My view is that targets, properly constructed and applied across public services have been fundamental to past successes and will be an essential part of sustaining progress into the future.

It is also right that we continue to consult with front line workers and the public to ensure that targets are reasonable and achievable, that measurement regimes are proportionate and that the targets take full account of the other reforms that are under way.

Advances in technology and in our understanding of illness and disease together with an expanded workforce and greater resources will allow us to provide more services to a higher quality.

My view is that targets, properly constructed and applied across public services have been fundamental to past successes and will be an essential part of sustaining progress into the future.

Primary care must never be seen simply as a set of organisational structures.

But effective regulation at the European Union level can make a massive contribution to achieving our shared goals of improving competitiveness, jobs and growth.

As Tony Blair has made clear, our fundamental challenge is how to make Europe work better.

But we can turn challenges into opportunities if we look outwards to the realities of the global economy and modernise our internal institutions in ways that will equip Europe to meet that challenge and create confidence amongst the public.

There is no such thing as free regulation.

And, in the past, it has been all too easy for legislators to load costs onto business in order to meet broader social goals. And costs for business means costs for consumers.

This call for a new culture is not a new idea.

For many Europeans the next decade looks to be filled with threats rather than opportunities.

Having decisions made not in midnight deals but in the light of objective evidence and after consulting those who will be affected should itself provide some reassurance that the EU is trying to reform itself.

Road testing the effects of regulation on European business must become second nature to the European Union.

Greater personal choice, individually tailored services, stronger local accountability, greater efficiency - these are all central to the new direction of travel we have set for our public services.

Some people argue that we should limit choice in favour of good local services. My response is simple: why should we assume those two concepts are mutually exclusive?

Our objective must therefore be to ensure EU better regulation contributes towards delivering a modern European Union which relentlessly focuses on building a dynamic and innovative economy equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

But we need to show that the EU can modernise itself, can adapt to the needs of its citizens, can take their views into account. That will be our ambition for the UK Presidency.

The Civil Service is a vital economic asset to the UK - firstly, in the way it creates a framework for excellence in service delivery and secondly, in how it helps organise the best way to deliver modern public services on which both businesses and individuals depend.

Our aim, during our Presidency in the next six months will be to lead this challenge, to show that Europe can function in a mature and responsible way, to start delivering tangible results that show we are taking people's concerns seriously.

So that we focus not on competing visions for Europe but on what Europe can do to improve economic growth, to give us a cleaner environment, to create more jobs, to make us more secure.

Here in the UK the government has decided to accept the recommendations of the Better Regulation Task Force to measure and make targeted reductions in the administrative costs - the red tape costs - that regulations impose on business.

If we took Chaucer's writings at face value, we'd have to conclude he was a complete drip.

At the heart of these challenges lies the question of how the institutions of the European Union make laws, the types of laws they pass and the effectiveness with which those laws are implemented on civil society and the economy.

More than 50% of significant new regulations that impact on business in the UK now emanate from the EU.

Western Europe GDP per capita - not taking into account the new accession counties - was lower in 2001 relative to that of the US than any time since the 1960's.

But let no one be under any doubt that the scale of the challenge that Europe faces in this emerging global economy is immense and the practical pace of our collective action to meet these challenge to date has just been too slow.

Yet in order to make sure the European social model keeps up with the pace of economic change that is now necessary, the EU must embrace a new approach to lawmaking.

From my time in Health I know that choice empowers people lives.

For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.

We must seek to persuade member states and institutions that better regulation in Europe does not mean cutting health and safety in the workplace, nor does it mean dismantling social standards.

The challenge to our national economies and the collective economy of Europe will become - with the growth of China and the continuing productivity growth of the US - even more intense in the decades to come.

For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back “ both professionally as well as financially.

The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.

It looks like the future's really bright.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Race horses are like golfers, you're never sure how they're going to come out of the stalls. It's just - hopefully the horses come out of the race all right, just fit and ready to go again in the near future, but 3rd was good. It's paid for its hay.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

No one is more important to the future of our state than our teachers.

We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future.

What I'm suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity.

Yet, our achievements also mask many continuing failings and seem to expose more future dangers.

I mean that at least 80% of the Russian people feel destitute. It's the people who had their past and future taken from them - they don't get paid - many of them face a wall. They have nowhere to go.