Press release
Tuesday 26th June 2012
Embargoed until 1800 Hrs
Getting
on with business: Entrepreneurship and social mobility - speech by
Chuka Umunna MP, Labour's Shadow Business Secretary, to Hub Westminster
Thank you for that introduction, and thank you for inviting me to speak this evening.
I
cannot think of a better group of people to discuss this with than all
of you gathered here today: restless people, not satisfied with the
world as it is; innovators determined to find new gaps in old markets
and to create ideas for new markets.
Our economy and society
needs more people like you. More people starting up businesses, building
businesses, and – hopefully – succeeding in business. You are engines
of growth for an economy that has stalled but a country which has huge
potential.
What I intend to do is to first reflect on
entrepreneurship, then consider how it can power social mobility, before
setting out our ongoing work to help entrepreneurs to set up and grow
businesses. What I do not cover in my remarks, I am mo
re than
happy to pick up on in the Q&A afterwards.
Now, before coming
here, some of you may have wondered what on earth is this grandson of a
High Court Judge, a private school educated, former City lawyer doing
coming here to talk to you about social mobility and entrepreneurship?
Well, the legal tradition in my family sits on my mother’s side and I am
incredibly proud of it. But it is my late father, a self made man, who
makes me so passionate about the transformative power of
entrepreneurship.
My father arrived here after a very long
journey on a boat from Nigeria in the mid 1960s. When he arrived at
Liverpool Docks he had a suitcase and no money. A random stranger lent
him the cash to pay for his train fare to London where he was due to
take up lodgings with friends.
Once settled in London, he did
various jobs. He washed plates in kitchens and he washed limousine cars
too. Washing cars was handy because, once he had finished each job, he
could sit and
study
in the warmth and luxury of the limo until its owner arrived to pick it
up. He was studying to acquire his business and accountancy
qualifications at the time.
Within 15 years he worked his way up
from arriving with nothing to running a very successful import and
export business doing trade between Europe and West Africa, selling all
manner of goods until his death. Sadly, he passed away when I was quite
young so I never got to hear the full story from him. But his example
continues to inspire me.
My father’s story was particular to
him. But in many ways his was an archetypal story common to many
immigrant families the length and breadth of Britain. Let us not forget:
the Britain of the 1960s - despite the free love, the hippies and the
rest – was not the tolerant Britain we live in today. His generation
created – through commerce – opportunities that no one else would offer
them.
So my family’s story informs my outlook; so too does my
London
constituency which takes in Streatham and parts of Balham, Brixton,
Clapham and Tulse Hill. There I see a vibrant culture of business that
must be supported. But it was something more serious that really got me
thinking.
I am Chair of the London Gangs Forum which works to reduce
gang activity across London. Gang culture has taken hold of a
substantial minority of our young people in London. My borough, Lambeth,
is one of the most acutely affected areas.
Gangs have been
responsible for numerous killings with innocent bystanders being
seriously injured in the cross fire between rival groups. The most
shocking incident of late was the shooting of 5 year old Thusha
Kamaleswaran in her family’s newsagent in Stockwell last year.
Make
no mistake: at the heart of these gangs activities are criminality and
very serious violence. Each of them lays claim to certain ‘territories’
in Lambeth – in particular in and around our social housing estates. As a
community
we
send a clear message: what the gangs do is completely unacceptable, we
will root it out and ensure the strong arm of the law is brought down to
bear on the perpetrators. That is exactly what happened with those
found responsible for the shooting of Thusha – members of a notorious
local gang, who were jailed for life in March.
But if one studies
what Lambeth’s gangs do in more detail, it is both shocking and
frustrating. They put a lot of effort into building up their gang’s
brand. Most are involved with the sale of drugs; but some have branched
out into more legitimate activities around fashion and music. You can
find music videos they produce to promote their activities on YouTube.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme did a series of reports on this a couple
of weeks ago featuring Lambeth’s gangs.
This brand building is
alarming because it helps the gangs to be more notorious and glamorises
what they do – it is one of the reasons myself and other Labour
parliamentary colleagues, Heidi Alexander and Karen Buck in particular,
have argued that stronger powers are needed to ensure the gangs’ YouTube
videos are taken down.
What frustrates me is this: many of these
young people are using skills that – if channelled in the right way –
could provide them with an alternative route to success. And yet, in
Lambeth, too much of this entrepreneurial instinct is being channelled
into totally the wrong thing. Just imagine what our young gang members
could achieve if their energies were redirected. Their entrepreneurial
zeal, used in a legitimate business setting, could provide them with a
ladder up, just as it did for my father. Instead, as things stand, many
of them will likely end up in jail with blood on their hands unless we
change things.
I spent an evening talking to young people in a
youth club in my constituency about this speech last week. A large
number of the young people attending that particular club are
affiliated to and/or are involved in the gangs which operate in my area.
We talked about why young people were choosing to do the wrong kind of
business through gangs. One young constituent said simply that
illegitimate business was “an easier and faster way to make money”, to
“get rich quick”.
When I dug behind this rather glib
explanation, my young constituents explained that pursuing gang related
business was viewed as a strategy for getting out and getting on. Gang
members “have goals”, said one young man, “they do bad to do good”. What
he meant was that gang members sought to make money first through
illegitimate means, with a view to building up enough finance to run a
legitimate business later. The other young people present shared his
analysis.
I
am sure that many in this room have struggled to access finance to
start and grow their business, and will have considered peer to peer
lending or maybe finding an angel investor for it. Well, among this
group in my constituency there was a perception that profits from
illegal commerce were the most viable solution for them.
Of
course the reasons why young people get involved in gangs are complex
and varied. But what is clear is that the entrepreneurial spirit is
strong in them, albeit misdirected. We must make legitimate business a
more feasible avenue through which they can realise their dreams even
when all else may have failed them. Reflecting on my father’s experience and the entrepreneurial impulse of our young peo
ple, I
am convinced that Labour must view entrepreneurship as central to our approach to increasing social mobility.
Social
mobility is of course very much in keeping with what Labour is all
about. We exist as a movement and as a political party to help more
people succeed in life – or, as we put it in our constitution, to secure
“the means for each of us to realise our true potential”. Like all the
best entrepreneurs, ours is an ambitious mission: putting power, wealth
and opportunity in the hands of the many. And, yes, this can sometimes
be threatening to the established market players - those who have the
power and wealth, and want to hoard it. So be it.
At root it is
about helping people to get on in life regardless of where they are
from, able to pursue the life they choose and value. It is about making a
person’s destiny less dependent on the circumstances of their birth.
Some
people view social mobility as a relative concept, meaning that for
every
person
moving up the ladder there must be an equal and opposite reaction of
others moving down. But extending opportunity need not be a zero sum
game. Removing the ceiling on success that too many experience is to the
collective benefit of us all.
And
in an interdependent world individual success can strengthen our common
bonds, just as strong common bonds can enrich the soil from which
individual success grows. Hillary Clinton is fond of quoting the
Nigerian proverb which says it takes a whole village to raise a child. I
say it takes a similarly strong culture to raise an entrepreneur. Just
ask those who have spent time in Silicon Valley about the strong culture
there – of hope, possibility and forgiveness, where failure is seen as
part of the learning process.
In government, Labour did a lot to
fracture the link between a person’s history and their destiny: from
Sure Start and unprecedented investment in early years education, to
improvements in educational attainmen
t
across the board; from the educational maintenance allowance, to the
expansion of higher education. These are things we can be proud of.
We
narrowed the gap in attainment between pupils from more and less
advantaged backgrounds – for example, the percentage of those on free
school meals gaining five grade A*-C GCSEs rose faster than for those
not on free school meals. And there is some evidence that we had begun
to weaken the link between family background and educational attainment:
research from the University of Bristol suggests family background had
less influence on GCSE results for those taking them in 2006, compared
to those taking O-levels in 1986. But, despite this, the link remains
strong and it is clear there is a long way to go.
However, it
seems unlikely that this progress will be sustained if this Government –
which has already cut the educational maintenance allowance – also
follows through on its plans to return us to a two-tier education
system
where kids are divided into winners and losers at age 14.
And
even where it appears that progress has been made, it takes a long time
to quantify. A key indicator for measuring social mobility is earnings.
I’m told that the erratic earnings of you entrepreneurs makes it much
more tricky to keep track of your earnings than those in employment,
meaning you are often excluded from the data. But that’s for another
day. Whether a wage earner or an entrepreneur, there is a long time lag
until these data are available. For example, the very first kids who
benefitted from Sure Start are still only just teenagers today but the
benefits they will derive will be long lasting if the US Head Start
programme is used as a guide.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group
on Social Mobility recently set out its excellent “7 key truths about
social mobility”. They highlighted the critical importance of early
years in developing learning skills and laying the foundations for per
sonal
resilience and future emotional wellbeing; the impact of high quality
teaching and out-of-school programmes; how these feed through into
university admissions, the main determinant of later opportunities; as
well as pointing out that while early pathways are often highly
predictive, they are not determinative, something that policy makers
should not forget.
So I do not want to decry the investment in
the early years, or to undermine the focus on educational attainment,
access to universities, and access to the professions – the last point
particularly brought to public attention through the excellent and
persuasive work of Alan Milburn more recently. All this remains
incredibly important. They are issues I am passionate about and, in the
case of universities, form a major part of my brief as Shadow Secretary
of State.
But – as Ed Miliband recently pointed out – social
mobility shouldn’t just be about changing the odds of people making it
to university,
as if
only one kind of pathway to success matters. We have to improve
opportunities for everyone, including those who don’t make it to
university. That means ensuring vocational education is seen as just as
much of a gold standard as academic education – and that there are good
opportunities to switch between the two.
What I wanted to do
today, by highlighting the role of enterprise, is to ensure we place the
role of entrepreneurship and business policy at the heart of this
debate. Increasing social mobility cannot just be a matter for
education, at whatever age. It must be a whole government activity. We
must harness the power of business to change lives, releasing the
entrepreneurial spirit wherever it resides, to open up new routes
through which people can shape their own destinies just as my father
did.
Entrepreneurship
has a key role to play here because running your own business, research
suggests, can sometimes offer a better route for weakening the link
between where you come from and where you end up, than being in paid
employment.
I have been particularly taken with the work of
Ingrid Schoon and Kathryn Duckworth at the Institute of Education in
this respect. They compared levels of social mobility between those who
are employed and those who are self-employed. Their findings suggest
that self-employment offers a more likely route to social mobility than
paid employment - so one has a better chance of getting on by going into
business.
And entrepreneurial success is at the core of
Labour’s vision for the dynamic, future economy we need, and at the core
of our vision for the dynamic, fair, opportunity s
ociety
we want to see.
It is central to the better and more productive
capitalism Ed Miliband and I have been arguing for – innovative
businesses, focused on long-term value creation not short term profit
extraction.
It is a vision rooted in our history. We have always
stood for increasing autonomy in life and dignity in work as the world
of work has evolved and changed. So what are we doing in this area?
We
set up our Small Business Taskforce early last year, now led by Bill
Thomas, to advise on what we should be advocating to help people start
up and grow businesses. Before coming here I tweeted a link on twitter
to the Taskforce’s interim report - produced by the late, great
entrepreneur Nigel Doughty - for those who have yet to read it. Its next
report will be published later this year.
We
set up NG:Next Generation, our vibrant entrepreneurs’ network, towards
the end of last year to ensure our party is connected into the
entrepreneur community and to provide a vehicle through which
entrepreneurs can connect with each other. The network’s next event
takes place here this evening just as soon as the Q&A session is
done.
Labour’s shadow education team, led by my good friend
Stephen Twigg - with whom my team is working closely - is looking at the
role schools can play in fostering the next generation of
entrepreneurs. It is why, for example, we are supporting the campaign by
the CBI and others that speaking, presentation and communications
skills should be a priority in all state schools following the excellent
example of Paddington Academy, as they are in many private schools.
And
I am pleased
to say
that, before being elected, every member of our shadow business team in
the House of Commons had either set up and run their own business, or -
like myself - professionally advised many entrepreneurs who have done
so. So when our manifesto comes, I can confidently say it will be
informed by practical experience, as well as our beliefs and values.
In closing, I want to quickly say something about the business environment.
These
are difficult times for business. Our economy is in a recession of the
Government’s own making. The outlook is uncertain. The full impact of
the troubles in the Eurozone have yet to feed through. All the while,
the Government continues to fail to show the leadership needed at home,
it has failed to show the leadership needed abroad, and it has failed to
take the action necessary to guide our economy back to growth. In
short, they risk creating a lost generation of businesses and business
opportunities.
That said, I remain optimi
stic
about our national future in the longer term. Looking around the world
at the rise of the emerging economies I know we will have to raise our
game to compete but I am determined that we will do it. There are, after
all, huge opportunities out there.
In the US there is a national
story in which the lone entrepreneur plays the lead role, pursuing the
American dream. The evidence for this kind of story today may be weak,
given that social mobility in the US is as low as anywhere. We all know
that in an unequal society it is simply harder to move up the ladder.
But there is no doubting the rhetorical strength of their national
story, with its unashamed veneration of individual success.
To
succeed in the future we must write the next chapter of our own national
story – with aspiration at its heart, entrepreneurship as its state of
mind, and community as its end. It must encourage your restlessness and
inspire my young constituents. That way, together, we will crea
te a
better future for all in Britain.
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Wauguzi
na Madaktari wa Hospitali ya Taifa ya Muhimbili, wakilisukuma gari
la wagonjwa lililombeba mpigania haki zao Dk. Ulimboka wakati
akitolewa chumba cha X-ray akipelekwa Taasisi ya Tiba ya Mifupa
Muhimbili (MOI).
Madaktari wakisaidia kumuingiza Dk.Ulimboka katika gari la wagonjwa namba T 151 AVD la Hospitali ya AAR.
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| Mkurugenzi
wa Kituo cha Sheria na Haki za Binadamu (LHRC), Dk. Hellen Kijo
Bisimba (katikati), akizungumza na waandishi wa habari Hospitali ya
Taifa ya Muhimbili wakati akitoa taarifa ya kujeruhiwa kwa Mwenyekiti
wa Jumuiya ya Madaktari inayoratibu mgomo wa madaktari nchini, Dk.
Stephen Ulimboka, Dar es Salaam jana. |
Dk.
Cathbert Mchalo wa Taasisi ya Mifupa ya Moi (kushoto), akizungumza
na waandishi wa habari baada ya kumpokea, Mwenyekiti wa Jumuiya ya
Madaktari Tanzania kwa ajili ya kupatiwa matibabu kufuatia majeraha
aliyopata kutokana na kipigo.
Ofisa
wa Polisi akimzuia mpiga picha wa gazeti la Tanzania Daima, Francis
Dande, asimpige picha wakati wakimuondoa askari mwenzao
aliyeshambuliwa na madaktari akituhumiwa kukutwa akipiga simu ya
kuwataarifu wenzake kuwa Dk. Ulimboka hakufa.
Mmoja
wa wana usalama wa (wa pili ushoto), akizozana na madaktari baada ya
kumbaini akijifanya ni mwandishi wa habari na kumuamuru kuondoka
eneo hilo mara moja.
Mmoja
wa madaktari wa Hospitali ya Taifa ya Muhimbili (MNH), wa pili
kulia, akizozana na Askari Polisi waliofika hospitalini hapo wakidai
wanatafuta redio yao ya mawasiliano iliyopotea wakati wa pilikapilika
za kumpokea Mwenyekiti wa Jumuiya ya Madaktari inayoongoza mgomo wa
madaktari nchini, Dk. Stephen Ulimboka, alipoletwa akiwa hoi kutokana
na kipigo kutoka kwa watu waliomteka usiku wa kuamkia jana na kumtupa
msitu wa Mabwepande.
Madaktari wakiwa wamepigwa butwaa nje ya viwanja vya Hospitali ya Taifa ya Muhimbili kufuatia tukio hilo.
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Wauguzi wakiwa nje ya wodi ya Kibasila wakitafakari jambo kufuatia jambo hilo |
Wauguzi wakiwa nje ya wodi ya Kibasila wakitafakari jambo kufuatia jambo
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