Protesters opposed to arms sales to Israel disrupt Reeves’ speech
The speech is now being interupted by protesters saying Labour should not be selling arms to Israel.
Reeves says Labour is not the party of protest any more. And she says the party has changed.
Key events
Reeves says, if the UK had grown at the rate of the OECD average under the Tory years, the economy would be £140bn larger than it is today. That would mean the government having £58bn a year more for public services “without raising a single tax rate by a single penny revenue to invest in our schools, our hospitals, our police and all our public services”.
Reeves says her ambition knows no limits.
The British capacity for inventiveness, enterprise and old-fashioned hard work has not gone away.
So believe me when I say my optimism about Britain is brighter than ever.
My ambition knows no limits, because I can see that provided that we make the right choices now, stability is a crucial foundation on which all of our ambitions will be built, the essential precondition for business to invest with confidence and for families to plan for the future.
The Liz Truss experiment showed us that any plan for growth without stability leads to ruin.
Reeves says she ‘won’t turn blind eye to fraudsters’, as she confirms Covid corruption commissioner being appointed
Reeves gets a round of applause for saying she has cancelled the government contract for a VIP helicopter ordered by Rishi Sunak.
And she delivers the passage about the Covid corruption commissioner. (See 10.35am.) She says:
I have put a block on any contract being abandoned or waived until it has been independently assessed by that commissioner.
I won’t turn a blind eye to rip off artists and fraudsters. I won’t turn a blind eye to line their own pockets. I won’t let them get away with that. That money belongs in our police, it belongs in our health service, and it belongs in our schools.
This gets perhaps the loudest round of applause so far.
Reeves says cutting winter fuel payments was ‘right decision in circumtances we inherited’
Reeves is now restating the assessment of the public finances, and the £22bn black hole in the current spending budget for this year, that she outline to parliament in July.
When she took office, she was told that failure to act quickly would undermine the UK’s fiscal position, “with implications for public debt, mortgages and prices”.
She says she decided to means-test the winter fuel payments.
I know that not everyone in this hall or in the country will agree with every decision that I make. I will not duck those decisions, not for political expediency, not for personal advantage.
But she says, given the £22bn black hole, and the fact the triple lock will lead to the state pension rising by an estimated £1,700 over the course of this parliament, she judged cutting the winter fuel payment “the right decision in the circumstances that we inherited”.
The protest is over, and Reeves is getting back into her stride again.
She attacks the Tories.
Where will the Conservatives go next? For what a clash of the titans their leadership contest has become.
The former home secretary who called the Rwanda scheme batshit and is, of course, now pledging to bring it back.
The former immigration minister who found himself too right wing to work with Sweller Braveman.
The moderate candidate, the security minister, former security minister, who says that he acts on his principles previously demonstrated by backing Liz Truss to be prime minister.
And then there’s the former business secretary, who claims that she became working class at the age of 16.
From Sky’s Beth Rigby
Reeves speech interrupted by a protester (as Starmer’s was a couple of years back) shouting about Lab “selling arms to Israel”. She delivers a line similar to that Starmer used back then: “We are a changed Labour party that represents working people not party of protest”
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) September 23, 2024
Reeves speech interrupted by a protester (as Starmer’s was a couple of years back) shouting about Lab “selling arms to Israel”. She delivers a line similar to that Starmer used back then: “We are a changed Labour party that represents working people not party of protest”
Here is video of the protest.
Reeves gets going again, but there is at least one more shout.
She does not seem too bothered by the protest. Most people in the hall are on his side, it seems.
Protesters opposed to arms sales to Israel disrupt Reeves’ speech
The speech is now being interupted by protesters saying Labour should not be selling arms to Israel.
Reeves says Labour is not the party of protest any more. And she says the party has changed.
Reeves says she wants to put work of all women ‘back into our economic story’
Rachel Reeves starts her speech by saying, after 14 years, she is ready to deliver on the pledge to get Britain building.
(She is smiling a lot.)
Labour is back, she says. She lists some of the seats the party one, including several in Scotland. “Labour is back in Scotland too,” she says.
She pays tribute to Labour members who helped the party achieve this.
One year ago she says she told the conference she wanted to be the first female chancellor of the exchequer. That is a promise fulfilled, she says.
She says every women watching will know that, however hard they climb, “there will always be moments when you are reminded some people still do not believe no woman can get the job done”. But she says her appointment has disproved that.
And she says this is because of the work of women before her.
I’m here because of thousands of women, many of you in the hall today, who broke down barriers and defeated low expectations to pave the way for the rest of us. I am a Labour chancellor because of that collective endeavor. I am the first woman Chancellor because of that collective endeavor.
And that collective endeavor does not stop here. It falls to me and to our generation of Labour women to follow in the footsteps of those who went before us, to write the work of all women back into our economic story.
At the conference they are now playing a Reeves promo video.
Reynolds has finished. Alex Depledge, a tech entrepreneur, is now introducing Rachel Reeves.
She praises Reeves for saying she wanted to make sure wealth creation is not a dirty word in the UK.
Reeves know there is no silver bullet to having a thriving economy. But she carries on regardless. She says Reeves is the sort of “smart person” she would choose to run this nation’s spreedsheets. She is also the sort of builder she would choose to rebuild Britain. And she is the kind of leader she would choose champion high growth and balance the books.
Reeves also “took a wrecking ball” to the glass ceiling, she says.
Reynolds says the government will extend workers’ rights. He goes on:
You may have seen the Conservative party. They don’t like our plan to make work pay. And whilst it’s ironic to hear the same people who have been asleep on the job for the last 14 years complain about other people’s working practices, didn’t we hear the same arguments against the minimum wage?
So when they stand up in a few years time trying to claim credit for the work the labour movement did to advance the rights of working people, don’t you let them forget which side of history they were on.
