英国首相卡梅伦在2013年达沃斯冬季论坛上的演讲

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Thursday 24 January 2013

It’s the UK’s privilege to host the G8 this year and I want to set out today our main priorities. Now right up there on our agenda is of course tackling the threat of extremism and terrorist violence that we’ve seen erupt in Mali and in that despicable attack in Algeria.

I’ll put my cards on the table, I believe we are in the midst of a long struggle against murderous terrorists and a poisonous ideology that supports them. Just as we’ve successfully put pressure on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, so al-Qaeda franchises have been growing for years in Yemen, in Somalia and across parts of North Africa, places that have suffered hideously through hostage taking, terrorism and crime.

Now to defeat this menace we’ve got to be tough, we’ve got to be intelligent and we’ve got to be patient, and this is the argument I’ll be making at the G8. Let me be again absolutely clear, there is a place for a tough security approach including at times military action where necessary. The French are right to act in Mali and I backed that action, not just with words, but with logistical support too. But we need to combine a tough security response with an intelligent political response. We need to address that poisonous narrative that the terrorists feed on. We need to close down the ungoverned space in which they thrive and, yes, we need to deal with the grievances that they use to garner support.

Now this means using everything at our disposal: our diplomatic networks, our aid budgets, our political relations, our military and security cooperation and yes, supporting – in those countries and elsewhere – the building blocks of democracy, like the rule of law and a free media. The Arab Spring remains part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Now I want to open up a new debate too in how we share the burden of meeting this threat. The G8 can help discuss how we can best divide up some of this work between us and how we can each individually partner-up with the countries worst affected to overcome this threat and, like I say, this is going to be right up there on our agenda for the G8.

But today I want to focus on our economic priorities, because for all the countries in the G8 and all the countries across the European Union there is a big, looming insistent question, and that is how do we compete and succeed in the global economic race that we are engaged in today.

How do we succeed when other nations are growing, changing, innovating so fast? Now a lot of the answers are clear. You’ve got to deal with your debts, you’ve got to cut business taxes, you’ve got to tackle the bloat in welfare, and crucially you’ve got to make sure your schools and your universities are truly world class.

Now back in the UK we’ve been doing all of these things. Less than three years in and this government has cut the deficit by a quarter; our corporation tax rate is the lowest in the G7. In welfare reform we’ve been radical, in education almost revolutionary - busting open the state monopoly of education and allowing new Free Schools to start up, and crucially to compete in this global race. We are making sure that the United Kingdom is more outward looking than ever before.

Now yesterday I gave a speech setting out the UK’s place in Europe.

This is not about turning our backs on Europe - quite the opposite. This is about how we make the case for a more competitive, a more open, a more flexible Europe and how we secure the UK’s place within it. This is how I see it. Just over half of the EU countries are in the single currency, in the Euro. When you have a single currency you move inexorably towards a banking union, towards forms of fiscal union and that has huge implications for countries like the UK who are not in the Euro and frankly [never will be] are never likely to join. The club we belong to is changing. We can’t ignore this: change is underway and the debate about what this means, it is live, it is happening right now.

And as I said yesterday consent in the United Kingdom for the steps that have already been taken is wafer thin.

Now some just say well let these events unfold naturally. I say no. We should try and shape them in the UK’s national interest. Let us negotiate a new settlement for Europe that works for the UK and let’s get fresh consent for it. And it’s not just right for the United Kingdom, it is necessary for Europe. Europe is being out competed, out invested, out innovated and it is time we made the European Union an engine for growth, not a source of cost for business and complaint from our citizens.

So I want the UK to look out, not in, and that is why for the first time in a decade UK foreign policy is on the advance. By 2015 we will have opened up twenty new diplomatic posts around the world, employed three hundred extra staff in the fastest growing regions of the world. We are having to make cuts in the UK, but this is something we are not cutting, we’re expanding. We’re now one of only three European countries to be represented in every single country in ASEAN and we have the largest diplomatic network in India of any developed nation. We are a global nation with global interests and a global reach, and if you think all of this is somehow an unashamed advert for the UK and UK business you’re absolutely right. Everything I do is about making sure we’re not just competing in that global race, but we’re succeeding in it.

But my argument today, the argument I want to make in front of you and the idea that the G8 will be driving forward this year, is that competing in the global race is not just about what we do at home, it is about the wider economy we’ll operate in, the rules that shape it, the fairness and the openness that characterise it. We need more free trade. We need fairer tax systems. We need more transparency on how governments and, yes, companies operate.

Let me tell you why. It’s the oldest observation of the modern age that we are all interconnected. Communication is faster than ever, finance is more mobile than ever and yet the paradox of this open world is that in many ways it’s still so closed and so secretive. It’s a world where trade is still choked off by barriers and bureaucracy. It’s a world where some companies navigate their way around legitimate tax systems and even low tax rates with an army of clever accountants. It’s a world where, regrettably, corrupt government officials in some countries and some corporations run rings around the letter and the spirit of the law to rip off hard working people and to plunder their natural resources.

There is a long and tragic history of some African countries being stripped of their minerals behind a veil of secrecy. We can see the results: the government cronies get rich, some beyond their wildest dreams of avarice, while the people in those countries stay poor.

So it is clear how devastating this can be for some developing countries. But frankly all this matters, and should matter, to developed countries too. When trade isn’t free, we all suffer. When some businesses aren’t seen to pay their taxes, that is corrosive to the public trust. When shadowy companies don’t play by the rules, that drives more box ticking, more regulation, more interference and that makes life harder for other businesses to turn a profit. That is why I want this year’s G8 to bring a new focus on these issues: trade, tax, transparency. Those are the issues we are going to be driving for this year.

So first we’re going to push for more openness on trade. In late 2008 we saw the steepest fall in global trade ever and the deepest since the Great Depression, and more than four years on trade has still not fully recovered. Now this should be at the forefront of the mind of every leader, every diplomat during those long negotiations on trade; and there’s an enormous amount on the table today. You’ve got the US leading efforts on the Trans Pacific Partnership. In the European Union we’re about to embark on our biggest-ever programme of free trade agreement negotiations. We’ve got parameters for a deal with Singapore, negotiations with Canada nearly complete, and we’re about to launch negotiations with Japan, and of course there’s the beginning of negotiations on an EU-US trade deal. Now the EU and the US together, we actually make up about a third of all global trade. A deal between us could add over fifty billion pounds to the EU economy alone. Agreeing all the EU deals on the table could increase our GDP by two per cent and create over two million jobs across the European Union.

Trade between developing countries and within Africa is growing and we should work to encourage that further - and we must also continue to support the multilateral system. This means working through the WTO to agree a deal to sweep away trade bureaucracy at the ministerial conference in Bali this December. That alone could be worth around seventy billion dollars to the global economy and help trade to flow freely across the world. It is ambitious, but we must seize these opportunities to give a massive boost to free trade across the world.