Floating docks and a research vessel: what Healey's first conference speech will mean for British industry

John Healey is set to make his first appearance at a Labour conference as chancellor this Monday, using his speech in Liverpool to promise "a new age of industrialisation" for the United Kingdom. The address will be his first sustained attempt to define an economic philosophy in front of the party faithful, and it lands at a moment when ministers face mounting questions about the cost of governing.

Central to the line he is expected to take is an unusually blunt admission about the country's industrial inheritance. Delegates will be told, in effect, that the coal mines are not coming back — but that Labour intends to remake Britain's industrial past "for the modern age" by throwing its weight behind advanced manufacturing. The framing is not one of restoration, but of substitution: old heavy industry is being replaced by a narrower, more technical base of production.

Alongside that, Healey is expected to build a keynote argument around what he calls a "new confidence in Britain" — a deliberately upbeat slogan designed to project certainty at a time when business surveys suggest the opposite. The speech is expected to be tightly focused on the shipbuilding and manufacturing commitments rather than on the state of the public finances.

The headline announcement concerns the Royal Navy. Three new floating docks at HM Royal Naval Base Clyde, at Faslane, are to be built in the UK rather than put out to international tender — a decision campaigners have sought for years. Plans for the docks were first set out in 2023, and they are intended to upgrade the base's facilities for the next generation of British submarines. The docks will form part of a wider £15bn upgrade programme for the Royal Navy's shipyards, with the new facilities expected to come into service in the early 2030s.

A second maritime measure was flagged on Sunday by First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, who said the government would commission a new marine research vessel as part of plans for a "new era of reindustrialisation". The chancellor is expected to confirm £115m in funding for the ship, which is also slated to enter service in the early 2030s. Taken together, the two announcements give the speech a concrete, national-security framing: naval construction on the Clyde, and a research asset designed to serve a maritime economy as well as a navy.

Healey has already previewed the reasoning. Ahead of the conference, he said: "By backing British shipyards, we are not only boosting national security but also securing resilience in the industries that will drive growth today while building the capabilities the country needs for the future." The argument is that keeping orders at home does double duty — it supplies the armed forces and it sustains a domestic industrial skill base.

The Conservatives have dismissed the package before it has been delivered. Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith called the plans "reheated announcements" with "no clarity on where the money is coming from", adding that Labour was "running scared of making the tough choices needed to pay for Britain's defence." He went further: "All they can offer is reannounced docks and more hot air from Healey. Only the Conservatives will cut the welfare bill to fund defence."

Trade union reaction was considerably warmer. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national secretary of the GMB union, which has campaigned for the change, described the move as a "massive boost" for UK shipbuilding. He said: "For too long juicy contracts have been sent to overseas - often subsidised - yards," adding that the policy "could reinvigorate UK yards and the communities that depend on them."

The political backdrop is that the chancellor has roughly a month until his first Budget, with pressure mounting to cut spending or raise taxes to address the ballooning cost of government borrowing. He is not expected to set out any Budget specifics in Liverpool. Instead, the speech is designed to lay out a positive vision for British industry, leaving the fiscal arithmetic — and its tax implications — for later in the autumn.

Andy Burnham, who is due to deliver his own major conference speech on Tuesday, has made reindustrialisation a recurring theme of his premiership, including in talks with US President Donald Trump last week. That means Monday's speech is likely to read as the chancellor's operational detail for a project the prime minister has been setting out at the highest level — a handoff that will be closely watched for how much money, and how much timeline, attaches to the slogan.

The mood on the shop floor is less certain. A Confederation of British Industry survey published on Monday is expected to show falling economic activity across key sectors such as retail and services in the three months to September, with manufacturing declining more moderately. CBI deputy chief economist Alpesh Paleja said rising energy and employment costs, combined with weak demand, were continuing to squeeze profit margins.

He added: "Uncertainty ahead of next month's Budget is also holding back activity in some sectors. Against the backdrop of renewed fiscal pressures, the Budget must draw a clear red line under any more rises in the cost of hiring, investing and doing business." For business groups, an industrial strategy will feel hollow if the cost of employing people and running plants continues to climb.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has pressed the chancellor from a different direction, urging him to "do something for workers and the working class" in his Budget. She called on him to unfreeze income tax thresholds "to put money back into people's pockets" and to take further action on energy bills — reminders that industrial rhetoric will only land with members if household finances improve alongside factory orders.

The speech is also expected to revive a union-run training programme. The Union Learning Fund is to return with £15m in taxpayers' money, drawn from existing government budgets, to help workers in England gain new skills as technology — including artificial intelligence — reshapes the workplace. Open to non-members as well as members, it will offer support ranging from essential English, maths and digital skills to training for jobs in growing sectors such as advanced manufacturing.

What Monday will ultimately be judged on is delivery rather than declaration. Floating docks that will not enter service until the 2030s, a research vessel with a similar horizon, and a skills fund small relative to the scale of the rhetoric — none of it changes the position of households or firms in the coming weeks. The test Healey sets himself is whether a generation of industrial pledges can be financed without adding to the very costs his own business warnings identify, and whether the ships in his speech ever get built in the yards he is promising to revive.