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  • Nicky Morgan – 2016 Speech on Extremism

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education, at Bethnal Green Academy in London on 19 January 2016.

    It really is a pleasure to speak here at Bethnal Green Academy

    A school that as we’ve just heard, knows all too well the devastating impact that extremist ideology can have on young people, schools and whole communities.

    I know that this has been an immensely difficult time for everyone involved here, but I want to commend Mark [Keary – Principal of Bethnal Green Academy and CEO of Green Spring Education Trust] and his staff for the leadership that they’ve shown in the face of this tragedy.

    I spoke to Mark shortly after the girls fled and was impressed then by his determination to ensure that other students’ education was not interrupted.

    And for the whole school’s commitment, as he outlined to me at the time, to ensure that pupils here continue to thrive in a safe, tolerant environment where the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance are enshrined in everything you do. Thank you to Mark, and all of your staff and leadership team.

    If you’d been drawing up the job description for Secretary of State for Education, just 5 years ago, I’d doubt that tackling extremism would have featured at all. How different things are today.

    In fact, my first task as Education Secretary was to respond in Parliament to Peter Clarke’s report on the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham.

    Since then I have led a department which has found itself at the forefront of the fight to protect and safeguard young people from the threat of extreme and fundamentalist ideologies.

    And that threat is like no enemy we have faced before – an enemy not defined by physical geography, but by a shared set of warped beliefs.

    An enemy that thanks to new technology has a potential channel from camps in Syria to homes right here in the United Kingdom – an enemy determined to take away our future by focusing their efforts to target the next generation.

    Defeating such an enemy requires a co-ordinated response. Not just from the police, intelligence and security services, but from civil society – from schools and from parents.

    Because left unchecked those that seek to destroy our way of life start to do so, by, as the Prime Minister said at the Conservative Party Conference last year, putting poison in the minds and hatred in the hearts of impressionable young people.

    It’s hard to comprehend that promising, bright girls from this school took the decision to leave their homes, families and country to join a brutal terrorist group.

    But I do know this, they didn’t take that decision alone – instead they were systematically targeted and groomed.

    Daesh has developed sophisticated social media strategies to allow them to spread their lies and propaganda on an unprecedented scale.

    They prey on and exploit young people’s vulnerabilities – claiming to offer them an identity and a sense of belonging, which is nothing more than a fiction built on lies and manipulation.

    That’s why, just as we so proactively take steps to safeguard children from sexual exploitation, the threat of gangs, drugs or FGM [female genital mutilation], we must all of us here today stand together as government, parents, teachers, heads, charities and civil society groups.

    All of us must work to protect children from the threat that Daesh poses.

    Doing that isn’t easy.

    Far from it. I absolutely understand the concerns of teachers and school staff who’ve said to me, this isn’t our role, this isn’t why I came into the profession, it’s not what schooling should be about.

    But to those teachers and staff I say this – the most powerful thing that you can do to keep young people safe, are the things that you do every single day:

    engaging, broadening horizons and challenging young minds
    ensuring young people leave school as well-rounded young people – ready to be active citizens, able to participate in society, with an understanding of the responsibility that brings
    That is why our work to tackle extremism – and specifically the Prevent duty are absolutely not about shutting down debate in schools – in fact they’re about reinvigorating it.

    Because what defines every extremist organisation throughout history is that more than anything else their mission is to close and narrow young minds – to indoctrinate, instruct and inspire hatred.

    That’s what we saw in the Birmingham schools at the heart of the Trojan Horse Affair: a concerted attempt to limit young people’s world view and spread poisonous views which had no place in our education system.

    That’s why we are taking action to remove those responsible from our classrooms and have put robust measures in place to prevent anyone else from being able to do the same again.

    But that action alone will not be enough to keep young people safe. Alongside tackling extremists directly, we must also ensure that young people understand British values – that they have the tools and arguments they need to challenge extremism and to deconstruct the false claims of groups like Daesh.

    It means that schools and universities need to be able to recognise the difference between a debate involving an academic controversialists like Germaine Greer and some of the events hosted by groups like CAGE, which have no place on our campuses and certainly not in our schools.

    That isn’t easy, there’s no hard and fast rule, age appropriateness matters, as do the motivations of the speakers.

    It requires judgement – but just as we must be absolutely clear that we should never give those who peddle extremist ideologies entry in to our schools or colleges, so too we must guard against inadvertently hiding young people from views which we simply think are wrong and disagree with.

    We will not do young people any favours by wrapping them in cotton wool or subscribing to a definition of safe spaces that makes young people more fragile, and that seeks to protect young people from offence rather than from extremism.

    The difference matters.

    I hold no truck with the move on some campuses to limit debate and ban those with offensive rather than extremist views.

    Far better, I think, to tackle Germaine Greer’s wrong-headed views about gender identity in open debate.

    Because it’s the resilience that young people develop through that challenge and debate which will be their best defence should they ever then find themselves confronted by the truly hateful views of extremist groups.

    I hope that all of you as educators will agree with me that our approach to protecting young people must be twofold.

    We must continue to root out those who peddle extremism in our schools, but at the same time we must equip young people with the mental agility, arguments and insight to see through and overcome the propaganda of extremist groups, be it the Islamist extremism of Daesh or the fundamentalism of the far right.

    As a government we are determined, and I am determined, to provide schools with the support they need to do this.

    That is why I am delighted to be launching the Educate Against Hate website today alongside the Minister for Security [John Hayes MP].

    The site brings together the best advice, support and resources available for parents, teachers and school leaders who want to learn how to protect young people from extremism and radicalisation, and that really is the result of successful collaboration between the Department for Education, the Home Office, the NSPCC, Internet Matters, Childnet, ParentZone, UK Internet Safety Centre, and the many other organisations who have contributed resources.

    What’s so important about this resource is that it doesn’t just offer information for teachers and schools – but parents as well.

    While schools may be able to spot the signs of radicalisation, the truth is much of it takes place beyond the school gates, in families or friendship groups, in communities and increasingly online.

    That means parents must be equipped to help protect their children from extremism.

    They need to understand the threat that extremist organisations pose, how radicalisation happens, what the warning signs look like and who to turn to for support if they are ever worried.

    The information and advice available on Educate Against Hate will be an invaluable resource in helping them to do that and I encourage all parents to visit the site and familiarise themselves with the information it provides.

    But as I said, schools also play a key role in spotting the signs of radicalisation – just as they do when young people experience other threats or difficulties, such as CSE [child sexual exploitation], eating disorders, mental health problems or drugs.

    Schools can pick up those behavioural changes which may signal that a student is being radicalised before their peers or even their parents have spotted those signs.

    That is why it is so important that schools see protecting children from radicalisation as part of their safeguarding duties. I know that the vast majority of staff in schools do this already and want to play their part.

    And I want Educate Against Hate to become a tool that helps them do that.

    It provides up-to-date, practical advice that will help heads and governors understand the procedures their school should have in place to robustly tackle the threat, and will help teachers facing these issues in the classroom to understand radicalisation, its warning signs, and crucially where they can get further support.

    Further resources, particularly those that help teachers to build children’s critical thinking skills, will be added over the coming months.

    And as the threat evolves, as we know it will, the site will be updated so that it continues to be a live and relevant source of support.

    Alongside this, I want to make sure that wherever children are being educated they are safe. I have said before, and I reiterate today, I fundamentally support the right of parents to decide where and how to educate their children.

    Our duty as the government is to make sure that those children are safe from harm. So when children are taken out of school and taken off the register, we must know where they end up to ensure they are safe not just from radicalisation, but also from female genital mutilation, forced marriage and child sexual exploitation.

    That is why, today I am also launching a consultation on improving communication and co-ordination between schools and local authorities to help them quickly and effectively identify children who are missing from education.

    By strengthening regulations and allowing local authorities to obtain the information they need, we will ensure that they don’t waste time filling information gaps, but instead focus efforts and resources on children who are at risk.

    Finally, alongside protecting children who are missing in education, we will take action to tackle those institutions where children are being educated in illegally operating unregistered schools.

    And let me be clear what I mean by an unregistered school, I mean an institution that is operating and educating young people full time and therefore should be subject to the same requirements as any other school.

    These unregistered schools often fail to meet even basic safety and educational requirements – putting young people at risk, and in some cases evidence suggests subjecting them to extreme and intolerant views.

    For too long these illegal schools have been operating under the radar. No more.

    Let me be clear if you operate an unregistered school, you are committing a criminal offence and will face the consequences.

    We have been working closely with Ofsted and local authorities to identify and tackle these schools, and the Chief Inspector has powers to make unannounced visits to any institution that he suspects is operating unlawfully as an independent school.

    Indeed, these powers have already allowed Ofsted to work with the local authority to secure the closure of several unregistered schools operating in Birmingham.

    But we must do more to take tough action against those who disregard the law in this area, and so I have agreed to give Ofsted additional resources so that they can go out on the ground to locate and investigate unregistered schools.

    I have also instructed Ofsted to start preparing prosecutions against the proprietors of these schools.

    Britain’s classrooms have for centuries shaped great minds, who in turn have gone on to shape the course of history.

    That is why it is so important that we do everything we can to ensure they remain places of enquiry and engagement, not breeding grounds for intolerance and indoctrination.

    There will be no single knockout blow against those who seek to corrupt young people, but the action we are taking, to protect children inform parents and support teachers will put us firmly on the front foot.

    It demonstrates our total commitment towards ensuring that we prevail in the battle against hateful extremist ideologies.

    Because we want to ensure that every single child is where they should be – receiving a great education that will help them to build a bright future.

    Thank you.

  • Robert Goodwill – 2016 Speech at Intertek

    robertgoodwill

    Below is the text of the speech made by Robert Goodwill, the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, at Intertek in Milton Keynes on 14 January 2016.

    It’s a real honour to open Intertek’s new testing facility today.

    And I am really pleased that Intertek will be using its expertise in a new field.

    The UK automotive industry is a genuine economic success story.

    Last year Britain built 1.5 million cars.

    One and a quarter million of which we exported to over a hundred different countries.

    Almost 800,000 people are employed in an industry that in 2013 turned over £64 billion.

    In 2014, a single plant – Nissan in Sunderland – made more cars than the whole of Italy.

    That makes you feel proud.

    And it means Britain’s transport manufacturing sector has passed its pre-recession peak and continues to grow.

    But that success is dependent on British-made cars being not just reliable, safe, clean and efficient, but verifiably so.

    The effect that cars have on our air quality has been in the news a lot recently.

    That focus won’t go away.

    Poor air is a real health danger in many towns and cities and CO2 standards for new cars are continually being tightened.

    Meanwhile, car manufacturers are facing global competition, unpredictable commodity prices and exchange rates, and ever-increasing consumer expectations.

    I have no doubt that the UK’s automotive sector will rise to these challenges, but only if research and development keep pace.

    And that’s where Intertek’s fantastic new facility comes in.

    It’s a vital addition to the UK’s testing capability, and it means we can test more of our cars here, in the UK, rather than sending them abroad.

    That’s convenient for manufacturers, and it keeps the commercial advantage here, too.

    We need to develop our expertise in testing electric vehicles, because by 2050 we want virtually every car on the road to be an ultra low emission vehicle.

    To help us achieve our target, the government is spending over £600 million to support the ultra low emission vehicle market.

    We have funded more than 50,000 Plug-in Car and Van Grants to help motorists buy ultra low emission vehicles.

    We have invested in refuelling infrastructure, including charging points for electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

    We are running the Go Ultra Low communications campaign, supporting cleaner buses and taxis and working with Innovate UK and the Advanced Propulsion Centre to develop new technology.

    This investment will ensure that the low emission vehicles of the future are designed, developed and tested here in the UK.

    So Intertek’s investment makes perfect sense.

    You are helping us on the way to low emission vehicles being increasingly commonplace on our roads, offering drivers all the convenience of internal combustion engine vehicles, but with cheaper running costs and cleaner, quieter engines.

    It means that we have come a long way in 120 years. On the 7th and 8th of May we will celebrate the 120th anniversary of the first horseless carriage exhibition, with a recreation of the event at Imperial College.

    I hope to see some of you there.

    But I would like to end my remarks by saying thank you.

    Thank you for your vote of confidence in the UK’s car manufacturing sector.

    And thank you for your commitment to the future of motoring.

    Your work here helps make the UK a global leader in the design, production and testing of cutting-edge vehicles, and will do nothing less than revolutionise personal transport.

    Thank you.

  • Nick Gibb – 2016 Speech on Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

    nickgibb

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Gibb at the Education World Forum at Westminster Hall, in London, on 19 January 2016.

    Can I start by saying thank you for inviting me to be part of this panel. Since coming to office in 2010, entrepreneurship and enterprise have been cornerstones of this government’s long term plan for the economy.

    We have saved businesses £10 billion in red tape, and have extended the doubling of small business rate relief until April 2017. Over 34,000 start-up loans worth £187 million have been provided to people starting their own business. Compared with 2010, there are now 900,000 more small businesses, and employment in small businesses has increased by 1.6 million. Today, business in Britain is flourishing and growing.

    Such measures have created a fertile garden for new enterprises to grow, but the extent of such growth is ultimately determined by the number of knowledgeable, skilled and ambitious young people leaving our schools. Highly qualified school leavers are an irreplaceable component of a strong economy.

    But what actually constitutes being ‘highly qualified?’ Since 2010, the government has focused on increasing the challenge, and the academic ambition, of our national examinations and qualifications. We have overturned a culture of low expectations that discouraged generations of capable pupils, predominantly from disadvantaged backgrounds, from studying the core academic subjects that would open doors to their future.

    It is our belief that all schools should introduce their pupils, up to the age of 16, with an understanding of the world around them. To be given the best chance of success in later life, all pupils should know the rules of mathematics and the natural sciences, great historical events, geographical landmarks, a language other than their own, and enduring works of art and literature. In short, they should be given the gift of knowledge.

    Such a message is, perhaps, at odds with the message often delivered at international education forums such as this. There is a common view amongst some educationists that the internet, and the advent of google in particular, makes the teaching of knowledge redundant.

    One educationist who is well known on the international stage recently wrote a book promoting ‘new pedagogies’. Chief amongst them was ‘learning to learn.’ He wrote of today’s education, ‘the goal is not to master content knowledge; it is to master the learning process.’

    Indeed, the Director of Education at a leading global think tank wrote in a 2010 report: ‘Educational success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge… Education today is much more about ways of thinking which involve creative and critical approaches to problem-solving and decision-making.’

    Though such a view may seem forward-thinking and persuasive, I believe it to be profoundly misguided. Those who are most adept at problem solving and decision making, and most easily master ‘the learning process’, are those with a well of background knowledge to draw upon.

    An educationist who has shaped my thinking on this more than any other is Daniel Willingham, professor of cognitive science at the University of Virginia. With reference to robust scientific evidence, he explains how the ‘thinking skills’ most prized by schools and employers are dependent upon background knowledge.

    In mathematics, pupils can only solve complex problems once they have achieved fluency in the use of algorithms, and memorised their number bonds and multiplication tables. Communication in a foreign language is impossible without having mastered its grammar, and learnt an extensive vocabulary. In studying a historical period, a knowledge of the events is vital before attempting to analyse evidence or explain causes.

    One memorable example Daniel Willingham cites is an experiment where good readers with a low knowledge of baseball, and poor readers with a high knowledge of baseball, were both asked to read a text about baseball, and tested for understanding. In this instance, the ability to read was not enough: poor readers with high knowledge performed much better than good readers with low knowledge.

    Does this mean that schools should aim to teach all information that pupils are likely to encounter in the working world? No, such an aim is impossible. Schools can equip pupils, however, with a framework of knowledge which enables them to learn more in the future. This framework is what an academic curriculum provides.

    It is the consensus of most cognitive psychologists that an individual can only hold 5 to 7 new pieces of information in their working memory at any one time. All other information must reside in long term memory for new knowledge to be understood – or else ‘cognitive overload’ is experienced. This is why, for someone with no background knowledge, browsing the internet is such a barren and fruitless means of learning.

    Say, for example, a young tech entrepreneur wants to find out about the advantages of cloud computing. The first paragraph on the Wikipedia page suggests that sharing resources achieves ‘economies of scale’, an unfamiliar term. So the young entrepreneur looks it up, but the definition for ‘economies of scale’ uses another unfamiliar term: ‘variable cost’. The definition of which in turn contains the terms ‘fixed’ and ‘marginal costs’, and so on and so forth in an infinite series of google searches which take the young entrepreneur further and further away from the original term ‘cloud computing’.

    The internet is a wonderful tool for those who already possess considerable knowledge. As a means of initial instruction it is not so useful.

    In 2013, we reformed the national curriculum in England to put in much of the subject knowledge that previous governments – under the influence of the 21st century skills movement – had taken out. Our mathematics and science curriculum content was based in part on the curriculums of far eastern education systems such as Shanghai and Singapore, where schools still place great value on the mastery of academic subject knowledge. It is no coincidence, to my mind, that their pupils top international league tables such as PISA and TIMSS.

    Of course, many argue that whilst pupils in the Far East do well in tests, their formal style of education limits creativity and independent-mindedness. One look at the skyline of Shanghai, or the commercial district of Singapore, should put such arguments to rest. According to the World Intellectual Property Organisations, China, Japan and Korea provided 3 of the 4 top patent offices for the number of patent applications in 2014. Remarkably, China contributed 89% of the worldwide growth in patents filed in 2014, compared with 2013. So much for a formal, academic education limiting a country’s potential to innovate.

    And it is this formal, academic education which best equips pupils for work in the modern world. The 2012 PISA survey of financial literacy in 13 OECD countries contained a very interesting finding. Pupils completed financial literacy tasks, on areas such as variable interest rates and inflation. There was a strong correlation between pupils’ performance in numeracy and literacy tests, and pupils’ financial literacy. However, there was no clear relationship between states which offer lessons in personal finance, and pupils’ financial literacy. For pupils from Shanghai, which topped the financial literacy table by quite some margin, mastering mathematics appeared to be the best means of becoming financially literate.

    In opposition to the idea that a formal education is the best means of fostering enterprising and entrepreneurial citizens, the individual cases of well-known school or university drop outs are often cited. ‘Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of Harvard,’ it is claimed. ‘Richard Branson never completed school,’ they add. Less often is it mentioned that prior to university, each of them received an academic education at an elite private school.

    Indeed, 2 Swedish academics recently took on the myth of the untutored business genius in their Centre for Policy Studies paper ‘SuperEntrepreneurs …and how your country can get them’. They analysed the educational background of around 1000 self-made men and women who have earned at least $1 billion. Only 16% of such ‘superenterpreneurs’ from the USA lacked a college degree, compared to 54% of salaried workers.

    In addition, superenterpreneurs in the USA were 5 times more likely to hold a PhD degree as the general population. One third of American superentrepreneurs have degrees from one of the top 14 American universities, compared to 1% of the general population. The exceptional stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and the Rausing brothers are well known precisely for that reason: they are exceptions. When it comes to producing a new generation of entrepreneurs, an investment in an academic curriculum will always pay dividends.

    This brings me to my second point. Any discussion of enterprise and entrepreneurship must consider the great advances in technology that are transforming the world. Schools must respond positively to these advances, but they should do so in a thoughtful and judicious fashion.

    As part of our national curriculum reforms, our government has introduced a new computing curriculum into schools, which moves away from everyday computer use – ICT, and focuses instead on understanding how computers work. The curriculum has been developed by teachers and sector experts, led by the British Computer Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, with input from industry leaders like Microsoft, Google and leaders in the computer games industry.

    From primary school until the age of 14, pupils will be taught programming languages, computational thinking, and Boolean logic – making this country, I believe, the first in the G20 to teach such a curriculum.

    Secondly, instead of proclaiming that educational technology will ‘disrupt’ traditional schooling, we should focus instead on how technology can supplement what teachers already do well. For example, educational technology has the potential to bring enormous efficiencies to the important but time-consuming process of marking pupils’ work.

    In this country, the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at Durham University and the company GL Assessment offer well-honed computerised assessments. These allow a teacher, with minimal effort in terms of marking, to assess a pupils’ understanding with great accuracy, and diagnose areas for further work.

    One of the 3 British teachers nominated for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize is Colin Hegarty, who left his accountancy job in the city to teach mathematics at a London secondary school. I met him last week, and he demonstrated the website he has been developing, which combines instructional videos in mathematics with sophisticated computerised assessment, based on a bank of 400,000 carefully designed questions. Such programmes have the potential to improve radically the way in which teachers assess the strengths and weaknesses of their pupils.

    Similarly, computer apps provide excellent tools for quizzing pupils about key facts and information. As cognitive scientists such as Robert Bjork have demonstrated, frequent quizzing reinforces the place of knowledge in our long-term memory. No longer do pupils revising for examinations have to use flashcards: they can use computer apps such as Quizlet or Memrise on their smartphone instead.

    One highly successful UK educational technology export is Show My Homework, a cloud-based homework software, which allows teachers to post homework assignments online so that children (and perhaps more importantly parents!) can check what work they should be doing. It is now used in over 1000 schools, and has 2.5 million users worldwide.

    In the cases of computerised assessment, quizzing apps, and useful teacher tools, educational technology is used to supplement what teachers already do. This does not mean, however, that computers can replace the work of teachers. Teaching is an unavoidably human activity. A computer may supplement the work of a teacher, but it will never supplant it.

    One well-known educationist shot to fame a few years ago with a popular TED talk, extolling the ability of pupils to learn from the internet independently. He asked in his talk: ‘if there’s stuff on Google, why would you need to stuff it into your head?’, and added ‘I decided that groups of children can navigate the internet to achieve educational objectives on their own.’

    There is considerable empirical evidence from classroom studies, however, that web-based learning does not improve pupil outcomes. Professor John Hattie from the University of Melbourne published ‘Visible Learning’ in 2009. This seminal book brings together 800 meta-analyses of academic research in order to judge the impact of 138 different teaching methods and school interventions.

    Amongst all 138 interventions, web-based learning was in the bottom quintile of effect sizes, ranking well below Professor Hattie’s threshold for an effective intervention. By contrast, teacher-led interventions, such as Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction scored very highly. Teachers will always remain the pre-eminent means of ensuring that a pupil succeeds: a teacher not only brings knowledge to the classroom: she brings motivation, personality, and ongoing support.

    Last year’s OECD report into school computer use appeared to confirm that, whilst an extremely important aspect of modern schooling, computers are not the magic bullet of education reform. The 5 countries where pupils spend the least time using the internet in school – Poland, Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and South Korea – are all amongst the world’s highest achieving jurisdictions.

    No education minister should fill schools with the latest technologies and expect that they, on their own, will spark an education revolution. Such practices will not provide a country with a new generation of entrepreneurs. In fact, by allowing educational technology to crowd out the timeless benefits of a knowledge-based curriculum and high-quality teacher instruction, it may well mitigate against such an aim.

    The optimal mixture of knowledge, attitudes and character traits which will produce an enterprising and entrepreneurial population will always be a subject of debate. As school ministers, however, we underestimate the importance of knowledge at our peril.

    We must draw the entrepreneurs and business leaders of tomorrow from all quarters of society, irrespective of birth or background. And that is why all children should be taught the core academic curriculum which will enable them to carry on learning for the rest of their lives.

  • Nicky Morgan – 2016 Speech to the Education World Forum

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education, to the Education World Forum at Westminster Hall, in London, on 19 January 2016.

    What a pleasure it is to be here at the Education World Forum again.

    It has become a unique meeting of education ministers from around the world and I am personally very proud to be here.

    It’s so good to see so many of you, not only willing, but eager to share with us what is happening in education in your countries.

    I know that ministers in my department have hugely enjoyed recent meetings with ministers from France, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Uruguay, Brazil, Turkey, Canada and others.

    To discuss and witness first-hand, areas as diverse as early years, the curriculum, attendance, teacher recruitment and vocational education. Last month I met with the Japanese education minister, Hiroshie Hase, to discuss values and citizenship. This sharing of ideas and knowledge makes so much sense because of the globalised world in which we live.

    Our neighbours may be our competitors, and I make no secret of wanting England to be a world leader in education, but they are also our partners. The truth is that educational performance isn’t a zero-sum game.

    I hope that as a result of this forum each of us will feel that what we have learned will strengthen and improve our approach to education policy, which ultimately enables all of us to better extend opportunity for the next generation.

    I know there is so much for us to share here and that particular strides forward are being made worldwide on school inspections, curriculums, assessments and performance tables.

    PISA

    The truth is that nobody has perfected every aspect of education policy. And international benchmarking tells us much about what we need to improve.

    For instance here in England we know – from the OECD’s library of PISA data alongside their comprehensive ‘Education at a Glance’ and other studies that the gap between our highest and our lowest-performing pupils is substantial compared to other countries.

    We know that pupils approaching the end of secondary education do not perform as well as their peers from a number of countries worldwide and that, as a result, they are not as well prepared for the next phase of their life as their international colleagues.

    From the same sources we know that other countries achieve incredible levels of performance in different areas and I want us to learn from those jurisdictions: Shanghai and Singapore have quite literally ‘mastered’ the teaching of maths, and we are beginning to unpick how through our successful exchange programmes in the last year.

    In Germany only 2.9% of 15- to 19-year-olds are neither in education, employment or training (NEET). In Macao, Hong Kong and Estonia, pupil performance is much less strongly associated with pupil backgrounds than is the case in other countries, including England.

    But there are also many exciting things happening here in England and I would like to share some key themes from what is happening here, framed within our conference theme: a new start for learning and skills through the prism of the sustainable development goals.

    Sustainable development goals

    How appropriate that the sustainable development goals should be our theme this year considering education not only forms one of the 17 goals but informs the targets on many others.

    Unlike the millennium development goals that preceded them, the sustainable development goals are outward-focusing; they are not confined either in letter or in spirit to developing nations but – quite rightly – are goals to which all nations should aspire.

    And I am so very pleased and proud the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was so involved in shaping this agenda.

    Education as a sustainable development goal

    The millennium development goals did much for education – for example, a near 50% decrease in the number of children not in school – but the focus needed to be widened beyond access to education in general. I think sustainable development goal 4 does exactly that.

    It calls for us to:

    “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning for all.”

    There are 10 targets attached to it and the first of these is about ensuring all children complete free, quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.

    I think this is crucial for 2 reasons. The first key component is quality. That is to say it isn’t enough simply to have access to education but the provision must be excellent too.

    Here in England we have made it our mission to spread educational excellence everywhere.

    As I said last year at this forum, all children deserve excellent teachers. Countries like Korea and Japan have demonstrated that this is possible.

    Here in England we are introducing a national teaching service to deploy our best teachers and best school leaders to areas that have struggled to recruit and have the most need of new teachers. Our Prime Minister, David Cameron, said just last week that we should give all young people the opportunity to dream big.

    To do that our young people need an excellent grounding in education and so we have sought to raise standards at every tier of education and every level of ability.

    This time last year we declared our determination to tackle illiteracy and innumeracy for primary school students.

    Additionally, in our manifesto last year we committed to matching the standards of reading of the best readers in Europe.

    It is a high bar but we want the very best for our young people. Because we know that maths and English are non-negotiable for future success.

    And let me say something about knowledge. There are those who say that a knowledge based education system is outdated. They claim that our young people need only creativity, imagination and critical thinking skills to get on in life.

    Don’t get me wrong – they do need those. But my view is that these skills cannot be acquired without an excellent knowledge base.

    Renowned cognitive psychologists like Daniel T. Willingham have produced compelling research to suggest that knowledge is crucial to educational success.

    We have therefore focussed on a rigorous, quality curriculum that accepts knowledge as a necessity in the pursuit of skills.

    The second key component is the call for education to lead to relevant and effective learning outcomes. For me this means that the education we are offering to young people should prepare them for their future.

    One of the ministers in my department visited an innovative project in Norway recently. The Jåttå School offers 6 vocational routes which are the basis for around 100 individual occupations.

    The minister was impressed by the school’s approach to building partnerships with other vocational schools, community leaders and employers – noting that its focus on achieving excellent career outcomes for its pupils. Its success is marked by the fact that it is highly oversubscribed.

    Here in England we have stripped away outdated vocational training courses that failed to give young people any advantage in the jobs market and have overseen the opening of university technical colleges.

    These are specialist colleges for 14- to 19-year-olds, sponsored by universities; they teach the national curriculum alongside high-quality vocational courses.

    They are designed to give their students the skills employers really want.

    They are focused on knowledge as well as outcomes.

    We have done more than any government before us to bring business leaders – both big business and small and medium-size enterprises – into the process of education as well as its governance.

    We now have business sponsoring schools, acting as non-executive directors, shaping school mission statements, informing curriculums and driving careers advice.

    This is because we take the view that business knows what business needs and with their expertise, complementing the work of excellent schools, we can truly deliver a truly excellent education system. One that ensures our school leavers are workforce ready.

    Character and resilience

    We believe there is another component that is vital if our young people are to succeed in life and that is character.

    I’m talking about the grit, resilience and determination: the ability to work with others, to be humble in the face of success, to bounce back from life’s disappointments.

    We are convinced that where character education can complement excellent academic study our students can become the well-rounded citizens we really want them to be.

    We are looking at innovative ways of bringing character education into schools which includes input from our sports people, first-aiders, social enterprises – with trials happening up and down the country.

    Just this week I am meeting a former England Rugby Captain and World Cup winner to discuss character education. He knows what it’s like to be under pressure, win or lose.

    The mentality of an elite sports team is built around the idea of pursuing success collectively – working together, complementing each other’s skills and having clear measures of what success should look like.

    This is the mentality any company, whether it’s a small business or a large corporation, expects from its workforce.

    We want to give our young people as much opportunity as possible to build their character and we have directed funding towards this important educational tool.

    Over the coming years we are confident that we can become a world leader in character education.

    Conclusion

    As ever, it is a real pleasure to come to this forum and I look forward to seeing many of you at the BETT fair on Wednesday too.

    I think the sustainable development goals give us an excellent opportunity to refocus education policy and truly have a new start for learning and skills.

    We need to ensure that it isn’t just access to education we offer but access to quality education. That our education systems are designed to lead to the outcomes our students and our economies need and want.

    And that our school leavers are workforce ready through the character and resilience building they need to get on in life.

    Education can be truly life transforming and is the most powerful tool we have to respond to this challenging world. And our challenges are many – economic change, climate change, inequality and extremism to name but a few.

    Let’s resolve to continue to work together, to share knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and to pursue the sustainable development goals for the good of our global community.

    Thank you.

  • Nick Clegg – 2012 Speech at the Global Business Summit on Energy

    nickclegg

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Clegg, the then Deputy Prime Minister, at the Global Business Summit on Energy held on 6 August 2012.

    It’s a pleasure to welcome you all to today’s Global Business Summit on Energy. One of a series of events, all timed to coincide with the Olympic Games, the biggest international business conference we have ever held.

    Our aim today is to look at what more we can do together, to advance clean, smart energy generation, boosting our shared prosperity, as well as building a more resilient economy, better able to withstand future shocks.

    The UK is already the sixth largest market in low carbon and environmental goods and services.

    We lead the world in offshore wind – our total installed capacity is as much as the rest of the world put together.

    With enviable natural resources, we’re one of the biggest players in marine and tidal energy too.

    We offer political stability, legal certainty, the English language.

    This is one of the best places in the world to do business – that’s according to the World Bank;

    With the best regulatory environment in Europe – that’s according to a recent poll of European utility investors;

    As well as some of the world’s best universities and research facilities;

    Indeed we produce more Nobel Prize Winners than any other country bar the US.

    We are creating the most competitive corporate tax regime in the G7.

    Add to that the fact the world’s biggest single market is on our doorstep, despite Europe’s continuing difficulties it’s still home to 500 million consumers, and you have the ideal location to invest your money and grow your businesses: A global powerhouse in the industries you represent.

    Despite pressures on other parts of the economy, since the 2008 financial crisis our low carbon sector has grown year on year with growth averaging 4.4%. But we want to do more; we want to seize every opportunity. Last year the sector was worth around £3.3 trillion worldwide and the race for green global investment is hotting up. The biggest, savviest economies are crowding in – China, Germany, Korea, Brazil. So the UK is upping our game exploiting our competitive edge making the most of our internationally respected brand in order to stay ahead.

    Ed will set out some of detail on how the government is seeking to do that, so I will limit my remarks to our central message to you today. The one thing we want to impress on you above all else: This coalition government is unreservedly committed to helping our low carbon sector thrive – no ifs; no buts. And we want to support the shift by traditional industry to cleaner sources of energy – while of course recognising the pressures they face. When we say that we want green growth, that is not flimsy, political rhetoric: It is a very real aim, driven by very real economic needs.

    I think it’s important to put that up in lights. The coalition is sometimes presented, in the press, as if it is riddled with debate and division with regard to greening the economy. That isn’t the case. Yes, there will be internal discussions and debates on the balance and sequencing of different policies – that’s the nature of any government – and energy policies will evolve over time as costs come down. That’s why, for example, we could recently reduce the subsidy for onshore wind. But the entire government is working within the parameters of the carbon budget, which sets the pace for decarbonising our economy. And there is no one in government who wants to depart from that.

    We all want an economy rebalanced across industries and regions. We all want to build on our highest growth sectors to create more jobs.

    So our challenge is giving you as much certainty as possible – we know that’s what you crave; we know it keeps your costs down. Indeed, it’s the issue raised with me most often by the people in this room. No-one expects an entirely risk-free investment environment, but your companies are embarking on major projects, breaking new ground, building infrastructure intended to last a lifetime, relying on low carbon technologies that involve significant upfront costs. And so, understandably, you place a big premium on predictability. We hear that loud and clear. And there are three overarching ways that we are seeking to provide it.

    First – and this applies to all business: We have made macroeconomic stability an absolute priority, because it is an absolute prerequisite for confidence and growth. It is easy to forget that, at the time of the financial crash, the UK had a deficit bigger than Greece. By taking the difficult decisions we pulled our economy back from the brink. We have kept the markets at bay, remaining masters of our own destiny. Interest rates have remained historically low. A quarter of our deficit has now been paid off.

    Yes, the road to recovery is long and testing, but make no mistake: if we have to sacrifice short-term political popularity for lasting economic health – so be it. We promised to safeguard economic stability in the national interest. That is what we will continue to do.

    Second: consistency from government. So no surprises; no rabbits out of hats. We set out what we’re going to do – then we do it. It sounds obvious, but you all know governments don’t always behave like that.

    Clearly our emissions and renewable targets provide an overall policy framework. And look, for example, at how we take decisions on things like our renewable obligations banding. We review it every 4 years, like clockwork. So, every 4 years, we consult with industry on the subsidy levels, we listen to the evidence you provide, and then we set the bands. And because everyone gets a sense of what’s coming, companies can plan and prepare.

    That’s why, since announcing the new levels just a few weeks ago, we’ve already seen signs of progress on around £3.5 billion worth of investments. Today, for example, shovels will hit the ground in Tees Valley, where Air Products is building a renewable energy plant that will power 55,000 homes and create 700 construction jobs.

    It’s true that sometimes we have to take a bit of time to get the detail right – especially on major items like Electricity Market Reform. But our aim is always predictable processes; transparent and inclusive policy-making; decisions that are based on evidence above all else. And, please, let us know how we can do more of that.

    Finally: ambition. A willingness to be bold, because we seek nothing less than a clean, green, low carbon economy and the scale of that task demands imagination.

    In order to meet this challenge we need to think big.

    That’s why the UK’s fourth carbon budget constitutes the boldest emissions reduction target set, in law, by any government, anywhere in the world.

    And we have been at the forefront of attempts to secure a more ambitious target across the EU.

    We are creating the world’s first Green Investment Bank: A national bank devoted to leveraging billions of pounds for green infrastructure. The government’s UK Green Investments team has already begun making investments. And I can announce they have just sealed a contract to provide £100 million for investment in small-scale, non-domestic energy efficiency projects.

    The Green Deal will start later this year. And which will transform home energy consumption. Creating a whole new market in UK home insulation and energy efficiency.

    We’re beginning the biggest shake up of the electricity market in 3 decades. In order to level the playing field between low carbon and conventional energy.

    We’ve just announced the largest investment in rail since the Victorian era.

    We’re providing one of the best offers in the world for Carbon Capture and Storage, including our new £1 billion competition.
    We’re the first country where listed companies will include emissions data in their annual reports. Something I pressed our international partners to adopt at the Rio Sustainability Summit in June.

    We’ve dramatically overhauled our planning regulations, slimming over 1,300 pages of planning policy down to 49, easing the path for good, sustainable developments.

    Big ticket reforms. World firsts. Policy that looks decades ahead.

    So, stability. Consistency. Ambition. The building blocks of our shared prosperity. I hope today reminds you of the value this government places on your businesses and your ambitions.

    Together we find ourselves at the vanguard of one of the most dynamic, most innovative, most important industries of our time. An industry that will help us build a more stable, more sustainable, more prosperous world. That’s a vision we can all get behind. This is a journey we are on together. And on that note, let me hand over to Ed.

  • George Osborne – 2012 Speech on Energy Sector Day

    gosborne

    Below is the text of the speech made by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Lancaster House in London on 7 August 2012.

    I am delighted to be here at the Energy Sector Day at Lancaster House when the world is here in London for the Olympics.

    The Global Business Summit is a demonstration of how the UK can lead the world in the energy sector: securing investment, creating jobs and building a more prosperous future.

    And there is no better example of the significant contribution that this sector makes to our economy than the UK oil and gas industry.

    This has long been one of our great industrial success stories, supporting a third of a million jobs, and extracting the equivalent of over 40 billion barrels of oil to date.

    We recognise that companies operating in the North Sea work in a truly global market – and that we have to work hard to attract their capital and their jobs.

    We are committed to ensuring that these businesses continue to see the UK and the UK Continental Shelf as an attractive location for that investment.

    To making the most of our remaining oil and gas reserves.

    And to ensuring that the UK economy continues to benefit from the fruits of this remarkable industry.

    That is why, at this year’s Budget, I introduced an ambitious package of tax measures to encourage investment and innovation in the North Sea.

    I announced that we would end the uncertainty that has hung over the industry for years by introducing a contractual approach to oil and gas decommissioning.

    This will stimulate the market in North Sea assets, release billions of pounds of capital for further investment, and give companies the assurance they need to continue investing in mature fields.

    I also announced changes to the field allowance regime to encourage investment in commercially marginal fields.

    Including a £3 billion allowance for large and deep fields, to open up the West of Shetland, the last area of the basin left to be developed.

    And it is great to see the very important Rosebank project pressing ahead as a result.

    Building on this success, last month we introduced a further allowance for large shallow-water gas fields. Following this announcement, we have seen confirmation of the £1.4 billion investment in the Cygnus gas field.

    This will be the largest gas development in the Southern North Sea in the past 25 years. Once in production, it is estimated that the field will deliver 5% of the UK gas demand and contribute significantly to UK security of supply.

    This reinforces our commitment to gas as the biggest source of energy in the UK.

    With 80% of the project’s expenditure destined for UK companies, Cygnus is expected to create around 4,000 jobs across the UK.

    Just today, the companies involved have awarded contracts to a number of UK suppliers, including yards in Hartlepool and Fife.

    These contracts alone will support 1,235 jobs.

    I am proud that highly skilled supply companies such as these have developed a global reputation of excellence and expertise.

    Proud that the UK is home to businesses that lead the world in cutting edge research and technology.

    As we are committed to providing the best possible environment for investment in oil & gas, so we want to the UK continue as an open, competitive location for investment in electricity generation.

    We have an independently regulated market that welcomes investment from all over the world.

    This helps provide the UK with the expertise and resources available around the world and with a diverse and secure supply of power.

    We have a clear and stable investment regime which allows investors to commit funds with confidence.

    The carbon price floor provides a clear cost trajectory for gas and coal generators.

    The new support rates announced for renewable technologies will ensure that low carbon generation remains affordable for consumers whilst providing certainty for investors.

    Last month we made clear that we expect gas to play a key role in meeting electricity demand for the UK throughout the 2020s and beyond.

    We will provide more detail in the autumn on steps we will take to make the UK an even more attractive place for gas investors.

    Together these polices will enable billions of pounds of investment in the UK economy; creating jobs, and securing the UK’s position as a world leader in energy technology development.

    And this Government is committed to ensuring the UK maintains its competitive edge in science, and to putting innovation and research at the very heart of its growth agenda.

    That’s why top businesses such as BP are investing in the UK and supporting our world-leading universities in delivering cutting edge research.

    It gives me great pleasure today to welcome BP’s announcement to create an International Centre for Advanced Materials.

    The fact that Manchester University is the hub for this great project and that two of the three spokes are at Cambridge University and Imperial College clearly demonstrates the UK’s strength in science and innovation.

    The centre will play a key role in helping to maintain the world-leading status of the UK in the research of advanced materials and I want to acknowledge the substantial investment by BP in creating 25 new academic posts, 70 post-grad researchers and 50 postdoctoral fellows.

    In my capacity as a local MP as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am delighted that this investment will further strengthen Manchester and the North West of England as a world-leading centre of expertise in materials technologies.

    It complements the £50m investment to create a Graphene Global Research and Technology Hub based in Manchester that the Government announced last year.

    It will also strengthen other centres of materials expertise such as the National Composites Centre in the South West, and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Sheffield, which are working in partnership with global businesses such as Airbus, GKN and Rolls Royce, and Boeing.

    The UK’s research base is second only to the USA for number of citations, and it is the most productive country for research in the G8 in citations and publications per pound.

    Our research institutes include world-leading facilities that combine flexibility to pursue innovative research with a unique environment for developing outstanding students and early career researchers.

    Throughout the energy sector and beyond, we are committed to creating an environment that allows research and innovation to flourish, ensuring that world-leading businesses, including energy businesses, continue to see the UK as an attractive location for investment.

    And we are committed to harnessing their success to drive our economy forward.

    Thank you.

  • Danny Alexander – 2012 Speech to the Global Business Summit

    dannyalexander

    Below is the text of the speech made by Danny Alexander, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to the Global Business Summit held on 8 August 2012.

    Good morning, it gives me great pleasure to open this breakfast meeting on UK infrastructure.

    To kick off this meeting, I want to say a few general words on how government policy supports investment in infrastructure, and how that investment supports a strong and balanced economic recovery.

    I don’t need to remind you of the difficult economic times we face and I know that times are particularly tough for some of the businesses represented here.

    The UK is still recovering from the biggest debt and financial crisis of our lifetimes – a recovery that is made no easier by the ongoing challenges in the Euro area and in our banking system.

    But in the midst of some sobering facts, we should not lose sight of the positives for the UK – employment up by 181,000 last quarter; 840,000 private sector jobs created since this government came to power; and inflation down to 2.4 per cent in June.

    These successes come in a very challenging climate, and though we still have much to do, they support the view that the Government is following the right economic strategy.

    Our objective is to return this country to sustainable prosperity and to rebalance our economy.

    That means fiscal consolidation, to sort out the public finances and ensure the UK commands the confidence of international markets.

    If means supply side reform, ensuring Britain is an excellent place to do Business, and raising our growth potential.

    And it means dealing with our long standing weaknesses – for example delivering a more mobile workforce, with the right skills in the right places.

    Infrastructure enables us to deliver on the latter two. And through taking tough choices on government spending, we are in fact investing more in transport infrastructure and in broadband access and quality than at the height of the spending boom.

    At the same time, the credibility that we have established has given the Bank of England space to keep the base rate low, and provide further monetary support for infrastructure investment, such as quantitative easing and the new Funding for Lending scheme, which came into operation last week.

    And it has allowed us to support further investment directly, for example through the ‘UK Guarantees’ scheme that we announced a fortnight ago.

    This will help to accelerate major infrastructure investment by offering guarantees of up to £40 billion of major projects, and a temporary lending programme that will allow around £6 billion pounds of public-private partnership projects to proceed without delay.

    Already we have had over 30 expressions of interest since the announcement, and we continue to receive more on a daily basis.

    The Treasury’s door is open to discussions with any project that meets our criteria – nationally significant, financially credible, good value for the tax-payer, dependent on a guarantee, and ready to start in a year – and we will deal with applications as quickly as possible.

    I can tell you this morning that the Green Deal will be an early candidate for the use of these guarantees. The Green deal is the largest ever programme for investing in the energy efficiency of our Housing stock and we are looking at whether and how a guarantee could ensure that the finances are in place to get the programme of to a very strong start.

    The deals my colleagues will be announcing later today show the UK is already in a strong position. And the work we are doing is building on that to strengthen it further still.

    Alongside these measures to support investment finance, we are also taking major steps to remove non-financial barriers to investment – reforming our planning regulations, and identifying skills gaps or capability issues.

    And to ensure that Britain’s infrastructure is delivering on Britain’s priorities, our National Infrastructure Plan sets out a clear vision for the £250 billion of investment that we expect to 2015 and beyond. Our updated plan brings together a comprehensive cross-sectoral analysis of the UK’s infrastructure networks, and sets out clear, long-term ambitions for improving performance in each sector.

    Our newly established Cabinet Committee, which I chair, will ensure that this plan is delivered, focussing on the top 40 growth projects identified in the National Infrastructure Plan.

    We have made great progress in removing barriers to investment – working with industry to resolve radar interference issues affecting four gigawatts of wind energy developments, and supporting the establishment of a new Pension Infrastructure Platform, which will make the first wave of its initial £2 billion investment in UK infrastructure by early 2013.

    The scale of the challenges we face as a country makes delivering on our hugely ambitious infrastructure agenda all the more essential. We want to work together with you to make that happen by removing barriers to project delivery and creating a supportive environment for long term investment in infrastructure. Today’s conversation is an important staging post in realising those ambitions.

    Thank you.

  • Nick Clegg – 2012 Speech at UKTI Manufacturing Conference

    nickclegg

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Clegg, the then Deputy Prime Minister, at the UKTI Manufacturing Conference held on 10 August 2012.

    Nick thank you very much and thank you all very, very much for being here this morning for this excellent event.

    I was at the Olympic Park yesterday like a lucky number of others watching Nicola Adams win the first gold medal, medal ever for a woman boxer in this new Olympic phenomenon female boxing. And it was such an uplifting celebration of talent and grit and determination and such a wonderful response to all the cynics and naysayers that Nick referred to and travelling here this morning I thought to myself that in many respects that celebration of success and that rejection of cynicism and pessimism is exactly what we should dwell on here this morning when we consider the strengths and potential in Great Britain for our advanced manufacturing and engineering sectors.

    Because for far, far too long we’ve laboured under the wrong narrative which has undervalued our successes in this area and undervalued our future potential as well. For far too long there has been almost a sort of hidden, unspoken assumption that inventing, designing and manufacturing, exporting things is part of the sort of past legacy of our manufacturing heritage, but that the future is all about services, that going in to boring subjects like engineering and science is the wrong thing, that what you should do is always aspire to go in to the whizz bang service industries – accountancy, lawyer, the City, City – and so on.

    And that is a dramatic misreading of our national strengths as a national economy and I really just want to in a very few minutes make three basic points, highlight our strengths as a global power for manufacturing and engineering. Secondly emphasise how determined we are as a Coalition Government to do more to expand on those strengths and thirdly to underline the importance I attach and we attach to inspire just as young people have been inspired by the Olympics, to inspire the next generation to dream of being the, the new Brunels and Stephensons of the future.

    So firstly our, our strengths. It is just worth repeating how important so many of you are in the fabric of our British economy, some of the most successful companies in the world operate – Airbus, (indistinct) Jaguar and Land Rover – all of whom are very, very welcome sponsors of this event and Nissan, Siemens, BAE and so many other dynamic businesses represented here. We have the second largest aerospace industry in the world.

    Despite the very disappointing trade statistics that were published overnight last night, we nonetheless saw that in the early months of this year the United Kingdom has, was exporting more cars than we import for the first time since 1976. A quarter of all Ford engines are made here, eight out of twelve Formula One teams are based here for good reason, because of access to skilled engineers and cutting edge technology.

    It is a sector advanced, advanced manufacturing, responsible for almost three quarters of business research and development in this country and in so much of that research and development we lead the world in neuroscience, computer science, ecology, energy, material science and so on. And we pride ourselves that we also have strengths, natural strengths, (indistinct) that we are right at the heart of the world’s largest borderless single market right on our doorstep in the European Union, all of those strengths are strengths which we must celebrate because they are very, very phenomenal strengths indeed.

    We need however as I said secondly to do more to build on those strengths and I won’t, because it’ll consume too much time and I know that Vince Cable and others will go in to this in greater detail later, enumerate all the measures that the Government has taken, but whether it is the new technology innovation centres, that try and emulate some of the world’s best examples of clustering academic excellence with advanced manufacturing research; whether it’s our very ambitious plans in infrastructure (indistinct) long term productivity of the economy so heavily depend; whether it’s the commitment to a high speed train spine up and down the length of the country, whether it’s the new guarantee scheme that we have recently announced using the strength of the Government’s balance sheet to mobilise private sector infrastructure and investment infrastructure; whether it’s the Green Investment Bank, the first of its kind, (indistinct) using three billion pounds worth of public money to leverage in several times that private sector money in our new renewable energy infrastructures.

    Those are all examples of commitment to infrastructure which is so necessary to your work, whether it’s rebalancing the sectorally unbalanced pattern of British, the British economy over, which has built up over the last two or three decades where so much growth is concentrated in the City of London, the South East and not enough is concentrated in what has become regions elsewhere in the country, in the North of the country in particular who’ve become over reliant on public sector subsidy. We’re using instruments like the Regional Growth Fund, two and a half billion pounds worth of direct finance from the Government to companies and particularly to manufacturers elsewhere outside the South East of the country who are committed to diversifying their businesses, creating jobs and creating greater private sector dynamism in other parts of the country.

    Those are just some of the examples of what we are doing. We’ve already launched, already implementing in the last two and a half years to build on those successes. But as I said at the outset, the final point I’m going to make to you before taking questions and comments from you is the importance of the, and the Olympics, the slogan is inspire a generation. I think we together, everybody in this room, the politicians and you in industry, we need to work together to inspire a generation so that unlike, I’m forty five, when I was at school I wasn’t the greatest at science and maths, but nonetheless no one suggested to me or to my friends at school at the time that maybe we wanted to dream of being engineers, of being, going in to industry, going in to manufacturing. This was, this was the early Eighties and it was all about making a fast buck in the City of London or going in to the glamorous industries of advertising or the media. There was no positive image visually given to our youngsters of an alternative career path. That has to change and thankfully it is changing.

    I’ve got three little sons. I want my sons to dream of doing what their grandfather and their great grandfather did who were in different capacities, scientists and industrialists and, and manufacturers. And we’re committed to do that, whether it is, notwithstanding all the difficult cuts we’ve had to introduce in public spending, protecting public spending on science, whether it’s the reforms that we are introducing in order to ensure and guarantee that our universities remain amongst the very best universities in the world; whether it’s the expansion of apprenticeships on a scale that has not been seen in this country in the post war period, we’re delivering a quarter of a million more apprenticeships during this Parliament than was planned by the previous administration; whether it’s the creation of twenty four new university technical colleges which specialise in subjects like advanced manufacturing, engineering and health technologies; whether it’s the new Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering which was launched, which is an international prize with a million pounds from us in order to celebrate and highlight the best achievements in engineering; whether it’s the network of around twenty eight thousand volunteers we’ve had from academia and industry who are going in to schools to get children enthused about a career in science and technology.

    All of those things and more are the kind of things we need to do together to make sure that we don’t regard our manufacturing excellence as something which only belongs to the past and present, but it’s also absolutely crucial to a thriving and prosperous future for the United Kingdom in the years to come as well. Thank you very much for listening to me.

  • David Cameron – 2012 Speech at Hunger Summit

    davidcameron

    Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, at the Hunger Summit on 12 August 2012.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much everyone for coming and for giving up your Sundays for something which I think is very, very important. A warm welcome to all of you.

    While we’re holding these Olympic Games – and I think they’ve been a huge success – and while the eyes of the world are looking at the United Kingdom, I wanted to make absolutely sure we weren’t just thinking about who was going to win the next gold medal, but also we spent some time thinking about some of the biggest problems that people face in our world. And while lots of us are able to think about the next gold medal, there are millions of people in our world who are thinking about whether they are going to get a meal, whether they will go to bed hungry, whether they can get the proper food and nourishment they need to stay alive and to develop. And that’s what today’s conference is all about.

    I’ll say some remarks in a moment, but first of all, I wanted to ask Mo Farah and then Haile Gebrselassie to say some words about how important this issue is to them. Mo, you stunned us all with those two amazing runs, and it’s very good of you to give up this time for something I know you care about deeply as well.

    Mo Farah

    Thank you for inviting me. It’s a great pleasure to be here. It’s really important as an athlete to get it right, and I got it right at this championship. But mainly, the reason why I am here is I’m lucky to have set up a new life here, and grown up here. I originally came from Somalia as a little boy and didn’t know the situation out there. It’s not great. And there are kids out there who need opportunities in hunger, starving, so we must do something about it, and it’s really important that we give back something to those kids.

    As a parent, for me, luckily I’m going to have twins, and they’re going to get the right things and everything they need. But there are kids out there who need our help and hunger, and are not able to get anything. So it’s important that we give back something, and it’s great to be here. And we must do something all of us.

    I’ve set up the Mo Farah Foundation, and that’s also going well. And the reason why I set up something is just the hunger and the situation out there. We must do something and to give something back to those kids, particularly. It really touches my heart.

    Haile Gebrselassie

    First of all, I would like to say thank you to the Prime Minister of the UK and Vice President of Brazil today, and for their leadership to take on under-nutrition around the world. Last month, I delivered a petition on behalf of the ONE campaign to Africa’s leader, signed by over 55,000 African citizens and ONE members calling for action to tackle hunger. So I am delighted to now be here in London at this global event that will also focus on these opportunity issues.

    We have all watched a great performance by athletes at this Olympics. Congratulations. What a wonderful Olympics, with the best performance for the UK team: amazing, especially my friend Mo here. Congratulations to you and your people here, to host such a wonderful Olympics. That’s my witness, because I’ve been in all the last five Olympics Games, and saw many good things at this one. It’s amazing, especially the crowd in the stadium.

    I understand the pain of malnutrition. In my home country of Ethiopia, I have seen lives blighted through extreme poverty and hunger. We have seen some great performances from Ethiopian athletes in the Olympics. My country has won three golds. Only Mo won two and the UK 28, wonderful; congratulations again for that.

    Throughout the year we have seen Ethiopia put out performances and outstanding athletes from all over the world, but at home, half of our children are affected by malnutrition. Just imagine what my country could have achieved on the athletics field if half of our children weren’t suffering chronic malnutrition, if all children escaped the long-term consequence of stunting, and could grow and reach their full potential. So I am pleased today that we are trying, and we are turning the world’s attention to malnutrition, which continues to affect so many around the world.

    When I speak to young athletes, I tell them that becoming an Olympic champion takes commitment, discipline and hard work. Without hard work, there is no achievement. I want to say the same to you here today. This is a very important mission, and it will take hard work and commitment to succeed in our goal. I have faith, looking at experts gathered at this conference today, that we can make progress to saving millions of children from stunting. I wish you all the best. Thank you very much.

    Prime Minister

    It matters a lot that you do this because you are enormous role models to people not just in the United Kingdom, but around the world. And you raising the profile of this issue will mean that more will get done, more lives will be saved, fewer children will grow up to be malnourished. So thank you very much for your contribution.

    I can update you on one point. You said we had 28 gold medals; we’ve just won a 29th in the heavyweight boxing, so I just had to get that in. That was today. That was just as we were gathering.

    But I know that Mo, you can’t stay because you have many other commitments, but thank you very much for coming. I want to thank everyone again for coming, and particularly Vice President Temer of Brazil, and for all of you for coming today.

    When we won the right to host these Games, we promised two things. We said we’d stage the greatest Olympics ever here in London, and I hope it’s not too much boasting to say we think we’ve come close to doing that, if not doing it. And second, we said we’d make sure the Games weren’t just a one-summer, one-off wonder, but we wanted to create something that would last. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

    Now you’ve heard from Mo Farah. A week ago, and last night, the whole country cheered Mo Farah to gold in the Olympic stadium. But a year ago, the country of his birth, Somalia, was suffering in that terrible famine. Now, I’m proud of the fact that Britain led in the response to the famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, with over £129 million of aid from the British government, and an incredible £79 million of individual donations from the British people. And I’m proud too that through the London conference that we held earlier this year, we helped to play a part in the international response that means today, Somalia is a place of some growing hope rather than despair.

    But while people around the planet have been enjoying and competing in these Games, there is another world where children don’t have enough to eat and never get the start in life that they deserve. The figures are truly shocking. One in three child deaths are linked to malnutrition, and 171 million children are so malnourished by the age of two that they can never physically recover. That is the terrible thing about this – what we would call a ‘silent crisis’ – that it harms for life. Even if malnourished children are able to fight off the sickness and the infection in their earliest years, their bodies and their minds never fully develop. And it’s a tragedy for them, it’s a tragedy for the societies that they live in, because children who could grow up to become doctors, farmers, engineers, entrepreneurs, or great Olympians, are simply left behind.

    The problem repeats itself generation after generation, and it doesn’t stop just when they’re older. Just under one billion people across the world go to bed hungry every single night. Now, we’ve got a responsibility to tackle this, but the hard truth is – and it needs to be said – that while we’ve made great strides in the last decade on things like education, malnutrition rates have actually stagnated. I’m determined that we try and help change this, which is why I wanted at the end of this Olympic fortnight to hold this hunger event, and it’s why between 2011 and 2015, Britain will reach 20 million children under the age of five and pregnant women with nutrition programmes. That is our own contribution to this challenge.

    But the ambition I want to set today is for the world to rise together to make a difference, between now and between the start of the Rio Olympics in 2016. And I think that’s appropriate because Brazil is actually making huge progress on this issue.

    Now, what is my answer to this challenge? Well, let me start another way. Here are two things I think we shouldn’t do. First of all, we shouldn’t just throw food aid at the problem and hope for the best. And second, we shouldn’t pretend there is one single fix. This is a complex problem; it requires a complex set of solutions.

    The challenge of malnutrition isn’t just about food. That is obviously the symptom, but we need to tackle the underlying causes. If you take, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, it’s a country that exports food but where millions are still undernourished; or if you take Africa as a whole, which has almost 60% of the world’s uncultivated land, but where malnutrition is chronic.

    So the problem is partly a failure of government. Farmers can farm, traders can trade, but without the rule of law, without property rights, without peace, you can’t get your product to market. You can’t sell your crops. And without things like decent sanitation, accessible healthcare, and basic education, malnutrition grows. So Britain’s response is to fund these things, as one of the most generous aid donors in the world. It’s precisely why we’re sticking to our commitment to 0.7% of our income spending on aid, even at a time of economic hardship.

    The problem is also, I believe, partly a failure of the private sector. Rising food prices leaves the poor hungry, but if the private sector can help farmers in Africa and Asia to grow more and get their crops to market at a fair price, then there can be opportunity too. So Britain’s response is to work with businesses like those here, like Unilever, GSK, Britannia Foods, to produce and distribute food that contains all the nutrients that young children need.

    And there’s another thing Britain can do here as well, and that is, use science to produce nutritionally enriched, resilient crops, and make sure everyone gets access to these seed types, not just farmers in rich countries. So we’re backing agricultural research and innovation to enable around half a million poor households across Africa to grow better crops, benefiting up to three million people.

    Finally, and I think this is very important, it’s important that we have meetings like this during Olympic fortnights like this. We’ve got to keep the promises that we make when we have meetings like this. Data on progress needs to be transparent. It needs to be put in the hands of our citizens so they can monitor what governments and businesses say they’re going to do, and then what they actually do.

    Now, I’m not claiming to have all the answers. This is a challenge for everyone round the table. I’m looking forward to hearing people’s contributions. But I do believe it’s a challenge the world can meet, and I know it’s one we have a duty to meet. We’ve all signed up to the World Health Organisation target to cut stunting from malnutrition by 40% in 2025, and it’s now time to put that into practice. That would see something like 70 million children have access to proper nutrition. It is doable and deliverable if we make these commitments and meet these commitments.

    Now, we’ve just seen in the Olympics what the world can do when it puts its mind to a task. We’ve got political leaders, we’ve got great Olympians here, we’ve got the leading charities and organisations that care deeply about this issue. We shouldn’t turn away from this issue. In my view, we won’t. Now, I’m going to hand over to the Brazilian Vice President to talk about his country’s contribution, and what you plan in the run-up to 2016, before opening up to other contributions.

    Michel Temer (Vice-President of Brazil)

    I should like to take this opportunity first of all to say that I’m going to be speaking in Portuguese, and secondly, to thank the Prime Minister very much for hosting this event, and also to thank him for taking the leadership jointly with us to pursue this thing that, as he just said a short while ago, was committed to silence; it was something that was not observed. And so I think it is something that is very laudable and it’s something that we need to pursue in earnest. And in Brazil, we do have a great experience in fighting hunger, and this is one of the great pillars of our development.

    Therefore, combating hunger in Brazil is not only a government policy but it is a state policy, because it is enshrined in our own constitution that establishes that there is a right to food. It is a social right that we have.

    It does not only determine that we should be fighting hunger within our own country domestically, but also to assist and aid those countries that are still struggling with this major challenge.

    Brazil has already employed a great and important fight against the scourge of hunger over the past ten years, both domestically and externally, counting on the support – and the very determined support – of the United Kingdom, of and the system of the United Nations that is currently here represented by various agencies.

    As a matter of fact, the Brazil conquests are internationally acknowledged in the field of food security with the reduction of extreme poverty over the past five years when, compared to the Millennium Development Goals, the timeframe was 25 years.

    And this did happen with the contribution of the civil society in Brazil, a very organised society that engaged with this in a very earnest manner; so much so, that this fight could be pursued very much so that we all know that both in Brazil and all the world, there is no lack of food. So what is lacking? There is lack of access, and over a billion people do not have access to proper food.

    In Brazil, at the same time that we sought to redistribute the income, we also prepared a set of public policies that are geared towards food security, food and nutritional security, which has encompassed things such as school meals, gardens, vegetable gardens in schools and community gardens, food banks, local purchase of family agriculture, credit to smallholders, farmers, public depots, agricultural insurance, food banks, and popular restaurants.

    In this manner, we succeeded in reducing by 11% the levels of malnutrition in our country, and then we came to become a point of reference for other countries that have similar difficulties, challenges of poverty.

    I should like to give you two examples. For example, the Brazilian school meal programme feeds currently 47 million pupils on a daily basis. It is based on the right to food, and does not discriminate even positively. All have the right to school meals.

    And what we did as well with the National Congress, we approved the Bill which requires that 30% of the food needs to be bought from family agriculture, family farmers; that is, those smallholders that produce food locally, so that they provide the food for this school programme. And by the same token, this constitutes a very significant social integration programme: people engage with this and they supply it at a local level.

    And it is this very experience that we are now sharing with other countries, helping them to organise their own small family farming or smallholders, their crops, and also the manner that they purchase this produce, the crops, for students and other people that are in a situation of food insecurity.

    So within this trajectory, we counted on the very generous interest of the United Kingdom, with which we have established a partnership for a project for local purchase of food in five African countries, each one situated in a macro-region of Africa; that is, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Niger and Senegal, organising the farmers and the production in the form of partnership with the Food Agriculture Organisation (the FAO), and buying the produce for the programmes, for the school meal programme, and for people that are currently in food insecurity situations through the World Food Programme.

    And I would like to also take this opportunity to point out that during the recent Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and also the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr Nick Clegg, did mention our programme, the food purchase programme that we have, as an example of horizontal cooperation.

    And within this cooperation, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) has created a number of initiatives. The chairman of EMBRAPA is present here, he is going to take part in these discussions this afternoon. He’s going to describe the various initiatives that EMBRAPA has been pursuing in order to provide this cooperation.

    And our very well-known, broadly known strategy, which is called Zero Hunger, is exactly the fruit of this practice of participatory and redistributive democracy, and that, of course, encompasses all the emergency elements. And I am extremely delighted to announce here on behalf of President Dilma Rousseff and myself a new donation that Brazil is making of $120 million in food for the World Food Programme. That was the most important part of my speech, of course.

    And this is just to say that not only did Brazil look after its own domestic problems and challenges that we had with hunger, but it also has a major concern to fight hunger all over the world, as well as malnutrition all over the world.

    And of course, all of these three aspects that I have just mentioned are based on three pillars of sustainable development, the social pillar, the economic pillar, and the environmental pillar, which are firmly grounded in the inalienable human right to food for all citizens throughout the world – that they have to have the right for good food and nutrition.

    And to close, I should like to express my gratitude to Prime Minister Cameron for inviting us to co-host this event here on combating hunger. Thank you very much indeed.

    Prime Minister

    Well thank you for co-chairing this event, and thank you for that contribution to the World Food Programme. And also, thank you for those good examples, including the school food programme, about how to tackle the shortage of nutrition and food security in some countries. That was very positive, thank you very much.

    We’re going to have, if we can now, three-minute contributions from the key speakers, the headline points they want to make about how we best tackle this crisis, before we go into the sub-groups.

    Enda Kenny (Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland)

    Thank you, Prime Minister. I’m from Ireland. In the 1840s, we lost half our population with the Great Hunger, principally caused by blight on the potato crop, which was the sustainable crop for our people. It instilled in us a sense of real interest in dealing with hunger, and it’s given us an intense interest in foreign aid, in dealing with hunger, malnutrition, and standing by the most vulnerable and the poorest of the world.

    The eradication, therefore, of hunger in a world sense is a cornerstone of the foreign policy of our country. We’re not as big and as powerful as many others, but we’ve got a very long tradition of being involved in other countries in these areas.

    The figures are enormous, and they are obscene, and they are a testament to failure. One billion suffer from hunger; two billion suffer from malnutrition and under-nourishment, and yet all of the research, all of the capacity, all of the potential, exists to deal with these problems. I’m not here to talk about that particular issue. What I do want to say is this: sometimes the political process doesn’t actually know what to do. That’s why the collective energy and the collective experience and the collective wisdom of all of the agencies, organisations, food producers, and so on, is needed, to understand what the particular problem in any location in the world might be, and how it should be dealt with.

    For me, as the Prime Minister of my country, we assume the presidency of the European Union on 1st January next year. This will be our seventh presidency. We intend to make hunger, nutrition and climate justice a particular issue during that presidency. In April of next year there will be a major conference hosted in Ireland on hunger, nutrition and climate justice and we will obviously make an issue of this.

    But it is also important to understand the very strong relationship that exists between Ireland and Britain, which has evolved to an unprecedented extent following the visit of Her Majesty to Ireland last year, which means that the Prime Minister, when he assumes the chairmanship of the G8 next year, is also in the position to influence the issue of climate justice, hunger and nutrition in a way that is paralleled by Ireland assuming the presidency of the European Union for the first half of next year. So we pledge ourselves to work together in these interests.

    We are one of the few countries that have actually – no more than Britain -stood by our commitment in respect of foreign aid and despite the economic challenges that we face, maintained our fund in that regard and have already exceeded the 20% commitment of that programme in respect of hunger and nutrition, and we commit ourselves to continue to do that.

    So for the future, for us, it is a case of continuing to understand that we need to be in a different place if this problem is to be tackled and this challenge is to be met successfully because the old way will not work for the future; growing numbers, different issues in respect of climate change and climate justice which cannot be put off for the next decade or the next two decades or the next three decades. It needs to be tackled and tackled now.

    So in that regard, our own contribution – we were not able to give 120 million but we did give 3.5 million to the CGIAR research organisation this year, just this week actually, dealing with hunger and nutrition and we will continue in that regard. So for a country that is committed to this, where we will work with our colleagues in the Commission, our colleagues in the European sense, assuming the presidency next January, work with the G8: it is important that we use our collective wisdoms to understand what it is that has to be done and can be done.

    Leaving aside the question of politics in different countries, which is always a challenge and an issue, it is very commendable that Brazil says, ‘We have a programme where small agri-producers can produce and that food is bought, which is an incentive for them to continue to produce, and children can be healthy.’

    I commend Mo Farah and Haile Gebrselassie, a wonderful athlete, in your years. These Olympics have been outstanding, David. To you and all those wonderful volunteers, you’ve had a great two weeks for Britain, a great message from London, an example of how the spirit of sport can unify people around the world. Thank you.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much and thank you for that commitment to make this issue so high profile during your presidency of the European Union and it’s very good that we have the European Commission here, represented by Andris Piebalgs, who obviously has a very large budget to distribute in terms of aid and food security. I am going to be calling on you a bit later. But if we could now hear from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, a very warm welcome to you. I know you are a member of the Scaling Up Nutrition movement and have had a lot of success in your own country tackling these issues, so I am very interested to hear from you. Thank you.

    Sheikh Hasna (Prime Minister of Bangladesh)

    Thank you, thank you very much, Right Honourable Mr David Cameron, Prime Minister of United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to you all. Today we are here to discuss hunger and malnutrition, a huge challenge facing us. Hunger is a painful experience that destroys the body and demeans the soul. Malnutrition is the largest single contributor to physical and mental underdevelopment and disease.

    I want to thank Prime Minister David Cameron for holding this event. I hope it will secure international commitment to meet the challenges.

    A billion hungry and undernourished people populate our planet with 98% in developing countries. South Asia has the highest child malnutrition in the world. Bangladesh has 6% of global childhood under-nutrition. Our pragmatic policies and measures to address this issue have succeeded in increasing dietary caloric intake. During our governance, a three and a half years’ period, under-nutrition has been reduced from 42% to 36% and stunting from 43% to 41%. We expect our children to be at 36% in 2015. In two years we are on track to attain the hunger target of MDG1.

    In Bangladesh, one third of women are undernourished and a lower proportion of pregnant women are anaemic. Macronutrient deficiencies are also a major concern. We are focusing on the first thousand days of life: that is from conception to 24 months of life. We are also promoting delayed marriage to improve the nutritional status of adults and girls, and lowering incidences of low birth weight babies and subsequent malnutrition.

    Our overall multi-sectoral efforts have succeeded in reducing poverty by 10% because we have many programmes for social safety net. And we also distribute free foods to the poorest of the poor people. Our aim is to lift deprived people out of poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

    By MDG timeframe of 2015, we have many pragmatic programmes. Our efforts have so far achieved GDP growth rate of 6.5% during our government’s tenure, increase of per capita income, attainment of MDG4 on infant mortality and MDG5 on maternal mortality. This was possible despite external vulnerability and challenges of global warming and sea level rises.

    Poverty and hunger are not just national issues. The ensuing global crisis – that is economic, energy, food, fresh water – calls for unified global approaches for solutions. A global consensus is also required to effectively respond to over-speculative transactions and financialisation of commodity markets. There is also a need for balance between government protection and regulation of institutions. All these have direct bearing on the effectiveness of domestic policies and programmes, on hunger and under-nutrition.

    Food security is imperative. During out last tenure from 1996 to 2001, we became self-sufficient in food for the first time. In recognition of this, FAO awarded the Ceres Medal to Bangladesh in 1998. Unfortunately, the years following, our government saw Bangladesh again reduced to a food importing country; that time we were not in power, it was the other party.

    During our present tenure, our reserves have led to the development of high-yielding nutritious rice varieties, also resistant to salinity, drought and rising water level. Today, we are again self-sufficient in food. We are not only growing food, we also make sure that food should reach the poor people.

    For sustainment of this achievement against climate change impacts we need concerted internal and global actions like regional buffer food grains and the imposition of export ban on imports of net food importing countries. It is predicted that climate change will adversely affect food grains in terms of yield, price, consumption, etc. This will reduce calorie intake and increase child malnutrition.

    Bangladesh is already feeling impacts of climate change, losing as much as 3% to 4% GDP growth which otherwise would have supported our efforts on health and nutrition.

    For nutrition, we also ensure health services for our people, especially for women. We have already established 12,000 community heathcare centres; through that, we are assisting our people.

    Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, today on the backdrop of the London Olympic 2012 Games, athletes are excelling with all vigour and vitality for honours for their nations. Let us for a moment wonder on the position of others of our family, passing their days in hunger and poverty with many hoping that they were part of the Games. It should be enough if we bear compassion in our hearts to make a place today to open all doors, raise all barriers and combine all our resources as one family to eliminate hunger, malnutrition and poverty, and thus leave the world a better place for our future generations.

    I thank Prime Minister Cameron again for arranging this meeting and many of you will make some comments on that. We can get some new directions, new methods or new experiences which we can use for our people and our country. Thank you.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much indeed. I now call on the Prime Minister of Kenya, Prime Minister Odinga, to speak to us about his experience and his items for the future. Thank you very much, Prime Minister.

    Raila Odinga (Prime Minister of Kenya)

    Thank you very much, David. I really want to begin by thanking the Prime Minister for this initiative, for getting all these brains together during the London Olympics; that we don’t just celebrate medals but we also think of those millions who are out there and who have nothing to eat. If it had been during the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette would not have made those remarks and maybe there would never have been a revolution.

    We all know how critical it is to be blessed with good health, particularly in childhood, and here we are talking about what they call the one thousand day corridor during the formative period of a child, when the brain needs nutrients to grow. Malnourished children actually face many risks. They will likely grow up to be unemployed and frustrated because they are stunted if they don’t get their requisite nutrients early enough. And that means that basically they will become a source of discontent and social and political instability in the country rather than a demographic dividend for the country.

    But as we speak now, the statistics don’t look very good for us in Kenya. An estimated 39% of our children are undernourished. This proportion is much higher, particularly in what we call arid and semi-arid parts of our country. The economic costs are equally large. It is estimated that about $2.8 billion of our GDP is a drag, I mean, goes down as a result of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

    What additional measures should we, the Kenyan government, take? One, we believe that it is critical to enhance the intake of vitamin A, zinc, iron and other essential nutrients by the vulnerable children and pregnant mothers. Two, iron fortification of staple foods and universal salt iodisation is also essential. Then three, we need to urgently scale up the school base warm meal programme to cover all children in the affected areas. We are about to launch this expansion with the support of the Children’s Investment Fund. Four, we should rapidly extend the free distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets. The aim will be to provide bed nets to more than one half of our children who still sleep without the treated bed nets. Five, many girls get married when they are just 12, and they are also undernourished. They then bear children who are also born weak and undernourished. Thus, the vicious cycle continues. All girls must be protected by society to ensure that they reach at least 18 years of age before they get married.

    Now we face two additional, major challenges. One is the influx of a very large number of Somali refugees, many of whom are children. Mo already left early, but he would have been happy to hear about this. We are right now hosting the biggest refugee camp in the world. About 600,000 people in one camp alone, but taken together there are nearly one million refugees as a result of political instability in Somalia. These children arrive with their mothers in the refugee camps, and when they come they are weak and malnourished. The other one is the issue of climate change. Droughts, floods and extreme, irregular weather are a common occurrence. The drought of the Horn of Africa in 2010 and 2011 affected thousands of children and mothers. We had the worst drought in over 60 years.

    So ladies and gentlemen, the resolution of these challenges requires collective actions by all concerned: that is governments, international agencies, NGOs and the private sector. This is why we endorse this Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement. We particularly appreciate the eminent roles expected of the private sector under the category innovations within the SUN movement. The private public partnership (the PPPs) will be a very key component of our solution. Sales of nutrient-fortified foods and milk products on commercial networks and direct deliveries to the refugee camps are some of the many good possibilities of such PPPs. That is, that food is fortified before it is delivered, whether it is sugar, whether it is salt, whether it is maize, or even rice: it is fortified first so that the children are able to get their requisite nutrients out of those foods when they are distributed. The government of Kenya is ready to play its part. I want to conclude by saying, ‘Let us work together so that the goals for the 2016 Rio Olympics that we will set at this meeting will be fully achieved.’ Thank you very much.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much for that very specific set of measures you’re taking, and also the common theme emerging about the importance of family planning as a good example of how this is not just about nutrition, it’s about things that lead to poor nutrition. And clearly, having children too early can be part of that.

    Krishna Tirath (Indian Minister for Women and Children)

    Good afternoon to all of you. I congratulate the Right Honourable David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, for organising this global nutrition event.

    Nutrition is being given the highest attention and priority under the leadership of our Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, who has noted the high prevalence of under-nutrition with deep anguish in the country. The PM’s Nutrition Council has taken several key decisions to address the issues, some of which I would like to highlight.

    The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is reaching about 80 million children under six years and 20 million expecting and nursing mothers through a network of 1.3 million centres called Anganwadis. It’s being strengthened and restructured with programmatic, institutional and managerial reforms along with the enhanced financial commitment from an annual average of US$3.5 billion to over US$6.5 billion. The investment will improve the infrastructure, professional management, monitoring, community participation and accountability of the programme. Real-time monitoring and service as well as the knowledge resources of nutrition are also being strengthened through the use of ICT.

    Simultaneously, the healthcare component and system, through the National Rural Health Mission, is being extended and strengthened for micronutrient supplementation, the management of childhood illness, immunisation, and protocol for the treatment of severely undernourished, underweight children. Further, a more intensive, coordinated and convergent effort in the Multi-sectoral Nutrition Augmentation Programme in 200 high burden districts is being considered. A National Food Security Bill 2011 is also under the consideration of our parliament. A nationwide awareness campaign is to be launched soon to accelerate the fight against malnutrition.

    Special schemes for the empowerment of adolescent girls have been initiated, and especially a maternity benefit scheme for women. A national mission for the empowerment of women has been launched for inter-sectoral convergence of schemes and services towards the social and economic development of women.

    All these policies and programmatic measures would reinforce evidence-based interventions. The next five years are going to be extremely challenging for us, and we are determined and committed to achieve the goal to have a healthy generation. We value the support from DFID, UNICEF and other development partners. India applauds the efforts of the UK and the global community for bringing the issue of malnutrition to centre stage to coincide with the exhibition of great human prowess during the Olympics. India stands firmly committed to reducing the burden of under-nutrition and achieving the full potential of our children. Thank you very much.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much for that contribution and for the action you’re taking particularly in the poorest states in India that have the greatest challenges, which is where I’m sure you’re right to focus and where others should help you to focus.

    Krishna Tirath

    And we are ready to fight for this, all these challenges.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you.

    Chris Cooper-Hohn (Children’s Investment Fund Foundation)

    Thank you, Prime Minister Cameron and Andrew Mitchell for convening today’s event and I sincerely applaud their leadership on international development and addressing malnutrition.

    Ten years ago, my wife and I co-founded the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) to help address the obscenity of hundreds of millions of children whose lives are permanently blighted by malnutrition in the form of macronutrient deficiency, stunting and wasting.

    Today, CIFF is one of the largest foundations in the world with assets of US$3.5 billion but neither we nor other donors have enough resources to solve the problem alone. I have no doubt that climate change, drought and population growth will relentlessly increase food insecurity and food prices, leading to future catastrophic levels of child malnutrition in many countries. Without committed leadership, greater urgency and significant co-funding from the governments of developing countries themselves, we and other donors will never be able to solve the malnutrition scourge. Governments must share the responsibility to care for their own children and end the wilful neglect of child malnutrition. Countries must scale up nutrition programmes and mainstream them within health and social systems. Measuring and tracking the success of these programmes is essential. We must measure and publicise the reality of micronutrient deficiency, stunting and wasting of children, and collectively hold ourselves, including heads of state, accountable for progress each year.

    The CIFF foundation is currently granting and working on proposals in four areas. First, stunting, through the support to the World Food Programme in Malawi and Mozambique, and directly with the government of Rwanda. Second, community treatment of severe acute malnutrition at a large scale in Nigeria, in partnership with UNICEF and the national government, as well as in some Indian states. Third, micronutrient supplementation programmes in Bangladesh in partnership with GAIN and the private sector. Fourth, developing new formulations for therapeutic foods, to reduce prices for de-worming programmes in Kenya and diarrhoea programmes in India.

    Fundamentally to address root causes of malnutrition, CIFF must fund programmes in family planning and is extremely active in climate change work. Our foundation, CIFF, stands ready to make investments of tens of millions of dollars immediately and annually to address malnutrition in partnership with those countries and donors such as DFID that show a genuine commitment to addressing child malnutrition. Thank you.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much indeed for that.

    Paul Polman (Unilever)

    Thank you, Prime Minister, and Andrew. Congratulations on a wonderful two weeks, to start with: it’s been enjoyable to live in London, to be honest.

    Unilever are one of the biggest food companies. We sell to about two billion people a day, operate in 90-plus countries. So food security and nutrition go to the heart of our business. We could not function if the world didn’t function, obviously, and we’ve always had that as an important part. In fact, we’re spending probably about 300 million a year in reinforcing our products, be it iodine in salt, or be it in our Knorr products in Africa with vitamin A, or be it in our drinks, and the list goes on. For us, it’s just the normal thing to do: working with multilateral agencies like the World Food Programme – which fortunately is present here – or simply working with the 1.5 to 2 million small-hold farmers, providing them training in agricultural techniques.

    But it’s also very clear that we don’t reach the bottom of the pyramid; there are too many excluded, and many of you have referred to that already. That’s why there is a different partnership needed. Now, I’m very encouraged coming out of Rio and having participated in the Los Cabos meetings leading the Food Security Task Force, that there is an increasing number of what I call responsible businesses willing to participate at a different level than they’ve done. We simply cannot do it alone. I call it moving from a licence to operate to a licence to lead, and there is no better time in society to do that.

    Now, there are some wonderful initiatives. The G8 pledged the L’Aquila fund, about $20 million came out of that with specific projects for Grow Africa. We got what I call responsible business to participate for $3 billion, so we need to capitalise on that and there are 26 projects coming out already. In Los Cabos, with the G20, most of the Food Security Task Force’s recommendations would have nutrition prominently written in it, we’re adopting it in a declaration. We have commitments from major food companies of 10 to 15 billion to participate in that. The New Vision for Agriculture now has 17 projects going, we need to capitalise on that.

    And David, my friend, is here on the Scaling Up Nutrition. His goal of 35 countries and I’m glad that Prime Minister Odinga is the new one signing up today. Business is fully behind that and there’s no clearer focus than what David brings to the Scaling Up Nutrition. And then you have the initiatives that we’re doing here with GAIN and many others, the multi-sector and public private partnership initiatives. Obviously, DFID is heavily involved with GAIN as well, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that are present here as well, and many of the companies around the table, projects like Project Laser Beam in Bangladesh, helping your beautiful country, or what we do in other countries, like AIM (the Amsterdam Initiative against Malnutrition), they’re all taking hold. And the reason I mention all these products is that we don’t need to invent too many. We just, as you rightfully said, need to focus on making many of these projects now come alive, as real momentum is building up. I’m also honoured, David, to be part of this high-level panel for the development of the Millennium Development Goals after 2015, and I hope that nutrition and food security will play a prominent part in that as well under your encouragement.

    And I was glad we had the meeting at Lancaster House the other day with the food industry, and you were gladly participating on that. Eidon told me, preparing for that meeting, that the UK has 3,000 food companies here; it’s about 10% of the UK economy, and it’s one of the largest industries globally, actually, here. So your rallying cry, which you rightfully did, of how we can challenge the UK food and drinks industry to play a more prominent role behind these initiatives, is obviously spot on.

    With DFID, and with GAIN, Unilever organised about two weeks ago in our offices exactly with that purpose, a conference of some of the major businesses. You’ve referred to that already, the Associated British Food, Scargill, DSM, GSK and some others were present, together with, obviously, DFID and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as Save the Children and some others. And it’s very clear coming out of that meeting that there is appetite, not frankly to invent too many new things, but to really build on some of these initiatives and to play a part in some of that very specific food security and nutrition, very specific, clear, well-defined projects, very specifically making the research and development available – that is very rich in the UK, I may add – and very specifically working on some hard output measures. So I’m very encouraged with that.

    I would say under your encouragement in the next few months, we should really summon these companies together, hold them accountable a little bit, and put some energy behind these initiatives. As we’re in this building, I found a nice quote of Winston Churchill, who said actually that, ‘The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of delays in coming to a close, is coming to a close. If no action is taken, we risk entering a period of consequences.’ And I think if we don’t take the actions that you rightfully champion, we risk these periods of consequences that we don’t want to face. So I thank you for the initiative.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much, Paul. Finally in this introductory session, I’d like Commissioner Piebalgs to speak, and then I’ll say some very brief remarks to sum up this opening session.

    Andris Piebalgs (European Development Commissioner)

    Prime Minister, thank you for your invitation and thank you for your leadership. Development cooperation is rather a complicated area, and sometimes seems very patchy. But I would like to congratulate you, particularly for this leadership on nutrition, and for family planning. Because when you address complex issues of development, there are some issues that somehow do not allow us to reach full-scale development cooperation. And family planning and nutrition are exactly the ones that can be overlooked for political difficulties, sometimes, and sometimes because we haven’t had enough courage to address it.

    Since this European Union has moved on nutrition for the last five and seven years, we have taken important decisions like one under EU Millennium Development Goals initiatives. The Commission has allocated €225 million to projects targeting food security and nutrition in the most vulnerable countries.

    Also, for biofortification of crops, we will invest €3 million to support harvests during this year, and most importantly, of the development strategies that are now adopted in the European Union, nutrition and food security are our top priorities.

    It is important to take goals, and usually we come up with very many inputs and fewer outputs. But also, I think from logic, we should put our targets and pledges on the goal sheet, what we would like to achieve; I would say that our European Union takes the pledge to at least 10% of the target of reducing the number of stunted children by 70 million by 2025, so that it can be done by our programme. So it means we would take a pledge to decrease the number of stunted children by 70 million through EU programmes, and partially also working with all other colleagues, doing everything to make the number of stunted children decrease. Because decreasing 70 million, if there are some places that increase, could not be too helpful. So we are taking this pledge. Thank you very much.

    Prime Minister

    Thank you very much. I think it’s been a very good opening session. Just three concluding points from me, from listening to people’s contributions. The first is about the priority we give this issue and the commitment that we make. I think everyone has been clear: this is the right issue to prioritise. The figures are horrific in terms of the number of malnourished children, and it is not improving at the moment. So we need to make real changes.

    In terms of the commitment we make, a number of dates and things have been mentioned, which I think are important to put into context. I think we all need to reassert the WHO target of 2025 for a 40% reduction of malnourished children: that would mean 70 million children. I think we should re-emphasise that. I think we should use between now and 2016, the Rio Olympic Games, as a sort of waypoint where you can measure how far we’ve got and how we are doing. We can use the Irish presidency of the EU for the European Union to play its part. We can certainly use the British presidency of the G8, just as the US did last year, to emphasise the importance of food security and nutrition. And I think, as Paul has said, where there are a number of us serving on the high-level panel Ban Ki-moon has set up, to make sure we emphasise this issue through those processes. So that’s the first point, the priority we give, the commitment we give, and the priority that we add to it.

    The second point I would make from listening to everyone’s contributions: of course, this is a multi-faceted problem. It’s very complex, because lots of things contribute to malnutrition. But I think it would be worth trying to pick some of the things people mentioned the most, and focus on those.

    A number of people talked about the first 1,000 days of life, pregnancy and post-birth. I think it’s absolutely vital to focus on that. I think the issue of family planning is absolutely linked to the issues of nutrition. I think what was said by the Minister from India about focusing efforts on the poorest people in the poorest areas, those where we can make the biggest difference.

    Third point is that this is, as Chris said, a shared responsibility. We won’t solve this by just the private sector improving crops and improving markets, we won’t do it just through government programmes; it is both these things and others beside. It is a shared responsibility, and I was particularly struck by what Commissioner Piebalgs said about making sure we are transparent about the aid that we give, the measures that we take, what government does, what the private sector does, and how we challenge private-sector companies. So it is a shared responsibility, but one where we should be transparent in our aims and goals.

    I’d like to thank everyone again for coming, and wish you well in the next set of sessions that will be chaired by my Secretary of State for International Development. But once again, very many thanks for your contributions, and thank you for coming today.

  • Jeremy Hunt – 2012 Speech on Tourism

    jeremyhunt

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Hunt, the then Secretary of State for Culture, at Tate Modern in London on 14 August 2012.

    It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Tate Modern. In just 12 years this has become the world’s busiest and most famous contemporary art gallery – perhaps the best single example of our restless determination to develop and improve what our nation offers both in culture and tourism.

    And after this year there’s every reason to think this great attraction will be even busier in years to come.

    An Olympics triumph which showed the country welcoming the world with professionalism, warmth and even sunshine…

    A Jubilee and an Olympics that showed us at ease with a glorious history and a vibrant present – witnessed by a global audience of millions, with the Opening Ceremony alone watched by almost a billion.

    A Torch Relay and London 2012 Festival that showcased cultural and tourist treasures in every corner of the country…

    Extraordinary shows and exhibitions like Freud, Leonardo, Frankenstein, Richard III and Matilda…

    New places to visit from the Turner Contemporary to the Hepworth to the Harry Potter studios…

    And old favourites restored like the Cutty Sark…

    Whatever the doomsters may say about the economy, we should be proud that our cultural and tourism sectors are investing in the future with optimism, confidence and panache.

    When I became Culture Secretary I was very conscious of the criticism that successive governments have undervalued tourism. So, in my first month as a Minister, I gave a speech at the new Olympic sailing venue in Weymouth saying I would address this.

    Let’s look at what has been achieved.

    GREAT

    First of all we have seen the launch of the first ever cross-government campaign to market the UK overseas. Bringing together the Foreign Office, the British Council, UKTI and Visit Britain, the GREAT campaign is our biggest ever investment in marketing the UK, a campaign that has turned heads and really taken the fight for tourist dollars into our key tourist markets.

    – We’ve stopped traffic at the Shibuya crossing in Tokyo with a GREAT double decker bus;
    – We’ve draped New Delhi taxis in red, white and blue;
    – We’ve taken British film to the red carpet of LA during the Oscars;
    – We’ve lit up Shanghai with GREAT projections on the Aurora building overlooking the mighty Huangpu river;
    – In the US, millions saw Victoria Beckham championing British fashion on a GREAT Britain-branded subway at Grand Central Station, New York;
    – On Sugarloaf mountain in Rio, thousands of journalists wrote, spoke, blogged or tweeted about David Beckham and Prince Harry as they promoted Britain;
    – And, my favourite, six out of ten Parisians discovered that unlike the Louvre, the British Museum is free thanks to a “Culture is GREAT Britain” poster mounted just outside the Louvre main entrance.

    Indeed the highest praise of all came from the country that can often be our sternest critic when the French newspaper La Tribune said that GREAT is the most effective global marketing campaign since the Big Apple campaign for New York.

    Back then in Weymouth I pledged £1bn publicity for the UK on the back of the Olympics. Thanks to the GREAT campaign, I am delighted to say we have delivered more than three times that amount of positive PR for Britain in key target markets.

    I also said in Weymouth we would back our domestic tourism industry. We all love holidaying abroad – and there’s nothing wrong with that. Indeed the falling cost of overseas holidays has been one of the great social advances of the last half century. But we should not neglect our domestic tourism industry, whether for day trips, weekend breaks or family holidays.

    So for the first time ever we have had a £6 million national TV and cinema advertising campaign promoting holidays at home. The ad, featuring Rupert Grint, Julie Walters, Stephen Fry and Michelle Dockery has reached more than 7 out of 10 holiday makers and generated 300,000 extra hotel nights in its first three months alone.

    The worm has turned, and no longer will domestic tourism be the poor relation when it comes to big marketing campaigns for the domestic tourism pound. And rightly so – because to suggest we need to choose between either a strong domestic offer or a strong international offer is a false dichotomy. The bigger the domestic market, the more investment we will stimulate in quality accommodation and attractions – and the more international visitors we will attract.

    Answering the critics of the Games

    So we are taking the fight to our rivals in key markets abroad and determined to win the battle for tourism spend at home.

    In doing so, we’re tackling head-on two big myths.

    The first is that hosting an Olympic Games is bad for business. In the run up to this year, critics said we’d see huge displacement, with people staying away from the UK in droves because of the crowds and the cost.

    The truth is that we’ve seen record-breaking figures for spend and holiday visits from overseas in 2012, even taking into account the blip we’ve seen in the June figures. Visa says that London spend in restaurants is up nearly 20% on a year ago, nightclub spending is up 24%, and spending on theatre and other tickets has doubled.

    Far from seeing a bloodbath, Andrew Lloyd Webber has seen sales for his shows increase by 25%. He has generously said that he “has been proved wrong” and “couldn’t be more delighted.”

    Quite simply, stories of “ghost town” London are not borne out by the facts:

    Retailers in Bond Street, Oxford and Regent Street all reported a surge in sales and footfall during the Super Saturday weekend;
    Tube traffic has been at record levels with over four and a half million journeys on some days last week – the highest number for one day in London Underground’s history;

    And hotels have been extremely busy – Richard Solomons has talked of 90 per cent occupancy across Intercontinental properties. Many other London hoteliers report they were at least 80% full, and up on the same days last year.

    Now I’m pleased to say that hoteliers are looking at new and creative ways to extend the party. Premier Inn, for example, will be celebrating TeamGB’s gold medal haul of 29 by offering 29,000 London rooms at £49 for bookings made until 22nd August.

    Of course, we were always going to see changes in visitor patterns during such a big year and there are inevitably some businesses that suffer short term consequences.

    But we should never underestimate the long term impact of securing London’s place in as one of the most buzzy and exciting cities on the planet – and the massive upside that offers to all businesses based here.

    Nor should we underestimate the power of the Olympic Park to become a new tourist attraction – with the superb landscaping, facilities, transport and views that it offers.

    A long term commitment to tourism

    Which takes me to the second myth.

    Ufi Ibrahim of the BHA said in June that when it comes to tourism the Government is “all talk, no action,” and that we don’t take tourism seriously.

    Let me gently remind Ufi that when I arrived in office there was no fully-developed tourism strategy for the Olympics. Getting that right always needed to be the first priority. How could anyone who cares about tourism waste a billion pound opportunity to put ourselves on the map?

    And critics are plain wrong to say that this is only about the short term.

    Let’s look at the changes that have been made with long term impact that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Olympics.

    Firstly, John Penrose and I promised to cut the red tape that was choking tourism.

    So in the last two years we’ve curbed regulations on food labelling, on no smoking signs and on arcade entertainment;

    – We’ve changed the VAT rules on holiday lets;

    – We’re consulting to change live entertainment licensing to help the entertainment industry; and

    – We’re giving industry and consumers control of star rating quality schemes.

    – We also said we’d improve support for tourism organisations at a local level.

    And notwithstanding the difficult financial environment, we’ve now seen a steady expansion of destination management organisations, bringing tourism back to its local roots.

    We’re also working with sector skills bodies to increase apprenticeships and training, to create the pipeline of trained staff necessary for future success.

    On top of which planning reforms in the localism bill will make it much easier for tourism attractions to invest and expand.

    And looking further ahead, transport developments such as HS2 will tackle one of the biggest challenges we face, namely how to get the 50% of international visitors who come to London but never move beyond the capital to discover everything the rest of the country has to offer.

    But as a government we can only create a climate that helps investment and expansion. And that means the support of the entire industry. I hope this year has shown what a strong partnership can achieve.

    The future

    But if we are to truly exploit our potential as the sixth most visited tourism destination, there is much more to do.

    Today, the whole country is riding high on a wave of global, Olympic excitement. In Shakespeare’s words: “On such a full sea are we now afloat… We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures”.

    In such a landmark year, with so much in our favour, isn’t now the time to go further, to make this Olympic year a real turning point for UK tourism? To step up, if you like, from being a creditable finalist to winning the gold medal.

    So today I want to invite the tourism industry to embrace some ambitious goals:

    To commit as a government and an industry to increasing the number of overseas visitors to the UK from just over 30 million today to 40 million by 2020;

    – To make 2012 the turning point for our domestic tourism industry – and make sure the UK is always promoted as actively to its home market as overseas destinations promote theirs in the UK;

    – To exploit the extraordinary role that sport has as a magnet for tourism by exploiting the opportunities presented by hosting world cups in rugby league, rugby union and cricket, not to mention the Ryder Cup and the Champions League final, the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and the World Athletics Championships in the Olympic stadium in 2017;

    – To build on the incredible success of the London Festival 2012 by binding the cultural and tourism industries much more closely together as we develop Britain’s reputation as the global capital of culture.

    – To support this, I am today announcing new initiatives on both the domestic and international tourism front.

    Domestic tourism

    On the domestic front, I will today commit that the domestic tourism advertising campaign we saw earlier this year will not be our last.

    That’s why we will invest a further £2 million in a follow up campaign next year, to be increased further with match-funding, in order to build on the success of the 20.12 per cent ‘Holiday at Home’ campaign.

    The Olympic Torch Relay has really helped to ignite domestic interest in UK holidays. In fact, about one in ten expect to visit a destination off the back of seeing the Olympic flame there. But it is still too difficult to book domestic holiday packages on the web.

    So Visit England has committed to double the number of domestic package breaks being booked in the years ahead by bringing together website retailers, car rental groups, train companies, airlines and hotel groups.

    Cultural tourism

    Following this extraordinary year, I also want us to capitalise on the successes we have achieved in developing cultural tourism. Tony Hall and Ruth Mackenzie deserve enormous credit for putting together the London 2012 Festival, which has already been enjoyed by around 10 million people across the country, with more opportunities still to come – surely the biggest and best Cultural Olympiad ever.

    How can we build on this? One promising idea is to have a London Biennale – a bi-annual London or UK-wide arts festival to celebrate the best of what we have to offer culturally. I have therefore asked Tony and Ruth to do a report for me on the feasibility of such a festival, how much it would cost and how it should be delivered.

    2013- A Focus on China

    Finally, how can we keep up the tremendous momentum we have achieved in marketing the UK internationally?

    Today I am announcing a continuation of the GREAT campaign next year with an £8 million focus on one of the world’s fastest growing economies, China.

    Only around 150,000 Chinese tourists visited our shores last year, a figure that is way down on that of our major competitors such as Germany and France. The numbers are rising, but it is still estimated that France attracts between 25 and 50% more Chinese visitors than the UK.

    We simply cannot afford such a comparatively small share of such an important market.

    Nobody should underestimate the opportunity China and its cities represent:

    By 2025, Shanghai is expected to be the third richest city in the world;

    Five other Chinese cities – Shenzhen, Tianjin, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Chengdu – are expected to be among the top 20 globally for GDP growth;

    And by 2030, China should have around 1.4 billion middle class consumers – creating a potential market four times bigger than America.

    We must get on the front foot. Through this new campaign, I want us to treble the number of Chinese visitors we attract, getting to 500,000 by 2015. This alone will generate more than £0.5 billion additional visitor spend a year and create 14,000 more jobs.

    We will be increasing our marketing in China’s major cities, not just in Shanghai and Beijing, but also some of the other major cities where we know there are big gains to be had.

    We’ll also be looking at improvements to the visa system and work with airlines and aviation authorities to improve the number of flight connections to China.

    Conclusion

    2012 already has far too many firsts to be able to list:

    – The greatest 45 minutes in our sporting history, thanks to Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah;

    – A breathtaking London 2012 Festival, our biggest ever summer of culture;

    – The creativity and fun of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, which amazed and delighted 900 million people around the world;

    – Our historic sites – Hampton Court, The Mall, Horseguards – and the new venues on the Olympic Park: all looking their best and projecting the best image of Britain, both heritage and contemporary.

    – And then our volunteers – the Games Makers and London Ambassadors and UK-wide Ambassadors – showing the world a friendliness that has never perhaps been associated with Britain before.

    But the biggest opportunity is yet to come.

    The Olympics should be for Britain what Usain Bolt is for athletics – something that grabs the attention of the whole world and refuses to let it go.

    We must use this extraordinary year to turbo-charge our tourism industry. To create jobs and prosperity on the back of a globally-enhanced reputation. And to show that when we talk about Olympic legacy, tourism is an opportunity we seized and ran with all the way to the finishing line.