The Conservatives have pledged a further 2p cut to employee national insurance in their general election manifesto.
An additional 2 percentage points cut in employee national insurance would be made in a future Tory government, on top of the 2pp cut introduced in April, and the 2pp decrease implemented in January. It would take employees’ contributions down to 6% by 2027, half the rate it was last year.
The Tories have previously indicated that they want to abolish national insurance completely in the long term, and the manifesto includes a commitment to not raise the rate of income tax or VAT.
If it won the general election, the Conservative Party would also maintain the national living wage in each year of the next parliament at two-thirds of median earnings, and abolish the main rate of national insurance paid by the self-employed.
Conservative Party manifesto
Equality Act: Tories pledge to clarify sex and gender
The Conservative Party’s 2024 manifesto also reiterates pledges that have already been made by the current government, including giving working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week when their child reaches nine months old from September 2025; relocating 25,000 more civil servants out of London; and cutting government spending on external consultants and equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Under its plans to encourage more people into work and reform the welfare system, the party repeated its pledges to tighten how the benefits system assesses capability for work, overhaul the fit note process and remove benefits from claimants who refuse to take up suitable jobs after 12 months.
On skills, the Tories said they would create 100,000 more apprenticeships in England every year by the end of the next Parliament. This would be funded by closing university courses with the worst outcomes for students, and replacing A-levels and T-levels with a new Advanced British Standard qualification. The party would also introduce lifelong learning entitlement loans from the 2025 academic year to help adults upskill and retrain throughout their working lives.
Its plans for immigration include increasing the skilled worker salary and family income thresholds with inflation, requiring migrants to undergo a health check, and introducing a binding legal cap on migration that would be voted on in parliament every year.
Speaking at the manifesto launch at Silverstone today, prime minister Rishi Sunak said: “We will halve migration as we have halved inflation and then reduce it every single year.”
On the NHS, the Tories have pledged to recruit 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors by the end of the next parliament and deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030. There are also plans to “cut waste and bureaucracy” by reducing the number of managers in the NHS by 5,500.
Other pledges include include changing the Equality Act to define ‘sex’ as biological sex, and the recruitment of a further 8,000 neighbourhood police officers.
Tania Bowers, global public policy director at the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), said the policies announced will do little to improve productivity or the labour market.
“Plans to continue to push apprenticeships without heeding the advice of businesses and trade bodies such as APSCo is of concern. As we have highlighted, if apprenticeships are to be appropriate for the modern, more flexible world of work, then how they are run and funded needs to be reformed. Increasing the number of apprenticeships won’t bridge the gap in take up of these study routes,” she said.
“With the UK’s skills crisis growing, the planned cuts on immigration could be a blunt instrument for the economy. Regional assessments that are based on individual skill requirements should be considered in order to ensure the country’s labour market is dynamic and meets the evolving needs of businesses.”
CBI chief executive Rain Newton-Smith said: “Moves to reduce tax on workers and increase the number of apprenticeships are in isolation welcome – but both are areas where a more holistic approach could unlock the business investment needed to deliver the shared goal of a high-productivity, high-growth economy. ”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
