Isn’t it amazing to be here in person
the first time we have met since you defied the sceptics by winning councils and communities that Conservatives have never won in before – such as Hartlepool in fact it’s the first time since the general election of 2019 when we finally sent the corduroyed communist cosmonaut into orbit where he belongs and why are we back today for a traditional Tory cheek by jowler?
It is because for months we have had one of the most open economies and societies and on July 19 we decided to open every single theatre and every concert hall and night club in England and we knew that some people would still be anxious so we sent top government representatives to our sweatiest boites de nuit to show that anyone could dance perfectly safely and wasn’t he brilliant my friends?
let’s hear it for Jon Bon Govi living proof that we, you all represent the most jiving hip happening and generally funkapolitan party in the world and how have we managed to open up ahead of so many of our friends?
You know the answer, its because of the roll-out of that vaccine a UK phenomenon
the magic potion invented in oxford university and bottled in wales distributed at incredible speed to vaccination centres everywhere I saw the army in action in Glasgow firing staple guns like carbines as they set up a huge vaccination centre and in Fermanagh I saw the needles go in like a collective sewing machine and they vaccinated so rapidly that we were able to do those crucial groups one to four the oldest and most vulnerable faster than any other major economy in the world and though the disease has sadly not gone away the impact on death rates has been astonishing and I urge you all to get your jabs because every day our vaccine defences are getting stronger and stronger and you, all of you, and everybody watching made this roll-out possible you each made each other safe so perhaps we should all thank each other go on – try a cautious fist bump
because it’s ok now and we in turn thank the volunteers, the public health workers, the council workers the pharmacists but above all our untiring unbeatable unbelievable NHS and as a responsible conservative government we must recognise the sheer scale of their achievement but recognise also the scale of the challenge ahead
The NHS
When I was lying in St Thomas’s hospital last year l looked blearily out of my window at a hole in the ground between my ICU and another much older Victorian section
and amid the rubble of brick they seemed to be digging a hole for something or indeed someone – possibly me but the NHS saved me and our wonderful nurses pulled my chestnuts out of Tartarean pit and the other day I went back on a visit and I saw that the hole had been filled in with three or four gleaming storeys of a new paediatrics unit and there you have the metaphor my friends for how to build back better now
we have a huge hole in the public finances
We spent £407 bn on covid support and our debt now stands at over two trillion pounds and waiting lists will almost certainly go up before they come down covid pushed out a great bow wave of cases people did not or could not seek help and that wave is now coming back a tide of anxiety washing into every A and E and every GP your hip replacement your mother’s surgery and this is the priority of the British people does anyone seriously imagine that we should not now be raising the funding to sort this out is that really the view of responsible conservatives?
I can tell you something Margaret Thatcher would not have ignored this meteorite that has just crashed through the public finances she would have wagged her finger and said more borrowing now is just higher interest rates and even higher taxes later when this country was sick our NHS was the nurse frontline health care workers battled against a new disease selflessly risking their lives sacrificing their lives and it is right that this Party that has looked after the NHS for most of its history should be the one to rise to the challenge 48 new hospitals 50,000 more nurses 50m more GP appointments 40 new diagnostic centres and fixing those backlogs with real change because the pandemic not only put colossal pressure on the NHS it was a lightning flash illumination of a problem we have failed to address for decades
Fixing Social Care
In 1948 this country created the National Health Service but kept social care local and though that made sense in many ways generations of older people have found themselves lost in the gap when covid broke there were 100,000 beds in the NHS - and 30,000 occupied by people who could have been cared for elsewhere whether at home or in residential care and we all know that this problem of delayed discharge is one of the major reasons why it takes too long to get the hospital treatment that your family desperately need and people worry that they will be the one in ten to suffer from the potentially catastrophic cost of dementia wiping out everything they have and preventing them from passing on anything to their families and we Conservatives stand by those who have shared our values thrift and hard work and who face total destitution in this brutal lottery of old age in which treatment for cancer is funded by the state and care for alzheimers is not – or only partly and to fix these twin problems of the NHS and social care we aren’t just going to siphon billions of new taxes into crucial services
without improving performance we will use new technology so that there is a single set of electronic records as patients pass between health and social care improving care
and ensuring that cash goes to the frontline and not on needless bureaucracy
When I stood on the steps of Downing Street I promised to fix this crisis and after decades of drift and dither this reforming government this can do government this government that got brexit done that is getting the vaccine rollout done is going to get social care done and we are dealing with the biggest underlying issues of our economy and society the problems that no government has had the guts to tackle before and I mean the long term structural weaknesses
in the UK economy
It is thanks to that vaccine roll-out that we now have the most open economy and the fastest growth in the G7 we have unemployment two million lower than forecast
We have demand surging and I am pleased to say that after years of stagnation – more than a decade - wages are going up faster than before the pandemic began and that matters deeply because we are embarking now on a change of direction that has been long overdue in the UK economy we are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages low growth low skills and low productivity all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration and the answer to the present stresses and strains which are mainly a function of growth and economic revival is not to reach for that same old lever of uncontrolled immigration to keep wages low the answer is to control immigration to allow people of talent to come to this country but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people, in skills and in the equipment the facilities the machinery they need to do their jobs the truckstops – to pick an example entirely at random – with basic facilities where you don’t have to urinate in the bushes and that is the direction in which this country is going now towards a high wage
high skill high productivity and yes, thereby low tax economy that is what the people of this country need and deserve in which everyone can take pride in their work and in the quality of their work and yes it will take time and yes it will sometimes be difficult but that was the change that people voted for in 2016 and that was the change they voted for again powerfully in 2019 and to deliver that change we will get on with our job of uniting and levelling up across the UK the greatest project that any government can embark on
We have one of the most imbalanced societies and lop-sided economies of all the richer countries
it is not just that there is a gap between London and the South east and the rest of the country
there are aching gaps within the regions themselves what monkey glands are they applying in Ribble Valley what royal jelly are they eating that they live seven years longer than the people of Blackpool
only 33 miles away
Why does half of York’s population boast a degree and only a quarter of Doncaster’s
This is not just a question of social justice it is an appalling waste of potential and it is holding this country back because there is no reason why the inhabitants of one part of the country should be geographically fated to be poorer than others or why people should feel they have to move away from their loved ones, or communities to reach their potential
When Thomas Gray stood in that country churchyard in 1750 and wrote his famous elegy
as the curfew tolled the knell of parting day he lamented the wasted talents of those buried around him the flowers born to blush unseen the mute inglorious miltons who never wrote a poem because they never got to read the simple folk who died illiterate and innumerate and he knew that it was an injustice
let me ask you, maybe you know where was he standing when he chewed his pensive quill ? Anybody know
Correct, thank you, he was standing in Stoke poges my friends there may be underprivileged parts of this country but stoke poges is not now among them in fact it was only recently determined by the Daily Telegraph and if you can’t believe that, what can you believe my friends to be the 8th richest village in England since gray elegised, Buckinghamshire has levelled up to be among the most productive regions in the whole of Europe
Stoke Poges may still of course have its problems but they are the overwhelmingly caused the sheer lust of other people to live in or near Stoke Poges overcrowded trains endless commutes too little time with the kids the constant anxiety that your immemorial view of chalk downland is going to be desecrated by ugly new homes and that is why levelling up works for the whole country and is the right and responsible policy, because it helps to take the pressure off parts of the overheating South East
while simultaneously offering hope and opportunity to those areas that have felt left behind and let us be clear that there is a huge philosophical difference between us and labour because in their souls they don’t like levelling up
they like levelling down they do they like decapitating the tall poppies and taxing the rich till the pips squeak they dislike academic competition latin I hear and in Islington – I kid you not I have seen it with my own eyes - they like kids to run races where nobody actually wins and I have to tell you I don’t believe that is a good preparation for life let alone for the Olympic games and if you insist on the economic theory behind levelling up it is contained in the insight of Wilfredo Pareto a 19th century Italian figure who floated from the cobwebbed attic of my memories that there are all kinds of improvements you can make to people’s lives he said without diminishing anyone else
Rishi will I am sure confirm this and we call these pareto improvements and they are the means of levelling up and the idea in a nutshell it is that you will find talent genius flair imagination enthusiasm everywhere in this country all of them evenly distributed but opportunity is not and it is our mission as conservatives to promote opportunity with every tool we have and it is still a grim fact that in this country that some kids will grow up in neighbourhoods that are safer than others
and some will be, as Priti was saying, some will be sucked into gangs and some will be at risk of stabbing and shooting and some will get themselves caught in the one way ratchet of the criminal justice system and many others will not that’s why levelling up means fighting crime putting more police out on the beat as we are and toughening sentences and rolling up the county lines drugs networks as we are 1100 gone already and giving the police the powers they need to fight these dealers in death and misery that’s what we want to do – and what is Labour’s answer, by the way – to decriminalise hard drugs apparently to let the gangsters off with a caution an answer that is straight from the powder rooms of the North London dinner parties and nothing to do with the real needs of this country
crime has been falling and not just by the way because we took the precaution of locking up the public for much of the last 18 months but because you have a conservative government that understands the broken windows theory of crime
I read a learned article by some lawyer saying we should not bother about pet theft
Well I say to Cruella de Vil QC – if you can steal a dog or a cat then there is frankly no limit to your depravity and you know those people gluing themselves to roads I don’t call them legitimate protestors like some Labour councillors do I, some Labour councillors actually glue themselves to roads
I say they are a confounded nuisance who are blocking ambulances, stopping people go about their daily lives and I am glad Priti is taking new powers to insulate them snugly in prison where they belong what I found most incredible of all was the decision by Labour now led by lefty Islington lawyers
to vote against tougher sentences for serious sexual and violent offenders and on behalf of the entire government I tell you we will not rest until we have increased the successful prosecutions for rape
because too many lying bullying cowardly men are using the law’s delay to get away with violence against women and we cannot and we will not stand for it and I know that there are some who now tell us that we are ungenerous and unfeeling in our attempts to control our borders and I say – don’t give me that
This is the government that stood up to China and announced that we would provide a haven for British overseas nationals in Hong Kong 30,000 have already applied and I am really proud to be part of a Conservative government that will welcome 20,000 Afghans people who risked their lives to guide us and translate for us we are doing the right and responsible thing
and speaking as the great grandson of a Turk who fled in fear of his life I know that this country is a beacon of light and hope for people around the world provided they come here legally provided we understand who they are and what they want to contribute and that is why we took back control of our borders and will pass the borders bill because we believe there must be a distinction between someone who comes here legally and someone who doesn’t and though I have every sympathy with people genuinely in fear of their lives
I have no sympathy whatever with the people traffickers who take thousands of pounds to send children to sea in frail and dangerous craft and we must end this lethal trade we must break the gangsters’ business model and is it not a sublime irony that even in French politics there is now a leading centre right politician calling for a referendum on the EU
Who is now calling for France to reprendre le controle?? it’s good old Michel Barnier that’s what happens if you spend a year trying to argue with Lord Frost the greatest frost since the great frost of 1709 and we will fight these gangs at home and abroad because their victims are invariably the poorest and the neediest and I will tell you what levelling up is a few years ago they started a school not far from the Olympic park a new school that anyone could send their kids to in an area that has for decades been one of the most disadvantaged in London that school is Brampton Manor academy and it now sends more kids to Oxbridge than Eton and if you want proof of what I mean by unleashing potential and by levelling up look at Brampton Manor and we can do it
There is absolutely no reason why the kids of this country should lag behind or why so many should be unable to read and write or do basic mathematics at the age of 11 and to level up – on top of the extra 14 bn we’re putting into education and on top of the increase that means every teacher starts with a salary of £30k
we are announcing a levelling up premium of up to £3000 to send the best maths and science teachers to the places that need them most and above all we are investing in our skills, skills folks
our universities are world beating, I owe everything to my tutors and they are one of the great glories of our economy but we all know that some of the most brilliant and imaginative and creative people in Britain and some of the best paid people in Britain did not go to university and to level up you need to give people the options the skills that are right for them and to make the most of those skills and knowledge and to level up you need urgently to plug all the other the gaps in our infrastructure that are still holding people and communities back
As I’ve been saying over this wonderful conference to you
when I became leader of this party, there were only, can you remember, what percentage of households had gigabit broadband when you were so kind as to make me leader? 7 percent, only 7 percent
and by the new year that will be up to 68 per cent
thanks to Rishi’s superdeduction the pace is now accelerating massively as companies thrust the fibre-optic vermicelli in the most hard to reach places it's wonderful, for years SNP leader Ian Blackford has been telling the Commons that he is nothing but a humble crofter on the isle of Skye
well now we have fibre optic broadband of very high quality that we can inspect the library or is it perhaps the billiard room of Ian Blackford’s croft and that is levelling up in action and my friends it is not good enough just to rely on zoom after decades of ducked decisions our national infrastructure is way behind some of our key competitors
It is a disgrace that you still can’t swiftly cross the pennines by rail a disgrace that leeds is the largest city in Europe with no proper metro system a waste of human potential that so many places are not served by decent bus routes transport is one of the supreme leveller-uppers and we are making the big generational changes shirked by previous governments
we will do Northern Powerhouse rail
we will link up the cities of the midlands and the north
we will restore those sinews of the union that have been allowed to atrophy
the A1 north of Berwick and on into Scotland
the A 75 in Scotland that is so vital for the links with northern Ireland and the rest of the country
the north wales corridor and we will invest in our roads unblocking those coagulated roundabouts and steering-wheel-bending traffic lights putting on 4000 more clean green buses made in this country
some of them running on hydrogen and as we come out of covid our towns and cities are again going to be buzzing with life because we know that a productive workforce needs that spur that only comes with face to face meetings and water cooler gossip
if young people are to learn on the job in the way that they always have and must we will and must see people back in the office and that is why we are building back better with a once in an a century £640bn pound programme of investment and by making neighbourhoods safer by putting in the gigabit broadband by putting in the roads and the schools and the healthcare we will enable more and more young people everywhere to share the dream of home ownership the great ambition of the human race that the left always privately share but publicly disparage and we can do it
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