This speech was given to the 2003 Labour Party Conference.

Conference – Imagine you were a steelworker – who worked loyally and proudly for more than 30 years – at the same steelworks – who was looking forward to a well earned retirement – helped by a final salary occupational pension scheme which you had been compelled to join when you started work all those years before –

A pension which everyone – including successive governments, told you was guaranteed and secure...

Conference – Imagine being that steelworker and waking up one morning to find that the steel company had gone under...

You'd lost your job –

At least – you think – at least my pension – which I've paid into for decades, is safe and secure –

But then you find out – that because of a flawed piece of Tory legislation passed in 1995 after the Murdoch pension scandal – you've not only lost your job – you've lost your pension too –

Conference – that is the reality which hundreds of steelworkers woke up to over a year ago in Cardiff & Sheerness – and that is the reality which they and thousands of other workers still face today –

I want to thank the Secretary of State Andrew Smith and also Ian McCartney and Malcolm Wicks for the way they have listened to the plight of these men and women and for the personal care and attention they've given to this issue – I want to thank them for the proposed new Pensions Protection Fund – which will put right this jaw-dropping injustice, caused by the mind boggling incompetence of the last Tory government

But it won't help these workers. So I want us to accept that we have a moral (and perhaps under European law- even a legal) obligation to help those who have been stripped of their pensions through no fault of their own –

These people are not subsidy junkie farmers looking for a hand out –

They're not feckless, irresponsible scroungers – trying to rip off the taxpayer

They are our people – Labour people – people who have done everything by the book –

And now all they ask is that we make our rhetoric their reality –

"Security and Fairness in Retirement" – that's the heading of one of our policy documents

They face "Insecurity and Injustice"

Our slogan this Conference has been "A Future Fair for All" – not a future fair for the many - and injustice for the few –

If our Party exists for anything – it exists to protect working people from risk, insecurity and injustice

These people are the best of Labour – let's give them a fair future

And show them the best of a Labour government