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by Staff reporter
14 April 2015
General election party manifestos at a glance

General election party manifestos at a glance

Labour

Main pledges include: 

  • A ban on some zero-hours contracts,
  • A freeze on energy bills
  • Scrapping non-dom tax status
  • Reducing tuition fees to £6,000.
  • Raising the minimum wage to more than £8 by October 2019
  • Freezing rail fares for one year
  • Protecting tax credits for working families so they rise with inflation
  • Introducing a new National Primary Childcare Service, guaranteeing childcare from 08:00 to 18:00
  • No increase to the basic or higher rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT

Read the full Labour manifesto here.

Conservative

Main pledges include:

  • Extending the right-to-buy scheme for housing association tenants in England.
  • Taking all workers on the minimum wage out of income tax, raising personal allowance to £12,000
  • 30 hours free childcare for three and four-year-olds, "worth £5,000 a year"
  • Lifting the inheritance tax threshold on family homes to £1m by 2017
  • No above-inflation rises in rail fares until 2020
  • An extra £8bn a year for the NHS by 2020
  • Opening 500 more free schools
  • An EU referendum by 2017
  • Plans to build 200,000 starter homes

Read the full Conservative manifesto here.

Liberal Democrats

Main pledges include:

  • Raise the Personal Allowance to at least £12,500 by the end of the next Parliament.
  • Legislate to make the ‘triple lock’ permanent in terms of pensions.
  • Additional £8bn a year funding for NHS by 2020.
  • Eliminate deficit by 2017-18 and have debt falling as a percentage of national income.
  • Green laws including decarbonisation target for electricity.
  • Create a supplementary Corporation Tax for the banking sector.
  • Proceed with HS2, as the first stage of a high-speed rail network to Scotland.
  • Invest £500m in mental health care with waiting time standards to match those in physical health care.
  • Extend free childcare to all two-year-olds for working families.

Read the full Lib Dem manifesto here.

Green Party

Main pledges include:

  • Plans to renationalise the railways; curb emissions
  • Reverse what the party sees as the "creeping privatisation" of the NHS
  • Raise the top rate of income tax to 60p
  • Increase the minimum wage to a living wage of at least £10
  • Decommission Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent
  • A plan for a free nationwide home insulation programme to help tackle nine million cold homes, and lift two million homes out of fuel poverty
  • Increase public spending to almost half of national income
  • Close taxation loopholes and crack down on tax avoidance
  • Introduce a wealth tax of 1-2 per cent on people worth £3m or more

Read the full Green manifesto here

Scottish Green Party

Main pledges include:

  • Raise the minimum wage in steps, with a target of £10 an hour for everyone by 2020
  • Roll back welfare cuts, abolishing the bedroom tax and workfare, lifting the sanction regime and halting the roll out of universal credit
  • Replace the Council tax and business rates with a progressive land tax
  • Stabilise house prices and invest in social rented homes across the UK, financed by scrapping buy-to-let mortgage tax breaks and prudent borrowing
  • Make renting fairer by introducing secure tenancies and rent controls in areas of spiralling cost
  • Introduce a Healthy Challenge fund for community-run health projects
  • Implement the world’s most ambitious home energy efficiency programme
  • Invest in affordable quality childcare
  • Introduce a wealth tax of 2 per cent on the wealthiest 1 per cent

Read the full Scottish Green manifesto here.


Plaid Cymru

Main pledges include:

  • Introduce an Economic Fairness Bill to rebalance the wealth of the UK
  • Create 50,000 jobs in Wales by giving more Welsh public sector contracts to companies working in Wales
  • Increase the minimum wage to be the same level as the Living Wage over the next Parliament
  • End zero hours contracts
  • Support the public ownership of railways
  • Support the devolution of air passenger duty
  • Establish a Welsh Migration Service to establish a list of skills shortages
  • Promote a Welsh civic identity through schools, by faith and community organisations to tackle
  • extremism
  • Double the bankers’ levy

UKIP

Main pledges include:

  • Support for in/Out referendum on EU membership as soon as possible.
  • An additional £3bn a year into the NHS in England by the end of the parliament.
  • Abolish inheritance tax.
  • No tax on the minimum wage up to £13,000.
  • Scrap the Barnett Formula.
  • Reduce the overseas aid budget from 0.7 per cent to 0.2 per cent of GNI.
  • spend two per cent of GDP on defence in 2015/16 and exceed substantially for remaining years of parliament.
  • Deportation of resident migrants who commit crimes resulting in custodial sentence.
  • Ban exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts.

Read the full UKIP manifesto here.


Scottish Socialist Party 

Main pledges include:

  • Immediate rise in the minimum wage to £10 an hour
  • Introduction of free public transport on all buses, trains, trams and ferries in Scotland
  • Replacing the council tax with a 'Scottish Service tax' to pay for local government services raised via a levy on an individual's income
  • Build 100,000 new social housing sector homes over the lifetime of this Parliament
  • Return teacher numbers to pre-2007 levels
  • Close private schools for a fully comprehensive, publicly owned and accountable education system
  • 16 and 17 year olds should continue to enjoy the democratic franchise in all future elections in this country from now on
  • The banks, oil industry, rail network and energy sector to be nationalised
  • Introduce a national debate over scrapping the monarchy

Read the full manifesto here.

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