Welcome back to Llandudno and to Welsh Labour Conference 2023!

It’s great to be back in North Wales again, re-connecting with members of the Welsh Labour family and celebrating the fantastic results in the local government elections last year.

While we reflect on those excellent results all over Wales, this weekend is a chance to start preparing for the next General Election in earnest, to ensure we get the Labour UK Government this country so desperately needs and are rid of the rotten Tories once and for all.

The 12 months since we last met have been truly extraordinary – even by the standards of UK politics.

We’ve had three Prime Ministers and a disastrous mini-budget, which sent the pound tumbling and almost crashed our pension funds.

Sadly, we are all paying for the Tories’ failures, with the highest taxes for 70 years and record levels of inflation, deepening and prolonging the cost-of-living crisis. As the soap opera in Downing Street has played out, we have been hard at work in Wales, delivering on the promises we made to people across Wales in 2021 and providing the support families need during the cost-of-living crisis.

We extended our fuel support payment to 400,000 households this winter and we continue to provide emergency, lifeline cash payments to people in need through our Discretionary Assistance Fund.

September saw the start of the roll out of free school meals to primary school pupils – by Christmas an extra 1.5m meals had been provided.

It’s universal support like this, free school breakfasts and free prescriptions, which helps to keep money in people’s pockets in Wales.

More than 11,000 young people have been supported to find jobs during the first year of our flagship Young Person’s Guarantee and we have set out our plans to create a state-owned energy developer to ensure energy profits created in Wales will benefit people in Wales.

Our ambitious LGBTQ+ plan, published just last month, will ensure everyone can feel safe, free from fear, discrimination and hate.

I’m looking forward to welcoming you all back to conference – to a weekend of conversations, debates and comradeship by the seaside.

Let’s all enjoy our time in Llandudno – hopefully in the sun. Welcome to Welsh Labour Conference 2023 and to a Stronger, Fairer and Greener Wales!

Welcome to Llandudno for our 2023 Welsh Labour conference. I’m proud to lead our Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party in the UK Parliament as your Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, in Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet.

Our Welsh Labour MPs are strong voices for their communities, holding the failing Tory Government to account and ensuring Welsh interests are heard and represented in Parliament. We have a Prime Minister who continually puts his party before the country.

Add to that, a Secretary of State for Wales who has shamelessly defended Boris Johnson then celebrated the Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget as a member of her government. It couldn’t be clearer — the Tories don’t respect, care, or think about Wales.

There has been a great deal of upheaval since we last gathered in Llandudno.

There will rightly be moments of sombre reflection this conference. We will also take time to celebrate the successes we have had in the last year.

In May’s local elections, Welsh Labour made gains right across Wales. I pay tribute to our fantastic Labour councillors, who work hard for their communities putting Labour values into practice and to all our candidates who stood.

In the last year, we’ve seen off two Conservative Prime Ministers. But people across Wales are still paying the price for their disastrous economic mismanagement. We are living with a Tory cost-of-living crisis, made in Downing Street.

Despite these challenges, Welsh Labour in power delivers for Wales.

Our social care workers are paid the real living wage, free school meals are being rolled out to all our primary school pupils and we are tackling the climate emergency.

As we look ahead to the next twelve months with renewed focus and determination, we all know that our job is to get Keir into 10 Downing Street leading a UK Labour government working hand in hand with our Welsh Labour Government.

Whenever the general election comes, we will be ready for the campaign, with our message of hope and change.

We have so much potential in our nation, so much talent in our communities, and the natural resources to put us at the forefront of the clean energy transition, creating skilled jobs and a stronger economy.

With Keir Starmer leading a UK Labour Government, we can truly unlock our potential to build a fairer, greener and more prosperous Wales.

I’m delighted to welcome you all back to Llandudno to our 2023 Welsh Conference.Hasn’t it been quite the year.

From the moment that conference ended last year, it was incredible to see the Welsh Labour campaign machine kick into action. The doors that were knocked, the phone calls that were made, and the leaflets delivered that meant that once again we saw an excellent set of local election results, with Labour gains across Wales.

Only two months later, we saw the first prime ministerial resignation of the year, and by the beginning of September Boris Johnson was out of Downing Street. If you blinked, you’d have missed it, but we were onto our second Prime Minister of 2022 with Liz Truss.

She lasted less than 50 days, but really made the most of it by crashing the economy, creating further chaos in the Tory Party, and almost giving some of our Welsh Tory MPs whiplash with the speed at which they had to row back on saying how great they thought she was.

It’s easy to look back on the year the Tories have had in disbelief, but beyond the chaos is a country crying out for help from a government who are too busy looking at themselves to think about what families need.

People across the United Kingdom are being hit hard by the cost of living crisis. Energy bills are skyrocketing, food is getting more expensive and the petrol in our tanks isn’t getting us as far as it once did.

Here in Wales, our Welsh Labour Government is stepping in to help - but without a UK Government willing to do their part, there is only so far they can go.

We need a Labour Government in Westminster, led by Keir Starmer, to really make that difference.

And we all need to do our bit to make it happen. That means getting on the doors, having those conversations, and delivering as many votes for Labour at the next election as we possibly can. It is a win in Wales which will change the political landscape of the UK.

I really hope you enjoy your weekend here in Llandudno, and that you leave here equipped and ready to fight the next general election. Across this country, there are people counting on us to win.

Let’s deliver for them.