Politics in Britain is at a moment of change and Labour is ready to give “Tory sleaze merchants their marching orders”, Angela Rayner has said.
The Labour deputy leader told delegates in Liverpool that in government Labour would grow the economy, rebuild trust in public office “and clean up politics”.
Rayner listed the catalogue of Tory scandals and sleaze, from the 126 partygate fines to the £10 billion wasted PPE contracts, as she promised her party would “oversee the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation”.
Rayner, Shadow Secretary of state for the future of work, told the Labour conference: “The Tories have become too dependent on handing away our public services on the cheap, and now we are paying the price.
“We will oversee the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation.
“Today I can announce that before any service is contracted out, public bodies must show that the work could not be better done in-house.”
Rayner slammed the Tory tax cuts announced in Friday’s mini-budget as tax cuts for the richest people in the UK and for big corporations.
Rayner said: “I ask Liz Truss today – whose side are you on?”
“When you boost bankers’ bonuses but force working people to carry the can for the energy crisis, using a pandemic to pile billions into the bank accounts of cronies while nurses wore bin bags. Whose side are you on?”
“When you say the working people of this country need more graft then deprive them of fair pay. Whose side are you on?”
In a stirring opening address, Rayner said the Tory plans to undermine workers’ rights would be reversed by a Labour government.
She said: “Be in no doubt - they are coming after the most basic things we expect. Decent work, fair pay. The foundations of a family life."
“Conference, so long as I have a breath left in my body I will defend those rights, including the right to strike.”
“And when in power we will repeal all the anti-worker and anti- trade union laws this Conservative government has enacted. All of it.”
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