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Tag: Speeches

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at Toynbee Hall

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at Toynbee Hall

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 29 April 2003.

    Thank you very much, Luke, for again inviting me to speak at Toynbee Hall.

    I pay sincere tribute to the dedication to London’s East End of all your staff and all of Toynbee’s many volunteers.

    Toynbee Hall’s national reputation for social policy is deeply rooted in your commitment to innovative community service.

    The Barnetts, Atlee, Beveridge and other Toynbee greats would – I am sure – be very proud of Toynbee Hall’s work today.

    And I know I speak for all of us here when I say a special thank you to your inspirational President, Jack Profumo.

    It was nearly six months ago – when on my visit to you – I named five new giants stalking Britain.

    Five key social challenges facing our people:

    Rising crime;

    Failing schools;

    Substandard healthcare;

    Child poverty; and

    Insecurity in old age.

    Those five giants already affect or threaten every community in Britain.

    Defeating them isn’t just a moral obligation.

    Turning the tide on crime and public service failure is in everyone’s interest.

    Not just because none of us are immune from the damaging effects of social decline.

    But also because unless we come together as a nation – in order to advance the interests of everyone – we forfeit the right to call ourselves civilised.

    People from minority communities, our poorest citizens and the very young and very old remain Britain’s most vulnerable – they are hurt most by the giants.

    In the past some Conservatives gave the false impression that poverty had been overcome.

    During my leadership I’ve made it clear that that’s not my belief.

    Last year, David Willetts gave a speech entitled ‘The Reality of Poverty’.

    In it he surveyed the complex material and relational dimensions of twenty-first century poverty.

    He noted that fighting poverty wouldn’t be cheap but it couldn’t be just about money.

    Communities stay poor because of crime, community breakdown and the disempowerment that can be passed from one generation to the next.

    He and other shadow cabinet ministers held a number of investigative One Nation Hearings in hard-pressed areas.

    And I told last spring’s party forum that restoring hope in places like Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate was a personal commitment.

    In recent months the Conservative Party has begun the process of unveiling policies that underpin our determination to restore that hope.

    Take education.

    Far too many inner city schools are failing.

    And when they fail – one of a young person’s best hopes of a better future is lost, perhaps forever.

    Damian Green has proposed a system of state scholarships to provide children from inner city areas with an escape route from failure.

    State scholarships will give parents a chance to send their child to a good school.

    One more suited to their child’s needs and their own values.

    This system of scholarships will, I hope, encourage higher standards in existing schools.

    But it will also encourage – and pay for – the establishment of new schools that serve children’s diverse needs.

    If education is a springboard out of poverty; then crime can entrap children in it.

    Oliver Letwin’s innovative policies will cut the conveyor belt to crime for tens of thousands of young people.

    A greater emphasis on early intervention – including parent support services – will stop the conveyor belt at its earlier stages.

    And the Conservative commitment to fund 20,000 new drug rehabilitation places will give other young people a chance to find freedom from addiction.

    I’ve sat with parents of drug users who – already devastated by their child’s drug habit – are close to being broken by the failure of the current system to provide rehab.

    That has to change.

    Another change we must make is to the level of policing on Britain’s streets.

    The 40,000 extra neighbourhood police officers Conservatives are committed to provide are not just a sign of our commitment to beat crime.

    They’re a symbol of our commitment to restore community and reclaim it from the gangs that imprison people in their homes.

    Through commitments like these on education and crime – and other policies focusing on better healthcare and housing – Conservatives will reverse the decline in Britain’s public services.

    Our policies are built on the rock of successful models throughout Europe and in Australia and America.

    We build, too, on what local Conservative councils are already achieving.

    Last year it was Conservative councils that received the most star awards for the quality of their social service provision for vulnerable people.

    Conservative councils run schools with the lowest levels of truancy and the best exam results.

    Local Conservatives are more committed to provision of street lighting and CCTV.

    By this time on Friday I hope more Conservative councillors will have been elected to deliver such practical compassion.

    Labour’s record on public service reform has failed the whole nation but the poor have suffered most.

    The revitalisation of Britain’s public services is vital and urgent but – on its own – it won’t be enough to reduce child poverty and other forms of social injustice.

    Progress will need to be underpinned by a strong, job-creating economy.

    Success will also depend upon a stronger, cohesive society.

    A society of which we can all feel proud.

    And by society I do not mean the state.

    The free institutions of society – like families, charities, local schools and other people-sized institutions – provide diverse, innovative and face-to-face care that state bureaucracies cannot match.

    It’s these associations within society that give me the greatest hope that even the worst effects of the Five Giants can be overcome.

    Since I named the Five Giants I’ve travelled to almost every part of Britain.

    The Five Giants are at least as menacing as I feared.

    Too much of what I have seen has made me conclude that society is being hollowed out from within.

    In Glasgow, Jim Doherty and Janis Dobbie of the Gallowgate Family Support Group, showed me around Parkhead Cross.

    It’s a neighbourhood in the grip of drug abuse and the havoc it wreaks.

    At night criminal gangs rule the streets.

    Two of Jim’s own sons have become addicts.

    He can’t understand the failure of government to provide proper rehab for his children and the children of the other families who flock to the Gallowgate Support Group.

    He told me “We have already lost our children’s generation to drugs.

    The battle we’re fighting now is to save our grandchildren.”

    Jim’s words – Jim’s challenge – affected me deeply.

    If Britain doesn’t act to save his grandchildren my generation of politicians will have failed.

    And we will certainly fail if we don’t do something about the state monoculture.

    The state is already too pervasive on many of the poorest communities -crowding out any and all alternatives to its own bureaucratic agencies and its metropolitan worldview.

    Beneath an artificial plantation of conifers nothing grows.

    All light is absorbed by the dense and impenetrable canopy far above the soil.

    The five giants won’t be defeated if government acts as if the work and values of groups like Jim Doherty’s don’t matter.

    Government must become an active and enthusiastic servant of society’s many poverty-fighting and community-building groups.

    In natural woodland, trees are spaced apart – allowing light and rain to nourish a diversity of plants and wildlife.

    An enriching and highly-interdependent ecosystem develops.

    It’s still like that in parts of Britain.

    For a very long time the people-sized institutions of society have lacked political champions.

    Their vital role has been taken for granted – or worse still dismissed – by big state and free market fundamentalists.

    That must change.

    Government can and must do much more to unlock Britain’s social capital.

    Soon, I’ll be publishing a Green Paper that will investigate how the next Conservative government will do that.

    It will contain proposals that are themselves as ambitious as the aspiration to serve of our nation’s volunteers, charities and social entrepreneurs.

    It will applaud the work of faith-based groups like Manchester’s Message Trust and Cardiff’s Care for the Family that have impressed me so profoundly.

    The government is wedded to the idea that more government spending and control is the answer to today’s challenges.

    But this government is not unlocking the potential of Britain’s social capital.

    It is not helping the people who have the ideas and values to rebuild their communities.

    Luke – on behalf of Toynbee Hall – has been one of a large number of voluntary sector representatives who have kindly contributed to the formulation of the Conservative Green Paper.

    That Green Paper will be a next stage in my party’s continuing commitment to offer a fair deal for Britain’s most vulnerable communities.

    I look forward to as many of you here as possible helping us to first develop – and then deliver – that fair deal.

    It’s time for politicians to help people rebuild their communities.

    And to return hope to neighbourhoods where – today – there is none.

  • Oliver Letwin – 2003 Speech on Rebalancing the Weight of Authority

    Oliver Letwin – 2003 Speech on Rebalancing the Weight of Authority

    The speech made by Oliver Letwin on 6 May 2003.

    Back in February I gave a speech on the retreat of civilisation in Britain’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods. I told the story of the Clarence Way Estate in Camden and the efforts made by local residents to reclaim their community from local drug dealers. Though policing of the estate is clearly inadequate, funds have been found for private security patrols. These have succeeded in moving on the junkies that use the estate’s stairwells, balconies and doorsteps to jack up – in full view of the tenants and their children. But there is only so much the security guards can do. For instance they are not allowed to tow away the illegal abandoned cars that the junkies and the dealers use as a cover for their operations. No, that is a job for the organs of the state, although when I visited Clarence Way they had yet to do it. However, the law enforcement authorities are not entirely absent from the estate. That much was made clear to the security guards when they returned from a patrol to find a parking ticket on their van. Residents were outraged and asked if free parking could be made available – as it is for, say, police officers and councillors. But the council said no.

    February saw another example of officialdom at its worst, this time in the Suffolk village of Trimley St Mary – home to Mary Martin, a grandmother of ten. Ms Martin was in fact born in the United States but has lived in Britain for 54 of her 56 years. Nevertheless, when she applied for British citizenship, following the death of her mother two years ago, she was turned down by the Home Office, which did not accept her claim of long-term residency. She was then given a few days to leave the country or be deported. Fortunately, the story was brought to national attention by local MP John Gummer, forcing the Home Office to back down. But as Mr Gummer said at the time: “She should never have been put in this position. In all my time as an MP, I have never seen a case as appallingly bad.”

    Unfortunately, appalling decisions are made all the time. Moreover, the government is continually extending the scope for such decisions. For instance, the new Draft Regulations for the Registration and Monitoring of Independent Schools threaten a regulatory framework so onerous that many schools will be force to close down. Not, of course, the likes of Eton or Harrow that have the resources to cope. But small neighbourhood schools such as those serving vulnerable children from Britain’s minority communities. It would seem that the Department of Education has learned nothing from the Department of Health’s ruinous attack on our old people’s homes.

    Bureaucracy gone mad?

    But my purpose tonight is not to recount isolated examples of bureaucracy gone mad. For one thing these examples are not isolated. They are part of a systemic problem that I believe is eating away at our respect for authority. Also, while bureaucracy is certainly involved, I don’t believe that it has gone mad. Rather we have created a bureaucratic system that for entirely rational, if self-serving, reasons is programmed to operate in a manner that defies fairness and justice.

    Nor is this speech just about the accumulating burden of regulation and red tape, though undoubtedly that burden is increasing. Rather, what I want to look at is how and where that burden falls. Because it appears to me that the blows of bureaucracy rain down in a systematic pattern of unfairness and injustice.

    Easy case / hard case

    That pattern can be seen in all three of the examples I have given.

    To start with, the Draft Regulations which threaten small independent schools. The stated rationale for the new provisions is to protect the safety of pupils in new schools – though, of course, the government has given no evidence that safety is compromised under the existing rules. Nevertheless even the smallest community schools will be subject to an intensive inspection regime covering such matters as sound insulation, acoustics, lighting, heating and ventilation. The compliance costs will shutdown existing schools and ensure that new ones are never started. The irony is that such regulations only ensure that procedures are followed, they do not guarantee outcomes. For instance, only this year, the Audit Commission warned that schools built under the Private Finance Initiative are significantly worse in terms of space, heating and lighting than new publicly-funded schools. But of course it is easier to pick on neighbourhood schools then to sort out the top-level mismanagement of the PFI programme.

    And, no doubt, the Home Office found it easier to pick on Mary Martin, an unsuspecting Suffolk grandmother, than to deport the failed asylum seekers that disappear into the netherworld of black market employment and unregistered accommodation. In the same way, for security reasons, they make it harder for British citizens to get a passport at short notice, while allowing thousands of people who entered this country without a passport to stay without security clearance of any kind.

    And even in a matter as mundane as parking restrictions, it is easier to slap a ticket on a security patrol van than it is to tow away a stolen car dumped in the middle of a housing estate. The former is achieved in minutes, the latter in months.
    Picking on the easy case

    Three very different cases, but there is a link. In each case, those whom the authorities target have three things in common:

    · First, they’re not very powerful – we’re talking about ordinary individuals and families, or small businesses and community groups.

    · Second, they’re easy to get at – through their property, their livelihoods, their reputations, these are sitting ducks as far as the authorities are concerned.

    · Third, they’re law abiding and honest, if not positively public-spirited – their every instinct is to obey the rules or, if they slip up, to take their punishment meekly.

    In each of our three examples, the authorities have picked on the easy case – by which I mean the person or organisation unable or unwilling to resist, evade or ignore the demands of the system.

    Avoiding the hard case

    But just as there are easy cases, there are also hard cases – as we can see in each of our three examples:

    · The powerful political, bureaucratic and corporate interests responsible for the poor performance of so many PFI projects.

    · The illegal immigrant that disappears off the official radar.

    · Or the drug abusing petty criminal who couldn’t care less what happens to the car he just dumped, which he probably stole anyway.

    So we have three kinds of hard case – the powerful, the invisible and the uncivilised. All of these make life difficult for those in authority, which is why the easy cases, who are neither powerful nor invisible nor uncivilised, present a more attractive target.

    A general phenomenon

    The easy case syndrome is an everyday fact of life. Examples are not isolated. They litter the system:

    · A month ago, millions of us received a self-assessment form from the Inland Revenue. This gives you the privilege of collaborating in the taxation of your income, patience and honesty. Meanwhile the cash-in-hand brigade enjoy the public services your taxes have paid for, without contributing anything themselves.

    · Even if your builder declares his income down to the last penny, you may still fall foul of our planning system, which regulates the placement of each and every garden shed, while whole townscapes are defaced by tower blocks.

    · And if you should find an intruder breaking into your garden shed, do not let him tread on a garden fork as it may be you and not the criminal that gets sued.

    · I have seen much the same attitude displayed by the ticket inspectors of more than one train operator, who while happy to fine the commuter who misplaced his or her ticket, are unlikely to challenge the carriage full of louts who didn’t have tickets to lose in the first place.

    · All too often, when some of life’s freeloaders see the inside of a courtroom, they will leave it laughing. Whereas, for those that respect the law, the courtroom is a near infallible means of enforcement, the mere threat of which ensures that fines for overdue parking tickets, misplaced train tickets, overdue tax returns and misplaced garden sheds are paid without protest.

    · The same threat ensures that responsible fathers who disclose both paternity and income provide easy work for the Child Support Agency, while deadbeat dads are allowed to disappear into a genetic and financial fog.

    · There is a strong European dimension to all of this. One only has to compare the British farmer, clobbered for making a small mistake in his IACS form, with the EU commissioners, who can’t even account for £3 billion in their annual budget.

    It is hard to think of single significant area of regulation where the authorities do not systematically target the easy case to the relative or absolute benefit of the hard case.

    Causes and consequences

    And the problem is getting worse. It pervades our regulatory culture. As the volume of regulation and legislation grows, so does the distortion of the system towards the clobbering of the easy case and the escape of the difficult case.

    Easy money

    We have arrived at a position where the easy case syndrome is not even always an unintended by-product of regulation – increasingly the pursuit of the easy case is becoming a positive intention of government.

    For instance, picking on the easy case is great way of raising revenue. One need think only of the spread of speed cameras and the introduction of congestion charges. The motorist, that is the legally registered fully insured motorist driving his own vehicle, is the ultimate easy case. The registration plate of the legally registered driver is a perfect identifier and the car itself a hostage subject to clamping, crushing or confiscation so as to extract a ransom from its owner. Meanwhile the joy-riders travel free of charge, free of speed restrictions and free of parking tickets. In a slight adaptation of the proverb, they have learned that to travel joyfully is better than to arrive in court.
    Cheap gestures

    The easy case also provides the state with an easy way of being seen to do something.

    How much easier to subject schools and charities to the bureaucratic disaster area that is the Criminal Records Bureau than to track down the real paedophile. Decent teachers, youth workers and volunteers dutifully submit themselves to the police check procedure in their tens of thousands, giving every impression that the authorities are on the case, when of course it will take more than a form filling exercise to stop the determined paedophile.

    Then there is the issue of animal welfare – again a proper concern, and again the subject of meretricious government initiatives that exploit the easy case. The laws protecting the welfare of British farm animals are the toughest in the world. Yet our livestock sector is sinking beneath a flood of foreign imports produced in conditions of sickening cruelty. By ignoring the hard case, the government actually increases the UK market for inhumanely produced food.

    The targets culture

    The tendency of the bureaucracy to deal with the easy case instead of the hard case has been exacerbated by New Labour’s penchant for targets and indicators. It is easier to meet a target for hospital waiting lists by prioritising patients with easily treated minor ailments than those with life threatening diseases, even though this is a policy for shortening queues by filling mortuaries. It is easier to meet targets for crime clear-up rates by concentrating on traffic offences than by concentrating on the lawlessness of gangs that terrorise council estates.

    The blame culture

    Allied to the targets culture is the blame culture, fuelled by a toxic concoction of European rights legislation and American-style litigation. The result is a predatory legal system always on the look out for an easy case – meaning any individual or organisation without the resources to fight their way through the courts, but with enough money to settle out of court. No one need have an accident these days, when they could be the victims of criminal negligence. Taxpayers, employers and volunteers pay the price in legal bills and insurance premiums – they are the easy cases.

    The hard cases are getting harder

    I have advanced five causes for the worsening of the easy case syndrome: regulation, easy money, government’s addiction to cheap gestures, the targets culture and the blame culture. But there is a sixth reason, which is that the hard cases are getting harder. If you remember, I identified three kinds of hard case – the powerful, the invisible and the uncivilised. In an increasingly globalised economy it is easier for the powerful to escape the constraints of national law; in an increasingly anonymous society, it is easier for those without a stake in the mainstream to drop out and disappear; and in an increasingly chaotic culture it is easier for those who just don’t care, to flout the norms of civilised behaviour. As a result the hard cases become harder for the state to deal with and the easy cases look much more tempting as objects of attention.

    The coming crisis

    It is inevitable that in any system of enforcement some cases will be easier than others. Moreover, it is important that the system holds the line against the easy cases. We’re all guilty of occasionally pushing the rules and if we all got away with it, there’d be chaos. I don’t know if you remember the traffic wardens’ strike back in the 1970s, but it wasn’t long before some streets were clogged with double and even triple parking.

    However, the system is out of balance. And so the question is this: how much more can the easy cases take? The weight of authority is sliding onto their backs, and that weight increases with every new law and every new tax. If this continues there will come a point at which those that respect the law respect it no longer. And at that point our society will be in serious trouble.

    Certainly we should not expect a loss of respect by the law-abiding to be offset by the gratitude of the lawless – who return nothing but contempt to so weak a system.

    Solutions

    The good news is that there are solutions. The even better news is that they are embedded in Conservative philosophy and policy.

    Conservatives stand for less regulation, red tape and bureaucracy. We do not share Labour’s love of taxation and we reserve particular contempt for Labour’s stealth taxes. We do not base our policy initiatives on the easy cases. There was nothing easy about the economic challenges we met in the eighties and nineties; and there is nothing easy about the social challenges we focus on today. We will abolish the targets culture. Recognition of risk, and the commonsense of British legal tradition, will be the foundations on which we build defences against the blame culture.

    In all these ways we will radically reduce the weight of authority on the law-abiding majority.

    The easy case side of the equation.

    But that is not enough. We also need new measures to make life harder for the hard cases.

    That is why the next Conservative Government will increase police numbers by 40,000. What’s more we will put them back on the beat, reclaiming the streets from the drug dealers, pimps and muggers that blight the lives of decent people. We will do for Britain what Rudi Giuliani did for New York – the proof that neighbourhood policing works. And it works precisely because it focuses the whole system on the hard cases – wherever, whenever and as soon as they arise.

    We will apply the same principle to the flipside of our law and order policy, which is to get young people off the conveyor belt to crime. We will deal with the hard case. We will rescue young people caught in the hard drug vortex by forcing them into intensive treatment. We will provide long-term rehabilitative sentencing for persistent young offenders to reform characters and change lives and make a profound impact on recidivism. We will draw inspiration from examples of success at home and abroad that prove that even the hard cases can be turned around.

    Triggers and trip wires

    It is said that no good deed goes unpunished. And in a society where the easy case takes the punishment, that is not far from the truth. It is certainly true that we cannot rebuild the neighbourly society through unfairness and injustice. That is why I am determined that in every aspect of Home Office policy – from drugs to asylum – we will focus the system on the hard case.

    That means setting clear boundaries for what is acceptable and what is not. It is only through such boundaries that the hard cases can be identified and isolated. This is not a prescription for boneheaded rigidity, like that suffered by Mary Martin at the hands of the Home Office. Any system of boundaries should have a degree of give, but this flexibility should be matched by a series of triggers for interventions of authority that increase in strength with the distance travelled from the civilised norm.

    This is our model for all systems of enforcement: boundaries which, when breached, prompt a proportionate response, instead of a system that stretches trip wires across the straight and narrow road, while those that walk a crooked path carry on regardless.

    Things have come to a pretty pass when it is necessary for the Shadow Home Secretary to preach the virtues of proportionate response. But things have come to that pass – and I am preaching precisely that doctrine. We need, with some speed and resolution, to rebalance the system of the state so that its weight bears down more heavily on the lawless than the just. Proportionality demands such rebalancing. I demand such proportionality.

  • Committee on Fuel Poverty – 2022 Letter to BEIS Permanent Secretary

    Committee on Fuel Poverty – 2022 Letter to BEIS Permanent Secretary

    The letter sent by the Committee on Fuel Poverty to the BEIS Permanent Secretary on 24 August 2022.

    in .pdf format)

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Central London

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Central London

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 19 May 2003.

    It’s a great privilege to be here to speak to you today. The British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce has a vital role to play in developing business relations between Britain and Switzerland.

    It’s a role you play with distinction.

    I would like to address three issues which are of common interest to all those concerned with the future- its business environment and, its place in Europe.

    In turn, I want to deal with our competitiveness, the euro and the proposed European Constitution.
    I have three propositions for you today.

    First, that Britain’s competitive position is being undermined…

    both by the micro-economic management of a Government that does not understand how business works and by the impact of its failure to reform our public services on our tax position, our public finances and our quality of life.

    Second, that addressing these root causes of declining competitiveness is what matters most to Britain and its business economy – not focusing on joining the euro. Labour’s political obsession with the latter is to the detriment of us all.

    Third, that Europe will not be improved by deeper integration and the strengthening of its institutions – but rather by bringing democratic power and accountability closer to all the peoples of Europe by reinforcing the autonomous power of nation states.

    We will lead this fight.

    Competitiveness

    Britain does not enjoy the quality of life it should.

    · There are a million people on Britain’s hospital waiting lists.
    · One in four children leave our primary schools unable to read, write and count properly.
    · Thirty thousand children leave our secondary schools without a single GCSE.
    · 39 out of every 40 crimes go unpunished by a conviction.
    · And British people spend longer commuting to work than any other people in Europe.

    The Labour Government’s only answer has been to spend more and more taxpayers’ money.

    By the end of their current plans, real terms spending on health will have doubled — and on education will have risen by 50 per cent.

    That’s why the government tax take has already risen by the equivalent of an extra five and a half thousand pounds a year for every household in Britain.

    And that’s why public borrowing is now spiralling upwards too.

    This is nothing less than a massive tax and spend gamble.

    And our competitiveness is fast being eroded.

    Britain is once more becoming a place where people do not want to do business.

    Business investment is falling and savings have collapsed.

    Burdens on business are up and our competitiveness and productivity growth are down.

    The CBI believes Labour’s extra tax and regulations have added as much as £15 billion a year to the cost of doing business in Britain.

    And since 1997

    · we’ve lost over half a million jobs in manufacturing,
    · we’ve seen the number of days lost to strikes increased sixfold
    · and we’ve fallen from 9th to 16th in the World Competitiveness rankings.

    But more than this, we understand that competitiveness is not just about economic efficiency.

    To compete means being a country where people want to live and where businesses actively choose to locate their operations.

    A place that can attract and retain the best talent and the most investment.

    A place with something extra to offer.

    To compete means being a nation with a well educated, highly qualified workforce that doesn’t waste weeks every year, off sick, or stuck in traffic jams.

    As a global competitor, we have lost a lot of ground.

    With taxes up, we’re a more expensive place to do business.

    With regulation up, we’re no longer an easy place to do business.

    With our public services in decay, we’re no longer a magnet for talent or investment.

    So how would a Conservative administration be different?

    First, we are, by nature, a party of lower tax.

    We believe that governments should measure success not by how much money they spend, but how well – and how carefully – they spend it.

    Second, a Conservative Government will not second-guess everything business does.

    We will not be over-interfering in the way businesses are run.

    Third, on public services we are committed to a strategy of real reform — widening choice and rooting out bureaucratic waste.

    This is what it will take if we are to begin to deliver a fair deal for everyone.

    And if we fail, Britain will be a less competitive place as a result.

    Euro

    My second proposition is that rather than addressing these problems, the Government is obsessed with the euro.

    Look at the mess they are in.

    Last Wednesday, they told the BBC they had reached an agreement.

    By Thursday morning they were having to deny that.

    And shortly afterwards, they announced that the Chancellor’s conclusions on the euro would be delayed until June 9.

    In the meantime, special Cabinet sessions have been called to thrash out the issue.

    The Chancellor, the Prime Minister and their factions are still clearly miles apart on whether they will rule out a euro vote before the next election.

    And Cabinet Ministers have been contradicting each other every other day.

    Last Sunday, John Reid said it was a question of when Britain would join the euro.

    Then on Wednesday, Jack Straw said it was first of all a question of if Britain should join.

    On Thursday, John Prescott said they hadn’t even decided whether the question itself was if or when.

    On Friday, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor were so concerned about the depth of the splits that they issued a joint statement to deny there were any splits at all.

    And yet we now hear that the Prime Minister does not want to hold a full Cabinet discussion on the euro until he has marched members of the Cabinet in one by one to beat up the Chancellor in private.

    I have a simple message for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor – let us all see the available evidence now.

    That way, we can weigh all the facts up for ourselves and come to our own conclusions.

    The Conservatives’ position is clear.

    We would not take Britain into the euro because we believe that giving up our ability to set our own interest rates would be…

    · bad for British jobs…
    · bad for the British economy….
    · and bad for the British people.

    We believe Gordon Brown’s five tests are a sham.

    Of course the Chancellor is right to say that it would be damaging to join the euro…

    · without the necessary convergence or flexibility…
    · or if joining would be bad for investment, financial services, or jobs.

    But there is no case for saying that any of these tests have been met.

    France has 2.5 million people unemployed; and Germany nearly double that.

    It is impossible to see how the Government could argue that joining the euro would be good for jobs.

    In fact, the opposite is true.

    But, of course, these economic tests are no more than an elaborate smokescreen.

    Because the only test that matters to the Government is the political one.

    They may pretend that they want to join the euro for economic reasons.

    They may argue that remaining outside the euro will damage our economic prospects – hitting our competitiveness, our trade performance and our ability to attract investment.

    But the fact is that despite being outside the euro, Britain remains a more attractive destination for inward investment than any eurozone country.

    We remain the world’s third favourite location for inward investors, after China and the United States.

    Not being in the euro has done our investment performance no harm at all.

    And the example of Switzerland, for that matter, shows that it is possible to live prosperously alongside the euro, at the heart of Europe, without adopting the single currency.

    But we will not retain our position for long if our domestic competitiveness continues to be undermined and we cease to be an attractive place to do business.

    Our trade performance tells the same story.

    In the euro’s first three years, British goods exports to the eurozone grew by 26.4 per cent – faster than France, Germany or Italy.

    But again, in the long term, our trade performance will depend on our ability to provide goods and services to a competitive standard at a competitive cost.

    So long as our productivity growth stagnates as it has for the past five years, we are in danger of slipping behind our competitors.

    And by that I do not just mean our competitors in the EU, but all those around the world.
    As we speak, the current uncertainty is doing damage to our competitive position.

    The Government is split and concentrating on healing political rows rather than on healing the public services.

    And, meanwhile, business is crying out for more certainty.

    My message to the Prime Minister is simple.

    Ever since becoming Prime Minister he has made it clear that he is in favour of the euro in principle.

    If, despite all the economic evidence, and despite all the splits in his Cabinet, he remains determined to take Britain into the euro, then…

    …he should admit that his is an entirely political decision…
    …and he should get on with calling a referendum so the British people can have their say.

    If not, he should forget about it and get on with what matters to the British people – delivering sustained prosperity and world-class public services.

    Constitution

    I am going to turn now to my third and final proposition – that the Government’s policy on the European Constitution, like its policy on the euro, threatens to give people a raw deal.

    The Convention on the Future of Europe is drawing up a draft constitution that may determine the shape of Europe for the next half-century.

    But right now, Europe faces tougher challenges than it has for many years.

    For a long time, we Conservatives have argued that the European Union is faced with a crisis of democracy and accountability.

    Turnout in European elections has fallen below fifty per cent across Europe.

    The peoples of Europe feel little ownership of European institutions.

    But at the same time the Europe Union is growing.

    Ten new states will join next year, increasing the EU’s population to four hundred and fifty million.

    We have always seen enlargement as one of the European Union’s most important tasks.

    But I fear that the direction being taken by the draft European Constitution will do little to serve the interests of the people of Europe, present or future.

    The peoples of Europe, and most particularly those in enlargement states, want jobs and prosperity — but the EU’s economic performance has been poor, and unemployment is far too high.

    Across the EU, people also want to feel connected to the laws and institutions that government them — but at present, our democracies face a great challenge — people feel alienated from the political process.

    Economic reform and political connection – these are the two points a modern, forward-looking EU should focus on.

    But though it is clear — and almost universally agreed — that the EU is in desperate need of reform — the Convention is looking backwards towards a vision of Europe that is wholly outdated.

    Now is not the time for more centralization and deeper integration in the EU.

    It’s time, as can be seen so clearly from the health of democracy in Switzerland, to reinforce democracy in nation states.

    The Conservative Party has a different vision of the future of the European Union.

    We want to see the decentralising of powers back towards national parliaments.

    Not least because, in the case of many of the new, enlargement states, these Parliaments are young, hopeful institutions we should seek to support, not to undermine.

    That way we can achieve a Europe that is more democratic, more accountable, and better suited to enlargement.

    And it is because we believe so passionately in an alternative and, we think, better vision of a modern Europe…

    …because we believe in the dream of a prosperous, harmonious, enlarged Europe that works for all its people…
    …we believe that the people of Britain should have the opportunity to vote on any proposed European Constitution.

    Since the current Labour Government came to power in 1997, there have been 34 referendums in Britain.

    Referendums have been held on everything from devolution to elected mayors – and have been promised on regional assemblies.

    In short, referendums have become the norm wherever changes have been proposed to the way people are represented and governed.

    But when it comes to the European Constitution – a constitution that will decide how every person in this country is governed, regardless of where they live – the Government doesn’t think the British people need a say.

    The Government’s defence is that the European Constitution will merely be a ‘tidying-up exercise’.

    Let’s challenge that assertion.

    The Prime Minister meets Giscard d’Estaing tonight.

    If this is merely a tidying up exercise, then a lot of what is currently being proposed must be dropped.

    Not least the plans for…

    · a single European foreign minister
    · a Constitution with legally enforceable fundamental rights
    · the establishment of legal status for the EU – the prerequisite of a state
    · the bringing of foreign, defence and home affairs, including asylum and immigration policy, under European jurisdiction
    · the extension of EU competence over criminal law including the establishment of an EU public prosecutor.
    · the adoption of qualified majority voting, rather than unanimity, as the default mode of European decision making
    · and plans to establish a fixed term five year presidency of the EU, even if that means Tony Blair having to reconsider what he will do with his retirement.

    Unless these, and other, items are dropped, then this cannot be called mere tidying up.

    As things stand, there can be no doubt that the draft constitution proposes deep and dangerous changes to how the British people, and all other peoples of Europe, are governed.

    What could strengthen the Prime Minister’s negotiating position more, and what could reassure those who fear what will emerge from this Convention more, than a commitment to giving the British people the right to make up their own minds on a proposed European Constitution?

    In just six years they have held 34 referendums.

    And there are many more to come.

    But on the only two issues of absolutely crucial importance to every single person in Britain – membership of the euro and signing up to a European Constitution – the Government is playing political games.

    On the euro, it has promised a referendum – but is clearly planning to call one only if and when it believes it can win.

    On the Constitution it speaks volumes that the Government has so arrogantly dismissed calls for the British people to have any say at all.

    It refuses to grant them a referendum.

    Contrast this with Switzerland, where a series of referendums were held only yesterday.

    Conclusion

    Historically, Britain is a great trading nation.

    Globally, we were the forefathers of free trade.

    We retain close and important ties with Switzerland and with so many countries across the world, within the EU and outside it.

    At home, a Conservative Government will recognize that it is the flexibility and innovation at the heart of our economy that determines our ability to compete internationally, far more than whether or not we share the same currency as others.

    We believe that if we hold no-one in our society back, we will be better placed to achieve this competitiveness and to ensure that no-one in our country is left behind.

    Internationally, we recognize that people don’t want a European super-state that leaves them feeling alienated from the faceless institutions that make their laws.

    The people of Europe deserve to live in a harmonious union of free moving, free trading nations, fostering prosperity and stability.

    The nations of Europe should settle for nothing less.

  • Caroline Spelman – 2003 Speech on Government and Iraq

    Caroline Spelman – 2003 Speech on Government and Iraq

    The speech made by Caroline Spelman in Westminster Hall on 4 June 2003.

    I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner) for securing this debate. There has been a dearth of debate on Iraq, particularly in the post-conflict period. Since Baghdad fell, we have been short of opportunities to discuss the matter. I believe that we are all glad to welcome the Minister back to the Department for International Development, but I am sure that the frustration of Members is tangible to him. He should be exonerated from the comments and criticisms that I am about to make because he was not in the Department during the period in question, but I have to ask why the contingency planning was so poor.

    As the former Secretary of State admitted in an interview on the Politics Show this past weekend,

    ‘the preparations for post conflict were poor, and we’ve got the chaos and suffering that we’ve got now.’

    She went on to say that the advice that she was giving about the need

    ‘to keep order, to keep basic humanitarian services running’

    was, to quote her, ‘all being ignored’.

    Those extremely serious allegations need further scrutiny. We cannot expect the Minister in a Westminster Hall debate of an hour and a half to give adequate answers to all the questions that have been asked, but there must be a thorough post mortem on why the contingency planning for the war was so poor.

    There is no excuse for the terrible sense of déjà vu that we are experiencing. The lessons from Afghanistan, which was a recent conflict, were not applied. The record in Hansard shows that in November and December last year the Secretary of State was deluged with questions, in which she was asked what contingency plans her Department was making for a possible conflict in Iraq. The record bears me out that a one-word answer of ‘None’ was given. In January, when asked what discussions were taking place with the Governments of surrounding countries about dealing with the impact of the conflict, the answer that came back was, ‘None.’

    I do not exonerate the former Secretary of State (Clare Short) from blame. It is unfortunate that she is not here this morning, participating in the debate. While criticising the poor planning, she should also be willing to answer some criticisms about her role in the matter. I feel strongly about such issues. There is a clear need to prioritise quickly. As other hon. Members have said, the key lesson is security, security, security. That should have been learned from Afghanistan and should have come as no surprise. The lack of security hits the vulnerable in Iraq most severely. As the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) said, it is women who suffer the most in the post-conflict scenario. It was recently reported that 13 schoolchildren were abducted from school in central Baghdad. It is not safe to get on with ordinary life. That is the reality of the situation, so we can hardly say that we have fulfilled our role in accordance with the Geneva convention as an occupying force restoring and maintaining law and order. That is a clear failing.

    Children are the other vulnerable group. I was appalled to learn that there is no possibility of a child nutrition survey. I saw shepherd boys lying in hospital in Kuwait, who had been injured in the conflict. A 14-year-old weighed only four and a half stone as a result of chronic malnutrition. There is an urgent need to help the most vulnerable, but that cannot be done without security.

    I join other hon. Members in chiding the Government on their contingency planning for phase 4. Clearly, it has failed. Phase 4 envisaged taking on board the Iraqi army and police, purging and vetting the Ba’athist elements and recycling them to help keep the peace in their own country. We were told that that did not work out because people removed their uniforms and went home with their automatic weaponry, which aggravated the security situation. Given the lessons learned in Afghanistan, will the Minister explain why there was no back-up plan for phase 4? The advantage about Iraq was that at least there was an army and a police force, and some possibility of recycling them.

    What is the thinking about inter-ethnic tension? Kirkuk has become a no-go area for the non-governmental organisations to work in because the returning Kurds are at loggerheads with the Arabs. The problem is spreading to Mosul. The situation is entirely predictable. It could have been envisaged in any contingency plan that was made last year. How does the coalition intend to deal with a situation that is only likely to become worse? I flag that up now to try to prevent a disaster from happening.

    After decades of distorted priorities under Saddam Hussein and the impact of sanctions, it is no surprise that the utilities are in such a bad state. It is a good deal worse than a sticking plaster job. The fact that there were no spares for the power stations and water supply plants has produced a chronic situation. It could all have been envisaged in the contingency planning. I have received calls from people who work in the utilities here and who want to help to restore the utilities there. Why were such matters not factored into contingency planning? Why were experts who were willing to help with the problem not lined up in advance? I reiterate that we need a proper post mortem into why the Government’s contingency planning for Iraq was so weak.

    What about the relationship with the United Nations? Resolution 1483 gives America and Britain legal cover to occupy and govern Iraq, but it has been said by the leaders of our countries that the UN will have a “vital” role to play. However, so far it seems to be very much the junior partner. The group whose role is most consistently eroded seems to be the Iraqi people. On 2 April, the Prime Minister said:

    ‘Iraq should not be run either by the coalition or by the UN but should be run by the Iraqis.’

    Is that still the case? Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s envoy to Iraq, John Sawers, told The Times that the Iraqis are not ready for democracy and that the coalition would appoint a political committee of 25 to 30 Iraqis. What role do the Government expect the Iraqi people, and women in particular, to play in running their own country?

    None of my remarks is intended to denigrate the hard work and accomplishments of our armed forces—we are all proud of what they have achieved in Iraq.

    The information that I have received from recently returned aid workers is that the Iraqi people are, contrary to much of what we hear in the media, delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein and glad to have British forces there trying to restore order amid the anarchy. Of course, they would like the current phase to end, and they would like to see a plan setting out the way forward.

    However, that should not detract from the role that our armed forces played in liberating the country from the repression that it suffered for far too long. The coalition’s victory over Saddam was swift and impressive, and our forces did Britain proud in their successful prosecution of the campaign. Our responsibility is to ensure that we do not ruin the peace.

  • Jonathan Evans – 2003 Speech Ahead of the Preparation for the European Council in Thessaloniki

    Jonathan Evans – 2003 Speech Ahead of the Preparation for the European Council in Thessaloniki

    The speech made by Jonathan Evans, the then Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, on 4 June 2003.

    Mr President,

    I congratulate you, President-in-Office, on the progress that has been made during the Greek Presidency on progressing enlargement. The special Athens Council in April was a landmark in the history of Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and we look forward to the ten applicant states taking their rightful place in the new Europe.

    However, looking at the priorities which were set out by the Presidency, two of them in particular have, sadly, been a disappointment.

    First, the Lisbon process. After three years, this agenda is stalled, indeed going backwards. It is disappointing that the Presidency has been unable to persuade Governments to get their act together on an issue that is fundamental to the prosperity of people across the Union. As a result, many EU countries are looking to a future of economic stagnation and deflation.

    Second, the Presidency wanted to see “the new Europe as an international motor for peace and co-operation”. Of course, the Iraq crisis was a difficult one. However, the way in which, during the Greek Presidency, the ‘Gang of Four’ convened in April in Brussels to consider alternative defence structures to NATO, merely reinforced anti-American sentiment.

    Thessaloniki will also mark the end of the Convention on the Future of Europe, when former President Giscard presents the conclusions of eighteen months of discussion. The Convention still has work to do in the coming two weeks, but I wanted to comment today on the emerging draft Articles published last week.

    At Laeken, Heads of State and Government said: “Within the Union, the European institutions must be brought closer to its citizens”. Having looked at the draft Articles in this Convention document, I fear that this noble ambition has fallen somewhat short of the mark. Indeed, I would say that, in many ways, it heads in precisely the opposite direction.

    The Convention is proposing a European Union that is more centralised, more bureaucratic, in many ways less democratic and certainly more federalist than is currently the case.

    I am a long-standing supporter of Britain’s membership of the European Union. But, the document that Heads of Government are likely to see in Thessaloniki is one that does, in my view, change the nature of the relationship between Member States and the European Union.

    In summary:

    A Constitution

    Incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights

    Legal status for the Union

    A President for the EU

    A Foreign Minister for the EU

    The collapse of the second and third pillars

    A Common Foreign and Security Policy

    The eventual framing of an EU defence policy

    A requirement for economic policies to be co-ordinated

    Harmonisation of certain taxes

    The establishment of a European Public Prosecutor

    The British Government has called the Constitution a “tidying-up exercise”, and therefore not worthy of being put to the people in a referendum. In contrast, the Danish Prime Minister is to submit the Constitution to a referendum because: “the EU’s constitution is so new and large a document that it would be right to hold a referendum on it”. 80% of the British public agrees.

    The former Prime Minister of Italy, Lamberto Dini, who also sits in the Convention, has said: “The Constitution is not just an intellectual exercise. It will quickly change people’s lives … “.

    This is not just a case of the British Government dismissing the right of the British people to have a say on their own future, it is also that the Convention proposals fundamentally change the relationship between the Union and the Member States and the way in which we are all governed.

    For those who have cherished the concept of a United States of Europe, the blueprint has been set out by Giscard, and the debate on the consequences of this draft Constitution should be based on this fundamental fact so honestly and sincerely articulated by President Prodi and many speeches in this debate.

    When the Inter-Governmental Conference begins its work later this year, my Party is determined to see that the accession states not only have a right to contribute to the discussion, they must also have a vote in Council on the crucial decisions it will take. The outcome of the IGC will impact on people in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, just as much as London, Paris and Berlin. It is unacceptable for the EU 15 to impose a radical new Constitution on these new Member States without them having a proper, democratic role in the outcome.

    We have long been the most ardent supporters of enlargement and the rights of the accession states to take their place at the European top table. But our Europe is one where diversity is celebrated, not one where countries are forced into an institutional straightjacket. We want a Europe that is democratic, prosperous, works with the United States to defend our freedoms and confront common threats. The Convention takes us down a different route to a Europe where the nation state is no longer the foundation on which the Union rests.

  • Damian Green – 2003 Speech at the LGA Conference

    Damian Green – 2003 Speech at the LGA Conference

    The speech made by Damian Green, the then Shadow Secretary of State for Education, on 5 June 2003.

    Last summer when I addressed your conference in Swindon, I arrived to be greeted by the local paper, which had as its entire front page a strong attack on Estelle Morris for snubbing the LEA and letting down Swindon’s schools. It is interesting to see that 12 months on, with a new Secretary of State, there has been such a huge improvement in relations between the Department for Education and Local Government—or so David Miliband tells me.

    I am for obvious reasons going to talk today about the funding crisis that is hitting schools up and down the country, in areas controlled by different political parties, in urban as well as rural areas. But I want to be constructive. I want to devote most of my speech to positive proposals about the future freedoms we need to give to schools, and the future role for successful LEAs.

    I will just say a few words about the current fiasco. It is not often that a Conservative politician has the pleasure of quoting the New Statesman, so I will enjoy agreeing with Francis Beckett in last week’s magazine. He wrote “Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, has for three weeks focussed his formidable political intellect on the schools budget crisis. Unfortunately he has not focussed on solving it. He has focussed on shifting the blame.”

    Exactly right. I think the Government owes an apology to LEAs for trying to set them as the fall guys for this crisis. I have seen many of the letters your councils have written showing how much money you were passing to schools. Detailed, factual letters, which have blown out of the water the idea that there is a five hundred million pound gap where the money has simply disappeared. I think everyone here knows that the crisis has been caused by a toxic combination of a local Government settlement that treated some councils much better than others, and a raft of increased costs on our schools which all but cancelled out the extra money that was put in. Stir in a dash of fancy footwork with standards fund money and you have the current mess.

    So let’s spend today looking forward instead of back. What I think would be the worst outcome from this crisis would be a new funding system devised in a hurry, because the Secretary of State is having a fit of pique with Local Government. Whatever your views about how to fund our schools, policy making on the hoof, driven by a sense of crisis and the search for scapegoats, will always be bad policy-making.

    It is extraordinary to realise that in one part of the Whitehall jungle the Deputy Prime Minister is running a committee designed to provide an LEA-based solution for future school funding, which is told to report by the end of this month, and next door the Prime Minister’s officials are working hard on a solution which cuts out the LEAs altogether. We are told that the Education Secretary is in the second camp.

    This is a lousy way to make policy. If we are to have effective and long lasting policy, rather than eye-catching press releases and poor delivery, Policy needs to be considered and evaluated. It should not be a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis, however serious, and it should certainly not be used as an excuse to shift the blame for current problems.

    The first step towards devising a funding system which will stand a chance of being fair and durable is to set it in the context of a regime which gives a clear role to Local Education Authorities, and freedoms for schools so that they can be the driving force for improvements in standards.

    Every policy these days needs a road map. So I think there should be a road map by which schools can become genuinely autonomous institutions. I think there should be a radical cut in the power of Government to interfere in the day-to-day running of our schools. I want this because the decisions that will improve the performance of schools year after year have to be made by heads, teachers, governors and parents.

    The guiding principle, as I have said, is that schools run schools best. By far the biggest influence on the standards set by a school is the effectiveness of the Head. So I want to go much further than the rather half-hearted attempts at decentralisation that the Government has already set out. The concept of ‘earned autonomy’ is, by any standards, a nonsense. The phrase itself is an oxymoron. If you are autonomous you cannot have earned it from a higher authority. And in practice the policy of earned autonomy is being implemented a rather arbitrary and centralising way.

    So we will replace this with a concept of assumed autonomy. If a school wants to be autonomous, and they have met some transparent criteria about standards in performance, discipline and governance, it will be their choice as a school whether they accept autonomous status. If they do, they will have control over how you spend they money, which will come to the school in a direct lump sum, and therefore mean that they will have more freedoms in other key areas.

    This autonomy will give schools the choice to manage their own affairs, remain under the control of their local authority, or join a federation of other autonomous schools. They could choose to employ their own teachers, have control over their own spending, and decide from where they buy support services such as transport, payroll, or catering.

    My intention is that the vast majority of schools would qualify for these freedoms. Obviously those who are seeing poor results, unacceptable disciplinary standards, or problems with general governance will need to be helped to reach the acceptable standard. But these will be the exceptions. One of the key functions of OFSTED, which will continue to undertake inspections, will be to look at these schools to put them back to full health.

    Clearly if schools are to be given the choice to be autonomous there is a significant change in the role of the Local Education Authority. Good LEAs will have a role in providing services that schools do not want to manage for themselves. For example, transport in many rural areas, perhaps Special Education Needs, payroll services. I am sure that local authorities that have a good track record in providing support services will continue to find a ready market for their services. Indeed, those who do not have a good track record would find themselves considerably sharpened up if they wished to continue to be significant service providers.

    The other key role for LEAs will be monitoring the progress of schools, particularly those that are struggling. There is enough data—at least enough data—demanded of schools now for this to be monitored on a continuous basis without the imposition of any new form-filling. This would allow the LEA to act as an early warning system between OFSTED inspections.

    And there is a potential new role for LEAs under our scheme for State Scholarships, which will allow new schools, state-funded but not state-run, to meet the needs of parents who are dissatisfied with the current provision. We want to create a new type of school within the maintained sector, of particular benefit to those in the inner cities who so often are unable to exercise the choices about their children’s education which the middle classes take for granted. I believe that an excellent education should be within the reach of everyone regardless of their personal circumstances. Now if we are to allow new bodies, whether voluntary or private, to set up new schools there needs to be a gateway body through which they pass, to check they meet the criteria. This could be an important role for local authorities. Since we would abolish the surplus places rule to enable the creation of these new schools, this role would replace the school planning function at local authority level.

    So there is a role for good LEAs in my vision of the future. A role in providing services for schools that want them, helping to provide information for parents so that standards can be continuously monitored and improved, and acting as a gateway for new schools from new providers within the maintained sector.

    All of this will necessarily entail a simpler funding system. Before this recent crisis I hadn’t met many who thought that the current system was simple enough to understand, or fair enough to deal justly with the different needs of different areas of the country. In the aftermath of this crisis, I suspect I never will. We are close to the position in the old joke about the Schleswig- Holstein problem. Only three people understood it, and one had died, one had gone mad, and the third had forgotten the answer.

    So we are working on a national funding formula for schools, and for the education functions of local authorities. This would remove the need for central Government to set minimum levels of delegation and to ring fence budgets. Which will mean that many of the problems that have arisen this year will have less chance of rearing their heads in the future.

    It will also allow parents to compare funding levels in different areas, force Governments to defend the weighting applied to different factors, and allow good local authorities to use savings from administration for improved services. The funding formula per child in a given area would provide a base figure for the State Scholarships—money which would follow the child.

    Now do I have a detailed plan that I can hand out afterwards? No. I try to take my own advice, and decide policies slowly and carefully, in consultation with those who will have to implement them. I have already had a number of useful discussions with practitioners pointing out the various difficulties, and I know that the Education Commission under the Chairmanship of Sir Robert Balchin is also looking closely at this issue. I look forward to hearing their findings on the issue.

    What is important is not just getting this central policy right, but putting it in the right overall context. That context is the one I mentioned a few minutes ago, in which the most important decisions in the Education System are taken by heads, teachers, parents and governors, rather than politicians.

    I hope it is clear that I am not, by habit or inclination, a centralist. But I am also not an anarchist. All schools, however independent we can make them, need to demonstrate to the wider community on a continuous basis that they are doing well for their pupils. That is why I see a continuing role for OFSTED both in inspection and in providing advice so that improvement programmes can be set in place in schools with severe problems. The assessment of the progress of improvements will also be a job for OFSTED.

    What I want to see is a system of much more independent schools, fulfilling their obligations to their local communities in an open and transparent way, checked regularly by outside bodies, and buying services they need from their preferred supplier. The main drivers for improving standards in these schools would not be central Government targets; it would be the heads and teachers, answerable to parents who will have been given choice in a way that the current system denies them.

    In this system the role of Governors will be at least as important as before. Good Governors are crucial to a well-run school. We are looking at the size of current boards of Governors, to see if they are not too large in some cases, and also at the detailed responsibilities of Governors, to see if they are not too onerous. It may well be that a more strategic role is necessary, both to make the job feasible for busy people, and to allow Governors to concentrate on what they should be doing.

    There is a thread running through all the proposals I have set out this morning. It is the notion of trust. We all say we want a more responsive school system, which offers excellence in our inner cities as well as the leafy suburbs. But we will never achieve that spread of excellence by diktat from Whitehall, and we will certainly never achieve it if the Government uses the notion of reform as a chance to pass the buck.

    There is a route out of the current morass. It requires a policy that puts the school at the centre of improving standards, and gives the appropriate role to politicians at both local and national level. Only if we trust professionals and parents to know what they want and how it can be delivered will we release the latent energies and talents of everyone within our school system.

    It is not a risk-free option. Some schools will do better than others. Some schools will fail, as they do under any system. But what I become more convinced about with every new crisis in our school system is that we will never achieve excellence under a centrally-driven, top-down, Whitehall-dominated system which generates more initiatives than improvements, and which demoralises teachers, heads, and local authorities. We need a complete change of direction. At present a quarter of our children leave primary school unable to read, write and count properly. 30,000 leave secondary school without a single qualification. The culture of truancy is growing, with a 15 per cent growth in the number of truants since 1996/97. Nearly half of all fourteen year olds do not reach the required standards in English, Maths and Science. And finally, the DfES now sends out 20 pages of paperwork every day of the school year, a real sign of the Whitehall knows best culture.
    We need a complete change of direction away from centralisation and towards local control.

    The ideas I have set out are designed to achieve just that. If we bring them to fruition, we will be able to ensure that no child is left behind, and no child is held back by the failures of a distant civil servant or Minister. We must give every child a fair deal, and a real chance to fulfil his or her potential. That is what our schools can achieve, and that is what we must achieve if we are to become a successful and civilised community in this country.

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the Launch of the Conservative Party Consultation Document on Health

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2003 Speech at the Launch of the Conservative Party Consultation Document on Health

    The speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Opposition, on 5 June 2003.

    The Labour Government is dangerously divided.

    And it’s got its priorities hopelessly wrong.

    That’s as plain today as it will ever be.

    We are not be going to spend today talking about the euro.

    We are going to talk about things that are already damaging the British people’s quality of life…

    Day in, day out…

    The public services on which they depend — and which are now failing them badly under Labour.

    But the Government are most certainly talking about the euro today.

    And they’ll still be talking about it tomorrow.

    And for a long time after that.

    Even as – we – speak, Mr Blair and Mr Brown are lining up their coalitions, on either side of the Cabinet table, ready for a battle over the euro — in which the losers will be the British people.

    While the Government are busy talking about something people don’t want — the euro — we will be talking about something they do want – better healthcare.

    This distracted and divided Government should be focusing on the things that really matter to the British people.

    The British people want better public services.

    Public services that work – and work well.

    We’ve already begun.

    For the past two years, we have been conducting the most wide-ranging policy review for a generation.

    A policy review focused on making the public services better.

    We have travelled – at home and abroad – learning from whatever works best for people.

    So last month, we promised to scrap Labour’s university tuition fees – their tax on learning.

    Today, Liam Fox and I are launching fresh, exciting proposals designed to give British people the better healthcare they need and deserve.

    Today begins a full consultation with patients and professionals on something that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

    The ‘patient’s passport’ is our plan to give people real choice over the health treatment they receive.

    This will be a fair deal for patients.

    A fair deal for everyone on healthcare.

    Our proposals will mean…

    Fairer healthcare, with no-one left behind, as we expand choice to everyone, not just those who can afford it.

    Fairer healthcare, with no-one held back, as we recognise the contributions of those who pay for their own treatment.

    Last year, a staggering number of people – 300,000 – paid for their own treatment.

    Most of them were pensioners — desperate people, who had suffered for too long.

    Under our proposals for a Patient’s Passport, everyone in the NHS will be able to get treatment at the hospital of their choice, free of charge.

    And people who choose to go outside the NHS for their treatment will be helped, not penalised.

    Our proposals would also mean…

    Better healthcare for everyone, with choice driving innovation and excellence.

    And more healthcare, as we expand the capacity of the health system in Britain.

    Our proposals would mean nothing less than a revolution in healthcare.

    We will preserve all the founding ideals of the NHS.

    Healthcare, according to your need not your ability to pay, and free at the point of delivery.

    But, for the first time in its history, the NHS would become a truly national health service — embracing our belief that healthcare is first and foremost about the patient.

    Compared to that, everything else is surely secondary.

    Our plans for a patients’ passport, combined with our plans to shift power from politicians to doctors, nurses and hospitals, will deliver a fair deal for everyone on healthcare.

    We care enough to find out what people really want, and we are open-minded enough to find out what really works.

    That’s why last month we promised to scrap Labour’s university tuition fees, abolishing their tax on learning.

    That’s why today we are proposing to give every patient in Britain a Patient’s Passport, making real choice available to all, not just those who can afford it.

    We have the courage and vision to commit Britain to a better course.

    Today, we are taking forward our fight, on behalf of the British people…

    For better public services — and a fair deal for everyone.

    A fair deal for people who find themselves paying higher and higher taxes, but not getting the improved public services they need.

    We will give them those better public services

    …public services where no-one is held back…

    …and no-one is left behind.

    A fair deal for people who deserve better healthcare.

    A fair deal for people who deserve a better education.

    A fair deal for people who have been made to wait and suffer too long.

    That’s our fair deal for everyone in Britain.

  • Liam Fox – 2003 Speech at the Launch of Conservative Party Consultation Document on Health

    Liam Fox – 2003 Speech at the Launch of Conservative Party Consultation Document on Health

    The speech made by Liam Fox, the then Shadow Secretary of State for Health, on 5 June 2003.

    Unless there is fundamental and radical reform, the NHS will never produce the quality of care we have a right to expect. And the people who would suffer most as a result would be the very people who rely most on the NHS.

    Labour’s internal divisions mean it is unable to deliver the reform that many
    recognise to be necessary. Only a Conservative Government will be able to deliver this.

    Our experiences during our extensive travels convinced us that we must undertake far-reaching reform on three broad fronts:

    – taking politicians out of running the NHS;
    – giving real freedom to health professionals; and
    – ensuring patients have real choice in health.

    We believe that the NHS is there to serve patients not vice versa.

    Freeing health professionals from the burden of red tape and the paperwork which targets bring will enable them to spend more time looking after their patients.

    This is vital, since ultimately greater professional satisfaction is the only route to more health care professionals, something which Labour has failed to understand.

    Our principle is that we want to see total spending on healthcare increase, but we will want to see the proportion of that spending that comes from other sources increase at a faster rate than that coming from the State. This will bring the UK more into line with the pattern of spending found in most of the European countries we have visited.

    We believe that choice – a Conservative word – must be available to all patients who will receive their health care through the NHS.

    But this alone is not enough. The standard of healthcare currently available to the British people is far below that which they have every right to expect in the world’s fourth largest economy.

    Over recent years, whereas there has been minimal growth in PMI, the number of people opting for self-pay (frequently the elderly, reflecting the high cost to them of PMI and their desperation to avoid excessive waiting times late in life) has increased by an average of over 20 per cent a year.

    In order to stimulate the creation of the new, non-NHS capacity referred to above, we will send clear signals that we are fully committed over the long term to measures designed to stimulate and strengthen demand in the voluntary and private sectors.

    The most effective way of doing this is to make it more attractive for individuals to supplement what is already being spent by the State through the NHS. This will therefore be on top of what they spend through their taxes, not, as Labour falsely claims, as an alternative.

    There are three main candidates which might be thus incentivised:

    • Personal PMI;
    • PMI available through company schemes; and
    • Patients who pay for a single procedure or item of care
    (the ‘self pay’ sector).

    We saw examples during our overseas visits of cash rebates, tax incentives and reductions of the price at source, with the State reimbursing providers.

    Attention needs to be given to companies who provide all their employees with a health insurance scheme and to those who negotiate reduced rates on their employees’ behalf with private insurers.

    This will include the large number of Trades Union members who benefit from these types of scheme.

    The self-pay market accounted for some 300,000 procedures last year (the age profile for which tends to be higher than that for personal PMI), a trebling since Labour came to power in 1997. If these patients did not opt to pay directly for defined elements of their care, in addition to what they have already contributed to the NHS through their taxes and National Insurance, they would be added to NHS waiting lists. It is doubtful whether the NHS would be able to cope with that extra demand.

    Under our proposals, patients will be able to move around the NHS, with the finance for their treatment automatically following them. This will mean that for the first time there will be access to a truly national health service. Patients will be given a greater say over where and when they are treated, and by whom.

    GPs could act as independent professional advocates for patients, advising them on factors such as comparative waiting times, outcomes and locations. This informed partnership between the patient and the GP would refute the argument advanced by Labour that patients would be unable to make sensible decisions about what form their treatment should take – a view which is both patronising and outdated.

    There is no acceptance in Labour’s centralised monopoly model that patients have any ownership, in part or full, of the funds they have contributed through their taxes to the NHS.

    We believe that the concepts of social solidarity – we all accept the need to cross-subsidise others in our society – and individual entitlement to contributions already paid are not mutually exclusive.

    We believe it is simply unacceptable for choice to be available to a small proportion of patients. We want it to become the norm that patients are free to get treatment beyond the NHS whatever their income. We will therefore extend the Patient’s Passport to services beyond the NHS – that is to the voluntary, the not-for-profit and the private sectors – as soon as capacity allows.

    This will yield two important benefits:

    • It will become a realistic option for a much larger proportion of the population to have access to a very much wider range of healthcare providers than is now the case.

    • Those who choose to have their health care provided within NHS hospitals will reap the benefit of shorter queues if more patients choose to have care elsewhere. Patients will, of course, be able to stay entirely in NHS hospitals if they choose: nobody will be compelled to go outside.

    The value of the Patient’s Passport beyond the NHS – i.e. whether patients take some or all of the standard tariff funding that patients can take to voluntary or private hospitals – will need to take account of several factors: the total cost to the public purse, the level of available capacity from other providers, the predicted effect on NHS demand, the effect on the current private insurance market and the need to promote greater diversity in provision.

    During the 1980s, the Conservative Government brought choice in home ownership to millions of people who had been denied it by socialist dogma.

    This laid the basis for a home-owning democracy in which all social groups were able to take part.

    The next Conservative Government will set patients free from the restrictions they face in the centralised Labour model of the NHS, so that all patients can benefit from the type of high quality and accessible care which is taken for granted by so many of our neighbours.

  • Michael Howard – 2003 Response to the Chancellor’s Euro Assessment Statement

    Michael Howard – 2003 Response to the Chancellor’s Euro Assessment Statement

    The response by Michael Howard, the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons on 9 June 2003.

    “The time of indecision is over.” That was what the Chancellor said about the euro six years ago.

    It’s time, he said, to “establish clear national purpose”, to show “economic leadership”, to “make . . . hard choices”.

    “Divisions,” he said, led to “indecision” and policy that was “inconsistent and unclear”.

    Today ministers are speaking with one voice. They are united in common purpose, with one objective only in mind: to paper over the cracks which have riven them apart over the last few weeks.

    Is it not clear, from any objective reading of the evidence, including the 18 volumes we were given today, that joining the euro would damage our prosperity, destroy jobs and lead to an irreversible loss of control over our economic policy? That is certainly our view. And it is the view of the clear majority of the people of this country.

    Today’s statement is not the result of any real assessment of Britain’s national economic interest. It’s a result of the frantic efforts by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to cover up their differences. After all, that’s why the five tests were thought up in the first place.

    Indeed, the Prime Minister was so determined that the Treasury view wouldn’t be decisive that he thought the unthinkable. He suddenly saw the merits of Cabinet decision-making. There’s a first time for everything. This Prime Minister will pay any price to do down his Chancellor.

    There they sit: united in rivalry. Each determined to frustrate the other. Each determined to scheme against the other. Each determined to do the other down. So there’s no clarity in policy. There’s no consistency of purpose. And each of them is the loser.

    The Chancellor is losing. The Prime Minister is losing. And much more importantly, the British people are losing.

    The Government’s ability to deliver has broken down; on health, on education, and now on the euro. Blair goes one way, Brown goes the other way, and bang goes the Third Way, lost in conflict, compromise and confusion. No wonder so little under this Government ever gets done.

    That’s the price we are all paying for the fault line at the heart of this Government. What a humiliation for the Chancellor! Wasn’t it the Chancellor of the Exchequer who briefed there was no reason for another assessment this Parliament?

    What if the 1,738 pages of data we’ve been given today had shown that the tests have been passed? How on earth are we to know whether a similar assessment in two or five or ten years’ time would reach a similar conclusion? If the data changes in one direction, how can anyone know it won’t change back again?

    If, at any particular moment in time, our growth rate or inflation rate or interest rates are at similar levels to those in the eurozone, how do we know whether that convergence is permanent? Might it not be because our economies were like ships passing in the night, coming together for a moment before moving off in different directions?

    The Chancellor predicted that trade with the EU could grow by as much as 50 per cent over 30 years. Will he confirm that his own department’s reports conclude that improved levels of trade are totally dependent on sustained convergence that has not yet been achieved?

    At the moment, we can choose to have the same interest rates as the eurozone when that suits our needs. But why on earth should we be forced to do so when it doesn’t suit our needs? Why on earth should we accept the straitjacket of a one-size-fits-all interest rate when it’s not the right rate for our economy?

    Competitiveness would be lost. Growth would be hampered. Jobs would be put at risk. And that will be just as true at the time of next year’s Budget and in a year’s time as it is now. Other countries have discovered these truths the hard way.

    This party has learnt its lesson from the experience of fixed exchange rates. But the Government has not — despite the fact that the present Chancellor was calling for “early entry” to the ERM nearly a year before we joined. Today the national economic interest took a back seat. As the Government dithers, uncertainty is maximised.

    This is the Prime Minister who promised in Opposition not to be derailed by “internal bickering” on Europe. This is the Government whose election manifesto in 1997 pledged that Labour would make a hard-headed assessment of Britain’s economic interests, rather than be “riven by faction”.

    This is the Government which promised to “prepare and decide”. But now it’s “not prepare and decide”. It’s not even “wait and see”. It’s just “hope and pray”.

    Today they haven’t put off a referendum because they’re against joining the euro or because they think it will damage the national economic interest. They haven’t put off a referendum out of conviction. The only reason we are not having a referendum now is that they know they can’t win it.

    Today’s statement comes from a divided Government, a Government on the run. This whole exercise has been an exercise in deceit. The deceit that they had the national economic interest at heart. The deceit that they wanted an objective assessment of what this country needs. The deceit that they were united. It is time for an end to the deceit. It is time for an end to the duplicity.

    This is not the end of the beginning for this Government. It is the beginning of the end. And the sooner it ends, the better it will be for the national economic interest and for the British people.