Liverpool 2008: Nick Clegg's Leader's Speech (part two)

9 March 2008

[Click here to read part one of Nick Clegg's speech]
[Click here to watch Ed Davey's reaction to the speech]

It’s a funny thing, freedom.

It ought to belong to everyone, in equal measure.

But in Britain today, some people are still more free than others.

Pensioners spending a whole winter in the bedroom, because it’s the only room they can afford to heat.

That isn’t freedom.

Children shunted from one damp, temporary flat to another – sharing a bed with their parents because there’s no space for a room of their own.

That isn’t freedom.

Teenagers trapped in a cycle of drink and drugs and crime, because they have never known anything different.

That isn’t freedom.

And it doesn’t have to be like this.

A better Britain would put education and opportunity at its very heart so no child, no parent, is ever trapped in poverty.

These days, a clever, but poor child, will be overtaken at school by a less clever, but wealthier child by the age of six.

The age of six.

Just two thousand days old, and already let down by the system.

We cannot let this go on.

I met a remarkable young man a couple of months ago in Southwark.

Ashley had the kind of drive and charisma that fills you with hope – and the kind of childhood that makes you want to weep.

Passed about from one set of foster parents to another.

These days, the government calls kids in care “looked-after children”.

Too often, “looked-after” is just a painful euphemism for a childhood on the scrap heap.

You know how many looked-after children go to university?

Five percent.

But Ashley defied the system, defied the statistics, and got into Cambridge.

By sheer force of personality, and with the help of a good school, he has conquered circumstance.

But it shouldn’t be so hard.

The system should pave the way for people like Ashley, not set up roadblocks.

That’s why our idea for a Pupil Premium is so important, to get investment in education for the poorest children up to the levels of private schools.

And I will find the £2.5 billion it will cost.

I want to build an education system where the people who need the most help get the most help.

Where schools that take on children who are harder to teach get extra cash to fund catch up classes, Saturday school, one-to-one tuition – whatever it takes.

I’ve seen it work.

In the Netherlands, classes in deprived areas are half the size of classes in more affluent areas.

And as a result everyone gets a good education, no matter what their background.

We can have that here.

We can have a better education system, and through it a better Britain.

But, inequality today isn’t just about what happens at school.

The crisis reaches so deep that where you are born, and who your parents are, affects everything about how your life will pan out.

It even affects how long that life will be.

Some day, if you’re in London, get on the tube at Westminster, on the Jubilee line.

Take an eastbound train towards the Docklands.

Every station you pass, every time the train stops, every time the doors open and close, for every stop you travel east, life expectancy drops by a year.

It’s the same across Britain.

In Sheffield, a child born in the poorest neighbourhood will live 14 years less than a child born just a few miles away.

The NHS is a great national institution.

But it isn’t good enough.

It isn’t good enough when the very number of days you will spend on this planet are determined by the place and circumstances of your birth.

So let us build a new NHS – a People’s NHS.

That’s why this week we’ve committed ourselves to a patient guarantee.

Treatment within a specified waiting time – or we’ll pay for you to go private.

That’s the way it works in Denmark – not to undermine the public health system, but to guarantee patients’ rights.

And patients should have more control over their care – with budgets in their own hands to treat long term and chronic conditions.

Nowhere is this more important than in mental health.

People are waiting for literally years for help.

In Plymouth you’ll be stranded for three and a half years before you even get to see a therapist.

So people languish on incapacity benefit, and stuff themselves with pills that might not even work.

And sometimes, help never comes.

Like for Petra Blanksby.

A childhood of sexual abuse. Beatings from her mother. Repeatedly locked with her twin sister in a cupboard with the dogs.

In a last desperate cry for help, she set fire to her own mattress.

Instead of receiving help, she was convicted of arson and sent to prison where she tied a ligature around her neck and hanged herself.

She was 19.

And what makes the tragedy even more agonizing is that her twin sister, locked as a child in the same cupboard, but given help and therapy in her teens, is OK.

That’s how it should be. People should get a second, a third, a fourth chance at life – however many chances it takes.

Take our criminal justice system.

It doesn’t have to be just a dustbin for people who’ve been failed by everyone else.

It should be a place where people and communities come together to tackle crime and deal with problems.

Where criminals are punished, of course, but also steered away from crime.

I visited a great drugs court in West London last year run by a Judge called Justin Philips.

He wants the drug addicts he sees to really feel they’ve achieved something when they’re staying away from drugs and crime.

He cajoles, encourages, admonishes, and praises the offenders as if they were from his own family.

And it makes such a difference.

I met a young man called Aaron. His story was like that of almost every drug addict.

Stealing to buy drugs.

Failed attempts at rehab.

A never-ending cycle of crime, punishment, cold turkey, falling off the wagon.

And then he was sent to Judge Justin.

Who – quite literally – held his hand through the huge task of getting clean, and keeping clean.

Aaron told me – “Justin was the first person I ever met, my whole life, who cared about what happened to me.”

It makes a difference when you treat a human being like a human being.

And it can be this way.

We don’t have to have to have tens of thousands of young people hooked on drugs.

We don’t have to have women selling themselves on the streets to fund their desperate need for a hit.

We can care for people as we punish them, not only for their sake but to make British communities safer too.

Change the system, and we can change Britain.

Education, health and crime.

The top three concerns of the British people.

They have been for decades.

But I want us to get the environment up there too.

Our planet is sick.

And we will only heal it if people – if millions of people – demand action.

Climate scientists trade all sorts of terrifying numbers and statistics: degrees of warming, metres rise in sea levels, numbers of people who’ll be driven from their homes.

But there’s one number that worries me most.

Just one in fourteen people thinks the environment is a big problem.

Everyone in this room knows the Liberal Democrats have the best policies on tackling climate change.

But I am not content to sit around, burnishing our policy credentials so that, some time in the future – if the apocalypse comes – we can say “I told you so”.

We’ve got to make concern about the environment a mass movement – now.

We must provide an optimistic, empowering case for action to tackle climate change.

You can't hector people – they must be motivated and inspired.

Especially when they’re already struggling to meet their council tax bills, the gas, the electric, childcare.

When you’re struggling to keep your head above water, buying a wormery or going organic seems like a luxury for someone else.

We all need to feel like the system’s on our side.

There are too many rules, too many blockages, too many obstacles to making life greener.

It's even difficult to make small steps.

It actually took me a year – a whole year – to get the Labour council in Sheffield to put a recycling bin in the playground of a primary school in my constituency.

Now, I’m an MP. It’s my job to campaign for this sort of thing sometimes.

But how many parents are there, across the country, who had the same idea – let’s get a recycling bin at school – and gave up?

By changing the system, to support people who want to do their bit, we can get business, government and people to act together.

If we all begin today, we can still save the planet.

We can harness environmental leadership to drive our economy too.

We will need it, if we’re to withstand the global downturn that’s on the doorstep.

Britain is in no fit state to endure the impact of a recession in the US.

Our government has created a system propped up on cheap credit.

We’ve been building castles on the sand. And the tide is coming in.

Poor Alistair Darling has become the chief mourner at his own political funeral.

But outside Westminster, we all know who will suffer first, and most.

It isn’t the hedge fund managers. It isn’t the wealthy tax exiles.

It’s ordinary families, already struggling with rising council tax, soaring gas and electricity bills, and the merciless upwards creep of the price of food.

Why is it that those ordinary families still pay more tax than the richest people in Britain today?

What kind of messed-up system is that?

If we want a better Britain, with opportunity for everyone, we’ve got to have fair taxes.

Cutting income tax by 4p in the pound is a great start.

But we must never stop thinking about how we make taxes fairer, greener and – if possible – lower.

Not loopholes for people with clever tax accountants and offshore trusts.

But lifting the burden on ordinary families.

We mustn’t be a party that taxes for the sake of it.

I have no interest in taxing people to “send a message”.

Taxes should be fair, and they should be green.

They should raise the money we need? and not a penny more.

So if, before the General Election, we find we can deliver our objectives with money to spare, we shouldn’t look for new ways to spend it.

We should look for new ways to hand it back, especially to those who need it most.

We have called for tax rises in the past, when investment in our public services was intolerably low.

We were right to do so.

But after a decade of unprecedented increases in spending the problem now is not “how much” – it’s “how”.

We need to think radically about how we improve our public services.

Change funding systems so there’s fair access for everyone.

Deliver services efficiently, instead of wasting money on massive centralised systems that do more harm than good.

And devolve control to councils, communities, families, parents, patients and pupils.

Change will upset some people, I know.

Change always does.

There are vested interests at play – in the establishment parties, in the big central bureaucracies that run things in Britain today.

Someone’s got to take on the vested interests?

Someone’s got to challenge the established order of things?

And it’s got to be us? it can only be us.

I don’t just mean vested interests determining government policy here at home.

Our whole international political system – and Britain’s role within it - is twisted and warped by powerful people determined to promote their own interests.

What better example is there than Iraq?

If there is one thing this illegal war has taught us, it is this -

That when others choose to ride their tanks over the top of international law, our government must not roll over or join in.

Iraq was Bush’s war – and supporting it is Labour’s greatest shame.

Our whole political establishment is in thrall to the might of the Pentagon and the White House.

Only the Liberal Democrats say no.

Britain must embrace our relationship with other allies – especially Europe.

That's why I will always be a passionate promoter of the European Union and Britain's place at its heart.

But the Bush administration is coming to an end. At last.

We have a real chance now to break with the past.

Set priorities here in Britain, not in the Pentagon.

No more nods and winks to the abuse of human rights.

No more secretive deals to host American missile systems on British soil.

No more neo-con wars.

Now is the time for change.

Of course there will be times when military action is necessary.

We supported, and continue to support, the intervention in Afghanistan – and we must do more to make it a success.

But Britain’s response to threats must always be ethical, measured and legal.

Under Labour, quite simply, it isn’t any of those things.

This is a government which identifies twenty 'major countries of concern' for human rights abuses, then exports record levels of arms to nineteen of them.

This is a government which cancels an investigation into corrupt arms sales to Saudi, then rolls out the red carpet for a state visit from its king.

This is a Prime Minister who refuses to speak up on human rights abuses in China, then picks up his reward in the form of special trade deals.

For too long, vested interests have triumphed over doing what’s right and it’s got to stop.

Sometimes it makes you feel so helpless - and yes, angry too - when there’s so much you want to change.

I bet you’ve all felt like that once in a while.

Like there’s a mountain to climb, and it’s just too much to do alone.

The cynicism of so much public debate doesn’t help.

A cynicism that mocks anyone with the nerve to speak with sincerity about what they believe.

A cynicism that’s given up believing in hope.

But I am not embarrassed by sincerity.

I am not ashamed of believing in things.

I want to believe in a better Britain.

Every one of us is here today because we believe in a better Britain.

It’s time for a party that isn’t cowed by the system, or afraid to challenge it.

Because the chance for change is there – within our reach.

The chance to prise open, once and for all, the rotten old system, and build something new.

The chance is there.

It’s ours to take.

So let’s seize it.