Conservatives election manifesto 2015 - the key points

The prime minister, David Cameron, has launched the Tory party’s manifesto at an event in Swindon, Wiltshire. Following are the key points:

Health

• Increase NHS spending to £8bn a year by 2020.
• Provide seven-day-a-week access to NHS services.
• Guarantee that everyone over 75 will get a same-day GP’s appointment if they need one.

Nick Watt’s analysis: With the NHS regularly listed as the main concern among voters the Tories know they must close the gap, or at least neutralise, Labour’s lead by offering a major funding pledge

Education

• Lift the cap on university places.
• Freeze the amount of government spending per school pupil.
• Turn every failing and “coasting” secondary school into an academy and create free schools for parents who want them.
• Make children resit SATs upon arrival at secondary school if they have not reached the required standards.
• Require secondary school pupils to take GCSEs in English, maths, science, a language and history or geography, with Ofsted unable to award its highest ratings to schools that refuse to teach these core subjects.
• Introduce a national postgraduate loan system for taught masters and PhD courses.

Work

• Raise the income tax threshold to £12,500.
• Legislate so that nobody working 30 hours on the minimum wage pays income tax on what they earn.
• Reduce the benefits cap to £23,000.

NW: Amid polling evidence that the Tories are seen as the party of the rich, No 10 decided it needed a clear policy to illustrate its claim that the Conservatives are in fact ‘the workers’ party’.

Housing

• Extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants.
• Build 200,000 starter homes for first-time buyers under the age of 40, to be sold at 20% below the market rate.
• Extend Help to Buy to cover another 120,000 homes.
• Introduce a new Help to Buy ISA to help young people save a deposit for their first home.

NW: As a student of the Thatcher era, the prime minister hopes to revive, and even go further than her famous championing of a property-owning democracy with her right-to-buy council homes scheme.

Childcare

• Provide 30 hours of free childcare to working parents of three- and four-year-olds.
  

NW: Polling has told the Tories and Labour over recent years that childcare is one of the most pressing issues: this pledge is designed to be a clear, voter-friendly offer in this area.

Tax

• Not raise VAT, national insurance or income tax, but raise the 40p income tax threshold to £50,000.
• Increase the inheritance tax threshold for homes to £1m.

NW: The Tories believe this policy shows they are championing ordinary homeowners who have spent decades paying off a mortgage, only to find their children’s inheritance is limited. The Tories regard this as a magic bullet: Gordon Brown abandoned plans for an early election in 2007 when George Osborne unveiled a similar pledge in 2007.

Pensions

• Continue to increase the state pension by at least 2.5%.
  

Immigration

• Keep an ambition of delivering annual net migration in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands.
• Negotiate new rules with the EU so that people will have to be earning income in the UK for a number of years before they can claim benefits, including the tax credits that top up low wages.

Culture

• Conduct a comprehensive review of the BBC royal charter and freeze the licence fee pending charter renewal.
• Consult on the introduction of a business-rate relief for local newspapers in England.
  

European Union

• Scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British bill of rights.
• Have an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU before the end of 2017.

National security

• Maintain the size of the regular armed services and not reduce army personnel numbers below 82,000.
• Retain the Trident nuclear weapons programme and build a new fleet of four Successor ballistic missile submarines.
• Outlaw groups that foment hate with the introduction of banning orders for extremist organisations.