The cspan video library, searchable, unique, and free, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your satellite rovider. The british house of commons is in recess this week, so Prime Ministers questions will not be seen tonight. Next written step you do prime britainsick clegg deputy Prime Minister nick likes spoke about the Party Current achievements as well as how the party will move forward. An hour. T [applause] if you think the new Party Looks Like the old alliance, you are right. A fair, free society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community. It is set of our determination to bring Self Government to scotland and wales and true democracy to britain, the return of power to the people, to create a citizens democracy. We are right. All people share the same basic rights. The courage to face down. We champion the freedom, dignity and wellbeing of individuals. We will stand up above all else for social justice. We have to give a voice to the disadvantaged and displaced. We are committed to fight poverty, oppression, hunger, ignorance, disease. The house of commons should be given the right of a vote on whether our forces should be sent into battle. The quest for freedom and justice can never end. We stand for three things, freedom, fairness and trust. Isnt it a in absolute disgrace, the poorest 20 are contributing more of their income in tax than the top richest one percent. Money back in the pockets of the poorest working families. We have determined to strengthen the democratic process and ensure there is a just and representative system of government. It is over. The liberal democrats have the courage to imagine a better society. I will do everything to end this unacceptable and immoral discrimination. Step one, fair taxes. Under the liberal democrats, you will not pay tax on the first 10,000 pounds that you earn. Nick clegg won the polls last night on the readers debate. Very good. This is what the voters voted for. This was the birth of a new we will take risks and government but we will never lose building a more socially mobile society where ability trumps privilege. We will at all times defend the right to speak. A form of consultation on civil matters. Our opponents have thrown everything at us. We stood our ground and won a stunning victory. Women and men working together for the achievement. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome leader of the liberal democrats and deputy Prime Minister, nick clegg. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Friends, three years ago nearly threeandahalf i walked into the Cabinet Office for my first day as deputy Prime Minister. Picture it. History in the making, a liberal democrat leader entered into power, preparing to unshackle britain after years of labour and conservative moves. Only to arrive to find an empty room and one shellshocked Civil Servant promising me we would get on with things shortly but first, he had to get us some desks. You saw the rose garden. What you didnt see was the utter chaos indoors. To say the coalition caught us offguard is a massive understatement. The government machine had no idea how it was going to handle powersharing not just the furniture. This was going to need a complete overhaul of how decisions would be taken and departments would be run. While no one really wanted to admit it at the time, the truth is, i dont think anyone was quite sure how it was all going to work. Here we were, this antiestablishment, liberal party which hadnt been in power for 70 years, smack bang in the middle of her majestys government. A government machine. Built to serve one party with only one party leader at the center now suddenly answering to two parties and two party leaders. Alongside us where these tories who we have been at war with for the past month actually, more than 100 years. The whole thing, remember, was set to this soundtrack of presentism and naysaying, the liberal democrats had signed their own death warrant. The coalition would fail. Britain would be the next greece. So, lets just stop and think about where we are now. The countrys economy growing stronger by the day. Stable coalition. Something that seemed impossible is now accepted as the norm. The liberal democrats proving that we can be trusted with the biggest responsibility of all. Fixing the economy. [applause] but i know, i know how hard it has been getting here, facing down that nasty vitriol from our opponents. Trust me, there were days i thank my lucky stars my children were too young to understand the things that were written and said. Every insult we have had to endure since we entered government, every that headline, every blow to our support, that was all worth it. We are turning britain around. We havent won over every critic. We will be tested a million more times. But that big question mark, could we handle government when the going got tough . That question mark is now gone. The recovery simply wouldnt be happening without us. We have made sure that we have made sure the deficit is being cut at the right pace. We were the ones who said you dont just get growth by cutting red tape. Government also needs to invest in things, infrastructure, apprenticeships. I want you to feel proud today. Feel proud that the countrys fortunes are turning. Feel proud that when we were under pressure to buckle and change course, we held our nerve. Feel proud that we are right here in the center of government and the center of british politics standing up for the millions of people in the middle. I have talked to you before about the journey, our journey from the comforts of opposition to the realities of government. Not anymore. Liberal democrats, we are a party of government now. [applause] just think. Just think of what we have achieved in three short years. Or the first time ever, our schools get given money to stop children from the poorest families from falling behind. The first time ever. Over one million men and women have started training as apprentices in record numbers. Businesses across every region are being given billions to help them grow. We have made the biggest investment in our railway since the victorian times. We have created a clean green industry. Elderly people will no longer have to sell their homes to pay for social care. We have kept the crippling costs. Others will no longer be worse off in retirement because our new simpler pension recognizes the value of raising a family. Fathers will have the choice of staying at home once their children are born because we are transforming parental leads. Parents will get free extra childcare paid for by the state for their children. We have taken innocent people off the dna database. We have ended child attention. 0. 7 of National Wealth spent on aid for the poorest. Our partys policy for years, not to mention getting the banks in order and helping to create over a million new jobs. [applause] one last one. At a time when millions of people are feeling the squeeze, when every penny counts, we have cut income tax bills by 700 pounds. It has taken almost 3 million people. The tories like to take credit for that one, dont they . Do you remember those leadersdebates . David cameron turned to me in front of the whole country and said, i would love to take everyone out of their first 10,000 pounds of income tax, but we cannot afford it. We can afford it. We did it. A stronger economy and a fairer society. [applause] actually, there is just one more. It is my new favorite. Just a few months ago, our government passed a law that will make britain a place where we finally celebrate love and commitment equally between couples whether they are gay or straight. Equal marriage at last. [applause] three years. Three years. We are not even done yet. Can you imagine what we could do with five more . You should be able to. We have spent the last five days talking about it. This whole week has been about looking forward and one thing is very clear to me now. The liberal democrats, we dont want to go back to the opposition benches because we arent done yet. Here is what is at stake at the next election. Our countrys finally emerging from the biggest economic crisis in memory. The absolute worst thing to do would be to give the keys to a single party government. Labor or conservative. All of those sacrifices made by the british people, the pay freezes, the spending cuts, the loss of jobs, the daily grind of austerity, all of that would be for nothing. Labor would wreck the recovery. Conservatives would give us the wrong kind of recovery. Only liberal democrats can finish the job in a way that is fair. [applause] in 2015, the politics of red, blue, blue, red, it threatened everything we have achieved. Back in government in time that will mean back in coalition government, the liberal democrats can keep the country on the right path. Imagine the next round of leaders debates. Everyone watching to see who agrees with whom this time. David cameron will say, you are irresponsible. Ed will say to david cameron, you cant be trusted to help everyone. You only care about the rich. For once, i will agree with them both. [applause] because, because of course they are both right. Left to their own devices, they will look at it wrong. We have learned a lot since getting into government. One of the main things i have learned is this. If we are asking people to put us back into the room next time around, if we want them to know why it is better to have us around the table when the Big Decisions are made they need to be able to make a judgment about what we will do there. That is as much about values, character, background as anything else. They need to know who we are. Who i am. Why i am a liberal democrat, why i am standing here today. Let me start with this. I was part of a generation raised in the 70s and 80s on a constant diet of aggressive us and them politics. I have so many memories of my brothers and sisters and i watching television and asking our parents why everyone seems so upset, angry. Union leaders gesticulating furiously. Later, standoffs between crowds of minors and riot police. At school, i was taught all about the cold war, the chilling backdrop to all of this. I remember a history teacher telling me and my petrified classmates that we probably wouldnt make it until christmas because there was bound to be a soviet strike. So the world i grew up in was all about stark polarized choices, us versus them, east versus west, left versus right. An incompetent labor government have been replaced by conservative governments. All anyone seems to care about was whose side you are on. I steered clear of party politics. One day, i was 22, studying in america. The phone rang and it was my mother. She just heard on the news, the berlin wall was coming down. My flat mates and i tuned into our radio and we sat and listened for hours to reports of people coming out of their homes in the middle of the night and literally hammering away at the symbol of division and hate. I can remember so clearly as if it was yesterday, the sense of optimism and hope. Anyone who is here my age or older will understand, it felt as though those dark, drab days of angry politics and conflict could now give way to something better. In the weeks and months that followed, when i looked to the government of my country, the british government, to see if that government was raising their sites to help shape this brave new world, all i could see was a bunch of tories too busy tearing off of each other. It was so totally dispiriting. Everything i had come to abhor about the politics with which i had grown up, insular, petty, polarized. If that had been the end of the story, i doubt i would have entered politics at all. It wasnt. I met patty for the first time when he came into a dingy gray bureaucrats office. It was the middle of a major trade dispute in america. He marched in, everyone instinctively stood to attention. In what seemed like the blink of an eye he ordered a cup of coffee, issued a series of action points that should have been delivered yesterday, reassured us it would be all right and then swept out. That was the first time i had seen a british politician talking with passion and conviction and without defensiveness or fear about the challenges in the world and the leadership britain needed to show. The liberal democrats seem so outward looking, so forward compared to that tired old introverted politics of labor and conservatives. For me, that was it. That was how i found our party. So i know what it is like to look at the old parties and want more, to want a party that speaks for big enduring values. With the liberal democrats gave me 20 years ago is something i want us to give to people across britain today. [applause] what do you think britain would look like today if the tories had been a loan for the last three years . What would have happened without liberal democrats in this country . There were some clues in the alternative queens speech proposed by a group of conservative backbenchers this summer. Did you see that . There were some real crackers. You couldnt make it up. Bringing back the death penalty, the return of national service, privatizing of the bbc, i even got a mention. The office of the deputy Prime Minister, abolition. They wanted to introduce an annual Margaret Thatcher day. I would like to see that on the streets of glasgow. The First Bank Holiday where people would rather go to work. [laughter] [applause] these gems though are not the most worrying bit. The real alarm bells arent so much in the thing torry backbenchers would like to do, but the things conservative ministers have tried to do. I havent said enough about this. It is a bit oldfashioned but i always thought it was better in politics to tell people about the things you have achieved, not just the things you have stopped. People do, they do need to know. How coalition operates and what we do day in, day out inside government. Ultimately, it is up to the Prime Minister and me to make the whole thing work. We try to see compromise. We cracked problems that single Party Governments that struggled with for decades. Social care, pension reform, so on. But, sometimes compromise and agreement isnt possible and you just have to say, no. Inheritance, tax cuts, no. Bringing back olevels, no. Newtown care ratios, no. Firing workers at will, no. Penalizing publicsector workers, no. Scrapping housing benefits for young people, no. No to ditching the human rights act. No two weakening the protections in the economy back. No the closing down the debate on trident. Had they asked us . No to the boundary changes if you cannot deliver your side of the bargain. [applause] if there is one area where we have had to put our foot down, have a guess. Yes, the environment. It is a clue. It is an endless battle. We have had to fight tooth and now, it was the same justice week to cut down on plastic bags. They wanted to back green energy. They wanted geography teachers to stop teaching children about how to tackle Climate Change. No, no, no. The liberal democrats will keep this government green. [applause] by the way, i hear the term torie Climate Change skeptics have said that we should abolish the department for energy and Climate Change. I expect they first denied that decc even existed or that if it does, it is probably not man made. [laughter] i dont pretend that this is always easy to say no. Sometimes, i have had to wrestle with genuinely difficult dilemmas, not just three party dogma. Months listening to Home Office Officials and police because as much as i am in government to protect civil liberties, i also have to go to bed and sleep at night knowing i did my bit to keep people safe. Government ministers, loud voices of course, they were all adamant that i should say yes. When push came to shove, it became clear that the surveillance powers being proposed were disproportionate. They would have undermined privacy. The security game was neither prudent nor clear. It was right for the establishment but wrong for the people. So i said no. [applause] obviously, we havent been in coalition with labor. I could give you a list of hypothetical bad ideas the liberal democrats would have to stop if we were in coalition with labor. That would involve labor producing some actual policy. [laughter] [applause] who here knows labors plans for our schools . Welfare . What will they do with the nhs . Industry . Cutting crime . No. Labor may not have an Economic Strategy but we do. A bold plan for growth, public finances, house building, infrastructure and lending to business. Liberal democrats turning britain around. The truth is, labor hadnt set out any kind of vision for britain. Because they didnt think we needed to. They spent the last three years lazily assuming that austerity would drive voters into their laps. For them, 2015 is all about the Coalition Parties losing rather than labor having to actually try and win. That, in my view, tells you everything about why they act the way they do. Their deliberate decision to put tactical deliveries over reform. Remember the referendum . Not a happy memory for the democrats. You remember that av was in labors manifesto. Yet it was labor figures most staunch in defense of the status quo just to score points against us. [applause] lords reform. Something that the labor party historically believed in. When they have a chance to vote for it, they found excuses not to just to score points against us. Even when we hear good news about the economy, they are miserable. They rather it be bad just to score points against us. I have a message for labor today. You cant just to duck