Theresa May unveils new immigration controls and cuts to pensioner benefits in Tory manifesto as she rips up David Cameron’s legacy
Prime Minister has set out her vision for Britain in Halifax with a vow to end the triple lock on pensions and scrap David Cameron’s tax lock as well as an extra £8bn for the NHS
THERESA May talked tough today as she revealed cuts to pensioner benefits, new immigration controls and radical social care reform in the Tory manifesto.
The Prime Minister set out her vision for Brexit Britain in Halifax with a vow to overturn much of David Cameron's legacy - including the end of his triple lock on pensions and vow not to raise taxes on individuals.
Other uncompromising policies include new levies on firms who want to employ foreigners, new curbs on businesses which exploit workers and customers, and the abolition of the winter fuel allowance for many pensioners.
Mrs May rejected calls to drop the longstanding promise to cut net immigration below 100,000 a year and insisted she is prepared to leave the EU without a trade deal if other European countries do not offer a good one.
Asking voters to “stand with me as I deliver for Britain”, she urged the UK: “With confidence in ourselves, a unity of purpose, let us all go forward together.”
But she was accused of unleashing a raft of centrist policies which could lead to her being labelled a so-called 'red Tory'.
The PM responded by saying: "Margaret Thatcher was a Conservative, I’m a Conservative, this is a Conservative manifesto.
"This manifesto shows I'm a good Conservative."
And denying the manifesto is a reflection of 'Mayism' - and a rejection of Thatcherism, she replied: "There is no Mayism.
"I know you journalists like to write about it, but there is good solid conservatism which puts the interest of hard working people at the heart of everything we do in government."
The Tory manifesto pledges include:
- Guaranteeing any poorer OAPs with cash and assets of less than £100,000 will be exempt from care charges
- An end to the pension triple lock which guarantees a minimum annual rise in state pensions, to take on 'inter-generational unfairness'
- Scrapping the £200 a year Winter Fuel Payments for the considerable majority of Britain’s 12million pensioners
- Abandoning a pledge not to raise National Insurance Contributions — but recommitting the Tories to long-promised income tax cuts for basic and higher rate taxpayers.
- A toughening of immigration controls by doubling the charge companies must pay to bring skilled workers in from outside the EU.
- Pumping an extra £4 billion a year into the schools system by 2022
- And a package of proposals to help consumers avoid being ripped off by landlords, rail bosses and mobile firms
She also identified “the five great giant challenges we face as a country”:
- The need for a strong economy
- Responding to Brexit and a changing world
- Tackling enduring social divisions
- Responding to an ageing society
- Facing up to fast-changing technology
But she warned: “All of this depends on getting the next five years. The central challenge we face is negotiating the best deal for Britain in Europe.
“If we fail the consequences for ordinary working people will be dire. If we succeed, the opportunities ahead of us will be great.”
On Brexit she again vowed to leave the Single Market and EU Customs Union - and reaffirmed her pledge to quit the EU without a free-trade deal if Brussels refuses to agree a good deal for Britain.
And she vowed to create a "United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund", taken from money coming back to the UK as we leave the bloc.
The manifesto says it is “specifically designed to reduce inequalities between communities across our four nations".
This measure ties in with other attempts by the party to support regions outside the South which have done relatively badly over the past decade.
On social care her plans will offer protection from the cost of social care for people with assets of £100,000 or less, a dramatic increase from the current £23,250 level in England.
The party would also scrap a £72,000 cap on care costs, which was the main recommendation of Sir Andrew Dilnot's 2011 report and was due for introduction in 2020.
Under the pledge, the value of an elderly person's property will now be included in the means test for care in their own home, meaning more people will be liable to contribute to the cost of being looked after.
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Wealthy pensioners will lose up to £300 in winter fuel payments under plans to means-test the "perk" to free up funds for social care.
And The Sun reported today Mrs May will risk further angering older voters by scrapping the triple-lock on the state pension, which guarantees it rises by the highest of average earnings, inflation or 2.5%.
The plans are set out in a manifesto called "Forward, Together", which the Prime Minister described as a "declaration of intent" to tackle the "great challenges of our time".
But in an embarrassing slip-up, the party's website crashed shortly before Mrs May was due to take the stage.
The slogan was also revealed to have been used by several other political figures, appearing during campaigns by Winston Churchill, Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon.
11 ways Theresa is ditching Dave's 2015 manifesto
The PM has binned a string of pledges her predecessor David Cameron made just two years ago, writes Matt Dathan:
- Review the honours system. David Cameron used his resignation honours list to hand gongs to 46 of his former aides, Tory donors and ministers. May's manifesto pledges to review the honours system to make sure it commands public confidence, rewards genuine public service and that recipients uphold the integrity of the honours bestowed."
- Scrapping the Pensions Triple Lock: The Tory manifesto bins Mr Cameron’s commitment to raise the state pension by the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent a year – whichever is the highest. Mrs May has replaced it with a Double Lock - raising the state pension only in line with earnings or inflation.
- Tax lock: May has also ditched Cameron’s tax lock - which barred rises in income tax, VAT and National Insurance. While May has ruled out hiking VAT and recommitted to cutting income tax, she has opened the door to raising national insurance contributions.
- Deficit: The 2017 manifesto pledges to eliminate the deficit by 2025 - five years later than the target set out by Cameron and Osborne.
- Grammar schools: Today’s manifesto pledges to “end the ban on selective schools” - another snub of Cameron, who famously said that the party’s obsession with grammar schools was a “key test” of whether the party was fit for government.
- Foreign aid: May’s manifesto vows to “change the law” to get a “better definition” of foreign aid if the international community fails to “change the rules” to ensure development spending is more efficient. It was Cameron who enshrined the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent on foreign aid in UK law.
- Care cap: May abandoned Cameron’s 2015 election promise of a life-time cap on social care costs. Instead she has opted for a floor that protects the final £100,000 of a pensioner’s wealth. And in a dig at Cameron and Osborne, May said the social care problem is one that “successive governments failed to tackle”.
- Poverty: Cameron’s 2015 manifesto pledged to “eliminate child poverty”. May today watered down the pledge to say: “We want to reduce levels of child poverty”.
- Single market: May’s manifesto confirms she will take Britain out of Europe’s single market - another reverse of Cameron’s 2015 pledge to keep Britain in.
- Big Society: There was no mention of Cameron’s “Big Society” in May’s manifesto today. In 2015 and 2010 the former PM put it at the heart of his vision for government.
- David Davis: The Brexit Secretary was exiled to the backbenches throughout Cameron’s premiership after he beat the veteran Tory to win the 2005 leadership contest - but today Mrs May chose him to introduce her at her manifesto launch.
In a radical break with decades of orthodoxy, the Conservatives today confirmed that they will scrap the ban on new grammar schools.
Unlike in the past, bright pupils will be allowed to enter grammar schools after the age of 11, reducing the chance of 'late bloomers' being damaged by the system.
The Tories will also encourage the establishment of new free schools, religious schools and specialist maths schools.
Pupils will have to know their times tables by heart by the age of 11, and within eight years 90 per cent of children will study an academically rigorous combination of GCSEs.
Mrs May's party will attempt to attract high-flying graduates into teaching by writing off the student loans of teachers who stay in the profession long-term.
The party is also vowing to overturn the system of fixed-term parliaments which was introduced by the Coalition in 2010.
The Fixed Term Parliaments Act dictates that General Elections should take place on specified dates every five years - but it was exposed as a farce when Mrs May was easily able to call the snap election last month.
In addition, a new Tory proposal means that voters will have to show ID at polling stations for the first time ever, in a bid to crack down on election fraud.
The Conservatives rule out extending the vote to under-18s - unlike Labour and the Lib Dems - but will allow British expats to vote in the UK for their whole lives, rather than just for 15 years as currently.
And they also pledge to press on with boundary reforms which will cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600, reducing the cost of Parliament to the public.
The manifesto promises to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £12,500, while the higher 40p rate will not kick in until you earn £50,000.
It also rules out a rise in VAT, and pledges to allow local residents to "veto high increases in council tax via a referendum".
However, the document does not rule out a rise in National Insurance contributions - raising the possibility that the party will seek to hike payments from the self-employed, as it tried to do at the last Budget before a Sun campaign forced a U-turn.
The Tories pledge to protect the freedom of the press by ditching plans to hold 'Leveson part two', a continuation of the inquiry which resulted in draconian new curbs on free speech.
In addition, the party will ditch a law which left newspapers facing punitive fines if they failed to sign up to the state regulator which is funded by billionaire Max Mosley.
They will also force Channel 4 to leave London in order to cut costs and make the media less centred on the capital.
London and Manchester are the cities most likely to be the new home of the publicly funded broadcaster.
In response to the BHS scandal which left thousands of pensioners out of pocket, the manifesto vows to protect workers from suffering as a result of corporate takeovers.
The pensions regulator will be allowed to scrutinise mergers to ensure that they do not leave pension schemes under-funded.
Bosses who do not fulfil their pension obligations will face "punitive fines" from regulators, and could be banned from running firms or even hit with criminal charges.
The party says: "Business owners who abuse pension funds and put them at risk, sometimes for their own lavish enrichment, are entirely in the wrong."
Although the manifesto ditches many promises previously made by David Cameron, it retains the controversial commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid.
Many MPs and experts have warned that much of Britain's aid is wasted on pointless projects.
However, the Tories pledge to continue meeting the target - which means that aid spending will increase whenever the British economy grows.
But they also vow to change the definition of what counts as foreign aid, so that it includes other forms of overseas spending such as military funding.
And despite calls for the Tories to ditch human rights laws which have hampered the prosecution of serious criminals, Britain will keep the Human Rights Act at least until Brexit is completed.
The manifesto says: "We will not repeal or replace the Human Rights Act while the process of Brexit is underway but we will consider our human rights legal framework when the process of leaving the EU concludes.
"We will remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights for the duration of the next parliament."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Tories of letting down their pensioner voting base.
He said: “Millions of pensioners are betrayed by Theresa May's manifesto. She is hitting older people with a classic Nasty Party triple whammy: Scrapping the triple lock on pensions, removing the Winter Fuel Allowance and forcing those who need social care to pay for it with their homes.
“The Conservatives’ record is one of broken promises and failure. They promised to raise living standards, but working families are set to be on average over £1,400 a year worse off.
"They promised to improve all standards of NHS care, but A&Es are in crisis.
"They promised to protect school spending, but schools are facing crippling cuts and class sizes are soaring. You can’t trust a word Theresa May says."
