Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will introduce a “Hillsborough law” before the next anniversary of the 1989 football stadium tragedy where 97 Liverpool fans were killed in a terrace crush.
He told the audience at the ACC Liverpool events centre on Tuesday: “For many people in this city the speech they may remember was the one here two years ago. Because that’s when I promised, on this stage, that if I ever had the privilege to serve our country as prime minister one of my first acts would be to bring in a Hillsborough law—a duty of candour.”
Starmer said it was a “law that people should never have needed to fight so hard to get, but that will be delivered by this Labour government.”
Net Immigration
In his wide-ranging speech, the prime minister addressed concerns over high immigration, reiterating his previously-stated position that the policy of his government is to reduce both net immigration and the country’s economic dependency upon it, which he has said can be relieved by filling the skills gap with home-trained workers.
“I have never thought we should be relaxed about some sectors importing labour when there are millions of young people, ambitious and highly talented, who are desperate to work and contribute to their community,” Starmer told the conference, saying that there are examples of the number of apprenticeships starting to go down at the same time visa applications for the same skills were going up.
The prime minister outlined that his government would introduce new foundation apprenticeships to get the skills system in a position where it meets the demands of business.
“We’ve got to give businesses more flexibility to adapt to real training needs and also unlock the pride, the ambition, the pull of the badge of the shirt that young people feel when building a future, not just for themselves but for their community,” he said.
In a statement issued by the government following the speech, the Department for Education (DfE) said these apprenticeships will give young people a route in to careers in critical sectors. A new levy is also being introduced to fund apprenticeships shorter than 12 months in duration.
According to the DfE, the first report from Skills England, the government’s new body for the skills system, found employer investment in training has been in steady decline over the past decade.
Summer Riots
Starmer also addressed the summer riots, saying that those who caused disorder, targeted mosques and asylum hotels, and scrawled racist graffiti on walls should not be confused with those who have concerns over immigration.“I have always accepted concerns about immigration are legitimate,” he said.
“But conference, whatever anyone thinks about immigration, I will never accept the argument made not just by the usual suspects, but by people who should have known better, who said that millions of people concerned about immigration are one and the same thing as the people who smashed up businesses,” the prime minister told attendees.
“People concerned about immigration were not doing that because they understand that this country, this democratic country, is built on the rule of law. The ballot box. The common understanding that we debate our differences,” he said.
“We do not settle them with violent thuggery. And racism is vile,” he added.
The prime minister also criticised the Conservative Party for its failure after Brexit to take back control of Britain’s borders by lowering immigration.
Control of immigration “is what people have voted for time and again,” Starmer said, but “they weren’t just ignored after Brexit. The Tories gave them the exact opposite. An immigration system deliberately reformed to reduce control.”
Net immigration hit a record 764,000 in 2022. Despite falling to 685,000 in 2023, it was still more than double its level in 2015, just before the EU referendum.
