The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Category: Prime Minister (1990-1997)

  • Mr Major’s Joint Press Conference with Helmut Kohl – 29 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint press conference with the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, held in London on Monday 29th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I would like first to welcome Helmut to the United Kingdom, he is a very welcome guest and we have had, as we always do, some useful and wide-ranging talks on a number of issues most of which I will set out for you in the next few moments.

    Apart from detailed matter, of course we looked at wider strategic matters as well. We looked at the future development of the European Union; there are many areas in there where we are of a mind and some where we have differing visions but nonetheless we took the opportunity to examine those yet again this morning.

    Of immediate and contentious matters, of course we spent some time discussing the particular difficulties that there are in the beef market in the United Kingdom and of course in the beef markets right across Europe. We discussed both the problems and the prospects for the Agriculture Council meeting today that perhaps will extend into tomorrow. The Agriculture Council of course cannot make decisions on this matter, it can only make recommendations for subsequent decision. I indicated that what we are looking for out of these discussions are some positive signals of support for relaxing the ban that at present exists; certainly we are looking for specific movement on the lifting of the ban on gelatine, tallow and related matters and I indicated to the Chancellor that I hoped that would receive some support.

    There is a great deal occurring today in Brussels both in discussions and in bilateral contacts between the United Kingdom and our European partners and I hope we will be able to achieve some movement on this matter before long.

    We also took the opportunity this morning of looking again at the sheer scale of the commercial relationship between the United Kingdom and Germany. There has also at the same time this morning been a meeting between leading businessmen in British/German trade and they joined the Chancellor and I for a pre-luncheon reception.

    Britain is now Germany’s second-largest market around the world, Germany is Britain’s largest market for visible exports and a very important source of invisible earnings. There is a great deal of interdependence between our two economies, a very large number of German firms established here in the United Kingdom and a large number of British firms established in Germany. The trade flow between our countries is very large indeed and the mutual commercial interest is very great.

    On European matters, as we look forward to the inter-governmental conference, we discussed in particular subsidiarity, that is to say ensuring that decisions are taken at the lowest possible level and not automatically at the European level; we discussed the prospects for better employment across Europe and for enlargement of the European Union and on these matters we have asked our staffs to work together very closely so that we may concert positions that are very close.

    On competitiveness and deregulation the same circumstance applies: we are both concerned to improve competitiveness, we are both concerned to improve deregulation and there will be a high-level seminar on competitiveness later on in the summer.

    We talked about the prospects for monetary union. We do have differences in enthusiasm about that and an agreement upon the importance of the economic criteria before such a step could be taken and agreement that those economic criteria would need to be sustained. The British position is I think well understood by the Chancellor and we had an opportunity to discuss it this morning.

    We both agree very strongly on the need to sustain the transatlantic partnership and have decided to establish a new trilateral United Kingdom/Germany/United States-parliamentary forum. We think the importance of keeping the parliamentary opinion of these three countries in concert is extremely important both in the short and the long term.

    We discussed foreign affairs and followed up on our brief discussions at Moscow. We talked also about Moscow and about my visit to Ukraine.

    We discussed also Bosnia where the cooperation between Britain and Germany is excellent and where we have a joint view of present developments and a joint understanding of what we hope will be achieved later in the year.

    Defence cooperation with Germany continues to be both deep and wide-ranging.

    We discussed the prospects for the North Atlantic Council foreign ministers meeting in Berlin in June where one of the key themes will be the adaptation of NATO structures to deal with the evolving and changing nature of NATO.

    We also discussed the question of NATO enlargement where British and German views are very close indeed.

    We discussed also a number of other bilateral matters and in particular the joint wish that we set in train a couple of years ago to ensure that there were greater exchanges between young Britons and young Germans, one to the other’s country, to improve greater understanding for the future.

    We had a very wide-ranging discussion indeed which was conducted in the friendly spirit that I have come to expect in discussing matters, even contentious matters, with the Chancellor and I am delighted that we were able to have such a fruitful meeting.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Allow me, if I may, to first of all use this opportunity to thank the Prime Minister most sincerely for the very warm hospitality with which we have been received, I myself and the members of my delegation, here in Downing Street. It is one of these visits that is part of our ordinary exchange of opinions but using the word “ordinary” does not actually correspond to the reality. It is more like a visit between very good friends because the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany is an excellent one and the personal relationship between the Prime Minister, my friend John Major, and myself is excellent and because friendships between politicians and those who are responsible in politics do not automatically remove problems, I have never been under that kind of illusion. That may be true but on the other hand such a personal relationship – such a good chemistry as the Americans put it – between two people certainly helps to smooth the way a little bit, even in those cases where one may be of different opinions and it was actually purely a matter of chance but also a good occasion for me here at this Round Table because it afforded us a good opportunity to meet with representatives of the business communities of the two countries and the Prime Minister underlined once again how close, how useful, how important, particularly the economic relationship between the two countries is and in my statement to the Round Table I said that after all British Officers launched the initiative for the Hanover Trade Fair that now has become the largest industrial fair in the world and I was very pleased to learn that next year, the jubilee year of the Hanover Fair, the United Kingdom will be the partner country of the Hanover Fair and I think we have every occasion to turn this into a big bash celebrating the friendship that has evolved between our two countries and business communities over the years and this meeting between the two business communities has actually also served to underline once again that we are here on a very good course in further intensifying our economic relationship and our exchange of views. I must say that from our talks today I took away a number of hints as to where we can come to improvements.

    We talked about a number of issues that are of mutual interest. We exchanged views during this admittedly rather short meeting about a number of issues. We also mentioned obviously the governmental conference on Maastricht 2 which was, as you know, inaugurated in Turin and we talked about further developments. I must say that it is of tremendous importance to me that we should cooperate as closely as possible with our British friends in this particular stage of European integration and we talked in very concrete terms about how matters are developing and I would like to say this here most clearly because sometimes I read in the British papers the exact opposite. I would like to state quite clearly what my position is exactly.

    I am a champion – and a fervent one at that – of building this house of Europe at the turn of this particular century that has seen such great suffering, that we should make room in this European house for our partners and friends in Europe and that we should make room on a sort of permanent lease for our American friends. It is unimaginable for me that this common European house might be one house where the United Kingdom does not have a firm position and its place.

    I know that internally you have a lot of discussions going on here in the United Kingdom and certainly here would not be the place nor the time for me to barge into that but there are voices I sometimes hear in public here that there are people over there in Europe who want to push the British out of Europe. This is absolutely not the case and it does become any more true because people repeat it. I will certainly not act for a Europe where the British do not have their firm place and position but I do think that in building this European house we should bear in mind the different traditions, different historical developments, different geographical situations and also the different kind of roads that we have to travel to get to these goals and this is why I say it is so important that we should bear each other’s interests in mind, that we should not enter into an almost theological debate where we say we have the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the others are completely wrong in what they say but that we should come to a working together and cooperation that is characterised by common sense and I am very much persuaded that then we shall have a great opportunity to make headway, to take a big step forward. Obviously, there are areas where we have different opinions the British and German governments, and there are areas where we are very close together.

    With the European Union we may have a different opinion as regards the two of us and the other partners on subsidiarity for example. That is a word that I know many people simply do not understand the way we interpret it. I would define it in a very simple way. I would say that when building this common European house – using now Brussels as a synonym for the European Union – I think we should opt for Brussels taking only those decisions that can be taken at that level and can then benefit citizens the best and decisions that can better be taken on a national level, for example in London, Paris and then later on in Berlin, those should be taken on that particular national level and those decisions that are best taken at a regional level – in Germany for example on the level of the Laenders – should be taken on that particular level. That is an issue that obviously we need to elaborate on a little bit further and in Maastricht 2 we will also have to ask a question as regards the [indistinct] local authorities in the European Union.

    I only mention these few examples to illustrate that I do see very good chances for coming to a common kind of position and that I will tenaciously hold to the view that this is indeed a policy which is not aiming at isolating anyone but that this is a policy which serves as a policy of rapprochement of the British, of the French, the Italians and all the other partners in the European Union.

    I don’t want to go into another issue now at length but I think I should raise it at least, BSE. I think that today and tomorrow, from what we have heard, the Agriculture Council will discuss the proposals submitted by the British Government and I think that those proposals should be then discussed as quickly as possible by the Veterinary Committee of the European Union and I would wish for the Agriculture Committee not leaving matters at that tomorrow but coming to a decision as quickly as possible.

    I am very much looking forward to your questions and since you are very often writing about me, I would even more welcome you writing about me when I am actually here to answer your questions.

     

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION (Robin Oakley, BBC):

    Chancellor Kohl, you have frequently said that Europe cannot afford to travel at the pace of the slowest ship in the convoy. Have you persuaded the British ship, in your talks with Mr. Major today, to move any faster?

    Can I ask the Prime Minister whether he and Chancellor Kohl have agreed that there should be any relationship between countries which stay out of an inner-core single European currency, any exchange rate mechanism to link those who stay outside and those who form any inner core?

    Finally, could I ask Chancellor Kohl if he did eat beef for lunch today?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Just as my friend John Major, I had indeed beef for lunch and I ate it and I think that was probably the underlying purpose for this press conference – to answer your question!

    What you have said by way of your second question you quoted me correctly but then automatically transposed that to the United Kingdom. This was not my meaning, that was your opinion from the BBC. I did not automatically declare the United Kingdom to be the slowest ship in the convoy which is why I cannot give you an answer to that question.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me pick up those points.

    We had an excellent luncheon.

    As far as the slowest ship in the convoy is concerned, I am delighted that the Chancellor was able to respond to that because it isn’t the only occasion where a remark like that has been wrenched out of context domestically and there has been an assumption that it was the United Kingdom that was in either the Chancellor’s mind or whosoever may have made such a remark in the European Union. That isn’t the case. Indeed, one of the things the Chancellor and I have been discussing today is the desirability – the necessity – of a more flexible approach to Europe as Europe develops further and I think it is much to be hoped that people will appreciate that those are the sort of things that are under pragmatic and detailed discussion at the present time.

    We didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing the possibility of a fresh exchange rate mechanism, our finance ministers discussed that some time ago and I think the British position on that is well known and hasn’t changed so we didn’t spend any time particularly discussing that this morning. We did discuss the range of matters that I set out and the Chancellor set out.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I should perhaps mention and add to what the Prime Minister just said on this last point.

    We shall decide in the spring of 1998 on this matter and not a minute earlier and therefore I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to enter into philosophical debate on what may or may not happen. In my day-to-day life as a politician, I am in many cases forced to take certain decisions but in Germany too a new form of penitence seems to have evolved. In former times, usually you had your sin first and penitence later; today, you have penitence and also the sort of penalty first and then the sin but I am actually one of the old school for that matter.

    QUESTION:

    You are never enthusiastic about this kind of building and you showed a certain reservation about enthusiasm in European development when you made your statement just now. Can you enlarge on this a bit?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I don’t think that there is any doubt at all about the British wish to see Europe develop. What the main debate is about is the nature, pace and style and the purpose of the development and there is a great misunderstanding I think often in this country – partly it is linguistic, partly it is simply modes of expression – as to what is often meant by what is said by our European partners. The Chancellor is here so he will want to add something to this.

    Often, when people talk about a “European house” in this country referring, to what has been said in Europe, there is an assumption that that European house is going to be centralised, that all the decisions are going to be taken at the centre and more and more is going to be sucked away from the nation state. That isn’t the sense in which it is frequently used.

    I cannot envisage a time in the future when the Germans aren’t Germans, the French aren’t French, the Italians aren’t Italians in all their instincts and the British aren’t British so I think we should actually look at what pragmatically we are discussing with the development of Europe.

    Where are the areas of development that are of importance? – The single market. Who were the proponents of the single market? The British and the Germans were the great proponents of the single market. What is another area of great development? Enlargement of the European Union in order to spread the opportunities that exist in a democratic free market further across Europe. Who were the great proponents of enlargement? The British and the Germans were the great proponents of enlargement. Who were the proponents of saying too much must not actually be centralised? You have just heard the Chancellor speak of subsidiarity; he and the British are very much at one upon those points.

    The area where there has been some difference is the question of a single currency and Germany are clear that Germany favours a single currency. I made it clear at Maastricht that we reserved our position on a single currency.

    We both want to see – if you wish to use the parlance – a European house, it is the nature of the construction that is a matter of legitimate debate and if I can make the point, it is a matter of debate. It is not a matter of artificial conflict as it is so often presented. Britain and Germany agree on many things, we disagree on some other things but I think I can say – and I think the Chancellor will confirm – that where we disagree we don’t disagree with animosity, we disagree because we both recognise that the other country has a legitimate point of view and to borrow the Chancellor’s comments of five minutes ago, different traditions and a different historical experience.

    In the discussions that I have had with the Chancellor and my European partners I have found that understanding. It doesn’t alter the fact that on some issues we have different policies but those differences aren’t the subject of unpleasant and nasty disputes. It is a question of how we develop in mutual interest and there will be differences about that and we will see those gradually solved as Europe develops.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Allow me, if I may, just a brief remark on that particular issue. Let me be very frank with you. It is not a question that may be of any local importance from London or for Bonn, it is a Europe-wide issue. I don’t understand this discussion at all because it sometimes demonstrates an impatience that I find absolutely absurd. I remember my first EEC summit, as it was called then, in Copenhagen in 1982, at the time the word that was most widely used to characterise the European Community was Euro-sclerocis, a very bad disease that had befallen Europe. And now here had I in the December of that year been here in this room with you I would not have believed that we would have come so far as we have come and everyone told me at the time it will not work, the internal market won’t work, Maastricht 1 will never come about, and then all of a sudden the treaty was there, and then people said it will never be ratified.

    So again and again we overcame those hurdles and we did move forward and it is simply not true that we have taken too long. Just look at European history over the past 200 years and it is only then that you have a correct yardstick as to what sort of distance we have travelled.

    Let me mention one example where we do disagree, at least at this particular point in time. For example on the issue of Maastricht II as regards intensification of our cooperation in the area of internal and justice matters, now if it were the case that we will not be able to come to some sort of conclusion in Maastricht II, would it be such a terrible thing if we were to find a formula that allows us to look at this matter again in let us say 5 years time. And then in the meantime we try to come to some sort of common decisions on an intergovernmental level. And these decisions will come, no matter what we may say now, at the very latest in 5 – 6 years there will be no European government that will be able to stand for elections and win the election shirking away from combating the threat from international crime and taking a defensive stand on it. And we will see that we will not make any headway on this particular issue on a purely national level. And it will be just the force of the situation as it stands at that time that we have to come to some sort of European-wide settlement. Obviously we have incredible amounts of drugs, for example, that are being brought into the European Union. This is not the fault of our police, but we have to come to a European-wide solution for that.

    So perhaps let us first of all come to some intergovernmental agreements. But it won’t be the end of the world for me. The decisive thing is let us make a move in this particular direction. And I am a pragmatist and it is rather a strange occurrence that it should be a German all of a sudden who opts for pragmatism because we have always been accused of doing exactly the opposite.

    So I am for a step by step approach and we shall make progress in one field and perhaps not in the other field, so well then there are areas where for the moment we will not make any headway at all, but this common European house will be built perhaps with different stages of development, but it will come about.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, I was interested in that last answer when you talked about internal discussion in this country, would you accept that some of the difficulties are driven by what people see as a relentless timetable towards EMU in the treaty, though Britain has its opt-out, and your own great enthusiasm for political union and that worries people here, and could that perhaps go slower as you suggest that other things might go slower? And Prime Minister, could you ever accept a situation where individual candidates, standing in election, could say in their individual addresses no to a single currency when that will not be your position in the main manifesto at the next election?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    On the second question, I suggest you wait for the election. The government’s manifesto will be quite clear, our position on a single currency is quite clear. We have said repeatedly that we don’t have the information upon which to base a proper decision at this stage. It is the most important decision that anyone is going to take for very many years, it has to be right, the economics have to be right and it is folly to take a decision in advance of knowing what the circumstances may be, for a country with the trading tradition of this country and the importance of sterling at an international trading currency. So I don’t anticipate the problem that you refer to arising, I read about it in the press, I don’t anticipate it arising and I think the position we will set out in the manifest on a single currency is well known.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I must say I don’t see this, what you mentioned. Without this kind of planning, without this kind of timetable, we would have lagged significantly behind the sort of progress that we have achieved. Let me give you one example that applies to Ireland, but that actually in more ways than one applies to the rest of the European Union as well. Ten years ago, for example, I had a number of fights with Francois Mitterrand. It would have been inconceivable at the time that as regards the matter of convergence of economic policy we would have made the sort of headway that we have made, and the citizens in Europe, after all, have drawn a great benefit from that. I don’t know, as regards the EU average, as regards inflation, but I think generally in the UK it is between 2 – 3 percent, and I was told when I was a student at the university that this is virtually no inflation, and I think you have 2.3 or something, so that means it is the kind of social policy that is geared to those who have small incomes. So why don’t we talk about the positive results that this has yielded for individual citizens?

    QUESTION:

    Do you both think that you could win a referendum about the single currency in your countries?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well we will have a referendum in this country if and when a British Conservative Cabinet decides to enter a single currency. If that were the case then we would clearly campaign for that. The answer, if you ask me whether we would win such a referendum today, is no we would not win such a referendum today, but then there is no prospect of us joining today so the situation does not arise.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    As far as I am concerned I have never been a great friend of this kind of democracy that is plebiscite because I am familiar with German history and up until 1933 it was not purely a coincidence that the fathers and mothers, as it were, of our constitution were very familiar with the Weimar Republic and later on very familiar with the concentration camps under the National Socialists who [indistinct] champions of democracy. And if we had this instrument in our constitution I would certainly not hesitate in using it, but if I use it for this particular area of politics I would have to use it for other areas of politics as well and I have great doubts whether that would actually lead and improve internal peace in our country because there are a number of issues, on for example immigration, that in many ways move people a lot in Germany and we don’t intend at all obviously to introduce that, it would mean changing our constitution and I have no intention of doing that. But if you ask me in concrete terms that if we held that, how would we decide, and I have no doubt at all that if we had this kind of referendum the majority of people who are well informed in our country would opt for it because they know that peace and [indistinct] of the 21st century depends on matters such as these.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, you have eaten British beef today and enjoyed it. Would you now tell the world clearly here today – eat British beef, it is safe and enjoyable?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I ate British beef but I am not a marketing manager for British beef. I said what is going on in the Commission and you don’t honestly expect me to say something like this, a sort of advertising slogan.

    QUESTION:

    Can I ask you both would it be possible for a member state of the EU to go on enjoying the market advantages while resisting any deepening or further integration of European institutions?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I gave you the answer some time ago when I said we were talking about the problems that develop in the Community and the advantages of flexibility. The European Union is flexible now. There are a whole range of flexible instruments within the European Union. The two most obvious ones are the position of the Danes and the British, for example, on a single currency; the position of the British on the social chapter, but they are by no means the only illustrations. So the answer is yes.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I don’t have this kind of concern, I don’t have the impression that we have this particular kind of problem that no-one wants to get into the European Union, quite the contrary, I think we have rather the opposite problem, there are so many who want to come at the same time, so I don’t share your concern. Actually the European Union seems to be one of the places to be in the world. If you don’t believe me, go to Tokyo, go to the Wall Street Bank of New York and ask them, to Latin America, other parts of this world, why do all of these people want to do business with the European Union, why at this conference that both of us attended in Bangkok only a few weeks ago meet with such interest – because we are the place to be.

    QUESTION:

    You said before that you would urge the Agricultural Commission to speed up the decision on the beef ban. Do you also respond to the Prime Minister’s request for help and support in a partial lifting of the beef ban?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I don’t think it would be entirely fair, I mean I am standing here as the German Head of Government and I am not part of those negotiations. My colleagues therefore are meeting there in Brussels today and tomorrow, they intend to look at the British proposals, they will submit it to the Veterinary Committee in order to examine it. The only plea I have is don’t let matters stand as they are but do it as quickly as possible and then there will be a concluding session where we come to a decision. But I don’t think it would be in any way a reliable or very serious answer that I could give at this point in time. After all, the debate will take place tonight when the individual Agriculture Ministers meet on that matter.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, Douglas Hurd said at the weekend that you no longer believe in a European super state, I just wonder if you could confirm that analysis or not. And Prime Minister, on the matter that Mike Brunson raised, are you worried that some people in your own party are now using the alleged electoral threat by Sir James Goldsmith to have one last push at making you rule out a single currency in the next parliament?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me answer that point first. I think you must ask other people what their motives are. I have made the position clear. We will decide upon a single currency when it is necessary for us to decide upon a single currency and we are not going to do that precipitately. I know many people think it would be extremely convenient if I were to say now, no we are not going to do it. But I think in the national interest I need to see what the circumstances are, I need the British voice in the negotiations right up to the time when the decision is made. I don’t want the British voice to be excluded from those negotiations.

    Whether we in the event turn out to be part of a single currency, or whether we in the event say we will not be part of a single currency, what happens in the development of that currency is important to the national interest in this country. If our European partners proceed with it, it is not a matter that we can just ignore, it will have its implications not only for those countries but for every country right the way across Europe. And frankly, for a country of the size and influence of the United Kingdom to exclude itself from the most important economic debate that Britain has had for 50 years, and will have for 50 years, does not seem to me to be in the British national interest.

    So we will not exclude ourselves. We will make a choice when we are compelled to make a choice and then we will decide upon the basis of what we think is right for this country at that stage. So there will be no change in our position upon that point.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I am not familiar with this particular quote from Douglas Hurd’s speech. If I understood you correctly, you said that he had said I was no longer a proponent of the European super state. If this is actually what he said, I don’t quite understand how he can say something like that because I have never been a champion of a European super state, perhaps he has read it in one of your papers here but it has certainly never been an opinion of mine. For a time perhaps there have been a few misunderstandings, because we actually adopted a sentence out of Churchill’s Zurich speech, it is a very beautiful speech and a very beautiful phrase, but I think it was a bit misleading for our people. At the time I was 17 years old and he appealed to the Europeans, to the Germans, the French, but to the Europeans generally speaking that they should build these united states of Europe and perhaps that was a bit of a misleading kind of slogan. I used it for several years and the association obviously was that people thought we wanted to build the United States of America on European soil, but this is something that we never wanted and we have always said we remain Germans, we remain British, we remain Swedes, and this is different than being from Texas, from Oregon, from Minnesota or New York. This is a misleading kind of comparison even though it may be from Winston Churchill and may sound very nice.

    I actually gave a speech a few years ago at a party meeting that because it was misleading we should no longer use this particular expression. I said we are building the European Union and the European Union, and again I think this is a bit misleading perhaps and may lead to different interpretations between the British and the Germans and I did try to define what I mean by mentioning this image of a common European house. It simply cannot be a centralised state and even though the British and the Germans may be of exactly the same opinion as regards the approach, we talk about federalism and for many people here in Britain in what we understand as federalism means quite a different thing.

    What we understand when we speak about federalism is exactly what you want, but it is perceived differently here. We are saying on the level of the citizens, on the local level, on the land level in many areas of Europe, on a regional level, this is where decisions should be taken that can best be taken there, this is what we understand when we speak about federalism, it is exactly the opposite of a centralised state. I have always been a very fervent champion of federalism in Germany. I would hold that one of the most important, and then subsequently most positive decisions by the parliamentary assembly when they drew up our constitution and basic law was that they sort of tried to make room for the sort of variety that has always existed in Germany, that the Lander, that the Bavarian, the man from the north will find that he has left an imprint on the constitution and that they all are part of one whole. So I have certainly not said at any time that [indistinct] super state.

    First of all I would like to thank Douglas Hurd for actually mentioning me at all because it is after all always an advantage. I have never been a man who has been a champion of federalism. I have always been, in the German sense of the word, how we understand it, not how you British understand it, a federalist. And actually those who think alike here in the United Kingdom should be creative and come up with a different kind of expression that exactly says that – this building of a common European house. So thank you once again. I will read your leading articles and will see what you come up with.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview Outside the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – 26 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s doorstep interview outside the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford on 26th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am delighted at the deal that looks as though it has been reached. It looks like a temporary deal. There is clearly going to be a lot more needing to be done to make sure that it is permanent. But it looks like a ceasefire with immediate effect. It looks like there is going to be some monitoring and I think that is a very good base upon which to build something more permanent. So I think it is extremely good news.

    QUESTION:

    What can be done for a permanent deal then?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think they will need to see how one can provide a more permanent mechanism for the prevention of the Kaduscha attacks from Lebanon into Israel and I think as they move towards a Middle East settlement they will need also to look at the question of Israel removing from Southern Lebanon. They are both matters I think that will need to be addressed at some stage before we get a permanent settlement.

    QUESTION:

    What influence, Prime Minister, are you prepared to put on the Americans who have considerable influence on the Israelis to encourage them to withdraw from the [indistinct] zone?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well, we need a wider Middle East settlement. I think if one looks at this as a patchwork and expects odd things to be determined in isolation, then I think one may well look in vain. That is why I say this is a temporary settlement and I think one will need to look at a much wider scene before we get a permanent settlement. But as far as the British influence is concerned we have been exercising what influence we have with both sides for quite a long time towards a settlement, but clearly the Americans have been the largest single influence. They have taken a leading role in seeking a Middle East settlement. But both Britain itself and of course as part of the European Union have played their own part in seeking a settlement as well.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Questions in Nuneaton – 26 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s doorstep questions and answers, in Nuneaton on 26th April 1996.

    QUESTION:

    What about the VAT case the Government has just lost in the court?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    The case has not yet been determined. It’s still in the courts. It will go to the High Court. The figures that I have seen banded around so relentlessly in the press bear no relation to what the figures really are. So I think people would be very wise to wait and see. It’s going to take some time to determine. Earlier courts decided one way, this court has decided another. It will now I assume go forward to the House of Lords and I think people really should just wait for that. It’s going to take some time.

    QUESTION:

    Will it rule out tax cuts in the next Budget?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I very much doubt that this matter is going to be determined and we think we have an extremely good case and we expect to win the case. In which case the proposition that so seems to concern some people isn’t going to happen but we’d better wait and see. It still has to go to the House of Lords. We will fight the case very vigorously. We expect to win the case and the problem will then fall away.

    QUESTION:

    Will it rule out tax cuts?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I have no intention of anticipating what is going to be in the Budget. It’s an extremely good try but I have no intention of doing so. This is a matter that’s still in the courts. It’s going forward in the courts and I am not going to say anything more about it than that. We think we have a very good case. We think we will win the case. We will take it forward in the courts and in any event the figures that are being bandied around this morning are wholly wrong.

    QUESTION:

    Economic outlook?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Things are beginning to go well everywhere. I think one can see the changing circumstances that are happening at the moment If you compare what is happening here with what is happening in other countries in the same economic environment we have inflation at a level we haven’t seen for a very long time and still falling; we have unemployment far lower than any of our European competitors who face the same problems; we have got growth coming; we’ve got mortgages at their lowest level for 30 years; inflation in its best position for 50 years. So there is a great deal I think that is going to help. And at the end of this month of course, in a day or so, people will begin to see the tax reductions from the last Budget in their pay packets. And I think they will begin to realise as most of the in depth opinion studies show that the economy has decisively turned, it is getting better and what I hope will come out of that is that people will feel much more confident both in the short term and in the long term prospects. That is what I would like to see. I would like to see this attitude that people have had of not feeling confident disappear. There is no reason for lack of confidence in the prospects of this country. I think that is becoming increasingly apparent and I think that evidence will grow as month succeeds month from now on,

    QUESTION:

    Confidence in your administration?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We have another year of this Parliament. The changes that we put in place are increasingly coming through. What I determined in the depth of the recession was that we would do nothing in the period of the recession that would mean that the recovery would be hampered when it came by having sown the seeds of future economic difficulties and we didn’t. And the result of that is that we had the best economic platform for prosperity over the years that lie ahead than we have seen for a very, very long time indeed.

    QUESTION:

    Thoughts on Paddy Ashdown visiting Stratford at the same time?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I didn’t know he was here actually. I’m in Stratford this afternoon. I’m very pleased for him to follow me around.

    QUESTION:

    One of your backbenchers said today this ruling does mean no tax cuts which would be a disaster for you in the election. Do you agree with that?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    You are asking me to comment on something that hasn’t happened. One can always make speculative comments on things that haven’t happened. People haven’t had a chance to look at the judgement, they haven’t had a chance to assess it in any way, they haven’t had a chance to consider the fact that in earlier courts we won and that we expect to win when it goes to the high courts. So I think people should just wait upon events and not over hype them and over exaggerate them.

    QUESTION:

    Good news?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There is very good news here. Just have a look round everywhere. You can see the housing market starting to move; you can see mortgages at their lowest for 30 years; you can see tax cuts in people’s pay packets this week; you can see unemployment lower here than in any comparable country; you can see more people in work in this country than in any other comparable country. There is nowhere else in Western Europe at the moment where the people of this country could live and find better economic circumstances and that is the view of the Europeans not just my view. You may I would say that wouldn’t I, but go and ask the Europeans and they will tell you the same thing.

    QUESTION (member of the public):

    Why don’t you stop those French walking all over us?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We are working for a negotiated settlement. That means reaching an agreement. If one strikes attitudes the people who would pay the price of that will be the beef farmers. If you were a beef farmer you would want this matter solved. And I want it solved.

  • Mr Major’s Speech in Rugby – 26 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech in Rugby made on Friday 26th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me touch on a number of things including prospects and some of the things I may say to you over the next few minutes may perhaps surprise you, but I hope pleasantly in a range of ways. Let me firstly just set out precisely where we are economically and how we got there.

    It is not all that long ago that we and the rest of western Europe, the United States, Japan, most of the world in fact, south east Asia perhaps excluded, were in the midst of perhaps the most severe recession that we had seen for 20 years or more. When we went into that recession, I made a promise to myself and to my colleagues that we have kept and that is vital for the future of our economy. The promise I made was this: we will do nothing during the recession that will mean when we come out of the recession we have laid the seeds for future problems. Time and time again that has happened in recessions, as economic cycle succeeds economic cycle since the War we have seen that problem. Recession, pressure, the Government takes action, it gets out of the recession but the seeds are laid for a fresh inflationary spiral and we go, after another move in the economic cycle, back into the same problems. How many times have we seen that happen since the War?

    I have had vivid experience of inflation. You have of course as businessmen, you know the perils of it, I needn’t spell them out to you, but I have to say to you, quite apart from the business perils there is a social implication to inflation as well that I feel extremely strongly about, too strongly perhaps you may feel but I will express it for you:

    If you have ever been in a position where you wonder at the beginning of the week whether your family can pay the bills at the end of the week because the prices are going up, then you begin to see inflation not as some abstract economic theory but as something that threatens the very security of the way you live so I loathe inflation and I make no secret of the fact that I loathe it and we have taken every precaution we can to prevent that inflationary genie escaping from the bottle again and what is the result of what we have done during the period of the recession. And I would like you to bear in mind when I say that that we have lived in the same economic climate as our partners in Germany, France and other parts of western Europe. What are our economic circumstances now?

    We have inflation under 3 per cent for the third successive year and it is still going down, we will hit our target of 2.5 per cent or less at the time of the next general election. Apart from the social implications, you don’t have to worry in your future planning in the way you once did about whether Your investments are going to soar in cost because of inflation or whether the projections upon which you based your investment will suddenly fall apart. That is the first point to be made.

    The second point is that a very unusual economic trick has been pulled. Not only has inflation come down but contrary to what we have often seen, inflation has come down in parallel with unemployment. Unemployment has dropped by three-quarters of a million in the last couple of years or so.

    What has happened elsewhere in western Europe in those countries in the same markets, in the same economic environment? As our unemployment has fallen steadily, theirs has gone up. If you look at Germany, their unemployment rising far higher than ours; in France, their unemployment round about 12 per cent, stuck, no sign of it coming down. We are below 8 per cent and falling. And neither is that a false measure. Not only do we have a lower rate of measured unemployment, we have a higher percentage of our workforce actually in jobs than any major economy across Europe through inflation below 3 per cent and falling and unemployment falling. There are not a lot of people in this room who will remember when that combination was as secure as it is at the present time.

    Has it been done at the expense of nil growth? We have had larger growth in our economy over the last couple of years than our competitors across Europe; that is going to be the case this year, it is going to be the case next year, so low inflation and falling, too high unemployment but lower than anybody else and falling and growth as good or better than any of the other European countries. What has happened to competitiveness? You know very well what has happened to competitiveness. We are now taking markets we haven’t had for generations in this country, exports are running at record levels. Go and listen not to what I say – I suppose there is an element of “well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Go and see what German industrialists and other people say, have a look at the booklets on your chairs and see what businessmen here and politicians and businessmen abroad have to say about the British economy. There was a time when we stood here and looked at the economies of our competitors and wondered how they did it. I wish the extent of fashionable opinion in this country would wake up to the fact that that is now happening in reverse; those countries abroad are now looking at Britain and saying: “What has happened to her? How has she suddenly produced an inflation record like this, a job-creation record like this, a growth record like this and increased her competitiveness?” so that as we meet here today, we are probably the most competitive industrial nation in western Europe.

    That is where we are, the question is what do we do with it because that factor is apparent. What we have built is the platform for future prosperity but the prosperity itself needs to be built and it needs to trickle down to the people up and down this country who by their efforts have played a part in creating the opportunities that now lie in front of us.

    We had to put up taxes, something I loathed doing but it was taxes going up or high borrowing and interest rates going up instead. But now we have begun to reduce taxes, the first tax reductions are in this month’s pay packet and they are well worth having. I hope we will be in a position to do more, as soon as we prudently can, we most certainly will.

    Let me touch on two or three other things:

    Peter mentioned the social chapter. That is one of the principal reasons why we are more competitive than other countries. Not the social chapter as it is but social expenditure as it is across Europe. Let me give you the figures:

    For every £100 in wages that a British employer pays, it costs them an extra £18 in employers’ national insurance contributions and on-costs of that sort. In France, Germany, Spain and Italy, it is between £30 and £45, a huge competitive difference.

    Why does the social chapter matter? Our political opponents say it is a set of principles – a set of principles like Cathy of Clade [phon] was conductor of music! It is not a set of principles. These are policies that you can’t opt out of once you sign the social chapter and the problem is not what is in the social chapter today, it is what would go into the social chapter once every European country was signed up to it and what would go into it is the sort of social provision that exists in the nation states of Europe but not here but that would come into the social chapter by qualified majority vote to diminish our competitiveness against our partners were we to be so foolish as to sign the social chapter. Let me give you a couple of illustrations:

    There are some very large companies in countries like Germany and Austria; if they had to make staff changes perhaps for an extremely good economic reason, they can’t do it without going through a works council if they have more than 5 employees. If you want to work overtime in the country of one of our European competitors, you actually have to get permission from the government in order to work overtime. Can you imagine the questions? “Are the staff fit? Is it Sunday? How much are you paying? What is the reason for this?” By the time you have sorted all that out, the export order for which you wanted your workers to work overtime has gone to Britain I hope, because we are beginning increasingly to be able to [indistinct].

    Let me just say a word about taxes:

    All the figures upon which people can base their broad tax projections are in the public sector. You can’t be detailed, I accept, but the broad figures are there, there is nothing hidden, our accounts are as open as the accounts of any nation in the world so anyone can have a pretty good idea what their tax objectives are, they don’t have to hide behind obfuscation and downright deceit.

    My tax objectives are perfectly transparent and clear. As soon as I am able, I wish to reduce taxes further and I wish to go down to a 20 pence basic rate of tax, I am not changing the upper rate of tax and then I want to tackle capital taxes because I think they damage the market, they damage job creation and what we need is job creation and a competitive environment to keep our people in work and to put more of our people in work. These are our objectives.

    What are our opponents’ objectives? It is very difficult to say. When asked privately, the leader of the Labour Party said: “We aren’t going to touch people up to £30,000!” which I would have thought to any rational observer would have meant they are going to touch people earning over £30,000 but after that remarkable slip of the tongue, one of the leader of the Labour Party’s minders rushed along to the press to say: “He didn’t say that, he didn’t mean it, it never happened!” Claire Short – bless her honest, cotton-picking socks! – [laughter] seems to think it should happen; she is very well paid. Mr. Prescott is middle class, he is very well paid! Nobody doubts where the instincts of the Labour Party lie or what will happen. I don’t know what the editors of some of the great Labour-supporting newspapers who earn large sums of money think, I hope they have worked out how much it is going to cost them if the upper rate of tax goes up from 40 pence to 50 pence which is the minimum demand of the Labour Party in the House of Commons or perhaps 60 pence but certainly a very expensive proposition.

    The people I am concerned about are the people up and down the country who at the moment are being told one thing by the leadership when it is transparent that that is not remotely what their position would be likely to be were they in government. That tax slip of Mr. Blair’s was brushed to one side. Gordon Brown was a bit more explicit on another aspect, on child benefit. Because he is being pressed on tax, he decided he had better display a touch of virility so he decided to announce that he was going to take away child benefit for people with families of youngsters between the ages of 16 and 18 who decide to stay on at school. Let me say something about this:

    I left school at 16. I didn’t leave school at 16 because I didn’t want to stay, I didn’t leave school at 16 because my parents wanted me to leave school at 16. I left school at 16 because we could not afford for me to stay at school and I chose to go out and work; my parents didn’t like it but I chose to go out to work.

    If you take child benefit away from any youngster in any family, perhaps a low-income family, perhaps not but very many families on low incomes are desperately keen that their children should have a better education, a better opportunity, a better chance than they ever had and these days 1 in 3 of our youngsters go through A-levels and on to university and I am proud of that and I defend the expenditure to make sure that that is possible but if in future Labour were to carry out this plan and have the opportunity, you have a youngster of 16, 17 or 18 going on to A-levels, as they should, they will lose a £560 child benefit every year for each child. Most families have two children, often only a couple of years between them, you will get a rolling effect that dwarfs any tax changes we have seen for generations and how well-targeted it is, targeted directly upon many of the people who have the lowest incomes in the country – £560 a year gone.

    Apart from the stupidity of that in inhibiting youngsters whose parents have modest incomes going on to further education, it is thoroughly dishonest for this reason: child benefit was a tax allowance. We changed it from a tax allowance to a cash benefit payment so that it actually went directly to the mothers to be used predominantly for the children because of concerns that that wasn’t happening. What would be happenings is you would be taking away a tax allowance and what is the equivalent in tax? For someone on average earnings, that is the equivalent of an increase of 5 pence in the pound on the standard rate of income tax if that was actually withdrawn from families. That has crept out without the Labour Party realising exactly what it would have meant for people. If that has crept out under pressure, I would like to know what else is lying hidden that needs to come out and that we need to examine before we get towards the next general election.

    Peter asked whether we are going to win. I remember Peter asked me that before the last general election. [Laughter]. I look forward to Peter asking me that before the next general election but one and I will give him the same answer: yes, we are going to win and I will tell you why we are going to win:

    We are going to win because when you strip away the absurd hyper-exaggeration of everyday news events, what is happening in this country at the moment is that we are producing the most stable economic platform that we have seen for generations. What a tragedy it would be if, having gone through all that has happened in the last few years to create that environment and that opportunity, it were to be casually tossed away with the sort of policies that a change of government would bring about.

    I don’t think that will happen but I don’t base my confidence only upon the economy though I am confident about the economy. I base it on one or two other things that hit here [touching part of body?] rather than in the wallet and the first of those is the proposal for constitutional change that our opponents have. If you wanted to draw up a recipe that would divide and break up the United Kingdom, you would draw up the proposal fox constitutional change and particularly a tax-gathering parliament in Scotland that the Labour Party have committed themselves to. Once you get that parliament in Scotland, within a measurably short period of time if you are going to have the parliament, you would have to have a Labour government and Labour governments; like all governments, become unpopular.

    Mid-term elections in Scotland and who is likely to win? There is a possibility that the Scottish Nationalists:- separatist party openly declared for separatism – would become the majority party in the Scottish parliament and what mandate are they going to claim? Is it really credible to have a Scottish tax-gathering parliament and still have public expenditure from the rest of the United Kingdom spent in Scotland at a much greater level per head of population than it is in England? Of course it isn’t practical. Is it practical to have Scottish MPs at Westminster voting on matters that affect England while the same English MPs in England cannot vote on the same matters affecting Scotland? What sort of recipe for chaos is being unleashed with its ill-thought-out porridge that they are producing for Scotland?

    What have they got against the Scots that they should pay more taxes? What have the Scots got against themselves that they could contemplate any party that would want them to pay more tax?

    Then there is the question of Europe. No issue has been more explosive, no issue has been more misrepresented, no issue has been more conducted in stereotypes with the debate often determining itself only on the fringes of argument – those who are fantastically opposed to Europe and those who are fantastically in favour of Europe. There is a middle and it is a very large middle. I don’t know how many of the businessmen here have half their trade going to the European Union and back but I bet a majority of you do because half of all our trade goes to Europe and back so we have a real interest in playing a constructive role and arguing our case. Removing our influence and standing on the outskirts would mean that the problems that we are having with beef, where I am in great dispute with our European partners, could be magnified over a whole range of issues if we were outside the European Union or not playing a part in trying to determine the rules of the European Union but that doesn’t mean we are going to go into a federal Europe.

    I can tell you quite frankly I have no intention whatsoever of going down the route to a federal Europe. I just don’t believe it would be right for Europe to go in that direction and I know that it would not be right for this country to go in that direction and we have no intention whatsoever of doing so. We will argue the case, we will debate the case, we will win the case – in which case all is well – or we will not win the case and we will just say “No! You can go in that direction if you like but we are not!”.

    At Maastricht, we had huge disputes. Nobody truly believed that I would come back from the Maastricht debates having said “Non to the social chapter and “No” to a single currency with the opt-out. The City didn’t really believe that, none of the newspapers believed it. If you promise not to tell anybody, even some of my colleagues in the House of Commons didn’t believe it! [Laughter]. I know you will find that hard to believe [laughter] but I promise – and tell not a soul – that they didn’t. But at the end of the negotiations there was a choice: no treaty at all because it is agreed by unanimity or recognising that Britain has a distinct view and we are not going to be pushed in that direction.

    At the inter-governmental conference in front of us, the same principles will apply. I have set out with great clarity what our negotiating position is in the negotiations and if I have to say’ “No” I will say “No”. I did before and I will again, not because of parliamentary pressures at home, not because of public opinion at home – not just because of those things but because what is in the White Paper on Europe is what I believe about Europe and I have to say I am pretty fed up with the absurd commentary which says you either have to be on one wing of the European argument or the other wing to have any views at all. Well my views are very clear. On one hand, I am being told always that I am shifting my position, on the other I am being told I am being told I am too stubborn and why don’t I listen to people. I am happy to accept one of those if someone can make a credible case for it but I am just a touch concerned that having both of them often on the same day on the same page of the same newspaper written by its seems to me the same person who clearly is not perhaps wholly convinced of his case.

    We are not going down the federal Europe route but our political opponents are, the Liberals because they believe in it, the Labour Party because they believe it is fashionable. I just believe it is wrong and when we come to the general election that will be a big division so there will be divisions on tax, divisions on the constitution, divisions on Europe and great divisions on education and other matters.

    The fact of the matter is, Peter, when people come to vote in a general election, forget the nonsense of by-elections, the protests – “Oh my God, I’m sick of those people, let’s not bother to come out and vote today!”. You have got real issues, issues that affect the family, the money, the future, the country and upon those issues I am perfectly prepared to take my Conservative case to the country and just as I recall at the last general election as we entered the last week 7 or 8 per cent behind on the Sunday before the election, with every newspaper writing us off and wondering what Mr. Kinnock was going to do in Downing Street, I didn’t believe the polls then, I don’t believe them now, I thought we would win then and I was right, I think we will now and I will be right again. [Applause].

  • PMQT Written Answers – 25 April 1996

    Below is the text of the written answers relating to Prime Minister’s Question Time from 25th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

    The Prime Minister: This morning, I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

     

    Oral Contraceptives

    Mr. Simon Hughes: To ask the Prime Minister what representations he has received regarding the manner in which the licensing authority handled the matter relating to oral contraceptives containing desogestrel or gestodene.

    The Prime Minister: I have received a small number of letters from doctors and members of the public in relation to this matter.

  • PMQT – 25 April 1996

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 25th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Mr. Corbett: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

    Mr. Corbett: Did the Prime Minister hear his Chancellor on the “Today” programme this morning deriding the claim that economic and monetary union would necessarily mean the end of the nation state? Is that the Prime Minister’s view, or will he be giving another shambolic free vote to his Cabinet?

    The Prime Minister: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not think that on matters of conscience it is right to have a free vote in the House. I understand that last night’s debate was of a very high quality, as is frequently the case when we have a free vote in the House, and I believe that it was the right way to deal with the problem. With regard to the nation state, my right hon. and learned Friend is a strong supporter of it.

    Dame Jill Knight: May I assure my right hon. Friend that the Government’s announcement earlier this week on the abolition of anti-personnel mines has been widely welcomed both within and outside the House? Bearing it in mind that some 2,000 innocent people are killed or maimed every month as a result of those diabolical instruments, will my right hon. Friend please use his considerable influence to obtain their abolition worldwide?

    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We have stated for a long time our aim to eliminate anti-personnel mines and we hope that through international agreement that aim can be achieved. I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will work for a total worldwide ban on anti-personnel mines.

    Mr. Blair: Does not the fact that four of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Ministers–[Interruption.] I am well aware why Conservative Members do not want to talk about this. Does not the fact that four Cabinet Ministers voted against the Prime Minister himself on a Bill from his own Lord Chancellor show the humiliating state to which his authority has been reduced?

    The Prime Minister: I think that the right hon. Gentleman will recall what I said when I announced the Bill last November in the debate on the Queen’s Speech. I made it clear at that time that this was a matter of personal conviction for all hon. Members and that I had no intention of riding roughshod over the convictions of any hon. Member, in the Government or beyond, on the matter. I said then that we would propose free votes on matters of conscience. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that it is right to have a free vote on a matter of conscience, does he equally think that it is right that those members of any Administration who feel strongly on these matters should be excluded? Presumably he does. If he does, he has a strange view of what forms a matter of conscience.

    Mr. Blair: I think that most people have an increasingly clear view of the Government. Is the Prime Minister not aware–[Interruption.]

    Madam Speaker: Order. The House must come to order and listen to what is being said.

    Mr. Blair: I remind the Prime Minister that that was a Government Bill, proposed by his Lord Chancellor. Last night’s vote was not only about the amendment–it was fundamentally about the ethos of the Bill and about the direction of the Conservative party. Does not that vote show the advanced state of decay of his Government–that he now has to rely on Opposition support to carry that messed-up measure through the House of Commons?

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is deliberately misleading, and he knows that he is deliberately misleading–[Interruption.]

    Madam Speaker: Order. I am sure that the Prime Minister did not intend to use unparliamentary language. I refer to the words “deliberately misleading”. Will he please rephrase that?

    The Prime Minister: Of course–as Madam Speaker wishes it. I will simply say that the right hon. Gentleman is being disingenuous in the way in which he addresses this issue. He has known from the Bill’s outset that I have made it clear that, on the issue of fault and on other issues of conscience, there was to be a genuinely free vote of the House. A free vote was not forced on the Government. I announced it from the Dispatch Box last November when I spoke about the Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I have honoured that promise, for every member of my party.

    I made it clear that we were to have a free vote, and I made it clear to every member of the Government that a free vote would apply to them as well. In the past we have had free votes on other matters of conscience, such as capital punishment and Sunday trading. I believe that on an issue of such importance, and on one which is a matter of conscience, it is right for hon. Members to have an opportunity to vote exactly as their consciences dictate. I believe that that is in the best interests of Parliament. Moreover, if I had imposed a Whip on members of the Government after announcing that there would be a free vote, the right hon. Gentleman would now be criticising me from the Dispatch Box for not allowing the genuine free vote that I promised the House some months ago. I gave my word to the House, and I have kept it.

    Mr. Blair: I do not mind the Prime Minister talking tough with me, but it is time that he also talked tough with his Cabinet–that is all that we ask. Is this not all of a piece with the defiance that we heard–[Interruption.] We heard the Chancellor this morning–[Hon. Members: “Where were you?”] Conservative Members are all shouting–[Interruption.]

    Madam Speaker: Order. Sir Ivan and other hon. Members who are shouting, come to order.

    Mr. Blair: They are all asking where I was. That is a novel constitutional proposition–that it is now my duty to turn up and vote with the Government to save them from their own Cabinet Ministers. After hearing the Chancellor this morning, and with two Cabinet Ministers sitting in silent support of the European Communities (European Court) Bill, is not the Prime Minister’s real problem that every member of his Cabinet has a future agenda but him? Until he gets an agenda and asserts it, this country will continue to suffer from the most feeble Government in living memory.

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman overlooks the fact that I set out the agenda last November, and I have kept to that agenda. I realise that in the new autocratic Labour party–where party henchmen oversee everything that Front Benchers and Back Benchers say and, should they stray, a signed statement is put out in their names later on the same day–the concept of a free vote is alien to the right hon. Gentleman.

    The next time the right hon. Gentleman talks to us about his conscience and matters related to church and conscience, perhaps he will say that it does not apply when he sees political advantage. He would be prepared to go through people for his own party political interests and to go against their consciences–even on a matter that affects the conscience of every hon. Member. If that is the way he behaves in opposition, people will be aware of that and they will be aware of what sort of Government he would be likely to have if he ever had the opportunity. What he has revealed to the House this afternoon is that he has no understanding of parliamentary tradition, no understanding of individual conscience and no understanding of the way in which Parliament must deal with matters of this sort which affect the consciences of every hon. Member and every family in the country.

    Mr. Spring: Does my right hon. Friend share the universal disgust that, despite the clear way forward that has been mapped out for enduring peace and stability in Northern Ireland, the IRA’s bombing campaign continues unabated? Does he share my outrage that a proposal to condemn the ending of the IRA ceasefire was rejected by the Labour party in Islington?

    The Prime Minister: I can only hope that the Leader of the Opposition will bring his own party in Islington into line on a matter of importance to everyone in the United Kingdom. It puts into proper context the nonsense that the right hon. Gentleman has just been talking to the House.

    Sinn Fein and the IRA, with their tired old combination of bullets and bombs, remain locked in the past. While they do so, they must remain outside the democratic consensus established by the two Governments, and outside the democratic consensus of all the other parties in Northern Ireland. I repeat to Sinn Fein that it has to make a choice, for it cannot duck it. If it wishes to become a democratic party, it must make it clear that it will have no truck now or in the future with violence of the sort that we have seen. If it does not do that, there is no way in which it can join the democratic discussions about the future of Northern Ireland.

     

    Q2. Mrs. Jane Kennedy: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the answer I gave some moments ago.

    Mrs. Kennedy: Given the President of the Board of Trade’s gloomy prediction that manufacturing firms are set to shed jobs in the coming months, and remembering that almost 3 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared from Britain since his party came to power, does the Prime Minister realise that his claims to have made Britain the enterprise centre of Europe have no credibility whatever?

    The Prime Minister: I am afraid that the hon. Lady has slightly misinterpreted, first, what my right hon. Friend said and, secondly, the facts. Perhaps she would care to acknowledge that manufacturing employment is 50,000 higher now than at the beginning of 1994; that this is the first time that a downward trend has been reversed for many years; that manufacturing output has risen by more than 8 per cent.; that exports have risen by a quarter to record levels; that total manufacturing investment in plant and machinery is up by 16 per cent.; that across the economy as a whole 5,000 new jobs have been created every week since the recovery began–almost three quarters of a million in all. While the policies of the Labour party would destroy jobs, the Government are creating jobs faster than any other comparable economy in western Europe. We have a lower level of unemployment than any other such economy in western Europe. The policy of the minimum wage and similar policies would certainly increase unemployment. As the deputy leader of the Labour party said some time ago, any silly fool knows that–even the deputy leader of the Labour party.

    Mr. Renton: Contrary to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mrs. Kennedy), I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the excellent speech that he made yesterday on Britain as the enterprise centre of Europe and on his vivid comment that those who think that Britain can be a trading haven on the edge of Europe without being in the European Union are in cloud cuckoo land. Does he recall that the original cloud cuckoo land was an imaginary city built in the air by the birds? Would that not also be a suitable destination for those who think that they can vote Labour without seeing their personal and business taxes go sky high?

    The Prime Minister: That does not apply only to personal and business taxes. It now seems that anyone who is ill advised enough to encourage their youngsters to stay on and take A-levels will lose £560 in child benefit every year. Those who happen to have two children aged between 16 and 18 doing A-levels will lose more than £1,000 a year. There is no purpose in the shadow Chancellor’s shaking his head: that is his policy–that is his response to people on low incomes who want their children to take A-levels, proceed to university and do better.

    We are not talking just about the withdrawal of child benefit. Before child benefit it was a tax allowance. This is the direct equivalent of a tax increase of £560 for every family with children taking A-levels. There is no point in the shadow Chancellor’s shaking his head: it is his policy and it is nonsense–and we intend to tell every family in the land about it.

     

    Q3. Mr. Chris Davies: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Davies: Does the Prime Minister accept that the Government’s statement earlier this week about anti-personnel land mines was a case of three steps forward in PR terms and two steps backward in terms of reality? It will greatly disappoint people all over the world who can take no steps at all because their limbs have been destroyed by those inhumane weapons. Will the Prime Minister not support the recommendations in today’s left-wing The Daily Telegraph, which suggests that the Government and Britain should take a moral lead in calling for a unilateral ban on the production and use of such weapons?

    The Prime Minister: I just wonder where the hon. Gentleman may have been about 13 minutes ago, when I made it perfectly clear that we would work for a total worldwide ban on anti-personnel mines. I would have hoped that he could support that.

  • PMQT Written Answers – 24 April 1996

    Below is the text of the written answers relating to Prime Minister’s Question Time from 24th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Louise Jensen (Killing)

    Mr. Cox: To ask the Prime Minister for what reasons a letter of condolence was not sent by a Minister to the family of the Danish tour guide for whose manslaughter three British service men have been convicted.

    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has written a private letter to Louise Jensen’s parents.

     

    Late Payments

    Mrs. Roche: To ask the Prime Minister what percentage of bills were paid late by his Department in 1995-96.

    The Prime Minister: This information is being collated by the Department of Trade and Industry and will be published by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade before the summer recess.

    Mrs. Roche: To ask the Prime Minister how much was paid late by his Department to the private sector for goods and services in 1995-96.

    The Prime Minister: The information is not held in the form requested.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the Institute of Directors – 24 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the Institute of Directors in London on Wednesday 24th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen. A few moments ago, David, you encouraged us with details of your latest business confidence survey. I suppose I might call it a sort of alternative news summary on how I hope it forms the basis of the real news summary in the days that lie ahead. Clearly what is happening in the economy is of crucial importance to all the plans we have.

    What I think that survey confirmed is what many of us have felt for some time: the economic prospects are bright, they will get brighter, and increasingly we have a lot to be confident about in this country. And I think it is time to be positive – I hope that message will be carried through to people up and down the country. This pervading atmosphere of gloom that so many people have perpetrated does no good to them, no good to the country, no good to our prospects and there is no conceivable justification for it. It is about time for the gloom-mongers to depart and for us to look more clearly at the prospects that lie ahead.

    The centre of your debate today is Europe. And firstly this morning I want to set out my view of the opportunities it offers and the fierce debate that almost invariably surrounds it. I would like to set out how I see the future of Europe over the coming years and what I see as Britain’s place in it.

    For the last 30 years, Europe has been the great explosive issue of British politics. Our membership of the European Community, as it was then called, was confirmed in a referendum in 1975. Today there are some who question that membership in each political party and in the media.

    I understand the concerns and frustrations that lead to that questioning, in many ways I don’t find it surprising. For years past some have portrayed Europe only in the most negative terms. Every frustration is played up, often inaccurately; every benefit denied at worst, or ignored at best. And in these circumstances it is little wonder that the European Union has become so unpopular in the United Kingdom.

    But there is another side to the picture. I also see clearly the hard-headed benefits that Britain has gained from its membership. And as Prime Minister, I believe it does the country no service whatsoever to suggest that the only choice we face is either to go along with every demand our partners make, or to head for the exit. That is naive, it is damaging and in my judgment it is just plain wrong.

    We are in Europe and we all know that we are staying in Europe. And anyone who seriously thinks of leaving should perhaps explain to the nation precisely what that would mean. What, I wonder, would be the impact on inward investment, which accounts for three-quarters of a million jobs in manufacturing alone? Would the Nissans, the Toyotas, the Samsungs still be so keen to come here if we were not playing a leading role in the European Union? What would be the effect on the city and the great exporting companies were we to leave the Union? Would we be taken more seriously, or less seriously, in the wider world? And why have more and more countries in Europe, including some of the most prosperous, decided to join the European Union in recent years?

    Some suggest we could just negotiate a trading relationship with Europe. But I must be frank with you. The idea that if we were outside the European Union we could somehow become a trading haven on the edge of Europe, with all the benefits of that vital market of 370 million, while others fix the rules without any regard whatsoever to our vital national interest, seems to me to be cloud cuckoo land. This country is an international trading nation, it is not a little England, and it must never become so.

    So the first point is, we are staying in Europe, that is not in dispute. But the second is where the battle must be joined, and that is what sort of Europe are we staying in, and how do we address and remove the legitimate concerns that so many people have in this country?

    Let me be frank. Some politicians in Europe do have an agenda of ever greater integration, an intent to subsume states into common institutions in order to prevent the re-emergence of old national ambitions and rivalries. And they believe in that integration just as passionately as many of us oppose it.

    I understand and I respect their views, they reflect the long experience of wars and conflicts right across the continent – a different experience from ours in this country. But I don’t believe they are the right way to develop European cooperation. The nation state that we care about so much lends security, comfort and familiarity and people need that more than ever at a time of change and insecurity.

    You cannot legislate for a common nationality or a common sense of identity. The nations of Europe have developed over centuries, their cultural traditions can’t be eradicated by a simple stroke of the pen, and nor should they be. That would not carry the consent of the peoples of Europe, whether in Britain or elsewhere. And if politicians ignore those realities we would increase rather than reduce conflicts and tensions across Europe, we would set at risk all that Europe has achieved.

    So we in Britain are not going down that centralising route. At Maastricht I said no to policies that I thought would be damaging to the interests of this country. And if I had not won on those critical issues, there would have been no treaty for there would have been no agreement. And equally on the intergovernmental conference we have set out our position. Nothing can be imposed upon us in the intergovernmental conference unless we agree to it. And if it isn’t in our interest, I will not agree to it, I will just say ‘No’.

    But I don’t seek confrontation and nor do I expect it. In negotiation the European Union can be tough, but in the end it must respect and accept the vital interests of its member nation states.

    There are things that we don’t like about Europe, but we must fight them on the arguments, not on the basis of stereotypes and slogans, they do no good to our interests or to our prospects of success. And my personal view is quite clear. Although there are many things in Europe we would like to change, there is a lot that helps us. The balance is in our advantage. Not every decision, of course is exactly what we would have liked, but neither is every decision comfortable for every other country. We aim to build in the years ahead, in the conference and beyond the conference, a Europe that is more in our image and more to our taste. If we win the argument to build a Europe of nation states, all of Europe will benefit. Equally, if others choose to go in a direction that we reject, they need to recognise that we will stand our ground and not follow them in that direction. The Europe that evolves will be flexible, and it will need to be flexible to recognise and accommodate our national interests and beliefs, as well as theirs.

    The European debate must take into account not only national interests and sensitivities, but economic realities. And upon those economic realities I want to concentrate for a few moments. Today we live, as no audience knows better than this one, in the most competitive business environment we have known. Competing against countries around the world is an everyday reality. The man in the street in Manchester, Milan or Munich is not only competing with someone else in Europe, he is up against someone on the other side of the globe as well working in Seoul, Shanghai or Singapore. And we compete successfully or we fail, and if we fail, we go out of business. And that is the main challenge facing all businessmen. We need hard-edged policies to address these challenges. Business must win the battles for contracts, not government. But the decisions that government make, and the policies they follow, can help or they can hinder. And if governments get things badly wrong, they will condemn their businesses inevitably to defeat.

    Many people talk about competitiveness, but over 17 years of government our commitment to competitiveness is a matter of record and an article of faith. To be competitive we had to overcome problems that have beset Britain for generations. In the 1980s we tackled the excessive union power that was throttling British enterprise, and Norman Tebbit will speak to you later, and your own President, had a key part in that particular battle, so successfully won.

    In the 1990s we have inflation at the moment under better lock and key than it has been for generations, and it is never a battle that is permanently won, and if we were to take the arm-lock off inflation, we would begin to face the problems we have seen in previous years. For decades inflation was the scourge of the British economy, fuelling industrial strife, discouraging investment and making long term planning quite impossible. Now we are enjoying the longest run of low inflation for nearly 50 years.

    And not only is that vital for business. If anyone has ever lived in circumstances in which if the bills go up at the end of the week it is difficult to know how they will be paid – they will understand the true wickedness of letting inflation get out of hand and I have no intention of letting that happen again.

    In the 1980s we began to return to the private sector businesses that used to be badly run in the public sector at the taxpayers’ expense. They are now profitable companies bidding in markets the world over.

    In the 1990s we have tackled the more difficult privatisations, such as coal, successfully privatised in 1994 and now the most efficient coal industry anywhere in Europe. On rail, impossible according to some, quite extraordinary people decided they weren’t in favour of the private sector running British Rail. I sometimes think they forgot who built up the rail network in the first place. And yet that privatisation is now well under way and delivering benefits – new services, new investment, new improvements to stations and in my judgment a much better service for the train user is certainly going to come about as a result of these changes.

    Always, right the way through the ‘80s and right into the ’90s, there was always someone saying that each privatisation was one privatisation too far – mustn’t do that, it is change, it is uncomfortable, it is trusting that wicked private sector with something that has been run so comfortably, but so inefficiently, in the public sector. So those pessimists were wholly wrong, they have had to eat their words as one privatisation after another has proved to be a success.

    And above all, to be competitive as a nation we have had to get spending under control. It is now coming down again and tax rates have come down with it. British business now has the second lowest burden of business taxation of any G7 country – 6 percent of GDP in Britain, compared with 9 percent in Germany, 14 percent in France.

    We now have an economy that is more successful and has better prospects than for a generation. No longer do we look at our European competitors and wonder what their secret is, now they are beginning to envy our success here in the United Kingdom.

    Across Europe they know that Britain is the number one destination for inward investment in the European Union, second only to the United States worldwide. They know it is Britain that has Europe’s leading financial centre and the lion’s share of Europe’s most profitable companies. They know it is Britain that has got the lowest unemployment of any major European country and more of our people actually in work than any other major European country. They know that Britain has grown faster than the G7 average each year since 1993 and is expected to do so again this year and again next year.

    We have in place all of the ingredients for a rapid growth in prosperity. Life is better, and it should get better yet, but not if we turn our back on the policies that have carved out these opportunities in the first place. Not if we are seduced by candyfloss promises instead of continuing to make the hard choices. Only if we keep on sharpening our national competitive edge will Britain be able to go on winning in the fierce global market place.

    I want Britain to be in the front rank of industrial nations. So I have a clear objective for this country’s future – to make Britain the enterprise centre of Europe. That means policies that build on our strengths and it means we must learn the lessons from the world’s fastest growing economies. It means sound responsible economic management – easy to say, not so easy to deliver. But inflation has wrecked too many, recoveries in the past for us to risk throwing that prize away now. It means finding room to reduce taxes by keeping the lid on public expenditure. That is the only way to keep taxes down and then to get them lower still. And that is why, as the economy grows, we are committed to getting spending back down below 40 percent of national income and keeping it there, and that compares to something over 50 percent amongst our partners in Europe. And as we do so, we will press on towards our target of a 20 pence standard rate of income tax and the abolition of capital taxes.

    We need an enterprise culture that runs right through society, one that encourages the belief that individuals can themselves, by their own efforts and their own actions, make a difference. And that is why I am determined to stand up for the risk-takers, whether it is the people who are ready to take on and run a piece of the railway, or the companies that will shake up our gas, and electricity, and water markets as competition comes, or the thousands upon thousands of people up and down the country who risk everything they have to make their own small business a success.

    And I want more people to have a stake in enterprise. In the last budget, Ken Clarke made it even more attractive for companies to get their workers involved as shareholders. Now it is up to industry to play its part. Many of you of course already have employee share schemes and I hope more of you will. My challenge to you is simple, let us see if we can have a majority of workers in Britain’s large companies holding shares in those companies by the end of this decade. It is eminently achievable and it will do a great service to the spread of capitalism.

    Britain is a global trading nation and will remain so, that is both our history and our future but what we trade in will change. Much of tomorrow’s trade will be in information, in technology, in software, in communications and here Britain, with its skills and culture, its trading links right across the globe and the huge incalculable advantage of the English language, is well equipped to take on the world and to win those battles but we can only do it if our young people have the skills they need and that is why progress in education is so important and why we have continued so rigorously with our education reforms.

    We have seen a massive explosion in the number of people going into higher education in recent years. In 1979, 1 in 8 of our young people went into higher education; today, no longer 1 in 8, today it is 1 in 3. We are making progress in schools through the national curriculum, through tests and inspection and league tables and vocational education. We are shining a searchlight on the things that went wrong in education. Sometimes, when they become apparent it is embarrassing but it is better to be embarrassed and to have the information so that we can put it right than to let education remain a secret garden when we are not turning out the right sort of skills in our youngsters that industry will need and that they will need for their own life satisfaction.

    But we mustn’t only look at the schools. We need to ensure that every adult in Britain understands the opportunities to learn new skills, to take advantage of new technology at work or at leisure. We need to open the nation’s mind to the opportunities that lie ahead so we are getting together with industry on a project for the millennium to let as many people as possible try out computers in schools, in libraries, in shops in the high street, wherever it can be arranged to give them the opportunity to see for themselves and to develop the skills that will equip them and all of us for the changes that lie ahead as we move towards the new century.

    Our route to success in the challenging, competitive markets of tomorrow is built upon sound finance, low taxes, the liberation of enterprise, the skills and the capabilities to compete and a global trading ambition to reach out for the markets of tomorrow. Indeed, I believe that is the only way to deliver the wealth, the prosperity, the jobs, the opportunities that this country needs and that the people of this country deserve. It is the only way to meet the challenge of the future.

    We would like all of Europe to adopt competitive policies and succeed. There is nothing altruistic about that. We have nothing to gain here in this country if the market on our doorstep goes into decline and if Europe does not put competitiveness at the top of its agenda it will decline and that is why I regret so much that Europe has not yet completed the single market. It should and soon, starting perhaps with some concrete progress on the single market for energy. Energy bills account for a huge proportion of industry’s costs and Europe’s businesses can ill afford to pay over the odds for it.

    The same goes for telecommunications. Thanks to privatisation and liberalisation, prices in Britain have tumbled by almost 24 per cent in real terms over the last 5 years. That hasn’t happened in other countries, in the Netherlands for example, where prices have increased by more than 6.5 per cent over the same period, a 30 per cent difference with the drop in the United Kingdom. Here at least, though, there is the promise of progress.to complete the single market with full liberalisation due by 1998 and what a shame as well that negotiations to create a single market in pension funds have come close to stalling since some countries are simply not willing to give up their national captive markets.

    Europe as a whole is never going to compete and win in the world if it cannot even bear competition in its home market so Europe must proceed to complete the single market as soon as possible.

    Nor can it be right or justifiable that Europe still tolerates huge state aids for some countries’ air lines – that just rewards inefficiency and punishes success – and here too the result is higher prices when what Europe needs is the lower prices that competition and deregulation will surely bring.

    I understand, I know why people are reluctant to change, they want to protect jobs. We all want that but jobs are most secure when companies are most successful. The social polices of some of our partners sound very attractive and they advocate them with great self-belief but I believe they are misguided and they destroy jobs. Across Europe, companies are feeling the pain. Much of Germany’s new-job creation is now in Poland or the Czech Republic and in Britain too which, according to the President of the BDI has “the most effective job-producing machine’ in Europe” and I agree with the President upon that point.

    In France last month, Brittany Ferries tried to get the government to cut the social costs it must bear as a French employer with a French workforce. Employing 2,500 workers, it claims that it pays up to 18 million pounds a year more than would be paid by a similar British employer. A spokesman was quoted as saying that he wanted “to level the playing field, to find a way of giving us the same overheads as Britain.” Again he is right. He asks for that with good reason.

    The difference between our employment costs and Europe’s is stark. For every £100 he pays in wages, a British employer has to add £18 in non-wage costs. Quite enough you might think but in Germany not £18 but £32; in Spain £34; in France £41; and in Italy £44 and that is the measure of the cost of excessive regulation and that explains also the attitude that I took and take upon the European Social Chapter. Those costs explain why it would be against our interests to be part of the Social Chapter.

    Let us be plain about it! It isn’t just what is in the Chapter now, it is also a question of what would go into the Chapter if Britain signed it. The Social Chapter isn’t a finite list of specific measures, it is a mechanism, a mechanism to implement unspecified social policies in many cases by qualified majority voting so we would have no veto to protect British businesses. If we signed up to it, we would emphatically not be able to pick and choose which bits of it we wanted and at the moment the British opt-out focuses minds on the Continent on the competitive cost of more social regulation, it acts as a brake on further measures but if that brake went, if we signed it, if we were part of it, we would then see an avalanche of new measures building on other countries’ existing traditions and many of those measures would be precisely the sort of policies that we have spent the last 17 years getting rid of and I don’t want them back on the backs of British industry and British employers. [Applause].

    Look at the sort of over-zealous – I think that describes it accurately – over-zealous employment regulations some of our partners have at national level. For example, in Germany, if your firm has more than 5 permanent staff you can’t cut staff without consulting the works council, pretty inconvenient I would have thought for huge companies striving in a very difficult market and if you want to work overtime in Luxembourg, you need government consent to work overtime. I could give you further examples but I will spare both you and our partners from them.

    Just ask yourself this question: If all of Europe were in the Social Chapter, we signed up to it and became part of it, wouldn’t it be more tempting and less painful for our partners to try and foist the same rules on everyone rather than putting their own house in order? The answer to that is self-evident, of course it would and that is why we shouldn’t sign it. The Social Chapter could make jobs one of our fastest-growing export businesses and that is not in our interests.

    Mr. President, at Maastricht I negotiated what became called “an opt-out from the Social Chapter”. That will remain but it must remain effective and in some ways there is a risk to it at the moment. I am not prepared to see that opt-out, undermined by the creative use of other articles of the treaty such as health and safety at work. We agreed those provisions in 1985 to deal with matters of genuine health and safety. Recent attempts to use them as the basis for imposing the working-time directive on Britain go far beyond what we agreed to and not only that, they breach the understanding I reached at Maastricht when I negotiated our opt-out from the Social Chapter.

    I have told our European partners in clear and distinct terms that we must change the health and safety provisions so that they reflect the more limited scope that was originally intended and that we originally agreed to and I take this very seriously. We cannot be expected to have confidence in European agreements if they are subsequently undermined by shifts in interpretation. I do not want to be misunderstood about this. If old agreements are to be broken, I do not see how we can reach new agreements.

    Mr. President, I want Europe to succeed. I have no doubt that our best interests are as part of the sort of Europe that I have tried to sketch out this morning but I don’t believe that Europe will succeed unless it faces the tough decisions necessary to win in tomorrow’s world and if it doesn’t, it isn’t only our continental partners that will lose, we will lose as well and that is why we need to be in the middle of the argument in Europe, not at the sidelines in the middle of the argument, arguing for the sort of Europe we believe in and care about and the business environment that will bring prosperity to our countries right across Europe.

    Every time I go to south east Asia or the United States or Japan, I see the growth of competition that is coming from those parts of the world, I see how much of the world’s market they are eating up day after day after day after day and I ask myself: if Europe doesn’t lift its eyes and begin to see what is happening elsewhere in the world rather than in Europe, what will be our competitive position and our place in the world in 10 years or 20 years from now?

    Those are the points at issue, that is why we are having the disputes that so often hit the daily headlines with our European partners. It isn’t a matter of this trivial subject, that trivial subject, this occasional dispute or that occasional dispute; it is a question of the direction in which Europe goes and whether it will go in a direction that can make it successful and competitive or whether it will shrink in on itself and find that slowly but inexorably it has less influence, less competition, less wealth, less prosperity and matters less in the world and fighting that battle is very much in our British national interest.

    Mr. President, I don’t believe you make business more competitive by hitting them with extra costs like the Social Chapter, I don’t believe you create more jobs by imposing a minimum wage – and Heaven alone knows, with nearly 20 million people unemployed in Europe we need those jobs – I don’t believe you support the force of market by resisting privatisation, private ownership, which is what most people in most parts of the world have now accepted.

    Why should we find it rejected in parts of some of the very centres of capitalism itself in western Europe? And you don’t reward hard work and initiative by a policy of high spending and high taxes not fair on the individual and crippling to the competitiveness of companies.

    These are policies of importance, they are policies that if we don’t fight for in Europe I cannot see who will and if Europe doesn’t fight for them or a British government doesn’t fight for them, then the long-term impact of what happens in Europe and the washback upon what happens in this country scarcely bears contemplating. That is why I say we must be in the centre of the argument, that is why I don’t want the argument conducted in stereotypes on one extreme of the argument or the other extreme of the argument. We will never find everything in Europe to our taste, in truth we never believed we would but we need to make sure the balance of advantage is there for Europe and for us and for our future and these are central issues that are coming up for discussion in the inter-governmental conference and in decisions that will be taken beyond it.

    We have seen for the first time in many years that we are more competitive than our European partners because we have followed the policies I have been talking about. We had a good argument to put over. We need to lift the atmosphere of confidence right across this country so that we can conduct our arguments with our European partners with confidence so that they don’t say: “Well, you are only saying that because there are disputes about European policy at home!”. We are saying it because we believe in it, believe in it for us and believe in it for them.

    Mr. President, life in Britain is better than it has been for generations, our membership of Europe has on balance helped make it better. It can be better yet and we need, all of us – government, business big and small and individuals in every part of the country – to approach the decisions ahead determined to protect what has been achieved and then to build on it for the future. That is my responsibility and I intend to discharge it. The arguments will be difficult but I believe they can be won and I believe they will be won. [Applause].

  • Mr Major’s Joint Doorstep Interview with the Greek Prime Minister – 23 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint doorstep interview with the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Simitis, in London on Tuesday 23rd April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Can I just say how much I welcome the Prime Minister’s visit here to Downing Street today and very much welcome him into his new responsibilities.

    We have had the opportunity this afternoon of a fairly wide ranging discussion. The Anglo-Greek relationship is extremely good. We think it could be closer and better, we think we can improve the trade and investment flow between our two countries and we have taken some time in discussing that. We have also looked at developments in the European Union, coming up to the intergovernmental conference and beyond the intergovernmental conference, and we have discussed the Cypriot problem of course and the relationship between Greece and Turkey and a number of other matters. I won’t go into the details of all our discussion so we will happily take a few questions in a few moments.

    MR SIMITIS:

    We had a very good and fruitful discussion with Mr Major. Mr Major mentioned the main problems we discussed – British-Greek relations, trade relations, cultural relations, our politics in the Balkans, the European Union problems, Greece and Turkey relations and the Cyprus problem. There are differences of views but there are also many common points, and I think on the basis of our discussions we can continue to work together and to find solutions to all problems.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I agree.

    QUESTION:

    In which area did you find support from the Greek Prime Minister on [inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think you had better ask the Prime Minister, our position is pretty well known.

    MR SIMITIS:

    As far as the European Union is concerned, we have a common view on the question of unanimity of decisions on foreign policy. We think also that matters of the economic and monetary union are not yet clear and must be cleared and discussed in future. And there are certain questions concerning the revision of the Maastricht Treaty that are not yet right for decision and that is why they must be looked at by both countries.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We think the time is right to have another serious push at trying to reach an agreement on the Cyprus problem. I very much hope before too long that Cyprus will be able to join the European Union, and in order to ensure that that is facilitated, we need to look again to see whether or not we can reach a conclusion to the problem in Cyprus. I think the Prime Minister as well is dedicated to seeking a solution. We know it won’t be easy. We have had 29 years to discover that it is not going to be easy, but we agreed that it is well worth trying and I think there will be a concerted push to do so.

    QUESTION:

    What is the British position on the problem of Imya [phon]?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We think it should go to the International Court of Justice, yes.

    QUESTION:

    Did you manage to find agreement on the beef problem?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There aren’t enough people to reach agreement on the beef problem. Douglas Hogg has been discussing this in Brussels today. I understand he has made some progress, I haven’t got a full report yet so I don’t quite know how much progress has been made. But over the last few days I made some progress when I had the meeting in Moscow at the end of last week, the Foreign Secretary pursued the matter further on Monday, the Agricultural Minister today. So I think we are moving to a position that is a good deal better than it was a few days ago, but I had better get further information before I say any more.

    MR SIMITIS:

    I want to add to what Mr Major has said, that we have discussed the matter and I will ask the Greek scientists to look at the facts that the British government will present and they will decide on the basis of the facts.

  • Mr Major’s Comments on Cinema – 23 April 1996

    Below are extracts of Mr Major’s comments on cinema, made on Tuesday 23rd April 1996.

    QUESTION:

    [asked about the first time Mr Major visited the cinema]

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I can’t remember the first time I went to the cinema, but I can remember as a boy I used to go to Saturday morning cinemas. They had a whole series of things that appealed to boys, Tom Micks, Roy Rogers, Tarzan of course, Batman and Robin, Dick Barton, that ages me somewhat, but Dick Barton I seem to remember as well and many of these were series. You went on Saturday at the end of the Saturday morning the film ended at some dramatic moment and you’d return the next week to see what happened and I got into the habit of film going at a very young age.

    QUESTION:

    [asked if he could remember the first film he saw]

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I remember a number of films from the forties that I probably saw in the early fifties. The old black and white version of How Green was my Valley. Whether that was the first or not I can’t be certain. It was certainly one of the first films I saw and a very good film it was too.

    QUESTION:

    [what genre of film does he like]

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I’m not excessively fond of comedies. Musicals I like, drama I like. I don’t think there’s a special genre, no. I have a fairly full taste.

    QUESTION:

    [asked if he has any heroes or heroines]

    JOHN MAJOR:

    Well I wouldn’t call them heroes or heroines, certainly not, but I thought Henry Hathaway was a great director and David Lean was self-evidently a great director and I think as far as actors are concerned, the person who didn’t enjoy a John Wayne film I’ve never yet met. I’ve always enjoyed John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart I think was a great actor. I greatly enjoyed almost everything that Bogart did. So I think they’d be among them, but certainly many more as well. One of the finest acting performances I remember is again a very old film, it’s the Olivier version of Richard III which I’ve watched more times than I can remember.