Full text: Michael Gove’s Conservative conference speech

Our island nation has been defined by its relationship with the sea. It has been our doorway to global trade, a treasure house of oil and gas, and the home to teeming stocks of fish. But now our oceans are in danger. Danger from climate change, from chemical residues, from exploitation and indeed from plastic. The equivalent of a dumper truck of plastic is dropped in the sea every minute of every day. Unless we change course, by the year 2050 the seas will contain more plastic than fish. We cannot, and we will not, allow that to happen. Which is why we need, in the words of Winston Churchill, action this day.

And we are acting. Already the plastic bag charge has cut the number distributed by almost 90 per cent. We are unleashing the innovative energy of our scientists, and the entrepreneurial flair of our businesses, to develop new greener products that are already generating new jobs. And later this year we will launch a new front in the war against waste. We will take steps to make recycling easier, invest in cleaner technologies, and take tougher action against the fly-tippers and waste criminals who pollute our landscape and trash our blue planet. Determined, focussed and effective action to conserve our environment from a Conservative Government.

As we know all too well from our history, if you want a mess cleared up you need a Conservative Government. In 1979, after our economy had been trashed by Labour, it was a Conservative Government that came to the rescue. And in 2010, we inherited a deficit out of control, rocketing unemployment and young lives wasted. But now, thanks to the steps we took, we have a dramatically reduced deficit, three million new jobs created and youth unemployment is at a record low. 

The Conservatives rescued our country again. I feel obliged to point out that every step of this...