"Time for a new shared agenda for better public services" - Dave Prentis at Labour Party Conference‏

Full text of Dave Prentis speech moving public services composite at Labour Party Conference 27 September 2010: On 6th May our whole world changed. Last Saturday we elected our new leader, and today we begin the task of defending all that we hold dear. Our public services facing an attack, the like of which we’ve never seen. A dishonest coalition of vandals, bent on destruction. Using the financial crisis to plunder our welfare state - take a chainsaw to our public services.

“Planning cuts on an unimaginable scale, our National Health Service, our schools system broken up. Local government to be handed over to powerful contractors. Big corporations cream off the profitable parts while vulnerable users and communities, the poor, left to fend for themselves.

“And everything they do, justified by a tissue of lies: they’re saying it was labour’s over-spending that caused the deficit, they’re saying labour wasted money on public sector non-jobs featherbedded public sector workers. Gold-plated pensions. They’re setting private sector workers against public sector workers.

“We have to challenge those lies. The truth is this isn’t about public versus private. It’s about haves against have-nots. The truth is it was public spending that prevented us falling into a deeper depression. The truth is it is this coalition’s cuts that will throw whole regions, and maybe the whole economy, back into recession.

“And if you want to talk about ‘non-jobs’, instead of slandering NHS staff, teaching assistants, and community workers, what about the casino bankers? What about the hedge fund gamblers? What did they do to protect our country? What did they do to deserve the bonuses and bailouts they’ve had?

“It is they who should be doing more for less. More for their country, less for themselves. Conference, we should be proud of our record, proud of the improvements made to public services. Yes, proud of the valuable jobs we created.

“But we didn’t get everything right. We were at our best when we worked together. Social partnership, in schools, hospitals and many local authorities, delivered huge gains. But too often this was drowned out by the argument. Too many top-down reorganisations, wasting resources and sapping morale.

“Why was it so hard to get our labour government to understand, that our members’ concerns about privatisation weren’t about dogma; they weren’t about resistance to change. We had a problem with privatisation, because we saw what it meant on the frontline: on hospital corridors, in school kitchens, in care homes, it means poverty pay and punishing hours, it means casualisation and understaffing, it means corners cut on training and investment and our members know it means a bad deal for the public.

“We sent mixed messages about public services - ‘any willing provider’, PFI, privatising care services, eroding Labour’s support. If Labour seemed to have no faith in our own public services it’s little wonder that the wider public became confused.

“That’s why we want to work with Ed to forge a new shared agenda for better public services. And we want to work with labour councillors to find alternatives to cut-price privatisation. Engaging and developing in-house staff to deliver more efficient and responsive services to the public. And it’s why we need to be clear in our opposition to this coalition’s attempt to tear down all that we have achieved.

“It doesn’t mean being in favour of waste, or always defending the status quo. But the public need to know which side off the street we are on. They should be in no doubt that labour is on the side of ordinary families who want a national health service they can rely on, a good local school for their children, proper care for their older relatives.

“Conference, we know this country faces tough choices but that means getting tough with those who have had it easy. So let’s ask those who can afford it to pay their share. Let’s see real action to stop the tax evasion and avoidance by the rich and let’s have a Robin Hood tax on the banks, to pay for the damage they’ve done.

“Fairness is what our people are crying out for. Together we must show there is an alternative we must work with labour councillors to protect services and communities. No support for those who privatise. We must work to kick the Tories and Liberal Democrats out of councils next may. We must work with Ed to win back this country.

“Trade unions and Labour, standing together. One movement standing up for the fairer Britain our people are crying out for. David Cameron, your honeymoon is over, Labour is back.”