Ed Miliband turns on coalition and SNP in address to Scottish Labour

Ed Miliband today called the coalition's changes to child benefit and housing benefit "unfair and unworkable". Speaking to his party's Scottish conference in Oban, the Labour leader said the child benefit changes were "a complete shambles". "Next came a housing benefit policy that their own mayor of London detests," he added, referring to yesterday's comparison by Boris Johnson of the policy to "Kosovo-style social cleansing". "Don't they get it?" Miliband asked the conference. "If you drive up homelessness, families end up in bed and breakfasts and that costs more to society, not less." The Labour leader said the Tories had developed these policies "because of their ideology. They came into politics to make these changes. They're out of touch; they don't understand the lives and experience of ordinary people. They've made bad decisions in haste and stubbornly refuse to change." He said Labour would "force a vote in the House of Commons on housing benefit" a week on Tuesday. Miliband also attacked David Cameron's idea of the "big society", wherein volunteers and local communities would take on responsibilities once handled by government and councils. "What does it really amount to?" he asked. "They think if government gets out of the way, the big society will miraculously spring up. They fail to learn the lessons of history." The "big society", he said, was "one big figleaf for an old pessimistic idea: that people do better on their own". The Labour leader, who cast himself and his party throughout as "optimists", also turned his fire on the Lib Dems and the SNP. It had taken Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, "just five short months to undermine 150 years of the Liberal tradition", he said. "Remember what they said: vote for us to keep the Tories out. Have they no shame?" Of the Scottish National party, Miliband said: "Narrow nationalism has nothing to offer the challenges of the 21st century. While we're fighting for jobs and hope, they are fighting to break up Britain ... Never has a party promised so much and delivered so little." The Scottish Tories were dismissed with a quip: "Talking of endangered species, what about the Scottish Tories? What about them; let's move on ..." Miliband defended Labour's record in office in the face of coalition claims the party had been financially irresponsible in leaving Britain with massive national debt. "There was a global financial crisis affecting every country and every country is having to cope with the consequences. Remember, our government paid down the debt before the crisis hit," he said. "At the same time we were investing in the schools, the hospitals, the infrastructure which had suffered chronic under-investment under the previous Conservative government. I remember it – I went to school in the 1980s. Conference, we didn't just fix the roof, we built the schools. And we didn't just cut the waiting lists, we built the hospitals." He added: "Why did the deficit go up so much? Not because of this investment, but because we lost 6% of our economy due to the global financial crisis." Miliband also paid tribute to his former boss Gordon Brown, who he said had "improved the lives of millions of people both here and abroad". The coalition, he said, had "no plan for jobs and growth". The Tories took issue with Miliband's claim to optimism. Michael Fallen, the Conservative deputy chairman, said: "Ed Miliband's claim to be a sunny optimist rings hollow when on the same day his shadow chancellor predicts that Britain is set to become a 'shrivelled, diminished society,'" a reference to comments by Alan Johnson. "It is the coalition government that is taking the tough decisions now so that the country can face a brighter future. By contrast, Labour has no plan for economic recovery or building a stronger society. All they can do is talk Britain and Britons down. For all his talk of optimism, Ed Miliband's 'new generation' look more and more like a bunch of Victor Meldrews." Andy Burnham, Labour's new election co-ordinator, told the Scottish conference that more than 40,000 people had joined the party since it lost the general election in May. He added that the party in Scotland had "really set the lead for Labour in the rest of the UK" and told activists: "You've shown how to fight back on the ground" after losing power in Holyrood after eight years in 2007. Recent opinion polls have also put Labour ahead of its rivals in the run-up to next May's Holyrood elections. If Labour won, Burnham said, "that would be the moment when we say to the whole country that Labour is coming back strong".