General Election 2015: The voters need to hear more on areas of vital importance

There are subjects on which the campaign has barely scratched the surface: the environment, the NHS and education

So far, this election campaign has not been as superficial as feared. Last week, the voters were offered substantial and detailed manifestos, and the challengers’ TV debate was a reasonably civilised affair, even if it did end with Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, shouting at Ed Miliband for telling “lies”.

Yet there are subjects on which the campaign has barely scratched the surface. The Independent on Sunday considers three in particular to be of vital importance: the environment, the NHS and education.

The threat of climate change has hardly featured in the election, despite the higher profile secured by the Green Party. It is a shame that the party has chosen to emphasise policies on jobs, the living wage and housing – and to compete on a rather crowded left-wing field – rather than on the central Green message. This year could have been an important one in global climate-change talks, ahead of the Paris summit in November. Britain could have played an important role in those talks, and the Green Party could have helped to mobilise British public opinion.

David Cameron started well on what he called “one of the most serious threats that this country and this world faces”, and his supporters say he has worked behind the scenes towards agreeing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, intended to take forward the Millennium Development Goals but with a more explicit green dimension. Britain’s credibility in these talks has been greatly enhanced by the increase in the aid budget, but climate change has undoubtedly slipped down the Conservatives’ list of priorities.

Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has tried to fight the corner for the Liberal Democrats, but no party is really showing the leadership on this question that is needed.

On the NHS, it may seem strange to claim that the subject has not been addressed after one of the big stories of the early weeks of the campaign has been the argument over health service funding. But the terms of that debate have been depressingly narrow. It has all been about how many extra billions should be spent and from where they should come: an important question, but not the whole story. Mark Porter of the British Medical Association, accuses the parties of “the worst kind of political campaigning – promising the undeliverable, misleading the public and refusing to face up to the facts”. He is right. Far too little has been said about how the NHS should evolve, to produce better outcomes for less money, to free resources to meet new and growing demands, even if an election campaign is a difficult time to deliver unpalatable truths.

Finally, The IoS has long taken the view that social progress begins and ends with education. Dramatic improvements have been made in London schools over the past decade and a half, universities have expanded and apprentice numbers have increased, but there are surprisingly few ideas on offer for how to raise the pace of change and spread the best education to all.

Tristram Hunt, the shadow Education Secretary, makes a good pitch for Labour’s plans to raise the status of technical education in his interview with this newspaper. This has been an objective bathed in the warm words of political aspiration for decades, but Mr Hunt is a more than usually persuasive advocate of a technical education that would appeal to the middle as well as working class.

With last week’s good employment figures, the governing parties can claim action rather than words in getting young people into work. But the challenge is to equip the next generation for the jobs market of the future.

On this, and on the environment and the NHS, we, the voters, have not yet heard nearly enough.