Miliband vows to ban fracking, labels Reform ‘ideological extremists’ and tells Musk to ‘get the hell out of our politics’ – live

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Phillipson says Labour should be 'as ruthless' in fighting Greens as they are in fighting Reform

Q: How do we win back support from the Greens and the Lib Dems?

Powell says her Manchester Central seat is half red wall, half urban, so she knows the threat those parties pose.

Labour should stick to its values and rebuild a progressive alliance.

Phillipson says they should expose the Greens for who they are.

They say, on the one hand, that climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and climate change is an enormous challenge, but a real opportunity to create some brilliant jobs.

But then what do they do? They oppose infrastructure projects. They oppose the investment that will make a huge difference to our communities and to tackling climate change.

So we’ve got to be as ruthless in taking the fight to them as we are in taking the fight to be to Reform.

Q: How should we take on Reform?

Phillipson says Labour should show what it is doing to improve people’s lives.

Powell says she wants Labour to seize back the microphone from them.

Powell says Labour needs to unite its voter coalition, and avoid policies like winter fuel payment cut

Q: What would you do to help win the elections in Wales next year?

Phillipson says she has a strong record as a campaigner.

Powell says the Senedd elections will be tough. She goes on:

And I think what we’re seeing in Wales is a real example of what we’re seeing elsewhere, which is the fracturing of our voter coalition, the fracturing of the electorate.

Yes, we’re losing some support to Reform, but we’re actually losing much more support to Plaid Cymru in Wales at the moment.

And that’s why we need to reunite our voter coalition with that really strong, compelling story about what we think is really wrong with this country and how we’re going to fix it.

Powell says the government can do better. She cites the winter fuel payment cut as an example of a policy that led to people not being clear “about whose side we are on”. It hit the party particularly hard in traditional Labour area.

We need to be out there telling people what we are doing, but we’ve got to get the politics of this right so that we’re not losing votes to all sides.

This is the first answer contained some criticism of the government.

Nan Sloane, a Labour historian, is moderating.

Q: What is your proudest achievement?

Lucy Powell says it was hearing King Charles deliver the king’s speech, the first Labour one in 15 years.

Bridget Phillipson says her proudest achievement has been bringing back a version of Sure Start.

Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell take part in deputy Labour leadership hustingss

The deputy Labour leadership hustings are starting now. There is a live feed here.

The decision to hold it now, when the formal conference proceedings have finished, and when most Labour delegates just want to go home, has been taken as a sign that the leadership does not want this contest to attract much attention.

It was caused by the resignation of Angela Rayner. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is the candidate preferred by the Labour leadership. And Lucy Powell, who was recently sacked by Keir Starmer from her post as Commons leader, is the candidate arguing, as she put it yesterday, for a “course correction”.

There have been at least two polls of Labour members suggesting Powell is ahead, although one suggested Powell would lose quite easily, and another suggested the result would be much tighter.

Miliband's speech to Labour conference - summary of key points

Ed Miliband’s speech had a policy announcement (see 11.14am), but it contained a lot more too and got a very good reception. His comments about Elon Musk are at 11.48am. Here are some of his other lines.

• Miliband said Reform UK were “ideological extremists”. He said:

And friends, friends, we’ve got to call out Farage and his cronies for who they are.

They are the Investment crushing, ob destroying, bill raising, poverty driving, science denying, Putin appeasing, young people betraying bunch of ideological extremists.

That is who they are.

And we know where they want to go next because they have told us.

And he said Labour would campaign against them because of their support for fracking too. (See 11.14am.)

• He said Reform were wrong about the reasons for Britain’s problems.

We know what Reform’s approach is:

Scapegoat anyone or anything they can pretend is the cause of all our problems:

They want to blame diversity, net zero, anything they can find to stir up division.

Friends I’ll tell you this. They’re wrong, they’re dead wrong about the causes of our country’s problems.

• He said two Tory ideas were really to blame for the state of Britain.

Here’s the thing, It’s two dominant right wing, Tory ideas that have devastated Britain over the last few decades.

The first idea, from the 1980s, trickle down economics, remember that, enrich those at the top, everyone else would feel the benefits.

But we all know how that worked out.

All it did was bring the deep inequality that still scars us to this day.

It didn’t work.

It can never work.

The second idea, from the 2010s

Austerity: that if government got out of the way and cut, cut and cut again, it would sort out our economic problems.

And we all know, and you all know from your communities, that was a disaster too.

• He said firms wanting to benefit from the government’s clean industry bonus awards for renewable energy would need to recognise unions.

Our Clean Industry bonus rewards the offshore wind industry for investing in Britain and that’s the right thing to do - but under a Labour government, public money must serve the public interest.

That’s why I can announce that we will introduce a new Fair Work Charter as a condition of that bonus. And let me spell it out, fair wages, the very best rights at work, and yes access to unions.

• He said he was also extending employment rights to people working on offshore renewables.

You know what I discovered when I walked into this department for energy.

Current rules mean that if you work offshore in renewables, more than 12 miles out at sea, you are literally in no man’s land when it comes to employment protection.

You’re not even guaranteed the minimum wage.

It is a scandal, It is a Tory scandal.

And I say we will end it.

Our principle which we will put in law - offshore, onshore, land or sea: you will be guaranteed fair pay and decent rights at work.

• He recalled a speech given by his father, the leftwing political philosopher Ralph Miliband, to a Labour conference in 1955

You know my dad spoke at conference only once as a delegate, the party conference was in Margate, it was 1955, 70 years ago.

Recently I looked back at his speech: in 2 minutes, he attacked the national executive committee, he complained about the composite he was being asked to support, and he called for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy.

It’s good some things don’t change in the Labour party.

But he said something in that speech that has always had special meaning for me: he said being part of this party was a great adventure: and we had a vision the Tories will never have.

A great adventure

For me, for us, for our party, that’s the point of being in politics.

Miliband tells Elon Musk to 'get the hell out' of British politics

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used his speech to the Labour conference to say that Elon Musk should “get the hell out” of British politics.

Referring to the far-right billionaire who owns Tesla and X, and who delivered a virtual “fight back or die” speech at the recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally calling for a new government, Miliband said:

The truth is, I wish Nigel Farage was just the snake oil, Tory city boy we’ve known about for years.

But he’s actually morphed into something even more dangerous.

He’s now a key part of a global network who want to destroy the ties that bind our communities and our way of life.

And I can sum up the threat for you in two words: Elon Musk

He incites violence on our streets.

He calls for the overthrow of our elected government.

He is an enabler of disinformation through X.

He thinks he can tell us how to run Britain.

Conference, we have a message for Elon Musk:

Get the hell out of our politics and our country.

Environmentalists welcome total ban on fracking

Here is some more reaction to Ed Miliband’s fracking announcement. (See 9.19am and 11.14am.) This is from Greenpeace UK’s political campaigner Angharad Hopkinson

The government is absolutely right to ban fracking for good. After years of hype, all this industry has brought to the UK are earthquakes and a couple of holes in a muddy field in Lancashire. Fracking is polluting, deeply unpopular, and even if it could be made to work in the UK, it’ll do nothing to lower energy bills.

The Friends of the Earth reaction is at 10.46pm.

Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK policy chief, claimed this morning that the parliamentary security department has cut Nigel Farage’s security detail by 75%. (See 9.35am.) He did not elaborate on what he meant by this.

Asked to comment, a House of Commons spokesperson said:

The ability of members and their staff to perform their parliamentary duties safely, both on and off the estate, is fundamental to our democracy.

Any assessment of an individual MPs’ security arrangements or advice is subject to a rigorous risk-based assessment, conducted by security professionals and with input from a range of professional authorities.

Whilst these are naturally kept under continuous review, we do not comment on specific details so as not to compromise the safety of MPs, parliamentary staff or members of the public.

Last year Farage claimed he had been told not to hold constituency surgeries by the Commons Speaker. But the Speaker’s office disputed this, and Farage subsequently retracted his claim.

Miliband vows to ban fracking

This is what Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, told the Labour conference in his speech about his decision to impose a total ban on fracking. (See 9.19am.)

Fracking will not take a penny off bills.

It will not create long-term sustainable jobs.

It will trash our climate commitments.

And it is dangerous and deeply harmful to our natural environment.

The good news is that communities have fought back and won this fight before and will do so again.

Remember Liz Truss and her 42 days of disaster.

The Tories tried to overturn the fracking ban – led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, remember him?

Friends, we sent those frackers packing.

I say: let’s ban fracking and vow to send this bunch of frackers packing too.

Ed Miliband speaking at the Labour conference. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, giving an interview this morning at the GB News studio at Labour conference. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, told the Labour conference in her speech that the government has more to do in cleaning up rivers. She said:

This Labour government has passed a new law that puts water companies on notice.

Banning multi-million pound bonuses for polluting water bosses.

Launching 81 criminal investigations.

Introducing new prison sentences for pollution.

Conference, there will be no more undeserved payouts on the back of your bills, no more ripping off the British people and no more rewards for failure.

Those days are over.

It is a Labour government that will drive the renewal of this broken system …

Turning around a broken water system will not happen overnight. But I am determined to drive this fundamental change and clean up our rivers, lakes and seas.

First, we will abolish Ofwat and create a new single powerful regulator to stand firmly on the side of consumers and the environment, ending the abuses of the past.

Second, we will go further and introduce a new water reform bill to deliver a water system designed for the long term.

And third, we will use the fines on water companies – over £100m pounds to date – to invest in cleaning up our waterways.

Conference, we will make the polluter pay.

Emma Reynolds speaking to the Labour conference. Photograph: Victoria Jones/Shutterstock

In his Sky News interview Keir Starmer said that President Trump’s claim that sharia law has been introduced in London was “nonsense” and “rubbish”. In fact, he used both words twice.

But, when Beth Rigby asked if the claim was racist (because Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, is Muslim), Starmer just said it was nonsense.

Rigby also asked Starmer if he believed Trump when he told the press conference at Chequers that he did not know Peter Mandelson, who was sacked as UK ambassador to the US. Trump does know him because he has had meetings with him in the Oval Office.

Starmer said he could not answer for what Trump said at a press conference.

When Rigby put it to him that he should mind if Trump was saying something untruthful, Starmer replied:

Well, what matters to me is the relationship between the US and the UK on defence and security … the closest relationship in the world.