The manifesto’s policy proposals, in key fields:
Business & finance
- Increase the tax-free income threshold to £10,000. The cost of implementing this policy is estimated at over
£16 billion, paid for through revenue from policies touching other parts of government. These include broadening the Air Passenger Duty levy to cover all air transport, and introducing a so-called ‘mansion tax’ on properties worth over £2m.
- Separate retail and investment banking to protect taxpayers from any future bank failures – a policy that
would involve both the Treasury and its Financial Services Authority, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in its role as the government’s lead on regulatory issues.
- Launch a green economic stimulus plan to create 100,000 new jobs, using approaches such as bringing back
into use 250,000 empty homes, and introducing a bus scrappage scheme to encourage investment by bus companies in new fleets.
Local government, planning and communities
- Replace council tax with a local income tax run by HMRC, initially on a trial basis.
- Scrap central government inspection of local authorities. A key manifesto pledge, enactment would affect all
departments that fund local services.
Health
- The manifesto proposes wide-ranging reform of the NHS, including the introduction of elected local health
boards to run primary care, and the scrapping of various health quangos.
- Integrate health and social care – currently divided between the departments of health and for children,
schools & families – into one service.
Home Office
- Introduce a regional points-based system to direct working immigrants to parts of the country where they are
most needed.
- Allow asylum-seekers to work two months after they’ve applied for asylum, reducing their dependency on
state handouts. Overall responsibility for asylum would be transferred away from the Home Office to a new
and ‘entirely independent’ agency: with their oversight of tax and benefits respectively, HMRC and the
Department for Work & Pensions would lead the implementation of this policy.
Last updated 751 days ago by Civil Service Live
