Thank you all for coming today.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the International Day of Democracy by the United Nations General Assembly.

In November 2007, the Assembly resolved that the 15th of September should be marked as an International Day of Democracy, with all member states invited to commemorate the day in an appropriate manner that contributes to raising public awareness of democracy.

I thought it would be fitting for us to meet here today, not only to share with each other what progress has been made over the past year in promoting democratic engagement and participation across the United Kingdom, but to recognise that the promotion of the importance of democracy cannot be achieved by government alone.

Indeed, the resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly in November 2007, noted that there was a ‘central role’ for the ‘active involvement of civil society organisations’ in celebrating and promoting democracy, equality and freedom.

I recognise too the crucial role that you and your organisations here today play in creating what should be termed as our Democratic Society.

Which is why I have invited Women’s Aid and Mencap to share their experience of working with Government to ensure all voices can be heard. I am very pleased that Sian Hawkins from Women’s Aid and Matthew Harrison and Ismail Kaji from Mencap are able to join us today to discuss the progress we have made on the anonymous registration process and the steps we are taking to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.

Speakers:

• Women’s Aid – anonymous registration
• Mencap – call for evidence on accessibility to elections

Thank you both, your work is not only valued— it is vitally important that we should continue to work together in partnership, as we continue our pursuit of increased democratic participation. We all know that this work cannot stand still.

It does not begin or end in the run up to and at the end of an electoral cycle. It must be sustained and be seen to be sustainable, if we are to ensure that as a society, our democratic processes are to be safeguarded and confidence in our democracy renewed.

Since I was appointed the Minister for the Constitution over a year ago, I have had the opportunity of not only meeting many of you personally, either at the many ministerial roundtables that I have held in the Cabinet Office, or on my Every Voice Matters tour that has taken me across every region and devolved nation; I have also had the privilege of working with you in our common and shared goal.

That endeavour, simply expressed, has been to ensure that, regardless of background, gender, disability or race, we all want the maximum number of citizens who are eligible to vote, to register to do so and to have their say at the ballot box.

And I have been grateful to charities and civil society organisations such as Bite the Ballot, Patchwork Foundation, the Citizenship Foundation, Voices 4 Change here today – to name but a few, who have not only given their time and effort to attend the several roundtable discussions that I have held in the Cabinet Office, helping to shape our plans for what more can be done to improve and increase democratic engagement, but have also worked hard to demonstrate what can be done, and what new approaches can be taken, to reach out to those groups in society who are under-registered, and do not participate in our elections.

All of you have done so much to give a voice to the voiceless; your passion and energy for what you do and have achieved has been clearly evident to me, and I hope that we continue to work together in our shared activity of ensuring that we have a democracy that works for everyone.

Next year, we will celebrate the centenary of women getting the right to vote, with the passing of the Representation of the People Act on 6 February 1918.

Not an equal right to vote— importantly, that would only come ten years later, when in July 1928, the Equal Franchise Act was passed. Even so, this milestone in our democratic history increased the proportion of adults qualified to vote from 28% to 78% and opened the door to the modern democratic age.

Whilst we can talk of our democratic system being one of the oldest in the world, revere our institution of Parliament and traditions of freedom enshrined in documents such as Magna Carta, the fact that we will be celebrating the fact that the equal franchise was created only 90 years ago, highlights that our modern democracy is in fact a very new one.

The Government has already confirmed that it intends to mark the Suffrage Centenary with the significant investment of £5 million, announced by the Chancellor at the last budget. Cabinet Office are proud to be collaborating with the Government Equalities Office who are leading on this work, and I know that further announcements will be made in due course on how the government intends to both commemorate and celebrate the achievement of women getting the right to vote.

It is an achievement we must never forget, for their struggle against the burning injustice of their situation demonstrates how fortunate we are in a modern democracy to live with the democratic freedoms that are ours today. Many in the world still do not, and it is right that the International Day of Democracy today gives all democracies in the world the opportunity to reflect upon the importance of our values, often taken for granted.

For myself, the legacy of the past, of the achievements of those women who fought tirelessly for the vote and to have their say, must also be reflected in our commitment to the future.
A commitment to future generations, to ensure that the importance of the vote and each individual voice is never eroded; a commitment to those vulnerable groups and people who find that there are still barriers that prevent them from participating in our democracy; and a commitment to ensuring that as a democratic society, though we recognise our differences are part of a healthy democracy, that should not prevent us from coming together to promote a democracy where every voice matters.

That is why I am delighted that you have been able to join me as I announce today that next year, in the 90th anniversary year of the establishment of the Equal Franchise, the Government intends to establish a new National Democracy Week.

I aim to establish this as an annual event of national significance, with the inaugural week taking place from 2-6 July 2018, in commemoration of the passing of the 1928 Equal Franchise Act on 2 July. In its first year National Democracy Week will complement the Suffrage Centenary Programme, expanding on the themes of inclusion and representation that underpinned women’s struggle for their right to vote.

My ambition is for National Democracy Week to increase the number of people who understand and take part in our democratic process. This includes those who feel excluded from the democratic debate, face barriers to participation and are less likely to be registered to vote.

Many of our partners have told us a focused week of activity is needed to help amplify their messages and build on the momentum of democratic participation in our most recent electoral events.

There will be many opportunities for organisations from all sectors to take part and I am confident that the creativity, enthusiasm and experience of our partners will be vital in helping achieve our shared objective of a democracy that works for everyone. That is why I believe that stakeholders should have a key role in National Democracy Week and we will announce in due course our plans for formal involvement.

In the meantime I welcome your ideas for making National Democracy Week 2018 a success and look forward to discussing these with you. We can make a start today: please take a moment if you can to share your first thoughts using the board behind you.

As we plan ahead, I hope to obtain cross party support for National Democracy Week. I have spoken with the shadow spokesperson on voter engagement, who is happy to support the event in principle, while I am also delighted that the Speaker for the House of Commons has also given his backing. I hope that all MPs, indeed all elected representatives, regardless of their political party, will feel able to get involved in National Democracy Week, and I will be actively encouraging them to do so.

It is vital that we recognise that when it comes to or democracy and increasing democratic participation, while we as politicians and political parties may disagree on details of policy, we do, in the words of Jo Cox, have more in common than that which divides us. It is in the spirit of those words that I hope everyone who is part of our Democratic Society, regardless of their political allegiance, will embrace National Democracy Week.

Thank you.

Facts and figures on the UK government’s relief work in the Caribbean and the British Overseas Territories in response to Hurricane Irma.

A Downing Street Spokesperson said:

President Trump called the Prime Minister earlier today to offer his condolences over this morning’s cowardly attack in London.

They also discussed North Korea’s latest missile test, agreeing it was a reckless provocation and that China must now use all its leverage to bring pressure to bear on the North Korean regime to ensure they change course and end these illegal tests.

Following a successful recruitment process, John Lakin and Michael Redhouse have been appointed to the School Teachers’ Review Body from 1 September 2017. John Lakin will be commencing his first term, while Michael, who has already served one 3-year term, will be joining to serve for a second 3-year term.

Dr Patricia Rice has also been reappointed as the Chair of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) for a second 3-year term to end in September 2020.

The STRB provides independent advice to the government on pay and conditions for teachers and school leaders in England and Wales.

Appointments process

The appointments process was run in accordance with the code of practice issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and was made on merit.

All 3 members confirmed that they have no political activity to declare.

All appointments to the STRB are prime-ministerial appointments.

Biographies

John Lakin

John is currently an independent management consultant and a non-executive board member of CAFCASS, where he is Chair of the Performance Committee and Vice Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. Prior to this John was at PwC for 23 years where he was a partner, Head of Education Consulting and Head of Public Sector Policy, Research and Economics.

Michael Redhouse

Mike Redhouse is currently Principal of EMES Consulting which he founded in 2002, helping many major organisations with their remuneration and benefits issues. Mike graduated in mathematics from the Open University, and his career included spells as a full equity partner at Diageo. Mike currently serves as a member of the Remuneration Board of the Welsh Assembly.

Dr Patricia Rice

Dr Rice has previously served on the STRB as the economist member. Dr Rice is a senior research fellow and the Associate Head for Research in the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford, where she specialises in labour economics.

It’s a real pleasure to be here today at DSEI. I’ve always enjoyed these things, I’ve come to them for many years. And anyone who has been in the Armed Forces and served, and I’m still in the reserves as well, you love wandering round and climbing on the equipment.

And if you’ve left the Armed Forces you’re curious to see what will come around the corner next. It’s interesting to see that some of the many things we are seeing are actually going to be used not by us, who are getting older in this audience, but by a fresher generation that is perhaps yet to even see it – the youngsters that we want to attract into the Armed Forces, and that is the theme I want to play on today.

In going round the stands I also noticed some interesting products. One stand is selling cross bows, for which there is a role I’m sure. It must be some special forces who can justify the need of that particular weapons system!

But it did remind me of how war has changed. The Longbow in Agincourt and the advent of that weapon changed the balance of war. After that everyone had the Longbow. There are many examples in military history where a key invention helped win a battle. The tank in the First Would War, for example. And we see this in the modern context with cyber security coming in.

Perhaps it’s too early to say but we are about to conduct from the SDSR a National Security Capability Review, simply because what has happened over the last couple of years with terrorism, where an indivudual is content to die to cause violance is forcing us to reconsider how we defend our assets and our people as well.

The scale of this event here reflects the determination and the commitment Britain has to play our role on the international stage. We are living in uncertain times but there are a few nations who want to step forward to change our world as a force for good, and we are one of them.

It doesn’t matter what ID card you have in your back pocket but it’s about whether you want to be part of that coalition of the willing in stepping forward to actually stand up to tyranny. So whether it’s tackling ebola, or coming together to come to a solution on Iran, on the nuclear deal, Britain will continue to step forward and play our role.

This week you’ve heard plenty about the Government investing our £178 billion budget towards our armed forces and equipping them for these very challenges that we know about, and perhaps the ones we don’t know about as well.

From F35 to the carrier, from Ajax to Apache, from Dragonfire lasers to Dreadnought submarines, this is the defence industry, moving together with out Armed Forces to create capability for the future.

We’re also playing our part across the world using that equipment. We shouldn’t forget that we have troops in South Sudan, Nigeria, the Gulf, in Iraq and over the skies of Syria, in Ukraine and doing training with our Allies across the world as well.

We step forward with our Armed Forces when others need our help. When the Blue Light services need support – Operation Temperer is when we provide that that help, flooding is another example.

So I’m displaying the wide variety of skill sets that anyone in uniform today will need to have to provide that versatility. There’s plenty to do to make sure we equip our personnel. But also plenty to do to make sure that what we do make we export as well.

That has been reflected this week, the need to drive up productivity, drive down cost and increase innovation as well. We need to make sure we are making the best kit that we can, attracting the best people to fly, see or use them in any capacity.

The pace of change that is taking place is incredible. I always think that when i have to put on my ipad and create an Imovie with my son that he now knows more about how to use the ipad than I do. I’m sure many of you can appreciate that if you have small children yourselves. And looking at some of this equipment, even though I’m a reservist myself, I wouldn’t know how to use them. And there’s two sides to that concern. one is simply making sure we can attract the people who can use the equipment. But second of all there’s a challenge for those of us who are in uniform to collect all that data and turn it into something that is useful.

Those of you who attended the land warfare conference this year, there was a very interesting study of the scale of date that is now being accumulated from the battlefield. It is enormous. If you have too much data you can’t go through the process of turning it into useful intelligence and plans. And when there is pressure on you to make decisions you can see that we’re getting to the point where we’re overloaded with data as well.

The selection of data is ever so important. But what’s also important is who we are recruiting to make sure they understand how to use that data.

I remember working with some Americans on an exercise and we were firing some rocket launchers. On the rocket launchers themselves the instructions were quite simple. It said on it, ‘aim towards enemy’. And that was the sole instruction on this entire thing. And that simply makes sense. But some of the kit we’re seeing today is far more complicated, required degrees and qualification that we need to look at and attract.

It reminds me of a story a Naval officer told me that equipment must be used in the right way because any ship can be used as a Minesweeper, once.

The vital task of recruiting and retaining is becoming ever more challenging as we adjust to society’s changing expectations and the exponential advance of technology.

So today we’re not just thinking about plugging critical skills gaps but how we can recruit people with a diversity of skills whether welders or cyber warriors at a time when the notion of a career for life has actually disappeared completely.

Today we’re considering how best to retain and develop our nuclear scientists and Apache pilots when faced with face stiffer competition from other industries for their talent. And we have to acknowledge that is very much the case. We need to make sure we attract people in the right ways and there are three approaches I want to share with you.

MOD BROADENING ITS TALENT BASE

First, we’re broadening our talent base. We can’t afford to miss out on the talents of our people no matter their gender, sexuality, religion or social background. A diverse community brings a diversity of talent into our Armed Forces.

That’s why, by 2020, we want 10 per cent of our workforce to hail from ethnic minority communities and 15 per cent to be women. We also want to make sure we extend opportunity to all. We’re lifting the ban on women serving in close combat units in the British military. Opening up the Royal Armoured Corps and the RAF regiment to women. And next year the Royal Marines.

We’re helping our young people get a better start in life, championing the apprenticeship programme. And I’m really proud to say that the Armed Forces are the country’s largest provider with as many as 19,000 people on our books. I think that’s a commendable achievement. But we want to increase that number by 50,000 by 2020.

All the while we’re hoping to appeal to a broader range of people by introducing legislation to make service life far more flexible.

Making it easier for personnel to temporarily change the nature of their service to work part-time or be temporarily protected from deployment to support an individual’s personal circumstances where operational need allows.

INDUSTRY

In wanting to attracting the right people, with the right skills, to the right jobs will mean more than just extra MOD effort, it’s about drawing on our Whole Force. So we’re using our Reserves to draw in the talent and skills that we need, whether in medicine, communications, or cyber skills, often in those areas where we don’t have the necessary standard of support.

The people who possess these high level skills are likely to be more familiar with smart phones than smart bombs. But that shouldn’t mean to say they can’t have a role, even for a short space of time in helping us do our job.

This is just a reflection of our need to change our outlook on how we use people and use civilian life. A broader minded perspective is also shaping our approach to plugging the skills gap which we have to admit is very much there.

Take engineering. We recognise it’s in the mutual interest of industry and government to find individuals who have these critical skills. So we’re looking at creating skills passports, enabling those with the right talents to move seamlessly between government and industry.

At the same, we’ve appointed an engineering champion to work with industry partners across the Defence enterprise to help make better use of the existing talent in the workforce.

Meanwhile, under the Defence Growth Partnership we’re looking at how we can make careers within MOD more rewarding creating a new programme to train our staff to support exports and future trading relationships.

I know Dave Armstrong will set-out more details later on.

But the headlines involve the creation of new qualifications in export and International trade, a common industry and government career pathway and secondments to allow individuals to develop their skills and gain key experience across both industry and government.

I hope those of you who are in industry will lend us your support and encourage that to be done to support the Armed Forces covenant. The commitment that we’ve created between business and the Armed Forces to help recruitment and retention of Reservists, the employment of veterans and service spouses/partners and the Cadets movement with supportive HR policies. This has proved very successful indeed and we’re almost up to our 2000th company signing up to our Armed Forces Covenant and I think that’s a great tribute to the work that’s been done.

PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP

Finally we’ve recognised that building the workforce of the future demands collaboration not just across defence but across Government and across the public sector as well.

So we’re currently working with the departments of Education and Business to reinvigorate young people’s interest in science, maths, engineering, and technology.

At the same time we’re working with academia to make sure to tell our defence story and show it for what it really is, a dynamic place of enterprise, of adventure, a place where you get to see the world, and get to make a difference.

Britain has always been blessed with brilliant talent. From John Harrison to Alan Turing to Sir Tim Berners Lee. In Defence it was Air Commodore Frank Whittle who invented the turbo jet. It was British engineer Robert Whitehead who first designed a torpedo launched from a ship underwater. It was Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning who landed a Sopwith Pup on HMS Furious 100 years ago completing the first successful aircraft landing on a moving ship.

And today our people have built the two mightiest carriers this nation has ever seen, satellites that can land on the back of asteroids, lasers that can strike targets 6 km away.

Our challenge is to fire up the ambition of the average 12-year old with the world beating record breaking kit on display in the room today, kit that can help us dive deeper, fly faster, reach higher.

CONCLUSION

So Britain isn’t just building the technology of the future, we’re building the workforce of the tomorrow. And we’re calling on the next generation of innovative heroes to come forward, for it will be on the back of the next Whittles and the next Berners-Lees that our future security, prosperity and reputation, is founded.

The conduct of war, as I mentioned at the beginning, is changing again, as the fourth phase of the industry revolution takes hold, Britain doesn’t just want to be part of it, we very much want to lead it.