May 30, 2001

The Strong Society : Rights, responsibilities and reform
The next steps on crime and welfare

Introduction
Today I want to set out our purpose and our programme to do more in a second term - how, on strong foundations, we can build a strong society where work is rewarded; where success is prized, but also possible for all; where none are written-off without the hope or the help they need; where aspiration and ambition become the expectation of the many, not the birth right of the few.

• A society where work pays and idleness does not
• A society where criminals are punished, but are offered routes out of crime
• A society where children are all offered a chance in life, regardless of their background
• A society with rules, and without prejudice A society where we bind generations and communities not split them asunder
• A society where parents take responsibility for their children, and where families are supported
• A society where everyone has a chance to share in prosperity and gives back in return

Our inheritance
We inherited a Britain where the very idea of society had for years been battered and derided. Too many parts of our society had been abandoned to dependency with no real effort to provide families with opportunities for skills, work and a higher standard of living. Failing schools were left to fail, benefits were delivered, but with no real effort to help people help themselves. Too many people no longer felt responsible for themselves and for one another. There was too little respect, and too much division, as gaps widened and stability weakened.

The results were clear :

• Crime and fear of crime had rocketed and the chance of being caught and convicted had fallen by a third.
• Unemployment was rife and those on benefit got no help with education and retraining.
• Child poverty tripled - and one third of all children were growing up in poverty with no prospects and low expectations.

A Strong Civic Society
We want to build a strong civic society, founded on the right values, the right policies and on getting the right systems in place.

The first element to be clear about is our values.

In 1995 I gave a speech where I argued that duty should be seen again as a core Labour value. Indeed I argued that for too long the Labour Party had been detached from its historic roots, which placed a high value on respect, duty and citizenship.

My concern reflected the thinking of people like William Morris and Tawney who argued in an earlier time : "What we have been witnessing… both in international affairs and in industry is the breakdown of society on the basis of rights divorced from obligations."

As GDH Cole said in 1943: "It ought to be so obvious as hardly to need stating that it is an obligation falling upon any decent human society to give all its members a fair chance in life". These opportunities are not a one-off - but opportunities across people's lives in the stages through which all of us pass - from birth to school, school to further or higher education or work, to sustaining our families and ourselves into our old age.

The second element is understanding how to apply our values today.

In the modern world, we must use the means available to us - public sector and business, voluntary sector and individuals - to build the strong society where individuals have the hope and the means of reaching higher. And everything we do, every route we choose, must work to reinforce our values.

So in the second term, if elected, we need radical reforms of the welfare state and of the criminal justice system to reshape them to put rights and responsibility at the heart of each.

The Welfare State
Since May 1997, we were determined not to leave the benefits system as a machine for churning out fortnightly Giros offering little in the way of real help to move off benefit and into work, or asking people to exercise responsibility to take up work if it was available.

We have put active responsibility at the core of our reforms - sanctions for those who refuse to take up work and training opportunities, visits to health professionals for pregnant mothers on Sure Start Maternity Grant, incentives for employers to provide jobs under the New Deal, and obligations for employers to provide access to stakeholder pensions.

But this has been balanced with a commitment to extending opportunity to all. We have put work and opportunity centre-stage as the best route out of poverty not only through the New Deals, but through the minimum wage, cutting taxes on the low paid and the Working Family Tax Credit. We have slashed youth unemployment - helping over 280,000 young people into jobs. Long-term unemployment is at its lowest level since 1979. Over 150,000 lone parents have moved off income support.

At the same time we have not forgotten security for people who cannot be expected to work. Independence is a difficult path to tread if you are ground down by deprivation and exclusion. We are spending more on our priority groups - an extra £6bn in real terms on families and children, an extra £4.4bn on pensioners.

But in a second term if elected we must and will do much more.

We will get to grips with illiteracy and innumeracy. What chance is there in today's labour market if you can barely read or write or can't use a computer? We want to tackle the many benefit claimants who lack basic skills. I want to see a welfare state where people on benefits acquire the skills which are essential to gain a foot-hold in the labour market. If re-elected we will want to roll-out compulsory basic skills tests for all job-seekers and will introduce early in the second term incentives and sanctions so that that people take up the courses that they need; courses which will be free of charge.

We will make work pay. Once people get into work we will help them stay there and progress. We will simplify Housing Benefit by reducing the number of transitional schemes in operation, having a fixed rate of payment for 6 months - giving people a platform from which they can try out work. We will introduce a Tax Credit Bill in the first session which will bring in Employment Tax Credit. For the first time people both with and without children will have wage top ups, building on the success of the Working Families Tax Credit. We will also introduce the Integrated Child Credit to bring together all existing income-related payments for children. This will be a big step to help us reach our child poverty target.

We will open up careers and not just jobs. We will ensure that people get the training and help they need to make progress in their jobs and to succeed. Individual Learning Accounts and training credits will all be geared to letting people develop their skills. And we will build on the New Deal, working with employers so people stay in employment and climb into better jobs - by developing career pathways in particular sectors such as catering and construction so that a person coming off the New Deal who may begin as a receptionist can end up as the restaurant manager or go from healthcare assistant to nurse. Personal Advisors will work with New Dealers not just to get them into jobs in the first place but to help them stay there. We will build on the success of the Employment Zones which include greater flexibility, public private partnerships and payment by results.

We will break down the barriers that keep people on incapacity benefit out of work. Many people on Incapacity Benefit aren't able to work. And our responsibility is to ensure they have decent income and services. But 1 in 3 people on sickness and disability benefits say they would like to work. We will help them to renew their skills and education - and where they are able to work - to take the steps back into a job. In the past, people on IB were just written off. In future every person claiming Incapacity Benefit will come to a work-focused interview, so that where they are able to, they can look at opportunities for work, volunteering and improving skills. We will develop decent rehabilitation services to help them into work. Our £35m for transitional jobs pilots will also reach the hardest to help in deprived communities - building on the success of organisations like Glasgow Works - where long term unemployed people combine work with re-training and do jobs that benefit the community. Unemployed people gain and so does the local community.

But as well as getting the policies right we are embarking on a fundamental change in how we deliver benefits :

We will embed work as the cornerstone of the system for all those of working age. We will bring together the Job Centres and Benefit Offices into Job Centre Plus to provide a quality service - not one which pays out benefits first- but which puts employment first. Everyone of working age will have to have an interview which will focus on their work and learning opportunities.

To underpin our reforms of the welfare state we will establish two new organisations. First the Job Centre Plus to bring together in a single modern organisation the services currently provided to those of working age by the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency. We will have 50 Job Centre Plus offices up and running by the end of the year providing a local, integrated employment and benefits service for the first time. Second we will establish the Pensions Service, to provide a joined-up high quality service dedicated to pensioners.

To make sure that we deliver these changes on the ground we will ensure that this service is reflected at the centre of government, ensuring accountability at all levels.

Crime
On crime, our approach is based on individual responsibility but recognises the conditions in which crime breeds. Crime is most commonplace in areas of economic disadvantage, family breakdown and endemic drug abuse. So we will continue to be tough on crime and on the causes of crime from low level disorder, to the 100,000 most prolific offenders to serious organised criminals.

We are tackling the causes of crime. As well as the measures announced earlier, we are supporting families and children through a substantial rise in financial support for families. Sure Start is a new initiative to make sure that children have the best possible start and are ready for school in 500 areas reaching a third of under 4s in poverty. We will make sure that the level of educational attainment of children in care is significantly increased, every child leaving care will be guaranteed access to a job, training or education. And as half of crime is drug related we have put drug workers in police custody suites and introduced a new drug testing and treatment order to get offenders off drugs and off crime.

We have strengthened measures to fight crime
We have ended the policy we inherited where young offenders could get away with caution after caution and the practice of turning a blind eye to breaches of community sentences. We have toughened sentences for drug dealers, persistent burglars and rapists. We have set up a sex offenders register, employed more prosecutors and increased supervision of sex offenders. And we are reversing the decline in police numbers which began in 1993. We are pledging an extra 6000 recruits to raise police numbers to their highest ever level.

These are the right foundations. But we will take further action to focus on the 100,000 most persistent offenders. They are responsible for half of all crime. They are the core of the crime problem in this country. Half are under 21, nearly two thirds are hard drug users, three quarters are out of work and more than a third were in care as children. Half have no qualifications at all and 45 per cent were excluded from school.

Throughout this campaign I have stressed the need for renewal of our public services. The Criminal Justice System is no different. It too requires investment and reform. Spending on the police will be an extra £1.6bn a year by 2003/4. And we are pledged to recruit another 6,000 police officers raising police numbers to their highest ever level. And that is investment that would be cut by the Tories and police numbers that the Tories have refused to match. A real choice for the public.
But that investment must be matched by radical reform. We plan the most comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system since the war -to catch, convict, punish and rehabilitate more of the 100,000 persistent offenders.

So we will :
Overhaul sentencing so that persistent offending results in more severe punishment: the more persistent the offender, the tougher the sentence. Reform custodial sentences so that every offender gets punishment and rehabilitation designed to minimise re-offending : for example stay off drugs or stay under supervision Reform the rules of evidence to simplify trials and so that evidence which people naturally think helps in the proof of guilt is not kept from juries. We will introduce specialist, late sitting and review courts so that we can deal with domestic violence more effectively, and make sure offenders are properly monitored: get 21st century courts for 21st century crime. We will establish a Criminal Assets Recovery Agency to seize the assets of crime and drug barons so that they do not profit from their crimes. And a register of drug dealers will help the police better crack down on drug related crime. Make sure crime does not pay. We will introduce a victims bill of rights providing legal rights to compensation, support and information for victims : it is time to put the victim first.

We will tackle yob culture which so often leads to more serious crime. We have given the police and local communities the power to take out antisocial behaviour orders to prevent disorderly conduct and harassment happening in the first place. Together with injunctions and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts there are now a wide range of measures available to prevent low level disorder. We are funding a range of warden schemes through England and Wales to reduce the fear of crime, strengthen community spirit, and report issues to the police, Local Authority and Housing Associations.

Anti-social behaviour is often alcohol-related. Police will now have the power to close down pubs and clubs linked with incidents of violent disorder and the power to levy a fixed penalty notice for minor disorder - like drunkeness in the street. We are tightening the rules on bail so that courts will have to give reasons for granting bail where the prosecution has applied for a remand in custody and, for young defendants, we will amend the criteria so that the courts can refuse bail to those with serious offending histories.

We will establish anti-social behaviour units in every local authority to support the Crime and Disorder partnerships. We will also give local communities £200m over 3 years to tackle drug-related crime - through extra policing, CCTV or extra neighbourhood wardens.

Truancy is still too common with 50,000 unauthorised absences from school on a typical day. It is one of the most basic legal obligations on parents to ensure that their children turn up at school, each day, on time. The law is in place for the children - so that every child gets a decent education.

We have put in place the powers for local agencies to take action. LEAs and the police have the powers to tackle this problem by prosecuting parents, and undertaking sweeps to pick up truants. Sentencers now have the power to levy higher fines and impose parenting orders on the parents of truants. I want to see these powers used, with local authorities and the police working together on regular truancy sweeps and effective follow-up actions, including prosecutions where appropriate, to see that truancy is tackled and parents take their responsibilities seriously.

We will reinforce our efforts to tackle drugs. Nearly 2/3 of the 100,000 most persistent offenders abuse hard drugs. We will ensure that an offender with a serious drug problem is required to undergo treatment and testing to break the cycle of abuse and crime. We will train more financial investigators to confiscate the assets of drug dealers. We will extend the powers of law enforcement agencies to allow them to seize cash in the course of investigations. And 50% of the assets will go back into the fight against crime - whether on policing, drug programmes or community programmes.

We will increase the rate at which we catch and convict people. We will work with the police to give real power to local divisional commanders, raise the skills and training of all officers and broaden the recruitment pool. We will strengthen training so that police officers have the skills they need today. HMIC will be given the power and resources to ratchet up performance in poor areas.

We are providing the police with the ability to use the advances in forensic technology. We have built up the national DNA database and by 2004 the whole active criminal population will be on it.

It is time to crack down hard on people who attack our frontline workers. We must reinstate a culture of respect for people working hard on behalf of the public. There should be zero tolerance of abuse and harrassment of nurses, paramedics, teachers, doctors and other public servants. So, whether it is teachers dealing with abusive parents, nurses being confronted by violent patients or relatives, they should know the community, and the courts, are on their side.

If we are reelected, we will issue revised sentencing guidelines to ensure tougher sentences for offences against public servants, like nurses and teachers. These people work hard for the community. The community has to stand up for them.

I am also aware of the growing concern among teachers over parents who think they can charge into the school and abuse heads, teachers, school support staff and other parents. Again, the community has to show whose side we are on. If we are re-elected, we will toughen measures against parents who harass, abuse, or attack teachers. We will ensure that the courts have the powers that they need: extending parenting orders so that parents can be excluded from school premises. This builds on existing measures designed to ensure parents take responsibility for their children; where the court can order training or that parents ensure their children get to school.

Education is the number one priority. None of our ambitions for Britain will be achieved without good teachers. It is time we stood up for them.

A society where everyone has a chance to share in prosperity and gives back in return
Hard pressed families need a strong society but they also need the benefits of a strong economy. That is why we have put such emphasis on creating the platform of economic stability on which families can prosper. We know how much more needs to be done -but today mortgages are lower, inflation is lower, unemployment is lower and living standards are rising. That is the foundation we can now build on - to spread prosperity to every region, to strengthen families by lifting more children out of poverty.

We are embarking on a range of reforms which pave the way to society where everyone has a stake. The Child Trust Fund is about partnership between government and individual to offer opportunity and responsibility for all our children. Every child - from all walks of life - will grow up knowing that something has been put aside for them. What it offers is the foundation for parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to save for a child's future.

And this policy does not stand on its own. If we are re-elected, from 2003 we will start a new scheme called a Saving Gateway. This will mean that people on lower incomes, whether they have children or not, will be able to open an account and up to a limit, have their savings matched pound for pound by the government.

We will examine the ways in which social housing tenants can be helped to gain an equity share in the value of their home - something they can hand down to future generations and an incentive to care and look after their homes. A stake is not just about a material asset, important though that is, but about giving people control, something to plan for, and something to pass on to the next generation and changing behaviour. It is about ownership for all and not just the few.

A Society where no-one is written off
That is why we created the Social Exclusion Unit which is beginning to get to grips with long-neglected problems. The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund will provide £900m over the next 3 years to the 88 most deprived areas in the country. We have had some early successes - teenage pregnancy is down, school exclusions are down, the number of rough sleepers is down and there are more young people in education. But there is much more to do - over the next year we will lay out plans to help young runaways, children in care, and reverse social exclusion. All our initiatives rest on partnership - government cannot simply 'do' things to communities. Our Community Empowerment Fund will ensure that local people have the resources to play a full part in those partnerships. So too will Community Chests which will offer £50m over 3 years to support community projects such as self-help programmes, and mother and toddler groups. It is communities themselves which know best how to do things for themselves.

A Society with rules and without prejudice
Strong communities exist where all groups - whatever their ethnicity, colour, age, sexuality, ability or disability, man or woman - can play a full part in local and national life. That is why we introduced the Race Relations Act, strengthened the Disability Discrimination Act and are tackling discrimination in employment so that more of our people can fulfil their talents. These rules - which underpin social order, tolerance and fair opportunities for all - are the foundation for mutuality and respect.

A Society with Strong Families
The key to building a strong society is understanding how individuals, families and society relate. It is no good for the Tories to proclaim that they support "the family" if they don't support the communities around them. How much harder is it to bring up children without a decent income, childcare, healthcare and access to good schools?

Governments can't substitute for good families or bring children up - but they can provide the support to help parents fulfil their responsibilities.

We have raised child benefit by a quarter in real terms for the first child and introduced the Children's Tax Credit - now worth up to £520 a year for 5 million families - and will raise this to £1,000 for new-born babies. We have made it easier for families to combine work and family - through our National Childcare Strategy which has provided childcare places for 625,000 children and a free nursery place for every 4 year old. If elected we will build on this through improved maternity pay and leave, paid paternity pay and a Taskforce on Flexible Working which we have announced today.

We have reformed the Child Support Agency to ensure that absent fathers cannot escape the obligation to support their children. Parentline has given advice to 85,000 parents last year. And we have had real success - over a million children out of poverty, a fall of 300,000 in the number of children growing up in homes with no one in work.

A society where people give of their time for others
We want to encourage the voluntary and community sector and volunteering. It reaches the parts that the public sector can't and the private sector won't. To do so, we need a strong voluntary and community sector and people willing to give of their time.

So far we have created a national database of places who need volunteers and people who want to volunteer. We have supported bodies that raise awareness of opportunities to volunteer- so many people want to give their time, but don't know how. We have supported local level community groups, encouraged employers to give their workforce an annual day off to volunteer, reduced the barriers to volunteering in the social security system and created Millennium Volunteers for young people and Experience Corps for older people. From this April we have earmarked an extra £300m to build on our efforts. Volunteering creates the trust that binds communities together - the social capital which allows communities to flourish.

Conclusion
We believe in the idea of society. We seek the reality of a strong society - a modern Britain built on our values. Values of social justice, efficiency, mutuality. But these values can only be made real if we have the right systems in place at the centre and at a local level. Change will not come overnight. We have laid the foundations. And we ask for a second term so the work goes on - not just in separate areas of endeavour but bringing them all together to crease a strong society of opportunity and prosperity for all.