General election: Labor vows to take on 'bad bosses and tax dodgers' – live news – The Guardian, Google News

• Jeremy Corbynhaslaunched Labor’s youth manifesto– called The Future is Ours – in Loughborough.The documentcommits the party to giving 16 – year-olds the right to vote, and to investing an additional £ 250 m to build up to 500 new youth centers.

• Earlier in the dayCorbyn and shadow employment rights secretary,Laura Pidcock,vowed to take on “bad bosses and tax dodgers” at an event to highlight the party’s “fair tax program” outside an Amazon warehouse in Sheffield. The party has pledged to tackle tax dodging by introducing unitary taxation of multinationals to stop tax avoiding profit shifting.

• The health secretary,Matt Hancock,has ruled outscrapping GP home visits after doctors backed the idea in a vote, arguing that they were too over-stretched to deliver the service. Delegates representing GPs across England at a British Medical Association conference voted to try to remove the duty from their standard contract, after complaints that they were wasting time driving around the country.

• The Conservative partyhas pledgedmore than £ 1.6bn for research to find a cure for dementia over the next decade, which it says represents the largest boost to dementia research ever in the UK, doubling current funding levels.

The Press Association has comments fromJo Swinsonfrom her campaign visit to London’s Design Museum this morning, where highlighted her party’s policies on innovation and technology.

She told the news agency:

I think it is quite astonishing thatJeremy Corbynis refusing to say … not even just refusing to say now where he stands on remaining or leaving the European Union, but is basically saying that he is never going to tell people what he thinks about that.

I mean, this is the biggest issue facing our country for generations and he is just saying he is not interested in telling people what he thinks. To me, I think that is a total absence of leadership. Remainers in this country need a leader, not a bystander.

Asked about her performance in last night’s BBCQuestion Timeprogram, she said:

I’m very proud of standing up for what I believe in. I think it’s important to have that authenticity in politics. And I have had a lot of good feedback and I look forward to future opportunities to discuss issues with the public.

She said it was up to others to decide if they thought she had been given a tougher time than the other leaders, but added:

I understand that it was according to the MPs at the last general election, which doesn’t reflect how we are currently in the opinion polls.

There have been a string of complaints from Lib Dem politicians about the make-up of last night’s audience, including this from MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton:

Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP🔶(@ agcolehamilton)

BBC confirm that the# bbcqt# LeadershipDebateaudience was stacked based on current party representation in the commons ie numbers of MPs. So there were effectively 2 Lib Dem’s in that room.@ joswinsonhandled it with grace & passion. Sustained pressure but she didn’t buckle once.

November , 2019

That’s it from Labor’s youth manifesto launch. You can readthe full document here.

The party has announced an additional £ 1bn in annual revenue expenditure for youth services.Laboranalysis of government figures shows that spending on youth services has reduced by £ 1bn (73 %) since 2010. The party says it would double the annual capital expenditure for youth services that the government has committed to, investing an additional £ 250 m to build up to 500 new youth centers.

Among Labor’s pledges aimed to get young voters on side are –

· Votes at 16 and automatic voter registration

· An end to tuition fees and bringing back maintenance grant

· Free bus travel for under 25 s

· Banning unpaid internships

· Reforming Help to Buy to focus it on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes

He concludes:

A Labor government that will deliver for all people in the future is a prize within our grasp, but it’s not going to be handed to us on a plate. You’ve seen the attacks we’re getting in some of the billionaire media at the moment. You’re seen all that stuff that’s thrown at us. But, I tell you what, don’t do personal, don’t reply, just relentlessly go out there with the policies we’ve got, the determination we’ve got to put them into operation, and then, in the cold misery of a wet November and December, you’ll get a red Christmas and a great spring with aLaborgovernment.

Chants of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” and selfies ensue.

Corbyn says he is proud that the UK parliament declared a climate emergency, but “declaring it is not the same as doing something about it”. He says that it is important to get to net-zero emissions as quickly as possible.

He adds that the job opportunities created in bringing emissions down are huge.Laborcalculates 300, 000 green energy jobs will be created.

The campaign has been framed as the Brexit election, says Corbyn, but it is also about health, housing and education.

He repeats his argument that under aLaborgovernment the “NHS is not for sale” in post-Brexit trade negotiations with the US , prompting chants of “not for sale, not for sale” from the audience.

TheLaborleader is talking about his visit to an Amazon warehouse in Sheffield earlier today, where he launched the party’s proposals for cracking down on tax avoidance.

“I want to make it very, very clear, under a Labor government there will be a few things done differently,” he says. They will end zero hours contracts “end of story”, every worker will have full-rights from day one, they will end non-dom status and tax people where they make their money.

He says their proposals are not “anti-business” because there are lots of small businesses that do pay their taxes and they are focusing on the biggest businesses.

Corbyn adds: “It’s a people-powered manifesto, in a people-powered party, in a people-powered campaign to win this election.”

Corbyn is up on stage. He says there are two weeks to get people to register to vote and then to get them to voteLabor. He says there are 9m people still not registered.

Corbyn says he enjoyed last night’s grilling from people in Sheffield. “I am very very happy to take questions from anybody, on anything, any time, any place. We have nothing to hide, ”he says.

The latest polling,from Panelbase, has the Conservative party lead over Labor narrow to 10 points. The survey has the Tories on 42%, down one point from the pollster’s survey last week, with Labor on 32%, up 2 points. The Lib Dems were on 14%, down one point, and the Brexit party down two points to 3%.

You can keep up to date with the most recent polling with our tracker here:

The Green party’s co-leaderJonathan Bartleyappeared on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Saturday this morning, where he warned that the climate emergency could kill more people than the second world war:

It’s an existential threat. 55 m people died in the second world war, the threat of a climate emergency is much, much bigger than that. There is no real bigger threat except of course for nuclear weapons.

On Prince Andrew’s decision to withdraw from public life, he said:

I think there are still questions that are unanswered. I don’t think just Andrew withdrawing from public life is a solution. The point here is the victims who are at the center of this, the survivors of abuse. No one should be above the questions and these questions need to be put and this is no substitute, no alternative.

Former prime ministerGordon Brownis to claim removingBoris Johnsonfrom Number 10 is the first step in restoring “common decency” and moving the UK forward, the PA Media reports.

He’ll be speaking today at threeLaborcampaign events across Scotland – in Fife, South Lanarkshire and East Lothian.

He will highlight figures that show there are 121, 925 children in working families north of the border living in poverty.

The UK is already torn apart by Brexit, divisive nationalisms, a north-south divide and the crude trolling of vulnerable people of all sides.

We are so disunited we have lost sight of a once-compassionate, state-guaranteed safety net and seem unable to work together – even to come to the aid of vulnerable children …

A caring nation would increase child benefit substantially, raise the child credit, end the withdrawal of benefits from three and four-child families and guarantee that there is always enough housing benefit in place to pay rent.