James Purnell MP, Labour's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions speaks to Conference.

- check against delivery -

Let's get straight to the point: we can win the next election. But, and it is an important but, we need to show that we deserve it.   

Our own history is full of clues. It is sad to say, a history littered with rather more defeats than victories.

The ghosts of those defeats haunt this and every Labour party conference hall:

    * the wretched aftertaste of losing;


    * the charade of pointless resolutions, no sooner passed by Labour conference than ignored by a Tory government,


    * the bitter frustration of seeing blatant injustice all around ...


    * but being powerless to do anything about it.


That's why we changed. Because we were tired of being the conscience of a Conservative country.   We changed. We wanted to become the government so that Britain could become a progressive country.

And 11 years on that's exactly what we are doing. And the Tories opposed us every step of the way.   But now they say they support all the things they used to oppose.

Good!

It's a tribute to us that they now say they agree with us.   It shows we're winning the argument.   

And even better - it opens the door to us winning the next Election.   The Tories say they agree with us. But if the country does want progress, as I believe it does, then people should vote for the only progressive party in British politics. They should vote Labour.

After all, why vote for an imitation, when you can vote for the real thing?

Politics is not a parlour game. Wh o's up. Who's down. Who wins. Who loses. All that all passes.  Politics is about the future: what is at stake, what matters, what remains is the character of our country in years to come.


Imagine the future we can build together.   

Imagine affordable childcare for all; abolishing child poverty; all parents with a good choice of schools; the NHS with no waiting lists; good, green economic growth; more democracies around the world; and Britain admired around the world as an open, tolerant country that is comfortable with immigration and with globalisation.

This would be a progressive country.   But it is a country the Tories could no more imagine than build.

And this is how we win:   with a clearer, bolder, fairer more compelling vision of the future.

When you reduce politics to its essentials, it's not very complicated: identify the issues that people care about and describe them in terms they recognize. De vise bold responses. Don't be deterred when there is opposition. Everything worth doing creates opponents.   

Real problems. Bold solutions:

That's what we are doing on the economy, on energy security, on academies, on health reform and on welfare reform.

Committing not just to reduce child poverty but to end it altogether.

Let me say this about Gordon Brown.

I judge a man by the things he believes in . And Gordon's unwavering commitment to social justice and the eradication of poverty in good times and bad marks out the character of our leader.

Compare that to David Cameron who blows with every political fashion and doesn't have a single bone of conviction in his body.

We are debating bold policies today:

On pensions, not an incremental move but completely rethinking pensions. Equality for women, the dream of Barbara Castle, being delivered by this Labour government.   And for the first time a comp any pension for every employee with contributions from every employer.

Three things we used to pass resolutions about.   

Three things we now pass laws about.
 
And we are reforming Incapacity Benefit.

Reforming it because we all know that in the 1980s, the Tories used IB to fiddle the unemployment figures. Hundreds of thousands were thrown on the scrap heap - written off with no help to get back to work. It is because of those people we are now reforming the system to help.

Whatever we need to do transform people's lives, we will do. So yes, we'll use the private and voluntary sector to fund it. They'll borrow more money to offer more help, and get more people back to work.

And with fewer people on benefits, we can give more money to those who need it most.  Giving disabled people control over the support they receive, power over their own lives, a revolution in rights of disabled people.

Some people say t his is a betrayal of our values. That using the private sector is privatisation.   But talk to people who we've helped. They don't say why are you making me do this programme.   They say why didn't you make me do it earlier. Because you would have given me ten more years of work, ten more years on my pension, ten more years of living life to the full.

We are not reforming the welfare state because it creates a dividing line with the Tories. That's a cartoon version of politics. We are reforming the welfare state because we believe everyone has a right to work.

A founding value of our party. Emblazoned in the name of our party. The right to Labour. The dignity of Labour.

But when we take the tough decisions and we are bold we put the Tories under pressure. And every time we do that, they fall apart.
 

The Tories are desperate to look like they care about child poverty. But they won't commit to a target and they won't commit to any more money. They even say that giving people money doesn't cure poverty, it merely disguises it.


I don't know about you Conference, but can you imagine David Cameron going to struggling families in our communities and telling them that he was going to take away their money because it only disguised their poverty!

Only a Tory could follow that logic.

The Tories say that society is broken in one breath and that social responsibility is the answer in the next. So society will somehow magically heal itself.   They conjure up a phantom problem and then offer a mirage as a solution.   

What complete nonsense .   As Boris Johnson said, in a rare moment of Tory honesty, David Cameron is talking ‘piffle' about the broken society. And he should know.

It's time we put this stuff under the microscope. The Tories will not stand the scrutiny and they know it.

On political positioning, t hey are clever. On policy, they are an absolute shambles. It is policy that decides if the future of the country is progressive or conservative.

We know how to do this. Do not fall into faction.   Do not indulge yourself with fantasy policy. Get to grips with real problems and pose them honestly. Respond boldly and be resolute in the face of opposition. Look after the policy and the politics will follow.

And remember, above all, remember why we do this.

A few months ago, in Falkirk , I met a woman called Mary.

After her husband left, she got depressed. She lost hope, thought she'd never work again. Then she got a call from a new deal advisor who asked her in for an interview.

Within weeks she'd got a new job.   She says she couldn't believe how much better off she was.

But best of all she said that when her teenage son came home from school, she felt a surge of pride like none she had known in years because she could tell him she'd been out to work that day.

You did that. You changed her life.

There are hundreds of thousands of people like Mary, who can tell their own stories of hope. You will never meet them, but you changed their lives.  

You learned how to win, you campaigned, you kept your discipline. And then, through the noble power of politics, you changed the lives of strangers.   

But if we don't heed these clues and learn those lessons of our past, we will be in this Hall, one September in years to come, passing pointless resolutions again...

Powerless as family by family, street by street, from village to town.

People are abandoned, and children lose the chance they would have had in life.  

The hope that only a Labour government would have given them.

We will not let that happen. We will not let them down.

I know you will not let them down.