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Tag: Speeches

  • Frances O’Grady – 2003 Speech to TUC Disability Conference

    Below is the text of a speech made by Frances O’Grady at the TUC Disability Conference which was held in Blackpool on Tuesday 9th December 2003.

    The TUC is delighted once again that the minister for disabled people has joined us for our conference. I know that you have always demonstrated a strong commitment to the same causes that the TUC supports, and that the work you have been doing to advance the rights of disabled people has been very important – even if we may sometimes have disagreements over some aspects. I am very pleased that you have been so interested in hearing our views, and that you recognise that the TUC is a strong and principled voice for equality, and that the people we represent have experiences that are really important, and have opinions based on real life that certainly help us at the TUC to arrive at our conclusions. We are very pleased as well that you have always agreed to stay to take questions from our delegates, because that way you get, directly, a flavour of what these experiences are, and what our members’ views are.

    I know that the whole conference will be looking forward to hearing from you this afternoon, and I imagine that you will be telling us a little bit about the new disability bill that you announced just last week. At this conference last year, delegates were keen to discuss what changes need to be made to existing disability law, and no less keen that, as soon as possible, the Government should deliver on its undertaking to reform the DDA. At the previous year’s conference, so strongly did the conference feel about this, that it voted to select, from all the motions agreed at the conference, a motion calling for a strong new disability bill to submit to the TUC Congress – where as you may know, it was debated and carried unanimously. Last year, we were very disappointed that up to that time, no progress had been secured in this vital question.

    Now, since this has been the European Year of Disabled People, it has been especially appropriate that we will now have a draft bill to consider. We know, of course, that the prejudice and discrimination faced by our disabled citizens cannot be removed just by having good legal rights – although having good legal rights would be a step forward indeed! That is why we will listen very closely to what you have to say about the scope of the new bill, and why I can promise conference that the TUC will consult closely with the unions as we go into the New Year to prepare a submission to help make the bill as strong as possible.

    Conference will know too that as part of the TUC’s commitment to achieving equality for disabled people, we have been campaigning on several fronts during the last year. We have organised training for thousands of workplace representatives to deal with the connection between disability rights and health and safety issues in the workplace. We have continued to advance the arguments for improvements to the benefits system, as part of our approach of making it more possible for those disabled people who are out of work, but who want to work and who can work, to move into work.

    But the biggest public thing we have been doing this year has been our petition, and on behalf of the TUC I want to thank every union here that helped us in this campaign for their contribution. Through promoting this petition, we have taken the message to thousands of trade union members, disabled but also non-disabled, that the TUC wants the law changed, that we want it changed as soon as possible, and that we want it changed significantly, so that some of the most serious problems with the DDA are got rid of. And our members have responded powerfully, and we have the petition here with us, and Maria [Eagle MP], in a few moments, it will be my privilege and honour to present it to you on behalf of the British trade union movement.

    But as I have already said, however good we manage to make the law, the challenge we all face is much deeper. We know that at a time when employment rates in Britain are as good as they have ever been, the proportion of disabled people of working age who want to work but are out of work has moved up, but only by a small percentage. We are worried that for every step of progress made in climbing this mountain, where employers come to understand the value and the need to recruit disabled workers, at the other end of the scale other disabled workers are being forced out, made redundant, given early ill health or disability retirement. Many of those who do find work are to be found in low paid and insecure jobs, in so many cases unable to afford to contribute to pension funds. So the cycle of poverty continues into retirement even when people do find employment. There are many other issues, too, that relate to this crucial challenge, and it was a motion on this topic that the conference selected last year to send to the 2003 TUC Congress.

    What are the answers? Well, if ever there was a need for a joined-up approach, this is it. We need at least to promote the benefits of employing more disabled people at the same time as improving legal protection against discrimination on grounds of disability. Easily stated, of course, but as both we and the Government have seen, quite hard to achieve. Because as well as changing the law, we know it requires a big change of attitude. There isn’t a magic wand to wave that will overcome so much commonplace ignorance and prejudice in a flash. So we welcome most sincerely the promise in the new bill to introduce a public duty to promote disability equality. This could be a critical step in helping change attitudes, too.

    But what about private employers? It may be getting a bit tedious to have to keep repeating the same old message, but we have argued for a long time that schemes like Access to Work, where they have been used, have been a fantastic success, but not enough people know about it, and despite the very welcome increases in the budget that the Government has organised, year after year, the potential demand is still vastly greater than the supply, yes, but the potential impact on increasing employment rates for disabled people is greater still.

    Workstep, too, has witnessed increases in its funding, and this is most welcome. But again, potentially, the number of more severely disabled people who could possibly benefit from such a scheme vastly exceeds the few thousand who do, a number too which has not increased. There are other important issues too about the way Workstep now operates that unions have brought to our attention, issues we have raised with Government. But the key message I want to get across here is that these are measures where the Government, directly, can make an impact, can help to tackle the problems disabled people have in getting properly paid, secure employment. Of course they cost money, but in terms of cost benefit, it is a small price to pay.

    We have also made the case that the problem must be tackled from the other side. It isn’t a secret that a lot of disabled people currently on benefit are themselves reluctant to take up work, for the very real fear that if the employment doesn’t work out, they will find themselves facing even greater problems than they faced when on benefit in the first place. The TUC has proposed ways to deal with this, and has welcomed several of the Government’s initiatives to reform the way the benefits system works. Let’s press on with easing the path from unemployment into work with all the powers available to us. But to meet this challenge isn’t cost-free, either, and we need to see significant improvements in the funding for schemes like the New Deal for Disabled People. And while we continue to urge more resources for measures such as these, nor must it be forgotten that there are large numbers of disabled people who have retired, or are very unlikely ever to be able to work, for whom providing the support needed to maintain respect and dignity along with an adequate standard of living are key indicators of a civilised society.

    Of course it’s easy to set out the problems, and to make a list of things we believe should be done, not quite so easy to actually do them. So it would be rather one-sided of me if I didn’t at least acknowledge that trade unions too have a way to go before we can claim to be properly accessible, properly representative of our disabled members and potential members. As you know, the TUC carried out an equality audit earlier this year, that was reported to Congress. Our audit found that while some great progress has been made by trade unions over recent years, there was also much still to be done. And in this hall, too, you will know that at least as far as disability is concerned, time to take the next steps towards proper accessibility is strictly limited – next October, in fact, when the new disability regulations come into force that apply to unions both as employers and as trade associations. I am delighted to tell you that the TUC has looked at this, and has drawn up some advice for unions on how to comply with the new regulations, and on how to build on the law as a minimum standard. We will be looking at this at our Executive next week, then circulating it to trade unions. After all, when we talk to Government about what needs to be done for disability equality, we need to be sure that we are doing all we can, too, to be inclusive. I am confident that with all your help, we can and will meet this particular challenge.

    So conference, I know you will be discussing a wide range of important questions over the next couple of days, and I can confirm that the TUC will pay full heed to your advice. I will close by wishing you all a very successful and enjoyable conference, and I know you are with me as I take this moment to present to you, Maria, on behalf of the TUC and the trade union movement, this petition with its ten thousand signatures that urge the Government to legislate quickly, but also effectively, to secure another vital step towards equality for disabled people in this country.

  • Mike O’Brien – 2009 Speech to the National Association of Primary Care

    Below is the text of a speech made by the then Health Minister, Mike O’Brien, on the 17th November 2009.

    I am very pleased to be here.

    Over 60 years ago, the people of this country made a bold and historic choice. Amidst the ruins of war, they chose to unite under a common cause and rebuild their shattered land. They chose to create a society where the needs of the many were put ahead of the needs of the wealthy elite. A welfare state where the success of a government would be judged against how effectively it battled Beveridge’s five giants of want, idleness, ignorance, squalor and disease. Where someone’s future would depend not on their family’s lineage and wealth but on their own talent and industry.

    This is still very much a work in progress. But one of the greatest achievements in this battle to tackle Beveridge’s giants was the National Health Service – what Donald Berwick, of Harvard Medical School, has called the “bridge between the rhetoric of social justice, and the fact of it.”

    Giving people access to the healthcare they need, free at the point of need, has transformed the quality of countless lives. And it has saved millions more. But this is not a political choice made once and then forgotten. It needs to be constantly renewed. The NHS was forged in the heat of political controversy with massive opposition to it. Again and again political controversy has swirled around it and its values. Like it or not the NHS is a political creation and will continue to be a matter of political debate.

    A service to the public, free at the point of need, funded through taxation is about values. The consequences of a lack of commitment to its values were made clear in the 80s and 90s when a chronic lack of investment brought the NHS into crisis. Crumbling buildings, old equipment, over-worked and under-paid staff and patients waiting in pain and distress for a year, sometimes two, for operations. So the public was faced with a choice. This time between abandonment of NHS values and a move to private health care or renewal. They chose renewal. The result of which has seen massive and sustained investment in the NHS since the turn of the century. Again, amidst controversy. The increase in funding through national insurance rises was bitterly resisted by the Opposition.

    In the last decade, investment that has given the Health Service in England, 40,000 more doctors, 80,000 more nurses, rebuilt or refurbished buildings, and given patients access to the latest NICE approved drugs and treatments guaranteed through the NHS Constitution, pushed through Parliament into law last week.

    Most importantly, it saves tens of thousands more lives every year.

    33,000 fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease, 40% fewer deaths caused by stroke, and almost 9,000 fewer deaths every year from cancer.

    Of course, I suppose you would expect a Government Minister in charge of the NHS to wax lyrical about its achievements. But this is not spin or a case of looking at the world through some kind of rose tinted spectacles. We all know, for example how this morning’s report on Alzheimer’s’ care shows there are still big issues that need to be addressed.

    For proof that the NHS is a truly impressive, world class provider of health care you need look no further than the esteemed Washington based think-tank, the Commonwealth Fund. Each year it compares the healthcare systems of various developed countries. They ask the people who deliver healthcare, the clinicians on the front line, what they think about their own system. It published two weeks ago and this year the focus was on Primary Care. Once again, the NHS has come out rather well. Of the eleven countries – including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand and the United States – the United Kingdom was;

    Top for low waiting times for specialist care,

    Top for the use of multi-disciplinary teams,

    Top for the use of financial incentives to reward patient experience,

    Top for quality of clinical care,

    Top for management of chronic diseases,

    Top for the use of data on patient experience,

    Top for reviewing doctors’ clinical performance, and

    Top for the benchmarking of clinical performance.

    This is the NHS that you are responsible for and as a Health Minister I want to thank you for your hard work in transforming the Health Service and making sure it comes out top in all these categories. This report is a real vindication of the work you have been doing.

    When it comes to primary care, it is hard to find anyone who does it better than the NHS anywhere in the world. It’s also hard to find anyone with more drive and ambition for doing more and getting it better, and for improving quality and improving the patient experience.

    Of course, it’s great to know that we do things better than others. It’s gratifying to watch as Britain moves up the league of nations, vindicating our efforts. But it is not an end in itself. Our mission is to give every single patient the highest possible quality of care and the best experience of the National Health Service that they can possibly get. Why stop at just being better than everyone else?

    It is testament to every person in this room and to the people you all represent and work with back in your communities that we have come so far and achieved so much in the last decade. That when the public chose renewal, they made the right choice.

    But the next 10 years will be different.

    If the last 10 years or so has been about quantity – more money, more doctors, more nurses, more hospitals and more clinics – we know we need to ensure that the next decade has to be about quality. Ara Darzi’s bottom-up review of the NHS, High Quality Care for All, has given us a vision around which we can all unite. A vision of a clinically-led Health Service where quality is always and everywhere the organising principle.

    Staying true to this vision will be increasingly important in the years to come as budgets start to level out. We need to find ever more creative ways for releasing funds to the front line. Now of course working more efficiently and cutting waste is important in the future direction of the NHS. But also working more effectively, continuing to improve the quality of care for patients.

    Clinical leadership 

    We will do this not by Whitehall diktat but through local clinical leadership. In many cases that means your leadership. You are the ones closest to patients, you are the ones who know where the waste and duplication lie. This government has done what it could do best, to push through the reforms needed to lift the NHS from poor to good. But the government cannot achieve quality through central mandate. It is now your turn to do what you can do best. To move the NHS from good to great.

    Practice Based Commissioning

    One of the principal ways of making this happen is Practice Based Commissioning. Practice Based Commissioning is about putting clinicians at the heart of PCT commissioning, giving them greater power both to transform the quality and the efficiency of local services. Where it has been embraced, the results have been impressive. In Bexley, major schemes include a cardiology service where virtually all aspects of the specialty, other than interventions, are carried out in the community.  Practices now receive hard, delegated budgets for prescribing. If practices make savings then they can use them, but they are also responsible for any losses. Through PBC, Bexley has so far saved £4m, money they can now spend in other ways for their patients, on more integrated, community-base care.

    Many other PCTs such as Nottinghamshire County and Hampshire are actively drawing up autonomy and delegation schemes in collaboration with their PBC groups. Enabling practices to take on greater responsibility as their capability grows. But we have to acknowledge that Practice based Commissioning has not taken off everywhere. Even where it has, it is a way off reaching its full potential.

    So you may well ask, if it hasn’t yet then why will this happen now, in the future?   Why will it be different this time?   My answer is it will be different because it needs to be. Because this is the only way to deliver High Quality Care for All. And, most dramatically, because the financial context has changed. This level of clinical leadership, of local leadership, will be the single most powerful way of driving up quality whilst releasing funds for further services. There is nothing to stop PCTs and Practice Based Commissioners from working together and devolving hard budgets to GPs. Nothing to stop every PCT in the country being bolder and more imaginative in how they work with GP Practices. Nothing to stop Practice Based Commissioning from transforming community-based care.

    This isn’t just about holding hard budgets, it’s about giving practices real responsibility for the design of local services and then holding them accountable, so the hard budgets can be there. It is about more than that however. It is about requiring organisations to work together. There is nothing to stop us, but ourselves.

    I would like to thank James Kingsland [President of the NAPC] for his work, independent of the NAPC, in leading the National PBC Clinical Network, doing what can be done to encourage the expansion of PBC. PBC is right for many surgeries. But it should be a matter of choice. Some GPs want it and their practices can cope with the administration it brings. Some GPs don’t want it. Particularly some small practices may want to focus on patient care not budgets. They may benefit from coming together with other practices. But some small practices could be broken if budgets are forced upon them. Lets leave the choice with GPs – rather than forcing GP budgets on all of them as some would do.

    The NAPC manifesto for the election, which was published just an hour or so ago I believe, has a core proposal for Community Health Collaborations, which is a really interesting idea. Aimed at raising the quality of primary care. Bringing GPs together with some going on to become Foundation Practices with greater independence for leading high quality practices. I welcome these ideas. I promise to look at them.

    Primary and Secondary

    And our changes are not just in primary care. Increasingly, acute trusts are devolving budgets directly to specialist clinical leaders. Enabling them to spend money in a similar way to Practice Based Commissioners. The next step is to join these two up. And to allow us to devolve acute budgets to primary care. I am not saying you must do this, it is not a new target. But I am saying that surely it is the logical next step. For clinicians in primary and secondary care to work ever more closely together to create a truly integrated patient care pathway. Imagine the impact of this sort of partnership.

    We talked for several years about moving care into the community, but the funding practices have not always encouraged this. We need to find better ways of doing this, with for example COPD to prevent repeated admissions when people take a turn for the worse but instead allow them to be cared for at home.

    This is done in large parts of the country but not in others. We need to find ways of spreading good practices more quickly across the NHS. We must ensure collaboration between the acute and primary sectors, then we can get better outcomes for patients, which are more effective and cost less. The work to reduce C Diff and MRSA has saved  £240m in the NHS. Quality saves money.  But it needs true clinical leadership providing a better service for patients and better value for the taxpayer.

    Innovation

    I am certain that this sort of cooperation will lead to all sorts of new and innovative practices. Strategic Health Authorities now have a legal duty to innovate. Here in the West Midlands, GP practices are working with the Met Office to ensure over 6,000 people with respiratory diseases are given warning of bad weather and helped to take simple steps to take care of themselves and to avoid a hospital admission. In Halton and St Helens PCT, GP practices are working together to deliver an award winning rapid access home visit service.   I understand that with their Health and Social Care Award safely displayed in their trophy cabinet, they’re up for another award at this conference too. Recognition that is richly deserved. A detailed analysis of their Acute Visiting Scheme revealed a 30% drop in hospital admissions and a saving of about £1 million in its first 6 months.

    Patients have better access to primary care,  the option to receive their care at home,  and are less exposed to the risk of infection in hospital.

    Patients as a result report a 90% satisfaction rate and one GP said it was, “the best thing to happen in my 37 years of General Practice.” Best of all, it’s ripe for adoption and spreading across other PCTs.

    We’ve been good at identifying best practice, but bad at spreading it further, and we must do better to spread innovation. In April, to encourage innovation across the whole of the Health Service and at every level, we announced the new £220 million Innovation Fund. The first round of awards have now been issued to SHAs. In Yorkshire and the Humber, they’re accelerating the uptake of telehealth technology to improve care for people with long term conditions. East of England SHA is encouraging practical solutions around long-term conditions, patient safety and keeping children active. And South Central SHA is funding a joint project between Milton Keynes PCT, Razorfish and Microsoft to support diabetic self-care. All providing a better service for patients and better value for the taxpayer.

    Rights and entitlements

    Last week, we announced the introduction of a new set of patient rights as part of the NHS Constitution. We propose that from April next year patients will have the legal right to start their treatment with a consultant within 18 weeks of GP referral, and to be seen by a cancer specialist within 2. If the NHS can’t deliver, then it will have to find an alternative provider that can. This means that patients will receive the same high standards of care wherever they live.  And, more controversially, working with the profession, we are looking at how we can give patients greater choice when it comes to registering with a GP practice. Perhaps one that is more convenient for them to get to, one with higher quality care or one with longer opening hours. It depends on what the patient wants.

    As the NHS has been given more money, people are expecting more to be done and greater choice. The information is there for all to see on NHS Choices, and the choice will be theirs for the making. Improving the patient experience and driving up quality through competition is important.

    In the next decade, the NHS must move towards being a preventative, people centred service.  So from April 2012 we want to give people over 40 the right to a 5-yearly NHS Health Check to assess their risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease.  By identifying the risks early and provide a better service for patients and better value for the taxpayer. We’ll also soon consult on a legal right for a person to choose where they want to die and on personal health budgets, giving people power over their own care. These proposals, building on the NHS Constitution, are part of decisive shift guaranteeing standards for patients and putting power in their hands.

    Targets in the NHS remain controversial. In 1997 the NHS budget was £35bn. It is now £103bn having almost tripled. Targets are a way of ensuring people get tangible returns for their money.  There is a choice here. The Opposition would end those targets. Some people would say ‘good’. But cancer patients would say otherwise. The right for suspected cancer patients to see a specialist within 2 weeks and get diagnostic tests in a week – gone. A maximum 18 weeks for an operation – gone. All A+E patients to be seen in 4 hours – gone. By contrast we would convert targets into patients’ rights. It’s a choice.  They would end extended hours access to GPs. Some GPs would say ‘good’. But patients wouldn’t. There are some difficult choices here. We would extend it. We support the GP-led health centres. They don’t.

    We need to ask – where is the patient in all this? Where are they getting better care? Where are the real values of the NHS? The NHS faces tighter budgets than in the last decade. But more than ever we need to choose the kind of NHS we want.

    Conclusion

    Patient rights, patient choices, innovation and joined-up local clinical leadership need to become as deeply ingrained in the psyche of the NHS as being funded by the tax payer and being free at the point of delivery.

    For this is about values. And if we are to maintain the values of the NHS, if we are to maintain the public’s confidence in the system for another 60 years, if the public are to continue to choose renewal, then we must always and everywhere be looking to make the Health Service better, more efficient and higher quality.

    The investment is there. The mechanisms are there. The opportunities are there. It will never be a done deal. There will always be a need to improve. We have already gone from poor to good. Now, with your leadership, the NHS moves from being good to great.

  • Mike O’Brien – 2004 Speech on the UK and China

    Below is the text of the speech made by Mike O’Brien, the then Foreign Office Minister, at the Dorchester Hotel in London on 19th January 2004.

    Thank you for inviting me to speak here this evening.

    I should start by wishing you all GONG SHEE FAR CHAI (long life and prosperity) in this, the year of the Monkey.

    TRADE

    Britain is one of the most open and one of the most successful trading nations in the world. Millions of jobs depend on our ability to export around the rest of the world.

    UK exports to China from January to September 2003 stood at £1.4 billion showing a rise of nearly a quarter on the figure for the same period in 2002.

    Countries who complain that they are losing out on investment or on jobs because of China’s success, fail to see the benefits that China’s success is bringing to global markets. Yes, China’s exports were up last year by 32%, but imports were up more – by 41%. Of course, there is still some way to go – Intellectual Property Rights need to be enforced more rigorously, and some trade barriers are still too high. But huge progress has been made.

    The reality is that as developing countries become richer, they contribute more to the global market – they buy more, they have more to invest.

    China’s new open approach to the global economy and its membership of the WTO are important steps along the way.

    I’m sure the British businesses amongst us here tonight agree, and I am looking forward to presenting the award for exporter of the year later in the evening.

    I was in Beijing and Shanghai last summer and saw for myself the level of involvement that Britain has in China’s awesome development as potentially the world’s major economic force.

    Just last year P&O signed an $800 million contract with COSCO and Maersk to create China’s biggest container port at Qingdao and British Architect Lord Foster and Arup are part of the successful consortium developing the new terminal at Beijing airport.

    For the Beijing 2008 Olympics Arup, British consulting engineers, are working on the National Stadium and the new aquatics centre; HSBC, Allen & Overy, PWC and PMP – all great British firms – are working alongside the Chinese in this ambitious project.

    These are just some of the impressive, large scale projects that shout China’s presence on the world stage. I know that more are in the pipeline and I hope that UK firms continue to be valuable partners for China.

    Just before closing, a quick mention for the China Britain Business Council’s 50th anniversary coming up in June. The CBBC has assisted thousands of British companies in China. As an organisation they are continually adapting their services to meet market demand.

    CLOSING REMARKS

    China is no longer the ‘sleeping tiger’ it once was – it is now a vibrant open and dynamic economy playing an important role in the global family of trading nations. And the UK looks forward to enhancing our trading relationship with China even further over the coming years.

  • Mike O’Brien – 2003 Speech on the Future of NATO

    Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Office Minister, Mike O’Brien, at Salter’s Hall in London on 24th January 2003. The speech was made at a conference debating the future of NATO.

    I am grateful for this invitation to talk to such an impressive audience about one of the most interesting and topical issues in the European security field today. Lord Robertson’s remarks set the context for the day’s discussions. Before I begin, may I pay tribute to him for his leadership of the Alliance through the remarkable changes of the last three and a half years.

    The NATO peace-keeping mission in Kosovo; the rapidly developing relationship with Russia; the transformation of the Alliance’s command structures; and the historic enlargement agreed at the Prague Summit. Any of these would constitute a significant achievement. All of them together represent a genuinely exceptional record. I would like to wish Lord Robertson well for the remainder of his time as Secretary General and for his future beyond NATO.

    Today I should like to focus on the European dimension of strengthening the Alliance, in particular on the UK vision of the strategic relationship we are building between the EU and NATO.

    UNDERPINNING EUROPEAN DEFENCE

    The decisions at the Copenhagen European Council and in the North Atlantic Council just before Christmas represented the culmination of two years’ work to secure the agreements between the EU and NATO to underpin European Defence. These will allow the EU to start conducting military operations with support from NATO and will lead to a strengthening of European capabilities, which will reinforce NATO.

    European Defence is, of course, NATO’s core business. NATO was created to defend Europe. It was – and remains – the basis for the American political and military commitment to the security of Europe.

    Despite the end of the cold war which removed the threat of conflict between east and western Europe, this transatlantic link remains central to NATO’s purpose and thus every bit as central to European Security in the 21st century as it was in the second half of the 20th. But neither NATO nor European security can afford to remain frozen in time. The threats we face, sadly, have not remained static. Europeans are no longer confronting each other in a cold war on the Central European Plain but we do face fragmentation in the Balkans, terrorism and threats emanating from other countries.

    MODERNISING NATO

    NATO has modernised itself continuously and impressively over the past decade and a half since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That process will continue, as Lord Robertson has told us. NATO has enlarged and is continuing to grow. It has shown its value as an active military alliance, peace making and peacekeeping in the Balkans. As the Prague Summit demonstrated, it is transforming its structures to cope with the new tasks and challenges it faces, particularly the threats from terrorism and WMD. But NATO, though necessary, is not sufficient for all aspects of European security.

    It is neither fair nor reasonable for Europeans to expect the Americans and Canadians always to contribute military forces to problems involving our security interests. Nothing would be more certain to place a strain on the health of the Alliance than continuing European dependence on American support at every turn. We must be prepared to bear our fair share of the burden. Also, the European Union has a Common Foreign and Security Policy, which should be underpinned by the ability for EU nations to conduct military operations.

    It was because of this understanding of the need for Europeans to do more for their own security and because we wanted this to happen through the EU as well as through NATO, that the Prime Minister proposed the development of a European Security and Defence Policy. Today, I should like to set out the UK’s vision for European Defence in NATO and in the EU.

    UK OBJECTIVES FOR ESDP

    The UK conceived and has developed ESDP to meet three main objectives:

    – to strengthen the European contribution to NATO by enabling European forces to take a fairer share of the European Security burden in circumstances where NATO as an Alliance was not involved;

    – to set a target for European nations to make their military forces more rapidly deployable, effective and sustainable – this will also be highly relevant to the modernisation of NATO’s force structures agreed at Prague;

    – to enable the European Union to play its full role on the international stage, recognising its uniquely wide range of external policy tools, from political dialogue, trade and aid to JHA co-operation and now civilian and military crisis management operations.

    DISPELLING MYTHS

    EU initiatives in this country tend to get a distorted reception from the Eurosceptic sections of the media and the political debate. ESDP has been no exception. It has been portrayed as everything from a Euro-Pentagon to a Euro-Army and a dagger at the heart of NATO. It is of course nothing of the sort.

    Too often the debate about the EU/NATO relationship treats the two organisations as if they were institutional monoliths – or two boxers circling in the ring, the experienced one warily eyeing up the new kid on the block, fearing his next shot.

    In reality we are talking about 23 nations, 11 of whom belong to both organisations. After enlargement it will be 32 nations of whom 19 belong to both.

    Deployment of military forces – for EU, NATO, UN or any other operation – will remain a matter for national governments. Javier Solana, let alone Romano Prodi, will not be ordering troops into Euro-battle on the basis of EU directives.

    The command, control and planning of ESDP operations can be done by NATO for the EU under the so-called Berlin Plus agreements now being finalised. Berlin Plus means that the EU has guaranteed access whenever it wants it to the resources of NATO’s operational and strategic planning capabilities.

    The EU also has the strong presumption that when it asks for it, NATO will supply the EU with command structures and capabilities to support an EU-led crisis management operation. This does not mean the EU can act militarily only when it has support from NATO. The EU will act either in operations using NATO’s assets and resources, which will be planned for by NATO, or in operations, which do not require NATO assets and resources, which will be planned for by the national headquarters of an EU nation. In all cases the EU will act on the basis of consultation and coordination with NATO to determine the most appropriate form of response to a crisis.

    THE FUTURE

    What then is the future for ESDP and what does it mean for NATO?

    The UK has a positive, ambitious and wide-ranging agenda for moving ESDP from the institutional to the operational phase. Much of the gestation of ESDP has been about institutional structures and bureaucratic rules-writing. This is necessary but it is not sufficient. ESDP also requires the development of military and civilian capabilities and the political readiness to put these into action.

    OPERATIONS

    The first opportunity is likely to come in a few months’ time, when an EU-led military operation replaces NATO’s Task Force Fox in Macedonia. This will be an EU operation based on planning done by NATO and with an operational commander provided by NATO. Given the crucial role that NATO and the European Union, in particular Lord Robertson and Javier Solana, played in preventing conflict in Macedonia, it is right that a NATO force should be replaced by an EU mission in that country.

    It is also right in terms of the wider EU engagement in the future of Macedonia, which was the first of the former Yugoslav states to have a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU. These agreements open the perspective of eventual membership of the EU for the countries of former Yugoslavia and Albania. The Agreements will help prepare the way by encouraging reform and modernisation across the board, including in the security sector.

    A bigger task for ESDP, but one which this Government thinks the EU should be ready to take on, will be replacing the NATO-led Stabilisation Force in Bosnia. The European Council at Copenhagen in December declared the EU’s willingness to take over from NATO in due course in Bosnia.

    We would anticipate that force also being an EU operation planned, commanded and conducted with recourse to NATO planning, assets and capabilities. This would not mean the end of a NATO presence in Bosnia. NATO should continue the Partnership for Peace activities, which are so important to developing European standards in that country and in its former Yugoslav neighbours. These states should develop their relationship with NATO in parallel with the European Union.

    As I just said, the scale and complexity of the operation in Bosnia would be more significant than that in Macedonia and the EU would want to be well prepared militarily and strategically to take on the task. But it would be consistent in our view with the strategy of Lord Paddy Ashdown, as the international community’s High Representative and as the Special Representative of the European Union, to help move that country in a European direction.

    The Macedonia operation from this Spring, in testing out the EU structures and the links to NATO, will be useful preparation for a potential operation in Bosnia. Also, towards the end of this year, the EU and NATO will conduct an exercise premised on an EU operation with recourse to NATO assets and capabilities. Coming after the operation in Macedonia and before that in Bosnia, this will be a useful opportunity to test and refine the links between the two organisations and their internal structures at top level.

    CAPABILITIES

    The crucial underpinning for ESDP and for the European pillar at NATO has to be continuing improvements in European national capabilities.

    At the heart of the ESDP process, the UK and France proposed and the EU adopted the so called ‘Headline Goal’. This is that European Nations should, by the end of this year, be able to deploy at 60 days notice a force of up to 60,000 and sustain such a force in operations for at least a year. This was a deliberately challenging target.

    The signs are that EU nations will be able to match the simple quantitative requirement, but aspects of the qualitative element, especially in terms of readiness, logistic support and sustainability may not be reached at full by the end of 2003. So work to improve our military capabilities will need to continue across Europe.

    NATO, under Lord Robertson’s leadership, has stressed the importance of investment by all Allies in modern defence capabilities. At Prague, NATO leaders agreed to the Prague Capabilities Commitment – specific undertakings to improve the ability of our armed forces to deal with new threats. The UK has pioneered work in the European Union and NATO to provide a mechanism to link the capability development processes of both organisations to ensure that, in particular for countries like us who are members of both, the efforts we make nationally to develop military capabilities will inform, and be informed by, EU and NATO requirements.

    RAPID REACTION

    The other element of the equation is, of course, ensuring that appropriate and capable force packages can be put together, if necessary at short notice, to conduct EU or NATO operations in the field.

    To this end, NATO, at Prague, agreed on an ambitious transformation towards rapidly deployable and flexible forces, able to deploy wherever needed, to deal with the security challenges of the 21st century. At the heart of this concept is the NATO Response Force. This will enable NATO to field a highly effective force of up to 20,000 troops, able to move very quickly to wherever it is needed.

    The UK strongly welcomes the NATO Response Force. It plays to our national strengths and it underlines the requirements in particular of rapid deployability that we think are crucial for NATO and ESDP. It complements work going on in the EU to place more emphasis on the rapid reaction elements of the Headline Goal.

    THE DEMISE OF NATO?

    Some commentators during the Prague Summit chose, paradoxically, at this moment of great success for NATO, to question the Alliance’s relevance to the post-11 September world. NATO has a role.

    Of course there will be occasions where the UK and other nations will act in coalitions of the willing. This was the case of the Gulf in 1991 and in Afghanistan in 2001. But five years after the 1991 Gulf conflict, NATO deployed to implement the Dayton peace settlement in Bosnia and three years after that, NATO ended Serb repression in Kosovo and deployed a peacekeeping force to that province.

    For each crisis that arises it is the responsibility of the governments whose interests are concerned to decide which is the most appropriate form of response. This may be a UN operation as in East Timor, a NATO operation as in Kosovo, an ESDP operation now that the EU/NATO links are in place, a national operation, as the UK conducted in Sierra Leone or a coalition of the willing as in Afghanistan. It is right that this range of options should be at the disposal of the governments concerned. This has always been the case and will continue to be the case.

    In no way does it change the fundamental relevance of NATO to European security. Nor does it change the argument, in which the UK believes strongly, that a European Union Common Security and Defence Policy can lead to fairer burden sharing between NATO and the EU and can simultaneously strengthen both organisations by enabling the countries involved to strengthen and modernise their round forces and their ability to operate together.

  • Mark Oaten – 2005 Speech to Liberal Democrat Conference

    Below is the text of the then Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, Mark Oaten, at the 2005 Liberal Democrat Conference in Blackpool on 21st September 2005.

    On the 8th of July, a journalist came up to me and asked if it was difficult time to be a liberal.

    I had no hesitation in saying no. Why? Because it’s never been more important to be a liberal than today.

    Never more important to speak up for freedom.

    Never more important to speak up for justice.

    Never more important to make sure the terrorists don’t change our way of life.

    I am proud to be a liberal in these difficult times because I know our values are the values that can defeat terrorists.

    But conference as a party we must recognise the ways in which these events in July have changed our country.

    We face an evil enemy.

    An enemy where 4 young men are so dedicated to their appalling cause that they are prepared to kill themselves and others.

    So we must take steps to stop these terrorists and in doing so protect our freedom – the freedom to live our lives without fear of bombs and attacks.

    That is why I want to speak to you today about the new anti-terror laws and  about our vision for stronger communities

    Charles Kennedy and I, in the weeks after July, felt that if possible the political parties should seek consensus.  We agreed to support three measures that have been put forward by the Home Secretary:

    Making it an offence to train terrorists; to prepare for a terrorist attack; and to incite terrorist activity.

    Now we know the measures on indirect incitement will be hard to draft – they must be robust enough to work in court, but not so wide that they are open to abuse.

    But – last week the Home Secretary went further and in doing so has tested the growing consensus and created two new measures we can’t support.

    We can’t support a wide and vague offence that allows glorification of terror to become a crime. What on earth does that mean. One person’s terrorist is another freedom fighter. This is a dangerous proposal, hard to define in theory, unworkable in practice, and putting freedom of speech at risk.

    And we can’t support plans to hold people for three months without charge. The case is simply not made.

    Let me be clear Liberal Democrats will not support what amounts to a new policy of internment.

    Labour tells us we must give up our hard-fought civil liberties in exchange for more security.

    But, conference, if we abandon traditions and values like the right to a fair trial, we are abandoning our identity.

    If we give up the fundamental principles of justice, we are giving in to the terrorists.

    And if we sacrifice our liberal society we will be weaker, not stronger.

    So conference,  measures on terrorism will have our support.

    But here are our conditions.

    First, measures must be effective and necessary and not just showpiece.

    Second, they should not encroach on our values and principles of justice.

    Third, they should be subject to full Parliamentary scrutiny – because we know that rushed laws are bad laws.

    So conference, today we send a message to the Home Secretary:

    Yes, we will work with you.

    But we will also defend the rights and liberties of the country.

    There will be no blank cheque from the Liberal Democrats.

    I also want to say a word about the victims of that outrage in July.

    Hardly talked about these days.

    Victims who may have to wait 15 months for compensation.

    Many face expensive bills as they can no longer work.  Many require specialist treatment for the loss of limbs and need money to adapt their homes to cope with their new disability.

    This literally adds insult to inquiry.

    So today I call on the government to speed this up and may quick and fair payments.

    It is the very least we can do.

    But we don’t solve terrorism with new laws alone.

    You bury your head in the sand if you do not ask uncomfortable questions.

    So much of Labour’s response to the events of 7th July has focused on deportation that you would be forgiven for thinking the bombers were foreign.

    They weren’t.  They were British – born and bred.  Britain created them.  And they turned on us.

    But why?

    Britain is home to and enriched by the contributions of a hundred different cultures. In the aftermath of the bombings the vast majority of Britons refused to be divided.

    And that is a great tribute to the British tradition of tolerance.

    But we cannot ignore the upsurge in racially and religiously motivated violence that British Muslims have suffered in recent weeks.

    These communities are our communities.  We must stand united against those who seek to attack them.

    Neither can we ignore the deep anger that is felt across the Muslim community about the war in Iraq.

    Let me be clear. We should not be ashamed to point to that link. By doing so we  begin to understand the causes.  And if Mr Blair wants to understand terrorism and work with the Muslim community, he needs to acknowledge that link too.

    But there are other ways in which we can combat the long-term causes of division in our country.

    It often seems that, in this country, rather than creating a melting pot, we have created a mosaic society.  From a distance, it looks healthy enough.  Get up close, and you start to see the gaps.

    A society in which communities co-exist, yet lead parallel lives – a community of communities, too often unaware to the concerns and realities of their fellow Britons.

    Just because several communities live within one of our cities, it doesn’t mean that the city is multicultural.  Not if they live separate lives, in separate parts of the city, never meeting or mixing.

    Terrorism plays on these gaps in our society.

    On our ignorance of each other’s way of life.

    On our lack of confidence as a society about who we are and what we stand for.

    If we want to create a safer society then it is our job to address these problems.

    We must work to address the genuine concerns, which exist throughout our country, about the state of multiculturalism.

    We must make New Britons feel that this is their society. That it is a society in which they and their families will be able to fulfil their potential.  And we must in particular address the appalling deprivation experienced by second, third and fourth generation Muslims.

    We must, as a political party, do more to encourage greater participation in the political process.

    Following the July bombings I remember waking up and watching Breakfast TV. Three young Muslim men were being interviewed – they were passionate, articulate and enthusiastic. These people would make great champions of their communities.  As a party we must do more to get them involved – standing for councils, standing for Parliament and representing our country.

    So whilst we seek to try and unite our parties on terrorism, there is much that separates us from New Labour, and in particular Charles Clarke.

    In a recent interview, he said: “I don’t like liberals. I am not soft. I am neither woolly or liberal or a woolly liberal. I have never been liberal in my life. I don’t like liberal with a capital L or a small l” !!!

    Well Mr Clarke, I’ve got a message for you from conference. Here, we’ve always been liberals, we are liberals, and we always will be liberals. Big L, small, L medium sized L?

    And we’re proud to be liberal.

    But you know, I think perhaps he protests just a little too much. There’s a liberal in him somewhere, just fighting to get out.

    After all, he’s the one with the beard, not me.

    And as far as “soft liberal” goes. No way. I’m not having that.

    There is nothing soft about our liberalism, last year I argued that our liberalism was tough, tough Liberalism. Tough because our solutions are not quick fix solutions. Tough because are solutions can take longer, tough because they are harder on the individual it is aimed at but, and here’s the point – its more effective in the long run.

    And I get annoyed when the media ask if this left or right- when they ask about our future direction.  Our new policies for the future should come from one set of values alone- liberal values.

    We are 21st century liberals with ideas for the future and today I want to set out some new ideas on tackling crime in this country.  Ideas on Prison, Police and Respect.

    I believe now is the time for the most radical reform of prisons this country has ever seen. Prisons in this country are an national disgrace.

    Crumbling Victorian buildings.

    Cramped over crowded prison cells.

    The highest prison population in Europe.

    Already in this year alone 60 prisoners have committed suicide.

    Drugs are freely available.

    8,000 prisoners have serious mental health problems.

    And within 2 years of release, 59% of prisoners are back in court with another addition to their criminal record.

    The consequences of which mean more crimes and victims and more people whose lives should have been turned round by prison end up turning straight back into prison.

    So here’s a different way forward, a tough way forward and a liberal way forward. Getting prisoners out of the cells and into the classroom. Teaching them skills to read and write. Investing in training and proper backup and support on release.

    But I’d like to go further than just reforming the prisons themselves. A negative culture is built into the very bricks of our older jails.  Charles Clarke wants to re name them as community prisons- but you don’t get change with just a new name.

    Now is the time for these crumbling prisons to be knocked down and for new modern secure units to be built. So the next generation of young criminals experience a tough regime in these centres which will prevent them from committing crimes in the future and end the revolving door of re-offending.

    Education – rehabiliation- a liberal solution

    I believe these reforms could drastically cut crime in this country. But we also need a strong, well-resourced police force to tackle that as well. I believe we have one of the best police forces in the world. But lets as a party have an ambition to make it the very best in the world. Properly resourced, properly accountable and with the tools to tackle the problems from international terrorism and street vandalism at the same time.

    At the last election we talked about a technological revolution. Techno cop not paperclip cop – was all about giving police 21st century equipment to tackle 21st century crime.

    But I want to go further today and suggest that police become more accountable to local communities and become more open to the outside in meeting their difficult challenges.

    Two weeks ago I visited the NYPD – I’ll admit not natural ground for liberal thinking, but I was taken with the way the police in NY had been revitalised by bringing in officers with non-police backgrounds. Why is it that people that have run large hospitals, companies and charities, people who are experts in intelligence and investigation, are excluded from senior positions in the force?

    We need to move away from the position where all our senior police officers started as bobbies on the beat.

    We must encourage fresh ideas but let’s not restructure just for the sake of it. On Monday the Home Secretary announced plans to merge and abolish some of our police forces.

    We should be making them more local, not more distant. People want to have the confidence that police know the area, that Chief Constables will visit and know every town and village in their area.

    So we say keep the forces as they are but provide a national resources unit with senior officers and experts to provide back up in complex cases.

    So Home Office – hands of our local forces- lets keep them as they are.  We don’t want Clarke police, we want community police.  And that’s a liberal solution.

    Let’s go out and campaign to keep our local forces.

    But prison and police are about when its gone wrong.

    What about stopping crime in the first place?

    Labour’s solution is always the nanny solution. A new law here, a regulation there. A ban today and a dispersal order tomorrow. It’s an alphabet of mismanagement.

    A is for ASBO

    B is for banning

    C is for curfew

    D is for dispersal order

    But it’s all about E

    E for elections.

    The problems of anti social behaviour-  the respect agenda – are not going to be solved by focusing simply on the symptoms and not the causes.

    That’s why our support for ASBOS is limited as they are quick fix solutions.  Our policy of ASBOS plus- which links punishment with measures to tackle the problems is more effective

    And as for respect- well you don’t create respect by banning hoodies in town centres.

    That is Labour’s answer, not ours.

    Conference, we must do better.  We know that society has changed.  Longer working hours, more time spent commuting and sitting in front of the TV, less time with the kids, more families splitting up.

    We’re less likely to chat to the neighbours over the garden fence.  We’re more likely to put up a taller fence so we don’t have to talk to them in the first place.

    Conference, we didn’t come into politics to watch British society become a society of strangers.

    We need new ways of knitting communities together.  New ways of building bridges between individuals and between the generations.  And new ways of inspiring our young people and showing them that there is so much more to life.

    As Liberal Democrats have been good at talking about freedom from oppression, regulation and conformity.

    But we have not been good at articulating a vision of our ambitions for individuals and communities.

    Liberal Democrats have always understood that strong families and strong communities matter. This is our natural terroritory.  We should reclaim it.

    Charles Kennedy has asked Ed Davey, our education spokesman, to join with me in putting forward measures to link education and community to help tackle this. We will be reporting to the spring conference.

    But it strikes me there is a golden opportunity to re think the end of the academic year. At 16 all the focus and money we spend is aimed at passing exams.

    Imagine this. A scheme which allowed all 16 year olds the opportunity to spend a month away from home, in different communities, volunteering for one of hundreds of different projects. To take a 16 year old, perhaps for the first time, away from his estate or troublesome peer group could create enormous opportunities.

    Because we should remember that not every child has the opportunity of  a gap year

    And we should use sport to achieve much more. Our Olympic bid success can be used to help a generation. Imagine every child with access to a sports academy place learning team spirit and healthy activity.

    So conference, in the months ahead we have much to do. As the Conservatives tie themselves up in yet another attempt to find a new leader, it will be left to us to make the case for police reform to keep local forces working with the community at the heart of tackling crime.

    It will be us who will continue to demand a prison service fit for the 21st century, that goes beyond punishment and actually rehabilitates offenders.

    It will be us who will develop the long term solutions for tackling today’s problems with anti social behaviour – giving as well as expecting respect from the younger generation.

    And above all, as terrorism legislation begins its passage through parliament, it will be left to us to defend the values of justice and freedom – the values of our party – the values that make us proud to be Liberal Democrats.

  • John Hayes – 2004 Speech on Housing

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Hayes at Toynbee Hall on 24th May 2004.

    We plant trees for those born later – and we build houses for them, too. Well – that’s how it should be. In recent times we often build – like we shop – for immediate consumption, on an excessive scale and with little regard for the future. Today I want to set out a different vision. A new vision. Built on age-old principles.

    First, I will propose that the idea of the home – and its protection – should become a defining theme for Conservatives as we seek to become Britain’s government again.

    Second, I will expose the twin threats posed by Labour’s gargantuan housebuilding plans –to Britain’s precious countryside and to the prospect of urban renewal.

    Third, I will describe the priorities that will guide our housing policy.

    The home and Conservatism For me, the idea of the home is an emblem of Conservatism.

    To talk about housing is one thing. To talk of the home lifts us to a different emotional plane. The difference between a house and a home is like the difference between calling a parent a mum or an acquaintance a friend.

    The home stands at the bright centre of our lives. Home is where lives start and end. It is where we return at the end of each day and at the end of all of our days. But there are far too many people – in our otherwise wealthy society – who either do not have a home or else the kind of home they deserve.

    Frustrated aspirations to home ownership, overcrowding and fuel poverty are painful symptoms of what’s wrong with Britain. So what do Conservatives have to say in response? What do we have to say about homelessness and broken or abusive homes? What do we have to say to the young couple fearing that they’ll never be able to afford a first home together?

    The Conservative Party must have specific and credible answers to these questions. Today I will describe the policy direction which has emerged from our dialogue with the organisations represented here today and many others besides. But, for me and Caroline Spelman – who I’m delighted is here – providing better housing is not simply about the mechanics of policy. Policies must be built on sound foundations. Ours will stand on our commitment to:

    · help more people to afford a home of their own…

    · ensure everyone has a warm, safe home – built-to-last – those least advantaged just as much as those of good fortune…

    · give local communities control over how they develop…

    · protect and enhance our precious environment…

    · and regenerate urban Britain – building high quality homes on brownfield sites.

    These are our goals. Goals at the heart of authentic Conservatism. The idea of the home can define a Conservative agenda for the twenty-first century. Homes are a symbol of social justice – of private ownership – of security – of independence from intrusive government – of local identity – of embryonic community life…

    The duty of Conservatives is to help people to find a home that supports their aspirations and anchors them for life’s journey. That duty involves protecting people from forces that make that journey more difficult. On the first day of his leadership Michael Howard spoke of this duty.

    “No one should be over-powerful”, he said.

    “Not trade unions. Not corporations. Not the government. Not the European Union.”

    “Wherever we see bullying by the over-mighty, we will oppose it.”

    And we oppose the over-mighty planning system. It’s bureaucratic, unresponsive and esoteric. It frustrates developers and bemuses council tax payers. It’s intrusive when a light touch is needed; yet ineffective when it comes to saving greenfields or ancient woodlands. Heavy-handed regulation limits the scope for innovative development but fails to stem urban sprawl.

    Conservatives know that the energy of the market powers the drive to social renewal. So we support protection of tenants from bad landlords BUT without making those protections so onerous that private landlords are discouraged from letting their properties.

    We believe that private developers should build long-lasting homes in character and scale with the built environment and local landscape BUT to do so we know they need an efficient planning system which assists their businesses to plan.

    And we support enterprise BUT oppose Gordon Brown’s eagerness to scrap controls on out-of-town hypermarkets introduced by John Gummer for the last Conservative government. Because Mr Brown’s permissiveness threatens market towns and high streets as much as it threatens the countryside. Conservatives recognise that the market and government can be good servants of the common good but neither should become so powerful that they make it harder for families to lead free and responsible lives. The idea of the home and all that it represents helps Conservatives to rediscover the things that really matter.

    Labour’s approach to housing

    You can tell how much Labour value housing. John Prescott has been put in charge. The Deputy Prime Minister has now turned his attention to housing. Recently, he welcomed the Treasury-commissioned Barker report. The Deputy Prime Minister is arguing that Britain needs at least two million more houses. That’s more than enough houses to gobble up land equivalent to two cities the size of Birmingham. That means for every year – two towns the size of Middlesbrough will eat into England’s shires. Mile after mile of the world’s finest countryside – Britain’s green and pleasant land – would be bulldozed. There’s a greenfield site near every Briton that he proposes to build on and every community will be blighted by his plan to slacken planning regulations.

    Mr Prescott’s other misplaced passion – Regional Authorities – will overrule the wishes of local people and impose sprawling developments on reluctant communities. Labour’s policy has mutated from ‘predict and provide’ to ‘dictate and provide’. But one-size-doesn’t-fit-all. We should encourage local diversity and allow local government to come up with local solutions.

    I’m clearly not alone in finding Labour’s approach frightening. The House of Commons Committee that shadows John Prescott has warned that a major housebuilding programme is unlikely to reduce house prices. They know that it’s low interest rates, macroeconomic factors and the relative unattractiveness of alternative investment opportunities that drive up house prices. A supply-side solution to the problem of house price inflation will be slow and crude.

    The same Committee warned of “excessive pressure on the water supply and other natural resources” and the significant costs of providing “the transport links, education and other facilities which new neighbourhoods require”.

    Similarly, the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said: “any such massive increase in the rate of building of new homes would have unacceptable environmental impacts and would impose enormous infrastructure and service costs.”

    Mr Prescott’s impending blitz of Britain’s countryside would be distressing enough if it was justified. But Labour’s approach is based on fundamentally flawed assumptions. Mr Prescott would lead you to think that there was a shortage of available dwellings. In fact: there were a million more dwellings than households in 2001. An excess that has grown by 300,000 dwellings since 1991.

    Labour’s approach would lead you to conclude that population growth is outstripping expectations. In reality the 2001 census revealed that there are 900,000 fewer people in Britain than previous government estimates. Labour’s approach would lead some people to believe that housebuilders are desperate for more land. In fact: planning permission has already been granted for 250,000 homes.

    Labour’s approach might lead you to think that they’d cracked the problem of empty houses. In fact: more than 700,000 homes stand empty in England tonight – and have done so for at least six months.

    Labour’s approach would lead you to believe that new home construction had a big impact on house prices. In fact: data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders has shown that 90% of property transactions involve existing homes.

    Myths and errors fuel Labour’s unacceptable approach to housing. Rural and urban communities are both being let down by Labour. Much of rural Britain would be concreted over – destroying vast swathes of the world’s finest countryside. And the opportunity to renew urban Britain – a task that includes housebuilding but also requires the introduction of school choice programmes and a zero tolerance of drugs and crime – would be missed yet again.

    A wholly different approach is needed.

    Conservative housing policy

    The direction of Conservative housing policy has been inspired and informed by many meetings with developers, pressure groups, charities and housing experts. And I’m very glad that some of those people are here today. I’ve listened carefully and I’m certainly committed to a continuing dialogue. The priorities that will characterise a future Conservative government’s housing policy are:

    · Aspiration.

    · Social justice.

    · Community.

    · Harmony.

    · And sustainable regeneration.

    (1) Supporting the aspiration to own a home

    Our first policy priority addresses the crisis of affordability. The Barker Report revealed that only 37% of new households in England could afford to buy a home – down from 46% fifteen years previously. The situation in London is especially serious. In 1993 a home in London cost approximately four times the annual income of those in the bottom quarter of the earnings scale. In 2002 eight times that group’s annual income was required to buy a home. No wonder 35% of our capital city’s first time buyers need help from parents or others to buy a home. The problem is so acute that the Government has been forced to introduce schemes to help the capital’s key workers find homes. But on-the-job houses are today’s tied cottages. They are a quick fix for the symptoms – not a cure for the cause of the affordability crisis. This is not the portable share of equity or assistance with mortgage eligibility that would help key workers to buy a home of their choice – where they want.

    The affordability pressures on key workers and first-time buyers will only worsen if Labour gets the opportunity to load graduates with tuition fees debts. It will deteriorate still further if young people, living with their parents and slowly saving for a deposit, are hit by the Liberal Democrats’ plan for a local income tax.

    Affordability is about people – not buildings.

    Setting affordability targets ignores the plain fact that houses become unaffordable as the market changes. So, we must help people to afford the homes that are available. Promotion of shared equity will be at the heart of the Conservative Party’s help for first-time buyers, key workers and other people currently struggling to fulfil their aspiration to home ownership. First-time buyers who can’t afford to buy 100% of a house might be able to afford a half or two-thirds. Building on the policies introduced by the last Conservative government– a government lucky enough to have as housing ministers Sir George Young and David Curry – we will work with the lending industry, builders and local authorities to bring about an equity revolution enabling millions more people to get on the property ladder.

    In my own area I know there is consideration of how a fresh approach to shared equity can help provide affordable local housing. Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy was one of the defining ideas of her first government. It enabled millions of people to own their own homes.

    But now we must go further. I want people to have the opportunity not just to buy the place they occupy but to buy a home of their choice. This opportunity – rooted in the concept introduced by the last Conservative government but never enthusiastically endorsed by Labour – will mean looking at how we can promote and extend transferable discounts to help tenants buy a home in the marketplace. By achieving a better pull-through from social housing this should ease pressure on the public purse.

    Conservatives also want to extend the right-to-buy to housing association tenants and we will consult housing associations and tenant representatives on how this policy can be implemented.

    Our aim is to create a more fluid social housing sector. One that increases the sector’s capacity to help those people desperate for a home because it also helps others to move from social housing to market housing.

    (2) Social justice: all Britons to have warm, safe homes – built-to-last

    The policies I’ve just outlined on affordability will most help people on lower incomes.

    But the Conservative commitment to ensure more people – whatever their income – live in warm, safe homes doesn’t end there. The scale of the empty homes crisis is a scandal when the number of homeless people has rocketed under Labour. Priority homelessness has risen from 102,650 in 1997-98 to 129,320 in 2002-03. These aren’t just damning statistics. Homelessness blights futures and costs lives. Homeless children are more likely to suffer ill health. Homeless adults are more likely to succumb to addiction. Roughsleepers are thirty-five times more likely to commit suicide than you and I. The Government has moved 4,000 families out of bed and breakfast to meet a pledge. But as Barnado’s say 9,000 families in B&B aren’t covered by it.

    Conservatives believe that families placed in temporary accommodation by social services – who say the Government don’t count – need help, too. We should redefine suitable accommodation and aim at a new measure of what is appropriate. I seek the advice of Shelter, Crisis, Barnado’s and others on achieving this.

    We will also take action to correct the mismatch between people and the properties they want and need. Many people – who as they get older – have more special needs but are living in unadapted, large houses whilst large, growing families are living in overcrowded accommodation. We must enable those who want to downsize to do so, by reviewing the availability of accessible, sheltered and extra-care housing. And by working with the care homes sector rather than against them – as the Government seems to do.

    Getting a better housing match could also helped by the provision of better information. I want to see local authorities maintaining an ‘accessible homes register’. Such a register would assist disabled and elderly people in their search for suitable housing and potentially save local authorities a fortune because of the reduction in unnecessary adaptation and readaptation of houses. Even so, much of the housing stock is unsuitable for people with disabilities. With a 300,000 shortfall in wheelchair-accessible homes, urgent action is needed.

    In England alone there are over 700,000 homes that have been empty for at least six months. Another 100,000 are estimated to be empty in Scotland and Wales. Many more properties – that fall just outside the definitions set by the Empty Homes Agency – are empty, unused and deteriorating. At last – after continuous pressure from Conservatives and others – the Government has reacted by offering an amendment to its Housing Bill.

    But, as usual, they’ve missed the point.

    A fifth of these empty properties are owned by the public sector! Dilatory local authorities must be obliged to let homes quickly. In the private sector incentives are normally preferable to penalties. The challenge is to encourage homeowners to make vacant properties available for rent. We need to look again at legal, administrative and tax incentives and disincentives of bringing these homes into use. Before Labour destroys more of Britain’s countryside it would seem sensible to fill these empty homes – over 300,000 of which are in London, the South-East, the South-West and the Eastern region.

    There are particular housing problems in rural Britain. The exception site policy has provided important opportunities for incremental development in rural towns and villages, but the Government is unenthusiastic about it. Not only is there a case for its maintenance, but also one for extending the opportunity for developers and local authorities to cross-subsidise affordable housing, through the construction of market houses in rural areas.

    We also propose to look again at incentives to the use adapted redundant farm buildings for housing. But it’s no good building rural homes to suck in second homeowners and buy-to-letters. The allocation of affordable housing should prioritise local people: those with roots, family or a job in the countryside.

    Urban areas that have been gentrified suffer, too, and we will look at how this can be addressed. I’m personally interested in ideas put forward by Gary Streeter MP for a new system of housing tenure – called ‘local hold’. Homes that can only be bought by people with long-standing, local connections.

    Social renewal means helping those in most need. 380,000 households do not claim the housing benefit to which they’re entitled. Those households are being failed by an over complex system. David Willetts MP, the Conservative spokesman on welfare issues, is already committed to find remedies to this failure.

    (3) Community – giving local communities control over how they develop

    My third policy theme is the need to give communities control over how they develop. Lawyers have said that the Government’s planning bill will keep their profession employed for years. Rather than undertaking necessary reform of planning Labour’s bill will throw the whole system into a period of massive upheaval. It’s a bill built on irreconcilable objectives. The first, purportedly, to make the planning system more transparent and effective. The second, unforgivably, to transfer more power to unaccountable regions. A more remote system can never be better at recognising local needs and responding to communal sensitivities.

    We need more user-friendly, efficient planning. There will be no ‘dictate-and-provide’ under the Conservatives. We will trust local communities; reduce government dictats; counter the undercapacity in the planning system – and give developers a fair deal by setting tougher statutory planning timetables. Conservatives understand that real communities evolve. They’re not designed by economists and imposed by Whitehall. Local people – not Mr Prescott – should decide what kind of houses they want and where they should be built.

    In its rush to build more and more houses Labour is stripping local authorities of strategic planning powers and giving them to regional planning bodies that cannot be as sensitive to the needs and traditions of local communities. The Leader of Kent County Council, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, has rightly warned that: “Local areas are in danger of losing their local identity to the man in Whitehall. Local people are in danger of losing their local voice and ultimately their countryside”.

    The Barker report calls for an even greater erosion of local democracy. New regional planning executives would deliver housebuilding goals that would be “independent from local government”.

    Yet, ironically, the Government’s unwillingness to provide adequate infrastructure is inhibiting development. Kent alone has an allocated land bank of 41,000 acres – largely undeveloped – because of a lack of infrastructure.

    The transfer of power from local people to remote regional bureaucracies is supported by the Liberal Democrats – but will be reversed by the Conservatives.

    (4) Harmony – the protection and enhancement of our precious environment

    Housing isn’t just about where we live but how we live and who we are. Housing policy and planning should give everyone the opportunity to live in a safe, warm, well-designed home. Our aim must also be to mix generations, help families to stay together and build houses that add to the landscape and locale. Everything built should add aesthetically to what is already there. This vision must inspire all development. Social housing should never be ugly; it should never be bad housing.

    For too long the most disadvantaged of our countrymen have endured indecent homes. Good local authorities are already working to ‘decent homes plus’ because standards set by the Government aren’t good enough. Shelter tell me that 500,000 households are officially overcrowded. An estimated three million live in fuel poverty. This just isn’t acceptable.

    I congratulate South Holland District Council who are building village council homes to a standard set higher than the private sector equivalent. They are showing that the design and quality standards that win awards must be the standard for all. Every local authority should develop supplementary planning guidance through local design guides and specific site appraisals – as the best already do.

    I think of the ambitions of the Victorians and the way those ambitions were reflected in the way they built. From public lavatories to public libraries the Victorians built to last Every building – a statement of local pride.

    We must raise our sights today and build warm, secure homes that people are proud to live in and others pleased to gaze at. The Prince of Wales has also modeled a very special vision of community in Poundbury. Tenants live next door to owner-occupiers. Workshops and offices are close to the homes of the people who work in them. All of the building materials used complement the local environment.

    All over Britain market and social housing should harmoniously meet environmental objectives. Britain’s housing industry is already building concept homes that recycle ‘grey-water’ and harness bio and solar power. Our age should match the ambition of the Victorian age with a commitment to environmentally sustainable housing.

    (5) Sustainable regeneration – high quality homes for urban Britain

    Brownfield land is a stream and not a reservoir. Brownfield development will be a central component of Conservative housing policy. Because, as we know, as land use changes development opportunities emerge. A housing policy that is seamlessly connected to a vision of urban renaissance so that, once again, our cities become places where families want to live and have their children schooled. Urban development has an unhappy post-war record in Britain. There has been an inhuman concentration on purely utilitarian objectives. Britain’s post-war cities, towns and villages have often been disfigured. Local identity corroded by an aesthetic orthodoxy which has given us buildings out-of-keeping in scale, design and materials with their surroundings. Time and again hastily-built, thoughtlessly-designed houses are demolished ahead of time at significant cost to the taxpayer. The planning system has routinely torn communities apart.

    Fortunately there are signs of better practice in regeneration today. Where regeneration projects are owned by local people they are much more likely to be sustainable. At Perry Common in Birmingham, local people – local champions – have modeled a kind of regeneration that meets local needs and is in harmony with community wishes. I know that Wimpey, Redrow and Bovis all have particular developments in different parts of Britain that illustrate what the best can be like.

    Smaller builders also often excel. I was proud to be a guest at the Federation of Master Builders awards lunch where the outstanding success of projects across Britain was recognised.

    The planning system – and government guidance that supports it – must enable best practice to become contagious. Such high quality housing depends upon a high quality construction industry and I welcome Kate Barker’s emphasis on increasing take-up of building industry apprenticeships. The challenge for government is to give builders the chance to excel – the challenge for builders is to rise to the task. Too often local authorities, Government departments and quangoes hold on to land that could be developed.

    We will review the planning, regulation and tax treatment of contaminated land with a view to making it safe and then developing more of it. In contrast, anxious to meet its brownfield development targets the government has crammed high density housing into suburban back gardens. More than half of the ‘brownfield land’ which the Government claim has been previously developed is people’s backyards, gardens and the like.

    Labour is doing nothing to prevent ‘town-cramming’. Nor are they stemming urban sprawl. The inner green belt is being built over. The percentage of greenbelt land developed has doubled under Labour. 91% of Mr Prescott’s much-trumpeted new greenbelt land is actually in a handful of remote parts of northern Britain – faraway from the development pressures of southern England. Mr Prescott’s greenbelt is clearly elastic.

    The Conservative ‘brownfield first policy’ will be heralded by the drawing up of a ‘Blacklist of Blight’. The people of Portsmouth recently saw the beginning of the demolition of the long and much-loathed Tricorn Centre. Other great British cities have been blighted by buildings that shout too much and insult their neighbours.

    Over the next twelve months I’m going to tour Britain and put together this ‘Blacklist of Blight’. In some cases an infamously ugly building will be blacklisted. In other cases a derelict dump spot – a crumbling and disused factory or the site of a demolished warehouse- will be added to my list of Blight.

    Some of this land will be suitable for new housing. Sometimes for greening over. Once fully evaluated by the next Conservative government all blacklisted buildings and sites will become priority candidates for a mixed provision of high-quality housing and community services.

    Building houses on brownfield sites by redesignating former commercial and industrial land will be a priority for that government. There is a great opportunity for Britain’s property developers to use their world class skills to rejuvenate urban Britain.

    Conservatives are also ready to reflect on some of the factors driving the scale and volatility of demand for housing. Volatile demand makes it particularly difficult for developers to invest with confidence. So can this volatility be ended?

    Stabilising the demand for housing raises controversial issues in the same way as increasing its supply… They’re just different controversies.

    The growth of the buy-to-let and second home markets – partly a result of the relative unattractiveness of alternative investment vehicles – hardly helped by Labour’s mishandling of the pensions industry – is one area of concern.

    Family breakdown is another. I believe that much more could be done to help couples to fulfil their aspirations to start a family home and to stay together once children have arrived.

    Conclusion

    Owning a home is the number one financial objective of most working families. Families that are being let down by Labour. During the horror of World War I soldiers dreamt of ‘home fires burning’ – and then Lloyd George promised ‘homes fit for heroes’. Now, as then, if housing policy is right – many of society’s other goals become easier to achieve.

    A child learns more quickly if he or she isn’t moving from one temporary form of accommodation to another. A warm home improves the welfare of children and older people, in particular. Thoughtfully-designed housing estates prevent crime. Where housing tenure and size of dwelling is mixed different generations are more likely to look after one another.

    Borrowing – prudently secured on a home – can support small business start-ups. It is in the interests of good, holistic public policy that we enter a virtuous circle of good housing feeding better health, education and welfare and these, in turn, supporting a good housing policy.

    A focus on the home will also help Conservatives to reconnect with the British people. Helping everyone to have a good home reinforces traditional Conservative strengths like our commitment to property ownership and independence from government.

    But the principles and policies I’ve also outlined point to equally deep to sometimes neglected Conservative beliefs. The emphasis on protecting the countryside and ending urban blight renews our party’s aesthetic and conservationist character. The emphasis on tackling homelessness and the affordability crisis is in tune with the Conservatism of Disraeli and Shaftesbury. Conservatives know that we are all diminished when some of us are diminished. And Conservative housing policy requires new vision. New vision. Age-old principles. A journey to deep-rooted Conservatism. A journey home.

  • William Hague – 2014 Speech on Ukraine

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, at Lancaster House in London on 29th April 2014.

    Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. I am very pleased to welcome you here today at Lancaster House.

    I thank our co-host United States Attorney General Eric Holder for being with us today at this event and his commitment to this vital initiative, the World Bank for their important technical support and Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Oleh Makhnitsky and Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko who are here with us for their valued presence at this immensely difficult time for their country.

    I am also grateful to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov who I understand has had to return to Ukraine to help manage the very serious situation there. He has our very strong support. I am looking forward to visiting Ukraine next week.

    This Forum on Asset Recovery provides a vital opportunity to forge connections between law enforcement agencies, to share expertise and to agree practical steps to track down assets that were criminally looted from the Ukrainian state by former President Yanukovych and his associates.

    Twenty two individuals suspected of embezzlement have already had their assets frozen in the EU, as you know. But we know from our experience of asset recovery after the Arab Spring that moving from freezes to actually returning stolen funds requires rapid, coordinated and widespread international action, so I am very glad to see so many countries represented here today.

    The task ahead of us is complex and challenging, but it is essential for three reasons.

    First, as a matter of principle, we have a duty to do everything we can to return to the Ukrainian state the huge quantities of funds that Yanukovych and his cronies are thought to have embezzled. These assets should be working to the benefit of the people of Ukraine, not lining the pockets of corrupt former officials.

    Second, we must show there is no safe haven for the proceeds of corruption in order to deter those who might be tempted to steal from the public purse in any country in the future. The people of Ukraine rose up against Yanukovych in large part because corruption and theft of state assets had reached such an appalling level under his leadership. I pay tribute to the many civil society activists, journalists and parliamentarians who worked so hard to bring these abuses to light.

    The Ukrainian people deserve our strong support in tackling corruption, strengthening the rule of law and building a more prosperous future for their country. That is why the United Kingdom is supporting projects in Ukraine to improve governance and public financial management, and recovering stolen assets will also make an important contribution to that effort. And the third reason – we must support the interim Government in Ukraine in its efforts to restore stability, begin the process of reform and prepare for elections on 25 May in the face of enormous pressures and unacceptable actions by the Russian Government even after agreement was reached at Geneva on 17 April to reduce tensions.

    The Government of Ukraine has made some determined efforts to implement that agreement. It has collected illegal weapons, removed roadblocks, initiated an amnesty law for protesters and taken an inclusive approach to constitutional reform.

    But Russia for its part has done nothing to implement the agreement. On the contrary it has continually called it into question, while mounting huge military exercises on Ukraine’s eastern border and unleashing a continual barrage of propaganda and aggressive rhetoric that can only increase tensions.

    And that is why the EU is pressing ahead with additional sanctions and I welcome the new US measures announced yesterday.

    It is why the international community must be united in condemning Russia’s illegal violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and why we must be committed in our support for the right of the Ukrainian people to chart their own course in the future.

    So, I hope that your combined expertise and resources allow us to make practical progress during this Forum to support the Ukrainian Government in identifying and recovering the assets that rightfully belong to it.

    If we are successful in this task, we will be making an important contribution to tackling corruption and to supporting the Ukrainian people in their desire to build a better, more prosperous and stable future. Thank you very much indeed for everything you do.

  • William Hague – 2014 Speech on British Foreign Policy

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in London on 15th April 2014.

    My lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an honour to address you tonight.

    It is an exceptionally turbulent time in world affairs, and I believe it will be so for some time to come.

    But it is also a time of immense opportunity.

    Crises always capture the headlines, but there is another side to the story.

    For four years in our government we have had a steady purpose in foreign policy:

    To build up Britain’s ties beyond Europe and our historic alliances;

    To connect our country up to the world’s fastest-growing economies;

    And to maintain Britain’s global role, for that is how we best protect our national interest.

    I am proud of what we have accomplished so far:

    Neglected alliances revived;

    Our relationships in Latin America, the Gulf, Asia and Africa transformed;

    Exports of goods and services up £50 billion since 2010;

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office stronger than it has been in decades;

    And 14 new British Embassies, High Commissions, or Consulates opened around the world.

    We are the only major European government that is expanding its diplomatic network in this way.

    That is how we build the trust that enables us to work on vast global issues from climate change to free trade.

    It is how we link our young people and businesses with opportunity across the world.

    And it is how we forge the agreements we need at the United Nations and other international institutions.

    So we have a long-term vision for the future of British foreign policy.

    As a result, I believe Britain is now in a stronger position to make the most of all that this century has to offer, and that we can offer more to the world ourselves.

    At the end of the 20th century some people thought that the end of Empire meant Britain would be in a state of permanent retreat internationally.

    But in the 21st century we are the country that is at the top of the world’s league tables of soft power, that has hosted a magnificent Olympics and Paralympics, that has met the UN target for development aid – and not many nations have – and whose economy this year is set to achieve the fastest growth of any nation in the developed world.

    Our rapidly falling unemployment, the surge in inward investment and our reformed tax rates all present an immense opportunity to our partners in the world as well as to British people.

    I am grateful to the British companies and institutions who are indispensable to this success overseas, to the Diplomatic Corps here in London and to all our partners, including in the European Union.

    The reforms we advocate for the European Union will help the whole of Europe become more competitive, more flexible and more democratically accountable.

    We have already in the last four years cut the EU’s budget for the first time, ended our liability for Eurozone bail outs, achieved the biggest reform ever to the Common Fisheries Policy, secured political agreement to free trade deals with Singapore and Canada and we are reaping the benefits of the trade deal with South Korea, we’ve opened talks on free trade with the US and Japan and investment talks with China, established a unified European patent, cut red tape for the smallest businesses, and secured vital protection for non-Eurozone countries in Banking Union – part of how we protect the UK and the competitiveness of our financial services in this great City.

    But the EU’s institutions are not immune from 21st century expectations of responsiveness, accountability and democracy.

    Institutions that prove to be impervious to change will prove to be without the means of their own preservation.

    Therefore the British Conservative Party will have no hesitation at all, when we have tested the ability to reform and improve the EU, in submitting the result to a national referendum and the verdict of the people of this country.

    As the United Kingdom we have every reason to face the world with confidence.

    But to do this we have to overcome some of our own demons and doubts. It has been a difficult decade for Western democracies:

    We have endured a global financial crisis so intense it shrank world trade by a tenth in a single year, and caused the entire world economy to contract.

    In Britain we experienced our deepest recession since the Second World War, three times as deep as that of the 1990s.

    On top of this, we have lived through a demanding decade in foreign policy.

    Tens of thousands of our Armed Forces served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    627 of these courageous men and women gave their lives in these conflicts. They and their families have our unending gratitude.

    It is not surprising that some people feel we have done too much, and that our country was over-extended.

    Some voices call for Britain to look inwards and turn away from its global role.

    When the government proposed that we should be ready to take limited military action to deter the further use of chemical weapons in Syria, we faced a great deal of opposition.

    But this has not in any way discouraged us from believing that Britain has international responsibilities.

    The aptitude for self-criticism is one of our greatest strengths, and it allows us to rebound as a nation.

    We are not like autocracies, prone to collapse under the weight of their contradictions or to become ever more oppressive.

    We should always learn the lessons of history. That is why in Opposition I and others demanded and secured the Iraq Inquiry.

    But our capacity for self-criticism must not become corrosive of our own values and our ability to defend them.

    We are approaching the time, while learning every lesson, when we must reassert our sense of confidence.

    Our economy is turning a corner. We are stronger at home, we have a clear purpose abroad, and we have the network and skills our country needs to prosper.

    It is time to draw on our talents as the United Kingdom with new confidence about our place in the 21st century.

    The British people are surely among the most tolerant, generous and daring people of all nations on earth.

    Everything we have achieved we have won through bold engagement with the world over centuries.

    Our NGOs blazed the trail on human rights, development and peace-building. The campaign to abolish the slave trade took root here, as did the demand for an Arms Trade Treaty.

    Our legal system is admired across the world, and companies on every continent choose to protect their interests and resolve their disputes under British law.

    We have many of the world’s best universities, and our media, musicians, artists and authors take British culture to billions of people around the world each year.

    Our history is often one of hard power. But in the coming years we will do even more to unleash these rivers of soft power across the world, so that we cultivate influence that flows rather than power that jars.

    On top of this, we are one of the few nations with the diplomatic network, the capabilities and the willingness to bring the world together to tackle vast problems, as we have done over the last two years on Somalia.

    We use our huge experience in ending and preventing conflict to help other countries, as we have done recently in the Philippines.

    Working with others we have been able to make progress in the nuclear negotiations with Iran that was unthinkable even a year ago.

    And I am proud that Britain that is leading the campaign to end sexual violence in warzones, now with the support of 144 countries.

    I have invited representatives of all those countries to London in June for a summit I will co-host with the Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie. It will bring together civil society, judiciaries, and police from around the world, and be the largest event of its kind, at which we want to shatter the culture of impunity for those who use rape as a weapon of war.

    Fewer than 50 countries in the world have not yet joined this campaign. If you are from one of those countries I hope you will ask your governments why they alone are standing on the sidelines, when we have it in our power to be the generation that saves millions of people from the horrors of warzone sexual violence, forever. But this need for confidence applies not just to us in the United Kingdom, but to many other nations.

    It is time to shake off a decade of doubt, while learning all its lessons, and to rediscover confidence in the power and longevity of our values.

    There is an obvious and immediate challenge requiring strength and unity from not only western nations but from many others, and that is the crisis over Ukraine.

    Last month Russia, a European country, annexed a part of the territory of its neighbour on trumped up pretexts and through an illegal referendum held at the end of the barrel of a gun.

    By this act Russia violated the fundamental principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right of every democratic nation to choose its own future.

    These principles have been built up over 70 years to avoid a repeat of the terrible conflicts of the 20th century that inflicted such grave suffering on Europe, particularly on Russia.

    If we do not defend these principles in Ukraine, including over Crimea, they will be threatened elsewhere in Europe and around the world.

    This would be immensely damaging for the long term prosperity and security of all nations – including Russia – which ultimately depend on a rules-based international system.

    We have to maintain strength and unity and confidence now, or our resolve could be tested even more severely in the future.

    That is why yesterday in the European Union we agreed to expand sanctions and to complete preparations for far-reaching economic, trade and financial sanctions whenever necessary in the future.

    In recent days Russia has deliberately pushed Ukraine to the brink, and created a still greater risk of violent confrontation. We call on Russia to stop these actions and to condemn the lawless acts in Eastern Ukraine.

    We want diplomacy to succeed, and for the Contact Group meeting later this week to produce steps to de-escalate the crisis.

    We are at a crucial moment. Russia needs to choose whether it is open to diplomacy and de-escalation, and if it decides otherwise, we must be ready for a different state of relations with Russia in the next ten years than we have enjoyed in the last twenty years.

    Ukraine can be a bridge between East and West and be able to have good relations with Russia. But that does not entitle Russia to send in its armed groups, thinly disguised, to spearhead the occupation of buildings in multiple Ukrainian cities, to try permanently to destabilise the country and dictate the terms of its constitution.

    My message to Moscow is that if anyone thinks they can do these things without serious long-term consequences then they are making a grave miscalculation.

    Russia is already paying a serious price for its actions. And the longer it breaches the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine, the heavier the price it will pay.

    First, we have already seen the flight of over $63 billion in capital out of Russia and the fall of the Russian stock market, as investors draw their own conclusions about the long-term implications for the Russian economy.

    Second, President Putin’s top objective in foreign policy is the creation of a Eurasian Union that would lock Russia’s neighbours into its own economic and political orbit. But now all countries in the region can see the risks of reliance on a bullying neighbour that shows no respect for the sovereignty of other nations. So the Russian government is undermining its own foreign policy, including alienating the vast majority of the people of Ukraine for decades to come.

    Third, Russia’s actions will only strengthen the unity, relevance and common purpose of the NATO Alliance for the long term. Already we have agreed increased NATO’s peacetime Baltic Air Patrols to reassure our partners. The NATO Summit, which we will be proud to host in Wales in September, will be even more strongly committed to strengthen capabilities and guarantee our common defence. And the case for increased defence spending, among NATO allies that have slipped below the threshold of 2% of their national income spent on defence, has become even stronger.

    Fourth, it is now much more likely that European countries will take action to reduce their energy dependence on Russia. The UK will advocate the diversification of gas supplies to Europe, the boosting of investment in gas interconnections and terminals, and the development of indigenous energy supplies such as shale gas. We will urge the EU to take action to help Ukraine and neighbouring countries to ensure more resilient energy supplies for them. And ahead of the G7 Heads of Government meeting in June, which will exclude Russia, Energy Ministers will meet to discuss ways to strengthen our collective energy security.

    And fifth, Russia’s behaviour has laid bare the danger of the creation of concentrations of economic, political and media power that subvert democratic institutions, particularly in South-Eastern Europe. We will increase our focus on supporting those institutions in European countries vulnerable to the pressure of creeping oligarchisation.

    In all these areas the Russian government is now at risk of undermining its own influence, and steadily disconnecting Russia from the international community.

    The Russian people stand to lose most of all, if their government continues on this path of the destabilisation of Ukraine.

    As these events show, we are probably heading for a period of greater instability and sometimes greater dangers in world affairs.

    Faced with such pressures the circle of countries bearing responsibility for upholding peace and security in the 21st century has to be widened.

    Countries that now play a bigger part in the world economy, particularly those aspiring to join the United Nations Security Council, have broad enough shoulders to take on a greater share of the burden.

    But nonetheless, it will remain vital that Western nations do not shrink from world affairs, and retain and reinforce their sense of purpose.

    We must demonstrate renewed confidence in the strength of our values.

    Democracy – even if it takes many different forms according to different cultures – will surely prove to be the foundation of the greatest human prosperity and stability over the long term. So let us be clear, democracy is not just an alternative to autocracy, secrecy and repression, it is infinitely preferable and superior to it.

    Accountability, human rights and the rule of law, transparency, tolerance, free trade, and open societies –they are the themes that will prove to be the most in tune with the trends of the 21st century, and the best basis for the fulfilment of human ambitions and dreams.

    So we have to advocate our values confidently and to make sure they emerge stronger from any challenge.

    This means we have to maintain our patient long term support for countries in the Middle East and North Africa that have experienced political upheaval.

    We have to do more to try to save lives in Syria and overcome the lack of international political will and unity. Just five countries, including the United Kingdom, account for more than 70% of all the aid that has been pledged through the UN for Syria this year. Britain has given over a billion dollars in aid so far. Other countries have to do more, because this crisis will get worse and the dangers to the region are growing every day. It is wrong for Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq to bear the burden without sufficient help and it is our duty to support them.

    And we have to show resolve and imagination as never before to win the greatest prize of all of the 21st century, the full social, political and economic empowerment of all women everywhere.

    In all these areas and more it is time for all nations that share these values to reject the psychology of decline, to have confidence in our democracy, to show collective leadership based on those values, to use our soft power to the full to persuade other countries to work with us in new ways, and to inspire the world with our efforts to improve the condition of humanity.

    This will be our approach in the years to come, as the United Kingdom: expanding our diplomatic network, seeking new friends while nourishing old alliances, not surrendering to events, but retaining our belief in our ability with our allies and friends to shape the world and a more prosperous and secure future.

  • William Hague – 2014 Statement on Crimea Referendum

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the statement made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, following the Crimean referendum on 16th March 2014.

    I condemn the fact that this referendum has taken place, in breach of the Ukrainian constitution and in defiance of calls by the international community for restraint.

    Nothing in the way that the referendum has been conducted should convince anyone that it is a legitimate exercise.

    The referendum has taken place at ten days’ notice, without a proper campaign or public debate, with the political leaders of the country being unable to visit Crimea, and in the presence of many thousands of troops from a foreign country. It is a mockery of proper democratic practice.

    The UK does not recognise the referendum or its outcome, in common with the majority of the international community. At the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers tomorrow we believe measures must be adopted that send a strong signal to Russia that this challenge to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine will bring economic and political consequences.

    Furthermore, any attempt by the Russian Federation to use the referendum as an excuse to annex the Crimea, or to take further action on Ukrainian territory, would be unacceptable.

    I call on Russia to enter into dialogue with Ukraine and with the international community to resolve this crisis through diplomacy and in accordance with international law, not to exacerbate it further through unilateral and provocative actions.

  • William Hague – 2014 Speech on Receiving Hillary Clinton Prize

    williamhague

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, at Georgetown University in Washington, United States, on 25th February 2014.

    I am delighted to be back at Georgetown University. I gave one of my first speeches as Foreign Secretary from this stage, and I am very proud to return under these circumstances. Secretary Clinton, Ambassador Verveer, thank you for this immense honour.

    Everyone remembers who they shared a desk with at school. Well Hillary and I shared a desk for 2½ years when I was a brand-new Foreign Secretary, at the UN Security Council and in meetings around the world where they seat nations in alphabetical order.

    She would silence any room, just by walking into it. She always spoke the truth as she saw it, fearlessly. And she was fond of passing notes in class. I remember one that said ‘William, let’s get out of here and have some fun’.

    Hillary, you enhanced the standing of US diplomacy in the world. You strengthened the State Department. You created new opportunities for your country, breaking fresh diplomatic ground in Asia and Africa. You are one of the world’s resolute champions of human rights, and in doing all these things and more you placed the United States in a stronger position for the 21st century. You are a remarkable stateswoman and an outstanding American, and I am glad to call you my friend.

    I am of course a Conservative Foreign Secretary while you were a Democrat Secretary of State. But there is a particular reason why we worked so well together across a political divide, as well as across the Atlantic:

    We both believe that foreign policy is not just about responding to crises, its goal must be to improve the condition of humanity.

    Yes, we must always be realistic about threats and dangers, but we must also always be fired with optimism about human nature, and be bold in seeking out and sweeping away injustice.

    As nations, it is what we choose to do with our power that matters most of all, and that is the greatest testament to our values.

    I believe that there is no greater strategic prize of the 21st century than the full social, political and economic empowerment of all women everywhere.

    This must be the century in which women take their rightful place, in which hundreds of years of marginalisation are forcefully and finally overturned and extinguished, in which girls are born not into a world of narrow hopes and lesser protections, but into a world of equal treatment and boundless opportunity.

    Every country including our own has far more to do, but this is not just a national responsibility. It is a cause that every Foreign Minister should champion, in a global effort to break down the barriers which hold women back and unlock their full potential.

    It requires all the ingenuity and persistence that diplomacy can bring to bear, and should be part of the mission of each Ambassador in every Embassy of all democratic nations.

    We must turn commitments that exist on paper into education, jobs, equal participation and leadership positions for women.

    We need to turn women’s invisible presence in many countries around the world into a visible force in every society: with women represented in every peace process, in every government, in all walks of life.

    In my view it is impossible to achieve that aspiration in a world in which the use of rape as a weapon of war goes unchallenged.

    Many men and boys are victims of these crimes. Their plight too must be brought out of the shadows. But sexual violence in armed conflict disproportionately affects women, and is part of the crushing weight holding back women’s development.

    It is also a major factor in creating refugee flows and perpetuating conflict. And it should be at the heart of how we view conflict prevention and foreign policy in this century.

    In discussing this award we must acknowledge that it is still considered unusual for a man, and a politician, to raise these issues. But rape and sexual violence are crimes overwhelmingly committed by men. And that they should happen, while the world does nothing, should shame all men. Indeed to shy away from talking about these facts is in itself unmanly.

    But that said, it is true that three women have inspired me and motivated me to take up this cause, on top of what I have witnessed as Foreign Secretary.

    Two of them are my Special Advisers, Arminka Helic and Chloe Dalton, who have worked with me for nine years.

    Among their many skills is the art of persuading me to do things. When I learnt that I was to receive this prize, they brought me down to earth by reminding me that the best way to get a man to do the right thing is to tell him that he has had an extremely clever idea, when in fact it was your idea all along. Perhaps that is what Hillary had in mind in awarding me this honour.

    The third woman who has inspired me is Angelina Jolie. Without her film In the Land of Blood and Honey this Initiative would not exist at all.

    It brought home to me that an estimated 50,000 women were raped in Bosnia twenty years ago, and that still today virtually none of them have seen any justice.

    It made me think about Colombia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Liberia, Syria – the endless list of conflicts where women, children and men have been brutally assaulted, often as part of a military strategy, with total impunity.

    Sexual violence is often one of the first things that happens as soon as conflict or instability take hold.

    Yet it is usually the last thing to be taken into account by those ending wars or rebuilding nations.

    Women bear the worst of the burden of war – but they have always benefited least from the peace.

    With this in my mind, I asked Arminka and Chloe to invite Angelina to the Foreign Office, to screen her film and talk about these issues.

    They came back and said she wants to know something first: what are you going to do that will make a difference?

    She was absolutely right. It is not enough just to watch a film, or to meet and discuss these issues. We only get close to doing enough when we take action that practical action that makes a difference to the lives of survivors.

    Out of those conversations was born the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, and the campaign that has taken us together from London to the DRC, the G8, the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly, while the number of nations supporting us has grown from 8 to 140.

    Tonight Angelina has just returned from Lebanon where she has been working with refugees, who are often survivors of sexual violence. Her extraordinary humanity, her deep understanding of the lives of people uprooted by conflict, and her remarkable ability to motivate people and governments around the world are central to the success of this initiative. There is no barrier of language or culture that she is not able to overcome with her intelligence, her charm and her compassion. She is a credit to her country.

    This summer, we will co-host a global summit in London, which we intend will be a summit like no other:

    It will be the largest gathering ever held on this issue, running for four days from 10-13th June. It will bring together not only Foreign Ministers from those 140 nations, but also members of their armed forces, police forces, judiciaries and civil society.

    We will involve young people from around the world, and open up the Summit to civil society and groups working on these issues. It will be open to members of the public, and interact with every form of social media. And British Embassies will stage events all around the world, so that the Summit continues on a 24-hour basis, and people across the globe can participate. Achieving change in the world today requires a new and more open form of diplomacy; that fuses the work of governments with civil society and the power of public opinion.

    We are going to ask these 140 countries to write action against sexual violence into their military training and doctrine and their peace-keeping missions overseas. We will encourage them to form partnerships to help the worst-affected nations truly turn a corner on this problem. We will ask governments to plug gaps in their criminal justice systems and pledge to make this a priority. And we will launch a new International Protocol on how to document and investigate, document and prosecute sexual violence in conflict, to overcome one of the greatest barriers of all to justice, which is the lack of evidence.

    But we are going to be even more ambitious than that. We are setting out to change the whole global attitude to these crimes, as well changing bureaucracies. We don’t just want to move the pens of Ministers, we are going to try to move the hearts of people. It is not enough to change countries’ laws, unless we change people’s whole mentality. We hope that to create so much momentum that we begin to shatter the culture of impunity, so that in the future, far from any judge, prosecutor or law, any man with a gun in any conflict-zone will think twice before ordering or committing rape.

    There will be many people who say that this is too big a task, too difficult, or that it requires too much change in the crooked timber of humanity ever to be successful.

    Other people say start with other, less extensive crimes, arguing that sexual violence in conflict is something that has always happened and can never be eradicated.

    It is true that this task will take years and that it will be formidably difficult. But we cannot turn away.

    If we don’t end impunity this problem will get worse not better.

    A society that believes in human rights for all human beings and opportunities for all its citizens cannot know about the way rape is used as a weapon of war and then simply ignore it.

    We cannot hope to end other forms of pervasive discrimination against women if we are unable to stand up to one of the most extreme forms of violence against them.

    If women are still treated in this abhorrent way in times of war, they will never be treated as equals in times of peace, and that simply cannot be tolerated.

    We know that the world is capable of agreeing that even during war, certain actions are unacceptable. We must remove rape and sexual violence from the world’s arsenal of cruelty.

    To receive this award is a proud moment in my public career, and I accept it with humility.

    I accept it in the name of the survivors who find the courage to talk about their ordeal, who overcome their terrible injuries, who struggle on despite intimidation, ostracism, and rejection by their families and societies. I hope that this award is some recognition that they matter and are not forgotten. And I hope it will encourage other men and other leaders to talk about these issues, since only then will we lift the stigma from innocent victims.

    I accept this award thinking of the true heroines and heroes who work with survivors of rape: doctors – like Dr Mukwege – nurses, human rights defenders, lawyers; thousands of women and men who have done far more than I have, most with no reward or acknowledgement. They have done for years what governments have failed to do, and we must follow their example.

    And I accept it with humility because although I am proud of what we have achieved, it is only a beginning.

    I will continue this campaign for as long as it takes. I am grateful to men and women of the Foreign Office who are working across the world in support of it, and to the NGOs whose years of indispensable work we want to build upon. I am greatly encouraged by this award and by knowing that we are all part of the same endeavour.

    By taking up this cause we are shouldering a responsibility that our world has shirked for too long; and having taken it up, now we must never set it down again.

    Thank you.