Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in Bogota, Colombia, on 17th February 2014.

I thank the Centre for Peace, Reconciliation and Memory for hosting us today.

And I thank you Defence Minister – it is an honour to be here in your country. Yesterday you and I saw how your navy´s counter-narcotics operations are making a huge difference to the security of my country as well as to Colombia, by reducing the flow of drugs on our streets. This is a powerful symbol of the trust and mutual benefits that underpin our bilateral relationship. I am here in Bogota because we want to strengthen those ties in many areas, from trade and education to foreign policy and security cooperation, as well as to support your peace process.

I discussed the peace negotiations this morning with President Santos. We know from our own experience how hard it is to reach and implement peace agreements and the courage and commitment that is required. I pay tribute to the President for his leadership, and to the efforts of civil society and affected communities. You will have our support as you bring an end to this terrible conflict and build sustainable peace. I am delighted to be sharing the stage with Nigeria Rentería, the Presidential Advisor for Women’s Equality, and one of two female negotiators to the team leading talks with the FARC. The Women for Peace march in November showed the inspiring possibilities for women’s participation in the peace process. Colombia is setting an example for many other countries, where women are frequently excluded from negotiations, something we must ensure does not happen in Syria today.

The friendship between our countries is growing stronger by the day because we have a like-minded approach to many problems in the world.

I hope we can now take our cooperation into a new area, and work together on ending the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war anywhere in the world.

To each generation fall different responsibilities, and this I believe is a cause for our generation.

Millions of women and girls and men and boys have been raped in conflicts in our lifetime, on every continent, including in the heart of Europe only twenty years ago.

Warzone rape destroys lives, traps survivors in poverty, undermines reconciliation and fuels conflict. We must stop this terrible cycle by shattering the culture of impunity that exists around the world today.

These crimes must no longer be regarded as something that simply happens in conflict zones. The suffering of women must never again be treated as an issue of secondary importance. And survivors must no longer be shunned and abandoned but supported and freed from stigma. To do this we need to change the entire global attitude to these crimes, so that governments are persuaded to live up to their responsibilities and take the practical action that is needed.

In many countries across the world civil society organisations have been working towards this goal – including Colombia’s courageous “Now is not the time to be silent” campaign who are our partners in this event today.

But the missing element until now has been that Governments have not taken up this cause. That is what I am trying to change, using the full diplomatic weight and global presence of the United Kingdom to persuade not just a few countries, but the entire world, to treat this as an urgent global priority. By championing it as a Foreign Minister I hope to persuade other countries to see that this is an issue of international peace and security that needs to be discussed at every top table of international diplomacy.

The samples of earth around this centre taken from the sites of atrocities are a powerful reminder of everything that the people of Colombia have endured during fifty years of appalling conflict, of the lives lost, and the lives shattered by violence, upheaval and displacement, including sexual violence. These crimes are particularly hard to quantify, but I am aware of one survey that estimates that between 2001 and 2009, almost 500,000 Colombian women were victims of sexual violence associated with the conflict.

Your government is working to address this government at home, but your knowledge and experience is something to be drawn upon by other countries facing similar problems. So we see Colombia as a natural partner in this area, and I was delighted when your Foreign Minister gave Colombia support to a historic Declaration promising to end the use of rape as a weapon of war which I presented at the United Nations in September last year and which has now been endorsed by 140 countries.

This was the highpoint so far of a campaign I began in May 2012 with the Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie, our Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative

In four months time we will convene a global summit in London in June this year, which we intend to be the largest ever staged on this issue. It will bring together governments, militaries, police forces and international organisations. It will be open to the public. Civil society organisations will hold open sessions on conflict prevention, women’s rights and business and human rights. Here in Colombia and across the world our Embassies will organise high profile events so that we really capture the imagination of the whole world.

We will ask all the countries present at the summit to make real practical commitments: to revise their military doctrines and training; to commit new support for local organisations and human rights defenders; to launch new partnerships and to prioritise this effort in their foreign policy; and to endorse and implement the new International Protocol which will help to increase the number of prosecutions worldwide.

We want Colombia to be represented in strength, and I hope Colombian civil society organisations will also accept our invitation to take part.

The Colombian government’s efforts internationally and at home demonstrate a clear commitment to tackling sexual violence.

As part of our strong support for those efforts, and I am glad to be able to announce two UK-funded projects in Colombia:

First, the British Embassy will work with two NGOs, LIMPAL and Casa Amazonia, directly to support survivors of sexual violence, train women’s organisations and connect them to government authorities.

Second, we will work with DeJusticia and the Attorney General’s Office to train prosecutors to investigate sexual violence in armed conflict, in support of your efforts to develop new national standards for investigation and prosecution.

We have also agreed that UK experts will visit Colombia to seek out views on the new International Protocol on the documentation and investigation of sexual violence in conflict which we hope will be adopted at the June Summit.

So, both internationally and here in Colombia we are already working together to prevent sexual violence and tackle impunity.

I hope Colombia will continue to translate its political commitment into practical steps, and that we can strengthen our international cooperation.

Colombia can play a vital role in the worldwide effort to end the horrors of warzone rape, and I have no doubt that working together with determination, courage and conviction, we can inspire many other nations to join us, make a difference to the lives of many people, and be able to say that by putting our shoulders to the wheel, we have hastened the day when the use of rape as a weapon of war will be consigned to the pages of history.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in Brazil on 19th February 2014.

Good morning Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen and thank you, Ambassador Amaral for hosting this event. I am grateful to the Lula Institute, and to our hosts FAAP.

It is a pleasure to be in your dynamic, vibrant city, the sixth largest in the world, and a symbol of all that Brazil has achieved in recent decades.

I am here in Brazil for our annual foreign policy Strategic Dialogue with your government, which took place yesterday. Over the last four years there has been a significant strengthening of our bilateral relationship. There has been a huge increase in the number of visits to Brazil by British Ministers; we’ve opened a new British consulate in Recife; we now have more diplomats at our missions here in São Paulo and in Rio, and we’ve signed agreements which are bringing thousands of Brazilian students to the UK through the Science without Borders programme. But there is immense scope for us to do more together and achieve more together by working side-by-side in foreign policy, perhaps nowhere more so than in Africa. So I am very pleased to be part of this panel event, since exchanging ideas in this way is an important stepping stone to future cooperation.

Africa is a region still affected by conflict. We are all conscious I am sure of the terrible situations in South Sudan and Central African Republic. The UK has committed more than £70 million for humanitarian activities in South Sudan and we are supporting efforts to find a political solution. We have also provided £15 million in humanitarian aid to Central African Republic and £2 million to the African Union peace-keeping mission and we supported the deployment of an EU force to assist the African Union and French troops already on the ground.

In both these countries we see the way conflict and instability destroy livelihoods and undermine sustainable development. The international community must be able to act to protect populations and avert disaster and we hope that the African Union will continue to strengthen its ability to respond in crisis situations like these. I hope Brazil can join us in supporting them, because your experience in Haiti and Lebanon gives you deep peace-keeping expertise, reflected in the choice of a Brazilian General to lead UN Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

My country is playing a leading role in reducing piracy of the Horn of Africa by contributing vessels to three international naval missions; we are working to counter terrorism from North Africa and the Sahel through Nigeria to Kenya and Somalia; we have held two major conferences in London in the last three years bringing together the Somali government and 50 other nations and organisations, helping that country to turn itself around; and we are one of the very biggest contributors in the whole world of development assistance to African nations.

But to look at Africa solely through the lens of conflict is misleading. My argument today is that there are exciting opportunities for Britain and Brazil to work in partnership with African countries to promote economic growth, good governance and stability – drawing on our own expertise, history, knowledge and historic ties with different parts of Africa – and building on the development partnerships that we have already established.

Both of our countries’ relationships with Africa are rooted in history, though they are not defined by it.

Eighteen African countries, including Mozambique, are members of the Commonwealth, a vibrant, free association of countries from every continent working together for our shared values and shared prosperity. British Africans make an invaluable contribution to many areas of our national life, while many leading government figures in Africa studied at world class institutions in the UK.

Brazil’s ties with Africa reflect your own long historical and cultural links. I know that Brazilians of African heritage and African culture play a vital role in your society, that your linguistic ties are a special bond with a number of countries in Africa, and that our other speakers today will touch on Brazil’s many contributions to prosperity, security and development across the continent, including your peacekeeping contribution. Your remarkable record of poverty reduction, growth and development of thriving democracy makes you an extremely strong partner for African countries set on the same path.

Both our countries are now building on those historical connections to strengthen our relationships with African countries for the future.

Since 2010 the UK has opened new Embassies in Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Liberia, South Sudan and Somalia. I know that you have also been expanding your presence in Africa and both our countries have extensive and well respected development programmes. In fact, we are working together in 23 African countries helping farmers boost productivity and ensuring children get the school meals they need to succeed. But the similarities do not end there because both our countries are also building our economic ties with Africa. Brazil’s annual trade with Africa rocketed from $4 billion to $27 billion between 2002 and 2012 and I look forward to hearing Vitor Hallack’s views on the trading relationship from the business perspective.

In that same ten year period, UK exports to Nigeria and Ethiopia doubled, our exports to Tanzania trebled and exports to Ghana increased almost four-fold.

Both our countries know we can do even better, because Africa is a continent of huge economic potential. In 2012, 5 African nations saw growth rates higher than China’s, and 36 grew faster than India.

Economic growth could transform countries in Africa as it has transformed Brazil. The vast majority of the 700 million people who escaped poverty in the last two decades did so thanks to growing economies that gave them jobs and higher incomes, and that gave their governments tax receipts to fund better health, education and infrastructure.

So growth will benefit the citizens of African countries, and it will help Brazil, the UK and the global economy too.

For all these reasons, the UK is putting economic cooperation and development at the heart of our relationships in Africa.

Our Department for International Development is doing so particularly successfully by working with Brazil across Africa. Through joint projects together we are strengthening food security, increasing agricultural productivity, supporting incomes and improving resource management. In many cases, applying to Africa techniques approaches developed and successfully implemented in Brazil, such as the Favela policing project we support in Nairobi and Cape Town, which uses social media to improve citizen security.

The UK’s Department for International Development is also working in partnership with African countries to make them more attractive destinations for much needed investment, to improve regulation, build infrastructure and develop capital markets. This will help create opportunities for home grown entrepreneurs and for British and Brazilian businesses alike, all to the benefit of the African countries concerned.

UK businesses can play a valuable role in supporting economic development in African countries not only because they bring world class skills, services, and technologies but also because British companies recognise the importance of local job creation, training, and corporate responsibility. In this they are supported by the UK government: we were the first in the world to launch a national business and human rights action plan and we are helping British companies invest in their staff worldwide.

We have fourteen UK Trade and Investment offices across Africa, dedicated to helping British companies to forge links with African countries, and all our Embassies have been tasked with finding opportunities for British businesses to invest and export.

In order to strengthen our effort across government, we recently established High Level Prosperity Partnerships with Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania. British Ministers will work with their counterparts in these five countries to remove barriers to trade, share expertise and identify business opportunities.

The UK will also continue to argue strongly throughout Africa for good governance, human rights and the rule of law because these are the common aspirations of people everywhere, and because corruption, oppression and instability hold back economic development, as we have seen all too clearly in Zimbabwe.

I hope Brazil can work with us to ensure that the world agrees a strong set of new global development goals that reflect the importance of the rule of law, stability and open and accountable government, because these are all essential conditions for long-term economic success.

We also recognise the importance of African countries and the African Union on the world stage. We are working closely with Nigeria, Chad and Rwanda on the Security Council and we support a permanent African presence on that body; 31 African countries have endorsed the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict which I launched last year, and we are working with many of them and with the African Union on practical measures to tackle warzone rape; and we are building strong bilateral partnerships to work together on issues from free trade to piracy to climate change.

So, the United Kingdom’s partnerships with African countries, like Brazil’s, are wide-ranging, dynamic and full of potential. I believe that our two countries should do more together to harness those strong ties to support economic development, good governance and stability, in a spirit of respect and cooperation, so that in the future African lion economies might rival Asia’s tigers, with all that that means for their peoples and for the security and prosperity of the world.

And in that spirit I look forward to hearing the views of our other panellists and to discussing these issues with you and the audience here today, and to even stronger cooperation between our countries in Africa in the years to come.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, at the Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference at Lancaster House in London on 13th February 2014.

I would like to thank his Royal Highness for his words, and the personal long-standing commitment that he, the Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry have shown to raising awareness of this issue.

It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing an unprecedented crisis: Tens of thousands of elephants were killed last year; over a thousand rhinos lost their lives to poaching and trafficking; and tigers and many other species are under ever greater threat.

But this is not just an environmental crisis. This is now a global criminal industry, ranked alongside drugs, arms and people trafficking.

It drives corruption and insecurity, and undermines efforts to cut poverty and promote sustainable development, particularly in African countries.

There is also anecdotal evidence that shows how insurgent or terrorist groups could benefit from the trade.

Therefore tackling it would build growth, enhance the rule of law, increase stability and embed good governance.

So the illegal wildlife trade is a global problem – and it matters deeply to all of us gathered here today and the nations and organisations we represent.

We need to show the world our political commitment, at the highest levels across the globe, to addressing it before it is too late.

We want to support the amazing work already done in Africa, Asia and elsewhere and send the unequivocal message that this stops now. We will confront the crisis and we will beat it.

I am greatly heartened by the presence here of leaders, Ministers, and representatives from all parts of the world from Africa, from Asia, from Europe and from North America. This gathering is unprecedented.

We will hear from all sides of the story; the countries that are most affected by the criminals which slaughter the world’s most iconic species; the countries working tirelessly to stop the trafficking; the countries where demand for products is highest; and our partners from the international system.

And we will learn from each other. We will take away solutions; breakthroughs on how we categorise and prosecute poachers and traffickers; how we investigate wildlife crime; how we invest in sustainable alternatives to poaching; and how we campaign to eradicate demand and supply for illegal wildlife products.

At the end of this Conference we will adopt an ambitious and powerful Declaration that demonstrates to the world we will not tolerate this abhorrent trade.

Firstly, governments here have committed for the first time to renounced the use of any products from species threatened from extinction. This goes beyond on our legal obligations – it shows that nobody, government’s least of all, need to buy these products.

Secondly, we will recognise that CITES is a fantastic weapon in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade. It is the only body that draws the whole of the international community together on this issue. Its strength is that it is universal. But we will go further than our earlier commitments and promise that we will support the CITES commercial prohibition on international trade in elephant ivory, until the survival of elephants in the wild is no longer threatened by poaching. This is an enormous and important step.

Thirdly, today we will commit to treat poaching and trafficking as a serious organised crimes in the same category as drugs, arms and people trafficking. Poachers think they can act with impunity. We will show them that they are wrong. There will be no weak links – we will all seek out those who commit these atrocious acts and use the full force of our national and international laws to break these criminal networks.

We have the attention of the highest levels of government now on this issue. We cannot pass up this opportunity to make a real breakthrough.

I am clear that action does not end with this Conference; we need to ensure that the commitments we make today are translated into urgent, concrete actions on the ground in the weeks and months to come.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in the Philippines on 30th January 2014.

Magandang hapon” [Good afternoon]. It is a great pleasure to be here in the Philippines.

I am grateful to the Asian Institute of Management for hosting this event, and I am delighted to see so many young people in the audience as well. You represent the future of your country of course, and I look forward to taking your questions at the end of my speech.

I am here in Manila today because the United Kingdom government is set on building an even stronger relationship with the people and government of the Philippines: a relationship that is forward-looking; characterised by optimism, dynamism and trust, and founded on our common values.

Your high rates of economic growth are a testament to strong economic policy and the hard work of Filipinos at home and abroad, including thousands in my own country. Your government can also be proud of its work to embed good governance.

The Philippines clearly has the potential to be one of Asia Pacific’s great success stories and we want to support you in that, to the benefit of both our peoples.

We are increasing the number of Chevening Scholars from the Philippines able to study in world-class British Universities; new direct flights between London and Manila are boosting tourism in both directions; the Prime Minister has just appointed a Trade Envoy to the Philippines, George Freeman MP, who will no doubt strengthen the flourishing business links that saw British exports to the Philippines rise 13% last year; and I am told I have arrived in the middle of a five month celebration of Britain in the Philippines.

You may be surprised to know that the British nomination for this year’s Foreign Language Film at the Oscars was a film made here in the Philippines by a British director with Filipino actors. That film, ‘Metro Manila’, is in Tagalog, and it has already won three awards at a British film festival. It goes to show what British creativity and Filipino talent can accomplish together and it illustrates the potential that there is in our relationship.

In Britain we deeply admire the resilience, fortitude and community spirit you demonstrated after Typhoon Yolanda. Thousands of British people gave money to support your relief effort, raising more than two billion pesos in just four days as part of the more than twelve billion pesos provided by the Government and people of the United Kingdom, along with the two Royal Navy vessels HMS Daring and HMS Illustrious, which we despatched to enable aid to reach isolated communities.

You have shown the same spirit in working to bring an end to the terrible Mindanao conflict, which has taken so many lives and caused such suffering.

I am particularly glad to be able to visit so soon after the completion of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, which I have just discussed with your Foreign Secretary. The success of those negotiations is a testament to the vision and determination President Aquino and all those involved, some of whom I had the great pleasure of meeting last night.

I am proud of the support the UK has been able to offer as part of the International Contact Group supporting these negotiations. We know from our own experience in Northern Ireland that implementation brings its own challenges, but it will also bring rewards, both for Mindanao and for the whole of the Philippines. You have found a Filipino solution to a problem that has divided the Philippines for too long, and I have no doubt that it can be an inspiration for other countries who are struggling to overcome their own conflicts and divisions.

As this example shows, our engagement in Asia is as much about security as it is about as trade and prosperity, since these are all inextricably linked.

We are setting our country firmly on the path to far closer ties with countries across Asia over the next twenty years; and on a completely new footing from the past.

We want Britain to be a leading partner with Asian countries, in trade and commerce, in culture, education and development, and in foreign policy and security.

Our government is investing the time and effort to develop the political relationships and, we hope, the deep understanding to support this vision over the long term.

This means investing in our relationships across the Asia-Pacific, from old friends like Japan and South Korea in North and East Asia, to Britain’s long standing allies Australia and New Zealand, and with our partners in South East Asia where we are building dynamic new relationships, including with the Philippines.

It also means building a strong and open partnership with China fit for the 21st Century, which is why, in December, the Prime Minister led a large delegation to China to advance our political, economic, business and cultural ties. As well as increasing the trade flows of today, we want to generate the ideas of tomorrow, which is why they announced a £200m joint research fund, to build on our position as China’s second largest collaborator in terms of joint research papers. We all need China to succeed: to continue to grow, and to play a responsible and active role in international affairs and in Asia. As part of our new approach to the Asia-Pacific we have increased the number of UK diplomats in Embassies across Asia including here in Manila, many more British Ministers are travelling to the region, and we are on track to open five new diplomatic posts in Asia by next year. I re-opened Britain’s new Embassy in Laos in fourteen months ago, making us one of the very few European countries to be represented in every single nation of ASEAN.

We see the potential of ASEAN both as an international organisation and as a group of sovereign states. We have deep connections with ASEAN countries that reach far back into history and we recognise this region’s strategic position at the heart of Asia-Pacific and astride the world’s major trading arteries.

A stable, secure and prosperous Asia-Pacific will only be achieved in the long-term if countries in this region are able to change, to innovate, to stay competitive through strengthening free trade, individual liberty and the rule of law. My message today is that as we strengthen our ties with countries across Asia, we will of course have a particularly close bond with nations that share our values most closely and those that are ready to take the reforms necessary to advance free and open societies.

Some people think Asia’s economic success has called into question the value of open economies and societies. Seeing the prolonged effects of the 2008 financial crisis in the EU and US, those people argue that Asia’s rise proves autocratic forms of capitalism are just as capable of economic success as stable democracies, and that countries can do without the values of individual liberty, free-markets and the rule of law.

Speaking here in the Philippines, this flourishing Asian democracy, fresh from my visit to another vibrant democracy over the water in Indonesia, I say that these people are drawing the wrong conclusions.

Universal values are not just right in principle, reflecting the aspirations of people everywhere; they also work in practice. In an ever more competitive world they will be just as important to Asia’s prosperity as they are to that of the West.

It is true that over the course of the last thirty years, countries have made progress under very different systems and from very different starting points.

There has been no single political recipe for Asia’s economic miracle. Economic growth has been achieved in vibrant parliamentary democracies in Japan, Taiwan and of course increasingly now in the Philippines, while Vietnam and Laos have taken other paths, and China’s economic growth has enabled more than half a billion people to lift themselves out of poverty.

Actions have clearly mattered more than ideology and states have had success when they have taken steps to attract foreign investment, support export-oriented businesses and open up to global trade.

But demographic, economic and political shifts are starting to pose new challenges for countries in this region. Populations are ageing in some parts of the Asia Pacific, if not yet in the Philippines. The middle-income trap is becoming a serious risk and states are struggling to meet the aspirations of their emerging middle classes in some cases. Corruption has emerged as a serious cause of public discontent in many countries, regardless of their political system, and Asia faces fresh competition from the emerging markets of Latin America, the Gulf and parts of Africa.

If governments want to address these long term challenges, they cannot just do more of the same. To sustain their progress, in our view, countries in Asia Pacific need to shift their economies up the value chain, raise productivity and innovate. They need to move from technological catch-up to exploring the technological frontiers.

In Britain, we believe countries in this region, of course, have to follow their own routes to prosperity, taking into account their traditions and history. There is no uniform solution to the challenges you will face in the coming years and indeed success is about innovation, not sticking to the inflexible models of the past. But we know from our experience in the United Kingdom that when it comes to economic performance, values add value.

To break through the middle income trap and achieve sustainable growth and long-term prosperity, a commitment to free societies and open economies of the kind I have encountered in Indonesia and the Philippines is, in my view, vital, matched by sensible policy and good leadership.

In Europe we are working to get our economies back on track and in Britain we are succeeding. We need to tap into vibrant and open societies and enhance competitiveness. I believe five principles underpin sustainable growth and will be crucial for the stability and success of Asian countries, as they are for many other countries, as they adapt to a changing world.

The first principle is that smaller is generally better when it comes to the state. The public sector should be lean but effective, and governments bold enough to allow market forces to drive enterprise and finance because economies dominated by public ownership stifle dynamism. Success can seem easy for state owned enterprises with access to cheap credit from state-owned banks and benefitting from the indulgence of regulatory authorities that naturally tend to serve the interests of the state. But this stifles competition, makes life harder for entrepreneurs, and limits innovation.

The suppression of competition, and the clash of political interests and commercial objectives within state-owned enterprises can cause inefficiency, inflexibility and stagnation; and it can lead to situations where the lifespan of failing companies is artificially extended, which just makes their inevitable collapse more painful and costly. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s government fought a long and difficult struggle to free our economy from the shackles of an oversized state and too much public ownership. History has shown it the right course of action. Formerly publicly owned companies such as Rolls Royce, British Aerospace and BG Group have flourished in the private sector, and Britain’s economy has been greatly strengthened as a result.

The second principle is that states need the rule of law to encourage investment, support fair and open competition, ensure innovators are able to benefit from their ingenuity and reduce corruption and its economic costs. Private and foreign investors do not feel encouraged to help dynamic companies expand if the judiciary cannot be relied upon to protect their interests impartially and in accordance with the law. A brilliant scientist does not have much reason to labour years for a technological breakthrough if his or her ideas can be stolen with impunity. And innovative foreign firms will be reluctant to open cutting edge factories in countries where their hard earned technological advances can be imitated while the state turns a blind eye.

One of the reasons the UK has become a biotech hub, home to 4,500 companies turning over £50 billion a year, is that our strong, independent and well-respected legal system gives companies confidence they will get the return they deserve on their remarkable innovations.

And both for businesses to have full confidence in the rule of law, and for the institutions of government to retain their legitimacy, it has to be possible to hold the powerful, and the state, to account, in the rare cases where people fall short. In the UK, five Members of Parliament were recently sentenced for claiming fraudulent expenses. Showing that all of us are accountable before the law is essential to ensuring public confidence in our institutions, and it is essential to the health and resilience of those institutions themselves. Throughout this region too, courts can and should play a vital, active and transparent role in tackling crime and corruption wherever they occur.

The third principle is respect and protection for individual freedoms. This is essential to unlocking a nation’s creativity and ingenuity and a prerequisite for long-term stability. I do not believe that you can achieve the very best in innovation in a political environment that prevents the free exchange of ideas. And I reject the proposition that what have long held to be universal values are in fact merely “Western” values; that freedom of expression, association or religion are somehow less relevant in Asia Pacific than in Europe; or that a vibrant civil society, democratic institutions and an independent judiciary are good for some countries but unsuitable for the populations of others.

British inventions from the steam engine to jet propulsion, the light bulb to the television and from the telephone to the World Wide Web all owe their existence not just to brilliant individuals but to a free and open intellectual and scientific culture, a culture that encouraged critical thinking, scepticism and debate. The freedom to question, to criticise and to propose new solutions are essential to the scientific method and a political system that values those freedoms does not just support a strong scientific culture at home, it attracts talent from overseas, and freely connects its own thinkers and institutions to great global currents of ideas and debate. In our digital age, those freedoms must extend online as well, and a vibrant and open internet can drive growth, development, innovation and good governance.

The fourth principle underpinning future success is a commitment to free trade. High tariffs, strict investment controls or obscure regulations designed to favour domestic over international firms may keep competition at bay for a while but they can raise consumer prices, and even the relief they offer to home companies often turns out to be illusory or short-lived. Protectionism prevents a country’s businesses developing the competitive edge they need to prosper internationally and countries that do not open up to competition run the risk that this fast moving world will pass them by.

The UK has long been a champion of free trade, which we know from experience to be an engine of national and global growth. The EU-US free trade agreement negotiations launched during our G8 Presidency will be worth £100 billion a year to the EU economy, £80 billion to the US, and as much as £85 billion to the rest of the world. Britain is an energetic advocate of EU free trade agreements with Asian countries, including those currently under negotiation with Thailand and Japan, and possible future agreements with China, Indonesia and the Philippines.

We also warmly welcomed the outcomes of the Bali round of WTO negotiations and I pay tribute to the Indonesian government for its generous hosting and exemplary chairing of that meeting, which produced the first multilateral trade agreement in almost twenty years. More still needs to be done, but Bali was a good step in the right direction.

The fifth principle is investment in human capital and infrastructure. High-quality education, training and public utilities are vital to support sustained economic development and innovation. They have made a huge contribution to the success of many countries in Asia, including China and South Korea. Hundreds of creative start-ups have sprung up around Britain’s world-class universities in places like the Cambridge Science Park.

But this investment is always an unfinished effort. That’s why the UK government is undertaking the biggest education reforms in our history, the biggest road enhancement programme since the 1970s and the largest programme of investment in our railways since the nineteenth century.

So sustainable economic development does not imply the absence of the State but it does imply the State focusing its efforts in the areas where it can best add value.

Some aspects of these principles pose a particular challenge for those states like Vietnam, Laos and China that retain a one-party system of rule and a legacy of state ownership. But domestic reform efforts can lead in the same direction.

At the recent Third Plenum, China’s leaders announced that the market would play a decisive role in the Chinese economy and set the goal of comprehensive reform, including issues like governance and the judicial protection of human rights. The Plenum recognised that all types of reform are inextricably linked and this is clearly something to be welcomed. Indeed, we are actively supporting many of these reforms. Experience elsewhere demonstrates that an effective and independent judiciary, transparent regulation and a market-driven financial sector work together to increase business confidence and support economic dynamism. So comprehensive reform will be an opportunity for China to ensure its growth is sustainable for the long term, which is good for China and good for the global economy as a whole.

South East Asian countries also face pressing governance challenges of their own. Thailand is struggling with deep political tensions, Cambodia must find a way to overcome the current political impasse and pursue reform, and Burma needs to resolve longstanding conflicts and build on the progress it has made towards genuine democracy. Here in the Philippines, you are seeking to institutionalise the gains you have made in terms of good governance, improve service provision and build the foundations for long-term growth.

Democratic institutions do not automatically produce smart policy or effective leadership and in a digital age, governments, whatever their nature, must run faster to keep up with the demands of their citizens, or “bosses” as I understand President Aquino sometimes refers to the Filipino public.

A pluralist democracy will only truly unlock the economic potential of a society if government responds to the wishes of its electorate, ensures strong and open institutions, fosters education and innovation, and builds a robust framework that allows the market to function properly. Democracy is about more than regular elections, it’s about what happens in between. Successful democracies drive governments to share the fruits of economic growth with the many not just the few, to invest in public goods like health and the environment, and strengthen societies and improve public participation. However, global stability and growth depend not just on what countries do themselves, but also on what they do together and organisations such as ASEAN have an important role to play. With the right level of ambition, the planned ASEAN single market, highly competitive and more integrated into the global economy, is a real opportunity to deliver huge benefit to the 600 million people who live in ASEAN countries.

ASEAN can also contribute to advancing international security, including through its important efforts to regularise conduct in the South China Sea. I urge all parties to these disputes to seek peaceful and cooperative solutions in accordance with international law. The UK, although not a claimant in these disputes, has an interest, as all nations do, in peaceful and rules-based resolutions.

In the long term, ASEAN will also reinforce regional stability through the connections it builds between people, businesses and governments and its increasing focus on the values of human rights and open and accountable government. For all these reasons, engaging ASEAN – as an institution and as a group of sovereign states – is central to the UK’s Asia policy.

So, in the international system and within states themselves, a principled and rules-based approach will be critical to stability and growth in the long term.

Countries in Asia Pacific have, in their different ways, made remarkable progress in recent decades but on some of the paths they have taken until now, progress will get harder as the global landscape changes. As Asian economies reach the technological frontier, their own pioneers will reach furthest when states embrace the principles of openness and freedom that I have outlined today.

In Britain we will continue our strong engagement with countries across this region. In a rapidly changing international system, where there are more centres of decision-making than ever before, strengthened bilateral ties are vital to advancing our interests and securing the common good. But at the same time we will continue to argue for these vital principles of economic liberalism and political freedom, because we believe them to be vital to the success of all countries of the Asia Pacific and the wider world, because our economic fates are increasingly tightly bound together. Asia has astounded the world with its progress in the last three decades, and I confidently hope it will produce the new ideas, the new thinking and the new discoveries to surprise and benefit all of us for many decades to come.

Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in Glasgow on 17th January 2014.

It is a pleasure to be in the Lighthouse, this iconic building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the man who put Glasgow Style on the map.

One century on, your city’s reputation is riding high, for good reason, and it will rise even higher this summer when you host the Commonwealth Games.

Over the last three months the Queen’s Baton Relay has wound its way through 28 countries, carried from Asia to Australia to Africa, from India to Rwanda.

In each country it has been greeted by enthusiastic crowds.

And in each country it has been supported by our High Commissions, who have seized the opportunity to promote Scotland and all it has to offer. They arranged for haggis to be sampled in New Zealand and Scottish salmon in Singapore; they brought Scottish music to Ghana, Brunei and Kenya; and they told the world about great Scottish companies from bus manufacturers to Whisky distilleries.

When it comes to what we do to promote Scotland, these events are just the tip of the iceberg, but they show how the UK’s extensive diplomatic network and our longstanding relationships support Scottish success, and how Scottish culture, tradition and innovation enrich Britain’s reputation and impact in the world.

As Foreign Secretary I am immensely proud to represent the whole United Kingdom. That does not mean I am any less proud to be a Yorkshireman or to have been Secretary of State for Wales. But I feel strongly that the United Kingdom is greater than the sum of its parts. I am convinced that the different peoples, traditions, languages, and landscapes that make up the United Kingdom are a vital part of who we are and the reason why we have been able to achieve so much together; something to be treasured, not to be torn apart.

And I feel deeply that what is at stake this year is not only Scotland’s future but all our future, because Scotland leaving the United Kingdom would diminish us all.

Of course those voting in the referendum must be forensic in weighing up the arguments. That is essential for any people charting their course in an uncertain and dangerous world. It is a duty owed not only to those living in Scotland today but to the future generations that will have to live with the decision.

The paper we present today sets out the facts and it is clear that the advantages of Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom are indisputable in foreign policy as they are in every other area of our national life. A Scotland outside the UK would find itself less connected in an increasingly networked world, less able to advance its interests in an ever more competitive global economy and less able to influence decisions in a shifting international order.

But there is more at stake even than that. At stake is what we can – and do – stand for together as a beacon of human rights, as a determined advocate of democracy and the rule of law and as a central force in the fight against extreme poverty and for women’s rights. At stake are the resources we all have to draw on, born of the self-sacrifice and hard graft of generations of our forbears, that mean that together we can approach the changing global landscape with pride and confidence and optimism. At stake are the relationships and the international standing we have built together. None of these things are easy to quantify. But people in the rest of the world clearly see their worth, as I hear all the time in my work overseas.

When people and governments in other countries look at the United Kingdom they see one of the most successful political and economic unions ever known and an outward looking country with a global reach that is positioning itself to flourish in a changing world. They see a cultural powerhouse that benefits from its many distinctive literary traditions under the great umbrella of the global language we call English; and a whole set of institutions and relationships nurtured over the course of our history that give us huge advantages; they see a shared endeavour that has yielded inspiring achievements; and they wonder why anyone would want to break up such a successful and promising union. It is something we often take for granted but it is not something to give up lightly.

I am conscious of course that this is not the picture the Scottish Government would like to paint. This paper, on the EU and international considerations around Scottish independence, is the first to be launched since their White Paper in November and the claims in that paper call for the kind of forensic examination I mentioned because the Scottish Government continues to state as fact what they know to be uncertain.

Let’s be clear about four things that we do know and that this paper sets out.

Currently, people in Scotland share a right to be represented by one of the world’s biggest and best diplomatic networks, made up of 14,000 people spread out over 267 locations in 154 countries and 12 territories.

This is three times the size of the network of 70 to 90 diplomatic offices proposed by the Scottish Government for an independent Scotland.

With this network, people in Scotland are represented on all of the world’s major economic, political and defence bodies.

Whether or not a Scot is in the chair, our diplomats do all they can to fight in defence of Scottish interests. And they display the same professionalism when they are standing up for the interests of Wales, England or Northern Ireland too.

When these diplomats speak, everybody knows they represent the world’s sixth largest economy, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and NATO, and the third largest country in Europe. The Scottish Government maintains that only they should speak for Scotland. But it’s one thing to speak and another to be heard.

The world of diplomacy is intensively competitive. An ambassador from an independent Scotland arriving in Washington would find that he or she was the 179th ambassador in town. With changes coming in on voting rules later this year, larger states will have relatively more weight in EU decision-making – and smaller states less. And, as the paper shows, while an independent Scotland would indeed have a seat in some international bodies, in others it would have to share, and in some it would have no seat at all.

My second point is on trade. As Foreign Secretary, I have put our prosperity at the heart of our foreign policy and this is a top priority for the years ahead.

Boosting overseas trade is just as vital to the economic recovery in Scotland as the rest of the UK. Currently, Scottish businesses draw on the expertise of UK Trade & Investment, a network that covers 169 offices in over 100 markets representing 98% of global GDP.

This network is six times the size of the current network of 27 Scottish Development International offices which the Scottish Government plans to use as the basis for its trade support. And UKTI can rely on the support of all UK Ministers in their contacts with other countries. As Foreign Secretary I have promoted Scotch Whisky with very genuine enthusiasm on countless foreign trips, arguing for and helping to achieve improved market access and protection against counterfeit products.

Even if an independent Scotland were eventually to offer trade support in each of the 70 to 90 diplomatic offices it plans, the network would still only be a fraction of the size of that offered by UKTI right now.

UKTI provides the overseas network used by Scottish Development International, which it also helps to fund. Last year alone, it helped nearly 2,000 Scottish businesses.

Here in Glasgow, a UKTI office provides grants to firms to attend over 400 trade shows each year: we’re sending Scottish engineering firms to Germany, IT firms to the United States and biotech firms to Brazil.

And UKTI also helps woo investors, who last year generated 13,500 jobs in Scotland. Three-quarters of these investment projects were won with UKTI help.

When it comes to education, that other great Scottish asset, Scottish universities can draw on the support of British Council offices in over 100 countries around the world, which have helped to attract more than 40,000 overseas students a year to Scotland.

And you will have seen that the European Commission has cast doubt on the legality of the Scottish Government’s plans to continue charging university tuition fees for English, Welsh and Northern Irish students if Scotland becomes independent.

My third point relates to that primary task for almost all foreign services, which is to look after their citizens overseas.

Currently, Scottish people are entitled by right to seek help from the UK’s consular network.

At any one time, this includes over 800 full-time, dedicated, trained professionals, for whom a routine day’s work can involve thefts, plane crashes, abductions, imprisonments, hospitalisations, violent weather, forced marriage and almost every form of misadventure that can and sadly does befall British people overseas. Last year alone, they answered around one million enquiries from members of the public.

The Scottish Government knows it is not able to match this. They are hoping that an independent Scotland would be able to piggy-back on the consular support offered by other EU member states.

Fourth, the Scottish people can be proud that together we are the second largest donor of aid in the world, with the power and reach to support the values that all of us on the British Isles hold dear.

In 2012, organisations supported by the Department for International Development gave 97.2 million people food aid, and immunised 46 million children against preventable diseases.

In the three years to 2013, UK support paved the way for 30 million people, over half of them women, to work their way out of poverty by giving them access to financial services; it helped almost six million children to go to primary school; and prevented 13 million children and pregnant women from going hungry.

In Syria, we are helping refugees shivering through a bitter winter and we have just announced a further £100 million in support; in the Philippines, we are providing aid for families whose homes have been washed away; and in South Sudan we have sent equipment to stop people dying from water-borne disease.

The Scottish Government says that it would spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on aid, but the United Kingdom is already committed to doing that. In fact, the UK is the first country in the G8 to reach this target. And the advantages of scale mean when we give as one our aid goes further.

And we don’t just give together, we campaign and work together for our shared values. One of the issues I feel most strongly about is the advancement of women’s rights. I believe passionately that the full realisation of social, political and economic rights for women is the great strategic prize of our century.

That’s one of the reasons why I launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and why the UK will host this year an unprecedented global summit designed to ask nations to confront the horrors of warzone rape once and for all. And the same commitment to ending discrimination, violence and exploitation runs through the Modern Slavery Bill the Home Secretary is introducing, and through DFID’s work to unlock the potential of girls and women.

But none of this is easy and on all these issues we need to take other countries with us, shift attitudes and change minds. To make a difference we have to call on all the resources and relationships at our disposal. The Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict which we put forward in the UN in September has been endorsed by 138 countries, all of whom are now committed to tackling impunity for the perpetrators of warzone rape, giving aid and justice to survivors and putting their weight behind a new practical measure to improve the investigation and documentation of these horrific crimes. This is the kind of result we can achieve together as a United Kingdom and there is still much more for us to do.

So these are facts that we know. Let me move on now to what we can’t know.

As the Minister for Europe noted this week, there are pronounced question marks over an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union. Based on the evidence we have, it is unlikely to be as easy as the Scottish Government makes out.

We have statements from those who are in the best position to know.

The President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has said that any region leaving an existing member state would have to reapply for membership.

This point was underlined by the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy who said that “a new independent state would, by the fact of its independence, become a third country with respect to the Union and the treaties would, from the day of its independence, not apply any more on its territory.”

Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy has pointed out that any region that seceded would require unanimous support to rejoin. Even the nationalist Catalan leader has stated that secession could mean exclusion from the EU.

No-one knows for certain how long it would take for an independent Scotland to become an EU member but one thing is for sure – it is not reasonable for the Scottish Government to expect what they have claimed would be a “seamless transition”.

The second question mark is over the euro.

Under the terms of the EU Treaties, all new Member States are obliged to make the political and legal commitment to join the single currency.

Only Denmark and the UK have a permanent opt-out, and all countries that have joined the EU since the 1990s have been formally required to commit to adopt the euro.

The Scottish Government doesn’t want to join the euro, but people in Scotland cannot be sure it would have the political capital to resist the pressure to join. Without an opt-out, Scotland would face greater EU oversight of its spending decisions and broader economic policy long before it joined the euro.

The third question mark is over Schengen.

The Scottish Government wants to remain in the same common travel area as the UK and Ireland, but membership of the Schengen area has been part of the EU legal framework since 1999 and all new members of the EU since that time have been required to commit to joining.

Only the UK and Ireland have a permanent opt-out, and it would take substantial diplomatic clout to negotiate a similar deal without any guarantees of the result up-front.

There are other assumptions in the White Paper that Danny Alexander will discuss.

It is clear that every voter has to look at what independence would mean for the future.

The Scottish Government says that Scotland faces a once-in-a-generation opportunity to choose between moving forward as an independent nation or standing still. I agree that this debate is about opportunity, not just for those who vote in September, but for Scotland’s next generation. I don’t agree that Scotland is standing still, nor indeed is the wider world and that’s the point.

We live in a time of unceasing and accelerating change, a time when as a nation or as individuals, we should aim to draw on every resource at our disposal.

When I speak to younger people here, optimistic, ambitious and with their whole lives ahead of them, many will say they are 100% Scottish, but that doesn’t mean that they should be denied the advantages of British citizenship that are theirs by right.

Being a member of this historic union gives people in Scotland the opportunity to do more good in the world; to exert an influence on global politics or economies; even to represent Team GB at the Olympics where we came third in the medals table in 2012, with Scots and English athletes sharing the podium and showing what we can achieve together.

It gives the security of belonging to a nation of 63 million people; with one of the fastest growing economies in the developed world; and a tried and tested defence and security network which is the envy of many other nations and will help to keep the Commonwealth Games secure this summer.

It also guarantees a British passport, which provides instant access to our extensive diplomatic, consular and trade networks and the most professional help worldwide for any Scot travelling or doing business overseas.

When Scottish people go to the polls in September, the Yes campaign will make great claims about the romance of national destiny. Uniquely among all the choices we face in life, they will present the choice for Scotland to leave the UK as pure gain and no loss. It is an astonishing claim because the assurances they are giving are based on very shaky ground. On the terms of this paper alone, they are offering a fraction of what Scotland already has. There are great risks, and it would be wrong for us to pretend otherwise.

Making a decision to remain within the United Kingdom is a positive choice – reinforcing what we already have and reaffirming what more we can be if we continue to work together.

In the end, this decision is Scotland’s to take. I hope Scotland will choose to remain in the United Kingdom and that together we can continue to act for our common good and our common beliefs and values.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on protecting children in conflict. The speech was made at the BAFTA Members’ Club in Piccadilly in London on 23rd October 2013.

It is a great pleasure to be here to congratulate War Child on its 20th Anniversary and take part in your discussion.

For two decades you have helped to protect and educate over 800,000 vulnerable children in some of the world’s most brutal conflicts; and you have ensured that their suffering is not forgotten by the world.

The plight of children in war is particularly heart-rending: because they are entirely innocent, extremely vulnerable and disproportionately affected by conflict, and because no-one can restore to them the childhoods stolen by war.

In Syria today a million child refugees have lost their homes, have been traumatised, have had their education violently disrupted and are facing yet another cold and hungry winter. Their situation is one reason why the United Kingdom is the second largest humanitarian donor to the Syrian conflict and why we are pressing so hard to get unfettered access for aid to the besieged areas of the country where some people are literally starving.

It is shocking that almost half of the world’s forcibly displaced people are children, who will probably spend their entire childhood in that condition. They must always be at the forefront of our efforts to end conflict, and the UK has a strong record. But we can always do more and do better, and organisations like War Child often point the way to doing so.

Conflict prevention is one of the top priorities of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office I lead, from the Horn of Africa to the Philippines. We have hosted two global peace-building conferences on Somalia in the last two years for example, and today Somalia has the best chance in twenty years of turning a corner and giving its children a better future.

The sad lesson of history is that there will be other conflicts over the next twenty years, despite our best efforts.

But although we may not be able to prevent them all, we can influence the environment in which conflicts take place, so that their worst consequences are mitigated and the gravest crimes are prevented.

And one of my personal priorities is to try to ensure that rape and sexual violence can no longer be a feature of conflict in the 21st century.

Millions of women, children and men have been raped in conflicts of our lifetimes, in a climate of almost complete impunity, with only a handful of successful prosecutions ever taking place.

This is sexual violence used to advance military and political objectives – to terrorise innocent people, to cause displacement, to change the ethnic composition of communities, or as a means of torture – and it is one of the greatest and most neglected injustices in history.

It is usually directed at the most vulnerable people in society, and sadly that often means children.

In the DRC in April I met a mother whose five-year-old daughter had been raped outside a police station – just one of countless cases where children have been targeted in the most sickening and depraved manner possible, precisely in order to inflict the maximum psychological torture on families and whole communities.

It is only one aspect of the suffering caused by conflict, but its long-term impact on children is impossible to understate. It can cause severe physical injury to growing bodies; infection from life-threatening diseases; psychological trauma that lasts a lifetime; it result in girls often being unable to bear children; causes others to fall pregnant and drop out of school; and leads to many being ostracised or forced to marry their attacker.

Because of taboo and social stigma, we have not talked about it enough as governments and nor have we shouldered our responsibilities as we should.

I am trying to change this, by putting sexual violence in conflict at the top table of international diplomacy in a way that it never has been before.

For just as we have come together as an international community to abolish the use of landmines, to curb the trade in conflict diamonds, to prohibit the use of cluster munitions and to adopt an International Arms Trade Treaty, so I believe we can and must end the use of rape as a weapon of war in our generation.

In May last year I launched my Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, with the Special Representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie.

At the G8 in London in April this year we secured a historic declaration from the G8 group of leading economies, promising practical action.

In June, we secured a landmark UN Security Council Resolution, which received unprecedented support from UN member states.

And last month, to my immense pride, 134 countries from Afghanistan to Vietnam endorsed a historic Declaration at the UN General Assembly promising to end rape as a weapon of war.

In this Declaration, we recognised rape and serious sexual violence in conflict as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and of their first Protocol, so that suspects can be apprehended wherever they are in the world.

We pledged not to allow amnesties for sexual violence in peace agreements, so that these crimes can no longer be swept under the carpet.

We promised to adopt a new International Protocol in 2014, to help ensure that evidence is collected that can stand up in court.

And we pledged to help victims to gain access justice and long-term support, and to protect civil society organisations, including women’s groups and human rights defenders.

Children are at the centre of our efforts, with both the G8 and UNGA Declarations recognising that appropriate health, psycho-social, legal and economic support must be provided to children.

Our campaign is also backed with practical action. We have created a UK team of Experts which has been deployed five times this year alone to the Syrian border, the DRC and Mali, where they have trained health professionals, strengthened the capacity of the armed forces, and helped raise local investigation standards; in each case focussing on the specific needs of that country and complementing the work of the UN and other agencies on the ground. Further deployments to the Syrian borders, to Kosovo and to Bosnia-Herzegovina will take place in the coming months.

In little over a year we have laid the basis at least for eroding impunity worldwide, for eradicating safe havens, providing greater protection for civilians, improving the help given to victims and working to increase the number of prosecutions including through setting an example ourselves of what can be done.

The task now is to turn this political commitments and diplomatic progress into lasting practical action – and we need your help to do it.

Next June I will host a conference in London that will bring together the 134 states that have endorsed the Declaration, along with representatives from civil society, judiciaries and militaries from around the world. It will be the biggest summit ever held on this issue and it will be used to launch our new International Protocol and to seek agreement to practical steps that we hope will end the impunity for war zone rape once and for all. Our goal must be to change the entire global attitude to these crimes – and I believe we can.

I hope you and your members can help us expand further the group of countries that have pledged their support for this campaign – we have 2/3 of the United Nations so far, but we want them all to come on board.

And I hope you will work with us to look at how we can improve further the support and care that is given to survivors, particularly children.

Albert Einstein once said that “the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Whatever the conflicts to come – and our goal must always be to prevent them all – we have in it on power to prevent millions of lives being destroyed by sexual violence. That is a goal worth fighting for, and I hope we can join forces to achieve it.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California in June 2013.

In 2011 Nancy Reagan invited me to take part in the celebrations of the centenary of the birth of President Reagan.

On a beautiful summer morning, with Condoleezza Rice and with Bob Tuttle, I helped to unveil a statue to him in London’s Grosvenor Square.

I am proud we found a home in our capital city for Ronald Reagan – a great American hero, one of America’s finest sons, and a giant of 20th Century history.

He was the President, who restored American confidence with inspirational leadership abroad and economic revival at home.

A man of conviction, who knew it was right to go to Berlin and say “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, when that seemed impossible.

The statesman who won the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher said, “by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends”.

And the man of warmth and compassion, whose words live on in our memories and will be remembered for generations.

Having taken part in that moving occasion, it was an even greater honour when Nancy Reagan invited me to speak here, at the Presidential Library they built together.

I thank her, and pay tribute to her: the equal partner in all President Reagan’s endeavours, and the person he said could make him lonely just by leaving the room.

We also remember Ronald Reagan gratefully for his friendship and warmth towards the United Kingdom.

We are immensely proud of our alliance with the United States, and what our two nations stand for and have achieved together.

We remember Churchill and Roosevelt, and the triumph over Nazi tyranny.

And we think of Thatcher and Reagan, when the fall of the Berlin Wall unleashed the 20th century’s single greatest advance in human freedom.

As a teenager I was motivated to come into politics by Margaret Thatcher’s vision and leadership. In one decade, and with the indomitable will of one woman, she confronted multiple dangers facing Britain, and, put simply, she rescued our country.

Two months ago, we mourned her passing. But I know that here in the Reagan Presidential Library her memory will always be preserved and cherished.

President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were often controversial leaders, and both had bitter enemies as well as devoted followers.

But both stood up fearlessly for their countries and raised them in the estimation of other nations.

These qualities and this leadership will forever make them stand out in history.

And millions of people who still say they object to their policies, nevertheless still benefit from the prosperity and security they stood for and assured.

A few minutes ago I saw the piece of the Berlin Wall on display here.

Today, communism is like that piece of masonry: an artefact of a failed ideology, torn down and discarded – although we should never forget the gulags and deprivation in North Korea, where it clings on in isolation and decay.

I’m told of one family visiting here with their small daughter, who turned to her parents and asked, “what is communism?

It is because we stood firm in the Cold War that today’s children can ask that question in tranquillity.

This Library is a place to be inspired by how that dangerous era – that long repression of the human spirit for the sake of a soulless and drab uniformity – was finally ended.

We live now in a world of almost unlimited access to information, at least in democratic societies.

But we need our libraries just as much as in distant times when they were the only storehouses of knowledge. And we need to take time to absorb the lessons they hold for us.

This Library reminds us of fundamental truths about humanity.

This place tells us that individual men and women can change the course of history through their ideas, example and constancy – as we all remember today as our thoughts dwell on Nelson Mandela and his family. We are not merely the victims of socio-economic trends; through our own will and determination we can accelerate positive change and avert disasters.

These walls remind us that change for the better does not simply arise in the world; it comes from powerful exertion and example. Millions of people can have good intentions but their efforts may be disconnected, ineffective or accidentally destructive without transformational leadership.

And this Library testifies that it is not enough to believe in our values, we have to defend them and be a beacon of them – all the more so in periods where those values are threatened.

Not all countries are willing to exert themselves to defend the freedoms they enjoy, but in the United Kingdom and the United States of America we are.

President Reagan in his Farewell Address to the nation told the story of an American sailor on the carrier Midway, patrolling in the South China Sea, in the 1980s. The sailor spied a small leaky boat full of refugees, hoping to get to America. Then one of the refugees stood up, and called out “hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.” Freedom man. That the United States still stands as a beacon of freedom in the world should be a cause of immense pride.

There is no greater bastion of freedom than the Transatlantic Alliance, and within it the Special Relationship, always solid but never slavish.

Our alliance is strong and enduring because it is built on the belief in human freedom, in democracy and in free markets and individual enterprise.

The ability to channel our power and ingenuity in defence of our values has led to many of our greatest achievements over the generations: the liberation of Europe, the Berlin Airlift, the founding of NATO, the end of the Cold War and our efforts side by side, even when dogged by controversy, in Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Libya.

This is not nostalgia for the past or starry-eyed idealism: it is our hard-headed national interest.

And it is undiminished by the fact that both of our countries are adapting our foreign policy to the 21st century.

Some say it is not possible to build up our countries’ ties in other parts of the world without weakening those ties between us. But I say these things go together.

The stronger our relationships are elsewhere in the world the more we can do to support each other and our allies.

Foreign policy is not a zero-sum game – we can pursue parallel efforts keeping our alliance as Western nations at the centre of our thinking and endeavours.

The foundations of the Special Relationship are sunk deep on both sides of the Atlantic, like those of a mighty building: invisible to the naked eye, but forming an immensely strong and unshakeable structure.

Anyone holding office in Britain or the US feels the strength of those foundations beneath their feet:It is there as a mainstay of our economies – and will be an even greater source of prosperity if we can fulfil the immense promise of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

It is a pillar of our Armed Forces, who train together, plan operations together, and fight together.

It is there in our unique nuclear cooperation, and the trust between the Foreign Office and the State Department.

It is that fortifying source of mutual strength at times of decision and crisis; what Margaret Thatcher called the “two o’clock in the morning courage”, that only a friend or ally can furnish.

And it is the fundamental underpinning of our security.

We should have nothing but pride in the unique and indispensable intelligence-sharing relationship between Britain and the United States.

In recent weeks this has been a subject of some discussion. Let us be clear about it.

In both our countries intelligence work takes place within a strong legal framework. We operate under the rule of law and are accountable for it. In some countries secret intelligence is used to control their people – in ours, it only exists to protect their freedoms.

We should always remember that terrorists plan to harm us in secret, criminal networks plan to steal from us in secret, foreign intelligence agencies plot to spy on us in secret, and new weapons systems are devised in secret. So we cannot protect the people of our countries without devising some of the response to those threats in secret.

Because we share such strong habits of working together, political leaders in our countries can always share their thinking about how to maintain clear leadership, bold thinking and decisive foreign policy in a shifting world.

It is in that spirit that I speak here tonight, offering my thoughts about the lessons of foreign policy in recent years and how we should apply them for the future: being confident without being arrogant; leading without monopolising; and taking pride in own societies while deepening our understanding of others; in keeping with the finest qualities of our open societies.

We are living through sobering hours in world affairs.

Many Western nations face an immense economic challenge, accelerated by the financial crisis. We need to strengthen our enterprise economies, to educate our young people, and make new advances in competiveness, or we risk being left behind in the global race taking place around us.

This economic challenge is intensified by the surge forward of many emerging economies – which brings with it a challenge to our values.

We see this in modern kleptocracies, where those in power take the benefits for themselves within an imitation of a free-market economy.

Or in today’s crony capitalist systems which discredit or damage free enterprise.

Or in those countries pursuing state capitalism without political freedom.

By failing to develop the open democracies or opportunity for all that go with a stable free enterprise economy, each of these is storing up social discontent for the future and will prove to be unsustainable.

We know that capitalism and free markets only work properly when there are safeguards against monopoly of power, when information is freely available and everyone who works hard or has a brilliant idea can share in success, underpinned by strong, independent political institutions.

Alongside these challenges in the world we can see the geopolitical landscape shifting and old certainties changing.

We see the diffusion of power away from governments and into the hands of citizens, speeded by technology.

We see the spreading of economic power and influence around the world to many more countries, many of which do not fully share our values.

This makes it harder in the short term to deal with the many crises and problems confronting us, which include a much more fragmented but still dangerous terrorist threat, on a wider front, from Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.

Those problems also include an even more unsettled Middle East, where to old sores new dangers are being added: social and political turmoil, new variants of terrorism and extremism, dangerous sectarian tensions, growing humanitarian crises and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Taken together, we are living through an exceptionally turbulent and unpredictable period in world affairs, which may endure for decades to come.

Facing all these threats and changes some people think and argue that Western nations face more pressures than they can cope with and must be less ambitious.

I draw the opposite conclusion – that it is time to reenergise and extend our diplomacy and seek to lead and work with others in new ways, and I want to set out five principles which should guide us through the turbulent decades ahead.

First, we must reject the idea that Western nations face inevitable decline.

Some predict gloomily that as emerging powers rise, so we in the West must fall.

But our free and open societies are better placed to make the most of changes in the world; to adjust to it and to cope with turbulence.

We are not threatened fundamentally by the interconnected world with its flow of information and the empowerment of citizens.

The demand for openness and change has hit autocratic states in North Africa and the Middle East so hard because they were so obviously failing to provide democracy, dignity, accountability and economic opportunity for their people.

But in different ways the same demand for accountability will make itself felt in many other countries, and is doing so already on several continents.

If these trends sometimes put us under pressure, think how worried it makes the autocratic regime that relies on keeping its people in the dark in order to stay in power.

And if state capitalism is an economic challenge, our response should be to revitalise our own countries through extending our lead in human capital, by reinforcing a culture of work, and by releasing to the full the ingenuity, dedication, loyalty and diversity that only a truly free society can fully benefit from and mobilise.

That is why in the United Kingdom in the last three years under our Coalition Government we have begun the biggest education reforms in our modern history; we are making it pay to work by reforming our welfare system; and have reduced jobs in the public sector by half a million already while creating a million and a quarter new jobs in the private sector.

We do not need to accept sleepwalking into decline any more than Reagan and Thatcher did before us. We need to remind ourselves of the advantages that we possess.

I sometimes urge British diplomats to imagine that we had just woken up today to find our country had been planted in the world overnight, and that we’d been given 60 million industrious citizens, a language that is spoken throughout the world, a seat on the UN Security Council, membership of the European Union, NATO and the Commonwealth, a diplomatic network that is the envy of many nations, a nuclear deterrent, some of the finest Armed Forces in the world and one of the largest development programmes in the world, all of which we have in the United Kingdom. And on top of that, we had all the ingenuity, creativity and resilience that is such an ingrained part of our national character. We would rejoice in our good fortune, not be filled with gloom that others have strengths as well.

Much the same and more could be said of the United States.

We have centuries of experience in building up democratic institutions – from our courts to our free media – that other countries wish to draw on and adapt from Burma to North Africa.

We have the soft power and cultural appeal to attract and influence others and win over global opinion.

We have our entrepreneurs, lawyers, scientists, journalists, academics, artists and activists sharing their knowledge and connecting with other nations, outside of government but forming part of our international contribution.

We have not yet exhausted all the means of building up and extending our influence.

It is not so much the relative size of our power that matters in the 21st century, but the nature of it, and how agile and effective we can be in exerting it.

So while it will inevitably be a time of anxiety about dangers and our collective place in the world, it is also a time to be fired by a sense of optimism and opportunity, and to extend our connections across the globe and use the inherent strengths of our societies to the full.

This leads to my second point: that in this turbulent and interconnected environment we need more engagement with the world, not less; and we must build more connections with other countries, adapting our global role, not pulling back from it.

At a time of spending reductions and financial pressures in the United Kingdom we have decided to do what some might feel is counter-intuitive and which has not yet been noticed by everyone.

And indeed we are the only European country to take this approach.

We have embarked on re-opening Embassies and consulates we once closed and opening new ones – up to 20 in total at the moment – spreading British diplomacy to places that have not felt it in decades, while significantly strengthening our presence in many other locations.

When I stood in Mogadishu two months ago and watched our flag being raised for the first time in 22 years, we were the first European country to open an Embassy there since all the calamities in Somalia of recent years.

Our diplomats at our new Embassy in Haiti, which opened two weeks ago, are our first there since the 1960s.

From El Salvador to Paraguay, and from Côte d’Ivoire to Kyrgyzstan, British Embassies are opening instead of closing.

We are reversing our retreat from Latin America.

We now have more diplomatic posts in India than any other nation.

And we now have an Embassy in every ASEAN country, one of the world’s largest new markets.

We already have one of the most extensive diplomatic networks in the world, but we have decided to enlarge it.

We do this in part to facilitate the export of British goods and services, because it is only through the growth of trade that we will lift up the world economy.

But it is also because over the coming decades we need to do more to promote our values rather than assume we can impose them.

It is also because we understand that there are more centres of decision-making than ever before and we need to be present in them.

This reflects one of the paradoxes of the globalised world, which is that while retail products become more homogenised, people are also freer to be different, and we need to deepen our understanding of, not neglect, the culture, politics and identity of other nations and work with the grain of them.

That is why in the reform of my department I have brought back historians to the centre of the work of the Foreign Office, and am opening a new language school this summer, and we are investing much more in geographic knowledge, cutting-edge diplomatic skills and economic understanding.

We will all have to go further afield for our prosperity. We all face threats which if we do not address them at their source will affect us at home, and so we are extending our cooperation in countering terrorism to new partners.

Not only is it not profitable to shrink away in the world, it is not safe to do so, for no nation or group of nations is going to increase the protection they offer to us. So we have to resist the temptation to turn inwards.

Our vision for Britain in the world is of a nation committed to an international, global role.

An outward-looking and reliable partner; that values and nourishes its traditional alliances with United States with European Countries but also with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and the Gulf states.

A country that makes the most of every network it is part of, including the Commonwealth, and that makes the case for a reformed European Union that is more competitive, more responsive to the needs of its citizens and more effective in using its weight in the world.

And a nation that is expanding its diplomatic reach; a powerful force for development and human rights with a renewed ability to make the most of a world, not of blocs, but of networks.

This leads naturally to my third point, that we must be willing to create more overlapping networks of countries that work together on specific issues even when they differ with us on others.

That is to take nothing away from the importance of NATO, the cornerstone of our security. Multilateral diplomacy is vastly important in a world of 200 countries with so many connections between them.

But the ability of groups of countries to work together on the basis of strong bilateral relationships with each other is now more, not less, important.

Despite globalisation it is still nations, their leaders and their people who take the decisions that determine their futures.

And the problems of the world are now so complex and centres of decision-making now so diverse that we have to move on fully from the idea that we live in a world of blocs of allies who agree with each other about everything.

Instead, we will find that there are countries we need to work with us on some issues even though we disagree strongly on others.

Whether it is our close and successful cooperation with Liberia and Indonesia to move beyond the Millennium Development Goals;

Our work with Mexico on climate change;

Our successful efforts with the Russian, Indian and Chinese navies to counter piracy off the Horn of Africa;

Our work with Nordic-Baltic nations to promote freedom of expression on the internet;

Or our burgeoning cooperation with Brazil and China on international development.

While NATO played a vital role in the military intervention in Libya, the network of relationships between the UK, France, US, Qatar and the UAE was fundamental to its success. And now that Libya needs to move to the next stage of its stability, we formed a partnership last week at the G8 with France and Italy for our countries to collaborate on security reform.

So this new global reality requires Western countries to build up bilateral relationships not weaken them, open Embassies not close them, and deepen the skills of their diplomats not to rely on others to do it for them.

We need to be able to create new partnerships at speed, and few nations are better placed than ours to do so.

I believe that any country that does not invest in this way in bilateral diplomacy in this way is making a major error, and will be at a strategic disadvantage when it comes to defending their national interests over the long term.

Building these networks does not mean turning away from our traditional alliances – far from it. Doing so is essential to our security and success.

Fourth, we should always show leadership based on the values of our own societies, and all Western nations should be ready to join in doing so.

I am not one of those people who expect the US to do everything in the world.

I subscribe to the view that reliance on the US for security has become too great in some countries.

We have continued in the UK to spend 2% of our GDP on defence, and have never shirked our responsibilities in NATO and to wider peace and security. We retain the fourth largest defence budget in the world and have some of the best-equipped and deployable Armed Forces. We will continue to be a robust ally of the U.S. for the future and a first rate military power.

But I believe some European countries and others who are part of our transatlantic alliance yet have reduced their spending below that level, will ultimately have to increase it again.

When President Obama decided that the US would do certain things in Libya but leave it to others to take the lead, I thought it was a fair policy and an effective one.

Nevertheless there will be issues, and there are some now, on which only the US has the leverage and can deliver the resources to do what is essential.

It is an immense credit to the US that under different administrations it has been prepared to do so.

The single most positive fact in world affairs is that the United States – that has within it such a vast range of cities and states far removed from the most troubled parts of the world – is prepared to stir itself in the face of serious international crises because it has an intelligent understanding that it is not secure if its allies are not secure.

We have welcomed and supported for years the efforts by successive administrations to settle the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and I pay tribute to Secretary Kerry now for his efforts.

But other countries also have to show leadership on difficult issues, as our Prime Minister did at the G8 last week with new agreements on tax, trade and transparency; and as we have shown by leading a major effort over two years to turn around Somalia.

And in the networked, highly connected world, it is more important than ever to demonstrate leadership in upholding our values.

I am proud that I have come here having presided over the UN Security Council where I was pursuing our global campaign to end the use of rape as a weapon of war. Foreign policy is not just about resolving today’s crises, but also about improving the condition of humanity.

When our campaigns are based on our values we can stir the conscience of the world and change the lives of millions, and we should be inspired that we retain that capacity.

And I believe we need to particularly apply this to that great moral battleground and strategic prize of the 21st century – the advancement of full economic, social and political rights for women everywhere.

The United Kingdom and United States share an interest in making the most of the restless activism of our democracies. We will find that millions, indeed billions of people in other countries will aspire to do the same.

We must never water down our convictions in the face of a more complicated global landscape.

Far from it, we must strive at all times to live up to them ourselves so that we retain and strengthen our moral authority – an indispensable component of future influence and security.

Fifth, we must work over the long term to persuade other nations to share our values and develop the willingness to act to defend and promote them.

The truth is that many ‘emerging powers’, as we have come to call them, still have foreign policies based on non-intervention or driven by what we would consider a narrow definition of national interest, which limits their contribution to international peace and security.

They do not share our sense of a Responsibility to Protect, or readiness to intervene militarily as a last resort when human rights are violated on a massive scale.

We will not change this by lecturing them, or forgetting to develop our understanding of their cultures and societies. We will change it by inspiring them and their citizens to join us over time.

This requires not the exercise of tough lectures and hard power but allowing our soft power – those rivers of ideas, diversity, ingenuity and knowledge – to flow freely in their direction.

And in return we should be open to their own good ideas, understanding that we have no monopoly of wisdom, and indeed it is our greatest strength that we start from that assumption.

Our challenge is to find a way to accommodate new voices within international institutions while also increasing their effectiveness and strengthening a rules-based world and universal values – an expanded United Nations Security Council would only work if we can achieve this goal.

So we need to open the sluice gates of our language and values and let them flow across the networked world, drawing on all our immense assets and the advantages of the English language, to spread the best of our ideas across the world, and to bring talented young people into our countries.

Our two countries are the top destinations in the world for international students and the numbers in Britain are rising. The British Council is teaching English in more than 50 countries, and the BBC World Service has added 26 million to its audience figures in the last two year, reaching its highest ever levels – our influence in the world is expanding, not declining.

So these are my five proposals for Western nations:

Reject the psychology of decline, deliberately increase your engagement with the world, construct strong overlapping networks, do not be afraid to show leadership in the world based on our values, and persuade without lecturing more countries to work with us in defending and advancing these values. If we do all of these things we will possess influence that flows rather than power that jars.

We need to bring all this activism, resolve and understanding to bear on the pressing problems we face today.

We need to make every effort to persuade a new Government in Iran to pursue diplomacy over its nuclear programme, while not weakening our resolve to prevent proliferation.

We must take what may be the last opportunity to achieve a two state solution in the Middle East Peace Process. The region will be immeasurably more dangerous and unstable – for Israelis and Palestinians themselves – if we do not succeed.

Despite all the dangers, we should not lose faith in the aspirations of the people of the Arab world, and help those countries to make a success of their long transitions.

We need to press on with the new phase in our support for Afghanistan, so that the Afghan lead in security is underpinned by real progress in political reconciliation.

And all the time we must maintain our commitment to the development of poorer nations. In the UK we are proud that we are living up to our commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on international development, for that way lies long-term security and prosperity for us all.

But of course the most pressing international crisis of all today is Syria, which presents a growing threat to the region and to our own security.

In Syria the demand for democracy and accountability has been met with state violence, murder and torture, destroying whatever legitimacy the Assad regime once enjoyed.

The tragedy of Syria’s people, millions of whom are now in desperate need, is the most complex and difficult crisis yet thrown up by the Arab revolutions but it is not one from which we can turn aside.

On its current trajectory, it is a crisis that will lead to even more death and suffering, a humanitarian catastrophe, the growth of extremism and the destabilising of neighbouring countries.

The answer, sooner or later, can only be a political solution, in which a transitional government is agreed in a settlement bringing peace and rights for all Syrians. That is what we hope for from a second Geneva Conference.

Yet there will be no such solution if the regime believes they can destroy legitimate opposition by force. That places a duty on nations dedicated to international peace and security, to bolster that opposition, saving lives and promoting a transition in the process.

Whether in Syria today or new conflicts in the future, we have to set a lead in confronting dangers and seizing the opportunities just as we did in the days of Thatcher and Reagan.

And we should do so not out of a sense of nostalgia or excessive idealism, but because that is the only way we ensure our safety and protect our values.

Winston Churchill once said, “the future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope”.

When we look at all that has been achieved since President Reagan held office, and remember the great advantages we have and the capabilities and freedom our nations have created over centuries, we should be fired with the confidence to build up our economies, adapt our foreign policy and renew our strength.

Never surrendering to events, but retaining our belief in our ability to shape them.

Never talking ourselves into decline, but confidently working to expand our diplomacy and prosperity.

Not returning to the past, but renewing our thinking, purpose and confidence in our values.

In the 21st century we must have the same breadth of mind to apply the best of the lessons of Ronald Reagan’s time: that decline is not inevitable, that global problems can be solved and that democratic values can prevail, and that even in the face of new threats and dangers, our countries can look, and go, confidently outwards to the rest of the world.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, during a visit to Edinburgh on 20th June 2013.

After three years as Foreign Secretary and visits to more than 70 countries, I am in no doubt whatsoever that we are safer together, stronger together and that we achieve more in the world together as the United Kingdom.

And in this speech today, I want to describe the foreign policy issues that the Scottish people will need to carefully consider, given that the one certainty of a vote for independence is that it wouldn’t be business as usual: it would be a vote for substantial change.

Travelling from Afghanistan to Brazil, and from Canada to Australia, I encounter bafflement that anyone would try to break up a union that has been so resilient, so successful and so admired as ours.

When outsiders look at the United Kingdom, they see one of the world’s most successful examples of stable democratic government, economic development and diplomatic influence.

They speak in awe of our institutions, our civil service, and our legal systems. The admire the richness and diversity of our culture, language, history, sport and traditions, and indeed we were ranked number one in the world for ‘soft’ power in one recent global survey.

It is of course up to people in Scotland to decide in 2014 which way they want to go. It is my sincerest hope that Scotland votes to remain in the United Kingdom. But I am not here to make dire predictions or to issue dark warnings. However I do believe that this decision involves a clear choice in foreign policy:

On the one hand, is continued membership of the world’s sixth largest economy, represented at the G7, G8 and G20, with a permanent seat of the UN Security Council, and an established, influential and growing diplomatic network that is increasingly focused on trade and building up links with the Commonwealth and the fastest-growing parts of the world economy.

On the other is an uncertain future where Scots would have to face the inconvenience and tremendous burden of having to start again in world affairs, with a different passport for future generations, without that global network and enviable diplomatic position in the world, and without automatic entry to NATO and the EU.

The G8 Summit in Northern Ireland this week is tangible proof that the United Kingdom’s seat at the top table of international decision-making matters. We have a voice on the major issues of the day: from international trade to human rights and counter-terrorism.

The UK is not a passive observer. We are active players. We are at the heart of global events. We help shape the world we live in, and our voice matters and it is listened to.

Our Embassies promote the whole of the UK – that means Scottish architectural companies, Scottish environmentally-friendly products, Scottish agricultural equipment and Scottish food, in some surprising destinations, such as the 1,000 tonnes of Scottish salmon imported into Lebanon each year with the active support of our Embassy.

And when adventure turns to misadventure for UK nationals overseas – when there is a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, when criminals strike or British children are forced into marriage overseas – that is when we all feel the benefits of being able to turn to one of our missions in 267 posts in 154 countries and twelve territories worldwide.

As part of the United Kingdom Scotland derives – and will continue to derive – many benefits from being part of this global diplomatic network, instead of having to rely on inevitably fewer, smaller Embassies which would take time and resources to establish.

The United Kingdom is one of the few nations in the world with the global reach and influence that means that we can ‘turn the dial’ on major global issues, as we have done in recent years in Somalia.

For foreign policy is not just about dealing with the crises of the moment, it is about improving the condition of humanity, something we are engaged in together as a global player, and we would be less able to do that if we were not the UK.

In all these areas the UK should stay together because we achieve more together.

The cost of creating new institutions would place an enormous burden on the Scottish taxpayer; it would also take years to develop the infrastructure and qualified personnel that are needed to deal effectively with the array of threats that we all face. And Scotland would lose the benefits that come from having some of the most capable and professional armed forces and intelligence services in the world. Within the United Kingdom we have one set of intelligence services and one set of armed forces, benefitting from significant economies of scale and years of institutional development now provide a far higher level of security for the Scottish people.

So not only is Scotland safer in the UK, but the UK is one of the world’s leading nations in human rights, development and trade because we stand strongly together: a force for good in the world, with the ability to protect the interests of our citizens at home and abroad.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on free trade between the EU and the US. The speech was made at Lancaster House in London on 18th March 2013.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Lancaster House. This Reception comes at the start of what I hope will be a successful but obviously challenging journey towards the historic prize of a transatlantic trade agreement, and I am particularly pleased that so many leaders from the business community are able to join us – as it is essential that we listen and understand your priorities before the negotiations with the United States begin. Senior officials from the FCO, UKTI and BIS are here so please give your opinions to them in order for us to be able to understand your priorities.

We are still grappling with the effects of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and there are significant challenges that all European economies must overcome before they can return to the path of sustainable and long-term economic growth. But that growth has to be built on the strong foundation of expanding trade, and not a mountain of debt.

So we need a competitive and open European market, one that attracts significant overseas investment and is committed to free and fair trade. The conclusion of ambitious trade agreements that unlock commerce, jobs and investment are vital to that process.

Since the 18th Century, this country has been leading the fight for free trade across the globe. From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the repeal of the Corn Laws, to Bretton Woods and the completion of the European Single Market, we have been at the forefront for most of the last 250 years in calling for the removal of trade barriers. Our argument is simple: open markets mean that people can sell their products to the highest bidder. By reducing tariffs, subsidies and quotas, and making sure that regulations are kept to a minimum, you can improve the lives of billions of people now, including those in developing countries.

And the conclusion of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would be the biggest possible milestone in the progress to a more open global trading system.

Now of course we have a mountain to climb. Previous efforts between the EU and US Administrations have failed: President Clinton’s New Transatlantic Agenda was swept aside by pressing security issues in the Balkans; President Bush’s Transatlantic Economic Council has been weighed down by technical disputes.

But an agreement has never been so necessary, or as achievable, as it is now. National leaders on both sides want it, CEOs of major companies are calling for it, and the people of America and the EU need it more than ever. And if this moment is not seized, then it could pass quickly and not be seen again for a generation.

We need to work hard to ensure that this opportunity is not lost, as the benefits of an agreement between the world’s two largest economies, which account for half of global GDP and almost a third of global trade, are too big to ignore:

First, a successful agreement should add over £100bn a year to the economies of the EU, secure millions of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic, and give a much needed boost to global growth.

Although the UK and Britain alone have almost one trillion dollars invested in each other’s economies, supporting over 1 million jobs in both countries, we should not underestimate the obstacles that some British businesses face when trying to enter the US market. This is especially true for those that operate in sectors where the states set the rules. And so each barrier removed will help British companies export more goods and services to America.

Second, an ambitious agreement would also send a powerful message to the rest of the world that we are willing to show leadership on trade liberalisation and to shape global economic governance in line with our values. We could agree common standards and rules fit for the 21st century – particularly in new and emerging areas such as online intellectual property – and these would set an example that could inspire others to follow, generating much needed momentum for broader trade liberalisation around the world.

Third, a trade deal with the United States would be a step towards demonstrating that the EU is relentlessly focused on delivering prosperity for its people, and responding to what they need the most: jobs and growth. It would also show that the collective weight of the EU enables us to negotiate trade deals that bring benefits to British people, thereby contributing to a more positive achievement of the EU in this country.

And finally, a Trading Partnership would reinvigorate the historic transatlantic ties and put the EU’s relationship with the United States on a more modern footing, one that is fit for this Century. We have always had close trading relations, but a proper agreement that integrates our markets further and is ambitious in scope would show that the relationship is capable of adapting to the most urgent needs of our people.

There will be significant obstacles along the way, such as agriculture, and the convergence of standards and regulations. But we have comparable markets and should be able to trust each other’s rules and standards.

Now is the best chance to reach a deal, and we must sustain the current political momentum, work hard to overcome our differences, and take bold decisions. This Government will do everything we can to ensure a successful outcome. Our diplomatic network across the US and Europe will be lobbying and negotiating, and the promotion of trade is one of the main objectives of our G8 Presidency, which we will use to build even greater momentum.

We also want the business community in the UK to be as involved as possible. An agreement will only be good for Britain if it is good for British business. So tell us what would be in your interests; what would benefit you the most; and we will work hard to meet those needs.

We need an agreement that removes shackles of regulation and eliminates unnecessary barriers to trade, injects energy into the British and European economies at a critical time. This would be a historic and transformative deal, one that shows the world that the EU and US are serious about opening markets and liberating business, and could provide an impetus for new free trade initiatives worldwide. We need to work together to grasp this opportunity. If we concentrate our effort, overcome obstacles, and focus on the end goal, then I am confident that we will succeed.