Yvette Cooper – 2024 Speech at Labour Party Conference

The speech made by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, on 24 September 2024.

Pooja, thank you. Thank you for your words. Thank you for your courage.

It is just two years since Ronan was killed, but Pooja has not stopped fighting for him since.

Fighting for Ronan. Fighting for other children, for other mums and dads.

Because no parent should have to go through this unimaginable pain.

So Pooja, we salute you, we support you, and now we are in government we will back you in your fight to save young lives.

Ronan’s teenage killers ordered the ninja sword online.

No checks. No questions asked.

Lethal weapons put straight in the hands of children.

So this Labour Government will bring in new laws to crackdown on dangerous online sales and the gangs who draw children in, alongside new youth hubs to steer young people away from violence – a teenage Sure Start to build hope in the future.

And we will make it a mission for our whole country to halve knife crime in a decade.

And yes, this Labour Government will pass Ronan’s law – a ban on ninja swords.

This Labour Government will.

It’s fifteen years since I’ve been able to say those words at a Labour Party conference.

All those years we said things but couldn’t do them.

So don’t let anyone tell you politics doesn’t matter.

Because six months ago, our party tried to ban ninja swords, but we didn’t have enough MPs to win that vote.

Because of the election – because of the change you campaigned for – now we do.

Ten years ago, I called for buffer zones around abortion clinics, but we weren’t in government. We couldn’t make it happen. Now we can and yes we have.

Because no woman should be harassed on the way to a healthcare appointment that is her legal right.

It can be hard to trust in change when things have felt so tough for so long.

And a year ago at this conference, I warned about the depth of the damage the Tories had done in 14 years.

How they’d taken a wrecking ball to the criminal justice system so criminals laugh at the law.

How they left communities to fracture so criminals and extremists step in.

Conference, eight weeks ago, when the unbearable news broke about a horrendous attack in Southport on little children at a summer dance club, from all across the country our hearts went out to the loved ones of little Alice, Bebe and Elsie. And that’s where all of our thoughts should have stayed.

The following day I met the police officers, paramedics and firefighters who were first on the scene that day, and whose bravery in the face of such trauma saved many young lives.

But within hours the same Southport police were under attack, facing missiles, bottles, and bricks.

The most shocking, violent insult to a grieving community and the police officers protecting them.

A total, total disgrace.

In copycat violence over the following days, stirred up from a safe distance by the grifters and the agitators online, we saw looting of shops, attacks on mosques, a Citizens Advice bureau torched, an asylum hotel set alight, and people targeted on the streets of Britain because of the colour of their skin.

And here in Liverpool, on County Road, the burning of Spellow Library.

A place where children go to read left in ashes.

And I spoke to some of those children who live around the library in Walton.

One told me how scared she was that night, how her mum switched off all the lights in the house, and told her to stay quiet and sit on the stairs as bins were set alight along her street.

Don’t anyone tell me that was protest.

Don’t tell me that was about immigration, or policing, or poverty.

Plenty of people have strong views on immigration, on crime, on the NHS and more, but they don’t pick up bricks and throw them at the police.

They don’t set light to buildings with people inside.

It was arson.

It was racism.

It was thuggery.

It was crime.

And, you know, it happened because criminals thought they would get away with it.

They saw the cracks in the system, the impunity that built up through the Tory years.

And when they decided to run riot those early August days, they thought no one would stop them.

They were wrong.

With Keir Starmer’s leadership, this Labour Government made clear that we would back our police, not blame them.

We would stand up for our courts, not undermine them.

We would pull our communities together, not divide them.

We stood up for the rule of law, decent people stood up for their communities, and, together, we put the disorder down.

But I’ll be honest I’ve been shocked by the response from some of those in political parties on the right who once claimed to care about law and order.

After rioters attacked the police, they should have given full-throated backing to our brave officers.

Instead, too often we’ve seen them undermine the integrity and authority of the police, even making excuses for the mob.

If you remember, back in the run up to Armistice Day last year, disgraceful slurs made against the police which made it harder for them to do their job were treated as a sacking offence for a Tory Home Secretary.

A year on, those same slurs have become an article of faith for every Tory leadership contender.

It is shameful what that party has become.

The Tories, with their mates in Reform, are just becoming right wing wreckers.

Undermining respect for the law, trying to fracture the very bonds that keep communities safe.

They have nothing to offer but fear, division and anger.

But that’s not who we are.

That’s not what Britain is about.

Our country has always championed respect and the rule of law.

That’s what this Labour Party will always stand up for – the party of law and order, now a Government of law and order once more.

And nor will we let disorder and violence silence a serious debate on immigration.

Something that has been missing for too long amidst the chaos, the gimmicks and the damaging, ramped up rhetoric.

A serious government sees that net migration has trebled because overseas recruitment has soared while training has been cut right back, and says net migration must come down as we properly train young people here in the UK.

A serious government sees an asylum system in chaos and say we have to clear the backlog and end asylum hotels.

And a serious government looks at the criminal gangs who are profitting from undermining our border security while women and children are crushed to death in crowded, flimsy small boats and says they’ve got away with it for too long – we will not stand for this vile trade in human lives.

A serious government knows that immigration is important, and that is why it needs to be properly managed and controlled so the system is fair – so rules are properly respected and enforced but we never again see a shameful repeat of the Windrush scandal that let British citizens down.

So in three months, we’ve set up the Border Security Command, launched new investment in covert operations, high tech investigations to go after the gangs, with proper enforcement and returns.

And instead of spending £700 million and employing 1000 people to send four volunteers to Rwanda, we are boosting our border security instead.

Because the best way to do that is to work with countries on the other side of our borders, not to just stand on the shoreline shouting at the sea.

So from our border security to our national security – combatting changing terror, state and cyber threats  – to the security and safety of our local streets, we know that security is the bedrock on which communities can come together, and on which all the opportunities Labour has always fought for are built.

You don’t get social justice if you don’t have justice.

And respect is the very foundation of our democracy.

And those Labour values are at the heart of all we do.

And they are at the heart of our mission for safer streets.

Where across the country where for too long rising town centre and street crime have been driving people away from our high streets, corroding the fabric of our communities.

So this Labour Government will bring in new powers on antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and off-road bikes and we will put neighbourhood police back in our communities and back on the beat.

And yes, after years of Co-op and USDAW campaigning, this Labour Government will introduce a new law on assaults on shopworkers, because everyone has the right to work in freedom from fear.

And you know Conference, it is long overdue.

At long last this government will treat violence against women and girls as the national emergency it really is.

When Raneem Oudeh called the police four times the night she was killed, no one came.

So in Raneem’s name, this Labour Government will put domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Overhaul protection orders and go after dangerous perpetrators who put lives at risk.

New laws on spiking and online image abuse.

A radical, ambitious Labour mission – for the whole of Government, for the whole country – to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

Because we cannot, and we will not, let the next generation of women and girls face the same violence as the last. Our daughters deserve better than this.

And why do we do all this?

For the same reason that communities came together here in Liverpool and across the country to clear up the damage that rioters had done.

To rebuild the broken mosque wall in Southport.

To find a new Citizens Advice centre in Sunderland.

To clean up the streets.

Because the simple belief that we all share is this: our streets do not belong to the gangs, yobs, and thieves. Our streets do not belong to the racists, extremists and thugs. And our streets will never belong to the stalkers, abusers or rapists.

These streets belong to us all. And it is time to take them back.

So Conference, of course the work is hard.

As a poet once said, ‘our sleeves will grow ragged from rolling them up’.

But if you need hope that together we can deliver, just look down the road again at Spellow Library.

After the fire, a young Mum from Netherton, here with us this morning, Alex McCormick, started a fundraiser.

Donations have poured in from all over the world, thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of pounds.

And already the Labour Council, Mayor and community are restoring and rebuilding Spellow Library, better than ever before.

So when Alex said: “Let’s show the world what community in Liverpool really means”.

She did her city proud, and she did our country proud.

Up from the ashes, a symbol of hope.

A model of what our country can do.

So leave the politics of fear, division and decline to others.

The politics of hope is ours.

The future belongs to us all.

Let change begin.

Thank you Conference.