green.md

Green Manifesto

Economy and Democracy

• Move towards the introduction of Universal Basic Income, including the introduction of a government-sponsored pilot scheme.
• Phase in a 4 day working week with a maximum of 35 hours.
• Abolish zero-hours contracts.
• Increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour by 2020.
• Require 40% of all members of public company and require 40% of all members of public company and public sector boards to be women.
• Create a network of local people's banks for every city and region.
• Crackdown on tax dodging.
• Reform taxation to include a wealth tax on the top 1% of earners.
• Reinstate the higher level of corporation tax for large businesses.
• A Robin Hood Tax on high value transactions in the finance sector.
• Inheritance tax calculated according to the wealth of the recipient.
• Phased-in abolition of the cap on employees' national insurance.
• Remove VAT from sanitary products, and ensure they are provided free of charge to those in extreme financial need.
• Lower the voting age to 16.
• Introduce proportional representation for parliamentary and local elections.
• Increase diversity in representative politics, with job-shares and a 50-50 parliament.
• Replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber.
• Defend the Human Rights Act and UK membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.
• Reinstate funding for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
• Give Parliament a vote on any new trade deals.

Infrastructure

• Bring energy, water, railways, buses, the Royal Mail and care work back into public ownership.
• Increase funding for local authorities to provide good quality public services.
• Review the effectiveness of how public services are structured, including assessment how care is provided at the transition age of 18.
• Re-regulate buses, investing in increased bus services, especially in rural and other poorly served areas.
• All public transport should be fully accessible and step-free with a phase-in of free local public transport for young people, students, people with disabilities, and older people.
• Invest in regional rail links and electrification of existing rail
  lines.
• Cancel all airport expansion and end subsidies on airline fuel.
• Invest in low traffic neighbourhoods and safe/convenient networks for walking and cycling, including safe places for learning to cycle.
• Invest in more staff at HMRC.

Industry

• Support the roll-out of high speed broadband.
• Replace fracking, coal power stations and subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear with clean energy.

Employment

• Raise national minimum wage to living wage levels for all.
• Scrap age-related wage bands.
• Revive the role of democratic trade unions.

Brexit

• A referendum on the detail of the negotiated deal for Brexit, with the option to reject the deal and remain in the EU.
• Protect freedom of movement.
• Press for remaining in the single market.
• Immediately guarantee the rights of EU citizens to remain in the UK, and seek reciprocal arrangements for UK citizens in the EU.
• Guarantee the rights of young people to study, work, live and travel in the EU, including through schemes like Erasmus.

Education and Childcare

• Provide more funding for sexual health awareness campaigns.
• Introduce non-biased political education and promote active citizenship.
• Free universal early education and childcare for all children, with formal education starting formal education at age 7.
• Abolish Ofsted.
• Reform the curriculum so that it is pupil-centred.
• Increase real term spending per pupil, and protect this spending.
• Bring academies and free schools into the local authority system.
• Abolish SATS.
• Reduce class sizes.
• Scrap university tuition fees and fund full student grants.
• Greater public investment in further and higher education.
• Restore Education Maintenance Allowance.
• Enable apprenticeships to all qualified young people aged 16-25.

Environment and Animal Cruelty

• Introduce an Environmental Protection Act to safeguard and restore our environment.
• A public works programme of insulation to ensure every home is insulated.
• Invest in flood defenses and natural flood management.
• Equality of access to nature and green spaces.
• Limit global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees- aiming for 2.5 degrees.
• Introduce a one-off fine on car manufacturers who cheated the emissions testing regime.
• Create a new Clean Air Act which would expand and fund a clean air zone network.
• Protection for the Green Belt, National Parks, SSSIs and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
• Create a wider, more effective network of marine protected areas around our coasts.
• Introduce Deposit Return Schemes with a zero waste target.
• Increase incentives to take diesel vehicles off the roads.

Housing

• Introduce a Living Rent to all through rent controlls and more secure tenancies for private renters.
• Put an end to letting fees.
• Introduce mandatory licencing for all landlords.
• Support the development of Renters' Unions.
• Start a major programme to build affordable, carbon-zero homes- including 10,000 social rented homes each year by 2022.
• End mass council house sales.
• Scrap Right to Buy at discounted prices.
• Abolish the Bedroom Tax.
• Take action on empty homes to bring them back into use.
• Trial a Land Value Tax to encourage the use of vacant land.
• Axe buy-to-let tax breaks.
• Improve housing choice for deaf, disabled and older people by requiring all councils to appropriately plan for their housing needs and significantly increase the number of homes built to lifetime home and mobility standards over the next 5 years.

Healthcare

• Roll back privatisation of the NHS, to ensure that all health and dental services are always publicly provided and funded - and free at the point of access - through the introduction of an NHS Reinstatement Act.
• Scrap NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans.
• Close the NHS spending gap and provide an immediate cash injection.
• Provide greater access to free condoms and sexual health clinics.

Security & Defense

• Cancel Trident replacement.
• End support for aggressive wars of intervention.
• No more arms sales to oppressive regimes.
• Strengthen the global deal on climate change, including by delivering climate justice and promoting ecologically sustainable development.
• End the sale of personal data for commercial or other ends.

### Local Communities

• Reject the Prevent strategy.
• Pursue community-led collaborative approaches to tackling all forms of extremism instead.
• Protect the BBC.
• Tighten the rules on media ownership so no individual or company owns more than 20% of the media market.

Social Services and Security

• Major investment in social care for the elderly and all those who need it.
• A single budget covering health and social services.
• Redress pension injustice.
• Redress benefits injustice.
• Reinstate housing benefit for under-21s and stop Local Authorities from declaring young people 'intentionally homeless'.
• Invest in community house-building projects to provide housing options for young people.

Diverse and Cultured Communities

• Implement a UK-wide strategy to tackle gender-based violence, including domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse, FGM and trafficking.
• Action to tackle racism and discrimination on the basis of faith, disability, real equality for LGBTIQA+ people, equal rights for mixed gender couples to have Civil Partnership.

Disabilities and Mental Health

• Introduce mental health awareness training within the public sector.
• Bring mental health care in line with physical health care through local support networks.
• Ensure that every child with Special Educational Needs or Disability has access to mainstream education, in accordance with the UN Convention for Persons with Disabilities.

Foreign Policy

• Increase the overseas aid budget from 0.7% of GPD to 1.0% of GDP.
• Implement an immigration and asylum system that recognises and takes responsibility for Britain's ongoing role in causing mass migrations worldwide.