Bishop David, Chancellor, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, -

May I start by warmly congratulating all the key players in this Churches' Enquiry? Ecumenical ventures are inherently difficult to organise and keep moving forwards, and I am all the more grateful to the Chairmen and Secretaries of both the sponsoring group and the working group who produced this excellent Report. It is unusual to find enthusiasm and competence combined in equal measure in such an ambitious initiative, but in this case we do. It has been a tremendous team effort, and I believe that the outside world generally and the Government of the day in particular is more likely to sit up and take notice when they see the combined testimony of all the major Churches rather than any one Church acting alone.

This has, of course, been one of the enduring themes of David Sheppard's ministry, and I feel it right to record that without his passionate determination, this whole initiative would not have happened. Guiding it through to the Report's successful completion, and indeed this occasion where Church Representatives receive the Report and commit ourselves to its agenda, have helped bring his ministry to a fitting climax.

Early in the Report, we are reminded that scripture urges us

"to see a good society as one of mutuality and interdependence. Its life is best seen as organic and its citizens as living members of a living body. We are "members one of another". We are commanded to resist the temptation to turn a blind eye to others' sufferings. We must learn to feel their fortunes as in part our own".

As part of this, we all need to be needed. Dignified work is about participating in the common life, about making a useful contribution to our fellow citizens, about being part of a community of work, even about fulfilling a part of our humanity. That is why, as Archbishop William Temple pointed out, the worst suffering of unemployment lies not in its material deprivation but in the spiritual deprivation of exclusion from contributing to the common life of society.

Hence, this is an area where faith and politics meet. The Churches have a right and duty to speak out about it, both because of our beliefs about the nature of humanity and because we are present in every part of this land, including those from which most other institutions have departed. And in particular, the Churches have a continuing responsibility to try to help create a climate of opinion in which the Government and all the other relevant players can rally public support for an onslaught on unemployment and social exclusion as a priority.

I am particularly pleased to be able to say two things in the presence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Firstly, I was delighted to hear that the Government is setting up a new unit based in the Cabinet Office and chaired by the Prime Minister himself to co-ordinate the drive against social exclusion. It is courageous and right deliberately to raise expectations in this way and make it a touchstone for the long-term success of Government policies. I can assure the Chancellor that the Church of England, and I am sure all our sister Churches, will want to give high priority to assisting that work in whatever way we possible can.

Secondly, I would like to ask the Chancellor not to take the so-called iron laws of economics too seriously! Economic orthodoxies which claim the status of fixed laws of nature usually turn out to be a passing intellectual fashion. One thinks of the painful adherence to gold standard economics in the 1930s. More recently, we think of the excesses of one-eyed monetarism in the 1980s. For me, one of the most important insights of this Report is that the future of work in our society is a matter of choice and priorities not something that is inevitable. The Report constitutes an invigorating onslaught on fatalism. If we choose to run the economy so that it creates more good jobs as a priority, the Report says, we can do so. Some people might wish to argue that there are more important things than creating more good jobs. Some people might want to argue that the merits of restraining public spending are greater than the merits of further reducing unemployment, but let nobody pretend that there is no choice in these matters because we are prostrate before the laws of economics.

I do not want to imply that an ambitious programme to create more good jobs is cost free or straightforward or politically feasible in the immediate future, but it surely remains a matter of priorities and choice, and we can all do what we can to influence the climate in which those choices are determined.

I was particularly pleased that the Enquiry took pains to take abundant evidence from groups of unemployed people themselves. We all know how easy it is to slip into treating them as a problem or as statistics rather than human beings with ideas of their own, and this is perhaps particularly important when it comes to the design and implementation of policies to shift the balance from welfare to work. The Report does well to remind us of the biblical injunction:

"Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets".

A very proper question to ask in assessing various schemes and the way in which they are administered is simply - "How would you feel about this scheme if you were the one who is unemployed?" This surely means putting oneself in unemployed people's shoes, which in turn involves taking the trouble to consult unemployed people seriously and I hope that the Churches will be among those organisations which can help the Government in achieving this.

In receiving this Report, let me say two final things. First, no doubt there will be some who will greet this as 'once again the Church getting embroiled in politics'. If by that they mean taking our place in the affairs of life, caring for people and seeking to ensure that others have the rights and privileges they deserve as children of God, then we plead guilty. If they mean that we are dabbling in party politics, they are wrong because what this Enquiry is about transcends us all and calls all people, regardless of political and religious affiliation, to tackle the curse of unemployment. Second, I thank God for this Report. I congratulate all those who put so much hard work into it, and I gladly affirm its crucial relevance to the agendas of both Church and, I hope and pray, the wider society in the years to come.

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