SDLP Lay Out Election Pledges

There will be no 'tie' to any one individual Westminster party for the SDLP.

The party's leader has vowed she will use its post-election leverage in any hung parliament to negotiate the best deal she can for Northern Ireland.

Margaret Ritchie was speaking as she launched her party's manifesto on Wednesday.

She rejected claims by the party's opponents that it would be tied to voting with its sister party, Labour and has instead pledged to create 42,000 jobs through a green new deal budget and an all-island corporation tax rate.

She said that the SDLP will also lead on a shared future by pushing shared values in every aspect of government activity.

The nationalist party will also oppose cuts to frontline health services and revolutionise public health by starting a special preventative health fund.

On justice, she said the SDLP will ensure penalties 'fit the crime' by stiffening sentencing for violent crime and making deep reforms to protect victims, while on Irish unity, the SDLP will move by restarting a 'forum for unity' and establishing a northern panel in Seanad Éireann.

Margaret Ritchie said Westminster is a really important platform and said and those who say it is not are wrong.

"Westminster sets the total Northern Ireland budget and decides on many other social and economic issues which are not devolved.

"We need to be there. This Westminster election is going to be different from all the ones before. The global economic and financial crisis and the real experience of unemployment and hardship means that people are looking to politicians for some answers. And that is what they will find in the SDLP manifesto."

Highlighting Sinn Fein she continued: "Those who are offering little more in this election than the latest sectarian headcount are missing the point."

(BMcC/GK)