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Conservative Party conference 2023: Jeremy Hunt speech; ENGLAND: Manchester: Manchester Central Convention Complex: INT Rishi Sunak MP (Prime Minister) in audience / Jeremy Hunt MP (Chancellor of the Exchequer) arriving on stage / Jeremy Hunt MP (Chancellor of the Exchequer) speech SOT / cutaways of speech and audience including Rishi Sunak MP, Victoria Atkins MP, John Glen MP, Mel Stride MP. - "Good afternoon. The last time I spoke at Conference was as Foreign Secretary five years ago. After that I thought my time in government was over. So, it’s great to see the PM getting the over 50s back into meaningful work. I do, however, have some very youthful under 50s in my ministerial team so thank you John Glen, Andrew Griffith, Vicky Atkins, Gareth Davies, JoJo Penn, Mark Fletcher, Paul Howell, Anthony Mangall and Andrew Stephenson for their brilliant work. And it’s great to be in Manchester. Since 2010 this great region has seen unemployment halve, nearly 200,000 more jobs and six new tech unicorns. Labour mayors talk up the problems but it’s Conservatives who chalk up the jobs. Now, our friends at the Office for National Statistics have recently changed their mind about the size of the British economy. They had been saying we were the worst performing large European economy since the pandemic. But we weren’t the worst. We were one of the best. Since the pandemic we’ve recovered better than France or Germany. We’ve grown faster than both of them since we left the single market. And since 2010 we’ve grown faster than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Japan… …so to all the pessimists and declinists who’ve been talking us down, we say this: don’t bet against Britain – it’s been tried before and it never works.