James Timpson, the prisons minister, has said that he wants the courts to put more faith in community orders as an alternative to prison.

He was speaking at a fringe event this moring where he also said that he thought his appointment as a minister meant Keir Starmer wanted to change the criminal justice system.

Starmer’s decision to make Timpson prisons minister, with a seat in the Lords, came as a surprise after the election. The former boss of the eponymous shoe repair company, Timpson was known for employing ex-offenders, and for believing that far too many offenders get sent to jail.

When Starmer was asked at a press conference soon after the election if he agreed with Timpson, Starmer said he wanted to reduce the number of offenders who return to jail because they reoffend. He has not said that he believes jail sentences are handed out too often.

At the fringe meeting, Timpson was asked if he agreed that community sentences should be used more regularly as an alternative to custody. He replied:

I completely agree with you about the positive impact of community sentencing but I think it needs to be trusted more by the courts.

I’m in this for the long haul and I hope by putting me in this position the prime minister has sent a signal that we need to change the system and I’m hopefully going to be around long enough to do it.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has accused the last Conservative government of “cultural vandalism” and promised that Labour will reverse it.

In her speech to the conference, she said:

Successive Tory governments running down our rich and proud heritage in arts and music and the right of every child to it.

At the stroke of a pen: enrichment funding in schools, gone.

Libraries, theatres, youth workers, gone.

That lifeline for young people, broken.

The promise of a generation inspired by sport, broken.

This is what cultural vandalism looks like. And conference, it ends today.

Nandy said the government was also going to reset relations with the charity sector, and other civil society groups like trade unions and community organisations. Describing them as “a lifeline in the darkest of times”, she said:

They were silenced by the Tories. No more. Our government believes they are essential partners in the country we seek to build and they have not just a right, but a duty to speak out.

She also said she and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, were reviewing the school curriculum to include a greater emphasis on arts.

Bridget and I have kickstarted a review of the curriculum to put arts, sports and music back at the heart of our schools and communities where it belongs.

It is our ambition that when, in five years’ time, we turn to face the nation again, we will face a self-confident country that can celebrate the rich diversity and inheritance of our communities and all the people in them.

Campaigners from Youth Demand sprayed the words “genocide conference” on the building at the conference entrance used for security checks.

🚨BREAKING: Supporters of Youth Demand paint the words 'Genocide Conference' on the Labour conference.

Labour banned the use of the word on Monday, so we thought they might need some help in labelling their spinelessness for what it is.

Join us at https://t.co/rqU3Oswm2K pic.twitter.com/YX1WZkieyM

— Youth Demand (@youth_demand) September 24, 2024

A Youth Demand spokesperson said in a statement:

Labour is still arming Israel despite a majority of the public backing a complete arms embargo. Despite admitting there is a ‘clear risk’ of ‘serious violation of international humanitarian law’, they have spinelessly suspended less than 10% of arms licenses.

In her speech Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, also promised a new drive to tackle street crime. She told delegates:

For too long rising town centre and street crime have been driving people away from our high streets, corroding the fabric of our communities.

So this Labour government will bring in new powers on antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and off-road bikes and we will put neighbourhood police back in our communities and back on the beat.

In a briefing note on the plan, Labour said:

Legislation will be brought forward next year to introduce new respect orders to ban prolific antisocial offenders from town centres, and to enable the police to more swiftly seize off-road vehicles that are deliberately being used to terrorise town centres and neighbourhood estates. Following years of campaigning by Usdaw and the Co-Op, the Labour government will also deliver on its plans of creating a new standalone offence of assaulting a shopworker.

The plans will draw on the work of the last Labour government’s Street Crime Initiative, which brought down street robbery in the early 2000s. Cooper was involved in the Blair-era programme as courts minister, and was responsible for overseeing the Merseyside street crime partnership as part of the programme. She says the same dedicated, determined focus is needed now to ensure that “local communities can take back their streets from thugs and thieves”.

Alongside 13,000 neighbourhood officers and PCSOs, the action plan on street crime will see the creation of a new Knife Enabled Robbery Taskforce, to stymie the sharp rise in knife-enabled robbery, which has seen a 13% increase in the last year alone. The taskforce will bring together ministers, police chiefs and community safety partners, pulling together best practice on the policing of geographic hotspots, blocking the onward pipeline of stolen goods and disrupting supply chains to disincentivise theft. The Home Office will work with the NPCC [National Police Chiefs Council] on week-long intensification initiatives when violent robberies are likely to peak, including around the release of new iPhones. The increased focus on knife-enabled robbery is a critical part of the government’s mission to halve knife crime within a decade, as knife enabled robbery now makes up 42% of all police-recorded knife crime.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has accused the Tory leadership candidates of lining up with Reform UK to undermine faith in the police.

She criticised them for supporting claims that “two-tier policing” is in force, describing them as “rightwing wreckers, undermining respect for the law”.

In her speech to the Labour conference, she pointed out that when Suella Braverman made similar claims about the police last year, she was sacked by Rishi Sunak as home secretary.

“Two-tier policing” refers to the theory that the police are biased in favour of leftwing, or minority protesters. During the summer riots this allegation was widely spread by far-right figures who argued that white, working-class people people who were rioting were treated much more harshly than people taking part in pro-Gaza protests.

The allegation was widely spread on social media, not least because it was adopted by the X owner Elon Musk, despite the fact that there is an obvious reason why police tactics used in response to riots are different from those used in response to peaceful, or largely peaceful, protests.

After telling delegates the riots were put down after “decent people stood up for their communities”, Cooper said:

But I’ll be honest – I’ve been shocked by the response from some of those in political parties on the right who once claimed to care about law and order.

After rioters attacked the police, they should have given full-throated backing to our brave officers.

Instead, too often we’ve seen them undermine the integrity and authority of the police, even making excuses for the mob.

If you remember, back in the run up to Armistice Day last year, disgraceful slurs made against the police which made it harder for them to do their job were treated as a sacking offence for a Tory home secretary.

A year on, those same slurs have become an article of faith for every Tory leadership contender.

It is shameful what that party has become.

The Tories, with their mates in Reform, are just becoming rightwing wreckers.

Undermining respect for the law, trying to fracture the very bonds that keep communities safe.

They have nothing to offer but fear, division and anger.

Braverman was sacked last November soon after writing an article for the Times accusing the police of bias in the way they were dealing with pro-Palestinian marches in London. “Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters,” she wrote.

Reform UK MPs revived the “two-tier policing” allegation during the summer riots, and Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, claimed that there is “a growing feeling of anger in this country that we are living through two-tier policing and a two-tier justice system” in a question to Keir Starmer at PMQs earlier this month.

To varying degrees, the four Conservative leadership candidates have also endorsed the idea.

Robert Jenrick, the favourite, has explicitly accused the Metropolitan police of “two-tier policing”.

James Cleverly, a former home secretary, has said he is worried about the perception of “two-tier policing”.

Tom Tugendhat, a former security minister, has said that, while he does not believe there is full “two-tier policing”, he thinks there is “inconstency” in how the police act in some cases.

And Kemi Badenoch has said that, while she is relucant to say there is “two-tier policing” in public order matters, the Huw Edwards sentencing was evidence of two-tier justice.

Labour is not going to order pubs to close early, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister said today.

Responding to a story in the Telegraph saying ministers were considering restricting pub opening hours, McFadden told the Today programme:

We’ve got a day left of the conference and if that’s on the agenda, I’m going to table an emergency resolution myself in order to make sure it doesn’t happen.

I think we’ve been clear about that overnight, the pub’s a great part of the British tradition and we’ve got no plans to change the opening hours in that way.

The Telegraph story was prompted by Andrew Gwynne, a health minister, saying: “These are discussions that we have got to have – even if it’s just about tightening up on some of the hours of operation; particularly where there are concerns that people are drinking too much.”

According to Politico, officials subsequently said Gwynne was talking about pubs that ignore current opening time rules.

Gwynne was speaking at a fringe meeting about preventative health.

In his Telegraph article this morning Prof Sir John Curtice, the leading psephologist, says Keir Starmer has not been very good at setting out “a clear vision of the kind of country he wants to create”. (See 8.46am.) In an interview with the Today programme this morning, Alastair Campbell, who used to be in charge of communications for Tony Blair and who now co-hosts the very popular Rest is Politics podcast, said much the same.

Campbell argued that the government got off to good start, but he said the riots “knocked them slightly off course, even though they handled it well”. In the run-up to the conference season, a “gap” emerged in communication, he said. He went on:

And I think in this gap there has been maybe just a lack of that strategic communication, where you understand that in government – which is much, much, much harder than opposition – you have to all the time be devising, executing and narrating your strategy, what the government is for, what the government is trying to do, where the government is trying to get to.

And when that doesn’t happen, then what tends to happen – particularly with a pretty hostile media which is not averse to double standards in the way it treats Labour viz a viz the Conservatives – that is when you get stuff filled with clothes and Sue Gray’s salary and all the behind-the-scenes stuff.

If you have that clear, consistent, strategic narrative, that is relentlessly being put out there, then that is when you give the country – which, by the way, doesn’t want to have politics in its face the whole time – that sense of this is what the government is about, this is what the government is trying to do.

Campbell praised Starmer’s five missions for government. He said they related to issues that people care about. But he said that talking to people at the conference last night, he was struck that even “people who are really plugged into politics” were struggling when he asked them to say what the five missions were. He went on:

You can’t blame the public for that. That’s a matter of the government being clear in its communication and the narration of that strategy, so the people cannot get any doubt about what they’re trying to do.

Pat McFadden did not rule out benefits being cut in the budget when he was asked about welfare in an interview with Sky News this morning.

Asked if Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was considering benefit cuts, the Cabinet Office minister replied:

She won’t start from that point of view, but she will start from saying there are too many people on long-term sickness benefits.

What can we do to get people back into work? There is some fraud in the system too, which we’re going to act on.

It’s really important that if money is spent on benefits, it goes to those who are genuinely in need of it, and where there’s fraud in the system that we try to root that out.

That’s two things that we do want to do. To get people back to work, and to make sure that money spent in this system goes to those who are genuinely in need of it.

When Reeves made her statement to MPs about the £22bn black hole in the public finances, she said the budget on 30 October would involve “difficult decisions to meet our fiscal rules across spending, welfare and tax”.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, has been doing an interview round this morning to roll the pitch for Keir Starmer’s “light at the end of the tunnel” speech. Speaking on Times Radio, McFadden said there were “good times on the horizon”.

We’ll hear from the prime minister today in what is a really big moment for us, the first speech from a Labour prime minister to Labour conference for 15 years, is that although the fiscal government budget situation is tough, there are good times on the horizon if we get stability right.

McFadden has never been seen as a purveyor of Boris Johnson-style boosterism – during Labour’s opposition years, his main role in the party was to warn against complacency – and in the interview Stig Abell put it to him that he was an unlikely spokesperson for hope. McFadden seemed willing to joke at his own expense. He replied:

I’m shocked. If it’s optimism and sunshine you want, I am your man.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is giving his speech to the Labour conference this afternoon and, as the Guardian reports, his overall message will be one of qualified, long-term optimism. Another leader might have dressed this message up in poetic rhetoric, but Starmer will be using a straightforward cliche, telling the audience “there’s light at the end of the tunnel”. He will say:

The truth is that if we take tough long-term decisions now, if we stick to the driving purpose behind everything we do: higher economic growth - so living standards rise in every community; our NHS facing the future - waiting lists at your hospital down; safer streets in your community; stronger borders; more opportunities for your children; clean British energy powering your home; making our country more secure ... then that light at the end of this tunnel, that Britain that belongs to you, we get there much more quickly.

Our preview story is here.

But the Times has been told the speech will also include plans for a crackdown on benefit fraud. It says Starmer will announce that the government will introduce a fraud, error and debt bill – not something that was mentioned in the king’s speech that happened only two months ago. It says:

The legislation will allow fraud investigators to compel banks to hand over information about people’s finances if there is a suspicion they are claiming benefits they are not entitled to.

It will also give them powers of “search and seizure” of people’s property in cases involving organised criminal gangs that are exploiting the benefits system.

The crackdown is designed to save the taxpayer £1.6 billion over the next five years by tackling fraud and reducing overpayments. Starmer will say that he wants to ensure that “every penny” of taxpayers’ money is spent on Labour’s pledge to “rebuild public services” ….

Banks will be required to tell the benefit system if people have savings of more than £16,000, the cut-off point for claiming benefits, or have been abroad for more than the four weeks allowed for universal credit claimants. Inspectors will then investigate and seek to recover overpayments.

The Times: Labour to crack down on benefit fraudsters #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/5Nb8k41Wuo

— George Mann (@sgfmann) September 23, 2024

The news that a right-leaning paper has been briefed about a crackdown on benefit cheats will worry the left and, in an interview on the Today programme this morning, John McDonnell, shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, said this reminded him of George Osborne.

I don’t say this lightly. If you close your eyes, and you listen to the language being used, it’s almost like George Osborne speaking again in 2010.

And when you hear politicians talk about “tough choices” or “painful decisions”, and then you hear some of the rhetoric around fraud and social security, literally that’s a replica of a speech made by George Osborne in 2010.

McDonnell may have been thinking of Osborne comparing benefit cheats to muggers when he was chancellor in 2010, although Osborne also associated with the “strivers versus shirkers” language used to demonise people on benefits by the Tories later during the coalition years.

But, to be fair to Starmer, this does not seem to be the language he is using. The Times story includes a quote from the Starmer speech this afternoon not included in the overnight preview sent to all newspapers. It says Starmer will tell the conference:

We will get the welfare bill down because we will tackle long-term sickness and get people back to work. We will make every penny work for you because we will root out waste and go after tax avoiders. There will be no stone left unturned.

The paper also says the welfare fraud initiative is a response to growing concern that the benefit system is increasingly being targeted by organised crime. Earlier this year the Department for Work and Pensions highlighted the conviction of a gang behind a £54m fraud.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.45am: Conference opens.

10am: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, opens a debate on “Safe Streets, Stronger Policing”. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is also speaking at 11.35am.

11am: Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, takes part in an ‘in conversation’ event at a fringe meeting.

2pm: Keir Starmer delivers his keynote speech.

4pm: Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, opens a “Fixing the Foundations” debate.

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