Labour has put out a briefing note with more details about its plans to wind up PFI contracts. It says PFI firms based offshore could receive less compensation.

In a section of the briefing saying “What Labour would do”, it says:

1 - Review, in conjunction with local authorities, NHS Trusts and other public bodies, all PFI contracts to assess the SPVs’ performance on:

- safety, including fire risk, in PFI buildings;

- labour and equalities impacts, and wages;

- changes in equity ownership;

- quality of delivery on service and construction contracts.

2 - Consult on amending or repealing legislation which provides government underwriting of unitary payments to PFI companies whilst ensuring the sustainability of public sector budgets reliant upon previous forms of PFI credits and payments. Existing PFI schemes were supposed to remove risk from the public sector but have failed to do so.

3 - Consult on appropriate methods for returning the ownership and responsibilities of SPVs [special purpose vehicles] to the public sector, with shares-for-bonds nationalisation (via an Act of Parliament) the presumed preferred approach. Shares held in countries deemed tax havens may be compensated at a different rate from others. Differential compensation rates for equity held by pension funds will also be considered.

4 - Ownership of assets and responsibilities for services will be returned to the bodies who have been paying for them, and who no longer need to make unitary payments.

5 - Develop a new public sector design/construction model based on public investment that enhances public sector capabilities to plan, design, manage and operate public infrastructure. Examples we will consider include the USA’s construction management at-risk. Our intention is not just to take over existing assets but to build the capacity to deliver projects better in future.

6 - Enshrine the rights of staff to have rights kept or enhanced to comparable public sector standards on transfer to public sector bodies.

7 - End the UK government’s financial and advisory support for similar projects overseas.

According to the Labour briefing, 12 offshore infrastructure funds hold equity in 74% of current PFI projects. Nine of these funds own majority shareholdings in 45% of projects. The HM Treasury offices project is 100% owned by funds located in Guernsey and Jersey.

At last year’s Labour conference in Liverpool there were several dissident speeches from senior party figures (like this from Ian McNicol, the general secretary, this from Tom Watson, the deputy leader, and this from Carwyn Jones, the Welsh first minister), but the most remarkable was Sadiq Khan’s “in power” performance. He used the phrase 38 times, in a none-too-subtle indication that he thought Jeremy Corbyn and his allies were not sufficiently focused on winning the election. Here is the video from last year.

Of course, Corbyn still isn’t in power. But the party as a whole is delighted with the way he eliminated Theresa May’s majority at the election and, in his speech to the conference this year (only granted on sufferance) Khan probably had little option but to kowtow gracefully to the leader.

And he did. He started with a full and apparently sincere tribute to Corbyn.

Let’s be clear, Theresa May called this snap election to try and wipe us out. And boy did she fail.

It was inspiring to see millions of people vote for the first time - especially so many young people. And it was inspiring to see so many people who used to vote for our party return home to Labour.

We made huge progress in the general election and the credit for that goes to one person – the leader of our party - Jeremy Corbyn.

After that, he got the audience going by praising the emergency services for their response to the London terror attacks and to the Grenfell Tower fire and he orchestrated some sustained applause for the emergency services and health workers.

Otherwise, it was a relatively light speech. He ended with a burst of optimism.

Conference, despite the challenges we’ve faced over the past year - I’m optimistic, positive and hopeful about our future. I’m so proud to call myself British and to call myself a Londoner. I’m confident that both London and the UK have bright futures ahead.That we can become a more prosperous, safe and equal country.

And, Conference, I’m optimistic about Labour’s future too. Optimistic that we’ll build on the success of Labour in power in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Wales. That we’ll make more progress in the local elections next year.That we’ll make a huge difference to the lives of millions. That we can build a fairer Britain. A more prosperous Britain. A safer Britain.

And that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn will win the next general election.

There is a new Guardian/ICM poll out today and it confirms that, since the general election campaign, Theresa May’s standing on a range of issues has collapsed, while Jeremy Corbyn’s has improved markedly.

In May we asked people who they rated May and Corbyn on nine policy issues. May was ahead on seven, and Corbyn was only judged better than her on the NHS and on improving public services.

Now May is ahead on just four measures. Corbyn leads on five, and in the last four months he has overaken May on making Britain a fairer society, education and pensioners.

Here are the figures.

Martin Boon, ICM’s director, says:

Estimations and expectations of Theresa May’s performance continue to tumble though. In a direct head-to-head against Jeremey Corbyn on nine measures that we last tested earlier this year (14 May) the prime minister is trusted less now on each of them compared to then then. On negotiating Brexit, her lead over Corbyn has dropped from +34 to +14 with only 32% saying they trust the PM to do the best job on it.

On the crucial issue of economic performance, the PM’s lead has halved to only +14, with 37% saying she’d do the best job compared to 23% believing Corbyn would.

Over the last fortnight Labour has also opened up a modest lead in voting intention, the poll suggests. Here are the latest figures.

Labour: 42% (no change from Guardian/ICM two weeks ago)

Conservatives: 40% (down 2)

Lib Dems: 8% (up 1)

Ukip: 4% (no change)

Greens: 2% (down 1)

Labour lead: 2 points (up 2)

ICM also asked people if they supported the policy Theresa May announced on Friday of continuing to pay into the EU budget for two years as part of a transition deal giving access to the single market. The results were:

Support: 41%

Oppose: 31%

Don’t know: 28%

Remain voters were strongly in favour of May’s policy (58% for, 16% against). But a plurality of leave voters were opposed (48% against, 30% for).

I will post a link to the tables when they go up on ICM’s website.

ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative sample of 1,968 adults aged 18+ on 22 to 24 September 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, has told a Labour fringe meeting he believes a Brexit deal can be achieved which would be as good or better than being in the EU.

Speaking to activists at an event with Labour’s MEPs, he said he was not prepared to accept that his children would grow up in a situation that would inevitably leave them worse off.

I hope we can reach a new arrangement that works for both of us. I say that because I do not want to get in to the approach that says: “It will never be as good as it was on the 23rd of June 2016.” I fundamentally reject that, I think if we work hard we can do better than that.

And I’ll tell you why I think that, I’ve got a six-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy and I am not going to let them grow up with their dad saying to them: “It will never be as good as it was.”

I will work to make this as good as it can be and to prosper in the future outside the EU and that is hugely challenging. But we need some grown-ups in the room, we need to take our time and we need to have options on the table.

Starmer said Labour’s critics on the pro-Europe side who said the party were enabling a Tory hard Brexit were incorrect, pointing to Boris Johnson’s 4,000 article in the Telegraph, which he said proved the Conservatives wanted a “low tax, deregulation economy.”

The CBI did not like John McDonnell’s speech. This is from its director general, Carolyn Fairbairn.

The shadow chancellor’s vision of massive state intervention is the wrong plan at the wrong time. It raises a warning flag over the British economy at a critical time for our country’s future.

Business and politicians share a determination to create a fairer society in which everyone benefits. But the trickle of stalled investments caused by Brexit uncertainty could become a flood if these plans were to become reality. This would threaten the living standards of the very people that need help, from pensioners to students.

Forced nationalisation of large parts of British industry will send investors running for the hills, and puts misplaced nostalgia ahead of progressive vision.

Where Labour has engaged with business – from Brexit and skills to infrastructure and innovation – solutions have been found to deliver an economy that is both more prosperous and fairer.

The CBI looks forward to urgent discussion with the Labour leadership to find better solutions to the shared challenges we face.

John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust, a heath charity, was on the World at One just now talking about John McDonnell’s PFI announcement. He stressed that it was hard to make a full judgment without knowing the full details of what was proposed. But he said it would be costly. Firms with PFI contracts would expect compensation.

Of course, it will cost a lot of money to do this. A big question is, is that an opportunity cost worth bearing? There are plenty of other things that we may want to spend our scare health money on.

The full cost could be more than £50bn, he suggested.

In the NHS in England, it is paying around £2bn a year in [PFI] repayments, and they will peak in about 2028, 2030. And I suppose if you add those up from now to the end of those contracts - the contracts end at different period - we could be looking at something like £56bn by 2048 in terms of payments. That’s a huge figure of course. That’s getting on for half of what we spend on the NHS today. Of course, taking these back into public ownership, as it were, doesn’t come free. And the money would have to come from somewhere, either taxes or borrowing or reprioritising other public spending.

According to the BBC’s Vicki Young, Peter Dowd, who as shadow chief secretary is John McDonnell’s deputy, has said that winding up PFI contracts could be “pretty self-financing”.

In his speech John McDonnell said:

But we will go further. I can tell you today, it’s what you’ve been calling for. We’ll bring existing PFI contracts back in-house.

But in the press notice send out it has just sent out, Labour has qualified this commitment. It says that what it will actually do is review all PFI contracts and “if necessary” bring them back in-house. The press notice says:

Labour today commits to signing no new PFI deals, to look to bring existing contracts back in-house and to develop alternative public sector models for funding infrastructure, saving the public money and improving services and working conditions.

Labour will review all PFI contracts and, if necessary, take over outstanding contracts and bring them back in-house, while ensuring NHS trusts, local councils and others do not lose out, and there is no detriment to services or staff.

On top of the billions of pounds paid out to shareholders, an estimated £28bn is being lost through costs incurred by problems associated with PFI, including higher interest rates, bail outs and management fees.

McDonnell says Labour would end private finance initiative contracts. Existing contracts will be returned “in-house”, he says.

It’s not just students and households with credit cards who are being ripped off. The scandal of the Private Finance Initiative, launched by John Major, has resulted in huge, long-term costs for tax payers, whilst handing out enormous profits for some companies. Profits which are coming out of the budgets of our public services.

Over the next few decades, nearly two hundred billion is scheduled to be paid out of public sector budgets in PFI deals. In the NHS alone, £831m in pre-tax profits have been made over the past six years. As early as 2002 this conference regretted the use of PFI.

Jeremy Corbyn has made it clear that, under his leadership, never again will this waste of taxpayer money be used to subsidise the profits of shareholders, often based in offshore tax havens. The government could intervene immediately to ensure that companies in tax havens can’t own shares in PFI companies, and their profits aren’t hidden from HMRC.

We’ll put an end to this scandal and reduce the cost to the taxpayers. How? We have already pledged that there will be no new PFI deals signed by us. But we will go further. I can tell you today, it’s what you’ve been calling for.

We’ll bring existing PFI contracts back in-house.

McDonnell says Labour wants a Europe “for the many, not the few”.

We cannot allow this dynamic vision for our economy to be undermined by the combination of belligerence and incompetence, displayed by the Tories in the current EU negotiations. Our aim is to create a Britain for the many, not the few. Our conscience doesn’t end at the English Channel. We also want a Europe for the many, not the few.

That’s why, whilst respecting the referendum decision, we will work with our partners across Europe to create a new European future, based upon collaboration and co-operation.

McDonnell says Labour would legislate to ensure the north gets more transport investment.

This Tory government plans to invest in the north just one-fifth of what it will spend on transport per head in London.

We will legislate for a fair distribution of investment. We’ll devolve decision making through the regional development banks, our mayors, and regenerate the powers and resources available to local councils.

McDonnell pays tribute to the Wilson government - and even to the Blair/Brown government.

And, yes, in 1997, after 18 years of Thatcherism, when whole industries and communities across our country had been destroyed by the Tories and our public services were on their knees, it was the Blair/Brown government that recognised and delivered the scale of public investment that a 21^st century society needed.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is starting his speech now.

He is due to make a big announcement, on top of the credit card interest payment cap announced overnight.

Sky News says he is going to announce the end of the private finance initiative.

Here are the main points from Emily Thornberry’s speech.

• Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, used a joke about a child born after one of Boris Johnson’s extramarital affairs to mock his refusal to take responsibility for Brexit. (See 11am.)

• She said President Trump was acting more like “a rogue dictator” than the American president.

Conference we now have a President of the United States who believes that none of these rules and laws apply to him.

- Imposing a travel ban on Muslims;

- Equivocating over illegal settlements;

- Reneging on the Paris climate treaty;

- Imperilling the nuclear deal with Iran;

- And threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea. A country of 20 million men and women. And 5 million children.

This is not what we need from the leader of the free world.

To be honest, conference it’s more like what we would expect from a rogue dictator.

• She accused Theresa May of being “supine, sycophantic and spineless” in her relations with Trump.

• She announced that Labour would introduce a new policy for licensing arms sales abroad. Criticising the government’s decision to sell arms to countries like Saudi Arabia, she said the current system depended on “entirely subjective assessments taken without proper parliamentary scrutiny without listening to independent, expert advice”. She went on:

So just as the new Labour governments elected in 1997 and 2001 Immediately reformed the way decisions were made on monetary policy and competition policy, the next Labour government will immediately reform the way decisions are made on the export of arms.

A wholesale reform of the legal and regulatory framework fully implementing the International Arms Trade Treaty with clear rules, tests and criteria for decision-making, based on independent, expert advice and the objective assessment of evidence. A new system, that will prevent the misuse or abuse of licences and adhere to the principles of transparency, true parliamentary accountability and freedom from undue influence.

• She said Britain needed a “revolution of values”, quoting a phrase Martin Luther King used when he was opposing the Vietnam war.

• She said Jeremy Corbyn had shown that Labour could win on a radical manifesto.

Because if June’s election taught us one thing, it’s that if we stand behind Jeremy’s principled leadership, if we stand united as a party, and if we stand on a radical manifesto, there is absolutely no seat that we can’t win. And no Tory that we can’t bin.

Here are the key quotes from Len McCluskey’s speech.

• McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, said Labour in one sense did win the general election because it won back its “dignity and pride”.

Let me say this to those merchants of doom, the whingers and the whiners who say we should have done better, we didn’t win. I say we did win. We won the hearts and minds of millions of people, especially the young. We won the arguments that radical policies can stir the imagination and support of the British people. And, perhaps most of all conference, we’ve won back our dignity and pride, making Labour a noble cause to fight for again.

• He said he and his union were not surprised that the public warmed to Jeremy Corbyn.

It was also a triumph for our leader, Jeremy Corbyn. During the campaign the public got the chance to see the real man, his decency, his compassion, and his vision for a better Britain. Some people were surprised, the media of course, and maybe some here in Brighton this week. But, conference, my union was not surprised. We were proud to nominate Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 because we knew our party needed something different. We were proud to stand by him in 2016 when others panicked.

McCluskey seems to have forgotten that he was among the doubters himself. Although he has never been anything other than pro-Corbyn, at one point he did not seem convinced that Corbyn’s qualities would help Labour gain seats. During the campaign he said Labour would be doing well to hold 200 seats - ie, to reduce its losses to around 30.

• He said, in 47 years as a Labour member, he had never looked forward to the next government as much as he looked forward to Corbyn forming one. He ended his speech with an adaption to the Red Flag.

So let’s make it clear today

“Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer”

We’ll keep the Corbyn flag flying here!

Starmer sets out Labour’s policy on a final Brexit deal. He says Labour would consider keeping the UK in a reformed single market and a form of customs union.

If we were in government, we would build a new progressive partnership with the EU. We would negotiate a final deal that ensured continued co-operation and collaboration with our EU partners in all fields. And a final deal, that retained the benefits of the customs union and the single market. Options for achieving this should not be swept off the table.

Subject, of course to negotiations, remaining in a form of customs union with the EU is a possible end destination for Labour.

We are also flexible as to whether the benefits of the single market are best retained by negotiating a new single market relationship or by working up from a bespoke trade deal. No rash, ideological red lines preventing a sensible deal. No fantastical, ‘blue sky’ proposals.

He goes on:

A pragmatic approach. Labour are now the grown-ups in the room. We stand ready to take charge of the negotiations. Not acting for narrow political gain. But in the national interest.

Starmer says Labour are an internationalist party.

He sets out Labour’s position on a Brexit transition.

Over the summer, Labour reached an agreed position that transitional arrangements on the same basic terms that we currently have with the EU are in the national interest. For Labour that means that during the transitional phase, we would remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market.

And he suggests that, even though the government has now adopted the same policy, Tory conference could overturn it.

So dysfunctional had it all become, that the prime minister had to fly to Florence on Friday, only to accept Labour’s position on transitional arrangements. Let’s see if that survives contact with Tory party conference.

But let’s not be fooled by what the prime minister said in Florence. All she has done is to delay the cliff edge. All her ideological red-lines remain. She still prioritises arbitrary immigration targets over jobs and the economy. She has no answer to fundamental questions in Northern Ireland. And she still insists – in spite of all the warnings – that no deal is a viable option.

Thornberry has used a joke about Boris Johnson’s private life to attack his stance on Brexit.

Let’s all take a second to sympathise with poor old Boris. Come on, just a second. He’s not been happy lately. Apparently he’s sick of being blamed for the way that Brexit is going, and all the broken promises of the leave campaign.

I’m sorry, what? Like, what? Who does he think made all those promises? Who does he think was in charge of the leave campaign?

I know that Boris does not like paternity tests, but maybe we need one for Brexit. Maybe we should take him into a studio with Jeremy Kyle. “I’m sorry, Mr Johnson, we got the results back, and it looks like this one is one of yours. It must have been that wild night out you had with Michael Gove. And I’ve calculated your maintenance payments. And that will be £350m a week.’

Thornberry was, of course, referring to Johnson fathering a daughter after an extramarital affair.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has done a round of media interviews this morning. Here are the key points.

• McDonnell said Labour would be preparing for government by preparing draft legislation and training shadow ministers. The party was developing “implementation manuals” for its manifesto policies, he said.

We are looking at what legislation is needed. We will have draft legislation on the shelf ready to go.

We are bringing in civil servants, like Lord Bob Kerslake, to train our teams on how you implement these policies. And we are taking advice from past ministers as well.

• He said that, under Labour’s plans to nationalise key utilities, parliament would decide the level of compensation shareholders would receive. When asked if shareholders would get the full market value, he said that parliament would decide the price, as happened in every nationalisation in the past.

The value of any industry that is brought into public ownership is determined by parliament itself, and that will be a detailed assessment.

Asked if companies deemed to have behaved badly could be penalised when this assessment was made, he replied:

The perceived behaviour affects the price. That will be determined by parliament. When parliament determines that, what those shareholders will get is a secure bond which is much more secure than what they’ve got at the moment.

He also said that nationalising rail was his personal top priority, but he said party members would take the final decisions.

My own priorities are rail, water, energy, construction in that way, and Royal Mail, that would follow. But it depends ... This is the whole point of our conference this year, we are listening to our members and saying what are your priorities.

• He brushed aside Sadiq Khan’s call for Labour to commit to keeping the UK in the single market for good (see 8.35am), saying the party also had to reflect the concerns of those who wanted to leave it because they were opposed to EU free movement rules. Labour was trying to find a consensus, he said. And he confirmed that the party was exploring ways of how the UK could stay in a reformed single market.

The consensus that’s emerging at the moment is that we recognise the conditions applied by the single market at the moment do not fulfil the concerns that were expressed at the referendum [ie, about free movement and immigration.] So is there a way in which reforms can take place that will enable us to have access to the single market. In that way we can achieve a compromise within the community that gains us the benefits of the EU, as they were, and overcomes some of the perceived disbenefits.

He also claimed Labour had been leading the debate on Brexit, pointing out that Theresa May has now adopted the Brexit transition plans originally proposed by Labour.

• He said he thought the Brexit transition period should last around three to four years. It should be at least two years, he said.

• He said he disagreed with what the Labour MP Clive Lewis said yesterday about opposition to free movement being ultimately drive by racism. Asked about this, he said:

Clive’s a good friend of mine [but] I think he’s wrong on that ... There are genuine concerns about some of these issues, particularly about exploitative employers and migrant labour. It’s not racism.

• He insisted that Brexit was “a big issue” for the party and that it was being debated today. The decision not to debate a contemporary resolution on Brexit was taken because members did not want to split the party, he said.He stressed that this was a decision taken by the membership, not the party leadership.

It’s democracy. The whole point of our party now is to hand the party back to the membership, and the membership have decided the motions we will debate on.

He also played down the significance of Momentum, the powerful pro-Corbyn group in the party, tellings its supporters not to vote for a Brexit debate in the contemporary resolutions ballot.

That’s the tradition within our party. Different groups mobilise in that way.

No-one controls these delegates, I tell you. They come along with their own minds and independence of spirit and they will voice their views no matter what anyone says.

• He said he agreed with what Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said yesterday about Labour being too London-centric. “Andy Burnham has a strong point,” he said. Burnham does not have a speaking slot on the conference agenda, but McDonnell said mayors would get a stronger voice in the party in future. He said:

There are elected mayors now and we have a number of them ... We will give them a stronger voice and that will be reflected in the structure of the party. That’s what we are going to be consulting on in this coming 12 months.

The main issue for us was to have delegates speaking, rather than shadow ministers. The issue was which mayor speaks this year and people chose Sadiq. In future years, you will see Andy Burnham from Manchester, Steve Rotheram from Liverpool, Marvin Rees from Bristol, a whole range of representation from outside London.

• McDonnell rejected suggestions that it was a mistake for the Labour manifesto to proposing spending £11bn on getting rid of tuition fees, in a move that would disproportionately benefit the middle class. When this was put to him, he said:

We believe in universal benefits. As soon as you start undermining the universal principle like that, what happens is that you have a system that is no longer sustainable.

He also said that having students educated at university benefited society as a whole.

• He said he had a credit card, but gave up using it some years ago.

I use a debit card, I gave up using the credit card side of that some years ago, because a lot of people get into problems when they borrow on credit cards.

In his speech today he is announcing plans to cap credit card interest payments.

• He said Tory MPs were engaged in a coup against Theresa May. “I can recognise a coup when I see one,” he said.

The Labour conference decided yesterday to avoid a contentious debate and vote on Brexit and staying in the single market permanently, but that has not driven the issue off the airwaves. The party is holding a long, general debate on Brexit this morning (although not one that will lead to a yes/no vote on staying in the single market for good) and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has just told the Today programme that Brexit is a “key issue” for the party. He said there would be “an extensive debate” this morning. And, sensitive to the charge that the leadership is to blame for a vote being blocked, he stressed that the decision not to debate a contemporary resolution on Brexit was one that was taken by the conference itself. Delegates from the constituency parties, who have half the votes, and trade unionists, who have the other 50%, both clearly voted in favour of debating and voting on other topics instead.

But Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has revived the single market debate this morning, telling the Today programme about an hour ago that he would like the UK to stay in for good. He told the programme:

I want us to continue to be members of the single market. If we can’t achieve, the less best scenario is us having access to the single market.

I will post more from the interviews shortly.

Here is the conference agenda for the day.

9.30am: General debate on Brexit and international affairs, with speeches from Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, at 10.50am and Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, at 11am.

12.15pm: John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, speaks.

2.15pm: Debate on living standards, with a speech from Debbie Abrahams, the shadow work and pensions secretary, at 3.25pm. Sadiq Khan is also speaking in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

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