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Labour's manifesto 2005
 | Visit labour.org.uk/manifesto to find out more about the Labour Party manifesto 2005 and to download it as a pdf or read it online | |
Ten Labour promises for an historic third term, taken from Tony Blair's speech at Labour Conference 2004. Read the full speech on the BBC website.
Ten things a future Labour third term can do for Britain's hard-working families:
- Widen the circle of opportunity by low mortgage rates, rising living standards and more jobs in every region of the UK; special help for first time homebuyers and in a week where the Tories are advocating an inheritance tax cut which gives £2 billion to the richest five per cent of estates, Labour's priority will be tax relief for the millions of hard-working families, not tax cuts for the wealthy few.
- A society where we put the same commitment to quality vocational skills as we do academic education, with new vocational courses at school, every adult given skills free of charge up to level two and further support for level three, and 300,000 Modern Apprenticeships at the workplace.
- Every parent with the choice of a good specialist school, 200 new City Academies all in areas of deprivation, but with no return to selection at 11; new powers for heads to tackle disruptive pupils; all secondary schools part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, and as each wave of schools is rebuilt, modern sports facilities in every one, with a guaranteed number of hours of sport per week.
And let's work to bring the Olympics to London in 2012 and have a sporting legacy not just for the capital but for the whole country.
- All patients able to choose their hospital, to book the time and date for treatment.
Maximum waiting times down from 18 months to 18 weeks.
100 new hospital schemes, 2,700 GP premises improved and modernised already with more to come, life expectancy up, cardiac and cancer deaths down.
The NHS safe in the patient's hands.
- Life made easier for families.
More choice for mums at home and at work.
Universal, affordable and flexible childcare for the parents of all three-14 year-olds who want it from 8am in the morning to six at night and a Sure Start Children's Centre in every community of Britain.
- Security and dignity for everyone in retirement.
Year by year we will work to increase the numbers who can move off benefit and into work, whether from Job Seekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit or any other benefit, and with the money saved, design a pension system that has the basic state pension at its core; gives special help to the poorest and provides incentives to save for hard-working families whatever their wealth or income.
- Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy.
Increasing by £1 billion the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008.
- On the back of the success of the ASB legislation and record numbers of police, we will take a new approach to the whole of law and order.
By the end of the next Parliament, all communities with their own dedicated policing team ; and the local community as well as the police have a say how it is policed.
There will be a radical extension of compulsory drug testing for offenders; a doubling of investment in drug treatment; summary powers to deal with drug dealers and with the violence from binge-drinking; and those believed to be part of organised crime will have their assets confiscated, their bank accounts opened up and if they intimidate juries, face trial without a jury.
- We will introduce identity cards and electronic registration of all who cross our borders.
We have cut radically the numbers of failed asylum seekers.
By the end of 2005, and for the first time in Britain, we will remove more each month than apply and so restore faith in a system that we know has been abused.
But we will welcome lawful migrants to this country; we will praise, not apologise, for our multi-cultural society and we will never play politics with the issue of race.
- A fair deal for all at work.
An opportunity society is one in which we stop ignoring the lives of the millions of hard working low paid families who do the jobs that we all rely on.
The jobs that get overlooked, the workers who we too often see right through, walk straight past, take for granted.
The office cleaners who do the early morning shift, clearing away the mess before the office is filled.
The security guards staying vigilant through the night.
The dinner ladies, who cook meals for hundreds of kids in the school canteen five days a week.
The hospital porters who often do as much for patient care as the nurse.
For them, we offer not just the respect they deserve, but the guarantee of a decent income, a rising minimum wage, equal pay between men and women, four weeks paid holidays from now on, plus bank holidays.
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Last Updated:
13 April 2005
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