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  • Matthew Ridley – 1876 Speech in Answer to Loyal Address

    matthewridley

    Below is the text of the speech made by Matthew Ridley in the House of Commons on 8 February 1876.

    Sir: It was with the most lively feeling of satisfaction that we received some time ago the announcement that it was the intention of Her Majesty to open Her Parliament this year in person; and I rejoice that it is my privilege this day to congratulate this House and the country upon the happy circumstance that no untoward event, no anxiety for friend or family, no ill health of her own, has stood in the way of the fulfilment of a purpose so agreeable alike to Her Majesty and to the nation.

    Nor is it, Sir, of less fortunate omen that Her Majesty is able to announce to Parliament the brilliant progress which her son, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, is now making through that vast Empire, which will shortly, as we are led to day to hope, bring under such happy auspices a new title to Her Crown. There have been, Sir, anxieties—I ought, perhaps, to say, grave anxieties—attending the journey; there have been heavy responsibilities thrown upon those who have had the charge of a progress which has scarcely a parallel in history—certainly not in the annals of the British Crown. But we are assured, Sir, to-day, that those anxieties and fears have so far proved groundless; we know that the ordering of that journey has been marked by the most signal foresight and success. The people of this country, Sir, are following with the keenest attention the incidents of His Royal Highness’s triumphal visit, which are so dramatically brought before them day by day: they are realizing with a vivid distinctness, which cannot but have the happiest results, something of the vast and varied interests which attach to the history, the religion, the civilization of those older races who are with them the subjects of Her Majesty, and who are receiving Her son with so loyal and enthusiastic a welcome. They appreciate to the fullest extent the energy and self-devotion for the public good of which His Royal Highness is giving so conspicuous an illustration. They can understand—for have they not experience of it themselves?—how his uniform kindliness and courtesy is winning the hearts alike of Princes and people, and is likely to leave behind it an enduring influence for good upon the relations between us and those vast millions whom it is our lot to govern. It is, Sir, I make bold to say, the hope and the expectation of this House that when His Royal Highness shall have happily returned among us, he will be found not only to have enlarged his personal experience and knowledge of those deeply interesting subjects of the Throne to which he will at some period—we hope along distant period—succeed, but to have achieved a great and valuable work in aiding to consolidate and harmonize that magnificent inheritance.

    It happens, Sir, in accordance with the line of thought evoked by this important circumstance in our history, that Her Majesty’s Speech this year is emphatically that of the Sovereign of a great people, who with their large possessions have responsibilities equally great of which they cannot divest themselves. It is satisfactory to hear that our relations with all Foreign Powers are cordial, and to know that we are everywhere at peace. But the House this day is brought face to face with a vast group of questions relating to the East, of which that commonly known as the Eastern Question is but one in the series, and the extreme importance of which to our Imperial interests it is perhaps impossible to over-estimate.

    Sir, in the far East, it is a matter for congratulation that a serious struggle has been again avoided with that huge Empire of China, the maintenance of friendly relations with which is of such importance, as well directly to the commercial interests of this country as indirectly to the finance and revenue of India. Happily, the reasonable and firm demands of our Minister at Pekin were, though only at the last moment, acceded to, and Her Majesty is able to assure us that an investigation, in which She herself is represented, is being officially conducted into the outrage committed upon the English expedition sent from Burmah to the Western Provinces of China, and that She awaits with confidence a successful result of the inquiry.

    The Malayan Peninsula has been the scone of an outbreak which has cost us more than one valuable life; but the war—if war it can be called—has been brought to a conclusion with signal skill and courage. I fear, however, it cannot be said that our difficulties have altogether been disposed of. They are difficulties of a kind which invariably threaten great Powers who, from out-lying settlements, and with small available resources, have to control, without governing, the barbarous tribes of some region just beyond their frontier. From the nature of the case it is impossible always to provide beforehand for every contingency which may arise from such undefinable relations, and it too often happens that we have to deplore the loss of some fearless servant of the Crown, who is performing his mission alone and with his life in his hand, in the name of a nation great indeed and powerful, but powerful only in his case to avenge the outrage of which he has been the victim.

    Sir, it is to a problem somewhat similar in character that the recent difference of opinion between the Cape Government and the Colonial Office may, perhaps, be traced. It seemed very desirable that all the English and Dutch communities of the South Coast of Africa should agree in some common policy towards the Natives of the interior, and should provide for some common defence in case a Native war should unhappily arise. Lord Carnarvon accordingly suggested a Conference of delegates from the various Colonies, and proposed also that they should consider the expediency of forming a Federation. The proposal, however, was not received with universal approval at the Cape, and it was in consequence suspended. Whether it be ultimately adopted or not, it is strongly to be hoped that the Papers which have been promised by the Government will show that the good feeling between the Colonies and the Mother Country has in no degree been impaired; and that if there has been any misunderstanding as to the intention of the proposal, that misunderstanding has been removed.

    Some few years ago, Sir, a private Company, originated and promoted by one courageous and determined man, whose name will ever be associated with it, commenced a bold project, which was to open through Egypt a new highway between the Eastern world and the nations of the West. They were not supported by English capital—they were even opposed by English Ministers. But their project proved a success, and England discovered that a thoroughfare had been created which it was absolutely indispensable to her political, no less than her commercial, connection with the East should be open to the passage of her ships. From the first the international character of the Canal has been acknowledged both by the Ruler of Egypt and the Porte; but the controversy on the tonnage dues showed the difficulties which might arise between us, as the principal customers of the Canal, and the shareholders, no less than the inconveniences and even quarrels which might follow from the zeal of a foreign Government in promoting the objects of the Company. Under these circumstances it can be no matter for surprise that the country received with almost unanimous approval the announcement that Her Majesty’s Government intended to propose to Parliament to sanction the purchase of those shares in the Company which were held by the Khedive. It was understood that an opportunity had offered itself for us to give timely aid to one of the original owners—who held these shares in “trust,” as it had been declared, “for European nations”—and to become at the same time one of those who were interested in the Canal by property as well as by policy. It was thought that this opportunity had been rapidly and promptly seized, and that the legitimate influence of England in a highway of such vital importance to her had been secured, or at least strengthened, in a manner least likely to wound the susceptibilities of its founders, or to give rise to foreign jealousies or suspicions; and it was taken both in this country and abroad to indicate the presence of activity, foresight, and resolution at the head of our affairs. The House and the country now look with eager interest to the utterances of Her Majesty’s Government upon the subject. Their action will, doubtless, be subjected to the severest criticism; but I do not hesitate to express my conviction that the verdict will be one of approval, and that it will be held that Ministers have, by this bold but peaceful stroke of policy, strengthened the position and vindicated the dignity of the Empire.

    Antagonism, Sir, of race and religion, which is so important a factor in all Eastern questions, is again giving great cause for anxiety in some of the Provinces of Turkey in Europe. An insurrection, which has, happily, not extended beyond the limits of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been excited by the long unredressed grievances, principally agrarian, under which the Christian population in those Provinces have suffered. The Government of the Sultan has failed to offer reforms which would satisfy the insurgents, and has been unable to put an end to the insurrection by force of arms. Accordingly, the three Northern Powers, who have all along been endeavouring to bring about a peaceful settlement of the difficulty, have invited the Western Powers to concur in a Note which should, in a friendly manner but with explicit firmness, invite the Porte to the establishment of certain specific reforms—these reforms being, in the opinion of the Powers, the minimum which could be expected to satisfy the insurgents, to effect a permanent and not a delusive cure, and to remove the dangers to which the Powers most nearly concerned are exposed. I do not doubt, Sir, that it will be thought that Her Majesty’s Government has pursued a wise and prudent policy in giving a general support to Count Andrassy’s Note. The initiative has been most naturally and properly taken by Austria and the two neighbouring Powers; but a consideration of our whole Eastern interests in their broadest sense shows that it was almost impossible for us to stand aloof, had we even wished it; while the approval and concurrence of England, whose history is so full of friendliness towards the authority and Empire of the Sultan, would seem to be a further guarantee that the requests so proffered are reasonable and moderate, and to give additional reason for the hope that this friendly intervention will be successful. Our expectations as to the effect of that Note seem, fortunately, to have been so far realized, and we may hope that we may now look with confidence to the action of the Powers most directly interested to assist in re-assuring the peace of Europe.

    Sir, the responsibilities which attach to the position which we hold among Nations have been this year pressed forcibly home to the most indifferent spectator of events by the prominence which circumstances have lately given to our relations to Slavery and the Slave Trade. For many years we have set ourselves a noble task, and have been expending money and lives in suppressing, so far as we could, the infamous traffic in human life which is still the disgrace of many parts of the world. Wherever we have had the control over it we have abolished—sometimes at heavy cost, but a coat we have never grudged—the institution of Slavery, so that it is our proud boast that the slave who sets his foot on British soil, or upon a British ship on the high seas, is at once a free man. There are still, however, some independent Powers which tolerate or maintain the institution of Slavery, and with many of these we are of necessity brought into contact—with some of them we have treaty engagements. It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that the doctrine elsewhere so easy of application is surrounded with delicate complications when our ships, being in the territorial waters of such countries, become bound by the obligations not only of international law, but of international comity. To have carried our practice as far as some persons would seem to wish we had done would have, I will venture to say, involved us in more than one war, and that not with unimportant only or least powerful nations. We have, in fact, Sir, to consider, not so much what we should wish to do were our Empire absolutely universal, but what our power—great indeed, but still limited—will permit us to do; and for this reason I believe that the Government have been well advised in taking the course which they propose in order to ascertain with accuracy the extent of our existing powers and obligations. It is well that the extremely imperfect information which prevails upon this subject should be supplemented, and that the whole country should be completely and thoroughly aware how we stand in this matter; for so only can the action of the Executive in cases often very difficult and complicated be fairly and adequately judged by public opinion—so best will their hands be strengthened in carrying out to the fullest practicable extent the glorious traditional policy of this country. The House will not be surprised to learn that Her Majesty’s Government contemplate legislation this Session on the subject of Merchant Shipping, and it may, no doubt, be anticipated that it is intended to put this measure, or these measures, in the forefront of the legislation of the Session. No Government, indeed, could afford to ignore the state of public feeling throughout the country upon this subject. But in this state of public feeling lies also their opportunity, and it appears to be a peculiarly favourable one; for if, on the one hand, there has been set going—in a manner familiar to us all, and one calculated to do infinite honour to the feelings, at all events, and impulses of its principal originator—if there has been set going under these circumstances a motive power the value of which can hardly be overstated, it is also, happily, the case that the passions and prejudices which have on some sides, naturally perhaps, been aroused, have had time to calm so that this House approaches the discussion enriched by much experience and backed by public sentiment which is, perhaps, all the more strong because it is less demonstrative. It cannot, I think, be sustained that our mercantile navy, has deteriorated, whether in regard to its officers, its safety of carriage, or the estimation in which it is held by foreign countries. There is, however, unhappily reason to believe both that the condition of the sailors is unsatisfactory and that some part of the annual loss at sea is preventible. It is this latter point—the condition, that is of the ship—which is, perhaps, most before the mind of the public; but I may be permitted to express a hope that the other point may not be forgotten, and that measures may be taken, so far as by legislation it is possible, to increase the supply and improve the circumstances of the men—especially in our sailing vessels—upon the efficiency of whom the security of a voyage so much depends. In dealing with the other branch of the subject, it will not, I trust, be considered presumptuous in me if I venture to enforce the necessity of bearing in mind one great principle which should, as it seems to me, guide this and indeed all legislation. It has been hitherto, so far as I have observed, the uniform policy of Her Majesty’s Government—and I doubt not we may confidently reckon upon its continuance—to require those who have the most personal interest and experience in the particular subject-matter to be responsible for effecting any result which the Legislation declares desirable, and then to maintain a Government control over that responsibility. In this case it is the shipowner, and the shipowner only, who can look effectually to the safety of the ship, and it should, therefore, be our policy to seek to make his responsibility a reality. We may, perhaps, do something—though it will, I fear, be a difficult and hazardous attempt—in the way of preventing insurance being a temptation to negligence or crime; but, our object being to see that the dishonest shipowner does that which the honest shipowner already does, we must rely in the end upon the enforcement of his liability. From this point of view we should be very careful not to impose regulations or precautions of too minute or too rigid a character. We should put all facilities for securing safety in the way of the owner, and remove as far as we can all hindrances: we should simplify and consolidate the law which he has to obey, and, being then in a better position to provide for a greater degree of publicity and liability, we might confidently hope to eradicate much of that which now casts some discredit upon a noble profession.

    Sir, speaking on behalf of a constituency in the main agricultural, I rejoice that among the few home topics in Her Majesty’s Speech there has been found place for the subject of Primary Education, and for the promise of some further relief to Local Burdens. Let me say this only—for I fear to weary the House—on this latter point. I take it as a happy augury that Her Majesty’s Ministers have seen their way to this mention of it. I trust it may be the prelude to a determined effort—of which I believe they are well capable—not only to redress inequalities in taxation, but to bring simplicity and order into the chaos of local management. The Agricultural Children’s Act, passed as it was with the best possible intentions, has not been absolutely a dead letter, but still may be said to have been almost inoperative. As far as those whom I have the honour to represent are concerned—if the House will allow me to make this one allusion personal to them—I will venture to assert that such an Act was not required for the children of the Northumbrian peasant. That it was demanded in some other parts—perhaps most parts—of England was and is, unhappily, the case; and I trust, therefore, that whatever measure may be passed, whether to improve this Act or to supplement the main Act of 1870, that it will be an operative one, while it is at the same time of such elasticity as not to inflict unnecessary machinery or expense upon districts where it is not required, Sir, there is one other topic in Her Majesty’s Speech to which it would ill-become me not to allude. Anything which concerns the welfare of the place, be it school or be it University, where so many of his not least enjoyable days were passed, and to which he owes so large a debt of gratitude for anything that may be useful in his maturer life, must always command the sympathies and interests of every man; and that sympathy and those interests cannot but be intensified when they are bound up with the well-being of either of our great English Universities, which have exercised so deep an influence upon our national history. Every Oxford or Cambridge man, and more especially, perhaps, any one whose direct connection with his old college has been only recently severed, must have been watching with close interest the efforts which have been going on within those old walls with which he is so familiar to increase their utility to the nation, no less than the growing interest which has been taken in them by the outside public, by whom their system, their discipline, and their constitution have been hitherto, perhaps, but little understood. Such a man will hail with satisfaction any legislation which will conduce to the more profitable employment of the endowments, the extent of which has now been accurately ascertained. But he will trust, too, that Parliament will touch these old institutions with a tender hand; that it will enact enabling and not restrictive measures; that it will not do anything towards destroying the independence or usefulness of the collegiate system, while it aims at making these Universities the centres of study and the homes of the highest scientific and literary research.

    Sir, the Session which has this day been inaugurated is not one which appears likely to be characterized by history as one which has witnessed numerous large domestic reforms. That it will see much useful work in this direction is the hope and trust of all of us; but in the meanwhile it opens upon us with the prospect of being signalized by wider deliberations, which win call forth the greatest qualities of debate, and display to a fuller extent than for years past the power and dignity of the Imperial Parliament. For myself, I have felt most deeply sensible of the grave responsibility under which I have attempted to fulfil the duty which I have undertaken, and of the kind and forbearing indulgence which the House has extended to me in performing it. I thank them most heartily for this favour received at their hands, and will conclude by moving that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, in answer to and in the terms of Her Majesty’s gracious Speech from the Throne. The hon. Member accordingly moved— That an humble Address he presented to Her Majesty, to thank Her Majesty for the Most Gracious Speech which Her Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for informing us that Her relations with all Foreign Powers continue to be of a cordial character: To thank Her Majesty for informing us that Her Majesty has considered it Her duty not to stand aloof from the efforts now being made by allied and friendly Governments to bring about a pacification of the disturbed districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that Her Majesty has accordingly, while respecting the independence of the Porte, joined in urging on the Sultan the expediency of adopting such measures of administrative reform as may remove all reasonable cause of discontent on the part of his Christian subjects: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for informing us that Her Majesty has agreed to purchase, subject to the sanction of Parliament, the shares which belonged to the Khedive of Egypt in the Suez Canal: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for informing us that the representations which have been addressed to the Chinese Government, as to the attack made in the course of last year on the Expedition sent from Burmah to the Western Provinces of China, have been received in a friendly spirit, and that the circumstances of that lamentable outrage are now the subject of an inquiry: To assure Her Majesty that we rejoice to learn that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has enjoyed uninterrupted health during his journey through India, and that we join in regarding the hearty affection with which he has been received by Her Majesty’s Indian subjects as an assurance that they are happy under Her Majesty’s rule, and loyal to Her Throne: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for reminding us that at the time the direct Government of Her Majesty’s Indian Empire was transferred to the Crown, no formal addition was made to the style and titles of the Sovereign, and for informing us that Her Majesty deems the present a fitting opportunity for supplying the omission. Humbly to thank Her Majesty for informing us that directions have been given for the issue of a Royal Commission to inquire into all Treaty engagements and other International obligations hearing upon the subject of the Slave Trade, and the action of British national ships in the territorial waters of foreign States, with a view to ascertain whether any steps ought to be taken to secure for Her Majesty’s ships and their commanders abroad greater power for the maintenance of the right of personal liberty: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for informing us that a Bill will be introduced for the punishment of Slave Traders who are subjects of Native Indian Princes: To assure Her Majesty that we rejoice to learn that the general prosperity of Her Colonial Empire has continued to advance: To join with Her Majesty in trusting that the operations of Her Majesty’s troops in Malay have restored order and re-established the just influence and authority of this Country: Humbly to thank Her Majesty for directing the Estimates of the year to be prepared and presented without delay: Humbly to assure Her Majesty that our careful consideration shall be given to the measures which may be submitted to us, and that we earnestly join in Her Majesty’s prayer that our deliberations may, under the Divine blessing, result in the happiness and contentment of Her Majesty’s people.

  • Theresa May – 2016 Speech on Crime Prevention Strategy

    theresamay

    Below is the text of the speech made by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, on 23 March 2016.

    Before I turn to why we are all here today I just wanted to say a few words about the terrible attacks that took place in Brussels yesterday and I am sure that the thoughts of everyone in this room are with the families of the victims and the injured and all those who were caught up in yesterday’s events.

    The Prime Minister has spoken to Prime Minister Michel. I have spoken to the Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon and our message was simple: we stand together against the terrorists and they will not win.

    We already work closely with the Belgian authorities on security matters. We share intelligence routinely and after the November attacks in Paris we deployed police and intelligence service resources to Belgium in support of the investigation into the attackers, which last week resulted in the arrest of Salah Abdul Salam.

    And we will continue to work together with our partners, not just in Belgium and other European countries, across the Five Eyes alliance and with our allies across the world to share intelligence, to cooperate on security, and to defeat those who wish to use terror to try to intimidate us.

    That spirit of co-operation, working together to keep citizens safe, is what brings us all together at this conference today.

    This is the second International Crime and Policing Conference we have hosted, bringing together scholars, experts and law enforcement leaders from around the world to better understand how known crimes are changing, where new crimes are emerging, and how we can best respond together. Because even though crime has fallen here and in many other countries over the last 20 years, the threat is changing and crime is still too high.

    I want to begin by talking about a very modern type of crime problem. Like more traditional forms of criminality, those behind this crime wreak havoc in other people’s lives. They subvert security measures; they unscrupulously gain the trust of their victims; and they create untold misery to thousands of families, businesses and people every single year.

    But unlike burglary, vehicle crime or street theft, the criminals who commit these crimes do not have to meet their victims or physically enter their homes. They break in using a keyboard, often while sitting in their back room or their bedroom hundreds and thousands of miles away, sometimes in another criminal jurisdiction entirely. And instead of creating a single victim, they can create thousands, some of whom do not realise what is missing for weeks or months.

    I am talking about the type of industrial scale fraud we now see committed over the internet. In just one case last year, 1 single teenager hacked 50,000 individual computers and corrupted 1,400 servers with malware. The valuables stolen included emails, personal data and credit card details which were used to make purchases online. A money-laundering scheme was established to fund a trip to Mexico – and a family in the US was targeted, harassed and threatened.

    Some of you may know of someone who has experienced something similar. You may yourselves have had your own computer hacked, money taken out of your bank account, or your data hijacked and held to ransom – or perhaps you know of someone who has received a bogus call from their bank, the police, a claims management company, an online seller or a loan company – only to find out it was a scam to fleece them of their money and their savings.

    This then is the reality of a great deal of crime today: faceless, contactless and conducted from a distance. It is changing the nature of victimhood, changing the nature of crime, and changing the nature of police investigations – and if we are to keep pace, if we are to stop these crimes, our response to crime prevention must change too.

    Today, in many countries crime has fallen dramatically compared to 20 or 30 years ago.

    Since I became Home Secretary in 2010, overall crime in England and Wales is down by more than a quarter, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales – compiled by the Office for National Statistics. Burglary is down by 21%. Car theft is down by 26%. Violent crime is down by 25%.

    If we go back even further, the reduction is all the more astonishing. Since the mid-1990s, when crime in this country peaked, the number of crimes in England and Wales has fallen from 19 million a year to 6.6 million last year – a drop of 66%.

    In 1995, if you owned a car you had a 1 in 5 chance each year of having it broken into or stolen. Now, that chance has dropped to 1 in 25. That same year, the risk of your home being broken into and burgled was close to 1 in 10. Now it’s 1 in 40. And the risk of being a victim of violence was 1 in 20. Last year, it was 1 in 50. This is excellent news, not only for those people who might otherwise have suffered car crime, been robbed, or been on the receiving end of a violent attack, but it is good news for communities and society as a whole.

    But this reduction has not happened by accident. There was a time when people thought there was nothing you could do to end crime. When my predecessor Michael Howard arrived at the Home Office in 1993, he was shown a graph with crime on an upwards trajectory rising year on year. ‘Home Secretary’ officials said to him:

    The first thing you must understand is that there is nothing you can do about this. Your job is to manage public expectations in the face of this inevitable and inexorable increase.

    Thankfully, Michael Howard did not listen to those hollow warnings, and instead took tough measures to bring crime down.

    This reduction has happened as a result of concerted, wide-ranging action by governments, law enforcement, industry and the public. What has brought about the dramatic drop in vehicle theft and burglary is not just down to the tremendous work of the police – although improvements in forensics and tactics may have played an important part. But it is thanks to a combination of other factors too: developments by manufacturers, such as immobilisers in cars and more secure door and window locks; improvements in the local environment, such as CCTV in car parks and better layout of housing estates; treatment for potential offenders such as heroin and crack users; better information and incentives, such as the Home Office’s Car Theft Index and insurance companies giving people an incentive to improve their home security; and greater awareness by the public, such as more people locking their car doors and the establishment of local neighbourhood watch schemes.

    This combined approach has worked. Crime is now at historically low levels. And thanks to the experience of the last 20 years, we now know more about how to stop crime from happening, and prevent people from becoming victims, than we have ever done before. And we must apply that logic to the present.

    Because while crime is down, it is changing and we cannot afford to become complacent. As I have just said, today technology is allowing criminals to operate on a much bigger scale, with greater speed and anonymity, and a far-wider reach than ever before.

    At the same time, we are uncovering the scale of many previously hidden or neglected crimes. We are seeing more people coming forward to report appalling crimes such as child sexual abuse, domestic abuse and modern slavery. That more people have the confidence to do so is to be welcomed, because too often in the past people feared repercussions or not being believed. And we should also welcome the fact that recent high profile cases involving TV presenters and premiership footballers are exploding the myth that some perpetrators are too famous, rich or powerful to face justice.

    These shifts are already radically changing the law enforcement response. Now, virtually every physical crime requires some form of digital investigation. Digital evidence is increasingly being used to support prosecution. And the police, prosecutors and judges will testify to the sheer scale of abuse cases currently being taken through the courts, resulting in more charges, convictions, and prison sentences for offenders than ever before.

    But as crime changes, so too must our approach to crime prevention. We need to stem the flow of emerging crimes, not just change our response after the fact. We need to understand what has worked effectively in the past, and how we can have the most impact in the future. We need to view crime prevention as an issue for all of us, and not just focus purely on a law enforcement response. And we need to do all this vigorously, energetically, intelligently and with the confidence that if we pull together we can drive all kinds of crime down.

    Because if we apply the lessons of the past, at the same time as using the best new techniques and technology, I believe we can solve the problems of the present. That’s why today we are setting out a new approach to crime prevention, based on what has worked in the past and with a clear and evidence-based understanding of what we need to do now.

    Two years ago, I established a unit in the Home Office called the Crime and Policing Knowledge Hub. Its purpose is to generate first rate knowledge of crime trends and the drivers of crime, in order to inform our response.

    As I told this conference last year, in this country, we believe that there are 6 main drivers of crime: alcohol, drugs, opportunity, the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, character and profit. They are not the only influences over criminal behaviour and they do not explain all crime, but by thinking about crime in this way, and understanding the interplay of different factors behind a particular crime problem, we can devise an effective response.

    First, there is strong evidence linking alcohol and violent crime and disorder. The facts are well-known but no less shocking for it. Over the last decade, in around half of all violent incidents, the victim believed the offender or offenders to be under the influence of alcohol at the time of the offence.

    So we need to ensure that the night time economy is safe, and that town centres are places of enjoyment. Building on our previous reforms to the Licensing Act 2003 we will make sure licensing authorities have the right powers and information to prevent alcohol crime and disorder. We will improve the late night levy and give police and crime commissioners the right to request that local authorities consult on introducing that levy. We will ensure that licensing authorities have much better intelligence when they are making decisions about the management of the night time economy. We will publish information about alcohol-related crime and disorder on Police.uk. And we will encourage local areas to share details about individuals and premises that have had their licences revoked in other areas.

    The second driver is drugs – one of the biggest factors behind the rise and fall in acquisitive crime in this country between the early 1980s and now. Previous Home Office research has shown how the growth of heroin and crack users between 1982 and 1995 accounted for around half of the rise in burglaries, robberies and theft of vehicles over that period. Today, heroin and crack use is still a threat, but we face new challenges from so-called legal highs.

    That is why we introduced the Psychoactive Substances Act, to ban the sale of psychoactive substances and to end the absurd situation where new drugs were being created more quickly than law enforcement, and the law, were able to take them off the market.

    Later today, Karen Bradley, the Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime, will talk more about our work to tackle drug misuse. And we are refreshing our drugs strategy which will set out new action to prevent drug use, restrict its supply, and go further to help those dependent on drugs to recover and live a life free from harmful substances.

    The third driver is character. An important finding from criminology is that the vast majority of crimes are committed by a small minority of people. The evidence tells us that there is nothing inevitable about criminality – no one is doomed to be a criminal by their upbringing. But there are some circumstances, like low levels of self-control, which are associated with a higher likelihood of offending. And we know that those characteristics can be influenced by what children experience growing up. So if we are to reduce the likelihood of future criminal behaviour, we need to build positive characteristics and resilience, particularly in young people at risk of harm or offending. That’s why we are expanding our Troubled Families Programme, which helps families where there are difficult, entrenched and multiple problems, and extending funding to the National Citizen Service so that 60% of all 16 and 17 year olds are given the chance of taking part.

    We must also address damaging social and environmental factors such as abuse, so we will introduce a professional development programme for teachers on core concepts of consent and healthy relationships. In addition, we have just launched a new teenage relationship abuse campaign, ‘Disrespect NoBody’, which encourages 12-18 year olds to re-think their views of violence, abuse, controlling behaviour and what consent means within relationships.

    Next, we know that criminals thrive on opportunity – it seems obvious but the easier it is to commit a crime, the more crimes they will commit. If we can remove that opportunity and make crimes harder to commit, the evidence suggests that many criminals just won’t commit them.

    Today, the equivalent of open windows and insecure car locks are weak online passwords, insecure mobile phone technology and forgetting to keep security features up to date. In fact, GCHQ estimates that 80% of cyber crime could be prevented by better passwords, security software and remembering to download all software updates, which generally fix bugs that hackers can otherwise use to gain access.

    Most of us have little idea how easy it can be for cyber criminals to get hold of our personal details online, or how much of our personal information is shared by the various apps we have downloaded onto our phones and tablets. So the Home Office has developed a new risk assessment tool to help people understand, on the basis of their online and offline behaviours, how vulnerable they are to fraud, cyber and financial crime, and what steps they can take to prevent themselves from becoming a victim.

    We are publishing today an updated picture about how mobile phones are stolen and who is most at risk. This includes the latest findings from the Behavioural Insights Team’s mobile phone theft ratio about specific models targeted by thieves. We are also publishing updated information that signposts the public to the various anti-theft security features on offer from a number of mobile phone manufacturers. And we are publishing a buyer’s guide for mobile devices setting out the cyber security features to look out for when purchasing or using smartphones and tablets.

    And we will also reduce opportunities by restricting access to items which contribute to certain crime types. So today I am pleased to announce a voluntary agreement with major retailers on a set of principles to prevent the underage sale of knives in their stores and through their websites. The agreement means that the retailers will have committed to requiring proof of age at point of purchase, collection or delivery, that knives will be displayed safely and packaged securely, and that staff will receive regular training. I am delighted to say Tesco, Lidl UK, Amazon UK, Wilko, Argos, Asda, Poundland, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, John Lewis and Waitrose have all made this commitment, and ebay UK supports it as well. We will work closely with the British Retail Consortium to get other retailers to commit to these principles.

    And where voluntary action can only go so far, we will use legislation – to ban the sale, manufacture and importation of so-called ‘zombie-killer knives’, which glamorise violence and are clearly targeted at young people. These are dangerous weapons and have absolutely no place on our streets. Under the secondary legislation, which will be introduced through powers in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, offenders would face up to 4 years in prison.

    The fifth driver is the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. There is good evidence that would-be criminals can be deterred from crime or re-offending if they perceive the system, including policing, as being effective. That is why policing known crime hotspots and taking a local problem-solving approach to address what is causing local concentrations of crime can be so effective, especially when aided by new techniques like data analytics and predictive policing.

    Our criminal justice system must therefore act as a powerful deterrent. As crime changes, the police, prosecutors, courts, prisons and probation must have the capacity to stay ahead. That is why we are providing funding, through the Police Transformation Fund, to develop digital investigation and intelligence capability in policing, and ensure that officers have the skills required to tackle new forms of crime such as online fraud. And we will use new technology to transform punishment too, by using satellite tracking of offenders.

    The final driver of crime is profit. Most acquisitive crime is financially motivated and many serious and organised crimes, from organised immigration crime to online fraud, are built on sophisticated business models generating vast illicit gains. These criminals trade in illegal substances, services, and in people. They generate income from others’ misery and exploitation. And they launder their proceeds through legitimate financial systems, facilitated – unwittingly or otherwise – by lawyers, accountants and financial advisers. Organised criminals don’t commit crime because they need to feed a habit. They commit crime, for the most part, because they can turn a profit doing so.

    Since 2010, we have confiscated almost £1 billion in proceeds of crime, and the Serious Crime Act 2015 closed many of the loopholes used by criminals to get around confiscation and asset freezing. We are working with the professional sector to deter solicitors and accountants from becoming involved in money laundering. But we need to go further to break the criminals’ business models and make it harder for organised criminals in particular to benefit from their crimes.

    We will implement a new Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Action Plan. Because if criminals know they can’t convert their ill-gotten gains into legitimate income, it should deter them from committing the crime in the first place.

    A few weeks ago, I launched the Joint Fraud Taskforce with over 40 major banks and financial organisations to strengthen the collective response of the government, the financial sector and law enforcement. And for the worst offenders, we are introducing a new top 10 most wanted fraudsters to focus effort and resources – and ensure that those coordinating the most activity find it more difficult to operate.

    And, as you will hear later on today, we are working with businesses to prevent modern slavery in their global supply chains, to help put a stop to the appalling abuse of people that most of us thought had been abolished over a century ago.

    I have outlined the approach in our new modern crime prevention strategy and the action we are taking to address the different drivers of crime. But of course most crimes will have more than one driver, and it is when we take a range of actions covering those many drivers that we can most successfully address a particular crime type.

    Take metal theft. In 2010, metal theft starting rising exponentially in line with the high global price in copper and lead. Churches, road signs and even civic statues were targeted, and in 2011 Network Rail reported a 50% rise in the number of metal thefts from their lines that resulted in more than 6,000 hours of delays to people’s train journeys.

    Yet once we understood the drivers behind this metal theft, it was clear what needed to be done. So we took action to address profit, opportunity and the criminal justice system by banning cash payments for scrap metal to make sales traceable, creating a joint intelligence hub to better monitor metal infrastructure, and introducing larger fines, tougher sanctions and a new licensing scheme for scrap dealers.

    The result was a fall in metal theft by 30%. And railway delays due to metal theft fell by 80% in the 3 years after 2010/11.

    So today we need to apply the same approach to all types of crime. And most importantly, we all need to play our part in making life harder for criminals.

    Because as I said earlier, the one thing we can learn from the last 20 years is that neither government nor the police can prevent crime on their own. Everyone with an interest in making our lives and communities safer needs to take responsibility.

    The police need to develop the right capabilities and ensure they are effectively deployed. Academics can help to fill the gaps in our evidence base on changing crime. Manufacturers and retailers should work with us to identify new ways to design out crime from products and services. Voluntary sector organisations – like Neighbourhood Watch and Crimestoppers – can support the police and provide advice to the public. And the public must play their part in protecting themselves, their possessions and their data from modern crime.

    At the opening of my speech, I spoke about online fraud and the new types of crime we are seeing. Crime is changing. But that doesn’t mean we should think they can’t be stopped.

    Time and again, we have proven that if we take the right steps, if we work together, and if we invest in the right capabilities, there is nothing inevitable about crime and nothing inexorable about its rise.

    We must prevent crime, not just respond to it. And if we do so, we can make our country safer, reduce crime in our communities, and reduce the harm done to vulnerable people.

    Crime is not inevitable. Together, let’s deliver the same reductions in the next twenty years, and we have seen in the last.

  • Edward Timpson – 2016 Speech to Virtual School Heads

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the Minister of State for Children and Families, in York on 22 March 2016.

    Thanks Alan for that warm welcome. The first thing I want to do is reassure you that I do really exist! Those of you who have attended this event before will know that my presence at your more recent annual conferences, for reasons beyond my control has, perhaps ironically, been virtual and through a pre-recorded message.

    So, it’s a particular pleasure to be here with you today, a little croaky, but genuinely in the flesh and at a time when, having already achieved a significant amount as a body of professionals, you’re looking to be even more ambitious for your role and for the education of children in care.

    I’d also like to take the opportunity to join others in thanking York St John’s University for hosting this conference and to everyone, especially Alan and Jane, who’ve been beavering away to make sure we have such a rich and varied programme on offer throughout the day.

    From the sneak preview I’ve had of the next presentation, I can see that you’ve not let the grass grow under your feet since your role became statutory. As I’d expect, your 7 priorities are rightly ambitious.

    And how exciting to be a virtual school head at a time when we’re planning and now delivering a raft of reforms to improve children’s social care more widely.

    In January, we announced the setting up of a new social work body to ensure social work education supports a world-class social work profession.

    We’re also developing a new Partners in Practice programme with the country’s best performing council and leaders, and we’re establishing a What Works Centre, so that social workers and others across the country, can learn from the very best examples of frontline social work.

    And in all of this, you, as virtual school heads, have a key role to play in helping realise our ambitious once in a generation programme of whole system transformation of children’s social care.

    Given the theme of today’s conference – “what can we learn from research and each other?” – it seems entirely appropriate it’s happening in a university. It’s true that we know more than we once did about the factors that impact on the educational outcomes of children in care

    But, as the paper researched jointly by the Rees Centre and University of Bristol last year demonstrated, we need to know and understand more. So I’m encouraged that research and development feature in 2 of the 7 priorities the national body of virtual school heads has set itself over the next 12 months.

    The importance of the virtual school head role

    But why is this so important? Well, as many of you will know, virtual school heads are a passion of mine. And so is helping every child in care get the chance to fulfil his or her potential.

    I know only too well from my own experience of growing up with foster siblings how easy it was for children in care to get lost in the system, for their education to take a back seat while other parts of their life were prioritised, something my father John decided to highlight in his agony uncle column in the business section of a national newspaper only yesterday – a shameless plug!

    As virtual school heads you are changing that. I know that on so many occasions it’s you, as the virtual school head, who’s been that parent with sharp elbows, the educational advocate a child has needed.

    It’s why as soon as I was elected to Parliament almost 8 years ago, I made it my mission to push the plight of children in care’s education to the top of the policy pile. And it’s why one of the first things I did as the Children’s Minister was to implement my own recommendation from a cross-party report and make the virtual school head role statutory – only the sixth statutory post that a local authority was required to have. It’s also why we introduced the pupil premium plus and gave the responsibility for its management to virtual school heads.

    Celebrate virtual school head achievements

    At your 2014 conference, the then Children’s Commissioner laid down a gauntlet at your feet. She asked you what you were going to do with your statutory status.

    Your response? Well, you’ve risen to that challenge, both as individuals and as a professional body, to affirm loud and clear that we all have a responsibility to help looked-after children have high aspirations and to succeed, and you’ve also put some grease on those sharp elbows.

    Within 2 years, your national body has taken you from a loose network of professionals that was not universally understood, to one where you have real currency and clout.

    You’ve forged a working partnership with Ofsted at both a national level and across the 9 regional networks. And, although I know it may feel like a mixed blessing when Ofsted comes knocking to inspect local authority children’s services, they now want to know about the work of virtual school heads.

    The work you’ve done over the last 2 years to foster links with Ofsted is significant and can only help in increasing your profile and status across children’s services and beyond.

    You’ve also been building strong links with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, and it was encouraging to see the joint policy paper you published with ADCS and the National Consortium for Examination Results, setting off a national conversation about improving outcomes for children in care.

    I’m also pleased this work is being embedded through a new virtual school head website that will be a hub for good practice and robust peer review, 2 key elements to achieving an excellent service.

    In the last few years you’ve also made much needed progress in raising awareness in schools about understanding children’s attachment and its impact on learning. Mike Gorman’s partnership work with Bath Spa University in this area has been nothing short of inspirational, and through the great work of Tony Clifford, the virtual head in Stoke, you’ve directly influenced the development of NICE guidelines on attachment.

    And not only do virtual school heads now get invited to the Education Select Committee to give evidence on the mental health of looked-after children; it seems that the virtual school head model is being embraced by other countries – I know that, Ian Wren, the virtual school head from Melbourne, Australia is here, eager to share experiences and learn more from your endeavours.

    So I wanted to be here today to pay tribute to your achievements, for your passion, your energy, your belief in making sure everyone does his or her very best to give children in care the support they deserve. It warms my heart to know that in every corner of the country there are dedicated professionals and carers championing their cause.

    Conscious there is more to do

    But of course – and you don’t need a minister to tell you this – there’s always more to do. None of us believe we’ve cracked it, making our roles redundant. Far from it.

    So in reflecting on the theme of today’s conference I’d like to talk about 2 areas where I believe it’s possible to make even more of a difference: the first is understanding and applying research and evidence to practice – building on the learning from today’s conference; the second is increasing the focus on what it means to be a great corporate parent.

    Using evidence-based research

    We all know that the reasons why children who come into care don’t perform as well as their peers are both complex and enduring.

    So if we’re serious about improving their educational outcomes, and helping them reach their potential, we need to avoid over simplistic conclusions and ensure that our policies and decisions are based on strong, reliable evidence.

    Yes, some of the statistics surrounding the outcomes of children and care seem stark and troublesome at first glance, but we need to go much deeper to really understand what lies behind them.

    That’s why I was so pleased to be at the launch of the joint research by the Rees Centre and University of Bristol last November on the educational progress of looked-after children in England. It was the first major study in England to explore the relationship between education outcomes and the care histories and characteristics of the young people looked after.

    I’m sure you’ll have discussed the findings in your regions just as we’ve been discussing them with ADCS. I could talk about them all at great length as my officials know to their cost! But in the time, I have I’ll highlight 3.

    Firstly, it appears that children who’ve been in care longer do better than those who have been in short-term care, therefore suggesting that care can provide a protective factor educationally. This is not the perceived wisdom out there in the public arena, an orthodoxy we now need to challenge.

    Secondly, and this comes as no surprise, the research shows that stability is a strong indicator of educational attainment. In particular, the research revealed that:

    – each additional change of care placement after the age of 11 was associated with one third of a grade less at GCSE

    – young people who changed schools in years 10 and 11 scored over five grades less than those who didn’t

    Serious food for thought, not just for virtual school heads, but the wider children’s social care workforce.

    And thirdly, the other stand-out message for me in the research – one that on the face of it is blindly obvious but nonetheless under-appreciated – was that schools doing well for other pupils do well for children who are looked after.

    That explains why the choice of school for every child in care is so important, and why that decision can have such profound consequences for that child in our care.

    So what are the policy and practice implications from this comprehensive study for virtual school heads?

    For me, research like this is all about helping you use the levers at your disposal to greatest effect.

    You’ve got the pupil premium plus, looked-after children get priority admission to schools, and you’re one of the handful of statutory roles a local authority is required to have. Therefore I urge you to reflect on the research, and use this power – as I know you do every day – to bring about real, transformative change in the lives of children in care.

    The good news is: we’ve already seen some outstanding, innovative, ground-breaking practice from virtual school heads restless in their pursuit of educational excellence for their children, refusing to accept watered down, tokenistic commitments from other professionals, prepared to use their powerful positions to push the boundaries of possibility.

    That’s fantastic, but to help you achieve more for our looked-after children, I appreciate you need a sharper way of measuring the progress these children are making. So, for me, another significant conclusion from the report was that it would be better to measure the educational progress of looked-after children relative to those with the same prior attainment, rather than in relation to absolute attainment. I’m pleased and relieved to say that this conclusion reflects the policy position we’ve ourselves reached.

    So, to take our thinking forward on this and on other strands of work emerging from what the research evidence is telling us – and in the spirit of working alongside each other – we’ve established an education working group co-chaired by a DfE official and Debbie Barnes, chair of the ADCS educational achievement policy committee.

    That group, which also includes Alan Clifton as the chair of the national group of virtual school heads, and representatives from the voluntary sector, has already met twice and is establishing a joint workplan. A significant strand of its work will be focused on how we can use data better to help understand and measure improvements in what children in care achieve – and therefore, of course, track the impact of what we’re doing, and target our energies at the highest impact interventions. Because we all want to know that our efforts are achieving the maximum return in the form of outstanding outcomes for children in care.

    Building partnerships with others

    Another significant area for the group is around how you as virtual school heads, can work more closely with teachers and other school staff, and importantly with foster carers, to develop your understanding of the role they have to play in driving educational aspiration for looked-after children.

    And, to that end, I was struck that the young people participating in the Rees Centre research said that teachers provided the most significant educational support to them. Yet teachers themselves felt they needed more training to do this effectively, particularly in supporting children’s emotional and mental health.

    So I’m delighted that some virtual schools, like the Tri-borough, are rolling out training programmes to schools, something I would strongly support and encourage all of you to do too.

    There’s also good work been going on in London through the Greater London Assembly Fostering Achievement as well as in other parts of the country to help foster carers develop the necessary confidence to engage with schools. After all, foster carers are the parent at the school gate, the parent able to reinforce at home what goes on in the classroom, the parent who can give you an invaluable insight into children under your wing.

    I’m also pleased the government is funding a £3 million joint pilot between the Department for Education and NHS England for training single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services.

    Through 27 clinical commissioning groups and 200 schools the pilots will ensure that children have timely access to specialist support where needed.

    And virtual school heads should quite rightly be at the heart of these developments, central to modelling the way in which their local authority, schools and even health professionals should live and breathe the principles of every good corporate parent:

    – promoting a culture of high aspirations

    – ensuring stability, and

    – making sure everyone understands and is deeply committed to their role in helping every child in our care to succeed

    Embracing new challenges

    Looking a little further over the horizon, the eagle-eyed will have seen that schools white paper published last Thursday announced that we’ll consider changing legislation to extend your current role and the role and responsibilities of the school designated teacher for looked-after children to support children who have left care under an adoption order. Like children in care, adopted children face unique challenges at school. We know they often struggle to keep up with their classmates and I’ve followed with interest what some local authorities are already doing to support adoptive parents and their children.

    Of course, you won’t be their corporate parent and so your role for this group would be quite different, more one of providing information and advice. But, we believe this is not only the next logical step, but the right thing to do.

    In thinking hard about your future role and remit, I don’t doubt the scale of challenge in what’s being asked of you as individuals and as a collective professional body of virtual school heads, whether that’s spotting opportunities to tap into innovation, or trying to make meaningful links across professional disciplines and agencies.

    But, I believe your very own National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH), puts you in a strong position to take on those challenges and more.

    Yes, you’ve set them an ambitious to do list: to commission and disseminate research that drives change; provide an independent and consistent voice for the people who know the most about children in care and to provide strong links between virtual schools across the country.

    But it’s a vision I commend, because it’s one that’s about getting it right for virtual school heads so that you can get it right for children in care. It’s empowering, isn’t it, to know you can be agents of real, meaningful and life-long change for some of our most vulnerable children. It’s why we do what we do – to see before our very eyes a child’s life chances transform from what might otherwise be a hopeless, hapless future, to one full of possibility, positivity and purpose. Not that you need it, but you have my permission to go out there and make it happen!

    Thank you.

  • Michael Fallon – 2016 Speech on the UK’s Independent Nuclear Deterrent

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Michael Fallon, the Secretary of State for Defence, at the Policy Exchange in London on 23 March 2016.

    Thank you John.

    It’s always a pleasure to speak at Policy Exchange.

    Policy Exchange has led the public policy debate over the past 14 years on issues as far apart as housing and the impact of lawfare on our Armed Forces.

    So I’m delighted to launch the new National Security Unit here today.

    I’m pleased to see Policy Exchange going global. I know – under John Bew’s direction – you’ll bring your trademark clarity to the broader issues of national security.

    At the moment all our thoughts today must of course be with our friends in Brussels.

    The Strategic Defence and Security Review identified terrorism as one of the greatest challenges we face and it set out plans to tackle it.

    Today, however, I want to focus on another important national security issue: the case for our independent nuclear deterrent.

    DEFENCE AND DETERRENCE

    Defence is the first duty of any Government.

    As our SDSR said…and I quote…: “Defence and protection start with deterrence, which has long been, and remains, at the heart of the UK’s national security policy”.

    Deterrence means convincing any potential aggressor that the benefits of an attack are far outweighed by its consequences.

    Deterrence draws upon the full spectrum of our capabilities… diplomacy, economic policy, law enforcement, offensive cyber, covert means…and, of course, our Armed Forces.

    Which is why the most fundamental role of the Armed Forces is not to fight wars, but – through their very existence – to deter, and thus to prevent war.

    For no part of our Armed Forces is that more true than our nuclear capability. If nuclear weapons are fired, they have failed. But they are used every day: to deter.

    This Government was elected on a manifesto that included a commitment to build four new ballistic missile submarines … replacing the Vanguard submarines that come out of service from the early 2030s.

    And we’ve committed to a debate and vote this year so that Parliament can endorse that decision. So now is the right time to set out why we should retain our nuclear deterrent.

    There are three reasons.

    Because we are realistic about the world we live in.

    Because we take our responsibilities to the British people and to our Allies seriously.

    And because that means that nuclear weapons are relevant now and are going to be relevant for the foreseeable future.

    Let me take each in turn.

    1. REALISM

    First, it’s about realism.

    Some characterise this debate as one of extremes. Between those who want to disarm and those who never will disarm.

    Let me reject that artificiality. We all agree on the destructive power of nuclear weapons, and that we must do everything to ensure they will never be used.

    We also have a shared ambition to see a world where nuclear weapons states feel able to relinquish them.

    Where we really differ is how best to achieve this.

    On the one hand are those idealists who believe that unilateral disarmament will make us safer…

    …on the other are those of us who recognise that the real world threats to the United Kingdom are growing not diminishing.

    So we must be realistic about the world in which we live.

    The Labour Government’s 2006 White Paper on the future of the deterrent identified risks to the UK from major nuclear armed states from emerging nuclear states, and state sponsored terrorism.

    Those risks have not gone away.

    Indeed, nine years on, our own SDSR judged that the United Kingdom is facing challenges that are growing in scale, diversity, complexity and in concurrency.

    Nor has the nuclear threat gone away. The SDSR recognised, and I quote, “continuing risk of further proliferation of nuclear weapons” and concluding that we could not “relax our guard… or rule out further shifts which would put us under grave threat”.

    And Russian behaviour is a case in point here.

    Russia has become more aggressive, more authoritarian and more nationalist. Its illegal annexation of Crimea and support of Ukrainian separatists through the use of deniable, hybrid tactics and media manipulation have shown its willingness to undermine the rules based international system in order to promote and secure its own perceived interests.

    Russia is upgrading its nuclear forces; and Russia is threatening to base nuclear forces in Kaliningrad and in the Crimea.

    The last two years have seen a worrying increase in both official Russian rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons and the frequency of snap nuclear exercises.

    And we should take heed of those developments.

    North Korea is another worrying case study. North Korea is the only nation to have tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century. It now claims to have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It’s developing long-range missiles, and continues to flaunt its new found nuclear capabilities.

    Just as we must be realistic about the growing nuclear threats, we also have to acknowledge that our prospects of single-handedly convincing the world to abandon its nuclear arms… are limited.

    Now we are committed to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons, in line with our obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    And we have led the way on disarmament.

    We’ve cut our nuclear stockpiles by over half since the height of the Cold War

    Last year I reduced the number of deployed warheads on each submarine from 48 to 40 last year

    And we have pledged to reduce further our stockpile of nuclear weapons to no more than 180 warheads by the mid-2020s.

    Other nations have not followed suit.

    There remain about 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world… we have less than one per cent of them.

    It is frankly naïve – even vainglorious – to imagine that the grand gesture of UK unilateral disarmament could change the calculations of nuclear states, or those seeking to acquire weapons.

    Far more likely they would see it as weakness.

    So the only way to create the global security conditions necessary for achieving nuclear disarmament is by working multilaterally…

    by taking tangible steps towards a safer and more stable world

    And by giving states with nuclear weapons the confidence they require to relinquish them.

    Our recent efforts, working alongside other leading powers, secured a deal with Iran and showed what can be achieved.

    But we should also be realistic about how long this will take.

    As the great nuclear theorist and former MOD Permanent Secretary, Sir Michael Quinlan, once wrote:

    ‘no safer system than deterrence is yet in view, and impatience would be a catastrophic guide in the search. To tear down” he said… “the present structure, imperfect but effective, before a better one is firmly within our grasp would be an immensely dangerous and irresponsible act.’

    2. RESPONSIBILITY

    That brings me to my second point. We have a political and moral responsibility to our people and our Allies.

    No-one would claim the nuclear deterrent solves all of our national security requirements.

    Terrorist threats are all too real – as we saw so tragically yesterday. But nuclear weapons were never intended to combat terrorism.

    They are intended to deter the most extreme dangers our nation might face.

    What’s more, our independent deterrent isn’t just key to our security; it contributes to our NATO allies’ security as well.

    NATO is the cornerstone of our defence. It is first and foremost a defensive alliance. And it is also a nuclear alliance.

    By maintaining our independent nuclear deterrent, alongside the US and France, we provide NATO with three separate centres of decision-making.

    That complicates the calculations of potential adversaries, and it prevents them threatening the UK, or our allies, with impunity.

    Now some will ask why we possess nuclear weapons when other Allies such as Germany do without them.

    But we can’t rewrite history. We were one of the original nuclear powers. Others were not.

    And many of those Allies signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the late 1960s in the knowledge they were covered by NATO’s nuclear umbrella, including the United Kingdom deterrent.

    It would not be the action of a strong and valued ally to withdraw that protection.

    And how would the United States or France respond if we suddenly announced that we were abandoning our nuclear capabilities…

    …yet will still expect them to pick up the tab and to put their cities at risk to protect us in a nuclear crisis?

    Without our nuclear contribution to NATO, could we guarantee that a potential adversary might not miscalculate the degree of United States commitment to the defence of Europe?

    As one of the leading member of NATO we shouldn’t now think of outsourcing our commitments.

    That would not make us safer and it would have no moral merit.

    It would weaken us now and in the future.

    It would undermine NATO.

    And it would embolden our adversaries.

    3. RELEVANCE

    That brings me to my third point: the relevance.

    Our independent nuclear deterrent is relevant not only for today but also for the foreseeable future.

    The UK case does not rest on our assessment of threats that face us now….

    …but on our assessment of what the world could be like in the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s and beyond…

    And the truth is we don’t know.

    No-one accurately predicted the end of the Cold War…or the coming of the Arab Spring, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, or the rise of Daesh.

    Those who argue in favour of scrapping our nuclear deterrent unilaterally must be certain – absolutely certain – no extreme threats will emerge in the next 30 or 40 years to threaten our security and way of life.

    And they can’t be so certain.

    That is why successive Governments for over sixty years have concluded that this country should retain its nuclear weapons.

    Now the UK government last formally presented the case for the future of the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent to Parliament in 2006.

    Launching that White Paper Tony Blair, said “an independent nuclear deterrent is an essential part of our insurance against the uncertainties and risks of the future.”

    That was the right judgment then.

    It’s the right judgment now.

    Our nuclear deterrent has helped keep the peace between the major powers for decades.

    Abandoning it, would undermine our security and that of our allies. It would not make us safer.

    And once we gave up those weapons, there would be no going back to them.

    OBJECTIONS

    That is the case for retaining a nuclear deterrent.

    And I put it to you that it is hard to argue against the principle.

    But, before concluding, let me finally address the main practical objections that people have raised.

    First, the claim that there are cheaper and more effective ways of providing a similar effect to the Trident system.

    There aren’t.

    Successive studies have looked at this in detail…

    … under Labour Ministers in 2006…

    …and more recently under the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition in 2013.

    They reached the same conclusion.

    A minimum, credible, assured and independent deterrent requires nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles.

    Other options were considered.

    The Trident Alternatives Review in 2013 assessed what ships, aircraft, submarines and silos could deliver nuclear weapons; and which missiles, bombs or nuclear warheads were most appropriate.

    It found that submarines were less vulnerable to attack than silos or aircraft.

    They can maintain a continuous posture in a way that aircraft and land-based alternatives cannot.

    It made clear that alternative delivery systems, such as cruise missiles, wouldn’t have the same range as the Trident missile … reducing the reach and capability of our deterrent.

    Only the current submarine-based, Trident missile system offered the resilience but also the cost-effectiveness that successive UK Governments sought. The second objection is that submarines will somehow become obsolete, through technological developments such as unmanned underwater vehicles or cyber threats.

    The ocean is a vast, complex and challenging environment in which to conduct large scale anti-submarine warfare.

    Our confidence that submarines will not be rendered obsolete by technology is partly based on classified analysis, but also on some obvious facts.

    Operating quietly for long periods in the ocean is highly demanding. It requires endurance, a powerful energy source, resilience from high pressure and corrosion, and stealth.

    The ability to track submarines and then communicate their position brings with it many significant challenges.

    Now we dedicate considerable resource to assessing these emerging capabilities. And we judge that there is no inherent reason, for the foreseeable future, to believe that unmanned submarines will be substantially more difficult to counter, than manned submarines.

    As for cyber-attack, while deployed, submarines operate in isolation. It’s hard to think of a system less susceptible to cyber-attack.

    And it’s also worth asking, if nuclear submarines were redundant, or going to be redundant, why would the United States, China, Russia and France all be spending tens of billions of dollars on their own submarine based ballistic missile systems?

    As practical as these objections appear, they are in fact simply the latest in a litany of arguments employed to justify an anti-nuclear position.

    COST

    The third practical objection is cost.

    Now we must remember that security underpins all the Government’s priorities.

    With the fifth biggest defence budget in the world…backed up by our commitment to invest 2 per cent of GDP in defence… we can afford conventional and nuclear capabilities.

    Our estimate is that four new submarines will cost £31 billion to build. We’ve also set a contingency of £10 billion on top of that.

    But the £31 billion acquisition cost will be spread over 35 years, which works out as an insurance premium of 0.2% per year of total Government spending.

    Twenty pence in every £100 pounds the Government spends…for a system that will provide a capability through to the 2050s and beyond.

    I believe that that is a price worth paying.

    CONCLUSION

    So let me say in conclusion…before nuclear weapons, major powers embarked on two of the most destructive wars imaginable.

    Many millions died, millions more suffered.

    Yet, for all the conventional conflicts since, and there have been many of them, there hasn’t been major conflict between nuclear armed states. The devastating possibilities of nuclear war have helped maintain strategic stability.

    And our independent UK nuclear deterrent has played its part.

    Those who still oppose it must prove to us how relinquishing it would make us safer.

    Now we should not accept nuclear deterrence as the last word in ensuring freedom from major war. Our commitment under our Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations is clear.

    But to abandon our deterrent now would be an act of supreme irresponsibility.

    In 2007 Parliament voted to maintain the minimum strategic nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the existing system.

    Last year Parliament voted twice to retain our deterrent.

    This year Parliament will have the opportunity to vote on the principle of Continuous At Sea Deterrence and our plans for Successor.

    This is not a judgment about short term threats.

    It is about the threats we may face over generations to come.

    We should not gamble with our national security.

    The United Kingdom’s independent nuclear deterrent remains right for our nation – for as long as the global security situation demands.

    Thank you.

  • James Duddridge – 2016 Speech on Bringing Peace to Great Lakes

    jamesduddridge

    Below is the text of the speech made by James Duddridge, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, at the UN Security Council on 21 March 2016.

    Thank you, Mr President, for convening this important and timely debate. I join others in thanking the Secretary-General for his briefing.

    Bringing peace to the Great Lakes area has been one of the most difficult challenges faced by this Council. Decades of violence and chaos have left millions dead; millions without hope or indeed a home; millions vulnerable to attack from armed groups.

    The UN Charter pledges to save successive generations from the scourge of war. In the seventy years since collectively we’ve made this pledge, nowhere has it rung more hollow than in the Great Lakes region.

    Nowhere is this more obvious today than in Burundi. When I visited the country in December of last year, I heard horrific stories of suffering and abuse. People spoke of torture, of disappearances, of extra-judicial killings, of mass graves and murders, indiscriminate raids on their homes. I met with health workers who were running out of medicine for sick children, human rights activists living in fear for their lives and traders that were helpless against the collapse of the economy that prior to the troubles was doing so well as we’ve heard earlier.

    In January, the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights noted that extra judicial killings were increasing despite the Government’s claim that the situation was normal. Evidence of nine mass graves, one of which contained at least one hundred bodies, was cited in the same report. Again, denied by the Burundian Government. And the violence continues today. Abductions and killings are creating a climate of fear. Just last month, Human Rights Watch presented credible evidence of the increasing and worrying use of organised sexual violence.

    The United Kingdom is committed to doing everything, everything in our power to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation in Burundi. We must not, collectively or individually, repeat the mistakes of the past. We thank the Secretary-General for his leadership and the members of this Council for their leadership and active engagement, particularly during their second joint visit to Bujumbura and Burundi earlier this year. We welcome the pledges made by the African Union and the East African Community to take decisive action to prevent human rights abuses and crimes against humanity more generally in Africa.

    We, the United Kingdom, stand ready to support the AU. We thank Uganda for their constructive participation in this mediation process. We also welcome the participation of His Excellency Benjamin Mkapa, former President of Tanzania, in these efforts and offer him our strongest support and indeed assistance.

    It is right that the international community should play its part. However, let us be clear, let us be under no misunderstanding – the primary responsibility for this crisis lies with the Burundian Government. The Burundian Government has failed in its fundamental duty to its nation, to support the security and safety of its own people. It has within its power the power to change things. Burundi has found a pathway to peace before. And it must do so again.

    President Nkurunziza must deliver on his promises to the Secretary-General and representatives of the African Union. The first step is simple. The Government must participate in a fully inclusive political dialogue with all parties. Not just those parties President Nkurunziza feels happy dealing with. All parties must be included, as peace among just a few is no peace at all.

    We have learnt time and time again elsewhere in the world that for peace to endure, communities need ways to resolve conflict peacefully. The United Kingdom believes genuinely that democratic and accountable governance is the best foundation for stability. That means a frank, lively and uncensored national debate, an active, representative civil society, and a freely operating media.

    It also means timely and democratic transitions of power to maintain lasting stability. Failure to allow that transition puts the progress across the Great Lakes at risk. We urge all countries in the region to use electoral processes to demonstrate their commitment to peace, stability and accountability. Today, this is particularly pertinent to the Republic of Congo, which held elections yesterday, following a referendum in which the national debate could sadly not be said to have been either ‘frank, lively or uncensored’.

    Looking across the border, 2016 is a critical year for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Kingdom is a particularly close long-term partner of the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo and we want them to enjoy stability and prosperity. We stand by UN Security Council Resolution 2211.

    DR Congo must hold elections this year, in accordance with their Constitution. With every missed milestone in their democratic journey, the Government loses credibility with the United Kingdom, and I believe with this Council. It breaks a promise not to us, but a promise to its people and this risks causing further instability in this already fragile region. We know that the process is not easy, and we are ready to help, with funding and supporting the electoral process.

    This Council has also offered its full support to the Government of DR Congo and I expect that to be repeated when MONUSCO’s mandate is renewed later this week. DR Congo must make the most of this support, and seize this opportunity to show leadership across the region.

    The United Kingdom believes in the enormous potential of the countries and the people of the Great Lakes. That is why we have maintained our strong friendships and support. But their fates are inextricably linked, so their governments must work together if this potential is to be realised. The Peace and Security Cooperation Framework signed by the countries of the region in 2013 offered a comprehensive joint approach to the region’s problems. But not enough has been done to deliver it.

    We all know that peace and security are fundamental building blocks for economic growth. Together they hold the key to unlocking the potential of the people of the region. The Great Lakes Private Investor Conference held in Kinshasa, which we’ve heard some of earlier during the debate, last month highlighted how poverty fuels conflict in the region. But it also showed that investment, economic growth and job creation can and will build peace. In recognition of that, the United Kingdom recently appointed trade envoys to Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

    Mr President, I urge leaders of the region to play their part in bringing peace, making the measures set out in the Peace and Security Cooperation Framework a reality, uniting to build long-term peace and prosperity. As they strive to do so, the people of the Great Lakes will have the full support of the United Kingdom, and, I hope, this Council.

    Mr President, obrigado [thank you].

  • Nick Gibb – 2016 Speech on Music Education

    nickgibb

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, at City Hall in London on 22 March 2016.

    Thank you Munira [Murza, Deputy Mayor of London for Education and Culture] for that kind welcome. And thank you for inviting me here today to talk about how good-quality music education should lie at the heart of every school in this country.

    It is a privilege to speak to so many music teachers from across London. Many teachers tend, by necessity, to work in small music departments so days such as these provide an important opportunity to meet fellow teachers and share ideas.

    I have enormous admiration for the work of music teachers: passing on a knowledge of and passion for music – of all forms – to new generations. I look back with great fondness and gratitude to the early exposure to music that I received as a child.

    Singing in the St Edmund’s Parish Church Choir in Roundhay, Leeds, gave me a lasting love for choral music. The delight I still feel today when I listen to ‘Zadok the Priest’ or Allegri’s ‘Miserere’ can be traced back to my schooldays. That is not an invitation for you to ask me to sing today by the way.

    An initiative from last year that the department helped achieve, and that I was delighted to see occur, was the Classical 100 music app – launched by the ABRSM in collaboration with Classic FM and Decca. This is a new digital resource, designed and made freely available to all primary schools. It includes recordings of 100 classical pieces of music composed over 10 centuries, ranging from children’s classics such as ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and ‘Carnival of the Animals’, to works such as Beethoven’s ‘Fifth Symphony’ and Handel’s ‘Messiah’. The recordings are supplemented by digital teaching resources, including information about the composers and the stories behind the music.

    I saw the app trialed at the end of last year at St Charles Catholic Primary School in central London, where a wonderful teacher entranced her class by playing them Tchaikovsky’s ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. So far, 339 London primary schools have signed up to use the resource, and I would encourage any here who haven’t already to access it, and delve into the treasure trove of timeless pieces of classical music that it contains.

    For me, the Classical 100 encapsulates 2 vital principles for music education in our schools. Firstly, ensuring that it is of a high quality. And secondly, ensuring that it is made available to all children, irrespective of birth or background.

    Due to our focus on increasing the uptake of EBacc subjects at GCSE, the government has been accused by some of damaging the status of arts in schools. This is absolutely not the case. I make no apologies for our belief that more schools should be offering a core academic curriculum to their pupils up to the age of sixteen. But there is no reason why this should imperil the status of arts subjects such as music: both can and should coexist in any good school.

    In fact, since the EBacc was announced, the percentage of state school pupils entered for at least 1 GCSE in an arts subject has increased. And so has the number of entries to music GCSE.

    The government is committed to ensuring that high-quality music education is not the preserve of a social elite, but is the entitlement of every single child. That is why funding for our highly successful music hubs, in which I am sure many here today are involved, is remaining at £75 million in 2016 to 2017. Nearly £11.7 million of that will go to hubs in London.

    Music education hubs ensure that every child in England has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument through weekly whole-class ensemble teaching programmes. Music education hubs also ensure that clear progression routes are available and affordable, and many hubs subsidise the cost of lessons for pupils. Under this programme, any budding seeds of musical passion that young children have will not remain buried and unnurtured. I hope that in years to come, adults with a passion for music will have the work of music hubs to thank for first introducing them to musical performance.

    Many schools work hard to nurture a love of music amongst their pupils. At St Charles Primary School in Ladbroke Grove, where 39% of pupils are eligible for the pupil premium, the school provides subsidised small group lessons to all children in key stage 2 who want them. Over 50% of all key stage 2 pupils have instrumental lessons outside the class environment and this summer 35 of them will be taking ABRSM exams. Pupils are charged just £4 a lesson and many receive them completely free.

    Learning a musical instrument can be a complicated business and children need support from their parents. But parents who have never learned to play an instrument themselves may struggle to help their children. So I am delighted that the GLA has commissioned a new guide for parents from the ABRSM. The guide will be launched in September and some promotional films on the guide will be shown during the lunch break today.

    Here in London there is the marvellous Mayor’s Music Fund for Young Londoners. This provides 4-year scholarships to children who show significant musical ability and a real commitment to developing their talent, but whose families do not have the financial means to support ongoing tuition.

    When it comes to provision of music education, the government believes in equity, but it also believes in excellence. Talented young musicians need the opportunity to make music with others of a similar standard, and access to selective ensembles and demanding repertoire. The music education hubs provide high-quality borough or county-wide ensembles and signpost the most talented toward specialist provision.

    For the same reason, the government supports national youth music organisations such as the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the National Youth Orchestra, to help ensure that no one is turned away because their parents cannot pay.

    There is a clear concern amongst the public that careers in the arts have become the preserve of the privileged and privately educated. To ensure that this is not the case in years to come, the government will continue to fund over 500 full-time places at 4 specialist music schools, as well as a similar number of places at 4 specialist dance schools, through the Music and Dance Scheme. The vast majority of pupils board, and means-tested bursaries are available to ensure that entry to the schools is based on pupils’ talent, not on their parents’ ability to pay fees.

    The scheme also funds places at the junior departments of the 6 English music conservatoires, and at 6 music and 9 dance centres for advanced training. We fund almost 1,300 students to take up places at these institutions, over 60% of whom receive a full bursary. With 4 of the music conservatoires here in London, young Londoners are particularly well placed to take advantage of these opportunities.

    In fact, with the wealth of cultural institutions on offer in the city, and the emphasis that the Mayor’s office has placed on developing high-quality music teaching in schools, I can think of no places in the country where it would be better to be a pupil, or teacher, of music.

    In terms of professional development for music teachers, I am delighted that the Music Excellence London network will be building on the work of the ‘Peer to Peer’ and ‘Teach Through Music’ programmes that were funded through the London Schools Excellence Fund. Music Excellence London will combat the isolation that some music teachers experience, and support teachers to develop and improve their classroom practice.

    Important though it is, playing an instrument is not the only aspect of a good music education. Music is also an academic subject, and the new national curriculum ensures that it will be taught as such. It sets the expectation that pupils will perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of great composers and musicians.

    By the time they leave key stage 3, children from all backgrounds should be prepared to, if they wish, embark on a GCSE course with confidence.

    That is particularly important now that the GCSE will be more rigorous. When we revised music qualifications last year, we were told that the gap between GCSE and A level music was too wide. Many students who did well at GCSE were unable to cope with the demands of the AS and A level syllabus. We have tackled that not by dumbing down the A level, but by increasing the challenge of the GCSE. At GCSE, students now have to read and write staff notation. And at least 1 area of study must contain music from the western classical tradition, better preparing pupils for A level study and beyond.

    Our vision for music education in this country can be summed up in 2 words: equity and quality. From their first exposure to the joys of music at a young age, through to providing for the brightest and most talented young musicians, all children deserve to be given the chance to fulfil their musical potential. Thanks to London’s 28 music hubs and the Music and Dance Scheme, and thanks to the Mayor’s music fund, these principles are clearly being fulfilled in the capital.

    I would like to say thank you for the inspiring work you do, ensuring that future generations of Londoners live lives enriched by music, and I hope you all have a wonderful day here at the Mayor’s summit.

  • Brandon Lewis – 2016 Speech at Home Builders Federation Policy Forum

    brandonlewis

    Below is the text of the speech made by Brandon Lewis, the Housing Minister, at the Home Builders Federation Policy Forum in London on 22 March 2016.

    Introduction

    Thank you for inviting me here today.

    Last week we set out our plans:

    – for an economy set to grow faster than any other major advanced country in the world;

    – for a labour market delivering the highest employment in our history;

    – and for businesses that are creating jobs, and building the infrastructure this country needs.

    I don’t need to tell you that the British economy has grown much stronger over the past 6 years.

    The extra homes you are building reflect that progress.

    And your companies’ reports confirm it.

    Economies don’t thrive by accident.

    This government confronted our country’s problems.

    We made the right judgements and took the difficult decisions.

    We had a long term vision, and pursued a long term plan.

    Today the deficit is down by two thirds, and is continuing to fall.

    And our economy is stronger and more resilient.

    Progress on housing

    We used the strong economic foundation we established after 2010 to improve the housing market. My job and yours is to make sure that work continues.

    Challenge for the future

    We all know much more needs to be done to create a housing market that meets peoples’ needs.

    That supports aspiration, increases mobility, boosts productivity and helps local economies grow.

    Spending Review

    In the Spending Review we doubled investment in housing, and set out the largest house building programme for 40 years.

    We aim to build a million homes [by 2021] and double the number of first time buyers in this Parliament, continuing work started in 2010.

    Some have a questioned our emphasis on affordable home ownership.

    But we make no apology for this innovation.

    It’s what working people want.

    86% of people say they would choose to buy their own property.

    And yet the aspiration and reality of home ownership has drifted apart.

    Why should we not help make aspiration more affordable?

    It’s simply old-fashioned political dogma to insist governments only intervene in the market to support renters, when most people would rather buy.

    To persist with this outdated mindset risks creating a generation of young people exiled from homeownership.

    Budget measures

    Starter Homes / Shared Ownership

    We’re committed to building Starter Homes, and in the Budget we set out some of ways we will achieve this.

    Councils will shortly be invited to apply for a share of £1.2 billion Starter Homes Land Fund.

    To remediate brownfield land so it’s ready for construction, and bring more land into the system

    We’ll also publish a new prospectus for the Help to Buy: Shared Ownership scheme for first time buyers, and you’ll soon be to bid for a share of £4 billion to get the work started.

    Releasing more land for house building

    In the Budget we extended that same support to areas wanting to establish Garden Villages.

    Public land

    For the first time ever local authorities have committed to an ambition to release public sector land for house building.

    Land with capacity for at least 160,000 new homes will be released – matching the central government target.

    At the same time the HCA will work with Network Rail and councils to bring forward land around stations for housing, commercial development and regeneration.

    And we expect the first sites to be brought forward shortly.

    In London we have approved the business case for a new Thameslink station at Brent Cross, paving the way for 7,500 new, and desperately needed, homes in the capital.

    We want to release more public land, but we also want to increase transparency across the whole the land market, so we’ll be making it easier to access information on land ownership

    Planning

    Planning permission was granted for more than a quarter of a million homes last year.

    It’s a huge turnaround for the planning system we inherited in 2010, which was in a state of disarray, and a byword for conflict.

    Permissions are starting to outstrip construction by some by an ever increasing margin.

    And that is an issue that must be addressed.

    But we’re always looking for any improvements that can be made.

    We’ll be setting statutory deadlines for the Secretary of State’s decisions, and streamlining local plans.

    We’ll also explore the scope for more ‘zonal’ plans that send clear signals about development potential and offer permission in principle on identified sites that have the support of local people.

    At the same time we want to improve the use of planning conditions to prevent delays getting on site.

    For example, ensuring pre-commencement conditions can only be used with the agreement of the developer.

    Role of the house building industry

    We’ll always look for to make improvements – but the government can’t be the only players in the housing market questioning the way we do things.

    Everyone needs to respond to the extraordinary demand for new homes.

    And our ambitions for house building will only be achieved if we’re all working towards the same goal.

    Government or industry – we will all be judged on our actions, not words.

    There is a desperate need for new homes in this country, and a millions of young people who want a home of their own.

    We all bear responsibility for supporting their aspirations.

    History will not remember us kindly if we allow a generation to face exile from homeownership.

    Do we really want our children to be worse off than their parents?

    Or feel compelled to leave the communities they love and grew up in?

    Forced to decline good job opportunities, and all because local housing is too expensive?

    That is bad for our economy, and it’s bad for society.

    We have been working with the HBF and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. Industry is equally committed to our goal and I would like to thank everyone at the HBF for their work.

    So I would like to finish with a challenge.

    To use the long term commitment of the government to boost capacity in your industry:

    – to build out faster;

    – use new technology better;

    – and invest in apprenticeships so you have young people with the right skills to build homes.

    Other countries are doing this – there’s no reason why we can’t too.

    We need to play our part in the global economy. I fully support the work the Prime Minister has done and is doing in Europe. We need the stability of the EU.

    Imports and exports have an effect on house building. Certainty and confidence affect the market.

    Help to Buy demonstrates this. It is no co-incidence that our economy grew as house building grew.

    Help to Buy gave confidence to buyers and developers. We know that Help to Buy doesn’t affect house prices, but it does impact on supply.

    Conclusion

    There is still a profound need to build more homes in this country, across all tenures, and support the aspirations of people who want to buy a home.

    This will be a defining challenge of our generation, and it’s a prize worth fighting for.

    The economic and social legacy will last far beyond any of our lifetimes.

    Young people have the same hopes and dreams of past generations, and the same ambitions for the future.

    Let’s ensure their hard work can be rewarded with a home of their own.

  • Rob Wilson – 2016 Speech on UK Social Investment Market

    robwilson

    Below is the text of the speech made by Rob Wilson, the Minister for Civil Society, at Lloyd’s of London on 22 March 2016.

    Good morning everyone, it’s a great pleasure join you at the launch of QBE’s innovative Premiums 4 Good insurance product here at Lloyds of London.

    Congratulations on the launch of this product – its great to see 40 early adopters.

    I’m reliably informed that I am in good company today, surrounded by people who want to make a real difference. And that is crucial to what I want to talk to you about.

    We all have an important role in making a difference to people’s lives.

    When I choose to donate to a charity, I expect that charity to act in a responsible way and to be transparent in how my donation is used.

    When I make a pension saving, I expect the investment manager to offer me a choice of investments and to keep me informed about its performance.

    When you take out an insurance policy with QBE and their “Premiums 4 Good” product, you can choose where some of that premium is invested and expect it to report on the social and environmental impact generated by it.

    These examples all have 3 things in common:

    – a focus on consumer choice

    – an intention to generate a positive impact, whether financial or social

    – transparency and accountability about how that impact gets delivered

    These are principles I have been embedding in my programme of reform across charities, civil society and social investment. They are core to my vision of a bigger, stronger society here in the UK.

    So let me tell you about what we as a government have done in the past, what we are doing in the present, and my vision of what we can do in the future.

    Past: Charity sector reform

    You will all be aware that the charity sector has had its fair share of difficulties recently. In the last year I have been focused on reforming the regulatory framework for charities and social sector organisations.

    I have given the sector the chance to sign up to better standards of behaviour. If it fails to follow through on commitments to do things differently, I will take more prescriptive measures to ensure those who donate to charities and those who benefit from charities are protected.

    I have ensured fundraising self-regulation is remodelled – a new fundraising self-regulator is being led by Lord Grade. This will provide confidence that fundraising scandals are now firmly behind the charity sector.

    It provides a platform of public trust and confidence that the sector needs for a generous public to continue to donate to the causes that matter most to them.

    Through the Charities Act, I have enhanced the powers of the Charity Commission to enable it to regulate the charity sector more effectively. Ensuring our charities have a framework fit for 2016 and beyond – subject to minimum bureaucracy but robust oversight.

    The Act also contains a statutory power of social investment for charities, to better enable them to make investments that contribute to their charitable mission as well as providing a financial return. This is the first ever definition of social investment in legislation.

    I hope this sends a strong signal to both the charity sector and the wider investment community that this government is committed to seeing social investment grow.

    Past: Social Investment

    The government took a number of pioneering measures in the last parliament to help with that growth:

    We set up Big Society Capital – the world’s first social investment bank. With contributions from the big four high street banks it received £600 million of capital to be allocated to social investments.

    We established Access – the foundation for social investment. With £100 million to support more organisations to take on investment, it will help stimulate the pipeline of social investment deals over the next 10 years.

    We created a Social Investment Tax Relief, modelled on the successful Enterprise Investment Scheme, to stimulate social investment by individual investors.

    We commissioned the world’s first Social Impact Bond, working on the principle that government only pays for the outcomes it wants to see and that are successfully delivered.

    Investors provide the up-front capital needed to scale up innovative services – the investor is then repaid by government when the specified outcomes are delivered.

    Present: Social Investment

    You will hear hardly any mention of Social Impact Bonds in the media today. I intend to talk about them frequently in the weeks and months ahead.

    Social Impact Bonds, or SIBs, are increasingly being deployed to deliver public service reform that cuts to the heart of some of the biggest challenges that we face as a country.

    They often focus on prevention and early intervention, which will help us to contain the ever expanding demands on our public services.

    In many cases, the delivery organisations are charities and social enterprises who have the experience of delivering successful programmes across local areas.

    SIBs help to foster a genuine partnership between government, Big Society organisations and social investors – bringing in the additional investment needed to support these organisations, who can innovate in ways that big government simply cannot.

    Perhaps most importantly though, they focus on delivering meaningful outcomes for real people. For example, supporting a child out of residential care into an adoptive home, a young person into their first job, or a rough sleeper into supported accommodation.

    The Prime Minister recently announced our new £80 million Life Chances Fund – an important next step on a journey that will show how social investment can transform local public services.

    This is a down payment on a Social Impact Bond market that I hope and expect to be worth more than £1 billion by the end of this parliament. The SIB model will become the norm for the way many of the more challenging public services are funded in years to come.

    I have also set up a commission to look further at dormant assets. I believe there are a host of such assets which belong, in aggregate, to the public and should therefore be used to benefit the general public and not specific firms who may be, unwittingly or not, sitting on these stores of potential public value.

    I expect the commission to report back later this year and I look forward to institutional investors playing their part in unlocking this puzzle.

    The UK is a world leader in social investment – to remain so, we need to continue to push the agenda. This is the right thing to do because of the social benefits it leads to, but also because it supports the UK economy.

    We attract foreign capital to investment opportunities in this country at the same time as exporting our expertise in this growing area to other states around the world. I will be unrelenting in pushing us all to seize this opportunity.

    Future

    My vision for the future of social investment is informed by the principles I set out at the start of this speech:

    – that individuals have genuine choice in how their money is managed in line with their values.

    – that institutional investors build social impact considerations into all their investment decision-making – recognising that fiduciary duty is not only compatible with, but ought to include an appreciation of, social and environmental factors.

    – that there is a culture of feedback on investment performance that includes social impact as well as financial performance.

    To achieve this vision I am beginning to think about further reforms that will make it easy for more people to be social investors. To connect their investments with the causes they care about.

    Firstly, requiring pension providers to offer products to scheme members where a specified percentage of their money goes to social investments. I think this should be as easy for the scheme members as ticking a box when they are deciding how they want their pension invested.

    Working with the grain of people’s behaviour by asking about their preferences at the right time to allow them to take action.

    It is something that we already see working successfully in the French pension system where billions of euros have been channeled to social impact investments.

    Secondly, updating the guidance and regulation around fiduciary duty to better account for social investment and non-financial concerns.

    The Law Commission has already set out a number of recommendations around fiduciary duty and its compatibility with environmental, social and governance factors. Broadly these say that fiduciary duty means considering both financial and non-financial factors. Or, put another way, fiduciaries are not doing their job correctly unless they are considering investments in the round.

    I want to see these principles more fully incorporated into the investment strategies of investment managers. I want to make sure that when investment managers are thinking about their fiduciary duties they are thinking about people’s investment preferences in more than just financial terms.

    This doesn’t mean reduced financial returns. It does mean considering how social impact can sustain or even enhance those returns.

    If the end beneficiary of financial products has limited ability to directly engage with investment choices then the investment manager, acting as a proxy, needs to be thinking about those preferences in a holistic way.

    75% of millennials say that it is important that a company gives back to society instead of just making a profit – these are the kind of preferences that need to be better thought through by investors.

    I have already mentioned the power of social investment for charities that I recently legislated for, better enabling them to combine investments with financial and social returns. I would like to see this approach replicated across the wider investment industry.

    Thirdly, creating a ‘social investor’ category along the lines of the ‘restricted investor’ category in the crowd-funding space.

    Currently the cost of compliance with full FCA regulations can be out of kilter with the small scale financing needs of most social sector organisations.

    A ‘social investor’ category, safeguarded with a maximum limit to each investment of say £250, would make it easier for ‘everyday’ investors to back local causes they care about, ranging from saving the local pub to sustainable energy production.

    And finally, developing a dedicated social investment ISA to make social investing easily identifiable to mass market investors.

    Product providers have made limited progress in developing social investment based offerings. I feel that an ISA allowance that has characteristics specific to social investment would provide the impetus needed to get a meaningful range of socially themed products in front of investors from the general public.

    This could be in the form of a dedicated additional ISA allowance for social investments of say £1,000 to sit on top of the existing allowance.

    I would very much welcome your ideas and engagement on this as well as some of the ongoing work I mentioned earlier. The role of the investment industry will be a large factor determining the success of further social investment reforms.

    Key messages

    I want to highlight some thoughts around social investment which I see as key.

    Social Investment is taking off – institutions are already making social investments.

    The investment manager Cheyne Capital is running a social impact property fund which I understand will make close to a £1 billion of investments in social property.

    Threadneedle has a UK social bond fund with tens of millions of pounds under management which can be accessed by individual investors. I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for retail fund offerings.

    And today we are here to mark this innovative insurance product from QBE – demonstrating how social investment can be applied to new areas of financial provision.

    Millennials are demanding this.

    They will be the beneficiaries of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in our history. Successful investment managers and product providers will need to cater for their preferences.

    They are more interested in values-based lifestyles than previous generations – that includes consumption choices but also the way they want to invest.

    They are also much more likely to demand transparency and accountability from those who manage their money. But the market is not yet providing suitable vehicles for them to express these preferences.

    The government wants to back these people in the choices they want to make.

    As I mentioned earlier, we are committed to growing the social economy. We will use social investment as a way to transform how public services are delivered, making them not just smarter but much more compassionate.

    Closing remarks

    I hope you have heard some clear and consistent messages from me today:

    That I am undertaking a wide programme of reform in those areas that fall under my responsibility; for charities, for social investment and ultimately for a bigger stronger society.

    That this government has taken decisive action to enable social investment in the past, that we are doing more now and that I want to take this much further in the future.

    That I expect major drivers of this progress to be the principles of increased consumer investment choice, transparency of how individuals investments are handled and a focus on better reporting of impact.

    The time for social investment is now – government expects institutions to actively engage in this space. We are listening, but want to see more of the kind of approach embodied by the ‘Premiums 4 Good’ product.

    I am looking forward to the growth of an investment market that better connects its customers with the causes they care about. And I am looking to the investment community to help me deliver it.

    Thank you and good luck to Premiums 4 Good.

  • Ed Vaizey – 2016 Speech on Culture White Paper Launch

    edvaizey

    Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Vaizey, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the Southbank Centre in London on 23 March 2016.

    It’s been a great privilege to have been arts and culture minister for six years – and on occasion to have been the heritage minister as well. It’s a wonderful job that has taken me all over the country and enabled me to experience many of our great cultural treasures and some outstanding events. Be they national and grand or local, small and exquisite, each has immense value.

    Fine art, heritage, music, dance, libraries, museums, theatre and other cultural pursuits describe and raise the human condition. They are valuable in and of themselves. But they also contribute in other ways: to our economy, to our education, to our health and wellbeing. They make places great and give them an identity.

    We have remained ambitious for culture – even during a very tough economic climate – and we have achieved, in my view, a great deal.

    We increased the share of National Lottery funding for the arts and heritage.

    We introduced tax credits for theatres and orchestras, and now we will do the same for exhibitions.

    We encouraged resilience in the sector and worked with our partners to roll out endowments and capacity-building schemes, in recognition of the vital role of philanthropy.

    We maintained free entry to our national collections and increased freedoms for museums. Recently, we secured £150 million to move collections out of storage in Blythe House and enable greater public access.

    We introduced the Cultural Gifts Scheme.

    We created music education hubs, expanded In Harmony, and introduced a range of cultural education programmes.

    We established the new English Heritage charity which runs a wide range of historic properties and in which we invested £80 million.

    Last year, we secured a good deal for the arts and heritage in the Spending Review that was welcomed across the sector.

    The role of our libraries has changed over the last 50 years and is continuing to evolve with society’s digital expectations. That is why we created the Libraries Taskforce.

    Attendances and participation have continued to rise. Over the last Parliament, we saw a third of heritage assets removed from the ‘at risk’ register for the right reasons. We continue to see phenomenal success and creativity, led by an outstanding generation of cultural leaders. So I think we can be in good heart.But of course there are challenges right across our cultural landscape. We want to address those challenges. We want to maintain our ambition.

    That is why we are the first government in fifty years to publish a White Paper on culture, one that offers a comprehensive assessment of that landscape.

    The great Jennie Lee was the last – and indeed only – arts minister to publish a White Paper. I am honoured to follow in the footsteps of someone so distinguished. Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 24 when she was too young actually to vote, she played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Open University and expanded the Arts Council so that it did more work in the regions, along with creating art institutions at the South Bank Centre.

    Jennie Lee’s White Paper is short and to the point – no more than 20 pages and a hundred paragraphs. It is challenging – to the arts themselves. It is aspirational – the beginning of a process, rather than the end. And many of the themes it identified in the middle of the 1960s are as relevant today, in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century.

    The biggest challenge Jennie Lee identified in her White Paper was ensuring that the arts should not be the preserve of a privileged few. Despite enormous changes to arts and culture in this country since 1965, the same concern animates our own White Paper.

    There are now many families for whom a trip to the theatre, a historic house, or a museum is second nature. But this is far from universal. Many of our institutions do great work in this area. But the challenge is to make that work sustainable, to make the engagement permanent, and to really try and reach those who are the hardest to reach.

    So the Government will challenge all cultural organisations in receipt of government funding to do more to reach out to people of all circumstances and backgrounds. Arts Council England will regularly report to government on the progress being made.

    A Cultural Citizens Programme will be launched in places that have especially high deprivation and low cultural engagement.

    Starting in September, ACE will help institutions to engage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by immersing them in the work they do and introducing them to the people that run those institutions.

    We will pilot the programme in three areas – the North-West, North-East and West Midlands – and hope that by the end of the third year it will be operating in up to 70 places and reaching 14,000 young people. I hope that many of them will end up forging a career in culture – and that all of them will be enriched and inspired in a way that stays with them for life.

    We also need to do much more on diversity. ACE has already made a start on this. But we need much more diversity in the leadership of our arts organisations, much more diversity among those who work in them, both on and off the stage. We will make it clear to arts organisations that we want to see real and tangible progress in diversity – that is a legitimate expectation of anyone who applies for public funds.

    Cultural activity should be nurtured in every corner of the country. There is a great debate, as there was in Jennie Lee’s time, about the balance of funding between London and the rest of the country.

    This debate is presented in stark terms, when the reality is far more nuanced. Nevertheless, we want to build on what ACE is already doing, in rebalancing its funding between London and the regions, with schemes such as Creative People and Places.

    So we will introduce a new Great Place Scheme, which will bring national arts and heritage Lottery funders together to work with councils, cultural organisations and universities to make culture a core part of local authority’s plans and policies.We will initially pilot this in twelve areas, at least four of them rural. Historic England will provide advice on how to use planning and development to bolster local culture.

    Culture should never be considered an add-on or a fringe activity, when a whole host of organisations would benefit from a closer relationship with culture. The Great Place Fund will be a catalyst for delivering comprehensive and sustainable strategies.

    The North East Culture Partnership has done sterling work in this field already – and can be an inspiration to others. Its Case for

    Culture has brought together more than 1,000 people and organisations – including twelve local authorities and five universities along with business, sport, education, tourism and cultural bodies – to work towards major cultural development over the next fifteen years.

    Today, at my behest, the Leadership for Libraries Taskforce has launched a consultation on our vision for public libraries in England that sets out a bold and dynamic direction of travel for the next five years. I very much welcome your comments and feedback through the consultation process to help shape the final Ambition document by Summer 2016.

    Our historic built environment is a unique asset. We have announced £3 million of new funding for the Architectural Heritage Fund and we are supporting Historic England in launching Heritage Action Zones. And I am delighted that Bernard Taylor has agreed to lead a review of Church buildings. This will examine new models for opening these buildings up, bring their history to life and sustain them for future generations.

    Our museums are a huge draw and extremely popular. It is clear from all the work we have done that they face specific challenges and merit a separate review.

    It will consider three main themes: firstly the framework for different kinds of museums, secondly those museums that are directly sponsored by government, and thirdly local and regional museums. The review will touch on multiple issues, but with a particular focus on shared services, storage, digitisation and resilience. We want to see many more objects brought out of storage, and made available, in an informal setting, to the public.

    And we want Britain to be a world leader when it comes to the digitisation and dissemination of our great collections. As announced in the Budget, we will bring in a new Museums and Galleries tax relief from April next year, and will begin our consultation on this in the summer.

    We want all our organisations to increase their resilience and long-term sustainability. More than £60 million of funding is available to help cultural organisations improve their resilience.

    I’m also tremendously excited by the new virtual Commercial Academy for Culture, which will use existing networks and forge new ones, in order to build a strong centre of commercial expertise. And we will pilot an innovative new matched crowd-funding scheme to support the cultural sector’s use of this rapidly growing fundraising tool.

    While our White Paper recognises the importance of the local, we also understand that there are global treasures, and that we need to play our part in protecting them.

    Culture is a key part of this government’s international development work, and we are signatories to several international cultural conventions and have taken a lead as members of organisations such as the Council of Europe and UNESCO.

    We are committed to helping protect World Heritage Sites and subject to legislation this country will finally ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols.

    Last year the Government hosted a highly successful cultural protection summit at which experts of all stripes discussed what more we can do to protect cultural assets. A £30 million Cultural Protection Fund, managed by the British Council, will make a serious contribution to these efforts.

    This White Paper is an unapologetically ambitious exercise – far- reaching in scope and driven by a fierce determination that the great gifts that cultural engagement bestows should be available to all.

    All of us who are responsible for cultural institutions must not only make clear that everyone is welcome, but do all we can to encourage them in.

    That is my mission. Thank you.

  • David Cameron – 2016 Commons Statement on European Council

    davidcameron

    Below is the text of the statement made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 21 March 2016.

    With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on last week’s European Council, which focused on the migration crisis affecting continental Europe.

    Mr Speaker, the single biggest cause has of course been the war in Syria and the brutality of the Asad regime. But we have also seen huge growth in people coming to Southern Europe from Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa, all facilitated by the rapid growth of criminal networks of people smugglers.

    There are over 8,000 migrants still arriving in Greece every week. And there are signs that the numbers using the central Mediterranean route are on the rise again. So far 10,000 have come this year.

    Of course, because of our special status in the European Union, Britain is not part of the Schengen open border arrangements – and we’re not going to be joining.

    We have our own border controls. And they apply to everyone trying to enter our country – including EU citizens.

    So people cannot travel through Greece or Italy onward to continental Europe and into Britain. And that will not change.

    But it is in our national interest to help our European partners deal effectively with this enormous and destabilising challenge.

    We have argued for a consistent and clear approach right from the start. Ending the conflict in Syria. Supporting the refugees in the region. Securing European borders. Taking refugees directly from the camps and the neighbouring countries but not from Europe. Cracking down on people smuggling gangs.

    This approach – of focusing on the problem upstream – has now been universally accepted in Europe. And at this Council it was taken forwards with a comprehensive plan for the first time.

    As part of this plan, the Council agreed to stop migrants from leaving Turkey in the first place to intercept those that do leave, while they are at sea, turning back their boats, and to return back to Turkey those that make it to Greece.

    There can be no guarantee of success, but if this plan is properly and fully implemented, in my view it will be the best chance to make a difference.

    For the first time we have a plan that breaks the business model of the people smugglers, by breaking the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement.

    Mr Speaker, I want to be clear about what Britain is doing – and what we are not doing – as a result of this plan. What we are doing is contributing our expertise and our skilled officials to help with the large-scale operation now under way.

    Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Mounts Bay and Border Force vessels are already patrolling the Aegean. British asylum experts and interpreters are already working in Greece to help them process individual cases.

    At the Council I said that Britain stands ready to do even more to support these efforts.

    Above all, what is needed – and what we have been pushing for – is a detailed plan to implement this agreement and to ensure that all the offers of support that are coming from around Europe are properly co-ordinated.

    And our share of the additional EU money which will go to helping refugees in Turkey under this agreement will come from our existing aid budget.

    But Mr Speaker, let me also be clear what we are not doing.

    First, we are not giving visa-free access for Turks coming to the UK.

    Schengen countries are giving visa-free access to Turks. But because we are not part of Schengen, we are not bound by their decision.

    We have made our own decision which is to maintain our own borders. And we will not be giving that visa-free access.

    Second, visa-free access to Schengen countries will not mean a back-door route to Britain.

    As the House knows, visa-free access only means the right to visit. It does not mean a right to work. It does not mean a right to settle.

    Just because for instance British citizens can enjoy visa-free travel for holidays to America, that does not mean they can work, let alone settle there. Neither will this give Turkish citizens those rights in the EU.

    Third, we will not be taking more refugees as a result of this deal.

    A number of Syrians who are in camps in Turkey will be resettled into the Schengen countries of the EU. But again that does not apply to Britain.

    We have already got our resettlement programme and we are delivering on it.

    We said we would resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees over this Parliament, taking them directly from the camps. And that is what we are doing.

    We promised 1,000 resettled here in time for last Christmas. And that is what we delivered.

    The other 27 EU countries agreed to 2 schemes.

    One to relocate 160,000 people within the EU, but by the time of last December’s Council, only 208 had been relocated.

    The second to have a voluntary resettlement scheme for 22,500 from outside the EU, but by the end of last year, just 483 refugees had been resettled.

    We said what we would do – and we are doing it.

    And Mr Speaker, Britain has given more money to support Syrians fleeing the war, and the countries hosting them, than any other European country.

    Indeed we are doing more than any country in the world other than the United States – spending over £1 billion so far, with another £1.3 billion pledged.

    We are fulfilling our moral responsibility.

    Mr Speaker, turning to the central Mediterranean, the EU naval operation we established last summer has had some success – with over 90 vessels destroyed and more than 50 smugglers arrested.

    HMS Enterprise is taking part, and we will continue her deployment through the summer.

    What is desperately needed is a government in Libya with whom we can work so we can co-operate with the Libyan coastguard, in Libyan waters, to turn back the boats and stop the smugglers there too.

    There is now a new prime minister, and a government whom we have recognised as the sole legitimate authority in Libya.

    These are very early days but we must do what we can to try and make this work.

    And that is why at this Council I brought together leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Malta, to ensure that we are all ready to provide as much support as possible.

    Mr Speaker, turning to other matters at the Council, I took the opportunity to deal with a long-standing issue we have had about the VAT rate on sanitary products.

    We have some EU wide VAT rules in order to make the single market work.

    But the system has been far too inflexible – and this causes understandable frustration.

    We said we would get this changed – and that is exactly what we’ve done.

    The Council conclusions confirm that the European Commission will produce a proposal in the next few days to allow countries to extend the number of zero rates for VAT, including on sanitary products.

    This is an important breakthrough.

    It means that Britain will be able to have a zero rate for sanitary products – meaning the end of the tampon tax.

    And on this basis, the government will be accepting both the amendments put down to the Finance Bill tomorrow night.

    Mr Speaker, my Rt Hon Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green spent almost a decade campaigning for welfare reform and spent the last 6 years implementing these policies in government.

    In that time we have seen nearly half a million fewer children living in workless households, over 1 million fewer people on out of work benefits and nearly 2.4 million more people in work.

    And in spite of having to take difficult decisions on the deficit child poverty, inequality and pensioner poverty are all down.

    My Rt Hon Friend contributed an enormous amount to the work of this government and he can be proud of what he achieved.

    And Mr Speaker, let me say this.

    This government will continue to give the highest priority to improving the life chances of the poorest in our country.

    We will continue to reform our schools.

    We will continue to fund childcare and create the jobs.

    We will carry on cutting taxes for the lowest paid – in the last Parliament we took 4 million of the lowest paid out of income tax altogether and our further rises to the personal allowance will exempt millions more.

    Combined with this we will go on with our plans to rebuild sink estates to help those with mental health conditions to extend our troubled families programme to reform our prisons and to tackle discrimination for those whose life chances suffer because of the colour of their skin.

    And Mr Speaker in 2 weeks’ time we will introduce the first ever National Living Wage – giving a pay rise to the poorest people in our country.

    All of this is driven by a deeply held conviction that everyone in Britain should have the chance to make the most of their lives.

    And Mr Speaker, let me add: none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the actions of this government – and the work of my Rt Hon Friend the Chancellor – in turning our economy around.

    We can only improve life chances if our economy is secure and strong.

    Without sound public finances you end up having to raise taxes or make even deeper cuts in spending.

    You don’t get more opportunity, you get less.

    And it’s working people who suffer.

    So we must continue to cut the deficit, control the cost of welfare, and live within our means.

    We must not burden our children and grandchildren with debts we didn’t have the courage to pay off ourselves.

    Securing our economy, extending opportunity: We will continue with this approach in full because we are a modern, compassionate, one nation Conservative government.

    And I commend this statement to the House.