Politics

Lib Dem manifesto: What can they actually deliver?

Nick Clegg has set out proposals for a Lib Dem government. But given that there won't be one, which ideas will come to fruition?

September 08, 2014
Nick Clegg needs to think hard about what function his party serves © World Economic Forum
Nick Clegg needs to think hard about what function his party serves © World Economic Forum
Today, Nick Clegg announced  his party's “pre-manifesto.” This is a document full of policies which party high-ups think are a good idea. Party members will then vote on whether to include them in the final manifesto at their conference in October. It's likely that the party's eventual manifesto will look roughly similar.

But for the Liberal Democrats to issue a conventional manifesto at all seems odd, in a way. As Jim Waterson at BuzzFeed has pointed out in the past, if you're heading for a coalition, a firm manifesto pledge is basically meaningless. You can't be sure of what you will have the power to deliver. A coalition is a strong possibility in 2015, whatever the outcome, but Labour and the Tories can both reasonably claim that they might be running the country by themselves. The Lib Dems won't be.

So what can you draw from this 80-page package of liberal aspirations? What are the Lib Dems likely to be able to deliver? We take a look at a few key priorities.

A building spree

The Lib Dems say they will increase the rate of house building to 300,000 homes a year. On the surface, this is welcome; at the moment we manage around 150,000, and most estimates say we need to be doing about 250,000. 300,000, though, is a huge number—we haven't topped it since 1977, and that was with the kind of public sector house building no government would fund now. The Lib Dems propose a ministerial taskforce on the issue, will release plans for garden cities, and will work with local authorities and social housing providers to free up land and develop strategies, but it's still a tall order. Labour have promised to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020. In coalition with them, enthusiastic Lib Dems might succeed in dragging this up to something like 250,000. The Tories have been much quieter on housing, beyond some confused rumblings about garden cities. They will need to build more homes urgently if they get back in to power, but 300,000 homes is unlikely to happen under a Tory government for a while.

Verdict: Lib Dems might well lead any coalition housing agenda from 2015, but 300,000 a year is pie in the sky for now.

Tax breaks

The Lib Dems say they would raise the point at which people start paying income tax to £12,500. If they end up back in coalition with the Tories, that's pretty do-able. The current government has announced successive increases in this figure, called the personal allowance: in 2010/11, it was set at £6,475. It's now at £10,000 and is already set to jump up to £10,500 in 2015. The only problem the coalition has had recently on this is a feeling that, in his most recent announcement, George Osborne took all the credit for what was initially a Lib Dem policy. If the Lib Dems ended up crossing over to a Lib-Lab coalition, the chances are less clear, but it's certainly not impossible. Labour's policy to help out lower earners with their taxes is to lower the starting rate of income tax to 10p in the pound (it is currently 20p), rather than raising the personal allowance. But they've never spoken out strongly against personal allowance increases, so if a Lib Dem leader pushed for this in a coalition agreement, they might get it.

Verdict: Fairly likely

The children are the future

Child welfare has ben a big theme for the Lib Dems in recent months, and the pre-manifesto policy of giving free school meals to all primary school pupils is a continuation of the existing coalition policy to do the same for all four to seven year olds. Under a Lib-Con coalition, this could well happen—after all, David Cameron has allowed Clegg to go half-way already, and a Tory block on extending the plan further could be seen as an admission of failure so far. Labour would not necessarily be averse to the policy; Tristram Hunt, Labour's Shadow Education Secretary, has criticised the implementation of the existing policy, but hasn't condemned it in principle. The Lib Dems also say they will expand free childcare to all two year olds. On this, they differ in small but significant ways to the other parties (read Emran Mian on the details) and would struggle to get their policy taken on unless it was made a real red line in negotiations.

Verdict: Free school meals could become a reality, but don't hold your breath on childcare

The “green crap”

The Lib Dems propose five new laws on the environment, which will set targets on biodiversity, energy efficiency standards for homes, sustainable use of resources and waste disposal, carbon emissions and green transport. One of these, a pledge to “strengthen the Climate Change Act targets” (the 2008 Climate Change Act requires the government to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050) probably won't happen. We're already way off achieving the existing targets. The others vary in their likelihood, but given that the Tories have spent much of this parliament ditching the “green crap”—and the Lib Dems haven't done particularly well in resisting them—a Lib-Con coalition would certainly not be likely to deliver all of them, and could well deliver none. A recent Labour briefing on the environment was fairly limited and focused largely on flooding prevention—it's fair to say long term environmental change is not at the forefront of their pre-election rhetoric. Still, in the first flush of a new coalition, they might allow the Lib Dems a couple of their climate targets.

Verdict: About as likely as Cameron hugging any more huskies