Cameron echoes Thatcher with plans for Lloyds sell-off

David Cameron has sought to channel the spirit of Margaret Thatcher for the second time in a week by promising that retail investors will get a chance to take part in a post-election sell-off of £9bn of Lloyds shares.

The move comes just days after Mr Cameron said a Tory government would extend Right to Buy to housing associations, a move that was heavily criticised by property experts.

The Conservatives have suggested seven times since 2010 that there could be a sale of Lloyds shares to retail investors in the vein of Mrs Thatcher's 1980s privatisations, including British Gas with its "Tell Sid" adverts. Instead Lloyds share sales have been to big City institutions.

The Tory plans for Lloyds involve offering £4bn of its stock to small investors with a minimum investment of £250 and a cap of £10,000 on any individual investment.

The stock would be offered at a discount of at least 5 per cent to the Lloyds share price, with a "loyalty bonus" which will see one additional free share for every 10 shares held for a year.

The remaining £5bn of Lloyds shares held on the government books would be sold to larger institutional investors.

The cost of the giveaway to the government would depend on the size of the discount and the Lloyds share price at the point of the privatisation.

The previous government put £20bn of taxpayers' money into Lloyds during the financial crisis, leaving it with a 41 per cent stake in the bank - which was in dire straits after rescuing troubled HBOS.

The stake has been cut to less than 22 per cent through a series of sales to institutional investors that began in September 2013. The government holds £12bn worth of shares, and the Tories want to sell £9bn of those within the next year.

"The £20bn bail-out of Lloyds bank by the last Labour government became a symbol of the crisis that engulfed the British economy under Labour," said Mr Cameron on Sunday.

"After the public bailed it out, people feared they wouldn't see their money returned. Today they are."

Chris Leslie, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Tories had been announcing the same idea since 2009 - months before the last general election.

"The most important thing is getting best value for money for the taxpayer," said Mr Leslie.

"That's why we have said all the proceeds from selling back the government's stakes in Lloyds and RBS should be used to repay the national debt."

With less then three weeks to go until the general election, an Opinium poll in the Observer put the Tories four points ahead of Labour while YouGov in the Sunday Times put Labour ahead by three points.

Labour have attacked the Conservatives on health, with shadow health secretary Andy Burnham claiming the Tories have a secret plan to cut nurse numbers in the NHS after the election.

Labour said the figures emerged in an official document, Health Education England's workforce plan, forecasting NHS trusts would employ nearly 2,000 fewer nurses by 2019.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson attacked Ed Miliband, Labour leader, as a 1970s-style socialist as he called the election a "battle for Britain".

"He is one of those theoretical socialists who thinks the problem with socialism is that it has never been properly tried," the London mayor wrote in a column in the Mail on Sunday. "I am horrified at the idea he should be given another go."

Vince Cable, Lib Dem business secretary, said the potential cuts under a Tory government were "pretty horrendous". But he questioned Labour's claims to fiscal responsibility, saying the party had offered "absolutely no detail" of how it would cut the deficit.

"We should be able to find some common ground with Labour or the Conservatives depending on who the public vote for," he said on the BBC's Andrew Marr show.

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