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  • Jeremy Corbyn – 2018 Speech on Britain After Brexit

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, on 26 February 2018.

    Thank you Rebecca for that introduction and thank you all for being here today.

    It’s great to be speaking here in Coventry, which has long been at the core of Britain’s industrial heartland and is now set to be our next city of culture.

    Next month, the government will embark on the second and most crucial phase of negotiations to leave the European Union to set the terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU for the long-term.

    We are now 20 months on from the referendum that voted to leave and a year on from the triggering of Article 50.

    But the country is still in the dark about what this divided Conservative government actually wants out of Brexit. They can’t agree amongst themselves about what their priorities are or what future they want for Britain after Brexit.

    They’ve got no shortage of soundbites and slogans of course.

    The Foreign Secretary says it will be “a liberal Brexit”, the Prime Minister says it will be a “red white and blue Brexit”, or on other days it’s a “bespoke economic partnership”.

    The Brexit Secretary at least now promises it won’t be “a Mad Max-style dystopia”, which you might think was setting the bar a little bit low.

    While the Trade Secretary can’t contain himself at the prospect of pushing Britain into a spiral of deregulation in rights and standards and the cabinet seems to have agreed at Chequers to leave the door open to that with their “ambitious managed divergence”, whatever that means.

    But the truth is we really don’t know much more about where they’re actually heading in these talks.

    While workers, businesses and everyone who voted in the referendum just want to know what the government’s approach to Brexit is likely to mean for their future and the future of the country.

    As the Opposition, we have been trying to hold this government to account. Our message has been consistent since the vote to leave 20 months ago. We respect the result of the referendum.

    Our priority is to get the best deal for people’s jobs, living standards and the economy. We reject any race to the bottom in workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, consumer protections or food safety standards.

    And we’ve pushed the government to act to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living here and of UK citizens who have made their homes elsewhere in Europe; to ensure a transition period on the existing terms; to minimise disruption and avoid an economic cliff edge; to avoid any return to a hard border in Northern Ireland; and to guarantee Parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal.

    This Conservative government has dithered and delayed. Their divisions, their incompetence and their deregulation obsession risk putting jobs and living standards at risk as we leave the EU.

    This is an economy that has already been damaged by eight years of Conservative austerity, where wages are still lower today than they were a decade ago, where productivity lags dangerously behind the other major economies, where the government has failed to invest and modernise, where more people are living in poverty. And where closing the deficit, that was due to be eradicated by 2015, then 2016, then 2017, then 2020 has now had to be put back to 2025.

    After years of Tory bluster and, the Conservatives have been found out. They have no economic plan and they have no Brexit plan.

    Every so often they wheel out Boris Johnson to promise once more that they’ll cough up more money for the NHS after Brexit. But they’ve spent the last 8 years not giving more money to the NHS.

    Even while they’ve been able to find billions of pounds to cut taxes for the richest corporations, to cut capital gains tax for the super-rich elite and to scrap the 50% rate for the richest too, and found billions more to cut inheritance tax on the wealthiest estates and to slash the bank levy.

    Yet the NHS has been subjected to the longest financial squeeze in its history. This is a government that’s failed our NHS, pre-Brexit and during Brexit. And it certainly can’t be trusted with the NHS post-Brexit either.

    Labour will give the NHS the resources it needs, because we will raise tax on the top 5% and big business, those with the broadest shoulders to pay. Not by making up numbers and parading them on the side of a bus.

    And we will use funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services and the jobs of the future, not tax cuts for the richest.

    Today, I want to set out Labour’s approach to Brexit in more detail. How we would do things differently, what our priorities are for the Brexit negotiations and the values that underpin them.

    The first is our overriding mission: that whatever is negotiated must put people’s jobs and living standards first. The Brexit process must not leave our people and country worse off.

    We are committed to building a more prosperous and a more equal Britain, in which every region benefits and no community is left behind, as we set out in our manifesto. And that is what underpins our approach to Brexit.

    The second is unity. Most people in our country, regardless of whether they voted leave of remain want better jobs, more investment, stronger rights and greater equality.

    So we will not let those who want to sow divisions drive this process. No scapegoating of migrants, no setting one generation against another and no playing off the nations of the UK.

    No one should be willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for 20 years of relative peace, development and respect for diversity in Northern Ireland.

    The third is our global perspective. We are leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. We are not throwing up protectionist barriers, closing the borders and barricading ourselves in. And we want a close and cooperative relationship with the whole of Europe after Brexit.

    We are internationalists. We know that our interests are bound up with millions of others across the world, whether that’s in order to tackle the huge challenge of climate change, build a more peaceful world or clamp down on the tax dodging elite, who think by bestriding the globe they can avoid paying their share for vital public services.

    I want to address each of these principles today because together they define Labour’s approach to Brexit the Labour Party’s values and what the next Labour government will seek to deliver in office.

    So many of the areas that voted to Leave are the same areas that have lost out from years of chronic under-investment.

    Areas where too many people are held back by a lack of opportunities, where people feel the system is rigged against them because they can’t get a decent secure job, can’t afford to buy a home, can’t get more hours or higher pay, can’t afford to retire or aren’t able to escape the spiral of debt.

    Labour’s priority is to get the best Brexit deal for jobs and living standards to underpin our plans to upgrade the economy and invest in every community and region. To shift it away from the low pay, low skill, low investment economy it has become. And rebalance that investment across the whole country so that no longer will some regions get a mere one-sixth of the investment that goes to London.

    That is why Labour wants a Brexit for all our people. One that offers security to workers in the car industry worried about their future, hope to families struggling to pay the bills each month and opportunity to young people wanting a decent job and a home of their own.

    Those are the people we are thinking of and working for. It is a different story around the away day table at Chequers.

    The government seems much more concerned about cutting deals with each other and for their friends and funders in the City.

    Labour is looking for a Brexit that puts the working people first. Leaving the EU, whenever that exit date comes, risks delivering a shock to the UK economy unless the right plans and protections are in place to allow the kind of investment and economic transformation programme that the country needs and that Labour is committed to.

    For 45 years our economy has become increasingly linked into the European Union. Many of our laws and regulations are set and monitored by joint European authorities, from implementing rules on use of pesticides to assessing the levels of fluoride in our drinking water.

    The European Food Safety Authority plays a vital role in monitoring the substances used in manufacturing or growing our food using the latest scientific evidence to assess whether substances are likely to have harmful effects on human or animal health. While the European Chemicals Agency carries out the vital task of evaluating and authorising chemicals as safe for use.

    And many businesses have supply chains and production processes, interwoven throughout Europe. Take the UK car industry, which supports 169,000 manufacturing jobs, 52,000 of which are here in the West Midlands.

    If we look at the example of one of Britain’s most iconic brands in this sector, the Mini, we begin to see how reliant our automotive industry is on a frictionless, interwoven supply chain.

    A mini will cross the Channel three times in a 2,000-mile journey before the finished car rolls off the production line. Starting in Oxford it will be shipped to France to be fitted for key components before being brought back to BMW’s Hams Hall plant in Warwickshire where it is drilled and milled into shape.

    Once this process is complete the mini will be sent to Munich to be fitted with its engine, before ending its journey back at the mini plant in Oxford for final assembly.

    If that car is to be sold on the continent then many of its components will have crossed the Channel four times.

    The sheer complexity of these issues demand that we are practical and serious about this next stage.

    I want to pay tribute to Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Barry Gardiner and Emily Thornberry, who are grappling with these issues.

    They are a serious and united team. Now you know I don’t do personal but let me simply say this: that is in some contrast to their opposite numbers.

    It makes no sense for the UK to abandon EU agencies and tariff-free trading rules that have served us well, supporting our industrial sectors, protecting workers and consumers and safeguarding the environment.

    If that means negotiating to support individual EU agencies, rather than paying more to duplicate those agencies here then that should be an option, not something ruled out because of phoney jingoistic posturing.

    So we will want to remain a part of agencies like Euratom, regulating nuclear materials in energy and health sectors and programmes like Erasmus that give students opportunities to study across Europe, because they serve our interests.

    We are leaving the European Union but we will still be working with European partners in the economic interests of this country.

    When 44% of our exports are to EU countries and 50% of our imports come from the EU, then it is in both our interests for that trade to remain tariff-free.

    It would damage businesses that export to Europe and the jobs that depend on those exports for there to be the additional costs of tariffs and it would damage consumers here, already failed by stagnant wages and rising housing costs.

    So we will remain close to the European Union, that’s obvious.

    Every country, whether it’s Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway that is geographically close to the EU, without being an EU member state has some sort of close relationship to the EU. Some more advantageous than others.

    And Britain will need a bespoke, negotiated relationship of its own.

    During the transition period, Labour would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market. That means we would abide by the existing rules of both.

    That is so the government, businesses and workers only have to make one adjustment, from the current situation to the final terms.

    Labour spelled out the need for a stable transition period last summer. Both the TUC and CBI agree. We thought the government had accepted that case but they now seem to be in disarray on the issue again.

    Time after time with this government, anything agreed at breakfast is being briefed against by lunch and abandoned by teatime.

    Disarray is, it seems, the new ‘strong and stable’.

    And the government’s muddle and division risk two costly adjustments for both government and businesses from the current terms to the transition terms and then again to the final terms.

    Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union as the Brexit Secretary, David Davis promised in the House of Commons, with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections.

    We have long argued that a customs union is a viable option for the final deal. So Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland.

    But we are also clear that the option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals.

    A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest.

    Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule takers.

    In contrast the Conservative government has moved from saying it wanted trade with the EU after Brexit to be “tariff-free” to saying it wants trade to be “as tariff-free as possible”.

    In which sectors of the economy and industry does the government think it would be acceptable for there to be tariffs? Like with so much else, they haven’t spelled that out.

    But that is the consequence of ruling out the option of a customs union, which this government has done.

    So I appeal to MPs of all parties, prepared to put the people’s interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting the option of a new UK customs union with the EU, that would give us a say in future trade deals.

    Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards.

    Some seem very keen on downgrading our trading links with Europe. But we do not believe that deals with the US or China, would be likely to compensate for a significant loss of trade with our trading neighbours in the EU, and the government’s own leaked assessments show that.

    Both the US and China have weaker standards and regulations that would risk dragging Britain into a race to the bottom on vital protections and rights at work.

    And Labour is implacably opposed to our NHS or other public services being part of any trade deal with Trump’s America or a revived TTIP-style deal with the EU, which would open the door to a flood of further privatisations.

    And we are not prepared to ask the British public to eat chlorinated chicken and lower the standards of British farming.

    We would ensure there will be no reduction in rights, standards or protections and instead seek to extend them.

    A deregulatory race-to-the-bottom would damage people’s jobs and living standards.

    And Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections.

    That new relationship would need to ensure we can deliver our ambitious economic programme, take the essential steps to intervene, upgrade and transform our economy and build an economy for the 21st century that works for the many, not the few.

    Labour has set out how we would create a National Investment Bank to drive investment in every community through a network of regional development banks so that every area has an industrial strategy, based on investment in a high skill, high wage and high productivity economy

    And through our £500 billion National Transformation Fund we would invest in a decade-long programme of renewal so that Britain has the infrastructure that matches, if not exceeds, that of other major economies.

    In our transport networks, our energy markets and our digital infrastructure, too often Britain lags behind.

    So we would also seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions where necessary in relation to privatisation and public service competition directives state aid and procurement rules and the posted workers directive.

    We cannot be held back inside or outside the EU from taking the steps we need to support cutting edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing or from preventing employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions.

    It was alarming that after the Brexit vote there was a clear rise in xenophobic and racist attacks on our streets.

    The referendum campaign was divisive and some politicians on the Leave side whipped up fears and division in order to further their cause that built on the shameful vans telling immigrants to ‘Go Home’ that the then Home Secretary instructed to trundle round the country stirring up division.

    I remember just after the referendum result receiving a text from a young person in my constituency who had been subjected to abuse in the street for the first time and who was afraid.

    Our immigration system will change and freedom of movement will as a statement of fact end when we leave the European Union.

    But we have also said that in trade negotiations our priorities are growth, jobs and people’s living standards. We make no apologies for putting those aims before bogus immigration targets.

    Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration.

    We would not do what this government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards.

    As Diane Abbott, our Shadow Home Secretary, set out last week, “We do not begin with, ‘how do we reduce immigration?’, and to hell with the consequences. Those are Tory policies and Tory values”.

    Part of the reason why net migration has been relatively high in recent years is because of skills shortages in the UK labour market.

    At the general election, Labour set out plans to invest in a National Education Service with free college and university training to tackle those shortages.

    People do feel frustrated when they are denied opportunities to re-train or improve their skills and employers instead import skilled labour from abroad.

    We will also restore free ESOL courses so that people who come here whether as migrants or refugees can learn English and fully participate in their communities and workplaces.

    We also set out how we would tighten labour market regulations and strengthen trade union rights to tackle the insecurity and exploitation of all workers.

    When migrant workers come to Britain, they must not be exploited or used to undercut or suppress better working conditions or higher pay. Those issues can only be tackled by stronger employment law.

    To stop employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions, collective agreements and sectoral bargaining must become the norm. Labour stands for ‘the rate for the job’, not ‘a race to the bottom’.

    But let’s also be crystal clear it is not migrants that drive down wages, it is bad employers that cut pay and bad governments that allow workers to be divided and undermined, and want unions to be weak and passive.

    We will strengthen our employment law invest in the skills of workers in Britain so they can progress, and we will oppose all those who instead of seeking to solve problems seek to scapegoat instead.

    The devolution of the last Labour government completed the peace process in Northern Ireland, which we must cherish. The Good Friday Agreement was a great achievement and I pay tribute to the work done by Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam and all sides in Northern Ireland to secure that Agreement.

    We must continue to support the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to ensure we maintain the situation of no hard border in Northern Ireland.

    The previous Labour government also brought powers closer to home in Scotland and Wales establishing the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

    And so, Labour believes that powers over devolved policy areas currently exercised by the EU should go directly to the relevant devolved body after Brexit, so that power is closer to the people.

    That is the same principle that informs the regional development banks that the next Labour government will deliver.

    The constitution of the Labour Party includes a commitment to support the United Nations.

    A promise “to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all” Some want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself, seeing everyone as a feared competitor.

    Others want to use Brexit to put rocket boosters under our current economic system’s insecurities and inequalities, turning Britain into a deregulated corporate tax haven with low wages, limited rights, and cut-price public services in what would be a destructive race to the bottom.

    Labour stands for a completely different future drawing on the best internationalist traditions of the labour movement and our country.

    We want to see close and cooperative relationships with our European neighbours, outside the EU based on our values of internationalism, solidarity and equality, as well as mutual benefit and fair trade.

    We are proud that Britain was an original signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1948 and in 1998 Labour’s Human Rights Act enshrined it in our law.

    So Labour will continue to work with other European allies including through the Council of Europe to ensure our country and others uphold our international obligations.

    We must work with other countries to advance the cause of human rights to confront the four greatest and interconnected threats facing our common humanity:

    First, the growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite.

    We must challenge that working with our European neighbours to stop those who would play one country off against another or those who hide their wealth offshore to avoid paying their dues.

    Second, climate change which is creating instability and fuelling conflict across the world and threatening all our futures.

    No matter how much we enforce them pollution stubbornly refuses to respect our borders.

    We can only tackle climate change, pollution and environmental degradation by working together and many of our closest allies in that struggle are in Europe.

    The Green Alliance estimates that trade in low carbons good and services contributed over £42 billion to the economy in 2015.

    The UK low carbon and renewable energy sector was expected to increase fivefold by 2030 potentially bringing 2 million jobs and contributing more than 8% of the UK’s total output.

    But that needs us to maintain our standards to ensure barrier-free trade of low carbon goods.

    These include eco-design and energy labelling standards, greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles, the internal energy market, construction product standards, chemicals regulation and nuclear safety and safeguards.

    So the importance of getting our Brexit settlement right is vital in this area both in terms of Britain’s industrial role in reducing climate change and in terms of protecting jobs and industry.

    Third, the unprecedented numbers of people fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights abuses, social breakdown and climate disasters.

    The global refugee crisis and there are 65 million refugees across the world that crisis is a challenge, much of which is on the borders of Europe and that challenge can be met by co-ordinating with our European neighbours, both to crack down on the people smugglers who put men, women and children to sea in unseaworthy vessels.

    And as Operation Sophia tried to rescue those from the seas around Europe as too many desperate people are drowning in pursuit of sanctuary. These are people who are simply seeking refuge from cruelty and suffering they want to make a contribution and, but for accident of birth, it could be any of us.

    I pay tribute too to the role of the Royal Navy for their contribution in the Mediterranean.

    And finally, I want to briefly address the use of unilateral military action and intervention rather than diplomacy and negotiation to resolve disputes and change governments.

    Let us learn the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and be clear that we will not take our country down the road of regime change wars again.

    The real answer is genuine international cooperation, which confronts the root causes of conflict, persecution and inequality, and we will continue to play a role in partnership with the EU in that effort.

    We live in a globalised world, the lives we lead are dependent on the work of others and our trade with those from around the world.

    Many of us have friends and family that are from or who live in other parts of the world.

    In contrast to the Prime Minister who said, “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.

    We believe in fact that we can only fully achieve what we want to as citizens of Britain by also recognising we are “citizens of the world”.

    I have long opposed the embedding of free market orthodoxy and the democratic deficit in the European Union, and that is why I campaigned to ‘remain and reform’ in the referendum campaign.

    Scepticism is healthy especially when dealing with politicians or the received wisdom of the political and media establishment, but often the term “Eurosceptic” in reality became synonymous with “anti-European”.

    And I am not anti-European at all, I want to see close and progressive cooperation with the whole of Europe after Brexit.

    Labour is the Party of the new common sense on the economy, on public services and on Brexit.

    The only party which recognises the world has changed these last ten years and know we cannot continue with widening inequality deregulation of industry and privatisation of public services.

    We are in a country where Tory-run councils are collapsing because of cuts. Where homeless people are dying on the streets in the shadow of the Parliament. Where good jobs are being lost, because we have a government that will not get a grip on the casino economy.

    In or out of the European Union, we have to deal with that reality, the reality of market failure and austerity.

    The free market has not worked in the banking sector. It has not worked in the water industry. It has not worked in the energy utilities. It has crashed in out-sourcing and it has failed our fragmented railways. And it has led to a labour market where abuse is rife.

    The European Union is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems.

    Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom for our country.

    There will be some who will tell you that Brexit is a disaster for this country and some who will tell you that Brexit will create a land of milk and honey.

    The truth is more down to earth and it’s in our hands.

    Brexit is what we make of it together, the priorities and choices we make in the negotiations.

    This Conservative government is damaging our country and their priorities for Brexit risk increasing the damage.

    But I also know, what a Labour government could do for this country and that our priorities for Brexit negotiations are the right ones, to create a country that works for the many not the few.

    Thank you.

  • Edward Timpson – 2014 Speech at BASW Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the then Children’s Minister, at the BASW Conference on 10 June 2014.

    Thanks, Bridget [Bridget Robb, BASW Chief Executive], it’s a pleasure to be here.

    Many of those speaking here today will, quite rightly, pay tribute to what an incredible, inspiring, life-changing job all of you do – and I can only add my own gratitude and admiration.

    But social work has a personal resonance for me that goes beyond politics, beyond my role as a minister.

    Having grown up with around 90 foster children – 2 of whom we adopted – and worked as a family lawyer in the care system for 10 years, I’ve seen up close and personal the pressures that social workers are under – and also the wonders they can work in the most desperate circumstances. It’s something I always remind myself of when I see social workers being pilloried.

    I remember, as a young child, social workers coming to our home so regularly that on occasion I naively thought they were family friends. But what I also saw were social workers (as I now know them to be) coming round irrespective of the time day or night, to settle in a new foster child fulfil a long-distance contact arrangement or deal with another emergency on their watch.

    And I’ll never forget the look of sheer relief on the face of a social worker who arrived at our house to drop off 9-month-old triplets having ended a desperate search for a suitable placement. An example of never knowing what the life of a social worker and a foster family can throw at you.

    And later, in my work in the family courts, there were many times I sat alongside social workers making difficult and momentous decisions that would change lives and having to justify them both in and out of court. Often cooped up in a stuffy conference room for most of the day, planning, negotiating, resolving conflict, seeking legal advice, seeking out a sandwich, all whilst trying to juggle the other cases outside of court they were responsible for. A tough environment and a tough job.

    So I understand better than most what you’re up against and the hard work and dedication it takes to deliver for our most vulnerable children. Now I’m not in the business of ignorantly criticising the social work profession. Yes, I think it needs improvement. Yes, I think we can do better. And yes, I think the structures you work in are often outdated and don’t support you as they should. But I’m not negative about the profession as a whole.

    Because, as the Prime Minister has also acknowledged, you carry out some of the most important work in our society – work that’s on a par with other front-line professionals – doctors, nurses, police and firefighters – who save lives.

    But, as we know, too often you only get public recognition for the bad things – when things go wrong. I’m keen to work with you to break this cycle, to build public confidence in the profession so you can get on with doing what you came into social work to do: your best for our most vulnerable families.

    It’s why we’ve supported Frontline and Step Up, programmes which both, in their way, are changing the image of social work; making it an aspirational profession rather than one which has too often been viewed by the public as a last-choice career. So it’s hugely encouraging that Frontline received 2700 applications for its first 100 posts, all of them from top graduates. That shows that we can change the image of the profession.

    But it isn’t just about image, as you all know well. I also want to change the way social work operates. It’s right to say that we’ve made some progress already in reducing red tape and freeing you from unduly restrictive assessment timescales. But as social workers I’ve met on recent visits have told me, there’s no point us telling you we’ve removed a timescale if you’re spending your life filling in forms.

    And there’s no point claiming that our new graduates to the profession are going to change the way we do things, if they end up operating in the same old unchanged structures of the past – undersupervised, overwhelmed by the responsibility of individual case-holding, exhausted within a few years and looking for a way out.

    The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Work’s Inquiry into the State of Social Work, published by BASW last December, rightly picks up some of these themes too.

    And that’s why our innovation programme is so important. It’s our attempt to free you from traditional structures which I believe have held the social work profession back.

    We want to trust you to innovate and raise standards – as we do other professionals in health and in education – and not just when things are going wrong, but when they’re going right.

    This isn’t about privatisation, as I’ve read a couple of times. If we wanted to privatise failing local authority children’s social care departments, we already can. The legislation already exists. But the fact is that we’ve never done it.

    The innovation programme isn’t about failure. It’s about improving the adequate and the good – making them better, good, even great. It’s about letting you show us what you can do to raise standards if we liberate you from the same old structures that social work has operated in for so long. I want to see new partnerships with the third sector, with the private sector too if they can find a role to play – but driven by you, social workers and councils. This isn’t something that’s going to be imposed from the top. It’s the front line that needs to be in the driving seat, helping design services that are unashamedly geared towards the interests of children.

    Look at Kingston and Richmond – an entirely new community interest company set up outside the local authorities to deliver social care for children in the two boroughs. This has been set up in the interests of children – and only for their benefit.

    But I’m alive to the debate within the sector – and I know BASW’s own consultation response highlighted several concerns – and we will look carefully at what we can do to take account of concerns raised about profiteering by the private sector, but without limiting too far the freedom I want to give you.

    Because, this freedom we’re trying to offer to social workers to create new, innovative modes of service delivery is an expression of our faith in you.

    Why can’t social workers – like the ground-breaking Evolve YP practice, or local authorities – be trusted with any flexibility, any freedom at all in how they deliver services?

    Family doctors – independent contractors to the NHS – are trusted with it. Academies – free to innovate subject to the same inspection regime as other schools – are trusted with it. But why not social workers? I find it frustrating that this case still needs making, so would welcome, really welcome it if the profession did more to stand up for itself here. And if you do, you have my support.

    Because what we’re doing is freeing you, but yes also challenging you as never before, to do what you do even better. Which is why the proposals have been supported by the LGA, by SOLACE and to a large extent by ADCS – none of them exactly market radicals!

    Anyway, I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more of this debate in weeks to come so I won’t labour it any more today, but I would ask you all to think about it and ask yourselves: why shouldn’t we be trusted with greater flexibility? Why does innovation have to be imposed from the top down and only when local authorities have failed, rather than us being allowed to develop it from the bottom up, to make good services better?

    Isabelle Trowler, our Chief Social Worker, who spoke at the BASW AGM in April, worked from the bottom up in Hackney to transform services there. Reclaiming Social Work has been an effective model and offers an approach which others are considering around the country. We’ve had a number of bids into the innovation programme aiming to do similar things, and I‘m encouraged by that.

    Isabelle’s now leading the work recommended by Sir Martin Narey, working with children and family social workers to identify and define what a children’s social worker needs to know and be able to do. We’ll be consulting on this in July, and I’m sure that BASW will wish to contribute.

    And we’ll be piloting around the country the licence to practise, to see whether that is a better way of testing the high skills levels needed in the toughest areas of child and family social work which are critical to secure safer, better lives for children.

    I’m also pleased to announce today that we’re supporting another cohort of Step Up to Social Work as well. It will begin in January 2016.

    Step up has been a big success – producing 415 new social workers, with another 304 currently undergoing training in 75 local authorities.

    According to an evaluation by Kings College London, an impressive 93% of those who completed the course have got a job in social work. And a whopping 97% of this second cohort of trainees, who come from varied backgrounds, tell us that the combination of intensive hands-on experience, academy study and close supervision left them well prepared to begin work. To quote a Step Up trainee Jessica, a manager with a background in youth work:

    I’ve been raving about Step Up to all my friends and family, I’m really impressed and grateful to be on such a high quality course with such dedicated staff supporting us.

    Jessica had previously been considering a move into social work, but wasn’t sure if she had the relevant skills and how she could cope financially with a more traditional entry route. Step Up has proved to be the perfect fit. We’ve had teachers and Samaritans, nursery nurses and legal executives, even a forensic examiner, joining the course.

    So it’s hardly surprising that, as with Frontline, demand for places is high; with an unprecedented 3,633 applications for a little over 300 places in 2013. We receive over 200 inquiries a week about joining. So for this fourth cohort starting in January 2016, I’d like to encourage councils who haven’t yet participated to join in. We’ll be contacting all the local authorities currently participating – so if you want to join, please contact us.

    Because, aside from the benefits for its trainees, Step Up stands out thanks to the way in which it gives councils the opportunity to take the lead on training social workers and raising standards.

    But it’s worth remembering that when it launched in 2010, Step Up was seen as controversial and ground breaking. A bit of a daring leap.

    And that’s exactly the leap I’m asking you to make when I urge you to contribute to the new children’s social care innovation programme. There’s £30 million available this financial year, and there’ll be more the following year, if the ideas are there to merit it. We want your proposals for how to develop and spread new, more effective ways of supporting vulnerable children. They don’t have to involve delivering services outside of the local authority – in fact we expect very many of the projects we fund will be about transforming things within local authorities.

    We want people from every area – local authorities, social enterprises, companies, not-for-profit bodies – to come forward with their most ambitious, most adventurous ideas.

    We’ll help develop, test and look to expand the most promising schemes; providing whatever tailored support is needed.

    And although we welcome proposals for all areas of care, we’ve decided to focus particularly on two: rethinking support for adolescents in or on the edge of care, and rethinking how children’s social work operates.

    But the innovation programme isn’t just about supporting a bright idea here and there.

    It’s about creating the conditions where innovation can thrive throughout the system. Increasing incentives to excel. Removing blocks that stand in your way. And allowing the best in the field to expand and spread what works.

    This isn’t – as you may have read – about ideology. It’s about what works.

    We do hope that some people will ask how we can “combine the skills of local authorities with the best of the voluntary and commercial sector”.

    These aren’t my words. They’re the words of Alan Wood, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and also Director of Children Services in Hackney.

    Frankly, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

    So, let me stress again, this isn’t about privatisation and nor is it about centralisation. It’s not about the government taking decisions and overriding local decision making.

    It’s not about government letting giant contracts to big companies and losing sight of what – or rather who – really matters: the children.

    But it is about saying to councils that they can decide how best to manage their children’s social care – by removing artificial restrictions. It’s the outcomes you achieve, not the structures you work in, that matter.

    Some of our major children’s charities have welcomed the initiative, though I accept that several are anxious about private sector involvement and are keen for more discussion about the practical implications. And that’s absolutely right that that happens.

    As Javed Khan, Barnardo’s’ new chief executive has said:

    The future has got to be about how you invite an organisation like Barnardo’s to the table of the thinking, the planning, the rethinking and then service commissioning.

    It is organisations like Barnardo’s that are big enough, experienced enough, knowledgeable enough about what the right thing to do is from the frontline that can be part of that right at the start as a strategic partner.

    So my conclusion is simple. I want to do whatever it takes to help you to put children’s needs first. But you have to seize the opportunity here. It won’t be there forever – the money behind the innovation programme is only available for two years although we hope its impact will last a lot longer than that. So we’ll be seeking to spread the best ideas around the country and embed them in practice.

    I’m under no illusions about the pressures you’re under to meet ever-growing demand for your services and I am genuinely grateful for all that you do. I only need to cast my mind back to some of the almost impossible situations social workers involved with my own family had to try and resolve over the last 30 years to appreciate the sacrifices you make in the pursuit of giving every child the protection, care and bright future they deserve.

    But I’m also challenging you to do better, and offering you help and support if you want to step up and take it.

    My hope is that we can work together to do this and give the most vulnerable children in our society what we want for own children – nothing but the best.

    Thank you.

  • Edward Timpson – 2012 Speech on the Catalysation of Childhood

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the then Children’s Minister, on 17 October 2012.

    Thanks for that kind introduction Mark. It’s a pleasure to be here.

    This morning I want to concentrate on some of the big challenges facing parents, politicians and industry leaders in making sure advertising and media doesn’t catalyse children into adults too quickly.

    Some of these challenges are still very new to us. We don’t know what impact they’ll have on children in the years ahead. Others are far more familiar. These are the age-old issues that parents have been fretting over for decades and continue to fret over today.

    So on the one hand we have the march of weird and wonderful – sometimes frankly bizarre – technologies that are transforming the way our children access information and socialise. I read an article in The Telegraph the other day about a puffer jacket that automatically expands to give you a hug when someone likes your Facebook status. I’ve resisted the temptation to buy one…

    On the other hand, we have what might be classified as the ‘bad penny’ challenges. The ones that keep on turning up over the years. Issues over the messages young people are exposed to in the home or in the street. Swearing, violence, sex or inappropriate imagery.

    Neither challenge – whether originating in the 21st century or 20th – is remotely simple to deal with.

    So I’d like to offer my real appreciation to the Advertising Association, and its members, for their thoughtful, positive engagement with Government on the Bailey Review over the last year.

    It is very difficult for those not directly involved – and I have to include myself here – to appreciate fully the very fine judgements involved in regulating advertising and media.

    Arbitrating over matters of public taste and decency is not remotely straightforward: particularly when opinion varies so subtly between the regions, sexes and generations – even between parents. One person’s supreme indifference can easily be another’s grave concern.

    In this context, I must applaud the industry as a whole – including major brands and retailers – for their intelligent approach over the last year in tackling the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

    Thanks to your leadership, we are now making steady progress against most of Reg Bailey’s major recommendations. Better than that, we are making swift progress.

    In the space of a few short months, you have made it simpler for parents to navigate media regulation with the launch of Parent Port. Only a year after its launch, a good proportion of parents already know about it. A great achievement.

    On top of this, the ASA has issued new guidelines on outdoor ads: aimed at reducing children’s exposure to provocative on-street advertising.

    Internet Service Providers are making it easier for parents to police the material their children see online.

    The Advertising Association has been working with Media Smart to develop the excellent new Digital Adwise Parent Pack – which is being previewed today ahead of its public launch later this month – to give parents invaluable guidance on digital advertising.

    And the industry is meeting parents’ expectations better when it comes to pre-watershed TV, with new guidelines issued for TV and radio.

    These achievements deserve considerable fanfare and fireworks. So my thanks again for your positive engagement with government – and my congratulations.

    Over the last year, we have seen that advertising in the UK has some of the most rigorous protections for children in the world. It is exceptionally well regulated. It is responsive. It is effective. It is regarded globally as the gold-standard for all others to follow.

    From a personal perspective, I have no desire at all to rock this particular boat. I am firmly of the belief that heavy handed and unnecessary government regulation of the ad industry is to be avoided.

    But looking ahead, it’s vitally important that advertisers and the wider business community continue to contribute towards, and lead, this debate. I’m very keen on the ‘work together’ approach espoused by today’s conference.

    So it is encouraging to see so many major brands here, alongside advertising agencies and the media. And to see them put pen to paper on improved ways of working.

    The industry’s pledge, led by the Advertising Association, on reducing commercial pressures on children – restricting the recruitment of under-16s as brand ambassadors or peer-to-peer marketers – is a case in point: embraced by global brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Unilever.

    On top of this, it is refreshing to see so many of the UK’s leading high street chains drawing up their code of good practice – through the British Retail Consortium – on appropriate retailing to children, including the design, materials and display of children’s clothes.

  • Edward Timpson – 2011 Speech about Children in Care

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the Conservative MP for Crewe and Nantwich, in the House of Commons on 10 February 2011.

    Mr Speaker, I should like to begin by thanking you for granting this short but none the less invaluable and timely debate on improving outcomes for children in care. With Eileen Munro’s final report on child protection due out in April, the spotlight on looked-after children in this country is rightly intensifying, as we strive to narrow not the gap but the chasm that still exists between the life chances of children in care and others. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on looked-after children and care leavers, I was disappointed not to be able to contribute to the recent excellent Backbench Business Committee debate on disadvantaged children, which was opened with great force by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). I am therefore delighted to have this opportunity to speak up for all those children and young people in care.

    I also declare an interest as a non-practising family law barrister specialising in care cases and, perhaps more importantly, as someone who shared their home for more than 30 years with 90 foster children and two adopted brothers. I have no doubt that that experience not only shaped and hardened my strong sense of social justice but propelled what some would argue was my misplaced desire to come to this place and fight for better outcomes for children in care. Indeed, I had no hesitation in using my maiden speech almost three years ago to do just that.

    I want to pay a warm—and, I stress, in no way sycophantic—tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is replying to the debate today. He has shown a profound interest in and deep knowledge of this subject. In government, he has embarked on the direct, purposeful, common-sense programme of reform that he advocated in opposition. As he has said, the programme is committed to

    “infusing the entire care system with a culture of aspiration, hope and optimism for each young person”.

    I am sure that his recent appearance before the all-party group, when more than 100 passionate young people came to Parliament to make their views known directly—and, on occasion, quite forcefully—to the Minister, did not put him off his stride. Instead, I am sure that the experience provided him with ample proof of the importance of the work that he has undertaken.

    I am sure that much of what I am about to say will sound as though I am teaching the Minister to suck eggs, but I hope to persuade him that, in supporting his efforts, there is even more we can do to help children in care to overcome the odds that are still so heavily stacked against them. Let us look at the facts. Looked-after ​children are four times more likely than others to receive the help of mental health services, nine times more likely to have special needs requiring assessment, support and therapy, seven times more likely to misuse alcohol and drugs, 50 times more likely to end up in prison, 60 times more likely to become homeless, and 66 times more likely to have children of their own who will need public care. As if that were not enough, there are four times fewer children in care getting five good GCSEs including English and maths than their peers.

    The financial and societal cost of those appalling statistics is heavy. According to Demos’s recent report “In Loco Parentis”, published last year, a young person who leaves care at 16 with poor mental health and no recognised qualifications could cost the state more than five times as much as one who leaves care with good mental health and strong relationships and who goes on to university or an apprenticeship and finds a job. The costs to society are, perhaps, immeasurable.

    I recognise that there are a number of counter-arguments to the picture that I have just painted. We must exercise a degree of caution about making direct, unqualified comparisons between children who have been through the care system and those who have not. In too many cases, children who enter the care system are already deeply damaged by their early-life experiences, which even the best possible care might be unable to unravel and overcome by the time they reach adulthood. We must therefore be careful to view such children’s outcomes in that context.

    We must also acknowledge the tremendous amount of fantastic care and support that is benefiting thousands of children in care every day. I have seen it and lived with it myself; I have witnessed at first hand what good parenting and appropriate emotional support can achieve. We should not forget that there are many children whose time in care was an enriching life-changing experience that led to a successful career and a fulfilling personal life. We need to be better and more open about accentuating the positive work that is done and not drag all those who work in the care system down with the structural failures within it.

    In many ways, we do not have a single care system, but more of a fragmented patchwork of care systems where good practice thrives in some parts of the country, despite the design of the system. In other areas, however, as noted in the Select Committee report on looked-after children during the last Parliament:

    “The quality of experience that children have in care seems to be governed by luck to an…unacceptable degree”.

    Let us be clear. As I know the Minister accepts and appreciates, there is no quick fix. This is going to require a cross-party commitment over a generation to build a care system that is proactive, responsive, joined up and brimming with high-quality multidisciplinary support, giving a real and enduring priority to improving outcomes for children both in and on the edge of care.

    As Sean Cameron and Colin Maginn lay down in their paper of March 2007:

    “The challenge for social work is to provide the quality of care and support that is to be found not just in the average family home, but also in the most functional of families.”

    So how do we achieve that end?

    Based on strong body of evidence and research by Demos, the three main factors associated with achieving the most positive experiences of care and the best ​outcomes for looked-after children are: first, early intervention and minimal delay; secondly, stability during care; and, thirdly, supported transitions into independence. This is backed up by Mike Stein of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who similarly identified the priorities for ensuring resilience and well-being for looked-after children in later life as preventing children entering the care system through pre-care intervention, improving their care experience and supporting young people’s transitions from care.

    The fact is that we need a comprehensive response at all stages of childhood, but there is unquestionably in my mind, amid a growing consensus, the need for a strong emphasis on and commitment to early intervention and prevention, which are absolutely key. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—a standard bearer for all things early intervention—said in his latest report, which was commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, that

    “we need to rebalance the current culture of ‘late reaction’ to social problems to help create the essential social and emotional bedrock for all children to reap the social, individual and economic rewards.”

    To that end, I welcome the Government’s financial commitment to that programme through the early-intervention grant, the expansion of family nurse partnerships and the widening of free nursery care for two-year-olds. Like others, I would also want to highlight the superb work done by Home-Start in my Crewe and Nantwich constituency and across the country to help families struggling with the demands of very young children. They deserve proper and longer-term support, so I look forward to the Minister taking the opportunity today to reiterate that to local authorities in no uncertain terms.

    By getting in early before problems become entrenched, Action for Children and the New Economics Foundation have calculated a potential saving to the economy of £486 billion over 20 years—imagine that. Just as relevant would be the transformation of life chances for so many young people. The brutal truth is, however, that even with more targeted and consistent preventive work, there will still be children who need the state to intervene in their lives. For them, stability is the foundation stone.

    Young people who experience stable placements providing good-quality care are far more likely to succeed educationally, to be in work, to settle in and manage their accommodation after leaving care, to feel better about themselves and to achieve satisfactory social integration into adulthood than young people who have experienced further movement and disruption during their time in care. With stability comes the security as well as the time for children to develop those all-important secure attachments, but much of that is undermined by frequent and disruptive moves, which are too often a feature of a child’s experience in care. As one year 8 child in care put it:

    “What was the point in trying to please people, because you would just get moved on again?”

    Children need and want a sense of belonging, of family, to feel reciprocal emotional warmth and to have someone who loves them unconditionally and believes in them.​

    It is true that in recent years there has been a small drop in the number of looked-after children with three or more placements during the year, but there is still a long way to go. We are short of about 10,000 foster carers. Given that foster placements make up about three quarters of all care placements, and given that in 2010 the number of looked-after children stood at 64,400—up 6% on 2009—a relentless recruitment and retention drive for foster carers remains crucial if we are to increase the prospect of providing every child with the right placement, rather than providing the right child for the placement.

    However, foster carers are only part of the stability equation. The recruitment and retention of social workers continues to cause concern, which is the driving force behind the Government’s new “step up to social work” scheme. With a high staff churn rate comes more instability for the child. That is not new. Lord Laming, Moira Gibb and, most recently, Eileen Munro have produced reports in the last few years that pinpoint the tick-box culture that has spread its tentacles across social work and has sapped the morale and professional judgment of social workers. Eileen Munro hit the nail on the head when she said:

    “Compliance with regulation and rules often drives professional practice more than sound judgment drawn from freed up social workers spending meaningful time interacting and building a trusting relationship with children, young people and families.”

    As the Minister has said previously, taking a child into care is not a science but a subjective judgment. To be able to make that and other judgments correctly requires experience, consistency, and the time and space that make it possible to really understand the needs of a particular child. A change of social worker every five minutes will not lead to good child-focused decisions. But it does not have to be that way.

    I am conducting a cross-party inquiry into the educational attainment of looked-after children, with the welcome support of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and Lord Listowel. A few weeks ago we visited Hackney children’s services to observe the way in which children’s social care in the borough had undergone a complete shift in the culture of practice and management by reclaiming social work through the establishment of social work units. There are teams consisting of a social worker, a family therapist, a children’s practitioner, a unit co-ordinator who takes all the red tape out of the hands of the social worker, and a consultant social worker who, under the old system, would have gone into management and had little or no contact with children of families, but is now using his or her experience on the front line.

    The results have been dramatic. We have seen a reduction in the number of looked-after children from 470 to 270, a reduction in the number of agency staff from 50% to just 7%, a 50% reduction in sickness levels, a 5% reduction in overall costs, high levels of morale, and a strong increase in academic achievement among the children in the care of those teams. That example of best practice shows what is possible at a lower cost. Other local authorities have shown an interest in copying the model, but let us make sure that they all know about it. The Government have rightly embarked on a trial of flexible assessment time scales enabling social workers to exercise their professional judgment more effectively, and I note that Hackney council is among those taking part.​

    Despite those welcome initiatives, the lines of accountability in local authorities remain cluttered, blurred and confusing. Local safeguarding children boards, directors of children’s services, children’s trusts, children in care councils, virtual school heads, corporate parenting boards, independent reviewing officers and others are all there to champion the voice of the vulnerable child, but, as Roger Morgan, the children’s rights director, will confirm, many children in care feel that their voices are lost in the myriad management decisions being made in their name. The problem needs to be sorted out. I would welcome a commitment from the Minister to look formally into how the voice of children in care can be better and more clearly represented, so that all who act as corporate parents have them constantly at the forefront of their thoughts, words and deeds.

    I mentioned my current inquiry into the educational attainment of looked-after children. I do not want to pre-empt its outcome, but the very fact of its existence demonstrates the central role that education plays in improving outcomes for children in care. Evidence that the inquiry has taken from young people in or leaving care suggests strongly that when they have had a stable educational experience not only are their prospects of future employability and independent living greatly enhanced, but their self-esteem, confidence and belief in themselves are significantly boosted. That is why I am reassured by the Government’s guarantees that all looked-after children will receive the pupil premium, and that that additional money will be attached—metaphorically speaking—to all children wherever their education is taking place. However, it would be remiss of me not to add a further plea to my hon. Friend the Minister. If it is right that the personal education allowance is to be rolled into the pupil premium, I urge him to make robust representations to his ministerial colleagues in the Department and the Treasury and to put to them the compelling case for looked-after children to receive an additional sum—a pupil premium-plus, as it were—to reflect their often acute problems, and therefore their heightened need for one-to-one support, psychological input such as cognitive behavioural therapy and other specific interventions relevant to ensuring their prospects at school are not compromised in any way by their looked-after status.

    Good quality support does reap rewards. We need only look at the achievements of the Horizon centre in Ealing, which was opened by the Minister and which I recently visited. Through offering young people in and leaving care a safe space where they can get financial, emotional and psychological support, and education and training, the centre has helped to increase the number of children in Ealing borough going to university from 7% to almost 20%. It is an example to others that the transition from care into independence can be successful with the right level and length of support. The so-called cliff-edge that many children leaving care face needs to become a thing of the past, and be replaced by an appropriate and incremental release of support backed up by a safety net when needed, something their peers—who on average do not now leave home until the age of 25—often take for granted, me included. Why should looked-after children be any different?

    If time had allowed, I would have wanted to cover much more ground, but before giving the Minister his opportunity to reply, there are four specific issues I want him to respond to in detail, if not today, then at a ​later date. First, we need to widen the range and choice of care. At present, about 14% of looked-after children are in a residential setting. That may be too high, or it may be too low; I simply do not know. Yet in Denmark and Germany more than half of looked-after children are in residential care. Why the huge difference? Is residential care in our country now seen as a placement of last resort? As my hon. Friend the Minister has said, there is scope for seeing whether a greater use of children’s homes is appropriate. The Select Committee report on looked-after children to which I have referred stated that

    “the potential of the residential sector to offer high quality, stable placements for a minority of young people is too often dismissed. With enforcement of higher standards, greater investment in skills, and a reconsideration of the theoretical basis for residential care, we believe that it could make a significant contribution to good quality placement choice for young people.”

    Indeed, the New Economics Foundation report, “A False Economy”, estimated that for every pound invested in providing an appropriate residential placement leading to good outcomes, a return of between £4 and £7 was created for the economy. With the continued shortage of foster carers and the hit-and-miss aspect of matching children to the right placement still prevalent, I invite the Minister to consider seriously the case for a full and proper national review of residential care, to ensure we can be confident that we are offering children the right placement for them, not simply the only placement available.

    Secondly, on looked-after children in custody, I urge the Minister to look urgently at ending the continuing and unjustified anomaly whereby, unlike a child placed under a care order, a looked-after child who was voluntary accommodated prior to custody loses their looked-after status on entering custody and therefore the support of their social worker and other key professionals. I know that people’s minds have been on prisons for another reason today, but this is a serious issue that merits action. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister spoke in favour of putting this discrepancy right during the Committee stage of the Bill that became the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, so I hope that now he is in a position to do something about it, he will do so.

    Thirdly, I echo the words of Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the family division, who has called for the prioritising of children’s cases in court above all other family law proceedings, especially judicial decisions on placement in care and adoption. I am aware that there is currently a review of all aspects of family law, so I hope this plea from our most senior family judge does not go unheeded.

    Fourthly, more than 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are being looked after by local authorities, but there continue to be concerns about their access to fundamental services such as education, as well as their vulnerability to trafficking. I know the Minister is vexed by this issue and trust he will look into it closely.

    I do not doubt that this Government and all previous Governments of whatever political hue have been, and are, determined to improve outcomes for children in care. So am I. With the tightening of purse-strings, the temptation for some will be to continue on a course of crisis management. My message to the Government, local authorities and all those who work with children in care is this: “Be bold, be smart and, above all, show you really care.”​

  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2018 Speech on the Eider Duck

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Conservative MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2018.

    After all that excitement, I hope now to take the House in a slightly different direction.

    We might think of St Francis of Assisi as the original saintly animal conservationist but, although St Francis preached to the birds, Northumberland’s own St Cuthbert is popularly believed to have taken steps way back in the 8th century to ensure that some of Northumberland’s eider duck population enjoyed his personal protection.

    There are a number of animal stories attached to St Cuthbert. A famous episode in Bede’s “Life of St Cuthbert” involved Cuthbert standing neck-deep in the sea and praying, after which two otters came and dried his feet with their fur. The animals were rewarded with a blessing and went on their way.

    Perhaps the animal most associated with St Cuthbert today is the eider duck, or Cuddy duck—Cuddy being a shortened form of Cuthbert. The first we hear of their association with Cuthbert is in the 12th century, some 500 years after his death. The monks had a small cell and chapel on the island of Inner Farne, one of the beautiful Farne islands in my constituency that are now visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. The monks shared this island home with a large nesting population of eider ducks. Cuthbert is said to have tamed the ducks so well that they would nest everywhere, even next to the chapel altar, without fear.

    Cuthbert also placed the ducks under his protective grace, so that no one should eat or even disturb them. Every spring, on the many Farne islands and on Coquet island, all in my constituency, Mrs Eider and her babies can be found snuggled into a shallow hole in the ground, safe from predators thanks to island life and the careful and diligent work of the RSPB and the National Trust rangers who look after the island reserves.

    The ducks cannot have remained entirely undisturbed by the monks, as we note the appearance in inventories made of Cuthbert’s shrine at Durham of cushions made of “Cuthbert doun”—downy feathers from St Cuthbert’s eider ducks on Farne. Perhaps the sacred purpose of the plucked feathers excused the necessary disturbance to the ducks. Certainly, other monks who had eaten or harassed Farne’s eiders were struck down by Cuthbert’s curse, with one even dying after mocking the saint’s protection.

    So it is that the association with place is very strong and that I have the great privilege of being the eider duck’s advocate today. In St Cuthbert’s time, only the Cuddy ducks of Inner Farne were protected; the eider ducks on the other islands were not protected. Today, in modern protection terms, many other species of our spectacular island birdlife are protected but not the eider duck.

    The creation in recent years of 50 marine conservation zones by this Government, with more planned, would no doubt receive the approval of St Cuthbert, as the delineated zones along my constituency’s unique coastline provide protection for wildlife and our marine environment. The MCZs have been created to protect ​important marine wildlife and their habitats, and they form part of what is now popularly known as the “blue belt.”

    Our spectacular Northumberland coast is teeming with wildlife, from seabirds as rare as the roseate tern to my personal favourite, the delightful and slightly ungainly puffin—she flies like a fast jet—to porpoises, grey seals, dolphins and even the occasional whale. And that is just what can be glimpsed from above the water. Below the surface, Northumberland’s blue belt is a bustling city of crustaceans and molluscs, alongside an extensive and healthy fish population.

    It is wonderful that the creation of MCZs means that our rich and diverse sea life will now be further protected from the effects of dredging and trawling, so that many more future generations can enjoy, explore and learn about nature’s world under the waves. But St Cuthbert would be disappointed to discover that within the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ lies the uninhabited—by humans, at least—Coquet island, which does not yet include the eider duck among its protected species.

    The common eider is a large sea-duck that is distributed over the northern coasts of Europe, North America and all the way to eastern Siberia. It breeds in Arctic and some northern temperate regions, but winters farther south, in temperate zones, when it can form large flocks on coastal waters. Our cuddy duck can fly at speeds of up to 70 mph. The eider’s nest is built close to the sea and is lined with eiderdown, plucked from the female’s breast. This soft and warm lining has long been harvested for filling pillows and quilts. Although eiderdown pillows or quilts are now a rarity, eiderdown harvesting continues and is sustainable, when it is done after the ducklings leave the nest with no harm to the birds.

    The common eider is both the largest of the four eider species and the largest duck found in Europe and in North America. The male is unmistakable, with his black and white plumage and green nape. The female is a brown bird, but can still be readily distinguished from all ducks. This species dives for crustaceans and molluscs, with mussels being a favourite food. The eider will eat mussels by swallowing them whole; the shells are then crushed in the gizzard and excreted. When eating a crab, the eider will remove all its claws and legs, and then eat the body in a similar fashion.

    Eiders are colonial breeders. They nest on coastal islands in colonies ranging in size from as little as 100 to up to 10,000 in some parts of the world. Female eiders frequently exhibit a high degree of natal philopatry, returning to breed on the same island where they were hatched. This can lead to a high degree of relatedness between individuals nesting on the same island, so I feel that those eider ducks from Coquet island and from the Farnes are very much part of our family. Breeding eider fly from Coquet island and across the sea to use the mudflats adjacent to the Coquet estuary as a feeding ground for their young. Eider is a true sea-duck and is rarely found away from coasts. Throughout the year, breeding eider from Coquet feed in the intertidal zone of the Northumberland Shore SSSI—site of special scientific interest—and later in the year non-breeding eider also migrate here to feed during the winter months.

    Although sea-bird and sea-duck colonies benefit from protection provided by the SSSI, these sites provide protection only on land. The site was designated in 1980 for about 500 nests, but by 2015 estimates of this ​number had dropped to about 300. The site is now being managed to address this long-term decline. The area is also an important winter feeding area for migrating eider from across Europe. Eider is a species listed as “near threatened” globally and “vulnerable” in Europe by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; a vulnerable species is one that has been categorised by the IUCN as likely to become endangered unless the circumstances that are threatening its survival and reproduction improve. These declines are thought to be driven by a range of threats, including the overharvesting of aquatic resources, pollution, disturbance and hunting.

    In Britain, eider are currently classified as “amber” on the birds of conservation concern in the United Kingdom list. Disturbance is the primary threat to our eider; it results in a loss of access to feeding areas and increased predation at breeding grounds. There are several studies considering the common eider in relation to human disturbances. The study of the effects of human disturbance at breeding sites found that when disturbed, some or all ducklings and sometimes the mother dived, and the breeding colony was temporarily dispersed. During this disturbance, attacks by predators such as greater black- backed gulls and herring gulls increased. The study found that predation of chicks by gull attacks was more than 200 times higher on disturbed breeding colonies than on undisturbed ones, and this resulted in significantly lower numbers of chicks fledging each year.

    The excellent Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 seeks to address management issues, such as disturbance, by creating marine conservation zones—MCZs. MCZs can be used to protect biodiversity in UK seas and are intended to allow a wide spectrum of protection. They form a key part of a wider suite of management measures including marine planning, ecosystem objectives, licensing and fisheries management. However, the designation of protected areas is the best means of securing the necessary commitment from marine managers and sea users to ensure that activities can be restricted, where necessary, to protect biodiversity.

    Although the area used by eider around Coquet island and the Northumbria coast overlaps with an existing European marine site—EMS—eider do not receive any legal protection from the existing designation within the new MCZ. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has asked the Government to add the eider duck to the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ list of protected species. Our friendly cuddies reside within this zone all year round, yet are not covered by the existing legislation. Our Northumberland coast’s resident eider populations have continued to decline steadily over the last few decades, so protection of their sea-based feeding and wintering habitats is essential.

    Across Europe, hunting, pollution and land disturbance means that other colonies are also in decline. The Coquet island colony is therefore all the more in need of protection. In so doing, the Minister would be allowing protection and management for these special birds to be put into place. Adding eider to the existing Coquet to St. Mary’s MCZ would enable proactive management to reduce and manage the threat of disturbance. The management requirements would be to carry out formal disturbance monitoring, management and enforcement, where necessary, such as by imposing speed restrictions or limiting boat traffic in sensitive areas.​

    The publication of codes of conduct increases public awareness of species of interest in an area, which may increase local tourism with benefits to the economy, so the proposals should include education and awareness of conduct in the MCZ.

    Are the Government willing to include eider ducks in the Coquet to St Mary’s MCZ? Will they go further and commit to giving them protection across the Farne islands, too, as these unique islands and surrounding waters become incorporated into the MCZ as it reaches further north in the months ahead? I understand that informal conversations are already taking place and urge the Minister to drive them forward, so that my constituency’s extraordinary coastline and her feathered residents, whom I consider constituents worthy of representation just as much as the human ones, can live in a place of safety and protection and so that their long-term future is assured.

  • Boris Johnson – 2018 Article on Fourth Anniversary of Crimean Annexation

    Below is the text of the article released by Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, on 22 February 2018.

    On the night of 22 February 2014, the most powerful men in Russia gathered in the Kremlin and resolved to seize Crimea from Ukraine.

    They would later make elaborate efforts to give their decision a veneer of legitimacy – including by staging a bogus referendum – but that meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his security chiefs was designed to seal the fate of Crimea’s people.

    We know this because Mr Putin said as much. In a documentary for Russian television, broadcast in 2015, the President described the sequence of events.

    He decided to grab Crimea during that conclave in the Kremlin 3 weeks before the sham referendum. All those claims about how he acted to protect the region’s people or uphold their wishes were, by Mr Putin’s own account, utterly mendacious.

    So it was that Russia seized 10,000 square miles from Ukraine and broke the first principle of international law – that countries may not acquire territory or change borders by force.

    Mr Putin formally annexed Crimea into the Russian Federation on 18 March 2014. Four years after that event, we should remind ourselves of the enormity of what happened and redouble our determination to stand up for our values and uphold international law.

    Russia’s land grab in Crimea amounted to the first forcible annexation of the territory of a European country – and the first forcible redrawing of a European frontier – since 1945.

    In the process, Russia broke so many international agreements that listing them all is a challenge. To select a few examples, Mr Putin trampled upon Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and the Russia-Ukraine Treaty of Friendship.

    He also broke Russia’s specific pledge, contained in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, to respect the “existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”.

    And after annexing Crimea Mr Putin went still further, igniting and vigorously fanning the flames of conflict in eastern Ukraine. To this day, Russia continues to deploy troops and tanks in a conflagration that has claimed over 10,000 lives and driven 2.3 million people from their homes.

    Flight MH17 became another victim of this tragedy when a Russian missile launched from an area controlled by Russian proxy fighters blew this passing airliner out of the sky, killing 298 innocent people, including 10 Britons.

    All the while, reports have emerged from Crimea of the oppression of the indigenous Tatar population and the harassment of those opposed to Russian annexation. Despite repeated calls from the UN General Assembly, Russia has refused to allow international human rights monitors to enter the peninsula.

    In the end, the security of every nation depends on the essential principle that countries should not change borders or acquire territory by force. That is why the fate of Crimea matters to all of us.

    We all have an obligation to stand up to Russia in a measured and resolute way. That means sustaining our Crimea-related sanctions against Russia for as long as the region remains under Kremlin control, and keeping further sanctions in place whilst the Minsk Agreements in eastern Ukraine go unheeded.

    These measures are intended to demonstrate that no country, however large, can dismember its neighbour and break international law without consequence.

    Nevertheless, while holding fast to our principles, we should engage firmly and purposefully with Russia. We need to communicate with clarity and directness our concern over the Kremlin’s actions.

    There is no contradiction between dialogue and deterrence – indeed the one can reinforce the other – as I made clear when I visited Moscow in December. As permanent members of the Security Council, Britain and Russia also share special responsibility for international peace and security.

    Our motto with Russia must be to ‘engage but beware’ and both halves of the formula should be pursued with equal resolve. But we must never forget the terrible consequences of that late night gathering in the Kremlin.

  • Chloe Smith – 2018 Speech on Votes for Life for British Ex-Pats

    Below is the text of the speech made by Chloe Smith, the Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, on 23 February 2018.

    Today (Friday 23 February) we’ll be debating the Overseas Electors Bill, introduced by Conservative Glyn Davies MP. I hope it will command cross-party support, alongside the firm support of the government.

    The Bill sets out to end the current 15-year time limit on British expats voting back at home in the UK. At the moment, British citizens who live overseas find themselves abruptly disenfranchised after they have lived abroad for 15 years, even where they still feel closely connected to our country and want to take part in elections that can affect them like any other citizen. To many, this has been a terrible injustice.

    As well as removing the time limit on the right to vote for UK citizens living abroad, we intend to enfranchise any British expats who were previously resident or registered to vote in the UK. Currently, only British citizens who were registered to vote before leaving the UK may apply to become overseas electors. The bill is seeking to change this. These changes are part of the Government’s wider ambition to strengthen the foundation of democracy and continually increase voter registration by ensuring every voter’s voice is heard.

    British expats – under existing laws – are estimated to have among the lowest level of voter registration of any group, with only around 20% of eligible expats registered to vote for the June 2017 general election.

    We think it’s right to encourage everyone to register to vote, and that’s why, last December, the government launched the first ever Democratic Engagement Plan to tackle democratic exclusion and outline how it will increase participation among under-registered groups. The Plan set out how we are launching National Democracy Week to promote democratic engagement and identifying the barriers faced by specific groups that are currently under-represented on the electoral register.

    In 2014, we introduced online electoral registration which has already made it much easier for overseas electors to register to vote – and they have done so in ever increasing numbers. The latest figures from June 2017 showed that the highest ever total of overseas citizens registered to vote but potentially around one million have not registered. So I am proud this government is doing more to enfranchise our fellow citizens overseas and make it easier for them to take part in our elections.

    Participation in our democracy is a fundamental part of being British, no matter how far you have travelled from the UK. Expats retain strong links with the United Kingdom: they may have family here, and indeed they may plan to return here in the future. Modern technology and cheaper air travel has transformed the ability of expats to keep in touch with their home country. Crucially, decisions taken by the UK government still affect them, such as pensions policy or foreign affairs choices. These are our fellow citizens and they have every right to be involved in our country and its choice of government.

    Of course, following the British people’s decision to leave the EU, we need to strengthen ties with countries around the world and show the UK is an outward-facing nation. Our expat community has an important role to play in helping Britain expand international trade, especially given two-thirds of expats live outside the EU.

    I am grateful to the many campaigners over the years who have asked for this rule to be changed, with dignity and passion. The Government pledged in our manifesto to make this change and I’m proud to deliver it. But it should be an aim we all share across parties. I will work closely with Mr Davies and everyone in Parliament, of any party, who wants to help every citizen of this country to register to vote and use their voice.

  • Nick Gibb – 2018 Speech to Conference for Commonwealth Education Ministers

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Standards, to the Conference for Commonwealth Education Ministers on 22 February 2018.

    Thank you Dr Mohamed. And thank you also to those fellow Education Ministers I have had the opportunity to meet over the last few days. I think this has been a very successful conference. I would like to congratulate the Secretary General and the Fijian Government for hosting a very successful conference. It has been wonderful for me to have had so many productive, interesting and warm conversations with fellow ministers, in meetings and at the very successful receptions that have been held throughout the course of the conference. I have really valued the opportunity to learn about other education systems and to discuss so many shared challenges that we all face across the Commonwealth. I am sure that many of us will stay in touch in future and continue to support each other where we can.

    The UK government is looking forward to welcoming your Heads of Government to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in April. We will discuss shared challenges, and move forward – I hope – renewed, and revitalised after that conference.

    These international gatherings are helpful in shaping shared policy objectives and working collectively to overcome challenges. For example, the Millennium Development Goals focused minds on universalising access to education. And now, the Sustainable Development Goals are going further.

    In recent years, great strides have been made across the world. It should not be forgotten that in 1990 there were 1.8 billion people living in absolute poverty. This has been reduced over those years since by a billion. But, there is still much more to do. As our Foreign Secretary wrote recently:

    Look at those countries where population is growing the fastest, where unemployment is highest, and where the tensions are greatest, and without exception you will find a common factor: female illiteracy.

    Boris Johnson was correct when he went on to state that this is both a moral outrage and ‘contrary to the interests of world peace, prosperity, health and happiness.

    Globally, 130 million girls are not in school. So I would urge member states to commit to work together and individually to ensure 12 years of quality education for all by 2030.

    But we must be more ambitious than seeking universal access. We must turn our attention to ensuring pupils receive the high-quality education they deserve.

    Of those pupils in school in low income countries, 90 per cent are not on track to master the basics of maths, reading and writing by the end of primary school.

    Raising school standards for pupils from all backgrounds has been the driving force behind the government reforms in my country since 2010. The government’s mission is to provide pupils with the knowledge-rich education that will prepare them for the rigours and opportunities of the 21st century.

    Core academic subjects have returned to the heart of the secondary curriculum and we have pursued evidence-based approaches to teaching, raising standards for all. At the same time, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers has narrowed both at primary and secondary schools in England since 2010.

    In education, there is nothing more important to spreading opportunity than ensuring all pupils are taught to read effectively. Figures from the UK show that pupils who are reading well by age 5 are 6 times more likely than their peers to be on track by age 11 in reading, and 11 times more likely to be on track in mathematics.

    But, in the years just before we came into government in 2010, we knew something was wrong with the way our primary schools taught reading. England was stagnating in the international league tables and the international data also showed a wider gap between top and bottom performers than in most other countries, leading to England being known for its ‘long tail of underachievement’.

    And data from 2012 showed that we were the only OECD country where the maths and reading abilities of our 16-24 year olds was worse than that of our 55 to 65 year olds. A misguided move away from evidence-based approaches to teaching children to read was stifling opportunity for too many children.

    For decades, the overwhelming weight of international evidence – including the influential longitudinal study from Clackmannanshire in Scotland – pointed to systematic phonics as the most effective way to teach children to read.

    Phonics teaches children to associate letters with sounds, providing pupils with the code to unlock written English. And despite the evidence in favour of this approach – a traditional approach – the government’s phonics reforms were controversial and met with widespread opposition from teaching unions and other vested interests.

    All primary schools in England are now required by law to use phonics as they teach pupils to read. But more controversially, the government introduced the Phonics Screening Check in 2012. This is a short test comprising a list of 40 words that 6-year-old children read to their teacher at the end of year 1.

    The proportion of pupils passing the Phonics Check has increased every year since it was introduced by us in 2012. In 2012, the first year of the Phonics Check, just 58 per cent of 6 year olds reached the pass mark of 32 out of the 40 correctly read words, so 40 per cent were failing. This year, 81 per cent of 6-year-olds reached that standard, with 92 per cent of children reaching that standard by the end of year 2.

    This year, 154,000 more 6 year olds were on track to be fluent readers than in 2012. Last year, 147,000 more 6 year olds were on track compared to 2012.

    And the success of this policy has been confirmed by the international PIRLS results (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). The international study of 9-year-olds’ reading ability in 50 countries showed that England has risen from joint 10th place in 2011 to joint 8th place in 2016, thanks to a statistically significant rise in our average score.

    But more importantly, these tests show that we are dealing with the ‘long tail of underachievement’ that has stifled opportunity. The PIRLS results show that reading has improved for pupils from all backgrounds, but it is the low-performing pupils who are gaining most rapidly.

    The report found that performance in the Phonics Check was strongly predictive of PIRLS performance, vindicating the government’s drive to universalise this evidence-based approach to teaching. The PIRLS national report for England states that, and I quote:

    Pupils who scored full marks in the phonics check were also the highest scoring group in PIRLS 2016, with an average overall PIRLS score of 617. In contrast, pupils who did not reach the ‘expected standard’ in the Year 1 phonics check perform below England’s overall average, with lower phonics check scores being associated with decreasing average PIRLS scores.

    So that is why our government is determined to go even further and see more pupils reach the expected standard at age 6. And if I could just quote the New Zealand Minister’s earlier quote:

    We have gone so far, we’re going to go further still.

    The government has also faced-down much opposition to the drive to increase the proportion of pupils studying core academic GCSEs at age 16. The English Baccalaureate, that we introduced as a performance measure, requires pupils to study GCSEs in English, maths, at least two sciences, either history or geography, and a foreign language.

    Schools are measured now on the proportion of their pupils entering GCSEs in all 5 categories, and on the attainment of their pupils in these subjects.

    Since 2010 – following a long-term decline in pupils taking these core academic subjects – there have been sharp increases in most of these subjects. For example, the proportion of pupils taking the science component of the EBacc has risen from 63 per cent to 91 per cent, and the proportion studying history or geography has risen from 48 per cent to 77 per cent.

    Nationally, nearly two-fifths of pupils are entered for the EBacc. This is up from just over one-fifth in 2010. But again there is still much more to do, to reach the government’s ambitious target of 90 per cent of pupils studying towards the full suite of EBacc GCSEs by 2025.

    Since 2010, the proportion of pupils studying a language to GCSE has risen from 40 per cent to 47 per cent and we are determined to raise participation in languages much further in the years to come, particularly as Britain raises its eyes to the opportunities that await post-Brexit.

    Evidence supports the government’s desire to drive up participation in these core academic subjects. Evidence from the Sutton Trust found that pupils in a set of 300 schools that increased their EBacc entry, from 8 per cent to 48 per cent, were more likely to achieve good English and maths GCSEs, more likely to take an A level, or an equivalent level 3 qualification, and more likely to stay in post-16 education.

    And these findings were corroborated by work carried out by the Institute of Education in London examining the effect that GCSE choice has on education post-16, and I quote:

    Students pursuing an EBacc-eligible curriculum at 14-16 had a greater probability of progression to all post 16 educational outcomes, while taking an applied GCSE subject had the opposite effect. There were no social class differences in the advantages of pursuing an EBacc-eligible curriculum which suggests that an academically demanding curriculum is equally advantageous for working class as for middle class pupils.

    And this year more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds entered the EBacc than at any point since the measure was created.

    Again, there is still much more to do. Disadvantaged pupils remain almost half as likely to be entered for these subjects than their more affluent peers. But it is essential that all pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are given access to the core academic subjects that widen opportunities at post-16.

    But the government is making progress in widening opportunities, whilst raising standards for all. Recent figures from national assessments that are published on a school by school basis taken at 11 and 16 reveal that the attainment gap has closed since 2011 at both primary and secondary schools, by 10.5 per cent for primary and 10 per cent for secondary.

    Despite the controversy and claims from many in my country that the government’s standards-raising policies would hurt the performance of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, in fact universalising access to evidence-based teaching methods and widening opportunities to study core academic subjects has been to the benefit of all, particularly those most in need.

    There is more to do of course. There are still too many pupils not reading at the expected standard by age 6; and there are too many pupils – particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds – not being entered for the full suite of core academic GCSEs. But much progress has been made since 2010 and the government – in step with teachers – is ambitious and determined to go further in the years to come.

    Thank you very much chair for listening. I am very happy to answer any questions you may have on what has been a very controversial seven years of education reform in England.

  • Matt Hancock – 2018 Speech at the CBI Annual Chinese New Year Dinner

    Matt Hancock

    Below is the text of the speech made by Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, at the CBI Annual Chinese New Year Dinner on 22 February 2018.

    尊敬的刘晓明大使各位来宾大家晚上好！

    Or, as I hope translates to English: good evening Ambassador Liu and honoured guests.

    It’s a real privilege to be here tonight to celebrate Chinese New Year with you all and mark the arrival of the Year of the Dog.

    I was born in the Year of the Horse; apparently Horses like me ‘are either naturally good public speakers or have a habit of talking too much’.

    I’m not sure which one applies to me – let me know in a couple of hours after I’ve finished….

    It’s an exciting time for relations between our two countries. As we open the next chapter in our golden era, look at the breadth of the cultural, political and economic partnership just over the past two months.

    The V&A Museum has opened a brand new design gallery in Shenzhen, the first branch of a national British museum outside the UK.

    The historic Terracotta Warriors are on display in Liverpool.

    And the Prime Minister visited China to meet President Xi and Premier Li, signing over 9 billion pounds worth of commercial deals, building on the vast rise in trade over the past decade.

    And as we look forward to the Year of the Dog, I want to take a moment to look at this vital relationship.

    And especially, talk about how we can use the transformational power of new digital technology to make this golden era even more golden.

    Making the most of change

    The world around us is changing faster than ever before. And yet the blistering pace of change we’re currently seeing is probably the slowest that we’ll see in the rest of our lifetimes.

    And it’s down to the incredible potential of new technologies, especially AI, which are constantly learning and getting exponentially better every single day.

    Both China and Britain understand the potential of this fourth industrial revolution – and the need to relentlessly pursue new technology.

    This forward thinking approach has been at the heart of our strengthening relationship over the last decade, and we’ve seen some remarkable hi-tech success stories over the past few months.

    Huawei has recently announced a new commitment to 3 billion pounds of procurement from the UK. Gordon – thank you for your personal commitment and Huawei’s vote of confidence in our world-leading tech industry. You provide the sort of leadership which is crucial forging this sort of relationship.

    Cambridge-based Astra Zeneca and Chinese tech giants Alibaba have announced they’re coming together to build smart health systems, to help chest patients in China get vital treatment more quickly.

    And the futuristic driverless pods used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 will soon be appearing in China thanks to a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding.

    And it’s not just tech firms and start-ups that are making the most of these opportunities.

    Tech is revolutionising all sectors, whether through autonomous vehicles helping us drive more safely or machine learning making it easier for doctors to find cancerous cells, saving and improving lives.

    The question that matters is how we can seize these opportunities of change to expand the potential to make both our nations more prosperous and better places to live.

    Looking forward

    We share this ambition and determination. AI pioneer and founder of Google China Dr Kai-Fu Lee recently said the UK is home to the ‘hottest AI companies in the world, producing breakthroughs of global significance’.

    Here, we’re investing heavily in AI and robotics and are working hard to attract the best and brightest research talent from all over the world.

    We are determined to be one of the leading places in the world for the development and deployment of AI. And we will share that global leadership with China.

    Our universities – the second biggest destination for Chinese students – lie at the heart of this revolution.

    But we cannot do this solely from our shores. To make the most of these opportunities we will need to reach common understanding and co-operate on a wide range of issues. We must do this together.

    And let’s be frank. China and the UK come at some of the questions around, for example data protection, from very different philosophical backgrounds.

    This makes it more important than ever that we understand each other – and respect each other’s point of view – so we can come to the right solutions and work together.

    We, for instance, have stronger protections for data and intellectual property. And while we ask China to respect these protections, we also respect China, and the progress we have seen in mutual understanding.

    I was delighted that in December, we partnered with you in the first bilateral science and innovation strategy that China has developed jointly with another country.

    This outlines, in the most advanced way yet, shared principles for intellectual property.

    Agreements like this are crucial to unlocking the vast opportunities of co-operation and harnessing this technology for good.

    We want to work ever closer with China, and other tech-minded countries around the world.

    And I was delighted that during the Prime Minister’s recent visit, agreements were signed on emerging technologies across the board – twelve in total, including space, smart cities and autonomous vehicles.

    For this is the future. Countries that work with, not against, technology, will be the ones that flourish.

    Flourishing as two vibrant, prosperous nations using technology to drive growth and make life better for our citizens and people across the world.

    For if we have learnt one thing this past generation, then we have learnt this.

    Free markets, in a proper framework, have been the most powerful force for good the world has ever seen – underpinned by the protection of property, openness to trade and sound finance.

    China’s journey is testament to this fact. Britain may have pioneered the market economy but, by God, China is proving it works.

    You have lifted people from poverty more quickly than ever before in human history. We salute you.

    And what’s more, the free market rests on an understanding that business, done right, is a force for good in the world.

    You can’t run a good business unless you’re solving problems for someone else. Solve them so well that they’re prepared to pay you.

    This is how prosperity is built. Our nations both understand this.

    Conclusion

    The UK and China are no strangers to changing history through our innovation and enterprise.

    And as we celebrate the Year of the Dog, let’s channel this spirit and just imagine what more we can do when we work together in the years ahead.

    恭祝各位中国朋友狗年大吉!

  • Jeremy Wright – 2018 Speech at the Modern Slavery Summit

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Wright, the Attorney General, at the Modern Slavery Summit on 22 February 2018.

    Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you this morning. Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my thanks to the CPS for organising and hosting this important summit on prosecuting Modern Slavery crimes.

    On behalf of the UK Government may I also pass on a very warm welcome to you all. Many of you have travelled a long way to be here, and I hope this summit will be an important step in improving international dialogue and combatting the crimes of forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking.

    As we are all very well aware, modern slavery exists in all our societies. It respects neither borders nor jurisdictions and its victims are subject to the most appalling mistreatment and exploitation, this brings our task at this summit into sharp focus.

    I know you will be looking at identifying ways to better support victims and witnesses, and establishing a strong, active international network to tackle Modern Slavery.

    In the last 8 years, the UK has clearly demonstrated that with the right will and mind-set it is possible to transform our approach to Modern Slavery.

    The then Home Secretary, and current Prime Minister, identified modern slavery as a significant problem, and since then this Government has put in place an ambitious strategy and dedicated legislation to tackle it.

    Prior to 2010, there was no bespoke legislation and the law enforcement response was not sufficiently coordinated or effective to deal with this type of offending.

    Giving law enforcement agencies the tools to tackle modern slavery is paramount in achieving successful prosecutions, and at the same time protecting victims. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 does just that. The Act not only consolidates all modern slavery legislation into one Act, assisting both the police and prosecutors but introduces other equally important measures to improve the criminal justice response. For example :

    – the introduction of maximum life sentences for perpetrators;
    – the provision for civil prevention and risk orders’, which stop potential acts of trafficking or forced labour from taking place; and
    – the introduction of a statutory defence for those forced or coerced to commit crimes like cannabis farming – which will also help safeguard victims from abuse.

    These measures are now beginning to have a real impact and – we are seeing a real rise in convictions for new offences prosecuted under the Modern Slavery Act and at least 56 Slavery and Trafficking Prevention and Risk Orders to restrict offender activity are in place.

    In addition to these new measures and tools, training remains important. Investigators and prosecutors need to be well trained so they are readily able to identify elements of Modern Slavery in their cases. They also need to be aware of the new tools they have available to tackle these crimes and prevent further offending from taking place and to identify and protect victims.

    As well as a criminal justice response, it is important that there other powers and regulations in place to stop the exploitation of vulnerable victims and to disrupt potential crimes before they take place.

    The Modern Slavery Act established an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Their job is to work with law enforcement agencies, local authorities and third sector organisations to encourage identification, prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of modern slavery crimes – across the UK and internationally. This role is essential in order to advise the Government on improvements to the system and to encourage joined up working across the UK.

    More recently the Government has used the Immigration Act 2016 to extend the remit and strengthen the powers of the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority. Its new mission will be to prevent, detect and investigate worker exploitation across the entire economy.

    The Modern Slavery Act also includes a world-leading transparency in supply chains measure requiring certain businesses to report how they are eradicating modern slavery from their organisation and their supply chains. By forcing business to report on this, it has made them much more aware of potential modern slavery crimes. Most importantly, the Modern Slavery Act has provisions to give protection to overseas domestic workers, a duty on public authorities to notify the Home Office when they come across potential victims.

    Crucially, we have found that where support for victims of this crime, who are typically extremely vulnerable and often reluctant, or fearful of engaging with law enforcement, is prioritised prosecution rates are higher and the chance of a successful prosecution much more likely.

    The National Referral Mechanism – the NRM – is the UK system for identifying and providing access to support to potential victims of modern slavery. The Modern Slavery Act ensued that this support was extended to all victims of Modern Slavery in England and Wales.

    The NRM should act as bridge – helping victims to be lifted out of situations of exploitation; providing specialist care and support to enable them to begin to recover and rebuild their lives; and facilitating their return to the relevant community.

    We recognise that the NRM does not always do this for victims, and that is why are committed to reforming it to ensure better results for victims.

    Having a regulatory environment which encourages collaboration between law enforcement agencies, first line responders and licensing authorities is essential in tackling such a wide ranging crime and our research reflects that this aligned approach produces better outcomes for victims. The global prevalence of Modern Slavery is significant, and whilst it is a largely hidden crime the International Labour Organisation and Walk Free Foundation in 2016 estimated that there are 40.3 million caught up in Modern Slavery globally. This is a conservative estimate and in reality there could be many more victims worldwide.

    No country can tackle modern slavery alone and I am proud to be part of a Government that is leading the fight against this horrendous crime internationally.

    To drive further progress and collaboration at the international level, the Prime Minister convened a group of world leaders at a modern slavery event during the UN General Assembly in September 2017. Leaders and senior ministers from 21 member states attended the event and 42 countries have now endorsed an ambitious Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. This sets out the practical steps that countries will take to effectively respond to modern slavery and fulfil the commitments set out by the international community. At that meeting the Prime Minister also announced that the UK would double its aid budget spend on modern slavery to £150m.

    £33.5 million of this is set aside in a Modern Slavery Fund, managed by the Home Office, and of this £11 million has been allocated to an innovation fund to trial new approaches to tackle and reduce the prevalence of modern slavery and to identify interventions that could be scaled up.

    This £11 million fund is currently supporting 10 successful projects which are being taken forward by a range of organisations including NGOs, universities and multilateral organisations. These projects target issues such as tackling slavery in supply chains, supporting victims, exploring vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation and helping to share skills and expertise with overseas partners.

    It should not be surprising that the majority of the victims referred to us are from countries other than the UK. In the last year there has been a significant increase in referrals from Sudan and Ethiopia with the most referrals coming from Vietnam and Albania.

    In response, we are increasing bilateral engagement with and increasing the operational response in countries from which a high number of vulnerable people are exploited and trafficked into the UK.

    Building strong partnerships is the key to improving our understanding of the context that leads to vulnerable people being exploited and trafficked to the UK to better inform our approach and operational response so this can be disrupted. This conference is an excellent step in improving that collaborative approach.

    We are increasing law enforcement cooperation, including through establishing joint investigation teams and greater intelligence sharing, to tackle this crime and bring perpetrators to justice. Additionally we are working with international law enforcement agencies to improve the international operational response. For example, the UK has encouraged Interpol to strengthen its understanding of modern slavery and its enablers to better understand international law enforcement challenges and gaps.

    We all share a moral duty to end Modern Slavery, a duty that transcends party politics and country borders and which unites us in our determination to root out this dreadful crime from our society.

    I welcome the opportunity this summit brings to create a unified, international approach to tackling modern slavery and ensure that victims receive the support and assistance they need to begin the process of rebuilding their lives.

    The leadership we show at this summit is therefore important. The task of tackling modern slavery is an urgent one, so we need swiftly to put our words into practice and hold ourselves to account for the progress that can be made.