Below are the sector relevant parts of the Conservative manifesto
Make Britain the leading hi-tech exporter in Europe
We will implement key recommendations from Sir James Dyson’s Review into how to achieve our goal of making Britain Europe’s leading hi-tech exporter, including:
- encouraging the establishment of joint university-business research and development institutes;
- initiating a multi-year Science and Research
- Budget to provide a stable investment climate for Research Councils;
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Create a more balanced economy
We will create the conditions for higher exports, business investment and saving as a share of GDP.
• creating a better focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths
(STEM) subjects in schools; and,
• establishing a new prize for engineering.
Research and development tax credits will be improved and refocused on hi-tech companies, small businesses and new start-ups. At the same time, we will give strong backing to the growth industries that generate high-quality jobs around the country.
We will improve the performance of UK Trade and Investment with a renewed focus on high priority sectors and markets where the return on taxpayers’ money is highest. We will regularly compare government support for exporters and inward investment against the services provided by our competitors.
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Boost small business
In the end, it is not the state that creates sustainable employment – it is business people. And small businesses are especially important to the UK’s economic recovery and to tackling unemployment. Government can help boost enterprise by lowering tax rates, reducing regulation and improving workers’ skills.
As well as stopping Labour’s jobs tax, for the first two years of a Conservative government any new business will pay no Employers National Insurance on the first ten employees it hires during its first year.
To support small businesses further, we will:
- make small business rate relief automatic; and,
- We will support would-be entrepreneurs through a new programme – Work for Yourself – which will give unemployed people direct access to business mentors and substantial loans.
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Improve skills and strengthen higher education
Developing economies are able to provide highly-skilled work at a fraction of the cost of British labour. The only way we can compete is by dramatically improving the skills of Britain’s workforce, yet thousands of young people leave school every year without the skills they need to get a good job.
A Conservative government will not accept another generation being consigned to an uncertain future of worklessness and dependency.
We will promote fair access to universities, the professions, and good jobs for young people from all backgrounds. We will use funding that currently supports Labour’s ineffective employment and training schemes, such as Train2Gain, to provide our own help for people looking to improve their skills. This will allow us to:
- create 400,000 work pairing, apprenticeship, college and training places over two years;
- give SMEs a £2,000 bonus for every apprentice they hire;
- establish a Community Learning Fund to help people restart their careers; and create a new all-age careers service so that everyone can access the advice they need.
To meet the skills challenge we face, the training sector needs to be given the freedom to innovate. We will set colleges free from direct state control and abolish many of the further education quangos Labour have put in place.
Public funding will follow the choices of students and be delivered by a single agency, the Further Education Funding Council.
Universities contribute enormously to the economy. But not all of this contribution comes directly – it can come from fundamental research with no immediate application – and universities also have a crucial cultural role.
We will ensure that Britain’s universities enjoy the freedom to pursue academic excellence and focus on raising the quality of the student experience. To enable this to happen, we will:
- delay the implementation of the Research Excellence Framework so that it can be reviewed – because of doubts about whether there is a robust and acceptable way of measuring the impact of all research;
- consider carefully the results of Lord Browne’s review into the future of higher education funding, so that we can unlock the potential of universities to transform our economy, to enrich students’ lives through teaching of the highest quality, and to advance scholarship; and,
- provide 10,000 extra university places this year, paid for by giving graduates incentives to pay back their student loans early on an entirely voluntary basis.
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The Conservative Party believes in lower and simpler taxation. That is why we will ensure that by far the largest part of the burden of dealing with the deficit falls on lower spending rather than higher taxes. Cutting the deficit is the most urgent task we need to undertake if we are to get the economy moving, but it is not enough. So, initially, we will cut the headline rate of corporation tax to 25p and the small companies’ rate to 20p, funded by reducing complex reliefs and allowances.
Encourage enterprise
We will improve Britain’s international rankings for tax competitiveness and business regulation.
Over time, we hope to reduce these rates further. Our ambition is to create the most competitive tax system in the G20 within five years.
We will restore the tax system’s reputation for simplicity, stability and predictability. In our first Budget, we will set out a five year road map for the direction of corporate tax reform, providing greater certainty and stability to
businesses. We will create an independent Office of Tax Simplification to suggest reforms to the tax system.
- We will take a series of measures to encourage Foreign Direct Investment into the UK, including:
- making the UK a more attractive location for multinationals by simplifying the complex Controlled Foreign Companies rules;
- consulting on moving towards a territorial corporate tax system that only taxes profits generated in the UK;
- and, creating an attractive tax environment for intellectual property.
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Spread prosperity
We want Britain to become a European hub for hi-tech, digital and creative industries – but this can only happen if we have the right infrastructure in place. Establishing a superfast broadband network throughout the UK could generate 600,000 additional jobs and add £18 billion to Britain’s GDP.
We will scrap Labour’s phone tax and instead require BT and other infrastructure providers to allow the use of their assets to deliver superfast broadband across the country. If necessary, we will consider using the part of the licence
fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.
We will give councils and businesses the power to form their own business-led local enterprise partnerships instead of RDAs. Where local councils and businesses want to maintain regionally-based enterprise partnerships, they will be able to.
Local government should be at the heart of our economic recovery, so we will allow councils to:
- keep above-average increases in business rate revenue so that communities which go for growth can reap the benefits;
- give councils new powers to introduce further discounts on business rates; and,
- introduce an immediate freeze of, and inquiry into, the Government’s punitive programme of back-dating business rates on ports.
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Philanthropy
Even in these difficult times, the British people have demonstrated their desire to give money and time to good causes. We will introduce new ways to increase philanthropy, and use the latest insights from behavioural economics to encourage people to make volunteering and community participation something they do on a regular basis.
The National Lottery
We will restore the National Lottery to its original purpose and, by cutting down on administration costs, make sure more money goes to good causes. The Big Lottery Fund will focus purely on supporting social action through the voluntary and community sector, instead of Ministers’ pet projects as at present. Sports, heritage and the arts will each see their original allocations of 20 per cent of good cause money restored.
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We will pay the student loan repayments for top Maths and Science graduates for as long as they remain teachers, by redirecting some of the current teacher training budget;
We will create 20,000 additional young apprenticeships and allow schools and colleges to offer workplace training;
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Curtail the Quango State
Under Labour, the quango state has flourished. Government figures show that there are over 700 unelected bodies spending £46 billion every year, but this does not even include the range of advisory bodies, public corporations, taskforces and regional government bodies that have sprung up under Labour. We believe that Ministers should be responsible for government policy, not unelected bureaucrats. Any quangos that do not perform a technical function or a function that requires political impartiality, or act independently to establish facts, will be abolished. To increase the scrutiny of quangos, we will:
- give Select Committees the right to hold confirmation hearings for major public appointments, including the heads of quangos; examine the case for giving Select Committees the power to prevent increases in quango budgets; and,
- ensure that the National Audit Office has full access to the BBC’s accounts.
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Make politics more local
We want to give individuals more direct control over how they are governed. So, mirroring our reforms at the national level, we will give residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue if 5 per cent of the local population sign up, and they will also be able to veto any proposed high council tax increases.
We will stop Labour’s plans to impose supplementary business rates on firms if a majority do not give their consent.
Nothing underlines the powerlessness that many communities feel more than the loss of essential services, like post offices and pubs, because of decisions made by distant bureaucrats. Our new ‘community right to buy’ scheme will give local people the power to protect any community assets that are threatened with closure. In addition, we will:
Give people a ‘right to bid’ to run any community service instead of the state; and, we will give democratically accountable local government much greater power to improve their citizens’ lives by:
- giving local councils a ‘general power of competence’, so that they have explicit authority to do what is necessary to improve their communities;
- ending ring-fencing so that funding can be spent on local priorities;
- scrapping the hundreds of process targets Labour have imposed on councils;
- ending the bureaucratic inspection regime that stops councils focusing on residents’ main concerns;
- scrapping Labour’s uncompleted plans to impose unwieldy and expensive unitary councils and to force the regionalisation of the fire service;
- ending the ‘predetermination rules’ that prevent councillors speaking up about issues that they have campaigned on; and,
- encouraging the greater use of ward budgets for councillors.
We have seen that a single municipal leader can inject dynamism and ambition into their communities. So, initially, we will give the citizens in each of England’s twelve largest cities the chance of having an elected mayor.
Big decisions should be made by those who are democratically accountable, not by remote and costly quangos. We will abolish the Government Office for London as part of our plan to devolve more power downwards to the London Boroughs and the Mayor of London. Decentralising control must go hand in hand with creating much greater transparency in local government. Power without information is not enough. We will implement fully the Sustainable Communities Act, and reintroduce the Sustainable Communities Act (Amendment) Bill as government legislation, to give people greater information on, and control over, what is being spent by each government agency in their area.
Our plans to decentralise power will only work properly if there is a strong, independent and vibrant local media to hold local authorities to account. We will sweep away the rules that stop local newspapers owning other local media platforms and create a new network of local television stations. And we will tighten the rules on taxpayer-funded publicity spending by town halls.
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City features
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, and home to 13,000 businesses, including some of Britain’s most successful firms. For example, eight of the ten largest insurance companies in the UK have an office in Glasgow, and the city is also home to leading technology, energy and creative businesses. Glasgow is the hub of an important entrepreneurial sector, which includes innovative start-ups in fields such as mobile telephony and computer games. Glasgow’s commercial strength also extends to manufacturing, and the city continues to be a
global leader in hi-tech ship building.
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Brighton and Hove is one of Britain’s most creative and diverse cities. The city hosts over 50 festivals each year, including England’s largest annual arts festival, and boasts some of the top live performance venues in the country. It is also home to a large number of creative industry companies, including some of Britain’s leading digital media businesses. Brighton and Hove also has the highest proportion of same-sex households of any city in the UK, and the annual Pride Festival attracts more than 120,000 visitors to the city each year.
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Manchester was the epicentre of the industrial revolution, and the first industrialised city in the world. Today, the city is a national symbol of successful urban regeneration. Over the past three decades, Manchester has undergone extensive urban renewal, transforming the city’s canals, mills and warehouses into vibrant new commercial, residential, and cultural spaces – including the creation of the Imperial War Museum North (pictured). As a result of this regeneration, Manchester is one of Britain’s most dynamic cities, and has been voted amongst the best places in the country to locate a business.
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