Five Hours Afterwards, No. 10 Release Boris CBI Speech Transcription

Five and a half hours after the event itself, No. 10 has finally released their ‘checked against delivery’ version of Boris’s CBI speech. Not only might it be the first No. 10 press release to reference Peppa Pig World, it spells the PM’s petrol car impression as “arum arum araaaaaagh”. It was accidentally CC’d to some 500 recipient hacks, rather than BCC’ing them, potentially breaking GDPR rules. A classic No. 10 day all round: as they say, “The only difference between Westminster and The Thick of It is in The Thick of It people don’t go round saying ‘this is just like something out of The Thick of It’ all the time.”

Read the speech in full:

“Great to be here in Tyneside the number one exporting region of the UK

great to be with the CBI

and I want to begin with a massive thank you to British business

for keeping going
for looking after your employees

for rising to the challenge

for responding to the call for ventilators in those first dark days

dozens of you
kitchen appliance makers

hairdryer makers

formula one motor car manufacturers
turning your production lines over
in days to try to save lives

for making the masks and the gowns and the gloves at such speed

turning things round from that awful moment
when we realised we simply didn’t have the domestic production

so we have gone from being able to supply 1 per cent of our domestic needs
to 80 per cent

and thank you British industry
enterprise
commerce

for producing not just one but perhaps half a dozen vaccines

because without you let’s face it we would simply not be here

and nor would tens of thousands of people in our country and millions around the world

who owe their lives to your resourcefulness and inventiveness

and while I’m on the subject can I ask who has had your booster?
you all look far too young and thrusting to need a booster but get your booster as soon as you can

because it is by vaccinating our country
that we have been able to get your staff back to their place of work
to open our theatres
our restaurants and to get back for longer now than any other comparator country

to something like normal life

even if we are still bumping elbows and wearing masks

I am not going to pretend that everything is going to be plain sailing

we can see the state of the pandemic abroad
the supply chain issues that we’re facing
the pressure on energy prices that we’re all facing
the skills shortages

but don’t forget folks, my friends it was only last year they were saying we would have an unemployment crisis now on the scale not seen since the 1980s or 1990s

They were forecasting 12 per cent unemployment

and what have we got?

thanks to you – thanks to the resilience of British business we have employment back in work at pre-pandemic levels

It was only last year that we experienced the biggest fall in output in a century

as we were forced to lock down the economy

well look at us now

thanks to you and thanks to British business bouncebackability we are forecast to have the fastest economic growth in the G7

and I was there in the 70s and 80s and 90s
and I remember mass unemployment

and the misery and the drain of the human spirit

and I would much rather have our problems

today – which are fundamentally caused by a return in global confidence
and a surge in demand

because now we have a massive opportunity
to fix these supply side problems

to transform whole sectors of our economy
and to tackle the chronic problems underlying the UK economy

the woeful imbalance in productivity across the country

but also the imbalance between British business

between the go-getting world-beaters represented by so many people in this room

and the long comet tail whose potential is frankly yet to be realised

that don’t have the skills
particularly the IT skills – as Rishi the Chancellor so often points out
that don’t have the banks behind them, that don’t have the investment

and that is the mission of this country

to unite and level up, of this government – to unite and level up across the whole country

and I’ve got to be honest with you it is a moral mission

as you get older the funny thing is you get more idealistic and less cynical, it’s a moral thing

but it is also an economic imperative

because if this country could achieve the same kind of geographical balance and dispersion of growth and wealth

that you find in most of our most successful economic comparators

and if all our businesses could reach more balance in their levels of productivity

then there would be absolutely no stopping us

and we would achieve what I believe we can
and become the biggest and most successful economy in Europe

and today fate has handed us an opportunity to do that.

When the first industrial revolution began 250 years ago

it was British industry that had first mover advantage

for hundreds of years we maintained that pace

Right up until the beginning of the 20th century we were producing more coal

smelting more iron
building more ships and boilers and making more machines

than virtually any other country on earth

and today we are on the brink of another revolution
a green industrial revolution

and again there are many ways in which we have first mover advantage

and today I want to tell you in the CBI how Britain is going to win in the new Green industrial revolution

provided we act and act now.

I have had some pretty wonderful jobs in my life, but among the most purely hedonistic I would rank motoring correspondent of GQ magazine. I drove

Ferraris
Maseratis
Nissan Skylines
proton sagas
You name it I drove it

and I learned to admire the incredible diversity of the UK specialist motor manufacturing sector

which is actually the biggest in the world

and I have spent hours in the traffic listening to the porridge like burble and pop of the biggest and most sophisticated internal combustion engines ever made

and I have heard that burble turn into an operatic roar as I have put my foot down and burned away from the lights at speeds I would not now confess to my protection officers

In that time, that great era I only tried two EVs – electric vehicles

an extraordinary wheeled rabbit hutch that was so tiny you could park it sideways

and I tried the first tesla for sale in this country
for GQ, that expired in the fast lane of the M40 – they’ve got a lot better

and when a few years later as mayor of London
I tried to get London motorists to go electric

and we put in charging points around the city
I must confess that they were not then a soar away success
and they stood forlorn like some piece of unused outdoor gym equipment

but ten years after that – the tipping point has come hasn’t it

UK sales of EVs are now increasing at 70 per cent a year

And in 2030 we are ending the market for new hydrocarbon ICEs

ahead of other European countries
and companies are responding

here in the north east
Nissan has decided to make an enormous bet on new electric vehicles and together with Envision there is now a massive new gigafactory for batteries

and around the world these cars are getting ever more affordable

and at Glasgow two weeks ago the tipping point came

as motor manufacturers representing a third of the world market – including the EU and America –

announced that they would go electric by 2035

and of course Glasgow was far bigger and more important than that

250 years after we launched the first industrial revolution we are showing the world how to power past coal

When I was a kid 80 per cent of our electricity came from coal

and I remember those huge barges taking coal up the Thames to Battersea power station

and those four chimneys belching fumes into the face and lungs of the city

By the time I became mayor
Battersea was a wreck
closed for being simply too polluting
and good for nothing except the final shoot out in gangster movies

but in 2012 we were still 40 per cent dependent on coal

today – only ten years later – coal supplies less than 2 per cent of our power

and by 2024 it will be down to zero

and Battersea of course is a great funkapolitan hive of cafes and restaurants and hotels and homes
thanks to the vision of the former mayor

and every time I made that point to leaders in Glasgow

about the speed of the switch that we’ve made from coal

I could see them thinking about it and I could see them thinking
right, ok, maybe this is doable

and when I was a kid literally zero per cent of our energy came from wind

And it seemed faddish and ludicrous to imagine that we could light and heat our homes with a technology that dated from 9th century Persia, I think

and yet today look at the coast of the north east where we are today

row after row stretching out to the north sea, of beautiful white mills
as we claim a new harvest
rich and green from the drowned meadows of doggerland

and on some days we derive almost half this country’s energy needs

with the biggest offshore wind production anywhere in the world – and growing the whole time

and that tipping point having been reached

the pace of change is now going to accelerate like new a tesla

because I can tell you as a former motoring correspondent, EVS may not burble like sucking doves and
they may not have that arum arum araaaaaagh that you love
but they have so much torque that
they move off the lights faster than a Ferrari

and we are now embarked on a new epoch
and in just a few years’ time

after almost a century of using roughly the same technology

we are going to change radically, we are going to change radically

our cars
our trucks
our buses
our ships
our boats
our planes
our trains
our domestic heating systems
our farming methods
our industrial processes
our power generation

and much else besides

and I can tell you the force driving that change

It won’t be government
and it won’t even be business – though business and government together will have a massive influence

It will be the consumer

it will be the young people of today
the disciples of David Attenborough

not just in this country but around the world

who can see the consequences of climate change
and who will be demanding better from us

and I confidently predict that in just a few years’ time it will be as noisome, offensive to the global consumer to open a new coal fired power station as it is to get on a plane and light up a cigar

and as the world reaches this pivotal moment
post Glasgow

it’s vital that we recognise not just the scale of the challenge

but the opportunity now for British business and industry

because in the end it is you
it is business people
who will fix this problem

governments don’t innovate
governments don’t produce new products
and get out and sell them in the market place

and though governments can sell, governments can spend tens if not hundreds of billions

we know that the market has hundreds of trillions

and yet we also know that government has a vital role
in making that market
and in framing the right regulation

and to ensure that you, the British business succeeds in this new world
we have set out a ten point plan for government leadership

a new Decalogue that I produced exactly a year ago when

I came down from Sinai and I said to my officials

The new ten commandments thou shalt develop

offshore wind
hydrogen
nuclear power
zero emission vehicles
green public transport, cycling and walking
‘jet zero’ and green ships
7. greener buildings
8. carbon capture and storage
9. nature and trees
10. green finance

and for each of those objectives

we are producing a roadmap

so that you in the private sector can see the opportunities ahead and what you need to do

And we are regulating so as to require new homes and buildings to have EV charging points – with another 145,000 charging points to be installed thanks to these regulations

We are investing in new projects to turn wind power into hydrogen

and the net zero strategy is expected to trigger about £90 billion of private sector investment

driving the creation of high wage high skill jobs across the UK

as part of our mission to unite and level up across the country

not just in the green industrial revolution of course

but in all sectors of the economy
and to help you
and to build the platform
to give you the advantage you need
we are now waging a cross-Whitehall campaign
to solve our productivity puzzle and to rebalance our lopsided economy

fixing our infrastructure

with investment on a scale not seen since the Victorians

and we must begin with energy and power generation

if we are going to have, allow our manufacturing industry to succeed we must end the unfairness

that UK, high energy intensive manufacturing pays so much more than our competitors overseas

and that’s why we are going to address the cost of our nuclear power and we are all now paying for the historic under under-investment in nuclear power

Which country first split the atom?
Which country had the first civilian nuclear power plant? It was this one.

And why have we allowed ourselves to be left behind?
Well you tell me

So we are investing not just in big new nuclear plants but in small nuclear reactors as well

and we are consulting on classifying this essential technology as “green investment”

so that we can get more investment flowing in and ahead of the EU

Lenin once said that the communist revolution was soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country

Well I hesitate to quote Lenin, Tony, before the CBI, but the coming industrial revolution is green power plus the electrification of the whole country

we are electrifying our cars, we are electrifying our

rail – last week we announced three vast new high speed lines
cutting the time from London to Manchester by an hour

and creating a new crossrail of the north
cutting the time from Manchester to Leeds from 55 to 33 minutes

a crossrail for the midlands

cutting journey times from Birmingham to Nottingham from one hour and 14 minutes
to 26 minutes

but these plans are far richer and more ambitious

than some of the coverage has perhaps suggested. To solve this country’s transport problems

you can’t just endlessly carve your way through virgin countryside

you have to upgrade
and to electrify
you have to use the tracks that already exist and bring them back into service

and we are doing the Beeching reversals – that’s putting in lines that were taken out sadly in the last century

You have to put other transport networks as well, you have to put in
clean buses, you have to improve – 4000 new clean green buses we’re putting in

and of course you have to fix the roads as well we cannot be endlessly hostile to road improvements

and we have to do it now, we have to fix it now. I know that there are some people who think that

working habits have been remade by the pandemic

and that everyone will be working only on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday

in an acronym I won’t repeat

I don’t want to be dogmatic about this
but I have my doubts

and it is not just that young people need to be in the office to learn, and to compete, and to pick up social capital

there are also sound evolutionary reasons why mother nature does not like working from home

so I people prophesy that people will come back, Tony – they will come to the office
and they will come back on the roads and the rail

but people also want choice

and that is why we must put in the gigabit broadband

as we are – which has gone up massively just in the last couple of years from 7 per cent when I became PM to 65 per cent at the beginning of next year

and with safer streets
with great local schools
with fantastic broadband
people will have the confidence to stay nearer the place they grew up

to start business
and business will have the confidence to invest

and then of course there is one thing that business wants and that this country needs

far more than a hundred supersonic rail links
far more than broadband

and that is skills
and the people

that you all need to staff your business.

It’s an astonishing fact that the 16-18 year olds in this country are getting 40% less time and instruction than our competitors in the OECD and so we’re turning that round.
We are focusing on skills skills skills
investing in our FE colleges, our apprentices, in the knowhow and confidence of young people
and since as everybody knows 80 per cent of the 2030 workforce are already in work

we are giving every adult who needs it the chance to get a level three skill

£3000 for a lifetime skills guarantee

we are supporting bootcamps for everything from IT to entrepreneurship

and at this pivotal moment in our economic history we are taking advantage of our new freedoms

to deliver freeports
as well as free trade deals
and to regulate differently and better
to lengthen our lead in all the amazing new technologies of the 21st century
AI
cyber
quantum computing

and all the rest and all the applications of those technologies to the areas in which we excel
so you get fin tech ed tech bio tech med tech nano tech ag tech green tech so you sound basically like

15th century Mexico – and that is what this country is doing

there are only 3 countries that have produced more than 100 tech unicorns
and they are, as you will know, well which are they? Let’s see who’s been paying attention to any of my speeches in the last few … which 3 nations have produced more than 100 tech unicorns?

Correct. They are the US, China and the UK

And the wonderful thing about the more than the 100 tech unicorns is they are dispersed now far more evenly across the whole of the UK than the tech unicorns of some of our rival competitor economies. And that is a fantastic thing. We want to see the dispersal of this growth and development across the UK. That’s why this government has doubled investment in scientific research – and again, we want to see the benefits of that research across the whole of the country

but in the end
and this is the most important message of all

there are, there are limits to what governments can do
And I just want to be absolutely clear about this – because this has been an extraordinary period. There has been the financial crisis of 2008, where government had to intervene on a massive scale, then Covid, when government had to intervene on a massive scale, but government cannot fix everything and government sometimes should
get out of your hair

and government should make sure there is less regulation and indeed less taxation. And the true driver of growth is not government it is the energy and dynamism and originality of the private sector
And Tony,
yesterday
I went as we all must to Peppa Pig world – hands up if you’ve been to Peppa Pig world – [not enough]
I was a bit hazy about what I would find at Peppa Pig world but I loved it
Peppa pig world is very much my kind of place – it had very safe streets
discipline in schools
heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems I noticed

even if they are a bit stereotypical about daddy pig

but the real lesson for me about going to Peppa Pig world was about the power of UK creativity
who would have believed, Tony, that a pig that looks like a hairdryer
or possibly a sort of Picasso-like hairdryer,

a pig that was rejected by the BBC
would now be exported to 180 countries
with theme parks both in America and in China as well as in the New Forest
and a business that is worth at least £6bn to this country
£6bn and counting

I think that it is pure genius – don’t you

No government in the world, no Whitehall civil servant in the world could conceivably have come up with Peppa
So my final message to you
As we stand on the brink of this green industrial revolution
as we prepare to use our new regulatory freedoms
in what I believe will be a very strong post-covid rebound
we are blessed, we are blessed not just with capital markets and the world’s best universities and incredible pools of liquidity in London, the right time zone and the right language and opportunity across the whole country
We are also blessed with the amazing inventive power and range of British business
and that above all is what fills me with confidence members of the CBI for the days ahead
Thank you very much for your kind attention this morning, thank you”