Labour manifesto - what's in it for contractors

The Labour party launched its manifesto for the May 7^th general election yesterday, April 13^th 2015.

The 84-page document is dividable into nine sections relevant to contractors.

The key pledges potentially affecting such professionals directly are emboldened.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said:

• “In the last five years I have heard your stories, your hopes and your dreams.”

• “The fundamental truth that runs through this manifesto is that Britain will only succeed when working people succeed.”

• “It means a country where hard work is rewarded, with high skill, high wage jobs. An economy built on strong and secure foundations, where we balance the books. It means a Britain where everyone plays by the same rules, including those at the very top of our society.”

Miliband’s message to businesses/employers:

“We are a great commercial nation that has been at the centre of global trade for centuries. We have a long tradition of innovation and enterprise.”

With implications for businesses and employers, Labour says it will:

• Require British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to produce publicly available registries of the real owners of companies based there.

• Consider how to support employee buy-outs when businesses are being sold.

• Give small businesses “a voice at the heart of government” by establishing the “Small Business Administration,” to ensure procurement contracts are accessible and that regulations are designed with small firms in mind.

• Ban “exploitative” zero-hours contracts, by ensuring that those workers who work regular hours for more than 12 weeks have a right to a regular contract.

• Abolish the loophole that allows firms to undercut permanent staff by using agency workers on lower pay.

• Strengthen rules protecting small firms against late payment.

• Reform corporate governance to protect the UK’s leading firms from the pressure to put tomorrow’s share price before long-term growth potential.

• Establish a British Investment Bank with the aim of helping businesses grow and create wealth and jobs.

• Give tax rebates to businesses who sign up to paying the Living Wage in the first year of a Labour government.

• Require publicly listed companies to report on whether or not they pay the Living Wage.

• Protect small businesses by ending unfair energy contracts and automatic rollovers to more expensive energy tariffs.

Affecting IT, Computing and Technologies, Labour says it will:

• Ensure all parts of the country benefit from affordable, high speed broadband by the end of the parliament.

• Work with the broadband industry and the regulator to maximise private sector investment and deliver the mobile infrastructure needed to extend coverage and reduce ‘not spots’, including in areas of market failure.

• Consult on creating a statutory requirement for all private companies, to report serious cyber attacks threatening the UK’s national infrastructure.

• Require every company working with the Ministry of Defence, regardless of its size or the scale of its work, to sign up to a cyber security charter. Labour says this would reduce the risk of hackers using small suppliers to break into the systems of major defence companies or the department itself.

• Support community-based campaigns to reduce the proportion of citizens unable to use the internet and help those who need it to get the skills to make the most of digital technology.

• Set up an independent National Infrastructure Commission to assess how best to meet Britain’s infrastructure needs. This is part of Labour’s plan to help reinforce Britain’s status as one of the world’s greatest centres of science and engineering.

• Further develop digital government to enable better communication, more collaboration, and sharing of data between services.

• Back the principle of ‘open data by default’, releasing public sector performance data wherever possible.

• Introduce a new long-term funding policy framework for science and innovation.

• Work to make Britain a world leader in low carbon technologies over the next decade, creating a million additional green jobs.

• Put forward a timetable for the Green Investment Bank to be given additional powers so that it can invest in green businesses and technology.

For Industry, Commerce and the Workplace, Labour says it will:

• Require every firm getting a major government contract, and every large employer hiring skilled workers from outside the EU, to offer apprenticeships. 

• Ask such firms to increase the number of high quality apprenticeships in their sectors and supply chains.

• Ban recruitment agencies from hiring only from overseas.

• Crack down on rogue recruitment agencies by extending the remit of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority where there is evidence of abuse.

• Raise the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019.

• Establish a robust environmental and regulatory regime before extraction can take place in the onshore unconventional oil and gas sector.

• Provide a long-term strategy to help the offshore oil and gas industry, including more certainty on tax rates and making the most of the potential for carbon storage.

• Abolish the employment tribunal fee system.

• Ban MPs from holding paid directorships and consultancies.

• Require large companies to publish data on their gender pay gap.

‘Pre-workplace’ pledges in Labour’s manifesto include:

• A commitment not to cut tax credits.

• Doing more to help unemployed people get the skills they need for work, testing jobseekers’ Maths, English and IT skills within six weeks of them claiming benefits.

• Requiring such job-seekers to take up training where this will improve their chances of getting a job.

• Making sure that apprenticeships can lead to higher level qualifications by creating new Technical Degrees and supporting part-time study.

• Creating more paths to success for our young people by introducing a gold-standard system of technical education and training, and the guarantee of an apprenticeship for every school leaver with the grades.

• Providing a paid starter job for every young person unemployed for over a year, a job which they will have to take or lose benefits

• Guaranteeing that every school leaver who gets their grades an apprenticeship.

• Creating thousands more apprenticeships in the public sector, including the civil service.

• Raising the standard and status of vocational and technical education, with a high quality vocational route from school through to employment.

• Transforming high performing Further Education colleges with strong links to industry, into new specialist Institutes of Technical Education.

• Guaranteeing that all teachers in state schools will be qualified.

• A promise that teachers will be expected to update their knowledge and skills as a condition of remaining in the profession.

‘After work’ pledges in Labour’s manifesto include:

• Double paid paternity leave for fathers.

• Expand free childcare from 15 to 25 hours for working parents of three and four-year-olds.

• Introduce a legal guarantee for parents of primary school children to access wraparound childcare from 8am to 6pm through their local primary school.

• Restrict Winter Fuel Payments for the richest five per cent of pensioners

• Reform the pensions market so that pension providers put savers first, and protect consumers from retirement rip-offs.

On Tax, Labour says it will:

• End the Marriage Tax Allowance

• Not increase the basic or higher rates of Income Tax or National Insurance.

• Not increase VAT, and will also not extend it to food, children’s clothes, books, newspapers or public transport fares.

• Reintroduce the 50p rate of tax on incomes over £150,000.

• Introduce a lower 10p starting rate of tax.

On Tax Avoidance, Labour says it will:

• Introduce tougher penalties for tax abuse.

• End “unfair” tax breaks used by hedge funds.

• Bear down on “disguised employment” (NOT disguised “self-employment” as Labour’s 10-point anti-avoidance plan says).

• Review the culture and practices of HMRC.

• Abolish ‘non-dom’ status.

On Personal Finance, Labour says it will:

• Freeze rail fares next year.

• Introduce a strict fare rise cap on every route for any future fare rises.

• Create a new legal right for passengers to access the cheapest ticket for their journey.

• Restrict tax relief on pension contributions for the highest earners.

• Cut university tuition fees (from £9,000 to £6,000 a year) thanks to the (above) restriction on pensions tax relief.

• Abolish the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax.’