Healey to pledge "new age of industrialisation" at Labour conference

John Healey is set to promise Britain a "new age of industrialisation" when he delivers his first conference speech as chancellor, opening Labour's annual gathering in Liverpool on Monday with a wide-ranging blueprint for reviving British heavy industry.

The former defence secretary will use the platform to argue that the government's economic strategy is about building, not repeating, the country's industrial heritage. While acknowledging that the extraction economy of the past is gone for good, he is expected to tell delegates that there is no place for a return of underground coal mining, and that the route to growth runs instead through investment in advanced manufacturing and the skilled workforces that support it.

The speech lands at a politically delicate moment. Healey is roughly one month away from delivering his first Budget as chancellor, and the government faces mounting pressure to reduce public spending or raise taxes to absorb the escalating cost of government borrowing. Officials have indicated, however, that the conference platform will not be used for specifics on tax and spending measures. Instead, the chancellor is expected to frame his remarks around what he describes as a renewed "confidence in Britain" — a deliberately optimistic message designed to project unity and ambition at a time when the OBR's numbers dominate headlines.

The headline announcements are expected to centre on shipbuilding, an industry where successive governments have been accused of allowing British capability to erode. Healey is expected to confirm that three new floating docks will be constructed for HM Royal Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, and that the work will be awarded to yards inside the United Kingdom rather than being put out to international competition. The plans were first floated as far back as 2023, and the docks are designed to modernise the Scottish base's facilities for the next generation of British submarines.

The Faslane project forms part of a wider £15bn upgrade of the Royal Navy's shipyards, with the new floating docks expected to enter service in the early 2030s. That timescale gives the announcement a certain political convenience: it signals long-term industrial intent without requiring immediate cash, and it ties defence spending to a domestic supply chain rather than to imports. Labour strategists will hope that framing converts a technical naval infrastructure story into a broader argument about national resilience and regional employment.

A second element is due to be announced alongside the docks. Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, indicated on Sunday that the government will commission a new marine research vessel as part of a "new era of reindustrialisation". The vessel is expected to attract £115m in public funding and, like the docks, is scheduled to come into service in the early 2030s. Taken together, the two announcements give the government a recognisable pattern: state-backed orders, British-built, with delivery stretching well beyond the current parliament.

Healey has pre-empted critics by arguing that supporting domestic shipyards is a two-way investment, one that simultaneously strengthens national security and underpins the industries expected to generate growth in the years ahead while building capabilities the country will need later. The rhetorical appeal is that public spending on defence infrastructure doubles as industrial policy — a line that resonates with voters in communities whose fortunes have been tied to naval yards for generations.

The response from the opposition has been sharply sceptical. Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, dismissed the announcements as reheated pledges, saying they came with no clarity about where the money would come from. He claimed Labour was running scared of the difficult choices needed to pay for Britain's defence commitments, and said only the Conservatives would cut the welfare bill to finance the military. The underlying Conservative attack is that the government has a spending aspiration but no fiscal plan to sustain it.

Union reaction has been considerably warmer, reflecting the unions' long campaign for domestic shipbuilding capacity. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national secretary of the GMB, which has pressed for the move, called the announcement a "massive boost" for the sector. He said British yards had for too long lost juicy contracts to overseas competitors, often heavily subsidised by foreign governments, and argued the policy could revive UK yards and the communities that depend on them — an argument about industrial employment that the chancellor can use to counter criticism of his tax and spending plans.

Business groups are offering a more mixed verdict on the wider economic picture. A Confederation of British Industry survey due to be published on Monday points to falling activity in the three months to September, with retail and services declining more sharply while manufacturing weakened more moderately. Alpesh Paleja, the CBI's deputy chief economist, said higher energy and employment costs combined with weak demand were continuing to squeeze profit margins, and that uncertainty surrounding next month's Budget was itself holding back investment in some sectors.

Paleja pressed the chancellor to use the Budget to draw a clear line under further increases in the cost of hiring, investing and doing business — a demand that sits awkwardly beside a speech about national ambition, and highlights the gap between the government's industrial rhetoric and the mood in boardrooms.

Labour's own activist base is likely to press a different message. Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, has urged Healey to do something tangible for workers, specifically by unfreezing income tax thresholds to put money back into people's pockets and taking further action on energy bills. The expectation among union supporters is that a Budget must deliver visible relief rather than symbolic gestures on industrial strategy.

One of the more concrete social measures in the speech relates to skills. Healey is expected to announce the return of a union-run training programme, the Union Learning Fund, with £15m in taxpayers' money drawn from existing government budgets. The scheme will help workers in England retrain as technology, including artificial intelligence, reshapes the labour market. It is not restricted to union members, and support ranges from basic English, maths and digital skills to programmes tailored to expanding sectors such as advanced manufacturing — tying the skills agenda directly to the industrial one.

Andy Burnham, the prime minister, is due to make his own major address on Tuesday, and has already linked the government's reindustrialisation agenda to international discussions, including talks with US President Donald Trump last week. The conference will therefore bookend a week in which the party's economic message is set out in full, even as the chancellor postpones the harder fiscal decisions to the Budget itself.