David Willetts

Conservatives today launch the families section of the ‘Mending our Broken Society’ chapter of the Conservative Party’s draft manifesto. The section outlines plans to make Britain more family-friendly by:

Reforming the tax and benefits system to help families
Taking a new approach to early intervention
Helping families to balance their lives

For many people raising our children is the most worthwhile thing we do. Raising a family can give new purpose to a marriage, dignity to work and delight to a home. It rests on deep-seated and admirable human instincts. And it is truly democratic as well - you can mess up despite great privileges or you can do brilliantly despite great adversity. A stable loving home is just about the greatest single advantage a child can have.

Commenting on the publication of the final report by Alan Milburn’s Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, David Willetts, Shadow Universities and Skills Secretary, said:

A speech given on the 20th may 2008 to the Business Services Association on Skills and Society.

Conservative Party leader David Cameron and David Willetts launched the second report of the Childhood Review today, which analyses how changing circumstances in the outside world have driven children indoors, and explains how this retreat from the outside world is having a profound effect on children’s well-being. The Childhood Review was set up after a UNICEF report in February 2007 judged the UK the worst place out of 21 developed countries to be a child.

In a speech to the Daycare Trust, David Willetts explained some of the issues, trade-offs and problems in current British childcare provision.

In a speech to to the CBI Conference on Public Service Reform, David Willetts explained some of the issues around the debate on social mobility and what we can do about it, with four proposals for school reform.

David Willetts enters the debate over social discount rates and welfare functions in the Stern Review and supports the case for backing Stern’s conclusions as part of a wider intergenerational obligation.

A neglected aspect of social justice is fairness between successive generations. This article argues that the large generation born immediately after World War 2 (the ‘baby boomers’) have benefitted from a favourable macro-economic environment throughout their lives, while the relatively small generation following them will bear the brunt of paying for the pensions and healthcare of their predecessors. Such extreme differences in the benefits and burdens of different generations over their lifecycles may need to be ameliorated in order to avoid a breakdown in the informal intergenerational social contract, which has sustained support for the welfare state over several decades. (This is a cleaned up transcript of a talk given to the Centre for Social Justice, and reprinted in the June 2007 issue of ‘Benefits: The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice’).

In the annual Swinton Lecture to the Conservative Party Policy Forum , David Willetts discussed the answer to the question “We need a Conservative Government because…”.

In a speech to Policy Exchange, David Willetts discusses how one of the most important (and overlooked) issues in British politics is the obligation of one generation to do the best it can for the next, and how this issue has become more important in recent years.

David Willetts - then Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary - reflects back on his five years as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, on the challenge of the pensions crisis, and the threat of the “zombie company”.

In a speech to Bloomberg, David Willetts MP sets out his critique of Gordon Brown’s economic programme, criticising him for encouraging “thin growth”.

In a speech to the Child Poverty Action Group, David Willetts discussed the social problems facing the UK today, the challenges of atomisation, problems in the life course, and a vision of the future.

In an article in The Times, David Willetts explains why raising the income tax threshold is not of itself an effective means of helping the poor.