Lib dem manifesto pledges

• ·         Saving the NHS by putting a penny in the pound on Income Tax to give the NHS and social care services the cash injection they need.
• ·         Transforming mental health care with waiting time standards to match those in physical health care.
• ·         In the longer term and as a replacement for the 1p Income Tax rise, commission the development of a dedicated health and care tax
• ·         End the public sector pay freeze for NHS workers.
• ·         Reinstate student nurse bursaries.
• ·         Roll out the Liaison and Diversion programme nationally
• ·         Raise the amount people can earn before losing Carer’s Allowance from £110 to £150 a week, and reduce the number of hours’ care per week required to qualify.
• ·         Make Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention available on the NHS.
• ·         Develop a strategy to tackle childhood obesity, including restricting the marketing of junk food to children, restricting TV advertising before the 9pm watershed and closing loopholes in the sugary drinks tax.
• ·         Encourage the traffic-light labelling system for food products and publication of information on calorie, fat, sugar and salt content in restaurants and takeaways.
• ·         Introduce mandatory targets on sugar reduction for food and drink producers
• ·         Introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol
• ·         Increase our Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 per pupil per year.
• ·         £7 billion more for school and college budgets (Not sure where the funds for this are coming from)
• ·         Guarantee that all teachers in state-funded schools will be fully qualified or working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) from January 2019
• ·         Scrap the planned expansion of grammar schools and devolve all capital monies for new school spaces to local authorities
• ·         Allow Ofsted to inspect both local authorities and academy chains.
• ·         Include in SRE teaching about sexual consent, LGBT+ relationships, and issues surrounding explicit images and content.
• ·         Challenge gender stereotyping and early sexualisation, working with schools to promote positive body image and break down outdated perceptions of gender appropriateness of particular academic subjects
• ·         Extend free school meals to all children in primary education (un-costed)
• ·         Reinstate maintenance grants for the poorest students
• ·         Create individual accounts for funding mature adult and part-time learning and training, and provide for all adults individual access to all necessary career information, advice and guidance.
• ·         Facilitate across the UK an effective and comprehensive system for credit transfer and recognition of prior learning and qualifications.
• ·         New direct spending on housebuilding to help build 300,000 homes a year by 2022 (borrowed money)
• ·         £5 billion of initial capital for a new British Housing and Infrastructure Development Bank
• ·         End the following: The cutting of Corporation Tax from 20% to 17%,  Capital Gains Tax cuts,  Capital Gains Tax extended relief, The Marriage Allowance and The raising of the Inheritance Tax threshold
• ·         Create a new ‘start-up allowance’ to help those starting a new business with their living costs in the crucial first weeks of their business.
• ·         Extend transparency requirements on larger employers to include publishing the number of people paid less than the living wage and the ratio between top and median pay.
• ·         Stamp out abuse of zero-hours contracts. We will create a formal right to request a fixed contract and consult on introducing a right to make regular patterns of work contractual after a period of time
• ·         scrapping employment tribunal fees.
• ·         Strengthen worker participation in decision-making, including staff representation on remuneration committees, and the right for employees of a listed company to be represented on the board
• ·         Require binding and public votes of board members on executive pay policies.
• ·         Devolve further revenue-raising powers away from Westminster, to regions from Cornwall to the north-east
• ·         Ensuring that four million properties receive insulation retrofits by 2022
• ·         A diesel scrappage scheme, and a ban on the sale of diesel cars and small vans in the UK by 2025  (no cost provided)
• ·         Extending ultra-low-emission zones to 10 more towns and cities.
• ·         Set up a British Housing and Infrastructure Development Bank to mobilise investment into the low-carbon and sustainable infrastructure – No amount mentioned
• ·         Continue to back new entrants to the energy market, aiming for at least 30% of the household market to be supplied by competitors to the ‘Big 6’ by 2022.
• ·         Establish a £2 billion flood-prevention fund focused on providing support for small community and council-led schemes (not sure where fund coming from)
• ·         Significantly increase the amount of accessible green space, including completion of the coastal path, and create a new designation of national nature parks to protect up to one million acres of accessible green space valued by local communities.
• ·         Introduce stronger penalties for animal cruelty offences, increasing the maximum sentencing from six months to five years, and bring in a ban on caged hens.
• ·         Clamp down on illegal pet imports through legal identification requirements for online sales
• ·         Funding research into alternatives to animal testing
• ·         Develop safe, effective, humane and evidence-based ways of controlling bovine TB, including by investing to produce workable vaccines
• ·         Pass a Zero-Waste Act, including legally binding targets for reducing net consumption of key natural resources
• ·         Establish a statutory waste recycling target of 70% in England and extend separate food waste collections to at least 90% of homes by 2022
• ·         Building on the success of our plastic bag charge, introduce a 5p charge on disposable coffee cups to reduce waste
• ·         Extending free childcare to all two-year-olds
• ·         Introducing a new Young Person’s Bus Discount Card for young people aged 16–21, giving a two-thirds discount on bus travel.
• ·         Expand Shared Parental Leave with an additional ‘use it or lose it’ month
• ·         Separate employment support from benefits administration
• ·         Take 13,000 children out of poverty by letting both parents earn before their Universal Credit is cut and also reverse cuts to the Family Element
• ·         Reversing the cuts to Work Allowances in Universal Credit, enabling people to work for longer before their benefits are cut
• ·         Uprate working-age benefits at least in line with inflation.
• ·         Abandon the two-child policy on family benefits
• ·         reversing cuts to housing benefit for 18-21-year-olds
• ·         increase the rates of Jobseeker’s Allowance and Universal Credit for those aged 18-24 at the same rate as minimum wages.
• ·         Increase Local Housing Allowance (LHA) in line with average rents in an area
• ·         Scrap the ‘bedroom tax’
• ·         Withdraw eligibility for the Winter Fuel Payment from pensioners who pay tax at the higher rate
• ·         retain the free bus pass for all pensioners
• ·         Maintain the ‘triple lock’
• ·         End the Voluntary Right to Buy pilots
• ·         Lift the borrowing cap on local authorities and increase the borrowing capacity of housing associations so that they can build council and social housing.
• ·         Create a community right of appeal in cases where planning decisions go against the approved local plan
• ·         Eable local authorities to: - Levy up to 200% council tax on second homes and ‘buy to leave empty’ investments from overseas. –
• ·         Enforce housebuilding on unwanted public sector land. –
• ·         Penalise excessive land-banking when builders with planning permission have failed to build after three years. –
• ·         Allow councils to End the Right to Buy if they choose.
• ·         introducing a new Rent to Own model where rent payments give tenants an increasing stake in the property, owning it outright after 30 years – Not sure who is building these
• ·         banning lettings fees for tenants, capping upfront deposits
• ·         stopping developers advertising homes abroad before they have been advertised in the UK.
• ·         Give tenants first refusal to buy the home they are renting
• ·         Remove the requirement to hold local referenda for council tax changes
• ·         Capping the maximum amount able to be bet on fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) at one time to £2
• ·         Ensure that every property in the UK is provided, by 2022, with a superfast broadband connection with a download speed of 30Mbps, an upload speed of 6Mbps, and an unlimited usage cap
• ·         Invest £2 billion in innovative solutions to ensure the provision of highspeed broadband across the rural UK
• ·         Set up a £2 billion Rural Services Fund of capital investment to enable communities to establish a local base from which to co-locate services such as council offices, post offices, children’s centres, libraries and visiting healthcare professionals.
• ·         Guarantee the freedom of people to wear religious or cultural dress, and tackle the growing incidence of Islamophobic hate crime.
• ·         Decriminalise the sale and purchase of sex
• ·         Address period poverty by providing free sanitary products to girls at school
• ·         Introduce a digital bill of rights that protects people’s powers over their own information, supports individuals over large corporations, and preserves the neutrality of the internet.
• ·         Increase community policing in England and Wales by giving an additional £300 million a year to local police forces
• ·         Require all front-line officers to wear body cameras on duty
• ·         End imprisonment for possession of illegal drugs for personal use, diverting those arrested for possession of drugs for personal use into treatment and education (adopting a health-based approach), or imposing civil penalties
• ·         Introduce legal, regulated market for cannabis. We would introduce limits on potency and permit cannabis to be sold through licensed outlets to adults over the age of 18.
• ·         Offer safe and legal routes to the UK for refugees to prevent them from making dangerous journeys
• ·         Expand the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme to offer sanctuary to 50,000 people over the lifetime of the next parliament.
• ·         Re-open the Dubs unaccompanied child refugee scheme, ensuring Britain meets its responsibilities by taking in 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children.
• ·         End indefinite immigration detention by introducing a 28-day limit
• ·         Spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid
• ·         Controlling arms exports to countries listed as human rights priority
• ·         suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia
• ·         Commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence.
• ·         Introduce votes at 16 for all elections and referendums across the UK
• ·         Introduce the Single Transferable Vote for local government elections in England and for electing MPs across the UK.
• ·         Capping donations to political parties at £10,000 per person each year
• ·         Mandate the provision of televised leaders’ debates in general elections based on rules produced by Ofcom
• ·         Introduce legislation to allow for all-BAME and all-LGBT+ parliamentary shortlists.
• ·         Cancel the boundary review due to report in 2018.

Highlight of labour manifesto:

·         Through our National Investment Bank and regional development banks, we will create the conditions required to flourish and grow by every region and nation of Britain.

·         Set out a plan to eliminate the current spending deficit on a forward-looking, five-year rolling timescale

·         When conventional monetary policy is hampered by the lower bound to interest rates, suspend operation of the rule in order that fiscal policy can work with monetary policy to support economic recovery

·         Make the Office of Budget Responsibility responsible to Parliament with a clear mandate to "blow the whistle" on government breaching these rules

·         Invest £250 billion over ten years [In infrastructure]

·         We will also encourage private investment by removing new plant and machinery from business rate calculations.

·         We will deliver universal superfast broadband availability by 2022

·         will invest to ensure all urban areas as well as major roads and railways have uninterrupted 5G coverage.

·         Ensure that 60% of the UK's energy comes from low or renewable sources by 2030

·         Labour will change the law so that banks can't close a branch where there is a clear local need

·         Labour proposes to amend the Companies Act 2006 so that directors owe a duty directly to [to employees, suppliers, the environment etc ]

·         ensure that businesses identified as being 'systemically important' are protected from hostile takeovers, and ensure that when a company is bought there is a clear plan in place to protect workers and pensioners

·         Labour will also legislate to reduce pay inequality by introducing an excessive pay levy on companies with high numbers of staff on very high pay.

·         Reinstate the small business corporation tax rate.

·         Developing a version of the Australian system of binding arbitration and fines for persistent

·         late payers for the private sector.

·         By ring fencing the extra proceeds from tax revenues and lower eligibility for in-work benefits, we will establish a new employment allowance for business that struggle to pay a higher living wage.

·         a locally run, democratically accountable energy supplier, working to tackle Fuel poverty, return profits to customers via reduced tariffs, support community energy projects and have drive larger energy companies to lower

·         We will reject 'no deal' as a viable and negotiate transitionalarrangements to avoid a cliff-edge for the UK economy.

·         We will introduce a ‘presumption of devolution' where powers transferred from the EU will go straight to the relevant region or nation.

·         Labour will guarantee to cover any shortfall in EU Structural Funding that occurs as a result of Brexit.

·         Labour will not make false promises on immigration numbers. Our economy needs migrant workers to keep going.

·         stop employers from recruiting only from overseas, and make zero hours contracts illegal.

·         We will establish a Migrant Impact Fund for public services

·         Labour opposes parallel investor-state dispute systems for multinational corporations and we will open a dialogue with trading partners on alternative options that provide investor protection whilst guaranteeing equality before the law.

·         Labour will build human rights and social justice into trade policy, We will ensure that trade agreements cannot undermine human rights and labour standards

·         Labour will create a unified National Education Service (NES) to move towards cradle-to-grave learning that is free at the point of use

·         a system of high-quality childcareplaces in mixed environments with direct government subsidy.

·         Transition to a qualified, graduate-led workforce, by increasing staff wages and enhancing training opportunities.

·         ending the public sector pay cap

·         giving teachers more direct involvement in the curriculum

·         Labour would introduce free, lifelong education in FE colleges

·         Restore the Education Maintenance Allowance

·         Reverse cuts to Union Learn

·         Labour will reintroduce maintenance grants for university students, and we will abolish university tuition fees.

·         Repeal the Trade Union Act and roll out sectoral collective bargaining

·         Introduce four new public holidays

·         Roll out maximum pay ratios of 20:1 in the public sector and companies bidding for public contracts

·         Ban unpaid internships

·         Abolish employment tribunal fees

·         Double paid paternity leave to four weeks and increase paternity pay

·         Hold a public inquiry into blacklisting

·         Introduce a civil enforcement system to ensure compliance with gender pay auditing

·         We will strengthen the law so that those who work regular hours for more than 12 weeks will have a right to a regular contract

·         Banning payroll companies, sometimes known as umbrella companies

·         Labour will guarantee the state pension "triple lock" throughout the next Parliament

·         The winter fuel allowance and free bus passes will also be guaranteed as universal benefits.

·         We will extend pension credit to 1950s-born WASPI women

·         So Labour will legislate so that accrued rights to the basic state pension cannot be changed

·         Scrap the punitive sanctions regime

·         Scrap the bedroom tax

·         Reinstate housing benefit for under-21 s

·         Scrap bereavement support payment cuts

·         Labour will repeal the following cuts in social security support to disabled people

·         Increase ESA by £30 per week for those in the work-related activity group

·         Scrap the Work Capability and Personal Independence Payment assessments and replace them with a personalised, holistic assessment process

·         By the end of the next Parliament we will be building at least 1 00,000 council and housing association homes a year

·         Labour will implement minimum space standards for new developments.

·         guarantee Help to Buy funding until 2027

·         We will also give local people buying their first home 'first dibs' on new homes built in their area

·         Labour will make new three-year tenancies the norm, with an inflation cap on rent rises.

·         Starting by making available 4,000 additional homes reserved for people with a history of rough sleeping.

·         We will set up a new £250m Children's Health Fund

·         We will hold a public inquiry into medicines, medical devices and medical products licensing and regulation, including Valproate.

·         [on the NHS] Labour will commit to over £6 billion extra in annual funding

·         Labour will repeal the Health & Social Care Act

·         new legal duty on the Secretary of State and on NHS England to ensure that excess private profits are not made out of the NHS at the expense of patient care.

·         we will provide an additional £8 billion over the lifetime of the next Parliament for social care including £1 billion in the first year.

·         Labour will increase the Carer's Allowance for unpaid full-time carers to align the benefit with Jobseeker’s Allowance

·         Labour will recruit 10,000 more police officers to work on community beats

·         Labour recruit 1 ,000 more border guards to add to our safeguards and controls.

·         release all papers relating to the Shrewsbury 24

·         We will immediately re-establish entitlements to legal aid in the private law arena of the family courts.

·         Labour government will introduce a no-fault divorce

·         Labour will also hire 3,000 more prison officers

·         Labour will fund child burial fees for bereaved parents

·         Labour will give communities more power to shape their town centres, by strengthening powers to protect Post Offices, community pharmacies, high street banks, local pubs and independent shops

·         Labour will reverse this privatisation [post office] at the earliest opportunity

·         We will reduce the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals from £100 to £2.

·         Labour will also legislate to increase the delay in between spins on these games [Fixed Odds Betting Terminals]

·         We will introduce regulations to designate and protect routes of critical community value, including those that serve local schools hospitals and isolated settlements in rural areas.

·         Labour will introduce a new Clean Air Act

·         We will establish Blue Belts in the seas and oceans surrounding our island

·         We will introduce a £1 billion Cultural Capital Fund to upgrade our existing cultural and creative infrastructure

·         Labour will maintain free entry to museums

·         Labour will introduce an arts pupil premium to every primary school in England - a £160m per year boost

·         We will extend the Freedom of Information Act to private companies that run public services

·         Labour's commitment to spending at least 2% of GDP on defence

·         Labour will publish a Defence Industrial Strategy white paper, including a National Shipbuilding Strategy.

·         We will introduce strict standards of transparency for crown dependencies and overseas territories, including a public register of owners, directors, major shareholders and beneficial owners for all companies and trusts.

New Psalm

Oh great saviour call me now longer

My flesh and soul is so tired

I can endure no more sunrise, I can take no more steps

I wish to dream no more

For my youth has escaped me, it is like a mirage to me

I am tired and my enemies gnaw at my soul

By day they pursue me as the wolves chase it pray

And by night they rain knives upon me

Life your grace from me my savour

Free me from your list of those whom you beloved

Let me slide into darkens

Let me awake to dream no more

Call me know more

Shine in my soul no more

Forsake me! Disregard me!

Let me die, this alone is my salvation!

You saviour will not leave me

When all else flee you are my refuge

Before creation you have guided my feet

Before creation you have been my protector, my principle and my friend in you we have always put our hearts

You are the great storehouse of love and mercy  

In time of trouble or drought we can turn to you Saviour and your living water shall flow 4

You have proven your faithfulness with scares and blood

In your there is no death or fear

With you I am blessed to walk all the days of my life. You are always with me

Do not be far from me in this time of trial

For you are my father and I your child

And in me you are proud