Labour Party manifesto: The key pledges, quotes and analysis

  • Video report by ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston

Jeremy Corbyn officially launched the Labour manifesto titled "It's time for real change", promising to "transform the UK".

What are the manifesto's key pledges?

The Labour manifesto promises to deliver the "most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country in decades”.

The 105-page document contains a host of already-announced policy proposals, along with a smattering of debut measures.

It makes pledges to invest vast sums into the UK's infrastructure, nationalise major sectors of rail, mail, water and energy, and also to have a second referendum on Brexit.

Here is an at-a-glance look at the manifesto.

Re-negotiate Brexit deal and have a 'final say' EU referendum

Mr Corbyn wants to re-negotiate a new withdrawal agreement with the European Union by March and put his deal to a public vote within six months of the election.

The referendum would be “legally binding” and implemented “immediately”.

The hefty list of proposals does not commit to keeping free movement, even if the public voted to Remain, simply acknowledging the benefits of immigration.

State ownership of rail, mail and water

The remit of the State would be massively extended under Labour, with intentions to bring back rail, mail, water and energy into public ownership and delivering full-fibre broadband, via a publicly owned company, free to everyone in the country.

Public sector workers would also see an immediate 5% boost in pay, with year-on-year above-inflation pay rises to follow.

Eliminate zero hours contracts

A commitment has been made to introduce a “real living wage” of at least £10-an-hour while ending zero hours contracts and strengthening trade union rights.

Under a Labour administration, Ofsted and SATS tests at Key Stage 1 and 2 would be scrapped. Credit: PA

Abolish university tuition fees

Under a Labour administration, Ofsted and SATS tests at Key Stage 1 and 2 would be scrapped, while power over the running of schools would be returned to councils and head teachers, rather than academy bosses.

Labour has promised to re-invest in technical training.

For early years, the party has pledged to provide 30 hours of free childcare to all pre-school aged youngsters and has guaranteed a Sure Start centre in every community.

In higher education, the 2017 vow to get rid of university tuition fees is back and maintenance grants would be returned but there was no mention of clearing graduate debt.

Aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030

The leadership as set out proposals for a so-called “green industrial revolution” that is designed to create one million jobs in the UK, with the aim of shifting industry, home gas and electricity, transport, agriculture and construction onto renewable energy modes.

The manifesto stops short, however, of signing up to the motion passed at the party conference of establishing a net-zero carbon economy by 2030.

Instead, it states a Labour government would “aim to achieve the substantial majority of our emissions reductions” by that target date.

The leadership as set out proposals for a so-called 'green industrial revolution' Credit: PA

Abolish Universal Credit

Universal Credit, the two-child limit for benefits and the welfare cap would all be for the cutting floor, if Labour wins power next month.

For women impacted by the change in pension age to 66, Labour has promised to review the retirement age “for physically arduous and stressful occupations”, with a focus on shift workers.

Recruit 22,000 police officers

Labour has committed to recruiting 22,000 more police officers – 2,000 more than Boris Johnson.

There would also be a royal commission established to look at de-criminalising drugs.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a building site in Carlisle Credit: Owen Humphreys/PA

Boost NHS spending

The NHS would see a 4.3% increase in its expenditure every year, with privatisation reversed.

Free annual dental care check-ups would be re-introduced, mental health services would receive £1.6 billion extra a year and free personal care for elderly people would be on offer.

Build 150,000 new homes a year

A spree of house building, the largest since the 1960s, features in the final version of the manifesto, with a £75 billion plan to construct 150,000 homes a year, with 100,000 of them built by councils.

Non-homeowners would see rental caps and open-ended tenancies, under a Corbyn-led administration.

A £1 billion fire safety fund would be introduced to fit sprinklers and other safety measures in council and housing association tower blocks to avoid a repeat of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

ITV News Analysis: What stands out from the Labour pledges?

Politicians live in fear of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Labour’s last manifesto, in 2017, barely survived first contact with the IFS’s economists who pointed to basic accounting errors and overly-optimistic assumptions.

Labour's latest offering, “a manifesto of hope”, needed to pass a key credibility test.

The scale of spending Labour proposes is colossal, even by the standards of 2017.

Hundreds of billions of pounds of extra public investment, paid for by borrowing. Enormous day to day spending increases paid for by tax rises of a similar magnitude.

Labour has clearly made an effort to present robust numbers and explain the thinking that lies behind them but the IFS still highlights credibility problems.

Labour is promising a spending boom that will benefit the many and is financed by the few. By the end of the next parliament a Labour government plans to raise an extra £83 billion from companies and those earning over £80,000 a year.

Labour suggests that 95% of the UK population will be insulated for any of the tax increases. The IFS thinks otherwise.

”That is simply not credible,” the head of the IFS, Paul Johnson.

“You can't raise that kind of money in our tax system without affecting other individuals.

"Obviously corporate tax affects individuals anyway, someone has to pay that tax, but if you are looking at transforming society, which Labour Party is absolutely upfront about doing, then you need to pay for it and it can’t be someone else who pays for it, we collectively need to pay for it.”

Jeremy Corbyn is promising to 'transform' the UK. Credit: PA

Labour pledges 'green industrial revolution' with nuclear power and a digging over of allotment laws

The environment gets top billing in Labour’s manifesto.

The first chapter of their 150 pages of policy pledges is devoted to what Labour are calling a "Green Industrial Revolution".

While they’ve conspicuously dropped a conference pledge of a net zero carbon target by 2030, which most serious analysts warned was impossible to achieve anyway, like the Liberal Democrats andGreen Parties they’re planning to borrow big to invest in a low carbon economy.

There’s a £250bn "Green Transformation Fund" to massively increase low carbon energy generation, warmer, lower carbon homes and promises to decarbonise heating in buildings — much needed if the UK is going to meet its existing climate change pledges.

In a notable departure from Liberal Democrat and Green manifestos, they promise to support nuclear power as a way of ensuring stable electricity supply on a future national grid dominated by wind and solar.

The key quotes from the Labour leadership

The Labour leader said his manifesto - titled "It's time for real change" - was full of popular policies that the political establishment had "blocked for decades".

"Over the next three weeks they will tell you that everything in this manifesto is impossible because they do not want real change in this country," he said.

He said the system was "rigged in their favour - but it's not working for you".

He said: "One third of Britain's billionaires donated to the Conservatives - the billionaires, the super-rich, the tax dodgers, the bad bosses, the big polluters, they own the Conservative Party ... but they don't own us."