Downing Street Says » Prime Minister’s speech to CBI dinner

» Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Prime Minister’s speech to CBI dinner

The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists the Prime Minister’s argument tonight was about the key long term decisions that faced us as a country. The Prime Minister would say that:

"these long-term decisions are clear. But they are also difficult. As you business leaders know, changing things requires faith in long term gain, to triumph over certainty of short-term pain. Not a single difficult decision I have taken in Government hasn’t resulted in prediction of disaster; shrieks of outrage; and a determined resistance, which usually elicits more sympathy than what can appear as a messianic impulse to change for the sake of it. But the urgency is begotten of the scale of the challenge".

The Prime Minister would then go through the challenges and would deal with the fact that the competition we faced was no longer what used to be called low wage, low skill economies, but rather, we were increasingly confronted with low wage, high skill economies, and the Prime Minister would go through the need for vocational skills, for example. The Prime Minister would also deal with education, under the headline "Knowledge is the Key to Prosperity". The Prime Minister would deal with the need to push further and faster with reform in the public sector, and would talk in particular about the changes within the Department of Health. Finally, the Prime Minister would deal with the Energy Review, which he said we would publish before the summer break.

"Essentially the twin pressures of climate change and energy security are raising energy policy to the top of the agenda in the UK and around the world.

Yesterday, I received the first cut of the Review. The facts are stark. By 2025, if current policy is unchanged, there will be a dramatic gap on our targets to reduce CO2 emissions; we will become heavily dependent on gas; and at the same time move from being 80/90%, self-reliant in gas to 80/90% dependent on foreign imports, mostly from the Middle East and Africa and Russia.

These facts put the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewables and a step-change on energy efficiency, engaging both business and consumers, back on the agenda with a vengeance. If we don’t take these long-term decisions now, we will be committing a serious dereliction of our duty to the future of this country".
The PMOS said that alongside the speech, we were publishing on the NO10 website three graphs that were presented at yesterday’s meeting which were on the carbon gap on the replacement of existing power stations, and on the reliance on gas. People could see for themselves the challenges that the trends posed. In the rest of the speech, the Prime Minister would talk about pensions, and the need for a long term solution, regulation, and changes in Europe.

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