Help for you now. Hope for you for the future.

Labour are taking action to give help to families and businesses now and for the future. By contrast, the Conservatives would do nothing.

Labour is acting to support the British economy by:

* Stopping the banking system collapsing, so that businesses and families have a safe and secure system they can rely on.

* Giving real help to families and businesses now so that people have a means by which they can get through this downturn

* Getting lending moving for small businesses, medium and large businesses as well as mortgage holders.

Help for you now
To deliver a more prosperous and fairer Britain, Labour is acting to help ease the pain of the credit crunch for hard-working people and families, including:

Helping hard-working people and families with a £145 tax cut for every basic rate taxpayer and VAT cut worth £275 off the average household bill.

Helping pensioners and parents by bringing forward April’s increase in Child Benefit to January, increasing Child Tax Credit and giving a payment of £60 to all pensioners that is equivalent to bringing forward the April increase in the basic state pension.

Supporting small business by providing them with £1bn worth of tax breaks, tax cuts and tax deferrals.

Help for businesses with a support package to help small and medium sized businesses who are finding it difficult to access credit and finance their plans, with loan guarantees and a new Capital for Enterprise Fund aimed at helping companies struggling to access finance for working capital and investment.

Supporting industry and jobs by bringing forward £3bn of capital spending from next year on infrastructure projects including increasing motorway capacity, improving housing and renewing schools; and £400m of Government spending on housing will be brought forward to help the construction industry.

Help for hard-working people worried about losing their homes, with an Income Support for Mortgage Interest scheme, which helps people with their mortgage payments if they lose their jobs; and new Homeowners Mortgage Support Scheme to allow people to defer interest payments for up to two years while they get their family finances back on track.

Help with energy costs with a £6.8bn Home Energy Saving Programme to help people insulate their homes and save on fuel costs; a new £350 million Community Energy Saving Programme offering free and discounted central heating, energy efficiency measures and benefit checks; and with £150m for Warm Front to help insulate people’s homes and cut heating costs.

Supporting mums-to-be with the new Health in Pregnancy Grant. From April 2009 every pregnant woman will receive a one-off tax-free payment of £190, payable after the 25th week of pregnancy, along with advice from a health professional, to help them with the additional needs they have at this important time.


Labour’s commitment giving real help now and real hope for the future stands in stark contrast to the Tories who would do nothing.
 
By opposing Labour’s fiscal stimulus, the Conservatives have set themselves against providing real help now for families and businesses. They are committed not just to spending less in a time of need but also to spend less in the future. By doing nothing, they would deepen the downturn and delay the recovery, just as they did in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. They would make Britain weaker not stronger for the future.