of the internal forces making for enlargement but in response to vast global changes – not least fast increasing trade and capital flows between Europe and the rest of the world and the growth of transcontinental companies.

The annual two way flow of goods, services, and foreign direct investment between the United States and the Europe is now nearly a trillion dollars. One-fifth of total US merchandise exports, and one-third of total us services exports go to the EU.

But the astonishing change has been the growth in direct European investment in the USA. In one decade it has increased more than ten-fold and we need only look at the impact of the American slowdown on European economic growth to understand this growing economic interdependence.

Total US direct investment in Europe amounted to $520 billion at the end of 1999, almost half of all US direct investment abroad.

Perhaps even more significant, by 1999 EU direct investment in the US totalled over $600 billion, more than 60% of all foreign direct investment in the US.

While in 1999, $68 billion flowed from the US to the EU in direct investment, the flow from the EU to the US was over $235 billion and as a result our economic ties are strong and getting stronger.  Now French, German, British, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, and Italian companies are prominent in America.   Indeed in America today, one in 12 factory workers is employed by one of the 4,000 European-owned businesses active in the US.

But this brings me to a fundamental question: it was said of one of our Prime Ministers that he never missed a chance to let slip an opportunity.  And the question I ask is – have we made the most of the opportunities that have come from the collapse of the Berlin wall, the end of the cold war and the opening up of eastern and central Europe?

Two decades ago, it would have been unthinkable to suggest that before the before the end of the 20th century, eastern and central Europe – and even Russia itself – would all turn to democracy and look westwards for economic guidance, or that in the rest of Europe, the old ideological conflict between state and market would be transcended by a more consensual view of states and markets working together.

But that, of course, is exactly what has happened.  But have we made the most of this turning point?

A decade ago, when the Berlin wall did fall, it would have been equally unthinkable to suggest that western Europe would respond to the collapse of communism by turning inward; or that the United States would respond by appearing to engage less rather than more with the rest of the world.

Of course, with the seismic shifts brought by the cold war’s end, all nations had to reconsider the geopolitical landscape, reassess their positions, and rethink their relationships in this very new world.  That was a smart, sensible and essential thing to do.

But it would be tragic indeed if the annals of the future record 1990, when common interest in our future was in the ascendant, not just as a point when history turned toward freedom, but as the point when those who had carried the cause of freedom turned inwards.

So I want to answer those voices on both sides of the Atlantic who believe that detachment is preferable to partnership; that isolation is more secure than a wider and deeper alliance; that our military cooperation, which should be spurring more Economic co-operation, can be downgraded.  In short, all those who wrongly believe that somehow in the post-cold war world, Europe and America need one another less, not more.

I could not disagree more profoundly – not merely with such arguments as expressed but with their very premise.

Neither America nor Europe has fully grasped the moment for a new age of economic interdependence – the realisation of President Kennedy’s vision.

With the old ideological conflicts finally behind us and with the new opportunities from globalisation ahead of us, the conditions now exist for the expansion of our economic partnership – not just incrementally, but comprehensively increasing the trade and commercial links between the EU and the USA.

So instead of the end of the cold war inviting a weakening of transatlantic ties, this is the time for a new era of enhanced engagement between America and Europe – a new transatlantic alliance for prosperity as important to our long-term economic strength as NATO has been to the cause of peace.

We must not let the banana or the genetically modified product become sad symbols of a frayed transatlantic trade relationship.  Nor must we let one dispute over a merger however large or another dispute over a sector however important obscure the scale of two-way trade and investment across the Atlantic which amounts to over $2 billion – each and every day.  However big the disputes that are temporarily in the headlines, they account for a fraction of our total trade.

Indeed the scale of our interdependence makes the case that Europe and America together not only make for the stability and growth upon which the world economy depends, but that it is possible by common endeavour for that stability and growth to be enhanced to benefit not just our nations and regions, but all nations and all regions.

That is why our first and most immediate obligation is to lead the world in advancing the multilateral trade agenda, ensuring that the Doha ministerial meeting launches a comprehensive and balanced round – and I am pleased to see the approach adopted by Mr Lamy and Mr Zoellick in this respect.

And it is because of the scale of our interdependence that we must also begin a new dialogue and build a new consensus aiming for a stronger economic partnership.

Let me give one basic example of why such a partnership is so important.

While America has been so critical to securing the freedom of eastern and central Europe there is a risk that, in a few years times, America will find its trade relationship with these markets declines as trade is inevitably diverted towards those countries in and beyond the European Union with which they will have preferential agreements by virtue of joining the Union.

When these countries enter the EU, under existing trade law they would need to respect the EU’s common external tariff which means, of course, aligning many tariffs downwards but on imports from the US actually raising some new tariffs.  Of course the GATT  (now WTO) article 24 provisions will be invoked to ensure this does not become another source of trade friction and the US gets due compensation.  But we need to ensure this is done amicably and with a view to advancing the cause of trade liberalisation in agriculture. And in industrial goods, instead of requiring candidates for membership to hike some of their tariffs to EU levels at the point they join, the EU and US should surely aim to have achieved the multilateral elimination of such tariffs by the time the first wave of new countries is ready for EU membership.

Here we should not move backwards by accident but move forwards by design.

Indeed more generally today, I fear that both the EU and US are, inadvertently more than by design, moving towards according each other almost “least favoured nation” status in each other’s markets.   As we both turn increasingly to preferential trade agreements with other partners which perhaps seem to promise easier progress and faster results, there is a risk that we neglect the relationship between the two most advanced and open blocs in the world with the consequent danger that we accord many of our other partners better trade and investment conditions than we do each other.

Open regionalism has its rightful place in liberalising trade and investment but the scale of our interdependence, our centrality to the stability and growth on which the whole world economy depends and the need for our leadership requires us to do more.

I think we should now think seriously about the future alliance for prosperity of which I speak between the NAFTA area and Europe.

It has been estimated that the annual income gain to the EU from a transatlantic marketplace would be of the order of 1.1% of EU GDP – or $140 billion – and 0.5% of US GDP, the equivalent of the estimated us gain from NAFTA.

And the gain together for the EU and the US if we also eliminate industrial tariffs on an MFN basis could be as high as $150 billion a year, a figure that means more prosperity and more jobs for both continents.

So there are potential gains in total of nearly $350 billion.

In 1988, when Europe was at the outset of the huge project to move towards deeper economic and trade integration via the creation of a genuine single market, we commissioned the so-called Cecchini report that examined in depth, and quantified the economic gains of the much deeper cooperation that a single market entailed. The figures were so impressive that European policy-makers saw the necessity of moving forward, and could explain to their citizens what was at stake in terms of growth, jobs and prosperity from changes which, at the time, looked dauntingly difficult.  And I am pleased to say that Signor Cecchini is going to chair a further study over the coming months looking specifically at the benefits from further financial services liberalisation within the EU, and the costs of failing to complete the single market in financial services.

I believe what we need now is a Cecchini-style report that investigates the potential benefits for growth, prosperity and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic from a wide-ranging effort to tackle all the remaining barriers to a fully open trading and commercial relationship between Europe and America.

With high-level political commitment we can then move forward to address those barriers in a systematic and balanced fashion.

First, industrial tariffs

It is to the credit of negotiators in previous multilateral rounds that the vast bulk of transatlantic merchandise trade is already duty-free or at low duties.

Only 41 of the EU’s 8200 industrial tariff lines now represent genuine tariff peaks while the US figure is 166 out of a total of 8300.

But, as I said a moment ago when talking about the challenge of enlarging the EU, we now need to question whether it makes sense to have any remaining industrial tariff barriers.  We should go into the new WTO round promising jointly to reduce our industrial tariffs to zero on a strictly MFN basis – on condition that a critical mass of the rest of the world, measured as a percentage of global trade, agrees to do the same. This would add over $50 billion a year to the national income of the US and over $90 billion for the EU.

In the information technology agreement which US and the EU led, states representing more than 95% of world trade agreed to the complete elimination of tariffs on the bulk of it goods in what was the biggest single trade agreement since the end of the Uruguay round in 1994.  It was in a real sense a joint “platform” created by the US and Europe subject to the agreement of others to join us.  We must look to replicate that US and EU leadership.

Second, services

We should also seek to remove market access limitations to commonly traded services, legal and other professional services.  This is an area where we, as two advanced economic blocs, should be able to move much further bilaterally than we can expect others to sign up to multilaterally in the GATS.

We should promote the same “deep” liberalisation that is a major feature of the single market, aiming to make the maximum progress towards mutual recognition agreements which the EU has pioneered across a wide range of service sectors with a view to constructing a genuine transatlantic marketplace.

Let me take, for example, financial services.  We in the EU are committed to an effective single capital market within the next 30 months and the single market in retail financial services will follow quickly after that.  This must be based on mutual recognition of regulatory practices, core standards of consumer protection and effective cross order redress to raise confidence.   And today I call on the EU and US to sit down to discuss how we can apply these concepts of mutual recognition and core standards to e-trade in financial services not just within the EU but across the Atlantic, in recognition of the ease with which these services can be delivered across boundaries using the internet.

Third, other non tariff barriers

We must also take a more pro-active approach to removing other non-tariff barriers.  I welcome the ideas emerging on both sides to improve each other’s intelligence on legislative/regulatory initiatives by the other which might impact on the trade relationship. But early warning devices are not enough.  We need to be more vigorous in addressing the “system frictions” arising from domestic regulation that now underlie the bulk of the “new” trade disputes.

We should set an example to the world with new levels of bilateral regulatory co-operation. We need to improve the transparency to each other of our respective regimes, to exchange more information and share more best practice and, crucially, on issues like consumer and food safety which are at the source of many of the immediate tensions in transatlantic trade, to share with each other the scientific evidence and risk analyses underpinning domestic regulation.

Ultimately our aim should be comprehensive agreements across industrial goods and service sectors, enabling companies that have a product or service approved in one regulatory system also to market it straightaway in the other.

And we should also aim to eliminate the existing barriers to EU and US firms wishing to establish and do business in each other’s markets. This could be achieved through the mutual recognition of regulatory and licensing authorities.

Already the EU has got further with Australia, New Zealand and Canada than with the US in tackling problems of standards, testing, certification, labelling and mutual recognition. Again, it cannot be sensible that the economies with vastly the largest two-way trade relationship fail to keep pace, particularly when both our business communities are clamouring for faster progress. So, with political will, it must be possible to make the same breakthroughs with each other to everyone’s advantage that have been made in our bilateral relationships with other countries.

Fourth, competition

Recent cases have shown most clearly why we need an increasingly convergent approach to competition by US authorities and the EU. We should not allow one high-profile case to mask the very considerable progress we have already made under the EU-US bilateral positive comity agreement in co-operating and sharing burdens on individual cases to reduce the risks of incoherent or divergent rulings. Nor should we aspire, in the new world I have been describing, to return to a world in which neither jurisdiction supposedly “meddles” in the affairs of the other. That would be to try to turn the clock back to a pre-globalisation world: we have no other option than to recognize that in a world of massive cross-border and transcontinental mergers, our respective competition authorities will increasingly be called on to assess the same transactions.

Instead, I think we now need to take bilateral co-operation on to a new level. I am not suggesting a harmonized global competition law framework. But we can and should look for greater convergence in competition analysis and methodology, and more commonality on the identification and implementation of remedies, on the analysis of our respective approaches towards oligopoly and collective dominance (“co-ordinated interactions” in America) and on how to achieve procedural convergence of the review process, starting with greater alignment of EU and US  timetables.   In other words, our bilateral co-operative relationship should become substantially deeper and aim at increasing convergence of analysis and outcomes on a scale to which no other bilateral relationship in the world could aspire.

But for that very reason, there is a need at the same time for the EU and US together to demonstrate leadership on multilateral solutions – not because we should aspire to anything like the same intensity of co-operation at global level as we do across the Atlantic but because, for developing countries to claim their share of the benefits of globalisation, it is crucial that they introduce and implement genuine competition policies and can look to us for support and assistance, and to a multilateral WTO framework for the core principles to which any system must adhere.

Mulitilateral agenda

But, as I have said, deepening the transatlantic economic relationship should not be and must not be at the cost of an ambitious multilateral agenda.

Indeed the agenda I set out makes it more important than ever that we work closely together in the run up to, and at, the Doha ministerial to ensure the launch of a comprehensive and balanced round.  In this round the EU and US should work closely on pushing for greater market access in third countries on services, have high ambitions to eliminate industrial tariffs, and make genuine liberalising deals on agriculture and the “new” issues: investment, competition, and environment.  And above all, because we cannot afford a repeat of the failure at Seattle, we must demonstrate to developing countries that a round with these ambitions will be of material benefit to their people; and that the WTO, like the other Bretton Woods institutions, has a vital role to play in ensuring the benefits of globalisation can be enjoyed by all.

Conclusion

So my case for a Cecchini style report that investigates the benefits for growth, jobs, prosperity, and world trade of a truly open relationship between the EU and the US is very strong indeed.  And in forging that stronger relationship, Britain can and must play a pivotal role.  Britain does not have to choose, as some would suggest, between America and Europe, but is instead well positioned as a vital link between America and Europe.

It is worth noting that of all the American investment in Europe, 40% goes to Britain and more than 2,500 US companies are based in Britain.

We know that American companies invest in our country not just because Britain is Britain, but because Britain is part of Europe.

We are the bridgehead from which those companies trade in mainland Europe.

It is in the interests of British business and British jobs not to detach Britain from Europe or from America but instead to build stronger links in both directions. And it is in the interests of Europe to build a long-term relationship with America based not on an assertion of complete independence from one another, but on a frank recognition of our interdependence.

For we will succeed in this new century only if we succeed together.  This is what some theorists are calling – non-zero – thinking – non-zero-sum solutions in which both sides win.

I believe this is the way forward – for Britain, for Europe, for the United States.