General election 2017: Labour manifesto draft leaked – English-BanglaNewsUs
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General election 2017: Labour manifesto draft leaked

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Published May 11, 2017
General election 2017: Labour manifesto draft leaked

A draft of Labour’s general election manifesto has been leaked, including plans to nationalise parts of the energy industry and scrap tuition fees.

The BBC has seen a copy of the document due to be signed off on Thursday.

It contains policies on nationalising railways and renewing the Trident weapons system and suggests Labour will not leave the EU without a deal.

The shadow chancellor said the leak was “disappointing” but the Tories called it “a shambles”.

According to the draft, Labour would:

Spend an extra £8bn on social care over the next Parliament

Refuse to make “false promises” on immigration

Stress that any leader should be “extremely cautious” about using Trident nuclear weapons, which leader Jeremy Corbyn opposes

Strengthen trade union rights – including increased unionisation across the workforce and repealing last year’s Trade Union Act

Scrap the public sector pay cap and reintroduce national pay bargaining

Ban so-called “zero hours” contracts

Increase income tax for the highest-earning 5% to raise an extra £6bn for the NHS

Build at least 100,000 council and housing association houses a year

Reserve 4,000 homes for rough sleepers

On energy, Labour would have at least one publicly-owned supplier in every region of the country, with the government controlling the transmission and distribution grids.

First it would introduce an “immediate emergency price cap” of £1,000 a year.

The draft manifesto also promises to ban fracking and cut the voting age to 16.

At-a-glance: Labour’s draft manifesto

Election live: Rolling updates on reaction to leak

Kuenssberg: No-one can say ‘they’re all the same’

The document restates the existing policy to renew Trident but commits a Labour government to a defence review which would allow opponents to question the position on the nuclear weapons system.

It also says Labour would “negotiate transitional arrangements to avoid a cliff-edge for the UK economy” if no Brexit deal was reached during talks with the EU.

The manifesto still has to be approved by around 80 Labour figures, including the shadow cabinet and the party’s National Executive Committee.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he did not know who was behind the leak, which he called “disappointing”.

‘Progressive proposals’

He said that the final manifesto was still to be signed off and insisted: “Every policy will have a costing and a funding source identified.”

Mr McDonnell added that a policy of rail nationalisation when train operators’ franchises run out “has been Labour Party policy for a number of years” and the document’s proposals on energy are “what a lot of modern European states have done over the last five years”.

He rejected comparisons with Labour’s radical 1983 election manifesto, saying Labour had “an extremely modern, progressive set of proposals… looking to the long-term future”.

Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s national campaigns co-ordinator, denied it was the party’s manifesto, but a draft list of ideas.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “The point is today the whole of the shadow cabinet, the executive committee and other stakeholders are meeting to go through what will become our manifesto.”

The final version will form the foundation of Labour’s pitch to voters on the 8 June general election.

Mr Gwynne later told BBC Breakfast he was taking a positive view about the leak given their policies were being talking about a week ahead of the manifesto launch.

“It gives us the opportunity to talk about the kind of Britain we want to see, run for the many not the few,” he said.

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