Every time I have the opportunity to vote, whether in a general, local or European election, I have a nosey at the main parties manifestos and also have a look at the underdog too. So this year I thought I would do a blog post about what I was able to find.
The main parties that seem to be appearing in the news a lot are the one's I will look into.
We have;
The Conservatives
UKIP
Liberal Democrats
Labour
Green Party
I am aware there are others but these seem to be the popular ones so will just stick to having a look at their manifestos.
Okay so lets start with the Conservatives and what they are offering to us.
The Conservatives
- Increase spending on the NHS
- Make GP's available 7 days a week.
- Keep NHS free (not saying if that is buy selling it or keeping it)
- Lift the cap on University places (this one sounds a tad odd, hope they don't over fill classes)
- Create 3 million more apprenticeships (nice way of having more people on less than minimum wage)
- Anyone earning less than £12,500 will be taken out of Income Tax (You only have to pay tax on the £2,500 after your £10,000 tax free money each year, so not a huge bonus)
- Tax free minimum wage (an increase in it would be nicer)
- Continue to cap benefits
- Extend Right to Buy to Housing Association properties
- Build 200,000 start up homes. (Maybe more social housing should be built considering 1.8million households are on the housing waiting list.)
- 30 hours free childcare to working parents of 3 and 4 year olds.
- Will not raise VAT, National Insurance or Income Tax.
- Raise the 40p Income Tax threshold to £50,000.
- Increase Inheritance Tax threshold for married couples to £1 million.
- Increase Basic State Pension by 2.5 percent.
- Cap the amount you can be charged for residential care.
So that's the Conservative manifesto in a bullet points. Here is the link to the complete manifesto.
UKIP
- Invest an extra £12 billion into the NHS.
- £5.2 billion more into social care.
- Build a dedicated military hospital.
- Scrap hospital parking charges.
- End income tax on minimum wage
- Cut income tax on middle earners
- Scrap inheritance tax
- Abolish the 'bedroom tax'
- Increase the transferable personal tax allowance for married couples and civil partners
- Fund 6,000 more posts spread between the Police, Prison service and the Border Agency.
- Cut business rates for small businesses.
- Remove tuition fees for students taking degrees in science, technology, engineering, maths or medicine.
- Increase defence spending by 2 percent to meet NATO obligations.
- Invest £1.5 billion into mental health and dementia services.
- Pay carers an extra £572 a year (this is by increasing the current carers money to match job seekers allowance.)
- Build 500 affordable rent homes each year and eight halfway house hostels for homeless veterans.
- Remove stamp duty on the first £250,000 for new homes built on brownfield sites.
- Introduce a points based system for immigration similar to the one Australia has in place.
- No entry for immigrants who have criminal convictions from other countries.
- Fund 8,000 more GP's.
- Fund 20,000 more nurses and 3,000 more midwives.
- End ATOS style work capability assessments and return the assessments to GP's.
- Sex Education to be only for secondary school age. (I personally agree with this.)
- Support Right to Buy social housing homes.
- Zero hour contracts, worker must be offer full or part time contract after a year. (Unfortunately I think this may result in employers just letting people go before the year is up and getting someone else in).
- Increase funding and support for Food Banks.
Manifesto's go into more detail about their other promises, each party has many of them.
Here is the link to the complete manifesto.
Liberal Democrats
- Secure economy
- Increase tax free earnings allowance to £12,500 instead of the current £10,000
- Spend £8 billion on improving the NHS (just like the Conservatives I don't know why they are saying this when both of them cut it whilst in government)
- Reduce the amount of money the government borrows.
- Make banks pay their taxes.
- Reduce transport prices.
- Increase tax for homes that cost more than £2 million (don't think this will effect most of us haha)
- Make sure all children can read before going to secondary school (love this one, too many children are leaving school unable to read properly)
- Spend £500 million a year on metal health care.
- Give carers a £250 a year bonus (I think maybe increasing the amount carers get would be better but hey just my opinion)
- Reduce council tax for homes that are insulated.
- Increase minimum wage and pay people who work for the government the Living Wage (personally think this shouldn't be limited to people who work for the government, everyone should be earning the Living Wage)
- Increase paternity leave for fathers. (As far as I'm aware it currently stands at 2 weeks)
- Double the amount of businesses who take on apprentices (Personal opinion but again I really don't agree with apprenticeships considering they are paid less than minimum wage in majority of roles.)
- Make sure 9 million people join the workplace pensions scheme.
- Build 300,000 energy efficient homes a year.
- Give more black, Asian and ethnic minority people police officer jobs. (I think it should be how well you will do the job, not the colour of your skin!)
- Make sure migrants learn English if they claim benefits (not saying if it's before they can claim them or they will fund them learning English whilst claiming)
- Lower the age of voting from 18 to 16.
Labour
- Increase minimum wage to £8 per hour by October 2019 (cost of living will have shot up by then, too little, too late)
- Cutting the deficit every year (not saying by how much)
- Incomes of over £150,000 increase rate of tax to 50p.
- Ban zero contracts and promoting the Living Wage.
- Increasing free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds with working parents from 15 hours per week to 25 hours per week.
- Double paternity leave taking it to 4 weeks instead of 2.
- Build at least 200,000 new homes each year.
- Abolish 'bedroom tax'.
- Fund 8,000 more GP's, 20,000 nurses and 3,000 midwives (same as UKIP)
- Smaller class sizes for children ages 5, 6 and 7.
- Migrants from the EU will not be allowed to claim benefits until they have lived here 2 years.
- Everyone who works in the public services will have to speak English.
- Build alliances in Europe.
- Create a more equal country that is open to the world (their words not mine).
- Cap child benefit rises for 2 years.
- Stop Winter Fuel payments for the richest 5% of pensioners. (Not saying what is classed as rich)
- Middle and lower income will pay a lower starting tax rate of 10p.
- Will not increase VAT.
- Tackle tax avoidance.
- Will put small businesses first in line for tax cuts (clever use of words there don't you think haha).
- Cut tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 (don't forget it was only £3,000 before it jumped to £9,000)
- Pay for a starter job for every young person who has been unemployed for over a year. They will have to take it or will lose benefits.
- Create more apprenticeships (they all keep saying this but nothing about increasing the apprentice wage which is less than minimum wage in majority of businesses).
- Freeze energy bills til 2017
- Freeze the cost of rail fares for a year.
Please see below link for Labour's complete manifesto. Head's up though it is a pain in the bum to read compared to the other parties.
Green Party
- Create over 1 million more jobs that provide the Living Wage.
- New wealth tax on the 1% top richest.
- Increase minimum to £10 per hour by 2020 (unfortunately I think this is similar to Labour not taking into account the increase in cost of living, we will still be at pretty much the same level, the increase is good but think about it before you get too excited.)
- End the creeping privatisation of the NHS.
- Take action on climate change.
- Ban fracking (I personally love this one!)
- Phase out coal power stations and say no new nuclear.
- Scrap university fees.
- Bring academies and free schools back to the local authority. (In my case the change from local authority to academy for my children's school has been fantastic.)
- Abolish 'Bedroom Tax'
- Provide 500,000 social rented homes by 2020. (This one I am unsure if they mean 500,000 more or include current ones?)
- Bring empty homes back into use to help provide people with affordable homes.
- Cap rent (guessing this includes private rent)
- Introduce longer tenancies. (Currently the average seems to be 6 months in private rent, which leaves many people feeling on edge not knowing if they will have to move or not in 6 months time.)
- Return railways to public hands (I think this one would be very difficult for them to do.)
- Cut public transport fares by 10%
- Promote walking and cycling. (I personally love walking but can't stand cyclists almost running me over, happens a lot!)
Below I will provide the links to the Green Party's mini manifesto and complete manifesto.
Quick note - The 'Living Wage' has been mentioned a lot throughout this, just for people unaware of what that is I thought I best explain.
The living wage is now set at £9.15 an hour in London and £7.85 an hour in the rest of the UK. By comparison, the national minimum wage is significantly lower.
Right so I think I have covered the main parties, I am from England so haven't actually put SNP down but if anyone would like me to cover them please leave a comment!
I am aware there are other parties you will be able to vote for but I could be here forever going through them all so just provided simple bullet points for the main parties in this general election.
I hope this article has been able to help some people with knowing what each party is offering the country. Please PLEASE go out and vote if you are of voting age. It is so important. All the people who haven't voted in the past do you not realise what a difference your votes could make. Also just my personal opinion but I think you have no right to rant and complain about how the country is run if you can't even be bothered to get up and vote.
General Elections 2015 are being held on the 7th May!! Please get your bottoms down to the polling station! Your vote does count!
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