Our plans to improve procurement will create quality jobs and raise standards

Over the last week, Labour has been setting out our new deal for working people. By boosting quality jobs through our plan to buy, make and sell more in Britain, to a strong industrial strategy that delivers green jobs – we want to make Britain the best place to work.

But with our plans to create more secure work with full worker rights from day one, a fairer economy, opportunity for all and work that pays a decent wage – we aren’t just raising the bar here for working people – but also showing how we can use our influence across the world for good.

As we shape a new future outside of the EU, we should be fixing the gaps in the government’s Brexit trade deal, and helping our brilliant British businesses sell all around the world. Just as importantly, we should be showing global leadership in tackling the climate crisis and building positive relationships with those whose values we share.

On all of these, this Tory government is falling vastly short. Our exports have been plummeting, with nearly 25,000 businesses exporting less than normal for this time of year and government-backed British exports falling by almost a third last year.

The idea of Britain being a global leader on climate has been torn to tatters, a situation they must swiftly rectify ahead of COP26. The government’s independent advisers, the climate change committee, has said that Boris Johnson’s government is failing to come up with the policies needed to reach their own targets.

And the government seems to have little interest in using trade deals to protect either British interests, or human interests. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the pure unconscionability of the government brushing off revelations that it procured £150m worth of personal protective equipment linked to human rights abuses against the Uyghur in China.

Labour will do things differently. Our plan to buy, make and sell more in Britain will help the British people get the reasonable things they expect: a stable job with wages they can raise a family on, a financial buffer when things go wrong, and opportunities to prosper – no matter where they’re from or what their background.

Our three-point plan will boost our economy, so people can afford things like a proper summer holiday, run their own car or own their own home. We’ll nurture the skills of the future we so badly need for our economic recovery, creating world-class jobs in digital media, film, offshore wind and fin tech.

While our plans to improve procurement will help create those quality jobs, they can also help us raise standards across the world by using social and environmental clauses in contracts. With these, we can create better trading and business relationships with those countries and their companies looking to treat workers well, in line with our own standards – not support a global race to the bottom for workers.

We can use weightings in those contracts to write in, for example, assessments on deforestation and pollution risks from suppliers, and start to address the growing problem of our high imported emissions – stopping the offshoring of climate destructive activities to other countries.

Across our country and across the globe, we have faced – and continue to face – huge and damaging challenges from Covid-19. With Labour’s plan to create quality jobs and make Britain the best place to work in, we can begin to overcome them.