Labour delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of the critical infrastructure motion, proposed by Unite and Aslef, calling for “UK energy to be brought back into public ownership, starting with the National Grid’s electricty and gas networks”. The motion also called for HS2 to be built in full – not just to Manchester, but the eastern leg to Leeds too.

Neither of those proposals are Labour policy, and Keir Starmer has repeatedly ruled out renationalising energy companies, and so technically you could view this as a defeat. But the leadership did not seem to put any effort into getting delegates to vote the composite down. The vote was taken at the end of proceedings, and it passed on a show of hands. It is as if the leadership doesn’t mind it passing provided the unions don’t mind it not counting for anything. At this conference there is so much unity that even the defeats are harmonious.

This is from the Labour for a Green New Deal campaign.

BREAKING: Labour Conference votes to support public ownership of energy ⚡️

Delegates defy Labour leadership by voting overwhelmingly in favour of motion from @unitetheunion, @ASLEFunion & @TSSAunion 👊

Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, is arguably the most powerful Labour politician in executive office in the UK. The Conservatives regularly cite Wales as an example of Labour’s poor record in government – because of NHS waiting lists, and, recently, the de facto 20mph speed limit for residential areas – but Drakeford argued Wales was a model.

He did not mention the 20mph speed limit. The Welsh government has defended this strongly, saying it will save lives and become more popular over time, but there has been a backlash, prominently covered by the pro-Tory papers.

Drakeford said:

In Wales, we are that bold Labour government, bringing forward bold reforms.

We are creating a Senedd fit for the future, fully elected by proportional representation, where every vote will count.

We are abolishing the pursuit of profit in the care of our looked-after children.

Reforming the school year – 150 years in the making – to put the needs of those children who have the least at the forefront of our decision making.

Bringing buses back into public control and making coal tips safer.

The path to sustaining Labour in power in Wales is never to be satisfied.

It is never to think the job is done.

And it’s never to be put off by the lies and distortions of our opponents.

Drakeford said he wanted a Labour government in London to follow the “social partnership” model adopted in Wales. He said:

The social partnership model we have enshrined in law in Wales is a model that can be echoed in a model for the future of the United Kingdom.

Under the Welsh government’s Social Partnership and Public Procurement Act, public bodies are now under a “social partnership duty” to consult unions.

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, has criticised Rishi Sunak for viewing net zero as a cost not an opportunity.

Speaking at a New Statesman fringe event, he said:

I fundamentally disagree with how Rishi Sunak presented the speech that he made when he changed the government’s net zero targets because I think the only place you can start this from is to talk about the opportunities for this country.

If you go around the world, talk to any business that is exactly how they see it. They don’t shy away from the challenges, but they see it as an opportunity.

Rishi Sunak has regularly defended his plan to water down net zero policies by claiming he would save families £5,000, £10,000 or £15,000. He has at different times implied this could be the cost for people affected by the ban on oil boilers for off-grid homes (due to come in from 2026, but now postponed until 2035), or for people affected by the ban on gas boilers from 2035.

But Reynolds said that Sunak was exaggerating the costs of heat pumps, and ignoring that his decision to delay the introduction of higher energy efficiency standards for landlords would cost tenants more. Reynolds said:

If you look at what Rishi said – first of all, it’s going to cost people money, right? If you are in private rented accommodation, and you take away the energy efficiency standards and have no targets, it’s going to cost you more money in energy bills …

I think the prime minister knows that costs of low carbon home heating will go down with the right framework that brings down the cost and ramps up the scale. I think he’s very smart on how that should work but he has felt he has to present it in a false way to fit with his political narrative.

Peter Kyle, the shadow science secretary, told the conference in his speech that Labour would would seek to create “certainty” with 10-year research and development budgets. He said:

Great, transformative breakthroughs need certainty and consistency.

But under the Conservatives, funding for innovation bodies, such as UKRI [UK Research and Innovation – a government quango that funds research], only last three years.

That’s enough to see them through three Tory prime ministers - but not to create the innovations our society and economy needs.

So Labour will create certainty with 10-year R&D budgets.

This would allow relationships with industry to be built, long-term partnerships to form and lead to investment in new technology and the infrastructure that underpins it.

Ed Miliband, the shadow energy security and net zero secretary, used his speech to confirm Labour’s plans for an energy independent act.

In a passage about the Conservative party that was particularly well received, he dismissed them as a pound shop Republican party. He said:

The Tories’ climate culture war is not just anti-planet. It’s anti-security, anti-prosperity, anti-worker, anti-business, anti-jobs, anti-future, anti-young people, and it’s anti-Britain.

We’re not going to let these Tories cancel our country’s future.

Now, Sunak tries to spin that he’s still committed to tackling the climate crisis, but look at the people celebrating what he’s done: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss, and to top it all, Donald Trump congratulated him.

The British people don’t want a pound shop Republican party.

They don’t want an energy policy written by Truss and Trump.

Let’s send these Tories to where they belong. Let’s recycle them from government to opposition. And chuck them into the seven dustbins of history.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has called for the government to pause the sell-off of HS2 land to give local leaders a chance to put together an alternative plan.

At the Conservative party conference last week, Rishi Sunak said he would lift the “safeguarding” order on the Birmingham to Crewe leg “in weeks” to enable the land to be sold.

Such a short timescale does not give local leaders enough time to look at alternatives, Burnham told a fringe event at the Labour conference:

We need to send a very clear message to the government that we will not accept that type of timetable for something with enormous implications ... Whatever the mechanism is, we’ve got to send a really clear message out now across party and across geography that it is a very damaging decision, if they take it, to lift the protections on that line.

Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, said land the size of several football pitches had been safeguarded for years around Leeds station in preparation for HS2. “That safeguarded land has cost us dearly, and after years and years of waiting, for that to be scrapped is going to have an absolutely devastating impact on our economy,” she said.

Labour seems intent on proclaiming its seriousness about governing at this conference and there are few things that broadcast seriousness as well as a speech about critical infrastructure. Rachel Reeves made infrastructure planning a key theme of her speech. And this afternoon Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture secretary, told the conference that she wanted to publish a “cultural infrastructure plan”.

She said:

Today I’m announcing that the next Labour government will bring forward ‘Space to Create’, the first national cultural infrastructure plan – Labour’s plan to fire up the engines of our creative economy.

We’ll build on the work of those fantastic Labour mayors who have put creative space at the heart of their growth plans and succeeded even under the Tories. Imagine what they could do under Labour.

A national cultural infrastructure map so local leaders, businesses and philanthropists are better able to spot cultural places at risk and opportunities for investment and development.

Space to Create teams around the country, providing guidance, training, learning, and networking to get creative businesses on a stronger footing.

Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has responded to Jeremy Hunt saying Rachel Reeves did refer to inflation in her speech – because she talked about it in terms of its actual impact on people.

Odd that the Tory Chancellor doesn’t know what inflation means.

As @RachelReevesMP said, under the Tories:

⚡️ energy bills = UP
🥗 food bills = UP
🏠 mortgage bills = UP

Inflation = a general increase in prices and a fall in the purchasing value of money.

The Conservative party has criticised Rachel Reeves for not mentioning inflation in her speech. In a response released by the party, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said:

It is extraordinary that Rachel Reeves failed to mention inflation once when it is the biggest challenge facing the British economy.

Instead, Reeves made it clear Labour will take ‘up’ borrowing by £28bn every year which is a fairy-tale for the British economy with no happy ending - just higher inflation, higher mortgages, higher debt and lower growth.

Borrowing more doesn’t solve problems, it creates them - the worst kind of short-termism when instead we should be taking long-term decisions that will actually tackle inflation and unleash growth.

Attacking politicians for what they didn’t talk about, as much as what they did, is a feature of conference season rebuttal. Rishi Sunak was widely criticised for not talking about housing in his speech. And when Ed Miliband was Labour leader in 2014, he sabotaged his own speech, which he was delivering from memory, by forgetting to include the passage about the deficit.

The Labour party has fleshed out some of the details of the announcements in Rachel Reeves speech in a briefing and a news release to journalists. Here are the key points.

• Labour says it expects to save £4bn from its clampdown on waste. It says it thinks having a Covid corruption commissioner could lead to £2.6bn being recovered, and that halving government spending on government consultants would save £1.4bn over the next parliament. (See 12.30pm.) The savings from reducing the use of private jets by ministers will be miniscule by comparision; the government only spends £5m a year on this, and Labour would not stop their use entirely. It would only stop unnecessary use. Oliver Dowden’s flight to the UN in a new empty plane is cited as an example of a flight that should not have been allowed.

• Reeves said Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, will carry out a review into how major capital projects covering energy, defence and IT can be delivered more quickly. Labour said:

The review will speak to experts with experience of delivering major projects, including experts in project management, finance, procurement, planning and engineering.

The review will be ongoing and will inform Labour’s policy development in opposition, as well as supporting an incoming government to make quick improvements to project delivery to secure the maximum benefits from important major projects that are currently live.

• Labour says the increasing stamp duty for foreigners buying property in the UK will raise £25m. The party announced its plan to do this last year, but today Reeves said how the money would be used – hiring 300 new planners, to speed up planning decisions. Non-UK residents already pay a 2% stamp duty surcharge, but this will go up to 3%.

Rishi Sunak has refused to concede error with a list of transport projects to be funded using HS2 money which contained schemes already built, previously promised or swiftly rescinded, saying these were just “illustrative” examples.

During a sometimes testy interview, the prime minister repeatedly dodged or refused to answer questions when quizzed about the list, unveiled when he announced the decision to scrap the northern leg of the HS2 rail link.

Announcing the HS2 decision during his speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester last week, Sunak promised that £36bn saved from this would be used for other road, rail and transport links.

Among projects cited were to upgrade an A-road link to Southampton, which in fact goes to Littlehampton; to expand the Metrolink tram to Manchester airport, which happened in 2014; and several projects which were swiftly deleted from the list, including £100m for a mass transit system in Bristol, and reopening the Leamside line in County Durham.

Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show, Sunak insisted the list had not been mistaken or misleading, but that these were just examples of the sort of areas that might be included.

There’s a range of illustrative projects that could be funded. But ultimately, it’s going to be local leaders who are in charge. Rather than Westminster politicians dictating to areas what they should do, lots of money is going to be given to local areas for them to decide on their priorities.

In her conference speech Rachel Reeves said Labour will carry out its own inquiry into what went wrong with HS2 before the election. She said:

If I were in the Treasury, I would have been on the phone to the chief executive of HS2 non-stop; demanding answers – and solutions – on behalf of taxpayers, businesses and commuters.

But with this government, it has become a pattern.

When it comes to getting things built and projects delivered, Britain has become the sick man of Europe; with HS2 coming in at 10 times the cost of the French equivalent.

And that is why our shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, will commission an independent expert inquiry into HS2 to learn lessons for the future.

Because many more major government capital projects are running over time, over budget and in danger of going undelivered.

Here is the full text of what Mark Carney said about Rachel Reeves in the short video shown to the Labour conference after she delivered her speech.

Rachel Reeves is a serious economist.

She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture.

But crucially, she understands the economics of work, of place and family.

And, look, it is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.

At a post-speech briefing, the spokesperson for Reeves said she was proud, as a former employee of the Bank, to have a former governor give a message like this. The spokesperson said he did not accept that a message like this meant the Bank was being politicised.

At the conference Labour has just shown a short video of Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, giving an endorsement to Rachel Reeves.

UPDATE: From ITV’s Robert Peston

Reeves says Labour would increase stamp duty for people from overseas buying property.

She says it would use the revenue to fund housebuilding.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

It is not right that, while so many people are struggling, many homes are bought by overseas buyers, who may own a property but leave it vacant; driving up prices, while families and young people are desperate to get on to the housing ladder.

So because, one year ago, Keir Starmer set out the ambition for the next Labour government to make 70 percent of British households homeowners; because a house should be a home not an asset; and because, conference, it is time we built the homes our young people need; we will raise the stamp duty surcharge on overseas buyers to get Britain building.

See 2.05pm for more detail.

Reeves says Labour would slash the use of private jets by ministers.

This proposal was briefed to the Daily Mirror this morning, which wrote it up here.

Today I can announce three further fronts in Labour’s war on waste.

First, we will crack down on Tory ministers’ private jet habit.

What is Rishi Sunak so scared of up there in his private jet?

Meeting a voter?

We will enforce the ministerial code on the use of private planes and save millions of pounds for taxpayers in the process.

Reeves says the exhaustion of Tory ideas does not give Labour the freedom to push through ideas that are “detached from our present economic reality”.

Working people will pay the price if financial discipline is abandoned, she says.

She recalls meeting people who have worked hard and who have done the right things, but whose dreams have been dashed by the Tory government.

She says the last Labour government gave the Bank of England independence. She worked there as an economist, she says. She says the next government will respect the Bank’s independence.

And she confirms Labour would pass a law saying governments making “permanent and significant tax and spending changes” have to get an assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

This would stop a repeat of what happened when Liz Truss announced the mini-budget, she says.

Rachel Reeves starts by saying, out of the “wreckage of Tory misrule”, Labour will restore economic credibility.

I make this commitment to you, and to the country:

Out of the wreckage of Tory misrule, Labour will restore our economic stability;

We will lift living standards.

Make work pay.

Rebuild our public services.

Invest in homegrown industries in every corner of our country.

And together, we will get Britain its future back.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, is about to speak. She is being introduced by Mary Portas, the retailer and broadcaster.

Portas says, if Labour wins the election, Reeves will be the first female chancellor in 800 years.

She says Reeves understands the need for a long-term partnership with business.

She says she also cares passionately about high streets. She is frustrated by what has happened to them during the last 13 years of the Tory government.

She says Labour would address this. And its plan to replace business rates with a fairer system would help, she says.

Labour’s new environment team says it will take on big businesses and supermarkets in order to halt pollution and stop farmers from being ripped off if it wins the next election, Helena Horton reports.

A Labour government would continue to support Ukraine, John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, told the conference. He said:

From this conference, let Putin be in no doubt, there may be a change to Labour next year, but there will be no change to Britain’s resolve to stand with Ukraine, to confront Russian aggression, and to pursue Putin for his war crimes.

Healey said Labour would “accelerate” the promised £2bn armed forces spending made by the government to “re-arm Britain, resupply Ukraine, and boost British industry”.

He also claimed the Tories were more likely to put UK defence at risk. He said:

As Ben Wallace said himself, our armed forces have been “hollowed out and underfunded” by the Tories.

In 13 years, they’ve:

• Cut the army to its smallest since Napoleon.

• Scrapped one in five Royal Navy ships.

• Taken 200 aircraft out of RAF service.

In 13 years, they’ve:

• Left forces families living in damp housing and let morale fall to record lows.

In 13 years, they’ve:

• Failed to fix the ‘broken’ defence procurement system – wasting billions and too often creating jobs abroad, not building in Britain.

The greatest risk to UK defence is another five years of the Conservatives.

Normally, when one of the main parties is holding its conference, the other one tends to hold back on news-making activity. That is partly because all the political correspondents are at conference, and so getting coverage for other politics news is hard anyway. But some politicians at least also used to believe that it was in the public interest for parties to get a few days of media scrutiny without other news getting in the way.

This week the Conservatives are adopting a different strategy. Overnight the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities announced a programme that it said would lead to the building of 6,000 homes. This morning Rishi Sunak held a PM Connect event in Nottinghamshire and he is on the Jeremy Vine show at lunchtime.

At the event in Nottinghamshire, Sunak said he was chairing a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee this afternoon. He said:

We already have a very long-standing relationship with Israel, we’re one of their strongest allies.

We’ve provided in the past the kinds of equipment that they’ve used to defend themselves over the past couple of days and, as I said to the [Israeli] prime minister, we will continue to provide – whether that’s diplomatic, intelligence or security support – as they need.

I’m chairing a Cobra with my ministerial colleagues this afternoon, when we’ll continue to discuss the situation, but we’re in close dialogue with our Israeli counterparts.

Given the seriousness of the war, Sunak would probably be holding a Cobra meeting anyway. But the Q&A and the housing announcement are unusual. In an interview on LBC this morning, asked if the government was breaching an informal agreement not to make announcements during another party’s conference, Lee Rowley, the communities minister, said:

No. It’s because we are getting on with the job. We have got a lot of work to do. It’s been a difficult time since Covid. What we’re trying to do is show the country that we’re actually making the changes that are needed in order to make the country move forward.

The best moment of oratory at the conference so far came from David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, who got a rave reception for this passage in his speech this morning. He said:

Last month Rishi Sunak became the first prime minister in a decade to skip the UN general assembly.

While world leaders gathered for climate week, Sunak stayed in London to row back on climate and make up nonsense about seven bins.

Keir Starmer won’t just turn up; he will stand up for Britain in the world.

When the Tories betray our children on climate, we will stand up.

When the Tories diminish Britain’s influence by neglecting international development and the global south, we will stand up.

When the Tories threaten to take us out of the European convention on human rights, what will we do? Stand up.

When the home secretary attacks LGBT+ refugees, what will we do? Stand up.

And when they say we can’t work closely with our friends in Europe any more, what will we do? Stand up.

Because Labour values do not stop at the English Channel. We are the party of internationalism. The party of Attlee and Bevin, Nato and the United Nations.

Interestingly, this passage bore some resemblance to Penny Mordaunt’s ‘Stand up and fight’ speech at the Conservative party conference. Outside social media, it did not get much attention, because the Tories did not release the text, and there was no news in it; it was just a warm-up speech for Sunak. But arguably it was the most bonkers and eccentric speech given at a party conference for years – at least by a senior figure. If you have not seen it, you can watch it here.

Why did Lammy’s speech work, while Mordaunt’s failed dismally, when they were using similar language? Because Lammy tied his stirring language to ideas, policies and values. Mordaunt was just urging the whole world to “stand up and fight” for … well, it wasn’t really clear, beyond freedom. It was just empty rhetoric, and it sounded hyperbolic, and absurd.

Jeremy Corbyn will “absolutely not” be allowed to return as a Labour MP, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said this morning.

Corbyn is currently banned from standing as a candidate again for Labour because he has been suspended from the parliamentary Labour party. In an interview with LBC, asked if she could see him returning to the fold, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, replied:

Absolutely not. Jeremy Corbyn is no longer a Labour MP because of the antisemitism that he allowed to take root in the Labour party.

And I’m so proud that we’ve got, in Keir Starmer, a leader who stands squarely alongside Israel at their moment of need, and has rooted out antisemitism from my party, the Labour party.

There are more business leaders than union leaders at the Labour party conference. According to the party, 300 CEOs and chairs have registered to attend.

The party said the business forum taking place this morning was going to the largest ever business gathering at a Labour conference, and that it had had to double the capacity. But that still left hundreds of people on the waiting list to attend, Labour claimed.

Speaking to the forum this morning, Keir Starmer said that business would be “coming into government” with Labour if it won the election because that partnership was important to the party. He explained:

We are not going to suck it up into the centre, we’re not going to run it from Westminster and Whitehall, trying to run things through government.

I don’t think government can do your job better than you can, and I don’t think we should try, I think that’s a big mistake.

Equally if the government just sits it out and says: ‘Well, we made our mission clear, the markets usually react, business knows what to do, we just sit back now,’ I don’t think that’s going to work because you don’t have a driving sense of purpose.

Therefore it’s got to be a partnership. It’s got to be a partnership between business, between you, and an incoming government. Therefore if we do come into government, you will be coming into government with us.

Keir Starmer has said that Labour is ready for a general election in May next year.

Speaking at a meeting with business leaders at the Labour conference this morning, he said:

I’m not going to predict the outcome of the general election, nor when it will be. Though obviously it will either be May or October, and our team is ready for May because I don’t think anybody would rule out May.

Starmer said he expected the campaign to be dirty and that he feared Rishi Sunak would in the meantime take short-term decisions that were not in the national interest for electoral advantage.

In terms of how it will be run, I think it will unfortunately descend into a place which isn’t about big politics.

I think it will go low from the government’s point of view.

My worry is, this is net zero, and there are other examples of this, that instead of making decisions in the long-term interest of the UK, the government is in danger of making decisions in the short-term interest of opening up divides for the purpose of an election.

When a government gets into that place, whatever political party it is, that’s a bad place for the country.

Peter Mandelson has said Labour needs to show much more empathy towards Scottish National party voters and be “genuine not reluctant devolutionists” if it is to regain power in Holyrood as well as Westminster.

Mandelson, one of the most influential architects of New Labour and Tony Blair’s 1997 election victory, said he had campaigned during the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection and met numerous SNP and ex-SNP voters.

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland, he said that despite the scale of the Labour byelection victory, defeating the SNP with a 20% swing, it still had to justify itself to Scottish voters and prove it could deliver. He went on:

My feeling about them is that they don’t expect Labour to support independence in Scotland, but they do want us to show an empathy towards those who do support independence.

I think that we need to gain a hearing from ex-SNP voters, I think that’s going to be very important indeed if we’re going to build our support and win the seats that we need at the next election.

That involved continuing with the devolution project, by adding to Holyrood’s powers and freedom of movement, and repaying voters’ trust in Labour after the next general election, Mandelson said. He went on:

It looks increasingly as if Scottish Labour will deliver seats to build a UK Labour majority in the next parliament after the election. I think importantly, in return, a Labour government, should it be formed, must then deliver to Scotland and the Scottish people ahead of the Holyrood elections in 2026. And that’s got to be the basis, in my view, of our appeal and of our project.

I’m very clear that for Labour as a whole to strengthen its appeal in Scotland we need to present a convincing economic growth plan to benefit the whole of the UK including Scotland, and that’s something the SNP can’t do.

We’ve got to be genuine, not reluctant, devolutionists. I think we’ve got to offer greater freedom of action and reform both within and between the nations and regions of the UK so as to deliver more for the Scottish people.

Labour has sent out a briefing to journalists with further details of its plans to change planning laws with the aim of allowing infrastracture to be built faster and cheaper. (See 8.12am.) This does not seem to be available online, so here is the summary for the record. (Bold type from the original document.)

Reforms to nationally significant infrastructure projects

Certainty, not chaos:

Some National Policy Statements have not been updated for more than a decade, and do not reflect existing government policy. Labour will update all national policy statements within the first six months of a Labour government, providing clear policy, set by ministers, detailing what should be built and where, and linked to specific announcements and funding streams. We will also set clear objectives, hardwiring national priorities like economic growth and net zero into the planning system, as is done in Germany.

Labour will modernise the infrastructure planning regime to reflect a changing economy. This approach will accelerate planning applications and the development of gigafactories, laboratories and 5G infrastructure.

Proportionality, not red tape:

Planning applications for a single project like the Thames Tunnel can be over 60,000 pages long and cost £800 million of taxpayers’ money before a single shovel is in the ground. The £20 billion Sizewell C project compiled over 44,000 pages of environmental data, but was challenged for failure to assess the environmental impact.

Labour will set national policy guidance on the proportionality of evidence required, with the planning inspectorate returning to its role as an assessor rather than arbiter. We will set ‘off the shelf’ mitigation standards and approved mitigation schemes, so developers know in advance what actions to take and costs, reducing delays and legal challenge while enhancing protection for vulnerable species and habitats.

Communities benefiting, not ignored:

Community consent is vital to the long-term success of the planning system, and delay can set in when local communities feel their views have been ignored. At present, there is no clear policy framework to guide decision making by business or inform the expectations of local areas. This adds unnecessary delay and pits communities and businesses against one another.

A Labour government would simplify this system by building a clear framework for community benefit on clean energy projects, providing business and communities with a clear menu of ‘off the shelf’ options they can choose from. This will simplify the consenting process and make applications quicker, cheaper, and simpler.

Democracy, not litigation:

In recent years, the rate of judicial review has soared, with nearly three in five projects facing judicial review up from a long-term average of ten per cent.

Labour will set out clear national guidance on consultation. This will mean that, whilst we will ensure high standards for engagement and democratic accountability, developers will no longer feel the need to run overly lengthy, often duplicative rounds of consultation, with protection from legal challenge if they have strictly adhered to guidance.

Grip, not drift:

Labour will increase planning capacity by hiring more than 300 new planners across the public sector. This will also allow us to ensure that every local planning authority has at least one full time planner, which is not currently the case, as well as providing for central government planning resource to be beefed up. We will fund this by increasing the surcharge on stamp duty paid by non-UK-residents when they buy property in the UK, from two percent to three percent, as announced at our party conference in 2022. This will raise £25m a year.

The government also says it wants to address this issue, although Rishi Sunak is partly constrained by Tory MPs worried about anything that might see forests of pylons going up in their rural constituencies. In February the government announced plans to speed up the planning process for significant infrastructure. And in his net zero speech last month Sunak said the government was working on “comprehensive new reforms to energy infrastructure” to speed up planning.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is to claim later today that the Scottish National party has “failed to put the people of Scotland first”, in effect stealing and reversing one of the SNP’s main attacks lines on Labour.

Sarwar and Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish secretary, will be addressing the Labour conference on Monday afternoon after the party’s “seismic” byelection victory in Rutherglen and Hamilton West last week, taking 58% of the vote.

That victorious new MP, Michael Shanks, a modern studies teacher, is likely to be introduced officially to delegates during Sarwar’s speech. Labour estimates it could win 28 Scottish Westminster seats, based on the Rutherglen result.

Labour sources say their confidence has been strengthened after repeatedly hearing from SNP members during the byelection campaign that they were sad and disillusioned about the party’s plight, the infighting and the police investigation into the SNP and its inability to deliver a second independence referendum.

Critics of Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader and first minister, believe he has failed to properly address the cost of living crisis, which amplified the scale of its byelection defeat.

According to advance extracts of Sarwar’s speech, he will say:

The cracks in the foundations of the SNP are deeper and wider than they’ve ever recognised and while senior nationalists have lined up in TV studios to blame the voters – they have missed the point.

Politics is about changing lives. It is about delivering a future where everyone can live up to their potential.

It is about serving the people of Scotland. That is what the SNP have forgotten. It’s that failure to stand up for Scotland, that failure to put country before party that has seen people turn their backs on them.

Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, told the Today programme this morning that it would be “very hard” for Labour to improve public services without raising taxes.

Labour says it wants to focus on increasing growth as a means of generating the extra tax revenues that would enable public services to improve. Johnson said higher growth would be very welcome, but that this might take several years to achieve.

Asked if that meant it would be realistic for Labour to stick to the spending plans it has without higher tax rises, he replied:

I’m not convinced that either a Labour or a Conservative government could do that. The most recent budget red book suggests extremely tight spending plans after the next election, even though taxes are at quite a high, or very high, level …

I think it’s going to be tough for either party. But clearly one’s presumption is that Labour is more inclined to want to do something to improve public services, and possibly the welfare system, and that’s going to be very hard indeed without some tax rises, at least in the short run, until and unless growth really does change.

Labour says its fiscal rules are “non-negotiable” and these say that it will not borrow to fund day to day spending, and that it will reduce national debt as a share of the economy.

Asked if there was any leeway in these rules that would allow Labour to borrow more than the Conservatives, Johnson replied:

The markets might well allow some more borrowing. One thing that the markets are really keen on is seeing a stable government and I think on both sides we see more stability in recent years.

But Labour have also said they want debt to be falling over the period of the parliament. That is actually the big constraint here. Debt is not really on course to fall over the next five years or so. That’s what really tied Jeremy Hunt’s hands back in March [in the budget] and … if the Labour party stick to that same rule, that will also tie their hands.

Good morning. It’s a busy day at the Labour conference, with 12 members of the shadow cabinet giving speeches, with the highlight Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, at noon. In a speech in May, Keir Starmer put down what he hopes will be one of the big dividing lines in the next election when he declared that Labour were the builders and the Tories the blockers. Reeves will today give some indication as to how that might happen.

According to extracts from the speech released in advance, Reeves will say that Labour will take on the “obstacles presented by our antiquated planning system”.

Here is the Labour summary of the reforms that the party is proposing.

Speeding up the planning for critically important infrastructure by updating all national policy statements – which set out what types of projects the country needs – within the first six months of a Labour government.

Fast-tracking the planning process for priority growth areas of the economy, such as battery factories, laboratories, and 5G infrastructure.

Ensuring local communities get something back by providing businesses and communities with a menu of potential incentives, which could include cheaper energy bills.

Tackling unnecessary, egregious, and time-consuming litigation by setting clearer national guidance for developers on the engagement and consultation expected with local communities.

Strengthening public sector capacity to expedite planning decisions by raising the stamp duty surcharge on non-UK residents to appoint 300 new planning officers.

In her speech, Reeves will say:

If we want to spur investment, restore economic security, and revive growth. Then we must get Britain building again.

The Tories would have you believe we can’t build anything anymore. In fact, the single biggest obstacle to building infrastructure, to investment and to growth in this country is the Conservative party itself.

If the Tories won’t build, if the Tories can’t build, then we will. Taking head on the obstacles presented by our antiquated planning system.

Since 2012, decision times for national infrastructure have increased by 65%, now taking four years. Labour stands with the builders not the blockers.

So today I am announcing our plans to get Britain building.

Reeves has been doing a morning interview round. I will post the highlights shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.15am: The conference proceedings start.

9.25am: David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, opens a debate on international affairs. There are also speeches from John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the shadow international development secretary.

10.30am: Liz Kendall, the shadow work and pensions secretary, opens a debate on growth, which will also cover a Unite motion calling for energy companies to be brought into public ownership. Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, is also speaking.

12pm: Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, gives her speech.

2pm: Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture secretary, and Peter Kyle, the shadow science secretary, speak in the ongoing debate on growth.

2.45pm: Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish secretary, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, speak to the conference.

3pm: Ed Miliband, the shadow energy security and net zero secretary, speaks in a debate on energy. He will also take part in a Q&A.

4pm: Jo Stevens, the shadow Welsh secretary, and Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, give speeches.

4.10pm: Hilary Benn, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, gives a speech.

4.20pm: Nesil Caliskan, leader of the Labour group on the Local Government Association, speaks. She will be followed by Joe Fortune, general secretary of the Cooperative party.

This blog will be mostly focused on Labour today, but there may be some brief coverage of two other developments in UK politics. In London, the supreme court hearing on the legality of the Rwanda deportation scheme starts. And Rishi Sunak is doing the media rounds today, holding a PM Connect Q&A in the morning, and doing an interview with Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 at 12.45pm.

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