Reeves lists Labour’s achievements
Reeves says that in every one of the 451 days it has been in office it has achieved more than it did in the more than 5,000 days it was in opposition.
She is now listing achievements, including:
creating Britain’s first genuine living wage, getting spades in the ground on new road and rail projects, backing our communities to strengthen Pride in Place, including here in Merseyside with the reopening of Southport pier, investing in home-grown, British energy, freezing fuel duty, capping bus fares, recruiting new neighbourhood police, opening school breakfast clubs, expanding free school meals, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty as we do it, and delivering a pay rise – a deserved pay rise – to our nurses, our teachers, our police and our armed forces.
And conference, we’re making the NHS fit for the future too, with £29bn a year towards its day to day funding, a record cash investment – the NHS created by a Labour government, protected by every Labour government and protected by this Labour government.
Key events
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Reeves says Covid corruption comissioner has recovered almost £400m lost during pandemic
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Reeves lists Labour’s achievements
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Reeves wins support of delegates as she hits back at pro-Gaza heckler, saying Labour no longer party of protest
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Labour ‘chose investment’ when it took office, Reeves says
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Why Scottish Labour’s leaders think there is path to victory in next year’s Holyrood elections
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Development minister Jenny Chapman says she’s ‘incredibly worried’ about disease breaking out in Gaza
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Elections guru John Curtice delivers grim prognosis for Labour, saying just attacking Reform UK won’t bring recovery
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Lib Dems accuse Reeves of planning ‘£10bn stealth tax’ by extending threshold freeze
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‘This is genocide’, and waiting for court to confirm that ‘too late’, says Unison’s Christine McAnea
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Labour activists urged to back motion saying Israel has committed genocide in Gaza
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Jackie Baillie tells Burnham to shelve leadership positioning, amid concerns it will harm Labour at Holyrood elections
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Reeves suggests big tax rises coming in budget, saying ‘world has changed’ and pledges made at CBI last year no longer apply
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Reeves plays down, but does not deny, report saying Treasury expects tax will have to rise by £30bn in budget
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Reeves to urge business leaders to face up to risk Reform UK poses to economy
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Reeves says much of speculation about possible tax rises in budget is ‘rubbish’
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Reeves confirms she no longer stands by pledge to CBI last year about not coming back with more tax rises
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Reeves says benefits bill too high
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Reeves does not dispute LBC presenter’s suggestion that Andy Burnham bond market comments makes him ‘Trussesque’
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Reeves says people can support racist policy without being racist, in reference to PM’s comment about Reform UK
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Reeves pushes back at suggestions VAT may rise, saying commitment not to put it up still stands
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Reeves to pledge Youth Guarantee to ‘abolish’ unemployment for young people
Reeves says she can only spend this money because Labour regained the trust of the electorate.
She will never squander that trust, she says.
We were able to increase investment only because we remain steadfast in that commitment to economic responsibility.
That was not a trade off against Labour values, she says. She says financial responsibility is part of Labour values.
Reeves says the government is also investing in social housing.
At the spending review she announced £40bn for this, “the biggest cash investment into council, social, and affordable housing in a generation”.
Reeves is now listing areas around Britain where Labour is investing.
She says the government will “push ahead” with plans for Northern Powerhouse rail.
(It was recently reported that this was being delayed. What “push ahead” with means is not clear.)
Reeves says Britain needs more growth.
Investment is part of the solution to that, she says, as well as planning reform, as well as reform to pensions, a national wealth fund, a modern industrial strategy, and new trade deals.
Reeves says Covid corruption comissioner has recovered almost £400m lost during pandemic
Reeves says, thanks to the work of the Covid corruption commissioner, the government has recovered almost £400m that was lost during the Covid pandemic.
We are getting that money back, and we are putting it where it belongs – in our communities, in our schools and in our national health service.
Reeves confirms she is funding libraries in every primary school in England.
Reeves lists Labour’s achievements
Reeves says that in every one of the 451 days it has been in office it has achieved more than it did in the more than 5,000 days it was in opposition.
She is now listing achievements, including:
creating Britain’s first genuine living wage, getting spades in the ground on new road and rail projects, backing our communities to strengthen Pride in Place, including here in Merseyside with the reopening of Southport pier, investing in home-grown, British energy, freezing fuel duty, capping bus fares, recruiting new neighbourhood police, opening school breakfast clubs, expanding free school meals, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty as we do it, and delivering a pay rise – a deserved pay rise – to our nurses, our teachers, our police and our armed forces.
And conference, we’re making the NHS fit for the future too, with £29bn a year towards its day to day funding, a record cash investment – the NHS created by a Labour government, protected by every Labour government and protected by this Labour government.
Reeves says Labour can make these choices because of Keir Starmer’s leadership.
Labour members gave their all to regain the trust of the British people.
She says she wants to explain what gets her up every morning. Her parents were teachers. Ordinary family find themselves fighting a system that hoard privilege at the top.
When she was growing up, the Tory government did not care about children like her.
She believes in “a Britain founded on contribution”.
I believe in a Britain founded on contribution, where we do our duty for each other, and where hard work is matched by fair reward.
I believe in a Britain based on opportunity, where ordinary kids can flourish unhindered by their backgrounds.
And I believe that Britain’s real wealth is found not only in the success of the fortunate few, but in their talents of all our people in every part of our great country.
Reeves wins support of delegates as she hits back at pro-Gaza heckler, saying Labour no longer party of protest
A pro-Gaza heckler interrupts, talking about genocide.
Reeves says the government has recognised a Palestinian state.
But Labour has changed, it is not a party of protest, and that is why she is here as chancellor of the exchequer.
Delegates applaud, drowing out the heckler.
Reeves says she calls her approach “securonomics”.
That is why she has stepped in to help the shipbuilding industry.
And it has stepped in this weekend to protect Jaguar Land Rover. The automotive industry is “the jewel in the crown of British manufacturing”, she says.
And she says, when steel jobs were at risk, the government intervened to take control of British Steel.
There must be a future for steel jobs in Britain, she says.
Labour ‘chose investment’ when it took office, Reeves says
Reeves starts by thanking Matt for his kind introduction.
She says she was proud to announce the Sizewell C investment.
It will produce the energy to power 6m homes.
When Labour was elected, Britain was faced with the choice of investment or decline.
Labour “chose investment”, she says.
The Tories did not choose that, and oppose it from opposition.
So there is a difference between the Tories and Labour, she says.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is about to give her speech to the conference.
Before she starts, a welder has been invited on stage to speak.
He says he met Reeves at the GMB confernce when she announced that Sizewell C was going to go ahead. He was honoured and excited, delighted that unions voices had been heard.
The government was showing it was committed to investing in the sectors of the future, he says.
Sizewell C will take £14bn of investment. GMB members feel pride in the industry, he says. They “finally felt heard”, he said.
The government is investing “in a brighter future for the whole of Britain”, he said.
Why Scottish Labour’s leaders think there is path to victory in next year’s Holyrood elections
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Scottish Labour leaders have sketched out their broad strategy for trying to win next year’s Holyrood election, warning their candidates and activists that time to overturn a huge polling deficit is running short.
Despite a 17-point deficit behind the Scottish National party, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, told a Politico event in Liverpool he believed pollsters and pundits seriously underestimated his party’s capacity, while overstating the threat from Reform UK.
Sarwar said June’s Holyrood byelection in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, when Labour triumphed despite very poor national polling and an apparently surging Reform vote, was a “preview for what’s going to happen next year.”
He said:
Reform are going to try to create noise, try and divide us and try and do a ‘plague on all your houses’ kind of approach [which] was utterly rejected and probably horrified lots of people across the country.
What did John Swinney, the SNP, do? They didn’t fight the byelection on their record. They’re not planning on fighting the election next year on their record. And who can blame them? [And] now they want to talk about independence, not because they think they’re going to win a majority. It’s purely a distraction from their record all over again.
What did Labour do? We ran the most impressive ground campaign we have ever done, the most, successful, intricate and detailed digital campaign we’ve ever ran. And we focused on the issues that matter to people. And I’m genuinely really, really confident that if we do the same again next year we will win the election.
Facing a very volatile electorate, where Reform is currently up-ending conventional party dynamics in Scotland, Labour strategists believe Labour can win by forming a new “transactional coalition” of voters if they relentlessly focus on voters’ low levels of happiness with the SNP’s domestic record.
At a Scottish Fabians fringe event on Sunday, Jackie Baillie, Sarwar’s deputy, and Douglas Alexander, the recently-appointed Scotland secretary, offered different versions of the same countdown clock facing Labour.
Alexander, appointed after Starmer’s deeply unpopular move to sack Ian Murray as Scotland secretary, said:
The way I think about this job is after this conference, we will have eight weeks until a Labour budget at the end of November. We therefore have ten weeks of political activity this side of Christmas. We then have 12 weeks from the 1 January to the 31 March, and then we are into the short campaign. So to each and every one of the candidates and I see a number of candidates, there’s not going to be much sleep and there’s going to be a lot of activity in the coming weeks and months.
Baillie, who selected nearly all Scottish Labour’s new Holyrood candidates, drummed home the same message: “It’s seven months away, 221 days. I know Douglas broke it down into different chunks but you need to work hard for each and every one of the 221 days. And I will be watching.”
In the conference hall delegates are now debating economic matters.
When Gaza was being debated, apart from the union delegates proposing and seconding it, no speaker was called backing the “genocide” motion. (See 10.31am.) The The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said this was “a blatant undemocatic move by the Labour leadership to silence demands from trade unions and members for Labour to acknowledge Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza”.
Development minister Jenny Chapman says she’s ‘incredibly worried’ about disease breaking out in Gaza
Eleni Courea
Eleni Courea is a Guardian political correspondent.
Jenny Chapman, the minister for international development, said she was “incredibly worried” that Gaza was “on the verge” of an outbreak of disease.
Speaking at a conference fringe event hosted by the Labour campaign for International Development, she said:
What I can’t understand is why the government of Israel is not more concerned about the outbreak of disease. Previously they’ve been very concerned about that because, clearly, disease knows no border.
IPC [Integrated food security Phase Classification] has designated famine already. The cascade event is starting to hit, disease is going to spread unless something is done very, very urgently, and even then once these things take hold it’s very very difficult to act. So I’m incredibly worried, and I think the things that we’re doing diplomatically on the world stage are very important but they don’t feed a single child, and we have to keep on using whatever levers we can.
The GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] method of distribution of aid has been a catastrophic failure, as we all said it would be. And it just proves that humanitarian principles really matter.
