Good afternoon, everyone. First thing to check, is this on? Can you hear me all around the room? Very good. Warm welcome to all of you. If you don't know me, I'm Gavin Kelly from I'm the Chair of the Resolution Foundation, and always, always happy to come to Bristol, as I often do for the great events you run here. Today, we are talking about boosting prosperity across Britain, and you're going to hear a lot about the UK-wide agenda that we have been working on. But we're also going to try and then translate that a bit into what that means for Bristol, and we've got a great set of speakers who are going to do some of that translation for us. The background to today's event is that we at the Resolution Foundation have been working on a project called Economy 2030 for almost three years. And we've done it jointly with the UN School of Economics, and it was kindly funded by the Nuffield Foundation, I should say. During that, we produced about 70 reports on all different aspects of British economic and social policy, looking across a kind of a two-decade timeline about how we can improve the performance of our economy, and also become a fairer society in the process. We launched the conclusions of this report, because we brought it all together into one book, which many of you have just picked up for a very reasonable price of nothing. We launched that report just before Christmas with Keir Starmer and Jeremy Hunt and the oodles of other great and good of the economic and social policy world. And we are taking that argument, if you like, on tour. It may not quite have the buzz of a Taylor Swift tour, but we have generated great audiences like today's and great discussion in our events so far and we've got many more events, because we think it's a really important, really important topic. And there's never been, if in my view, a time where we need to have a sort of debate about how we grow our economy in a different way, as much as we do right now. And indeed, just doing it today, as I guess all of you know, we had the budget yesterday, and the commentary leading up to the budget and around the budget is kind of almost everything that we don't want in a way. It's kind of like a very, very short-term hyper-political way of framing economic policy, and I get it, you know, it's election year, I've worked in politics, I get all that, but that's kind of the problem. And we, I suppose our basic take is that we're in a really serious state in this country, we're stuck in a kind of low growth, high inequality, equilibrium, we have been so for some time, and that's a really serious issue. And a lot of the commentary about our economic system is profoundly unserious. And so the reason we're kind of investing in trying to get this debate going ahead of an election is because we feel that the stakes are quite high. We also, as you'll hear, kind of are going to really have the view that turning this round is not kind of for this year or next year, this is like a two-decade job. So if you're impatient, I'm sorry, we're all impatient for change in lots of ways, but this is a long-term project and it needs to be coherent. We have set out, as you will see when you all read this book, I'm sure you're going to read every page, that there's a huge amount on investment, on net zero, on labour market reform, on industrial policy, on social security, I could go on and on and on. You need to work across many fronts and you need to do so coherently and importantly and something which we don't do in this country is you need to accept trade-offs. You may have got free lunch just now, but there aren't many of them and things need to be paid for and trade-offs need to be gripped and we talk a fair bit about that. And the last thing I'd say is that, as I say, this is for our reports about the UK, not about any particular city, less still Bristol, but cities feature really heavily in our reports. And there's no world in which Britain becomes a much more productive, prosperous and fairer society if our cities don't step up in lots of different ways. And cities like Bristol have got a big part to play in all that. We can't do justice to all that in the next hour or so, so apologies, but we'll do what we can and we have a really good lineup. And we're going to hear first from Nye Kameneti, who's my colleague from the Resolution Foundation. We'd like to think of him as a very own Taylor Swift. No pressure. Nye, when he's not doing that, he's the principal economist at the Resolution Foundation and brilliant in all sorts of ways. So we're going to hear from Nye first who's going to take you through the bare bone of our argument. I'm really hoping we're going to hear from Darren Jones MP, who to be fair to him is busy responding to the budget in the House of Commons, which we always knew was a risk. I'm hoping he's going to join us and looks like the Orwellian on the side of that screen behind us. So we'll have to sort of see what point he manages to get out of the house to come and join us, but he should be here. And then we're going to hear, I feel I should make you wait because you're on the front row. We're going to hear from our other speakers. We're going to hear from Evelyn Welsh, who is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, Jessica Lee, who's director of strategy at the West of England combined authority and Sally Dorothy, who's the chief marketing officer of GraphQL, which is a semi conductor firm based here in Bristol. So we are on good hands and we're going to try and be done by two or soon after two and we want to get some questions in too. So I need to keep my speakers to time. He says staring them all night over to you. All right, thank you, Gavin. Resolution foundation we tried to make big important charts and one way to do that is to do insightful data analysis. And the way is to put them on a cinema screen. So I'm very happy to be talking to you here today. And so I'll start with the problem which is the depressing bit for a few minutes then we'll move on to some solutions and then at the end I'll try and say something a bit more specific about Bristol. But obviously I'll be leaving there the real Bristol expertise to our other panelists. So, first of all, the UK is over a decade into a pretty serious episode of stagnation. You can measure this in all kinds of ways. One way is the growth of GDP per capita. So back in the 70s, 80s and 90s that used to rattle along at a decade or growth rate of 20 or 30%. But that growth has really fallen off the cliff in the last 10 years or so. Now, not everyone likes thinking about GDP. It can feel a bit abstract. Some people say it's not their GDP, but I think you'd all agree that wages do matter to you. And that might be more persuasive. It follows exactly the same trend. So again, we used to enjoy quite healthy wage growth in this country, and that has fallen off the cliff in the last 10 years or so. So this is what we mean when we talk about stagnation. To make it even more concrete, if wages had kept on growing at the pace they were growing at in the early 2000s, average wages today would be about 10,000 pounds higher. So this is really quite a big deal. And that's the first of a few big numbers in this presentation. Sometimes you'll see economic slides, which sort of make a lot of some quite small changes. But here we really, we really are talking about some quite large numbers. The only other thing to say here is that this stagnation isn't inevitable. So you'll probably see some chart saying, well, the UK looks bad, but so do other countries. In other case, I'm afraid that the UK has done worse in other countries over the past 10 years. The chancellor yesterday in his speech said, actually we've done better since 2010. That's one of those picking the sort of start point of your comparison, quite specifically, really we have fallen behind other comparative countries over the last 15 years. So the extent of this stagnation shouldn't be thought of as inevitable in the UK. That's problem number one, problem number two is inequality. Again, you can measure that in a number of different ways. This is a fairly standard measure. It's the Gini coefficient for household incomes. Now you might be looking at the right hand side of that chart, which looks like a flat ish line. And it is the inequality on this measure hasn't changed a huge amount in the last 10, 20 years, but it's really the fact that we're living with the explosion in inequality which happened in the 1980s. It really changed the picture and inequality in this country, and we've been living with that inequality ever since. And it's the combination of these two things high, so stagnant growth and high inequality, which we think is seriously toxic and which we need to do something about. Where does that leave the UK, compared to other countries so here we're going to do a scatter plot on the x axis you're going to see countries plotted by the Gini coefficient so it's that same measure of inequality we just looked at. And on the y axis, you've got average household disposable incomes, and we're going to break it up into a few quadrants this chart so on the top right you're going to see countries that are richer. But less equal, bottom left poor more equal, and you're probably as you can probably guess we really want to be having upwards and left was on this time we want to be richer and more equal are there any other countries that fit that bill. Yes, there are many, there are many other countries so many countries in Europe. And a few other Anglo Saxon countries are both richer than us, and more equal than us and at the end of the presentation I'll come back to this chart and say what what kind of changed the UK my experience if it did start moving in that direction. This, however, is using average incomes, and really the picture is is worse if you focus on the experience of of poor households that is really the problem that high inequality and stagnation gets you. One, I think quite impactful way of illustrating that is to think about how a household in this country compares to a household in another country at different points in income distribution. So on the left hand side we're thinking about a high income household from the UK, going to one of these other countries and then saying, how would their income compare to incomes in that country so if you're a rich person in this country. When you go to Germany, you probably think this feels fairly similar, you know, their living standards look the same, having the same number of meals out per week, their house might look similar to yours. And so that's why it's easy to sort of not have this idea of the cross country differences, quite so clear on your head if, like, presumably many of you in this audience you're towards that left hand side of the picture when it comes to incomes, but for a low income person. So this inequality really is very serious. So if someone at the bottom end of the income distribution in this country was to go to those countries, they would see that their income is really much, much lower than their equivalence in those countries. So hopefully that brings home quite how serious this inequality problem is. Okay, so that's a depressing bit so in terms of what we should do about this. We're going to cover everything in the book you'll see that the book goes through how to adjust to net zero, how to adjust to how to improve our trade strategy. I'm just going to do some very brief bits mainly on investment because that is at the center of everything. So I'm going to do seriousness about growth and seriousness about inequality and that is the theme in our book we sort of lambast people for being unserious about these things. So seriousness about growth, and there isn't a way of turning our country around that doesn't involve investment rising. This UK has been a low investment country for the last 40 years. This is an illustration of that. This is the total investment happening in the in the economy as a proportion of GDP fairly standard way of measuring this in the band which is that sort of light blue, blue swath. This is a range of advanced economies, excluding the UK. So these are OECD countries basically the dotted blue line is the average and you can see that in most countries. Sorry, the average it kind of covers around mid 20s UK being consistently lower in terms of how much it invests in a single year. And, you know, being a low investment country for one year doesn't really matter. It's not going to change the capital stock is not going to change how many factories you have. It's not going to change the investment country every year for a long period of time that really does start to make a big difference. We have some estimates in our book about the the impact that has had on today's economy but but it is a big deal. It's important to say this is a problem for business and for government so in the budget yesterday that one of the Chancellor's projected lines was for capital spending to be falling. We think that's bad news given all the things that the country has to be investing in over the next few years, but it's also a problem facing business so business investment is lower in this country than in other countries. Our solutions cover a number of areas so for businesses, we think it's mainly two prong so we would like to reduce cost of investment and a lot of that is to do with barriers in the planning system. Secondly, we would like to reform ownership and governance of businesses. There's some evidence that a greater work of voice in the company makes them more likely to take longer term decisions. And also we have a fair bit of thinking in our book about how reforming pension funds might might might channel more money but that's a bit more complex. I won't get into it for government. I think the real problem is having a higher target for capital spending, but also to end the volatile policy making so we don't just have low public investment in this country is very volatile that obviously makes it very hard to plan long term projects. So those are our central proposals there. I'm going to be thinking how do we pay for that so obviously everyone at the moment is talking a lot about tax. This is a chart showing you the tax to GDP ratio in the broad sweep over the last 30 years that has been rising, partly driven by our population and the older health services becoming more expensive. And for all the talking in yesterday's budget about the national insurance cut bringing down taxes, really we're still in a tax rising period. So that's the OBR forecast on the right hand side. It is fractionally lower now than it was yesterday before the chancellor decided to change the next rate but we're still in a tax rising period. And that is that that forecast doesn't come along with any improvements public services in fact the opposite. So we do think that we need higher taxes, but of course it matters how you tax. So we would like to tax all types of income the same in practice that means raising capital gains tax, we would want to reform council tax, as I'm sure you'll know that's based on very old property valuations it's a really unfair system. And there are various loopholes in the inheritance tax system we'd like to we'd like to close all of that we think our pros in the book, raise substantial amounts of money, and much of that we would want to put towards higher levels of public investment. And one more point about seriousness of growth, and what we like to push against is people who get wrong where we're starting from so it's important to remember the UK is a services superpower. This is a controversial controversial message in some parts of the country, in particular when I presented this in Birmingham where there's lots of manufacturing it's it's maybe a more difficult one to hear. But that really is where the country strength lies here I'm showing you total services exports and we're only behind the US on this measure and obviously the US is much, much bigger than us. And I think this seriousness and acknowledgement of where we're starting from needs to flow through our other policies so it should inform our trade strategy, and also things like our human capital strategy. I won't go into I don't have a proper slide in here but also one of the reasons people don't like talking about services jobs as they associate some of those jobs as being low quality so we have a large number of proposals to improve the quality of jobs. That's a big part of our plans to I'm going to speed up slightly only to. Yeah, we have lots to say about inequality here I'm just showing you the unemployment benefits has been falling over time relative to wages, we would change that we would link benefits to wages. We have quite a lot of proposals to, I'm going to rattle forward to Bristol if you don't mind but obviously please go and look at the book for more information of all of those. So, for cities, our broad messages and we focused on Birmingham and Manchester in our proper our broad messages are about raising the inputs to growth in cities. That means more high school workers and more business capital, allowing city centers to expand and to grow better public transport to rely on more people to access a center. And then of course tackling inequality and in particular that comes down to providing more social housing so I'm looking forward to hearing from the panel about how those things do or don't relate to the Bristol story. I'm only here going to give a couple of charts to maybe get the conversation started. So, first of all, it's interesting for me to know that Bristol's productivity so that's output per job is kind of middle to upper end of the UK pack. And one of the ways in which we try to think about this is how does Bristol's productivity look compared to its input so one of the inputs to productivity is the human capital of your population. And so Bristol's over there and read vertical access you've got productivity horizontal access you've got the number of graduates in the population and you can see large number of graduates in Bristol, and so the, you know, towards up end of the productivity across UK cities.  Now, if you're complacent you can say good news we're doing, you know what the economics asks of us. However, we would say no city should really be happy being on that line that is not a good line. And that's because overall UK cities don't do very well, compared to cities in other countries. So, these are those same cities the data slightly different so you'll notice that Edinburgh is bounced around, but you can see again UK cities over there quite a big gap between London and the rest, but all of them are shifted to the left compared to French cities. So that's why we don't think anyone should be delighted to be sitting on that on that on that trend line that I just showed you. So, how might Bristol try to become more productive. Well, and again, so please I'm getting out of my depth here in terms of Bristol knowledge, but first of all, in terms of its city centre. There is some sign here that Bristol could be more densely developed. It's much less densely developed at the moment then the Manchester and London. So there's some food for thought. However, some people really don't like the idea of sort of denser city development and a sort of faster growing centre. We did a lot of work in our cities projects to talk to residents in Bristol in Birmingham Manchester which is where we focus to ask residents there about the trade off say you know do you want to a more prosperous prosperous city or not what kind of trade off would you be happy to live with. And this is just one small example of someone saying, actually I don't want more development in the centre I'm worried that I would just make it too expensive and inaccessible to someone like me. You know, faster growth. Well, you know, good in some respects might bring risk to residents. The most important way I think of mitigating that is to have proper and sufficient social housing supply. There is a tends to a bit of evidence here saying that although you know it's fallen off across the country in terms of social house building, maybe particularly so in Bristol. I wouldn't get too unhappy about this, you know those lines look slightly different if you draw the averages in different places but but certainly there's been there's been less development happening on social housing. But unfortunately, there is a fairly long standing, I think, in existing inequality problem in Bristol, as there is in many cities but but some sign in this evidence that it might be slightly bigger in Bristol so here. I'm showing you GCSE attainment for free school meals pupils compared to other pupils. You can see Bristol's at the bottom of the pack and that gap is bigger than in other cities. So certainly there's an inequality challenge to go along with, you know, any hopes for expanded growth. Okay, just to very quickly go back to the start then so you might think that all sounds very difficult. I don't like the sounds about what. Let's just not do anything. We would massively resist that urge, because of quite how serious this this toxic stagnation and inequality problem is based in the UK. So if, if the UK was to we know we're not saying we want the, the richness of the United States with the equality of Norway we're just saying what happens if the UK moves to become more like those countries that we've plotted in black there. And even if it only did that which you can see on this graph doesn't look like the most dramatic shift ever. So here's the big sort of number finale, the average house of the UK would be 8000 pounds richer.  All right, that's that's all from me. Thanks very much. Thank you so much night. I think other speakers should all come and join us in the right seats. This is where I'm hoping magic. It was a sort of all well in sort of buy to how you're looking at. I think you all know Darren Jones, but you've just been joined by Hello Darren, really, really pleased that you took a minute out from responding to the budget to join us. You got a good mix good audience here and a great panel. And I don't know if you managed to hear much of what I was saying but we've just done an overview of reports and touched on a few things for Bristol. And I would just sort of say, first of all, that chart showing where the UK sits compared to other countries just shows you how much I mean it can make you feel really bleak but it also shows you how much there is to play for those countries shouldn't be so different and they are. And I would also just say, I mean that's that chart on education in Bristol just coming, coming on from Bristol. I mean it's a really bad place to be a poor kid who wants to go to school like really bad. I mean I know lots about shape or I know lots about other cities in the UK and Bristol's worse and those places and they're quite bad. So that is just, I mean, I say that with that with lots. I mean it's a staggeringly bad statistic. So I hope we can pick up on that in the discussion.  If it's okay with you, we're going to turn to you. And that will issue say something about yesterday's budget but we're hoping you'll also speak to the kind of bigger agenda we've set out. Thank you. I'm sorry to be so such an enormous presence in the room it's always I think probably more for me that it is for all of you but it's great to be with you and sorry that I couldn't be at home in Bristol today. But as you mentioned, obviously it was budget day yesterday and so it's a busy week for those of us that work on these issues. I just want to say a couple of things really, both as a Bristolian and also as a politician now working on on these issues. You know in Bristol we can all be really proud about our record and our heritage Bristol has for a long time been one of the country's great cities, producing enormous amounts of innovation of ideas of capacity. And our contribution to the country more broadly has been something that we can be proud of where we generate lots of wealth as a city which often gets shared more broadly around the country. And we also know that as a consequence of our record but also in new ways, we have enormous potential as well our great universities are great entrepreneurial system in Bristol, building new potential of the legacy of older heritage for example in the aerospace and advanced manufacturing sectors and of course Bristol as a home and a base for an enormous professional services and creative industry sector as well which are both really key sectors for the UK economy as a whole. Our challenges in many ways are not particularly new. I just caught the last bit of the presentation. I'm sorry that I was late. I had to be in the chamber around the inequality gap in the city. Anybody knows if you've been here in Bristol before that we've had that challenge for decades. That's a very personal experience for me. You know I grew up in a, what was then a council flat in Lawrence Western first in my family to go to university because of the new labor gifted and talented program. And went to a school which now doesn't exist. It was called Portway Community School. It was one of the first academies in the country under the Blair government for improving failed schools, where when I left. It was about 15% of my cohort that had the minimum standard of five GCSEs a start to see including English and maths and I'm pretty sure that in my year group it was fewer than five of us that went on to higher education. And that inequality was quite deep in the 80s and 90s national policy helped some of us to be able to overcome the challenges of inequality and to do well in life for something that I'm very grateful for. But we can see from the data that those policies were helpful when they were in place, but when they have proceeded the inequality challenges have come back to the for and we see that across the city. The slightly newer challenge I think well partly newer is around infrastructure and the ability for the city to deliver on its potential and create those opportunities for people. You will know that we've been talking about the trams and buses for longer than I've been alive and that transport has always been a kind of big bugbear for people in the city. But it still is. We've got some good investment coming in at the moment on urban rail. The metro bus system has been helpful in connecting particular areas across the city. But because Bristol is such a great place to be at such an attractive place to be the speed of population growth. Not just within the city, but people moving into Bristol has not has not been able to keep up with the infrastructure investment to be able to take as much opportunity from that as possible. And that's why house prices now are particularly high in the city. I think I'm right in saying we're now the second most expensive place in the country to live outside of London, both buying houses and for renting them. And I see in my constituency in the northwest part of the city that that's pushing out a lot of people who would like to be here and who grew up here. And that's really challenging. You know, parts of my constituency, which were built after the war to be affordable, secure housing for people in areas like the ones I grew up in in Lawrence Western, but in other areas like Southmead and Lockleys. I'm sure it's the same for other parts of the city. Because of house pressure prices, that's our pressure on house prices. There are many, many people now that can't afford to live here and they're being forced to move out to the. And I know this phrase is controversial for many people, but the greater Bristol region or even further afield into South Wales. And that then poses this question of infrastructure, the ability to commute in and around the city region to where the jobs and the opportunities exist. And we've got much more to do all that. And so we had the budget yesterday. And I'll just talk about it a little. There was a bit of a focus in there on infrastructure delivery and a review has been announced into how we deliver infrastructure better across the country. For many years Bristol has kind of missed out from big infrastructure ticket projects for various reasons and we need to think about how we are lying infrastructure spending decisions to economic growth opportunities more closely. There is absolutely a case for that in the north and other parts of the country, but I think there's some pent up demand in cities like ours where there's a case to be made around that investment. And for those of us on the Labour Party side of the pitch, we talk about it in three ways we talk about stability investment and reform stability in terms of stability in the economy and in the leadership and around policy decision making. We've had a number of years now, probably in the run up to Brexit and then through COVID and the energy crisis and more recently where things are moving around a lot and investors and others don't quite know where to put their money or the risk is too high. We think there's a huge opportunity there for to unlock investment, especially from private capital to invest in our infrastructure and growth needs. Bristol city leap is a great innovation at local authority level where the council has partnered with private sector capital to try to unlock city level investment and we'll be watching that closely. And then lastly reform, you might have stability, there might be money available, but how do you do the deals and actually get it spent well. That's going to require lots of reforms around planning skills supply chain apprenticeships or energy system, you know, which is contingent on government to get right working in partnership with combined authorities and local authorities. So I'm enormously positive about potential for Bristol both in its own right for those of us that live in Bristol in the Bristol region, but also for the country I think there's much more we can do about optimizing the great potential with our great cities across the United Kingdom and our ability to be able to roll up our sleeves and get on with it. I did not time myself at all. So I'm just going to stop there and be led by you. Fantastic. Thank you so much. My first question is, do we have you for another half an hour or you're going to disappear. I think you have me for another half an hour. Yeah. Amazing. In that case, I'm going to go to my other speakers and then come back to you. I'm going to go straight to to you Evelyn leader of massive employer and national institutions from Bristol University. Yeah. Thank you very much Gavin. And so I'm Evelyn Welsh, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Bristol. I've been in post for just around 20 months now. And I had my entire previous career had been in London. So it's really interesting seeing the different feel and the ability of an institution like the university.  That's fantastic because you feel both a sense of responsibility but like Darren, an enormous sense of if I get up in the morning and roll up my sleeves and all my eight to 9,000 staff and 35,000 students come along with me. The difference that we could make. And we do make a difference. And I'm here really to have a very simple message, which whatever flavor of government is in power, locally, regionally, nationally, universities throughout the UK are part of the solution to the problems face and actually we have problems of our own. We wind a lot about our own problems, but actually we are here to help whatever government is in power to find those solutions, because we're here for the long term. The universities date from either 900 years ago to an our case about 120 years ago, and something like our National Composite Center which is up on the outskirts of Bristol was actually the original idea came from Peter Mandelson. If you can remember that name from so long ago so long ago. I don't remember myself that please. And so, so these institutions that are created by governments carried by universities and businesses and regional development agencies together can actually see through the sea source and make a real difference and just one statistic. The US research intensive universities as measured by a London economics report in 21 22 generated more than 1.7 billion for the economy from research and innovation activities alone, supporting 16,000 jobs. There's a real difference and anyone who goes in and out of Temple Mead Station will see what was land for an old post office sorting office so we did not displace people. We have a complex building. We are putting in a 250 million pound building there which will be our start and it is just the start of our temple quarter enterprise campus with the focus being on innovation and with investment and support from WECA for example, for our quantum innovation institute. So the big question for us is, we do know how to generate economic development. We do know how to generate skilled graduates. We absolutely know how to make these contributions to the economy. How do we do it in an equitable and truly inclusive way that brings everybody along when you're talking about artificial intelligence quantum high skilled high risk but high reward entrepreneurship. We do ensure that somebody who hasn't gone to university sees this as a positive, not just as somebody pushing them out of their old neighborhood. We are working around the clock on just that question, but it's not as easy as getting students to come to your parts of Bristol to university because the statistic that you just quoted is worse. 100% of Clifton students go on to university. 8% of South Bristolians go on to university and have done so for many generations. So we have real work to do to tackling that fundamental long term inequality, but we're up for it. Thank you so much. I'm going to move straight on because time is not our friend. So I'm going to be straight on to Sally, a key kind of employer in the city. So your perspective. Yeah, sure. So I work from AI semiconductor company graph core based and headquartered in Bristol on the executive team that worked in Bristol for over 20 years for various different technology companies. I think the key there are lots of issues in Bristol around housing and around transport, but unless there are jobs and employment in Bristol. The structure projects will be short term gains, but won't be sustainable in the long term. We need jobs driven by businesses in the Southwest. We do have a lot of strengths in the creative industries and technology and aerospace. We need professional services. I think we need to keep those businesses and we need to grow them. There's lots of work that's going on, for example, Evelyn touched on it with the university in nurturing startups and new businesses to to grow and stay in Bristol, and there are a number of challenges around funding again that Evelyn is and her team are addressing. I think one of the things that everybody needs to be aware of is that the and really take seriously think about the consequences and pair is for the AI revolution that is coming. It's coming already as a country. The UK missed out on the internet revolution. We don't have a global social media company. We don't have a global e-commerce company. We could have done but we missed out on the opportunity. We shouldn't miss out on the AI revolution. What does that mean for Bristol? Why can we not have the first AI driven professional services superpower here in Bristol? The time is now to really drive that because it's coming and we could miss out if we don't take notice of it. So we should be thinking about building new businesses and not just relying on US firms whereby they drive the AI companies and they just offer employment in the UK. We would want to keep the assets and the value in the UK. And then the other part of the equation is how do we ensure that the businesses that are succeeding today in Bristol take advantage of the AI transformation early to really reap the competitive advantage that it can bring. Because I believe the companies that invest early in AI will be the ones who take the rewards. We don't want to be the country sorry, the city that is in catch up mode because then productivity, if you're trying to improve productivity, it becomes much more about cost cutting. And we want to create the value and keep the value here in the UK and in Bristol. So that's another area that we really need to think about. And going back to the equitable side of things, there is enormous value coming down the line, a potential for enormous value from the AI revolution. It is by no means guaranteed or even likely that that will lead to less inequality. There's a real risk that it will create more inequality. And it's important that we are aware of that, that we think through the consequences and prepare to ensure people are not left behind. We would rather be the ones who are upskilling their low paid workers today to provide a more skilled role with an AI co pilot and be paid fairly for that work, rather than the other end of the scale being somebody who is low paid has an AI co pilot is doing the job of somebody who is a high skilled high paid role today, but is still paid below wages. And I think the chances of that happening if we rely on the US and other companies to drive the AI revolution are far higher than if we own that those assets fat those companies in the UK. So, I think that's huge benefit to come from AI there are going to be new businesses created, but we also need to ensure that we prepare for the impact that it has that may not be as positive. Right. Thank you so much. I hope in discussion we get sort of push you a bit on what are the barriers to you investing more and doing more of the sorts of things that I was talking about. But before we get to that, and we're going to turn to Jess, the director of strategy at the combined authority for kind of broader city perspective on this city region perspective. Yeah, absolutely. I'm Jess Lee, I'm director strategy for West Berlin combined authority. And previously to that I worked in the treasury for a number of years earlier in my career and so I think I've got a sort of interesting perspective now thinking about economic policy from a from a regional perspective and having done so, you know, a national level at a national level. Previously, there are three points I wanted to make I think the danger of going third is that a lot of the good stuff's kind of been taken. But there are three points I really wanted to make the first being I think the specific set of strengths that we have in Bristol and the wider west of England region puts us in a really good position to be able to drive growth for the country as a whole. I think nationally we need to think about capitalizing on the strengths of places like this rather than looking at us as being fine without further investment and we'll just sort of look after ourselves and focusing on other places because it's growth that's driven by places like this that can then go on to create the potential for government to invest in some of the really knotty challenges that might exist elsewhere. So I think in terms of the sort of specific strengths of the Bristol City region that we have is a kind of combination of our people and our sector strengths that I think is really powerful. So we know we have a huge number as we saw from the slides and Evelyn has touched on a huge number of really talented, innovative people who live and work in the west of England. We were attractive place and we attract and retain talented people. There's a lot of downsides that go with that in terms of, you know, cost of living and cost of housing, as Darwin mentioned, but but it's a real asset for us. And we have a growing population and the bits of our population that's growing is our working age sort of sector of the population rather than, you know, many other places where you've got, you know, different bits, the sort of older over 65 level area of the population spectrum that's growing. So here we're looking at a growing working age population, which is a real benefit for us. So we've got these sort of diverse group of really talented and innovative individuals that live in the region, but we also have a really diverse range of sectors of economy that we are leading the way in. So, you know, there's aerospace and advanced manufacturing and some of the, you know, high tech and AI and will be all the other sort of really interesting areas of the economy but there's also the kind of cultural and creative sectors which we know is as people from the region are kind of part of our DNA aren't they and it's how we sort of think of ourselves as being quite closely interlaced with that whole kind of culture and creative economy. And I think we often think about that combination of the different sectors of the economy being quite a powerful mix and it's on the sort of boundaries of all of that where real innovation can lie and having the opportunity to harness all of that for the greater good of the country as a whole to drive economic growth nationally is a real opportunity that I think government needs to see and and think about how it can support us in driving that. The second point I wanted to make is I think it's really important that that nationally we consider ourselves the country as a whole, rather than sort of trying to move away from this idea of setting places up in competition with each other. And I think the way that the leveling up agenda in particular but also often government funding exercises, take shape, they tend to set us up in competition rather than thinking about how can we work together across the country the UK isn't big enough to have a whole kind of competing places we really need to be taking a serious look at what the relative strengths I think of different parts of the country are and and and building on that and thinking about how they come together to develop a kind of national network of areas where we're very clear about what they can contribute, you know, so the activity that might happen in the west of England in terms of aerospace R&D or whatever it might be isn't necessarily going to result in manufacturing jobs here but there will be manufacturing jobs elsewhere as a result and that's a success for the country as a whole. So I think that ensuring government support us to think about a real cold hard look at what everybody's different areas of the country's genuine strengths are is I think going to be really important. And the final point I wanted to make which I suppose I would say wouldn't I being from the combined authority is that I think places really understand ourselves best, better than central government. You know we are here and we're talking to each other and we understand what the challenges and the opportunities in the region are. We also have more skin in the game than we would do if we were in national government so you know when you're sitting in a place trying to write an economic strategy. It means an awful lot more. If you know your kids are growing up here and this is where you spend your living your life. So I think allowing you know devolution as a as a route to allowing places to be really confident to engage with and with each other about what our genuine strengths are and when working together as a network across the country is going to be a really important part I think of a future national economic strategy. And so I think that's what I wanted to say. Excellent said very well thank you and if we get a chance I want to hear you on what greater powers a city region like Bristol might want to have which could make a difference. And because I think that is a pertinent question. Now, gather some questions in your minds will take them in clusters. I'm going to kick off with just one of my own. Why you do that but when we do come to you first of all, Darren won't hear you unless you're speaking into a microphone, which is about unfair and him so wait to get the mic and say tell us who you are. I'm going to be my position by kicking off and I'm going to ask you a question.  Now, you've got a sense of the report that we've published here launched along with others. In it's one of the central things that we argue is that there's basically no path for Britain to grow in the way that many of us wanted to, unless we invest more and when I say more I don't mean a little bit more I mean a lot more. We talk about, and actually I thought this was at the low end but we talked about getting to on public investment 3% net investment per year every year for a very long time. As of yesterday, in the budget, the very large cuts real cuts to capital investment that were set out, it were implied by yesterday's plans will actually take us down to just over 1.5% of GDP, which is just like miles off. And now I know you have an election coming up and I know you're restrained and you're probably not going to announce lots of great policy and this event much though you'd like to. So I recognize a bit of reality, but give us a sense of your ambition here and I don't want to rehearse the whole 28 billion net zero sort of. Let's not do that. But I mean what, what, like, do you recognize the need to get to something like 3% as a country for us to be at the races, or do you just think that's pie in the sky and yeah we're thinking that we can say what we want is never going to happen. Well, thanks for the question. I mean, we, we haven't set a target, but the five missions that Kirsten and set for us in the Labour Party are spearheaded by the first mission on economic growth. And we're very clear that the roots economic growth, sustainable economic growth is investment into productive parts of the economy. And you'll hear a lot, you've heard a lot from us and you'll hear a lot more from us about getting Britain building again how we think about infrastructure and major project delivery on technology infrastructure on house building, and how all of these different things underpin our ability to grow the economy and get the economy back on track, so that we're in a position to be able to do the other missions that we have around public sector reform and improving public services and making people better off. And so the question is really at the heart of our economic policy. The reality check of course is that if we do win the election this year, you know, we inherit what we inherit from the current government there's nothing I can do about that. And, you know, it's not, it's not great. I think Rachel we've said this week, they're either the worst fiscal inheritance any party has had coming into government since the Second World War. So we have to be frank and honest about the fiscal challenges that we will, that we will face. But also there are some glimmers of hope. And the first is really around how government spends capital. Government's not very good at spending its capital budgets on average, one pound in every six pounds goes unspent. And the remaining five pounds that are spent, there's lots of projects where there's a lot of waste and overspend. So I've been leading a review on behalf of the party about how we deliver infrastructure major projects, which is thinking more about how do you spend your money more effectively working across departments, how do you make a proper growth assessment in the business case process so that you try to drive joint joined up decision making on infrastructure investment. But also our partnership with the private sector is going to be key. And you know, you mentioned the 28 billion. This was the, this was the debate about how much public sector investment we might be able to make, which we have to change because of the state of the economy, and the way it went on a downturn between first making that announcement and where we find ourselves now. But it was always the case that private sector investment is going to be a huge part of our success and unlocking that is going to be a huge part of our success. And as a consequence of that, you know, I and the team, we talk to investors, whether they're UK investors or overseas investors all the time. And they'll literally come to this office where I'm sat now and say, we have too much money, we need to invest it somewhere that gives us stability, good outcomes, a stable rate of return. We want to invest in the UK, the UK, the good place to invest, but there are lots of reasons why we can't do it right now and then they list all of the reasons. And so there is a job for government to not only improve the relationship with business and investors domestic and overseas, but also to do the reform piece of my opening comments to make sure that we can do those deals unlock the investment and get it spent effectively. So it will be the core of our economic strategy coming into the election. It will be a key performance indicator for us in terms of how we're delivering against ambitions. And we definitely need to up the scale and ambition that we have as a country compared to now. Brilliant. Thank you. Lots to come back to there, but let's open it up. I'm going to, oh, my Lord God, we've got a forest of hands going up here, which is great to see. Whereas is there a mic somewhere? Is there a raving mic? Is there? So I'm going to take, is there any? So let's go to this gentleman in the middle that he's got glasses, if he doesn't mind me saying. And then there's a gentleman, another gentleman with a sort of ready brownie jumper. You go back, you go, sorry, I was like the right and awkwardly went to the middle of the room. Sorry. And I'm inviting questions. They have a question mark at the end and your voice goes up in intonation, not speeches. And I will, I will get grumpy quite quickly because there's lots of people want to go. So tell us who you are. Mark Willis from Bromford Housing Association. Hello, Mark. I'd like to ask what the role is for anchor organizations such as housing associations, working in partnership with local authorities et al. To achieve the necessary investment that we need in all aspects, you know, housing, transport, health and education, etc. To maximise the impacts of investment in specific places. Great. Good question. And if you could just pass the mic along. Hi, I'm Andy O'Brien from Bristol Energy Cooperative. And I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last decade, I suppose, really on how we actually get to the equivalent of a new green deal. And we know about donut economics and the idea that you've got a finite resources for the world and how we actually deal with that. So we need to focus on what we actually have to prioritise on. And I wonder if the Resolution Foundation has been looking at modern monetary theory much. It's only something I've come across literally in the last couple of months, but where the idea is if you've got your own currency, you can print money, just as we did during COVID. And if you manage the inflation aspect really well, that can be transformational for what you do. Yeah, okay, we'll come back to that. I'm going to, can we get the microphone? There's, I'm going to take these two and then we're going to go, actually, you're, yeah, good, because it's going to say lots of men. So we've got, we're going to take these three very brief questions and then we'll come back to you. Okay. So if you bring the mic down, sorry, I'm making them. There we go. Focus a team. We'll be having two microphones. Yes, I know. Come on, Andrew. I'm just talking about two microphones. Thank you. So I'm going to link a comment that Professor Welch said, and Sally Docti said, totally concur with Sally's analysis of the impact of AI. It will be absolutely transformational. Isambard AI is going into Bristol, 300 million pound investments. So to what extent did the panel agree with backing winners? Should we be putting GraphCorp AI into Isambard AI? Yeah, let's just take, let's just take, tell us your name. Jennifer Churchill and from UWE Bristol. Good question for Darren. How helpful is it given the context of discussion we've had from the report to carry on talking about household budget analogy is what we're talking about fiscal policy for the government itself. And a really quick other one just we're talking about partnerships between the states and corporate investment. But they also mentioned the Great Leap Forward for Bristol, which is sort of led by Vattenfall, which is, which is a state-led company. Are we, are we kind of holding ourselves back in terms of how we really have an ambition to link with corporate companies? Do we need to get the state somewhere kind of leading or working fully in partnership, not just at the state of finance, but in terms of delivery as well? Thank you. Okay. And then the gentleman that's you. Joe Michelle University was actually going to push a little harder on Jennifer's first point. The BBC report recently into its own coverage and the coverage that Gavin mentioned in the introduction is often quite unserious. Said that saying things like the nation's credit card is maxed out is misleading. BBC journalists shouldn't do it and the BBC should challenge commentators and politicians when they do it. So could Darren Jones comment on that, please? And could the Resolution Foundation economists comment on what organizations like the Resolution Foundation can do to improve this kind of discussion, which is part of the reason I think that we have low investment, not withstanding tight public finances, of course, which is a reality. Okay, so let's pause. We'll come back to for another round. I think and hope. Darren, I also know you're kind of pressed.  So you've been asked about the language, I guess, of fiscal policy and the Labour Party's language in particular. And I know on this, I mean, I remember hearing here, Stammer, I mean, in the last, in the last month, doing it making a kind of borrow to invest is the right argument to have points. And he'd been quite kind of upfront about that. So, I feel like there's different bits of language being used. So I think that is an interesting point, but I would also, if you've got thoughts on any of the other questions Darren, whether it's anchor institutions as a kind of key vehicle for investing in Bristol. This is your chance. So thank you. Sure. Thanks so much. Thanks for the questions. And I'm sorry that I have to go at 2pm. Sure. But happy to answer them. Firstly, on the country's credit card. So when I did the media round yesterday morning in advance of the budget, I used that phrase. And my team spotted that lots of people were getting quite animated about it on social media. So let me just explain why I use that. The reason I use that is because what is a credit card, it's borrowing money that you pay back later. There's an interest rate attached to it and you get a credit limit on your credit card. And the reason we use that analogy is because if I talk about fiscal rules, which is the credit limit on the credit card. I talk about the interest on the national debt, which is easily comparable to interest that you pay on debt. And then you talk about national debt, you're trying to communicate these things in a plain English way to the public. Some people have good understanding of these things some people don't. So you're trying to find the language to make it understandable for a broad range of the viewers. I'm afraid I'm not somebody that signs up to the kind of MMT approach to fiscal policy. And I'm afraid there is a limit to the amount to the amount that a government can either borrow or print. And we've seen the consequences, not just in our country, but in others where you get that balance wrong. And that's not the approach that an incoming government would take. And so I stand by my language of the country's credit card because when you have a fiscal rule, a credit limit, when you have an interest rate, when you have borrowing, I think it explains it in a reasonably good way. And one of the key messages really is that one of the problems we have as a country right now is not necessarily that the national debt is around 100% of GDP. Although that is high in a post war context, not high in a longer term context, but high in a post war or two context. The problem is that the cost of that debt is increasingly expensive because the government borrowed it on variable interest rates, not fixed interest rates. So in the last financial year tax payers we tax payers paid over 100 billion pounds in one year, just paying the interest on the national debt. That made it the third largest department in whiteboard. And so the more debt that you take on, especially in an environment where you might not be able to control interest rates in the way that you might like to. You take on the risk or the burden of having to pay off the interest in your debt first and having what's left to be able to go to other departments. Just very briefly on two of the things that I pointed from the questions we agree about the role of state owned institutions in the net zero transition because there are things that can't be delivered on a purely commercial basis. By the private sector there are technologies that we can risk share and co invest in that that's why you know the left party we talk about GB energy and our national wealth fund. And lastly just on housing. It's really, really important. I'm a big believer in place based decision making. That's why I've always been supportive of Marvin Reese's approach to kind of the one city conversations where he brings different budget holders different providers different leaders together to talk about the same topic. And because the consequence of failing that has real life implications for people if I take one constituency example, South Beach Hospital, huge employer in the city in the region that was struggling to be able to recruit midwives, because the midwives couldn't find any housing that they could afford to live in that was able to get more distance to the hospital. And so we've had some great projects locally where philanthropic funds and impact investors in the city. In that region and others have come together to build housing to be ring fenced for health care workers. And if you don't have the health care workers in the health system you don't get through the backlog which limits participation in the labor market so absolutely the different parts of the economy should be speaking with each other in what we would call the mission that approach to national policies and national national priorities. So hopefully that was okay in terms of answering questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. I know you're really basic. So that gets to your own. Thanks. Right. And if our speakers are pithy, then we'll take we'll have time for a few more questions. So I'm going to turn and just answer the ones you feel you've got something to say. We have institutions like housing trust. Absolutely. University of Bristol and you we are currently in conversation about intergenerational housing, which we can work through where where students and people in need of elder care actually live together and are very supportive. So those are incredibly important conversations on graph coin isn't by AI and state aid rules or prevent us at the moment from using what is a national facility, which will be again just on the outskirts of the city of Bristol, Bristol city region. That's going to be fantastic, but for pre commercial work. And eventually, obviously we would like to have something an intermediary zone like a catapult as we have with the aerospace industry, which will allow us to join up the R&D work that we do with the commercial work that something like Graphcore does, but actually it's important that we don't try to be a business in competition with Graphcore and Graphcore can rely on the University of Bristol to do the really long term work. Much of the quantum work that we're spinning out now as companies started way back in the 50s and 60s can take that long. So on the, I'll take the partnership between private and public sector and these and both things as well. I think it's really important that the government does include when they're partnering with with commercial entities that they consider UK businesses and not just US businesses. So a lot of the investment in AI with the current government is going directly to US companies and we've been we were in fact we were excluded from the isn't bad AI contract we were we weren't able to provide our kit into it. For reasons I'm known to myself and I'm also concerned for example, the announcement yesterday about improving productivity and national health service through AI. I think that is great. Government has an issue with large scale IT problems, but putting my cynicism aside, I think there's definitely a role to play there and AI can improve productivity in many of these public services. However, again, the direction of travel is to give those contracts to US firms and not UK firms. I think that really needs to be considered because if the investment continue goes into US firms, it becomes circular. The UK firms can't compete or go out of business and it will only be US firms. That's an ordinary of the graphical whatever pitch for that is, I know that that's something that's happening. So I think that that partnership with the commercial sector needs to be considered whether they're UK firms or not. Thank you. Jessica. Yeah, well very briefly I suppose you saw on the question about anchor organizations like housing associations I think I agree with the point about the one city model I think that the value of working together to identify the sort of scale of the challenge that who can contribute what to resolving some of these really not see issues because no organization can do this in isolation and it's only when we bring all bring the resources at our disposal lined up behind the challenges that we're going to be able to address any of them really particularly the housing one. Yeah, right. Okay. You asked I was asked to question or we were asked a question about the resolution foundation and macro should I should I just have a longer conversation I the report that there's a really good report by the BBC about how to communicate and economics effectively. I thought it was well I basically agreed with pretty much not all the pretty much all of it. And I don't like household analogies by and large went back economics we avoid them. I hope to check every single thing we write on this but I avoid them. I'm not totally relaxed about where we are as a country on debt I mean it could go higher and the lights wouldn't go out but I actually think I, you know, that doesn't mean that we don't think there is a really serious question about how we manage the sort of debt burdens over time. We take that really, really seriously. But I don't think the way of informing that is household analogies myself. Right. Wow. People are so we're going to we're not going to take all the questions will take. I'm going to go to I can see a lady there. And then I'm going to go to the gentleman just that side and I think there was one over at the back. And we're probably going to have to, if you're really quick we'll see what we can do. Isabel and I'm an economist in the civil service. You've spoken a lot about higher education. What about further education and vocational graduates. Thank you for asking that question it's vital someone did. Yeah. So that's business leadership organization. Thanks very much first for the seriousness of your work and the report is excellent. And you're right about the points about short termism. Just wondering in that mode. How do we, as a city region, get more serious in terms of delivery of the big things. How do we do that in terms of governance and political leadership and how do we do it as a city region as a whole if you have reflections as a panel. Because it's a massive challenge yourself. Okay. And as the Mike travels back and I'm going to ask Jess to answer that. And I'm going to throw in my writer to that which is, do you need more fiscal power. I don't mean this year, like over the next 20 years to the city regions of this country really need to be able to have some sort of tax base to do that job properly. We'll come back to it. So just, but that's what I'd like you to speak to that because I kind of think you do. Let's, I think there was a gentleman on this. I can't see my friend is dark. Yeah, there's a gentleman I think at the back of the question. Or maybe I maybe it was a mythical. Let's take, well, I'll be if it's a man there has been has his hand on the very beginning. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed you. He was literally at the very beginning. Yeah, why do you why do you. You can just if you speak loudly. Okay, my friend always will people here. So we are rushed. Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon, Paul Fox. I head up the government's money and pension service for the Southwest of England come over from Dorset for this. I just wanted to put on, I suppose the panel's radar. An important topic that I think has over 20 year period of looking forward here, a real opportunity to impact both inequality in Bristol and across the country and prosperity and that's financial education. There are not enough children and young people getting a solid enough financial education and learning about the basics of money in this country and in this city. That is proven to go on that the more they take on, they, they will make more positive decisions as they go into adulthood. What can the panel do to weave that into Bristol policies in the future. Wow. Thank you for that. And was there a fight. You know it was that guy there. Okay, last one. Last one to this gentleman, just a very quick, a quick one picking up a point or two points really that Sally made to do with keeping homegrown businesses and the competition markets. Process in this country has been very much in favor of allowing them to be sold to American companies. So I think there's something that needs to happen there, if we can with which other government comes in next to try and make sure we keep homegrown companies with at least a stronger UK. Yeah, we get the frost. I'm going to come back to the panel because it's we're almost out and everyone speaks the epi point please and anything else is five remarks. So I couldn't agree more. And we have a civic agreement with you and city of Bristol College and the one city partnership and city council, which is designed to drive exactly that level of partnership. There are lots of other examples but and it's a continuum and particularly as jobs are changing. You actually need to have the kind of most blue skies cutting edge and work that you might do as a PhD student actually is remarkably rapidly translated into what we tend to call vocational training so you absolutely need to be working with the government and glove. And there used to be something called Bristol Learning City, and we're in conversation about reactivating that so we do see ourselves as partners. Thank you so much, Sally. Going to the point about the keeping homegrown companies in the UK. I don't believe that preventing UK startups being sold to US companies or other, or other overseas companies is the is the right solution, because it would mean that they would be less likely to get funding in the first place from outside the UK because it would be said the exits will be too limited. I do agree we should try and keep those assets in the UK. I think one of the ways of doing that is to ensure that the government for some of these public investments considers using the UK companies for the for the commercial operations that it's investing in. So I think it's important that the UK government buys their services rather than invests in them. And also that they keep the options open because I think preventing them from companies from being sold overseas would just mean at the beginning that be less likelihood of them getting funded, sadly. Okay, thank you, Jess. So a couple of points to pick up I suppose the question from Matt about the city governance and also the point about more fiscal power. So, so in my view that the combined authority model is in its sort of infancy. We have been going since 2017 we're we're a place with quite a diverse politics, as everybody knows and that's not without challenge when you then seek to bring everybody together and to work collaboratively. The model of Greater Manchester is always held up as being the thing to aspire to. But I think that in reality there's a very different, it's a very, very different proposition in Greater Manchester they have a history of working together they're politically aligned they may or may not get on but they certainly all come from the same sort of starting point. And there are far more places around the country like the west of England than there are like Greater Manchester. So for me if I was sitting in Whitehall, my question for the future of combined authorities future of devolution will be how do you make this model work in places that are very diverse and have a range of different political kind of backdrops and and and we haven't got the answer here we're working to towards it. We definitely don't have the answer yet and in answer the point about fiscal devolution I think absolutely but I think we need to run walk before we can run or whatever we're going to run. We need to be so I think there are, you know, we need to have a solid foundation here there are other steps that it would be great to take to like consolidated budgets at the moment, combined authorities get lots of different pots of money that need to be, you know, spent in specific ways all all kind of tightly governed by government. We need to be allowed to have the freedom to spend the money as we think we need to for the good of our region, rather than it all being so defined but I think we're on a journey. Great. And now you've been sat there very quietly, I've ignored you I'm sorry.  And I want you to send these fine people off to the afternoons with if you like one minute or so of the case for why things might not be as bad as your charts said, give us a bit of sunshine. They are currently as bad but they don't need to be as bad. You'll go. We, I was just reflecting there I would very much like to have a British artificial intelligence company a British Facebook type of thing but you can move towards Norway you can move towards France by just doing boring but good things on the tax benefit system boring but good things on investing in capital spending, you know, these are radical by the standards of recent years but they're not really by, you know, the, you know, looking at other countries so it really really can and should get better in this country. Okay, you come to the resolution for wearing but sensible agendas to make the world better inch by inch but I would settle for that right now. It's been a fantastic audience. We haven't done the, all the contents of this justice. There's, oh, there's one copy left. My goodness, there's one copy of someone take that. Do follow our work on our website we're going to be doing loads of stuff between now on the election to try and as best we can raise the level of economic and social debates about the future of our country ahead of an election. Thank you for your questions and can you just all come together to thank you.


The president's remarks at a political rally at Lovell Field in Chattanooga, Tennessee, October the 24th, 1964. Governor Clements, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm very happy to see so many proud and happy and smiling faces here in this great section of the United States. My grandfather was born just across the line in Georgia, and my wife, and Georgia has never gone Republican, I remind you, and not going again, is there? And my wife came from Alabama, and I'm just about to claim Tennessee. I appreciate that fine introduction that Governor Clements gave me. It's the second best introduction I ever had in my life. The other one was when he was supposed to introduce me once before, and he didn't get there and I had to introduce myself. This new terminal has a special meaning today, as I know it does to you, because it's dedicated to the memory of Estes Kefaufer, the great senator from the Lookout Mountain who died just a year ago. In Washington, we miss Estes Kefaufer. We miss his humanity and his dedication to the cause of equal opportunity for all of our citizens. You have an outstanding opportunity here in this state this year to elect not one great senator, but two great Democratic senators. Albert Gore is one of the real leaders of the Congress, and you have another man here who will be a source of pride to this state in the Senate. I've served with Albert in both the House and the Senate, and I look forward to having him help me put my program through the next Congress. Stand up, Albert. Ross Bass has made one of the most distinguished records in the Congress, and he's going to make it more distinguished after you elect him in November. We want to hear his voice in the United States Senate for the next six years and many more. Stand up, Ross. Senator Walters has done an able job in filling Estes Kefaufer's old seat in the Senate, and he's one of my dear friends. Stand up, hub. These men are carrying on a great tradition. They tell me that I asked Nancy Gore this afternoon. Someone told me that I was running about 55-45 down here in Tennessee, and I said, well, how's Albert running? They said he's running 85-15, and I said, well, who's helping him get that 85? I said, Nancy's his campaign manager. So, stand up, Nancy. I want him to meet you. Now, I hope after that kind of bragging and introduction, I hope she'll be mine the last week of the campaign. The volunteer state of Tennessee has given this nation three presidents and some of the most distinguished leaders in our history. Tennessee sent San Houston to build Texas. We have a little trouble out there? Well, lower down there and get out. Lower that a little bit for him. Lower this a little bit too. One more. I'll just go on with this. Tennessee sent San Houston to build Texas. Tennessee sent David Crockett to give his life at the Alamo. And this is still frontier country with a great frontier spirit that I believe believes in the new frontier, and I think will vote Democratic come November 3rd. I'm very pleased to see that you people here in Chattanooga have bright, young, able public servants like Bob Summit, and I hope you send him to Congress from this district. Stand up, Bob. Stand up, Bob. We really have two big problems confronting us, and your president needs a Congress to help him. One is continue the bipartisan foreign policy that we've had for 20 years. Republican Arthur Vandenberg helped Democrat Harry Truman stop the Communist in Greece and Turkey. Democrat Lyndon Johnson helped Dwight Eisenhower when I was Democratic leader in his problems in the Suez and the Famosa Straits, and politics stopped at the water line. Edward Dirksen, the Republican leader, helped John F. Kennedy on the test ban treaty when we all needed to pass that treaty so we could stop, get the pollution of the air and the food we drank and the food we ate and the milk we drank, all bipartisan working together for foreign policy. Now I want to continue that foreign policy. My opponent has different ideas about it, and I don't want to see the bipartisan foreign policy of this country go down the drain, and for that reason I need men like Bob Summit up there to help me. No man has served his nation, his state, with more patriotism than my old friend Congressman Joe Evans. Today is his birthday, and I hope he's as happy on November the 3rd as campaign manager in this state as he is today by seeing this large crowd. Stand up, Joe. I'm glad to see Mayor Kelly. I'm grateful to him for this warm turnout of hospitality, and I appreciate more than you know all these happy smiling faces that are here today. Here in Tennessee, you're fortunate in having Frank Clements as your governor, fortunate for many reasons. I'm particularly fortunate because he gave me two of the best introductions I've ever had today. He has given this state strong and vigorous and able leadership, and this state deserves it. Frank Clements understands the meaning of the partnership between the federal government and the state government, and I'm happy to say that over the last four years we have gone far in this partnership. Per capita income in the state of Tennessee rose over 4% every year, almost twice as much as the national average in other states. That growth rate in income is twice as fast as it was between 1956 and 1960. There were 74,000 new non-farm jobs in this state between 60 and 63, and that is almost twice the increase of jobs from 1956 to 1960. Just last week, the number of non-farm jobs in the Chattanooga area passed the 100,000 mark for the first time in this city's history, and I know you're proud of that. And before I pass along, I want you to know how grateful I am, not only for how wonderful you make me feel and for all of you coming out here and saying hello, but I particularly want to thank the Chattanooga Times, the newspaper for helping me in my campaign. It has helped this city and it has helped this state move ahead, and we want you to keep moving ahead as fast as that famous old Tennessee cavernment, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who used to say that this only problem was to get there firstest with the mostest. There's a candidate who called the Tennessee Valley Authority, and I quote him, an unfortunate socialistic venture and a federal white elephant. In one of his more inspired moments, he referred to your TVA, and I quote, as a socialistic octopus, unquote. Well, this city of Chattanooga is in the heart of the TVA, and I think everybody in this city and in this state knows what this socialistic octopus has done for Tennessee and has done for the nation, and I think I know what you're going to do to him November the 3rd. This great institution of TVA, which is the marvel of the entire world, hardly any foreign leader comes to Washington, but he wants to come and see the TVA. It has transformed the whole region and made it better and I don't, as long as I'm president, intend to give it up or give it away. I think it can build this region even more. I think it's up to us to build on this foundation and not to tear it down. I want to strengthen TVA, not call it into question, and the first thing that we must do for our future and for the world's future is to keep the peace, and that's what I've really come here to Chattanooga to talk to you about today. There are two central questions in this campaign. First, will we preserve and strengthen the programs for justice and progress that have brought a better life to our people? I think I know what your decision will be. I think it'll be to stand fast for justice and to stand fast for progress and more of it. Second, will we carry on the bipartisan foreign policy that has guided this nation safely through 20 perilous years? Again, I know what your decision will be. I think you'll stand fast for peace. For the last 20 years, the architecture of our foreign policy has been a policy of unity, and now that unity of national purpose is called into question for the first time. It is challenged by men who represent not the majority of their own party, not the majority of Americans, but a fringe that wants to repeal the present and a fringe that wants to veto the future. Four years ago, we faced a United World Communist movement. Nikita Khrushchev was boasting about his Sputniks and threatening open war over Berlin and telling us that he was going to bury us. He had smashed the summit conference. All over Europe, the communist satellites were following Moscow's command. They saw no other choice. In Asia, the communists also moved as one block. They were on the march in Latin America. The new countries of Africa were weak targets of communist ambitions. Well, in 1961, when John F. Kennedy took office and when this administration came to office, we set out firmly and patiently to frustrate communism's ambitions and to help build allies and help them build their own security. First, we strengthened our ties with NATO. Peace Corps volunteers went forth to show the world that our interest in peace was more than a good intention. Then we launched the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. At home, we set out to build our own strength as the free world's guarantee of survival. Well, what has happened in four years? The communists are still here. Although Mr. Khrushchev has not buried us and it looks like he's not in control anymore. The communists are still dedicated. The communists are still dangerous. But in Eastern Europe, the communist block no longer wears just one face. Mr. Khrushchev said some of those countries are like children that have grown too big to spank. In Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, the tide of communism is running out. In the Kremlin, Mr. Khrushchev's successors know that the United States of America intends to bury no one, but they also know that we will not be buried. But a foreign policy of resistance to aggression would be only half a policy. We in America have combined it with an unceasing fight for peace. And I think that we are winning that fight. There is no easy way to oral peace and security. They are not achieved by the jiffy solution or the reckless threat. The Bible admonishes us to, quote, run with patience the race that is set before us. Run with patience. And that is what I intend to do. We have grown strong in the last four years, and we must continue to increase that strength. We must hold firmly to these four principles of peace. One, we must continue to resist communist aggression. Two, we must support the United Nations and advance the unity of our NATO ally and of the entire Atlantic community. Three, we must assist the developing nations to become stable members of the free world community. And four, we must enlarge the ban on nuclear tests and we must keep the ultimate purpose always before us of a world that is free of the threat of nuclear destruction. The foreign policy of this nation is as strong as the resolve and the concern of the individual Americans who constitute this nation. Each one of you is an architect of that foreign policy. Each one of you on November 3rd will cast your vote far or against the policy of peace and responsibility that we have been building for 20 years. I count on your judgment to sustain that policy.   Eleven months ago, on that tragic day when we lost our president, our fallen leader had gone, I had on a moment's notice to assume the responsibilities of the presidency. I had sat with John F. Kennedy through many perilous moments. I sat in 37 meetings of the National Security Council with him when Mr. Khrushchev had brought his missiles into Cuba 90 miles to the United States and they were pointed toward our people. I saw our leader meet there day after day with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with our leading naval authorities, our leading military men, our leading aviators. I heard the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the CIA all give their judgments. And I'm proud to say that the coolest man in that room was our own Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was firm and steady. He was not frightened, but he was not provocative. He did not rattle his rockets and he did not bluff with his bombs, although he ordered our planes off of the ground, fully loaded, fully prepared for any emergency. But he showed great patience and great judgment. And as a consequence, we avoided a nuclear holocaust that would have wiped out 100 million Americans over half of our population in one day's time and would have killed 100 million Russians in the same period of time. Now, on November the 3rd, you're going to select the man whose thumb will have to touch that button if it's ever touched. You're going to select the man that has to pick up that hotline telephone when Moscow's calling.  For 11 months, I have done the best job I could for you.  I told you that night when I took over, that with God's help and with your prayers, that I would do the best I could, and I have done that. No one man can lead this nation alone. It requires the help of all of you. And if you want me to lead it, I will tell you today, as I told you then, with God's help and with your prayers, I will do my best. But I think you're going to have to make up your mind in the next 10 days what you're going to do about it.  And you're going to have to see on that morning of November the 3rd, not that you take your boy down to the draft station, not that you willing go and volunteer yourself, but that you exercise the priceless privilege that is your heritage to go in that polling booth and cast a secret ballot. And that ballot ought to be based on what you know in your conscience is good for your country. What you know in your heart is right. I haven't come down here to try to mislead you or persuade you or to convince you. I think that's a reflection on your intelligence. I came here to meet you, to look at you, to speak with you, to discuss some of our problems. And I have confidence in your decision on those problems.  I think that you're going on November the 3rd and vote for what's best for America. And I'll tell you this, if you'll do what's best for America, you'll do what's best for you. Thank you and goodbye.