Penny Mordaunt – 2023 Speech to the Institute for Government Annual Conference

The speech made by Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons, to the Institute for Government annual conference held on 17 January 2023.

Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for inviting me along today.

I’m a fan of the institute. The IfG is a very helpful organisation. It produces the performance tracker. Many interesting reports.

And in advance of events such as this, a round up assessment of the government’s agenda and challenges.

It was an appropriate coincidence that many of you would have read Hannah’s helpful scene setter on Blue Monday.

A fair summary would be:

Urgent recovery and reform required against geo and domestic political complexity and huge post Brexit expectations.

With not much spare resource, capacity, energy, time or trust.

I am reminded of Nixon’s 1969 inauguration speech:

“We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfilment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.”

Are you suitably depressed?

Well, let me see if I can cheer you up.

Today, you will hear some ideas and issues that need attention.

You may hear some new policy ideas too from panelists.

But at such times of great challenge, we need to focus on strategy as well as tactics.

A successful strategy is not just for government.

It needs to yield opportunities. So we can all make a contribution.

If you’re here today, or watching online, or reading this speech after the event, it is likely you already have a good sense of the challenges facing us.

It’s also likely that you are part of the solution.

Whether you’re a politician, civil servant, or council leader, or exec or trustee or member of the media – it requires all of us.

Part of the frustration with politics is not that people don’t have solutions.

It is that people have great solutions and ideas, they desperately want to be able to act on.

People WANT to take responsibility.

They want to help. Did you not see what happened during Covid?

Individuals, business and organisations stepped up.

There was a huge civic outpouring.

And a renewed interest in volunteering that we should capitalise on.

Now they want to be the change. We should let them.

To unlock potential and create solutions we need to let every part of the UK, every talent, sector and individual to be able to help.

From us in Government that needs:

• a clear mission
• a commitment to excellence and accountability
• the centre ground to be valued
• free and empowered citizens
• and the amplification of hope.

Since 2010, there is much to be proud of.

I shan’t take up time here because it is the future that matters. But do tune in on Thursday mornings for further details.

However, Technological change, geopolitical events and Covid threw the jigsaw pieces of our nation up in the air.

We are painstakingly putting them back together.

The picture has changed.

Many people feel things don’t work any more, at least for them.

Some are feeling economic shocks for the first time.

Consumers feel they have less power, sometimes it is harder to change contracts, or even make a complaint.

We have the rise of new monopolies which escape our usual ways of ensuring choice and opportunity for our citizens. Whether they be what John Penrose calls ‘natural monopolies’ such as energy or water companies or ‘network monopolies’ – online giants which stealthily make their customers stick with them.

The customer feels they are no longer the boss. They are not turning to the state, politicians or the regulator as their champion. Fair Fuel, Which? and Martin Lewis are their preferred protectors.

We have a generation gap – especially in financial resilience. Home and share ownership are still out of reach for some.

Young people are fixated on rewriting or tearing down the past because they don’t believe they have a future.

Older people feel their world has been “amazonked”, their values trashed and the high street hollowed out.

And we have a demographic timebomb to contend with. A quarter of the workforce is inactive. Others are still trapped in low pay by the system only part reformed.

Productivity and stronger wage growth is needed to raise quality of life

The volume of Data we now have should have empowered us.

At best it hasn’t.

At worst, it has made us more vulnerable.

Nor did it help us to spot the pandemic that hit us.

For those with the least, the whole system can seem rigged against them.

They see it in the so-called ‘poverty premium’ as the CSJ has termed it, that some parts of the private sector impose. Higher insurance, prepayment meters, high cost credit and paying to get access to cash.

They see it in the public sector upon which they depend. They can’t choose a school or a GP.

Much good has been done under previous administrations in these areas, from raising personal tax thresholds, to school reform resulting in meaningful improvements in standards, to strengthen consumer power – bank portability for example.

But there is so much more to do.

Innovative businesses are slowed down by the inability of regulation to keep pace.

Sometimes Government departments take too long to decide even who should be doing the regulating.

The absence of security felt by some has fueled the normalisation of conspiracy theories.

I’ve no wish to depress you. I am saying these things because to meet the peoples priorities, we need to understand them.

That is why the Prime minister in his New Year speech set them out- what they meant for the economy- halving inflation, growth, debt falling

And how he will fix access to healthcare and the small boats issue.

They want a stake, responsibility, security and accountability – put another way- fairness.

They want power, choice, and control or put another way- freedom.

Those principles are at the heart of my philosophy.

I also believe we don’t have a monopoly on them.

They are the values of our country.

And they are the lens through which I view our legislative programme.

We don’t do too badly the freedom index – it rates us 22nd in the world.

But what would it take to get us to the top spot?

To be on that podium is a choice.

As Chancellor, the Prime Minister commissioned work focused on how we get our economy working for all of us. To support competition. To modernise regulation. To raise the quality of life. To empower and unlock human potential.

It is why he has:

• Protected R & D.
• Championed agile regulation and a creative culture.
• Enhanced access to finance for entrepreneurial and fast growth companies
• And championed and a culture of creativity.

We progressed

• The state of competition report,
• The competition bill,
• The procurement bill,
• The EURL bill [Retained EU Law Bill],
• The subsidy control act

All those things which help drive choice and quality. We will continue to do that.

As we reassemble those jigsaw pieces we need what the PM calls a ‘shift of mindset’.

He understands the metric at the heart of this is ‘trust’.

That trust won’t be won when people understand how our legislation or budget will improve their lives.

That trust will be won when people feel understood.

When they feel the benefit in their wallets

In their quality of life.

In their resilience, security and opportunity.

Upon that trust hangs more than just happy citizens and election victory.

Or indeed the progress of the United Kingdom.

The very continuation and success of capitalism and democracy also hangs in the balance.

If people stop believing these systems work for them, then like Tinkerbell’s light those systems will fade and die.

So, between now and the end of the Parliament there is much at stake.

Have I now added anxiety as well as depression?

Can we meet the challenge?

One can’t go far wrong in listening to the advice of the Institute,

I want to thank them for their important work.

I spent some time with them, amongst other when writing GREATER which set out why we needed to modernise and how we might do that:

• the mandate – parliament,
• the management – Whitehall and Town hall,
• the mutuality that binds us –
• and markets.

In true ‘play your cards right’ fashion I asked 100 movers and shakers what they felt about Britain.

How we were doing, what was it that held us back.

What needed to change and why.

I mapped their views against every international indices.

I asked people what they had learnt.

I wanted to know what they identified Britain with.

How would that help us point the way.

There are many things that help shape a nation; time zone, the weather, geography, natural resources and its history and human capital,

But a country’s character is also its destiny.

The destiny of a country isn’t that chosen by its corporations or its political candidates.

You can’t take a country where it doesn’t feel comfortable going.

Yes modernise.

Yes reform.

Yes change.

But the pace and scope of the change must be calibrated.

Get it wrong and change ceases to become an opportunity and it becomes a threat.

Frank Gibbons in David Lean’s classic movie This Happy Breed called ‘our way of doing things’ ‘slow and dull’ and that ‘it suits us alright’

But go too slow, and change becomes an event – that for me is the lesson of Brexit.

So the UK is a paradox.

It needs division, to test ideas and make progress. But it needs unity to deliver them.

It needs both local and national vision and leadership.

It needs continuity to change.

It needs diversity and devolution. But consistency in its social fabric and social contract.

It needs shared values.

It needs balance.

At this point in the electoral cycle manifestos start to be shaped.

At this point in the parliament the glide path to an election that is the 4th session starts to be formed.

Everyone gets very excited indeed.

Competitive storytelling goes into overdrive.

Attention is sought.

Balance gets forgotten.

And this is why Parliament is so important.

Because Parliament, despite its confrontational layout, and penchant for drama, helps create balance.

So, as Leader of the House of Commons, while I will be focused on getting our legislative agenda through, keeping the building from falling down and I am hoping to get Steve Bray’s PA system permanently confiscated.

I will be doing something else too.

I’m also going to focus on making our legislature the best in the world.

That the services it provides enable MPs to have the most agency and capacity to serve their constituents as possible.

We will benchmark ourselves, in the first instance, against our equivalents in the G7.

We will be working with all MPs to rebuild our offer to them, and we are going to do it swiftly.

To ensure they are ready when they arrive, and that they are supported properly to deliver through their parliamentary career.

All that you’ll hear today – from every perspective and political hue – will be aided if we strengthen the most direct connectivity from citizen to real power: their MP.

I want them to be as effective as they possibly can be.

Their workplace needs to modernise,

The systems that we built during Covid demonstrate we have all sorts of options we currently choose not to use.

We need to move at the speed that business and science needs us to.

To improve our responsiveness and awareness, ‘slow and dull’ will no longer do.

And we need new partnerships to help us protect and defend democracy.

At his inauguration Nixon went on to say,

“To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.”

The answer is in all of us.

And we need to set it free.