Miliband’s message tomorrow: young people and the NHS

Tomorrow, Ed Miliband will address Conference in his final leader’s speech before the general election.

As we reported earlier this evening, rumours are circulating around Manchester that he’s going to announce a mansion tax to pay for increased NHS spending. For the moment, however, these are just rumours. Here’s what we are sure of:

He will reveal (and reiterate) 6 key planks to Labour’s policy agenda in the run-up to the general election (listed below). Miliband will put particular emphasis on his desire to implement policies that will enable young people to get started in life.

Addressing the Scottish referendum – a topic that has unsurprisingly been an ongoing discussion-point during this conference – Miliband will stress that the Labour party is set to speak to those people who feel disconnected from the political process:

“So many people have lost faith in the future. I’ve met young people who should have the brightest of futures who tell me their generation is falling into a black hole. People in England who think all politics is rubbish. People in Scotland who wanted to leave our country because they felt they had nothing left to lose.

Our task is to restore people’s faith in the future. But the way to do it is not to break up our country. It is to break with the old way of doing things, break with the past.

We can build that better future for you and your family, wherever you live in the United Kingdom, and this speech is about Labour’s plan to do it: Labour’s plan for Britain’s future.”

The six following goals are those that Miliband say a Labour government would be achieve by 2025:

1) Apprenticeships – this is one of the key areas of policy in relation to young people; ensuring as many school-leavers go on to apprenticeships as go to university

2) Living standards – Miliband will pledge to create good jobs at decent wages, reforming banks, devolving power and making sure the “self-employed are not locked out of the benefits that come from going out to work.”

3) Housing – he will use this speech to reiterate the leadership’s pledge to building at least 200,000 more homes per year by 2020

4) Green technology – Miliband will highlight the UK’s slow movement on low-carbon, green technologies, particularly in relation to Germany, Japan, the United States, India and China. In this vein he will commit to creating one million high-tech, green jobs.

5) Low pay – the ongoing problem of in-poverty workers and low-paid workers is something Miliband is keen to address head on. Alongside repeating his pledge to raise the minimum wage to £8 by 2020, he will say that Labour will halve the number of people on low pay.

6) The NHS – as we’ve said above and in a story earlier this evening, it’s rumoured that the leadership are set to announce a mansion tax to fund the NHS. Whether this is true remains to be seen (tomorrow) but what is clear is that Miliband will promise that a Labour government will protect and improve the NHS by guaranteeing 48 hour access to GPs, and repealing the Government’s Health & Social Care Act.

We’ll give you all the latest tomorrow on the leaders speech as it’s happening, and if you’re in Manchester, don’t forget to join us at our event straight after the leader’s speech in the LabourList Marquee where we’ll be discussing the public’s reaction to Miliband’s message.