Tag Archives: Labour Party

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Joint statement from Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson following today’s Shadow Cabinet meeting

Joint statement from Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson

The shadow cabinet met today to discuss Labour’s policy and election plans and had a robust and constructive discussion about the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The shadow cabinet agreed on the need to strengthen party unity. It recognised the right of groups across the spectrum of Labour’s broad church to discuss their views and try to influence the party so long as they operate within the rules.

The leadership represents the whole party and not any one strand within it. No one speaks for the leadership except the leadership themselves and their spokespeople.

The shadow cabinet agreed our local and Mayoral election strategy and what a united Labour Party can and must offer the whole country after seven years of Tory austerity in terms of jobs, housing, education and health and social care.

We will fight for a Britain where people aren’t held back and where everyone in every community can lead a richer life.

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party

Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party

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Britain is about to embark on the most complex and important negotiations since World War II. This a hugely significant moment for the whole country – Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer MP, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary, commenting on reports that Theresa May will trigger Article 50 on March 29, said:

“Britain is about to embark on the most complex and important negotiations since World War II, so this a hugely significant moment for the whole country.

“Theresa May has repeatedly said that she wants to build a national consensus on Brexit, but it is increasingly clear she has failed to do so. Britain is now more divided at home and isolated abroad.

“It is also extraordinary that the Prime Minister has failed to provide any certainty about her plans for Brexit or to prepare for the clear dangers of not reaching a deal with the EU.

“Labour will hold the Prime Minister to account all the way, and argue for a Brexit deal that puts jobs, the economy and living standards first.”

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Barbara Keeley responds to Panorama’s upcoming report on care contract closures

Barbara Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Social Care, commenting on Panorama’s upcoming report on care contract closures, said:

“This is yet more evidence of this Government’s social care crisis.

“With £4.6billion cuts to social care in the last Parliament and rising pressures from demand, costs and wages, it is no surprise that an increasing number of care providers are finding it impossible to make their contracts work.

“The funding in the Budget for social care was only half what was needed for this year. It’s time the Government gave social care the money it needs and develops a fair, long-term funding solution to provide sufficient good quality and dignified care for those who need it.”

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Jeremy Corbyn speech ahead of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party speaking in Birmingham today, ahead of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Wednesday 22nd March, said:  

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I would like to start by thanking Race On The Agenda and the Runnymede Trust for hosting this event today.

And for all the work they do to highlight the issues that impact the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities in Britain.

Birmingham of course has a long race relations history.

It was in Birmingham almost 50 years ago, that the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton, Enoch Powell gave his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. I remember it like it was yesterday as I was living in Jamaica at the time.  The outrage on the streets was palpable.

An evil appeal to racial hatred, made just a week before the Labour government’s Race Relations Bill 1968, the first legislation in the country to prohibit racial discrimination.

And some of you will remember that it was in 1972, Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-born cultural theorist and political activist became the director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University. I learned a lot from Stuart.

His writing on race, and identity, and the links between racial prejudice and the media in the 1970s, was certainly ground-breaking.

And of course, Birmingham’s Handsworth, now a vibrant multi-ethnic commercial area, was rocked by unrest three decades ago following years of social injustice, poverty and racial inequality.

This coming Wednesday, the United Nations marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

So it’s particularly fitting for me to be here today to set our Labour’s vision on race equality and economic justice for Black, Asian and Minority Communities.

Labour is a party built on the values of social justice, equality, internationalism and human rights. That is why I have devoted my life to it.

Theresa May will tell you she wants a society that works for everyone. But friends, I and many others in the Labour party haven’t just talked the talk; we have walked the walk as well.

I have stood side by side with your communities, to campaign against Apartheid in South Africa, against increasing Islamophobia in this county against Racism and against anti-Semitism.

And under my leadership the Labour party will deliver a credible plan to break the racial injustices in our economy and social institutions.

Now more than ever, we need to celebrate the profound and enriching transformation that the diversity of people in this country, with all the different experiences, talents and contributions has brought.

And we are privileged to have this reflected in the mass membership of the Labour party, now the biggest political party in Western Europe.

In my constituency of Islington North, we are all made better by the dynamism of cultures and languages from Ghana, Somaliland, the Kurdish region, Ireland and many more.

Here in Birmingham, one of the most diverse cities in Europe, people have come to Britain from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Birmingham is home to an elaborate variety of ethnic and religious communities:

Kashmiri Pakistanis in Sparkbrook.
Bengali Muslims in Perry Barr.
Hindus in Sutton Coldfield.

Britain wouldn’t be the place it is today, people living and working together side by side, without the contribution of Black and Asian communities.

Following the Windrush Generation of 1948, it was the help of African- Caribbean communities that kept the nation moving.  And of course many who came before then.

Asian people in the industrial cities like Leicester and Bradford were recruited to work the night shift when Britain retooled its textile industry after the Second World War.

Today, Britain has the world’s sixth-biggest economy – no mean feat for a small island nation you might think…

That’s partly about inventiveness and organisation, and it’s also the legacy of immigration and an exploitative relationship with poorer nations as an imperial power. The echoing voices of Empire two point zero from this government are rightly making BME people feel very unsettled.

Labour rejects a post-Brexit Britain based on trade deals that profit from the exploitation of the world’s fragile economies.

We remember the great British heroine, the late Mary Seacole, originally born in Jamaica, who set up the “British Hotel” during the Crimean War, providing care for wounded servicemen on the battlefield.

Over 150 years later, and without the contribution of your communities, our health service would struggle to survive.

The NHS was established the same year as Windrush docked. It’s our most cherished national institution.

NHS England figures in 2015 show that nearly one in five of all staff were from ethnic minority backgrounds, with over two in five NHS doctors from a non-white group.

And the Tories are squeezing the NHS dry, as they hand over chunks of it to their friends in the private sector, just as they refuse entry to desperate refugees, and allow the migrants, who keep the health service going, to be demonised.

Your communities also play an important role in our civil service, local government and voluntary sector.

Today Black and Asian owned businesses are an important and growing feature of our economy and society.

These businesses are important not just because of their financial contribution; they have also helped transform particular sectors of the economy and in the regeneration of inner-city areas like Birmingham.

In the wake of the Brexit decision, it is vitally important, that we value, celebrate and protect our diverse society.

And that includes the 3 million EU nationals who live and work here, and who have made lives, have families, friends and colleagues here and so are connected to many millions more of us.

Equality is the central bedrock of Labour’s values, and that message must be heard loud and clear, particularly in the current political climate.

However, the challenges remain stark.

It’s indefensible that in Britain today, if you’re Black or Asian you are more likely to be living in poverty than if you’re white.

And that young black men have experienced the worst long-term employment and economic outcomes in generations.

Or the fact that women of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin are less than half as likely to be employed compared with rates for other women.

How can it be just or fair that black people with degrees earn 23% less on average than their white peers?  

And despite significant equality legislation brought in by Labour governments, racial inequality is a routine feature in the British economy.

Why?  The political choices of this Tory government are a good place to begin.

Time and time again Theresa May patronises the electorate with empty rhetoric of “building an economy that works for everyone”.

After 7 years in government, the political machine she herself dubbed “the nasty party” continues to pursue an economic agenda that serves the elite at the expense of the majority of the people, including Black and Asian communities in particular.

Let’s just look at the budget her chancellor delivered last week. The biggest losers of this government’s tax and benefit policy are Black and Asian women.

Analysis from the Runnymede Trust and the Women’s Budget Group shows:

Asian women in the poorest third of households will be £2,247 worse off by 2020, facing almost twice the loss faced by white men in the poorest third of households.

And Black and Asian lone mothers stand to lose about 15% and 17% respectively of their net income due to punitive benefit changes.

The Race Equality Foundation showed in 2013 that overcrowding is most commonly experienced by Black African and Bangladeshi groups (with just over a third of households living in overcrowded accommodation).

And sadly, you are more likely to be homeless in Birmingham if you are Black or from an ethnic minority than if you are white.

The government’s own data reveals that a shocking 15 in every 1,000 BME households in Birmingham were homeless in 2015-16, the equivalent figure for white households is bad enough at four per 1,000.

Britain’s housing crisis is at its worst for 20 years and the government are not doing enough to address this problem.  The housing minister has ruled out raising the housing revenue account which enables councils to borrow money to build.  Councils cannot meet local needs.

Far from building an economy for everyone and helping the ‘just about managing’, this government is intent on the transfer of cash from the purses of poorer Black and Asian women to the wallets of the richest men.

There are also huge health inequalities in this country, particularly when it comes to mental health and social care.

Black British women are four times more likely to be detained under the mental health act than White British women.

Older people from Black and minority ethnic groups are often under represented users of health and social care services, where they do, often receive poorer treatment.

So how can Theresa May justify huge cuts to social care, but a special deal for Surrey?

The people of Birmingham are worth no less and deserve better!

The Tories talk a lot about the need for integration. Let them start by integrating our communities – black and white – into the economy, into secure and well-paid jobs, into the education system, into the health care system, onto a viable transport system.

They say they want more people to speak English and then cut the funding for English courses.

They say they want communities to integrate but then allow schools to opt out and slash the kind of youth services and education funding that would make that possible.

Britain has come a long way. But the journey was not an act of our own genius.

People fought for it … Black and white and Asian, side by side, to build the kind of country that could celebrate our racial differences rather than be wary of them.

But we have a long way to go. Black and Asian people are still more likely to be excluded, stopped, searched, arrested, charged and get longer sentences.  Still less likely to go to university, get to the boardroom, the Houses of Commons.

We shouldn’t be content with tolerance. You tolerate things you don’t like.

We can do better than that. We DO do better than that.

People are right to be anxious. These are volatile times and people feel insecure in their work, about their children’s future, about this country’s future, they look for someone to blame.

Syrian refugees did not trade in credit default swaps and crash the economy.

East European builders and technicians did not slash funding for children’s centres and libraries.

Since BME communities can be disproportionately found in poor areas, and are more likely to be less well-off, everything we can do to support those families who are struggling to get by, will disproportionately support them.

And everything that is done to attack the living standards of families who are struggling to get by, will disproportionately make things worse.

Enoch Powell was wrong. There have not been rivers of blood. We have one of the highest rates of mixed-race marriage in the western world.

What we need is leadership that does not stoop to preying on those anxieties, blaming people who look differently, talk a different language or dress differently, for the mess that we’re in.

Our Labour party has a proud record on race and equality.

Every progressive piece of equality legislation has been delivered by a Labour government:

The Race Relations Act
The Human Rights
The Equality Act

But these were not gifts from the liberal well-intentioned. They were won by struggle from well organised campaigns from the Black and Asian community in alliance with the wider labour and progressive movement.

The late 1980s saw a concerted push by members of Vauxhall Labour Party, in alliance with other members across the country, to establish Black Sections in the Labour Party.

Black Sections would become self-organised, autonomous groupings within the Labour Party, with the aim of increasing black and minority ethnic representation in the party but also in elected positions.

At the time they were opposed by many Labour Party members are being “divisive” or “segregationist”.

Today self organisation is much more accepted across the Labour movement.

But these important milestones won by your communities are now vulnerable.

Without a mandate, but with a motive, Theresa May seeks a dilution of rights and protections of people in this country.

Threatening to abolish the Human Rights Act.

Cutting to the bone funding to Equality and Human Rights Commission and all its vital work.

This Prime Minister is happy play to the gallery of her backbenchers and media cheerleaders who think your rights are a bureaucratic burden.

While serving as a distraction from the economic failure, the inequality and injustice that six years of Conservative government has delivered to our country and to our Black and Asian communities in particular.

This has serious consequences. Look at hate crimes against ethnic and religious minorities.

We see an alarming rises in racism and anti-Semitism, we are implacably opposed to racism and anti-Semitism in any form.

The party has carried out important work in this regard, both in terms of our policies to advance equality and combat hate crime, and in terms of taking forward the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Inquiry into racism and anti-Semitism.

Just last week, a report from Equality and Human Rights Commission to MPs expressed concern that the start of formally leaving the EU could cause a backlash, similar to the period of increased hate crime that followed the EU referendum.

Any move to tackle such heinous crimes head-on would be laudable, if it didn’t come from a government which has actively stoked the fires of frenzied scaremongering as Europe faces its biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

“Go home or face arrest” vans, razor wire in Calais and warnings of swarms and migrants flooding our shores throws light on a party much more content to steal the clothes of far-right forces than attempt in any meaningful way to tackle racial and religious prejudice.

The Government strategy for Muslim integration has been through the lens of counter-extremism.

It has confused race, religion and immigration, with alarming consequences.

It woefully ignores the fact that your communities bear the brunt of its own economic choices that fund tax breaks for the richest in our society.

There is a long line of critical reports of the Government’s failing Prevent strategy.  

The parliamentary joint committee on human rights has called for a review, arguing that it has the potential to drive a wedge between the authorities and whole communities.

None of these organisations or bodies have any sympathies with terrorism or act as apologists for it.  

Anti-terrorism is a serious issue and effective anti-terrorism is always intelligence and community-led.

This must be fully supported and resourced. Prevent is the opposite of intelligence-led policy.

It is time for a major review of the strategy and a fundamental rethink by Government.

The rise of so called populist parties on the right in Europe reinforces how important it is for us to implement policy – both in the UK and internationally – which is inclusive and based on human rights and justice.

We must not allow people’s freedoms to be curbed and must at all times promote religious acceptance.

In this country we have a tradition of acceptance and I am sure many of us will want to maintain that tradition – including opposing any discriminatory bans of religious symbols, whether these be crucifixes, turbans, kippahs or niqabs or any other form of dress.

Friends you know the progress that has been made, but you know too problems that endure, you live these challenges. And you know too the forces that want to turn back the clock.

It is no coincidence that these and the economic injustice faced by your communities have worsened since 2010, when the Tory led coalition government began dismantling social provision.

The truth is austerity has hit ethnic-minority groups the hardest.

When left to its own devices what is called the free market has shown again and again that its impact is racial discrimination.

The loss of more than a million public sector jobs, either disappearing completely or outsourced to the private sector, has shattered one of the few footholds for ethnic minority young people to gain a real stake in society.

I am proud that Labour has the highest number of Black and Asian MPs of any other political party.  This year we celebrate the 30 year anniversary of the historic election to the House of Commons of four black members of parliament – Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Keith Vaz.

Labour will remain the party for aspiring councillors and members of parliament from Black and Asian communities.

As leader, it has been an honour to appoint Labour’s most ethnically diverse Shadow Cabinet, including the first Black woman, Shadow Home Secretary – Diane Abbott.

Labour is proud to have the support of many Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.

I will not take this for granted. I don’t want you to just vote Labour.

I want you to organise, campaign and lead for Labour in your communities and within the party. And to drive us to do more.

But we together must go further.

And address the systematic economic disadvantage and institutional barriers your communities, the forgotten communities face.

If we are to build an economy that delivers for black and Asian people, not the privileged few off the back of you.

The Labour Party is passionately committed to equality and human rights. It has been at the forefront of championing changes in legislation and policy across the UK to combat discrimination.

That is why under my leadership, a Labour government will commit to eliminate racial inequality in our economy.

Work is now less secure and pays less, leaving Black and Asian employees, in increasingly precarious situations.

Labour has committed to introducing a real living wage, of at least £10 an hour by 2020 that will do most to boost the incomes of Black and Asian women.

We will work with businesses, stakeholders, and trade unions to ensure resources are available to investigate and deal with racial inequality in relation to pay, promotion and recruitment.

This is not red tape. It should not burdensome to ensure transparency in equality and diversity policy, or for tenders to demonstrate a zero-tolerance approach to racism.

At the same time as overseeing the proliferation of zero-hours contracts.

The Conservative government has pursued an agenda of removing employee protections, denying access to justice and fairness at work.

One example was introducing a regime of Employment Tribunal Fees in 2013, a financial barrier to challenging employers over equal pay, race and gender discrimination, putting a price on justice

Since the introduction of these charges, cases of race discrimination have fallen by 50%.

The fees brought in just £8.5 million last year. The low level of income from fees shows this was a purely political decision, not an economic necessity.

Labour’s policy is clear: we will abolish these punitive fees, giving employees seeking to challenge racism and discrimination in the workplace back access to the justice system.

A Labour government in a post Brexit Britain will safeguard the rights of all citizens by incorporating the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination into British law.

Just up the road in Stoke last month Labour defeated an attempt by UKIP to divide that community – to whip up hatred and division.

Ukip stood their leader as a candidate, they poured resources into the campaign – but they were emphatically rejected.

The far right and this government seek to divide our communities, the communities of working people.

But we have far more in common than the fake anti-establishment elitists want us to think.

Labour will unite our communities around economic and social justice for working people.

We will create a society where our origins don’t determine our destinies.

A Labour government will break the rigged economy.

End austerity.

And call time on the economic disadvantage faced by black and Asian communities in Britain.

Labour will deliver change.

Yesterday, the world lost Sir Derek Alton Walcott, the Saint Lucian poet and playwright whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living  and writing in two cultural worlds won  him a Nobel Prize in Literature.

I end with a sentence from his poem about being kind to yourself:

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

Thank you.

ENDS

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John McDonnell speech to Labour New Economics Conference in Newcastle

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John McDonnell – speech to Labour New Economics Conference, Newcastle – Saturday 18 March 2017

It’s a great pleasure to be back in Newcastle again.

We’ve been up and down the country with our economic conferences.

The attendance has been incredible – there’s a huge thirst for ideas and alternatives out there.

So it is fitting that we are here in a city which the world has looked to as a guiding light for economic development.

At the heart of a region that helped lead the industrial revolution.

But a region being robbed of its greatness by Conservative economic failure.
We’ve just seen the most stunning display of rank, thoughtless incompetence by any Chancellor during my twenty years in Parliament.

Philip Hammond’s authority is now shredded after just one Budget, and he tore up a manifesto commitment to do it.

Labour opposed the increase in National Insurance Contributions for the self-employed from the second he sat down.

Jeremy Corbyn made our opposition to an unfair tax rise loud and clear in his immediate Budget response.

Labour MPs and Shadow Cabinet members hammered the same message home over the next few days.

Opposition came from all sides of the House, and from business organisations like the Federation of Small Businesses, leaving the Tory leadership completely isolated.

Perhaps if the Chancellor had spent less time thinking up stale jokes, and a little more time thinking through the consequences of what he was proposing, he wouldn’t have ended up in this mess.

This is a government that never deserved its reputation for economic competence.

Their economic policies have caused real and lasting damage to this country.

Their political choice to impose austerity spending cuts on a scale not seen for generations have created untold misery.

It has meant public services cut to the bone and in some cases beyond.

It has meant a million people using food banks in the sixth richest economy in the world.

And it has meant that investment has fallen, dragging down productivity.

Our economy has become far too dependent on low-paid, insecure work as a result.

Worse yet, spending cuts have hit the places least able to cope with them.

Councils in the 10% of most deprived local authorities have cut their spending by £228 per person since 2010.

Councils in the 10% of least deprived local authorities have cut their spending only £44.

After the referendum, there was some brave talk from both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor –

Back when they were still speaking to each other –

About pressing the “reset” on fiscal policy.

And about bringing in a real industrial policy.

We’d welcome both – we need a fiscal policy that supports working people’s living standards, instead of tearing up public services.

And we need a real industrial policy to deliver the decent, secure jobs of the future, across the whole country.

Instead we’ve seen nothing but more of the same failures.

It should be very clear that they have no sense of direction, and no real vision for the future.

Brexit

That’s very clear on Brexit.

Closing your eyes and charging at a brick wall is no way to deal with complex negotiations.

Labour respects the result of the referendum, which was a clear vote to Leave – not least here in the North-East.

But I don’t think anyone voted for a Brexit deal that would trash jobs and living standards.

Or lead to the UK becoming a bargain basement corporate tax haven somewhere off the shores of Europe.

Yet that’s what the Tories have now lined up.

They don’t have a clue about where to go next.

They’re pretending no deal at all would be better than a bad deal.

They don’t seem to grasp that no deal at all would be the worst possible deal.

We’ll fight for a deal that protects jobs and livelihoods right here in the UK.

That means keeping our full, tariff-free access to the Single Market. It’s critical for the North-East.

The Tories won’t fight for that.

They’re too busy fantasising about creating “Empire 2.0”.

The reality of all this bluster is very simple.

This government is about the steady management of decline.

Of keeping those in charge today still in charge tomorrow.

And to hell with the rest.

Labour stands for something very different.

Our vision is simple: of an economy and a society that is radically fairer and more democratic, where prosperity and opportunity is shared by all, and where our wealth is sustainably secured.

It is a vision of an economy not run for the benefit of the elite, but for the people.

Government of the rich

Because the situation we’re in demands action now.

We can’t wait for those in Westminster to sort themselves out.

As we’ve seen in just the last few weeks, this is a deeply dysfunctional government.

Basic tasks like assessing the economic costs of the government’s own approach to Brexit haven’t been completed.

Tax increases that should never have made it out of the Treasury wish-list end up in the Budget –

And then get reversed less than a week later.

Above all else, this is a government that thinks about the interests of a tiny metropolitan elite before it thinks of anyone else.

The former Chancellor is heading off to edit a London newspaper.

At the same time, he’s going to be advising the world’s biggest asset manager.

Working four days a month for £650,000 a year.

All whilst still being paid for his job as an MP.

How can he properly represent his constituents in Cheshire when he’s editing a newspaper for London?

Or take the current Chancellor, Philip Hammond.

It’s little wonder he and the Cabinet seemingly didn’t realise that hiking up National Insurance Contributions would hammer the self-employed.

He’s a millionaire and part of the out-of-touch Tory elite.

They don’t live in the same world as the rest of us.

Dysfunctional system, wrong ideology

But it’s about more than just this government, rotten as it is.

It’s a whole rotten system.

There’s an establishment revolving door – just look at George Osborne’s career to date.

It’s a system where too many decisions are taken too far away from the people who have to suffer them.

It means that for decades those in Whitehall have made decisions that prioritise the metropolitan elite before they think about anyone or anywhere else.

And a deep commitment to an ideology that believes public action is always wrong – but markets are always right.

We can see where that approach has got us.

The old rules for the economy have failed.

Every claim made by the people who supported those rules has turned out to be exactly wrong.

The belief that freedom for financial markets would deliver stability lead to the crash of 2008.

The belief that wealth would trickle down from the richest to the rest has led to massive inequality.

The belief that free markets alone would deliver efficiency means that workers in deregulated Britain take five days to produce what workers in Germany or France produce in four.

The old rules have given us an economy in which too much wealth is held in too few hands.

The rules have meant the economy was permanently rigged to the benefit of the elite, and against the rest of us.

The old rules have failed working people and that failure is now unavoidable.

It was this failure, I believe, that helped drive the vote to Leave.

The world is changing, and Brexit is part of that.

The old idea that states could no longer play any role in the economy is breaking down.

We’ve seen this with the steel crisis last year, where steel dumping by China has been met by concerted state action, from tariff barriers in the US to nationalisation in Italy.

Eventually the government was dragged into action, and I want to pay tribute to the campaign led by trade unions alongside Labour that forced them to act.

But it was too late for the North-East.

More than a century of investment and expertise and wealth has been almost squandered.
Labour will make different choices, and take a different approach.

CCS and metals

Labour will commit to putting in place a real industrial strategy, focused on getting government to deliver for local areas where the potential is being wasted.

That’s not about looking back to past successes – although we’ll build on them.
It’s about looking to the future.

It means supporting initiatives like the Teesside Collective, which will build on the natural advantages and expertise in the area to create a clean-technology industrial hub.

It’ll put this region at the cutting edge of Carbon Capture and Storage technology.
It’ll be a new, clean industrial renaissance.

A pilot project would cost £110m up-front, but have the potential to deliver £31m every year in savings for government.

And on the back of the pilot, the potential for expansion is huge. The UK would become a world-leader for viable carbon capture and storage.

Alongside local leaders here, Labour will be pushing for this government to unlock that funding.

And in government we’ll back it up with a real commitment to deliver research and development spending on the clean technologies of the future.

That means committing the £50m needed to get the Metals Catapult Centre up and running.

This will build on the expertise that is already here in the region to accelerate new metal technologies towards full, commercial use.

It would mean supporting a sustainable steel industry for the future, securing jobs.

UK Steel, the Federation of Small Businesses and CBI have all written to the Chancellor and the Business Secretary to support the scheme.

The government could fund it immediately – the plans are there, it just needs the funding.

But like so much else, when it comes to the North-East, that potential is squandered by dithering and delay in Whitehall.

Stale Whitehall thinking is holding you back. Labour will crack through it.

We’ll commit to securing funding for the Metals Catapult.

Together we’ll unlock the potential of the North.

Potential everywhere

We can see where our future prosperity will come from.

The North-East is an exports success story.

It is the only English region to run a trade surplus with the rest of the world.

There are world-leading universities and research centres.

The Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review identified specific strengths in advanced manufacturing, the life sciences and the digital economy.

Its ports are expanding. New industries are growing up.

You can stand here and see, in ten years’ time, how we could build on these foundations to create an outward-looking, productive and fairer economy.

But that means doing much more than making the marginal changes of the past, and hoping for the best.

Or thinking first and only about those places that are already successful.

The real untapped potential of our country is not in those places where there is already growth and prosperity –

It’s the places that have been overlooked.

It’s the smaller towns and the smaller cities.

The places that for twenty or thirty years have seen other parts of the country do so much better.

It means that when we talk about rebuilding this country, we need to start with those places.

There is so much potential here currently squandered by under investment, delays and a lack of real commitment from Whitehall.

So with our mayoral candidates in Manchester and Liverpool, and councils across the north, Labour will be pushing for this government to deliver.

Sue Jeffery, our Metro Mayor candidate for Tees Valley has put forward a comprehensive plan to deliver jobs and prosperity.

We’ll be backing them every step of the way as they take on not only this government but a system that has failed the people of the North for too long.

Investment commitment

Because right now the potential of the North East is being wasted by this Conservative government.

Whilst London receives half of all transport investment made by the government, the North East receives just 1.8% of the total.

That’s almost £2,000 a head in London, but just £220 in the North East.

That funding gap has real consequences.

It means that communities can’t prosper when they could.

It means that decent jobs can’t be created that could be.

Decades of under investment by distant governments and their corporate allies turn into real failures right here, in local communities.

But after Brexit, the status quo is no longer an option.

We need a new vision for the North-East.

One that builds on its historic strengths, but looks to the future.

That recognises the potential for the North-East as a great manufacturing and trading hub in a global world.

Based on investment right here, in its people and its places, and facing the world with confidence.

Egalitarian, outward-looking, and open to the world.

The next Labour government will hand the power that Whitehall and the City have taken away back to local communities across the country.

And we’ll back this up with real commitments to invest.

Here in the North-East, where the first commercial steam railway was opened, we’ll build on its immense legacy of engineering and manufacturing success.

We’ll invest in new local rail so that every part of every county here can share in the prosperity.

Improving rolling stock. Overhauling and expanding stations.

Electrifying lines that should have been electrified years ago.

This is a £1.4bn commitment to transform the transport infrastructure of the whole region.

It can be part of unlocking an extra £20bn economic potential for the North, helping create 60,000 extra jobs.

Not my figures, but the careful estimates of Transport for the North.
The economic potential here is huge.

Conclusion

But to reach that potential we need a break with the past.

As I’ve said before, Labour will oversee the greatest transfer of power to the north of England since the industrial revolution.

We’ll tear up the old rules, and break up the vested interests in Westminster and the City that stand in your way.

Where their promises have failed you, Labour will not.

We’ll help you build a new economy that works for the people, not the elites.

This new economy in the north can be somewhere that faces the rest of the world with confidence.

Where pride has been restored to every town and community.

The challenges ahead of us are immense, from Brexit to Trump to climate change.

But I believe that with confidence and clarity of purpose we can meet them.

And not just meet them: build, together, a fair and democratic society and economy.

That transformation starts here.

Ends

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