During the leadership debate on Sky News last night David Cameron accused The Labour Party of sending out scaremongering leaflets that said that a Conservative Government would scrap free bus passes and eye-tests for older people.
Gordon Brown denied authorising such leaflets, and a subsequent Labour press release repeated this. Labour have also argued that this is legitimate territory since commitments are absent form the Conservative manifesto.
The manifesto issue will no doubt become the fulcrum of the debate in the press, but in the mean-time what do we really know about the leaflets in question?
We certainly know that Labour Candidates have been mentioning the fact that Labour introduced or have a commitment to free bus travel and / or eye-tests (but without an explicit statement that a Conservative Government would remove these) in their own local leaflets here, here, here, here and here.
This makes sense, since you assume that these candidates are proud of these achievements, and fits with the Labour strategy of championing their domestic achievements.
We also know that in Scotland a leaflet from Gordon Brown’s own constituency claims that free bus travel is under threat from the SNP. So it is fair to say that the threat of cuts to bus-passes is a live part of the Labour campaign against the SNP, and would hope that Gordon Brown knew about this since it was on his own leaflets.
But what about other local Labour leaflets attacking the Conservative for a threatening to cut these services?
We don’t appear to have any in the 2,200 + leaflets that we have. There are however, according to photographs published on Twitter by Conservative campaign member of staff Henry Macrory, other local leaflets mentioning eye-tests and / or free bus travel, but in some cases alongside explicit statements that they were at risk or would be scrapped Conservative Government.
So far so good, but this doesn’t sound like a national campaign against the Conservatives authorised by Gordon Brown. There are though two other pieces of evidence that are possibly national in their nature.
Firstly there is a leaflet published by the shop workers union USDAW which does state that Winter Fuel Allowance and free bus travel are under threat from a Conservative Government. We only have the front page of this leaflet, but it looks like it could be something that was distributed nationally to USDAW members. Would Gordon Brown have taken part in the drafting of a leaflet by a Trade Union for distribution to it’s members though? Probably not.
The final thing we have is a bit more convincing though. Again it comes from the Conservative Staffer Henry Macrory on Twitter, and it appears to be a postcard aimed at older people. This is a very similar design to other national campaign postcards from the Labour Party during the campaign so far, for example here and here so we can pretty safely assume it’s genuine.
(We don’t have a copy of this leaflet and would really like to get a full copy (both sides) of it. Please help us seek one out and add it to the site.)
It’s worth noting the language on this leaflet. It’s certainly not as explicitly as originally suggested by David Cameron, but it does get the message over pretty clearly. Assuming we can verify that this leaflet is a national campaign then you would think that Gordon Brown should have known about it.
So, assuming we can independently verify this last leaflet, it is probably fair to say that Labour are campaigning nationally on the issue of a non-explicit Conservative threat to bus-passes, but that we have no evidence of a similar campaign over the issue of eye-tests. In addition to this, local leaflets are mentioning the issues in various forms. We’ll leave other to argue over the rights and wrongs of all this.
But what of the Conservatives said about these issues? Well, we know it’s missing from their manifesto, but we do have a leaflet, in letter form and ’signed’ by David Cameron, pledging that the Conservatives will:
- Protect the Winter Fuel Payment
- Protect the free bus pass
- Protect the pension credit
Is ‘protect’ the same as ‘not cut’? Either way this looks like it goes someway to counteract the Labour claims.
It’s worth noting however that it also includes a statement that Labour are considering a “death tax” which they have since rules out. So it also turns the other accusation made at Labour, that it was using campaign material to scare older people about the outlook post May 6th, back on the Conservatives. So score-draw?
