The Conservative Manifesto 1997

CHOICE AND SECURITY FOR FAMILIES

Families are stronger if they have the money to look after themselves: that is why we are shifting power and wealth back to working families and away from the state. We have already achieved much - the average family's disposable income has gone up by 40% since 1979. But we want to go further. The next Conservative government intends to reform the tax system so that it gives substantially more help to families.

We also want to encourage people to save so they have the security and self-respect that comes from being able to rely on their own resources rather than immediately turning to the state. We have already made much progress here too with widening ownership of homes, pensions, and the new PEPs and TESSAs. We now propose further radical measures for more saving for retirement.

Families and Tax

At the moment, if one spouse does not take paid work in order to look after children or dependent relatives, they not only give up earnings but may also be unable to benefit from their personal tax allowance. Yet this is the time at which their income is often most stretched.

We believe our tax system should recognise and support the crucial role of families in their caring responsibilities. We will give them that support.

We will give priority to future reductions in personal taxation that help families looking after dependent children or relatives by allowing one partner�s unused personal allowance to be transferred to a working spouse where they have these responsibilities.

This will provide a targeted reduction in the tax bill to those families who need it most. Around 2 million one taxpayer couples with dependent children, or looking after elderly relatives and others needing care, would gain up to �17.50 a week - around �900 a year.

Family Savings

We want people to enjoy Britain's success - especially by owning shares in the companies for which they work. We have already introduced a number of schemes to encourage employee share ownership. To encourage a further expansion of worker shares, our new Share Match Scheme will allow employees to be rewarded with additional free shares if they acquire a stake in their company.

Our goal is that by 2000, more than half of the employees of Britain's larger companies will own shares in those companies.

4.5 million people now benefit from tax free TESSAs and 2.5 million from PEP schemes to encourage the accumulation of long term saving. We will continue to build on this success by exploring ways in which existing tax exemptions for savings can be developed - allowing individuals to secure their futures and protect their families against unexpected contingencies.

We will continue to raise the threshold for inheritance tax as it prudent to do so.

People are not just saving for themselves but for their children and grand-children. These savings should not be penalised by the tax system.

For many people their biggest asset is their pension. Thanks to the steps we have already taken to encourage occupational and personal pensions, we now have �650 billion invested in private pensions - more than the rest of the European Union put together. We now plan to build further on this achievement.

We will make it easier for small employers to set up personal pension plans for groups of employees.

We will create more flexibility for people who save in personal pension plans to continue investing in those schemes if they subsequently move to jobs with company pension schemes.

We will also create flexibility for employees with savings in Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVC) schemes to take part of that pension earlier or later than their main company pension.

But we believe the time has now come to plan for another important step in improving Britain's pension provision. Britain is already much better placed than many other countries to afford state pensions in the future, but we want even more people to be able to look forward to a properly funded pension that grows with the economy and is free from dependence on taxes paid by future generations. We now propose a practical way of achieving a gradual transformation of the state pension scheme.

At the start of the next parliament we will set out proposals to provide all young people entering the workforce with a personal pension fund paid for through a rebate on their national insurance contributions. At retirement they would be entitled to the full pension earned by this accumulated investment. This could give them a pension significantly higher than they would currently receive from the state. But they with be guaranteed a pension at least equal to the current basic state pension, increased in line with inflation.

This will be one of the most significant improvements in the state pension system since it was introduced.

Older people currently in the workforce would be unaffected - they will continue to contribute as now and receive the normal state pension when they retire.

This policy would come into effect early in the new millennium. Gradual phasing in of the new system over 40 years will make the impact on public finances affordable. Even at its peak, the net revenue forgone will be only a fraction of the savings from the recent Pensions Act. And eventually, the new policy will produce massive public expenditure savings.

This far-sighted idea is in the best Conservative tradition. The growing wealth of the nation will provide for the next generation through private funding, underpinned by a state guarantee. British people will be able to look forward to retirement with even greater confidence. And our young people will have a pensions opportunity unrivalled in the world.

Support for Families

Some families need help to cope with their responsibilities. For them, Social Services play a vital role. They help with children where parental care has failed. They deliver an ever wider range of services to people with learning difficulties or who are mentally ill. Our community care reforms have given them a central role ensuring that elderly people get care of the highest quality: and in their own homes where possible. We need to ensure that role is properly fulfilled.

Early in the next Parliament we will introduce a Social Services Reform Bill which will create a new statutory framework for social services. The Bill will provide for greater openness and accountability in social services.

We will provide new guidance to ensure social workers properly reflect the values of the community - focusing their efforts on those families who most need support, and minimising unnecessary interference. Social workers working with children will receive special training to cope with the often heart-rending cases they face.

We will raise standards through a new regulatory framework which will apply the same standards in both the public and private sector.

We will also remove the power of local authorities to operate care homes where this is in the best interests of the people for whom they are responsible.

We believe that families who use social services should be able to exercise choice wherever practicable. We have given cash payments to disabled people to purchase the services they need directly.

We also want new ways of reinforcing individual choice where possible. We will therefore ensure no barriers stand in the way of local authorities wanting to issue their users with vouchers to buy certain services.

We will review the direct payment scheme, and provided it has been cost effective, we will extend it to other users of social services.

Above all, we want to help families to help themselves. Caring for older - or disabled - relatives is one of the most natural human instincts. We recognise the crucial - and often demanding - role carers play, and will help them more.

We will introduce a Respite Care Programme. This will enable family members with heavy responsibilities caring for a relative to take a much needed break. We will also offer more practical advice for carers who want to go back to paid work.

But in some cases, elderly people need more care than their friends or relatives can provide. Financing long term care worries many families. We will create an imaginative, fair partnership between individuals and the public sector to resolve this problem.

In the first session of the next Parliament we will implement our partnership scheme for long term care, making it easier for people to afford the cost of care in old age without giving up their lifetime savings.

Good preparation for marriage can be an important aid to a successful family, while timely help in meeting difficulties can often avoid family breakdown. These are matters for voluntary effort, not the state, but we will continue to support such effort.

We need to make sure efforts to help struggling families does not turn into unnecessary meddling.

When the state goes too far, it is often the children who suffer. They become victims of the worst sort of political correctness.

We will introduce legislation to remove unnecessary barriers to adoption and introduce new rules to make adoption from abroad more straightforward.

We will also monitor the workings of the Children Act, and act if necessary to ensure it maintains a proper balance between the rights of children and the responsibilities of adults.

Social Services departments are now the fourth arm of the welfare state. Most people will need them at some point in their lives. We will ensure that the Conservative revolution in public services now reaches Social Services.

Disabled People

We have introduced the Disability Discrimination Act. This is the first legislation of its kind anywhere in Europe and it provides positive proof of our commitment to disabled people. We will monitor it to ensure it continues to meet its objectives.

We are also providing a continuing fund to support the most severely disabled people to stay in their homes.

Security in Retirement

They have paid their National Insurance contributions and taxes and rightly expect us to continue to protect the value of the basic state pension against price rises. We will do so. We will also ensure that less well off pensioners continue to get extra help on top of the basic pension.

At the same time as protecting the state pension, our encouragement of private pensions is already transforming the living standards of pensioners. The average net income of pensioners has risen by 60% since 1979. This has been achieved by our encouragement of saving for retirement.

The tax system must help pensioners who have saved. Our new lower 20p rate on income from savings directly helps 1.7 million pensioners and the special age allowances raise the point at which pensioners start to pay income tax.

A Better Social Security System

Social Security must be there to help families, pensioners and people in need. We will protect the value of Child Benefit and Family Credit which help with the cost of bringing up children. This is our Family Benefits Guarantee.

We will bring the structure of benefits for lone parents into line with that for two-parent families. We will continue to help lone parents obtain maintenance, and assist with childcare in work: both these measures help lone parents obtain work. We will pilot our "Parent Plus" Scheme that gives special help to lone parents who want to work, and extend it as it proves successful.

Social Security fraud must be stamped out.

We will intensify our current initiatives of inspections and checks including more home visits, to crack down further on benefit cheats. We will introduce benefit cards across the country. We will establish a Benefit Fraud Inspectorate to monitor local authorities' performance. We will also improve the sharing of information between government departments to catch more fraudulent claims.

To ensure as much of the Social Security budget as possible goes into benefits, we will continue to improve the efficiency of administration, using the best mix of public and private sector operations.

Housing

We will also carry through our draft Bill, creating the option for those buying flats to choose a new form of commonhold ownership.

For those who wish to rent their home, we are encouraging a thriving private rental market, building on the success of housing investment trusts and protecting assured tenancies.

Easier renting will help us meet our target of reducing the proportion of empty homes below 3%. The number of empty houses has fallen in each of the last 3 years. But nothing is more frustrating for people who need social housing than the sight of a suitable property owned by the public sector lying boarded up and empty. We will stop that.

Public landlords will have to sell houses which are available for occupation yet have been left empty without a good reason for more than 12 months.

Housing associations and housing companies will continue to receive help in building new homes, and we will encourage more public - private partnerships. Together, these policies will help meet the demand for new public housing and make sure that there are decent homes for those in need.

Opportunities for women

This success reflects the efforts and determination of many women. Government's role has been simpler - to level up the playing field, whether in education, where girls are now doing better than boys, or in the workplace, where opportunities for women are the best in Europe.

But we know our job is not yet done. Some women still face barriers to doing well. Some still do not have the financial security they deserve. And crime, and the fear of crime, often affect women more than men.

We will ensure women have equal opportunities in education and the workplace. This can best be achieved by keeping our economy buoyant and our labour markets flexible. And our proposals to bring crime rates down further will help women especially.

But many women - and some men - face a particular problem: how to juggle job and family. For those who need or want to work, we will seek further ways to minimise the barriers to affordable, high quality childcare. For those who wish to be full-time parents, our proposals to enable them to transfer their unused personal allowance to their spouse will be worth up to an extra �17.50 a week.

We also want to give women more financial independence, particularly when they retire. We propose, as explained elsewhere, to improve flexibility in saving for retirement and to allow courts to split pensions on divorce.

Looking outwards

People who are secure at home can look out for others in their community. Over two thirds of adults engage in some form of voluntary activity. By the end of 1997 all young people aged between 15 and 25 who want to volunteer will be helped to find an opportunity to do so.

We will encourage voluntary work by others living on benefit while continuing to insist that those who are capable of work should actively seek employment. We will also develop accreditation for voluntary work to encourage employers to see it as preparation for a paid job.

We will make it easier for those receiving incapacity benefit to volunteer by removing the 16 hour weekly limit on their voluntary work.

It is wrong to imagine that compassion must be nationalised and that we can only help our fellow man through state action.