UKIP 2015 Election Manifesto launch

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has launched the Party’s 2015 Manifesto today. Here is a summary of the full document:

“May 7th presents the people of Britain with an incredible opportunity.

‘For the first time in 100 years, there is real change on the horizon. All you have to do is vote for it.

“Political party manifestos are usually filled with arbitrary, over-ambitious targets and pledges to some special interest group here or there. UKIP is different.

“In this document, which should inform your choice at this election, you will find serious, fully-costed policies that reflect what our party is all about: believing in our country.

“On the major issues of the day – immigration, the economy, our health service and living standards – the establishment parties have repeatedly and knowingly raised the expectations of the public, only to let us down, time and time again.
In many ways, this is where UKIP came from: a feeling that successive governments were no longer representing the will of the British people.

“Now, there is something to vote for if you believe in Britain.

“If you believe that we are big enough to make our own laws, in our own Parliament; if you believe we should have the sovereign right to control our own borders; if you believe that we should be fiscally responsible, and stop adding to our national debts and expecting our children and grandchildren to pay the bill; then we are the party for you.

“If you believe that in this year, the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, we should seize the opportunity for real change in our politics, rebalancing power from large corporations and big government institutions and putting it back into the hands of the people of this country, then there really is only one choice.

“If you Believe in Britain, vote UKIP on May 7th.”

– NIGEL FARAGE MEP

ECONOMY

UKIP is a party that believes in low taxation, enterprise and fairness.
Our economic policy and spending commitments are rooted in the savings we will make from leaving the European Union, making reasonable cuts to the overseas aid budget, reviewing the unfair Barnett Formula and cancelling HS2.

We will, by the end of the next parliament:

• Raise the personal tax allowance to at least £13,000, taking those on minimum wage out of tax altogether
• Raise the threshold for paying 40% tax to £55,000 and introduce a new 30% intermediate rate on earnings between £45,300 and £55,000
• Abolish inheritance tax
• Increase the transferable tax allowance for married couples to £1,500
• Ensure big corporations pay their fair share of tax
• Remove VAT from listed building repairs and sanitary products.

IMMIGRATION

UKIP believes immigration is far too high.
Seven million immigrants came to live in Britain under the last Labour government and another two million have arrived under the Tories.
The pressure on housing and on public services such as schools, hospitals, transport networks, power and water supplies, is far too great. We must control immigration.

UKIP will:

• Leave the EU and take back control of our borders
• End immigration for unskilled jobs for a five-year period to re-balance our work economy
• Introduce an Australian-style points-based immigration system to assess all potential migrants to Britain on a fair, ethical and equal basis
• Tackle the problem of sham marriages
• Introduce a new visa system for workers, visitors, students, families and asylum seekers
• End access to benefits and free NHS treatment for new immigrants until they have paid tax and NI for five years
• Require all visitors and new immigrants to the UK to have their own health insurance.

THE NHS

UKIP is fully committed to keeping the NHS free at the point of delivery and at time of need for UK citizens.
We will spend a total of £12 billion more on the NHS in England by 2020 to make sure it stays that way.

We will:

• Fund 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs and 3,000 more midwives
• Invest an extra £1.5 billion into mental health and dementia services over the next five years
• Scrap hospital parking charges
• End ‘health tourism’ by making sure those ineligible for free NHS care pay for treatment
• Replace Monitor and the CQC with powerful new County Health Boards to drive up standards.

CARE FOR THE ELDERLY

There is a national crisis in elderly care. According to Age UK, 900,000 older people between the ages of 65 and 89 have social care needs that are not met.
Residential care, nursing care, home care and day care have had their budgets cut, meaning one millionhospital bed days are now lost every year because patients cannot be discharged.

We will:

• Integrate health and social care and bring both under the control of the NHS
• Increase social care funding in total by £5.2 billion between 2015 and 2020
• Promise to invest any tax profits from ‘fracking’ into setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund to pay for elderly care
• Protect services such as day care centres, home care and Meals on Wheels
• Abolish the practice of arranging home-care visits in 15-minute windows
• Keep the current free bus pass, winter fuel allowance, free TV licence and free prescriptions and eye test schemes for all pensioners, without means testing.

PENSIONS

Some of the recent pension changes, such as the simplification of the state pension to a single tier, greater flexibility in how personal pensions can now be accessed and the ‘triple lock’, are to be welcomed, but raising the retirement age to 67 will be especially tough on women.

We will:

• Introduce a flexible state pension window so you can still take a slightly lower state pension at age 65 even as the state pension age increases
• Double the budget for free pensions advice to help pensioners make sound financial decisions
• Make it a criminal offence to cold call someone in respect of pension arrangements

WELFARE AND DISABILITY

Circumstances can conspire against any one of us to leave us unemployed, seriously ill and unable to work, perhaps even facing bankruptcy and homelessness.
UKIP is fully committed to maintaining a strong and supportive safety net for those who fall on hard times, but will not be a soft-touch on welfare.

We will:

• Support a lower cap on benefits
• Crack down on benefit fraud
• End welfare tourism with a five-year embargo on benefits for migrants
• Stop child benefit being paid to children who don’t live here permanently and limit child benefit to two children for new claimants
• Scrap the ‘bedroom tax’

We are committed to protecting the rights of disabled people and want to support their inclusion in the workplace and our communities. We also recognise the need to care for those who are unable to work, and to care for their carers.

We will:

• End unfair ATOS-style work capability assessments and return the system and funding to GPs
• Increase Carers’ Allowance to match Job Seekers’ Allowance – £572 more a year

We will also put 800 advisors into foodbanks to help those using them with additional problems such as debt, addiction, family breakdown and mental or physical health problems, and to offer employment and legal advice.

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Read the full manifesto, or download it, here

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CHILDCARE AND THE FAMILY

Supporting children and families is a pre-requisite for a strong and healthy society.
Families are important, in all their diversity, and we want to help create a society in which they thrive, and where childcare provision is affordable and accessible for all parents, whatever their socio-economic status.

We will:

• Honour existing childcare voucher and tax-free childcare schemes
• Extend these existing schemes to informal, non-Ofsted registered childminders
• Offer wrap-around childcare before and after school for every school-age child
• Amend planning legislation to ensure more nurseries are built to expand childcare places
• Give parents easy access to emergency childcare through their local authority
• Legislate for an initial presumption of 50-50 shared parenting in child residency matters, and give grandparents visiting rights
• Initiate a thorough review of childcare and child safeguarding systems.

EDUCATION

UKIP believes in an education system that works for every child, regardless of their social background or academic ability.
We will prioritise teaching and learning, and bring forward improvements to primary, secondary and higher education.

We will:

• Ease teachers’ workloads by cutting down on assessments, data collection and appraisals
• Scrap teachers’ performance-related pay
• Abolish Key Stage 1 SAT tests at primary level
• End sex education for primary school children
• Bring back grammar schools and support a range of secondary schools including vocational, technical and specialist schools
• Waive tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects at university
• Make First Aid training part of the national curriculum.

HOUSING AND THE ENVIRONMENT

There is a dire shortage of affordable homes in Britain. We need to build a house every seven minutes to meet demand. Rents are rising, homelessness is increasing, and our green fields are being concreted over. This is unsustainable, and must stop.

We will:

• Protect the green belt
• Bring empty homes back into use
• Build one million homes on brownfield sites by 2020
• Prioritise social housing for those with local connections to an area
• Give local people the final say on major planning developments in their area
• Restrict the ‘Right-to-Buy’ and ‘Help-to-Buy’ schemes to British nationals
• Oppose the so-called ‘Mansion Tax.’

TRANSPORT

We all need a reliable, cost-effective transport network. UKIP supports whichever methods of transport users wish to choose, from walking and cycling to driving a car. We are not a party that wants to wage a tax war on the motorist.

We will:

• Scrap HS2: this is an expensive, politically-driven vanity project for which there is no good business case. It will blight our countryside and not solve the problem of capacity
• Campaign to re-open Manston airport to address the lack of airport capacity in the South East
• Ensure speed cameras are used to improve road safety, not just to raise money
• End road tolls wherever possible
• Oppose ‘pay-as-you-go’ road charging schemes
• Support British HGV drivers by charging foreign lorries extra to use our roads
• Roll back the VED exemption for classic vehicles to 25 years.

ENERGY

Britain is sleepwalking into an energy crisis. Families suffer as energy prices rise. Millions are living in fuel poverty. One pensioner dies from the cold every seven minutes in winter, according to Age UK. Meanwhile, the old parties continue to push ‘green’ energy policies that only make energy more expensive and the supply of energy less reliable.

We will:

• Scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act and the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive
• Support ‘fracking’ for shale gas
• End subsidies for wind turbines and solar photovoltaic arrays
• Support renewable energy where it can deliver electricity at competitive prices
• Seek to rejuvenate the coal industry
• Abolish ‘green levies’ to cut the cost of fuel bills
• Force energy companies to end higher charges for pre-payment meters

EMPLOYMENT

Being in the EU is damaging job prospects for British workers.
Uncontrolled mass immigration has lowered wages and for many jobs the minimum wage has now become the maximum wage.
Interference from the EU means jobs are being moved abroad and workers from other EU member states are enticed to seek work in the UK, making it more difficult for British citizens to find work.

We will:

• Protect workers’ rights
• Enforce the minimum wage
• End the abuse of zero-hours contracts
• Allow British businesses to choose to employ British workers first
• Prevent access to EU schemes which encourage businesses to hire foreign workers
• Scrap EU directives which restrict the British economy and go against our work ethos.