General election manifestos: Where do the main parties stand on key areas from NHS to immigration

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With the July 4 general election nearly just days away, all major parties have released their manifestos setting out their vision for the country’s future.

The policies within these documents explain what each party would aim to achieve during their time in power, should they successfully secure a parliamentary majority.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will go head to head to win voters over (Jonathan Hordle/ITV) (PA Media)

For all the latest updates ahead of the general election, follow The Independent’s live coverage

While it’s very unlikely any party but Labour or the Conservatives will form the new government in July, other parties’ manifestos offer an insight into the principles their members hold, and will hold the prevailing government to account on if they secure any MPs.

With each manifesto coming in at hundreds of pages, it can be hard to sift through to the important bits, so here’s a handy guide to where all the major parties stand on the key areas:

NHS

Conservatives

• Increase NHS spending above inflation every year
• Long-term workforce plan: 92,000 new nurses, 28,000 more doctors by the end of next parliament
• Investing £8.6bn into social care system, reaching a funding settlement with local authorities
• Sticking to 2019 plan of 40 new hospitals by 2030 (despite concerns from the National Audit Office)
• Expand Pharmacy First, build or modernise 250 GPs, build 50 more Community Diagnostic Centres

Labour

• Reduce waiting time for non-urgent treatment to no longer than 18 weeks from referral
• 40,000 more appointments a week by incentivising out-of-hours working and shared waiting lists between practices
• Use ‘spare capacity’ in the private sector to reduce waiting times (in the short-term)
• 8,500 more mental health staff
• Double the number of CT and MRI scanners for cancer prevention
• Introduce Neighbourhood Health Service and give pharmacists independent prescribing rights

Lib Dems

• Give patients the right to see a GP within 7 days, or 24 hours if urgent
• Recruit 8,000 new GPs
• Bring in mental health hubs for young people, with check-ups offered at key points in life
• Cancer treatment to be guaranteed no more than 62 days after referral
• Give pharmacists independent prescribing rights
• Support carers with wages at least £2 above the minimum, and free personal care for adults

Greens

• Steadily reduce waiting lists and grant rapid access to a GP (same day if urgent)
• Guaranteed access to an NHS dentist
• Boost NHS staff pay immediately
• Restrict the role of commercial companies in the NHS
• Move towards a legal and regulated drug market
• Make mental health and equal priority to physical health: guaranteed free therapy within 28 days

Reform

• No tax on frontline NHS staff for first three years
• Use independent healthcare capacity to supplement NHS services
• 20 per cent tax relief on all private healthcare and insurance
• NHS patients to receive voucher for private treatment if they can’t see a GP within three days
• Set up an ‘excess deaths and vaccine harms’ Covid inquiry

Tax and economy

Conservatives

• Another 2p cut to national insurance (halving it to 6p from 12p at the start of the year)
• No increase to personal taxes like income tax or VAT
• Maintain corporation tax at 25 per cent and back businesses to trade and invest in the UK
• Reduce borrowing and debt
• Abolish main rate of national insurance for self-employed workers

Labour

• No increases to taxes like income tax, VAT or national insurance
• Implement new strict fiscal rules guided by ‘securonomics,’ strengthen the role of the OBR
• Create ‘sustained economic growth’ by being the party of ‘wealth creation’
• Close non-dom tax loopholes and tackle tax avoidance
• Introduce VAT and business rates to private schools
• Windfall tax on oil and gas giants

Lib Dems

• Cut income tax by increasing the tax-free personal allowance (frozen since 2022)
• Reform capital gains tax to make it ‘fairer’ by introducing three rates, similar to income tax, and raising allowance
• Reverse Conservative ‘tax cuts’ for big banks
• Implement a one-off windfall tax on ‘super-profits’ of oil and gas companies
• Protect the independence of the Bank of England and OBR
• Fix ‘broken relationship’ with Europe to improve trade opportunities

Greens

• No increase to basic rate of income tax during cost of living crisis
• 75 per cent windfall tax on banks
• Introduce a ‘wealth tax’: assets over £10 million taxed at 1 per cent; assets over £1 billion at 2 per cent
• Reform capital gains by bringing rates in line with income tax, scrap the upper limit of national insurance tax
• Invest £40bn into the “green economic transformation,” through combined revenue-raising measures
• Only party backing full nationalisation of public utilities

Reform

• Lift income tax allowance to £20k (and higher rate to £70k)
• Lower fuel duty by 20p per litre
• Reduce stamp duty to 0 per cent below £750k (up from the current £250k)
• Bring corporation tax down to 15 per cent within three years

Immigration

Conservative

• Get Rwanda scheme off the ground as soon as possible
• Introduce a legal cap on migration
• Increase visa fees
• Cut migration by half and then reduce every year of next parliament

Labour

• Reduce migration by training more UK workers to fill employment gaps
• Ban employers from recruiting from overseas as default
• Abolish the non-dom status immediately (curbing transitional measures)
• Bring in 1,000 more staff dedicated to returning asylum seekers with rejected applications
• Cancel the Rwanda policy

Lib Dems

• Scrap the Rwanda scheme, and provide a safe, legal route for refugees
• Create a dedicated unit to decide on asylum cases within three months
• Give asylum seekers right to work if no decision is made on their case in three months
• Give full settled status to all EU citizens in the UK with pre-settled status

Greens

• Replace Home Office with Department of Migration
• Scrap minimum income requirement for spouses of migrants with work visas
• End all detention of migrants
• All asylum seekers to work while their case is being decided

Reform

• All migrants who arrive illegally from safe countries are barred from claiming asylum
• Small boat migrants who cross Channel are sent back to France
• Required five years residency before benefits can be claimed
• Asylum seekers to be processed from safe countries offshore
• 20 per cent national insurance for international workers

Education

Labour

• Recruit 6,500 new teachers
• Create 100,000 new nursery places and 3,000 primary school-based nurseries
• Help such as training or apprenticeships for all 18-21 year olds looking for work
• Free primary school breakfast clubs for all children

Conservatives

• 30 hours free childcare from nine months old (from September 2025)
• Child benefit threshold for single-income households raises to £120,000
• Schools to ban mobile phones
• End ‘rip-off’ degrees and fund 100,000 more apprenticeships instead
• 60,000 more school places and 15 new free schools

Lib Dems

• Dedicated mental health professional in every primary and secondary school
• Increase school and college funding per pupil above inflation every year
• Introduce a ‘tutoring guarantee’ for every disadvantaged pupil needing support
• All adults given £5,000 to spend on education or training throughout their lives, rising to £10k when possible
• Triple pupil premium to £1000 a year

Greens

• Additional £8bn funding for schools
• Abolish university tuition fees
• Scrap OFSTED
• End ‘high stakes’ testing in schools to reduce pupil stress

Reform

• Ban ‘transgender ideology’ in all schools
• No VAT on private school fees
• Scrap interest on student loans
• Cut funding to universities that ‘undermine free speech’

Environment

Conservatives

• Ban bonuses for water company bosses if the company breaks the law
• Create a new national park
• Increase the UK’s offshore wind capacity threefold
• Cut the cost of net zero and aim for goal of 2050

Labour

• Create Great British Energy – a publicly-owned clean power company
• Ban bonuses for bosses of failing water companies
• Make five million homes energy efficient
• Create 650,000 new energy jobs by 2030
• Ban fracking

Lib Dems

• Water companies made public and bonuses for bosses banned
• Introduce a 16 per cent sewage tax on water company profits
• Double the size of Protected Area Network by 2050
• All new homes to be zero carbon
• Plant 60 million trees a year

Greens

• Bring in a carbon tax on businesses of £120 per tonne emitted (rising to £500 p/t over ten years)
• 70 per cent of UK electricity to come from wind by 2030
• Ban cage farming and badger culling
• Bring energy sources into community ownership, allowing excess to be sold
• Remove oil and gas subsidies

Reform

• Scrap VAT on energy bills
• Scrap environmental levies
• Speed up North Sea oil and gas licences
• Scrap HS2 and ULEZ