Conference diary, day three

 Another interesting day at the Conservative conference in Manchester. Whatever the press may write about the conference there are a lot of people here, there is a positive buzz in the conference atmosphere, I have met a lot of friends here.

Nobody should ever take the British people for granted, and nobody at the Conservative conference is foolish enough to be complacent about the next election or imagine that we are going into it as anything other than the underdogs. But the outcome of the election is not a done deal and there is no sign at all of the party giving up without a fight.

I will save most of my fire on HS2 until we actually get an announcement, which I understand is likely to be in the PM's speech tomorrow. If the rumours about what has been decided are correct, then making the announcement in his speech here in Manchester would be far better than ignoring the issue while he is here and slipping the decision out a few days after the conference. But I won't make any other comment on rumours when we should get the actual announcement soon enough.

I am currently on leave while attending the conference, but turned on my work computer today to check if there were any urgent messages. As soon as I had logged on to the Manchester Central free WiFi and set up the VPN to protect the security of company data, Outlook informed me that it was now downloading 40 megabytes of new emails.

I am not sure how many multiples that amount of data is of the entire contents of the Great Library of Alexandria, but I suspect it is a few. It is certainly greater than the whole capacity of the hard disc on my first computer issued to me when I started work - and that was more than the software of the time could handle without partitioning the disc.

The most interesting and welcome announcement was three new  medical schools, about which I have already posted, but there was quite a lot more ...

Other news today:

The justice secretary announced that the government is extending whole life orders for even more of society’s worst killers and introducing new powers to protect children from abusive parents – meaningful, long-term reforms that put victims at the heart of our justice system. 

• The public rightly expect the most despicable killers to face life behind bars and that victims and their families will be put first. 
• That is why the government is strengthening laws to apply Whole Life Orders to those who have committed murder but have not yet been sentenced, ensuring life means life for the most serious cases without the chance of parole. The government is also enacting "Jade’s Law" which will suspend parental responsibility in cases where one parent has murdered the other, protecting children and families from manipulative behaviour.  
• These long-term reforms will ensure criminals pay in full for their crimes and put victims and their families at the heart of our criminal justice system. 

The Business Secretary announced that the government will look at further ways to scrap unnecessary regulations – part of a package of meaningful, long-term reform that will help to grow the economy. 

• Leaving the European Union has given us greater powers to reform regulators in the UK, ensuring they are working with businesses and consumers to support economic growth. 
• That is why the government is launching a call for evidence to understand what works well and what can be improved in regulators’ agility and performance, underpinning the delivery of meaningful long-term reform of our regulators as we back business and grow the economy. 
• Delivering smarter regulation is key to the UK’s economic success as we take the necessary long-term decisions to deliver economic growth and a brighter future for the whole country.