Manifestos manifest

If you hadn’t noticed yet, it’s manifesto week.

Yesterday was the turn of Labour who pledged an additional £83 billion of public spending, while claiming that there would be no increase in VAT, income tax or national insurance for people earning less than £80,000. 

That’s technically correct, but that doesn’t mean people earning less than £80,000 would be completely unaffected by Labour’s tax plans. The scrapping of marriage allowance and increase in the sugar tax will have a disproportionate impact on lower earners, for example.

Lower earners could also be affected by the proposals to increase inheritance tax and corporation tax (not just paid by large multinationals, but 1.5 million businesses).

We’ve factchecked Labour’s manifesto and launch speech here.

Before Labour, on Wednesday it was the Liberal Democrats’ turn. As we have heard often through the campaign, the Lib Dems advocated for the financial benefits of remaining in the EU which it plans to spend on public services.

There’s always uncertainty with these sorts of predictions but we think their calculations are fair. You can read more from their manifesto here.

The Green Party also launched its manifesto this week, and we looked at some of the party’s claims about climate change.

As for the Conservatives, their manifesto launch is pencilled in for Sunday. We’ll be checking the launch speech live so check our twitter account (@fullfact) and the liveblog for the latest.