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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Valuing the future [speech by David Willetts MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills]
— [given on 14 February 2007 at Demos, London; preceded by press release], Are we doing enough for our children? | | Author(s) | David Willetts |
| Publisher | Electronic format only, February 2007 |
| Pages | 6 pp |
| Source | Further information from website: http://accessible.davidwilletts.org.uk |
| Keywords | Young people ; Age groups [elderly] ; Social interaction ; Social policy ; Conservative. |
| Annotation | In this speech to the think tank Demos, David Willetts identifies the need for politicians to tackle not only the challenge of ensuring fairness across the generations, but also a clash of generations. He discusses the economic concept of the social discount rate in relation to Sir Nicholas Stern's report on climate change and UNICEF's recent report on child neglect. In their own way, both reports suggest that we are not doing enough to protect future generations or to invest in children and value their future. David Willetts concludes by noting that "a socially responsible politician is one who maintains the contract across the generations": his experience of education and pensions portfolios has added to his awareness that pensioners and children have a claim on the baby boomers in the middle. He comments on the need for more intergenerational mixing in the workplace and in housing, of the sort he came across in a social enterprise in Bradford. Here, older and younger people are helping each other with spelling and mastering IT, but the scheme has fallen foul of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) rules that older people cannot be funded. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070625204 E |
| Classmark | SB: BB: TMA: TM2: VL2 * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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