 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the chairman of the National Conservatives Convention, Peter Booth. Good afternoon conference. I welcome the opportunity to introduce this afternoon's session. I'm chairman of the National Convention, the body made up of constituency chairman and area and regional officers. ac mae gennym rydw i rai efo eu felly, the volunteers. Gwi efo gyfagorau'r team ym ddechrau'r flynyddo'rnydd ac rydw i'r ffordd erdoedd o'r gwybod wedi gyflwyddol o'r gydag. Mae'r Yuwsllag Y Llyfriddor Oedrych Gwmwythodol ac mae'r llwyfyddolol gydag ym yn y test o'r gydag o'r trucker o ddechrau a'r gydag o'r gydag o'r gydag o'r gydag o'r gydag am gydag bod os i'r gydag ym ystod o'r gydag o'r gydag oherwydd. As your representative, this summer I was given the unique opportunity by our prime minister of being invited to attend political cabinet. In the cabinet room at number 10, so I know personally how first hand our prime minister values our voluntary party input. And it is right and proper that our volunteers sitting here today feel part of the big decisions affecting our party. If you haven't at conference already been then please go and take part in the Conservative policy forum discussions which help shape the future of our party policy. If you haven't already been then please go and take part in the excellent training sessions laid on by CCHQ to learn about the latest campaigning techniques. Above all I want you to leave Manchester this week knowing that our party is in good heart and despite of where we lie in the opinion polls that the thousands of conservatives in Manchester this week leave Manchester knowing that the Conservative party has a plan to win the next general election. You've all seen our Conservative conference slogan long term decisions for a brighter future and this week our prime minister and our government will set out our approach to the big issues facing Britain. We will demonstrate our plan and how it differentiates us from and our party from the brother knights, Sir Keir and Sir Edg, who joust with each other for supremacy but who really loathe each other and adjust comrades in arms to try and defeat our noble cause. This week it is our prime minister Rishi Sunak who will show a way forward for Britain and who will unveil carefully laid out plans to set our country on the course for a brighter future. Conference it's our generation who've lived through the darkest days since World War II through the global pandemic. Once again we see war in Europe and we're facing down a tyrant and we know that it is Rishi Sunak who has the ability, the proven track record of defending people in this country through the pandemic and he has the determination and the commitment to put our country in a better place. I ask you now to imagine your worst nightmare, a Labour government led by serial flip-flopper Sir Keir Starmer. He'll say anything to sneak past the electorate but we know in office this is the man who wanted to make Corbyn prime minister who wanted us to remain in Europe and who wants us to accept European laws with a little added dose of old fashioned Blair and Brownism. With votes for European Union, sorry votes for European Union citizens, votes at 16 and proportional representation all thrown in. This would do untold damage to our country. Here's the thing however far down in the polls the commentary at places I predict that this week is a turning point and it is our opportunity to show Britain that we have a plan, that we are the party to take the long-term decisions and it is our Conservative party under the leadership of our prime minister Rishi Sunak that is best place to deliver. This afternoon we welcome Jeremy Hunt, Cammy Badenock, Mel Stride, Therese Coffey and Gillian Keegan all part of our experienced cabinet team and they're going to tell you how Conservatives are going to deliver from Britain. Conference, enjoy your time in this great city of Manchester, enjoy this afternoon and after a short video we'll be hearing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt. The path to lowering inflation is never easy because it doesn't happen in a straight line but if you look at the overall picture since it peaked last autumn it is now done 40% and that says the plan is working. The fact that inflation has come down so symbolically important when almost everybody thought it would go up. For not only did inflation fall to 6.7% in August it's falling faster than expected. Things are moving in the right direction with food inflation falling for the fifth consecutive month. UK GDP is revised higher for the first and second quarters for the country's statistics office hailing post pandemic performance stronger than both Germany and France. The increase of childcare support, the introduction of capital investment allowance in the sprint budget, targeting key growth areas, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, clean energy that is all on the right track. Today we build for the future with inflation down, debt falling and growth up. The declineists are wrong and the optimists are right and because the plan is working and I commend this statement to the House. Welcome to the stage, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt. Good afternoon. The last time I spoke at conference was as foreign secretary five years ago. After that I thought my time in government was over so it's great to see the PM getting the over fifties back into meaningful work. I do however have some very youthful under fifties in my ministerial team so thank you John Glenn, Andrew Griffith, Vicki Atkins, Gareth Davis, JoJo Penmark, Fletcher Paul, Hal, Anthony Mangle and Andrew Stevenson for their brilliant work and it's great to be in Manchester. Since 2010 this great region has seen unemployment half, nearly 200,000 more jobs and six new tech unicorns. Labour mayors talk up the problems but it's conservatives who chalk up the jobs. Now our friends at the office for national statistics have recently changed their mind about the size of the British economy. They had been saying we were the worst performing large European economy since the pandemic but we weren't the worst, we were one of the best. Since the pandemic we've recovered better than France or Germany. We've grown faster than both of them since we left the single market and since 2010 we've grown faster than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Japan. So to all the pessimists and declineists who've been talking us down we say this, don't bet against Britain, it's been tried before and it never works. Conference it's nice to set the record straight but Rishi Sunak and I care more about the future than the past and our plan is very simple. We're going to make Britain a global leader in the industries of the future, the world's next silicon valley and it's already happening. Last year we became only the third trillion dollar tech economy in the world. Our tech sector is now double the size of Germany's and three times France. British discovered vaccines and treatments saved seven million lives across the world in the pandemic more than from any other country. We do more offshore wind than anywhere in Europe. We've got three huge electric car factories being built where Europe's biggest film and TV production centre and next time I want to see Barbie wearing a Union Jack because that too was filmed in Britain. My mansion house reforms are part of that because they'll help fast growing companies source billions of pounds of extra capital. We don't just want them to start here, we want them to stay here because as we become a science superpower there's nowhere better to be. All this happens not from quick fixes but from long term decisions which is what you get with Rishi Sunak. We conservatives know if you get the economy right everything else comes right too. So right now we are focused on bringing down inflation. Nothing hurts families more when it comes to the weekly shop, heating bills or pump prices which is why the prime ministers pledged to harvest and we're getting there. It was 11% it's now down by 40%. The plan is working and now we must see it through just as Margaret Thatcher did many years ago. Conference when we have inflation that's not a 1% income tax cut it's a 5% boost to incomes compared to if it stayed the same but just as we're succeeding what's labour planning? Some 28 billion pounds a year of new borrowing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies say borrowing on that scale risks fueling inflation and keeping interest rates higher. Labour can change the fiscal rules they can dress it up as responsible but if they increase borrowing they increase debt and that means higher taxes, higher mortgages and higher inflation for families that's not an economic policy it's an economic illusion and it underlines the elemental choice in British politics, the choice behind all other choices, sound money under the conservatives or run out of money under labour. Never again conference never again. Conservatives will always protect public services but we're also honest about the taxes that pay for them. After a once in a century pandemic and the biggest energy crisis in a generation the level of tax is too high. We were right to protect jobs and families and thanks to Rishi's furlough scheme we recovered faster from the pandemic than others but with an ageing population and a war in Europe public spending is still growing faster than the economy. Now some say that's inevitable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said last week it's likely to be what they said was a decisive and permanent shift to a higher tax economy. Conference they're wrong we need a more productive state not a bigger state. If we increase public sector productivity growth by just half a percent we can stabilise public spending as a proportion of GDP. Increase it by more and we can bring the tax burden down half a percent. Now for those of us with private sector backgrounds that doesn't seem too much does it? In the public sector I'm telling you it's harder but we are up for the challenge so I've commissioned my deputy John Glenn to restart the process of public service reform. John wants to know why teachers say that more than half their time is spent not actually teaching. Why police officers complain they spend longer filling out forms than catching criminals. Why doctors and nurses say they spend up to half their time not with patients but on admin. Of course we need modern working practices and better IT but the Treasury too needs to change its focus from short-term cost control to long-term cost reduction and we're going to start with the civil service. We have the best civil servants in the world and they've saved many lives in the pandemic by working night and day but even after that pandemic's over we still have 66,000 more civil servants than before. New policies should not always mean new people. So today I'm freezing the expansion of the civil service and putting in place a plan to reduce its numbers to pre-pandemic levels. This will save £1 billion next year and I won't lift that freeze until we have a proper plan not just for the civil service but for all public sector productivity improvements. That means amongst other things changing our approach to equality and diversity initiatives. Smashing glass ceilings is everyone's job, not a box to be ticked by hiring a diversity manager but I'm going to surprise you with one equality and diversity initiative of my own and trust me you'll like this one. Nobody should have their bank account closed because somebody else decides they're not politically correct. We'll tighten the law to stop people being debanked for the wrong political views. The Lib Dems are wrong to want to overturn a democratic Brexit vote but they still need a cash point to withdraw their euros. The SMP are wrong to ignore a democratic vote for the union but they still need a bank account to pay for their motorhomes and even Keir Starmer who's wrong on just about everything needs his trade union cash so he too can have a bank account just never the keys to Downing Street. There's somewhere else where we need to rethink the way the state works our welfare system. I'm proud to live in a country where as Churchill said there's a ladder there's a ladder everyone can climb but also a safety net below which no one falls. That safety net is paid from tax and that social contract depends on fairness to those in work alongside compassion to those who aren't and that means work must pay. We're making sure it does. From last year for the first time ever you can earn a thousand pounds a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance but despite that even when companies are struggling to find workers around 100,000 people are leaving the labour market every year for a life on benefits. Mel Stride gets this 100% which is why he's replacing the work capability assessment and we're going to look at the way the sanctions regime works. It isn't fair that someone who refuses to look seriously for a job gets the same as someone trying their best. Now Labour have pledged to end sanctions. Have they learned nothing? When they left office we had more children in workless households than nearly anywhere in Europe. Since then those households are down by a million and conference we are never ever going back. So to make sure work continues to pay. Today I take a step forward towards completing another great conservative reform the national living wage. Since we introduced it nearly two million people have been lifted from absolute poverty after housing costs not by tax credits or benefits but by removing the barriers to work, boosting salaries, cutting tax, making work pay. We promised in our manifesto to raise the national living wage to two-thirds of median income ending low pay in this country. At the moment it's £10.42 an hour and we're waiting for the low pay commission to tell us next year's recommendation but I confirm today whatever that recommendation will increase the national living wage to at least £11 an hour next year that's a pay rise for two million workers and the wages of the lowest paid over £9,000 higher than they were in 2010 because if you work hard a conservative government will always have your back. It's easy to support higher growth better public services and lower taxes. Harder to make it happen. In Britain today there's only one party prepared to make those difficult decisions our party and our prime minister whose diligence and tenacity have given us the Windsor framework the Atlantic declaration the Trans-Pacific trade deal and the NHS workforce plan whose own life story shows just what's possible with education aspiration and hard work his story and our story more growth more jobs more doctors more nurses better schools less poverty less crime conference it's time to roll up our sleeves take on the declineists and watch the British economy prove the doubters wrong thank you