Rebecca Harris MP Meets Cancer Research UK Representatives at Conservative Party Conference

Last week, Rebecca Harris MP attended Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. This year’s edition once again demonstrated that Kemi Badenoch has put together a truly united team who continue to deliver detailed plans to build a stronger, safer and more prosperous United Kingdom. Throughout Conference, Rebecca had the opportunity to meet leading charities, industry bodies and party organisations to hear more about their respective ideas for the country. Rebecca visited several stands, speaking to representatives and engaging with experts on cancer research, palliative care, defence and the economy. During Conference, The Conservative Party also unveiled a range of measures to improve the lives of people across Castle Point. These proposals are rooted in strong conservative principles as outlined in Kemi Badenoch’s recent publication, The Right Way. In addition to previously announced measures, this forms part of a renewed Conservative Party’s offering to the country. Below is a list of announcements made at Conservative Party Conference 2026: 1. We will abolish inheritance tax on the family home. Kemi Badenoch has announced that we will abolish inheritance tax on the family home. 2. The Right Way, published by Kemi is a statement of the conservative principles that will guide our united, different Conservative Party that is unashamed of being on the side of hard-working people. The Right Way sets out clear, common-sense principles: wealth must be created before it can be distributed, freedom requires responsibility, rule-breaking must have consequences, and government should be judged by what it achieves, not by its intentions. 3. Our Savings Plan will save £71 billion by tackling the unsustainable welfare budget and reducing the size of government so we can pay for our commitments like 3 per cent of defense spending by 2030. At Conference 2025 we set out a package of measures to save £47 billion a year. Today we are updating our Plan for Savings to save £71 billion, following extensive work by the Conservative Economic Unit. In line with our Golden Economic Rule, half of these savings have been allocated to deficit reduction, meaning that our savings plan will reduce the deficit by £35.5 billion against 2029-30 forecasts. 4. We will halve Employer National Insurance for those aged 21 to 24 to get young people back into work. We believe in working hard and getting on, not parking people on benefits. We will halve the Employer National Insurance rate from 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent for employees aged 21 to 24 on earnings up to £50,270. This will reduce the cliff edge where employers begin paying Employer National Insurance. We will back young people and make it cheaper for businesses to recruit them to build a Stronger Economy. 5. We will end the childcare cliff edge. We will end the childcare cliff edge which leaves working parents thousands of pounds worse off when their earnings exceed £100,000. This is a pro-family policy to make the tax system fairer for working people. 6. We will build the Britannia Shield to keep Britain and overseas sovereign territories safe from missile and drone attack. We will deliver the ‘Britannia Shield’ - an integrated missile and drone defence system protecting Britain and our territories around the world. This is part of our plan, setting out the choices we will make to keep Britain safe in a more dangerous world. 7. We will build 50,000 new prison places funded by further reducing the aid budget. Our plan will be the largest expansion in prison places in decades, which will build 50,000 new places by repurposing the aid budget and reducing the DCMS budget. 8. We will scrap the Family Homes Tax. We will abolish the Family Homes Tax (High Value Council Tax Surcharge), removing the unfair system Labour are creating where families are punished with a tax they did not know they would have to pay when they bought their homes. 9. We will cut the price of a new home by £50,000 by cutting red tape. Net zero building rules have increased the build cost of new homes, making sale prices up to £50,000 more expensive. We will repeal net zero building rules making homes harder to build and more expensive. This will not affect the quality of new build homes. Our plan will help millions of young people get on the housing ladder by directly reducing the cost of new build housing, especially when combined with our removal of Stamp Duty on the family home. 10. We will repeal rules that hold up the building of homes and delay community improvements. Section 106 rules have created a vast and costly bureaucracy, delaying developments by up to 17 months and preventing communities from getting local improvements as a result. We will therefore replace Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy with a simple and transparent ‘one-stop’ Infrastructure Levy to simplify the planning system. 11. We will scrap the Grocery Tax. We will scrap the Grocery Tax, a £1.5 billion tax on the packaging our shopping comes in. This will reduce costs that businesses face. 12. We will support a Third Runway at Heathrow. We will support a Third Runway at Heathrow Airport to deliver cheaper flights, better connections for passengers and more exports. 13. We will simplify the UK’s over-complicated tax code. We will simplify the tax code to cut the time and money spent complying with it and we will replace IR35. 14. We will overhaul the fit note system to get people into work funded by welfare savings. We will end the fit note system as we know it to get people back to work and free up GP time. We will move patients seeking a fit note for an extended period away from GPs and to alternative healthcare professionals such as an occupational therapist or physiotherapist, who will assess the individual's capacity to work and whether the patient will receive welfare or not. 15. We will abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency and restore ministerial oversight. We have announced plans to abolish Natural England and the Environment Agency, improving outcomes for the environment, while removing unnecessary blocks on infrastructure. Putting the responsibilities back in Defra. 16. We will create a new Get to Work programme so young people do not slide onto a life on benefits. Under our plans, young people under 25 who can work – and have done less than six months continuously in employment – will no longer be able to sign onto Universal Credit when they leave education (or reach 18). Those who leave education without a job or an apprenticeship will be offered support through the Get to Work Programme and will only be able to claim the Get to Work Allowance. 17. We will launch Get Transport Moving, a comprehensive plan to tackle transport skills shortages, remove barriers to employment and give businesses the workforce needed to keep Britain moving. This will include a £40 million package to recruit more HGV drivers and improve their welfare, rebuild Britain’s maritime skills pipeline and establish a £10 million Aviation Skills fund. 18. We will ban floating bus stops and remove the most dangerous floating bus stops. Floating bus stops can create serious barriers for elderly, blind and partially sighted passengers trying to use buses independently. A future Conservative Government would ban all new floating bus stops and remove around 100 of the worst existing examples. Our Community-Led Floating Bus Stop Abolition Fund will allow local communities to nominate the most dangerous and egregious stops for action, while no new floating bus stops will be permitted. 19. We will crack down on drug driving and take dangerous offenders off the road sooner. Our four-point plan will introduce Road Risk Prevention Orders, modernise drink and drug-driving enforcement through evidential roadside testing, extend the High-Risk Offender Scheme to drug drivers and introduce a national Drug-Driving Rehabilitation Scheme. 20. We will review airport drop-off charges and what is driving them, to put passengers first to get Britain working again. We will launch a review that would report within six months of airport drop-off charges. The review would look at the extent to which government environmental policies, surface-access targets and modal-shift requirements, alongside commercial incentives, are driving up airport drop-off charges. 21. We will leave the Aarhus Convention to speed up development. We will withdraw the UK from the Aarhus Convention. We will then remove the special Aarhus costs caps so that environmental judicial reviews are subject to the same costs rules as every other judicial review. We will keep the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, so the public’s right to environmental information is unaffected. 22. We will accelerate the Fingleton Nuclear Regulatory Review. We will deliver a national nuclear renewal by accelerating the implementation of the Fingleton Review to speed up the delivery of nuclear facilities. 23. We will introduce our Pledge to Parents, which will take politics out of the classroom and create schools that unite and not divide. We have announced a seven-point Pledge to Parents on our plan to keep politics out of the classroom. This will give parents confidence that when they send their child to school, the focus will be on learning and high academic standards. Too many parents are afraid to speak up about what their children are exposed to at school for fear of being labelled racist or insensitive. We will back parents, protect time for core academic subjects and crack down where political activism creeps into the classroom. 24. We will stop handing billions in student loans to foreign nationals while British taxpayers pick up the bill. Foreign nationals now receive around one fifth of UK student lending – about £4 billion a year – yet only 51 per cent repay, compared with 68 per cent of British borrowers. A Conservative Government will end access to UK student loans for EU and non-EU foreign nationals, while honouring the rights of EU citizens with settled status under the Brexit agreement. The change will save taxpayers an estimated £900 million every year. If you have been forwarded this email and wish to subscribe to this distribution list, please fill out this form.