Tag: Iain Duncan Smith

The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 13 June 2002.

I am very grateful to Stephen Bubb and the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations for the invitation to today’s conference.

Members of ACEVO greatly strengthen our society, particularly at the local level, by enabling groups of people with a common vision to come together to work for a common cause.

And because you tackle the causes as well as the consequences of social problems you reach vulnerable people who have often been failed by conventional approaches.

Gathered in this room are a variety of organisations that serve diverse communities of people all over Britain.

Leonard Cheshire supports and enables 19,000 people with disabilities in Britain.

The hospice movement provides 3,215 beds for very sick and terminally-ill people.

Victim Support offers help to over one million people whose lives have been struck by crime.

Prison Fellowship equips and supports 2,000 volunteer visitors throughout Britain’s 136 prisons.

This week is National Carers’ Week. This morning I visited the Princess Royal Trust Carers’ Centre in Hammersmith and Fulham, which provides support for those who care for relatives and friends when they can no longer look after themselves.

Every 5th household in this country includes at least one carer. There are some seven million adults carers in Britain today. I watched my mother care for my dying father and I know the selfless dedication born out of love and obligation that is the cornerstone of so many families in this country.

Informal care is the most effective and least expensive form of care there is. However it places an extraordinary amount of strain on those who give it. The voluntary support carers receive often makes the difference between a heavy burden and an intolerable one. I pay tribute to the work that they do and the support that you give them.

Of course, there is also a need for paid professional help, especially where vulnerable people have no friends or relations to look after them. Here the state can step in with support for people who can’t afford this help themselves. But that doesn’t mean the state has to organise and provide the care itself, or that it does a very good job when it tries to.

Last month a report from the Social Services Inspectorate made clear that many local authorities were failing to provide adequate levels of care to vulnerable people. I was struck by the testimony of one charity worker in the West Midlands:

‘Elderly people with mobility problems cannot get even the most basic help. If they want a grab rail for their toilet or bath, they go to social services for an assessment – which takes months… When we complain, the politicians blame it on the officers and vice versa.’

This is illustrated by the case of a 71-year-old man who has not been able to have a bath or a shower since suffering a stroke in July 1997. He desperately needs a downstairs shower, but the council has said that it may be another three years before one is installed. As he said:

‘It is about my dignity. They don’t understand how traumatic it is to have a stroke, to not be able to go out for a walk. They don’t know how it feels not to be able to bathe. I feel absolutely terrible and I really feel as if I have been let down.’

Some will say that the problem is resources. But it is not about resources alone. There is a huge variation in performance between different councils. As the inspector’s report said:

‘People are fitted to services, rather than services to people.’

I believe that charities and the voluntary sector have so much to teach us about fitting services to people. Of course, many others have come to the same conclusion, which is why the voluntary sector has been called upon to play a bigger role in the public services. But charities must not be used to prop up crumbling state structures. And neither should vulnerable people have to wait and hope for the failing state to find the right partners from the voluntary sector.

Rather, the true duty of the state is to help vulnerable people achieve dignity and this is best done by ensuring that they get help from those that understand their needs best. And very often that will be a charity or a community group or some other non-state body. It is vital that we establish a direct relationship between what people want and the support the voluntary sector gets from the public purse.

People will benefit from more responsive public services, but the voluntary sector will also benefit. They will be held accountable by the people they help instead of by Whitehall. This is public funding with a human face that ensures freedom from political interference and a closer connection with the communities they serve.

That is why an evolving partnership with the voluntary sector will be a high priority for the Conservative party.

It will be vital for effective public service reform. It also lies at the core of the commitment which I set out at the Conservatives’ Harrogate conference to address the needs of vulnerable people within society.

Of course you are used to be courted by politicians. We are meeting at a time when the boundaries between the public, private and voluntary sectors are becoming blurred beyond recognition.

At first glance, this presents charities with unprecedented opportunities. It offers you the chance to expand your work, to gain access to policymaking and to secure new sources of income.

But on deeper examination these opportunities present their own problems. If charities increasingly rely on government for their influence, their authority and their funding, at what point do they cease to act as agents for change and constancy, and start to become just another agency of the state?

To improve the quality and the responsiveness of our public services we have to be more flexible about those organisations we use to deliver them. That is one very obvious lesson I have learned from travelling around Europe and America studying those countries who run better systems of healthcare and education than we do.

But we must never lose sight of the fact that if we want to help the most vulnerable people in our society, then we also have to strengthen society around them and that means supporting institutions and groups whose reach extends beyond the state.

I applaud the new spirit of professionalism in the charitable sector that you embody, but that should never lead to the professionalisation of voluntary impulses.

To do so risks eroding the independence of charities and undermining the virtues of self-help, mutual obligation and social engagement. People must not believe that their obligations to neighbours in need begin and end with the payment of taxes.

People give time and money to volunteering for any number of reasons. They may want others to think well of them, or to contribute to the well-being of those less fortunate than themselves. These sentiments make us who we are.

That is why the expression of compassion through spontaneous co-operation is as old as society itself.

It has survived the 20th century struggles between socialism and capitalism and the battle between the public and private sectors for the control over the economy.

Now it must flourish in the 21st century as we seek to wrestle with the limitations of state power in tackling some of our most intractable social problems.

This, I think, is where the Government and the Opposition part company. Both main parties talk about civil society, the need to replenish social capital and an enhanced role for the voluntary sector.

But for my part we do so from a belief that the voluntary sector should not just be another branch office of central government.

For us the sector is part of new political settlement. One which stresses the local over the central, diversity over uniformity, and innovation over control.

Labour came into power offering the voluntary sector a new partnership. They were promised unprecedented access to Whitehall, a voice in decision-making and access to a panoply of government grants.

But in return they were often required to submit themselves to target-setting, auditing and performance indicators that have become the defining feature of the way this Government runs the public sector.

Too many voluntary groups fear becoming institutionalised. They devote more and more of their time to applying for grants and writing reports and less and less time to finding new ways of helping people.

This Government’s bear-hug is as expensive as it is suffocating. The bureaucracy and the compliance costs risk excluding the smallest charities who are the most local and often the most innovative in meeting the needs of their communities.

As Conservatives, we see things differently. Certainly Government has a duty to account for the way it spends its money and there are certain minimum standards which all organisations must adhere to.

But the potential of the voluntary sector lies in what it alone can achieve.

Voluntary groups can operate on a human scale, they are often run by members of the same communities they serve, they can demand more of the people they are trying to help.

The lives they touch and change are not to be measured by statistics or read in annual reports, instead they are measured by the strength of our communities and they are written in faces of the people and the families they help.

These are the things that give the voluntary sector its power. It is why charities reach the parts of our society that government has never reached in the half century since the universal welfare state was founded.

If we are to tap into that power, we are going to have trust people; trust charities and the voluntary sector to do their job, not emasculate them with a series of contracts and regulations in the name of partnership.

This is not a rallying cry for the voluntary sector to provide public services on the cheap: responsibility must be matched by resources and by results.

All told, the voluntary sector receives a public income of more than £5 billion a year from central and local government, from the European Union and from the lottery.

But currently this money comes at the price of the strings that politicians attach to it.

You only have to look at the problems of residential care homes. Many face closure because of excessive regulation, disrupting the lives of vulnerable people.

The rules governing the European Social Fund are drawn so tightly that voluntary groups are unable to offer assistance to those who fall just outside its rigidly-defined geographical boundaries.

Muslim groups face discrimination if they bid for money as religious rather than cultural organisations. Christian and other faith-based groups sometimes face discrimination simply because of their faith.

We have to find ways of involving the sector in transforming our public services without compromising its independence and integrity.

That is going to mean fundamentally rethinking the way public money reaches the voluntary sector.

Earlier this week, while I was in Washington DC I visited the Unique Learning Center. It looks after 40 children from broken homes whose parents are addicted to drugs or in prison. It coaches them through school, dealing with teachers and providing a place they can go to after school to do homework or play sport.

The Center offers children a haven from disruptive neighbourhoods. It teaches children of the link between work and achievement and steers them away from the culture of instant gratification and criminality.

Currently they receive no money from the central government for fear of interference. But the Bush Administration is backing the CARE Act. This would allow faith-based organisations to bid for Federal funds on a level playing field with non-religious organisations. It would also create a special fund that community-based organisations could bid for.

We need to learn from the American experience. Michael Howard and I are examining carefully how we can reform our tax laws in a way that will help the voluntary sector.

As things stand today, funding passes through the hands of too many people who have done nothing to produce it and who lack the expertise to spend it wisely.

Voluntary groups aspire to serve real people and their real needs.

But the current funding system gets in the way. It encourages mission creep; suffocates innovation; and it produces uniformity.

Centralised and politicised funding systems produce grey uniformity.

Government rarely tolerates alternative opinions. Charities with the temerity to challenge prevailing orthodoxies about drugs or marriage can suffer discrimination. The result is a one-dimensional approach to social problems which can never meet the diverse needs and beliefs of communities throughout Britain.

The public has a right to demand that the money raised in its name goes to ensuring better access to higher quality services. The Government has duty to tell them where their money is going. But ultimately all governments are judged by results. Elaborate audit trails are no substitute for achievement.

And as we know from every other walk of life, from every other country whose standards of public services exceed our own, these achievements are greatest when those closest to the communities they serve are given the power to get on with their jobs.

To do this, we have to address a number of questions.

How can we reform funding so that charities can stay loyal to their fundamental missions?

How do we ensure that higher-risk, but more innovative projects, get funds?

How do we make sure that small neighbourhood-based charities get support alongside larger, nationally based ones?

The answers will come from a mix of innovative approaches. The NCVO’s interest in local charitable endowments is worthy of consideration.

Some of the ideas we will look at would extend existing practice, some would depart from it.

I would be grateful for your views in this search for a more democratic, more diverse and more devolved voluntary sector.

We will have a robust and constructive debate with the Government as it develops its own responses to some of the issues I have discussed today.

If good decisions come out of the voluntary sector reviews being carried out by the Treasury and the Performance and Innovation Unit, we will support them.

But when the Government damages the voluntary sector, as it did by cutting your investment income through the ACT changes or imposing National Insurance increases on a sector which needs to employ more people on tight budgets, we will not hesitate to say they are wrong.

Nor are we concerned to help only the voluntary sector. Families, community networks and places of worship must also play their part.

If our society is serious about tackling some of its most deeply-rooted problems, then we must start by taking society seriously.”

It is often those institutions that lie beyond the reach of the state who have the firmest grasp of what needs to be done. They bring a human touch to the healing of social ills that has eluded both material prosperity and the universal welfare state.

Government has a role in supporting the voluntary sector and it should carry out that role actively, but it should not try to run your sector for you. It must give you the room to breathe and the space to work.

That is the balance the Conservative Party will seek to strike in the years ahead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five key social challenges facing our people:

Rising crime;

Failing schools;

Substandard healthcare;

Child poverty; and

Insecurity in old age.

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

Defeating them isn’t just a moral obligation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take education.

Far too many inner city schools are failing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That has to change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Success will also depend upon a stronger, cohesive society.

A society of which we can all feel proud.

And by society I do not mean the state.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At night criminal gangs rule the streets.

Two of Jim’s own sons have become addicts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beneath an artificial plantation of conifers nothing grows.

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

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

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

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

An enriching and highly-interdependent ecosystem develops.

It’s still like that in parts of Britain.

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

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

That must change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, in Birmingham on 26 June 2003.

The Conservative Party is committed to a fair deal for everyone.

There are those, however, who claim this is little more than a dream.

They argue that leadership is about choices.

They say you have to penalise one group to help another. You soak the rich to help the poor or you neglect the poor to help the rich.

This Government believes this argument.

That became clear again last week when Peter Hain broke the golden rule of New Labour and told the truth about their tax raising agenda.

But as Conservatives we reject this false choice. We recognise that you don’t help vulnerable people by making the rest poorer, and nor do you make our country richer by leaving large sections of society behind.

Our fair deal for everyone demands that we are just as committed to leaving no one behind as we are to holding no one back. It is a realisable goal, but it requires leadership, vision and ambition.

These are three qualities this party has shown before. And we have them again today.

We have always been the party of one nation. The social and economic reforms of the 1980s were only possible because we built a coalition across social groups and reached out to the inner cities as much as to the leafy suburbs and the shires.

Today we are still that party, but we must renew our commitment to solving and not merely managing the problems of places like Handsworth here in Birmingham.

We believe the problems faced by parts of Britain’s inner cities are not insurmountable. No one should be excluded from society because of where they live.

We believe in the creation of the neighbourly society – not as an unachievable utopia but as a real and possible vehicle of sustained social progress.

We believe that we can transform our representation in our inner cities because by supporting community groups such as Parents United who I met earlier today, we are showing that only the Conservative Party believes in the potential of every single person who lives in some of the most deprived areas of our country.

Our challenge is not to attack those who create our nation’s wealth, but to focus instead on ensuring everyone shares in that wealth to the benefit of society as a whole.

The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, to the Compassionate Conservatism Conference held on 15 September 2003.

Thank you all for coming to this ground-breaking conference.

I’d particularly like to welcome people from some of the voluntary and charitable organisations that I – and members of the shadow cabinet – have been meeting over recent times. Thanks for being here today and for helping us to understand the nature of poverty in Britain and around the world.

This is one of the most important conferences I’ve addressed since I became Conservative leader. One hundred and fifty Conservatives in their teens, twenties and thirties at a two-day conference on social justice. A third of the shadow cabinet – including most of its senior members – here to talk about the Conservative Party’s commitment to build one nation.

I made that commitment after my first visit to Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate in February last year. Some dismissed my commitment as a publicity stunt. Some will dismiss this conference as a two-day publicity stunt. And in this in this age of spin, perhaps that’s understandable. But the people of Easterhouse and Gallowgate, of Hackney and Handsworth, of the many other hard-pressed communities all over this country have had a profound impact upon me.

They have led me to refocus the Conservative Party on the challenges that most face these communities but which worry and threaten everyone. Britain’s left-behind communities are often thought of as Labour’s strongholds. Their heartlands. But there’s little heart in the way Labour neglects and forgets these communities.

Communities suffering under the weight of drugs, crime, community breakdown and the other social challenges that the wealth and technology of our times have not defeated.

The burdens of want and fear are blighting the lives of more and more people in this country. Casting a shadow over the lives of the many and dominating the lives of the few. In recent months Conservatives have announced policies on schools, policing, drug rehab and social entrepreneurship that will help people who find life a daily struggle.

People whose struggle is greater because of this Labour government. Greater because of the humiliating complexity of Labour’s benefits system. Because of the taxes Labour have loaded onto the backs of the poorest workers. Because of Labour’s appeasement in the war on crime and drugs. Because of Labour’s pursuit of total politics rather than practical delivery.

We won’t identify all of the answers to today’s social challenges over the next two days or even over the next few years. Problems that have grown over a generation will need the idealism, imagination and unfailing commitment of a new generation.

Your generation.

Today’s social challenges – the challenge of poverty in the twenty-first century – needs you.

In your youth…

In your idealism…

In your creativity…

You, in your solidarity with people for whom life is a struggle…

You are the future of this Party.

These challenges are your challenges.

They’re the challenges of the many, not the few.

The battle to overcome these challenges – in all their enormity – is the future of this Party.”That is why I have brought the issues and you together, in this conference, as a foundational act. We live in a world where poverty challenges our moral conscience and our security. It is a staggering thought that over the next twelve months, over ten million children around the world will die as a result of malnutrition.
War, disease, terrorism and many forms of hardship and danger will feed on each other – claiming the lives of still more millions. And of those who do not die, the majority live in conditions that would be intolerable to anyone in this country.

Against that background, there are those who say that poverty in Britain simply does not exist. But it does. Many people do not enjoy the opportunities and freedoms that most of us take for granted. I think of children growing up in homes where it’s still hard to make ends meet. I think of pensioners in communities ruled by criminal gangs. Poverty is real today for those children and pensioners. When I left Easterhouse, I committed the Conservative Party to a new mission with these words:

A nation that leaves its vulnerable behind, diminishes its own future.

Britain will never be all that it should be until opportunity and security mean something to people in Easterhouse.

To make this country theirs as much as it is ours. That is a mission fit for the new century.”

That is why there are two inseparable parts to our Fair Deal. No one held back and no one left behind. Opportunity and security. Aspiration and compassion.

Talk is one thing, action is another. But, of course, action is the privilege of government, and so I want to spend some time on what this Government has done about poverty. To give credit where it’s due, Labour has not been inactive. They talk big on poverty and they spend big too. I‘m sure Labour politicians care about poverty but, sadly, something has gone terribly wrong with their policies. And we need to understand why if we are to avoid making the same mistakes. If we are to build an effective and distinctive Conservative programme of social justice.

How you tackle poverty depends on how you define it. Currently the following definition is in use, ‘You’re poor if you live in a household with less than 60% of the median household income’. Now there are all sorts of problems with that definition. Above all the definition is exclusively financial and says nothing about the non-financial needs of every human being. It’s also interesting to note that Labour – the party of equality – has presided over growing inequality. According to the Government’s own statistics, Britain is more unequal under Tony Blair than at any time under Margaret Thatcher or John Major. Even under their own figures – Labour have failed.

Ministers would say that they have focused on households with children – and that, according to their definition of poverty – and their figures – they have made real progress in this area. But they have missed their targets on child poverty and show little prospect of ever achieving them. The Labour MP Frank Field – as well as David Willetts – have shown that what progress has been made has been achieved by “picking off the easy ones.”

In other words, the main effect of Labour’s policy is to shift some families from just below the poverty line to just above it. Now this helps ministers meet their targets, but it doesn’t do much to help those in the deepest need.

Earlier this month a Save the Children report confirmed Frank Field’s analysis. The report’s authors were concerned with children in severe and persistent poverty – equivalent to household incomes of less than 40% of the average. Over one million children live in such households. The researchers were surprised to find that many, if not most, of these households are not on permanent benefits.

An earlier report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies came to much the same conclusions: One in ten children, the report concluded, live in households on very low incomes – but almost half did not receive any of the main means-tested benefits. So it’s clear: Labour’s child poverty targets are being missed – and the limited progress that has been made has been achieved by focusing on the easiest cases. Those children deepest in poverty are those least likely to be helped.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. The targets culture always encourages government to focus on the easy cases in order to fake success. The complexity of Labour’s benefits system may delight Gordon Brown but it is a nightmare for vulnerable families. They cannot cope with the humiliating bureaucracy that Labour has manufactured. The stigma of means-testing means that many families and pensioners who need help do not ask for it. The perversity of the whole system means that people who try to do the right thing are often punished.

Save money and you’ll lose it. Seek work and, if you can’t master the complexity of the benefits system, you’ll find yourself out of pocket. The system is fundamentally flawed. Even the Government knows that something has gone terribly wrong with its policies. Let me read you this from a Cabinet Office report. It sounds as though it was written by Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby, but it’s real:

It is possible the efficacy limits of some key policy instruments are being reached.

For example, the take-up of some means tested fiscal measures remain low and further means-tested support of in-work incomes could undermine the incentives of households to enhance their own earnings.

Now, let me translate the gibberish into English:

Our policy isn’t working.

People aren’t getting the help they were promised.

And if we carry on like this we’re going to trap even more people in poverty.

Let’s not forget that we have reached these “efficacy limits” under the most favourable economic conditions. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have enjoyed a golden legacy of record tax receipts. Which they have spent wasted. This compares to the record of Conservatives in Kent. Kent Conservatives have invested the good economic times of recent years to help families build free and independent lives through a range of innovative support programmes.

Labour’s policies have left the poor even more dependent on the state for their incomes and the kind of public services they receive. Worse still – Gordon Brown has spread dependency up the income scale. And when times get harder, as they always do, that dependency will remain. But it will be harder for a weaker economy to afford. And that, in the end, will be Labour’s legacy to the poor. Dependence not independence.

We can’t blame this Government for inventing the flaws in the system. They have pumped more money into these flaws than any government in history, but there is nothing new about the dependency culture. Or about means testing. Nothing new about the poverty trap.

Since the war, unimaginable sums of money have been funnelled through the benefits system. Undreamt of wealth has opened up healthcare, education, transport and culture to all sections of society. And yet social mobility is less today than it was in the 1950s. After five decades of state-led welfare a child born at the bottom of the pile is more, not less, likely to stay there.

This is what Patricia Hewitt, a serving member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet, said to the Fabian Society back in June:

“Today [historians] would still be horrified by the gulf in health, education and life chances between the child growing up in an impoverished council estate – with a secondary school where only 10 or 15 kids in a class of 100 can expect to get five GCSEs – and the child of the leafy suburbs heading confidently for university and a professional career.”

What she is describing is the final failure of socialism. The final failure of the know-all, centralised state. The state that Mr Blair runs from Downing Street.

A failure all the more dramatic if one looks beyond purely financial measures of poverty.

This is not a tactic for avoiding the issue of benefit levels. Families with young children, pensioners, people with serious disabilities, the sick, those looking for work – Conservatives will always ensure a fair income for these deserving causes. But we also know that there is no conceivable increase in benefits that would change some of the fundamental facts of poverty. A few extra pounds can make a big difference to a tight budget. But it won’t buy you security when you’re too frightened to let your kids play outside. Or peace, when your home is a noise-polluted tower block. Or friends, when vital support networks have been smashed by the breakdown of family and community. Or self-respect, when you’re trapped in dependency. Or ambition, when your child’s school descends into chaos.

Surely, if the fight against poverty is to mean anything, then it has to be as much about peace, community and self-respect as it is about money.

And it also has to be about turning round the public services on which we all depend, but on which the poor depend most of all.

I have devoted the greater part of this speech to the problems dogging the fight against poverty. Governments have a role to play in fighting poverty and the next Conservative government will take its responsibilities seriously. But government cannot solve the problem of poverty on its own. Securing a fair deal for everyone is a shared task. A task for government, businesses, families and communities. Conservatives have, therefore, a project.

A mission to replace the welfare state with a welfare society. It was William Beveridge who said –
The making of a good society depends not on the state but on the citizens, acting individually or in free association with one another…

The happiness or unhappiness of the society in which we live depends upon ourselves as citizens, not on the instrument of political power which we call the state.”

Beveridge was never in favour of a monolithic welfare state and issued a prophetic warning against any policy which, in his words, caused “the whole field of security against misfortune, once the domain of voluntary Mutual Aid, [to be] divided between the State and private business conducted for gain.”

The post-war Labour Government ignored that warning.

That was a mistake of historic proportions – the consequences of which we still live with today. We must not live with it tomorrow. We can begin to build a welfare society.

Let me give you a practical example of what I mean. In July, I visited Tabernacle, an inner-city school, mainly serving the African and Caribbean Community. Because the parents were fed up with the way the state system had failed their children they got together and started their own school. A school under the inspired leadership of Paulette and Derrick Wilson. Standards of discipline and academic achievement are high. The teachers love teaching there.

The pupils love learning there. And the parents, many of modest means, make the necessary sacrifices. And yet this school is under threat.

The Government is set to impose a crippling regime of inspection fees that would force the school to close.

Conservatives oppose this disgraceful attack on high quality inner-city education. Our policy is not only to systematically reduce the regulatory burden on schools like Tabernacle, but to actively support their foundation and expansion. Our State Scholarships policy will give every parent the right to send their child to a school that’s right for them and consistent with the family’s values. It will support schools like the Tabernacle and create more of them. We are determined that no child should be left behind in a failing school.

Tabernacle School is just one example of what voluntary action can achieve for our nation. Indeed, there isn’t a single social challenge to which someone, somewhere hasn’t found an answer. Social entrepreneurs are at work in every area of public policy. And we’ll be hearing from some of these trailblazing projects over the next two days. Projects which have inspired our green paper, Sixty Million Citizens, which contains sixteen proposals aimed at unlocking the full potential of Britain’s civil society.

In a moment, Greg Clark, our Director of Policy, will explain how Conservatives would open up our public services to this spirit of social renewal. But I believe that the same principle – of Government enabling people to find their own solutions – can apply to the social security system too.

David Willetts, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, will be here tomorrow to talk about his latest thinking in this area. Thinking informed by the One Nation Hearings he and other members of the shadow cabinet have held in disadvantaged parts of Britain.

Also speaking will be Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhart, the Leader of Kent County Council, and Simon Milton, the leader of Westminster City Council – both of whom are proving that Conservatives can take on the dependency culture and win for the most vulnerable people in their communities. I thank both of them for their work.

No serious discussion of social justice can ignore the injustice faced by communities plagued by crime. We often hear about poverty as a cause of crime. It’s time we heard more about crime as a cause of poverty. People in social housing are twice as likely to be burgled as homeowners. Residents of flats are twice as likely to have a vehicle stolen than those in detached homes. The unemployed are twice as likely to suffer violent crime as those in work. There can be no end to poverty without a start to security.

That is why the next Conservative Government will recruit 40,000 extra police officers to take back the streets for law-abiding people who, today, are afraid to walk them. Our plan for a ten-fold increase in the number of drug rehabilitation places – to 20,000 – will give young people the chance to escape from a life of addiction and crime. I’m delighted that the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, will be here this evening to tell you more about our law and order policies.

Crime is not the only cause of poverty. Drugs and family instability can also damage a child’s chances in life. Labour is too embarrassed to face up to these issues. They hide behind a screen of political correctness. Conservatives must not be afraid to talk about these and other causes of poverty. We must be intolerant of discrimination. We will have the opportunity to talk about the face of poverty within Britain throughout this conference. And the fact that deeper exists beyond the shores of our country. If there is a pressing need for a new approach to poverty at home, then there is a desperate need for a new approach to third world poverty. Statist, and superstatist, solutions have not worked.

But as we’ll hear from Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, Conservative solutions do have a chance. Through our emphasis on free trader for third world producers. On fighting corruption and promoting good governance. On trusting local agencies and local people as the only people capable of delivering sustainable development. In particular, Conservatives will put greater trust in the extraordinary work of Britain’s aid agencies and fair-trade enterprises – including CaféDirect and Traidcraft – both of which are kindly with us today.

On my first visit to Easterhouse, someone shouted out:

“What are you doing here? This is a Labour area.”

“Yes,” I said, “and look around you.”

There will be others that say:

“Why are you talking about poverty? That’s a Labour issue.”

And to them I’ll say “yes, and look around you.”

Labour think they have a monopoly on compassion. And this monopoly – like all monopolies – has hurt the people it dominates. Poverty is too important an issue to leave to Labour. It’s too important to leave to any one political party.

Labour is failing because it thinks poverty is only about money. Yet, as I’ve shown, even on its own measure, Labour is failing. Defeating poverty is about more than spending money. It’s about living in a secure neighbourhood. But today – under Labour – violent crime is rising. It’s about fighting the drug menace that blights our children’s lives. Yet, today, families desperate to get their children off drugs find that there aren’t enough rehabilitation places available.

It’s about order and structure in schools. Yet Labour have taken disciplinary powers away from headteachers. Most of all it’s about giving people control over their own lives. But over recent years Labour’s massive centralised state has increased dependency and left far too many people and communities unable to take key decisions about how they lead their lives.

That’s why a future Conservative government will be different. We’ll protect the incomes of vulnerable people but we’ll do much more. 40,000 extra police officers will reclaim the streets from criminals and drug pushers. 20,000 drug rehabilitation places will give young people a second chance in life. Our State Scholarships scheme will give parents in the inner cities the means to send their children to better schools. Our proposals on the voluntary sector will greatly increase the opportunities available to community-based social entrepreneurs. These and other policies will make a real difference to the hard-pressed communities that I’ve visited throughout my time as Conservative leader.

I don’t expect to storm the Labour heartlands at the next election. But unless Conservatives can show that we will govern for the whole nation, we will neither win nor deserve to. That is why our fair deal is for everyone. No one held back. No one left behind.