 Thank you Torsten! It is a real privilege to speak at an event like this, dedicated to the biggest question in British politics. On behalf of an organisation that always shines an unsparing light on what working people need. The economic security that is essential for their hopes, their aspirations, their future. The purpose which drives everything my Labour party seeks to achieve. So I want to start by thanking you, Thorston, all the commissioners on the economy 2030 inquiry and everyone here at the resolution foundation for all the vital work you do guiding that mission. I know it's been a busy year, and I'm sorry I can't promise that next year will be any easier. Now, I suspect that this is a room that likes a graph, and not in the way the Lib Dems do. So I'd like to start by drawing your attention to a chart published by the Resolution Foundation following the autumn statement. Some of you will have seen it before. It's truly shocking, because what it shows is that this Parliament is on track to be the first in modern history where living standards in this country have actually contracted household income growth down by 3.1%, Britain worse off. Now over the last 13 years we may have become a little desensitised to findings like this. But these aren't the concerns of the past. This isn't living standards rising too slowly, or unequal contractions and concentrations of wealth and opportunity. This is Britain going backwards. Decline. Not just diagnosed subjectively by politicians. A decline that can be measured and experienced in the homes, the pockets, the aspirations and anxieties of millions of people across Britain. Now, I'm not here today to hit you over the head with the statistics that flow from that. That's Torston's job. But what this does to a country, the cultural trauma, this needs to be understood. I go back to the 1970s, growing up in an ordinary working class household, a decade where we had our fair share of cost of living crisis. I know what this feels like. I know when you're struggling to make ends meet, and we were, that the natural response of working people to work harder and harder can feel like you're running faster and faster into a brick wall. That rising prices create this kind of what next anxiety, a fear, and it really is that of going to the shops because of the decisions you might have to make. And yet that graph shows unequivocally that this is worse than the 1970s. Worse than the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. Worse even than the global crash of 2008. And before anyone ventures the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as explanations, big shocks, undoubtedly. I point to the evidence the economy 2030 inquiry has set out at length that our productivity failings, the root cause, predate those shocks. And that other countries, comparable countries have dealt with those same challenges much more effectively. So we are in a hole. No doubt about it. And what this feels like is a clouding over a loss of the future. Because what my parents felt in the 1970s was that whilst day to day life was often tough, the future would be a happier place. Britain would be better for your children. Hard work in the end in the long run would be rewarded. And that was actually a comfort to them, a security blanket if you like. But one which for working people in Britain now sadly no longer exists. That is the upshot of that graph. A political consensus that if you work hard and play by the rules you'll get on, which is a glue that binds British society together, has become nothing short of a lie for millions. It's a well from which so many political horrors can spring. But I say to all of you, if we are privileged enough to be elected next year, the quack diagnosis, the search for distractions and excuses, all of that ends. Because the defining purpose of the next Labour Government, the mission that stands above all others will be raising Britain's productivity growth. A goal that for my Labour Party will become an obsession. That's a big change for us. Having wealth creation as your number one priority. That's not always been the Labour Party's comfort zone, trust me. But that's the change I knew was necessary. That's the change I've delivered. And my party is united behind it. We see clearly the country before us. But I do want to be clear. It's not the case that any growth will do. We can't be agnostic about the sort of growth we pursue. The growth we need must better serve working people and must raise living standards in every community. Now, I know that this is a room that will know exactly how hard a mission like that is. We all know the headwinds, the revolutions in energy, science, technology, the rising geopolitical temperature, terrorism, climate change, securing our borders and age of insecurity. We see all of that. And yet the truth is, even before so many of these threats, he wasn't exactly a golden age for living standards, equality or productivity was it. And even during the last time we were in government, even when we enjoyed the most sustained period of redistribution in British history, did it redistribute dignity and respect to working people? Or was that glue for too many places starting to come a little unstuck? Now, the truth is, despite all the headwinds, despite the inheritance being stored up for us, this is a new era and we must establish, as other politicians have in the past, a new economic consensus with a different model of growth, a different set of values and a different analysis of the state and its role in the economy. Now, some people have called this modern supply-side theory because it recognises that the unchanging fundamental that growth comes from the supply-side expansion now needs a new toolkit. Others have called it productivism, acknowledging the obsession with raising productivity that is now required. They're both good, but for me the best description comes from my favourite economist who calls it Securonomics, which is not easy to say, but nonetheless Rachel Reeve's description is perfect because in a single word it captures all the insights that will shape this era and our approach. First, the stability we enjoyed during the Great Moderation, that period of calm before the financial crash and the conditions it provided for hyper-globalisation, that era is over. Co-operation and trade must now respect a mutual need for security. Second, that broad-based growth, economic security for every community is now the only way to a stable politics and national unity. In short, we have to deliver on levelling up. We have to provide a more secure foundation for working people to get on with cheaper bills, more home ownership and stronger worker rights, but most of all we have to provide sustained economic stability. I think it's just rhetoric. When politics keeps lurching, when you lose control of the economy as this government has done, that loads political insecurity onto the backs of working people and family finances take the hit. Third insight, a sticking plaster approach to public investment, seen again in recent cuts to capital investment, is bad for business investment, bad for living standards, bad for growth and in the end bad for the public finances as well. Fourth, that the old laissez faire complacency on industrial policy will not deliver the long-term stability that investors need in this era. And fifth, that in a world where the likes of Putin will weaponise key supply chains, outsourcing critical industrial capacity is damaging not just for economic security but also for national security. Now, if you fail to act on these five principles, the end result is an economy more vulnerable to the shocks of our age of insecurity. And at the level of ideas, that in a nutshell is the economic story of Britain over the past 13 years. The Tories have been waiting around for the genteel conditions of the great moderation to return rather than letting go of a failed ideology. They have refused to reassess the role of government as the careful steward in tough times for security, growth and economic stability because government can and must set the mission. Government can and must shape markets, not just submit to them. Government can and must reform our economic institutions rather than just mop up after the event with the state's big checkbook. And above all, government can and must hold out the hand of partnership to business, build shared institutions like a national wealth fund, like an industrial strategy council, like a joint undertaking on skills, a new architecture for growth, a new foundation for security, security from tyrants, security from global headwinds, security for working people and businesses. That's secure and omics. And no matter what is stored up for us, it will remain our north star. But look, of course, we can't ignore our financial situation. So, while I welcome some of the individual measures in the autumn statement, tax cuts for working people are a good thing. It was also a budget for growth that ended up downgrading growth and a budget for tax cuts that confirmed the highest tax burden since the war. A fiscal slight of hand that showed the government is quite prepared to salt the earth of British prosperity in pursuit of its political strategy. Now, I don't think any of you expect me to announce Labour's spending envelope on this stage here today. And I won't. Nonetheless, it's already clear that the decisions the government are taking, not to mention their record over the last 13 years, will constrain what a future Labour government can do. I mean, sometimes you have to laugh when they talk about that note in 2010, because the comparison between 2010 and today is instructive. Compared with 2010, now debt is much higher. Interest rates much higher, growth stagnant, British standing diminished, public services on their knees, inflationary pressure, pressure serious, taxes higher than at any time since the war. None of that was true in 2010. Seriously, never before has a British government asked its people to pay so much for so little. And that's why growth is everything. It's not just the quickest way out of this. It's the only way. The path to public service investment and keeping taxes competitive. It will be a hard road to walk. No doubt about it. And anyone who expects an incoming Labour government to quickly turn on the spending taps is going to be disappointed. Inflation, debt, taxes are now huge constraints. Of course, we will make different choices on the non-dom tax status invested in cutting NHS waiting lists, on removing private school tax breaks invested in high quality teaching and our children's mental health. But at the same time, we will be ruthless when it comes to spending every pound wisely. I ran a public service in the days of austerity. I know how hard it can be. But I also know you could always find ways to improve delivery, change your practice, your behaviour, reform your approach. And when times are tough like they are now, that is the least that people expect. Put it like this, there are millions of people in this country right now who wake up in the morning and know every day will bring a fight for every penny. Just like the last day. My sister is one of them. I will say to her, let's go to the pub for lunch. And she will say straight away, I'll make sandwiches. So I've said to every member of my shadow cabinet when they're drawing up their plans for our manifesto, think carefully about how precious every pound is for the people that we must serve. Hold them in your mind's eye and approach the public finances, spending decisions like it's their money because at the end of the day it is. But look, this is a council of realism, not despair. The UK has huge assets, flexible product and finance markets, a highly educated population, world-class universities. This city, an economic giant. A global economy that is hungry for the services and sectors where Britain excels. Life sciences, the creative industries, technology, clean energy, financial services, advertising. And then there's the potential of the places that have been ignored, passed over, disres guarded as a source of growth and dynamism. A potential that I believe is routinely underestimated. And so with Securonomics as our guide, there are big steps we can take quickly that will get British growth moving. One, we can get Britain building again. We're the only country in the G7 where land development per head has decreased in the past century. The dream of home ownership, ever more distant. Working people shelling out more of their income to chase it. Less security and opportunity. So yes, we must bulldoze through the restrictive planning laws. We must remove the blockages that choke the supply side of our economy. Stop us building the warehouses, train lines, grid connection, wind farms, laboratories and homes our country needs. Step two, we can back British business with political stability and certainty. With a competitive tax regime, we've shown our determination on that front. A new direction on skills, reform of the apprenticeship level to give business more flexibility and incentivise investment. Technical excellence colleges specialising in the high growth, high shortage skills that we need. But above all, with that new partnership, a proper industrial strategy drawn up with business and a national wealth fund that can de-risk and crowd in major private investment because we believe that is our job. Not to shower taxpayers cash on favoured companies, picking winners, this isn't the old dogma. But in this global economy, it is negligent not to take a view on which sectors can compete and even more negligent not to use the power of government to back them properly. Now this is mission critical because we will never arrest our decline unless we become a high investment nation. Finally three, we can make work pay. Even now, in the face of the ample evidence on the good work provided by this inquiry, some people still see flexibility in our labour market as one sided. The growth comes not from a labour market that asks how can we make workers more productive but from driving down wages, rights and conditions. Mark my words, we will consign that argument to history. And I say this to business as well. This is a labour party more committed to working with private enterprise than ever before. But a partnership must have a purpose and the returns of private enterprise must be better shared. Your country needs higher investment, your workers need a fairer return and both will be good for your productivity. So we will broker a new deal with increased mental health support, a fully funded plan to cut NHS waiting lists and end to zero our contracts, no more fire and rehire, a bold new act to stamp out racial injustice and a real living wage. So reforming our labour market, reforming the institutions that drive business investment, reforming planning and infrastructure delivery, three significant steps we can take quickly, three significant departures from the current British growth model and all three laser focused on clear challenges for our productivity. And three clear divides on growth that will shape the general election. Sorry, I do have to mention it because it is a big election. Tory decline has been a disaster for the British people. Labour will offer a new deal for the public, stronger growth, rising incomes, creating the wealth we need to fund our public services. That's the direction we need. That's my ambition for Britain. A chance to turn the page on a miserable chapter of decline and with a new economic plan, with a new determination, with growth that will deliver the security working people need, we will walk down the hard road towards national renewal. A Britain building again, growing again, believing again, that we will get our future back. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. That was very clear. You have said, raising productivity will be an obsession for a Labour Government, that it will be the defining purpose of the next Labour Government, which is, frankly, music to the ears of this room. Very unusual for the Labour Party. So let's figure out how you're going to get to this, make this obsession work. Let's start with investment because it's very clear from this report here and indeed from all the work that everyone does on productivity that investment is key. Let's start with public investment because you described the Government's approach as sticking plaster economics on public investment. I want to know what your approach is because, as I understand it, it was September 21 that the Shadow Chancellor promised an additional 28 billion of capital investment each year to support the transition to net zero. That was your flagship policy. It's all we all wrote about. This year you repeated it but without the word additional. I think it wasn't really mentioned at the party conference and unless I missed it, you literally didn't mention that number today. What has happened to the 28 billion? Are you still committed to increasing public capital investment and will you hit it within the next Parliament? Firstly, I'm not going to shy away from the challenge that we face when it comes to investment and we need to create the conditions for both public and private investment and that goes to the 28 billion as well and I'll come directly to your question. What we want to do is have investment that triggers and Rachel Reeves has set this out a sort of three to one ratio with public investment triggering private investment by a ratio of three to one. That isn't happening at the moment. It hasn't happened for a very, very long time because we haven't created the conditions for it. The conditions for it and I've spoken, I don't know to how many investors and businesses about this is a conversation that is always along the same lines that says we've got the money to invest but we're not investing in the moment because the conditions, there's too much chopping and changing, there isn't any strategy, there isn't any long term thinking so we've got to set those conditions. We've got to remove the barriers as well. That's why I talked about planning, about the grid, about an industrial council. On the 28 billion, the first thing to be absolutely clear is what is the purpose of the money because I intend to have a mission driven Labour government with only five missions. The main mission is growth, economic growth as I've set out. The other missions, only four of them, Clean Power 2030 is one of them, are to ladder up to that mission. The 28 billion, we will ramp up to that in the second half of the parliament and it will be used to trigger that other investment from the private sector and we'll ramp up. It's not a question of the investment not starting until the middle of the next parliament. It will be ramped up to that point. It is of course subject to our fiscal rules but I am confident that if we turbo charge the growth that we need we'll be able to achieve the investment we need within the fiscal rules. But if you are ramping up in the second part of the parliament just to be clear that probably means that you are overseeing a net decline in public investment for much of your tenure. We will be ramping up in the second half of the parliament. Will you be overseeing a decline at least at the beginning in public investment? The figures we are going to inherit are pretty awful figures. You have choices. Once you are in government you can decide, you could say, we need to invest in public investment is essential for growing this economy. That's in fact what this report suggests and we are therefore going to borrow to invest but you are now saying you will not do that. We will borrow to invest subject to our fiscal rules. That's what the £28 billion in the second half of the parliament is all about. But I do think it's a mistake to think that is all that you need to do to trigger growth because if we don't create the conditions of stability we won't be able to trigger growth. When I talk to investors to say what's the biggest problem with investment? They say your planning laws, your regulations, if they are in the energy sector they will say within the first few sentences the grid is too slow. I've got a conversation seared on my memory about wind turbines and had the conversation with a CEO of an energy company. How quickly can you build me a wind turbine factory? The answer was two years. I said oh that's good. He said it will take 13 years before you are actually getting energy out of it because I'm going to lose five years to planning and even when I get there I'm going to lose six years before the grid then crawls towards me. So I accept the challenge on investment. I do not accept that that is the only question that we are confronting here because we can change planning without money. We can change the approach to the grid without money. We can look at the regulators and align the regulators without money. We can reform our public services without money. I run a public service. If you put more money in the top you tend to get a better product out but if you want a really better product you've got to reform it. So there are other things we can do and I think sometimes all of us get into this habit that Labour Party has had for a long time which is thinking that the lever that is spend investment is the only lever that can ever be pulled. I don't accept that. I think there are other levers that need to be pulled and I can honestly say with most businesses I'm talking to the question of how much are you investing is way down the line compared with are you prepared to take the tough decisions that will create the conditions in which we can come up alongside you and share your ambition. Listening to you I'm sure most people in this room would agree and frankly the Chancellor said something very similar this morning and he was talking about planning reform. He was talking about all of his 110 growth enhancing things that he had in his autumn statement. When I listened to you you've scaled back your public investment. You want to make it affordable. You're focusing on planning reform. You're focusing on all of these other things which are also there and the Tories want to do too. Just tell me what is what are the big differences now between what you're proposing and what they're proposing in order to enhance growth. Well the first thing I'd say is they've had 13 years to do these things. But let's look forward. Sure but I mean you can't we are in this hot. The defining feature of the last 13 years has been pretty well stagnant growth. It's the root cause of pretty well all the problems that we have. So to come along 13 years down the line and say we're now going to do the things that we've done 14 years ago does lack a certain plausibility when it comes to planning. It was this government that in 2015 I think pretty well put the kibosh on on shore wind farms deliberately. That was their strategy in their policy. It's this government that took down the targets for house building. That will mean by the way very few houses being built. Everybody knows that the Prime Minister knows that. So there is a plausibility problem. But what we've got is a strategy. We've got a mission led government. We've got clarity about what we're trying to achieve. And we are creating the partnership that we're going to need with business. I mean the fact we're having much more business engagement is is much discussed across the media in politics. This isn't just coffee and quosals around the usual breakfast table saying the same thing over and over again which drives me nuts. It's actually quite detailed discussions now with business about how we're going to hit the ground running in a year's time. Quite granular discussions about how quickly we can achieve things. So we've gone well beyond there. How are you? What's your name? What are you doing? To a really constructive set of engagements that mean that I don't want any conversation had by my Shadow Cabinet in the first 100 days of an incoming Labour government if we get that far that they could have had now. And that's the mindset we're in. So let's talk about I've got so many questions in only about three minutes. But you said that you're now focused obsessively on productivity. You also said that wealth creation is your number one priority. Something I think Margaret Thatcher would have agreed with. Have you therefore given up on redistribution? No, of course not. But I think it's very important to recast the way redistribution should work. There's a model of growth that we could put forward, which would be to say London and the Southeast is a power engine of growth, which it is. That's a good thing. And therefore redistribution can be the sort of one word answer for the rest of the country. That's not good enough. That's the mistake we've made in the past. And that lacks the basic dignity and respect that working people want. They want their economy to grow where they are. They want their place to be part of the wealth creation. They don't just want their place to wither and somehow they're propped up by redistribution from growth elsewhere. This is a fundamentally new chapter of Labour's political thinking. And it comes very much from my, you know, talk about my parents more than I did before I was a politician. But for my dad who worked in the factory of his life, the dignity and respect of earning his own wage in a sector that was working was really important to him. It's really important for working people across the country. I think it's redistribution, but I think that the idea of a model that requires us to say growth is there in some other place. What you get is a bit of the fruits with a bit of luck to keep you going is a model that I don't think we can any longer countenance. I think if you look at the last 13 years, look at the divisions, the inequality, the whole concept of levelling up is built on an understanding that we can't go on any longer. Turbo charging some parts of the country, some sectors, some communities and leaving others falling by the wayside with just about enough to get by. That is, I fundamentally reject that model. I think it's the wrong model. I don't think it's a progressive model and it's not the model in incoming Labour government. Now, I know that makes life harder and I know that in this room and Torsten will be looking quizzically at me as to how you're going to do that. I accept that challenge and it means we need to do more, but I'm not prepared to shy away from that challenge. I guess I find it quite hard to understand what the there there is in this. You say it's fundamentally different and for a couple of years it seemed that the biggest difference was that you really wanted to borrow to invest in the green transition, which you can argue about whether we could afford it, but it was a perfectly plausible big difference. You've now really given up on that. You talk about an industrial strategy. It's not quite clear what that industrial strategy adds up to. You said you must hold out the hand of partnership to business. It's supply side stuff because you don't want to do unnecessary spending, but what actually is it? Well, take industrial strategy. When I say in my conversations to investors and businesses, we want an industrial strategy, we want a council that sits around it and we're going to put it on statutory footing. They say that's music to my ears and one or two of them have pointed out to me. If you Google, if you go to the government website and put in industrial strategy, there is literally the words written across it, archived. Archived. I promise you not, but I do it. Have a look. That is a massive difference between us and the government and that is an industrial strategy. Obviously what operates first and foremost at the national level, what is it you're trying to achieve? What are your five missions here? The reason I've set the missions out before an election is because I want those that I'm inviting to go in this partnership to look at the missions, put their fingerprints on them, to test them and to make sure that they're the right missions. But also in addition to the national strategy, we need a strategy in each of the sectors up in Aberdeen just two or three weeks ago with the oil and gas sector looking at the transition that's needed there. The challenges that they want, what they want from government is different to life sciences where a different strategy is going to be needed and that is the sort of understanding and partnership that we need to drive forward. But there is planning, I mean planning has been a problem. Saying planning is a problem is not a sort of eureka moment. Everybody has known that for a really, really long time. Nobody has done anything about it. Knowing that the grid takes forever to actually connect up anybody who wants to supply power is not a new problem. It's not just a problem here either. It's a problem in other countries. But the question is, are we actually coming up with the solutions to those problems and actually got the way with all to do something about it and to take the tough decisions that are going to be needed in order to get this over the line. And to do it in a way which is true to a model of growth that does mean living standards rise everywhere across the country because I do not want to perpetuate the increasing inequality that we have in this country. I don't want to come at longer than is necessary and as soon as we get the chance if we're privileged enough to come into power that inequality alongside our growth strategy will be absolutely in our sights. One last question for me because I know you want to take some more questions from the rest of the media. Another phrase, words that you didn't mention today were the EU, at least I don't think you did, not once. And you wrote in the telegraph at the weekend and I can't resist asking you this. You said the Tories have quote failed to realise the possibilities of Brexit. What exactly are those possibilities and what opportunities would you grab? Firstly what I was talking about in my speech was the lack of growth in the last 13 years and it is a mistake to think that all of our economic problems are somehow the cause of Brexit. We've had flatlining on growth for 13 years, way before Brexit was a word, way before there was a vote and certainly way before we left. So it's a mistake to think that the EU is a civil bullet. What can we do now that we weren't able to do before? Look it's not a panacea, I'm not going to pretend that it is. There are things. I mean I've just come back from Dubai at COP28 talking to obviously world leaders but also businesses. We can have a more agile, a quicker discussion about what we can do. There are certainly discussions in life sciences about some of the things that we can do. There are areas where we can move at speed with an agility that we probably didn't have before and I think we need to make the most of that. That doesn't mean we pretend that being outside the EU is the absolute silver bullet that's now going to unleash growth because I don't think anybody believes that to be true. Nor is it to pretend that the deal we've got is good enough because it's not good enough. We need a better deal than the one we've got. We need a closer economic relationship with the EU, our main trading partners. Now that doesn't mean going back into the EU and in all the discussions I'm having with international leaders nobody's saying you've got to rejoin but they are interested in what does a closer relationship actually look like. This report talks about a UK protocol based on the Northern Ireland protocol. Is that something you'd be in favour of, a UK wide one? Well, I do think that the protocol actually was a big step in the right direction. This was when our Prime Minister was beginning to look like, he was concerned and bothered by international relations and wanted to act in good faith. He sort of drifted away from that with the Greek Prime Minister and sort of breezing into COP for a few minutes before he left again. The protocol was a step in the right direction. We said we'd vote for it as soon as we saw it because we thought it was. Now whether that works across the whole of the United Kingdom, I don't know but I do know that there's a better deal to be had if we do the hard yards of negotiating in good faith. On that note, you must go and answer some more questions from other people. Thank you very much. Thank you. I've got a number of media questions that I know various journalists are waiting to ask. Let me go through those. I think Beth, I've got you down first. Beth Rigby from Sky. Keir Starmer, you keep saying public services are on their knees and yet now you're saying beyond small amounts of money Labour have already committed, a Labour government won't be turning on the spending taps after a general election. You know it will be a huge disappointment to many of your supporters. I have a really simple question for you. Can you at least reassure them that you won't be cutting any departmental budgets after a general election or are some spending cuts still on the table? Let me take that in two parts. Firstly, on public services, I'm a massive believer in public services. I gave up five years of my life out of practice as a lawyer in order to run a public service which was the Crown Prosecution Service. So, I do care about, I believe in public services and I know a thing or two about the constraints of delivering in public service and I'm certainly not in the business of cutting the funding which is why the focus is so much on growth. What I would say though is that we must never forget that our public services need reform. I saw that for myself. In criminal justice, which was my old field, it is perfectly true you can put more money in the top of your public services and you probably get a slightly speedier product but you don't materially change it. You have to reform. The same is true now of the health service. The health service 75 years or so in is facing very different challenges to the health service when it was created. If it's to last another 75 years and I want it to, I believe in it and I'm determined that it will, then it's got to change. It's got to become preventative. It's got to be closer to people in their communities. We've got to make much more use of data and AI. So, on public services, yes there's the question of how much money you put in but there is equally the question of whether you've got the wherewithal to carry out the reform that is desperately needed. For that to happen, Beth, just get this because if that reform is to happen, we've got to break out of the silos of delivery and government. One of my biggest frustrations in criminal justice is that if you wanted to improve and to prevent crime, reduce crime rates, you had to deal with health, education, the situations in which people were living but that was all outside of the criminal justice silo and therefore it never really got done. So, we've got to do a different way of delivering. It is about money but it's not just about money. Thank you, Beth. Can I go to Dashini at the BBC? Thank you. Just following up from Beth's point really because there is another chart which was circulated widely after the autumn statement which showed that some departments could be facing spending cuts once you take into account population growth and inflation of the greater size since the last period of austerity 10 years ago. Now, we can say we can spend money more wisely in the public sector but you'll be very aware that many services are under much more pressure. They're already much leaner. So, what assurances can you give people that in reality they are not facing a new age of austerity that the level of services they're seeing at the moment will be maintained? Well look, if you look at the record of labour in government, what you see is a record of investing in our public services. The austerity is something of this government, that is the road down which they want. We are a party that always invests in our public services. Of course we're going to inherit a very difficult situation. There's no point in me pretending otherwise. It is obvious that the government is doing everything it can to salt the earth to make it even more difficult for whoever might come after them. By the way, that's not in the national interest. This reduction of government from the national interest into party interest is so bad for the economy and so bad for the country. Not thinking what's the best thing for the economy in two or three or four years time. But how do I make the life of Keir Starmer more difficult? They're actually briefed out that the king's speech was all about making my life difficult. I don't care which political party you support. Government should never be reduced to that. Now we need to reform, we need to grow our economy, but the record of labour government is always to look after our public services. Thank you very much. I've got Peter from the Guardian, I think. Peter. Keir, I think if a voter was to read through the speech you just gave, they might very easily recognise your description of where the country is now. But when it came to reading the bits about how things are going to improve under a labour government, they might potentially find it a bit woolly in long term, things like supply side reforms, bank it all on economic growth. One of the things we've heard earlier from this stage is that politics is about offering hope to people. If one of these hypothetical voters was to listen to speech now, in say a sentence or less, how would you sum up how their lives are going to be better under two years for labour government? Higher living standards felt across the country giving people hope, a sense that we have a direction as a country, a sense that we've got a government that wants to bring people together and has got a clear idea of where it's going. A sense that we need economic growth which is living standards raised. A sense that the change we need to make for energy, the transition is not just an obligation of millstone around our net, but a huge opportunity to get ahead for lower bills for security for the next generation of jobs. A sense that the health service, which most people are really anxious about, will it last any longer, is in good hands and is going to be there for decades to come. A sense that young people have opportunities under a labour government that they don't have at the moment. When looking at the statistics to see that most working class children are going to be held back by the salary or income of their parents, rather than their own talent, is something I will never accept and people knowing they've got a safe place that they can work and play. These are, every time I test out our missions on anybody, almost everybody says I want some of that. I want to go in that direction. And that's why we characterised it at our conferences, the difference between 13 years of decline and a decade of national renewal. And Peter, I say one other thing that I do think is important going forward. The decade of national renewal is important. I accept your challenge. Beth put it to me at the beginning of the year, I think, when I did my New Year's speech. It's a challenge which always comes, which is... That's all very well, but that's going to take five years. What about this Christmas? What about this January? Why can't you do it by then? And we have this with the waiting with the NHS. Every year we have an NHS winter crisis. It's coming. It comes every year. Every year the only thing we know is it's going to be worse than the year before. And in about January or February, watch for it this year. There will be a bit of sticking plaster that's put on. It gets the NHS through until about April, May, June when it gets warmer. And then we go into another winter crisis the next year. We can't go on with that sticking plaster politics. It's the lack of the fundamentals. Yes, some of these things take time. The home insulation scheme that was running, it started about 15 years ago, which would have massively reduced the energy needed to heat homes. That was cut 10 years ago by David Cameron and said cut the green crap. And we've lost 10 years because of that. So yes, some of these things will take time. But if all you ever do is say I'm only prepared to do things that are relevant for the next six months, we will continue with decline for a very, very long time. We have to fix the fundamentals. Now it doesn't mean we can't do anything straight away. I accept the challenge. We've got to help people with their energy bills now. I accept the challenge. We've got to reduce NHS waiting lists now. But we've also got to think in the long term. And frankly the sticking plaster politics, the chopping and changing over the last 13 years has been the single most important reason that we're in the terrible state we're in. And I think most people across the country now think that nothing is really working. There's a reason for that. That's because we've done everything too short term. We've never been prepared to say these are the changes we need over a period of time. It's going to take time. The national bit of the renewal is to say to everybody, and this was something in my Telegraph article, which is to say, this shouldn't be tribally labour. If you want to fix your country and take it forward in renewal, if you believe in that project for your country, that national project, you can be part of that whoever you might normally vote for. And I think there are many, many people who say if you're prepared to fix and take forward and have an inclusive project for the country, I want to be part of that. Thank you, Peter. I'm sorry that was a bit of a long answer. Nick, the Telegraph. Thank you, Keir. I just wanted to come back to the answer you just gave then on the 28 billion green investment. You said it's subject to the fiscal rules and dependent on growth. So if growth is slower than expected, are you saying that that 28 billion figure is a target that you would like to achieve, but you will be sticking to those rules and therefore you might never actually reach it? And just ever so quickly on the speech in response to Beth, you said you're not in the business of cutting funding. After five years of a Labour government, will the state be larger as a proportion of GDP? Thank you. Nick, on the 28 billion, we will ramp up to that and get to that in the second half of the Parliament. It is, of course, subject to our fiscal rules. That's not special to the 28 billion. Talk to Rachel Reeves about this. Everything we do is going to be subject to the fiscal rules. They are the most important foundational stone and this is not just about going into an election. They're fundamental and they're fundamental for a reason. Last year we tried the experiment of unfunded commitments that would not be consistent with our fiscal rules. We tried it with Liz Truss as a country and it didn't land well, did it? It caused huge economic harm and who's paying the price? Who's mortgages gone up? Who's struggling with their energy bills? Who's struggling at the supermarket working people? I'm not prepared to let that happen ever again and therefore those fiscal rules are the foundation upon which we build everything. They're not a straight jacket for the 28 billion. They're a foundational stone for everything that we should do. By the way, I'm confident. I'm really confident that we can make the investment that we need to within our fiscal rules because I'm confident that we're doing the work on growth that we need to do what you would expect to have from a responsible opposition that doesn't know whether it's going to win the election but knows that if we do win the election we would be unforgiven if we hadn't done the planning well in advance. On your second question, look, there are at least two fiscal events before the election. I don't think there will be one more before the election and therefore for me to say what may or may not be the position in five years I think is pretty unrealistic at this stage. Thank you, Nick. I think I've got Jack from the Times. Jack. Thanks, Keir. Over the weekend you sung the praises of Margaret Thatcher and I think some people within the room here would say that the policy remedy put forward here is slightly different to her economic strategy. I'm just wondering what aspects of her economic strategy you aspire to the most. What I was doing at the weekend in the article I wrote for the Sunday Telegraph was distinguishing between particularly post-war leaders, those leaders, those prime ministers who had a driving sense of purpose, a mission, a plan to deliver and those that drifted. That's why I picked Atley who of course had a new Jerusalem as his mission, his plan and put in the foundations for the next 70 years or more. Thatcher of course, now it doesn't mean I agree with what she did but you don't have to agree with someone to recognise they had a mission and a plan in her particular case about entrepreneurship equally with Tony Blair, a mission to change the Labour Party and put it in a position to seize the opportunities of the era as the turn of the century. I want a mission-driven Labour government. I want this sense of driving purpose that withstands the inevitable sidewins that any government gets and is clear and consistent over a five or ten-year period because I think it's the only way we can deliver. I think it's the only way realistically other people are going to come alongside and invest in us because unless there's that clarity it won't be there. So I was giving Margaret Thatcher as an example of the sort of leader who had that mission and plan. It's obviously different to saying I agree with everything that she did but I'll just finish it by saying what we've had in the last 13 years is the complete lack of leadership, complete drift, real drift. Can anybody in this room define the mission of the last 13 years? What was it? What is it? Even now the government struggles to say what they want 13 years down the line. There's no sense of mission or direction and so I was using it in that way and obviously that's provoked to certain reaction in a number of places. Thank you Jack and I've got Noah I think from the sun. Thanks Keir. You've spoken today and quite often about how crippling the cost of living crisis has been to so many families and people you know well. So with that in mind would you step in to stop the BBC licence fee being raised by 9% or by any percent at all? Well Noah thank you for that question. I think this particular problem really is the government's in the sense that this is a decision that Lucy Fraser I had this morning says she's about to take in the imminent future so it is one for them. They've obviously set out the approach they were going to take with freezing and then increasing and the anxiety is that they're going to break the promise that they've made so that is one for them. Well we will I mean you know we will set that out as we get to the election we're going to have to see what the government does first and you know like all things it will have to be set out in detail before the election. I'm going to wait to see what Lucy Fraser actually does wait to see what may or may not be in a budget if we get to a budget early next year but I think in that particular case this is a problem of the government's making and one that they're going to have to solve sooner rather than later. Thank you all very much I think we've probably overrun our stretch but thank you very much for having me.