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Tag: Speeches

  • Sian Berry – 2015 Speech to Green Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made to the Green Party Conference held in Bournemouth on 27 September 2015.

    Hello Conference, I’m Sian, and it seems you want me to be Mayor of London.

    It’s so great to be back on the campaign trail. Thank you so much to London Green Party for selecting me.

    Politically it’s a really exhilarating time. Impossible things are becoming a reality. All over the world, in Barcelona, Madrid, in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and closer to home, candidates that started off as massive long shots are sweeping in and winning elections.

    I look at these remarkable movements and I see what positive, principled politics, combined with the power of the people, can deliver.

    I want all of these victories to inspire our campaign. And I want to give my huge thanks to Rashid, Benali, Tom, Caroline and Jonathan who all stood for Mayor alongside me – because you made it a strong and positive campaign, you raised new issues and brought in new supporters.

    And I’m so pleased to have you standing with me still. And lined up with Shahrar, Noel, Dee, Andrea and Rosemary to win the seats we need on the London Assembly where we can hold the balance of power in London again.

    I also want to give the biggest possible shout out to Jenny and Darren. Next May their hard work will have kept the Green flag flying proudly at City Hall, for 16 years – and we will build on that in 2016.

    Now I’m going to introduce you to some of the Londoners we’ll be working with and for. Our campaign will bring their voices into City Hall, and I want to start by bringing them into my speech.

    So this is what just a few of them told me on the towpath this week.

    They definitely know what our city needs.

    All of us here, like them, want a better, fairer, more equal society, where we work together for the common good.

    This isn’t impossible. It is not a false hope. It is a resolute statement that there’s a better way for us to exist together. It is an understanding that things which once seemed impossible can happen when the people decide to make them happen.

    Who could have foreseen the political movements of the last two years? First in Scotland. Then our Green Surge, then the huge wave that has overwhelmed and overturned the establishment in the Labour Party.

    The landscape has changed so much, and it’s clear the political field remains wide open. The stakes are high. For our planet, for us and for the next generations.

    As a Councillor in Camden I meet people every week in severe housing need. Families living four in a single room, and they want to know why there aren’t new homes for them to move into.

    In King’s Cross in Camden we’ve seen nearly a quarter of the promised affordable homes cut this year. It’s the same all over London. In Earls Court just 11 per cent of homes will be affordable, in Mount Pleasant just 12 per cent. These projects are taking huge chunks of what used to be public land and turning them simply into speculative private investments. And this is happening not just under Boris Johnson’s gaze, but with his active help, overriding local communities and councils to push these deals through.

    In City Hall, we will be different.

    The Earl’s Court scheme is not good enough and I will block it. And Greens will put resources and staff into a new Community Homes Unit so that Londoners can decide what to do with land like this all over our city.

    This isn’t just a policy for London. It’s based on a successful model in Cornwall, where 13 community-led housing schemes have been finished since 2009.

    So as with Bristol Green Party’s amazing swing in May, on this too, London needs to follow where the South West has led.

    And don’t get me started on private rent. I rent my flat and I don’t mind saying that rising costs have left me really worried I’d have to move out of the city I love.

    We need to redefine affordability in terms of wages not market prices, and to stabilise rents. And along with Caroline Lucas, with London MPs, and with the help of Generation Rent, I have already been working on this. And I hope to see these powers added to the powers of city mayors by Parliament this autumn, so that they are ready for me to use them in May as the new Mayor of London.

    And of course housing isn’t our only crisis. Air pollution causes the early death of nearly 10,000 Londoners every year. And the absolute scandal of Volkswagen cheating its emissions tests shows that we cannot rely on manufacturers’ pledges on cleaner vehicles to solve this problem. To put it mildly, we cannot rely on them at all.

    I am demanding prosecutions, an independent inquiry right now.

    And for car makers who have lied to us and not cleaned up their cars? I want them to be made to pay for the buses, walking and bike infrastructure, trams and trains we need to reduce traffic and get people off the car dependence that leads them to buy cars in the first place.

    That would be real justice for this criminal fraud.

    What’s the thread running through all these stories? It’s the abuse of power.

    We want to win a Green Mayor and Assembly Members to put power back in the hands of the people, not to hoard it for ourselves.

    Greens will give London back to Londoners, bringing the voices of its amazing campaigns and citizens into our campaign and then into City Hall.

    We don’t have the resources of other parties because we don’t sell out. But we do have one thing that has made the impossible possible in campaigns all over the world: you and tens of thousands of other activists. And seven months.

    So we need your help. We need you on our doorsteps, we need you online, sharing our campaigns and actions and events, we need your ideas. Come and talk to me about them afterwards. And we need your support and lots of retweets for our crowdfunder, which launches next week.

    London is at the heart of the crises we face and it will be at the vanguard of how they are solved. In this exhilarating political climate, we can reclaim our city, and all eyes, across the UK, will be on London’s election next year.

    I’m here to ask you to organise, to recruit, to contribute, to be active in support of our London campaign. Because if we work and stand together, anything is possible.

  • Caroline Lucas – 2015 Speech to Green Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Caroline Lucas to the Green Party Conference held in Bournemouth on 27 September 2015.

    In 10 weeks’ time, the world’s leaders will gather in Paris for the next round of international climate talks.

    We’re at a crossroads: climate change is accelerating, the daily lives of millions are already being devastated by the consequences, and time is running out.

    And we are under no illusions. For more than 20 years, governments have been meeting at global conferences to talk endlessly about the crisis, yet greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.

    For those of us who remember Copenhagen and Kyoto, Lima and Nairobi, it’s easy to be cynical. World leaders jet in. They fail to do a deal – then either pretend they’ve saved the world, or break down in bitter recriminations.

    What will be different this time? Well, it being Paris, I’m sure the champagne will be properly chilled and the canapés second to none. But the fear is that once again our leaders will put their own, short-term political interests above those of their citizens.

    Once again, the main winners will be the corporations and their lobbyists. The stakes are high and the obstacles even higher.

    We know that global corporations and governments will not easily give up the profits they reap through the extraction of coal, gas and oil reserves. The brilliant 350.org tell us that just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of recorded greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

    Genuine responses to climate change threaten corporate power and wealth, threaten free market ideology, threaten the structures and subsidies that support and underwrite them. But resistance is fertile. And Paris is as much a beginning as it is an end.

    Because in 10 weeks’ time, Paris will also be home to the world’s largest non-violent direct action civil disobedience. It will be home to a mass mobilisation from global movements that aim to leave political leaders no other choice than to change everything.

    Conference, the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. It ended because we had a vision of something we thought was better.

    And so in and after Paris, we will be articulating a vision of a fairer, more compassionate world, where energy is in people’s hands, not the hands of corporations, and powered by the sun, the wind and the waves. And sending a message, loud and clear, as we do from our own conference here today, that we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

    That the era of fossil fuels must end.

    That change also requires a transformation in the way we do politics.

    The future we want for our children is not going to be created through the politics of the past. When everything has changed so much, and the threats we face as a society and a planet are so deep and complex, we need a new kind of political life.

    From Obama’s first election, to the Arab Spring, from Spain to Greece, from Scotland to the Green surge, and now Corbynism – politics is increasingly defined by waves of energy that swell up – seemingly from nowhere – and coalesce around people, parties and decisions.

    These waves are not, sadly, the monopoly of those who believe in a better world. The future can also be more brutish and authoritarian, if we let it.

    But by being open to doing politics differently, we can ensure the future is about change made by and for people, in places and ways that make sense for them.

    Of course, we need an effective state to intervene on many issues such as the regulation of global financial markets. But more than anything, the politics of the future must be about the creation of platforms, spaces and spheres in which people can collectively change the world – from workplace democracy and self-management, to civic engagement and generating our own community renewable energy.

    But these efforts will be fatally undermined if the neoliberal deregulating zeal of the Tories remains the dominant force in British politics.

    Slashing public services; stamping out trade union rights; and environmental vandalism on an epic scale – ripping up energy efficiency measures, privatising the Green Investment Bank, and taking a wrecking ball to what was once our thriving solar industry.

    Conference, we say enough. We are working for something better.

    And Conference, being in a position to actually deliver that vision of something better is what, I believe, makes it so imperative that we see a realignment of progressive votes to maximise electoral impact.

    Finding and cooperating with others with whom we share a belief in a much more equal, democratic and sustainable world.

    Of course we will have differences. But we also know that no one individual, no one party, has a monopoly on wisdom. Cancelling out each other’s votes is bad enough, but fighting in essentially the same terrain for the same issues and fundamentally the same belief set is madness, when it simply lets the Tories in.

    We share a commitment to a much more equal, democratic and sustainable world.  It is beholden on us to find a way to make the desirable feasible. In a world as complex and rich as ours, we need an equally complex and rich political response. To create a different mood, culture and sentiment to our national politics – one where we see that our differences can become a source, not of division, but of strength.

    Conference, the truth is, we need a progressive Labour Party – if that’s what Jeremy Corbyn transforms it to be – to do well. Because, like you and me, it’s part of the movement for change.

    Progressives are spread about the political battlefield – often more intent on fighting each other – and not the real enemy. But things are changing fast. Old tribal loyalties, that are blind to the good in others, are dying away. We can – we must – respond to that change.

    And conference, I’m about to say something a bit controversial!

    Who has been one of the most effective advocates of human rights in Parliament? Conservative MP David Davies. Who has pushed the case tirelessly for a reformed voting system? UKIP MP Douglas Carswell.

    If we can make common cause, on a case by case basis, even with those with whom we most profoundly disagree on most issues, then why not with those with whom we have so much in common, in other progressive parties?

    There is here a simple truth.  We are stronger when we work together.

    We know this in our own lives, as families, communities, amongst our friends and in our workplaces. This is one of the inspiring principles of the co-operative movement, of the trade union movement.

    And I believe it should guide us as a political movement – strong and self-confident in ourselves, but also ready to reach out to work with others.  With 1.1 million votes we Greens have a vital place in shaping that future, and a distinctive responsibility to the politics of people and the environment, over the politics of individualism and greed.

    We don’t have forever to get this right, and I don’t say it will be easy. But Conference, if we’re serious about the urgency of our task, I believe we have no other option.

    As in politics, so in Europe. The same underlying principle that we are stronger when we work together.

    That doesn’t mean closing our eyes to what is wrong with the European Union. Too much power is in the hands of the elites.  Too little democracy and accountability. Ordinary people feeling closed out from its decisions.

    But the same can be said about our own British Parliament. Concentration of power, corruption, remoteness.

    Our response to that is not to say, ‘let’s do without Parliament’. It’s to say we must reform it.

    The same can be said of the United Nations. But would the world be better off if there were no international institutions to try – yes, failing much of the time, but still trying – to solve the world’s problems?

    From the climate crisis to the refugee crisis, from air pollution to workers rights, consumer protection to hazardous waste, we face so many challenges that can only be tackled at a European level.

    We need institutions where we can meet as Europeans and try and resolve these issues. And as with the realignment of progressive politics, we have a duty to engage, and to recognise that much for which the EU is criticised is the responsibility of the individual member states.

    Greece is, in the main part, suffering because of the intransigence of free-market national governments.

    TTIP – the deeply damaging Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – is simply an extension of the free-market logic that pervades all trade relationships negotiated by right-wing governments like our own, and others across Europe.

    The way we can free Europe from the forces of globalisation and elitism is not by walking away, but by fighting at the ballot box at general elections in every member state.

    As Greens we are committed to the principle of EU existence, to working internationally on the shared issues we face, and to making Europe better from within.

    If we want the kind of future we believe is possible, then we need to harness the amazing energy, passion and skills that can be found throughout our party.

    Our members have always been the life-blood of our organisation. Democracy, participation and giving people a voice is at the very core of our identity.

    And at a time when other political parties are looking to us, to try and rediscover radical ideas such as a party conference that is there to make policy, not look good on TV, it seems right to take some ideas from them in return.

    One of these is how we can best nurture our talent, including bringing on the next generation of Green MPs: potential leaders and opinion formers who have the judgement, commitment and a propensity for the incredible hard work that it takes to get elected under our first past the post system.

    We will be asking an awful lot from them in the years to come. We must do everything we can for them in return.

    That’s why, today, I am proud to announce the launch of Generation Green – a new programme to nurture talent within our party.

    It will start by giving five of our election candidates the kinds of training and preparation that their rivals in the other political parties have always accessed. It’s part of a vision to make our party stronger from the grassroots up; to amplify the voices setting out why we are distinct. Leading by example. The party of the future.

    Which brings me on to Sian Berry: one such talent, and whom I am delighted to introduce as the Green candidate in next year’s London Mayoral elections.

    I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sian and I know she will bring conviction, intellect and professionalism to the campaign. On everything from housing and transport – both vital issues across the capital – to making sure the UK’s economy is no longer in thrall to the city’s financial sector, Sian will be a fearless and dedicated voice for Londoners and for Green ideas.

    In the 2009 Mayoral race, with Jenny Jones at the helm, we won a record share of the vote and became London’s third party, reflecting her long and remarkable service as a London assembly member.

    In 2016, we are aiming even higher.

    Conference, please put your hands together and welcome onto the stage, Sian Berry.

  • Natalie Bennett – 2015 Speech to Green Party Spring Conference

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Natalie Bennett, the Leader of the Green Party, to the spring conference held in Liverpool on 6 March 2015.

    Thank you everyone, and particularly thank you Caroline – for being the standout MP in the parliament of 2010, just as I’m sure you’ll be the standout MP of the parliament of 2015 and onwards!

    And thank you Liverpool for hosting us again, just a year after our last visit.

    I’ve been back in between, often visiting the beautiful Sefton Park Meadows – the threatened green space that I hope I’ll be able to visit again in the future.

    Thanks to all of you, this has been a momentous year. A year in which the Green Party has taken its place at the forefront of UK politics. A year in which young people in particular have embraced our message of hope and real change. A year in which nearly 300,000 people joined together to help ensure we took our place in the national leadership debates. A year in which we are matching, and often exceeding, the Lib Dems, a party of government, in national polls. And a year in which we have become the third largest political party in England and Wales!

    In the space of 12 months we have grown from 13,000 members to 55,000. Our membership has quadrupled!

    But of course conference, today’s speech is not addressed to you alone, it is also for voters across the country. Because one thing that the green surge means is that more than 90% of you will have the chance to vote Green on the 7th of May – for some that means the first-ever chance to vote Green.

    In just nine weeks’ time, you will have in your hands something miraculous… the possibility of a peaceful political revolution.

    Your vote can change the face of Britain.

    It can end the failed austerity experiment, end the spiteful blaming of the poor, the sick, the vulnerable for the mistakes of the wealthy.

    This election can be a turning point in history. The moment where we can deliver a better Britain, a Britain which works for all its people… A Britain which cares.

    Vote for what you believe in, vote for the policies of hope not fear, vote for policies that work for the common good not just the few, and Britain could be a very different country on the 8th of May.

    We, the Green Party, can be the agents of change.

    Real Change.

    It is time for Green Politics – the politics of the future.

    The politics of the future delivers a living wage – provides jobs that workers can build a life on – and ensures those who need help receive the support they need.

    The politics of the future delivers public services run for the good of all – our railways run not for shareholders but for passengers, our NHS not handed over to profiteers but kept in public hands.

    The politics of the futuredelivers social housing, council housing. Meets our housing needs.

    The politics of the future delivers for everyone within the limits of our one planet – because that’s the only place we have to live.

    That’s the politics of the future.

    That’s the politics of the Green Party. Because no one should be living in fear of being unable to put food on the table.

    No one should be forced into debt just for trying to get an education.

    No one should be worrying about a fracking drill burrowing into the heart of their community.

    No one should fear being left destitute by Iain Duncan Smith’s punitive benefit sanctions.

    The politics of the future is not a politics of transaction, that discredited politics which offers selected individuals and groups a bribe of short-term, unsustainable personal advantage.

    History tells us that is now the old politics, the tired politics, the failed politics. The Green Party is offering instead a society working for all of us; a society that works for the many, not just the few; a society in which those who can contribute do so, and no one in need goes without.

    It asks voters to make a choice that will deliver a society fit for themselves, their communities, and their children.

    That’s why the green surge is much more than just a hash tag – although a highly successful hash tag it has been – the green surge is much more than just membership numbers.

    That’s why people are becoming engaged with the Green Party.

    I have seen the green surge on the ground, around the country, from a village hall in Ilkley Yorkshire, to an enormous, snaking queue of hundreds at Exeter University, to a Valentine’s Eve Friday night crowd at the London School of Economics.

    And of course we saw it last May with the election of Molly Scott Cato as the first Green member of the European Parliament in the South West – and boy, hasn’t she delivered for her voters!

    The green surge is the result of your hard work as Greens. It’s thanks to you in this hall, and to all of the Green Party members and supporters up and down the country – to your commitment, your belief, your dedication and your hard work – that we approach the General Election as a central player in UK politics.

    And of course, it isn’t just Green Party.

    Up and down the country, campaigns demanding a new politics are getting stronger, getting bigger, getting more effective.

    There’s People’s Assemblies, Occupy Democracy, the anti-fracking movement and the fossil fuel divestment campaigns: the tide is growing, the demand for change is louder and clearer.

    At last, the people are fighting back! Five years ago we made a huge breakthrough with the election of Caroline Lucas as the first Green MP, and she’s given Brighton a spectacularly good local voice and a national impact far beyond any other MP. Caroline has led the debate on issues from railway ownership to statutory Personal and Social Education.

    She’s led the debate on parliamentary transparency and she has put her freedom on the line to oppose fracking.

    Because Caroline shows what voting Green delivers: passion, sensitivity and courage.

    On May 8, just imagine, a strong green group of MPs at Westminster – able to build on and expand Caroline’s work.

    A group which would never, ever support a Conservative Government.

    A strong group of Green MPs – in a parliament where they could have a huge say, a huge impact – that is a real opportunity to start to deliver a new kind of politics.

    We know that the way things are in Britain is not sustainable.

    Continuing as we are is not an option.

    Since 2007, food prices have risen 22 per cent but wages have fallen 7 per cent.

    Almost seven hundred thousand people are listed as ‘in work’, despite having no guaranteed hours week-to-week.

    It’s time to end the scourge of zero hours contracts. Almost half the new jobs created since 2010 are for the self-employed, yet nearly 80% of self-employed workers are living in poverty.

    I applaud the growing number of individuals who contribute to, who volunteer in, who run, food banks.

    But this Individual charity is no substitute for collective justice.

    This the outcome of the years of Blair, of Brown, of the Cameron/Clegg Coalition and austerity Britain – this is the record of George Osborne’s “long term economic plan”.

    The Green Party are calling time on the politics of low wages, job insecurity and fearing the food bank.

    We are calling time on privatisation – the sell-off and the handing over – of public assets into private hands.

    We are calling time on the trashing of our natural world – the world on which everything,depends.

    Our economy, our lives, our future depend on society, which in turn depends on the earth and its resources.

    That puts a huge weight, a huge responsibility on our shoulders – a responsibility we have to meet in the next few years.

    We know now the damage we are doing to the Earth, as we didn’t know in the past.

    We have to be up to the task.

    The whole ideology of Thatcher and her successors, be it Blair, Brown or Cameron, has failed.

    Change has to come. The market is short-sighted and short-term. It is blind. It is senseless. It works for the 1%, it fails the rest of us. All in it together? I don’t think so.

    The current model of economics and society has served only those with power and wealth.

    In austerity Britain, the super rich grabs more than anywhere else in Europe.

    We must be first and foremost citizens, paying fairly to common funds to look after the poor, the weak, the old and the sick.

    Everybody contributes what they can and everybody benefits from that. This is what the politics of the future will look like, what the Green Party will deliver. The old politics, the failed politics of letting the market rule has to end.

    There’s nowhere that’s more obvious than in our NHS.

    The insidious but rapid infiltration of the profit motive into our health service, the dreadful, senseless PFI schemes that have deliver despair and threaten bankruptcy, must be reversed. The market costs us big time. In 2010 the Health Select Committee reckoned it consumed 9% of total NHS costs – well over £10bn a year.

    As Caroline has already said – we will repeal the Health and Social Care Act, which is damaging and threatening the health service.

    And we will go further – we will replace it with an NHS Reinstatement Bill that removes the market mechanism from our NHS.

    But of course there is another side to care.

    Free healthcare is the very cornerstone of our NHS. Whether you are rich or poor you have the right to the best that is available.

    That’s something the Green Party will restore – and extend. For that same principle should apply to social care – the support and services that you need to lead a fulfilling life should be available when you need it, free at the point of use.

    We believe that to be a decent, humane, caring society, social care must be free.

    We believe those who have the most should contribute to help pay for social care.

    We need a range of new taxes aimed at making Britain a more equal society.

    We would introduce a new wealth tax, rigorously clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion and introduce a financial transaction tax – a Robin Hood Tax, and we are not ashamed to say that those on incomes above £100,000 should pay more income tax.

    Providing Free Social Care for the Over 65’s means security and freedom from fear, suffering and loneliness for many, and it means 200,000 new jobs and training places.

    We will consult experts, users, and care workers on its exact design – but our manifesto will include this as a core pledge: social care is not a privilege, it is a right!

    We know that the younger generation – many of whom are supporting the Green Party – have it tough. But we acknowledge, we stress, that isn’t the fault of their elders.

    In a Britain of solidarity, in a Britain of community, in a Britain of care, we all need to look out for each other. Of course – and I cannot stress this enough – we can only do this if you, the people of the UK have your say on May the 7th.

    It is impossible to overstate the importance of each and every person who can vote registering to do so and making their voice heard.

    The deadline is April 20th, but please don’t wait – register today. Only then can you deliver the politics of the future, help us deliver for the Common Good. There are people who want to see business-as-usual politics continue. People who are happy with politicians who learnt nothing from the global economic crash. People who’ve quietly forgotten the scandal of MPs expenses. Who are resigned to the failed austerity experiment, to low wages and to the swift demise of public services. Those people will probably vote for the parties of yesterday.

    To counteract them, you need to use your vote.

    At this election, if we all vote Green, we can change Britain.

    Together we can create the society we all deserve a society that cares, a society that works for all of us.

    Vote for the party that cares. Vote for the common good. Vote for the politics of the future. Vote Green.

  • Natalie Bennett – 2015 Speech at Green Party Conference

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Natalie Bennett, the Leader of the Green Party, in Bournemouth on 25 September 2015.

    Hello Bournemouth – it is great to be in this lovely town for the first time for Green Party conference, soon after it elected its first Green Party councillor, and just a year after the South West elected its first Green MEP – and hasn’t Molly Scott Cato done a brilliant job!

    Yes, I am aware that we are following the Liberal Democrats in this venue – we’re getting used to taking seats from them – but I promise that’s the only thing we’ll be following them on.

    In the Green Party we know what our policies are, we know that our values and principles are solid, unmovable foundations. We don’t tack around with the political winds: we stand up for what we believe in.

    I know many of you here will be at your first conference. But let’s start with some members who’ve been around for longer. If you were a member of the Green Party before January 1st last year, please put your hand up!

    Thank you – you’re the veterans.

    Now who’s joined after January 1st?

    Welcome ‘green surge’.

    But I know that many of you are veterans too, veterans of campaigning for free education, veterans of fighting against the privatisation of the NHS, veterans of Transition Towns, Friends of the Earth and many other organisations.

    Many new members told me that they had come to realise that lobbying, campaigning, pushing against the closed door of the old politics, just wasn’t going to deliver the results that our economic, social and environmental crises demand.

    We can’t keep electing the wrong people and hoping they’ll do the right things.

    What we need to do is elect many more Greens in the proportional representation elections – the fair elections – coming up next May in Wales, in London, and in Scotland.

    Now I could ask the Green MP and House of Lords member to put their hands up, but I don’t think you need help identifying them. Of course if we had a fair electoral system Caroline Lucas would have 24 other Green MPs with her in the Commons, but she, like Jenny Jones in the Lords, does the work of at least that many average MPs, so all we can say to them is thank you!

    And who here is a Green Party councillor? Please put up your hand. I want to offer you my thanks, our thanks, for all of your hard work.

    And promise you that next year, in the elections in May, we’ll be electing many compatriots to join you. In Bristol, in Liverpool, in Sheffield, and many other cities, towns and villages up and down the country, we built a great foundation in the general election. In a year’s time I look forward to that question raising a forest of hands… quite appropriate for the Green Party, I think.

    For it’s clearer by the day, that the political times they are a’changing. It’s the time of new politics.

    Greek leader Alexis Tspiras this week in his victory speech thanked the European Greens for their support for a different kind of Europe. The clear re-election of Syriza in Greece and the strength of Podemos in Spain are just two examples of the future of politics in Europe.

    In Britain you can measure that not just by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership, but by the Green Party’s more than 1.1 million votes in the general election and the ‘green surge’ that’s seen our membership more than treble. And by the left-positioned SNP’s comprehensive wipe-out of right-wing Labour in Scotland, and the daily-stronger surge in political activism across England and Wales and beyond.

    The pressure is growing against the failed politics of austerity, on the disastrous privatisation of public services, on treating the planet as though it were a mine and a rubbish dump.

    The failings of successive governments in Britain are attracting widespread attention, widespread concern, widespread opposition.

    The United Nations is investigating the Tory government’s treatment of the disabled and breaches of their human rights.

    The world is increasingly questioning the Tory government’s environmental failings. Al Gore led the way this week: “Will our children ask, why didn’t you act?” he said this week.

    Judges will also be questioning more and more the abuses of basic human rights, and the destruction of civil liberties in the disastrous Trade Union Bill and the snoopers’ charter.

    Politics is heading towards the understanding that social and environmental justice are indivisible – and essential to all of our futures.

    Politics is heading, fast, towards the policies the Green Party has consistently pursued and promoted for decades.

    And politics is far more diverse than ever before – making the argument for long-overdue electoral reform overwhelming, an issue that I hope Jeremy Corbyn will be putting at the top of his political agenda. The government only has a majority of 12 – a fragile majority that’s already dissolved on a couple of issues. United in a just cause, we can win electoral reform.

    The new politics – the politics that demands electoral reform – is a people’s politics, founded in everyday life, everyday struggles.

    On the streets, in community centres and pubs and cafes, online, people are talking together, gathering together, working together – recognising those immortal words: “Ye are many, they are few.”

    Many of you I’m sure were on the streets on June 20th for the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, and again this month at the massive, inspiring Refugees Welcome march.

    At both marches people assembled under many different symbols, under the banners of church groups and the flags of unions, under the homemade placards of the unaffiliated and the organised groupings of long-established campaigns, all saying:  “we’re not going to take this anymore: no more austerity, no more privatisation of public services, no more planet-trashing, and no more of this unfair, inhumane, unjust immigration system”.

    The marchers got their message across, and more than that, they got the message that the Green Party is their party.

    For these growing, increasingly coalescing movements of people power need a political wing. They need representatives at the heart of the places where decisions are made: in local councils, in Cardiff and Westminster, in Brussels.

    Campaigners up and down the country are understanding that the Green Party is the natural home of the community campaigner and the Transitions Towns member, the natural home of the campaigner against the privatisation of the NHS and the anti-evictions activist, the natural home of the immigration rights advocate and the defender of environments local and global.

    Local parties, far stronger and more numerous than ever before, are able to reach out into new parts of their communities, to offer their help, to be a guide through the frequently forbidding, deliberately opaque bureaucracy of town halls, Westminster and Brussels.

    I know that some commentators are asking: what’s the difference between Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and the Greens? Communities up and down this country who are dealing with Labour councils know one answer to that.

    They have Labour councils who aren’t listening to them, aren’t meeting their needs, are too often in the pockets of the developers and big business, who believe despite all the evidence that ‘economic development’ comes from supporting an out-of-town supermarket that destroys local independent businesses by the score.

    When it comes to standing against planned nuclear plants from Hinkley to Anglesey to Hartlepool, when it comes to resisting the power of the oil and gas lobby that keeps supporting this government’s fracking, underground coal gasification and coal bed methane fantasies from Blackpool to Middlesborough to Warwickshire; when it comes to resisting the concreting over of the greenbelt for expensive, poor quality homes by mass builders out for a quick pound, communities know that it’s the Green Party that consistently backs them.

    But we’re not just following and supporting, we’re also leading.

    And leading on the issue of climate change – the issue on which all of our futures, as inhabitants of this one fragile planet, depends.

    The Green Party is at the front of a broad push to make the Paris Climate Talks not just successful in their own terms, but to be a vehicle for putting tackling climate change at the heart of every community effort, the plans of every council, the work of every official.

    We’ve already launched our ‘Climate Sense’ campaign – yes that’s the hashtag – and this is the Green Party’s ‘Climate Sense’ conference.

    Green councillors and parties up and down the country are at the forefront of the broad campaign to get institutions and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels.

    And we’ve joined the European Green Party in calling on everyone to share their ‘climate moment’ – the second when they as individual human beings recognised that climate change was already here – and just how urgent it is to change direction before it is too late.

    For me it was January 1st, 2006. Yes, it was New Year’s Day. It was time to make an assessment about the state of my life and the state of the world.

    I’m unusual in British politics in that I have a degree in science, and I took the knowledge from that, looked at the state of the world, and it frightened me. I thought: “I must do something.”

    So I joined the Green Party. Although I never would have predicted where that would lead me.

    And I would not have predicted that in the leader debates before this year’s general election I would have been the only one to talk about climate change. That in three and a half hours, the Labour leader, the Liberal Democrat leader, the Conservative leader, the SNP leader and the Plaid Cymru leader wouldn’t find space for those two momentous words, climate change’.

    That has to change. It has to change now. We cannot have another major political debate that doesn’t have climate change at its heart.

    But I’m a strong believer in the idea that deeds not words are what matter the most when it comes to tackling climate change.

    It does not bode well that, just two months before the crucial Paris climate talks, the Prime Minister last week appointed a fossil fuel industry insider as his key adviser on energy and environment.

    This isn’t just disappointing, it’s scandalous.

    If the Prime Minister is even half way serious about success at the Paris climate talks and tackling the threat of climate change to our security, prosperity and natural world, he should ask for Stephen Heidari-Robinson’s resignation with immediate effect. And instead appoint an advisor without association to a climate-destroying industry. The UK’s green economy is a huge success story – often in spite of government policy – so he won’t be short of options.

    This disastrous approach has to change. It has to change now.

    As the Pope said this week, this is a critical moment of history. The problem cannot be left for future generations to deal with.

    Dealing with climate change has to be at the centre of every policy, every decision, the responsibility of everyone. If we don’t make that a reality, our children and grandchildren will never forgive us.

    As part of the work towards that, today I’m issuing a special request to every Green Party in the country to hold at least one public meeting to raise this issue up the agenda in their community.

    More, I’d ask everyone listening to take action. Organise a meeting in your community group, in your union, in your university, school or college, in your local pub. The next few months are critical – please play your part.

    In Scotland a grassroots referendum campaign drew many into political involvement, into issues local and global. We can do the same by taking understanding of the issues around climate change into the heart of every community.

    Let’s summon up, to draw on Abraham Lincoln, every better angel of our human nature to this great, the greatest, cause.

    Together we can ensure that everyone has the chance to find out more, to understand how tackling climate change isn’t just essential, but also a positive framework that can improve our society, our lives, and the lives of future generations.

    And I’d urge everyone not to pin all of their hopes on the Paris talks, but to see this as a stepping stone, one branch of a plan to reshape our societies to live, to thrive, to meet the needs of future generations on this fragile planet.

    I’m going to borrow a phrase from the climate change campaign 350.org: this is the point where everything breaks apart and everything comes together.

    But we can only protect our planet in a fair, humane society. That’s at the absolute core of Green Party values and principles – and it is at the core of solving our climate crisis.

    For the Green Party is the solutions party. We know that the crises we face in our economy, in our society, in our environment are not happening at the same time by coincidence.

    The cause – the nature of our economic system, the hypercapitalism of the multinational oil giants and the sweatshop-based fashion chains, the sealife-destroying giant trawlers and the cruel, destructive factory farms, the hugely subsidised private landlords and the zero-hours-contract employers – are all part of the same system.

    And the solutions to deal with the crisis need to tackle these together. It’s joined-up thinking – the kind of thinking that’s in the Green Party’s DNA.

    And it is thinking that demands real change – when it comes to dealing with our social and environmental crises only 21st-century thinking will do.

    We can’t go back to the failed 20th-century answer of perpetual growth; that can’t continue on a finite planet.

    We can’t go back to the failed 20th-century model of centralised administrative monoliths imposing models on diverse local communities.

    We can’t go back to the idea of a wasteful industrial economy built around giant companies.

    We need new solutions.

    The Green Party has long championed treating our homes as the critical national infrastructure that they are – a plan to lift nine out of 10 households out of fuel poverty, to create at least 100,000 jobs, and cut carbon emissions. Not bad for just one Green policy!

    The Green Party has long demanded investment in public transport, not the botched, illogical HS2, but local and regional schemes that help to rebalance our economy, linked to local bus services under the controlling hand of local councils. Such a transport policy would not only tackle congestion and air pollution, but also help to cut the NHS bill for dealing with obesity and diabetes. Not bad for just one Green policy!

    And we’ve long understood that the only secure, sustainable economic future is based in strong local economies, with local needs met by local suppliers, with a rich ecology of farming, manufacturing and services businesses supporting each other.

    Think global, act local is a long-term Green vision – and an essential one to secure our future.

    But there’s no doubt there are forces out there, powerful forces, with huge amounts of cash and influence, who want to keep things just as they are.

    But every day their power wanes, they have to struggle harder for a grubbier, weaker hold.

    They’re in a crisis of legitimacy. They cannot be trusted. They are rotten to the core.

    I was going to say that the emperor has no clothes, but after the news reports of the last week I won’t inflict that image on you… Even better, I’ve carefully combed this speech to ensure there are no porcine references at all.

    What I will refer to about Lord Ashcroft’s book is his self-declaration that he expected donations of millions of pounds to buy him a place at the heart of the British government. The core is rotten – it must be removed.

    And that’s true also of our financial sector. The list of scandals is almost endless, from Libor to Forex rigging, PPI to money-laundering and tax evasion.

    The finance sector exists not to serve the real economy but to fuel speculation in financial instruments and property that’s become entirely detached from the reality of homes and business premises, to fund its own empty structure. It expects be propped up by the sweat and pain of communities far from the glass towers of Canary Wharf when it fails again.

    We’ve seen just this week another emerging scandal – a giant, respected, global car manufacturer has confessed – after it was exposed – to rigging tests about the emissions from 11 million diesel cars it has manufactured, and put on the streets. And there are questions now about whether it was just that manufacturer.

    Our politics is rotten. Our finance sector is rotten. Our industrial sector is rotten. Even some of our sport is tainted. Fifa, in control of the ‘beautiful game’, is rotten.

    The people newly engaged in politics, the people of Britain overall – if not the people currently running things – see very clearly that we cannot continue on our current path.

    Increasing numbers of Britons understand instinctively that David Cameron’s ‘recovery’, built chiefly on consumer debt, has no firm foundations – and that’s particularly clear to the people of Wigan and Rhyl, Gateshead and Ramsgate – the many communities that have seen precious little sign of this ‘recovery’ at all.

    They’re deeply worried, as people across Britain are worried, about the kind of world we’re leaving future generations.

    Realism means understanding that massive change is coming, and it can be, if we make the right choices, pursue the right policies, change for the better.

    To achieve that, we need new political structures, as well as new economic, social, environmental structures.

    To get those we need to break the shackles of a 19th-century electoral system.

    There’s one number I’d urge you to remember – 24%. That’s the number of eligible voters who supported this Tory government.

    Even if you count the people who chose to vote, the Tories only won 37% of that vote. As a Swedish Green Party minister said to me recently: “surely you can’t form a government with that!”

    The route to electoral reform is not clear and obvious. In an ideal world the Tory government would say, ‘clearly the current situation is intellectually and morally untenable and we have to introduce proportional representation, fair elections, for both the Commons and a new House of Lords’.

    But don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath for that.

    What I am doing is asking Jeremy Corbyn as the new leader of the Labour Party in a parliament where the Tories have an extremely narrow, already tottering, majority, to join with us and others to deliver a fair, simple system in which voters can participate with confidence that their vote counts.

    Already the Green Party is working with campaigners, working with other parties, to keep electoral reform, a proportional, fair, electoral system, on the political agenda.

    And if that gives Nigel Farage the chance to photo-bomb me in the Mirror, so be it!

    But we don’t have to wait for electoral reform – for coming up we’ve got votes in already reasonably fair elections in which voters can simply vote for what they believe in.

    Those elections are in London, for its Assembly, in Wales, for its Assembly. In Scotland our sister party has a great chance to increase their parliamentary representation to historic highs, and in Northern Ireland, our fellow Greens will be seeking to increase their Assembly numbers from one to three.

    You’ll be hearing from Pippa Bartolotti, leader of the Welsh Greens, later today, about the exciting prospects of our first Assembly members in Cardiff. And on Sunday you’ll be hearing from Sian Berry, our London mayoral candidate, about the prospects for growth in our Assembly representation.

    And here’s a tip: the bookies have Sian’s odds of waking up as London mayor on May 6th considerably shorter than Jeremy Corbyn’s during the Labour leadership contest.

    But next May the prospects are much broader than that.

    Since the general election I’ve been travelling the country and visiting new and revived local parties, already gearing up for next May’s council elections – aiming to win their first councillors, build their local representation, be the challengers, the critical scrutinisers lacking on so many councils.

    In Hitchin in Hertfordshire, which I visited for the town’s first-ever anti-austerity rally in June, I met Green Party members already campaigning for elections in 11 months’ time.

    In Swansea, I heard from Green Party members how they’re working on the ground, at the grassroots, literally, rescuing the abandoned Ganges Field from litter, vandalism and council neglect, turning it back into the community asset it should always have been.

    In Darlington, which I first visited two years ago, for the founding rally of what would become the brilliant campaign 999 Call for the NHS, I was delighted just last week to attend the formal founding of a new local party, a party which in May from a standing start was able to put up candidates in nearly every ward in the town, and aims to elect its first councillors next year.

    These are local Green Parties that are seeing what needs to be done, and doing it. And more than that, they’re feeling the tide of history approaching.

    Here in Bournemouth, we’ve been consistently supporting the proposed wind turbines of the Navitus Bay offshore wind farm, sadly only the latest victim of this government’s disastrous energy policies.

    Of course this government’s had to grapple with a difficult concept: the wind turbines are big, but are far away.

    But the Navitus Bay developers can subject this arbitrary decision to judicial review, as I hope they will, just as we can use not just democratic, but legal mechanisms, international mechanisms, to hold this government to account.

    The rotten politics, the old politics, is in its last throes.

    Politics is moving in our direction. Historians will look back and see 2015 as the year change started – the year that a fundamental shift in politics saw it move away from the mantra of ‘greed is good, the environment doesn’t matter’ that rose with Margaret Thatcher and will fall with David Cameron.

    It’s time for a new approach – the Green approach – a society that works for the common good within the environmental limits of our one fragile planet, a society that works for its people, not for the few global corporations and the richest 1%.

    That’s what Green Parties around the globe, green movements around the globe are working for. In Norway, the Greens have just recorded their best-ever election result – calling for an end to all oil production there within 20 years. In Rwanda, the Green Party is bravely leading the struggle to defend a democratic constitution. In the European Parliament, the Greens’ group is leading the way in calling for fair, just, humane treatment of refugees across the Union and outside it.

    The problems we face – in Britain and around the world — are huge. We need to think big to deal with them. We need a politics powered by people, communities powered by renewables, our economy powered by small businesses, social enterprises and cooperatives.

    We need a politics of the people – Green politics.

    If you’re facing decades of unpayable student debt – join us and fight it.

    If you’re stuck in a zero-hour, low-pay job, join us and fight for jobs you can build a life on.

    If you’re disabled or have been ill and suffered from the dreadful work capability assessment – join us and fight it.

    If you’ve suffered under our abusive, inhumane immigration system – join us and fight it.

    If you believe that Britain should get rid of Trident, those hideous weapons of mass destruction – join us and fight them.

    If you believe that Britain should not be bombing Syria, following the failed policy that’s had such disastrous consequences for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan – join us and fight for change.

    If you’re a parent who cares about your children’s and grandchildren’s future – join us and fight for their future, fight for a liveable planet.

    Politics should be something you do, not something done to you.

    2015 can be – must be – the start of the century of Green politics.

    Let’s get together and make it happen.

  • David Cameron – 2016 New Year Speech

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    Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, on 1 January 2016.

    It’s a new year. And with our economy growing and a strong, majority government in power, Britain begins it with renewed strength.

    There are no new year’s resolutions for us, just an ongoing resolve to deliver what we promised.

    Security – at every stage of your life.

    Over 31 million people will begin the year in work – more than any in our history.

    Six million children will start the new term at a good or outstanding school.

    More than half a million workers will be taken out of income tax in April, as everyone apart from the very best paid gets a tax cut and, for the lowest paid, there will be a new National Living Wage.

    Meanwhile, millions more will benefit from the free childcare, new academies, rising pensions and extra apprenticeships that we committed to, all as a result of our long-term economic plan.

    We also promised something else: giving you a say on Europe. Now we are delivering on that promise. There will be an in-out referendum by the end of 2017 – it is written into the law of the land. I am negotiating hard to fix the things that most annoy British people about our relationship with the EU.

    There is just one thing that drives me: what is best for the national interest of our country?

    But in the end it will be for you to decide: is our economic and national security in a dangerous world better protected by being in, or out?

    We also go into the year confronting some deep social problems, ones that have blighted our country for too long.

    I want 2016 to be the time when we really start to conquer them – a crucial year in this great turnaround decade.

    Because with economic renewal and social reform, we can make everyone’s lives more secure.

    So if you’re one of the many hard-working young people locked out of the housing market, we will deliver the homes that will help lead you to your own front door.

    If you’re off school or out of work, trapped in an underworld of addiction, abuse, crime and chaos, we will sweep away state failure and help give you stability.

    If your dreams have been dashed simply because of who you are, we will fight discrimination and deliver real opportunity, to help lay your path to success.

    And we will take on another social problem, too.

    When our national security is threatened by a seething hatred of the west, one that turns people against their country and can even turn them into murderous extremists. I want us to be very clear: you will not defeat us. And we will not just confront the violence and the terror.

    We will take on their underlying, poisonous narrative of grievance and resentment. We will come down hard on those who create the conditions for that narrative to flourish. And we will have greater confidence in – indeed, we will revel in – our way of life.

    Because if you walk our streets, learn in our schools, benefit from our society, you sign up to our values: freedom; tolerance; responsibility; loyalty.

    These are the big challenges of our age, some of the biggest our nation has ever faced. And this year is a test of our mettle.

    Whether we put up with poverty – or put an end to it, ignore the glass ceiling – or smash it, abandon the tenant – or help make them a homeowner, appease the extremist – or take apart their ideology, piece by piece.

    We’ll get Britain a better deal in Europe, give families the peace of mind they crave and we’ll make our country even more secure.

    That’s what this year – this turnaround decade – is all about.

    So let me wish everyone the very best and a very happy new year.

  • Jack Cunningham – 1970 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Jack Cunningham to the House of Commons on 7 July 1970.

    Mr. Speaker, may I begin by expressing my thanks and appreciation to my predecessor, Mr. J. B. Symonds, for the tremendous job that he did at Westminster during the last eleven years? He worked diligently for the constituency as a whole and on behalf of many individual constituents. Latterly, as many hon. Members know, he has been troubled by ill-health. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides will join me in wishing him well in his retirement. After 50 years in public service at all levels he thoroughly deserves it.

    Whitehaven is in the south and west of Cumberland and is quite diverse in nature. It covers an area of 350 sq. miles comprising agricultural land with small industrial communities based mainly on coal and iron-ore mining. It has, for the last six years, been almost wholly a special development area. As its representative I shall be concerned principally with scrutinising the future regional policies of Her Majesty’s Government. Indeed, as a special development area it has had preferential Government aid for six years. No one will suggest that in this time the many problems of areas like Millam, Cleator Moor, Whitehaven and Frizington have been solved, but whilst we had a Labour Government the foundations for progress were effectively laid.

    Many of the small industrial communities are still fighting for survival, lacking many of the basic facilities of some of the more prosperous areas of Britain. I want the Government to give a vigorous commitment to even greater assistance for areas like my constituency, because it is only through the policies of the central Government that the problems will be solved.

    Last year the northern region as a whole enjoyed the fastest rate of growth in public expenditure in Britain, but still the problems remain. So it is nonsense for hon. Gentlemen opposite to suggest that we will solve regional problems by reductions in public expenditure. This just is not possible.

    People might ask—I can understand this—why the regions have a right to preferential Government aid. One of the principal reasons for the present plight of various regions is that historically their natural assets—coal and steel—have been taken away in a major contribution to the last economic and industrial revolution. But—this is the important point—the money made at that time was never reinvested in the regions. There has been a total neglect for decades in terms of public and private investment.

    To add insult to injury, local people have been left surrounded by industrial waste and dereliction and they are now presented with the Bill for clearing up the mess. I suggest that the Government should give a commitment to providing the whole of the cost involved in the removal of industrial dereliction.

    I must also express grave concern at the apparent lack of interest instanced by the failure to provide a Minister of State for Regional Development. Apparently, there was indecision yesterday at Question Time concerning Government control of industrial development certificates. We heard some equivocal replies this afternoon on investment grants. Hon. Members representing constituencies affected by regional development have pointed out that this has been one of the major reasons for new industries moving to the regions. It is obvious that the Government cannot appreciate this point, because they have virtually no representatives from the areas affected.

    I should also like to see a firm commitment to the continuation of the regional employment premium. This measure has enabled industries in the regions to reduce their costs and to become more competitive. Any Government which believes in the slogan “one nation”, as we understand the present Government do, will give us these commitments to help solve the regional problems not only in terms of industrial development, but also in terms of education, housing, health and urban renewal.

    We ask not only for more industries and jobs, but also for a better share of the jobs which will provide higher incomes to families living in the regions. One of the major problems facing local authorities is that, because of low family incomes, there is no local impetus for the growth of amenities.

    I remind the House that Government policies between 1951 and 1964 had a remarkably similar effect—in the Northern Region, at any rate—to the policies employed there by William the Conqueror. At the end of 1964 Government spending on regional policies as a whole totalled approximately £19 million. In 1969 this had risen to £285 million, but still the problems remain and many more problems need to be tackled more vigorously.

    Can we believe, in view of this, that a commitment to reducing public expenditure will give us the results that we desire? To be more specific, we have not seen enlightened capitalism, about which we heard so much, rushing to help communities like Millam. They just do not want to know. It is only through a vigorous Government policy of inducements that we shall achieve industrial development in these areas.

    As a scientist, I am sure that the new technologies which are coming will exacerbate these problems in the regions. Many of the difficulties that we already know will get worse. A more balanced economic development will not only aid regions like West Cumberland, but will also aid Britain as a whole. It is no accident that the community problems in the South-East and the West Midlands exist because people are afraid of overcrowding and of uncontrolled urban development. It is these very problems which, on the one hand, give the South-East a kind of pot-bellied economic affluence, whilst, on the other hand, the Northern Region in particular goes through a kind of economic Biafra. We shall be looking to this Government to reverse these policies.

    I believe, as has already been said this afternoon, that in a rapidly changing industrial democracy it will be essential for any Government to intervene in industrial development and to give a commitment to ensure that we have a more even development in future than we have enjoyed hitherto.

    I appreciate the traditional reception of a maiden speech from both sides of the House. I look forward in future to speaking on regional matters, on education, in which I have some experience, and also on science and technology.

  • Yvette Cooper – 1997 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

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    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Yvette Cooper to the House of Commons on 2 July 1997.

    Mr. Deputy Speaker, thank you for calling me during this historic debate. I am honoured to be uttering my very first words in the House on behalf of the people of Pontefract and Castleford on Budget day. This is Labour’s first Budget for 18 years—and what a Budget. It is hard to know where to begin: resources for education and health, help for the young and for the long-term unemployed, measures to calm growth in consumption, boost for investment or help with child care.

    It is also an honour to conclude the debate today, and to hear so many maiden speeches. We have had such speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield, North (Ms Ryan), for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), for Eastwood (Mr. Murphy) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Mrs. Keen), and from the hon. Members for Witney (Mr. Woodward), for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Cotter) and for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior). We have had a tour of the country, and we have heard how the Budget will affect people across Britain. It is truly a people’s Budget.

    Almost 100 years ago, Lloyd George launched his people’s Budget for this century. Now we have a new people’s Budget to begin the next century. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on a wise and radical Budget. It faces up to the long-term problems of the British economy. It also takes immediate steps to tackle some of the deep-rooted inequalities faced by my constituents.

    I represent a corner of West Yorkshire which is proud of its industrial heritage and its hard-working people; the liquorice fields and factories of Pontefract; the potteries of Castleford; the pits—the heart and belly of the constituency; the power station at Ferrybridge; the glassworks and the chemical works of Knottingley and Castleford; and, near the corner of Normanton that I represent, a Japanese electronics factory.

    These past two decades have been hard times in my constituency. Many of the pits are now closed, jobs in traditional industries have gone and, most important, we lack new investment and help to reskill the work force to generate new jobs to replace the old ones that have gone.

    I must report to the House that 2,600 people in my constituency are officially unemployed: a third of them have been unemployed for more than a year. The number of people not working, either because they have been forced into early retirement or on to sickness benefit, is much higher. Too many of my constituent have not had their fair share of opportunities to learn and to obtain the qualifications that they need to prosper in a modern economy. That matters for the future, as one generation follows in the footsteps of another. Evidence shows that the chance of the sons and daughters of miners in my constituency becoming high earners when they grow up is a mere tenth of that of the sons and daughters of well-educated and wealthy professionals. That figure is shocking.

    The House must not misunderstand me. It is true that my constituency is plagued by unemployment, but I represent hard-working people who are proud of their strong communities and who have fought hard across generations to defend them. They are proud of their socialist traditions, and have fought for a better future for their children and their grandchildren. In the middle ages, that early egalitarian, the real Robin Hood, lived, so we maintain, in the vale of Wentbridge to the south of Pontefract. It was a great base from which to hassle the travelling fat cats on the Great North road.

    Centuries later, Pontefract became home to another true fighter for social justice, Barbara Castle. In her autobiography, she describes her politicisation during the miners lock-out in 1921. Through the years, my constituency has been home to other Members who have fought hard for the working people whom they represent in nearby constituencies, including the former Member for Hemsworth, Derek Enright, and my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O’Brien), who has helped me so much in these early months.

    The people of Pontefract and Castleford owe most to the man who represented them for the past 19 years, and who battled hard for their welfare, Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse, now Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract. I know that hon. Members will join me in paying tribute to someone who, as a former Deputy Speaker, worked hard for the House, was fair and honourable, and, above all, was a kind man. He governed the House, which can sometimes be rowdy and alarming, with a firm but fair hand.

    For some, the traditional tribute to a predecessor is something to be swallowed swiftly, got over as fast as possible. For me, it is an honour and a privilege to be able to pay that tribute on behalf of the House and the people of Pontefract and Castleford to Sir Geoff, as he is known locally.

    Sir Geoff was a well-loved constituency Member of Parliament. Like my grandfather, he began his working life in the pits as a teenager. The mischievous among his Pontefract friends describe him as a corner-stint man, but they would never use the same phrase to describe his commitment to his constituents. His proudest achievement was his work for the welfare of the miners with whom he served for so long, getting emphysema recognised as an industrial disease.

    I pay a personal tribute to him, too, for Sir Geoff has been extremely supportive during these curious first months here. I hope that we can continue to work together for the people of Pontefract and Castleford, a partnership which I hope echoes the strength of this new Government, young and old, energy and experience, women and men, across the country and across the generations working together for common goals. The Budget gives us the chance to achieve those goals.

    More important to my constituents than anything else will be the new deal for the unemployed. In Pontefract and Castleford we are raring to go. Already, the Groundwork Trust in Castleford has approached me with a proposal for an environmental task force. We hope to encourage young unemployed people in some of the highest areas of unemployment in our constituency—in Knottingley and on the Airdale estate in Castleford—to join regeneration projects that are already planned. That way, they can take their first steps into the world of work straight from their own doorstep, be part of rebuilding their own troubled estates, learning transferable skills and building their own personal pride in their environment and in their work.

    We think that this is such a good idea that we are not even waiting for the windfall tax money to come through. A local partnership is already drawing up a proposal for European money, and I hope that we will provide a successful model for the rest of the country to follow. At the same time, Wakefield council is itching to expand on its successful job subsidy programme, Workline, which it has been operating for the past 11 years. Employers there have a year-long subsidy of up to £40 a week to take on unemployed workers.

    I asked one employer involved whether he would have taken someone on anyway. After all, his business was expanding. He told me two interesting things. The first was that the subsidy encouraged him to take on a new employee a year earlier than he would otherwise have done. The second was that, without the subsidy, he would not have considered taking on someone who was unemployed. There, in that one anecdote, was the proof that such a job subsidy can speed up job creation and help people in most danger of being locked outside the work force, trapped on the dole, into jobs.

    That is important because it means that the new deal gives us a chance to tackle the long-term roots of inequality—people who are trapped on the dole in my constituency. Moreover, by helping those who find it hardest to get work, the new deal also boosts the capacity of the economy. That means that, as the economy grows, instead of running into the old inflationary buffers, as so often happens, we can have growth that creates jobs and more jobs, because we have boosted the capacity. That is the Budget’s greatest strength. At the same time as controlling consumer demand and stopping it expanding too fast, the Budget is boosting the supply side to try to raise Britain’s long-term sustainable rate of growth.

    I hope that the new deal will receive support from both sides of the House, because it is about our future. In Pontefract and Castleford, I found enthusiasm for these proposals on both sides of the political spectrum.

    As recently as Monday morning, a small business man came into my surgery. He admitted to being one of the few people in the area who had voted Conservative for 30 years—until the recent election. However, he said that he was delighted with what he had seen about Labour’s plans for young people. He said that he wanted to take on three young unemployed people, asked when they could start, and where should he sign. His enthusiasm was infectious, and I hope that such enthusiasm will encourage more small businesses, both in my constituency and throughout the country, to take up the challenge to provide a new deal for the unemployed. It is something which we all need to work on together.

    I am sure that that man will be even more delighted now that he has heard my right hon. Friend’s Budget. It truly is a people’s Budget—a Budget for social justice and for Britain’s future. Tough choices have to be made, but they will generate results in the long run.

    Keynes said: In the long run we are all dead”— but I say, “So what?” Our children and our grandchildren will still be alive. Therefore, for the people of Pontefract and Castleford and for their children and grandchildren, I welcome the Budget.

  • Jeremy Corbyn – 1984 Speech on Care of the Elderly

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons on 22 February 1984.

    I shall attempt to be brief. It is a shame that so few hon. Members can participate in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) pointed out that there was a link between Health Service cuts, the effects on local social services and the effects on the elderly within each community. The council in the area that I represent has just been told by the Government that its social services budget is being overspent by well over 30 per cent. and that it is spending too much money on providing for the needs of the elderly. Yet the services for the elderly provided by Islington council, excellent as they are in many ways, are insufficient and do not meet the demands and wishes of councillors, the director of social services and others.

    The council provides 900 meals on wheels. 1,700 elderly people’s holidays, 2,674 households with home helps and 285 places for elderly people in day centres. Obviously, the cost of those services is considerable. It is incredible that, considering the borough’s needs and the increasing dependence of elderly people on the council to provide services, the Government should be telling the council to make cuts.

    On a first look at the demographic pattern of arty inner city area Ministers and many civil servants would say that there is a continual outflow of population from the boroughs. In many cases, that is true. An increasingly elderly and single population is dependent on local authorities to look after it. A document produced in 1982 by Islington council’s social services programme plan working party states: The elderly now form a higher proportion of our population than they did 10 years ago, since emigration from the borough has been mainly by adults and children, leaving the elderly with less support from their families and neighbours. The number of single-pensioner households has decreased from 10,563 in 1971 to 10,170 in 1981. More importantly, the proportion of such households has increased. In 1971, single-pensioner households formed 13.7 per cent. of all households in the borough, while in 1981 they formed 16 per cent. In 1971, people over retirement age formed 15 per cent. of the total population; in 1981, they formed 17.3 per cent. It is important to emphasise that the great majority of the elderly do not require, or do not use local authority services; but when other support to the elderly becomes less available from family and neighbours then increasingly the Social Services Department is asked to fill the gaps, particularly when Health Service bed norms fail to reflect the significance of high proportions of single pensioner households. Local authorities are facing an increasing demand upon their services and a demand for better services and more imaginative use of homes for the elderly. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), I have often been in old people’s homes. I have been profoundly depressed not just by the conditions within them — I am talking of homes throughout the country—but the attitude that leads us to force people to live in old people’s homes with a colour television blazing away in the corner as a piece of moving wallpaper and with people not participating in arty activity in the homes. That promotes and provokes senility.

    We need a more imaginative approach towards care for the elderly and a recognition of the growing needs of the ethnic minority elderly communities in many parts of London and the major cities. I am pleased that my area has formed an elderly persons’ luncheon club for retired West Indian people. The same is happening in many other places. It is incredible, and it makes me angry, that many old people in my constituency who rely entirely on the local authority to provide services for them do not have any relatives living nearby. They are not in a position to buy luncheon club facilities, to have meals on wheels delivered to them or to pay for maids or other people to come in to help. We do not have a huge, generous, middle class able to provide daily volunteers to do the work for the elderly. Unlike the case referred to by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who spoke on behalf of Kent county council, the local authority and political system in my area is determined to provide for all our old people.

    We resent the Government’s attitude when they say that Islington is spending £9 million too much on its social services when there is clearly a demand for them. That figure has not just been thrown at Islington council; nearly every London social service department has been told that it is spending well over the Government’s grant-related expenditure assessment formula. This is a scandal. If Conservative Members are serious about caring and supporting the elderly in a decent and humane way, they would not be imposing spending cuts on local authorities or attempting to control their spending.

    Conservative Members have been quick to tell us that there have been no Health Service cuts. I challenge and refute that. A further £163 million is required for the National Health Service to provide for the elderly. As the motion points out, we are looking for a comprehensive policy on care for the elderly. That means an end to the attacks on local authorities that are trying to provide services, an end to the cuts and closures in the Health Service and a different attitude towards transport, mobility allowances and bus passes.

    Mr. Winnick Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most unfortunate aspects of the Minister’s speech, and his sneering remarks about 1945, was his refusal to recognise that many advances have been made in the care of elderly people since 1945? With a Labour Government, with a large majority, 1945 was a watershed in the provision of services by the state and local authorities. Without such provisions the elderly would be far worse off than they are at present.

    Mr. Corbyn I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Government’s policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town.

    Last week saw the culmination of a massive campaign by pensioners throughout London, who are determined not to lose their concessionary bus and train passes, and who are determined not to see the gains won for them by a Labour-controlled GLC in 1973 swept away by the London regional transport authority.

    We must recognise the other matters that are affected by the Government’s change in policy. If cuts are made in public spending on the elderly or people in the Health Service, many relatives will be forced to look after elderly people. That care is often inadequate because the relatives cannot do the work. Women are forced to give up work to nurse elderly relatives. The problem caused by women having to give up jobs to look after elderly relatives is growing. One hears of unpaid carers giving up their work to look after elderly relatives without support or recognition from the state, despite lectures about bounteous volunteers.

    I have heard of people in their sixties and seventies being full-time carers for elderly patients in their nineties. That will become worse unless the Government change their attitude towards the elderly and recognise the work done in homes for the elderly, by meals on wheels workers and home helps. I am sponsored by the National Union of Public Employees. The Government have said that those workers are not worth £100 a week for the jobs they do and the dedication they show. They are subjected to moral blackmail, in the way that Health Service workers were two years ago.

    In addition to forcing local authorities to cut their spending, we have the Government’s privatisation policy. There is a growing number of residential and nursing homes for the elderly. Conservative Members have asked what is wrong with them. I believe that there are two things wrong. First, I am not satisfied that the DHSS has the resources or the capability, or is prepared to provide them to enable local authorities to undertake the necessary tight supervision and inspection of those homes to ensure that they adopt progressive caring policies. Secondly, there is motive. If there is a local authority home with a caring policy for the elderly, the motive is clear. The people who work in that home, who manage and administer it, are doing so because they care for the elderly and wish to see them looked after.

    The motive in operating a private home—not from the point of view of the staff but from that of the owners —is simply to make money out of care for the elderly. I reject the idea that one can privatise care for the elderly, which is what Conservative Members in their arrogant way continually tell us.

    Mr. Boyes Does my hon. Friend agree with the Association of Directors of Social Services, which says that the system is unfair and that the Government are prepared to allow private money to be poured into these homes whereas local authority homes are continually monitored by expensively paid auditors? On the one hand, private owners can provide even poorer services and get away with it, while, on the other, local authority homes are continuously under pressure.

    Mr. Corbyn My hon. Friend has hit the nail squarely on the head. The Government are restricting money for publicly run, publicly owned and publicly administered homes for the elderly yet at the same time are encouraging the development of private homes for the elderly without imposing the same conditions on them.

    My own authority has been told that it is 33 per cent. over budget on social services. When the Minister kindly finds the time to visit my borough, or any other poor inner city areas, he might care to tell the people which home for the elderly should be shut, how many home helps ought to be dismissed from post and where exactly the cuts should be made.

    Mr. Kenneth Clarke The hon. Gentleman’s whole speech is based on the ridiculous claim that his borough is in trouble for overspending solely because of its caring policies for the elderly. It is in trouble because of the totality of its spending. Islington is notorious for the money that it pours into crackpot political groups and the curious hiring of fringe officials to perform unnecessary duties on behalf of the borough. Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that something must be done to tackle Islington’s wasteful expenditure so that it can maintain the services and reduce the rate burden for some of its elderly population?

    Mr. Corbyn The Minister, who is a member of a Government who are promoting the Rates Bill, which seeks to control local authority spending, shows a worrying misunderstanding of the way in which the GREA formula works. That formula is specified department by department. My borough, along with others, has been told that it is overspending on social services. I am not talking about the totality of its spending. Indeed, virtually every other London borough has been told exactly the same thing by the Minister and his Government colleagues. He ought to understand the way in which the Government’s policies operate on social services spending.

    Mr. Clarke With respect, targets are not based on GREAs, as the hon. Gentleman, as an experienced councillor, knows perfectly well. He makes a quite misleading use of GREAs by suggesting that that is the measure of overspending that the Government are taking into account. They are taking account of the inexorable year-on-year increase in Islington’s budget, because that borough spends its money in profligate, wasteful and sometimes downright foolish ways. That has got the borough into trouble and is threatening its services.

    Mr. Corbyn I do not know how long we shall be able to continue this discussion. The Minister ought to get a new brief on what the rate capping legislation means. The GREA formula is specific on each department, and it is specific that social services departments in London are overspending.

    Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands.

    Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.

  • Michael Heseltine – 1966 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Michael Heseltine in the House of Commons on 14 July 1966.

    I was deeply aware of the regard in which my predecessor, Sir Henry Studholme, was held in this House. It is matched by the affection extended to him in the Tavistock Division. He represented that Division with great distinction for 23 years. I am particularly conscious, as I am honoured to rise for the first time to speak in this House, of the standards he set when he was a Member of Parliament.

    I know from what I have heard in this debate:hat we shall hear objections to the working of the Bill. We have heard some of them expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling). As a director of a company in the recruitment field, I saw something of these difficulties and I wish to make reference to them, but before I raise those questions I should like to raise what to me are questions which are fundamental not only to the Bill, but to the thinking of hon. Members on both sides of the House.

    I wish to ask what right the House has to assume that there is a concept of national interest to which each of us as citizens owes a prime obligation in the every-day conduct of our job or business. If such a claim can be made of us I ask whether the making of that claim will so stimulate our energies and talents that the country will derive the greatest benefit from our endeavours.

    There are two conditions which would be necessary to be fulfilled if we are to accept the concept of true national interest. The first condition is that it is capable of definition and that that definition must be acceptable not only to a political party, but to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

    The second is that all sections of the nation shall be expected to share in any sacrifice which might be required by serving the national interest. I believe that on these two counts the Bill is unacceptable. By keeping the economy in its present over-heated state, many hon. Members would believe that we are acting against what we would term to be the national interest. There is no consensus on this subject today.

    On the second point, only statutory control would enable the trade unions and the large industrial concerns to have the confidence that they were not embarking on an experiment from which the less controllable parts of the private sector would opt out. Even if the First Secretary were able to introduce legislation of the sort which would ensure control, I do not think that this would encourage on the part of each of us the sort of endeavours that the right hon. Gentleman would require. The First Secretary is concerned to involve the public in the problems facing the country. The overwhelming majority of the public are now aware—the First Secretary of State must take some of the credit for having educated them—that the only way in which the country can enjoy increasing benefits is if we can get faster growth.

    There are two other considerations which I ask the First Secretary to bear in mind. First, a policy of full employment does not mean that each one of us is entitled to expect that the same job will be available to us in the same place throughout our lives and industries cannot automatically expect Government protection from historical trends and from overseas competition. Secondly, the only way to extract the maximum effort from the majority of our citizens is to reward by financial incentive. Businessmen will respond to one thing, and one thing only—the opportunity to increase their salaries, their profits, and the capital value of their companies.

    If we wish, as I am sure we do, to enlist the nation’s greatest efforts, tangible rewards must be placed within the reach of everyone. There is no doubt that the First Secretary is one of the most persuasive and eloquent members of the Government. He has gained remarkable success in persuading people to say that they agree with the targets he has set, but I urge him to realise that it is one thing to persuade people to say that they agree. It is quite another thing for those people to go away and carry out what they have said they agree with. If the First Secretary could be present at every management meeting, if he could stand behind all the retailers’ counters, and if he could travel daily with the men going to work in Britain’s factories, then I believe that in a short term such a policy would be credible. The fact is that such an idea is patently absurd and, therefore, an alternative solution is required.

    There can be few hon. Members who have not engaged in some negotiation which, in theory at least, would now fall within the purview of this legislation. There must be few who have not negotiated a salary increase, who have not evolved a pricing structure, or who have not disposed of capital in order to secure the maximum return. These are commonplace activities. I do not believe that behind the closed doors of human motivation considerations of the national interest weigh in the balance. I believe that it would be unhealthy if they did.

    There is involved in this discussion this afternoon an obligation as fundamental as any that we may owe to the nation. We have obligations to ourselves. There are many hon. Members on this side of the House who believe that we serve our community best by maximising the return on our own endeavours. Of course there are exceptions to every generalisation, but for the generalisation I would say that the community grows stronger where its members set out to maximise their earnings and where its companies strive to maximise their profits.

    It is the Government’s duty to establish beyond any doubt what they consider the national interest to be and, once they have so defined the national interest, not to urge or to beg or to plead, but to legislate on behalf of that national interest. That must be the purpose of the Government. Responsibility for interpreting the national interest cannot be spread into every trade union conference room, into every board room, nor, indeed, into every private home. Surely it is the responsibility of us in the House to lead. If we surrender that right we shall fail in our obligations to those who have sent us here.

    There are many practical difficulties facing this legislation. I want to say something about the problems which confront anybody trying to hold or recruit salaried staff today. The shortage of skilled and trained management staff is acute. The temptations facing them to move from one job to another are intense. A small but significant group of these people are particularly tempted by the carrots dangled in front of them from America. I know of one occasion only this week when a telephone call out of the blue offered a man a 300 per cent. increase on the salary he was earning.

    Even the employee devoted to his own job cannot avoid the £8 million worth of recruitment advertising which will appear in the national press in 1966. Indeed, it is indicative of the problem that in 1961 recruitment advertising in the national Press amounted to £4,193,000. By 1965, the figure had more than doubled to £8,535,000. It is now widely accepted by employers that, to recruit a suitable candidate for middle management, the advertising costs alone in the national Press can exceed or amount to up to £250.

    I mentioned earlier the temptations on employees to seek increases by changing their jobs. These employees are sought by specialist registers which are prepared to distribute their names to company after company until they are offered another, and usually higher paid, job. Job changing, which is usually synonymous with an increase in salary, is increasing.

    It is further encouraged by the growth of employment agencies. Between 1956 and 1965 in the whole of the London County Council area licences were issued to 300 new employment agencies. This was an annual rate of 37. In the year ended 31st March, 1966, the Westminster City Council which took over most of the responsibilities in this respect from the London County Council, issued 93 licences to new employment agencies.

    The latest development of this activity in this country is the establishment of the professional head hunter. There is nothing new in companies making offers to employees of outside organisations, but I believe that it is a new practice new being established that lists of highly qualified, specialised staff are approached, without any indication of dissatisfaction on their part, and offered new jobs, often at a greatly increased salary.

    Against this background, the background which has built the job-changing market into a highly specialised operation, it s simply of no value to tell employers that they should try to hold their staff to a 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. norm, or even lower—the figure is now to be reduced. Employees often do not want to leave the companies that employ them; but they will not, as a general rule, remain with their employers if their salary scales fall below the national average. As we all know, every application for an increase in salary or for a new job is a special case for the person submitting it. Today, no employer can lightly refuse one of his good staff an increase in salary of £100 or £150, because he knows that the replacement will almost certainly be more expensive and probably not of so high a calibre.

    I have seen it argued that, although this section of the market cannot really be controlled by a prices and incomes policy, it is not a section which ought to concern us particularly because of its size. It is undoubtedly a fairly small market, but it is not obscure. What is happening in this market is an example to the majority of people in other sections of the community. The ripples spread out and the majority cannot be expected to accept readily a policy which they know does not apply to the minority.

    Further, although the highly volatile section of this market is probably restricted to the younger, more highly qualified personnel up to 40 years of age, this section of the salary market is the dynamic for a much larger market. Forty per cent. of employees are now salaried. Part of the 40 per cent. covers the public sector and is, therefore, theoretically, under Government control. But this sector is directly linked with the private sector because interchangeability of career patterns is considerable. One of the most thorough and accurate salary surveys is based on co-operative research between private sector companies and nationalised industries. No major industry can afford to develop the reputation that its pay scales have fallen behind those of other industries.

    There are further independent salary surveys caried out by recruitment agencies. These concentrate on people who are basically job changers and are, therefore, more likely to be bidding up the market. The purpose of the surveys is to enable companies to discover whether they are falling out of line with national trends. Throughout a given period, these surveys consider thousands of salary standards and the pattern of all new and usually rising levels of remuneration developments. The surveys are then distributed widely to personnel managers, encouraging them to bring their existing staff into line with the salaries being commanded by those changing their jobs.

    There is only one impression that one can see from the salary market. Under present conditions of demand for staff, it is in a totally uncontrollable state. There are so many employees and employers that any form of control that is not imposed and not seen to be imposed cannot work. The Bill substitutes statutory exhortation for Ministerial exhortation, but the force of that exhortation is no stronger.

    Indeed, I believe that we are acting out a charade, because by the time the Bill becomes law the measures that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken, and those he is to take, will have removed the need for the Bill. The Government have committed themselves to a policy of deflation and if the steps not taken up to now are not sufficient to raise the level of unemployment the Government will take further steps. I believe that they have accepted that as the policy they must pursue.

    In the short run, it is simply not necessary for hon. Members on this side of the House to answer the question,”What would you have done?” The Chancellor has answered it for us. The core of the problem is the need to pursue policies which can obtain growth on which the ability of the Government and the public to have a choice must be based. We need a major redeployment of our resources and to retrain labour. I accept that this means paying higher unemployment benefits in order to remove the fear of unemployment but we must inject a wider degree of competition and ask ourselves not what other industries we should nationalise but what nationalised industries can be denationalised. Above all, we must so adjust our taxation system that every citizen is encouraged to earn more.

  • Geoff Hoon – 1992 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made in the House of Commons by Geoff Hoon on 20 May 1992.

    I congratulate the hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Duncan-Smith) on his maiden speech. I hope that he will take it as a compliment when I say that he looked and sounded as though he had been here for years. I am sure that he will soon be fitted with his own leather jacket.

    Perhaps I have the easiest task of any new hon. Member in paying proper tribute to my predecessor. Frank Haynes was popular in all parts of the House because of his genuine friendliness and good humour, his commitment to a range of good causes—from local hospitals to the fortunes of Sutton Town football club. He was popular with political friends and opponents alike.

    Had I needed any convincing of that, it was confirmed recently when, with characteristic generosity, he agreed to help me to show a constituency school party round the Palace of Westminster. He has a formidable reputation as a tour guide and the Kirkby Woodhouse school party was not disappointed. As we made our way round the Palace it was clear that we were in the presence of a star. Wherever we went we met people who would stop and congratulate Frank and wish him well for the future. Everyone from police officers to Members of the House of Lords had a good word for him.

    Frank’s popularity is reflected in the constituency of Ashfield. There cannot be an organisation, group, club or society of which Frank is not a member or which he has not helped in some way over the years. I say that with some confidence as, since my election, representatives from them have all written to me asking me to carry on the traditions that Frank established. Frank’s talent and obvious popularity are based on the sheer force of his personality and the sheer volume of his voice.

    Frank had one quality that I believe has not been given proper attention: his considerable political skills which have perhaps been overlooked. He won Ashfield after arguably one of the worst by-elections in Labour party history. He held Ashfield for the Labour party in some extraordinarily difficult circumstances in Nottingham. He was greatly assisted in that by the wisdom and experience of his agents, Clarrie Booler and Bryan Denham.

    In 1979, Frank replaced the current hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith), who might like to know that he still has at least one supporter in Ashfield. In the dying days of the general election campaign, I knocked on the door of the house of an elderly lady, who kindly invited me in and asked why I had taken so long to get round to see her. Like any candidate anxious to win votes and influence people, I politely explained that it was a big constituency and it took a little time to get around. “Tim Smith,” she said, “called on everyone.” In my candidate’s mode, I still more politely pointed out that there were 75,000 electors in Ashfield and I could not see how he could have met them all. “Of course he did,” she said, “regularly.”

    My candidate’s charm school smile was wearing a little thin by the time she asked me what I had to say for myself. I launched into the two-minute version of the Labour party manifesto, trying to steer the conversation in the direction of her voting intentions. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I have already voted by post.” I now know what is the political equivalent of the blind man in a dark room looking for a dark cat. It is a Labour candidate canvassing a Tory lady who has already voted by post.

    In making my preparations for this speech, I realised that the last three people to represent Ashfield now belong to three different political parties. David Marquand left Ashfield for a career in the European Commission. By contrast, I shall be leaving the European Parliament to concentrate on the constituency of Ashfield. He made his maiden speech in 1966, when he was able to state that mining was the linchpin of the economy of Ashfield. He went on to say, however: the coal mining industry of Nottinghamshire faces a grave crisis of confidence.”—[Official Report, 5 May 1966; Vol. 727, c. 1965] He argued that it was urgently necessary to work out a comprehensive fuel programme in order to be able to assure the miners of the east midlands about their future for a long time to come.

    These words have echoed down the years. There has been a massive reduction in the number of local collieries. I expect to represent Ashfield when its last colliery closes. That will be a sad day for the local community and it presents a bleak prospect for young people, who will also face difficulties finding work in Ashfield’s other great industry, the textile trade.

    From 1955, Ashfield was represented by Will Warbey. He had first been elected to the House to represent Luton in 1945. On 23 August 1945, in his maiden speech, he used words which are of particular relevance to today’s debate: absolute national sovereignty is now an out-dated factor in international affairs. He quoted the right hon. Member for Woodford, Winston Churchill, who had talked of the mixing of the nations, and went on: I believe there is a great opportunity in the future for nation States to get more mixed together, especially in their economic functions. We have a particularly excellent opportunity in the case of those nations in the north and west of Europe, and I include our own, which, I am glad to say, have now very largely a common political outlook, and which are intending to pursue similar policies of planning for full employment and for raising standards of living. We can get together and plan very largely in common in order to achieve those objectives.”—[Official Report, 23 August 1945; Vol. 413, c. 898] That was what the House was discussing in August 1945, and in essence it is what this debate should be about.

    The Members meeting in Parliament in 1945 were determined to end the divisions of Europe based on the extreme nationalism that had caused two catastrophic world wars. Like many others in a similar situation, my father volunteered to fight in the second world war on his 18th birthday. When he came to Strasbourg shortly after my election to the European Parliament, he said how much better what I was doing was than what he and millions of others had had to do in the second world war.

    We now have to build on the European foundations established by previous generations. Although the Maastricht treaty is a far from perfect addition to the European building, it contains much that will contribute to the mixing of nations. Others have already criticised Britain’s opt-out on economic and monetary union and on the social chapter. Since I am still a member of the European Parliament I want to concentrate my remarks on the institutional aspects of the treaty and to express my regret at the timid steps taken towards real democracy in the decision-making processes of the European Community.

    Too often we have heard Ministers complain about decisions taken in Brussels as if they had played no part in the process or had no responsibility for the failure to hold the European Commission properly to account. The same Ministers were responsible for the intergovernmental negotiations that led to the treaty. If Brussels is to blame, so are the Ministers who have failed to reform the treaty to control the Commission and to make it answerable to those who have been directly elected to represent the people of Europe. Those representatives sit in national Parliaments and in the European Parliament.

    Members of all the Parliaments of Europe should be working together more closely to improve the democracy of the European Community. We could start by considering how to improve the working relationship between Members of this House and British Members of the European Parliament. There remains an uneasy tension between those two democratically elected institutions which, in a European context, should be following a common purpose—the proposing, amending and approving of European legislation as well as holding the European Executive to account.

    The uneasy relationship exists in spite of the fact that in the present House of Commons, 62 hon. Members have experience of one or more of the European institutions. Thirty of my new colleagues have been members of the European Parliament, directly elected or appointed like our Speaker, and 32 have been members of the Council of Europe.

    The uneasy relationship allows the European Commission—the least democratic of the Community’s institutions—to assert a disproportionate influence over legislation. During the debate on the Single European Act, it was suggested in Britain that the treaty changes then being debated marked a final shift of power from Westminster to the European Parliament.

    In practice, the European Commission has significantly increased its power over legislation because of its ability to determine which amendments to propose during the various stages of the legislative process. In effect, it has been able to play off the European Parliament against the Council of Ministers, telling the Council that the European Parliament would not accept certain amendments and, in turn, telling the Parliament that it could not propose Parliament’s amendments to the Council because they would be rejected. As a result, the Commission’s policy line has been strengthened at the expense of the democratically elected Parliament and Council.

    Certain measures in the Maastricht treaty will undoubtedly tilt the institutional balance slightly in the direction of the European Parliament. It will do little, however, to make the European Commission subject to democratic control. Similarly, the decisions of the Council of Ministers, meeting in secret, are rarely subject to democratic scrutiny. The Maastricht treaty will do little to improve the ability of elected Members of national Parliaments to oversee the activities of Ministers meeting in council.

    Much of the debate so far has concentrated on criticisms of the present operation of the European Community. I share some of the criticisms, but I disagree strongly about the appropriate solutions. If the European Community overrides democracy, the solution is to make it more democratic.

    I am grateful for the House’s attention.