Starmer says Labour would create new state energy company, Great British Energy
Starmer talks about visiting an insulation scheme in Kirklees. Energy bills were next to nothing. And tenants were delighted. Why not? Their energy bills had been cut by £1,000.
That is what levelling up should look like, he says.
And he says Labour would not make the mistake the Tories made in the 1980s, when they wasted the wealth from North Sea oil.
That is why Labour is proposing a wealth fund.
He says Labour would set up Great British Energy – a new company – within the first year of a Labour government.
It would take advantages of the opportunities for clean power.
And it will be publicly owned, he says.
That gets a sustained round of applause.
UPDATE: Starmer said:
We won’t make the mistake the Tories made with North Sea oil and gas back in the 1980s where they frittered away the wealth from our national resources.
Just look at what’s happening at the moment. The largest onshore wind farm in Wales. Who owns it? Sweden. Energy bills in Swansea are paying for schools and hospitals in Stockholm. The Chinese Communist party has a stake in our nuclear industry. And five million people in Britain pay their bills to an energy company owned by France.
So we will set up Great British Energy within the first year of a Labour government. A new company that takes advantage of the opportunities in clean British power and because it’s right for jobs, because it’s right for growth, because it’s right for energy independence from tyrants like Putin.
Yes Conference, Great British Energy will be publicly owned.
None of this will be easy – it won’t be like flicking a switch. It will mean tough battles on issues like planning and regulation. But when the Tories nay-say and carp, remember this: the road to net-zero is no longer one of stern, austere, self-denial. It’s at the heart of modern, 21st century aspiration.
Keir Starmer addressing the Labour conference. Photograph: James McCauley/REX/Shutterstock
Sir Keir Starmer in his party conference speech in Liverpool said Labour would invest more in the NHS but the damage done by the Tories means “this time the rescue will be harder than ever”. He says Labour will also set a target to get home ownership up to 70%. (It is currently 65% in England.)
Starmer said Labour would set up Great British Energy – a new company – within the first year of government. It would take advantages of the opportunities for clean power and would be publicly owned. He said: “Many European, Asian, and American countries have public generating companies, like EDF in France and Vattenfall in Sweden, which partner with the private sector to increase capacity and build clean energy at scale.” The TUC and the CBI both welcomed the proposal.
Labour MP Rupa Huq has offered the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, “sincere and heartfelt apologies” for her “ill-judged” comments describing him as “superficially” black. Huq has had the Labour whip suspended. The MP said: “I have today contacted Kwasi Kwarteng to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies for the comments I made at yesterday’s Labour conference fringe meeting. “My comments were ill-judged and I wholeheartedly apologise to anyone affected.”
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, called for the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for his “crime of aggression”.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said Keir Starmer’s speech today was “a start” but that he should be bolder.
Water bosses could go to jail if they deliberately mislead investigations into water pollution, Jim McMahon, the shadow environment secretary, told the conference. He mentioned the new penalties as he used his speech to say the next Labour government would “finally hold water bosses personally accountable” for their failures to stop sewage discharges.
Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya will be the special guest speaker on the final day of the Labour party conference.
She will use her address to the gathering in Liverpool to say the fate of her country and neighbouring Ukraine are connected in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s “Russian imperialism”.
Belarus, under authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, was used as a launch point for the invasion of its southern neighbour by Putin’s forces.
Tsikhanouskaya met the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, when she visited Westminster.
Labour has attracted a surge of interest from big business at its conference in Liverpool with the biggest attendance of companies since 2010, including a firm owned by a major Tory donor.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were among the senior politicians to speak at a packed reception of more than 600 business leaders, executives and international guests on Monday night.
Labour sources said there had been a significant increase in business interest in its conference as the party continues to perform well in the polls, with bookmakers putting Starmer odds-on to win the next election.
One of the companies to showcase its wares at the conference is Wrightbus, owned by Tory donor Jo Bamford, with the firm exhibiting a hydrogen bus at both Labour and Conservative events this year.
The shadow defence secretary, John Healey, said there would be “no change to Britain’s resolve to confront Russian aggression and support for Ukraine” under a Labour government.
To applause at the party’s conference in Liverpool, he added: “Those who call ‘stop the war’ more loudly than ‘win the war’ are playing into Putin’s hands.
“A ceasefire now cedes new territory to Russia, it risks Russia regrouping its forces, deepening their occupation, legitimising its regime of torture, rape and execution.
“We are not fighting, we don’t decide when it ends, only Ukraine can make this call and our duty will be to support Ukraine in the negotiations, just as we are now in the fighting.”
Asked if Rupa Huq should get the whip back after her apology, the Ed Miliband, shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, told Radio 4’s PM programme: “Well, that’s a matter for Keir Starmer, but look, let me just say these are appalling comments that Rupa Huq made.
“There is absolutely no place for these kind of comments in our politics and the party will have to decide what it does in terms of her future, but I mean these comments are reprehensible and awful.”
On Great British Energy, Miliband said “we’ve had an aversion in this country to a real industrial policy where the state plays its proper role”.
He added: “We’ve looked at the experience of countries around the world. The top 10 countries for renewable energy all have state energy companies.
“Why do they do that? Partly because they want to make the investments so they can get the jobs and the wealth, and we’re saying, well look if we’re going to not only get this green economy, but take advantage of the opportunities there are for good jobs and decent wages, we need to do this ourselves as well.”
A Labour delegate was booed in the party’s main conference hall in Liverpool after criticising the Ukrainian government and suggesting that supporting them in the war against Russia is “supporting imperialism”, the PA news agency reported.
Angelo Sanchez, from Leicester South Constituency Labour party, was speaking on a motion that called for the party to continue to provide support alongside Nato allies to Ukraine and “tackle” the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, among other things,
On the prospect of the motion being approved, Sanchez said: “It means that the future Labour government would be sending money to a government, the Ukrainian government, that is repressing the left in their own country, a government that is criminalising socialist parties and imprisoning Ukrainian activists.
“If you support this motion, motion 13 on Ukraine, you are not supporting the Ukrainian people, you are supporting only the United States, you are supporting neoliberalism, you are supporting imperialism.”
A number of people in the audience booed the speaker but a minority in the hall also clapped various parts of his speech.
The following speaker, Josh Dean, from Hertford and Stortford CLP, said: “So many across our movement have reaffirmed our unshakeable commitment to Nato, to our friends in Ukraine, and they have put us firmly on the side of the Ukrainian people.
“With due respect to the last delegate, that is where we must remain and never leave again.”
Anushka Anthana, deputy political editor for ITV News, with the latest on the investigation into Labour MP Rupa Huq’s remarks about Kwasi Kwarteng.
Labour source says this apology won’t mean the whip is returned to Rupa Huq. As I understand it it’s suspended pending an investigation 👇 https://t.co/xapbJtd7uz
Trade negotiators would be required to deliver economic opportunities across the UK under a Labour government, according to the shadow international trade secretary.
Nick Thomas-Symonds said: “We can’t go on with a situation where only 1.4% of exporters are from the north-east and less than 5% from the east Midlands.
“So, I can pledge today the next Labour government will establish firm rules to ensure that trade negotiators have binding responsibilities to help deliver economic opportunities across all of the United Kingdom.
“For every new trade deal Labour negotiates, we will do everything possible to ensure that it will work for communities, livelihoods and businesses nationwide.”
Starmer 'needs to be bolder', says Unite general secretary
Andrew Sparrow
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said Keir Starmer’s speech today was “a start” but that he should be bolder. In a statement, she said:
The real crisis, for everyday families in Britain, is a crisis of wage cuts, frightening energy bills and now soaring rents and mortgages. So Keir Starmer’s promises for change in today’s speech are a start.
But Labour still needs to be bolder. It must offer a very clear, tangible response to the crisis that people can understand and get behind. Clear blue water has opened up in British politics between Labour and the Conservative government. It’s time to make that count.
As Labour’s Nye Bevan said as far back as 1953: ‘We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down’.
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