attractive place than many to invest, and are at least as important as our flexible
labour market.
Britain fails to make the most of these advantages. Labour needs to set out the
practical steps to do so. We need to make it easy for people to invest in Britain. We
should expand Heathrow; no alternative can be delivered fast enough to remedy the
problems caused by Heathrow reaching capacity. When I was first elected in 1997,
Heathrow was the world’s premier airport. It has slipped to fourth place, serving 50
fewer destinations than France’s Charles de Gaulle airport, and so lacks connectivity
to key markets in China. We must protect air quality and set noise limits, but should
also enable Heathrow to grow.
Heathrow airport
We should restore education in creative subjects, which is being destroyed by Gove's
‘Gradgrind’ curriculum. United Kingdom creative industries accounted for 4.5 percent
of total British exports, growing by 5 percent annually during 1997-2007, compared
to just three percent for the rest of the UK economy. The UK’s creative share of GVA
is 5.8 percent compared to France's 2.8 percent and the USA's 3.3 percent, but our
competitors are catching up, a cause for concern. 1
“We need to focus mortgage help on new-build properties, which
generate jobs, and restrict mortgage help to first time buyers”
We need a practical house-building plan. The last Labour government’s housing
policy was determined too much by the needs of the North; modernising council
housing was welcome all over the country, but insufficient attention was given to
building new homes, especially in the South where they are needed. Taxpayers have
massively subsidised private landlords through housing benefit. Many properties
have been paid for many times over: we built them as council houses, sold them to
sitting tenants at a discount, and then they were let on the private market at rents
which the taxpayer subsidises. Now if they are sold, they are eligible for a taxpayer
mortgage guarantee. It’s time to stop these short-term fixes and to invest in housing
1
http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditctab20103_en.pdf
revolutionise.it
7