Tag Archives: HM Government

Thank you Mr President and thank you Under-Secretary-General Feltman for your valuable briefing. And thank you to Fatima on the phone for sharing your thoughts.

It was six months ago in a dusty IDP camp in Maiduguri that we heard her testimony – together with that of many others – and it really brought home to me, and I think probably to several of us who were there, the human cost of the crisis in the Lake Chad Basin. So it’s very good to hear from Fatima again today and it’s vital that the Council continues to hear from those most affected by the issues on our agenda and continues to use that analysis, and those from-the-heart interventions, to inform our decision making.

Sadly, as both Fatima and the Secretary-General’s report make clear, six months on from our visit to the Lake Chad Basin, and the situation remains deeply troubling. Yes, Boko Haram has been degraded, yes territory has been reclaimed, but Boko Haram is far from a spent force. They are down but not out, shifting their tactics from land grabs to opportunistic attacks.

Maiduguri now faces weekly suicide attacks, many from girls forced to be suicide bombers. Over 400 people have been killed since we visited. And Boko Haram’s shameful, sickening abductions of young women and girls continues unabated. Those that return continue to face stigma and discrimination, which is why the UK will host a ministerial event here on the 18th of September to launch a new set of global principles to tackle such stigma.

The continuing barbarity is only exacerbating the humanitarian crises. Since we visited, the number of Nigerians seeking refuge in neighbouring countries has only marginally decreased, with nearly 2 million people still displaced in North East Nigeria and over 8 million in need of urgent, life-saving assistance. And while the numbers of forced returns have fallen, we have seen thousands of people pressured back into areas where they don’t feel safe.

So it’s clear that we should all redouble our efforts to implement the commitments that we made in resolution 2349. The UK will play our part. We remain committed to partnering with Nigeria and its neighbours to degrade and defeat Boko Haram. We remain committed to helping people in need in the region, having scaled up our humanitarian support to 130 million dollars this year and announced an additional 260 million over four years, as part of the North East Nigeria Transition to Development programme.

But we all need to play our part. The Nigeria Humanitarian Fund launched in February with an appeal for 1 billion dollars this year. As of last month that appeal is less than half funded. As the Secretary-General’s report makes clear, insufficient funding from the donor community continues to limit the provision of food aid, development and recovery activities.

And just as the international community must act, so too should governments in the region. We look to the Government of Nigeria and affected countries to provide greater resources where they can and to further prioritise the humanitarian response. We also call on them to expedite all remaining registrations for humanitarian organisations in the region, as the Secretary-General’s report notes. We welcome the increased civil-military coordination in the humanitarian effort and urge this to continue. However we deeply regret the raid on the UN Red Roof Compound by the Nigerian military last month, though we do welcome the swift response by the authorities.

It’s clear Mr President that a long term solution will only be found through addressing the root causes which led to Boko Haram’s emergence. That, I think, was the main lesson for many of us on our visit. That search for the longer term root causes requires a regional plan to address the political, economic, governance, transparency and accountability issues. And if such an effort is to succeed, it must respect human rights. The ongoing reports of torture, arbitrary arrest and sexual exploitation are deeply concerning and must stop. So we support calls for greater funding to strengthen the UN’s monitoring presence on the ground.

Finally, the role of women in this crisis cannot be overlooked. We reiterate the Council’s call for greater engagement between regional governments, the Multinational Joint Task Force and women’s civil society, as well as deployment of a gender advisor to the MNJTF.

So in short, Mr President, there is a lot more that all of us need to do. Six months on from our visit, we cannot afford to lose focus. I hope that through briefings like the one we’ve heard today from Fatima and from Jeff, we will all be reminded of what is at stake, just as we were in Maiduguri. Thank you.

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The Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson visited the Caribbean to see the impact of the UK’s relief effort following Hurricane Irma. He also met the governors and others leading the recovery work, and visited communities working to repair major damage.

Arriving in the Caribbean

Arriving at Bridgetown airport in Barbados yesterday, 12 September, the Foreign Secretary said:

We’re in Bridgetown in Barbados which is absolutely crucial for the operation of British armed forces in getting in huge numbers of men and supplies and police officers into areas affected by Hurricane Irma, in Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos.

It’s an extraordinary effort, the biggest military effort by British services since Libya, and I really think it’s starting to work, I think they’ve been very well received. You’re seeing confidence starting to rise on those islands, making some more announcements tomorrow about some of the funding that’s coming through.

But the key message that we’re making, we’re giving is that we’re not just here to support these islands to get back up on their feet, we’re here for the long term. These are British people, and we’re here to help.

Foreign Secretary speaking in Barbados

Visiting Anguilla

Visiting the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Anguilla today, the Foreign Secretary said:

I’m here outside the hospital in Anguilla where they’ve had huge amount of storm damage, about 60% of the facility is damaged, but the Royal Marines, the Royal Engineers are here and they’ve been putting it back on its feet and steadily repairing it. A dozen or more have just arrived with their tools and getting on with the job of putting Anguilla back on its feet.

It’s incredible to see the resilience of the people here, I’ve seen tree’s stripped of every leaf, telephone poles snapped in 2, electricity poles torn down, roofs blown off. Quite unbelievable destruction but you can’t destroy the spirit of the these people.

Foreign Secretary speaking in Anguilla

Visiting the British Virgin Islands

After meeting the authorities and local communities, the Foreign Secretary said:

I’m in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and this is the East End Area and we’re looking at, as you can see, incredible devastation but it is starting to come back on its feet and the UK is helping. £25 million announced today by our government in addition to the £32 million we’ve already pledged. We are getting on with the work of sending our Armed Services around, with the police helping to build up confidence on the streets.

Yes there are difficulties distributing some of the aid, getting water and food to the places we want it to get to but slowly it’s happening and you’ve got the UK government working very, very closely with the authorities here in the British Virgin Islands.

What’s so incredible is the spirit of these Islands. The hurricane can come in, it can knock down absolutely everything in its path but it can’t bow or bend the spirit of the British Virgin Islands.

Foreign Secretary speaking in BVI

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The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, returns from his visit to the British Overseas Territories that have been devastated by Hurricane Irma tomorrow (Thursday 14 September) and will host a meeting with international partners in London about continued co-ordination in response to the Hurricane.

The Foreign Secretary will discuss the response to Hurricane Irma with the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the French Political Director Nicolas de Rivière. This is Secretary Tillerson’s second visit to the UK since taking up his post, and follows his visit in May after the Manchester terror attack.

The UK has already provided a strategic airlift to support French operations on St Barts and St Martin and worked closely with the US authorities to ensure people’s safety in Florida.

The three countries will have a separate discussion on tackling the aggressive and illegal actions of the North Korean regime. The UK is at the heart of mobilising world opinion with the aim of achieving a diplomatic solution to the situation on the Korean peninsula. The international community adopted new measures on 11 September which put in place the most stringent UN sanctions regime placed on any nation in the 21st century.

The Foreign Secretary will also chair a meeting on Libya with the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Libya, Ghassan Salamé, US Secretary of State Tillerson, Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Anwar bin Mohamed Gargash and the French Political Director Nicolas de Rivière.

The Libya meeting is an opportunity to discuss how to break the political deadlock in Libya, and to build momentum in support of the efforts of the UN Secretary General and his Special Representative. Helping to bring stability to Libya is a vital part of UK efforts to tackle the threat from terrorism and the issue of illegal migration, which exist in close proximity to Europe.

Speaking ahead of the meetings the Foreign Secretary said:

I’ve seen firsthand the devastation Hurricane Irma has caused people in the Caribbean. Close coordination with our allies is vital for both the short-term and long-term recovery efforts.

Britain will continue to work closely alongside our partners to tackle the shared challenges we face worldwide.

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Thank you for inviting me here tonight…

…at the inaugural UK Finance Annual Dinner…

…it’s good to see this new super-charged trade body up and running and looking out for the interests of British finance, banking, markets and payments companies from up and down the UK.

UK Finance may only be a few months old…

…but you represent an industry that is somewhat older.

It was only last year that we discovered just how old.

Archaeologists were digging just a few yards away during excavations for Bloomberg’s new European Headquarters…

…where they found dozens of old tablets, which represent the oldest known record of Roman writing in England.

What the tablets revealed is that by the mid first century AD this was a thriving, commercial and financial centre.

Junius the cooper was selling barrels to Tertius the brewer…

…it turns out even two thousand years ago alcohol was playing a central role in the life of the city.

And then there’s the tablet that contains a friendly warning to a businessman that he has extended credit unwisely because “they are boasting through the whole market that you have lent them money.”

…obviously something that never happens these days.

Finance has changed somewhat in the centuries since.

Tablets were replaced with coins; coins were replaced with notes; notes were replaced with plastic; and…well we’re back with tablets.

But that is why this industry is so successful.

It’s ability to innovate and develop as the world around it changes.

Fintech – a sector that barely existed a decade ago – now employs 60,000 people.

Since the first banking app appeared six years ago, around 20 million people in the UK have become users.

And contactless payments have risen eight-fold in the past two years…

…with cash usage falling…

…which as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am very pleased about!

And the reason it is so pleasing to speak here tonight…

…at the launch of this new trade body…

…is that it is here in the UK…

…where we have the financial innovation…

…the venture capital…

…and the world’s number one financial centre…

…where we are leading the world in the FinTech revolution…

…and changing the way in which financial services are accessed and delivered.

It is my priority as Chancellor to ensure that the UK remains the financial services centre of the world. And the global hub of fintech.

We have the timezone, the language, the legal system, the talent, the capital markets, and the tech centre to succeed.

And we have a government which is determined to create the regulatory and tax environment for these new markets to succeed.

We have given our regulators a clear mandate to do so…

The FCA have led the way internationally with their ‘regulatory sandbox’…

…allowing companies to test their products with consumers in a safe environment.

The Bank of England’s FinTech Accelerator gives companies the chance to work on innovative central banking solutions…

…while the Bank is broadening access to its settlement accounts and payment systems. And in the last year we have introduced a new investors’ relief, to support investment into firms looking to scale up.

But we can do more.

And we will do more.

But it has to be a collaborative effort.

On government’s part we must invest in the skills and the infrastructure – to ensure the UK remains the most attractive place to start and grow a business.

And for your part, businesses must invest in raising the productivity of your employees, and ensure that we are leading the world in the ground breaking innovation that will be so critical to succeeding in the economy of the future.

At the Autumn Statement I launched £23 billion of additional government investment in infrastructure and innovation…

…that will take public investment to nearly half a trillion pounds over the next five years.

At the Spring Budget I unveiled our plans to overhaul our technical education system…

…to equip our young people with the skills they will need in the decades to come.

And our Industrial Strategy will seek to tackle Britain’s distortive regional productivity disparity.

But that is just one side of the coin.

We need private investment too.

It is businesses in this room that have built the world’s pre-eminent financial centre…

…the UK’s financial services industry has around £7 trillion of assets under management…

…60% of European capital market business is conducted through the UK…

…and UK firms provided more than £1.1 trillion of lending to the EU 27 in 2015.

Yet some of the highest potential UK start-ups still struggle to obtain the finance that they need to grow into world-leading firms.

That is why the Prime Minister appointed Sir Damon Buffini to chair an expert panel as part of the Patient Capital review…

…and why we launched our Patient Capital Consultation over the summer…

…which puts forward proposals for a new National Investment Fund…

…with the government and private sector working together to mobilise the investment our growth businesses need…

…examines the effectiveness of government’s current tax interventions;

…and asks what more should be done to support some of the largest pools of capital in the UK to invest in those growth businesses.

Because if we are to build a more productive society we need to harness this capital and encourage its investment in the areas of highest growth potential.

Of course I recognise that for companies in this room a key issue is the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.

And it won’t surprise you to hear my top priority is securing an outcome that puts the economy, business, jobs, and prosperity first.

And that includes securing a solution that protects our most important EU export sector – financial services.

Today I chaired the first meeting of the Brexit Business Advisory Group, along with my colleagues David Davis and Greg Clark.

And from this, and other discussions I have with business, it is very clear to me that getting clarity soon on issues such as transition, is of vital importance to business – and thus the economy.

I can tell you we have made progress in the negotiations…

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…publishing position papers to inform our negotiating position with the EU…

…building on the principles I talked about when I was last at Mansion House in June:

The importance of a smooth and orderly exit…

…the importance of preserving reciprocal access to each other’s markets for goods and services…

…and the importance of getting our future financial services relationship right.

I want to say a brief word about these three principles.

First, our intention that our withdrawal from the EU be as smooth and orderly as possible.

I am clear that, whatever the ultimate outcome of the negotiations, an integral part of delivering that is through the negotiation of a time-limited interim period…

…where we will have left the EU and therefore will be outside of the EU Customs Union and the Single Market…

…but during which the UK and the EU 27 will retain access to each other’s markets, and will operate a harmonised customs arrangement, ensuring a frictionless border.

This will provide certainty, and avoid a cliff-edge for business and individuals during the transition from the current structure of membership to the deep and special partnership which we hope to agree with the EU.

Second, as we negotiate our long-term future partnership with the EU, we want to maintain two-way access to each other’s markets in goods and services.

Because that’s what business want.

And it is also what the British public want.

Polling has shown that people overwhelmingly believe free trade is positive for our economy, regardless of how they voted in the referendum.

And that they want to continue our trading relationship with Europe.

And they are right.

Take the financial services sector.

A fragmentation of European financial service markets would result in poorer quality, higher priced services for business and citizens across Europe.

It would result in business being lost to New York and Hong Kong…

…it would push up fixed-rate borrowing costs for homeowners across the continent…

…it would push up costs for airlines hedging against fuel prices…

…or farmers protecting themselves from foreign exchange risk when exporting their produce.

So we want to protect our existing trading relationships with the EU.

But we also want to ensure that the future trade arrangements we have with the EU work.

And that is particularly important for financial services…

…because no existing trade agreement, nor third-country access to the EU, supports the scale of reciprocal trade in financial services that exists between the UK and the EU.

Delivering an outcome that protects the financial services infrastructure serving Europe will require detailed negotiation and a flexible and innovative approach.

And that is the third principle.

We will seek a new paradigm for our future trading relationship in financial services.

We acknowledge that there are legitimate concerns among our EU colleagues about the oversight and supervision of financial markets here in the UK that are providing vital financial services to EU firms and citizens.

We will address them by making forward-leaning proposals for greater transparency, cooperation, and agreed standards based on international norms.

But, let me be clear, we will not accept protectionist agendas, disguised as arguments about financial stability. We will seek to agree new mechanisms around key issues, from dispute resolution to data protection.

Domestically we will continue to have the most robust regulatory and supervisory regime – to protect our taxpayers from having to step in to deal with failure.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations, we must ensure that firms are able to operate within a workable regime at the point of exit and beyond.

Further detail on our proposals will follow – but the papers we have published set out a starting point on these key areas of negotiation…

…and I look forward to engaging with you all over the weeks and months ahead.

I’ll leave you with a final thought and let you get on with your main course.

I am off to Budapest tomorrow to meet Visegrad 4 Ministers, and Tallinn on Friday – and I will be making all these points to my European counterparts.

But this has to be a team effort…

… it is incumbent on all of us, in business and in government, to go on making the case for an outcome that protects jobs and prosperity…

…in Britain, and across the EU…

…and for a transition that takes us to it smoothly.

We have to go on emphasising to contacts and supply-chain partners in Europe that this is a shared challenge, that needs a shared solution.

We’ve got off to a good start.

But we still have a long way to go.

I am confident that we will get to the right outcome…

…that achieves early agreement on transitional arrangements…

…that allows businesses to go on trading, investing, creating jobs and driving prosperity up and down this country, and across the continent …

…and so protects the long-term interests of our people and our country.

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The theme of 2018’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “The Power of Words”. And that’s a theme that’s particularly apt for the times in which we live. Last month, as you may have seen, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it was going to start treating online hate crimes just as seriously as their offline equivalents. So if you are reported to the police for hurling vile, hate filled abuse at someone on Twitter, the CPS won’t treat it any differently to abuse on the street.

We all know it’s absolutely the right move. But there’s a sizeable minority who say online abuse isn’t really abuse at all.That anyone complaining about remarks that are anti-Semitic or homophobic or racist should just turn a blind eye.

That’s nonsense.

Words have enormous power to do harm. Believe me, I’ve been receiving racial abuse my whole life.

There’s the direct effect on the individual, of course. The emotional trauma and psychological damage that hateful abuse can cause. The fear and self-doubt it can sow. But there’s also the bigger picture.

The wider impact.

Look at the Holocaust.

We all know where it ended: in the labour camps, the gas chambers, the death marches. But it began with nothing more than words.

With abuse.

With slanders.

With threats.

And when those words were allowed to go unchallenged, year after year, the consequences were catastrophic.

Only words, yes. But words that led to the deaths of millions.

Half a century later, in Rwanda, messages of hate filled the airwaves and the printed press, encouraging, even demanding, the slaughter that was to follow. One study found that the deaths of more than 50,000 Tutsis could be directly linked to the broadcasts of one radio station. 50,000 innocent men, women and children murdered because of words.

And the absence of words can also be dangerous. In Myanmar, one powerful woman’s refusal to raise her voice and speak out is having devastating consequences for the Rohingya people.

So history has shown us, again and again, that words can be used to cause and inspire hate, to encourage and justify violence. Words are powerful things that should be handled with care. But that power can also be a force for good.

Social media is often condemned as a platform for hatred, but the most liked Tweet of all time is Barack Obama sharing the inspiring words of Nelson Mandela:

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion.”

And harnessing the positive power of words has long been a core part of Holocaust Memorial Day. Every year we hear the words of genocide survivors, sharing their most harrowing memories so that we understand the importance of saying no to bigotry.

Thanks to HMD, late January each year sees our school classrooms flooded with words. Words explaining what happened in the Holocaust, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia and in Darfur. Words impressing on the next generation their duty to remember. Words warning what can happen if they fail to do so.

In 2018, with continued support and funding of government, the HMD Trust will be reaching out to more people than ever before. It will be organising more events than ever before. And it will be publishing and sharing more words than ever before. Only words, yes. But words that have the power to prevent genocide.

Around the world there are memorials to genocides that feature the most powerful words of all. Words that spell out the human cost of failing to fight back against bigotry.

At the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam you can see her diary, yes, but also another book. It’s more than an inch thick, hundreds of pages of tightly printed words: the names of every Dutch Jew murdered by the Nazis.

Visitors to the Srebrenica memorial are greeted by a vast, curving wall. From a distance the grey stone appears to be filled with countless black lines. But as you move closer, you realise the lines consist of countless words. The names of thousands upon thousands of Muslims who were shot, stabbed, even buried alive. These words, whether printed on paper or carved in stone, speak to us of the individuals who died, the human tragedies behind the horrifying statistics of genocide.

They will soon be joined by the UK’s National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, to be built a short walk from where we are today. It will contain millions of words. Words that share testimony. Words that stand as a reminder. Words that serve as a warning. They’re only words, yes. But they’re words that tell a story we should never, ever forget.

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