It’s party conference season, and this week sees the turn of the Labour party setting out their stall ahead of a General Election in 2015 (or possibly earlier, if the cracks in the current coalition grow any wider).
Last week we looked at what the Lib Dems had to say about a higher personal allowance for those on the minimum wage. This week it is the turn of Labour to talk about pension taxation and free childcare.
One headline grabber already to emerge from the Labour party conference is the promise of 25 hours a week of free childcare for three and four year olds.
Working parents of three or four year old children would get access to this amount of free childcare each week, funded by an increase to the bank levy.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls would tax the banks to the tune of an additional £800m a year (ultimately paid for by banking customers and shareholders, such as you and me) in order to fund this free childcare promise.
Three and four year old children of working parents already receive 15 hours each week of free childcare, so the pre-election promise would see an additional 10 hours a week added.
It would only be available to households where all parents were in work, either single parents or couples.
On pensions, the Labour party have told interested parties to “watch this space”, with proposals for new reforms to pension taxation due out before the election.
They have already proposed a cut in the top rate of pensions tax relief, to 20%, for those earning more than £150,000 a year.
The statement today from shadow pensions minister Gregg McClymont has hinted they could go even further than this.
Watch this space, indeed.
