The 2015 Conservative Party Manifesto Lies, Broken Promises and Missing Policy
MARKING OFF
Cameron says in a speech…“A manifesto shouldn’t be a wish-list; it should be a checklist. And that’s why, since the election, we haven’t been taking off in in a new direction, but marking off the commitments we made”
How do you mark off the following? They’ve been altered in some way since May 2015. They’ve…..
been delayed……(Care home charges cap)
been changed……(Benefit cap)
been increased…….(Freeze on benefits)
So they can’t be “marking off the commitments” they made, because many of them don’t exist as promised to the electorate!
THE 2015 MANIFESTO
Lie 1: Rail improvements scrapped/”paused”
Lie2: The Benefit Cap
Lie 3: 30 hrs Childcare
Lie 4: Two yr freeze on benefits
Lie 5: We will help keep Council Tax low
Lie 6: We will make motoring greener
Lie 7: We will cap charges for residential social care from April 2016
Lie 8: Labour’s Great Recession
Lie 9: £20bn of departmental savings not £13bn
Lie 10: No cut to child benefit
Lie 11: No increase in National Insurance
Lie 12: Support to working families
Lie 13: 18 week target
Lie 14: No mention of Forced Academisation/All schools to be academies
Lie 15: Broadband plans scrapped
Lie 16: Single Market
Lie 17: Help to Save ISA
Lie 18: New Grammar Schools
Lie 19: Benefits for EU Nationals
Lie 20: 200,000 New Starter Homes
Lie 21: Net Migration to the 10’s of Thousands
*****************
Missing from the Manifesto……
*Maintenance Grants scrapped
*Higher Tuition Fees
*Housing Benefit scrapped for 18-21 yr olds
*********Lie 1*********
Rail Improvements
Just under 2 months from winning an election, they’ve conned enough people to get their greedy mits in the till again, and another commitment is doubtful.
Manifesto commits to £38bn in May 2015
But in June 2015, it’s scaled back. Though a line improvement going through Cameron’s constituency is of course still going ahead…
http://news.sky.com/story/1508314/rail-improvement-plans-thrown-into-disarray
Update: They were told in March 2015, that delays were likely – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33654572 – July 24th 2015
*********Lie 2*********
The Benefit Cap
On the Andrew Marr show on 5th July 2015, 2 months after winning the election, George Osborne revealed the second lie of the Tory Manifesto. The original announcement was for the Benefit Cap to be lowered from £26,000 to £23,000. But he announced to Marr that outside London it will be lower (probably£20.000?)
He said the figure in the manifesto was for Greater London.
Whether you agree or not with a cap, isn’t it odd that they didn’t know 2 months ago?
20k is invisible in the manifesto!……
*********Lie 3a,3b &3c*********
30 hrs Childcare
Lie 3a: 1st June 2015 it’s starting in 2016 – https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-brings-forward-plans-to-double-free-childcare-for-working-families
8th July 2015 it’s put back to 2017 – https://www.gov.uk/government/news/summer-budget-2015-key-announcements
Lie 3b: Autumn Statement 2015 and a clause is added that wasn’t in the Manifesto requiring recipients to be working 16 hrs or more a week and on less than £100,000.
Lie 3c: Announced as helping 630,000 families, this figure has gone down to 390,000
The extended pledge would mean the creation of an extra 630,000 15-hour places for three and four-year-olds, which the Conservatives say would cost an additional £350m. However, according to the research, the true cost of the extra places could be more than four times this, at £1.5bn, based on 2014/15 funding rates.
Dec 2016: The following link states (on page 4), that the childcare manifesto promise will, in fact, only support 400,000 families……
Click to access Early_years_funding_government_consultation_response.pdf
*********Lie 4*********
Two year freeze on working age benefits becomes 4 yrs
2 years in the Manifesto (above)
4 years in the Summer Budget…… 2 months later! (above)
*********Lie 5*********
We will help keep Council Tax low
but in the Autumn Statement 7 months later, Council Tax to rise by 2% to pay for Social Care…..
*********Lie 6*********
We will make motoring greener
The changes to Road Tax on new cars have done exactly the opposite. Look at this example…….
In 2017 (based on a 2015 price/spec) the Skoda Citigo 1.0 60S will be £140 car tax (first year and onwards) This is a car with a low 105g/km emissions.
Currently (2015/16) it’s £0 in it’s first year, and £20 thereafter. An increase of £120/£140
Zero emissions cars will be £0 VED from 2017, as they are now. and cars 1g/km and above will be £140 as a standard rate. There are some increases in the first year for higher emissions cars.
Cars costing £40,000+ will attract a further £310 in their 2nd-5th years from 2017
The government have decided to do away with green incentives, other than purely electric or Hydrogen cars that have no emissions, and instead base it on flat rate and vehicle value.
The chancellor said “Because so many new cars now fall into the low carbon emission bands, by 2017 over three quarters of new cars will pay no VED at all in the first year. This isn’t sustainable and it isn’t fair”
He may have a point, but it’s still a lie to say they are supporting green motoring if there is next to no incentive.
This is not making motoring greener!
*********Lie 7********
We will cap charges for residential social care from April 2016
The government says its flagship policy to cap care costs in England will be delayed until 2020.
Costs were to be limited to £72,000 for the over-65s and younger adults with disabilities from April 2016.
The Department of Health said it was still “firmly committed” to the cap, but questions are now being raised whether the policy needs rethinking.
The move came after councils wrote to ministers asking for a delay because of the “enormous pressures” they faced.
For years councils have been warning the care system – which covers residential care and help at home with tasks such as washing and dressing – has been underfunded. A shortfall of £4.3bn has been predicted by the end of the decade – nearly a third.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33552279
*********Lie 8*********
“Labour’s Great Recession”
It wasn’t Labour’s. It was global, and started in the US.
Contrary to popular belief, Labour’s policies were not dominated by increased cash benefits but by reinvestment in and “modernisation” of public services. But Labour’s agenda was expensive. Its spending increases were high by international comparison, but they started from an inherited historically low level. Also taxes did not rise as much as spending, increasing the budget deficit and public sector net debt. Both, however, were still lower in 2007-08 than when Labour took office. The big increases came with the economic crisis, not as a result of earlier social spending.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/alumni/LSEConnect/articlesWinter2013/whatDidLabourReallyDoForUs.aspx
*********Lie 9*********
£20bn of departmental savings not £13bn
The Treasury will write to cabinet ministers to ask for savings in their departments to total £20bn.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33604811
********* Lie 10 *********
No cut to child benefit
Not cut as such, but a freeze in the budget, just TWO months later amounts to a real terms cut, and it’s a FOUR year freeze, so is effectively a cut!
https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3126-which-benefits-are-being-frozen-for-four-years
Also….
Child benefit has been frozen for seven of the 10 years to 2020/21 – giving parents less as inflation rises.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility that means the first child rate will have fallen 14.4% in real terms over a decade.
*********Lie 11*********
No increase in National Insurance
Manifesto states ” No increase in VAT, Income Tax and National Insurance“, but according to http://www.employerspensionsforum.co.uk/en/other-pensions/national-insurance/…”in April 2016 the ability to contract-out of a DB scheme will be abolished when the new single tier state pension comes into force. This means that your NI rate will increase by 1.4% to 12% on earnings up to approximately £40k and will remain at 2% on all earnings above £40k”
……March 2017 Budget – From The Independent – “Self-employed workers will see their rate rise from 9 per cent to 10 per cent in 2018, with a further rise to 11 per cent in 2019”
***UPDATE: 15th March 2017 – After a national outcry, Philip Hammond SCRAPS this broken promise, but still scraps Class 2***
At a ceremony to unveil a monument to those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Chris Ship from ITV tweeted his theory that he saw David Cameron mouth the words “breaking a manifesto promise is stupidity”. A theory backed by a lipreader.
Most of the promises in this blog post were broken by David Cameron!
See more on the original story here – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/philip-hammond-national-insurance-self-employed-breaks-manifesto-promise-tax-a7618666.html
********* Lie 12 *********
Support to Working Families
House of Commons research looked at a family with two children and a parent working 35 hours a week on minimum wage.
With the higher minimum wage, tax credit cuts (in Universal Credit) and the child benefit freeze all counted in, that family will be £2,038 a year worse off by 2020 than if those three measures had never happened.
********* Lie 13 *********
18 week target
When he was in office in 2011 David Cameron said he would keep the 18 week limit between referral and treatment for 90% of patients.
“We’re not going to leave anything to chance, especially as our changes are working their way through the system,” he said.
“So we’re keeping the 18 week limit. That’s in the NHS contract and constitution. And it’s staying.”
NHS England is scrapping the target that 90% of admitted patients should start consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks of referral. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-targets-ae-waiting-times-5824594 4th June 2015
*********Lie 14*********
No mention of Forced Academisation/All schools to be academies
***UPDATE*** 6th May 2016 –
Plans to force all of England’s schools to become academies are being abandoned in a government climbdown.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan hopes the concessions will meet the demands of Tory rebels opposed to compelling high-performing schools to convert.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36227570
The only reference to conversion to academies is for coasting or failing ones. It seems the Conservatives were quite happy to leave well alone if schools are performing well. In fact, even the poor schools wouldn’t be converted, if they had a plan to improve!
*********Lie 15*********
Broadband plans scrapped
High speed internet will not be automatically delivered to countryside homes after ministers claimed some people living in rural areas do not “want to be connected”.
The pledge to provide high speed broadband to every home in the UK has been abandoned by the government in an attempt to save money.
Instead fast broadband will only be provided in rural areas on request because, according to a Whitehall document, “it is unlikely that everyone will want to be connected”
5th May 2016
*********Lie 16*********
The Single Market
How could Cameron be certain of retaining single market access?
In a speech in Jan 2017, Theresa May confirms the UK will leave the single market!
*********Lie 17*********
Help to Save ISA
The Government’s much vaunted Help to Buy Isa was described as a “scandal” after it emerged that first-time buyers will not be able to use it for an initial deposit on their new home.
But it emerged that a flaw in the scheme means a 25 per cent government “bonus” on savings will not be paid out until the sale has completed.
Experts say this renders the scheme technically useless
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/19/help-to-buy-isa-scandal-500000-first-time-buyers-told-scheme-can/ 20th August 2016
*********Lie 18*********
New grammar Schools
On the 10th Sept 2016, the PM announced there would be new Grammar Schools. The manifesto only says that existing Grammars would be allowed to expand. Nick Gibb the schools minister said on the Daily Politics, that the manifesto said the government wanted to offer more good school places.
Nicky Morgan, the former Conservative Education Secretary blasted the plan…http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/09/theresa-may-every-school-in-england-will-be-given-opportunity-to/
******Lie 19******
Benefits for EU Nationals
A lie? Well it’s gone from very positive to a maybe, a lie in my book……
The 2015 Manifesto said “Changes to welfare to cut EU migration will be an absolute requirement in the renegotiation”
Damian Green, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on BBC Daily Politics on the 14th September 2016, said of the Conservative Manifesto promises of….
*No benefits for EU migrants for 4 years
*EU job seekers to leave the UK if they haven’t found work within 6 months
*Changes to Child Tax credits
………will all “be POSSIBILITIES in the negotiations”
******Lie 20******
200,000 New Starter Homes
The manifesto promised the Tories, if elected, would “build 200,000 new Starter Homes – 20% below the market price, for first time buyers under 40.”
But housing minister Gavin Barwell confirmed this week that discounted starter homes, aimed at getting young families on the housing ladder, will only make up ‘part’ of the 200,000 figure.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-quietly-dropped-another-manifesto-10004409 12th Mar 2017
******Lie 21******
Immigration to the 10’s of thousands
A manifesto pledge that was unwise to include!
Net Migration to Sept 2016 = 273,000
Net Migration to Sept 2015 = 323,000
So it has fallen, but is extremely unlikely to be anywhere near 100,000 before 2020!
………………………………………………….
Missing from the Manifesto: Maintenance Grants scrapped
“We will ensure that if you want to go to university, you can” says the 2015 manifesto…..not exactly a lie, but no mention of grants being scrapped, just 2 months before the budget. What the manifesto does say is “taxpayers fairly represented”….which appears to be a hint….
In 2010 Cameron promised to keep grants (Above)
Missing from the Manifesto: Higher Tuition Fees
Again no mention of allowing Universities the ability to raise fees – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/budget-2015-universities-will-be-allowed-to-raise-fees-beyond-9000-says-george-osborne-10375910.html
Missing from the Manifesto: Housing Benefit scrapped for 18-21 yr olds
What’s the next porkie?
Sources:
Some of the above information came from this article in The Mirror – http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/labour-reveals-21-broken-promises-6537411 29/09/15
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People may be changing to cars with ZERO VED because they are the only person to use the car. The corrupt party, Conservatives, are going to tax every car owner no matter what. Osborne will not use the money to improve roads unless all the extra money is ring fenced for that purpose and as far as I can see he has done no such thing it’s all a con(servative) pile of BS