Minister Burt said:

Today I hosted a roundtable on the future of Iraq with His Excellency Iraqi Foreign Minister Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari and representatives from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, USA, the EU External Action Service and the UN Department for Political Affairs to discuss stabilisation and governance priorities.

As the next Government of Iraq begins to lay the foundations for a country that meets the aspirations of all Iraqis, stabilisation efforts and good governance will be vitally important. The UK and the international community reaffirmed their political support for a strong stabilisation partnership with the Government of Iraq.

Ultimately we recognise that progress must be Iraqi-owned and Iraqi-led. I welcome the Government of Iraq’s commitment to stabilisation and governance, so that support from international partners can continue to be sustained and effective. We want to see a strong Government of Iraq that delivers for all its people.

Published 27 September 2018

Communities across the UK will benefit from £840 million to upgrade public transport links, the Prime Minister has announced today (27 September 2018).

The shortlist of ten city regions marks the next stage of the £1.7 billion Transforming Cities Fund which under the government’s modern Industrial Strategy is supporting cities to make it easier, safer and quicker for people to travel and get to work by funding improved transport connections.

Local authorities in Derby & Nottingham, Leicester City, the North East, Norwich, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent and West Yorkshire will bid for a share of the funding.

The Transforming Cities Fund is already delivering major improvements for people across England. Six Mayoral Combined Authorities have already received a share of £840 million to deliver schemes such as the Brierley Hill tram lines extension in the West Midlands and £160 million towards the Beeline Cycle Network in Greater Manchester. Set to be the largest network of its kind in the UK, the proposal for 1,000 miles of interlinked bike and pedestrian lanes will connect communities across its 10 boroughs and help make cycling and walking a safer option for people living in the region.

Over the next four years, the new allocation of funding will be used to improve transport links in city regions, linking travel to work areas, increasing access to jobs and helping ensure that businesses have the infrastructure they need to thrive.

This funding could go towards upgrades such as new bus routes between residential areas and major employment hubs, smart technology aimed at reducing congestion, or rolling out docking stations for e-bikes.

Prime Minister Theresa May said:

Our great cities and their suburbs are home to millions of people and world-beating businesses.

We want to help them succeed, so as part of our modern Industrial Strategy we will fund £840 million of upgrades for better, safer, faster transport links.

These improvements to vital infrastructure will help spread growth beyond London and empower local businesses to create more, better-paying jobs – opening up more opportunities to help people get on in life and be rewarded for their hard work.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said:

Good bus, cycle and tram routes play a huge role in increasing the vitality and vibrancy of cities.

These 10 areas now have the chance to transform their transport systems – making it easier for people to get around and enhance links to work, school or shops.

The ten shortlisted city regions will each receive an initial £50,000 as well as bespoke support from government to co-develop the strongest cases for investment. Once finalised, funding decisions will consider the relative strength of each bid and their impact on improving connectivity, supporting employment and driving up productivity.

While the city regions finalise proposals, £60 million from the Fund will be made available over the next year to share across transport schemes aimed at tackling head on some of the most pressing challenges faced by communities.

The projects supported by the Transforming Cities Fund will also help progress the government’s mission to radically improve the ways in which people, goods and services move around the country through its Future of Mobility Grand Challenge.

Under this commitment, the UK will become a world leader in cutting-edge clean technology and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, whilst also making travel safer, improving passenger journeys and presenting enormous economic opportunities for the UK.

Thank you Mr. President.

In March 1963, President Kennedy predicted that as many as 25 nations would soon develop nuclear weapons, posing what he described as the greatest possible danger to the survival of humanity. In the event his bleak prophecy never came to pass. Seven years after Kennedy voiced his fears, the world summoned the collective wisdom to create the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which now has 191 States Parties.

All but a handful of countries put aside their differences and agreed that global security, indeed the existence of the human race, depended on halting the spread of nuclear weapons.

Only one country signed the NPT and then sought to withdraw from it. Only one country promised in this Treaty never to develop nuclear weapons and then did exactly that. And that country is North Korea which has tested six nuclear devices in the last 12 years.

Today the international community shares a collective responsibility to ensure that North Korea complies once again with the rules on which the safety of every nation depends.

Britain welcomes North Korea’s decision to re-engage in diplomacy since the beginning of this year. We’re encouraged by the meeting between President President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang last week. We hope that North Korea’s repeated promises to denuclearise are genuine but we note the lack of concrete steps so far.

Action counts for more than assurances.

Deeds must follow words.

North Korea must comprehensively, verifiably and irreversibly abandon its nuclear weapons, and the means to build them, in accordance with the resolutions passed by this Council. Until that moment comes, Britain believes that the sanctions agreed by the international community should continue to be rigorously enforced, reflecting our shared belief that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions threaten the safety of all our peoples.

This Council passed the relevant resolutions as one and we should enforce them as one until the conditions that caused their adoption have decisively and irrevocably changed.

Britain will continue to play our part in this effort. We’re supporting the work of the Sanctions Committee established by Resolution 1718 and the UN Panel of Experts.

The onus rests on the whole Council to prevent North Korea from evading sanctions, particularly the controls on refined petroleum products. We support the assessment presented by Secretary Pompeo and the United States, which demonstrates that North Korea has systematically violated the controls placed on the import of these products and already breached the annual cap for 2018.

This year, Britain has sent two Royal Navy ships, HMS Sutherland and HMS Albion, to the Pacific where they have helped to monitor illegal fuel transfers. A third ship, HMS Argyll, is due in East Asia later this year.

Members of this Council, especially the five permanent members, have a duty to uphold and enforce the sanctions contained in the resolutions which we ourselves supported. We mustn’t allow the authority of the Security Council to be undermined.

Today, North Korea’s leadership has a choice to make. In a country where 200,000 children are acutely malnourished, half of all schools have no access to running water, and only 3 per cent of roads are paved, the regime has squandered the nation’s resources and deepened the poverty of its people by pursuing an illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Far from bringing prestige or security, this arsenal has only increased tensions in East Asia and brought upon North Korea the most extensive economic sanctions ever imposed by this Council in the 21st century.

As recently as 1973, North and South Korea had about the same GDP per capita. Since then, decades of communist economic failure in North Korea have opened up a twenty-fold disparity: today, North Korea’s GDP per capita is less than 5 per cent of South Korea’s.

But it is not too late to change course. Just as President Kennedy’s prediction turned out to be pessimistic, there is nothing inevitable about the road along which North Korea has so far travelled.

Before his regime wastes even more resources, creates yet more poverty and triggers still greater confrontations, Kim Jong-un could decide to allow his country to flourish in peace and safety. He could choose to heed the will of this Council, keep his own promises, and relinquish the nuclear arsenal that has brought only misery and tension. The decision rests on his shoulders. Until then, this Council should hold fast to the Resolutions that we passed.