Andrea Williams to Reform UK fringe: ‘Jesus is the ultimate reformer’

Chief executive Andrea Williams today addressed the Christian Fellowship for Reform fringe event at its party’s conference in Birmingham.

This is the text of her speech in full:

Ann Widdecombe — a woman of formidable intellect, unwavering conviction, extraordinary courage — and also a lot of fun!

As we look at Reform and its radical vision for government — to take power back from the administrative state, and use a smaller but stronger state to facilitate the rebuilding of  family, community and country — we see so much of what Ann stood for, unembarrassed, in public life for forty years.

At Christian Concern, our ambition is simple:

We challenge what is wrong.
We articulate what is right.
And we build what is better.

That is why Ann was such a great friend to me and to Christian Concern.

Ann was prepared to stand alone on the great moral issues of our time. She wore her Christian faith proudly — defending human life, marriage, freedom of speech and the Christian foundations of our nation.

Nowhere was that courage clearer than in her defence of our unborn children.

In 1990, I was 25, three years into practising as a barrister, when Parliament passed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

It made me question how we were legislating.

Here was legislation eroding protection for unborn children; reshaping family and parenthood through IVF and surrogacy; weakening marriage; and permitting human embryos to be created, experimented upon and destroyed.

I asked Christian lawyers: what do we do?

They said: our job is to implement the law, not make it.

I said: but what happens when the law itself is bad?

Law is never neutral. We legislate for good or bad morality. We do not legislate in a vacuum.

This Bill came in under a Conservative government.

So I asked: is it not the job of Conservatives to conserve? For three decades we have not had a political party that is socially conservative.

I looked to the Church. I heard that the issues were difficult, complex; that we needed compassion.

But where was the clear voice?

What happens when Conservatives stop conserving and the Church stops being the Church?

Enter Ann Widdecombe.

She spoke fearlessly. During the passage of that legislation she warned where the direction of travel would lead — towards DIY abortion in a woman’s own home.

She was ridiculed. Called extreme.

Yet years later, when pills-by-post abortion was introduced during Covid, what she had warned about became reality.

Ann became a witness for us in our Judicial Review of DIY abortion.

That case revealed something else: the disclosed evidence showed the enormous influence of the Department of Health — unelected officials working closely with the abortion sector — in driving that policy.

And that takes us to the great challenge Reform now faces.

Over decades, governments of different parties have built an enormous administrative and regulatory state.

A godless equality and diversity ideology has become pervasive — through government, regulators, councils, schools, universities and the NHS.

Politicians come and go.

The ideology remains.

And eventually it reaches ordinary people.

Three are in this room today.

Gozen.

Head of Pastoral Support for 14- and 15-year-old girls in a Catholic state school. Removed from her role as a danger to the girls — not because she harmed a child, but following concerns about her Christian beliefs, expressed on social media, on marriage and sexuality.

Ofsted and the Teaching Regulation Agency also punishing Christian schools and removing the licences of Christian teachers.

Jamie.

A Christian street preacher.

Rushmoor Council obtained an injunction restricting preaching, prayer and distributing leaflets in Aldershot and Farnborough town centres — expressly referring to its Public Sector Equality Duty and preventing “alarm and distress”.

Breaching an injunction could ultimately mean imprisonment.

Think about that.

Prayer. Preaching. Evangelism. In England.

And Bethany — lead nurse in the Darlington nurses’ case.

Three years fighting simply for female nurses to have a single-sex changing room because hospital policy allowed a man identifying as a woman to use it.

The established unions failed them.

So Bethany and her colleagues, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, built their own — the Darlington Nursing Union.

And now the Nursing and Midwifery Council is investigating Bethany and her fellow nurses’ fitness to practise.

Schools. Councils. NHS trusts. Unions. Regulators.

Different institutions.

The same ideological capture.

That is why Danny Kruger’s big ideas for government matter.

Cut through the administrative state.

That is radical reform.

And radical reform is necessary because too many of our great institutions have become captured, unaccountable and impenetrable.

Build a big and beautiful vision for freedom not fear; faith not faithlessness; hope not despair.

People need something to believe in – to build.

And I am unashamed to say that Jesus Christ is the ultimate reformer.

He changed my heart.

Changed hearts change lives.

Changed lives change families.

Strong families build strong communities.

And strong communities build strong nations.

So yes — we need the most radical rethink of government and public life in generations.

But political reform must be accompanied by moral reformation.

My prayer is that Reform’s ideas will be truly understood in the public square — and that together we have the courage to:

Challenge what is wrong.
Articulate what is right.
Build what is better.

For life.
For family.
For freedom.
And for the good of our nation.