At the heart of the Conservative Party campaign over the next three weeks is a pledge from Boris Johnson to recruit a further 50,000 NHS nurses. The Prime Minister promised £879million more a year by 2023/24 to fund the recruitment, training and retention of nurses, including more bursaries of student nurses and action to recruit qualified nursing staff from abroad. The proposal was part of a major “NHS people plan” recruitment programme also including 6,000 more doctors and 6,000 other medical professionals.
The election manifesto contains several other key policy pledges, including a immigration system, 20,000 more police, more investment in schools and colleges and action to revive struggling towns and coastal communities.
The Conservative Party has also pledged tax cuts worth a total of £3.6billion a year by 2023/24 including raising the National Insurance threshold to £12,500 and slashing business rates.
The slimmed down manifesto offers a relatively modest £22billion of new spending commitments over a Parliament term of five years, in addition to £160billion announced in the Treasury’s three-year spending plan.
Presenting the plan to an audience of Tory supports in Telford on Sunday, the Prime Minister said: “Today in this manifesto we pledge 50,000 more nurses and their bursaries and 15 million more GP appointments and today we make this guarantee to the British people: we will tackle crime with 20,000 more police officers and tougher sentencing and we will sort out our immigration system with a points-based Australian-style system.
General election poll: Boris Johnson launched the Conservative Party’s manifesto on Sunday (Image: GETTY)
“That we will invest millions more every week in science, in schools, in apprenticeships and in infrastructure, and control our debt at the same time.
“We will reach net-zero by 2050 with clean energy solutions.
“And here is the kicker – we can do all these things without raising our income tax, VAT or national insurance contributions. That’s our guarantee.”
Mr Johnson also promised “better infrastructure and better transport” would allow “us to build tens of thousands of superb new homes, hundreds of thousands, on brown belt sites, giving young people the prospect of home ownership they currently don’t have”.
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General election poll: The Prime Minister has vowed to recruit a further 50,000 NHS nurses (Image: GETTY)
He also vowed to tackle unfairness and barriers to social mobility across the country.
The Prime Minister said: “Opportunity is not distributed evenly and I believe passionately that with education, infrastructure and technology, we can tackle that unfairness, we can unleash the potential of this whole country and we can make those investments precisely because we One Nation Conservatives also support a dynamic market economy.
“That’s why we’re cutting taxes for businesses and why when people get up at the crack of dawn to prepare their family business and when people take out a mortgage to fund a new venture and when they risk everything on a new product or trying to find a market, we don’t sneer at them, we cheer for them.
“That is the choice at this election. That is the choice between out and out retrograde and destructive socialism and sensible One Nation Conservatism.
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General election poll: Boris Johnson has vowed to ‘get Brexit done’ by January 31 (Image: GETTY)
General election poll: Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour’s manifesto last week (Image: REUTERS)
“You can come with us and have a Government that backs our Armed Forces as a power for good around the world, or you can have Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party who say they want to scrap them.”
But remaining at the heart of the plan from Mr Johnson and his Conservative Party is to “get Brexit done”, and has continued to insist he will take Britain out of the EU on January 31.
The manifesto spending pledges are in stark contrast to those outlined by Labour Party last Thursday, which would see a spending spree of more than £80billion a year funded by tax hikes and soaring borrowing.
Mr Corbyn confirmed the party’s intention to re-nationalise water and energy utilities, train firms and Royal Mail, and also wants to part-nationalise telecoms giant BT as part of a plan to bring free full-fibre broadband to everyone in the UK.
General election poll: Manifesto pledges from the Labour Party (Image: EXPRESS)
Energy firms National Grid and SSE have already transferred the ownership of their businesses offshore in a bid to protect themselves against the planned re-nationalisation.
Labour’s plan to introduce a four-day, 32-hour working week has also come under heavy fire, with the Centre for Policy Studies think tank warning it could add £45billion to the public sector pay bill.
Other manifesto pledges include a “green transformation fund” worth £250billion, which would be focused on upgrading energy and transport networks to help Britain meet its tight decarbonisation targets.
Abolishing tuition fees and re-establishing maintenance grants alone would cost £13billion, while rolling out free personal care for all over-65s would total cost £6billion in 2020/21 and rise to £8billion in 2030/31.
General election poll: Jeremy Corbyn insisted Labour’s manifesto policies are ‘fully costed’ (Image: GETTY)
Mr Corbyn told supporters in Birmingham: “This is a manifesto of hope. A manifesto that will bring real change. A manifesto full of popular policies that the political establishment has blocked for a generation.
“Those policies are fully costed, with no tax increases for 95 percent of taxpayers.
“Over the next three weeks, the most powerful people in Britain and their supporters are going to tell you that everything in this manifesto is impossible. That it’s too much for you, because they don’t want real change.”
