Manifesto week: Labour's "Budget Responsibility Lock" #GE2015

Pic credit: Labour Party

By Dan Whitehead, @danwnews

It is manifesto week. First up, Labour leader Ed Miliband revealed his party's list of pledges with a little over three weeks until polls open.

The full manifesto is here, but the highlights include:

• Scraping zero-hours contracts
• Scrapping nom-dom tax status
• Freezing energy bills
• Freezing rail fares for 2016
• Reducing university tuition fees to £6000 per year
• Raising minimum wage to £8+ per hour
• Pledges to not increase basic or higher rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT

Central to Labour's manifesto is a "budget responsibility lock", a promise that any commitments made would require no additional borrowing. Ed Miliband was at pains to point out his "triple lock" budget in contrast to what he sees as gaps in how the Conservative's would pay for plans to increase NHS spending and increase the 40% tax threshold and tax-free threshold.

Labour's "Lock" made page number 1 of the manifesto. Clearly an attempt to demonstrate how series Ed Miliband is on the economy and repair Labour's credibility over the issue. It's a point repeatedly attacked by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Many will not forget when he "forgot" to mention it in his speech at the Labour Party conference last year. 

All parties have repeatedly broken promises made in manifestos, so will people believe them this time round, or even take a glance at them? With a hung parliament on the cards, manifesto pledges could mean very little indeed once a coalition is formed and compromises need to be made. Matt Dathan writes an interesting take on whether manifestos are worth the paper they're written on for the Independent.

Tuesday will see David Cameron launch the Conservative's manifesto, with the Green Party, Lib Dems and UKIP publishing theirs on Wednesday.