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Tag: Speeches

  • Nick Gibb – 2016 Speech at the Jewish Schools Award

    nickgibb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Stephen Crabb – 2016 Speech on Wales and Europe

    Stephen Crabb
    Stephen Crabb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Greg Clark – 2016 Speech on Holocaust Memorial Day

    gregclark

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

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • William Hague – 2012 Speech on UK and Australia Relations

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Foreign Secretary, in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on 24 January 2012.

    Over the last two days we have conducted the meetings we know as AUKMIN; which are detailed and substantive consultation between Britain and Australia’s Foreign and Defence Ministers.

    I am very grateful to Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith for travelling here with such a senior delegation, and for the excellent tenor of our talks.

    We believe that close consultation between Britain and Australia has never been more important and I think I can confidently say that our approach to world affairs has seldom been more in step with each other.

    Our countries are strategic and global allies.

    We share democratic values and the will and determination to play a leading role in world affairs.

    Our membership of the Commonwealth means that we are not just allies, we are also family. But while this is a partnership rooted in history it is also relentlessly forward looking and practical, which is why we attach such importance to it in the British government.

    Australia’s neighbourhood is of growing importance in world affairs. We particularly appreciate Australia’s understanding the Asia-Pacific region and of the emerging powers, just as I know Kevin, Stephen and their colleagues appreciate our leading role in the foreign policy discussions of the European Union.

    Our talks reflected our interests and priorities over the next decade, including preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    Yesterday the European Union agreed to a phased ban on the import of Iranian oil, and action against Iran’s central bank. This is a significant increase – a major increase – in the peaceful, legitimate pressure on the Iranian government to return to negotiations over its nuclear programme. Until it does so, the pressure will only increase and Britain and Australia share the same sense of resolve about that.

    We have discussed cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. We share close views about the development of the region and we discuss it regularly among ourselves and with our mutual ally the United States of America.

    We have a valuable information-sharing relationship which is critical to our security. This morning Kevin and I have signed a new agreement which will increase this area of our cooperation.

    We exchanged views on cyber security, following last year’s London Conference on Cyberspace. We explored how better to protect our governments, our industry and our national infrastructure from cyber attacks, and how we can work with others to mitigate cyber threats while championing human rights and the social and economic benefits of the internet. Both our countries are committed to developing our partnership in the cyber arena.

    We discussed preparations for the London conference on Somalia next month, and later we will also discuss the situation in Nigeria, where we condemn the appalling acts of terrorism and stand behind the Nigerian government and people.

    We have agreed to work closely on the Arab Spring, including assistance to countries in transition to more open, democratic government.

    We support the work of the Arab League. Both our countries believe the United Nations Security Council has a responsibility to speak out and will work to that end.

    We looked ahead to the important NATO Summit in Chicago, as the next milestone in the transition of security in Afghanistan to Afghan control.

    And we discussed our bilateral ties. I am pleased that British exports to Australia increased by 30% in the first ten months of last year and we will take every opportunity to build on this success.

    The deep trust at the heart of our relationship will be reflected at the meeting of our National Security Council later today which both visiting Ministers will attend and fully participate in.

    I thank them both for the energy, friendship and intellectual rigour they have brought to our discussions and for the many areas where we have agreed we will work more closely this year; and am delighted to hand over the floor to Kevin Rudd.

  • Chris Grayling – 2012 Speech on Government Perspectives on Employment

    chrisgrayling

    Below is the text of the speech made by Chris Grayling, the then Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, in London on 24 January 2012.

    This morning I am here to talk to you about the Government’s perspective on employment.

    And as the Government Minister who goes on television each month to present the latest employment figures, I am perhaps more focused on the detail behind the headlines than most.

    Last week’s unemployment figures demonstrate the challenging economic climate we currently face.

    Unemployment remains high and dealing with it continues to be a priority for the coming year.

    But beyond the headlines the figures show that there is still a lot of movement in the labour market.

    This month’s figures also show a small rise in employment.

    The numbers of unemployed people have increased in part because people who were previously not looking for work – particularly women and students – have decided to try to get a job.

    And the numbers claiming unemployment benefits has broadly flattened out, despite welfare reforms adding to the numbers claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

    The figures also show that there are opportunities available for those looking for work. 300,000 people stopped claiming out of work benefits last month, and Jobcentre Plus took nearly 350,000 new vacancies.

    Indeed over the course of the last year something like six million people have started a new job.

    There are 10,000 new vacancies advertised through Jobcentre Plus every working day. This is estimated to be around half of all potential vacancies in the UK.

    Even in difficult times there are vacancies and opportunities available for unemployed people.

    And many people get themselves back into work quite quickly.

    More than half of unemployed people leave benefits within three months.

    But there are some people who find it much harder to get back into work and are unemployed for much longer periods.

    And the longer someone is out of work the more difficult it can be for them to find another job. Their skills and experience become less relevant to the jobs market, their confidence may suffer and they may become indoctrinated by the welfare system and alienated from the world of work.

    There are one million people of working age who have been claiming benefits for 10 years or more.

    And 1.84 million children living in homes which are currently workless.

    Of those 300,000 children live in homes where no one has ever worked.

    And what is really sad is the way an attitude that being out of work is acceptable can pass down through generations, so entire families expect nothing more than a life on welfare.

    Almost unbelievably inner London has the highest proportion of children in workless households – inner London – an area in which Jobcentre Plus takes an average of 15,000 new vacancies a month.

    It is clear to me that, even in these difficult times, the supply of job vacancies is not the problem.

    We must help people gain the skills, experience and motivation they need to get back into work.

    And this support must be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, of employers and the local labour market to have the best chance of success.

    To deliver this support we have created the Work Programme and contracted the best of the private, voluntary and public sector to deliver it.

    This Programme is bigger than any previous employment programme and it will serve an unprecedented range of people, some of whom will need more help finding and keeping a job than others.

    Organisations delivering the Work Programme are therefore paid variable amounts which are dependent upon the perceived complexity of getting an individual into work.

    So, the more difficult it is to get someone into the work the more we will pay for that support.

    Maximum payments for supporting people into sustained employment will range from around £4,000 for typical jobseekers to almost £14,000 for the hardest to help, reflecting the differing levels of support required.

    This in itself is a unique approach for Government but what is really revolutionary is that we have not dictated the terms of this support.

    The Work Programme is being delivered on an almost entirely payment by results basis.

    How the providers get those results is broadly up to them.

    But they receive a significant part of their fee only when they get someone into work and the rest of the payment when they keep them there.

    In just over 12 months we have completely redefined employment support to focus on sustainable results.

    And in doing so we have designed a contracting Framework that is deliberately flexible enough to bring in other forms of social intervention to support people in to work.

    This means other parts of central and local government can use the Framework to deliver support in a much more holistic and comprehensive way.

    We have built something that can go much further than tackling unemployment, and we are now looking at developing a sophisticated system of social interventions based around the payment by results model, with the Work Programme at its core.

    The Prime Minister has made it clear that he is committed to extending payment by results to increase accountability and transparency as part of wider public service reform.

    At the same time we are pushing power out from central Government and down to Town Halls.

    The Localism Act gives local councils more power over the services they provide.

    It frees local councils to make their own decisions about the services they deliver and shape their services around the needs of the people they serve.

    On another level we are also giving Jobcentre Plus managers and advisers more discretion to tailor the services they provide to the needs of the jobseeker.

    Jobcentre Plus staff understand far better than those of us in Whitehall what someone needs to help them get into work.

    We have improved the service by encouraging our own staff to focus on results and giving them much more choice and flexibility in the services they provide.

    We are also encouraging them to forge partnerships with local government officials, employment support providers, health and charitable organisations to deliver effective, holistic support.

    And these partnerships make a real difference to successfully helping unemployed people back into sustainable employment.

    I have visited virtually all of the Work Programme prime providers now to see how they are getting on.

    And it is those that are forging links with the local government services, with Jobcentre Plus, with locally based charitable organisations, community organisations and crucially employers that appear to be performing the best.

    It is those providers who have developed the strongest networks that are delivering more for their clients.

    Because they are able to draw upon a much richer reserve to help people overcome their barriers to work – whether those barriers are a lack of skills and experience or something else – an addiction, or a criminal record.

    We are already using the Work Programme Framework to develop similar partnerships to provide support from some of the most troubled families.

    There are a small but significant number of families – around 120,000 – who are truly struggling and contribute a disproportionate amount to Britain’s social problems.

    These families often have multiple problems and are well known to Local Authorities as they are already being supported in different ways by a host of local services.

    Turning the lives of these families around and enabling them to fulfil their potential is a priority and would bring real social benefits.

    Using European Social Fund money we are investing £200 million in drawing together that support to deliver real change for troubled families and help them get back in to work.

    The ultimate aim is to break the inter-generational cycle of worklessness and get families working.

    But a similar non-prescriptive, payment by results model to the Work Programme will mean providers have the resources and the freedom to really work holistically with these families, bringing together a comprehensive package of support that rewards progress towards work as well as starting in a job.

    Local Authorities have played a key role in getting this service up and running.

    I know you have been working extremely hard with officials at the Department for Work and Pensions and with the providers to get this provision in place.

    And you will continue to play a critical role in making sure we see a strong flow of family referrals to make this provision a reality.

    It is written into the contracts that families must be referred by their Local Authority and that suppliers must work with local services to deliver support.

    I know that this work is already well underway; contracts went live earlier this month, the first families have been referred and the first action plans are being developed right now.

    But this is just the beginning.

    We are already looking at a number of other options, including using this approach to provide services to tackle drug and alcohol addiction and rehabilitate ex-offenders.

    Ultimately, this comes down to a more sophisticated appreciation of public service delivery.

    And a growing understanding that social change cannot be achieved simply through ever increasing spending, we have to be smarter than that.

    Payment by results can help us deliver better public services by providing a real opportunity to shape services around individual need and in doing so really change people’s lives for the better.

  • Jo Johnson – 2016 Speech on Science in the UK

    jojohnson

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

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

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

    A world-leader in science and engineering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A decade of protection for science

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

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

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

    Best place to innovate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Science budget allocations

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

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

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

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

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

    – to free up scientific leadership to focus on the research

    – to reduce the duplication between funding bodies

    – to improve support for multi-disciplinary research

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

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

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

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

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

    Global challenges

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘STEM capital’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Best in Europe, best in the world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Conclusion

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

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

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

    We have the tools.

    We have the people.

    We have the ambition.

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

  • Patrick McLoughlin – 2016 Speech on Aviation Capacity

    Patrick McLoughlin
    Patrick McLoughlin

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

    Introduction

    Thank you Sir Michael.

    I’m delighted to join you this evening.

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

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

    UK airlines have enjoyed sustained growth.

    Passenger numbers at our airports have reached record levels.

    And Britain itself is in a much stronger position.

    A much reduced deficit.

    A flourishing economy.

    A majority government.

    We put infrastructure investment at the top of our manifesto.

    Infrastructure investment

    If anyone doubted our commitment.

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

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

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

    Planning and delivering a long-term transport infrastructure programme.

    Building the capacity to fulfil the needs of future generations.

    And when you consider investments that will help Britain thrive …

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

    Aviation growth

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

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

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

    Investing in new aircraft and routes.

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

    That’s thanks to you.

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

    Last week I was at Luton.

    Which is investing £110 million developing facilities.

    And celebrating record passenger numbers in 2015.

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

    A billion pound programme at Manchester.

    Edinburgh.

    Bristol.

    New routes from regional airports to fast growing global destinations.

    I could go on.

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

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

    But constrained capacity is already costing us business and jobs.

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

    The advantage we’ve enjoyed for so long.

    Through the strong global connections provided by Heathrow and Gatwick.

    Is becoming less of an advantage as time goes on.

    So sorting out the capacity issue is critical.

    Delayed decision

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

    And that is why.

    Before Christmas.

    The government accepted his case for expansion.

    That in itself was a big step forward.

    It showed that the debate’s moved on.

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

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

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

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

    It wasn’t something we took lightly.

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

    They could not have been more wrong.

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

    The responsible thing to do.

    To make sure we’re fully prepared.

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

    You understand more than most.

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

    Has a history of de-railing vital transport schemes.

    And although we are slowly changing that culture.

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

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

    Six years of intense planning.

    The biggest consultation in government history.

    Perfecting the design.

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

    Getting the widest possible public and political support.

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

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

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

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

    Absolutely not.

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

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

    This is additional work to test compliance.

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

    We’re also doing more work on carbon.

    To address concerns on sustainability, particularly during construction.

    We’re dealing with concerns about noise.

    To get absolutely the best outcome for residents.

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

    Finally, we’re carrying out extra economic analysis.

    To assess the runway’s potential locally and nationally.

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

    Local UK growth

    And this is crucial.

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

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

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

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

    In fact the reverse is true.

    Wherever we decide to build new runway capacity.

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

    With more flights, more routes, and more connections.

    So as we complete our work this year.

    Let’s make sure these localised benefits are articulated.

    From the airports and airlines that serve the regions.

    Your voice is a powerful one.

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

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

    New BATA Chairman

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

    BATA’s new chairman.

    Jane, I look forward to working with you.

    Conclusion

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

    But there’s also a real sense of purpose.

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

    And to maximise the opportunities that new capacity will bring.

    Opportunities for passengers.

    For the aviation industry.

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

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

    But getting this decision right.

    So the benefits are widely appreciated.

    So environmental impacts are clearly mitigated.

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

    Is absolutely paramount.

    So let me assure you.

    We will make a decision once this work is finished.

    It will be the right decision for Britain.

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

    Thank you.

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

    theresamay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    So policing must keep up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The slow pace of gritty reform

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But we need to go further still.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Rationalising the system

    Which brings me to the opportunity to transform police capabilities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Making the most of this new system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But we still have a mountain to climb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Ed Vaizey – 2012 Speech to Oxford Media Convention

    edvaizey

    Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Vaizey, the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, at the Oxford Media Convention on 25 January 2012.

    Delighted to be opening the tenth Oxford Media Convention. In 2002, I wasn’t even yet a Parliamentary candidate, and people in my constituency were campaigning for dial-up internet access. Nobody knew what a smartphone was, and very few people had digital television,

    So we have come a long way.

    But one theme that perhaps links the two dates is the continued success of what we now call – thanks to Chris Smith – the creative industries.

    Let me begin by saying what a privilege it is to represent the creative industries in Government. It’s a commonplace nowadays to talk about the success of the creative sector in the UK, but it’s a commonplace because it’s true.

    You know how successful you are but it is always good for a Minister to rehearse your success in public.

    As I might say if I were presenting the BAFTAs, “let’s pause and look back on a successful year”…

    In the last twelve months we’ve seen:

    – UK films – from Harry Potter to the InBetweeners top the UK box office for 20 weeks in the UK;

    – the King’s Speech become the most successful independent movie in history, earning £46 million in the UK and £266 million worldwide;

    – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, made in the UK, earning more than any other 2011 release (over £73 million in UK, which is the third highest ever);

    – The highest ever amount of UK film production activity growing by 7% to £1.16bn;

    – UK acts charting at number 1,2 and 3 in the same week in the US for the first time in 25 years, with Adele’s album, 21, the best-selling digital album of all time;

    – UK TV formats dominating television schedules all across the globe, accounting for two in every five global programmes;

    – and of course Downton Abbey continuing UK success at the Globes; exports of UK television content are worth more than £1.3 billion per year;

    – the BBC’s global reputation for excellence cemented, with BBC Worldwide supporting the creative industries and increasing international sales by 9.6% in 2010-11;

    – the UK consolidating its place as the European hub for video games, with 35% of video games software sold in Europe being developed by UK studios, with almost half of the world’s top 100 development studios based in the UK;

    – UK-based games companies taking the lead in online markets:Jagex’ online multiplayer;

    – Hand Circus’ iPhone App; Playfish’s social network games;

    – VFX company Double Negative winning an Oscar for Inception;

    – the VFX hub in Soho is home to four of the largest VFX companies in the world;

    – one of the most innovative and successful advertising industries in the world grow despite the recession: 2010 revenue growth of 5.9 per cent to £15.5 billion, with forecasts of 1.4 per cent growth in 2011 and over 5 per cent in 2012. A recent PwC report predicted that the size of the UK advertising industry would grow 4.8 per cent in the next four years to £17.7 billion;
    – one of the most successful and creative fashion capitals anywhere in the world continue to flourish, with Burberry a UK company increasing its sales by a quarter;

    – and the largest of the UKs creative industries, the UK publishing industry, adapt and remain one of the most successful in the world for the breadth, depth and quality of content it creates, as well as the multiple ways in which that content is brought to market.

    Publishing in the UK has a turnover of £19 billion.

    Before I talk about the future, I hope you’ll indulge me further as I also want to highlight some of the achievements of my Department.

    In the last 18 months we’ve established the Creative Industries Council and Creative England; merged the UK Film Council and the BFI and increased Lottery funding for film; brought forward revolutionary plans for local television; settled the licence fee until 2017; secured S4C’s future; launched our plans for digital radio switchover; put in place ambitious plans for broadband, both mobile and fixed; continued to implement the DEA and make progress on copyright infringement; implemented the e-privacy directive; launched the e-accessibility plan; persuaded the DfE to revolutionise the computer science curriculum …I could go on.
    I want to take this opportunity to thank the officials in my Department who have worked to make this happen, as well as some of the organisations we work with, particularly Ofcom, which I think does an outstanding job.

    Anyway, I’m now beginning to sound like I am delivering an Oscar acceptance speech. So. The future.

    We know we have some of the tech savviest consumers in Europe: two-thirds shop on the web; one in four already have a smartphone; and soon one in four will have a tablet too. So again it’s become traditional to predict the end of big media, and the dominance of new internet companies. Throw in a prolonged downturn, and the doom mongers seem to hold all the cards.

    But hold on a minute. This afternoon you’ll hear from Channel 4 how they have turned around from where they were a few years ago, angling for licence fee money; the BBC is launching the Space, a hugely significant cultural event; ITV has hugely ambitious plans focused on content; more and more international companies like Discovery are investing in UK content.

    In the last two years, linear television viewing has increased by almost 8 per cent;86 per cent of people who can time-shift still choose to watch linear television; 9 out of 10 us together still consume a billion hours of radio a week.

    The future’s not binary. It’s evolutionary. In a digital age, content is crucial.

    It may seem odd to say this given the concerns we have around digital copyright infringement, but my view is that technology provides huge opportunities for the content industry in the UK. Technology may change the platform through which we view or hear content. But it will not remove the desire for the consumer to access great content. Our viewing habits will evolve – but they will not change fundamentally. And in a digital age, the chance to monetise content through advertising may well increase, as enhanced and targeted advertising commands higher prices.

    In a world in which much is changing, but more will stay the same than perhaps we think, Government’s role is to provide regulatory certainty, and the right infrastructure for business. The publication of the Green Paper is imminent, but let me focus on just a couple of issues.

    Infrastructure

    To give us the infrastructure we need, we’re investing more than three-quarters of a billion in digital infrastructure – rural, mobile and urban – that will give us the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. This adds to BT’s investment of £2.5 billion as part of the most rapid broadband investment in the world. And Virgin Media has recently announced it is investing to double the speed for its existing customers.

    The largest part of the Government funding is £530 million to extend superfast broadband to 90% of the UK and to ensure universal availability of standard broadband. We have asked local authorities and the devolved administrations to match this funding, to give total public funding of around £1 billion, which we expect to be supported by a further £1 billion of private investment.

    Our aim is to complete this roll-out by 2015. This gives us a very tight timetable. We have asked local authorities to submit draft Local Broadband Plans by the end of February and to have these signed off by the end of April, so that they can complete procurement by December. I can announce that today we will have signed off the broadband plans for almost a third of the total areas in England, which is fantastic news.

    As well as broadband, we’re looking at how spectrum policy can underpin innovation. In a world of mobile data, spectrum is the new railway. Ofcom has announced its plans for a 4G spectrum auction later this year. We’ve committed to releasing 500MHz of spectrum over the next ten years – more than double the amount being made available in the 4G auction. And we’re monitoring the trial of the use of white space in Cambridge to see how we can use this to stimulate innovation. All in all Ofcom estimates the net value of unlicensed spectrum might be as high as £100 billion over the next 20 years.

    In short, we want to create the conditions to ensure that effective use of spectrum can continue to support economic growth and innovation, which is why it will feature heavily in the forthcoming Green Paper.

    Content Regulation

    As well as infrastructure, we need to put in place the right business conditions to support UK creative industries and encourage inward investment. We will address the regulatory environment across the board in the Green Paper, but today I want to focus on public service broadcasting.

    Despite digital television, we still believe the obligations placed on public service broadcasters are important, to ensure a vibrant production sector throughout the UK. But the quid-pro-quo, of free, scarce spectrum, is not what it was.

    So we need to find new ways to reward public service broadcasters who invest in UK content, and also to perhaps broaden our definition of what a public service broadcaster is.

    One idea we are keen to explore is the potential for Government to encourage investment in UK content through the Electronic Programme Guide.

    At present the EPG, though statutory, is governed by a Code of Practice policed by Ofcom. The main PSBs are meant to be given appropriate prominence, but the broadcasters have some discretion, and Ofcom does not have the power to prescribe or guarantee a position. Further, current regulations only apply to linear television.

    In addition, many non-PSB channels invest in UK content that could fall within the traditional definition of public service content – obvious examples are news, current affairs, children’s television, documentaries and quality drama. So we need to look at whether the prominence rules could be used to reward those who invest in that kind of content.

    So we have commissioned research on this issue, and we will seek further views in the Green Paper. It’s important that any new regime is sufficiently flexible and does not prejudice the UK’s huge success in attracting inward investment.

    While we might look at one or two areas where we think regulation might help, I want to make it clear that we believe very firmly in self-regulation where possible. We have seen how the implementation of the e-privacy directive has caused huge problems for business. And we have now seen draft proposals from the Commission on amendments to the data protection directive, which will need careful scrutiny.

    So we need to take a step back, and consider what it is we want to achieve. If viewers can access content in many different ways, top-down regulation won’t work on its own. We need to do two things – give viewers the tools to protect their kids from inappropriate content, and give viewers the guidance they need to choose what they want to watch.

    We’ve seen this operate with some success already: the PEGI ratings for on-line games; the BBFC’s work in classifying websites; and UKCCIS’s work in encouraging ISPs to make parental controls available to their customers.

    And given that data is now king, it is absolutely right that consumers should have a say in how their data is stored and used – so that means transparency, education and the right of redress where appropriate. Self-regulation, and engagement from industry in this area, can help reduce the burdens on business and ensure that you can continue to innovate.

    Conclusion

    These are just some of the successes and challenges facing this sector. It is a unique moment of change for the media, as we enter a new phase of the digital revolution, one that is transforming our lifestyles and touching deeper into personal and public life than ever before.

    Predictions aren’t easy. We’ve got some very difficult balances to strike, but I’m confident that with your help, we can find the right solutions and keep British creative industries at the forefront of the new digital economy that’s emerging.

  • David Cameron – 2012 Speech on the European Court of Human Rights

    davidcameron

    Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, on 25 January 2012.

    Once in a generation, each member has the honour of leading the Council of Europe.

    Today, I want to speak about the once-in-a-generation chance we have, together, to improve the way we enhance the cause of human rights, freedom and dignity.

    We have an ambitious agenda for the coming months…

    …to reinforce local democracy…

    …to combat discrimination…

    …to strengthen the rule of law across Europe.

    But the focus of our Chairmanship, as you know, is our joint effort to reform the European Court of Human Rights.

    The role of the Court has never been more challenging.

    As the Council has expanded, more and more people have applied to seek justice.

    We need to work together to ensure that throughout these changes, the Court remains true to its original intention: to uphold the Convention and prevent the abuse of human rights.

    So today, I want to explain why I believe the Court needs reform and set out some of the proposals on the table.

    UK Commitment to Human Rights

    First, I want to make something clear.

    Human rights is a cause that runs deep in the British heart and long in British history.

    In the thirteenth century, Magna Carta set down specific rights for citizens, including the right to freedom from unlawful detention.

    In the seventeenth century, the Petition of Right gave new authority to Parliament; and the Bill of Rights set limits on the power of the monarchy.

    By the eighteenth century it was said that:

    “This spirit of liberty is so deeply implanted in our constitution, and rooted in our very soil, that a slave the moment he lands in England, falls under the protection of the laws, and with regard to all natural rights becomes instantly a free man”.

    It was that same spirit that led to the abolition of slavery…

    …that drove the battle against tyranny in two World Wars…

    …and that inspired Winston Churchill to promise that the end of the “world struggle” would see the “enthronement of human rights”.

    As he put it, victory in that war was the “victory of an ideal founded on the right of the common man, on the dignity of the human being, and on the conception of the State as the servant, not the master, of its people”.

    These beliefs have animated the British people for centuries – and they animate us today.

    When the Arab Spring erupted, the UK was a principal supporter of resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council.

    We are leading EU partners in maintaining pressure on Syria.

    We have played a key role in securing EU sanctions against Iran.

    Through the UN, we are working to empower women in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East.

    We have pledged additional money to the Special Fund for Torture Prevention.

    And we are contributing to the Council of Europe’s own Human Rights Trust Fund.

    All these are clear signals of our belief in fundamental human rights.

    And if called to defend that belief with action, we act.

    When the people of Libya were reaching for the chance to shape their own destiny, Britain stepped forward with our allies to help.

    Visiting Tripoli a few months ago, seeing the crowds of people who were jubilant and free, I was reminded of what Margaret Thatcher once said:

    “The spirit of freedom is too strong to be crushed by the tanks of tyrants”.

    It is our hope that this spirit of freedom spreads further – and we will continue to support those reaching for it across the Arab world.

    We are not and never will be a country that walks on by while human rights are trampled into the dust.

    This has a lot to do with Britain’s national character – a love of freedom and an instinctive loathing of over-mighty authority.

    But it is also about our national interest – to live, travel and trade in a more open, secure world.

    When a government respects its citizens’ human rights, that makes for a more stable country – and that is good for all of us.

    It was that great champion of freedom, Vaclav Havel, who said it best:

    “Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace”.

    In other words, a commitment to human rights is both morally right and strategically right.

    Achievements of the Council and the Court

    So I want no one here to doubt the British commitment to defending human rights…

    …nor the British understanding that the Council of Europe, the Convention and the Court have played a vital role in upholding those rights.

    But believing these things does not mean sticking with the status quo…

    …because as we are agreed, the time is right to ask some serious questions about how the Court is working.

    Over sixty years ago the Convention was drafted with very clear intentions.

    It was born in a continent reeling from totalitarian rule…

    …shocked by the brutality of the holocaust…

    …sickened by man’s inhumanity to man.

    Its purpose was clear: to spread respect for vital human rights across the continent – for life, liberty and the integrity of the person.

    It has achieved some vitally important things over the decades: exposing torture; winning victories against degrading treatment in police custody; holding heavy-handed states to account.

    And since the Berlin Wall fell, it has played a major role in strengthening democracy across central and Eastern Europe.

    Of course, we should remember that oppression and brutality are not just facts of Europe’s past.

    As we sit here today, in Belarus there are people being thrown into prison for their political beliefs.

    Dissidents’ voices are being silenced and their rights are being crushed.

    What is happening less than a thousand miles from here underlines the continuing importance and relevance of the Council, the Convention and the Court.

    It reminds us that now, more than ever, we need a Court that is a beacon for the cause of human rights, ruthlessly focussed on defending human freedom and dignity, respected across the continent and the world.

    It is in that spirit that I have come here to speak to you today.

    Because today, the ability of the Court to play this vital role is under threat.

    As I see it, there are three inter-linking issues that should cause us concern.

    Too many cases

    First, the Court is being compelled to do too much, and that threatens its ability to do what is most important.

    We have seen a massive inflation in the number of cases.

    In the first forty years of its existence, 45,000 cases were presented to the Court.

    In 2010 alone, 61,300 applications were presented.

    This has created a huge backlog – more than 160,000 cases at its peak.

    There can still be a delay of some years before cases are heard, which means tens of thousands of people with their lives on hold.

    These will inevitably include some of the most serious cases: of detention; torture; people who have had their fundamental rights denied.

    Let me be clear: impressive steps are already being taken to filter out inadmissible cases more quickly.

    The Court should be congratulated on that – but a new problem is emerging.

    More and more of the backlog is now made up of admissible cases that, according to the current criteria, should be heard in full.

    Again, the Court is doing good work to deal with this.

    A system to prioritise the most important cases is in place.

    But the sheer volume risks urgent cases being stuck in the queue.

    That means the very purpose of the Court – to prevent the most serious violations of human rights – is under threat.

    Court of the fourth instance

    This flood of cases is linked to the second issue.

    The Court is properly safeguarding the right of individual petition – and it’s a principle the UK is committed to.

    But with this, comes the risk of turning into a court of ‘fourth instance’…

    …because there has already been a first hearing in a court, a second one in an appeal court, and a third in a supreme or constitutional court.

    In effect that gives an extra bite of the cherry to anyone who is dissatisfied with a domestic ruling, even where that judgement is reasonable, well-founded, and in line with the Convention.

    Quite simply, the Court has got to be able to fully protect itself against spurious cases when they have been dealt with at the national level.

    A good start has been made with Protocol 14, which makes clear that cases aren’t admissible if there is no significant disadvantage to the applicant.

    The initial case where the protocol has been used shows exactly the kind of thing I mean.

    The applicant was taking a bus company to court for 90 Euros compensation, because they felt their journey from Bucharest to Madrid hadn’t been as comfortable as advertised.

    One of the matters at issue was that they didn’t provide fully-reclining seats.

    The domestic courts had turned him down, and he was taking his case to the Court.

    Now I think we can all agree that fully-reclining seats would be very desirable on a trip from Bucharest to Madrid…

    …but we can also agree that this is a completely trivial case, and is not the kind of case that should be heard here.

    The Court agreed – and quite rightly rejected the claim.

    But this case just underlines how important it is for the Court to have that consistent power to control the cases it admits.

    Slim margin of appreciation

    The third issue is that the Court is, quite rightly, determined to make sure that consistent standards of rights are upheld across the 47 member states…

    …but at times it has felt to us in national governments that the ‘margin of appreciation’ – which allows for different interpretations of the Convention – has shrunk…

    …and that not enough account is being taken of democratic decisions by national parliaments.

    Let us be frank about the fall-out from this issue.

    As the margin of appreciation has shrunk, so controversy has grown.

    You will know that in the UK there is a lively debate about the way human rights law works, and how our own national courts interact with Europe.

    Yes, some of this is misinterpretation – but some of it is credible democratic anxiety, as with the prisoner voting issue.

    I completely understand the Court’s belief that a national decision must be properly made.

    But in the end, I believe that where an issue like this has been subjected to proper, reasoned democratic debate…

    …and has also met with detailed scrutiny by national courts in line with the Convention…

    …the decision made at a national level should be treated with respect.

    Another example of this – and one we can all agree on – is in the area of immigration.

    At Izmir, we collectively invited the Court, “to avoid intervening except in the most exceptional circumstances.”

    All states agreed that the Court was, in some cases, too ready to substitute its judgment for that of reasonable national processes and all agreed that that was not its role.

    In other words, it should not see itself as an immigration tribunal.

    Protecting a country from terrorism is one of the most important tasks for any government.

    Again, no one should argue that you defend our systems of rights and freedom by suspending those freedoms.

    But we do have a real problem when it comes to foreign national who threaten our security.

    In Britain we have gone through all reasonable national processes…

    …including painstaking international agreements about how they should be treated…

    …and scrutiny by our own courts…

    …and yet we are still unable to deport them.

    It is therefore not surprising that some people start asking questions about whether the current arrangements are really sensible.

    Of course, no decent country should deport people if they are going to be tortured.

    But the problem today is that you can end up with someone who has no right to live in your country, who you are convinced – and have good reason to be convinced – means to do your country harm.

    And yet there are circumstances in which you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.

    So having put in place every possible safeguard to ensure that ECHR rights are not violated, we still cannot fulfil our duty to our law-abiding citizens to protect them.

    Together, we have to find a solution to this.

    These concerns are shared by many member states.

    And at the heart of this concern is not antipathy to human rights; it is anxiety that the concept of human rights is being distorted.

    As a result, for too many people, the very concept of rights is in danger of slipping from something noble to something discredited – and that should be of deep concern to us all.

    Upholding and promoting human rights is not something governments and courts can do alone…

    …it is something we need all our societies to be engaged with.

    And when controversial rulings overshadow the good and patient long-term work that has been done, that not only fails to do justice to the work of the Court…

    …it has a corrosive effect on people’s support for human rights.

    The Court cannot afford to lose the confidence of the people of Europe.

    Right moment for reform

    Taken together, these issues threaten to shift the role of the Court away from its key objectives.

    The Court should be free to deal with the most serious violations of human rights; it should not be swamped with an endless backlog of cases.

    The Court should ensure that the right to individual petition counts; it should not act as a small claims court.

    And the Court should hold us all to account; it should not undermine its own reputation by going over national decisions where it does not need to.

    For the sake of the 800 million people the Court serves, we need to reform it so that it is true to its original purpose.

    Already 47 members are agreed on this, and great work has been done.

    Now we would like to use our Chairmanship to help progress that work.

    This is the right moment for reform – reforms that are practical, sensible and that enhance the reputation of the Court.

    Our proposals

    So we are looking to improve the efficiency of the Court.

    New rules could enable it to focus more efficiently and transparently on the most important cases.

    We want to improve the procedures for nominating judges.

    The Assembly needs consistently strong shortlists from which to elect judges – and clear guidelines on national selection procedures could help with that.

    And we are hoping to get consensus on strengthening subsidiarity – the principle that where possible, final decisions should be made nationally.

    It is of course correct that the Court should hold governments to account when they fail to protect human rights.

    In these instances it is right for the Court to intervene.

    But what we are all striving for is that national governments should take primary responsibility for safeguarding their citizens’ rights – and do it well.

    Subsidiarity is a fundamental principle of the Convention, and at Izmir, we were all clear that more needed to be done to give it practical effect.

    For that reason, we will shortly set out our proposals for pushing responsibility to the national system.

    That way we can free up the Court to concentrate on the worst, most flagrant human rights violations – and to challenge national courts when they clearly haven’t followed the Convention.

    Of course, re-balancing this relationship is a two-way street.

    The other side of the deal is that members get better at implementing the Convention at national level.

    That is why, in the UK, we are investigating the case for a UK Bill of Rights, and thoroughly examining the way our liberties are protected.

    Parliaments also have a key role – and we are proud of the role that our own Joint Committee on Human Rights plays.

    And of course, this Assembly makes a vital contribution, helping states to honour their obligations.

    Together, through these institutions, we can reduce the number of violations and ultimately ease the burden on the Court.

    Conclusion

    Let me finish today by saying this.

    With this Chairmanship we have a clear opportunity to agree a practical programme of reform.

    Built on the noble intentions of the Convention.

    Forged through consensus.

    Driven by a belief in fundamental human rights and a passion to advance them.

    This is undoubtedly a challenge – but it is a challenge we can meet together.