Category: Speeches

  • Miatta Fahnbulleh – 2026 Speech on the Future of our Energy System

    Miatta Fahnbulleh – 2026 Speech on the Future of our Energy System

    The speech made by Miatta Fahnbulleh, the Energy Minister, in London on 14 October 2026.

    Good afternoon.

    It is a pleasure to be here and I would like to say a huge thank you to Energy UK for bringing us all together.

    You have heard today about the choices facing our energy system.

    And I want to spend our time together talking about what it will take to build its future and the partnership between government and industry that will make this possible.

    That starts with recognising what the people in this room do. You keep the country powered. You invest in our infrastructure, develop our people and build the projects on which our future depends.

    You know what it takes to turn ambition into investment and investment into something people can see around them.

    And you continued to do that through years of economic and political uncertainty.

    So I just wanted to start by saying thank you to each and every one of you for everything you have done to get us to this point – and for the work I hope we will do together in the months and years ahead.

    And that work begins with our ambition as a government to deliver a 10-year plan for national renewal.

    One that unlocks growth in every single postcode.

    Reindustrialises parts of the country that have been held back.

    And ensures that people have the basics to live well.

    In a Britain that is confident, that is forward-looking and that is hopeful.

    And energy has an absolutely vital role to play in that.

    An everyday essential that we all rely on.

    But one that is increasingly unaffordable for too many families and too many businesses.

    In a system that is simply not working for them as consumers.

    Now look I know that this is not a reality that any of us can be happy with – and it is one we are absolutely determined to turn around as a government.

    And we have taken the next steps for the drive for homegrown clean power.

    We all know that one of the reasons we are seeing rising prices is because we are uniquely exposed to volatile global fossil fuel markets.

    Which means that conflicts miles away in Ukraine and now the Middle East reverberate deeply in people’s pockets.

    That’s why our ambition to deliver homegrown clean power is so important and is why we set it out when we came into government.

    Now I know there are a few raised eyebrows, but look the point wasn’t just about the target itself, but the confidence and momentum it would create in the system.

    And what we have delivered in partnership in just 2 years in pursuit of this mission has been incredibly impressive.

    £100 billion of private investment in clean power unlocked.

    Enough clean power consented to power over 20 million homes.

    189 terawatt hours of clean power delivered last year.

    And over the course of 2025, almost two-thirds of Britain’s electricity generation came from clean power.

    Huge progress – and we will continue to play our part to sustain this momentum.

    But we know the public doesn’t measure the success of our energy system in gigawatts.

    They measure it in bills and whether they can live comfortably.

    And by these measures, the framework within which you are being asked to deliver is not working.

    That is not a criticism of the businesses that have invested, built and innovated within it.

    It is a recognition that even the best companies cannot compensate for a system that lacks sufficient coordination and long-term direction.

    That is failing in its purpose of providing this essential good to the British people at a reasonable cost.

    So let’s be clear with how we got here.

    And look I often say, if you have a blank piece of paper, and you can design the energy system, would you design the system we have now? Probably not.

    So I think it is important we are honest about where Britain went wrong.

    The privatisation of the energy system changed more than the ownership of individual assets.

    Generation, transmission, distribution and retail were separated into different parts of the system.

    And those reforms changed the state’s relationship with the energy system.

    Government moved away from direct ownership and coordination.

    Responsibility was carved up, and farmed out across companies, regulators, network operators and public bodies.

    And when responsibility fragments, accountability weakens.

    Successive governments recognised that markets alone could not make every decision the country required.

    So, they introduced targets, created new regulation, new frameworks.

    And the cumulative effect of all these interventions was that central government and regulators ended up micromanaging the system, often with imperfect information.

    The result was neither free market, nor public direction. It was a system in which industry was often asked to deliver without the infrastructure, certainty or joined-up decision-making it needed.

    And crucially, the state never really left the energy system.

    Because it can’t.

    The idea that the state could be absent from providing a service as critical as energy was fundamentally flawed from the outset.

    The state cannot – it cannot – relinquish responsibility for keeping the lights on.

    For protecting consumers.

    For maintaining national security.

    Or for preparing the system for the future.

    So government returned through regulation, subsidy, contracts, targets and interventions.

    But it never resolved the fundamental question of how to make our energy system work for the families and businesses it is there to serve.

    And we are now living with the consequences of that.

    We have inherited an energy system that is too exposed to volatile global markets.

    We have projects ready to invest and businesses ready to expand, but can’t secure timely connections.

    We have renewable power available in a system that still pays generators to turn down their output because the network cannot always use or move that power efficiently.

    And we have families who want lower bills, but who are locked out from accessing cheaper electricity because they cannot upgrade their homes.

    When energy suppliers failed during the last energy crisis, 4 million households were affected and customers were left carrying £2.7 billion in costs.

    And look, these are not isolated problems.

    They show what happens when the system as a whole lacks sufficient coherence and accountability.

    A system can have ambitious targets.

    It can have willing investors.

    It can have viable projects.

    But if the networks cannot connect them, those ambitions remain on paper.

    If people do not see and feel the benefits of them, the system loses the confidence of the public.

    So the answer cannot simply be another layer of targets.

    That is why piecemeal reform is no longer enough.

    Stronger consumer protection matters. Of course it does.

    A more powerful and effective Ofgem matters. Of course it does. And we’re driving forwards with those reforms.

    But our ambition must be greater than making another adjustment to the model that we have.

    Our task is to make the whole system work coherently in the interest of the consumers that we serve.

    Now that requires us to be clear about the choices that are in front of us.

    There are some choices that will make sense for the state to step in.

    There are some choices where competition, private investment and innovation have a vital role to play.

    And there are those that should sit closer to communities, giving people the freedom and opportunity to shape the energy future of their places.

    But the choice is not a binary between state or market.

    That is a false choice.

    Many countries around the world, with far lower electricity prices than ours, combine public ownership with vibrant markets.

    So the real question is: who is best placed to do what?

    Where should government set the strategic direction and establish firm rules?

    Where should businesses have the operational freedom to compete, to innovate and deliver?

    And where should communities have the power to lead, participate and benefit?

    The purpose of reform should be to accelerate delivery, not to pause it.

    To give investors greater certainty, not less.

    And to replace accumulated uncertainty with clear responsibilities, freedom and accountability for the system to deliver.

    And this is precisely the purpose of Great British Energy.

    Giving the state the ability to do more than regulate industry and its decisions again.

    Instead, creating the capability to invest directly.

    Develop projects, build partnerships and take a longer view.

    Entering parts of the market where the strategic value is high, even when the immediate commercial incentives aren’t obvious.

    Ensuring that more of the value created by Britain’s natural resources is retained for the benefit of the British people.

    Ensuring the public have a direct stake in the energy assets that will shape our economic future.

    And we can already see what practical public investment means.

    Take the Sizewell C nuclear power station for example. My department is the primary public shareholder, alongside private consortium partners.

    Taxpayers will see up to £18 billion in net consumer benefits and we’ll reduce overall electricity system costs by roughly £2 billion per year compared to other routes to net zero.

    Lower costs.

    Good jobs, buoyant supply chains, greater security.

    Great British Energy working alongside private investors.

    Building capability in technologies and supply chains where Britain has a strategic interest.

    And helping shape markets rather than merely responding to them.

    The same principle underpins Great British Grid that the Prime Minister announced at conference.

    We cannot, we cannot deliver cheaper power if viable projects remain stuck in a queue.

    We cannot electrify industry if businesses cannot get the connections they need.

    And we cannot build a more secure energy system if generation, networks and demand are planned as separate challenges.

    Great British Grid is about acknowledging what industry has been telling us – projects cannot be delivered at the required scale unless network planning, connections and investment are treated as a strategic national priority.

    Great British Grid will provide additional public investment and dedicated leadership, working alongside existing network operators and private investors.

    It will enable the vital grid upgrades needed after decades of underinvestment, helping to reduce constraint costs and meet rising electricity demand.

    This is the shift that we want to see from fragmentation to coordination.

    But of course, of course, the number one test for reforming our energy system must be whether it benefits people. And that is the ultimate test we will apply in everything we do as a department.

    Whether families and businesses can afford the energy they use.

    Now there are short-term reliefs that we must provide to give people some breathing room. And we know that and we understand that particularly in the current context.

    That’s why one of the first thing’s the Prime Minister did when he came into office was to cut VAT on energy bills, building on the £150 off the costs of energy bills that we did in the Budget last year. 

    And the expansion of the £150 Warm Home Discount to over 6 million families.

    So we know we need to do our part to give people breathing room.

    But this cannot be a substitute for the big changes we need to deliver in the energy system to drive down energy costs for good. And we are very clear as a government this is our responsibility and this is the moment we must grip this.

    Now I have given you a top-down view as you will expect.

    But I am really clear these reforms cannot simply be mandated from Whitehall.

    They will be delivered hand in hand with the people, places and communities that must see the benefits.

    When communities host the infrastructure that powers Britain’s future, they should share fairly in the rewards.

    Places shouldn’t host the transition. They should have a stake in it.

    So we will back local energy, support greater community participation and put a fairer relationship between clean-energy infrastructure and the communities hosting it.

    Through Great British Energy, which will support over 1,000 community and local energy projects by 2030.

    We will pave the way for communities to own more of the renewable energy projects built in their area and share more directly in the benefits of the clean power transition.

    And vitally we will put our communities at the centre of delivering the Warm Homes Plan.

    Devolving funding so regional and local government can play a critical role in co-ordinating and accelerating the pace of home and building upgrades that we absolutely need to see over the course of the next decade.

    So that we can insulate, solar, clean heat and smart technology street by street, state by state, community by community.

    So that people can directly benefit from the drive towards electrification.

    There’s a lot of work that I know we need to do together.

    There will be those who say you should slow down.

    That the answer is to build less.

    To reform less.

    To relinquish control.

    To blindly place our faith in the established way of doing things.

    But I believe that we must seize the opportunity of this moment as we must make this transition.

    And to do that, we’ve got to be ambitious.

    And we can only do that with clear strategic direction from government.

    With certainty, opportunity and autonomy for industry in the right parts of the system.

    And a stronger voice for communities.

    The need for the energy transition is real and urgent. And for those that question that, I simply say look at the summer we’ve just had. Record heatwaves, droughts, wildfires. They are an indication that climate change is there and we have got to do our part to respond to it.

    And in this transition which is accelerating every day in the UK and all around the world.

    The UK’s net zero economy now generates around £105 billion in Gross Value Added and supports 1.1 million full-time equivalent jobs, spanning energy, manufacturing, construction, engineering and professional services.

    Oil and gas will of course remain part of our energy mix for decades to come.

    And we will bring these vital communities with us as we move towards mass electrification and renewable power.

    Because the UK must be a leader for making the transition work for all people.

    And all of you here today are world leaders.

    You are the backbone of the energy system that we must build and of the future economy that we must build.

    So what we do and what that looks like, we must do in partnership. And that brings some questions, what do we want the end goal to look like?

    More control over the sources of our power, the level of our bills, the infrastructure that forms the bones of our economy?

    Or less?

    Do we want more certainty for businesses to invest? Or do we want less?

    Or remaining overexposed every time a crisis overseas shakes fossil fuel markets, is that the reality that we want? Or less?

    These are the big questions that we’ll be asking all of you and of ourselves.

    But for me we are really clear there’s an absolute imperative for government to grip this.

    There is an absolute imperative for the state to provide direction.

    To build public capability.

    To invest where the national interest demands it.

    And to create the conditions in which we collectively make to ensure businesses can invest, can build the infrastructure that we need, and can get us to an energy system that does the very simple job of ensuring this essential good – not a luxury – a basic that everyone needs, is provided to people at a cost that is affordable.

    And look, the commitment that you have from me is, from my department and from all of government is to do everything that we can to work in partnership to get there. We will play our part because the stakes are far too high.

    But I hope you are all willing to go on this journey with us.

    And to work in partnership to deliver the energy future that I believe we can.

    Thank you.

  • Martin McCluskey – 2026 Speech on Carbon capture and the renewal of British industry

    Martin McCluskey – 2026 Speech on Carbon capture and the renewal of British industry

    The speech made by Martin McCluskey, the Minister for Local Energy and Jobs, in London on 13 October 2026.

    Thank you, Olivia [Powis], for that introduction.

    I’m really pleased to join you this afternoon as the new minister responsible for carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

    In July, the Prime Minister asked me to continue in the department in a new role, as Olivia said, as Minister for Local Energy and Jobs. The idea behind this brief is simple.

    Energy has always been a critical sector for our country – employing tens of thousands of people, driving and contributing to the country’s economy.

    And with the country now firmly in the midst of the energy transition, my focus is on making sure that every single community feels the benefit and that people across the country can grab the opportunities of the transition with both hands.

    What I say about this job is that it isn’t a job that deals in the abstract. This is about people and places. And that’s why it’s at the heart of the Prime Minister’s agenda for reindustrialisation.

    This sector underpins so many communities in the UK and for decades, industrial decline has dismantled the people and places at the heart of it.

    As we transition our economy from fossil fuels to clean homegrown power, we have to be clear what this is about…

    …maintaining our independence, reducing our reliance on dictators and petrostates, rebuilding our industrial strength…

    …creating good jobs and restoring opportunity in every part of the country.

    And ultimately, building a world-leading British economy that is fit for the challenges of the future.

    And I see CCUS playing a key role in that.

    Your sector enables some of our most strategically important sectors, including cement, chemicals, refining and low-carbon power generation…

    …to remain competitive in an increasingly carbon-constrained global economy.

    It helps decarbonise existing industries, safeguard foundational sectors, and create the conditions for new low-carbon products and services to emerge.

    The engineering expertise, project-delivery capability, offshore infrastructure and technical skills developed over decades in the North Sea are directly transferable to carbon capture, transport and storage.

    From decarbonised cement to future low-carbon industrial products, CCUS is opening up opportunities across our industrial heartlands and ensuring they have a stake in the industries of the future.

    At the same time, it creates new markets and supply chains, attracting private investment into our industrial heartlands.

    CCUS is not just an industry in its own right. It is an enabler of wider industrial growth.

    That is the central argument I want to make today.

    Carbon capture is not an end in itself.

    The pipelines, capture plants and storage sites – they matter.

    But ultimately, they matter because of what they allow us to do, and the industries they enable.

    To protect existing industries looking to decarbonise.

    To make products in Britain that the world needs.

    And, most importantly, to create good jobs and restore opportunity in communities right across the country.

    That, in my mind, is the real prize before us.

    When we talk about reindustrialisation, it can sometimes sound like quite an abstract idea.

    A word that might be more comfortable and belong in an economic strategy or a government report.

    But it describes and reflects the reality, the lived experience of millions of people in this country.

    That too many places have been left behind for too long, with opportunities cut off and people moving away from their homes, or abroad, to find decent jobs.

    Young people grow up in communities that they love.

    Their families and friends are there.

    Their roots are there.

    But when it comes to the point of building a career, too often they feel they have little choice but to leave.

    Not because they necessarily want to go, but because the secure jobs, training opportunities and well-paid careers are no longer available close to home.

    And when that happens, a community does not simply lose one worker.

    It loses skills. It loses spending power. It loses people who might have started businesses, raised families or contributed to local life.

    Over time, that changes how a place sees itself.

    Because meaningful work is about more than just a wage packet.

    It gives people purpose, it gives people independence.

    It allows them to plan for the future.

    It gives families security, it gives young people something to aim for.

    When generations of people see industries close, investment disappears and opportunities move elsewhere.

    And the damage is not just economic.

    It damages confidence. It weakens the sense that the future belongs to them.

    It frays at the social fabric of a place.

    We have seen this in the past in former mining communities.

    We have seen it in our great manufacturing towns.

    We have seen it in communities built around steel, around chemicals, oil and gas, and engineering.

    I have the privilege of representing in parliament a shipbuilding community.

    But I’m from the first generation in my family that didn’t work in the yards or the trades associated with them.

    Why? Because the jobs just aren’t there anymore.

    At the end of the 1950s, around 10,000 people in my community worked in shipyards.

    Now that number is about to fall below 200.

    And when the decline set in through the 1970s and through the 1980s, the new jobs that were promised materialised in the form of call centres and semiconductor manufacturers, but then most of them disappeared in the ‘90s and the noughties.

    What the government is now focussed on is how we undo that damage.

    These places powered this country.

    They created Britain’s wealth.

    They created the skills, the expertise and the industrial capacity on which our national success was built.

    But too many were left without a serious plan when the industries around them declined.

    Government stood back. Investment moved elsewhere. And people were told that this was simply the way that the economy worked.

    This government does not accept that.

    We have a responsibility to shape the economy.

    To work with industry.

    To invest strategically in the long-term and build the infrastructure businesses need.

    And to ensure that economic change happens with communities, rather than happening to them.

    That the places we are proud to call home can be given new life, designed by the people who know them best.

    That is why, to my mind, reindustrialisation matters.

    It is not about recreating the economy of the past.

    It is about building the industries of the future in the places that have the skills, experience and ambition to lead them.

    That thinking is at the heart of my job as Minister for Local Energy and Jobs.

    The 2 parts of that title belong together.

    Local energy.

    And local jobs.

    Because the clean energy transition will only succeed if people can see how it improves their lives.

    If they see good jobs being created. If they see investment arriving in their communities. If local businesses win contracts.

    If young people get apprenticeships. And if communities have a real stake in the economic change taking place around them.

    My job is not simply to support projects. It is to ensure those projects support people and places.

    That means strengthening local supply chains, enabling engineering firms to win new contracts, invest in new capabilities and grow for the long term.

    It means making sure experienced workers know that the skills they have gained over decades will be needed in the industries we are building today.

    And it means giving businesses confidence that Britain is serious about the infrastructure, skills and long-term certainty that industrial investment requires.

    It also builds on strengths we already have.

    That’s why CCUS is not only critical to achieving net zero.

    It is central to this government’s reindustrialisation agenda.

    And the clusters are proving that we can deliver it.

    The most important thing about CCUS is not simply the carbon it captures. It is about what that infrastructure makes possible.

    When we talk about pipelines and storage networks, we should also talk about the industries that can connect to them.

    Cement works. Refineries. Chemical plants. Low-carbon power generation. Energy-from-waste facilities.

    Take just one industry, cement.

    The project at Padeswood is not simply carbon capture attached to a cement works. It will be the UK’s first carbon capture-enabled cement plant, securing the future of a vital foundation industry.

    It is about protecting an important industrial site, the workers who depend on it and the supply chains built around it.

    But it’s also about creating a new generation of low-carbon construction materials and positioning British businesses to serve future markets.

    Or take refining and chemicals.

    Carbon capture offers a route to reduce their emissions while keeping production and skilled employment in Britain.

    The alternative cannot be to close British industry, import the same products from elsewhere and pretend the emissions have disappeared.

    That would not be decarbonisation. It would be deindustrialisation by another name.

    That is why I see CCUS not simply as environmental infrastructure, but as economic infrastructure.

    And we are making great strides in building that infrastructure.

    Working with industry, government has secured 5 Final Investment Decisions.

    In the East Coast Cluster, the Northern Endurance Partnership and Net Zero Teesside Power are helping to build a new low-carbon industrial heartland, supporting around 3,000 jobs during construction while delivering secure, flexible low-carbon power.

    In the North West and in North Wales, as part of HyNet, Liverpool Bay CCS is now supporting over 1,400 jobs.

    In the same cluster, as I mentioned a moment ago, Padeswood is securing the future of a vital foundation industry.

    And Protos will be the UK’s first carbon capture-enabled energy-from-waste facility, demonstrating British innovation in action.

    These competitions will help maximise the use of infrastructure already under construction, attract further private investment, develop supply chains, and strengthen Teesside’s position as a leading hub for clean industrial growth.

    Projects in the East Coast Cluster have announced over £2 billion of supply-chain contracts awarded to more than 260 UK suppliers to date.

    They have also announced investment of over £1 million in local skills development, with 175 local young people in training.

    That is what reindustrialisation looks like in practice.

    Combined, Padeswood and Protos will support over 600 jobs.

    The real value of a cluster is the ecosystem that can grow around it, and we are building the foundations of new industrial economies.

    And this opportunity reaches beyond the first 2 clusters.

    Two Teesside-based competitions are running this year to support expansion.

    We will be setting out the next steps soon, so that industry has the clarity you need, taking into account the readiness of additional store capacity along the East Coast.

    We are funding the development of CCUS infrastructure in the Humber region as part of the Viking cluster.

    We are supporting the development of Acorn CCS, which is important to Scotland’s carbon capture infrastructure.

    It will help strengthen industrial competitiveness, attract private capital, and ensure Scotland can play a leading role in the UK’s growing carbon-management industry.

    Together, this industry and these projects are already supporting around 5,500 jobs in the UK.

    And I want to hear from you. I want to hear from all of you.

    To hear what is working, hear where the challenges are, and to support the work you are doing.

    It begins with government and industry working together to maintain investor confidence, attract new investment and drive down costs as we deliver this first wave of projects.

    At the same time, you have a part to play in this as well.

    Showing how these projects create real economic growth, and support domestic supply chains, and, ultimately, provide value for money.

    This is how the clean energy mission delivers not only decarbonisation, but reindustrialisation and economic growth.

    And sets us up to be an economy that can resist the effects of wars and crises overseas that we do not control.

    But it is no secret that we are operating in a challenging fiscal environment, and this government remains committed to meeting its fiscal rules.

    So I owe you today to level with you, the next phase of the CCUS programme will be in the context of broader difficult decisions on funding.

    We must ensure that public investment is targeted where it can deliver the greatest value, while continuing to build confidence in the long-term future of the sector.

    That may mean making decisions about priorities, sequencing and pace, and recognising that progress will not always happen everywhere at once.

    But this will also mean opportunity. As we move beyond first-of-a-kind projects, we are developing policies that offer industry and private investment greater leadership and flexibility: simplifying access to networks, enabling non-pipeline connections, and allowing international transfers of CO2.

    And the Prime Minister has been clear that UK projects must deliver for UK plc and UK workers.

    So as the CCUS sector grows, the requirement for government subsidy will need to reduce if it is to be sustainable for the long term.

    But let me be totally clear, my overriding message to you today is that the government wants a strong CCUS sector in this country.

    That it is an important sector for the UK’s future, and we will continue to engage closely with industry as we continue to deliver the programme.

    That is why one of the first things I did after the reshuffle and taking this job was get a meeting in the diary with the CCSA.

    And I will be out visiting the clusters soon.

    And one thing I can do for you is make this transition more visible.

    Showing off what this sector has already achieved, that the energy transition can deliver real opportunity for our communities and our country.

    The government is in delivery mode, 2.5 years after the election.

    And I want to see how this industry is boosting local economies, and I want people to know about those successes.

    So please don’t be shy in coming forward and telling me about those successes.

    The government wants a strong carbon capture industry in Britain.

    To restore a sense of worth to our communities, to rebuild our industrial base, to lay the foundations for the future.

    And behind every strategy document, investment decision, every statistic, is a person who is proud of their community and wants to build a decent life.

    And we are serving them too.

    So, my message today is a simple one.

    Success will not be measured only by how much carbon we capture.

    It will be measured by what we build, and the message we send as we do.

    That the transition to clean energy is not a threat to British industry.

    It can be the beginning of its renewal.

    That is why this government is backing carbon capture and storage.

    So, in closing, I want to thank you all for your work so far, and I’m looking forward to we all we can achieve together in the months and years ahead.

    Thank you.

  • Ed Miliband – 2026 Speech on the Global Financial System

    Ed Miliband – 2026 Speech on the Global Financial System

    The speech made by Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, in Bangkok on 14 October 2026.

    So, look, I come to this event very conscious that I’m sharing a panel with people who know much more about these issues than I do. What am I trying to do in my remarks before you get onto the real experts on the panel?

    I want to try and offer political leadership on the part of the UK on these issues, and to explain why I believe political leadership on the part of the UK is right, is necessary, and I believe can make a difference, particularly over the coming year as we approach our G20 presidency. And this is my argument today.

    First, I come to these issues, to these challenges, believing that the UK’s foreign policy must confront issues of debt development and climate, for reasons of both values and interests, and I want to explain what I mean by that.

    Second, I want to take inspiration from past UK leadership, but I want to recognise that today’s agenda in 2026 is very different from the challenges we confronted 20 years ago.

    And third, I want to set out some thoughts about how the UK wants to take these issues forward. But first, the case for action.

    In my first week as foreign secretary, I confirmed I would serve as Governor to the World Bank, and I believe I’m the first ever British Foreign Secretary to attend the annual meetings in this role.

    Why did I decide to do this? Because the issues of climate, development, and debt matter profoundly to me. I know from my experience working on climate for nearly two decades that the countries that have done least to cause the climate crisis face its most extreme effects. And if 20 years ago we talked about the climate crisis as a theoretical future threat, we now know it is a present-day reality for many countries, including our own.

    But it is small island states and many other developing countries for whom this crisis is existential. And I also know that for many, this vulnerability on climate breakdown is now piled on top of high levels of debt servicing and the urgent need for poverty reduction.

    Now, this is a values case for action, but I believe it is also matched by our national interest as the UK, because in the interconnected world we live in, the opportunities and challenges we confront are collective. We can all benefit from prosperity and growth across the world. Emerging markets can help our economic gains for themselves but also help spur global growth.

    And it is true of the challenges we face as well. Climate is a national security issue, and this is one of the things I’m emphasising in my role as Foreign Secretary, but these are national security issues that cross borders.

    This is a collective action problem because issues of global food security, energy security, migration will affect Britain if we do not tackle them.
    And the same is true on debt, development, and fragility. A foreign policy, in my view, that ignores the root causes of conflict in the world is one that is wholly inadequate to genuinely defending our security.

     So that’s the first part of my remarks. Why I am here, and I’m determined the UK plays a leading role. Second, I take inspiration from the past and what UK leadership, working with others has achieved.

     I was an advisor in the Treasury in the 2000s working with Gordon [Brown] and Shriti [Vadera] on Development and Debt in the run up to Gleneagles in 2005, the biggest debt relief intervention for a generation. I even remember being phoned and shouted out by Bob Geldof, although at the end of the conversation he made clear that he thought I was Ed Balls, my colleague.

    But now that action from two decades ago, as well as what was done in the HIPC [Heavily Indebted Poor Countries] Initiative in the 1990s, continues to make a difference.

    But the world is different, and I cite these examples not to say we rerun the past, but also to say how are things different and how we must rise to the level of ambition of the previous era. So, how has our thinking changed?

    I think I think first of all, we know that this must be a partnership of equals as we think about tackling these questions, not a rich world dispensing help to poorer countries. And we also know, and this is something that Shriti has very much emphasized in her work, of the opportunities for growth in emerging economies.

    This is an opportunity story, not just a deficit and challenges story, and I think this is a very, very important part of the picture that we are painting.

    We also, though, have to acknowledge the profound moment of challenge that we face as a world, even more than 20 years ago. When foreign secretaries come to events like this, they get a [diplomatic] telegram, as we call it, a Diptel. In my case, from Vel Gnanendran, our representative on the World Bank board, and as Vel pointed out in his Diptel, we have a world where there is more conflict than at any time since the Second World War.

    We see rising food and fuel prices as a result of the Iran War, which comes on top of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which came on top of COVID, and we see climate damage hitting developing countries as we brace ourselves for the worst El Nino on record.

    That is quite a portfolio of challenges, a perfect storm of challenges, and at the same time, we see greater fiscal strain in richer countries. ODA spending continues to play a critical and valuable role in the UK’s work, but in common with others, it is reduced. I say all this about the world having changed and about the challenges, so we get the solutions for today and the future right.

    And I want to emphasise this point: the same issues as 20 years ago persist about the fundamental failings. This is the title, in a way, of today’s event: the failings of the global financial system and indeed of the global order to properly serve developing countries, and that includes the imbalances of power we see between Global North and Global South.

    The manifestations of this imbalance, the nature of the challenges may have changed, but the injustice hasn’t, and that’s why we’re determined to bring the same level of ambition as we did back then.

    Third, then this is the third part of my remarks. This takes me to what do we do about it, and this is incredibly important. It’s easy to commentate on the world, but the point of political leadership is not to commentate; it is to act.

    One of my predecessors from some time ago, Lord Carrington, used to say – I’m told, I wasn’t around at the time – at the end of meetings at the Foreign Office, ‘and so’. In other words, ‘and so, what are we going to do’? And we’re not short of insightful proposals from successive G20 presidencies, from coalitions such as the Bridgetown Initiative (I was with [Prime Minister of Barbados] Mia Mottley earlier on today), President Macron’s ‘four Ps’, and the important Accra Reset.

    But how do we translate it into action?

    I said earlier that next year the UK takes the chair of the G20, and I wanted to use this moment to lay out some ideas today around areas we can take action: around debt, around investment, around resilience, and around fragility. And I’ll say something briefly about each of them.

    First, on debt, the debt problem may have changed, but its impact, if anything, is worse than 20 years ago.

    Debt servicing costs are at a 25-year high in sub-Saharan Africa. Over three and a half times more is spent on debt servicing than on education. And this is in part because the Global South is paying the price for rising interest rates in wealthier countries, and the Rockefeller report shows this very well.

    Many of these countries’ debt may be sustainable over the longer term, but the short-term repayments are crippling. And while many are not defaulting on their payments, they are being forced, if you like, to default on the lives of future prospects of future generations. So we need a new deal on debt, a deal that supports countries to repay over longer time horizons and, crucially, refinancing with better rates to give developing countries precious fiscal space.

    And we’re right to talk about the private sector. And I was at an event this morning, obviously, it’s a theme of the Annual Meetings, but we can’t ignore the issue of fiscal space.

    I do want to acknowledge the work the World Bank has already done on these issues, but we need all of the [multilateral development banks] MDBs to go further, as well as debtor countries delivering their end of the bargain through economic reform.

    Now, there is a small number of countries, and again, this was pointed out in the Rockefeller report, that need deeper relief.  And this deal must also deliver faster debt restructuring through the G20 Common Framework, and we’ve got to improve the debt architecture in the longer term, so we don’t find ourselves in this position again, including ensuring that debt restructuring can’t be blocked by a single private lender.

    But I think it is also the case, and I know there is debate about this, that we can make progress on this agenda through the full implementation of the review of Capital Adequacy Frameworks.

    We know that some MDBs are not even making full use of the headroom they already have to provide greater funding. So using their balance sheets, and this could release 10s of billions or even more fiscal space.

    There was a Standard and Poor’s report recently, which suggested hundreds of billions of fiscal space could be opened up by leveraging the balance sheets of the of the MDBs.

    I also want to just say, in this context tackling the issue of dirty money is also crucial. Africa alone loses an estimated $90 billion each year in illicit capital flows, outstripping both aid and foreign direct investment. As a global financial centre, the UK has a responsibility to play our part, and we’re going to convene an international summit in 2027 on illicit finance.

    And we will also continue to back partner countries’ own efforts to raise higher domestic revenues and to secure the international tax revenues they are owed.

    So that’s the first point that I want to make on debt. Second, we know we can’t only focus on debt and public investment. We know it’s part of the story, but not the only story.

    And this is the point about private capital. And I do think this is an inspiring agenda. And I do want to acknowledge what Ajay has done at the World Bank, as Shriti pointed out this morning at a panel discussion, trebling the amount that has been released in terms of private capital leverage through the World Bank. We know global savings are worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. We know that capital stays overwhelmingly in rich countries. Even a fraction of it would make a huge difference to lower-income countries.

    Now, the UK government has brought together pension funds, insurance companies, commercial banks, and others through our EMDE [Emerging Markets and Developing Economies] Investor Task Force, and this has highlighted the possibilities: how the multilateral development banks and bilateral development finance institutions need to overhaul the way they work to vastly improve their ability to crowd in the private sector by sharing risk and building the pipeline of opportunities.

    And there’s a really interesting aspect to this, which is that the private sector seems to overestimate the risk of investments in developing countries, because last week the MDBs published data on their investments, and that shows the returns, not just the risks, that investors can expect in emerging markets.

    Individually, the MDBs are doing good work, but collectively they can go much further, including by creating asset classes that attract far greater volumes of capital, and by deepening domestic capital markets. So that’s something about the private capital and the difference it can make.

    Third, I want to make a point about resilience, because we can make headway on fiscal space, and we can make headway on investment, and yet still see gains wiped out by repeated climate shocks and natural disasters.

    And this is something that we cannot ignore. Maybe it could have been ignored 20 years ago, but it can’t be ignored in the world we live in in 2026.

    Extreme heat, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires. You all know it in the audience, destroying livelihoods, displacing populations.

    I’m doing an event tomorrow with the Nepalese finance minister, precisely about this question, and we know what happened in Nepal only very recently.

    Now, of course we need to carry on our work to reduce emissions. But, and it’s really important to say this: adaptation and resilience on its own can’t address this problem if we don’t address mitigation and emissions. But we also know that many climate change effects are already locked in, so we need a fundamental shift from financing disaster response after the fact to investing in preparedness and resilience before the crisis hits.

    And we have to make resilience central to creating a financial system that works for all.

    That means better data, better early warning, and better infrastructure that can withstand or recover quickly from shocks.  But – and this is the key point I want to make – we also need finance teed up in advance of crises, so that governments get rapid support. Currently, only 2% of crisis finance is prearranged, despite, and you might think, well, how can it be pre-arranged, despite 35% of shocks being predictable.

    Time is of the essence to save lives, limit costs, and limit damage. And we know that pre-arranged finance, including insurance, works. It enabled rapid payouts of over $600 million to help Jamaica get back on its feet after Hurricane Melissa. It paid out drought insurance in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. We need to make these approaches the norm.

    And we need much stronger private sector take-up of so-called pause clauses to countries hit by major shocks to defer debt payments.

    The last point I want to make is on fragile states. This is gloomy, I’m afraid.

    This decade could be the first in more than a generation without meaningful progress in reducing extreme poverty, which blights the life chances of over 800 million people.

    Previously, ending extreme poverty was not simply a phrase; it was within reach. But that progress has not only stalled; it is being reversed. And this picture is inextricably linked to conflict and fragility, countries where power politics work directly against development and where the consequences of instability transcend borders and cross continents. Places like Sudan and Afghanistan, where we must confront the drivers of conflict and target our efforts accordingly, including working with women and girls who so often pay the heaviest price.

    Now, the reason I make this point is we can’t simply say that because a government is failing its people, we will do so as well. So, I welcome the World Bank’s new strategy for improving its work in these difficult contexts and urge it to be fully implemented. But the entire international system needs to change in relation to fragility. The MDBs, IMF, and UN should work together from the outset in ways that build on local leadership. And the MDBs must take action to end the wasteful duplication of their processes.

    Every unnecessary delay means jobs not created, schools not rebuilt, and communities left vulnerable.

    So this is just a summary of some of the ideas we have for our G20 presidency. We want to see action on debt, private sector mobilisation, resilience, and on fragile states. And this is work I will take forward with my colleague and friend, the Chancellor John Healey.

    I think it’s important also, though, to acknowledge that we can only shape our ideas with you in this room, with partners across the Global south, and with others, including civil society and others, mobilising for change. I’m not one of those politicians who believes that politics should be left to politicians. Politics is about everybody. It’s about popular movements. It’s about campaigners. It’s about policy advocates. It’s about the whole range of civil society.

    Let me then end finally, though, with this thought.

    So I said earlier that there was a perfect storm of challenges facing the world, the biggest set of challenges since 1945. But in case we are daunted by the challenges, I think we should think of the spirit of that generation that rebuilt the world anew after 1945.

    My parents were part of that generation. They were refugees from the Nazis. They saw the world rebuilt after World War II, the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All of those had their flaws, but I make this point because I think I think it’s so important for us to remember as we face these challenges in our generation. That generation faced absolutely enormous challenges, but they didn’t lower their sights; they raised them.

    They raised their sights, and they built the world anew, as I said. And I think what’s so important in the era that we live in, and I think our prime minister is a fantastic exemplar of this, is this same spirit of boldness should call us today, in this generation, to build the world anew and to defend our values of solidarity, justice, and equality.

    And together, Global South and Global North. We should all take that spirit forward in the work we do in the months and years ahead. And on behalf of the UK Government, I pledge that we will play our part, working with others in that spirit. Thank you so much, everybody.

  • Emma Hardy – 2026 Comments on the Flood and Drought Taskforce

    Emma Hardy – 2026 Comments on the Flood and Drought Taskforce

    The comments made by Emma Hardy, the Floods Minister, on 11 October 2026.

    We’re facing extreme weather, with flood and drought intertwined, but the government is taking decisive action.

    We’re taking a smarter, more joined-up approach to manage the nation’s water and set up our new Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce. This will put communities and businesses at the heart of our work and will make sure the UK is ready for whatever the weather brings next.

    We are also backing that ambition with historic investment, including £4.2 billion for existing and new flood defences that will protect even more people in the years ahead.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech at the Innovation Nation Summit

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech at the Innovation Nation Summit

    The speech made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, in Manchester on 9 October 2026.

    It’s good to be back on home turf and I’m sorry for the shock that Manchester-based members of the audience are feeling at seeing me in person in a tie.

    So, I’m going to start by saying something that I used to say every week between the years of 2007 and 2010, when I was in his cabinet. Gordon is right. In every cabinet meeting. Very loyal. A very proud member, I might say. But life has taught me that he so often is.

    And I think many people will know that, David Sainsbury and others, we all know that. I’m pleased actually that I’ve got a member of my cabinet here today, the Business Secretary, who is part of that Greater Manchester team that is increasingly making its presence felt on the national stage and the AI Minister Kanishka Narayan. We’re really pleased to be here with you all.

    Gordon is right. Britain can be the world’s leading innovation nation. We are an innovation nation. But I today set the national goal to be the world’s leading innovation nation.

    The good news is I think we’re already close. We’ve got multiple strengths and assets that Gordon’s mentioned, but this is a moment to challenge ourselves to go further. It’s what the country needs. I said this last week in Liverpool. We need to draw a line on a decade of too much drift, face forward, get a real sense of direction, purpose, hope in our hearts, knowing where we’re going. That’s what the country needs. It’s what I’m trying to bring, and I hope it’s beginning to be felt in all of the regions and nations of the UK. I think we can go further and I want to say a few things today about how.

    The first thing though is just to question what is it to be an innovation nation and particularly to become the world’s leading. I would say this, it would mean having a globally significant cluster in every region and nation, every single one. And within those clusters, a globally significant company in every region and nation on the scale that Gordon was just describing. And from that, having opportunity, investment, growth and good jobs, fairly distributed across all parts of the UK as part of a new intentional national drive to re-industrialise the UK in the 21st century as an innovation-led, research-driven economy.

    Re-industrialisation, that is a serious part of this mission and re-industrialisation that is felt by all people in all places. We can do it and we can be the nation in the next 10 years that as Gordon says, does find the cure for cancer or does make the breakthrough on dementia or indeed on nuclear fusion.

    To anyone who says we can’t be that I say we did it before, so why not?

    As Gordon said, this is the city where Ernest Rutherford in 1917, over a 100 years ago, first split the atom. So why can’t we be the place that makes nuclear fusion a commercial possibility. After all, the Dalton Nuclear Institute is literally a stone’s throw from where we are now, and it is world leading.

    Innovation is a tradition in Britain. It is part of us. Ada Lovelace imagined what a computer could be in the 19th century, and this was before one even existed. And then Alan Turing laid down the blueprint for the world’s first programmable computer. And then he moved here to Manchester when that very machine was built here in 1948.

    Tim Berners-Lee, as Gordon said, then put the world on the web. And more, if you think about life sciences, the millions of lives saved by Alexander Fleming and Edward Jenner, the electric motor, the jet engines and the telephone, all of these things, British inventions, Britain, a nation of inventors then and now.

    The important thing is just to be clear about the assets that we have right now because they are to be found in every single region and every single nation of the UK.

    An expanding creative sector in the Liverpool city region. It is unbelievable how many things you will watch tonight on Netflix or whatever that are filmed in the city of Liverpool. It really is an amazing UK strength.

    Then if you look to South Yorkshire, the outstanding advanced manufacturing research centre that is doing so much to lift productivity in South Yorkshire.

    One of the continent’s largest fintech sectors in Edinburgh, Europe’s gaming capital in Dundee, a global hub for photonics in Glasgow, clean energy in Newcastle, space research in Leicester, the future home of the UK’s biggest electric vehicle battery plant in Somerset, a global automotive engineering research and testing centre in Warwickshire, the frontier of quantum research in Oxford, 100 billion chip design company headquartered in Cambridge, a leading cyber cluster in Belfast, thousands of jobs in compound semiconductors in South Wales. You can tell I’ve become Prime Minister because I’ve not mentioned Greater Manchester once in this list, but I will now, Greater Manchester. The biggest UK AI cluster by headcount outside of London and the South East.

    And then look at what is happening in London. There are so many strengths. The creative industries, obviously, but research, fintech, AI, our capital city is at the top of its game and can go further. So it’s proof isn’t it? We’ve got world-class strength in every region and as Gordon said every region needs now to punch its full weight and make its presence felt on the world stage as a home of innovation.

    All of those clusters are underpinned by world-class universities, many represented in this room today and we thank you for what you are doing to drive the innovation economy in the UK. It isn’t said enough, I will say it today, without you we just couldn’t have done it.

    I know as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, I’m obviously looking to Vice Chancellor of Manchester University when I say this but I know there are others in the room. We could not have done what we did here in the last 10 or more years without having the universities right with us, and I mean right with us, developing the thinking, the ambition for what we could be, and I know that applies elsewhere as well.

    The university assets we have in this country are perhaps our strongest base when it comes to being a world leader in innovation. As Gordon said, 16 in the top 100, all of them conducting world leading research and spinning out a stream of startups.

    We mentioned those London-based scientific institutions, but very shortly, the UK Biobank, a true global resource, will soon complete its move to the Manchester Science Park here. Life sciences in this part of the world about to take a major step forward, bringing cutting edge robotics and leading research into cancer dementia and heart disease to the fore.

    Behind all of it, the government is investing over 80 billion in research and innovation in this spending review.

    So, we’ve got the assets, we’ve got the talent, we’ve got the ideas and the ambition, but here’s the crux of it. Here is where we’re falling short. We are not making the most of them yet. And this is our collective challenge, everybody. This is what we must fix, and this is what today is about.

    Being an innovation nation is thinking more about what we are all doing in our different places. It’s when you combine it all together that we’ve become more than the sum of our parts in innovation and this is what the next decade has to be about.

    We can all see the world in the way that it’s changing and some of the challenges that it’s presenting to us. I’ve certainly felt that in my first two months as Prime Minister. They are huge challenges.

    In Germany yesterday talking to Chancellor Mertz, we have to face them with our partners as well and our partners in Europe. We won’t rise to these challenges if we don’t think like that, networking as people ever are. It is the way we make Britain and the people of this great country safer, healthier and more resilient in the 21st century that is going to test us in so many ways.

    We can’t do it any other way, and we need to think like that and set out a clear plan and a shared purpose and path for where we go next together and I hope that comes from today.

    For me it does always begin with place as Gordon said. If we want to unlock the potential of people in all places, we do need to give more power for them to do more for themselves. And I have set up Number 10 North for precisely that purpose, to take power out of Whitehall and rewire an over-centralised country and create the optimum conditions for innovation on the ground in all parts of the UK.

    And it’s great today to have the Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo with us, and also Caroline Simpson, former Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority here today, Caroline leading the team at Number 10 North, both of them recognising that more power in the hands of people in our places is what will make the difference. That is when you see the fusion of public, private, academic sectors around place-based strengths.

    That is how it happens. I saw it happen here, I know it can happen elsewhere, but when you have a Cabinet Secretary committed to civil service report, leading that change, evolving power, working with Number 10 North. This is when it gets exciting, everybody. And this is what I want, what has happened here and the powers that we have here available to all parts of the UK. And that is what we are going to deliver.

    Because the key thing is when you have that, you have the ability to change the game and set new ambitions, you have the chance to improve the liveability of places. And that’s what we have tried to do here.

    And I know Steve, my colleague in Liverpool, who’s doing exactly the same, as are the other mayors. You can then attract talent to live in these great cities that perhaps wouldn’t have come here before. That is a really important part. of it. And that is what has been happening here and elsewhere in the last decade.

    So, when you are able to take more control over your destiny, and this place first in England to do it, what then happens is the crucial thing. You can set a new ambition. And that’s what we did, working with our colleagues in the private sector, Chris has been a huge driving force, as you all know here, and others who helped come together with us, our business leaders, in the city region with our vice-chancellors, then with the politicians, set a joint ambition and that’s what we did.

    And the thing we’ve got to be honest about is when we had a country that was largely run from Whitehall, it didn’t have ambitions for its big city regions like this. It wouldn’t be able to articulate them if they’d been asked to say what was the ambition for the leaders, what was the ambition for Birmingham, it just didn’t have one. But when you give people power, they then will say that ambition and they will back their places and then those places start to move.

    It’s like what Gordon said about putting a man on the moon. If you create a situation where people have the power to set a mission, it’s unbelievable and then people start to feel part of it and start to come towards it. And that is the joy of my life to see that happen here when I was the Mayor of Redmond and it’s still happening now under Bev Craig.

    And that’s what I want everybody to be able to do, all parts of the country, to set new ambitions for themselves. And you can see the results when it happens.

    For the first time, having set our ambition, we then worked with Theresa May’s government, actually, and I’m really pleased to see Greg Clarke in the audience today, because Greg led here a very important process which was the local industrial strategy process and that still underpins modern Greater Manchester and actually allowed us to develop our thinking around five clusters because that is where we got to.

    We obviously had the original creative media cluster at Media City, Life Sciences on the Oxford Road and the UK Biobank that is as I said going to go up several levels.

    Digital, cyber and AI across the city centre, our third cluster. And we have the emerging advanced materials and manufacturing cluster at Atom Valley, in the North East of Greater Manchester and Clean Energy at Carrington, five clusters and that came from that work and we thank you Greg for that.

    All built from the bottom up and this is the important point that everyone in Whitehall needs to understand and I think they’re getting the message now. It comes from the bottom up, that’s how growth is, it has to come that way. And it’s when you combine the different things together that then you weave it into something that becomes powerful and compelling.

    Business, academia, local government working in lockstep with high ambition. That’s what we want everywhere. And I want personally to see everywhere taking a step forward in that direction very shortly.

    I want all areas to have a good growth fund, on the model that has been established here. A single investment pot drawn from public sources which can then attract private capital and decisions can be made quickly and made jointly and we will say more at the budget about how that will be achieved.

    As part of that commitment I want to announce three specific measures today.

    First, we will devolve local innovation partnerships funds to established mayors from 2028. Now this is significant. I’m going to explain this because this is the first step towards devolving dedicated innovation funding to local leaders. So, a very significant announcement.

    Second, we will build on our existing industrial strategy at a national level by identifying the clusters around the UK with the potential to become truly world leading and with UKRI, commit one billion pounds over the next four years to back these clusters and these places.

    So that is working with UK Research and Innovation to take a more place-based approach to innovation is something the mayors have long called for and it’s about to happen.

    And thirdly, picking up on what Gordon was saying, I want to see more collaboration between clusters in a way Britain has never managed before.

    Lou Caldwell chaired the business board here in Greater Manchester and she pioneered the partnership between Greater Manchester and Cambridge which has really already started to open new thinking and we’re really proud that that has really taken root.

    You know Cambridge, home of incredible health research. When you connect that health research to a city region nearer 3 million people with a digital care record, you immediately see how the potential for clinical trials is totally transformed.

    And on the back of that we’ve seen Liverpool and Oxford sign a new partnership. Imperial and Warwick, doing the same. We want to see more of it, a more collaborative UK. If you think of that Edinburgh FinTech sector or gaming in Dundee, partnering them with counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That’s the way I think the UK will start to punch above its weight and that’s what we’ve got to do, partnering complementary clusters around the UK.

    So that’s the third element of this. If we do these things in this way, Number 10 North will lay the foundations for the innovation nation.

    But given the fierceness of competition globally, the Chancellor and I know we need to do more to back British investors, British inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses.

    Our people will always be our most important asset. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to go as far as their talents will take them.

    It does need to start in schools, and we will reshape the education system so that it is innovation ready, 21st century ready and that does mean basing it on parity between academic and technical so that there is a path for everybody into the innovation economy.

    It can’t be about supercharging a part of the economy and everybody else feeling shut out. We need to give paths to everybody into the emerging innovation economy.

    And from there we need to provide quality pathways towards work experience working with our employers, work placements, apprenticeships, solving Britain’s skills deficit in a re-industrialised economy.

    What we also recognise is of the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK last year, more than half were founded by people who came to Britain.

    And let me just say for a moment, we thank them for coming here. We welcome them here. We need the brightest and the best from across the world, researchers, academics, entrepreneurs to keep choosing here. And it’s why we will have an international outlook in everything that we do, building closer ties with Europe and making sure that we have that outlook in everything that we do, not too much of the division that we’ve seen in the last decade.

    This is time to network here and around the world and that is what we will do.

    I also know we need our innovators to be able to move freely between companies and start their own without constraint.

    I believe some businesses have gone too far in their use of restrictive practices such as non-compete clauses.

    A few I know shared by many in this room and across the sector. Non-compete clauses stop workers from joining a rival organisation or indeed setting up one of their own after they have left their role and I think that’s a drag on innovation and prevents the best really being energised and bringing that dynamism to the economy.

    So, we are looking at changing this. They are often held back and unpaid during the time they have to sit out on the sidelines, and it does, as I say, stunt innovation and traps workers.

    So, I can confirm today we will legislate to make sure that non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for our most promising startups and scaling firms.

    Call it, if you like, the Bosman ruling for the innovation sector, but I think it’s much needed and long overdue.

    And we will ensure, by the way, that workers in the foundational economy, the everyday economy, are not prevented from moving jobs too.

    We will also bring forward options to address the wider use of restrictive practices. Everyone needs talent to succeed. Everyone needs investment to grow. We are in Britain very good at financing companies early on. The problem is that when our companies are ready to scale, the money too often comes from abroad or not at all. And before long, that company will head to where that investment came.

    We have, I believe, been too relaxed as a country about this arrangement. How many innovations, how many inventions can you think of that began here and then were scaled up somewhere else around the world?

    This is part of our national story, which we should not be proud, and we should commit to change today.

    Over the last two years the government has sought to increase domestic investment in UK assets through the creation of a national wealth fund and reforms made to the local government pension scheme, but we will go further and ensure more UK pension capital is invested specifically in British-based, high-growth companies.

    With talent and capital, you also need somewhere to sell. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, yet alone our market is simply not big enough for one of our startups to grow into a global giant. And this is why our trade deals with the US, India, and others matter, why closer relations with the European Union matter.

    You all heard me talk before about the power of public procurement to re-industrialise Britain, and this applies just as much to our shipyards and steelworks as it does to our start-ups, and we will make British public procurement work harder.

    We will work with our trade unions too, represented in this audience today with Jay McKenna from the TUC.

    We will make sure that we get good jobs by using social value procurement too.

    We’ve got a great example of that on the River Mersey with Camel Laird or the former Camel Laird site and what has been happening there.

    I want to see so much more of that across the UK. British public procurement driving re-industrialisation but also giving good secure jobs to people in all places. And that will be a very big theme.

    So, this is how we use our resources better to support British business and retain sovereign manufacturing capability and technology. A government on your side not in the way. That’s what we want to be.

    I know it’s not always felt like that. Our Regulatory Innovation Office is changing it. New sandboxing powers will allow us to suspend rules temporarily, giving innovators the space to test out ideas more freely.

    It means you can develop new technology more quickly and bring new medicines for instance to patients faster.

    We cannot speak about innovation today without mentioning AI.

    Of course, it is a foundational technology that would underpin all of the sectoral strengths of the United Kingdom, and we need to have a mentality of building out the AI sector everywhere to support a research driven innovation led economy everywhere.

    As you know Britain takes the presidency of the G20 next year and I have promised to demonstrate our renewed confidence as a country by putting AI top of the G20 agenda.

    We do need to take an AI for good approach first and foremost because it can unlock everything that we’re talking about today, but at the same time be clear-sighted about the risks it may pose.

    And just as Gordon did in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008, convening the world around a set of principles and standards to safeguard the global economy, so Britain will do it again, using the high level of trust that we have from many countries to develop a global set, a global code of standards and principles to support an AI for good approach, but at the same time making sure that we guard against any risks it may pose.

    This could be a major moment as the G20 comes to Manchester for the Leaders’ Summit next year, a huge opportunity for investment and I hope you will work with me to unlock it right around the country.

    Even if we get all of this right, it is still a fact that business and those who build companies want to see a reward. And those who back them expect to see a return.

    If the UK wants to build global companies, we need to be globally competitive. To do that, we cannot have Britain’s startups simply sell up.

    So, one of our biggest challenges is breaking through our own ceiling.

    Too often our best ideas are developed and scaled overseas, as I said, with it the jobs, technology and investment that goes with them.

    So, I know there is more to do to fix that, specifically on tax, to encourage people to stay and scale.

    And if we do that, we know the UK can become home to trillion-pound companies in the future, as Gordon was saying, who employ thousands of people, pay taxes and invest in local communities.

    Obviously, we will be able to develop that thinking as we go forward from here.

    So, I want to finish by where Gordon ended his remarks in that concept of an idea galvanizing everybody and then bringing progress forward.

    When we were speaking about this event, we talked about how an innovation nation comes to life around some of those big missions that we might set ourselves. But what is it that we’re ultimately reaching for here?

    I mentioned jobs and apprenticeships and investment opportunities and obviously people having higher living standards, growth productivity, all of those things are important.

    But the main thing, and let’s not today forget this, it’s about human progress at the end of the day. That’s what innovation can most bring, in the 21st century, making sure that everywhere we can see and feel human progress. And I think there’s areas where we need to go further. And I want to learn from something I did when I was here as Mayor.

    I was advised when I came in 10 years ago that we could within a decade end all youth transmissions of HIV in the Greater Manchester, I should say in a generation.

    It was part of the Fast Track Cities initiative, a call to arms to improve screening, education, testing, and get life-saving antivirals to the most vulnerable in our city and region. I’ll be honest, I felt sceptical about it all the time. I was worried about making a commitment that we could end new transmissions of HIV in greater amounts within a generation.

    I look back at it, and I castigate myself for the caution because the progress has been incredible.

    When you do put out a challenge and you ask people to pull together. It’s amazing actually what happens and the progress that we’ve achieved on it means we’ve achieved our fast-track HIV goals as a sitting region.

    And I learned from that and then start to think well how do then we apply that thinking more nationally.

    So, what we need to do is draw from our past and start to set new goals for the future.

    I think we are a global leader in life sciences, and we should be proud of that status. We all remember what happened during the pandemic. Britain was at the forefront of the development of the vaccine.

    We have successfully added years to life in so many ways, but I look at a challenge that is particularly personal to me right now.

    We have nearly a million people living with dementia in Britain and I cannot stand before you today and say that we know enough about it because honestly, we don’t.

    When people get a diagnosis, what are they told? But even before a diagnosis, do we all know enough individually about what we might do now to change our lifestyle to reduce the risk of dementia in later life. I don’t think we do, do we?

    This is the issue, I would say, or one of the issues in the 21stcentury, but we’re still in a position where we are not facing it fully.

    Cancer has made a huge drive in terms of what we know and what we can do, and we need to see the same now around dementia.

    Cancer was the 20th century focus and look what’s been achieved and we need to keep that going. But we need to convene people in the same way because I do know three things from personal experience.

    First, I know of its cruelty as a disease and what it does not just to the person but the people around that person. It’s devastating, absolutely devastating and I know many of you know that too.

    I also know, secondly, that we don’t know enough about it. As I said before, it’s quite shocking actually when you are in that experience and you start to try and find out more. I know amazing work being done by the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, but still, we don’t know enough about it, nowhere near enough.

    But thirdly, and more positively, there is extraordinary work underway to find out more and to stop it.

    The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme was set up by a previous Conservative government. Part of that programme includes the Barbara Alliance, a brilliant organisation which carries out some remarkable work in the search for new dementia treatments by increasing the number of participants in clinical trials.

    Today I’m very pleased to announce 33 million pounds of government investment to support those life changing efforts. And with thanks to additional industry funding, it means a total of 48 million will now go to speed up the development of dementia treatments.

    I can also confirm today that the Health Data Research Service, a 600 million investment by this government and the Wellcome Trust, will select dementia as one of their first priorities.

    And this is a move that I hope will make the UK the leading nation in dementia research. I want Britain to be the country that makes the breakthrough and delivers the cure for dementia the world has been waiting for.

    And I say it knowing we can do it. Absolutely confident that we can. When this country pulls together, there is nothing that we can do. We are unbeatable.

    I mentioned the vaccine, the Oxford vaccine, but also there are so many other things that we can point to for Britain to take pride in and then from that start believing in ourselves again.

    We have everything we need to succeed. We’ve got the finest minds working at the most prestigious universities, the most innovative companies and clusters producing some of the most advanced technologies.

    We are doing so much right, but we can do so much more. We have good opportunities now in all of our nations and regions to deliver something that I’ve set as a mission as Prime Minister, good growth in every postcode.

    Let’s really focus on that and bring innovation to all parts of the UK as well. We can grow our companies into global giants. We can extend the chain of human achievement. We can be the world’s innovation nation.

    Thank you very much.

  • Kirsty McNeill – 2026 Speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs

    Kirsty McNeill – 2026 Speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs

    The speech made by Kirsty McNeill, the Foreign Office Minister, in Dublin on 8 October 2026.

    Thank you Orlaigh and the IIEA for hosting us today.   

    I’d also like to thank the Irish Government, and the European Union, for inviting me to join today’s meeting of development ministers – the first time the UK has sat around that table since Brexit.   

    Before coming here, I met Neale Richmond and we reflected on the strength of the relationship between the UK and Ireland.  

    As nearest neighbours, we share common interests. But more importantly, we share common values – a belief in democracy, multilateralism, the rule of law, and standing up for those most in need.  

    Those values matter more than ever, because we are living through a period of profound uncertainty.  

    Conflict is driving humanitarian crises across the world. In Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, too many places, the level of suffering is immense.  

    If you switch on the news today, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world is becoming a darker and darker place.  

    But being here in Ireland is a reminder that darker days need not lie ahead.  

    This country has a long history of refusing to accept that cruelty is inevitable.  

    I travelled here today from Scotland. More than thirteen hundred years ago, the Abbot of Iona made the same journey for a gathering he had convened on this island to establish the Cáin Adomnáin  – the Law of the Innocents.  

    Often described as Europe’s first human rights treaty, it sought to protect women, children and other non-combatants from violence. It reflected a shared belief that even in war there are rules, and that those not involved should be protected.  

    Of course, warfare has changed enormously since then.  

    Today’s conflicts are often more urban, more prolonged, and more complex.  

    Yet some things have remained the same. Women and children still too often bear the brunt. Human beings still find new ways to turn all our ingenuity into new ways to inflict harm on one another.  

    And yet it is also the case that we have never lost the capacity to come together and agree norms and rules to protect life.  

    Right from the days of the Law of the Innocents to the Geneva Conventions, the Mine Ban Treaty to the Arms Trade Treaty – each generation has tried to draw a line and say there are limits we will not cross.  

    That is a tradition we must all hold on to.   

    Because development, humanitarian action and conflict prevention all begin with the belief that every human life should be cherished.  

    And that brings me to my second point: we don’t just share a common humanity – we also share common challenges to that humanity.  

    Whether it is climate change, access to decent work, whether food is affordable and accessible – the issues facing the young people in the Global South and the Global North differ in degree and not nature.  

    That’s why I am determined that in how I do my job we will think of development not as something that happens ‘over there’ and not ‘over here’. But as the process of ensuring that more and more of us are safe and have enough – enough to live well, and with dignity.  

    That applies in Europe just as much as it does in Africa, Asia or anywhere else.  

    It’s one reason I was struck by what Taoiseach Micheál Martin said during a UN General Assembly event we were both at last month – when he talked about Ireland’s long-standing commitment to tackling hunger and malnutrition, rooted in its values and experience.  

    It reflected an understanding that solidarity begins by recognising ourselves in the experience of others.  

    That also helps explain why both Ireland and the UK continue to believe so strongly in international development – but also in doing development differently.  

    For the UK, that means adopting a modern approach to development grounded in investment, stronger systems and local leadership – and rooted in shared solidarity and mutual interest.  

    I’ll be thinking a lot about this as we prepare for the UK’s G20 Presidency next year.  

    And that same spirit of shared solidarity brings me to the future of Europe’s role in the world – and the UK’s place within it.  

    The UK Government is committed to building a closer, more ambitious relationship with our European partners because as the Prime Minister said at the Labour Party Conference, Brexit has done more harm than good.  

    So we are committed to reconnecting with our friends, allies and closest neighbours. My presence around the table of EU development ministers today is part of that.  

    As I said, this is the first time the UK has been invited to this format since we left the EU, and we want to build on the discussions today and do so quickly.  

    We’ve also restarted formal development discussions with the European Commission, our teams in Brussels are working together more closely, and we’re looking forward to the second UK-EU Summit later this year.   

    These are all important steps. But they are part of something bigger. A belief in solidarity across the continent we each call home and then onwards, ties of solidarity that tie the peoples of this continent to others around the world.  

    There is so much that the UK and EU agree on. Not least our resolve to tackle poverty and injustice, respond to humanitarian crises, reform the international system, and build more resilient communities.  

    At a moment when some are stepping back from international cooperation, we are stepping forward.  

    That is why I am pleased to be in Dublin today. And that is why today is just the start.

  • Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Professor Fonagy’s Review

    Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Professor Fonagy’s Review

    The comments made by Yvette Cooper, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 9 October 2026.

    Professor Fonagy’s review has shown the importance of early intervention to address mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions and the huge distress these can cause. It is clear that mental health services need to change to focus more on the early support young people need to stay in education or work or keep their lives on track. We will set out our response in a new mental health strategy in the coming months, building on the new mental health services we are already providing in schools and in the community.

    Based on the review findings, we will also take action to strengthen the oversight of mental health and neurodevelopmental services, and make all diagnostic assessments for ADHD and autism CQC-regulated, so people can be confident that assessments are high quality and that the NHS is not being overcharged by independent or private providers.  

  • Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    The comments made by Yvette Cooper, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 8 October 2026.

    This cruel disease has done so much damage to families across our country, and for too long we have lacked the tools to fight back. This investment will help us turn the tide on dementia, helping us to speed up diagnosis, accelerate research and give more people the chance to take part in trials that could transform their futures.

    We are also determined to ensure that every person living with dementia gets the care they deserve, and that no family is left to fend for themselves when a loved one needs support. So, alongside this new investment, we will ensure that the treatment of dementia is one of the central priorities of our new National Care Service.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 8 October 2026.

    Dementia is a devastatingly cruel disease, not only for those who live with it, but for the families who care for them. For too long, we have accepted dementia as something to be managed later in life, rather than a disease we can defeat. I don’t accept that. In fact, I have real hope that we can come together and do exactly that.

    I want Britain to be the country that makes the breakthrough and delivers the cure for dementia the world has been waiting for. That is why I am making dementia research a national priority – by backing the NHS, universities, researchers and industry to drive the breakthroughs we desperately need.

    This investment goes hand in hand with our plans for a National Care Service, helping ensure that people living with dementia get the care and support they need, and giving families peace of mind that their loved ones will be cared for.

  • Kemi Badenoch – 2026 Comments on Inheritance Tax

    Kemi Badenoch – 2026 Comments on Inheritance Tax

    The comments made by Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of the Opposition, on 7 October 2026.

    The Conservatives are and always have been the party of home ownership. We understand why putting roots down and having a stake in society matters.

    Our homes are where we watch our children take their first steps. They are where we gather every Christmas to put up the same decorations. Passing on your home to your family is one of the most human instincts of all.

    That is why the next Conservative government will legislate so nobody will ever pay Inheritance Tax on their family home.

    No Stamp Duty when you buy your home. No Mansion Tax when you live in your home. And no Inheritance Tax on your home when you pass it to your children or grandchildren. That is what the next Conservative government will deliver.