Election Fever Hots Up the HR Promises!

Interesting to note that every party is keen to secure the vote for their sector with promises for employees... here's a quick round up of the promises we have seen so far that will affect HR Departments if implemented:

Conservatives: 

• Create three million apprenticeships to be paid for by benefit cuts.  
• Raise the personal allowance - the point at which you start paying income tax - to £11,000 in April 2016 and then to £12,500 by 2020, which means that if you work on minimum wage for 30 hours you will pay no income tax.
• Recruit 5,000 more doctors
• In England, everyone would be able to see a GP seven days a week by 2020

Labour: 

• Guarantee a job for under 25s unemployed for over a year and adults unemployed for more than two years. As many young people to go on an apprenticeship as currently go to university by 2025. 
• Create a million new high technology, green jobs by 2025. 
• Ban "exploitative" zero hour contracts.  
• Double the amount of paid paternity leave available to new fathers from two to four weeks, and increase statutory paternity pay to £260 a week  
• Scrap married couples tax allowance.
•  Double the number of Sure Start childcare places to more than 118,000.
• Recruit 5,000 more healthcare workers to help patients stay in their homes and introduce new safety checks to identify people at risk of hospitalisation. 
• "Smarter" targets to reduce low-skilled migration but ensure university students and high-skilled workers are not deterred. 
• Employment agencies who only recruit abroad will be outlawed while the fines for employing illegal immigrants will be increased.
• Parents of primary school children would be guaranteed childcare from 8am to 6pm

Lib Dems: 

• An extra £1 an hour for the lowest paid apprentices. 
• Campaign to create a million more jobs.  
• Raise the personal allowance - the point at which you start paying income tax - to £11,000 in April 2016 and then to £12,500 by 2020.

SNP: 

• Introduce gender quotas on public boards. 
• Living wage "a central priority" in all Scottish government contracts. 
• Continue the 'small business bonus'.
• Reduce the number of senior managers in the NHS by 25% over the next parliament.
• Guaranteed free 30 hours of childcare a week for three and four-year-olds in Scotland, up from 16 hours

Plaid Cymru: 

• Provide rates relief for small businesses. 
• Increase the number and value of contracts from Welsh public bodies that go to firms within Wales.
• Pass a Military Wellbeing Act to promote and safeguard the physical and mental health and wellbeing of military personnel.

UKIP: 

• Allow firms to offer jobs to British workers first "without the fear of being sued for discrimination".  
• Increase the personal allowance to the level of full-time minimum wage earnings, about £13,500, by 2020.
• Greater emphasis on vocational education with new Apprenticeship Qualification Option.

Greens: 

• A national energy conservation scheme to create thousands of new jobs. 
• The party wants to create "sustainable jobs" and promotes more local production of food and goods.
• The party backs a Citizen's Income, a fixed amount to be paid to every individual, whether they are in work or not, to be funded by higher taxes on the better off and green levies. But in the short-term it would increase the minimum wage to £10 by 2020. 
• Ban zero hours contracts.
• Abolish the work capability assessment and restore the level of the former disability living allowance.