Good morning everyone. Good God …good morning everybody, thank you very much.Please, please take your seats,we’ve got a lot to get through. Good morning everybody inManchester, it’s agreat joy to be back here. Not so long ago my friends I…we welcome all sortsofwonderful luminaries to City Hall but not so long ago I welcomed the formerFrench PrimeMinister, Monsieur Alain Juppe to my office in City Hall and hecruised in with his sizeableretinue of very distinguished fellows with theirlegion d’honneur floret and all the rest of it andwe shook hands and had atête a tête and he told me that he was now the Mayor of Bordeaux. Ithink hemay have been Mayor of Bordeaux when he was Prime Minister, it’s the kind ofthingthey do in France – a very good idea in my view. Joke, joke, joke! Andwhat he said … joke! Hesaid that he had the honour of representing, he had239,517 people in Bordeaux and thereforehe had the honour of representing the9th biggest city in France. I got the ball back very firmlyover the net,folks, because I said there were 250,000 French men and women in Londonandtherefore I was the mayor of the 6th biggest French city on earth.
I can’t remember exactly what hesaid then, I think he said something like ‘Tiens!’ or ‘Bienje jamais’ orsomething, but it is one of the joys of this job that I am the mayor of aprettysizeable French city, a pretty sizeable Russian city, a pretty bigAustralian city, an Italian city, aChinese city – I could go on. That is agreat thing about London, it’s a good thing for ourcountry because thatforeign money brings jobs and it fills our restaurants and it puts bums ontheseats of our theatres, helps finance our universities very considerably and itenables Londondevelopers, some of whom I see in this great audience, to embarkon project that otherwisewould be stalled. Am I right? Yes. And it brings abuzz of excitement to the city which also ofcourse attracts investors and yet wehave to recognise that the sheer global charisma ofLondon is putting pressureon Londoners, with average house prices in our city now six timesaverageearnings and for the bottom 25% of earners, the house prices in the bottomquarter arenine times their earnings.
The pressure is really growingand it is intensifying thanks to an entirely home grownphenomenon to which Ialluded at the end of the Olympic and Paralympic Games which tookplace lastyear because you may dimly remember that I prophesied that the athletes thatTeamGP and Paralympics GB had so moved the people of this country to suchparoxysms ofexcitement, I think I said, on the sofas of Britain that they hadnot only inspired a generationbut probably helped to create one as well and likeall my predictions and promises as your Mayoror as the Mayor of many of youhere, I have delivered mes amis, in that GLA Economics now saythat live birthsin London this year will be 136,942 which is more than in any year since1966when England won the World Cup – and the Prime Minister was born I think.
I look around this audience –that means the population is growing very fast and it is goingto hit ninemillion by 2020, possibly ten million by 2031 and I notice when I point thisout topeople that they start to look a bit worn. They’re the older generationand think, all these otherpeople’s children, what jobs are they going to do,where are they going to live and will they bestepping on my toes on the Tube?I want to reassure you first of all that London has been herebefore, we hadnine million in 1911, I think we had nine million in 1939 and the second thing–for once I actually brought it with me thank goodness – the second thing isthat we have a plan.Here it is, the 2020 Vision, and it will ensure that wecreate a city in which no child is left behindor shut out and everybody has achance to make of their lives what they can.
Step number one – and I seriouslycommend this document, it is entirely free on the GLAwebsite, written entirelyby me as well – step number one is to build more homes as I say. Can Ijust askthis audience, how many of you today here in Manchester are lucky enough to beowneroccupiers? Can I ask for a show of hands, is anybody here an owneroccupier? Look, here we go.Who is an owner occupier? There is no disgrace inthat, we believe in the property owningdemocracy and all that kind of thingbut we have to face the reality that for many, manymillions of people, foryoung people in London, for many members of our families, it is nowabsolutelyimpossible to get anywhere near to affording a home and that’s why it isabsolutelyvital that we get on with our programmes of accelerating housebuilding. We have done about55,000 – Rick, how many have we done so far? 55,000so far, give or take it will be around100,000 over two terms.
We’ve put £3.6 billion of publicland to the use of so many of the good developers I seearound here, since Maylast year when I was elected by the way, but we need to do more and weneed toaccelerate our programme of house building dramatically and I think that it istime thatwe considered allowing companies to make tax-free loans to theiremployees to help them withthe cost of their rent deposit – how about that?Brainy policy, no, put in for the budgetconsiderations. Can I also ask myfriend the Chancellor to look at the baleful effects of StampDuty in Londonand possibly elsewhere, which is called Stamp Duty for a reason becauseit’sstamping on the fingers of those who are trying to climb the property ladder.Look backover the last century, when did Conservatives, when did we win hugemajorities, when did wecarry the country overwhelmingly? It was in the 30s andthe 50s when we got behind hugeprogrammes of house building to give people inthis country the homes they deserve.
To make those homes possible ofcourse you have got to get on with putting in thetransport links, as I nevertire of telling you and we’ve not only cut delays by 40%, comrades,in Londonsince I was elected, we have expanded the capacity of the Jubilee Line by 25%,theVictoria Line is now running at incredible 34 trains an hour – how many isthat per minute? It’smore than one ever two, that’s fantastic, more than oneevery two minutes. There’s no flies onthese guys! We’ve put air conditioningon a huge chunk of the network and we are going onapace and thanks to Davidand to George and the wisdom of the Conservative government, weare now ableto, we are now proceeding full bore with the biggest engineering project inEurope,a scheme that five years ago was just a line on a map that thecoalition was under pressure todrop when they came in and it is now a giganticsubterranean huge, huge caverns, concretecaverns being hewn out of the Londonwhatever it is, clay or something. I should know that. Aswe speak, as wespeak, beneath the streets of London are six colossal boring machinescalledAda and Phyllis and Mary and Elizabeth and Victoria I think, I have got theirnames wrong,I can’t remember their names but they all have female names forsome reason and Phyllis andAda are coming in from the west and Mary andElizabeth are going from the east, from theLimmo Peninsula and they arechomping remorselessly through the London clay and they aregoing to meet somewherearound Whitechapel for this ginormous convocation of worms – I don’tknow whatthey’ll do but it will absolutely terrific because the rail capacity of Londonwill beincreased by 10% and we will have done Cross Rail, I confidentlypredict, as we did theOlympics, on time and on budget. A fantastic example ofwhat this country can do and acalling card that British business is now usingaround the world.
In my view and in the view ofthose who are now working on Cross Rail, what we should do isuse those worldclass skills that we’ve been accumulating in London, to get going beforewedisband them on the next set of projects. I mean obviously Cross Rail 2, HighSpeed Rail, newpower stations, solutions to our aviation capacity problem, sothat we have a logicalsequential infrastructure plan for our country and don’tdo what previous governments havedone and that is waste billions by stoppingand starting. I think we can do it, I am absolutelyconfident that we can doit. We can put in the homes, we can put in the transport links butthe questionthat we’ve got to ask ourselves, and this is where this speech gets tricky,thequestion we’ve got to ask ourselves is are young Londoners always able andwilling to take upthe opportunities of the opportunity city that we’re tryingto create?
Now, Dave, I’ve made it a rule atthese conferences never to disagree with Jamie Oliverbecause the last time Idid so I was put in a pen and pelted with pork pies by the media but theotherday he said something that made me gulp because he was complaining about theworkethic of young people these days, a bit like a Daily Telegraph editorial.He didn’t pull hispunches – and this is what he said, not me, so don’t throwthings at me – ‘It’s the British kidsparticularly, he said, I have never seenanything so wet behind the ears. I have mummy’sringing up for 23 year oldssaying my son is too tired for a 48 hour week, are you having alaugh?’ thecelebrity chef told Good Housekeeping. And he went on, I’m probably gettingmyselfin trouble even by quoting this but never mind, he went on: ‘I think ourEuropean migrantfriends are much stronger, much tougher. If we didn’t haveany, all of our restaurants wouldclose tomorrow. There wouldn’t be any Britsto replace them.’
Now I can see looks of apoplectic… well, no I can’t really. Where’s the apoplexy? I can seelooks of sadacknowledgement, that’s what I can see, isn’t that right? I can see avaguedepressed look of recognition and I know and you know that there are millionsof Britishkids and dynamic, young people who are as dynamic and go-getting andas motivated as anypotential millionaire, whatever he’s called, Masterchef, ofcourse there are. But my question toyou is, what if Jamie has a point? What ifhe has half a point or even a quarter of a point? Doyou think he does? Half apoint, quarter of a point? He’s on to something. He may have phrasedit in aprovocative way but he was saying something that I think resonates, right?Okay, I’mgetting through this with difficulty.
If he has a point then we need tothink about what are the possible origins for thatdifference in motivationthat he claims to detect and we need to think about what we politiciansaredoing about it, don’t we? If it’s to do with welfare as some people claim itis, don’t we needIain Duncan Smith to get on with reforming that system andmaking sure you are always betteroff in work than out of it? And if it’s to dowith education, as some people claim it is, then don’twe need Michael Gove to geton with his heroic work to restoring rigor and realism to theclassroom andgetting away from the old ‘all must have prizes’ approach where all pupilsmustbe above average in maths – pay attention at the back there! – which is notpossible. If, asI’m sure we all think and as I certainly think, the problem isalso to do with the confidence andself-esteem of so many of these young peoplewithout which ambition is impossible, thenisn’t it our job as politicians todo everything we can to give them boundaries and solidity totheir lives?
That’s why I have spent a lot ofmy time as Mayor on projects like the Mayor’s Fund forLondon and Team Londonand encouraging volunteers to read to kids across our city andmentoringprogrammes which we are expanding and the support of the uniformed groups,theScouts, the Guides, all those kinds of fantastic organisations, bringingsporting facilities toschools that don’t have any, mobile pools we’ve beensending around London, beautiful glorifiedsheep dips we send round, they loveit. They work brilliantly well and we’re helping to gettalented youngmusicians to cross that barrier that they confront when they reach the ageofeleven and have to go through into secondary school and so many of them give uptheirinstruments and it’s a real, real tragedy and we are setting up funds tohelp with creation ofexcellence in our schools and to improve standards allround, to support the work that MichaelGove is doing.
It’s when I look at the hugerange of projects that we’re engaged in now at City Halltogether withhundreds, if not thousands of other projects, many of which are supportedbypeople in this room, I do think we are making a difference to the lives ofthose young peopleand we have got loads of them into apprenticeships, about118,000 over the last couple of years,we’re going to get on to 250,000 by 2019and thanks to the police, thanks very largely to theirwork, we are seeingsignificant falls in crime as Jane was just saying. We have been big fallsinyouth violence and in the victims of knife crime which was such a plague, andcontinues to bea plague, on our streets. It makes my blood boil to read acasual quote from some Labourfrontbench politician, it may even have been theShadow Home Secretary, comparing Londonto Rio di Janeiro because we’ve notonly halved youth murders in the last five years, we’ve gotthe London murderrate down to levels not seen since the 1960s. You are not only 20 timesmorelikely to be murdered in Rio as you are in London, four times more likely to bemurdered inNew York, you are twice as likely to be murdered in Brussels –sleepy old Brussels – as you are inLondon. Presumably with lobster picks.
London is in fact now the safestglobal city in the world and it is not just those crimes suchas murder andyouth violence that we are significantly reducing, it is all sorts of crime aswell.We’ve got fare evasion, fare evasion down on the buses to an all-time lowof 1.1%, whatever1.1% means, mainly thanks to getting rid of the bendy buses.That I think is the way forward.You’ve got to tackle that complex of problems,crime well frozen, educationalunderachievement and you’ve got to make surethat kids growing up in London are able to takeopportunity that our cityoffers and at the same time we must make sure they don’t dismisssome jobs asquote/unquote ‘menial’, which is a word I sometimes hear, and that theyseethem, those jobs that London creates in such abundance, in the same way thatJamieOliver’s East Europeans see those jobs, as stepping stones, as abeginning to a life in work thatcan take them anywhere.
Now I’m conscious today that I amspeaking very frankly about this issue, I have probablygot myself as usualinto trouble, that’s my job, because I think there is a vast and latentgeniusin these young people and if we could harness their talents more effectivelythen theywould not only have fulfilling lives but we could drive even fasterthe great flywheel of theLondon economy that is now the most diverse in Europeand we not only lead the world as thefinancial centre, artistic centre,cultural centre, we now have, we now have the biggest textsector anywhere inEurope, we have a growing NED city of academic health scienceinstitutionsalong the Euston Road and in ten years, in the next ten years it is forecastthatLondon’s media industry will produce more film and TV content than eitherNew York or LosAngeles. I can scarcely believe that but that’s what I amassured. That is an extraordinarychange that is taking place in the Londoneconomy and it is this prodigious, pulsating demandof London that helps todrive the rest of the country.
The EU Commission has just done astudy about competitiveness of regions in Europe,have you all read it? Youshould read it, you’re in it folks. They have discovered, they havedetermined,the EU Commission – and I dare not dissent – has concluded that Surrey andWestand East Sussex – anybody here from Surrey and West and East Sussex? Well done,welldone Surrey and West and East Sussex, you belong to the fifth mostcompetitive region inEurope. They have looked at Berkshire, Buckinghamshireand Oxfordshire – anybody here fromBerkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire?Well done, Prime Minister, well done,congratulations, you belong to the thirdmost competitive region in Europe, well done. And whyare those regions sofizzing with competitiveness according to the EU Commission? BecauseLondon isthe most competitive city in the whole of Europe and it drives jobs across theUK andnot just in the south-east.
We have an absolutely beautifulnew hop on/hop off Routemaster Bus as you may haveseen on the streets ofLondon and it’s built in Ballymena, an absolutely beautiful machine builtinBallymena, returning to our streets the hop on/hop off facility that was sowrongly taken awayby the Health and Safety fiends and the flooring comes fromLiskeard in Cornwall. Yesterday Iwas at a factory in Middleton, GreaterManchester, where they are making the destinationblinds with a beautiful 2019year old Chinese silk-screening technique, the destination blindsfor our newLondon bus. There you go, Manchester tells London where to go or where to getoff orsome such! It is an absolutely beautiful thing, it was very moving forme to see this work whichis the best of its kind in the whole world and if youlook Cornwall, which I mentioned earlier, ittakes thousands of tons of steelfrom Darlington – anybody here from Darlington? FromMiddleton? Come on folks,from Oldham? Well there we go. Cranes from Derbyshire…[cheer]There you go!Newcastle? Bridges, bridges from Shropshire, anybody from Shropshire here?Welldone, we love your bridges. Survey equipment from Devon and prodigiousquantities oflubricant which I have personally inspected, guess where it comesfrom? Bournemouth.Bournemouth, isn’t that fantastic. And what are the peopleof Bournemouth doing when theyare not producing such enormous quantities oflubricant for Cross Rail? Shall I tell you whatthey are doing? I’ll tell you.Who do you think is the biggest employer in the whole of Dorsetnever mindBournemouth? Who is the biggest employer in the whole of Dorset, you knowthisone – excluding the NHS which is still pretty big – do you know who it is?Insurance is veryclose, it’s the right idea, it is J.P. Morgan mes amis. J.P.Morgan. If there wasn’t a strongbanking sector in London then there would beno strong banking sector in Edinburgh and therecertainly wouldn’t be one inDorset.
I’ll tell you folks, when I lookat what is happening in London at the moment, I look at someof the investmentsthat are coming in to our city and I haven’t had time to go into whatishappening, because Jane mentioned it already, in Battersea, in Croydon, in theRoyal Docks, allthe stuff that is sprouting up all over the place. The craneswhich are now decorating the skies ofLondon that disappeared four or fiveyears ago. When I see what’s happening I must say that Ishare the optimism andthe excitement of George Osborne completely, I thought he gave abrilliantspeech yesterday but I also, I also share his realism, his realism and hisdetermination toremove the remaining barriers to competitiveness in ourcountry and what is the greatestbarrier to competitiveness folks, for Londonand indeed for Britain? What is it? Not visas,much worse than visas. What isthe greatest threat we face, come on folks, pay attention. ALabour government,correct.
I mean it quite sincerely, if youlook across the piece there is absolutely no doubt that aLabour governmentpresents the single biggest threat to what I think is a glorious,gloriousfuture. Do we want to go back to all that again? Do we want to put them back onthebridge when they ran the ship aground? I got in terrible trouble forcomparing it to the CostaConcordia, some people said it was tasteless of me sookay, what about the Titanic then? Is thatbetter? Is that more acceptable?
We don’t want to go back to thehigh tax, high spend approach of Ed Miliband whoemanated from the bowels ofthe trade union movement like his party, we want to go forwardwith a low taxenterprise equality. We don’t want a mansion tax do we? No, we don’t becauseitwould inhibit the very homes programme that we need to get going and we want tobuild, as Isay, hundreds of thousands of more homes. We don’t want to go backnever mind to the age ofold Labour, we don’t want to go back to the age ofDiocletian, Emperor Diocletian that is, withsome crazed attempt atgovernmental price fixing, which is what Ed Miliband came up with lastweek, wewant to go forward with a serious programme of new power station building and,for mymoney, with fracking, why not, absolutely, let’s get going.
We must not go back to the oldfailed Labour idea of a third runway at Heathrow. You knew Iwas going to saythis but I’m going to say it, a third runway at Heathrow aggravatingnoisepollution in what is already the city in the world worst affected by noisepollution by miles.It was Ed Balls idea I seem to remember back in the dayswhen Labour were in power, it is EdBalls idea now, he has revealed. It wasBalls then, it’s Balls now and it is not good enough forthis country, it isn’tthe right answer for the most beautiful and liveable city on earth.
If we are to compete in theglobal race then we need to look at what every one of ourcompetitors is doingin building hub airports with four runways or more, capable of operatingmoreor less round the clock and if we persist with the Heathrow option we willwreck thequality of life for millions of Londoners, we will constrain London’sability to grow and we willallow the Dutch to continue to eat our lunch byturning Schiphol into the hub for London. Thankyou.
Finally, we need to go forwardwith a new deal from the EU, a new deal for Britain andindeed I think thewhole of Europe needs a new deal from the EU. Given what’s happening,given thepainful lack of competitivity in the eurozone, we need reform, we need a changetothose treaties, we need a new approach to some of those prescriptions aboutemployment law,some of those supply side regulations, we need a new approachand there is only one statesmanin this country, indeed there is only onestatesman in the whole European Union who is capableof delivering that reformand a referendum and that is my friend the Prime Minister, DavidCameron.
It’s true, absolutely true. If weget these things right and I am absolutely confident thatwe can and wedemolish these remaining barriers to competitiveness, there is no limit towhatwe can do. I saw the other day some geezer from the Kremlin said somethingabout thiscountry that was even less polite than what Jamie Oliver had to say.He said that Britain was asmall island that no one paid any attention toexcept oligarchs who bought Chelsea. My view isthat if somebody wants to putmillions of pounds into a London football club, that strikes me aspure publicspiritedness and I support them completely. I don’t want to risk polonium inmysushi by bandying statistics with the Kremlin about per capital GDP or lifeexpectancy exceptto say that the UK of course vastly exceeds Russia in both.
The serious point is that thisalleged spokesman underestimates where our country, the UK,is going and whatit can do. If you look at the demographics and the knowledge base andindeedthe manufacturing industries, if you look at what is happening with Tata, inwhich thiscountry excels, then there is every chance in our lifetimes and Imean to live a very, very longtime, that the UK – mark what I say – the UKcould be the biggest country in the EU both inpopulation and in output. Thathad you, it’s true. Scary thought. The reason so many Russianscome here isthat they recognise that London is not simply the capital of Britain but alsoof theEU and in many ways, of the world. A city with more American banks in itthan there are in NewYork for heaven’s sake. A 24 hour city in which there are100,000 people working in supplying usall with coffee in the coffee bars ofLondon, how about that? We have more baristas thanbarristers, there are quitea few barristers as well, and yet with so much green space in Londonthat weproduce two million cucumbers a year from London. Eat your heart out, VladimirPutin. Itis partly thanks to our cucumber yields, our staggering cucumberyields, comrades, that Londonnow contributes almost 25% of UK GDP, which ismore than the city has contributed at any timesince the Romans founded it.
In the next couple of yearsobviously we need to take all sorts of crucial decisions about howto ensurethe harmonious development of that city and I want those decisions to be takenbyConservatives. The choice at the next election is very simple – it’s betweenthe fool’s gold ofLabour gimmicks which we all understand, we’ve all fought beforeand a government that iswilling to take tough and sensible decisions, to cutunnecessary spending but to make the keyinvestments in transport andinfrastructure and housing and in our communities that will takethis countryforward. I know what I want as Mayor of the greatest city on earth, I think Iknowwhat you want, am I right? I know that we can do it so let’s go for itover the next two years.Cut that yellow Liberal Democrat albatross from aroundour necks and let it plop into the sea, letit plop into the sea by workingflat out for David Cameron as Prime Minister and an outrightConservativevictory in 2019. Thank you very much, thank you everybody.