Wes Streeting

They can shout all they like, Madam Deputy Speaker. The fact is that the former Chancellor restored the confidence of the markets after the Conservatives trashed Britain’s reputation with their catastrophic mini-Budget. She created the platform for our Labour Government to invest in public services, protect the most vulnerable, foster innovation and navigate the headwinds of the last two years. During her time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey established a record that the Conservative Front Bench could not begin to touch. Those are the facts. None the less, against the backdrop of the enormous challenges this country faces, the Chancellor, as he set out yesterday, is taking action to tackle the cost of living and give households breathing space today: help for 20 million households to heat their homes this winter; freezing fuel duty to keep prices down at the pump; helping with the everyday cost of the weekly shop so that people have more money in their pockets; action on energy bills; and the minimum wage, the national living wage and the state pension all going up to help people out. No one is suggesting that these measures solve everything for everyone, everywhere, all at once, but people can see that we are doing everything we can, as fast as we can, to give them breathing space today and fresh hope for the future; to show that this Government and this Prime Minister have got their backs; and to show that we can still do big things as a nation, that Government can make a difference to people’s lives, and that Britain is a country we can still believe in. That is important, as we look beyond the optimism of the first 100 days of this new Government and our new Prime Minister to the brighter future that lies ahead for our country if we make the right choices. Yes, we face great challenges, but the character of a nation is not defined by the challenges it faces, but how it chooses to respond to them. And be in no doubt: it is a choice. We choose not to be daunted by the scale of the challenge, but to be motivated by it—to face the future not with fear, but with confidence, and to choose hope. We choose it because we know what hope can do. Look at what this Labour Government have delivered in the past two years: half a million children out of poverty; waiting lists down by a quarter of a million; the asylum backlog down 60% in a year; small boat crossings at their lowest in six years; the fastest growing economy in the G7 in the first half of this year; free breakfast clubs feeding 680,000 children; six train operators brought back into public ownership; and defence spending up by £14 billion compared with the Conservatives’ final year in office. Lots done and lots more still to do, but so many reasons to believe that our best days lie ahead.