General Election: Labour manifesto 2019

Economic Status

The new Workers’ Protection Agency working with HMRC will ensure that employers take equal pay seriously and take positive action to close the gender pay gap.

Require all employers with over 250 employees to obtain government certification on gender equality or face further auditing and fines. By the end of 2020, we will lower the threshold to workplaces with 50 employees, whilst providing the necessary additional support for small businesses.

We will review retirement ages for physically arduous and stressful occupations, including shift workers, in the public and private sectors.

We will maintain the ‘triple lock’ and guarantee the Winter Fuel Payment, free TV licences and free bus passes as universal benefits.

We will stop people being auto-enrolled into rip-off schemes and seek to widen and expand access for more low-income and self-employed workers.

Labour will radically reform early years provision, with a two-term vision to make high-quality early years education available for every child.

Within five years, all 2, 3 and 4-year-olds will be entitled to 30 hours of free preschool education per week and access to additional hours at affordable, subsidised rates staggered with incomes.

Labour will also work to extend childcare provision for 1-year-olds and to ensure that childcare provision accommodates the working patterns of all parents.

We will provide free personal care, beginning with investments to ensure that older people have their personal care needs met, with the ambition to extend this provision to all working-age adults.

We will develop eligibility criteria that ensures our service works for everyone, including people with complex conditions like dementia.

We will ensure no one ever again needs to face catastrophic care costs of more than £100,000 for the care they need in old age, which we will underscore with a lifetime cap on personal contributions to care costs.

Enable positive action for recruitment to roles where employers can justify the need for more diversity and introduce a right for all workers to request flexibility over their hours from the first day of employment.

We will give working people a voice at the Cabinet table by establishing a Ministry for Employment Rights.

We will start to roll out sectoral collective bargaining across the economy, bringing workers and employers together to agree legal minimum standards on a wide range of issues, such as pay and working hours, that every employer in the sector must follow.

We will ban the dismissal of pregnant women without prior approval of the inspectorate.

· End the family cap that leaves children without welfare support;

• Scrap the rape clause that forces mothers to disclose rape or coercive control;
• Reduce the wait for payments;
• Allow for separate payments by default;
• Improve work incentives for second earners;
• Restore the disregard for Maternity Allowance.

We will immediately stop moving people onto it and design an alternative system that treats people with dignity and respect.

We will also implement an emergency package of reforms to mitigate some of the worst features of UC while we develop our replacement system.

We will end the five-week wait by introducing an interim payment based on half an estimated monthly entitlement.

We will immediately suspend the Tories’ vicious sanction regime and ensure that employment support is positive not punitive.

We will stop 300,000 children from being in poverty by scrapping the benefit cap and the two child limit, so ending the immoral and outrageous ‘rape clause’.

We will pay childcare costs up front so that parents aren’t forced to turn down work or get into debt to pay for childcare. Labour will protect women in abusive relationships by splitting payments and paying the child element to the primary carer.

We will take urgent action to protect private renters through rent controls, open-ended tenancies, and new, binding minimum standards.

Labour will stop runaway rents by capping them with inflation, and give cities powers to cap rents further.

We will give renters the security they need to make their rented housing a home, with new open-ended tenancies to stop unfair, ‘no fault’ evictions.

An end to violence, harassment and abuse of women and girls

We will establish an independent review into shamefully low rape prosecution rates.

We will establish a National Refuge Fund, ensure financial stability for rape crisis centres and reintroduce a Domestic Abuse Bill.

Create a safer society for women and prioritise domestic abuse as a health issue, introduce 10 days of paid leave for survivors of domestic abuse, and ensure women’s refuges receive the long-term sustainable funding they need.

Misogyny and violence against women and girls will become hate crimes.

Improved access to healthcare

Women in Northern Ireland should have access to abortions in Northern Ireland.

We will uphold the principle of comprehensive healthcare by providing free annual NHS dental check-ups.

We will guarantee universal healthcare by ensuring women’s and children’s health services are comprehensive, by protecting the rights of EU workers, other migrants and refugees and by ensuring all our services are made accessible to BAME, LGBT+ and disabled patients.

We will invest more than £1 billion in public health and recruit 4,500 more health visitors and school nurses.

We will increase mandated health visits, ensure new mothers can have access to breastfeeding support and introduce mental health assessments in a maternal health check six weeks after birth.

We will take actions to significantly reduce infant deaths and ensure families who lose a baby receive appropriate bereavement support as well as protections at work.

We will fully fund sexual health services.

We will abolish prescription charges in England.

Education & Training

· Training up to Level 3;

· six years training at Levels 4-6, with maintenance grants for disadvantaged learners.

We will restore funding for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses and restore and expand the Union Learning Fund, giving workers the right to accrue paid time off for education and training.

We will reverse the fragmentation and privatisation of further and adult education, incorporating it into a single national system of regulation.

Labour will end the failed free-market experiment in higher education, abolish tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants.

Widen access to higher education and reverse the decline of part-time learning

Law and criminal justice system

We will also secure robust and legally binding protections for workers’ rights, consumer standards and environmental protections, and ensure level-playing-field protections are maintained.

We will put class at the heart of Britain’s equality agenda and create a new ground for discrimination on the basis of socio-economic disadvantage.

Women in Northern Ireland should have access to abortions in Northern Ireland.

We will keep employment tribunals free, extend their powers, and introduce new Labour Courts with a stronger role for people with industrial experience on panels.

Labour will introduce a no-fault divorce procedure.

Implement recommendations of the Lammy Review to address the disparity of treatment and outcomes for BAME people within the criminal justice system.

We will ensure better police training on domestic abuse and offences arising from coercive control, as well as historical abuses and other crimes neglected by the reduced forces operating under Tory austerity.

We will introduce minimum legal standards of service for all victims of crime.

We will end indefinite detention, review the alternatives to the inhumane conditions of detention centres, and close Yarl’s Wood and Brook House, from which immediate savings would contribute towards a fund of £20 million to support the survivors of modern slavery, people trafficking and domestic violence.

We will ensure justice for migrant domestic workers and restore the overseas domestic workers’ visa.

We will uphold [international legal obligations]. Once here, refugees will have the right to work, access to public services and will be treated humanely by government at all levels.

We will invest in proven alternatives to custody, including women’s centres, expand problem-solving courts and plug the funding gap in the female offender strategy.

We will further consider the evidence for effective alternatives and rehabilitation of prolific offenders.

Reinstate the Access to Elected Office Fund to enable disabled people to run for elected office.

We want our political institutions to be connected fully to the wider electorate, and will take urgent steps to refresh our democracy.

We will commission an independent review into discrimination in sport