Lib Dem manifesto - what's in it for contractors

The Liberal Democrats have launched their manifesto for the May 7th general election.

The 158-page document is dividable into the following sections relevant to contractors.

The main pledges with the potential to directly affect contractors are emboldened.

Lib Dem leader and Deputy PM Nick Clegg said:

• “Our mission has only just begun. You can’t build a stronger economy and a fairer society, and spread opportunity to every citizen, in five years.

• “In Government for the next five years, Liberal Democrats will continue to build a stronger economy and a fairer society with opportunity for everyone.”

• The manifesto adds: “We will continue to rebalance the tax system away from hard work and towards unearned wealth, while stamping out abusive tax avoidance”.

Clegg’s message to business:

“Britain will be the place to be if you want to thrive in advanced manufacturing, science, creative, digital and green industries, and our country will be open to ambitious entrepreneurs and thinkers from overseas.”

With implications for business, SMEs, employers and the workplace, the Lib Dems say they will:

• Ensure employers cannot avoid giving their staff rights or paying the minimum wage by wrongly classifying them as workers or self-employed.

• Reform “Dividend Tax relief”.

• Refocus Entrepreneurs’ Relief.

• Extend Freedom of Information laws to cover private companies delivering public services.

• Develop platforms on which government can provide feedback on its suppliers to help "quality providers" to grow.

• Move to ‘name blank’ recruitment wherever possible in the public sector.

• Extend existing reporting rules to establish consistent requirements on all large UK companies to report on the social, environmental and human rights impacts of their activities and those of their supply chains.

• Create a formal right (for zero-hours contract workers) to request a fixed contract.

• Consult on introducing a right to make regular patterns of work contractual after a period of time.

• Continue to allow high-skill immigration to support key sectors of the economy.

• Develop a national skills strategy for key sectors, including low-carbon technologies, to help match skills and people.

• Encourage employers to provide more flexible working.

• Further support to medium-sized businesses through a one-stop-shop for accessing government support, a dedicated unit in HMRC and the development of management skills

• Continue to reform business tax to ensure it stays competitive, making small and medium-sized enterprises the priority for any business tax cuts.

• Double innovation spend in our economy, making the UK a world leader in advanced manufacturing, clean technology and digital industries.

• Improve the enforcement of employment rights, reviewing Employment Tribunal fees to ensure they are not a barrier.

• Aim to double the number of businesses which hire apprentices, including by extending them to new sectors of our economy, like creative and digital industries.

• Promote a new community banking sector to support small and medium-sized enterprises and social enterprise.

• Look at ways of raising the National Minimum Wage.

• Ensure London’s transport infrastructure is improved to withstand the pressure of population and economic growth.

With implications for IT, Technologies, Science and Computing, the Lib Dems say they will:

• Build on the success of Tech City, Tech North and the Cambridge tech cluster with a network across the UK acting as incubators for technology companies.

• Design-out opportunities for crime, by improving the built environment, the design of new technologies.

• Ensure the technology implications of government activity are properly considered by introducing Technology Impact Assessments into the policy design process

• Reinstate post-study work visas for STEM graduates who can find graduate-level employment within six months of completing their degree.

• Support fast-growing businesses that could create a million jobs over 20 years.

• Develop an Off-Gas-Grid Strategy to help rural areas benefit from new technologies.

• Continue to release government data sets that can facilitate economic growth in an open and accessible format, including on standards in public services.

• Develop cutting-edge digital skills courses for young people and the unemployed, working with private sector employers and education and training providers.

• Continue and expand the midata project into new sectors, giving consumers the right to access data businesses hold on them in an open and reusable format.

• Promote the take up of STEM subjects in schools, retain coding on the National Curriculum and encourage entrepreneurship at all levels.

• Increase R&D and commercialisation support in tidal power, carbon capture and storage, energy storage and ultra-low emission vehicles.

• Ensure UK Trade and Investment and UK Export Finance can prioritise support for exports of green products and technologies.

Affecting broadband, online and the digital industry/consumers, the Lib Dems say they will:

• Complete the rollout of high-speed broadband, to reach almost every household (99.9%) in the UK as well as small businesses in both rural and urban areas.

• Protect internet users’ privacy by updating data laws for the internet age with a Digital Bill of Rights.

• Recognise the expansion of warfare into the cybersphere, by investing in our security and intelligence services and acting to counter cyber attacks

• Safeguard the freedom of the internet and back net neutrality.

• Oppose the introduction of the so-called Snooper’s Charter (which requires companies to store a record of everyone’s internet activities for a year).

• Set stricter limits on surveillance and oppose the blanket collection of UK residents’ personal communications by the police or the intelligence agencies.

On Tax, the Lib Dems say they will:

• Reform “Dividend Tax relief”.

• Refocus Entrepreneurs’ Relief.

• Raise the Personal Allowance to at least £12,500, and bring forward the planned increase to an £11,000 allowance to April 2016

• Consider (post-12K personal allowance) raising the employee National Insurance threshold to the Income Tax threshold.

• Introduce a UK-wide High Value Property Levy on residential properties worth over £2m.

• Protect low earners’ ability to accrue pension and benefit entitlements.

On Tax Avoidance, the Lib Dems say they will:

• Reform Capital Gains Tax, Dividend Tax relief and refocus Entrepreneurs’ Relief and introduce a supplementary Corporation Tax for the banking sector.

• Set a target for HM Revenue and Customs to reduce the tax gap and continuing to invest in staff to enable them to meet it.

• Introduce a general anti-avoidance rule.

• Implement the planned new offence of corporate failure to prevent economic crime, including tax evasion, with penalties for directors up to and including custodial sentences.

• Levy penalties on firms proven to facilitate tax evasion, equivalent to the amount of tax evaded by their clients.

• Improve tax transparency including in low-income countries by extending country-by-country reporting from banks and  extractive industries to all UK listed companies.

• Restrict access to ‘non-dom’ status.

‘After work’ pledges in the Lib Dem manifesto include:

• Legislate to make decent pensions rises each year.

• Extend free childcare to all two-year olds, and to the children of working families from the end of paid parental leave.

• Expand Shared Parental Leave with a ‘use it or lose it’ month for fathers, and introduce a right to paid leave for carers.

• Establish a review to consider the case for, and practical implications of, introducing a single rate of tax relief for pensions.

‘Pre-work’ pledges in the Lib Dem Manifesto include:

• Introduce the Parents’ Guarantee, under which the core curriculum is in every school and every child is taught by qualified teachers (from Sep 2016)

• Double the number of apprentices to be hired by enterprise.

• Give young people aged 16–21 a discount bus pass to cut the cost of travel.

• Continue to support the Teach First programme to attract high calibre graduates into teaching, in particular in STEM subjects.

• Encourage schools to have at least one science specialist among the staff.

• Use mentoring schemes and programmes that seek to raise aspiration to inspire more children and young people to follow technical and scientific careers through partnership with relevant businesses.