Tag: 2019

Below is the text of the speech made by John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Birmingham on 4 December 2019.

On Monday night I watched the Dispatches programme “Growing Up Poor.” If you haven’t seen it yet please do so. It portrays starkly what nearly 10 years of austerity has resulted in for too many families in our country.

The precarious insecure existence so many families face in our society means that all it takes is one mishap, an illness, a death or family breakdown and families are pushed over the edge.

Watching children showing us that they had no food in their home, going to bed cold, wearing their clothes in bed to keep warm, raiding their piggy bank to find some money for their mum to pay the meter for the electricity to boil the water for their hot water bottles. Parents struggling with stress and mental health problem.

And, yes the wonderful spirit of the children as they help the marvellous but overstretched volunteers at the food bank.

The remarkable story of the programme was that these were families living in wealthy towns like Cambridge.

On Tuesday a new Shelter report also found 135,000 children will be without a home this Christmas.

On the same day an analysis by the Equality Trust showed the UK’s six richest people control as much wealth as the poorest 13 million. It all went to show just how unequal our society is.

It’s three weeks to Christmas. The celebration of the birth of Jesus. Children going hungry and homeless in the 5th largest economy in the world begs the question:

“Are we really living up to the values of Christianity or any other of our religions or beliefs for that matter?”

What Dispatches showed was what happens when a family is forced to rely upon a safety net that in reality barely exists. We don’t believe it’s enough to offer people a hand up out of poverty. We want to abolish poverty. That’s why we committed in our manifesto to abolishing in-work poverty within five years. And it’s why we’re replacing the Social Mobility Commission with a Social Justice Commission, because unlike the Tories we don’t believe in tolerating poverty so long as a lucky few can escape it.

I want to thank Lyn Brown for everything she’s done in the Shadow Treasury Team to push that agenda forward. But the problem of a steeply rising cost of living over the last 10 years is an issue faced by most within our country. It isn’t just a small number of families hit by stagnant wages and rising bills. But the majority of people in our community.

Labour has published today a report setting out the cost to most, of the nearly 10 years of the Conservatives in government and the policies of privatisation under successive Conservative governments. Going all the way back to the Thatcher and Major administrations selling off our nation’s public utilities and natural assets. ‘The family silver’ – as a former Conservative Prime Minister called it.

Profiteering through privatisation and the Conservatives’ failure to curb rising bills has cost families nearly £6000 a year since 2010. While wages are still lower than before the financial crash, inaction and economic mismanagement by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats over the past decade has meant the cost of living for millions of households has soared.

In our exciting Manifesto launched two weeks ago, Labour set out its plan for real change. Change that will help tackle that burden of rising living costs. How can we do that? After nearly ten years during which it’s seemed impossible that anything might change. I’ll tell you where it starts. It starts with adopting the principle of “do no harm”. “At least don’t make things worse.” So we’ll scrap Universal Credit, stopping its roll-out and putting in place a package of fixes while we design a replacement that’s fit for purpose.

Of course that won’t help everyone. We need to raise wages across the country so people don’t need to rely on Universal Credit. That starts with our Real Living Wage – £10 an hour, straight away, for everyone over 16. An average pay rise of up to £6,000 a year. A pay rise for 7 and a half million people.

For public sector workers, it’s a boost of 5% in the first year of a Labour Government. For others, it’s bringing in trade union bargaining across the economy, to raise wages everywhere. Ending bogus self-employment and investing across the UK in good, sustainable jobs in the industries of the future. A high-wage society is the building block of our vision for a better, more inclusive economy.

But higher wages are no good if the cost of living continues to race away. The Tories and Liberal Democrats have said they’re opposed to public ownership; they’re prepared to tell voters they’re wrong to want control over the essentials of our economy. But their ideological objections have real consequences.

Our proposals to bring the major energy companies into public ownership has been independently estimated to save an average of £142 a year, While our proposals to retrofit almost every home in the country would slash the average household bill by over £400 a year. Getting rid of the dividends being paid out, the overpaid management and the financial speculators isn’t just the right thing to do. It doesn’t just return the essentials of life to people’s hands. It will save you money as soon as Labour get into government and make it happen.

No wonder the privatisation fat-cats are scaremongering with their threats of legal action.

But that’s not the end of it either. Because you’ve heard the Tories and Liberal Democrats over recent weeks telling you that the essentials of life can’t be provided free at the point of use, paid for through taxation. And you’re a dreamer if you think otherwise. The same people whose political ancestors would have laughed at the idea of free healthcare, free roads or education are now telling you that we can’t possibly provide free social care, prescriptions or childcare.

Of course these things need to be paid for. In the Labour Party we know that: our members and supporters are the people who provide the care, who look after our young people, and who dispense those prescriptions. Of course they need paying for. But we believe in a fair society, we don’t leave them to the market so those with the most can afford them while others can’t.

That’s why Labour has a fair approach to tax: raising income tax rates for the top 5% while closing loopholes and taxing income from wealth the same as that from work.

And what a difference that could make. Paying for free childcare – saving on average almost £3,000 a year per child. Providing free school meals for all primary school children, saving parents over £400 and ensuring that no child struggles to concentrate because of hunger. Paying for the personal care that we or our family members might need in old age If you or someone in your family needs care at home, that could mean a saving of over £7,000 a year. Paying for a reduction in rail fares, to keep the cost of living down and encourage more people onto public transport. And paying for free prescriptions, saving those with monthly prescriptions over a hundred pounds a year.

We estimate that – just looking at some of our policies – Labour’s plan for real change could save families over £6,700 a year. And that’s before we start talking about righting the injustice done to women born in the 1950s. Something the Tories will also tell you they can’t afford, despite all the billions handed out in tax cuts to the rich and big corporations.

Labour’s plans to transform our society – to create a society based on reducing costs and raising wages by working together – are based upon laying the foundations of a new economy. The scale of the reforms we pledge to introduce is significant because the challenges we face are significant.

The question asked of us is whether the level of change we aspire to is achievable.

Nearly ten years of Conservative and Lib Dem governments imposing austerity on our society has limited some people’s ambitions for our country’s future. It’s understandable that confidence in the potential for a better future has been damaged by a Conservative political narrative that has undermined the hope that things can change. That’s why for those of us, who believe that real change is not only necessary but readily achievable, we need to spell out in detail how concretely, step by step that change can be brought about.

We have done that, through our Manifesto and our Grey Book. And I’ll be saying even more about that theme in the days ahead. So that before polling day people will know not just what we want to achieve. But also just how we are going to achieve it.

This election campaign began for me in Liverpool, the city of my birth. Only last week, the people of that city were forced to relive again the trauma of the Hillsborough Disaster. The memory of a previous Conservative government and how it treated the north, midlands, Wales and Scotland – football fans, and the working class.

I remember the Hillsborough Tragedy like it was yesterday. I remember the brave campaigners who have fought for justice ever since. And I remember how my best friend, Jeremy Corbyn, one of the bravest of politicians, stood up for them, fighting for justice for those denied it.

Those killed and then lied about at Hillsborough – including by the Prime Minister in his days as a journalist.

People need to remember what the Conservatives have done to us over the decades.

Those who had their communities deliberately smashed apart by the Conservative Party and were lied about during the Miners’ Strike.

Over the years as I’ve worked with Jeremy – over all the times he has taken a stand, been denounced and then been proven right. I’ve seen one thing consistently: the way he supports others to turn their hopes into reality. We’re seeing that now with the rising stars of the Shadow Cabinet; the future leaders of our country.

And giving power to others is at the heart of the society we’ll start to forge in just over a week’s time. Some have said we’re too ambitious, that there’s no way we can achieve everything we’re promising. They may have forgotten or not even heard about the Attlee Labour government which, after the Second World War when the country was virtually bankrupt, took back control of our economy, brought key utilities and industries into public ownership, created the NHS and welfare state.

Well they also said Jeremy couldn’t become Leader of the Labour Party. They said we’d be annihilated in the 2017 election. They say there’s no alternative. They say – or at least the Prime Minister does – that the working class are drunk, criminal and feckless.

It’s hardly surprising they don’t want to see power put into people’s hands away from the bankers who fund the Tory Party. That they mock the intelligence or the capability of ordinary people to run things. And beneath the short-term Brexit bluster it’s the same old message:

“Nothing can change

“Nothing will change

“A better world isn’t possible”

We know that’s not true.

Things can, and will, change. We’re ready to make that change with a fully worked-out programme to give everyone control over the decisions that affect their lives. Not just the lucky few.

The next week is decisive.

On December 13th we can wake up to years more Brexit chaos, of Donald Trump dictating the terms of our trading future, while our economy with “baked in” austerity, according to the IFS, sees public services sink even further into neglect.

Or we can start the task of putting right the mistakes of the past, rebuilding Britain from the bottom up. That will only happen under a Labour Government. And all of us here today will give everything we’ve got in the coming days to make that happen.

For those families and children whose Christmas dinner will be from the food bank this year and who are homeless and have no permanent secure home.

We’ll give them a Christmas present that will transform their lives.

A Labour government.

Below is the text of the speech made by John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 9 December 2019.

Only three weeks ago Jeremy Corbyn launched our manifesto. The most inspiring manifesto of any election I’ve ever stood in. Since then we’ve won the debate out there in the country.

First the Tories denied they were brutally slashing our public services, then they admitted it but said it was necessary, now Boris Johnson has admitted austerity was wrong… while promising in their manifesto to continue it for five more years.

As the IFS said about the Conservatives’ Manifesto, it has austerity “baked in.” So we’ve won the argument for our vision of a brighter, fairer, more sustainable future.

A future in which all can share – not just a lucky few. But some say it can’t be done, that we’re too ambitious.

Ten years of Tory austerity, of undermining any hope of change, have had their effect: of limiting people’s horizons and the potential for real change.

So let me be crystal clear about this – we’re setting our sights higher than any opposition party has ever done before. And we’re doing that because we have to.

Because the scale of the challenge is greater than ever.

To rebuild the shattered communities and public services from the wreckage which the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have created over the past ten years.

While at the same time we’ve got no time to lose.

If we are going to stop the climate emergency becoming something even worse, any future General Election will be too late. We need to start this week, and we need to start together.

Only a Labour government will mobilise the necessary resources and put communities, which the Tories have held down for so long, at the heart of our plan to rebuild Britain.

And of course that ambition needs to be matched by a plan. So I’ve been meeting with Shadow Cabinet colleagues for months now, drawing up detailed plans for their department budgets, talking to them about their priorities. And working up draft plans to hand to the civil servants on Friday.

So let me now set out my priorities for my first hundred days in the Treasury and how we’ll put power and wealth into the hands of those who create it.

Firstly, the next few years are vital if we are to tackle the climate and environmental emergency, and doing that will mean getting money moving out of the City and Whitehall into the places that need it.

We’ve wasted ten years of the Tories serving the interests of big polluters. And in too many parts of the country, we have been wasting people’s potential for much longer. That’s down to successive governments sitting back and leaving the fate of whole communities at the mercy of market forces.

Good jobs and whole industries that were once the pride of our country have been lost and replaced with dreary, exploitative, insecure and low paid jobs, or in some cases no jobs at all. No wonder people feel disillusioned in politicians.

As our manifesto makes clear, turning these two things around will be our number one priority in government. Our Green Industrial Revolution will deliver the changes we need to avert climate catastrophe.

And it will put British industry back on the map, bringing prosperity to every part of our country. It will give every community something to be proud of.

The pride that comes with an honest day’s work, yes, but also more than that. The pride of being on the right side in this crucial moment of human history. The pride, quite literally, of helping to save the planet.

A few weeks ago I launched our regional manifestos setting out how every single part of the country will be part of our Green Industrial Revolution. They set out a plan to expand and create new industries in each region.

The first priority of a Labour Government will be getting investment going to make this happen. We’ll set up our National Transformation Unit immediately – before Christmas – so it can start work in the Treasury, before being moved out to its new office in the north of England early next year.

It will provide the initial finance for our new National Investment Bank, regional development banks and Post Bank, using the power of the Treasury to get affordable finance onto every high street in Britain.

We’ve already started our meetings with the Treasury, they are working up plans and getting ready to implement all this. So don’t be fooled by the doubters who say our plans are unachievable.

A decade of austerity, and forty years of believing the market knows best, have dulled people’s sense of what’s possible, just as they were intended to do.

That’s why – if we are to help make hope real again – we need to remake government, and what people expect from it.

We’re creating new institutions – institutions that will become a normal part of people’s lives, like the NHS. Institutions that we will come to cherish and rely on, like the NHS.

And, like the NHS, institutions that will only be set up under a Labour government.

Central among those institutions will be publicly-owned and democratically run utilities, because when Labour put money in your pockets, we will also put power back in your hands.

In the last election our manifesto was leaked by someone who thought public ownership would be unpopular. It turned out to be something that unites people right across Britain, young and old, Leave and Remain. And that’s not surprising when you think about it.

Even the Financial Times has conceded that privatisation was an organised rip off. People are fed up of paying higher bills just so that money can be siphoned off by shareholders, but they are also fed up of feeling like they’ve lost control over their lives.

This isn’t just a feeling. Thanks to privatisation and outsourcing and offshoring and similar initiatives pursued by the Thatcher Government since in the name of market efficiency, more and more aspects of our lives are shaped by remote corporate interests over which we have little control.

The second key priority for me and a Labour Government will be to change that.

When we win power it will be to give it to you, because we believe in democracy and we believe in you.

Since we first put public ownership back on the political agenda, we’ve been talking about our plans more, and consulting on them with experts, trade unions and industry. And we are ready to go.

In our first hundred days we will start the process of bringing water and energy into public ownership. We’ll set up boards to run these utilities made up of who, the customer, and you, the worker, as well as representatives from local councils, metro mayors and others.

We’ll make sure decisions are taken locally by those who understand the services – those who use them and deliver them.

Meetings will be public and streamed online, with new transparency regulations set higher than ever before, so you can see if your road is being dug up, why, and for how long. And we’ll create new People’s Assemblies to give everyone the option of participating in how their utilities are run.

Meanwhile of course, during this period, Jeremy Corbyn, our new prime minister, and his negotiating team will have secured a new Brexit agreement with our EU partners to put before the British people within 6 months.

Despite all his promises it is clear to all now that far from getting Brexit done, under Johnson Brexit won’t be done for years or we risk a catastrophic no deal.

And finally, but in some respects most importantly, our first Budget. The Budget which ends austerity once and for all.

This is the budget that will save the NHS, that starts to rebuild the public services the Tories have brought to their knees.

A Budget that will put money in people’s pockets, a Real Living Wage of £10 an hour. Money to fix the worst aspects of Universal Credit, while we design its replacement, a 5% pay rise for public sector workers after years of pay freezes.

The Waspi compensation scheme will be established and legislation brought forward to scrap tuition fees

Urgent funding will be brought forward rapidly to tackle the funding crisis in our NHS, our schools and education service. To establish free personal social care and childcare, to bring forward urgent homeless support, and inject much needed resources into our council services, with a full Comprehensive Spending Review to follow later in 2020 to allocate resources for the full five years.

So I can tell you today that my first act as Chancellor will be write to the Office for Budget Responsibility asking them to begin their preparations for my first Budget which will be given on the 5th of February. The date when almost ten years of cuts will come to an end.

And when it happens, it will be down to the millions who stood up against what they saw happening in society.

Just in the last few weeks we’ve seen the dedication and creativity of Labour Party members, ordinary people, up and down the country, inspiring us and inspiring millions of others by stepping up.

In the last few days, as we push as hard as we can for every vote, we should be immensely proud of what we’ve achieved already in this campaign.

There will always be those at the top who will do anything to stop us – we’ve seen character assassinations, lies and smears taken to a new level.

The more people we convince on the doorsteps, the more they ramp up their attacks because those who’ve had it good for so long are terrified, terrified of losing control.

When they attack me, or Jeremy, we know it’s not really about us. It’s about you, they hate the people of this country.

They think – and I quote the Prime Minister – that you’re drunk and criminal, they hate the idea you might dream of a better life. They hate the idea you might want real change in how things have been done for so long, and a say in how things are done in future.

No wonder they will stop at nothing to keep you from taking control of the country where you live, and which you’ve given so much to.

But when they come to write the history books, and write about when it all began to turn around.

When your children or grandchildren ask you:

“What did you do to end that world of rough sleeping and food banks?

“What did you do to save the NHS and stop the Tories selling it off?”

“What did you do to bring back pride to our town?

“And to finally wrestle back control from those who had kept it to themselves for so long?”

You can tell them:

“It all began when we voted Labour, when together we laid the foundations of that new society, foundations so deeply rooted that no Tory could ever tear them up.”

You can tell them:

“It was when we proved, once and for all, that the doubters were wrong. That the doubters are always wrong: another world really *is* possible.”