The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Tag: Taxation

  • Mr Major’s Speech at the 1996 Lord Mayor’s Banquet – 11 November 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech given at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall in London on Monday 11th November 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    You set out as the theme of your speech “Making Britain even Greater”. Not just – “great”. But – “even greater”. You acknowledge accurately what we are already and seek to improve it. That is exactly right.

    There is a part of the British character that undersells our achievements and over emphasises our difficulties.

    As a fault it is one on the right side. As a nation, we would not be comfortable with a boastful nationalistic posture, but we shouldn’t let our talent for understatement mislead others either about our prospects and abilities or our national character.

    My Lord Mayor, let me develop your theme. Because it is my theme too.

    Long gone are the days when the British economy was bedeviled by restrictive practices, strikes, high tax levels, runaway inflation and government controls.

    It has taken over a decade and a half to make fundamental, lasting changes to improve our economic performance. But we have done it. Some of it was very hard. There have been setbacks as well as advances.

    In the six years since I first spoke at this dinner, we have passed out of a turbulent recession, and emerged in vigorous economic health.

    We have turned round our economic prospects. We are back in the first rank. We are building a prosperity that will last.

    Too often, past recoveries were derailed by a yawning trade gap or soaring inflation. But not this time.

    All the evidence is that we have moved from a country prone to erratic bouts of high inflation, to one where subdued inflation can be the norm. If that is so, it is a change of historic importance.

    We now have a longer, more sustained recovery than any major European economy, with lower unemployment and inward investment flooding in.

    As a result, we are pulling ahead of the European field. To stay ahead we will need to go on pursuing the policies that are giving us this advantage.

    We have reined back public expenditure to well below the average of our European competitors – a difference worth £2000 to the average household in lower taxes. We now have the lowest basic rate of tax for 50 years, and a lower target still before us.

    Strikes are now down to a twenty-fifth of the 1979 figure. And huge swathes of industry – telecoms, gas, water, electricity, airlines and the bulk of the rail network have been transferred to the private sector, where they belong and are prospering. Daily we see evidence of this in lower prices for consumers, more investment in the future, and increased success in overseas markets.

    That is the argument for privatisation, and we shall look at more areas where private sector discipline can improve economic performance and service to the public.

    My Lord Mayor, the truth is that we may have to brace ourselves to hearing an increasing chorus describing Britain as a success.

    We are not going to throw away those hard won advances. The Chancellor of the Exchequer showed that when he acted on interest rates a week or so ago. And we’ll ram the message home with a prudent and sensible Budget – one that will keep us on the path of growth and prosperity for years ahead.

    Next year our country will have the most secure economic base for generations. We can turn to the future and plan with confidence.

    Ahead of us lie changes that we should embrace with enthusiasm because of the opportunities they bring with them.

    I believe we can expect a tremendous growth in world trade and economic development. Around the world trade barriers are withering.

    The dynamism of the single market is on our doorstep.

    Newly industrialised economies are emerging in East Asia and Latin America.

    The collapse of communism has opened up new markets and new competitors.

    We are well placed to take advantage of these opportunities.

    The world is turning to free trade. I welcome this. It makes countries more competitive, and more prosperous, and it gives consumers a better deal. It is in Britain’s interest, given our potential to win in the world markets of tomorrow. And it is the best way to help the developing world into long term prosperity.

    I have always felt there is something rather objectionable about rich countries grandly handing out aid with one hand, while with the other they block trade access that would enable poorer countries to become more self sufficient.

    Earlier today the Foreign Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade published a White Paper setting out our vision of global free trade by 2020.

    This means free trade in services – especially important for the City – as well as free trade in goods. It goes together with our determination to secure free and open markets for investment and capital.

    Day by day the very nature of trade is changing. It’s no longer dominated by freighters full of coal and steel. Now it’s as likely to be a service like broadcasting or tourism, or some tiny high tech component smaller than a fingernail assembled in four different pieces in four different continents.

    We are well placed to prosper in this new trading environment. In the last great age of British enterprise, the influence of this small island was spread world wide by the efforts of countless men and women, who often risked everything they had to trade and invest around the globe.

    That’s left the benevolent legacy that Britain has Links with nearly every corner of the world.

    They aren’t nebulous links. They have real substance. Britain is second only to the United States in our ownership of overseas assets around the world. Those assets don’t just earn dividends. They give us a vital edge in overseas markets.

    And the City of London remains an asset beyond price, as the dominant financial centre in our continent.

    And, on top of all this, we have the great advantage of the world’s international trading language. Worldwide, one in five people speak some English and it is an official language in over 70 countries.

    Six years of being Prime Minister has shown me these are real assets that can help us to realise our potential as one of the leading global trading nations of the 21st century.

    We are living in a world where the economic centre of gravity is shifting to the massive populations and economic growth of Asia and the Pacific Basin. In the global marketplace, we must compete with these countries in their markets and match their competitiveness round the world.

    We need to raise our eyes to this wider horizon. Some fear the development of global markets. They think it breeds insecurity. They believe that by shutting themselves off they can somehow be stronger. But history shows they are wrong. No country has ever prospered behind closed doors. The free movement of goods, people and ideas has always been a source of wealth.

    Our future economic security and prosperity will come from our success in competing in the free market, not trying to cocoon ourselves from it.

    So I am determined to develop further Britain’s position as the most competitive, low tax, enterprise centre in Europe.

    We have the lowest tax burden on business of any major European country. Low social costs, no Social Chapter and no minimum wage.

    This is what is making us more competitive and marks us out as a prime target for inward investment.

    Today’s investment is footloose and fancy-free. It will go where tax is low and opportunity is high. So it is coming to Britain.

    That’s why we’re bucking the trend and creating jobs, not dole queues.

    So we will continue with those policies and resist proposals that would damage our competitiveness, cost us markets, and lose us jobs.

    That is why the Working Time Directive, on which a European court judgement is expected tomorrow, represents an important point of principle.

    We are in favour of good working conditions in this country. They are very important. But the basic employee protections are long established in domestic law. There’s no case for extra prescriptive legislation from Europe – imposed by qualified majority voting against British objections – on matters that are now best resolved between employer and employee.

    That is why, if the court rules against us, we will require changes in European law to reinforce Britain’s protection from such legislation. Our partners know that. And they know that we shall insist upon these changes before we can conclude any new agreements at the Intergovernmental Conference next year.

    In the next decade the speed of change may worry some people. We British love progress. But we hate change. We shouldn’t – it will bring greater prosperity.

    We must look forward. No one ever reversed into prosperity. Progress will certainly change our lives. Information technology will bring new services available at the touch of a button in the home – banking, buying groceries, booking a flight, access to almost unlimited information and entertainment.

    We will see medical consultants diagnosing and even treating patients through information and pictures piped possibly hundreds of miles to their surgery.

    Dealings with government will be transformed – with services available on a terminal in your library or post office or even in your home.

    Children in schools may be coached at their own pace through a new generation of interactive software.

    These changes will happen. We’re making them happen. And this is a revolution where Britain is well placed to stay in front.

    Our telecommunications and media markets are amongst the most competitive and developed in the world. They will be able to take the new opportunities because two decades of deregulation and privatisation have enabled them to become market leaders.

    We are already one of the leading countries in the use of personal computers at home and in schools. And, by the end of this century, most households will have access to a range of new hi-tech services through cable, satellite and the telephone network.

    We’re becoming one of the laboratories of the world in the development of information technology. All of this means that the new, global information and media industries are truly industries in which we can win – and win handsomely.

    My Lord Mayor, the prospect before us is to become one of the world’s most successful global trading nations in the 21st Century.

    We have been through an industrial and economic revolution. We haven’t been beaten down by that effort. We’ve shown we have the skills and strength to win. But the last crucial ingredient for our future success is national self-confidence. There are always people prepared to write Britain off. They are always wrong.

    Listening to the political debate, you might sometimes get the impression that confidence is something we don’t have as a nation, or even that it’s something that we can’t have.

    But if you lift your eyes beyond the charmed circle of professional pessimists, you get a quite different picture.

    The City of London has the greatest concentration of foreign banks in the world.

    Britain has won more Nobel prizes than any nation except the US.

    As you pointed out, Britain has won a third of all Oscars in the last 30 years.

    Our streets are bustling with foreign tourists.

    Our pubs, clubs and restaurants are packed.

    Our television programmes are in demand worldwide.

    Our education system attracts half a million foreign students a year.

    Our theatres give the lead to Broadway.

    Our pop culture rules the airwaves.

    Our country has taken over the fashion catwalks of Paris.

    And our capital is described in an American magazine as “the coolest city on the planet”.

    So, my Lord Mayor, you are right. We have every reason to believe in ourselves.

    It’s time to parade our virtues as a country. To show – at home and abroad – how far Britain has come in economic progress and in the quality of our life and culture.

    We can surprise others as well as ourselves.

    We have a nation of talent in a world of opportunity.

    Not for a very long time have we been so well placed for future success.

    The fact is: Britain is back in business – and it’s back to stay.

  • PMQT – 5 November 1996

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 5th November 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Ms Primarolo: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 5 November.

    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.

    Ms Primarolo: Is the Prime Minister aware that, according to his own Government’s statistics, the average family living in council housing has been £3 a week worse off since the last election? Is not the main reason for that the fact that the Government have increased taxes 22 times since the election, and put VAT on fuel?

    The Prime Minister: If the hon. Lady is worried about the net cash position of council tenants, she might look to see who runs the highest tax rates across the country. The highest band D tax rates are imposed by Labour councils: Coventry, Salford, Hartlepool, Manchester, Islington, Redcar, Hackney–I will not continue the list; the hon. Lady knows them. If it is a Labour council, the council tax is high.

    Sir Fergus Montgomery: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government are doing everything in their power to help with the rebuilding of Manchester city centre following the terrible damage inflicted by the IRA bomb, while using some of the existing initiatives to help to regenerate our inner cities?

    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend knows, following the bombing in June last year, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said that a task force would be set up to oversee the city’s recovery. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt), the sponsor Minister for Manchester, announced in Manchester today that EDAW had won a competition to redesign the city centre. That is an important step forward in the redesigning of Manchester, and, I hope, towards a greatly improved future Manchester city centre. Money has already been allocated from European funds, and it is quite possible that, if appropriate application is made, further funds will come forward.

    Mr. Blair: Will the Prime Minister admit what he denied just two weeks ago: that, with casualty departments closing and waiting lists up in many parts of the country–and with some hospital trusts technically bankrupt–the national health service is indeed in a state of crisis?

    The Prime Minister: No, I do not accept that. Nor do I accept most of the misleading statistics that, the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have used in recent weeks. If the right hon. Gentleman was so concerned about funding, perhaps some time ago he might have matched our pledge to increase funding in real terms each year.

    Mr. Blair: Perhaps the Prime Minister will now accept what his own Government’s statistics show: that, although they have spent an extra £1.5 billion on the national health service, it has gone into bureaucracy and administration rather than proper patient care. That is why there are 20,000 more senior managers and 50,000 fewer nurses since the Tory internal market reforms.

    I ask the Prime Minister to talk to people who use the national health service and who know when they go to a casualty department that something is seriously wrong; who know, when their appointments are cancelled and they are told that they are better off going privately, that something is wrong. Why does he not talk to women who had children in the national health service a few years ago and have had children recently and know the difference in the standard of facilities? Would it not be better for him to admit the existence of this problem and try to solve it rather than deny what everyone knows: that something is seriously wrong in the national health service?

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman talks about management and bureaucracy in the health service. Perhaps he can explain to the country why he opposed the abolition of a whole tier of bureaucracy–regional health authorities–saving £100 million a year? The right hon. Gentleman’s party opposed that. If he thinks that a £43 billion service does not need proper management, perhaps he might remember what the Socialist Health Association said:

    “The NHS was traditionally under-managed and the party”–

    Labour–

    “should avoid bureaucrat bashing.”

    The right hon. Gentleman knows that it needs to be properly managed, that it is now being properly managed and that, as a result, money is being allocated to where it should go. He knows that waiting lists are falling, that the number of operations being performed is increasing, that a wider range of treatments is being produced and that the national health service is something that this country should be proud of, not something to be used as a political football by the right hon. Gentleman whenever that is appropriate.

    Mr. Blair: I do not think that the Prime Minister–[Interruption.]

    Madam Speaker: Order. If any of the Whips have anything to say, let them come to the Front Bench and say it.

    Mr. Blair: I do not think that the Prime Minister understands. This country is very proud of the national health service, but it is not proud of what the Government have done to the national health service. Is not the fear that any extra resources that are put forward now are just sticking plaster to see the Tories through to the election? Why will not the Prime Minister admit what the country knows: that there will be a crisis every year in the national health service while this Government remain in office?

    The Prime Minister: I seem to recall that it was a Labour Government who closed hospitals, cut nurses’ pay and genuinely created a crisis in the health service. The right hon. Gentleman would be well advised to give up these kindergarten soundbites and concentrate on reality. NHS spending will be more than £34 billion this year–more than £720 for every man, every woman and every child. That is an increase over and above inflation of about three quarters since 1979. There were over 9 million episodes of hospital care in 1995-96–25,000 every day, up 46 per cent. in 10 years.

    As the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said, the acid test is whether more people are being treated. They are, and they are being treated better and offered a wider range of services. The right hon. Gentleman knows that but he will not admit it: he is more concerned with his politics than with the reality of improving treatment.

    Sir Jim Spicer: Has my right hon. Friend had the opportunity to see the statement made last week by the railway franchising director in which he states in clear and unequivocal terms that, over the next few years, taxpayers will be saved more than £2 billion as a result of privatisation? If we add to that better punctuality, service and customer care, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time that the Opposition prophets of doom and gloom recanted and accepted reality–that privatisation is good for the railways and good for the taxpayer?

    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is quite right. Not long ago, the Opposition were trying all sorts of scares about privatisation–safety on the railways, services being cut–all of which have been shown to be utterly and comprehensively wrong. The reality is that new rolling stock is being introduced, the service is being improved, there is more investment than before and extra services are being run on a range of lines throughout the country. The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) may shake his head, but all he is showing is that he is ignorant–not that he has any knowledge.

    Mr. Ashdown: We have said what we would do to provide extra funding for the health service, both next year and now. If the Government have decided to commit more money to the health service for next year, that is a good thing. If they have decided that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), the former Foreign Secretary, was right when he said that cutting taxes would be rejected in Britain if it was bought at the cost of closed hospital wards and sacked teachers, that is even better. But does the Prime Minister not realise that the crisis in the health service is not next year–it is now. Wards are being closed–now. Operations are being cancelled–now. Waiting lists are growing again–now. That money is needed–now. Will he provide it and, if not, what will he do to avert the national health service crisis and to prevent any further hospital ward closures this coming winter?

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman had better wait for the statement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on health service funding. It will be made clear at the time of the Budget. I have nothing further to say to the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon except this: it was the right hon. Gentleman who, just a few days ago, was lecturing us about spending and debt. Now he is advocating extra expenditure. Whatever happens to be his tune for the day, he will shift to it. We have said–and we have kept the promise throughout 17 years–that we will provide extra resources for the health service to ensure that it is able to match the needs of the people of this country. That is why more people are being treated, and better treated, than ever before. The growth in the health service over the years has outstripped every other area of government, and I have made it clear that, in future, it will beat the inflation rate year after year after year. That is a pledge that people do not have to look in the mirror to see. They can look at our record. We have done it.

    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does my right hon. Friend accept that one of the present Government’s great success stories is the fact that they have brought about a growing economy with low inflation and falling unemployment? Will he now accept an invitation from me to visit Macclesfield, where all those facts are amply demonstrated–where we have a Conservative-controlled authority, where unemployment is falling and where we have an area that is proud to be Tory?

    The Prime Minister: I am delighted that Macclesfield is doing so well. Throughout the country, we see falling unemployment, increasing growth, increasing jobs and increasing prosperity. That will continue to be the case while we retain a Conservative Government following the policies that we have followed in the past few years.

     

    Q2. Mr. Wigley: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 5 November.

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

    Mr. Wigley: Is the Prime Minister aware that more than 40 per cent. of retirement households in these islands depend entirely on the state pension–and that for a single person it is only £61 a week? Is he further aware that, if the link between pensions and earnings had not been broken in 1980, the pension would be £83 a week? On what basis can the Government deny pensioners who depend totally on the state pension any share at all in the increase in prosperity over that period?

    The Prime Minister: Of course I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. That is why we have always recognised the significance of the state pension as the cornerstone of income in retirement, and ensured that it has kept up with the increase in prices. In addition, of course, I accept that for many people the state pension is not intended to be the sole income. That is why, in preparation for the future, we have encouraged personal responsibility and additional pension provision and why, for the present, we have targeted additional resources on the safety net of income-related benefits for people who have no resources other than the state benefit. That is apart from the entitlement that they would certainly have to council tax benefit and housing benefit, so we have targeted a great deal of additional resources to ensure that people who do not have a substantial income and who perhaps depend entirely on the state pension have additional help.

    Mr. Carrington: As my right hon. Friend knows, millions of ordinary people own shares in privatised utilities. Does he agree that a windfall tax on those utilities would damage those investments and push up prices for the consumer?

    The Prime Minister: There is no doubt about that. It is no good promising on the one hand to cut VAT on fuel while, on the other, proposing a windfall tax on the utilities which would put up the price of fuel by more than any potential reduction in VAT. Thus far, the shadow Chancellor seems to be spending the windfall tax on a number of different things, including helping the long-term unemployed back to work, improvements in child care provision–[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]–new environmental tasks, small business VAT relief–[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]. I am glad to hear Labour Members cheering. How much will the windfall tax be, and upon whom will it be levied? What will it do to the price of the utilities, which are used by everybody in the country? The more Labour Members cheer the spending, the more we know that the windfall tax will rise.

     

    Q3. Mrs. Ewing: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 5 November.

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

    Mrs. Ewing: On this historic day when a certain individual tried to set fire to the House of Commons, will the right hon. Gentleman give some serious consideration to the thousands of pensioners and disabled people who, this winter, will be afraid to put on the fires in their houses? Will he give serious consideration to a reduction of VAT on fuel, a review of the home energy efficiency scheme and an automatic payment, thereby giving us a better reason to remember 5 November?

    The Prime Minister: I have always rather fondly hoped that we celebrated Guy Fawkes day because he failed to blow up the House of Commons. The hon. Lady’s point is similar to that raised a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley), and I hope that I can rest on that answer.

  • PMQT – 31 October 1996

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 31st October 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Dr. Goodson-Wickes: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 31 October.

    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.

    Dr. Goodson-Wickes: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is the Government’s intention first to cut and then to abolish both inheritance tax and capital gains tax–moves that would be extremely popular with all who work hard to provide for themselves and their children? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is strange that the electorate hears a great deal about taxes that the Opposition would cut and precisely nothing about taxes that they would raise?

    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is entirely right. We hear very little about the windfall tax. Instead, we hear about promised reductions in value added tax–reductions that were called “cynical” by a shadow Treasury spokesman last year. But we hear little about what the rate of the windfall tax would be, on whom it would be levied, or what it would mean for the people who use gas, electricity and the other utilities.

    As for our tax plans, I can confirm that our first priority, when it is affordable, is to move towards a 20p basic rate of tax; and then to deal with the other taxes that my hon. Friend mentions.

    Mr. Blair: I think that what most people remember about cynicism and tax is that the Government promised not to raise VAT before the election and raised it straight afterwards.

    On Tuesday, the Prime Minister said that he could not be precise about lifting the beef ban now because there were continuing discussions in Luxembourg. That meeting ended last night. Is it correct that, although a compensation package for all European farmers was agreed, there was no agreed progress on lifting the ban? If so, given that the Prime Minister’s timetable for lifting that ban expires tomorrow, what is his new timetable?

    The Prime Minister: No, the right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood something–but I shall happily explain it in greater detail to him. The discussions yesterday in the Agriculture Committee were not the discussions to which I specifically referred. The discussions are going on with officials and with the Commission in order to deal with the science–that was not a matter for general discussion in the agriculture debate yesterday.

    What was agreed was more resources for farmers. The determination of precisely where the extra £50 million will go is to be discussed in this country and decided later.

    Mr. Blair: Actually, the right hon. Gentleman said on Tuesday that the discussions on lifting the ban were continuing now. My understanding is that lifting the beef ban was not even put on the agenda by the British Government at Luxembourg–an extraordinary state of affairs.

    The Prime Minister gave us the November timetable; it has now expired. Is it his position that the Florence agreement is still valid, or is his position that that agreement should be changed? In the latter case, what change is he seeking; and in either case, given that he gave us a timetable before, precisely what is his new timetable now? I think we should be told.

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman needs to do a little more research before he asks ill-advised questions on this subject. The discussions on the scientific evidence are continuing with the Commission. Those discussions were not especially appropriate for the Agriculture Committee. Many of them are technical discussions and they are continuing. As I said to the House very clearly earlier this week, scientific issues that arose after the Florence agreement remain to be determined

    As I told the House on Tuesday, of course the Florence agreement is still in being. Much of that agreement has already been met, and, as I set out to the House on Tuesday, a determination on the rest of it depends substantially on the points still under discussion. I shall explain again gently to the right hon. Gentleman that those points arose after the Florence agreement in the light of changed science that is still being discussed. I hope that that is now clear enough for the right hon. Gentleman.

    Mr. Blair: I do not think that it will be clear to the farming industry, to Europe or to anyone else. What is clear is that the Prime Minister said that the beef ban would be lifted by November. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. We all remember when he stood at the Dispatch Box and said that the ban would be lifted by November. Is it the position now that it will not be lifted by November, and that he cannot tell when it will be lifted? I think that is true. He simply cannot tell us what the position will be.

    Is not that weak and ineffectual leadership–precisely what means that his Government can no longer advance Britain’s interests abroad, nor look after them properly at home? That is why people in this country say, “Enough is enough”. [Interruption.] Yes, they say that. If we are to get leadership, direction and purpose back in Britain, let the British people decide, and let this weak and vacillating Government go.

    The Prime Minister: That really was one of the most trivial series of comments–utterly trivial. This is a matter of great interest to British agriculture. Scientific changes are important to that industry, but the right hon. Gentleman does not understand them, does not enter into any research on them, deliberately distorts what little he does know, ignores the reality of what is happening to the British beef industry, and moves–as he does on his third question every Tuesday and Thursday–into a carefully pre-packaged, pre-prepared piece of irrelevant, juvenile sloganising. [Interruption.] I hear applause for the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), who is undoubtedly the author of much of this sloganising. The right hon. Gentleman should give up this matinee performance, and start dealing with the realities of the beef crisis and other matters that we deal with daily.

    Mrs. Peacock: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the county of Yorkshire has an economy that is bigger and better than those of many small nations? Is he also aware that 140 companies from Yorkshire are quoted on the London stock exchange, which is more than many other regions in this country? Will he send congratulations to all those in the county who have worked extremely hard to achieve the present state?

    The Prime Minister: I am certainly happy to congratulate the successful innovators who have produced a successful economy in Yorkshire, and undoubtedly many of them have been successful. That is also true in other parts of the country. At the moment, we have the most innovative and the most competitive economy in western Europe.

    Mr. Ashdown: The national debt has been going for 300 years. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he has doubled it in the past six?

    The Prime Minister: Can the right hon. Gentleman name a single expenditure cut that he has supported?

    Mr. Bill Walker: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Union that he wishes to protect is the Union of the United Kingdom, and that his Government will have no truck with proposals that put the Union at risk, and would not give people living in England the same opportunities as the people living in Scotland?

    The Prime Minister: I confirm the importance of the Union not only to Scotland but to England and the rest of the United Kingdom. I have never advanced the argument that devolution, or the separation that the Scottish National party wants, would be bad for Scotland alone, although I believe that it would be bad for Scotland–because I believe that it would be bad for the rest of the United Kingdom too.

     

    Q2. Mr. Austin-Walker: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 31 October.

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

    Mr. Austin-Walker: Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) reminded the Chancellor of the Exchequer of a BBC radio interview in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman, recalling the introduction of VAT, said that if we could start again we could have VAT on everything. Does the Prime Minister share the Chancellor’s desire to extend VAT to children’s clothes, water, public transport and food, or does he share the view of Opposition Members and of the mass of the British people–that enough is enough?

    The Prime Minister: I certainly think that enough is enough of absurd sloganising of that sort. I am delighted that the Opposition have decided to spend so much of the money that they have apparently accumulated on the sort of trashy advertising campaign that they are trying to conduct this afternoon. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know about VAT, I shall tell him what the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) said about a Scottish nationalist proposal to reduce VAT to 5 per cent. He described it as

    “another cynical ploy from an increasingly opportunistic and desperate party”.–[Official Report, 23 January 1995; Vol. 253, c. 49.]

    Now the Labour party is doing the same.

    Mr. Garel-Jones: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, following yesterday’s rise in interest rates, mortgage rates in this country remain at their lowest level for a generation? Can he recall any Government-announced interest rate move, whether upwards or downwards, that was not opposed by the Labour party?

    The Prime Minister: No. One part of the shadow Chancellor’s litany is absolutely consistent: if interest rates go down he claims that that shows weakness in the economy, but if they go up he claims the same thing. It is a consistent litany. My right hon. Friend is right about the present level of interest rates. He is also right to say that the British economy is exceedingly strong, and that we shall keep it strong and keep inflation low.

     

    Q3. Mr. Hutton: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 31 October.

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

    Mr. Hutton: Does the Prime Minister accept that, after 22 Tory tax rises since 1992, which have left the typical British family with an extra tax bill of £2,000, the British people are entitled to say that they have had enough both of him and of his party’s broken promises on tax?

    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the level of tax, I look forward to finding out which tax reductions he has supported in recent years. Will he say now that he will not support the windfall tax, the tartan tax, the health tax proposed by his Front-Bench spokesmen, or the teenage tax that will result from child benefit being taken away? Which of those, all of which have been proposed by the occupants of the Opposition Front Bench, will the hon. Gentleman oppose?

    Mr. Riddick: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the European Commission has disgracefully suppressed new evidence showing a clear link between rigid labour laws and high unemployment? Is not that a huge embarrassment for the Commission and for Opposition Members who support the job-destroying social chapter and a minimum wage? Does it not show that the Labour party’s approach would lead to massively increased unemployment?

    The Prime Minister: I have not seen the report, but like my hon. Friend I have heard that the report exists and that there has been some difficulty in getting it into the public gaze. I shall certainly ask whether the report will be published, so people can have a sensible debate on the policies that underlie it and see whether they are, as we believe, costing jobs; if they are, we shall consider whether we can take action to prevent that from occurring in the future and to reverse those expensive, job-costing policies, which are so much the flavour of the month with Opposition Front-Benchers.

     

    Q4. Mr. O’Hara: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 31 October.

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

    Mr. O’Hara: Two days ago in the House, I repeated to the Prime Minister our invitation to co-operate in the introduction of legislation to regulate the advertising and sale of certain dangerous knives and weapons that are obvious to Opposition Members and to the British public and that ought to be obvious to the Government. The Prime Minister once again retreated.

    [Hon. Members: “Question.”]

    Madam Speaker: Order. Those who are calling out for a question are often the first to be guilty. I am asking the hon. Gentleman to carry out the regulations and put his question, but he does not need any guidance from Conservative Members.

    Mr. O’Hara: Certainly, Madam Speaker. The Prime Minister once again retreated behind the need for a definition. We have now produced a definition and–

    Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must now put a question; otherwise, he must resume his seat.

    Mr. O’Hara: Has the Prime Minister seen the definition, does he agree with it, and will he now sit down with us and discuss it?

    The Prime Minister: Of course we will examine very carefully any constructive proposal. I understand that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has written to my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and that there will be a meeting with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) in the near future. I must say, however, that it seems that the Labour Front-Bench team has been forced to accept what my right hon. and learned Friend has said all along: that it is not easy to define knives to be banned, despite the fact that the hon. Member for Blackburn said that it was. I believe that he has had to change his position. Of course we will consider any constructive suggestion from the hon. Member for Blackburn or from the hon. Gentleman.

  • Mr Major’s Question and Answer Session at Conservative Party Conference – 9 October 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s question and answer session at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth, held on Wednesday 9th October 1996.

    QUESTION:

    [small section at beginning of session missing] within the Caribbean and Ethnic minorities to vote Conservative and not Labour.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    If you were to scratch any politician down to the core, you would find some things that they instinctively believe. There are many bits of ideology we learn. That is part of our intellect that we accept them because they are right. And then there are the things that go beyond that. There are the things that go to the very instinctive heart of that particular politician.

    [Indistinct] that equality of people in this country, equality of opportunity and choice. Whether people are black or white or brown. Whether they are rich or poor, old or young. From the north to the south. Is the most instinctive part of the core of what I believe in in politics. I don’t have a shred of hesitation in saying to you I would like more people from the Caribbean background, more people from an Asian background. More people, whatever their backgrounds are, who are now living in this country as British citizens to realise that they are welcome here in my Conservative party. Not just as members, but to seek elected office, whether at local level, county level, parliamentary level, or to be appointed to the House of Lords. They are British citizens. They have the same rights as every other British citizen, and indeed they have a Prime Minister who will stand up for them.

    QUESTION:

    Good afternoon Prime Minister. Just what are we going to do with the idle scroungers and abusers of our welfare system? Thank you.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me ask you to reflect firstly on what has already been done. And then perhaps I might invite you to look forward to two speeches later this week. The first you will hear from Peter Lilley, who in my judgement, since he is not here, I will say so in his absence, in my judgement has done more to draw down unreasonable dependency on the state than anybody for a very long time. He has taken some very courageous decisions. And what is more, those courageous decisions have often involved legislation, controversial legislation, being taken through the House of Commons with a very tiny majority indeed. We have done that consistently, year after year after year. Because our interest is in the hard working classes of this country – not in the people who abuse and rip off the system in any way. So I invite you to look forward to two speeches later this week, Peter Lilley, and then perhaps be around on Friday as well.

    QUESTION:

    I am Babs Martin, Women’s Chairman for Warwick and Leamington Conservative Association. Prime Minister, I would ask you, nay, I would beg you, that when a person is condemned to life imprisonment for the murder of a policeman or a child, that life will mean life.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We now have provision to ensure that in many cases that is precisely what it can mean. Michael Howard set out a further range of issues yesterday where we propose to handle not just this question, this question of very serious violent crime, but a whole range of other crimes as well. It is not very long ago that this conference heard Michael outline a twenty-seven point plan some time ago, and it was much mocked by the opposition who opposed every part of it. It has now been carried out and we are moving beyond that so that there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that our determination is to act firmly but fairly with those people who commit crimes, but above all to protect those innocent victims of crimes.

    Now, you refer to one sort of crime. I would like to touch, if I may, on another. Because it refers to something we propose to do later this year. I guess if you ask most people around the country which is the crime that perhaps, a serious crime, that they perhaps are most concerned about, because they have seen it happen to someone near to them, or they know about it, or perhaps its has happened to them. I think many people would say it was burglary. Well, I wish to share with you some thoughts about that. I, many years ago, when I was in my late teens, maybe early twenties, had my flat burgled. I was a single man, I had nothing much to go, but I remember how I felt about it. If you then imagine how people feel, perhaps particularly elderly people, when someone has entered their house, stolen their possessions, ransacked through their personal belongings, and perhaps stolen mementoes that can never be replaced. And rifled through their clothes and other possessions. I vividly remember someone saying to me, I shall never feel safe again in my home now that it has been violated, in this fashion. I understand that. And when Michael and I discovered sometime ago that the sentence for a first act of burglary, upon being found guilty, was about fourteen months, of which seven were served. Well, prison is not a pleasant place to go to, we thought that was about right. But when we discovered that if it was a multiple offender who had perhaps committed ten offences of burglary, he did not get fourteen months in jail, of which he served seven, but about sixteen or seventeen months of which he served eight or eight and a half. Then Michael and I reached the judgement that that was not a fair response on behalf of society and on behalf of those who were burgled. So we will introduce legislation this November to correct that and more accurately reflect the penalty that I believe that crime deserves.

    QUESTION:

    Bill Garret from Buckingham Branch. It has been suggested Prime Minister, that if we don’t agree to join the Single Currency, our voice, or whatever, won’t be heard in Europe with the same weight as it is now. Is this true?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Yes, it is certainly true. Europe at the moment is changing. And Europe is going to go on changing. I think that is the first point we need to filter into this great debate that there has been about Europe. It is a great debate. I will take a moment or two about this, if you don’t mind. And elaborate upon it because I know the passions and tensions that have been aroused by this debate over the last few years. So I want to put it in some sort of context. Europe is changing. And it is going to go on changing in one way or another. Our concern and our determination is to make sure that it changes in a way that is acceptable to the United Kingdom and not damaging to the United Kingdom. Now the central part of that debate is what should the European Union be doing. I think it should extending its boarders further to the East to take in those countries in Central and parts of Eastern Europe, who were for so long with the other side of the Iron Curtain militarily. And also economically. There are been an economic Iron Curtain down the middle of Europe as well. And we need to bring them into the free enterprise nations of Western Europe. Not just as a piece of autism, because in this generation of politicians, we have the chance to frame a new Europe that will never again lead to the conflicts that have twice decimated Europe and the rest of the world during this century. We can shape something for our grandchildren, that our grandparents would never have imagined could have happened. Now that is a very great prize. And Britain is one of the nations who believes that is the single most important thing that the European Union should be concerning itself with, rather than other institutional questions.

    But there is the second question, and clearly it was what was in your mind, and I know in the minds of many people in my party. The question of a Single Currency and what will it mean. Malcolm, I know touched on that this morning. And I will develop on that a little further if I may. If a single currency goes ahead, it will have an impact in one way or another way, upon every nation in the European Union, whether or not that particular country is in the Single Currency. Let us accept that fact. If it goes ahead, even if a particular country is not in it, it is going to have an impact upon it. If it fails, that Single Currency, then the fall out from a failed economic and monetary union, would make the fall out from the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism look like a teddy bear’s picnic economically, right the way across Europe. So the first thing we have to determine is that the circumstances for that experiment, if it is to proceed, are right. That the conditions are right. Now this isn’t a new idea, that was why Britain, that is why Norman Lamont and I insisted on what became known as the Convergence Criteria – good economic conditions were written into the treaty some five years ago. They are still important today. And the decisions upon those have still not been made. We don’t yet know what the convergence, how the convergence criteria will be interpreted, to let anybody into the Single Currency. And yet is the wrong people go in, with the wrong economic circumstances, it might collapse and damage us. So we don’t know that yet. We don’t know what the legal circumstances of it are. We know that only a small part of the European Union will go forward. But what is to be the relationship between that part that goes forward and the bulk of the European Union that doesn’t. How does that affect the institutions? How does it affect who pays for what? What happens if the Single Currency circumstances mean that many others who perhaps wish to, join can’t? And give rise to structural unemployment. Perhaps in the Southern part of Europe. Who will pay for that? Will the European Union doing it the tradition way with money transferred from the richer Northern nations to the Southern nations. I don’t think that will happen. Because I don’t see who is going to transfer those resources.

    So this is an issue that if it were to go wrong, could crack wide open the European Union as we have seen it build up over the last twenty five years. And if it cracked it open, then it would impact upon this country as well, so we need to make sure in the national interest that we have Britain’s voice in this debate. I put it to you perhaps the other way round. Let us suppose I earned some easy applause from many by saying I am going to rule everything out immediately. If I did that, and I then had no British voice in this great debate that will effect us, what would I say to the British nation when they said to me, Prime Minister, how can you protect or advance our British position if you have unilaterally ruled yourself out of the discussion upon something that will affect us and affect the whole of Europe. It is very easy to say make up your mind and do this, but it is not wise to make up your mind when you have your country’s interest to protect, and you are in a position to protect them and advance views that may be of importance of your country and to the rest of Europe. And let me say one other things about the Single Currency if I may. We will make our judgement when we have all that information. There are advantages in it. There are disadvantages in it. We will be cautious but we will look both at the advantages and the disadvantages. But we have made one thing clear. Beyond any doubt, and I would like to re-emphasise it for you – if, if a future Conservative Cabinet decided that it was right to enter into a Single Currency, if it decided that, then there would be a referendum of the full nation specifically upon that particular question. We have made it clear that we would not have consent wrapped up in a General Election victory. This decision is going to be the biggest political decision economically that has been taken in this country, perhaps at any time, if a British Cabinet decided to go ahead. A British Conservative Cabinet, decided to go ahead, then I think it is right for us to put that question distinctly, clearly and unequivocally for the British nation to decide and that I promise you, we would do.

    QUESTION:

    Sharon Messey, Bexley Heath and Crayford. Prime Minister, I understand your wish to await reports following the Dunblane massacre. My view is, guns should be kept for the armed forces, but should they be wanted to pleasure, then may I suggest to them only being held on licences premises. In a secure environment, i.e. a gun club. But Sir, you did not get where you are today by awaiting to hear what your opinion should be. I ask you, as a fellow parent, does your gut instinct not say to you, and I crudely quote, “my child’s right to live is far greater than any man’s right to hold a firearm”.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    No one could be unaffected by what happened in Dunblane. We were asked before the party conference season to delay the report from Lord Cullen so that it could be examined dispassionately, and dispassionate decisions taken in the interests of children up and down the country, families and everybody else. And we agreed to delay it and we will receive that report at the moment Parliament returns at the beginning of next week. We’ll ask Lord Cullen to report. I have my own very clear views, but we have asked Lord Cullen to report. When Lord Cullen reports, we will make a clear cut and firm decision within a matter of days of receiving that report. But I do not wish to examine that at the moment. I think we have asked for the report. There are many complexities as to how we do things as well as to what is done, and I hope we will have wise advice from Lord Cullen at the beginning of next week, and we will act upon it very speedily. But I do not in a public forum like this, wish to delve into those questions until we have received the Cullen report. And then the Home Secretary and I will be both advocating and explaining precisely the action that we personally, both of us as parents as well, believe is right to be appropriate for the future of gun law in this country. There are only a few more days to wait. I would ask you to be patient.

    QUESTION:

    George Richie, Shrewsbury Constituency. Could I say that I am Chairman of a ward which twelve days ago regained a seat from Liberals. Can I also say we did a very full canvas, and what is absolutely clear is traditional Conservatives are coming back home. Now for the question. It actually has to do with the Single Currency, but an aspect which you, Sir, didn’t actually mention. It is a fact that British pension funds total more than all the pension funds added together in the European Union – the Germans, the French and the Italians – to mention but three. All their pensions are funded from tax. Now if we go into a Single Currency, inevitably there will be a single taxation system and equally inevitably we will have to start having to fund German unfunded pensions. Now if the debt of the German pension, pension debt, was included in the convergence criteria, they would have a debt of something like 140% of GDP. There was no way that they could hit the criteria which is why I suspect they have left them out. Now Sir, we need to smoke the Germans out on this one and it seems to me that one, it seems to me that a hot button could be “Single Currency; your pension in danger”.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well Brian, I was saying earlier we had better bring in one of those cynical journalists to find out if the questions were rigged. I think they would be pretty cynical to imagine they are now. I am delighted to hear about your win in your ward. I hope there are a lot of constituency chairman here who are going to take back Liberal held constituencies at the next General Election as well.

    You’re right about the build up of British pensions funds compared to the rest of Europe. Because of action taken by Conservative Governments many years ago, we have a better gross aggregate of pension funds to look after people’s future security in any other nation in Europe. Indeed, than all the other nations in Europe added together. And that is one of the reasons why over the next few years our economy will become increasingly competitive because it will not have the same extra burden to build up secure pensions in the future because we have laid the ground work for that over very many years. But if I may say so, you illustrate one of the reasons precisely, reasons like that, why the British Government need to be in the negotiations to make sure the convergence criteria are appropriate. If I were not in the discussions, how could I examine your point and raise it with our partners in Europe. And I could offer you fifty other examples like that.

    QUESTION:

    My name is Barbara Stroud, I come from Poole, and I am Chairman of the Dorset and East Devon European Union of Women. In my Conservative work in my area, I am now being more frequently asked, or people more frequently saying, you know, there is hardly any difference now between the Conservative and the Labour policies. But we know from the previous question or two that there is this great fundamental difference that the Conservatives want to the United Kingdom united and Labour want to tear it apart. This message is not getting through to constituents, to the electorate. Not at all. Now we can all go away from here with the strong message that we heard in the debate in the union yesterday. But much much more needs to be done. My question now, can we make this vital issue fundamental issue in the election campaign, and on you place all the resources at your disposal into getting this message to the electorate day and night from now to polling day?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I will tell you what will draw a distinction between our approach to the development of the nation states of Europe, and the Labour Party’s determination to bring policies they could not enact here back from Europe through the backdoor. I will tell you what will drive that distinction home to the people right across this nation. It would be if this party stopped conducting an internal debate with itself and began conducting a debate with the electorate and the Labour Party. And that I believe has happened. We’re not conducting an anti-European campaign. Let me make that perfectly clear. I am in favour of Europe, I am in favour of our membership of Europe. I wish to see that membership work and I wish to see Europe succeed. But my job is to take our ideas to Europe, not just hijack their ideas and bring them back here.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, Pierre Oxley, I am candidate for the Holland Haven district by-election next month. Prime Minister, what do you say to residents of that ward when Liberal and Labour run Essex county council cuts money off social services, whilst Conservative run Government increases money on such vital people in society?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well, I would say there is nothing unusual in that happening when you have Labour and Liberal councils. If you want to look at deprivation across a wide scale in this country, if you want to look at lack of opportunity and education in this country, go to the areas that are run and have been run for years by the Labour Party. The Labour Party tell us now they’ve got all sorts of wonderful ideas for education, but they control the education authorities. Why are they not putting them into practice if they really know what they wish to do, The Leader of the Labour Party says his priority is education, education, education. Well, ours is the same but perhaps in a different order. And I said it in ’91 so I am delighted he has caught up at last.

    But let me offer you a memory I have about education. It goes back a very long way. I went in the early ’80s, I can’t remember which year it was, so many events telescope together. On a brief tour of some countries in South America. I went to Peru, to Columbia and to Venezuela. I was just outside Peru, not one of the richest cities, one of the poorest cities of the world, menaced by a wicked terrorist group called Sendera Luminosa. And I went on the outskirts of that to a small school one morning. I was there, it was part of my visit. And it was adjacent to housing that really by any standards that we see in this country is truly appalling. Unbelievably poor circumstances for people to live. Just after eight o’clock in the morning, those front doors opened, and out of those front doors came a whole selection of moppets up to the age of ten or eleven. Nicely turned out. With satchels, not expensive ones, but satchels. Hair brushed, eyes bright, heading off to their school. And I stopped one of them and asked them what them what his ambition was. And he looked at me and said, I would like to be a brain surgeon. Can you imagine that, a boy from the slums of Lima, who had the soaring ambition to wish to be a brain surgeon. If you wish to know in a sentence what education is about, it is making it possible for boys or girls from whatever background to achieve that sort of superb ambition if they have the guts, the will power, the intellect and the effort to achieve it. That is what education is all about.

    QUESTION:

    Tom Wearing, Redditch. And may I say that Redditch Association is a loyal and united association. Can we have that on the record, BBC. My question, Prime Minister is this, if television advertising is effective, and there is little doubt that it is, why should television be less effective when in advertising gratuitous violence, pornography and permissiveness generally.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    When you’ve finished your question just then, sitting down here, and shyly hiding himself away on the front row is the Home Secretary. I have just a shrewd feeling that when you finished your question, that he agreed with you. And shall I let you into another secret? I agree with you too. And we do need to look at those extra definitions of pornography and other matters in order to protect our children. I think sometimes the judgements that are made are not right. They’re not easy judgements. We’re not a party of censorship and pray God, will never become one. So there are difficult judgements to be made. I don’t believe the judgements always are right. Neither does Michael. And we will take what you say to heart.

    QUESTION:

    Ann Priestly, leader of the Conservative Group on Wycombe District Council. Prime Minister, in spring many people in this hail will be standing as candidates in the elections for local government. I know that you realise from experience how important it is that we return as many Conservative Councillors as possible. Can we be reassured that as much as possible will be done to return those candidates so that we see a sea of blue on the map of local authorities.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Gosh, that’s a tricky one. Yes, of course. I come from Local Government and I know how important it is and I know also how deep the roots of the Conservative Party are sunk in local government as well. From local government has come over the last century or so some of the great figures of Conservative politics, and out there in local government at the moment are young people in it or going into it who will be the great figures of Conservative politics in the future. I want a sea of blue right across local government. Don’t let there be any doubt about that. But I will just say this one thing, since this is a party meeting, and since I can speak to you in the discretion of a private occasion, I would just say one thing for you to take back to your constituencies. I look very carefully at the local election results and I see results in unpromising areas like Hackney where the Conservatives have done spectacularly well and I make enquires and ask what has happened. And I have to say to you, if the Conservatives are out on the streets, knocking on the doors saying we are the Conservatives, this is what we stand for – we win. And if they’re wringing their hands saying well, we’re behind in the opinion polls, we’re very unpopular, then they don’t win. Within a very few months, we have a general election to win. I believe that we will win that general election. I believe we deserve to win that general election.

    Here in this hall today, is the heart and soul of the Conservative Party in the country. Doesn’t lie in cabinet or in Parliament. It is here. You are the movers and shakers who make the Conservative party what it is in the country. You are the people as resentful as I am at the slurs that have been cast at the Conservative party. You are the people that did not join the Conservative Party for fame and fortune, but because you believed in what we stand for. Because you believe in what we want to do. I want you to go back and get every single person in your constituencies out on the doorsteps, reminding people that we Conservatives are not a party apart, we are a part of the nation itself. We have been for 200 years and no party has served its country in Government for so long, so often, and in my judgement, so well, as the British Conservative Party.

    QUESTION:

    Mr Chairman, David Leal, Treasurer, Conservative Association, Hornchurch in Essex, and Chairman of one of its branches. My question to the Prime Minister; information is being let out from EEC, EU, EM, I don’t really know what they call themselves from day to day, that Europe is moving towards federal Europe. Can the Prime Minister tell me that if federal Europe becomes a reality, it will not be part of it?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There are people in the European Union who would move for a more integrationalist European Union, because they believe it, that is what they think is right. They have a different perception on the way in which Europe will develop from us, that is what the great debate in Europe is about. But I don’t have to say anything fresh about that today because I said it to the conference last year or the year before. If Europe go ahead with integration, sometimes called federalist integration, of a sort that is unacceptable to the British, then we will stand aside from that integration. That has been our stated position for a very long time and it hasn’t changed, and it isn’t going to change under a Conservative government.

    QUESTION:

    Peter Fleet, PPC for Southampton ltchen. Prime Minister, whether I am meeting dockers at our port, ship builders at Bosba Thornycroft, or line workers at our Ford plant, one theme is consistent. These working Tories want to pay less tax. Can you assure us that the budget in November won’t be a budget for Europe, but one for Britain?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Now tell me, hands up those who think I’m going to tell you what’s in the budget? I can tell you that we Tories are by instinct tax cutters. I can tell you that we believe money is better off in people’s pockets to make their own choices than in the Government’s pockets to make those choices for people. And I can tell you also that we are concerned to deliver right the way through the next Parliament the economic miracle that is emerging from those difficult years in the recession. We are now in a better economic position than we have been in this country since I can’t remember when. We are going to deal with that responsibly. That means if it is appropriate and prudent to cut taxes, our first instinct would be to cut taxes. But if it is not, if it would be imprudent, and would imperil the recovery that we have got, would imperil the falling unemployment that we’ve got, would imperil the low interest rates and low mortgages that we’ve got. Then we would not do so. We will make a judgement on what is right for the country, we will not make an imprudent budget judgement. But that we are tax cutters, all of us, every single member of the cabinet and the party is beyond doubt, it is one of our instincts because we believe that people’s money is best left in people’s pockets in the largest possible sums.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, I am Councillor Sally Wilkes, a member of Christchurch Borough Council and very proud to have won my seat last year, as a Conservative gain in a seat that has not been held by the Conservatives for more than ten years. My question to you Prime Minister, is when canvassing for the next general election, what can we tell our voters to assure them that this nation is safe in our hands.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    You have several hours? I said a moment ago that our economic circumstances were better than they had been for a long time. That opens up opportunities. I will not answer your question at length this morning, but I will answer your question in very great length indeed on Friday morning if I can invite you to be patient for just another forty eight hours or so. Because when one says safe in your hands, there are two elements to safe in yours hands. There is the domestic element, safe in terms of taxation, in terms of health, in terms of a fair and a good welfare system, in terms of making sure the money goes where it really should, in terms of a good police force, properly, effectively armed, armed forces. All these things are safe, safety on the streets. All those things are part of being safe domestically. There’s also the question of being safe internationally. I talked perhaps sufficiently enough this morning, as Malcolm did earlier, about the European Union, but there’s a wider world beyond that as well, in which Britain is a force of great significance. One of the great nations of NATO. A central pivot of the Commonwealth as well, one of the members of the Group of Seven, on the Security Council of the United Nations. That is, that element of the Nation also has to be safe. There is one difference you know between a British Prime Minister today, and a British Prime Minister of many years ago. For example, William Pitt when he was Prime Minister never moved more than 40 miles away from Downing Street in all the years that he was there. I must have visited 60 countries over the past six years, and I could probably pick up the phone and speak directly and personally to forty or fifty Heads of State around the world because we have met on more than one occasion. We know one another. That helps in its own way to make the world safe and to make it secure. It is very different. And that is true of the changing face of the world. We have seen the unbelievable changes that have been for example in what was the Soviet Union, the collapse of the complete empire, and an embryonic democratic state gradually beginning to emerge. And how I hope that Boris Yeltsin soon successfully has his operation and is fit and can go back to running that country.

    Now you may remember that he was my guest at Chequers with Naina Yeltsin. Norma and I had them at Chequers for the weekend about a year or so ago, and we had our talks on the Friday morning. And I said to Boris, well, we’ve finished some discussions, shall we go out for a walk. And Boris thought this was a very good idea. And he went upstairs and he changed into a blue and white tracksuit and trainers, and I slipped into a rather fetching Val Doonican sweater. And we went out for a walk. Just the two of us, with Norma and Naina, two ambassadors, about 40 security guards, large number of civil servants, for a private walk through the Chequers grounds surrounded only by the birds, the trees, the grass and four or five hundred photographers. It was a very instructive walk. Chequers, the grounds at Chequers, are lovely. And much of it is very hilly. We went over one hill, Boris and I, and there was a lady walking her dog up the hill, because part of it is public ground, and she suddenly looked up, and over the brow of the hill came the President of Russia in a blue and white tracksuit and the Prime Minister in a Val Doonican sweater. And she was undeterred. Magnificent. She swept through us saying “Good Morning Prime Minister, Good Morning Mr President”, and left us in her wake as she walked straight through. And Boris Yeltsin said, “Now I know why we won the war”. And we went on. And I said to “Boris, well, we’ve had a long walk. We’re got three choices; we can take the long walk back to Chequers, we can go down to the little village down there and we can get the cars back, or we could, you and I Boris, go and have a lemonade in the Bernard Arms.” And at this stage, the West Security Forces learnt that the President of Russia could speak English. “The Bernard Arms!” said Boris, “The Bernard Arms!” And we got there. And there were cars parked all outside, but the Bernard Arms was shut; the cars belonged to all the photographers still hanging in the trees! They were staying there. And the Bernard Arms was shut! This was something of a blow. And one of President Yeltsin’s interpreters went up to the door and went [knock, knock] “open up!” It’s the President of Russia”. And a voice came back “This is the Kaiser!”. Now you know why I want him to get well!

    QUESTION:

    Sylvia Tidy, Chairman of the South East Area and Countryside Forum, and a member of Wealden Constituency. Prime Minister, there are a group of farmers in this country that are suffering the most severe hardship they are known for decades. Can you please do your best to see that we get the ban lifted in Europe because our beef and our food is the best and the safest in the Community.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I had a meeting yesterday for around about an hour with Sir David Naish, the President of the NFU, and representatives of farmers who had come for the demonstration yesterday. And I understand the concerns that they feel. Through something that is not within their control, and decision that are collectively being taken abroad. They are concerned about their future and their livelihood. And the British Government is very sensitive to the concerned of the British agriculture industry and very sensitive to see what we can do to help the dairy industry and the beef industry. And we entered into discussion.

    We’ve thus far committed in order to help the industry something in the region of £2,500 million and you heard Douglas Hogg make some more commitments just the other day. But it isn’t just the money. What we need to do is to try and persuade people across Europe and across the world – not the Commission, [indistinct] who have been better friends of the British farmers than the nation states, but the nation states that British beef is safe. I believe it to be safe. Our scientists believe it to be safe. But a panic has been created and it is very difficult to persuade other people of that. And new evidence has emerged in the last couple of months or so which is very material. The first was the report by Professor Anderson and others that BSE is actually dying out of the British herds faster than we thought, as a result of action that we took in 1988/1989, around about that time. And secondly, that the question of genetic inheritance of BSE may not be as straightforward as people thought. A few weeks ago there was a lot of publicity that calves could inherit BSE, from the cow. Now there is considerable doubt about that. What it looks as though it might be, although this is not yet certain, the scientist are still looking at it.

    Uncertain science has bedevilled this matter from the outset. What it now looks as though it is, is that what can be inherited is a genetic tendency to catch BSE if, if the calf is fed contaminated feed. And there is no contaminated feed. It has now been taken completely away. So these are two new ingredients in the debate. And I am sorry that is not 90 at 30 seconds, but this is a matter of crucial importance to the agricultural industry. Desperate worry to the farmers and the most difficult problem, I believe, that any British Government has had to face and seek to solve for very many years. My heart and my sympathy is with the farmers. A large part of tax payers support is with the farmers because when we have come through this, I am determined of one thing above all, that we will have a viable beef and a viable dairy industry in each and every component part of the United Kingdom. However we do it, that is a guarantee the farmers can rely upon.

  • Mr Major’s Speech on Choice and Freedom for All – 19 September 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech on Choice and Freedom for All, made on the 19th September 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    CHOICE AND FREEDOM FOR ALL: THE MORAL CASE FOR A SMALLER STATE

    Tonight I want to talk about the role of government. Not from the perspective of political theory, but from practical experience. Why my aim of smaller government can produce better government and better public services.

    The role of government has changed massively – and is still changing. All around the world, people ask the fundamental question – how much government do we want and what kind?

    Some might have imagined that the 1980s would have settled this debate. The pressures of a global market place were already evident. The centrally planned economies collapsed and the victory of the free market model was clear.

    That remains true. But it doesn’t settle the question. Because within the free market economies there are many differing visions of the role of Government.

    At one end of the spectrum are most members of the European Union, with the state spending half or more of the nation’s income and a long tradition of high state intervention.

    At the other end are the US, Japan, and the emerging Asian economies spending around a third or less – in some cases much less.

    Britain is somewhere in the middle, with the state spending a little over 41 per cent of GDP.

    A look at the growth and job creation records of countries with a smaller state argues persuasively the economic case for restraining public spending.

    And that is certainly one, though not the only, reason why the Government has set a target of getting public spending below 40 per cent of national income.

    When we achieve that I believe we should look further at a lower target.

    But the case for smaller Government is as much a moral case as an economic one.

    “Moral” is a word I usually prefer to leave to the Church but it is apt for what I intend to say.

    For example, is it moral to take from individuals the right to make personal decisions? I think not.

    Is it moral to impose obligations on employers like the Social Chapter and the minimum wage that will cost jobs and prevent those without jobs from getting them? Again, I think not.

    Is it moral to compulsorily take too much tax from people for government to spend and diminish individual choices? My answer is no.

    Smaller Government fits with a belief in individual freedom and choice – still one of the basic divides in British politics.

    I start from the presumption that government should not interfere and meddle where it is not needed. The belief that power, choice and responsibility should, wherever possible, be left with individuals and their families, with entrepreneurs and businesses.

    I don’t want my personal choices made for me by the State. Nor do most people. Nor is it necessary. The British people are better able to order their lives effectively than the most efficient and humane of Governments.

    ‘Trust the People’ is an old Conservative battle cry. It must be central to our future policies.

    We aim to regulate less of people’s lives.

    We trust people to spend their money, or save it, or give it, and to do so sensibly.

    We don’t believe most people are selfish or greedy.

    And we think they can be trusted to exercise those instincts themselves – not to have them exercised on the people’s behalf by men in Whitehall who claim to know better.

    So we aim to tax and spend an ever smaller share of what people earn. To reduce and, in due course, abolish capital taxation.

    I want to do that because it makes good economic sense; it ends a penalty on enterprise and investment; it will release capital and create jobs. And that is the right thing to do.

    There is a moral case for low taxation if you genuinely want to see growing prosperity and more employment.

    And it is that moral view, just as much as the economics, that leads me to the conviction that the state should progressively disengage and do less – but that what it does it should do well. Indeed, I believe that by doing less it is more likely to do better.

    I can hear the cries of ‘uncaring Conservatives’ already forming on the lips of our opponents.

    Cut taxes? Just an electoral bribe, they say.

    End capital taxation? Just a ramp for the well to do.

    But these cries just blur the argument. They are nonsense. We should not be put off by them. They are the baggage of a welfare state mentality that distrusts personal choice and resents personal ownership.

    I reject the muddled thinking that says a smaller state must be uncaring. And I reject the thinking that equates big government with benevolent government.

    We’ve seen time and time again that high government spending and good public services don’t go hand in hand. If they did what a glory there would be in some states.

    But look at the failure of socialism to improve people’s lives in Eastern Europe. Or the recent strains and popular unrest in high spending economies in the EU as they seek to cope with escalating public budgets. And at home you only have to look at the Britain of 20 years ago, with its crumbling state industries, high tax rates and economic malaise.

    Practical experience of Government suggests to me those failures weren’t an accident, a workable philosophy misapplied or derailed by the unexpected. The more I see of Government from the inside the more I believe those failures were predictable, the result of applying fundamental principles that are diametrically opposed to common instinct, common freedom and common sense.

    Underlying socialism, democratic socialism – or even social democracy – is a set of instincts that favours State control. Where there is a choice it is always to be exercised in favour of the State, and too often by the State.

    It’s not always put in those terms, of course. But because the mind set of Socialists and social democrats is to trust Governments more than individuals, their instinct is always to try and bend individuals, businesses, markets, to behaviour they would not naturally see as being in their interests.

    It’s those instincts that lead to high spend, high tax policies, and to ever more regulation. They may be dressed up in the name of better public services. But underlying them is a confident belief that the Government knows better how to spend your money than you do. That government control can produce better outcomes than free choice.

    It’s a philosophy that has two outcomes – both bad. First it stifles enterprise and wealth creation.

    And – second – step by step – too much government control traps individuals in a culture of dependency. Choice, freedom, independence are gradually whittled away until the citizen’s only response is that the ‘government ought to do something about it’. And, of course, all too often the government can’t. The citizen feels helpless.

    At its worst it means that if you are poor the state makes all your choices for you, but if you are well to do you are free. The goal I aim for is to give more choice to everyone.

    If the state takes on more and more responsibilities, it becomes the keeper of the individual’s conscience and duty. There is a danger that people will think their obligations to others are fulfilled solely by paying taxes – whereas they are not, and cannot be.

    I believe that the enrichment of this country – both economically and socially -will come from the people of this country, as individuals, families, businesses, public servants.

    And I believe it is right to think of government as an enabler – not trying vainly to script and control every move, but providing the conditions and support to help people to succeed themselves.

    That’s why we encourage ownership – of homes, pensions and other forms of savings to give people security and independence.

    It’s why we’ve taken steps to reduce the future growth of the social security system, bringing it within the growth of the economy reversing the trend since the war.

    It’s why we emphasise improving standards in education.

    It’s why we are looking again at protecting the public from industrial action in essential and monopoly services.

    It’s why we have opened up the telecommunications industry and deregulated broadcasting, the control of shopping and licensing hours.

    It’s all been about restoring choice and freedom to the individual.

    But while I argue for a small state, I am not arguing for a minimalist state. The state does have a role but we must keep it in proper bounds.

    The great political advance has been to recognise that public interest does not always require State ownership. It is not a paradox to say that a private company can be a public service.

    Not so long ago it was thought that public services like phones, gas, water and electricity had to be publicly owned and had to be monopolies. Now we have shown that private ownership, competition and regulation can protect the public interest better than public ownership.

    It must be galling to those who believe in the innate superiority of State control to see how private ownership has transformed standards.

    Our phone, gas and electricity prices are now amongst the lowest in Europe. Rail fares are capped as never in the past.

    Our water industry is at last able to afford long-delayed investment. The consumer gets better quality.

    We now have phone boxes that work.

    Fewer disconnections.

    Better standards of service.

    Compensation if they let you down.

    And quality is increasingly bolstered by choice, an everyday reality in telecoms and increasingly so for gas – with people actually knocking on doors round the country offering cheaper gas. And soon competition will begin in electricity and water too.

    And if we had not de-nationalised I wonder what the standard rate of tax might be today to deliver services of this quality under public ownership?

    Of course, improving services and giving power back to consumers is not how it is seen by our political opponents. To hear them talk, you would believe denationalisation amounts to abolition. Their mind set has not moved on from their traditional hostility to private ownership. All sorts of scare stories were peddled. But the reality has been quite different, and a huge success.

    But private ownership is not the best answer for all areas of the public sector. There are some where it is simply not right, or acceptable, for the government to cede its role.

    To take an obvious example, no Conservative would argue that the State should not have the responsibility to provide a secure defence, or an effective police force.

    Equally, it is right that we should provide universal access to a taxpayer-funded Health Service, and to provide every child with the choice of a State-funded education.

    And other areas are self-evident, such as the welfare safety net.

    But where privatisation is not an option the Government has a double responsibility to ensure efficiency and good service.

    We owe that to the consumer and taxpayer – after all it is their money, compulsorily extracted. And we owe it to the people who work in our public sector to help them deliver the best possible service.

    But if that is our aspiration, how do we deliver it? There’s no simple straightforward solution. The public service has to be picked up, shaken down, re-shaped and given a new culture. That is what I am seeking to do and I’d like to bring the strands of that policy together for you.

    Our problem is not the many dedicated people who work in the public service, it is the structure and culture of monolithic post war public service that has weighed against them.

    So what are we doing about that?

    First, we recognised that too many public services have been run by organisations that were too large and bureaucratic.

    With control sucked to the centre, they became insulated from the issues and problems on the ground.

    Their front-line workers were often as frustrated by inflexible bureaucracy as the public itself.

    And second, since the system was so reluctant to provide information on service standards, and there was no choice to go elsewhere, there was no countervailing pressure – and few incentives – to put their customers’ interests first.

    To deal with this I believe we needed a revolution in the way Government runs itself.

    We’ve slimmed down the number of government employees – at a time when it has been growing in most of our major competitors – and wherever possible we’ve broken up the large monoliths and created smaller, more manageable units closer to their users.

    The Health Service is a good example.

    I, and successive Health Ministers, have been attacked for years for seeking to improve the service of a much loved national institution. But what our reforms have done has yielded huge efficiencies to be ploughed back in patient care.

    And the smaller, more manageable units that have resulted – Hospital Trusts, GP Fundholders – have a much closer relationship with their local community and a much better appreciation of their needs. The intention is that the people providing the service look outwards to the people they serve rather than upwards to the top of some distant organisational pyramid.

    As our health service develops, I believe these reforms will ensure it always takes account of the need to serve people on a human scale – at local level. People first means efficiency first.

    Of course any reform is traumatic. I was involved in the NHS reforms from the start – and they were no picnic.

    But I also remember why we did it. Who could forget Sir Roy Griffiths’ famous remark that if Florence Nightingale were wandering the corridors of an NHS hospital in the eighties, it would be because she was trying to find out who was in charge.

    A bit too true to be funny, actually. I remember being astonished, as Chief Secretary, how little we knew about where the £20 billion we spent on the NHS was actually going. I asked questions. Officials scratched their heads. No-one knew the answers.

    But it’s not just a matter of changing management structures.

    Increasingly we are also introducing private finance into public services. This makes taxpayers’ money go further, which is the only realistic way to deliver the better services and infrastructure we all want. And the successes are already visible, for example in our inner cities where challenge funding has harnessed public and private money to achieve tremendous results.

    Of course some of the changes we’ve made to devolve management and bring in the private sector have provoked a huge debate about Parliamentary accountability. Some politicians believe Ministers must know and control every tiny action and detail.

    Well, they don’t.

    They can’t.

    Frankly, they shouldn’t. And it’s silly to pretend otherwise.

    Yet, for years past every successive Minister and for that matter Prime Minister has been expected to answer questions of administration that fall far below the level of policy. No wonder Question Time sometimes sheds more heat than light.

    The idea that Ministers are omnipotent is very flattering but history and experience argues against it. And in the complexity of modern government, it is absurd. The important thing is that Ministers are accountable for getting public services properly managed, putting someone in charge with clear objectives and making sure they are kept on their toes.

    I have seen the injustice and indignity and demoralisation that people feel when public service is frustrating and patronising.

    I’m not prepared to tolerate a culture where it is the norm to wait in queues, to be passed around from pillar to post, and treated like a cog in some labyrinthine machine.

    That must change. And the way to change it is to continually ratchet up the quality of service; to tell the consumer the standards he has a right to expect; to give the information about the service he’s getting, and offer decent redress for failings.

    That’s why I launched the Citizen’s Charter five years ago. I saw it then as a ten year programme. But attack came immediately from all sides – as so often happens, when you aim at fundamental change.

    Some thought the standards too demanding: others too modest. Some thought it all a gimmick. Others said we were only tinkering. Most believed we would never deliver targets and standards.

    But these improvements are happening. Spectacularly in some areas, patchily in others. But they are happening.

    Only a few years ago the holidaymaker used to have to wait three months for a passport. Now it usually takes just a week.

    Not long ago, some 170,000 patients had to wait more than a year for hospital treatment. Last year, that was fewer than 5,000.

    Several patients used to be given the same hospital appointments and then be expected to wait the convenience of the consultant without complaint. Patients now get a timed individual appointment in hospitals and should never have to wait more than 30 minutes.

    We see even more fundamental improvements in education, where tests and performance tables are finally giving parents the information they deserve. Gillian Shephard will shortly be announcing further measures to drive up standards, including increased use of targets in a variety of areas.

    In these ways, standards are pulling up public service performance to levels far better than we have seen before.

    And, as they do, I expect them to raise the public’s expectations. And that too is happening.

    The White Paper published tomorrow will show a near quadrupling of nominations by the public for Charter Mark awards – more than 15,000 nominations this year from last year’s 4,000.

    To me that suggests the Charter is increasingly taking root. And in time I have no doubt my ambitions for the Citizen’s Charter – a fundamental shift in power from the state to the consumer – will be fulfilled.

    Of course, we still have much to do. We are only half way through our programme. But the direction in which the Government wants to go is towards more choice, more information, more accountability.

    Some like to claim these days that the main political parties are closer together than ever.

    I wonder how true that is when it comes to hard decisions – rather than oratory.

    The kind of programme I have set out tonight requires perseverance to drive it through. If you come to a boulder in the middle of the road do you drive to the left or the right? Your instincts take over. If you come to problems is your instinct to trust the government or the private sector to find a solution?

    Our instinct is for less government. Our opponents’ instinct is for more government. This is still a sharp divide.

    I believe our programme to reform government is more than a managerial question.

    For me, there is no more political question than how we define the limits of the State, how we run our public services, how they treat their customers, and how the burden of financing government falls on the economy and the individual. These issues touch on the fundamental philosophical and political divide between the parties.

    I have spent my life fighting on one side of that divide.

    My beliefs are for a future with a smaller state and lower taxes. Where individuals and families have more independence to own and save.

    This is a distinctive Conservative agenda with a common theme: choice and freedom for everyone. Not for one class, not one faction, but all in society.

    Having built the strongest economy we’ve known for decades, we now need to turn to giving all in society the chance to take more control of their lives. Those living in Labour strongholds, just as much as those in leafy Conservative heartlands. They all matter just as much.

    Extending choice and freedom is an endless task, performed against the clamour for the government to do something – be it spend more, intervene more, regulate more.

    But, as I have explained tonight, that is not my way. The right role for Government as we approach the millennium is quite different.

    It is to enlarge choice, not restrict it. To extend freedom, not curtail it.

    To trust the people more and control them less.

    That runs with the grain of what the British people want, and that is what I set out to deliver.

  • Mr Major’s Comments on the Economy – 18 September 1996

    Below are extracts of Mr Major’s comments on the economy, made during an interview held at Chequers on Wednesday 18th September 1996.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if he planned to spend less money and where cuts would come from].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think there are two elements, as you say: firstly, expansion of the economy; and second, saving money and spending it more effectively. And that is what we have been doing. If you look at the relative comparisons, most of our partners in Western Europe, in the same economic space, would spend between 47-50 per cent of national income. We are down to 41 per cent, we are continuing to see that drop. As the economy grows, we will ensure that the growth in the economy is not wholly used by the state, that predominantly it is used to reduce the state’s role in terms of taxation. But in addition to that there are savings. It is hard to get savings, no-one should pretend that that is easy. We have been chipping away at elements of waste for 17 years and will continue to do so.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked how he could get below 40 per cent when it had been higher than that for most of the last 17 years].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We have set a target for the moment of 40 per cent, just as originally when we wanted to cut tax we set a target of 25, when we got to 25 per cent for the basic rate, we set a new target. So our first objective is to get it below 40 per cent.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked how much lower].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well we will get it below 40 per cent first and then we will set a further target. I am not going to set a long distance target at the moment. Let us reach the target we have set ourselves for the moment and then see how much further we can take it. That is what we have been doing and is it the only sensible way in which to proceed.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if he would make cuts or believe the economy would grow at a sufficient pace to make cuts unnecessary].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We have been saving public expenditure for some years. Let me take the most practical example – the welfare state and in particular social security. Social security since the war has been growing at a faster rate than the growth of the economy. Because of changes that we have made, widely supported I think by most people in this country, the growth of the social security budget is now about 1 per cent a year. That has never been achieved before. It opens up options for government either to spend that money elsewhere, on health or education for example, or to spend it partly to reduce taxes.

    The question – is there a single simple way in which you could massively save money? If there were that would have been done by governments a long time ago. It is a steady accretion of cutting out unnecessary expenditure and there are still areas where the government spend money unnecessarily.

    Let me give you a practical illustration. Suppose in the last few years we had not privatised all the utilities – gas, electricity and other matters – they were heavily subsidised when they were in the public sector. Heaven alone knows what the standard rate of tax today would be if we had not shrunk the state in that fashion. And we have to continually look to see where we can extend that thought.

  • PMQT – 2 July 1996

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 2nd July 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 2 July.

    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. Hoyle: Will the Prime Minister confirm that the Government’s attacks on the Labour party are being scrapped because they were not hurting and not working?

    The Prime Minister: Obviously, our campaign has already worked and already hurt new Labour. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me explain precisely why: new taxes on jobs, on Scotland, on parents, on employers, on shareholders; new chaos in schools, in hospitals, on roads; and new weakness in defence and in Europe. That campaign will run and run.

    Sir Anthony Grant: Should the Government not be congratulated on embarking upon the long overdue reform of the legal aid system? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it has been widely abused and, too often, used for blackmailing purposes? Does he further agree that it would be disastrous if Britain had litigation on the scale of the United States, where everyone seems to be suing everyone else?

    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend on both points. My noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor will publish a White Paper setting out the Government’s plans to reform the legal aid system in England and Wales. It is right that we should ensure the proper use of money, which is why we believe that legal aid should be directed towards those whose need is greatest. That means stopping weak or undeserving cases being pursued at public expense.

    Mr. Blair: In respect of the sale of Ministry of Defence homes, will the Prime Minister confirm the following facts that have emerged? Not only is the MOD guaranteeing the property developer the full market rent for 25 years: on top of that, if the aggregate rents fall beneath a specified minimum the taxpayer is guaranteed to make up the shortfall for each of the 25 years; on top of that, every year a certain quantity of vacant homes will be made available to the property developer to sell at a profit; and on top of that, the property developer can exchange the sites of MOD homes for comparable sites, without the consent of the tenants. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that in each of those four respects my understanding is right and, if so, what is the justification for that extraordinary deal?

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman has overlooked the two most salient facts. [Interruption.] All the details will be made plain when the sale is concluded. He has overlooked, first, the extra £100 million released by the sale to provide better homes for the services throughout the United Kingdom and, secondly, the £1.5 billion or thereabouts that will be available to the Exchequer for other resources. He has a lot to say about how he is going to be stringent on public expenditure, but at the first difficult decision he wants to toss away about £1.5 billion.

    Mr. Blair: The Prime Minister says that we should wait until the sale is concluded. With all due respect, I think that we should know the details now. It is precisely the worry about public spending that leads me to put this question. The right hon. Gentleman says that the services will get £100 million, but will he confirm that over the next 25 years there will be a recurring liability to the taxpayer–

    The Prime Minister indicated dissent.

    Mr. Blair: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he has not disputed a single one of the four points that I put to him. Will he say which of those four points is wrong and, in particular, whether the Government are guaranteeing not just a market rent but that if the aggregate of rents falls beneath the specified minimum the taxpayer will be obliged to make up the shortfall? We should know how much it will cost in future years.

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman still does not understand. This is going to yield substantial resources for the Exchequer. With the shadow Chancellor sitting next to him, I am surprised that he so lightly tosses £1.5 billion aside. There is no doubt that all he has to say about stringency in public expenditure is for public consumption but will not stand up to the first whiff of controversy when it comes to decisions. We are negotiating a good deal for the taxpayer, now and in the future, and a good deal for the service man–now and in the future–as in due course the right hon. Gentleman will be forced to acknowledge.

    Mr. Blair: With all due respect, the Prime Minister is talking about the amount of money that he will get in this financial year, but we are asking the question because we expect to be dealing with these problems in future years. That is the difference between the short term and the long term, between the Tory party and Labour. Will the Prime Minister say which of those four facts he denies? Is not the truth of the matter that he is attempting to boost the capital sum in this financial year for pre-election purposes while leaving a recurring liability to the taxpayer for years to come for a sale that no service men or women want?

    The Prime Minister: What the right hon. Gentleman has just done is to advance the precise argument against the windfall tax that he himself proposes. Perhaps he will now withdraw the windfall tax, which the shadow Chancellor has spent on three or four occasions already. The right hon. Gentleman still misses the substantive point: it is to provide better accommodation for our service men and that is what it will do, both now and in the future. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman does not think that that is a worthwhile proposition.

    Mr. Tredinnick: Will my right hon. Friend congratulate the police on the success of their Euro 96 operation? Does he agree that this showed Europe at its best, acting in harmony and co-operation, and does he think it likely that there will be any plans to prosecute for racial incitement?

    The Prime Minister: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about the way in which Euro 96 was policed and about the behaviour of the overwhelming majority of people. I had the pleasure of attending the final and of hearing from football administrators across Europe how much they admired the way in which the competition had been run and the behaviour of the crowds at football grounds across the country. I very much hope that this will help us to obtain further such competitions. Prosecutions are, of course, a matter for the police, but I am sure that they will have noted what my hon. Friend said.

    Mr. Ashdown: Further to the Prime Minister’s answer to a previous question, does not a large part of the cost of our legal aid come from inefficiencies at all levels in the legal system? Why do the Government not attack those inefficiencies instead of attacking access to justice for ordinary people?

    The Prime Minister: We are trying to ensure that people have proper and equitable access where there is a need for it. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the legal aid system has very few friends at the moment because of the way in which it operates, and it is right that we should examine it in a White Paper and reform it, which is what my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor proposes to do. His plans will ensure better value for money, with the right services going to the right people, and greater fairness between legally aided people and their opponents.

    Mr. Sykes: May I ask the Prime Minister a question about Scotland? He will be well aware that the people of Scotland have much in common with the people of Yorkshire, chiefly in the fact that we will not wantonly part with hard-earned cash. Will my right hon. Friend tell the Opposition that that is why the Scots will never, in a month of Sundays, vote for a tax-raising tartan parliament?

    The Prime Minister: The speed of the Opposition’s changes on that policy become more bewildering day by day, so it is not at all clear what their policies will be by the end of this week or the end of next week. What we have seen in the past week or so illustrates clearly the total absurdity of the plans that the Labour party has been preparing for a long time but apparently has not thought about. Labour spokesmen have answered none of the questions asked here or in Scotland about that policy because they have no credible answers to them.

     

    Q2. Mr. Sutcliffe: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 2 July.

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

    Mr. Sutcliffe: Does the Prime Minister agree with the right hon. Member for South Thanet (Mr. Aitken) that there is a “get Portillo” campaign–a dirty tricks campaign–in the Tory party? Does he not think that such a serious issue–

    Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is asking the Prime Minister about policies for which he is responsible.

    Mr. Sutcliffe: I thought that the Defence Secretary was the responsibility of the Prime Minister.

    Should such a serious issue as homes for the families of service men and women who serve this country so well be used as a political pawn by contenders for the Prime Minister’s job?

    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, like me, is determined to ensure the best possible accommodation for service men, and to ensure that an extra £100 million is available to be spent on them. If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about criticism of one Member against another, I suggest that, after the past few days, he should begin to protect his own leader.

     

    Q3. Mr. Luff: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 2 July.

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

    Mr. Luff: Does my right hon. Friend believe that the international influence and unity of the kingdom, the interests of England and the practical needs of his constituents and mine, will be assisted by radical constitutional change? Does he think that it was just a coincidence that, immediately after his strongly argued speech on the constitution, the Opposition’s policies collapsed in disarray, posing a multitude of new dangers for our nation?

    The Prime Minister: It is only the beginning of the collapse of those policies; there will be more progressive collapses to come. Whatever U-turns the Opposition continue to perform on their devolution policies, their policies for a devolved, tax-raising parliament in Scotland are bad news for the United Kingdom and bad news for Scotland, and they will prove to be bad news for the Opposition–of that I have no doubt.

     

    Q4. Mr. Hain: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 2 July.

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

    Mr. Hain: Is the Prime Minister not ashamed of the way his party’s £10 million attack on new Labour today stooped to exploiting the blindness of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)? Will he instruct his party chairman to withdraw that disgraceful attack and exploitation and apologise immediately?

    The Prime Minister: No one would conduct such an attack. There are ample policies in new Labour to attack, and those are the policies that we find distasteful and wrong. They are concerned about controls to take rights away from parents, they are producing taxes that they are trying to hide, and they would produce chaos in our public services. Now that we have been able to focus on what the allegedly new Labour party actually stands for, we can identify its dangers and make sure that everyone is aware of them. New Labour and the new dangers will become very apparent to everyone, and it will be the policies that we shall attack, because they are wrong and damaging.

     

    Q5. Mr. Simon Coombs: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 2 July.

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

    Mr. Coombs: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the average family in this country will be £450 a year better off by next April as a result of the tax cuts announced by the Government? Can my right hon. Friend think of any good reason why the average family should trust and risk the Labour party’s policies for tax and spend?

    The Prime Minister: I can certainly confirm that growth in the economy and lower taxes mean that the average family will be £450 better off this year, even after taking account of inflation. I can also make it clear to the average family that inflation is down, interest rates are down, unemployment is down, investment, exports and production are up and the prospects for individuals as well as for families are brighter than they have been for very many years.

  • Mr Major’s Speech at the 1996 Scottish Conservative Party Conference – 11 May 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech at the 1996 Scottish Conservative Party Conference, held on 11th May 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I want to touch first on two issues of great concern.

    When last I came to Scotland, I went to Dunblane. The events there were a horror, almost unimaginable – a mad act that robbed innocent children of a happy future.

    Michael Forsyth and Michael Howard have already announced an amnesty on illegal guns to gather them in.

    Lord Cullen – one of Scotland’s most senior judges – is to advise us on what further action is needed.

    Should legislation be necessary – and it may well be – I can promise you we will move speedily. We have already set aside time in the Parliamentary programme for this purpose.

    I intend that we will do all we can to ensure such a crime cannot happen again.

    Secondly, beef.

    The European ban on beef has caused frustration and anger.

    Not just amongst farmers, but amongst everyone.

    Certainly here in Scotland, as Scottish beef is a by-word for quality.

    The ban is totally unjustified. It’s the result of panic, not science. And it must be removed.

    The ban turned a problem into a crisis, not just in Britain, but across Europe where beef markets have also been hit.

    Next week, the first steps towards lifting the ban are going to be discussed in Europe. I hope that progress will be made.

    For the ban was introduced by the Commission. And it is the Commission that has now unanimously recommended a partial lifting of the ban.

    Against that background, our European partners must understand the level of resentment that will be created if they fly in the face of scientific arguments and the Commission’s recommendations and continue to damage our beef industry.

    But let us be frank. Even when the ban has been lifted, we will need to rebuild consumer confidence to regain our markets. We need to make the case for quality again and again.

    Many beef herds have never had a case of BSE. So, while we aim to get the ban totally lifted, we’ll also be pressing to get rapid exemption for specialist beef herds.

    Such a move across the UK will particularly benefit Scotland, and the premium, grass-fed beef herds for which Scotland is rightly famous.

    We’re already consulting on proposals to get mature, prime beef from these herds back on the market in Britain.

    But to regain our markets around the world, we must – in our own interest – look at any sensible proposals to speed up the already rapid decline of BSE throughout the UK.

    I met with the Scottish NFU this morning, and heard from them first hand of the fears and anxieties of their members. I promise you this – we will stand by this industry.

    We have already committed huge resources. In addition to that, I am confident that we can deliver significant extra help for beef producers within this year’s European farm settlement. And, to help the exporters, we’ve agreed to pay more money to those whose stocks were destroyed or devalued in the initial crisis.

    I pay tribute to the leadership which the NFU has given over this difficult period, and to the effective and influential role they have played.

    We’ve made a start in tackling this crisis but we need to remove the threat of BSE once and for all. British beef is the best in the world.

    It’s good to be back in Scotland and to find you in such good spirits.

    So am I.

    I always enjoy coming to Scotland. Not least because you always doctor my water in a most agreeable way.

    We’re now within a year of the next General Election.

    And, when it comes – next year, I expect – we Conservatives are going to win that election – by working together, north and south of the border.

    It’s a good Tory word, “together” – and especially so here in Scotland.

    It emphasises that ours is a United Kingdom.

    And we’re the Conservative and Unionist Party.

    We believe in working together, north and south.

    And, so long as there’s a Conservative Government, that’s how it will remain.

    Some people say to me – why? Surely, if Scotland breaks away, England will save on public spending and can have lower taxes? And surely, it’ll be easier to win elections without the SNP, Labour and Liberal MPs from Scotland?

    True. But the United Kingdom as a whole would suffer. And so would Scotland.

    And we Conservatives put the United Kingdom first, even though it’s not to our Party advantage. That’s not the way Labour behave. Their devolution plans put the interests of the Labour Party first. We put the country first. And that’s the difference.

    For months, Michael Forsyth and his team have been taking the argument to Labour, exposing their flawed plans.

    Showing how they would wreck Scotland.

    Showing how the devolutionists are laying a false prospectus before the Scottish people.

    I have a message for you Michael. The battle you’re fighting for Scotland is as important as any that has been fought before.

    Fight hard. Punch hard. Punch often.

    And you’ll have from me all the support you need.

    When I became Prime Minister I spoke of a classless society.

    Many scoffed that this had happened without my noticing it.

    Others said it was a preposterous and even undesirable aim.

    Well, there have been remarkable changes in British society over the last 50 years. Indeed, I’m a beneficiary of them.

    But don’t tell me that a child brought up in deprived circumstances – and given an inadequate education – has the same prospects as one from a more prosperous background with a good education.

    There are many who achieve good results from bad beginnings. But one of our principal risks as a Government – and as a Party – is to ensure that fewer and fewer of our children have those bad beginnings. And that’s what our education reforms are about.

    We don’t believe that people in difficulties always have only themselves to blame. Don’t forget I’ve been poor and unemployed. And I know that our Party has done more than any other to relieve poverty and to finance the National Health Service and social security.

    It was practical compassionate Conservatism that marks me a Tory and millions like me.

    And it’s values like that that have underpinned the last 17 years of Conservative Government.

    17 years.

    Some people on the cocktail and chattering circuit think it’s time for a change. As though Government were a game of street cricket with everyone having a bat in turn. But what sort of change?

    Labour wouldn’t bring to Britain the sort of changes we’ve brought.

    Taxpayers. Cuts for everyone. The lowest basic rate for 50 years. Change that?

    Homeowners. Lowest mortgage rates for 30 years. Gas, telephone bills falling. Change that?

    Workers. More of our people in work than any major country in Europe. Change that?

    Savers. TESSAs and PEPs flourishing. Scotland is thrifty. It saves. And now it has a 20p rate of tax on savings – a new low. Change that?

    Businessmen. The longest period of low inflation for almost 50 years. Why change that?

    Parents. More choice than ever before. We shouldn’t change that – and Labour agree.

    Not only do they agree, they welcome our change and take advantage of it.

    You don’t believe me. Check with the Blairs. Ask Harriet Harman.

    Pupils. More going on to higher education than ever before.

    Patients. More being treated than ever before.

    The changes we’re brought about are changes for the better.

    Thanks to them, Britain is the best performing economy in Europe. The world’s leading companies are pouring in investment and jobs.

    Britain, with her unique heritage of trading links, and a mother tongue that’s the world’s common language, is winning new markets around the globe.

    Today, Britain stands on the threshold of a new era of opportunity and prosperity as a global trading nation. A small island that’s an international success.

    Of course, there’s much we have to do. But look what we’ve done.

    Take our schools, for instance.

    We inherited a system that had become a secret garden, overgrown with so-called progressive theories.

    Today, children are taught the basics. Labour called that a “fanatical doctrine”.

    We’re going to make sure that children are regularly tested. Labour said tests “encourage a climate of failure”.

    Exam results are published. Labour called that “political propaganda”.

    Schools can now govern themselves. Labour said that was “wrong”.

    Wrong? It’s precisely the kind of education parents want. That’s not wrong. It’s just commonsense.

    The same goes for crime. We’re been turning back the tide of political correctness that excused the criminal and forgot the victim. It meant once again taking on the so-called progressive establishment that dominates Labour thinking.

    Well, we took them on.

    For example, we increased the maximum penalty for cruelty to children. For dealing in drugs. We gave the police new powers to stop and search suspects.

    And right the way down the line, Labour opposed almost every change.

    If Labour had won their arguments, dangerous criminals who are in prison today would be out – walking the streets.

    So, change? Change back to that? Surely that would be folly.

    Some of the changes we’ve made have been painful. They’ve hurt people. And they have hurt us politically in by-elections and local elections.

    But although it hurt, it worked.

    And when we look around us we can see life getting better and our country becoming more prosperous.

    So when people talk of change, ask them “What kind of change do you prefer?”

    “Higher inflation? Lower taxes? More jobs? Tougher laws under the Tories?”

    That’s the kind of change you and I want. And it’s the only way to meet the challenge of the future. A change to Labour would be a change all right – a change for the worse. Don’t let it happen.

    Mr Chairman, before these changes, British companies and British businesses were fighting just to keep their heads above water. Now they are fighting to lead the field.

    And that’s especially true in Scotland.

    Which place in the UK do you think has gained most from our reforms of the last 17 years?

    Seen living standards grow by over a third?

    Grown faster than the rest of the United Kingdom over the last five years?

    Exports 40 per cent more per worker than the United Kingdom average?

    Brought unemployment down to its lowest rate for almost fifteen years?

    You’re right: that country is Scotland.

    Could this remarkable success story have happened without the Union?

    It’s out of the question.

    Labour or the Scot Nats would never have given Scotland the changes she needed. Instead of sunrise industries we’d have had sunset industries, propped up by subsidy, but doomed to disappear. The only question was when.

    Our way has delivered the private investment that’s the key to Scotland’s success.

    In one year alone, almost 100 projects brought Scotland over one billion pounds worth of planned investment, creating or protecting over 12,000 jobs.

    International companies – like Motorola, NEC, BT – they’re all investing in Scotland.

    And they’ll continue to do so as long as they’re sure Scotland will stay in the United Kingdom and income tax will not rise above those in England.

    But, if either of these things do happen, they won’t. They’ll go elsewhere.

    That’s the choice for Scotland.

    One of the reasons they come here is that a Conservative Government has built an economy that encourages investors by controlling expenditure and keeping inflation down. That’s meant we’ve been able to cut interest rates and keep taxes low.

    Again – yes, it hurts. But it has worked. It’s making life better. Don’t throw it away.

    Enterprise has many elements. But high among them is something that goes right to the heart of running the country – and dips into the pocket of every family in the land. Tax.

    Tax is always a battlefield between the parties because we have different instincts.

    We believe in low tax because it stimulates initiative and enterprise, fosters personal independence, and helps the country create enough wealth to help those in need. So we cut taxes when we can. But, as Ken Clarke said yesterday, when, and only when, it’s sensible to do so.

    Labour’s instincts are different. They increase spending.

    So, as Roy Hattersley put it, “Labour now has a clear choice. It can either be the party of higher taxation and proud of it, or the party of higher taxes which it is ashamed to describe, afraid to admit and incapable of calculating with any accuracy. It cannot be the low taxation party”.

    For once, he’s right. People will have a clear choice, a party whose instinct is for less tax, or a party whose instinct is for more tax.

    That’s why our opponents don’t like talking about their tax plans.

    But there’s no honest reason why Labour shouldn’t come clean about them. Britain’s books are open.

    After all, I’m perfectly happy to talk about our tax plans. They’re quite simple.

    We’ll cut taxes whenever we safely can.

    Labour are the exact opposite. Believe it or not, I’m told there are actually people who say Labour are addicted to the politics of envy and want taxes for that reason. And New Labour too. Shocking isn’t it?

    Be that as it may, one thing is certain. Whatever Labour say for public consumption, people know from past experience they’d be worse off under Labour.

    Tory scare tactics, the spin doctors who rule Labour till say. Is it?

    For example, any family with a sixteen to eighteen year old child who is in education had better watch out. Under Labour, their child benefits could disappear.

    Let’s call it a Teenage Tax – a tax increase of up to £560 a year for families whose children are 16 or over and at college. For some families, that’s the same as an increase of 5p on income tax.

    Under Labour, anyone who earns more than Clare Short would be easy pickings for the taxman. Clare’s salary is about £35,000. Many people would love to earn that much. But thanks to Labour’s ThirtySomething Tax, they’d be worse off.

    There are other taxes lurking.

    And, of course, anyone living here in Scotland would be hit by the Tartan Tax. But if they don’t need it, let them reject it now.

    Think how it would damage Scotland to pay more tax than the rest of the country. Who’d be hit most? Not those on high incomes, those on low ones. Someone earning, say, £76,000 a year would see his tax bill rise by 9%. At the same time, someone on £12,000 would see it rise by 14%.

    And this from a Labour Party that has the nerve to talk about ‘fair tax’.

    Before the last election, Labour published their plans. They said they’d increase spending, so naturally Labour would raise taxes to pay for it.

    The New, unscrupulous, Labour Party are different. Whenever Mr Brown threatens honesty on taxes, Mr Blair contradicts him. And Mr Prescott tries to keep up, but doesn’t quite know what’s going on. Well, I can tell you what’s going on.

    Labour still want to spend more of your money, that’s what’s going on. They can’t kick the habit – it’s a sort of reflex action. So they’d tax more. They always have. They always will. And nothing is going to change them.

    I sometimes wonder what on earth Labour stand for these days.

    Their leadership is trying to shed all its history, philosophy and creed with one contemptuous shrug and replace it with – what? A burning desire for office.

    But a lust for power is not, and never has been, a qualification for being entrusted with it.

    But it’s not just taxpayers who’d be worse off.

    Parents would be deprived of a choice of school for their children.

    Patients would see hospitals turned upside down as Labour tried to turn back the clock.

    Shareholders in privatised companies would find their shares threatened.

    But don’t just look at what Labour would do to our reforms. Don’t just think about how Labour would hit the pockets of the people. The real danger is to the very fabric of Britain itself.

    By their own admission, Labour say that they’d bring in the most extensive package of constitutional reform our nation has seen.

    Mr Chairman, this constitution of ours has run like a thread through this land for centuries. It’s been our backbone and our heritage. And without so much as a qualm, Labour would cut it in two.

    I wonder sometimes if they have any idea what their plans would mean?

    Labour would change our United Kingdom for good. Or rather, not for good. Palpably, flagrantly for the worse.

    If we were to let Labour tear this ancient island of ours apart, it could well be impossible to put it together again.

    Labour has tried the devolution gambit before.

    And now they’re at it again. A Scottish Parliament here, a Welsh Assembly there, regional assemblies heaven knows where. Will they never learn? What a way to mark the Millennium by tearing up the United Kingdom.

    Mr Chairman, this fiddling by Labour is a wild and dangerous game. No one can say where it would end.

    No-one can answer the questions it raises.

    No-one, least of all Labour – can tell how such totally irresponsible and disruptive plans would affect this nation and the real concerns of all its people.

    Would it help the Scots if they paid more tax?

    Do the Welsh think a talking shop would improve their lives?

    And when was the last time you heard people saying, “What Britain needs is more politicians in regional assemblies”?

    And all this would be just the tip of the iceberg.

    Proportional representation. No government ever able to take decisions without backroom deals.

    A Bill of Rights.

    Elected mayors – to do what, for heaven’s sake?

    A whole raft of constitutional doodling. That’s Labour’s irrelevant manifesto.

    Would it mean more jobs? Yes, for bureaucrats and politicians.

    More investment? Well, no actually – probably less.

    More prosperity? No. Just more taxes.

    Would Britain’s voice carry more weight in the council chambers of Europe if we divided her into three? No, much less.

    Mr Chairman, the changes Labour plan, no matter how slickly packaged and presented by their media gurus, would destroy in years what has been built up in centuries.

    Nor are the dangers Labour post restricted only to devolution. Their European policy is demeaning and disastrous.

    Now, I fully understand that the European issue raises the most passionate feelings. Who, in this country, would know that better than me? It’s a central issue of our time. But that shouldn’t distract us from a cool, dispassionate assessment of what is truly in our nation’s long-term interests – and what is not? That is my guiding principle. Getting the balance right for Britain now and in the years to come is the key to our approach to Europe.

    Yes, Britain must be a part of Europe, and a partner of Europe. But a Europe of nations, not a united states of Europe. Not a federal Europe. When people say “Let’s have a referendum on whether we want a federal Europe”, I say “why?”

    Because, Mr Chairman, there’s no need. Once again, I make this pledge. While I am Prime Minister, if others should opt for such a Europe, then Britain will not be part of it. We don’t need a referendum to know that we don’t want a centralised Europe.

    But let no one doubt that Labour would accept such a Europe. Already they’re committed to sign up to the Social Chapter. To give more powers to the European Parliament. To re-negotiate our rebate. To undermine our veto.

    So on both counts – what Labour would do to Britain at home and what Labour would do to Britain abroad – the whole future of this nation is at stake.

    Mr Chairman, come the election, the future we’ll be fighting for is a Conservative future.

    One where everyone feels that they belong.

    Where all our people, no matter what their background, have a chance to realise their dreams.

    To go to a good school, university, get a job, have a home of their own.

    To do what they think is best for themselves, their families, their children.

    To enjoy more of what they’ve earned and saved.

    These are the building blocks of the future.

    They’re what drive the people of our country.

    A people independent of spirit, proud of their past. Who look to a future of enterprise encouraged and work rewarded.

    Who want to protect the freedom and responsibilities of the family against the intrusions of the state.

    Who believe in the rule of law.

    And who love our country.

    Mr Chairman, at the last election, when I said I would fight to protect the United Kingdom, I was accused of wrapping myself in the Union Jack. It was meant as an insult. But I didn’t take it as such.

    You don’t have to dislike other nations to be proud of ours and I am proud of ours. I never feel more comfortable than in defending our nationhood and our unity as a Kingdom.

    The Union Jack in the flag of this United Kingdom – and we Conservatives, by nature a kindly Party, need to be ruthless, remorseless and relentless in defence of that Kingdom, as we always have been when that unity has been under threat.

    It is so once again today. Labour’s slick world of the soundbite and the over-simplified solution to problems of immense complexity has nothing to offer to bind this nation together. The superficiality of their policies – many of them disingenuous and ill-thought out – is breathtaking. What’s more, they bear little or no relation to the reality of government.

    When you walk through the door of Number Ten, reality walks in with you. Reality on a world scale. Over the years a Conservative Government has faced that reality and learnt how to handle it. So let me give you, here in Scotland today, this assurance.

    We Conservatives have the confidence and the tradition and, yes, the experience to guide us as we take our nation forward, out of this troubled century and into the next.

    That’s why we’re going to win the next election.

    Why we deserve to win that election.

    At stake is more than just our achievements. More than just the strongest economy we’ve seen for decades.

    This election will decide the very future of the United Kingdom itself.

    The future of our Parliament, our Union, our Country.

    It’s a fight for our Nation’s Future.

    And it’s a fight we’ll win.

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

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

    PRIME MINISTER:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Let me touch on two or three other things:

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

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

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

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

    Let me just say a word about taxes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • PMQT – 23 April 1996

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 23rd April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Kashmir

    Q1. Mr. Madden: To ask the Prime Minister when he intends next to meet the Prime Minister of India to discuss Kashmir.

    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): I have no plans at present to meet the Indian Prime Minister. I look forward to an early opportunity to do so following the Indian elections, which begin later this month.

    Mr. Madden: Does the Prime Minister share the growing international view that the conflict over Kashmir presents the gravest threat to international peace today, given that India and Pakistan have gone to war over Kashmir previously, and that both countries now have a nuclear capability? Against that background, will the Prime Minister and Her Majesty’s Government do everything possible to persuade the next Government of India to enter into serious and urgent negotiations with the Government of Pakistan on the basis of UN resolutions, to find an acceptable settlement on the basis of the right of the people of Kashmir to decide their own future?

    The Prime Minister: That is an important matter, as the hon. Gentleman says. We are in touch with our friends and colleagues in India and in Pakistan. We have said consistently to those friends and colleagues that we are prepared to help in the search for a solution, either at the UN or in any other forum, provided that the parties concerned wish us to do so. That remains our position, but there must be simultaneous progress on several fronts–first, self-evidently, bilateral dialogue; secondly, the development of a genuine political process in Kashmir, with an improvement in the human rights position there; and, thirdly, a clear cessation of external support for militants, which has poisoned the atmosphere in Kashmir for far too long.

    Mr. Whitney: Does my right hon. Friend agree that recent developments in Kashmir have caused many UK citizens of Kashmiri origin much anxiety? His statement that the British Government will continue to press for a stable democratic solution of the Kashmir problem will therefore be most welcome.

    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I know from my experience that what he says about citizens here in the United Kingdom is true. Our policy is to advocate the development of a genuine political process in Kashmir.

     

    Engagements

    Q2. Ms Armstrong: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 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.

    Ms Armstrong: As we once again see Tory Members of Parliament queuing up to express their differences–one with another–over European policy, is not the Government’s real problem the widely held view of the Prime Minister, which was vocalised this morning by Sir James Goldsmith when he asked how people could be expected to follow a man who zig-zags so much?

    The Prime Minister: I can think of some prominent politicians who, in the past two years, have made it their life’s work to deny everything that they stood for previously. So far as I recall, those politicians enjoy the strong support of the hon. Lady.

    As to Europe, the hon. Lady might care to look at the comments of some of her hon. Friends in response to recent statements that I have made about Europe which expose clear differences on the Opposition Benches. She might also care to look at some of the pamphlets that have been produced, in which many tens of Labour Members demonstrate their sharp differences with the Labour Front-Bench policy. They are as split on Europe as they could be.

     

    Q3. Mr. Jacques Arnold: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 April.

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

    Mr. Arnold: Will my right hon. Friend reaffirm that British beef is best and that that remains the case despite the scaremongering by the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) which has done so much damage? Will he tell our European colleagues that, until the ban is lifted, there will be no more co-operation from this country, nor any more British money?

    The Prime Minister: I am happy to confirm to my hon. Friend that British beef is best. I am also happy to confirm to him and to others that it is entirely safe, and that has been verified by British scientists, by the World Health Organisation and by Commissioner Fischler. There is no justification whatever for the European ban, but I believe that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has made some progress this morning and I am delighted with that. We are seeking to get the ban lifted as soon as possible, and I hope and expect that that will happen.

    As to withholding resources, I must tell my hon. Friend that that would be illegal under United Kingdom law, quite apart from European law. I am not sure that either the House or my hon. Friend would wish the Government to behave illegally.

    Mr. Blair: I suspect that the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) speaks for many tens on the Conservative side. Will the Prime Minister clarify whether it is the Government’s policy to threaten retaliation against Europe over beef, so that the confusion and incompetence at the heart of Government policy may be removed once and for all?

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman once threatened to leave Europe, as I recall–it was part of his election manifesto. As the hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) might put it, he has clearly zig-zagged from that policy since then.

    Our policy is as I described it a moment ago: to try to seek, by agreement, the lifting of the ban. I hope that the ban will be lifted but, if that is unreasonably withheld, our position is–as it has been–that we shall look at other options.

    Mr. Blair: What does that mean? I suggest to the Prime Minister that a strategy based on the Grand Old Duke of York is not a very good one. The Foreign Secretary is hinting at retaliation, the Deputy Prime Minister contradicts him and he calls his European partners a bunch of something-or-others while the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is negotiating with them.

    Will the Prime Minister kindly take a grip on the situation? If he does not, he will find that his Government are taken seriously neither at home nor abroad.

    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends played a part in creating this problem. There is not a beef farmer in this country who does not know that the problem has been worsened by the way in which the Labour party has behaved. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman has the gall to continue to behave in that way. I set the matter out perfectly clearly for the right hon. Gentleman a moment ago and I am sorry that he was unable to understand it. We are discussing the lifting of the ban, and we are making progress on that. That is the right way to proceed but, at the end of the discussions, if the lifting of the ban is unreasonably withheld, we shall consider other options for action. I hope that is clear enough for the right hon. Gentleman this time.

    Mr. Blair: If the Prime Minister is to threaten retaliation, he should be clear about what he is saying. At some point, the Prime Minister will have to admit the brutal truth to himself–that the business of his Government is less designed to run an Administration than to appease the factions in the Conservative party. Until that changes, he and his Government will be divided, weak and incompetent.

    The Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman is so keen on being clear, perhaps he will be clear about his tax plans. Perhaps he will be clear about why, if children stay on to do A-levels, their parents should lose £500 a year in benefit. Perhaps he will recognise that we operate in Europe in the national interest while he seeks party interest. It is in the national interest to seek, as we are doing, the lifting of the ban on beef, and it is equally in everyone’s interest to remind the beef industry which party played a role in worsening the crisis.

     

    Q4. Sir Wyn Roberts: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 April.

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

    Sir Wyn Roberts: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of young people staying on in full-time education since 1979? Does he agree that that considerable achievement, on which our future depends, is put at risk by the plans that we have heard from Opposition Front Benchers for chopping the funding for 16 to 18-year-olds?

    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend is entirely right. Even among the children of unskilled parents, more than half now stay on in education beyond their 16th birthdays. The claim by the shadow Chancellor, who is probably absent because he is checking his figures, that only 20 per cent. of children stay on at school is years and years out of date. It is based on figures from between 1974 and 1978, under the Labour Government. The fact that the figures are so wrong shows the vast increase in educational opportunities since then. The reality for working-class and other parents is that, if their children stay on at school beyond GCSE to A-level, the Labour party will charge them £500 for each child by taking away their child benefit–so much for Labour’s concern for opportunities for the poor.

    Mr. Ashdown: We can always tell when the Government are in a real mess–they start to blame everybody else. Given the urgent necessity to get the ban on British beef lifted, have not the past 24 hours been all too typical of the five weeks of fiasco over BSE? The Foreign Secretary launches gunboats over breakfast, Tarzan sounds the retreat over lunch and, by dinner, the poor old Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, on his way to Brussels, is shot in the foot again. How on earth can we persuade Europe to believe the Government when the Government cannot even agree among themselves?

    The Prime Minister: I suppose that, one day, it is just possible we might hear something from the right hon. Gentleman about what he would do in any given circumstances. We never hear that: we just get the usual carping criticism. The matter was carried forward in Moscow, when I met Heads of Government on Saturday; my right hon. and learned Friend took it further in the Foreign Affairs Council yesterday; and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is pursuing it today. Each and every day, there are further meetings and more progress is made towards getting the ban lifted. It would be helpful if, just once, the right hon. Gentleman were to think of the interests of the beef industry and of the country, rather than produce the carping criticism that we usually get from him.

     

    Q5. Mr. Robert G. Hughes: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 April.

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

    Mr. Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Church-aided schools have a long and proud tradition of providing good quality education? Therefore, is he, like me, shocked to see the specific attacks on Church schools by the Liberal Democrats? Is that not another example of the Liberal Democrats attacking parental choice and the right of parents to make their own choice? Does he agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) that parents must take that into account when they vote at the next election?

    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of moral and spiritual education, and I share the views of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). What the Liberal spokesman said was a silly and ill-considered attack on religious education and I can assure my hon. Friend that it will never form part of our policy.

    Mr. Donald Anderson: What further measures of appeasement do the Prime Minister and the chairman of the Conservative party have in mind to placate the patriot across the water, Sir James Goldsmith?

    The Prime Minister: The answer to the hon. Gentleman is quite clear–none.

     

    Q6. Mr. Congdon: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 April.

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

    Mr. Congdon: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will press ahead with the objective of achieving a 20 per cent. rate of basic income tax? Given the reports in the press at the weekend, is it not absolutely clear that, while the Government are rightly moving towards a 20p rate, the Labour party is moving towards a 30p rate?

    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend will know, one quarter of taxpayers already pay tax at only 20 per cent. and I confirm that, as soon as it is affordable, we shall move further towards a 20 per cent. tax rate for everyone. There is no doubt that taxes go up under Labour Governments. The Labour party does not like to admit that. Today, the shadow Chancellor is trying to gag the City, but the fact is that, because Labour wishes to spend more, it will always tax more at national level, as it is doing today at local level.