Every child deserves the best start in life.

That’s why children’s charities have asked every party leader how their policies will help children and generations to come.

Here are five things the Liberal Democrats will do to build a brighter future for every young person:

1. Stop Brexit

Brexit is a disaster for our young people. It limits our ambitions and our horizons.

Outside the EU, the UK can no longer take part in the Erasmus student exchange programme for schools, colleges and universities.

Brexit makes our children less safe. The European Arrest Warrant lets us track down people accused of crimes against children if they move abroad.

Brexit will make us poorer. If Boris Johnson wins this election, his ‘die in a ditch’ Brexit policy means we could crash out of the EU’s trading bloc in 2021. That would harm our economy and increase debt – meaning we have less to spend on our children and young people.

Only the Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit so we can spend our £50 billion Remain Bonus on public services, like our schools, and tackling child poverty.

2. Free childcare

Under the Conservatives, the gap between the performance of richer and poorer children at nursery school is widening.

They’ve turned their backs on families. Working parents can get 30 hours a week of free childcare, but only when their child turns 3 – and it doesn’t cover the school holidays. It’s been so underfunded that some providers have had to close.

Liberal Democrats will provide free, high quality childcare for every child from when their parents go back to work to the day they start school.

The Liberal Democrats’ plan includes 35 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for every child from 9 months to school age.

We’ll pay childcare providers properly, so that every child has a high-quality place.

3. Reverse school cuts

Our schools and colleges should be world-class. But instead, they’re falling behind.

Teaching assistants are being sacked. Cash-strapped councils struggle to help children with complex needs. Some schools aren’t keeping their doors open for a full five-day week.

The Conservatives are failing our children. They have cut school budgets to the bone.

By stopping Brexit, Liberal Democrats can use the Remain Bonus to reverse school cuts with an emergency cash injection.

By 2024, we’ll spend £10 billion a year more on schools, so we can employ 20,000 more teachers.

Children should come home from school happy, healthy and with all the skills they need to succeed.

4. Invest in Children’s Centres

Local councils’ budgets have been slashed – but more children than ever need their support. Councils are spending more on helping children in crisis, so they’ve got less to spend on stopping children getting into crisis in the first place.

Children’s centres provide vital support for children and their families in the first years of life. They give advice to parents on how to manage behaviour. They give free post-natal checks for new babies. They’re a safe space for toddlers to play.

Liberal Democrats will support our most disadvantaged young children, by spending an extra £1 billion a year on children’s centres.

5. Support children in poverty

Under the Conservatives, almost 30% of children were in poverty in 2017/18.

The Tories botched the roll out of Universal Credit and they made brutal cuts to benefits in 2015.

Liberal Democrats will support children in poverty. We’ll scrap the two-child limit and the benefits cap and let families where both parents work keep more of their money.

That’s why the independent Resolution Foundation says that our manifesto does more to help child poverty than both Boris Johnson’s Conservatives or Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Under the Liberal Democrats, 600,000 fewer children will be in relative poverty than under Boris Johnson.

The Liberal Democrats are the only party that can win seats off both the Conservatives and Labour – so we can stop Boris Johnson, stop Brexit, and build a brighter future for our children.

Want to help us?

“We must stop Boris Johnson ramming through a damaging Trump trade deal.”

The US trade team is offering PR tips on how to force chlorinated chicken down our throats.

That tells you everything you need to know.

Leaked documents from the US-UK trade deal talks have revealed the truth. The US team agreed to share their “public lines” on chlorine-washed chicken.

Why? They argue it’s to “inform the media narrative.”

In reality, it’s “how to sell the lie.”

These trade talks hang in the balance due to Brexit. US negotiators had ‘the most angst’ about EU limits to the use of chemicals in food production. They want a no-deal Brexit so we can break from EU regulations on food standards.

The Tories’ desperation for a trade deal with Donald Trump risks leading to lower standards for the food on our tables. A hard Brexit means fewer regulations and standards on the quality of our food.

This will not just be damaging to our health. It will be incredibly damaging to our food production industries, too.

We must stop Boris Johnson ramming through a damaging Trump trade deal. It will do great damage to both British consumers and farmers.

We will stop Boris, stop Brexit and uphold our world-leading food standards.

Our country’s health is at the heart of our vision for a brighter future.

“Boris Johnson only cares about Boris Johnson.”

When I meet children and teenagers in schools, they often ask me what you need to be good at to become a politician.

And my answer is always this:

Being able to write a press release and understand legislation is important for the job. But you can learn all of that.

What matters the most – and is almost impossible to learn — is caring.

Caring about the people in your community and in your country, so that your decisions are based on what you genuinely believe to be best for them.

I say it is impossible to learn, which perhaps is just as well.

I am not sure Boris Johnson has time for lessons on caring alongside his “technology lessons”.

Boris Johnson only cares about Boris Johnson.

And he will do whatever it takes, sacrifice whatever is needed, to get what he wants.

This is a man who decided which side to support in the EU referendum by game-playing whether it would get him the keys to Number 10.

His life has been about becoming Prime Minister. Not out of some deep-seated desire to make people’s lives better, but out of some sense of Etonian entitlement. Because it’s what people like him get to do.

And you cannot trust a word Boris Johnson says – the man will say anything if it means getting what he wants.

He lied to the 3 million other EU countries citizens in the UK when he told them he would guarantee their right to stay.

He lied when he said that no Conservative Prime Minister would ever put a border down the Irish Sea.

He lied to the Queen to unlawfully shut down our democracy.

He lied when he said over and over that we would leave the European Union by 31 October.

He lied when he said he would rather be dead in a ditch than ask for an extension to Article 50.

“We are the only party that can win seats off Johnson and Farage’s hard-right cabal.”

Well, there might not be a ditch, but Boris Johnson has dragged the office of Prime Minister through the mud.

Johnson cannot be allowed to win a majority.

We have a different vision for our country. The Liberal Democrats are the only party that will build a fair, open society for both our generation and the next.

We are the only party that can win seats off Johnson and Farage’s hard-right cabal.

Together, we can prevent a damaging Tory majority.

Together, we can build a brighter future.

Today, we’ve unveiled two posters attacking Boris Johnson.

The first attacks him for lying to the Queen, Parliament and the people. The other will show him flanked by Donald Trump and Nigel Farage with the caption: “Brexit is good for them, how is it for you?”

And this is the whole point of this election. While Boris Johnson and his backers may stand to benefit from Brexit, it’s families across the country who will suffer.

Johnson has shown time and again that he can’t be trusted. Now, he’s trying to dupe the public yet again. This time, he says that voting for him will make Brexit go away.

This is the biggest lie of all. His disastrous Brexit plan would mean even more years of uncertainty. This would cause more damage to our economy, NHS and public services.

Johnson’s lie must be challenged head-on.

So we launched the posters to do just that!

Four poster vans will tour Conservative / Liberal Democrat marginal seats. We have already seen massive surges in those seats…

And if we win there, we could deny Boris Johnson a majority.

We can stop Boris. Not only that, we can stop Brexit, too.

Together, we will build a brighter future by taking seats off the Tories up and down the country.

Please click below to download the posters:

Poster 1

Poster 2

Today, a document was released that lays out the details of talks involving UK and US officials.

The documents are horrifying.

They reveal what looks like a deal cooked up between the Tories and Donald Trump that puts our NHS on the table. This, despite Johnson’s repeated insistence that the NHS is not for sale.

Yet again, Johnson has lied to all of us.

For all intents and purposes, Johnson has now become Trump. They are clearly in cahoots, and Johnson now emulates his friend by lying again, and again, and again.

The US trade representatives have said a no-deal leaves ‘all to play for.’ This shows how vital it is that Boris Johnson is stopped. It could not be clearer that Brexit will make the UK weaker, and that Donald Trump wants to profit from this weakness.

When our NHS is on its knees after Brexit, it will be sold off to American pharmaceutical companies, raising the prices of medicine for millions.

Only we can prevent Boris Johnson from getting a majority in this election. If he succeeds, we will have no way of stopping him from pursuing either his damaging Brexit deal or crashing the UK out with no-deal in 2020.

We must fight to protect our precious NHS. We can and must defeat the Tories and prevent a Johnson majority.

We are the only party that will stop Johnson, and stop this pointless Brexit. When we do, we will build a brighter future, together.