Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, at the LSE on 10 September 2007.

INTRODUCTION – THE END OF ECONOMIC HISTORY?

When I studied economics, twenty years ago, arguments raged about the most basic principles of how to run the economy.

There may have been some agreement about aims: to save Britain from being the sick man of Europe, and raise living standards throughout the country.

But there was a vast gulf between left and right as to how this could best be achieved.

The left advocated more intervention and government ownership.

Those on the right argued for monetary discipline and free enterprise.

That debate is now settled.

Over the past fifteen years, governments across the world have put into practice the principles of monetary discipline and free enterprise.

The result?

A vast increase in global wealth.

The world economy more stable than for a generation.

Global income doubled.

Two billion people have escaped subsistence poverty, and joined the world economy.

So the conclusion appears…well, conclusive.

Francis Fukuyama argued in the early 1990s that, if we see human history as the acting-out of intellectual disputes, then history was over.

On the political battlefield, democracy had emerged the victor; in economics, liberalism had prevailed.

Thus in 1990 the “post-Cold War consensus” began: the idea that, as Fukuyama put it, history had ended in the triumph of liberal democracy and market economics.

Today, Fukuyama’s political thesis – the victory of liberal democracy – has been qualified, shall we say, by events since 2001.

And in this lecture I want to ask what has happened to his thesis in the economic sphere – the consensus on free markets.

Have we really seen the end of economic history?

AGREEMENT ON THE FUNDAMENTALS

Here in Britain, it is tempting to answer that the consensus is intact.

The principles put forward by Nigel Lawson in his 1984 Mais lecture have become standard practice:

Use macroeconomic policy to ensure stability and control inflation.

Use microeconomic policy to promote supply side growth.

Less intervention; more competition; an increasingly open economy.

Added to this, the monetary framework that we developed in the early 1990s – a combination of inflation targeting and a floating exchange rate – brought to an end decades of argument in Britain, and academic debate.

I’m proud that this is one of the few countries in the world where all serious candidates for high office support the principles of free trade and monetary discipline.Other countries – even America or Germany – have senior politicians who disagree with economic liberalism.

Not us.

Indeed the whole New Labour project was built on recognising, and accepting, the free market consensus.

When I visited India last year everyone – from the Prime Minister to the chief executive of Tata Steel – told me that Britain’s political consensus on free markets is one of our most important selling points as a destination for trade and investment.

So I will not exaggerate the differences between myself and Gordon Brown on the overall economic framework.

And yet my argument today is that we have in fact reached the limits of the post-Cold War consensus.

We have reached its limits because the post-Cold War consensus was actually a consensus on how to manage Cold War-era economies.

It does not provide answers to the questions that have emerged since 1990.

MARKET TURBULENCE

Of course, in many ways the times we have been living through in the past decade have been remarkably benign.

Indeed, the recent turbulence in the credit markets has reminded us of just that fact…

…as well as the reality that the very success of a competitive and innovative economy can lead to new challenges.

Our hugely sophisticated financial markets match funds with ideas better than ever before.

They have facilitated cheap credit that has helped companies expand, helped families achieve their dreams, and helped entrepreneurs put their ideas into practice.

Yet that same cheap credit has also increased the social problems associated with over-indebtedness, and potentially has made us more vulnerable to global shocks.

And it leaves central banks grappling with the question of whether providing help now will increase the danger in future.

It is still too soon to know what impact this latest bout of financial turbulence will have on the real economy of jobs and investment.

But it is clear that our economy has not been best prepared.

Gordon Brown’s reckless strategy of excessive borrowing, leaving our economy with the largest structural deficit in Europe, has left us ill-prepared to respond if the turbulence spreads more widely.

That is why we are determined to create a more secure framework for economic stability in this country.

In terms of monetary policy, by enhancing the independence of the Monetary Policy Committee.

And in fiscal policy, by giving control over monitoring of the fiscal rules to an independent body.

These measures will strengthen monetary policy, and ensure that fiscal policy supports rather than undermines it.

But while these differences on the execution of macroeconomic policy are important, they are not as great as the difference between the approaches of right and left on the big questions that will determine the course of economic history in this century.

Our distinct responses to these big questions about the future give the lie to the idea that we have reached the end of economic history.

There are three questions in particular that the modern world demands answers to – and I would like to address these questions today.

First, the best way to stimulate economic growth in the face of globalisation.

Second, the best way to stimulate green growth in the face of climate change.

And third, the best way to stimulate social growth in the face of inequality and social breakdown.

ECONOMIC GROWTH: SUPPLY SIDE REFORM

It is globalisation that most insistently prompts us to consider afresh the question of economic growth, and whether there really is consensus about the right way to stimulate that growth in the post-Cold War era.

History did not stop in 1990, any more than the church clock stopped at 10 to 3 one summer day in 1914.

John Maynard Keynes’ famous description of the pre-World War One Londoner, “sipping his morning tea in bed” and ordering by telephone “the various products of the whole earth” is famous because that world abruptly ended in the guns of August.

Many years of economic nationalism followed, until a new era of globalisation began in our own time.

So we must not assume, like Keynes’s Edwardian Londoner, that the age of Amazon, eBay and Google is here to stay forever.

The thousands of people who demonstrated against the WTO in Seattle, or against the G8 recently in Germany, certainly don’t think that globalisation is a necessary or inevitable process.

As George Osborne has put it, every generation has to make the case for free markets.

And every generation has to develop the mechanisms to make free markets work better.

Nearly two years ago I asked our economic competitiveness policy group to set out proposals for the way Britain should meet the challenges of globalisation.

Its findings were very clear.

To stimulate economic growth in the new global economy, dramatic supply side reform is required.

Government must regulate and tax enterprises less.

But Britain’s competitiveness is not simply a matter of government getting out of the way.

It must also do more to secure the skills, energy and transport infrastructure that help us compete.

For example, we need a radical simplification of business taxes, to lower the rate and broaden the base.

But we must also ensure that we remain at the cutting edge of science and technology.

Government funding of science and technology may look to some like old-fashioned interventionism.

Yet because the findings of primary research can be too far from the market to be commercially viable, there is a strong case for direct government intervention.

Some of the most successful free market economies, like the United States, spend the highest proportions of their income on government-funded scientific research.

Our taskforce on Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics has set out an ambitious agenda for promoting science and innovation…

…including proposals to promote scientific research in our universities, and make it easier for innovative start-up businesses to win government contracts.

While we bring forward supply-side reform proposals that are imaginative and appropriate to the scale of the challenges we face, the Labour government is in my view moving in the wrong direction.

And so I do not believe there is consensus on the best way to stimulate economic growth in Britain today.

Our economy is labouring under the highest tax burden in our peacetime history, the longest tax code in the world, and an explosion of new regulations that cost us more than £50 billion a year.

Just last week we heard that the latest version of Tolley’s tax handbook is more than twice as long as it was in 1997.

The publishers even had to change the formatting just to stop it going to five volumes.

The result of all this is that Britain has fallen from 4th to 10th in league tables of economic competitiveness.

Indeed, last week the Institute of Directors concluded from its annual survey that Britain’s competitiveness was “remarkable by its mediocrity.”

This is not an abstract concern.

Research done here at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance shows that on average a British worker has to work an extra day each week, just to produce the same as an equivalent worker in France.

Our average rate of productivity growth – what Gordon Brown himself has called the “fundamental yardstick” of economic performance – has actually fallen over the last decade.

Meanwhile in America it has almost doubled.

Both a symptom and a cause of Britain’s falling overall productivity is the productivity of our public services, for which the Government is responsible.

Perhaps the biggest mystery in British politics is how Labour can have spent so much and achieved so little.

I believe the answer is a top-down system of central control and targets that takes power away from the professionals who deliver public services and the citizens who use them.

And at the centre of it all a Treasury that, under Gordon Brown, was so busy trying to do everything that it lost sight of its single most important role – delivering value for money.

We believe that it’s time for change…that it’s time for modern Conservative supply-side reform to stimulate higher economic growth.

The agenda is clear.

We need deregulation to promote commercial competitiveness.
We need decentralisation to promote public sector productivity.

And overall, we need to share the proceeds of economic growth between higher investment in our public services and lower taxes.

George Osborne and I have made clear that we will put economic stability before promises of up-front, un-funded tax cuts.

As George Osborne has set out, we will match Labour’s spending totals, and by growing the economy more quickly than public spending over an economic cycle, we will deliver a lower tax economy over time.

Sharing the proceeds of growth is a significant policy choice.

There are clear dividing lines here, and I believe that in time economic history will show that once again those on the political right, and not those on the left, have the correct analysis and the most productive policy solutions.

GREEN GROWTH: MARKETS AND GREEN TAXES

Just as the pressing need for supply-side reform in the face of globalisation should enable us to challenge the notion of a post-Cold War consensus on economic growth…

…and the accompanying fiction that we have reached the end of economic history…

…the threat of imminent, irreversible, and catastrophic change to the climate of our planet should prompt us to challenge any perceived consensus on green growth…

…the vital need to protect our environment through policy that enhances, rather than impedes, wealth creation.

I won’t rehearse here the arguments in favour of action to halt climate change.

Let me simply ask the big question to which economics must provide a modern answer:

How can we make economic growth sustainable for our planet?

This is not a question many people were asking at the end of the Cold War, but they are certainly asking it now.

The pollution that leads to global warming is one of the greatest market failures of all time.

Some argue that to save the planet we must stop growing altogether.

Capitalism has brought this threat upon us, they say, and we must reduce consumption now.

Others argue that whether or not climate change is man-made, there is nothing we can realistically do to stop it, so we should simply prepare for the consequences.

I think both are wrong.

As Nicholas Stern’s authoritative report showed, the likely economic cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action.

So what is the action we need to take?

I believe that if we blame capitalism for climate change, we should also look to capitalism for the solution.

Jonathan Porritt, in his important book Capitalism as if the world matters, argues explicitly that we must harness the power of the market to deliver progress on the environment.

Of course we must look at all the tools at our disposal, including green taxes, trading, regulation and technology.

But in designing and using those tools, we must understand their limitations.

Consider for example the choice between green taxes and carbon trading.

In theory, the argument for trading schemes is compelling.

Government sets the limit, and the market puts a price on carbon.

The result is that carbon is reduced at the lowest marginal cost.

But a growing body of evidence shows that the reality can be very different.

Consider the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the largest scheme of its kind.

Partly due to government backsliding on national emissions quotas, the first phase of the scheme has suffered from low and variable carbon prices that have failed to provide the long term incentives needed to affect investment decisions.

I support the scheme and I hope that the second and third phases will be more successful.

But time is running out.

More generally, trading schemes may seem the obvious free market solution, based as they are on market transactions.

But crucially they are artificial markets dependent on government regulation and monitoring for their existence.

A growing strand of opinion on the right argues that green taxes provide both better environmental outcomes and make more economic sense.

In a paper for the free market think tank the American Enterprise Institute, Kenneth Green and others have gone so far as to argue that because of the cost in terms of bureaucracy, the opportunities for fraud, and the inherent incentive “to push the legality at all stages of the process”, carbon trading systems are bound to suffer limitations.

Instead, they argue for environmental tax reform.

I believe that to confront the challenge of climate change and to stimulate the green growth we need, we must use a combination of the tools available to us.

Trading schemes will play an important role, but they depend crucially on real government leadership in setting quotas and ensuring they are kept to.

Environmental taxes must also play a role.

As taxes will always have an incentive effect – discouraging whatever they are levied on – why not use them to discourage bad things rather than good things?

To mitigate market failure, rather than pervert good decision-making?

Environmental tax reform can have economic benefits too – the so called “double dividend” of lower pollution and lower taxes on jobs and investment.

But in this country, that is not what we have seen.

By using green taxes as extra stealth taxes, Gordon Brown has given them a bad name.

I’m determined that the Conservative approach will be different.

With my Government, any new green taxes will be replacement taxes, not new stealth taxes.

In a few days, our Quality of Life Policy Group will publish its report.

It will contain many recommendations on tackling climate change, at home and abroad, including recommendations on green taxes.

As with all the reports in our Policy Review, we will study its proposals carefully.

But let me be clear.

We will raise green taxes, and use the proceeds to reduce taxes elsewhere.

That is the right direction for the environment and it’s the right direction for our economy.

It is the best way to deliver the green growth that must be our aim.

SOCIAL GROWTH: INEQUALITY AND WELL-BEING

Let me turn now to the last great counter-argument to the post Cold War consensus.

The case for the end of economic history is based on the observation that everyone now agrees on the need for economic growth and the way to achieve it – even if sometimes they don’t always practice what they preach.

But there is an area of profound disagreement beyond this consensus.

It concerns the need to stimulate the social growth that people demand in the face of inequality and social breakdown.

How shall we help, firstly, those left behind by economic growth – and secondly, those for whom economic growth is not enough?

This matters, for the simple reason that everyone is in one or other of these groups.

First let me talk about those left behind.

If we are to enjoy all the potential benefits of the modern economic era, we need to understand why so many people are deeply anxious about it.

For a start, we have to be honest and admit that when the winds of globalisation are unleashed, our societies become more prosperous overall but people can get left behind.

There are towns in Britain where the retreat of traditional industries has helped to leave a quarter of older working men on disability benefit year after year.

Where the winds of globalisation feel like a chilling blast, not an invigorating breeze.

As is often pointed out, globalisation tends to decrease inequalities between countries, but it can also increase inequalities within countries.

So we should celebrate the benefits of globalisation.

But we must also recognise our moral obligation to the people and the places left behind.

For government that means preparing our economy to make the most of globalisation, and preparing our society to cope with the disruption it can bring.

The tragedy is that for all their rhetoric – and for all their undoubted sincerity and effort – our present Labour government has failed in these vital tasks.

I have already noted Labour’s economic failure, in particular with respect to supply-side reform.

This is a record that is, I think, increasingly well-understood in the economics community and beyond.

Perhaps less well understood is Labour’s failure to prepare our society.

Too many people in our country are not sharing in the new global prosperity.

There is a poverty of ambition, of capability, and of hope – increasingly passed down through generations – which the world’s rising prosperity has failed to dent.

It is a startling fact that despite the vast rises in wealth across the world, in Britain, the poorest in our society have got poorer in the past ten years.

Social mobility is falling.

Some estates in Britain have a lower life expectancy than the Gaza Strip.

But the old solutions are not working.

Over the past decade the degree of redistribution between regions of the UK has reached unprecedented levels.

Yet still, as the IPPR has demonstrated, regional inequality has actually risen.

They warn that the north-east remains at the lower end of achievement in education, health and welfare-to-work despite receiving some of England’s highest total spending on public services per head over the last decade.

And of course it is not just inequality between regions that is growing, but inequality between communities and people within regions.

Areas of entrenched poverty sit alongside pockets of vast wealth.

We have known for years that the old responses of the old left – hostility to markets and enterprise – were spectacularly ill-suited to the task of overcoming these challenges.

But now we can see that the new responses of the new left – targets and transfers – have failed too.

Child poverty is rising, despite a huge increase in means-tested benefits.

On Government figures, 600,000 more people are in extreme poverty than in 1997.

Massive payments from one region to another have not halted the growing disparity.

It is clear that social growth – enabling everyone to share in growing global prosperity – requires new solutions.

We know that high taxation and over-regulation can stifle the enterprising spirit.

We know that without a decent education, success is ever harder.

And we know that the greatest force for social progress is the force of people’s determination to build a better life for themselves and their family.

So let us take those lessons and apply them across Britain.

Our approach reflects the modern Conservative freedom agenda, aiming to give people more power and control over their lives…an approach built around enterprise, education and aspiration.

Enterprise – where we learn from countries where radical benefits reform, with tough incentives combined with patient, personalised support from the voluntary sector, has moved people from welfare to work.

Education – where we learn from countries where radical schools reform, enabling the creation of new schools that give parents a real choice within the state sector, has helped increase standards, discipline and achievement – particularly in poor neighbourhoods

And aspiration – where we understand that none of this will work without a renewed drive to create a can-do culture of opportunity.

Over the past year, across Britain the average family has seen their take home pay actually fall in real terms.

Thanks to a rising cost of living and extra stealth taxes, families are finding their budgets increasingly squeezed.

And when young families look to take their first steps onto the housing ladder, they find that even the bottom rung is unattainable.

Half of all families now rely on their parents for help in buying their first home.

Yet because the threshold has not kept up with the rise in house prices, more than a third of families now find that aspiration hampered as they fall into the inheritance tax net.

There are so many ways in which those striving to reach their aspirations for a decent life are being hit.

Because of the complex tax and benefits system, millions of people on low and middle incomes find that if they earn a little extra, or move from part time to full time work, the taxman takes away more than two thirds of every extra pound they earn.

So any revenue raised from new green taxes will be used to reduce the burden on those striving hard for a better life.

WELL-BEING

I grew up in a home that was materially privileged.

But as I have often said, the real privilege of my upbringing was a strong family.

And that is the point I want to end on today.

If a significant, unacceptably large minority of our fellow countrymen and women are trapped in poverty, in all the horrors of multiple deprivation and social injustice, the majority of us are also trapped in an economic system which can be destructive of family and community life – destructive of all the elements which contribute to well-being.

Let me explain clearly what I mean when I talk about well-being.

I do not mean some woolly, new-age, anti-capitalist agenda which favours downshifting rather than ambition, or a hair-shirt Puritanism rather than the legitimate pursuit of happiness.

Capitalism is clearly the greatest agent of human fulfilment that human ingenuity has ever contrived.

But capitalism on its own is not enough: an approach that ignores the rest of life is one that is badly misguided.

For me, well-being is simply the opposite of the social breakdown that we see all around us in countless daily manifestations…

…crime and anti-social behaviour, rudeness and incivility, litter on the streets and a transport system which makes it such a hassle to get around.

For me, well-being means a determination to improve the quality of life for everyone in our country.

Let me demonstrate my point with a quotation I am fond of from Robert Kennedy:

“Our gross national product… if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them.

It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets.

It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.

It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Those words have a special relevance for Britain today.

Over the last ten years we have fallen in the league tables of quality of life.

For example, the UN’s Human Development Index, devised by Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq, found that quality of life in the UK has fallen from 10th in the world a decade ago to 18th in the world today.

That is a terrible finding.

How do we increase well-being alongside wealth?

How do we stimulate the social growth that people so badly want?

Economists are now fully engaged in this debate.

On one side of the argument, Lord Layard has pointed out that once out of poverty, happiness doesn’t seem to rise with income, and more equal societies are happier.

From this he draws a simple policy conclusion: more redistribution is needed.

Yet this simple analysis only gives part of the picture.

Recent work by Paul Ormerod and Helen Johns shows that redistribution does not increase happiness either.

In fact, as Ormerod and Johns show, the few things that do consistently correlate with well-being are the sense of trustfulness in the society we live in, our health, and the strength of our marriages.

And this points me to a central insight of Conservatism – central to the Conservative philosophy throughout our Party’s history.

The value of institutions.

Abstract national wealth – a high rate of GDP – is necessary, but not sufficient, to deliver higher GWB, or general well-being.

We need to tackle poverty, and we need to tackle inequality – particularly the gap between the mainstream and those left behind.

But we need more than that.

We need above all an agenda which puts not the individual, not the state, but society at the centre of national life:

… society in all its forms: families and local councils, trade unions and churches, small shops and great universities, charities and clubs and protest groups …

…all the institutions and associations that in Bobby Kennedy’s words, “make life worthwhile.”

That’s what I call a richer society.

That, to me, is the real object of economic policy.

CONCLUSION

So far from this being the end of economic history, far from there being a consensus on economic matters today…

I believe there are still great battles to fight.

But these are different battles, on different terrain.

The fight for supply-side reform that will deliver economic growth in the face of globalisation.

The fight for environmental protection that will deliver green growth in the face of climate change.

And the fight for well-being that will deliver social growth in the face of inequality and social breakdown.

Economic growth; green growth; social growth.

These are the big questions in the economic debates of the modern age.

This is the new economic history that it falls to this generation to write.

And these are the battles that the centre-right of politics is once again uniquely equipped to fight.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 7 September 2007.

I’ve brought you here as we face a great fight for the future of our country.

I don’t know whether the general election will be in weeks, months or years.

But we will be ready…

Ready with a plan to change Britain for good, a plan that is as bold and ambitious as the one on which we fought Labour the last time we came from opposition to win.

Ready with policies that meet the great challenges and opportunities of our times and which are the product of the most serious, comprehensive policy review ever conducted by an opposition party.

And ready with a message that reaches every part of this country and inspires every person in this country – a message of change, optimism and hope.

Today I want to talk about the things that drive me, why I want to put this forward and why I want to win.

THE CHANGES WE’VE MADE

Two years ago I said we had to change to win and I’ve led those changes.

We changed our Party, the way we selected candidates, and now almost a third are women, but still we must go further.

We changed the issues we talked about: NHS as well as crime, the environment as well as Europe, well-being as well as wealth creation.

But we changed something more fundamental – our whole approach to the great challenges and opportunities Britain faces.

We have been doing the long-term thinking we need to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

I want to thank all of you for the work you’ve done with our Policy Groups.

As a result of that work, we’re leading the argument on the big challenges …

….social breakdown … improving the quality of life for everyone…

… sharpening our economic competitiveness …

… international security … improving public services and fighting global poverty.

Since I became leader of this Party, all the new thinking and all the new argument has come from our side of the political divide.

While we have a fully worked up NHS white paper … the PM has an 11 month long meandering review with no idea what to do next.

While we are making the running on discipline and standards in schools and promoting small schools, he’s wandering round the country holding focus groups to ask people what on earth he should do.

But still we have further to go.

Britain, and the world, are changing faster than ever before in front of our eyes.

There will be new challenges and new opportunities.

We need to be ready for them, ready to lead the world in shaping the future as we did in the 1980s.

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW MORE

But these things are not enough. People want to know something even more profound and even more simple.

And they want to know it of their leader more than anyone else.

What are the beliefs that really drive you?

What are the values that, when you’re faced with a tough choice, help you make that choice?

They don’t just want to know about the policies in your manifesto.

They know that leaders will be confronted with unpredictable dilemmas and difficulties …

… so they want to know how a leader would make those decisions.

And linked to that, there’s something else…

What will the country look like after five or ten years of leadership and commitment, consistently putting those values into effect?

Those are the two things I want to talk about today.

FAMILY

The first and most important of my values is my belief in family.

When I think of my own life and experience it was a strong family more than anything else that gave me a good start in life.

That was the real privilege.

A Mum and Dad who were always there for you, brothers and sisters who always looked out for you, with help and advice about school, home, jobs…

And today my own family shows me how there is nothing more important than your family responsibilities…and when disaster strikes, it’s your family that gives you the strength and the resources to cope.

Anyone who says that the family is an old-fashioned idea and not relevant to the modern world and its challenges is just completely, 100% wrong.

It’s precisely because the modern world can move so quickly, has so many varied temptations and opportunities and choices that you need the rock of the family to be a secure base.

Just ask yourself…who is best at bringing up children with the right values, helping with the elderly, sick and disabled…Who’s picks us up when we fall, or puts us back on track when go astray…. It’s the family.

It’s because the family is such a vital part of society that communists and socialists hate it so much.

They always want to undermine the family, because they don’t want anything to come between the individual and the state.

Well I do.

And so when it comes to making choices, facing up to tough dilemmas, I think politics should begin and end with a simple question and a simple test: does this help families and the work they do?

That’s how I will lead.

RESPONSIBILITY

The second belief at the heart of everything for me is my belief in responsibility.

We are not atomised and passive individual units. We are all part of society, we have responsibilities to each other and to our neighbours.

I think of my mother who was a magistrate for almost three decades. She believed she had a social responsibility to serve her community and do her bit.

If that sounds idealistic or even paternalistic, I don’t care.

I believe we all have an active responsibility to do things for each other and we’ll never have a strong society unless we make it happen.

That’s why I go on and on about social responsibility and will not stop going on and on about social responsibility until the day I die because social responsibility is what I believe in.

Ask Amir Khan and the youth workers I was with yesterday what social responsibility means and they will tell you.

He doesn’t just want to be the best boxer in Britain and the world – he wants to put something back, building the gym I spoke in yesterday to get teenagers off the streets, to give them the chances and the choices that he’s made for himself.

That is social responsibility.

Ask doctors, nurses, teachers who went into public service through a sense of vocation what social responsibility means and they will tell you …

… and they will tell you what it means to have that sense of social responsibility and their vocation questioned and undermined with targets and second-guessing from a government that doesn’t believe in social responsibility because it just doesn’t have faith in human nature and is fundamentally pessimistic about people’s motivations and values.

OPPORTUNITY

And the third belief that drives me is my belief in opportunity.

I’ve always believed that life is what you make it, that of course life isn’t fair, you make your own luck but that there’s nothing you can’t achieve if you strive and try hard.

I learnt from my father’s irrepressible optimism that opportunity is always there if you go for it with passion and courage.

And so the role of the state is to clear away any and every obstacle to opportunity so that individuals really can make the most of their lives.

That’s the real difference between left and right: they believe in equality of outcome, we believe in equality of opportunity.

We as the government, we have to tear down the barriers to opportunity.

You as an individual, you have to do your best, make your own luck and go for it with everything you have.

And what makes me angry is that we’ve got a world where there have never been opportunities like this, and yet there are so many barriers still in the way of so many people …

… poor education, bad housing, no assets…that’s the job of government, to unleash opportunity by taking down the barriers.

A POLITICAL AGENDA OF FREEDOM AND CONTROL

So if you believe in family, responsibility and opportunity, if you know that those are your values, what is the political agenda that flows from that?

As night follows day it means that the most important driving force of everything you do, the principle and purpose of your politics, is to give people more freedom and control over their lives.

Why?

Because freedom is the real benefit of a strong family – it’s the security it gives you to get on and get out and get up, with a strong family behind you if you fall.

It’s because if you believe in responsibility, you have to give people freedom. You literally cannot be responsible for something unless you have power and control over it.

And it’s because opportunity means the freedom to be a doer not a done-for, taking down the barriers so that everybody can make the most of their life.

So that will be the central test for the decisions I make: will it give people more freedom and control over their lives?

That is the overriding aim of the government I will lead.

A CLEAR POLITICAL PROGRAMME

So what is the political programme that flows from this political agenda of freedom and control?

I want to paint a picture of the kind of country Britain will be if we consistently apply these values and principles, and drive forward this political agenda.

Conservatives, with our traditional suspicion of utopias and state-manufactured solutions, have not always been good at describing the kind of country we want to see.

But I want you to imagine an education system where parents have a real choice of strong, independent schools within the state sector that set their own rules on discipline …

… where the teachers are happy and proud to do their jobs without interference from on high …

… where the kids are well behaved because the parents have made a commitment to that school and a real emotional investment in it.

You don’t need a Citizens Jury for that, you just need a Conservative Government.

Imagine an NHS …

… where you can go to your GP and they have the freedom to get the best care for your needs instead of being bogged down in rules and regulations …

… where the local hospital is being saved and improved instead of being closed down …

… and where the doctors and nurses have the time and the energy to treat you like a king instead of having to give you the brush-off because of all the red tape and targets they’re drowning in.

You don’t need a Citizens Jury for that, you just need a Conservative government.

Think of those families that are caring for disabled or special needs kids …

We don’t need Citizens Juries to work out how to improve the services they use, there are a hundred thousand experts out there already – they’re the parents of those kids.

We just need to give them the freedom and control to get what they want, with individual budgets and direct payments so that they have the cash and they can make the choices about care, about respite, about the help and support they need.

We don’t need Citizens Juries to work out what to do about social breakdown – everyone knows what needs to happen.

You start with strong families, and then you need discipline in schools, active policing on the streets, strong communities with things for young people to do.

You need welfare reform to get people off benefits and into work, tough punishments when people break the law, and every citizen to play their part in delivering it.

Imagine a world where you know your local police officer and they know you because they’re out there in the community, free of all the ridiculous targets and paperwork and accountable to you because you voted for their boss.

You don’t need a Citizens Jury for that, you just need a Conservative government.

Imagine local councils that are free to respond to the needs of the local area because they have real power instead of being second-guessed by Whitehall the whole time.

They know their areas, the problems, the opportunities … give them the money, let them get on with the job and let the local population use the ballot box to reward the good and chuck out the bad.

Imagine a world where more people can buy their own home because the right to buy has been extended, rent to mortgage schemes are available to all and the perverse rules that stop affordable houses being built have been swept away.

Imagine a Britain where a government says to its people we want you to keep more of the money you earn to spend as you choose … because we will share the proceeds of economic growth instead of spending all the money ourselves.

Imagine a country where the government doesn’t change the way we’re governed without asking the people.

Not a Prime Minister who lamely says you are the master, I am the servant and then denies you a referendum that he had previously promised.

But one that gives this guarantee – no passing power away from Westminster without asking you in a referendum – and let’s start now with a referendum on the European constitution.

Imagine a world where, yes, we give priority to tackling environmental degradation but with a government that says we will meet this challenge by making it easier for people to take green choices in their daily lives.

That’s the world we’re fighting for, and it’s a world away from the ‘he knows best’ Britain of Gordon Brown.

When I heard him talking this week about his Citizens Juries it said everything about the difference between his vision and mine, between his worldview and the way I see things.

We don’t want people to sit on Citizens Juries and talk about what they want, we want to give them the power and the freedom and the control to get what they want.

They shouldn’t have to ask Gordon Brown if he’d be so kind as to listen to them for once.

NO FALSE CHOICES

That’s the political programme I will follow, based on my values of family, responsibility and opportunity, and driving forward our political agenda of giving people more freedom and control over their lives.

And we need to apply this with renewed rigour to every issue, not just some issues.

That is the essence of the modern compassionate Conservatism I believe in.

Forget about those on the left who say I shouldn’t talk about Europe, crime or lower taxes …

… or those on the right who say I shouldn’t talk about the NHS, the environment or well-being.

That is a false choice and I will not make it.

All these areas of policy matter to people in Britain today and they are all long overdue for the modern Conservative freedom and control agenda.

It is the only way we will meet the challenges and make sure of the opportunities of our time.

It’s what Conservative leaders have always done.

Churchill with his bonfire of war time controls to set people free.

Macmillan with his house-building programme to deliver a property owning democracy.

Margaret Thatcher with her great economic liberalisation, stripping power and control from trade union leaders and giving it to their members.

We have always applied our freedom and control agenda to the challenges of the day, and that’s what I will do.

That’s what modern compassionate Conservatism means.

Meeting all of the challenges of the modern world all of the time, not just some of them some of the time.

What are these people saying who think the Conservative party shouldn’t be at the forefront of the green revolution – that we should ignore the fact that we face a great environmental challenge and that people care about their quality of life as well as the money they earn?

That would be a betrayal of the Conservative party and its values.

And crime isn’t a right wing issue or a left wing issue – it is a daily threat that people – rich, poor, black, white, urban and rural – face in their daily lives.

That is why I will not ignore the rising tide of crime, but meet it with a proper three dimensional approach to liberate the Police, punish the guilty and strengthen our society and our families.

That’s modern Conservatism.

And to those who think, even in 21st century Britain that commitment and responsibility cannot be embraced by all, I say: you will not find a stronger supporter of marriage but why not also recognise the commitment that gay couples make to each other in civil partnerships?

That’s modern Conservatism.

And responsibility doesn’t end at the front door of your home, it encompasses businesses as well.

Someone who believes in responsibility should not exclude big business from the obligation to be a good neighbour and good citizen.

That’s modern Conservatism.

And if we believe in opportunity for all – that must really mean for all – and that’s why we must condemn racism and help to create role models within our own party that British black and asian people can aspire to.

That is modern Conservatism.

LEADERSHIP FOR THE INTERNET GENERATION

We will give the leadership we need on the issues that matter.

We will drive forward our freedom agenda, based on our values of family, responsibility and opportunity.

This is an agenda that is right for our times and right for the next generation, who above all know the power and the joy of having freedom and control over their life.

The internet generation, who are growing up in a world of amazing choice and control …and who expect that to be extended, not limited by government and politics.

Gordon Brown just doesn’t get it. When I look at him one phrase comes into my mind: “Oh ye of little faith.”

He has little faith in anyone but himself…

… little faith in the people of this country …

… little faith in the doctors, the nurses, the teachers, the police officers, any of us at all.

I do have faith, faith in the men and women of Britain who make this country great and will make it greater still if we give them more power and control over their lives.

Those are our values, that is our agenda, and this is our time.

It’s time for change.

This will be the choice at the election.

State control from Labour. Freedom with the Conservatives. And we will say to the British people – choose freedom.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, in Darwen, Lancashire, on 22 August 2007.

Thank you for coming here to listen to me today. I hope that together we can address some of the serious issues that are affecting your community. Two weekends ago, not far from here in Bacup, a young couple were viciously attacked in a skate park, leaving both unconscious. Last weekend a man was stabbed to death here in Darwen, and a 16 year-old was murdered, also with a knife, down the road in Farnworth. These terrible events are part of a national trend – a crisis of order on Britain’s streets.

A dead father in Warrington, Gary Newlove, who went outside to confront a gang of youths and ended up bleeding to death on his doorstep. 17 dead children in London this year alone. This year Tony Blair suggested that this spate of murders in our cities is a “specific problem within a specific criminal culture” – that is, not part of a wider social problem.

To me that betrays a deep complacency. In the last 10 years violent crime has doubled. Here in Lancashire, it’s up 140 per cent. Knife crime – mostly robberies committed at knife point – has doubled in the last two years. What Mr Blair’s remark failed to recognise is that violence grows in the fertile soil of anti-social behaviour. And here we have a real and growing problem throughout society.

The Chief Constable of Cheshire said earlier this week that anti-social behaviour in Britain is “out of control”. And most people agree. A recent poll showed that half of British people feel more frightened on the streets than they did a decade ago. And it’s not just the fear that matters – it’s the damage to our quality of life. Vomit and broken glass in the town centres. Graffiti and litter and urine in the stairways of blocks of flats. Fly-tipping in country lanes.

Aggression and foul language on the train and the bus … general disrespect… all the little acts of aggression and ugliness that people have to put up with in the course of a day. Is all this an inevitable feature of life? I don’t believe so. Other cities, other countries, have fought the battle with anti-social behaviour, and won.

New York halved its murder rate between 1992 and 1996 – and it did so by a fixed concentration on low-level disorder. Litter. Fare-dodgers on public transport. Petty vandalism. Aggressive begging.
The police targeted the minor crimes which cause the community to retreat, and thus cede the ground to more serious criminals. Helped by the police, the community advanced back, and crime retreated.
Government approach

So if that is what can be done, how is the British Government tackling the problem? I am often reminded of Robert Peel’s remark: “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”

The same can be said of Government efficiency. In the last 10 years we have seen a lot of visible evidence of activity – but there is no absence of crime and disorder. Labour confuse activity with action, and initiatives with results.

They have taken a one dimensional approach to the problem – relying on criminal justice legislation. There has been wave upon wave of legislation. Over 30 criminal justice Bills since 1997. Over 3000 new criminal offences created – one for every day Labour have been in office. Yet in all this, no real steps to reform the police, to build enough prison places, or to reverse the social breakdown which lies at the root of our crime rate. And even on Labour’s own terms – the legislative approach – they have failed.

Their legislation has been inconsistent, contradictory, and not properly implemented. Take the 2003 Criminal Justice Act. This was presented as the centrepiece of Labour’s attack on crime. Yet one in five of the sections of this Act, and half the schedules, have been repealed in whole or in part or not implemented at all.

If we are to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour we need a resolute and comprehensive response. Instead of a one dimensional approach – just looking at criminal justice – we need a three dimensional approach. First, the response of the courts. Second, the response of the police. And third, the response of society at large.

Criminal Justice

Let me deal with the courts first. Our system of criminal justice is an essential defence against disorder. People need to know that crime is punished – victims need to know it and potential criminals need to know it.

But at the moment, this basic knowledge is missing. Detection rates are down. Conviction rates are down. And too many convicted criminals either escape prison or are let out too soon.

The Human Rights Act simply adds insult to injury. The recent judgement in the case of Philip Lawrence’s murderer flies in the face of common sense.

We believe there is a better way – and that is why we will replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights that can better balance rights and responsibilities in a way that chimes with British traditions and common sense.

My party is currently reviewing sentencing policy and our prison and probation system. Today I want to mention two proposals which we will consult upon as part of this review.

First, I would like to see magistrates have greater powers over sentencing. One of the many provisions of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act was the power for magistrates to sentence an offender to a maximum of a year’s imprisonment, not the current maximum of six months.

This power was never actually enacted. Instead Ministers brought forward the point at which prisoners become eligible for parole. Prisoners sentenced to less than 12 months only serve a maximum of 13 weeks. Take off the extra 18 days from the early release scheme, and magistrates’ powers are really limited to little more than two months.

We need to scrap the early release scheme. And I suggest the Government should activate the 2003 measure, and allow magistrates to hand down sentences of up to 12 months. A 12 month sentencing power would enable the community-based lower courts to get real criminals off their streets.

The second issue I would like our review to examine is designed to target offenders and potential offenders a little lower down the scale – to stop them before they become the sort of criminal that deserves a prison sentence. The sad fact is that the penalties available to magistrates and judges – even the power of custody – often don’t have the deterrent effect we would wish.

Common sense suggests that with young people you need to hit them where it hurts: in their lifestyle and their aspirations. In 2000 the Government passed a law allowing judges to disqualify a young offender from holding or obtaining a driver’s license. Characteristically, this power was not actually enacted until 2004 – four years when a law lay on the statute books without being used.

I want to see this measure more widely used – and I don’t believe it should only be targeted at driving-related offences, as the Government guidance suggests. I’d like to see judges and magistrates tell a 15 year old boy, convicted of buying alcohol or causing a disturbance, that the next time he appears in court he’ll have his driving licence delayed. And then I’d like that boy to tell his friends what the judge said.

Policing

Let me move on to the second dimension of a proper response to anti-social behaviour – the policing response. At the moment police officers spend more time on paperwork than they do on patrol. That’s utterly wrong. With its targets and audits and inspections the Government is guilty of wasting police time.

Only a fifth of an officer’s time is spent on the beat. They have to fill in a form a foot long every time they stop someone. And making an arrest usually involves four hours back at the station. This has to change.

Earlier this year we published proposals for ending the remote control of policing from Whitehall, freeing forces up to respond to local need and making the police forces of England and Wales directly accountable to local people.

This agenda is acutely necessary when it comes to anti-social behaviour. For this is a local problem if ever there was one. It simply happens because too many young people in a particular place feel they can get away with it. And because of the way that policing is organised, too often they can get away with it.

I quoted Cheshire’s Chief Constable earlier. He also said this:

“The obsession with statistics makes the criminal justice system less effective in tackling anti-social behaviour… They give less room for local police officers to take into account local priorities”

For “obsession with statistics” read the whole range of central performance management which the police are subject to. I want to see a general bonfire of the targets and measurements which the police have to comply with. I want them accountable to the communities they serve, not to officials in London.
Community

Finally, let me outline the third element of the proper response to anti-social behaviour: the response of society itself.

Some people say that trying to understand the causes of crime betrays weakness. I say that failing to understand the causes of crime is simple stupidity. Those fifteen year old boys who are causing such mayhem in our towns and cities, were five years old when Labour came to power. They mostly had problems even then – but they weren’t criminal, there was nothing that the police or the courts could do. But now they are very much involved with the police and courts, and it’s often too late to stop them.
Labour failed to address the problems those five year olds had. Let us not do the same to the next generation.

That’s why a comprehensive approach to crime and disorder must include radical action to restore families and communities, to build up the natural networks which – far more than laws and regulations – stop crime before it starts. How do we restore families and communities?

As I said recently we can start with schools

– giving head teachers the power to exclude unruly pupils
– stopping the closure of special schools, including those that address behavioural problems
– intervening early and empowering the social enterprises that specialise in turning around children with behavioural problems.

But as well as policy changes, we need cultural changes.

We need to make men realise that having children is an 18-year commitment – not a one-night stand.

We need to make mothers realise that it’s work, not welfare, that offers their family the best future.

We need to help couples stay together, not drive them apart with the tax and benefits system.

And we need to make society as a whole – that’s you and me – realise that we all have duties to our neighbours.

These are duties as compelling as the taxes we pay and the laws we obey. They represent a social responsibility.

For me the most exciting development that is happening in Britain today is the growth of social enterprises and other voluntary bodies dedicated to social justice. They’re tackling the hardest problems, the things which agencies of the state find it so difficult to get at – debt and addiction, unemployment and family breakdown.

They are independent organisations, locally based, often amateur in their beginnings but soon highly expert. They are fired by compassion and the spirit of innovation. They work.

I would like to make a new deal with the voluntary sector. Longer contracts. Less red tape. Full cost recovery. These are the organisations in the front line of the war against crime and exclusion, and we need to give them the weapons to do the job.

Tough action on criminal justice.

A radical programme for reforming the police, freeing them from paperwork and making them locally accountable.

And concerted action to tackle social and family breakdown in Britain.

This is the programme we need to tackle crime and lawlessness.

This is the approach to replace disorder and fear on our streets with hope and respect.

This is way that the modern Conservative party will help to mend our broken society.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 10 July 2007.

The report published by Iain [Duncan Smith] and his team today is a landmark in British social policy.

And I believe it is a clear vindication of this Party’s approach to policy-making.

Iain’s Policy Group has held over 3,000 hours of public hearings.

Over 2,000 organisations – most of them non-political – from all over the country, have contributed ideas.

50,000 people have been surveyed.

That’s people from broken homes…

…people who are drug addicts today…

…and they were asked how they wish they’d been treated by society and by government policy.

We have engaged the people on the front line, the people who know most about the complex human and emotional challenges of social policy.

People like Camila Batmanghelidj, whose remarkable work we celebrate with our event here today.

What a contrast to Labour’s approach.

We’ve had ten years of government by short term initiative – and as today’s announcement from Ed Balls shows that’s not going to change under Gordon Brown.

We said we would be different.

That we wouldn’t rush out policy initiatives to get headlines.

That we would take the time to understand the big long-term challenges Britain faces.

And that we would go back to first principles, applying our Conservative values to the problems of today and tomorrow, rather than the preoccupations of the past.

BROKEN SOCIETY

Let’s be clear about what most concerns people today.

This is a great country to live in, but we all know life could be a lot better.

That’s not just about our economy, though of course a growing economy is vital.

It’s about our society – the level of crime, the state of the neighbourhood, our relationships.

I think there’s a real sense of unease about what’s happening to our society.

I spoke about it right at the start of my campaign for the leadership of this Party.

Six year olds wandering the streets of some of our cities looking for a hot meal and an adult who will take them to school.

Eleven year olds beating each other up and filming it on their mobile phones.

Fourteen year olds getting pregnant…children having children.

Gangs. Guns. Graffiti.

It’s all part of the same story.

And above all, the sense of social unease is reflected in the breakdown of the family, which is for me the most important institution in our society.

The family has always been the starting point for everything I want to achieve in politics.

And with my leadership, the Conservative Party will not shy away from saying the things that need to be said if we’re to mend our broken society.

Well now we have all the evidence we need.

As Iain’s report comprehensively demonstrates…

…millions of people in Britain today still suffer from the complex and connected problems of poverty, poor education, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction and debt.

And at the heart of it all is family breakdown, the highest in Europe.

As I argued in my speech to our Party’s spring conference earlier this year, the widely-held sense of social breakdown is the biggest challenge Britain faces.

In the 1970s, as she prepared for government, Mrs Thatcher focused her energy on fixing our broken economy.

She did that by applying Conservative principles like freedom and enterprise.

Today, I will focus my energy on fixing our broken society.

And just as before, Conservative values will help us through.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Those values are represented by my belief in social responsibility, not state control, as the best way to solve problems.

That means trusting people, families and communities…

…not thinking that government has the answer to every problem.

I believe that we’re all in this together…

…that there is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same thing as the state.

And as I said in my party conference speech last year, this belief in social responsibility, not state control, is the foundation of everything we do and all we hope to achieve.

It is the big dividing line in British politics today and it is the reason we can confidently offer people change, optimism and hope.

Because we know there is a positive alternative to Gordon Brown’s top-down, centralizing state control.

IAIN’S REPORT

These ideas – the importance of family; the challenge of fixing our broken society; the vital need for more social responsibility and less state control…

…these ideas are what I am all about.

And they are what Iain’s report is all about.

That’s why I’m so delighted and proud that his report is the first of our main Policy Group reports to be published.

The report of the Social Justice Policy Group does two vital things.

It outlines, in forensic detail, the scale and the nature of Gordon Brown’s social failure.

And it presents, in substantive and robust terms, a long-term programme for reversing that failure and fixing our broken society.

GORDON BROWN’S SOCIAL FAILIURE

Gordon Brown’s social failure is costing this country over a hundred billion pounds a year.

But it is not just the financial cost that should concern us.

It is the cost in wasted lives, dashed hopes and disappointment.

And the scandal is, this was what the Labour government was supposed to fix.

Gordon Brown said he wanted to get Britain back to work.

But after ten years of his policies, five million people of working age – over one in ten adults – are out of work and on benefits.

Gordon Brown said he wanted to give young people the best start in life.

But after ten years of his policies, there are over a million young people not in work, education or training – more than in 1997.

Gordon Brown said he wanted to tackle poverty.

Yet after ten years of his policies, the poorest people in our society have got poorer – and there are more of them.

What on earth was it all about, these last ten years, if it wasn’t about this?

With this report as our evidence we will take Gordon Brown to pieces for his devastating social failure.

These Labour politicians, they talk about being progressive; they pose as the champions of the poor and the vulnerable…

…and all the while preside over a Britain where the poorest and most vulnerable sink further and further behind.

We’ve got among the worst rates of teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and personal debt in Europe.

It’s often said that over the past ten years Britain has become a more tolerant country, and I welcome that.

It’s good that we’re more tolerant of social change.

But I believe we have become far too tolerant of social failure.

Indeed this government has all too often indulged it.

Failing to take the tough decisions that address the fundamental causes of social breakdown.

Clinging to an outdated view of society and relationships.

And unable to break free from a simplistic, short-term, top-down, centralizing, mechanistic approach.

That is what we intend to change.

FIXING OUR BROKEN SOCIETY

This report provides a rich and constructive menu of options.

There are around two hundred specific policy recommendations.

Some would make a bigger difference than others.

Some of them would cost a lot of money; some would save money.

Some ideas could be implemented quickly and easily; others are more complex and would take more time and effort.

The reality of government is that you can’t “have it all.”

You have to make hard choices between different, sometimes competing priorities.

I won’t pretend that I can wave a magic wand and solve all our problems overnight.

I think people have had enough of that kind of politics.

That’s why I will not make the mistake of instantly picking and choosing policies from this report.

I want to lead a full and serious debate with the whole country about what the priorities should be.

I want people to get involved in debating these ideas over the next few months.

Politics – especially Conservative politics – should be about practical, grass-roots common sense, not top-down ideology.

That is why we will be asking the British people to get involved in shaping our next manifesto through our Stand Up Speak Up campaign.

But politics is also about giving a lead, and I can tell you today the elements of this report that I welcome.

THINGS WE WELCOME

I welcome the fact that this report does not shirk the big challenges and confronts the issues head on.

I welcome the emphasis on trusting charities and community groups.

As the proposals in the report show, we now have the chance to make a decisive break with the Labour approach, where the government gives charities money, tells them what to do, and calls it “partnership.”

I welcome the report’s thoughtful approach to drugs, and the emphasis on turning addicts’ lives around so they can lead drug-free lives, rather than keeping them hooked on methadone.

FAMILY

But above all, I welcome this report’s emphasis on the family, and on marriage, as the basis for the social progress we all want to see.

My family, and my marriage, are the most important things in my life.

They matter more than anything to me, and I believe that families matter more than anything else to our society.

If we get the family right, we can fix our broken society.

Britain is almost the only country in Europe that doesn’t recognise marriage in the tax system.

And the benefits system actively discourages parents from living together.

We have the highest rate of family breakdown in Europe.

And we have the worst social problems in Europe.

Don’t tell me these things aren’t connected.

If Gordon Brown wants to play political games with this, let him.

If he wants to defend the anti-marriage bias in our tax and benefits system, good luck to him.

He’s on the side of the past, and on the side of social failure.

CONCLUSION

This report shows that only the Conservative Party is serious about tackling Britain’s long-term challenges.

Gordon Brown has poured billions of pounds into the fight against poverty but the nation’s deepest social problems remain untouched.

We are the only Party willing to face up to the root causes.

We understand that unless we do this, we limit not just the opportunities of those trapped in poverty, but the opportunities of everyone else too.

No-one can isolate themselves from what’s going on in our society.

Individual opportunity depends on collective security.

Our society, your life.

Our support for families and for marriage puts us…

… on the side of the mainstream majority…

…on the side of a progressive politics…

…on the side of change that says…

We can stop our social decline.

We can fix our broken society.

We can and will make this a better place to live for everyone.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 6 July 2007.

Introduction

It’s a great pleasure to be here.

Let me start by congratulating Geoff Taylor, who was recently made Chief Executive of the BPI, and thanking him for inviting me here to speak today.

I am sure he did so with some trepidation.

After all, politicians and music rarely mix well.

I had a reminder of that the first time I went to the BRIT Awards.
It was the year when Chumbawamba threw a bucket of water over John Prescott.

Music Industry Today

A flourishing music scene plays a huge role in bolstering the vibrancy of our culture and the strength of our identity.

It plays a huge part in most peoples’ lives.

This was brought home to me when I went on Desert Island Discs…

And the agony of trying to condense your love of music into just eight tracks.

We are a nation of music lovers, buying more music per head than any other country.

Take any time in recent history, and the music of that period has come to define a generation.

Punk in the ’70s.

New Romantics in the early ’80s.

Britpop in the ’90s.

Today, British music is undergoing another renaissance.

Last year, six out of every ten albums bought in this country were by UK artists.

That’s the best result since 1997.

And let’s not forget that a flourishing music scene also helps extend our identity and culture abroad.

We should be proud of the international success newer artists like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen are having, carrying on the global traditions set by the likes of The Rolling Stones and Elton John.

Indeed, the UK now accounts for one in every twelve albums sold in the United States.

When you look at the – albeit rain-sodden – success of Glastonbury, with so many British artists performing to hundreds of thousands of fans in the flesh and more than a million people watching back home….

….it goes to show that when it comes to fostering national self-confidence and a sense of belonging, not much compares to music.

But the music industry deserves its seat at the top table of our national life for another important reason too.

It’s the reason why I am here today.

The music industry is a serious and pioneering business.

It generates billions of pounds for our economy and nurtures some of the most creative talent in our country.

The facts speak for themselves.

There are nearly 100,000 people working in the music industry today.

Retail spending on music was around £1.8 billion in 2006.

And at a time of technological revolution, you have adapted to changes in consumer behaviour with great ingenuity, launching online and mobile services.

Matching business acumen with creative instinct, you have shown you have the dynamism necessary to succeed in the 21st century.

But just as this new world offers exciting new opportunities…

It also presents incredible challenges.

And it is two of those challenges that I want to speak about today.

First, how do we prevent the massive fraud that is carried out against your industry every day through copyright theft.

And second, how do we protect your investments in the long-term by looking at the issue of copyright extension in the digital age.

The British music industry is one of the best in the world.

I want to address these issues to make sure it continues to be so.

But I also want to talk about a bigger challenge that we all face together.

That of the broken society of crime, of guns and knives, of broken families, of entrenched poverty…

And how I expect the music industry, like everyone else, to recognise their responsibility in helping to fix it.

Anti-Piracy

Very few people would go into a shop, lift a CD from the shelves and just walk out with it.

But for some reason, many are happy to buy pirate CDs or illegally download music.

Look at the figures:

Around seven percent of the population buys pirate CDs.

And each year, an estimated 20 billion – that’s right, 20 billion – music files are downloaded illegally.

This alone has cost the music industry as much as £1.1 billion in lost retail sales since 2004.

We wouldn’t tolerate fraud on such a massive scale in any other industry….

….. so why is there such little will on the part of government, businesses and individuals to confront it in the music industry?

Copyright matters because it is the way artists are rewarded and businesses makes its money and invests in the future.

So copyright theft has to be treated like other theft.

If you cannot get protection from illegal activity, where is the incentive to continue innovating?

So what should be done?

The right approach means understanding that like any other crime, this will only be beaten if we all realise the part we have to play.
By that I mean government, industry leaders like yourselves, businesses, internet service providers and the general public.

I think government has three important responsibilities.

First, to establish a more robust intellectual property framework.

The Gowers Review into the UK Intellectual Property Framework rightly disappointed many in the creative industries by failing to do much more than suggest tinkering at the edges.

Changes at the margins will not be good enough.

If we are serious about protecting intellectual property, we need to build a framework that is both flexible and accessible.

It has to be flexible so it reflects the changing way in which people listen to their music for personal use.

That means decriminalising the millions of people in this country for copying their CDs onto music players for personal use, and focusing all our attention on the genuine fraudsters.

And it has to be accessible so smaller companies, who currently find it so expensive to register their intellectual property, have the resources to do so.

That means working at a Europe-wide level to end the need to translate all documents and applications into all the EU languages.

The second thing the government should do to fight copyright theft is vigorously bringing offenders to book.

There have been some recent progress here that we should welcome.

As a result of the Gowers Review, Trading Standards Officers will now have the power to seize pirate and bootleg CDs that breach copyright law, even if they do not bear infringing trademarks.

The key is now to make sure we actively find the perpetrators and prosecute them.

This is a vital step towards the third thing the government should be doing in the fight against copyright theft…

….. and that is confronting the blasé attitude that many people have towards piracy and illegal downloading.

Too many people think it is a victimless crime.

But they conveniently ignore the links between CD piracy and serious and organised crime.

I strongly believe that if people really knew the kind of criminality they were funding, sales of pirate CDs in this country would plummet.

I want to work with figures in the music industry to get the message out that piracy and illegal file-sharing is wrong.

I know that you already go into schools and educate young kids about this.

This is something I wholly support.

So when it comes to combating copyright theft, there are three things that the Conservatives will do:

Establish a proper framework of intellectual property rights

Enforce laws more strongly so perpetrators are brought to book.

And work in partnership with industry leaders to get the message out there that buying pirate CDs and illegal downloading of music is wrong.

But when in government, we alone cannot do everything.

We need you in the music industry itself to continue to innovate and make the sort of technological progress that makes pirating CDs more and more difficult.

We need businesses and individuals to report the sale of pirate CDs or the existence of illegal file-sharing websites whenever they see them.

Let me also speak about one final responsibility too: that of Internet Service Providers.

They are the gatekeepers of the internet.

Some ISPs claim there is nothing they can do to stop illegal downloading of music.

But last month alone, there were eight sites that hosted more than 25,000 illegal downloads.

That is clear and visible internet traffic.

You should know.

In 2006, the BPI took down 60,000 illegal files from some 720 websites.

Since 2004, you have brought 139 actions against peer-to-peer filesharing.

But we cannot expect you to do all the work.

ISPs can block access and indeed close down offending file-sharing sites.

They have already established the Internet Watch Foundation to monitor child abuse and incitement to racial hatred on the internet.

They should be doing the same when it comes to digital piracy.

Copyright Extension

So there is much that we could all be doing in terms of taking the fight to copyright theft.

The second challenge I want to talk today is how we can protect your investments in the long-term.

In the digital age, whole back catalogues from any decade are available at the click of a button.

Previously, if you wanted to buy an old album, you would have to trawl through any number of record shops, before, in all likelihood, giving up.

Now, there is no shop floor.

The music industry has done so much in making all manner of music from any decade available to everyone.

And if we expect you to keep investing, keep innovating, keep creating….

… it is only right that you are given greater protection on your investments by the extension of copyright term.

After all, PWC found that extending copyright term could boost the music industry by £3.3 billion over the next fifty years.

But extending copyright term is good for musicians and consumers too.

It’s good for musicians because it would reduce the disparity between the length given to composers and that granted to producers and performers.

That’s only fair.

In the UK alone, over 7000 musicians will lose rights to their recordings over the next ten years.

Most people think these are all multi-millionaires living in some penthouse flat.

The reality is that many of these are low-earning session musicians who will be losing a vital pension.

And extending copyright term will also be good for consumers.

If we increase the copyright term, so the incentive is there for you working in the industry to digitise both older and niche repertoire which more people can enjoy at no extra cost.

That’s why, as we move on forward into the new digital age of the 21st century, I am pleased to announce today that it is Conservative Party policy to support the extension of the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 to 70 years.

A Conservative Government will argue for this in Europe for this change to happen in order to protect investment in the future of the industry, reward our creative artists and generate more choice for consumers.

Social Responsibility

So I want to give you real help in the future.

In the fight against copyright theft.

By extending copyright term.

But in return, you’ve got to help me too.

The single biggest challenge facing this country today is that of the broken society.

A few months ago, UNICEF released a report on the material, educational and emotional state of childhood in 21 developed nations.

Britain came bottom.

It was a wake-up call to us all.

Take any indicator on childhood welfare, and Britain is among the worst in the developed world:

Family breakdown…

Rates of teenage pregnancy…

Rates of substance abuse….

Rates of criminal activity.

How did we get into this mess?

And more importantly, how will we get out?

I believe that there has been a failure of leadership at every level.

Put simply, we all helped break our society…

…Now we’ve all got to help fix it.

Of course, that must mean politicians.

Government can’t bring up children.

But government decisions have an influence on how children are brought up.

For too long governments have neglected families, who do so much to bring up children with the right values and with the opportunities that everyone deserves in life.

That’s why, in Government, we will do all we can to put families first, to back them, and give them the support they need.

But our broken society is not just about government and politics.

It’s about our culture too.

Popular culture is a massive influence on our children.

A culture, in which of course, music plays an important part.

That’s why I need your help if we’re going to fix our broken society.

Many of you sitting here today already do so much to use the power of music to give young kids the opportunity to fulfil their dreams and feel a part of something.

The BRIT School is a great example of what can be achieved.

There are other examples across the industry too.

One is the Nordoff-Robbins Trust, which does great work in providing music therapy for children with disabilities.

Last year, I made some remarks about rap music.

I got a letter from one of SongBMG’s artists, Rhymefest.

He wrote to me saying that not all rappers were responsible for negative messages – some, like him, understood their responsibilities.

So we met for a cup of tea and what turned out to be a very positive chat.

An idea called ‘Music for Good’ was born, and it’s already providing opportunities for kids to forge a career in the music industry.

The simple truth is that music and musicians can influence young people much more than politicians can.

Our message does not resonate half as much as the messages they hear from their.

Music is what kids listen to, understand and draw inspiration from.
So let’s ask ourselves, honestly, what inspiration are they getting from some music today?

I don’t just mean hip hop and I don’t just mean lyrics.

Music culture today extends beyond what people listen to on the radio to what they see online, on their televisions and in magazines.

And in these places, we can often see the celebration of macho-materialism, a hedonistic lifestyle and the portrayal of women as nothing but sex objects.

We’ve got a real cultural problem in our country; and it’s affecting the way young people grow up.

It’s an anti-learning culture where it’s cool to bunk off, it’s cool to be bad, and it’s cool not to try.

This affects what’s happening on our streets and with our kids.

Educational achievement and aspiration is pushed aside by the dream of instant material gain.

Now I know this is difficult territory for a politician.

People could argue that music is just a portrayal of life today, not a cause of the way we live.

And they argue that other, perhaps older, genres of music are also provocative, including ones that I personally have said I am a fan of.

After all, it’s not as if Morrissey, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash have ever shied away from violence in their lyrics.

And there are those that will go on to say, yes, music can be violent and overtly sexual, but so are movies, video games and television.

Of course, there is some truth in these arguments.

But let’s ask ourselves some simple questions:

Does music help create, rather than just reflect, a culture?

Yes.

Is some music, are some lyrics, are some videos and are some artists, helping to create a culture in which an anti-learning culture, truancy, promiscuousness, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny are glorified?

Yes.

Can we see the effects of this on our young people, in our schools and on our streets?

Yes.

Do we think we can combat this culture by government policies, policing and criminal justice alone?

No.

If change in our culture is necessary…and it is.

If we are all responsible…. and we are….

Then we all need to take our responsibilities seriously.

Put simply, we have to acknowledge that all of us – as politicians, as teachers, as parents, as television producers, video game manufacturers and yes, as record industry executives – need to understand our specific responsibility in not promoting a culture of low academic aspiration or violence but instead to inspire young kids with a positive vision of how to lead their life.

That’s why I am not calling for censorship, legislation or the banning of content.

I am calling on you to show leadership, exercise your power responsibly and to use your judgement.

I know music plays a small part in all this.

But I also know, unless we all fulfil our responsibilities, however small, we cannot hope to confront the challenge of our broken society.

Already, schemes like rhyme4respect, which encourages positive lyrics in music, is leading the way, showing that the music industry recognises its responsibility and takes this issue seriously…

I really do welcome that…

… but I think we all know we need more.

So when it comes to helping fix our broken society, it is not enough for the music industry to sponsor community projects….

You can make a difference by providing positive role models for young kids to look up to, draw inspiration from and aspire to be.

Let me put it another way.

Would it make any sense to say to media companies that you can simply meet your obligations for social responsibility – to be a responsible corporate citizen – through community projects which had nothing to do with your actual product?

I know such projects are vital and companies like those here today do so much to channel your charitable energy towards giving opportunities to the young.

But imagine if we took this approach with McDonalds or a mining company.

Is it really enough to say that you can put anything you like in your burgers, or do anything you want to the environment when digging for precious metals…. “That’s ok, as long as you are doing some other charitable things at the same time” ?

Of course not.

Social responsibility is not just about community projects where you use your profits to do good, it’s about how you make those profits in the first place too.

Conclusion

I began by showing what I wanted to do to help make sure that the music industry in this country continues to be one of the world’s greatest.

That’s why I want to work with you to combat piracy and illegal downloading.

That’s why I want to extend the copyright term to 70 years.

But in return, I want to see more from you….

… using the influence you have over young children to help fix our broken society.

Britain’s music scene has had an incredibly proud past.

Together, we can ensure it has an even brighter future.