The Labour Party has drafted up a policy programme that could shape their manifesto ahead of the next general election. The 86-page policy handbook draws on submissions from Labour groups and pledges made by members of the shadow cabinet since Keir Starmer became leader in 2020.
The document is set to map out Labour’s policy and focuses on six key areas that will support Starmer’s five “missions”.
The content of policy programme will now need to be debated and agreed by members of Labour’s National Policy Forum (NPF) before they can be included in the manifesto. NPF members are set to meet in July to have this discussion.
Some of the most notable points include:
A green and digital future
- Invest £28bn of public capital a year into the green economy, alongside an active industrial strategy, with strategic public investment attracting private sector investment.
- Cut energy bills for good, saving each UK household hundreds of pounds a year.
- Invest in both mitigating the climate crisis but also in adapting to the effects of a warming world, for example by rapidly improving flood defences, the resilience of our national infrastructure to extreme weather and other measures.
- Commit to stopping the issue of new licences for oil and gas, while managing existing oil and gas wells sustainably over the coming decades.
- Turbocharge the just transition to cheaper electric vehicles, making them affordable and accessible by helping families manage the higher up-front cost.
Better jobs and work
- Legislate to tighten the rules on late payments and tackle the late payments crisis which is particularly acute for small businesses.
- Scrap and replace the current system of business rates in England and Wales with a fully-costed and funded system of business property taxation.
- Fix the access to work scheme, with improved targets for assessment waiting times and by giving people who are looking for work ‘in principle’ indicative awards.
- Use government procurement to support local businesses, cutting red tape and streamlining the bidding process to level the playing field for small businesses.
- Introduce new Fair Work Standard will ensure the best employers get the recognition they deserve when contracts are awarded.
Safe and secure communities
- Halve the level of violence against women and girls, halve incidents of knife crime, raise confidence in every police force to its highest levels and reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes solved.
- Put 13,000 more neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs back on Britain’s streets – paid for with the clear and tangible savings that can be delivered from a shared procurement and efficiencies plan for all police forces.
- Introduce a new Domestic Abuse Register to track offenders and help protect victims.
- Automatically ban any potential applicants to the police service who have a history of domestic abuse, indecent exposure or sexual assault, and mandate specialist training for every officer on countering racial bias and tackling violence against women and girls.
- Speed up the justice system, tackling the courts backlog.
Public services
- Double the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year.
- Use spare capacity in the independent sector to treat NHS patients and bring waiting lists down.
- Publish the first ever long-term, whole-government plan to improve mental health outcomes.
- Deliver a long-term plan for reform of adult social care that will lead to a world-class National Care Service that makes people as proud as the NHS does.
- Roll out an ambitious school improvement plan that would see investment in a high-quality teaching and support staff workforce to deliver an excellent education for all.
Family first
- Deliver free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England as a first step, funded through the ending of the non-domiciled tax status.
- Help first-time buyers onto the ladder with a new, comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme.
- Provide a reliable safety net for people who lose their jobs, including through large scale redundancies and insolvency, or who cannot work due to ill health or disability.
- Reform the social security system, starting with making Universal Credit work for all families who rely on it, to ensure that it makes work pay, supports people back to work, allows people to live their lives in dignity, tackles child poverty and offers a proper safety net.
- Give first-time buyers first dibs on new developments in their area.
Britain in the world
- Apply a ‘NATO test’ to major defence programmes in Government to ensure our NATO commitments are fulfilled in full.
- Guarantee continued long-term UK support for Ukraine and will work with allies to provide the assistance it needs to defend itself.
- Conduct a Strategic Defence and Security Review to ensure that we fully understand the nature of these threats and align defence and security spending accordingly.
- Seek to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with Europe while maintaining its new role outside of the single market and customs union.
- Take strong action to tackle channel crossings, reduce the asylum backlog and make sure Britain plays its part internationally through a fair and transparent asylum policy that does not discriminate.
Final thought
The Labour party’s policy programme is a detailed plan that covers a wide range of areas, including the green economy, jobs, public services, and international relations. The policies proposed are ambitious and aim to address some of the most pressing issues facing the UK, such as climate change, wealth disparities, and public service funding.
However, it remains to be seen how these policies will be received by the public. Much criticism has already been given online, ranging from whether they will be feasible to implement, to whether some plans, such as those concerning migration or tax, are extensive or fair enough to create a more equal society.