Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Katie Lam addresses Conservative Party Conference 2026

Today, Katie Lam MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, delivered her speech at Conservative Party Conference 2026.

Please see the full text of the speech below:

Checked against delivery

Good morning, good morning.

Splendint is a new one, I like that.

Thank you, John, and thank you all for being here today.

I joined the Conservative Party as a student, and I have been coming to Conference ever since so it is a real privilege to be here on the main stage after so many years in the audience.

When I joined the party, my lovely dad did too, and for every one of those years, he's come along to Conference to keep me company.

This year is no different although it is a special one, because today is his 70th birthday. Happy birthday, Dad, I won't make you sing.

And what better place could anybody imagine to spend your birthday, than here in Birmingham, with all of us.

Because it is a privilege to be with so many people who understand the problems that our country is facing, both nationally and at the local level and who are so committed to holding this disastrous Labour government to account.

For somebody who talks so much about devolution, Andy Burnham only seems to care about local democracy when people vote the way that he wants them to.

He says mayors can choose to tax people more, but they can't choose to let people keep more of their hard-earned money instead.

In places where people have voted for Conservative councils, and have voted to keep their taxes low, he is slashing funding and trying to force tax rises on them anyway.

And across the country, he is working with Angela Rayner to redraw council boundaries in a way that suits Labour.

From start to finish, their local government reorganisation project has been a disaster.

And for all the work that they have created,

nd all of the costs that they have imposed on councils which are already struggling,

their so-called plan for local government has totally failed to ask most of the big questions that people actually have about local government.

It makes you wonder what they were doing for all those years in opposition.

But we'll show them how it is done.

Together with the Conservative Councillors' Association and the Conservative Policy Forum, we will be launching a new programme of work to build a new Conservative vision for local government.

That vision has to be informed by the wealth of experience that we have in our party.

Whether that's councillors, former councillors, or just people who know about their area, and who have ideas about how it should be run.

We want to hear from you.

And unlike Labour, we won't shy away from the big questions.

Because while this Labour Government is all too happy to create new tax-raising powers for local mayors, and to fiddle with council boundaries, they have totally failed to ask the most fundamental question of all.

What is local government for? What should be done nationally, and what should be done locally?

Because at the moment, far too much of what local government does is really about central government dictating what local councils should do, and how they should do it,

but leaving them to pick up the tab.

It is clearly not working.

It is not fair on hard-working councillors, who get left with the bill for decisions that they haven't made,

and it is not fair on people who turn up and vote, because all too often their choice is being overridden by a system which forces spending increases and tax increases on places that have voted for exactly the opposite.

We also have to look at the role that councillors themselves play in the way that our country is run.

How can we make sure that they, how can we make sure that many of you, have the proper resources and support?

How can we make sure that we are attracting talented, brilliant people into local government?

How can we make sure that MPs aren't picking up work that only councillors can really deal with?

In other words, how can we make local democracy work properly?

So that when people turn up and vote for people to run their area, they get what they vote for.

I am really excited to be launching this project today. Our approach to local government really matters.

Because while Labour might only understand local government as another way to take more of people's money,

As Conservatives, we understand that the world does not look in practice how it might seem from a ministerial office in Whitehall.

Local government is not about squeezing people for even more money, or about pushing responsibilities out to local councils which cannot cope, for the sake of the central government's balance sheet.

It is about giving people control over the places that they call home, on the issues that it makes sense to decide locally.

And for us, as a party, local government is more important than ever. The process of renewal that Kemi has set in train has as much to do with local government as it does with what happens in Parliament.

I know that Kemi, and all of us in Parliament, are doing everything that we can to hold this appalling Labour government to account, to show how our party has changed, and to set out why the solutions to our country's problems are Conservative solutions.

But nationally, we are in opposition.

The only way to show people, in ways that they can feel directly, how life is different under a Conservative government, is in local government.

So in those parts of the country that we run, we have to show how we will do things differently, as so many of our excellent councillors already are.

We have to show people, in practical, tangible ways that they can feel, what the Conservative approach to government is, and why it is better for them.

Ben Houchen in Teesside and Paul Bristow in Peterborough are already doing exactly that. I think that we can all agree that they are doing an unbelievable job at showing the positive impact that Conservative principles have in practice.

We have to do even more to amplify our successes, and to work even harder to make sure that we are moving as one Conservative team.

And where we are in opposition locally, our job is just as important.

We have to hold the other parties to account, whether that is Labour, Reform, the Lib Dems, or the Greens.

Whoever we are up against in any given area, we have to use the opportunity to remind people, again and again, how we would do things differently, what those parties are getting wrong, and how we would put things right.

That is exactly what this work is about, and that is exactly why I am so excited to be launching it today.

Our renewal depends on our ability to show locally what we can do nationally. It is so important that we get this right,

And I have every confidence that, drawing on the incredible wealth of expertise and talent in our party, we can do exactly that.

There are so many wonderful people who work tirelessly for Conservative values and the Conservative Party in local government.

It would take all day to list them all, and I won't do that to you.

But I would like to give a special note of thanks to Kevin Bentley and Sam Chapman-Alan, who are doing such a great job running the LGA Conservatives,

To Richard Wright at the local councils network, Steven Broadbent at the county councils network and of course, to our wonderful host John, the whole team at the CCA for everything they do,

And thanks in advance to the CPF for their help with this project.

And, of course, I would like to thank the MHCLG Shadow Ministerial team.

All of those people have been incredibly generous in helping me as I start in this brief, so thank you to them, ad thank you in advance to all of you for giving me your thoughts, so we can build this vision together.

Thank you.