Labour - Fighting for Britain's Future

Labour's Cost of Living Contract

Last week, Labour would have delivered a Queen’s speech to help Britain be better off 

Parliament should be making real progress to address the public’s discontent and chart a new direction for Britain. Labour’s Queen’s Speech would have included: 

 

• A Make Work Pay bill to reward hard work with a higher minimum wage.

 

• A Banking Bill that backs British business with a real British Investment Bank and new regional banks.

 

• A Consumers Bill to freeze energy bills until 2017 and reform the energy market

 

• A Housing Bill with long term reform to increase supply to 200,000 homes by 2020, and measures to end rip-off letting fees and make three year tenancies the norm.

 

• A Communities Bill to give people a say over pay day lenders and betting shops on their high streets.

 

• An Immigration Bill, to stop workers being undercut through enforcement of the minimum wage and banning recruitment agencies that only use overseas labour.

 

• An NHS Bill, to put a stop to its privatisation and improve access to GPs. 

 

To make that happen we need a different government, a Labour Government.

 

Labour will take immediate action to deal with David Cameron’s cost-of-living crisis:

 

• Freeze gas and electricity bills until 2017, as we reform the broken energy market to prevent customers being ripped off.

 

• Get the next generation into work, with expanded apprenticeships and a compulsory jobs guarantee for young people unemployed for a year or more – with a real paid job they’ll have to take or lose benefits.

 

• Introduce a lower 10p starting rate of tax to help make work pay and cut taxes for 24 million working people on middle and lower incomes – funded by a mansion tax on homes worth over £2 million.

 

• End the abuse of zero hour contracts and strengthen the minimum wage.

 

Labour will make big long-term changes so that hardworking people are better off

 

• Get 200,000 homes built a year by 2020, creating up to 230,000 construction jobs.

 

• Make work pay with 25 hours free childcare for three and four year olds with working parents paid for by an increase in the bank levy.

 

• Improve school standards, by guaranteeing that all teachers must be qualified, and transforming vocational education for the 50 per cent of young people who don’t go to university with gold-standard technical qualifications at age 18.

 

• Repeal David Cameron's NHS changes that put private profit before patient care – and we will give patients and the public a say when changes to local services are proposed.

 

Only Labour can make Britain better off, putting hardworking families first with a plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and earn our way to higher living standards for all.

Welcome ban on plastic bags at last!

The Government's crack down on plastic bags is welcome, but rather late compared to us locals!

Lutterworth Labour Party and friends were campaigning for plastic bag reduction many years ago: "Join blitz on plastic bags", Lutterworth Mail, 2008; "Recycling is in the bag", Lutterworth Diary, 2009; "Campaigners succeed in bid to cut plastic bags", Lutterworth Observer, 2009.

If only the Government would take up some other Labour party ethics such as build more houses rather than heating up the housing market; put effort into getting NEETs into work or education instead of playing down the numbers of young people in this difficult position; keeping the NHS in the public sector where it belongs and providing economic stimulus for manufacturing to get more people into work.

Well at least our suggestion regarding plastic bags has been heeded - lets keep hoping!....

Elaine Carter

 

Glenis and Ed out campaigning in Nottingham

 

Only two days to go and the Tories are desperately trying to get everybody to stay at home and not vote.  Of course they expect (and deserve) a going over on Thursday, but what worries them is coming third behind UKIP.  We have a special UKIP problem here in the East Midlands, of course.  The top candidate on their list, and thus the only one who stands a chance of getting in, is not going to serve.  He's already campaigning for the parliamentary by-election in the Nottinghamshire seat of disgraced Tory Patrick Mercer - where I understand he got involved with a disabled Labour supporter yesterday.  To round off a poor day for Mr Helmer, his own party leader, interviewed by Paxman on Newsnight, blamed some of Mr H's stronger opinions on him being over 70 and therefore presumably in Farage's opinion ga-ga.

 

 

 

Voting on Thursday is about more than ensuring embarrassment for Cameron and disappointment for Mr Helmer.  It's about standing up for the rights of ordinary people all across Europe - the rights to travel, the rights to be treated fairly at work, the right to live or work abroad if you chose, and the fundamental right to be treated by the elite as a human being whose opinion actually counts.

Labour guarantees

 

Labour will act to deal with the Coalition's cost-of-living crisis.

 

With your support we will:

• Freeze gas and electricity bills until 2017 and reform the energy market to prevent customers being ripped off again in the future
• Expand free childcare to 25 hours for three- and four-year-olds of working parents
• Get 200,000 homes a year built by 2020
• Get the next generation into work with our compulsory jobs guarantee for young people who have been unemployed for a year or more

Read Glenis Willmott on Europe's role in beating the cost-of-living crisis by clicking here.

Housing Benefit - the facts

The number of working people claiming housing benefit has increased by 60 per cent costing taxpayers an extra £6 billion because of David Cameron’s cost-of-living crisis. 

400,000 more working people are claiming housing benefit costing the taxpayer an estimated extra £4.8bn in housing benefit over the course of this Parliament. 

Every single local authority in the UK has seen an increase in the number of people in work claiming housing benefit, the biggest increase in the country was in Croydon which has seen an astonishing 1100 per cent rise since 2010. 

The maths is simple: landlords profiting from ridiculous rents are likely to vote Tory; tenants paying those rents (and going without in other basics to make up the shortfall in benefit) are not.

Labour has pledged to limit rent increases, extend the length of tenancies and stop letting agents charging both landlord and tenants for their so-called services.  The rent-for-profit industry is up in arms.  Yes, in the country which built railways and cars and ships and wove fabric for the world, renting property now counts as an industry.

Euro Launch Leicester

Rory Palmer and Glenis Willmott launch Labour's Euro Election campaign at the Clock Tower in Leicester, Tuesday May 6th 2014.