5,000 people a day now sign off work.
Britain has stopped working, because for too many, it has stopped making sense to work.
We need a party that is willing to face this challenge head on, and from Labour’s mismanagement of the economy, it’s clear that they’re not up to the task.
Watch Kemi Badenoch’s speech on how The Conservative Party will reverse Britain’s decline 👇:
Read the full speech here 👇:
It is great to see you all here at the Royal Academy of Engineering.
People didn’t seem to be getting the message that I was an engineer, so I’ve decided to do all my speeches here until they do.
Engineering is about solving problems, about getting things to work, and it’s clear that Britain is not working.
Unemployment has risen every single month since Labour came into office but listening to the Chancellor you would have thought that was all because of us.
People have stopped working.
Graduate jobs are down by a third since just last year when Labour came in.
Young people are not working.
And our high streets are closing down.
It’s time to get Britain working again.
Everywhere you look the people who keep this country going feel that they are being punished, not rewarded, for doing the right thing.
Sole traders, family businesses, family farms, we see many people paying insane rates of marginal tax.
One in three hospitality businesses are trading at below break even.
I had a roundtable with oil and gas businesses in May.
And one of them told me the windfall tax, taxed 102% of their profits.
Yes you heard that right, taxed at 102%.
Britain has stopped working, because for too many it has stopped making sense to work.
No one should be taxed at 102% of profits.
And I know no one in Labour has run a business, but still.
Far from solving this, Labour seem intent on making it worse.
At best, they have given up.
They are managing decline.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
And I’m here to tell you how we can fix it.
How we can get Britain working again.
This morning we saw the extraordinary spectacle of a Chancellor, just days before a Budget, rushed into a panicked speech.
We were told this was the great moment when Labour would show they had a plan for growth.
Instead, what we got was a masterclass in managed decline.
A Chancellor claiming she was just going to set the context.
But instead of clarity, business leaders are none the wiser. Investors are confused. Workers are anxious. Because the truth is, Labour doesn’t have a plan to get Britain working again.
The Chancellor’s speech was one long wafflebomb.
It was a laundry list of excuses, she blamed absolutely everyone else for her own choices, her own decisions, her own failures.
She claims she will focus on the priorities of the British public.
Whose priority is it to pay more tax?
It is basic economics, that if you tax something you get less of it.
Remember those graduates who aren’t finding work?
Some people are blaming AI, it’s not AI’s fault.
You can draw a direct line between what Rachel Reeves did in the Budget and the dire prospects that many of those graduates are now facing.
She is the one who taxed their jobs and then destroyed them.
When Labour made every business in the country pay more to employ someone.
Those firms had three choices: raise prices, cut jobs, or close.
And the impact of all three of those choices, is why growth has flatlined.
What began as Labour’s idea of fairness.
To take from the unworthy private sector and give to the worthy unions has made life harder for everyone, especially those doing the right thing.
But we have a plan to fix this.
And that plan means Rachel Reeves doing the exact opposite of what she has done so far.
To get Britain working again, we need to, scrap the Windfall Tax to get our oil and gas industry working again, scrap the Carbon Tax and take up our Cheap Power Plan to get our manufacturing industry working, scrap the Family Farm Tax, scrap the Family Business Tax to get our farming industry working again.
That’s what we would do.
But most importantly, we are going to get people off welfare, and into work
What’s happening right now with our welfare system is not just an economic scandal. It’s a moral one.
When we left office last year, after Covid, 2,000 people a day were being signed onto out of work sickness benefits.
In just a year under Labour that’s now more than doubled to 5,000 new people a day now signing off work.
We have tried to help Labour fix this.
When they started a Bill to make savings on welfare, we offered them our votes in Parliament.
But they didn’t want them.
They’d rather try their backbenches instead.
And what happened?
They managed to pass legislation guaranteeing that the sickness benefits bill would rise to £100 billion a year.
In fact, Labour backbenchers celebrated.
Why? Because they are too scared and too weak to make difficult decisions.
They kicked it into the long grass, set up the Timms review which would try and find some welfare savings. And what did we hear?
Last week we heard the Government has now quietly given up on making welfare savings altogether in this Review.
Labour believe they are being compassionate.
But what’s compassionate about writing millions of people off for life, many of them young people.
There will always be a small number of people who need support.
But a generation of young people are being told that instead of challenges to overcome, they have “disorders” that mean they should never work.
This isn’t compassion.
Even those who have been dealt an incredibly bad hand in life, can do incredible things.
They can own a home, they can start a family, they can run a business.
And many do.
But if sickness benefits pay more than the minimum wage, you can understand why someone lacking confidence might not take the risk.
Why even bother to get a job?
We want to get these people working again. It will help them, and it will help us.
Not least, because for too long we have relied on immigration to do the jobs Brits won’t do.
It’s been damaging social cohesion.
Instead of getting people into work, Rachel Reeves is going to put taxes up.
And Reform’s position is more of the same.
They are also addicted to welfare with their pledge to lift the Two Child Benefit Cap.
It is not sustainable. And it is not serious.
Only the Conservatives are committed to ensuring that we get on top of public spending, and only the Conservatives will fix our broken welfare system.
We have already announced our plan to reduce eligibility for lower-level mental health issues.
To make sure people coming to this country don’t qualify for benefits.
And to limit Motability vehicles to people with serious disabilities.
Our plan will save £23 billion by restricting access to benefits to those who need them most.
And if Rachel Reeves had any sense, she would cut and paste every one of those ideas.
We know she’s good at cutting at pasting.
And we will keep going. Our plan is just the beginning.
Each young person not in employment, in education, or training costs the economy nearly £200,000.
And there now a million of them under Labour.
A million young people not in education, not in training, not working.
Labour might have given up on them, but we haven’t.
We will get them working.
And give them a £5,000 First Jobs Bonus when they do.
This isn’t just about economic growth, it’s also about fairness. Ladies and gentlemen.
Everyone in Britain says they want to live in a fair society.
What does that actually mean?
Labour talk about fairness in the language of Robin Hood.
They think those who have, have taken from those who don’t have.
They talk about those with the broadest shoulders, never worrying about the limit of what those shoulders can bear.
They talk about fairness for working people, but they can’t define what a working person is.
They think that what they are doing is righteous.
But they’re wrong.
What they are doing is making everyone poorer.
To me, fairness isn’t about the government enforcing equal outcomes.
I believe that reward should match effort.
If you get up, and go to work, provide for yourself and your family, you should be better off than someone who doesn’t.
If you take a risk, leave the security of a job, and start a business, if after years of hard graft it finally succeeds, then you should be rewarded for taking that risk.
This simple contract, that effort and risk should lead to reward, is what makes society work.
It is how progress is made.
You might have seen the news last week, that thousands of people on benefits are going to have their debts to energy companies paid off, by adding an extra £5 to everyone else’s energy bills.
How unfair is this?
Not only have Labour put your energy bill up by £300.
They’re going to make you pay extra for the people who cannot pay.
We have a plan to get Britain working.
In fact, we have many plans.
At our Party Conference I announced our Cheap Power Plan to cut bills by £165 for the average family by backing British energy production.
I noticed yesterday Reform copied that announcement.
It’s nice to see other parties following our lead, but we’re the only party with a plan to do it.
The message that this Government is sending couldn’t be clearer.
Don’t bother doing the right thing, don’t bother living within your means, because the government won’t.
Don’t bother putting money away to cover your bills, you’ll just end up paying for those that don’t.
The Budget is an opportunity for Rachel Reeves to fix this.
To make savings and take the pressure off all of us.
But this morning we saw she’s given up trying.
And instead, they’re just going to wrap them in more red tape.
Labour are so mistrusting of people, of business, they think if a politician can check everything what everyone is doing, and that’s the only way to stop anything bad from happening.
But this is nonsense.
The reality is that all their red tape, stops good from happening.
Businesses get swamped in paperwork.
They close down.
Or they don’t bother starting in the first place.
Shops and restaurants don’t get built.
Our highstreets are boarded up.
Chancellors can’t rent out their own homes out without breaking the law, because they can’t keep up with the red tape.
Just look at their Employment Rights Bill.
The Government has plugged its ears to the warnings of businesses across the country.
We tried to work with Labour in the national interest.
We offered constructive amendments.
It is clear, quite clear, that this current Bill is not fit for purpose.
It needs a fundamental rethink and overhaul.
It won’t get Britain working. It will kill jobs.
The only responsible action left is for Labour to shelve it in its entirety and start from scratch.
What they should be doing at the Budget is withdrawing the Employment Rights Bill altogether before it becomes the Unemployment Act.
And I understand Keir Starmer’s thinking.
He thinks making it impossible to ever fire anyone is good news for workers.
That it will protect them from evil businesses.
What actually Labour don’t realise is that these rules just mean people won’t get hired in the first place.
Especially young people, especially disabled people, especially those currently on welfare.
And that is why the Conservatives would repeal all of the stupid measures in that Bill.
You cannot guarantee that everything is going to work out.
You have to allow people to make mistakes, change their minds, take a risk, if you want to get Britain working again.
I’m afraid Ladies and Gentlemen, that risk aversion is killing us.
The price of avoiding all failure is that we are losing all chance of success.
This is the culture that Labour is creating.
That you’re better off spending your money than saving it, you’re better off on welfare than in work.
And if you do work, you’re better off working for the organisation taxing the business, rather than the business itself.
Just look at their definition of a working person, they’ve been getting into knots about.
It gets smaller and smaller every day.
First, they got rid of farmers, then they got rid of business owners,
Now apparently, it’s anyone earning less than £46,000.
By the time they’re finished, the only person left who counts as a working person will be someone on out-of-work benefits.
Labour go on and on about fairness, while creating the most unfair of economies.
They talk about working people, while making life harder and harder for people who actually work.
And worst of all, they pretend that what they’re doing is all necessary.
They pretend that they don’t have a choice.
The reality is that they have given up trying to change anything.
They have given up trying to get the government to live within its means, and they have given up on not raising tax.
That’s what Rachel Reeves was telling us this morning.
And a government that refuses to live within its means, while telling everyone else to tighten their belts, isn’t being fair, that government is being hypocritical.
Government living within its means is not austerity, it is respect.
It is respect for taxpayers who already give enough.
It is respect for the small business that cannot just pass its losses onto someone else.
And it is respect for the next generation who we want to inherit opportunity, not our liabilities.
There is only one way out of this decline.
We need to get Britain working again.
And you do that, by making it make sense to work.
The £47 billion of savings we have identified aren’t random.
And this isn’t about paperclips in Whitehall.
And they aren’t cuts to hospitals or schools, like Rachel was saying this morning.
Rachel Reeves clearly hasn’t read our plans, or looked at our record in office protecting schools, protecting the NHS. In the same way she didn’t bother reading the rules on renting out a property.
She needs to pay attention.
So, let me tell her what our £47 billion of savings is, yet again.
Those savings will come from money being paid to people to sit at home.
Money going to those quangos that are wrapping businesses in red tape.
It is money going on degrees that leave people with no skills and no opportunities.
It is taxpayers’ money that is making life worse, not better.
And with the money we save, we will do two things.
Under our Golden Economic Rule, at least half will always go to reducing the debt burden for our children and grandchildren.
Because we are the only party that has ever cared about fiscal responsibility.
But with the rest of the savings – we are going to get Britain working.
We are going to abolish Stamp Duty.
So that people who do the right thing make sacrifices, save up, build something for their family, and can buy a home.
And when they buy a home, painters, decorators, people who get out of bed in the morning will have more work.
People who run furniture shops and DIY shops will have more customers.
Our highstreets will be busier.
And to help the high street even further, we are going to abolish their business rates.
Business rates for pubs, cafes, shops.
Instead of putting their bills up, we’re going to cut them.
We are going to make life easier for all of those people.
Because what they do is work hard.
And their work makes people’s lives better.
Those people deserve our support.
And when they have more work that will need more people to do that work, people with skills.
So, we are going to double the apprenticeship budget, making sure businesses have the skills they need, rewarding young people who want to get on in life, and giving thousands of people a path off welfare and into work.
That will reverse Labour’s tax doom loop.
When you tax something, you get less of it.
So, we want lower taxes on jobs. We want more jobs.
We want lower taxes on businesses. We want more businesses.
We need lower taxes on taking a risk.
Lower taxes on buying a home.
Lower taxes on having a family.
And we will get Britain working by rebuilding the contract between government and citizen.
Those of us who are adults have a duty to act like it.
Fiscal responsibility is not cruelty, it is care in its truest form.
The kind that thinks beyond an election cycle.
The kind that refuses to harm the next generation for the convenience of this one.
Fairness is about effort matching reward.
It’s about people who work hard doing better than those that don’t.
Fairness is about equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
It is about taking responsibility and being trusted to get on with your life
And fairness is about living within our means, so our children don’t pay for our debts.
That is the fairness that we are going to rebuild our country on.
And we have a plan to do it.
Cut Government waste, cut welfare, get people into work, abolish Stamp Duty, cut Business Rates, slash red tape, create jobs, double apprenticeships, and deliver cheaper power.
Because when work pays, when business grows, and when government lives within its means – Britain works.
