Healey pledges ‘reindustrialisation’ through arms spending

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The former defence secretary, who quit that post to press for a bigger arms budget, announced new docks for submarines on the Clyde and major investment by military supplier Rolls-Royce in factories across the country.

Mr Healey said the Rolls-Royce investment in Derby, Bristol, Glasgow and Rotherham was an example of Labour’s “new age of industrialisation.”

His speech followed similar sweeping commitments to accelerate arms spending by Defence Secretary Wes Streeting and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.

The Chancellor also embraced the Treasury’s fiscal rules, which have constrained government spending plans, with the same fervour as his predecessor Rachel Reeves.

Mr Healey said: “On day one as chancellor, I said my first duty is fiscal discipline. We can’t succeed without it.

“The Prime Minister and I are united in meeting the fiscal rules, balancing the books with a buffer against uncertainty, controlling borrowing to bring down inflation and reducing long-term pressures on our finances and confidence.

“That commitment is so important. There is nothing progressive about losing control, because it’s always working people who pay for it.”

The speech hardly represented the break with 40 years of neoliberalism that delegates had been hoping to hear.

Indeed, Mr Healey pledged to help businesses reach “new levels of profits,” since it was they that “create this country’s jobs, wealth and growth.”

Nonetheless, it was welcomed by GMB general secretary Gary Smith, who said it “was full of hope and optimism for a reindustrialised Britain” and that his union’s members “can’t wait to get started.”

And Unison general secretary Andrea Egan said there was “no path to growth and better living standards without improving essential services,” calling for an end to the “scourge of outsourcing” and taxing the wealthiest more.

The return of the Union Learning Fund, set up under the last Labour government and abolished by the Tories, was welcomed by unions.

Train drivers’ union Aslef general secretary Dave Calfe said it was “the right thing to do — for workers, for unions, for Britain. It gives us all hope again.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said that restoring the fund was “plain common sense,” while transport union TSSA general secretary Maryan Eslamdoust said it had “the potential to give workers the chance to fulfil their dreams.”

Mr Healey also announced £100 million for a new apprenticeship scheme, to be controlled through regional mayors.

The money will come from cuts in the social security budget. There may be more such to come, as Mr Healey also said: “Benefits should be a bridge to work, not a trap that people can’t escape.

“It is simply not progressive to allow a bigger and bigger benefits bill and a system which offers an income but doesn’t offer a future.”

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