The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Category: Prime Minister (1990-1997)

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the Association of American Correspondents – 26 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the Association of American Correspondents in London on Thursday 26th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Just as I left Downing Street, if Gus will pass it to me, the Foreign Office gave me an extremely interesting brief and it contained an extremely interesting speech and it is so interesting I think it should be held under the 30 year records. And if we could assemble here in Browns Hotel in 29 years I will leak it to you.

    Maureen, thank you very much indeed, I am very pleased to be here. And I just want to talk to you perhaps very briefly and leave a rather longer time for questions perhaps than the 15 minutes you had in mind because my experience of your British colleagues is that they are modestly interested in what you have to say and extremely interested in how you reply to the important questions that they have about the things that you were not even prepared to mention.

    So I will just speak briefly about a few matters and then we will open the floor to any questions you choose to ask.

    Let me touch on several contemporary matters that I think are of importance to us here in the United Kingdom and also of importance to the United States as well. I know there is a great deal of discussion, debate, in some areas uncertainty about what is happening in the European Community and what it actually means both for the Community, for wider Europe and for the relationship with the United States as well.

    So let me just try and put that into a proper context for you. The European Community has been developing for a long time, it had a very significant development when Britain joined it in the early 1970s, it developed very dramatically when Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act which extended qualified majority voting and extended the competence of the European Commission, and also introduce the Single Market to the European Community in the mid-1980s.

    And now they are marching forward to two extremely critical inter-governmental conferences on economic and monetary union and political union towards the end of this year. There are several points to be made without touching on the detail of the treaties. The direction of Europe is for a greater degree of integration, there is no doubt about that. But much of that integration I believe is on the basis of cooperation, not compulsion, in terms of the direct responsibilities of the Commission and the difficulties of qualified majority voting.

    There has been a great deal of discussion in the last few days about the new text for the political union treaty and we have very considerable reservations about much of that text, but we will go on negotiating within Europe to try and find a satisfactory agreement when we get to Maastricht in December.

    And nobody should under-estimate the communal wish within the Community to get a satisfactory agreement. The European Community is a strange beast for people to observe from outside, there can be what seem to be very wide differences and magically as you actually get to the day and the time at which negotiating positions have to be shifted and decisions have to be made, it is generally the case that a solution can be reached.

    I cannot promise you that in terms of Maastricht but I can say to you there is a general will around the European Community to try and reach an agreed conclusion both in the monetary union conference and the political union conference.

    But I think there are some wider issues in Europe as well. The one thing that the European Community must not become in the years ahead is a rich man’s club with a girdle thrown around it, either a girdle of protectionism which it will not become though I know the concerns there are in the United States, or a girdle in another sense that it says to the rest of Europe: Here we are, the European Community, we are doing very well thank you very much and there is no room for the rest of Eastern Europe and beyond. That is not the direction that I believe the European Community will go in.

    After the Second World War, Europe essentially divided into two. It divided into Western Europe, a collection of sovereign free nations, many of which combined together either in the European Community or in EFTA, the European Free Trade Association. And then East of Europe which effectively became either directly or de facto satellites of the Soviet Union. That has broken up, the whole of Eastern Europe is now in a wholly different circumstance, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and increasingly other nations as well are adopting a free market approach and have aspirations either in the short, the medium or the long term to join the Western family of nations in the European Community.

    And the message that Britain will give the Community is perfectly clear. Whatever agreement we may reach at the end of the year in Maastricht, nothing in those agreements must effectively say to Eastern Europe and beyond: the opportunity of joining us in the future is not going to be there. That is why we have to complete the association agreements with Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, that is why we have to open our mind and our vision a little to seeing those Eastern European nations come in, when their economies are ready and it is many years away, into the European Community. And in saying that I would not exclude that meaning the Western republics in what up until now we have known as the Soviet Union as well and of course the Baltic States.

    Much of this is ten, twenty, years maybe even longer ahead. But we have an historical opportunity of the sort that occurs once a century if you are lucky, to change the whole pattern of the way life has been in Europe for a very long time. And that is not just a political change, not just an economic change, it is a security change as well and the opportunities of bringing the great Russian republics, all of them, increasingly into the Western sphere with Western influence and Western trade patterns and diminishing the military threat that has been there for so many years is a vision that ought to enable every single western politician to lift his eyes above the short term and look at the opportunity that is actually there.

    At the moment we have some other problems that concern us more on a day to day basis. What has been happening in Iraq over the past few weeks is a matter of concern. There is no doubt that the UN special commissioners have been hindered and harried, cheated and lied to by the Iraqis repeatedly over recent months.

    And I just hope Iraq realises how seriously we view the fact that they still have the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons and that they seem to be seeking to hide that capacity away from the West, notwithstanding the Security Council Resolutions. They ought not to misjudge how we view that matter. The remarks the President has made will be echoed here and echoed elsewhere I think in Europe very strongly indeed. And one way or another that nuclear capacity has got to be surrendered up and I hope the Iraqis will act accordingly and understand that. There should be not a shred of doubt in their mind about how seriously we view the way in which they are behaving, it is not acceptable and we will not accept it.

    Let me say a word about one or two other subjects that I know are of concern, if only perhaps to stimulate questions. Let me talk for a moment about GATT and the Uruguay Round. We have a great blockage in GATT, agriculture has been the main blockage, immense frustration in the Cairns Group, a good deal of frustration I know in the United States and a great deal of frustration in the United Kingdom as well.

    The risk of not having an agreement in the Uruguay Round is one that ought to make every single European, North American and other nation pause and think about their own domestic policies. It was for that reason that we pushed the matter so hard at the G7 Summit in London. There is a great deal to all intents and purposes already agreed in the Uruguay Round that would be a great loss to most trading nations were the Round itself not to be concluded.

    Our position is quite clear. We believe we should proceed for an agreement this year on the GATT Round and that means several things. It does mean that the Europeans have to move on agriculture. It does mean that the European Community have got to be a good deal more forthcoming than thus far it has been on many of the agricultural concerns that exist in the Cairns Group and North America. It does mean also that there are aspects of American tariffs, perhaps some of the high tariffs on ceramics, perhaps even some of their agricultural protection as well, will have to be tossed in the pot of a communal agreement.

    But the risk of not having an agreement, the risk that there is no agreement and countries then move to protectionism with all the distortion of trade flows that then there would be is a risk that no sensible politician ought to contemplate for a second.

    It is, to put it the other way round, a huge prize if we get agriculture in the GATT agreement in this Round which is what I firmly believe we need to do and we can then build on that in the future.

    The European Community is going to reform the Common Agricultural Policy but it is not going to have completed the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy within the necessary timescale for the completion of the GATT Round, it will have started it, it will be committed to it but it will not have completed it, not because it is seeking not to but because it physically would not be possible to reach the agreements that are necessary.

    Nonetheless we have to move ahead as quickly as possible and it may be that a very great burden in framing the consensus for an agreement will actually fall upon Mr Dunkenis [phonetic] shoulders later on this year. But he must be given every assistance to try and produce a satisfactory agreement.

    You invited me just to say a word about the special relationship. I think there is very little really to say about it. It is in remarkably good shape, it has always been in good shape. Those people from time to time who sense a peripheral short term difference between the United States and the United Kingdom are always perhaps over keen to say: “Well the situation has changed.” But over any run of years, the similarity in outlook on trading matters, on economic matters and on foreign affairs policies between the instinctive attitudes of the British and the instinctive attitudes of the United States are likely to mean that that special relationship is in very good repair indeed.

    And I would like to say something of that to you from the point of view of a European. It is much better recognised in my country, and I think in the rest of Europe, that we would not have had the peace and security that we have had in Europe in the last 40 years had it not been for the enormous dramatic presence in Europe of United States troops. We would not have had that peace and it is as important in the future, even with the shrinkage and disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, it is as important in the future that the United States retains its commitment to European defence as it has been in the past. It may be that the Europeans will pay a larger proportionate role in that, that they will bear a larger proportionate share of the cost in that, both of those things would be correct but the United States presence here will be critical in the future as indeed it was in the past.

    There is another aspect I think of the special relationship and that is the primacy of NATO. There is much talk about greater European defence and for the reasons I have just set out elements of that are thoroughly desirable. But the core of our defence must be the Atlantic Alliance, the NATO Alliance is the core that actually gives security to the whole of Western Europe and I see nothing in the short or medium term that will change that or should be permitted to change that.

    If I can just say a word about the domestic economy. The United States have been through a recession which may well have been a bit shallower than many people expected. The United Kingdom has been through a recession which figures emerging now suggest may now be coming, as it is I think now coming to an end, and that also may turn out when we have got all the figures to have been a little shallower than many people anticipated just a few months ago.

    The key point is that as the agreements mount up, as the statistics appear, it is becoming increasingly evident that the United Kingdom economy is coming out of recession. I think the OECD recognise that, the CBI recognise that, the Institute of Directors recognise that, economic commentators recognise that, the Governor of the Bank of England has spotted that, and there are one or two people who perhaps have not quite caught up with it. But out of the recession we are undoubtedly coming.

    But we have to come out of it slowly and in a measured form. Because what I do not wish to see is to come out of that recession in a way that will take us over the hump and back down into a further difficulty two years down the road. That is why we need a stability of exchange rate that the Exchange Rate Mechanism will undoubtedly give us, why we need the very low inflation rate which I am now confident we are well on the way to achieving, inflation has fallen dramatically and will fall yet further, and why we need a steady sustainable growth pattern that will encourage investment right the way through the 1990s.

    That is where I think we are in the economic cycle and the way in which we are coming out of the recession is very encouraging. I very much regret that we went in it but we are at least coming out of it in a way that encourages me to believe we are going to have sustainable growth in the 1990s.

    I think the only other thing I just want to say generally by way of introduction is this. It is very instructive sometimes to stand back, wipe away the stereotypes and have a look at the way the world has changed over the past few years. There is one super-power now and only one super-power – the United States. We have a shrinking world and a changing world. Many parts of the world where the United States and the United Kingdom would have found ready markets and dramatic exports are now industrialising themselves, around the Pacific Rim I suppose is the most obvious but by no means the only example. And they are now providing a different range of products, they are often able to provide products much more cost effectively than the old traditional markets are able to do. And so there is an increasing trend in the established democracies towards greater technology, greater investments and differing trade patterns.

    That is a very significant economic change that we have increasingly seen over recent years and because of those changing trade patterns, that greater inter-relationship, the fact that no nation increasingly, if I may use an old cliche, is an island however powerful it may be economically or militarily, that brings together the degree of cooperation there is not just in economic matters through the IMF and through the World Bank. but in political matters through the G7, through the Commonwealth, through the European Community, that inter-relationship of interests has made a significant difference in the way in which world diplomacy and politics are today conducted.

    And I believe it is a source of great strength for the United States that President Bush is such a master of that particular form of diplomacy. It is difficult to imagine that the telephone could be a more effective form of diplomacy than George Bush has made it over the last few years. And it is a matter of great reassurance to all of us that he is prepared to do that as the one remaining superpower, to continue to assume the responsibility that somebody must take in a world that even today is littered with all sorts of regional conflicts where leadership of one sort or another is required.

    Things will change again in the next few years, I have absolutely no doubt, but that reassurance that the United States is using its authority benevolently and is using its authority as a partner with the other members of G7 and with Europe collectively is a source of immense reassurance to those of us in Europe.

    So that in a very scattergun and superficial way just touches upon I think some of the high points in the political scene that one can see at the moment. I will not sketch out the details of those. The details of economic and political union and monetary union are deeply fascinating but not wholly riveting, so I will not sketch those out. I will leave the remarks at that very general level and seek to field any questions you may have.

     

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION (Craig Whitney, New York Times):

    Prime Minister, as Chairman of the G7 until the end of the year, I wonder if you could tell us what you thought the prospects were for the usefulness of aid to the former Soviet Union so that it does not drift any more in the way it was when Mr Gorbachev came here to see you in July? Do you think they are any further along, these republics, to being able to use large amounts of aid that they are now beginning to request, how will you approach that?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think firstly we have to determine the parameters of what we are talking about. Aid comes in different forms – food aid, other humanitarian aid, technical aid, and then what many people instinctively think of, large scale financial aid. In terms of food aid my strong guess is that at some stage in this winter, unless the Soviet Union are going to have an awful lot of people with no food, there will be a need for some form of Western humanitarian food aid. How much there will be. we do not yet have the information to know, but there is a great deal of official discussions going on at the moment to try and determine that. How far into the winter they will run short we cannot yet be certain of.

    But what we are already certain of is firstly that it is overwhelmingly likely they will need some and secondly that if it is to be of any value whatsoever, we will have to arrange for a distribution system within the Soviet Union as well to make sure the aid actually gets to where it is needed. I think that food aid may well be matched by a need for medical supplies as well, though again we do not have clear information about that.

    On technical aid, know-how, whether one calls that aid or whether one calls that assistance I do not know, but over the next few years they are going to need a great deal of help to move from the command economy they have had to the mixed economy that they are keen to have and that we would wish them to have. So there is going to be a great deal of assistance of that sort, all of which does not classically fall in the realms of aid as we think of it, a good deal of it is in the form of collaboration and joint ventures that would actually provide them with the advice and assistance. But I am sure there will be a need for that as well.

    As for large scale financial aid. we do not yet have the information available to us to know precisely what is necessary, we do not know what their gold stocks are, we do not know to what extent they are prepared to pledge their gold stocks. we do not know what their resources might be in terms of hard currency. There are a raft of questions, you could stretch the list to the end of the room and back again that we do not yet have the answer to.

    But there are several criteria when we examine that. We need to know first of all before we consider any aid of that sort whether they have a credible reform programme that they are going to put into place, and in order to provide one I have no doubt whatsoever they will need the advice and assistance of the International Monetary Fund, I do not believe they can do it without that.

    And secondly, if that degree of aid is needed and the criteria for it to be provided is to be put in place, then I believe they also have to show clearly to the West that they are going to reduce, and reduce significantly the proportion of their GNP that they spend on defence matters. We will have to be realistic about that, it will have to be phased over a period of years because there are very practical problems in suddenly making huge reductions. But that they will have to make reductions and continuing reductions I think is beyond doubt if we are to look seriously at that form of aid.

    QUESTION (Washington Post):

    You mentioned Iraq, I am wondering if you have discussed Iraq with President Bush and how close do you believe we are, the US, Britain and the allies, to recommitting troops and to actually re-engaging in combat against Iraq? And if the Americans do commit forces do you expect that your troops would also be recommitted?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We speak regularly and we have touched upon that amongst other matters is the answer to the first part of your question. As to the second and third parts of your question, the information this morning suggests that the Iraqis are changing their position and that the UN Commissioners will be released and that the documentation they have with them will be available to the United Nations, though photocopies of the documentation will actually be left with the Iraqis. So I think the crisis that clearly you had in your mind may, I emphasise may, be failing away on the basis of information I had earlier this morning. As to the third point, you know our record, make your own judgment.

    QUESTION (CBS News): [parts of question inaudible]

    Apparently the future security … of Europe are going to be more internal rather than external … Yugoslavia … does NATO have a role, clearly the attempts to mediate have not been very successful thus far?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    NATO is a defensive alliance, it is not an alliance that would seek to sort a problem out like Yugoslavia. Conceivably the Western European Union could, conceivably the United Nations could, the United Nations would clearly be the better of the two. For the time being, for geographical reasons, the European Community essentially has taken the lead and we must wait and see how the peace conference which reconvenes today actually develops. But I think if that were to fail and if events in Yugoslavia were to take a serious turn for the worst, I think it is to the United Nations that the problem would be most likely to go. But it is a very fluid situation there, a very fluid situation indeed.

    QUESTION:

    But there is a difference between peace-keeping and peace-making, peace-keeping does not work when there is no will, is there a need for peace-making?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Who do you think is going to make the peace? In Yugoslavia I do not think anybody is seriously proposing a peace-making force, that would be a commitment of a sort that you in the United States would remember from other areas and that we would too. So I think a peace-making force is difficult. If there is to be a peace-keeping force it would have to be on the basis that people actually had a peace to keep and that there was a commitment and a will upon the combatants to see that peace kept, then I think you may have the basis upon which you can consider a peace-keeping force. But short of that I think not. For the moment it is going to be diplomatic efforts that will continue in the short-term.

    QUESTION (Wall Street Journal):

    If I could turn back to the domestic situation, you mention the evidence that the economy is on the turn and on the up-swing, is that now an appropriate time to begin to think about an election in this part of the year as opposed to next year? And more generally if you cannot give us an indication can you tell us how you begin to weigh the variable opinion polls, economic statistics, etc?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well I think that is the most elegant way of asking the question that I have heard all day. And I am in some difficulty as to determine the most elegant way of not answering it, so perhaps I will just do that.

    QUESTION:

    If we are to believe what we see on BBC and ITV, Britain goes into the 21st century with Britain still the most secretive society in the Western world, the Labour Party is making much of the proposed Freedom of Information Act and the Liberal Democrats want a Bill of Rights for people of this country. Mrs Thatcher once said that there would never be a Freedom of Information Act when she was Prime Minister, what is your view on these subjects to make Britain into a modern state like the rest of Europe?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I look at that pasty look of shock on Gus O’Donnell’s face at the thought that government is a nice secret house out of which nothing ever gets, if that were true I would not need him, he would be unemployed.

    The truth is that the premise underlying the question, from whatever noble source it may have come from, is essentially a false premise. There are certain security matters where we believe they should be kept for security reasons very quiet. We have a more liberal regime than some, a less liberal regime than others as far as that is concerned.

    Elsewhere in terms of the Freedom of Information Act we made significant changes a couple of years ago which many of our critics tend not to notice and I do not think there is any immediate need for more. As for a Bill of Rights, it may be that our critics have never heard of the Magna Carta, they may never have heard of the way in which Parliamentary democracy has moved on, they may never even have heard of Prime Minister’s Questions which I am bound to say to you is a good deal more effective than a Bill of Rights in terms of people getting their points across and getting their problems dealt with.

    We have an unwritten constitution, most countries have a written constitution, we do not, ours is unwritten, it evolves on the basis of statute law and court judgments reflecting statute law. And that has always been a way of life that has protected the rights of the individual, I think most dispassionate observers would say more effectively than almost any other country in the world. And I do not see any reason to change that and I do not have any plans to change that.

    What does one mean by a Bill of Rights? What rights are there that are not met in present legislation that would be covered by a Bill of Rights or by the legislation that we have in prospect? When people get to that it is actually extremely difficult for them to identify areas that do not fall in the security field that they would want covered.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible] I think your Citizen’s Charter is something like what they are thinking of, a Bill of Rights gives people an idea of what they are entitled to by society, and correct me if I am wrong but the average person does not know what his rights are and he has to go to a lawyer to find out and a lawyer costs money. Therefore your Citizen’s Charter [Inaudible]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Yes well the Citizen’s Charter is a great change in the culture of this country, people have not actually realised what a remarkable change in its culture it is. But it is really determining that the citizen has a better position to ensure they get a good service, a fair service from state monopolies than ever they had before and quasi monopolies, private sector monopolies as well. So to that extent it gives them a much greater right of information about their children’s school records, medical records, matters of that sort, that is certainly true. But the debate about freedom of information is often conducted in this country. What people mean is not freedom of information often when they talk about it in that sense, they mean a freedom of all sorts of security information which has traditionally never been produced.

    QUESTION:

    At the Economic Summit in July you said that if the Uruguay Round were to be flagging by the end of this year you would call together another G7 summit to try and head that problem off, is that still on your agenda, is that still a possibility and could such a forum be used to persuade some of the more reluctant partners that the Uruguay Round is the only way to go?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    If I may put a slight gloss on that. I was reported as saying that I would call together another group of Ministers. What in practice I said was that one would need to liaise with the G7 and find out how one dealt with the matter, whether that actually means a meeting or not I do not know, I said I cannot exclude that which I think is a slightly different point. We are at the moment in touch with governments on the question of the GATT Round to express our view about how we might move ahead. That is not something that suddenly happens, one does not say on 15 November: “God there is a crisis, let us all get together”, it is a continuing piece of diplomacy, we are continually in touch with our European partners and others about the necessity, not just the desirability, the necessity of moving ahead and making sure we get a GATT agreement. There is no meeting that I have with any of my European colleagues at Heads of Government level when the GATT round is not a staple part of the agenda.

    QUESTION:

    Even with Mr Mitterrand?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Of course with President Mitterrand. I had the opportunity of discussing it with him only a fortnight or so ago. I had the opportunity of discussing it with Mme Cresson on Monday of this week, so yes most certainly.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I do not think breast beating like that will help him to remove it in the way he should. I just want to repeat the point that it is perfectly clear it has to go, that is the collective view of the United Nations, they put their hand to a resolution to that effect and that resolution is going to have to be enforced. How we enforce it we will consider in the light of events as they evolve, I do not want to make dramatic statements about that. But the fact of its enforcement ought not to be in any doubt.

  • Mr Major’s Comments on the Soviet Union – 25 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s comments on the Soviet Union, made in an interview in London on Wednesday 25th September 1991.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked who he thought would be the strongest leader to come through in the Soviet Union].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    When I went to the Soviet Union I had the opportunity of meeting President Gorbachev, President Yeltsin and a large number of other Soviet leaders. Since then back in London I have had the opportunity of discussions with Mr Lushkev, Mr Sobchek and with a number of other leaders as well. So I have had the opportunity of seeing most of the significant Soviet leaders within the last three weeks or so, and it has been a series of very worthwhile meetings.

    For the immediate future I think that Mr Gorbachev and Mr Yeltsin will work together, they have different though complementary roles, they recognise that it is necessary internally for them to work together and I believe they recognise that it is necessary externally for them to work together for the time being.

    What will happen in the longer term future no-one can say. I believe there is no doubt that greater authority and influence is moving to the republics than was previously the case, but there is a role in the centre and we must wait and see how the Russian political system settles down, it may well be a form of confederation with both a continuing role for the President of the Union and the President of the republics.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked which policies the G7 should have towards the Soviet Union].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me put the answer to that question in a proper context. What has happened in the Soviet Union in the last few months is of historic importance, we have seen the ending of a communist state, the end of communism and the rapid development of a country that wants to move towards the sort of market system that we are familiar with in the West and that you are familiar with in Japan. They are absolutely momentous changes and nobody should understate that in any way.

    Because they are so important economically, politically and socially I believe the G7 countries should assist the Soviet Union to go down the process of reform, we cannot do it for them. Any help that we provide to the Soviet Union will be peripheral to the help that they must themselves provide in order to continue this reform path. But providing they have a proper reform programme and providing they make their own contribution, and I think by that we must look to see they have a firm commitment to reduce their defence expenditure, then I think it is in everyone’s interest, the interest of people in the Soviet Union and the interest of people in the rest of the world to help them carry that reform programme forward and that is what we would wish to do.

    In the short term this winter that may mean assisting with food, with the distribution of food, with all sorts of mechanistic assistance, with the development of schemes such as the British Know How scheme so that we can encourage collaboration between our companies, joint enterprises, and also so that we can give them the advice and experience we have gathered from years in how to run a successful mixed economy.

    I know that Japan has very significant joint collaborative schemes in the Soviet Union and I believe that is the right way forward and I think you will find many other countries going precisely down that path.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if the northern territory issue had been discussed].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There is very close coordination amongst the G7 countries. For example, I liaised with Prime Minister Kaifu both before and after my visit to the Soviet Union and we exchange joint experiences where we think that would be helpful. I did raise the question of the northern islands with President Gorbachev, I cannot say I got an answer that encouraged me to believe there was going to be swift movement, I did make it clear to him that I thought movement on the northern islands would be very helpful for their relationship with Japan and for their wider relationships, but President Gorbachev made no commitments on our discussion.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the Windsor Fellowship – 25 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the Windsor Fellowship, given in London on Wednesday 25th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Thank you very much indeed for that very kind introduction and indeed I am very glad to be here this afternoon to present awards to the Windsor Fellows.

    It is in many ways a unique programme, the Windsor Fellowship, and I think for that reason amongst others it justly deserves the support that it receives from everyone present here today. And I say that for a number of reasons. The job the Fellowship does, the example of the Fellows who are here is very important, not just important to them but important to others and I want to use this opportunity this afternoon to explain why I believe that to be the case.

    Many of us present this afternoon doubtless have different views, different backgrounds, perhaps in some cases different political opinions. But all of us would share one wish, and I think the wish that all of us would share would be to see a truly open society and in that I believe the Windsor Fellows have a particular role to play.

    I believe deeply that all men and women should be able to go as far as their talent, their ambition and their effort can take them, there should be no barriers of background, no barriers of religion, no barriers of race, and the society that I want to see is a society of opportunity where people can better themselves and their families by their own efforts, a society that encourages each and every member to fulfil his or her potential to the utmost.

    In short, the sky should be the limit for each and every one of us. But all too often society’s attitudes still impose a false ceiling instead of providing a ladder. Modern society is not a drab, monochrome affair, thank goodness, indeed it probably never has been, I know that. The Windsor Fellowship knows that that is the case because the Fellowship works to enhance understanding and pride in ethnic origin. But it is also concerned, as I am, to work for more effective integration in the United Kingdom socially, culturally and economically.

    We have to consider what integration means. It does not mean everyone being like everyone else. Uniformity is not integration and uniformity is not my philosophy and neither has it ever been the philosophy of my Party. Integration I think is something rather different, it is like a successful team, all the different players have recognised roles to play, they have contributions to make and they are accepted by each other as equal parts of the whole.

    I know from personal experience what a vital and rich contribution people from the ethnic minorities can make. I lived 35 years ago in Brixton, later I was a Councillor for some years in Lambeth, I know of the energy, the zest, the excitement of the people who helped to build up the community in that area. And I had the opportunity recently of tasting some of that again when I revisited Brixton to open a nursery at St Paul’s Church, I had the opportunity of talking to the new youngsters who live in Brixton. And just like my generation, what they wanted to talk about was cricket and football and the same sort of things that concerned me so many years ago.

    I have never experienced personally what racial prejudice is like but I do understand prejudice, I do understand what it is like to be out of the mainstream of society, I do know what it is like to be unemployed and they are three conditions too commonly experienced by people from ethnic minorities in this country.

    So let me say here and now that I regard any barrier built on race as pernicious. And that is all the more so as black and Asian people have lived in this country for a very long time. In the 18th century, for example, a sizeable population of Africans and west Indians were in London. In the later 19th century people from the Indian sub-continent were coming to London in sizeable numbers. In Cardiff, which I visited just last week, there is a distinctive black population near the docks and they have been there since Victorian times. And there is of course a constant flow of students to Britain from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia and has been since the latter half of the 19th century. Indeed African children were sent here to school in the 18th century and have continued to do so ever since.

    Many of these people of course led unrecorded lives, as did the white population, but there are individuals that stand out as a result of what they were and what they did. Ira Aldridge, the great black actor who barnstormed England for years. The Jamaican nurse, Mary Sokol [phonetic], who died in London in the late 1880s after sterling service in the Crimea and London hospitals. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the composer and conductor. And the early Indian Members of Parliament, even though I must tell you one of them was a communist. And of course the great Leary Constantine, that wonderful cricketer who became the first black peer in this country.

    I welcome the fact that there are now four black and Asian MPs in the House of Commons, even though I do not share their politics. There are a number of good Conservative candidates from the ethnic minorities in the past and there are more now, I hope there will be some black and Asian Members of Parliament on my side of the House after the next General Election, John Taylor in Cheltenham, Nirj Deva in Brentwood and Ongar, Lurline Champagnie whom I saw again just earlier today in Islington North. And I could go on with that list but time presses and curtails it.

    So there is a long history of black and Asian Britons, and yet still, despite that, prejudice all too often stretches out its tentacles and bars the way forward. And so I am determined to work for a society where that prejudice shrinks and then withers away for reasons of straight, simple, straightforward justice and because of my belief in the value of the individual.

    And because also of our nation’s prosperity. As the Windsor Fellowship realises, as the government appreciates and understands, this country cannot afford to ignore the potential of any of its citizens.

    I have been very struck in travels round the world over the last year by the pace of technological change in every part of the world and if this country cannot do as well or better we will fall behind. And to do as well or better we must harness to the full the potential of all our citizens. Capabilities and not colour is what must matter and will matter in the future.

    The government can only do so much to combat prejudice through legislation, but legislation certainly does have its place. And indeed we have strengthened the law on incitement to racial hatred. There is new legislation in the Public Health Order 1986, which came into force in 1987. And Geoffrey Holland I have no doubt has outlined employment legislation and policies.

    Our action for citizen initiatives promote enterprise, education and training in the inner city areas. The Section 11 grants now amount to over 100 million a year, overcoming barriers for pupils with Commonwealth backgrounds and yet a poor command of English. And there were new arrangements introduced last year and we must see how those work. We have the new Ethnic Minority grant paid to the voluntary sector through Tex for training and for enterprise.

    And we are also introducing new reforms in education and the Fellows here today are proof of the value of education. I know of the very high value which people from the ethnic minorities traditionally place on education so I want to spend just a few moments talking about that.

    I know that parents from the ethnic minorities are rightly in my view concerned that their children should have the best possible start in life and high standards in schools are absolutely key to this. I know that many Afro-Caribbean parents especially are dissatisfied with education provided by some local authorities, they are concerned that their children are not stretched enough and some have even gone to the extent of setting up their own schools, the John Loughborough School in Haringey is an example of that. And I know that many others work desperately hard to send their children to independent schools.

    Our education reforms directly address these concerns; they are designed to raise standards across the board for all pupils. The national curriculum guarantees that every child gets a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum. National testing means that all children will be encouraged to achieve their full potential with national standards to measure up to and it is clear already that national tests are a powerful engine for raising standards and for raising expectations and in this year’s tests, one-third of pupils did better than their teachers expected and if only politicians of all parties had a similar success rata I am sure we would all be very happy.

    We will shortly be publishing what I believe is a landmark document, the Parents’ Charter; we will follow up in more detail what the Citizens’ Charter said about education; we will set out clearly parents’ rights and their responsibilities as well; and we will give parents a much greater say in the running of state schools.

    I sometimes wonder what parents need to break into a system which has sometimes resembled Fort Knox. I think the answer is clear: they need information, facts, figures; knowledge for them is power. Schools, like children, do best with the active support of parents; parents can only give that if they are fully informed about what is happening in the schools so the Parents’ Charter will make clear the steps we are taking to ensure parents are given genuine, relevant information about schools in their area, the school their child attends and their child’s progress and we must help parents to become equal partners with teachers in their child’s education.

    Under the Parents’ Charter, parents can expect to have information about all the schools in their locality, grant-maintained schools, city technology colleges, independent schools as well as local authority schools and league tables of public exam results, the national curriculum test results, truancy rates, the destination of school-leavers, all that information will be available and it will be easier, therefore, for parents to compare schools when they begin to consider and choose how and where they would like their child to be educated. They will know exactly what is on offer before they choose the school that they want for their child. And parents will get a report on their child’s progress at least once a year; that report will name a teacher who will discuss the report with parents if they wish so parents can monitor their child’s progress. Independent inspectors will regularly assess state schools’ performance; parents will get summaries of their reports. Where there are weaknesses, the school governors will have to tell parents how they plan to put things right and keep on telling them until the things are put right. Parent with older children will get similar information on sixth form and further education colleges and we will publish the exam results and the destination of leavers.

    The Charter is important for all parents so it must be accessible to all parents and it will therefore be made available in the main minority languages so that all parents can use it and it should, believe, especially help members of ethnic minority communities who feel disadvantaged by lack of information about schools and lack of opportunity for involvement in their child’s education. I hope, too, that black and Asian parents will seize the new powers we are giving to school governors. There is a fundamental shift of decision-making powers to individual schools and colleges; school governors now take key decisions for their schools; they can best judge spending priorities within their schools and they know best the needs and aspirations of pupils, parents and local communities.

    Next year, the four-year term of office for many school governors expires and that creates marvellous opportunities for members of the ethnic minority communities to put themselves forward and I hope people will consider taking advantage of that; I hope many of you will take advantage of it and will encourage your friends to do so as well.

    Some people argue, I know, that these reforms are all very well for the majority of schools but some schools will be left behind, especially inner city ones but I am confident that schools everywhere will benefit from our national programme of reforms. But some inner city schools do face special difficulties; that is why Kenneth Clarke has launched the new grant scheme starting next April to raise school standards in the inner cities. Funds will be targeted on schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas; they will support projects to strengthen the delivery of the curriculum, particularly in the vital area of reading; they will foster links between school, home, the wider local community, including business.

    Much, of course, depends upon the teachers. I should like to see more of our best-quality teachers working in the inner cities. Teaching in the inner city schools can be immensely challenging but also very rewarding. I would like very much to see more black and Asian teachers in our schools too, both in the inner cities and elsewhere; the potential of such teachers as role models for black and Asian pupils is enormous.

    I hope that our reforms will enable mothers and fathers concerned about their children’s education to break into the system and to bring about the improvements that they want in the interests of their children but education is not the be-all and the and-all; it is not a cul-de-sac; it should be an ever-widening road leading on to opportunities at the end of it and that is especially important for young people from ethnic minority groups. There is now a greater concentration in the under-sixteens – 8.2 percent – but unemployment rates are still one-and-a-half times higher for ethnic minority groups than for the white population. That is an improvement on five years ago when it was nearly twice as high but it is still not good enough and one of the reasons is an important reason why our battle against inflation is so vital. We are now winning that battle. Underlying inflation is down to 4.7 percent; we are on track for below 4 percent inflation by the end of the year. Only when inflation is kept down, can we look forward to stable and secure growth in the economy and that is essential to offer greater employment opportunities to everyone, including black and Asian graduates.

    Furthermore, firms must employ people on merit, not on the colour of their skin. We cannot afford stereotypes. At a college of further education in Bridgend last Friday, I saw young women being trained as engineers; there was a practical illustration of one stereotype being broken down. We have no place for stereotypes of gender and no place for racial stereotypes either.

    I am not one of that breed of politicians who think the Government can do nothing but if I don’t subscribe to the view that the Government can do nothing, neither do I subscribe to the view that the Government can do everything. It is up to individuals, up to individual companies, and that is why the Windsor Fellowship is so important. Whilst the Fellowship’s activities are designed to help west the hopes and aspirations of black and Asian undergraduates, it is equally committed to help the needs of employers in industry, commerce and the public sector. The Fellowship exists as an answer to two conflicting statements: the black graduate saying; “They didn’t want to employ me!” and the predominantly white institution saying: “They don’t apply!”.

    Each of your Fellows makes an important contribution to ensuring that other black and Asian graduates have a better chance of a job which will stretch and reward their skills. Once in a firm or a Government Department, you can show any doubters that it is your skills that count, not your colour and the ripple effect goes well beyond that: your success as Windsor Fellows lays a responsibility on you as role models and possibly even mentors for your friends, your brothers, your sisters and their peers.

    I am glad that some very important Government Departments participate – the Department of Education and Science, Employment, Health, Social Security, Defence, Home Office, the Lord Chancellor’s Department, the Cabinet Office. I hope that the list will soon stretch beyond these.

    The Civil Service is wholly committed to being an open, equal employer. There are genuine opportunities, genuine competition and that was not always the case. In days gone by, being the second son of a duke could guarantee you a sinecure in the Civil Service for life; the Trevelyan-Northcote reforms in the second half of the 19th century put an end to that sort of nepotism and opened up the Civil Service but we still need to be alert to possible discrimination and so we will maintain ethnic monitoring and special training programmes to ensure fair chances for everyone.

    I hope that one day such programmes will be unnecessary. I expect the Windsor Fellowship will one day count itself successful when it can wind itself up. Meanwhile, I wish it and you every success. No doubt you will remember in your careers that the Fellowship programme wasn’t just about self-reliance and personal development – it was also about understanding the needs of others and how to be active citizens in your local communities as you become graduate Fellows and I note with a very considerable amount of pleasure that voluntary work is an integral part of your programme.

    The Windsor Fellowship’s expectation doesn’t stop at your qualification and enhanced skills; you are expected to go on caring for one another and never stop working for a more cohesive society, no matter what your profession may be or how far you go in your career. I can assure that the Government will lead in combating discrimination through employment practices in the Civil Service, through maintaining legislation and through example.

    Finally, I want to tell you something that happened three years ago at a Conservative Party Conference: a young woman finished her speech by saying she was black, British and Conservative and proud of all three. I hope that those of you are Windsor Fellows and graduate Fellows can say that you are black, British and Windsor Fellows and be proud of all three and I wish you the best of luck in the future. [Applause].

  • Mr Major’s Joint Doorstep Interview with Edith Cresson – 24 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint doorstep interview with the French Prime Minister, Mme Edith Cresson, in London on Tuesday 24th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Good afternoon, we have had the opportunity over the last two and a half to three hours of a very wide ranging and free discussion over matters of mutual concern. We have been able to discuss the present position on the two inter-governmental conferences on economic and monetary union and political union, we have been able to discuss a number of bilateral matters, Yugoslavia and a series of other issues both bilateral and international that are of concern to both of us.

    I think both the Prime Minister and I have found it a very useful exchange of views, we had the opportunity in France some weeks ago of a brief exchange, this was a much more substantial opportunity to discuss current matters and we have agreed that we will continue this dialogue up to the Maastricht IGCs where we both hope we will reach a satisfactory conclusion and of course on bilateral matters beyond that.

    MADAME CRESSON:

    Thank you. Our conversation has indeed been very useful and instructive. It has enabled us to clarify our positions in relation to the Maastricht summit at the end of the year. Regarding the two main points of economic and monetary union and political union, we have noticed that we agree on many points. In any event, we are very determined to advance on these two issues during the Maastricht summit.

    It has been a friendly and warm conversation, in a very pleasant atmosphere; we have been able to get to know one another better and move forward on these issues. Our respective teams are in contact and will have further talks on the last text of the Dutch presidency which needs closer study from both sides.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    As the Prime Minister has indicated, there is a very strong agreement between us that it is highly desirable to reach a conclusion at Maastricht on the intergovernmental conferences providing we can. I think that is something we both feel very strongly, a great deal of progress has been made, there is a little more progress still needed, but we will be working together to see if that is achievable.

    QUESTION (Elinor Goodman):

    Do you think you have Madame Cresson’s support in opposing further powers for the European Parliament at Maastricht?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It is a mistake, Eleanor, to assume that we are opposing all the powers for the European Parliament, we think there are areas where the European Parliament should have greater authority, we are discussing that with the European Parliament and with our partners and we had made some proposals for the political union text. So that is the British position but I will invite the Prime Minister to respond on behalf of France.

    MADAME CRESSON:

    Yes, the French position is very similar. That is to say, the powers that the European Parliament might gain are part of a whole package. In this context, we will have to assess what extra responsibilities will be given to the European Parliament. we are of course very open on that topic.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    As the Prime Minister indicates, the question is determining what extra responsibilities must go to the European Parliament.

    QUESTION (Adam Boulton, Sky TV):

    Mme Cresson, could we ask you about the situation we have at the moment with French farmers and the import of English lamb, what action do you propose to take on that to allow the import of British lamb on to your market?

    MME CRESSON:

    I have noticed that both the British and the French Press have covered this issue in many articles. I would like to say that French agriculture is at present in a situation that is very worrying. Our farmers, and in particular the beef and sheep breeders, find themselves in a very difficult situation.

    Next Sunday a very large demonstration organised by the farming world will take place in Paris, to express its worry about the future. We cannot ignore this. Regarding your question on British lamb and the attacks on British lamb imports which have taken place, we are of course very shocked by such incidents. The French population is against such actions in general. Measures are of course taken to sanction such incidents. But one has to take into consideration the anguish of French breeders, Also, these British losses are being reimbursed. I know that moral prejudice is difficult to compensate but as far as financial prejudice is concerned, the French side is dealing with this.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    The Prime Minister has indicated just now that she is concerned about that but there are very real problems in France and she set those out but that she does not condone the difficult problems that have been faced and that there will be compensation for the damage that has been caused. This is a matter that we were able to discuss at some length over luncheon and it is a matter I know the Prime Minister proposes to take a very direct interest in.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, have not the Dutch today called your bluff by insisting on continuing with a federal Europe in their draft treaty on political union and how do you react to the news that we expect Jackie Mann to be released at 6.00 tonight?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    On the second point about whether the British hostage, Jackie Mann, will be released at 6.00, I very much hope that that will prove to be the case, I do not think it would be of any help to Mr Mann, Mrs Mann or anyone else for me to comment until that happens except to say just this. I hope very much that it is true, it has been an agonising time for Mr Mann, an equally agonising time I suspect for Mrs Mann, and it would be my fondest wish and believe everybody else’s as well that he would be released very speedily and returned to his family, I very much hope that will be the case but we must await events, I hope we will not have to wait too long.

    On the earlier point which is the revised Dutch text on political union, I have not yet seen the revised text on political union, have heard rumours of what it said, I gather it will be available to me later on this afternoon and I will examine it very carefully on that occasion.
    But I have made it perfectly clear to the Dutch Prime Minister and others the areas where we saw very grave difficulty when we had a meeting last week. They can be in no doubt about those difficulties, I set them out clearly, they are still there.

    But even apart from that, once the text has been received it is a basis for further negotiation, it is not a fait accompli, there will be many people across the whole of Europe who would have reservations about part of almost any text that any Presidency could produce, so what it is is a basis for further discussion and when we have the text we will discuss it and we will set out the reservations we have.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No, everyone is very keen for there to be great disagreements but there is great agreement in the Conservative Party about the fact that we need to be in the centre of Europe, that we need to carry the debate forward. I do not have any doubt at all that we will be able to reach satisfactory conclusions. This is the way Europe operates, a proposal comes forward, it is often controversial, it is often a matter of very great controversy among some member states, but after discussions a conclusion is reached that is satisfactory for all the member states.

    At the moment we are in the preliminary stage, by the time we get to Maastricht I hope we will be in a position to reach agreement, I cannot tell yet, there are certain reservations beyond which we cannot go but at the moment I still anticipate that the will to reach a collective agreement at Maastricht will prevail and that clearly is the best answer for us and the best answer for the whole of Europe.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview in London – 24 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s doorstep interview in London, held on Tuesday 24th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am very pleased indeed to be able to confirm that the British hostage, Jackie Mann, has been released and is now on his way to Damascus. I expect that he will be safely in British hands by 9.00 this evening. Mrs Mann at the moment is in Cyprus and will be flying to see him and I hope they will be able to meet in just a few hours time.

    This is very good news indeed, I am delighted at this outcome and I would like to express my thanks to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Syrian government, the Iranian government, the Israeli government and all those other people who have played a role over many months in ensuring this very satisfactory outcome.

    We are very pleased about the outcome but I think we should also remember that we still have another hostage, Terry Waite, and I can imagine how his family must be feeling this evening. I would like them to know that we will be continuing to work very hard and will not be satisfied until we have Terry Waite free also and back where he belongs with his family.

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION:

    What will you be doing to free Terry Waite?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I do not think it would have been very helpful in recent months if we had been too public about the work that has been going on behind the scenes to help free Jackie Mann, the important thing is the outcome, we have not forgotten Terry Waite, we want Terry Waite back here, home with his family. We will continue the diplomacy that has proved successful on a number of occasions in recent weeks.

    QUESTION:

    What is Mr Mann’s condition?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I do not have any detailed information about Mr Mann’s condition, I have heard, though with no confirmation, that he is a little unwell but I do not know yet what a little unwell may mean, I hope to find out very shortly.

    QUESTION:

    Have you spoken to Mrs Mann at all?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No, Mrs Mann is now waiting to get on a plane at Cyprus and I think she has other things on her mind at the moment.

    QUESTION:

    When will Mr Mann return to the UK?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    That is a matter for Mr and Mrs Mann to determine, the first thing that will happen is that he will have some medical attention in Damascus, we have a medical team out there waiting to see him, he will have some medical attention, he will probably want to have some time to rest, to recuperate and to discuss what next to do with Mrs Mann, when he returns is a matter for him and I cannot tell you yet when that will be.

    QUESTION:

    In general terms what is going on diplomatically at the moment, was this sparked off by further concessions by the Israelis?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No it is not a question of concessions by the Israelis, there has been a great deal of pressure over recent months for progress towards the general release of hostages, you have seen what has happened in recent weeks, I believe that diplomacy has been very successful. John McCarthy has been released, a number of prisoners in Israel have been released, now I am delighted Jackie Mann has been released. The policy is moving in the right direction, I have no more to say about it than that, I hope we will be able to carry it a little further.

    QUESTION:

    Do you want another gesture now from the Israelis?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We are continuing a policy in company with others and with the tremendous work being done by the Secretary General to try and get a much greater release of hostages generally, that requires goodwill on all sides. Some progress has been made after a very long period when there was total blockage, no sign of hope and no hostages being released. So it is a hopeful time, things are moving forward, I hope and believe they may yet move forward further.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the National Sporting Club – 19 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the National Sporting Club at the Cafe Royal in London on Thursday 19th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am very grateful for the invitation, I had to come, it was the only way I could keep the job I have got. So I am very grateful to be here, Bob, thank you very much indeed. And I would like to thank you, Lord Porte, and Henderson Financial Management who have sponsored this splendid lunch here today.

    It is a long time since I first saw Bob Willis, he mentions when we first met at what actually did later in the evening turn out to be a Jeffrey Archer book signing session – I buy one every time, I am building an extension, it should help the recovery along just a little.

    I have watched Bob Willis play cricket for many years, in those days when he played for Surrey and later when he moved to pastures new, and he was I think beyond doubt a very great bowler with a very remarkable action. But what I think is less well known about Bob Willis is that he was a very remarkable batsman. He had perfected what wisdom once called the curtain rail defence, it was an interesting proposition, it was an absolutely perfect mid-wicket lunge to an out-swinger. I believe he was taught by the same cricket coach as President Bush, who is taking a very great interest in the game.

    Since Bob invited me to come and join you, what is now I think about 18 months ago, I have had some interesting travels – Headingly, Trent Bridge, Lords, the Oval – and I am very pleased that I was able to find the time to do that and support the very successful England cricket team that we are in the process of developing and they clearly had an absolutely excellent year.

    It was not only me as an amateur watcher of cricket and a lover of it who spotted the great talent of Bob Willis. I remember sitting there one evening in the Oval with a great businessman, a magnet with newspaper and other interests, and we were looking at Bob Willis and I said: “He is a very fine cricketer”, and the magnet agreed with me: “A very fine cricketer indeed” he said “he will go a long way, I think the sky is the limit.” Thank goodness it was.

    Lord Forte of course has had a very long and distinguished connection with the National Sporting Club and just to indicate his sporting interests over lunch he challenged me to a game of golf. Now I do not really want to take up this offer for I suspect I would lose, the last occasion I played golf I think was in 1966 in Nigeria when I gave up when I found a snake in the bunker at a moment when I was two down. And I think after such a gap that I am perfectly prepared to concede to you, Charles, that the game undoubtedly is yours.

    One of the pleasures of being here at the National Sporting Club is what it represents, what it is, it is a place of very great tradition in the sporting world and some of those traditions I think could well be transplanted elsewhere. One of them for example is that they watch rounds of boxing in silence and then have applause at the end and I think Erskine May might well adapt that for Question Time in the House of Commons, but they probably will not do it until we have given up bear knuckle fighting so there may be a while.

    It is also a very attractive tradition, I am not sure whether you are going to follow it today at lunchtime, but money, so-called nobbins, are thrown in the ring to acknowledge a good fight at the end of the contest. I have a note here from Norman Lamont…..

    I explained some of these intricacies to the President when I was in Kennebunkport just after I gave him the cricket bat and I must say he was very fascinated by the cricket bat, he asked me a series of deeply searching questions about it, “Is it a mashie or a niblet?” he said.

    I would like to just take a few moments of your time just to review some of the developments in sport in recent years and perhaps have a look at some of the things that may happen in the future.

    I believe there is a great deal that we can look back on with pleasure over the past year. One event that I take particular satisfaction in is the reopening of sporting links with South Africa. The government has consistently taken the view that sanctions, including sporting sanctions, had a very limited role to play and that those whose regimes we disapprove of must be offered carrots as well as sticks. I think we must show that where changes for the better are made, those who bring about such changes have something to show for it and South Africa have sought to bring about those changes, they have taken political risks domestically to do so and I believe to that extent they are entitled to our support.

    We have seen the dismantling of some of the main legal pillars of apartheid, we are now seeing the emergence of racially integrated sports, each under a single governing body in South Africa. believe it would have been quite wrong of the International sporting organisations and of this country not to have responded to those changes in sport that we are seeing in South Africa and those other changes in policy.

    So I was delighted this year to see South Africa readmitted by the International Olympics Committee and personally delighted to see South Africa come back into international cricket and I look forward to seeing them play at our great cricket grounds before too long.

    The government may have done what it could to bring that about through quiet diplomacy, but cricket itself did a good deal more and I would like to say in his absence here today what a very remarkable job Colin Cowdrey did working so tirelessly with cricket administrators to help achieve the necessary consensus to bring South Africa back into world cricket. He had a good deal of help, he had a good deal of help from the African National Congress in particular which although in other contexts has resisted the lifting of sanctions, in the field of sport played a very positive role indeed.

    And I was delighted just a few weeks ago to have a celebratory drink in Number 10 with Ali Bakher, the current and future Chairman of the new united Cricket Board of South Africa, and Steve Shwepi [phoentic] of the ANC. These I think are very encouraging developments indeed.

    One other encouraging development that to a greater or lesser extent is mirrored elsewhere across the cricket team was the opening at the Oval by Her Majesty The Queen of the Ken Barrington Sporting Centre. I guess most people in this room will have their own memories of Ken Barrington as a cricketer and some of us, Bob Willis perhaps more than any of us, of Ken as a player. He was a very marvellous cricketer, those who knew him and knew him well say he was a marvellous man as well and I think it is a great tribute to his memory that Surrey have created this remarkable cricket facility in a deprived area of central London.

    And it is part of a trend. So many of our county clubs, so many of our football clubs, so many of our rugby clubs, so many of our athletics clubs are increasingly running special schemes to bring out the best in youngsters and to try and give them the sporting encouragement and training that they need in order to turn them, not just into top class performers, important though that is, but to imbue in them the love of sport that most generations in this country have known and that does in my judgment so much good for our national characteristics.

    We had this year a very remarkable roller coaster of a test series. I was in Spain during the final test, which is a tribute to two things, the inefficiency of my personal diary arrangements and the appalling fact that the MCC brought the final test forward from its normal resting place in late August to early August.

    But I did when I was in Spain make certain arrangements to make sure that I was kept up to date with the score at the Oval. In fact I got the score almost on the hour, by the hour, whether I was actually at home in the house I was staying in or whether I was out. The system worked pretty well but it had a wonky moment or two, it was not always entirely smooth. I was in the village of Candeleda, a lovely little village in Spain near the Grados mountains, on the first day of the Oval test match and we had been walking round there for an hour and a half and up ran one of the Garden Room girls who work at Number 10 and she ran up and she said: “I have got the test score, it is 43 for 0”, “Splendid” I said, “Who is batting?” “Ah!” she said. The Civil Service in future, together with their conditions of employment … I do not think I need finish.

    I have not myself played cricket since I injured my leg in a very serious car crash in Nigeria in the 1960s and I have found over the past two or three years that people will sometimes say extraordinary things to me that would not previously have happened. Mystics appear to predict all sorts of strange events in the future and re-write elements of the past, and not all the people writing elements of the past are journalists, and the mystic explained to me apologetically, very apologetically, that my accident had been a mistake – well I could agree with her about that – “No” she said “it was a mistake, the accident should have happened to the car in front”. So I was not quite sure how to reply to that. I said to her: “Well can fate put my leg back together again?” “Much too difficult” said the mystic “leg broken, ligaments torn, kneecap smashed, not a hope of putting it together again. But I can probably give you a wish as a consolation prize.” I thought I would take it, “Excellent” I said, “Please spare us an England middle order collapse in the next test match”. She paused and said: “Well let me have another look at that leg.”

    There are often very odd things that happen in sport and life, England are off soon to New Zealand and then to Australia to play in the World Cup and there was after the team’s selection a certain amount of controversy about Ian Botham combining cricket and pantomime – I do not understand that, I have had no problems in my profession.

    But soccer too has had a marvellous year. A close fought title race, an underdog win in the World Cup, a wonderful FA Cup Final of flowing passing football and only perhaps a smidgen of disappointment that by some malign trick of fate Chelsea yet again failed to win anything. I have spoken to Ken Bates about that, at some length, I then listened to him at even greater length.

    Football of course, and its image I believe, and I am delighted to see it is very much on the upswing, I think its image is improving, it is improving to the extent that football managers can joke in many cases about the problems of football hooliganism that once they had. And one manager I think who had better be un-named for fear it might point the finger at his club and his fans indicated to me in this fashion the way in which things had changed.

    “Some years ago” he said “a band of football fans arrived in an after life at the pearly gates chanting, singing, waving scarves. St Peter, a wise, prudent, cautious man, was in two minds about whether to admit them and decided to go off and consult a higher authority. Being a tolerant man he took the view that they were merely boisterous young men and should be let in. So he returned to the pearly gates, thought again, consulted again, consulted that higher being, and then came rushing back to the Almighty after he saw what had happened to the young men at the gate. And he rushed back and he said: “Lord, Lord, they have gone.” “Then your problem is solved” said the higher being. “No, no” said St Peter, “the pearly gates have gone.” It is why Charlie Forte had swing doors on all his restaurants, most of which survived.

    But happily hooliganism, that scourge of football, now seems to be on the wane and I congratulate the football authorities for the way they have sought to deal with it. Arrests, ejections at League matches, fell very dramatically last year and I hope that we will continue to see them fall.

    I have always held the view myself that the more successful our national teams are, not only is that good for the love of sport in this country, I think it engenders a much greater level of good behaviour amongst those people who watch those sports as well. The English team has improved, they not only do well in Europe but I think last year their fans acquitted themselves well in Europe also.

    And a good deal of the credit for that must go I believe to the Football Trust which has financed amongst other things the installation of closed circuit television. I took the decision in the period I was Chancellor to augment the Trust’s resources by cutting Pools betting duty for 5 years to help finance the programme of conversion from terraces to seats.

    And Norman Lamont, my successor, has taken that a good deal further, he has not only made a further reduction in pools betting duty but the 20 million that that yields, that will make available, will be supplemented by a further 40 million from the pools promoters. And yesterday, just yesterday, saw the formal launch of the foundation under the chairmanship of Tim Rice who, combining a love of sports and the arts, is the modern equivalent of renaissance man. Sports lover though he is I do hear that he has given up driving for a while – bang go my tickets to Evita.

    Of the 60 million a year that will be raised, 20 million will be allocated to the arts, in addition to previous funding, and 40 million will be allocated to sport, again in addition to the previous funding. And the foundation I know is particularly keen to contribute to projects of lasting benefit to local communities.

    But I do not think in our love of sport that we should forget the other sports as well, many of them are very popular, much loved and have a huge number of people who actually play them themselves. I daresay many people felt a sense of disappointment at the performance of our athletes at the world championships last month, but if they did I hope they will think again for I think that disappointment was not justified. We did see some magnificent British performances there, Liz McColgan particularly, the men’s 400 metres runners, and at the end of the tournament we finished fifth in the middle table, far ahead of 155 other nations who competed. And I was delighted to see amongst other performances Steve Backley returning to form after that disappointment in Tokyo.

    And then in terms of participatory sports there is the enormous growth of interest in golf which I have no doubt, snakes apart, will continue in every part of the country. So let us send our very best wishes to our Ryder Cup team and to the European team.

    The best of our sportsmen in the main sports become household names, they become role models, and I hope they always remember that responsibility. But in addition to them, I think we should not forget that it takes as much determination as skill, as many lonely hours in practice to be a world champion in a minority sport as it does in athletics or in golf. And when one looks across that wider vision of sport you can see how successful our country has been, Judy Laydon, the world champion in women’s hang gliding; Penny Way, the world sailboarding champion; and Wilf O’Reilly at ice speed skating – all those great skills, often without the glare of publicity that more famous sports attract but nonetheless tremendously important for the general sporting complexion of the United Kingdom.

    And although we rightly recall those triumphs, although we are rightly pleased about the improvement in behaviour at so many sports, there is I think still room for further improvement which is why the government supported John Wheeler’s Private Members Bill, the Football Offences Act, which introduced new offences of chanting abuse and chanting racialist abuse, throwing missiles and invading the pitch. That is not what the people of our country wish to see when they go out to sporting grounds and I believe we are entirely right to take a very firm hand whenever and wherever it occurs.

    I guess many of you will share my concern about the state of sport in so many of our schools. Much of it is excellent, but in many areas there has been an undoubted decline in competitive sports, in part I think this reflects the priority which education authorities place on sport and games, and it is to counteract that that the government has in very large part accepted the recommendations of the Physical Education Working Group and in future will require all pupils between 5 and 16 to take part in physical education, starting in September next year. This is the first time such a requirement has been placed on our schools and I believe it is entirely right for us to do so in the interests of development. And we have also accepted their recommendation that the national curriculum physical education itself should require all school children to be taught to swim at least 25 meters by the age of 11.

    But I do not think it is just a matter for the government, even though I concede they have a role. Sport itself can help raise the facilities for other people to enjoy sport. I have been involved in the last year in Surrey Cricket Club’s Youth Trust, we have raised getting on for quarter of a million this year and we are now receiving applications from schools for facilities such as cricket nets and artificial pitches which so many of them now lack.

    The problem I think in schools’ cricket, and some other school sports, may well reside in the changing structure of the teaching profession. If teachers feel society is short-changing them, they will understandably feel disinclined to put in extra hours after school or on Saturdays to coach teams and organise matches.

    But I hope that we can, over a number of years, re-establish the status and the esteem and the self-esteem of teachers, perhaps by the establishment of the Review Body which we have set up to determine their pay, just as we have a Review Body for other professions as well. And perhaps when we have fully re-established their esteem they may be more inclined to re-establish school cricket and some other school sports, I certainly hope that will be the case.

    I daresay most people, if not everyone in this room, will know that the British Olympic Association have nominated Manchester as Britain’s bid for the Olympic Games in the year 2000. This country last hosted the Games in 1948 and to host them again in the year 2000 would be a remarkable achievement which would provide a very valuable focus for the millennium.

    With that in mind last week I had a meeting with the Manchester Olympic Bid Committee, the British Olympic Association and Manchester City Council to hear how they are progressing and to discuss what the ingredients of a successful bid would be. One factor I think did emerge clearly, to succeed it should be perceived not just as a Manchester bid or even as a north-west bid but as a national bid to bring the Olympic Games to this country in the year 2000.

    I put to them the specific questions on which I would like a clearer view, including the issues that this bid raises for government itself, and we agreed that as soon as I have their more detailed proposals we would meet again to consider the way forward for this bid. No-one should under-estimate the competition, not least from Berlin in the West and Beijing in the East, but I am sure that those involved with the bid can build on the favourable impression created by their campaign to host the 1996 games and the experience they gained in that bid will be invaluable.

    I look forward to our future discussions, I hope very much it will prove possible to develop a formidable bid for the Olympics 2000. We have the expertise to make the event a success and what a marvellous thing it would be if we could bring it off and have the Olympics here in Manchester in 2000.

    Let me just finally say this. I have spent sometime this year at Trent Bridge, Old Trafford, Lords, quite apart from other cricketing venues like Kennebunkport – not a lot of cricket in Moscow and Peking yet I must say – and I discovered, if I needed to discover it, rediscovered perhaps more accurately I should say that a day’s sport is a wonderful opportunity for reflection and one message I have learned again from those days which I believe is relevant to all of us is that work and play need not be compartmentalised with work taking second best, with a little organisation one can combine the two.

    I hope that is a message we can pass on not just from this generation to the next but from this generation to all succeeding generations and in the meantime I hope it is a message that we might take from this lunch.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Doorstep Interview with Ruud Lubbers – 18 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint doorstep interview with Ruud Lubbers, held at The Hague on Wednesday 18th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We have had the opportunity this morning of an exchange of views on a large range of issues, economic and monetary union, political union, the difficult circumstances that exist at the moment in Yugoslavia, the importance of reaching agreement on the Uruguay Round during the course of this year, all these are matters upon which we have had the opportunity of an informal exchange this morning.

    If I can run very briefly through some of those and then I am sure you will have some questions after Ruud has spoken. Progress has self-evidently been made I think in recent months on economic and monetary union and some of the difficulties are becoming smoother and I think increasingly a way through can be seen. There is still a considerable way to go and nobody should assume that there is necessarily going to be an easy agreement well in advance of Maastricht but I have become increasingly confident that we will be able to reach an agreement on economic and monetary union when we reach the conclusion of the intergovernmental conference in December at Maastricht.

    On political union I think it is fair to say that the debate is a good deal less advanced. There are many very formidable and difficult problems still to be discussed, we were able to touch upon some of those today and I know that the Prime Minister, as President, will be conducting a series of negotiations in the months ahead and I have a series of bilaterals with our Community partners as we try and find a way towards an agreement that will be generally satisfactory in December.

    The situation in Yugoslavia is one of very great concern, I do not think anyone underrates the difficulties that there are there and the problems that there will be in seeking a satisfactory solution. I would like to express my congratulations to Hans van den Broek for the way he has handled those matters in recent weeks, I think he has done magnificently, and I am delighted at the way in which Lord Carrington is chairing the peace conference, we must see how these events progress. But clearly it is a very dangerous and difficult situation and it would be very unwise at the moment to determine precisely how that may fall out.

    On GATT, there is a clear conformity of view, we are wholeheartedly of the opinion that it would be very damaging indeed if there were not a very formidable push towards reaching an agreement in the GATT Round by the end of this year, that is our agreed position, has been for some time, and the problems lie elsewhere rather than in Holland or in the United Kingdom.

    MR LUBBERS:

    I have not much to add to what Prime Minister Major said. Tomorrow we will have the Ministerial and the WEU conference on Yugoslavia and of course we discussed that topic but we draw conclusions tomorrow together with our other European partners.

    We had a very good discussion, as was said, about monetary union and political union and this was very timely because it gives us the opportunity to take into consideration the British position and see what we can do to come to agreement in Maastricht.

    About GATT we have still a long way to go to find a good method to bring the Uruguay Round to a success but as you know as well Great Britain and the Netherlands as, if I might say so, the Presidency, have a big interest here that we show that Europe can not only organise itself internally but is also prepared to come to terms with other groups of nations and continents.

    Finally, one word about central and Eastern Europe. As you know, Prime Minister Major is also in charge now of monitoring the efforts of the Group of G7 and also in that responsibility we had a useful talk about the possibilities, [Indistinct] the coming months, to coordinate the action of the European Community and that of the G7 group of countries.

     

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister Major, on political union, are you still opposed in principle to any extension of the legislative powers of the European Parliament and Prime Minister Lubbers, has anything that Mr Major told you this morning made it easier for you to complete your internal examination of new proposals for the IGC?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We discussed a great many matters on political union, not just the extension of legislative competence, I think it would be a mistake to think that that is the only matter of difficulty, not just for the United Kingdom but for other countries as one actually moves forward to the debate on political union at Maastricht in December, there are very many areas of difficulty. We are prepared to look constructively at what the role of the European Parliament should be in the future, there are areas where we believe that it should change and I have set those out on a number of occasions in the past. Precise details of where we think their role should change and how it should change, what its reporting mechanisms should be, are matters we are still in discussion with both the Presidency and with our European partners.

    There can be some changes, I think there are areas beyond which we would find it very difficult for the European Parliament to go at this stage, but there are other difficulties as well and we have not dwelled especially upon those this morning.

    MR LUBBERS:

    The answer to your question is yes. To clarify that a little bit, we see Maastricht and the result of the inter-governmental conference on political union not as the final result of one political union immediately and for the full 100 percent at Maastricht. In fact, it will be a first step forward to a political union, defining the process, as I see it, and the different fields and speech in which we can come together to a more common approach will be different. You see that on the one hand in monetary union but there is also the single market and areas related to that in which we can make a step forward but we have to be a little bit more cautious in other areas like foreign policy and defence, not losing the perspective of political union but allowing ourselves time to develop procedures in which gradually Europe will speak more with one voice which is the ultimate aim of course.

    QUESTION:

    [Indistinct] Carrington and London has been frankly pessimistic about the prospects in Yugoslavia, in the light of that could I ask you both what conditions you would set and what prospects you see for the sending of an EC peace-keeping force to Yugoslavia and what implications do you think the different emphasis seems to being put within the Community for that political union?

    MR LUBBERS:

    As we said earlier, this will be discussed tomorrow with our European colleagues which is essential because if we really want a Europe which acts coordinated with one voice we have to come to a common opinion together. It would be very unwise I think as well for the British Prime Minister as for myself just one day before such a Ministerial meeting to dictate already the result of such a meeting. But I can assure you that we had a very thorough and fruitful discussion about the difficult situation and certainly we will do our utmost to support with all means the possibility for a success of what Lord Carrington is doing now in the peace conference here in The Hague.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me just add something to that. I do not think one wants to necessarily assume all the difficulties of Lord Carrington’s mission will come about, we must hope that he is more successful, I think he is very prudent to be cautious about what can be achieved, it is clearly an extremely difficult circumstance and I think both on substance and in terms of tactics he is entirely right to be cautious about the outcome.

    One of the purposes of tomorrow’s meeting is to determine the extent to which it will be possible to coordinate policy and decide how to deal with the difficult emerging situation that exists in Yugoslavia. But many of the conclusions that we will have to reach will have to depend upon the will of the people in Yugoslavia firstly to create a ceasefire, secondly to seek assistance to make sure that that ceasefire actually continues. I do not think anybody is talking about a peace-making approach in terms of military intervention in Yugoslavia, but we must wait and see what happens in the discussions tomorrow, there are many things to discuss in what is a very rapidly evolving situation.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It means we are going to discuss things tomorrow, I do not have any immediate likelihood of sending a force, no.

    QUESTION:

    Did you outline any British reservations about the sending of a force, any conditions there would have to be on the ground?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    As Ruud said a few moments ago, we are going to discuss all these matters tomorrow and we have had the chance of some exchanges today, but I think these are matters that have to be developed in discussion tomorrow.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Every European nation has entirely the right to express its own distinctive views on what is happening in Yugoslavia and seek to discuss those views with its European colleagues, that is the free and easy and open way in which we conduct our affairs. But we will have a meeting tomorrow at which I hope we will get a communal view.

    MR LUBBERS:

    Let me add to that. In our discussion it was very clear, the main point of course is not the common policy, our common policy in this part of Europe, but the necessity that those who are responsible in Yugoslavia are ready to accept the necessity of a ceasefire and of the positive attitude to the efforts of Lord Carrington and only under that condition can we be instrumental in helping and assisting them. And that is the main point of discussion tomorrow, I guess, how we define that necessity of a perspective for the future of Yugoslavia based on their own efforts and then what can we add to help them in that situation.

    QUESTION:

    Are you planning an extra summit?

    MR LUBBERS:

    No, not at this moment.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the Nursing Standard / BUPA Nursing Awards – 17 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the Nursing Standard/BUPA Nursing Awards dinner, held at the Marriott Hotel in London on 17th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Madam President, I am delighted to be with you this evening. These awards are very important. Important because they are the result of joint enterprise between the RCN, BUPA and Nursing Standard. There is scope for much more joint enterprise in many areas of health policy. And I hope and expect to see more.

    But important also because they recognise the service ethos which is at the heart of health care. I know already that the award winners all have one thing in common. They are all nurses, midwives or health visitors who are engaged in clinical practice. They have all been nominated for their work in improving the quality of care which they deliver to their patients.

    The delivery of care to patients is at the heart of nursing practice: and nursing practice is at the heart of our Health Service. The NHS is the largest employer in the country. And within it, nurses, midwives and health visitors form the largest professional group. So this is a good occasion for me to set out some objectives for the Service.

    In our country, the National Health Service is almost universally respected. The NHS offers peace of mind to millions of people. I am determined that it will thrive and grow as a truly National Service available to all our citizens. That is what it has done for the past twelve years.

    The facts speak for themselves. More patients have been treated. New treatments have been developed. More staff have been available. Since 1979 expenditure on the NHS has grown at 3 per cent a year over and above inflation: a cumulative increase of 50 per cent in real resources devoted to health care.

    But money is not everything. It is how we use that money that is so important. None of that progress in patient care could have been achieved without the commitment of the skilled professionals who work in the health service. Each and every day there are hundreds of thousands of cases of professional, dedicated, and successful health care.

    Of course, things go wrong from time to time. But everyone here, all of us, are committed to preventing and to solving those problems. The more we work together the more successful we will be. The purpose of tonight’s awards is to recognise individual effort to provide better care. Such effort epitomises all that is best in the National Health Service.

    I have good reason to be personally committed to the NHS. When I was seriously injured it was the NHS that treated me. When my parents were in their final illness, it was the NHS that cared for them. When my children were born it was the NHS that delivered them. In this I share the experience of millions.

    This government is quite clear about its health policy and the future of the NHS. That policy is founded on ten important principles.

    First, the needs of the patient must be paramount in running the NHS.

    Second, health care is free at the point of use in hospitals and in doctors’ surgeries. And it will remain so.

    Third, we will continue to offer free prescription charges, so that only those who can afford to do so will make a contribution to the cost of medicines.

    Fourth, the Government’s priority will be to see the NHS is not just maintained, but improved. Extra resources will continue to be provided for the NHS year after year within the limits the economy can afford.

    Fifth, all money – and I do mean all the money – that is saved by increased efficiency in hospitals will be ploughed back into patient care and not handed back to the Treasury.

    Sixth, the reforms we have introduced in the Health Service will continue to be directed towards improving care for patients, and ensuring that more responsibility for health care is handed down to local levels. That is why we created NHS Trusts and GP Fundholders. To give more responsibility to hospitals and GPs in deciding how best to meet local needs. And let me stress a fundamental truth about NHS Trusts. They are, and will remain an integral part of the National Health Service available to all. None will be privatised now or in the future.

    Seventh, as we have underlined in our Citizen’s Charter, every patient must be treated with proper respect and dignity at all times. And they must receive proper information about all aspects of their illness, treatments and care.

    Eighth, not only must the treatment offered by the NHS be clinically good. The NHS must offer patients certainty about the maximum time they may have to wait for inpatient or out-patient treatment.

    Ninth, families have the right to make private provision if they choose. Doctors and nurses have the right to practise privately. No free society should try to deny either right. As the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe begin to hope and plan for private health care, it is inconceivable that anyone in the UK should still oppose it. And, as it grows, there should be more constructive co-operation between the private and public sectors in health.

    Finally – and I place particular importance on this – nurses, doctors and all the staff who work so hard and with such skill deserve our support. I can assure you that they can count on mine and the wholehearted backing of this Government in the years ahead.

    Those ten principles will guide the way ahead for our policies on health. There will be many challenges. There may be setbacks. Meeting the ever-growing demand for health care is a daunting task, not only for Britain, but for every other country as well.

    But let us be clear why we face such challenges. They are the challenges of success. They came about because:

    – More people live longer.

    – Technical advance makes new treatments possible.

    – New techniques have been developed by professionals in health care.

    – New discoveries have been made by scientists involved in pharmaceutical and diagnostic research.

    Of course, it is reasonable to point to the case for growing resources. That is a legitimate matter for debate, though I regret it is all too often turned into a political football. But the growing pressure for more resources comes not because health care is failing, but because it is advancing – at a greater pace than ever before. And is advancing because of the success of the Service.

    In Britain we now spend over 30 billion pounds a year on the health service. More than on Defence. More than on Education. And as a Government we have a duty to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent effectively. That is true for all public services. But what really matters for NHS spending is getting the best service from the resources available – for the patients and for the community as a whole. And that is what our reforms in the NHS are intended to bring about.

    I know that carrying through these changes has meant some heart-searching, much hard work, and has needed lasting commitment from all those involved. But the benefits are increasingly to be seen. With the principal reforms now in place we can lift our sights to the common goal of all these changes – a better Health Service.

    For I am quite clear where the NHS reforms are taking us.

    – We will see further improvements in the health of the nation – some of them quite dramatic, like the vastly improved prospects for children with leukaemia and reduction in measles, mumps and rubella. In 1990 there was not one death from acute measles – the first year without a death since records began.

    – We will see costs brought down and waste reduced within the NHS. And waste reduced means funds gained for the Service. I say again that every penny saved will stay in the NHS to provide more and better care.

    – We will see people working in the NHS with more confidence in the services they are delivering.

    – And we will see the public at large placing even more value on the NHS. Not just out of affectionate habit, but because it is getting better and better and is responding more directly to their needs.

    Madam President, in July, I launched our Citizen’s Charter. want that Charter and its principles to be a driving force in every part of the public service in the 1990s. The Citizen’s Charter’s key theme is to make public services more responsive to the needs and the wishes of their users and to raise further overall quality. Nowhere are these objectives more important than in health.

    The NHS reforms are already taking us a good way towards achieving the improvements set out in the Citizen’s Charter. In future those responsible for spending public money will be able to set new and demanding standards for those providing services to patients.

    We will be building on the reforms when we publish the Patient’s Charter soon. The Charter will set out in detail what people can expect of the NHS. It will also spell out what Health Authorities and providers are expected to do to ensure that these expectations are met. And what people can do to secure redress if they are not met.

    For example:

    – you can expect your District Health Authority to publish details of all the services it provides, together with an indication of the standards of quality it expects to maintain;

    – as soon as you are put on a waiting list, the hospital will write to let you know how their guaranteed waiting times affect you;

    – you can expect a named nurse or midwife to be responsible for your care from start to finish;

    – if things go wrong, the Patient’s Charter will tell you how to register a complaint about GP or hospital treatment.

    I am delighted to find from your manifesto for health that the Royal College of Nursing is thinking on very similar lines.

    You have argued for:

    – the right for all citizens to have access to good quality services;

    – the need for services to be matched more clearly to need;

    – the need to empower consumers, for example by providing information on the range of services available locally in language people can understand;

    – the need to inform patients about their diagnosis and to secure their consent to treatment and participation in research programmes;

    – the need for patients to be informed of the likely waiting time for treatment and given a guarantee that their wait will not exceed a stated maximum.

    It gives me great confidence to know that the driving force for delivery of service in the NHS does not need persuasion of the merits of the Charter approach. It is already your approach. This makes it much more likely that things will happen.

    It is, at last, becoming properly recognised that nursing as a profession is a key complement to medicine. Highly trained nurses are now the deliverers of care to cancer patients, to diabetics and to many others. In a number of areas nurses are running their own clinics. Nursing is becoming more specialised as nurses develop and extend their roles in both physical and psychological care. All these changes must make for the more effective use both of their skills – and those of doctors. Most important of all, it benefits patients and improves the choice available to them. I thoroughly welcome such developments and look forward to seeing them grow.

    Previous winners of these awards have provided us with examples of how nurses have pushed further their traditional role. They were innovators who had developed, for example:

    – new skills in counselling and support;

    – a programme of higher quality care for elderly patients with mental illness problems;

    – new arrangements for parent support and communications; and

    – a highly effective nurse-led service for those suffering from leg ulcers.

    Just a few examples of nurses carving out a new, improved and distinct role for themselves and raising the quality of care which patients receive. I know that when we hear the achievements of tonight’s winners there will be more excellent examples.

    For its part, the Government has reaffirmed its commitment to the development of nursing practice. William Waldegrave announced at the RCN Congress in May that he was making £3.2m available over the next five years for the development of Nursing Development Units and the concept of patient centred nursing care. I know that Ann Poole here is working closely with the Kings Fund, the NHS and professional organisations to develop this initiative.

    Madam President, Christine Hancock was kind enough to attend my seminar at Chequers where we discussed the then proposed health strategy. As all of you will know, we published the consultative document “The Health of the Nation” in June.

    That document was widely welcomed. The strategy seeks to strike a much better balance between prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. By setting national and local targets, I am confident the strategy will help tackle some of the main health problems of our time, for example reducing the amount of heart disease and cancers.

    But if the strategy is to succeed we need your help. The initiative is directed towards improving health in the widest sense. Not just through better diagnosis and treatments in doctors surgeries and in hospitals, but through preventive measures and more effective rehabilitation. Nurses, midwives and health visitors are also uniquely well-placed to get these messages across. That is why you must be involved in the planning of the strategy. The Department of Health is consulting widely on this initiative until the end of October. I hope that each of you will make your views known.

    So far, I have spoken mainly of the National Health Service of which we are all rightly proud. However, we must not overlook the important contribution which the independent health care sector makes in giving people a choice about how their health care needs are met. Moreover, in recent years we have seen many examples of co-operation and collaboration between the sectors, including some in the field of nurse education. These initiatives flourish through joint commitment. I am delighted with your achievements to date and urge you to continue your efforts.

    I believe that there is much more scope for collaborative ventures between the private health sector and the NHS. Although it is not a new development, the reforms will make this easier. For example, for some time the private sector has been an important supplier of elderly care to the NHS. Such developments provide choice to those buying services, and help to sustain standards. They ensure that we get the best possible value for every pound of taxpayers money spent on health care.

    Madam President, this evening we must thank BUPA and the Nursing Standard for sponsoring and organising these nursing awards. The Nursing Standard is not only run by nurses, it is owned by them through the Royal College.

    I understand that the College is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. I congratulate you, your predecessors, and officers and members of the College, on the many successes which the organisation has had through the past 75 years. You have an enviable reputation as a College and I have no doubt that will grow further in the future.

    This evening I have touched on a wide range of nursing issues in my remarks. But the main theme has been that nurses, midwives and health visitors are at the very heart of health care. They have more direct contact with patients and with their families than any other health profession. Their responsibility for the well-being of the patient and family is critical. Their role in health care is quite unique. No one forgets the nurse who looked after them in hospital; the midwife who delivered their first child; the health visitor who checked mother and child thereafter. I would like to say thank you to all who work so hard and with such skill in the NHS and private sector. I wish you well for the future.

  • Mr Major’s Comments on the European Community – 12 September 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s comments on the European Community, made in an interview in Paris on Thursday 12th September 1991.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked whether it was possible to widen and deepen the Community].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think it is possible to combine the two, but we have to ensure in the areas of deepening that in deepening we don’t erect the barriers that prevent subsequent widening; that is really the point.

    We are facing changes at the moment of an absolutely historic nature. There are chances here for creating a new circumstance across the whole of Europe, the whole of geographic Europe, on a scale nobody would have dreamed about even a few months ago. That is a chance that Western Europe and the Community must not let slip so whilst we look at the developments within the Community for deepening, we must do so and have it against the background of the possibility of widening the European Community very substantially in the years ahead.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if the process should be slowed down].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I don’t think it is just a question of slowing it down. There are many matters to be discussed and to be determined on economic and monetary union; we are getting deep into the detail now. The important matter is that as we determine that detail, we do so against a background of what will be possible in the years ahead for the Eastern European nations. We need to make sure that we leave open the possibility for them to meet their ambitions of joining the Community and that what we do does not erect a barrier over which they would never be able to jump.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if a larger Community would fail to agree on issues].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It is a Community that is coming. I don’t know of very many European leaders within the Community who don’t actually expect that Community to widen. Even here in Paris yesterday, for example, President Mitterrand signed an agreement with the Hungarians and the Poles that presumed in due course their eventual membership of the European Community.

    We have a much wider issue in mind in terms of the general relations within the Community than some of the narrow-minded visions that have sometimes been enacted in the past. It is an opportunity we dare not miss.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if President Mitterrand thought this would take a long time].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No-one is suggesting that it is imminent. The Eastern European countries are going to have to prepare their economies so they can be satisfactory members of the Community. What we have to do to them is say: “It is worthwhile preparing your economies. When that has been done and when you are ready, we will say to you: “You are welcome in the Community!”, not “The barriers are up and we don’t want you”. They will be welcome and we must make that clear to them.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if there were still big differences of opinion between President Mitterrand and himself].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No. I think you misjudge this question of a deep gulf. We are in the midst of negotiations. When one is in negotiations, there are differing opinions about which Europe has to reach a conclusion between here and Maastricht. It isn’t just a question of differences that may exist on negotiating positions between the British and the French. There are very many differences amongst all the nations in the Twelve at the present time; that is what the negotiations are about; if they didn’t exist, we would have no need for the negotiations, but we have the negotiations in hand and there is a general expectation that we will reach a satisfactory conclusion by Maastricht. That is what I wish to see and I think it is what every other member of the Community would wish to see as well.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to European Democratic Union Conference – 12 September 1991

    Below is the transcript of Mr Major’s speech to the European Democratic Union Conservative Party Leaders’ Conference, given on Thursday 12th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Rt Hon John Major MP Thursday 12 September 1991 533/91

    Extract from a speech by the Rt Hon John Major MP (Huntingdon), Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, to the European Democratic Union Conservative Party Leaders’ Conference:

    Jacques Chirac and I met in London a few weeks ago. We talked, among other things, about the future of our continent. I valued that discussion. But neither of us could then foresee that within a matter of weeks, we would be witnesses to one of the most dramatic revolutions of the 20th Century.

    I do not need to tell an audience in this city about the perils, as well as the opportunities, of revolution. This new revolution brings tremendous opportunities. But it brings uncertainties as well. And risks. They combine into a tremendous challenge, but it is not just to the people of the Soviet Union. It is also to the governments and peoples of the whole of Europe. It is about that challenge that I want to talk today.

    For our parties of the centre right, the sudden and total collapse of Soviet Communism must be a special source of satisfaction. A dark and discredited ideology lies in ruins; rejected by the people it ensnared.

    It was an ideology which promised power to the people; but it drained power from the people. It promised prosperity; but it brought poverty.

    It did not cherish initiative; it did crush all personal economic aspiration. It replaced the inventiveness of the human imagination with the mumbo-jumbo of Marxist doctrine. It lived by tyranny, oppression and lies. And even the failed coup epitomised one of its most striking characteristics: enormous incompetence, even in the pursuit of its own misbegotten objectives.

    Brian Mulroney recently told me a story of a conversation with President Gorbachev during his visit to Canada. President Gorbachev asked: what was the secret of Canada’s success as a wheat producer? What did Canada have that the Soviet Union did not? The answer, Brian Mulroney said, was quite simple: the Canadian farmer worked, not for the party nor for the state but for himself and his family. Like farmers in all our countries, he was prepared to work from first light until after dark knowing that he could improve his lot and pass on something worthwhile to future generations. That was Canada’s ‘secret’.

    It is to the enormous credit of President Gorbachev that he saw clearly the flaws and injustices in the Soviet system. Ultimately, Soviet Communism was doomed to collapse because its foundations were rotten. But it was sustained by repression. It was President Gorbachev’s decision to move from repression to reform which opened the doors to freedom. They have opened first to the people of Eastern and Central Europe and now to the people of the Soviet Union. For this act alone, his place in history is secure.

    Today, there is no longer a Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It is an irony that while the Communist Party is actually banned in Russia, Communist parties survive in most of our countries. So where are they now going to look for their ideological lead? To Cuba, just as Soviet troops are starting to withdraw? Or China?

    I have just returned from China. I made that visit in the interests of the continued freedom and prosperity of Hong Kong. But I had another purpose too: to try to bring the influence of the free world to bear on the leaders of China, and to show the people of China that they are not forgotten by the West.

    Even under the harsh and baleful influence of Communist rule, China is changing. The province of Canton is in a ferment of free enterprise. Take a helicopter and fly over Hong Kong and you will see that, beyond the line of the border with China, the lights of commerce and industry burn almost as brightly. The people there have some of the freedoms of the market place. They can benefit from their own hard work and enterprise. But they do not have personal liberty – the most precious freedom of all. It may take time, but I believe that political and personal freedom must inevitably follow the liberation of market forces.

    In the meantime, we in the West must keep pushing at the door. I raised with Chinese leaders a large number of human rights cases. They did not dismiss them out of hand. They recognised that they had to listen and that they had to respond. They would prefer not to. But they did. A Hong Kong citizen who was in prison in China a week ago is back home in Hong Kong today.

    I believe we must keep up the pressure on them. If every visitor from the West reminds China of their obligations, as a member of the United Nations, and a Permanent Member of the Security Council in particular, then that pressure will produce results.

    The bastions of Communism have crumbled. But it still has its last outposts. No one can rule out desperate rearguard actions. But all the evidence is that we are now opening a new chapter. I am particularly delighted that our friends from the Baltic Republics are opening it with us. They have rejoined the European family – and not a moment too soon. Soon, with Britain’s support, they will become full members of the United Nations.

    None of these changes are easy. Yugoslavia is a vivid example of a country teetering between self-determination and self-destruction. It is a reminder too of our responsibilities as democratic Europeans.

    These are events of world significance. But, first and foremost, they affect our own continent of Europe.

    At the end of the Second World War, Europe was split into two. The countries that emerged from war into freedom and democracy took two great steps to defend their liberties. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was formed. The European Community was launched. The fact that so many other European countries have since sought to join the Community, or to form associations with it, is the greatest signal of its success. Now the part of our continent that was denied the political and economic renaissance that the rest of us have enjoyed is emerging into freedom and democracy. For the rest of us that poses a unique responsibility. We cannot and must not turn our back on them.

    We have the immediate, urgent duty to throw them a lifeline. We have already done this for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Each of our countries individually is helping. We in Britain have, through our ‘Know How’ fund, started to help the countries of Eastern and Central Europe develop the infrastructure of a modern economy. We have helped with privatisation in Poland; with the Stock Exchange in Budapest; with the banking sector in Czechoslovakia. Polish-speaking civil servants from London are today at work in Poland’s Ministry of Labour in Kracow.

    Now we must do the same for the Soviet Union. Already, in July at the Group of Seven Summit, we agreed on:

    (i) Special Association for the Soviet Union with the IMF and the World Bank;

    (ii) Support for the Soviet Union and its republics from all the relevant international organisations;

    (iii) Intensified technical assistance – especially in the fields of energy, the conversion of defence industries, food distribution, nuclear safety and transport.

    (iv) Improved access to western markets.

    The greatest single obstacle to the implementation of that plan was indecision within the Soviet Union. Would the Soviet Union go down the path of reform – genuine reform – or would the Soviet Union still try to combine partial political freedoms with economic centralism? We now know the answer to that question. The coup designed to halt reform has failed. It is now the catalyst to accelerate it. Only the Soviet Union and its republics can determine their future course. But we can help, both in the short term and for the future. First of all:

    (i) We must assess their immediate needs urgently. They may need food aid to get them through this winter. If so, we and our partners will be generous with our help.

    (ii) The Soviet Union and its republics will need an efficient infrastructure for food processing and distribution. In Britain we have assembled a team of our major food producers and distributors. They will go to the Soviet Union in a few days’ time to discover how they can help with food processing and distribution. Other countries of the Group of Seven are sending teams of their own. We have all agreed to pool our assessment by the end of this month.

    (iii) We must speed up the implementation of existing food credits.

    (iv) We must accelerate technical assistance and ‘Know How’ programmes.

    (v) We must get the Soviet Union and the IMF into discussion so that the IMF can assess the Soviet economy and its requirements. I am pleased to say that a team from the IMF is already in the Soviet Union.

    (vi) And we must accelerate the special association of the Soviet Union with the IMF that was agreed at the G7 Summit;

    This will be a massive task. It is not a task for the Group of Seven alone, or the European Community alone. It is a task for all of us who enjoy prosperity and who have a stake in the Soviet Union’s new freedom.

    That is the lifeline approach. But we must look also to the longer term. The people of the Soviet Union will have to decide what political system they want. When I was there ten days ago, one could feel the ground of history shifting beneath one’s feet. There was much uncertainty. Boris Yeltsin told me that the future shape of the Soviet Union would not necessarily be a federation or a confederation but something new and unique. Already, however, certain points were emerging. Many of them were confirmed at last week’s meeting of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, notably single armed forces for the Soviet Union; confirmation of the Soviet Union’s adherence to its international obligations and treaties; central control of nuclear weapons.

    I pressed the Soviet leaders particularly on the issue of defence spending. For a country in dire economic straits, to spend 25 per cent of its resources on military expenditure is unsustainable and unacceptable. They must help themselves to be sure of our help. I have assurances from President Gorbachev, President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Silayev that defence spending is being cut – and will be cut further.

    We cannot determine the future of the Soviet Union. But we can help – or we can hinder. We must offer them a new deal – and not a raw deal.

    I would like to set out what I believe should be the basis of our relationship with the newest European democracy, or democracies.

    We want them:

    i) to create a genuinely democratic society;

    ii) to develop a free market economy;

    iii) to secure a stable and just system of government with protection for minorities;

    iv) to play a constructive part in world affairs;

    v) and to become an integral part of democratic Europe.

    The idea of a common European home was once a slogan. Now it can become a reality.

    We cannot allow one artificial division in Europe to be replaced by another. We in the European Community cannot say: ‘Here is our club.

    We have made the rules. And we will make new rules regardless of your interests’.

    Under the Treaty of Rome, any democratic European country can apply for membership of the Community. Eastern and Central European countries have made clear that they see full membership of the Community as their ultimate goal. I believe the Community should welcome them in as soon as they are ready politically and economically. We must be prepared to widen our horizons and widen our membership.

    Already, at British initiative, we are, in the European Community, speeding progress towards Association Agreements for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Of course, this involves some sacrifice. Association Agreements mean opening our markets to Eastern and Central European Countries. That means more competition – including in some agricultural products. But it is the right way ahead.

    There is no purpose in giving countries aid and denying them trade access. Such policies would leave them on a drip feed of dependence for ever. It would be absurd and potentially dangerous, to preach the virtues of the free market but to practise old-fashioned protectionism. I think there will now be a real effort in the European Community to reach an agreement by the end of this month on agricultural access for Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

    I have encouraged the Commission to be in urgent discussion with the newly independent Baltic Republics. They too will want a special relationship with the European Community. That may take the form of a Trade and Co-operation agreement leading, in due course, to an Association Agreement. In the longer run they may seek full membership. That possibility should be open to them too. And we should tell them so now.

    I believe the European Community must hold out the hand of friendship and cooperation also to Russia and other republics of the Soviet Union. It is too early to say what form the relationship will take. But we should not close off options. It is no use saying the Community would not be the same if Russia became closely associated with it. It might have to change. But then we do not live in an unchanging world. The Community will have to change with it.

    The Community’s strengths to date has come from its dynamism. We have not stood still. Nor can we now. That does not mean that we should neglect the development of the Community in its present form. But we must ensure that that development opens doors rather than closes them. We should be lowering barriers, not raising hurdles.

    We Europeans must heed the aspirations and choices of 400 million European citizens. There is an unmistakable feeling that our continent is coming together. European union will not be led by politicians. It will be led by people. Politicians must not create barriers for half of Europe to step over.

    In the West we already enjoy fundamental freedoms and human rights. Now we are extending their compass with new opportunities to work, trade and travel. We may have to work out new patterns of co-operation. The Soviet Union has the enormous task of adapting itself. We should be realistic. We should be practical. We should not push it in the direction of unrealisable objectives. Equally, we should not set artificial limits on its development. For years, the objective of a Single Market for the members of the EC was a far off dream. Now, it is becoming a reality. We should not close our mind to the prospect of the European Community embracing many of the newly emerging democracies. One day we shall surely do so.

    That is one side of the openness I am talking about. But there is another kind of openness we in the Community should bear in mind as we work out the shape of the new European union. We must heed the way the world is moving – towards more decentralised, more accountable structures. In our talks on political union, we must enshrine a principle which captures the spirit of the age: it is the principle that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practicable level, close to the people they affect.

    In security too, openness and trust must be our objectives. They are the new key words in the language – some would say jargon – of security. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact presents new opportunities for confidence-building. The CFE Treaty offers us the prize of a proper verification regime. We should redouble our efforts to secure a ban on chemical weapons. We must strengthen the convention on biological warfare. And we must strive to set up a UN arms register to control the sales of conventional weapons to the Third World.

    These opportunities are there to be taken. And why are they there? They are there because the Atlantic Alliance has held fast. It has provided the security which is the prerequisite for our immense economic progress. Like the European Community, it has provided an outstanding model of co-operation. Like the Community, it offers us a solid framework within which to manage the process of change.

    It would be folly to suppose that the great changes of recent weeks justify neglect of our defence. There is too much uncertainty, too many nuclear weapons, too many countries with nuclear ambitions to allow complacency. Of course we Europeans should do more for our own defence. We have in the Western European Union the means to do it. Let us turn it into a real European pillar for the Atlantic Alliance. Let us use it to meet security threats from outside the NATO area.

    Recent developments make the continued American and Canadian commitment to our continent more necessary, not less. It is not doctrine which holds NATO together, but shared interests and needs. As we develop our growing European defence identity, we must ensure that it is compatible with, not in conflict with, our mutual obligations as members of the North Atlantic Alliance.

    Last, but not least, we should remember that trade is a peace maker – one of the most powerful and persuasive. Countries locked together in trade have mutual interests that prevent them being locked together in conflict.

    Trade is the lifeblood of the international economy. When trade is relatively free, the international economy grows quickly and vigorously and all countries benefit. When trade is restricted, individual economies suffer, even those of the would-be beneficiaries of protectionism.
    Free trade is vital for future world prosperity. It also provides vital underpinning for good political relations.

    The GATT is at the heart of the world trading system. The Uruguay Round is now at a critical stage. The hopes of the developing world as much as the industrialised world rest on a successful outcome. At the G7 Summit in July, we all undertook to make a successful outcome this year a personal priority.

    The EC is now the world’s largest trading entity. Together with the US and Japan it accounts for half the world’s trade. We have a central responsibility for maintaining a strong, open world trading system.

    We are already dismantling barriers inside the Community. That should be part of a wider process of opening up world markets. We should vigorously resist pressures for a Fortress Europe. And we should guard against trading blocs based on Europe, the USA and the Pacific. That would be deeply damaging to world prosperity – and to world stability.

    Openness in trade will be the test of our commitment to a real European union. For many of the countries represented here today, it will make the difference between prosperity and poverty. The Twelve should rise to the challenge, and that includes agriculture. The debate may be technical; but the underlying issues are fundamental. We talk of a new world order. It is fragile and flawed. But the idea is not unrealistic. If we were to fail to reach agreement on how the world is to trade and do business, we would deal a body blow to our hopes of a new world order. And the damage would be entirely self inflicted.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the open society is on the march. Not just in Europe, but in every continent. Different countries will have their own ways of pursuing reform. But the lesson of the 20th Century is filtering through: freedom is the precondition of a happier world – and free markets are the precondition of a more prosperous world. It falls to us Europeans to spread that simple message, and live up to it ourselves. To fail would be unforgivable. To succeed will bring prizes beyond calculation. There is no better place to start than here on our own continent. And no better time to start than now.