PARTY CONFERENCES 2014
Labour L
abour’s party conference in Manchester had its highs and lows, with Ed Miliband
announcing a £2.5bn fund for the NHS to pay for 20,000 nurses, 8,000 GPs, 5,000 care workers and 3,000 midwives.
It would be financed by a new levy on tobacco companies, a £1.1bn clampdown on tax avoidance, and a new mansion tax on homes valued over £2m. He also pledged to repeal the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.
Miliband said: “We built the NHS, we saved the NHS, we will repeal the Health and
Social Care Act, and we will transform the NHS for the future.”
He also pledged to devolve greater powers to local areas and reiterated the LGA’s call for a constitutional convention, “harnessing the civic energy and spirit of people right across our land”.
His ‘Britain 2025’ plan would ensure more apprentices; help for the self-employed and the restoration of the link between growth and wages; doubling the number of first- time buyers; halving the number of people
Conservatives T
he mood at the Conservative Party conference was surprisingly positive,
considering the awful news that preceded it – defections to UKIP, a ministerial sex sting resignation, and polls continuing to show Labour ahead.
Despite – or perhaps because of – these pressures, delegates and politicians were in a feisty and fi ghting mood, and were ready to be won over by their leadership, which they duly were. Speeches from Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May went down well, stressing ‘toughness’ and traditional Conservative themes on benefi ts and security, while Boris Johnson got the laughs he was going for.
David Cameron won many plaudits for his speech, which he spiced up with a pair of tax- cutting pledges aimed at the higher and lower ends of the income spectrum.
He pledged a further increase in the personal
allowance for income tax to £12,500 from £10,500 – a direct lift of a Lib Dem pledge – and a rise in the 40p tax threshold to £50,000. Although analysts say that move would be of the biggest benefi t to the richest voters, the newspapers mostly loved it, as did Cameron’s conference audience.
His speech also touched on the D-Day anniversary, fi ghting Islamic State, ‘English votes for English laws’, rising employment, the defi cit and £25bn cuts in the fi rst two years of the next Parliament, the Modern Slavery Bill, housing, education, pensions, the NHS, immigration, and a ‘British Bill of Rights’.
Cameron said the personal allowance measure “will take one million more of the lowest paid workers out of income tax – and will give a tax cut to 30 million more”.
Discussing the 40p tax threshold rise, he said: “The 40p tax rate was only supposed to be paid
Liberal Democrats In
Glasgow, the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg described the upcoming general election
campaign as the “fi ght of our lives” to party activists. He wants to keep cutting the defi cit but with more focus on tax rises than the Conservatives, who said that spending cuts must be the focus.
Revenue-raising plans include a mansion tax
using new council tax bands, and a cut in the amount that can be placed in a pension pot with tax benefi ts from £1.25m to £1m.
Clegg wants to “deliver defi cit reduction, but do it fairly”. Business secretary Vince Cable accused his Coalition partners of “lying” by claiming they can eliminate the budget defi cit without the need for tax rises. He said that the
24 | public sector executive Oct/Nov 14
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