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  • William Hague – 2012 Speech on Consular Diplomacy

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Foreign Secretary, on 4 April 2012.

    I have given many speeches as Foreign Secretary about our approach to foreign policy, our work for international peace and security and our strong emphasis on commercial diplomacy. But today I want to describe what we are doing in a vital area of the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but one which rarely receives so much attention: strengthening Britain’s consular diplomacy.

    When an Air France jet plunged into the Atlantic and 228 people died; British consular staff and police worked painstakingly to identify the 8 British victims from amongst the wreckage and body parts.

    When the worst hurricane in Mexico’s history struck, Foreign Office staff battled along flooded roads, downed trees and tangled power lines to reach Cancun to help evacuate 9,000 British citizens.

    And last year in Bangladesh, Foreign Office staff rescued four girls from forced marriage in a single day and returned them safely to Britain, including one girl who had been kept chained to her bed.

    As these stories show, consular work is a very personal business.

    It touches the lives of British citizens in difficult and sometimes extreme circumstances.

    It is the only way most people come into contact with the Foreign Office, and it is one of our main responsibilities as a Department.

    When we came into Government we boiled down our objectives to three priorities:

    First, security: the Foreign Office has to safeguard Britain’s national security by countering terrorism and weapons proliferation and working to reduce conflict.

    Second, prosperity: we must build prosperity by increasing exports and investment, opening markets, ensuring access to resources, and promoting sustainable global growth.

    Third and the subject of my speech today, the Foreign Office must support British nationals around the world through the provision of modern and efficient consular services.

    In the front of each and every British passport is a message which reads: “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and Requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary”.

    That is an expression of the responsibility we have to stand up for the rights of British nationals wherever they are in the world. When people travel our moral obligation to them does not stop at the Cliffs of Dover. At home, the first duty of the Government is the safety and security of British nationals. Abroad, it is the first duty of the Foreign Office, and consular work is one aspect of how we keep Britons safe.

    I am giving this speech today because I want people to have a better understanding of the consular work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

    We already run one of the best consular services of any nation in the world, and I want to set out our plans to make it even stronger in the future.

    And I want to pay tribute to all the staff involved, for their outstanding dedication and commitment. They help tens of thousands of British nationals cope with problems ranging from family breakup to natural disasters and revolutions. Often their work does not get the recognition it deserves and I want to begin to redress that.

    Foreign Secretaries do not often give speeches on this subject. In fact, I am told that I am the first to do so.

    But one of my personal priorities is to strengthen the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as an institution, for the long term and in all its areas of work.

    I want the Foreign Office always to be a centre of excellence in government, attracting the best talent from across our society, bound by a strong sense of identity and common purpose and home to the very best diplomatic skills, and I know that the Department as a whole aspires to the same thing.

    This is good for our country, because a thriving democracy needs strong institutions.

    It is good for British citizens, because strong diplomacy helps protect them and secures things that matter to them, from reducing terrorism to supporting jobs.

    And it is good for the world, because it means our country plays a leading role in promoting human rights and democracy and in helping others.

    So the need to strive for excellence in our diplomacy applies as much to consular work as it does to all other areas of foreign policy.

    We need talented and highly trained UK-based and locally-engaged Foreign Office staff in many different countries.

    We need people who speak the local language; who know the country inside out; who have a deep understanding of its government, its society and its institutions, and who are able to use the latest technology in creative ways to help British nationals, as our staff in Japan did to use Facebook to track missing people after the tsunami.

    We need courageous people, who will travel to disaster areas, comfort the victims of violent crime and comb hospitals and morgues when our nationals are injured or killed overseas.

    And we need people with judgement, who know when we should tell British people to leave a country but can also avoid over-reactions. During the Revolution in Egypt we were one of the few countries to judge accurately that the Red Sea resorts would remain safe for travellers.

    So in this speech I will explain how we will maintain and strengthen this work around the world.

    But first, I want to describe what it is that we can and cannot do.

    If you are a British national and you get into genuine difficulty abroad, you can turn to the Foreign Office for certain types of assistance.

    We help people who have lost their passports or need to find a doctor or legal advice, or who are struggling with bereavement in a country they don’t know well.

    Often the circumstances are tragic and upsetting: we help the parent whose child has been abducted by their former partner; the traumatised victim of rape; the devastated family whose son has committed suicide; the distraught boyfriend whose partner has been murdered; or the vulnerable girl or boy who has been forced into marriage against their will. Last year, the youngest person we provided assistance to help rescue from a forced marriage was just five years old. At this very moment, our consular officers are dealing with saddening cases involving young vulnerable children being abandoned by their families overseas.

    We help the victims of kidnappings and their families, maintaining daily contact if they need it and using all our diplomatic means to locate and help release their loved one.

    We deal with crises such as terrorist attacks and conflict as well as natural disasters; and we plan for major events such as the Rugby World Cup and Euro 2012 so that British fans are helped to travel safely.

    And we are also there when people bring trouble on themselves by breaking local laws, ignoring advice or committing crimes which lead to a prison sentence and, in the worst cases, even the threat of the death penalty.

    Foreign Office staff have a responsibility to provide you with professional, non-judgmental advice and help; and to treat you fairly and equally whatever your gender, race, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, religion or belief.

    This impartiality and dedicated public service reflects the highest values of the Foreign Office as a whole. And it can make a huge difference to anyone who finds themselves in any of these frightening and stressful circumstances.

    The sorts of things we can do include issuing you with an emergency travel document if you lose your passport abroad and need to travel urgently. We will provide help if you are unfortunate enough to be the victim of serious crimes such as sexual assault overseas. If you are injured in hospital, we will visit you if there is need. If you are arrested or detained, we will also visit you as soon as possible after arrest, if that is your wish. And if you are in prison, in most countries we will visit you to monitor your welfare, to help you understand the local legal and prison system, to put you in touch with support networks and to help you find an English-speaking lawyer.

    We do these things every day somewhere in the world.

    But there are also things we cannot do, which is unsurprising when you consider the context.

    Britons make more than 55 million individual trips overseas every year, and at least 6 million of our nationals live abroad for some of or all of the time. In the space of a year, approximately 6,000 Britons get arrested, and at any one time more than 3,250 British nationals are in prison around the world. At least 10% of all the murders of Britons in the last two years took place overseas, and on average more than one hundred British nationals die abroad each week.

    As you can imagine, this produces an immense demand for our services. In fact, just under two million people contact the Foreign Office for some form of consular assistance each year: that is more than 37,000 people a week.

    When you are aware of these vast numbers, you can understand why it is that Embassies cannot pay your bills, give you money or make travel arrangements for you, and why we cannot arrange funerals or repatriate bodies. We try to look after everybody in the same way, and to be consistent in how we help people whether they are rich or poor, famous or unknown.

    We also have to observe the law. That means we cannot help you enter a country if you do not have a valid passport or necessary visa. We cannot get you better treatment in hospital or prison than is given to local people, and we cannot get you out of prison. We cannot resolve your property or other legal disputes for you. We cannot override the local authorities, such as police investigating crimes. And we cannot give you legal advice: consular staff are not lawyers.

    There are also cases where members of the public waste time and scarce resources with ludicrous requests.

    It is not our job, for example, to book you restaurants while you are on holiday. This is obvious, you may think. But nonetheless it came as a surprise to the caller in Spain who was having difficulty finding somewhere to have Christmas lunch.

    If like a man in Florida last year, you find ants in your holiday rental, we are not the people to ask for pest control advice.

    If you are having difficulty erecting a new chicken coop in your garden in Greece as someone else was, I am afraid that we cannot help you.

    Equally, I have to say that we are not the people to turn to if you can’t find your false teeth, if your sat nav is broken and you need directions, if you are unhappy with your plastic surgery, if your jam won’t set, if you are looking for a dog-minder while you are on holiday, if your livestock need checking on, if you would like advice about the weather, or if you want someone to throw a coin into the Trevi fountain for you because you forgot while you were on holiday and you want your marriage to succeed. And our commitment to good relations with our neighbours does not, I am afraid, extend to translating ‘I love you’ into Hungarian, as we were asked to do by one love-struck British tourist. There are easier ways to find a translation.

    These are a just a few examples of bizarre demands that get put to our staff overseas.

    Criticism that is sometimes levelled against us should be viewed in that light. An effective consular service does not mean a nanny state.

    So we ask British nationals to be responsible, to be self-reliant and to take sensible precautions. This includes following our travel advice so that you ‘know before you go’, getting the right vaccinations and visas; and familiarising yourself with local laws and customs. We cannot emphasise enough the importance of good travel insurance as we don’t want to see more heart-rending cases of families forced to remortgage their house to pay for a hospital bill overseas. If you do find yourselves needing our help, we do ask British nationals to be prepared to pay for certain services; since Consular assistance is paid for from fees not from taxation and where we do charge a fee for a service, we only do so to cover our costs.

    In return, we maintain one of the most extensive and most effective consular networks of any country in the world.

    We have consular representation in over 180 countries. More than 740 full time staff work on consular issues at any one time, and we have 160 other staff, trained in crisis management, ready to be deployed at any moment in response to crisis overseas. Last year we despatched them to New Zealand, Cote D’Ivoire, Japan, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain and to Tunisia to reinforce our Embassies and High Commissions there. And we provide travel advice on 227 countries and territories which is viewed by more than eight million people a year, giving the public a detailed picture of the risks they may face around the world.

    And I am also proud that we not only react to events, we also lead campaigns to change things for the better:

    The Foreign Office works to alter attitudes to forced marriage; to improve conditions in prisons; to abolish the death penalty and to restrict the cases to which it to applies; to extend human rights; to combat the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation; and to deter people from crime by warning them about the potential penalties, all in support of British nationals and our democratic values. We were the first country to launch a special section on travel advice for gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender travellers and we are the only country to have published an advice document for LGBT victims of forced marriage. And increasingly, we now give advice to hotels and governments on how to boost security in coastal resorts in Africa to reduce the risks of kidnapping.

    When you consider that last year we issued 345,000 passports; provided nearly 18,000 Emergency Travel documents; helped some 20,000 Britons who had been arrested, hospitalised, whose relative had died overseas or who had been a victim of crime; provided face-to-face assistance to nearly half a million people; gave written support to another 350,000; answered nearly 1 million phone enquiries; assisted in 356 cases of child abduction; led the rescue overseas of 205 victims of forced marriage; successfully protected 6 British nationals from the death penalty and helped Britons after flooding in Thailand and Australia and instability across the Middle East, in addition to the other crises I have mentioned;

    When you reflect that this entire service was provided to British passport holders, every day of the year, week in and week out, at a cost per person of £1.50 a year over the life of a 10-year passport, and without burdening the taxpayer;

    And if you note that on top of this, Ministers are involved in many consular cases; meeting families and MPs and raising cases on visits overseas, for example to challenge slow judicial processes that leave British nationals in limbo;

    Then you really do see that we provide a vital service to British nationals, and that foundations of our consular services are extremely strong.

    Of course we do make mistakes, and sometimes things go wrong.

    With so many tens of thousands of cases, many of which are unique, sometimes we do fall short, and often Members of Parliament take up these cases with us on behalf of their constituents.

    In Libya for example we were criticised last year when a plane broke down that was due to go to the aid of British nationals, delaying that mission.

    We will always constantly strive to improve what we do, and to ensure that we learn lessons from each major crisis.

    We published a report on lessons learned in the case of Libya and we have implemented many recommendations from that report, including building more resilience into our consular system. But it is also worth noting that in Libya we succeeded in evacuating 800 British nationals who wished to leave the country, and 1,000 other nationals from over 50 countries.

    In general, the Foreign Office receives three times as many messages of thanks as it does complaints or criticism. A very unusual experience for a Government department in my experience.

    “Life is unpredictable and dealt me the worse possible blow at what should have been the best possible time of our lives”, wrote a man whose wife had died overseas, in a letter to our Ambassador and his team: “I would have been at a complete loss but for all your unforgettable and truly helpful assistance.”

    The words of one young woman whom we helped to cope with a personal tragedy overseas are also typical of many messages that we receive. She wrote: “I was truly amazed by the reactions of the Embassy and Foreign Office. I have been travelling and working overseas for just over 8 years now and up to this point have never needed the assistance of an Embassy. I never could have imagined how supportive and comforting the people who work in this job could be…I really feel that the Embassy and Foreign Office worked above and beyond the call of duty on my behalf and I have nothing but thanks for everyone who was involved.”

    We could not do this work as well as we do without other government bodies including the Home Office, the Identity and Passport Service, the Ministry of Justice, the UK Border Agency, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Defence.

    We also could not do it without the travel industry, charities, NGOs, voluntary organisations and local support networks, and members of expat communities who give their time for free. Some of those groups are represented here today. To them I say we are very grateful to you all and we value our connection with you.

    We are determined to maintain and strengthen the Foreign Office’s consular work in the years ahead.

    We will do this first and foremost by maintaining our global diplomatic reach and expanding it in some places.

    We must always retain our ability to look after our own nationals through consular work as well as our wider diplomacy. We can never rely entirely on anyone else to do this.

    Our government understands this, and that is one reason why we are expanding Britain’s diplomatic network in parts of the world and opening new Embassies.

    We of course look for ways to work with other countries so that our nationals get the best possible protection wherever they are in the world, including arrangements with Commonwealth nations and the EU.

    The Australians recently went to great lengths to secure the safety of a British national who was in grave danger in Papua New Guinea. Just last week we helped a Singaporean stranded in Mali by the coup to get home. And we were recently very grateful to Germany for evacuating an injured British national to hospital, after an attack on tourists in a remote area of Ethiopia in which five people were killed.

    We benefit from the European Union arrangement that EU nationals with no Embassy of their own can turn to any other Member State for help.

    But those who think we are ever going to subcontract consular services are mistaken. For us consular services will always remain a national responsibility.

    Within the European Union, there is no role for EU institutions in defining the consular assistance that Member States should provide to their citizens, or in providing frontline consular assistance. These are matters for which national governments are accountable to their Parliaments and we will oppose EU competence creep in this area.

    We will always ensure that our diplomatic network is configured in the best way to support British nationals as well as our wider interests. We have opened or are opening new British Embassies in South Sudan, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan, Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia, El Salvador and as security improves, in Somalia; we have opened two new consulates in Canada and Brazil and plan to open six more in the emerging economies. In Europe, changing customer demands and the opportunities of new technology mean we no longer need large established Consulate offices in, for example, Florence and Venice, where the bulk of routine consular services are being delivered by consular hubs in Rome and Milan; or Funchal and Lille, where routine calls are now centralised. We plan to re-structure our consular services in Naples along similar lines this summer.

    On top of all these improvements, we are introducing six new measures to improve our service.

    First, we are opening a new crisis centre this summer with 50% more staff compared to this time last year, so that we can respond to multiple crises at the same time. We will be able to bring together teams of more than a hundred people from across Government to coordinate the response to crises, with a new call handling centre for worried citizens and families in trouble, and better audiovisual and IT equipment.

    Second, we will set up a new network of contact centres which people can call, to provide round the clock coverage and free up more front line staff to deal with difficult cases.

    Third, we are increasing our ability to respond to crises in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia by setting up a new Rapid Deployment team, on call 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, ready to be despatched to help British nationals wherever need arises.

    Fourth, we will introduce a new mobile registration system by the end of this year for British nationals caught up in a crisis, which will enable people to register with the Foreign Office by text message from their mobile phones.

    Fifth, we are freeing up resources and making our services more accessible by moving them online where we can, reducing queuing and unnecessary phone calls.

    Finally, we are going to increase our focus on vulnerable people, so that we narrow the gap between the help they would get in the UK and that which they are likely to receive overseas. We already have arrangements to ensure that if someone is bereaved by a murder or manslaughter abroad, they will receive practical support from the Victim Support National Homicide Service, to help them access services like travel, translating and repatriation of remains. We want to build new partnerships to extend this sort of help to other bereavements and to support victims of other serious crimes, such as rape or other assaults resulting in life-threatening injuries, and people with mental health problems.

    So this will be our approach: Maintaining and extending our diplomatic network, so that we are in the right places to help British nationals;

    – Increasing our capacity to respond to crises, and our accessibility to the public;

    – Using the latest technology to help British nationals get the information they need as quickly as possible;

    – And training our staff to the highest standard, so that British nationals, including the most vulnerable, get the best possible advice and support.

    In two years in the Foreign Office, I have come to see how consular work typifies the very best of the institution and the values it stands for, including commitment to public service, fairness and impartiality.

    I have seen the ingenuity and determination of our staff in overcoming problems, their willingness to go the extra mile, and the resourcefulness and courage with which, time and again, they confront the unexpected.

    All these things give me great pride in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, great confidence about what we can achieve in the future, and the certainty that it performs an indispensable role for the British public in this area as in so many areas; a service on which we can rely, and which we could never and will never do without.

  • Suella Fernandes – 2015 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

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    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Suella Fernandes to the House of Commons on 1 June 2015.

    feel a real sense of humility speaking after the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who gave an accomplished speech in the best traditions of this House. I congratulate him.

    On a cold February morning in 1968, a young man, not yet 21, stepped off a plane at Heathrow airport, nervously folding away his one-way ticket from Kenya. He had no family, no friends and was clutching only his most valuable possession, his British passport. His homeland was in political turmoil. Kenya had kicked him out for being British. My father never returned. He made his life here in Britain, starting on the shop floor of a paint factory. My mother, recruited by the NHS in Mauritius as a girl of 18, passed her 45th year of service last year.

    My family had nothing but hopes and dedication. They were so proud to be British and so proud to make our country even better. If I succeed in making some small contribution during my time in this place, it will reflect only a fraction of my gratitude to this country for the abundance of education, culture and traditions that have made Britain great, for the tolerance and fellowship of the British people, and for the opportunity and liberty that we all enjoy.

    Before I turn to the subject of today’s debate, I should like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Mark Hoban. Mark served for 14 years in this House and during that time set an example as a conscientious constituency MP and a principled member of the Government. I have met many constituents for whom Mark was an indefatigable campaigner. He set a standard that it would be difficult to match. Mark played an invaluable part in the previous Government, initially as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and latterly as Minister for Employment. His brief covered financial services in the aftermath of the credit crunch and he embraced the challenge of banking reform. As Minister for Employment, he was responsible for Universal Jobmatch, an excellent service matching jobseekers and employers online.

    Following Mark is not only daunting but inspiring. I will be a strong voice for Fareham. More than 1,000 young people travel too far for A-levels, and I hope to see more sixth-form provision within the constituency. As an increasing and ageing population puts pressure on local GP services, schools and roads, I plan to be an advocate for all my constituents as we face the challenge of building more homes.

    Fareham is nestled on the Solent coastline between Portsmouth and Southampton. In the south of the constituency lies Titchfield, famous for its abbey. It is on the route to the Isle of Wight, and monarchs often visited. In 1625, Charles I, just married, arrived with his new bride, the French Princess Henrietta Maria. It was the 17th century equivalent of a honeymoon. However, all was not well between the newlyweds: instead of their enjoying the first days of a new life together, arguments that had been brewing between the French and English courts came to a head in Titchfield. Disputes about status, religion and money culminated in melodramatic outbursts between Charles and his new wife, altercations and even the attempted murder of the local vicar. It is fair to say that that European union was not going so well. Thankfully, all was lovingly resolved and the Hampshire honeymoon marked the beginning of a decade of marital bliss for Charles and his wife. No doubt the European renegotiation that this Conservative Government are driving forward will be judged successful if our marriage remains happy and prosperous in the decades ahead.

    It is fitting that I make my maiden speech during the debate about Britain in the world because if you take away only one fact about Fareham today, Mr Speaker, let it be the bravery of the men and women who gave so much in the name of freedom. Warsash on the Hamble river was the disembarkation point from which hundreds of British and allied naval and commando units sailed for the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches. It was an ambitious operation. Just before he left for Normandy, one officer wrote:

    “the local rector arrived in the camp and there was a parade. We all attended and knelt in the main road coming into the camp, the rector stood on a box and gave a short speech ‘God teach us not to show cowardice, God give us the strength to face the enemy’”.

    At times of threat and in the face of evil, Fareham was courageous. We will never forget.

    As the new MP for Fareham, I hope to build on a legacy of enterprise, for Fareham is at the forefront of technology in the aerospace and marine sectors, with companies such as Eaton Aerospace, National Air Traffic Services and Raymarine headquartered locally.

    It is a stroke of luck to be born British, and my indebtedness goes to the heart of why I am a Conservative. Our party rewards endeavour, enables compassion and liberates people from the shackles of the state. Our party says, “It doesn’t matter where you start. You can make your life and that of others better by taking responsibility and through self-empowerment and generosity.” I will do all I can to serve the people of Fareham with humility, integrity and warmth.

  • Jeremy Corbyn – 2015 Speech on the Queen’s Speech

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons on 1 June 2015.

    I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your re-election as Speaker of the House. I also put on record my deep thanks to the people of Islington North for electing me to Parliament for the eighth time and for their support. I pledge to represent them on all issues, and I hope that in this Parliament we begin to see some justice for them, particularly on issues relating to housing and to the poverty levels that are sadly so rife and serious in much of inner-city Britain.

    This debate is on the sections of the Queen’s Speech covering international affairs, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), particularly for the latter part of his speech in which he pointed out the issues facing the globe. The wars of the future will largely be about resources, water, food and food security. We have to face up to global inequality and the widening chasm between the wealth of the minority in the wealthiest countries and the poverty of the majority in the poorest countries of the world. If we are complaining about refugee flows at the present time—awful as the conditions from which those people are escaping are, and tragic as the deaths in the Mediterranean, the Andaman sea and elsewhere are—the situation will get worse as global inequality becomes greater, particularly on issues of food and environmental security. We have to be far more serious about how we approach inequality.

    The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and I have a slightly different view of the way in which the world should be run, as I think he would be the first to acknowledge. Is he, and anyone else who proposes this measure, really serious in saying that the most important thing facing Britain is not only to get up to spending 2% of gross national income on defence but, in some cases, to consider going above that level and to insist that every other NATO country does the same? We would then have a built-in accelerator of arms expenditure in a world that is already a very dangerous place. Can we not think of a way of solving the world’s problems other than more weapons and more wars, and more disasters that follow from them? Can we not pursue a serious agenda for peace?

    I heard on the radio this morning that the US Defence Secretary is very concerned about Britain’s position in the world and that we might be becoming a laggard—he wants us to boost our expenditure. Presumably, the US is giving the same message everywhere else, so that it can carry on influencing NATO policies, including in Europe, while building up its military might all over the Asia-Pacific region, which in turn encourages China to do exactly the same, just as NATO expansion eastwards has been paralleled by increasing Russian expenditure. Surely we need a world dedicated to disarmament and rolling down the security threat rather than increasing it. I see a huge danger developing in the current military thinking.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) made a point about Labour’s strategic defence review, which largely included a foreign policy review. I agree that we do not just need a strategic defence review; we need a serious foreign policy review to apprise ourselves as to what our position and status in the world actually is. We once had an empire, but we no longer have one—that might be news to some Government Members, but I can let them know it in the confidence of this Chamber. Our influence in the world ought to be for good, peace, human rights, environmental protection and narrowing global inequality. We might delude ourselves that the rest of the world love us—they do not. They think we have a predilection towards arms, intervention and wars, as we did in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

    Let us think about what influence in the world is about. Last week or the week before, I was in New York for the last two days of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference. It was a desperately sad occasion, as Britain and the other permanent members of the Security Council lined up together to protect their expenditure on and the holding of nuclear weapons. They did not do anything positive to bring about a good resolution of that conference, and no good resolution has come out of it. A conference on a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the middle east, first called for more than a decade ago, still has not happened. Because it has not happened, encouragement is given to proliferation by other wealthy countries in the region that could afford to buy nuclear technology and develop it. Why is the UK not helpful on this issue? Why do we not accept that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) pointed out, the non-proliferation treaty is the most supported treaty anywhere in the world?

    That treaty has reduced the spread of nuclear weapons. It has not completely eliminated it, as India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel have nuclear weapons outside that treaty, but the countries that gave up nuclear weapons have some clout in the world. The respect with which South Africa was listened to at the conference because it is the most industrialised country to have specifically given up nuclear weapons was interesting. Abdul Minty, its representative at the conference, was treated with enormous respect. He pointed out that the conferences on the humanitarian effects of war held in Vienna, Mexico and Norway had all shown exactly how dangerous nuclear weapons are. So why are we proposing to spend £100 billion replacing the Trident nuclear missile system when we could be doing something far more useful in the world?

    I do not have much time, so I shall briefly cover the other points I want to mention. I have talked about intervention and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and I ask the Foreign Secretary or, as he is not in his place, the Foreign Office to reply. When are we going to see the Chilcot report published? When are we going to know the truth of the Iraq war? This is the third Parliament since there was, tragically, a vote to go to war in Iraq, and we need to learn the lessons. We need to learn the lessons of the abuses of human rights in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and of the tragedy of the victims of war—all the wars—who have fled, tried to find a place of safety and been greeted with brutal intolerance in many of the places in which they have arrived. There is a refugee crisis around the world that has to be addressed very quickly.

    My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton talked about the situation in Palestine. Some of those people dying in the Mediterranean are Palestinians; they are the ones who have managed to get out of Gaza or the west bank. There must be serious concern that, after all the horrors that have happened in Gaza—I have been there a number of times—there is still no real rebuilding going on. What message does that send to the poor and unemployed young people of Gaza? They sit amidst the rubble of their existence, watching the rest of the world on their television screens or computers. Surely, real pressure must be put on both Israel and Egypt to lift the blockade of Gaza so at least the rebuilding can take place and there can be some sort of process there for the future.

    I want to draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to two specific cases. I was on an all-party delegation to the USA—it was a very strange delegation because it included the right hon. Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and me—to plead the case of Shaker Aamer. It was with some interest that we were received by Senator John McCain who realised that there truly was a breadth of agreement on Shaker Aamer if the four of us could enter his office, as we did the offices of Senator Feinstein and a number of other senators, and make the point that this House of Commons voted with no opposition that we should press for the return of Shaker Aamer to this country.

    Shaker Aamer has been in Guantanamo Bay since 2001. He was sold to bounty hunters in 2001, brutally treated in Bagram airbase, and taken by a rendition process to Guantanamo Bay. He has been there on hunger strike and been making other forms of protest ever since. He has never been charged, never been prosecuted and never been through any legal process. He has twice been cleared for release by President Bush and later by President Obama. He has never seen his 13-year-old son whom I had the pleasure to meet when he came to Parliament. I also met him last Friday evening at a meeting in Battersea, at which we called for his father’s return and release. The meeting was also attended by the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison). Will the Foreign Office undertake to follow up our visit with real vigour and press the Obama Administration to name the date when Shaker Aamer will be able to come home and join his family in this country? That is the least it can do at the present time.

    The other case involves my constituent, Andargachew Tsige, who was an opposition figure from Ethiopia. He was kidnapped at Sana’a airport in Yemen and taken to Addis Ababa and has been in prison ever since. He was tried in absentia, sentenced to death and is on death row in an Ethiopian prison. He could not have been extradited there because of the death penalty. No extradition process was ever sought or followed. He is an entirely peaceful person who wants to see peace, democracy and development in Ethiopia. I know that he has been visited by the British ambassador on a couple of occasions. I hope that the Foreign Office will be able to inform me that it is making real progress on his release.

    We live in a time when there are serious human rights abuses all around the world. I have been an officer of the all-party human rights group ever since I was first elected to this House. The abuse of human rights is legion all around the world; we know that because we all take up many, many such cases. If we as a country leave the European convention on human rights, which is the human rights system in Europe, what message will that send to the rest of the world—that we do not care about human rights and that we do not think they are important? How could we proselytise against human rights abuses or call on countries to improve their human rights process if we are walking away from the international process ourselves? We need a world of peace, not of war. We need a world of human rights and justice, not of injustice and imprisonment. We achieve those things not by greater militarisation but by trying to promote peace, human rights and justice all over the world.

  • John Whittingdale – 2015 Statement on Sepp Blatter and FIFA

    johnwhittingdale

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Whittingdale, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the House of Commons on 1 June 2015.

    Last Friday, FIFA’s members had the opportunity to embrace the overwhelming call for change that is coming from football fans around the world. They failed to do so. FIFA’s support for its discredited president was incredibly disappointing, but it will not have surprised the footballing public who have become increasingly cynical as the allegations of misconduct and malfeasance have piled up. FIFA needs to change—and to change now. I can assure the House that the Government will do all in their power to help bring change about.

    I have just spoken to Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, and assured him that we stand behind the English FA’s efforts to end the culture of kickbacks and corruption that risk ruining international football for a generation. I agreed with him that no options should be ruled out at this stage.

    Let me also reiterate the Government’s support for the action of the American and Swiss authorities. Earlier today, I spoke with the Attorney General. We agreed that the British authorities will offer full co-operation with American and Swiss investigators, and that if any evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the UK emerges, we will fully the support the Serious Fraud Office in pursuing those involved.

    FIFA’s voting system is designed to support the incumbent, and it returned a predictable result, but there is no doubt that what remained of Sepp Blatter’s credibility has been utterly destroyed. The mere fact that more than 70 national associations felt able to back a rival candidate shows that momentum against him is building. We must now increase that pressure still further. It is up to everyone who cares about football to use whatever influence they have to make this possible.

    I am sure that fans the world over will be increasingly vocal in their condemnation of the Blatter regime, and FIFA’s sponsors need to think long and hard about whether they want to be associated with such a discredited and disgraced organisation. For the good of the game, we must work together to bring about change. For the good of the game, it is time for Sepp Blatter to go.

  • Patrick McLoughlin – 2013 Speech on Local Enterprise Partnerships

    Patrick McLoughlin
    Patrick McLoughlin

    Below is the text of the speech made by Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport, on 18 April 2013.

    Thank-you. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

    As you probably know, I’ve been in politics quite a while.

    In fact I’ve been Transport Minister twice with a gap of 20 years in between.

    And in that time I’ve heard a lot of ministers speak eloquently about how things are best done locally – while doing the precise opposite.

    For decades, they’ve been preaching devolution, while planning and orchestrating it from their Whitehall offices.

    And it hasn’t worked.

    So I understand why you might be a bit suspicious whenever there’s a new outbreak of that enduring “ism” – localism.

    But today I want to talk about why something big is changing in how we run our country.

    And I want to talk about the role that transport can play in that.

    First of all, today’s conference is proof in itself that we are serious about change.

    We’re here because you represent a new force in government: local partnerships bringing business and government together to change the way we think about localism.

    Not the theoretical, unworkable localism of the past, but localism that is practical and deliverable, that responds to local conditions, and local communities, and that balances growth across the UK – not just in the south east.

    Local decision making is particularly important in transport.

    Because the transport issues that most concern people are local in nature.

    Congestion. Road safety. Bus and train services. Issues that are not just understood better by local people and businesses, but that are best solved by them too.

    That’s why the DfT has been at the front of the queue to involve and empower local enterprise partnerships (LEPs).

    I’ll be honest.

    Many in government had doubts.

    Could local partnerships succeed where others have failed in the past?

    Well you are already proving that you can.

    You’ve been helping us make the case for HS2, a scheme that has the potential to change the economic geography of the UK.

    This year you start making the decisions on where funding for local major transport schemes should be targeted from 2015.

    This is a fundamental part of our commitment to devolve responsibility for transport, and streamline government.

    Because LEPs are in the best position to target investment more effectively, and get the best value for money.

    Under the last government, local major schemes were managed through the regional funding allocation, which meant central government remained the ultimate decision maker.

    It was a top-down system with a thin veneer of localism.

    But with the new structure, we will be genuinely shifting power away from Whitehall into the hands of local transport bodies, accountable at the local level, and responsive to local economic conditions.

    You’ve also played an important role in the delivery of our £170 million Local Pinch Point Fund, which the Chancellor announced in last year’s autumn statement.

    And I’d like to thank you for your help so far.

    It’s a new way of prioritising schemes.

    And it’s already making a real difference.

    Because tackling road bottlenecks is one of the most effective ways we can remove obstacles to economic growth.

    In March I made £25 million available to get cracking with the first 10 schemes.

    The first – a £6.8 million project to increase capacity on Northampton’s ring road, and improve access to the Northampton waterside enterprise zone R1; has already begun construction.

    Work on others is starting this spring.

    They include an upgrade to the notorious A40 and A4010 Chapel Lane junction in Buckinghamshire, and improvements to the Clock Tower junction in Harlow, Essex.

    Four of the 10 schemes will boost transport links around enterprise zones – reflecting our commitment to support local economies.

    We’ve also announced a further 58 pinch point schemes to reduce congestion on Highways Agency roads – again, with your help.

    And we’re delivering a programme of 24 major road schemes – including 4 new ones announced in the autumn statement.

    For example, the £60 million A30 Temple to Higher Carblake scheme in Cornwall will relieve congestion, reduce journey times, and improve links between Cornwall and the rest of the country.

    Another vital project is the A453 dualling between M1 Junction 24 and the A52 Nottingham ring road.

    This is a major stretch of road serving the East Midlands and East Midlands Airport – and the £150 million improvements will not only help address congestion, but also make the route safer.

    Of course devolved transport isn’t just about roads.

    We are also moving ahead with plans for further rail devolution.

    And earlier this year we also launched the competition for local transport authorities to become designated as Better Bus Areas.

    All this means there will be tremendous opportunities for devolved bodies over the next few years.

    Not just in transport, but across government.

    And I’m sure that later today Lord Heseltine will expand on those opportunities in the light of his “no stone unturned” report.

    Government has now accepted the majority of Lord Heseltine’s recommendations.

    This includes the single local growth fund to cover housing, transport and vocational training.

    The clear message from government is that there certainly won’t be any slowing down in the rate of decentralisation.

    On the contrary, we’ll be looking to accelerate.

    So the work to set up local transport bodies (LTBs) – and to prioritise transport schemes by this summer – will go ahead as planned.

    The strategic growth plans which LEPs are currently preparing will be integral to the deal that we negotiate with each local partnership.

    We have set out the criteria we will use in those negotiations.

    But the scale of the resources available will depend on the current spending round.

    So there is an opportunity over the next few weeks for LEP chairs to make clear which spending programmes they think should be included in the Single Local Growth Fund.

    So, to sum up.

    This is a time of great fluidity in government: a time or innovation and new ideas.

    The challenges we face as a country are very different to those we faced a few years ago.

    And we need to translate thoughts and policies into jobs and growth faster than ever before.

    How we do that involves not just central government.

    But everyone here today.

    LEPs are uniquely positioned to help us get devolution right.

    Making the trade offs that will deliver the best value results for your areas.

    Using the knowledge and experience of businesses and local authorities.

    Supporting economic growth from the ground up.

    With your help, we can set local government in Britain on a new course.

    And emerge with a model of localism that will change this country for good.

    Thank you.

  • Edward Timpson – 2013 Speech to NSPCC Conference

    timpson

    Below is the text of the speech made by Edward Timpson, the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, to the NSPCC Conference on 18 April 2013.

    Thanks, Maggie [Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England]. I’m very pleased to be here and grateful for the opportunity to contribute to your conference.

    As a champion of children living in fear and challenger to our collective conscience, the NSPCC has been a powerful force for good over the years. Your work to help victims of abuse and neglect through channels like ChildLine – which we’ve been pleased to support – has been especially valuable.

    It’s crucial that we give young people a stronger voice. Which is why, as Maggie has said, straight after this speech, I’ll be returning to Parliament to debate our clauses in committee on strengthening the role of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in our Children and Families Bill.

    But, arguably, the NSPCC’s greatest impact has been through its unflinching mission to make us, as a society, confront what is still so often incredibly hard to face – the desperate plight of our most vulnerable children and the urgent need to do more to protect them. And the report being published today is no exception to this long and proud tradition.

    I’m encouraged by its findings that, in many ways, today’s children are safer, with child homicide and child deaths from assault and suicide down and a decline in some forms of maltreatment and abuse. I’m also encouraged by your acknowledgement that we’re on the right track, with child protection services working harder than ever to reduce harm, and getting smarter about doing so.

    But I agree that there’s much more we need to do – to better understand child abuse and neglect, to intervene earlier and with even greater impact.

    That’s why we’re fundamentally reforming the child protection system to put the needs of children at its heart – so the system fits in the needs of children and not the other way around.

    These reforms and the issues being discussed today could not be more timely. From shocking revelations about child sexual exploitation to alarm about the exposure of children to online pornography, child safety is higher than ever on the public agenda and in the public conscience.

    The never-ending revolution in technology, in particular, is, taking us into uncharted territory, with new opportunities opening up alongside new dangers.

    But while there’s no way we can put the digital genie back in the bottle, we can certainly do more to equip our children to stay safe. And, with toddlers manipulating iPads more confidently than their parents, it’s clear you can’t start too young.

    Which is why, primary school pupils will have the chance to learn about internet safety under our proposed changes to the National Curriculum. They’ll be taught how to communicate securely and responsibly online and how to keep their personal information private – essential skills in the information age.

    But, technology aside, it still very much remains the case that children are, sadly, most likely to come to harm at home and in the hands of someone they know.

    This, as we know, was the terrible fate of Peter Connelly, Victoria Climbie and Khyra Ishaq.

    In many of these instances – as we’ve also seen with victims of child sexual exploitation – the children’s cries for help went unheeded time and time again. They were met by indifference, disbelief and, in the worst instances, vilification from adults who should have been protecting them.

    And after every such tragic case, we hear the familiar refrain ‘never again’ – until the next time.

    Of course, we all know that we cannot completely eliminate risk. We should always be realistic about that.

    But there will always be a next time until we learn the fundamental lesson that a child’s needs (to be safe, to have their basic needs met, to be heard) must always come first.

    Ahead of the rights of abusive parents who are unable or unwilling to change their ways and ahead of adults wanting to escape criticism or any challenge to assumptions and work practices, however manifestly ineffective or outdated.

    Problems with the child protection system

    This is something that, over the years, many politicians and professionals have pledged to do, but, despite some good work, we know that there’s still far too much variation in child protection around the country.

    There are, of course, some highly effective examples of good practice, such as multi-agency safeguarding hubs, including the one I visited in Nottinghamshire. But, it’s clear that too many local authorities and other agencies are still failing to meet acceptable standards for safeguarding children – to look for and act on signs of abuse, to intervene early enough and remove children decisively in sometimes the most appalling of cases.

    Having lived and worked, for many years, with children damaged by neglect and abuse, I’ve seen, first-hand, what failure to act can mean – both in terms of the huge challenges these incredibly vulnerable children face and what it takes to turn lives around.

    Now, as you may know, I grew up with over 80 foster children and two adopted brothers. Many came from chaotic, troubled backgrounds. Their behaviour was, at times, extremely challenging to say the least. I’ve seen babies addicted to heroin go into spasms. I’ve watched on as an abused and deeply angry little boy shattered every pane of glass in my dad’s prized greenhouse because he didn’t know how else to let his anger out. And I became proficient in most swear words by the age of ten thanks to the foster children who parroted back to me what they had heard at home.

    But, over time, I saw how love, stability and routine helped them settle and thrive. And it became increasingly clear to me that many could have been spared immense suffering and long-term damage if they’d got consistent and reliable help earlier.

    I went on to become a family barrister often representing children in care; an experience that reinforced what I’d seen at home – that timely intervention still wasn’t happening anywhere near enough.

    By the time a case landed on my desk, the damage had, all too often, already been done, and it was a matter of trying to make the best of a bad job. It was apparent that cases were managed, all too often, for the convenience of adults rather than the interests of the child.

    So if we’re to seriously raise our game and do better at keeping children safe, it’s vital that we reverse this wrong-headed emphasis. That we re-focus on the child protection system where it should always be – on the needs of the individual child.

    What the Government is doing

    Our reforms are focused on doing just that.

    We’re implementing recommendations from Professor Eileen Munro’s valuable and widely-welcomed review of child protection; helping us move towards a much more child-centred system in which there’s a greater emphasis on early help, on identifying and tackling neglect and on multi-agency working – where possible, before formal intervention is needed.

    One of Professor Munro’s most important recommendations was the need for guidance on the core legal requirements on all professionals working to keep children safe.

    A clear framework within which professionals could exercise their expertise and judgement. And which spelled out what different agencies could expect from each other.

    Working Together

    We’ve delivered on this in the revised Working Together guidance, that Peter referred to, which has just come into force just this week. And we’re also producing an equivalent young person’s guide for the first time, with the Office of the Children’s Rights Director, to make sure we reach those whose needs are at its very heart.

    Crucially, the guidance emphasises that safeguarding is the responsibility of all professionals who work with children, reinforcing, once again, the importance of multi-agency working.

    As you know, Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards (LSCBs) are absolutely vital to driving this at a local level so that different services; police, health, education, social care, work closely together and properly share information.

    This is happening in a highly effective way in some parts of the country, such as Lancashire’s excellent Engage project – a multi-agency team that has been especially successful in tackling child sexual exploitation, whether that be better prevention techniques, bringing criminals to justice or supporting victims.

    I want us to do more to understand what works and why so we can spread best practice further through the LSCBs.

    Serious Case Reviews

    And when things do go wrong, we need to confront, honestly and openly, the mistakes that were made.

    As your study, last month, into neglect, showed, one of the most critical vehicles for learning lessons – good and bad – are Serious Case Reviews (SCR).

    Yet, until recently, all that was published were bland executive summaries. This certainly suited the adults who had made mistakes. But the price of sparing their blushes was paid by our most vulnerable children who were condemned to suffer from the same failings, over and over again, because we didn’t learn vital lessons.

    That’s why this Government has insisted on SCRs being made public. Some local authorities, such as Leicester, north Somerset and Nottinghamshire, have responded positively to our call for greater transparency and accountability.

    And we can see the benefits of publication beginning to be felt on the ground. In Southend, for example, findings drawn from SCRs triggered targeted, multi-agency audits of domestic abuse referrals to children’s social care. These audits identified that not enough was being done to engage with men in families, which had implications for children’s outcomes. So, training was introduced to raise awareness among practitioners and improve this engagement.

    Yet, despite their potential to drive improvements, the number of SCRs being published remains disappointingly low – around half (99) of the 181 SCRs started since June 2010 have been completed, but only 44 have been so far been published.

    This does show an increasing trend – 10 SCRs have already been published in the four months of this year compared to just seven for the whole of 2011. But too many SCRs still take too long to complete and too many are not published.

    We’re keen to see these numbers rise significantly. It’s why we’re establishing a new national panel of independent experts to scrutinise and advise on LSCB decisions not to initiate or publish SCRs. One of the big issues to emerge from published SCRs and which bedevils multi-agency working is the failure to share information effectively.

    Only yesterday, I met a council lead member for children’s services who was frustrated that many professionals still don’t know what facts they can share with other professionals about children at risk, often because of confusion about data protection rules – which is madness, when you consider that passing on the right information at the right time to the right organisation could quite literally mean the difference between life and death for a child in danger.

    The modified Working Together guidance addresses this issue head-on, making it clear that, where a vulnerable child is concerned, the presumption should be to share information.

    Health – information sharing

    It’s right to say that the health service’s track record in this area has been a notable source of frustration. It’s a common complaint from LSCB Chairs that the NHS has an abundance of information, but doesn’t necessarily share it with other agencies.

    So I’m pleased that my colleagues at Health are making moves to tackle this, with Dame Fiona Caldicott working on a statutory code of practice for information sharing.

    And in December, there was the launch of a new system to make child protection information available to NHS doctors and nurses who suspect abuse or neglect when treating children in emergencies and unscheduled care.

    The NHS Commissioning Board has also just published its accountability and assurance framework for safeguarding in the NHS, making it much easier for health professionals to understand what they need to do keep children safe.

    But what we’re really grappling with, when it comes to better information sharing and, indeed, refocusing the system on the needs of the child, is the need for a shift in attitudes and culture.

    Looking ahead

    Fundamental to this are our reforms to bolster the workforce and improve practice.

    Social workers do one of most critical, most demanding and, yes, potentially, most rewarding jobs in our society.

    Something apparent when I accompanied social workers on family visits in Halton, in the north west, a few weeks ago.

    One of the visits was to a family with four young children, in which the mother had learning difficulties and the father, mental health problems and suicidal tendencies. I was hugely impressed by the strong relationships and meaningful communication the social worker had established with the family.

    This meant that her direct, practical attempts to support the parents by, for example, attaching a checklist of small steps to follow on the fridge, really hit home, rather than just eliciting platitudes that change nothing. I was also struck by the high morale and signs of strong leadership I saw when visiting the council offices. I was particularly interested to hear about a case file audit system they’d introduced, that had initially been greeted with unease by social workers, but had now been embraced it as a useful tool to motivate staff and manage performance.

    This is just the kind of positive approach I’d like to see spread more widely – a commitment to self-improvement where professionals are not afraid to challenge one another.

    And our reforms to provide greater leadership and support to the profession should go a long way towards this.

    We’re appointing a chief social worker to lead the debate nationally about reform and ensure the profession has a strong voice at a national level.

    Locally, each council is appointing a principal child and family social worker to lead on standards of practice and on learning locally. We’ve also set up the College of Social Work, a Step up to Social Work programme, and initiated a strengthened Ofsted inspection framework. And we’re keen to do for social work what has been done for teaching through TeachFirst.

    Which is why we’re so supportive of Frontline, a brilliant idea by a TeachFirst Graduate, to get talented, committed graduates into social work.

    I’m hopeful that we can get it up and running so some of our brightest and most committed graduates can start making a difference to our most vulnerable children and provide a welcome boost to the profession.

    Conclusion

    It’s by investing in people working on the frontline in this way that, I believe, gives us the best chance of driving the decisive shift in culture that’s needed to truly put children’s needs at the heart of the child protection system.

    There’s little doubt that the fight against child cruelty continues to challenge and test us as a society as no other issue.

    Even in our supposedly cynical age, we’re shocked by the extreme violation visited on the victims of child sexual exploitation. We worry about new threats to our children online.

    Thankfully, as your report recognises, we’re making good progress towards keeping children safer, but it’s clear we need to do more to intervene earlier and more effectively, especially in a technological landscape that’s rapidly changing.

    As I’ve just outlined, our overhaul of child protection and social work and proposals to put internet safety on the National Curriculum aim to do just that.

    There’s nothing more important than protecting children from harm. Where children are suffering abuse or neglect they should be taken into care more quickly.

    By re-focusing the system on children’s needs through our reforms, we’ll help ensure that each child gets the right support at the right time. And key to such timely intervention is the need to listen to the children and young people involved.

    This message emerges loud and clear, time and time again, from the children who contributed to Professor Munro’s review, from the victims of child sexual exploitation and from the many letters I receive from young people.

    As one of the older children interviewed for Professor Munro’s review said: ‘You’ve left me for too long.’

    It’s, sadly, a plea that many vulnerable children would echo; starkly illustrating the uphill struggle they face in getting their voices heard and getting the timely help they so desperately need.

    It’s only when young people no longer feel the need to make these pleas, that we can honestly say that we’re making the leap required of us – to properly protect them from harm and to reduce our chances of having to say ‘never again’ in years to come.

    Thank you.

  • George Osborne – 2013 Speech at Currency Paper Launch

    gosborne

    Below is the text of the speech made by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 23 April 2013.

    In seventeen months Scotland will decide whether or not to end over three hundred years of partnership with the other nations within the United Kingdom.

    As decisions go, they don’t come much bigger.

    This isn’t a decision for the UK Government or me to take.

    It’s a choice for people living in Scotland.

    The UK Government is today publishing an in depth economic paper; the first of a series about the economic implications of Scottish independence.

    With this, and future Scotland analysis publications, the UK Government wants to inform the debate and help people to make up their own mind.

    The paper deals with one of the most important decisions that would face a separate Scotland – how to arrange its currency and wider monetary and fiscal affairs.

    This analysis has been prepared by Treasury civil servants, which is why I’m speaking to you today.

    Their analysis shows that the current arrangements of a full, monetary, fiscal and political union bring economic benefits to all parts of the UK.

    Breaking up that union would represent a fundamental change, and confront an independent Scottish state with difficult choices about what to put in its place.

    The paper provides evidence of how the United Kingdom benefits from being a deeply integrated single domestic market.

    We trade together – Scotland exports to the rest of the UK nearly a third of everything it produces.

    We do business together – nearly one in five private sector jobs in Scotland is for business based elsewhere in the UK.

    We work together – each year over forty thousand people move across the border in each direction to live and work.

    It’s not surprising then that Scotland’s economy is so closely aligned with the rest of the UK and its interests so inextricably linked.

    So the analysis makes clear the value of being able to fully co-ordinate our monetary, fiscal, and financial stability policies.

    Such co-ordination allows us to:

    our central bank, the Bank of England, to set interest rates to suit conditions throughout the UK and to have the ability to step in rapidly to stabilize our financial system when the need arises;
    take advantage of the UK’s ability to borrow in its own currency and credibility and track record with the international financial markets – built up over many, many years – to access cheaper financing;
    leverage the UK’s large and diverse tax base of thirty million individual taxpayers and nearly two million registered businesses to ensure when times are tough there is the fiscal firepower to ensure resources go to wherever in the UK they are needed most.
    As the Scottish Government’s own Fiscal Commission puts it:

    Retaining a common currency would promote the single market and help facilitate trade and investment to and from the rest of the UK and elsewhere.

    And the Commission is right on this point.

    Who would conclude the answer to today’s economic and financial challenges is to:

    – erect barriers between you and your most important trading partner;

    – accept a premium on the cost of borrowing when money is tight;

    – and conduct your business in two different currencies, across fluctuating exchange rates, when currently you don’t have to – with all the additional costs involved?

    The Treasury paper identifies four potential alternative models from which a separate Scottish state could pick its currency and monetary arrangements.

    All are a profound change from the pound we have today.

    An independent Scotland could:

    – adopt the pound unilaterally, just as Panama uses the US dollar;

    – seek a formal agreement, like the Eurozone have with each other, to form a sterling currency zone with England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the continuing UK;

    – agree to adopt the euro itself;

    – or introduce a new Scottish currency.

    And the analysis is clear: all of these alternative currency arrangements are less suitable economically than what we have now – for both Scotland and for the rest of the UK.

    Scottish Government Ministers have made it clear they want an independent Scotland to keep the pound, the Bank of England and to enter a formal currency union with the rest of the UK.

    The Treasury paper cautions that a formal currency union between two completely separate countries is not the same thing as keeping the pound we have now.

    First, financial markets would need to be convinced such a union was built to last.

    A durable currency union between two separate countries requires very strong and credible political commitment. The very opposite of what the SNP is proposing with its determination to break the political ties with the rest of the UK.

    But the lesson from the Euro is stark – they want to weaken the political ties in a dramatic way.

    Monetary union without close fiscal and political integration is extremely hard to sustain.

    That’s why the Euro area is having to reform its institutions, as the original measures to maintain budgetary discipline of its member states proved inadequate.

    Countries with the euro now have to:

    – submit their budget plans to Brussels alongside their own national parliaments;

    – commit by the Fiscal Compact to keep budgets balanced or in surplus;

    – and face the prospect of sanctions if they run excessive deficits and fail to take effective action to cope with them.

    And that’s not all.

    You only have to look at the problems facing smaller members of the euro area such as Portugal, Ireland and Greece. The most recent reminder of how difficult things can become are the events in Cyprus.

    Cypriot authorities have had to put in place temporary capital controls.

    This wouldn’t happen within the US or within the UK.

    And the Treasury paper cites the example of the last two nations to try to form a currency union following separation – Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

    Their union fell apart after only thirty-three days as capital flowed from one to the other as investors and savers sought what they saw as a safer haven for their funds.

    So the challenges for establishing a formal currency union between Scotland and the remaining UK are not hard to imagine.

    The political commitment to maintaining the currency union would be tested daily in the financial markets; particularly if there was any hint of that currency union being a temporary arrangement – a real possibility if an independent Scotland was committed as a condition of EU membership to join the Euro at some point.

    Indeed the Scottish Government’s own Fiscal Commission talks only of retaining sterling “immediately post-independence” and of how its proposed framework was “designed to be flexible” should Scotland’s economic conditions change post-independence.

    Instead of talking up the strength and permanence of currency union, they are talking up the flexibility and short-lived nature of it.

    Second, the Treasury analysis suggests that an independent Scottish state would have to accept significant policy constraints, even if the financial markets could be convinced of both countries’ commitment to maintain for the long-term a formal currency union.

    Monetary policy set by the Bank of England in such a union would over time become less and less suitable for both countries, as tax and spending policies diverge.

    Tax and spending would therefore need to take more of the strain to stabilize the Scottish economy in the face of economic shocks.

    And the paper suggests that an independent Scotland would be more exposed than the UK to volatile revenues from oil and gas, and a large banking sector relative to the size of the Scottish economy.

    Today in the UK we pool our tax resources – a common insurance policy where all pay their share of the premium.

    We are able to transfer funds to help areas of the country adjust to economic shocks.

    A co-ordinated UK response is automatic.

    Such arrangements couldn’t simply be translated into a currency union of two separate countries.

    An independent Scotland would have to agree its tax and spending plans with what would become a foreign government.

    So the big contradiction is that those proposing separation are campaigning to “bring powers home” with one hand, while planning to give them away with the other.

    Third, there is no guarantee that the terms of a formal currency union could be agreed between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK.

    There are no modern examples of a successful formal currency union between two countries of such unequal size.

    There are currently seventeen members of the euro area.

    The largest member – Germany – represents just less than thirty per cent of the GDP of the euro area as a whole, a sterling currency union would be much more imbalanced.

    The continuing UK would comprise around ninety per cent of the total GDP in a sterling currency union with an independent Scotland.

    Some have quoted the example of the Belgium-Luxembourg economic union, two countries with a similar difference in size.

    But both countries kept separate currencies.

    Luxembourg effectively ceded all control of monetary policy to the Belgian central bank.

    And the monetary association nearly failed in the early 1980s when Luxembourg made plans to make the Luxembourg franc independent.

    So let’s be clear: abandoning current arrangements would represent a very deep dive indeed into uncharted waters.

    Would a newly independent Scottish state be prepared to accept significant limits to its economic sovereignty?

    To submitting its budgetary plans to Westminster before Holyrood.

    To constrain the degree of tax competition between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

    To accept some continuing oversight by UK authorities of its public finances.

    And what is the economic case for the remaining UK?

    The Treasury analysis suggests that the answers are not clear.

    Of course there could be some benefits for the rest of the UK in keeping the same currency as an independent Scotland using the pound, but it would also create significant economic risks.

    However, the imperative to agree to a formal currency union would not be as strong for the rest of the UK as for Scotland.

    While around 30 per cent of total Scottish output is exported to the rest of the UK, the rest of the UK relies on exports to Scotland for less than 5 per cent of its total output.

    The benefits of this trade would need to be judged against the imbalance within the sterling currency union of exposure to economic and financial risk.

    The rest of the UK – as the larger economy – would be much more exposed to the risk of an independent Scotland running into fiscal and financial difficulties.

    As Professor John Kay – formerly a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers – has put it:

    It is easy to see why the rest of the UK, representing 91.5% of a monetary union, might seek oversight of the economic affairs of Scotland, representing 8.5% of the same union. It is more difficult to see why the rest of the UK representing 91.5% of a monetary union should concede oversight of its policies to Scotland, representing 8.5% of the union.

    The fundamental political question this analysis provokes is this.

    Why would fifty-eight million citizens give away some of their sovereignty over monetary and potentially other economic policies to five million people in another state?

    Before the rest of the UK could ever agree to enter a formal currency union, any future UK Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of independence would have to provide the British people with a clear and compelling answer to this question of sovereignty.

    The SNP asserts that it would be in everyone’s interests for an independent Scotland to keep the pound as part of a Eurozone-style sterling zone.

    But the Treasury analysis we are publishing today shows that this is not the case.

    Let’s stop speculating – and look at the evidence: would the rest of the UK family agree to take that risk?

    Could a situation where an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK share the pound and the Bank of England be made to work?

    Frankly, it’s unlikely, because there is real doubt around the answers to these questions.

    In other words, the only way to be sure of keeping the pound as Scotland’s currency is to stay in the UK.

    The Treasury paper also discusses other alternatives open to an independent Scottish state if it proves impossible to agree a formal currency union with the rest of the UK.

    It could continue to use the pound without the rest of the UK’s agreement.

    However, to do so would leave an independent Scotland with no control over its own monetary policy.

    The Bank of England would continue to set interest rates – but without any regard for conditions in Scotland.

    And with no ability to print money, a Scottish monetary authority could only play a very limited role as a ‘lender of last resort’ to Scottish commercial banks.

    In this scenario an independent Scotland would be faced with severe monetary and fiscal constraints.

    Some small countries have adopted this approach.

    Montenegro uses the euro.

    Panama the US dollar.

    But, both the Scottish Government’s Fiscal Commission and the Treasury’s analysis conclude that this option would not be appropriate for a country of Scotland’s economic size and complexity.

    Another option is that Scotland could apply to join the euro area.

    Indeed, it may well have to as part of conditions for EU membership.

    But this would mean losing the pound, imposing new transaction costs on Scottish businesses’ trade with their largest market – the rest of the UK.

    And the Scottish economy differs significantly from the euro area.

    It is certainly less well integrated with the EU than with the UK as a whole.

    The policies of the European Central Bank would therefore be less well suited to conditions in Scotland than those currently pursued by the Bank of England.

    And an independent Scotland would face the same constraints designed to ensure the eurozone’s stability as its other smaller members.

    Finally it could introduce a new independent Scottish currency.

    An attractive option for many as it’s the only one where an independent Scotland would not have to give up control over some or all of the economic levers at its disposal.

    However, the Treasury analysis shows that this freedom would come at a cost.

    The transition costs of establishing a new central bank and to replace the pound coins and notes currently in circulation;

    The risk that capital could flow out of Scotland if Scottish residents preferred to hold their assets in an established currency, with the need as a result for capital controls in the transition period;

    The higher transaction costs of doing business with all of Scotland’s trading partners – particularly the UK;

    And the risks of a volatile exchange rate deterring long-term transactions and investment.

    So the analysis concludes that in comparison to current arrangements the benefits of an independent monetary policy are unlikely to outweigh these costs.

    The conclusion is clear.

    The pound we share works well.

    The saying goes,

    If it ain’t broke why fix it?

    But I say –

    if it ain’t broke don’t break it.

    The alternatives to the way Scotland now uses the pound are second best.

    Is second best really good enough for Scotland?

    I want the best for Scotland and for all our United Kingdom.

    We’re better together.

  • Chloe Smith – 2013 Speech at Infosec

    chloesmith

    Below is the text of the speech made by Chloe Smith, the then Economic Secretary to the Treasury, at Earl’s Court in London on 23 April 2013.

    Introduction

    Many thanks to the organisers for inviting me to give the keynote address. I know that this is a well-respected event by the sheer numbers of exhibitors and the investment you’ve made to be here.

    It is heartening to see that this sector is thriving and that there is so much innovation and vitality in this field. With so many global and UK companies represented it is clear that the UK has an important role in this growing sector. Today, I would like to share with you some of the steps we are taking to raise the profile of cyber threats and generate demand for more and better cyber security products and services.

    Firstly though I would like to give you a brief overview of our UK Cyber Security Strategy and objectives.

    The threat

    In 2010, when this government first came into power, the Strategic Defence and Security Review determined that cyber attacks were one of the top four threats to our national security. This is still the case today.

    Cyber threats come from a variety of sources but we broadly categorise them as emanating from state-sponsored actors, hacktivists or cyber criminals. The motivations for attacks vary from ideological, political or fanatical, to financial.

    I don’t need to tell this audience that almost every day there is a news story about an organisation being ‘hacked’ or individuals being defrauded by online criminals in new and ever more sinister ways.

    And government is faced with these threats on a daily basis. On average over 33,000 malicious emails are blocked at the Gateway to the Government Secure Intranet every month. These are likely to contain – or link to – sophisticated malware, often sent by highly capable cyber criminals and state sponsored groups. A far greater number of malicious emails and spam, but less sophisticated emails and spam are blocked each month.

    Strategy and objectives

    So what is government doing to help protect UK interests in cyberspace? In 2011, we produced our UK Cyber Security Strategy, setting out 4 clear objectives:

    We must make the UK one of the most secure places in the world to do business in cyberspace

    We must make the UK more resilient to cyber attack and better able to protect our interests in cyberspace

    We must help shape an open, vibrant and stable cyberspace that supports open societies

    We must build the UK’s cyber security knowledge, skills and capability.

    £650 million of investment over 4 years has been put in place; in of course one of the tightest fiscal environments government has ever seen. This underlines the importance we place on cyber security.

    In December last year we reported on progress against the strategy and the work being carried out under the National Cyber Security Programme as well as our forward plans. This covers all the objectives I’ve outlined in terms of enhancing skills, research and education, policing and tackling cyber crime, international engagement and capacity building, new measures to help protect the UK industry as well as the Critical National Infrastructure. Information on all these efforts can be found on GOV.UK and we will be reporting back again to parliament again at the end of this year.

    Making the UK a safer place to do business

    Objective 1 of the strategy relates to the need to protect and fuel UK business interests and is what I would like to focus attention on today.

    Industry is by far the biggest victim of cyber threats. We have stated before that cyber crime, ranging from IP theft to cyber espionage to online fraud, is costing the UK economy billions of pounds a year. And as businesses and government move more of their operations online, the scope of potential targets will continue to grow.

    Later today David Willetts, the BIS Minister, will be releasing the 2013 Cyber Security Breach survey results. The statistics are very revealing and provide us with the insight we need to determine how and where we direct resources to support UK industry.

    In particular response to this, we are launching today new guidance for SMEs on how to protect themselves from cyber threats. In addition, we are announcing a new Innovation Voucher Scheme for small businesses through the Technology Strategy Board. An Innovation Voucher provides companies with a grant to work with a supplier for the first time and should be invested in an idea or problem that is a challenge for the business and for which specialist support is required. The cyber security element of this scheme will fund 100 companies with Innovation Vouchers of up to £5000 each.

    Across government then we are working hard to raise awareness of cyber security throughout industry and ensuring that the right incentives are in place for industry to take responsibility for securing their own interests. But where government can help, we will.

    For example, at the end of March, Francis Maude launched a ground-breaking partnership between government and industry – the CISP (Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership). The scheme currently involves 160 companies allied with government to share information and intelligence in ‘real-time’ on cyber threats to UK companies and how to mitigate them. As part of this we have set up a ‘Fusion cell’, funded by the National Cyber Security Programme, which brings together experts from the security services, law enforcement and industry to work together to address cyber threats in a trusted environment. The ultimate aim is to extend this scheme beyond CNI (Critical National Infrastructure) companies and eventually to include SMEs.

    Raising awareness in industry

    We are working to create better awareness of the threat throughout both the public and private sectors; this is to help drive informed demand at the very highest levels within organisations to ensure that their key information assets are well-protected.

    To this end we have been giving advice and guidance to businesses. Last September, for the first time amalgamated advice from the Cabinet Office, the Security Services and BIS was delivered to an audience of 200 Board-level directors of FTSE companies. The “Ten Steps to Cyber Security” booklet has been well-received to such an extent that in January this year at Davos, the World Economic Forum cited it as an example of best practice. Copies of the booklet are available on the CESG stand here today andit is also available on .gov.uk

    The Cyber Security Sector

    As we are successful in raising cyber security standards across the private sector, growth in demand for products and services to support this should follow.

    So we are putting in place the right environment for a vibrant and self-sustaining cyber security market-place of good UK based cyber security providers.

    We are determined to help seize the business opportunities in cyber, promoting the UK cyber security industry both domestically and across the globe.

    Cyber security represents an opportunity for the UK – both for companies where cyber is core to their business and for companies across all areas of the economy who need to develop a competitive edge through demonstrating that they handle information responsibly and protect the details of those they do business with. We have every reason to believe that UK firms are well placed to capitalise on this growing market.

    The UK has history of being innovators in technology and in technical areas such as cryptography which is maintained to this day in our universities. We know how to implement this as our ongoing strengths here underpin our cutting edge position in areas such as online commerce and banking. Undeniably, there is a massive growth potential for UK businesses and innovators to do very well in the cyber security sector.

    SMEs

    Making a difference often relies on the forging of new partnerships – not necessarily between government and industry but business to business. A good example of this is an SME in Malvern, called IASME, a small business that has developed a cyber security standard specifically for SMEs. IASME has partnered with a local insurance provider (Sutcliffe and Co) underwritten by AIG to offer reduced premiums to those companies that are assured against the IASME standard. This approach is helping to grow these two small businesses, offering an innovative approach to cyber risk management, as well as growing the cyber security market in the local area. Linked to this is a series of awareness-raising events that IASME are holding around the UK for SMEs to introduce them to cyber risk and promote this insurance offering: quite impressive stuff for a micro-business. We applaud this approach and BIS is also contributing to these ‘roadshows’ to offer the government view and present on HMG is doing to stimulate supply and demand for cyber security.

    Standards

    And to help more companies demonstrate that they are cyber savvy we are also bringing clarity to the broader standards landscape helping companies identify the best of the standards that exist in the marketplace and to protect organisations against cyber attacks.

    GCHQ and BIS have drawn up, in partnership with industry, a series of requirements for what a good organisational standard for cyber security would look like. We are relying here on market support and industry telling us what their preferred standard is and how it aligns with the requirements.

    Sector growth

    At the last count, there are around 2380 UK companies in the cyber security sector which equates to 21 % of all UK security companies. In total, these companies support well over 26,000 jobs – currently 16% of all UK security employment. According to a UK Security Sector Report, UK Cyber Security sales amounted to £3.8bn with UK exports of £800m. Cyber security global growth is forecast over the next four years to be over twice that of the security sector as a whole as economic constraints bite in traditional defence and security markets. So it is clear that this is a growth sector and one which we should encourage and nurture.

    The Cyber Growth Partnership

    To this end, we have launched a new Cyber Growth Partnership, led by BIS and Intellect, the ICT representative organisation, representing over 850 large and small technology organisations. Central to this will be a high level group which will identify how to support the growth of the UK Cyber security industry, with an emphasis on exports. It will also help identify what currently stops the cyber security sector from growing, with a particular emphasis on SMEs and boosting their market potential.

    The first meeting of this group took place last month. The main outcome of the meeting was an agreement with industry on the practical steps they needed the government to take to support export growth. For example we are looking at ways in which those businesses which government has procured cyber security products from can promote the fact that they are an HMG supplier to their prospective customers overseas.

    We also discussed how industry and government can work together to ensure that the right inputs such as skills, R&D and funding are available to support growth.

    It is early in the life of the group and we are keen that we don’t lose momentum – however the indications are that this group can play an important role in addressing issues that impact on sector growth.

    Skills and research

    The ideas for skills and research we discussed as part of the cyber growth partnership are focussed on what we can and have to do in the future.

    Through the National Cyber Security Programme we are investing in skills research and training. Last week two new Centres for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security were established within UK universities to bring people with the right skills and knowledge into the cyber security field. The CDTs will provide broad training focused exclusively on cyber security and engage with industry to ensure that this training reflects the complex and dynamic nature of cyber threats. This is in addition to funding for Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security status to 11 UK universities and 3 new Research Institutes.

    We are also taking steps to improve cyber security skills among young people and to widen the pipeline of talent coming into this field. e-Skills UK is developing interactive learning materials on cyber security for GCSE and A-level students. We expect these materials to be available to schools from September 2013.

    At the end of last year, GCHQ and the other Intelligence Agencies launched a new technical apprenticeship scheme which aims to identify and develop talent in school and university age students. They aim to recruit up to 100 apprentices who will be enrolled on a tailored two-year Foundation Degree course. We also sponsor the Cyber Security Challenge UK in its work providing advice, support and guidance for anyone interested in a career in cyber security, and we want to create opportunities for employers and previously unidentified talent to come together. Since its launch in 2010, over 10,000 people have registered with the initiative.

    GCHQ has also established a set of certification schemes to improve the skills and availability of cyber security professionals. The Certification for Information Assurance Professionals scheme will help Government and Industry to recruit cyber security professionals with the right skills at the right level, and into the right jobs. It will also assist participants to build a career path and to have the opportunity to progress through re-assessment as skills and experience grow.

    All this will take time to filter through but we are putting in place the right processes to achieve increase the numbers of skilled people needed to help protect UK business.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, cyber threats are an increasing challenge for UK businesses but they also present many exciting opportunities as well. We are making every effort to address the threats through improving our ability to detect and defend UK interests in cyberspace. We have to work with you, with UK businesses to help this growing sector to thrive. We want to work with industry through real and meaningful partnerships to ensure that UK businesses capitalise from this growing demand for the benefit of the UK as a whole.

  • William Gladstone – 1885 Statement on Lord Salisbury Becoming Prime Minister

    williamgladstone

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Gladstone, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 15 June 1885.

    Mr. Speaker, I have received authentic information that Lord Salisbury has undertaken the formation of a Government, and I have likewise received an expression of a desire, to which I am sure the House will be as ready to conform as I am, that I should move to-day that the House, at its rising, should adjourn until Friday next. That accordingly is my intention, and I believe it will be quite conformable to precedent, as it is to the reason of the case, in this necessarily early stage of the arrangements. That being so, we have before us the question whether it is desirable to proceed with the Lords’ Amendments to the Redistribution of Seats Bill—a matter upon which, as I have said before, I am in the hands of the House. But my opinion is that, on the whole, it is for the public interest and for the satisfaction of all parties that we should proceed to deal with them and to complete the measure.

    There is another arrangement, rather less in magnitude, but which, at the same time, touches matters of feeling in relation to Royalty of such a nature as makes it desirable for me to submit to the House whether another exception ought not to be made to the more usual practice. The House will remember that some time ago—I do not know how many weeks ago—it was determined, by a very large majority, to introduce the usual Annuity Bill for the marriage of Her Royal Highness tie Princess Beatrice. That Annuity Bill has reached its third reading, and, although it is true a limited opposition was made to it on its first stage, that opposition has not been revived. The House has, therefore, on the various stages of the measure, except upon one occasion, given its unanimous assent to the Bill. As there are practical arrangements connected with that measure, and as it touches the relation of the House towards the Throne, and the loyal feelings of the House, my opinion is that there will be a general disposition on the part of the House to approve that course, if I should proceed to move the third reading to-day.

    There is another portion of the arrangements as to which I do not propose to take a similar course, for reasons which, I think, will be obvious. The custom has always been, besides the Annuity, to propose the grant of a capital sum. But towards the grant of that capital sum in the present instance—which is precisely based upon former precedents—owing to the course of Business, the first stage which is to procure the voting of that capital sum has not yet been taken. I have not the smallest doubt in my own mind that that capital sum will be voted with the same readiness and the same loyalty as was the Annuity. But the House has given no decision upon it, and I wish to call attention to that point—that the House has given no decision upon it, and has not become a party to it. The proposal itself is a responsible act, and I think it is better, being a responsible act, however sure we may be of the decision the House will give, that we should properly reserve it to the House, to be dealt with in the usual manner, upon the proposal of a responsible Government.

    Consequently, I do not intend, as far as I am concerned, to take any steps in regard to that proposal; but with respect to the third reading of the Annuity Bill, the House will probably be inclined unanimously, as it has been on the later stages of the Bill, to think that, under these circumstances, it is just to make that also an exception to our usual methods of proceeding, and allow the Bill to go forward to the House of Lords by reading it a third time tonight. I beg leave to move that the House, at its rising, do adjourn until Friday next.

  • Nick Gibb – 2016 Speech on Mathematics

    nickgibb

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, at Elmhurst Primary School in London on 11 February 2016.

    It is a delight to be back here at Elmhurst Primary School. During my time as Schools Minister, I have learnt a great deal from both Elmhurst Primary School and your inspiring head Shahed Ahmed, and I have enormous admiration for the academic outcomes that your pupils achieve.

    I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, Shahed and I share a belief in the importance of getting the basics right in primary education, be it phonics, arithmetic or handwriting. But that is not the only thing we share. My sources tell me that in a previous life Shahed, like me, worked as a chartered accountant – though I believe that I lasted a little longer in the profession than Shahed.

    Now, as accountants, we belong to a small minority of people in England for whom it is not socially acceptable to say ‘I can’t do maths’. Sadly, for many others in this country, such a claim is commonplace. It is extraordinary that in a country which produced Charles Babbage and Bletchley Park, a deficiency at mathematics has come to be seen as a defining national feature.

    The idea that maths is something some people can do, and some people cannot, is cognitively untrue for all but a tiny minority of people. It is also of dire consequence for adult’s livelihoods, and our country’s economy.

    According to the international PISA tests carried out every three years by the OECD, 22% of fifteen year olds in this country are functionally innumerate. This means they are unable to carry out simple tasks such as recognising that travelling 4km in 10 minutes means going at the same speed as travelling 2km in 5. Such a record places us well behind countries such as Korea and Singapore, and cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, where the percentage of innumerate 15-year-olds is below 10% in each.

    The PISA survey which produced those results was carried out in 2012. Since then, the situation may, perhaps, have been changing for the better. Today, I want to celebrate a renaissance in mathematics teaching that is taking place in our schools. Currently happening on a small scale, it has the potential to revolutionise the teaching of the subject in this country.

    Elmhurst Primary School’s fantastic results, where 60% of pupils last year achieved a level 5 or above in their key stage 2 mathematics – is an example of the excellent standards English schools can achieve. Due to its strong track record on mathematics, Elmhurst was made one of England’s 35 maths hubs in 2014. The maths hubs have been funded by the Department for Education to disseminate expert mathematics teaching throughout this country’s schools.

    In particular, teachers at maths hubs are finding out what we can learn from international leaders, such as Singapore and Shanghai. Over the past 2 years, the maths hubs have arranged for 127 teachers from Shanghai to teach in English schools for 3 weeks, and 131 teachers from England to teach in Shanghai.

    Through visiting maths hubs and talking to their teachers, I have been consistently impressed by how positively teachers are engaging in this project. The Maths Hub programme will continue into 2016 to 2017 and hub budgets will be confirmed in March 2016.

    One of the most inspiring teachers I have met since becoming Schools Minster is Bruno Reddy. As head of mathematics, he helped found King Solomon’s Academy in 2009. As a maths specialism school, it developed a mathematics curriculum which focuses on depth of understanding before breadth of study. In the school’s most recent results, 82% of its pupils gained a GCSE in mathematics at B or above, and 95% at C or above – an astonishing achievement for any school, let alone an inner-city school with a proportion of disadvantaged pupils around 3 times the national average.

    At A level, pupils appear to be gaining, not losing, an enthusiasm for mathematics. Due in part to this government’s emphasis on the importance of STEM subjects, there has been, since 2010, a 15% increase in pupil entries for physics, an 18% increase in pupil entries for maths, and a 27% increase in pupil entries for further maths.

    2014 saw the opening of the Kings College London Maths School in Lambeth, a small free school for sixth formers where all of the pupils study mathematics, further mathematics and physics. This summer, the school reported that 72% of pupils attained AAB or better, and 97% of pupils attained an A-grade in mathematics. Such exemplar schools show what can be achieved by pupils in this country. The challenge now is making sure that the approach to mathematics that characterises the best of our schools, can spread to the rest of our schools.

    I do not believe that outcomes in mathematics are low for many pupils in this country because of bad teachers, or bad schools, or bad parents. Where pupil outcomes are low, I believe it is because of bad ideas.

    What ideas am I talking about? I am talking about the idea that sustained practice is too boring to engage pupils. I am talking about the idea that teacher led instruction and worked examples in mathematics are passive. I am talking about the idea that memorising your multiplication tables is antiquated in the age of the smart phone. For half a century, these ideas have been propagated by a romantic belief that the discipline can be taken out of mathematics, and the learning can remain. But as our best schools know, this is not possible. Memory, testing and teacher instruction are all vital components for success in the subject.

    Take the last example – multiplication tables. This government has pledged to introduce a computerised multiplication check for all year 6 pupils at the end of primary school. The announcement was received positively by many parents and teachers. But some influential voices within education remain opposed.

    One English educationist, now residing at an American university, appeared in the TES in December arguing she would ‘ban’ times table tests, and told the Telegraph that they have nothing to do with mathematics. Earlier last year, Conrad Wolfman wrote in the Financial Times that calculation is an ‘obsolete skill’, thanks to technological advances of the 21st century.

    That last comment reminded me of an influential pamphlet about the future of mathematics entitled ‘I do, and I understand’, which suggests that in the age of the computer and the ‘simple calculating machine’, mental arithmetic has become a thing of the past. That pamphlet was written in 1967. Its romantic view was wrong then, and it is wrong today.

    Five decades of research by cognitive psychologists, as reviewed by the American psychologists James Royer and Loel Tronsky, shows that there is a positive relationship between computational automaticity and complex mathematical problems solving skills.

    For example, a 2001 study gave 200 American pupils aged 7 to 11 a battery of tests assessing basic skills, followed by a mathematics test involving complex problem solving. Speed at basic arithmetic in 4th grade still had a small but statistically significant relationship with complex problem solving ability 1 year later, when controlling for a child’s verbal IQ, processing speech, and reading ability.

    In 2013, a controlled trial was carried out where 195 first grade pupils in America who were struggling with mathematics were given 16 weeks of specific tutoring where they practiced simple sums. The pupils were then tested on areas such as word problems, arithmetic and 2-digit calculations. Compared to the control group who received no such tutoring, these pupils had a statistically signification improvement in all 4 areas tested. Revealingly, those children who practised simple sums in timed conditions using flashcards, improved even further, showing that repeated practice aids memory.

    And there is absolutely no reason why such practice has to be dull and dispiriting. Just look at the ‘Rolling Numbers’ chants developed at inner-city American charter schools to learn multiplication tables, or the wildly successful Times Tables Rock Starts programme developed by Bruno Reddy. You will see children delighted with the sense of achievement which comes from mastering mathematical knowledge.

    Of course, mathematics is not limited to number knowledge, just as reading is not limited to decoding words. Memorising sums and times tables is simply an important gateway for achieving the far more valuable prize of conceptual understanding in mathematics. When your working memory is freed of having to make simple calculations, it can think more fully about the conceptual underpinnings of a problem. As the American cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has written, ‘This automatic retrieval of basic math facts is critical to solving complex problems, because complex problems have simpler problems embedded in them.’

    A lovely example of this was provided by the mathematician Hung-Hsi Wu, in the magazine American Educator. Being able to carry out long division can open the door of understanding as to why some fractions, such as one third, are repeating decimals. You keep on dividing, and you keep on getting 3!

    A large body of evidence from cognitive scientists demonstrates that knowledge and understanding in mathematics proceed in tandem, and should be taught together. This insight is well understood by mathematics teachers in the Far East.

    I have been most impressed by the focus teachers from Singapore and Shanghai place, not just on basic skills, but also on developing clear conceptual understanding. From the maths hubs, I have learnt about the importance of using real life illustrations of mathematical problems to give pupils a clear understanding of the concepts that underlie procedures. Lessons move from concrete examples, to pictorial examples, to abstract procedures. From sharing biscuits, to dividing up a shape, to simple division – as an example.

    And a huge amount of thought goes into finding examples which will resonate with pupils. One teacher joked with me that whilst household pets may be an excellent analogy for gathering like terms, it is much better to discuss splitting a journey along a road into thirds, than a kitten.

    Crucially, the knowledge, examples and questions which underlie successful teaching in the Far East are embodied in a detailed curriculum, and high quality resources. An enormous amount of thought and care goes into the construction of mathematics textbooks in Shanghai and Singapore, planning in great detail every step of the algorithm or calculation. No pupil’s understanding is left to chance or accident: every step of a lesson is deliberate, purposeful and precise.

    It is revealing that, according to the 2011 TIMSS international survey, 70% of Singaporean pupils in year 5 are taught by teachers who use textbooks as a basis for instruction in lessons. In England, that figure was 10%.

    This is not to say that the common curriculum and textbooks in the Far East constrain teacher creativity. Quite the opposite: high quality resources provide a foundation upon which creative and imaginative teaching can be built. I am delighted that England’s maths hubs are currently trialling 2 English adaptations of Singapore mathematics textbooks, entitled ‘Maths No Problem’ and ‘Inspire Maths’.

    In addition, Shanghai teaching methods depend upon whole class instruction from the teacher. As Charlie Stripp from the National Centre for the Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics has observed, this does not mean reducing pupils to being passive recipients, as some caricatures of Chinese teaching suggest. Shanghai teaching is teacher-led, but not teacher-dominated, with constant questioning and interaction between the teacher and the class.

    In 2014, a fascinating piece of research was published by Professor David Reynolds of Southampton University, and his Chinese postgraduate research student Zhenzhen Miao. They videoed lessons in both countries, to find out what teaching methods were being used to such great success in the Chinese classroom. The answer was clear: in Chinese classrooms, interactive whole-class teaching made up 72% of lesson time, compared with only 24% of lesson time in England. In England, almost half of the time – 47% – was used up on pupils working individually or in groups, compared with only 28% of the time in China.

    But perhaps most importantly of all, Shanghai mathematics teaching is based upon the principle that, if taught well, all pupils can master the content of a lesson. Differentiated teaching is not common in Shanghai, as it reinforces the performance gap between pupils. Across the OECD as a whole, the use of differentiating by ability whilst teaching has a negative relationship with pupil outcomes – an insight provided by the maths teacher and education blogger Greg Ashman.

    There appears to be no conception in Shanghai that some pupils can ‘do’ mathematics, whilst others cannot. Instead, the focus is on all pupils mastering a concept before moving to the next part of the curriculum sequence, allowing no pupil to be left behind.

    The benefits of a good understanding of mathematics for pupils’ life outcomes are unarguable. The phrase ‘I am not good at maths’ should be banished from English schools, as it implies current difficulties are fixed within a child, suggesting that there is no hope of these difficulties being overcome.

    The way that we are going to improve maths in this country is simple: improved curriculum, quality resources, and better teaching methods.

    I am delighted to be here today to open the new building at a maths hub which is leading the way in these developments. Through Shahed’s travels to Shanghai, and Elmhurst Primary School’s involvement as a maths hub, this school is an inspiring example of how we can learn from international best practice.

    I hope that where Elmhurst Primary School leads, the rest of this country will follow. If so, we may one day have a country where mass innumeracy is a thing of the past, and all pupils – not just the future accountants – know they have it within them to ‘do maths’.