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Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark: A year of reckoning

Greg Clark MP, Thursday, January 8 2009

A year ago, we published Who's Progressive Now?, a pamphlet

focusing on social and environmental issues, in which we argued that it
was David Cameron's Conservative party, not Labour, that was best
placed to carry forward the progressive tradition in British politics.

A year on, and the focus is on the economy.

Is the recession the end of the social and environmental progressive

agenda? Of course not. But it will expose what little progress Labour
has made in strengthening society or sustaining the environment. To
quote Warren Buffett: "It's only when the tide goes out that you learn
who's been swimming naked."

One of the first duties of a progressive government is to pursue policies that strengthen, rather than take
risks with, the financial security of all citizens - particularly the most vulnerable. If prudence matters for us
all, it matters most for the poorest, who are least well-placed to weather upheaval as unemployment passes
2 million, perhaps 3 million, by the end of the year.

Even before the downturn, the government was set to miss its 2010 target to halve child poverty. That
target will now be missed by an even wider margin. And what about pensioners, many of whom rely on
income from savings? What of the forgotten poor - the working age adults who, under Labour, have fallen
into severe poverty in ever increasing numbers? How many unemployed disabled people are going to find
work against this background?

Social progress depends above all on broadly based, sustainable prosperity - the illusion of which is now
disintegrating. There is no hiding the fact that we were swept along by an unbalanced, unequal boom built
on an explosion of personal and public debt.

How ironic that Gordon Brown is trying to characterise the Conservatives as unwilling to act, when it is his
party that has been limited in its progressive ambition and foresight. Some examples of its inactivity are
painfully obvious.

For instance, despite inheriting a job-creating economy, ministers waited a decade before announcing a
serious policy to tackle the scourge of long-term worklessness. Millions who could have been helped were
abandoned; and just as the government finally seems inclined to do something, the engines of job creation
are spluttering to a halt.

Then there is the issue of fuel poverty and energy security. Ministers had ample warning that dwindling
North Sea reserves would leave us increasingly dependent on imported gas - but did nothing to increase
gas storage. While Germany has 99 days of storage capacity and France 122, Britain has just 15. As a
result, our neighbours are able to buy British gas at summer prices and sell it back to us at a hefty winter
premium. It is no wonder that our bills, once among the lowest in Europe, are now about the most
expensive.

On climate change, after 10 years in office Labour has made no impact on carbon emissions. Moreover,
notwithstanding world-class wind, wave and tidal resources, no other major country in Europe generates
less of its energy from renewable resources.

Even where ministers have taken action, it has typically been in the form of clunking interventions by the
central state - rather than by championing the transformational change that is the true mark of progressive
politics.

1z2 2009-07-20 23:06

The Conservative Party | News | Articles | Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark:... http://www.conservatives.com/News/Articles/2009/01/Jeremy_Hunt_a...
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Labour has pursued its own version of trickle-down economics, through a burgeoning public sector and an
inflating bubble in the financial sector. Despite the long run of economic growth that started in 1993, net job
creation has been virtually restricted to the public sector. And instead of seeking to spread broadly based
economic opportunity, Brown was content to harvest tax revenues from a booming City in an unbalanced
economy - while attempting to offset resulting inequalities through unrestrained and inefficient public
spending.

There is no progress without sustainability, and there was nothing sustainable about Brown's economic
policies, which have devoured rather than built Britain's capital - human, social and financial. It is typical that
his proposed solution is yet another mechanical state intervention: a massive expansion of public debt to
compensate for the collapse of private-sector lending. It is a gamble for short-term electoral advantage,
with Britain's poorest most exposed to the long-term consequences.

Instead of leading Britain deeper into debt, a progressive government must return the financial system to its
true purpose: to be a responsible provider of investment in wealth-generating activities. It must attack the
root causes of broken-society issues, so reducing the mushrooming costs of social breakdown. Most of all,
it must ensure that any economic recovery is sustainable.

The last decade has shown that fostering dependency on the state is as unsustainable and damaging as
relying on trickle down to deliver social justice. In all areas of policy, the progressive party isn't the one that
peddles dependency on government, but the one that seeks to strengthen the people and institutions of this
country from within.

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Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative Party, both at 30 Millbank, London, SW1P 4DP

2z2 2009-07-20 23:06