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Welfare benefit and tax credits highlights in the Labour Party election manifesto
Reforms designed to 'increase fairness and work incentives'
The Labour Party has today published its 'Manifesto 2010: A future fair for all' which outlines 'tough choices on welfare' aimed at increasing fairness and work incentives and includes savings of £1.5 billion.
Welfare benefit and tax credit measures included in the manifesto include -
- 200,000 jobs through the Future Jobs Fund, with a job or training place for young people who are out of work for six months, but benefits cut at ten months if they refuse to take part;
- a £40-a-week Better-off in Work guarantee;
- the extension of the 'tough-but-fair' work capability test which will help to reduce the benefit bill by £1.5 billion over the next four years, with the reassessment of 1.5 million incapacity benefit claims by 2014;
- a guarantee of supported employment after two years on benefit for those with the most serious conditions or disabilities who want to work;
- extra help for lone parents with childcare, training and support to find family-friendly work, while requiring those with children aged three to take steps to prepare for work and to actively seek work once their youngest child is seven years old;
- the reform of housing benefit to ensure that 'we do not subsidise people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working families could not afford';
- a new 'fathers' month' consisting of four weeks of paid leave, rather than the current two, to be paid for with savings from housing benefit reforms;
- a 'toddler tax credit', increasing the child element of child tax credit by £4 a week for families with children aged one and two from 2012;
- a re-established link between the basic state pension and earnings from 2012 with pension credit also rising in line with earnings;
- people aged 60 and over to be able to claim working tax credit if they work at least 16 hours a week, rather than 30 hours as at present;
- grandparents who give up work to help care for their grandchildren to receive national insurance credits towards their state pension;
- a commitment to continued help for pensioners, for example through the winter fuel payment, and free eye tests and prescriptions;
- the Savings Gateway account for people on lower incomes to be available to over eight million families from July 2010, providing, with the future extension of this approach to savings for more people on middle incomes and the development of a matched savings account for all 18-30 basic-rate taxpayers; and
- a commitment to protecting the Child Trust Fund with an additional £100 a year for all disabled children.
Supporters of Gordon Brown's flagship free personal care legislation are concerned it will not be implemented, despite being passed into law by the House of Lords yesterday.
Carers UK - part of a broad voluntary sector coalition backing the Personal Care at Home Act 2010 - warned that the legislation could simply lie on the statute book without being put into practice.
The act, which was only saved after the government offered key concessions to opponents, received Royal Assent on Parliament's last sitting day before the election.
The legislation, announced by Brown at last year's Labour conference, is designed to provide free care at home for 280,000 people with the highest needs and reablement support for 130,000 people a year.
However, in a concession made to its critics in the Lords, the government agreed that both Houses of Parliament will have to approve implementation of the measure in a vote after the next election.
Without this, it will not come into force.
Emily Holzhausen, Carers UK's policy and public affairs director, said: "This means it's by no means a foregone conclusion. It will depend on the make-up of the Houses of Parliament."
Though the Conservatives have not opposed the legislation, they have criticised it on grounds of cost. The Liberal Democrats, who could be crucial in a hung parliament situation, oppose the measure and would instead use the £670m budget set aside for its implementation to fund short breaks for carers.
Peers and local authorities have raised concerns about the costs of the legislation, which have been estimated by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services to be as high as £1bn a year.
The government has also put back its proposed start date for implementing the plans from October 2010 to April 2011, following concerns that councils would not be able to put the proposals into practice this year.
Adass welcomed the later start date. President Jenny Owen added: "Adass will continue to be available to work closely with the government on unresolved funding and implementation issues."
Related articles
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/04/09/114246/Carers-UK-fear...
Labour has pledged to ensure that dementia patients in every area have access to psychological therapy, counselling and memory clinics if it wins the election, in its manifesto, published today.
The promise on memory clinics takes forward plans in last year's national dementia strategy, which called for early diagnosis and intervention services to be set up in every area by 2014.
However, the pledges on psychological therapies and counselling appear to be new and respond to widespread concerns that people with dementia lack access to these services because of age discrimination.
Labour "promised end to the age discrimination that has too often seen older people disadvantaged in the provision of health services".
The promises come with Community Care calling for a full debate on dementia during the election and for the next government to commit to prioritising the care of those with the condition, through our Dementia Declaration campaign.
As expected, the manifesto also included plans in last month's care White Paper to set up a national care service - with services free at the point of need but paid for by individual contributions - in three stages, though with full implementation delayed until after 2016.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/04/12/114258/labour-pledges...
LONDON, April 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Crisis, what crisis? That could be motto for the election manifestos published by Britain’s main political parties this week. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives addressed the country’s fiscal crisis head-on.
Instead, they have sought to bribe the electorate with promises.
There are some good ideas in the manifestos. But there are too many promises to cut taxes and not to touch spending – as well as a general lack of urgency. Once one puts the pledges into categories of good, bad and ugly, there are too few in the former bucket.
OVERALL DEFICIT
The two parties are promising roughly the same fiscal squeeze over the course of the parliament. Labour says it would halve the deficit, which is standing at 167 billion pounds or 12 percent of GDP, over four years. The opposition Tories say they would reduce the bulk of the deficit over five years. But such cuts aren’t deep enough. What’s more, neither party has been prepared to say how they will achieve them.
The Tories do seem more determined than Labour to control the deficit. Next year, they would freeze public-sector pay for all except the lowest-paid one million workers. And they would even start cutting elsewhere this fiscal year — promising an emergency budget within 50 days of taking office and measures to cut spending by 6 billion this financial year. But they won’t say how they’ll do this, except that they will cut waste.
They have also promised to set up an independent watchdog to vet whether the government’s spending plans were sustainable. This would only be able to make recommendations — so it can bark not bite. That said, it might help get the government onto the fiscal straight and narrow.
But the Tories also have a really bad idea — reversing the government’s “tax on jobs”. Going back on the increase in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) would cost 6 billion pounds a year. Given the state of the public finances, that is irresponsible.
Labour scores 1 bad idea for lack of urgency on the deficit, and no good ideas at all.
The Tories score 2 bad ideas, but also have 2 good ideas.
TAX/BENEFITS
NICs aren’t the only Tory tax promise that will cost money. The Conservatives would introduce a new tax credit to encourage marriage. And they’d raise the inheritance tax threshold to 1 million pounds. It really doesn’t make sense to shell out more money when the government is bleeding red ink.
Labour is better on inheritance tax — promising to freeze the threshold for four years. But it has also made an unfortunate pledge not to extend the reach of Value Added Tax. Various goods — notably food and children’s clothing — don’t qualify for VAT. By putting these off limits, Gordon Brown has denied himself a useful lever for addressing the deficit.
The Tories do have one good idea on tax: simplification. They want to streamline the current cat’s cradle of tax and benefits. Their one big specific idea is to cut corporation tax to 25 percent funded by abolishing complex reliefs and allowances. They haven’t spelt out what they mean by this, so there could be nasty surprises. A radical — and welcome — proposal would be to phase out the tax-deductibility of interest payments.
The Liberal Democrats, which may be influential in a hung parliament, have one bad idea – raising the threshold before income tax is paid to 10,000 pounds. The country just isn’t in a state to finance such generosity. But they also have a good idea on simplification. They’d align the rates of capital gains and income tax. That wouldn’t just raise money. It would stop rich people going to elaborate lengths to convert income into capital to cut their tax bills.
Labour: bad ideas 1; good 1
Tory: bad ideas 2, good 1
HOUSING
Both Labour and the Conservatives especially have made unfortunate promises on housing. They’d abolish stamp duty on homes worth less than 250,000 pounds. Housing is already wildly under-taxed; it doesn’t need further subsidies. The Tories tax cut would be permanent. At least Labour’s would last only two years. And Labour would simultaneously raise stamp duty on properties worth over 1 million pounds — so there would be no revenue loss in the short run and actually a gain in the medium term.
The Liberal Democrats have a good-ish proposal on housing: a “mansion tax” of one percent a year on properties worth over 2 million pounds. This may seem as a way of bashing rich people. But the current system of property taxes — the council tax — actually benefits those in expensive houses. A mansion tax would level things out.
Labour: bad ideas 1; good 1
Tory: bad ideas 1; good 0
PENSIONS
Labour and the Tories have both made the same bad pledge on state pensions: they’d increase them in line with average earnings from 2012. One of the reasons that Britain’s finances aren’t in an even worse mess is because Margaret Thatcher severed the link between state pensions and earnings in the 1980s. This U-turn is retrograde.
That said, the Conservatives also have two good ideas. Firstly, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66 for men from as early as 2016, and for women from 60 to 66 from as early as 2020. And secondly, capping pensions for public-sector workers at 50,000 pounds a year. Public-sector pensions are extraordinarily generous. It is a shame that Tories’ haven’t been more radical. But these are still steps in the right direction.
Labour also has a useful pension idea — scrapping the default retirement age of 65. That should make it easier for people to hang onto their jobs as they age, instead of needing early pensions.
Labour: bad ideas 1; good 1
Tory: bad ideas 1; good 2
SOCIAL SPENDING
Both Tories and Labour have fallen over themselves to pledge more money for the National Health Service. Of course, the NHS is a national treasure. But how will the government cut its deficit if the biggest-spending department is off limits?
Labour compounds the error by also treating schools as a sacred cow. What’s more, it has promised to give old and needy people the right to free care in their own homes. The best thing that can be said about this potentially extremely expensive proposal is that it will be phased in, with the big bills only hitting in the parliament after next.
The Tories have promised to protect various perks for the elderly, including winter fuel allowances, and free bus passes and television licences. The Tories have missed an opportunity to scrap universal allowances in favour of more cost-effective help for those who really need it.
Labour: bad ideas 3; good 0
Tory: bad ideas 2; good 0
CITY PRACTICES
Both Labour and the Tories have the same good idea about banks: tax them in proportion to how much they rely on hot money. Rightly crafted, this would not only raise money but also give banks an incentive to operate more safely. The Conservatives, though, are taking an unnecessary risk by promising to do this even if other countries don’t follow suit. That potentially could undermine the UK’s financial services industry. Labour’s multilateral approach is wiser.
The government’s approach on takeovers, though, would be bad for the City and industry. It would require a two-thirds majority of shareholders to vote in favour of any bid. Putting grit in the sands of the takeover machine could protect underperforming management from external discipline.
Neither party has got financial regulation quite right. Labour would try to stop future crises by modifying the failed tripartite system comprising the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury. The Tories would abolish the FSA and hand its banking powers to the BoE. But the BoE didn’t exactly cover itself with glory during the crisis. A better solution would be to keep the FSA regulating individual banks but create a new independent committee — comprising the BoE, the FSA and some maverick outside voices — to prevent bubbles.
Labour: bad ideas 2, good 1
Tory: bad ideas 2, good 1
CONCLUSION
Sadly, this rough assessment of the parties’ biggish ideas finds 19 bad proposals, against 10 good ones. Labour has nine bad ideas and only four good ones. The Tories have an edge of sorts, with ten bad ones compared to six good ones.
But neither party is really pulling out the stops. Given the risks the economy faces, the failure of imagination and courage is a great shame.
(Editing by Chris Hughes and Aliza Rosenbaum)
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2010/04/16/crisis-what-crisis-2/
Extending choice for patients over where and how they want to be treated has been a priority for the Labour government. Its 2005 manifesto included a number of specific pledges in relation to hospital treatment, primary care, maternity care and palliative care services.
Hospitals
‘By the end of 2008, patients whose GPs refer them for an operation will be able to choose from any hospital that can provide that operation to NHS medical and financial standards.’
Since 2006, patients needing a non-urgent hospital referral by their GP should have been offered a choice of four hospitals. In April 2008 this choice was extended to include any NHS or private hospital meeting NHS standards. The government’s main measure of performance against this target has been a survey of patients using hospital outpatient departments, asking whether they remember being offered a choice of hospital.
The results of this survey suggest that the implementation of the policy is still incomplete (figure 1 below). The proportion of patients who recalled being offered a choice of hospital increased from 30 per cent in May/June 2006, when data was first collected, to 45 per cent in January 2007 but has stayed fairly constant since then – although the number of patients who were aware they had a choice has slowly increased. These findings are supported by research carried out by The King’s Fund, which found that 49 per cent of patients who booked their first outpatient appointment in January 2009 were offered a choice of hospital.
Figure 1
Primary care
‘We will expand capacity and choice in primary care too. Where GPs’ lists are full we will expand provision by encouraging entrepreneurial GPs and other providers to expand into that location.’
In 2007 the government made a commitment to establish 100 new GP practices in the areas of the country with the poorest provision and to provide resources for primary care trusts (PCTs) to develop 152 GP-led health centres, offering a range of services from 8am to 8pm seven days a week. In 2009, the government announced that 65 new GP practices had opened and 50 GP-led health centres were in operation (see High Quality Care for All: Our journey so far).
In a speech at The King’s Fund in September 2009, Andy Burnham announced that ‘within the next 12 months’ the government would abolish practice boundaries to allow patients to register with the GP of their choice.
Maternity
‘By 2009 all women will have choice over where and how they have their baby and what pain relief to use.’
In 2007, the government introduced a new national guarantee of choice for women, including choice of where they gave birth – at home, at a midwife-led unit or at a consultant-led unit – and where they received their antenatal and postnatal care. The Department of Health has not published any monitoring of performance against this target.
In 2008, the Healthcare Commission’s review of maternity services in England suggested that choices in maternity services were not yet comprehensive. They found that 81 per cent of women had been given a choice of where to have their baby, and for 58 per cent this had included the option of a home birth. However, the report also found that only around a third of trusts had a range of both consultant- and midwife-led units and concluded that ‘in practice, the choice of types of maternity unit is currently very limited’. It also found that 64 per cent of women ‘definitely’ received the pain relief they wanted and that 28 per cent had had the pain relief they wanted ‘to some extent’.
Cancer treatment
‘In order to increase choices for patients with cancer we will double the investment going into palliative care services, giving more people the choice to be treated at home.’
In its End of Life Care strategy, the Department of Health acknowledged that it is ‘difficult, if not impossible’ to calculate the cost of palliative care (now often referred to as end-of-life care), in part because there is no definition of when end-of-life care starts. So the government decided to interpret this manifesto commitment to mean increasing the funding for specialist palliative care services by £198 million (to reach a total of £378 million) for the three-year period 2009 to 2011, compared to a total spend of £180 million between 2000 and 2004.
It is not known what impact this investment has had on the provision of palliative care services at home. In 2008 the National Audit Office’s review of End of Life services included a survey of home care services provided by 138 PCTs in 2006-07, which suggested that home-based services are still limited in their coverage (see table 1).
Table 1
The government is considering creating a legal entitlement to die at home as part of the NHS constitution, but the feasibility of this right will not be explored until 2013.
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/general_election_2010/key_election_questions...
Labour launches Health Manifesto: an NHS guaranteed to all, personal to each
Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, has today launched Labour's Health Manifesto, Your Personal NHS Guarantee. Labour outlines our plan for a better NHS. An NHS that is on the side of the patient, not the system.
To read a copy please click here
Today, while Labour campaigns on public services, the Tory risk on public services is becoming more and more clear – removing guarantees in the NHS, charging top-up fees in nurseries and planning cuts to existing schools that even their own Tory councillors are worried by.
Introducing Labour's Health Manifesto, Gordon Brown writes:
"The NHS embodies our values of fairness and social justice with care on the basis of need, not ability to pay: a universal health service, not a third-rate safety net.
"Only a decade ago, the very existence of the NHS seemed to be in doubt. Now with sustained investment and reform, the NHS is working for all the people of Britain – delivering higher quality healthcare which is far easier to access in safer and more convenient settings.
"For sixty years, the National Health Service has been part and parcel of what it means to be British. Its principles - tax-funded with care provided according to clinical need - remain as valid today as in any previous generation.
"In an insecure, fast-paced world people need a world-class health care system that is for them and their family. They need a guarantee not a gamble. The hardworking majority in our country simply cannot afford to opt out and go private -they want an NHS offering the highest quality personal care free at the point of need.
"To prosper in the future, the NHS will have to respond to the same challenges that face healthcare systems across the developed world.
"Medical advances have eradicated some illnesses while opening up new possibilities in the treatment of others. Many experts predict that medicine will change more in the next 20 years than in the last 200 years. An ageing society and so-called “lifestyle diseases” are changing the nature of illness and disease and mean improved health requires a far greater focus on prevention and early intervention. Taken together these factors demand radical reform and change across the NHS if we are to meet the aspirations of the public to world-class healthcare. They require an increase in the pace of change.
"In the NHS of the next decade, real power must lie in the hands of patients, not the bureaucracy, and the NHS must focus far more than it has in the past on prevention and early intervention. No longer can we sustain the approach of patients as the passive recipients of services.
"Increasingly patients and their families and carers must be seen as active partners in their care with enforceable guarantees, real choice and control over services.
"So Labour will fight for a better NHS - for an NHS on the side of the patient, not the system. This is Labour’s personal NHS guarantee to you."
The global poverty emergency: our moral duty, our common interest
Labour’s international leadership on development has helped transform the lives of millions across the world. Yet too many people still live in extreme poverty, die from treatable diseases, or are denied the chance to go to school.
We will lead an international campaign to get the Millennium Development Goals back on track. We remain committed to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid from 2013, and we will enshrine this commitment in law early in the next Parliament. Our aid will target the poorest and most excluded – spent transparently and evaluated independently. We will fight corruption, investing more to track, freeze, and recover assets stolen from developing countries. Further action will be taken to strengthen developing countries’ tax systems, reduce tax evasion, improve reporting, and crack down on tax havens. To increase accountability, we will allocate at least five per cent of all funding developing country budgets for the purpose of strengthening the role of Parliaments and civil society.
Our leadership on debt cancellation has freed 28 countries from the shackles of debt. We will continue to drive this agenda, building on legislation to clampdown on vulture funds.
Access to health, education, food, water and sanitation are basic human rights. We will spend £8.5 billion over eight years to help more children go to school; maintain our pledge to spend £6 billion on health between 2008 and 2015 and £1 billion through the Global Fund to support the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria; fight for universal access to prevention, treatment and care for HIV/AIDS by 2010; and deliver at least 30 million additional anti-malarial bed-nets over the next three years.
We will provide £1 billion for water and sanitation by 2013, driving this issue up the international agenda, and over £1 billion on food security and agriculture. We will push for the establishment of a Global Council on Child Hunger. We will help save the lives of six million mothers and babies by 2015 and, because international focus on the needs of women and girls is vital, we will double core funding to the new UN Women’s agency. While the Tories would favour private schemes, we will work closely with NGOs and developing countries to eliminate user fees and promote healthcare and education free at the point of access. We will encourage other countries to ratify the ILO conventions on labour standards, as we have done.
Trade can lift millions out of poverty. We will work with the private sector, trade unions and co-operatives to promote sustainable development, quadruple our funding for fair and ethical trade, and press for a fair World Trade Organisation deal, with no enforced liberalisation for poor countries, and increased duty-free and quota-free access.
http://lcid.org.uk/2010/04/18/labours-manifesto-on-international-develop...
The tax and benefit measures implemented by Labour since 1997 have increased the incomes of poorer households and reduced those of richer ones, largely halting the rapid rise in income inequality we saw under the Conservatives. Despite this, inequality was still slightly higher in 2007-08 than when Labour came to office, according to the first set of Election Briefing Notes to be released by the IFS to help inform public debate during the general election campaign.
Download full version (PDF 618 KB)
Related report: What has happened to 'Severe Poverty' under Labour?
Related report: Living standards, inequality and poverty: Labour's record
Related report: Tax and benefit reforms under Labour
Labour’s manifesto: new pledges, omissions and the usual ambiguities
Labour’s pitch for distinction in its manifesto is the promotion of a series of legal rights and guarantees for patients, the most important of which relate to a one-week commitment for cancer tests, a two-week referral-to-diagnosis guarantee for cancer patients, the 18-week referral-to-treatment guarantee for most other kinds of hospital-based care and a right to choose a GP offering evening and weekend opening.
The idea behind the first three is to consolidate and extend waiting times targets in a post-target world. Initially, targets helped to create pressure to achieve some key objectives — particularly on speedier access to services — but more recently they have been the subject of criticism in the policy world, mostly for the disruptive rigour with which they were enforced by central government at the expense of staff morale.
But Labour is clearly aware that shorter waiting times have been popular with the public and there is political mileage to be gained by emphasising how both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are campaigning on scrapping targets, with the obvious risk that waiting times could go up. Labour’s success will depend on how well it can convince the public that these rights will be backed up, promptly, with any kind of force.
Another big theme is prevention. The detail is thin here beyond the existing commitment to extend screening for 40-74 year olds. There are no new initiatives to tackle alcohol misuse amongst adults and nothing new on obesity. Manifestos are perhaps not the best place for pleasure-limiting commitments, but the assertion that better prevention is the key to efficiency is not supported by tangible commitments.
Better access to GP care outside office hours will be a popular idea. It is not clear whether all GPs will be required to extend their hours to fulfil this or whether patients will have a limited list of extended-hours GP practices to choose from.
The backdrop of constrained resources may explain the non-committal tone of much of the manifesto: how to promise reform without providing significant new resources is a challenge for all the parties. Some of the pledges have clear resource implications: single rooms for parents needing to stay in hospital overnight, home births for mothers, guarantees for home-based palliative care and one-to-one cancer nursing. No timescales have been put on any of these commitments, leaving some wriggle room were Labour to be re-elected.
On social care, the manifesto re-iterates the plans for a National Care Service. The question of how it should be funded will be left to the parliament after next, along with the prospects for a public debate about this important policy question.
The Labour manifesto does include some new pledges — for instance scaling back the NHS IT programme and no more top-down changes to primary care trusts and strategic health authorities.
There are also some interesting omissions: no mention of the four-hour A&E waiting times target and no mention at all of health inequalities.
And there are the usual ambiguities, without which no manifesto would be complete: ‘3,000 matrons’ will have the power to ‘manage wards, order deep cleaning and report problems directly to hospital wards’ leaves voters to figure out if this means current or new matrons exercising current or new powers.
It is not clear how important the detail of the manifesto on the NHS will be to voters: Labour has always enjoyed an advantage over the Conservatives in public perception of their competency on the NHS, and their hope will be that this message of rights and guarantees will do the trick on polling day.
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/labours_manifesto.html