Boris Johnson: Conservatives must protect low paid
Boris Johnson: Conservatives must protect low paid
(about 17 hours later)
The government must support the "hardest working and lowest paid" as it reforms welfare, Boris Johnson is to tell the Conservative Party conference.
The Tories "cannot ignore the gulf in pay packets that yawns wider" every year, Boris Johnson has told the Conservative Party conference.
The capital's economy would "collapse" without those who work through the night and aspire to a better life, the Mayor of London and Tory MP will say.
He said the government must support the "hardest working and lowest paid" as "we reform welfare and we cut taxes".
It comes amid a row over plans to curb tax credits for million of workers.
He did not mention potential Tory leadership rivals by name.
Ministers insist they are sticking to the plans, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt saying they send a "cultural signal".
But he did list the policies one of them, Chancellor George Osborne, had "stolen" - such as the living wage and devolution of tax powers to cities.
Speaking at a fringe meeting in Manchester on Monday, Mr Hunt said the government was right to press ahead with cuts to tax credits at the end of the year - despite claims millions will be worse off - because the UK must become as hard working as China and the United States.
The London mayor joked that the "only type of crime currently going up is the theft of City Hall policies by central government," adding that it was "a crime I entirely condone".
He said the cuts, combined with a higher minimum wage, would send out the right "cultural signal" to low paid workers and he did not "buy" claims people would be left out of pocket - comments which were immediately criticised by the opposition and unions.
Prime Minister David Cameron was in the hall in Manchester to watch Mr Johnson's speech - as he normally does at his party's conference. He sat next to Zac Goldsmith, the man bidding to succeed Mr Johnson as the Conservative mayor of London, who had just delivered his own speech to conference.
There has been mounting speculation about who will succeed Mr Cameron, who is to step down as Tory leader before the 2020 election, with most of the fancied contenders, including home secretary Theresa May, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Mr Johnson himself, making speeches to activists on Tuesday, following Mr Osborne's address on Monday.
'United society'
'United society'
Addressing Conservative activists on the third day of the conference, Mr Johnson will launch a fierce attack on Labour's new leader Jeremy Corbyn and claim it is only the Conservatives who can deliver social and economic progress "by bringing people together".
Mr Johnson's speech was packed with jokes, particularly at the expense of new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and "our crusty friends outside the hall" - a reference to the protesters who have been hurling abuse, and occasionally eggs and other missiles, at Conservatives queuing up to get into the venue.
Mr Johnson, who is expected to run for the leadership of the party when David Cameron stands down before the next election, will contrast his party's goal of "giving everyone the tools to make their own lives and their own successes" with Labour, whom he will accuse of "once again becoming the party that pointlessly bashes the rich".
But he also ranged across "British values," stressing the importance of immigrants learning English. and a defence of capitalism which he claimed was under attack from "Marxist" shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
"That is the society we need, not just a big society but a united society," he is expected to say. "Where the different elements are bound together by an irreducible set of values - democracy and freedom and equality under the law."
He called for a "united society" in which "one person's forward progress drives another person's forward progress" but warned that it would not work "if the economic gap between us is allowed to grow too big".
But amid the row over tax credit cuts, he will warn the party leadership that people will only go along with far-reaching changes to welfare and the tax system if they have "hope and aspiration" for the future.
He said that "in 1980 a chief executive of a FTSE 100 company earned about 25 times the average salary of his or her employees" - but that had now grown to 130 times and there were some who paid themselves 780 times more.
"If people are to feel bound into this system... above all there must be opportunity," he is expected to say.
People would only accept this if "rich corporations and rich individuals" paid their taxes and "if and only if those firms are paying their employees decently".
He will add: "We must ensure that as we reform welfare and cut taxes that we protect the hardest working and low paid. Shop workers, cleaners, the people who get up in the small hours or work through the night because they have dreams for what their families can achieve.
'Social media twitstorm'
"The people without whom the London economy would simply collapse."
He added: "We must ensure that as we reform welfare and we cut taxes that we protect the hardest working and lowest paid, the retail staff, the cleaners, who get up in the small hours or work through the night because they have dreams for what their families can achieve."
'Hope and aspiration'
In a lengthy speech by his conference standards, Mr Johnson claimed the Labour Party had been "piratically captured in a kind of social media twitstorm," by the London Labour Party, who he said he had beaten on two separate occasions at the ballot box and who used the "same ruthless methods as the old colonialists that they purport to despise, in that they believe in divide and rule".
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there was "no sign" that the leadership was prepared to give way on the proposed changes.
"Will we surrender to the hard-left agitators - preposterously supported by Jeremy Corbyn - who believe in these tactics and want to divide this society?," Mr Johnson asked Tory members, who shouted "no" in response.
Ministers have said the £30bn spent a year on tax credits - paid to those in work at the lower end of the income scale - is unsustainable and that factoring in future rises in the personal tax allowance and the introduction of a higher national living wage, people will not lose out.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned it is "arithmetically impossible" for nobody to lose out under the shake-up while the Resolution Foundation, headed by former Conservative minister David Willetts, said more than one million households would lose an average of £1,350 a year.
Speaking on Monday, Mr Hunt said the changes would be challenging but claimed they sent "a very important cultural signal" about the importance of work and the direction in which the country was heading.
Asian economic example
"My wife is Chinese and if we want this to be one of the most successful countries in the world in 20, 30, 40 years time there is a pretty difficult question that we have to answer which is, essentially, are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in a way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in a way that Americans are prepared to work hard?
"And that is about creating a culture where work is at the heart of our success."
Mr Hunt will also address activists on day three of the conference in Manchester, as will Home Secretary Theresa May - herself tipped as a future leadership contender - Justice Secretary Michael Gove and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.
In his keynote speech on Monday, Chancellor George Osborne - who many regard as David Cameron's likely successor - told his party to "extend our hand" to Labour voters who felt "completely abandoned" by its new leadership.
He announced plans to allow councils in England to keep all proceeds from business rates raised in their area.
