28/09/2016 - Live Afternoon Session Labour Party Conference

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Doctor Sheila Coleman.

APPLAUSE Thank you. I am a resident of the top step in the south of the

city. I have lived and worked in Liverpool all my life. It has been

an honour for us to host the Labour Party conference of 2016 and I hope

you have all enjoyed our city, the culture... APPLAUSE. The culture,

the nightlife and our warm Liverpool welcome. Liverpool is a brave,

courageous and progressive city. We as Scousers unite in solidarity to

welcome visitors. We also unite in solidarity when our people are hurt.

The Hillsborough disaster was an injustice and avoidable. I am not

one of the bereaved families but I have been involved with others in

campaigning for truth and justice to be established since 1989. APPLAUSE.

I and others knew that by standing with families and survivors of the

disaster who were telling us what had happened, that one day, the

truth would be acknowledged and one day, we would secure justice. We did

not think it would take 27 years to have the verdict overturned but that

was how long we were prepared to go. From the very beginning, Liverpool

Labour council established the Hillsborough disaster working party

and supported those fighting for the truth. And I acknowledge them

because without them, a lot of the early work could not have been done

without that practical and moral support. In the latter years, Labour

worked with aggrieved families to help secure justice for Hillsborough

and in so doing, assisted in affording the dead of Hillsborough

the respect that had long been denied. I am a member of the

Hillsborough Justice campaign, a grassroots campaign born out of the

fundamental injustice. We are proof that campaigns that are rooted in

our communities lead to success. Jeremy Corbyn's re-election is the

key to your success. APPLAUSE. Jeremy has energised our communities

and brought on board a new generation of people who previously

were disillusioned with politics. APPLAUSE.

Please, unite behind your socialist leader! APPLAUSE. He is the Leader.

He is also a leader who reflects what is good about my city. He is

honest, proud and strong and he never gives in. APPLAUSE.

Comrades, when Jeremy takes to the platform in a few minutes, please

give him the huge Scouse welcome he deserves and has earned but first,

let us watch a short film relevant to this conference. Thank you.

APPLAUSE. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Leader of the

Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn! APPLAUSE.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that welcome and that introduction.

This hall is absolutely packed here today in Liverpool and we even have

an overspill down the road. I want to say thank you to everyone that is

here today. APPLAUSE. Before I go into my speech, I want to also say a

huge thank you to all the staff of this conference centre that have

made us so welcome and have worked so hard here today. I want to say

thank you to all of our Labour Party staff for the huge work they have

put him for this conference today and all the other days. And I want

to say a big thank you to my own staff in my own office in the

constituency and in Parliament that the huge work and support they give

me give our party, all year round. APPLAUSE. But I have got to correct

myself because I did say that all is completely packed. I got a message

on the way in from Virgin Trains. They have assured me there are 800

empty seats in the hall! APPLAUSE. Either way, it is a huge pleasure to

be holding our party's annual conference at this fantastic city,

the city of Liverpool that shaped our country, economy, culture and

music. Liverpool has always been central to the Labour Party and our

movement and I know some people say campaigns and protests do not change

things. But the Hillsborough families have shown just how wrong

that is. APPLAUSE. It has taken 27 years but those

families have shown with great courage and dignity finally, do you

can get truth and justice for the 96 who died. I want to pay tribute to

all of the families and campaigners for their solidarity, commitment and

love. Thank you. APPLAUSE. And as Andy Burnham put it to conference

this morning, we must learn from them. And we promise, those

campaigning for justice, for the thousands of workers blacklisted for

being trade unionists, we will support your battles for truth and

justice, and when we return to government, we will make sure you

have both. APPLAUSE. Because winning justice for all and changing society

for the benefit of all is the heart of what Labour is about. So yes, our

party is about campaigning and protests. But most of all, it is

about winning power in local and national government to deliver the

real change our country so desperately needs. APPLAUSE.

That is why the central task of the whole Labour Party must be to

rebuild trust and support to win the next general election.

Button for the benefit of working people.

Everyone of us in this hall knows we will only get there if we work

together. It is fair to say, after what we have been through these past

few months, it has not exactly been the case. Those months have been a

testing time for the whole party. First the horrific murder of

Jo Cox, then the Brexit loss, and the leadership contest. Jo Cox's

loss was horrific, she believed in loving her neighbour, and that every

person can tip. She believed that we have far more things in common with

each other, then divide us. Let that truth guide us as we come together

again to challenge the Tory government and its shaky grip on

power. In her memory, thank you for

everything she did, and her family and close friends for all they have

been through, and the solidarity they have shown together, so we may

learn from their life. APPLAUSE.

We also lost good MPs Buick were compassionate campaigners for a

better world. Let me pay a particular tribute to those

parliamentary colleagues who step forward in the summer to fill the

gaps in the Shadow Cabinet. And ensuring that Labour could

function as an effective opposition in parliament. They actually did not

seek office, but they stepped up when their party and the country

needed them to serve. They all deserve the respect and gratitude of

the party and movement. This conference should thank them today,

they are our future. We have just had our second

leadership election within a year. It had its fraught moments, not only

for Owen Smith and me, and I hope we don't make a habit of it. There have

also been some upsides to it. Over 150,000 new members joining our

party. Young rising stars have shone on the front bench, we have found

the party is more united on policy then we would ever have guessed. I

am deeply honoured to have been re-elected by our party a second

time, with an even bigger mandate. APPLAUSE.

But we all have lessons to learn and a responsibility to do things

better, and work together more effectively. I will lead with

learning those lessons. I would like to thank Tobin for the campaign and

his work the shadow health and pension secretary. And also, of

course, to the Labour Party staff, our own teams and the brilliant

scenes that support all our members of Parliament and our party around

the country. One lesson is, there is a responsibility on all of us to

take care with our rhetoric, respect democratic decisions, respect our

differences, and respect each other. We know that robust debate has at

times spilled into abuse and hate around our country, including

misogyny and anti-separatism, especially on social media. --

anti-Semitism. Let me make that clear, that is utterly unacceptable.

APPLAUSE. Our party must be a safe and

welcoming space for everybody. We will continue to take firm action

against abuse and intimidation. Let me be absolutely clear,

anti-Semitism is an evil, leading to the worst crimes of the 20th

century. Every one of us has two ensure it is never allowed to fester

in our society again. APPLAUSE. This party always has and

always will fight against prejudice, hatred of Jewish people, with every

breath in our body. We meet, this year, as the largest

political party in western Europe, with over half a million members,

campaigning in every community in Britain. More people have joined our

party in the last 20 months, then the previous 20 years.

We have more of our fellow citizens in our party then all the other

political parties in Britain put together. Some may see this as a

threat, I see this as a vast democratic resorts. I wish eg

increased membership is part of a movement, that can take Labour's

message into every community, winning support for the election of

a Labour government. Each and every one of these new

members is welcome in our party. After a ten year absence, we welcome

back the fire brigade's union to our party and conference.

APPLAUSE. We are reuniting the Labour family.

I want to, if I may, say thank you to all the firefighters and public

sector workers who worked so hard to save people during the floods last

winter. Thank you for everything he did. Over the past year, we have

shown what Labour can do when the party stands together. At conference

a year ago, I launched a campaign against cuts to tax credits, and we

succeeded in knocking this government back. This year, 3

million families are over ?1000 better off because Labour stood

together. In the budget, the government tried to take away

billions from disabled people. But we defeated them on that.

And, we won all four Parliamentary by-elections, I welcome our new

colleagues to Parliament, and the great victories they achieved. In

the May elections, we overtook the Tories to become the largest party

nationally. We won back to London with a massive win for Sadiq Khan,

the first Muslim mayor of the capital city in Europe. I

congratulate him for that incredible win.

We won the Bristol mayor for the first time. Marvin Reece. The first

black mayor of any European city, my congratulations to him. And we also

won May elections in Salford and right here in Liverpool. That is the

road of advance we have to return to to challenge the Tories for power,

and turn the huge growth in the Labour Party into the electoral

support we need right across Britain. There is no doubt that my

election as Labour leader one year ago, and re-election this month grew

out of a first for a new kind of politics. A conviction that the old

way of riding the economy in the country is not delivering for more

and more people. It is not about me, or unique to Britain. Across Europe,

North America and elsewhere, people are fed up with the so-called free

market system that has produced grotesque inequality, stagnating

living standards, and many calamitous foreign wars without end.

A political stitch up which leaves the vast majority of people shut out

of power. Since the crash of 2008, the demand for an alternative, and

the end to counter productive austerity has led to the rise of new

movements and parties in one country after another. In Britain, it has

happened in different ways, in the heart of political politics, the

Labour Party. Something we should be extremely proud of. Exactly what

Labour was founded for coming to be the voice of many, social justice,

and progressive change, from the bottom up.

APPLAUSE. But it also means, it is no good

harking back to the tired old economic and political fixes of 20

and 30 years ago. They won't work any more. The old model is broken,

we are in a new era, that demands a politics and economics that meets

the needs of our own time. Actually, even to reason may get sick, sort

of. -- Theresa May gets it. That is why she talks about the equalities

and burning injustice in today's Britain. Well, she said it. In fact

she promised the country that works not for a privileged view

-- few, but everyone of us. Even if she talks the war, it is time to

walk the walk. It is David Cameron's government, repackaged with a new

harsh right-wing edge, taking the country backwards, and dithering

before the historic challenges of Brexit.

Who is seriously believes that the Tories could ever stand up to the

privileged few? They are the party of the privileged few. Funded by the

privileged few, for the benefit of the privileged few.

Theirs is a party, after all, and that now wants to force through an

undemocratic boundary review, based in and out of date version of the

electoral register, with nearly two million voters missing. They have

dressed it up as a bid to cast the -- cut the cost of politics. The 12

million savings are dwarfed by the expense of the 260 peers that David

Cameron appointed, at the cost of ?34 million a year.

It is nothing more than a cynical attempt to gerrymander the next

election. And this is from a Prime Minister elevated to her job without

a single votes being cast, after a pantomime farce, seeing one leading

Tory after another falling on their swords. When I meet Theresa May

across the dispatch box, I know only one of us has been elected to the

office they hold by the votes of nearly 200,000 people. In any case,

the Tories are simply incapable of responding to the breakdown of the

old economic model. That failed model is absolutely in their

political DNA. It is what they deliver every time they are in

government. Tory governments deregulate, outsource, Private eyes,

and stand by as inequality grows. They cut taxes for the privileged

few, sell financial assets on the cheap, turn a blind eye to the

chronic tax avoidance. They are so committed to the interests of the

very richest, they have recruited Sir Philip Green into government, as

something called and efficiencies are. I am not sure what that is, but

I would simply say this, government might be a bit more efficient if the

super rich like Sir Philip actually paid their taxes.

When governments steps back, there are consequences for everyone of us.

Look what has happened housing under the Tories. Housing has fallen to

the lowest level since the 1920s, home ownership is falling as more

people are priced out of the market, evictions and disgracefully

homelessness and rough sleeping go up month after month, year after

year. Council homes are being sold off without being replaced. And

another consequence of that is that we, all of us, are paying over ?9

billion a year to private landlords in housing benefit to pay the rent.

Instead of spending public money on building Council Housing, we are

subsidising private landlords. That is wasteful, inefficient and

frankly, poor government. APPLAUSE. So Labour will, built over 1 million

new homes, at least half of them council homes, and we will control

private rents so we can give every British family that basic human

rights, a decent home. APPLAUSE. It is the same and the jobs market.

Without proper employment regulation, there has been an

explosion of temporary insecure jobs. Nearly 1 million people are on

zero hours contracts, not knowing what their earnings will be. There

are now 6 million working people earning less than the living wage

and the poverty amongst those in work is at record levels. That did

not happen by accident. The Tories have torn up employment rights and

deliberately tried to weaken the organisations that get people

justice at work, the trade unions. APPLAUSE. Of course, trade unions

are not taking this lying down. Look at the great campaign Unite has

waged at sports direct to get justice for exploited workers. And

hold Mike Ashley to account. That is why Labour will repeal the trade

union act and set unions free to do their jobs, defending and supporting

their members and rights at work. APPLAUSE.

And we will raise the minimum wage to a real living wage that brings

working people out of poverty and will ban zero hours contracts. John

McDonnell, our Shadow Chancellor, set this out very clearly at

conference this week. And then there is the scandal of the privatised

railways. More public subsidy than under the days of British rail. All

going to private firms and more delays, more cancellations and on

top of that, the highest fares in Europe. That is widely great

majority of British people back Labour's plan set out so well by

Andy McDonald this week to take the railways back into public ownership.

APPLAUSE. But if you want the most spectacular

example of what happens when government step back, the global

banking crash is an object lesson, a deregulated industry of

out-of-control greed and speculation that crashed economies across the

globe and required the biggest ever government intervention and public

bailout in history. Millions of ordinary families paid the price of

that failure. I pledge that Labour will never let a few reckless

bankers wreck our economy again! APPLAUSE.

So, Labour is offering solutions. During this summer's leadership

campaign, I set out ten pledges which I believe can be the platform

of our party's programme. They were put to conference yesterday in a

statement. They lay out the scope of change we need to see. For full

employment, a homes guarantee, security at work, a strong public

National Health Service and social care, a national education service

for all, action on climate change, public ownership and control of our

services, a cut in inequality of income and wealth, action to secure

an equal society and peace and justice at the heart of our foreign

policy. APPLAUSE. Do not worry, conference. They are not the Ten

Commandments. I have not come down from the mountain with them! They

are here already and they will now of course go to the National policy

Forum and the whole party needs to build on them. All our brilliant

members have ideas, imagination, inspiration. We want to help and

refining those policies and above all, take them out to the people of

this country, take them out so that we get support. But those ten

pledges, the core of the platform, will now form the framework of what

Labour will campaign for and for what a Labour government will do.

Together, they showed the direction of change we are determined to take

an outline a programme to rebuild and transform Britain. They are

rooted in traditional Labour values and objectives but they are shaped

to meet the challenges of the 21st-century. They are values Labour

is united on. They reflect the views and aspirations of the majority of

our people and they are values our country can and will support sooner

is the given the chance to it. APPLAUSE. These pledges are not just

words. Already across the country, Labour councils are putting Labour

values into action in a way that makes a real difference to millions

of people despite cynical government funding cuts that have hit Labour

councils, often representing the poorest parts of the country, five

times as hard as Tory run areas. APPLAUSE. Good examples like

Nottingham City Council, setting up the not-for-profit Robin Hood energy

company, to provide affordable energy, or Cardiff bus company

taking 100,000 passengers every day publicly owned for the passenger

panel to hold its directors to account. Or Preston Council, working

to fake the local procurement and keep money in, or Newcastle Council

providing free Wi-Fi in 69 public buildings across the city, or

Croydon council which is set up a company to build 1000 new homes. We

can no longer afford to sit back and let the market take its course. Or

Glasgow, that has established high quality and flexible workplaces for

start-up and high-growth companies in dynamic new sectors. All right

here in Liverpool, the global forefront of the new wave of

technology,, a ?15 million business hub that aims to create 300 start-up

businesses and 1000 jobs over the next decade, and there are many

other examples. It is a proud Lage record. Each and every Labour

councillor deserves our heartfelt thanks for the work they do and the

difficulties they ensure in doing it. APPLAUSE But I want to go

further because we want local government to go further and put

public enterprise back into the heart of our economy and services to

meet the needs of local communities. Municipal socialism for the

21st-century as an engine of local growth and development. That is why

I am announcing that Labour will remove the artificial borrowing cap

and allow councils to borrow against their housing stock. That single

measure alone... APPLAUSE. That single measure alone would allow

them to build an extra 12,000 council homes year. Labour councils

increasingly have a policy of an in-house as the preferred provider

and many councils have broad bin collections, cleaners and IT

services back in-house, in sourcing privatised contracts. APPLAUSE. I

have said that Labour will put security work and employment in

union rights from day one centre stage but one in six workers in

Britain are now self-employed. They are right to value their

independence but the too many, it comes with insecurity and a wilful

lack of rights. So we will review arrangements for self-employed

people including Social Security that self-employed people paid for

in their taxes yet are not fully covered by it. We will ensure the

successful innovators have access to the finance necessary to take their

ideas to the next level, grow their businesses and generate employment.

So as part of our workplace 2020 review, we will make sure our tax

and social security arrangements are fit for the 21st century, consulting

the self-employed workers and the Federation of Small Businesses.

APPLAUSE. If the Tories are the party of cuts in short-term is,

Labour is the party of investing for the future. APPLAUSE. With the same

level of investment as other major economies, we could be so much more.

We could unlock so much skill, ingenuity and wealth. That is why we

will establish a national investment bank at the heart of our plan to

rebuild and transform this country, and we will borrow to invest at

historically low interest rates to generate far greater returns. It

would be foolish not to because that investment is expanding the economy

and the income it generates for Arsenal in the process. Even this

government, after years of austerity and savage cuts, is starting to

changes tune. I am not content with accepting second-class broadband, or

creaking railways or seen the United States and Germany investing in

cutting edge in green technologies while we lag behind. Last year, for

example, the Prime Minister promised a universal service obligation for

10 megabytes broadband that since then, the government has done

nothing, letting down entrepreneurs, businesses and families, especially

those in rural areas that want to grow the economy. That is why we

have set up proposals for in national investment bank with ?500

billion of investment to bring our broadband, railways, housing and

energy infrastructure up to scratch. APPLAUSE. A country that does not

invest is a country that has given up, that has taken the path of

managed to climb. A Labour government will never accept second

best for this country. APPLAUSE. Our country's history is based on

individual ingenuity and collective endeavour.

There are brilliant people that made so much developed so much. But the

Tories have turned their back on this proud British tradition. They

put privatisation and cutting spending first. Britain spends less

on research is the share of national income than France, Germany, the US

and China. A Labour government would bring research and development up to

3% of GDP. Yesterday Rebecca Long Bailey set

out the terms of our industrial review. We need an economy that

works for every part of this country so no community is left behind.

Today I am asking businesses, academics, workers, trade unions,

anyone who cares about our future prosperity to have a say in that

review. We are wealthy country, not just in money, but talent and

potential. That is why we proposed a comprehensive national educational

service to deliver higher education for all, throughout our lives.

Education has always been a core Labour value. From the time of Ellen

Wilkinson, the MP for Jarrow, and later Education Minister, and before

that. A national education service will be an essential part of the

21st-century welfare state. In a rapidly changing economy people need

to retrain or update their skills without falling into debt. Britain

falls behind others in productivity, partly about investing in technology

and infrastructure, partly about investing in people and their

skills. How can we build and expand the sector in the future without a

skilled workforce? This Conservative government has slashed adult

education budgets, taking away opportunities for people to develop

skills, leaving businesses struggling to find the skilled

workforce they need. Today, I am offering business a new settlement,

a new deal to rebuild Britain. Under Labour we will provide the

investment to rebuild Britain's infrastructure. We will find that

investment, because it will lead to a more productive economy. Providing

the basis on which our economy and businesses can thrive. Helping to

provide 1 million good jobs for businesses and opportunities.

Investment in capital, must include investment in human capital, the

skilled workers needed to make our economy a success. This is the deal

Labour will offer to business. To help pay for a national education

service, we will ask you to pay a little more in tax. We have started

to set out this, raising corporation tax by less than 1.5%, to give an

education maintenance allowance to college students, grants to

university students, so every young learner can afford to support

themselves as they develop skills and gain qualifications.

Business shares in economic success, it must contribute to it, too. I

recognise that good businesses deserve a level playing field. I

also pledged to give businesses, we will clamp down on those that dodge

their taxes. You should not be undercut by those who don't play by

the rules. There is nothing more unpatriotic than not paying your

taxes. Frankly it is an act of vandalism, damaging the NHS, older

people's social care, younger people's education. A Labour

government will make Xavi tax avoidance a thing of the past. --

Xavi. Our national education service will

be every bit as vital as our national health service. We

recognise education is not simply about preparing for the workplace,

also about the exploration of knowledge, unlocking the creativity

hair in every human being. All school pupils should have the chance

to learn an instrument, take part in drama and dance. Have regular access

to theatre, Museum and Galleries in their local area. That is why we

will introduce an arts pupil premium to every primary school in England

and Wales, consulting on the design and national roll-out to extend this

to all secondary schools. This will be a 160 million boost to schools,

to investing in projects, supporting cultural activities for schools over

the longer term. It could hardly be more different from the Tory

approach to education. There any plan is the return of grammar

schools, segregation, second-class schooling for the majority.

What a great job Angela Rayner is doing in opposing them in this.

APPLAUSE. This Saturday, the 1st of October, I

want you to take this message into your community, that Labour is

standing up for education for all. Grammar schools are not the only way

the Tories are bringing division back into our society. They are also

using the tried and tested tricks of demonising and scapegoating to

distract for their failures. Single mothers, unemployed people, disabled

people, migrants. Tory failure is always someone else's file. --

fault. Those smears have consequences, from children being

bullied in school, attacks on the street, such as the rise in

disability hate crime. I am so proud of his party, in the last year we

stood up to the government, on cuts to disabled people's benefits and

working family tax credits. On Monday, our Shadow Work and Pensions

Secretary, Debbie Abrahams, announced we would be scrapping the

punitive sanctions regime, and the work capability assessment.

As politicians, political activists, citizens, we have zero tolerance

towards those who whipped up eight and division. Stand together. --

whip up hate. Xenophobia, anti-Semitism, defend those being

demonised. It has been shaming to our multicultural society that

assaults on migrants have increased sharply since the referendum

campaign. A campaign that peddle myths, whipping up division. It is

not migrants that drive down wages, it is exploitative employers, and

the politicians deregulating the labour market, ripping up trade

union rights. It is not migrants, who put a strain on the national

Health Service, it only keeps going because of the migrant nurses, and

doctors who come here, filling the gaps left by politicians failing to

invest in training. It is not migrants causing a housing crisis,

it is a Tory government failing to build homes.

Immigration can certainly put extra pressure on services. That is why,

under Gordon Brown, Labour set up the migrant impact fund, to provide

extra funding to communities that have the largest rises in

populations. The plan. Very effective. What did the Tories do?

They abolished it. Then demonising migrants are putting pressure on

services. A Labour government will not offer false promises on

immigration, as the Tories have done. We will not fan the flames of

fear. We will tackle the real issues of immigration instead. Whatever the

outcome of Brexit negotiations, we will make the changes needed. Acting

decisively to help wages that have been undercut.

We will ease the pressure on hard-pressed public services,

struggling to absorb Tory austerity cuts in communities absorbing new

populations. Labour will reinstate the migrant impact fund. Giving

extra support to areas of high migration, using the Visa levy for

its intended purpose. We will boost the fund. That is the labour weight

to tackle social tension. Investment and assistance, not racism and

division. This party campaigned hard to remain

the European Union. I spoke in rallies from Cornwall to Aberdeen,

for the Labour campaign to remain in. Although many voters backed us,

we did not convince many natural Labour voters, especially in parts

of the country left that I'm by years of neglect and underinvestment

and deindustrialisation. Now we have to face the future together. We're

not helped by patronising or lecturing those in our communities

who voted to leave, we have to hear their concerns about jobs, public

services, jobs, immigration, the future for their children. We have

to respect the vote of the British people. Of course that does not mean

giving a blank cheque to Theresa May and her three leading team of

fractious Brexit supporters. They a negotiating plan. Fortunately they

have a distraction, they have to squabble about whose turn it is to

go to whichever country retreat at the weekend. We have made it clear

we will resist Brexit at the expense of workers' writes and social

justice. We have set out our Red Line

unemployment, environmental and social protection, and access to the

European market. We will also be pressing our own Brexit agenda,

including the freedom to intervene in our own industries like steel,

without the obligation to liberalise or privatise public services.

Building a new relationship with Europe, based on incorporation and

internationalism. As Europe faces the impact of the refugee crisis,

fuelled by wars across the Middle East, we have to face the role that

repeated military intervention by British and other governments have

played in the crisis. The Chilcott report made absolutely clear the

lessons to be learned from the disastrous invasion and occupation

of Iraq, just as this month the foreign affairs select committee

report into the war in Libya demonstrated those lessons are still

to be learned a decade later. The consequence of those wars has been

the spread of terrorism and violence across complex displacing millions

of people, forcing them from their countries. That is why it was right

to apologise behalf on the party for the Iraq war. Write to say we learn

the lessons. APPLAUSE.

We were right to say such a catastrophe must never be allowed to

happen again. We need a foreign policy based on peace, justice and

human rights. I tell you what great news it is to hear the peace treaty

agreed in Colombia after 50 years of devastating war. We need to honour

our international treaty obligations on nuclear disarmament, as much as

we do on human rights and other things, and encourage others to do

the same. We are a long way from that humanitarian vision. Britain

continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, a country the United Nations

says is committing repeated violations of international

humanitarian law. War crimes in Yemen. On Sunday it was good to

stand alongside the community from Yemen in Liverpool. We need to end

those sales to Saudi Arabia. Just as the war crimes that are going on in

other places, such as Syria, there has to be a political solution to

the conflict. To date, I make it clear, under a Labour government,

when there are credible reports of human rights abuses, war crimes the

ingenuity from a British arms sales will be suspended starting with

Saudi Arabia. Last year, the votes we needed to

win power went many different ways, in all parts of our countries, while

millions of potential voters stayed at home. Many did not believe we

delivered an alternative that they wanted. It is true, there is an

electron mountain to climb. If we focus everything on the needs and

aspirations of middle and lower income voters, ordinary families, we

must electoral people is being felt, minority divinities,

days suffering with the impact of migration at work, and people who

want to secure a better life for themselves, their families and

communities. Running like a golden thread through Labour's vision today

is the struggle for equality. Rampant inequality has become the

great scandal of our time. Sapping the potential of our society,

tearing at its fabric. Labour's goal is not just greater equality of

wealth and income, it is also about power. Our aim could not be more

ambitious, we want a new settlement for the 21st century, in politics,

business, and the environment, and our relationships with the rest of

the world. Everyone of us in the Labour Party is motivated by the gap

of what our country is, and what it could be.

We know that in the sixth largest economy in the world, the food

banks, stunted life chances, growing poverty alongside wealth on an

undreamed of scale are a mark of a shameful and totally unnecessary

failure. We know how great this country could be, for all its

people, with a new political and economic settlement, and new forms

of Democratic ownership, driven by new investment in new technologies

of the future. Decent jobs, and housing for role. Local services run

by and for people, not outsourced to faceless corporations. This is not

backward looking, this is very much the opposite. The socialism of the

21st-century. Our job is now to win over the

unconvinced of our vision. Only that way can we secure the Labour

government we need. Let's be frank, name one will be convinced of the

vision promoted by a divided party, we all agree on that. I ask each and

every of you to accept the decision of the members, end the trench

warfare, and work together to take on the Tories.

Conference, anything else is a luxury that the millions of people

who depend on Labour cannot afford. We know there will be local

elections next May, in Scotland where we won three council elections

this summer, in Wales, thank you, Labour Scotland. And across the

counties in England. There will be Metro Mayor elections, including

right here on Merseyside. Where my good friend Steve Rotherham will be

Labour's candidate. Steve, best of luck, I will miss

your comradeship, humour, criticism and wonderful support.

On the same day we will be electing Andy Burnham in Manchester, and Sean

Simon in Birmingham. Three big Labour victory is on the

same day, are we agreed on that? But, there is always a but. We could

also face a general election next year. Whatever the Prime Minister

says about snap elections, there is every chance to reason they will cut

and run for an early election. Today we put ourselves on notice, Labour

is preparing for a general election in 2017. -- Theresa May.

And we hope and expect all our members to support our campaign. We

will be ready for the challenge whenever it comes. Let's do it.

Let's do it and be ready for that challenge. Let's do it, in the

spirit of the great Scots born, Liverpool football manager, Bill

Shankly. I'm sorry, Andy, I know he isn't Everton supporter. Do not

leave the stage. You will like it, it is OK. The socialism I believe in

is everybody working for the same goal, everybody having a share in

the rewards. That is how I see football, and that is how I see

life. We are not all Bill Shanklys, each

of us comes to our socialism from our own experiences. Mine was shaped

by my mum and dad, a teacher and an engineer. Both very committed

socialists, and peace campaigners. My mum's inspiration was to

encourage girls to believe they could achieve anything in their

lives. I have met some of them that she taught. She inspired so many

girls to take up science and engineering because of her example.

In my experience, working as a volunteer teacher in Jamaica as a

young man taught me so much about the strength of communities, living

in adversity, and showing the most amazing solidarity to each other in

poverty and promote communities, determined to achieve something

collectively good for their entire communities.

Later, I spent years as a union organiser in the National union of

Public employees, representing low paid workers, fighting for the

national living wage, decent conditions, unions make a strong,

that it is the determination of people to be strong for themselves

and each other that shakes my politics, ideas and values.

As the great American poet, Langston Hughes put it, I see that my own

hands can make the world in my mind. Everyone here and everyone in our

hundreds and thousands of members has something to contribute to our

cause. That is why we will unite, build our policies, take our vision

out to the country crying out for change. We are half a million of us,

and there will be many more. Working together to make our country the

place it could be. Conference, United we can shape the future. And

build a fairer Britain in a peaceful world. Thank you.

APPLAUSE.