Labour’s health and education plans impress region’s voters
SURVEY REVEALS SOME POLICIES IN CORBYN MANIFESTO ARE MOST POPULAR
Labour’s plans to increase education spending, stop hospital closures and introduce a £10 an hour minimum wage have found favour among voters in the North East.
A new survey found 42.9% of respondents in the region agreed with Labour’s plans to boost school budgets by £6billion a year.
The same proportion backed Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for a freeze on hospital closures.
It was the most support for any major policy pledge by any of the major parties.
A further 42.4% agreed with Labour’s planned £10 an hour minimum wage.
Labour’s education plans even found strong levels of support among people planning to vote for other parties.
Some 52.9% of people saying they plan to vote Lib Dem and 26.8% of would-be Conservative voters agree with the extra schools cash.
Among North East voters, the most popular Conservative election promise was recruiting 10,000 more mental health staff.
That was supported by 42.2% of people across the region.
Caps on energy prices (34.3%) and cutting immigration (31.7%) came next.
The Lib Dems’ most popular promise was extra education spending, while for the Green party it was scrapping tuition fees.
The results come as the Lib Dems made a range of pledges in their manifesto, including legalising cannabis and scrapping prison sentences for personal use of drugs.
The party says plans to create a legal market for the production and sale of the Class B drug would generate £1billion in revenue and would “break the grip of the criminal gangs and protect young people”.
Key pledges also include plans to decriminalise prostitution, which would allow police to dedicate more time to curbing people trafficking and grooming.
The wide-ranging document offers a number of promises to end discrimination, stating: “The rise in hate crime, the abuse of refugees, and the toxic rhetoric on immigration and about immigrants themselves is not the future Liberal Democrats want for Britain.
“We will not let campaigners for a hard Brexit pretend that racism and discrimination are a kind of patriotism.”
Vowing to retain the Human Rights Act and strengthen punishments for hate crime, the party also promised to allow 50,000 more Syrian refugees into Britain and to reopen the Dubs scheme for unaccompanied child refugees.
The Lib Dems would spend £300million to bolster local policing and require all police officers to wear body cameras to protect them and the public from abuses of power.
In the courts, the party pledged to clamp down on short prison sentences in favour of tough, non-custodial sentences, and to strengthen rights for victims.
Other measures include offering free sanitary products to schoolgirls and reviewing rules preventing gay men from donating blood.
The study, run in partnership with Google Surveys, was completed online by more than 8,000 people across the regions of England.