This Government is working night and day to repel this virus and we will succeed because we have seen how the country has responded before, with the energy and self-sacrifice of the NHS, the care workers and the armed forces.
But after all we have been through this year it isn’t enough just to go back to normal. We are resolving not to go back but to build back better:
- Build a greener economy - becoming the world leader in low cost clean power generation, creating jobs across this country.
- Build more homes – extending the Conservative dream of home ownership.
- Build more hospitals and rebuild more schools, so public services have the tools they need to give everyone the opportunity to get on.
- Transform the provision of skills with a new lifetime skills guarantee.
- Build the infrastructure that will transform and level up all parts of the UK.
- Build a better United Kingdom.
Though is seems tough now when we are tackling this disease it is a measure of the greatness of this country that we are simply not going to let it blow us off course. Because even in the darkest moments we can see the bright future ahead, we can see how to build it, and we are going to build it together.
That is why this government will build back better and we will do what all governments have shirked for decades:
- Delivering on our promises to the NHS – more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses. This government is pressing on with its plan for 48 new hospitals. That’s the eight already underway, and then 40 more between now and 2030. We need to get on with recruiting the 50,000 more nurses – and we are proud that we have 14,000 more since this government came into office; 14,000 more nurses now, under this Conservative government – and yet we will go further.
- Doubling funding for scientific research – creating jobs backing British science. We have seen the frantic global scrabble for vaccines, for therapies – and so now we are doubling our funding for all types of revolutionary scientific breakthroughs, with a national Advanced Research and Projects Agency.
- We will fix the injustice of care home funding – delivering on our manifesto pledge. We need a long-term solution for social care – that’s why we have an ambitious three point plan. Covid has shone a spotlight on the difficulties of that sector in all parts of the UK – and to build back better we must respond, care for the carers as they care for us.
- Fighting crime and delivering 20,000 new police officers. We are fulfilling our manifesto commitment to put another 20,000 officers out on the street – we have already recruited almost 5,000. We are also backing the police, and protecting the public, by changing the law to stop the early release of serious sexual and violent offenders, and stopping the whole criminal justice system from being hamstrung by lefty human rights lawyers.
- Town by town we are rooting out the county lines drugs gangs that are causing so much misery – and in that sense our agenda is basic social justice.
- Investing massively in schools - delivering on our promise to raise per pupil funding, to £4,000 per head in primary school and £,5000 per head in secondary school, as well as a £30,000 starting salary for teachers.
- Exploring the value of one-to-one teaching, both for pupils who are in danger of falling behind, and for those who are of exceptional abilities. We can all see the difficulties, such intensive teaching could be transformational, and of massive reassurance to parents. It is in a crisis like this that new approaches are born.
- Transforming skills with a Lifetime Skills Guarantee. We have broken down the senseless barrier between Further Education and Higher Education, so that it is just as easy to get the funding you need for a training course in engineering or IT as for a degree in politics or economics. We are offering every adult four years of funded post-18 education – a lifetime skills guarantee.
