It’s decision time – who are you going to vote for?
The General Election is happening tomorrow and if you’re going to cast a vote you need to know what that means for you and your family.
Here’s a handy guide with ten pledges from the four main parties’ manifestos.
Note: these are selected highlights, to see the full manifesto go the party websites.
Labour
- Increasing the minimum wage to £10 per hour.
- Extending free school meals to all primary school children and putting measures in to cap class sizes in schools.
- Commit to more than £30bn in extra funding for the NHS in England over the next five years, while reversing privatisation of the NHS.
- Ending the 1% pay cap for nurses, midwives and other NHS staff and scrapping all NHS hospital parking charges.
- Reintroduce a 50p tax rate and raise income tax for those who earn over £80,000.
- Abolish university tuition fees and reintroduce maintenance grants.
- Scrap the Brexit white paper and replace it with a fresh set of negotiating priorities with an “emphasis on the single market and customs union”.
- A commitment to the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent.
- Increasing the number of police officers on the streets by 10,000 over five years.
- Minimum standards for landlords and beefed-up powers to punish rogue landlords with tough fines.
Conservative
- To increase the personal tax free allowance to £12,500 by 2020 and raise the higher rate threshold to £50,000.
- Exit the European single market and customs union but seek a “deep and special partnership” including comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.
- To reduce immigration to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.
- Real terms increases in NHS spending reaching £8bn extra per year by 2022/23 and a pledge to hire 10,000 more mental health nurses by 2020.
- Scrapping the triple-lock on the state pension after 2020, replacing it with a “double lock”, rising with earnings or inflation.
- Scrap free school lunches for infants in England, but offer free breakfasts across the primary years.
- A pledge to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence and raise defence spending by at least 0.5% above inflation every year of the next Parliament.
- Means test winter fuel payments, taking away £300 from wealthier pensioners.
- Raising cost of care threshold from £23,000 to £100,000 - but include value of home in calculation of assets for home care as well as residential care.
- Pump an extra £4bn into schools by 2022.
Liberal Democrat
- Hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal, with the option to remain in the EU and unilaterally guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK.
- £7billion to halt cuts to schools and re-instate maintenance grants for some students.
- An extra penny on income tax to pay for the NHS while “ring-fencing” money for health and social care.
- Borrow £100bn to invest in infrastructure, including housebuilding, broadband, schools, hospitals and transport.
- A £1billion fund dedicated to mental health services.
- Commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence but suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
- Introduce a diesel scrappage scheme and extend ultra-low emission zones to 10 more towns and cities.
- Reverse cuts to Universal Credit.
- Completely legalised cannabis with a fully-operational market.
- An extra month of parental leave for dads.
Green Party
- A ‘ratification referendum’ on the terms of the Brexit deal - with an option to remain in the EU.
- Move towards a four-day working week and “universal basic income”.
- Pass an Environment Protection Act to safeguard and restore the environment, ban fracking and scrap plans for new nuclear power stations.
- Renationalise the railways, cancel HS2 and all airport expansions.
- Scrapping tuition fees and bringing back maintenance grants.
- Roll back use of private providers in the NHS and scrap NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans.
- Scrap the UK’s nuclear deterrent and ban arms sales to oppressive regimes.
- Introduce rent controls, ban letting fees and build 100,000 social rented homes a year by 2022.
- Introduce proportional representation for parliamentary and local elections and lower the voting age to 16.
- Retain free movement of citizens between the UK and the EU and introduce a “humane immigration and asylum system”.
