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- [00:00]
A
This must be some testimony, I think, to the guests that we have here this evening. So I'm going to be very short in my introduction. I'm Peter Sutherland. I'm chairman of lse, and we're very pleased to have you here. And above all, we're very pleased that you're here because Boris Johnson is here. The event was rearranged after the murder of drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich in May this year. And while acknowledging that dreadful event, we're very grateful that the mayor has agreed to come back here this evening and to honor what his commitment was, to speak to LSE on an occasion in the future. As we all know, Boris Johnson is a man of great discretion, low profile, and customary understatement. Who could possibly agree with the comment that I read in the Financial Times? Surely an unfair comment that I quote, Boris has a talent for carefully calculated imprudence. However, we would all be delighted, I think, this evening to hear his customary candor on a number of topical issues. And as far as I am at least concerned, the more imprudence in those comments, the better. But as mayor, his role and responsibility and what he has done has been very considerable. He's promoted the Crossrail project, the modernization of the Underground. He's set up a commission to consider the needs of Outer London. He's been engaged in overseas trade missions. He has been developing the image of London abroad in a very positive way. And few British politicians have such prominence, and probably none are so immediately recognizable. So we very much look forward to listening to him this evening. I'm told that I have to say that for those Twitter users in the audience, the hashtag for today's event is lseboroughs. Some of you may understand what that's all about. As usual, after the lecture, there will be a chance for you to put questions to Boris Johnson, but he will deliver his lecture on the future of London within the United Kingdom. Whether he adds to that and within the European Union or not, I do not know. Thank you very much indeed.
- [02:44]
B
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, thank you very, very much, Peter, for that very, very generous introduction. I'm going to stick absolutely ruthlessly, as I always do, to the rubric before me. Thank you very much, everybody, for inviting me tonight to this famous institution where time and again, throughout the history of the lsc, the academic and indeed the student body has stood up against tyranny and in favor of. Of democracy. And you spoke movingly just now, Peter, about the relation between the LSE and the great continent of Africa. So it's grand that we can meet tonight in what I'm sure is called the Muammar Al Gaddafi Memorial Auditorium. And I congratulate you. I congratulate you on your. On your. I congratulate you on your far seeing fundraising ventures. And I was thinking how lucky LSE students are in their. In their leaders. Tony Travers, who's invited me, and of course, in their teachers and in your location. You don't know this. Folks, I'm going to tell you the most important and interesting thing about the lse. You are blessed. We are blessed because here at Aldwych is about to be constructed. You are about to go through the most beautiful revolution in urban realm since the 8th century, when the Saxons, as you will remember, moved the city from the Roman ruins to this area to Aldwych. Why they called it Aldwych, or London Wick, as it was called. And I don't know whether you've seen the news, but we have agreed just south of here, to build a garden bridge. How about that? From one end of the garden bridge. From one. From virtually. From here, more or less just a couple of. A couple of hundred paces across the river, roughly speaking, to LWT on the South Bank. A bridge with no purpose other than to recreate the soul with bosky nooks and bowery corners such as Kubla Khan might have called into being in Xanody, where the students of lse, where you all would be able to go off for crafty fags and romantic assignations to read. To read. Well, absolutely. It's going to be a fantastic community for this university to read your. Your Schumpeter, or indeed your Marx or whatever floats your boat as the sun goes down on the Thames. And the most wonderful, amazing thing of all about this great scheme is that we have just got the treasury to agree and Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the treasury, is going to stump up, even though he is not only a Liberal Democrat, but also the MP for Inverness, ladies and gentlemen. He is the MP for Inverness. And he didn't hesitate to wield his gigantic checkbook in favor of the garden bridge because he knows that bridge will not only be good for London, but good for Inverness. A fantastic investment for the people of Inverness. And he's right, ladies and gentlemen, because I want tonight to tackle. I want to tackle one of the great myths and one of the most pernicious myths of our time, namely that London is somehow drifting apart from the rest of the country as if it were some lunar module about to detach itself while the booster doodah's slump back to earth. Two reasons. A because I simply don't think that that is what is happening and B because I think it would be a disaster if it did. I disagree both with those kind of non Londoners who seem to disapprove of London in some way as though it were a modern Babylon, a louche, an alien culture. And I disagree also with those who actively proud Londoners who actively want to hive London off and create a new city state, a Florence as it were, on the Thames. And I disagree because London is the capital, isn't it? Of England, of Britain, of the United Kingdom of Europe, as I shall go on to prove and any Peter and it is profoundly in the interests, it is profoundly in the interests of, of all those political entities that it should remain so. Because the destiny of London and the destiny of Britain are woven inextricably together and the bonds, the coils, the weave is actually getting tighter, more dense the whole time. Never in history has London contributed so much to the UK economy. Did you know this? Up now to 21.9% of GVA from London going to the rest of the UK economy more than it was in 1911 when this was the workshop and manufacturing center of the world. Never has London offered so much to the more than half its population who were born outside this city. Many of them not just born abroad, but of course many of them from the rest of the uk. The Dick Whittingtons have come to seek their fortune here. I'm talking about 800,000 Scots, including obviously Andrew Neil and many many others. Never, never has the great flywheel of the London service economy been so crucial for turning the wheels of the rest of the uk. And you may sometimes have heard me already talk about the beautiful new London bus which I saw outside in Aldwitch looking splendid and how it has seat fabric from Huddersfield and windows from Runcorn and destination blinds from Manchester and bodywork and chassis assembled all over the country from Falkirk to Guildford to Scarborough to Leeds to Rotherham to Blackburn. And you may also have heard me explain how London transport TfL the body I chair pumps out billions a year to thousands of SMEs around the country, sustaining companies, very often family companies and livelihoods by taking in to London, sucking in underground escalator chains from Dudley Jumbo, Lubas from Liverpool, I'll be your long haired Luba from Liverpool, as the song once went. Lift cables from Chester, the street where they have the Oldest cable manufacturer in the world thought once to have been responsible for making Vince cable himself. And I don't think, I don't think people realize. I don't think people realize that when a new office development arrives in London, 65% of the economic benefit from construction, insurance, maintenance or whatever, 65% of the benefit of these colossal developments that you see around our city. It's actually felt outside London. And I don't think people, when they make this argument about detaching London from the rest of the country, understand how London serves as a global magnet for economic activity that benefits the whole uk. There would simply be no financial services industry in Edinburgh if London did not lead the world in financial services. I hope that doesn't sound like a Lundo chauvinistic thing to say, but it happens to be true. There would be no insurance business in Norwich. There would be. As I've said many times before, J.P. morgan is the biggest single employer in guess which county. In the west country?
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C
Dorset.
- [10:23]
B
Dorset. Correct. JP Morgan. Then there would be no JP Morgan bankers in Dorset if there were not colossal numbers of affluent J.P. morgan bankers in London. London is like a gigantic undersea Salentorate, I think is the word I'm looking for that sucks in talent from around the world. We have students coming from around the world. I'm delighted to say we have four of the world's top 40 universities here in London, including of course this one in which we now sit. Where are you in the top four? Number one. Right. I don't think there's going to be a descent from that proposition tonight. It's London that brings in the tourists. 63%. 63% of all visitors to the UK go first to London rather than anywhere else. And contrast other European destinations in Italy, for instance, only 13% of visitors going to Italy bother with the capital of France. Only 26% bother with going to Paris. And London's seething mix of cultural and economic activity is then spread across the country. Or whatever an undersea silent does when it. How does undersea center indeed respires, doesn't it? It sucks in and then it. What's the word I want for the opposite of the sucking in process of the undersea cylinder? What's that? Osmotic? Well no, I don't think it's quite osmotic. Is it? I think it's a two way thing. And London gently expels. I think of the word I want expels. Expels talent, economic activity, dynamism around the country. And I'm thinking of great cultural brands like the Tate going to St Ives and Liverpool or the VA going to Dundee. Commercial brands. Selfridges popping up in Manchester and Birmingham. Harvey Nichols in Leeds, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol. And I don't for a minute deny that when the undersea Silent Rate ingests things, it ingests wonderful things from the rest of the country. Clearly, you know, back in the Always has done and huge. As I said earlier on, talent comes from around Britain. The greatest band in the 20th century, greatest band of our times, probably came from Liverpool. Yes, Come on, Liverpool. Is anybody seriously going to disagree with that? But in the end, where did they record their stuff? They recorded it Abbey. I'm not going to have to send to Liverpool to apologise for mentioning this fact. But they recorded their songs at Abbey Road in London. In the end, it was London that helped propel and project them around the world. And that is truer today. That role of London in projecting the British economy is truer than it has ever been. And I conclude from this that the secret of the national success of Britain is not to engage in some mad process of decapitation of separating the greatest city on earth from the rest of the country. The secret is to strengthen London as the gateway to Britain. And that is indeed what we have been trying to do. Peter kindly alluded to some of the things that we have done. We are at the moment seeing phenomenal investment coming to London in the last few months. And just since the Olympic Games, we've seen colossal sums of money invested by the Chinese. The Royal Albert Doxer, they're bringing about 6 billion quid to create a third financial district for London. About 1.6 billion pounds coming from Malaysia to the Battersea Power Station, that crumbling old relic fit for nothing except the COVID of a Pink Floyd album, now going to be transformed into thousands of of homes, jobs, restaurants. Heaven knows. Heaven knows what? Croydon. Who's here from Croydon? Let's hear from Croydon. Powerhouse. Wonderful place. Powerhouse of the South London economy now at last going to be regenerated thanks to about a 1.2 billion pound investment coming from Westfield and Hammersons, the two shopping giants coming together to form Westfield and Hamza, forming a conglomerate which they resist the name West Ham, but they are going to. They're going to transform Croydon and we're going to rebuild the Crystal palace thanks to an investment from China. Kuwait alone now has investments in this city of the order of £120 billion. And everywhere I go I find people wanting to get involved in Activity here in. In London. You may wonder why we're being so successful and what it is about London that attracts these international investors. And why it is that I'm the mayor of the sixth biggest French city on Earth, as I'm proud to be, or why I'm the mayor of the 12th biggest Australian city, the 20th biggest Russian city. Someone said to me when I was in the Gulf, I'm the mayor of the 8th emirate. He proudly turned, in any way, a badge I carry with pride. Why is it that people want to come here? And I think if you look at what's been happening over the last few years in London, it's really pretty exciting. Crime, which matters a great deal to people deciding where to invest, is down over the last five and a half years to pick a period entirely at random by about 11 or 12%. The murder rate is down to levels not seen since the 1960s. We are so ruthless in enforcing the rule of law here in London that we lock up our MPs for trying to pass their speeding points to their wives and. Absolutely right, absolutely. It sends a very powerful signal around the world, and we are so punctilious in patrolling the city with complete impartiality towards every community that we recently arrested the Duke of York for. For loitering in the shrubberies of Buckingham Palace. And that sort of thing goes down very big around the world. They think these guys are serious. They take the rule of law serious. I won't be subject to arbitrary arrest. And that's why they're investing. That's why we're able to get schemes off the ground that would otherwise be stalled, like Battersea, that's been, as I say, mouldering away for 30 or 40 or 50 years. And we need to get on with it. And we need, obviously, to do more and to do it faster. Because one feature of this city today, perhaps the most important statistic I want to leave with you tonight, is that we are seeing a massive population boom. And no thanks to me. Since I've been mayor, the population of London has gone up by 600,000, according to some. Some censuses. And that puts very considerable pressure on our infrastructure, on our housing supply. Everybody knows the critical problem we now have with shortage of homes in London. We need to build 400,000 new homes over the next 10 years. We have to get young people the homes that they need. Now. We can only do this if we get investment, if we make sure that we have security of supply. And I'm delighted to say that we have so far built more than a record number of affordable homes in London over the last few years. But we've got a lot further to go. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so devoted to what Tony Travers had to say recently about security of funding in London. We need to know that we are going to get the funding we need to do these great projects. And he said, as I'm sure you know, that we should devolve, because you're all students of Tony's, aren't you? Well, okay. Well, Professor Tony Travers did a brilliant report called the Independent Finance Commission for London, which proposed that the suite of five property taxes should be devolved to London and indeed to all other cities in England. Now, who knows what the suite of five property taxes is apart from Tony? They are council tax statute, land tax, business rates, the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, in which. Have I left out? Have I said capital gains tax? Capital gains tax. Those are the five. And the project, which is fiscally neutral, is to hypothecate the value of those tax receipts and give it to the authority in London, give it to the boroughs, give it to the gla, and give us the certainty that we will be able to invest in the infrastructure, in the housing that we need. Because, believe me, we are with a growing population. We're going to have 9 million by 2020, we're going to have 10 million by 2030. We are going to need not just hundreds of thousands more homes. We're going to need new river crossings. We're going to need Crossrail, too. We are going to need massively to invest in this city. And we can only do it, or rather, we can do it much more easily if we have that certainty. And I passionately support what Tony has said and I hope very much that all you will join me at the barricades. Join me at the barricades. What's our cry? What do we want the suite of five property taxes devolved to London? What are they? We're not entirely sure. When do we want it? Now. That's our slogan. And remember, if the treasury complain, remind them that it is fiscally neutral. And what it would do is give local politicians an incentive to. To go for policies that will generate jobs, generate growth, and that will be economically sensible and prudent. It is a very, very good idea for this country. And by the way, it helps us to answer the question, what do the English, or what do the great cities of England get out of devolution? Which is one of the questions That, I think has been posed in this series of lectures. And the answer is not very much so far, is it? And I think it will be. It's a small step. It's not a giant leap forward for local fiscal democracy in England, but it would be something. And it wouldn't begin to match what the Scots and the Welsh yet have, but it would be something, and I think it would be wholly right to do. And the last thing that we should think of doing, and I will more or less conclude on this point, the last thing that we should think of doing is breaking up. Devolve this fiscal authority to the cities of England, but do not break up the union between England and Scotland that helps make up Britain and has made us one of the most successful political constructions of all time. Because we would lose an identity being British. That is of huge value to people like my immediate antecedents, for instance, who come here and who find it hard to think of themselves immediately as English, but who find Britain and British a very, very wonderful and convenient identity to adopt. We lose that and we lose our brand as a country. I was in Kuwait the other day, as Peter would say, I go around drumming up interest in London. I was in Kuwait and I saw this incredible shopping mall where there was a shopper buying underpants made in. Guess where? Yes, Britain Made in Devon, which is apparently Underpants City. Apparently Devon is absolutely fantastic. Basement underpants these days. Owned some tax break I'd never heard of. But why? Why was that? That shopper? Why was she in her kit? Why was she going into a shop in the middle of Kuwait to buy underpants made in Devon? Because the shop had a red, white and blue flag and bunting all over it. It had guardsmen in Busbys at the door, looking a bit forlorn, actually. But their message was Britain. And what will those people think? What will those shoppers in Kuwait think if the Union flag is red and white and green as it will be once you abstract the blue of the St Andrews cross? Am I not right? What will they think? Indeed, what will we call ourselves if you lop off the top of Britain? And because we can no longer properly call ourselves British, we'd have to say that we were rather like the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. We were the rest of the UK or something. We were our UK or perhaps we were the former UK or fuk. And my question is, what the former uk, what the former UK do we think we are doing? We are stronger, if I can put it as delicately as that, we are Stronger together. And by the way, I believe we have a great future together. This is a quite extraordinary city which is at the crossroads of the world economy. Thanks to the native witness ingenuity of Londoners. We don't have any gold or zinc or aluminium or indeed any bismuth or beryllium or tantalum or any other non ferrous metal as far as I know, in London. But we have in London the biggest metal exchange in the world, don't we? Thanks to our ingenuity and our ruthless metal trading abilities, we don't grow much wine in London, more's the pity. Though we do have a vineyard, I think about to start up in Enfield making champagne. But we do have the entire market for Bordeaux futures which we brilliantly snaffled off the French. We continue, in spite of our economic difficulties, we continue to export the most stunning things from London. We export bikes made in Chiswick all the way to Holland. We export TV antennas made in Wandsworth to Korea. We export growing quantities of a very dense kind of chocolate cake made in Waltham Forest to France. Let them eat cake made in Walthamstow. As I always tell the French, we have exported. We have exported Piers Morgan to America, which is a signal achievement. And I predict that by the middle of this century I'm going to make some concluding predictions about the incredible developments that you're going to see in the City. By the middle of this century, London will have, as I say, about 10, 11 million people. Probably about 11 million people. And it will have established itself as the unchallenged capital not just of England, not just of Britain, not just of the United Kingdom, but, believe me, of Europe. And we will have by then, by 2050, we'll have a population of 72 million. We will overtake Germany in the following decade, not just in numbers, but probably also in economic output as well. And I will go further. We will have, or you will have, because I may be. Well, I'll still be very hale and hearty in 2050, I can tell you. We will have a monarchy. We will have a union between England and Scotland and many, many things will be the same. We will have a government still trying to build a third Runway at Heathrow while the rest of us have gone on to better schemes. I predict that Mr. Julian Assange will still be holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy wasting police time and resources. And the lse, the London School of Economics, will have lengthened its lead as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, higher education institution in the world. And people will continue to come to Britain to have a cosy tea in a Welsh pub and enjoy a traditional night out in Newcastle as you do, or romp with a shaggy Highland cow or whatever you get up to with a Highland. But, but. And this is the critical point to which I return. But they will come. But insofar as that is their ambition, they will come to London first, just to see the beautiful garden bridge. And that is why I. And that is why we need London as the world capital. The world capital of finance, of culture, of law, of the arts, of live music, of tech, of fintech, of nanotech, of biotech, edtech. Tech. I mentioned tech already. But above all, above all, we will need London as the capital of Britain. Thank you very much indeed for your time this evening. I think we more or less covered the waterfront there, but. Sorry, Peter. No, if there are any questions, I'll be delighted to have a go at answering them. Since this is about my 15th speech of today. Forgive me if I get ragged, but. Yes, I'm sorry, Peter.
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A
No, no, this gentleman here in the third row, we've roving microphones somewhere. Where are they? They've vanished. Of all days. Where are the microphones? Here they are. We'll take three questions one after the.
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B
Other, and then we'll justify the speech again. You talk about expanding London and needing to build more affordable housing, but affordable is shorthand for subsidised. Who's going to pay this subsidy? Will it be our children and grandchildren? Well, in many cases, obviously, it's the developers who are able to offset the. The deduction by the revenues they get from what they call the market housing. So there's that aspect of it, I'm afraid. Yes, there is a taxpayer element to it, but I believe it's absolutely economically indispensable to get on and build more homes for others. It's. Now, the CBI will tell you it's the single biggest worry, the single biggest cause of economic inefficiency in our city is the difficulty that our workforce has in living near a place convenient to their place of work. And the worse that gets, the bigger the inefficiencies that will be introduced. And the costs are rising the whole time, everybody. I'd just be interested to know how many people here are actually in the lucky position of having any kind of equity. How many have equity in your property? How many have a stake in the value of your property? Who's actually got. That's extraordinarily high number, actually. That's fantastic. That's why you're very brilliant LSE students. It's the smart thing to try to do. Most people are trapped in paying very, very high rents without actually seeing any of the upside that comes with the ever rising London property market. We have got to help more people onto the property ladder, particularly by part, by part rent schemes. And yes, they require subsidy, but in the long term they are massively beneficial for the economy of this city. And by the way, new homes in Britain, New homes in London will drive the rest of Britain, the rest of the British economy. I think I mentioned earlier the 63% of value from a. An office development that goes to the rest of the country. That is also true of domestic housing in the sense that all those window frames, all those bath fittings, all that, all those bricks, they come from outside London. By and large, they come from the Midlands. They're massively beneficial in getting the economy going. So I think it's a very, very prudent and sensible investment for society.
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A
This person here in the front, fourth row.
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C
Thank you. At the beginning you mentioned standing up for democracy. I'd like to get a reaction then on what's happened at ULU, where they banned student protesting till June. And will you set up an inquiry into the University of London Union, which is getting shut down at the end of the year? Students were protesting against it. And will you set up an inquiry into the treatment of students by the police last week?
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B
Right. You're going to have to forgive me, I'm not as familiar as I should be with what happened to students last week at ULU. What happened? What did the police do? Sorry, just.
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C
39 students were arrested and there was. Oh, thank you. 39 students were arrested and there was perceived rough treatment of students taking them out of the building. A combination of the management and police work at Senate House.
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B
Well, look, on that point, I will certainly take it up because that's my job as chairman of the Mayor's Office of Police and Crime. And I will look at that and if I may, I will write to you about what I am told. We will make inquiries about the rough treatment on the democracy thing. Again, I'm afraid I'm just unsighted as to what the dispute is about and I'm in favour of free speech. What did you want to say? Say it now. Is it printable?
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C
They're shutting down the you as itself, as a student body.
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A
Why?
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C
Well, if we can convey this. If we can convey this to the people who are making this decision, that would be most helpful.
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B
Okay, well, Listen, I don't want to seem unnecessarily demagogic here, but I don't know. My general insight is that student unions are very good things. And since I used to try to campaign to get elected and those sorts of things myself, I love them, I support them. I don't know what's the beef with the student union. Anybody? Peter, do we know what the story is?
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A
No, we don't.
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B
We don't know what the story is. Okay. We're going to get to the bottom of it. We're going to stick up for democracy if we possibly can. We'll find out. Terry, you're looking anxious here. I don't know what. What. I don't know what it's all about. We're going to. I undertake to make inquiries on your behalf of a general nature. I can't, I don't think, institute a formal inquiry. I don't have any locus in the matter. I'm not responsible for education, but I am responsible for policing. I'll have a look at the other matter you raised.
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A
Let's have somebody on this side over here, the lady here. Third in. As an international student, I'm sort of concerned about immigration policy that's been recognized recently, especially in Parliament. So what are your views on immigration? I mean, international students and international citizens obviously have a large impact in London.
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B
They do, and a beneficial impact, too. And as I said the other day, I think I'm probably the only politician in this country who's willing to have a. To say a good word about immigration. And I do. I mean, not just because I had a Turkish great grandfather who fled Turkey, obviously. Actually, he fled all sorts of places by the end, but he came to Wimbledon. He then went back to Turkey and became a terrific cropper. But if he hadn't come to London, obviously, I wouldn't be here. That's axiomatic. And I think he'd have been. You know, he came here because London stood in his mind as a place that was a haven that stood for freedom, that stood for democracy, the rule of law that would protect people like him. And it did. And I think we benefit hugely from talented people coming to our city. I think we benefit massively from brilliant students coming to London. And I have campaigned pretty tirelessly, feeling pretty exhausted tonight, but I've campaigned tirelessly for student visas. And it's absolute economic nonsense to try to exclude from our economy people who have so much to contribute, not least to the higher education budgets that we deploy. I mean, you know, not to put Too fine a point on it. It is the fees of the international students that are heavily cross subsidizing the rest of the university cohort. I'd be blunt about things like that. And that is a good thing, that is a fantastic thing. We should encourage it and we should support it. Of course you don't want people overstaying and being bogus students and all the rest of it. You've got to crack down on whatever rackets there are and you've got to stop people coming here and milking the system or misbehaving in any other way. But we won't succeed as a country if we simply have a bring down the shutters on. I mean we've succeeded. What we've done in the last couple of years is we've brilliantly had a 60% reduction in the number of New Zealanders coming to, coming to Britain. I mean, fantastic. I don't see who that helps particularly. I want to see a more progressive.
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C
A more.
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B
Dynamic approach and I've made this point many times. But to be fair to Dave and to be fair to the government, I do think they get that. I do think that the Prime Minister gets that. I think, you know, he is getting this, he's getting this time and again when he goes abroad. He would have had the message in, in China people want talented people who have much to contribute, want to be able to come without too much hassle. We should make it possible whilst obviously keeping out people who simply want to leech off benefits or all the rest of it. So there you go, that's my goal. How are we going to do this.
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A
Gentleman over here on the left, what.
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D
If anything could be done to correct the left wing bias, the BBC?
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B
I think the tragic answer is I don't think there is anything that could be done. It is a gigantic inoperable problem and all you can do is live with it. You've just got to manage it. And sometimes I go absolutely round the bend. But there's no point. What can you expect in a system, a corporation that has about 8,000 taxpayer funded journalists? They are not going to, on the whole they are not going to be instinctively wedded to a free enterprise, open market, low tax kind of view of the world. When they depend, their jaws are clamped very firmly about the hind teat of the state. That is just reality. And that's no disrespect to many, many wonderful and talented people at the BBC. This is a problem that cannot be solved. Because the trouble is every time I think we've got to write I. My policy should be to ban the BBC, to scrap it. It's a wonderful institution. That's an awful thing. It's a wonderful institution and it's a great British ban. One of the many, one of them. Of course it is itself threatened by devolution since it is not at all clear that it will be British anymore or threatened by Scottish independence. So I don't know, I don't know how they're going to sort that one out. It will be the former UK Broadcasting Corporation is what it will have to be. Yes.
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A
This gentleman here, his hand up. Yep.
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B
Can London survive as a world leading.
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C
Capital outside the eu?
- [39:24]
B
Yes. Is the answer to that? Yes, I think it can. Absolutely. Is that the optimum scenario should we seek a new future? Well, I think we should go. My policy on cake, as you know, is pro having it and pro eating it. I think if we can get a better deal out of Brussels, if we can get a substantial reduction in some of the non wage costs that are imposed by the European Union, I think that would be a great thing, not just by the way for this country but for the whole of Europe. I bet Peter would agree with this because he has spent many years in Brussels and served with great distinction as Competition Commissioner and did some very hair raising deals and decisions he took. Then I seem to remember blocking the French when they wanted to or you know, insisting on various takeovers going ahead or when the French didn't want it or vice versa. I can't remember what you want but he was a great free marketeer. It's absolutely true. He was Peter Sutherland. I'm not wrong. Peter Sutherland was a great free marketeer and still is a great free marketeer. And there is an appetite, there is an appetite in Europe for someone to step up to the plate and say that the old model that's been going on for 30 or 40 years needs reform and you don't need so much of this stuff coming down the pipe from Brussels. You don't need to be told by the EU that you've got to set a, you know, that you can't set a cap on, on compensation in industrial tribunals for instance, which is one of the problems we've got in our employment law at the moment. Why does that need to be set at a European level? Why do we have a common agricultural policy still that is actually still so inimical to the interests of many in the third World? Why do we have a common fisheries policy at all? There are many, many reforms that you could introduce that would be greatly to the benefit of not just of this country, but of the whole eu. There is a massive appetite for it. I think David Cameron is ideally placed to lead that campaign, lead that renegotiation and get a better deal. And in those circumstances, if we were presented with the option of remaining in the internal market council, able to call the shots in some of those important decisions, still able to deploy our vote whatever it's worth nowadays, greatly diminished proportionally, but still important. If we were still there, still had our crep whittled down, but still there, still able to lobby for Britain, then I think, and we conceived of ourselves as having a much bigger and more and wider interest in the rest of the world, then I think that would be a great future for this country. The future for Britain is to be at the center of the intersecting circles, if you like, the intersecting set in the Venn diagram of the world. And that is the way we should think of ourselves and Europe. This is why I gave my initial answer. There's a perfectly good future for this country outside the EU as a proportion of global GDP has gone down just since 1989 from about 30% of global GDP to about 19% of GDP today. And even though the EU as a whole has got much bigger, the big markets, the opportunities are around the world. And that's one of the reasons, by the way, why we need to equip ourselves forthwith as our European rivals are doing, with a proper competitive 24 hour, 4 Runway hub airport that will allow us, that will allow us to communicate properly with these growth markets around the world and will stop Schiphol and Paris and Charles de Gaulle effectively eating our lunch by taking the business that is going there. And that should be our approach. It should be internationalist. It should be firmly, firmly internationalist. It should be pro American, it should be pro European. But whether we need to remain in the EU or not has become less critical, less decisive about our national identity in my lifetime. No doubt about that.
- [43:44]
A
I'm tempted to say that some of the banks don't agree with you. I don't think. I mean there is a bit of a worry and some quarters if Britain were to leave the European Union.
- [43:54]
B
I heard what Goldman Sachs had to say the other day. Peter, of course represents Goldman Sachs, amongst other things, not to be confused with the vampire squid permanently wrapped around the face of humanity, it's blood funnel seeking money. I saw what Goldman had to say about that and that is unquestionably true. It's a serious point because I think the biggest risk is the uncertainty and the biggest risk is the feeling in the market, the feeling among the sentiment amongst foreign investors that a critical decision is being taken, the implications of which are not fully understood and could be bad for their investments. There's no question at all that that is the. That is the risk. I think it's more to do with sentiment than reality. I think there could be. There could be, as I say, a viable future outside. It's outside the eu. It is not the one I prefer. It's clear from what I'm saying, it's not the one I prefer. I would prefer to remain within the single market, to be at the heart of the global economy, to look to the wider world and to have our cake and eat it. That is my preferred approach.
- [45:12]
A
Next question. We have somebody further up on the left. Yeah. Any one of those.
- [45:23]
B
Do you believe we should re. Nationalize the railways? Re. Nationalize, yeah. Well, do you know, it's a fascinating thing. Winston Churchill, funnily enough, always used to be in favor of. Of nationalizing the railways. I don't know why I mentioned that. He wasn't much of a traveler by train. In fact, he never ever went on the London Underground. Isn't that disgraceful? He did once. Winston Churchill went once on the London Underground and had to be helped to understand how to use it. I think I speak with the. As somebody, probably the only Tory politician in the last 50 years to bring a substantial railway network back into the public sector, which is what I did when I broke up the ppp, as some of you may remember, or possibly not by the blank looks on your faces. And that was the right thing to do. I think it's a. It is a difficult, difficult question. I think the difficulty we had with the PPP was that we had a load of private sector contractors who just didn't have to take the interests of Londoners into account as they got on with upgrading and modernizing the Tube. And in the end, it became intolerable and we had to take it back. We had to organize it ourselves. Now, in the case of the. Of the talks, perhaps, all I can say is in London, for which I'm responsible, what I would like to see is the railway franchises, the suburban railway franchises. How shall I put this? Shared responsibility for setting the railway franchises should be shared with TFL and where are you? I think that would be a good thing for commuters and for London. Whether you actually have to re. Nationalize, I doubt. I mean, there are advantages in having a privatized system, you're able to raise considerable sums on the markets. You're able to use private sector disciplines to bring costs down. There are considerable advantages. I wouldn't want, I don't think to do that wholesale. I certainly. Well, I would want to do is to have the rail franchises in London brought more within the general ambit of Transport For London. I think that would be a great thing for consumers and a great thing for passengers. We're going to get the West Anglia line. What we need is the south east line, the South Eastern services as well.
- [48:09]
A
One final question. I'm afraid we have to bring this to an end in a couple of minutes.
- [48:14]
D
Tom, in the wake of the recent deaths of quite a few cyclists and being a cyclist yourself. I'm a cyclist. I ride every day from my flat to Union back. What are you actually going to change? Because the drivers. It states in the highway code, Rule 163. You can check if you wish, but it says that cars should give vulnerable road users the same space as another car. And they don't respect that. Cyclists don't respect or some don't. They shouldn't go through red lights, they shouldn't ride on the pavement. The Boris bike, people who use Boris bikes often don't have helmets. What are you going to do to improve safety?
- [48:58]
B
Okay, right. We're doing about four different things and the first is education. We have a. Because it's true, there's been a massive expansion of cycling in London, hasn't there? It's gone up. It's gone about 150% by 175%, something like that. Huge, huge, huge expansion in cycling. And a lot of people say, well, what are you doing to teach those cyclists how to do it? Well, we are teaching them. Does anybody want to cycle? But doesn't at the moment? We can coach you, we can help you. We have tfl, we have people who are willing to show you how to be safe in the London traffic. We've already helped, I think, about 7,000 adults. We've shown about 38,000 kids how to ride a bike. We have schemes to help people and to educate them. Number two, you've got to have better safety features on the most dangerous vehicles, particularly the hgv. So you've got to have the mirrors, you've got to have the Fresnel lenses on the mirrors, you've got to have the visible and audible signs indicating which way the vehicle is going. You've got to have the sidebars on the HGV to stop people being dragged under, because that's how you've seen some of the most terrible injuries. You've got to have all sorts of things that make vehicles. And indeed we are going forward with a safer lorry zone in London, like the congestion charge zone, where no vehicle that disobeys our safety provisions will be allowed to enter number three. You need to have enforcement. Getting to your point about cyclists jumping lights, in the last few weeks we have stopped, find, I'm delighted to say, 752 cyclists for jumping the lights. I haven't personally, but the police have. And in case you think I'm picky on cyclists, we've also stopped and fined 1,392 motorists, mainly for talking on their mobiles or for jumping the lights. So you've got to enforce the rules of the road. And the fourth thing you've got to do is you've got to invest in our transport infrastructure and make London beautiful to cycle in. And this city should be as pleasant, as lovely to cycle in as Amsterdam or as Copenhagen. That is the ambition. And we're putting the thick end of about a billion pounds into junctions, into roundabouts, into cycle superhighways to encourage people to cycle. And I hope that they will. I hope that they will. We are not giving up, we are not turning back. We're going to continue to invest in cycling. We're going to continue to encourage the take up of cycling. And let me just remind you that in spite of the recent tragic spate of accidents, it is the case that in the last five years there were fewer cyclists killed on London's roads than there were in the five years before that. Even though there has been a huge increase in cycling and the number of, I think people killed or seriously injured in the last 10 years or so has come down by about a quarter. So that again is in spite of a very considerable increase in the number of cyclists. Now that is a tribute to the efforts of the police, of everybody who's trying to improve the roads. But it can only happen if cyclists are responsible. I would urge everybody to get on their bikes, as I shortly will if I ever get to the end of answering this question and enjoy yourselves. London is made for cycling. It's made for cycling. It's beautiful, it's huge and flat with loads of parks and bosky nooks. The one place you will not be able to cycle, I am afraid to inform you, is the Garden Bridge, which will be strictly for medicine, meditation and contemplation without being intimidated by people on bicycles. In fact, I'm not even sure that we're going to allow dogs. In fact, I might ask. Peter, can I ask this distinguished audience what their views are on whether we should have dogs on the Garden Bridge? Whoa, whoa. This is democracy. LSE stands for democracy. Can I have a show of hands, please? All those in favour of allowing man's best friend the dog on the Garden Bridge. Okay. And all those against. What's your.
- [53:40]
A
I'm afraid, no.
- [53:44]
B
Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Well, that may be a guide to policy for which I'm most grateful. Thank you very much.
- [53:52]
A
Okay, Boris. Well, first of all, let me make three comments. We've been privileged to hear a first class raconteur as well as a person who is really both entertained and informed. And we're all very grateful to you, Boris, for being with us and spending a lot of time in LSE in a very busy schedule. Two other points. First of all, I'd ask everybody to remain seated until the mayor leaves the room. And thirdly, and this is both good news and bad news, as we've scaled up to a much larger venue than would normally be the case, the drinks reception, which will take place afterwards, is only open to LSE staff and students. So you mean not me, but the rest? The rest. Well, you're very welcome. And that is in the atrium of the Student Services Centre in the old building. But I would ask you now to show your appreciation of our guest in the customary way.