General Election: Confused.com?

I don't know about anyone else but as time marches on towards the election next week I'm still no closer to deciding which way I am going to vote. In fact, the more I read or watch about it, the more confused I get. It doesn't help that I am not keen on any of the potential leaders and neither do I firmly agree with any one party's policies.

One thing is certain, I will vote. It's something I am passionate about and it's also important to me that my children grow up knowing the importance of exercising their right to vote, more so as a female as it was a long hard battle to gain the right. I don't think anybody should take it for granted and the poor turn-out figures every time there is an election, general or otherwise, always gets me a little angry. People are happy to sit and moan about the government but not actually take ten minutes out of their day to put a cross on a piece of paper?

I could witter on about all the main issues however in the interest of keeping this blog post relatively short, I'll stick to four issues that directly affect me. That's not to say the others don't, of course they do however these are probably the ones I am most interested in. I've also gone a step further and included the Green Party along with the three main parties as people seem to really rate them.

The stand out issues for me are family, education and health. The economy is another huge issue for all of us but perhaps that deserves it's own blog post. Lets compare the policies of the parties.

Family

Conservative

• End tax credits for families earning over £50,000
• Let parents share maternity leave
• Recognise marriage in the tax system by allowing adults who are married or in a civil partnership to transfer up to £750 of their tax-free personal allowance to their spouse, as long as the higher-income member of the couple is a basic-rate taxpayer
• End government contributions to Child Trust Funds for all but the poorest third of families and families with disabled children
• End the "couple penalty" for all couples in the tax credit system
• Re-focus SureStart on the "neediest" families
• Provide 4,200 more health visitors
• Support free nursery care for pre-school children, from a range of private and public providers
• Extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of 18.

Labour

• Reject Conservative plans to "recognise" marriage in the tax system
• Protect the Child Trust Fund
• Aim to end child poverty by 2020
• Increase free nursery hours to 15 hours a week for three- and four-year-olds
• Provide nursery places for 20,000 two-year-olds in the most deprived areas by 2012
• Provide two extra outreach workers for 1,500 SureStart community support centres in most disadvantaged areas
• Fund two parenting advisers in every local authority
• Pioneer mutual federations running groups of local children's centres
• Guarantee primary school pupils childcare from 8am until 6pm in term-time at school to help working parents
• Double paid paternity leave to four weeks
• Continue to provide nine months of paid maternity leave, but no extension to 12 months
• Allow mothers to share maternity leave with fathers after six months
• Give parents of one- and two-year-olds an extra £4 a week in Child Tax Credit for each child from 2012.

Liberal Democrats

• Allow parents to share maternity leave, and extend it to 18 months when resources allow
• Give fathers the right to time off for ante-natal appointments
• Extend the right to request flexible working to all employees, not just parents and carers
• Fix the payments of tax credits for six months at a time so that payments are stable and predictable
• "restrict" tax credits to "those who need them most"
• End government payments into Child Trust Funds
• Maintain the commitment to end child poverty in the UK by 2020.

Green Party

• Scrap child tax credits, but double child benefit
• Spend £1bn a year on enhancing and expanding Sure Start Children’s Centres
• Introduce more generous maternity and paternity leave
• Work towards a 35-hour working week
• Open up full civil marriage to same-sex partners
• Ensure legal parity for parents and those wishing to become parents regardless of sexual orientation
• Oppose all opt-outs from equality and anti-discrimination laws for religious organisations.

My thoughts on the above? I think the Green Party are in cloud cuckoo land. I support the Liberal Democrat's stance on Child Trust Funds - a complete waste of time, effort and money. Ours are worth hardly anything, they decrease every year and I am so glad we never topped them up. A very irresponsible initiative I think. I also agree with giving fathers time off for appointments however I do not agree in extending maternity leave. Labour's policies - they want to stick with the CTF but as above, I think it should go. Increase free nursery hours to 15 per week, my son is getting that from September anyhow so I am a little confused by that one. I'm happy with their maternity leave arrangements but a bit indifferent about paternity leave. I'm just not sure it's wholly necessary. I like the childcare for pre and after school, that would certainly help out a lot of people but there is a lot of things that just sound like job creation which is what Labour are good at - like the parenting advisers and mutual federations. I don't agree with the Conservative's policy of ending tax credits for those earning over £50,000. I don't think a household earning over £50k is always particularly comfortable? Especially when you add in the cost of houses, the cost of living these days and childcare. I really don't think we need thousands more health visitors? Most people I know have found them next to useless and I don't think there is any need to extend flexible working for parents of children under 18.

Education

Conservative

• Allow charities, parent and teacher groups, and co-operatives to establish Academies - schools which are state funded but independent of local authority control
• Allow every existing school - including primaries - to seek Academy status
• Force schools that are in special measures for more than a year to be taken over immediately by a successful Academy provider
• Give local parents the chance to take over schools threatened by closure
• Create a Pupil Premium, giving more money to schools that teach the poorest children
• Raise teacher training entry requirements
• Allow state schools to offer the same international exams as private schools
• Keep Key Stage 2 tests but make them more rigorous
• Make it easier for teachers to use "reasonable force" to deal with violence
• Give head teachers power to pay "good" teachers more
• Scrap exclusions appeals process
• Create 10,000 extra university places in 2010 and 400,000 work pairing, apprenticeship, college and training places over two years
• Give bonuses for early repayment of student loans
• Consider forthcoming findings of Browne Review of higher education funding.

Labour

• Increase "frontline" spending on Sure Start, childcare, schools and 16-19 learning, but at a slower rate than in recent years
• Continue roll-out of Academies independent of local authority control
• Increase free nursery hours to 15 hours a week fro three- and four-year-olds
• Give pupils legal guarantees of a quality education, including extra maths and English tuition for all 7 to 11 year olds who fall behind
• Introduce "licence to practice" for teachers
• Offer £10,000 'golden handcuffs' to attract the best teachers to the "most challenging" schools
• Give parents the power to trigger a ballot on whether to bring in new leadership team from a proven provider if they are unhappy with their school's performance
• Encourage schools to pool budgets in school chains, allowing stronger schools to raise standards in weaker schools
• Introduce school "report cards", which would rate schools on a wide range of data, including exam performance, behaviour and parents' and children's views of a school
• Introduce Local Pupil Premium, forcing local authorities to pass on extra funding to schools teaching the poorest pupils
• Reject a return to the 11-plus
• Give all secondary school pupils a "Personal Tutor of Studies"
• Compulsory sex and relationship education for secondary school pupils
• Guarantee a place in education or training for all 16 and 17 year olds
• Expand apprenticeships by up to 70,000 a year
• Retain tuition fees for higher education, and consider Lord Browne's forthcoming higher education funding review.

Liberal Democrats

• Replace Academies with "Sponsor Managed Schools", to be run by educational charities and private providers, but under local authority control, not Whitehall
• Provide £2.5bn for a "Pupil Premium" for schools teaching the poorest pupils
• Replace National Curriculum with a Minimum Curriculum Entitlement to allow teachers more flexibility
• Create a General Diploma made up of GCSEs, A-Levels and vocational qualifications
• "scale back" Key Stage 2 tests at age 11
• Create an Education Standards Authority to monitor school standards independent of government
• Increase apprenticeship numbers, and places on university and vocational higher education courses
• Scrap the target of 50% of young people attending university
• Scrap university tuition fees over six years
• Guarantee Special Educational Needs (SEN) assessments for all 5-year-olds.

Green Party

• Spend £500 million on 15,000 more teachers to get class sizes down to an average of 20 pupils within five years
• Abolish SATs and league tables
• Establish a system of self-evaluation for schools, monitored by local education authorities
• Create a programme for private schools to "assimilate voluntarily" into the state sector, removing their charitable status
• Give children with disabilities and special educational needs the opportunity to attend their local school
• Require all schools to embrace a multi-faith perspective
• Abolish the Academy Schools programme
• Provide free school meals for all
• Expand pre-school provision
• "phase in" the abolition of university tuition fees and provide students with grants for living expenses.

Again I'm not sure that the Green Party are quite on the same planet. Forcing all schools to be multi-faith? Reducing class sizes to 20 - just where are they going to get the £500 million for that? I have similar views on the Liberal Democrats - I'm not sure why ALL children would need SEN assessments? I don't find much to disagree or agree with on Labour's policies, there is nothing radical there but the Conservatives leave me baffled in some areas. I'm not sure why schools that teach poorer children need more money? Perhaps I am missing something.

Health

Conservative

• Increase health spending in real terms every year to 2015
• Replace 'process' targets, such as maximum time before seeing a cancer specialist, with 'outcome' targets, such as number of people dying from cancer
• Ensure all hospitals become Foundation Trusts
• Put performance data online
• Allow patients to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards
• Implement a 'payment for results' system throughout NHS
• Link GPs' pay to results
• Ensure that every patient can access a GP in their area between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week
• Introduce a single phone number for every kind of urgent care
• Cut the cost of NHS administration by a third
• Create an independent NHS board
• End mixed-sex wards
• Increase the number of single rooms in hospitals
• Give one million more people access to an NHS dentist
• Allow retirees to prevent their homes from being sold to fund residential care costs by paying a one-off premium of £8,000 at retirement
• Reject any proposals to fund care by levying charge on elderly people’s estates after death.

Labour

• Protect "frontline" NHS from spending cuts
• Ensure all hospitals become foundation trusts and allow successful foundation trusts to take over failing hospitals
• Guarantee cancer patients will see a specialist within two weeks of diagnosis and get test results within one week
• Give patients requiring elective care the legal right to choose from any provider who meets NHS standards of quality at NHS costs
• Offer everyone between 40 and 74 free, five-yearly NHS health check
• Guarantee NHS patients the legal right to wait no longer than 18 weeks from the moment of GP referral to hospital treatment
• Give all patients access to a GP practice in their area that is open at evenings and weekends
• One-to-one dedicated nursing for all cancer patients
• Create a new national telephone number for non-emergency medical services
• Establish national standards of hospital infection control that get tougher every year
• Provide free personal care indefinitely for those in highest need from 2011
• Meet elderly people's care costs after they have spent two years in residential care from 2014
• Establish a "National Care Service" free at the point of use for all adults with an "eligible care need", with funding arrangements decided by a Commission by 2015.

Liberal Democrats

• Scrap Strategic Health Authorities
• Create democratically elected local health boards with power to prevent hospital closures
• Reduce number of health targets
• Introduce "patient contracts" specifying what patients can expect from NHS
• Make it easier to switch GP
• Allow patients to register at more than one practice
• Reform NHS dental contracts to encourage dentists back into the NHS
• Extend access to end-of-life services and hospices
• More cost-effective purchasing of drugs, including greater use of generic drugs
• Establish an independent commission, with cross-party support, to develop proposals for long-term care of the elderly
• Ban "below-cost" sale of alcohol and back minimum pricing "in principle".

Green Party

• Reverse the increasing involvement of the private sector in the NHS
• Decentralise healthcare responsibility to local government, ensuring that minimum service levels are met to prevent a postcode lottery
• End mixed-sex hospital wards
• Abolish prescription charges and reintroduce free eye tests and dental treatment
• Focus research and funding on public health issues like pollution and the benefits of exercise
• Gradually increase alcohol and tobacco taxes by about 50%
• Provide free social care to the elderly
• Give people the right to an "assisted death", within a rigorous framework of regulation.

The Liberal Democrats's approach of scrapping SHA's could have a bearing on the company I work for and therefore my employment so I can't agree with that on that basis. I work in an industry that is already on it's knees. I think patient contracts will be a paper exercise and worth nothing more than that. Finally something I agree on with the Green Party - free prescriptions for all, doesn't Wales already get that? It's not a free NHS if we have to pay for the treatment is it? but again whilst I don't agree with the private sector having such an influence in the NHS, the reversal of that could impact our work. Labour have a good idea to be able to see your GP evenings and weekends, we all know what a headache it is but I can't imagine the GPs will agree to it, and I like the sound of 5 year health checks after the age of 40. The Conseratives views seem to be pretty similar to that of Labour and interestingly they raise the issue of elderly care. This is something that concerns me greatly.

So looking at that, who should I vote for? Certainly note the Green Party, I think they are nuts. I can't see me voting Liberal Democrats so for me it's between Labour and Conservative. I have been adamant that I would not vote Labour at this election and last election I did vote Conservative, but this time it's just not cut and dry for me at all, doesn't help that my local MP is Conservative at the moment and I can't bear her. I just don't think I can vote for her (last election I lived in a different area). I guess I am one of those floating voters they keep talking about. Perhaps I won't even decide until I am stood there with the form in front of me.

What are your views? What issues are important to you and which party do you think represents you best on those issues? Do you know which way you are going to vote yet?

love & kisses
Mrs M x