CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Angela Eagle MP, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Chair of Labour’s National Policy Forum, in a speech to Labour Party Conference 2013 in Brighton, said:

It’s great to be back here in Brighton and to have the chance to meet our three brilliant local parliamentary candidates. I know that with their tenacity and your help we will be painting this town red again.

Conference, there’s not long to go before the next General Election.

591 days to be precise.

I am proud to be chairing Labour’s National Policy Forum in the run up to that General Election.

Proud to be working with you as we fight for victory in May 2015.

And looking forward to watching our leader Ed Miliband walk up Downing Street as our next Labour Prime Minister.

But Conference we all know that an election victory will not just drop into our laps.

We all know that together, we are facing the biggest fight of our political lives.

Our single purpose over those 591 days is to show the country that we’re ready for Government.
That we are up to the challenge of solving the cost of living crisis.
That we will build an economy that works for working people.

That’s why our policy process is so important.

And that’s why the work of the National Policy forum is at the heart of our preparations for that General Election fight.

I’d like to thank my Vice Chairs Billy Hayes, Simon Burgess and Bridget Phillipson for all of their work over the past year. I’d also like to thank every member of the National Policy Forum for what they have contributed.

The ten policy papers on issues you prioritised last year, the many talking points documents published on Your Britain, the hard work of our policy commissions, all of this is summarised in the Annual report you have before you today.

We will spend next year reaching out and consulting to write a One Nation manifesto to put before the country when the General Election comes.

We know we are in a fight for the future of Britain and none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines.

The Liberal Democrats have just had their conference.

And I must say this hall is a nice contrast to what we had on our TV screens last week.

We’ve had Vince Cable - hawking his conscience round Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow and hoping no-one will be rude enough to check out his voting record in London.

We’ve had Danny Alexander warning us with a straight face that politics would be dragged off to the right if the Tories win a majority.

And then Nick Clegg who grandly announced last week that the Lib Dems were now the party of ‘in’.

Well I’ve got news for him.

In 2015 his will be the party of 'down and out’.

Next week the Tories are in Manchester.

David Cameron knows that his time is running out. And for us women especially, May 2015 can’t come soon enough.

Some of you will already know that the Prime Minister isn’t really my type.

I like people who keep their promises.

If I had a pound for every promise the PM has broken, I’d be in his tax bracket.

And let’s face it conference with a record like his you really need something much more substantial than a Mickey Mouse towel to hide your embarrassment on the beach.

Remember his pre election pledges?
That ludicrously airbrushed portrait?
His promise to the British people?
“I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS”?

Three years later we’ve got 5000 fewer nurses, A&E departments at breaking point and a huge top down reorganisation to flog off parts of our NHS to the highest bidder.

He promised he’d keep the child trust fund for the poorest families.
He promised he’d keep the education maintenance allowance to help young people learn.
And he promised he’d keep tax credits for middle earners.

Then with the support of his Liberal Democrat lapdogs - he cut the lot of them while proclaiming:
“We’re all in this together”

That’s what George Orwell would have called Newspeak.

Conference after three years, the Prime Minister has had his chance and he’s blown it.

He has been found out.
He runs an out of touch Government of millionaires, in hock to millionaires, governing for millionaires.

With their failed economic policy, they’ve done nothing but make things worse for hard pressed people and their families.

Job losses, falling wages, rising prices, health service cuts, insecurity, worry and fear.
We have a callous Government.
An out of touch Government that blames the victims of the living standards crisis that it has created, for their own suffering.

Remember George Osborne’s nasty strivers and shirkers rhetoric?

Michael Gove accusing those forced to turn to food banks of financial mismanagement?

And what about those appalling Government ad vans touring our inner city areas telling people to go home?

It’s a desperate resort to the politics of division and it reminds us about the true nature of the Tories.

Once the nasty party, always the nasty party.

And haven’t we had enough?

We are all in this hall today because we believe in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better.

That’s why we got involved in the first place.

We’ve all got our own memories of why we joined Labour.

I remember my mum telling me how she couldn’t go to grammar school because there was no money for the uniform.

I remember being angry that opportunity was denied to people just because they were poor.

I joined the Labour Party because I wanted to change that.

That’s why we’re here.

That’s why we all knock on doors, deliver leaflets, work for the Labour cause in our communities and in our workplaces.

We know that politics is not a spectator sport.

We know that democratic politics gives everyone a chance to have a say in how their society is run.

In what kind of society they want to help develop, in the values which will underpin it.

We know that the more people get engaged and believe in their own power to influence our politics, the more real progress can be made towards Labour’s goal of fairness and opportunity for all.

That is why for us, the current decline in political engagement and participation is so worrying and so dangerous.

Because we know that without strong input from many people, the privileged few will monopolise power and do so in their own narrow interests.

They seek to control the national conversation.

Just look at what the Government is doing.

They are trying to make everyone believe that there is no alternative to falling living standards for the many and untold riches for the few.

That there is no alternative to widening inequality, widening unfairness and a race to the bottom.

We must not let them succeed in pedalling this politics of division and despair.

Increasing inequality is not an inevitable result of some sort of natural law, it is a political choice and an expression of the values and priorities of our current Prime Minister.

He believes in a small state plundered by his rich mates.

But we can’t just be angry.

We can’t create a consensus for a fairer society simply by wishing for it.

We have to go out and argue for it.

We can’t give people hope that the future will be better just because we have hope that it can be.

We have to engage and persuade those weary with worry about the future, those who are cynical about politics and all politicians.

We have to convince them that there is a better way forward for our country than this.

We have to persuade them that only by working together can we actually make it happen.

And we have to inspire them to join us in the fight for a One Nation Britain.

That’s what I’ve been doing in the People’s Politics Inquiry. With colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party I have been talking to disengaged voters across the UK to ask them what we need to do to make politics worthwhile for them.

There was Michelle in Oldham who told me that she was finding it hard to cope because of the rising cost of food and utility bills. She said all politicians are the same and didn’t have faith in any of us to make a difference to her life.

There was Annette who told me that she was worried about her children’s future. She wants them to have a good education but the cost of university is making that dream impossible.

Or Paul on Merseyside, who talked about his struggle to find a job and keep his hopes up after being unemployed for three long years.

And I’ve met those with great business ideas or good businesses who can’t get the bank loans they need to start up or grow.

I’ve heard from people who have experienced the NHS going backwards under this Government. People who just can’t make ends meet on zero hours contracts, who never know from one week to the next what they will be paid or the hours they will be expected to work.

I’ve met many who are being driven into debt, illness and destitution by the casual cruelty of the bedroom tax.

And isn’t it right, conference, that our Leader Ed Miliband has announced that the next Labour Government will scrap it.

These are the people we can’t let down.

These are the people whose faith in politics must be restored by our actions. These are the people we have to win with and for in 2015.

As Chair of the National Policy Forum I have made it my priority to put members back at the heart of how we do politics in the Labour Party.

Over the last year we’ve made important progress.

We’ve had five times as many submissions made to the policy process than we had before our reforms.

We’ve established Your Britain where over 60,000 different organisations and individuals have already had their say.

And we’ve had a record number of discussion events in every part of the country.

I know that we can still do more to improve our policy process and we will.

We need to be less afraid of letting go at the centre.

We need to find more ways to reach out to people and more ways to let them have a say.

But Conference, I think there is one thing that we all understand as we approach the crucial final year of our policy making process.
We need a One Nation manifesto that is rooted in real people’s lives and experiences.

We can’t write it in a smoke filled room in Westminster.

We have to write it in our communities, across our country and we have to write it with your help.

Your enthusiasm has helped to get us to this point.

You’ve organised policy discussion events.
You’ve debated on Your Britain.
You’ve given us your views.
But now is the time to move up a gear.

Together we need to write a winning manifesto that captures the promise of Britain.

That inspires those who are cynical.

That gives hope to those who have given up.

And that makes our country once again believe in the power of politics to change people’s lives.

And Conference working together we can and we will do it.