The Conservative Party Manifesto launch for the 12th December 2019 election was announced today by their leader Boris Johnson.
The main message of the day was to “Get Brexit Done, Unleash Britain’s Potential” – and with a relatively unsurprising manifesto, the Conservatives look to have learnt from the mishaps of May and gone for playing it safe.
Here are the comprehensive highlights:
- Keep the UK out of the single market, out of any form of customs union, and end the role of the European Court of Justice.
- Will not extend the implementation period beyond December 2020 (this is within the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU)
- Introduce an Australian-style points based immigration system
- 20,000 more police
- No rise to VAT, Income tax or National Insurance
- Additional 50,000 more nurses, 6,000 more GP Doctors, 6,000 more primary care professionals & 50 million more GP surgery appointments a year.
- 20 hospital upgrades & 40 new hospitals
- Protect the triple-lock for pensions, the winter fuel payment and older person’s bus pass
- Free hospital car parking for disabled people, frequent outpatient attenders, parents of sick children staying overnight and staff working night shifts
- Introduce an NHS Visa & increase to NHS surcharge for foreign patients
- NHS not to be part of any future trade negotiations
- £1 billion extra of funding every year in term of parliament for Social Care while working on a cross-party consensus on how to resolve the Social Care challenges
- £74 million over three years for additional capacity in community care settings for those with learning disabilities and autism.
- Double research funding into dementia and speeding up trials for new treatments
- An extra £14 billion in funding for schools; at least £5,000 a year for each secondary school pupil and at least £4,000 for each primary school pupil.
- Increase teachers’ starting salaries to £30,000
- Raise the National Insurance threshold to £9,500 next year – tax cut for around 31 million workers. Target to reach a threshold of £12,500
- £10.50 an hour “living wage”
- A new £1 billion fund to help create more high quality, affordable childcare, including before and after school and during the school holidays
- Free TV licences for over-75s
- Abolishing the tampon tax (effectively remove the VAT from sanitary products once the UK is outside the control of the EU for VAT)
- Maintain commitment to free school meals
- End the benefit freeze, and making sure it pays to work more hours.
- Add 10,000 more prison places – with £2.75 billion already committed to refurbishing and creating modern prisons
- Maintain the ban on prisoners voting from jail
- Post Brexit: Cut the number of foreign nationals in UK prisons, and prevent more foreign national offenders entering the UK
- Treat EU and non-EU citizens equally with a focus on being law-abiding in their own countries, “good grasp of English” and have good education & qualifications. With an aim of reducing lower-skilled migration
- People coming to the UK to live will need a clear job offer
- EU citizens who came to live in the UK before Brexit will have rights protected, and introduction of an EU Settlement Scheme
- People coming into the country from the EU will only be able to access unemployment, housing, and child benefit after five years, in the way non-EEA migrants currently do
- Remove the ability to claim child benefit for children living overseas
- Invest £500 million in new youth clubs and services
- New “Towns Fund” will go to an initial 100 towns
- Highstreet: Cut taxes for small retail businesses and for local music venues, pubs and cinemas
- £100 billion in additional infrastructure spending
- £4 billion to increase flood defences
- £28.8 billion investment in strategic and local roads
- £1 billion in completing a fast-charging network (for electric vehicles) – aim for every person to be within 30 miles of a charging station
- Launch the biggest ever pothole-filling programme
- Bring full fibre and gigabit capable broadband to every home and business across the UK by 2025.
- Homelessness: Expand pilots and programmes such as the Rough Sleeping Initiative and Housing First – “End the blight of rough sleeping by the end of the next Parliament”
- Introduce a stamp duty surcharge on non-UK resident buyers
- Protect the Green Belt – and aim to prioritise building on brown-field sites
- Increase the Employment Allowance for small businesses
- New £3 billion National Skills Fund
- Expand start-up loans for businesses
- Business: Increase the tax credit rate to 13 per cent and review the definition of R&D
- Set out a new anti-tax avoidance and evasion law which includes doubling the maximum prison term to 14 years
- Reduce National Insurance contributions for employers if they employ ex-Service personnel
- Offer “wraparound” childcare for Forces families
- Offer a guaranteed job interview for veterans for any public sector role they apply for
- Continue to exceed the NATO target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence and increase the budget by at least 0.5 per cent above inflation every year of the new Parliament
- Introduce new legislation to tackle the legal claims against the UK Armed Forces and further incorporate the Armed Forces Covenant into law
- Maintain commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GNI on foreign-aid
- Introduce tougher sentences for animal cruelty
- Bring in new laws on animal sentience
- Keep the target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
- Set up new international partnerships to tackle deforestation
- Invest £500 million to help energy-intensive industries move to low-carbon techniques
- Temporary prohibition on fracking in England with immediate effect – will not support fracking unless it can be proven to be done safely
- A new £500 million Blue Planet Fund to help protect our oceans from plastic, pollution and over fishing & extend the Blue Belt programme
- Setting strict new laws on air quality – consult on the earliest date by which the UK can phase out the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars
- Aim to have 80% of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan – in parallel with the EU agreement
- “Forge stronger links with the Commonwealth”
- Create up to 10 freeports around the UK
- Post-Brexit: Retake seat at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
- Post-Brexit: Be in full control of the UK fishing waters – leave the Common Fisheries Policy, become an independent coastal state, and take back control of UK waters in December 2020
NOTE: this is an extensive list, however does not include everything in the manifesto. For a more detailed look, download the manifesto and costings below
