Labour and Tories to woo working-class voters with new policies

Political reporter(wp):

Labour and the Conservatives are to intensify their bidding war for working-class voters with a number of eye-catching policies on workers’ rights and the NHS, as the general election campaign steps up a gear with just over three weeks to go until polling day.

Jeremy Corbyn will promise on Monday to take a million patients off NHS waiting lists by 2020 and Theresa May will announce what she claims is the biggest extension of workers’ rights by any Conservative government, as the parties compete for the backing of what the prime minister calls “ordinary working-class people”.

Corbyn will address an audience of 3,000 nurses on Monday at the annual Royal College of Nursingconference in Liverpool, where he will promise that Labour will spend an extra £37bn over the next parliament on a “new deal” for the NHS.

The party calculates the sum would allow the NHS to take a million people off waiting lists by the end of this parliament by guaranteeing access to treatment within 18 weeks, and to ensure that patients could always be seen in A&E within four hours.

The Labour leader will repeat the party’s pledge to lift the 1% pay cap for public sector workers that has restrained nurses’ wages. He will tell nurses, who voted on Sunday to ballot for strike action over pay: “Imagine what would happen to the NHS if the Conservatives under Theresa May were to have another five years in power. It would be unrecognisable: a national health service in name, cut back, broken up and plundered by private corporations.”

May will spend Monday morning at a workplace in south-east England, where she will announce plans for new statutory rights to unpaid leave for carers and bereaved parents, fresh protections for workers with mental illness and safeguards against pensions mismanagement. Workers will be allowed to take up to 12 months’ unpaid leave to care for family members with an illness or disability under the proposals.

The pledges are the latest step in the prime minister’s strategy of rebranding the Tories as the party of working people in an attempt to seize seats across a swath of traditional Labourterritory.

The Conservatives will also commit to increase the “national living wage” each year in line with average earnings over the course of the next parliament. That is likely to be significantly less generous than Labour’s pledge to raise the minimum wage for all workers, not only the over-25s, to £10 an hour.

Many of the Tory proposals are likely to be regarded by the right of May’s party as imposing burdensome red tape on businesses, but May has openly rejected the laissez-faire approach of David Cameron, urging Conservative members in her party conference speech last October to “put the power of government squarely at the service of ordinary working-class people”

The Conservatives know some of Labour’s tax-and-spending pledges poll well, after almost a decade of austerity. But they are hammering home the message that Labour’s sums do not add up and are relying on other levers, such as new rules and regulations, to show they are on the public’s side.

Labour’s promised boost to NHS funding includes £10bn for extra capital investment, including in IT systems, which were subject to a damaging cyberattack on Friday. This would be funded through borrowing, while the rest of the new spending would be paid for by tax increases, including higher income tax for the top 5% of earners.

Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said the “substantial amount” of extra NHS funding would come from higher income tax on those earning above £80,000.

“We are being entirely upfront that people above £80,000 will pay more tax under a Labour government,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday. “And we believe that every penny piece that is raised from that tax will go into our National Health Service.”

There would be an extra £10bn for capital spending from the planned £250m capital investment fund, and some more from corporation tax, Ashworth added.

All would be revealed in the full manifesto, he said: “I think that the IFS [Institute for Fiscal Studies] and others will be reassured when they see [shadow chancellor] John McDonnell’s sums tomorrow.”

A Conservative spokesman said: “Jeremy Corbyn can’t deliver any of this because his nonsensical economic policies would damage our economy and mean less money for the NHS, not more.”

As well as announcing new workers’ rights, May will repeat her promise to maintain all of the protections currently underpinned by the EU, which include maternity leave and paid holidays.

Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, said the workplace changes would also see employees offered a voice on company boards, though he said this would not necessarily be a staff representative.

He denied this amounted to a climbdown on what May had promised when she stood for the Tory leadership in July, a plan from which she later backed away.

“We haven’t watered it down at all,” Green told Today. “What we are saying today, we actually said in the green paper we put out about this idea. What Theresa said when she when she first brought this up during the leadership election campaign last year was that there needs to be a worker’s voice on board.”

This could be one of three things, he said – a worker on the board; a non-executive director representing staff, or some form of workers’ advisory board.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, told the WP the real test of May’s pledge to govern for working people would be whether she was willing to write such protections into the trade deal Britain signs with the rest of the EU after Brexit.

O’Grady, who represents almost 6 million union members, said the Conservative manifesto should include a clear promise to ensure Brexit was not used as an excuse for a “race to the bottom”. In particular, she said, she would like to see the final Brexit deal include a promise not to undercut European social standards.

“This is not about sovereignty; this is about saying there will be a level playing field and nobody will fall below this basic standard,” she said.

“Now, of course, Theresa May has already said that she won’t just protect rights, she will enhance them – so it should cause no problem whatsoever for the Conservative party to sign up to a commitment that British workers will not fall behind rights in other countries.”

That idea has already been included in plans for the talks by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, after lobbying from trade unions. The European council’s negotiating guidelines say of any future trade deal with the UK: “It must ensure a level playing field, notably in terms of competition and state aid, and in this regard encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages through, inter alia, tax, social, environmental and regulatory measures and practices.”

The prime minister is expected to promise to enhance protections for workers in the gig economy, whose precarious status has become a focus after a series of investigations, including by the Guardian, revealed that many survive on poverty pay rates, with little or no job security.

However, the Conservative manifesto is not expected to give details of fresh rights, instead promising to await the findings of a review into the 21st-century workplace being carried out by a former adviser to Tony Blair, Matthew Taylor.

O’Grady said: “I don’t think it’s going to be good enough at this stage to talk about reviewing things or developing things. I don’t think that’s going to cut much ice.”

As well as Corbyn, the RCN conference in Liverpool will hear from the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, who will echo Corbyn’s pledge to lift the ceiling on public sector pay.

The Lib Dems’ Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said: “Public sector workers are facing a double blow at the hands of this Conservative government, with years of pitiful increases to pay combined with a Brexit squeeze caused by soaring inflation. Living standards are falling, prices are rising and nurses are going to food banks – but Theresa May doesn’t care.”