“Thank you, conference.
Conference, there is a fight coming in British politics.
A fight that we have not seen in this country for more than
half a century.
It will be a battle for the soul of this nation.
A battle of ideas.
A battle that goes to the very core of who we are and what
kind of country we want to be.
On one side, we have a government that wants to wind back
the clock to the failed ideas of the past.
They believe economic growth is created by politicians.
They think government knows best.
They think that your income, your pension, and your savings
are theirs to take and then hand out as they see fit.
They believe that what they are doing is compassionate, but
we know, that these ideas will make every single person in this country poorer.
Your taxes will be higher.
Your bills will go up.
You will find it harder and harder to make ends meet.
Just because these ideas are delivered on TikTok, doesn’t
make them any less dangerous than they have always been.
On the other side of the battle, is us.
A renewed Conservative Party, fighting again for the belief
that what people earn belongs to them, not government.
That the collective wisdom of people in our country is
greater than the central planning of bureaucrats and politicians.
That spending money we don’t have on things we can’t afford
is not kind.
It is reckless.
This is a critical moment.
The world is becoming more dangerous.
Western economies are becoming more fragile.
We are running out of money and running out of time to put
it right.
Conference, we have a fight on our hands, and we need to be
ready.
No one else is going to solve these problems,
No one else is going to deliver a stronger economy and a
stronger country.
Too many people have been going the wrong way,
Conference, let me take a moment to remember two great
friends we’ve lost recently.
The indomitable Ann Widdecombe, a formidable politician,
never afraid to speak her mind.
She always fought for what she believed in,
And her politics were guided by her faith and her values.
And Jeffrey Archer, a brilliant author, and a dear friend to
the Conservative Party and to me.
After my speech on Sunday, he sent me a lovely message.
He said great speech, great outfit.
I am going to miss him.
Very different personalities with very different lives, but
the world is a less colourful place without them both.
And what a great Conference we’ve had.
Some people were worried we couldn’t top last year’s
Conference in Manchester.
Did you see that absolutely wonderful Ukrainian children’s
choir, weren’t they fantastic?
Did you get a chance to catch Jeremy Clarkson, telling it
like it is?
And of course, the great historical artefact,
The chronicle of our times,
The majestic Birmingham tapestry.
Last year in Manchester we showed that this party is back.
This year in Birmingham, we have shown we are the only party
with the team and the plan to get Britain working again.
What’s Labour been up to this last year?
Keir Starmer, remember him?
Last year he was talking about being in power for a decade.
Now, he’s not even an MP.
Life comes at you pretty fast.
And to think, people were writing us off.
Let me tell you, I am not someone who gets written off and
neither is the Conservative Party.
Conference, there is a reason our party is still here after
200 years.
We have adapted to every single challenge and every single
age, and we are doing it again.
We have a great team, and we are already making a
difference.
Just this week, Labour u-turned on jury trials because Nick
Timothy won the argument for victims.
Labour u-turned on the Family Farm Tax because Vicky Atkins
won the argument for farmers.
They u-turned on banning social media for under 16s, because
Laura Trott won the argument for children.
We put Labour under constant scrutiny for the mess they were
making,
On welfare, on Peter Mandelson, on not having a plan for our
country.
We are doing our jobs.
Conference, we are fighting for what we believe in again.
We are fighting for what we know is right.
We are making people’s lives better.
This summer, while everyone else was squabbling over a
by-election in Makerfield,
A by-election about one man’s job,
Douglas Lumsden fought a campaign in Aberdeen South for
thousands of people’s jobs.
Together, we fought to put the interests of the great city
of Aberdeen first and the people heard us.
Douglas didn’t just win Aberdeen South, he won 50 per cent
of the vote.
Conservatives hadn’t won a by-election in Scotland, in
nearly 60 years.
Last time we were in opposition it took us eleven years to
gain a seat in a by-election,
This time we did it in less than two.
Douglas won because we understood what was wrong and we had
a plan to put it right.
We made it clear whose side we were on.
We fought for them and we are going to do that everywhere in
our country.
Conference, I told you that we have a fight on our hands,
There are separatists running not just Scotland, but Wales
and Northern Ireland.
And our Prime Minister clumsily opened the door to a second
Scottish referendum, while his leader in Scotland actively supports one.
Only the Conservatives will fight properly for our union,
And Russell Findlay and Darren Millar are on the frontline
of that fight.
I am proud to have them leading our parties in Scotland and
in Wales and we need to give them all our support.
Aberdeen South shows that we can win wherever we get our
message across.
Conference, the Conservatives are coming back,
Not just in Aberdeen South, not just in London, not just in
places like Swindon, Fareham, Harlow, Trafford, and Milton Keynes, but
everywhere.
We are going to win,
Not for ourselves, but for our country.
For every hard-working person out there.
For everyone who wants to see common sense restored,
For everyone who wants to see Britain working again,
We are going to win for everyone who wants to see our great
country united.
Unlike Andy Burnham, I believe we need to learn from the
past, not live in the past.
We have acknowledged our mistakes,
We have set out what this party believes,
We are making it clear that those beliefs are expected of
everyone who stands for us.
In the past, we had people who used our party to get elected
and then betrayed our values.
I am building a united team of people.
A team motivated by public service, not self-service.
In 2024, voters gave their verdict on the rows, the plots,
and the infighting.
Remember all that drama?
That’s gone.
The Conservatives have had an export boom of drama queens
going to Reform.
This party is now the no drama party.
We are the no-nonsense party.
No other party in Britain has got a team with talent like
mine.
They are a great team.
Look at Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat,
He would have told Ed Miliband not to shake hands with the
Iranian Foreign Minister.
Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith.
He has more business experience than John Healey, Rachel
Reeves and Gordon Brown combined.
Shadow Equalities Minister Joy Morrissey, she has more
common sense than the whole of the Labour Party.
We have rising stars like Harriet Cross, Katie Lam, and
Rebecca Paul bursting with ideas.
Conference, there is no one more determined to stop the
boats than Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp,
The first British politician to be fired on by the French
since the Battle of Trafalgar.
Let me tell you a secret about our Shadow Cabinet,
We actually like each other.
We like each other, we respect each other’s experience, and
we listen to each other’s ideas.
What a contrast with the Labour Cabinet,
Or Reform’s Circular Firing Squad.
My entire front bench and Parliamentary party are a great
team.
But Conference, we will need many more talented people in
the next parliament.
People who have had successful careers outside Westminster.
Not just people who know how to talk a good game, people who
know how to get stuff done.
If you’ve never thought about a career in politics, now’s
your time.
We want talent from all walks of life.
Every single Conservative MP and candidate must bring
Conservative values and principles to the table and stick to them.
So, conference, all our candidates will sign a commitment to
these high standards.
Integrity, duty, discipline,
Common sense is non-negotiable.
The country needs to know that when you vote Conservative,
you get Conservative.
Conference, we have changed our Party, but there is still a
lot of work to do.
People are looking through the shop window, they like what
see but let’s be honest, not enough of them are buying yet.
We need to fix that.
A few weeks ago, I was at London Fashion Week attending
Marks & Spencer’s first ever catwalk show.
M&S is a brand that has been around for 100 years.
Not so long-ago critics said they were a bit stuffy and
stuck in the past.
Some were even questioning whether the brand would survive.
Do you see where I’m going with this Conference?
Now, M&S is back in fashion.
Great looks at affordable prices.
They have adapted their style for today’s market and people
are flooding back, including me as you’ve probably noticed this week.
Just like M&S we must learn from our mistakes, win back
trust, and make people feel good about our party again.
We have to get out there every day to make the Conservative
case.
It took Labour 18 years to get back after 1979.
It took us 13 years to turn it around after 1997.
It took Labour 14 years after 2010 and even then, they
didn’t win, we lost.
I want us to win in 3 years’ time,
To be honest I want us to win next week,
We are ready for an election whenever it is called,
Because we are the only party that understands what has gone
wrong in Britain and knows how to put it right.
We are a team, we are a family and we are going to do this
together.
Labour are putting all their hope in just one man.
But they don’t get a clean slate just because they have
changed leader.
We are going to hold them to account and expose every single
failure.
In fact, Andy Burnham doesn’t have a clean slate.
This is a man who was happy to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s
shadow cabinet.
He wasn’t the junior DEFRA PPS,
He was the Shadow Home Secretary.
Nodding along to a man who wanted to take the UK out of
NATO, give up our nuclear deterrent, and even disband our army.
When Andy Burnham was in Opposition with Corbyn, he didn’t
feel a need to change the leader.
But after Keir Starmer won a landslide, Burnham couldn’t
wait to get back and take it off him.
That is who Andy Burnham is.
Don’t let this man fool you with his fluttering eyelashes
and his pork scratchings.
He said opening No 10 North was the best day of his life.
Really?
It’s got a fake Cabinet room, a cardboard cutout of Larry
the cat and the address isn’t even number 10!
It’s all make believe.
In Liverpool last week, he promised a National Care Service
at a cost of £18 billion without a plan to pay for it.
Yet again we have a Labour Prime Minister making a promise
that he cannot deliver with sums that do not add up.
This is the wrong way of doing things.
50 years ago, the state was failing to run businesses it had
no business running.
British Leyland, British Telecom, British Airways, British
Steel.
Government couldn’t manage them properly,
In fact, political interference made their problems worse.
Andy Burnham is wilfully ignorant of those lessons.
He doesn’t want to know because it doesn’t fit his
worldview.
So, he is going to make the same mistakes, and we will all
pay for those mistakes.
He wants to reopen the Brexit debate.
Can you imagine having to go through that again?
So much time lost, arguing with ourselves, with the EU,
Going round in circles, businesses not knowing whether they
should invest,
He wants to do it all again.
I think that is a terrible idea.
The last thing we should do right now is re-run those
arguments.
Those were Andy Burnham’s exact words when he was
campaigning in Makerfield.
What’s changed, Prime Minister?
Conference, at least he has delayed his biggest plans, and
the worst ones, until after the next election.
So, I know, he’s never going to do any of them because he’s
not going to be Prime Minister after the next election.
Not if I have anything to do with it.
I’m more worried about what wasn’t in his speech last week.
Funding defence wasn’t in it.
Getting borrowing under control wasn’t in it.
Stopping illegal immigration wasn’t in it.
Cutting crime wasn’t in it.
Cutting the ballooning benefits bill wasn’t in his speech.
I am shocked that this Prime Minister doesn’t have defence,
the economy, immigration, or crime in his priorities.
This is not serious.
He is supposed to be leading our country, and I want the
country to know we will do things differently.
We believe in the dignity of work, they believe it’s fine to
live a life on benefits.
We believe prosperity comes from people and businesses, they
believe it comes from Government.
We believe in a state that does the important things and
does them well,
They believe in more and more and more and more government.
It’s the same old high tax, high spend, Labour.
No common sense.
Addicted to welfare.
Drowning our country in debt.
Choking our economy with taxes.
Stifling every innovation with regulation.
Conference, enough is enough, the country deserves better
and we are going to give them better.
Do you know who else deserves better?
Reform voters, many of them are our people.
We let them down and we want them to come back home.
They deserve better than Reform politicians.
A year ago, those politicians were measuring up the curtains
for Number 10.
Now, some of them, are measuring up the curtains for their
prison cells.
Let’s go through their greatest hits.
Their leader in Wales was sent to prison for taking bribes
from Russia.
His successor then had to stand down after he was arrested
last month.
The police are investigating not just Robert Jenrick’s
donations, but Richard Tice’s company as well.
Farage’s fishy £5 million personal gift,
Has anyone here ever received a £5 million gift?
I haven’t.
The brown envelopes they boasted about on camera.
Just when you think Reform couldn’t get any weirder, there’s
a convicted fraudster who calls himself Posh George and calls Nigel Farage,
Daddy.
The circus goes on and on and it will never stop, because
this is who Reform politicians are.
To those who say unite the right, we are not uniting with
that.
People deserve better than that and we are going to give
them better than that.
Character, conduct, and standards matter.
I don’t want to live in a country run by people who threaten
journalists, call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children
are English.
I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our
brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black
players are English.
I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes
were playing, nobody was questioning whether they were English.
We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether
they were English.
We must not let these people take us backwards.
That is not the country we are.
Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity.
They are not like us; we are not like them.
We are different.
We are the Conservative Party.
Back in the day, we were the ones who put out a poster
saying Labour says he’s black, we say he’s British.
We are still that same party.
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I am black.
I am British.
I’m proud of my country, I’m proud of our history.
All that we have done, and all that we will do in the world.
Our best days are not behind us, and we will not let this
country go backwards.
You know what else is taking us backwards?
The disgraceful antisemitism we saw at the Green Party
conference in Brighton last weekend.
They are seeking to erase Jewish identity.
Shame on the Green Party and shame on Zack Polanski.
Exactly three years ago today, we saw the horrific 7th
October attacks, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
The Conservative Party stands with the Jewish people.
We will never stop fighting antisemitism.
Some people think that being a Conservative is about trying
to stop the world from changing.
They are so wrong.
The world is constantly changing.
New technologies, new challenges, new opportunities.
It is only by adapting that we can preserve the very best of
this country and hand something better onto to the next generation.
That is what being a Conservative means.
Andy Burnham says that we all just need to hope again.
Hope is not a strategy.
The last thing this country needs is a Paddington Bear Prime
Minister, hoping that the problems go away, while Putin attacks our allies,
while our economy flatlines.
He wants to turn back the clock to the 1970s.
Nostalgia is not a plan for our country.
Andy Burnham is promising a better yesterday what I am
promising is a better tomorrow.
Conference, the fundamental problem we have right now, is
that our country is running out of money.
Almost every other problem flows from this.
Our national debt currently stands at nearly £3 trillion,
and we are adding more than £100 billion every year.
Last year, four in every five pounds borrowed by the
Government was spent on debt interest alone.
That’s like taking out a second mortgage just to pay the
interest on your first mortgage.
This is crazy.
Unless we start creating more value, unless we start growing
our economy, something is going to break.
That is why growing the economy will be the central
organising principle of the next Conservative government.
We know that a stronger country is built on a stronger
economy.
The two go hand in hand.
There is no national security without economic security, and
there is no economic security without national security.
We cannot have one without the other.
Labour don’t understand this.
They see no need to fix the public finances,
I’m not even sure they know what is going wrong.
If they did, they would be making tough decisions to bring
spending down.
Instead, they are making a lot of promises.
Promises need to be paid for,
More government costs more money.
It means higher taxes and higher borrowing.
Higher taxes and higher borrowing that will weaken business,
weaken investment, weaken hiring and it will lower growth.
Then what will they do? Put up your taxes again.
This is the tax doom loop that is making us all poorer,
round and round we go.
That is the wrong way.
Conference, let me show you the right way.
The right way starts by living within our means.
Every family and every business knows this,
But Labour’s choices are adding £260 billion to the national
debt.
Our children will already inherit a more dangerous world,
They should not inherit our debts as well.
Every politician is tempted to spend money on something
popular, instead of cutting the deficit.
Last year, I announced our Golden Economic Rule, to impose
self-discipline.
For every pound we save, 50 pence will go towards cutting
the deficit.
We have already identified over £70 billion of savings.
That means we will cut the deficit we inherit from Labour by
more than £35 billion.
Restoring confidence in the public finances is essential to
economic growth.
But it’s not just about that,
It’s about building up protection for a rainy day, leaving
less of a mess for our children.
That is the right way.
As Conservatives we know that it’s businesses that create
growth, but they are being held back in so many ways.
Anyone who has worked in a business knows exactly what I
mean.
It’s our planning system, it’s our tax system, it’s our
energy system.
Less than one in four major planning applications is decided
on time.
In 1976 our tax handbooks were 1,600 pages long.
They are now 23,000 pages.
That is all seven Harry Potter novels, the Bible and the
complete works of Shakespeare combined, 4 times over.
No wonder our economy isn’t growing.
So, we are going to do things differently.
I’ve got a plan to get Britain growing again, the kind of
growth that you can actually see and feel.
Rachel Reeves talked about growth hundreds of times, she had
no idea what it meant.
Let me tell you what growth looks like,
It looks like a pensioner doing their food shopping and
realising they can afford a little bit more because lower energy prices mean
cheaper food.
Because they feel richer, they decide to go and meet their
family at a new café, or a new restaurant or pub that’s opened up
And there will be more of them because we’ve scrapped
business rates for most of the high street.
Over a coffee, they’ll hear from their granddaughter, who
has just got a loan to start and grow her business because our banking reforms
have released up to £450 billion of capital to every corner of our country.
They’ll hear from their grandson, who’s buying his first
home.
A home which costs less because we’ve scrapped regulations
that drive up building costs and abolished Stamp Duty.
That is what growth looks like.
Growth looks like graduates choosing between jobs, instead
of choosing between job centres.
There’ll be more construction jobs because we’ll have
scrapped obscure rules, like the Aarhus convention,
How many of you have heard of that?
That is what activists use to block development.
When we are in charge no one from Natural England will turn
up with a clipboard counting bats and newts.
It’s time to build new nuclear and not worry about whether
the fish can have discos.
And yes, it’s time to finally build that third runway at
Heathrow.
Last week, Andy Burnham said Heathrow expansion was a matter
for London.
No, Prime Minister, you are not the Mayor of Manchester
anymore.
The future of our country’s busiest airport is not a
regional matter, it is a matter for you.
So, stop faffing about and get this runway built.
Conference, you can’t have growth without cheap energy.
Energy is growth.
Countries that have expensive energy are poor and Britain’s
energy is pretty much the most expensive in the world.
Climate change is real but importing oil and gas from
countries that drill in a dirtier fashion, that actually increases our
emissions.
People in Aberdeen told me that their city is dying.
The government’s energy policy is killing Aberdeen.
No more.
We will drill in the North Sea, increase our tax revenues,
and drive down energy prices.
We need oil and gas, we need renewables, we need nuclear,
We will build new small modular reactors,
Because our mission is for cheap, clean, abundant energy.
Living within our means, delivering cheaper energy, this is
how we grow our economy.
You know what else we need to do?
Create jobs.
I finished my engineering degree in 2003,
And I remember what it was like graduating from university
at that time.
My friends and I didn’t have to worry about getting a job,
we were debating which jobs to take.
Should we move to London?
Should we stay nearer our families?
Should we take a more boring job that paid a lot of money,
or something more exciting that didn’t pay quite so much?
Those were our options.
That is not true for young people today.
This is the first time in 26 years that youth unemployment
in the UK is higher than the EU average.
Young people are leaving university into the worst graduate
recruitment market on record,
With a mountain of debt they can’t find a job, they can’t
buy a house.
Conference, young people need our help, and we are going to
help them!
Let’s start by cutting the interest on some of those student
loans,
Instead of putting them on benefits we will help young
people get a job.
And the way to get jobs is not to move government to
Manchester, it’s to move government out of the way so that businesses can
create jobs.
And so that’s why we will scrap every job killing measure in
Labour’s Employment Rights Act.
And Conference, because of Labour’s Jobs Tax, in the two
years of this Labour government, youth unemployment has increased by 174,000.
So, we will cut the Jobs Tax in half for under 25s!
That is how you get people into work, by making it easier to
hire them.
That is the right way.
We don’t just need to create jobs.
We need to fill them with British workers instead of relying
on immigration.
Our welfare system is broken, we spend more on benefits than
we raise in Income Tax,
And we are incentivising low value immigration to our
country.
We need to put the fair back in welfare.
We need tough love.
It is morally wrong to tell people suffering bouts of mild
anxiety that they are disabled and cannot work.
That’s why Shadow Welfare Secretary Helen Whately will build
a new welfare system, where everyone who can work, will work.
If you don’t find a job within six months, you’ll get a Back
to Work Card, which you can only use to buy what you really need.
No alcohol, no cigarettes, no gambling.
Some say you shouldn’t tell people how to spend their money,
I say it’s not their money, it’s taxpayers’ money.
There will also be no out-of-work benefits straight out of
school or university.
If you haven’t paid in, you shouldn’t be taking out.
Instead, we’ll put you on a Get to Work Programme.
Conservatives don’t believe in a something for nothing
culture.
The best welfare is a well-paying job.
Cutting the welfare bill will allow us to fund our defence.
The first duty of any government is defence of the realm.
Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our
security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no
schools. We have a heap of cinders.
Do you know who said that first?
A Labour Chancellor called Healey, Denis Healey in 1969.
His Labour party never questioned the need to spend money on
defence.
Denis Healey, like so many others in his generation, fought
in the Second World War.
They knew the terror of war, they understood the folly of
appeasement.
What a contrast with our current Prime Minister, who said
that national security can’t come at the expense of social security.
The era of peace is over.
Britain today can no longer coast.
Every age must fight its own battles.
If we want peace, we must prepare for war.
Conservatives have a fully funded plan to get to 3 per cent
on defence by 2030.
Let’s be honest, if Russia sends a missile to hit
Manchester, £2 bus fares are not going to save us.
That’s why yesterday, Shadow Defence Secretary James
Cartlidge announced our plan for a new national missile and drone defence
system,
Britannia Shield.
We need to keep people safe.
When you watch your child walk out the front door, you
worry, but you trust they will come home again.
Every parent knows that fear.
This year, I have been meeting the parents of those children
who didn’t come back home.
The family of Henry Nowak, 18 years old, handcuffed by the
police in his dying moments, as his murderer stood over him accusing him of
racism.
The lack of common sense and compassion, shown to Henry in
his final moments was a shocking failure by the state.
I met the parents of Barnaby Webber and Grace
O’Malley-Kumar, Grace’s father, Sandroy, is sitting here today.
Their children were butchered in Nottingham, along with Ian
Coates, by a psychopath authorities had multiple opportunities to stop but
didn’t, because they were afraid to.
These are different kinds of failure.
But in each case, institutions that were meant to protect
people, failed.
It is devastating for families.
And it keeps happening, again and again and again.
It’s not just Henry, it’s not just Grace or Barnaby, it’s
those little girls who were killed in Southport, it’s the Manchester Arena
bombing.
When a child dies, a family is changed forever.
When that death might have been prevented, the pain is
almost impossible to comprehend.
No mother or father should have to carry that question for
the rest of their life.
There has to be proper accountability for those who are
responsible.
We have to do better conference, and I promise that we will
do better.
Earlier this year in Middlesbrough, we saw lawless gangs
terrorising their neighbours and police officers killed by cars on the rampage
down the A66.
This is what happens when there is a collapse in
consequences, when criminals believe they can get away with crime.
We need to make sure that criminals face the full force of
the law.
Under Labour’s early release scheme,
Paedophiles, killers, and rapists were going to be let out
early.
It was only after so many of us campaigned with victims that
the government finally u-turned on their plan to release criminals like PC
Andrew Harper’s killers.
Champagne socialists and people who have never had to live
amongst dangerous criminals think it is fashionable to say there should be
fewer people in prison.
It’s not about fewer people in prison, I want to see more
criminals in prison.
And so that is why the next Conservative Government will
undertake the largest prison building programme in modern history, 50,000 new
prison places.
And with this extra capacity, we won’t just be able to end
Labour’s early release schemes once and for all,
We will be able to introduce tougher minimum sentences for
the worst crimes.
Punishment which fits the crime, real consequences,
criminals behind bars and communities feeling safe again.
That is the Britain we will build.
That is the right way.
Some people talk as if the public sector are the enemy, they
are not.
There are real jobs in the public sector adding value to
society.
Doctors, helping people get better and back to work.
Soldiers keeping our country safe.
Badass teachers like Katharine Birbalsingh, fighting to give
disadvantaged children a better education.
Conference, these are our people too, and we will always
back them.
They are being let down by a system that tries to stop them
using their common sense.
No more.
We are going to give them back that freedom, so they can do
their jobs.
That is the right way.
Conservatives believe we need to strip out the politics
which has crept into our schools and put academic standards first.
Everyone in this hall knows my views about Bridget
Phillipson, let me move onto her successor.
Do you know what Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, said?
She said there is an overfocus on academic outcomes in
schools.
That is what schools are for.
It’s like saying there’s an overfocus on air in breathing
We want children to grow up and fulfil their potential.
What sets us apart from every other party is that we believe
in the potential of human endeavour to create great things.
We trust that if you give people the tools to succeed,
whether that’s an academic or vocational education, they will find the best way
to use them.
Conference do you know what else we trust people with?
Their own money.
For the last few days, everybody’s been asking me about
Inheritance Tax.
So, let’s talk about it.
We are not abolishing Inheritance Tax at this Conference.
I know you’re disappointed.
We could do it,
But not if we want to keep our country safe with a Britannia
shield.
Not if we also want to keep people safe with 50,000 new
prison places.
Not if we want to cut the deficit threatening to bankrupt
our country and burden our children.
Governing is about choices, tough choices, and Conservatives
will not announce a tax cut without telling you how we are going to pay for it.
But just because I can’t give you everything you want,
doesn’t mean I can’t give you anything you want.
The Labour Party think it is selfish, to pass on what you
have earned to your children.
We don’t.
If Labour understood why this mattered, they wouldn’t have
introduced a Family Farms Tax which drove some farmers to take their own lives.
Inheritance Tax was supposed to be a tax on the super
wealthy,
Those people have all gone.
Or they’ve moved their money offshore and avoid the tax
altogether.
Instead, it is now a tax on ordinary middle-class families
in every corner of our country.
Let’s go back to first principles, what is the thing that
most people want to pass on to their children and grandchildren?
It is their family home.
Conference, the Conservatives are and always have been the
party of home ownership.
We understand why putting roots down and having a stake in
society matters.
Our homes are where we watch our children take their first
steps.
They are where we gather every Christmas to put up the same
decorations.
Passing on your home to your family is one of the most human
instincts of all.
So, Conference, the next Conservative Government will
legislate so nobody, will ever pay Inheritance Tax on their Family Home.
But that’s not all.
On top of that, couples will be able to leave an additional
£1 million tax free.
These changes mean every Inheritance Tax bill will be cut,
And the number of families paying Inheritance Tax will fall
by more than half.
Conference my ambition is to abolish Inheritance Tax
altogether, as soon as we can afford it.
That can only happen with a Conservative government.
I believe that people who work hard and save should be
rewarded for that effort.
So, Conference, this is my guarantee,
No Stamp Duty when you buy your home,
No Mansion Tax when you live in your home.
And no Inheritance Tax on your home when you pass it to your
children or grandchildren.
That is what the next Conservative Government will deliver.
I want you to know, that we are on your side and whoever you
are, you will be better off under a Conservative government.
If you run a business, we will get government out of your
way and cut your taxes.
If you are a parent, we will make sure free childcare is
never removed because of a pay rise.
If you want to own your home, we will scrap Stamp Duty and
make houses cheaper to build.
If you’re a woman who knows biological sex is real, like the
Darlington nurses do, we will protect your privacy.
If you are a police officer who puts your life on the line,
like Sergeant Martyn Blake did, we will back you.
If you’re a mother in a village threatened with a migrant
camp, like in Piddington and you want your children to feel safe we will deport
illegal migrants, not house them.
If you’re worried about the threat of Russia or Iran, we
will keep Britain safe.
If you’re leaving school, we’ll let you choose between work,
university, or a high-quality apprenticeship.
If you are a graduate paying over and above for your student
loan, we will end the interest rate rip off.
If you are a farmer, we will end the Family Farms Tax.
If you are a veteran, we will protect you from malicious
prosecution.
If you are a victim of crime, the perpetrators will be
locked up.
If you are on welfare, we will get you into work,
If you are under 25, we will make it easier for you to get a
job.
If you have retired, we will protect your pension.
If you want to pass your home on to your family, we will
make sure you don’t pay a penny in tax.
We have something for everyone.
Everyone will benefit from a growing economy, safer streets,
and secure borders under the Conservatives.
Conference I told you that a fight was coming.
Every day, the choice at the next election is becoming
clearer.
It will be between,
A Labour party which takes more of your money, or a
Conservative party which lets you keep more of what you earn.
A Labour party which says Government has all the answers, or
a Conservative party which lets you decide.
I am optimistic, because we have learnt from our mistakes,
we are going the right way.
We are ready to fight for our values,
Ready to win the argument,
Ready to govern,
Ready to get Britain working again.”
