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A new Labour government would not increase the retirement age or national insurance but would come up with incentives to encourage people to save, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this mornng.

Addressing a news conference at Mdina, he said that to encourage future generations to save, the government would give parents €300 if they saved up to €2,000 for their children.

In another initiative, it would increase by €40 a week the income of an average family with two children of exam age attending non-state schools.

A new Labour government would also help families become homeowners - not by increasing the subsidy on rentals or building new property - but by helping them with guarantees to ensure they were able to afford their repayments.

The government was looking to extend the agreement it had with APS Bank on this system to include other banks. People could also be exempted from the payment of withholding tax on property, as long as this went towards certain types of investments.

Labour does not agree with the idea of free childcare for all

Labour, Dr Muscat said, did not agree with the idea of free childcare for all. This would mean an enormous explosion in the cost of the programme, raising this to some €50 million, and it was unaffordable. However, childcare had to be widened to cover those who worked at night, more workplaces, and humanitarian cases.

Dr Muscat noted that his government was introducing the progressive concept of a living income by providing companies with fiscal incentives if they were willing to pay their employees enough to enable them to live comfortably.

In another measure, a Labour government would also give Maltese people who used to work in Libya the opportunity to regularise their national insurance position.

These people, he said, used to think that the national insurance they paid covered their pension. But although there had been an agreement between the Maltese and Libyan governments, this had stopped some years ago without informing the people concerned. These had ended up with a reduced pension or no right to one as a result.