1. society
2. work
3. unemployment

GENERAL ELECTION 2015: Summary of key manifesto pledges for the
employability sector
r
Topic
Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrats
Scottish National Party
Reduce government spending by one
per cent each year in real terms for
first two full financial years of
Parliament – requiring £30 billion
consolidation. £13 billion to come
from departmental savings and £12
billion in welfare savings. Plus £5
billion in tackling tax evasion.
Will cut the deficit every year. National
debt to be falling and a surplus to be
achieved on the current budget as soon as
possible in the next parliament.
Aim to balance the current structural budget
by 2017/18. Limit reductions in departmental
spending to less than the rate agreed in
2015/16.
Cuts in spending outside protected areas of
health, education and international
development. Cap structural social security
expenditure in each spending review.
Extend the current UK budget protection for
education. Keep ringfencing of overseas aid.
Oppose further spending cuts and
put in place modest spending
increases of 0.5% above inflation in
each year of next Parliament. Would
still reduce deficit, but would provide
at least £140 billion across the UK to
invest in skills and infrastructure.
Spending plans
Spending
plans
From 2018/19 spending will grow in
line with inflation.
From 2019/20, spending to grow in
line with GDP.
Proposals in Labour’s zero based review to
be implemented, including reforming
government bureaucracies, devolving
powers and services and redesigning public
services.
Referendum on EU membership.
Employment policy
Employment
support
Examine ways to build on a Work
Programme type approach in the
future.
Will create a more tailored back to work
system that helps people secure and keep
jobs.
Deliver a reformed and improved Work
Programme in partnership with English local
government and the national governments.
Look to scale up the use of social
impact bonds and payment-byresults, particularly focusing on
youth unemployment, mental health
and homelessness.
Will guarantee a paid job for all young
people who have been out of work for a
year and for those 25+ for two years. They
have to take it or lose benefits.
Improve incentives for JCP staff and Work
Programme providers to ensure there is real
help for those furthest from work.
Commission a replacement for the Work
Programme at a more local level,
working with local authorities to join up
Ensure help and training are more tailored to
local employment markets and better
integrated with other services.
Prompt devolution of the Work
Programme and Work Choice.
Facilitate more integration of skills
and employment policy, achieved
through the extension of powers for
the Scottish Parliament in the Smith
Agreement.
support for the long-term unemployed.
Will test jobseekers’ maths, English and IT
skills test within six weeks of claiming
benefits.
Introduce a higher rate of Job Seekers
Allowance for those who have
contributed over years. It will be funded by
extending the length of time people
need to have worked to qualify.
Progression in
work
Zero Hours
Minimum
wage
Youth
employment
Ban ‘exploitative’ zero-hours contracts.
National Minimum Wage should rise
to £6.70 this autumn, on course for
over £8 by the end of the decade.
Pass new law so that nobody
working 30 hours on Minimum Wage
pays Income Tax on what they earn.
Abolish long term youth
unemployment and make sure that
all young people are either earning
or learning
Replace JSA for 18-21 year-olds with
a Youth Allowance time-limited to six
months, after which will have to take
an apprenticeship, traineeship or do
daily community work for benefits.
Remove automatic entitlement to HB
for 18-21 year olds.
Abolish employer NI contributions
for apprentices under 25.
Raise the minimum wage to more than £8
by October 2019.
Introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee,
which will provide a paid starter job for
every young person unemployed for over a
year, a job they will have to take or lose
benefits.
Replace out of work benefits for 18-21 year
olds with new Youth Allowance.
Encourage progression through in work
careers and job search advice.
Create a right to request fixed contracts and
consult on rights to make regular patterns of
work contractual after a period of time.
Ask the Low Pay Commission to look at ways
of raising the Minimum Wage, without
damaging employment opportunities.
See apprenticeships and skills.
End ‘exploitative’ zero hours
contracts.
Increase the minimum wage to £8.70
by 2020, for 18 to 21 year olds to
£6.86 by 2020 and believes the same
rate should be paid to apprentices.
Aim to reduce youth unemployment
by 40 percent by 2021.
Disability and
health
employment
Aim to halve the disability
employment gap. Review how best
to support those suffering from long
term yet treatable conditions, such
as drug or alcohol addiction, or
obesity, back into work.
If someone refuses a recommended
treatment, review whether their
benefits should be reduced.
Reform the Work Capability Assessment by
focusing it on the support disabled people
need to get into work. Give an independent
scrutiny group of disabled people a central
role in monitoring the WCA.
Introduce a specialist support programme
to ensure that disabled people who can
work get more tailored help.
Develop a package of specialist support for
carers seeking part time work or a return to
full time employment. Simplify and
streamline back to work support for people
with disabilities, mental or physical health
problems.
Raise awareness of, and seek to expand,
Access to Work
Aim for the goal of one assessment and one
budget for disabled and sick people to give
them more choice and control.
Employees
rights and
equality
Require companies with more than
250 employees to publish gender pay
gap.
Reform laws related to strike action.
Employers
Abolished employers' NICs for young
apprentices under 25.
Help businesses create two million
new jobs to achieve full employment
Support small firms with a major
business rates review.
Big company and the public sector
workers to have entitlement to
Volunteering Leave for 3 days a year.
Treble the Start Up Loans so that
75,000 entrepreneurs get the chance
to set up their own business.
Require large companies to publish their
gender pay gap.
Abolish the employment tribunal fee system
as part of wider reforms to ensure workers
have proper access to justice.
Support employers to pay more by using
government procurement to promote the
living wage.
Establish a Business Investment Bank to
help businesses grow and create jobs.
Conduct a review of the WCA and PIP
assessments and evaluate merits of using a
public sector provider. Invest to clear backlog
in assessments for DLA and PIP.
Ensure swift implementation of the rules
requiring companies with more than 250
employees to publish gender pay gap.
Support medium sized businesses through a
one stop shop for accessing government
support and a dedicated unit in HMRC.
By 2020, extend transparency requirements
to include publishing the number of people
paid less than the Living Wage and the ratio
between top and median pay.
Consult on requirements for companies to
publish a full equality pay review, and to
consult staff on executive pay.
Support an urgent review of the
system of assessments for disability
benefits.
Halt the roll out of both Personal
Independence Payments (PIP) and
Universal Credit.
Reverse the replacement of Disability
Living Allowance with PIP.
Oppose the £3 billion cut in disability
support and give assurances to
people already supported by the
Independent Living Fund that
support will continue.
Push for 50:50 representation on
public and private boards. Action to
secure equal pay.
Increase the Employment Allowance
from £2,000 per business per year to
£6,000 per business per year, with
this change being phased in over the
four-year period to 2019.
Continue the Small Business Bonus
and back reduced Employers’ NI
contributions to support job
creation.
Support increased employee
representation on company boards.
Skills
Apprenticeshi
ps and
training
Create three million new
apprenticeships.
Guarantee an apprenticeship for all school
leavers with certain grades.
Continue to replace lower-level,
classroom-based Further Education
courses with high quality
apprenticeships that combine
training with experience of work and
a wage.
Create thousands more apprenticeships in
the public sector, including the civil service.
Introduce new sector led National Colleges.
Require any firm that gets a large
government contract or is hiring skilled
workers from outside the EU to offer
apprenticeships.
Develop digital skills courses for young people
and the unemployed, working with private
sector employers and education and training
providers.
Give employers more control over
apprenticeship funding and standards. In
return must increase apprenticeships in
sectors and supply chains.
Establish a cross party commission to secure a
long-term settlement for the public funding
of reskilling and lifelong learning.
Roll out more Degree
Apprenticeships, allowing young
people to combine a world-class
degree with a world-class
apprenticeship.
Publish more earnings and
destination data for Further
Education courses, and require more
accreditation of courses by
employers.
Work
experience /
internships
Guarantee all 16 and 17 year olds,
who want one, a place on National
Citizen Service.
Increase the number of cadet units in
schools.
Ensure apprenticeships can lead to higher
level qualifications by creating new
Technical Degrees and supporting part time
study.
Make apprenticeships gold standard,
refocused away from low-level
apprenticeships for older people.
Tackle the growth of unpaid internships.
All students to undertake work experience
between 14 and 16.
Double the number of businesses that hire
apprentices. Major expansion of high quality
and advanced apprenticeships.
Work with the Apprenticeship Advisory Group
to increase the number of apprentices from
BAME backgrounds and ensure gender
balance across industry sectors.
Review practices such as unpaid internships.
Work experience placements for those with
disabilities or mental health problems and
those with parental responsibilities.
Promote social action and volunteering at
school, college and university.
Seek to inspire children and young people to
follow technical and scientific
careers through business partnerships.
Deliver 30,000 Modern
Apprenticeships each year and
continue to keep university
education free in Scotland.
Careers advice
Jobcentre Plus advisers will work
with schools and colleges to
supplement careers advice and
provide routes into work experience
and apprenticeships.
Basic skills
Introduce a new, independent system of
careers advice, offering personalised
face to face guidance on routes into
university and apprenticeships.
All students to study English and Maths
until age 18.
Improve careers advice in schools and
colleges. Improve links between employers
and schools, encouraging all schools to
participate in mentoring schemes.
Promote the take up of STEM subjects in
schools, retain coding on the National
Curriculum and encourage entrepreneurship.
Eradicate child illiteracy and innumeracy by
2025 - all children should start school with
good language skills by 2020.
Will test jobseekers’ maths, English and IT
skills test within six weeks of benefit claim..
Welfare and families
Welfare for
young people
Capping
benefits
Replace the Jobseeker’s Allowance
for 18-21 year olds with a Youth
Allowance that will be time limited
to six months, after which will have
to take an apprenticeship, a
traineeship or do daily community
work to continue to claim.
(also see Housing section)
Cap overall welfare spending.
Lower the amount of benefits that
any household can receive to
£23,000.
Replace out of work benefits for 18 to 21year-olds with a new Youth Allowance
dependent on recipients being in training.
(also see youth employment programme)
Will get benefits bill under control. Will
keep the household benefit cap and ask the
Social Security Advisory Committee to
examine a regional benefits cap.
Will not cut tax credits.
Freeze working age benefits for two
years from April 2016, with
exemptions for disability and
pensioner benefits.
Family
benefits
Protect young people’s entitlements to the
welfare safety net, while getting them the
help they need to get their first job.
Retain the overall cap on a household’s - this
should continue to be set at around the
average family income.
Back increases, of at least the cost of
living, in welfare benefits.
Introduce a 1% cap on the uprating of
working-age benefits until the books are
balanced.
Cap child benefit rises for two years.
Cap structural social security expenditure in
each spending review
Protect tax credits for working families.
End the Marriage Tax Allowance.
Expand Shared Parental Leave with a ‘use it
or lose it’ month for fathers, and introduce a
right to paid leave for carers
Greater support for working parents
with increased paternity leave.
Support for
parents
Bring in tax-free childcare to support
parents back into work
Provide 30 hours of free childcare to
working parents of three and four
year-olds
Support for
those in work
Housing
Universal
Credit
Sanctions and
hardship
payments
Introduce a new National Primary Childcare
Service, a not for profit organisation to
promote the voluntary and charitable
delivery of quality extracurricular activities
Extend free childcare from 15 to 25 hours
for working parents of three and four year
olds. Ensure all primary schools guarantee
access to childcare from 08:00 to 18:00.
Take everyone earning less than
£12,500 out of Income Tax and pass
legislation to ensure a Tax-Free
Minimum Wage.
Lower 10p starting rate of tax.
No increases the rates of VAT,
Income Tax or National Insurance in
the next Parliament
Ensure that 18-21 year-olds on
Jobseeker’s Allowance no longer
have an automatic entitlement to
Housing Benefit.
No increase to the basic or higher rates of
income tax, National Insurance or VAT.
Continue to roll out Universal Credit
in line with existing plans.
20 hours’ free childcare a week
for all parents with children aged from two to
four-years, and all working parents from the
end of paid parental leave (nine months) to
two years.
Complete the introduction of tax-free
childcare, which will provide up to £2,000 of
childcare support for each child and include
childcare support in Universal Credit.
Raise the Personal Allowance to at least
£12,500.
Protect working tax credits so they rise with
inflation.
Reverse the removal of the spare room
subsidy.
Guarantee three-year housing tenancies
with a "ceiling on excessive rent rises".
Support the principle of Universal Credit,
but must be affordable and fit for purpose –
will pause and review.
Support an increase in free childcare
to 30 hours
per week by 2020.
Back a 20 per cent increase in the
Work Allowance – the amount
people are allowed to earn before
their benefit is cut.
Encourage landlords to lower their rent by
paying them Housing Benefit directly, with
tenants’ consent, for a fixed reduction.
Not support attempts to restrict
housing benefit for 18 to 21 year
olds.
Complete the introduction of Universal Credit
(UC), but also review UC to address any
issues.
Reform hardship payments. Review sanctions
procedures in JCP. Introduce a ‘yellow card’
warning.
Halt the roll out of Universal Credit.
Those with chaotic lives might be more
successful in finding a job if they were
directed to targeted support with their
problems.
Conduct an urgent review of the
conditionality and sanctions regime.
Health
Mental Health
Support
Provide ‘significant new support for
mental health’ - enforce access and
waiting time standards for people
experiencing mental ill-health.
NHS staff training to include mental health.
Set out a strategy with the goal of ensuring
the great majority of patients can access
talking therapies within 28 days.
Disabled people and those with complex
needs will be helped to have more control
of their lives with the entitlement to a
personal care plan designed with them and
shaped around their needs, the option of
personal budgets where appropriate, and a
single named person to coordinate their
care.
Integrated
support
Integrate health and social care,
through the Better Care Fund.
Expand access to talking therapies allowing
many more people to recover and be able to
seek work.
Support good practice among employers in
promoting wellbeing and ensure people with
mental health problems get the help they
need to stay in or find work.
Develop a clear approach on preventing
mental illness, with a public health campaign.
Improve links between Jobcentres and Work
Programme providers and the local NHS to
ensure all those in receipt of health-related
benefits are getting the care and support to
which they are entitled.
Work with Monitor to reform NHS funding
systems, moving away
from payments for activity to tariffs that
encourage joined-up
services and preventive care.
Public services
Freedom of
information
(FOI) and data
Introduce the ability to FOI private
companies delivering public sector
contracts commissioned by government.
Extend FOI laws to cover private companies
delivering public services.
Continue to release data in an open and
accessible format, including on standards in
public services.
Urgent review of the
conditionality and sanctions regime,
which will take particular
account of the needs of people with
mental health issues.
Committed £15 million to a mental
health innovation fund and will seek
to increase this to
£100million over the next 5 years.
Continue a programme of
health and social care integration,
across Scotland and aiming to
provide a seamless service, especially
for people with
long-term conditions and disabilities.
This includes £300
million over the next three years for
the Integrated Care
Fund and £30 million for telehealth.
Public
procurement
Public services
Guarantee a ‘right to mutualise’
within the public sector.
Raise the target for SMEs’ share of
central government procurement to
one-third
Will look to scale up use of social
impact bonds and payment-byresults contracts in the future,
focusing on youth unemployment,
mental health and homelessness.
We will make recruitment to the Civil
Service more open and actively look
for exceptional talent, especially in
areas where capabilities are in short
supply.
Parliament
Sell unneeded government property
and co-locate services.
Reduce the number of MPs to 600, in
line with the findings of the existing
boundary review.
Raise the target for SMEs’ share of central
government procurement to one-third,
strengthen the Prompt Payment Code and
ensure that all major government suppliers
sign up.
Develop platforms on which government can
provide
feedback on its suppliers to help quality
providers to grow.
Through guidance on procurement,
the SNP will work to ensure all
suppliers to the Scottish Government
also pay the living wage.
Save money and create more responsive
services by building co-operation between
public services and organisations. Pool
funds across local areas to reduce
inefficiency and avoid duplication.
Improve consumer protections in public
services, with a review of
complaints handling processes.
Propose responsible increases in
public spending.
Invest to prevent social problems rather
than waste money reacting to them.
Continue and expand the What Works
Network and open up public procurement to
SMEs and to the voluntary sector.
Ministerial pay will be cut and then frozen
until government has ‘balanced the books’.
All 16 and 17 year olds to have the vote by
May 2016.
Social economy/voluntary sector/citizenship
Guarantee children a place on
National Citizen Service, so they can
learn new skills and meet young
people from different walks of life
Give those who work for a big
company and the public sector a new
workplace entitlement to
Volunteering Leave for three days a
year, on full pay.
Support the development of the social
economy by improving access for cooperative and mutual organisations to grow
finance through the new British Investment
Bank. Will consider how to support
employee buy-outs.
Will support the National Citizens Service.
Will repeal the Lobbying Act.
Promote a community banking sector to
support small and medium-sized enterprises
and social enterprises
Use public contracts to deliver clear
community benefits, such as
employment and training
opportunities and support for
community initiatives.
Commit to the Small Business Bonus
and expand the Social Entrepreneurs
Fund, to encourage and support
community social enterprises.
Devolution
Devolution
from
Westminster
Give English MPs a veto over matters
only affecting England
Build a Northern Powerhouse.
Devolve powers over economic
development, transport and social
care to large cities which choose to
have directly elected mayors.
Embark on biggest devolution of power to
city and county regions. Will transfer £30
billion of funding along with powers over
economic development, skills, employment,
housing and business support.
Continue the Regional Growth Fund through
the next Parliament. Devolve more economic
decision-making to local areas.
Make Scotland's voice heard at
Westminster.
Establish local Public Accounts Committees.
Devolve further powers over skills
spending and planning to London
Mayor, plus more bespoke ‘Growth
Deals’ with councils. Back LEPs to
promote jobs and growth.
Scotland
Develop a fund to ease pressure on
local areas and public services.
Fulfil commitments to Scotland to
devolve extensive new powers - a
new Scotland Bill will be introduced
in the first session of a new
Parliament.
Devolve further powers to Scotland.
The Work Programme will be devolved
along with a greater ability to invest in
capital projects.
Barnett formula to be maintained.
City Deals available to all Scotland’s
cities. Refresh the Scottish
Government’s refreshed Economic
Strategy.
Improve access to finance for
businesses through the Scottish
Business Development Bank.
Introduce a £1m 'Innovation
Challenge Fund' to address industry
challenges and foster innovation.
Wales
Implement the agreed settlement for
Wales
Northern
Ireland
Implement the Stormont House
Agreement in Northern Ireland.
Devolve further powers to Wales and put
on the same statutory basis as Scottish
devolution. Establish a fair funding
settlement with a guaranteed funding floor.