PM statement to the House of Commons: 1 September 2026

Delivered on: 1 September 2026

Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the direction in which I will lead our country.

I come before this House, having visited each of the regions and nations of the UK over the last six weeks and Ukraine on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of its independence.

The UK's steadfast support has helped sustain Ukraine's resolve over the last four and a half years, particularly so in the last two.

That was the achievement of my predecessor and as he stands down from this place, I want to pay tribute to the Right Honourable Member for Holborn and St Pancras.

He has given this country a lifetime of public service, Mr Speaker, particularly for those fighting for justice.

When my Right Honourable Friend delivered in this House on his promise to the Hillsborough families, and everyone involved in the Hillsborough Law campaign, it was a moment I will never forget.

[Political content redacted]

The position my right honourable friend took on Ukraine, building on the work of his predecessors as Prime Minister, is one which I will not change, whatever the threats we face.

We do not seek escalation, but instead will stand firm in providing what help we can to enable Ukraine to defend itself from this illegal invasion.

Britain's defence starts in Ukraine, and the defence of our nation will always be my first priority.

On public safety, Mr Speaker, I know the whole House will wish to join me in expressing deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, who were killed in the line of duty on the A66.

We will do our best to support the Middlesbrough community, which is hurting and grieving right now, and we hear the call from the members of this House representing it for a discussion about investment in policing and police numbers.

I know I also speak for the whole House in expressing my profound shock and horror at the devastating scenes on the Nepal-China border.

My sympathies are with all those affected, including the families and loved ones of those missing in this appalling tragedy.

The Foreign Secretary is doing everything he can to support the Nepalese Government and British nationals in the region.

This is what the climate crisis looks like, Mr Speaker.

We have just ourselves experienced what is likely to have been the hottest summer on record.

This Government will meet the climate challenge, and I can confirm to the House that I will attend COP31 in Turkey in November.

Mr Speaker, I will build on the work of my predecessor in other areas.

When I visited Dover in early August, staff from Border Force and HM Coast Guard told me extra police numbers on French beaches are beginning to deliver real results.

I can report to the House today that this has continued throughout the last month, with numbers arriving over the summer halved on last year, making this year to date the lowest for crossings since 2021.

Tomorrow, when I welcome President Macron to the UK on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry, I will thank him for the cooperation that has enabled us to prevent over 48,000 people crossing.

Where it is right to do so, Mr Speaker, I will build on what has been achieved.

However, where necessary, I will not hesitate to make changes.

One of the first things I did after taking office was to review the plans to relieve pressure on prison places with the Lord Chancellor, who will provide a full update to the House following my statement.

We took an early decision to exempt rape, grooming and serious child sex offences and fast-track work to see if we could go further, hearing calls from the family of PC Andrew Harper and many others.

As a result, Mr Speaker, we are now confirming that anyone convicted of manslaughter, death by dangerous driving or indecent assault will not now see any change to their prison term.

We will find additional prison places by deporting more foreign national offenders and finally grasping the nettle on an issue this House has ignored for too long, indefinite IPP sentences, a now abolished policy, but one which to this day keeps people behind bars despite already having served more than their sentences.

None of this is easy, Mr Speaker, but I did what I always do, and that is to apply my values to a challenging situation and a care for people, which I spoke about in Downing Street.

I believe the public will support me in recognising the clear difference between those who have served their time and more and those who have not.

We will bring forward legislation soon, but we can find a solution to end this injustice which balances public safety and basic fairness, and I urge colleagues on all sides of the House to help us do that. This is politics done differently. Problem solving over point scoring. It is what the country needs. It is what the public want more of. And it will characterise my time in office, Mr Speaker.

I was pleased to begin cross-party talks over social care in the summer. And I thank the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Right Honourable Member for Daventry for the spirit in which that endeavour began, and I wish the latter well as he leaves the front bench.

When it comes to the biggest issues facing the country, the economy and the cost of living crisis, people are looking for much more substantial change as promised in our manifesto and that is what I will bring.

Britain is not where any of us would wish it to be. Things are not working as they should. Life is too expensive and too hard for too many. This is why this government's first moves were to give businesses and people a little breathing space.

On tax, in my first week in office, we cut VAT on electricity bills and cut business rates for pubs, social clubs, and live music venues.

We reinstated the two-pound cap on bus fares for the whole of 2027.

These measures will provide some relief, Mr Speaker. They were funded by reprioritising within government as the bedrock of our approach will be grounded in fiscal responsibility.

But in the long term, lifting growth and living standards will require much more.

What I bring back to the House after 10 years away is a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong.

And let me lay it out clearly, particularly for the right honourable gentleman since he asked.

From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns.

Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, the country deindustrialised, austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this.

And then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.

Change begins with honesty, Mr Speaker. I'm not hearing much of it this afternoon.

Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we won't turn things around.

Far from taking back control, the combination of these policies took control out of the hands of communities up and down Britain.

For 40 years, too many places have been drifting.

Too many British high streets tell the story of this decline.

People yearn to see them restored to what they once were, as the Community Secretary and I heard on our visit to Ilkeston in the summer.

But they see no hope if we continue on the same path, with a failed economic model which does not trickle down much to places like theirs and instead allows wealth to be extracted and siphoned out.

Britain's water industry stands as a leaking monument to that approach. A country run in the private rather than public interest.

[Political content redacted]

The government I lead will be relentless in giving people and places what they were promised 10 years ago, ownership and control. And from that control over their destiny comes change and growth.

I say this with confidence. I do. Let me explain why. Because it is backed by a decade of personal experience turning around one of the UK's former industrial heartlands and turning it into the fastest growing city region in the country, bucking the low growth trend.

It has given me, Mr Speaker, a clear theory of growth, and I will apply it to all parts of the UK, learning from what has been achieved in Greater Manchester.

For a long time, the country did not have ambitions for its regions outside of London.

It even talked of the managed decline of Liverpool.

It took the devolution of power out of this place to allow our big city regions the ability to set new ambitions for themselves.

Now I want every single place across our regions and nations to be able to do the same, creating the conditions for good growth in every postcode.

And in that spirit, I was glad to meet the Liberal Democrat leader of Cornwall Council with my honourable friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth on my recent visit.

I know, like many rural economies across the UK, Cornwall lacks a basic level of infrastructure which in turn harms growth and holds back living standards and life chances, and I heard the cross-party call for a devolution deal.

I understand concerns in this House about the potential emergence of a two-tier England between those with devolved power and those without, and I will not ignore them.

So, I have asked Number 10 North to begin work with Cornwall Council and its six MPs on a devolution deal, with or without an elected Mayor.

And Mr Speaker, I today extend the same offer to all parts of England without devolved power.

The First Secretary of State will today write to every member of this House setting out how they can engage Number 10 North in the service of the places they represent.

I extended the same offer to the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales and the First and Deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland when I met them over the summer.

As they rightly pointed out, their situations are different, but there is interest in what a local model of devolution could look like in each of the home nations, and we will discuss that with them at a special meeting of the National Economic Council next month.

Mr Speaker, this Government will oversee the biggest redistribution of power this country has seen.

In July we published a statement on the next stage of English devolution, and it will include powers long requested by mayors such as post-16 technical education, employment support and fiscal devolution, starting with the ability to set an overnight visitor levy to commence towards the end of the financial year 27-28.

The driving force behind it all will be Number 10 North. It will oversee the rewiring of the British state, the rebuilding of resilience in our communities and the re-industrialisation of our regions. Its creation was one of the first acts of this administration and I believe that in time it will be seen as one of its most significant.

It is a clear answer to the question with which this country has long wrestled. Who in government drives growth?

My theory of growth requires it to be driven with the full authority of the very centre of government in close partnership with HM Treasury.

Number 10 North has been set up with that full focus.

The single front door on which regions can knock to get quicker joined-up decisions from Whitehall and through which power and resources will be passed to them.

Resources will include human resources. This is because a state which has grown too large at the national level now needs to redirect civil service capacity regionally and locally, repairing the damage of austerity and making the service of place the state's first priority.

We can already see what is possible, Mr Speaker.

I'm glad Number 10 North was able to stand behind Mayor Richard Parker when he took urgent action in August to prevent the collapse of bus services across the West Midlands.

And I want to congratulate Mayor Steve Rotheram who this weekend, after four decades of deregulation, will see the first buses return to public control in the Liverpool City region.

Taking back control of essential services like transport is an enabler of a more productive economy because it allows local areas to grab hold of the levers of power for themselves.

But driving growth demands we go further.

It is taking far too long for businesses to get grid connections.

And they are being quoted prohibitively expensive sums of money if they try to bring those dates forward. As I heard on my visit to a farm near Truro, household energy bills are the highest in Europe, and the cost of energy is impacting business and inward investment.

Too many areas have seen water supplies disrupted this summer due to a lack of reservoir capacity.

Our tourism industry is damaged by too many sewage spills.

Why they say opposite is a question they should ask themselves.

This summer has shown us very clearly that water companies are failing to rise to the climate challenge. It can't go on.

Later in the year, our 10-year plan for Britain will set out plans for stronger public control over these essentials, making them work for people and places again.

Alongside this, we will empower all areas to expand the public housing stock, building on the first allocations from the Social and Affordable Homes programme announced by the Community Secretary last week.

[Political content redacted]

Allowing mayors to shape technical pathways and provide work placements for young people, building back into colleges and schools from the needs of the regional economy is the way to support more young people into work.

So is prioritising more accessible community-based mental health services as we announced in the summer.

This will be a major part of our response to the forthcoming Milburn report, which will follow its publication in the autumn.

For it to work, a more intentional approach to the reindustrialisation of Britain is required.

We will support all parts of the country to take more public control over investment strategy, learning from the Greater Manchester model of a consolidated good growth fund, drawn from their own funds, prudent loan borrowing and fragmented budgets held by government bodies.

We will back local industrial strategies, a policy of the Theresa May government I am happy to revive by identifying priority sectors and developing the triple helix approach to economic development by entwining business, academia and government behind the plan.

This is the way, Mr Speaker, we will build a pro-business culture and an innovation-led economy in all parts of the UK, finally capturing the long-term benefits of the invention that is in the DNA of our nation, backing our start-ups and scale-ups to stay in the UK where they were founded.

Mr Speaker, when I stood outside Downing Street six weeks ago, I said Britain needs a circuit breaker after a decade of turbulence, negativity, point scoring and divisive politics.

This is what I have outlined today.

A clear, coherent, and credible approach to growth that can unlock a feeling of positivity and possibility in every postcode in Britain.

Our job in here is to make it real by taking a place first rather than party first approach.

It starts with reasserting basic standards for Britain, that this is a country where no one sleeps rough and no community is blighted by an illegal waste tip.

And from there, working together to build a new sense of optimism around the country.

We can make this next decade better than the last.

We can lift the prospects of all our people and places.

We can put more power into every postcode.

We can let Britain believe again.

We can bring back hope.

Mr Speaker, I commend this statement to the House.