In our first year Labour fixed the foundations – now we must build a stronger economy for a renewed Britain | Rachel Reeves

THe]I have met a dozens of business in the past few weeks of about the United Kingdom. PUB and Restaurant owners in Cornwall and Kent. Manufacturers of Defense in Belfast and Moray. Investment foreigns in Aberdeenshire and Port Talbot.

I have seen an economy that has the ingredients for success – a skilled and subject of work forms, innovative companies. You do not belong to reform or the conservatives talk about this success. They want you to believe that the economy is broken. That our best days are behind us and that the path of decline is inevitable. I accumulate that basically. It's not the country I see around us, and it's not the future I believe in. Britain's economy is not broken but I know that in the last few years has detained.

Austerity, a chaotic brexite and Liz Truss's's Despursite Mini-Budget led to more than a decade of stagnation. Our economy was trapped in a low growth cycle, suppressed investments and stagnant income that weaken our competitiveness on the global stage.

The months and weeks before all budget are full of people speculating with people – or claim to know – which tax and spend decisions I will take or what the office Budget Responsibility will conclude. This budget is not different – I get that. I will set the decisions I'm assuming in a responsible manner.

But just as my focus has been in the past 12 months over the outstretched economic growth for the benefits of working people, so will my next. Because Britain's productivity problem Is not a abstract, Techstract, and has directly affecting any working family in Britain who feel they are increasing every penny to make end. When businesses cannot grow, wages stagnate and there is less money in the pockets of working people. If infrastructure is not enough, rise, and opportunities are lost.

If skills do not match economic needs, potential is not full. With lower productivity tax go down and our public services faces. And with the changing of the world is Britain is to be exposed to Global Shocks.

Working people about Britain Strive and graft, but they did not have the tool they need for the job. They have not seen their income as a reward for their hard work. There is that sealing feeling that families and companies feel in the end of each month they work hard but now receive. There is nothing progressive – nothing Labor – About an economy that is not productive and reward not those who contribute. Since I became shadow classes and then chance, I have known to break this cycle, our persistent effort on many fronts.

Because if update is our mission and productivity our challenge, then our exit, then in investing and reforms are our tools. It is investment in our infrastructure, from the train lines connecting companies and communities to each other to the building of new houses that have people who have the dream of fulfilling a house. It invests in British workers and increasing skills in this country, so we finish company confidence in cheap migrant workers.

We provide that investing and the barriers also inflating. Break down the scheduling system To get Brittage BuildingCut of the unnecessary red tape that supports innovation instead of enabled, and fill in the skills that fill in companies that can expand and work.

We make progress: LOennies grew quickly in our first 10 months in power than the first 10 years conservatives, 384,000 More jobs have been createdTrading companies now hit with the united states, India and the European UnionThe cost of a representative new variable Rate mortgage lower than when we were chosenand millions of working people who come a wages from a boost at the national minimum wage.

But I know that there is more to do – and that's what this fall will be. Because I do not accept as inappropriate. If the first year in the first year in the power was in the Labor to fix, then the second year, about building a stronger economy for a renewed Britain. An renewed economy that works for working people – and rewards work people. That's my priority. That's my mission. That's what I am determined to deliver.