Conservative Party Conference 2010

 
By Heidi Blake

BREAKING 11.05 The Foreign Secretary also promises to legislate a "sovereignty clause on EU law" to "place on the statute book this eternal truth: that what a sovereign parliament can do, a sovereign parliament can undo." A vast cheer sweeps the hall.

BREAKING 11.03 Hague promises to introduce a bill before the end of the year enshrining the requirement for governments to hold a referendum before transferring new powers to Europe. "This will be a referendum lock, and a lock to which only the british people will hold the key." Enraptured applause.

11.02 And now to Europe. "The EU has many faults. It interferes too much, and the Lisbon treaty has left it beset by rivalries in Brussels, as indeed we always warned. Its democratic legitimacy was undermined by labour’s disgraceful failure to hold a referendum."

11.00 The Government is committed to building strategic alliances overseas to win jobs and prosperity for Britain. This is why it is seeking a "new special relationship with India" and has "elevated our relationship with Gulf states". Ministers have been sent to Latin American and Japan, Hague points out, and he will shortly become the first British Foreign Secretary to visit Australia for 20 years.

10.57 The Foreign Office is "energetically engaged" in trying to improve security in Yemen, where militants this morning fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a British embassy car.

10.55 The Government is committed to nuclear non-proliferation, but all the while Iran is covertly developing nuclear capabilities, Britain must retain its deterrent. For this reason, Hague says, Trident must be replaced. Britain has "no quarrel" with the Iranian people, but twill continue to lead the way on sanctions as long as the contry's nuclear programme is continued.

10.53 "We have put the C back into FCO: we take the Commonwealth seriously, for a change."

10.51 He renews the coalition's promise to tackle climate change. "The scientific consensus tells us this could give rise to the wars of the future. And even to those who are sceptical, this is far too great a risk not to act on it."

10.50 He pledges his support for the flood-ravaged people of Pakistan, promising that Britain will be a "long term partner" in efforts to rebuild the country's infrastructure.

10.47 Hague, like Fox, stresses his admiration for Britain's Armed Forces. "As we work, eat and sleep, we must bever forget that 10,000 brave men and women are doing their utmost to bring order and stability to southern Afghanistan. From the first hours of our new government we have worked together to do better for our troops. They have never let us down, and today we repeat our commitment that we will never let them down."

10.45 William Hague gets a noisy standing ovation as he taks the stage. In his characteristically fruity baritone, he starts by giving a shout-out to his team of ministers and advisors in the Foreign Office.

10.34 Providing 30 dedicated mental health nurses for veterans will cost £1.5m a year, while the helpline will cost less than £500 annually.

10.33 Murrison's report was commissioned by David Cameron after research showed one in four Iraq veterans suffer mental health disorders and one in 20 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

10.27 Fox is speaking to Andrew Murrison MP, an Iraq-war veteran, whose report on support for ex-armed forces personnel is published today. The Ministry of Defence will accept all its recommendations, Fox says. The 30 mental health nurses and 24-hour support line are among the measures suggested in the report.

10.24 To Britain's troops on the front line, he says: "I have a simple message from all of us to all of you. Thank you. And we will never let you down." The speech concludes to resounding cheers and applause.

10.22 In a reference to a number of protests against troops arriving back in Britain at RAF Lyneham, Fox says: "When those small but nasty minorities turn out to abuse our returning troops we should ensure that they are swamped with people cheering our heroes."

BREAKING 10.20 Fox says dedicated 24-hour support line for service personnel and their families will be launched and 30 mental health nurses will be made available for those suffering from post traumatic shock and other combat-related conditions. In addition, 135 family accommodation units in Canada will be replaced and another 260 will be built.

10.19 Shoring up Britain's security is vital, says Fox, so the replacement of Trident will go ahead.

10.18 “I did not come into politics wanting to see a cut in the defence budget, and neither did the Prime Minister. But we must confront the ghastly truth of Labour’s legacy,” Fox says. “They behaved like some kind of out-of-control online shoppers who kept ordering goods without even thinking about whether they would have the money to pay for them when they arrived.”

10.16 With the £46bn being paid each year in debt interest, Fox says he could buy an extra four aircraft carriers, 10 destroyers, 53 cargo planes, dozens of Chinook helicopters and 33,000 extra soldiers with enough left over to “revolutionise” accommodation for the Armed Forces.

10.11 After nine years in Afghanistan, it can be easy to forget why we are there, says Fox. He asks delegates to remember where they were when they heard about the events of 9/11. That’s why we must not leave Afghanistan with a "security vacuum". It is "fashionable to be pessimistic" but real progress is being made.

10.08 Fox follows the tried and trusted formula for Tory Conference Speeches 2010. The Government faces terrible, barely-surmountable obstacles which are all Labour's doing. "It’s not an easy time to be at the Ministry of Defence. You should seen the mess Labour left behind. No defence review for 12 years. A £38bn black hole in the budget. A military covenant in need of repair, and an MoD in itself in need of reform."

10.03 Liam Fox is welcomed to the platform. He begins his speech:

Not a day has passed since my appointment when I have not felt truly honoured to be working with the brave men and women of our Armed Forces and those who support them. I have been humbled by the lack of bitterness of those recovering from injuries in Sellyoak. I have been touched by the dignity of those who have lost loved ones. If we are looking for role models in our Big Society, we need look no further than our Armed Forces and their families.
10.00 The final day of the Conservative Party Conference has opened and the session on defence and foreign affairs has begun.

09.55 Liam Fox's pronouncements on defence spending will be closely watched when he takes the stage later this morning. A letter in which he warned the Prime Minister that "draconian cuts" must not be carried out while the country is at war galvanised opposition to cuts when it was published by the Telegraph last week. Fox gained the backing of senior defence figures after the letter was leaked and the overwhelming support for his position is though to have forced Downing Street into a climbdown over spending plans.

09.50 Robinson also said that one of the two aircraft carriers commissioned by the Royal Navy may be scrapped. Gordon Brown yesterday weighed into the row over defence spending by urging the Government to press on with plans to spend £5.2bn on the two vessels.

09.45 The BBC's political editor Nick Robinson told the Today programme that David Cameron's speech will revive the Victorian-era idea of the "deserving poor". Cameron will promise to protect the "sick, elderly and vulnerable" and those striving to find work but refuse to carry those who choose to live on state handouts.

09.38 A few more extracts from David Cameron's speech are beginning to emerge. The Prime Minister will stress the importance of "fairness" in government and renew his commitment to looking after the vulnerable.

People who are sick, who are vulnerable, who are elderly - I want you to know we will always look after you. That's the sign of a civilised society and it's what I believe. But you can't measure fairness just by how much money we spend on welfare, as though the poor are products with a price tag and the more we spend on them the more we value them. Fairness means supporting people out of poverty, not trapping them in dependency. So we will make a bold choice. For too long, we have measured success in tackling poverty by the size of the cheque we give people. We say, let's measure our success by the chance we give.
He will also affirm his loyalty to the taxpayer, promising not to squander the hard earned wages of "the man who goes out to work long hours". We'll assume he doesn't mean it's fine to waste the money of the hard working woman.

Here's something else about fairness. Fairness isn't just about who gets help from the state. The other part of the equation is who gives that help, through their taxes. Taking more money from the man who goes out to work long hours each day so the family next door can go on living a life on benefits without working - is that fair? Fairness means giving people what they deserve, and what people deserve depends on how they behave. If you really can't work, we'll look after you. But if you can work but refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.
09.32 Despite all the fuss over the child benefit cut in political circles, the vast majority of the public apparently support the plan. A YouGov poll found 83 per cent of people surveyed were in favour of the cut and another 86 per cent agreed with a £500-a-week cap the benefits unemployed families can claim. Sighs of relief all round in the Hyatt Hotel.

09.20 George Osborne was rushed into making his announcement on child benefit reforms by media pressure, Iain Duncan Smith has suggested. The Work and Pensions Secretary said last night at a fringe event that "a sort of interest" fuelled by the media "dwelling" on the issue had prompted the news to be brought forward.

09.09 A look at today's papers. The front pages are once again almost universally dominated by the child benefit row. While yesterday the focus was on the backlash against George Osborne, today the spotlight has turned on Cameron after he apologised for failing to include the plan in the party's manifesto. "CAMERON SAYS SORRY TO MUMS" bellows the Daily Mail. The Independent splashes a picture of a weary-looking Cameron under the headline: "Caught in the Eye of the Storm". "Cameron 'sorry' child benefit cut was not in Tory manifesto," says The Guardian. The Daily Telegraph's headline reads: "Child benefit: I should have warned you, admits PM". Needless to say, The Daily Express has splashed on Princess Diana.

08.56 Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome blog, tweeted the following at around 2am last night: "Off to bed after News Intl party. PM and most of Cabinet were there. Walked back to hotel with @StephanShaxper. Good night!" Could Cameron's sleepless night have had causes less pure than a crying baby daughter?

08.45 As if a grilling from Paxman wasn't bad enough, the Telegraph's Janet Daley has a few stern words for Theresa May. The Home Secretary made a "rousing enough" speech to conference yesterday in which she said that hooliganism is a blight on communities and ought to be stopped. Tell us something we don't know, writes Daley.

Her major theme – the need to redefine “anti-social behaviour” as crime and to treat it as serious police business – sounds rather quaint given what we have known for twenty years about the connection between hooliganism and criminality. “Anti-social behaviour” is not innocuous. It drives decent people off the streets and makes them feel unsafe in their own neighbourhoods so that real criminality can thrive in the vacuum.
08.35 Theresa May underwent a grilling from Jeremy Paxman last night. In an echo of his infamous 1997 Michael Howard interview, Newsnight's resident Rottweiler pressed the Home Secretary 11 times on when she first heard about the child benefit cut.

May persistently refused to give a direct answer, saying the decision was "a matter for the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions". She added: "No, I didn't first hear about it on breakfast television yesterday". Paxman interrupted the Home Secretary while she was speaking to say: "You haven't given me a date." She replied: "Are you asking me for a date, Jeremy?" to laughter and applause from the audience. That seemed to shut him up.

08.25 After meeting his wife and daughter off the train yesterday, Cameron embarked on a round of broadcast interviews in which he apologised for not warning voters that child benefit could be cut in his party's manifesto. It was a change of tack from his assault on the airwaves earlier in the day, in which he vigorously defended the move as "tough but fair" and refused to acknowledge that it was a bolt from the blue. Had Samantha, who stands to lose thousands in child benefit payments in 2013, given her husband a flea in his ear?

In an interview with ITV News, Cameron said: "In the election campaign, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats said there are going to be cuts, there are going to be difficult cuts and we outlined some of those cuts.

"We did not outline all of those cuts, we did not know exactly the situation we were going to inherit. But yes I acknowledge this was not in our manifesto. Of course I'm sorry about that, but I think we need to be clear about why we're doing what we're doing."

Throughout the election campaign, Cameron and George Osborne repeatedly assured voters that child benefit would not be cut.

08.20 Cameron is also expected to use his speech later to tell delegates that spending cuts will "not be easy" and warn that jobs will be lost and programmes cut.

08.15 Plans to kickstart David Cameron's "big society" through a series of US-style town hall meetings have been ditched after the first event descended into acrimony over public spending cuts. The Big Society Network, which was organising the town hall tour with support from civil servants, says the open format of the meetings "wasn't really working". The network is now rethinking its tactics, the Guardian reports.

08.00 David Cameron will use his speech today to hail small business owners as the "doers and grafters" who can get Britain's economy moving again. His address will be dominated by the Government's bleak economic inheritance from Labour and will seek to explain how the country can be turned around through sheer hard work. He will say:

It will be the doers and the grafters, the inventors and the entrepreneurs who get this country going. Yes, it will be the wealth-creators – and no, those aren’t dirty words. I can’t tell you how much I admire people who leave the comfort of a regular wage to strike out on their own. I’ll always remember what the owner of a small business told me once. He said ‘when I was starting out the government didn’t lift a finger to help me. Then as soon as I started making money they were all over me trying to take it away. That’s completely the wrong way round. We need to get behind our wealth creators.
07.50 Here's what's coming up at the conference today.

10.00 - 11.00 A session on defence and foreign affairs with Liam Fox, Defence Secretary, Timothy Kirkhope, Conservative MEP, and William Hague, Foreign Secretary.
11.00 - 11.25 A session on the the 2012 Olympics with Jeremy Hunt, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary.
11.30 - 12.25 Session on "devolved nations and new politics" with Cheryl Gillan, Welsh Secretary, Owen Paterson, Northern Ireland Secretary, Nick Bourne leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Annabel Goldie, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons.
14.30 - 15.30 The Prime Minister's speech.
07.30 David Cameron is waking up alongside his wife and newborn baby daughter in Birmingham on the morning of his first set piece conference speech as Prime Minister. But is he ruing the sleepless night that he yesterday said he would relish?

However bleary he may already be feeling this morning, Cameron will realise he has a bigger headache to contend with when he picks up the morning papers. Despite a raft of big announcements at yesterday's conference, the front pages are still dominated by the child benefit row that erupted on Monday. Can he recapture the initiative in his speech today and end the conference on a high? Stay with us to find out.

We'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis throughout the day and live streaming all the major speeches. Meanwhile, here are the five key things you need to know about yesterday.

As the row over child benefit rages on, George Osborne was forced to write to Tory MPs justifying the move and David Cameron rushed out a promise of a tax break for married couples to offset the impact on stay-at-home-mums.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, unveiled £2000 grants to help the unemployed set up their own businesses and said his "Universal Credit" reform would get people off benefits by making sure work pays more.
Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, announced plans to make inmates work 40-hour weeks for minimum wage which have been broadly welcomed by prison reform campaigners.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced plans to hand communities powers to force police to investigate anti-social behaviour.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced that £70m saved by slashing bureaucracy will be spent on home adaptations and rehabilitation for 35,000 patients discharged form hospital this year.

Telegraph