Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, to the GMB Congress held in Nottingham on 12th June 2014.

I want to pay tribute to the fantastic work that the members of the GMB have done over this year.

The GMB takes a stand for the values of our movement, even when that is hard.

And we have seen that in the work you have done.

Leading the campaign against blacklisting in our construction industry.

Standing against tax avoidance by some of the world’s biggest and most powerful firms.

Doing all you can to make work pay, with your campaign for a Living Wage.

And I also want to thank you for playing your part in the fight to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.

And let us also stand for this debate being conducted in a decent way.

We have seen over the last 24 hours the most unpleasant and unseemly attacks on JK Rowling for her speaking out.

All leaders should say that this has no place in the debate about independence.

Friends, I want to talk today about the country we can begin to build in less than 11 months’ time if we win the next general election.

And I want to talk about Labour’s cause between now and that election.

And, more important than that, the crucial cause for our country.

You know how your members are feeling.

They have been at the sharp end of the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory.

More and more people who are working all the hours God sends and are still being left behind.

One in five people are now working for poverty in the 4th richest country in the world.

Millions more struggling to make ends meet.

And a deep sense of unfairness about how Britain is run.

Friends, it’s not good enough for Britain.

And the Labour Party I lead will not let it stand.

And these aren’t just problems for today.

They are problems for our country’s future as well.

For the first time we can remember, parents in Britain are worrying that their children will have a harder life than they did.

Young people are unable to get the best start in life.

The apprenticeships and secure jobs people used to rely on, just don’t seem to be there anymore.

There aren’t flats or houses that young people can afford to rent or buy.

What I call the promise of Britain, that the next generation does better than the last, has been broken.

What does all this tell you?

This country doesn’t work for most working people.

The vital link between working people’s family finances and the wealth of the nation as a whole has been broken.

And it is the task of the next Labour government to restore it.

The bond between hard work and fair reward has snapped.

And it is the task of the next Labour government to mend it.

Inequality has been on the rise.

And it is the task of the next Labour government to turn the tide.

These are our tasks.

And that is why we need big changes.

Big changes in how our country is run.

And who it is run for.

And that is what One Nation Labour is all about.

And there’s one thing we can be certain of.

We’re never going to see the kind of action Britain needs from David Cameron and George Osborne.

Friends, the Tories can never be the solution to the cost-of-living crisis.

Because they are part of the problem.

It is because of how they think an economy succeeds.

They really do believe in the old ideas.

If a few at the top do OK, it will be all right for everyone else.

That’s why they give the millionaires their tax cut.

While to everyone else they say:

Keep your wages down.

Put up with insecurity.

Trade in your rights at work.

Accept the zero-hours contracts.

A race to the bottom.

Friends, what you know, what I know is that Britain doesn’t need a race to the bottom.

It needs solidarity, fairness and a country that works for all.

And don’t let anyone tell you UKIP are the answer either.

They say they want to be the champion of working people.

But what do they stand for?

Charges to see your GP.

Attacking the minimum wage.

Bring back the 11 plus.

Tax cuts for those at the top.

Keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive.

These aren’t the values of working people.

And they offer no solution for Britain.

So it will fall to Labour, as it has fallen to us before, to make the changes we need.

To have the determination to rebuild the economy.

I’m not going to pretend it will be easy.

Because it won’t.

We will face tough an economic situation.

That’s why we’ve said we won’t borrow more for day-to-day spending in 2015-16.

And we will balance the books in the next Parliament with a surplus in current spending and the debt falling.

But don’t let anyone tell you that it means we can’t make a difference.

We can.

And we will.

On every aspect of inequality, of the cost-of-living crisis, of the break between hard work and reward – we will act.

And I want you to know, your members to know, your friends and neighbours to know, the difference a Labour government will make.

We will take action on wages, on jobs and on prices.

It starts with wages.

The next Labour Government will write the next chapter in the battle against low pay.

For the first time since records began, most of the people in poverty in Britain today are in work, not out of work.

There’s a low pay epidemic in this country.

It has not happened overnight.

It has been coming for generations.

And it shames us all.

A Labour government would start to turn it round.

Let’s today congratulate the 26 Labour councils who are already leading the way in moving to a living wage.

A living wage is good for employees as it means they can better afford to bring up their family.

It makes sense for government, saving money on subsidizing the cost of low pay.

And leading businesses are showing it makes sense for them too,

improving productivity and reducing turnover of staff.

That’s why in government we want to help more employers become living wage employers.

Why for the first time we will give tax incentives to employers who do the right thing.

Because we know the living wage is an idea whose time has come.

And working together we’ll strengthen the minimum wage too.

We all need to take action – government, trade unions and businesses together – to stop those who abuse the minimum wage.

Exploiting workers who come here from abroad and driving down wages for everyone else.

I’m the son of immigrants and I believe that immigration has benefited our country.

But it is part of a progressive, Labour agenda, a trade union agenda, to say it is right to tackle exploitation whoever it affects, including when it undercuts wages.

You know your members are concerned about immigration.

Because you hear it in the workplace.

Let us tell them Labour doesn’t stand for cutting Britain off from the rest of the world.

But Labour stands for fair rules.

Enforcing the minimum wage, stopping employers putting 15 people in a house to sidestep the minimum wage, regulating the gangmasters operating in industry.

And it means something else as well.

It took too long for the last Labour government to introduce rules on agency workers.

The next Labour government will act on the loopholes in those rules that mean agency work can be used to undermine the pay of permanent employees.

And we will set our sights higher as a country too.

With a clear ambition for the minimum wage at the start of each Parliament.

Because we know the single most important truth:

A country can only succeed if those who work hard and do the right thing get a fair day’s pay.

That’s why I guarantee today: the next Labour government will increase the minimum wage.

And we won’t just increase it, we will narrow the gap between the minimum wage and average earnings.

So we can make hard work pay again in our country.

These are the values of the British people, that if you work hard you should get a decent reward and be able to bring up your family.

And these will be the values of the next Labour government too.

Securing good wages for the working people of Britain is also about creating the jobs of the future.

The principle of the next Labour government is that we must not just secure full employment but decent jobs with decent wages.

That means successful businesses, making profits, creating wealth in a dynamic economy.

After the next election the route to social justice lies through the creation of these well paid, private sector jobs.

Jobs that help people build a career, a future for themselves and their families.

Secure. High skill.

Like those you have been campaigning for in the construction industry.

Getting Britain building again.

I believe in a simple idea: there should be a future for all of our young people including the 50 per cent who don’t go to university.

Decent qualifications.

Apprenticeships.

And careers for all our young people.

We can’t build the good quality jobs of the future, when zero-hours contracts are spreading like wildfire through our workplaces.

There’s no place for exploitative zero-hours contracts in Britain today.

So the next Labour government will have a simple rule:

If week after week, you do regular hours, you deserve a regular contract not a zero-hours contract.

And creating the jobs of the future, means backing Britain’s small businesses too.

The businesses that invent and create and sell, that make the opportunities, but so often can’t get a break themselves.

That’s why we will cut and freeze business rates for Britain’s small firms.

And why we will take on the big banks that still refuse to lend.

Breaking up the banks on the high street.

Establishing a British Investment Bank.

And creating regional banks in every part of the country.

So that there are successful companies creating good quality jobs in every single part of Britain.

Not just in the City of London.

Because I believe in the same principle that you do.

We don’t want businesses serving our banks, we want banks that serve our businesses.

Tackling inequality and the cost-of-living crisis, also means dealing with the costs families face.

The next Labour government will have a simple principle: we will take action on the broken markets that have held our country back for so long now.

Driving prices too high, ripping people off.

It starts with the energy companies.

We’ve seen the problem this very week.

The wholesale price goes up, your bills go up.

The wholesale price comes down, your bills still go up.

Not under a Labour government.

We will freeze gas and electricity bills until 2017 to stop them rising.

And we will give new powers to the regulator to cut prices too.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Isn’t it time we had a government that faced up to one of the biggest causes of the cost-of-living crisis in our country?

The price of renting or buying a home

There are nine million people renting their homes.

Think of the million families in this position, with kids starting the school year this September.

Who don’t know whether they will be in their house in 12 months time.

That insecurity is bad for them and bad for our country.

That’s why we will give those who rent, three-year secure tenancies, with rent rises that are stable and predictable.

The government might think that reminds them of Venezuela.

But I think it is the minimum sense of decency and fairness that the nine million people of Britain who rent their homes have the right to expect.

And we will get homes built again in this country.

We all know why house prices are out of reach for so many families.

Because there are fewer house completions in Britain today that at any time since the 1920s.

That’s why the next Labour government will make sure that 200,000 homes a year are built by the end of the next Parliament.

We’ll give local authorities the right grow.

And at the same time, we’ll tackle the problem of developers buying up land, getting planning permission, and then just sitting on it waiting for it to rise in value.

Half a million homes part of the landbanks in our country.

We won’t let it continue.

And to those developers, we’ll have a simple message:

You either use the land, or lose the land.

And we know we can only make this country strong for all and not just a few if we have strong public services.

People have lost faith in lots of institutions in Britain.

Politics.

The press.

The banks.

But amidst all that, there is a public service, an institution, that people still have great faith in.

And that’s our National Health Service.

We created it.

We invested in it.

And brought it back to health after 1997.

And it will be our job to save it once again.

The NHS is going backwards under the Tories.

The highest waiting times in A&E for a decade.

Longer waiting lists.

Longer waiting times to see your GP.

And creeping privatization of our NHS.

David Cameron said the NHS was safe in his hands.

He has betrayed the trust of the British people.

It will be up to the next Labour government to protect and improve our NHS.

Stop the Tory privatization.

And repeal their terrible Health and Social Care Bill.

Friends, we face a generational challenge in Britain right now.

For years, for decades even, we’ve had a country that works well for a few.

But that leaves most working people behind.

We’ve got to turn that round.

We face the fight of our lives in less than a year’s time.

We all know how the Tories will fight that election.

We all know the tactics they will use.

How desperate they will be to cling to power.

But I have to tell you.

We have a bigger opponent at these elections.

Bigger than the Tories.

Bigger than UKIP.

And it’s certainly bigger than the Liberal Democrats.

It is the sense that nothing can be done.

The sense that Britain’s problems are too big.

And politics is too small.

We all heard it time after time during the election campaign last month.

“You’re all the same. In it for yourselves. You don’t keep your promises.”

Friends, we know that’s not right.

We know we are different.

We have to show people.

We can do it.

Remind people that we came into this party, and this movement, for a reason:

Show that we can change Britain.

That we can rebuild our economy.

Save our NHS.

That we can make our country a fairer, more prosperous, more equal place.

And that we can do all that even when times are hard.

Friends, that is our mission.

A fairer society.

A more just society.

A more equal society.

That is our cause.

And together, we can make it happen.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, in London on 17th January 2014.

Today I want to tell you what the next election is about for Labour.

It is about those families who work all the hours that God sends and don’t feel they get anything back.

It is about the people who go to bed anxious about how they’re going to pay their bills.

It is about the parents who turn to each other each night and ask what life their sons and daughters are going to have in the future.

It is about those just starting out who can’t imagine they will ever afford a home of their own.

It is about the most vulnerable in our country who feel they are just being tossed aside.

And it is about all those who are doing OK but still feel Britain should be doing a lot better.

It is about who we are as a country.

And who we want to recover to be.

It is about all those who believe that we’re Britain and we should never settle for second best.

All those millions of people who believe, like I do, like you do: We’re Britain, we’re better than this.

But we can only do better if the conversation in politics catches up with our country.

For too long politicians acted as if when something wasn’t talked about in politics or wasn’t big on our television screens, somehow it wasn’t happening.

The banking crisis.

The problems in the eurozone.

Ups and downs on the stock market.

They are the daily stuff of politics.

But all the while something just as important, something even deeper, has been going on.

And we have been far too silent about it.

That is the cost-of-living crisis.

Some people in Westminster still ask me: is the cost-of-living crisis really such a big deal?

Isn’t it just a short-term problem?

This shows they just don’t understand.

The cost-of-living crisis is the single greatest challenge our country faces.

Not since the century before last have we seen such a sustained fall in living standards.

What is the cost-of-living crisis?

On my very first day as leader of the Labour Party, I talked about the squeezed middle.

I realise now that back then I didn’t grasp the full scale of the problem.

It only really came home to me later.

And since then we’ve had three more years of that squeeze.

It is why I focused on it in my Labour Party conference speech this year.

And today, I think about the fragments of the conversations I have had since then, about the problems people face.

“My wages are stuck but all the bills carry on going up.

I just can’t get the hours I need so everything is a struggle.

The weekly food shop.

Gas and electricity.

Petrol for the car.

I just can’t afford this government.

I don’t know how much I am going to earn from one week to the next.

Work sixty hours a week.

I have to do two jobs.

I don’t have time to see my kids.”

“Of course, life’s going to be hard,” people say, “but surely it doesn’t need to be this hard?”

“And what’s going to happen to my kids when they grow up?

Will they get a regular job?

What about when they want to start a family?”

“They tell me on the news the economy is fixed.

And the people at the top they certainly seem to be doing OK.

But why isn’t that happening for my family?”

It is used to be that this country worked for ordinary people.

It just doesn’t seem to any more.

You see, this cost-of-living crisis is about the pound in people’s pocket today.

But it is not just about that.

It reaches deeply into people’s lives.

Deeply into the way our country is run.

Deeply into who our country is run for.

And because the problems are deep, the solutions need to be too.

That is the task for the next Labour government.

What is going to happen?

At least, politicians are finally talking about the cost-of-living crisis.

But talking about it isn’t enough.

People need to know that we’re going to do anything about it.

This government think it is all going to be OK.

Because this year the forecasts say that average wages will finally overtake prices.

Let’s hope that happens.

But I really warn this government:

If they think a few months of better statistics will solve this crisis, they are just demonstrating again that they have absolutely no idea about the scale of the problem or the solutions required.

This cost-of-living crisis is about who gets the rewards, not just the averages: ordinary people or just those at the top?

It is about the nature of work and whether it is secure or insecure.

It is about the prospects for people’s kids and the quality of jobs.

It is about decent homes at affordable prices.

It is about a strong sense that this cost-of-living crisis has been coming for a long time.

And that there are some big things need to change if we’re going to sort it out.

This government says: “the job is not even half done.”

You might think that’s a good sign.

But when they say that, they are not talking about your living standards.

The work you do.

The prospects for your kids.

They are just talking about the deficit.

Of course, we need to reduce the deficit.

That’s why Labour won’t borrow more for day to day spending in 2015/16.

But deficit reduction alone can’t fix our economy.

Deficit reduction alone can’t make hard work pay.

Deficit reduction alone isn’t a vision for the country.

And why does their vision fall so short?

It is not an accident.

Because they think low wages, insecure work, the hope of a bit of wealth trickling down from the top, is the way Britain succeeds.

Their economic policy is not the solution to the cost-of-living crisis.

It’s part of the problem.

They believe in a race to the bottom.

Low wages, low skills.

Not the race to the top Britain needs to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

High skills and high wages.

The symptoms of their failure to make the long-term changes that Britain needs are there for all to see.

Personal debt for ordinary families rising again, as wages are squeezed and productivity remains low.

The largest deficit in traded goods since records began back in 1955, because there’s no proper industrial policy and no plan for growth in every region.

Investment 159th in the world because reforms haven’t been made so firms can take the long-term view.

Over-reliance on insecure, low paid jobs, not enough of the secure, high paying ones that used to keep our middle class strong.

Millions of people unable to afford to buy or rent a home, because the homes just aren’t being built.

Broken markets, from gas and electricity to transport, which are not being reformed.

And a banking system that still doesn’t serve Britain’s firms.

Higher personal debt.

Uneven growth.

Low investment.

Insecure jobs.

House prices out of reach.

Bills still too high.

Banks not serving the wealth-creators.

And David Cameron and George Osborne want congratulation.

This is not a recipe for building the new economy that can tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

It is a recipe for clinging on to the old economy.

I say: Britain can do better than this.

How we earn our way to a higher standard of living

Over the coming months, Labour will be setting out the long-term changes we need.

So we earn and grow our way to a higher standard of living.

A One Nation industrial policy serving every region of Britain.

An end to the fast buck with a new culture of long-termism, from our infrastructure to our takeover rules to the stock market.

An education policy to help provide skills, training and a career to all of our young people, not just the 50% who go to university.

A plan to build 200,000 homes a year by the end of the next Parliament, so we can tackle the housing crisis.

Taking on the vested interests in every broken market to get a fairer deal to help consumers.

And building a banking system that serves the real economy.

At our party conference in September, I talked about how we will reform Britain’s broken energy market.

As you may remember, the big energy firms didn’t like it.

But it is broken.

And only Labour will put it right.

Today, I want to talk about another broken market.

Britain’s banking system.

Because there can be no bigger test of whether we are serious about building a new economy and tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

Part of the reason as a country we rely too much on low paid, insecure work is that the small and medium sized firms that could create the good, high paying jobs of the future can’t get the finance they need.

Of course, financial services is an important industry in itself.

But for an industry that calls itself a “service”, it has been a poor servant of the real economy.

And it has been an incredibly poor servant.

Not just since 2010.

Or 2008.

But for decades in this country.

We need a reckoning with our banking system not for retribution but for reform.

Labour has already laid out important plans to change our banking system.

A Green Investment Bank, with proper powers to invest.

A new British Business Investment Bank, supported by a network of regional banks in every region of the country.

And we’ve said very clearly if the big banks can’t demonstrate real culture change by the time of the next election they will see their high street and casino arms broken up.

But to really change our banking system, we have to tackle a decades long problem in British banking: too much power concentrated in too few hands.

Britain has one of the most concentrated banking systems in the world.

Just 4 banks control 85% of small business lending.

Not lending to firms.

Poor customer service.

High charges.

The old economy.

The next Labour government will act.

On day one of the next Labour government, we will ask the Competition and Markets Authority to report within six months on how to create at least two new sizeable and competitive banks to challenge the existing high street banks.

I want to be clear about the difference this will mean:

This is not about whether we should have new banks.

The question this government is still asking.

But about how.

It is not about creating new banks that control some tiny proportion of the market.

But new banks that have a substantial proportion and can compete properly with existing banks.

And we are not asking whether existing banks might have to divest themselves of significant number of branches.

We are asking how we make that happen.

And we will go further too.

In America, by law, they have a test so that no bank can get too big and dominate the market.

We will follow the same principle for Britain.

And so under the next Labour government we will establish for the first time a threshold for the market share any one bank can have of personal accounts and small business lending.

Preventing mergers and acquisitions over this threshold.

After decades of banking becoming more and more concentrated, Labour will turn the tide.

I want to send a message to our small and medium sized businesses: Under a Labour government, you will no longer be serving the banks.

The banks will be serving you.

You will have a better chance of getting the support you need to grow your business, employ more people, at decent wages, making profits and helping Britain succeed.

Only if we take on powerful vested interests, from energy to banking, and reform broken markets, can we make the long-term changes Britain needs.

And tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

Conclusion

All of us face a choice about how we want to fight the next election.

Optimistic about Britain and its future.

Or pessimistic.

Giving people a sense of hope.

Or trying to win by fear.

In the next 16 months, I want you to tell people:

About our belief that Britain can do better than this.

About how we believe we can tip the balance away from struggle and towards hope.

And tell them exactly what we will do to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

An energy price freeze.

Strengthening the minimum wage.

Tackling the payday lenders.

Better childcare.

Abolishing the bedroom tax.

Alongside the long-term changes our country needs:

New banks on our high street.

Skills for all our young people.

A new culture for long-termism.

An industrial policy for every region.

Building homes again in Britain.

I say Britain can do better than this.

To build the new economy.

And leave the old economy behind.

To tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

That’s what the next Labour government will do.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, in Battersea, London, on 5th November 2013.

Introduction

It is great to be here in Battersea with you today.

Last Friday, I was in my constituency, at the local Citizens Advice Bureau.

And I talked to some people who had been preyed upon by payday lenders.

There was a woman there in floods of tears.

She was in work.

But she took out a payday loan for her deposit so she could rent somewhere to live.

And then disaster followed.

A payday loan of a few hundred pounds became a debt of thousands of pounds.

She still faces bullying, harassment and threats from multiple payday lenders.

Like the young mum I met who described sitting at home with her daughter and seeing an advert on the TV for a payday lender.

She said she was down to the last nappy for her baby.

She took out the payday loan.

And one led to many more, with her ending up spending most of the money she had each week on repayments and charges.

She was so frightened by the harassment she faced that she had given her mobile phone to her mum.

Her mum showed me the phone and told me that she’d had fifteen calls that day.

The woman who worked at the CAB said the problem had got far, far worse in the last couple of years.

She said: “payday lenders are running riot through people’s lives in this community.”

Yesterday Wonga released a film all about themselves.

And last night the boss of Wonga said he was speaking for the ‘silent majority’, who are happy with their service.

But the truth is he wants us to stay silent about a company where in one year alone their bad debts reached £120 million.

An industry in which seven out of ten customers said they regretted taking out a loan.

With half saying they couldn’t pay it back.

Payday lenders don’t speak for the silent majority.

They are responsible for a quiet crisis of thousands of families trapped in unpayable debt.

The Wonga economy is one of the worst symbols of this cost of living crisis.

And as I listened to these stories, my overwhelming thought was: how is this being allowed to happen in Britain, 2013?

Because these stories of payday lenders are just one part of the cost of living crisis facing families across our country.

Low skilled jobs.

Wages that are stagnating.

Predatory behaviour by some companies.

This isn’t just an issue for the lowest paid, it affects the squeezed middle just as much.

A country where a few at the top do well, but everybody else struggles.

This is not just an issue facing Britain.

It is the issue facing Britain.

It is about who our country is run for.

How it is run.

And whether we believe we can do better than this.

I do.

The Nature of the Problem

Now, David Cameron said recently that I wanted to “talk about the cost of living” because I didn’t want to talk about “economic policy.”

So we have a Prime Minister who thinks we can detach our national economic success from the success of Britain’s families and businesses.

He doesn’t seem to realise that there is no such thing as a successful economy which doesn’t carry Britain’s families with it.

And he obviously doesn’t get that the old link between growth and living standards is just broken.

Growth without national prosperity is not economic success.

The first and last test of economic policy is whether living standards for ordinary families are rising.

And the scale of the problem is familiar to millions of people in our country.

The official figures say that on average working people are £1,500 a year worse off than they were at the election.

And it has happened because prices are rising faster than wages.

In 39 out of the 40 months that David Cameron has been Prime Minister.

But the average doesn’t tell you the whole story.

We don’t just need average wages to creep higher than prices.

For people to be genuinely better off, we have to do much better than that.

Ordinary families are hit harder than average by higher prices.

They rely more on expensive basic necessities, like electricity and gas.

And ordinary families do worse than the average when it comes to wage increases.

Because those increases are scooped by a few at the top.

Chief executive pay went up by 7 per cent last year.

When everyone else’s wages were falling.

We can’t just make do and mend.

We need to do much better than we are.

Can Anything Be Done?

And that means we can’t just carry on as we are.

We have to permanently restore the link between growth and living standards for all of Britain’s working people.

This Government can’t do it.

And the reason is because they are wedded to Britain competing in a race to the bottom.

Listen to their silence on our plans for a living wage.

Nothing to say.

On the falling value of the minimum wage.

Nothing to say.

On zero-hours contracts.

Nothing to say.

On the exploitation of low-skill migrant labour which undercuts wages.

Nothing to say.

They’re silent because of what they believe in.

In his speech to the Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne described my argument that they believed in a race to the bottom as something straight out of “Karl Marx” and “Das Kapital.”

No.

He’s wrong.

It is about what is happening in this capital city.

Right here.

And towns and cities across the country.

Right now.

Now, they think that this low wage economy is the best we can do.

Because they believe doing anything about it means intervening in markets in ways that we shouldn’t.

I disagree.

A dynamic market economy, with profitable private sector companies is essential for creating the wealth we need.

But markets always have rules.

The question is: what do those rules allow?

And what do they encourage?

Do they encourage companies to create high-skill, high-wage jobs, as part of a race to the top?

And provide the support they need to do so?

Or do they encourage a race to the bottom of low wages and low skills?

Do the rules mend broken markets?

Or allow some firms to take advantage of broken markets at the expense of everybody else?

All governments set rules for what they want to see.

This Government does intervene in markets but in the wrong way.

They make it easier to fire people.

Water down rights for agency workers.

Turn a blind eye to the failure to pay the minimum wage.

Pushing companies to compete on low wages, low skills and worse terms and conditions.

They introduce tax cuts for the richest.

Defend bonuses for the bankers.

Stand up for a powerful few.

Supporting their belief that wealth will trickle down from those at the top to everybody else.

Don’t believe it when they say they are stepping away, they are stepping in all the time, stepping in to stand up for the wrong people.

High hopes for those at the top.

Low expectations for everyone else.

A race to the bottom.

When what we need is a race to the top.

Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Jobs

To win that race to the top, we are going to earn and grow our way out of this cost of living crisis.

Not by spending money we don’t have.

Because we have to bring the deficit down.

But by building a different kind of economy.

One that really works for working people.

That starts with the jobs our country creates.

David Cameron is still on his lap of honour.

To celebrate how brilliantly he has done.

In the slowest recovery for a hundred years.

We still face a massive challenge of creating jobs in this country.

There are still nearly two and half million people unemployed in Britain and nearly a million young people are still looking for work.

And when we look at the jobs in our economy, too many are low paid, part-time and temporary.

Half of new jobs have been in low paid sectors of the economy.

We have 1.4 million people working part-time when they want full-time work.

More than ever before.

And we’ve got more people in a temporary job because they can’t find a permanent one.

The Tories don’t think we can do anything about it.

They think it is the way we compete with China and India.

But they are wrong.

A Labour government will put all our country’s effort into winning a race to the top.

And that means taking action on both the quantity and quality of jobs that we are creating.

We can only win a race to the top if we transform our vocational education system and apprenticeships in this country, which is what we will do.

We can only win a race to the top if we radically transform the way we support business in every part of our country, with a proper regional banking system learning the lessons of Germany, which is what we will do.

We can only win a race to the top if we support the small businesses that will create the jobs of the future, by cutting business rates, which is what we will do.

We can only win a race to the top if we help parents get back to work and start earning to support their families by extending childcare for working parents to 25 hour a week, which is what we will do.

And we can only win a race to the top with a proper industrial policy, including for environmental jobs, which is what we will do.

All this is about re-engineering the British economy so that we make a difference to the kinds of jobs we create.

You can’t do it if you believe in a race to the bottom.

You can only do it if you believe in a race to the top.

Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Wages

So dealing with the cost of living crisis starts with jobs.

But it is also about wages.

Wages for millions of people have been in decline for far too long.

I am talking about people battling to do the right thing and struggling and struggling.

Hard, honest work, in supermarkets, on building sites, in call centres.

Working harder, for longer, for less.

We have a low pay emergency in this country.

Five million people now paid less than the living wage.

Working for their poverty.

Up at least 1.4 million in just the last four years.

To one in five of all employed workers.

More of Britain’s poor children today are being brought up in working families than in jobless families.

And low wages aren’t just bad for working people.

They cost money in benefits too.

As the country has to subsidise more and more low paid jobs with higher and higher tax credits and benefits.

The government now pays more out on tax credits and benefits to those in work than it does for who are unemployed.

So to those who say we can’t afford to do anything about wages in our country today:

I say we can’t afford not to.

And many businesses now recognise that a low pay economy is bad for them too.

I was in Bristol last Thursday night talking to cleaners who are paid the living wage.

They told how proud to work for a firm like that.

Better pay means lower turnover of staff.

Higher productivity.

So we have to end the scandal of poverty pay in this country.

We would strengthen the minimum wage, which has lost 5 per cent of its value under this government.

We are looking at the case for higher minimum wages in particular sectors of the economy, like financial services, where they can afford to pay more.

And we will go further than that too.

That is why the next Labour government from its first day in office, will offer “make work pay” contracts to employers all over Britain.

It is a simple deal.

For the first year of a Labour government, we will say to every firm:

You start to make work pay, through a living wage.

And we will give you a 12 month tax rebate of 32p for every extra pound they spend.

Make work pay contracts will raise wages, keep the benefit bill down and tackle the cost of living crisis.

It is a good deal for workers, business and the taxpayer too.

And by tackling low pay we won’t just strengthen our economy, we will strengthen our society as well.

It is not good for our country for people to be working 60 or 70 hours a week, doing 2 or 3 jobs, not having time to see their kids.

We will change it.

Under a One Nation Labour government: work will pay.

Dealing with the Cost of Living Crisis: Broken Markets

And tackling the cost of living crisis is also about ensuring markets work for working people.

And that means fixing markets when they are broken.

This power station was built in the 1920s after a Conservative government intervened to fix a broken energy market.

That government, of Stanley Baldwin, knew that if government didn’t fix broken markets, nobody else was going to.

Stanley Baldwin knew it.

John Major seems to understand it.

But David Cameron doesn’t.

His response to Labour’s energy price freeze shows how out of the mainstream he is.

He took issue with the whole idea of government intervention in a broken market.

Ever since, on energy he seems to have had a different policy every day of the week.

But what we know is that we can never expect him to stand up to the energy companies, because they are a large and powerful interest.

It is not who David Cameron is.

It is not what he does.

He stands up to the weak, never to the strong.

For the next eighteen months, people will hear scare stories from the unholy alliance of the energy companies and David Cameron.

The Big Seven.

It will just reinforce in people’s minds who he stands up for.

The six large energy companies.

Not the 60 million people of Britain.

Today, new figures confirm that most of the recent price rises weren’t caused by government levies or by a rise in wholesale prices.

But are the direct result of a broken market.

For the average increase in the price for electricity and gas since 2011, over half went straight to the costs and profits of the companies themselves.

This shows exactly why we need a price freeze now.

Because only a price freeze will protect customers while we re-set the market.

A price freeze until 2017 will happen if Labour wins the election.

A freeze that will benefit 27 million families and 2.4 million businesses.

It is workable and it will happen.

And tomorrow, Parliament will vote on that price freeze.

So Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs could vote for it now.

And if they line up against it, the British people will know the truth:

This Government is on the side of the big energy companies not hard-pressed families.

And our price freeze until 2017 will pave the way for us to radically improve the energy market for the long term.

We will publish an Energy Green Paper for:

A regulator that can cut unjustified price rises.

A ring fence between the generation and supply businesses of the energy companies, so there is proper transparency.

Forcing energy companies to trade the energy they produce in the open market.

And a new simple tariff structure that people can understand.

So we will change the way the energy market works.

In a way that will provide long-term confidence for investors and a better deal for consumers.

And we will mend other markets that aren’t working in the public interest.

Opening up competition in banking.

A cap on the cost of credit in payday lending.

Proper regulation of our train companies.

Ending unjustified charges and fees in the private rented sector.

And new social tariffs in the water industry.

The Conservative Party defends broken markets and the few people that profit from them.

I am proud that the Labour Party stands up for markets that work for working people.

Conclusion

The next general election will offer a big choice.

A choice about whether we tackle the cost of living crisis or shrug our shoulders.

A choice about whether we run a race to the top or a race to the bottom.

A choice about whether we reform broken markets or defend them.

A choice about how we succeed as a country.

Above all, the choice will be about who our country is run for.

There is a Tory vision for Britain that has low expectations for what most people should be able to expect.

Payday lenders can prey on the vulnerable.

Millions of families see stagnating living standards.

Energy companies can just carry on as they are, ripping off consumers.

My vision is different.

We can run Britain in a different way.

Different from the past.

Building a different future for our country.

Where ordinary people feel the country is run for them.

In their interests.

And for their future.

Earning our way to a better standard of living.

Sharing rewards fairly.

And making markets work for people, not the other way round.

Britain can do better than this.

And that’s what One Nation Labour will do.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, to the TUC Conference in Bournemouth on 10th September 2013.

Frances, thank you so much for that introduction.

And let me pay tribute to you, as the first female General Secretary of the TUC, for the fantastic job that you do.

But I am sure you would agree that it would be wrong not to also remember those who did so much before you.

And I want to pick out one particular individual.

In a speech I remember reading, he argued that the problem of British politics had been that the “voices of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, all the other important centres of … industry have been unheard.”

He went further.

He praised that trade union march through the centre of London.

He talked evocatively of its “immense organisation, with marshals and sub-marshals, scarves, banners and an exhibition of almost perfect military discipline.”

Yes, I am talking, believe it or not, about:

The Conservative Prime Minister of 1867.

The Fourteenth Earl of Derby.

The longest ever serving leader of the Conservative Party.

The man who first legislated to allow trade unions in this country.

His real name: Edward Stanley.

Or as he would be called today:

Red Ed.

I tell this story to make a serious point.

The Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli who succeeded him were One Nation Conservatives.

They knew the Conservative Party had to represent the whole country.

They couldn’t write off whole swathes of people if they were to be worthy of governing Britain.

It seems extraordinary to have to even talk about this historical lesson.

But I do.

We have a Prime Minister who writes you and your members off.

Who doesn’t just write you off, but oozes contempt for you from every pore.

What does he say about you?

He says the trade union movement is a “threat to our economy”.

Back to the enemy within.

Six and a half million people in Britain.

Who teach our children.

Who look after the sick.

Who care for the elderly.

Who build our homes.

Who keep our shops open morning, noon and night.

They’re not the enemy within.

They’re the people who make Britain what it is.

How dare he?

How dare he insult people – members of trade unions – as he does?

How dare he write off whole sections of our society?

The Earl of Derby, Benjamin Disraeli, and other One Nation Conservatives, would be turning in their graves if they could hear the nasty, divisive, small-minded rhetoric of the leader of their once great party.

But friends, just remember this.

We know from recent experience what happens to political leaders who write off whole sections of a country.

That’s what Mitt Romney did when he talked about the 47 per cent of people who would never vote for him.

And look what happened to him.

They didn’t.

Friends, my job is to make sure that’s what happens to David Cameron as well.

A One Nation Party.

Unlike Mr Cameron, I am a One Nation politician.

And One Nation is about governing for the whole country.

To do this we are going have to build a new kind of Labour Party.

A new relationship with individual trade union members.

Some people ask: what’s wrong with the current system?

Let me tell them: we have three million working men and women affiliated to our party.

But the vast majority play no role in our party.

They are affiliated in name only.

That wasn’t the vision of the founders of our party.

I don’t think it’s your vision either.

And it’s certainly not my vision.

That’s why I want to make each and every affiliated trade union member a real part of their local party.

Making a real choice to be a part of our party.

So they can have a real voice in it.

And why is that such an exciting idea?

Because it means we could become a Labour party not of 200,000 people, but 500,000 or many more.

A party rooted every kind of workplace in the country.

A party rooted in every community in the country.

A genuine living, breathing movement.

Of course, it is a massive challenge.

It will be a massive challenge for the Labour Party to reach out to your members in a way that we have not done for many years and persuade them to be part of what we do.

And like anything that is hard it is a risk.

But the bigger risk is just saying let’s do it as we have always done it.

It is you who have been telling me year after year about a politics that is detached from the lives of working people.

That’s why we have to have the courage to change.

I respect those who worry about change.

I understand.

But I disagree.

It is the right thing to do.

We can change.

We must change.

And I am absolutely determined this change will happen.

It is the only way we can build a One Nation party.

So we can build a One Nation country.

And most importantly a One Nation economy, one that works for all working people, not just a few at the top.

Now at the moment you hear the Tories congratulating themselves on the recovery.

George Osborne was at it again yesterday.

And it is welcome that the economy is growing.

But we have to ask: “whose recovery is it anyway”?

The million young people looking for work.

It is not their recovery.

The long-term unemployed, higher than at any time for a generation.

It is not their recovery.

The 1.4 million people, more than ever before, desperate for full-time work but only able to get part-time work.

It is not their recovery.

And all the millions of people who are seeing their living standards falling year on year under this government.

It is not their recovery either.

Living standards have been falling for longer than at any time since 1870.

About the time our old friend, the Earl of Derby, left office.

We know whose recovery it is.

A recovery for the privileged few in our society.

The City bonuses are back.

Up by 82 per cent in April of this year alone.

Helped along by David Cameron’s millionaire’s tax cut.

It is a recovery for a few.

It is an unfair recovery.

An unequal recovery.

And an unequal recovery won’t be a stable recovery.

It won’t be built to last.

The only way we can have a durable recovery is with an economy that works for all working people.

Because what makes an economy succeed is not just a few people at the top, but the forgotten wealth creators.

The people who put in the hours, do the work, do two jobs.

Who get up before George Osborne’s curtains are open in the morning and come back at night well after they have closed.

They’re the people who make our economy strong.

They’re the people we have to support to make a recovery that lasts.

We know life won’t be easy under a Labour government.

We’ll have to stick to strict spending limits.

I know that means you ask:

What do we have to say to our members about what would be different under a Labour government than a Tory government?

The answer is we’d make different choices in pursuit of a fundamentally different vision of our economy.

One that works for all working people, not just a few.

These different choices start with young people.

On day one as Prime Minister, I would be mobilising all of Britain’s businesses behind the idea of getting our young people back to work.

If we were in government now, we would be saying to every young person out of work for more than a year, we will offer a compulsory jobs guarantee, funded by a tax on the bankers’ bonuses, for a job with proper training, paying at least the minimum wage.

A Labour government would get our young people working again.

And we need to get the best out of all of our young people.

It is time to end the snobbery in our country that says that university is always best and apprenticeships second best.

That’s why the next Labour government will get proper careers and qualifications for that forgotten 50 per cent who don’t go to university.

And we’ll say to any business: if you want a major government contract, you must provide apprenticeships to the next generation.

And to get a recovery that works for working people, we need proper investment in the future too.

Britain is currently 159th in the international league table of investment.

We’re not going to succeed in the future with a record like that.

Turning it round means changing our banking system.

We’ve still got businesses that serve our banks rather than banks that serve our businesses.

So we would have a new British Investment Bank to get finance to small businesses.

And regional banks too.

Banks that are legally obliged to invest in their region of the country and their region alone.

Not chasing a quick profit in the City of London.

But investment in the future doesn’t just come from our banks.

It needs to come from the government too.

I believe the way we get the best companies to come here is not on the basis of low skills and low wages.

But high skills and a decent infrastructure.

So we’d be doing something that hasn’t been done for decades.

Investing properly in housing in this country.

So, building a recovery that can last, one that works for working people and not just a few at the top, needs different choices on young people, on jobs, on skills, on investment and on infrastructure.

But it means something else too.

The Tories really do believe we get success through a few at the top.

So they say to get more out of the very wealthiest, you give them a tax cut.

But you get more out of working people, if you make them feel more insecure.

I disagree.

We can never build a recovery works for all, unless working people feel confident and secure at work.

That’s what other countries know.

And I think that’s what the British people know too.

Now I recognise, as do you, that both workers and businesses need flexibility.

It is how you unions and employers worked together to keep people working even during the most difficult moments of the recession.

Putting jobs above pay rises.

Working fewer hours in order to protect employment.

Flexibility yes.

Exploitation no.

And nowhere is that more true than when it comes to zero hours contracts.

Of course, there are some kinds of these contracts which are useful.

For locum doctors.

Or supply teachers at schools.

Or sometimes, young people working in bars.

But you and I know that zero hours contracts have been terribly misused.

I had the privilege last week of speaking to some people working on zero hours contracts.

One in particular in the care sector who said “You can’t build your life on what you get from a zero hours contract”.

Another told me of her experience: 23 years on a proper, regular contract and now had the nightmare of 2 years on a zero hours contract.

As she said, just imagine if you didn’t know from one week to the next whether your wages were going to halve.

That is the reality for so many people on zero hours contracts.

They don’t know how many hours they’re going to do from one week to the next.

They don’t know how much they’re going to be paid.

They have no security.

All of the risks in the economy which we used to believe should be fairly shared between employers and working people.

Now placed on the individual worker alone.

That’s why the worst of these practices owe more to the Victorian era than they do to the kind of workplace we should have in the 21st century.

It’s wrong.

And the next Labour government will put things right.

We’ll ban zero hours contracts which require workers to work exclusively for one business.

We’ll stop zero hours contracts which require workers to be on call all day without any guarantee of work.

And we’ll end zero hours contracts where workers are working regular hours but are denied a regular contract.

Because I am determined to build an economy that works for working people.

And that means security, not insecurity at work.

Because that is how our country will succeed.

Let me end by saying this.

The next election is a high stakes election.

High stakes for your members.

High stakes for working people.

High stakes for our country.

We’re in the fourth year of this government.

We know who they stand for.

A privileged few at the top.

We know that they will never create an economy that works for working people.

It is not what they believe.

We know how they’ll try to divide our country.

For political advantage.

I stand for a different and better way forward for our country.

A vision that draws on the best of our traditions.

I think about the 1945 government.

We didn’t lower our sights in the face of difficulty.

We raised them.

That government was a One Nation government.

It listened to the voices of all.

Used the talents of all.

Built a country fit for all.

My vision: a One Nation Britain.

Let’s rebuild that country together.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, to the Women in Advertising and Communications Conference in London on 28th June 2013.

I am delighted to be here tonight.

I am hugely proud to join the illustrious list of politicians who have spoken to you during your extraordinary history.

David Lloyd George

Jennie Lee

Stanley Baldwin

And it is an extraordinary tribute to the history and influence of your organisation that you are still going strong in your 90th year.

Nine months ago at the Labour party Conference I set out the idea of One Nation.

Not a Labour vision or a Conservative one.

But a British one.

Benjamin Disraeli, the great Conservative Prime Minister, was probably first to use the idea in the 19th century.

But it was also used by Labour after 1945 as Britain rebuilt after the War.

Its essence is that the way a country succeeds is by everyone playing their part.

For me, it is rooted in something that drives my politics: the cause of equality.

Not mathematical equality for every person.

But a passionate belief in equal opportunity for all.

And in the dangers of a society becoming too unequal.

About citizens living separate lives from one another.

Tonight I want to talk—appropriately I hope to this group— about the equality of women and men.

We have some of the most senior people in advertising and communications here.

And I believe there are urgent issues we need to address together.

First, at the heart of a One Nation idea is that we must drive further and faster towards equality for men and women from the shop floor to the boardroom to the cabinet room.

Second, if we are truly to become a more equal society — not just in numbers but in reality — we must change the structures of our society.

Third, I want to address a subject which a growing number of people, especially young women, are talking about: the representation of women in our culture, in our national life.

I want to do that as a Dad, the father of two boys, and not just as a politician.

Let me start with representation in its most formal sense.

We should celebrate progress but note how far we have to go.

When Harriet Harman, my Deputy, entered Parliament, just 3% of Labour MPs were women.

Today it is 33%.

And my Shadow Cabinet is now 40% women.

That has changed politics.

From childcare to parental leave to women’s employment – women MPs have put these issues centre stage.

Indeed, there are women MPs in Parliament now who would not have been there but for the trail that people like Harriet blazed.

But I don’t need to remind this audience that there are still enormous problems in the representation of women.

Even now, all these years after women got the vote, still over three quarters of MPs are men.

More than four fifths of the Cabinet.

And as our shadow equalities minister Yvette Cooper has exposed, this government’s chosen cuts have affected women at least three times as hard as men.

I strongly believe that wouldn’t have happened in a Cabinet with equal female representation.

And I know we have the same problems in business, the law and other areas too.

Being here tonight celebrating women in business, it is simply wrong that just 17% of FTSE 100 Directorships are held by women.

Just 14% of senior judges.

Just 5% of national newspaper editors.

Now I know that people have campaigned for decades to put this right.

But let me be clear: my goal is to get to a Labour cabinet that is 50% women and a Parliament that is like that, and boardrooms and everywhere major decisions are made.

We can’t be One Nation if the majority of the population is under-represented in every area of public life.

My second point tonight is that it is not enough to think about how we change representation but leave everything else unchanged.

The reality is that women are so often at the sharp end of the injustices in our society.

They are more likely to be carers for the elderly and disabled.

More likely to have primary responsibility for looking after the children.

More likely to be low paid, finding that their husbands or partners are working the longest hours in Western Europe.

Tonight as we enjoy this dinner, there are women all over this city, working as cleaners and carers, doing two jobs or sometimes three, travelling late into the night to get there, and still not earning a living wage.

And finding themselves working for their poverty.

So the call of economic and social change is urgent.

It is what I call a more “responsible capitalism”.

Because I think our country faces a choice in the years ahead:

A nasty, brutish, more insecure country.

Or a country where we recognise that to get the best out of workforce we need big change.

Reforming our workplace to make it less exploitative.

Taking further steps to make it more supportive of those who have families.

 

Dealing with all the many other issues we face: zero hours contracts, exploitation of agency workers, and shockingly low pay.

These are vital for the cause of equality.

And for the cause of equality between women and men.

So if we are truly to be One Nation where everyone can play their part we need change in formal representation, change in the way our economy works, but I believe we need something else.

We need cultural change if women and men are to realise their full potential.

Let me read you something that a 15 year old wrote to the Everyday Sexism project.

She said:

“I am 15 and I feel that girls my age are under pressure that boys of my age aren’t under … I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m sexy or hot then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing.”

Friends, I think of my two sons, Daniel and Sam.

They are 4 and 2 years old.

And I think about the world that they are set to grow up in.

I think forward a decade, to their teenage years.

And thinking that decade ahead, I want different messages going out to them than too often go out to teenage boys and girls today.

Representation is not just about the jobs that people do, it also about how people are seen.

About the images we have of each other.

Now, we all know the changes our culture has gone through in recent years.

But I still believe we face a crisis of representation of women and men in our culture today.

Greater prominence is given to fantastic role models for women and girls than was true in the past.

Clare Balding, Doreen Lawrence, J.K. Rowling, Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

As well as some of you present tonight.

My kids will grow up with Dora the Explorer as much as my generation did with Dennis the Menace, and that matters.

The success of Jessica Ennis inspired a generation, just as much as Mo Farah.

And we are supporting Laura Robson just as much as Andy Murray at Wimbledon.

And if they both win, they will finally now be rewarded to the same extent too.

But we would be fooling ourselves if we deny the problems.

There is a culture of increasingly sexualised images among young people.

The culture that says that girls will only get on in life, if they live up to the crudest of stereotypes, as that 15 year old wrote.

The culture where pornographic images, some violent, are available to children at a click on a smartphone or a laptop.

Like any parent, I worry about this.

There are things that can be done about that, like safer default settings on our computers.

But my point tonight is different.

It puts a greater responsibility on all of us to do what we can to counter these images.

Schools should offer proper relationship education at all stages to ensure all our children have a proper chance to understand what good loving relationships are about.

And Schools should always encourage the aspirations of girls and boys.

And our society should always be promoting real role models of heroic women and their achievements.

That applies to everything from banknotes to statues around our great city of London.

When Winston Churchill replaces Elizabeth Fry, everyone who will appear on our banknotes will be a man apart from the Queen, our Head of State.

What kind of signal does that send?

I read this week that Jane Austen is “quietly waiting in the wings” to appear on a banknote one day.

But 100 years on from the great struggle to give women the right to vote, women shouldn’t be “waiting quietly in the wings” for anything.

This is a small but important symbol of the kind of country we are.

Why don’t we have one of our great women scientists, like Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and a suffragette like Emmeline Pankhurst on our banknotes?

And it applies to the school curriculum too.

We all know the trouble Michael Gove has had writing a History curriculum.

He’s on his third go now.

But he still can’t get it right when it comes to women.

It seems as if he thinks it is alright to talk about women when you are specifically teaching Women’s History.

But then to talk almost exclusively about men when you are teaching the rest of History.

Well I don’t think that’s right.

The role of women should be taught throughout the History curriculum in our schools.

And, if I may say so, responsibility applies to broadcasting and communications.

In broadcasting, it is just wrong that older male broadcasters are seen as distinguished, and older female broadcasters are not seen at all.

What greater example could there be of double standards.

And it applies to your world, to advertising.

That same young woman I talked about earlier, also wrote: “I wish people would think about what pressures they are putting on everyone, not just teenage girls … I wish the people who had real power and control of the images and messages we get fed all day actually thought about what they did for once.”

Now, of course, you do think about these issues.

There are great examples where the advertising industry has led the way in displaying 21st century images of men and women.

Including people in this room.

And I applaud the creativity, the freshness, the innovation that your industry displays.

But it does not always do so.

We all know there are still too many images in our advertising that reflect outdated ideas about the role of men and women, boys and girls.

There are still too many adverts which do not show the modern world as it is – let alone as it should be.

Of course, there are limits to what government can do about this.

But it is something we must to talk about.

And something which advertisers have a responsibility to address.

Conclusion

Let me end with this thought.

Ninety years ago WACL was founded.

Just five years after women had got the vote.

In the 1924 Parliament, there were just eight woman MPs.

There had never been a woman Cabinet Minister.

And no thought that there could ever be a woman Prime Minister.

Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the founders of feminism right back in the eighteenth century, said:

“In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it.”

And what she meant is this:

If we change the way we think, then we can change the way we are.

Change has happened not because politicians wanted it to happen.

But because people made it happen.

There needs to be political leadership, but as I always say politics is too important simply to be left to politicians.

What excites me about this debate, about the equality between men and women, is that there is a new wave of young women, with high expectations of what this society should offer.

They are not impressed that we have a Parliament of 25% women, they expect it to be 50%.

They are not impressed that there are some women business leaders, they expect there to be half of business leaders to be women.

They are not impressed that there is a law on equal pay, they expect pay actually to be equal.

They are not impressed that we have some positive female role models in advertising, they expect to see them every day.

They are not impressed that women can be doctors and writers, they expect all women to be respected for who they are.

We should listen to their voices.

All of us.

Politicians.

Advertisers.

Business leaders.

Newspaper editors.

Because they are right.

We can only be One Nation if we have true equality for men and women.

This is one of the biggest causes of our century.

To complete the work of the last century.

To turn a formal commitment to equality in to real equality.

I know that it is your cause.

And this will be my cause, as part of the next Labour government.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Miliband, the Leader of the Opposition, in response to the Budget on 21st March 2013.

Mr Deputy Speaker.

This is the Chancellor’s fourth Budget, but one thing unites them all.

Every Budget he comes to this house and things are worse not better for the country.

Compared to last year’s Budget

Growth last year, down.

Growth this year, down.

Growth next year, down.

They don’t think growth matters, but people in this country do.

And all he offers is more of the same.

A more of the same Budget from a downgraded Chancellor.

Britain deserves better than this.

I do have to say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he almost need not have bother coming to the House because the whole Budget, including the market-sensitive fiscal forecast was in the Standard before he rose to his feet.

To be fair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I sure he didn’t intend the whole of the Budget to be in the Standard before he rose to his feet and I hope he will investigate and report back to the House.

Now, what did the Prime Minister declare late last year, and I quote:

“The good news will keep coming”.

And what did the Chancellor tell us today?

Under this Government the bad news just doesn’t stop.

Back in June 2010 the Chancellor promised:

“a steady and sustained recovery…”

He was wrong.

We’ve had the slowest recovery for 100 years.

Last year he said in the Budget there would be no double dip recession.

He was wrong, there was.

He told us a year ago that growth would be 2% this year.

He was wrong.

Now he says it will be just 0.6%.

He told us that next year, growth would be 2.7%.

Wrong again.

Now just 1.8%.

Wait for tomorrow the Chancellor says, and I will be vindicated.

But with this Chancellor tomorrow never comes.

He’s the wrong man.

In the wrong place.

At the worst possible time for the country.

It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor.

He has secured one upgrade this year.

Travelling first class on a second class ticket from Crewe to London.

And the only time the country’s felt all in it together, was when he got booed by 80,000 people at the Paralympics.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I’ve got some advice for the Chancellor.

Stay away from the cup final, even if Chelsea get there.

And, who is paying the price for the Chancellor’s failure?

Britain’s families.

In his first Budget he predicted that living standards would rise over the Parliament.

But wages are flat.

Prices are rising.

And Britain’s families are squeezed.

And what the Chancellor didn’t tell us, is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed the British people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.

It’s official: you’re worse off under the Tories.

Worse off, year after year after year. And wasn’t there an extraordinary omission from his speech, no mention of the AAA rating.

What the Prime Minister called the “mark of trust”.

Which he told us had been “secured”.

The Chancellor said it would be a humiliation for Britain to be downgraded.

So not just a downgraded Chancellor.

A humiliated Chancellor too.

And what about borrowing?

The Chancellor made the extraordinary claim in his speech that he was “on course”.

Mr Deputy Speaker, even he can’t believe this nonsense.

Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget.

He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.

And what did he say in his June 2010 Budget:

He set two very clear benchmarks, and I quote, “We are on track to have debt falling and a balanced structural current budget” by 2014/15.

Or as he called it “our four-year plan”.

This was the deal he offered the British people.

These were the terms.

Four years of pain, tax rises ….

The Prime Minister says from a sedentary position, borrow more, you are borrowing more.

And he just needs to look down the road, because the Business Secretary was asked and he said: “We are borrowing more”. From his own Business Secretary.

So these were the terms: four years, tax rises, and spending cuts, and the public finances would be sorted.

So today he should have been telling us:

Just one more year of sacrifice.

In twelve months the good times will roll.

Job done.

Mission accomplished.

Election plan underway.

But three years on, what does he say?

Exactly what he said three years ago.

We still need four more years of pain, tax rises and spending cuts.

In other words, after all the misery, all the harsh medicine, all the suffering by the British people:

Three years.

No progress.

Deal broken.

Same old Tories.

And all he offers is more of the same.

It’s as if they really do believe their own propaganda.

That the failure is nothing to do with them.

We’ve heard all the excuses:

The snow, the royal wedding, the Jubilee, the eurozone.

And now they’re turning on each other.

The Prime Minister said last weekend, and I quote:

“Let the message go out from this hall and this party: We are here to fight”.

Mr Deputy Speaker, they’re certainly doing that.

The Business Secretary’s turned on the Chancellor.

The Home Secretary’s turned on the Prime Minister.

And the Education Secretary’s turned on her.

The whole country can see that’s what’s going on.

The blame game has begun in the Cabinet.

The truth is the Chancellor is lashed to the mast, not because of his judgement, but because of pride.

Not because of the facts, but because of ideology.

And why does he stay in his job?

Not because the country want him.

Not because his party want him.

But because he is the Prime Minister’s last line of defence.

The Bullingdon boys really are both in it together.

And they don’t understand, you need a recovery made by the many not just a few at the top.

It’s a year now since the omnishambles Budget.

We’ve had u-turns on charities, on churches, on caravans.

And yes, on pasties.

But there is one policy they are absolutely committed to.

The top rate tax cut.

John the banker, remember him?

He’s had a tough year, earning just £1m.

What does he get? He gets a tax cut of £42,500 next year.

£42,500, double the average wage.

His colleague, let’s call him George, his colleague has done a little better, bringing home £5 million. What does he get in a tax cut?

I know the Prime Minister doesn’t like to hear what he agreed to, what does he get? A tax cut of nearly £250,000.

And at the same time everyone else is paying the price.

The Chancellor is giving with one hand, and taking far more away with the other.

Hard working families hit by the strivers tax.

Pensioners hit by the granny tax.

Disabled people hit by the bedroom tax.

Millions paying more so millionaires can pay less.

Now the Chancellor mentioned childcare.

He wants a round of applause for cutting £7bn in help for families this Parliament, and offering £700m of help in the next.

But what are the families who are waiting for that childcare help told? They’ve got to wait over two years for help to arrive.

But for the richest in society, they just have to wait two weeks for the millionaires tax cut to kick in.

This is David Cameron’s Britain.

And still the Prime Minister refuses to tell us – despite repeated questions – whether he is getting the 50p tax cut.

Oh he’s getting embarrassed now, you can see.

He’s had a year to think about it.

He must have done the maths.

Even he should have worked it out by now.

So come on.

Nod your head if you are getting the 50p tax rate.

They ask am I?

No I am not getting the 50p tax rate, I am asking whether the PM is.

Come on answer.

After all, he is the person that said sunlight is the best disinfectant, let transparency win the day.

Now let’s try something else. What about the rest of the Cabinet, are they getting the 50p tax rate?

OK, hands up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut?

Come on, hands up.

Just put your hand up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut. They are obviously … they don’t like it do they?

At last the Cabinet are united, with a simple message:

Thanks George.

He’s cutting taxes for them, while raising them for everyone else.

Now the Chancellor announced some measures today that he said would boost growth.

Just like he does every year.

And every year they fail.

I could mention the “national loan guarantee scheme”, he trumpeted that last year.

And then he abolished just four months later.

The Funding for Lending scheme, that he said would transform the prospects for small business.

The work programme that is worse than doing nothing.

And today he talked a lot about housing.

And the Prime Minister said this in 2011. He launched his so-called housing strategy, and in his own understated way he labelled it “a radical and unashamedly ambitious strategy”. He said it would give the housing industry a shot in the arm, enable 100,000 people to buy their own home.

18 months later, how many families have been helped?

Not 100,000.

Not even 10,000.

Just fifteen hundred out of 100,000 promised

That’s 98,500 broken promises.

For all the launches, strategies and plans, housing completions are now at the lowest level since the 1920s.

And 130,000 jobs lost in construction because of their failing economic plan.

It’s a failing economic plan from a failing Chancellor.

The Chancellor has failed the tests of the British people:

Growth, living standards and hope.

But he has not just failed their tests. He has failed on his own as well.

All he has to offer is this more of the same Budget.

Today the Chancellor joined twitter.

He could have got it all into 140 characters.

Growth down. Borrowing up. Families hit. And millionaires laughing all the way to the bank. #downgradedChancellor.

Mr Deputy Speaker, more of the same is not the answer to the last three years.

More of the same is the answer of a downgraded Chancellor, in a downgraded Government.

Britain deserves better than this.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, on welfare reform. The speech was made in Newham, in London, on 6th June 2013.

It is great to be here in Newham.

Where a Labour Mayor and council are doing so many great things to help get local people back into work.

On Monday, Ed Balls gave a speech about how the next Labour government would control public spending.

The biggest item of expenditure alongside the NHS, is the social security budget.

The next Labour government will have less money to spend.

If we are going to turn our economy round, protect our NHS, and build a stronger country we will have to be laser focused on how we spend every single pound.

Social security spending, vital as it is, cannot be exempt from that discipline.

Now, some people argue that if we want to control social security we have to leave our values at the door.

But today I want to argue the opposite.

Controlling social security spending and putting decent values at the heart of the system are not conflicting priorities.

It is only by reforming social security with the right values that we’ll be able to control costs.

And the system does need reform.

And it is only by controlling costs that we can sustain a decent system for the next generation.

In every generation the world has changed and Britain’s welfare state has to change with it.

We’re no different.

Today we have women at work, not the male world of work that William Beveridge envisaged in the 1940s.

We have persistent worklessness, not the full-employment of the past.

So jobs for everyone who can work and help to make that happen, must be the starting point for social security reform: cutting the costs of worklessness.

Today, people often don’t get paid enough in work to make ends meet.

And the taxpayer is left picking up the bill for low pay.

We must change our economy, so that welfare is not a substitute for good employment and decent jobs.

Today the welfare state, through housing benefit, bears the cost for our failure to build enough homes.

We have to start investing in homes again, not paying for failure.

And, today, people’s faith in social security has been shaken when it appears that some people get something for nothing and other people get nothing for something – no reward for the years of contribution they make.

We have to tackle this too.

Overcoming worklessness, rewarding work and tackling low pay, investing in the future and recognising contribution: these are the Labour ways to reform our social security system.

And what I want to talk to you about today.

And it is very important I do, because there is an extra responsibility on those who believe in the role of social security to show real determination to reform it.

Real long-term reform not the short-term, failing approach of this government.

Which leaves hundreds of thousands of people in long-term idleness.

Hits the low-paid in work and pretends they are skivers.

Forces families into homelessness, driving up bills.

Never truly getting to grips with the root causes of social security spending.

So here is the choice:

Remake social security to make it work better for our country and pass on a fair and sustainable system to the next generation, with the Labour Party.

Or

Take the Conservative way: taking support away from working families and those who need it most, always seeking to divide our country and not tackling the deep causes of rising costs.

Work

Let me start with the importance of work.

As I have said before:

Labour – the party of work – the clue is in the name.

Our party was founded on the principles of work.

We have always been against the denial of opportunity that comes from not having work.

And against the denial of responsibility by those who could work and don’t do so.

This country needs to be a nation where people who can work, do.

Not a country where people who can work are on benefits.

That’s about values.

And it’s also about making social security sustainable for the future.

History teaches us this.

The growth rate of social security spending was higher under the Thatcher and Major governments of 1979 – 1997 than under the New Labour governments of 1997 – 2010.

How can this be?

Given the Conservative governments pared back benefits, year after year.

Whereas the Labour government took action, of which I am proud, to increase tax credits to help make work pay and to address pensioner poverty in a way no previous government had done since the War.

The reason is this:

Because among the biggest drivers of social security spending are the costs of unemployment.

That’s what happened under those Tory governments.

Unemployment went up.

Now we have heard so much from this government, and from Iain Duncan-Smith, about the importance of work.

So surely they’ve promoted it?

The answer is they haven’t.

After only three years, just like the Thatcher government, they have a dirty secret about social security.

Something they don’t want you to know.

Long-term worklessness is now at its highest level for a generation.

From this government, that preaches to us about work.

About people not being on benefits.

Today, there are more men and women – half a million – who have been out of work for over two years than at any time for sixteen years, in fact since the Labour government took office in May 1997.

This worklessness, this waste, under these Tories, is totally at odds with the values of the British people.

In 2012 youth unemployment alone cost Britain £5 billion.

And long periods of unemployment store up costs for the future.

This level of unemployment among young men and women means further costs of at least £3 billion per year in the long term in further worklessness and lost tax revenue.

Billions of pounds that could be put to far better use.

There’s nothing in Labour values that says that this is a good way to spend tax-payers’ money.

Britain just can’t afford millions of people out of work.

Now just as there is a minority who should be working and don’t want to, there is a majority who are desperate for work and can’t find it.

I think of the young man I met in Long Eaton recently, out of work for four years, desperate for a job.

The problem is this government’s Work Programme can leave people like him unemployed year after year after year.

We would put a limit on how long anyone who can work, can stay unemployed, without getting and taking a job.

For every young man and woman who has been out of work for more than a year, we would say to every business in the country, we will pay the wages for 25 hours a week, on at least the minimum wage.

Fully funded by a tax on bankers’ bonuses.

The business would provide the training of at least 10 hours a week.

And because it is a compulsory jobs guarantee, young people will have an obligation to take a job after a year or lose their benefits.

And we will do the same for everyone over 25 unemployed for more than two years.

And to those who say the work simply isn’t there, I say with a national mission, led from the top of government, we can get thousands of businesses, tens of thousands, in the country behind the idea.

Businesses and social enterprises that are desperate to give people a chance.

And while the jobs guarantee is national we will make it happen through local action.

The kind of local action I’ve seen here in Newham.

Devolving power and resources to local communities so there can be advice and support suitable for the individual who is looking for work and tailored to the particular needs of businesses in the area.

But we need to go further.

Parents need choices, particularly when their children are very young.

We know the difference stay-at-home mums and dads can make in the earliest period of a child’s life.

But we also know that the ethic of work is an important one to encourage in a household.

We do not want worklessness passed down from one generation to another.

The last Labour government made significant progress in getting parents in workless households back into work.

But the truth is there is still more we can do.

Too many children still live in families without work.

And under the current government too little is being done about this.

At the moment, if both partners in a couple are out of a job, or a lone parent is out of work, they risk completely losing touch with the world of work when their child is under 5.

But all of the evidence is that the longer anyone remains disconnected from the workplace, the more likely they are to stay unemployed for a long period.

Bad for them and bad for the country.

And there is something we can do.

Thanks to the last Labour government, we now have nursery education available for all 3 and 4 year olds, for 15 hours a week.

The very least we should offer and demand is that while their children are at nursery, both partners in a workless household, as well as single parents who aren’t working, should use some of the time to undertake some preparations to help them get ready to go back to work.

Attending regular interviews in the Job Centre, undertaking training, finding out what opportunities exist.

To be clear, under this policy there would be no requirement to go back to work until their youngest child is 5.

But there would be a pathway back into work for them.

We should also support disabled people.

Those who cannot work.

And those who want to work and need help finding it.

Successive governments did not do enough to deal with the rise in people on Incapacity Benefit.

It was a legacy of unemployment from the years Mrs Thatcher was in power.

But the last Labour government should have acted on it sooner.

Towards the end of our time in government, we did introduce tests for the Employment and Support Allowance.

That was the right thing to do.

And we continue to support tests today.

But when over 40% of people win their appeals, it tells you the system isn’t working as it should.

And too often people’s experience of the tests is degrading.

So this test needs to change.

It needs reform so that it can really distinguish between different situations.

Disabled people who cannot work.

Disabled people who need help to get into work.

And people who can work without support.

The test should also be properly focused on helping to identify the real skills of each disabled person and the opportunities they could take up.

I meet so many disabled people desperate to work but who say that the demand that they work is not accompanied by the support they need.

So these tests should be connected to a Work Programme that itself is tested on its ability to get disabled people jobs that work for them.

So the first piece of a One Nation social security system that controls costs begins with the responsibility to work and the responsibility of government to help make it possible.

Rewarding Work

But it is not just about work.

It is also about the kind of work that can properly support people and their families.

Today in Britain almost three million men and women and almost one and half million children live in families that are going to work and are still not able to escape poverty.

People doing the right thing, trying to support themselves and their children.

The last Labour government took action on this, and was right to provide tax credits for those in work.

But we didn’t do enough to tackle Britain’s low wage economy, a low wage economy that just leaves the taxpayer facing greater and greater costs subsidising employers.

To tackle the problem of poverty at work and to control costs we need to create an economy that genuinely works for working people.

I want to teach my kids that it is wrong to be idle on benefits, when you can work.

But I also want to teach them that the people in this country who work 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week, do two or even three jobs, should be able to bring up their families without fear of where the next pound is coming from.

That’s as much an issue as the responsibility to work.

Of course, this government has nothing to say about this.

Worse than that, they are taking our country in the wrong direction.

Their failure on the economy means that real wages have fallen £1,900 since this government came to office.

We know that this government will never stand up for low and middle-income working people.

But our approach for the future needs to make good on what the last Labour government did not achieve.

As William Beveridge envisaged seventy years ago when he founded the social security system we need to understand that there are three sets of people with responsibilities:

Government.

Individuals.

And the private sector, including employers.

That’s what One Nation is all about.

Responsibility being borne by all.

For too many people in Britain the workplace is nasty, brutish and unfair.

The exploitation of zero hours contracts to keep people insecure.

Using agency workers to unfairly avoid giving people the pay and conditions offered to permanent staff.

Recruitment agencies hiring just from overseas.

And some employers not paying the minimum wage.

These issues too are about our responsibilities to each other.

About the failure of government to set the right rules and the failure of a minority of employers.

Be in no doubt: all of this is on the agenda of the next Labour government.

So, for example, we will change the law to stop employment agencies using loopholes to undermine the pay of what are effectively full-time employees.

And we will do everything in our power to promote the living wage.

If local councils can say if you want a contract with the council then you need to pay the living wage, then central government should look at doing that too.

And for every pound that employers pay above the minimum wage towards a living wage, government would save 50 pence in lower tax credits and benefits and higher revenues.

We should look at offering some of these savings back to those employers to persuade them to do the right thing and pay the living wage.

It will be tougher to tackle big issues facing our society like child poverty in the next Parliament.

But I still think we can make progress if everyone pulls their weight.

And it starts with tackling child poverty among families in work, as part of a long-term goal that no-one should have to work for their poverty.

So the second plank of our approach is about an economy that works for working people so that we can both keep social security costs under control and work towards a fairer society.

Investing for the Future

The third plank of our approach is wherever possible we should be investing for the future, not paying for the costs of failure.

It is why it is far better to be investing in putting people back to work than paying for them to be idle.

It is why it is so important to invest in childcare so we support families as they struggle to balance work and the needs of family life.

And the same is true when it comes to one of the biggest drivers of the growth of social security spending in recent decades: housing benefit.

We can’t afford to pay billions on ever-rising rents, when we should be building homes to bring down the bill.

Thirty years ago for every £100 we spent on housing, £80 was invested in bricks and mortar and £20 was spent on housing benefit.

Today, for every £100 we spend on housing, just £5 is invested in bricks and mortar and £95 goes on housing benefit.

There’s nothing to be celebrated in that.

And as a consequence we are left with a housing benefit bill that goes up higher and higher.

For the simple reason, that we have built too few homes in this country and therefore we see higher and higher prices, particularly in the private sector.

Now, this government talks a lot about getting housing benefit under control.

But let me be clear: any attempt to control housing benefit costs which fails to build more homes is destined to fail.

For all the cuts this government has made to housing benefit, it is still rising and it is forecast to carry on rising too.

Of course, there is an issue of values here too.

In 2011, there were 10 cases where £100,000 a year was spent on housing benefit for individual families.

That’s 10 too many.

And it is one of the reasons why Labour has said we would support a cap on overall benefits.

As Ed Balls said on Monday, an independent body should advise government on how best to design this cap to avoid it pushing people into homelssness and costing more.

But the real, long-term solution is clear: we have to do what hasn’t been done for three decades and to move from benefits to building.

Currently Britain is building fewer new homes than at any time since the 1920s.

Ed Balls talked on Monday about how we invest for the future of our country.

Clearly, the building of homes is high on that list.

This will be a priority of the next Labour government.

But just like tackling worklessness, we can’t do it from central government alone.

We will need every local authority in Britain to be part of this effort.

At the moment, we expect individual families to negotiate with their landlords.

In these circumstances, it is almost inevitable that tenants end up paying over the odds.

And so does the taxpayer, in the housing benefit bill.

It’s time to tackle this problem at source.

So a Labour government would seek a radical devolution to local authorities.

And Labour councils in Lewisham, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham have all come to us and said that if they had power to negotiate on behalf of tenants on housing benefit, they could get far greater savings than the individual on their own.

So a Labour government would give councils this power.

Bringing the cost of housing benefit down.

And what is more, we would let them keep some of the savings they make on the condition that they invested that money in helping build new homes.

This is the way we can start to bring about the shift from benefits to building.

Bringing the housing benefit bill down for the long-term too.

And it is a One Nation solution: enforcing the responsibilities of government and private landlords.

So the third plank of a One Nation social security system is to invest in the future, not to pay for failure.

Recognising Contribution

The fourth and final plank is around recognising contribution.

We do that by recognising the importance of supporting families, through maternity and paternity leave and pay, child benefit and child tax credit.

We do that by providing support to people with disabilities, both those who cannot work and also to those who can work, but whose extra needs it is right to recognise.

Of course, it is right to make sure that we have the right tests in this area too.

Which is why we support tests for Personal Independence Payments, but again they must be done in the right way.

We also recognise contribution by supporting elderly women and men who have contributed to our country throughout their lives.

On pensions, we know we have a rising elderly population and a rising budget.

The way to make this sustainable is to ensure that we increase the number of people in the working population supporting our elderly.

And therefore to show a willingness to adjust the retirement age.

Of course, there needs to be proper notice, but as people live longer, the age at which people retire will have to increase.

All of Britain’s elderly men and women deserve dignity in retirement, after a lifetime of contribution to our country.

That’s why there will always be a place for universal support at the heart of our welfare system.

Like an NHS for all.

A proper basic state pension for all those who’ve paid in.

But whether it is relation to pensioners or children there is always a balance that has to be struck between universal, contributory and means-tested benefits.

With so many difficult choices facing the next Labour government, we have to be realistic about what we can afford.

So it doesn’t make sense to continue sending a cheque every year for Winter Fuel Allowance to the richest pensioners in the country.

Equally, when it comes to the decisions of the next Labour government it won’t be our biggest priority to overturn the decisions this government has made on taking child benefit away from families earning over £50,000 a year.

But in one important respect our social security system fails to recognise contribution: the service of those currently of working age.

Last week, I met somebody who had worked all his life, for 40 years, in the scaffolding business.

What does the social security system offer him if he falls out of work?

It’s the same as someone who has been working for just a couple of years.

That can’t be right.

I can’t promise to turn the clock back to Beveridge and nor do I want to.

Our society isn’t the same as it was back then, with most men at work and women at home.

But the idea that people should get something back for all they’ve put in is a value deeply felt by the British people.

So I believe we should look at the support that is offered to those who fall out of work and the contribution on which it is based.

Currently, after two years of work, someone is entitled to “Contributory Jobseeker’s Allowance” without a means test for six months.

They get £72 per week.

Whether they’ve worked for two years or forty years.

Two years of work is a short period to gain entitlement to extra help.

And £72 is in no sense a proper recognition of how much somebody who has worked for many decades has paid into the system.

As so many people have told me: “I have worked all my life, I have never had a day on benefits, and no real help is there when I needed it.”

So I have asked our Policy Review to look at whether, without spending extra money, we can change the system.

Asking people to work longer – say 5 years instead of 2 – before they qualify for extra support.

But at the same time making that extra support more generous to better reward contribution.

This is particularly important for older workers who find it harder to get back into work at a level similar to their previous occupation.

And we will look at accompanying this with extra help back into work for older workers who lose their jobs.

And as we look to reform this contributory part of our welfare system, we should also examine ways to take account of some of the other kinds of contribution people make, like mums looking after very young children and children looking after their elderly parents.

Because we want to send a signal about the real importance that the next Labour government attaches to recognising contribution.

Planning the Budget

So the four building blocks of a One Nation social security system are: work, rewarding work, investing for the future not paying for failure, and recognising contribution.

A system that is sustainable.

And one which reflects the values of the British people.

But I believe we need to do more in these tough times in how we plan social security spending.

In Labour’s last period in office we introduced the three-year spending review.

Enabling Departments, like any business, to properly plan three years ahead.

Throughout previous generations, there had been an annual spending round, rows between ministers, arguments between Departments, leaks to the newspapers.

A bit like now really under this government.

It makes much more sense to plan ahead.

I believe we should extend this approach from Departmental spending to social security spending.

So that planning social security over three years should become a central part of each spending review.

And I also believe that a cap on social security spending should be part of that planning process.

Because what governments should be doing is looking three years ahead and setting a clear limit within which social security would have to operate.

Now, clearly there are detailed issues that need to be worked on to make any cap sensible.

The government has also talked about a cap on social security.

And we will look at their proposals.

In particular, they are right we need to be able to separate the short-term costs of social security – those that come from immediate downturns in the economy – from the big, long-term causes of rising spending that should be within a cap, like housing costs and structural unemployment.

And we need also to consider how to cope year to year with higher than expected inflation and how to treat the impact of an ageing population.

The starting point for the next Labour government will be that in 2015 – 2016 we would inherit plans for social security spending from this government.

Any changes from those plans will need to be fully funded.

For example, if we were in government today we would be reversing the millionaire’s tax cut to help make work pay through tax credits.

Today I am delivering a clear statement about One Nation Labour’s principles for social security spending:

The next Labour government will use a 3-year cap on structural welfare spending to help control costs.

Such a cap will alert the next Labour government to problems coming down the track.

And ensure that we make policy to keep the social security budget in limits.

Introducing greater discipline, as ministers from across Departments will be led to control the big drivers of spending.

Conclusion

So here is the choice that people will face at the general election.

I have set out how we can control the social security budget.

Not in anecdote or as part of a political game or as a way of dividing the country.

But as a way to reform the system so that it meets the values of the British people.

I have set out the values that would drive a One Nation social security system in government.

But there is another choice on offer from David Cameron.

I will tell you that there is a minority who don’t work but should.

He will tell you anyone looking for work is a skiver.

I will tell you that we need to protect the dignity of work and make work pay.

He will hit the low-paid in work.

I will tell you that we do need to get the housing benefit bill down with a cap that works, but crucially by investing in homes and tackling private landlords.

He will make the problem worse by making people homeless and driving up the bill.

I will tell you that we always need to value contribution in the system

He will hit people who work hard and do the right thing.

We will tackle the deep, long-term causes of social security spending and tackle the costs of failure like housing benefit, worklessness and the problem of low pay.

They will not.

We must pass on to our children a social security system that is sustainable.

And a system that works and is supported.

We can use the talents of everyone.

Demand responsibility.

And seek to move forward as a united country.

Or we can have politicians who seek to use every opportunity to divide this country and set one group of people against another.

I believe this country is always at its best when it is united.

One Nation.

Everyone playing their part.

That is the social security system I want to build.

That’s the future I want to build for Britain.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, at the Progress Conference on 11th May 2013.

Thank you for that kind reception.

But it is great to be here at Progress.

For nearly 20 years Progress has been an important forum for debate in our party, and it will to continue to provide that in the future.

That’s why I am proud to be here today.

We meet – as we always seem to – in the aftermath of the local elections.

And I want to start by congratulating all of you here who worked so hard for our Party.

Let’s take this opportunity to applaud the 291 newly-elected Labour councillors.

And let’s applaud the great success we had in the crucial battlegrounds of the next general election, places from Carlisle to Harlow to Hastings.

And if you will allow me, let’s applaud a One Nation Labour success: a new councillor in Witney Central, Laura Price, pushing David Cameron’s own Tories into third place.

This is a party moving forwards.

But what else did we learn from last week’s elections?

That the people of Britain have lost any confidence in this government’s ability to turn this country round.

But also that our Party has more to do to reach out to the people we need to win back.

That is clear from the results.

Being a one term opposition is about defying the historical odds.

But today I stand here convinced that not only can we win the general election.

If we do the right things and we have the right programme, the right policies, the right organisation – this general election is there to be won.

And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

To win we have to be clear about the ideas that will drive us to victory.

We will not win the election by saying that we were a good government and we just need to carry on where we left off.

Because the truth is that things have dramatically changed in the years since Progress was founded in the run up to our victory in 1997.

Progress helped make possible New Labour’s successes: rebuilding our schools and hospitals; lifting families out of poverty; creating Sure Start to give support to millions of young families; introducing the minimum wage.

I am proud of those achievements.

We should always be proud of those achievements.

But almost two decades on, many of the truths that underpinned that project – truths that appeared to be so self-evident back then – have been undermined.

That is what I heard as I went round the country during these local elections.

From Maidstone to Newcastle-Under-Lyme.

In our economy, our society and our politics the old certainties have broken down.

There was an old way of running the economy that saw financial services as the bedrock of our prosperity.

That what was good for the City of London would automatically be good for Britain too, just as long as government was there to redistribute the tax revenues.

It is no longer true.

In the way we live together in communities, there was an old certainty that globalisation and economic change would open up aspiration and benefit all.

For example, that ever-increasing diversity would automatically benefit the whole country and that should shape our view of immigration.

It no longer holds true.

And in our politics, there was an old certainty that we were in a world of predictable party politics, where the pendulum and the voters would always swing between Labour and Conservatives.

None of these certainties any longer hold.

And that changes what our party needs to do.

The first of those old certainties was shot to its core by the financial crash in 2008.

But it had been crumbling before then.

The reason I take a different view of our economy from the past is simple: it is clear now this economy is not working for most working people.

And the answer can’t be to go back to the world before the crash.

In our society, change has brought anxiety, winners and losers, and often people have felt left alone and isolated in the face of change.

It is not prejudice but real issues that have driven concerns about immigration.

About the pace of change.

With worries about jobs and livelihoods.

And about the integration of our communities.

If we go out and talk to people, we all hear it on the doorstep.

And in our politics, more and more people are turning away from the major parties.

More people who don’t vote.

And more people eligible to vote who have never voted at all.

That’s why I say our biggest opponent at the next election is not the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or UKIP, but the idea that nobody can make a difference.

These are uncomfortable truths for our Party.

But we ignore them at our peril.

Now, in the face of so many deep and profound challenges in our country, it is no wonder that the people of Britain are worried about our future.

Let me tell you, on the way back from Doncaster last Friday, having celebrated our Party’s victory over an Independent mayor, a construction worker in his forties came up to me on the train.

He said he had just one thing to say: that the country had no future.

No future for him.

No future for his friends.

No future for his son.

And that’s what he needed me to know.

It shows the gravity of people’s concern about what is happening.

He, and millions of people like him, just don’t believe we have an economy that works for them.

A society that they feel part of.

Or a politics that can answer these challenges.

Now, can the Government turn this around?

I think we can be pretty clear that the answer is no.

In this week of the Queen’s Speech, exactly three years after they stood together in the Downing Street Rose Garden, what do David Cameron and Nick Clegg really offer for our country?

Their economic plan has failed and they have run out of ideas – and the Queen’s Speech shows it.

They stand up for the wrong people – from the millionaires’ tax cut, to their U-turns on cigarette packaging and lobbying.

And they are hopelessly divided and cannot offer the leadership our country needs – and Europe shows that more than anything else.

What an extraordinary spectacle of a government that says it is relaxed about its own MPs voting against their own Queen’s Speech.

I know David Cameron is a man who likes to be known for a bit of relaxing, even chillaxing, but on this occasion, it beggars belief.

He’s not lying on the sofa, relaxed.

He’s hiding behind the sofa, too scared to confront his party and provide the leadership the country needs.

He’s weak and panicked and flailing around.

Because on this, as on so many issues, he has no answers to the challenges facing Britain in the future.

And why is he in this position?

Because he is being pushed around by his own backbenchers.

That’s the only reason he changed his mind in January on an in/out referendum.

It wasn’t about the national interest, it was simply about his party interest.

And it hasn’t even worked.

Because those backbenchers will keep coming back for more.

David Cameron may try to out Farage-Farage on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

But in all of our decisions we make, we will always stand up for the national interest.

And our national interest lies in staying in the EU.

And working for the changes that will make it work better for Britain.

It is wrong now to commit to an in/out referendum and have four years of uncertainty and a ‘closed for business’ sign above our country.

Of course people are frustrated about the EU, but in town centres across the country I heard loud and clear where people see the national interest, what people are most worried about: jobs, living standards, the fate of their small businesses.

One Nation Labour will not put them at risk.

It is One Nation Labour that will fight for our national interest.

Of course, we live in anxious times.

And it is understandable that people are looking for different answers.

But UKIP doesn’t have them.

It is a party of protest, not solutions.

And the Tories are fast turning from a party of government to a party of protest too —protest against each other.

Labour will succeed as a party of solutions addressing the challenges of 2015.

In the 1990s, Labour adapted to change.

So too today.

The policies for today will not be the same as those we put forward back then, or in 2005, or in 2010.

We are not going back.

Nor are we looking for false promises or easy answers.

We will have to pay the deficit down.

We cannot promise to reverse every cut.

And we will not just sit back and wait for the political pendulum to swing.

We will win by offering Britain a new direction: to rebuild together as a country, not fall apart.

That is what One Nation Labour is all about.

That’s why One Nation Labour is the modernising force in the Labour Party and in the country today.

It means a new economic plan.

A plan to turn Britain around.

When there is less money around.

This is the challenge the British people have set us.

I think of the young man in Long Eaton I met desperate for work, who couldn’t find work, and who hasn’t be able to for four years.

I think of the single parent I met in Lincoln.

She was working as an ambulance controller, desperate not to be stigmatised, struggling to make ends meet.

She wanted a government that understood.

I think of the market trader I met in Bristol desperate, as he told me, just for some hope.

What unites every person I met during the local election campaign is the sense that we are facing an economic crisis without end.

We will win the next general election by showing people that we have credible, real answers to that crisis.

And that is the mission we are on as a Party.

One Nation is not just the country we would like to be.

It is the only way we can succeed as an economy in the future.

It is based on this idea: wealth creation does not come simply from a few at the top.

All the lessons of our history, from the industrial revolution to the post-war reconstruction, are that we need a recovery made by the many.

The people who do the hours.

Who put in the shifts.

The people who are out at work before George Osborne’s curtains are open.

And come back after those curtains have already closed for the night.

And we are setting out how we do that.

Different from this government.

And different from the last Labour government too.

Training and apprenticeships for the forgotten 50 per cent of our young people, not just qualifications for those who go to university.

A banking system that serves the real economy, in particular small business, not businesses serving our banks.

An industrial policy based on long-term, durable wealth creation and innovation, not on the short-term, fast-buck.

Homes, schools, transport that we invest in, as the best route to growth, to create jobs and to enable people to play their part.

And understanding that we cannot have a recovery made by the many when living standards are falling year on year on year.

That might not keep the people in Downing Street awake at night.

But we know it is what keeps the people of this country awake at night.

That’s why we’d make different decisions on the tax system from this government and from our own past, like wanting a mansion tax to fund a 10p starting rate of tax.

And all this must be underpinned by credibility that we understand the next Labour government will not have money to spend like the last.

In our society, we are not dazzled by change.

But nor do we seek to re-create the past.

Take immigration.

It was controversial when I started giving speeches on immigration a year ago.

Immediately, people asked: is this a dog-whistle to prejudice?

Let me tell you: this Party must never make the mistake that any issue is a no-go area.

If the British people are talking about it, we must be talking about it too.

And we’ll always do it in a Labour way.

On immigration, I bow to no-one in my commitment to a diverse, multi-ethnic Britain.

It is one of things that makes our country great and more prosperous.

But immigration doesn’t just work for everyone automatically.

And we got it wrong in government.

Not just the policy.

But our failure to listen.

The pace of change does matter.

Integration – including learning English – is important.

And it’s about our economy too.

We should stop employers paying less than the minimum wage.

Crack down on recruitment agencies that only take people from overseas.

And say no to slum landlords who cram people into houses, leaving neighbours and communities with burdens simply too big to bear.

An agenda only we can champion.

Because we’re the party that believes in high standards for working people and not a race to the bottom in wages and conditions.

And just as we need rights and responsibilities when it comes to immigration, so too in social security.

Which is the only party in politics today that is actually going to tackle the chronic problem of 70,000 young people languishing on the dole for more than a year and 160,000 older people out of work for more than two years?

Only the Labour Party.

I think of the young people I met, like that young man in Long Eaton, desperately looking for work.

And the older person in Blackpool, who was so turned off politics because he thought no-one could help get him a job.

Only the Labour Party – with a compulsory jobs guarantee has anything to say to them.

For all their rhetoric about welfare reform, for all the cuts they’ve made, this government will be spending more on social security at the end of this Parliament than at the beginning.

Not because they’re generous.

But because they haven’t taken the action on the economy and they haven’t created the jobs we need to keep the social security bill down.

Rights and responsibilities are at the core of what we believe for our society.

Because One Nation is about everybody having opportunity and having a responsibility to play their part.

And that should go all the way to the top of society too.

From taxing the bankers’ bonuses for youth jobs to ensuring everyone pays their fair share of tax through the stamping out tax avoidance for individuals and the big corporations too.

Now, there is no greater challenge to the old certainties than when it comes to our politics.

Here, the only way forward for us is to understand why people have turned away from politics and seek to change it.

Power in Britain is far too centralised.

Local people don’t feel they have a say in the decisions that shape their lives.

That is why, as part of our Policy Review, we are absolutely committed to devolving power down.

Because the only way we can restore faith in politics is from the ground up.

And if you want to see what difference that can make, look at the fantastic 29 Labour councils committed to paying a living wage.

We need to devolve power not just in the country but in our party as well.

You know, the best campaigns I saw across Britain were the ones based on an open manifesto process, talking to people about their lives and about what they wanted to see, as we did in Lancashire.

Our pledges in that election were made by the many.

Based on 150,000 conversations on doorstep across all of Lancashire.

And, finally, the lesson for politicians is always we need to open up our politics.

In this campaign, as you know, I went to town centres across the country and stood on a pallet.

Reinventing the old-fashioned town meeting.

The way politics used to be done.

Not seeking the easy questions but answering the hard ones.

In a small way, it is a symbol of the need for us to open up our politics.

And it is a lesson for our party.

That we need to reach out to people.

Including people who are completely turned off politics.

In every area, the only way forward is use the talents of every person in the country.

A recovery made by the many.

A society in which everyone plays their part and accepts their responsibilities, all the way to the top.

And a politics to match.

But there’s one other thing that will win us the next general election.

And it’s not about policy.

It is what I used to say on that pallet in every town centre I went to.

We don’t just offer a different style of management.

We offer a different vision of the country.

Think about UKIP and what it is offering.

It is seeking to offer a patriotic story about Britain.

But it is not my patriotic story.

And it is not yours either.

Because it is insular.

Backward looking.

And it won’t meet the challenges of our age.

Just look what they say about rights for women and maternity leave.

They say employers shouldn’t hire women who want to have a child.

They are campaigning to scrap maternity pay.

And are against parental leave for working families.

We don’t like their story about our country.

And we have a much better one ourselves.

A sense of mission for the country.

Inclusive.

Not exclusive.

Outward looking.

Not inward looking.

Optimistic about our future.

Not simply hankering back to the past.

There will be some people who say that a UKIP strategy or a Lynton Crosby strategy may just work.

Set one group of people against another.

Those in work against those out of work.

Those in the public sector against the private sector.

North against South.

I say it’s our job to show a different way forward.

Because we believe it.

And it is the only way our country can succeed.

One Nation is not just a slogan.

It is not a Labour idea or a Conservative idea.

It is a British idea.

A country that acknowledges the difficulties, accepts the anxieties, knows that times are going to be hard, but that is confident that change can come.

A country that knows that we work best when we work together.

That knows that we won the War and rebuilt after the War because of that vision.

A country where everybody is given the chance to play their part.

And everybody is expected to do so.

That’s what One Nation Labour stands for.

That’s the future I offer our country.

That’s the Britain we will rebuild together.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, to the 2013 Scottish Labour Party conference, held on 19th April 2013.

Thank you so much for that incredibly kind reception.

It is great to be with you here in Inverness today.

I want to start by thanking the work you do for Scotland, our party and Britain.

Since we last met you’ve had those fantastic local election results in Glasgow, Aberdeen, South Lanarkshire.

Let’s applaud everyone who was part of that.

And let’s applaud Johann Lamont for the excellent work she is doing as the first leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

Anas Sarwar her deputy.

And Margaret Curran, our great Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.

And let us also pay a special thank you to Alistair Darling for leading the Better Together campaign to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.

Friends, this is a party on its way back.

And I want to talk to you today about two very important moments of decision.

The referendum.

And the general election.

Big choices that Scotland has to make.

The last ten days have been dominated by memories of Lady Thatcher and the 1980s.

I know how much pain the Conservative governments of that time caused to communities in Scotland and across the whole of the United Kingdom.

Areas that felt angry and abandoned.

Social division.

And the injustices of the poll tax.

And the reason the Tories were able to do this because they won election after election.

If we learn one thing from this history, it is that we must never allow a Tory government in Westminster to do what was done over eighteen years after 1979.

It was a Labour government that stopped them in 1997.

And I have news for the SNP:

By making David Cameron’s government a one-term government, it will be Labour that does it again in 2015.

And let me talk to you today about the scale of challenge that we face.

You know the similarities between what is happening under this Tory-led government in Scotland now and what happened under the Tory governments in the 1980s.

But the parallels don’t end there.

What ushered in that Tory government, was the failure of the old order in 1970s.

So too today.

Five years on from the financial crisis of 2008.

Our banks still failing, our living standards still falling, the people of Britain, of Scotland, paying the price.

The old order breaking down again.

And just like back then, it is because the old way of running our economy just doesn’t work any more.

This time:

Deregulation.

The dominance of finance over industry.

Allowing unaccountable vested interests in the private sector to have free rein.

Government just getting out the way.

The old in-it-for-yourself, laissez faire, deregulated economy just isn’t working for working people.

So when David Cameron says “we’re all Thatcherites now”, I have news for him: we’re not.

And when Alex Salmond says Scotland “didn’t mind” Margaret Thatcher’s economics, I have news for him, you did.

And you do.

The reality is this, only Labour can build a new settlement.

The answer lies not in going back.

Not in taking the Gleneagles hotel back into public ownership.

Going back to penal tax rates of the 1970s.

We need the benefits of a dynamic market economy.

But we do need a new settlement, appropriate for new times.

And here’s the difference with us and our opponents.

We know countries succeed by uniting and not disagreeing.

Despite my deep disagreements with what Lady Thatcher did, I showed respect, because you can’t preach the principle of One Nation, and then fail to uphold it in practice.

That is who I am.

I want to be a Prime Minister of the whole country.

Britain will succeed when everyone feels part of Britain and can contribute to our country.

That’s what One Nation Labour is all about.

One Nation Labour a party of the south as well as north, the private sector and the public sector, the person who owns the small business as much as the person who works for it.

A party of every part of the whole country.

We know that Britain’s best days lie ahead if we unite our country and not divide it.

That’s how we will succeed as an economy and a society.

The Need for a New Beginning

Some people used to believe, three years ago, David Cameron could change our economy for the better.

The slowest recovery for 100 years.

Wages falling.

Prices rising.

Unemployment increasing.

Borrowing going up, despite all the cuts, all the tax rises, because of their economic failure.

Their plan has completely and utterly failed the people of Scotland and the people of the United Kingdom.

How do they offer to turn our economy around?

The same old answers.

Tax cuts for millionaires.

They don’t want you to know the truth.

They are giving 13,000 millionaires an average £100,000 tax cut each this year and every year.

Same old Tories.

The same old way of doing things that says wealth trickles down from those at the top to everyone else.

That just doesn’t work.

And what else do they propose?

Fewer rights at work for everyone else.

Parliament recently debated the government’s plans to swap shares for your employment rights.

It was described as a “positively dreadful” idea and an “ill thought through attack on employment rights”.

Who do you think used the words?

It wasn’t Len McCluskey.

Not Margaret Curran.

Not even Vince Cable.

But Michael Forsyth.

These Tories are too right wing even for Michael Forsyth.

Now even the Tories don’t trust the Tories on employment rights.

We could have told them that a long time ago.

And from the people who brought you what they called the community charge, or what we know as the poll tax, comes a new idea.

Because he’s a PR guy, David Cameron calls it the “spare room subsidy”.

But let’s call it what it is: it is the iniquitous bedroom tax.

The bedroom tax forcing people out of their homes.

Driving up costs as they force people into the private sector.

What kind of government thinks that is the way to turn our economy around?

Let me tell you:

A heartless government.

And a hopeless one too.

This Tory-led government.

And all the time, what do they do?

They just seek to divide not unite our country.

Trying to pretend we have a good government being let down by bad people when the reality is that this is a country of good people being let down by an appalling, hopeless government.

There is a different way.

One Nation Labour: Vision

It’s not going to be easy.

But there is a different future.

It’s not just a question of waiting for a little bit of growth.

It’s not about the old problems of the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, but the problems of today.

Like the living standards crisis that blights so many people’s lives.

The reality that you know in your own communities that this economy dosen’t work only for a few at the top.

How we pay our way in a world with new trading powers, like China, India and Brazil.

We have a huge challenge to rise to.

And we will have to solve these in more difficult times too when there is less money around.

That’s why we need to rebuild our economy from its foundations.

We do that with a simple idea, idea that expresses who we are as a party: that we need a recovery made by the many and not just a few at the top.

When you back the people who do the hours, put in the shifts.

Who get up in the morning before George Osborne’s curtains are open.

And get back after they have closed for the night.

So we must challenge what has been happening in our banks for decades, so that we have banks that serve our businesses not businesses serving our banks.

Let’s establish regional banks to serve small businesses in every part of Britain.

That backs those communities.

Getting back to those old principles.

Principles we should be proud of.

And principles we should restore in our banking system.

We must challenge the decades-long culture of short-termism that’s held back British firms.

Let’s abolish quarterly reporting rules and, we should do something, let’s change the takeover rules for companies to stop the hedge funds and the speculators swooping in for a quick profit.

We must challenge the decades-long problems in our vocational education system in all parts of the United Kingdom, working with a Scottish Labour government led by Johann Lamont.

We know there is a huge challenge.

Let’s reject the culture that says university is always best and vocational education second best.

And let’s have proper high quality, real apprenticeships for our young people to aspire to in this country.

And we must challenge the decades-long problem of not building enough homes in this country that has put the dream of home ownership and fair rents further and further out of reach.

That’s why we would have used the money from the 4G auction to start building homes again and put construction workers back to work.

That is what the government should be doing.

And building a recovery made by the many needs every person who can to play their part.

You know what’s really interesting for all this government’s rhetoric about welfare reform, and despite all their cuts, the costs of economic failure goes up and up under this government.

There is only party in British politics that will actually tackle the scourge of long-term unemployment.

It is the Labour Party.

With a compulsory jobs guarantee for the 7,000 Scottish young people unemployed for more than a year and the 15,000 over 25s unemployed for more than two years.

Real jobs, with real rights to work, with a real responsibility to do so.

Friends, let me say this, you know there is a minority in our communities who can work and should be doing so.

But you also know there is a majority desperate for work.

And, let me be clear, what I am never going to as leader of the Labour Party will never seek to divide our country and say to young person in Inverness or the older worker laid off in Ipswich desperately looking for work, that they are scroungers, skivers or somehow cheating the system.

We know we will succeed by uniting our country, not dividing it.

And we won’t have a recovery made by the many if family budgets are just squeezed year on year on year.

That’s why if we were in government now we would cancel the millionaires’ tax cut, and protect the tax credits that make work pay.

That’s why we want to introduce a 10p starting rate for income tax.

And we’d be taking on the energy company rip-offs and breaking the stranglehold of the big energy companies.

That’s how we begin to win the people’s trust once again.

That’s how we will start to build a different economic future for Britain.

Independence is Not the Answer

And so what about Alex Salmond?

While we present a plan for our economic future, Alex Salmond spends his time trying to draw a line through the country.

It’s the same divisive politics that we’ve seen from the Tories, just a different form of division.

The Tories divide between those in work and those out of work, those in the private sector and those in the public sector, those in the trade unions and those outside them.

Alex Salmond wants to divide between the people of Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

It’s wrong.

He has no focus on the issues that really shape people’s lives.

What has he said about Lady Thatcher’s legacy?

Not just that Scotland didn’t mind her economics.

He said thanks to Lady Thatcher we got a Scottish Parliament.

Well I’ve got a message for him.

Margaret Thatcher didn’t deliver a Scottish Parliament.

The Labour Party and the people of Scotland did.

And he doesn’t understand the need for a new settlement, despite all his rhetoric, he defends the old order.

His is a narrow nationalism that thinks the way Scotland prospers is in a race to the bottom across the UK in corporation tax while doing nothing for working people.

His is a narrow nationalism that says if it is in the interest of the SNP then it is OK to do cosy deals with Rupert Murdoch.

His is a narrow nationalism that prays for Tory success so that he can convince people that the only way to get rid of the Tories is to get out of the UK.

He claims he opposes the Tories but he wants them to succeed.

We are going to stop them in their tracks.

Have you ever heard such a selfish, self-serving, narrow-minded, blinkered, in it for yourself, divide and rule piece of nonsense?

We know we need to celebrate our shared history.

Build our shared future.

And elect a Labour government.

Conclusion

Our country has been here before.

Huge challenges our country faces.

Dark and difficult times.

But every time we have come through the storm, it is because we have come together, joined together, worked together: the people of Scotland, the people of Britain.

So here is my message to you.

Let us do that again.

We offer something our opponents cannot.

The power of a people coming together.

Let the Tories try to divide our society.

Let the SNP try to divide our country.

We are a one One Nation party.

We are the unifiers.

We are the ones who can turn Scotland round.

And with your help, we are the ones who can turn Britain too.