24 MAY 2000

I’m very grateful to the Birmingham Press Club for hosting this lunch today and to you all for coming along. I’ll try to keep my comments brief so we have some time for questions.

As Government co-ordinator, my job is to help ensure delivery of the Government’s key policy priorities.

Many policy issues cut across different government departments - and our job is to see that they work together to deliver on policies that make a real difference to people’s lives.

Like social exclusion, for example, where my role is to make sure that policies on homelessness, truancy, teenage pregnancy and poor neighbourhoods are implemented, to deliver a real impact on the ground for the people who need our help most.

Often the issues are complex – a combination of high unemployment, poor education in training opportunities, poor housing, bad health and crime. But by working together with all parties we can make a difference.

Or Biotechnology which basically covers GM food and crops and regulation in the biotechnology industry. The Government’s position is that we are neither pro nor anti GM technology, we are pro safety, pro consumer and pro the environment.

We also recognise the value of biotech as a major growth industry and believe that the best way to help and encourage biotech companies is to have a proper regulatory regime that people can have confidence in.

After BSE that’s crucial. Which is why we have set up the Foods Standards Agency, a new Human Genetics Commission and a new Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission.

I also co-ordinate anti-drugs policy taking account of the health, education and criminal justice issues. We have a ten year anti-drugs strategy focusing on: treatment and prevention; cutting crime; and stifling the availability of drugs.

Here in Birmingham, for example, last year £6.5 million went into helping ensure that:

• over 95% of both primary and secondary schools have anti-drug education polices;

• drug treatment services are available for up to 1500 people who look for them – either voluntarily or through arrest referrals and court orders;

• and local projects like Turning Point and other training agencies are funded to help get people away from drugs and into jobs and a normal life.

Another crucial part of the work we do is in cutting government red tape – which I know is important to anyone in business and in the public sector.

But there is an important distinction to make between the cost of red tape and the costs of paying fair wages and providing workers with basic rights and entitlements.

But I make no apology for introducing proper employment rights and protections like a minimum wage, paternity and maternity leave, and proper holiday entitlements.

These are all part of a decent society here and across Europe.

This government have introduced no more regulations than previous governments.

But what we are trying to do better than previous governments is to simplify and minimise what administrative burdens we do place upon businesses - and on teachers and doctors and the police as well.

As part of that process, I chair a Ministerial panel which oversees the development of regulations; there is an independent taskforce chaired by Northern Foods Chair, Chris Haskins, and a special Regulatory Impact Unit which looks at what regulations government departments are proposing and recommends how they can be made simpler and easier to administer.

Another committee I chair looks at all the different policy areas, which impact on people living in the countryside.

It’s not just about farming and agriculture, it’s also about services, training, schools, health and jobs. Making sure that the interests of people who live in rural communities as well as those who live in urban communities are properly taken into account when new policies are put forward.

The other main role for the Cabinet Office is in driving forward the modernisation of Government.

This afternoon I will be going to the DePaul trust here in Birmingham to take part in a Learning Lab project - which is part of modernising government - and brings together staff from all different local agencies to see how they can improve their working practices together to provide a better, more integrated service for their clients.

So that’s what the Cabinet Office does and I’m happy to discuss any of those areas in more detail with you in questions.

But I’m also here today to talk overall about where Government is today, and where I think it’s going. Three years into this Parliament there is no doubt we’ve done a lot. It was very important early on to tackle some of the serious structural problems in the UK.

Increasing democracy through devolution to Scotland and Wales, and the London Assembly as well as major constitutional changes like the Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information.

All very important to do. All took a lot of time.

Structural change in the public services too - ending the internal market in the health service and the unfairness of Grant Maintained schools.

Again very important to do, took a lot of time.

And finally, changes to how the economy is managed, the independence of the Bank of England to create stability, end boom and bust, and stop interest rates being used as a political football.

These changes were essential if the extra investment that we put in was going to work and not be swallowed up in bureaucracy and lost in the system.

But it took a lot of energy, a lot of time and I believe has meant that the delivery of actual improvements on the ground - that people can see in their faces - has taken longer.

Change may come slowly. But when it comes you notice it.

And that has been the effect of the money we have invested in health, in education and in local communities.

The Government is delivering on the issues that really matter to people. Jobs, crime, hospitals and schools.

Nearly 200,000 young people have found jobs through the New Deal – 20,000 of them in the West Midlands.

NHS waiting lists are down, and waiting times will follow. Here in the West Midlands an extra £1.1billion is going into the Health Service and three of 38 new hospitals nation-wide are being built here in the West Midlands.

In schools in the West Midlands thousands of children have benefited from smaller infant classes – 38,000 so far.

We have done a lot but there is a lot more to do.

We’re working at long term solutions to long term problems here in the West Midlands and across the UK.

One of the key challenges is raise to skills and qualification levels so that everybody has a fair chance at a decent job.

As everyone in this room knows some of the most deprived areas in the country are in the West Midlands and we are working to deliver real improvements on the ground together with business, trade unions; the voluntary sector and local communities.

That partnership approach is crucial.

As the recent difficulties over the sale of Rover showed – it’s important to work together.

That’s why the Task Force was set up involving 21 West Midlands partners – the local Chambers, the council, the CBI and trade unions.

And with £129 million on the table, Steve Byers and the DTI are key members of that partnership.

We are in this for the long term – because it’s long term solutions that are needed – not quick fixes.

A lot of people have been blaming the strength of the pound for particularly manufacturing’s problems here in the West Midlands.

Let me say straight off that we understand the pressures that the pound/Euro exchange is rate is causing.

But quick fixes and panic measures are not the answer.

It’s exactly the sort of short term lurches from boom to bust in the past that have caused many of today’s problems.

Now we have underlying stability and steady growth in investment and jobs.

And that’s what matters most to business now and in the long term.

I got into politics to stand up for what I believe in and to get things done.

Over the past three years we’ve made a new start. And a lot has changed – including peoples’ expectations.

Now we have to deliver more to meet those expectations. There is clearly a long way to go.