Miliband calls for 'new bargain' on economy

27 Sep 11
Labour leader Ed Miliband has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to recognise that the government's economic plan is not working.

By Richard Johnstone | 27 September 2011

Labour leader Ed Miliband has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to recognise that the government’s economic plan is not working.

Ed Miliband Labour party conference

In his speech to the Labour party conference, Miliband said the economic recovery had stalled due to the government’s policies.

‘The current plan to raise taxes and cut spending more dramatically than any other country is not working,’ he argued.

The Labour leader said Cameron represented that ‘last gasp of the old rules’ of an economy that too often rewarded ‘the wrong people with the wrong values’.

Admitting that in government Labour had lost trust on the economy, Miliband promised to ‘strike a new bargain’, that would be built on the ‘values of hard work, something for something, the long term’. 

He criticised some companies as asset strippers, including the private equity-owned Southern Cross care home group, which wentout of business earlier this year.

The company had been ‘treating tens of thousands of elderly people like commodities to be bought and sold’, he said, telling delegates that this ‘must never happen again in the new economy we build’.

A future Labour government would be on the side of what he called Britain’s producers, who ‘train, invest, invent, sell’, not ‘predators just interested in the fast buck’.All major government contracts would go to the producer firms, he said, who would have to commit to training young people with apprenticeships.

Miliband criticised the government’s reform plans in the health service, saying that the government was introducing these ‘old values’ to the NHS.

He also told delegates that the welfare state must be reformed, as some people are taking ‘something for nothing’, with benefits ‘too easy to come by’.

Taking the example of social housing, he said councils should ‘recognise the contribution that people are making’ when deciding who should get priority on the housing list.

‘When we have a housing shortage, choices have to be made. Do we treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t?

‘My answer is no. Our first duty should be to help the person who shows responsibility.’

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