Q and A session on globalisation
8 February 2008
Gordon Brown has spoken of "the opportunity revolution" offered to Britain by globalisation. Speaking at a question and answer session in London, Mr Brown said changes in the way economies operated around the world meant there was now the greatest chance for social mobility than at any time since 1945.
Read the transcript
Prime Minister:
Can I say first of all what a pleasure it is to be here, to thank the Friedrich Ebert Institute and the Policy Network for organising this superb conference. And I thought I would be coming along, having heard all the conclusions, and that you would have made up your mind about the future and I could simply give the vote of thanks to everybody who had participated.
Giles rightly talked about the role of ideas in politics, and no two men have done more to promote ideas in politics than David Marquand and Giles Radice, so it is a great pleasure to be alongside them.
The fate of people with ideas in politics has not always been encouraging. Keynes of course was the great ideas man of the 1930s, and I was a Minister at the UK Treasury obviously in the last few years, and I found when I arrived at the Treasury that he promoted his great ideas, how we could conquer unemployment - later found to be absolutely the right policy - and he sent his paper to the Treasury, the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury had marked on it only three words: "Inflation, extravagance, bankruptcy". And when Keynes went to America to present his great ideas about the future of the international organisations and reminded us that when he was on the steps of the Treasury in America meeting the US Treasury Secretary, the Treasury Secretary turned to this great intellectual and said: "Where is your lawyer?' And Keynes said: "What do you mean, my lawyer?" And the Treasury Secretary said: "Well who does your thinking for you?" It led Keynes to say that politics was the survival of the unfittest.
Now the question you are asking - where do we go from here? This is the central question, not just for Germany and Britain, but for all major countries in the coming few years and it is the central issue I believe of the American election.
If you look at the changes that we are having to cope with and master, we are in a totally different world from even ten years ago when we took power in 1997. The scope, and the speed, and the scale, as no doubt you have been talking about, of the shift of global economic power is at a level unprecedented since the industrial revolution. On top of that climate change means that no government can have a policy simply for economic progress and social justice, but must now have a policy for economic efficiency, social justice and environmental care.
The changes that are taking place as a result of security issues, terrorism, failed states, global poverty, the threat of global diseases being able to move between continents means that we need definitively a new system of global governance and a new relationship between rich and poor countries. And probably not fully understood as a political issue is what has emerged from the power of the internet, that people now themselves are in a position to drive in all sorts of different ways political decisions and other decisions. And if you take public services, they can no longer be uniform or standardised, they are going to have to be tailored to people's needs.
Now I feel that for many progressive parties around the world globalisation fills them with fear. I feel that to a large extent many have become protectionist, or could become protectionist, and I feel there is a sense that the balance of power is shifting to the east and somehow we are going to move out in the countries that we represent.
And I feel the opposite actually. I am incredibly optimistic about what globalisation and how we manage it offers us for the future. I believe there is an enormous potential for progressive politics if we can set out the right paradigm for the future. And what I mean by that is this. I mean it is easy to resort to what a lot of people had, I mean Shelley said of his mother-in-law that she had lost the art of communication but not, alas, the gift of speech and to some extent when I hear statements about globalisation I feel that people cannot communicate a message to the ordinary public who are themselves insecure about their prospects. But what I would say are the features of it, and how we can respond, and why it is a huge opportunity and why I think we have got this great political chance, first, is that we used to talk about national economies in terms of there being limited room at the top who you could train this group of doctors, this group of engineers, this group of scientists, but there was limited room at the top and therefore the opportunity for social mobility was itself limited.
Now in a global economy there is no limit to the national room at the top. Good global jobs are going to be created, and the question is whether it is Britain, or Germany, or other countries that are going to get the best share of these good global jobs. And therefore the opportunities for social mobility are there in a far bigger way than at any point since 1945.
The second thing is that if people recognise that there is no future for unskilled work in the industrialised countries, then the agenda for skills, education, training people to their full potential, is a massive demand upon a progressive agenda.
I think the third thing is that we can build in our countries a higher aspiration culture, and if we were to do so then the opportunities that people can see for their future are again massive indeed.
And I would summarise the challenge as in past generations the limits placed upon us by there being national economies and not a global economy, where that only a small number of people could realise their potential, so some people could realise some of their potential, in the new economies and in the new global society the challenge is that we can unlock for all of the people all of their potential. And that should be the agenda for the future, that should be our agenda.
In other words the opportunity revolution was started 50 years ago with minimum standards in welfare provision, in education, in higher education, giving some people opportunities to be able to get on to higher education after 16 or 18. That has only just begun. The opportunity revolution is one that is unlocking all the potential of all of the people. And I believe that therefore not only have we got to encourage people to be of high aspiration, but also we have got to tailor our public services to the needs of people and their aspirations, and that means instead of the old uniform provision of standardised provision, we are going to have to think carefully about how public services can meet the individual needs of people.
So if you think of the economy as a two year old, it has got to have the opportunity of early learning and not be left behind. The 16 year old has got to have the opportunity to go on to get higher skills or they will be unemployable in this new economy. The adult who is in mid-career who needs to change job has got to get the opportunity to get the new skills, or if they want to, to start a business. And the agenda for us is to be on the side of opportunity, knowing as we do that the power of opportunity to change people's lives is really the agenda of social democratic parties round Europe.
So I am enormously optimistic about the future. The way that globalisation will work is that it challenges us to provide even greater opportunities for people previously denied them, but also for people who have got good opportunities but want better opportunities. For the issue is, and I think this is really where we are - how can we help everybody unlock their potential to the full? And I think that is the agenda that we should concentrate on in the coming year.
Chairman:
Well as you know ... and I think it does give as it were a narrative for what a social democratic government and party can do. But of course there is a lot of sort of hidden if you like, in your term, unlocking the potential is the implication that a lot of it isn't unlocked at the moment. What do you think are the biggest and most serious obstacles to this dream, which has to be overcome, and how do you think they can be overcome?
Prime Minister:
For us it is lack of vision about what is possible. I think for us it is as political thinkers and people looking at the future of politics, it is not realising that all we did, although it was a great success story over 50 years, was to create a series of minimum standards so that people did have opportunity. But now the next stage is to say to people it is only if you can unlock your potential to the full that you will get the best of global opportunities that are available. And so you go to a school now and you talk to the pupils, and you can sense that if someone simply has the minimum of qualifications, in ten years time they will not be able to get the jobs that are going to be available around the world. I mean there has been a 400% increase in unskilled workers because of the entry of China and India to the global economy. That means that if China is paying 5% of the wages of Germany or Britain to the workers, most of the unskilled work will either be done in China or India or Asia, or alternatively most of that unskilled work will be taken over by technological change. We have got to say to a young person of 16: if you don't have a skill, if you don't get a skill, then you are in danger of not being employable. And then we have got to help and encourage the aspirations that will make it possible for people to get these skills for the future.
So any society where too few people are benefiting from opportunities in education, is not going to be one that is bringing out the best in people and their potential, and is not going to succeed in the global society.
Equally, I go to my local school sometimes where I was brought up and I was educated, it is in my own constituency. When I was at school, not one company, not one business, not one enterprise, ever came near my school. You had the professions recruiting for lawyers and everything else, but there was no contact between schools and business.
Now what we have got is a situation where businesses are now coming to schools, talking about enterprise, talking about entrepreneurial opportunities. In fact I was back at one of the schools in my constituency only a few weeks ago and they had won this enterprise competition and all these kids had started their own companies, and seen them through the year, and were showing that they were entrepreneurial and could run the company. In fact one came up on to the stage and said with great glee that she had not only run a successful company, but avoided any corporation tax as a result of her ingenuity.
But here you have got children who previously had not got the chance of talking, thinking about enterprise, and we have got to say to young people look there is a massive number of entrepreneurial opportunities in the economy, we can help you get them, that is what unlocking opportunity and unlocking potential is all about, and you can take that through to all the changes in career that people are going to have during the course of their lives, and say look we are on the side of opportunity, we know from our experience the power of opportunity to change lives.
Why is that a different agenda from a right wing agenda? Because when it comes to opportunity and how we can extend opportunity, some people will say well charities can help, and of course they can help and they can give people support, and some people say you can do a great deal on your own, and you can do a great deal on your own, but the only guarantee of opportunity is if the government is prepared to say we will back everyone in our society and make sure that these opportunities are available. And we are running this debate in Britain at the moment because we are saying you need skills until the age of 18, so even if you are in work at 16 or 17, you should have a day's training in employment, so everybody will have education of some kind and at some level until the age of 18.
[PARTY POLITICAL CONTENT] And we know the power of government to enable that and empower people with opportunity, and that is I think why progressive forces are going to win in how you combat the challenges of globalization. And I feel it is in entrepreneurial education, it is in employment, it is in culture as well where we can open up opportunities for people in music and the arts. It is understanding the range of potential that people have. You know, before we used to measure people by IQs, then we measured people by 11 Pluses. Actually the range of people's potential goes beyond analytical skills that can be detected in IQs and in 11 Pluses and some of the exams that people undertake. And it is interpersonal skills, it is communication skills, it is technical skills, it is engineering skills, all these different skills, these potentials have got to be recognised. And I think we are only at the beginning of an agenda where if you like we are halfway there in the opportunity revolution in all our countries.
Chairman:
Don't you think there is a slight danger in the way that you have been phrasing this? And I agree with the content, but could it be said that this is a bit technocratic, a bit economistic? You are saying to people, "look you have a chance now to be at the top of the global economy, this will be good for you, this will be good for the country and good for the world". But isn't there also a kind of moral side to all of this, or shouldn't there be?
Prime Minister:
Well I think the great thing about British philosophy over the years is that this sense that it is a moral right of people, and a moral responsibility on the part of decision makers to make it possible for people to realise their full potential, and runs right across English literature and English poetry. And no doubt this is true of so many other countries as well. I mean Thomas Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' is written centuries ago, is about in a graveyard all this talent that was never unlocked, that never had the chance to show itself - the village [INAUDIBLE], the Cromwells, the Miltons, but never had the chance to be what they could have been.
And if you go through to the poetry of Wordsworth in the 19th century, and then you go through to some of the great philosophers that have influenced [INAUDIBLE] and then through to Tawney, and then right through to the work that you, David, have done, this sense that there is a moral imperative if you like to help people, and it is about empowerment actually, it is not about dictation, it not about controlling, it is not about management, it is empowering people to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in themselves to become.
Now the new sort of observation is that that was always the right thing to do. I mean think of past centuries as some great creative genius that was unlocked, and then the wasted talents of millions of people who never had the chance even of basic education.
But the new thing in our century is understanding that added to this moral argument about the importance of helping people realise their potential to their full, is this economic argument that if you can do that then you can not only benefit from the global economy but actually make the global society work better.
And you know it is not just restricted to the old industries or the old services. If you take the environment, the talent that people have to create new processes and products for the environment is going to be one of the great transforming features of the next period of time.
Now obviously I want Britain to lead the way, but there are many countries in a position to do that. And unlocking that potential and encouraging it, given the interest among young people, particularly on the environment, is a great challenge that will bring new inventions, great innovations, new processes and products, and will benefit everybody. So I am saying yes the moral argument has always been there, but added to that there is clearly an economic argument that says minimum standards are no longer enough. Maximum opportunity is what it has got to be about. And if you are looking at how we can extend opportunity to people, then that is the case for progressive politics, because it cannot be done by charities or individuals simply on their own, there must be a guarantee to people that if they take up the opportunity that opportunity will be there for them.
Chairman:
Fascinating, your little comment about philosophers in the past. It occurred to me that this kind of vision that you have fleshed out, you mentioned Tawney and you mentioned John Stuart Mill. Tawney is clearly a classic social democrat, John Stuart Mill is normally thought of as being a small "L" liberal, a social liberal. Do you think that this theme, this grand narrative, could it be a way of, how can I put this, of being together again, the progressive broad-based tacit progressive coalition if you like, consensus anyway, which I think has always been a crucial factor in all the big Labour victories that we have had in the last 100 years, certainly 1945, to a lesser extent in 1966, to an enormous extent in 1997?
And it seems to me that this theme could become, if you put it in the context of social liberalism, could become the cement for something like that again if you can get the right way of putting it, the right language of saying it?
Prime Minister:
Well like many people here, I have talked about a progressive consensus and how you build that for the future, and I mean a progressive consensus that is able to capture the imagination of the public, and it is simply not just a group of politicians talking together.
While you go back to John Stuart Mill, rightly, is that all of us must be concerned to ensure people's liberties, people's freedom from arbitrary treatment by any vested interest, and that is an essential part in my view of any progressive thinking, and I think that is common to both Liberal and Labour parties.
And when Rawls writes about equal liberties compatible with the liberties of all, I think all of us would subscribe to that important thing. But I think what John Stuart Mill got to in the last part of his writing, I sense, was this idea of positive liberty and not simply a negative liberty, and this idea that while it is absolutely vital, and nothing should detract from the importance, and you know I firmly believe this, of emphasising the individual liberty of the citizen against any vested interest in the protection against arbitrary power.
But you can also talk, as the later Liberal philosophers after Mill did, about this idea of positive liberty expressed in the sense of people having the chance to realise their potential to the full. And I think if you think then of the demands of the next 20, or 30, or 40 years, then what you might call the second part of the opportunity revolution should be common to all progressive thinking, that you can combine the liberty, which is the liberty as freedom from arbitrary treatment, with this idea of a positive liberty which is people given the chance to realise their potential to the full.
But when I talk about the progressive consensus, I think really the issue here is how you can build public support for it. And there is no point in politicians sitting behind closed doors and talking about detailed policies that are of interest to them if they cannot win public support.
It seems to me that this agenda, which is about people empowered to make decisions that affect their lives, politicians giving people far more power over their lives. After all what is the public service reform agenda all about? It is actually about empowering people so that they make the decisions about how the services that they get can be far more tailored to their needs. So there are three phases of public sector reform: we had the investment in the public sector after 1997; then we had the diversity of supply that opened up the provision of public services in a way that gave people more choices; now we are talking about the diversity of diversification of demand so that people's demands are different and public services must meet them.
And I think you can build public support around this agenda: that policing needs to be more personal to people's needs, that the Health Service has got to make sure that both in its preventative care and its curative care that we are attentive to the needs of the individual patient, and of course schooling must be more about tuition and giving support to the individual for his or her aptitude and her potential, than it is simply about getting a class of 30 people and giving the same lecture to every one of them. And gradually we are seeing how each of our public services is going to have to change and adjust to the needs to be more personal, and to be more personal of course they have got to be more professional and they have got to offer a reliability of service and a standard of service that means we are talking about excellence and we are not just talking about a minimum standard, which in a sense is where we were for too many years.
Chairman:
I could go on, for a very long time, and I would enjoy doing so. But there is a large number of people here and I think they ought to have a chance to interrogate you, or interlocute, you as well. So I am going to throw the debate, if that is what it is, to the floor. But there are a lot more people here today than there were yesterday, a lot of friends from the media. They are not segregated, as some of you thought, we don't have a kind of apartheid here, but maybe the media representatives here could be just a little restrained so as to give a fair crack of the whip to the participants. I mean some of the things you said I am sure will have fascinated our friends from Germany, and Scandinavia, and Spain, and France and other European countries. So what I think we will do is to ask for about three questions, one after another, and then put those three to you, and we can carry on and see how that goes for roughly half an hour more, which is what I think we have got. So who would like to ask the first question?
Question:
Prime Minister it has been very good to listen to you and David [INAUDIBLE] the moral, what he called the more technocratic argument. And if I may be so bold as to say, I think when you talk about the moral case it is much more inspiring to the public and that may be more likely to win people over than the more ecoomistic case.
And David asked you about the obstacles to realising potential and it has felt a bit like the elephant in the room, which wasn't talked about, which was poverty and inequality, and I have heard you in the past speaking very inspiringly about the need to tackle child poverty in particular. Some people think that that has to be done in the context of also tackling inequality. So my question I suppose is where does tackling poverty and inequality fit within the framework that you have outlined for us?
Question:
I just think for our European friends here, I wondered what your thoughts were regarding advice that could be given to other social democratic partner parties throughout Europe since new Labour has been probably the predominant force throughout Western European social democracy, so your thoughts and perhaps some hints for the future.
Question:
I would like to raise two questions. Listening to you, you were very much speaking about the individual, empowering the individual, unlocking certain problems that they can develop their opportunities, and you said there are a lot of opportunities in globalisation, and I agree on that. But, and it is my question from a social democratic point of view because that is a different tradition in debate. 20 years ago, or 40 or 50 years ago we discussed about society, politics, the state and so on, so giving a framework, now we are talking about the individual and that is a different approach. I am asking this because if you look at videos and how they look at globalisation there is a kind of fear because they see the opportunity but they want to know where is the security if we develop in a certain direction. That is my first question. My second question, there is a wonderful new book by Robert Reich called "Super Capitalism" and he points out one thing, and it is a very important thing I think for us. There are new chances from the consumer point of view because there is a new demand, there are different opportunities, but on the other hand the citizen is going to lose in globalisation. And the question is how can we bring these two things together because that is a vital question for social democrats to my mind?
Prime Minister:
You talked about the past. I am reminded of this story of John Kenneth Galbraith going to the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Republic and giving a speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary, and in the front row, as he recalled the story, were Hayek, and von Mises and all the right wing Austrian economic philosophers, and he started his speech by saying he owed a very great debt of gratitude to Hayek and von Mises and others because if they hadn't left Austria in 1945, Austria would never have been able to enjoy the economic progress and social justice it had. That first 50 years of social democratic achievement was essentially collective institutions supporting the individual, but it wasn't empowering for the individual in the way that I believe we could be in future.
The next 50 years is obviously also about using the collective support that we can provide to empower the individual, but in different ways. On many occasions the individual will be driving the service rather than accepting simply a uniform service, and I think that is the difference, it is not just enabling, it is empowering and the individual in the driving seat and I think it is collective support for individual potential to be developed. That is how I think we should see the common strand between what happened in the first 50 years after 1945 and what is happening now.
And then the question is asked, what are the lessons that we learn across Europe from both success and failure, and I suppose the lessons we learn from Austria, as well as from America by what is happening? And I think the lesson is you can never count on the status quo, you can never say we are just here to protect you against something that is about to hit you. You have got to show people a way forward. [PARTY POLITICAL CONTENT]. And so the starting point was obviously getting people back to work in a stable economy, and we succeeded in getting 3 million people back to work over the last 10 years, then it was rebuilding the public services but with reform of the public services, not simply putting money behind them.
And in a global economy the natural tendency is large numbers of people will say, "protect me against these changes, shelter me against something that is about to happen, I feel a victim, not a beneficiary of change even although I am a consumer in the west getting the benefit of cheaper goods coming out of China and Asia. If my manufacturing job is about to go, protect me, stop the change, halt the change, do something that will essentially be a protectionist measure".
And I think as progressive forces we have got to resist that. We have got to say the best way we can help you is often not protecting you in your last job but helping you get the next job. The best way we can protect you is giving you a skill that will equip you for the jobs that are going to come in the future, not the jobs that are definitely going to go. And I think the protectionist tendency at the moment, and you see it in America at the moment, is to somehow say to people if you support us then what we will do is we will stop that job being lost, when everybody knows that that is an illusion. What is going to happen is that we are going to have to help people get the new skills for the new jobs of the future. So the way we succeed as progressive parties is not telling people we simply protect you against change, but telling people we will equip you so that we can master change. And I think that is going to be the lesson that will win the elections in future years, as well as what Tony achieved in winning the election in 1997.
But that means we have got to deal with real problems and obviously Ruth is absolutely right. Since 1997 in Britain absolute poverty amongst children has gone down from something like 3.5 million children to 1.5 million, and we have made advances on the definition that we have used for relative poverty. But we have got a huge amount more to do. And for me it is persuading the public that that child who is denied the chance to realise their potential, if not given the chances, even before the age of 5, is going to lose out, people whose lives are destined to failure even before they have begun if we do not take the right action. And what do we know now? We know now that what happens to a child in the first 48 months of their lives is probably more important than anything that will happen for their intellectual development in the next 48 years. And therefore the services that are available for the under 5s, which were in a sense Cinderella services in all countries, perhaps Scandinavia until recent years, these services have got to enable every child to have the chance to get early learning, to get the right personal development, to get the support, the books and also the healthcare that will enable them not to be left behind even before they have started at school.
Now you know from 1945 - 1997 the under-5 services were basically a mother got maternity services, you were called for vaccination and then you were asked to turn up at school. That is really what it was. Now you have got guaranteed rights to nursery education at 3 and 4, we have got Sure Start for the poorest areas of the country, but extended to all areas of the country soon, which is providing all the learning opportunities for children, and we have the right form of maternity protection. And we have to a large extent improved the conditions of children in poverty in these early years.
What more have we got to do? We have got to make sure that if you are working you are not in poverty as a family with children, and we haven't yet made sure that that is happening and I hope we will be able to do more than that soon, and then we have got to help those people who are inactive, for whatever reason, some of whom need the chance to get the skills to get back to work, some of whom need proper support, which is sometimes not available. And I think we are learning from things like family intervention partnerships and learning from nurse-family partnerships a whole range of things that can be done to support families.
So I agree with Ruth that this is the unfinished business of social reform. We have come a long way, but we have got a long way to go, but it is a moral and economic argument. Any society that ignores the potential of any child, in particular a society like ours, where China has 4 million graduates a year, we have 400,000 graduates a year, we cannot afford to waste the talent of any child economically, but it is not right morally either. And that is why the unfinished business of social reform is right at the centre of the assault on child poverty.
Question:
Welcome Gordon. Thanks very much for coming to this particular conference. There are a couple of issues which I think many people are concerned about currently. One is constitutional reform. I know you are a reformist but the recent paper which has been produced on constitutional matters, particularly with regard to voting systems, was somewhat lacking in recommendations. And another thing is about people's empowerment. If we are engaged with trying to empower people, particularly at the community level, which I am as a community activist socialist councillor, how do we and your government step forward on doing something fairly radical, particularly when we seem to be moving away from the sort of regional structure and policy, which of course is very prevalent in Europe, and after all we did set up the Lander system in Germany, didn't we?
Question:
I am the kind of invited guest from Africa, Asia and Latin America in this meeting I think. We work on international development. We have had a number of conversations about Europe and Ed Miliband made the point in a previous session that we should mobilise around issues, not institutions. But people have also said we need a Barack Obama or an Al Gore on Europe, I think what we need is a Gordon Brown on Europe. So the question is will you be the Gordon Brown on Europe and what are the issues around which you will mobilise us?
Question:
Following on directly from that. Gordon, a speaker on the last panel asked the question, what is the role of the EU specifically between on the one hand the nation state and on the other hand globalisation. And I wonder how you would answer that question, what is the EU good for in the new world you described?
Prime Minister:
I think that is an absolutely fascinating question. A global Europe is what I want to talk about, but let me deal with the proportional representation question first.
You know in 1918 the Labour Party in Scotland was allowed a separate manifesto by the National Labour Party and it had only three things on its separate manifesto: one was the devolution proposal, the second was proportional representation and the third was prohibition of alcohol. Now we have actually achieved two of them, but proportional representation is part of the system in Scotland and Wales and obviously there is a different system of election in Northern Ireland. And I think to be fair to the paper that was set out, that what it did was it looked at the experience of all the different systems that are quite distinct, of course the European system of election for members of the European Parliament as well, and what is the experience we have had of them in the United Kingdom, and it is genuinely a paper to stimulate a debate on these issues.
As far as the constitutional agenda is concerned, in some ways I am somewhat disappointed by the reaction to our proposals for a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, for steps to reform the constitution, to end the Royal Prerogative, to open up greater freedom of information. And given that we have had a great movement of opinion in the country like Charter 88 and a whole series of movements over the last few years to stimulate this constitutional reform, I feel right at the centre of it is this issue about how we can empower people for the future. And you are right, if at a local level we can give people power of recall for officials, if we can give people the power to hold to account people who are doing particular jobs as well as improve the elective mechanisms for local government, I think that would be a very good thing as well. So my appeal to people here is that this constitutional debate actually happens, that there is an open door for this to take place.
Obviously you would prefer to proceed by consensus and not simply one party imposing their will, but this is a huge debate about the future. Because in a sense I detect that if you are looking at the next stage of our development as a country and all the big decisions we have got to make - climate change and what we do on that, security and terrorism, economic change, what we do to build community cohesion and social regeneration in difficult communities - in each of these areas you cannot make the right decisions unless people are involved in making the decisions themselves.
You can't build strong communities without people involved in the making of strong communities; you can't answer climate change without people being involved in showing personal and social responsibility in relation to the environment; and you can't deal with terrorism and security unless there is a sense on the part of people that there are hearts and minds involved as well as all the policy and military and other action that is necessary. So the next stage of our development depends on that participation and therefore I hope that the constitutional debate that we are inviting people into will stimulate it.
Now I have talked about a global Europe. I believe that the history of the European Union inevitably when you had the accession of so many states, now up to 27, was dominated for many years by the internal organisation of the European Union. And you had to make decisions about how different countries could work together and the huge achievement, and let us not forget this, and we must never forget this, is countries that 100 years ago were in danger of always being at war with each other are now at peace, and the very existence of the European Union safeguards that peace and brings in countries to the east of Europe who want to be part of a democratic framework. This is a huge achievement that when people look at the span of centuries they will see that as absolutely massive, and the praise that must go to the decision makers who made that possible is something that I don't think we always properly acknowledge.
But of course the challenge now for the European Union is to prove that it can't only guarantee peace, but can bring about prosperity and security to its citizens in every way. And that is why a Europe that looks inwards would not be sufficient to meet the challenges of the future. I would say that we should think not of a trade bloc Europe but of a global Europe, and I think the role that Europe can play in the development of what I would call a global society, not a new world order but something bigger than that, a global society, is momentous.
We are leading the debate about climate change in Europe and I believe that the post-2012 agreement will be very much dependent on European leadership which has been obvious in the commitments on renewables, on carbon reduction, on a whole set of demonstration projects like carbon capture. So we are leading the debate on climate change and the cooperation across Europe necessary to achieve that is obviously proven.
I think we can lead the debate about what a global economy could look like, but given I have talked a bit about the economy I will not talk about that too much now. But our single market is a model for what has got to happen in Africa and what has got to happen in other parts of the world.
But I think there are two other areas where we can lead the debate as well. The biggest problem of peace around the world is now fragile states and states that are either broken down or subject to terrorist activity and where you may put in some humanitarian aid at some point, or peace keepers at another point.
But actually the real problem, whether it was some states in Europe, or Somalia in Africa, or Darfur in Sudan, the real problem is to have humanitarian aid, peace-keeping support, but then reconstruction with proper security. And you are going to need a civilian and military presence to do that and I think that Europe and NATO together could make a huge contribution to that for the future.
And at the heart of the reform of the United Nations must be this idea that where we have potentially in future Zimbabwe or Burma in similar conditions you have got the potential to have the civilian and military rapid response standby facility that can provide the support of lawyers and police and judges as well as civil workers and the military for there to be humanitarian aid, followed by peace keeping, followed by stability and reconstruction.
And then the second international area where Europe can make a difference is on the relationships between rich and poor countries, and I believe this is an opportunity for change that we will not take at our peril. This is the time to reform the global institutions to make them suited for the needs of 2008. We set up the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations in the 1940s and they were for a world of a few nation states with separate and protected and sheltered economies.
We are dealing with a global society now, we are dealing with 200 states, we are dealing with international cooperation being absolutely essential on an environment where there is no international agency that does it properly at the moment, on security I have just talked about, and on economic development for the poorest countries. And I believe that the World Bank should now become a World Bank for Development and the Environment with the resources to channel into alternative sources of energy for the poorest countries, for developing countries, the emerging markets who will never do anything other than build coal fired power stations or take the cheapest sources of energy unless there is an international support mechanism to enable them to do it.
We have got no early warning system for the world economy. As we have seen in the recent global financial turbulence the International Monetary Fund is not performing the function of being the world's economic body that can actually help us deal with crises, and more importantly prevent crises, so we need the reform of the International Monetary Fund, and we need a new approach to the relationship between the poorest countries in terms of aid, development and support.
Now in these areas Europe can take the lead - global Europe. Europe saying, look here are the changes that need to be brought about, we will support them, build support in the rest of the world and make it happen. And on the issue of international aid, which was raised rightly, Europe is the biggest donor of all the countries in the world, the accumulation of aid that is now provided by Europe is the biggest going to Africa and to Asia as well.
But we have it within our power in the next few years to achieve momentous things never achieved in any centuries before. We could be the first generation in history that could say that every child in the world was able to go to school. 70 million children do not go to school today. We could do this. There is no technical reason why we can't do it, there is actually no financial reason because it is a small amount of money, but there is a lack of political will to do it. We must lead that debate and make that happen because the only way we can bind rich and poor countries together is if we are in a position to say that the poverty of the developing countries has been addressed.
Equally on disease we could be the first generation in history to say that polio, tuberculosis, malaria, diphtheria and all these dreaded diseases that still today kill off millions of people can be abolished, and Europe again is leading the way in many respects, but we could go one bit further. And I believe that the work that is being done for a preventative vaccine for malaria, the work that is being done to tackle polio and tuberculosis, the work now on HIV/Aids, that carries with it the possibility that in this generation we could actually say that these diseases have been eradicated.
Now again only if Europe takes the lead on this will malaria for example be dealt with properly, and only if Europe proposes a new deal between rich and poor countries, can this actually happen.
And I think the deal is roughly this - be transparent as developing countries, make sure that you operate stable economic policies, be supportive of economic growth and trade. But we will support education, development, healthcare, and we will make sure that that is a lasting bargain so that you are able as countries in Africa and Asia to develop. Now only Europe will decide that Europe, working with America and the other countries, can make this happen. So global Europe can actually make in the next period such a huge difference to the quality of life in the rest of the world, that that unity that we are building in Europe is absolutely crucial.
Question:
Prime Minister can I ask you what you think we should do to improve our relations with Russia and what you think the role of Russia is likely to be over the next 10 - 15 years in the world? Will it change with the access of Mr Medledev to power, supposing he does come to power?
Question:
Prime Minister I am delighted to hear you talk about participation and the way in which we can involve the public in this. My question to you is how do we do that? I will give you a very simple example. Last night I was at a school governing body where we were talking about how to make a children's centre work, and not just in the government but also in the ideas and the entrepreneurship that those parents are showing and how that will work, they are making a difference to that service. They don't see what they are doing as being political, they don't see it as anything to do with progressive politics certainly, and obviously I have a vested interest in wanting them to feel that they are progressive. But my fear is that we are not involving the public in thinking not just in terms of how they can hold us to account as political people, but actually in terms of the contribution that they can make to social change. So my question is how can we unlock people's opportunity not just to be good public people but also to be good citizens?
Question:
The question that you pose that one of the basic questions is how to deal with the diversification of demands, and I would like to ask you that there is a demand and not only material but identity demands, cultural demands, and how to deal with this diversity of demands.
Prime Minister:
On Russia, look we want good relationships with Russia and in many spheres we are working very closely together, such as on Iran and such as many of the issues that will appear at the G8 agenda in Japan in July. And relations on these issues are good.
We have two problems: one is that someone was murdered on the streets of London and we have asked for the extradition of the person that we believe to be responsible, that person is now a member of the Russian Duma; the second issue is the treatment of the British Council. In no other area of the world is the British Council treated in the way that it has been treated over these last few months.
So I would just say to you that we want good relations with Russia but we are not in a position to either do nothing or stand by as the life of a citizen in Britain can be taken away without us getting the cooperation of authorities that we know could cooperate to deal with that problem. And we do not believe that the British Council that is doing the work that it is doing in promoting cultural relationships should be put in this position where people are effectively thrown out of important work that they are doing, despite there being an international treaty that they should have the right to work there.
On this question of participation, I think what we are moving from is an old idea of participation, which to some people [PARTY POLITICAL CONTENT] was a requirement to turn up in a smoke filled room once every few weeks for a meeting, and that was what participation involved. And I think what we are now seeing is that there are many layers to the kinds of participation that people are prepared to engage in, but people are prepared to be consulted on, to involve themselves and to engage in decisions in their local communities. But perhaps not in the old structured and formal and sort of permanent requirement that we put on them to attend a meeting every few weeks and to sit and listen to the minutes being read, and then to the agenda being contested, and then to a vote of confidence in the chair or something like that.
So I think we have got to recognise that the way people will participate in future will be less structured, it will be less a permanent commitment, but it will be no less meaningful for that. And we have got to create avenues for people to participate in ways that are acceptable to them.
Now the power of the internet and blogging and the ability to communicate through that is going to be incredibly important. The power of mobile telephones to actually transmit information is going to be important. I think the things that have been successful recently for us - Citizens' Juries where you go round the country and you listen to what people are saying, not just in a formal question and answer session which was the old way, and not in a public meeting where the speaker speaks and people have got the chance to ask one or two questions, but people actually participating in looking at individual issues.
And I have been going round the country, we have done ones on the Health Service and it is absolutely fascinating when people say what they really want out of the Health Service. We did one on the banning of smoking which is amazing that such a consensus has been built over such a short period of time for the public banning of smoking. We have done it on education. We have done it on adult learning. We have done it on all this range of things. And once people are willing to participate in looking at a problem and how you can solve it, then that changes the whole nature of participation. And people are not just an audience but they are actually participants in what is happening.
And I think over the next few years we are going to have to both experiment, pilot and give a head to lots of innovative ways of helping people choose the way that they want to participate in making decisions in their lives. So the way people hold policing to account will be different from formal meetings and maybe even formal elections. But there are ways in which the community can be involved in both determining what the policing should be in their area, and in giving the views about what should happen. In health and education we have got to look at how we can do better, as well as you rightly referring to schools. But there are millions of people every day participating in things in our country and we have got to give them the sense that what we are doing is meaningful by giving them the structures that they want to enable it to happen. And I think that is going to be a very important element of the constitutional reform agenda.
Now the final question was on the diversification of demand and cultures, how you respond to people's individual needs in the modern world, and that is going to be very difficult. It is again recognising the range of potential and interests that people have and how what used to be uniform and standardised services can respond to it. I went to a school the other week where a child was learning to read under our Every Child a Reader programme. That child would not have succeeded if they hadn't had that personal tuition that was absolutely essential to them, being given both the time and the personal sort of recognition that was necessary for them to concentrate on them to get to be a reader. And that young child at the end of it said to me that he had now learnt to read and he was going to be the best reader in England. And it was not only building a skill but building confidence in that child.
So we have got to look at every stage with our services and that goes right across the services for the elderly, what is going to be a huge issue in the next few years about how we can respond to the differentiated needs of the elderly. People do not want to spend their time in institutional care but they want a hierarchy of care that suits their different needs when they are staying at home. So on some occasions they will need just a home help, they may need a health visitor, they may need a doctor to be regularly there, they may need a whole series of services. They may want, rightly so, to have their own individual budget that they can choose who they employ and whom they get to do these services for them.
And that is how we will respond to the differentiated needs of people in the next few years. So public services cannot simply be collective services that are uniform and standardised that leave people with no voice and no choice and no forms of accountability. They can be diverse, they can be tailored to people's needs, they can be personalised. And the more personal they are the better they are. But that doesn't change the initial sort of judgment that the collective provision is in the interests of the individual and their potential and needs.
Chairman:
Prime Minister, Giles said that he had known me for I think he said 46 years, I think I have known you for about 18 years. I don't know if you remember this at all, probably not, it wasn't a very important thing for you, but I will never forget it. About 18 years ago when you were a front bench MP but the party was in opposition, out of the blue you asked me to come and talk to you in your little slightly squalid office opposite the House of Commons.
Prime Minister:
... how could you forget.
Chairman:
Well from my perspective reassuring - about a lecture that you were going to give to Charter 88, in which I was quite active at that stage. This meeting with you lasted for about four hours, from 8.00 pm until midnight. At the end I staggered out into Parliament Square with my shirt dripping with sweat, it was a hot May night it has to be said, and it was rather like going to a very rigorous tutor. I was quite terrified actually. Well I think you have mellowed a bit over those 18 years and can I just say on behalf of all of us a huge thank you for coming and for answering questions in such a spontaneous and witty and at the same time I think profound way.
Prime Minister:
And thank you for writing my Charter 88 Lecture.
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