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  • Mark Reckless – 2015 Speech to UKIP Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Mark Reckless, the party’s economic spokesman, to the UKIP Conference held on 25 September 2015.

    It has been an eventful year.

    One change for me from last year is that this time you have been kind enough to advertise me in the programme.

    As our new Economy Spokesman, I would first like to thank Patrick O’Flynn for the solid base of work he has left me, as well as for his hard work on the general election campaign.

    Second I would like to thank Nigel for all the support he has given me both before and since the general election. I could not have asked for more, from him or from you.

    Would Britain be better off outside the European Union?

    Trade deals

    For the first time in forty years we would be able to negotiate our own trade deals, rejoin the World Trade Organisation, and sit on the global bodies which set product regulations.

    We could press for trade deals which would open up new markets for the business and financial services at which this country excels. In return we could offer the free trade in food and agriculture which the EU sets itself against.

    We could reach deals with the big emerging economies, like India and China, with which eight million Swiss have a free trade agreement. Yet the EU blocks us from trading freely with China, so every British woman pays an EU tax every time she buys a bra.

    UKIP wants to end those EU tariffs to cut costs for consumers.

    We also want trade deals with the United States and Canada. But we would seek free trade deals, based on eliminating tariffs and mutual recognition of standards.

    That could not be more different from Cameron and Corbyn’s TTIP. Their Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will in reality be a corporatist’s charter constructed behind closed doors to shield incumbent companies from competition.

    Now that Jeremy Corbyn has gone back on his word and handed David Cameron a blank cheque on Europe, it is UKIP and UKIP alone that can fight TTIP.

    Paying our way in world

    Ever since we joined we have run a large trade deficit with the European Union. In good years we have paid for it with a surplus on our trade outside the European Union.

    Despite having no authority over trade, where the EU is in charge, David Cameron promised to double UK exports under what George Osborne termed a “march of the makers”.

    The reality within the EU has been anything but. We now have, along with Turkey, the largest overseas deficit of any advanced country globally, between 5 and 6% of GDP.

    The problem is three fold and all relate in significant degree to the EU.

    First, the UK trade balance in goods and services has been running about 2% of GDP in deficit. More than all of this is with the EU.
    Second, we now run a similar deficit on investment income, largely due to a deteriorating balance with the EU and Osbrown more than doubling our national debt.

    Third, and most easily dealt with, if only we were to restore our independence, we transfer a net 1-2% of everything we earn overseas every year. In other words we give it away.

    It is one thing to give money away in overseas transfers if, like say Germany, you run an enormous trade surplus with which to pay for it. It is quite another when, like the UK, you run a 2% of GDP trade deficit and another near 2% deficit on investment income.

    Yet on top of that 4% deficit David Cameron’s Conservatives transfer overseas a further 1-2% of GDP leaving us with a current account deficit of 5-6% of GDP, or £100 billion per year.

    What that means is that every year we have to borrow from or sell to foreigners the equivalent value of British assets.

    So when people complain to me, including some people in the hall today, about all that fancy London property being sold to foreigners, and not our own young people, I say don’t blame them, or think you can somehow solve our problems by restricting those purchases.

    The emptying out of prime central London property to overseas owners is a symptom, not a cause of our problems. If foreigners didn’t buy our most expensive property, we would have to sell them something else, or pay them more to lend to us, adding yet more to our deficit.

    We must instead tackle the problem at source. That means improving our trade balance. We must shift the focus of our trade from the EU, where we run a massive deficit, to outside the EU, where we run a surplus.

    The need to cut overseas transfers

    We must also stop giving away money we do not have. That means cutting the enormous overseas transfers we are making.
    Fifty years ago it was Britain’s huge overseas defence burden which drained resources from the UK. So the call went out to end commitments East of Suez, because our chronic balance of payments couldn’t support them.

    Today our massive overseas transfers do not reflect defence spending, but EU membership, overseas aid, and likely now migrant transfers.

    If you don’t want to have to borrow an extra £55 million a day from overseas, that you will later have to pay back with interest, then don’t give the EU the £55 million a day you then need to borrow.

    If you don’t want to sell £13 billion more London property to absentee overseas investors, then don’t run an overseas aid programme that requires the UK to finance £13 billion of overseas spending.

    You can’t spend money overseas unless you borrow or sell something overseas to pay for it.

    And just as we should never blame overseas investors for buying something we need to sell, we should never blame people who come here from overseas for trying to do the best for themselves and their families.

    That will often mean sending wages which they earn here back to their family who are still overseas. So we need to increase UK exports to pay for those overseas remittances. If we don’t, and they continue, then we will add to our already record current account deficit.

    The Brexit dividend

    Cutting overseas aid and ending our EU contributions will cut our current account deficit. It will also give us more money to spend at home.

    Patrick and Suzanne set out how we might spend our Brexit dividend in a superb manifesto fully costed and independently verified. Leaving the EU would yield enough to finance widespread tax cuts as well as billions more for the NHS.

    That exceptionally well received manifesto will remain the baseline for policy development which I now undertake, and there is just one change I will announce today.

    Our manifesto was so good that we have already seen the government adopt a number of our ideas. One area where we can now come close to declaring victory is inheritance tax.

    It is now eight years since George Osborne promised to raise the inheritance tax threshold to a million pounds, and until this summer it was eight long years of inaction.

    There are three aspects of the changes he now proposes where I would like us to be able to go further, and which we may seek to address in our next general election manifesto.

    First, I would prefer a threshold of a million pounds per person, as George Osborne first promised, and not a million pounds per couple. Second I would not further distort the market by restricting the new allowance to housing for descendants. Third, I would not add yet more complexity to the system by clawing back the extra allowance from larger estates.

    However, making those changes is not the priority for our Breixt dividend. That lies somewhere else.

    Public sector pay

    As an MP in the last Parliament I voted for severe restraint in public sector pay.

    I thought there was no choice if we were to cut the record deficit. I also thought it was fair after several years of relatively more generous public pay settlements and then a sharp fall in real private pay in the recession.

    Public and private pay are now in better kilter.

    Despite that, the Conservatives now propose to continue their assault on public sector pay for another five years, while private sector pay accelerates.

    The government said in the Summer Budget that it would only fund 1% pay increases on average across the public sector.

    Last Monday Greg Hands, the Treasury minister and Conservative MP for Chelsea and Fulham, went further and stated on the parliamentary record that their policy was one “of a one per cent cap on public sector pay increases”.

    And what have we heard from Labour? On Budget day their Acting Leader declared they supported the Conservative policy. And under Corbyn, nothing. A Treasury minister just hardened a 1% pay norm to a 1% pay cap and the Labour front bench didn’t even notice.

    If public sector pay rises at that 1% a year, or barely 5% over the Parliament, then the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast implies that private sector pay will increase by 25% over the same period.

    5% v 25%. How can that be fair? How could we recruit and retain the quality staff we need for our public services? Why do the Conservatives so dislike people who work in the public sector? And who will defend those public servants when Labour is riven by extremism and division?

    UKIP will. It is not just people in the private sector who deserve a pay rise but public servants too.

    And unlike the other parties, UKIP can find the money to pay for fairer treatment of public sector workers, from the £55 million a day we give the EU.

    So I have an announcement.

    Instead of using £5 billion of the Brexit dividend to abolish remaining inheritance tax, UKIP would use that £5 billion to give public sector workers a pay rise.

    We would end the government’s 1% pay cap in the public sector, except for those at the top end who already earn more than £50,000. The extra £5 billion could fund 2% rises every year, or one 5% pay rise above the government’s policy.

    We give the EU up to £55 million a day. If Britain votes for Brexit next year then that money will be available for the NHS, it will be available for tax cuts, and it will be available to give people in the public sector a long overdue pay rise.

    When we vote to leave the EU we will not only be more than a star on someone else’s flag. We will be prosperous, democratic and free.

  • Roger Helmer – 2015 Speech to UKIP Conference

    rogerhelmer

    Below is the text of the speech made by Roger Helmer to the UKIP Conference held on 26 September 2015.

    Good Morning Conference!

    I’d like to share with you something I’ve learned in my years in Brussels and Strasbourg, and it’s this: the EU’s apparatchiks harbour a huge contempt for public opinion.  Isolated in their ivory towers, they can mostly afford to ignore the voters.  They think that people like you and me are just too stupid and ignorant to understand the huge benefits of EU membership.

    But once in a while, reality strikes back and bites their ankles – for example, in 2005 when the French and Dutch voted down the European Constitution.  So did the bureaucrats see the error of their ways, and change course? The hell they did!  No.  They stood wringing their hands, and saying “Perhaps we haven’t explained it well enough”.

    My response is, that I have spent the last sixteen years explaining the European Union to the voters, and the more I explain it, the angrier they get.

    But now at last, with the up-coming Referendum, we’re facing the opportunity of a lifetime.  So I’m going to change the habit of a lifetime.  I’ve spent the last sixteen years telling the British people what’s wrong with the EU.  But now it’s time for a change.   It’s time to talk benefits.  It’s time to talk positively about the massive opportunities offered to this country, to all of us, not by the EU, but by freedom and independence.

    And nowhere are those benefits clearer than in the field of energy.  For three years now, as UKIP’s Energy Spokesman, I’ve been setting out a plan to deliver secure and affordable energy.

    And while we in UKIP have a consistent and workable energy policy, other Parties do not.

    Alex Salmond of the Scots Nats wants to finance an independent Scotland on the back of North Sea Oil and Gas.   But he also says he wants 100% Green Electricity by 2025.

    Jeremy Corbyn talks about re-opening the coal mines, and coal currently produces a third of the UK’s electricity.  But don’t believe Mr. Corbyn – because he also says he wants carbon-free electricity by 2030.

    In any case, we in UKIP can’t implement our plan while we’re in the EU, because we’re hog-tied by EU climate policy and emissions rules.

    So the positive message is simply this: after Brexit, we’ll be free to implement a rational energy policy that can deliver the secure and affordable energy we so desperately need.

    But of course Brexit doesn’t deliver that policy by itself.  We still have to fight what Owen Paterson calls the Green Blob, in Westminster.

    But fighting the green blob is not as hopeless as it sounds.  In this area, as in so many others, UKIP policies are starting to gain traction.  We’re already seeing signs of the alarmist consensus breaking down.  There’s been no global warming for eighteen years.  The costs of renewables are increasingly unaffordable.

    We have a Prime Minister who’s given up hugging huskies, and who reportedly wants to “Get rid of the Green Crap”.  We’ve seen wind farm subsidies cut, and wind farm plans knocked back, including most recently the enormous Navitus Bay offshore project that would have despoiled the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.

    Amber Rudd, described as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, came into office last year with ambitious plans to cover the nation’s roofs with solar panels.  Someone – maybe it was George Osborne — must have talked her through the costs of solar power, because she’s just announced a dramatic cut in domestic solar subsidies.

    As I recently tweeted: “Not so Green?  Amber Rudd gets the Red Light on Solar Subsidies”.

    More generally, there’s a recognition that many of the assumptions behind the rise of renewables were just plain wrong.  We were warned of the threat of “Peak Oil”, which was predicted to be happening by now.  But instead we see a world awash with new oil and gas fields.

    Of course fossil fuels are finite and will one day be exhausted, but that event is so far off that it has no bearing on today’s policy debates.  We need to be worrying about pensioners with hypothermia today.

    An underlying assumption of the dash for renewables was that as fossil fuels became scarcer, they would get more expensive.  In fact the reverse has happened.  We’ve all seen what’s happened to oil prices recently.  And in the USA, gas prices have dropped by two thirds, thanks to the shale gas revolution.

    With Brexit, we can sweep away the threat to our security of supply issues, we can exploit indigenous coal and gas resources, and we can eliminate our over-dependence on intermittent renewables.  But stuck with EU rules, as we are today, serious industry commentators are warning of blackouts in the winter of 2016.

    Under the terms of the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive, we’ve seen a series of coal plant closures – with consequent job losses and threats to generating capacity.  Kingsnorth in Kent; Longannet in Scotland, and Eggborough in Yorkshire, with Ferrybridge not far behind.

    These closures will make not a scrap of difference to the trajectory of atmospheric CO2, nor to the climate.  There are reportedly 1200 new coal-fired power stations in the global pipeline.  Perhaps surprisingly, even über-green Germany is building or refurbishing a couple of dozen – and importing dirty brown coal from Poland into the bargain.

    Our closures will make no measurable difference in the overall picture.  The IEA predicts that coal use will rise for decades.

    We’re currently seeing a haemorrhage of production and jobs and investment out of the UK – and out of the EU – as a direct result of energy prices.  I’ve often quoted former Energy Commissioner Antonio Tajani, who famously said “We are creating an industrial massacre in Europe”.

    We in UKIP don’t want to be a part of that European massacre.

    You’ve heard me talk before about energy-intensive businesses.  Recently we’ve been losing steel companies.  Tata Steel cut 500 jobs in North­umberland.  It’s mothballing its plant at Llanwern in Wales. This affects Bill Etheridge as well – there are knock-on job losses at Tata’s plant at Wednesbury in the Black Country.

    Since I started drafting this speech, we’ve had an even bigger blow to the steel industry.  In the North-East, Redcar, the second largest blast furnace in Europe, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.  Its Thai owners have failed to meet scheduled repayments, and 2000 jobs are at risk.  My message for those 2000 steel-workers: you’re being sacrificed to climate hysteria, and to Brussels bureaucrats.

    We’ve lost several aluminium smelters, like Anglesey Aluminium in Wales, and Alcan Lynemouth in Northumberland.

    It’s the same with petroleum refineries.  Petroplus closed Teesside in 2009, and Coryton in 2012.  Murco closed Milford Haven in 2014.  Research commissioned and published by the British government shows that overseas refineries typically emit 35% more CO2 per unit than UK refineries.

    According to Jim Ratcliffe, the CEO of INEOS, the chemicals giant, twenty-two UK chemical plants have closed since 2009, and he says that unless we resolve the energy price problem, there’ll be no chemical industry left in Europe in ten years’ time.  And remember they use gas not only for energy but also as a feedstock.  The list goes on – glass, cement, paper.  All these industries, all these jobs, are under threat from energy prices.

    Across Europe, there are increasing concerns about the costs of renewables.

    Denmark is scaling back climate and emissions targets which are proving just too expensive to deliver.

    Meantime in Germany, Der Spiegel reports that the German renewables business is in crisis.

    But despite these concerns, you can bet that the EU will cling doggedly to its perverse energy policies for years to come.

    The good news is that with Brexit, we can stop the haemorrhage.  We can keep those jobs here at home.  We can reverse the tide, so that industry and jobs and investment come back to Britain.

    That means that outside the EU, we in Britain will have a dramatic competitive advantage on energy prices against the rest of Europe when it comes to inward investment.

    Britain after Brexit will become the manufacturing capital of Europe.

    That’s the story from industry — but there’s the issue of domestic prices as well.  As we get into the referendum campaign, you may find people on the door­step who care about jobs – but don’t always enthuse about the problems of companies.  But they all get electricity bills, and many are suffering.  Maybe they – or their elderly relatives – are struggling to make ends meet.  For them, Brexit means the lower energy bills they desperately need.

    That’s the positive message of Brexit for the voters of Britain.  Lower domestic bills.  More jobs.  More investment.  More growth.  More prosperity.  Not a bad prospectus.

    So Conference, I think it’s time for us to speak up for those 2000 steel-workers in Redcar, and for all the other British workers whose jobs are threatened by perverse climate and energy policies.  It’s time to send a message to our Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, Amber Rudd.  And to the Chairman of parliament’s Climate Change Committee, John Gummer, now ennobled as Lord Deben.  And to George Osborne and David Cameron.

    Let’s send a message from this hall in Doncaster, from this Conference, from this Party, that will reverberate in the Palace of Westminster.

    Do we want secure and affordable energy?
    Do we want Britain to become the manufacturing capital of Europe?

    Do we want our country back?

    Colleagues – thank you so much.  And if I may borrow David Steel’s famous rallying cry: Let’s go back to our constituencies and prepare for independence!

  • Priti Patel – 2015 Speech at ERSA Conference

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Priti Patel, the Minister of State for Employment, at the ERSA annual conference on 8 December 2015.

    Thank you for inviting me to speak at this flagship event.

    You have played an important role in the success of the labour market over recent years – around half a million job outcomes across the Work Programme and Work Choice. Thank you.

    I’m grateful for your work and look forward to continuing to work closely with you.

    I welcome and share the sentiment of this conference: ‘Ambitious Futures: upping our collective game’.

    It is right that we are ambitious and my message to you today is that the focus should be on outcomes, not just inputs.

    My challenge is for you to think outside of the traditional approaches of provision – and to think innovatively.

    There is much we need to do, but it is worth reflecting on what changed over the last Parliament.

    Legacy

    Since 2010, we have made great strides reforming the welfare system – ensuring it better supports the people who need it, and remains affordable to the taxpayer in the long term.

    The labour market is in a much stronger position than it was 5 years ago:

    • the claimant count is nearly 700,000 lower and is at its lowest level since 1975
    • the unemployment rate is close to pre-recession levels
    • long-term unemployment has fallen by 274,000
    • 1 million fewer people on the main out-of-work benefits since 2010
    • the employment rate and number of people in work are at record highs

    I appreciate the role you have played in this….

    ….helping to deliver our shared goal of supporting those who need help back into work, and helping to drive performance improvements across our key provision.

    Building on success in this Parliament

    So, we’ve seen huge progress, but we know there is more to do.

    The government is committed to moving this country to a higher wage, lower tax and lower welfare society.

    So, we will press ahead with our reforms over this Parliament and we will continue to be ambitious.

    The overall position following the Spending Review is that the funding for employment support will remain broadly stable.

    However, within this, we have aimed to improve the effectiveness of our spending, reflecting our key priorities.

    That means:

    • continuing the roll-out of Universal Credit and extending the same support that Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants get to around a million more people by 2020
    • improving support for people with health conditions and disabilities through a real terms increase in funding
    • and ensuring value for money, with interventions that we know work

    This approach focuses on what our labour market most needs today whilst retaining flexibility for the future.

    I want to deal with each of these in turn.

    Universal Credit and refocusing employment offer

    Firstly, Universal Credit – the key plank of our welfare reforms.

    It marks a distinct shift in our approach and is transforming lives through more personalised support and by making sure work always pays.

    Under Universal Credit, people can expect early and continued support looking at what work they can do and what support they need to do it.

    Unlike in the past, Universal Credit stays with someone when they enter work and continues to support them until they leave the benefits system.

    Today we have published Universal Credit at Work.

    The independently reviewed research shows that Universal Credit is making a real difference.

    It shows that people who are on Universal Credit are:

    • more likely to be employed in the first nine months of their claim, spending twice as much time looking for a job than under the legacy system
    • work on average 12 days more than Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants
    • and are more likely to be earning more

    This is welfare reform in action, making things simpler, ensuring the right incentives are in place – and ultimately, changing culture and changing lives.

    The report also shows we are on track in terms of roll out.

    Universal Credit is now available in three quarters of all jobcentres, and by April next year it will be available across the country.

    Building on this, we are testing a digital service in 3 London jobcentres.

    This will expand nationally from May next year, initially to 5 jobcentres every month, as part of the gradual, safe and secure delivery plan.

    Health and disability focus

    Secondly, this renewed approach also represents the start of genuine integration between the health and work sectors, with a focus on supporting people with health conditions and disabilities return to and remain in work.

    Your input has been invaluable in helping us to set out our strategy here.

    I firmly believe that the perspective from the frontline – the perspective from people and organisations like you all who are helping people into work day in and day out – is essential to developing successful interventions.

    That’s why I so value the input you have been providing on the development of future employment support, and that’s why we’ll be taking those views on aboard as we design the new programme over the next few months.

    In particular you’ve told us that we need to target support more effectively.

    So, I have asked my officials to develop better ways of targeting and preparing people for employment programmes so that we can ensure that you have a good chance of supporting every person that walks through your door.

    Once people are with you, you should have enough resources to give them the support they need to make a difference to their lives.

    We will make sure the right incentives are there for you to deliver a first class service to everyone on the future programme, not feel the need to pick winners.

    You’ve also said that it is really difficult to find a way through the maze of services offered through different government departments and agencies.

    That is why my priority is to remove these roadblocks and prompt genuine integration of services across government, so you can better integrate services on the ground.

    Nowhere is this more important than in how we support people with health conditions and disabilities, which is why we have set out such an important programme of reform in this area.

    This work includes:

    • the launch of the new contracted Work and Health employment provision in 2017
    • an expansion of Access to Work, enabling up to 25,000 additional disabled people to receive support through Access to Work
    • and at least £115 million of funding for the Work and Health Unit, including a Work and Health Innovation fund

    The government will publish a White Paper next year setting out more detail of our plans to improve support for people with health conditions and disabilities.

    Good value for money for contracted employment

    Thirdly, we need to build on the success of current contracted employment provision and design support that helps today’s labour market and delivers good value for money.

    The decision on the level of central government funding to employment programmes in the recent Spending Review followed comprehensive consideration of our strategic direction against the current market; the economic climate and our manifesto commitments.

    Work has started on the design and structure of the new programme and draws heavily on all the best experience and consultation work we did over the summer.

    Senior officials also met with many of our prime providers last week and held an open, constructive dialogue around how we can continue to work in the spirit of partnership to ensure the most effective delivery of the Spending Review announcements and the best possible support for claimants.

    We will be working closely with providers both individually and collectively in the coming weeks and months.

    Devolution deals and integration

    We will also be capitalising on the expertise of local authorities.

    Local authorities know their local labour market and often have access to services which claimants may need alongside employment support. Help finding accommodation for example, or advice on budgeting and debt management.

    We have already collaborated with Manchester, Glasgow and Clyde Valley, and London to develop the Working Well, Working Matters and Working Capital programmes. And we will be looking carefully at whether the localised key worker approach being delivered in those areas improves outcomes for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants.

    We know that providing holistic support can be key to supporting the hardest to help claimants into work. It is therefore crucial that the design of the new programme supports providers, local authorities and other local organisations to better integrate services.

    So all local authorities will have the opportunity to comment on the national design of the new programme. And we will be testing different approaches to jointly designing and commissioning programmes across the 7 devolution deal areas – Greater Manchester, London, Sheffield, Tees Valley, Liverpool, West Midlands, the north-east.

    This approach will enable us put integration at the heart of the new programme. And accordingly, we will expect providers to demonstrate how they will forge strong partnerships with local organisations to deliver the integrated support that claimants need.

    Employers

    More often than not, we know that providing claimants with the support they need entails equipping them with the skills that local employers demand.

    It is the job of everyone in this room to engage with local employers, employer representatives and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to understand that demand. This means working in partnership with them to: to:

    • identify sustainable job opportunities
    • create and support apprenticeships
    • nurture skills that aid progression
    • and improve the way that the labour market works in low employment areas

    Together, we must listen to what employers in varying local labour markets need.

    Together, we must understand their skills and progression challenges.

    And together, we must be innovative in reaching out to new employers and engaging with those who may have overlooked the employment services we can provide.

    So think about how you currently work with employers, and consider how you can engage with them more effectively to ensure the support you deliver to both claimants and employers reflects local labour market demand.

    Conclusion

    Today’s challenges are different to those of 2010.

    We have largely overcome the issue of long-term unemployment.

    Our focus now is on the nearly 3 million people who are on ‘inactive’ benefits.

    The majority of sick and disabled benefit claimants want to work, but there is a large gap between the proportion that want to work and those that feel able.

    We worked effectively together on the labour market challenges of 2010 and witnessed significant improvements in the labour market.

    I see ERSA and its members being key partners to support people that can work into work. This is a shared challenge – delivering more integrated support to those with some of the most significant barriers to work, particularly those with health conditions and disabilities.

    Our role is to embrace that challenge….to integrate and innovate…..to support people into sustainable jobs.

    Thank you.

  • Matthew Taylor – 2001 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Matthew Taylor to the Liberal Democrat Party Conference held in Bournemouth on 25 September 2001.

    Before the appalling events in America, the row between the Prime Minister and the TUC (and many Labour backbenchers) over the Private Finance Initiative looked set to dominate the news.

    Introduced by the Conservatives, PFI has been pursued by Labour in their “private is best” footsteps.

    Liberal Democrats oppose this dogma – but not as members of the old-left’s “public is always best” camp either.

    In theory, private involvement can, sometimes, encourage lower costs and better service, and real innovation.

    For example, a company building a road can be paid for each day it is available. Therefore the designs minimise maintenance, meaning fewer traffic jams for you and me.

    Similarly, in some PFI prisons bonuses are paid if re-offending rates fall – an incentive to concentrate on helping prisoners go straight.

    Of course, some want private involvement ruled out altogether.

    They claim the cost of borrowing is higher for the private sector than for government, and so it is always more expensive.

    But the government is paying a little more to, in effect, insure against the risk of something going horribly wrong. Then it’s private companies, not you and me as taxpayers, who get landed with unexpected costs and overruns.

    In any case, other savings may, may outweigh the interest costs.

    Critics also mention that government is often tied into PFI contracts for 25 or 30 years.

    However when government borrows for a conventional project it is also tied into contracts of 25 or 30 years – albeit for the repayment of debt rather than the provision of a service.

    Either way, if the original service provided turns out to be mistaken, the taxpayer will still be paying for that mistake many years later.

    In truth, neither private finance nor public service can rescue the taxpayer from bad decisions in the first place by the politicians.

    But if the opponents sometimes exaggerate their case, the zealots in favour go further. Much further.

    Both Conservative and Labour Politicians have suggested PFI magics up “extra” public investment.

    But PFI is a form of debt just like government borrowing. It incurs charges for the service built, rather than interest on the money borrowed to build it.

    Either way, the taxpayer pays.

    Even if it doesn’t show in the Treasury accounts that way.

    In truth, it only makes the Government’s figures look better – it doesn’t save taxpayers a penny.

    Extraordinarily, the Treasury openly admit that they are willing to pay for more expensive forms of finance just to keep the cost out of the official statistics – a pure waste of public money.

    When they did this for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link it cost us £80m extra – to make the Chancellor look prudent.

    For the London Underground it will cost £700m extra for Gordon’s Brown’s obsession with appearing – just appearing – prudent.

    That’s a shocking scandal. It’s one reason why we will put a stop to London Underground’s part-privatisation if we can.

    Because of this, the Government usually refuses to publish their public sector cost comparisons with PFI.

    For the NHS these show an average benefit of just 1% – which usually depends on unproven assumptions of long-term efficiency savings.

    Claims of commercial secrecy are sometimes used to justify this cover-up.

    Only because the Government was forced by a court to publish the Deloitte & Touche report, could we prove that the London Underground PPP calculations had been rigged, and that the bond scheme is clearly cheaper.

    It is a shocking scandal. And we will put a stop to it.

    Worse still, government Departments often get their sums wrong.

    I can announce today that we have now examined all the National Audit Office’s reports on such schemes.

    More than half show major errors in the calculation of costs – all favouring PFI.

    At the very least this is gross incompetence.

    Frankly, we believe the figures are being fiddled.

    If it was cricket Gordon Brown would get a life ban.

    We will put a stop to it.

    So no surprise, there are problems with accountability.

    Most PFI contracts replace unaccountable and over-centralised publicly run services with even more unaccountable and over-centralised privately run services.

    Democratic accountability is actually diminished, particularly if information is treated as “commercial – in confidence”.

    So it is time to sweep away this secrecy.

    To expose private involvement in public services to proper scrutiny.

    To knock it off its pedestal

    To allow real choice. Examine every option.

    Throw out the ideology.

    This motion rightly doesn’t say it is always wrong.

    It can, at the right time, in the right place, bring real benefits.

    But rigging the system at the expense of democratic accountability, value for money or quality of service is wrong.

    Totally wrong.

    We won’t rule out using the private sector. To do so would be for us to say that even if a project could be proven to substantially improve public services then we would not use it.

    But we do demand proof.

    Scrutiny.

    Accountability.

    When public services are developed, all the options must be tested.

    With the Liberal Democrats they will be tested.

    So a word on the main amendment:

    It implies that even when a partnership can be unequivocally demonstrated to be better, by our tests, we should not use it in the NHS.

    That doesn’t make sense. If we believe these tests are right, we should have the self-confidence to use them. If NHS schemes don’t match up we’ll put a stop to them.

    On the evidence.

    But, by testing alternative provisions, the public sector is itself opened up to scrutiny of its costs, its quality of service, and its ability to innovate.

    Liberal Democrats in local authorities and the devolved administrations have often delivered greater accountability and transparency in PFI projects.

    The challenge now is to ensure that all public private partnerships are tested in this way.

    Freeing local authorities and devolved administrations to borrow on financial markets, subject to the same rules as central government, would further level the playing field between PFI schemes and other alternatives.

    Labour have wedded themselves to PFI, whatever the cost.

    The Conservatives can offer no opposition to this, only support.

    They invented it.

    So it falls, yet again, to Liberal Democrats to lead the only effective opposition.

    Let us be absolutely clear today.

    Liberal Democrats are not ideological about private finance or public service.

    But we are implacably opposed, ideologically opposed, to secrecy, dogmatism or fixing.

    We will root it out every time.

    We will put a stop to it.

    Throwing out the ideology. Putting people first.

    Now that’s effective opposition!

  • Charles Kennedy – 2001 Speech on Terrorism

    Below is the text of the speech made by Charles Kennedy on 24 September 2001.

    We meet against an unimaginable backdrop.

    It is hard to find words adequate to give proper voice by way of response, far less respect.

    How can day-to-day vocabulary, measure up to such sheer criminality?

    For me, watching those grim images on television – again, and again and again – there were all the normal, human reactions.

    Disbelief. Then alarm.

    Horror – as the truth sank in.

    Compassion for all those people and their families, so many of whom were British.

    Can you imagine that last mobile phone call from your husband, or wife or child?

    The helplessness. And with it, the hopelessness. We’re here because we don’t believe in hopelessness. We actually believe in hope. But hope requires purpose. And purpose requires direction.
    When I spoke again with the Prime Minister earlier today,
    we were clear on a number of matters.

    First, common resolve to root out terrorism wherever it may be. Second, the need to balance legislation with the interests of domestic civil rights. Third, vigilance against anyone who seeks to target and attack any of our ethnic communities. Fourth, no ruling out of a further recall of Parliament, if events require it.

    Now immediate emotions inevitably begin to subside, but they will never go away. Nor should they. We Liberal Democrats must be clear about our intentions.

    Resolve. There cannot be capitulation to the terrorist.

    Determination. That we strike at the heart of international terrorism.

    And equal determination that in combating terrorism we do not lose sight of the fact, at one at the same time, that we live – actually – in a liberal democracy, and the principles of democracy are what we’re all about. So as we gather here this week, this is one of the challenges facing us as Liberal Democrats.

    One of our particular duties, is to make it clear that short-term knee-jerk responses, never provide long-term solutions.

    We have to be especially vigilant against those people who would seek to make scapegoats of Muslims in Britain.

    Let us be quite clear, we have no quarrel with the Muslim community and no quarrel with the Islamic faith. Last Friday, when I visited a Mosque in London, that was the message I took to our fellow citizens on all our behalves. And that message went out loud and clear from this conference hall this morning.

    But let us also remember. There will be particularly difficult dilemmas ahead for our party. Those difficulties will involve a gauging between the balance of the liberty of the individual against the threat that the terrorist presents to that very liberty.

    Do not underestimate the real, ongoing pressures and the public scrutiny that goes with that, which will be upon us in the times ahead. Proportionate response is not just about military measures.

    Proportionate response is also about civil liberties. The scandal that is terrorism is all about civil liberties. In facing those dilemmas, we are best to remember our first principles. We subscribe to the rule of law, violated over the skyline of the United States, on September 11th.

    But that subscription, as the very word implies, comes with a price tag attached. It involves realism and risk.

    Realism means facing the stark truth, that the terrorist will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing. Risk is about the consequences of your response.

    So let us be clear about these first principles.

    Civil liberties – yes.

    The rule of international law – yes.

    Co-operation amongst sane-minded peoples across the globe – yes.

    All underpinned by a philosophic and fundamental commitment to the integrity of the individual, and the supremacy of that individual over the power of the nation state. But recognising also that people need and are looking for security and reassurance, and that the proper role of the state is to provide that.

    Now that’s where we stand. And that defines our response and our reasoning in the wake of these dreadful events. When Parliament was reconvened, I couldn’t help but cast my mind back to such a happy year as a student in the mid-West of the States.

    Friendships were made there. What struck me then, what I didn’t understand properly, was the extent to which the mid-West can almost be a country which is very different
    from the rest of the country, which, when you think about it, itself is a continent.

    But what is so striking now is the remarkable degree of spontaneous unity right across America. A unity of understandable anger. But the fear that can flow from that can be dangerous.

    That’s where a candid friend comes in. Standing shoulder to shoulder, but always there for the occasional cautionary tap on the shoulder.

    The most special relationships, in my experience, are based on a combination of trust and mutual respect.

    And as America’s candid friend, we are able to say: there are no blank cheques to be issued to the United States.

    The way to defeat international terrorism, is through international co-operation, based on international law, clear intelligence and a measured and appropriate military response.

    And let me say this where military response is concerned: we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that where our armed forces are involved, the risks to them are quantified and minimised.

    We cannot shelve or abandon that requirement.

    That means supporting American actions only in the knowledge that Britain will be involved in all planning and risk assessment.

    All that, we owe that to our armed forces.

    And let me also, incidentally, pay tribute to the BBC World Service. As ever, one of the key contributions that Britain can make to the coalition against terror and suppression is to offer accurate information and rational analysis.

    But do remember. War is not the word. Nor is crusade. Resolve is.

    We have got to fashion a mindset, to find that approach which begins to address the roots of such evil.

    We do need to get back to those first principles.

    In the face of such violation, be inviolate.

    Don’t flinch.

    Democracy must prevail and it will.

  • Menzies Campbell – 2001 Speech to Liberal Democrat Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Menzies Campbell, the then Party Foreign Affairs spokesman, to the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Bournemouth on 26 September 2001.

    With the exception of some ritual skirmishing over the single currency, Foreign Affairs were noticeably absent from the general election campaign of 2001.

    Foreign Affairs hardly seemed to register in the collective mind of the British electorate.

    But as the events of two weeks ago show, there is no other area where policy is more influenced by external events over which we have no control, than the conduct of our relations with other countries and institutions.

    It has become trite to claim that “the world will never be the same again” or that we have reached a “defining moment” or that we have reached a “watershed”.

    We do not know any of these things are true.

    But what is true is that before the 11th of September there were and still remain foreign policy issues which are urgent and acute;

    Such as our military commitments in the Balkans and Sierra Leone;

    The proper British response to American proposals for ballistic missile defence;

    Or the impact of the slowdown in the Japanese economy on the inward investment upon which 65,000 jobs in the United Kingdom depend;

    Or the political and economic consequences of remaining outside the single currency.

    We have not suspended all political activity in the United Kingdom since 11th September but I sense that the electorate has little stomach for the partisan political exchanges which normally characterise the party conference season – and that least of all in Foreign Affairs.

    So, let me today adopt a more reflective tone and try to set out a purely Liberal Democrat view of Foreign Affairs – leaving others to conclude how and to what extent that view conflicts with the policies of the other parties.

    Our aim must be to offer a clear, constructive and credible foreign policy in which, by means of effective international and regional organisations, we can help to promote prosperity, peace and freedom, combat poverty and disease, and tackle global environmental problems.

    Our natural inclination is towards internationalism – celebrating diversity, recognising that state borders provide no defence to environmental threats – accepting that the desperation of asylum seekers knows no boundaries – always holding to an unwavering commitment to the universality of human rights.

    Freedom should not be the prerogative of the well governed, the well off, or the well connected.

    A Liberal Democrat view embraces freedom from want and disease, freedom from oppression and fear, freedom of assembly and expression.

    In short – a foreign policy with an ethical dimension.

    But neither we nor any other country will fashion a foreign policy which meets these objectives unless by multilateral action; by acknowledging our dependence and by supporting international institutions; by collective and not unilateral action.

    If the events of the last two weeks have taught us anything it is surely that no nation however powerful can hope to defend its citizens or seek redress on their behalf unless it acts in concert with those of like mind.

    However much a sense of national pride may seduce us to believe we have the ability to stand alone, the truth is that our survival depends on our allies and our alliances.

    It is no accident that in seeking legitimacy for prospective military action, the USA was compelled to seek the support of the United Nations, of NATO and of the EU.

    It is no surprise that in order to maintain the coalition of support it has gone outside even of these institutions to try to forge an alliance of those who will look neutrally, at least, on a military response.

    In renouncing unilateralism the USA has been compelled to cede to allies old, new and improbable, a measure of influence over its own decision-making.

    When we argue as we have for a military response based on clear intelligence, precise and proportionate to the need, and consistent with the principles of international law this is not an over-cautious response, as it is crudely characterised by some, it is no more than the cement necessary to keep together the newly constructed coalition.

    Abandon these principles and the coalition will be impossible to maintain.

    Such ad hoc coalition may be a matter for congratulation, even astonishment, but it is no substitute for the permanent coalition of interests which a reformed, effective and fully funded United Nations would provide.

    The mechanism for crisis management needs to be in place before the crisis erupts.

    The United Nations will only fulfil these aspirations when it commands the unqualified support of all the nations, no matter how powerful.

    A system of international justice will only be effective if all nations no matter how powerful accept the universal jurisdiction of an International Criminal Court.

    And if we put our trust in a reformed and revitalised United Nations we must here also assert our belief in the web of mutually reinforcing treaties for arms control and disarmament which have maintained the strategic balance.

    We are not signatories to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but we have been its beneficiaries and we have a legitimate interest in the stability it brings and the consequences of its abrogation.

    We are entitled to call upon the declared nuclear powers to fulfil their obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

    We support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – we want all nuclear powers to do so too.

    Landmines and biological weapons verification, measures to control the global trade in small arms and the Kyoto protocol – how shall we make a success of these unless we approach them from a collective and not a unilateralist standpoint?

    Today is the 15th day after the events in Washington and New York, but it is also the 30th day of NATO’s operation to collect up weapons in Macedonia – a collective successful action in which the United Kingdom has played a prominent and leading part.

    But if we are to go on playing such a role – if we are to go on being a force for good – if we are to assert and implement the right of humanitarian intervention where there are systematic breaches of human rights, I simply do not believe that we can do all this on the existing defence budget.

    I lost the argument inside our party for a commitment to increase defence spending in our budget proposals for the general election.

    But I was in good company.

    So did Iain Duncan Smith and Geoff Hoon.

    No UK political party campaigned in the General Election on the footing of increasing defence spending.

    And yet every party wants the armed forces to do more, to be better equipped, better manned, to make a better contribution to our foreign policy objectives – just plain better.

    It can’t be done without better resources.

    The Labour Government’s Strategic Defence Review was supposed to provide conceptual stability for defence policy and it largely succeeded.

    But without adequate resources to match its objectives we shall be driven to a further review before long.

    We shall find it difficult to deal with turbulence abroad if the armed forces are facing financial turbulence at home.

    And finally let me turn to Europe.

    A party of reform in Britain has to be a party of reform in Europe.

    Better scrutiny, better control of expenditure, less waste, less bureaucracy, more subsidiarity, more transparency.

    Our commitment to Europe will not survive sceptical challenge unless it is accompanied by frank acknowledgement of Europe’s weaknesses and credible proposals to put them right.

    But let us acknowledge the burgeoning foreign policy influence of the European Union.

    In its achievements as a partner with Nato in Macedonia and its mature political response to President Bush, it is coming of age in foreign affairs.

    These last two weeks have been a curious time in foreign affairs.

    So much of what seemed certain has been disproved.

    So much of what we took for granted has been destroyed.

    In uncertain times a political party confronts challenges by rigorous adherence to its principles.

    Be in no doubt, our principles and our resolve will be tested as never before.

  • John Major – 2001 Speech to Young Conservatives Conference

    johnmajor

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Major, the then Prime Minister, to the Young Conservatives Conference held in Scarborough on 9 February 1991.

    In each of the last three General Elections well over a million young people voted Conservative – three times as many first time voters supported us for every two who voted Labour in 1987.

    That is good, but not good enough.

    Why did we enjoy that support? It was because young people shared the values that we care about. I believe we want to strengthen and deepen that commitment.

    I want them to know that the Conservative Party is open to them and to their ideas.

    They will be welcome – and we need them.

    Their idealism.

    Their willingness to challenge accepted wisdom.

    Their readiness to try new ways. And we must respond to their hopes as well.

    To their concern for the sort of life they want to build for themselves.

    Today the world is changing at an unprecedented rate. We cannot be immune from that.

    Our principles and our philosophy are firm. But we must still adapt in order to thrive.

    We must be open to originality, to innovation, and to change. And so long as I am able to ensure it, we will.

    In a few moments I want to share with you some of my thoughts about our priorities for the future.

    But first I want to speak of one group who are uppermost in our minds at present – those in our armed forces in the Gulf.

    A few weeks ago I had the privilege of meeting many of them. They made a lasting impression.

    They had no doubt that the task they had been set was just. And they left me in no doubt that they were wholly equal to that task.

    And since then – night after night and day after day – we have seen them prove that with a skill and courage we can only admire.

    They deserve all the support they can get – and they will get from us all the support they need.

    And when they have done their job we will bring them back home – as soon as we can.

    For here, at home, there are deep anxieties faced by their families.

    I have received in recent weeks many letters from them.

    Some are worried. Some emotional. All proud.

    I believe the whole nation shares those feelings.

    We did not want this war.

    But we have it.

    And we face a difficult period ahead.

    But Saddam Hussein must know what he faces.

    He faces defeat.

    The timing maybe uncertain.

    But the outcome is absolutely certain.

    Because we intend to complete the job they have begun.

    The British people understand very well the key principle underlying the Gulf conflict.

    Throughout history the instinct of Britain has always been to defend freedom.

    To uphold the rule of law.

    That above all is why our troops are in the Gulf.

    For our troops back home and all over it is not enough simply to protect the rights and freedoms that we have inherited. We must look beyond the present.

    We must extend them.

    In the last ten years tremendous advances have been made. Now we must move forward again.

    We must look now at the opportunities that should be there and are not.

    At the choices we do not yet have.

    And at the people who have not yet benefited from change. The success of our Party since 1979 has sprung from our readiness to reform – our willingness to make the changes necessary to produce a better quality of life.

    And I promise you today that great programme of reform will continue in the years ahead

    In our Party we know you have to produce wealth before you can use it.

    Like many other nations, Britain faces economic difficulties at present.

    The next few months will be uncomfortable.

    I regret that.

    But short term expedients won’t do.

    They will only lengthen and worsen the problems themselves.

    We must follow a policy that will cure those problems, not simply mask them.

    That is precisely what people expect of us.

    Every time we have faced economic difficulties we have brought the country out of them.

    We have a good track record.

    And we will come through our problems yet again.

    The centre piece of any strong economy is low inflation. And in that there are good signs for Britain.

    Inflation is coming down, and will continue to fall throughout the year.

    It will halve from its peak.

    And we will still be driving it down.

    There are some who that say inflation doesn’t matter so very much.

    What that shows is that to them people don’t matter so very much.

    Well, people matter to me.

    I know that inflation is the enemy of personal security and peace of mind – for people of all ages.

    It gnaws away at the hard won savings of the pensioner. It disrupts business and destroys jobs.

    It betrays the basic trust in the value of money that lies behind every transaction in our daily lives.

    That is why we must and will defeat inflation as our first priority

    But, you know, when we talk of efficiency, of competition, and of economic success, we do it not for its own sake.

    Not for material reasons only.

    But for what we can achieve with the resources we create.

    In the year ahead we will set out our ideas for the 1990s and beyond.

    We have an agenda to work through.

    Some of those ideas will be tried and tested.

    Some will be new.

    Some will involve novel concepts.

    But all of them will have one thing in common – the long-term needs of this country and the people that live in it.

    Our Party exists to give more people more choice, more independence, more control over their daily lives.

    We know that the role of government should be limited. At present it is still too big.

    But let there be no question about one thing.

    We must never accept the contention that limited Government means lower standards.

    That state services must be second-best.

    I want to see an unending search for better quality in all our public services. When we deprive people of their money in never taxes, they have a right to ensure that it is never wasted in government.

    So I want to see new ideas flowing into public service. More privatisation, yes, of course.

    But also more partnership with the voluntary and private sectors.

    More use of the best private skills.

    For far too long we have tolerated public services that are just not good enough.

    Council house repairs that are shoddy and slow.

    Hospital appointments that take all day.

    Trains that run late and buses that travel in packs. Children refused admission to the schools to which their parents wanted them to go.

    In all of these areas we have been investing enormous sums – in health, in transport, and in education.

    But are we getting proper value?

    We must make those services operate better for the people who use them.

    And operate with the same efficiency within the public sector as we would expect outside the public sector.

    At the top of my personal agenda for the 1990s is education.

    Education is the key to opening new paths for all sorts of people, not just the most gifted and for doing so at every stage of their lives. And it is also the key to the Tory ideal of a mobile, dynamic and diverse society.

    So my objectives are straightforward – improving quality and standards.

    More pupils staying on in education after 16.

    Much more choice, and better training for all young people. I want to see more vocational options in schools of equal rigour and repute to the academic courses.

    And this must go hand in hand with greater coherence and quality in post-school training.

    There has been great progress over the last ten years. Some parts of our education system are unrivalled.

    But others clearly are not.

    Right back to the 60s and before, serious mistakes were made. Tried and tested methods were swept aside.

    Unproven theories were foisted on our children.

    And as a result, standards were lowered. And as a result of that the status of teachers was undermined.

    As a nation we cannot be proud of what has been done over the last thirty years for many of our children.

    Too many of them have been allowed to expect too little of themselves and too many other people have expected too little of them.

    Over a decade ago the Labour Party recognised all this to be true.

    They launched what they called a “great debate” about education.

    But of course it was not debate that was needed.

    It was action.

    As usual, it was left to a Conservative Government to take it up after 1979.

    In 1979 we set ourselves to tackle those problems.

    And since then, we have introduced a great range of reforms in our schools.

    Given more choice and influence to parents.

    More responsibility to governors.

    Set out the building blocks of a new system with better education in the National Curriculum.

    These policies are working.

    More pupils are getting more out of their education.

    There are now five 16 year olds staying on at school for every four just two years ago.

    Ten years ago only one person in eight went on into higher education.

    Now it is one in five.

    And soon it will be one in four.

    We have many more young people graduating from our universities than ever before in the past.

    Those are the real tests of success. And the policies of the Conservative Government have passed them in the last ten years.

    And we are passing them.

    So the 1980s have seen an opening of freedom and choice.

    But I for one have no intention of resting on the Government’s achievements.

    I want to bring the benefits of the best possible education to all. We cannot accept a situation where in some places nearly 40 per cent of school leavers get at least five higher level GCSEs, while elsewhere, less than ten percent do so. The Conservative Party has never accepted the notion that excellence for the few excuses mediocrity for the many.

    It is, of course, the teaching profession that must lead the drive to higher standards and aspirations in our schools. I want to see dedicated teachers rewarded fairly.

    But I also want to see more effective scrutiny of performance in schools.

    And I want the most rigorous standards applied in teacher training.

    We must ensure that every subject is taught to a high standard.

    Teachers may need to be better trained in the subjects they are going to teach.

    It is no good having hours of study of the theory of education if you actually fall down in the practice of teaching it when you get into the classroom.

    So we want to see an educational system that is the equal of anything abroad.

    Doing the basic things well.

    It is not only a question of reading and spelling.

    Although it is most emphatically a question of every child having the right to be taught how to read fluently and spell accurately.

    And it is also teaching to a good standard with the right combination of factual knowledge and critical understanding in every subject.

    And of training people for worthwhile qualifications in job related skills when they choose a vocational course.

    And so what is it we seek? In summary we seek a system of education and training able to equip the children of today for the twenty-first century.

    That is the objective that we will be seeking in our education policy throughout the 1990s.

    And we need that for a variety of reasons, we need it because we need that education, that excellence in education to maximise our success both domestically and in Europe. And also of course, because that education equips people so much better to enjoy all the aspects of life both in work and in leisure, that will be opening up before them in the years to come.

    Above all in the 1990’s we will face a competitive future in a world that is becoming increasingly competitive and most especially in a European community that will become increasingly competitive. There will be no hiding place for inefficiency, no hiding place for the shoddy and the second-rate once we get into the Europe of the 1990’s. That will all change as the reforms of 1992 increasingly come to place. Those who are well equipped and do well, work well, think well, produce well, are efficient and effective will be the leaders of the Europe in the 1990’s. And we are, and will remain, an important and enthusiastic part of the European community. It is simply not enough for some people to say, ‘I don’t really like Europe, but I will tolerate it’, for if we take that view about Europe we will never be the centre of it and can not lead it in the direction which we wish it to go.

    It may be true in some ways that we need Europe but by golly it is equally true that Europe needs us and we had better make sure we are a key part in it.

    It is not only the opportunities in Europe, though I will return to those in a moment. Look at the opportunities opening up in other parts of the world, the increasing democratisation of so much of Eastern Europe, a part of the world that for a very long time indeed we have seen subjugated, and unable to open itself up to a free enterprise system and all the opportunities that will flow from that.

    That is all changing and has been changing in the most dramatic fashion in recent years.

    And then you see the extent to which throughout the whole of South East Asia and elsewhere there are growing industrial giants with whom we will have to compete in the future and then there is the increasingly growing and important market throughout the whole of Latin America. Those are the opportunities that lie there for British industry, British commerce, and British people in the future.

    And to return to the central point, providing we have the education system, the skills and the enterprise we will be able to win in those markets and winning in those markets will mean a much higher standard of life and living for all people who live in this country in the future.

    And nowhere will that competitiveness be more needed than within the European community itself.

    And that is why I say again that we must remain an enthusiastic partner in Europe.

    It is not for nothing that we led the way in the drive for the Single Market. It was not without good reason that we took sterling into the Exchange Rate Mechanism. We propose to play a leading part in Europe’s future and no-one should doubt that for a single second.

    And Britain will have a strong voice in the new Europe. Strong because of our commitment.

    Strong because we have hard heads as well as soft hearts. Strong because Britain under a Conservative Government has firm principles and a very clear idea of where it wants to go and what needs to be done to get there.

    And we will also resist the unworkable.

    Set realism in place of impractical dreams and protect the diversity of Europe while removing obstacles to partnership and enterprise.

    Necessarily you in the Young Conservatives must look to the long-term, to the year 2000 and beyond.

    And so you should.

    It is your future for a good deal longer than it is mine. Your Government has the same instincts. We will set our sights on the same horizon and so we should because it is our responsibility to do so.

    Mr Chairman, I have a total faith in Britain and in its future.

    I don’t accept for a second the craven argument that we cannot compete with the Germans and the French.

    I don’t agree with the pessimists who always believe we must devalue in order to remain competitive and I despise the defeatists who run down this country and write off its future. Defeatism is always an excuse for doing nothing. But we have no intention of doing nothing. In the months ahead our agenda will unfold. Throughout the last decade Conservative Governments have proved successful to an extent beyond most peoples’ imagination. I believe that will be increasingly recognised.

    Throughout the past decade Conservative Government’s have shown very clearly what it is possible for the British economy and people in this country actually to achieve and do. That is a record that people will look back on, I believe, in years to come with some envy and with a considerable amount of pride.

  • John McDonnell – 1997 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    John McDonnell GB Labour MP Hayes and Harlington

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by John McDonnell in the House of Commons on 6 June 1997.

    I have been made aware of the conventions of maiden speeches, especially the tradition of paying tribute to one’s predecessors. I have no problem with praising many of the previous Members of Parliament for Hayes and Harlington: men such as Walter Ayles, a good socialist who took a special interest in aid to Africa; Arthur Skeffington, a superb housing Minister in the Wilson Government; and Neville Sandelson, a good man who unfortunately fell victim to the delusions of grandeur of David Owen.

    Despite my respect for the conventions of the House, I shall not perjure myself by praising my immediate Tory predecessor. Many saw him simply as a Tory buffoon, and he was once described as a “pig’s bladder on a stick”. When he chose as his election slogan, “We love Dicks”, we were not sure whether to laugh or to call in the obscene publications squad. However, Terry Dicks was not a joke. He was a stain on the character of this House, the Conservative party which harboured him and the good name of my constituency. He brought shame on the political process of this country by his blatant espousal of racism and his various corrupt dealings. He demeaned the House by his presence, and I deeply regret that the Conservative party failed to take action to stem his flow of vile bigotry. Thankfully, my constituents can now say good riddance to this malignant creature.

    My speech in this debate, and many others today, have been more than 10 years in the waiting. In the newspapers this week, we have seen pictures of 50,000 people demonstrating for democracy by holding candles in a park in Hong Kong. More than a decade ago in our capital city, more than 250,000 Londoners stood silently in Jubilee gardens on the last night of the GLC when the lights were turned out in County hall. As the GLC councillor for Hayes and Harlington council and deputy leader of the authority, I was among them, and we tearfully sang “We’ll Meet Again”. After all this time, we are about to meet again.

    The abolition of the GLC was self-evidently an act of malignant spite by a Prime Minister in the first demented throes of megalomania. Harold Laski, a good socialist and once the chair of the Labour party, prophetically explained that Britain would not experience fascism in the form of a strutting Mussolini or Hitler, but instead was vulnerable to a form of Conservative authoritarianism arrived at by the slow incremental erosion of our civil liberties and democratic institutions. Under the Thatcher regime, the institution of democratic local government was bombarded by the introduction of rate capping, the surcharging of the Lambeth councillors and the abolition of the GLC, culminating in the establishment of the government of our capital city by an appointed state: the appointment of Tories, by Tories, to line the pockets of Tories.

    What has that plethora of quangos and joint committees achieved for our city? In the custodial care of the Tory appointees, 40,000 families in London are homeless every year; up to 3,000 people sleep on our streets in winter; crime has doubled, with a terrifying and unrelenting increase in violence; our manufacturing and economic base has collapsed; our health service is in crisis; and our transport system is gridlocked, with the effect that traffic is slower than at the turn of the century. Many of us will never forget or forgive the Tories for the scale of their neglect of our city.

    For most of the past decade, I served as the chief executive of the Association of London Authorities, and latterly the Association of London Government. After 10 long years of designing blueprints for a new strategic authority in that capacity, I am naturally pleased that, at last, we have the opportunity to start the reconstruction process. I also warmly welcome the fact that, in the spirit of open government and inclusiveness, there is to be a thorough consultation process, including a Green Paper, a White Paper and a referendum before the final legislation.

    It is critical in the consultation process that views are honestly expressed and listened to if we are to avoid putting in place a structure that we shall live to regret. In that spirit, I want to set out some initial views on the basic architecture of the proposed new government for the capital.

    There was a consultation process in the Labour party on the structural options for the new authority, but it is no secret that the proposal for a directly elected mayor was the result of enthusiasm from above.

    I have tried to analyse why, deep within me, I have such reservations about the proposal; it is certainly not because of an emotive claim that the system is somehow alien to this country. It is partly because it grates against my notion of democratic socialist practice, which involves the development of a policy programme by the party for presentation to the electorate, and in which the electors vote primarily for a set of ideas and policies associated with an ideology and advocated by a party rather than voting for their impressions of an individual. That is a vote for the many, not the few—and certainly not for one.

    I also have practical concerns about accountability and the potential for the abuse of power and corruption in a mayoral system. Nevertheless, the proposal for a directly elected mayor was contained in the manifesto on which our party was elected, so I look to the detail of the design of the relationship between the mayor and the elected authority to ensure political accountability and to secure probity.

    The checks and balances that are essential to ensure accountability would at a minimum include, for example, the election of the mayor’s cabinet by, and from among, the authority members; the approval by the authority of the overall budget and major spending decisions; a system of scrutiny of policy making; the ratification by the authority of any senior staffing appointments; and the right of the authority to express no confidence in the mayor and to trigger an election—in effect, a right of recall.

    The strategic role and powers of the new authority are almost self-evident in terms of the immediate and concrete needs of Londoners: economic regeneration; an efficient integrated transport system; a decent environment; and a feeling of safety from crime and hazards.

    My plea is simply that the legislation that we pass be sufficiently flexible to enable the new authority to meet new challenges as they arise. That may require a more general power of intervention, if necessary triggered by a decision by the electorate, the Secretary of State or the House.

    On funding, I agree that the allocation of powers and responsibilities without resources is pointless. The inheritance of existing precepts and the transfer of grant from central Government without capping, combined with the ability to borrow, would go a long way towards resourcing the new authority and achieving some economies of scale that would release new money. I also plead for flexibility in the legislation, to enable the new authority to explore new funding streams, possibly by hypothecated levies again triggered by the Government, by the House or by referendums.

    Some discussions have already taken place on the location of the new authority. Naturally, I prefer the retrieval of county hall, if necessary by compulsory purchase. I would certainly welcome an inquiry into the sale of county hall under the previous regime.

    As an alternative, the Middlesex guildhall across Parliament square would be suitable. We have been informed that the Prime Minister has assured the Corporation of the City of London of its continued existence. Thus, the City’s guildhall is not available for use.

    Labour remains committed to reforming the City’s archaic and undemocratic procedures. I hope that the City corporation will produce its own options for reform. By way of an incentive to expedite matters, I give notice that, unless reform proposals are forthcoming at the appropriate stage of the Bill enacting the new authority, I am minded to seek to insert a clause to abolish the City corporation—a generally uncontentious measure, I suggest.

    On the representative nature of the authority, whatever its size and method of election, I would argue that it should reflect the gender balance and ethnic diversity of our community. We should ensure the full involvement of all the social partners, of both sides of industry in the capital, in its deliberations and decision making.

    As a child, my first political awareness came when Wilson was in Government, John F. Kennedy was President of the United States and Martin Luther King had a dream—a dream of a new society, of equality and decency for our children. I believe that the last Greater London council administration was part of that dream; it was about building a new beginning for our city. The new authority that we are putting in place will be part of the procedure that will allow us to dream that dream again; a dream of a decent civil society in which equality reigns. I am pleased that I am going to be part of the process of making that dream a reality.

  • John McDonnell – 2015 Speech at Imperial College

    John McDonnell GB Labour MP Hayes and Harlington
    John McDonnell

    Below is the text of the speech made by John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Imperial College on 20 November 2015.

    I’m grateful to you here at Imperial College for having me here to speak today. And what an inspiring place it is to speak about the future of the economy and the world of work, at the College’s new Incubator where start-ups and entrepreneurs can work alongside some of the leading minds in science.

    My own experiences of work began with the technological revolution of the time.

    Looking back at it now, I think about the possibilities open to us then. There were skilled jobs available for the millions who, like me, didn’t go straight from university. There was generous access to courses at local FE colleges. There was free education for those who did go to university.

    On modest means, a young person could buy a house. After all the advances we have made, why is it that so many things we took for granted back then are no longer available to our children’s generation? Wages for the under 30s have been decimated since the financial crisis, and are still 10% below their 2010 level.

    Home ownership in many parts of the country is out of the reach of the millions whose parents are unable to help with a deposit. Social housing is almost a distant memory, and the insecurity of private renting means upheaval and uncertainty for a majority.

    How did this come about?

    How can it be, with all the productive and creative advances of the last few decades that in some of the most important aspects of life, my grandchildren have a less secure life to look forward to than mine?

    John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in the 1930s that these expanding capacities would lead to a fifteen hour working week, the rest of the time filled with leisure activities rather than worrying about how to find more money.

    For today’s young people, more than any other generation since, his dream could not seem further from coming true.

    This is the backdrop to Jeremy Corbyn’s election. Jeremy was elected leader of the Labour Party by an overwhelming majority of members and supporters on the basis of a programme that rested on three pillars.

    First, a New Politics, the creation of a more democratic, engaging and kinder politics in both the Labour party and society.

    Second, a New Economics, laying the economic foundations of a prosperous, fairer and sustainable society.

    Third, a New Relationship with the World, based upon a foreign policy promoting mutual co-operation, conflict prevention and resolution rather than military aggression.

    The good society that I think most of us envisage is one that is free, democratic, prosperous, environmentally sustainable, safe and secure, based upon the values of fairness, equality and social justice, where everybody has the ability to develop their talents and enjoyment of life to the full.

    Austerity provides none of this. Worse, it moves us further and further away from that vision. The impact is felt by the poorest and most vulnerable. Just one example, amongst many. The number of those sleeping rough has risen by a shocking 55 percent since 2010.

    In the sixth-richest country in the world, that anybody should be without a roof over their head is a disgrace. And there is worse to come. Unless reversed by the Chancellor, under public pressure, tax credit cuts threaten over  three million households with losing £1,300 a year. These raw figures hide the real stories – of huge suffering and personal tragedies now being borne across the country.

    Yet none of this suffering is necessary. Austerity, as I argued in September and have continued to argue, is a straight political choice. There is no economic necessity behind it. There is a broad consensus, from the International Monetary Fund and across the economics profession, against it. Austerity is a political choice. It threatens our future economic security. It is, however, for George Osborne and the Conservatives, the easy option.

    Since the late 1970s, governments across the World have promoted gains for the few in the belief that the many would, eventually, share. Capital markets were liberalised and taxes cut. But under successive governments, inequality rose. Not trickle-down, but trickle-up. It is time to change the rules of the game.

    Neoliberalism – the current rulebook – has outlived its time. The old rules are failing the majority. And they will not cope with the changes that are ahead of us. My real concern is for the long term well-being of our economy.

    If we are to thrive as an economy we have to base our future on the rapidly developing new technologies. It’s what many are calling the new machine age. Miss this boat and we will struggle to keep up in a competitive global market place. We will have a country divided geographically between the finance sector of the City of London – surrounded by a sea of low-paid, service sector jobs – and the rest of the country.

    In many areas, the pace of industrial decline will continue to destroy lives and devastate communities. If this sounds dystopian, take a trip to Teeside and see what the loss of steel, of Potash mining and the loss of 300 HMRC jobs can do to threaten the life of a community.

    Technological advance is forcing the pace of change. Bank of England research suggests that 15 million jobs could be at risk of automation over the next decade or so. And those most at risk from automation are the lowest-paid.

    For those who own the robots, of course, it will be a different story. Wealth will flow faster into fewer hands. A minority will continue to profit immensely. But there is a different way. First we need government to understand and accept the strategic role it has to play in our new economy.

    The current government is blocking the path to our future. They are willfully blind to the changes taking place. They privilege vested interests and the old ways of working. Our giant corporations are enjoying a boom time, taking their biggest ever slice of our national income as profits.

    Some of the most powerful institutions in the land appear to act almost unhindered. Think about how little has been done to get even our publicly owned banks to clean up their act since the crash. So many of our underlying problems can be traced back to the domination of a few powerful institutions that have failed, over many years, to act in the public interest. And yet we have a government all but captured by vested interests.

    Corporation tax, already the lowest in the G7, has been cut again and cut, heading towards just 18%. Featherbedding, through a wildly complex system of tax reliefs that now comes to £110bn a year.

    Cutting HMRC, while turning a blind eye to rampant tax avoidance and evasion, running into billions. And whilst large corporations are treated with kid gloves, those who work are shown the iron fist. We already have the most repressive union laws in Western Europe.

    The Trade Union Bill will tighten the screw still further. Labour will oppose the Trade Union Bill at every step of the way and, should it become law, repeal it in government. Unlike France or Germany, in the UK rights of workers to speak up in their own companies are limited in the extreme.

    No formal provision exists for workers to have a say in decisions that affect not only their own lives but potentially those of their customers. We are throwing away the chance for those who work to bring their skills, talent, and in-depth knowledge into how our corporations make decisions.

    Democracy isn’t just a political question. It is a bread-and-butter issue. A new contract for the workplace means securing a better balance between those who work, and those who employ. We will open a review on workplace representation, drawing on the best practice from around the world to unlock democracy in our workplaces and release its creative potential.

    We will seek to break open the monopolies and oligopolies that dominate our essential industries, offering extended support to those seeking to set up cooperative and community ownership of their companies and assets. Meeting the challenges of the future requires a state that can think and act strategically. A new economics can start to provide an alternative.

    We need to think about how government can operate on the basis not only of providing necessary public services, but also to meet challenges in the future. That is why we have launched reviews of the mandate of the Bank of England, and the Treasury’s function, to report on how they can operate in the best interests of society.

    That is just the first step in a process that will see us work with businesses, entrepreneurs, scientists, trade unions and wider civil society to shape the economy of the future.

    We know this can be done. Finland met its disastrous recession in the 1990s by transforming its economy from an exporter of lumber, to an exporter of technology. At the centre of its transition it established the Science and Technology Policy Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, drawing on expertise from across business, science, and civil society.

    Labour in government will bring together business, unions, and scientists in a new Innovation Policy strategy, with a mission-led goal to boost research and development spending, and maximise the social and economic benefits from that expenditure.

    We already have brilliant entrepreneurs like Dale Vince, who started the world’s first green energy company, Ecotricity, from a caravan in Gloucestershire. Ecotricity now supplies 75,300 homes with renewable energy and in 2014 had turnover of £66 million.

    We need more creativity like this.

    Thousands of new businesses are being created. We want government to work with, not against, those entrepreneurs helping create wealth in society. But rather than investing for the future, Osborne has overseen a slump in government funding for vital infrastructure.

    As a share of GDP, public infrastructure spending has fallen from 3.3% in the final year of the last Labour government to 1.6% today. It is scheduled to fall still further, to 1.4%. Meanwhile, our major corporations, despite record profits, are sitting on vast cash piles. At least £400bn is held in corporate bank accounts – money that should be invested.

    This is part of a pattern, identified by Martin Wolf, of slumping investment, relative to cash flow, across major economies. That slide has been amongst the worst in the UK, stretching back beyond the crash to the early 2000s.

    Meanwhile, dividend payments are at an all-time high. So we have a government that won’t invest and corporations that won’t invest, a damaging cycle setting up the generations ahead for failure.

    The consequences of this failure are all too apparent. Underpaid and overworked staff. Insecurity. Businesses unable to compete. Basic utilities under threat. The National Grid has warned of electricity shortages.

    This in Britain, in 2015 – the sixth richest economy on the planet. Clearly, some of this has got back to Osborne. In a state of panic, he has been running around China trying to drum up funding. Osborne opposes nationalisation – except when it’s the Chinese or the French state doing it. Short-termism and antipathy to the state dominates every decision.

    The OECD thinks that, as a minimum, a developed country like Britain should be spending 3.5% of GDP on infrastructure. Labour in power will meet and exceed that commitment, reversing decades of underspend. This could include renewable energy, energy efficiency, major public transport improvements and ultra-highspeed broadband.

    Labour understands that government’s role is to provide the opportunity for massive advances in technology, skills and organisational change. A Labour Government would prioritise provision of patient long term finance for investment in research to support the technology that will drive future innovation in our economy. And we would look to change our corporate tax system to give companies incentives to invest wisely. A higher tax on retained earnings should be investigated, alongside improved deductibility for long-term investment.

    The City of London and our financial institutions can also play their part. Labour will seek a new compact with financial services, looking for guarantees on stable, long-term domestic investment, mobilising their skills and resources for the wider public benefit.

    I am hoping to meet with Mark Boleat of the Corporation of London later this month to discuss ways in which the City and finance can play their part in a new contract for Britain. We will retain, of course, the right to legislate if needed. It is science, technology and innovation that are shaping our new world. Britain has an extraordinary and proud legacy of scientific research, of which this institution is a part. It is still a world-leader today in the quality of its research.

    But rather than build on that heritage, we are strip-mining it. Despite promising to protect research funding this has neglected it. Current expenditure on research and development has fallen by £1bn in real terms since 2010. This is having results. For example, the UK’s cutting-edge neutron source at Harwell is only running 120 days a year due to funding shortages, and leading scientists say we are facing irreversible declines in “particle physics, astrophysics, and nuclear physics.”

    Britain spends less on research as a share of GDP than France, Germany, the US and China, all of whom are increasing their commitment to science and technology. We spend less than 0.5% of GDP on science and that is set to reduce still further. The UK has no long-term plan to increase R&D spending. Modern breakthroughs in research are the result of past investment by government, built on the foundations of an immense scientific and technical heritage.

    However, in science, technology, and innovation, we are beginning to live off past glories. We can, and should, do better. The Royal Society recommends a target of meeting at least the OECD average spend on research and development by 2020. A Labour Government will aim to exceed this, with total spending – from both public and private sources – of at least 3% of GDP by 2030.

    We will extend Labour’s Ten-Year Framework to cover the next decade and increase innovation support, ring-fencing this spending. Osborne may be trying to close the fiscal deficit. But by failing to invest, he is opening up a massive deficit with the future.

    We believe that any fiscal rule should ensure government’s current spending is brought into sensible balance, consistent with sustainable economic growth, whilst allowing vital investment to continue. Another priority will be to ensure that our provision of skills is adequate to the needs of the new economy we wish to create.

    At present, employer after employer reports dire shortages. Further Education colleges, a vital lynch-pin of the education system, are threatened with swingeing cuts. If every person is to have the opportunity to share in the prosperity that the new economy can offer, every person must have the opportunity to learn, develop and fulfil their potential.

    Secure foundations for the new economy mean prosperity across the whole country. The widening gap between our richest places and the rest is clearly excessive. Average weekly pay in North-East Derbyshire is £389 a week while in the City of London it’s £921. Government’s response to this regional disparity has been persistently inadequate. Planned infrastructure spending per person in the North of England is one-fifth of its level in London.

    We won’t get a “Northern Powerhouse” unless government is prepared to pay for it. Improved transport, greater autonomy in taxation and spending decisions, and powers to borrow will enable our regions to meet their huge potential. And of course we cannot allow government to strip local councils to the bone. Labour will continue to oppose the devastating cuts being made to local authority funding. Local authorities can, and should, be local engines of sustainable, long-term prosperity. How we work is changing.

    Shifts in technology are opening up new possibilities. The spread of information technology, in particular, with the long-term decline in the cost of computing power has created opportunities that simply did not exist before.

    Airbnb, for example, simply could not have existed before the internet. It does not own or rent rooms itself. It provides a space through which others can do so. Sometimes this has been labelled the “gig economy”. Its enthusiasts talk up its possibilities for more exciting, more varied consumption, making better use of the assets we own.

    But a nice phrase can hide a grim reality for those who depend on the new world of work for their livelihood. The insecurity of self-employment. The uncertainty of not knowing where, or when, the next pay-cheque will be coming from. And the pressure this places on those in more typical employment, whether it is London taxi drivers threatened by Uber or call-centre workers placed on zero-hour contracts.

    Millions of workers excluded from the hard-won protections of formal employment contracts. And relentless pressure placed on those, the majority, still protected. It was the labour movement that won shorter working days. Health and safety at work. Rights in the workplace. But technological change, and the unfettered free market, are tearing up the old work contract. Labour, instead, will offer a new contract for a new workforce. Security of income against uncertainty. The same rights and protections extended to all those at work.

    This is why the fight over tax credits matters so much. The tax credit system is well-adapted to new forms of employment. Small businesses, providing a useful service to the community, rely on the tax credits system to get them on their feet and smooth out their earnings. So we will defend and, where we can, improve the tax credits system. Self-employment offers few protections. So we will look to extend maternity and paternity rights to all self-employed workers.

    White van man – and woman – deserve just as much protection and recognition as white-collar workers. Austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. Unless we change our political choices, the vast majority will be denied the opportunities that technological change presents. We can’t afford to run a deficit with the future.

    Working with businesses, workers, and civil society, governments today can and must seize the chance to change how we live and work, both now and in the future. We can break the stalemate and change course. A new economy, where technology liberates rather than traps. Where the fruits of scientific advance are shared by all. And where every one of us has the opportunity to develop our talents. A prosperous society built on sustainable growth, and predicated on the values of fairness, equality and social justice. It’s socialism, but socialism with an iPad.

  • John McDonnell – 2015 Speech to London Chambers of Commerce

    John McDonnell GB Labour MP Hayes and Harlington
    John McDonnell

    Below is the text of the speech made by John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the London Chambers of Commerce on 2 December 2015.

    I’d like to start by thanking the London Chambers of Commerce for giving me this opportunity to lay out what Labour’s new approach means for business.

    Jeremy was elected, back in the summer, he promised a new politics. I’ve spoken in the past few weeks about how this relates to a new economics.

    Today, I want to begin to lay out what the new economics means for businesses, and how Labour’s approach will be a break with the kind of mistakes made in the past.

    That means a new relationship between business and government.

    Not one of antagonism. But recognising how together we can generate and share prosperity, with proper support where it is needed.

    It means identifying the challenges and opportunities the rapid technological change presents us with.

    It means recognising real wealth creation, and developing long-term investment for the future.

    And for London, it means building on an extraordinary economic record, but recognising the many problems the capital faces.

    The backdrop to my speech here today is an economy that is finally growing again after the slowest recovery on record, but where the headline figures hid deep underlying problems.

    The productivity gap between us and the G7 is at its largest since 1991, and last week’s Office for Budget Responsibility report downgraded their forecasts for productivity growth for the rest of the Parliament.

    Our current account deficit has reached record highs. We’re not properly paying our way, becoming far too dependent on short-term borrowing from the rest of the world.

    And with interest rates glued to the floor, the pace of household borrowing is picking up rapidly. So rapidly that the Financial Policy Committee is considering activating the countercyclical buffer, and warning about future shocks.

    London is an exceptional, world-class city. It’s an extraordinary centre for creativity and entrepreneurship. A new business in London is created every 6 minutes.

    But keeping London, and London’s businesses at the cutting-edge means recognising where we’re not doing enough. And that means changing what government is doing.

    Short-term vs. long-term

    It’s not good enough that 36% of London’s businesses report being affected by slow internet speeds in the last year.

    London ranks 26th out of the 33 European capitals for broadband speed. Average connection speeds in Bucharest are nearly four times faster than here.

    Meanwhile, as so-called “superfast” broadband trickles out, countries like South Korea are investing in ultra-fast broadband, with connections of 1,000 megabits per second compared to the 25 megabits speed typical today.

    It’s no good patting ourselves on the back about London’s great historic legacies, and its status as a cosmopolitan world city, whilst failing to build on either.

    And it’s no good the government talking up improvements in connectivity when too many businesses face a reality of delays, difficulties, and poor service.

    More needs to be done to support the digital economy. We would support the London Chamber of Commerce’s calls for the creation of a London business panel focused on raising awareness of the benefits of online trading to sole traders and small businesses.

    Building on London’s success means ensuring the whole country shares in the prosperity. The better our regions and nations outside the capital do, the better we all do.

    We want London businesses to also share in the potential of the rest of the country. That means delivering investment here and across the UK.

    We want to keep this city and country at the cutting edge, helping build the high tech, high wage economy of the future.

    That also means solving London’s housing crisis. London rental prices are the highest in Europe. The biggest single constrain on London businesses right now is that the people they want to employ can’t afford to live here. That’s bad for them, bad for business, bad for all of us.

    Labour is committed in government to providing at least 200,000 new homes a year, and would allow local councils additional powers to tax empty properties, bringing them properly into use. My colleague Sadiq Khan, if elected Mayor, would like to see public land held by bodies like Transport for London used for more housing.

    The Spending Review

    All of this together is why Labour has decisively rejected the Chancellor’s austerity policies. Not a single credible economist can be found to support his fiscal surplus rule.

    By restricting day-to-day and capital spending, it places a straitjacket on vital government investment.

    There is no credible economic case of austerity and there never has been. We think the tide is turning on this question as the real impacts of extraordinary spending cuts become clear.

    George Osborne was pushed into a u-turn on the tax credit reductions that would have seen 3m families lose £1,300 a year. It was under pressure from Labour and others that he reversed.

    However, the pain has been delayed, rather than postponed. As the Institute of Fiscal Studies analysis shows, Cuts to Universal Credits will see a similar number of families lose a similar amount, but pushed somewhat into the future.

    Labour will continue to campaign for a fair deal here.

    The reality of his delayed cuts to tax credits is that 2.6 million working families will be £1,600 worse off, as the independent IFS has set out. This is taking £4.1bn of spending power out of the economy.

    Labour has offered George Osborne a way for him to reverse his own cuts – by targeting a lower surplus and reversing his giveaways to the wealthy, but we’ve yet to receive an answer.

    Other cuts will continue, even if at a reduced pace. Local authorities face an extraordinary 79% decline in their budget, should Osborne carry out his plan.

    And Osborne is continuing the extraordinary pace of asset sales, with air traffic control, the Land Registry and the Ordnance Survey all scheduled to be sold.

    But Osborne has to complete the sales to meet, as the Office for Budget Responsibility say, his own debt reduction target. Without the asset sales, he misses his own, economically worthless, target.

    This isn’t a long-term economic plan. It’s a series of short-term political manoeuvres.

    In place of austerity, Labour will seek to balance spending on the government’s day-to-day at a pace compatible with fair and sustainable growth, whilst making sure government can still use its full powers to invest in vital infrastructure, science, and skills.

    We are committed to raising the level of infrastructure spending to at least the minimum the OECD thinks applies in a developed economy, of 3.5% of GDP.

    At present, despite many fine words in the Autumn Statement, government infrastructure spending is scheduled to fall to well below half that figure over the next few years.

    It’s no use increasing capital spending in the Department for Transport, whilst cutting day-to-day spending a colossal 37%. We’ll be building new roads – but how will pay to repair them?

    This isn’t good enough. And whilst we welcome the government’s commitment to protect day-to-day science spending in real terms, we should, like the US, China, Germany and France, be looking to increase what we spend on research and development.

    That’s how we can start to make the most of the opportunities that technological change is bringing.

    The government spends less than 0.5% of GDP on research and development. We will look to lift that level, aiming to deliver research and development spending, from all sources, of 3% of GDP over the course of the next two Parliaments.

    And subsidies for solar energy have been slashed, tearing apart what was a British business success story. Businesses in their infancy and operating in high-potential areas need support. We’ll be losing out on what Barclays has called a $30trillion global investment blitz from fast-growing green industries.

    It’s the short-term thinking that leads to the closure of the successful Business Growth Service – not announced in the Spending Review itself, but only made public nearly a week later.

    The Business Growth Service had helped over 18,000 businesses meet their potential, raising £100m in funding for small businesses. It’s been sacrificed on the altar of austerity.

    Short-term vs long-term

    There’s a deeper failing here. We’ve had decades now where successive governments have focused on the short-term.

    It’s why we don’t invest properly in infrastructure. It’s why skills budgets are cut and the training we provide not adequate.

    Independent polling shows that among the main barriers to London’s global competitiveness is its lack of affordable housing and its lack of skilled workers. The future prosperity of our nation’s economy is dependent on strategic investment today.

    A future which is being gambled by this Government. We know that is our access to EU labour markets, our digital connectivity and our infrastructure which are the most important factors in attracting businesses ventures to London yet too often we are failing to incentivise that investment.

    We have major institutions, like the Treasury, that seem far too concerned about short-term penny-pinching at the expense of long-term investment.

    I’m pleased that Lord Kerslake is now leading a review of the Treasury, launched yesterday, and looking to see how it can function in the best interests of the whole economy.

    But we need a break with the past if we’re to meet the challenges of the future. This short-term way of thinking, sometimes called neoliberalism, has had its day.

    Short-termism means all of us lose out. It means skills shortages. It means poor infrastructure. It means failing to invest in science and technology.

    It means a seriously unbalanced economy, both domestically and in our relations with the rest of the world. Our current account deficit, and the dependency it creates on short-term financing with all the risks this entails, should be treated as a particularly concern.

    Above all, it means failing to reach this country’s potential.

    We need institutions and a government that stand on the side of our real wealth creators.

    The business that create decent jobs, that pay their taxes, and that bring a social value to their communities.

    The innovators and entrepreneurs who create new wealth.

    And those who work, whether for themselves or as employees, providing the goods and services.

    Fair financing

    But we are all being poorly served by the institutions we have.

    Our current financial system is plainly not fit for this purpose.

    2008 should have been a wake-up call. Instead, we’ve allowed it to settle back into a rut. Reforms have not gone far enough.

    This means businesses lose out. Less than half of small traders were approved for bank credit over this financial year.

    Lending to small businesses has fallen and fallen again, year after year. Even with a recent improvement, lending is down £49bn on 2008 levels. It’s no good expecting our high-street banks to provide. Despite recovery in some parts of the economy, the Funding for Lending scheme is having to be extended in an effort to get our banks to try and lend to small business.

    For small businesses, “too big to fail” shouldn’t also mean “too big to lend”.

    Nothing substantive has changed. The same failed institutions we had before the crash are all set to fail again.

    Labour will take a different approach.

    No other major developed economy has just five high street banks providing over 80% of all loans.

    A more diverse market for finance will be a more resilient financial market.

    We think that regional and local banks, properly managed with a public service mandate, are part of the answer for small businesses.

    We want banks that know their customers and understand the needs of their local businesses. Germany’s network of highly successful “Sparkassen”, publicly-owned local banks in tune with their communities, provide one model.

    The individual branches support each other to provide security, with a combined balance sheet of over 1trillion euros. But the banking licence for each branch means it has to lend only to local and regional businesses.

    The US’ Community Reinvestment Act has helped promote transparency amongst banks and lending to small businesses. We’ll look to introduce a similar Act of Parliament here.

    And we’ll look for ways for government to support innovative new forms of financing in peer-to-peer lending. Placing this emerging sector on a properly regulated basis can help it grow.

    I’ve been meeting with Mark Boleat of the Corporation of London to discuss how the City of London can use its resources and its talents to help deliver the patient, long-term financing businesses in the UK need.

    We want a new compact with the City, spelling out its obligations. And we’ll retain the right to legislate if needed.

    Fair contributions, fair taxes

    But it’s not just financing. Our tax system needs to be focused on the future.

    Tax reliefs have grown into an unmanageable thicket of different schemes and wheezes.

    This tangle is estimated to cost the taxpayer at least £110bn a year. Labour think it’s time for a pruning.

    We want to encourage healthy growth, keeping the reliefs that promote good investment, jobs and entrepreneurship.

    But we’ll cut away at the wasteful and the unnecessary.

    We’ll launch a proper review of the system, lead by my colleague Seema Malhotra, looking to cut away where we can but keeping the parts that help support decent businesses.

    We want to do what we can to unlock the potential of our businesses, including releasing the huge cash hoards they have built up over the last decade. We think money should be invested for the long-term.

    The system of reliefs needs a root-and-branch reform so we can get the best possible deal for taxpayers, businesses, and society at large.

    But we have to be clear. There needs to be a different approach to business taxation all round.

    This Chancellor has cut and cut again the rate of Corporation Tax. That’s cost the taxpayer £7bn over the last Parliament.

    Yet business rates have risen by a total of £3bn over the last Parliament. That’s a huge increase, particularly for small businesses.

    We think the tax burden should fall heaviest on the broadest shoulders. And we want to see our small businesses also able to grow and flourish.

    So Labour will cut the headline business rate in their first Budget, and freeze it thereafter.

    We’ve made a firm defence of tax credits, and we welcome George Osborne’s decision to reverse the cuts to tax credits.

    Of course, we know there’s a job still to be done here with the cuts to earnings still coming through the Universal Credit system.

    But we recognise the value of tax credits in helping provide a solid financial footing for the self-employed and those just starting their businesses.

    Labour has always been the workers’ party. The clue is in the name. But we need to recognise how, and where, people work has changed.

    Self-employment reached a record high last year.

    New technology is enabling new ways of working. Some of this is providing opportunities for entrepreneurship and expanding the range of goods and services we have access to.

    But it can also mean the exploitation and uncertainty of zero-hours contracts, or the intolerable pressures placed on those in existing forms of employment.

    We have many institutions that are simply not adapted to the new world of work. Labour is proposing a new contract for a new workforce, and for new businesses.

    We need to think of ways that we can offer the same protections to those in self-employment as those in more traditional employment contracts.

    We can start by making sure maternity and paternity pay is properly provided for those who are self-employed.

    Labour will insist on giving everyone a fair deal.

    Recognising decent businesses

    That fair deal applies across society.

    Businesses create a huge value. And that’s not just the revenue they earn. It’s the vital social value of small traders, of independent shops, of start-ups.

    It’s the taxes paid, and the good jobs supported.

    It’s being a part of a community. It’s providing a service, big or small.

    We think it’s dog eat dog. But real wealth creation isn’t about some desperate war of all against all.

    Now I’m a socialist. But my socialism has always meant all of us pulling together. What we achieve by working together is always going to be more than what we achieve separately.

    Working together means recognising contributions when they are made.

    It means recognising the hard work and effort our decent businesses make.

    When people are paid fairly, and taxes paid properly

    We know a small number fail the rest of us. The tax dodgers, wriggling out of making the fair contribution the rest of us make.

    The under-payers, ducking their responsibilities to their own employees and failing to pay a wage anyone can live on.

    It’s an attitude that’s fine for some. But the decent businesses who make the effort lose out.

    We’ve allowed a small minority to duck their responsibilities to society, undercutting wages and undermining the public purse.

    The rest of us lose out from the actions of a few.

    We think decent businesses should be recognised.

    So Labour would introduce a “Good Business” kitemark scheme

    Those businesses who pay their taxes transparently and properly, and who pay their employees at least the living wage, deserve proper, public recognition.

    It’ll be open to any business that wants to apply. We’ll make sure that the strivers are properly and publicly recognised.

    We’re for decent businesses.

    We’re on the side of the real wealth creators, across the country and right here in London.