October 06, 2020

Conservative Party Conference 2020: Day 4

Today on the final day of Virtual Conservative Party Conference 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out his ambitious vision to transform the UK for the better. He set out our approach as follows.

This Government is working night and day to repel this virus and we will succeed because we have seen how the country has responded before, with the energy and self-sacrifice of the NHS, the care workers and the armed forces.

But after all we have been through this year it isn’t enough just to go back to normal. We are resolving not to go back but to build back better:

Build a greener economy – becoming the world leader in low cost clean power generation, creating jobs across this country.
Build more homes – extending the Conservative dream of home ownership.
‍Build more hospitals and rebuild more schools, so public services have the tools they need to give everyone the opportunity to get on.
‍Transform the provision of skills with a new lifetime skills guarantee.
‍Build the infrastructure that will transform and level up all parts of the UK.
‍Build a better United Kingdom.

Though it seems tough now when we are tackling this disease, it is a measure of the greatness of this country that we are simply not going to let it blow us off course. Because even in the darkest moments we can see the bright future ahead, we can see how to build it, and we are going to build it together.

That is why this government will build back better and we will do what all governments have shirked for decades:

Delivering on our promises to the NHS – more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses. This government is pressing on with its plan for 48 new hospitals. That’s the eight already underway, and then 40 more between now and 2030. We need to get on with recruiting the 50,000 more nurses – and we are proud that we have 14,000 more since this government came into office; 14,000 more nurses now, under this Conservative government – and yet we will go further.
Doubling funding for scientific research – creating jobs backing British science. We have seen the frantic global scramble for vaccines, for therapies – and so now we are doubling our funding for all types of revolutionary scientific breakthroughs, with a national Advanced Research and Projects Agency.
We will fix the injustice of care home funding – delivering on our manifesto pledge. We need a long-term solution for social care – that’s why we have an ambitious three point plan. Covid has shone a spotlight on the difficulties of that sector in all parts of the UK – and to build back better we must respond, care for the carers as they care for us.
Fighting crime and delivering 20,000 new police officers. We are fulfilling our manifesto commitment to put another 20,000 officers out on the street – we have already recruited almost 5,000. We are also backing the police, and protecting the public, by changing the law to stop the early release of serious sexual and violent offenders, and stopping the whole criminal justice system from being hamstrung by lefty human rights lawyers.
Town by town we are rooting out the county lines drugs gangs that are causing so much misery – and in that sense our agenda is basic social justice.
Investing massively in schools - delivering on our promise to raise per pupil funding, to £4,000 per head in primary school and £5,000 per head in secondary school, as well as a £30,000 starting salary for teachers.
Exploring the value of one-to-one teaching, both for pupils who are in danger of falling behind, and for those who are of exceptional abilities. We can all see the difficulties, such intensive teaching could be transformational, and of massive reassurance to parents. It is in a crisis like this that new approaches are born.
Transforming skills with a Lifetime Skills Guarantee. We have broken down the senseless barrier between Further Education and Higher Education, so that it is just as easy to get the funding you need for a training course in engineering or IT as for a degree in politics or economics. We are offering every adult four years of funded post-18 education – a lifetime skills guarantee.

The Green Economy

There is one area where we are progressing with gale force speed – the green industrial revolution, that in the next ten years, will create hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs. So we will give people the chance to train for the new jobs that are being created every day.

The UK government has decided to become the world leader in low cost clean power generation – cheaper than coal and gas; and we believe that in ten years’ time offshore wind will be powering every home in the country.
Raising our target rising from 30 gigawatts to 40 gigawatts. Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle – the whole lot of them could get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.
Investing £160m in ports and factories across the country, to manufacture the next generation of turbines. We will not only build fixed arrays in the sea but wind turbines that float on the sea – enough to deliver one gigawatt of energy by 2030, 15 times as much as the rest of the world put together.
Levelling up by upgrading infrastructure in such places as Teesside and Humber and Scotland and Wales. We will increase an offshore wind capacity that is already the biggest in the world.
‍This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country – and help us to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Imagine that future – with high-skilled, green-collar jobs in wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen and in carbon capture and storage.‍

We will build back and build back greener; and this Government will lead that green industrial revolution.

Fixing our broken housing market:

We want to extend the fundamental life-affirming power of home ownership. When Covid struck, millions of people, often young people, found themselves locked down in rented accommodation whilst for most people the overwhelming instinct is to buy. ‍‍
We will give young first time buyers the chance to take out a long-term fixed rate mortgage of up to 95 per cent of the value of the home, vastly reducing the size of the deposit, and giving the chance of home ownership – and all the joy and pride that goes with it – to millions that feel excluded. We believe that this policy could create two million more owner occupiers, the biggest expansion of home ownership since the 1980s. We will help turn generation rent into generation buy.
‍We will transform the sclerotic planning system whilst protecting the green belt. We will make it faster and easier to build beautiful new homes without destroying the green belt or desecrating the countryside.‍

We will fix the long-term problems and fix the broken housing market by giving power back to people – the Conservative and fundamental life-affirming power of home ownership.

Conservatives and the Labour Party:

We want to level up AND they want to level down.
We want to extend the fundamental life-affirming power of home ownership BUT they deeply dislike home ownership for anyone else.
We must be clear that there comes a moment when the state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it – developing therapies and vaccines - BUT Labour don’t agree and regard recent state expansion as progress.
We are proud of this country’s culture, history and traditions BUT Labour want to pull statues down, to re-write the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct.
We believe passionately in our wonderful United Kingdom BUT Labour have done frankly nothing to protect the Union, and continue to flirt with those who would tear our country apart.
We believe in Global Britain as a proud independent and outward-looking country BUT Labour, be in no doubt, are secretly scheming to overturn Brexit and take us back into the EU.‍
We believe in our fantastic armed services as one of the greatest exports this country has BUT Labour can’t even vote for measures to protect veterans from vexatious prosecutions.
Throughout this pandemic it is this government that has taken the tough decisions AND it is Labour who have simply sniped from the sidelines.