Lidington: Northern Ireland needs a new direction

It's been a good year for our party in Northern Ireland. Our membership is growing and we have regained our toehold in local government.

We are the only political party that contests elections in every part of the United Kingdom.

I look forward to the day when we can ...

Lidington: Social enterprise and Government

Extracts of the speech are below. Check against delivery.

Social enterprise and Government

These days, all politicians would readily declare that they, in the words of America's Founding Fathers, are in politics to maintain and enlarge "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

But too often we talk about ...

Lidington: Sinn Féin must show commitment is permanent and irreversible

Speech to DUP business and politics event, Belfast

"Like the Government, and everyone in this room, I want to see the current, unaccountable system of direct rule brought to an end.

My Party wants a properly functioning, democratic Assembly at Stormont. Locally elected politicians should take the decisions that affect ...

Lidington: We will oppose amnesty for 'on-the-run' terrorists

Speech at CHAMP fringe meeting at Conservative Party Conference

"Today's meeting takes place against the backdrop of two important events.

First, we had the IRA statement of 28 July in which, the Provisionals ordered their "volunteers" to dump their weapons and formally declared an end to its "armed campaign ...

David Lidington: Fair deal for the British dairy industry

Speaking at the National Dairy Event 2003 in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire. David Lidington, Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said;

"The Dairy Industry is going through a period of drastic and painful change.

The rules of the market place are changing in three significant ways ...

Lidington: British agriculture needs Government support

Speech to the Sentry Farms Conference

Any politician speaking on agricultural policy would do well to remember the words of the late President Eisenhower who commented that, "farming looks mighty easy when your plough is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the corn field".

Politics is more ...

Lidington: Enterprise and Environment - an alternative to 'anti-globalisation'

These days no summit is complete without its contingent of demonstrators protesting against the alleged evils of capitalism and globalisation. I must confess that when I see them on my TV screen, my first reaction is one of exasperation. The demonstrators seem to have adopted as their vision statement the ...

Lidington: Government is Failing the Countryside

We live in what is now an overwhelmingly urban and suburban society. Indeed, one of the things that I found most striking about last month's Countryside March was how those who took part saw themselves as a minority and a minority whose interests are being ignored by those in ...

Lidington: Listening to the Countryside

Delivered to Conservative Rural Action Group Seminar at Conservative Party Conference

Just over a fortnight ago, I joined 407,790 others on the Countryside March through London. It was a massive, peaceful and good-humoured demonstration. But underlying that good humour was a sense of desperation over the crisis in the ...