Free childcare and boost for schools in £50bn ‘Remain lift’
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT leader Jo Swinson yesterday unveiled plans for free childcare and legalised cannabis at the launch of the party’s General Election manifesto amid a slide in the polls.
She told an audience in Camden, north London, that Britain had wasted the past three-and-a- half years on Brexit, which the Lib Dems would halt and spend a so-called £50billion ‘Remain bonus’.
‘There is no form of Brexit that will be good for the future of our country. It would put our jobs at risk, hurt our NHS, reduce our environmental protection, threaten workers’ rights and make us less safe,’ she said. ‘Whether Brexit is done by Boris Johnson, or sorted by Jeremy Corbyn, they are both gambling with your future.’
The Lib Dems plan to licence cannabis and impose a duty they say could raise £1.49billion in five years and ‘break the grip’ of criminal gangs.
The party plans to provide 35 hours a week free childcare for all two- to fouryear-olds and give all adults £10,000 towards training through a ‘skills wallet’. Schools are earmarked for an emergency £4.6billion next year, with an extra 20,000 teachers in the next five years, and £11billion for mental health over the parliament. A tax on frequent flyers is also proposed.
It comes as the latest polling put the Lib Dems at 15 per cent, a fall from 23 per cent in a YouGov poll last month, forcing Ms Swinson to insist her style of leadership is not putting voters off. Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the Lib Dems ‘followed Labour and the Conservatives in promising big increases in investment spending’ but were ‘the only major party committed to reduce the national debt as a fraction of national income’.