Labour’s shadow chancellor has said his party wants to “abolish poverty once and for all” within five years, should it win the General Election.
John McDonnell made the statement as he said Labour’s “plan for real change” could save families more than £6,700 a year.
Delivering a speech in Birmingham, Mr McDonnell pledged Labour would replace measures like Universal Credit, whilst increasing the living wage to £10 per hour.
He claimed doing so would give a “pay rise of up to £6,000 a year” for more than seven million people.
He referred to a Channel 4 television documentary, aired earlier this week, in which a family struggling to make ends meet shared their daily experiences living in poverty.
Mr McDonnell said “families are just pushed over the edge” by events like people losing jobs or the death of family members.
He blamed a “soaring” cost of living brought about by “inaction and economic mismanagement by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats over the past decade” for rising poverty and homelessness.
In yesterday’s speech, the shadow chancellor repeated his party’s commitment to bring the UK’s energy providers into state ownership, a commitment he said would save the average UK household “an average of £142 a year”.
A scheme of retrofitting homes with more efficient energy supplies would “slash the average household bill by over £400 a year”.
He went on to say free childcare would provide a “saving on average almost £3,000 a year per child”, whilst free school meals for all primary school children could cut household bills by £400.
Health and social care pledges from the Labour Party “for the personal care that we or our family members might need in old age” could mean a saving “of over £7,000 a year”.
Two-and-a-half years since the last general election, British voters will be heading back to the polls next Thursday 12 December after MPs supported a pre-Christmas election.
Britons do not vote for a prime minister directly, but instead choose an MP to represent them in their local constituency. The party that has the most MPs once the votes are counted will form a government, with the leader of that party becoming prime minister.
There are 650 constituencies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that make up the UK parliament. The first-past-the-post electoral system applies in each constituency, where the candidate who gets the most votes wins.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wants a second EU referendum to give voters the choice between a “sensible” Brexit deal, negotiated within the first three months of a Labour government, and the option of staying in the EU.
If no party secures a majority of seats in the House of Commons, there would be a hung parliament. The party that wins the most seats can then either try to form a coalition government with one or more other parties, or form a minority government.
An exit poll will give us an early indication of what has happened when voting ends at 10pm on Thursday 12 December.

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