Results 1-20 of 64 for climate change speaker:Kenneth Clarke

Opposition Day — [18th Allotted Day]: Economic Recovery and Welfare (19 Oct 2009) has video

Kenneth Clarke: ...to restore growth, apart from tackling the credit market problems and the problems of the public debt that loom so heavily over everyone. When we look at what is needed to restore to this country a climate that is fit for business enterprise to get the country back to work, the first thing that we need to address is the taxation of business. Whenever I go to meetings with small and...

Orders of the Day: Clause 8 — Commencement (5 Mar 2008) has video

Kenneth Clarke: ...the next American election. The European Union is finally getting its act together in improving its decision-making capacity so that it can move on to deal with economic reform, energy security, climate change, international development and our relations with the Russian Federation. All those are areas in which we need a common position. I would include foreign and security policy in other...

Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty) (28 Jan 2008)

Kenneth Clarke: ...on the main point: the Government propose that a great deal of time should be spent on general debates and that one and a half hours should be spent on specific amendments, which is a radical change to the way in which we normally conduct a Committee of the whole House. We have lots of general debate on Europe, and if one allows four hours in which any comment on Europe or climate change...

Amendment of the Law: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation (27 Mar 2007)

Kenneth Clarke: ...supply-side reforms of the Thatcher and Major years have begun to feed through steadily, and we find ourselves far more able to adapt, as an industrial economy, to the rapidly increasing amount of change taking place in the global economic climate. The result is that the Chancellor has presided over a reasonably benign scenario. There are always fragilities, and there are considerable ones...

Orders of the Day: New Clause 19 — Power to remove or reduce burdens (15 May 2006)

Kenneth Clarke: ...about parliamentary procedure that we will become extremely pedantic and Governments will again find that their deregulatory legislation is quite inadequate for anything except making such minor changes as to be of no consequence to anyone. I tell myself—and I hope that everybody else will in this debate—that one must guard against that before looking at new clause 19 and...

Orders of the Day: New Clause 19 — Power to remove or reduce burdens (15 May 2006)

Kenneth Clarke: ...I still cannot understand why the Bill would not allow a Minister to seek to repeal a tax by using the process. Let me be helpful to him. If, for example, a future Government wished to repeal the climate change levy, it seems to me that that could be done by statutory instrument so long as the Government ensured that they had a majority on the relevant Select Committees. I would hope that...

Pensions and Welfare Reform (13 Oct 2004)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...fed up of hearing the mutual recriminations about who made which mistakes, but we should remind ourselves of some of the recent events in the Government's record. With hindsight, the Chancellor's changes to the tax treatment of pensions were plainly scandalous. I was not the only. Member who criticised the Chancellor's first Budget on social grounds, because it was bad social policy to...

Pensions and Welfare Reform (13 Oct 2004)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...will not accumulate a big enough fund to make it worthwhile, whether or not we get rid of means-testing. People mostly do not go into a pension or save because they cannot afford it. That will not change, as we discovered with the abortive attempt to introduce stakeholder pensions, by introducing new and attractive schemes to encourage people to save if they do not have the money. That...

Public Services (22 Jan 2002)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...they will be monitored and that their performance will be managed by the new strategic health authorities that are being put in place and will take over by April 2002. If the Government make that change without causing chaos and confusion, it sounds like a promising step back in the right direction. That is what the temporarily silent Labour Members call the internal market, and it is...

Clause 1: Rates of Duty on Hydrocarbon Oil (24 Apr 2001)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...the levels of taxation which have been imposed, and that is not very satisfactory. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan said that we are having this debate against the background of an interesting change in the economic climate, which affects all our discussions on the Bill. The Chancellor has at last recognised that he has not abolished the economic cycle. A marked slowdown is taking...

Orders of the Day — Finance Bill (17 Apr 2000)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...harm. I shall not discuss the tax arrangements for foreign dividends at length because two companies with which I am involved undoubtedly have an interest, but there is no way in which that change could be described as anything other than unfriendly to British companies doing international business. It was not consulted on properly. No one anticipated that the arrangements for mixing...

Orders of the Day — Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation (22 Mar 2000)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...combined Budget dealing with tax and public spending. I presented four Budgets, all of which were in November, under an arrangement introduced by my predecessor, Norman Lamont. We announced the tax changes for the year and the public spending commitments after an annual review which examined carefully the needs of each and every Department. We looked at the consequences for public...

Orders of the Day — European Communities (Amendment) Bill: Meaning of "the Treaties" and "the Community Treaties" (2 Dec 1997)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...I think with approval—as having said that I did not think there was any great reason to get very excited about the treaty of Amsterdam, which did not seem to me to have made any fundamental changes. Indeed, I was rather disappointed by the treaty of Amsterdam. Certainly, there are people on the continent of Europe—who, no doubt, are more pro-European than me—who think...

Orders of the Day — Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation (3 Dec 1996)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...will stay in opposition. The one figure that the Opposition have not been able to shake, or attempted to shake, is our assertion that the average family is £20 a week better off, after all tax changes both up and down over the past four years, and after inflation. That is not the result only of individual Budget measures, Budget after Budget, but of a combination of policies: the way...

Orders of the Day — The Economy (30 Oct 1996)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...he becomes extremely muddled. The right hon. Gentleman produces more and more league tables, which he claims support his arguments. His speech, his gloom and his claims of disaster are entirely unchanging, but the real world is changing and the British economy is doing better and improving. We are producing the strongest recovery in western Europe, and the right hon. Gentleman and his...

Bill Presented: The Economy (17 Jul 1996)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...spokesman in a moment, but I shall give the House a little more good news from the summer economic forecast while I have the chance to keep the debate roughly on the subject before the Labour party changes it to a subject that it would prefer. Consumer spending will provide the motor for the accelerating growth that everybody—not just I—knows will occur later this year and...

Ways and Means (13 Dec 1994)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: .... As I told the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, a prompt reaction to events to put in place the Budget judgment was essential to keep us on course. In the short term, the interest rate change was never likely to be welcomed by people concerned about the housing market. The present difficulty is that our manufacturing economy is roaring ahead, with very strong growth, while the...

European Communities (9 Dec 1993)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...it still turns out as its policy. Time was when the economic approach of the European Commission and many of our partners came straight out of Harold Wilson's Government of the 1960s. We have now changed the climate in the rest of Europe, but the British Labour movement remains rooted in its historical past. We go on to advocate flexible labour markets, as my hon. Friend the Member for...

Orders of the Day — The Economy (25 Nov 1993)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...discipline and the monetary policy that we are now imposing upon ourselves. Successive reductions in inflation have helped. What I have just described has preserved our competitive position. The changed climate in this country means that although we have had a devaluation of the currency and reductions in both inflation and interest rates, we have also had good management, successful...

Oral Answers to Questions — National Finance: Growth Rate (15 Jul 1993)

Mr Kenneth Clarke: ...8212;the Japanese and the countries of the Pacific rim and, probably, the north American economies if they recover their normal powerful growth. That is why we have not only to ensure that our own climate is right, but to persuade our European Community partners that Europe as a continent will fall behind if we saddle ourselves with costs on employment and restraints on economic change,...