The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Tag: Gulf War

  • Mr Major’s Article in the Wall Street Journal – 25 March 2002

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s article in the Wall Street Journal, published on 25 March 2002.

    JOHN MAJOR:

    All wars are uncertain but some predictions about the outcome of the present conflict can be made safely. When the fighting is at an end, the US and her allies will have won the military conflict. America is the most powerful military force the world has ever seen and the large, but ramshackle, Iraqi defence capability cannot stand before it. Saddam Hussein will be dead or fled or awaiting trial for his many crimes. His sons and other senior advisers will share his fate. The whole apparatus of the Iraqi Government will have gone, together with the upper echelon of the Republican Guard.

    Iraq herself may – dependent upon how the war evolves – be in chaos: at best, she will be in confusion. There will be a shortage of food, water and medicine, and a potentially huge refugee crisis. Civil insurrection is a real risk if the Shias and other victims of Saddam seek to exact retribution on the remnants of a cruel regime that has repressed and murdered them for years. Coalition troops may enter Baghdad as liberators but events may force them to remain as peacekeepers. Ahead of them lies a messy, uncomfortable – and potentially hugely expensive – task.

    And yet, in many ways, even these difficulties pale beside those that must then be faced: How will Iraq be governed? How can the rifts in the UN, the EU, NATO and the transatlantic alliance be healed? And – most delicate of all – how can relations be repaired with a large part of the Islamic world that, by the day, becomes ever more suspicious of the motives of the US and Britain?

    Such suspicions are misguided and foolish but potent. They are a hymn of hate for the US and Britain and their echo can be heard in market places throughout the Moslem world. The common belief is that the coalition has an agenda to dismember Iraq and control its oil; that the war has more to do with Imperialism and aggression than liberation and self-defence. Nonsense though this is, it is a fear which will not be dispelled by words alone which is why the actions of America and Britain will be scrutinised so carefully in the months ahead.

    Whatever the immediate post-war arrangements for governing Iraq may be – probably a Military Governorship – it is desirable for the UN to be involved as swiftly as possible in any interim Administration. Some sounding board for local opinion – perhaps a Consultative Council representing the main tribal interests – should also be put in place. This will be uncomfortable and rancorous since the views of the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds are unlikely to be as one, but the effort must be made – and be seen to be made. It is important, too, that Arab opinion accepts beyond any doubt that the present territorial borders of Iraq are sacrosanct and that the management and ownership of oil will remain in Iraqi hands.

    The establishment of any longer-term Government in Iraq is fraught with difficulty. Iraq is not a natural democracy. The depth of bitterness between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds is such that any “grand coalition” is improbable to the point of absurdity. Yet, unless Military Governorship or UN Administration is to be lengthy we must anticipate a legitimate Government that may reflect the numerical dominance of the Shia tribe who make up over 60% of the population. Such a majority Government would install a Shia Iraq beside a Shia Iran which is an uncomfortable omen. Saudi Arabia is one of many countries that will look uneasily at the future if collaboration between these two countries were to become likely.

    One of Saddam’s more baleful legacies will be rifts between the coalition partners and France, Germany, Russia and China – as well as with mainstream opinion across the Islamic world. It will require Statesmanship, and a generosity of spirit, to quell the fears that give rise to these divisions. But it would be foolish to let them fester: an effort at reconciliation must be made or we will all come to regret it.

    There is a menu of healing actions from which we can choose. We must be generous to post-war Iraq in her travails. We would be wise to consult Arab opinion – the Arab League and the Gulf Co-Operation Council for example – about how to reconstitute a free and democratic Iraq. We should discuss our plans with the EU, China and Russia and seek their active political support: we may, after all, need them to open up their wallets as well. As we do so, we should not neglect the views of our allies, Australia, Spain, Japan prominent among them. In victory, magnanimity may heal many wounds.

    President Bush has already announced his intention to move forward on the issue that is, above all, the poison in the well of relations with Islam: Palestine.

    The strong support that the US and Britain has given to Israel is based on admiration for a talented nation that has overcome many ills with courage and fortitude yet still finds herself in a hostile environment. And yet, that support rankles with many in the Moslem world who see it as one-sided and look on with dismay at the truly pitiable position of the Palestinians.

    In the post-Saddam era, Israel will be safer and it is time for President Bush to take Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat by the elbows and demand progress.

    Both sides need a settlement. Israel needs security and Palestine needs a future. An active Peace Process is vital –for without one there is a vacuum into which terror and mayhem steps too readily.

    After the Gulf War in 1991, the Madrid Conference held out hope for the future. It faded. Now, something similar is needed. The forthcoming “Road Map” offers hope once more, but this will only be realised if it is accompanied by action and a route to political progress. There will be a need, too, for economic assistance for the embryonic Palestinian State, for a land without hope breeds only resentment. There are many donors – in and beyond the Middle East – who might be expected to contribute.

    No-one should expect trust to spring forth from suspicion. It will not be easy to wrong out the compromises that both Israel and the Palestinians must make. But, perversely, war over Iraq provides an impetus for peace in Palestine: the prize is very great indeed.

    The removal of Saddam’s odious regime could change the face of the Middle East, but a settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute would assuredly do so. It will be a tragedy if such an opportunity is not grasped with an open heart and a ready will.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to the Association of American Correspondents – 30 June 1993

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the Association of American Correspondents, held at Brown’s Hotel on Wednesday 30th June 1993.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    What I want to know is, when they shoot the wounded, why do they miss so often. I was just leaving Downing Street forty five minutes or so ago and a parcel arrived. I opened it and inside was a watch and it had an inscription on the back but discretion has taught me that you don’t read out inscriptions in future.

    We’ve been talking casually over lunch and as part of the conversation, one of my visits to Kennebunkport came up. I remember going there. They were marvellous hosts, George and Barbara Bush. Extremely good company, you never knew quite what was going to happen. But they were extremely good company in every respect.

    One evening at the end of a long day, we went in a lounge there, a huge lounge and the whole of one wall converted to a large screen, a large cinema screen. And they showed a very remarkable film. Some of you may have seen it, called Patriot Games. It was a great piece of diplomacy. It’s the story of a plot to kill a British minister and I was sitting there watching it with my Private Secretary and Press Secretary. And of course the villain, the murderer, turns out to be the Private Secretary and the terrorist was a man named O’Donnell. So I said to the President that I think he scored double top on that particular occasion.

    Let me just take you back a while, just test your memory as we slip away from some of the extraneous matters that have intruded into politics over the past few months. There has been something of a frenzied atmosphere in Capitals all round the world, not just in the United Kingdom. I think, dare I say it, from time to time there has been a slightly frenzied attitude in Washington, Tokyo, in Bonn, in Paris, in Rome and perhaps in any number of other countries I might mention. But in the midst of that in the United Kingdom, some fairly important things have happened.

    If I had come here just fifteen months ago and said to you on that occasion, let me make a few predictions: I will come back and see you at the end of June in 1993. And when I come back and see you at that time, interest rates will be down at 6 per cent. Inflation will be down at 1.3 per cent and our exports will be growing faster than we’ve ever seen before and faster than anywhere else in the European Community. We’ll have the most competitive exchange rate we’ve had for a very long time. We’ll have potentially the greatest growth rate in the European Community this year. The greatest growth rate forecast for next year. Unemployment will not reach three million. And by the time I come and see you in June 1993 it will be falling for four successive months when right the way across the rest of Europe, in our principal markets, unemployment is rising, growth is falling and so many of them are heading into recession.

    Now if I had said that to you, you might perhaps have called for the men in white coats to have me carted off to the funny farm. If I’d added to that, and said in the Parliamentary Session drawing to a close in June 1993, we would have carried all our legislations, often against little local difficulties. Hugely important and reforming Bills on housing, on education, on lotteries, on asylum, on the de-nationalisation, forget that ugly word privatisation, it’s de-nationalisation of British Rail. And also, despite the occasional tiny split in my own Party, the Maastricht Bill would have gone right the way through the House of Commons and would be receiving average majorities of over 150 on the votes it faces in the House of Lords. If I’d added that, you would undoubtedly have said, this guy has taken leave of his senses.

    Yet that is the reality when you strip away the nonsense that has be-devilled so much of our national interest over recent months.

    That is the reality of what is happening.

    And then, there’s another fundamental change that has taken place.

    Out there, all the way around the United Kingdom, if you tap people on the shoulder they’ll say of me. Why does he spend so much time on foreign affairs? Why is he bothering about Europe? What about our problems here at home? But the reality for our country now, as it has been for some years, and will be in the future, is that the European market is our own home backyard in terms of exports, in terms of investment and in terms of prosperity.

    And what has happened in the last two years in Europe has been very profound, very striking.

    I believe the whole nature and tilt of European policy has begun to move. And it has begun to move in a direction that we British have been pushing for, for some time.

    Try and put it in context for a moment. For so much of the 1980’s, the European Community was bouncing along, 3 per cent plus growth a year. It’s not all that long ago in two of the European countries, Portugal and Spain, that the countries were actually led by men in dark glasses and epaulettes. And one was worrying as to whether they would actually be safe for democracy when they headed the community in the early 1980’s. And yet they are.

    Spain, despite its present difficulties, has immeasurably improved its position over the last decade and so has Portugal.

    We have now seen in the last couple of years some changes in European policy profoundly important for Europe and profoundly important for this country.

    The first of them is the enlargement of the community. The Community has now agreed, the British have pushed it and pushed and pushed it and the Community has accepted, that the four EFTAN countries can enter the community, subject to negotiations being satisfactory, by 1 January 1995. A good deal earlier than many people anticipated. Many would have pushed it aside for their own domestic reasons. We have won that argument, they are coming in, subject to their own domestic approvals, they’ll be in the community by 1 January 1995.

    Four extra countries enlarging the community from twelve to sixteen and all of them net contributors to the community budget.

    For the first time ever in the European Communities history, about one half of all the member states will be net contributors to the budget, not net beneficiaries from the large contributions of the Germans, the British and the French.

    And that begins to change the tilt and balance of interests in the community in a more sensible and pragmatic way in terms of looking at its own financial future.

    And then of course there is the remarkable change. The new realism that I think was very evident in the debates we had in Copenhagen. Alas, in this country rather overshadowed by domestic matters. The debates there were at Copenhagen were about the future direction of European economic policy.

    I make no secret of the fact, that I believe we have to look ahead for a decade or more and address a problem that has been getting steadily worse right the way across Europe.

    Unemployment is a huge problem. We all know it. There’s been a huge hump in unemployment right the way across the community in the last two or three years. Seventeen million Europeans unemployed. In two years time it is likely to be twenty million Europeans unemployed.

    But that isn’t just a function of this current recession. Unemployment in Europe has been rising steadily, growth or not, for over twenty years. And it has been rising steadily for twenty years because Europe has become relatively less competitive over twenty years to the United States, Japan and of course to the Pacific Basin. Though I think separate criteria apply there.

    I won’t weary you with lots of statistics. Just let me give you one that is a start. Over twenty years the growth in Europe and the growth in the United States is pretty much the same. It should have produced the same number of jobs. But in fact for every single job created in Europe over twenty years, the United States have created four. I think the underlying reason they have done that is the flexibility of the United States’ economy and a lack of additional on-costs that has be-devilled the cost structure of so much of employment in Europe.

    So it isn’t a question of just being beastly and holding back on social costs, it is fundamental to the prosperity of the future of Europe, that the whole of Europe, not just the United Kingdom, grasps that nettle of competitiveness for the future. If they don’t, they will remain powerful and relatively rich. But relatively, over time, they will become less powerful, less influential and less wealthy. Unless across Europe they have the courage to actually address those problems.

    And it is for that I have been arguing in the European Community over recent years. And it is for that I will go on arguing.

    The other point, I think that has changed, very much in the direction we have wanted it to, is the size and shape of the Community, even beyond the growth of the EFTAN states.

    I see the European Community at the moment as, in truth, just a fragment of European community. It doesn’t yet take in our old friends in Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary, Czechlands, Slovak, in due course Romania, Bulgaria, Poland. In due course they must come into the community.

    In the last two years the British have managed to persuade our European partners that will happen. It won’t happen perhaps for a decade, but it is now agreed as a matter of European policy that in due course they will enter the Community. And for military, social and political reasons, I believe that is the right way ahead for the community to go.

    Let me move on to one or two other issues and skim over them just lightly so that I may leave the maximum amount of time for you to ask the questions you wish to ask rather than simply listen to what I wish to say.

    I think the United States were right to attack Baghdad. What I said publicly is what I believe privately. I have not a shred of reservation about it. The attempt to assassinate, in the way that occurred, a former President of the United States with the potential death of hundreds of other innocent people, who would just have been in that area, is an act of international terrorism. An act of international terrorism sponsored not by a group of international terrorists but by the Government of Iraq and by the dictator of Iraq.

    Faced with that I think the United States were absolutely right to retaliate and to attack in the way that they did. And they certainly have my wholehearted support. And I regret that support doesn’t spread, as it deserves to, across every strand of British politics.

    Let me just say a word about the G7 Summit that’s just coming up. There are a number of important issues that I think we have to address at the G7 Summit. Certainly I think we find it in our interests, as well as in Russia’s interests, to try and help the Russians as they go through the second Russian revolution this century. I wonder at the right way to do it.

    There is more than one way to do it and in many ways I think the most effective way is a wide-range of micro-economic assistance rather than macro-economic packages with no clear guidance as to what it will be used for or over what timescale it will be available.

    If one goes these days to Moscow and compares it to two years ago, you are beginning to see embedded in the system, the roots of private enterprise. Whereas there was once just a black market, there are now lots of little stalls selling goods that they’ve brought in from overseas. Things that simply wouldn’t have been available in Russia just two years ago are now available.

    Go into the stores where you wouldn’t have brought anything a few years ago, except perhaps as an illustration of how rotten everything they had was. You now find a wide range of, in many cases, quite high quality goods.

    There is a buzz, a feel, a moving place. Despite all the difficulties they have, it suggests that there is a realistic chance, and it will take a long time, it will take a long time, but a realistic chance that their hopes and aspirations to move to a mixed market economy may be beginning to take shallow root in Russia. And it is in our interests I think, on every count, to try and assist them.

    Then of course I think we must look at the desirability of settlement of the Uruguay Round. For some years, Heads of Government have gone to the G7. They have solemnly sat down and agreed at the end of that year they would have a GATT settlement. And the next year they have gone back and agreed that at the end of that year they would have a GATT settlement. It is beginning, frankly, to get a bit thin and I know the difficulties there will be only too well.

    Few have been in a better position to see what the difficulties are. But I do believe it is profoundly important that we begin to make progress with that agreement.

    If we find ourselves in a stand-off between any of the great trading nations to the extent that you then get protectionism and counter-protectionism and trade wars, there will be no winning for anyone. That will be a defeat for everyone and at this moment, when the thing the world economy most needs is confidence and the growth of trade, it would be folly for us not to bend every wit and will we have to try and find a settlement to the Uruguay Round.

    Maybe positions will have to be changed, people will have to take a long-term view and in many cases face difficulties in their own countries. But I think we need to address that very seriously and see what can be done.

    The other thing I just briefly want to touch on is the world economy. It is pretty sluggish. Indeed, in Europe, the United Kingdom is coming out of recession. Many of our European partners are going into recession. In some cases on a far greater scale than they could remember at any stage in the postwar period.

    If you look at Japan, the signals are conflicting. In Japan the Japanese economy is certainly not bounding along as one of the great entrants to the world economy in the way it has so often in the past.

    The United States looked as though it was coming sharply and clearly and powerfully out of recession a few months ago. It looks a good deal less like that now. And so one has, amongst three of the great engines of the world economy, the United States, Japan and Germany, none of them exactly giving that powerful pull out of sluggishness and recession that ideally we would wish to see to get trade going and see growth return to put more and more people back to work.

    So I think there are areas there. I don’t anticipate that we can sit round at the table in Tokyo and decide a new world economic order that is going to correct us. Nobody should imagine that is remotely going to happen. But I think we do have to look and see what the policies in different countries, that will lead to sustainable non-inflationary growth, that will, during the 1990’s, the most competitive decade we will ever have lived through, which ever part of the world we’re in, to see what is the best way to lift the economy up and out and back towards prosperity.

    Those are some of the things that I think we will be discussing, by no means an exclusive agenda, at the G7 in Tokyo.

    There are many other issues I could stray into. Many of them are lengthy and I think dealing with them trivially would perhaps be a mistake. What I will do, with your consent, is just leave it at that and answer any questions you may have either on the subjects I have raised or if you wish on any other subjects.

     

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION (Tom Penther, CBS News):

    Prime Minister, if I could ask a broader question. As the United States withdraws from Europe and seems to be advocating its boardroom leadership, Bosnia is the obvious example. Who or what in Europe is going to build this back?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well, there are two premises there. If I may examine them both.

    That the United States militarily is reducing its commitment to Europe. I think that’s probably right. Given the changed military and security structure in Europe, there isn’t the same land based threat that there once was from the Soviet Union. We haven’t got Russian troops on the very borders of West Germany anymore. They are right the other side of Russia and they’ve got an army that’s collapsing, and in the most appalling difficulties. The threat has wholly changed. But there will still be a very substantial United States presence in Europe. I would guess around 100,000 troops will remain. And I know of no suggestion that this administration or any alternative administration has any imminent likelihood of reducing below that 100,000.

    So it is a reduction in their physical presence in Europe. But I don’t believe it is an abdication of their instinctive and traditional role as part of European defence. I don’t believe that is the case, though you perhaps may feel you know your own fellow citizens better than I do but I don’t believe it is.

    As to America’s world role. The United States finds itself in a difficult position at the moment. Difficult in the sense that it is now the only superpower.

    When the United States had the old Soviet Union, there was a counter balance. People instinctively rallied to it, or they rallied against it. Now the counter balance is gone and in a curious way it leaves the United States much more exposed. It hasn’t got an enemy, I’ll put the word in inverted commas if I may, that it can push against in difficult times. It has actually got to exist in popular fact, solely upon its own policies without that limited aspect that so often helps Governments when they face difficulties.

    The present administration has got two problems on its plate. Neither of them of its own making, both of them hellishly difficult to deal with. Bosnia is quite literally a problem from hell and it is difficult to see quite what the United States could do to provide effective leadership.

    As far as the world economy is concerned, economies take a long time to respond to action. This one showed signs of being very powerful and has now fallen away. And it will take time for the administration to begin to put that right.

    I think that is an extraordinarily unfortunate conjunction of events for a new President to inherit. And I hope and believe that America will grapple with those immediate difficulties that it has. For I profoundly believe that it is very much in the interests of the free world, of the West in particular, that America, as the single great superpower, does exert a powerful leadership in the western world. I hope and expect that it will do so. I don’t believe there is any information to abdicate that role and I profoundly hope that there isn’t.

    QUESTION (Keith Brockwell, Journal of Commerce):

    Prime Minister, you mentioned the importance of getting an agreement in the Uruguay Round at the G7. When you arrive in Tokyo you will find there is no Japanese Government, the French have a pretty large chip on their shoulder and most of the other leaders that are there are looking at opinion polls that frankly they must consider to be pretty grim. How can these leaders summon the political will to make difficult choices, to change positions as you said, in very strategically, or in politically sensitive sectors that are needed to make to make a deal? And if this year after the last four years, the leaders are unable to do so, do you believe that the momentum can possibly be summoned to have another go?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think the answer to the first part of the question is, look at what will happen if they don’t. I don’t expect that these matters are going to be easily solved and I’m certainly not saying they must be solved at Tokyo next week. Things rarely operate in that fashion. We must make sure the momentum goes on up to Tokyo, during Tokyo and through Tokyo. But nobody can expect that if they aren’t all solved at Tokyo, as I suspect they will not be, that is the end of the matter. We just have to continue.

    But despite the difficulties that you’ve set out more vividly than I might have done in public, the reality is that unless the leaders of those seven large industrial nations actually move towards a GATT agreement, there will not be one. And if there is not one, what lies the other side of that hill is potentially immensely damaging. And the closer one gets to those difficulties, the greater one sees the prize already there in those areas of GATT already agreed. The loss in losing that and the potential damage that could then come about if the whole Uruguay Round itself was not able to move forward.

    It was put very vividly to me the, the moral case for an agreement, by the President of one of the [inaudible] group countries, who came to see me, a relatively small country, and said: “what are you Americans and you Europeans playing at. We reached our agreements in the GATT round five years ago. The world has changed since then. We haven’t squealed and complained. We’ve stuck with it because we want a GATT agreement, we’re a relatively small nation. A few months ago the Americans and the Europeans struck a deal and now they’re both wondering whether they’re going to stick to it. Where does that put us when we have already stuck to the deal that we made four or five years ago?”

    Now I have to say to you that I have a lot of sympathy with that argument. And it isn’t just a question of the position of America and the position of Europe.

    A GATT deal is of acute importance to countries all the way round the world. There is no morality in saying to many of the small nations of the world, we Americans, we British, we French and we Germans are going to be frightfully generous with all this overseas aid. And while we’re giving you this overseas aid, a good deal of it tied to trade, we will actually close off our markets to your goods. So you can live off this overseas aid, today, tomorrow and for as far ahead as you can see.

    I believe that is a self defeating policy. At some stage we have got to liberate world trade, open markets and enable these smaller countries themselves to provide themselves by their own endeavours and not have a hand to mouth existence with aid from the rich countries in the West.

    And unless we do that, we will simply find that the rich countries of the West, over time, will not be rich enough to help these other nations.

    So although this argument is largely couched in economic terms, I have to say personally, I think there is a powerful moral case. If that is not a dangerous thing for a politician to say in public these days. There is a powerful moral case for a settlement of the GATT round in the interest of weak nations in Latin America, in Africa, in South East Asia and in many other parts of the globe and I think that is an argument that will need to surface at Tokyo and elsewhere in terms of discussion on the GATT round.

    QUESTION (Carla Rappaport, Fortune Magazine):

    I was very interested in your comments on employment. You praised America’s labour flexibility. The UK actually has one of the most flexible labour systems in Europe. Yet when I talk to economists about the recent [inaudible]. What more does Britain have to do, what is left to help the unemployment problem?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think there are a number of things that need doing. I certainly think there are some more supply side changes that we could make to free up unemployment.

    I think as a whole, the economy is too heavily over-regulated. That largely, politicians push that out and they say well that’s wicked Brussels sending lots of nasty directives over here. Up to a point that’s true. They do send lots of nasty directives over here. But on top of that we often tie a cap and bells to them when they get to Whitehall.

    We have some accident, and then there will be an inquiry, and then whoever conducts the inquiry makes 480 recommendations as to what might be done to ensure that such a thing never occurs again. They are faithfully enacted.

    If one asks a businessman, go out there and ask all the people running small and medium sized companies what inhibits them from growth, one of the things they will come back, almost invariably, and say to you is, the degree of regulation is too great.

    It is in this country less than in other European countries, but that is not the right measure. The question is, how does it compare with the United States and with Japan. That is the question. And the answer to that question is very badly. So I think there is a good deal more of supply side changes that still need to be carried through.

    I think the trade union changes have worked immensely successively and I think that is very good. But there are other changes. I think there is a good degree of deregulation. Like every other nation in Europe we have to look at our social on costs.

    We in the United Kingdom have seen a social budget that has absolutely soared and people rather say, well that’s unimportant. Up to a point, but only up to a point. If you strip all the unemployment costs out of our social budget and then look at the rest of our social security budget, I’ve put health to one side, just social security, social security rises year on year, almost inexorably by between three and three and a half per cent a year over and above the rate of inflation.

    Now that is the equivalent each year of about a penny ha’penny on income tax.

    Now that is happening, it’s happening all over Europe, in Germany, in Holland and Italy. All sorts of countries that are politically attracted to high social provision are finding it is necessary to trim back within what they can afford. And that is true here. That is why we have set in train with these fundamental expenditure reviews that we need to examine. So I think some of those are the things that we still need to do.

    There’s one other that I would touch upon. One of the other clear pieces of evidence from examining unemployment across Europe, is to look at the people who are unemployed. And predominantly the people who are unemployed for a long time are relatively unskilled males. They are the people who are unemployed for a long time. I’m not now talking just of the United Kingdom, I’m talking right the way across western Europe. And that argues to me firstly the on-cost argument. The same on-costs on someone of less economic value to a company, means they’re less likely to be employed. Straight economic facts. So one has to look at those on-costs.

    Secondly it argues that all across Europe we need to look more carefully at the nature and style of trading.

    Thirdly in terms of the United Kingdom it argues very powerfully to me that I very much want to expand both the service sector, where most of our future jobs will come, but also the manufacturing sector. Not because I think the manufacturing sector of itself will be a large net producer of additional jobs, I doubt that it will. But I think the suppliers of some of the secondary impact of the wider manufacturing sector will give us jobs. And a wider manufacturing sector of its own will be benevolent addition to the British economy. So those are some of the things I think will go to address the point you made.

    QUESTION (Rick Salinger, CNN):

    You mentioned Bosnia as a problem from hell, perhaps a case can be made for saying that Northern Ireland’s is the Prime Minister’s problem from hell. Are you discouraged by the lack of success in bringing about a political solution and an end to the terrorism there?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well, I’d like to have had a complete solution of course. But I think it would be unwise to look at the extent to which progress has been made in the last two or three years. Let me illustrate that with some practical points rather than just the assertion.

    Who would have contemplated two or three years ago that we would have managed to get all the political parties talking in the way that they have around the table. It has never happened before. Large measures of agreement reached in strand 1 and strand 2 of the talks. Agreement, without an explosion in either side of the Ireland, that there should be regular bilateral summits between the Irish Government and the British Government. Huge improvement in cooperation on security matters between the Irish Government and the British Government. Huge increase in the relationship between the Garda and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

    And perhaps above all, if you go to Northern Ireland and go out on the streets and talk to the people of Northern Ireland, there is a huge instinctive will for the politicians to talk and to try and reach an agreement.

    They don’t say anymore this or that political slogan when you talk to them. What they do say, though they may not put it quite in these terms, is that they don’t want another twenty three years like the last twenty three years. They do want us to push ahead for some progress and the reason for that is quite clear.

    If you walk around Belfast it’s a different city from ten years ago. The difficulties are highly publicised, magnified all the way round the world. The successes aren’t. There has been a huge amount of investment in Belfast and a great change in the city. One only has to go there to see it.

    But it is just a drop in the ocean and this is what explains the public attitude. Just a drop in the ocean to what could happen if the bloodshed and the terrorism stopped.

    You could triple tourism. I was in Northern Ireland over the weekend. The first Prime Minister to spend a weekend there I think for fifty years. I opened the tourist agency in Larne, a brand new agency. They could triple tourism in Northern Ireland but for the fact that all the rest of the world knows about Northern Ireland is when you get terrorist incidents. So they don’t go. They think it is far worse than it is.

    And secondly inward investment. Northern Ireland is a hugely attractive place to invest in. I went, the previous time I was there, to a great cotton factory where they got some investment from the United States. They’d merged and they were producing Fruit of the Loom t-shirts. Everybody there was hugely successful. Much more competitive than anywhere in the Pacific Basin.

    And the amount of inward investment that would flood into Northern Ireland because of the attraction of Northern Ireland as a place to live, and also its competitiveness is huge, provided it had a better terrorist overhang.

    Now the people of Northern Ireland know that. They know that there is a prosperity deficit in Northern Ireland because of terrorism. And I think they are getting heartily sick of it.

    So I think there is quite an agenda of reasons for positive hope. I don’t think it will be easy, I don’t think it will necessarily be quick but I think inexorably we are moving in the right direction in Northern Ireland and that is something one could not have said for much of the last quarter of a century.

    QUESTION (Linda Albany, ABC News):

    Recently someone quite close to the talks on Bosnia indicated that they were quite surprised by the lack of preparation which the Americans came overseas to talk about what it was they wanted done, and said something about this administration being worse than even the Carter administration [inaudible]. What was the reaction of Europeans, would you say, behind closed doors to some extent, to what the US’s position was and how they handled it?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I’m always rather suspicious of anonymous quotes, having spent a year living through them. So I tend not to react too well to anonymous quotes.

    I can only say on the occasions that I have spoken either to President Clinton or the Secretary of State, I found immensely well briefed about realities. Nobody is in any doubt that we have produced different prescriptions as to what is appropriate from time to time. But I think they’re very well briefed. I think they do understand the problems involved and I sometimes find it bizarre when I read afterwards what has allegedly happened at a meeting I attended. Either I wasn’t there at all or there’s been some misapprehension in the way it has subsequently been passed on for reporting. So I have no criticisms to make on that score.

    It’s a very difficult problem. The United States have to grapple with it in the same way that we do. In some areas we have reached different conclusions but I think the objectives we have in mind are the same objectives and I think that will become apparent again when we talk about it in weeks ahead.

    QUESTION (Maureen Johnson, Associated Press):

    Prime Minister, when you were saying fifteen months ago we wouldn’t have believed the achievements of your administration if you’d listed them, would you yourself have believed one of us if we had said where you’re poll ratings would be now and how candid or permanent do you think these are?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I have someone whose word you trust implicitly with me. Namely Gus O’Donnell. And Gus will tell you, if I ask him to, won’t you Gus. “Yes Prime Minister” [GUS]. He used to write a very famous show as well of the same title.

    What I said to him the day after the last election. On the Friday after the election he sat upstairs in my flat. There were four of us there: Chris Patten, Gus O’Donnell, Sara Hogg and myself. And one of them said, ‘well, election’s over, we’ve won it’. And I said, and I hope Gus will recall the incident, that in a year I would be the most unpopular Prime Minister that this country had known for a very long time.

    I did not quite envisage how it would come about. I freely confess that. But I was well aware of the intrinsic difficulties that lay ahead and I had no doubt that it would lead to a considerable amount of difficulties.

    But I’m bound to say, asking me about poll ratings is not wildly productive. If I had believed poll ratings I wouldn’t have had any of these problems, because I wouldn’t have won the last election. None of them said that we would, I didn’t believe them then. I disregarded them then and I have no intention of letting them get in the way of what I’m doing now.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    The Exchange Rate’s only part of competitiveness. Don’t make too much just of the Exchange Rate. That’s short hand for a range of other things as well.

    If you look, for example, at the other components of competitiveness in the United Kingdom: unit costs, productivity growth. You’ll see all of them are now strikingly better than most of our European competitors and strikingly better than we’ve seen previously in this country. So I wouldn’t make too much simply of the Exchange Rate problem.

    There are a whole range of other things that are making our exports very competitive. And I am delighted about that and also delighted that we have quite a degree of spare capacity, with proved production in this country in order to continue to export.

    The problem that we will face, I think, will be a slightly different one. The problem that we are going to face over the next year is that so many of our principal markets are themselves in recession or are heading towards recession. So we are likely to get a larger share of our improved competitiveness. A larger share but perhaps of a smaller market. And if I had to worry about the trade deficit, I would worry about that aspect of the trade deficit rather than the one that you raised.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well, I think that question is capable of more than one interpretation. I hope we will be able to reach a settlement that is satisfactory for each of the three parties.

    Even if that were true, the probability is, I state this is a probability not a certainty, but the probability is that there will need to be some international presence in the former Yugoslavia for some time to come. I don’t know what form that presence will take. I don’t know what form any guarantees that might be required would be. But I would be very surprised if there wasn’t firstly an humanitarian presence in Bosnia for some time.

    Secondly a presence aimed at the reconstruction of the former Yugoslavia, and very possibly what I might call the guardian presence, that’s small g, of troops under a UN guise to help in one form or another.

    So I think if any of the world’s big nations had ambitions that they may be able to wash their hands of the Yugoslavian/Bosnian problem in the near future, then I think that is very unlikely. I don’t myself foresee it. I hope we will get a settlement. I think that would be a great step forward.

    The other problems would be rather more agreeable to have. But even if that occurred and we did get a settlement and that settlement were satisfactory and it looked as though it was going to last, there would still be a need, I think, for a continuing involvement.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, for thirty five years I’ve been trying, to explain British cricket. Unsuccessfully of course. Now I have to explain whether there is actually a decline in British cricket in its appearance of British Cricket and County Cricket, a lot of my audiences are waiting expectantly for my answer.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I have many responsibilities and I am prepared to take the blame for most of them which on balance is a jolly good thing. Let me try and respond to that question.

    As for explaining cricket it is quite simple. Two men go out to the middle of the field, they put in six pieces of wood, two men in white coats come out and it starts to rain. That is really all you need to know.

    I tried to explain to President Bush what a leg breaker was, several times, and he got it. Ah, he said, it’s a curved ball that doesn’t bounce.

    There is a serious point underlying your question. And I think it deserves a slightly more serious answer. County Cricket isn’t the force it was. School cricket, the lack of school cricket, is really I think where the roots of the difficulties cricketers have actually spring from.

    That is the negative side of the equation. The positive side of the equation is that the great County sides have recognised that and they are now organising on a scale we’ve never seen before in this country. Club Cricket and Youth Cricket actually organised by Lancashire, Surrey, Yorkshire and Middlesex. So they are seeking to get youngsters with some form of cricketing talent at a very young age and exposing them to a higher class of cricket.

    That will take some time to work its way through. But if you look at the Surrey team, which I mention only because by far the most important public appointment I hold is that of life vice-president of Surrey County Cricket. A large number of the present Surrey County side actually came through those youth arrangements.

  • PMQT – 19 May 1992

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 19th May 1992.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Mr. Ron Davies : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

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

    Mr. Davies : The Prime Minister will recall the support given by all sides of the House and by the public at large to the British armed forces during the Gulf war. In recognition of that and following the verdict of a jury yesterday that nine of our soldiers were unlawfully killed, will the Government take all necessary steps to ensure that criminal proceedings are brought against those responsible? If his commitment to open government is serious, will he ensure that the full details of this incident are made available to the public, because this is not an occasion when there should be a cover up either by the American or the British authorities?

    The Prime Minister : My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will answer a private notice question about this matter in a few moments. I sympathise with the anguish of the families and with their wish to find out exactly what went wrong. That has been our aim as well.

    The sad fact is that in war terrible accidents of this sort do sometimes occur. Clearly we must learn the lessons of this for the future ; but I hope that we will not lose sight of the fact that these were American pilots risking their lives alongside our troops in the battle against a common enemy and to liberate Kuwait. I hope that that thought is not lost sight of : without American resolve and support the liberation of Kuwait would not have been possible.

    Mr. Robert B. Jones : Can my right hon. Friend confirm that any minimum and legally binding rate of VAT imposed by the European Commission will be unacceptable to him as well as to the people of this country?

    The Prime Minister : As my hon. Friend knows, we are not in favour of minimum rates of VAT, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made that clear in his discussions with our European partners.

    Mr. Kinnock : Following the Prime Minister’s response just now, may I put it to him that the House is united in its admiration of the risks taken by United States and other service men in the course of the Gulf war ; and that the families whose sons are judged to have been unlawfully killed by allied fire are not seeking the identity of any United States personnel? They are seeking the truth about what happened to cause the death of their sons. In common with many others, I believe that they have the right to gain that truth. In addition to what he has already done, will the Prime Minister therefore use all the authority that he has to ensure that every available procedure is employed to see that the full truth is obtained?

    The Prime Minister : I entirely understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point. In many ways he expresses a view widely held across this country and elsewhere. The United States Government have acted in this case in the same way as they have acted in the case of friendly fire involving their own forces and their own citizens. A great deal of information has been provided, including by the pilots themselves. They were assured by their authorities that their anonymity would be safeguarded, and they provided information to the inquest on that basis.

    This was a tragic accident and the whole House sympathises with the anguish and frustration of the families. The United States Government have shown their sympathy for the bereaved at the highest level. President Bush saw the families ; he has responded to their requests to him for more information. But the United States Government also have to weigh up the anguish of the families of their pilots and their obligations to their own citizens. All the relevant considerations have been drawn to their attention, but the decision whether to send pilots to the inquest must be for the United States authorities to make.

    Mr. Kinnock : I am sorry to press the Prime Minister, but I must do so. The anguish of which he speaks–the anguish being experienced by the pilots and their families–is obvious ; but that anguish will not be increased or diminished if the British families are told the exact truth of the circumstances in which their boys were killed. Will the Prime Minister concentrate on that aspect of the matter, and set any possible legal proceedings aside for the concern of the appropriate authorities, while using his authority to gain the truth? That will not add to or–tragically- -diminish the great sadness that we know must be felt by any service men who have been involved in any way in this horrific incident.

    The Prime Minister : As I told the right hon. Gentleman a moment ago, the inquest was provided with a great deal of information, including that provided by the pilots themselves. That information has been sought, and it has been provided. I am not in a position to provide any more information : that which is available has been provided.

     

    Q2. Sir George Gardiner : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

    The Prime Minister : I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Sir George Gardiner : I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his publication today of the structure and membership of Cabinet committees. Does he intend to continue to blow the cobwebs of secrecy from Whitehall, and can he apply the same zeal to the antiquated procedures of the House by enabling hon. Members to reach decisions on the Select Committee on Sittings of the House before the summer recess, so that more sensible working hours can be adopted when we return in the autumn?

    The Prime Minister : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing my attention to both those points.

    As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House told the House last Wednesday, we plan to provide an early opportunity for the House to debate the Select Committee’s report on the reform of our procedures. Obviously, hon. Members will want to have their own say on the far-reaching changes that are proposed ; I am sure, however, that my right hon. Friend knows my personal belief that the House needs to reform its procedures, and I hope that we shall be able to proceed to such reform as speedily as possible.

    As for my hon. Friend’s first point, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is looking across Whitehall and beyond, with the aim of incrementally removing unnecessary secrecy. I think that this is a way in which the Government can make their own information more accessible and more responsive to the citizens whom they serve.

    Mr. Ashdown : May we leave aside for the moment the clear mishandling of the Oxford friendly-fire inquest by both the United States authorities and the Ministry of Defence, and the clear duty that now lies with the Government–which I hope that the Prime Minister accepts–to pursue those unanswered questions directly with the United States authorities? Will the Prime Minister confirm that he would not permit British soldiers who had committed tragic but human errors in conditions of war to be required to face either inquest or trial on the basis that such mistakes would be made in time of peace? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we should not require of the United States Government something that we would not permit ourselves?

    The Prime Minister : I understand the underlying point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but so much depends on the individual circumstances of the case. I think that the whole House will understand precisely why that must be so. Certainly, there might be circumstances in which the right hon. Gentleman’s conclusion would be absolutely right.

     

    Q3. Mr. Gill : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

    The Prime Minister : I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Gill : Given that the Prime Minister will seldom find himself in a better bargaining position in this regard, what assurance can he give the House that issues such as immigration, border controls, Britain’s contribution to the European Community budget and its rebate and–this should not be forgotten–the European working time directive will be settled before he ratifies the Maastricht agreement?

    The Prime Minister : My hon. Friend raises a number of extremely important and, in many ways, tendentious issues. They are matters that relate to existing provisions of the treaty of Rome and they are not directly related to the Maastricht treaty. All the matters to which my hon. Friend has referred are extremely important and I give him the assurance that we shall fight to preserve British interests up to, during and after the ratification of the Maastricht treaty.

     

    Q4. Mr. Pendry : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

    The Prime Minister : I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Pendry : In this season of maiden speeches does the Prime Minister recall his own in June 1979 in the Budget debate, when he expressed grave concern about the level of unemployment in his constituency? Since that time he has held high office–Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and now, of course, Prime Minister. The level of unemployment in Huntingdon by the same count today is 5,483, a staggering increase of 393 per cent. What went wrong exactly?

    The Prime Minister : The strict answer to the hon. Gentleman is that I recall clearly my maiden speech, and I doubt whether any hon. Member is ever likely to forget it. It is often an extremely difficult occasion. As for employment prospects, the hon. Gentleman might care to consider how many of my constituents were in work. In my constituency and throughout the whole of the country we have a higher percentage of our population in secure jobs than in any other part of the European Community, with the exception of Denmark.

     

    Q5. Mr. Bowis : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

    The Prime Minister : I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Bowis : Now that my right hon. Friend has persuaded trade union leaders to accept democracy in the workplace, will he see what he can do about their attitude to democracy in this place? Perhaps they could start by abandoning their current practice of appointing the Leader of the Opposition.

    Madam Speaker : Order. That is not a question for the Prime Minister to answer.

     

    Q6. Ms. Quin : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

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

    Ms. Quin : Is the Prime Minister aware that despite the welcome increase in dental treatment last year, Government policies are threatening the future of dentistry within the national health service? What action will the right hon. Gentleman take to resolve the dispute with the dentists, to reverse the ever-increasing cost of dental treatment and to ensure that dentistry will be available to the entire population within the NHS for the long-term future?

    The Prime Minister : As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) referred a moment ago to the position over the whole period that the Conservative Government have been in power, perhaps I also could do so. There are now 27 per cent. more dentists in the general dental service than there were in 1979. Expenditure on the dental service in England alone exceeded £1 billion last year, an increase of 43 per cent. since 1979. On the vexed question of dental fees, which might have underlain the hon. Lady’s supplementary question, a joint inquiry has now concluded its meetings and will report to the dental rates study group. It would not be right for me to comment until conclusions have been produced.

    Mr. Rathbone : Might I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir G. Gardiner), welcome my right hon. Friend’s publishing of the Cabinet committees and sub-committees? I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm that the translation of the inter-ministerial group on drug misuse into a Cabinet sub-committee is additional Government accent for this important area of activity?

    The Prime Minister : Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance.

     

    Q7. Mr. Trimble : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 19 May.

    The Prime Minister : I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Trimble : May I refer the Prime Minister to the speech that he made on the Loyal Address, in the course of which he committed himself to strengthening the union between Scotland and England throughout this Parliament? In this Parliament will he show an equal concern about strengthening the union with Northern Ireland?

    The Prime Minister : I am happy to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to respect the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Northern Ireland. That has been our position for a long time and there is no change in that. At the same time, the people of Northern Ireland and I believe that the whole of the United Kingdom wants the present political talks to succeed. I understand the difficulties of the talks, but I hope that all Northern Ireland political leaders will bear in mind their responsibility to help to make the talks successful in the interests of all the people who live in Northern Ireland. It is those political leaders and those talks that offer the best prospect of a secure and prosperous future for Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom for all the people of Northern Ireland.

    Mrs. Angela Knight : Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is fundamental that the basics of English are taught to children in schools? Is not that a vital part of the education policy of our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State? Does my right hon. Friend further agree that teaching the dialogue of soap operas will not raise the standards of education?

    The Prime Minister : My hon. Friend speaks for many hon. Members and for many millions of people outside the House. The basics of education are clearly of fundamental importance. I suspect that the teaching of the classics is rather more valuable to children than the teaching of soap operas.

  • PMQT – 16 January 1992

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 16th January 1992.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Mr. Winnick : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    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. Winnick : In view of the evidence given yesterday should there not be a full and frank ministerial statement–which should come from the Prime Minister–of what was known inside the Government at the time about the supergun affair? Bearing in mind the number of military items sold to the Iraqi regime by this country right up to the invasion of Kuwait and the highly critical comments made about the conduct of Ministers during the Gulf war, what right do the Government have to lecture hon. Members on the Opposition Benches over defence matters?

    The Prime Minister : In so far as the Gulf war is concerned, the hon. Gentleman is referring to one of the most successful military operations ever undertaken by this country or any other. It achieved its objectives more swiftly and with less bloodshed than anyone could possibly have imagined. As to the earlier part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, he knows that much of what he said was nonsense. It has been dealt with often enough.

     

    Q2. Mr. McGrady : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    The Prime Minister : I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. McGrady : Could I remind the Prime Minister that one of the consequences of his Maastricht agreement is to prevent Northern Ireland from participating in the new cohesion fund, to the extent of losing tens of millions of pounds? I am sure that he is aware of the total lack of adequate funding for roads, transport and the environment in Northern Ireland, especially now that the Secretary of State has imposed a total moratorium on all public spending in Northern Ireland. Would he assure the people of Northern Ireland and the House that as soon as possible he will remedy that appalling error, and allow Northern Ireland to benefit from the new cohesion fund as a category 1 area?

    The Prime Minister : There is, as the hon. Gentleman knows, a higher level of public expenditure per head of population in Northern Ireland–and rightly so–than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. The establishment of the cohesion fund and eligibility to benefit from it were agreed by all the member states. There is a misapprehension that Northern Ireland is the only category 1 area that will not benefit from that, but that fund is designed to help the poorest member states, not poorer regions or provinces within the more prosperous nations. So, the hon. Gentleman does not understand the purpose for which the fund was devised.

     

    Q3. Mr. Gwilym Jones : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    The Prime Minister : I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Jones : Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he has no plans to increase income tax and national insurance contributions for millions of ordinary taxpayers? Does he agree that it is the height of irresponsibility to try to pretend that there can be a massive increase in spending from day one of a Government if the tax increases to pay for that are to be phased in?

    The Prime Minister : I can also confirm to my hon. Friend that we have made no plans for a super increase in VAT, as the Opposition have apparently considered. There is no doubt that the Opposition are now in a shambles over their tax plans. Their muddled statements show that they cannot be trusted on tax ; they shift their position from day to day. The only thing that is certain is that a party that promises to spend and spend is a party that would have to tax and tax.

    Mr. Kinnock : Will the Prime Minister tell us why his record on unemployment is even worse than that of his predecessor?

    The Prime Minister : Everyone in the House and beyond regrets the fact that unemployment rises. That is why we are persisting with policies that will create long-term, permanent jobs for the future. We have put those policies in place–low inflation, lower taxes and lower interest rates. Those are the only measures that will get people into work and keep them in work, which is the only proper policy to follow.

    Mr. Kinnock : Unemployment has risen by nearly 1 million in the time that the hon. Gentleman has been Chancellor and Prime Minister, but still he refuses to do anything useful to stop that remorseless rise. Is it not because he believes that 2.5 million unemployed is “a price worth paying”?

    The Prime Minister : The right hon. Gentleman should not be so cheap over such a problem. Unemployment is greater than a year ago in every country in EFTA and in every G7 country except the Netherlands. French unemployment is at its greatest level ever. United States unemployment is higher than for the past five years. What the right hon. Gentleman might also have fastened his mind upon is the fact that reported job vacancies are rising, that the number of people placed in jobs is rising and that there are 500,000 more people in work than in 1979. Those are some of the facts which the right hon. Gentleman should absorb.

    Mr. Kinnock : The right hon. Gentleman is a dodger.

    [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order.

    Mr. Kinnock : In the last year employment in Britain went down by 873,000. Job vacancies are still 10,000 lower than they were this time last year. When Sir Nicholas Goodison of the Trustee Savings Bank says that this is the worst recession in living memory, is it any wonder that the whole country knows that this is the Government of high unemployment?

    The Prime Minister : Some people might say that on policy rather than on personal matters the right hon. Gentleman is a tax dodger. He can give no lecture to us on unemployment. [Hon. Members :– “Withdraw.”] His policies would cut jobs across the whole country.

    Hon. Members : Withdraw.

    Mr. Speaker : Order. I do not think that that was meant in a personal sense.

    The Prime Minister : Indeed ; I expressly said that, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman’s minimum wage would increase unemployment by putting 2 million people out of work. His plans to slash defence budgets by £6 billion would cost 100,000 more their jobs. His tax on jobs would cost another 100,000. He is the only person in opposition to plan for greater unemployment as a matter of policy.

    Mr. Nicholls : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if the upper earnings limit on national insurance contributions– [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. I ask the House to settle down.

    Mr. Nicholls : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if the upper earnings limit on national insurance contributions were to be removed, it would punish not just somebody earning £20,280 a year but would punish anyone who earned £390 in a single week? Does he agree that a proposal that would impose a massive tax burden on 4 million ordinary people could be produced only by a shower such as those who currently comprise the Opposition?

    The Prime Minister : My hon. Friend is quite right– [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. The House is in a very excited state.

    The Prime Minister : My hon. Friend is right. I suspect that the Labour party simply did not understand when it drew up its policy that everyone would pay more national insurance contributions in a single week if they earned above one fifty second of statutory UEL. The Independent pointed out, for example, that the Opposition’s tax plans would mean

    “the largest ever peacetime tax increase.”

    The Leader of the Opposition promised explicitly that anyone earning less than £21,000 a year would not pay a penny tax extra in income tax or national insurance under a Labour Government. Clearly, he was wrong about that. He should admit it, and do so publicly.

     

    Q4. Mr. Canavan : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    The Prime Minister : I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Canavan : Will the Prime Minister confirm that he personally was informed about British Steel’s decision to close Ravenscraig over a fortnight before the official announcement last week–[ Hon. Members :– “Oh?”]–and that instead of trying to reverse the decision, he and the Secretary of State for Scotland took part in a conspiracy of silence? Will the right hon. Gentleman now, even at this late stage, intervene to try to stop the closure, bearing in mind the Government’s responsibility for privatising the steel industry, thereby allowing a butcher such as Bob Scholey to betray the Scottish steel workers?

    The Prime Minister : It is noticeable that the Labour party has not offered to keep Ravenscraig open. I was informed that British Steel would be making a decision on the day that it made the decision– [Interruption.] I was informed in confidence some days before that it would be making a decision on that day. It was a commercial decision by British Steel. It is clear, despite all their words, that Opposition Members would have done nothing different.

    Mr. Irvine : Does my right hon. Friend agree that defence cuts of £6 billion would lead to a massive loss of jobs in defence industries throughout the country? Does he further agree about the hypocrisy of those who call on the one hand for the maintenance of defence contracts in public and, on the other, plan in private for defence reductions?

    The Prime Minister : My hon. Friend makes a good point. Our policy, both for nuclear and conventional defence, is clear, has been set out in a number of documents and is properly costed. The Opposition do not say where they stand, cannot say where they stand and cannot admit to the jobs that would be lost if their policy were carried out. The Labour party conference has three times voted to cut £6 billion from the defence budget, and we can see the extent to which that would devastate the defence industry and the defence of this country.

     

    Q5. Mr. Madden : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    The Prime Minister : I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Madden : Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman a question about which I gave notice to his office earlier this morning? Will he arrange for X-ray and metal detection equipment to be installed immediately at Armley prison in Leeds? I ask for this following a serious breach of security at the prison last Friday, when a visitor inside the prison drew a knife and sought to attack another visitor. As this is the latest in a series of serious breaches of security at prisons, will the Prime Minister call upon the Home Secretary, who has clearly lost control of his own Department and no longer enjoys the confidence of the public, to resign now or else sack him?

    The Prime Minister : First, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of the detailed point that he wished to raise. Security at prisons holding category A prisoners is already very tight, with rigorous searching procedures. In addition, however, we are providing X-ray equipment, as the hon. Gentleman has suggested we should. A contract has been placed for the supply of this equipment to prisons that hold category A prisoners. Devices have to be specially constructed, and they will be delivered as soon as possible.

    In reply to the hon. Gentleman’s last point, I can say that I have complete confidence in my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

     

    Q6. Mr. Evennett : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January.

    The Prime Minister : I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Evennett : Does my right hon. Friend agree that to base defence policy on defence cuts–the North Sea oil of the 1990s–is irresponsible and misguided? Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Opposition Front- Bench spokesman on Treasury affairs has actually stated this as a belief–

    Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question about Government policy.

    Mr. Evennett : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that Labour remains unsound on defence?

    The Prime Minister : Yes, it is clear that, as my hon. Friend says, Labour would cut the defence budget to ribbons. It is true that on defence Labour cannot be trusted. [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. Will the Prime Minister please answer the matters for which he has responsibility?

    The Prime Minister : I am seeking to do precisely that. It is perfectly clear that, while the defence of this country is the first priority of the present Government, it might not be the first priority of the Opposition if they were to make the defence cuts to which they have committed themselves.

  • Mr Major’s New Year Message 1992 – 1 January 1992

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s 1992 New Year Message, issued on Wednesday 1st January 1992.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    1992 will be General Election year. It is an Election that we must and will win. Over the last year we have wiped out our opponent’s big lead in the polls. And we have done that because of our solid record of achievement. We have:

    – Reduced inflation from some 11 per cent to about 4 per cent. Brought down interest rates eight times.

    – Led Britain with success into the ERM.

    – Committed record resources to the support of the NHS. Safeguarded child benefit against inflation for all mothers. Taken 400 measures to improve environmental protection. Replaced the Community Charge with a new Council Tax.

    This has been accomplished in the face of a world recession. I know it has been a tough year for many in business and for many families. But everyone will gain from the more stable economic position our policies have produced. I will never take short-term action that I know to be wrong, simply because it might be popular. We are now seeing the first signs of recovery, and all forecasters expect to see our economy growing again in the coming year.

    The Conservative Government has given strong leadership in Britain and outside.

    Our education reforms have won a powerful welcome from the parents of Britain. Only the Labour Party could oppose the idea for systematic inspection of all schools. Only the Left are resisting our campaign for a return to basics in the classroom. We will see this programme through under the next Conservative Government.

    Abroad, too, we have acted when and where it was needed. For me one of the most moving parts of the year was my visits to our troops in the Gulf. They did everything we asked of them – quietly, professionally, courageously. When the war against Saddam Hussein was won, they also played a crucial part in carrying through our plan to bring help to the Kurds, and to save hundreds of thousands of people from death in the mountains.

    There have also been great developments in Europe. Our Government was among the first to speak out for the forces of reform in the Soviet Union when they were threatened by a coup. And most recently we have won success for Britain in the important European Summit at Maastricht. The new Treaty followed months of patient discussion. We reached an agreement that was good for co-operation in Europe. To fight international crime and terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal immigration. To develop closer partnership in foreign policy and a greater role for Europe in defence while preserving the importance of NATO. And, on a British initiative, a crucial decision was taken to keep the European Community open to the other newly emerging European democracies. The Community was founded on the desire to bring democracy, stability and prosperity to Europe. The Maastricht Treaty has advanced that cause.

    But I was not prepared to accept an agreement on any terms, or an agreement that could have damaged our national interest. That is why we insisted on deleting from the Treaty a Social Chapter which would have put the trade unions back in the driving seat in British industry. And why did we not sign up now to a single currency. Parliament will decided on that only when it is certain whether economically or politically it will become a reality.

    Our Party has been consistent in its commitment to practical measures of cooperation in Europe. We Conservatives are not opportunists who flip from one policy to another as the opinion polls move.

    We know that it is the effort and initiative of individual people that leads to a successful economy. That is why we will continue to be the Party of low tax. We trust people with their own money. We want them to be able to save, to give them the ability to invest for the future, to start their own business if they wish, and to give their children a good start in life. We have helped many millions of people to own their own homes, to buy shares both in the company for which they work and the privatised utilities, to take out personal pensions. And we have introduced new vehicles for tax free savings.

    But I want to do more: people who have worked and saved during their lives should be able to pass on the fruits of that effort to their children – that ability is a great incentive to effort.

    I place great importance on the Citizen’s Charter programme. That is widening choice and raising standards in public service. Those services should all be properly responsive to the public’s wishes, and offer them the high quality that they need.

    The Conservative Government has already given choice in schooling through providing information, allowing open enrolment and increasing diversity of schooling. It has brought choice in training through training credits. And it has given more weight to local decisions in how the best health care can be provided and new guarantees for patients awaiting treatment.

    It is not only important that choice exists, but that everyone has the opportunity to exercise it. There must be no part of our country, no inner city area, no deprived family that does not receive first rate public services, so that they, through their effort and ability, can build fulfilled lives within the community.

    We faced great challenges last year and we surmounted them. We were able to do so because our actions were based on the enduring principles of Conservatism – sound money, strong defence, respect for the law and a belief in personal rights and responsibilities. It is on these principles that our Party has been elected for the last three General Elections. It is on these principles that we will win again.

  • PMQT – 15 October 1991

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 15th October 1991. John MacGregor responded on behalf of John Major.

    PRIME MINISTER

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Dr. Goodson-Wickes : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 15 October.

    The Lord President of the Council and Leader of The House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor) : I have been asked to reply My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Harare.

    Dr. Goodson-Wickes : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that nothing will prevent the dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s capability to manufacture nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction?

    Mr. MacGregor : My hon. Friend made a particular personal contribution in the Gulf war and I therefore understand why he has made that point. I am happy to give him that assurance. He will agree that this country has played a major part in securing resolution 687 which stated that we would seek, identify and destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. As a result of the United Kingdom’s initiative and of the courage of members of the teams including scientists from several countries under United Nations auspices, it is becoming clear just how extensive and advanced was Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability. [Interruption.] I do not understand why Opposition Members are reacting in that way, because they must know that this is one of the most crucial international issues at the moment. The Iraqi Government are still trying to cling to it and are still cheating and lying. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Dr. Goodson-Wickes) that they will not be permitted to succeed. One way or another, their nuclear capability must go, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear. [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. This is a very important matter.

    Mr. Kinnock : Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the Government propose to do to stop the process of privatisation of the national health service?

    Mr. MacGregor : The first thing is to make it clear–time and again- -as I believe the right hon. Gentleman now knows, that there is no question of privatisation. [Interruption.] That is why the right hon. Gentleman is now retreating to his charge of creeping privatisation. Let me tell him what that amounts to. It amounts to issues like contracting out of services and competitive tendering. It amounts also to other issues to ensure better reforms of the health service. Even allowing for all the savings that Labour claims that it would make, the net loss to patient care as a result of Labour’s proposals for abolishing competitive tendering and charges and introducing a statutory minimum wage–proposals that would cost nearly £400 million a year–is equivalent to 400,000 fewer acute in- patient treatments or 16,000 fewer heart transplants, 12,000 fewer liver transplants or 40,000 fewer kidney transplants. That is the point the Leader of the Opposition has refused to answer. The policies that we are pursuing are not creeping privatisation, they are achieving proper reforms to ensure that the resources are better directed to patient care.

    Mr. Kinnock rose–

    Hon. Members : Tell the truth.

    Mr. Kinnock rose–

    Mr. Dickens : Lies– [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Withdraw that remark.

    Hon. Members : Withdraw.

    Mr. Kinnock : Surely the right hon. Gentleman knows–

    [Interruption.]

    Mr. Dickens : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It has been a custom — [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. No point of order arises. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the comment.

    Mr. Dickens : In accordance with your wishes, Mr. Speaker, I withdraw the word “lies”. We do not lie in the House of Commons.

    Mr. Kinnock : There is another withdrawal in order. It is the withdrawal of opt-outs and privatisation, for which the Government have no mandate.

    Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the closure of geriatric wards in NHS hospitals means that old and very sick people are forced into private medical homes? Is not he aware that people now have to pay the commercial rate for eye tests? Is not he aware that people are having to use their life savings for urgent operations? The people call that privatisation–so do we.

    Mr. MacGregor : Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is engaging in the smears and fears again? There is no question of national health trust hospitals being outside the national health service. On eye test charges, he will know that about 40 per cent. of the population do not have to pay for those eye charges. Is he really saying that he would abolish them and thus deprive patients with serious hospital needs from getting the extra resources that he would take away? Is that what he is saying? On elderly people in homes, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the number of elderly people supported by public funds in residential care has more than doubled since 1979.

    Mr. Kinnock : The more the Government protest, the less the Government are believed. Is it not clear to the right hon. Gentleman that, when people have to pay for services at the point of use that were free at the point of use, that is privatisation in anyone’s language?

    Mr. MacGregor : May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that a Labour Government supported the idea of some charges in the health service? He simply has to answer the question that we have increased resources of more than 50 per cent. in real terms in the health service. He is putting forward the only proposals that seem to be different. The only proposals that he can possibly say are creeping privatisation, are actually designed to improve the amount of money that goes direct to patient care. He has failed to answer the question why he would pursue that policy and thus deprive patients of operations which are currently taking place.

    Mr. Ken Hargreaves : When the Leader of the Opposition refers to opt-out hospitals, is it not the case

    Mr. Speaker : Order. Please deal with Government policy.

    Mr. Hargreaves : Will my right hon. Friend agree that in response to his recent remarks, the opting out of NHS hospitals is simply the return to their status before 1974, as in the case of teaching hospitals which were then hospital trusts? Is it not the case that a large number of those hospitals wish to have the management of their own affairs in that state to which they were accustomed before 1974?

    Mr. MacGregor : I would go further than my hon. Friend. The reforms are ensuring better use of resources in the health service directly on patient care. The reason why we are getting wholly unfounded smears and fears is that the Labour party has nothing to say about improving the management of the national health service.

     

    Q2. Mr. Skinner : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 15 October.

    Mr. MacGregor : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Skinner : On the subject of facts and figures, does the Leader of the House recall that on 8 November last year the Prime Minister forecast that there would be a surplus on the Budget account of about £3 billion? He was wrong. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the budget for this year forecast a deficit on the Budget account of £8,000 million. He was wrong again, because the forecast for this year looks like being at least £18 billion. The truth is that the Government cannot get their economic sums right, and that is why they cannot be believed on the national health service or anything else. The Tory Government would not recognise the truth if it were sprayed on their eyeballs.

    Mr. MacGregor : This Government have succeeded in achieving a rate of economic growth throughout the 1980s that has been a good deal faster than in previous decades. That is why we have been able to increase spending on the national health service and in many other areas. It comes very rich from the hon. Gentleman’s party to accuse us about issues relating to public expenditure when we know that the Labour party has already committed itself to an increased expenditure bill of £35,000 million.

     

    Q3. Mr. Roger King : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 15 October.

    Mr. MacGregor : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave a few moments ago.

    Mr. King : Is my right hon. Friend aware that the city of Birmingham is blessed with a superb education system based on choice? We have six grammar schools, a city technology college on our border, a growing number of grant-maintained schools and many church schools. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will maintain that element of choice in our education system, in contrast to the Labour party which is intent on nationalising all that choice?

    Mr. MacGregor : I agree with my hon. Friend. I have visited that city technology college and some of the grant-maintained schools. I also agree with my hon. Friend that the reforms that we are undertaking and the extra choice that we are giving are raising educational standards and increasing parental choice. It is very noticeable that grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges are increasingly popular with parents because demand for places at them is rising substantially. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Labour party would abolish that choice.

    Mr. Ashdown : How does the Leader of the House reconcile a Government who say that they want to privatise British Rail with a Prime Minister who appears to want to run British Rail? Is not the problem the fact that the travelling public are now paying in full for the Government’s 11-year neglect of our rail system, and is not the answer to give BR access to the private markets to increase investment and to give private services access to the rail network to increase competition?

    Mr. MacGregor : At present, BR is engaged on a massive programme of capital investment to improve services. I believe that the public are prepared to pay more in charges to secure that improvement in services. As for the charge about the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend had a view to express about those lines that were faced with a higher-than-average increase to reflect the benefits of extra investment and better services. In the case of one line, he said that that should happen only when the better services were delivered. That is the citizens charter already operating.

     

    Q4. Mr. Bowis : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 15 October.

    Mr. MacGregor : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave a few moments ago.

    Mr. Bowis : Has my right hon. Friend been able to study the case of my constituent who stands to lose his job and is being victimised at his place of work because of his support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the anti-poll tax campaign, despite the fact that 30 of his workmates take the same view and are not being sacked? Will my right hon. Friend look into this matter? He will understand that on this occasion I cannot name my constituent, but his job is as the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist)– [Interruption.]

    Mr. Speaker : Order. Time is getting on.

  • Mr Major’s 1991 Conservative Party Conference Speech – 11 October 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s 1991 Conservative Party Conference Speech, made on the 11th October 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Earlier this week this Conference welcomed Mrs Thatcher. You gave her the most tumultuous reception. She deserved it. She led our country for over 11 years, our Party for over 15. We owe Margaret a great debt.

    The Britain she left us is immeasurably stronger than the Britain she found. Above all, she helped others to believe in us and us to believe in ourselves. And on those foundations she laid three great Election victories.

    It’s good to applaud; it’s grand to cheer. But the greatest tribute we can pay her is to do as she did. To win, and win, and win again. At this Conference – and what a successful Conference it’s been – you have heard how the next Conservative Government will secure the best future for Britain.

    We’ve heard some cracking speeches this week. From the right team. A young team – in fact the youngest Cabinet this century. A professional team.

    Just think for a moment. When the going gets rough in international affairs, who would be the first person you would send for? Gerald Kaufman? No. He would be the second person. The first person would be anyone but Gerald Kaufman. But far and away the best person would be Douglas Hurd, one of the finest Foreign Secretaries this country has ever had.

    Of course, Labour’s Captain tries to talk up his team. “A winning team” he calls them. After three election defeats? Well, it goes to show that there must be more than one way to look at history. Take waterloo. You thought Wellington won Waterloo? No, Waterloo was a smash hit for Napoleon. But we can help Labour to win one thing – the record for the longest run of election defeats. Played four. Lost four. And a probable vacancy for team captain.

    Last week at Brighton we had speech after speech about a fairy-tale future for the British people. In Labour’s Never-Mind-the-Cost-Never-Never Land. Then there was singalongaleader. It was all good fun if you like that sort of thing.

    But while this was happening out front, there was something thoroughly nasty seeping from under the platform. I refer, of course, to what Labour pretends to believe are the Government’s plans for the National Health Service. There’s only one way to deal with a lie: nail it to the wall of truth, as William Waldegrave so conclusively did yesterday. We have all been brought up with the Health Service. We use it. We cherish it. We are proud of it.

    I know that for millions of people in this country the National Health Service means security. I understand that. Because I am – and always have been – one of those people. I know that even when you’re fit and well, it brings peace of mind – just to know it’s there. It is unthinkable that I, of all people, would try to take that security away. A genuine belief I can respect, even when I profoundly disagree with it. But deliberate lies – repeated, repeated and repeated – merely diminishes its authors.

    The Health Service has been in existence for over 40 years. And who has been in Government for most of that period? We have. For 29 of those years it has been a Conservative Government. It has been under Conservative Governments that the National Health Service has been built up, enlarged and improved. And our reforms will carry that right through into the 1990s. So let me say now, once and for all, and without qualifications – under this Government the National Health Service will continue, to offer free hospital treatment to everyone.

    And so that no-one can misunderstand the position – and I hope the whole country is listening – let me make it even clearer. There will be no charges for hospital treatment, no charges for visits to the doctor, no privatisation of health care, neither piecemeal, not in part, nor as a whole. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not after the next election. Not ever while I’m Prime Minister.

    And if, after all I have said, there are still those who set out to frighten the vulnerable, the weak, and the old, with carefully calculated smears, then the public will know where to find them – in the gutters of public debate. Such people are not friends of the Health Service. They are the parasites that live on its back.

    No Conservative need be defensive about the Health Service. On the contrary, every Conservative has the right to share my disgust at what is said. Go to your local hospital. What do you find? You’ll find Conservatives. In the hospital shop. Serving with the League of Friends. Working on the wards. They are not just friends of the Health Service. They are part of the Health Service.

    The National Health Service doesn’t belong to the Labour Party. As its name makes clear, it belongs to the Nation. And – in both senses of the phrase – Labour isn’t going to get away with it. The Health Service is not a political football to be kicked around in the hope that, somehow or other, it will reopen the door of Downing Street to a Labour Government. It won’t. Neither by hook or by Cook.

    This is the first Conference I have addressed as Leader of the Conservative Party. It is hard to explain how I feel about that. It is a long road from Coldharbour Lane to Downing Street. It is a tribute to the Conservative Party that that road can be travelled.

    Perhaps at the back of this hall today there is another young man or woman who stands where I did 30 years ago. Who knows few people here. Who feels it is a long road to this platform, too.

    They should remember the last two leaders were a builder’s son from Broadstairs and a grocer’s daughter from Grantham. We don’t need lectures in the Conservative Party about opportunity. We are the Party of opportunity.

    This Party is open to all. And to all those who may be watching, wherever you come from, whatever your background, I say simply this, “Come and join us”. There are no barriers in our Party, just as there will be no barriers in the Britain we are building together.

    Some people ask whether we will have a different sort of Conservatism in future. Of course we will. We all bring our own beliefs, our own instincts, and our own experiences to politics. And I am no exception.

    But the fundamental beliefs of the Conservative Party, those beliefs that brought me into this Party, are the beliefs that Chris Patten expressed so brilliantly on Tuesday. They remain as strong today as ever. Old though our Party is, the values behind it are older still. They are rooted in the instincts of every individual. And it is through our policies that we make them come alive.

    What is it that we offer? A strong Britain, confident of its position; secure in its defences, firm in its respect for the law. A strong economy, free from the threat of inflation, in which taxes can fall, savings can grow, and independence is assured.

    I want to give individuals greater control over their own lives.

    – Every mother, every father, a say over their child’s education.

    – Every schoolchild, a choice of routes to the world of work.

    – Every patient, the confidence that their doctors can secure the best treatment for them.

    – Every business, every worker, freedom from the destructive dictatorship of union militants.

    – Every family, the right to have and to hold their own private corner of life; their own home, their own savings, their own security for their future – and for their children’s future.

    Building the self-respect that comes from ownership. Showing the responsibility that follows from self-respect. That is our programme for the 90s. I will put it in a single phrase: the power to choose – and the right to own.

    Do you know what Labour believes? That choice is something for them. They just can’t accept that choice is something most of us can be trusted with. You might make mistakes, they say. What arrogance. As if the State have never made mistakes, in our name, with our money. Try telling that the tenants of the crumbling tower blocks that disfigures our cities.

    And tell that to the citizens of Eastern Europe, who have risked their very lives for these freedoms, for the right to own, and for the power to choose. Ordinary values – for which ordinary people have, in our time, fought an extraordinary fight.

    During the summer I did quite a bit of travelling – Headingley, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, Lord’s, the Oval. Also Moscow, Peking, Hong Kong and Kennebunkport. Wherever I went abroad, I found the same story. Britain is respected again. We don’t always realise the admiration and affection for Britain abroad.

    We’ve earned it, because when others have hesitated, we have always stood firm and given a lead. As we did again this year. In defence of freedom in Kuwait. We didn’t want that war, its waste, its suffering, its grief. But to achieve greater security in the world, we had to reverse the annexation of Kuwait. And to keep that security we must destroy Iraq’s nuclear weapons capacity. They are still trying to cling to it, still cheating, still lying.

    They cannot be permitted to succeed. One way or another that nuclear capacity must go. I hope it will go peacefully. If not, it must go by force. But go it will. In January I flew by helicopter over our army in the Gulf. I can still see the scene below me. A great convoy of troops and heavy equipment moving forward across the sands. For mile after mile. You could only marvel at the organisation and planning involved.

    But down on the ground, I had a different impression. Dug into position each unit seemed almost alone. Young men – mostly very young – thousands of miles from home in the wastes of the desert. Let me tell you what was in my mind when I met them. What would they think? Here was a new Prime Minister, unknown to them, untried, asking them to prepare for battle, perhaps not to return. How would they respond to that? And would they understand the reasons why they were there?

    Whatever doubts I had soon disappeared. They knew why there were there. They knew the cause was right. And they knew that they could do the job. They asked only to be allowed to get on with it. And, when they did, my goodness, how they proved their point. They really were the best of British.

    I learned something else from that extraordinary war and especially from that precision bombing that amazed the world. It’s this. If our troops are to do the job we ask, it is absolutely vital that their equipment and their training are the best.

    That is why in the last few weeks we have bought the new anti-submarine helicopter from Westland – the best. Why we are moving ahead with the new Challenger tank from Vickers – the best. And that’s why we will keep our own independent nuclear deterrent, Trident. The best security for Britain.

    And we will take with just a little pinch of salt the conversion of those who campaigned for CND for the past thirty years – and then suddenly let their principles ….what was the word? … lapse? What principles? First, peace at any price. Then power at any price. I know what this country will say to that. Never at any price. For a man who with no fixed view on the defence of Britain, there can be no fixed abode in Downing Street.

    As we saw again in the aftermath of war, a confident Britain is a force for good in a troubled world. If we had not created those safe havens in Iraq, hundreds and thousands of Kurdish people would have died last winter in bitter, freezing mountains. We spoke out strongly for human rights in Peking and spoke out first against the return of tyranny in Moscow.

    Alone among all the nations of the world we stand at the hub of three great interlocking alliances. Of NATO, which is and must remain the core of our defence. Of the European Community. And of the Commonwealth, which meets in conference next week. There we must persuade 50 nations, some – frankly – with a chequered political history, to a formal commitment to democracy and human rights.

    And in the 1990s I hope to see one former member of the Commonwealth once more take its rightful place. We have always fought for an end to apartheid. But we have worked just as consistently for the long-term goal of a fully free and prosperous South Africa. I believe that both goals are now in sight. And when they are reached I want to see South Africa back where she belongs – as a fully-fledged member of our Commonwealth of nations.

    A great debate is now underway in Europe. One in which the Conservative Party can speak with authority. Harold Macmillan first sought to take Britain into the Community, Ted Heath finally led us there, and Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act – with its vision of ever closer union between states. Closer union between states. Not a federal merger of states. That is still our policy.

    I believe strongly in partnership in Europe. Britain, as a great European power, has gained from our membership of the Community. That is the verdict of those people in our country who live by business, banking and trade, the very people on whom our prosperity and jobs depend. But it must be the right Europe. Let me set out for you the objectives that I have in mind, the principles that I will fight for, and the propositions I will resist.

    First we want a Community that will in time embrace the new democracies of the East. We have the chance to heal the scar that divided and disfigured Europe for two generations. The nations of Eastern Europe – Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States – need to know now that when their economies are ready for the Community, the Community will be ready for them.

    Second, I want a genuine single market, open for business right across the Community. It must have common rules. And these rules must be obeyed. When we sign up to something, we put words into actions. Some of our partners, I fear, are keener on making new rules than on keeping them. We need a system that can deal effectively with those who call themselves good Europeans, but who hijack lorries or hold up free trade.

    We are now negotiating new Treaties on political and economic union. I am always ready to listen to new ideas. But they must be workable ideas. Ideas that make sense for Europe, and for Britain. There are vital issues at stake. They involve hard judgments of where our true interests lie. The idea of a single European currency is one with enormous ramifications, both practical and political. At best it is an uncertain prospect. And treaty must provide for a separate decision to be taken – not now – but at a future date by the British Government and the British Parliament. It’s our decision. A single currency cannot be imposed upon us. And I would not accept, on behalf of Britain, any treaty which sought to impose a single currency – at however distant a date.

    We already work closely with our European partners in financial affairs. So, too, in foreign policy and defence. When national interest and Community interest coincide, then common action is only common sense. But in no circumstances – not now, not at Maastricht – will a Conservative Government give up the right, our national right, to take the crucial decisions about our security, our foreign policy and our defence.

    We are working to reach an agreement at Maastricht in December. But I cannot guarantee that our negotiations will succeed. For it is no easy task to get 12 nations to agree. And for my part, I shall put the interests of our country before any agreement. Not any agreement before the interests of our country.

    I hope we can reach agreement. If we do, I will submit that agreement to parliament. For it is here in Britain that the crucial decisions must be taken. Not in the European Parliament. Not in the Council of Ministers. Not in the Commission – certainly not in the Commission. It will be for Parliament to decide on behalf of the people of Britain who elected it.

    So far I have spoken of alliances. Of how much we can achieve if we work with other nations. But when it comes to the search for new markets, even our closest allies remain our competitors. I have never accepted the craven argument that Britain can’t compete with Germany or Japan. And I have contempt for the defeatists who run down our country and write of its future.

    Those who said we couldn’t compete in Europe when we led Britain into the Exchange-Rate Mechanism.

    Those who said that we would have to push up interest rates. And that our inflation was bound to stay far higher than the rest of the Continent.

    All that was just a year ago this week. And look what has really happened since.

    We have cut interests rates – eight times.

    Our exports to the rest of the Community have shot up. Our imports have fallen. Our trade deficit with Europe has been almost wiped out. And in case you haven’t heard this morning’s news, our inflation rate has fallen to just 4.1%. For the first time in a generation we have brought inflation down to German levels.

    They said we couldn’t do it. We did it. And in just one year. Let me remind the sell Britain short brigade of just a few facts. We attract more American investment than any other European country, and twice as much investment from Japan.

    Only two years ago, this country had a 17,000 million pound deficit on manufactured trade. This summer, we had a surplus. Our manufacturers sold more abroad than ever before. They didn’t sell Britain short. They sold for Britain. And they had to fight for their markets when the going was hard.

    I know times have been tough. Unemployment has risen. Many people have faced great difficulties. I know how they feel – what it’s like for a family when a business collapses. What it’s like when you’re unemployed and when you have to search for the next job.

    I have not forgotten – and I never will.

    It is because of that that I will never play fast and loose with the economy. Many have pressed us to do so this past year – siren voices, urging us on to the rocks of inflation, and off the course to recovery. The Chancellor and I ignored those voices. And, as he told you, we can now see the way ahead out of recession, to the recovery that will bring investment. To the investment that will bring jobs.

    And the clearer the signs of recovery, the louder the Labour Party complains.

    Look how they rounded on the Governor of the Bank of England. All because he dared to confirm what everyone else was saying. That recovery is on the way. When he said there was a recession – they cheered him. When he said it was coming to an end – they called for his head. What are they going to do with those hundreds of businessmen telling the CBI exactly the same thing? Will Labour threaten to sack them too? All of them?

    Do Labour realise what their policies would do to business?

    – Stab it in the back just when it’s winning the battle for trade

    – Impose new levies

    – Pile on new costs

    – Bring back union power.

    It may be true that a Labour Prime Minister would no longer get his marching orders over beer and sandwiches at No 10. In these days of designer socialism, he’d get them over a G&T – down at the Old T&G.

    A minimum wage would create the very unemployment they claim to care about. New burdens would drive business out of markets. Higher taxes would drive business talent abroad. Above all, inflation would drive our economy out of the future and back to the past.

    Remember who suffers from inflation.

    – Infant businesses

    – People on fixed incomes

    – Pensioners

    Inflation is a tax paid by those least able to protect themselves. It is Labour’s invisible tax. It wouldn’t come through the letter box, though there are plenty that would.

    They have eight new taxes lined up already.

    Well, that’s not surprising. We’ve costed Labour’s spending promises. 35 billion pounds extra and still rising. Of course, they say there would be hardly any more tax for hardly anyone. But that’s hardly credible.

    The next Labour Manifesto will be the biggest tax demand in history. They love nationalisation. High taxes nationalise choice. It won’t be a case of ‘you pays your money, you takes your choice’. It will be – they take your money, they take your choice.

    High taxes would enrich the businesses, the laboratories, the the universities of American and the rest of Europe at the expense of the businesses and universities of Britain. We’d be back with something we haven’t heard of for twelve years – the brain drain. Our low tax policies have built up a brain bank for Britain.

    Our Party has always kept personal tax rates down. And in the next Parliament we will go on doing so.

    Lower taxes don’t just mean richer people. They mean a richer life. A life with wider horizons, in which people can develop their interests. Support their favourite charity, pursue their hobbies. Go fishing or to a football match, the theatre or the cinema, or just save up for a holiday.

    But lower taxes give people more powerful choices, too. The chance to save for the long-term, to invest in the future. Building up a pension. Starting a business. Giving their children a good start in life – and passing on to them the fruits of a lifetime’s work.

    In the 1980s we began a great revolution. Our aim was a life enriched by ownership, in which homes, shares and pensions were not something for others, but something for everyone.

    We can now see the lifeblood of ownership – of wealth – running through the veins of the country. Nearly four million more families now own homes. And eight million people more own shares. And four and a half million people now have personal pensions.

    But this revolution is still not complete. In the 1990s we must carry it further. We must extend savings and ownership in every form. And we now have the chance to make enduring change. For people in their middle years are inheriting homes, businesses, farms on a scale never before seen. The pioneers of the property-owning democracy are the parents of the capital-owning democracy to come.

    We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.

    So, in the next Parliament, I believe that we must go much further in encouraging every family to save and to own. To extend every family’s ability to pass on something to their children, to build up something of their own – for their own.

    Labour have their eyes on the money stored in the homes in which millions of people now live – and in the businesses they have created. But I believe that what people have worked to build up in life, the State should never destroy.

    As Harold Macmillan once memorably put it, people walk in public gardens, but they tend their own. I want to build a pride in our common inheritance of town and city, coast and countryside. In the very fabric of our nation.

    I want to foster ownership in its widest sense. In making people feel that public property belongs to them. Giving them more say – at the local level – in how things are run. Giving them a choice. Putting them in control.

    That’s the idea behind our Citizen’s Charter – about which Francis Maude spoke so well yesterday. It will be a centrepiece of our policies for the 1990s. I want to see public services in which the passenger, the patient, the parent can have confidence. And in which public servants can have pride.

    I see that Labour are now trying to copy my ideas. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. Even the Labour Party has to have some good ideas amongst all the bad. It’s just that they filch the good ideas from us. The bad ones of course they think up for themselves. They don’t even hide it when they steal some of my clothes. Did you see how many of them were wearing grey suits last week? Have they no shame?

    The test for Labour will come in the next session of Parliament. We will be legislating on the Citizen’s Charter. We shall be giving parents a greater say in schools. Making the big utilities more responsive to customers. And as Michael Heseltine promised us yesterday, exposing incompetence in the council chamber.

    And how do you imagine Labour will vote? With us? For the charter? And for the consumer? Or against us? For the trade unions? For the old ways? For the past? But it’s not just a matter of changing the way we run things. It’s a matter of breaking down the false and futile divisions, based on class and envy, that have been around for generations. They are wholly artificial. Labour fosters those divisions. It thrives on them. Our task is to end them for good.

    I spoke of a classless society. I don’t shrink from that phrase. I don’t mean a society in which everyone is the same, or thinks the same, or earns the same. But a tapestry of talents in which everyone from child to adult respects achievement; where every promotion, every certificate is respected, and each person’s contribution is valued.

    And where the greatest respect is reserved for the law. There can be no harmony in a lawless society. The recent outbreaks of violence in some of our council estates involved a brutal disrespect for other people and their property. Such behaviour cannot be excused and will not be tolerated. In the face of such violence, I know that this Party will give the police the support that we always have. We admire the bravery and the professionalism of those young policeman and women who have been the front line against violent attacks. This Conference must leave no shred of doubt. Rioting is a crime – a serious crime. And it will be dealt with as such.

    But dealing with crime is not just something for other people – the police, or the courts, of the Government. It’s a challenge to everyone. And the way to fight crime is to change the attitudes that lie behind crime.

    The attitudes of people who say that theft of vandalism are somehow less serious. They call it property crime. Property crime? Tell that to the widow who has been robbed of treasured mementoes of her past life. That’s not a property crime. It’s a personal wound which can never be healed.

    This Government is going to crack down on crime, as Ken Baker made clear this week. Let me give you an example. What the irresponsible call joy-riding, we know as simple theft; dangerous driving, a disregard for human life, and the destruction of other people’s property. Some of these people are too young for a licence. We will ensure that when they reach driving age they can be banned from the road.

    As for those parents who stand by and watch while their children commit crimes, they are going to be held responsible for their children’s actions. Those in authority – parents and teachers as well – should use their authority to teach a sense of respect for others, for their rights, not just your own; for their opinions, their welfare and their possessions. Without respect for others, there can be no proper respect for the law.

    We don’t help our children by excusing bad behaviour, we betray them. And we lead them into worse behaviour. Sometimes it’s right to say no.

    A great deal has been written about my education. Never has so much been written about so little. Perhaps that’s why I am so keen on the subject. I believe that Ken Clarke’s programme of reform is a turning-point in education. It will mean that parents and pupils come first, that the key subjects are studied properly, and that the status of teachers is restored.

    Some have said that Ken Clarke and I are wrong to insist on simple pencil and paper tests for children in schools. Well, I’ll tell you what marks I would give to people like those. Nought out of ten for concern. Nought out of ten for interest in our children. Nought out of ten for commonsense. And, so long as there is a Conservative Government, they’ll get nought out of ten for influence in our schools.

    What Labour Governments did, and what all too many Labour Councils are still doing, is unforgivable – the years of levelling down; the destruction of good schools; the harassment of good teachers; the kicking away of the ladder of opportunity by those who climbed up it themselves; the setting of the union rule book above all other text books; the neglect even of spelling. That is where the long march of the Left in education has led us. Well, we are now rooting these ideas out. We are giving parents more influence in schools. If we want them to exercise responsibility for their children, we must give them a say in the education of their children.

    I will fight for my belief in a return to basics in education. The progressive theorists have had their say. And they’ve had their day.

    In the last twelve months we have seen the Socialist philosophy collapsing in ruins. Who will ever forget those days of high drama in the Soviet Union last August? Or the three young men in Moscow who gave their lives for reform.

    When I visited the place where they died, I was struck by the number of young people who pressed in around me. They had copied Western fashions, wore Western gear. For decades they and their parents had been taught that Socialism was the destiny of their future. That the Soviet Union would bury the West. But it wasn’t the West that the Socialist system had buried, it was the hopes and dreams of their own people.

    Socialism has gone in Czechoslovakia, gone in Poland, gone in Hungary, gone even in Sweden. And here in Britain, I’ll tell you what you’ll see over the next few months. You’ll see the Red Flag dying here. It’s going. Going. Gone. Suddenly, it’s just so old fashioned, so irrelevant, so out of date.

    What I owe to this country and to its people is difficult to put into words. My greatest wish now is to give back something of what I have been given.

    I want to work for a Britain that is the best educated and the best governed.

    Where schools and universities are the finest and accessible to all. Where inner cities don’t mean deprivation, but communities that bind and belong. And where no-one has to go in fear at night.

    I should like to live in a world where opportunity is for everyone, where peace is truly universal, and where freedom is secure.

    If that is what you believe in, then go back to your constituencies. Tell them what we stand for. Tell them what we care for. And ask them to choose.

  • Mr Major’s Speech at 1991 Welsh Conservative Party Conference – 14 June 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the 1991 Welsh Conservative Party Conference in Swansea on Friday 14th June 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    This is my first opportunity to speak to the Welsh Conference as Prime Minister. I look forward with pleasure to many more. The Conservative Party is giving a clear lead in Wales, setting the agenda for all the other parties. Much of the credit for that goes to David Hunt and his team. They are doing a superb job. I am lucky to have them. And so is Wales.

    Their work and their commitment makes me even more determined to lead this Party forward in Wales. Not only to win back Monmouth, Brecon and Radnor and Ynys Mon. But to take other seats as well. And, with your help, when the day comes we will achieve it.

    In politics – as in life – it is easy to miss the turning-points. Only afterwards are we able to say: this was when it was clear the struggle was being won. This was when determination, grit and patience began to yield their rewards.

    I believe, right now, that we are at one of those turning-points. For we have seen, over the past week, an unmistakeable advance in this country’s toughest economic battle – against inflation. We learnt in the 1980s how easily it can counter-attack against economic prosperity. And we know how painful it can be to force it back again.

    Over eighteen months ago as Chancellor my first action was to set a course against inflation. So I take particular pleasure in the signs of success we are now seeing. It is not merely that the all-important inflation headline has fallen sharply this week – and is now down over five percentage points since last autumn’s peak. Today’s figure is an encouraging 5.8 per cent.

    But more important is what this week’s figures say for the future. New realism in pay bargaining, which has brought the average increase down sharply this spring. And a new flexibility and variety in settlements. At the same time we have seen long-awaited evidence of a slowdown in price increases charged at the factory gate.

    The message of this week’s figures is of real success. On any sensible measure, underlying inflation is coming down. We are coming into line with the best of Europe. We are learning how to compete, and to win. And we can be more confident still that our forecast for the end of this year – an inflation rate of only 4 per cent – will be met. And it will fall further next year. It has been a hard battle against inflation, fought during a world recession. But the news this week shows that we are succeeding.

    Six months ago, three urgent tasks faced us:

    – to prepare for a possible Gulf War and to steer Britain through whatever crisis arose;

    – to sort out what seemed then to be the insoluble problems of local government finance, and;

    – to reverse rising inflation and interest rates and set the economy back on the road to recovery.

    GULF WAR

    It did come to war in the Gulf despite all our efforts. In that war our Armed Forces, including many young men and women from Wales, performed superbly. They were well armed, well trained and well supported. We can be proud of what they did – and how they did it.

    But now there are some who argue for concessions to be made to Iraq. I am not among them. So long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, we will maintain our firm line. We will veto any UN resolution to drop sanctions on Iraq. In the last six months we have driven Saddam out of Kuwait. His weapons of mass destruction are being destroyed. Of course he will lie and cheat – he is doing. But we will dog his footsteps. By whatever means it takes we will not allow Iraq to rebuild its nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal. So there should be no doubt. Iraq cannot return to the international community of nations white Saddam Hussein remains in control.

    At the war’s end, when we saw the tragedy of the Kurds unfolding, it was Britain who took the initiative to help them. Again, some derided our efforts to bring help to the Kurds. But we continued to press our “safe havens” proposal. And first the European, then the whole international community accepted our ideas. The ‘safe havens’ were established and a human tragedy of enormous proportions was avoided. We can be proud that it was Britain that took the lead in bringing support to the Kurds.

    COUNCIL TAX

    Meanwhile, at home we were tackling a second acute problem that faced us last November. To cut through the divisive problems of local government finance.

    Norman Lamont’s reforming Budget dramatically eased the burden of payment on local taxpayers. It made a £140 cut in headline charges. And gave extra help where it was most needed.

    Then, in April, we published detailed proposals for a new Council Tax. It avoids the disaster of a return to the rates against which this Party rightly campaigned for so long. We are now converting our plans into legislation for the very next Session of Parliament, while Labour are still floundering, trying to fathom out just how their unrealistic rates policy will work.

    COMING OUT OF RECESSION

    The third great task we faced last November was to lead Britain out of the world recession. That recession is not unique to this country. It has hit economies as strong as the United States and as far apart as Canada and Australia. But as we come out of recession, we need to look to the future. We need a stable framework for the 1990s that will keep inflation down so that the problems of the last two years will never occur again.

    That is why last autumn we took Britain into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Since then we have had five cuts in interest rates in just seven months. We have lowered interest rates by 3 per cent from their peak last autumn.

    A STRONGER ECONOMY IN WALES

    We are now reaping the rewards that flow from co-operation in Europe. No-one in Wales should need convincing of that. Our central role in Europe has been the prime reason for the massive flow of foreign investment into Wales over the last 12 years. In that time we have set out a new course for Wales, reversed its decline, and opened new prospects for the future.

    In doing so, it has not been the State on which we have relied. It is the choices and ambitions of millions of men and women that lead our country forward. The Conservative Party stands for variety and for independent action. In that it is akin to the natural instincts of the Welsh. The cultural, religious and practical inheritance of Wales bring a special quality to the character of the United Kingdom. We have done much to nurture the Welsh language and sustain Welsh traditions. We have swept away attitudes that patronised Wales, and brought new life to the Welsh economy. Where once it was dependent on old and declining industries, it now has new industries, new confidence, and jobs with a long-term future. It offers wider opportunities to its young people than ever before.

    In Wales we have also seen a revolution in investment. Companies from around the world have been attracted here. Bosch from Germany, Delanair from France, Matsushita, Toyota and Sony from Japan among many others. I tell you this. None of those companies would have come here if we had stood outside the European Community, as Neil Kinnock himself demanded we should, year after year until he became Leader of his Party.

    This investment drive continues. Take just the last few weeks. At Bridgend Sony, backed by Government support, creating some 1,400 jobs in television and computer display. And in the same period the 50th and 51st German-backed companies investing in Wales. Nine important new job announcements were made in Wales in May – with more to come in the pipeline. In the last financial year alone nearly 70 investment projects from overseas have been announced in Wales, totalling almost £300 million and creating or safeguarding over 8,500 jobs.

    I know that the recession has pressed hard on businesses – large and small – in Wales. But I also know that Wales is now in a stronger position than ever before to confront it. It is sought out as an investment base more today than at any time in history. This Government can be proud of that.

    Government support for Wales goes much further than promoting inward investment. Remember the unnecessary delay and obstruction over the planned Cardiff Bay barrage? How typical it was of many in the Welsh Labour Party to complain about job losses in Wales and then hold up a project to create 25,000 jobs. The very day after their members had filibustered for hours in the House of Commons to block new opportunities for 25,000 people, Labour had the sheer effrontery to launch a bogus policy document called ‘Opportunity Britain’.

    But we were not prepared to let Wales be filibustered. So we stepped in and gave full backing to the Cardiff Bay project. We will now make sure, through our own Government Bill, that the Cardiff Barrage and the thousands of jobs it will create will go ahead. And so will the housing for people on low incomes, many elderly and disabled, that go with this scheme.

    When we look at the progress made since 1979 in Wales as elsewhere, we see a picture of a nation transformed. There are three reasons for this.

    The determination and skills of a whole generation of people.

    The leadership in Wales that Peter Walker and David Hunt have given. That has been outstanding. They have fought to open up new opportunities for Welsh business and families. As a result more people than ever before now have homes, savings, shares, pensions. They have a stake in the present and the future. Many of them didn’t dream that was possible in the 1970s. Now it’s an everyday reality.

    EUROPE

    But the third reason for Wales’ revival has been our membership of the European Community.

    I have said before that I want to see Britain at the heart of Europe. A Europe which has seen, over the past two years, historic changes. A Europe in which the barriers of half a century have broken down. A new and wider Europe of free nations.

    Throughout the twentieth century, Europe has inflicted its worst wounds on itself. Now we must ensure that the years of division and hostility are finally put behind us.

    To secure our future, we need not abandon our past. Or accept the imposition of uniformity on the nation states of Europe. But we must not – cannot – turn our backs on the construction of the new Europe. That is where our history points; and our interest lies.

    There have been times, in our island story, when we have turned aside from Europe. But we have always been drawn back to Europe. There are still those, today, who argue that Britain should step off our chosen path. They seem to believe that Harold Macmillan was wrong to make our first application to join the European Community. That Ted Heath’s government was wrong to sign the Treaty of Rome. That the British people were wrong to vote overwhelmingly for Britain in Europe. And that Margaret Thatcher’s government was wrong to sign the Single European Act. I do not share those views. Sulking on the fringe of talks about the destiny of Europe cannot be the right role for Britain. Europe is not a battle between “them” and “us”. It is our continent, too.

    Of course, there are frustrations in membership of the European Community. Things on which one member will disagree with another. Things we fail to get right. But the opportunities dwarf the disappointments. We have gained much; we can hope to gain more from membership of a thriving Europe.

    There are people, of course, who readily admit we need a place in Europe, but suggest we might leave the Community for EFTA. What an irony, when so many EFTA countries are preparing themselves for membership of the Community. Indeed, this very morning Sweden announced its application to join. They want to be at Europe’s top table – where we already enjoy our rightful place. What a folly it would be to leave a party in full swing, to join one whose other guests are departing.

    In years to come, the European Community will have far more members than it has today. It must be in our interest to be an architect of that wider Europe.

    Our presence in the Community has helped to shape its development so far. Britain’s free market principles have been a powerful force for good. The single market, free of national barriers, will be the clearest expression of our contribution in Europe.

    And these same principles govern our approach to the Community’s long term objective. An objective formally approved by our Conservative Government in 1985, in the preamble to the Single European Act: the progressive realisation of economic and monetary union in Europe.

    For we bring another distinctive contribution to the European debate: a habit of asking how ideas will work in practice. A habit of subjecting them to hard-headed tests of their effect on our freedom and prosperity. That is the contribution we are making, yet again, to the current – critical – negotiations on the future of the Community. There are inevitably some faint hearts who think the outcome of these negotiations is bound to be bad for this country. I am not among them. And for good reason. We are negotiating vigorously. Positively. Clear in our aims, and confident of our position.

    Let me make one thing quite clear. There can be no change in the Treaty of Rome taking us towards economic and monetary union unless all members – Britain included – agree. We could say no. If we cannot find common ground, we may have to say no. And if necessary we will. But no-one should imagine that our European partners would simply abandon their ideas. That Europe would remain fixed in aspic. Or that we could insulate ourselves from the effect of what the rest of the Community decided to do.

    I do not intend to let Britain be sidelined. The potential damage to our trade, to the City of London and to our future prospects would be immense. Moreover, the rest of Europe does not want to sideline us. We all want to find common ground. There has been much talk recently of offers and compromises. But we are not interested in a fudge – in the kind of waffle we have heard from Neil Kinnock on Europe. So let me make the Government’s position clear.

    I will not agree to a treaty on economic and monetary union unless it is practical and workable. It would not be in our interests, or in the interests of our partners, to endorse economic nonsense.

    I will not put to the House of Commons a treaty unless I believe it conforms with our free market principles, and unless I believe it is in the interests of Britain to sign.

    I support the idea of a common currency, which all Europeans could use if they wish. But I am wholly opposed to the imposition of a single currency.

    I am not alone in Europe in my appreciation of how economically damaging it would be to put widely divergent economies into the straitjacket of a single currency. Act in haste; repent not at leisure, but in failure. I believe the whole European Community will come to see the need for caution.

    But I do not rely solely on this belief. I will promise you one thing more. We may, by the end of this year, have before us a treaty. A treaty that could, amongst other things, allow Europe to develop a single currency at some time in the future. If so, such a treaty would have to contain the following clear provision. The British Government and the British Parliament would only move to a single currency if they took a further, separate and explicit decision to do so. Not just when to do so. But whether to do so at all.

    That is a question that would not arise in this parliament. It might not even arise in the next parliament. But if or when it arose, it would be for Parliament to decide. Parliament will not be committed in advance. In no circumstances will I agree a treaty which does not contain that safeguard. Of course, that safeguard is not all we require. I have spelt out today a number of other important considerations. In long and complex negotiations, many issues arise.

    I believe the interests of this country lie in negotiating toughly and forcefully. Europe’s aim must be to achieve a treaty on which all can agree. This may not prove possible. But for my part, I believe the chances of successful negotiation are greater if it is clear where we stand.

    So, as you would expect of us, this Government will do what is right for the future of Britain. And I know that this Government and only this Government is capable of completing these negotiations and building the new Europe in the way that our country needs. So we intend to lead this country through to the conclusion of these talks later this year. That is my position. That is the Government’s position. That is the Conservative Party’s position. That is where we stand.

    LABOUR’S KEBABBLE

    Mr Chairman, I have today set out our position on Europe and set it out clearly. Just compare that with the sheer babble we heard from Mr Kinnock earlier this week when he was asked to explain where Labour stood. He claimed that there was “real understanding” of his ideas among European Socialists. Frankly, if they understand that, they’ll understand anything.

    Of course, Mr Kinnock never likes being asked to explain what Labour’s policies are. He calls it being “kebabbed”. Do you remember? When he refused to go on with an interview because he didn’t like the questions. Mr Kinnock was kebabbed alright on Europe this week. And his Euro-kebabble can’t hide the absence of a policy. He should be under no illusions. Over the next few months we’re going to put the search-light on Labour and expose Kinnock’s kebabble, not only on Europe but on every other issue as well.

    SOCIALISM – THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

    For there is only one thing that could stop the progress Britain has made over the last 12 years. A Labour Government. And that would do worse than stop progress. It would reverse it.

    Just remember. Year after year through the 1980s, Labour opposed all our advances for the people of Britain. They were against lower taxation. Against home ownership. Against denationalisation and better public services. Opposed to the right to buy shares in privatised companies. Against rights for parents in schools. Against help for savings and personal pensions. Against the hope and the independence that millions of people yearned for under the bankrupt Labour Governments of the ‘70s.

    Throughout the last 12 years Labour have fought and fought and fought again, against a better future for the people of this country.

    Labour have one constant criticism of us. Whatever the issue, whatever the problem, whatever the Department, they say we don’t spend enough of your money. It might have been Wilfred Pickles’ approach to politics. Do you remember? “Give ‘em the money, Mabel”. You name it; spend more on it. That’s Labour’s approach.

    But promises have to be paid for. And people are rightly afraid that under Labour their spending commitments would mean bigger tax bills. Labour don’t have the honesty to admit that. Instead they send John Smith out into the Boardrooms of the City to say that all those spending plans can be discounted. They promise the public they’ll spend. They promise the City they won’t. That’s what Labour call Public Relations. It’s what most people call public deceit.

    It’s the same on economic management overall. Labour seem to think it is possible to run the economy by giving everyone everything they want whenever they ask for it. Pay rises. Interest rate cuts. Spending increases. They will give you whatever you want. You name it. You can have it. All at the same time. As a result Labour have no credible policy on the economy at all. None on inflation. None on unemployment. None on investment. None on growth.

    But Labour’s policies do mean something. They mean a pay explosion, a huge increase in public spending, a surge in taxes, an increase in borrowing, a loss of confidence in our currency. Glad, confident morning would be followed by growing misery, devaluation, rising interest and mortgage rates for all. ‘Vote now, pay later’ is the essence of Labour’s plans.

    And there is one other basic truth about Labour Government which has not changed. Labour Government would be trade union government. The two are indivisible.

    Just consider some of Labour’s so-called new policies. The green light to flying pickets. Secondary action in industrial disputes. New life for the closed shop. A minimum wage that would destroy up to 2 million jobs. Labour say they have changed. But who is calling the shots when it comes to Labour policy?

    Who wants to scrap competitive tendering and waste money on direct labour in Councils and hospitals more than Rodney Bickerstaffe and the National Executive of NUPE?

    Who wants to bring in a National Minimum Wage more than Ron Todd and the National Executive of the TGWU?

    Who wants a National Economic Assessment, in which trade unions would parcel out the nation’s resources, more than John Edmonds and the General Council of the TUC?

    So whose policies are they really?

    Behind the Shadow Cabinet loom bigger shadows still – the big brothers at the TUC. In a Labour Britain they would be eased back into Downing Street faster and even more conspicuously than Neil Kinnock’s wardrobe.

    What does Labour’s National Economic Assessment mean? I’ll tell you. It means a glitzy gloss on meddling by trade union bosses. It means the elected Government surrendering its responsibility to unelected union bosses. Of this you can be sure. Just so long as the trade unions go on paying for the Labour Party, a Labour Government would go on paying off the unions.

    Mr Chairman, our duty in this Conservative Party is to stop there ever being a Socialist Government. Not just this year. Not just next year. Not just in 5 years’ time. But for good. For the hard-learned lesson of the twentieth century is this. Freedom, free enterprise, personal independence and wider ownership are the roots to richer, more inventive, more varied societies. Socialism is the road to nowhere. And it is on the road to nowhere that we will ensure the Labour Party stays.

    THE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH

    Our approach is far different from Labour’s. People say to me: ‘You cannot cut tax and improve public services’. But we have. We have. We have shown over the last twelve years how wrong these people are. Cutting income tax by record amounts, but spending far more than any Government before on improvements in health. Cutting back taxation on companies, but spending more per pupil on education than any Government before. Sweeping away the last Labour Government’s taxes on jobs, but committing billions of pounds to new roads, railways and hospitals.

    We will continue that work in the 1990s. And as we do I want us to concentrate, not simply, as Labour do, on what we spend, but on what we deliver for the money that we provide. That is why we are developing right across Government our Citizens’ Charter programme. The Charter initiative will bring new pride to those who work in public services, and still higher quality for those who use them.

    The 1980s were a decade of Government achievement. But we can’t stand still now. The world has moved on and so must we. So we are developing new policies. And improving familiar ones.

    Things will be different in the 1990s as we build on the bedrock of the last decade. It will be an era in which we develop further the wider competition, the choice, and the personal opportunities we have brought in in the 1980s. But it will also be an era in which we extend a helping hand to those still not aware of, or still not able, to take the opportunities that Conservative policies bring. A helping hand to help people up. That is our way.

    Our distinctive Toryism is the polar opposite of Socialism. It rejects their policies based on envy. It rejects their attitudes which foment class division. For our belief – our Tory belief – grows from the commonsense instincts of the British. From their fairmindedness, their sense of what is right and their sense of obligations to other people. It builds on the instinctive friendliness of our people. It seeks to unite, and not to divide. I want no barriers in my Party. And no barriers in our country either.

    I want our Tory approach to strike a common chord with all generations – a Toryism based on the liberal free market but sensitive to individual needs. A Toryism that stands for a stable way of life rooted in decency. For the breaking open of closed doors in our society, whatever or wherever they may be. For a culture of generosity, public and private; respect for the contributions and opinions of others; and pride in our great national institutions. For making it easier for everyone to build up something to call their own and to pass it on to their children and those after them. For all those values that, as I believe, go to create a nation that is sure in its aims and at ease with itself. We want a Toryism that encourages and does not threaten. That is as relevant in the high rise housing estate as by the village pond.

    I want to build a nation that can put hesitation and self-doubt aside. A nation that will act confidently in the world. That will accept its obligations and defend its rights. I stand for a strong, independent Britain playing a positive part in building a better and wider Europe. And playing its part, too, as a cornerstone of NATO in the defence of peace and security.

    Only a Conservative Government can build and sustain such a nation. And together we must fight to ensure that it is a Conservative Government that leads our country through the 1990s and beyond.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to 1991 Scottish Conservative Party Conference – 10 May 1991

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech made to the 1991 Scottish Conservative Party Conference on 10th May 1991 in Perth.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It’s wonderful to be back in Scotland for my fourth visit since I became prime minister. And each time I come I am struck by the growing confidence of our party. We are right to be confident. So is Scotland. There are five Scots in my Cabinet shaping policy – for all the UK, with my old friend Ian Lang making sure the Scottish dimension is always considered.

    He has a powerful team at the Scottish Office. Allen Stewart once defeated me by one vote for a local council candidacy over twenty years ago. I often wonder what would have happened if I had won.

    And in the party machine, Russell Sanderson and Micky Hirst are revolutionising our prospects as we look forward to Conservative gains at the next election.

    Today I want to share with you some important news – of a new White Paper we will be publishing to improve public service, of help for a hard pressed region of Scotland, of our initiative to tackle the international trade in arms. And a meeting that will make Scotland the focus of world attention.

    But before I address these policies to enhance our future, I want to turn for a moment to something that could threaten it – Labour’s policy fiasco on tax and spending. We have always said Labour do not add up. This week they have proved that in spectacular fashion.

    People want to know a party’s promises, of course. But they also want to know how they will be delivered; how they will be paid for; and – crucially – who will do the paying.

    After this week we know who will do the paying for Labour’s promises. Every single taxpayer will. It was kind of Mr Kinnock to warn us he wouldn’t make any tax cuts. We never supposed he would. It’s not your taxes he’ll cut. It’s your income.

    This week he promised 20 billion of extra public spending which, he said would be paid for by economic growth. But existing spending plans already rely on growth in our economy. You can’t spend the same money twice. So his 20 billion would have to be paid for either by higher borrowing or higher tax. 10p on the basic rate of tax. Of course, it would be phased over a full parliament. So that is the cost of Mr Kinnock. 2p a year on the basic rate of tax every year for 5 years to take the basic rate even above the 33p we inherited in 1979.

    It is a breath-taking lunacy. And this from the man who promised 14 out of 15 tax payers would not be worse off under his plans.

    You work harder. Good. You pay more.

    You put more into your job. Bad luck. You take less home for your family.

    What folly!

    That is no way to encourage people to work harder. It is a way to encourage people to work abroad. And when our doctors, dentists, surgeons and scientists take their talents abroad Labour will be surprised. But who will be the poorer? The whole country will be poorer. They always are under Labour.

    So don’t be misled by the red rose ad-men. I know from personal experience how deep is the difference between Labour’s policies and ours. When I was young and living in an inner city, labour canvassers used to come to our door. They were confident and cocky. They assumed I would vote Labour because of where I lived. But they never said how their policies would help me make the best of my life or how they would help me reach a position where I could help others.

    They just assumed I would go on living exactly as I did then. That was my role in life. And I should stay there. They talked about my rights. They talked about what they would do for me. But never about my opportunities or my obligations.

    That is the enduring face of Labour. Never to ask what people, given the encouragement and opportunity can do for others or for themselves. Just what the state might do. Always with someone else paying the taxes. To block out hopes and ambitions and to disparage success. That is the real failure of socialism.

    So when people say there’s no difference between us and Labour, tell them some of the differences.

    We back the consumer through our citizens’ charter plans; they line up behind the trade union providers.

    Our aim is lower taxes for all; they reject lower taxes and plan to put them up.

    Our pledge is more home ownership; theirs more council homes.

    We offer personal pensions to millions of families – pensions they own; they want dependence on the state and attack personal provision.

    We promote more savings and investment; they plan to tax savings and so damage investment.

    We help more families to own shares they want the state to have more.

    We give more say to parents in running their schools; they would go back to council control – ‘on day one’, Labour’s Education spokesman boasts. Their top priority. To take parent’s freedom away. ‘on day one’. I tell you. If parents understand that message there will never again be a ‘day one’ for Labour.

    So Mr Chairman, there is a giant gulf between our parties. That gulf is seen in many policies. But in essence it is that we trust people and they don’t.

    One thing is clear. Labour have peaked. Roy Hattersley knows that. He now warns he will retire if Labour don’t win. Well there’s a threat. Vote Labour to keep Roy Hattersley in politics. It’s not the worst reason I can think of for voting Labour. But, it’s far from compelling.

    As always, it is our party that has the new ideas. About good public services at low public cost. About raising standards in schools and hospitals. About leaving more money in the pay packet and about ownership for all. The issues that we put first are the issues that matter to Britain.

    People build success

    Mr Chairman, it is now evident that we are getting inflation down. And provided we keep it down our prospects are bright. The opportunities immense. I want to see those opportunities spread as widely as we can. To see more people with homes, shares and pensions of their own. More people with skills. More ways into independence and less ties to dependence. More say for every family in their children’s future. More chance to save to make that future secure.

    In our party we know that it is not the state that builds the success of a nation. It is the citizen that builds the success of the state. What we in Britain must do is encourage success at every level. And recognise it when it happens. I don’t want a country in which anyone should be led to feel: ‘I can’t do that; that’s for other people’. I want to see an end to the bystander mentality – the view that problems are something for someone else to deal with, and that success is something you see on television. No-one should settle for less than they can achieve. The credo is simple. If you think you can do it, you can do it. So start to do it – and don’t delay.

    Winning hearts and minds

    We must take our Party’s appeal into every village and home in Scotland. Our door must be open to everyone. And we must open their doors to our ideas. And that means understanding the doubts and fears of many who traditionally vote Labour.

    We have always stressed the dangers of Labour’s far left. And rightly so. Their neglect of defence; their attacks on the police; and their contempt for the law. And never suppose that those elements in the Labour Party have ceased to exist.

    But the vast majority of those who have supported the Labour Party do not share those extremist views. They have their ideals. As we do. They want a better future for their children. As we do. We need to show them, through performance and persuasion, that it is the Conservative way that offers independence, choice, and better living standards.

    And if you want to test the strength of our vision there is nowhere better than Scotland.

    Scotland’s revival

    Ten years ago Scotland stood on the fringes of Europe’s economy. Its industries outdated, its infrastructure and cities run down. So we took the Whitehall controls off Scotland’s economy. Output today is more than 10 per cent higher than it was in 1979. All due to the work of those in the offices and on the shop floor. At 4.6 per cent a year over 12 years, the rise in productivity in Scotland has been among the fastest in Europe.

    No longer is Scotland dependent on a few declining industrial sectors. On steel, shipbuilding, coal. New industries have grown, high tech industries. Service firms alongside the manufacturing base. Who would have expected in 1979 the rate of expansion of services? Services now account for two in every three jobs in Scotland. 23 billion of value-added in 1989.

    And look at the astonishing growth of the electronics industry – a fivefold increase in output since 1979. Who would have guessed then that within just twelve years, one in ten of all the personal computers built in the world would be made in Scotland?

    We took the tax burden off personal success. And Scotland responded – with a surge of innovation and effort. There are five companies in Scotland today for every three in 1980. And the number of self-employed is up by more than half.

    No one ever needed persuading of the attractiveness of Scotland, the quality of its people or of its environment. Whenever I come here I am struck by how within a few minutes of any airport or station I am in beautiful countryside.

    But for too long the outdated face of Scottish industry turned opportunity away. Now, people and businesses are voting for Scotland with their cash. And with their feet. In 1989, 10,000 people moved here from the rest of the UK and from abroad. Since 1981 foreign companies have invested 4 billion in Scotland, creating or safeguarding a planned 80,000 jobs.

    These achievements reflect Mrs Thatcher’s determination to get business and industry here and throughout the United Kingdom back on its feet. And her success in doing so.

    Lanarkshire

    But I recognise that, for all the progress since 1979, some parts of Scotland have managed these changes less easily than others. Lanarkshire is one. At Ravenscraig, and elsewhere in Lanarkshire, British Steel has already announced a number of job losses. That has come as unwelcome news to all who live and work in the area. And I am well aware these are by no means the first job losses in Lanarkshire.

    Allan Stewart will shortly receive the report from the working party we set up to examine the problems of the area and see how they can best be overcome. Ian Lang and I will study that report carefully and speedily.

    There will be no delay. We will take the necessary steps to help Lanarkshire become, once again, an area that will be attractive to new investment and new jobs.

    But even before we see the report there is some preliminary work we can put in hand. Today – before we have seen the report – we are making a further 15 million available now to Scottish enterprise to enhance work on site clearance and to ‘green’ over the worst areas of industrial dereliction. For I want to see Lanarkshire as a thriving, successful part of the Scottish economy. I believe the extra resources I have announced today – together with the other support for Lanarkshire already committed – will be a further step towards bringing about that resurgence.

    Labour’s tax on skills

    Whatever we do, when it comes to regeneration, what areas like Lanarkshire need, will be men and women of energy, skill and vision. Good managers, trained professionals, skilled workers. They are the people who will build new businesses and create new jobs. And we need them here – not abroad.

    Only one thing could discourage people like that – a Labour Government. They plan a special tax on the hardest-working and most skilled people. 72 a month extra national insurance stopped from the pay of a family doctor in Dundee, and a secondary head teacher in Glasgow. A quarter of a million Scottish workers and their families, would be caught in Labour’s trap – before we even begin to consider their tax increases.

    Those people already pay nearly 1650 a year in national insurance. But that’s not enough for Labour. 1650? Labour would spend that in less than one hour on a new state-led body. A typical Labour proposal. The men from the ministry picking winners in technology – the boomerang that won’t come back, the aircraft too heavy to fly, the computer that could make Labour’s policy plans add up. Labour picking winners? They would have a better chance in sporting life. Yet it is to fund quangos like that – 71 of them – that Labour now want to attack the most enterprising people in our country with a new tax on skills.

    Many of Scotland’s top business managers would be facing bills of 250 a month and more. Why should they stay in Scotland when Labour’s new policy would drive them abroad? Such a policy would be a disaster. Indeed, for Labour, it is a disaster. Publishing it was the beginning of the end of their prospects of power.

    Economic revival

    The industrial changes of the ‘80s have helped Scotland resist the present world recession better than most other parts of Britain. Things may seem difficult. Unemployment is rising. I regret that. I know what it means to the people and families involved.

    But there are still far more people in Scotland with jobs than when we came to power. Britain’s unemployment levels remain below the EC average. But I know also that this is not much comfort to those looking for jobs who want them. What is of comfort is that we are winning the battle against the cause of the problem – inflation. That we have put in place policies to prevent it. And that our policies will mean more jobs in Scotland as Britain grows again. More secure jobs. In modern industries. For this generation and the next.

    If we are to grow again strongly, we need to get inflation down. That we are doing. Eighteen months ago we took tough action against price rises. I knew it wouldn’t be popular. I knew it might not be ‘electorally convenient’. But I also knew it was right.

    As a result inflation is now tumbling in Britain when it is climbing elsewhere. It will tumble further throughout this year. Scottish families and Scottish business will benefit from that.

    It is not just inflation that we have in retreat. A few months ago we led Britain into the ERM. Since then we have made five cuts in interest rates. Yet the pound is as strong in Germany now as it was when we joined. Five cuts in interest rates. And the costs of mortgages falling as well. It is high time some of those who opposed entry into the ERM recognised the benefits it has brought.

    Local government

    There is another way in which we must help both people and business in Scotland. By improving the quality of local services. Reducing the costs of local government. And, where necessary, intervening through tougher capping powers to block excessive spending.

    I believe local residents must have more choice. Parents should have the right we gave them to choose the right school for their children, and have more say in how it is managed. Families should have more choice over the homes in which they live. This Party gave Scottish people the right to buy. Now we are going further by giving a new group of tenants the chance to buy their homes with our rents-into-mortgages scheme. Older people. Those on lower incomes. Single parents. They found right-to-buy difficult. Rents-into-mortgages is exactly for them. The response has been huge. Two weeks after the new scheme’s launch, 20,000 people had expressed their interest. People who thought that they would never be able to own a home. People who thought they would be renting for the rest of their lives. Now they will have something that is theirs; something they can leave for their children in the future.

    We are also extending choice into the future shape of local Government itself. There will be many different ideas – perhaps even a return to the old city corporations. But few will favour keeping artificial and impersonal regions like Lothian or Strathclyde. You can be certain. If people’s views, point to the scrapping of any authority, the next Conservative government will act to abolish it.

    Citizen’s charter

    I am determined to give power back to the people who use public services. I intend to help them secure improvements in quality. That is what our new citizens’ charter programme will work to achieve.

    The charter’s principles are already in action. When we privatised British Telecom we insisted on competition and tough regulation. And compensation too, when standards weren’t met. The results were dramatic. Then, a quarter of callboxes were unusable; now it is just one in twenty. Then, under three-quarters of line cuts were repaired in two days. Now it is over 96%. But we should do better still. So we are bringing in more competition to help the consumer. As a direct result there will be a cash cut in BT charges this autumn. Then take gas. There, too, we set up a regulatory regime. But the system was not tough enough. So this month OFGAS has acted. If inflation falls as we expect, gas charges next year will actually be cut. When did that last happen? Did it ever happen when gas was in state hands? It will now. And, again, the public will gain.

    Ian Lang has told you how he will develop the Citizen’s Charter in Scotland. Already, some forward-thinking services have brought in the kind of reforms I want to see throughout the public sector. In the health service; in Scottish homes; and in education. They must go far further.

    We will be developing our charter programme throughout the summer. Make no mistake. I intend it to bite. And to do so in the interests of parents, pupils, passengers and patients alike. This summer we will be publishing a white paper which offers the citizen nothing less than a revolution in the way public services are delivered. It will be the most comprehensive quality initiative ever launched. New and tougher standards of service will be set. We will introduce a wide range of mechanisms to ensure they are met, to the citizen’s satisfaction. But it should also point the way to new pride and purpose for those who work in public services. They too believe in a job well done.

    We do not fall into the trap of supposing that better service must always and everywhere mean spending more. That is Labour’s expensive fallacy – peddled by those who would rather take the money than deliver the service. We never forget it is the citizen’s money government uses; and it is the citizen to whom the public sector must be accountable for every penny it spends.

    The whole public sector will be expected to commit itself to this process. Whitehall, the new Next Steps agencies, local Government, public services, and nationalised industries. And I will keep it under the closest scrutiny as it does. There must no longer be any hiding place for sloppy standards, lame excuses and attitudes that patronise the public. Our programme has four main strands – more competition, privatisation and contracting out, to ensure that complacent services are shaken up; new approaches to pay and budgeting which mean that good performance is rewarded and low standards penalised; a complete review of all the mechanisms for helping the public to get the standards they deserve – truly independent inspectorates, tough auditing, ombudsmen and effective complaints procedures; and insistence on the publication of detailed targets for performance and how nearly those targets are achieved. Services and their users must know where they stand. And, where possible, as the new electricity companies have already found, we intend to look for ways of direct compensation to the public when standards fall far below what the public should be entitled to expect.

    For each public service we will select the most effective means of delivering the best. For each service the techniques will be different. But the citizen’s charter will have just one common aim – achieving the highest possible standards of performance for those who rely on public services in this country. Once complete, it will be the most comprehensive of its kind in Europe.

    Health

    No-one should doubt our commitment to good services at every level, including the NHS. I believe in the health service. My family and I use it. We will go on doing so. Because I have confidence in the NHS and admiration for what it achieves. It is well over forty years since the health service was formed. And everyone knows how dramatically it has grown. But hang on. For most of that time Britain has had Conservative governments. So who do the government’s critics imagine has been pouring resources into the NHS over that time? Nearly 33,000 million a year, four times as much in 1979. Treatments unheard of in the 1970s routine today. Health spending in Scotland some 24% above the UK average. It wasn’t Labour that achieved all that. They weren’t in Government. We were.

    And what of this? At every recent election Labour promised a 3% real annual growth in NHS spending. They never got near that in office. Just 1.5% a year between 1974 and 1979. Nurses’ pay cut by 21%. The hospital building programme slashed by a third. A very modest performance. Indeed shameful. The more so when measured against their own immoderate boasts.

    Yet while they’ve blustered, we have delivered. Spending is up, year after year after year. 3.1% a year over twelve years. And levels of patient treatment up as well. Our performance has gone far beyond Labour’s promises.

    And the fact is that if Mr Kinnock’s 2+% growth formula had been applied this year, the NHS would have had 500 million less than it has had from us. 500 million? That would have meant 500,000 fewer patients treated in hospitals, according to the Labour leader’s official plan. It must be one of the biggest own-goals in British political history. Yet more evidence that Labour doesn’t and can’t add up.

    There is just one more thing I want to say about the health service. I do not accept that there cannot be change in the NHS. I do not accept that every pound in nearly 33,000 million cannot be better spent. Our reforms are about achieving better patient care – and better patient care alone. We will see them through.

    European Council

    I want Scotland to play a leading role in international affairs. Our place in the world begins in Europe. As I said recently, it lies ‘at the heart of Europe’ . I believe that Scotland’s experience is essential to that. I was delighted that Glasgow made such an impact as Europe’s city of culture for 1990. Next year I want to put Edinburgh, like Glasgow, at the centre of European events.

    Edinburgh is already the European Community’s fourth largest financial management centre. And it is moving up the world league close on Chicago’s heels. But a historic capital like Edinburgh should be a diplomatic centre as well. I can tell this conference today that when a Conservative Government chairs the European Council in 1992, we will bring the European council, and the summit meeting of European leaders, to Scotland. I want it to be in Edinburgh that Europe signals the final completion of the single market, on which so many countries have laboured for so long.

    Scottish Assembly

    But I don’t just want Britain to be in Europe. I want Britain to be a leader in Europe. That means being confident and secure as a people as well. I believe passionately that our country must stay united. The United Kingdom draws together, in partnership, the traditions of four proud nations. We have much to give each other. Much to learn from each other. The Scots have always played a great part in the government of Britain, and always will. I know there is sometimes a feeling – not just in Scotland, but in Wales and England too – that Westminster can be too remote. I believe that government should be – must be – more receptive to the aspirations of people throughout the united Kingdom.

    But I do not believe those aspirations would be met by the creation of a further tax-raising body in Scotland; by more Government and more taxes that would disadvantage this part of the island. I don’t want industry and investment to be driven out of Scotland by the highest level of tax in Britain, destroying jobs and smashing hopes. Nine out of ten of Scotland’s business leaders oppose the kind of revenue-raising Assembly the convention proposed, and surely we must listen to that warning.

    Ever since the union of the crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, it has been as a United Kingdom that we have made our incomparable mark on the history of the world. And in this century it was as a British people that we fought in two world wars. And, more recently, as part of the British armed forces, that so many young men and women from Scotland went to the Gulf to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. I was proud to meet them when I visited our forces in the Gulf, and proud, too, last weekend that it was here in Scotland that Britain gave thanks for what they had achieved.

    Britain in the world

    At that service there were readings by children from differing traditions – Christian, Muslim and Jew. All Scottish children. It was very moving. They spoke of common thankfulness and a prayer for peace. It is a peace that for the sake of all our children we must buttress with new safeguards.

    Britain did not sell arms to Iraq. Others did. Saddam Hussein built up his supplies until he had twice as many tanks as Britain and France put together. That is why I have called for a register at the United Nations of all conventional arms sales. I can tell you today that I have asked our representative in New York to press this issue as a high priority. And let me also give more details today of what I want this register to do. It needs to require countries selling arms to declare what they sell, to whom they sell them and in what quantity. I shall be working for that register to be agreed this year.

    Achieving agreement on a register will be an ambitious objective. But we are getting used to breaking new ground. For example, the safe haven for the Kurds in the north of Iraq. And the United Nations special commission, which in the coming weeks and including British scientists, will search out and destroy the weapons of mass destruction still held by Saddam Hussein after the war. Both those ideas were without precedent. Both were British proposals. A Conservative Government s proposals.

    Today, at this conference, I can give the country two further assurances:

    First, Britain will veto any UN resolution designed to weaken the sanctions regime we have set in place, for so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power;

    Second, that we shall ensure, by whatever means it takes, that Iraq can never again build a capacity to threaten her neighbours with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

    Conclusion

    Mr Chairman, we have come a long way together these last seven months. Do you remember what the critics were saying last autumn? They said that our government was finished. We were 16 per cent behind in the opinion polls in the UK as a whole, 33 points behind in Scotland. Well, seven months on we have silenced those critics. Now we are ahead in the polls overall, and we have increased our support by a third in Scotland.

    Last autumn we were facing a world recession. Now we are on the road to recovery. Then inflation was rising. Now it is plummeting. Then mortgage rates were locked at a high level. Now they are coming down and poised to fall further. Then disputes over local government finance seemed insoluble. Now they are solved.

    And I have not even mentioned our progress in Europe, or our help for the Kurds. That is not bad for just seven months work.

    So we should be confident about our party’s future. And, what is more important, we can be confident about the future of Scotland as well.

    This party has the right vision for Britain’s future. Our priorities are to care for those who can’t, to encourage those who can, and to make our country a better place to live in for everyone.

    And that message must ring out from this conference. Our Party in Scotland – the Conservative Party – is on the way back. We are not talking any more about holding on in Scotland. We are talking about regaining seats in Scotland from Labour, Liberal and Nationalists, too. And we will not be easily satisfied. Not satisfied at all, until we have what once we had – a majority of seats in Scotland, safe and secure in the Conservative interest. Nothing less will do. And with your support, whenever the election comes, we will begin that work.

  • PMQT Written Answers – 23 April 1991

    Below is the text of the written answers relating to Prime Minister’s Question Time from 23rd April 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Public Holidays

    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : To ask the Prime Minister if he will bring forward proposals to abolish the May day holiday in England and declare St. George’s day a public holiday instead.

    The Prime Minister : I have no plans to do so, though I recognise that this is a holiday that many people disapprove of.

     

    Engagements

    Mr. Harry Greenway : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for 23 April.

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

     

    The Gulf

    Mr. Dalyell : To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his policy in relation to long-term coalition presence in the Gulf.

    The Prime Minister : We have made it clear that it is for the states of the region to take the lead in establishing lasting security arrangements for the Gulf, We stand ready to play our part in underpinning such arrangements, if requested, but we have no intention of maintaining a permanent ground force presence in the Gulf.

    Mr. Ralph Howell : To ask the Prime Minister what plans he has to bring war charges against Iraqi leaders ; and if he will make a statement on British policy on this issue.

    The Prime Minister : Iraqi leaders bear personal responsibility under international law for their actions. This principle was reiterated in United Nations Security Council Resolution 674. In the case of both the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Genocide Convention of 1948, Iraqi leaders can, in law, be brought to trial before a national court or international tribunal. We and our EC partners have asked the United Nations Secretary-General to investigate how this might be achieved.