Labour conference 2011: live coverage

• Ed Balls’ interviews – summary • Harriet Harman’s speech – summary • Jim Murphy’s speech – summary 12.40pm: Balls says David Cameron has described the UK as a safe haven. But it is not a safe haven for the 16,000 companies that have gone out of business this year. Or for people who have lost the education and maintenance allowance. Or for families losing child benefit. Or for young people who are out of work. Or for the millions of families struggling with higher bills. Balls ends saying that Labour must show that there’s a better way. At the end of his speech it’s not clear that he has finished – the peroration is a bit flat – and it takes delegates a while to work out that they are meant to start applauding. 12.38pm: Balls says Labour is determined to tackle short-termism in industry. The party will consider the case for a National Investment Bank for small businesses. • Labour to consider calling for a National Investment Bank for small businesses. 12.37pm: Balls says Whitehall doesn’t always know best. But we know too that government just walking away is not the answer. 12.35pm: Balls says before the election he will spell out “tough fiscal rules” that a future Labour government would have to follow. They would be independently monitored. And he says that any windfall from the sale of shares in the nationalised banks will be used to pay off national debt. 12.34pm: Balls says he does not mind whether this plan is called plan A, plan B or plan C. I don’t care what they call it. Britain just needs a plan that works. 12.31pm: Balls is now describing his five-point growth plan. 1. Repeat the bank bonus tax and use the money on a job creation scheme. 2. Bring forward investment projects. 3. Cut VAT for a temporary period. 4. Announce a one-year cut in VAT to 5% for home improvements. 5. Introduce a one-year national insurance tax break for firms that take on extra workers. (That’s interesting. There has been speculation that George Osborne is going to introduce a national insurance holiday of this kind. Balls may have shot his fox.) 12.25pm: Balls says the government is refusing to change course. But even the IMF are saying that slamming on the brakes too quickly will hit the recovery. An economic policy can only be credible if it works. But Osborne’s is “just not working”. The Lib Dems and the Tories are saying it’s all Labour’s fault. Balls says Labour could spend all it’s time defending its record. But that won’t help people who are struggling to pay the bills now. Other commentators say Labour should admit it spent too much money. Balls says Labour did make some mistakes, like the 75p tax rise for pensioners and abolishing the 10p rate of tax. Labour should have got more employers to train, it should have adopted tougher controls on immigration and it didn’t regulate the banks properly. Balls says Labour did not spend every pound wisely. But he says Labour did not over-spend. • Balls refused to apologise for Labour’s record on spending. “Don’t let anyone tell you that Labour in government was profligate with public money – when we went into the crisis with lower national debt than we inherited in 1997. 12.23pm: Balls says Cameron and Osborne did not cause the global financial crisis. But the question is: have their decisions made things better or worse. Balls says he warned a year ago that, with the economy fragile, it was not the time to “tear out the foundations of the house”. Now confidence has slumped, Balls says. The economy has flatlined and unemployment is going up. 12.21pm: Balls says the world needs a global plan for growth. But, in the EU and America, David Cameron and George Osborne are applauding austerity. This is not just a failure of leadership. It’s an abdication of responsibility too. 12.18pm: Balls praises Labour’s leader in Liverpool and in Wales for showing that Labour policies can work. He turns to the economy. These are the darkest, most dangerous times for the global economy in my lifetime. This is a global problem, he says. It is not a crisis that can be solved “country by country”. The problems are “deepening and darkening by the day”. Austerity does not work, he says. You either learn the lessons of history “or you repeat the mistakes of history”. 12.15pm: Balls says this is his first speech as shadow chancellor. He is the first Labour and Cooperative party MP to be shadow chancellor. And it’s Labour’s first conference in Liverpool since 1925. He pays tribute “to our leader and my friend, Ed Miliband”. He has shown courageous leadership on issues like phone hacking and Libya. In Miliband, Labour has a leader who is genuine, honest, principled and fair. He is a leader in whom Labour can ask the British people to put their trust. • Balls pays lavish tribute to Miliband, saying he is “a leader who speaks his mind and tells the truth”. 12.15pm: Ed Balls is speaking now. 12.11pm: Here’s the gaffe of the day. I didn’t hear Harriet Harman on Woman’s Hour, but James Chapman has posted the quote on Twitter. I hope we will have David, er, Ed, Ed Miliband elected as Prime Minister at the next election. 11.53am: So far the proceedings have been relatively thin this morning. Even Douglas Alexander, (left) the shadow foreign secretary and one of the party’s leading thinkers, did not have a great deal to say in his speech. Here are the main points. The full text is on the Labour website. • Alexander said that in the past Britain and other western countries had been too willing to support dictatorships in the Middle East. Too often in the past, the West has backed stability over democracy in the Middle East. So I’m so proud that this year, this Party, chose to stand with these young people, and against the old autocrats. That choice meant I could stand on the street in Tunis a few months ago and look them in the eye. • He said Britain should now worry more about China than Brussels. This seemed aimed at the Tory Eurosceptics. The real question for the new generation isn’t about the reach of Brussels – it’s about the rise of Beijing. For with power and money moving East, no country has an alternative but to work in partnership with other countries. • He said Britain should forge international alliances. It was important to have a foreign policy that was “realistic about what we can achieve alone, but idealistic about what we can achieve together”, he said. 11.38am: I’ve already mentioned the announcement from Jim Murphy (left) that serving and former members of the armed forces will be allowed to join Labour for £1. (See 11.01am.) Here are some of the other main points in his speech. • Murphy says Labour would always take defence seriously. “We will never wrap ourselves in the cloak of jingoism but the Labour Party will always be strong on defence,” he said. • He attacked the government for reducing military pensions, cutting army numbers and decommissioning aircraft carriers. • He said Labour would set up a Friends of the Forces organisation. It will increase Labour’s engagement with the service community. George Robertson, the former defence secretary and former Nato secretary general, will be a patron. Murphy also said Labour would voluntarily sign up to the military covenant. 11.23am: Aung San Suu Kyi (left), the Burmese opposition leader, has recorded a message for the Labour conference. It has just been shown in the conference hall. In it, she spoke about the importance of democracy. Democracy is the best system that has yet been thought up by man. It is the system that values the individual. It is the system that will help our people to live with self-respect, with freedom. This is why it always gives us the greatest pleasure to feel that we are in contact with democratic forces. It makes us feel at one with others who believe in the same values in which we believe. 11.20am: David Miliband has given an interview to the Journal in which he has played down the prospects of an early return to the shadow cabinet. This is what he said when asked about taking a job on the frontbench. I say the same thing always to everyone, which is that I think I made the right decision last year. I promised I would give Ed the space to lead the party as he sees fit, I wasn’t going to be part of a soap opera. And so I am here to support the party and support the leadership. 11.01am: Jim Murphy , the shadow defence secretary, has just delivered his speech to the conference. As Nick Hopkins wrote in the Guardian today, he announced that Labour would allow members of the armed forces to join the party for £1. He introduced Corporal Stephen Burke, who has become the first person to take advantage of the scheme. In a short speech, Burke said that servicemen and women were “ordinary people” and that they had the same concerns as civilians. Nick first wrote about this scheme in July. When his original story appeared, Ann Black, a member of Labours’ national executive committee, wrote a post on a blog dismissing the idea as a gimmick. A strange story appeared in the Guardian on July 30th claiming that Labour was set to launch an aggressive marketing campaign offering membership at 1p each to several million military veterans, including former national servicemen. This would signal that we are a party of the armed forces, and use their “unique experience and insight” to “shape the party’s culture, policy and campaigns”. This has never been raised with the NEC, and I can find no-one in authority to confirm it, so I think it can be dismissed. This does not deny the courage of those who are sent to fight and the respect in which they are held, regardless of opinions on particular wars. However the veterans’ associations themselves see it as a silly gimmick and would, like everyone else, prefer a decent pension. And many people serve their country in other ways: as unpaid carers, volunteers, and other frontline public servants, large numbers of whom – unlike most veterans – happen to be women. Party membership is still overly white, male and ageing, and initiatives should surely be aimed at increasing diversity. I’ll post some more from Murphy’s speech when I’ve read the text. 10.35am: Harriet Harman ‘s speech is now on the Labour website. Here are the main points. • Harman said multinational companies should pay more tax in Africa. Tax dodging was costing poor countries more than they receive in aid, she claimed. Africa has huge reserves of oil, gold, iron, diamonds. The biggest companies make billions of profit. They must publish what they get in profits from each country and what they pay in taxes to each country. Global companies all say they are committed to transparency – but they are not doing it. No-one can accept the situation where we have to give money to poor countries but those countries – which are rich in natural resources – don’t get their fair share of the profits from their mines. The truth is, more is lost to people in poor countries from tax dodging by global companies than is paid in aid. • She praised Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, for resisting pressure for international aid spending to be cut. But while Andrew Mitchell is – to his credit – fighting to live up to our 0.7% promise, most of the Tories are against it – including his fellow cabinet ministers who’re blocking the legislation they promised to put it into law. We mustn’t let aid be just the next Tory broken promise. • But she also claimed the Tories would never take a leading role on other international development issues. They’ll never tackle the unfair trade which sees rich countries get richer and the poor get poorer. They will never tackle the obscene global speculation on food and land that sees profits soar while the poor go hungry. They will never tackle climate change – which hits first and hardest at the poorest countries. That’s what Ed Miliband did when we were in government. We hear nothing of that now. The Tories’ team of men only development ministers will never be able to lead the way internationally in empowering women and girls in the developing world. 10.28am: I arrived at the conference centre well before 8am, which meant that I didn’t have to queue to get through security, but delegates and journalists who tried to get in later have had to wait for ages. One colleague told me he thought some people had been queuing for up to an hour. It seems there aren’t enough security scanners. Sky’s Jon Craig has put a post on Twitter suggesting it might be time to resurrect a famous old poster. Massive queue to get into the Labour conference. Only one entrance. Shambolic! It’s already being dubbed the “Labour isn’t working” queue. 10.21am: Ed Balls hasn’t even delivered his speech yet, but the reaction is rolling in. George Eaton at the Staggers says that committing Labour to new fiscal rules is a masterstroke. Balls’s smart calculation is that these promises will provide him with the political cover necessary to make the case for renewed stimulus, in the form of a temporary cut in VAT and other measures (he has promised to set out a five-point plan for restoring growth in his speech). As Keynes put it: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.” And Fraser Nelson at Coffee House is interested in the way Balls is offering a partial apology. Read between the lines of Balls’ speech today, and you can see a man backtracking – and trying to hold on to his job. Even when Balls tells porkies, he does so with imagination and élan . 10.08am: Listening is a theme at this conference. Douglas Alexander , the shadow foreign secretary, told Sky this morning that the public were ready to listen to the party. Now, I’m not saying that people are instantly going to support the Labour Party. But I would say, even if they’re not yet willing to give us their support, my sense at this conference is they’re now willing to give us a hearing because there’s a real anxiety that the Conservatives have got this wrong. But Paul Kenny , the GMB general secretary, said that it was the Labour party that needed to think about listening. This is what he told the Today programme. I wish that when New Labour was in government they’d actually done a bit more listening to people because up through the ranks of party and the people they were warned about the impact of PFI, the long-term impact and the now the chickens are home to roost. On social housing, the pressures that would come, that was ignored, on pensions, so many issues that were clearly very, very important were ignored and we can’t go back to that. I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome. 10.07am: Harriet Harman, the shadow international development secretary (and deputy Labour leader) is speaking now on international aid. I’ll post a summary of the speech when I’ve seen the text. 10.04am: Back in the conference hall, the delegates have just heard from Maryan Qasim, a former minister for women in Somalia. She said the civil war in the country had had a particularly harsh impact on the country’s women. 9.54am: David Blunkett told Today this morning that Ed Miliband had time to make an impression on the voters because Margaret Thatcher (left) was not immediately popular when she was opposition leader. I’ve taken the quote from PoliticsHome. I’m totally realistic. David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher back in the 70s – I’m so old I remember this – actually had a dip when they became leader they were not doing very well for two years. Now, Ed’s got that time to do it. Miliband may have made the comparison himself. Earlier this year the Spectator said Thatcher was “an unlikely new role model” for Miliband. I n a recent interview with Progressonline, he refused to be drawn on this, instead saying that he was not going to compare himself with anyone. 9.43am: The conference has just opened. And they’ve announced the results of the vote on the Refounding Labour proposals. They were approved by 93.92% to 6.08%. Almost all the unions voted in favour. The unions have 50% of the vote and, in that section, there was a 99.52% majority in favour. In the constituency section, 88.83% of members were in favour. Officials also announced the result of the ballot on which topics should be the subject of a contemporary motion debate. There will be debates on health and social care; jobs, growth and employment, phone hacking, public services and housing. 9.30am: More from Ed Balls. Apologies if you’re starting to feel that you’ve had enough. But there’s a lot more to come. • Balls has accused the government of wanting to provoke a strike in November to distract attention from the state of the economy. If George Osborne really wants to sort this out, he should get round the table and have serious discussions with the trade unions. I fear that what he really wants is strikes in the autumn to divert attention away from an economic plan which isn’t working. • He has said that ideally he would always want to lower taxes. This came in an interview in the Independent. My instinct is that you should always try to reduce every tax if you can. But in this parliament, the idea that the priority is going to be cutting the top rate of tax when child benefit is being cut, VAT has gone up, people are seeing their living standards squeezed, I find that very hard to see. 9.15am: If you weren’t up before 7am, you will have missed John Prescott (left) on the Today programme. And you’ll have missed a treat, because he was on top form. Essentially, he was saying that some members of the shadow cabinet should be sacked because they’re useless. The BBC has got a full report. Here are the key quotes. • Prescott said some members of the shadow cabinet should be sacked because they are ineffective. There are some people in there who are undoubtedly not carrying their weight … This is a Tory government that’s doing some outrageous things and we haven’t had many words of protest. Ed, you’re the leader, get a shadow cabinet who’ll do that. • He said Labour should stop apologising for its record. They all seem to accept that the 13 years of Labour was a failure despite the record levels of employment, record of investment in housing, minimum wage, SureStart and all that. I say stop apologising for that, stop complaining and get out campaigning. (Ed Balls wasn’t listening. See 8.29am.) 8.29am: Ed Balls (left) has now given at least three interviews this morning. Here are the highlights. I’ve taken some of the quotes from the Press Association and PoliticsHome. • Balls conceded that Labour’s reputation for economic competence had been damaged. When he was asked if he agreed that Labour’s reputation for economic competence “took a battering” in its last days in power, he replied: “Yes, of course, and it’s a big task to turn that around.” After 1979, it took Labour 18 years to restore its economic credibility. This time Labour had to restore its credibility “in this parliament. He said he did not want to make the mistake Labour made in 1992, when it was not credible on the economy. “We had nothing to say on the economy [from 1990 to 1992],” he said. “In 1992 there was a debate on tax and spend, the shadow budget. The real issue was rising unemployment, no growth. Labour wasn’t in the debate. I will not make that mistake again.” • He denied claims that he was a bully. I tell you, there is nothing more despicable than bullies. They become weak people. I had arguments with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on some of the big issues in our country. But they weren’t weak people they were strong people and it was my job to have an argument. But bullying? No way – it’s a hideous thing, and the only thing more cowardly is people who say things anonymously to books and think they’re making a contribution to public life. They’re not. • Balls said sorry for Labour’s failure to regulate the banks properly. Asked if he would stand up and say sorry, he replied: “Yes, I have and I will. The banking crisis was a disaster. All around the world banks have behaved irresponsibly, but regulation wasn’t tough enough. We were part of that. I’m sorry for that mistake. I deeply, deeply regret it.” He made a similar comment in the Commons recently. But his apology only covered banking regulation. He did not apologise for spending too much. Balls said that he accepted that Labour, like every government, did not spent every pound of public money well. But he said he did not agree with the Tory claims that Labour spending caused the crisis. • He denied claims that he put pressure on Treasury officials to massage their growth forecasts when Labour was in government. This allegation appears in the updated edition of Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge’s book about Gordon Brown, Brown at 10, that was featured in the Daily Mail on Saturday. We had Graham Parker, who was head of forecasting at the time and is now at the independent OBR. There is no one who could tell Graham Parker to diddle his forecasts. • Balls said he would today set out a five-point plan for restoring growth in his speech. He did not reveal the full details, but he said it would include cutting VAT and using a tax on bank bonuses to fund a job creation programme. • He said Labour would use any profit from the sale of shares in the nationalised banks to pay off national debt. “If they can make a profit on the sale of bank shares, which are all owned by the public at the moment, you should not, as Nick Clegg and George Osborne say, use that for a giveaway,” he said. “Use the bank shared to repay the national debt – that’s the responsible thing to do.” (When Gordon Brown was chancellor, he did the same when he raised more than £20bn from the sale of mobile phone licences.) • Balls said he did not accept coalition claims that the markets would panic if Britain slowed the pace of its deficit reduction programme. “The markets know that if economies aren’t growing, then you get into a vicious circle and your debt dynamics can actually make a debt unsustainable,” he said. • He said he told Gordon Brown that he would not undermine Alistair Darling when Darling was chancellor. “I said to Gordon Brown at the very beginning I would not be the Alan Walters of the Labour government who came between the prime minister and the chancellor,” Balls said. When Balls did disagree with Darling, which was “very rarely”, he spoke to him about it directly. • Balls said setting up the Office for Budget Responsibility was “the right thing to do.” 8.16am: The interview is still going on. Balls says borrowing is going to be £45bn higher than George Osborne planned because the economy is not growing. He says if the Treasury makes a profit from the sale of bank shares, that should be used to pay off the national debt. Q: What are your five points? Balls says it will involved cutting VAT and using a bank bonus tax to create jobs for young people. (These are established Labour proposals.) He says he does not want to reveal the rest of his speech now. Q: Won’t the markets take a dim view of any Labour plan to slow the deficit reduction programme? Balls says Italy’s credit rating was downgraded because its economy was not growing. Growth is vital, he says. Q: But a growth strategy in one country is very limited? That’s right, says Balls. This is the most dangerous moment for the world economy in his lifetime. David Cameron is going to international meetings recommending more cuts. But that is not working. Cameron and Osborne are stuck in a “false consciousness” about the economy. Q: When you were in government, did you ever think you would have to say sorry so clearly? Balls says he was children’s secretary. Q: But according to Alistair Darling you were the shadow chancellor. Balls says that claim was not in Darling’s book, only in a blog purporting to reveal what it would say. He says that he told Gordon Brown that he did not want to be the Alan Walters of the Labour government. (Walters was the economic adviser who triggered Nigel Lawson’s resignation as chancellor because Margaret Thatcher trusted him more than Lawson.) He did not have many disagreements with Darling. When he did disagree with Darling, he told him to his face. The interview ends. Jim Naughtie invites Nick Robinson to comment. Robinson mentions the speech that David Miliband would have given to the Labour conference if he had won the leadership last year. (It was published in the Guardian earlier this year.) In that, Miliband said Labour should never have promised an end to boom and bust. Balls comes in. He says he would have applauded that speech. I’ll summarise the highlights shortly. 8.11am: Ed Balls is being interviewed on the Today programme now. Q: Do you accept that Labour’s reputation for economic competence took a battering when you were in power? Yes, says Balls. That’s why it is important for Labour to be credible. He says people have to believe what Labour says. That’s why he has to be very careful what he says. He cannot promise to reverse every cut or tax rise. But he can show that there is a different economic strategy. Q: You’ve got to stand up and say sorry, haven’t you? Yes, says Balls. I have and I will. He says Labour got banking regulation wrong. Q: You proposed soft-touch regulation. Balls says that wasn’t his phrase. People want Labour to acknowledge the mistake. But most people are forward looking too. Q: People are angry. Balls says: “I feel pretty angry too.” He says he has said sorry for Labour’s failure to regulate the banks properly. Today he will set out a five-point plan for growth. But people need to be able to trust Labour. If they don’t, they won’t listen to the five-point plan. 8.06am: Ed Balls’ speech to the Labour conference will be the highlight today. Last year Balls was accused of doom-mongering when he came close to predicting that Britain would slip into a double-dip recession as a result of George Osborne’s economic policies. A year later, growth is flat and Balls’s warnings are looking prescient. But Labour does not appear to have benefited from this at all. As the figures on the YouGov tracker poll show (see page 8 of the issues 1 document), voters still trust the Conservatives more on the economy than Labour. Labour’s hopes of winning the next election dependent, to a large extent, on turning that around. Balls will be hoping that his speech, and the announcements he’s making, will play a part in this process. Balls has already been giving interviews and he’s about to go on the Today programme. I’ll be covering that in full. As for the rest of the conference, here’s today’s programme. 9.30am: Conference starts • Carwyn Jones , first minister of Wales • Glenis Willmott , leader of the Labour MEPs • Session on Britain in the World, with speeches from Harriet Harman , the shadow international development secretary, Jim Murphy , the shadow defence secretary and Douglas Alexander , the shadow foreign secretary. Murphy is going to offer cut-price Labour party membership to former and serving members of the armed forces and Alexander is going to say that the west, including Britain when Labour was in power, has too often promoted stability instead of democracy abroad . 12pm: Session on prosperity and work, with a speech from Ed Balls , the shadow chancellor. As Patrick Wintour reports in the Guardian today, Balls is going to say that Labour will go into the next election with demanding and independently scrutinised fiscal rules for cutting the deficit . 12.45pm: Break for lunch. 1pm: Douglas Alexander , Liam Byrne , Mary Creagh and Lord Glasman speak at a Guardian fringe on What Labour must do next? 2.15pm: Session on Prosperity and Work, with speeches from John Denham , the shadow business secretary, Maria Eagle , the shadow transport secretary and Liam Byrne , the shadow work and pensions secretary. Denham is going to propose an overhaul of consumer protection rights . • Scottish report, with speeches from Ann McKechin , the shadow Scottish secretary, and Iain Gray , the leader of the Scottish Labour party. As usual, I’ll be covering all the conference news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best comment from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and an afternoon one at about 5pm. My colleague Paul Owen will then take over the blog for the rest of the evening. Labour conference 2011 Ed Balls Labour conference Labour Ed Miliband Economic policy Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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