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Cameron puts his faith in right to buy

The Conservative manifesto pledge to expand the right to buy to cover 1.3 million housing association homes would help 'realise the potential of Britain', David Cameron has said.

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However, his plans for a major expansion of Margaret Thatcher's policy to let tenants buy council homes was branded 'uncosted, unfunded and unbelievable' by critics.

The Tories also made an appeal to working families, promising to double free childcare and offer a tax-free minimum wage.

The tax-free wage will be achieved in tandem with the existing policy to make the tax-free personal allowance £12,500, up from £10,600 this year. In addition, the Tories plan to change the law to ensure the personal allowance keeps rising in line with the minimum wage.

Mr Cameron said: "If Conservatives are in government, we will change the law so that no-one earning the minimum wage will pay income tax. Yes: the tax-free minimum wage."

And they reaffirmed a pledge to pump an extra £8 billion into the National Health Service over the next five years, guaranteeing a same-day appointment with a GP for anyone who needs one.

On the right to buy extension the Prime Minister said: "They're about realising the potential of Britain, not as a debt-addicted, welfare-burdened, steadily declining, once-great nation, which is what we found, but a country where a good life is there for everyone who is willing to work for it.

"In Britain we've always shown that we have the ingredients, the will, above all the people, to overturn what is inevitable. And with a strengthening economy behind us, this buccaneering world-beating can-do country we can do it all over again. This is a great country and we can be a greater country still."

But Emma Reynolds, Labour's shadow housing minister defending her seat representing Wolverhampton North East, said: "This is yet another uncosted, unfunded and unbelievable announcement from the Tories."

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