Tom
Watson MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Secretary of State for
Culture, Media and Sport, speaking at the Labour Party Conference
in Brighton today, said:

***CHECK
AGAINST DELIVERY***

Conference, thank you for being here. Thanks for your enthusiasm,
for your passion,  for all your hard work
on behalf of the Labour Party, on behalf of our country. I’m grateful to every
one of you.

Last week, the Prime Minister made yet another speech to reboot,
yet again, her Brexit strategy. She chose to deliver this latest oration in the
great city of Florence, though no-one seems to know why. For politicians,
Florence, even more than the city of Dante, the Medicis and Michelangelo, is
the city of Niccolo Machiavelli.

I can only assume Michael Gove picked the venue. Michael Gove, who
undermined his own Tory leadership bid last year, by admitting he doesn’t have
the right skills to be Prime Minster.
For once in his life, he was right. Trouble is, none of the rest of them
do either.

So now he’s back. Machiavelli’s famous advice was that it’s better
to be feared than to be loved. This mantra runs as deep in the Tory Party as
blue through a stick of Brighton rock. Fear is how they win. Fear is how they
govern.

It’s fear of strangers behind this Government’s callous treatment
of EU citizens living here. It’s with the peddled fear of economic ruin that they
justify their cruelty to our nurses and teachers, our armed forces and our
police officers. It’s with fear that they hammer our poorest and most
vulnerable, while turning a blind eye to their plutocrat friends.

I’m going to be honest with you, Conference: fear is a powerful
force. It won the Conservative Party elections in 2010 and in 2015. But this
year, something magical happened. The spell has been broken. Jeremy told this
country that we don’t need to be afraid. That another way is possible. That
living in fear is not inevitable: we can choose to live in love and hope
instead.

And this country, our great country, began to throw off the
shackles.

Mrs May, the Tory Party was never loved. But you were happy to be
feared. It worked for you. Well not any more. 15 months in, you still seem as
dazed as on day one. Caught between your enemies and, even worse, your friends.
Caught in the headlights. Living on Boris time.

As Shadow Culture Secretary, I’ve got one of the best jobs there
is. When I get invited to the theatre or to the cinema or,  yes, to Glastonbury, I get to say I’m only
there for work. And one of the most surreal moments of my political life
happened to me late at night, in a field, surrounded by people much younger and
far more stylish than me.

I realised something as the crowd at Glastonbury’s silent disco
began to sing:

“Oh, Jeremy Corbyn….” And as they sang, I realised
it’s actually better to be loved than to be feared. And Jeremy has shown us
that it’s possible.

Thank you Jeremy.

There are some serious bits to my job, too, though. It’s not all
music festivals and opening nights. Digital, culture, media and sport are key
battlegrounds in our fight against fear and despair.

And alongside me in those battles I have the best Shadow DCMS team
you could want: Kevin Brennan, my deputy, Rosena Allin-Khan, Liam Byrne, Steve
Reed, Ruth Smeeth and Wilf Stevenson.

And we’ve recently lost Louise Haigh, the finest mind of her
generation, who was rightly promoted to join Diane’s team in the shadow Home
Office.

And we have a leader in Jeremy who stamped his leadership on
culture policy when the two of us launched our innovative culture manifesto in
Hull – deservedly the UK City of Culture.

What a great job they’ve done this year. An early priority for our
DCMS team in Government will be to finally confront
problem gambling. Of course, gambling isn’t risk free. Even bets you think are
absolute certainties can end up costing you a lot. Just ask Theresa May.

That was a joke, by the way, but it’s a
serious problem. The damage to the families of gambling addicts can be
terrible. Yet some gambling firms, driven by greed, are deliberately targeting our
poorest communities. We now know that when vulnerable people try to opt out of
online gambling, companies don’t always block their accounts as they should.

Gambling companies are even harvesting
data to deliberately target low-income gamblers and people who’ve given up.

As Mike Dixon, boss of mental health
charity Addaction says, “gambling addiction tears lives and families apart.
It’s outrageous that an industry with a £13bn revenue contributes less than
£10m to treatment”.

Well Mike, I can tell you that a Labour
Government will introduce a compulsory levy.

Can you imagine the uproar if the drinks
industry started targeting Alcoholics Anonymous by selling drink outside AA
meetings? We wouldn’t tolerate that – and we shouldn’t tolerate the same kind
of behavior by some bookmakers. And addicts must be given the help they need.
Gambling addiction is an illness and it’s about time it was taken seriously.

So I can announce today that, together
with Jonathan Ashworth, our shadow Health Secretary, I’m launching a thorough
review of gambling addiction in this country and current provision for
treatment on the NHS. Jon Ashworth, by the way: what a sparkling star of
Labour’s front bench. He’s going to be an outstanding Health Secretary in the
next Labour Government.

Our review will look at how best to fund
NHS treatment and help free problem gamblers from the destructive cycle of
addiction. My message to gambling firms today is clear: stop targeting
vulnerable people. Start acting properly. And meet your obligation to help
those whose lives have been blighted by addiction.

You can do it now, because it’s the right
thing to do. Or you can wait for the next Labour Government to do it for you.

Oh and by the way, the same applies to the
organisations that run football in this country. If you won’t ban football
clubs from signing shirt sponsorship deals with betting companies – Labour
will.

Conference, as I said, I know how lucky I am. I love my job.
Serving my constituents in West Bromwich, serving the Party, serving each of
you as Deputy Leader. There’s no better job – perhaps that’s why so many people
want to do it.

But I know not everyone’s as lucky as me. More and more are being
left behind by an economy that serves the few, not the many.

And the world’s changing in ways we can’t continue to ignore: the
labour market’s polarising.Today’s choice for too many young people is
precarious employment or no employment, a zero hours contract or no contract,
shabby, dangerous, soul-destroying work, or no work at all.

Income inequality in Britain is amongst the highest in the
developed world. Inequality between those with fulfilment and security in work,
and those without it is growing too.

This is a stain on our country. But the Tories just shrug their
shoulders and say there’s no alternative.

Just like they did on low pay, before our party introduced the
minimum wage. Just like they did on maternity rights, before we secured them.
Just like they did on healthcare, before we created the NHS to treat the many,
not just the few.

And
the Tories are still doing it now. Transport for London has told Uber it has to
follow the same rules as everyone else. Nothing more. That it can run its
mini-cab service, as long as they respect our rules.  Treat your customers with respect and keep
them safe, like everyone else has to. And then you’ll be welcome to make money
in London.

Uber,
you’re becoming the perfect picture of how the future gig economy must not
look. You may think you’re immune because your friends in the Tory party run
Britain and its newspapers. You know the Tories don’t care about level playing
fields and orderly markets. They don’t care about consumer protection.  They certainly don’t care about workers’ rights.
But they don’t run London – and that’s where you make your money.

And, mark my words, they won’t be running Britain for much longer.
Conservatives don’t have the imagination to embrace change. They never have.
Theresa May summed it up in her now infamous line from the election:

“Nothing has changed.

Nothing. Has. Changed.”

So: no lessons learned. No message received. It’s the same old
Tories. No end to austerity. No change for public servants who deserve a pay rise.
No change for the millions who desperately need something different. The truth
is, the Tories don’t really want to change things.

But Labour does. And when Jeremy forms the next Government, Labour
will. A time for change is upon us. The old fear is gone. We’re ready for bold,
transformative reform, hungry for it.

That’s what Labour’s campaign showed – as hundreds of thousands
knocked on doors, went to rallies, got out the vote and delivered stunning
Labour victories in Tory strongholds like Canterbury. Like Kensington.

This year’s election showed that real change is possible. We can
and we will form a radical Government which does things differently.

We have the imagination; we have the drive; we have the momentum.
The fight is so important. Not just because we need to undo the damage of all
these years of Tory rule. But because fresh challenges lie ahead.

On the horizon – in sight, in the next few years – automation and
artificial intelligence threatening jobs and wages on a scale the world has never
seen. Digital platforms making access to work much more direct and immediate.
But the quality of that work, the safeguards, the wages, the pensions – too
often these are cast aside, disguised as innovation.

Whereas Labour believes that secure, high-quality work should be
available to every adult who wants it. And in order to get it, in the digital
age, the successful worker will need to be a creative worker. It’s the job of
Government to make that happen. And that starts with education.

In an age when every child has access to all the knowledge that
has ever existed on a device that fits in the palm of their hand, just teaching
them to memorise thousands of facts is missing the point. Michael Gove’s
curriculum reforms were a useless return to the past – obsessed by what
children can remember, instead of how they use the knowledge they have.

We don’t yet know what the jobs of the future will be, so we’ve
got to teach children not just what
to learn but how to learn. And
how to be. Self-awareness, emotional
intelligence, social skills, creativity and collaborative learning.
Transferable skills they can adapt as the new world swirls around them.

Great schools are places of imagination, inspiration, love.They
help our young people become great humans, constantly adjusting in a
continually changing world. Such schools are as powerful as the creative
imaginations they nurture. They’re fabulous places. And, let’s be clear, they
do exist.

But let’s be equally clear that they exist in spite of Michael Gove, Nicky Morgan and Justine Greening, and
all the other names of Tory shame. If it was left up to them, our children
would be totally ill equipped for the economy of now – let alone the economy of
the future.

Whereas
Angela Rayner, our fantastic Shadow Education Secretary, will lead an education
system that prepares our young people for a world we can’t yet see.

Angie’s
talked about how a Labour Government helped her grow from teenage mom into
Shadow Minister. Our education system failed her at first, but when she’s
running it, she won’t let it fail the next generation.  We’re all so proud of her. So proud of what
she’s going to do.

The next Labour Government will educate and train a nation of
workers that are the most creative and adaptive on the planet. We’ll give
working people the tools to use technology to enhance their lives, rather than
restricting them to a digital elite.

The digital economy succeeds only when it gives each of us the
means to realise our true potential. Which doesn’t stop in our schools. It must
be threaded throughout our economy, throughout our lives.

So let’s extend employment rights to all workers in the gig
economy – the self-employed, agency workers and contractors as well as the
traditionally employed. Let’s stop dancing on the head of a legalistic pin
about when is a job not a job and when is self-employed not really
self-employed. It’s a fake fight which big business always wins and Tory
governments love to hide behind.

So let’s put an end to all that and just give rights to people. Yes, in one of the richest countries in the world in the
21st century, let’s just make basic employment rights non-negotiable in all
circumstances and give them to everybody.

Anybody tells you it can’t be done, it’s because they don’t want
to do it. They said it about the minimum wage. They said it about maternity
rights. They said it about the NHS. Don’t let them frighten you out of the
rights you deserve.

We need to revolutionise our trade unions for the digital age,
finding new ways to build solidarity and collectivism.

And let’s not forget social enterprises: community-focused,
people-oriented companies, that have thrived since the recession and will be
vital to unlocking the future.

At last year’s Conference, I announced an independent commission
to look at the future of work. It will be reporting shortly, having done a
tremendous job, and I’d like to thank the chair, Helen Mountfield,
and all the Commissioners.

This year, Conference, together, we rewrote the rules of politics.
We overcame fear and we took the country with us. Using new digital platforms,
instead of our biased media, we talked straight to the people and they heard
our message.

In contrast, last September Theresa May had a secret meeting with
Rupert Murdoch in New York.  Nine months
later, at the election, Murdoch’s papers did their best to start a Tory
landslide. They threw the kitchen sink at Jeremy. But this time the dirty
tricks didn’t work. This time it was not
the Sun wot won it.

And let me tell you, Conference: it never will be the Sun wot won
it again.

Winding up my speech last year, I predicted an early election. In
which, I also said, we’re going to give the Tories the surprise of their
lives.  Well conference, we did it.

Jeremy, you did it. So this year I’m going to go out on another
limb.

Yes, there’s hard work to do and no, we mustn’t be complacent, but
Jeremy Corbyn has broken the spell of fear the Tories sought to cast on this
country. He has helped us all to remember that politics should be about
inspiring hope, not peddling despair. He has shown us again what a real
alternative to Toryism looks like and what it can achieve.

And because of that, I tell you, Conference, Jeremy Corbyn will be
our next Prime Minister.

And in ten or twelve years’ time, this Conference will be
celebrating the achievements of two transformative terms of Labour government:

Abolishing tuition fees and reintroducing the education
maintenance allowance;

Taking back our utilities into social ownership;

Re-nationalising our railways;

A £10/hour real living
wage, and rising;

Hundreds of thousands of new council houses;

Waiting
lists down by at least a million and A&E waiting times back to 4 hours;

No
more Tory hospital closures;

Freezing
the state pension age;

Free
school meals for all primary school children and smaller class sizes;

Banning
zero hours contracts and giving all workers full and equal rights from day one.

That’s what a Labour Government
looks like. That’s what we do.
That’s who we are.

Politics now is a fight between those who want to be feared and
those who’re not frightened to love. Britain’s run out of patience with the
tin-pot Machiavellis. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liam Fox and the rest of
you: your time is up.

This country is ready for change. Ready to throw off the shackles,
to turn back the tide; ready to do the right thing and to do the thing right.
In place of fear, love.

Conference, Britain is ready for Labour.

Love wins and so will we.

Thank
you.

ends

Barbara
Keeley MP, Shadow Cabinet Member for Mental Health and Social Care, speaking
at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today, said:

***CHECK
AGAINST DELIVERY***

Conference,

It is an honour to close this
debate as Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Member for Mental Health and Social Care

I am proud to have this role
in a Labour party that understands how vital Mental Health and Social Care
services are. And that makes protecting these services a major priority.

And it’s even more important
when we see the crisis the Tory Government has created in both social care and
mental health.  A crisis made in Downing Street

They are failing people
across the country, failing those who need care and their families, failing
unpaid family carers and failing hundreds of thousands of care workers.

People are now going without
the care they need. Nearly half a million fewer people getting publicly-funded
care since the Tories came to office. Over a million older people with unmet
care needs, many of them isolated and lonely

But this Tory Government
isn’t just failing social care users, it’s failing their families too. With
hundreds of thousands of unpaid family carers struggling to balance work and
care. It’s failing hundreds of thousands of care staff, because under the
Tories too often they are under-paid, under-trained and under-valued.

Caring staff who are forced
to work on zero-hours contracts, denied pay for travel time, underpaid for
sleep-in shifts, with care visits of just 15-minutes. Prevented from giving the
quality of care which people deserve

And the Tory Government is
failing children and young people in need of mental health services, denied
treatment due to Tory cuts. Young people told they are not thin enough to be
treated for an eating disorder. Children who have self-harmed being turned away
unless they have made a serious suicide attempt.

And thousands of people in
mental health crisis being sent hundreds of miles from their families just to
get the treatment they need. Mental health services for young people that are
now so poor, a High Court Judge had to tell Jeremy Hunt that this country:
would have “blood on its hands” if suitable care could not be found for
a suicidal teenage girl.

Conference, it’s time for us
in the Labour Party to say that this is not good enough.

Not good enough that care
quality has fallen, with one in four services now failing on safety grounds.

Not good enough that
thousands of vulnerable people are stuck in hospital for weeks or months,
because there is no care for them at home or no place in a care home.

Not good enough that last
winter the British Red Cross talked of a humanitarian crisis that saw people
sent home from hospital without clothes, people falling and not being found for
days, people going unwashed because there are no care services to help them to
wash.

This Social Care Crisis was
made in Downing Street. A crisis made by a Tory Government cutting billions of
pounds from council budgets. And by Tory Ministers failing to find the extra
funding needed for social care

And then during the Snap
General Election, Theresa May announced her solution to the crisis would be a
new tax on care. Dubbed the “Dementia Tax”, hitting people who need care even
harder. Making people use the value of their homes to pay for their own home
care

Such a failing and toxic
policy that Theresa May announced a U-turn on it within 4 days. And then the
Tories quietly dumped their policy. But in its place, the Tories now have
nothing to say on the future funding of social care. They just promise a consultation
and a Green Paper.

And on the crisis in mental
health for children and young people, they also promise only a Green Paper.

Conference, Labour will fill
the Tory policy vacuum. We will show that we are the party that values social
care and mental health. At the election, we pledged an extra £8 billion for
social care in this Parliament, with an extra £1 billion this year to deal with
the Tory crisis.

This would have delivered:
paying a real living wage to care staff, paying them travel time and letting
them choose regular hours; finally ending inadequate 15-minute care visits and
ensuring free end of life care.

And Conference, Labour believes funding must be found to pay care
staff properly for sleep-in shifts.

And Labour will support family carers. We have pledged to increase
the carers allowance for unpaid carers to at least the same rates as
Jobseeker’s Allowance. A small first step to recognise the value of the work of
unpaid family carers.

And Conference, a Labour Government will build a National Care
Service. A service in which we pool the risk of high care costs, so that no-one
is faced with catastrophic costs as they are now.

In its first years, our National Care Service will receive an
extra £3 billion in public funds every year. Enough to place a cap on what
individuals have to pay towards care. Enough to raise the asset threshold for
paying for care. Enough to provide free end of life care

To act on our pledge, we will invite an independent, expert panel
to advise us on how we move from the current broken system of care to a
sustainable service for the long term.

In mental health, we will increase the amount we spend on services
for children and young people. We will ring-fence mental health budget,s so
that money isn’t siphoned off by other parts of the NHS. We will bring an early
end to patients being sent hundreds of miles for mental health treatment. And
we will offer school-based counselling for young people in every one of our
high schools.

Conference, under the Tories we have seen years of neglect of care
needs. Neglect of older people. Of younger people. Of vulnerable disabled
people.

This Tory Government has no solution to the problems it has
created. Only Labour will end this crisis made in Downing Street. Only Labour
will bring hope to those in need of care and those who care for them

And only Labour will build care services fit for the many. Not the
few.

Jonathan Ashworth MP, Shadow Secretary of
State for Health, speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today, said:

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

It is a tremendous privilege to speak from this
platform, humbled in the knowledge that it was this Conference over 80 years
ago that demanded public universal healthcare.

And this Party, almost 70 years ago, established a
National Health Service, free at the point of use covering every man, woman and
child in the land.

So today we renew our commitment to that cause and
dedicate ourselves to electing a Jeremy Corbyn Labour Government whose mission
will be the rebuilding of a comprehensive, reintegrated, public NHS, free at
the point of use, there for all who need it.

And we must also speak out with a sense of urgency
about what is happening to our NHS. In the past year: waiting lists topped 4
million and 2.5 million people waited over four hours in A&E; over the
winter, patients crammed
on trolleys in corridors; ambulances backed up outside overflowing hospitals.

And the nation
left shocked by a little boy, with suspected meningitis, waiting 5 hours
in A&E without a bed, forced to lie on two plastic chairs.  Some called it a humanitarian crisis. When
you underfund the NHS and slash billions from social care let’s call it what it
is, a Tory manufactured crisis.

A crisis where waiting lists are so lengthy, more and
more patients feel they have no option but to pay for a surgeon to come to
their bedside, while the rest wait longer and longer.

Friends, a person’s health should never depend on
their individual wealth.

So a Labour Government would allocate an extra £45
billion for our NHS and social care sector. And to avoid another winter like
the one we’ve just had, we would establish a half billion pound emergency
winter fund, so that patients and their families never suffer like that again.

And we will invest in general practice too, and start
recruiting so everyone can access a GP when they need one.

Don’t let anyone tell you we cannot afford to invest
in the NHS. If our forebears were able to marshal their resources to create our
NHS in 1948, then we owe it to their endeavour 70 years later, to give our NHS
the funding it needs today.

This is the leadership Jeremy Hunt should be showing.
Instead he ordered hospital bosses to a summit last week where they were instructed
to chant ‘we can do this’The NHS doesn’t need silly Jeremy Hunt gimmicks; it
needs a Jeremy Corbyn Labour Government.

I will be a Health Secretary, who will work closely
with NHS staff.

So let us send a message to the staff of the NHS, who
work day in day out, at weekends too, whose hands deliver us into the world,
who comfort us in our final moments, you have our gratitude, our backing and
you have our commitment that a Labour Government will tackle vacancies, will
bring back bursaries and scrap the pay cap to deliver fair pay for you all.

To those who come to our shores from the EU and
beyond, we say you are welcome, your rights will be secured, you are not
bargaining chips, but part of our society and of the fabric of our NHS.

Our NHS is undermined by millions of pounds wasted on
endless tendering of services to private providers. It is patient care that
suffers.

Let me give a quick example, an ambulance contract
here in Sussex handed to a private company who didn’t own any ambulances so
they sub-contracted to 20 other companies. Two ceased trading, and ambulances
drivers couldn’t be paid. Thankfully the contract was taken back off private
hands.

I had the privilege of meeting those ambulance
drivers recently. They continued taking patients to appointments for 8 weeks
without pay. Doesn’t that show public service is about a greater calling, is about
compassion, care and public duty, not contracts, markets and commercialisation.

So a Labour Government will legislate to reinstate
the Secretary of State’s duty to provide universal care, we’ll reintegrate the
NHS, reverse the Health and Social Care Act, fight fire sales of hospital
assets and end Tory privatisation.

Cutting beds, closing services and rationing
treatments because of underfunding is not sustainable transformation. So we
would stop the STPs and integrate health and social care.

I also want a new approach to public health that
protects people’s wellbeing for years to come.

To prevent disease, to reduce the toll from cancer,
stroke and diabetes it’s time to start tackling the causes of ill health too.
We need to end the dismantling of our public health services, we need to tackle
social isolation, build decent homes and improve the quality of the air we
breathe.

We have seen an increase in hospital admissions for
malnutrition, and a stalling in the improvement in life expectancy for the
first time in 100 years. We know a child born into poverty is likely to suffer
far worse health outcomes in life.

It was once said “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s
soul than the way in which it treats its children”.
This Party has long been committed to abolishing child poverty, so I can tell
you today that the next Labour Government will commit to an all-out assault on
child ill health too.

No longer will we let squalor impair the health of
our children.

We’ll recruit more health visitors for our
communities. We’ll invest in dentistry and, to tackle child obesity, we’ll give
every infant a free school meal and ban junk food advertising on family
night-time television.

And we’ll end the disgraceful cuts to child and
adolescent mental health budgets, end the scandal of children being treated on
adult wards, and finally deliver true parity of esteem.

I want to mention one other area. This year £43
million will be slashed from alcohol and drug addiction treatment services. Recently,
I chose to speak out very personally about my own circumstances, growing up
with a dad who had a drink problem. He was an alcoholic.

His drinking hung over my
childhood with the fridge empty other than bottles of drink. His drinking
became so bad in his final years he couldn’t bring himself to come to my
wedding because he felt too embarrassed.

I tell this story not for
your indulgence or sympathy. But because 2 million children grow
up with an alcoholic parent, 335,000 children grow up with a parent with drug
abuse issues.

So as part of our assault on child ill health, I will
put in place the first ever national strategy to support children of alcoholics
and drug users and we’ll invest in addiction treatment and prevention as well.

So conference, a
fully funded public National Health Service; fair pay for our staff; an end to
Tory privatisation; an assault on health inequalities. The very best quality of
care for all, free at the point of use, there when you need it.

This is what we
strive for. We settle for nothing less. It’s the demand of a
civilised society.

So today we pledge ourselves to united effort: and
resolve that the next Labour Government will rebuild our NHS.

ends

Author
Naomi Klein, speaking
at Labour Party Conference, said:

***CHECK
AGAINST DELIVERY***

Thank you
Kate for that lovely introduction and all the work that you do to put social
justice on the world agenda.

It’s been
such a privilege to be part of this historic convention. To feel its energy and
optimism.

Because
friends, it’s bleak out there. How do I begin to describe a world upside down?
From heads of state tweeting threats of nuclear annihilation, to whole regions
rocked by climate chaos, to thousands of migrants drowning off the coasts of
Europe, to openly racist parties gaining ground, most recently and alarmingly
in Germany.

Most days
there is simply too much to take in. So I want to start with an example that
might seem small against such a vast backdrop. The Caribbean and Southern
United States are in the midst of an unprecedented hurricane season: pounded by
storm after record-breaking storm.

As we
meet, Puerto Rico – hit by Irma, then Maria – is without power and could be for
months. It’s water and communication systems are also severely compromised.
Three and half million US citizens on that island are in desperate need of
their government’s help.

But just like
during Hurricane Katrina, the cavalry is missing in action. Donald Trump is too
busy trying to get Black athletes fired – smearing them for daring to shine a
spotlight on racist violence.

Amazingly
a real federal aid package for Puerto Rico has not yet been announced.

By some
reports, more money has been spent securing presidential trips to Mar-a-Lago.

As if all
this weren’t enough, the vultures are now buzzing. The business press is filled
with articles about how the only way for Puerto Rico to get the lights back on
is to sell off its electricity utility. Maybe its roads and bridges too.

This is a
phenomenon I have called The Shock Doctrine – the exploitation of wrenching
crises to smuggle through policies that devour the public sphere and further
enrich a small elite.

We see
this dismal cycle repeat again and again. We saw it after the 2008 financial
crash. We are already seeing it in how the Tories are planning to exploit
Brexit to push through disastrous pro-corporate trade deals without debate.

The
reason I am highlighting Puerto Rico is because the situation is so urgent. But
also because it’s a microcosm of a much larger global crisis, one that contains
many of the same overlapping elements: accelerating climate chaos; militarism; histories
of colonialism; a weak and neglected public sphere; a totally dysfunctional
democracy.

And
overlaying it all: the seemingly bottomless capacity to discount the lives of
huge numbers of Black and brown people.

Ours is
an age when it is impossible to pry one crisis apart from all the others. They
have all merged, reinforcing and deepening each other….. like one shambling,
multi-headed beast.

I think
it’s helpful to think of the current US president in much the same way.

It’s
tough to know how to adequately sum him up. So let me try a local example.

You know
that horrible thing currently clogging up the London sewers. I believe you call
it the fatberg?

Well
Trump, he’s the political equivalent of that.

A merger
of all that is noxious in the culture, economy and body politic, all kind of
glommed together in a self-adhesive mass. And we’re finding it very, very hard
to dislodge.

It gets
so grim that we have to laugh. But make no mistake: whether it’s climate change
or the nuclear threat, Trump represents a crisis that could echo through
geologic time.

But here
is my message to you today:

Moments
of crisis do not have to go the Shock Doctrine route – they do not need to become
opportunities for the already obscenely wealthy to grab still more.

They can
also go the opposite way.

They can
be moments when we find our best selves….. when we locate reserves of
strength and focus we never knew we had.

We see it
at the grassroots level every time disaster strikes.

We all
witnessed it in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower catastrophe.

When the
people responsible were MIA……. the community came together…… Held one
another in their care, organized the donations and advocated for the living –
and for the dead.

And they
are doing it still, more than 100 days after the fire.

When
there is still no justice and, scandalously, only a handful of survivors have
been rehoused.

And it’s
not only at the grassroots level that we see disaster awaken something
remarkable in us.

There is
also a long and proud history of crises sparking progressive transformation on
a society-wide scale.

Think of
the victories won by working people for social housing and old age pensions
during the Great Depression….. Or for the NHS after the horrors of the Second
World War.

This
should remind us that moments of great crisis and peril do not necessarily need
to knock us backwards.

They can
also catapult us forward.

Our
progressive ancestors achieved that at key moments in history, in your country
and in mine.

And we
can do it again – in this moment when everything is on the line.

But what
we know from the Great Depression and the post-war period, is that we never win
these transformative victories by simply resisting….. by simply saying “no”
to the latest outrage.

To win in
a moment of true crisis, we also need a bold and forward-looking “yes”

– a plan
for how to rebuild and respond to the underlying causes.

And that
plan needs to be convincing, credible and, most of all, captivating.

We have
to help a weary and wary public to imagine itself into that better world.

And that
is why I am so honoured to be standing with you today.

With the
transformed Labour Party in 2017.

And with
the next Prime Minister of Britain,

Jeremy
Corbyn.

Because
in the last election, that’s exactly what you did.

Theresa
May ran a cynical campaign based on exploiting fear and shock to grab more
power for herself – first the fear of a bad Brexit deal, then the fear
following the horrific terror attacks in Manchester and London.

Your
party and your leader responded by focusing on root causes: a failed “war on
terror”…. economic inequality and weakened democracy.

But you
did more than that.

You
presented voters with a bold and detailed Manifesto.

One that
laid out a plan for millions of people to have tangibly better lives:

free
tuition,

fully
funded health care,

aggressive
climate action.

After decades
of lowered expectations and asphyxiated political imagination, finally voters
had something hopeful and exciting to say “yes” to.

And so
many of them did just that, upending the projections of the entire expert
class.

You
proved that the era of triangulation and tinkering is over.

The
public is hungry for deep change – they are crying out for it.

The
trouble is, in far too many countries, it’s only the far right that is offering
it, or seeming to, with that toxic combination of fake economic populism and
very real racism.

You
showed us another way.

One that
speaks the language of decency and fairness, that names the true forces most
responsible for this mess – no matter how powerful.

And that
is unafraid of some of the ideas we were told were gone for good.

Like
wealth redistribution.

And
nationalising essential public services.

Now,
thanks to all of your boldness, we know that this isn’t just a moral strategy.

It’s a
winning strategy.

It fires up
the base, and it activates constituencies that long ago stopped voting
altogether.

If you
can keep doing that between now and the next election, you will be unbeatable.

You
showed us something else in the last election too, and it’s just as important.

You
showed that political parties don’t need to fear the creativity and
independence of social movements – and social movements, likewise, have a huge
amount to gain from engaging with electoral politics.

That’s a
very big deal.

Because
let’s be honest: political parties tend to be a bit freakish about control.

And real
grassroots movements….. we cherish our independence – and we’re pretty much
impossible to control.

But what
we are seeing with the remarkable relationship between Labour and Momentum, and
with other wonderful campaign organizations, is that it is possible to

combine
the best of both worlds.

If we
listen and learn from each other, we can create a force that is both stronger
and more nimble than anything either parties or movements can pull off on their
own.

I want
you to know that what you have done here is reverberating around the world – so
many of us are watching your ongoing experiment in this new kind of politics
with rapt attention.

And of
course what happened here is itself part of a global phenomenon.

It’s a
wave led by young people who came into adulthood just as the global financial
system was collapsing and just as climate disruption was banging down the door.

Many come
out of social movements like Occupy Wall Street, and Spain’s Indignados.

They
began by saying no – to austerity,

to bank
bailouts,

to
fracking and pipelines.

But they
came to understand that the biggest challenge is overcoming the way neoliberalism
has waged war on our collective imagination, on our ability to truly believe in
anything outside of its bleak borders.

And so
these movements started to dream together, laying out bold and different
visions of the future…. and credible pathways out of crisis.

And most
importantly they began engaging with political parties, to try to win power.

We saw it
in Bernie Sanders’ historic campaign in the US primaries…. which was powered
by millennials who know that safe centrist politics offers them no kind of safe
future.

By the
way…. Bernie, is the most popular politician in the United States today.

We see
something similar with Spain’s still-young Podemos party, which built in the
power of mass movements from Day One.

In all of
these cases, electoral campaigns caught fire with stunning speed.

And they
got close to taking power – closer than any genuinely transformative political
program has in either Europe or North America in my lifetime.

But
still, in each case, not close enough.

So in
this time between elections, it’s worth thinking about how to make absolutely
sure that next time, all of our movements go all the way.

A big
part of the answer is: Keeping it up.

Keep
building that yes.

But take
it even further.

Outside
the heat of a campaign, there is more time to deepen the relationships between
issues and movements, so that our solutions address multiple crises at once.

In all of
our countries, we can and must do more to connect the dots between economic
injustice, racial injustice and gender injustice.

We need
to understand and explain how all of those ugly systems that place one group in
a position of dominance over another – based on skin colour, religious faith,
gender and sexual orientation – consistently serve the interests of power and
money and always have.

They do
it by keeping us divided.

And
keeping themselves protected.

And we
have to do more to keep it front of mind…. that we are in a state of climate
emergency….  the roots of which are found
in the same system of bottomless greed that underlies our economic emergency.

But
states of emergency, let’s recall, can be catalysts for deep progressive
victories.

So let’s
draw out the connections between the gig economy – that treats human beings
like a raw resource from which to extract wealth and then discard – and the dig
economy, in which the extractive companies treats the Earth in precisely the
same careless way.

And let’s
show exactly how we can move from that gig and dig economy to a society based
on principles of care – caring for the planet and for one another. Where the
work of our caregivers and of our land and water protectors, is respected and
valued. A world where no one and nowhere is thrown away – whether in fire-trap
housing estates or on hurricane-ravaged islands.

I applaud
the clear stand Labour has taken against fracking and for clean energy. Now we
need to up our ambition and show exactly how battling climate change is a
once-in-a-century chance to build a fairer and more democratic economy.

Because
as we rapidly transition off fossil fuels, we cannot replicate the wealth
concentration and the injustices of the oil and coal economy, in which hundreds
of billions in profits have been privatized and the tremendous risks are
socialized.

We can
and must design a system in which the polluters pay a very large share of the
cost of transitioning off fossil fuels. And where we keep green energy in
public and community hands. That way revenues stay in your communities, to pay
for childcare and firefighters and other crucial services. And it’s the only
way to make sure that the green jobs that are created are union jobs that pay a
living wage.

The motto
needs to be: leave the oil and gas in the ground, but leave no worker behind.
And the best part, you don’t need to wait until you get to Westminster to start
this great transition. You can use the levers you have right now.

You can
take a page from Barcelona and turn your Labour-controlled cities into beacons
for the world transformed.

A good
start would be divesting your pensions from fossil fuels and investing that
money in low carbon social housing and green energy cooperatives.

That way people
can begin to experience the benefits of the next economy before the next
election – and know in their bones that yes, there is, and always has been, an
alternative.

In
closing…..

I want to
stress, as your international speaker, that none of this can be about turning
any one nation into a progressive museum.

In
wealthy countries like yours and mine, we need migration policies and levels of
international financing that reflect what we owe to the global south – our
historic role in destabilizing the economies and ecologies of poorer nations
for a great many years.

For
instance, during this epic hurricane season, we’ve heard a lot of talk of “the
British Virgin Islands,” the “French Virgin Islands” and so on.

Rarely
was it seen as relevant to observe that these are not reflections of where
Europeans like to holiday.

They are
reflections of the fact that so much of the vast wealth of empire was extracted
from these Islands in bonded human flesh.

Wealth
that supercharged Europe’s and North America’s industrial revolution,
positioning us as the super-polluters we are today.

And that
is intimately connected to the fact that the future and security of island
nations are now at grave risk from superstorms storms, sea level rise, and dying
coral reefs.

What
should this painful history mean to us today?

It means
welcoming migrants and refugees.

And it
means paying our fair share to help many more countries ramp up justice-based
green transitions of their own.

Trump
going rogue is no excuse to demand less of ourselves in the UK and Canada or
anywhere else for that matter.

It means
the opposite -that we have to demand more of ourselves.

To pick
up the slack until the United States manages to get its sewer system unclogged.

I firmly
believe that all of this work, challenging as it is, is a crucial part of the
path to victory.

That the
more ambitious, consistent and holistic you can be in painting a picture of the
world transformed, the more credible a Labour government will become.

Because
you went and showed us all that you can win.

Now you
have to win.

We all
do.

Winning
is a moral imperative.

The
stakes are too high, and time is too short, to settle for anything less.

Thank you

Angela Rayner MP, Shadow Secretary of
State for Education, speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today, said:

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

Conference, last year I said it was a
surprise, but a great privilege, to stand before you as Shadow Secretary of
State for Education.  And what a year it
has been.

Theresa May started it by warning of a
coalition of chaos. Now she leads it. And her education ministers have spent
the last few months ripping up their own Manifesto page by page.

They wanted to open new grammar schools.
But they can’t. They said they’d build 140 free schools. They couldn’t. They
pledged the healthy pupils fund would not fall below £400 million. Now it will.
They promised they’d provide free school breakfasts. But they won’t.

When we beat them on tuition fees, they
refused to accept it. Instead they will just stop turning up for votes. They’ve
gone from running the place to running away from the place.

In fact, I went through their Manifesto
line by line. There are more education policies that they are reviewing or
abandoning than they are actually implementing.

They’re binning their Manifesto; we are
building on ours.

The next Labour Government will create a
National Education Service, a cradle-to-grave system supporting everyone
throughout their lives. It would start in the early years, where we know it has
the most impact in changing people’s lives – just like my life was changed by a
Labour Government.

When I became pregnant at sixteen, it was
easy to think that the direction of my life, and that of my young son, was
already set. My mum had a difficult life, and so did I, and it looked like my
son would simply have the same.

Instead, the last Labour Government,
through support of my local Sure Start centre, transformed my son’s childhood,
and made sure that his life would not have to be as hard as mine had been. So
when I say that politics changes lives, I say it as someone whose own life was
changed.

Yet those services are being lost across
the country. We revealed today that since 2012, £437 million pounds has been
cut from Sure Start – nearly half of their funding.  That means more children and families with less
control over their lives.

So I am proud to say that we will give
£500 million a year directly to
Sure Start, reversing those cuts in full. Because to give every child a
fair chance to succeed, we need to give them the best possible start in life.

For far too many that simply isn’t
happening.  The Tories promised free
childcare to the children of working parents.
They promised over 600,000 places. But they created less than a quarter
of them. The most disadvantaged aren’t even eligible and costs are rising more
than twice as fast as wages.

Today, we are publishing a report setting
out the alternative. Free, high-quality early education, universally available
for every 2-4 year old, and extra
affordable care for every family, saving them thousands of pounds a year.
So our children will be ready for school.
And when children arrive, they won’t be let down for a lack of resources
there either.

The Government’s latest U-turn was on
their so-called fair funding formula two weeks ago. Thanks to our pressure, and
the great campaign run by parents and teachers, they have abandoned cash cuts
to schools.

But the truth is, there is no new money –
every penny has been found by cutting other education spending.  And they still won’t meet their promise that
funding will go up in real terms over five years. This means the continuation
of real terms funding cuts to 88% of schools, hitting the most disadvantaged
areas hard.

A Labour Government would meet that
promise instead: a fairer funding formula, but genuinely fair and properly
funded.  And we will remember the most
important resource: people.

Learning needs teaching. Teachers would
be at the heart of the National Education Service. And we will pay them
properly to do it. That is why we will bring an end to the public sector pay
cap.  And teaching assistants  and support staff too. Many have lost so much
that they are on the minimum wage. We will bring back national standards for
them too. They look after our children. We should look after them.

As well as giving our schools the
resources they need, we must ensure that they give every child the support they
need. Because all our pupils deserve a good quality of life. So, I am proud to
say that as your Secretary of State, I will allocate £10m from our departmental
budget to end the scandal of period poverty in our schools.

Councils are required to find a school
for every child. We will give them the resources to meet that responsibility.
Unlike the Tories, we will help successful state schools expand and ensure that
every child gets a school place. So we will invest £8bn pounds in new school
buildings, where they are needed. And we won’t neglect existing schools to do
it.      

We will provide the full £13bn pounds
needed for the existing school estate. Instead
of wasting millions of pounds on an inefficient free schools programme, we will
provide funding to ensure our schools are safe – that flammable cladding can be
removed, sprinklers installed and asbestos cleared.

And the National Education Service won’t
stop at eighteen, or sixteen.  Further
education isn’t just for those who ‘didn’t get the chance’ to go to university;
it serves the majority of young people. They too deserve a world-class
education.

Instead, the Tories are happy to manage
decline. I will only be happy when we manage success. So we will invest a
billion pounds into a further education service to deliver T-levels that are a
true gold standard.

The Tories keep talking about how they
want to help young people. Reducing fees.

Capping interest rates. Raising repayment
thresholds. I’ve got a suggestion for them. Stop talking about it, and get on
with it.

But our National Education Service is not
just for young people either. That is personal to me too. At sixteen I was out
of school and looking for work, but without qualifications to offer. I
supported myself and my son as a care worker, looking after the elderly and
disabled in their homes. Low qualifications meant low wages. No skills meant no
security.

As a trade unionist with Unison, I could
change that. Not just for myself, but for the carers I worked with, and the
people we cared for. Workplace education meant we had the chance to learn more
and earn more. Other people need that chance. So, our National Education
Service will be lifelong, providing for people at every stage of their life.

That is our National Education Service.
Not just another structure. Not another new sign on the school gate.

A promise, from a Labour Government, to
the British people and British businesses.

That we believe in all of them, in their
talent and their potential, in all they give to our country, and that we will
never limit their aspiration or their ability to succeed.  It will set out the education that people can
expect throughout their lives. The contribution that society makes to them and
that they can make to society.

Today, we outline the principles of that
National Education Service in a draft charter, starting a conversation on how
we continue to build it moving forward. And I look forward to that
conversation, to visiting schools, colleges, and universities, to talking to
pupils, parents, teachers, and businesses, so we can truly build a National
Education Service for the many, and not just the few.

Conference, Education informs. It
inspires. And it empowers. Because knowledge is power. I know that from my own
life. We must ensure that power becomes the right of every person, whatever the
circumstances of their birth.

That means giving opportunity to all,
with a guarantee of lifelong learning, whenever they need it. It means giving
power back to our communities, ensuring that every school in receipt of public
money is genuinely, democratically accountable to the people it serves.

The Labour Party was founded to ensure
that the workers earned the full fruit of their labour.  Well, the sum of human knowledge is the fruit
of thousands of years of human labour. The discoveries of maths and science;
the great works of literature and art; the arc of human and natural history
itself; and so much more that there is to learn. All of it should be our common
inheritance. Because knowledge belongs to the many, not the few.

This is our historic purpose as a
movement. Not just to be a voice for the voiceless.

But to give them a voice of their own.
That is the challenge we face. And it is what we will do, together. 

We have got the Government running. Now
let’s get running the Government.

Thank you.