Jo Stevens – 2022 Speech to Labour Party Conference

The speech made by Jo Stevens on 26 September 2022.

Chair, Conference, thank you.

It’s wonderful to be back in Liverpool. A great city with a great heart and on a clear day, great views of Wales too.

It’s a real honour to address conference, as Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Wales.

Firstly, I want to thank our Welsh Labour staff who always go above and beyond for our Party.

And our wonderful Shadow Wales team in Parliament – Gerald Jones, Jessica Morden and, in the House of Lords, Debbie Wilcox.

But I particularly want to thank all of our Welsh Labour MPs.

There are 22 of us, all working hard every single day for people in Wales, as part of our strong, united and determined team of Welsh Labour representatives across our Councils, Senedd and Parliament.

From Mark Tami in the North to Tonia Antoniazzi in the Southwest – every single one of our Welsh Labour MPs makes a difference for the people we represent.

And talking about making a difference, who better to exemplify that than our brilliant Deputy Leader of Welsh Labour, Carolyn Harris.

A campaigning machine.

Through her children’s funeral fund campaign Carolyn achieved something remarkable for bereaved families in the worst possible circumstances of their lives.

Not just in Wales, but in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland too. And she didn’t stop there.

Now, both women and men, for the first time in my life, are talking at home, in workplaces and across the media about the menopause.

About its impact on women and the need to improve healthcare, medical training and employment practices.

Carolyn has helped to change women’s lives because of this.

Carolyn – from all of us – thank you. We are very lucky to have you.

Conference – this year marks 100 years of Labour winning the majority of seats in Wales in every single general election.

It is a remarkable achievement and reflects Wales’s central role in the history of our Party and across our Labour and Trade Union movement.

We also celebrate 23 years of devolution in Wales.

Devolution delivered by a Labour government to the people of Wales who have put their trust in us at every Senedd election since and know that we are on their side.

But we never take a single vote for granted. We have to earn every vote.

None of those election successes could have been achieved without your help and support.

To everyone across our Labour and Trade Union movement who has given their time and effort campaigning all year round to help win elections – and persuaded others to do the same – thank you. You are brilliant. And I know you will continue being brilliant.

Whether it’s in a general election, Senedd or our hugely successful Council elections earlier this year – following which the Tories don’t run a single Council in Wales – people in Wales see that Labour is working for them.

We listen, we share values and aspirations, we earn trust, and we deliver for Wales as a team.
And in the most difficult of times – during the pandemic and now during the Conservative cost of living crisis – people across the UK can look to Wales to see the difference that a Labour government makes.

No reckless Tory borrowing billions instead of taxing the £170bn excess profits of the oil and gas producers, or scrapping the cap on investment bankers’ bonuses – our Labour government in Wales is using every lever it has, to put money back in the pockets of people who need it most.

• Extending free school meals and providing free breakfasts
• A real living wage for social care workers
• Help with council tax bills
• Giving students the best deal anywhere in the UK
• Extending our childcare offer to parents in training and education

Labour is building our stronger, fairer, greener Wales.

And there’ll be no Tory fracking in Wales, Conference.

Wales will play its part in powering the UK economy with renewable energy creating the stronger, fairer, greener Britain that Rachel Reeves spoke so brilliantly about this morning.

But our job, Conference, our job, is to make sure that we get Keir into 10 Downing Street leading a UK Labour government working hand in hand with our Welsh Labour government.

So Conference, it gives me such pleasure to welcome my friend and Cardiff neighbour – our brilliant Welsh Labour leader and First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford.