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Angela Eagle MP, Chair of Labour’s National Policy Forum, in a speech to Labour’s Annual Conference 2014 in Manchester, said:

Conference, as Chair of the National Policy Forum it is my task today to wind up the debate and to ask you to adopt Labour’s policy platform for the General Election next year.

It feels appropriate that I do so in Manchester, a city with a proud radical history, a city that is home to a political activism which has changed our country for the better. Where our long march to democracy began on the killing fields of Peterloo. Where the first ever Trades Union Congress met to fight workplace exploitation with worker solidarity. Where the suffragettes first unfurled their banners demanding a woman’s right to vote.

If you look around you conference, you can still see the ‘dark satanic’ mills that were once at the heart of the industrial revolution here. They spawned an exploitation so awful that they demanded a response and they got one.

The creation of the Labour and Trade Union movement. Chartism. Trade Unionism. The Co-operative movement. Campaigners for universal suffrage.

Manchester is a city alive with the history of ordinary people.
It reminds us of a great truth: all that we are proudest of was built by working people with radical ideas; men and women who died to bring us democracy; who tore down exploitation and inequality.

And who out of the destruction of the Second World War, fostered a spirit of national unity and built a land fit for heroes. Free education for all. An end to fear of the workhouse. And our NHS - guaranteeing free access to healthcare for all those in need.

But now conference we have a Government that is hell bent on dismantling all of it bit by bit, and it falls to us to give people confidence that there is an alternative. And it’s here before you today.

This report is the result of four years of hard work by the National Policy Forum. Up and down this country we’ve had discussions in town halls and on street stalls. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of people have their say on our new online policy hub Your Britain.

And conference nothing has been off limits. We’ve debated Trident, the economy, our health service, education, procurement, privatisation and we have even debated public ownership!

We have pioneered a new way of making policy in our party, ending suffocating top down control. We really have built this policy platform from the grassroots up. And in the autumn we’ll be doing more of the same as we work together to finalise our manifesto.

I want to say how grateful I am to all of you: each National Policy Forum Representative; our trade union sisters and brothers; the socialist societies; those who worked so hard on our policy commissions and to the equality champions who have worked with me to secure the first ever overarching commitment to equality.

The National Policy Forum meeting we had in Milton Keynes this year was our policy making process at its very best. We had robust debate, real compromise and for the first time in living memory - an early night.

Conference, the history around us in Manchester reminds us that our country has been built by working people. But we know at the moment it is not working for them.

The NHS is under threat from piecemeal privatisation, funding cuts and record waiting lists. Our economy is today only delivering rewards for a few at the top and our democracy is suffering too.

In the aftermath of the global banking crisis people see those who caused the crash keeping their riches while everyone else pays the price. They are angry and they no longer believe that our politics represents them.

I’ve spent the last couple of years travelling round the country talking to those who don’t vote through my People’s Politics Inquiry.

I hear the same thing time and time again. You’re all the same. You’re only in it for yourselves. Politics isn’t for people like me.

Conference, as a party that has fought for working people to have a voice we simply cannot ignore this crisis in our politics. In today’s Britain social justice is being dismantled.

Conservative vested interests have an iron grip on Westminster. Tory donors and millionaires are getting tax cuts while real wages have fallen. And while the Chancellor boasts about 'growth’ there’s record insecurity at work.

Conference, the simple dream of radicals through the ages is that this country works in the interests of the many and not the few.

And despite the tough challenges facing the country, that is what our programme will offer. A transformational agenda which will make a real difference to people’s lives. A social justice that people can believe in.

A Labour Government will re-make Britain’s place in the world and build a new prosperity for all.

A Labour Government will reverse the cost of living crisis and ensure we build an economy that works for everyone and not just a few at the top.

A Labour Government won’t just accept a low wage economy, we will raise the national minimum wage and fight for a living wage for all.

We won’t just accept broken markets that work for profits and not consumers, we will freeze energy prices and challenge the rip off merchants.

We will build two hundred thousand new homes a year, give security to private renters, deliver a revolution in vocational skills and Conference we will repeal the Health & Social Care Act, repeal the Lobbying Act and abolish the hated and cruel bedroom tax.

Conference, the document before you is a statement of intent.

It is a contract between us the Labour Party and the British public.

A promise that we will make Britain work for everyone once more.

It’s an honour to ask you to support this policy platform.

To ask you to stand with the working people throughout our history who have built the Britain we love.

To ask you to stand for a new radicalism that will finally defeat the forces of conservatism in our country.

And to ask you to stand with Ed Miliband as we build a Britain that works for everyone not just a few at the top.

Thank you.

Ends