labour.md

Labour Manifesto

Economy and Democracy

• Tax Transparency and Enforcement Programme.
• Guarantee no rises in income tax for those earning <£80,000 a year (with no increases in personal National Insurance).
• 95% of taxpayers will be guaranteed no increase in their income tax.
• Increase corporation tax for large companies.
• Lower small profits rate of corporation tax. Small business (with turnover of <£85,000) are excluded from quarterly reporting and late payment actions.
• Double the size of the corporate sector.
• Reinstate the Cross-Whitehall Ministerial Group on Tourism.
• Elected House of Lords, and reduce the size of the House of Lords.
• Extend the Freedom of Information Act to private companies that run public services.
• Reduce the voting age to 16.

Deficit Reduction

• Financial Credibility Rule introduced to maintain fiscal health.

Infrastructure

• National Transformation Fund to upgrade the economy.
• Complete HS2 rail-line which will be linked to Crossrail of the North, etc.
• Crossrail 2 built in London.
• Complete Science Vale transport arc.
• Rail electrification and expansion across the whole country.
• Deliver universal super-fast broadband and availability by 2022.
• Reintroduce road safety targets.
• Bring private rail companies back into public ownership as their franchises expire.
• Transition to a publicly-owned de-centralised energy system.
• Replace the current water system with a network of publicly-owned water companies.
• Reverse the privatisation of the Royal Mail at the earliest opportunity.

Industry

• Ensure 60% of the UK's energy comes from zero-carbon renewable sources by 2030.
• Meet the OECD target of 3% of GDP spend on Research and Development by 2030.
• Create National Education Service for England.
• Councils established for each strategic industry in the UK.
• Reduce boardroom pay excesses by moving towards a 20:1 gap between highest and lowest paid.
• Appoint a Digital Ambassador.
• Establish a National Investment Bank to bring in private capital finance.
• Law changed so that banks cannot close a branch where there is a clear local need.
• Excessive Pay levy introduced to reduce the pay gap.
• Amend the takeover regime to ensure that businesses which are systematically important have a clear plan to protect workers and pensioners when the company is taken over.
• Mandate the new National Investment Bank to improve the funding gap.
• Lower the small business corporate tax rate.

Employment

• Ban zero-hours contracts.
• Repeal the Trade Union Act and roll out sectoral collective bargaining.
• Propose 4 new public holidays.
• Raise the minimum wage to the living wage for all workers who are 18 or over.
• End the public sector wage gap.
• Ban unpaid internships.
• Double paid paternity leave to 4 weeks, and increase paternity pay.
• Reinstate protection against 3rd party harassment.
• Introduce a civil enforcement system to ensure compliance with gender pay auditing.
• Consult with employers and trade unions on statutory bereavement leave after the loss of a close family member.
• New statutory definitions of employment status to reduce need for litigation.

Brexit

• Immediately guarantee existing rights for all EU nationals living in Britain and secure reciprocal rights for UK emmigrants living in the EU.
• Reject no deal as a viable option for Brexit negotiations.
• Build a co-operative future relationship with the EU, not as members but as partners.
• Ensure the UK remains part of Horizon 2020 and its successor programs.
• Seek to maintain membership with organisations such as Euratom and the European Medicines Agency.
• Seek to ensure that Britain remains part of the Erasmus scheme.
• Secure continued EU market demand access.
• Drop the Great Repeal Bill by replacing it with an EU Rights and Protections Bill.
• Ensure that all EU-derived bills which are of benefit are fully protected without qualifications, limits or sunset clauses.
• presumption of devolution to bring control to regions.
• Ensure there is no drop in EU structural funding until the end of the current funding in 2019/2020.
• Ensure there is no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
• Ensure there is no change in the status or sovreignty of Gibraltar.
• End indefinite detentions and distinguish between migrant labour and family attachment.
• Continue to support the work of the Forced Marriage Unit.
• Scrap overseas-only recruitment practices, strengthen safety-at-work inspections, and increase prosecutions of employers evading the minimum wage.
• Reinstate the Migrant Impact Fund and boost it with a contributory element from the investments required for High Net Worth Individual Visas.
• Review current arrangements for housing and dispersing refugees.
• Set out priorities in an International Trade White Paper.
• Work with global trading partners through the Just Trading initiative, to develop free trade investment agreements that remove trade barriers and promote skilled jobs.
• Rejoin the Government Procurement Agreement.
• Work with the other WTO members to end the dumping of state subsidised good on our markets.
• Create a network of regional trade and investment champions.
• Actively support international negotiations towards an Environmental Goods Agreement at the WTO.

Education and Childcare

• Transition the childcare system to a system of high quality childcare places in mixed environments with direct government subsidy.
• Phase in subsidised childcare provision on top of free-hour entitlement.
• Extend the free 30 hours of childcare to all 2 year olds.
• Move towards extending maternity pay to 12 months.
• Introduce a Fairer School Funding Formula which leaves no school worse off.
• Require joined-up admissions processes across local schools to enable councils to fulfil their responsibilities on child school places.
• Reduce class sizes to under 30 for all 5, 6 and 7 year olds.
• Introduce free school meals for all primary school children.
• Remove the VAT tax exemption on private school fees.
• Launch the commission to look into curriculum and assessment.
• Reduce teacher monitoring and bureaucracy and give teachers more direct involvement in the curriculum.
• Consult on introducing teacher sabbaticals and placements with industry.
• Extend schools-based counselling to all schools to improve students' mental health.
• Introduce free, lifelong education in Further Education Colleges.
• Improve careers advice and open up a range of routes through, and back into, education.
• Restore the Education Maintenance Allowance for 16-18 year olds from lower to middle income backgrounds.
• Set a target to double the number of completed apprenticeships at NVQ Level 3 by 2022.
• Protect the £440 million funding for apprenticeships for employers who don't pay the apprenticeship levy.
• Set targets to increase apprenticeships for people with disabilities, care leavers and veterans.
• Reintroduce maintenance grants for students, and abolish university tuition fees.

Environment and Animal Cruelty

• Introduce an immediate emergency price cap to ensure that the average duel-fuel household energy bill remains <£1000 per year.
• Alter the National and Regional Network Operator license conditions.
• Support the creation of publicly-owned energy companies- at least 1 in every region.
• Permit publicly-owned companies to buy the regional grid infrastructure.
• Insulate 4 million homes as an infrastructure priority.
• Homeowners offered interest-free loans to improve their property.
• Improve existing Landlord Energy Efficiency Regulations and re-establish the Landlord Energy Saving Allowance.
• Ban fracking.
• Protect the vital North Sea assets.
• Support further nuclear projects.
• Put the UK back on track to meet targets in the Climate Change Act and the Paris Agreement.
• Introduce a new Clean Air Act.
• Keep forests in public hands and plant a million trees.
• Increase the maximum sentence for those convicted of animal cruelty.
• Prohibit the 3rd party sale of puppies.
• Introduce and enforce a total ban on ivory trading.
• Cease the badger cull.

Housing

• Guarantee Help to Buy funding until 2027.
• Make new 3-year tenancies the norm, with an inflation cap on rent prices.
• Legislate to ban letting agency fees for tenants.
• Introduce new legal minimum standards to ensure properties are fit for human habitation.
• Reintroduce housing benefits for 18-21 year olds.
• Remove government restrictions to stop councils from building homes and begin a council building program.
• Make 4000 additional homes available to those with a history of rough sleeping.

Healthcare

• Lay the foundations for a National Care Service for England.
• Increase social care budgets by £8 billion over the lifetime of the next parliament.

Security & Defense

• Recruit 10,000 more police officers to work on community beats.
• Ensure appropriate support provided to victims of crime.
• Appoint a new commissioner to set new standards for tackling domestic and sexual violence.
• Establish a National Refuge Fund and ensure stability for rape-crisis centres.
• Make age-appropriate sex and relationship education a compulsory part of the curriculum.
• Ban the use of community resolutions as a response to domestic violence.
• Review the Prevent programme.
• Recruit 500 more border guards.
• Recruit 3000 new firefighters and give Fire and Rescue services a statutory duty to coordinate and respond to floods.
• Retain the Human Rights Act.
• Re-establish early advice entitlements in the family courts.
• Introduce a no-fault divorce procedure.
• Recruit 3000 more prison officers and review the training and professional development available.
• Insist on personal rehabilitation plans for all prisoners.
• No new private prisons.
• Embed restorative justice practices across all youth offending institutions.

### Local Communities

• Set up a commission to set up a Post Bank, owned by the Post Office.
• Reduce the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals from £100 to £2.
• Reinstate the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme and Agricultural Wages Board.
• Enforce an anti-bot legislation and implement the recommendations of the Waterson Review.

Social Services and Security

• Guarantee the state pension triple-lock- it will rise by at least 2.5% a year or be increased to keep pace with inflation or earnings (whichever is higher).
• Winter fuel allowance and free bus passes will be guaranteed as universal benefits.
• Reject the Conservative proposal to increase pension age further.
• Scrap the Bedroom Tax.
• Reinstate housing benefits for under-21's.
• Scrap cuts to Bereavement Support payment.
• Labour will reform and redesign the Universal Credit, ending 6-week delays in payment and the rape clause.
• Commit to tackle child poverty with a new Child Poverty Strategy.
• Increase Employment and Support Allowance by £30 per week for those in a work-related activity group.
• Increase Carers Allowance by £11 to meet the level of Jobseekers Allowance.
• End the stress of reassessments for people with long-term conditions.
• Enhance the 2010 Equality Act, enabling discrimination at work to be challenged.
• End cuts to youth services.
• Support all training routes for social workers.
• Extending Staying Put arrangements to support all children and young people in residential or other forms of care until they are 21.
• Fund child burial fees for bereaved parents.

Diverse and Cultured Communities

• Appoint a Violence Against Women Commissioner to enforce minimum standards in tackling domestic and sexual violence.
• Reform the Gender Recognition Act and Equality Act 2010 to protect trans people by changing the protected characteristic from 'gender assignment' to 'gender identity' and remove outdated language.
• Bring the law on LGBT hate crimes into line with hate crimes based on race and faith.
• Legislate to make terminal illness a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.
• Give British Sign Language full recognition as a recognised language.
• Introduce a £1 billion Cultural Capital Fund.
• Introduce an arts pupil premium- a £160 million annual boost for schools to invest in projects that will support cultural activity.

Disabilities and Mental Health

• Ring-fence mental health budgets and ensure funding reaches the front line.
• Bring forwards the ending of out-of-area placements to 2019.
• Increase the proportion of mental health budgets spent on support for childcare and young people.
• Review the provision of mental health services in prisons.

Foreign Policy

• Publish a strategy for protecting civilians in conflict.
• Immediately recognise the State of Palestine.
• Review all training and equipment contracts with repressive regimes, to ensure that Britain never colludes with the mistreatment of civilians.
• Introduce standards of Service Accommodation.
• In the first 100 days, produce a cross-departmental strategy to meet our international obligations on the refugee crisis.
• Establish a centre for Universal Health Coverage