Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith says Tories imposed too much regulation when they were in power – UK politics live

And here is Griffith’s peroration.

The time is coming when Britain decides it’s had enough of mortgaging its future, where hard work triumphs, where people will no longer be used as cash machines for the benefit of others, while their own hopes and dreams slip from their grasp …

When the story of Britain’s next economic comeback is written, it will be a Conservative story. Every generation has its destiny. This is ours.

Griffith says he wants young people to feel hope.

What those speeches and banners in Liverpool last week failed to understand. Labour thinks hope is something you can hand out, like a type of food stamp.

But hope is something people find for themselves when they believe their lives are getting better, that they have more choices, more freedom.

A society that cannot offer hope to its young people has little hope for its own future.

As parent of lockdown generation children myself, I feel this strongly.

I sometimes see the uncertainty in the eyes of that generation, their worries whether things will really be OK.

Too many are already voting with their feet.

Last year, an average of 350 young people left Britain to live elsewhere every single day, the equivalent of a jumbo jet, taking with it their hopes, dreams and ambitions.

Because, like all young people down the generations, they are looking for better jobs, a better life because they see other societies offering hope, while Britain under Labour offers more of the same.

Many Labour MPs spend their time talking about safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to come here.

Well, what about safe and legal routes for our own young people to get a job, buy a home, have a good life? Does that not count?

What kind of government is so passive in the face of its young people leaving?

And what kind of future would it be where grandparents must travel across continents just to spend time with their grandchildren?

Conference, it’s our duty to offer those young people a better future.

Griffith confirms his plans to cut red tape announced overnight. (See 8.08am.)

And he confirms the Tories will get rid of the “job-destroying” Employment Rights Act.

Griffith says the Tories would get rid of Labour’s proposed council tax surcharge for expensive homes.

Andy Burnham is recruiting an army of snoopers. That’s right. In Labour’s Britain, they don’t use satellites and drones to defend our country, but to spy on citizens to see if you’ve a particularly well-kept garden.

It’s an anti-growth tax that will distort the housing market and remove the incentive to make home improvements.

So, conference, today I can announce that we will scrap Labour’s family homes tax.

On the subject of the packing tax, Griffith cites this as an example of how the last Tory government took the wrong approach.

It’s a tax that most people have never heard of, but I include it to make a much bigger point.

It’s the sort of thing the old Conservative party went along with. They would have said, don’t make a fuss or it’s only a couple of billion.

Well, conference no more.

We are unafraid to tell the truth.

And when we see Labour inflicting economic self-harm, doing damage to businesses or adding extra costs on families, we will never hesitate to call them out.

Griffith confirms he is cutting what he calls Labour’s packaging tax.

(Labour points out that this tax was introduced by the Tories – see 9.22am.)

Griffith says cutting taxes will be his “North Star” as chancellor

I didn’t come here to raise taxes. I came to lower them.

No country in history has ever taxed its way to prosperity. So we will cut taxes, but only when we can afford to do so. And always saying clearly how we will fund that within our golden economic rule.

Like Nigel Lawson, he will try to get rid of at least one tax in every budget, he says.

Griffith confirms he wants to cut the size of the civil service back to what it was in 2016.

We’ll make further reductions on overseas aid, net zero subsidies and government advertising, and we’ll crack down on the health care, tourism in the NHS and stop foreign abuse of the student loan system.

Griffith says is comfortable taking unpopular decisions.

We will have to be the ones to make the hard choices and tackle the debt, to help our country live within its means.

As a finance director for more than a decade, I long ago made peace with the idea you can strive to be respected, but you should not expect to be popular.

Griffith says other countries have done better because they have deregulated more.

Other countries chose the other path the path of free markets and enterprise. And unsurprisingly, they are winning.

Three decades ago, Britain was the ninth richest country in the world.

Today, we are barely in the top 30.

Britain is competing in a global race with leaner, fitter economies while carrying too much weight on our back.

Griffith says the Tories are fighting a battle of ideas.

Too many in society today believe that business is bad, wealth is unworthy, and that despite all the evidence to the contrary, life would only be better if we had greater public control, more regulations and higher taxes, and that anything might be improved by putting Angela Rayner in charge.

Today’s left does not even understand the basic truth that you can eat the goose, or you can have a supply of eggs, but you can’t do both.

Griffith says the right has failed to make the case for free markets. And he says, when the Tories were in government, they did too much to restrict economic freedom.

For those of us who believe in free markets, in enterprise, in lowering the burden of regulation, that is partly our failure, because for too long we failed to properly make our case.

Despite Ronald Reagan celebrating Britain as the birthplace of economic freedom, in government we allowed restrictions on everything from the type of car you could buy, how you could heat your home, to banning adverts for certain types of yoghurt.

Griffith starts by saying Britain has a debt problem, a tax problem and a growth problem. But above all it has a Labour problem, he says.

You cannot have a stronger country without a strong economy, and it will take us Conservatives to make our economy strong again.

I joined our party as a teenager under Mrs. Thatcher because I was convinced the right way was Conservative.

He says, like Kemi Badenoch, he is not a career politician. He had a 25-year career in business.

He says when he was young, he was able to buy a home “because back then London was actually building homes”.

Under the Thatcher government and afterwards, Britain was recovering, he says.

It was an era in which anything felt possible. A new terminal at Heathrow, urban regeneration, driverless trains on the Dockland Light Railway. The first mobile phone calls on networks built by business.

Ater difficult years, Britain was once again on the rise conference. That feeling is what we need again today.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, is about to give his speech to the Tory conference.

Solar Energy UK, the trade body for the solar energy industry, has criticised the Conservatives’ proposal to get rid of the Future Homes Standard. (See 8.51am.)

In a statement, Chris Hewitt, its chief executive, said:

Everyone can see that solar and batteries are the quickest and most effective way for families to take back control of their energy bills. I would urge the Conservatives to reconsider abandoning a policy that they were instrumental in developing. It is far cheaper to design and build a new home with solar panels than having families pay to retrofit afterwards.

Like having carpets, a fridge or indoor plumbing, generating your own power from your own roof is part of modern living. I am glad to say that more than half of new homes are already designed this way due to the regulatory standards that are in force already. Reversing course now makes no sense.

The Future Homes Standards, which fully comes into force in 2028, requires new homes to have low-carbon heating.

Here is some more criticism of Andrew Griffith’s plans to slash regulations for builders. (See 8.08am.)

These are from Sir Jonathan Jones, a former head of the government’s legal department.

I’ve lost track of the number of “red tape challenges” I’ve lived through – commitments to “slash regulations”, “roll back the frontiers of the state”, blah blah. Sure have a go. Repealing obscure, already obsolete rules doesn’t count

It turns out that much “red tape” is not imposed by bureaucrats or lawyers but the result of conscious political choices which can only be reversed at a political and practical cost

These are from James Murray, editor-in-chief of BusinessGreen.

The pitch here seems to be, ‘we’ll build the houses and infrastructure we failed to build during the 14 years we were in government, but we’ll do it in the most damaging and lowest quality way possible’.

Also worth noting planning is just one part of what the Environment Agency and Natural England do. This would be an enormous change and even if you don’t care about the environmental impact of development there’d be huge disruption to work on flood resilience, waste crime, nature recovery, etc.

Is there anyone who seriously thinks there’s a quick and easy way to cut the price of a new home by £50k, which has just been being ignored by policymakers?

Scrapping the Future Homes Standard will deliver cost reductions for developers, but it’s hugely unlikely they’d be passed on to buyers and those buyers would be left with homes that cost thousands of pounds a year more to run.

Meanwhile, the alternative plan to tackle climate change Badenoch promised when she announced the Tories would scrap net zero targets is still yet to materialise. Instead we have yet another plan to lock in fossil fuel reliance for decades.

In Badenoch’s new The Right Way document climate change is mentioned once outside references to the CCC and Climate Change Act. It says it is real, but then proposes a plan that would lock in higher emissions for decades. It pledges to replace the Climate Change Act, but won’t say what with.

Climate resilience, climate adaptation, and nature are simply not mentioned.

And this is from Jill Rutter from the Institute for Government thinktank.

You might hate the Environment Agency and Natural England – but am not sure how good your evidence base is that there is a latent majority for poorer air quality, more pollution and (even more) destruction of nature #CPC2026 – and homes that are going to require big retrofits