Rishi Sunak launches Conservative manifesto with pledge for ‘bold action’

Labour has pledged to pay care workers £12-per-hour minimum if it wins the General Election.

Sir Keir Starmer will announce in the party’s manifesto on Thursday that the wages will be protected by a Fair Pay Agreement to bring them in line with nurses and other NHS staff, The i reports.

It would highlight an ambition for care workers to receive at least the real living wage, which is £12 across the UK or £13.15 in London.

50% of the sector consists of private providers, these firms would be expected to foot the bill for the increase in wages, rather than pass them on to local authorities

Unions representing care workers would be able to enter into collective bargaining with care providers – in the same way the pay for NHS staff is set at nationally agreed rates.

But unions representing care workers, including the GMB, have called for the wage floor to be higher, at £15, to ensure closer parity with NHS staff.

YouGov has just released its latest poll and it is not good news for Rishi Sunak.

Reform UK are now just a point behind the Tories and Labour are way out ahead by 20 points.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems and Greens are also gaining increased support as the election campaign goes on.

Check out the results below.

LAB 38% (-3),

CON 18% (-1),

RefUK 17% (+1),

LDEM 15% (+4),

GRN 8% (+1)

Fieldwork Mon/Tue (around Lib Dem manifesto coverage)

Reform UK’s membership has grown 50% since Nigel Farage took control of the party in another blow to the Tories.

Over the last seven days, 14,000 people have joined the right-wing party – taking the membership to 45,000.

On Monday June 3rd when Mr Farage announced he was the new leader 4,000 new people joined, ITV News reports.

It also saw an increase when Rishi Sunak decided to skip the D-Day celebrations.

But Reform has also come under scrutiny because one candidate Robert Lomas is alleged to have commented asylum seekers had it ‘in their DNA to lie’ in comments posted online.

He also wrote that ‘Black people of Britain’ were ‘grifting the race card’ and should stop acting ‘like savages’.

Home Secretary James Cleverly has denounced the attack on Reform leader Nigel Farage earlier today.

A man wearing a red hoodie was filmed throwing a paper coffee cup at Farage as he travelled on an open-top bus through Barnsley.

The mas was later arrested on suspicion of public disorder.

Cleverly said: ‘There must be no place for violence and intimidation in our politics and these actions should be condemned by everyone.

‘Thanks to the police for their quick action to detain the suspect.’

There are a few high-profile Conservatives out there who are openly sceptical about the merits of net zero, the effort to drive down the UK’s carbon emissions.

So it’s not too surprising that the manifesto goes hard on the ‘pragmatic’ approach the party would take on the issue.

For example, it recommits to annual licensing rounds of oil and gas production in the North Sea, and says the Climate Change Committee would get an explicit remit to consider costs to households when giving advice.

Ed Matthew, campaigns director at climate and energy think tank E3G, said the document was ‘utterly devoid of new pledges to supercharge the net zero economy and is the most unambitious on climate action yet’.

He continued: ‘Rishi Sunak has turned his nose up at the economic opportunity of the century.

‘This failure will keep households hooked on high-cost oil and gas and undermine our energy security. It is a manifesto for economic decline.’

Greenpeace UK’s policy director Doug Parr said: ‘New gas plants and more dependence on the very fossil fuels that caused the cost-of-living crisis will only result in higher bills, more energy insecurity and increase our climate-wrecking emissions.

‘We need a clean break from 14 years of failure on climate and nature but this is a manifesto that will drive us further into crisis.’

…and here’s the Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper with her take.

She said: ‘Rishi Sunak got one thing right in this speech: people are frustrated with him and the Conservative Party. This manifesto isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. No one will believe anything they’re promising today.

‘From his D-day disservice to a Formula One flop, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives have packed their campaign with desperation and lies.

‘After years of taking people for granted, the Conservatives have overseen crumbling hospitals, sewage scandals and a cost of living crisis like no other. It’s time for a change.

‘Frankly, it’s astonishing that they managed to sit politely in a room and agree with each other for long enough to publish something.’

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have sent out their responses to the Tory manifesto.

First, here’s Labour National Campaign Coordinator Pat McFadden said: ‘This Conservative Manifesto is a recipe for five more years of Tory chaos.

‘After 14 years in power, the Prime Minister’s desperate manifesto published today is stuffed full of unfunded spending commitments.

‘The Prime Minister that was brought in to be the antidote to the chaos of Liz Truss has instead become the next instalment of the same thing.

‘Tory desperation leads to costs for the British people. The public is still paying the price of the Conservatives crashing the economy. Now they promise a repeat if they win again leading to higher mortgages and a weaker economy.

‘After today the choice at this election could not be clearer: five more years of chaos with the Conservatives or stability and growth with Labour.’

Here are a few other points from the Tory manifesto that stand out to me on first glance.

• Requiring schools to ban the use of mobile phones during the school day
• Investing £8.3 billion to fill potholes and resurface roads
• Boosting the number of bus routes in the North and Midlands by providing an extra £1 billion
• Reopening train lines closed during the Beeching Cuts in the 1960s
• Reducing the size of the civil service to pre-pandemic levels, and move 25,000 more civil servants out of London
• Reducing the number of managers in the NHS by 5,500 to ‘cut waste and bureaucracy’
• Urgently introducing Martyn’s Law, anti-terrorism legislation named after a victim of the Manchester attack in 2017 which was put on pause when parliament was prorogued for the election
• Restricting sex offenders from changing their names
• Introducing further powers to ‘ban face coverings, pyrotechnics and climbing on war memorials’ to build on the Public Order Act 2023
• Trebling offshore wind capacity and build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters
• Launching a review of the nighttime economy in England to investigate how to reverse the decline in pubs and clubs

The Tories have also released a costings document, which purports to show how all these tax cuts will be paid for.

It’s eight pages long, including a front and back page and an introduction. Without those, it’s five pages.

You can find it here.

In comparison, the manifesto is a total of 80 pages.

Tax is the big headline issue in the Tory manifesto – by cutting as much as possible, the party hopes to win over voters before July 4.

Here are the main tax-related pledges in the manifesto:

• Total abolition of the main rate of National Insurance for self-employed people
• Further 2p cut to payroll National Insurance by 2027, meaning it will have halved since the beginning of this year
• Triple Lock Plus, to ensure the state pension does not reach the income tax threshold
• Ending the single earner penalty in the High Income Child Benefit Charge and moving the threshold to £120,000, up from £60,000 currently
• Abolish Stamp Duty for homes up to £425,000 for first-time buyers
• Temporary capital gains tax relief for landlords selling to a tenant

You can finally explore the Conservative manifesto for yourself.

We’ll be taking our own look through it, but in case there’s an issue that you’re particularly concerned about, here’s the link.

The Conservative manifesto still hasn’t appeared on the party’s website.

But courtesy of Sky’s Beth Rigby, here is the first page of pledges in the document.

PM Rishi Sunak referenced Brad Pitt once again in his speech when he said: ‘The first rule of Labour tax rises is Labour don’t talk about tax rises.’

He got a big clap for saying the Conservatives are the ‘party of the property-owning democracy in this country’.

And in another dig at Labour, he said the only thing the GB in proposed publicly owned energy company GB Energy stands for is ‘giant bills’.

‘Nowhere better to mark the fact our economy has turned a corner,’ says Rishi Sunak as he takes to the podium in Silverstone.

He points out seven of the top 10 Formula One teams are based in the UK, and that Brad Pitt is currently filming nearby ‘thanks to our tax cuts in the creative sector’.

Nigel Farage has posted a video on social media showing a man throwing an object from a bin at the bus he was using to travel around Barnsley.

The Reform leader is waving at supporters from the top of the bus when something resembling a can hits the side – causing him to duck.

A man can be seen reaching into a bin to throw something else before he races down the street, and is then tackled by police.

Farage wrote on Twitter: ‘I will not be bullied or cowed by a violent left-wing mob who hate our country.’

Recently re-elected Teesside mayor Ben Houchen will be introducing the prime minister to the stage.

His result was a rare bright spot in the local elections last month, so it’s unsurprising that they’re wanting to remind people of that.

Reform leader Nigel Farage has been met with protesters and counter-protesters on the campaign trail in Barnsley.

Harry Horton of ITV News paints a picture of the scene.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is the first speaker up to the podium today.

She’s talking about her ‘non-stereotypical’ upbringing for a cabinet minister, in the constituency of Labour PM Harold Wilson.

It looks like she’ll be one of two speakers before PM Rishi Sunak appears.

It’s 11.30am – that’s the time the Conservatives said they would be kicking off their big manifesto launch at Silverstone racetrack.

Rishi Sunak hasn’t stepped up to the podium yet and the manifesto isn’t yet live on the Tory website.

We’ll keep you updated when that happens.