Chancellor Rishi Sunak gave a passionate speech on Monday at the Conservative Party Conference pledging to keep finding “ways to support businesses.”
Sunak said that Minister have had to make very “difficult trade-offs and decisions” amid the pandemic, and the economy is going through a significant change.
He warned that he cannot “protect every job or every business. No chancellor could,” and admitted of “the pain of knowing it only grows with each passing day.”
He said as a Chancellor my “single priority” is to “create, support and extend opportunity to as many people as I can.”
Sunak said, “We will not let talent wither, or waste, we will help all who want it find new opportunity and develop new skills.
He told the Party Conference that he will keep “listening and keep striving to be creative in response to the challenges our economy faces.”
“Where I can, I will act.”
He added, “I have always said I couldn’t protect every job or every business. No chancellor could.
“And even though I have said it, the pain of knowing it, only grows with each passing day.
“So, I am committing myself to a single priority – to create, support and extend opportunity to as many people as I can.
“Because even if this moment is more difficult than any you have ever faced, even if it feels like there is no hope, I am telling you that there is, and that the overwhelming might of the British state will be placed at your service.”
Sunak continued, “We will protect the public finances, over the medium-term getting our borrowing and debt back under control.
“We have a sacred responsibility to future generations to leave the public finances strong, and through careful management of our economy, this Conservative Government will always balance the books.
“If instead we argue there is no limit on what we can spend, that we can simply borrow our way out of any hole, what is the point in us?
“I have never pretended there is some easy cost-free answer.
“Hard choices are everywhere.”
“I won’t stop trying to find ways to support businesses,” he concluded.
The Chancellor paid tribute to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and said that he has been forced to make some “difficult trade-offs.”
He said: “I’ve seen up close the burden the Prime Minister carries.
“We all know he has an ability to connect with people in a way few politicians manage.
“It is a special and rare quality.
“But what the commentators don’t see, the thing I see, is the concern and care he feels for people every day, for the wellbeing of every person in our country.
“Yes, it’s been difficult, challenges are part of the job, but on the big calls, in the big moments, Boris Johnson has got it right and we need that leadership.”
Sunak warned, “We are only part way through this crisis.”
Labour’s shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds responded to the speech and she said, “The chancellor spoke for just ten minutes today, and he had nothing to say to the millions of people whose jobs are now at risk because of his policies.
“Britain risks the worst unemployment crisis in decades and Rishi Sunak’s name will be all over it.”
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