We’ve put £3.6 billion of publicland to the use of so many of the good developers I seearound here, since Maylast year when I was elected by the way, but we need to do more and weneed toaccelerate our programme of house building dramatically and I think that it istime thatwe considered allowing companies to make tax-free loans to theiremployees to help them withthe cost of their rent deposit – how about that?Brainy policy, no, put in for the budgetconsiderations. Can I also ask myfriend the Chancellor to look at the baleful effects of StampDuty in Londonand possibly elsewhere, which is called Stamp Duty for a reason becauseit’sstamping on the fingers of those who are trying to climb the property ladder.Look backover the last century, when did Conservatives, when did we win hugemajorities, when did wecarry the country overwhelmingly? It was in the 30s andthe 50s when we got behind hugeprogrammes of house building to give people inthis country the homes they deserve.
To make those homes possible ofcourse you have got to get on with putting in thetransport links, as I nevertire of telling you and we’ve not only cut delays by 40%, comrades,in Londonsince I was elected, we have expanded the capacity of the Jubilee Line by 25%,theVictoria Line is now running at incredible 34 trains an hour – how many isthat per minute? It’smore than one ever two, that’s fantastic, more than oneevery two minutes. There’s no flies onthese guys! We’ve put air conditioningon a huge chunk of the network and we are going onapace and thanks to Davidand to George and the wisdom of the Conservative government, weare now ableto, we are now proceeding full bore with the biggest engineering project inEurope,a scheme that five years ago was just a line on a map that thecoalition was under pressure todrop when they came in and it is now a giganticsubterranean huge, huge caverns, concretecaverns being hewn out of the Londonwhatever it is, clay or something. I should know that. Aswe speak, as wespeak, beneath the streets of London are six colossal boring machinescalledAda and Phyllis and Mary and Elizabeth and Victoria I think, I have got theirnames wrong,I can’t remember their names but they all have female names forsome reason and Phyllis andAda are coming in from the west and Mary andElizabeth are going from the east, from theLimmo Peninsula and they arechomping remorselessly through the London clay and they aregoing to meet somewherearound Whitechapel for this ginormous convocation of worms – I don’tknow whatthey’ll do but it will absolutely terrific because the rail capacity of Londonwill beincreased by 10% and we will have done Cross Rail, I confidentlypredict, as we did theOlympics, on time and on budget. A fantastic example ofwhat this country can do and acalling card that British business is now usingaround the world.
In my view and in the view ofthose who are now working on Cross Rail, what we should do isuse those worldclass skills that we’ve been accumulating in London, to get going beforewedisband them on the next set of projects. I mean obviously Cross Rail 2, HighSpeed Rail, newpower stations, solutions to our aviation capacity problem, sothat we have a logicalsequential infrastructure plan for our country and don’tdo what previous governments havedone and that is waste billions by stoppingand starting. I think we can do it, I am absolutelyconfident that we can doit. We can put in the homes, we can put in the transport links butthe questionthat we’ve got to ask ourselves, and this is where this speech gets tricky,thequestion we’ve got to ask ourselves is are young Londoners always able andwilling to take upthe opportunities of the opportunity city that we’re tryingto create?
Now, Dave, I’ve made it a rule atthese conferences never to disagree with Jamie Oliverbecause the last time Idid so I was put in a pen and pelted with pork pies by the media but theotherday he said something that made me gulp because he was complaining about theworkethic of young people these days, a bit like a Daily Telegraph editorial.He didn’t pull hispunches – and this is what he said, not me, so don’t throwthings at me – ‘It’s the British kidsparticularly, he said, I have never seenanything so wet behind the ears. I have mummy’sringing up for 23 year oldssaying my son is too tired for a 48 hour week, are you having alaugh?’ thecelebrity chef told Good Housekeeping. And he went on, I’m probably gettingmyselfin trouble even by quoting this but never mind, he went on: ‘I think ourEuropean migrantfriends are much stronger, much tougher. If we didn’t haveany, all of our restaurants wouldclose tomorrow. There wouldn’t be any Britsto replace them.’
Now I can see looks of apoplectic… well, no I can’t really. Where’s the apoplexy? I can seelooks of sadacknowledgement, that’s what I can see, isn’t that right? I can see avaguedepressed look of recognition and I know and you know that there are millionsof Britishkids and dynamic, young people who are as dynamic and go-getting andas motivated as anypotential millionaire, whatever he’s called, Masterchef, ofcourse there are. But my question toyou is, what if Jamie has a point? What ifhe has half a point or even a quarter of a point? Doyou think he does? Half apoint, quarter of a point? He’s on to something. He may have phrasedit in aprovocative way but he was saying something that I think resonates, right?Okay, I’mgetting through this with difficulty.