Labour’s ‘tax on mansions’ will fund NHS recruitment drive

In his final party conference speech before the general election, the Opposition leader said creating a “world class” health and social care system was one of the six main goals in his 10-year plan to restore the UK’s fortunes.

A “Time to Care” fund would be created to tackle shortages that have left wards and surgeries dangerously understaffed, and transform a “creaking” home care system, he pledged.

Its first priority will be the recruitment of 20,000 nurses, 8,000 GPs, 3,000 midwives and 5,000 care workers, as part of a wider shift to a more integrated health and care system proposed by the party.

The cash will come from a new annual “mansion tax” on £2 million-plus homes, a US-style levy on cigarette manufacturers and a promise to find ways to close tax loopholes that the party says cost the Treasury £1.1 billion.

“We won’t borrow a penny to do it,” he told the gathering in Manchester where shadow chancellor Ed Balls yesterday warned activists that austerity would continue under Labour - including a fresh squeeze on child benefit.

“And we won’t do it by raising taxes on everyday working people.”

Instead those paying for the improvement would be tax-dodging hedge funds, tobacco giants “who make soaring profit on the back of ill health” and those wealthy enough to own large homes, he said.

“Doing it together means everyone playing their part to help fund our NHS.

“The stakes are incredibly high in this election. But nowhere more than on the NHS.

“The NHS is sliding backwards under this Government. They are privatising and fragmenting it. Just think what it would look like after five more years.

“It is not safe in their hands.

“We built the NHS. We saved the NHS. We will repeal their Health and Social Care Bill and we will transform the NHS for the future.”

Mr Miliband stressed the party’s commitment to fiscal discipline, insisting a “world class” country can be achieved without “big spending”.

Mr Balls received a muted reaction to his own speech as he set out plans to extend real-terms cuts to child benefit until at least 2017.

The Labour pair continue to trail David Cameron and George Osborne by some distance over the key election issue of who can be trusted to run the economy.

But Mr Miliband sought to paint a brighter longer-term picture - suggesting Britain was so damaged it will take Labour a decade to fix it and laid out a series of goals the party would aim to achieve by the end of a second term.

Doubling the number of first-time buyers to 400,000 a year, boosting apprenticeship take-up until it matches the number going to university, halving the number of low-paid workers and creating a million new “green” technology jobs also form part of his “national mission”.

In a direct riposte to the Government’s much-vaunted “long-term economic plan”, Mr Miliband said he wanted to “restore people’s faith in the future” with his own “plan for Britain’s future”.

“’Can anyone build a better future for the working people of Britain?’ That is the general election question,” he said.

“Our task is to restore people’s faith in the future.

“I’m not talking about changing a policy, or simply a different programme.

“But something that is bigger: transforming the idea, the ethic, of how our country is run.

“Strip away all of the sound and fury and what people across England, Scotland and Wales, across every part of the UK, are saying is this country doesn’t care about me. Politics doesn’t listen. The economy doesn’t work.

“And they are not wrong. They are right. But this Labour Party has a plan to put it right.

“For Labour, this election is about you. You have made the sacrifices, you have taken home lower wages year after year, you have paid higher taxes, you have seen your energy bills rise, you have seen your NHS decline, you know this country doesn’t work for you.

“We can build that better future for you and your family, wherever you live in the United Kingdom, and this speech is about Labour’s plan to do it: Labour’s plan for Britain’s future.”

He hailed his conference-opening pledge to raise the minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020 as the best way of “rewarding the talents of all”.

Setting out the plans to double the numbers getting on the housing ladder - partly through a pledge to be building 200,000 new homes a year by 2020 - he said property ownership is “that most British of dreams” but that it had “faded” for too many young people priced out of the market.

He called for a “revolution in apprenticeships” to ensure as many school leavers go into one as now go on to study for a degree.

At present four times as many go to university, “leaving both young people and businesses without the skills they need to succeed for the future”, he will add.

There would be action to tackle the “modern injustice” of self-employed people lacking pensions and being refused mortgages, he said.

And ensuring the UK caught up with countries such as Germany, Japan, the United States, India and China in creating jobs in green technology was “the most important thing I can do in politics for the future of my kids and their generation,” he said.

Mr Miliband made a point of thanking former Prime Minister Gordon Brown for his role in securing a No vote in the Scottish referendum - after leaving him out of a list of thank-yous on stage yesterday.

He also delivered a pledge to Scotland: “This Labour party will show you over the coming years that you made the right choice, because we are better together.

“All political leaders, all of us in this hall have a responsibility to try to explain why 45% of people voted yes - 45% wanted to break up our country.”

Mr Miliband said he had met a cleaner called Josephine during the campaign. “I don’t know how Josephine voted in the referendum, but I do know that the question that she was asking - is anyone going to make life better for me and my family - it isn’t just Josephine’s question, it is the question that people are asking right across Britain ...

“That wasn’t just the referendum question, that is the general election question.”

Mr Miliband said he was not talking about the wealthy who “do well whatever the weather” but families who are “treading water, working harder and harder just to stay afloat”.

The Labour leader said: “For Labour this election is about you.

“You have made the sacrifices. You have taken home lower wages year after year. You have paid higher taxes. You have seen your energy bills rise and your NHS decline.

“You know this country does not work. My answer is we can build a better future for you and your family and this speech is about Labour’s plan to do it - Labour’s plan for Britain’s future.”

Mr Miliband said a silent majority has said they wanted Britain to endure but that things needed to change.

He recounted an anecdote with a young woman in a pub near where he lived, who did not go to college but worked her way from cleaning dishes to becoming a chef.

Mr Miliband said: “Her life is incredibly tough - and by the way, she thinks politics is rubbish.

“What does she see in politics? She sees drifts. She doesn’t think we can solve her problems and we have got to prove her wrong.”

The Labour leader added: “I think there is something almost even more important about country - people have lost faith in the future.”

Mr Miliband recounted a further anecdote about two young women in a park he met near his home.

“One of them said something which really stuck with me,” he said.

“She said this, she said ‘my generation is falling into a black hole’.

“She said about her parents’ generation, ‘they have had it so good and now there is nothing left for us’.

“She was not just speaking for herself, she was speaking for millions of people across our country, millions of people who have lost faith in the future.”

Mr Miliband added: “So many people, friends, across our country feel this way. They feel the country doesn’t work for them and they have lost that faith in the future.

“Our task is to restore people’s faith in the future - not by breaking up our country but by breaking with the old way of doing things.

“By breaking with the past. I’m not talking about a different policy or a different programme, I’m talking about something much bigger - I’m talking about a different idea, a different ethic for the way our country succeeds.

“You might think in England, Scotland, Wales, across the United Kingdom what people are actually saying to us is this country doesn’t care about me, our politics doesn’t listen, our economy doesn’t work, and they are not wrong they are right.

“This Labour Party is going to put it right.”

Mr Miliband said Britain could no longer carry on with just a “tiny minority at the top doing well” where a “circle that is closed to most” is blind to the concerns of the majority.

The Labour leader said it sent a message to people that they were on their own.

“It’s working people who are made to bear the burden of anxiety, precariousness and insecurity, he said. “They’ve been told ‘you’re on your own’.

“So many young people who don’t have the privileges think their life is going to be worse than their parents’. They’ve been told ‘you’re on your own’.

“So many small businesses are struggling against forces more powerful than themselves. They’ve been told ‘you’re on your own’.”

Mr Miliband said people had lost faith in the system and that is why so many people had voted in favour of independence in the Scottish referendum.

He added: “Is it any wonder? The deck is stacked. The game is rigged in favour of those who have all the power.

“In eight months’ time, we are going to call time on this way of running the country because ‘you’re on your own’ doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for your family, it doesn’t work for Britain.

“Together we can restore faith in the future, together we can build a better future for the working people of Britain. Together we can rebuild Britain. Together we can.”

Mr Miliband said teamwork was “the ethic of the 21st century”.

“If the ethic of the 20th century was hierarchy, order, planning, control, the talents of a few, the ethic of the 21st century is cooperation, everybody playing their part, sharing the rewards, the talents of all.

“It is time we ran the country like we know it can be run.”

But, in an attack on the Conservatives, he said David Cameron’s party was “the best example of the ‘you’re on your own’, ‘rig the system for the powerful’ insecure throwback dogma”.

Struggling families, low-paid workers, people on zero-hours contracts, those worried about rail fares and payday lenders were all being told “you’re on your own” by a party which said “intervening would be like Venezuela”, he said.

“They say they don’t believe in Government intervention. Really?

“Of course they do because if you’re a millionaire seeking a tax cut you’re certainly not going to be on your own,” he told activists - along with bankers worried about bonuses and energy firms concerned about profits.

“And if you are a Conservative-supporting, gold-mining, luxury hotel-owning, Putin award-winning Russian oligarch and you have £160,000 to spare to bid in an auction, you won’t be on your own. You’ll be on the tennis court playing doubles with David Cameron. That’s all you need to know about this Government.”

Mr Miliband said the British public had endured five years of sacrifice under Mr Cameron’s Government and zero years of success.

He said its record was not just mediocre, but “one of the worst ever”.

The Labour leader went on: “A Tory economy is always an economy for the few because that is who they care about, that is the basis on which they think a country succeeds. So the past with this Government is a good guide to the future - your family worse-off.

“You can’t afford to take that risk. The British people can’t afford another five years of David Cameron.”

Mr Miliband told delegates he had an idea for Mr Cameron who, he sai,d liked surfing, playing the computer game Angry Birds and playing tennis with Russian oligarchs.

He said: “Why don’t we give him all the time in the world to do all these things come next May and let’s send him into opposition?”